Vengeance Calling: An Action Thriller Novel (David Rivers Book 4)

by Jason Kasper

  Continuing to rub the milky white soap in circular motions on my cheeks and jaw, I worked a dense foamy lather over my beard, massaging it under the whiskers.

  What was I becoming? There were times when this journey seemed an immovably dense mass of depression and anguish, others when it was an incredibly fast-paced adventure. Traveling the world and battling men no different than me, seeing who would emerge from the gunfight with their lives to show for it.

  Wheeling open the straight razor, I lightly brushed my thumb across the fin of the blade from bottom to top; it was usably crisp, a mass-produced Chinese blade of decent quality mounted onto a wobbly plastic handle. I’d probably become a blood donor on this passage, but the beard had to go. Compared with the likelihood of getting shot in the upcoming raid, I could tolerate a few more facial cuts.

  Twisting the straight razor open at a reverse ninety-degree angle, I reached over my head to pull my sideburn taut. Wincing as tender skin was pulled tight, I touched the blade to the edge of the cream, then began short, feather-pressure strokes downward with the grain of my hair. The whiskers popped off with a crisp whisking sound, and I worked halfway across my face before switching the razor to my opposite hand and resuming.

  Yet now things were different than any mission I’d ever conducted as a soldier or mercenary; now I’d been granted other fighters under my command. I’d long been flippant toward the prospect of my own death. But losing a man due to my own decisions, or lack thereof, would certainly follow me until the day I died. Was I ready for that possibility?

  My thoughts were interrupted by the sight of my ridiculous-looking face in the mirror. Contrary to the movies, true straight razor shaving involves a choreographed sequence of pulling on your cheeks, followed by exaggerated expressions to draw the skin taut, and then passing over the whiskers a blade sharp enough to slash a man’s throat. The more ridiculous you look, my father had assured me, the less blood you’ll spill. He’d regarded disposable cartridge razors as a pitiable concession to the ranks of men working miserable day jobs until they died; the men destined for greatness, he said, were “wet shavers.” Brush and blade—straight razor or double-edged, it didn’t matter—making their own lather and executing a shave with focus lest the slightest distraction scar them for life.

  Why had I stopped shaving like this? What other lessons had I forgotten from my father, to this day my only true guiding light?

  During my first shaving pass, I moved the razor with the grain of my hair. Now I re-lathered and ran the blade perpendicular to the grain, coming one degree closer to smooth skin. No blood. Then I began a third pass, sliding the razor against the grain in the most difficult of techniques.

  I didn’t feel like a leader. I felt equal parts total imposter and debutante, both fated and impossibly unsuited for the task I had been dealt.

  So what would I do?

  I would execute. Even if I died, even if everyone under my command did, there was one fate worse: to know that Ian was alive, enslaved, and I had done less than I was capable of to free him.

  I washed the excess soap lather from my face, seeing newly exposed skin free of stubble, impeccably smooth and without a single weeping drop of blood to show for it.

  12

  There were eight of us in the raiding party, our number dictated by how many Myanmar Army uniforms Kun had on hand. Myself, Tiao, Peng, and Cong made up half the team. The other four were Kokang fighters purported to have combat experience. None spoke English.

  Zixin’s perimeter security had reached its staging area as my raiding party moved quickly uphill and between buildings amid rainfall that was sparse and stinging yet fell from a ceiling of turbulent charcoal clouds. Above the sound of rain we heard periodic gunfire and explosions on the town’s periphery. The Kokang Army had sought refuge in the wild green hills surrounding the village, using the jungle to move large formations of men toward clashes with junta outposts. It was the perfect distraction to allow the eight of us in uniform to slip through the village toward the depot—while we wouldn’t fool anyone up close, particularly with my complexion, at a distance we were passable as a junta squad moving to reinforce another position against the rebel attacks.

  Tiao had identified the rifle I’d stolen from the depot guard as a Chinese Type 95, commonly enough available elsewhere that we’d been able to outfit the raiding party with them. We also had pistols tucked into our belts. My handgun was a suppressed Indian 9mm automatic that I carried for sentry disposal: the more stealthily we could remove perimeter guards, the closer we could get to our target building before being compromised.

  As we closed in on the depot, I could tell Tiao was good in a fight—he moved confidently, alertly, carried himself in a way that couldn’t be faked when enemy contact was imminent. Peng appeared less certain, though that much was understandable given he was an air defense soldier by training, not a ground fighter. Cong, by contrast, was doing his best to appear brave yet looked like he’d borrowed his father’s uniform to play soldier for a day. The four militia members were casual enough about the entire affair that I knew they’d happily followed orders a great deal in the past, though whether they were good in a fight remained to be seen.

  We took a circuitous route toward the depot, keeping ourselves in relatively low ground as long as we could to avoid being spotted.

  As we reached the bottom of the hill, the rainfall increased to a steadier pattering. Tiao spoke over it to address me.

  “This it, America. You ready rock and roll?”

  I mustered a grin. “Ready when you are, Tiao.”

  He glanced to Peng, then tipped his head toward me. “Hide the roundeye.”

  “I don’t really want to be spoken to like that, you racist…”

  But Tiao was already bounding ahead of our group, helplessly waving his radio over his head and shouting to the guards in Burmese. Peng and the others clustered in front of me as we walked up the hill, weapons slung casually over our shoulders.

  One guard had risen from the bunker to respond to Tiao, and I could see another rising to a knee to look at us, the hood of a slick green poncho over his head. These were foot soldiers, complete privates, left to stand guard in the rain in a position where rebel infiltration was least likely.

  Tiao came to a stop, articulating wildly as he spoke and subtly maneuvering himself to leave me a clear line of sight to the standing guard. The guard was laughing at Tiao’s banter as the rest of us closed in, and once we were within ten feet I made my move.

  I pushed Peng aside with one hand, stepping forward and leveling the suppressed pistol at the guard kneeling in the bunker. Two of the fastest shots I’ve ever taken, first at the kneeling guard and then the standing, both hits. Tick, tick.

  Tiao was pulling his rifle to a firing position before the bodies had fallen—there must have been a third guard in the bunker—and I ran alongside it to take a suppressed shot before rifle fire compromised us.

  It was too late.

  A blast of flame from Tiao’s barrel, and the shots echoed over the rain, over the distant gunfire, over the entire village.

  We took return fire from the soldiers uphill almost immediately, the guards around the anti-aircraft piece engaging us with assault rifles as their rounds kicked up mud around us. Our group had just begun firing back when we were attacked from behind—and, turning, I saw a formation of Myanmar soldiers starting to maneuver toward us from below.

  We were never going to make it to the cannon as a single team.

  Peng was the only one who could fire the anti-aircraft gun, and Tiao was the most experienced fighter. We had barely enough augmenting Kokang troops to help them overtake the cannon, and since they didn’t speak English they were of little use to me at present.

  I grabbed Cong’s rain-soaked sleeve and shouted, “Cong and I will hold them back until Zixin’s men arrive. Get the cannon.”

  Tiao didn’t hesitate and neither did I—by the time I readied my radio, his six-man element was
vanishing over the hill.

  I keyed the mic and said, “Perimeter security, now!”

  Zixin’s voice responded, “Yes.”

  Cong was standing in the open, wild-eyed.

  “Get over here!” I yelled.

  He crouched next to me.

  “Not next to me! Get over to the other side of the bunker!”

  He scrambled to the opposite corner at once, calling back, “What now?”

  I pulled every Type 95 magazine from the chest racks of the three dead guards, splitting them between myself and Cong. I anticipated that we wouldn’t make it out of this scuffle with less than ninety rounds per man being fired.

  This would quickly turn out to be a gross underestimate.

  I looked down the barrel of my rifle, watching for the first enemy fighters to appear. “Put your rifle on single shot,” I told Cong. “When you see those Myanmar troops coming up the hill, start lighting ’em up. Two shots per man, then move to the next. You work right to left, I work left to right.”

  Automatic weapons fire continued behind us, and I had to force myself to keep my focus downhill—if Tiao and his element didn’t succeed in overrunning the cannon, then we were all dead anyway.

  I keyed my radio again. “Zixin! Get your men here now!”

  “I hear you.”

  Cong asked, “What else?”

  “Nothing, man. Just enjoy yourself. Shooting people is the most fun you can have with your clothes on—”

  I fired twice as a man’s silhouette appeared over the crest to my front before immediately dropping with a puff of smoke.

  Cong began firing wildly, and I shouted at him.

  “Two shots per man, Cong! Stop wasting ammo.”

  “I have many magazines—”

  “So do I. But we might need them all.”

  More human silhouettes appeared—at the divots of the hill, and at the corners of buildings. I was engaging soldiers as fast as I could see their murky figures through the rain, and failing pitifully to keep up with new targets. Crevices of the landscape, bathed in shadow, were illuminated with the flash of weapons firing toward us.

  Rounds slapped against the front of the bunker, popping into the sandbags above us, occasionally cracking through the air beside my head. These guys weren’t elite fighters, but they weren’t exactly basic trainees either. While their marksmanship wasn’t incredibly accurate, I’d hoped to hear wild bursts of rifles on full auto rather than the disciplined shots impacting around us.

  Cong’s rifle barked consistently, reassuringly, as he mirrored my efforts on the opposite side of the bunker. Enemy fighters were bounding from building to building toward us, taking up new shooting positions quicker than I could locate them. By the time I’d suppressed one junta soldier, two or three more had appeared and opened fire on us. Our efforts were a very temporary reprieve against the Myanmar soldiers fighting their way to the depot, and we desperately needed to be reinforced by Zixin and his perimeter security force.

  I loaded my last magazine.

  Cong shouted, “They will run over us!”

  “If we’re killed, we’ve got nothing to worry about. Give me a magazine!”

  He tossed one my way, and I had to reload in the span of forty seconds of shooting. I’d likely only scored a few lucky kill shots. The two of us couldn’t shoot men fast enough, and the assaulting force had become well aware of this.

  “Another magazine!” I called.

  “No more,” Cong shouted back. “I am out.”

  I drew my pistol, unscrewing the warm suppressor as fighters started to spill onto the hillside. They were charging forward because our rifle fire had ended, and it was better they hear my pistol shots than nothing at all.

  Feeling ludicrously inadequate, I began popping single handgun rounds at the front runners of a formation racing toward us like a Civil War reenactment. They feared their leaders’ orders more than us, and we didn’t have the ammunition or the numbers to reverse that equation. I wanted to run but realized at once that if we broke contact and fled toward Tiao, we’d be killed crossing the open ground to our rear.

  I spoke into my radio. “Zixin, we need your men here!”

  Zixin’s disjointed voice streamed from the radio. “We having difficulty.”

  “Get up here right now, or Cong and I are dead.”

  “I am trying.”

  I wanted to beeline to Zixin’s position, leaving the mission and my item behind just to kill him. We both knew his men had been staged before the raiding party approached the hilltop. He was hedging his bets: if we failed to make entry, he’d retreat with the lukewarm excuse of something beyond his control. If and when we breached the depot wall, he’d come racing in, guns blazing, to capture some of the glory.

  Cong shouted at me, “What now?”

  I squeezed off three more pistol rounds at the marauding junta soldiers.

  “Die in place,” I called back. At some level I knew he’d panic and flee, and wouldn’t make it more than three steps before being gunned down in the mud.

  But instead I heard the pop pop of Cong’s pistol as he remained in the fight, same as I did. I wanted to smile and cry at the same time—the kid had guts, had potential, would’ve made a fine fighter if he didn’t have to die out here in pursuit of some unknown item, another life lost in the effort to unseat the Handler’s regime. I kept shooting, but there must have been two dozen junta soldiers and only ten seconds until they were upon us.

  I reloaded my pistol and had just continued firing when the hand of God wiped our enemy from the face of the earth.

  A wall of blood and earth and smoke, limbs flying and a torso with one arm spinning in a high arc over the crowd as 57mm rounds from the S-60 anti-aircraft cannon did to fragile human bodies what they had been designed to do to helicopters.

  The roar of each shot sucked the air from my lungs. Scalding hot wind coursed over us in a fiery tempest, the reverberating shots splitting time and space in a series of otherworldly blasts.

  I put my head down, trying to sink as low as possible into the ground, and covered my ears until I realized the shooting wasn’t about to stop. Glancing up, I saw that Peng was going full cyclic, sending massive supersonic rounds into the hillside and every building that once hosted Myanmar Army fighters.

  The cannon eviscerated formerly stoic buildings, and explosions of cinderblock and brick swept back and forth until all resistance had ended. There was no one left to kill, or at least no one willing to fight, after Peng’s melee. After the first continuous seconds of silence save the steady fall of rain, I heard Cong give an exuberant shout.

  “We do not die!”

  “There’s still time. Follow me!” I pushed myself to my feet and turned, racing into a wall of choking black cannon smoke. Though gunpowder residue burned my eyes, I charged forth blindly and reloaded my pistol by feel along the way, knowing that Cong was struggling to keep me in view.

  Transmitting into my radio while on the run, I shouted, “We’re breaching! Get your men here now.”

  Zixin responded, “Moving.”

  I had just keyed the mic to respond when I crashed into a wet human shape and fell, the figure above me laughing loudly—one of the augmenting fighters, having a great time ridiculing my panicked rush away from the bunker.

  “Peng, hit the building!” I yelled from the ground.

  The cannon’s long barrel was already traversing toward the depot, a fourteen-foot horizontal column of steel choosing its next subject to obliterate. Once it stopped, I felt a chilling rush of fear that it would at that moment malfunction and we’d have to attempt a door breach without equipment.

  But the cannon roared to life one last time. In his bloodlust, Peng had decided that the first few rounds weren’t enough—why climb through a small hole when you can simply make the hole three times bigger? So he kept shooting, turning a considerable section of depot wall into a vaporous cloud of white that rose into the rain.

  He stopped firing,
and amid the echo of his final shot I yelled, “ADVANCE!”

  Tiao was first into the breach, followed by Peng and two of the extra fighters. That put four assault rifles into our objective building before I crossed the threshold with my 9mm pistol, a weapon almost feloniously inadequate for room clearing.

  I crossed through the hole into a rubble-filled room, clouds of white dust from incinerated cinderblock making the space appear as an impassable obstacle. I held my breath and plunged inside anyway, waving my free arm in front of me until I reached an interior wall, then felt along it until I found a doorway. The air started to clear as I entered a main storage room to discover a free-for-all in progress.

  Tiao was on the floor, dead, his contorted body just inside the doorway next to a fallen enemy soldier. Peng was inexplicably on the back of another junta fighter, trying to choke him as one of our supporting Kokang fighters slammed his rifle stock into the enemy’s chest in an attempt to take him down without injuring Peng. In the far corner, the remaining fighter who’d entered ahead of me was in a close-range shootout with another enemy taking cover behind a stack of wooden crates.

  I raced through the main storage room and past the next doorway on my route toward the item.

  An advancing enemy soldier almost ran into me as he charged toward the sound of fighting that followed anti-aircraft fire ripping through the building. Two chest shots from my pistol dropped him and exposed another soldier several yards behind him, stopping in place to raise his Type 95 too fast for me to take careful aim.

  I shot him a half dozen times in the torso, then took off at a run and vaulted his body before it had time to settle. I needed a rifle but couldn’t bring myself to expend valuable seconds getting one off the dead enemy—we were close to the item, and possibly even closer to an enemy counterattack that we wouldn’t be able to hold off.