by J. T. Patten
Chapter 4
Bullets snapped over Drake’s head as he struggled to move parallel to the shooters. Their haphazard shooting was a jihadi spray-and-pray technique, which further pissed him off since the damned Deltas and Special Forces had worked tirelessly for years in Iraq to train the operators properly.
He maneuvered closer but didn’t have a shot in the wooded cover and didn’t want to give away his position. Suppressive fire wouldn’t do much good now that Lars was dead. The barrage of bullets at Havens in the truck was another shock to the senses. Running to Sean would be suicide in the cone of fire. But Drake was no longer the indecisive, scared teen frozen in a Tunisian kitchen while his parents were gunned down nearly a lifetime ago. No, he was selected for the task force because he was an effective and remorseless killing machine.
His tongue clicked, but Drake was already game on. He dropped his rifle and swung the Leatherback over his head and tightened the two soft armor panels tight against front and back.
He snapped his Griptilian open, leading the charge with its steel blade. Woolf estimated three, maybe four, shooters from his vantage. They were spaced four to five feet of each other from what he could judge by the flashes, and they were just inside of the overgrowth before the service road.
The ambush assaulters must have approached from the southwest, which was out of his initial view and the drone’s flight pattern.
Drake cut into the trees to come up from behind. Salvos like this didn’t last long without returning fire, so Drake hurried along before they moved from their current position toward Havens.
He moved from cover to cover behind his attackers, careful to avoid sudden movement that could catch the eye of one of the assaulters.
Drake made his approach from their rear, knowing better than to try to slice their carotid artery. That shit was for the movies. To kill a man with full assurance you had to drive the knife into the base of the skull severing the spinal cord and brain stem.
Drake made do with his position and stabbed straight into the Iraqi’s neck just to the side of the larynx.
He yanked the knife sideways and away; the knife’s upper serrated edge ruptured the carotid and jugular blood bank line. Ripping the blade from the neck, Drake pulled the knife away, his legs already charging for the next man.
The second operator saw the blurred shape and turned.
Drake plunged the knife into the man’s arm, felt the blade grind against the bone, and knew he’d missed the artery.
Shit.
The man spun, and Drake tore the blade free, the handle slick with blood. The Iraqi swung the rifle toward his face, but Woolf had already slipped low, spearing the ISOF soldier deep in the chest.
The man swung back, but Drake stayed low. He retracted and then repunched the knife up and under the ribs to the liver and made a carving sweep.
Feel it.
Drake hit another area, stabbing the metal into the leg crook of the man’s groin.
Again, the Man from Orange was on the move.
The third Iraqi had heard the commotion and charged Woolf. Drake launched for a front strike to the throat but missed as the man deflected the attack.
The knife sank from high to low into the man’s breast meat. The Iraqi screamed but had the presence of mind and quick reaction speed to hammer Drake in the head with a flying elbow.
Woolf was dazed and breathless. He stumbled backward, stopped by a tree trunk, the knife still stuck in the Iraqi’s chest.
The Iraqi wasted no time and was upon Drake, who was shaking off the dizzying sparkles. The man claw-gripped Drake’s shoulders, bringing him in close.
Woolf felt the man’s balance shift. The Iraqi’s weapon dangled from a sling harness and pressed between both fighters. Drake head-butted his opponent, smashing his skull into the man’s nose and mouth. Woolf seized the swinging submachine gun, twisted it into the man, and squeezed the trigger.
Nothing.
Shit! Didn’t we teach you Iraqis anything?
The Iraqi pulled a side arm and fired from the hip while Drake thrust the submachine gun up and into his foe’s face with a sickening crunch as the handgun popped twice.
Drake’s ballistic protection took the rounds, but bullet momentum and impact solidly punched the wind out of Woolf like a direct mule kick, knocking him back and dropping him to his knees. His lungs depleted and gasping for air, he willed his tingling legs to shoot him forward. His foe moving in, Drake took hold of his knife from the man’s chest and backhanded it out and into the Iraqi’s neck, wrenching it around and out until they both fell into foliage and onto the hard ground.
Catching a few quick breaths, his head still shocked from lack of oxygen, Drake knew that a fourth man would have engaged, so he pushed off backward out of the brush area and into the access road in a stumbling run toward Sean Havens or whatever was left of him.
Please, no. Please, no.
Chapter 5
Drake ran through the gun smoke that crept from the tree line and hung over Sean Havens’s van. The Ford Transit was riddled with holes, and his feet crunched over the broken glass from obliterated windows. “Sean,” his voice croaked upon seeing unmistakable blood spatter on the seat, visible even under heavy shadow and the darkness of the night. The smoke stuck to the back of his throat, choking him.
Drake expected to see Havens slumped in a bloody mess but was panicked to find no one.
“Sean!” he called again.
“Hey,” a familiar voice grunted from the rear.
Drake swiveled, expecting to see Sean with his usual smirk as he came up from behind.
Sean wasn’t there.
“Over here,” Havens redirected, his voice strained and low to the ground.
“Oh, fuck.” Drake’s eyes followed a blood smear to a shadowed heap that was Havens lying on the ground. He was in bad shape. “How bad?”
“Swiss cheese bad.”
Woolf dropped to his knees, squishing in a small puddle of blood. Havens was the closest Drake had come to having a friend in years. He clawed at Havens’s clothes, running his hand over and in his shirt. It was dark and Sean’s body was soaked with blood, making it hard to get a visual, but his fingertips felt no initial holes.
“That tickles.”
“Still with the jokes?”
“Drake, I’m pretty sure we’ll be surrounded by security guards shortly. You can massage me later. My hand and foot are the most jacked up. I think I’m okay beyond that.”
“Okay. Should take ten to fifteen minutes before local authorities can get out here and through the checkpoints. They’ll come from the north and east gates. I’m thinking we head to our entry point before the Allendale gate.”
“Dude, I don’t need a map. And we don’t need another situation like Georgetown. We need to go.”
“Yeah.” Drake grabbed Havens under the arms to give him leverage up. “I don’t know what to say about Lars. I fucked up, Sean.” Emotion stole his voice for a moment. “I thought the guy was down.”
“It’s not on you,” Sean assuaged. His voice also strained with emotion, and physical pain, to boot. “He was a trained cop, and I put him to the task. This is all on me.”
“I’ll go back and try to get him when you’re in the truck.”
“Torch him. We need to scram.”
“What?”
“I can’t help you carry him. And I won’t just leave him. He wanted to be cremated anyway with no frills. There’s a gas can in a metal box in the rear. Hopefully if it was shot up there’s enough left. Road flares are in the box across from it. Light up the van, then give Lars a Valhalla Viking send-off. We’re not going to be able to get him in and get away. He would see that as a waste. Just do it.”
“You’re serious.”
“Do it. Really, we have to. AO is still hot, and this is as good of a set
ting as he’d ever want. He wanted to die a hero,” Sean lied. “I’ll head for your vehicle. I’m not going fast, so I won’t be leaving without you, but you need to hurry. Just put it behind you right now.”
Drake understood the sense of urgency and their dire situation. He didn’t need to be told twice, despite his qualms.
In the quiet of their surroundings, Drake heard the distant turn of an engine from behind and through the woods. Giving a second of thought to the map he memorized the day before coming on-site, Woolf knew it was coming from a service road beyond the water.
Drake redirected the drone with his wrist monitor as he grabbed stuff from the van with a free hand. Rotating the drone and expanding the map, Drake spotted the dark object, tapped it on the screen and sent the drone after it.
* * * *
It wasn’t okay burning Lars like that. It was unconscionable to leave him behind. The image of Lars in the explosion was seared into Sean’s mind, and it constantly looped in his mind. The ancillary thought of Havens’s daughter being fatherless was his sole justification for right or wrong. He refused to take a chance on being busted.
As he hopped down the dirt road, the emerging firelight from Lars reached out to Sean in the shadows. Havens’s chest heaved in silent agony. He squeezed his bullet-broken wrist to minimize the flopping compound fracture and the pain it caused, but at least he was still alive.
Havens had dashed out of the van as the melee started, but not before one of the first fire bursts sniped his right wrist from the wheel, passing to his left shoulder. His ankle was tagged as soon as his foot dropped to the ground. As he rolled out and low to the ground, another had ripped through his bicep. All the while, the only thing he could think of was how he would tell his daughter, Maggie, that Uncle Lars was the latest victim of Sean Havens’s curse. Aside from his daughter, there was no family left in their world. At least no one who hadn’t asked him to stay far away.
* * * *
Drake’s American Eagle drone followed an autonomous mission plan program. Its carbon fiber frame cut through the night air guided by a locked object tracker. With a FLIR multispectral zoom camera streaming real-time HD in night vision, the UAS buzzed along at thirty knots. Without an explosive payload, all the drone could do for the next two miles was intelligence collection. But in the first minute, it had everything Drake needed.
Havens stepped on a road divot and tumbled over. Like a hawk snatching a rabbit, Drake was already running up from behind and Ranger-rolled Sean, scooping him up in a fluid fireman’s carry as he sprinted to the Jeep Cherokee still ten yards ahead.
“Fuck, Havens, I must have missed one. You’re completely soaked with blood.”
At the forefront of Drake’s mind in caring for Sean were bleed out and shock. Both of which would be tough to prevent while hightailing it out of there with no medevac to call in.
“You still with me buddy?”
“Yeah,” Sean grunted as he bounced along. “Wrist is the bad one. It’s bleeding pretty good. Too dark to tell about the ankle. Round’s still in there.” Havens grimaced again. “Same with one in my upper shoulder.”
Drake’s SUV was nestled near the tree line, but at a slight road bend that blocked it from view of the responding vehicles.
“Okay, man.” Woolf loaded Sean into the passenger seat and sloughed off his jacket and the pack. He tore a sleeve off his shirt and yanked the straps off the Leatherback to use as a tourniquet. “Make a fist with your left hand and raise it to your armpit.”
With his fist between his arm and his side, Drake leaned into Sean’s right arm, putting pressure indirectly to the brachial artery while he wrapped Havens’s broken and bleeding wrist. “You sure you’re breathing okay?”
More perimeter alarms sounded in the night, and headlights snaked toward them from as far as Drake could see.
Sean grunted.
“Okay, buddy. Hang in there. I’m getting us out.”
Keeping the headlights off, Drake exfiltrated the SRS K Area along Four Mile Creek, slowing only on the other side of the woods to redirect the UAS.
Havens slipped in and out of lucidity as they drove.
Red-and-blue lights flashed as responders approached on the narrow access road. It was hardly the time for chicken, and without headlights on, any armed security responder would surely stop them if a collision didn’t happen first. Drake slowed and pulled over to the right.
“What are you doing?” Sean mumbled. “This is not getting us out.”
“I’ll tell you if it works. Glad you’re still alive.”
Woolf returned the manual UAS control to his mobile device. Redirecting it yet again, he lowered its altitude and sent it toward the oncoming vehicle. Device in hand, Drake returned to the road and punched it.
“Fuck me,” Sean exclaimed with a hint of lift in his voice. “If I don’t die in the next minute, I’ll die in the next two.”
Drake watched the road and red dot of the UAS with one flitting eye as the oncoming car sped toward the drone and its camera. “Three, two, one, action.” Woolf activated the blinding lumen bulbs on the UAS.
The oncoming emergency response vehicle veered quickly to the left, going off-road and onto the reed-filled mud flats.
The plan would have been a bigger success had there not been another vehicle following close behind the lead. The drone flew straight into the second emergency vehicle’s windshield—an unexpected bird strike. Drake flashed on his own headlights and flipped the brights, praying the startled driver would regain control and get the hell out of the way.
Instead, the vehicle swerved toward Drake and Sean, out of control.
Chapter 6
Drake gunned the gas toward the oncoming headlights.
“What the hell are you doing?” Havens lurched back in his seat, staring death in the eyes.
“Assault driving.”
“That’s not a thing!” Sean gripped the seat belt strap with his good hand. “Oh, shit. This is gonna hurt.”
Drake spun his wheel to the right then quickly back left, hitting the brake and sending their ride’s rear outward.
The oncoming vehicle nearly sideswiped Drake’s SUV but caught the back bumper, spinning their SUV back inward.
Woolf cranked the wheel opposite and stomped the gas again, controlling the spinout, fishtailing like a breeched marlin with Sean flopping side to side.
The emergency response vehicle spun off the road.
While Woolf would never wish ill will to any innocent victim resulting from the task force’s actions, he checked his side and rearview mirrors to ensure he was no longer being pursued. The welfare of the innocent was a secondary thought. Most vehicles had airbags, he convinced himself. His only concern was getting Havens to medical care ASAP.
Of course, there was also the flashing red and white lights of the gate that they were closing in on, which was their next hurdle.
Drake drove the Jeep steering along the straightaway with his wrists as he changed the band on his Sentry phone to dial an open line.
“Nine-one-one,” the operator answered. “What is your emergency?”
“Ma’am, this is the Radiological Control Group calling from the Savannah River Site,” Drake lied. “We’ve had an accident and need to ensure roads are blocked coming and going from the north, west, and east entrance. There is some confusion about a breach, but we had a Red Team exercise go bad. I need you to alert all nearby hospitals to expect incoming paramedic busses. Hazmat is en route. Please contact local authorities and direct them to our website for the SRS Operational Radiological Emergency Response Plan. I’m running back to check wounded.” He hung up.
Havens laughed then coughed and grimaced from the injuries.
Woolf caught Sean’s face of pain, and in the fleeting light of passing streetlamps he saw blood coming from Havens’s lips. He placed his ha
nd on Sean’s leg. “I’m getting you to the contingency site. We’ll get you all patched up.” He hoped. “Hang on, pal.”
* * * *
The task force was nascent. Drake didn’t know exactly how many months behind the scenes the small unit had been in the making, despite the recent weeks of operations. Drake Woolf had been operating on the fly in response to a direct threat that had killed dozens of military personnel. The same affiliates who had just ambushed them at the storage site.
The enemy were comprised of Iraqis formerly trained by Deltas and other government agencies, who had been retaliated against by their own people for aiding the Americans. Driven by vengeance and manipulation by local agents of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps—Qods Force—these “Mohawks” and Iraqi Special Operations Forces had hunted down their trainers and coalition partners. Fortunately, Drake, his spymaster boss, Sean Havens, and ex-cop, Lars Bjorklund had managed to take out the known threat. They used Drake’s expertise in signals intelligence and direct action to drive the rooting out while being supported logistically and technologically from the NSA by an ex-Brit program director, Sebastian, and two analysts. One witting to the program, one unwitting.
About the only thing the task force had really planned was this mission to thwart an unknown attack in South Carolina by the remaining Iraqi hunter killers. Within the plan was identifying in the logistics layout a local area surgeon who was a prior Special Forces medic turned spook. Now, that former 18-Delta medical sergeant ran an urgent care clinic, which would suit their needs perfectly, and since he was a trusted agent, the team wouldn’t have to worry about a physician’s mandate to report the gunshot wounds.
That would bring questions, and questions would bring more cops, and more cops would bring the Feds, and that would put Special Agent Tresa Halliday back on their ass. And for as much as Drake knew, the FBI counterterrorism agent was a danger to their mission. He hadn’t had a crush on a female like this since his teens, and that was nearly twenty years ago.
“Open the gate,” the Allendale south gate security captain ordered the low-wage contract watch officer. “Just got a call from a Department of Energy security team lead. They had an accident doing a Red Team exercise by K Area.” He figured that must be them coming in now. “Said they got a man hurt pretty bad. Must be what all that radio chatter’s about.”