by Shawn Kupfer
“You need one, boss?”
“Ugh. Boss. Don’t like that much. That’s what we call Nick,” Christopher said, taking the pack from the operative’s outstretched hand and pulling out a smoke.
“Yeah, I know what you mean. How about Chief? Or Gunny?”
“Or Chris. That works. My mom did go to the trouble of naming me, and all.”
“Right on, man. So, what’s the deal? I wasn’t sleeping well, or anything, but...”
“You know I need to pick a second in command. I’m thinking you’re the man for the job, if you want it.”
“I mean, I’ll take it. But it’s just temporary until Nick gets back, right?”
“That’s the hope.”
“You can count on me, man. I’ve got you.”
“Sergeant Lee,” the driver piped up, turning slightly to face Christopher.
“Yeah, Yuri? What’s up?”
“We’re getting a call from Bulaevo. It’s a small town in Kazakhstan, not too far off our route. They’re being attacked by Renegade forces, and their local militia is already overwhelmed.”
Russian Renegades. Christopher had hoped they wouldn’t run into any, that their trip would be nice and uneventful. It never worked out that way. When the war started in early 2019, just under half of the Russian military had sided with China and North Korea, and outside of the Chinese lines, the Renegade forces were a constant irritation.
“Any idea on how many?”
“Small force. No more than 50, but well-armed. There is another problem,” Yuri said.
“Yeah?”
“We’ve got orders to deliver this vehicle and your team to Yekaterinburg, and nothing else. We’re not supposed to stop for anything less than a direct attack. Do you have such orders, as well?”
Christopher nodded. He saw where Yuri was going with this – he really wanted to engage, to help this small town fight off these jackasses, but he couldn’t – unless 47 Echo made him divert.
“We don’t. In fact, our standing orders are to take out whatever Renegade forces we come across,” Christopher said. That was stretching the truth, but only a little.
“So, I could safely say you asked us to divert to engage?”
“You could say that, yes,” Christopher said, clapping Yuri on the shoulder and turning to his team. “All right, folks. Get on the clock.”
* * *
Now it was time for a plan. They were outnumbered at least five to one, but they’d had worse odds before and all come out alive. Then, though, Nick had been at the wheel, and Nick always seemed to have a plan. Even when Christopher knew his boss didn’t have a clue how to proceed, he never let the other people in the unit see it. Christopher didn’t know how to do any of that, how to plan or hide his lack of a plan.
The situation was made worse by the fact they would be facing off against Russian Renegades, the hardest in a group of hardcore soldiers. When the Russian Republic tore itself in half at the start of the war, the most hardline communist soldiers went over to the Chinese side. The soldiers that had survived the combined Loyalist Russians and American forces were lethal, brutal. There might as well have been three times as many as there actually were.
“Do we know anything about who we’re up against?” Christopher asked as Yuri killed the engine a mile and a half from Bulaevo.
“The man who sent the call was an old veteran,” Yuri said, standing and opening the weapons locker. “He says VDV.”
VDV – Vozdushno-Desantnye Voyska – Airborne troops. Highly trained, heavily armed. Great.
“Couldn’t have been a bunch of supply clerks, could it?” Peter asked, echoing Christopher’s thoughts.
“Unfortunately, this is not the case. But they are low on supplies. Our source reports they are not fully armed, and light on grenades and RPGs. We only have to worry about small-arms and sniper fire,” Gregor, Yuri’s partner, said.
“How’d this guy contact you, anyway?” Anthony asked. It was a good question, and one Christopher wished he’d thought of.
“An old radio unit,” Yuri said, “transmitting on a low-frequency channel the Russian military uses for Special Purpose.”
“And he told you where they’re hanging out?” Christopher asked.
“Da. They’re mostly collected in four houses on the other side of this park,” Gregor said, bringing up a satellite image of the town and pointing to a large wooded area roughly in the center.
“So here’s what I’m thinking,” Christopher said, the wheels starting to turn in his head. “We’re dealing with half a unit, low on supplies, at night. Their watch will probably be light, maybe 10, 15 guys. Two or three snipers. That sound right?”
Yuri nodded.
“And we have one sniper,” Christopher started.
“Two,” Gregor said, pulling a Druganov sniper rifle out of the weapons locker.
“Great. Two. So we set up our snipers in the trees at the edge of the woods here,” he pointed to the screen. “Then we send a small force – me, Peter, Martin, and you, Yuri – to go wire the buildings to blow under sniper cover.”
“Problem, Sergeant,” Yuri said, opening the weapons locker wide so that Christopher could see inside. “We’re light on explosives. A case of grenades.”
“Martin?” Christopher said.
“Got it handled,” Martin said, pulling a duffel from under his seat and opening it. Inside were thirty blocks of C4.
“Jesus. You really need to stop riding around with so much boom,” Peter said, shaking his head.
“It’s my security blanket,” Martin yawned, shrugging.
“And the rest of us?” Mary asked.
“You’re our cavalry. We get in trouble, you all charge in and fuck them up as much as possible with the big gun on this thing,” Christopher said, pounding the bulkhead next to him. “Bryce? You handle this thing?”
“Sure.”
“Mike?”
“Gun’s no problem.”
“Good. Sound about right, guys?”
Yuri and Gregor nodded, almost in sync.
“All right, then. Let’s move.”
Getting the snipers set up was no problem. The APC was idling just behind the forest, ready to rock out at a word from Christopher. Everything seemed to be going to plan, Christopher thought as he and his small team crept across the open park towards the lights of the small houses three football fields away. They saw no guards, no snipers in high perches. It looked like the job was going to be easy enough.
And just as he had that thought, the night exploded in gunfire.
Chapter Eight
Outlaw
“So you’re a junkie, on top of everything else.”
Nick thought Hansen had fallen asleep. His eyes had closed and he’d stopped talking, for which Nick was infinitely thankful. It didn’t last long, though, maybe five minutes before the guy’s eyes were open again and he resumed his active campaign of not-shutting-the-fuck-up. When he thought the pilot was sleeping, Nick shook out two of the stimulant pills he’d taken from his dead medic’s pack and shot them into his mouth. That was when Hansen decided to open his eyes.
“Yeah. You pilots never take uppers,” Nick shot back after swallowing the two pills.
“Not like you, buddy. Quick question – when was the last time you slept?”
“Approximately none of your damn business.”
Hansen shrugged.
“Your nervous system, man. Just make sure you’re not pointing your gun at me anytime soon, yeah? Hate for you to get twitchy and put one in my eye.”
“Perhaps not being an asshole would be a good way to assure I don’t draw down on you.”
Nick meant the comment to come off almost as a joke, but when he heard his own words, there was a hard edge to them. He knew he was irritated, stressed, angry – but he thought he was doing a better job of hiding it.
“Perhaps not being a Chink spy would be a good way of assuring I don’t act like an asshole,” Hansen said, but his voice
was quieter now. Nick realized he’d scared the pilot a bit.
Good, Nick thought. Maybe he’ll shut up from time to time now.
Hansen did keep quiet for the next several minutes. In fact, it was Nick who spoke next, and he wouldn’t have if there hadn’t been a major problem.
He’d been enjoying the silence, simply piloting the Brave Warrior further north. The landscape was starting to look familiar – they were approaching the Taizhou Military Installation, where Nick had been captured and imprisoned just a few days before. As he drove, he thought he caught a small, red light flicker on and off at the top left edge of his peripheral vision. When he looked up, he saw a small camera near the truck’s driver-side sunshield, and there was, indeed, a small LED beside it. The LED, however, was dark.
As Nick watched, though, the LED flickered on again, then off. Finally, it switched on and stayed on.
“Shit. We need to ditch this car,” Nick said, swerving toward the road’s shoulder and stepping on the brakes.
“What? Why?”
“Camera just came on. And you know they’re looking for me.”
“So what? Your face is all covered up,” Hansen said, leaning back further in his seat.
“No time to explain it to you. Can you walk?”
“Doubt it.”
“Fine. I’ll carry you.”
“Uh, no, thanks. I’ll try to walk.”
Nick hopped out of the truck and crossed around to Hansen’s door, scanning the road in both directions as he moved. There weren’t any cars in sight, at least, not for the moment. He opened Hansen’s door and helped him out.
“We need to find some cover while I figure this shit out,” Nick said, hauling the young pilot out of the truck and closing the door behind him.
“Not much in the way of cover by the side of the damn highway,” Hansen bitched, pushing Nick’s arm off of his shoulder and standing shakily.
Nick surveyed the landscape around them and caught sight of an electrical substation about four hundred feet off the road. There was a small bunker in the center of the transformers – it was better than nothing.
“Power station. Think you can make it?”
“Yeah.”
Nick took off, walking fast, and looked behind him. Hansen was moving, but barely. He would take a step with his right leg, planting it squarely in front of him, then drag his left leg behind him until it met up with his right. Nick sighed, tightened the strap on his assault rifle, and covered the distance back to the young pilot in two big steps. He grabbed Hansen’s left arm and threw it over his shoulder, supporting the wounded leg with his own body weight.
“I didn’t ask for your help,” Hansen growled.
“I noticed. But the rate you’re going, it’ll be night before we get there. So I’m dragging you if I have to.”
Hansen muttered something under his breath, something so quiet that Nick, inches away from the man’s head, couldn’t quite make it out. He brushed it off as probably another racial slur and hauled the pilot along with him to the power substation. The gate was unlocked, and Nick kicked it open with his left foot. He dragged Hansen quickly to the bunker – it wasn’t tough, as the pilot didn’t weigh much – and tried the door. It was unlocked as well. He opened the door and set Hansen down in the small, featureless concrete room, then went back to close the gate.
When he joined Hansen back in the room, he noticed that the young man was sweating profusely. It wasn’t hot out at all.
“You wanna let me take a look at that leg now?”
“Just toss me the medical kit. I’ll do it myself.”
The medical kit. Nick realized he’d left it back on the Brave Warrior’s back seat. He’d have to go back for it.
“Wait here. I’ll go get it, and get the truck off the road somewhere,” Nick told him.
“I’d argue with you, but I don’t think I’m going anywhere,” Hansen said, his eyes shutting as he spoke.
Jesus. He must be in agony, Nick realized. He didn’t know how badly the pilot’s left leg was injured, but it couldn’t have been minor. Fifteen seconds of putting weight on the injured limb had turned Hansen from a combative asshole to a compliant, quiet little kid. But at least it shut him up.
Nick hopped back into the truck and grabbed the medical kit, a nondescript beige messenger bag, from the back seat. He started the engine and scanned the area around him for somewhere to stash the vehicle. There was still no one on the roads, but up ahead, near the Taizhou Military Installation, he saw a fenced-in parking lot with a couple of other Brave Warriors in it. It was maybe half a mile away. Perfect.
The gate was open, and there was no one wandering about in the parking lot. Nick found that odd, then realized it wasn’t. With the aftermath of the computer network shutdown and subsequent bombing runs by American forces, everyone was probably inside at their desks, busy as hell. Either that, or they were out in the field prepping for a counterattack. If such a thing had happened at Firebase Zulu, where he and his team were stationed, Nick knew he and the rest of 47 Echo would have rolled out on some harebrained, half-planned mission or another within hours. No reason to suspect the People’s Liberation Army worked that much differently, especially in high-adrenaline reaction mode.
Nick found a parking space near the middle of the lot, around a few more Brave Warriors. In addition to the Brave Warriors, there were some armored personnel carriers, Mengshi light assault vehicles, and huge, eight-ton troop trucks in the lot. Nick considered just switching his Brave Warrior for another, but that wouldn’t solve the problem that forced him to ditch their ride in the first place.
It was a problem he explained when he got back to the substation and tossed the medical kit over to Hansen. The pilot dug through the kit, laying out gauze, compression bandages, and medical tape.
“So why are we sitting in a fucking concrete shack rather than riding in relative comfort in an air-conditioned truck?” Hansen asked.
“There was a camera on in the cabin.”
“Yeah, you said that. So what? It’s not like you don’t look like a guy who should be driving that truck.”
“Remember those wanted posters on every building in downtown Shanghai? They know my face.”
“Your face is all messed up with the blood and stuff,” Hansen said, rolling up the left leg of his flight suit. “The guy at the ferry let you pass no problem.”
“Jesus, man. That looks really bad,” Nick said, swallowing to keep the bile down. Throwing up a little wouldn’t help the situation any, but that was what he wanted to do – he was sure he could see Hansen’s shin bone through a huge gash that ran from just below his knee halfway to his ankle.
“It isn’t good,” Hansen said with a sigh, shaking his head and digging in the messenger bag. He came out with a bottle of antiseptic spray and liberally dosed the area with it, wincing as the medicine hit the wound. “You went to lengths to disguise your face. Why worry about the camera now?”
“Fooling a guy working a checkpoint is one thing. He’s human. But the camera coming back on means the PLA computer network is coming back up to full strength. Disguising my face won’t mean shit to the computer. You can’t fool facial-recognition software.”
“How do you even know the Chinks are running it?”
“Wanna cool it with the Chink shit?”
“Not especially.”
“I know they’re running it because surveillance here makes a Las Vegas casino look like a gas station security camera setup. And Vegas has been running facial recognition software since about the time you were in middle school. Hell, Chinese programmers probably wrote the software Vegas used back then.”
“So we switch seats. You let me drive. Thing was an automatic. Not like I have to use the clutch,” Hansen said, shoving gauze into the wound and biting his lower lip to keep from shouting.
“Yeah, because a blond-haired, blue-eyed guy driving one of their trucks certainly wouldn’t trip any alarms,” Nick said, frowning. “Sure yo
u don’t need any help with that?”
“You know anything about trauma wound care?”
“A little.”
“Well, I know a lot. They teach it to you for just such an occasion. So just give me space and get out of my light.”
Nick moved so his back was against the door of the tiny bunker, which moved his head out of the path of the single overhead light. Hansen sprayed the wound again, then wrapped the entire thing in gauze, then wrapped the gauze with a compression bandage.
“Now, what’d you do with those painkillers?”
Nick pulled the bottle of Hydrocodone from his cargo pocket and tossed it to Hansen. Though he’d already seen the English label back in the truck, he studied the bottle before opening it. He shook out two pills, then studied one of them up against the light. Shrugging, he put both large pills into his mouth and swallowed.
“I’m probably gonna get pretty sleepy in about a half an hour here,” he said. “My bet is this isn’t a very secure place for me to sack out.”
Nick had the same thought. It was less than half a kilometer from where they’d bailed out of the truck, and it would be the first place anyone looking for them would check. But with Hansen’s leg shredded below the knee, it wasn’t like they were going to get much further. Stealing another military vehicle was out, because they’d logically all have the same cameras connected to the PLA core, and Nick had no idea how to turn them off. And if there were cameras, there were probably other trackers he couldn’t even find or identify.
“We need to go low-profile from here on out,” Nick said. “Find civilian transportation, civilian clothes. Me impersonating a PLA officer is just going to get us into more trouble than we want. There are a billion and a half people in this country, and most of them aren’t in the army – we need to blend in with them if we’re getting out of here.”
“Great plan,” Hansen said, yawning. “We haven’t seen a non-military car in hours. How do you plan to do that?”
“No idea. But I don’t have much time to figure it out.”
Chapter Nine
Gun Fury
