by Peter Nealen
Several more shots cracked overhead, then a body hit the ground behind him. “Friendly,” Wade snapped, as he dashed toward the other side of the conex, taking up position to cover the other flank.
Brannigan didn’t turn to watch him; he kept his eyes on his own sector. So far, they’d only seen about three or four shooters, but with the bad guys alerted, that was bound to change any moment.
More boots were hitting the ground as the rest of the team came over the HESCOs. It was eerily calm, despite the hiss and howl of the storm. It couldn’t last.
And just as he thought that, Brannigan spotted the stack coming around the corner of one of the trailers in the center.
They were kitted up and moving carefully, weapons up and alert, scanning all around them, some of their muzzles even tracking upward to the tops of the conexes, just in case. But Brannigan was already aimed in.
His trigger broke a split second before the lead shooter swung his rifle toward him. The L1A1 roared, the bullet catching the man at the top of the plate and staggering him with the impact. Brannigan had been leaning into the rifle, and the follow-up shot came almost as soon as the trigger had reset, smashing through the man’s expensive sunglasses and knocking him backward into the next guy back.
Then he was dragging his muzzle across the stack, firing as fast as he could steady the sight aperture on a target. Bianco leaned out above him, adding his own fire, as one of Price’s guys dropped flat and shoved himself out beneath, the lighter bark of his SCAR 16 almost drowned out by the heavier cracks of the 7.62 L1A1s.
Bodies dropped. Three of the men at the back of the stack fired back wildly as they scattered, diving for cover.
Despite the disparity in body armor, Brannigan shouted, “Standing!” He didn’t want to stand up into Bianco’s rifle barrel. The big man leaned back, and then Brannigan was out from around the conex, pushing forward, his rifle in his shoulder, dashing toward the trailers. They had the initiative for a precious few seconds; they had to push forward or risk getting flanked, isolated, and finished off.
He was moving fast, but not quite running. He was a good shot on the move, but not that good. He’d seen men knocking down targets at a dead run, but he wasn’t one of them. He was at more of a fast glide, his rifle held ready, the muzzle just below his line of sight.
Price’s guys weren’t quite ready for it, and a bullet snapped past his head, going toward the trailers, but his own were right with him, Bianco on one flank, and Wade quickly catching up on the other. They moved quickly toward the nearest trailer.
Brannigan was watching the bodies lying in the dust. At least one of them was moving slightly, but judging by the blood gouting from the man’s throat, he didn’t have long.
He scanned the open space between the tents and the trailers as he crossed it, and a good thing, too. One of the shooters who had scattered popped out just as his muzzle swept that corner of the far trailer, and they both fired at the same time.
Brannigan felt a vicious, burning blow in his shoulder. The man he’d shot fell on the ruin of his face, blood pouring from a shattered skull.
Then they were closing on the entrance to the trailer. Wade pushed past it, covering the far corner, while Bianco hastily set up on the door itself, hurrying to get in front of Brannigan. Meanwhile, the rest of Price’s men set up around them, covering down on the surrounding camp, except for Price and Max, who joined Brannigan and Bianco at the door.
Brannigan hesitated for a moment, though he knew that if there were armed men inside, their time was rapidly running out. Those walls weren’t bulletproof, or at least they didn’t look like they were. He still took a moment to put a hand to his shoulder. There was a hole in his shirt, and blood on his glove, but it felt like it had just been a graze. The bullet hadn’t gone in.
Price was right behind him. “I don’t think that we’ll find biohazards in there,” he said. “This looks more like command and control. Offices.”
“Which is what we’re looking for,” Brannigan said. “I don’t have any MOPP gear. Do you?”
Price froze for a second. Didn’t think about that, did you? That’s a bit of an oversight. “We’ll figure something out,” he said. “They’ve got to have hazmat gear if they’re doing that kind of work.”
Unfortunately, right at the breach point wasn’t the time or the place to debate and plan. Brannigan gave Bianco the nod, and the big man turned away from the door and donkey-kicked it in.
The door gave with a splintering crack, and then Brannigan was driving through, his L1A1 in his shoulder, his finger hovering near the trigger.
He cleared his corner and swept the inside of the trailer. It was a workspace, no doubt about that; there were equipment cases along one wall, and a chair and desk with a laptop against another. It was also deserted.
“Vinnie, see if you can grab anything off that computer,” Brannigan said. “Make it fast.” There was another door opposite the one they’d busted in, that, if he had read the layout from outside right, led to the next trailer.
Bianco moved around the desk and checked the computer with one hand, the other still on his rifle’s grip. He looked up a second later, shaking his head. “No joy, boss,” he said. “Unless you want me to bring the whole thing with us.”
“Never mind, then,” Brannigan said. “Keep pushing.” He reached for the door.
It came open three inches and slammed against a desk. Instinctively, he threw himself back and into a crouch, almost colliding with Wade in the process, but it saved his life. A burst of fire punched neat holes in the door and the wall opposite, the reports slamming at his ears.
Wade swore, stepping back to get around Brannigan, stuck his own muzzle through the small gap between the door and the jamb, and pumped five shots into the far room.
As soon as Wade pulled his rifle back, the fire from inside falling away, Bianco reared back and threw himself, all two hundred ninety pounds of man, weapon, and ammo, at the door. He hit low, his legs pumping, and the trailer shook with the impact as he drove the desk inside, dropping prone as it gave way and opened onto the interior of the next trailer.
Wade didn’t hesitate, actually stepping on Bianco’s back as he threw himself through the half-open door, firing as he went. Brannigan followed, hearing Bianco grunt under his weight, but unable to help it. They had to clear that room, or else they were all dead.
Wade had hooked around the door and the desk that had been holding it closed, and his rifle was already thundering, hammering at the inside of the room with the muzzle blast.
By the time Brannigan got through the gap and got his feet steady, it was all over.
The trailer wasn’t nearly as small as the first one they’d cleared. In fact, it looked like three trailers had been joined together and the walls knocked out. The massive room had been turned into a command center of sorts. There were two big plasma screens on the wall, along with several tables, a dozen chairs, and laptops and comm equipment. Maps were tacked to the walls under the plasma screens, covered in markings and pins.
There was a single body sprawled on the floor, near the far corner. The other door on the far side of the room was shut.
Brannigan moved deeper into the room, keeping one eye on the door, while Bianco got up and shoved the desk the rest of the way clear. That was when Brannigan noticed that only Price had come in with them.
At almost the same moment, a barrage of gunfire roared and crackled outside. It sounded like some of Price’s men on the cordon had engaged another group outside the trailers.
“Keep low, and tear this place apart,” Brannigan said. “Hard drives, CDs, whatever. Grab it. We don’t have a lot of time.”
Price’s radio crackled, and he listened for a moment. “Some of my boys on the cordon just intercepted about half a dozen shooters and twenty unarmed civilians. They’re bringing the civilians inside until we’re ready to move. But they also say that there are more shooters massing near the conexes on the far side of the compoun
d, near the tactical vehicle motor pool.”
“Probably where their security team room is,” Brannigan muttered. “Anybody who wasn’t out on the convoy or the react force, or hitting the perimeter when the Chinese hit them, was probably staged there.” He looked at Bianco, but the big man was already tearing through everything in the room, stuffing flash drives into his chest rig. There didn’t seem to be a lot of information security being practiced in that room; clearly, the Humanity Front personnel thought they were covered.
There was some commotion in the other, already cleared room, and raised voices. They were quickly drowned out by Max’s high-pitched yell. “Shut the fuck up!”
Brannigan glanced toward the open door, then pointed at the uncleared one. “Wade, cover that door.” When the other man quickly complied, he started back toward the room where Price’s guys were shoving the prisoners.
There did appear to be about twenty of them, all dressed roughly the same, in khakis and light blue polo shirts with the Humanity Front logo embroidered on them. Most of them looked a little dusty and disheveled after being dragged a few meters through the sandstorm, but he knew that was nothing compared to the towering, dust-caked, gunsmoke-smelling apparition he had to be.
“Which one of you is in charge in here?” he asked. He’d pulled his shemagh down so his voice cracked across the small, crowded room. The dust and the exertion had turned it into a nightmarish rasp.
A hatchet-faced woman stood up. “I am,” she said. “And you’re going to regret this. Do you have any idea who we work for?”
“Yeah, I’ve got a pretty good idea,” he said. “Get over here.”
She folded her arms. “You have no idea what kind of trouble you’ve caused. The consequences that are going to come down on your head...”
He lifted the L1A1. “I’m not asking, lady,” he said. “Move, or I’ll have you dragged. And if I’m right about what you’re doing here, no jury in the world is going to convict me for just shooting you all dead right here.”
The woman stared at him defiantly for a moment, but uncertainty flickered behind her eyes. Brannigan just returned her stare unblinkingly, his own face set and cold, his trigger finger tapping the trigger guard. He could see the fear growing in her eyes. He suspected that she was considering the type of contract soldiers that the Humanity Front had employed, presuming that these people really were behind the terror attacks that led to the Tourmaline-Delta incident.
He was also entirely aware of just how thin a line they were treading. They had precisely no time to screw around. He let the standoff go for a few seconds before he lifted the rifle and pointed it at her chest, his finger slipping onto the trigger.
At that point, she seemed to realize that none of her bluster or threats meant a damned thing, out there in a miserable desert base in the middle of Chad, facing a towering killer with a 7.62mm battle rifle in his hands and blood in his eye. She blanched, and started to move through the press, while Price’s own men watched.
Brannigan stepped aside to let her through into the command center, watching her, his rifle still held ready.
He wasn’t going to shoot her, not then. He honestly wasn’t sure that he wouldn’t have a moment before, though. Faced with the increasing certainty that the Humanity Front was really a front for an extremely ruthless and powerful international terrorist organization, he was beginning to realize just how viscerally he hated these people.
She entered the bigger room, looking around at the shambles that Bianco and Price had already reduced it to. She glanced at the body on the floor, but seemed far more distressed at the ransacking of the computers.
“You have no idea what you’re doing,” she said, apparently deciding that since Brannigan hadn’t shot her, she could bluster again.
Price looked up from the computer he was studying. He straightened. “This computer’s password-protected,” he said. “Unlock it.”
“I will not,” she started to say, but Price lifted his SCAR.
“The Colonel might or might not have shot you,” he said. Clearly, he had heard the byplay in the other room. “I definitely will shoot you. Only I’m not going to be nice about it and just kill you. I’m going to start at the toes and work my way up.”
Brannigan’s eyes narrowed slightly as he studied the former SEAL turned captain of the PMC industry. The threat might have seemed a little dark for a man who was more politician than warrior, but given Price’s reputation, there was no telling.
Apparently, the woman decided not to take the chance. Her lips pressed tightly together, she stalked over and tapped on the keyboard.
“Thank you,” Price said acidly. “You might be useful yet. Go sit over there.” He pointed to the wall, where one more of his contractors, a thickset man named Graves, was standing. She glared around at them, but complied.
Price turned to the computer and quickly started reading. After a moment, he went still. Then he swiveled it around to face Brannigan. “Read it,” he said, his voice leaden.
Brannigan didn’t have to read far. The report was titled, “Effectiveness Of Strains 3, 4, and 5 in Targeting Undesired Mutations.”
Chapter 24
Lung Kai didn’t know it, but he was lying prone in almost the exact same spot from which Brannigan and Price had surveilled the Humanity Front’s camp. He was peering through the dust, which seemed to be finally starting to thin, through the optic on his NAR-10. The scope was a near carbon-copy of a Trijicon ACOG, though the glass wasn’t quite as good.
He could still hear sporadic gunfire down there. His targets must be inside the compound, and fighting with the camp’s security.
His face was impassive, and he was making a bit of a show of studying the compound and looking thoughtful, but the fact of the matter was, his guts were twisting. He’d felt slightly sick ever since he’d realized that he and his men were trading fire with the camp, instead of the target.
He knew who had built that camp. And right at the moment, the PLA had a strict “hands off” policy concerning that particular organization. He didn’t know why. He was not in a position to be trusted with that information. But he knew that his orders were very specific, and the fact that he had violated them, even inadvertently, had his mind racing, and not about the mission.
It would be bad enough if the target got away. If it came out that he had fired at that particular organization in a “hands off” area of operations, then even if he did capture or kill the target, then he would probably still be heading for a reeducation camp. If he was lucky.
Suddenly, Feng Kung’s fall seemed far less worthy of his own contempt.
He had to find some way to fix this. To save face. He could blame Goukouni, but he still suspected that his own superiors wouldn’t accept that. Or at least, if they did, it wouldn’t be enough to save him.
The thought of Goukouni roused him, and he looked back. Unfortunately, the storm wasn’t abating yet; even as he peered through the swirling, lashing orange haze, he could just barely make out the nearest of the Chadian vehicles, hunkered down in a wadi to try to take shelter from the worst of it.
If he could convince Goukouni to assault the camp, maybe then he could convince his superiors that the incident had happened because of Chadian impulsiveness, rather than his own mistake. But that would require the Chadians to move and fight in the sandstorm, or the target to stay put for the next two or three hours. Which didn’t seem likely. His own men weren’t doing so well in the windblown dust. They were starting to “turtle,” to hunker down and turn in on themselves.
And he knew that the target was going to slip away if he didn’t do something quickly. He squinted against the lashing grit, flogging his mind for a plan…
***
Brannigan stared at the report for a moment. “Vinnie, rip everything off that computer. I want names, dates, the whole nine yards.” He stared at the hatchet-faced woman, who was really starting to look scared all of a sudden. “Bag and tag her,” he rasped. “She�
�s coming with us.”
“One last detail,” Price said.
Brannigan nodded. “How to bring this down without infecting all of us.” He turned his glare back on the woman. “What kind of failsafe did you put in place?”
“You don’t seriously expect me to tell you that?” she asked. Apparently, the fear didn’t extend quite far enough.
“Yes, I do,” Brannigan growled, stepping closer. He could sense Wade’s own intense stare turning toward her, and briefly considered letting the big Ranger take over. But he wouldn’t. Wade would be a professional about it, but there was a line that he couldn’t be sure Wade wouldn’t cross.
Granted, the rage rising in him at what they were sitting on was sorely tempting him to let Wade loose. Which was all the more reason to keep a firm grip on his temper.
But she didn’t need to know that.
“You’re going to tell us what the failsafe is, and you’re going to show us how to activate it,” he said grimly. “Or else you’re never going to leave this room alive.”
She looked around the room, seeing the set, angry faces—those that were actually turned toward her. He didn’t think she saw the fingers hovering near triggers, but she probably didn’t need to. The threat was implicit.
More gunfire rattled outside. Loud bangs announced rounds hitting the trailers. Price’s radio crackled again. “They just tried again,” he reported. “And they’re getting a little more insistent.”
“Whatever you think you’ve accomplished,” the woman said, apparently summoning up a little bit of defiance at the sound of her security’s gunfire, “you’re not going to get off this compound alive, you realize that? We have the best in the business working security here.”
Wade snorted. “Right. Tell you what, Colonel. If she wants to die for the cause so bad, I say we just wait until they try to rush us again, and toss her out into the line of fire. From what I’ve seen so far, the ‘best in the business’ will ventilate her before she knows what hit her.”
