by D. J. Molles
Whump.
BOOM.
Lee looked up at the fence. Morrow was an excellent grenadier and had splashed the round right at the base of the fence. The explosion had ripped a hole more than big enough for a man to fit through.
“We’re good! Move!”
Lee surged to his feet, ran for the breach in the fence, then forced himself to slow down. Slow down. Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast. A heavy hand landed on his shoulder and stayed firm there. He could hear one of the operators’ voices behind him.
“We’re with you. We’re good. Move. Move.”
Lee swept the breach again, made sure there was nothing to trip him. In his right eye, the jagged ends of the chain-link fencing were still glowing orange in the greenness of the nighttime. Past that, he looked right and left, his rifle following, the infrared laser flickering as it passed over the chain links and tattooed the yard beyond. No heat signatures.
Lee stepped through the breach.
Carl’s voice: “Two down. Two moving in your direction, coming around both sides of that silo at your eleven o’clock. Right there! To your left! Your left!”
Lee moved laterally to his left, rifle up. The big, round, stainless steel can of the silo sat there, tree branches touching its tops and leaving the southern side in blackness as they shadowed it from even the muted ambient light that was coming from the cloud-covered stars. But he didn’t need light to see heat.
Orange on the left side of the silo, peeking out.
Lee fired, kept moving. He realized his stomach was in knots. Not for fear of being shot or hurt, but a sudden terror that the drawback of thermal imaging was a lack of target identification. What if Harper and Julia had managed to escape? What if that was who Carl had seen moving to that silo? What if Lee just shot one of them to death by mistake?
Too late, rounds are downrange…
But he pulled his finger off the trigger, and kept edging off the angle between himself and that heat signature. And when he’d taken four more steps, he got his answer. The heat signature leaned out and Lee was closer now. He could see the rifle. He could see the heaviness of the gear that was strapped to the figure. And the rifle was coming up.
Shoot him shoot him shoot him.
Lee cranked off rounds reflexively and got the hell off his target’s line of fire. The target’s muzzle bloomed white in his right eye. He felt something bite his shoulder, felt the slap of a tiny sonic boom against his face. He was moving to his right now, and so was the orange-red target, both of them circling each other, firing.
Lee went low. The white blaze of his infrared aiming device settled into the center of the orange-red shape, and he let off a burst of fire. He could actually see the mist of blood in the air, like hot gasses erupting out of the man, registering a muted ochre color in his right eye. The orange-red shape jerked and the knees wobbled, and Lee’s burst of rounds tracked up and destroyed the face, toppling the whole thing to the ground, where in a few hours it would take on the same greenish, background quality of all the other cold things that lay scattered around the grain mill.
There was another boom and a flash of light, a billow of dust and smoke.
Lee flattened himself up against the silo. He looked at his arms, his legs, his chest, but couldn’t find a bullet hole. I’m fine. I’m okay. Not hit.
A chatter of suppressed gunfire, answered by the crack of unsuppressed rifles, back and forth through the grain mill. Footfalls behind him. He glanced back, saw Rudy just a few feet behind him, running with a hitch, sweat beading on his bald head.
“You hit?” Lee asked.
Rudy nodded quickly and put his back to the silo. “Leg. Through and through.”
Lee gave the man a once-over with his naked eye. He was close enough to see the damage to the man’s upper thigh and the dark wetness of his pants leg. Another round had almost punched through his gut, but the ceramic plate had caught it. There was a hole in one of his magazine pouches, and Lee could see the magazine looked like it had exploded, springs and plastic sprouting from the pouch.
“You got a tourniquet?”
“I’ll be okay for another minute,” Rudy said with a grimace. “Keep moving.”
Lee nodded and turned back to his objective.
Find the barn. Find Harper. Find Julia. Find Tyler.
He edged out from the silo, pie-ing off bigger and bigger angles of the grain mill. All green. No orange shapes—then two of them, moving laterally, away from Lee. He could see their infrared designators on their helmets. Delta. They were moving for cover behind a large piece of farm equipment. Perhaps some sort of cultivator.
Incoming rounds clattered and sparked off of the metal, just over the heads of the operators as they slid into cover like they were stealing a base. Lee tracked the gunfire back. He couldn’t see a heat signature, at least not from a body, but he could see the muzzle flashes coming from the door of a large, square metal building. Kind of like a barn.
“Carl, Carl,” Lee called out. “We’re taking fire from that building right there, you see it? Is that the barn you were talking about?”
Pause.
“Yeah, yeah. Affirmative. I have not put eyes on them directly, but I’d avoid putting rounds into that building.”
Lee did a quick scan of the compound. His team was accounted for. No other heat signatures. At least two enemies in the farmhouse, but he didn’t know whether they were still in the fight. Carl had taken two. And then the two on the silo. Lee had taken one of them, and he assumed the other had been taken by the Delta operators now huddled behind the farm equipment.
Six bodies so far. How many more? Maybe a couple more. At least one, obviously, since he’s shooting at us from the barn.
“Guys behind that tractor equipment,” Lee called to them. “You guys copy that? Don’t return fire into that building. Continue drawing fire, but don’t shoot into it. How copy?”
Lee was watching them as he spoke and he could see in the thermal imaging one of their heads bobbing. “Solid copy. Don’t shoot the building.”
“We’re gonna move around the back, see if there’s another entrance.”
Lee took a glance behind him at Rudy. He pushed himself off of the silo and readied his rifle.
“You good?” Lee asked.
“Good to go.”
Lee crossed, rifle up. Looking for something. A heat signature. A muzzle flash directed at him. Anything to show that the attention had turned in his direction. But whoever was shooting from the door was just laying it down on the tractor equipment, slow and steady, evenly spaced rounds meant to keep heads down.
If they’re trying to keep heads down, they might be trying to move.
Lee made it to the side of the barn. He could hear voices inside, shouting, and it sounded like they were shouting at each other, though he couldn’t be sure. He tried to listen for Harper or Julia, but he didn’t think their voices were in the mix. The gunfire kept going. Slow and steady.
Lee moved to the back corner of the building and pied it off. Nothing. Just empty space.
“Clear,” he whispered, hoping not to be heard by the people inside, despite their yelling and gunfire.
“Moving.”
“Move.”
Lee hit the corner, kept himself a few feet off the metal wall, but traveling parallel to it. A sliding garage door, it looked like. Well-worn gravel acted like an arrow, drawing Lee’s attention to it. He stepped up to the edge and inspected the latching mechanism. Which was basically nonexistent. Unlocked. At least from the outside. Perhaps barricaded from the inside, which could be disastrous if he went yanking on it thinking it was going to open for him.
Pop… pop… pop…
The suppressive fire went on and on. Eventually they would realize that no one was shooting back and begin to suspect that they were being flanked, if they didn’t already suspect it. Whoever was in there—more than one, and possibly three—they knew damn well they were sitting in a tin can with only two points of ent
ry and exit.
Lee looked down at his feet and saw light coming from inside the barn.
There was a gap between the gravel and the door. Maybe a few inches at the most.
Lee dropped to his belly and pressed his face against the gravel. He could hear the words of the voices now, their individual owners, though he couldn’t see anybody just yet. What they were saying made no sense to Lee.
“Back the fuck off!”
“Get outta the fucking way!”
“Guys, I don’t…”
“Just keep fucking shooting! Let me handle this shit!”
“Kensey, listen to me…”
Lee felt his skin contract, electricity on his spine. The last voice had been Julia; he was positive. She was still alive. And so was Sergeant Kensey, apparently. He thought he heard three individual male voices inside. But he couldn’t get quite enough of a view of the inside from the small crack at the bottom of the door.
He stood back up and held up the appropriate number of fingers: “Three hostiles inside, at least one hostage. Couldn’t get a visual. You ready?”
“You want me to bang ’em?”
“Can you get it over the top of this barn and onto the other side?”
Rudy leaned back and judged the height of the building above them, his tongue sticking out and touching the bottom of his mustache. “Yeah, I can do that.” He was already shucking the cylindrical “flashbang” grenade out of a pouch on his chest, a finger slipping into the pull rings. “You ready?”
From inside the barn, Lee heard the sound of a gunshot, different from the others. Smaller caliber. Maybe a pistol. This one was inside. And then someone was shouting, screaming curses. It sounded like Julia.
Shit…
Lee put a hand on the sliding door and prayed to God that it would open when he pulled it. “Send it.”
A yank. Safety lever and all, Rudy stepped out and flung it sideways like he was making a hook shot. Lee didn’t watch the grenade, just kept his focus on the door and hoped that the grenade reached the other side of the barn, roughly where the open door was.
Rudy shouldered his rifle again, his stance poised and ready.
Lee waited for it.
BOOM!
Lee yanked the door.
It opened.
He flowed through, rifle up.
Inside was brighter. Orange glow from a fire. White glow from a lantern. Lighting faces still cringing from the blast of the grenade. Lee wasn’t looking for Julia and Harper. He was looking for who was not Julia and Harper. He found someone he didn’t recognize, registered nothing about them, not age or race or gender. A body standing in the door. Probably the one laying down suppressive fire. He pulled the trigger five times, ending that person.
Beside him, Rudy let out a burst at almost the exact time as Lee, but aimed at a second subject, this one standing in the middle of the room. The burst caught the man in the shoulders and chest, and maybe one of them hit the back of his skull, Lee couldn’t be sure. The body went head over heels, sideways, and was still.
There was another body in the room, but it was already dead. Or dying.
Lee moved across the room for the body he’d killed. He put a boot to it, making sure it was dead. It flopped like meat. He turned to Rudy, who was standing over the target he’d taken. There was no need to check that body for life—the brains were littered out the back in a scattered, pink-white trail.
“Clear?” Lee asked, looking around and his eyes landing on Julia, tied to a wooden post.
“Clear,” Rudy called, then keyed his radio. “Barn’s clear. Barn’s clear. We have one hostage recovered. One hostage recovered and one outstanding.”
Lee kicked the rifle out of the hands of the body at his feet and then crossed quickly to Julia. Her wrists were bound, and then bound again to the wooden post. He knelt beside her, pulling his knife from his rig and sawing through the bindings. “Julia, you okay? Are you good?”
Her eyes were fixed at the body that was lying close by, the one that had already been dead when they’d come through the door. Lee cast a sidelong glance at it. A light-skinned black guy.
Julia sounded out of it. “He was trying to help us. Trying to keep Kensey from taking us.”
“Taking you?” Lee asked, finally cutting her free. “Taking you where? And where the hell is Harper?”
Julia finally looked up and met Lee’s eyes. She seemed to suddenly realize it was him and she grabbed him by the shoulder and by the back of the neck, a desperate grasp of appreciation. “I can’t believe you’re here. Oh my God. Oh my God.”
“Julia,” Lee said, pulling away. “Where is Harper?”
She blinked rapidly, like she was struggling to clear her head. “Major Bowden. He took Harper and his pilot…”
The radio cracked in Lee’s ear. Carl’s voice: “Lee, I got three on the move! I don’t know how the fuck they got away, but they’re almost to the helicopter now. You need me to take ’em out?”
NINETEEN
LOSSES
LEE ALMOST SAID NO, but held off for long enough to think about it. “One of them is a pilot. If you can positively ID the pilot, take him out. I’m on the way.” Lee gave Julia’s shoulder a squeeze and stood up quickly. “Julia, I’ll be right back. Don’t move from here.”
Lee burst out of the barn and heard helicopter rotors. For a moment, he thought it was Tyler, escaping in the Little Bird, but then saw the big black shadow of the Black Hawk swoop overhead. Lee heard a muffled rifle report—just the sound of the bullet breaking the sound barrier. Lee looked right and left and realized that he didn’t know which way to go.
“Pilot’s down,” Carl said over squad comms.
“Carl, where are they? Where am I going?”
“Lee, he just ducked inside one of the silos. It’s north of you. To your right, from where you are. One, two silos… the second silo on your right.”
Lee started running for it.
“The silo has a hole in the side of it. They ducked inside.”
“I copy,” Lee said breathlessly. “That’s Tyler. Tyler and my man Harper.”
“Rog, I think I know who is who.”
This time Lee did say it. “Don’t shoot!”
“I can’t even see him.”
Lee rounded the first silo and saw the second standing there in the darkness, a gaping hole in the side of it, and beyond that hole, just blackness. Lee lowered the NVGs over his right eye again and peered into the hole from twenty yards away. He could see the miniscule glow from body heat coming from inside, but not the bodies themselves.
In front of the silo, a body lay on the ground, squirming. The pilot, Lee assumed. His arm was still moving, the fingers grinding into the gravel, but if he had any time left to live, it was just seconds, and Lee could do nothing for him.
He scanned around. He was looking for some cover a little closer to the silo. He didn’t want to stand at the thin metal wall that bullets could so easily penetrate. And he wasn’t going into that silo. Not with Tyler inside, probably using Harper as a body shield. Lee would find himself at a distinct disadvantage trying to go in there. But that was Tyler’s only card. He had to know he was trapped. What did he hope to accomplish with this?
Lee spotted a pallet of what looked like large drainage rocks. He slipped around the silo and crouched behind the pallet. He needed to speak to Tyler, but he couldn’t do it with the Black Hawk hovering over their heads. “Shamus, go ahead and pull off. I can’t hear with you overhead. We got a hostage situation and I need to talk.”
Before the helicopter could acknowledge, Carl took the radio. “Lee! He’s runnin’ out the other side! He’s heading for the fence!”
Lee stood up and saw an orange blob filling the empty space of the hole in the side of the silo. He addressed it with his rifle and started moving toward it, but after crossing a few feet, he could see that it was a man, hunched over, stumbling out of the silo, no weapons, no gear.
“Harper!” Lee shou
ted at him.
Harper looked up, his eyes alarmed.
Lee ripped the NVGs up that were covering his face and recognition dawned on Harper as the two men closed the gap. Harper looked like he was about to collapse and Lee scooped an arm up under his shoulder to steady him and keep him from hitting the dirt. It was only then that he saw the front of Harper’s body, slaked in blood.
“Holy fuck,” Lee breathed as he felt Harper’s legs go out and the man’s entire weight was on his shoulders. He slowly lowered the man to the ground. “What happened? What did he do?”
Harper grimaced. “Fucking gut-shot me. Shitfire.”
Why? Why would he do that?
Even right at that moment when Harper told him, his mind wanted a different explanation. He wanted the man that had shot Harper to not actually be Tyler. To be someone else that was impersonating Tyler. But there was a certain cold logic to it, and Lee realized, feeling suddenly sick to his stomach, that Tyler and he were two peas in a pod. Everyone had changed, it seemed, and not for the better. Perhaps Tyler had never wanted to believe the things that he’d been told about Lee. Perhaps Tyler had thought to himself, Lee would never do those things. But Lee had changed. And apparently so had Tyler. Because Tyler knew he had no way out, not with his helicopter pilot dead and the entire compound of the grain mill swarming with Delta operators. And he knew that he had to run, and that his best chance of getting away on foot was to distract Lee, to distract him with a dying body.
Cold, cold, cold, he thought. Just like your goddamned self.
Lee held Harper’s head with one hand, keeping it from hitting the gravel. “Oh man, Harper. I can’t believe this. I can’t fucking believe this. I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry.” Lee’s other hand found the hole in Harper’s stomach. Right in the middle. Right where all the important stuff was. The type of injury that needed a real trauma hospital. Not a corpsman’s skills while lying in the gravel and dirt.
