by Peter Nealen
Fortunately, none of the crew argued. They were Triarii. They got it. The pilot swung back around, dipping toward the ground on the south side of the crash site, keeping the plume of dust and smoke between the helo and the enemy.
“Actual, One-One.” LaForce sounded like he was hurting, but he was alive. “We’re still here. Still mostly in one piece.”
“Roger that. Hold your ground; we’re coming to you.” He was pretty sure he could get everyone on the one bird.
After they destroyed the enemy drones. Somehow.
The SH-70 touched down, about four hundred yards from the crash. As soon as the wheels touched, Hank was out and running toward the downed bird, Faris, Huntsman, Evans, and Reisinger right behind him.
Gunfire was already starting to bark from the wreck. In a moment, as he came around the smashed tail, he saw why.
Four SUVs were advancing on them, including two of the minigun-armed ones.
He almost despaired. They had no explosives and no armor that could stand up to those miniguns. That they hadn’t just raked the wreck yet was a minor miracle.
He dropped flat, getting behind his rifle. The miniguns didn’t have splinter shields, and that was their only hope.
Letting his breath out, he tightened his finger on the trigger.
The shot wasn’t an easy one, not when his heart was going like a jackhammer, he still hadn’t entirely gotten his breathing under control, and adrenaline was coursing through his veins, making his limbs feel rubbery. Add in the movement of the target vehicle as it bounced across the desert, and that made it worse.
The first shot missed, smacking paint off the roof just to the right.
The second punched a star into the windshield, and the driver flinched. The gunner tried to shoot back, but the vehicle was moving too much, and the stream of fire went high, a horrific, hellish crackling roar tearing the air apart over his head.
The third shot took the gunner in the throat.
Throwing a hand to his neck, the man slumped, red pumping between his fingers. At least, that was what Hank saw in the split second before the vehicle all but disappeared in smoke, fire, and pulverized metal, the impacts’ thunder deafening even after the snarl of the minigun fire.
Hank could only lie there and blink for a moment as the 25mm Bushmaster cannon fire eviscerated the SUVs. The easternmost tried to make a run for it, but that way the heavy shells went through it long-ways.
Four old M2A3 Bradleys were crossing the road to the west, their cannons trained on the ARI Risk Management vehicles. In the distance, to the north, Hank could see another platoon of four moving toward the camp.
He stood up, feeling about a hundred years old. Everything hurt. His eyes felt like they were full of glass. He staggered around the tail. “Friendly!” His voice was a harsh croak.
LaForce had just finished helping the pilot out of the wreck. Taylor and the Rodriguez brothers were crawling out under the broken rotors. As soon as the pilot was down, his arm apparently broken, LaForce slumped down to sit next to him, leaning his helmeted head back against the battered fuselage.
One of the Bradleys pulled up in front of them. Hank squinted up at the commander, standing in the open hatch atop the turret.
“Looks like we got here right on time.” The man with the Mayan nose and prominent Adam’s apple still had his helmet on.
“Yeah, you did.” Hank looked off to the east. A couple more plumes of black smoke were rising into the blue sky, but not nearly as many as there might have been. “You did, indeed.”
Epilogue
The Triarii had quietly been put up in the Best Western Plus North Odessa Inn. Hank had quickly gathered that now that the mission was accomplished, the Rangers and the other agencies involved needed the Triarii out of the way and out of sight as much as possible.
Under different circumstances, that might have pissed him off, but what he’d gotten from Huck led him to believe that it wasn’t a matter of “stealing the glory” as it was trying to defuse some serious trouble coming from the Feds—and certain agencies of the Texas state government.
What they’d done was getting a lot of pushback. And from what Hank could see, none of it for what he’d consider good reasons.
Between his exhaustion and the need to take care of his section—Bishop, Calvin, and Bronsted had all ended up in the hospital, with Calvin’s survival still iffy—Hank hadn’t had the time or the energy to figure just what all the screaming was about. A lot of it seemed to be the standard anti-Triarii, anti-militia boilerplate—taking things into their own hands, racist against brown people, etc. The biggest concern, however, second even to fears of open war with Mexico, was the fear of repercussions over the Chinese interest in GSC Energy and ARI Risk Management.
That he found borderline incomprehensible. Only willful blindness could make anyone ignore what the Chinese were still doing on the West Coast, never mind the mountains of evidence that the Texas Rangers and the Triarii had gathered pointing to GSC’s complicity in the attacks across the border and traffic in oil—and apparently some human traffic as well—back into Mexico to the Triads.
But it seemed that a lot of people were still too scared to want to act. Whether they were afraid of actual backlash from China or that their own complicity with Beijing might be revealed, he didn’t know.
The other possibility was somewhat more prosaic and at the same time more sinister: that they had financial interests in the operation, themselves, and didn’t want to lose money. That had been a major weapon in the PRC’s strategy for years.
For the moment, though, he was trying to shut all of that out. Sprawled on the bed in the hotel room, studiously trying to ignore the temptation to go out and get a bottle of Jack, he stared at the ceiling, trying not to think too much.
It wasn’t working.
He was actually grateful when a knock came at the door. Swinging his legs off the bed, he checked that his weapon and gear were close by. He was in jeans and a t-shirt, hastily bought from a local store. His tans were still filthy, and a backup set was miles and miles away.
It was Wallace, similarly attired. He cracked the door open.
“Come on. The Colonel’s here, and he wants to see you.”
Hank’s eyebrows rose. He’d had no idea that Santiago was coming down, much less that he’d want to see Hank. He glanced down at his feet; he was still in his socks. “Do I need to put boots on?”
“Nah.” Wallace shook his head. “Trust me, he won’t care. Come on.”
Hank grabbed his room key and followed as Wallace led the way down the hall.
They didn’t go to a boardroom, though Hank knew there was one at the end of the hall. Instead, Wallace went about four doors down and knocked at another room regular hotel room.
The door cracked open, then swung wide. Colonel Santiago stood in the doorway, in jeans and a collared shirt. Apparently, everybody was staying low-profile at the moment.
“Come on in, gents.” He turned to let Wallace in past him, and ushered Hank inside before closing the door.
The room was scattered with papers. Santiago had apparently decided that the power grid attack was a warning not to rely too heavily on electronics. Hank couldn’t say he blamed him.
Hank stood a little uncertainly just inside the main room, before Santiago waved him toward the chair next to the window. The Colonel leaned against the wall, his arms folded.
It wasn’t the first time Hank had seen Santiago in person, though that had been at a much larger gathering. The man was smaller than most people expected, standing only a little under six feet, lean and wiry. His sallow face was pockmarked, and his dark eyes were cold.
“Wallace filled me in on what you’ve been doing, Foss.” The Colonel’s voice was a harsh rasp. “I’ve got to say, you’ve done a damned good job, shifting mission sets the way you’ve had to. From a Combined Action op to deep penetration and raids, to combined arms work back here… I’m glad I’ve got guys like you as section lead
ers.”
“Thank you, sir.” Decades of discipline made the response automatic, though Hank couldn’t help the cynical part of his mind wondering just how sincere Santiago really was, and whether he’d been called in just for a congratulatory backslap that he really wasn’t sure he merited. Once again, Arturo’s broken body flashed before his eyes.
“Now, before you think that I’m just here to pass out congratulations like some fucking politician, let me get down to business.” Hank kept his face carefully composed; Santiago was watching him like a hawk. “While I’m confident that we’ll be able to secure the oil fields as the next step in the Fortress Doctrine—the Texas governor’s on our side, and I’ve got more friends in DC than the powers that be suspect I do—we’ve still got some serious problems ahead of us.
“Part of the reason we’ve decided to go forward with the Fortress Doctrine—which boils down to securing and holding the American heartland, essentially between the Rockies and the Mississippi, with limited engagement on the coasts until later—is that the Chinese are moving fast. We’ve gotten intel from the Grex Luporum Teams that infiltrated Germany this month that points to the Chinese playing a pretty large role in the chaos that’s gone down over there, too. They’ve got their claws deep in the EDC, as well as every other adversary they’re targeting.
“If we don’t move to counter them fast, then they might get so far ahead of us that we’ll be in for a decades-long guerrilla war if we hope to even start to erode their position. They’re hurting economically already—which I suspect is a large part of why they’ve gotten desperate enough to push this hard, this fast—but if they can tear everyone else down before they collapse, they still end up on top.
“Our Letter of Marque and Reprisal is aimed at the European front, and that took some doing all by itself. Congress is too terrified of crossing Beijing to want to push things—look at all the hemming and hawing about the West Coast. So, if we’re going to do anything about it, we’re going to have to follow Beijing’s lead and get sneaky and deniable.”
Hank’s focus was sharpening as he thought he started to see where Santiago was going. The older man pinned him with a cold, steely stare.
“There’s a PMC that just picked up a large anti-piracy contract in the South China Sea. We happen to own a controlling interest in that PMC—as a matter of fact, it’s a shell company owned by Triarii. The client is a legit client, but they’re also read in and willing to work with us. That PMC is actually heading out there to start pushing back, eroding Chinese interests in the Western Pacific.”
Santiago titled his head slightly as he watched Hank for a reaction. “Now, there are those who would argue—not without some legitimacy—that this is a job for a Grex Luporum team. But we don’t have enough of them, and you proved in Camargo that you can fill that role if you put your mind to it. You’d be a long way away from the usual support. And I can’t spare replacements for the men you’ve lost or have in the hospital.”
Hank nodded, but didn’t dare speak just yet.
“It’s ultimately your choice. I’m not ordering you to do this. If you’d rather, I’ve got a lot of Combined Action work still to be done here, Stateside. A lot. We’ve got to push back overseas, but there’s a lot of security and stability operations still to do in the US, even if we’ve started to draw back to the Fortress. If you’d rather stick to what you’ve been doing, I’ll understand. But I felt like I needed to offer you the opportunity.”
Hank leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, and stared at the floor for a long moment.
The responsible thing would be to stay here. I’m not a special ops guy. And I’ve got three guys in the hospital.
But I don’t want to do the Combined Action thing again. Not here. Not where I have to get involved with the local population, make ties, bond with people who just get chopped up into hamburger when they shouldn’t even be in combat…
He looked up at Santiago. “I’ll put it to the rest of the section, sir. But as for me, I’ll go to the Pacific.”
THE STORY CONTINUES IN:
THUNDER RUN
MAELSTROM RISING BOOK 6
From the Author
I hope you’ve enjoyed this fifth chapter in the Maelstrom Rising series. This book got a bit dark, but that’s the nature of the beast when you’re dealing with narcos. I touched on some similar themes in The Devil You Don’t Know, though with a somewhat different focus.
The next book, Thunder Run, will return to Matt and Europe. A lot is happening in the aftermath of the failed coup in Strategic Assets, and our heroes can’t afford to rest on their laurels. To keep up-to-date, I hope that you’ll sign up for my newsletter—you get a free American Praetorians novella, Drawing the Line, when you do.
If you’ve enjoyed this novel, I hope that you’ll go leave a review on Amazon or Goodreads. Reviews matter a lot to independent authors, so I appreciate the effort.
If you’d like to connect, I have a Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/PeteNealenAuthor. You can also contact me, or just read my musings and occasional samples on the blog, at https://www.americanpraetorians.com. I look forward to hearing from you.
Also By Peter Nealen
The Maelstrom Rising Series
Escalation
Holding Action
Crimson Star
Strategic Assets
Fortress Doctrine
Thunder Run
SPOTREPS – A Maelstrom Rising Anthology
The Brannigan’s Blackhearts Universe
Kill Yuan
The Colonel Has A Plan (Online Short)
Fury in the Gulf
Burmese Crossfire
Enemy Unidentified
Frozen Conflict
High Desert Vengeance
Doctors of Death
Kill or Capture
The American Praetorians Series
Drawing the Line: An American Praetorians Story (Novella)
Task Force Desperate
Hunting in the Shadows
Alone and Unafraid
The Devil You Don’t Know
Lex Talionis
The Jed Horn Supernatural Thriller Series
Nightmares
A Silver Cross and a Winchester
The Walker on the Hills
The Canyon of the Lost (Novelette)
Older and Fouler Things
