by Myke Cole
But something about the scene nagged at him. “Sir?” He said to Fitzy, “That bird skull’s awful big. How the heck would the Apache get their hands on a Ro…”
“Focus, Keystone!” Fitzy silenced him. “Intel’s not your job here.”
Britton bit his lip and concentrated.
As he looked at the video, he felt a movement beside him, and one of the Goblin contractors began to wave a small plastic canister under his nose. The fumes rose, carrying foreign scents — spent diesel fuel, animal manure, dust, and mold. “Close your eyes,” Fitzy said. “Get a real good sense of the place.”
Britton did his best to focus on the smells and the room in the video, trying to ignore the heady silence around him, the stares of the SF operators, Fitzy, Therese, and the medical crew, Colonel Taylor. The pressure made him nervous, and he leaned on the Dampener to shunt the emotion aside. Focus, focus.
After a moment, Sharp coughed. Fitzy stirred at Britton’s side. “What do you think?”
“I’ve got it,” Britton said.
“Are you sure?”
“No, but it’ll have to do, won’t it?”
Fitzy nodded grimly. “I guess it will. All right, I want a pinhole, Keystone, open for no more than five seconds. I want a quick recon of the room and ID any threats. Can you do that?”
“I think so, sir.”
“Remember, no bigger than a pinhole. We alert the enemy to our entry, and this whole thing is going to go south.”
Britton nodded and cleared his mind. He tried to push all other thoughts from his mind’s eye, focusing on the image of the room, repeating it in his head, centering on the details of the filthy brick, the hung banner, the pile of soiled machine parts. He recalled the smells, the dull cordite tinge burning his nostrils. Then he leaned on the Dampener, letting his nervousness, his desire not to disappoint the crowd staring at him, fuel the magic. The gate materialized perfectly, barely the size of a dime, shedding a tiny pinprick of light. He looked through it, then leaned back, shutting it and nodding.
“Room’s empty, sir. No light source or obstructions. No threats visible. Looks like they abandoned it after making the video.” Britton kept his voice even, but inside he was exulting. I did it. I watched a video for a minute and sniffed a canister and I can take us right there. The control, the sense of accomplishment was almost overwhelming. Fitzy grinned at him, and Britton grinned back, grateful in spite of himself. Bastard gave me this chance.
“All right,” Sharp said. “I wish we had more time to prep, but we need to go now. Keystone, Captain TrueZero, on our six, and do not engage unless called upon. In and out, quick as we can. Normally we’d have weeks to drill for an op like this. But…but things are different.”
You bet things are different. Now the army’s got a guy who can get you there in an instant. You probably wouldn’t have even attempted this mission before. Don’t worry, I won’t let it go to my head.
“I’ve got it,” the SOC Hydromancer groused.
“With all due respect, sir,” Sharp said, “I need you to secure the attitude. I cannot afford to be worrying about either of you.” He nodded to his men, slipping the night-vision device into position over his eyes.
“You might want to hold off, Sergeant,” Britton said. “The gate makes a lot of light. Better wait until you’re through, and it’s closed, before you go to the night optical devices. Otherwise, you might be running this op blind.”
TrueZero smirked, and Sharp nodded, slipping up his NODs and making a you-got-me face.
Britton nodded to Fitzy and widened his stance. “Folks might want to step back a bit.”
As the group complied, he heard Therese whisper behind him, “Good luck, Oscar.”
“Yes,” added the colonel, almost as an afterthought. “God-speed.”
“Don’t fuck it up, Keystone,” Fitzy added, “or it’s your ass.”
Britton grinned and slid the gate open, wide enough to admit the operators abreast. The SOF soldiers hesitated a moment, staring at the portal. Sharp motioned them forward, and they went, following their carbine muzzles as if they were dragged by them, walking evenly, calm, perfectly stable firing platforms. Sharp made a zipping motion across his lips to Britton and TrueZero before moving through. Britton and TrueZero drew their pistols and followed behind. They entered into the darkness, and Britton shut the gate, an array of smells hitting his nose. The IO guys had gotten it almost exactly right. The air was thick, close, and freezing.
He heard the low clicks of the SF operators snapping their NODs into place, and Britton followed suit, the world transforming from black into pale green and white. He’d operated on NODs before and paused to adjust to how they flattened the world, robbing him of depth perception and color, plunging him into a weird ghost world, mechanical and unforgiving. But it was well worth it. The benefit of seeing in the dark far outweighed any minor adjustments that had to be made to do it. Britton looked left and right, able to take in the rest of the room that the camera’s aperture had cut off. Two metal doors stood at the far end. The SOF operators were already stacking up alongside it, Sharp anchoring the three men. Britton and TrueZero took up position on the door’s far side, shoulders pressed against the wall, pistols pointed at the floor, out of the line of fire as instructed.
Sharp nodded, and the operator across from him knelt, sliding what looked like a dental mirror under the door. He looked at it briefly, then nodded back to Sharp and made a fist, thumb up. Clear. He then stood and tried the door handle, his touch surprisingly gentle and silent. The handle didn’t budge. He sliced his hand flat through the air. Locked. Britton looked up at the hinges, rusted nearly solid. There would be no way to open it without making a lot of noise.
Sharp signaled TrueZero, and the SOC Hydromancer moved to the door. Britton felt his magical current surge as he placed his hands against the rusted surface, and within moments it paled, sparkling with frost and turning a faint, glowing blue that softly illuminated the darkness. The cold was so intense that Britton could feel it from his position feet away.
TrueZero stood back and kicked the door. It shattered, the metal pieces flying apart with no more sound than a broken window. The SF operators dashed through, their infrared sights casting pencil-thin beams down the hallway, invisible to all but those wearing night-vision optics.
A short hallway stretched out before them, the floor cast from the same dirty, chipped concrete, and the walls made of the same moldering brick. Graffiti covered most of it. A dog corpse sprawled to Britton’s left, stretched out among piled garbage. Two doors were set in the hallway’s left side and one in the right. Sharp signaled one of the operators to cover the two doors, while he and his remaining man knelt and checked through the garbage. Sharp flicked out his pocketknife with a soft click and slit the animal carcass, spreading it wide and peering inside the cavity with a small flashlight, checking for hidden explosives. The odor nearly made Britton gag, and he had to grit his teeth and press his forehead against the wall to keep from vomiting. By the time the feeling passed, Sharp had made the clear sign and joined his remaining man to stack on the single door. This door was unlocked, and they rolled into the room, emerging a moment later, signaling to their remaining man. Clear.
One operator moved to cover one of the remaining doors while Sharp and the other operator stacked on opposite sides of the second one. The operator knelt, sliding his mirror underneath once again, then stood and shook his head, giving an exaggerated shrug of his shoulders. Can’t see. Sharp trotted to Britton’s side. “Can you look in there?” he whispered.
Britton shook his head. “I have to know what it looks like first.”
Sharp cursed and moved back into position. He pulled a grenade from his vest and tried the handle himself this time. Again, locked. He nodded to TrueZero, who ran to the door, placing his hands on it. The magic poured forth from his hands, chilling, then freezing the door; the soft blue glow began to radiate outward as the Hydromancer worked.
Then the door exploded.
Britton heard the sharp report of gunfire and the frozen shards exploded outward, flying in TrueZero’s face. The SOC Hydromancer went flying backward, the fabric of his body armor ripping as a round caught him in the chest. He fetched up hard against the opposite wall and slid into a sitting position, senseless.
Sharp rolled around the corner to hurl the grenade, and a round caught him in the leg, spinning him off-balance. He collapsed, already lifting his carbine and firing one-handed into the darkness. The grenade, pin pulled, rolled a couple of feet down the hallway and stopped.
The other operators turned toward it, their guns dangerously out of the fight.
“I’ve got it!” Britton shouted, and snapped open a gate between the grenade and the team. It glimmered over a section of the berm beside Route 7 in Shelburne just as the grenade exploded. He felt the hot air of the thermal discharge engulf him, his ears ringing from the percussion. The solid rubber balls, intended to stun and incapacitate the enemy without killing the hostages, whisked harmlessly through. Britton could hear them pattering off the tarmac of the thankfully empty stretch of road.
The operators wheeled, dropping to their knees, knocking their NODs up onto their helmets and flooding the room with white light from the mounts beneath their carbine barrels. Gunfire exploded from their weapons, and Britton was momentarily blinded until he had a chance to push his own night optics away from his eyes.
“Get down!” Sergeant Sharp had begun to shout. “Get down on the fucking ground right now!” Over his back, Britton could see ragged men, gaunt and long-haired, moving in the room beyond. At least two lay on their sides on the floor before them, stirring weakly, bleeding out into the dust beneath them. Behind them, he could make out the hostages, their uniforms filthy, lying facedown with their hands bound behind them. Another round hissed by Britton’s head as the Hydromancer slouched over on his side.
Sharp’s face had turned gray as the pool of blood from his leg expanded, spreading out to make the floor slick. One of the operators slipped in it and went down. The enemy was pinned down in the close confines of the room, but they would make no headway. Britton knew a stalemate when he saw one. As Britton watched, a man stepped into view, one foot on the back of one of the hostages. His thick black hair tumbled from under a beaded cap, a cluster of feathers sprouting from the peak. He wore a tactical vest, the magazine pouches bulging with long rectangles covered in duct tape, wires extending from their tops to his belt.
No time for a stalemate.
Britton stepped into the doorway.
“What the hell are you doing? Get the hell out of the way!” one of the operators shouted.
Britton snapped open a gate back on the trauma tent at the FOB and leapt through. Fitzy, Therese, and Colonel Taylor gaped at the sight of him, but he ignored them as he opened another gate on the back of the room and stepped through directly behind the man in the vest. Come on guys, hold your fire, Britton thought. A bullet streaked past his ear close enough to make him wince, but then the rounds stopped as the operators figured out what was going on.
The man had a cell phone in his hand, a curling cord extending from it to his belt. Britton opened a small gate below his elbow and severed the cord just as he shouted something in Apache and punched a button on the phone.
Nothing happened. Stunned, the man punched the phone again, then turned, his eyes widening as Britton raised his pistol and brought the butt of it crashing into his temple. Other men in the room were turning, whirling to face him, leveling their weapons. Seeing their chance, the operators came storming into the room as Britton opened another gate and stepped backward through it into the trauma tent.
“It’s okay,” he said to Fitzy, “we’ve got it.” And then he was gone again, running to Sharp’s side and dragging him backward through another gate to the trauma tent. The sergeant was unconscious, but the other operators were inside the room, and the shooting had stopped. Britton felt strong arms grab the sergeant from the other side and haul him through, and he raced to TrueZero’s side. The Hydromancer stirred weakly. Britton fingered the bullet hole in the fabric and felt dented but solid plating behind it. No penetration. He’d probably escape with a broken rib.
Sharp gave a weak thumbs-up as Therese bent over his leg, her eyes closed and hands gently drifting over his knitting flesh. TrueZero had stripped his vest and shirt and sat coughing raggedly as a nasty bruise spread its way over his ribs. The other two operators knelt on either side of the rescued marines, checking them for injuries. Both hostages stared wide-eyed at Britton, silent and terrified. One finally mustered the presence of mind to drawl a thank-you.
“You’re welcome,” Fitzy answered for him. “I’m afraid you’ve just become read into a rather classified government program. We’ll go over the requisite nondisclosure agreements once you’ve been cleared by medical.”
Britton knelt in the gravel of the trauma tent, stripping off his gear, as a blue-scrubbed orderly approached him. “You okay?”
“He’s Shadow Coven,” Fitzy snapped. “He’s better than okay. He’s the magic behind the magic.”
The doctor at last turned to Colonel Taylor and gave a thumbs-up sign. “They’ll live.”
Colonel Taylor sighed, his shoulders sagging with relief. He leaned over Sharp where he lay on the gurney. “I can’t tell you how grateful I am to you, son.”
Sharp nodded, clearly uncomfortable with the praise. Colonel Taylor turned to Fitzy. “Chief Warrant Officer Fitzsimmons, I’m delighted with the capabilities Shadow Coven brings to our force. Keep up the good work.” Fitzy saluted as Colonel Taylor made his way toward the entrance. “I’ve got to call General Hamilton and let him know we’re out of the woods. You take it from here.”
“Sir,” said Fitzy, and turned to Britton. “Don’t go thinking you’re a fucking hero all of a sudden, Keystone. You’ve got miles to go yet.” But Britton couldn’t miss the grudging respect in the chief warrant officer’s eyes.
Therese stepped from the gurney’s side and reached a hand up to cup Britton’s cheek. She stood on her tiptoes and kissed him on the side of his neck, leaving him tingling. “I think you’re a hero, Oscar. You’re amazing, and you did a great thing today.”
“Jesus,” Fitzy muttered, disgusted. “Let’s get you the hell out of here before this mutual admiration society gets out of hand.” One of the operators shook Britton’s hand before Fitzy managed to whisk him back out of the tent.
Britton was exhausted, the adrenaline of the action curdling in his veins, leaving him sick and shaking. But he was also overwhelmed with a sense of joy. He had done it. He had used his magic to save people’s lives. He had controlled it to the point where it did good. People were alive because of Oscar Britton, because of what he could do. How could running ever be better than that? Here is where you can be different from Swift, he told himself. Time to stop fighting it.
“I get it now, sir,” Britton said to Fitzy.
“What is it that you get?” the chief warrant officer asked him, frowning.
“I mean I’ll do it now. For real. You don’t need the ATTD anymore.”
Fitzy was pensive for a moment as they walked along. “Well, that’s an encouraging thing to hear, Keystone. Very encouraging indeed. But if it’s all the same to you, we’ll just keep it there for the nonce.”
Britton nodded, and they walked on in silence, pushing the rest of the way through the cash and back out into the road.
“Sir, if you don’t mind me asking, there was this…giant black thing I saw when we first flew in. It seemed to be on the same side as the Goblins. I saw it again in one of the videos in the SASS. They said it was one of the Apache’s ‘Mountain Gods.’ ”
“That’s right.” Fitzy kept his eyes straight ahead.
“Well, what are they doing in both Mescalero and in the Source?”
“Let me answer your question with a question, Keystone. Do you think that the United States Army, in all its wisdom,
would have missed such a connection?”
“No, sir.”
“And, given that we clearly wouldn’t have, do you think we might have people working on what the significance was?”
“Yes, sir, you would.”
“And do you also think that if we felt your opinion on this particular matter was of any value, we would have solicited it by now?”
“I get it, sir,” Britton said.
“I thought you might. Seeing how these SASS videos are starting you down the road to thinking you work intel, let’s get you off that particular slippery slope. You don’t have to go to the SASS anymore,” Fitzy said. “I think we can both agree that you’re past that.”
It was Britton’s turn to be pensive. “I need to go back, sir. Just one more time.
“There’s something I need to do.”
CHAPTER XXIII: UNCONVINCED
Kind of changes your take on things, doesn’t it? We’re suddenly a world starving for conspiracy theories. The mysteries are all solved. The heads on Easter Island? Stonehenge? Bigfoot? The Bermuda Triangle? In the past we’d just shrug our shoulders, and say, “Magic!” We’re still sayin’ the same thing, but nobody’s shrugging anymore.
— Comedian Art Wilkes, Live on Home Entertainment Network
Britton entered the SASS while the enrollees were lined up for basic control practice. As Britton looked around, he realized that both Fitzy and Therese had followed him from the raid-staging site, and stood a few paces behind him. The No-No Crew, Wavesign among them, stood leaning against the side of the Quonset hut, refusing to participate as usual. The yard seemed tiny to Britton, Swift’s crossed arms and frowning face even more petulant and useless.
Salamander paused from his work with a young woman, busy raising rock walls from the mud at her feet, and stared frankly at him, arms folded. A moment later, the rest of the enrollees followed suit. Can they see the difference I feel? Britton wondered. Can they tell that I’m beyond this now? He glanced over at the flagpole, with its reflective black-and-orange US flag. As a member of Shadow Coven from the outset, he would never need to raise it, but he felt that he had the moment he’d stepped through the gate into that foul-smelling room and dragged the hostages to safety. Oscar Britton had a purpose. Oscar Britton had a home.
