The recessed entrance remained dark, but an immense tree lay lengthwise next to it. Above, the snow had been cleared away from a sizable fissure left by the tree’s tumble to the ground. Light dimly illuminated the rim of the hole. Back to Hadrian. Eric spotted him coming up the east side, using the row of bushes as a screen from the house. Eric dialed back the scope’s magnification in time to catch flickering in the light coming from the hole. He double tapped the illuminator as a figure emerged.
Fifty meters away, Hadrian froze. Eric lit up the man as he climbed out of the hole with the narrow beam. A few seconds later, the bright dot of an IR laser appeared on the side of the new arrival’s head.
“I don’t care what if you found that stash or not, David, either she’s mine next, or you are,” the figure shouted into the hole before continuing down the outside slope and following the path the drunk had earlier around the north side of the house.
Eric frowned as the man disappeared from view. As he shifted position, something snapped in the woods to the west. Slewing the rifle into the wind, he twisted the scope’s magnification knob as the woods in front of him lit up.
“Fuck, Frank, that’d better not be you!” someone shouted amongst the trees, surprised. Partially concealed by trees, a person jerked their hand up to shield their eyes from the brightness.
Eye glued to the scope, Eric’s right hand slowly snaked out and retrieved the detonator. In his scope the forest before him glared like someone had lit a spotlight. The naked eye saw only darkness. The light vanished. Straining to listen to snippets of faint conversation, Eric panned back and forth. Several figures moved through the trees, spread out in line abreast. NVGs. Armed. Eric thumbed the detonator to channel one.
Clad in mostly animal furs, an armed figure slowed, and then came to a halt, looking at the ground. What’s he looking at? The figure bent over. Snow cascaded in neat lines away from the figure as he pulled a cord up from the snow. Eric squeezed the detonator.
With a sudden wallop followed by a torrent of angry buzzing, the forest disappeared behind a cloud of flying debris. Holy shit! As Eric blinked away the flash, echoes of the explosion bouncing off the surrounding mountains joined the pops and cracks of falling trees. Eerie stillness reigned scant moments before a pained moan broke the silence. Eric pulled the rifle to his shoulder as the wind shifted away from him.
“Frank! The fuck was that?” Eric heard someone yell from the bunker’s direction. Movement, someone attempting a running stumble to the bunker, caught his eye. Before Eric could put the man in his crosshairs, a pair of muffled pops came from Hadrian’s last known direction. The man he presumed was Frank tumbled into the snow. Hadrian advanced toward the fallen tree, weapon at the ready.
Another figure in furs scrabbled out of the hole above the bunker. Eric’s rifle bucked against his shoulder, softer than expected. A patch of snow behind the figure sprayed into the air, brief sparks from the ricochet amplified into a burst of green-white. Fuck. A white dot appeared on the figure’s chest as it brought its weapon up. Two soft pops and the figure staggered and fell back into the hole. The wind shifted again.
“Come on out!” Hadrian shouted, glancing between the hole and the north side of the house.
“Fuck you!” a male inside the bunker yelled back.
“Fuck me? Really? How about fuck you?” Hadrian said as he brought his arm back. His grenade bounced just short of the hole and arced inside. Earth and snow fountained from the hole, snuffing the illumination.
“You still there, buddy?” Hadrian shouted and lobbed another grenade into the hole as he finished. Eric winced at the report moments later. The pattering of debris tapered off. Save for a solitary wail from the woods to the west, the night was silent again.
Hadrian swung around the tree, and pushed up the hill, pausing just below the lip of the hole to glance back at Eric. The commando’s hand hovered over another grenade momentarily before he shrugged, and inched forward. Peering over the edge, Hadrian stepped up, rifle aimed at the impromptu entrance.
With a deep blast, sudden light washed out the scope. Through his other eye, Eric saw Hadrian lit in brilliant white light from below in an instant of illumination. A second boom, firearm not explosive, followed and Hadrian staggered back before toppling backwards down the hill. Oh shit! A figure in ratty camouflage skipped to the top of the hole, and racked his shotgun as he cleared the rise.
Eric’s rifle bucked. The figure jerked to a halt and lurched to face Eric. Eric squeezed the trigger again and his target fell bonelessly back into the hole. Staring at the dark pattern spattered across the monochrome snow behind where the figure had stood, Eric grit his teeth. Hadrian writhed in the snow not far below. Fuck.
Eric repeated his new mantra and bit back the urge to yell at Hadrian. Nobody knows where I’m at. Stay quiet. Breathing approaching normal, Eric noticed the moaning from the woods had ceased. Nothing but the faint stirring wind competed with Hadrian’s quieting groans.
Eric pulled his monocle down and peered toward the wood now that the snow and dust had settled. Shattered and whittled into nests of spikes by Hadrian’s light show, shorn stumps poked through fallen foliage. Several of the thicker pines, thick gouges in their trunks and lower reaches stripped bare, leaned precariously against their upright neighbors. A squirrel scrabbled atop a shattered trunk and chattered angrily.
Unexpected movement as he scanned the area around the house brought his eye back to the bunker. What? Hadrian had sat up and retrieved his rifle. The commando shoved the monocle on his helmet up and angrily shook his head. He then deliberately dragged himself back up the slope leaving specks of darkness in the snow as he went. The man slithered to the lip of the hole and pointed his rifle inward. What’s he doing? Hell, what should I be doing?
Several long seconds passed before Hadrian rolled on his side and gave a quick wave. Eric glanced at the woods and gathered the detonator along with his spare magazines. He rose from the hide and hustled across the landing field in a low trot.
Without taking his eye off the hole, Hadrian tapped the snow by him as Eric rounded the tree.
“Well, we’re good and fucked now,” the commando growled in a pained voice the moment Eric dropped to a knee. “There’s at least three more in there. One female, possibly not hostile. Two males, definitely hostile. My NVGs got smoked by that asshole with the shotgun, can’t see for shit. Spalling, probably. I’ll be worse than useless inside where it’s actually dark. We can’t afford to wait these assholes out. You remember what was on the manifest. If any of the hostiles are familiar with explosives, we’re just giving them time to leave surprises. I won’t lie, this is a fantastically stupid idea but we’re out of options. You ready to go say hi?”
The snowy air’s chill settled into Eric’s gut and his mouth went dry. Eric swallowed a few times before giving Hadrian a cautious nod, hoping he didn’t show any outward fear.
“Good kid. Swap rifles,” Hadrian told him. In the exchange Eric noticed dark liquid dripping from the commando’s beard onto the ground and the front of the man’s tattered camouflage.
Blood?
“Don’t worry about me, you’ve got this. Treat this a bit like we did the cabin, but slow and quiet, not loud and fast. Watch your corners, keep an eye out for tripwires and traps. Shoot first, shoot straight.”
Swapping in a fresh magazine, Eric sighed. This is so fucked. He lightly squeezed the two pressure pads on the foregrip, avoiding the third for the visible light. Illuminator and laser, still work. Chewing his lip, Eric closed his eyes and mouthed a soft prayer.
“Give ‘em hell,” Hadrian whispered as Eric stood.
Before moving, Eric considered the enormous divot before him. A pair of bodies lay sprawled half way down the hole, the two he and Hadrian had shot earlier. A metal wall lined the far side of the hole’s depths. The remains of a cloth sheet stirred weakly over a narrow rent in the wall. Bits of plastic and glass mixed with twisted shards of metal, pieces of an electr
ic lantern, lay strewn in front of the opening.
Each careful step sent an electric shiver through his feet on the way over the corpses in the gap. Two hostiles. Each breath filled his lungs with acrid tang, blood and burnt explosives. Just like the cabin, but completely different. Shit, I’m going to get shot. There’s no way I won’t. He paused at the tear in the wall and willed the whirlwind of thoughts and worries away. None of that helps. I either know what I’m doing or I don’t. Worry is going to get me killed sure as just standing here doing nothing. Eric pushed through the tatters of the cloth, every hair standing on end.
His heart beat insistently in his ears as he scanned the darkness. Several meters to his left, the passageway ended in the back of the bunker door. An access panel hung open on the inside, a rat’s nest of wires dangling. A variety of crates lined both sides of the passageway with barely enough space between them for a forklift. Most of the crates bore signs of tampering. Lids had been pried off, corners smashed in, and contents scattered. Eric frowned as he crept through a field of scattered ration pack wrappers and sealed bandages that had been tossed on the floor. Ahead of him a sizable archway loomed.
No noise. Noise is death. Quiet, quiet, quiet. Wait, listen. Is that breathing? No, whimpering. That, that is breathing. Where?
Sparks of white flickered through the monochrome before him, the monocle emitted a barely audible high frequency whine. Not enough light. Eric squeezed the illuminator’s pad as he slinked through the archway. He barely noticed the whine stopped as the enormity of the complex hit him.
He stood at the east wall of the complex. To his left, a maze of crates, broken into like those in the entryway, filled the space. No sound came from the scattered detritus clogging the maze. In the monocle, a weak, unsteady glow lit the southwest corner, casting wandering shadows from the far side of the maze. Visibly, however, the dark remained unbroken.
Ahead, the concrete dropped away. A thick diamond-patterned metal walkway covered the gap, leading to a large, open air elevator mounted into the wall. A sizable gantry spanned the space over the elevator. Eric counted five concrete levels below him, all densely stacked with crates, boxes, and equipment. Great, clearing this is going to be hell. Fuck my life.
Eric jerked, bringing his rifle to bear at sudden movement that vanished amongst the crates. He swallowed. Rifle pointed at the crates, he stepped sideways onto the grating and edged his way to the north wall.
“Shhh! Shut up!” Eric heard someone hoarsely whisper from the maze. “I thought I heard something.”
Brilliant white light lit up the entryway far behind him. Eric pivoted without thinking, bringing the rifle to bear on a head poking out above the crates. His finger tightened. And then a burst of an earlier conversation with Hadrian over tactics shot through his head. Patience. They don’t know I’m here. Eric’s reticle stayed riveted to the man’s face as the intruder searched the entrance area with his light. He took his finger off the trigger. Soon.
Eric glanced at the crates nearest to him. Behind cover. Flank them.
“Private, turn off that light. I told you don’t use it until we know someone’s there,” a new voice snapped, a slight slur marring an accent remarkably similar to Byron’s Svoboda identity.
“But, Sarge,” the man with the light protested.
Eric recognized incipient panic in the man’s voice while rounding another crate in the maze. He moved as fast as he could silently manage, stepping over and around empty wrappers, discarded cases, and general trash. The closer he got to the voices, the more trash and other items littered the floor, the more gaps in the crating. They’ve taken crates out of here. They had to have. Got to be more of them, and not all here. More than the guys I blew up in the woods.
“Don’t but me, Private. Shut your hole and keep listening. Taylor, how’s that charge coming along?”
“Trying to not blow us up, Sarge. I need light if you want this done faster,” a third voice replied as Eric came to a corner.
Close. Last row. Eric risked a peek around the crate. The interlopers had cleared out a sizable area in the back corner of the maze. Trash littered the edges of the space with a row of sleeping bags arranged around the embers of a dying campfire.
The guy with the light, skinny and no older than eighteen, knelt at the edge of a set of crates looking out at the entrance. The rifle in his right hand shook visibly. A second man sat with a rifle in his lap and his back against the crates a row over from the first. He picked a pistol off the floor next to him, pulled back the slide as he eyed the chamber, and sat it back down.
“I didn’t ask for complaints; I asked for status, Corporal.”
“Got maybe a quarter of one row rigged. Gimme a minute and I’ll have enough patched together to set the rest of this place off with it.”
Right around the corner from me. Eric edged forward, holding his breath. The third man stood a handful of meters away, focused inserting plugs into small blocks inside the open crate before him. Wires dangled down from the crate in a mass that jiggled as the man worked, but the wires ended only in bare metal. Not wireless, no detonator yet. Eric palmed a grenade and began to tug it free.
“You think it’s Caledonian commandos?” the kid whispered.
The sergeant grit his teeth. “Dostov, watch the doorway or I’ll shoot you myself and save them the trouble. And no, it’s not Caledonian commandos. Either we’d be dead by now or they would.”
“Besides which, how would they get here?” their explosives expert quipped. “If they’re here, they’re just as fucked as we are.”
One of the sleeping bags moved, a faint whimper came from within. The sergeant grimaced and checked his pistol again before scuttling over to the bag.
Pressing the muzzle against the fabric, the sergeant’s whisper dripped anger, “I said be quiet, Confed whore. One more peep, you hear me?”
Eric stayed his hand. No grenades. Protect the innocent. One of me, three of them, I need--The label on the half open crate next to him caught his eye and Eric smiled. That will do. Keeping an eye on the three, Eric fished a slim cylinder with octagonal end-caps from the crate and inched back the way he came. Grenade, distraction, delay one second. Just what I needed.
Eric steadied himself, forcing his breathing to even out. He pulled the pin. Loud and fast it is. The grenade clinked as it bounced off the floor around the corner. A deafening bang strobed the makeshift living space with bright white light.
Time slowed to a crawl as he lurched around the corner, and the ringing in his ears faded to a barely audible drone. The explosives expert cringed in slow motion, and began to look up just as Eric slammed the stock of his rifle into the man’s face. He tumbled languidly away, specks of blood arcing from his nose.
A flash lit the darkness to his right. Eric struggled vainly to turn. More flashes. And another, this one illuminated the kid as they both spun about. Brass cartridges cartwheeled away from the other kid’s rifle while it kicked, spitting its deadly payload indiscriminately. The sergeant sat between them staring into space as Eric swung his reticle to the private’s center of mass. The trigger felt like he was squeezing an iron plate. With no report, the rifle gently shoved back against his shoulder and a copper streak arced towards the panicking gunman. He pulled the trigger again. And again as he watched the kid’s bolt cycling back and forth to kick out yet more brass. Sparks skipped across the floor. Wood boxes splintered as neat black holes appeared in them. The kid’s spin turned into an uncontrolled fall and the rifle leapt from his hands.
The sergeant blinked and scrabbled to stand. Eric stepped forward, planted his boot, and kicked with the other. Time lurched back to normal speed as his boot connected to the sergeant’s head, sending the man back to the floor. Eric kicked the sergeant’s weapons away from him. Panting, he staggered back several steps, avoiding the convulsing sleeping bag.
“Stay on the ground! Stay on the ground!” he yelled, barely making out his own voice over the ringing in his ears. He jerke
d his weapon several times between the two men he hadn’t shot before realizing the sergeant was clearly unconscious. Off to the side, the private laid at an awkward angle in a growing pool of blood. The young man’s upper body twitched as he gurgled and he went still.
As the hammering in Eric’s chest slowed, the corporal shuddered and began to sit up in a panic. Eric squeezed the pad his fore grip and his weapon light caught the corporal in a blinding beam. Eric hissed, “Stay on the ground.”
The man recoiled and threw a hand up to shield his eyes from the beam.
“Ground it is, boss,” he said.
“How many more of you are here?” Eric asked.
“We’re it.”
Eric’s skin started to crawl. Something was looking at him. He brought his rifle up toward the entryway without thinking. Hadrian staggered under the intense beam from Eric’s light, bringing his free hand up from the shotgun he carried. The man’s beard glistened with blood.
“Fuck, son, that’s bright. Mind pointing it somewhere else?” Hadrian muttered.
“Sorry,” Eric replied as the commando gingerly moved toward him.
“Don’t apologize. Good reactions keep you alive. Did I make some sort of noise?”
“No? Just felt like something was there.”
Hadrian gave a pained smile. “That’s a good sixth sense to have. So, what do we have here? Prisoners? Can’t say I was expecting that.”
“Shit,” the corporal muttered.
“Someone rattle your cage?” Hadrian asked the man. “Spit it out.”
“Dostov was right. Caledonian commandos.”
“Oh, heard of us have you? Good. That will make what’s coming easier.”
“What? What’s coming?” the corporal asked.
“Oh, you know, lad,” Hadrian replied. Blood dripping down his beard gave his toothy grin an unnerving quality. “You know.”
By Dawn's Early Light Page 26
