by A. R. Shaw
Chapter 42 Eyes Aglow
Each person knew his or her position and responsibility. And each knew that, above all else, this wouldn’t be easy. What Graham didn’t expect was the sheer number of enemy soldiers descending upon their location.
Dalton kept his eyes on the screens and the five reaper operators at the same time. They all sat or stood wherever they felt most comfortable. His main priority was to keep them safe as they battled the enemy less than six hundred feet from their position. If the enemy gained on them, he’d hustle them out of there fast.
With night vision goggles over their eyes, they adapted to each camera and the controllers in their hands. Dalton watched each move, toggle, and fire his or her assigned reaper. In doing so, he kept track of each operator’s progress through his own video feed. Five tree-affixed machine guns made a hell of a racket, and in an instant Dalton was back in the bedlam of Afghanistan.
He sat in his chair with one eye on the operators and the other on the monitors.
“One, go left. Don’t let them flank,” he said.
“I’m . . . trying,” McCann said.
“You’ve got a hundred rounds each. Make them count,” Dalton reminded them, spinning back to the monitors. They had no way of knowing how many there were. A Humvee appeared in the background as several assailants rushed for cover behind it when reaper number 3, Tala, yelled, “You goddamn cowards, come back here!”
“That’s right, Tala, keep after them!” Dalton cried. “Remember, this isn’t a video game. This is for real. Their guns are real, and if we let them through, we’re in trouble.”
Rick held his position on the right flank, but their numbers were increasing. A thicket of trees held cover for several, and the rapid fire of the number 1 gun rarely ceased.
“Talk to me, Rick,” Dalton said.
“Can’t. Busy now,” Rick said, his attention fully fixated on the killing task at hand. He was sweating, and Dalton began to worry that his friend wouldn’t be able to keep them back.
Seven to ten jihadists slipped past Rick’s reaper using their comrades for shields. “You fuckers!” Rick yelled, turning his reaper in their direction, heading right for Sam’s position.
“Sam! Take cover!” Dalton warned.
Rick shot down the first three, only to have the last two do the same thing others had done before, using the dead bodies of their brothers to shield themselves before they slipped behind the trees.
“Sam, you’re up. Three o’clock,” Dalton advised.
“Copy,” Sam said.
Rick had returned to his position, taking down as many as he could. He had slightly less than half of his hundred tracer bullets left to go when they showed how bad his aim was and revealed that the reaper was about to shake itself apart completely from the rapid-fire invasion. He continued to expel as many lethal shots as possible to make up for the numbers and account for the recoil, but at some point reaper number 5 ceased to work at all. “Fuck it,” Rick said, pulling it off.
“Number 4, hand yours to Rick,” Dalton said.
Dalton knew Clarisse had no problem tossing her controller over to Rick; she was capable of doing this work, but she was needed elsewhere. She pulled off her NVGs, and the dim light of the media tent momentarily blinded her. She blinked several times, and Dalton tipped his chin over to McCann. He’d noticed a blossoming bloodstain on the young man’s shirt, but there was no time to deal with examining a wound now. The tension in the tent could not be more profound.
“Clarisse, be a runner. I need to know how far Reuben is on the evac,” Dalton said.
She turned and left right away while the chaos outside continued.
“Sam, status,” Dalton asked.
“Oh, they’re done. Working up with the ceased number 5. They’re starting to come through there. I can do this all day, but I only have so much ammo, Dalton.”
“Graham?” Dalton asked.
“There are too many of them,” Graham said.
Then an explosion rocked the ground. The four remaining Reaper controllers all braced their footing.
“What the hell was that? Report!” Dalton yelled.
“Fucking mortar!” Dutch yelled over the din of war. “On fire, too. Pull back!”
“Incoming!” Graham broke in, shouting. The ground rocked again.
“Graham!” Tala yelled. “Graham!” She whipped off her NVGs and ran for the door. Dalton caught her just in time for yet another mortar round impact. He covered her body as she fell to the ground.
“Fall back!” Dalton ordered as Clarisse arrived and helped Dalton and Tala up. Reuben appeared with their own Humvee, and Rick pushed all the operators out of the burning tent and into the vehicle.
“McCann, go with Rick. Retrieve the others!” Dalton ordered.
Tala cried, and Clarisse held her. “Come on, Dalton,” Clarisse implored him.
Dalton cut his eyes away from her and closed the door. Pounding the metal twice, he nodded to Reuben, who floored it. Clarisse’s scream faded with his name as he turned toward the fire. Dalton’s silhouette stood out against the flames as he pulled out his pistol with one hand and a long knife with the other.
Chapter 43 Let’s Roll
“Tala!” Clarisse yelled, holding the sobbing woman by the shoulders and shaking her to get her attention as Reuben raced away. Then she whispered, “I’m going back. Give me your gun and extra magazines. If we don’t return, take care of Addy and the boys for me.”
Tears streamed down Tala cheeks. She glanced quickly at the back of Reuben’s head and nodded, handing Clarisse her pistol. Lucy handed over hers, as well as the NVGs she happened to have with her. “Get them back,” Tala said.
“I will,” she said and hugged them both briefly. Then she slyly smiled. She opened her jacket, pulled it down past her shoulders, and tucked her glasses into the inside pocket, and strapped the NVGs to her belt loop. She holstered one of the extra pistols to her thigh and slid the other into the waist of her cargo pants, placing the extra magazines into a leg pocket. She zipped up her jacket and pulled the hood over her head, cinching the straps tightly around her face.
“Reuben!” she commanded, alarmingly loud and clear. She swung open the door of the Humvee and leaned backward, ready to roll for his view. She didn’t give him a chance to make a decision. As soon as he saw what Clarisse was about to do, Reuben automatically began to brake. She glanced quickly at Tala and Lucy one last time, then dove out of the vehicle with her arms protecting her head, spinning with momentum upon the ground. She knelt up on one knee and watched as the Humvee picked up speed again and gained distance.
Clarisse assessed herself quickly for injuries. Detecting no major pain, she pulled her own pistol out of her side holster, checked a magazine, and loaded it into the chamber. She holstered it again, donned the NVGs, and ran into the forest to gain cover and cut through the woods toward the gunshots and the growing blaze. The closer she got, the more her vision began to fail. The NVGs were too bright and her eyes watered, so she tore them off and secured them to her belt loop.
It was time. She’d been trained along with all the others in tactical maneuvers, and it was time to tap that training. Shadows passed before the blaze. Many were wearing traditional wear. Some wore commando gear. Her mission was to locate the guys and get them the hell out of there. She knew Dalton wouldn’t last long—especially not in his condition.
A shadow passed too close to her, and Clarisse dove for cover behind a tree. The barracks were now fully ablaze; the enemy were torching everything and beginning to overrun the camp. There had to have been at least a hundred of them when all this started. Then a red pinpoint of light shone on her thigh; she panicked and braced for the shot. It blinked, and she followed the light. It was Sam; he was signaling her. Hiding in a tree, he motioned for her to come to him.
Clarisse ran toward Sam as an assailant yelled something in a foreign language. She felt a shot land near her feet. With her right arm extended and her weapon d
rawn, she hit him twice in the chest, not three feet away. Sam finished him off with a shot to the head as she joined him in the tree.
“Where are they?”
“Dalton’s fine,” Sam said.
“Where is he?”
“Right flank. He’s getting Dutch,” Sam said.
“And McCann?”
“He’s with Rick, getting Graham.”
That’s when she saw the blood as the fire reflected light on Sam’s arm. His hands were covered in it.
“Where are you hit?” she gasped.
“Thigh,” Sam said. She felt his leg, and her hand came away warm and slick. She peeled off her jacket, pulled up her thin cotton T-shirt, and ripped the hemline around it off, pulling it over her head. She stretched the loop of fabric, then tied it around Sam’s leg to stem the flow of blood long enough to keep him conscious.
He grabbed her by the shoulder and growled at her, “Get out of here, Clarisse!”
“Shut up!” Clarisse barked back. “Stay awake, Sam. I’ll find them and send them here to meet you.”
“No,” he said and grabbed her by the sleeve. “They’ll capture you. Don’t you understand what they’re doing?”
She yanked herself free. “Stay awake, Sam. I’ll be right back.” She put her jacket back on over her bloodstained shirt and leaped forward. She’d go for Dalton first. She had to. Taking advantage of the forest, she slunk from tree cover to the dark shadows, ducking in and out of the ravenous light of the blazing camp.
She aimed farther to the right flank, staying in the shadows and springing from one patch of darkness to another. Each step brought her closer to her own demise, but she went there willingly. To kill them if she could. She wanted to kill them. To murder, maim, and annihilate those whose own selfishness had destroyed not only a nation but also humanity itself.
With gun drawn, Clarisse headed toward the increasing gunfire to the right of the camp. At the next rise, around the former mess hall, she came across a dead assailant who she assumed had succumbed to Dalton’s handiwork and retrieved his automatic rifle a few feet away. Slinging the weapon over her back by its strap, she ran on toward the action.
Two aggressors came around the corner, and she shot the first one in the head at point-blank range with her right hand drawn across her body. She calculated, with swift reasoning, that she had a split second to hit the other one. With the left hand she retrieved the second pistol at her waistband, crossed it under her right arm, and blasted the other guy in the stomach. Then she brought her right arm around to finish him off with a headshot before he came within five feet of her. Without missing a step Clarisse ran on, weapons in both hands. She moved closer to the sounds of war and of murder, knowing she might find one or all of her friends dead by now. She had to recover them. She at least had to try.
“Nooo!”
Clarisse stopped in her tracks. It was Dalton’s agonized voice, followed by a barrage of gunfire more intense than before. She continued toward his location, terrified of what she might find.
She could no longer even register the sounds of battle—they were too intense—and came around the right end of the guard shack to see Dalton, kneeling behind a Jeep so riddled with bullets that before long the shield it provided would became a trap.
Dalton fired on a group to the left of his position. Clarisse searched for Dutch, but he was nowhere in sight. Five men fired at Dalton while another loaded what looked to Clarisse like a rocket launcher. She aimed for that one. She had to buy some time to run in the open to Dalton, twenty yards away, and get him the hell out of there. She wasn’t certain he could stand by the way he knelt against the Jeep. She couldn’t waste any more time; she had to get him out now.
Clarisse holstered the pistols and pulled the newly acquired rifle around to her chest. She checked the load, shoved the stock into her shoulder, and aimed the rifle at the man with the rocket launcher, following the line of his arm to directly target the rocket launcher’s ordnance. The shot she fired exploded the round within the chamber, killing the operator and two others standing nearby with a great blast. It was enough of a diversion to run the twenty yards in the open to get to Dalton’s position, and Clarisse ran before she had a split second to convince herself otherwise.
Dalton stared at the explosion in surprise and then turned behind him as Clarisse barreled toward him. She’d rearmed her right hand with the pistol along the way and fired again at an attacker dressed in white who was aiming at her. Dalton turned his attention to the same assailant, and as the white-robed man went down Clarisse slid into Dalton’s side.
“Clarisse!” Dalton yelled in horror and dismay, and he pushed her down. It barely registered that Dalton was uttering curse words at her; his lips moved, but Clarisse heard nothing. She turned, scanned the enemy, and pinpointed what she was looking for: their magazines. She wanted to light them up; this picking off one at time was taking too long.
Where the ordnance for one rocket launcher was located there was sure to be more. With the fire lighting their position, Clarisse aimed again and fired on the back of a vehicle she suspected carried their cache. Once Dalton realized what she aimed for, he gave up trying to chastise her and he fired repeatedly until they were both suddenly taking cover from the flash explosion generated by a lucky shot.
Clarisse pulled Dalton to his feet, looping his right arm over her shoulder, and they both ran, covering one another from the volley of incoming shots. Clarisse dragged them toward one of their own Jeeps as Dalton began to lose consciousness; leaning against the door, he began to slide down it. Clarisse imagined that, in his condition, he was blacking out after the massive adrenaline rush.
“Get in!” she screamed and opened the door, pushing and shoving him into the seat.
“Get out of here, Clarisse!” he yelled. “They’ve got Dutch.” That was the last thing he uttered before passing out altogether.
Clarisse threw the Jeep in drive and sped west through their former haven, now nearly burned to the ground. She drove madly, hoping to find the others before the entire camp was overrun. Shots pinged off the Jeep when it became visible between shadows.
They saw her before she saw them; she nearly ran right into them. They came out of the shadows directly in front of her—only two stood—and Clarisse slammed the Jeep to a stop. She recognized Graham, who had another man in a fireman’s carry over his back. He and McCann rushed around to the back of the Jeep, tossed Rick’s body inside, and jumped in themselves. Still the enemy shot at them. Graham remained on the tailgate, returning fire.
Clarisse glanced in the rearview mirror, catching McCann’s face in the firelight, his expression one of having witnessed hell. In slow motion, he pounded on the metal and screamed, “Go, go!” Clarisse stomped on the gas, and the Jeep sped away into the shadow of darkness.
The enemy were chanting now, raising their rifles high overhead and dancing in the firelight. The scene reminded her of jackals, in celebration over a kill. These people were long past human. Now Dutch was among them; they were leaving him to his death. The thought ate at Clarisse, but they had no choice. Not now.
She stopped near the woods where she had left Sam, and pointed toward his location, yelling, “Get Sam!” As Graham ran to the woods, Sam appeared, leaning against a tree. Graham retrieved him while Clarisse checked her rearview mirror.
They were still coming; she saw the movement of two motorcycles trailing them against the light. Then she heard a shot hit the Jeep. “Hurry!” McCann yelled as he returned fire, trying to hold them back.
Graham struggled to get Sam closer, and Clarisse threw the Jeep in reverse to block their position from incoming fire. Everyone screamed at Graham to hurry, and one of the motorcycles pulled in front of them. Just as Graham and Sam were seated, the rider aimed directly at Clarisse. She floored it, and his body slammed onto the hood, and then the windshield, shattering it, but she kept going. She couldn’t see a thing and shoved her fist through the glass to get a better view. The guy
was either dead or stunned; if he wasn’t dead, he would be soon enough.
McCann continued to shoot at the other rider, and Clarisse assumed he got him when the firing ceased. She raced onward.
“Are we clear?” she yelled.
“I don’t know!” McCann yelled.
“Keep looking,” Graham said more calmly, climbing into the front seat over Dalton’s unconscious form and opening the hatch of the Jeep’s sunroof. He pulled his pistol out and pushed himself waist high through the opening.
“Be careful!” Clarisse said, then turned to Sam. “You okay?”
“I’m fine,” Sam said weakly.
“Stay awake, Sam,” she implored him.
Graham leaned over to grab the body of the guy on the hood of the Jeep; amid the sound of scraping glass, the body slid from the hood and onto the side of the road. Graham came back inside and said, “He was way dead.”
“Good,” Clarisse answered.
“Where are we going?” Graham asked. “We can’t lead them to the others.”
“No. I agree. We’ll find a place. We have a cache west of here,” she said.
“How’s Dalton?” Graham asked, trying to feel for his pulse.
“He’ll be fine.” She had to ask but was afraid of the answer. “And Rick?”
“He’s got a pulse. He was hit in the head during one of the mortar rounds,” McCann said.
Graham put his hand on Clarisse’s shoulder. “Why don’t you pull over. Let me drive now.”
“No. I know where we’re going. We’re almost there,” she said. She knew that Graham was trying to comfort her, afraid she’d break down soon. What he didn’t know was that she was far ahead of him now. She wasn’t too concerned about Rick, Sam, or even Dalton’s condition. She’d make sure they’d be fine in time. Right now she was thinking about one of their own, and the cache of equipment she was about to have access to, and plotting. She had to get back to Dutch before the sun rose.
Chapter 44 The Escape
