by Devon Ford
“Jake,” said a voice softly from behind him, “we’re being followed.”
Jake froze and lowered his body weight instinctively on hearing the news. “Where?” he asked inadequately, when what he wanted to know were the answers to a dozen questions to correctly identify the threat and formulate the appropriate and accountable response.
“Two behind, hanging back,” came Sebastian’s voice, the smooth concierge showing an even more surprising skill-set with each minute that passed. “Keep moving slowly.”
Jake resumed their cautious advance at the previous pace, his inherent obedience to receiving orders from senior ranks so ingrained that he didn’t hesitate for a second. Not that he felt Sebastian was a senior rank, but something in the man’s voice said he knew what he was doing, and moreover made Jake really believe it, so he did as he was told after making a mental note to ask why a hotel manager was seemingly trained in night operations.
“Keep moving,” Sebastian said in the same low voice for the others to hear. “In a while they will probably block us in from the front and then try to rob us,” he told them, hearing an alarmed noise from the traumatized Louise between Cal and Jake. Jake swallowed on hearing the words. He knew about the gang activity in Central Park to some degree, but being stationed miles—and in a tightly packed place like Manhattan a couple of miles was an eternity in terms of people and crime statistics—away from it down in the One-Three, he rarely needed the information. Plus, there was also a task force set up for that kind of thing when it rolled around as flavor of the month for the brass to throw overtime at.
Jake could imagine the CompStat meetings held at 1 Police Plaza, or 1PP as they liked to abbreviate it, where crime statistics were fed to a room full of brass and overtime budgets were thrown back casually as though money could prevent crime.
He changed his mind about his earlier decision not to give Louise a weapon, and took away the hand with the flashlight to unsnap the fastening of the compact 9mm under his left arm. Holding it out behind him to Louise he whispered, “Know how to use this?”
“Yes,” she answered, taking the small gun and nestling it in her hand. A tense minute and a half later, Sebastian muttered two last instructions and then disappeared.
“Keep moving,” he said, “and don’t hit the flashlight until I call it.” Then he was gone.
~
Muscle rolled his thick neck on his shoulders, put on his meanest game face, and stepped out to block the path. He could see them approaching, not clearly but more a sense of darker shadows moving amongst the dark shadows. Once more he saw the glint of reflection ahead, telling him that the gun was there and it would soon be his. Then he would be taken seriously. What he didn’t see was any reflection from the black polymer of the three Glocks in the shadows ahead. Had he known, he would have hunted easier prey.
~
Just as a shadow ahead stepped out and partially sky lined itself on a slight incline, so too did the two followers pick up their pace to pen in the others. Sebastian, silently tucking himself into the foliage to his left and standing stock still with his breath held, felt the two pass right by him without ever knowing he was there. He slipped out and followed the unaware marauders on practiced feet, enjoying the adrenaline more than he thought he would. Sebastian Hill, remembering a life he tried so hard to escape and one he had promised, literally on pain of death, never to return to, suddenly found himself wondering why the hell he had ever retired. Hearing and sensing the inevitable confrontation ahead, he stalked forwards and struck twice, felling the two children with savage blows to their hoodie-covered skulls. Melting back into the undergrowth, he silently circled back around with a smile on his face which bordered on evil.
~
“Hand over everything,” Muscle demanded confidently, flexing his upper body autonomously even though his intended victims wouldn’t be able to see him sufficiently to fully appreciate the spectacle. A rustling to their right snatched their attention as two more figures emerged from the bushes, both brandishing reflective strips of sharp metal in their hands, held low but menacingly.
“Put your weapons down and step back,” Jake told them in the unmistakable tone of voice of an eager cop. “Do it now and you can walk.”
Muscle chuckled, a theatrical show of confidence which he actually felt, and sucked his teeth. He knew that people, especially cops, lived by rules. He felt free of rules and this empowered him, made him confident that he would easily triumph in this conflict even though he had literally brought a knife to a gunfight.
Jake drew in a breath to issue his next, and final, ultimatum when Sebastian struck. “Now!” he called, prompting Jake to hit the flashlight’s switch with his thumb and cast a blinding light straight into the face of the one directly in his path.
Sebastian had worked around, smelled, and sensed the two others lurking in wait, and held his breath for them to spring their rudimentary trap. As he stepped forward and called out to Jake, he brought the butt of his weapon down onto the base of the skull of the man closest. The second one responded quicker than he expected, but he still had no chance.
He didn’t realize this, because he was a young thug; full of the exuberance of angry youth and lawlessness, but with none of the calm confidence of experience and training. He was six feet from Sebastian, which was too far away to close the distance and stab him before he could fire, and too close to have any other options. His only chance of surviving the ambush was to surrender, but he failed to grasp that. The instant he made a move, Sebastian put two rounds dead center into his chest and killed him. He turned his attention to the one in front, who still had his hands up to shield his eyes from the bright light, and took three fast steps toward him. Sebastian kicked him brutally between the legs, which would have felled almost every person, man or woman, but it had the simple effect of doubling him over. Sebastian brought the gun down where his skull met his neck, but the exaggerated muscles of his upper back prevented the full effect from knocking him out. The second blow brought the huge youth to his knees, one hand on the tarmac of the path to steady himself.
“Come on!” Sebastian told them urgently, prompting the other three to follow. They ran, eager to put distance between themselves and the failed street robbery, with the bouncing beam of Jake’s flashlight lighting their way. They didn’t stop until they were forced to when Louise stumbled and fell in the dark, then they were forced to slow their pace.
~
Far behind them, having heard the shots and homing in on the sound like predators in the dark, two black-clad infiltrators found the three unconscious, one dead, and one injured youths on the park.
“Where did they go?” one asked the hugely muscled boy still gasping for breath.
“Go fuck yourself,” he replied bravely, still believing that pure aggression and hostility were the only weapons at his disposal.
The man standing over him wasted no more time on questions, simply drew a bead on the likely path of his quarry and turned to put a single round into the heads of the entire crew at his feet.
RUN
AND HIDE
Saturday 2:50 a.m. - Greenbrier Mountain, WV
Troy’s unit touched down at the moth-balled forward operating base in the Allegheny Mountains in the dark; their expert pilots executed the maneuvers flawlessly using night vision. Troy had been there once with Chalky, travelling there in one of their dedicated Black Hawk helicopters and escorting a small flight of Chinooks, all weighted down with underslung loads. Whilst the Black Hawks could land easily on the artificially flattened earth, the Chinooks were too large to set down so had to hover whilst they took turns to cut away their cargo straps.
The location was not a new project. In fact, it harked back from even before the very beginnings of the Cold War, and was intended as a command bunker in the event of a nuclear attack. Whilst the enemy had changed drastically since then, the threat of nuclear annihilation had only ever grown in intensity, especially as Middle Eastern count
ries had since acquired their own nuclear arsenals. Not to mention the alarming amount of radioactive material which was unaccounted for since the fall of the iron curtain. The existence of a bunker in those mountains was not a state secret; in fact, the original cold war era bunker had been decommissioned and was now a novelty hotel, but the public never knew of the other base nestled into the dark hills.
Troy and a few other commanders of elite groups of specialists were read-in on certain contingency plans. They were all on code-word standby to drop everything they were doing and get their teams there with as much ammo as they could carry. Inside there was space for almost a hundred personnel. The base was buried deep into the very mountainside and had been excavated in parts over the last thirty years, as the emergency base was extended and refitted for various upgrades.
There were also vast stores held inside: MREs, munitions, telecoms suites, as well as huge fuel reservoirs and maintenance equipment to keep their birds in the air. The way the flattened helicopter pad had been created showed very little sign from any aerial surveillance and each helicopter could be covered with folding canopies. One by one the helicopters set down and shut down their engines as they disgorged their crew and passengers. Most of the operators, typical amongst their kind, had fallen back to sleep during the ride there but now came awake without any issues.
“Inside, grab a rack, find the briefing room in ten,” Troy announced when the last sounds from the winding down engines had faded away. “Valdez, Farrell, get on overwatch. I’ll fill you in later.” The two teammates, inseparable at the best of times, nodded their assent.
Troy heard a muttered, “Oohrah” in stereo as the two trotted away to their assigned duty, which he translated into his own vernacular in his head. Commanding a team of mixed forces produced a lot of interesting cultural differences, and the oohrah/hooah debate between the army and the marines was a constant one which took a predictable turn when their resident SEAL piped up to offer his opinion on the matter.
Valdez, one of two trained and experienced snipers under his command, was a stone-cold killer who also had a passion for drawing landscapes in pencil; the pastime offering a stark contrast to his profession but also an insight into his love and deeply intrinsic knowledge of terrain. Farrell, his fellow United States Marine Corps recruit and friend, mocked his ability to find routes over open ground by telling others he had been a Coyote bringing illegals over the Mexican border. Valdez was from Houston, but that never stopped Farrell telling the story. He operated a big support weapon which he carried with ease, despite its incredible weight and his slight stature. Farrell operated as Valdez’s eyes and protection detail, and between the two of them they had probably taken the lives of more insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan than the decorated heroes Joe Public heard about. They didn’t do what they did for fame, but because it was their job. Pure and simple.
Troy walked inside, leaving the aviators of SOAR running out the camouflage net canopies to cover their aircraft. Just as the operators of Endeavor cared for their weapons first, the 160th maintained their aircraft before themselves. He threw his ruck on the closest cot in the closest rack in the room nearest the ops center before pulling dust sheets off the table in the briefing room. As he did so under the weak glow of the emergency lighting, which had come on automatically when the main door had been opened, the main lighting came online. Troy smiled to himself knowing that Dillon, the team’s proud tech geek, would have taken it upon himself to find the main power grid and fire it up. The bunker was powered by a generator as a backup, but one of the last changes to have been made was to reroute the entire power grid from a small hydro-electric plant submerged in the Greenbrier River. The facility, although officially decommissioned, was in fact a multi-billion-dollar project and one of the American military’s best kept secrets.
A boot scuff behind him made him turn, and he found Chalky in the doorway of the windowless room. A puff of renewed air circulation dropped the temperature by a couple degrees as the airflow kicked up a gear to provide enough clean air for the bunker to support live bodies.
“So …” Master Sergeant White said to him, waiting for the personal response to their mission before the official line was given to the team.
“Yeah,” Troy said tiredly, adjusting his weapon, and sitting heavily, kicking up a small cloud of dust, “the shit has well and truly hit the fan, my friend.”
“We’re expecting more though, right?” Chalky asked him hopefully, meaning both in troops and information.
“Three of the standby teams on call to come here were at Bragg,” Troy told him, meaning that they had lost close to a combined thousand years’ worth of fighting experience in one go with the loss of the other teams like theirs along with their air support. “But we’re supposed to be getting two Apaches from somewhere. ETA within the hour.”
That was welcome news to Chalky’s ears, after the crushing blow of discovering their 25 percent now had to act as the 100 percent they originally expected. There was almost nothing quite as lethal on the battlefield than a Boeing AH-64 Apache, and the chances of being supported by two of them to add to their strength would give them an incredible edge over any adversary.
“Well, shit …” Chalky said before he puffed out his cheeks and blew out the air slowly. “I’ll go find us some coffee.” He walked out of the room, leaving Troy alone with his thoughts.
Five minutes later, having been hailed on the secure satphone from a pair of death-dealing air-sharks which hurtled toward their position hugging the terrain at close to 180 mph, he told his extended team to settle in until they arrived. He gulped down his second cup of coffee and took a lap of the main areas, finding the various members of his elite squad busying themselves with equipment or tech, and finding that their additional ammo cache had been carried to the closest armory. The screaming whine of four turboshaft engines penetrated the bunker, and he walked to the door to feel more than watch the angular aircraft settle down on the flat surface. Both aircraft were fully manned, with each pilot and co-pilot occupying their own sealed cockpit, and he watched through the thin moonlight as four men, scratch that, he thought, three men and one woman, based on how the hips of the first pilot swung, all walked toward him. He greeted them on the threshold, seeing that each of them only carried a small pack which would contain their emergency survival equipment. All of them wore M9 pistols similar to his own on their chests, and all of them had clearly abandoned sleep at a moment’s notice when they got the call.
“You must be Gardner,” said the man in the lead who had occupied the front seat of the second helicopter. “Colonel Simon, air force,” he said introducing himself and offered a hand before turning to his other pilots. “Captains Rogers and Harley.” Two men nodded to him, one bearing the call sign ‘Buck’ on his helmet. “Major Healey, army,” he said, indicating at last the hip swinger. Troy shook hands with them in turn, noticing the Ranger patch on Healey’s flight suit and trying not to raise his eyebrows. He was no misogynist, in fact he appreciated a fighting woman more than most, but finding, especially in this sudden shit storm, a young female army major who had successfully attended ranger school was something of a rarity. It was commonplace for advanced-trained aircrew to train as infantry, given their close working relationships with the SF guys on the ground and their likelihood of being shot down in places less than hospitable. Also uncommon was the makeup of mixed arms helicopter crews. Troy assumed they were part of a cross-training exercise when they got the call.
“I’m Gardner, call me Troy,” he told them. “Grab a coffee and meet in the briefing room when you’re set. Empty bunks down the corridor to your left.” They filed inside, loosening their tight flight suits and removing helmets as they passed him.
~
“Okay, so you’re all clued up as much as I am with the exception of some bad news,” Troy told the twenty-two people present; a few too many for the briefing room leaving a few guys standing. Not counting the two he had standing guard
, this was his entire force, but as small as it was, it was certainly formidable. “Fort Bragg was hit by an ICBM, with an expected total loss. Three teams of SF which should have come here won’t be coming at all.” That news hung heavy in the room. The faces of his team registered the facts with anger, processed it, and set it aside to use later. It was clear from the reactions of the Apache crews that they already knew this, but some of the pilots and crew of the 160th cracked at the news.
“We are waiting for orders and intelligence for counterstrikes, but until such time as we are deployed our mission is to sit tight and wait.” He held up both hands to stay the barrage of protests he knew would come. “I know, I hate that shit just as much as everyone here, but it’s what we’re going to do. Any questions?” By telling them that they now had to sit on their asses and wait to be set on something to kill, he expected few questions.
“Command element and reinforcements?” Dillon asked from a seat near the front.
“Unknown on any other personnel,” Troy said, “and command elements are still in play from unknown locations. Comms via satphone and squad net, which I need you to re-encrypt and rotate. Assume we are compromised by any other means of communication, got it?” They did, so Troy dismissed them, knowing that they would do whatever tasks were necessary without orders.
“Jackson, Miller,” Chalky called out making two men stop and turn, “relieve Valdez and Farrell. Send them to me for the brief.” The two men acknowledged their orders and left.
