by Sean McFate
“What’s so funny?” I asked.
“Winters is alive,” said Tye, once he caught his breath.
“And he’s leading the renegade squadron,” said Lava.
Chapter 13
Rush hour on K Street was normally a throng of angry cars, double-parked trucks, rude bike messengers, and rushing pedestrians in suits. People outside the beltway think Capitol Hill is the epicenter of American power, but DC denizens know better: it’s K Street. The intersection of K and Connecticut, and the blocks surrounding it, are home to crisis communication companies that manipulate the news cycle, law firms that have partners without law degrees, and boutique political-risk consultancies that practice the dark arts of subterfuge. Together, they formed the troika of Washington’s seedy underbelly.
Today K Street was empty, even though it was a weekday morning. The threat of another terrorist attack kept even the soulless home, leaving Lin the wide boulevard to herself. She took her time walking and thinking.
Be a good soldier and just do it, she thought grimly. She knew she had to return to the Hoover Building and play the game. But it wasn’t her style.
If you don’t, you are just a civilian, she thought. When she left the building an hour ago, she wanted to solve the case on her own. However, going AWOL during a national crisis was guaranteed job termination. Now she just wanted to save her career.
I need to make repair, before it’s too late. The FBI had given her third, fourth, and even fifth chances. She was a born badass but was marooned to a desk for her sins. However, the desk was her last chance.
How did it all go sideways? Lin stopped and felt her eyes tear up. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Not for me!
A year ago, she was taking down Russian mobsters as part of a FBI assault team, its only woman. In a single night, the FBI’s Joint Eurasian Organized Crime Task Force arrested more than two dozen members of the Shulaya gang in Brooklyn, although the word “gang” didn’t go far enough. This bloody group trafficked drugs, women, weapons, and even children—anything to turn a profit, they didn’t care.
Lin cared, though. She still remembered the moment. The raid was like any other, and something they trained for in the shoot house for hours. But training cannot prepare you for everything.
“Breach!” the team leader had shouted, and she heard the battering ram crash through the shabby apartment’s door. She was third in the stack and shuffled in, covering her sector with her Colt M4 carbine. No movement, no threats.
“Clear!” she shouted. They snaked through the living room, pizza crusts on the floor. Lin moved smoothly, despite being turtled up in black body armor. The room was empty.
“Clear!” they each shouted, and the four-person stack moved on. Somewhere, a young woman was sobbing. A closed door ahead. The stack advanced.
Automatic gunfire tore through the wood door, splintering it, and caught the team leader in the chest. He went down, saved by body armor, but he struggled to breathe, as if someone had taken a sledgehammer to his solar plexus.
“Man down! Man down!” someone shouted.
“Laying down suppressive fire,” said Lin, taking a knee, flipping to full auto, and firing back through the shredded door. The other two members of the stack reached for the team leader’s equipment vest and pulled him back through the living room and out the front door.
Click. Lin’s magazine ran dry. Time slowed as her heart rate spiked and adrenaline panicked through her veins. She rolled right as automatic gunfire from the other side of the door blew it apart and exploded the cheap chandelier overhead. Her Kevlar helmet took a bullet and fell off, while her weapon slipped from her grip as she rolled. She was alone in the room.
A mammoth, shirtless man emerged through the door frame, sweeping the room with his AK-47 and screaming in Russian like the possessed. His torso was covered in tattoos: a large Eastern Orthodox crucifix over his heart surrounded by winged skulls and Cyrillic encircling it all. Saints in chains were on his shoulders and upper arms.
The man stopped and smiled at her. Russian mobsters are all men, the worst kind.
“Get out of there!” shouted one of the FBI agents from the hallway, but Lin knew better. The gangster would mow her down the moment she sprinted. Instead, she stood up, chin high and facing him, unarmed. He smiled, not because she was a sexy woman but because she was a challenge.
“You are mine, bitch,” hissed the man in Russian.
“I’m nobody’s bitch, bitch,” replied Lin in Russian.
“What are you doing?! Get out of there!” yelled her partners from the outside hallway. One peeked around the corner with his M4 but the Russian was quick and shot the door frame around the agent’s head. The man slunk back around the corner.
Simultaneously, Lin kicked the kitchen table toward the Russian. As he spun around to block it, she bounded toward him: the first step on the floor, the second step off the sliding table, the third step her legs around his neck. She twisted her hips and they both crashed to the floor. The man pointed his Kalashnikov at her head as he gasped for breath and flailed. Lin’s legs tightened around his throat while she yanked the AK-47 barrel upward, causing it to fire on automatic into the wall. She ignored the pain of the hot barrel.
Click. The AK-47 was dry.
The FBI agents ran forward but not before the mobster flipped Lin on her back and put a knife to her throat, its point under her chin. She could feel warm blood trickle down her neck. One thrust and the knife would go through her nasal cavity and into her brain.
“Stop or I kill her!” shouted the Russian in a heavy accent. The two agents froze, weapons trained at his head. One called for backup.
“You do that, we blow you away,” said the other FBI agent.
“I do not fear death. I am death.”
Fuck this, she thought. In a rapid motion, her hands swept inward and caught the Russian’s knife hand; her right connected at his inside wrist while her left walloped the back of his hand. The knife went flying across the room. She incapacitated him with a knuckle strike to his throat, leaving his grasping his Adam’s apple as she rolled him off.
“Are you all right?” asked one of the agents as the other handcuffed the Russian, who was still straining to breathe.
“Yeah, no problem,” she replied. Her father had taught her well in Chinese martial arts, and the most important lesson was no fear. Fear is hesitation, and hesitation is death.
As Lin stood up, she heard crying from the next room. She entered and felt the air get sucked from her lungs. Two naked thirteen-year-old girls were tied to the bed. One was crying and the other was unconscious or dead. The Russian had had his fun, for days. It was a mess.
Lin spun around and drew on the Russian. The man’s eyes bulged out in comprehension. The other agents screamed at her, but too late. The top half of the Russian’s head exploded as she pulled the Glock’s trigger. Bits of brain and skull splattered the rear wall.
There was an internal investigation, but her teammates covered for her. They reported it as self-defense, and she was exonerated. But people knew. No one wanted to work with her after that, and her corridor reputation was set: loose cannon. It is a curse inside the Bureau. No assault team leader wanted her after that, despite her abilities, and the task force director saw her as a public relations catastrophe in the making. He exiled her to the Hoover Building for “your own safety,” he had told her.
That was a year ago. She had been a top agent whom others envied, and now she just wanted to remain in the Bureau.
“They will fire you,” she whispered aloud, anxiety in her voice. She could not imagine life outside the Bureau. It’s all she ever wanted to do. But the notion of appeasing her boss and working a dumb desk to find nonexistent terrorists was odious. Especially when the real bad guys—the Russians—were getting away. She could almost hear them laughing inside the Kremlin, toasting vodka and slamming down shots at America’s expense.
I hate the Russians, thought Lin as she stared at t
he black smoke in the sky a mile to the north. It was the remnants of the blown-up bridge, an act of war invisible to the government.
Morons, she thought, and picked up her pace. I need to get back on the task force. I’ll make the Russians pay. Maybe not now, but later, when I’m a senior agent. I shall not forget! “I SWEAR IT!” she shouted at the plume of smoke. A lone passerby eyed her nervously and crossed to the other side of the street.
Lin made her plan. She would march back into headquarters, make up with the boss, become the model desk agent, get transferred back to her old task force, and then kick ass. It would take time, but she was committed.
Bzzzzz. Bzzzzz. Lin pulled out her work phone and read the text. It was from her boss.
“return to building asap. surrender badge and gun at security office. you are on administrative leave w/o pay pending misconduct investigation.”
“Crap,” uttered Lin as her hands trembled. She had just been fired, by text.
Lin stood still for minutes, lost in cognitive dissonance. Then walked aimlessly. She paused at a metro subway station, its escalators running but with no people. Downtown looked like the zombie apocalypse had ravaged the city of its population, yet all the escalators, traffic lights, and other automated machines toiled on without purpose. She felt like the escalator.
Then Lin smiled with a glint in her eye. She bounded down the escalator to the subway below. She discovered her purpose after all.
Chapter 14
Banging on my front door.
I was lost in a dreamless sleep.
More banging.
My hand reflexively reached for my SCAR assault rifle before my brain registered the fact that someone was inside my ultra-secret safehouse and standing at my trailer’s front door. And knocking. Banging, actually.
“Locke, get your ass up!”
It was Lava. I lowered my weapon and sat up in my cot, checking my watch. Almost midnight.
“Let yourself in!” I shouted back.
“It’s locked.”
I shuffled to the door and opened it. Lava’s burly frame and stern expression awaited me. I felt like a scrub at Ranger School again.
“Daylight’s burning, Locke. You need to suit up,” he said, brushing past me and entered the trailer. “Real shithole of a place you got here. Know that?”
“What are you doing here? How did you know where I was, and get past my defenses?”
“Don’t insult me. Here, drink this,” he said, pulling out a small metal thermos.
“What is it?”
“Energy drink. Special stuff. You’re going to need it,” said Lava. Before I could protest, he opened it and shoved it into my hand. “Drink it.” Normally I wouldn’t, but Lava was my last, best commander. He took care of his people, and I wanted to be his people again, so I drank it against my better judgment.
“Tastes like fruit punch,” I said, handing back the empty thermos.
“And take this,” he said, handing me a kit bag. I opened it; inside was exotic Apollo tech and weapons. During my exile, I would have killed for such equipment, but not today. Not under these enigmatic circumstances.
“What’s this?” I asked.
“We don’t got all day, cupcake,” said Lava, tossing me a tactical cuff. It was among Apollo’s most coveted proprietary tech items, and far more advanced than anything governments issue. Looks were deceiving; it was a black Velcro cuff that attached to one’s inner forearm. Simple enough. But opening the inner flap revealed a touch screen that was beyond next-generation technology. It connected with the wearer’s tactical suit and linkable weapons; monitored vitals; interconnected with all Apollo team members and command nodes; and delivered ultrasecure global communications, limited artificial intelligence assistance, collective targeting, and near-perfect situational awareness in a firefight. It was the envy-lust of every special operator in the world, for those who knew of it, but only Apollo had them.
“Why are you giving me this?” I said, cradling it in my hand. It was unlocked and in setup mode, awaiting my biometric confirmation.
“Because I need to know if I can trust you.”
“And so you give me Apollo tech? I’m flattered but don’t understand.”
Lava shook his sideburned head. “If you’re gonna be on my team again, Locke, then I need to trust you. And it’s been a long time, Locke. You went rogue, remember?”
“It’s more complicated—”
Lava cut me off. “You don’t know someone until you fight with them, or against them. I need to know if I can trust you again. Suit up. We’re going on a mission.”
“Mission?” I stammered. “What, now?”
“Now.”
Lava’s missions were usually infamously impossible but never impromptu. Like SEALs, Delta, and other elites, they were meticulously planned by Tier One operators who worked exclusively on a team for months, even years. They never took along war tourists.
Unless I was the mission, I realized. Was Lava trying to eliminate me? Yes, if he didn’t trust me. But would he? I doubted it, but times change. I was caught up in a secret civil war, and I had gone rogue with Winters, the enemy. Lava had reason to doubt me.
“Where are we going? What’s the mission?” I said as I suited up. The body armor was exquisite. It looked like black carbon-fiber plate mail, but it could flex with the body and it was light. I felt I could pole-vault in the stuff.
“Need-to-know only,” said Lava, thumping me on the chest as he passed me and disappeared into the dark warehouse. “And you don’t need to know.”
I still held my SCAR. If I was going to end this, now would be my best chance. The sooner you make a break from your captors, the better your chance of survival. Those who wait for later opportunities usually find themselves in a hopeless prison cell, or dead. Sooner is always better. It’s basic escape and evasion.
“Locke?”
But would Lava really kill me? Somehow I doubted it. He was my former commander, and we had endured things together that bond men. Or perhaps that was just hope for an old friend. Who was a survivor. And a killer.
You must decide, I thought. Either you kill him, or he kills you. Or he saves you. Or I kill my only friend and ally. Or perhaps his rifle was already aimed at my head. Whatever I did, it would be consequential, and I had only seconds to decide.
“Hey, how did you get in here anyway?” I yelled into the darkness, buying time as I weighed my options. They all sucked.
“Stop stalling, Locke,” came Lava’s voice from the shadowy recesses. “Hurry up. Let’s bounce.”
OK, let’s see where this goes, I thought as I strapped on the cuff and exited the safehouse.
“Good man,” whispered Lava.
Half an hour later, around 0030, we pulled into a corporate airfield in Maryland, just outside the Capital Beltway. Lava drove the black Suburban down the tarmac, past rows of private jets, and into the last hangar. Inside was a lone plane. It looked like a military transport, with twin turbo-props on a high wing and a T-tail. Its back ramp was down, and men in combat gear were hauling weapon cases and parachutes from a van. I counted ten men, and they were preparing for a high-altitude low-opening, or HALO, jump mission.
“Your new team?” I asked Lava as we parked in the hangar.
“Old team,” Lava said. “You’re the FNG.” Fucking New Guy. Also, bottom of the food chain.
It’s gonna be a long night, I thought.
“Hey guys, I brought a new recruit,” said Lava.
“Locke, good of you to join us!” said Tye with sarcasm and a smirk. He introduced me to the rest of the team. They were all ex–Tier One special operators: six Americans, one Aussie, a Brit, a Canadian, a German, and an Israeli. All looked combat weathered, and none seemed pleased to see me. But I was the FNG, and I knew the deal. I used to be one of them. Hell, I led my own team under Lava’s command in the early days.
“Body armor, grenades, and ammo in the van,” said Tye. “Grab your pleasure and get on th
e iron bird. Wheels up in five.”
“Thanks. Where are we—” I began before Tye cut me off.
“Just get your shit, Locke.”
I stared at him and he stared back, giving no quarter. In the van, I grabbed the armor, a few boxes of 7.62 mm for my SCAR, .45 rounds for my twin HK Mark 23 handguns, and four frag grenades.
“Where’s my parachute?” I asked.
“We already got one waiting for you,” said Tye, his smirk disappeared. “On the plane.”
I didn’t like it.
“Thanks, Tye, but I see one here, toward the front of the van.” I clambered over the ammo crates, and felt Tye’s firm grip on my calf, stopping me.
“Stop wasting time. Like I said, your chute is already on the plane,” he said. We locked gazes.
“Locke, move your ass! We’re moving out,” yelled Lava from the plane’s tailgate, his assault rifle dangling at his side. A tug began pulling the aircraft from the hangar while the ground team got in the vehicles and started the engines.
“Leave it, Locke. Let’s go,” said Tye.
If I were to bail now, Lava could have capped me: one in the back and the other in the skull. He had a gift with bullets. So I followed Tye and leapt onto the plane’s back ramp as it began to lift. The turboprops whirred to life once we cleared the hangar, and the van and Chevy Suburban drove away into the darkness. Lava’s team sat on benches facing each other, looking slightly like cyborgs in their battle suits. Meanwhile, I was struggling to put mine on as we taxied to the runway. Seat belts were ignored as we took off.
“Are you going to tell me where we’re going now?” I shouted over the din of the turboprops.
“You will know it when you see it,” said Lava.
“What’s the mission?”
“Need to know.”
“I need to know,” I said, gesturing at the aircraft and heavily armed team of strangers. We were about to parachute into a fight, and I had the right to know why I was risking my life.
“Need to know,” repeated Lava as he leaned back and closed his eyes for a nap. So did the rest of the team.
