Black Flagged Vektor (4)

by Konkoly, Steven

  ***

  Gary Sheffield low-crawled down the blood-slicked hardwood floor toward the front door, urging his body forward against every survival instinct his brain had activated within the past five minutes. Another burst of machine-gun fire swept through the front of the house, spraying him with wooden splinters and bits of drywall. The sound of gunfire seemed closer than before. A second distant explosion had shaken the house less than a minute ago, yielding a temporary lull in machine-gun fire. The team had advanced to a new position inside of the fence line.

  He stopped for a moment and leaned to the right, peering through the open front door, still unable to spot the shooters. He had no intention of taking a second look. The headless body lying several feet ahead of him served as a grim reminder that the ceaseless machine-gun fire wasn’t the only threat out there. Anyone who exposed a body part for too long or appeared in the same place twice inevitably attracted a .50 caliber projectile. Three members of his team had been gruesomely killed this way.

  Satisfied that he wasn’t in their line of sight, Sheffield squirmed through the doorway on the left and surveyed the communications room. Greg Marshall’s bullet-riddled body sat slumped in a chair at the sensor station. He had been killed in the first full machine-gun sweep, along with Sheffield’s assistant. Both of them had been desperately trying to raise CIA headquarters to report the attack, but had not received a response. He suspected that the first few thunderous rifle reports had been directed at their communications dome, knocking out their encrypted satellite connection.

  Even if they had managed to contact headquarters, reinforcements wouldn’t arrive for several hours. Protocol for this ultra-secret station didn’t allow them to contact local law enforcement. In the event of an attack, they were on their own until the CIA could arrange for a team to arrive. Under most conceivable scenarios, his security arrangement would have been sufficient to repel any attempted breach of the facility. This morning’s attack had been different, and he couldn’t shake the thought that the timing of Berg’s arrival had not been a coincidence. Greg Marshall’s last report confirmed that the second team had breached the fence line near Reznikov’s residence.

  The rest of his survey confirmed that nothing salvageable remained in the room. Sporadic rifle fire erupted from the house, attracting another long hail of machine-gun fire and at least two sniper rounds. Several bullets punctured the north-facing wall, indicating a new threat direction and the arrival of the team sent to either kill or retrieve Reznikov. Disregarding the machine-gun fire that poured through the front of the house, he sprinted into the hallway and barreled into the kitchen, stopping at the back door.

  “What do you have?” he yelled at the agent crouched in the doorframe.

  “Another team moving across the middle. Four men. One of them is Reznikov!”

  Son of a bitch. They were trying to break Reznikov out of his compound. The big question was how? He had no idea how they had arrived, but he figured that they had hiked in. It was the only way to approach silently enough to evade early detection. There was no way they could successfully hike back, with or without Reznikov, at this point.

  The only other option involved commandeering vehicles based at the compound. He had personally disabled both SUVs with his rifle, which left them with the ATVs parked in the garage. They could use the ATVs to navigate the access road and hijack a car on one of the county roads, but this seemed like a flimsy exfiltration plan given what his intruders had already accomplished, and they were headed in the wrong direction. The garage was located in the opposite direction they were travelling.

  “Is Berg with them?” Sheffield said, still not convinced the CIA agent’s arrival was a coincidence.

  “Negative. Three shooters and Reznikov. Fuck! They have a clear angle on us!” the agent said, raising his rifle to engage the group.

  Sheffield leaned through the door and sighted in on one of the partially exposed moving targets through the holographic sight attached to his HK416C ultra-compact. He fired in semiautomatic mode, striking the rocks just behind the shooter. The agent in the doorway fired a long burst at the same man, kicking up dirt and rock chips, but failing to score a hit. The two other agents stationed along the back of the house at the corners retreated toward the back door as return fire from the cluster of shooters started to tear into the west-facing side of the house.

  A bullet snapped past Sheffield’s head, striking the doorframe above him and forcing his retreat into the kitchen. The rest of his agents piled through the opening as bullets started to slice through the wall, forcing all of them to seek cover deeper inside the house. They had learned the hard way that the structure’s exterior walls barely slowed the high-velocity projectiles fired at them. Firing directly through a window while standing near it only made things easier for the compound’s intruders. He’d lost at least half of his team to gunfire that passed effortlessly through the exterior walls. The compound’s designers clearly hadn’t anticipated the possibility of the team getting trapped inside the house.

  ***

  Yergei threw himself down against the rocks and hugged the ground, wincing from the pieces of rock that peppered his face. The surviving members of the compound’s security team were putting up a spirited resistance. With this kind of incoming fire, there was no way he could risk directing the helicopter to land, and without the helicopter, they faced a long, arduous trek out of here by ATV. The helicopter was less than a minute away.

  His machine gunner fired a five-second-long burst of 7.62mm projectiles through the north wall and stopped to reload while the sniper sprinted to catch up with the group escorting Reznikov. The scientist didn’t have a clue about tactical considerations in a firefight, and his men had to constantly force him down to avoid incoming fire. For a supposed genius, the guy didn’t have the situational awareness of a drunken street bum. When the machine gun started chattering away at the house, he called for their extraction on his handheld radio.

  “Eagle, this is Mountain Man, over,” Yergei said.

  “This is Eagle, over,” crackled a voice over the gunfire.

  “Commence your run to the primary LZ. LZ is hot. I repeat. LZ is hot. All hostiles are buttoned up tight inside the gray, two-story house in the middle of the clearing. You are cleared to engage the house.”

  “Roger that. We’re inbound. Thirty seconds.”

  He scurried down the backside of the rocky outcropping, staying as low as possible, until he reached a point where he could see his entire team. His sniper had reached the main group a dozen meters away and grabbed Reznikov. With the scientist out of their custody, the two men turned their attention to the house, directing burst after burst of gunfire into the wood siding below and alongside the windows. He signaled for his machine gunner to catch up, and emptied the rest of his rifle’s magazine into the back door.

  His gunner dropped to the ground next to him in a state of sheer fatigue from hauling the RPK-74S light machine gun more than three hundred meters over rough terrain.

  “Take a break and set up here. I want continuous fire on the back of the house until the helicopter arrives. As soon as the helicopter touches down, you move. Good job so far,” Yergei said, slapping him on the shoulder.

  “The barrel is dangerously overheated!” the ex-soldier said.

  “It can handle another two hundred rounds. Keep firing until the helicopter lands,” Yergei said. “Move to the LZ! Thirty seconds!” he said, emphatically motioning for the rest of the team to pick up the pace.

  The light machine gun unleashed a furious volley against the battered structure, filling the house with deadly fragments of steel and wood. Yergei reloaded his weapon on the run, headed toward several yellow putting flags crowded onto a closely mowed circular patch of grass due west of the house. A massive post-and-beam lodge loomed behind the landing pad, offset to the right and out of both groups’ lines of fire. Three gray-haired, overweight men stood on the deck, bizarrely cheering them on with drinks raise
d over their heads.

  A bullet hissed past him, followed shortly by another as he sprinted for the putting green that would serve as their primary landing zone. He fired controlled bursts at the house while running, letting his machine gunner do most of the work. By the time he reached the short grass, the volume of fire had intensified, kicking up patches of sod around him. He ran onto the soft grass, throwing the flags to the ground as the helicopter appeared over the western tree line.

  ***

  Sheffield fired a few hastily aimed 5.56mm rounds through the shattered dining room window at the group lying prone next to the putting green, quickly shifting his aim to the commando removing the yellow flags. His last shot missed, mainly because he was more focused on getting back down to the floor as quickly as possible. Standing for more than a few seconds nearly guaranteed taking a bullet from the light machine gun pummeling them from a well-protected position less than a hundred meters away.

  The agent positioned in the far corner of the dining room rose quickly to his knees and fired an extended burst through the same window. The drywall below the window framing exploded at the same time, showering them both in a chalky white powder residue. He covered his face with his right arm and buried his head into the hardwood floor as the room took another devastating extended burst from the machine gun outside. He heard the agent’s body hit the ground hard and scrambled through the chunks of building material to reach him.

  Bright arterial spray decorated the walls on both sides of the corner, continuing to jet from the agent’s lower thigh. Sheffield instinctively started to remove his belt in an attempt to fashion a tourniquet, but stopped upon further examination of the agent’s contorted, twitching body. A bullet had passed cleanly through the middle of his neck, rendering the level of trauma care he could give at the moment utterly pointless. He had to do something to even the odds and take revenge for the brutal murder of his security agents.

  “Lopez, Graham. Get ready to go full auto. Full mags. Pour it on the group next to the green and get down!” he said, pulling a fresh thirty-round magazine from his combat vest.

  The two men spread across the kitchen, changed magazines, and signaled him with a thumbs-up.

  “Pour it on those motherfuckers!” he screamed, rising up in defiance of the steel-jacketed rounds cracking overhead.

  All three of them emptied their magazines on full automatic toward the group huddled near the putting green. Within three seconds they had unleashed ninety 5.56mm bullets in a hail of gunfire that struck down the group’s leader, who just kneeled next to the group. He saw thick splatters of blood erupt from behind the commando, but that was all he could confirm before dropping out of sight and preparing for the inevitable, overwhelming response. Upstairs, he heard at least one friendly gun continue the shooting spree and something else. Shit. Now he understood.

  “Helicopter inbound! Get away from the wall!” he said.

  All three of them clambered on their hands and knees for the center hallway in a desperate attempt to move deeper into the house. Sheffield was the last man through the opening before bullets started to tear into the kitchen and dining room at a downward trajectory that would have killed most of them immediately. The deep thumping of the rotors competed with the utter devastation unleashed on the house, rapidly growing along with the intensity of incoming fire.

  “Keep going out the front door! Out the front door!” he said, pushing them along until they tumbled down the granite steps and onto the gravel driveway.

  Bullets continued to rip through the house, passing completely through the structure and forcing them to huddle behind the thick granite steps and concrete foundation. He just hoped that the helicopter didn’t plan to circle the house. They’d have nowhere to go but back inside, where they would eventually die. The machine-gun fire continued, but didn’t change trajectory, leaving him with the impression that the helicopter was here for one single purpose. To extract the team.

  He turned to the two men, hoping to muster one last attempt to stop Reznikov’s escape, but both of the agents had taken multiple hits. None of the bullet wounds looked immediately life-threatening, but he could tell by their eyes that they were thinking the same thought that Sheffield had just pushed out of his head. There’s no point anymore. It’s over.

  He crawled along the foundation to the right corner of the house and risked a peek toward the putting green, which was partially obscured by the far end of the house. The helicopter’s tail rotor protruded into his view, giving Sheffield hope that he might be able to disable the helicopter. They’d still have to contend with two light machine guns and four commandos, but at least he’d make it a little harder for them to get away. He didn’t care how good they were, escaping on ATVs would present a whole host of problems that the CIA might be able to contend with.

  He aimed at the tail rotor and fired a burst, seeing sparks fly off the rotor assembly. His burst was answered by concentrated machine-gun fire from rocks northwest of the house. He’d hastily assumed that the machine gunner had already fled for the helicopter. The rounds chewed up the concrete foundation and splintered the painted wood above him, leaving him no choice but to withdraw. He waited a few seconds and leaned to the right, squeezing off three shots at the rocks, which were not met by return fire. He rolled along the gravel until the machine gunner appeared, running full speed for the helicopter. Sheffield found the fleeing figure in his holographic sight and centered it in the red circle. He fired two rounds before the gravel ten meters in front of him erupted, barely giving him enough time to roll out of the way of the helicopter door gunner’s fusillade.

  He backed up to the porch and prepared to climb inside the house to seek shelter, unsure of the helicopter’s intentions. He could tell by the whine of the engines and the deeper pitch of the rotors that the helicopter had taken off at high speed. Seconds later, the sound started to fade, and he stood up, walking back to the corner of the house. He watched a red and white, Bell 427 medium utility helicopter disappear beyond the western tree line.

  “Check on the rest of the team in the house, then get the staff in the lodge organized. I want all hands on deck helping out with the casualties. Full prisoner count in five minutes. Get on one of the handheld satellite phones and notify headquarters,” Sheffield said.

  “Got it. Where are you going?” Graham said, leaning on Lopez’s shoulder for support.

  “To check on Karl Berg. He was here to permanently retire Reznikov,” he said.

  He started to jog down the center gravel path, stopping for a moment to survey the putting green. He counted two bodies on the ground, indicating that his final shots had found the machine gunner’s back.

  Sheffield slowed down once he entered the forest and cautiously approached the residence. Scanning over the barrel of his compact assault rifle, he immediately saw that the front of the cottage had suffered the same fate as the security complex, but that the damage had been contained to the left side. A body lay in a widening pool of blood on the covered porch, which caused him to stiffen, until he realized that the man was dressed in the same camouflage pattern as the rest of the assault team that tore up his compound. There was no need to examine the body. The back of the man’s head was missing, giving him some hope that Berg might still be alive inside the house.

  He stood quietly for a moment, listening for signs of movement in the cottage. Hearing nothing, he stepped inside, sweeping the rifle left to right to ensure that the attackers hadn’t left a wounded man behind. The attack had progressed so quickly from his perspective that he couldn’t rely on what they had momentarily seen on the camera feeds. He had counted six men approaching the fence, but his count had been quickly interrupted by automatic fire directed against his Quick Reaction force.

  His hopes of finding Berg alive were crushed when he caught sight of the ceiling to his left. Bullet holes riddled the entire surface, leaving very few areas intact. Combined with the damage he’d seen on the exterior of the house, he could
n’t imagine any scenario in which Berg had survived. The assault team had made a concerted effort, inside and outside of the house, to take him down.

  “Berg! Karl Berg! You in there?” he said, walking toward the kitchen.

  No response.

  “Karl. It’s Gary Sheffield!”

  Glancing through the kitchen, he noticed several bullet holes in the far wall, which caused him to point his rifle toward the staircase to his left. He spotted a dark red stain on the wall at the top of the stairs.

  “Berg! Answer me, damn it!” Sheffield said.

  “I’m up here,” a weak voice responded.

  “Are you alone?”

  “Yes,” Berg said.

  Sheffield slung his rifle and mounted the stairs, expecting to find him lying in the hallway. The hardwood floor in the hallway was cracked and splintered from wall to wall, covered in a fine dust from the damage to the ceiling above.

  “Where are you?” Sheffield said.

  “Taking a bath,” Berg said.

  He peered into the bathroom just off the hallway and found himself staring directly at the business end of the suppressed pistol he had given Berg less than fifteen minutes ago. The top of Berg’s head protruded just far enough over the top of the cast-iron, claw-foot tub to effectively aim the pistol. The pistol disappeared into the tub, along with the rest of Berg’s head.

  “Reznikov?”

  “He escaped by helicopter. They had us pinned down from the start,” Sheffield said, stepping into the bathroom.