Bloodshot--The Official Movie Novelization

by Gavin G. Smith

  The APC walked the cannon rounds from Rodriguez into the crashed helo. The wreckage started to crumple in on itself, then the avgas ignited, but KT was already running. She felt the heat of the explosion, and she covered her head as bits of wreckage tumbled past her. The pressure wave battered her spine and her ribcage as the fireball blossomed in the middle of the square behind her.

  She sprinted full tilt for the corner of the square and a downhill street that she prayed led to the beach. She thought she heard shouts behind her. Russian. She definitely heard the gunfire, saw the explosions of powdered brick as bullets chewed away at the wall ahead of her. She almost made it to the corner, then a hammer blow to her upper left arm spun her round and she went down. Her armed burned, felt numb and wet at the same time, but she managed to throw herself around the corner even as bullet impacts chewed away at the brickwork. She crawled away from the gunfire, pushed herself to her feet and despite her injuries, despite the pain, she ran like she had never run before.

  * * *

  KT forced herself to stop. She hid in the entrance passage to a block of flats and tried to ignore the dead cat on the steps. She was aware of the roar of a diesel engine, she assumed it was the APC. She wasn’t sure but she suspected it was moving on a street parallel to her current position. She tried to force herself to think more clearly.

  Sandeman, Huang, Thorrason, all dead. Rodriguez... oh my god, Anna, the kids. Her thought patterns were out of control. She had to supress the emotion, force it down. Think now, mourn later. Their memory wouldn’t be helped by her death.

  She flexed her left arm. She could move it but she felt the bullet wound seep blood as she did. Quickly she drew her knife and cut a strip from the arm of her BDU, allowing her access to the wound. She took a field dressing from one of the cargo pockets on her pants and quickly used it to bind the wound. She touched her head and her fingers came away wet. She knew that head wounds bled a lot. They always looked worse than they were. She used the strip she’d cut from her sleeve to bind the head wound. It probably wasn’t very effective but she hoped it would keep the blood out of her eyes. God, her head hurt! She was pretty sure that she was concussed and she felt sick. She shook her head to try and clear it but saw stars instead. Once more she had to force herself to think. She needed an objective: get to the beach alive. Find help. Then kill every single person responsible for the death of her crew and the chemical weapon attack. It was a solid objective. She assumed, but could rely on, Gunny Harv and anyone remaining on the beach to have seen or heard the destruction of the helo. Also she was pretty sure that Sandeman had got a mayday off before the crash.

  There was a strange taste in her mouth, like pineapple and pepper.

  She was armed! She cursed herself for her stupidity. How could she have forgotten that? She scrabbled at her holster and drew her sidearm. She was a good shot on the range and in training simulations, but she knew a 9mm Beretta was of little use against an assault rifle, even if her hand did stop shaking long enough for her to aim.

  A shadow crossed the entranceway. The beam from an aimlight mounted on an assault rifle illuminated the passage. It was pure luck that KT had her sidearm in her hand. She just extended her arms, sighted on the silhouette of a large man in MOPP gear and squeezed the trigger again and again and again. The muzzle flash lit up the tiny passageway. She shot so quickly the soldier in the MOPP gear looked like he was caught in a strobe light as he staggered back, but didn’t go down until a bullet pulled at the hood of his protective gear, then he tumbled to the ground.

  KT stared at man’s body on the ground. The slide was back on her sidearm, the magazine empty, spent brass on the floor all around her. Only then did it occur to her that it could have been one of her own people. A member of a search party. She took a step forward. It wasn’t. The gear, the Russian weapon. If the briefing had been right then the dead man had probably been one of Vasilov’s mercenaries.

  She heard the sound of running boots on the concrete outside. KT fled.

  * * *

  She had run, lost among a tangled warren of alleyways and passages, catching the odd flash of blue sky in the narrow gaps between the tenement buildings. Hoping to see a US helo fly overhead. She needed to find her way back to the main streets but she knew that was where the mercenaries would be looking for her.

  Fighting the panic, she forced herself to stop, to listen for sounds of pursuit. KT knew that she was more than lucky to be alive. The mercenary must have not been able to see her momentarily. She had fired first. With shaking hands she changed the magazine in her sidearm and worked the slide to chamber a round as quietly as she could. She had the mag in her gun and one more after that. She couldn’t use that many rounds again if she encountered one of them. The mercenary she had killed hadn’t gone straight down. She was pretty sure that meant they were wearing body armor, which in turn meant she needed headshots to kill them.

  The smell of pineapple and pepper was getting stronger. She had a metallic taste in her mouth that was making the back of her throat sting.

  Why are you even thinking about fighting them? her internal voice practically screamed at her. Her only real hope was avoiding them altogether. She wondered about the river. Could she swim and climb down to the beach, play to her strengths?

  This was why she was less than pleased when she peeked around a corner and found herself looking at a patch of waste ground bordered by tenement buildings with the APC and another vehicle parked there.

  KT had to stifle a cough. When she took her dirty hand away from her mouth she saw there was blood on it.

  She looked more closely at the second vehicle. It looked like some kind of military tanker. It had a number of nozzles open to the air. Her throat and chest were starting to burn as the smell of pepper and pineapples became nearly overwhelming. Her eyes were stinging as well.

  The tanker vehicle was manned by more soldiers in MOPP gear, though their camo patterns were distinct from the Russian mercenaries. She also noticed a man-portable surface-to-air missile launcher leaning against the tanker truck. She suspected the soldiers with the tanker were members of Syrian Special Mission Force.

  A Russian was pointing a pistol at one of the Syrians.

  “This was a test! You were told not to draw any more attention to yourself than was absolutely necessary!” The Russian was shouting in English. She guessed that English was the language they had in common and that the Russian was shouting to be heard over his gas mask. She wondered if this was Vasilov, or perhaps even Baris. Then something he had said struck her.

  A test. A test! She had seen the dead in the street, treated them on the beach, even had one die in her arms on the way to the refugee camp. All for a test.

  “Do you think perhaps that shooting down an American helicopter might draw attention to the operation?” the Russian demanded. The Syrian said nothing. Even though she had seen it coming, KT still jumped when the Russian pulled the trigger and shot the other man in his gasmask-covered face. He hit the ground. If KT had expected the other Syrian soldiers to do something then she was disappointed. They remained still, which was odd. It was almost as if they were being covered from somewhere else, somewhere she couldn’t see.

  KT started to cough, doubling over, her eyes, throat and chest burning as she spat white froth and blood. She knew what was happening. The test must have been for the tanker delivery system but she couldn’t quite bring herself to think the words “chlorine gas.” She was dead. She knew it as she sank to the ground. She also knew she was making too much noise. That was when one of the mercenaries swung round the corner of the alleyway and hit her in the face with the butt of his rifle.

  * * *

  KT’s first thought was: People have to stop hitting me in the head. It felt like her skull had split. Her second thought, tinged with panic, was: I can’t breathe. Her chest was on fire. She managed to draw in a ragged breath; it felt like she was breathing through lungs filled with broken glass. She opened bloodied eyes to
look up at a figure in MOPP gear silhouetted against a clear blue Mediterranean sky. She was lying in the dirt close to the APC. Not far from the tanker. Ground zero of the gas attack that was killing her. It was the man with the pistol, the one who had shot the Syrian soldier. He was bringing his sidearm up to point at her. The one that she was pretty sure was—

  “Vasilov?” she managed. Her voice didn’t quite sound like her own. Maybe if she had chain-smoked for a thousand years.

  He hesitated for a moment. It was all the confirmation KT needed. This was Vasilov alright. Then she found herself looking down the void of a gun barrel.

  “You are from the helicopter, yes? What other forces do you have in the area?” Vasilov had to all but shout to be heard through his gas mask.

  KT just pushed herself up into a sitting position and grinned. She knew she must look a sight. Somehow she took perverse pleasure in this. None of it mattered. She was dead anyway.

  Glancing around she saw four other shooters. One of them stood nearby, the others were stationed around the wasteland, keeping an eye out. If they were an eight-man squad then that left two more in the APC. Seven Russian mercenaries, plus however many of the Syrian special forces there were, but seven, or seven hundred, it didn’t matter as there was nothing she could do, unarmed and dying.

  “Death by chlorine gas is more painful and prolonged than you might imagine. Tell me what I want to know and I’ll end it quickly. What difference does it make, nobody will ever know?” Vasilov told her. With the pain lancing through her split head, the agony of trying to draw a breath, his suggestion wasn’t without merit. Except she would know.

  KT gave Vasilov the finger.

  He nodded as though he had both expected and was pleased with the answer. His finger started to tighten on his sidearm.

  She saw the drone first. It looked like an exploded canister, its tiny rotor a blur. The corner of her bloodied mouth curled up into a smile. Part of the roof of one of the tenement buildings overlooking the wasteland exploded. Then the mercenary closest to Vasilov did the same, coming apart at the waist, his torso somersaulting to land on his legs. The roof and the mercenary were on the same trajectory. The dead man’s assault rifle fell into the dirt close to KT. Thunder rolled across the bright blue sky, shaking windows in the surrounding buildings.

  Vasilov didn’t hesitate. He jumped through the open side door of the APC. KT grabbed the fallen assault rifle. She knew that special operators rarely safetied their weapons when operational. She swung around on the ground and fired at Vasilov but he dived farther into the vehicle’s interior, the bullets sparking off armored plate.

  There was a monstrous clang and the APC rocked on its suspension. It was mostly adrenaline that carried KT to her feet, the butt of the assault rifle snug against her shoulder. Instinct and training took over despite the malicious alchemy of the chlorine gas turning the water in her lungs and throat into hydrochloric acid and eating away at her respiratory system.

  KT stepped into the darkness of the APC, her eyes taking a moment to adjust. Vasilov was leaving by the armored vehicle’s back door. KT squeezed the trigger. The muzzle flash lit up the interior. The three-round burst caught Vasilov in the back, central mass, just like she had been trained. He fell out of the back of the vehicle, hitting the ground face first. She was aware of movement behind her. She swung around. Too slow. The APC’s gunner was already bringing his weapon to bear. Another monstrous clang. The gunner exploded like a bag of red liquid. The driver of the APC was swinging around. KT fired. The three-round burst from KT’s weapon battered the driver around in his seat.

  Body armor! She remembered. She shifted aim and squeezed the trigger again, ignoring the dripping interior of the APC. The driver’s head splattered all over the windscreen.

  KT was aware that she was no longer breathing. She didn’t know if it was psychosomatic or not, but it was as though she could feel the acid dripping down through her body, liquefying her other organs, hollowing her out. Somehow she was still moving. She swung back round and moved through the APC to the rear door, hoping to find Vasilov face down in the dirt. He wasn’t. He was running toward an alleyway between two of the tenements. KT tried to raise the rifle but instead face-planted out of the back of the APC.

  Across the patch of waste ground she could see one of the mercenaries. He was in cover behind a low wall in front of one of the tenements. He had his squad automatic weapon raised high and was firing long burst after long burst, every third round a tracer drawing a laser-like line of fractal light in the sky. The low wall exploded. The mercenary disappeared and the wall of the tenement was painted red. Thunder rolled across the sky as from far away Tibbs continued his long-distance killing spree. Dying, KT was reminded of the start of the Iliad: the sun god Apollo raining death on the besiegers of Troy with his arrows.

  More gunfire, the staccato of the mercenaries’ weapons answered by a deeper sound, like a shotgun but fired on full automatic. It didn’t really matter to KT. Struggling to breathe through the acidic soup that used to be her respiratory track was a shitty way to die, no doubt, but she had few regrets, other than failing to kill Vasilov. She hoped that she had given more than she had taken. Because her crew had turned up at the darkest moments in the lives of others; there were people at home with their family right now that would otherwise be dead. She owed God nothing.

  Family.

  As she died in the dirt KT found herself thinking about lying on a sun lounger sharing a beer with Anna. The older woman’s loud, infectious and somewhat dirty-sounding laugh. Rodriguez working the grill, shouting good-naturedly at the perpetual rolling chaos that was five children.

  A bloody tear rolled down KT’s cheek and into the dirt.

  She fell into shadow. She found herself looking at feet made of composite and steel. She managed to move enough to look up at the bulky silhouette of Dalton. He was wearing a gas mask and carrying a weapon she didn’t recognize. It looked like a futuristic, oversized carbine.

  “It’s Tor,” he said. He wasn’t talking to her. “No, she’s dead.”

  No I’m not, she wanted to tell him but only because he was a few moments early.

  “Vasilov got away.” Dalton continued his one-sided conversation, presumably over comms with the unseen Tibbs. “She did well. Took a couple of them with her.”

  She wanted to tell him that it wasn’t the people she had killed that mattered. It was the ones she had saved.

  Then she was gone.

  * * *

  Bright light shone through the membrane of her eyelids. Somewhere at the back of her mind KT knew it was presumptuous but she wondered why heaven was so painful. She forced her eyes open, pleased that they weren’t just spheres of burning chemical soup in their sockets.

  A hospital room. Too sophisticated to be a shipboard sickbay, too nice to be an underfunded public hospital. She could breathe. She didn’t understand how that was a thing. She felt something hard and plastic imbedded in the flesh of her chest. There were people in the room with her. Tibbs, in his sunglasses, leaning against the wall by the door, his big arms crossed. And someone stood over her bed. An older man, glasses. He made her think of the college professors she had known, except for the metal hand. That was pure Bond villain.

  “Good morning, Miss Tor,” the professor said. “My name is Doctor Emil Harting. Welcome to RST.”

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