Left for Dead

by Sean Parnell

  He parked, donned a black slicker and a Steelers ball cap, pulled his father’s 1911 from the box, tucked it into his jeans, took a canvas Whole Foods shopping bag from the trunk, and locked up. The rain was pinging off the car and the rocks scattered around the shooting bench area. He walked right past the three layers of steel target setups and into the woods.

  Every such Program outdoor range—there were three, located East Coast, middle America, and West Coast—had a secret cache of weapons and ammunition. You had to memorize exactly where they were, or you’d find yourself stomping around through the brush like a lost Cub Scout. He didn’t have a set of Ranger beads, the rosary-like string you used to keep count of your paces, but he figured he could manage. He knew his pace count was 62 for every 100 meters. He took out his cell, tapped the compass icon, stomped 300 meters northwest through the brambles at 342 degrees, shifted to 67 degrees northeast for another 125 meters and stopped. The rain picked up even more.

  Go ahead, God, piss on me . . .

  Not cool. He’d have to make up for that one Sunday in church. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been in a church. Oh, wait, it was the National Cathedral, when he was praying Ralphy wouldn’t blow them both up, along with everyone else on-site.

  The cache was buried under a big boulder that could only be moved by muscle. He felt like Sisyphus as he rolled it away, found the handle, and pulled up a rectangular patch of phony moss glued to a steel hatch. Under that was another safe-weight door with a manual digital lock. He punched in his old code and was thankful it still worked.

  The cache was deceptively large, about the size of a big man’s iron coffin, and set into a concrete cocoon—no one could steal it without a backhoe and a crane. All the long arms and pistols were encased in weatherproof custom ziplock bags and clipped horizontally to the walls. None had trigger locks. The ammunition was ordered in the center well, in standard military green metal boxes, calibers and volumes marked in yellow.

  He selected an FN SCAR 16S, a 5.56 mm assault carbine with a 17.44-inch barrel and gas piston system, currently in use by USSOCOM. It had dark flat earth-colored furniture and pop-up adjustable sights. He didn’t pull any sort of reflex sight from the box.

  Next up was a Remington 870 TAC 14 shotgun in 12 gauge, the Marine Magnum version with nickel plating and a black polymer stock that looked like a club. He didn’t like fancier shotguns. You weren’t likely to find one of those lying somewhere on the battlefield. Both long arms were already affixed with tactical slings.

  He didn’t choose any of the pistols. He had his father’s Colt.

  He pulled a can of 5.56 mm, one of 9 mm, stuffed his slicker pockets with shotgun shells, slung a pair of Peltor ear protectors around his neck, closed up the cache, and hauled it all back to the range.

  He killed targets in the rain for an hour, moving smoothly, quickly, faster each time. He didn’t have a tactical vest, so the extra mags went into the rear pockets of his jeans, though nothing ever hit the mud but his smoking empty shell casings. He started at the bench with the FN, took down ten steel round targets using double taps on the initial advance, transitioned to the Remington, blew down five more, transitioned to the pistol, and finished off the third wave. The guns banged hard, even in the pouring rain, and the water in the air blended with the nostril-flaring smoke as the explosions concussed his skull and the rounds pinged steel and he moved like a fluid robot and fired without thinking anything at all. It was like meditating in a lightning storm, and he did it again, and again, and again, without stopping for a break or a sip from his now cold-as-snake-piss coffee.

  Finally, he was out of ammo.

  “Try doing that, Keanu, when the rounds are inbound,” he said out loud.

  Then he felt a little conceited. Truth be told, Keanu Reeves was actually a very fine shot and had taken some prizes in three-gun matches. A shooter from Hollywood was rare. Hats off.

  He didn’t clean the hot firearms. He’d have to come back for that. There was preening gear in the cache but no overhead shelter, so he just wiped the FN and the shotgun down, locked everything up, and rolled the boulder back. After that he went back and picked up every single gleaming shell from the mud, stuffed them into the Whole Foods bag, looked around once more, as if inspecting a crime scene, turned to walk to his car, and froze.

  Dalton Goodhill was blocking his way. He was standing between Steele and the GTO at about ten paces. The raindrops were pinging off his bald head, which looked like a dinged-up beige bowling ball, but like most infantry-trained veterans he no longer had any rain flinch. A pair of Snoopy goggles were around his thick neck, his black leather jacket was open over a white T-shirt, and he was wearing leather chaps and square-toed boots. Steele saw the gleam of his cut-down shotgun under the jacket.

  “Ralphy’s got the sensors up,” Goodhill said.

  Steele nodded. That’s how Goodhill knew he was there. He peered over his shoulder past the GTO.

  “Where’s the bike?”

  Goodhill rotated a thumb toward the access road.

  “Back there.”

  Steele realized he still had the Peltors on. That’s why he hadn’t heard the bike. He took them off.

  “You rode your motorcycle in the rain?” he said. “You may be crazy.”

  Goodhill ignored the Billy Joel reference and said, “Well, I am my brother’s keeper.”

  Steele’s shoulders relaxed. Goodhill had come because he was concerned, though he’d never say that.

  “Thanks for sending McHugh,” Steele said.

  “Better than some slimeball ambulance chaser.”

  “I assume you know his status with the Program.”

  “I do.”

  Steele wondered if he’d ever really know who was who in this Alice in Wonderland game.

  “You still pissed?” he asked his keeper.

  “Oh, yes. Never been in a fight myself, never trashed a bar, never been brought up on charges. Motherfuckingteresa, ya know.” Goodhill grinned.

  Steele did too.

  “Guess I don’t have to ask who won,” Goodhill said, meaning Steele’s street fight from the night before.

  “The Marine Corps.”

  “Semper Fi.” Goodhill looked Steele over. “You all right, kid?”

  “Yes.”

  “And all tuned up, trigger-wise?”

  “On target.”

  “Good. What’s next on today’s agenda?”

  “Meg.”

  “Okay, see ya later for adult beverages. You’ll need some inebriation.”

  Goodhill turned and walked back through the puddles to his bike. Steele got into the GTO, cranked up Guster again, and left.

  An hour later he was sitting in the car in the underground parking garage beneath Meg Harden’s apartment building in Falls Church. He was staring at his cell, just about to text her and say he was there, when all at once every app on his phone disappeared. He still had his government-issued iPhone clone and had forgotten it wasn’t under his control. Ralphy was relinking the TOC comms. The screen went black, red letters appeared that said sawtooth comm check, then those disappeared and everything else came back.

  Pretty soon now, Flash messages would be coming his way. Game on.

  He sat back and exhaled a sigh. Meg Harden. The only woman with whom he’d ever considered making a lifelong run. He saw her as he had the very first time, with her raven-black hair, crystal-blue eyes, a set of small dimples that gave her a cheerleader visage but belied her petite muscled form and martial arts skills. He heard her again, whispering things in his ear that daughters of generals weren’t supposed to say, even in the throes of passion. He saw her naked, flushed, breathless and sated, sitting on his lap on the couch in her apartment. He saw her happy, furious, courageous, and scared. He saw her on her knees in the underground chapel at the National Cathedral, her eyes streaming as he pointed a pistol at her face.

  It was never going to work. They both knew it, though they’d certainly tried like
hell. This wasn’t a game in which lovers thrived. But still, this was going to be hard.

  Just do it . . .

  He locked the 1911 in the box, got out of the car, went into the lobby, and stabbed the ringer for her apartment. She didn’t ask who was there. She just buzzed him in and he took the stairs, as always. When he got to the top he was breathing hard, but not from the climb. He walked down the pristine carpeted hallway where her doorway loomed at the end.

  He was reaching for the bell button when the door opened. He looked at her beautiful face, and then glanced down where her small hand was resting on her belly.

  She was seven months pregnant.

  Chapter 14

  No Acknowledged Location

  EYES ONLY

  SAP (Alphas/Support/Off Stations - FLASH)

  From: SAWTOOTH MAIN

  To: All CONUS PAX

  Subj: Duty Recall

  Source: Staff Ops/Duty Officer

  Confidence: N/A

  IMMEDIATE, all CONUS PAX, inc ALPHAS, KEEPERS, SUPPORT, TECH, SEC PERS, ARMORERS, A&S INSTRUCTORS: Report SAWTOOTH 0730 hrs EST for Retrofit, all transport modes cleared. Emphasis, No Exceptions.

  STATUS: DEFCON Yellow.

  Operational window: Immediate Execute

  Chapter 15

  Maputo, Mozambique

  When the deep dark blues of the Indian Ocean sweep toward the southeastern coast of Africa, they turn into the warm, glistening, emerald waves of Delagoa Bay.

  Cargo ships, great and small, tossed by the storms of a merciless sea, lean toward Maputo with their crews smiling at the rails, anxious to explore, drink, and dance in a city that on casual inspection resembles Miami. Host to a million souls, Maputo is Portuguese in its colonial splendor, yet wholly native in its scents and hues.

  It has five-star hotels and poverty-line slums, magnificent churches and legalized brothels, upscale rock-and-roll bars and seedy dives where tourists can be stripped of their wallets and still fall into bed, drunk and happy. The teeming markets are piled with fresh fruit and fish. The girls in Maputo are mahogany skinned and beautiful. The men are the same, and often muscular from hauling crates at the seaside docks.

  You can have the time of your life in Maputo, but it’s suggested that you take note of Mozambique’s national flag. It is green, black, and yellow, with a red triangle in the hoist, inside which you’ll find an AK-47 with a bayonet, crossed over a farmer’s hoe, both laid upon an open book, and all superimposed over a Marxist star. It is the flag of FRELIMO, the Mozambique Liberation Front.

  These people are not to be toyed with.

  It was only seven in the morning when Maputo’s pilot station at Buoy 6 first noted the ship bearing down on the main cargo terminals. The station, a small floating barge with a black hull, a white-and-green superstructure, and an “aquarium” on top, was in the command of a former deep-sea fisherman, Abdul Magide, who dispensed pilots from the buoy to incoming ships to guide them through the Xefina channel, which had a comfortable draft of 13.7 meters.

  Peering through his binoculars as he sipped black coffee and chewed a French roll, Magide was troubled, because the captain of the ship that was rapidly filling his lenses hadn’t replied to his radio calls. He’d tried in Portuguese, then a Bantu dialect, Emakhuwa, and finally in English. Nothing.

  This ship was not some lightweight fishing scow that perhaps had a rum-soaked crew who might be stirred by an air horn. It was a four-hundred-foot container vessel with a gleaming forest-green hull, a three-story white superstructure and bridge at the stern, and double rows of Maersk and Zim containers neatly ordered on the sunken deck all the way to the bow. Block print white lettering on the ship’s port flank said ocean africa, a reputable shipping firm. It should have been slowing to three nautical knots in preparation for one of Magide’s forty-ton bollard pull tugs to come alongside. It was not. It was churning up white foam behind its propellers and steaming as if it was a competitive yacht.

  The ship was nearly due east of Buoy 6 at a hundred meters when Magide reached up and yanked three sharp blasts on his horn. Then it careened right by him, without a single visible crewman on deck. It was flying a Liberian flag. The name on its stern was Windhoek.

  Magide punched his emergency siren as two of his pilots rushed up the ladders into his aquarium and peered out the slanted windows, cursing in Portuguese. Then he called the boys at Buoy 11 and told them to get the hell out of the way. Then he called the harbormaster and breathlessly told him to warn everyone at the cargo terminals just past the Xefina channel.

  It was way too late.

  The ship kept coming. It was not slowing down.

  There are no wooden wharves at the Maputo cargo terminals. Ships cut power and are gently nudged alongside a series of offload landside gunwales protected by giant rubber tires, where hundreds of dockworkers man container cranes and refueling hoses. It’s backbreaking, sweat-dripping labor under the African sun and is as risky as deck crew work on an aircraft carrier. When the harbormaster’s sirens went off, they raised their heads from their slithering chains and steel cables, saw the Windhoek bearing down, and scattered like insects from an anthill fire.

  Screeching like a banshee cutting steel with a chain saw, the Windhoek’s bow sliced into the terminals at twenty degrees, sending tires spinning up into the air, flipping two dockside trucks onto their sides, and taking out six blue plastic latrines. Four of its forward containers broke from their stanchions, one bucked off the port side and crashed into the water, and as the bow splintered the quay, it burst through a gas-powered generator and started a fire. Then, with the lancing prow jammed in the freshly cleaved scar, the engines slammed the fuselage broadside into the docks, where it shuddered and bucked and moaned, with the props still turning, until they encountered an upright steel submerged stanchion, and shattered halfway down to the nubs.

  The hee-haw sound of fire engines loomed. . . .

  Rod Kruvalt took the call at Maputo’s central police station, headquarters of the PRM, the Police of the Republic of Mozambique. Captain of the municipal SWAT team, Kruvalt was well respected and a semicelebrity. The son of a Rhodesian mercenary and black African mother, he had wiry blond curls, yet a distinctly African face and hazel eyes. He also had a wry sense of humor, but no one around him dared reference his racial mix, because they were never quite sure how he’d take it.

  After a long stint in the Rhodesian army, Kruvalt had hunted poachers all over Africa, with the occasional ISIL fighter dropped by accident. He was under six feet, with soccer legs, rugby biceps, and brilliant white teeth chipped in the front by a pair of brass knuckles, though the man who’d used them on him was dead.

  Kruvalt listened to the gasping harbormaster, who was babbling in Portuguese, hung up, and stomped down the stairwell into the SWAT team’s break room. Six of his men were in there, dressed in their field gray tactical uniforms and enjoying a breakfast of scrambled eggs. They were looking forward to a day of rappelling training at an abandoned building down by the Mercado Janete market, and their guns and ropes and gear were piled on the floor at their feet. Kruvalt barked at them in his South African English accent.

  “Drop your cocks and grab your socks, mates. We’re off.”

  They arrived at the dockside twenty minutes later aboard a green Patriot3 Elevated Tactics armored SWAT truck with policia stamped on the side and a heavy assault ladder mounted on the roof. The truck bounced over coiled cables and stopped twenty meters back from the ship, which was shuddering and banging against the quay’s remaining tire array like an epileptic whale. Kruvalt got out and stared up at the monster while his men tumbled out and pulled on American “Fritz” helmets, donned Israeli load-bearing vests, and checked over their worn AK-47s. Kruvalt had a shorter Krinkov, but it was also in 7.62 mm because he preferred that everyone used the same ammunition. He also had a Sig Sauer P226 in a thigh holster—a personal choice.

  He turned and saw a line of crookedly parked regular Maputo police cars and their s
houting cops, keeping curious onlookers back from the scene. Then a small sweating man in a Nehru suit and glasses rushed up to him—the harbormaster, Ingo Ferreti.

  “Captain,” he gasped to Kruvalt in English. “We do not know what this is!”

  “Well, it’s a bloody ship, Ingo.”

  “I know, I know, but she would not stop.”

  “That’s sort of clear, don’t you think?”

  “Yes, yes, but we don’t know why. Perhaps she was taken by pirates, Captain. Perhaps she has hostages aboard!”

  “We’re about to find out.” Kruvalt pressed a SWAT-gloved hand into Ferreti’s chest and cocked his chin back over his shoulder. “Now go tell those PRM uniforms to get everyone the fuck out of here. This thing might blow up.”

  Ferreti needed no further encouraging. He took off at a stumbling run, waving his arms and yelling.

  Kruvalt turned to his men, who had formed a semicircle and were squinting at their captain through steamed-up SWAT goggles.

  “All right, mates. Let’s do this line astern, pick your shots, and watch for anyone popping from hatches.” He pointed at the largest man in the team. “Charlie, if I go down, stomp right bloody over me and kill them all. Got it?”

  “Right, sir.”

  Kruvalt climbed up the truck’s side ladder, with his men in short order behind him. Atop the Bearcat, he punched a pneumatic actuator, and the wide black assault ramp whined and rose and extended over the end of the dock, vibrating in the air above the undulating deck of the ship. He poised out there at the lip of the ramp, looked behind him at his men, nodded, and one after the other, they jumped.

  Twenty minutes later, the ship’s engines coughed and murmured and fell eerily silent. Then Kruvalt and his men appeared at the gunwales, helped one another climb back up onto the Bearcat’s ramp, and reversed down its fuselage ladder to the ground, where they tore off their helmets and slurped great draughts from their water bladders.