Bloodshot--The Official Movie Novelization

by Gavin G. Smith

  “Seriously boss,” KT said, “can you get him squared away?” She was almost pleading.

  “I’m not sure that’s my remit,” Rodriguez told her in mock apology.

  “He’s flying with us!” she protested, nodding at another crew chief who’d just given her the thumbs-up.

  “I squared him away,” Rodriguez told her, apparently having decided that she had suffered enough.

  “Thank you,” KT said.

  “I’ve said he can’t ask you out until he rotates off our crew.”

  KT did some swearing.

  * * *

  Sleeping hadn’t worked. It was clear that she was still far too wired from the day’s exertions. Lying in her bunk she had gone from analyzing the day’s events to see if she could have done anything differently, anything better, to just replaying the most harrowing bits over and over again like a film on a loop. She had finally given up and gone for a walk, trying to keep out of the way of the crew on late watch. When she found herself near sickbay she decided to put her head in. She was on good terms with some of the corpsmen as she sometimes delivered their clients.

  Mike lay in one of the bunks, hooked up to a drip. The fracture had been set and dressed. His eyes were closed. With no familiar faces around she had decided to withdraw when he opened his eyes and looked straight at her. She imagined it was some kind of operator instinct, knowing when you’re being watched. It was clear that he was in some discomfort but he beckoned her in.

  “I wanted to thank you.” His voice sounded like it was cracking.

  “You already did,” she said handing him a glass of water and pulling a chair over before sitting down.

  “Oh, I was in pain.”

  “How are you feeling now?” KT asked.

  “Morphine.” Mike squeezed his eyes shut. It was clear that the pain he felt was more than physical. She was pretty sure that he had lost a buddy when the Seahawk had gone down.

  “Can you tell me what happened?” she asked.

  “How many helo crashes have you been in?” He didn’t ask if she had been in one. It was almost an inevitability if you spent a lot of time in helos flying in tricky situations.

  “Two.”

  “You new?” he asked, his smile humorless. It looked as though he was fighting a drug-induced stupor to talk to her. She was happy to sit by his bed until he succumbed, if it helped.

  “Think about who I fly with.” Everyone in the US military seemed to think they were the best but you really had to have skills to fly a rescue bird. That and, today notwithstanding, they didn’t get shot at as much as SF taxis.

  Mike managed to nod.

  “The rocks hid the gunboat. We didn’t see them until it was too late. We all but flew into the barrels of the Dushka.” KT knew that a Dushka or DShK was a Russian-made, Soviet-era heavy machine gun that fired huge 12.7mm rounds. “I think the first burst hit the pilot. The cockpit turned to red and the next thing I know I’m in the sea. I think I’d blacked out. Had to cut myself free. I managed to get the crew chief out. Ralphy went after the co pilot...” It had been delivered in a monotone, dispassionate as though reporting to a superior officer, until this last. His face went taut and he turned away from her.

  “You want me to stay or go?” she asked. It was all she could think to say, though she suspected that his answer might not be all that honest. Guys like Mike hated showing weakness. She wasn’t surprised when he waved her away. Still, dealer’s choice. She stood up and turned to leave. She was more than a little surprised when he grabbed her arm but let go the moment he felt her tense up.

  “Sorry,” he told her. “That guy...” he said.

  KT was thinking that she might need a bit more information to work with, then she remembered Mike sitting up and staring at one of the operators who’d climbed out of the stealth helo.

  “The guy with the prosthetic legs?” she asked. Mike managed to nod. His eyes looked wet. It could have just as easily been pain as grief. “What about him?”

  “You need to stay away from him,” Mike told her. “Piece of shit.” He almost spat this last.

  It was overprotective bordering on proprietary for someone she’d only just met, even if they had met in heightened circumstances. Still, it was clear that Mike really did not like the guy with the prosthetics. She had no particular interest in going anywhere near them beyond thanking the sniper. On the other hand, he might know something about what was going on. After all, even in a military the size of the US’s the SF community is a pretty small one.

  “Who is he?” she asked.

  “His name’s Dalton. Doesn’t give a shit about anyone else but himself. Gets people killed.”

  “Who’s he with?” KT asked.

  Mike shrugged, though it looked as though it had hurt him. There was just a momentary pang of guilt. She didn’t want to take advantage of a wounded man on morphine. Still, he’d offered the information.

  “He’ll either be a contractor or maybe with the SOG,” Mike told her. The Special Operations Group was the CIA’s own covert paramilitary unit. “Somewhere that teamwork is less of an issue.”

  This made sense.

  “You hear them firing on the gunboat?” KT asked.

  Mike nodded and then grimaced.

  “Didn’t sound like anything I’d ever heard before.”

  KT didn’t want to push too much farther. It had been far from her intent but she was definitely starting to feel like she was taking advantage.

  “Mike, I’m gonna let you get some rest, okay?”

  He managed to nod again.

  KT stood up and turned to leave.

  “How are you with it all?” he asked. She turned back to look at the wounded operator. “I know you guys. You join a combat service to save lives.”

  He was talking about her using the grenade.

  Say it like it is, she told herself. She had killed today. How did she feel about it? She wasn’t sure if she had processed it. She had mostly been working on instinct and training.

  “They were trying to kill my crew,” she told him. If it came down to her friends, or strangers with guns, she was always going to throw that grenade. She didn’t want to kill but in this case she was pretty sure that she had saved lives. Maybe she would have to come to terms with it farther down the road; rational thought and emotions were frequently at odds with each other, after all, but for the time being she was at peace with her decision. “I’m good with it.”

  Mike looked at her for a moment or two, then he nodded once more.

  * * *

  “What you got for me, senior chief?” KT asked as she sat down at a table on the mess deck opposite Rodriguez with her breakfast. After their exertions yesterday, she was looking forward to a day of light duties. She hadn’t gotten much sleep.

  Rodriguez looked down at the size of her breakfast.

  “Sure you got enough there?”

  She loved deploying but it meant she couldn’t train as much as she wanted. By train she meant swim. Swimming a lot meant she could eat as much as she liked, which she was all for. Still, she was reasonably pleased with the size of her breakfast: a stack of pancakes, scrambled eggs, bacon with syrup and even sausage. After all, she’d worked hard yesterday. She looked down at the senior chief’s bowl of oatmeal and shook her head.

  “The breakfast of a middle-aged man,” she said with mock sympathy.

  Rodriguez gave her the finger.

  “C’mon, you’re dodging the question, quit holding out on me,” she said.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he told her. He, of course, knew exactly what she was talking about. Of all the rumour mills in the United States Navy, the most efficient and effective was that of the senior NCOs.

  “I will phone your wife,” KT said looking him straight in the eyes.

  “Whoa!” Rodriguez cried, a couple of jarheads on a nearby table turning to look their way. “Straight to the nuclear option, just slither right round the established chain of
command?”

  KT shook her head. “I know who your real commander-in-chief is, senior chief.”

  She knew he would spill. The reason that the senior NCO’s rumor mill was the best in the navy was because they were a bunch of incurable gossips.

  Rodriguez leaned forward conspiratorially. KT did the same.

  “Okay, hear me now. You gotta understand that a lot of this is pure speculation but we’ve got people putting this together who know their shit. People who’ve been places and seen things.”

  KT nodded, playing along.

  “Like the time you saw that mermaid?” she asked.

  “I did see a mermaid,” he replied with total sincerity. The “mermaid” sighting had resulted in what was genuinely agreed to have been the single worst mermaid tattoo in the history of the US Navy. Which was saying something. The tattoo, in turn, had apparently also resulted in one of the worst arguments that Rodriguez had ever had with his wife. “But that’s not what we’re talking about, okay?”

  “What’ve you got, senior chief?” KT demanded.

  “So the guy with the prosthetics—” he started.

  “Dalton?” KT couldn’t help herself.

  Rodriguez looked a little put out and a lot like he wanted to ask her how she knew. KT just grinned at him.

  “He’s ex-DevGru.” The Naval Special Warfare Development Group, more commonly known as SEAL Team 6, were the navy’s own Tier One special forces unit. “Seemed he was discharged on medical grounds.”

  “His legs?” she asked.

  Rodriguez nodded.

  “Yes, but he left under a bit of a cloud, left some people behind to die. He’s persona non grata in the community.”

  That put some light on what Mike was saying at least.

  “The other guy?” KT asked.

  “Sniper’s the best guess,” the senior chief told her. She was pretty sure she could have worked that out herself. “Bit of mystery but he’s no swabbie, or jarhead, probably ex-dogface.” Roughly translated it meant that the possible sniper wasn’t navy or marine but was probably ex-army. “Maybe green beret, maybe Delta.” Which made sense.

  “So what they doing here?” KT asked. He hadn’t really told her much that she couldn’t have worked out.

  “Well, you saw the body bags. They’re killing people. It’s what guys like that do.”

  KT leaned back in the chair.

  “And bringing the bodies back! C’mon chief. They’re flying around in a stealthed bird. They’ve got contractors running security. They might be trying a bit too hard but there’s more than that going on. Where’s the juice?”

  “You heard the shots, right?” he asked. She nodded. It would have been difficult not to hear them, the reports had sounded like the gods were angry, like something out of the Iliad. “We reckon they are contractors working for DARPA, they’re field testing next-gen weapons.” The Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency was the government department responsible for developing cutting-edge weapon systems for the military.

  KT gave this some thought. It explained the weapon, even the advanced prosthetics. It made sense but somehow she was disappointed. She suspected that she might be getting jaded but the normality of the explanation just seemed to underscore just how mundane most military service was, even for operators. Yesterday notwithstanding, she thought. Still, Rodriguez looked pleased with himself. He was looking at her expectantly.

  “That it?” she asked. She was being mean. He looked a little crestfallen.

  “What’d you want? This is some James Bond-level shit, right here,” he insisted. KT was less sure about that but pleased that Rodriguez was enjoying himself. “I mean there’s the weapon itself,” he added. It was clear that he had been keeping this little snippet as an Easter egg.

  “You know what it is?” she asked, not quite managing to keep the skepticism out of her voice.

  “Well we have some speculation from ordinance.” By ordinance he meant the NCOs who ran the crews that worked the Twain’s various offensive and defensive weapon systems.

  “Oh, okay,” she said. She had few illusions regarding the accuracy of navy speculation. It had a much lower hit rate than the gossip network.

  “You know what a railgun is?” he asked her.

  She knew she’d heard the term somewhere. In the back of her mind she felt it was connected to the electromagnetic catapults that were used on some of the more modern and retrofitted carriers to launch jets.

  “Some kind of gun?” she hazarded.

  She almost laughed as Rodriguez gave her a look that said: this is serious stuff. Rodriguez had very many fine qualities but sometimes she knew that you just had to let a guy mansplain something. It made them happy.

  “It’s a gun that uses electromagnetic force instead of a chemical explosion to launch a projectile,” he told her.

  “Like the new launch catapults?” she asked, pleased that she’d made the connection. Rodriguez looked momentarily surprised. She tried not to hold it against him and remind the senior chief that she was in the navy as well.

  “Er... yeah,” he said.

  It certainly fit the facts. The strange sound of the report. The heightened noise of the hypersonic bang. Presumably it also explained the remarkable destructive power of the weapon.

  “And you think that DARPA has developed a man-portable one?” KT asked.

  “Well the ordinance guys do. It would have been in the big gun bag that the second guy was carrying, probably about the size of a .50 cal sniper rifle.”

  Again it all made sense, but KT still felt a little disappointed.

  “What about their contractors?” she asked.

  “Standard issue. Gunny Harv thinks the fool who stepped to you used to be a jarhead, to Harv’s eternal shame. Word has it the same guy has been behaving like an asshole all over the ship. They’re not ex-SF though.” “Harv” was the gunnery sergeant in charge of the marine contingent on board the Twain. He was very much a marine’s marine, liked shouting a lot, but he was personable enough. More importantly to KT, the gunnery sergeant was good at his job and cared about his people.

  “Where they bunked?” KT asked, trying to make it sound as casual as possible.

  Now it was Rodriguez’s turn to sit back in his chair, regarding her carefully.

  “Why?” he asked. She shrugged. “They’re doing some top secret shit you shouldn’t go digging in.”

  “You did,” she protested.

  “We’ve engaged in some casual speculation, an intellectual exercise is all.”

  “Intellectual exercise!” KT scoffed.

  “Don’t make trouble,” Rodriguez warned her. He was using his paternalistic I-really-want-you-to-listen-to-me tone of voice. She sort of appreciated it. It wasn’t like she had a real dad, after all. Not that she had the slightest intention of doing as she was told.

  “I just want to say thank you to them,” she protested.

  “And if I order you not to?” he asked.

  “It’s just manners. Look either you tell me or I find out elsewhere,” she said crossing her arms.

  Rodriguez sighed. KT was grateful to his wife for teaching the senior chief how to lose arguments with a degree of grace. Or as he put it: ‘Knowing when the battle’s lost.’

  “They’re for’ard, near the armory,” he told her. Then he pointed at her. “Don’t go starting some shit, you understand me, chief?” He had used her rank, which meant he was, gently, pulling rank. She just smiled. “Hey, check that out,” he said and nodded at something behind her.

  KT turned and looked. The press of people on the mess deck had cleared now and she could see Huang sitting at a table finishing off his breakfast and talking to Lieutenant Commander Ellen Bedford, USN retired, the pilot of the stealth Black Hawk.

  * * *

  “What’s up, boss?” KT said, putting her now pretty cold breakfast down on the table before sitting down. She saw Huang sigh and Bedford roll her eyes.

  “I’ll see you l
ater,” Bedford said standing up.

  “Bye,” KT said picking up a bit of bacon to chew on.

  “Rude,” Huang said once the other pilot had left.

  “I actually wanted to speak to her,” KT said.

  “You remember that whole officer/NCO chain of command thing we keep on trying to impress on you?”

  “Sort of,” KT said, “but she’s not in my chain of command.”

  “I am,” Huang reminded her. His tone suggested that he was being serious. Which was fair, she was playing fast and loose with navy regulations here but she did respect the chain of command and, more importantly, she respected Huang.

  “Okay, Lieutenant, I’m sorry, I’m out of order but what’d’cha find out?” she asked, with a mouthful of lukewarm pancake.

  “KT, you must know it’s a covert op—” he sounded genuinely exasperated.

  “Which you’re not involved in either. You were talking to her for exactly the same reason I’m talking to you,” she pointed out, spooning egg into her mouth.

  “I was catching up with an old friend,” he protested.

  “And coincidentally finding out about things that you can’t possibly tell me.”

  Huang studied her for a moment or two.

  “What’s this about, KT? You’re not normally like this.”

  The question brought her up short. He was right. She understood the need for secrecy, for operational security. Why was she probing?

  “I don’t know, there’s just something about this one,” she said finally.

  “First time under fire?” he asked

  “Yeah,” she said, after a moment or two. “And under weird circumstances, does that make sense?”

  Huang thought about this.

  “You’re just trying to make sense of it. That’s normal, I guess.”

  “So you gonna tell me anything?” she asked. “I mean I think we owe these guys our thanks, maybe even our lives.”

  “Which is an argument to leave them in peace,” Huang pointed out.

  “I don’t think they want to be left in peace. I mean they’re a noisy kind of covert, aren’t they. What if they’re desperate for our attention?” she asked, grinning at him.