“How many people do you count, Big Guy?” Jonathan asked over the local net.
“Eight.”
“Mother Hen?”
“I concur. Eight.”
“That’s what I’ve got, too,” Jonathan said. “I’ll take the four on the left, full auto. In three, two . . .”
On the count, Jonathan pressed his trigger. His M27 chattered as he raked the muzzle from the leftmost edge of the line to the center, sending thirty rounds downrange in three seconds. The foliage danced under the assault of pressure and projectiles, and his targets all fell. As the bolt locked back, Jonathan fingered the mag release and allowed the spent box to fall while he pulled a spare from its pouch on his vest. He pressed it into the mag well, slapped the bolt shut, and was ready for more.
“Moving forward,” Jonathan said. “Switching to thermal. Mother Hen, watch for movement.” While humans had a hotter signature than foliage, spilled blood had a hotter signature still.
“I’m on your right,” Boxers said. It no longer made sense to whisper.
Jonathan’s world had changed from shades of green to shades of silver and black, and as he moved swiftly through the undergrowth, he had to fight the dizziness that came with the panoramic distortion. His adversaries had shown their amateur side again, and he wanted to capitalize on their—
“Movement!” Venice said over the net. “Big Guy, to the front and slightly left.”
Jonathan refused the urge to shift his eyes to mind Boxers’ business. He had his own slice of battlefield to worry about, and there was plenty for him to do. Big Guy fired a burst of four without slowing his stride.
“Hit,” Venice said. “He’s still.” At the end, there was a hollowness to her voice. Presiding over this kind of shoot-out took an unspeakable amount out of her, but she never blinked from doing the job she did not enjoy.
Jonathan and Boxers slowed in unison as they approached the blood-splashed foliage. As Jonathan saw his four bodies and their brightly shining wounds, he switched back to light enhancement mode. Head shots all around. There’d be no surviving those.
“All of mine are sleeping peacefully,” Boxers said over the local net.
“Ditto,” Jonathan said. Off the air, he added, “Hey, Big Guy. Let’s get prints and photos of these guys, too. Take five or six minutes to do it. Then we’ll use their trucks to get to Exfil One.”
“You know he’s not there, right?” Boxers said.
“I don’t know anything until I see it.” Jonathan pivoted to face the night behind him, and he called, “Harry Dawkins! You can get up now. It’s safe.”
In the distance, at the effective edge of his night vision, Jonathan saw the man rise from the undergrowth. Dawkins moved hesitantly, nervously. Of course, Jonathan thought. The PC’s world was black.
“I’m popping a light stick,” Jonathan said over the local net. To Dawkins, he shouted, “Hold where you are. Don’t get hurt.” He reached into a lower left pocket on his vest and found one of the four light sticks he carried. Nothing exotic, they were the same sticks anyone could pick up at a hardware or sporting goods store. He ripped off the aluminized wrapper, bent the stick to release the reactive chemicals, and then he shook it. In seconds, Dawkins’s world was illuminated in the same green hues that Jonathan and Boxers saw through their night vision.
“You’re safe,” Jonathan said. He walked back to meet the PC halfway. “I know this has been traumatic, but—”
“Please don’t patronize me,” Dawkins said. “I’ve done time as a door kicker myself. I understand the whole dead versus alive thing.”
Behind him, Jonathan could hear Boxers laughing. Big Guy admired anyone who understood the whole dead versus alive thing.
“Scorpion, Mother Hen,” Venice said over the air. “Be advised that the satellite feed has gone away.”
Jonathan stopped short. “Gone away? What does that mean?”
“Are you talking to me?” Dawkins asked.
“No,” Jonathan said. “If I’m talking to you, you’ll know I’m talking to you.” Over the local net: “Go ahead, Mother Hen.”
“Who’s Mother Hen?” Dawkins asked.
“Quiet!” Jonathan barked.
“It means that the screen went blank,” Venice said. “They’ve stopped monitoring the satellite feed to you.”
“Did they stop monitoring altogether, or did they just shut you out?”
“I’ll pretend not to be insulted,” Venice said, though her indignation was obvious. “They turned off the satellite. More accurately, they shifted the satellite’s view to something that’s more important to them than you.”
“Alpha Team, Air One,” Goodman said over the government net. “Status report? Over.”
“Where the hell have you been?”
“Radio problems. Status report, please.”
“We’re alive,” Jonathan said.
“And your OpFor? Over.” Opposing force.
“Not alive,” Jonathan said.
“And the PC? Over.”
Jonathan didn’t like the tone or the rhythm of this conversation. The head count would be what it was, and as long as one of them was still alive, Air One’s mission was the same. “Keep the channel clear, Air One,” Jonathan said. “I’ve lost contact with Overwatch. Advise if you see additional bad guys on their way to us.”
Goodman said, “Be advised, I’m on the ground at Exfil One and monitoring. Air One out.”
“Now that’s interesting,” Boxers said over the local net. “Seems to me that he might have left out a detail or two.”
“Mother Hen, how sure are you that the satellite signed off on us?”
“I’m sure,” Venice said. “And sure is an absolute. There are no degrees of sureness.”
Jonathan smiled under his balaclava. There was a time when Venice had been nominally afraid of him and would never have spoken to him that way. Those days seemed so long ago now.
“That means Air One is withholding important information,” she added, as if he hadn’t put those parts together in his head yet.
“Understood,” Jonathan said over the air.
“Is there a problem?” Dawkins asked. He stood with his fists on his hips, projecting exasperation.
Jonathan didn’t know why Dawkins’s lack of appreciation pissed him off so much, but it did. “Is there a reason you can think of why Uncle Sam and his representatives would be interested in killing you off?” he asked his PC.
The question pulled Big Guy away from his task of searching for papers and taking fingerprints and photographs of the dead. He stood to his full height and rested his hand casually on the pistol grip of his rifle.
Dawkins caught the body language and stiffened. “What are you doing?”
“Don’t worry about us,” Jonathan said. “We’re on the side of the angels. I’m just trying to figure out if we’re playing with the devil.”
“Me?” Dawkins said. “You think I’m the devil?”
“No,” Jonathan said. “Not at the moment, anyway. But things are happening that lead me to believe that we’re being set up for something bad.” He relayed the story of the satellite imagery going away.
“How do you know the imagery went away?” Dawkins asked. Then he got it. “Ah. Mother Hen?”
Jonathan didn’t respond.
“Who are you guys?” Dawkins asked. “Names don’t matter to me, but what agency are you with?”
“I’m still not answering that,” Jonathan said. “But you owe me an answer to the whole ‘who wants to kill you’ thing.”
Dawkins took a few seconds to think. “Are there people in Uncle Sam’s employ who want to kill me? Probably.”
“Ain’t that peachy?” Boxers grumbled.
Jonathan gave the guy points for honesty. “Let’s talk about it in the truck.”
“We have a truck?” Dawkins asked.
“We do now,” Boxers said, dangling a set of keys he’d pulled from a dead man’s pocket.
Dawkin
s walked to a different bad guy and lifted his bandolier of magazines for the dropped AK and slipped it over his shoulder.
“Hang on a second, cowboy,” Boxers said. “We’ve got the weapons, not you.”
Dawkins ignored him and bent for the rifle itself.
“You’re not hearing me,” Boxers warned.
Dawkins slung the rifle, too. It had an old-style two-point sling that linked the barrel to the buttstock, rather than the single-point sling preferred by Jonathan and Boxers.
“Hey, Boss. We’ve got a bit of a mutiny here,” Boxers said, seeming to swell as he towered over the PC.
“You know how to use that thing?” Jonathan asked Dawkins.
“I do.”
“Show me the safety,” Boxers challenged.
Dawkins worked the lever on the rifle’s right side. “It’s right here. I can shoot three-inch groups at two hundred yards.”
“Well, we’re not going to test that here, are we?” Jonathan said. “Keep it on safe, keep your finger off the trigger, and don’t muzzle me or Big Guy. No second chances. But go ahead and carry it.” As Jonathan saw things, even if the guy wasn’t the marksman that he claimed to be, there was little downside to another rifle.
Jonathan scanned the area one more time, verified that everyone was ready to go, and led the way into the night.
They moved swiftly through the jungle, but they also moved as silently as conditions allowed. Jonathan let Dawkins bring the light stick along so he wouldn’t be completely in the dark, a roll of the dice that even if bad guys had sneaked in close enough to be dangerous, the diffused green light wouldn’t make too obvious a target. Certainly, the dull green glow was a substantial step up from the attackers’ white-light flashlights.
It was too early to draw any conclusions, but something about Dawkins’s demeanor led Jonathan to believe that the guy had some chops as a boonie rat. It was the way he moved through the foliage, placing his feet as quietly as possible, and the lack of panic now that the initial shooting was over and he was able to move. He also carried his rifle with an easy grace that spoke of familiarity, sweeping it left to right in a constant oscillation that mimicked Jonathan’s own.
There was much to discuss, but this was not the time. Until they reached the abandoned trucks, he wanted every sense focused on detecting movement in the night. Every twenty seconds or so, Jonathan commanded a stop, at which point he and Boxers turned and scanned the area behind them. And Dawkins knew better than to ask why. The guy’s stock was rising with every step.
Jonathan found it a struggle to keep his head in the game as his mind raced to figure out what, exactly, was going on. If this was a deliberate setup to hurt him and his team, someone was going to pay a high price.
Without help from eyes overhead, they had to do their land navigation the old-fashioned way. Jonathan followed the instructions he received from his portable GPS.
It took just under twenty minutes to close to within fifty yards of the vehicles, whose engine compartments still glowed warm in the infrared sensors.
Jonathan placed a hand on Dawkins’s shoulder to get his attention, then whispered, “You stay here while we check it out.”
“Don’t shoot anything that looks like us,” Boxers added.
“And if you do, shoot him first,” Jonathan quipped. “Easier target.” He motioned for Boxers to move forward with him.
The trucks were aligned nose to tail along the path that called itself a road. It had the look of a patch of ground that hadn’t been honed into a road so much as worn down to flatness via multiple passes of heavy vehicles. If that was indeed the case, then Jonathan deduced three conclusions, none of which were encouraging. One, this was a road created by consensus rather than by government decree. Two, it was probably built for illegal purposes, which in Mexico meant it was built by the drug cartels. And three, given the thoroughness with which the foliage had been laid flat, it was used frequently. It was that last point that caused the greatest concern. The way the night had been going so far, it didn’t seem at all unreasonable to assume that they would be joined by another convoy of killers.
They didn’t have time to dawdle.
Jonathan pressed his transmitter for the local net. “Big Guy, you hold cover. I’ll check the vehicles.” He let his M27 fall against its sling, and he drew his heavily customized Colt 1911 .45. It was the only pistol he’d ever carried as his primary sidearm. He was well aware that it had fallen out of favor with a lot of people due to its bulk and its small seven-plus-one capacity, but it was one area of firearm science where he chose to be intractable.
He started from the rear vehicle and worked his way forward. They were all Chevrolet Blazers of varying age and with different degrees of abuse. Jonathan approached from the left rear quarter panel, his hands up in a nearly pugilistic posture. His right fist clutched the .45, the hammer just inches from his chin, while he held his IR flashlight in his left fist, the barrel of the light parallel to the barrel of his pistol. With his NVGs in place, he was afforded the same view with the IR light that he would have with a regular flashlight and no night vision.
It was always an intense moment when you exposed your face to a window at close range. A killer with infinite patience would need only lie in wait until a silhouette filled the window and he’d get a guaranteed kill shot. That Boxers’ return gunfire would subsequently shred the shooter was of little solace.
One vehicle at a time, a window at a time, Jonathan proved that no such patient shooters existed, and he breathed a sigh of relief. He slipped the IR light back into its pocket on his right sleeve, and he holstered his pistol. “We’re clear,” Jonathan said over the local. Then he turned toward the jungle and repeated himself loudly enough for Dawkins to hear. “Let’s get on the road.”
Dawkins climbed into the front passenger seat of the least shitty Blazer while Boxers slid behind the wheel. It wasn’t that Jonathan didn’t trust the PC, exactly, but he didn’t relish the thought of having a nervous former hostage sitting behind him with a loaded rifle. He was superstitious that way.
And Boxers always drove. Always. Period.
The inside of the Chevy smelled like everything smelled in this part of the world, dirty and wet. And vaguely of old food. The engine turned easily, and they were on their way within a few seconds.
“Hey, Boss. I have a suggestion,” Boxers said as he steered the SUV with the headlights off. “I say we go in real easy to the exfil site.”
Clearly, Boxers’ battle-experienced nose smelled the same ambush that worried Jonathan. “I agree,” he said. “Worst case, you end up driving the chopper, too.” Boxers was as talented a pilot as Jonathan had ever known, and was famous in certain circles for making aircraft do things that they were not designed to do. A few of those exploits helped to explain Jonathan’s chronic back problems.
“And let’s get rid of these,” Jonathan said, reaching over to his assault pack and removing the transponder that made him so visible to the satellite that allegedly wasn’t watching them anymore. Boxers’ pack was on the seat next to his, so he pulled that transponder off, too, and tossed them both out into the jungle. “Now let’s get out of here. If Snoopy orders an air strike, let’s not be nearby.”
“Holy shit,” Dawkins said. “An air strike?”
“He’s kidding,” Boxers said.
“Sort of kidding, anyway,” Jonathan added. Why let people feel relaxed when you could make them a little squirmy instead?
Exfil One was a clearing at a particular longitude and latitude, and it sat only seventy-five yards off of the deer trail of a road. The original plan called for Jonathan and his team to hike all that way with the PC. A variant of that plan would have them drive their purloined vehicle into the clearing and hasten the takeoff. Under the current circumstances, with all the plan’s underpinnings coming apart, Jonathan decided it was wiser to park a quarter mile away and then hoof it the rest of the way. With the PC reasonably healthy and fully mobile, there really
was no downside.
Boxers made an effort to pull the vehicle off the road far enough to let other vehicles pass, but it was a largely wasted effort. The trail was simply too narrow. As a matter of habit, Jonathan pressed a button on his portable GPS to mark the location of the vehicle as he climbed back outside—one never knew what useless data might later become useful.
“We’ll need to keep the noise and light signature as low as possible,” Jonathan said, mainly for Dawkins’s benefit. “You’ll have to hang on to me again.”
It took a good thirty seconds for Jonathan and Boxers to don their equipment, and then they set out into the jungle. It was tough going for the most part, with the uncut undergrowth making every step an effort. Navigating the creepers and branches while trying to keep a low sound profile made it all doubly difficult.
“How much farther?” Boxers whispered when they were twenty minutes into the journey.
Jonathan looked at his GPS. “Not far. I show it to be twenty, twenty-five yards, max.”
So they stopped. And listened.
“What are we doing?” Dawkins whispered. They were his first words since they’d started marching.
Remarkable restraint, Jonathan thought.
“We’re waiting and listening,” he said.
“To what? All I hear is jungle.”
“Me too,” Boxers said. “Where’s the engine noise? There should at least be something from the APU.” Auxiliary power unit.
Jonathan thought it through, and there was only one explanation. “Shit,” he said. “The son of a bitch flew off without us.”
CHAPTER 3
“There is a shitload of ass whuppin’s on the way,” Boxers growled.
“Where’d he go?” Dawkins asked.
“All I know is he’s not here,” Jonathan said. To Boxers: “We’ve got to get out of here, Big Guy.”
“Couldn’t agree more. Where do you want to go?”
“Somebody want to tell me what’s going on?” Dawkins said. His anxiety was palpable.
“Don’t worry,” Boxers said through a smile. “We’re professionals. When we lose control, we do it with grace and class.”
Final Target Page 3
