Thunder Run (Maelstrom Rising Book 6)

by Peter Nealen

  “Friendly.” Tony came up behind me. “Other side of the house is clear.”

  “Hold on these kids. We’re going to finish the sweep.” I’d barely finished speaking when Tucker’s voice crackled in my earpiece.

  “Deacon, Caveman. Hurry up with that security house. We could use some help over here.”

  Chapter 34

  We finished clearing the rest of the bedrooms as quickly as we could, while Tony zip-tied the survivors. We couldn’t afford to leave anyone on them—we had too few men, and from the sporadic gunfire I was hearing from the direction of the main house, we were going to need the whole team to support Tucker’s Grex Luporum Team IX.

  It was quick but thorough. The door gets kicked in, and two rifle muzzles fill the space as we go through like we’re about to tear somebody’s throat out. Clear the corners, clear the dead space, move on.

  We were finished in minutes. There might have been eight shooters staying in that house, but there had only been five inside. And only two of them were still breathing.

  “Caveman, Deacon. Coming out.”

  “Deacon, Caveman. They’ve got the door locked down—we can’t get close without taking a lot of fire. We’re keeping them bottled up, too, but we can’t get in there.” Tucker sounded pissed. “On top of that, we can’t get to any of the windows—they’ve got us pinned inside the gate.”

  “This is India Quebec Five.” Bradshaw sounded almost blasé compared to Tucker right at that moment. “We’ve got the front locked down, but we’re taking some fire from that door, too.” Several more shots popped loudly in the night even as he spoke.

  “Roger. We’re moving.” I was heading for the door, where Jordan and Greg were already stacked up and ready to go.

  The front door and the little courtyard in front of it were sheltered from the main house by the security team house itself. So, we had a little cover, for the moment.

  “Around the back. We’ll cross the road and the lawn, jump the wall, and go through a window.” I knew that we might have to break the window to do it, but time was flying. We might have some quiet to work with now, but I was under no illusions that Chausson didn’t have a QRF staged somewhere on the mainland, that was probably winging its way there even then.

  We hurried around behind the house, keeping it and the trees between us and the target house. A couple of Bradshaw’s boys were set up at the north corner, one crouched and the other leaning over his head, both aimed in at the target house.

  “Watch yourselves. We took some rounds from that top floor window.” Given the shattered windowpane and the two M5E1s aimed in at it, I suspected that those rounds had been returned, with interest.

  “Roger.” I turned to David, who’d moved up to the front, almost shouldering Chris out of the way. David was in full Barrio Punisher mode again. “Go.”

  He was waiting for it. We sprinted across the road and the short lawn to the low wall that encircled the grounds, such as they were. The wall wasn’t tall enough to need a ladder or even a boost, but we still didn’t just vault over it.

  I popped over the top, leveling my rifle at the windows and the corners. The top of the wall was just low enough that I could do that without having to climb on anything, and tall enough that I didn’t expose much beyond my weapon and my helmet. It was still just barely too tall for David to do that, so he slung his rifle on his back, reached up to the top of the wall and started over.

  There was a single window right in front of and above the outer wall, framed by dark-painted decorative shutters. The room beyond it was dark, but I could see just enough through the window with my NVGs that I probably could have seen movement quickly enough to keep David from getting shot.

  He got over without issues, brought his rifle around, and stacked on the window. Meanwhile, Jordan and Greg had reached the wall, and Chris and I clambered over and joined David.

  The window was shut and latched, but unlike the Council building, it hadn’t been designed to resist entry. With Chris and David covering the inside, ready to fire over my shoulder and through the glass if need be, I let my rifle hang, hauled out the crowbar I’d slung behind me, and started to crank on the lower window.

  The latch broke with a snap under the pressure, and the window rose smoothly. I stepped back as David and Chris cleared as much of the small bedroom from outside as they could.

  Fortunately, a renewed storm of gunfire from the back door had covered the noise I’d made forcing the window open.

  Getting through the window took a bit more effort—it wasn’t an overly large opening, and we were wearing a fair bit of gear that could catch on things like windowsills and frames. I hit my NVGs on the upper frame, and it almost bent my head back before I ducked to one side and finished crawling through. I’d barely been able to get one knee up to the sill, so when I went in, I sort of dragged my legs through and walked on my hands, intensely glad that Chris and David were covering my back.

  The bedroom was empty, the door shut. I got to my feet and got my rifle back up, covering down on the door while Chris and David climbed through behind me.

  By the time Tony, Jordan, Reuben, and Greg joined us, we were already stacked on the door and ready to go. It opened soundlessly, and we flowed out into the hallway.

  We could hear shooting up ahead, where the short hall opened onto a main room. But another sound caught my attention from much closer. As I neared the next door along the hall, I heard raised voices, slightly muffled by the door and almost drowned out by the gunfire—which was still all suppressed—but clear enough that I could tell someone was trying to hide in there.

  I’ll admit, I acted on a hunch. We didn’t know the interior layout of the manor house, and we had no idea where Chausson might be hiding, but something about those voices, even though they were in French and barely audible, told me we were close to our prey.

  I stacked on that door while David took security on the hallway ahead. I tested the doorknob, but it was locked. I waved Chris up, and he angled out, while David pushed to the far side of the door so as to avoid standing right in the middle of the hallway.

  I turned and donkey-kicked the door just under the doorknob. The frame cracked but held. Screams echoed from inside. I kicked the door again, all but desperate to get it open before gunfire tore through the door itself.

  On the second blow, the frame splintered, and the door juddered open. I’d spent most of the force of the kick on breaking the frame.

  Chris acted fast, shouldering the door open as he stepped across the threshold, pausing just long enough to make sure he wasn’t about to get shot from the middle of the room. Then he rode the door to the wall, clearing that corner. I took the other corner, stepping just far enough inside to clear the door before sweeping back toward the center.

  The bedroom was considerably larger than the one we’d come through on entry. A big, king-sized four-poster bed dominated the room, and the rest of the furniture was clearly worth a fortune.

  The fat man in his boxers was still yelling into a phone in French. The very young woman in a bra and panties cowering behind the bed looked young enough to be his daughter as she stared at us with eyes the size of saucers.

  Chausson glanced over his shoulder as Reuben and I advanced around the bed, weapons leveled, but he was clearly in denial. After only a glance, he turned back to the phone, yelling in French.

  “Denis Chausson, get down on the floor and put your hands on your head.” I kept my red dot trained on his head.

  I’ll confess, to my shame, that I was sorely tempted to simply murder him right then and there. This man and his cronies had made decisions that had cost a lot of American lives, including three of my teammates and closest friends. And given the precariousness of the political situation that we found ourselves in, the rationalizing part of my brain couldn’t help but think that things would be a lot easier if he was dead.

  The desperately young-looking woman at his bedside didn’t make me any more inclined to keep
him alive.

  But I couldn’t kill an unarmed man. I’ve killed a lot of people, but I was reasonably sure I wasn’t a murderer.

  As I came around the corner of the bed, though, he took the decision out of my hands.

  At least, that was what I told myself when I thought about it later.

  He turned suddenly, grabbing the girl by the arm and dragging her in front of him, snatching a knife off the dresser and holding it to her throat.

  I’m sure that he had some demands in mind. He’d force us to back off or he’d kill the girl. He had no idea who he was dealing with.

  I didn’t let him get a word out. I barely had to shift my aim. The suppressed 7.62mm shot sounded like a heavy book being slammed shut, and the bullet almost parted the girl’s hair.

  Chausson’s head jerked back under the impact, one eyeball bulging out from the overpressure as the bullet punched through the bridge of his nose. He’d backed up against the dresser, so there wasn’t much of anywhere for him to go. Blood, brains, and bits of hair and bone spattered against the wall behind him, and the girl shrieked and twisted away as his hands suddenly went slack.

  I grabbed the girl and pulled her away, handing her off to Chris, who was already telling her it was all right, that she was safe. I don’t know how much she understood right then, whether she spoke English or not. She was hysterical, screaming and crying. She hadn’t gotten sprayed too badly, but she did have some of Chausson’s blood on her.

  I advanced on the corpse, but there was no need for a dead check. One of the last members of the European Defense Council still at large was facing his eternal judgement at that moment.

  Letting my rifle hang, I keyed my radio as I looked down at the body. “All Tango stations, Golf Lima Ten Six. The Merovingian is KIA. Stand by to pull off target and return to the birds.”

  More gunfire hammered outside the door. David had rolled inside, but was barricaded on the door frame, covering the hall toward the entryway. “Might want to tell these guys that their principal’s dead.” He slammed two more shots down the hallway. “On second thought, why don’t we just kill these guys, then leave? They don’t seem to be too eager to get the point.”

  A part of me was ready to simply take what remained of Chausson’s security apart. Even more immediate than his role in the war, the girl’s relative youth compared to his corpulent middle age had pissed me off. These guys had watched her get marched inside and had turned the other way. I was sure they weren’t hurting in the paycheck department, either.

  But more death wasn’t going to accomplish anything but revenge. We’d dealt with our target. They no longer had a principal to protect.

  “Listen to me!” I might not have been the most imposing individual, at least compared to some of my teammates, but I could make myself heard, even in a firefight. The fact that everyone was using suppressors helped, too. “Your boss is dead! It’s over! Put your weapons down and you won’t be harmed!”

  The fire slackened. A moment later, a voice with a thick French accent asked, “How do I know you’re telling the truth?”

  “Because if he was alive, I’d have made him tell you. I might even have showed him to you, with a gun to his head. But he’s too fat for me to want to drag him out here, half naked and leaking blood and brains everywhere.”

  I waited while they debated the issue. At least nobody was shooting anymore, but they might be stalling for time, hoping that the QRF was going to get there.

  “Listen, you’ve got ten seconds to put your weapons down and get on the floor, or we’re going to come out there and kill all of you.”

  We were out of time. “Deacon, Caveman, we’ve got birds inbound from the south. We need to go.”

  Apparently, Chausson’s surviving security was on comms with the incoming birds, and thought they had a chance.

  They burst into the hallway, their suppressed MP7s spitting bullets. David grunted as he was hit and staggered back against the doorframe. Jordan hauled him back, then with a muttered, “Fuck it,” yanked a frag off his vest, pulled the pin, cooked it for a two count, and chucked it out into the hallway at the oncoming shooters’ feet.

  They didn’t even have time to scream. Jordan had turned away from the door and dived out of the fatal funnel as soon as he’d thrown the frag, throwing himself over David, who was swearing at him until the frag went off with a tooth-rattling thud that shook the building and immediately started my head hurting.

  Reuben and Greg went out into the hallway behind their rifles, stepping over David and Jordan. I heard a single crack, then Reuben’s voice. “Clear!”

  Of course, the rest of the house hadn’t been cleared, but our mission was accomplished, and we had hostiles incoming. Jordan was checking David. He straightened up and held out his hand. “Just went through the meat, brother, you’re gonna be fine.” David grabbed the outstretched hand and Jordan hauled him to his feet.

  With Reuben and Greg in the lead, we headed for the front door, careful to cover each doorway as we passed it. I thought I could already hear the helicopters coming. We had to get out before we got cut off from our own birds.

  “Friendlies coming out!” Greg had paused at the door, careful not to expose himself before making contact with Tucker and his team. That would have been a really bad time for a blue-on-blue.

  Tony had the girl with him, wrapped in a jacket that he’d found somewhere inside. I nodded as I looked back and saw that. Leaving her behind might have caused all sorts of problems, not least being the distinct possibility that she would simply have been trafficked to someone as bad or worse than Chausson.

  We moved out fast, joining up with Tucker in the courtyard. He was on a knee beside the door, while the rest of the team had spread out, some covering the windows and corners, some covering outboard, particularly toward the south and the incoming helicopters.

  I hoped that the Recon Marines around L’Arcouest might do something about them, but we had to be ready, anyway.

  Tucker grabbed me by the sleeve, and I knelt next to him. “The birds are moving, coming to us. Bradshaw’s already setting up the LZ, on the lawn across the road.” He pointed off to the east, and the big open space between the trees that we’d skirted on final approach to the security team house. Then he jerked a thumb at the girl, who was crouched behind Tony, now subdued and silent, staring at the ground. “Who’s she?”

  “The hooker that Chausson tried to use as a hostage.” I glanced back at her. “Tony’s bringing her with us, because he’s soft-hearted that way.”

  Tucker snorted. “Your whole team’s soft-hearted that way, Matt. Except maybe Jordan. I can see him slitting some throats.”

  I just returned his snort, turning my attention outboard. I knew enough about Jordan’s history. Tucker wasn’t all that far off.

  Somewhere on the far side of the water, gunfire echoed through the night. I couldn’t tell if the Marines had taken the QRF birds under fire, or if something else was going on.

  But then the first Osprey was coming in on the LZ, its props roaring, and a pair of F-35s went overhead with a deep, throaty growl. If nothing else, provided the French didn’t have any more nasty surprises waiting, the Lightning IIs would light up the QRF birds.

  “You’re first.” Tucker pointed to me. “Since one of your boys is leaking, and another one picked up a stray.”

  I clapped him on the shoulder, and circled my hand above my head as I looked around at the team. I found Chris and pointed him toward the LZ. “Let’s go.”

  We jogged out of the courtyard and across the road, weapons out and eyes scanning. If Chausson had any security left, though, they clearly weren’t interested in starting a fight.

  The Osprey was already down, the props still spinning and the prop wash lashing the trees around it. We had to fight against the wind to get to the ramp, and the girl screamed and had to be helped onto the bird, clutching the oversized jacket around her. Tony got her strapped in as I got a head count and waited at the ramp for
Tucker and his boys.

  They weren’t far behind. I could barely hear the F-35s over the Osprey’s engines, but I could see a flash somewhere off to the southwest. Things were happening.

  Then everyone was aboard, and we were pulling for the sky.

  We circled just long enough for Bradshaw’s section to get picked up, then we were heading for the Iwo Jima.

  Mission accomplished.

  Now we had to see if it had actually done anything.

  Chapter 35

  I was a little surprised at how fast things moved after that.

  The SEALs had grabbed Roman Verhoeven out of his nine-thousand-square-foot mansion outside of Amsterdam, and he was currently in custody aboard the Iwo Jima along with the other Councilors. The entire Council was now accounted for.

  The State people had been talking via back channels with what remained of the national governments under EDC control for a while, even before the offensive had started. From what I understood, they were still pissed that their plan for a cease-fire and peace agreement with the existing EDC had been dumped.

  That alone made me dislike them even more. To them, “Just stop fighting so that we can kiss and make up with the people who ordered the murders of a couple thousand of your brothers in arms,” might seem like a reasonable idea, but it rubbed me the wrong way.

  At any rate, after the seizure of the Council building, apparently Berlin and Paris had gotten serious quickly. Especially since the delayed offensive in the east had just broken through the EDC 1st Division—rumor had it because of conflicting and stupid orders coming directly from first Chausson and then Verhoeven—and was right at the outskirts of Berlin.

  Within a week, things had calmed down, and arrangements for the installation of the new European Defense Council were in motion.

  At least, things had calmed down on the official level.

  ***

  Tony still looked disgusted as we stepped out onto the roof of the Théâtre National de Strasbourg. I felt him. The French were not graceful in defeat, and the building security had caused more than a few headaches. Never mind that we had official orders, from their government, to get up on the roof and get eyes on the Place de République, setting in topside security for the upcoming installation, that was supposed to start in two hours. No, he had to look down his nose at the rough-looking Americans with their beards and unfamiliar green fatigues, treat them like dirt, and take up as much time as possible making as many phone calls as possible to “confirm” that they were actually allowed up there.