Reflexive Fire - 01

by Jack Murphy

  “Maybe an explosively formed penetrator,” he remarked with his hands on his hips.

  “Not on your fucking life.”

  Richie jumped, on hearing the voice appear from nowhere. Turning, he found Deckard standing behind him, covered in sweat, grit stuck around his neckline and the corners of his eyes.

  “I told you to bring down that bridge, not start a shooting war with the world's largest military.”

  “Couldn't be helped, boss.”

  Deckard sighed.

  “We need to identify Peng, which means you can't put a plasma jet through that vault door and incinerate everyone beyond recognition.”

  “You got it all wrong--”

  “Use the thermic lance instead. You can still frag everyone inside after.”

  Richie stormed off, mumbling something, heading for the stairs.

  Deckard held his radio to his ear, listening as Alexander with Second Platoon gave the word that they had cleared the barracks, encountering limited resistance.

  Suddenly the mansion rattled, something buzzing overhead.

  “Fast movers,” Deckard announced to no one in particular.

  Bounding back up the steps and into the hallway, Deckard ran for the door while screaming into his radio. “All units, get under overhead cover!”

  Stepping outside, Samruk's commander looked into the night sky. The first pass was just to get a lay of the land. With the second, they would be going hot.

  “Everyone get indoors now. Leave the trucks where they are. I want--”

  Flashes streaked through the sky. The ball of fire began falling towards the earth, splitting into two sections before burning out on its trajectory to the ground.

  He couldn't be sure, but had a feeling that he had just witnessed a UAV, probably a Global Hawk, getting shot down at ten thousand feet.

  Looking down, he keyed his hand mic.

  “Anyone find the armory? Report.”

  “No.”

  “Nyet.”

  “Nyet.”

  “Nah.”

  “Nyet.”

  “Nein.”

  “Probably behind this door.” Richie.

  “Make it fast. I need some of that hardware up here if intel is correct.”

  “Got it.”

  The Chinese Chengdu J-10 fighter jets came in low and slow, strafing Peng's compound. The first J-10 let rip a burst of twenty-three millimeter cannon fire, the massive bullets tearing up the terrain before crossing over one of the assault trucks. Several mercenaries who hadn't evacuated fast enough were cut down by the jet's stream of fire.

  Now anyone left outside understood the urgency, sprinting for the mansion and the barracks as the second J-10 came in right behind the first, firing up another one of A/co's trucks, detonating something on board. The vehicle was quickly consumed in a blaze, bullets cooking off in the flames sounding like firecrackers.

  Whether the Chinese were pissed about Richie's indiscretions and were seeking revenge, or Peng had called in a favor, using some piece of dirt on the PRC as leverage, the rationale seemed irrelevant at this point.

  The fighters were circling around for another pass.

  Richie walked towards the vault door, his hands covered with heavy gloves, face shielded with a darkened welding visor.

  Burning through nearly two inches of steel a second, he pressed forward holding the thermic lance by its pistol grip, the other end connected to an oxygen bottle. The vinyl covered rod made up the actual lance. Inside were steel and aluminum wires that, when infused with oxygen from the O2 bottle and charged by a twelve-volt battery, burned at over ten thousand degrees.

  The lance created a superheated plasmic cone that was enough to burn through any barrier in seconds, rather than spend all night wearing through dozens of drill bits.

  Moving the lance from one attack point to the next, sweat beaded on Richie's forehead, even as cannon fire swept the compound topside. They could feel the gunfire reverberate through the mansion. He was moving as fast as he could.

  “Richie, what the hell is going on down there?” his radio nagged him, the voice on the other end sounded stressed.

  Gritting his teeth he hoped for the tear gas rather than a fast acting nerve agent.

  Deckard dove for the ground as 23mm fire ripped into the UWSA's headquarters. The Chengdu fighter came in along the fortress' long axis, shooting up another assault truck, the barrage of fire walking across the lawn and into the mansion itself.

  Large caliber bullets tore open the roofing and smacked into the stone floor before the jet broke off, circling around for another pass.

  “All stations on this net,” Deckard said into his radio “triangulate fire approximately a hundred meters in front of the jets the next time they make a pass at us.”

  To Richie's delight it was just an Oleoresin Capsicum based gas that was ejected from the vault's fail-safe mechanism and not mustard gas or something worse. The OC stung his face, burning his eyes with some of the worst pain he'd felt in recent years. The tears flowed down his face freely as he hyperventilated in the narrow confines of the basement.

  Pushing the thermic lance through the blast plate on the door, he managed to disable the final locking bars. Trying to blink away the tears, he spun the valve shut on the oxygen bottle and set down the lance. The Kazakhs moved forward with scarfs and bandanas tied across their faces against the OC gas and attached a tow strap to the handle on the composite metal door.

  With eight men on the other end of the strap, they managed to yank the door a few inches ajar with the first heave. From inside they could hear shouting in Chinese, the actions on pistols and submachine guns being racked.

  Another heave and the door was pulled farther open, this time leaving about a foot of space. Two mercenaries ran up, each tossing a nine-banger through the opening as gunfire began slamming into the vault door from the inside.

  Giving a final tug on the tow strap, they got the door fully opened, just as the flash-bangs began to go off. Two squads were already on standby and rushed through the door. Stacked in a column, they pushed forward like Roman legionnaires in a phalanx, desperate to get into the fight.

  The first assaulter through the door immediately went down under a hail of gunfire.

  Jean-Francois ran for the assault truck and jumped up on the side. His boot catching on the side of the truck, he stumbled before righting himself. Slinging his rifle, he reached down to the pivot mount and yanked the retaining pin out that held a PKM machine gun in place.

  The stench of gasoline invaded his nose, the tank punctured from one of the previous gun runs.

  The sound of jet engines grew near.

  The J-10 opened fire with its 23mm cannon, JF firing his own weapon, careful to lead the aircraft by a wide margin by watching his tracer fire. It was one of those instances where tracers were of vital importance, but of course the enemy could follow their trail right back to him as well.

  Several other streams of fire sprayed in front of the Chinese fighter jet, the Kazakhs having the same idea and recovering their automatic weapons from the trucks during a pause in the chaos. The others joined in, firing their AK-103s from doors, windows, and anywhere else they were able to take cover.

  Someone must have begun scoring hits, the pilot probably hearing the impact against his fuselage, because suddenly he yanked on his controls. The J-10 arched up and away, attempting evasive maneuvers to avoid the ground fire.

  Shouts of elation went up from the mercenaries, proud and relieved to have driven off the enemy.

  Sadly, their celebration was short-lived as the second J-10 came in on approach, nosing directly towards JF's position.

  Four members of Second Platoon came stomping up the stairs and down the hallway. In their hands they struggled with two rectangular dark-green wooden crates which were carried by attached rope handles. Setting them down in the lobby, they stepped away as Deckard kicked open one of the lids with the edge of his boot.

  As advertised,
a HN-5 anti-aircraft missile launcher sat in the crate in pristine condition.

  “We have them cornered in their bunker,” one of the Kazakhs reported.

  “Peng?”

  “We are looking.”

  Grunting, Deckard yanked one of the missile launchers out and shouldered it. One of the older looking Kazakhs handled the second HN-5. Sometimes he forgot that their Central Asian home country was once a Soviet satellite state, many of them having grown up around Russian weapons platforms.

  “Let's do this,” he told the Kazakh.

  Stepping outside, they screwed the thermal batteries into the front end of the launch control unit attached to the missile tube itself. With the HN-5s on their shoulders, they used the iron sights on the tubes to target the approaching J-10, while they waited for the electrical supply and internal gyros to stabilize.

  Deckard milked the trigger halfway while sighting in on the Chinese fighter jet. He was the first to get a solid IR lock, the control unit buzzing and blinking red.

  “I got him,” Deckard said, ordering the Kazakh to stand down.

  As the jet swooped over the compound, he took up the rest of the slack in the trigger. The missile launched, the booster burning out before it left the tube. The rocket engine initiated, the four stabilization fins unfolding simultaneously.

  With the HN-5's seeker locked onto the jet's IR signature, the missile flew at over four hundred meters a second, eating up the distance in a heartbeat.

  Jean-Francois rolled the dice and lost, the two hundred round belt having been exhausted by holding down the PKM's trigger, leaving him with nothing but a smoking barrel.

  The J-10 closed in.

  Cannon fire spat from the aircraft, large caliber rounds tearing up the ground and headed straight for him. The former legionnaire winced a moment before the anti-aircraft rocket smashed into the side of the jet.

  The impact fuse on the missile detonated the fragmentation warhead, lighting up the J-10's reserve fuel tank and separating one of the wings, sending the rest of the jet spinning out of control. Separate streams of fire flashed out in the night as the wreckage crashed into a hill behind the UWSA compound.

  The second J-10 coming in behind tried to pull up, the pilot having seen what happened to his partner. He popped chaff and flares just a moment too late as a second HN-5 missile snaked right up the jet's tailpipe and exploded, blowing the aircraft out of the sky.

  With the back end taken out, the aircraft folded on itself, wings blazing, the fuselage engulfed in flames. The pilot never had the chance to eject as the enormous g-forces hurled him back and forth before the entire jet separated and fell to the jungle below like miniature meteorites.

  JF set the machine gun down, remembering to breathe.

  Deckard turned towards the Kazakh as he dropped the still smoking launch unit to the ground.

  “Talk to me about promotions when we get home,” he told the mercenary.

  Deckard's business model promoted positive performance.

  Shaking his hand, Deckard could have sworn he saw a smirk on the trooper's face.

  Peng cursed his misfortune.

  He had gotten his ducks in a row a long time ago, greased the right palms, played by the rules, and now he was left in ruin. The Sino-Burmese gangster had so much dirt on so many Chinese bureaucrats that he wielded a disproportionate amount of power that stretched far beyond the small autonomous zone he had carved out of the jungle to freely run his narcotics business from.

  If the information he had was revealed in the Chinese press, dozens of officials would instantly walk home and commit suicide, knowing that there was no such thing as a not-guilty verdict in a Chinese courtroom. That was the kind of power that allowed him to wake up generals in the middle of the night and have fighter jets deployed against his enemies.

  Waging war against the Burmese Government might be off-limits, but gunning down foreign mercenaries was another matter entirely.

  Straining his entire body, he managed to push open the trap door at the top of the ladder he stood on.

  They had watched the entire assault via closed-circuit television cameras hidden throughout his compound. Sixty million bought a lot, but apparently not invulnerability. The foreign mercenaries brought down the reinforced concrete walls, fought their way inside, and had the audacity to burn their way into his inner sanctum.

  Seeing the red glow of some strange type of cutting torch slicing through the supposedly impenetrable vault door, Peng had decided it was time for him to utilize his fall back plan. He abandoned his bodyguards just as the door was being hauled open, slipping behind a bookcase that moved on well maintained hinges. Disappearing into the darkness, he had heard the firefight rage behind him.

  It was a four hundred meter long underground escape tunnel, the first structure he had built, even before the walls went up. The contractors came from Hong Kong, recommended by a Triad boss and trading partner of his. It was the backup plan for the backup plan.

  Emerging into the terraced central highland fields, Peng actually felt relieved. He'd been fighting his whole life. The UWSA leader took a deep breath of fresh air, palming the pistol tucked into his pants and freeing it, just in case.

  Every day for decades, he had to respond to one emergency or another. Uniting warring ethnic groups, playing others off against each other, fighting it out with the SPDC every few years, blocking Triad attempts to edge into his market. It was exhausting and he wasn't getting any younger.

  In a strange way he had been provided with a way out. Untapped offshore bank accounts were hidden all over the world, bulging with narco-dollars. He'd spend his final days in Mauritius or someplace drinking whiskey and taking a different woman to bed every night.

  Kicking the trap door shut, he smiled as he walked towards the Chinese border.

  A quick swim across the river and he would link up with some of his customers. If they wanted access to his cash reserves, and they would, his people would be more than happy to issue him a brand new passport and a one way plane ticket.

  Smiling, he never heard the shot that thundered across the terraced paddies.

  “Target down,” Nikita said, racking the bolt on his sniper rifle.

  Twenty Five

  “We are entering an entirely unique period of history, one unlike any era of the past. In the near future, power will be drawn from new centers of gravity, the very idea of the state quickly becoming obsolete. Old mechanisms, old systems of vertical integration, will give way to non-state actors. This will be a complete paradigm shift, not just in the political and economic arenas, but a shift in social dynamics as well. This will be a change in energy itself. Complete deinstitutionalization will take place in the coming decades. As the state bleeds credibility and legitimacy, new centers of population will turn towards the multinational corporate conglomeration, the guerrilla organization, the terrorist group, the privatized army, or other free agents. Crime and war will blur. Citizen and soldier alike will be thrown into direct competition with every single human being on the planet.

  “While the old paradigm will persist deeper into this century, it will become increasingly irrelevant. The old powers still attempt to shape the geopolitical landscape, but this new energy will outpace any monopoly on state violence. While the Global South continues to construct federations to stand against Western influence, a new type of undeclared global insurgency will rise in the place of these old powers.”

  Jarogniew looked up from the podium. The participants seated around the stage were hanging on his every word, large eyes searching for insight from the world's mapmaker.

  “Thank you,” he finished, taking a sip of water as the audience politely applauded, not sure how to respond to the world's subject matter expert on international strategy telling them that their life's work would be crashing down around them in the coming years.

  His words had been frank and candid.

  The former presidential advisor had made his career with brutal honest
y. Some ignored his words, to their detriment. Others just stared in disbelief, convincing themselves that he had not, in fact, meant what he had just said, that somehow they had confused his message.

  Shaking themselves back to reality, Council on Foreign Relations members lined up to ask questions. Jarogniew set down his glass of water, nodding at the little worm of a man at the front of the line.

  “My question,” he said, clearing his throat, “is that as we find our way forward, what are the main challenges we face in creating this new style of global governance?”

  “Yes, the main challenge we face in achieving this goal is the global political awakening that is now taking place. While in the past only the elites were permitted into certain intellectual circles and given a say in society, we are now in a time of advanced communications technology that allows individuals to attain a level of connectivity like we have never seen before.

  “Only the elites participated in the first Renaissance, knowledge such as philosophy and mathematics was a carefully guarded secret, restricted to Pythagorean cults and the like in more ancient times. Today nearly everyone has access to every single word ever written, and ideas propagate much faster today, whereas a mental reshuffling would require a hundred years during the Middle Ages.

  “This leads to human beings the world over casting aside their previous status of political inertness, now becoming awakened, activated, and joining in a struggle for a new type of personal freedom or an older kind of ethnic self-determination. This awakening triggers social turbulence that transcends sovereign borders and is the most significant threat to the construction of global governance.”

  “Uh,” the suited man stammered, “thank you.”

  Most of them thought they understood what he was saying.