by Shawn Kupfer
Sadly, though, Nick knew this was his best shot, so he agreed. At just after midnight, they left the garage, with Feng driving, Nick in the passenger seat with his QBZ-95 in the footwell next to him, and Lung and the mechanic in the back of the truck.
“What about patrols?” Nick asked as they lumbered along the back roads.
“They’re pretty light. One vehicular patrol every hour or so. Foot patrols on the half.”
“And this information came from?” Nick prompted.
“Lung’s wife. She works for the kitchen that delivers lunch to the soldiers at the pier.”
“So that’s daylight intel. Anything relevant? Like what they’re doing around, oh, say, now?”
Feng looked over at Nick and blinked, which made Nick realize he was being more than a little harsh. He’d somehow managed to forget that these weren’t convict Marines or Army Rangers he was working with – these were three guys who repaired large, diesel trucks for a living. He made a mental note to back off a bit.
“Sorry. You got a couple of cell phones with wireless headsets?” Nick asked.
“Of course.”
“Who’s the most observant out of the three of you?”
“Lung’s got a good set of eyes.”
“Right. We’ll find a spot to drop him off, somewhere with a good overview of the pier. Stay on the line with him, and hopefully he can give us a few seconds’ warning if we have trouble heading our way.”
Feng bobbed his head.
“That’s a good idea. But can we load as fast with three people?”
“Two. Someone will have to stay on the wheel. If trouble’s coming, we’re not going to outshoot it. We’d better be able to outrun it. So you’ll stay in the driver’s seat. Homeboy and I back there will throw boxes – he looks like a strong kid.”
Down the highway a few minutes later, they found the perfect spot for Lung to set up shop – a grain silo complex with an external staircase. Lung would be able to climb the stairs to a fourth-story open-air observation point with a clear view of the pier and the highway. Feng made sure their connection was clear, then drove Nick and the mechanic down to the pier.
Nick had already explained the plan to the young mechanic, who hadn’t yet said a word or introduced himself. He simply nodded as Nick outlined the plan, watching Lung run up the metal staircase out of the corner of his eye. As they approached the pier – and the forty crates sitting right out in the open – the mechanic hopped out of the back of the truck before the vehicle even stopped and headed over to the pallets of boxes.
“Engine running. If Lung sees a damn thing, just put it in gear,” Nick said, hopping out of the cab. “The kid and I will catch up.”
He kept the QBZ-95 slung over his shoulder as he hurried over to join the mechanic at the pallets. As Nick moved, Feng backed up the truck to within a couple of feet of the stack. Nick grabbed one end of the box nearest him, the kid grabbed the other, and they were off.
Each box weighed easily a hundred pounds, which led Nick to guess each had ten to twelve rifles inside. It only took them about thirty seconds to get a box into the truck, but they slowed down as they worked, a combination of muscle strain and having to use the current box to push the last one further into the truck bed. A third guy would have been helpful, after all. Still, they made decent time, and had half of the boxes loaded within ten minutes.
“You see any ammo on that side of the stack, kid?” Nick asked, his voice low, speaking in Mandarin. He didn’t know anything about the mechanic, including whether he spoke English.
The mechanic shook his head.
“Damn. This stuff is useless to you guys without some bullets. You have any back at the hideout?”
The kid shrugged.
“Hold on one second,” Nick said, jogging around to the driver’s side window.
“We’re all clear,” Feng said when he saw Nick.
“Yeah, great. You guys got ammo for these things?”
Feng looked like he just realized he’d left the oven on in the house.
“Shit. No,” he said. “They don’t come with ammo?”
“It’s not like a store, Feng. They don’t come in package deals,” Nick said, shaking his head. “Lung’s wife didn’t say anything about ammo storage, did she? Or your truck driver contacts?”
Feng’s eyes moved up and to the left. He squinted, obviously searching his brain for any mention of ammunition. It didn’t look good – he was motionless for several seconds.
“Oh! Yes. Further down the dock, there,” he said, pointing. “That smaller building. Ammunition and rockets. I’m not sure of the caliber –”
“Get the truck moving. The kid and I will jump in the back. Lung probably won’t be able to see us down there, so you’ll have to keep your eyes peeled.”
Feng nodded and started the truck, slowly at first. Nick gestured to the mechanic, and as the truck slid past him, he jumped into the back of the vehicle, landing on top of one of the crates. The mechanic sprinted to the tailgate, and Nick helped him in.
“He thinks there’s ammo down at the end of the dock. I’ll check, you keep your eyes open for guards, clear?”
The kid nodded.
They were away from the land now, surrounded on all three sides by the quiet, black Suma Bay. The electric streetlights that lit the cargo area they’d just left were getting further and further away, so Nick slipped on his TotalVis goggles and set them to night vision mode. Everything turned green and black, but Nick didn’t see any movement out of the back of the truck. He almost fell over when Feng hit the brakes hard.
“You! Let me see your work order!” he heard from the front of the truck.
Nick dropped as quietly as he could out of the vehicle, his boots sounding far too loud on the pavement. He dropped low, laying on his stomach on the ground, and scanned the area. He saw one set of boots, walking toward the driver-side door, but that was it. One guard.
“Ah, yes, let me just find them,” Feng stammered as Nick pushed himself up to his feet and crept around the vehicle toward the driver-side door.
“You’re out of uniform. What are you hauling?” the guard asked, his voice low and sharp.
“We’re –”
Feng didn’t need to say anything else. Nick had gotten up behind the guard without being heard, and had the poor bastard in a rear-naked choke before he knew anything was wrong. A few seconds later, the guard hit the concrete, unconscious.
“You recognize the guy? He ever been into your shop?” Nick asked, his voice marginally above a whisper.
Feng shook his head.
“Good. That just saved his life. You’re watching the front, the kid’s on the back. Either one of you sees shit, just get out of here. I’ll fend for myself.”
He didn’t give Feng a chance to answer. He just jogged quickly to the small building about fifty feet away, the one Feng indicated he thought just might have ammo in it. For resistance fighters, these guys had a lot to learn about... well, everything. Planning, intel, not getting caught. The only thing they seemed to have going for them was a certain closeness with the PLA, enough friendliness with their enemies that they probably wouldn’t be suspected of the theft.
The small building’s door was locked, and it was a pretty high-quality lock. The door itself, though, was cheap pressboard, and Nick had no problem kicking it off the hinges. He didn’t hear alarms as he entered the small room, but that didn’t mean there weren’t any – he’d have to move fast. Luckily, what he needed was right there inside the door. He saw ammo boxes stacked ten high, all of them marked DPB87, the standard assault rifle ammo for the guns they’d just stolen as well as the one on his shoulder. Next to them was a wheeled loading cart, and Nick wasted no time in throwing twenty boxes of ammo on the cart and wheeling it back out to the back of the truck.
“Kid! Help me out with this!”
The mechanic jumped down from the tailgate and immediately started throwing ammo boxes haphazardly into the back of th
e truck. Nick heard one break open, but they could clean it up later – for now, all they needed to do was get loaded and get the hell out of there. The loading part happened in under a minute.
Nick kicked the cart to the side and pounded on the side of the truck.
“Let’s go!” he yelled to Feng as he and the mechanic jumped back into the bed of the truck.
The truck backed up, turned, and headed back up the dock. They were out on the street and stopped to pick up Lung when Nick saw lights and heard sirens down the highway. They were coming toward the back of the truck, and moving fast. He broke open one of the crates and pulled out a QBZ-03, then jammed one of the magazines from his own rifle into the gun and handed it to the mechanic.
“You know how to use this thing?” he asked.
The kid shook his head.
“Of course not. You’re going to have to learn fast,” Nick said, thumbing the safety off the kid’s rifle and unslinging his own as the police cars came into view.
Chapter Seventeen
Ready Steady Go
“Is that right?” Anthony asked as he and the rest of the crew boarded the Razor. He was looking over Mary’s shoulder at the power readout.
“Yep. Our power is at 212 percent,” Mary said, turning in her chair.
“How the fuck did we manage that?”
“Science. Magic. Doesn’t matter. Strap in. We have a lot of ground to try and cover,” Christopher ordered. His crew took their stations – Michael and Peter in the gun turrets, Daniel on the cameras, Anthony at the comms, Bryce on the wheel, Mary in her stealth and systems area, and Gabriel, Carson, and Martin in jump seats, out of the way until they were needed. Christopher strapped himself into the passenger seat and turned to Bryce.
“Bring up that Nav program. Start at Firebase Lakota, end at Pyongyang. Intel says they’ve been on the run for 9 hours, 35 miles an hour maximum under full stealth.”
“Right on.”
Bryce brought up the navigation program and started working as the crew brought their stations online. All of the systems were up and running in just over a minute, and Christopher turned to Bryce.
“So?”
“Hang on, Chief. This program isn’t exactly user-friendly,” Bryce said, a hint of a scowl forming on the right side of his mouth. It was the most emotion Christopher had seen the young man express in months.
“Need a hand?” Mary called from the back of the vehicle.
“Nah. Got it,” Bryce said.
“OK. Now, backtrack on the route. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”
“Got it. Shit. It says they’re already well behind North Korean lines. But that can’t be right, can it?” Bryce said.
“Did you reset the program to avoid American and Russian patrols rather than North Korean, Renegade, or Chinese?” Mary asked.
“See, this is why I just drive the damn truck,” Bryce muttered, making a few adjustments to the program. “OK. No. Estimates put them 30 miles northwest of us. If I triangulate the headings, we should pick them up just before the North Korean frontier. Maybe 40 minutes.”
“That sounds more like it. Mary, put us into stealth mode, please. Bryce, step on it.”
“See? That I can do,” Bryce said, backing the large assault vehicle out of the building.
“OK, people. There’s a reason they put us on this detail, and it’s not one Captain Neal decided to mention in the briefing,” Christopher said once they were underway, standing and turning to face the rest of the crew.
“Well, that ain’t a surprise. When was the last time they told us everything?” Gabriel asked.
“You have a point. It’s kind of a ‘use a convict to catch a convict’ kind of thing. But it’s a little more than that. How many of you went on the run before you got arrested?” Christopher asked.
“Shit, man. They arrested me right outside the bar,” Daniel said.
“Me, too. Different bar, though,” Gabriel said.
“Turned myself in, kinda,” Martin said.
“Well, this is shooting my theory all to shit,” Christopher mumbled.
“Ran from Detroit to New York,” Peter called down from the turret. “Took ‘em a couple of weeks to catch me.”
“I can beat that,” Michael said. “Four and a half weeks. All hiding out in Boston. What about you, Chief?”
“Three months and change. Led the cops on a chase across three states. Finally took me down in South Carolina,” Christopher said, grinning slightly.
“Three weeks. And I was driving pretty fast,” Bryce offered.
“I, uh, got a speeding ticket once,” Carson said, shrugging.
“Mary? You’re awful quiet,” Christopher said.
“I’m just trying to do the math. From when they initially charged me, or for the final thing they charged me with?” Mary asked.
“Either,” Christopher said. “Whichever is longer.”
He was starting to actually somewhat enjoy the idea of being the one who outsmarted the cops the longest. It shouldn’t have been a competition, but he couldn’t believe they hadn’t talked about this before. Though he counted these people as his best friends – better than people he’d known since his childhood – he was surprised to be learning something new about them.
“Two years, eight months, and a handful of days,” Mary finally said. “From the initial charge to when they arrested me for the first time.”
A series of “ooooh!” choruses went up around the truck. But Mary wasn’t done.
“Then, when I escaped, I went on the run for another seven months, eight days.”
“Damn, kid. How did they ever get you?” Peter asked.
“The first time, it was a special unit of the FBI’s Computer Crimes team. Second time, U.S. Marshals, FBI SWAT, and the Texas Rangers. They picked me up just as I was about to cross the border into Mexico.”
“OK, you win,” Christopher said, nodding his head in appreciation. “You get the fun job. We’ve now turned this into a manhunt, and Mary, you’re the most experienced in that department. I want you to get inside this guy’s head, figure out his next move.”
“You mean... we’re the cops now?” Michael asked.
“In a manner of speaking, yeah,” Christopher said. “Mary, pull whatever info you need from our mission briefing. I’d offer to send it from my command screen, but chances are...”
“Yeah, I’ve already got it.”
“Good girl. Anthony, you’re our clutch here. That squawk comes over the line, I need to know immediately.”
“Ear’s to the ground, Chief.”
“Outstanding. Everyone else... well, try to figure out what we do when we catch them. I still don’t have much in the way of a plan on that end.”
For the next half hour, Christopher read and re-read the mission intel. There wasn’t much there on the people who pulled the heist – Harlan was still the only one they’d identified. No other convicts seemed to be missing from their units, but elements at Lakota had seen a number of casualties in fighting with the North Koreans over the past couple of weeks. They were still sorting out who was missing and who was dead, and for convicts, that wasn’t much of a priority. Neal assured him someone was on it, and they should have some educated guesses on who else they were dealing with soon.
What information they had was mostly on the technical specs of the Razor ELR, most of which Auffrey had Cliff’s-Notesed for them as he upgraded their own vehicle. Upshot was that they wouldn’t be able to stop it with their weapons, even if they could see it for some reason – which they wouldn’t be able to. Harlan had to be running in full stealth mode, unless he was a massive idiot. And as much as Christopher wanted to believe that’s exactly what the guy was, he had to admit that a complete moron couldn’t have pulled off a theft like that, or have made back-channel deals with North Korean forces over coded frequencies to sell the Razor to them.
There was some information on the deal arranged with the North Korean Special Forces – an Air Force communi
cations specialist had pulled the coded message from Lakota’s mainframe. Harlan himself had contacted the North Koreans the day before, saying he could get his hands on American ground stealth technology, for a price and for sanctuary from American forces. It hadn’t been too hard to send the message to the right group – Lakota, as a forward operating base, had been monitoring the Special Forces chatter around the North Korean lines for months. They had all the frequencies sitting right there in their computers.
That was something troubling, though, Christopher thought. Harlan’s file didn’t mention anything about a computer aptitude. Those files – the North Korean transmissions, the duty logs, the fact that the ELR would be coming in to Lakota at all – those required a pretty high security clearance to access. While they were still in range, Christopher decided to access the databases at Lakota and see if he could find any missing convicts with the kind of skills to pull off a hack like that. He was running the query when Bryce spoke up.
“Chief. We’re... well, we’re somewhere, anyway. Where the computer says Harlan and his stolen ride should be by now.”
Christopher walked over to Daniel’s camera station and checked the screens. Even as he looked, he wondered why he bothered. It wasn’t as if he was going to see the Razor lumbering by – that was the whole point of the adaptive camouflage. Functional invisibility, not just to cameras and the naked eye, but to instruments. Radar, thermal, infrared – none of them would pick it up.
“Looks like a bunch of hills. Some snow, a couple shitty-ass roads,” Daniel said.
“Anthony? Anything?” Christopher asked over his shoulder.
“All quiet, Chief.”
“Damn. What do we do now, Chris? I mean, we’re here. Maybe they’re here. We wouldn’t know it unless they run into us or something,” Peter said.
Christopher considered for a short moment.
“Only one thing we can do. Until we start figuring out their game plan, we follow where they should be. We wait here a few minutes, then follow the route to Pyongyang that the program suggests they’ll take. Maybe we’ll get lucky and they’ll have to drop their stealth, or we’ll get the squawk.”
