NEED.
So, when we reached the stand of trees, I was pathetically grateful to pull in among the trees and shut the engine off, to get out and stretch my legs and relieve my screaming, achingly full bladder. To start the process of doing, rather than just thinking and driving.
Dani seemed on edge, but I was too, so I didn’t mention it.
We each spent a moment going through the ritual of precombat checks—main weapon ready, plenty of ammo secured in easy-to-reach locations, sidearm in place with appropriate ammo, KA-BAR secured, make sure nothing jingles or jangles or rattles, shoes tied…
She broke down her HK and cleaned it while I examined the satellite images again. “So,” she said, “what’s the plan?”
“Recon, first. Numbers, layout, all that.” I indicated the rear of one of the SUVs. “There an actual sniper rifle in either of those bags?”
She shook her head. “Negative. Assault rifles, submachine guns, and sidearms only.”
“Nothing with a scope worth mentioning, then?”
Another shake of her head. “Nope.”
“Dammit.” I sighed. “So we’ll have to get pretty close.”
She nodded, a grim expression on her face. “Yeah. Seems so.”
I wanted to address the elephant in the room—the tension between us. But I didn’t. It would only distract us, and we needed to focus now more than ever.
“Okay, so we’re approaching the airfield from the north, and as best I can tell the topography is mostly flat, with a slight downward slope as we approach, which will work in our favor. We move fast, stay low, and when we’re within sight of the structures, we continue our approach on our bellies.”
She blinked at me a moment. “You have any sniper training?”
I shrugged, shook my head. “No, why?”
“Obviously I do. I don’t have a scope or anything, but I’ve got experience in infiltration. Maybe I should do the approach and you hold back and keep watch.”
I hated to let her assume all the risk, but she was right. I sighed. “Yeah, you have a point.”
She caught my displeasure. “You’re not going all alpha on me, are you?”
I frowned. “No. I don’t like letting you take on all the dangerous stuff. It’s not a man-woman thing, or an alpha male thing, it’s a team thing.”
“So you feel the same way about your buddies on your team at A1S?”
I nodded. “Yeah.”
She frowned, obviously not buying it. “You’re the techie. You sit in a room and watch shit go down on a computer.”
I felt a bolt of anger. “The fuck I do. My work happens in a mobile command center, as close to the action as possible. I’m never safe in an office. I may not infiltrate and run the op with them, but I’m far from safe. And it bothers me every time that I’m not out there with them, facing the real danger with them. But I have to accept that my skills are best used elsewhere. Just like now. My instinct, as your partner in this, is to go with you, to do this together, to take the risk on myself. But you have skills and experience I don’t, so I’m agreeing—you should do the recon. Doesn’t mean I have to like it, though.” I sighed. “And if you want full disclosure, the fact that I so frequently have to sit back while others do the dangerous work is a big part of the reason I have the adrenaline bug. I’d rather be on the op with them, but I can’t because I have to use my skills where they’re needed—and as I think you’ve seen, I’m not exactly helpless in combat, but I’m not on your level, or the level of Thresh, Duke, Puck, and Harris.”
She sighed. “That wasn’t fair of me, sorry. I just…”
I waved a hand. “I get it. You’ve had to earn and hold your place as one of the guys. I know I can’t imagine how hard it was for you, as a woman, to cement your place on that team. You just have to try and trust that I’m not going to make you earn it with me, that I trust you, that I respect your skills, and that I’m not threatened by them.”
She just stared at me. “I’m doing my best.” Another pause. “Enough talk. Let’s move out.”
I hated the weird, sudden chill between us, and couldn’t figure out where it had come from, or why it had cropped up between the last time we talked and now.
“Dani, why are you—”
She gave me an icy Cuddy stare. “Let’s focus, Lear.”
“Dani.”
An aggravated sigh. “We have to focus, Lear. The only way I can do that is to shut you out, emotionally. I can’t figure out how to compartmentalize our relationship, how to handle how I feel about you. We can’t afford distractions, or hesitations. The only way I know, right now, is to just be all Cuddy. It’s not personal. If anything, it’s to keep you safe, to make sure we both stay alive through this so there’s an us to be personal about.”
I nodded. “Understood.” I checked my weapon, and the walkie-talkie. “Let’s switch to channel…fifteen.”
She matched my channel, and we checked the connection, made sure the earpieces and mics were secured, and then I headed out in front, leading the way. We moved slowly, ears alert, heads on a swivel. The landscape, here, was rolling hills and high grass, the occasional tree or three, barbed wire fences off in the distance. As I’d noted from my examination of the satellite images, the terrain sloped downward very gently, flattening here and there or rolling up slightly now and then, but largely trending downward. We moved side by side in companionable and alert silence until the hill leveled off for about a hundred yards before sloping sharply downward. As we reached the edge of the slope, I caught sight of a glint of metal in the distance, and dropped to my stomach.
Cuddy joined me, and we army-crawled closer to the edge until we could see over and into the valley below. The hill here was a lot more precipitous than I’d originally thought. We spent a moment in silence, each of us taking our own inventory of what we saw below, and then we moved in unison backward, so we wouldn’t be a silhouette against the ridge.
“So,” I said. “Thoughts?”
“Four hangars, big enough for some pretty sizable machinery. Three ex-military helos, and an old but serviceable turboprop cargo plane, the ramp lowered. I counted at least twenty heads on the ground, but two of the hangars were open—I’m assuming more personnel is present in the hangars but without a better angle and a closer look, I can’t be sure.” A pause, and then she continued. “Our position here would be damn near perfect if we had a sniper rifle, but to approach downslope from this angle would be suicide. They’d see us and we’d be pinned against the hillside.”
“Options?”
“Depends on how we want to proceed. If we want to think about a full-frontal assault, we go in together, approaching from the east or west—the airstrip itself is oriented north-south, and I’m guessing most traffic takes off and lands from a southerly approach, so an approach from the east or west would let us sneak closer and attack from the side of the hangars. Or, we bring the SUVs around to the two-track, which comes in at an angle from the south-east—you rig one or both to blow, send it in unmanned or something, and then when it blows, we use the distraction and ensuing chaos to make our attack.”
I frowned, thinking. “Not sure I like either option.”
“Me either.” She eyed me. “We both alerted our respective bosses. If I call back and leave the phone here, he’ll pinpoint the location and send the kill teams this way at top speed.”
“How fast could they be here?” I asked.
“Assuming he was able to pull all teams in and have them ready for my call, they’d be coming from outside Chicago…” she started.
“Assuming they’re coming via helo,” I cut in,” figure around two hundred miles or so, top speed of…one-forty or so…” I did some quick math. “An hour and a half or so.”
“Right.” She glanced at me. “What about your guys?”
I shrugged. “No way to know. I’m kind of assuming they’re around here somewhere, but without any way of securely contacting each other…”
“God, wh
at a fucking mess,” she groused. “I really hate this.”
I grimaced. “Sorry to have dragged you into this,” I said. “Not fair to you.”
She shook her head. “I mean, it just sucks. I’m supposed to be on vacation right now.” She hesitated, not looking at me. “Not saying I’m not glad to have met you, but…”
“You could have done without all the bullshit.”
“Right.” She tucked her HK against her chest. “I’m gonna head down for a closer look.”
I pulled one of the burner phones from a pocket and clicked the battery into place. “Might as well contact Raze.”
She nodded, took the phone, dialed a number, and left it in the grass. “Leave it there.”
I nodded. “If Alice is watching those numbers, she’ll know we’re here.”
A shrug. “Only option. It’s a burner phone, though, so I guess it’s a question of how likely it is that they called in every number of every phone for tracking purposes.”
I shrugged. “On my team, any time the guys are out on an op and get a burner, they usually do try to cross with me so I can track them as needed. But that’s us. Not sure how these guys do things.”
She moved to her feet, remaining in a low crouch. “While I’m gone, see if you can find a way to get hold of your guys. I have a feeling we’re going to need all hands for this.”
“Will do.”
I watched her angle away, her vector such that she’d end up approaching parallel to the two-track—it would bring her level with the airfield and give her a vantage point into the two open hangars.
I watched her until she was out of sight, behind trees and over the edge of the hill. And then I set my mind on the problem at hand—contacting my guys without giving us away any more than that phone in the grass already had.
A few minutes of thinking left me unable to crack the conundrum. The coded call I had used was a one-way thing only, as was the email process I’d set up; no way to let them contact me. I had a walkie-talkie, but it wouldn’t do me any good because even assuming the guys were out there and within range, they were on a private, encrypted channel, not a public one. They’d have to know I was here, and that I had a radio, and then have someone tuned to public, unencrypted channels cycling and sending out a coded message, or listening for one from me.
Worth a shot, at least.
I switched from our current channel to the next one down. “One-two-five-one-one-eight, receiving on one-eight. Repeat, one-two-five-one-one-eight, receiving on one-eight.”
I repeated this message on every channel until I reached the channel Cuddy and I had agreed on.
And then waited, and waited.
Silence from Cuddy.
I cycled through the channels again, pausing for a few seconds on each one, listening. After ten minutes, I repeated my message on all the channels.
When I got back to channel 18, I heard Cuddy’s voice. “Lear? Respond.”
“I’m here.”
“Where’ve you been?”
“Trying to get ahold of my guys.”
A pause, and then the crackle of static as she thumbed her mic. “Ah. That explains it.”
“Explains what?”
“The sudden burst of activity.”
“Elaborate, please.”
“Well, I’m down here in the grass inching closer, and suddenly there’s trucks starting, and guys running all over the place.”
“They heard me.”
“Seems like it. They must be using a public channel and figure there’s someone within range. They can’t possibly know it’s you, specifically, I don’t think, but they clearly want to make sure there’s no chance of being discovered. I’ve got four pickups mobilizing, each one with four men in the cab and four in the bed.”
“My way?”
“No. Two-track.”
I gave it some thought. “This might be our shot.”
“That’s what I was thinking.” An idea hit. “I have a plan. Hold your location.”
“What’s the plan?”
I just grinned to myself. “You’ll see. Just hold.”
“Lear?”
“When you hear the big boom, wait for ninety seconds or so, and then hit ’em. I’ll be lighting ’em up from a different direction. If my guys are in the vicinity, they’ll see the fun and join in.”
“Too fast and loose for my liking, Lear. I like a tight plan.”
“Best we got, babe. Four trucks with eight each, that’s thirty-two. Has to be a good majority of their available personnel.”
“And then what?”
“We get into that transport and hope there’s a pilot to take us to the next location.”
“The next location.” Her sarcastic disbelief was audible even over the walkie-talkie. “You mean, where they’re expecting us? That next location?”
“Where they’re expecting us as prisoners or dead.”
“I don’t like it. Too many holes.”
“Got a better idea?”
Silence. “No.”
“Then wait for the boom.”
“Fine.” Pause. “Don’t get dead.”
“Nope.” I hesitated, and then thumbed the mic. “You either. I’m starting to like you a little.”
She didn’t answer for a long time. “Holding my position. Waiting for the boom.”
I laughed. “Fine. Avoid it, then. See if I care.”
“Lear.”
I clicked the button, and then held it to talk. “Okay, okay. Stowing the mushy shit. Radio silence starting now.”
She didn’t answer, and I just laughed to myself. I ran back to the trees, transferred the gear to the vehicle, and then started rigging my bomb.
I wasn’t as good at this as Puck was—if he was here, he’d have a bomb that was a work of art fixed up in about a minute flat, but I was less of an artist and much slower. My final product was messy and ugly and basic, but it would work. When it was rigged, I drove the booby-trapped SUV at a recklessly fast pace away from the trees, around to the southeast. My plan was to get ahead of the trucks, park the rigged Suburban, and then haul ass to a new position so I could light up anyone not caught in the explosion.
Bouncing and jarring and jouncing across the landscape, I saw the two-track in the distance, and puffs of cloud marking the trucks—they were further ahead than I’d thought, meaning I was behind them…between them and the airfield. They’d have to turn around and double back to get to this location, and there was no way for me to get ahead of them now without them seeing me. As it was, this was becoming risky as hell.
Fuck it.
I jammed the brakes, and the vehicle slewed to a skidding stop in the tall grass about fifty yards from the two-track.
I put it in park, and left it running. Grabbed the burner phone that would be the detonator, took the key fob. Took one last glance at the road, making sure there was no one watching, and then hopped out and ran hard and fast back the way I’d come, up the hill and circling around to the north. I could see a bend in the two-track, and the approaching caravan of trucks. They were going slow, probably scanning the surrounding area for sign of…well, me.
I pressed the panic button on the fob, and the horn started honking, the lights flashing. I saw the caravan halt, pause, and then they all spun in awkward three-point turns on the narrow two-track. They sped back this way, and I dropped to my belly. I had the burner phone in one hand, and my Steyr Aug in the other—I’d already picked out my next two firing locations.
A minute or so later, the caravan of trucks skidded to a stop on the road near where the Suburban was parked, panic alarm still going off.
A moment of silence, the trucks still, and then the lead truck disgorged its passengers, four emerging from the double cab, the other four hopping down from the bed. They moved in a tight, trained formation toward the truck—they were dressed in casual clothes, jeans and T-shirts, but their movements identified them all as ex-military, and highly trained.
The other thre
e trucks sat in the road, waiting.
Shit.
I’d hoped they’d all go check it out, but they were too well trained for that.
Not good.
I waited, waited. The eight-man squad surrounded the honking SUV, weapons trained on it. They quickly tagged it as empty, and one man yanked open the door while another rolled in to cover the opening, scanning. They repeated this on all four doors. Nothing, just an empty SUV, out in the middle of nowhere, panic going off.
I saw one of the men, likely the squad leader, key his mic—conversing with the others in the truck. The other three were too far away from the Suburban to be much affected by the blast—I’d only packed it with enough to yield a decent explosion…enough to knock out the truck and anyone near it, but not enough to blast a bigger radius.
They were trying to shut the panic off, to no avail, and were getting pissy. A panic alarm sets your teeth on edge, as it’s designed to do, and that at least was working in my favor.
This was dumb. I was dumb. They were never going to fall for this, and now I was here with four eight-man kill squads, only one of which was in range of my bomb. I set it off, they’re dead and the other three are alerted, swarming. The boom sets off everyone’s radar—the wasp’s nest was already poked by my little goof with the walkie-talkie, and now the bomb going off is going to be the equivalent of whacking the wasp’s nest with a stick.
Fuck.
Nothing for it.
I key in the code on the phone, sending a text message to the rig set up inside the hood of the SUV—a simple thing, once you know the trick of it. I muttered a thanks to Puck for teaching me as I pressed send.
The other burner in the engine bay received the message—I heard it from here, and saw the moment the kill squad heard it. The text tone was a merry little digital jig, the kind of ringer popular with grandpas who haven’t gotten a new phone since ’97.
I saw the men around the truck glancing at each other in confusion, and then I saw the moment one of them realized what was about to happen.
He shouted something in an Eastern Bloc language, and took off sprinting pell-mell away from the truck. Not in time.
Lear: Alpha One Security: Book 5 Page 18
