Cold Harbor

by Matthew Fitzsimmons

  Jenn racked the slide and yelled at them to get their hands up. Barking instructions—hard, decisive commands. Controlling the room. Allowing no time for anyone to even think about fighting back. Gibson raised his hands and backed up into the group.

  Jenn herded them out of the office, back through the lobby, and into the conference room. She shifted into a soothing, calm voice. “Stay quiet. Do as you’re told. No one will be hurt.” She repeated it over and over. A lullaby for a child woken by a terrible nightmare. She ordered them facedown on the ground, fingers laced behind their heads. When everyone was down, she prodded Gibson in the side with her boot. “You. Up.”

  “You just told me to get down,” Gibson complained, climbing to his feet. “Make up your mind.”

  The sitcom wife hissed at him to shut up and do it. She seemed to press herself even deeper into the carpet as if her own obedience could compensate for Gibson’s mouthiness.

  Jenn dropped a bag of zip ties at Gibson’s feet and ordered him to hog-tie the other four. Gibson moved down the line as quickly as he could while still playing the unwilling accomplice. The shotgun leveled at his chest made for a convincing prop. His four new friends peered up fearfully, but no one struggled and no one fought back. When all four were secured, gagged, and hooded, Jenn ordered Gibson back down on the ground. They waited a minute and went back to the Air Center office and got to work.

  First things first: Gibson hacked into the Dulles Air Center computers and disabled the server that recorded security footage. He deleted the last thirty minutes. They’d been recorded by enough cameras across Dulles to put them away for a long, long time, but the last thirty minutes had been especially damning. The next thirty might be even worse.

  He left the cameras functional, however, so Jenn could confirm no stray personnel wandering about where they shouldn’t. Satisfied, Jenn had Gibson switch all of the monitors to the various camera angles inside Hangar Six. They huddled before the monitors and studied the lay of the land, eager to finally know what they were up against.

  In the center of the hangar sat a slate-gray Lockheed C-130 Hercules. A wide, slow-moving beast with the top speed of an aerodynamic brick, it wasn’t fast, comfortable, or pretty. But it was durable and got you there in one piece. Gibson had flown in one like it more times than he could count in the Marines. A military workhorse since the 1950s, the C-130 had been designed as a troop and cargo transport. But it had also been adapted to myriad other roles in its sixty-plus-year lifespan. Its wings stretched 133 feet, tip to tip, but the hangar was large enough that a pair of medium-size jets were parked comfortably against the north wall.

  The C-130’s four turboprop engines couldn’t be safely started inside the hangar. That explained the two missing mechanics, who were attaching a ramp vehicle to tow the aircraft outside. Jenn sketched out the interior of the enormous hangar. Besides the mechanics, they counted two Cold Harbor mercenaries guarding the hangar’s interior doors and another pair guarding the exterior access door. Five more huddled at the bottom of the C-130’s ramp. All wore desert camos, but none was visibly armed.

  As far as they could tell, Eskridge had indeed played it low-key, relying on the safety provided by Dulles. Still, nine unarmed mercenaries spread out across a hangar this size would be a lot more difficult to control than a roomful of airport staff. And that accounted only for the ones they could see. They had no view of the aircraft’s interior. Calista had insisted that the bulk of Cold Harbor’s personnel had already decamped for North Africa, but Gibson knew from experience how many men a C-130 could hold. If it had more than a skeleton flight crew tonight, they would have some hard decisions to make. Gibson feared that Jenn had already made them. She viewed everyone associated with Cold Harbor as complicit. If they encountered heavy resistance taking the plane, she wouldn’t hesitate to kill them all.

  Kill them all or die trying.

  Jenn pointed to a man holding a clipboard. “That one is the loadmaster. He’ll have the manifest. We’re going to want to talk to him. The rest look like mercs.”

  “That’s a lot of men.”

  “Agreed.”

  “We need to thin the herd,” Gibson said. “Bring some of them to us.”

  “What do you have in mind?”

  They both studied the flickering images, looking for an answer. Gibson wanted to avoid a bloodbath if possible. He had an idea.

  “The hangar door is closed,” Gibson said.

  “And?”

  “The master override is computer controlled. I saw it when I was in their system. If we kill the hangar door, someone’s going to have to come check on it.”

  Jenn liked that idea. Together they sketched out a plan and went out to the van for her suitcases. She unpacked the gear they would need while Gibson used the office’s computer to lock down the hangar door. Then they waited and watched.

  The clock ticked closer to one a.m.

  The mechanics finished hooking up the ramp vehicle. One walked over to a control box mounted on the wall between the exterior access door and the enormous retractable hangar door. On the silent monitors, Jenn and Gibson watched the mechanic turn a key and punch a green button. Nothing happened. The mechanic tried it several more times. The two Cold Harbor mercs guarding the exterior access door gathered around and gave it a try. Still nothing. The other mechanic wandered over, and the four of them diligently troubleshot the problem before eventually reaching the consensus opinion that it didn’t work.

  One of the men standing at the rear of the C-130 strode across the hangar to find out what was happening. He had the bearing of a man whose schedule was being blown all to hell.

  “I know him. Name is Norrgard. He’s the leader and a mean son of a bitch,” Jenn said and leaned in to study his flickering image. “Control him, and we control the room.”

  Down in the hangar, a decision had been reached. Accompanied by two Cold Harbor mercs, one of the mechanics hustled across the hangar. They went out a smaller door and into the service corridor that connected the hangars and the Dulles Air Center offices. The man that Jenn had identified as the leader updated the rest of his team on the situation. The second mechanic went back to the ramp vehicle and made himself comfortable behind the wheel.

  Gibson reactivated the hangar-door controls.

  Then they got ready for company.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  The mechanic from the hangar was thicker than Gibson, but his shirt fit passably if Gibson tucked it in all the way.

  “How do I look?” Gibson asked.

  “Like you shrunk in the wash,” Jenn said.

  “That’s not reassuring.”

  “Relax. You’re a mechanic, not a male model.”

  “The mechanic in the hangar will know I’m wrong.”

  “He’ll be a hundred feet away. Keep your head down and keep moving. You’ll be fine.”

  “I think fine is optimistic,” Gibson said. “Do you think he’ll be on board?”

  “No, Eskridge is too smart to be anywhere near this.”

  “I meant George.”

  “He has to be,” Jenn said with a weariness that reinforced Gibson’s belief that she had reached the end of her line.

  They both had.

  He thought about what that meant on the long, cold walk down the corridor to Hangar Six. He might die tonight, and he greeted the idea with indifference. If anything, it would be a relief. What little he had left to lose had already been lost. No matter what happened tonight, Damon Ogden and a prison cell waited for him. Knowing there was no way back and only one way forward, he felt weightless and, strangely, free.

  Despite Jenn’s reassurances, he was still worried that the mechanic would see him and sound the alarm. Gibson pulled his Phillies baseball cap from his jacket pocket. He ran his fingers across the brim as he did sometimes when he needed good luck.

  “Put it on,” Bear said. “Or do you still think you don’t deserve to?”

  “It’s complicated.”


  They came to the hangar door. He considered the cap again. It would really help conceal his face, but still he hesitated.

  “Put it on,” she said again with the gentle lilt of someone coaxing a nervous puppy into the open.

  He did as she asked and fitted it low over his eyes.

  Bear looked him over with a kind smile. “It suits you.”

  “If you say so,” Gibson replied and opened the door.

  The cameras hadn’t conveyed the enormity of the hangar. The ceilings soared overhead like a cathedral, and every sound was answered by a faraway echo. Even the enormous C-130, in the center of the hangar, looked insignificant by comparison. There would be nowhere to hide if things went wrong. And he’d be in enemy territory the entire way. As if to remind him of that fact, the two mercs guarding the door stepped into his path.

  “Heard you boys broke my hangar,” he said and shook his canvas tool bag for effect. Neither cracked a smile.

  “Hurry up,” one said. “We’re running late.”

  “You stopped me.”

  That observation did little to endear him to them or to move them out of his way. He squeezed between them and walked toward the control panel, which was diagonally across the hangar. It looked like a day’s hike between here and there. Unfortunately, the C-130 sat between here and there. His feet wanted to take the long way around to avoid the three mercs at the bottom of the C-130’s ramp. But he was keenly aware that they were all watching him now, so he forced himself to walk straight toward them. At the aircraft, Gibson glanced up the ramp but didn’t see a platoon of men lying in wait.

  “Doesn’t mean they’re not in there,” Duke said pleasantly.

  Gibson ignored him.

  The leader—the one Jenn had identified as Norrgard—was an imposing man with Scandinavian features and a dissatisfied scowl that had etched deep lines around his mouth and clearly made smiling more trouble than it was worth. He was Eskridge’s right hand at Cold Harbor, and Jenn had sketched out his string of atrocities across Nigeria in 2014. Just on the off chance Gibson wasn’t terrified before.

  Norrgard paused as Gibson approached. With military precision, he snapped his arm crisply at the elbow and examined his wristwatch. “Take your time, sweetheart,” he told Gibson with a voice that reminded Gibson of every drill instructor at Parris Island—one part disgust, one part what is the world coming to?, two parts I ought to charge you for breathing my air.

  “I’m going, aren’t I?” Gibson said.

  Norrgard looked from Gibson to the interior door and back to Gibson. “Where are my men?” he asked, meaning the two mercs sent to check on the problem with the hangar door. Jenn had subdued them and tied them up with the others.

  “The hell should I know?” Gibson said. “The pisser?”

  “Together?”

  “Maybe they like to hold hands. Look, you want me to fix the door or go chaperone your boys? Your call.”

  The big Scandinavian bristled but only cocked a thumb toward the control panel. “Get that door open or I’ll polish my foot in your ass.”

  “Aye, aye, capitaine,” Gibson said with a mock salute.

  Crossing the hangar, Gibson adjusted his cap still lower and slung the tool bag over his shoulder so that his right arm concealed his face. As he came around the C-130, the other mechanic called out a greeting from the driver’s seat of the ramp vehicle. Gibson raised his free arm and gave an ironic thumbs-up. Hopefully, the mechanic wouldn’t get ambitious and come offer to help.

  “So, what seems to be the trouble, boys?” Gibson asked the final two Cold Harbor mercs who stood guard by the exterior hangar door.

  “Door don’t work,” one said with the stupid accuracy of the mechanically disinclined. He pointed at the open access panel.

  “Why don’t I take a look-see,” Gibson said and knelt to unzip his bag. Among the tools, he saw the Taser and a Glock. He reached for the flashlight instead and shone it into the access panel, nodding thoughtfully as if he had a clue what he was doing. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the other mechanic moseying in his direction. That narrowed Gibson’s timetable considerably. He estimated twenty seconds before the mechanic got a good look at him and raised the alarm. He didn’t like how close the two Cold Harbor mercs stood to him, but there wasn’t time to do anything about them now. Gibson only hoped that Jenn was in position.

  He reached up into the access panel and mimed fiddling with the wiring. Then he stood, dusted off his dustless hands, and punched the oversized green button on the control panel. The enormous retractable door began to open. Given its size, Gibson had assumed it would be deafening, but the motors rumbled quietly overhead. He realized this was the same gambit he’d tried in Damon Ogden’s garage. After everything that had happened, all he’d done was trade one garage for a much larger, much more dangerous one. As he reached for the Glock and not the Taser, the symmetry of his life struck him as darkly funny.

  A hand slapped him on the back.

  Behind him, the mechanic congratulated him on troubleshooting the problem. Simultaneously, from the far side of the aircraft, a shotgun discharged. Once. Twice. Rumbling through the hangar like distant thunder.

  Everything slowed down.

  Everyone turned to see.

  Everyone but Gibson.

  The two Cold Harbor mercs took several tentative steps toward the aircraft. It bought Gibson critical yards.

  He pointed the Glock at the ceiling and fired twice.

  The mechanic flinched as thousands of years of survival instinct drove him into a crouch. Gibson shoved him hard to the ground, barking at them to get down, facedown. The mechanic rolled into a ball and covered his head with his arms.

  The two Cold Harbor men didn’t flinch, decades of training sublimating their base drives. They pivoted smoothly, assessed the threat, and moved quickly apart to create two targets from one. It reminded Gibson of pack hunters circling prey. He yelled for them to get down, but instead, they showed their hands and kept moving laterally and forward.

  The warning shots had been a mistake. The Corps had taught him better than this. You didn’t shoot to warn. You didn’t shoot to wound. If it came time to pull the trigger, you aimed center mass and put your man down. Now they knew he meant to take them alive—a weakness they aimed to exploit. Gibson repeated his command, drifting to his right, back against the wall, buying himself time—compounding his error.

  He’d lost the initiative and control of the situation. Either he took it back or he’d have to kill them both.

  Or they’d kill him.

  He wasn’t wild about either of those options.

  Both men outweighed him substantially, so with no good option, Gibson went for the man to his left. Straight at him. Gun level with his eyes. When the man’s stare shifted to Gibson’s gun barrel, he knew he had a chance.

  The Marines taught unarmed, close-quarters combat that someone with a sense of humor had once dubbed “Semper Fu.” In it, rifles and sidearms became hand-to-hand weapons that could deliver devastating attacks. Of course, the Marines assumed the magazine would be empty by that point. Gibson figured it would work either way.

  At the last moment, the man brought his arms up in a defensive posture, but not fast enough to stop the heel of the Glock from breaking his nose. Like a faucet, blood gushed down the man’s face. Gibson hit him again squarely in the eye socket.

  The man dropped and lay motionless.

  Gibson spun, looking for the partner, who was closing like a linebacker, low and fast. Six feet . . . five feet . . . He didn’t see another way.

  Gibson shot him twice in the chest.

  The man went down and clutched his chest. Labored breathing but no blood. Gibson said a silent prayer to the inventor of ballistic armor.

  “Smart move,” Gibson said, patting the merc’s vest.

  “Fuck you,” the merc wheezed.

  “Roll over.”

  Gibson had just finished restraining all three when gunfire erupted f
rom inside the C-130.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Gibson sprinted across the hangar toward the desperate sounds of battle. When he got close, he slowed and crept alongside the fuselage toward the rear of the aircraft. As if on cue, the gunfire stopped, and the hangar fell ominously silent. Using the ramp as cover, Gibson surveyed the scene.

  Jenn’s handiwork lay all around. A trail of bodies led from the hangar door to the bottom of the C-130’s ramp. Miraculously, none was dead. The guards at the hangar door had taken beanbag rounds to the head. They’d be out for a while yet, and Gibson didn’t envy them their concussions when they regained consciousness. He saw where she’d discarded her shotgun on the run and switched to a compact MP7. The big Scandinavian and the loadmaster lay trussed up like Christmas trees on the way home from the lot. They peered up at Gibson with murderous eyes.

  “Was that fast enough for you?” Gibson asked.

  Norrgard sneered at him. “I’ll remember you said that.” Even restrained, the man made it a meaningful threat.

  Movement from inside the aircraft snapped Gibson to attention. He crouched beside the ramp and aimed into the darkness. Waited breathlessly. He heard movement before he saw it. His finger slipped off the trigger guard of its own volition.

  “It’s me,” Jenn called loudly. “I’m coming out.”

  She appeared at the top of the ramp. Her MP7 dangled loosely from its harness. Blood was splattered across her chest and dripped from her arms and from her hands. Gibson felt his heart climb his throat and try to punch its way out.

  “It’s not mine,” Jenn said.

  Gibson felt a wave of relief, but then he realized what that meant. He dropped his head and asked, “How many?”

  “Two. Both of the pilots.”

  The big Scandinavian roared and struggled against his restraints. He vowed revenge in the blunt poetry of soldiers. Called her all the words men saved for women that they hated. “How many is that now?” he demanded. “How many have you killed?”

  Jenn came down the ramp and knelt beside him. Her hand wrapped around the grip of her MP7, and for a moment Gibson thought she meant to add the Scandinavian to her résumé. The Scandinavian must have believed it too, because his jaw snapped shut.