by Myke Cole
A burly Entertech contractor nearly knocked Britton over, fitting body armor and a tactical vest over Britton’s head, strapping a pistol and go bag to his legs, stuffing the pouches with magazines.
“This him?” said one of the SF operators, a grizzled sergeant first class, his face half-invisible under brim of his helmet and the fittings for his night optical device. His name tape read SHARP.
Fitzy nodded. “Just give me a sec to get him briefed up, and, hopefully, we can make this work.”
“We don’t have a lot of time. They could be moved, or worse,” Sharp said.
“You can’t rush this,” the colonel said. “Let Chief Warrant Officer Fitzsimmons do his job.”
The SOF operators stared at the colonel with open contempt, completely unimpressed by his rank.
Fitzy faced Britton squarely and placed his hands on his shoulders. “All right, Keystone. I need you to listen carefully and to focus completely. We don’t have time to go through this twice. You with me?”
“Locked on, sir,” Britton said.
“Good.” Fitzy nodded. “You’ve been kind of cut off from the news out here, so you aren’t tracking on the fact that we’ve got two kidnapped marines out of the Second Marine Expeditionary Force running support for the Bureau of Indian Affairs on the Mescalero reservation. The res is gigantic. We have no idea where the hell they are, and to be frank, we were starting to lose hope that we’d ever get ’em back. But just about two hours ago, the kidnappers posted a video to the Internet showing proof of life. The video also shows the room.”
Britton nodded. “You want me to gate there.”
Fitzy pointed to a computer monitor mounted to a wheeled cart behind the SF operators. “The video has a pretty good pan of the entire room, hopefully enough for you to get a fix on the location. We had one of our information operations bubbas work up a scratch-and-sniff kit for you, so you can get a sense of what the place smells like. Mission is simple. You gate the team in, keep to the rear, and get the team out when the hostages are secured. Bring everybody home so the medical crew here can work on them. Sergeant Sharp runs the show, for you and even for Captain TrueZero here. The Apache husband their magic users carefully, and we’re not expecting a ton of sorcery on this run, but TrueZero can Suppress well enough if it comes to that.”
“You stay on our six and out of the fight,” Sergeant Sharp added. “I can’t afford to be worrying about you once we hit the target.”
“Don’t worry about me,” Britton said, trying not to bristle. “I was doing assault-team insertions for years before I came up Latent. I know the drill.”
Sharp looked unimpressed, and Fitzy jerked his head toward the computer monitor. “Let’s give this a shot.”
Britton nodded, a lump of fear and excitement working its way from his stomach up to his throat. I’m finally going to put it to use. I’m finally going to do something.
The video was grainy, but clear enough for Britton to make out a wide brick-walled space. A dirty gray concrete floor, a drop-tiled ceiling with water stains. Rusted machinery parts were jumbled in one corner. A flag hung on the rear wall over a green-painted door, depicting crossed fists, each clenching a rifle, positioned behind what looked like a winged wheel. A narrow black shape, vaguely manlike, rose from the wheel’s center. A wide, knife-toothed grin stretched across it, narrow hands flexing dark claws. Britton thought the shape looked familiar, and a chill ran across his back. Crowning the display was a giant bird skull, striped red and orange. Four hooded men stood behind the two marines, seated Indian style in their uniforms, their faces bruised past recognition.
But they were alive. Don’t worry about that. Focus on the room. Your job is to get the guys in to do the job.
But something about the scene nagged at him. “Sir?” He said to Fitzy, “That bird skull’s awful big. How the heck would the Apache get their hands on a Ro…”
“Focus, Keystone!” Fitzy silenced him. “Intel’s not your job here.”
Britton bit his lip and concentrated.
As he looked at the video, he felt a movement beside him, and one of the Goblin contractors began to wave a small plastic canister under his nose. The fumes rose, carrying foreign scents—spent diesel fuel, animal manure, dust, and mold. “Close your eyes,” Fitzy said. “Get a real good sense of the place.”
Britton did his best to focus on the smells and the room in the video, trying to ignore the heady silence around him, the stares of the SF operators, Fitzy, Therese, and the medical crew, Colonel Taylor. The pressure made him nervous, and he leaned on the Dampener to shunt the emotion aside. Focus, focus.
After a moment, Sharp coughed. Fitzy stirred at Britton’s side. “What do you think?”
“I’ve got it,” Britton said.
“Are you sure?”
“No, but it’ll have to do, won’t it?”
Fitzy nodded grimly. “I guess it will. All right, I want a pinhole, Keystone, open for no more than five seconds. I want a quick recon of the room and ID any threats. Can you do that?”
“I think so, sir.”
“Remember, no bigger than a pinhole. We alert the enemy to our entry, and this whole thing is going to go south.”
Britton nodded and cleared his mind. He tried to push all other thoughts from his mind’s eye, focusing on the image of the room, repeating it in his head, centering on the details of the filthy brick, the hung banner, the pile of soiled machine parts. He recalled the smells, the dull cordite tinge burning his nostrils. Then he leaned on the Dampener, letting his nervousness, his desire not to disappoint the crowd staring at him, fuel the magic. The gate materialized perfectly, barely the size of a dime, shedding a tiny pinprick of light. He looked through it, then leaned back, shutting it and nodding.
“Room’s empty, sir. No light source or obstructions. No threats visible. Looks like they abandoned it after making the video.” Britton kept his voice even, but inside he was exulting. I did it. I watched a video for a minute and sniffed a canister and I can take us right there. The control, the sense of accomplishment was almost overwhelming. Fitzy grinned at him, and Britton grinned back, grateful in spite of himself. Bastard gave me this chance.
“All right,” Sharp said. “I wish we had more time to prep, but we need to go now. Keystone, Captain TrueZero, on our six, and do not engage unless called upon. In and out, quick as we can. Normally we’d have weeks to drill for an op like this. But…but things are different.”
You bet things are different. Now the army’s got a guy who can get you there in an instant. You probably wouldn’t have even attempted this mission before. Don’t worry, I won’t let it go to my head.
“I’ve got it,” the SOC Hydromancer groused.
“With all due respect, sir,” Sharp said, “I need you to secure the attitude. I cannot afford to be worrying about either of you.” He nodded to his men, slipping the night-vision device into position over his eyes.
“You might want to hold off, Sergeant,” Britton said. “The gate makes a lot of light. Better wait until you’re through, and it’s closed, before you go to the night optical devices. Otherwise, you might be running this op blind.”
TrueZero smirked, and Sharp nodded, slipping up his NODs and making a you-got-me face.
Britton nodded to Fitzy and widened his stance. “Folks might want to step back a bit.”
As the group complied, he heard Therese whisper behind him, “Good luck, Oscar.”
“Yes,” added the colonel, almost as an afterthought. “God-speed.”
“Don’t fuck it up, Keystone,” Fitzy added, “or it’s your ass.”
Britton grinned and slid the gate open, wide enough to admit the operators abreast. The SOF soldiers hesitated a moment, staring at the portal. Sharp motioned them forward, and they went, following their carbine muzzles as if they were dragged by them, walking evenly, calm, perfectly stable firing platforms. Sharp made a zipping motion across his lips to Britton and TrueZero before moving through. Britton
and TrueZero drew their pistols and followed behind. They entered into the darkness, and Britton shut the gate, an array of smells hitting his nose. The IO guys had gotten it almost exactly right. The air was thick, close, and freezing.
He heard the low clicks of the SF operators snapping their NODs into place, and Britton followed suit, the world transforming from black into pale green and white. He’d operated on NODs before and paused to adjust to how they flattened the world, robbing him of depth perception and color, plunging him into a weird ghost world, mechanical and unforgiving. But it was well worth it. The benefit of seeing in the dark far outweighed any minor adjustments that had to be made to do it. Britton looked left and right, able to take in the rest of the room that the camera’s aperture had cut off. Two metal doors stood at the far end. The SOF operators were already stacking up alongside it, Sharp anchoring the three men. Britton and TrueZero took up position on the door’s far side, shoulders pressed against the wall, pistols pointed at the floor, out of the line of fire as instructed.
Sharp nodded, and the operator across from him knelt, sliding what looked like a dental mirror under the door. He looked at it briefly, then nodded back to Sharp and made a fist, thumb up. Clear. He then stood and tried the door handle, his touch surprisingly gentle and silent. The handle didn’t budge. He sliced his hand flat through the air. Locked. Britton looked up at the hinges, rusted nearly solid. There would be no way to open it without making a lot of noise.
Sharp signaled TrueZero, and the SOC Hydromancer moved to the door. Britton felt his magical current surge as he placed his hands against the rusted surface, and within moments it paled, sparkling with frost and turning a faint, glowing blue that softly illuminated the darkness. The cold was so intense that Britton could feel it from his position feet away.
TrueZero stood back and kicked the door. It shattered, the metal pieces flying apart with no more sound than a broken window. The SF operators dashed through, their infrared sights casting pencil-thin beams down the hallway, invisible to all but those wearing night-vision optics.
A short hallway stretched out before them, the floor cast from the same dirty, chipped concrete, and the walls made of the same moldering brick. Graffiti covered most of it. A dog corpse sprawled to Britton’s left, stretched out among piled garbage. Two doors were set in the hallway’s left side and one in the right. Sharp signaled one of the operators to cover the two doors, while he and his remaining man knelt and checked through the garbage. Sharp flicked out his pocketknife with a soft click and slit the animal carcass, spreading it wide and peering inside the cavity with a small flashlight, checking for hidden explosives. The odor nearly made Britton gag, and he had to grit his teeth and press his forehead against the wall to keep from vomiting. By the time the feeling passed, Sharp had made the clear sign and joined his remaining man to stack on the single door. This door was unlocked, and they rolled into the room, emerging a moment later, signaling to their remaining man. Clear.
One operator moved to cover one of the remaining doors while Sharp and the other operator stacked on opposite sides of the second one. The operator knelt, sliding his mirror underneath once again, then stood and shook his head, giving an exaggerated shrug of his shoulders. Can’t see. Sharp trotted to Britton’s side. “Can you look in there?” he whispered.
Britton shook his head. “I have to know what it looks like first.”
Sharp cursed and moved back into position. He pulled a grenade from his vest and tried the handle himself this time. Again, locked. He nodded to TrueZero, who ran to the door, placing his hands on it. The magic poured forth from his hands, chilling, then freezing the door; the soft blue glow began to radiate outward as the Hydromancer worked.
Then the door exploded.
Britton heard the sharp report of gunfire and the frozen shards exploded outward, flying in TrueZero’s face. The SOC Hydromancer went flying backward, the fabric of his body armor ripping as a round caught him in the chest. He fetched up hard against the opposite wall and slid into a sitting position, senseless.
Sharp rolled around the corner to hurl the grenade, and a round caught him in the leg, spinning him off-balance. He collapsed, already lifting his carbine and firing one-handed into the darkness. The grenade, pin pulled, rolled a couple of feet down the hallway and stopped.
The other operators turned toward it, their guns dangerously out of the fight.
“I’ve got it!” Britton shouted, and snapped open a gate between the grenade and the team. It glimmered over a section of the berm beside Route 7 in Shelburne just as the grenade exploded. He felt the hot air of the thermal discharge engulf him, his ears ringing from the percussion. The solid rubber balls, intended to stun and incapacitate the enemy without killing the hostages, whisked harmlessly through. Britton could hear them pattering off the tarmac of the thankfully empty stretch of road.
The operators wheeled, dropping to their knees, knocking their NODs up onto their helmets and flooding the room with white light from the mounts beneath their carbine barrels. Gunfire exploded from their weapons, and Britton was momentarily blinded until he had a chance to push his own night optics away from his eyes.
“Get down!” Sergeant Sharp had begun to shout. “Get down on the fucking ground right now!” Over his back, Britton could see ragged men, gaunt and long-haired, moving in the room beyond. At least two lay on their sides on the floor before them, stirring weakly, bleeding out into the dust beneath them. Behind them, he could make out the hostages, their uniforms filthy, lying facedown with their hands bound behind them. Another round hissed by Britton’s head as the Hydromancer slouched over on his side.
Sharp’s face had turned gray as the pool of blood from his leg expanded, spreading out to make the floor slick. One of the operators slipped in it and went down. The enemy was pinned down in the close confines of the room, but they would make no headway. Britton knew a stalemate when he saw one. As Britton watched, a man stepped into view, one foot on the back of one of the hostages. His thick black hair tumbled from under a beaded cap, a cluster of feathers sprouting from the peak. He wore a tactical vest, the magazine pouches bulging with long rectangles covered in duct tape, wires extending from their tops to his belt.
No time for a stalemate.
Britton stepped into the doorway.
“What the hell are you doing? Get the hell out of the way!” one of the operators shouted.
Britton snapped open a gate back on the trauma tent at the FOB and leapt through. Fitzy, Therese, and Colonel Taylor gaped at the sight of him, but he ignored them as he opened another gate on the back of the room and stepped through directly behind the man in the vest. Come on guys, hold your fire, Britton thought. A bullet streaked past his ear close enough to make him wince, but then the rounds stopped as the operators figured out what was going on.
The man had a cell phone in his hand, a curling cord extending from it to his belt. Britton opened a small gate below his elbow and severed the cord just as he shouted something in Apache and punched a button on the phone.
Nothing happened. Stunned, the man punched the phone again, then turned, his eyes widening as Britton raised his pistol and brought the butt of it crashing into his temple. Other men in the room were turning, whirling to face him, leveling their weapons. Seeing their chance, the operators came storming into the room as Britton opened another gate and stepped backward through it into the trauma tent.
“It’s okay,” he said to Fitzy, “we’ve got it.” And then he was gone again, running to Sharp’s side and dragging him backward through another gate to the trauma tent. The sergeant was unconscious, but the other operators were inside the room, and the shooting had stopped. Britton felt strong arms grab the sergeant from the other side and haul him through, and he raced to TrueZero’s side. The Hydromancer stirred weakly. Britton fingered the bullet hole in the fabric and felt dented but solid plating behind it. No penetration. He’d probably escape with a broken rib.
Sharp gave a weak thumbs-
up as Therese bent over his leg, her eyes closed and hands gently drifting over his knitting flesh. TrueZero had stripped his vest and shirt and sat coughing raggedly as a nasty bruise spread its way over his ribs. The other two operators knelt on either side of the rescued marines, checking them for injuries. Both hostages stared wide-eyed at Britton, silent and terrified. One finally mustered the presence of mind to drawl a thank-you.
“You’re welcome,” Fitzy answered for him. “I’m afraid you’ve just become read into a rather classified government program. We’ll go over the requisite nondisclosure agreements once you’ve been cleared by medical.”
Britton knelt in the gravel of the trauma tent, stripping off his gear, as a blue-scrubbed orderly approached him. “You okay?”
“He’s Shadow Coven,” Fitzy snapped. “He’s better than okay. He’s the magic behind the magic.”
The doctor at last turned to Colonel Taylor and gave a thumbs-up sign. “They’ll live.”
Colonel Taylor sighed, his shoulders sagging with relief. He leaned over Sharp where he lay on the gurney. “I can’t tell you how grateful I am to you, son.”
Sharp nodded, clearly uncomfortable with the praise. Colonel Taylor turned to Fitzy. “Chief Warrant Officer Fitzsimmons, I’m delighted with the capabilities Shadow Coven brings to our force. Keep up the good work.” Fitzy saluted as Colonel Taylor made his way toward the entrance. “I’ve got to call General Hamilton and let him know we’re out of the woods. You take it from here.”
“Sir,” said Fitzy, and turned to Britton. “Don’t go thinking you’re a fucking hero all of a sudden, Keystone. You’ve got miles to go yet.” But Britton couldn’t miss the grudging respect in the chief warrant officer’s eyes.
