Fear and Anger (The 47 Echo Series)

by Shawn Kupfer

  “Too much risk,” Yuan said, shaking his head. “He’s obviously an American. That will bring up questions. Even if we dropped him at the hospital, he could lead the authorities right to us.”

  “We’re not shooting him,” Nick said, his eyes staring into Yuan’s, hard and unblinking.

  “Fine. I’ll do it,” Yuan said, sighing and taking a pistol out of his jacket.

  “You so much as breathe in his direction, I will end you,” Nick growled, stepping toe to toe with the older man and blocking his path.

  “You have to understand my position here –” Yuan started, scowling.

  “I don’t have to understand shit. Now back up and put that gun away, unless you think I won’t kick the shit out of a senior citizen.”

  Yuan stood his ground for a moment, but folded the second Nick leaned in closer toward him.

  “Fine. Fine. You deal with him, then,” the old man said, shoving the pistol back into his coat and making a show of walking to the other side of the garage.

  “Feng, how soon can you have that car ready?”

  “Another day. Tomorrow evening. You can’t leave until dark anyway,” Feng said. “But I can make sure it’s done by sundown.”

  “Good. Get it ready, and I’ll just drive us out of here tomorrow night. I’ll take my chances on the road – I can get to the Kazakh border faster than the train, anyway.”

  Feng nodded.

  “Don’t let Yuan get under your skin,” he said quietly. “He’s under a lot of pressure.”

  “I know all about pressure,” Nick said, his heartbeat still pumping in his ears. “Still, get him out of here before I crack his spine like kindling.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Forbidden Zone

  Despite his crew’s assurances to the contrary, Christopher couldn’t help feeling that he’d completely fucked the mission.

  Sure, they might have damaged the ELR’s power supply. Yes, they might get the squawk again and be able to track the vehicle once more. But “might” was far from equaling mission success. In fact, “might” sounded a lot like “won’t” in his mind.

  If the other Razor had even slowed down, 47 Echo certainly didn’t know about it. All they knew is that the squawk had gone silent again, and they were back in the same boat as an hour before. Worse, probably, as the people in the ELR could probably guess that someone was after them now.

  “Anything?” Christopher asked Anthony as he walked by the young comm tech’s station. He’d been pacing back and forth in the moving Razor for the better part of ten minutes.

  “Sorry, Chief. Nothing,” Anthony said.

  “Well, I wouldn’t say that,” Carson said, holding up a hand to stop Chris from making another orbit of the Razor’s cabin.

  “What’ve you got, Carson?”

  “Chatter. NoKo army frequencies. Stuff we broke the encryption on months ago,” Carson told him. “Some about the explosion, but I’m getting other stuff.”

  Christopher stood for a moment, just looking at the Ranger.

  “And?”

  “Sorry, Gunny. Still getting used to the way y’all do things around here. I usually need permission to talk,” Carson said, grinning. “Anyway, stuff from listening posts. One that’s a request – in English – to bounce a message to NoKo SF in Pyongyang.”

  “You intercept the message?” Christopher asked.

  “Yeah, but it’s encrypted. Email, I think,” Carson said.

  “Let me take a look at that,” Mary piped up, crossing the Razor and taking a look at Carson’s screen.

  “Think you can do anything with it?” Christopher asked.

  “I’d be surprised if I couldn’t,” she said.

  Christopher felt the cell phone Neal gave him buzz in his front pocket. He pulled it out and swiped across the screen. Luckily, the text message popped up on its own, because Christopher couldn’t remember the last time he’d used that particular phone – his late teens, he thought.

  Identity of three other conspirators confirmed, the message read. Convict Trevor Washington, Army Kilo, Armed Robbery and Murder 1. Convict Lawrence Hardy, Army India, Identity Theft and Computer Crimes. Convict Reed Campbell, Army Kilo, Murder 1. Pictures to follow.

  Christopher looked up from the phone and saw Mary was still working on decrypting the intercepted email. As his point person on the fugitives, she needed to see this information, but he preferred not to interrupt her when she was in the zone, and she definitely was right then. Of any of his people, she could handle multitasking the best, but he needed to know what the message said.

  “Pete,” he said, “Hop on down here.”

  Peter dropped out of his turret and landed, catlike, on the deck next to Christopher. He stood and stretched.

  “What’s up, Chief?”

  “Check this out,” Christopher said, handing his SIC the iPhone as the pictures came through.

  “Three more, eh? Black guy, black guy, white guy. We know anything more about them?”

  “Not yet. But at least we know how many there are, minimum.”

  “And we got ‘em outnumbered on bodies, anyway.”

  “You’ve crewed Razors even more than me, thanks to the last mission. Can four guys really run the thing efficiently, or are they going to make some costly mistakes spreading themselves too thin?”

  “Well, you got a driver. Any one other than ours ain’t gonna be able to handle much more than steering, ‘cause ours is pimp.”

  “Right on,” Bryce said from the front of the vehicle.

  “Also, he has good hearing,” Christopher said, grinning.

  “Yeah, when he wants to,” Daniel chuckled.

  “So, driver has one job. You’ll need one guy running stealth and systems. Again, he can’t double-task. Especially in the ELR – hell, all the upgraded shit might need two people to run it, one on stealth, one on systems. That leaves one, maybe two guys for everything else – weapons, comms, cameras. If we’re lucky, they’ll only be able to use rockets or one of the fifties if it gets into a firefight,” Peter said. “But running under stealth? Yeah, four guys could do it.”

  “Thanks, Pete.”

  “No problem. Hey, Mike! You want some water while I’m down here?”

  “Yeah, bro. Thanks.”

  “You guys doing OK up there? You need to cycle out?” Christopher asked.

  “We’re good right now. Hey, you think we could talk to that Auffrey cat about designing chairs into the next version of the turrets?”

  Christopher laughed. Peter grinned as well, then grabbed two bottles of water and climbed back up into the turrets.

  “Got it, Chris,” Mary said, motioning him over to Anthony’s station.

  “Trade you,” he said, handing her the iPhone and grabbing the tablet she’d been working on.

  He checked out the email, which was only a few lines long: I was assured our route would be kept clear. We rolled over a pressure mine just inside the frontier. Damage manageable. Will discuss at meeting at Waypoint 1.

  “Good job, guys. So they don’t think they’re being followed, not yet. And they’re meeting someone somewhere before Pyongyang,” Christopher said, handing the tablet back to Mary.

  “And we know who the rest of them are now,” Mary said.

  He hadn’t thought of it until just then, but Christopher suddenly had an idea.

  “Their convict locators,” he said, referring to the small chip implanted in every convict’s neck, which the military used to track them. There was also a small explosive charge near the jugular, which commanders could use to kill an escaped convict. “Can we pick those up?”

  “Negative, Chief,” Anthony said, shaking his head. “Not as long as they’re under stealth. There’s that whole electronic-damping field that keeps transmissions from leaking out of the vehicle so the Razors don’t get tracked by them.”

  “Shit. Wait, then,” Christopher said, that completely confused feeling hitting him for the second time in as many hours.
“How did they transmit that message out? I mean, aside from the damping... thing... isn’t their comm system broken?”

  “It is,” Mary said. “At least, their main one. There’s a new system on that Razor, a laser system that beams a direct message. Send only, no receive. And so quick you can’t track it. If you know exactly where you’re beaming the transmission to, it takes about a hundredth of a second to beam the data.”

  “So they knew exactly where the listening post was,” Christopher said.

  “Had to. Which means they know where all of them are, probably,” Carson said.

  “And they mentioned a route,” Anthony said, “which means they might not be using the ELR nav. We just caught them by luck.”

  “If they have a map, it had to be concealed in the initial hacked transmission we got from Lakota,” Mary said, rushing back to her station. “I have all of the traffic from the leak. I’ll see what I can find.”

  “Um, right. I’ll go... sit over there, then,” Christopher said, heading back to the passenger seat and sliding in.

  For a few minutes, it was quiet in the Razor. Everyone was going about their work, or at least pretending to. Bryce was driving, Daniel was keeping an eye on the cameras. Anthony and Carson were keeping tabs on the comm channels, and Mary was in the zone back at her station. Finally, Bryce turned his head slightly to Christopher and spoke almost too quietly to hear.

  “Don’t worry, Chris. You’re doing a good job.”

  “You psychic all of a sudden, Bryce?”

  “You’re sweating and it’s 60 degrees in here. Either you’re stressing out, or you’re about to have a heart attack or something.”

  Christopher ran his hand across his forehead, and it came away with a thin sheen of perspiration. He hadn’t realized he’d been sweating, but he had been feeling slightly feverish and unsteady. His stomach was a bit jumpy, too – but he didn’t think he’d shown the symptoms of his slightly terrified state.

  What if I let them down? What if I get them killed? The thoughts had been running in the back of his mind since the second they’d left Carbon-4. Up until that point, Captain Neal was in charge, and Christopher just did what he said. Now? All of his friends were looking to him for leadership, and the last time that happened...

  The Battle of Neryugn. Two dead, one MIA. A mission that, on the surface, was supposed to be much simpler than this one: take and hold a small airfield. Chinese and North Korean soldiers had been lying in wait for them, though, and had come down on the American forces like an angry hailstorm. He was lucky anyone survived, much less most of the team... but the two dead were very much on his mind these days. Except... what were their names?

  Well, that’s not good.

  Christopher had always been bad with names, but he’d expected to remember those two until the day he died. A year and change later, he could kind of vaguely remember one of them... Will? Wes? Something with a W. The other one was a complete blank.

  Wes. Owen. The names slammed into his forebrain, rocketing out of whatever dark corner of his memory had been hanging onto them. Remembering their names had made him feel just a little bit better about himself, until he remembered that he was the one who’d gotten them killed.

  “Ask Wes and Owen how great I am at running a mission,” he said.

  “I was at that battle, remember? Not in your unit, but I was there. Your unit fared a hell of a lot better than mine. Why not ask Gabe or Pete or Mike that same question? Or the guy you pulled out of twenty pissed-off Chinese soldiers? That Marine who was down to his bare hands and his aggression?”

  He’s got a point.

  “You know I’ve got a point,” Bryce continued. Christopher started to think the small, quiet man who drove them around was actually psychic.

  “Yeah, I suppose.”

  “Damn straight.”

  “When did you become the old, wise, bearded guy from, like, every movie ever?” Christopher asked.

  “Sometime around third grade. A full beard at eight years old really commands respect,” Bryce replied, his voice as flat and monotonous as usual. “Why don’t you try to catch a nap? You know we’ll wake you up if something happens.”

  “Another point,” Christopher said, smiling and closing his eyes.

  The second he closed his eyes, he heard a loud chiming. His eyes snapped open, and he realized the noise was coming from his pocket.

  “Phone’s ringing, dude,” Daniel said.

  “Yeah. Which it’s not supposed to do,” Christopher shot back, frowning and pulling the iPhone from his pocket. On its screen, he saw Jason Black’s face. He swiped his finger along the screen to answer, and his own face popped up in an inset at the top right corner of the screen.

  “Hey, Chris,” Black said, smiling.

  “Captain Black? How are you contacting me?”

  “FaceTime, man. Cool program. Don’t know why it went away.”

  “I mean, how did you get this phone number?”

  “I designed the protocol, remember? And is this what you really want to talk about?”

  “You have news?”

  “Yeah. Your boss’ phone dropped off the map for a couple of days, and it just popped back on. He musta found a place to charge up. Anyway, if he doesn’t move, I’ll be able to intercept in a few hours. Looks like this job’s gonna be easier than I thought,” Black told him, his smile growing wider, his straight, white teeth gleaming in the low-res image.

  “Man, that’s good news.”

  “And that’s why I called. Hey, be careful in North Korea. I’ll let you know when I have him, cool?”

  “Thanks, Captain.”

  The image winked off, and the screen went black.

  “Want to tell us what’s up with that?” Daniel asked.

  When Christopher turned around, he noticed that most of his crew had gathered behind his chair.

  “Long story,” he said. “But, as we seem to have time...”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Argument Then War

  True to his word, Feng poked his head into the small room behind the garage just after sundown the next day.

  “Finished. Let me walk you through the car, then we can get you loaded up,” he said.

  Nick got up from where he was crouched next to Hansen, who was unconscious. He was taking the pilot’s pulse – over 90 bpm. He didn’t know if that was good or bad, but he assumed bad.

  Still, not much he could do about it. He’d been forcing antibiotics down the pilot’s throat for two days, and he didn’t seem to be getting any better. Or any worse, really. He had no way to tell. So he might as well go look at the car with Feng.

  It was the same BYD F3 he’d seen in the corner of the garage the night before, but it had been put together and painted black. The windows were tinted now, too. It looked showroom-new.

  “So the computers won’t be able to pick this thing up?” Nick asked.

  “Yeah. All of the factory transponders and computers have been ripped out. As far as the networks are concerned, this thing is a ghost,” Feng said, nodding and smiling. “But there are a few other things I want to show you.”

  The young man was obviously proud of his work – it showed in his smile, in the bold gesturing when he pointed out a feature or improvement. It was a kind of confidence Nick hadn’t seen out of him in the last couple of days.

  “OK, first thing,” Feng said, lifting the hood. “Took out the old engine and put in a supercharged I4. It’ll get 275 horsepower, enough to outrun any of the vehicles the PLA is currently working with.”

  “So it eats gas, then?”

  “Nah. Gets 50 miles to the gallon. And you have a lot of gallons,” Feng said, opening the trunk. Inside was a white plastic box that took up the entirety of the car’s trunk.

  “Extended fuel tank,” he said, smiling again. “Near as makes no difference, 40 gallons, plus the ten-gallon tank in the car. You could theoretically drive 2500 miles without having to fill up. Rear suspension is upgraded so
the extra weight won’t mess with the ride.”

  “Nice,” Nick said. The guy certainly knew what he was doing with cars. “But having a bullet magnet on the back of the car...”

  “Don’t worry about that,” Feng said, closing the trunk and rapping on it with his knuckles. “Armor from a Mengshi Warrior in the trunk, doors, and hood. Small-arms fire will just mess up the paint.”

  “Outstanding work, Feng. Anything else I should know?”

  “Two things. Pulled out the nav system, but I made you a good, old-fashioned paper map of the route to Kazakhstan. It’s in the glove box. Also, I found this really old cell phone in your stuff when you came in a couple of days ago. Took a bit, but I found a charger head for it and installed it in the car. It’s doing its thing as we speak.”

  “OK. Want to help me get Hansen loaded up in the back seat?”

  “Yeah. He doesn’t look very heavy.”

  The two of them didn’t have much problem lifting the unconscious pilot off the couch and laying him out in the F3’s back seat. Nick packed the food and water into the passenger footwell, along with some nutrition bars and energy drinks Feng had bought earlier in the day. As he was putting the medical kit on the front seat, Lung came out of the garage office with one of the QBZ-03 rifles, three magazines, and a box of ammunition. He handed them to Nick with a smile.

  “Thanks,” Nick said, forcing a smile in return.

  “Without you, we wouldn’t have any of this,” Lung said.

  Nick simply nodded – that was true – and stashed the rifle and the ammo in the passenger footwell, where he could easily put his hands on it if he needed it. He was almost ready to go, but there was one more thing.

  “Feng, you got a way I can get in contact with you? I’m going to try to help you out from our end once I get back into Allied territory,” Nick said.

  “Um... cell phone?”

  “That’ll work for now.”

  Feng scrawled down his number on a scrap of paper from one of his diagnostic machines, and Nick placed it in the right hip pocket of the cargo pants Feng had brought him earlier in the day. He tried to think of something to say to Feng and Lung, some parting words that might help them out, but all he could think of was that they were probably fucked with Yuan in charge of their little operation. He’d already mentioned that to Feng earlier in the day, but he doubted the message stuck.