I’d overdone the C4, apparently.
There was nothing left but flaming wreckage, and the three trucks on the road nearby had been heavily damaged by the shockwave alone—knocked over, glass shattered. Pieces of flaming wreckage were scattered everywhere.
My ears rang; I was disoriented.
I rolled to my knees, brought my Steyr Aug up, lined up a woozily staggering figure. Crack—crack—crack-crack. He dropped, and so did the one next to him. My gut churned with disgust—this was like shooting fish in a barrel.
I steeled myself, and kept going.
Crack-crack—crack—crack-crack—crack—crack.
I dropped merc after merc, and then finally one of them clued into my location and return fire started echoing—rounds whined high at first, and then wide to the left, and then started walking up the grass toward me, dirt spraying. I tumbled head over ass as I threw myself out of the way, and then rolled to my feet and sprinted hard for my next pre-chosen location—ten yards away, up the hill. I waited, watched. They were scrambling, still firing at my previous location.
I opened up, rattling rounds off in five- and six- and eight-round bursts—suppressing fire. My mag clicked empty, and instead of taking the time to reload, I let it drop by its strap and yanked up the HK UMP40 I’d brought as backup. Again, I fired off longer bursts, and the kill squads stayed down behind their wrecked trucks.
Another series of bursts, targeting windows and tires, punching through door panels.
I heard automatic weapons fire in the distance, and knew it was time to wrap this up—Cuddy was getting busy.
There was a pause in the staccato firing, and I heard Cuddy’s voice over the radio. “Hell of a boom, Lear.”
I keyed the mic, and laughed. “Yeah, no kidding. I may have overdone the explosives a little.”
“I’m in a good location—drawing fire and holding.”
“Perfect. Stay there as long as you can—keep ’em busy. I have to wrap this up over here.”
And then I heard it—a sweet, sweet sound.
BOOOOM!…BOOM!…BOOM!
The unmistakable voice of a Barrett .50cal.
Anselm.
I breathed an audible sigh of relief, and could have cried.
“The fuck?” Cuddy snapped over the radio. “Incoming heavy fire. Big caliber. Taking out…” I heard the pause as she waited for the next series of reports to echo across the landscape and over the radio. “Jesus. He’s decimating them, whoever’s on that big fucker. Barrett, it sounds like. The helicopters are toast, people are smears…fucking hell.”
I cackled into the radio as I hustled for the next location. “That, my dear, is my friend Anselm. It means we’ve got backup.”
“No shit.”
I focused on the scene below. I’d moved far around behind them, but they’d wised up to my game, and were clustered, backs together, trying to watch all directions at once. How far? Seventy yards, maximum? I considered throwing one of the frag grenades I had, but decided against it—my arm wasn’t that good, unfortunately, and it would be a waste. I opted for the simple expedient of just laying a strafing line across the group, rather than aiming at anyone. Bullets hit, slamming into bodies, and while I knew I probably hadn’t killed any of them, I’d created a lot of wounded, which would buy me time.
I heard the Barrett going, a deafening roll of concussive thunder, punctuated by a barrage of small arms fire.
I left the mercs to their wounded and hauled ass on foot back toward the airfield. This was the weak part of the plan—I didn’t really have a next phase, other than to figure out a way to backtrack closer to Cain. Follow the trail of mercenaries and thugs backward—to Europe somewhere, I assumed, and put a bullet in his fucking skull.
Fast and loose—usually I’m a meticulous planner, but this had taken me by surprise, obviously, and it was the best I could come up with on the run.
I heard the chatter of automatic weapons fire getting closer, and could now pinpoint different directions. Anselm had gone silent for the moment—picking a new spot. It was weird to not be in contact with them, to know my brothers were out there fighting for me, operating purely on the scant information I’d been able to provide…risking themselves on next to no intel, going in essentially blind and trusting that shit would just work out.
They could clearly see that there was at least one person laying down fire on the airfield, and likely knew something else was afoot, judging by the firing I’d been creating. I’d reached the two-track again, somehow. Fuck it. I followed it at a lope, reloading both main weapons and switching back to my Steyr Aug. I skidded to a stop as I caught sight of something on the road ahead, dark shapes moving.
I flung myself off the road and into the brush, and then crept forward.
Voices, engines rumbling.
Crept forward more, and peered through the screen of trees—I was in a section of thick undergrowth, thin young hardwoods scattered in dense clumps, the two-track carved through the new growth forest. The sound of the voices and the engines muffled the noise of my approach.
Another couple yards closer, and now I could make out individual voices.
A man, on the phone. Speaking what sounded like German, but accented as if it wasn’t his native language. I wasn’t what you would call fluent in German, but I could make out bits and pieces—conversational, let’s call it, enough to catch the gist.
“More than one…taking fire from multiple directions. Sniper, too….four units, but they have not returned—explosions…fear the worst…” A pause as he listened. “Cain is not here is he? He orders me to kill, to capture, but he does not pay me enough for this…yes, I’ll come to Riga and say it to his face. He might kill me for it, but that’s better than this shit. I’ve known him since he was a child in the army, so I’ll say it to his face—he is taking too much risk. These fuckers do not die. It is not worth it. He needs to give up…”
Bingo.
That’s my guy, right there—my ticket to Cain.
I crept to the edge of the trees, and took in the scene—a deuce-and-a-half, army surplus, painted black, massive diesel rumbling at idle. Back open, full of armed troops. And troops they were—it was a small army, considering the presence of the two other deuces ahead of it, each at max capacity. Fucking hell—we were not prepared for this.
Seventy-two fucking grunts? Plus the twelve I’d fucked up, and however many more were still at the airfield.
Cain was going all out.
Full assault.
And this was just for me.
I was flattered, to know he thought highly enough of me to need this many guys.
Unless…
This was the staging ground for his assault on the rest of us.
Unless this whole thing was a trap…
Fuck.
What if the whole thing had been an elaborate trap, knowing I’d elude capture, knowing I’d find the information on that phone and follow it, and likely bring in my team as support?
It was a lot of assumptions with no way of ensuring it’d work, and it had a huge margin for error, but it was exactly the kind of stupid-yet-cunning plan Cain was so fond of, so crazy and reckless and underhanded that it could just maybe work…and maybe just had.
But…now what? I couldn’t take on this many alone.
Yet I dare not let the man on the phone out of my sight—he was my ticket to Cain—he was dressed in a suit, tall and lean, swarthy, with hairy knuckles and heavy stubble, a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, an AK-47 hanging from one shoulder. Older, some silver in his black hair.
He’d said Riga.
I consulted my brain for the vast array of random facts I had stored away in there, but came up with nothing. I’d have to look it up. No matter, I had a location.
I just had to figure out how to get this guy, and how to get him somewhere we could get information out of him.
I heard something off to my left, the snap of a stick.
My head w
hipped around, and I saw a dark shape slipping through the trees—a massive, hulking shadow in the trees.
Oh shit.
A grin fixed itself on my face—there was only one person in the world that large who could move so silently—Thresh.
And where Thresh was, Duke wasn’t far away.
I just hoped they didn’t kill my information source.
I couldn’t alert them to my presence, not without alerting the transports full of troops to theirs—and my own.
No matter anyway—it was too late.
I saw another shadow moving in the trees, and then saw a small dot fly through the air, landing on the first transport—at the same time, Thresh’s shadow tossed one into the rear-most.
And then the air was shredded by a pair of deafening explosions, heat and pressure blasting over me, and then arms fire opened up, along with screams and the crackle of flames.
I went into action, lunging into the road and sprinting for the now-prone form of the man with the phone.
He was bleeding, moaning, unconscious. I saw Thresh, and he saw me, and a grin crossed his face. He keyed his mic and I knew he was calling out to the rest of the team that he had eyes on me. Between him and Duke, they made quick work of the middle deuce and its unfortunate contents.
That, motherfuckers, is how two men take out seventy-two in less than five seconds.
I grabbed the man under his arms, rolled him over, stripped him of his weapons, and then hauled him into the trees. I was joined seconds later by Thresh—who picked me up bodily and crushed me in a bear hug.
“You little fucking bitch! You had me worried!” he rumbled in that deep, bear-like snarl of his.
Duke was there too, ruffling my hair as if I was a little kid. “Lear, my man. Thank fuck you’re alive.” His grin was merry. “This is some party you cooked up for us.”
“No shit.” I gestured at the body. “Thank god you didn’t kill this guy.”
Thresh rested the barrel of his M4 over his shoulder, eyeing the unconscious form. “Who is he?”
I shrugged. “All I know is he works for Cain—knows him personally. I caught part of a conversation, and this dickhead seems to think Cain is in Riga, wherever the fuck that is.”
“Latvia,” Duke answered immediately. Thresh and I both glanced at him, and he just shrugged. “What? Temple and I spent a weekend there last summer. Beautiful place. It’s one of those Baltic States.”
“Who the hell vacations in Latvia?” Thresh wondered.
“Temple does,” Duke answered, with a laugh and a shrug. He glanced at me again. “Seriously, though. What the actual fuck is going on?”
“Cain has a big old messy-ass plan to get back at all of us at once, I think,” I said. “I don’t know much, seeing as I’ve been dodging his assholes left and right and just trying to keep my ass in one piece.”
Duke jerked a thumb at the continued small arms fire. “Who’s that, out there? Whoever it is, they’re a hell of a shot.”
I grinned. “That’s Cuddy.”
Duke and Thresh both stared at me, jaws dropping.
“As in the Cuddy?” Duke asked. “Works for RMI, and is personal friends with Johnny Raze, the Butcher of Benin? That Cuddy?”
I frowned. “Butcher of what?”
“A contract gone wrong,” Duke answered. “Ugly business. Your girl Cuddy was there.”
I shook my head. “We haven’t exactly traded war stories as yet.” I grinned, as Thresh and Duke’s eyebrows lifted.
“How the hell did Cuddy get mixed up in this?” Thresh asked.
At that moment, my earpiece crackled. “Lear?” Her voice was breathless. Winded.
“Yeah?” I said, turning away and cupping my hand over the earpiece.
“I could use some help.”
I went into a sprint down the road. “On it, with big-time backup. Location?”
“Half a click east of the airfield,” she panted. “They surrounded me…hurt but okay. On the run. Low on ammo.”
“Fuck,” I snapped, but not to her. I keyed the mic. “On the way. Hang tight.”
“There’s a fucking lot of them.”
“I know. This was bigger than I thought.”
More automatic weapons chatter, and I heard breathing behind me, saw Duke jogging easily next to me, making my near-sprint look like an easy morning jog.
“What’s up, buttercup?” he said, grinning.
“Cuddy…she’s in trouble.”
He just blew a raspberry. “Well no shit. This is a big ol’ clusterfuck.”
“She sounded…nervous,” I said, between gasps. “Not like her. She’s got…ice…in her veins.”
Duke wasn’t even breathing hard. “Bet she does.” He held up a hand, and we slowed. “Marks ahead,” he whispered. “Bunch of ’em.”
He angled off the road into the brush, and I followed him. He made ghosting through the woods without a sound look easy, while I blundered noisily behind. We’d come to where the two-track widened into the airfield, and there were several clumps of mercs standing in loose formation, waiting for orders. Duke listened, watched, and then winked at me.
Ready? he mouthed.
I adjusted my grip on my weapon, tucked it tighter against my shoulder, let out a couple short soft breaths, and then nodded.
He held up three fingers…two…one…
We darted out of the tree line, splitting apart, Duke going right as I went left. He was wielding an HK G36, a truly massive assault rifle, and making it look tiny as only a monster of a man like Duke could. He fired in three-round bursts chained so quickly together that, to the untrained eye and ear, it’d seem like one long burst. The deafening concussions of his G36 blatted against my ears, and I opened up myself, my smaller and less noisy Steyr Aug cracking sharply in comparison to the concussive rattle of his weapon.
His red hair was bound back in a tight top knot, the sides shaved to the skin, and he wore a tactical armor vest over a sleeveless black shirt, leaving his thigh-thick biceps bare. Duke was one of a kind, and was truly one of the deadliest humans on the planet—as evidenced by the fact that he emptied his entire clip in a matter of seconds, each burst scything through a different body, most of them headshots, if not direct T-box hits. He did it all without hesitation, still moving forward at a deceptively quick crouching jog, his gait smooth. I was a half second behind him in my bursts, strafing them left through the clusters of mercenaries.
And then he was in among a group of mercs, dropping his now-empty rifle and quick-drawing his sidearm in a blur—the next couple of seconds were a wild dance of death, as Duke combined hand-to-hand combat with precise and artistic use of his Berretta in a montage that seemed like something out of John Wick, a blur of kicks and throws, punches and blasts of his pistol, and then the clearing was empty and he was changing magazines on the run, aiming toward the sound of firing off to our left.
I followed, tapping a fresh magazine in place. We were sprinting across the close-cropped grass between the hangars, dodging around the flaming wrecks of helicopters, stepping over the corpses that were courtesy of Anslem’s .50cal—bodies with disintegrated heads, nothing remaining but a pink mist on the grass. I heard the big rifle booming still, but couldn’t identify the vector.
Ahead, now, off to the left, into the tall grass beyond the edge of the field—black- and camouflage-clad shapes were arrayed in an arc, closing in. I saw their rifles going, saw the glint of sunlight on shells flinging from firing mechanisms, heard the crack and rattle. Saw them dropping, coming on undeterred. We were a hundred yards away—a long shot for an assault rifle.
Duke made it look easy, as he had a tendency to make everything look. He dropped to one knee and fired through the tops of the grass, single rounds cracking repeatedly. I joined him, picking targets.
The booms of Anselm’s rifle shifted, and I saw a skull explode into red fog, and then they’d cottoned onto the fact that they were being killed from three directions.
They pivote
d as a unit; saw Duke and me in the distance. Easy targets.
Good.
They came for us, and now their rounds were whipping and snapping and buzzing, and I had to roll to one side, dart a few steps, pop up, and crack off a pair of rounds.
Duke was moving, firing, moving, firing, and Anselm was snapping off rounds in a slow steady rhythm, each one turning heads into mist.
Cuddy wasn’t idle—I caught a glimpse of her, streaking through the field toward the airfield.
I followed her vector, and cursed: the transport was powering up, turboprops spinning up to speed.
I clutched my rifle in one hand and sprinted as hard as I could—let Thresh and the boys interrogate Cain’s friend…I had a destination, and I’d wager a pile of money the plane was heading there.
Duke was on his own—I wasn’t worried about him, not with Anslem as backup.
God knows where Thresh was, or Puck and Harris.
I had to get on that plane.
It was moving, and I knew time was running out.
The movies make it look like an exciting bit of adventure, catching a plane before it takes off. It’s always that, in the movies, right? The hero sprinting dramatically down the runway after a plane taking off, catching a wheel and climbing it up the side of the now-airborne aircraft, somehow making it inside without falling off…
Yeah, that shit isn’t possible.
Not by a long shot.
The only hope was to get to it before it started taxiing.
Cuddy was ahead of me by several yards, made it to the transport and the ramp. The props were whirling at speed now, and I was still fifty yards away. Winded, gasping, legs burning.
Run fucking harder, I told myself.
Cuddy vanished up the ramp, and I heard her HK snapping.
Twenty yards, now.
Off to my left, I saw a trio of mercs slip from the shadows under the fuselage and onto the ramp.
Sneaking, creeping, rifles up.
Behind Cuddy.
My gut churned as I pushed my body harder—running at full-tilt well past my natural ability to sustain a dead sprint. Eyes blurred. Legs felt like jelly, rubber, moving of their own accord. Lungs were on fire, each breath searing through my chest.
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