by Shawn Kupfer
He had a disconcerting thought then, about the one other soldier who was still around the city looking for him. If they’d sent three of them to guard the eastern path, that meant they had no one on either the western bypass or the center of the city. That was just poor planning, and poor planning wasn’t what worried Nick.
No, what bothered him was the one soldier still out there. If they’d sent three of their elite soldiers to guard one route, they had to be pretty confident in this fourth guy. He was likely to be as good as these three combined, and Nick was only able to defeat them by playing them against each other, using each soldier as a weapon to defeat another. This last guy would probably redefine the term “badass.”
“Fuck that,” Nick growled out loud. “He’s just another weak-ass PLA soldier.”
As he hammered northeast, he saw he’d soon get his chance to find out – a Haitun Z-9 helicopter had landed in the road about a half mile above him, and one guy in green camo hopped out. He saw Nick’s car coming, lit a cigarette, and waved.
“Cocky motherfucker,” Nick mumbled. He saw the soldier reach inside the helicopter and pull out an assault rifle, which he aimed down the road at Nick’s car.
Nick had a quick second of worry before he remembered – the car was armor-plated and the windshield was bulletproof. Grinning, he pushed the accelerator down all the way as the soldier opened fire. Bullets pinged off the hood and the windshield. Nick grabbed two grenades out of the box and pulled the pins. He aimed the F3 right at the soldier, who stood next to the chopper, still firing. He dove out of the way as Nick sped through, tossing both grenades out the window as he passed the chopper.
In his rearview mirror, he saw the helicopter go up in a huge, bright orange fireball. He looked back out the windshield at the clear, open road ahead of him.
It was then he remembered what song he’d been humming. “On The Road Again.” He chuckled to himself, starting the song over as he hammered into the night.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Under the Big Black Sun
Skirting the North Korean military base had been much easier than Christopher expected. Cloud cover rolled in just as they were getting in visual range of the base, and the sky turned almost as black as if it were eight at night. The rain started up soon after. It was a huge stroke of luck on an otherwise luckless mission – rain cut the motion blur of a stealth Razor to almost nothing. They were functionally invisible again, and with luck, the rain would be hard enough to wipe out the tracks they left in the woods.
The soldiers who had been working on their tanks scurried inside, and Christopher was once again thankful for the hard rain that had seemingly popped up out of nowhere. He remembered hearing that a lot of combat units had weathermen working with them, which seemed smart – weather was always a factor, be it the cold and snow they’d dealt with earlier, or the fierce, driving rain that was helping them now. Those were real military units, though. Convicts were lucky to have a guy who could work a computer.
“That our cover up there?” Christopher asked, nodding at the screen on his console. It was a ramshackle barn, seemingly out in the middle of nowhere. Before the war, this area had been mostly farms and forests, but thanks to the North Korean push into Siberia, much of the land had been abandoned. Tall weeds sprouted on either side of the dirt road leading to the empty farm, and it reminded Christopher of driving through somewhere like Kansas or Nebraska rather than the Siberian Steppe.
“Yeah. Thermals show clear. I’d guess the structural integrity of that thing leaves a lot to be desired, but it’s all we’ve got anywhere close by,” Daniel said, checking the Razor’s thermal feeds.
“That door big enough for me to drive through?” Bryce asked over his shoulder.
“Just. You’ll have maybe a foot of clearance. Six inches on the top, thanks to the turrets,” Daniel said.
“Shit. The way you drive, Bryce, that might as well be a football field,” Gabriel said, smiling.
“True. Long as this black sunshine holds, we should be able to get in, drop the stealth, find the bug, and get back out before anyone knows we were here,” Christopher said. “Carson, you got a list of places we should check?”
“I’ve got some candidates, yeah. Most of them on the bottom of the vehicle – makes more sense to put it down there. A couple other candidates, but my guess is we’ll find it somewhere on the undercarriage.”
“OK. We stop, jump out, and everybody starts looking. Any idea what this thing will look like?” Christopher asked.
“That’s the problem, boss,” Mary said. “Could be set up so the only visible part is the diode – the actual part that shoots the laser beam. That could be smaller than the nail on your little finger.”
“What’s the unit on the ELR look like?” Peter asked.
Mary brought up the image of the ELR’s laser comm system on the large plasma behind Christopher’s chair. The diagram had measurements on it – six inches long, three inches around. The unit was cylindrical, tapered just a bit at one end, and had a tiny, white glass lens near the tapered bit.
“My guess is that’s what we’re looking for,” Christopher said. “If the Umbra techs are really the ones who put it there, it’s probably a spare unit for an ELR prototype. Something they had lying around.”
As he spoke, Bryce piloted the Razor into the old, broken-down barn. There were separations in the wooden slats on both sides. In daylight, that would have been a problem, but thanks again to the driving rain – the black sunshine – it was unlikely anyone would see the 47 Echo team moving around inside the barn. A few seconds later, Bryce had the Razor parked.
“OK, kids. Let’s get to it. Daniel, I want you to stay on the cameras. Keep sweeping with the thermals. Anyone comes calling, I want to know about it.”
“Gladly, Chief. Looks like it’s pretty muddy out there, and I’m happy to stay inside and not get covered in shit,” Daniel said, grinning.
As the back hatch opened, Christopher immediately smelled that Daniel had been more right than he’d known. Christopher hadn’t grown up on a farm (Daytona Beach wasn’t famous for its agriculture), but he’d been to the zoo. He knew what old animal feces smelled like, and that was this barn all over. The rain, which was pouring through the holes rotted in the ceiling, had just moistened up the old shit, which, mixed with straw, formed the building’s floor.
“Oh. Awesome,” Mary grumbled, stepping off the Razor after Christopher.
“And we get to get down in this shit, too,” Bryce said.
Christopher didn’t like the idea of getting covered in crap – he guessed no one in the world really did. There were no showers in the Razor, either. Once they got the smell on them, they’d have to smell it for days.
“Martin – reach back there and get the parkas and shell pants,” Christopher said.
It was warm enough now – maybe in the 40s – that they didn’t need them, but at least they could cover themselves up and ditch the ECW gear. It wasn’t ideal, but it was miles better than riding along smelling...
What is that, I wonder? Christopher asked himself as Martin started handing out shell layers. Horse? Goat? Cow?
“Aren’t the Air Force guys going to expect us to give them their gear back?” Gabriel asked, pulling a pair of the white shell pants on over his black BDU pants.
“They want them after this, they can have them,” Christopher said. “We’ll tell them right where to find them.”
Once his crew was attired in their cold weather gear, Christopher raised his voice to be heard over the pounding rain.
“All right, everyone. Quick as possible. Take a section of the truck and start looking. Coordinate with Bryce and Carson once you clear an area. The faster we do this, the better chance we have of catching up with those assholes in the stolen truck and going home.”
Without waiting for a response, Christopher led by example, dropping down and sliding on his back under the Razor’s rear axle. It was darker than he thought it would b
e under the truck, but he’d brought his flashlight. He started looking around the massive undercarriage, suddenly aware he had no idea what made these things run. All of it looked confusing to him – not like a regular car at all. Around the wheels, he could see machinery, belts, hoses, wires. But most of the undercarriage was smooth, completely flat and level. Wasn’t there supposed to be something under here?
Armor plating, he realized. In case of mines or IEDs. Even the areas with exposed machinery were protected, as the armor was built to angle any explosions away from the wheels and back down towards the ground. With the smooth, featureless expanse of the Razor’s undercarriage, Christopher suddenly got the idea that the laser comm would be a lot easier to find. He flashed the light into the wheel wells, looking for anything that remotely matched the object he’d just seen on the screen. The back two passenger wheels were clear, so he used his legs to push himself further under the truck.
In his peripheral vision, he saw his people moving around underneath the Razor, their flashlights dancing all around the undercarriage. The surface area was large, but most of it was just armor plating, so they were making quick progress. They were only down in the shit for a few minutes (still a few minutes longer than Christopher would have liked) before Peter spoke up.
“Mary – wanna come take a look at this?” Peter asked.
“On my way,” Christopher heard from near him. He saw Mary pull herself out from under the opposite wheel well, then heard her and Peter talking near the front of the truck. The rain was too loud to make out what they were saying, though, so Christopher squirmed out from underneath the Razor and walked around to the front of the vehicle. He saw two sets of legs sticking out from just under where Bryce usually sat, and squatted down to find Mary and Peter pulling something from the Razor’s front-driver wheel well.
“They hid it pretty good, considering,” Mary said, crawling out from under the truck and handing the cylinder to Christopher. “It was way up in there, firing out from the inside of the tire.”
“Good work, people,” Christopher said, making sure his voice was just loud enough to hear. “Gabriel, find somewhere we can stash these ECWs. Martin, you think you can find a quiet way to destroy the shit out of this laser comm?”
“Might not want to do that, Gunny,” Carson piped up, walking around the front of the Razor to join Christopher, Mary, and Peter.
“How do you figure, Carson?”
“Well, we have an opportunity to fuck with whoever’s trying to fuck us,” Carson told him. “If we get that thing moving in a direction we’re not going, the North Koreans will start thinking we’re heading somewhere we ain’t.”
“And how do you suggest we do that?” Christopher asked.
“I’d find a vehicle down at the North Korean base to put this thing under,” Bryce said, shrugging.
“Exactly. One of us should be able to sneak down there in the rain, put it on one of their trucks or APCs. That’ll keep the North Koreans from tracking us, and confuse the shit out of whoever sabotaged our truck,” Carson said, nodding.
“Yeah, but none of us exactly blend in with the locals down there,” Michael said.
“Looks like most of them scrambled inside when the rain started. We have some ponchos on the truck – I wear one of those and move quick enough, they won’t be able to tell I’m anyone special,” Carson said.
“‘Cept for the fact that you’re, what? Six two? Six three? Little big for the North Korean Army,” Christopher said.
“I’m the shortest one,” Bryce said. “I can do it. Besides, I know these old Soviet-area APCs the North Koreans use. I could hide it a hell of a lot better than whoever stuck it on our truck.”
“Technically, I’m shorter than you,” Mary said. “And I know the systems on those APCs, too.”
Christopher shook his head.
“Nope. I need you on the truck. You’re going to have to pick the ELR’s trail back up as soon as possible. You and Carson work on that – Bryce, you’re elected to plant the comm. Keep on the radio with us. If you get in a corner, we’ll come in guns blazing.”
“No doubt,” Bryce said. “But I’ll be fine. Simple job. Probably won’t take me more than a few minutes.”
Gabriel found a well behind the barn where he dumped the unit’s shit-smeared ECW gear. He placed the cover back on the well, then got back into the Razor, where everyone else was already back at their stations. Christopher was behind the wheel, and Carson was next to him. Near the back hatch, Bryce was already in his poncho with the hood up. He slipped a pair of screwdrivers into his cargo pocket.
“Stealth is up. Adaptive camo is working fine,” Mary reported.
“OK. I’m backing out. I’ll get you as close to the base as possible,” Christopher said, slowly piloting the Razor back out into the rain and heading back the way they had come.
A half-kilometer from the North Korean base, Bryce jumped out of the vehicle and almost instantly vanished into the dark, rainy evening. Christopher watched the cameras for him, and occasionally caught a little flare of movement on the thermals.
“Got it,” Bryce radioed a few minutes later. “You still in the same spot?”
“That’s affirmative,” Anthony told him.
“Good. Knocking on your door in two,” Bryce replied.
True to his word, Bryce was back onboard the Razor in two minutes. The team’s driver looked as impassive and stone-faced as ever, as if he’d just run out to get the newspaper rather than complete a dangerous mission. He peeled off his parka and walked to the front of the vehicle, handing a laminated, folded document to Carson as he moved.
“Present for you,” he said flatly.
“What’ve you got?” Christopher asked, vacating the driver’s seat.
“Map, looked like,” Bryce said, taking his position and strapping himself in.
“Better than that,” Carson said, looking up from the document and smiling wide. “Your boy here just got us the location of every North Korean base and listening post within 200 miles.”
Chapter Thirty
Crimson Ghost
The backpack Nick stole had something he’d wished for since he first sat in the driver’s seat of the F3 back in Lianyungang – an iPod. It was a few years old, but that was to be expected. Just before the war, the Chinese factories had stopped producing electronics for Western companies – this might have been one of the last official iPods to roll off the assembly lines. Of course, there were millions of clones out there now, sold to countries that had a hate on for America to help fund China’s war.
Or America’s war, possibly, Nick admitted to himself, remembering his conversation with Jason Black.
The F3 had an iPod dock, so Nick clicked the device into the holder and started scrolling through the playlists. He hoped the guy who formerly owned the thing had been the type to bypass the Great Firewall of China and steal some decent music. Having to listen to horrible Chinese pop and rap for the next twelve hours would be worse than silence. The first thing that caught his eye was Texas Death Machine, a thrash-metal band from England. Most of their stuff had come out when Nick was in grade school, but his brother Stan had a few of their albums. They were loud, aggressive, and screamy – perfect for Nick’s mood. He pressed “play” and turned the volume way up.
It took him a few songs before he realized that blasting the stereo was probably a bad idea. There was no way he’d be able to hear the stolen radio over the music, so he turned the volume down to a much quieter level.
“Huh. This stuff doesn’t sound near as good when it’s not really, really loud,” Nick said to himself, shrugging and scrolling through to see what else he could find.
He found a compilation of punk from the late 70s and early 80s – a box set, they used to be called when he was a kid. Nick hadn’t listened to much punk when he was younger – his brother Stan had been the one to fill the angry, rebellious youth role in the family – but he’d gotten into the genre recently, thanks to Mary. H
er dad was in a punk band when she was young, and her love of the music was contagious. Everyone in 47 Echo was pretty familiar with the work of The Misfits, Black Flag, The Sex Pistols, and The Dead Kennedys now.
This compilation had bands Nick had never heard of – Gogol Bordello, NOFX, Fugazi – in addition to the ones he knew. Still, all of it was appropriately aggressive, and all of it sounded just fine when played at a medium volume. As he drove, he wondered if he’d be able to hear the stolen hand radios over the more reasonable volume, but he got his answer soon enough when one of the radios sent out a burst of static. He checked – it was the one he’d stolen from the Special Ops guys in Binzhou.
The static pulsed again a few seconds later, but this time, words followed it. A message, in English.
“American operative,” a voice came from the radio. It was male, monotone, flat. “We know you have a radio tuned to this frequency. Respond.”
“Yeah, that’s likely,” Nick scoffed.
“We are willing to discuss terms for your peaceful surrender and return to your forces,” the voice said. Again, flat, monotone. Like a computer doing a bad impression of a human being.
Nick was about to say something sarcastic back to the voice, and reached for the radio to do so, but his hand froze as the other hand radio – the one Jason Black had given him – started transmitting.
“The transmission is in progress. As soon as he responds, get the locator running,” another voice, this one definitely human and speaking Mandarin, said.
“Affirmative. We’ll be able to get a location if he stays on the line for ten or more seconds,” another voice, also human, responded.
“And if he doesn’t respond?” the first voice asked as the message in English repeated itself on the first radio.
“Five minutes, maybe ten. We’ve advised all Beijing Special Forces to abandon that frequency. If his radio is on, we’ll get it eventually.”
