by Shawn Kupfer
“All right,” Christopher said, sighing. “Make one more sweep of the outbuildings and come on back to the truck.”
“Well, that doesn’t sound good,” Bryce said, pouring a cup of coffee from the dispenser behind the driver’s area. He handed it to Christopher.
“We either miscalculated their hide spots, or they managed to fix the Razor before we could find them and are back on the way to Pyongyang,” Christopher said, taking a sip of the strong black brew. “Either way, it looks like we’re going to plan... shit, Bryce. What plan are we on now?”
“Plan K, I think.”
“Right. Martin’s plan. The one I don’t like.”
“Cheer up, Chief. He was telling me there’s almost no way we can get clear before someone discovers a bomb that size. So chances are good we’ll go up with everyone else.”
“And that’s supposed to cheer me up?”
“Best I’ve got at the moment.”
“Yeah. Get with Martin and set our course. We’ll roll as soon as Peter and his team finish their sweep.”
“Roger that.”
Christopher finished off his coffee, then made another. He was halfway through that one when Peter radioed again.
“Nothin’ out here, Chief, unless you like antiques. Found a pretty cool pocket watch.”
“All right, Pete. Get your team back on the truck, but hang outside a minute. I’m coming to you.”
Christopher shrugged into his Kevlar and strapped on his helmet. Mary’s drones had pretty much assured them they were alone at the mine, but Christopher didn’t want to be unarmed and unarmored if that suddenly changed. He opened the back door and saw Peter, Daniel, Mary, Anthony, and Gabriel walking back to the Razor, their weapons dangling from their chest straps. Christopher went outside, squinting against the sunlight and wishing he’d grabbed a pair of goggles on his way out.
“Sorry, Chief,” Daniel said as he passed Christopher.
“Can’t find what’s not there, Daniel.”
“Still... sorry.”
“On the truck. We’ll be rolling in a few.”
As the rest of Peter’s team loaded up, Peter hung back a few feet and lit a cigarette. Christopher sipped from his coffee as the door closed behind the team.
“What’s up, Chris?”
“You heard Martin’s plan. Looks like we have to seriously consider it now.”
“Yeah. I don’t see any other real options.”
Christopher finished off his coffee and pulled out a cigarette.
“There’s one. Go into Pyongyang and try to find the Razor. Take it out conventionally.” He lit the cigarette and dragged deeply.
“Thought we rejected that plan. Low chance of success, zero survivability.”
“Martin’s plan has a similar survivability,” Christopher said, “and a downside none of us considered.”
“Such as?”
“We go nuclear – take out a major city in North Korea – this thing heats up in a way we don’t want. A way no one wants. We nuke Pyongyang, they nuke Fairbanks. They nuke Fairbanks, we find a way to nuke Shanghai. Shanghai goes down, they take out Los Angeles. See where I’m going?”
“Yeah. And all those ICBMs start flying around, and those old Soviet systems wake up and start nuking every major city in Europe and North America,” Peter said, shaking his head. “How’d we miss that?”
“We were thinking of the mission. Never thought of the big picture,” Christopher told him. “My fault.”
“Hey, I didn’t think of it either,” Peter said.
“Yeah, but it’s not your job. It’s mine.”
“So we go into Pyongyang. John Wayne the hell out of it. If by some chance we kill the Razor and make it out, we’re good. If we make it out without killing the Razor...”
“We fail. We go back to being regular-ass convict soldiers. China reverse-engineers the stealth and rolls through and takes over the world. I’ll take that over triggering global thermonuclear war.”
“Yeah. Me too. At least there’ll be a world left for us to be miserable in,” Peter said, finishing his cigarette and tossing it off into the dirt.
“Think the team’ll go for it?” Christopher asked.
“Go for it? It ain’t a democracy, Chief, no matter how much you like them and how much we like you. The team will follow orders. You’re in charge, Chris. You’re the man. We all respect that. Well, ‘cept for the Ranger, but he ain’t in much condition to argue.”
“Thanks, Pete.”
“I didn’t do anything, Chief.”
“Yeah, but in case I don’t get to say it later – you’re a hell of a second.”
“Just doin’ my job.”
“You’ve done more than that,” Christopher said. “You’re –”
His radio clicked on, cutting him off.
“Chief, I need the two of you back on the truck, now. We have to roll. I’ll explain when you get here,” Anthony said.
“Open up. We’re coming in.”
The back door opened, and Christopher and Peter jumped aboard. No sooner were they inside than the door clanged shut, and the Razor’s engine started up.
“Explain, Tony,” Christopher said, covering the distance to the comm station in several steps.
“Yeah. Do me a favor, turn off your hand radios? Both of you?” Anthony asked.
Christopher reached down and turned off his hand radio, and saw Peter do the same. Anthony checked his screens and smiled.
“Confirmed. We need to go. Bryce has the coordinates.”
“Go, Bryce,” Christopher yelled up to the front of the truck. He turned his head back to Anthony. “Well?”
“A pulse. It passed within 20 miles of us. Steady, regular, and transmitting on 1-9 Victor,” Anthony explained, tapping his screen.
Christopher took a look – there were several bands displayed on the monitor, communication frequencies Anthony kept an ear on as a matter of course. The top band, in red, was labelled “19V.” As Christopher watched, the band spiked, then went back to flat. As the Razor started to move, it did so again. There were ten seconds in between the spikes.
“What is that?” Peter asked.
“It’s a hand radio. Set to 1-9 Victor. It’s probably damaged,” Anthony said, holding up his own radio. “If one of these things gets knocked around really good – like, the speaker and mic are dead, but the transmitter and the power source still work – there’s an emergency circuit. A locator beacon.”
“And that’s what we’re getting here?” Christopher said.
“Yep. Hand radios come with the Razors. If one got damaged in the attack, then got power restored to it... boom. Locator switches on.”
“Why wouldn’t they have just turned it off?” Daniel asked, walking up to stand behind the comm station.
“If the front got smashed in, the locator light would be off,” Anthony told them. “They probably don’t even know the radio is working.”
Anthony swiveled in his chair and pointed back at Mary’s station.
“We charge the radios back there. And that’s where we think Martin’s grenade went off. Shrapnel could blow off the front of one of these things, and the locator would still be functional. It’s buried pretty deep in the device,” Anthony explained. “If they got the stealth station back up and running, maybe a radio that was still on the charger pulled power. That’s my guess.”
“If they repaired the stealth, how are we reading it?” Peter asked.
Mary stood up and walked over to the rest of the group.
“They might not have repaired everything. You have one panel on the outside go out, or one circuit not up to full power. These systems are complicated, and they aren’t meant to have their controls hit by a fragmentation grenade. It’s not like they’re flush with spare parts over there, so they might have done a shit repair job,” she told them.
“Convict labor,” Christopher said. “You get what you pay for.”
“Exactly,” Mary said, nodding.
“They leave a minor stealth leak, and the comm signal could get out. And since it’s low-power, they might not read it. Those things only have a thirty-mile range, after all.”
“And here’s the thing – the NoKos don’t have this frequency,” Anthony said, his words fast, almost jumbling together. “We know that. It has to be an American signal. Chinese and NoKos haven’t broken this encryption, and there’s very little chance they can clone the locator signal. It’s too specific.”
“Where is it now?” Christopher said, taking off his helmet and hanging it on its post.
“Fifteen miles northwest, heading back to the main road. It’s on the course we’d take to Pyongyang.”
“That tears it. Bryce, catch up to that signal. Push this thing as fast as it’ll go,” Christopher ordered.
“That’s a problem,” Bryce called, not turning around. “It’s doing 40. We can do 35 under full stealth. Unless it stops –”
“We’ll lose the signal in three hours,” Anthony told him.
“How the hell is it doing 40? I thought we were faster than they were,” Christopher asked.
“No idea, Chief. Maybe they’re pulling power from nonessential systems. But they’re hauling, at least as much as a Razor under stealth can haul,” Mary said.
“Shit. Always something, isn’t it? Get on our power. Do what you can to increase our speed,” Christopher said. “We’ve got a chance here, people. We’re not letting these motherfuckers get any further. Are we clear?”
“I’m on it, Chief,” Mary said, heading back to her station.
“Martin,” Christopher said.
“Yeah?”
“Load up everything you have into one package. I’m going to get you inside that thing, and if we can’t take it over, you’re going to wreck the living shit out of it.”
“You got it.”
“Pete, I want you and Mike to put together a breach plan. We might need to do it in-motion. Work with Bryce, and get Mary in on the plan when she gets our speed up. They know the Razor ELR as well as anyone.”
“Right on. Come on, Mike. Let’s take a look at the specs.”
“Second anything changes, Anthony, just yell out...”
Anthony nodded, then slipped on his headphones and turned back to his station.
“Daniel, you’re with me. We’re loading up every weapon we’ve got. Fifties, ARs, everything down to Glocks. I want every magazine full and every round available. We might have to burn a lot of ammo, so let’s make sure we’re ready.”
“I’ll set up near the racks. Grab the extra 5.56 and meet me there,” Daniel said.
Christopher went to the back of the Razor and grabbed their ammo crates. There were only three boxes of 5.56 ammo left for the M4s, and only one box of .40 for their pistols. He hefted the load easily, much more easily than he thought he could.
Adrenaline, he realized. Five minutes ago, you were a fucking zombie. Now you might be able to kick through the Razor’s armor and tear apart everyone inside with your bare hands.
But it was more than adrenaline, Christopher knew. The adrenaline was making the muscles strong, making the ammo boxes feel light... but the thing that made him feel awake, the thing that made his mind sharp? That was hope. Hope and relief.
He hadn’t failed.
At least, not yet.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Automatic Man
“Now, what the hell is this, Trenton?” Nick asked the unconscious Major.
He’d been checking Chen for anything he could use – a Ghost Unit radio would do him nicely. But when he checked the Major’s sleeves, he found a hard, smooth plastic square on his arm. On closer inspection, it was a tiny screen, and it was blinking.
“Left wrist,” Nick realized. “Bio-monitor.”
With the next-level, balls-crazy tech and tracking he’d encountered over the last couple of weeks, Nick guessed Chen’s people were monitoring his vitals, and were aware of his position even now. That could be a problem, or it could be his ticket out.
Lifting the Major wasn’t easy – the guy was heavier than he looked, and Nick’s knee and foot were shot. On the upside, though, the ankle he’d sprained the night before didn’t hurt anymore. Still, Nick managed to dump him in the trunk of the car. He checked for an inside release latch, found it, and ripped it out.
“Wow. That’s some shitty manufacturing,” Nick said, shaking his head and looking at the release latch in his hand. He tossed the defective part to the side of the road, slammed the trunk lid shut on his unconscious captive, and limped around to the open driver-side door. The keys were still in the ignition, and the engine was running.
“Beats walking. Or dragging a useless goddamn leg behind me,” Nick told himself, hobbling around the car and picking up the Major’s dropped assault rifle. He considered walking up the road for his own, but his leg was already throbbing. Easier just to leave it – a gun was a gun at this point.
He got into the car, and found that it was, thankfully, an automatic. He’d have made it work somehow if it had been a stick shift, but for now, he was just happy he didn’t have to work the clutch with his wrecked foot and wrenched knee.
He knew he should stop for a minute and assess his injuries, or find out where the blood was coming from at the very least. But Nick knew he’d already eaten up a huge chunk of time searching the Major and dumping him in the trunk – if his team was monitoring him, and thought he was stationary for any real length of time, they’d probably come running. That was an eventuality Nick would prefer to avoid, so he’d just have to hope the bleeding would stop itself. He closed the door and put the car into Drive, spun the tires, and tore off down the road.
The Major’s car had a radio in-dash, and as Nick turned it on, he found it was set to the Ghost frequency. The chatter was mostly quiet, but every once in a while, a short report would come across the airwaves.
“Team Four. Heilongjiang North Section Seven clear. Dogs found nothing.”
Nick wasn’t sure, but he thought he remembered that Heilongjiang was what the Chinese called the Amur River, the former border between China and Russia. If they were still down there looking for him, they were almost a hundred miles away.
“This is Eight. Nothing in Border Four.”
That second report tore it. At least two of the teams were way off. He could only hope that most of them were covering the area around the border – it would make his life a lot easier.
Strangely, no one called asking for the Major. Over the course of the next hour, Nick heard three Lieutenants and two Captains mentioned, and heard them respond. But no one tried to contact the boss.
“He’s OFP,” Nick realized. The acronym meant own fucking program. He was the boss, and he did what he wanted. He’d call his men for backup, but the guys under him would never dare ask him where he was or what he was up to. The Major did what the Major wanted.
And he was also the best hunter of the group, if the evidence Nick had seen thus far was any indication. He had no idea how the Major had been able to find him, but Chen had made it look easy. He considered for a brief moment that someone had been able to get some sort of tracking device on him, but dismissed the thought almost immediately. If that was the case, then he would have had to deal with a lot more than just one middle-aged PLA officer.
“Chaoxian Listening Post 14 reports contact with possible American vehicle,” the radio streamed. “We sent a recon flight over; unable to confirm. Coordinates 52.402419, 129.682507. No electronic intercepts. Probably nothing, but when a team becomes available, might want to send them that way.”
Nick’s eyes widened at that report. Chaoxian meant North Korean, and intel said the PLA usually didn’t place much credence in their surveillance. Chinese soldiers largely saw the NoKos as incompetent, but Nick remembered that some of the listening posts had been able to detect vibrations from Razors under stealth, even though they didn’t seem to know what it was they were detecting. Could there be a Razor rolling around o
ut there somewhere?
He plugged the coordinates into the dashboard GPS and found that they were only about 20 minutes away.
“Guess I’ll find out soon enough,” Nick said, hitting the “go” button on the screen.
* * *
For the next fifteen minutes, Nick’s brain ran at hyper-speed. Part of him knew it was adrenaline combined with Dexedrine and whatever the hell the Chinese were putting in their energy drinks, but he felt there was another component to the sudden burst of energy: hope. If this NoKo signal intercept was an American Razor, that meant friendlies. The minimum crew complement for a Razor, at least in his experience, was five, and that was a skeleton crew.
Strength in numbers. He had no illusions that he was a one-man army – he’d never have made it this far without help from Feng and the insurgents, or Jason Black, or even Hansen. And he wasn’t likely to make it much further without help, especially injured and exhausted. A Razor meant a Razor crew, and even if they were convicts, that meant allies.
And they’d most likely be convicts this deep inside North Korean territory. Real Military didn’t often pull shit jobs like that. They’d probably be some poor sad-sacks sent off to gather intel from one of the most hostile places on Earth, guys who were expendable. Guys who had a self-destruct wired into their Razor, set to go off the second they failed their mission. Nick knew because he’d been one of those sad-sacks more than once.
It was during the last five minutes of the drive that the realization hit: he might not be headed for help after all. He might be headed for a Razor full of dead soldiers. A stationary Razor in the middle of the day was pretty normal – their adaptive camouflage worked much better at night – but any kind of signal leak from a stationary Razor was a bad sign. It either meant something was wrong or the crew was incompetent, and Command generally didn’t put incompetent convicts in charge of multimillion dollar equipment.
I guess I’ll know soon enough, he reasoned, glancing at the GPS. Four minutes, and he’d know if he had backup or not. Even if the Razor had a dead crew, at least it was an upgrade in the vehicle department. He knew he could drive the Razor by himself, but he wasn’t sure he could get all the other essential systems chained to the front control panel. There’d only be one way to find out, and he’d cross that bridge when and if he came to it.
