by D. J. Molles
Not today.
One more time.
You’re almost there.
In the cabin of the Black Hawk, a dull red light came on. It bathed everyone in blood. Lee, and five other men. Carl sat beside Lee, a crewman’s headset on his head, speaking to the pilots. Across from them, Rudy, Mitch, and Morrow sat in quiet focus. Morrow’s large, expressive eyes were staring out the side window of the helicopter. The three operators had donned small helmets that didn’t cover much of the head, but seemed more useful for mounting their NVGs. On all of their short-barreled rifles, Lee could see they’d attached suppressors. He could also see the infrared laser aiming devices on the quad rails of the rifle—invisible to the naked eye, but brilliant when you were equipped with night vision.
He wondered if Kensey’s Marines had night vision.
Maybe. Hopefully not.
Lee pulled on the same helmet that the others were wearing. Carl and his men had packed mission bags full of gear that they kept stored in the Black Hawk. Carl had outfitted Lee out of his own bag, telling him, “This is your fight, I imagine you want to be in on it.” The gift included the helmet and the rifle.
A few adjustments to the helmet and it fit Lee’s head snugly. The optics were already attached, as well as a mouth-and earpiece for their squad comms. Just like the others, the rifle Lee had been given from Carl’s gear bag was fitted with a suppressor and an infrared aiming device.
“What about you?” Lee had asked.
Carl had slung his submachine gun on his back and was holding a bolt action rifle that Lee was not familiar with. It was all rails and ergonomics, nothing left for aesthetics. It had a substantial rifle scope mounted on it, as well as a suppressor. The rifle scope looked like it was equipped with a night-vision attachment. Carl seemed proud of it. “I’ll hang back. Give y’all some overwatch.”
To their credit, the Delta boys made no negative reaction to the fact that Lee was going in with them. It was never comfortable to do an operation with a new guy, but in Lee’s experience, Delta operators tended to be more open to working with others than most other special operations forces. Besides, they’d seen for themselves that Lee was solid.
Lee had night operations equipment in his bunkers, but hadn’t had the time to grab it at Bunker #3, so he accepted the borrowed equipment gracefully. The rifle was in the M4 platform, though it was chambered for .300 AAC. Lee was familiar enough with it to be comfortable using it in a real-world application. All the mechanics were basically the same. Along with the rifle came four spare magazines, loaded with subsonic ammunition.
He felt the helicopter begin its descent, as the sound in the cabin changed.
Again, Lee wondered where the nervousness was. He knew he should have been feeling it right then, but it was not there. Just Tyler Bowden. Tyler and his betrayal. Tyler coming after the one thing he knew that Lee wouldn’t give him.
You stupid motherfucker, Lee thought. Now you’ve gone and started this. You’ve pushed me into a corner. You’ve forced me to hit you back. And I’m gonna hit you hard.
He looked across from him. Rudy, Mitch, and Morrow were already facing out to the doors. On each side, one of them slid over and pulled the sliding doors, staging them open for the landing. Wind erupted into the blood-red cabin. Outside, there was nothing. Emptiness. Space.
Morrow staged the door and leaned out, looking at the ground. He held up three fingers. Then two. Then one. Then he was sliding out. Mitch followed, and then Rudy, out the starboard side of the helicopter. Lee came out last. They huddled beneath the roar of the rotors as the helicopter dusted off over their heads and then tilted away into the night sky.
There it is, Lee thought as he felt his heart finally start knocking. Time crunch.
They were in a nasty situation. The hostage situation required that they have stealth when coming in. But the helicopter insertion required that they be dropped where Tyler and Kensey’s crew couldn’t hear. And the helicopter couldn’t stay aloft all night. They were quickly approaching the hour that they needed to return to Fort Bragg for fuel.
They knew where they were. Just west of Highway 61. And they knew where they were going: four miles to the intersection of Herron Road, where there was an old grain mill. That, apparently, was where Harper and Julia were being held.
The night was dark around them. The sound of the helicopter had already faded. Lee could hear wind in the grasses, and when he looked down he knew that he was in an old farmer’s field. Unharvested wheat, it seemed, grown over and weed infested, now dry and brittle and whispering as the stalks rubbed together.
Lee lowered the monocular over his right eye. The world became a bright, pale green landscape shot through with streaks of light. The streaks of light meandered back and forth, scanning, jumping, looking this way and that. Each was blooming from one of their rifles—the infrared aiming device doing its job. The monocular was a fusion system, overlapping light intensification and thermal imaging, so that everything appeared bright and contrasted, and hot things—such as warm bodies—stood out in orange and yellow and red.
Lee scanned around, saw the glow of his own aiming device, saw the blobs of molten colors that were his comrades. And through his left eye, he could still see the real world. It was disorienting, and it took a little practice to alternate focusing on real-world and night-vision-world. But Lee had done it many times before, and he fell into it with familiarity.
“That’s Highway 61,” he said, gesturing to a thin gray line across their vision, about three hundred yards to their east, running approximately north to south. “We need to move with it until we see the grain mill. We good?”
Out of one eye, he could barely see some shadows moving. Out of the other, his orange-blob companions lifted thumbs up to indicate that they were ready.
“Let’s move, then.”
The designated point man moved out ahead of them. The others waited until he was barely inside of their vision, just to the point that they would be able to understand his hand signals, and then they started to follow. The wind through the dried-out wheat stalks covered most of the sounds of their movement, and they took up a good pace, trying to close most of the distance. The stealth approach would be necessary only for the last several hundred yards as they drew in close enough to be seen and heard, if anyone was watching or listening.
They will be, Lee told himself. Of course they will be. The only question is whether they are expecting this to happen or not. Are they ready for us?
The pace picked up to a slow jog at points, and then sometimes just a fast walk, depending on the terrain. They stayed in a single-file line, the six of them spread out over a hundred yards or so. Lee kept seeing flashes of color in the green—hot things moving in the woods around them, and sometimes in the grass at his feet. His heart would seize every damn time and his rifle would swing in that direction, his mind immediately thinking, Infected! But the shapes would disappear. They did not appear to come any closer. He thought that maybe they were deer.
They hit a section of woods. The wind hissed at the treetops, bending the trunks and creaking the trees. Their feet crunched quickly through the dry leaves—there was no avoiding that. But they kept scanning for anything warm-blooded, anything that might be watching them.
Halfway into the woods, they stopped.
Lee heard the quiet whisper in his ear: “Contact. Contact. Three o’clock. A hundred yards.”
He knelt into the leaves and spun to his right. Mitch was directly behind Lee. He had been the one to call the stop. His short frame was even shorter, knelt down in a compact ball, rifle resting on his knee. He was facing west, deeper into the woods, and up a small hillock. Lee saw nothing with his naked eye, but he raised his rifle and focused through his right, and he could see two, then three, then four shapes, huddled at the top of the woods. They were spread out in a line, like a mirror image of Lee’s column.
“Everyone hold,” Mitch said breathily. “If they come toward us, put ’em d
own.”
Nobody asked the question as to whether they were infected or not. It was not that everyone was so sure of what they were, but that it simply didn’t matter. If the ghostly, glowing shapes at the top of the hill started to descend on them, sane or not, they needed to be taken out.
“Counting one, two, three, four,” the electronic voice whispered. “Rudy takes far left. Morrow takes far right. Me and the captain’ll take the two in the middle.” To Lee, Mitch said, “You’re left, I’m right. Rog?”
“Rog.”
They knelt there in the cold, dry leaves for a long time. Long enough for the sweat to start chilling on their bodies. Lee’s heart was making an appearance again. His adrenal glands stretching their legs once more.
Slowly, the two shapes on the outside crept farther over the hill. And here Lee could see them for what they truly were. Not in any detail, but just from the way they were crouched low to the ground, moving so stealthily forward on all fours. Definitely infected. A pack. Or maybe hunters…
He closed his left eye, seeing only the strange vision of illuminated night lands and boiling hot heat signatures. He watched the dot of his aiming device bounce and zigzag up the hill and then hover around the second heat signature from the left, waiting for it to start moving closer with the others. Lee breathed steadily, trying to lower his heart rate.
And then the two on the outside that had been moving forward suddenly slipped away, back behind the hill.
Lee looked in each direction rapidly, and then when he looked back up at the hilltop, the two middle ones were gone as well.
His heart slapped his rib cage.
His breathing became tense again.
Dammit… where the hell did they go?
They switched to 360-degree coverage, trying to make sure that they weren’t being flanked and surrounded. But after another minute or two of hushed breathing and rustling leaves, there was still no sign of the infected.
“Let’s get moving again,” Lee transmitted quietly.
The column started moving again. Slowly, at first, and then picking up speed again.
After another minute or two, they emerged into a clearing. They looked in all directions, but there was nothing. They continued through, into the other side of the woods. More valuable minutes passed by as they picked their way through the forest. When they emerged on the other side, they stopped again.
Lee took a knee and waited. Far up ahead, the little blur of orange heat at the edge of the woods was the point man, scoping things out. After a moment of stillness, his voice crackled in Lee’s ear: “Eyes on target. Six hundred yards southeast.”
“Copy,” Lee said. “Everyone hold what you got. Carl—it’s on you.”
Carl acknowledged. “Copy. Moving.”
The sound of Carl’s movement was slight, but still audible, as he moved eastward in the woods, toward the roadway. There was some slight high ground just north of the grain mill that he was heading for. Carl had estimated he’d need about five minutes to get there and get in position.
“The rest of ya’ll, let’s maintain that three-sixty,” Lee said. “Don’t want those fuckers sneakin’ up on us again.”
Minutes passed by.
Slow traffic in the fast lane.
Frustrating.
Lee’s mind turned to Tyler again. He might know that they were coming. But did he expect them so soon? And did he know how they were going to make contact? No. There was no way he could know these things. He might suspect, and he might have his lackeys on heavy watch, but that wouldn’t stop what was coming for him. Lee felt a stir of anger as he thought this time, but it was quiet. It was controlled. There was no rage to what Lee was doing. Just the smooth glassiness of inevitability.
Carl’s voice on the squad comms: “I’m in place. I’ve got a visual on four. Granary is… medium-sized complex. Six-foot chain-link perimeter fencing. No barbed wire. There’s a large barn in the center. Metal siding. Painted white. There’s a door on the northern side of the building. Two men are standing outside that door. The other two are stationary. One on the north fence. The other I can just barely see between the buildings, but I think he’s on the south fence. Break.”
The radio cut off.
Lee waited in silence, breathing steadily.
Carl picked up again. “I think our target building is going to be the barn. One of the two outside the door just stepped inside, then back out. There’s definitely other people inside, but I couldn’t get much detail. Looks like you’ll have plenty of concealment and maybe even some cover if you come in from the southwest corner. Stand by for gear intel.”
Another long pause.
“Okay. All four subjects that I can see are armed. M4 and variants. Full chest rigs. Body armor. Only one is wearing a helmet. The others have soft covers, including the sentry on the south corner, which is the one you’ll probably have to take out. From what I can see, none are currently equipped with night-vision capability. Still, keep your IR off until it’s go time. Just in case.”
It didn’t need to be said, but it didn’t hurt, either. Anything infrared could be seen if you were looking through night vision. Including their laser aiming devices. If they were blazing as they tried to sneak up, and one of the targets was enterprising enough to throw on a pair of NVGs, each of them would look like a beacon and surprise would be out the window.
“By the way, I can also see what looks like a Little Bird sittin’ pretty in the middle of it all. Think that might be your boy. It’s unoccupied. Looks cold. I have nothing further right now. Four total. All armed. The only one with the helmet is standing outside of the barn. On your initiation, I’m taking the sentry on the north side, and the two standing outside the barn, if possible. Keep the channel clear once you’re in so I can tell you what’s up. Go ahead and move.”
They moved.
They skirted the edge of the woods, staying low. The sky above them was still overcast, blocking out any trace of moon and stars. There was some bare ambient light coming off the sky, but it was only enough for them to see a few feet ahead by naked eye. They met a few farm fences that bordered properties and negotiated the barbed-wire tops carefully, then kept moving. They were less than three hundred yards out, and Lee could almost see the tops of the silver grain silos in the muted light.
The woods became thinner and thinner until it was nothing.
They were in the backyard of some large farmhouse, directly across Highway 61 from the grain mill. They stopped there, in the blackness of the overhanging trees, huddled close to cover and concealment. The point man was scanning the farmhouse and the barn out back. Lee closed his left eye and observed the farmhouse for a time.
The slightest of whispers over squad comms. “Possible contact. Heat signature inside the farmhouse…”
The night exploded.
EIGHTEEN
RESCUE
LEE DOVE FOR THE WOODS.
The sound of projectiles splitting the air near him and peppering through tree branches just above his head. The clatter of rifle fire, both incoming and outgoing. In his left eye, there was blackness with strange half-lit geometric shapes, blooming with fire, but in his right eye, he could see heat signatures, big impressionistic blurs of orange and red, his team scrambling for cover in the woods, and other heat signatures in the windows of the farmhouse.
He hit the ground hard on his side, felt nothing. He tumbled over onto his back, and then onto his hands and knees, behind a large pine. He brought his rifle up and watched through his right eye as a half-dozen infrared aiming devices crawled over the farmhouse. He found a window where an orange blob of a man had been and he squeezed the trigger as he watched his infrared dot settle onto the window. The rifle in his hands chattered—muffled but not silenced.
“Contact! Contact!” someone was yelling over the squad comms.
Lee keyed his PTT and addressed the grenadier with the M32. “Morrow! Level that fucking house! Rudy, keep their heads down! The rest of you on
me!”
Then Lee started running, crosswise, with the farmhouse to this left.
He didn’t see Morrow shoulder the six-cylinder grenade launcher, but he heard the heavy whump-whump-whump of the 40mm rounds going out, and only a second later the sound of them smashing into the farmhouse and exploding in white-hot flashes that lit the night only for milliseconds at a time.
Lee tried to see where the hell he was going, but the NVG over his right eye was destroying his depth perception and he kept having to slow down to negotiate fallen logs so that he wouldn’t trip over them while he ran.
“Carl,” he called breathlessly on squad comms. “Cover’s blown! We’re hitting now! Initiate!”
Carl’s voice came back tight. “Roger.”
The darkness of the trees drew back like a curtain. Ahead of them was the roadway. On the other side, the grain mill. Lee scanned it once with his NVGs, but saw no heat signatures lurking in the shadows. He sprinted out of the woods, into the clear, onto even ground where he could run full bore.
“Shamus!” he yelled as he ran, using the helicopter’s call sign. “Assaulting now! We need cover fire from air support! Get inbound now!” Lee reached the other side of the road. He leapt across the drainage ditch, hit the other side oddly on his bad ankle, but kept going. He hit the tree line and stopped.
“Shamus copies. Inbound. Two minutes.”
Lee looked behind him. The farmhouse looked like a heap of ruins, a fire burning inside, smoke billowing out of it. The Delta team was crossing the road behind him, Rudy bringing up the rear.
From inside the grain mill, he could hear randomly spaced shots, strings of automatic fire, shouting and screaming.
“Morrow, blow the fence,” Lee called as the grenadier’s big frame came huffing up.
“Rog.” Morrow sprawled himself on the ground. “Everyone get low. We’re in close.”
Everyone mimicked him, getting low on the ground. The fence was only about fifty yards away from them, and they could still catch shrapnel if they weren’t careful. Everyone buried their faces in the dirt, keeping their helmets aimed toward the fence, hoping the rest of their bodies wouldn’t catch molten steel fragments.
