by Linda Nagata
Chris’s gloved hand comes away from his weapon, closes into a fist. He’s about to hit her. Lincoln can feel it. He wants to shout at Chris to back off. Friday tags the woman with a name: Fatima Atwan.
Gloved hands grab Fatima from behind, haul her off of Chris and out of the way. She keeps screaming, begging, as if the apocalypse will be ignited if any further disrespect is shown to Hussam El-Hashem—who is up again, hunched over his assault rifle, blood running from his nose and lips as he raises the muzzle of the weapon.
Lincoln hears a three-round burst as Chris jumps off the bed. He can’t tell where the bullets hit. “Fucker,” Chris swears as he kicks Hussam in the gut, kicks his weapon away. Spares a glance for the door.
Nate gets there just as the door opens. A rifle muzzle pokes in. Nate grabs it, shoves it down as shots are fired. Holes explode in the floor. But he doesn’t shoot back. Lincoln’s gaze shifts to the feed from Nate’s visor as he yanks a boy, no more than eight years old, into the bedroom. He separates the boy from the assault rifle and heaves the rifle out the window.
From the end of the hall, Rohan is shouting in Arabic, Drop the gun! Drop the gun!
Then shooting erupts.
~~~
True and Jameson move up the stairs to the first landing. Whispering voices from above give them a moment’s warning. “Back against the wall!” True shouts. There’s a flurry of shots, bullets buzzing down the stairs, shattering the tiles on the floor below. Jameson pulls a flash-bang. True leans out, squeezes off six quick shots to suppress enemy fire, ducks back. Jameson heaves the grenade. It goes off in a shattering of light and noise. They hurl themselves upstairs.
True’s visor highlights four figures in the hallway. One lies prone, his weapon dropped. Two hunker against a wall, still clinging to their assault rifles. And the other staggers away, blinded and confused by the explosion.
Jameson and True go after them while they’re still disoriented. Jameson takes the lead. He skips the first one, the one who’s already down, using swift kicks to unseat the next two, wresting away their weapons.
True squeezes past him, pursuing the one still on his feet. The air stinks and she’s breathing hard, as much from adrenaline as from exertion. She catches up to the man, swings her KO, and hammers him in the shoulder. He drops with a pained yelp, and she follows him down, groping in a pocket for zip ties. They spill out beside her. She puts a knee in his back. He tries to get up. She punches him in the ear, growling, “Not a good idea.”
“How you doing, Mama?” Jameson asks.
“Having a fucking heart attack.”
“That soldier give you any problems, put a bullet in his head.”
“No need for that,” she says in a low, hostile voice as she works to zip-tie his hands together. “He’s just confused.”
They secure all four men, hand and foot. Then they clear the rest of the rooms on the way to the closed steel door at the end of the hall.
Behind that door is a storeroom that must have been intended as a vault for gold or weapons or something of value. But not people. Standing outside of it, True smells the stink of the sump bucket. She tries the latch for the hell of it. Of course it’s locked.
~~~
Lincoln looks at the 3-D map of the house. Only one room left to secure, three defenders inside. Rohan and Felice are hunkered down at the end of the hall, taking fire but not returning it. If they return fire, they run the risk of stray bullets and shrapnel penetrating the room where Chris’s team is located.
He tells Chris, “Stay where you are. Shelter the prisoners.”
He shifts to Rohan’s video feed. All he sees is the large front room. Somewhere out of sight, a flash-bang goes off. Rohan pivots. He charges into the hall. Reaches a door. It’s ajar. He punches it open, pitches another flash-bang inside, drops back, drops flat to the ground.
Somewhere—in the room?—an assault rifle hammers out a string of bullets. The grenade goes off. The gun goes silent. Felice moves up, passing Rohan as he scrambles back to his feet. She is first into the room, pivoting with her weapon. She yells, “Face down on the floor!” and fires a single shot.
Rohan moves in behind her. The three men are down. It takes only a minute for the pair to secure their prisoners, binding wrists and ankles with zip ties. When it’s done, Rohan flips each man over so he’s facing up. “Hey,” he says, crouching over the last one. “We know this guy.”
On the video, a young man glares in defiance. His face is sharp-featured, shadowed by a sparse beard and neat, black brows. His right ear is slagged scar tissue, a scar that continues down his neck to his shoulder, disappearing under a white nightshirt. Gleaming in his deep-set dark eyes is a promise of murder. The system identifies him as Hussam’s nineteen-year-old brother, Rihab. A young filmmaker, according to rumor, who specializes in execution videos.
“Should we take him with us?” Rohan wants to know.
“Another time,” Lincoln says. “We’ve got no authority to take him now.”
Rihab’s glare becomes a grimace of frustrated rage as Rohan leans closer. “First one’s free, pal,” Rohan warns him from behind the anonymity of his mask and visor. “I’ve got a feeling we’re going to meet again.”
One Chance
Miles isn’t surprised when gunfire erupts downstairs. He’s been expecting some kind of operation ever since he saw the mosquito drone, but, “Shit,” he whispers to himself. “Why did they wait until Noël was dead?”
Then he’s up, military training taking over. There isn’t enough light in the stinking little room to see, but he’s memorized the place, the positions of his companions. “Ryan, you up?”
“Right next to you.”
Miles feels a hand on his shoulder. Ryan is alert and ready to act; he saw the mosquito drone too.
“Get in the corner,” Miles says, giving him a gentle shove. “Face the wall. Cover your head.”
“What the hell is going on?” Dano demands in his thick Brazilian accent.
“We’re hoping it’s a rescue.”
“What rescue? What do you mean? How do you know it’s a rescue?”
Miles hears doors open. Shouts, footsteps. Decides against debate. Groping in the dark, he finds Dano, grabs the front of his shirt—“Get over here”—hauls him into the corner. “Get down. Cover your head. Protect your eyes.”
He huddles with Ryan and Dano. Flinches as a flurry of shots erupts. A loud bang. Running footsteps. New voices. American voices.
Dano tries to get up. Miles won’t let him.
“Stay back from the door!” someone shouts. A woman’s practiced command voice. “We’re getting you out of here but we have to blow the lock. In five!”
“We’re ready!” Miles shouts.
“Might want to cover your ears,” the woman suggests.
The gunfire downstairs has ceased. Distant shouts and a car alarm’s faraway bleat mingle with the heartbeat thump of her retreating footsteps.
Boom!
Miles winces, feeling like he’s been punched in both ears. Then he’s up again, hauling Dano with him, knowing Ryan will follow. He still can’t see a damn thing. He gropes for the door anyway, finds it ajar, pulls it wider. A tiny red light flicks on in the hall outside. It casts shape into the world, defines the hallway, but it does no more than suggest the presence of a camouflaged figure behind the light. She is a conception, a sketch of a soldier drawn to confuse the eye. Definition exists only in her gloved hands, the screen of her MARC visor, and in the solid mass of the Kieffer-Obermark resting in the crook of her arm.
True, looking back at him, finds herself caught in a moment of weird dissociation. Her visor shows her a light-amplified view of this stranger, Miles Dushane. He’s dressed in a shapeless tunic and stained trousers, face gaunt, beard tangled, his hair dirty and disheveled. She does not know him, has never met him before. And yet between one heartbeat and the next it feels to her as if both time and space are folding around him, bringing forward a more familiar
presence.
Haven’t I dreamed this? she asks herself. Of opening this locked door?
Yes. And though it is Miles Dushane who looks back at her from beyond the doorway, she sees through him into a parallel past, to another prisoner, a young man not so different from him, also slated for brutal execution.
Her heart beats again. Time restarts. The past falls away. It is forever beyond reach, and still, a connection remains. It leaves a pressure behind her eyes, a tightness in her chest as she resolves that what happened before will not happen again. Not this time. Miles is not her son, but he is someone’s child, a good man from all that she’s heard, and it consoles her to be here tonight, to ensure that he, at least, survives.
She speaks in a voice purposely brusque, businesslike, no reflection at all of that space between heartbeats. “What’s your condition?” she asks. “Any significant injuries? Broken bones? Anything that will prevent you from getting down the stairs?”
Miles too uses brusque words, but his voice is husky with emotion. “No,” he tells her. “We’re all ambulatory.” He watches the red light move closer. It takes him a few seconds to realize she is holding it out to him. He accepts it by instinct.
“Step out here,” she instructs him. “You first. The others to follow one at a time. I need to pat you down.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He does as she says, stepping into the hall. Only then does he notice a second soldier, a big man waiting halfway down the hall, keeping close watch on the proceedings, ready to bring his weapon into play. Beyond him, four men are on the floor, bound and therefore presumably alive. Miles holds his arms out. The woman runs her hands over him, quickly, professionally, stooping to check his legs and crotch.
Behind him, in the stinking cell, Dano protests. “I don’t understand. Who is this woman? How do we know we can trust her?”
Miles answers with an impatience verging on anger. “I know she’s not fucking Hussam and that’s good enough for me.”
“You’re clear,” the soldier tells him. “Who’s next? Let’s move.”
“Go on, Dano,” Ryan growls from the dark. “Or get the fuck out of my way.”
Dano stumbles into sight, off balance like he’s been pushed. Miles catches his arm, pulls him into the hallway, and tells him, “Stand still.”
He stands frozen, staring at the men on the floor while the soldier pats him down. She finds nothing, turns to Ryan, and repeats the procedure.
“All right,” she says when she’s done. “My name is True Brighton. I’m here with an American PMC called Requisite Operations. If you cooperate and move fast, we will get you out of here. But it’s all or nothing. There won’t be a second chance. If you want to live, follow Jameson.” She gestures at the second soldier. “Move out.”
She doesn’t seek their agreement. She doesn’t need it. This is their one chance at freedom. Ryan understands that. When Jameson starts down the hall, Ryan totters after him, unsteady for lack of exercise but determined. Miles keeps his grip on Dano’s arm and follows.
But Dano still isn’t sure. Shock and confusion piled on top of months of stress have left him adrift, focused on the wrong things, on things he can’t control. After two steps he plants his feet and demands, “What about Fatima? Fatima Atwan? Dr. Atwan is my colleague. She is a prisoner too. We can’t leave her behind.”
Miles doesn’t have an answer. This isn’t his operation. For all he knows, Fatima is dead. “Right now, Dano, you need to shut up and do as you’re told. I swear if you slow me down I will leave you behind.”
“I just—”
“Dr. Atwan is downstairs,” True says, crowding behind them. “She’s coming with us. Now move.”
Dano gives in. He allows Miles to steer him. The little red light picks out the men on the floor, picks out the face of Abu Khamani glaring at them as they stumble past. Aloha, asshole, Miles thinks, but he’s too disciplined to say it aloud—or maybe he’s too superstitious. They’re not home yet.
His light finds the top of the stairs. He directs the beam down. The dim red glow wraps around an indistinct figure. “Ryan, is that you?”
Ryan confirms it. “Right here, pal.”
Miles follows with Dano, the red light revealing one step, then the next. He can’t see Jameson. Wrapped in darkness and camouflage, the soldier has become invisible.
But though Miles can’t see much, he hears things. Male voices. A hard percussion of footsteps. The throaty rush of wind.
He reaches a landing. From somewhere below comes a woman’s wailing wordless cry, one that shifts suddenly to a screaming protest in American-accented English. “No, no, you don’t understand. It won’t help. It’s too late.”
Dano is energized by that voice. “Fatima!” he yells in response. He picks up his pace, rushing Miles to the bottom of the stairs. “Fatima, where are you?”
Miles tightens his grip. “Leave it to the professionals,” he warns.
~~~
True peels off at the bottom of the stairs, leaving the three hostages to make their own way to the door.
“Lincoln.”
“Here.”
“Going to pick up a few souvenirs.”
“Do it. But be at the door in ninety seconds.”
“Roger that.”
She returns to the office that she and Jameson cleared on the way in. The door hangs open, its latch broken from when Jameson kicked it. She slips off her pack, digs out two radio-frequency shielded collection bags, and loads them with the obvious storage media: a laptop, a tablet, drives, sticks. That’s all she can take. She seals the bags.
“Lincoln.”
“Here.”
“I’m going to leave a kamikaze crab.”
He’s silent for almost five seconds. Then he says, “All right. Do it. The structure of the house should support it.”
She shrugs the pack back on, slings her KO over her shoulder, and with the two bags in hand, heads for the door. It’s been a few minutes since she checked in with Juliet, who was posted to the courtyard. Time to catch up.
“Juliet,” she says over comms. “What’s your status?”
“Prepped and ready. I’ve got the canopy sliced open and our bots collected.”
“You got all the mayflies?”
“Roger that. Recovered all four.”
Good. True is concerned about the legality of the mayflies. The neurotoxin they deliver might be considered chemical warfare. Best not to leave evidence behind.
~~~
Miles follows the beam of his red light around furnishings set up like obstacles in a large room. Ahead is an open doorway with a thin slice of dusty night sky visible beyond. Jameson waits there. Ryan heads for the door but the soldier says, “Hold up. Stand on the side. Keep the door clear. We exit last.”
Miles moves up, stands behind Jameson. From outside he hears the muted roar of powerful engines. A distant jet? And another aircraft, closer.
Boom!
He drops into a crouch, pulling Dano down with him as searing light flickers in the slice of night sky. A courtyard and two parked trucks are briefly revealed, along with a canopy, sliced open, loose edges rippling in the wind.
“That was us,” Jameson says. “Just clearing the skies of cameras.”
Miles stands up again, shaking. Ryan is right beside him, breathing in labored gasps. “Hey,” Miles says. “You okay?”
“Ask me in ten.”
“Right.”
A clatter of motion draws his attention back to the house’s interior. A shadowy tide of soldiers, more sensed than seen, flows from a hallway to the left of the stairs. As they reach the door, glints from their visors and red sparks reflected from his little light give them vague definition. Miles counts four of them and realizes they are carrying a body. He gets only a glimpse before they’re out the door, but that’s enough for a mental snapshot. The body is confined in a canvas bag zipped up to the chin; a black hood covers its head. The sight makes the hair on the back of his neck stand on end.
He is sure the body is Hussam’s.
All or nothing, he thinks. Either they get out of here in the next few minutes or every one of them is dead. He grits his teeth and waits for the signal to move out.
Aircraft noise gets louder, deafening, as a helicopter comes in. No navigation lights. No spotlight. It hovers over the courtyard, rotor wash blasting dust in through the open doorway.
Miles leans over to get a better look at the operation, but it’s too dark to see what’s going on. All he can make out are shadows and glints. Then an oblong object rises into the slice of open sky, its shape silhouetted against charcoal clouds. Hussam’s corpse. It’s lifted over the wall as the unseen helicopter roars away.
With the engine noise in retreat, Miles hears something else, something closer: a woman breathing in tiny, high-pitched gasps. She sounds as if she’s just inches away. Cautiously, he raises his light.
Dano turns to look too. “Fatima,” he whispers.
She is dressed in a thin white shift. A broad Velcro restraining strap secures her arms against her body. A soldier stands behind her, gloved hands on her shoulders. Fatima wears no veil, no hijab. Her black hair hangs loose and wild, and in the red light her eyes have the appearance of unnatural black pits, haunted, in a face that is waxy and drawn.
“Dushane, are you ready?” True Brighton asks him.
He startles at the question, having lost track of her. He turns, finds her beside him, and answers, “Yes, ma’am. Are we getting the fuck out of here now, ma’am?”
“Roger that. We are crossing the courtyard and exiting through the gate, into the street. You will get your people into the back of the waiting truck. Understood?”
“Absolutely, ma’am.”
“Switch off your light.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Let’s go.”
~~~
Miles can’t see a damn thing as they move out across the courtyard. All he can do is follow the sound of the soldiers ahead of him while keeping a hand on Ryan’s shoulder and a grip on Dano’s arm. Grit under his bare feet and the occasional thorn make him wince, but he doesn’t slow down. Ahead he hears shouts and the ripping thunder of over-accelerating gasoline engines racing toward their position. It sounds like this escape attempt is going to run straight into the enemy’s arms. But there’s no going back.
