The big man hunched back down as the GEO men returned fire.
“One thing we can do, though,” William said, “is make it harder for those bastards to smuggle Bretta out of here. You think it was her who sent that man tumbling from the rafters?”
“Could be,” Ethan said.
William nodded, then crabbed towards the end of the conveyor belt, to the limitation of their available cover.
“What are you doing?” Ethan asked him as he laid down suppressive fire.
William sat on the floor with his back to the conveyor belt, pulled the incendiary grenade from his webbing and yanked the pin free. The spoon flew away, then William dropped sideways so that he was flat on his back, and threw the grenade hard across the floor, sending it skittering away. Then the big Texan pulled himself back into cover.
Ethan gave him a puzzled look. William grinned back.
The incendiary grenade went off with very little noise, the gunpowder making only the dullest of whumpfs as it ignited the magnesium accelerant and dispersed the thermite payload.
The idling Ford Transit van, which had been somewhat overlooked after the unexpected appearance of Ethan and William, was instantly engulfed in flames. The searing heat of the fireball, burning at about four and a half thousand degrees Fahrenheit, washed over all the men in the area.
At the same time this happened, Ethan heard a heavy report come from up above, on the gantry. He looked up just in time to hear another and see an accompanying muzzle flash.
That’s not aimed at us, was his initial thought. Definitely could be Bretta.
He chanced a glance over the top of the conveyor belt, squinting against the glare of the burning van. Past the flames he could just make out one of the GEO guards dashing for the double door on the far side of the factory floor. Even as Ethan watched, there was another rolling crack from above; pink mist sprayed from an exit wound and the fleeing man dropped like a felled tree, sliding on his face to a halt in the dust and gravel that coated the ground.
There was a silence then, disturbed only by the crackle of the flames and the occasional soft pop as something burst or melted or cracked within the burning van.
“Copperhead?”
The familiar voice floated down from gantry like the answer to Ethan’s unspoken prayers.
“Maelstrom?” he replied incredulously. By the orange glow of the vehicular inferno, Ethan could finally make out a figure above, cradling a rifle.
“About time you guys showed up,” Bretta called.
As relieved as Ethan might have felt just then, he was well aware that this was not the time for pleasantries. There were still multiple Kidon members somewhere in the building, unless Aaron and Huntsman had managed to take any of them out.
She ducked as the enemy opened fire.
“Get the hell off that gantry!” Ethan ordered.
“Copy that,” Bretta called back. “I’ll try to reach the roof.”
He turned to William. “We have to get upstairs. Anything moves that isn’t one of ours, you burn it, got it?”
William nodded.
The two of them set off across the open floor of the factory, giving the torched van, which was still burning nicely, a wide berth, and moving past the prostrate form of the three GEO members Bretta had taken out. Ethan tossed a grenade at the hiding place of the final holdouts, and he mowed the men down when they emerged from cover.
As they continued toward the doors, Ethan spoke into his TCAPS comms mic. “Constrictor, Huntsman, what’s your status?”
He was answered by nothing––no static, no garbled transmission. Nothing.
“Constrictor, Huntsman, sit-rep, over,” he tried again.
Still, nothing.
“I don’t like that,” William said.
“They can look after themselves,” Ethan said, though personally he didn’t much like it either. “We’ve got to get to Maelstrom.”
On their side of the compound, Aaron and Huntsman had not found it quite so easy to infiltrate their way into the main complex. Unsurprisingly, the concussion grenade detonating had not gone unnoticed by the few men stationed in that part of the factory.
Aaron was following along behind Huntsman, who had taken point. They were moving through what might have once been an administration section of sorts––a huge, open-plan area filled with desks, support pillars spaced at even intervals and a once impressive, now dilapidated, meeting table. It was the sort of large, open-plan, cubicle-filled space in which employee tax was calculated, holiday days deducted and invoices organized into chronological order.
They were moving steadily, sweeping from left to right, when an abrupt double crack came from their two o’clock—a dusty computer monitor exploded in a burst of plastic and glass.
Huntsman grunted and folded up. The tall Australian dropped to his ass on the cheap, scuffed carpet and exclaimed, “Fuck!” in the same annoyed voice that he might have used had he just dropped a full beer at a barbecue.
And it is just like that the momentum of the game changes.
Aaron dropped to one knee, grabbed Huntsman by the shoulder strap of his body armor and yanked him into the cover of one of the solid cement pillars that supported the roof of the open office. Then Aaron shimmed and crawled across to the pillar parallel to it, just as the men who had been laying in wait for them lit up the area.
Automatic gunfire crackled and roared from two points across the room. Aaron peeked out from around the corner of the pillar he was hiding behind and saw two pairs of GEO officers moving cautiously from the far side of the office space towards them. They were peppering the area in which they had seen the two DIA agents go to ground. Their submachine gun fire sent old stacks of paper billowing into the air, and reduced cubicle partitions to splintered wood and plastic ruins.
There was another crack that came loudly even through the TCAPS earpieces, from a weapon that was definitely more heavy-duty than any nine-millimeter.
“Is it bad?” Aaron yelled as a desk phone was sent bouncing across the floor, and an ancient, dried cactus in a pot was blown to smithereens on a desk across from where he was hiding.
Huntsman’s face was pale as he looked across at Aaron, and his eyes shone with a sort of supreme realization.
“Cheeky little devil has snuck through my OTV,” he said. Outer Tactical Vest.
Aaron could see speckled blood under the man’s chin. Both of them knew what that potentially meant. “Shit.”
“You’re bloody telling me, mate.” Huntsman winced and leaned out to fire a few short bursts from his FAMAS rifle in the direction of the encroaching men.
“You want me to have a look at it?” Aaron peered around his own pillar and fired a few more rounds, almost winging one of the GEO officers. The man dove out of sight as the bullets ripped into a wheelie chair and sent it flipping over backwards.
“Oh yeah, mate,” Huntsman replied, “I’m sure these blokes will go on pause while you patch me up.”
One of the GEO officers had advanced further than his fellows. Perhaps he was intent on being the one to take down the men he had probably been told were terrorists of some kind.
“Three o’clock, turn and burn,” Aaron cried.
Huntsman’s FAMAS had just run dry but, with astonishing speed, he dropped the rifle, whipped his Browning Hi-Power from his thigh holster and brought it to bear on the approaching tango. He unloaded all thirteen bullets at the GEO officer, sending his foe crashing backwards into the boxy cubicle behind him, blood from a couple of the exit wounds speckling the flimsy wooden walls knocked over by the dead man.
Before the man had even come to rest, Huntsman had already ejected the spent magazine and slapped in a fresh one. Then he holstered the pistol smoothly, and reloaded the FAMAS. In all, the killing of his enemy and the reloading of both guns might have taken all of twelve seconds.
However, it had not been without taking a certain something out of the former SAS trooper. His face had gone a shade paler and bea
ds of perspiration were now standing out on his pallid forehead.
“Constrictor,” Huntsman said through gritted teeth. “We’re going to have to clear this room ASAP, otherwise I’m going to fall over, mate.”
Aaron wouldn’t let himself believe his friend was mortally injured. It made no sense to him somehow, despite the fact he had seen plenty of men cut down before. If there was one thing you learned on the road to becoming a black ops soldier, it was that death didn’t give a damn about relationships or reputations. Death was about as indifferent an act of nature as a person could care to imagine.
Aaron hit the back of his head against the pillar a couple of times, trying to reestablish a little focus.
“Copperhead,” he said into his TCAPS mic, “Huntsman is hit. Any chance of support?”
No answer. Ethan and William were either occupied, or out of range. Neither bode well for Huntsman’s chances.
“Get your ass over here,” he told Huntsman. “Let me take a look.”
Huntsman shook his head. “I don’t think I can take my IBA off, mate. I’ve got a nasty feeling its holding something important in.”
He flashed a grin at Aaron; his teeth were smeared with crimson.
Shit!
“Copperhead, do you copy?” Aaron tried again, ducking out from the pillar and loosing a few more rounds in the direction of the men creeping forward from the other side of the room. His bullets pummeled into the dusty carpet making the men pause. Aaron emptied his magazine through the flimsy walls of the partitions they had ducked behind, but wasn’t rewarded with any cries of pain.
As he ducked back into cover, Aaron caught a glimpse of a black-clad figure moving patiently down the far wall, rifle in hand.
Kidon, his flustered brain supplied. Goddamn wonderful.
“Copperhead?” Aaron tried again, as he slotted a fresh mag into the well of his assault rifle.
Nothing. No answer. Not even static.
“There’s one of those fucking Kidon in here,” he told Huntsman as his friend let off a burst at the remaining GEO officer on his side of the room. An answering rattle of MP5 fire chewed into the pillar, spraying cement chips everywhere. “Eleven o’clock, far wall. I’ve got no radio contact with the others.”
Huntsman nodded grimly. “RF jammer, I reckon.”
Another burst of submachine gun fire ripped into the ceiling, sending dust floating down.
“We’ve got to rush them,” Huntsman said. He cleared his throat and spat red saliva onto the floor. “Adrenaline is only going to take me so far, mate.”
Aaron squeezed off another shot. He chanced a look towards where the Kidon had been, but the figure had gone.
“We take a flank each, meet at the far door,” Huntsman said. “Use me while you still can.”
Aaron nodded. “Go.” He leaned past and lay down suppressive fire.
Huntsman heaved himself upwards and ducked round the pillar, gun bucking in his hand.
Aaron followed suit. He went the opposite way, moving at a crouch with the single-minded intent of a hunting cat. Speed and aggression. They were two things that served a man well when it came to close quarters combat. You kept moving, kept your enemy guessing, stayed on the front foot.
He slung his G41 over his shoulder and led with his pistol. He slunk between the maze-like partitions, making his footfalls as light as possible by stepping with his heel and rolling his feet after. He took a couple of exploratory peeks over the low office dividers, the second of which told him where his quarry was.
There was a brief crackle of gunfire from the other side of the room––an exchange of different calibers––and Aaron used this to hurl one of his M84 flashbangs.
Aaron didn’t stop moving after he had thrown the stun grenade.
“Bang,” he whispered over the comm.
He looked down at the floor as a precaution and continued in the direction where he had last seen the two GEO officers.
There was a double cry of alarm and shock as the flashbang went off with a deafening boom. Aaron swept smoothly around the corner of a final set of partitions and came to face to face with the two disorientated GEO men. The first went down with a double-tap to the head before he was probably aware of anything other than the ringing in his own ears. The second man flinched at the sound of Aaron’s pistol, but then dropped soundlessly to the deck with a neat set of nine-millimeter holes punched in just below and above his right eye.
Aaron let out a breath––a slow one through his nose––and listened. The sound of battle had died on the other side of the room. Holstering his pistol, he swung his G41 back into his hands and made his way stealthily towards the back of the vast space. As he passed the center of the room, where the enormous meeting table sat, the sound of a muffled groan and a curse came to his ears.
Aaron immediately deviated left. One thing that working with Huntsman had taught him was an appreciation for how much venom could be injected into a phrase as seemingly innocuous as, “You’re no bloody good, love.”
His finger resting lightly on the trigger of his assault rifle, Aaron stepped silently over a wrecked water cooler and around a pillar.
Huntsman was leaning heavily against the huge table. Aaron was horrified to see what the last four minutes had done to his friend. Huntman’s face was a bloodless wax mask, his eyes ringed with dark circles. He was breathing in shallow gasps and Aaron had heard a slight slur in his voice when he had spoken the moment before.
Massive blood loss, Aaron’s ever whirring brain told him.
Huntsman was unarmed, one arm dangling limp at his side, the other clutching feebly at his body armor. There was no visible mark to the body armor so Aaron guessed the round that struck him must have gone in through the side.
Not good.
The words floated ominously through his mind.
A bullet that penetrated body armor might whizz about inside, kept in the body by the very armor that had been tasked with protecting it instead of punching its way out again.
Behind the wounded Australian, a lithe figure––wearing all-black combat fatigues, a helmet and a mask––stood with a pistol pressed to the base of his skull. There was a portable RF jammer, half a dozen antennas sticking up from a black box no bigger than a large cell phone, sitting on the table next to her.
Aaron came to a halt about twenty-five feet away, standing in the middle of the thin aisle that separated two long lines of desks.
“You are DIA?” the woman asked in her soft, inoffensive, ever so dangerous voice.
Aaron said nothing. Just continued to stare fixedly down the sights of his G41.
For a few seconds the only sound was the soft buzzing of the overhead lighting and the patter of blood, running down Huntsman’s limp arm and dripping off the tip of his pinky.
“Who the hell are you?” Aaron shot back, pointlessly.
“You know already,” the woman said from behind her mask.
He was playing for time. They both knew it.
“I will disable this jammer,” the woman said, “and you will radio for the scientist to be brought in here. We know that you wouldn’t have left her far away.”
The woman was a head shorter than Huntsman and kept slowly moving her head so as not to present a stationary target for Aaron. There was no way he could take a shot at her without compromising the life of his friend.
Aaron didn’t reply. It was quite the bind they were in. No comms and a badly wounded teammate taken hostage.
The ex-SAS soldier sagged slightly, but the female Kidon member dug her finger into the pressure point in his shoulder and he straightened with a groan.
“You will do it,” the Kidon said, calmly. “Or this man will die.” She said it in the infuriatingly patronizing tone of someone about to discard refuse.
Aaron looked at his friend. Huntsman was in bad shape. Even as he spared him a glance, the Australian warrior coughed raggedly and wrapped his arm about his stomach and sagged forward again.
&n
bsp; The woman jerked at the taller man’s collar and, when Huntsman straightened, Aaron saw that he was holding something.
Aaron frowned.
The spoon of the M67 frag grenade flipped out into the space dividing the two friends and landed noiselessly on the carpet.
Huntsman grinned. “Drive on, mate.”
Aaron threw himself sideways, crashing bodily through one of the rickety partition screens and landing heavily on the carpet. He rolled desperately away.
The muffled pop of the detonation was surprisingly quiet. The explosion tore Huntsman’s body apart. Those pieces of the cast-iron outer shell of the grenade that weren’t stopped by his body ripped into the woman standing just behind him, taking off her arm and riddling her upper torso with shrapnel that tore into her like razorblades.
Aaron got to his feet. He took one look at the bodies and gritted his teeth at the mutilated remains of Huntsman’s lower torso. He gazed at the smaller body that lay nearby, ripped and crumpled like a pile of old cast away clothes.
Dead.
He went over to Mia’s body all the same, put his rifle to her temple and put a round into her head. Better to be safe than sorry with the Kidon.
Aaron paused beside the ruined torso of Huntsman, then closed his eyes for a moment. Finally he turned away and stalked off.
There would be time for grief later.
If he was lucky.
He disabled the RF jammer. “Copperhead, do you copy?”
“Copy, Constrictor,” Ethan replied a moment later. “What’s your sit-rep?”
“Huntsman is down. I repeat, Huntsman is KIA.”
30
Ethan and William dashed through the double-doors that led out of the main factory floor, noticing as they did so that said doors were pocked with bullet holes. It looked like someone had threaded a fire hose through the handles, but the hose had been broken apart by gunfire.
William was first through, his eyes instantly alighting on the stairwell leading upwards.
Boiling Point (An Ethan Galaal Thriller Book 4) Page 26