by Jeff Schanz
A rope was tossed to the captain. He grasped it, hooked it to his harness, and started his climb.
* * * *
The men called him Freddy, no one knew his real name, and he was the leader of Beta team. Freddy was lightning quick and deadly with a knife, as efficient as if it was part of his hand, like he wore the infamous knifed glove of the movie villain Freddy Kruger. Approaching the charred wreckage of the helicopter, Freddy stumbled over an uneven patch of rocky ground. He stopped and held up his hand for his men to halt. They gathered behind the helicopter and checked their status and gear. There were originally twelve men on their team, now there were only seven. Alpha team still had twelve and that would be plenty. He knew one of the dead men well, and it sucked that the guy died, but one rarely made good friends in the mercenary business.
Freddy motioned for his team to move out. They split up in three separate directions. Freddy and two more of his men made it to the woodworking shed. He brought out his night vision binoculars and focused on the house, even though he knew Dekker wouldn't be stupid enough to hold up in there. Dekker would take it to them guerrilla-style. The barns and shed would be the prime locations to hide, plus the mountains. If they had to flush Dekker out of the mountains using fire and explosives, they would, but for now, they would clear the flat part of the island. Who knows maybe they'd…
“What the f…” started Freddy. He focused his binoculars on a window in the barn. There she was! Their prime target. Dekker, the dumbass, had set the girl up as his sniper. He was probably running around somewhere hoping that she would keep their heads down with her firing, while he picked them off one at a time. Dumbass. Freddy had men circling back to clear a perimeter. If Dekker was even close, they'd either run into him, and then kill his sorry ass, or raise the alarm. Freddy scanned around and found what he was looking for. There was a row of bushes and trees that lined the edge of the mountain base that would be perfect cover and would be out of the line of sight from the window of the sniper girl. They could come up behind the barn, infiltrate, and be done with that part of the mission in five minutes.
Two by two, the men skirted the shed that went behind the tree line. The tree line had an opening and they came out of it carefully, still two at a time. The window could be seen from their vantage point, but the occupant in the window could not see them. They came up behind a simple wooden fence with a single gate. Freddy wasn’t stupid enough to think that Dekker didn’t have any more explosives, and if he did, he might’ve wired the gate area. Freddy would’ve. So, he motioned for two of his team on the left to jump the fence further away from the gate. The black-scarved men nodded. Everyone on his team wore black scarves. It was some kind of tradition or fetish with the client that wasn’t explained. Freddy didn’t care as long as they could see clearly. One soldier stood up with his partner. The rest of the team covered them. The two men hopped over.
Actually, they fell over. The fence collapsed. At first, Freddy thought, what a piece of shit. They can’t even build a decent fence here. Then it hit him – too late. The fence had been weakened. The whole thing was wired.
“Shit! Move! Run!” he yelled.
The men were about to acknowledge when the C4 blew. Shards of fence and human body parts scattered in a storm of dirt, wood, and blood.
* * * *
“Beta! Damn it, Beta, do you read? Status!” yelled the captain over his earpiece.
The captain had heard the blast, the biggest one yet, and immediately called for status. From his vantage point on top of the cliff, he could see the barn abutting the mountain slopes and trees, and he could see a plume of smoke rising from behind the barn.
Son of a bitch. “Beta! Anyone! Do you read?”
A scratchy voice made a sound in the captain’s earpiece. It sounded something like a swear or a grunt, but it wasn’t an answer.
“Whoever you are, give me your status,” said the captain. “How many did you lose?”
The voice was almost indistinguishable, the word sounded like, “Every.”
“Beta?”
No further answer.
“Beta! Do you read?”
No other sound came.
“Captain?” asked one of the men standing near him. “What’s up?”
The captain shook his head. The only audible response he gave was muttered swears. He wasn't getting paid enough for this bullshit. First, the client tried to offer some kind of snake-oil elixir as payment, which the captain laughed at, and then the cash price was haggled, barely to the captain's satisfaction. They had to wear these stupid scarf balaclavas, supposedly because it was tradition with this client, and go face first into this guerrilla bullshit, just because the client and his personal team got antsy and jumped the gun last night, thoroughly screwing the pooch and making the target wary. At least this time the client was staying home.
“Captain?” came a voice over his earpiece. But it wasn’t Beta team. It was the right-hand man of the client. He went by “Alex,” no last name given. Alex said, “I’m hearing things that worry me.”
“Stay off the coms, Alex. We’ve got this under control,” said the captain.
“It doesn’t sound like it. It sounds like you’re screwing this up. My employer will be…”
“Yeah, yeah. He’ll be pissed. I just lost twelve men because you shitheads underestimated this Dekker asshole. He’s smarter than you let on. Stay off the coms. Let us do our job.” A job I regret right now.
He motioned for his men to gather around. Time for plan B.
CHAPTER 32
Brandt came out of his hiding place near the barn. He was only twenty yards behind the assault team when they had tripped the fence bomb, and couldn't believe it had gone so perfectly. There was a dense shrub and boulder combination that was just large enough to hide behind if he lay flat, which sheltered him from the debris of the blast when the fence toppled. He had essentially destroyed half of the assault team with some well-placed C4. But he knew the other part of the assault team would be getting their act together now and he was almost out of explosives. He had one small set rigged as a grenade, and he had one more set wired near the front door of the house, but no one had gone near it so far. The rest of his traps involved Vietcong-style ingenuity and shotguns. And a lot of running.
Brandt came around to the side of the barn where his straw facsimile of Lia was positioned in the window. “She” had been tossed around by the blast percussion, her hat had blown off somewhere, and her dress was yanked half on and half off the straw body. But it didn't matter. The rest of the strike team would know it was a decoy by now and would be wise to more tripwire traps. Time to initiate the next phase. Before he began, he turned and blew a kiss to the fake Lia.
“You did great babe,” he said.
He only hoped the real Lia would remember what the rear barn blast meant. It meant it was time for her to start firing. No more pretense as to if she was, or was not, in the barn. And time for Brandt to start running.
* * * *
“There he is,” said one of the captain’s men looking through binoculars. “Near the side of the barn.”
The captain nodded. “Any sign of the girl?”
“No, sir. What Beta spotted in the window must have been a decoy. No way she’d be that close to that blast.”
“Agreed. She’s probably hidden in the mountains.”
The captain sent his men in their prearranged directions and they moved forward. The part of the squad that stayed with the captain stopped about fifty yards from the barn. There was plenty of cover where they were, so they checked with binoculars again.
Several seconds later, one of the men spoke up. “I got him. Northeast, in that line of short trees. He just ducked behind them.”
“Good,” said the captain. “He’s probably trying to sneak back and help the girl. Engage him, follow at a run. Fire at will. Scare the little shit. Make him panic.”
A group of dark shapes race
d from the shadows ahead, their rifles aimed forward. As they closed the distance to the copse of trees, Dekker scrambled out and ran for a grouping of large boulders. The pursuing dark shapes fired on full auto. Rounds ricocheted off the boulders, and Dekker ducked behind the cover.
“Rear team. Let’s move. We have him on the run. The girl is probably in the mountains. He’s got her hidden somewhere. Drive him up there and follow. Go, go, go!”
The captain and his men began to run. They got twenty yards before shots from somewhere far up the mountain began whizzing over their heads. Rounds thumped into the ground and screamed off rock surfaces. One bullet caught one of the men in the arm, and he spun around and fell. Not fatal, just a nuisance.
Son of a…
“Cover! Now!” yelled the captain.
* * * *
Three men ran up a steep incline, zigzagging around boulders that were tall and vertical enough to resemble Easter Island statues. Two men ran forward and one man covered them with his rifle. One spotted the back of Dekker as he pelted uphill. According to their satellite map, there was one more grouping of large rocks before they got to a row of trees, then there was a downgrade. Dekker might be at the bottom of that grade right now. If they could get over the rise, they’d have a clear shot. Two men cleared the rocks and the third got up to follow. That’s when the third man noticed a long, tree limb flying toward his comrades. Tree limb, flying? The limb had been bent back somehow and hidden behind the last rock. It smashed into the two front men and sent them careening backward. One of the men smashed into the third man, and all three men tumbled down into the jagged rocks. One man hit his head solidly against a rock, and cracked his skull, going unconscious. The other two tumbled over each other, tangling their bodies from their own weight. As they tried to get untangled and stand back up, they saw the figure of Dekker slide down the slope and land right in front of them. They couldn't get their rifles up to bear fast enough before they saw the muzzle flash of Dekker's tactical 12 gauge shotgun. None of the three men knew or saw anything further.
* * * *
The man given the honorary title “corporal” led his men up the slope past their dead comrades. They paused only a moment to regard the corpses, then cautiously moved forward. They had seen Dekker pop up and they sent some automatic fire his way before they were themselves fired upon by someone in the mountains. They ducked for a moment, then stayed low, continuing to move forward. Dekker had been too far for an accurate shot, but that would soon change. The area he had disappeared was a slow-going, rocky area on the mountain. And the corporal’s team had an RPG to make it difficult for Dekker to hide as soon as they had a clear shot. According to the satellite data, the path Dekker was near went around a sharp corner, and then there would be nothing but a mountain cul de sac. There was nowhere to escape from them once he got there. All Dekker could do was continue to go up, leading them toward the girl, who the corporal assumed was the sniper. All in all, the corporal admired Dekker for his brilliance thus far, but the tricks were about to run out. The guy was cornering himself on the mountain, and once the corporal blocked him in with the RPG, or just blew him up, or crushed him in an avalanche, then the tricks wouldn’t matter. All they had to do was keep their heads before they turned the corner. There was no telling what last little surprise Dekker might have set up there.
They topped a rise, which was really just a giant sandstone boulder, and took stock. Night vision goggles weren't perfect for detailed exploration but were remarkably effective for these kinds of missions. As expected, there was a traversable path to the left that was narrow and they would have to walk it single file. Easy for Dekker to pick them off if he was just ahead. The corporal knelt and thought about this as his partner scanned the terrain, leading with his rifle.
“Clear so far,” said his partner.
The corporal was trying to figure out a way to get through the small pass without exposing themselves when he noticed something odd. There was a downed tree in front of him that was obscuring the edge of a crevasse. As the corporal stared at it, he noticed that the tree trunk had been sawed off. The tree had been cut down and placed there on purpose.
The corporal motioned quietly for his man to cover him as he snuck forward and knelt beside the tree. Behind the tree was a clear view of the little crevasse. The width was only fifteen feet, but it dropped straight down into jagged rocks, and vicious-looking brush. However, the most interesting thing was a twenty-foot wooden ladder spread over the crevasse. Dekker must’ve used it to cross an impossible-to-jump distance, then placed the tree in front of it so the strike team wouldn’t see it. He was probably hiding just across the crevasse waiting for them to spread themselves out on the little narrow path, and as soon as they did, he’d pop out and pick them off one by one. Smart asshole. But the corporal had found his little sneaky secret and was a step ahead.
The corporal motioned for his teammate to cross the ladder while he stood back and kept his rifle trained forward, and as soon as Dekker poked his head out, he’d drill the son of a bitch in the head. And if Dekker didn’t show himself, and simply ran? He was still trapped in the mountain cul de sac and was a dead man. The corporal was very pleased with himself.
The soldier crawled across the ladder as the corporal sighted down his rifle, seeing no movement ahead. There was a sudden crack, followed by a yell. His eyes left his rifle sight for a second to see what had happened. The ladder had split directly in the middle and his team member was falling down the pit with half of the ladder still in his grip. The man hit the jagged rocks at the bottom, tumbled, and rag-dolled, a smear of blood left against the rocks from the man’s split head.
Shit! The other soldier quickly bent over the edge to see if he could get to the fallen man. The corporal fidgeted, waggling his rifle sight in front of him, but still saw no enemy. The son of a bitch would’ve stayed somewhere close to witness his handiwork. And then it hit him. Dekker wouldn’t have crossed the sabotaged ladder himself, and wouldn’t be in front of them. The thought was just a little too late.
The corporal heard a shotgun blast and the man to his left jerked from the impact. Then a knife appeared in front of the corporal’s face and flashed down to his neck. He tried to turn to engage the attacker, but his neck wouldn’t function. All he saw after that were the rocks and bushes around him spinning as he tumbled forward over the edge, with numb sleepiness overtaking him and hot liquid pouring from his neck.
* * * *
“Captain, report,” came the edgy voice of Alex.
“We’re handling it. Keep off the coms,” said the captain.
“My master does not share your confidence.”
My master? Who does Alex think he is? Igor? “I don’t care. You’re paying us to do a job and we’re doing it.”
“I doubt you will finish it. My master is on his way now.”
On his way how? There wasn’t any transportation left on the yacht. The helicopter was destroyed, Beta team had parked the Chris Craft launch on the North side of the island, and the two Zodiacs belonged to the captain. Did the idiot plan to swim? “Tell him to keep his ass off the battlefield, or he’ll get shot.”
“He is on his way. Do your job in the meantime.”
What in hell does that mean? “Whatever,” said the captain. He had just about enough of this bullshit. Yes, he needed the money, but he had already lost a lot of men, and no pay was worth losing your life to some lunatic running around whacking people with trees and explosive tripwires. But the captain always finished a job he was paid to do, and he would finish this one. God help me, though. He motioned his men forward.
* * * *
Brandt picked up another of the shotguns he had stashed in various places across the mountain, then hid behind a rock at the top of the path. He had led the last team into the ladder trap, but that was as far up the path as he was willing to go. Any further and he would trap himself.
He was trying not to be stunned that h
is crazy Rambo scheme was actually working. Lia was popping off shots just like he had asked, and the teams were dividing themselves and coming at him in small groups, exactly how he had drawn it up. He truly expected that the assault team would throw him a curveball, but so far they hadn’t. Were he and Lia really going to survive this? He was starting to believe it.
And then he saw the curveball.
What the hell? A dark shape in the sky was speeding toward the mountain peak. The shape had long tapered wings that beat the air mercilessly. Shit! Mikhail. The son of a bitch probably got pissed that his well-paid crack team was getting their asses kicked by a girl and a castaway. And since there was no airstrike to call in, Mikhail was the airstrike. Shit, shit, shit.
Lia hadn’t popped off a round in the last minute or two. She probably was moving to a new position like he told her to. Damn, I love her. She carried out orders better than most of his Army brethren. But she wouldn’t know what to do about Mikhail. Nor did he. It was the one gigantic flaw his plan didn’t account for. Mikhail could search easily via air, and Lia wasn’t exactly trained in camouflage, and neither of them had the right weapons to destroy a projection. The only real way was fire, radiation, or killing the real body.
Brandt pulled out a flare gun from his backpack. He had two flares and they had already agreed that if Brandt needed Lia to abort and hide, he would shoot up a flare to tell her. It would give away his position, but Mikhail wanted her more than Brandt. The flare was already loaded, so he simply pointed away from the mountain and fired. The flare arced into the night sky.
