I reholstered my gun and pushed myself off the ground as Sarah came running out the door. “Mike, they’re coming!” she warned, pressing herself up against the wall. “Are you okay?”
“Good to go!” Swinging my rifle around, I leaned around the door frame and popped off four or five shots down the hallway, scattering the Zubaran troops advancing through the ops center. The door at the end of the hall was open. My middle finger moved to the trigger of my under-slung grenade launcher and squeezed. The weapon bucked under my arm, launching a 40mm high-explosive round with a loud POOT! Before I could finish ducking out of the way, the round exploded in the ops center, right in the middle of the cluster of enemy soldiers.
“Watch the door, watch the door!” She shouldered her weapon and covered the hallway as she crossed. It was clear. “Let’s go!” I grabbed her by the arm and pulled her close to me. Sarah covered to the east while I risked a look round the west corner.
“Shit!” I said, pulling back just in time. Several rounds snapped past me. Maybe a dozen Zubaran regulars were creeping up the side of the admin building. “We can’t go this way.”
“Over here!” Sarah said, pointing to the chopper wreck with her carbine. I removed my last hand grenade from my vest and lobbed it around the corner, up the west side of the building. Sarah and I bolted for the chopper. The grenade detonated behind us a few seconds later.
We dashed into the open, running past dazed, wounded, and surprised Zubaran troops around the wreck of the Mi-17. We turned north and ran alongside the supply building. It wasn’t that far. I could feel my heart pounding in my ears as I sprinted with sixty pounds of gear on. Thunder crashed again. The rain was pouring harder than ever. Tracers flashed by, but we kept running. There were bullets buzzing from every direction. Rounds splattered into the muddy ground ahead, barely missing Sarah’s legs. Smack! My leg came out from under me. I stumbled and fell into the mud. It burned. Blood leaked from a gash in my calf. I grunted in pain.
“Mike!” Sarah cried, looking back. She stopped running and turned around.
“No, Sarah, don’t stop!” I screamed. “Keep going!”
But she didn’t listen. She started toward me. A hole was torn in her vest as a bullet punched right through it. A second bullet hit her a little lower, in the stomach. A third went into her side. Sarah’s face went blank. She collapsed to the muddy ground.
“Sarah!” I screamed. My voice sounded like it was coming from far away. I couldn’t feel my wounded leg anymore. I pushed myself up off the ground. Bullets zipped past me as I limped to her. My left leg buckled. Every time I put weight on it, I began to fall. The wind was knocked out of me as a bullet struck me in the back, cratering on the ceramic plate in my vest. It felt like I’d been hit with a sledgehammer. I fell again.
I crawled through the mud, bleeding, dragging my weapon on its sling. On my hands and knees, I reached Sarah and lifted her head up. She was completely limp, nothing but dead weight. Her pupils were dilated. Her beautiful face was smeared with mud. I held her body close to me as blood poured from her vest. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t move. The rain poured down relentlessly. Sounds began to fade out. Everything sounded muffled, like I was underwater, except for my own ragged breathing and the pounding of my heart.
I was being shot at. I ignored it. The strange key I’d given Sarah was hanging around her neck, drenched in blood. I grasped it in my hand. There was a concussion. Then everything went black.
My eyes opened. I don’t know how long I was out. I was lying on my back, staring up into the rain. Sarah’s key was still in my hand. My ears were ringing, and I could barely feel anything. I couldn’t see out of my right eye. Warm blood, my blood, was pouring down my face.
I saw Sarah out of the corner of my eye. She was just a few feet away, but out of my reach. I couldn’t sit up. I was bleeding badly. I was about to die. Holding my last breath, I stretched my hand out and reached for her.
Then she was out of reach altogether. My last conscious thought was the realization that I was being dragged away.
LORENZO
“Squad of soldiers is heading right for your building. Eight of them.”
Carl’s voice now. He had a laptop in the van and could watch the videos, too. “The dorm’s a good position for them to take. Gives them cover and elevation against Dead Six. They’ll use the windows on the west-facing rooms.” Carl knew, because that’s exactly what he would have done in this situation, and he had a lot of experience leading infantry in combat. Unfortunately, that was the building I’d picked to hide in.
I grabbed the bag of money. I’d slip out the north stairs. I’d just reached them when a sudden rhythmic beating rocked across the compound. “What’s that?” I shouted.
“Helicopter incoming!” Reaper answered. “Where’d that come from?”
The stairs were exposed to the open air. Suddenly a chopper appeared through the rain, slowing to a hover thirty feet off the ground, rotating as the door gunners blasted the living hell out of Building One with belt-fed machine guns. Ropes spilled from the open doors, and blue-camouflaged Zubaran Special Forces started fast-roping down. These guys were everywhere.
Then there was a terrible bang, like a clap of thunder. The side of the helicopter seemed to collapse into itself, belching smoke and launching one of the soldiers out the open rear door. The chopper fell from the sky. The rotors hit, hammering the mud into a circular plume before fragmenting into thousands of lethal bits. Fire, blood, oil, and flesh sprayed in every direction. I ducked as a chunk of the broken rotor screamed past and hit the stairwell just over my head.
Looks like I’m not going that way. I ran back inside the dorms. I needed a way out. The weight of the money gave me an idea.
“Soldiers are in your building,” Carl insisted. “Whatever you’re gonna do. Do it quick!”
“Roger that.” I picked a west-facing room, whose door was unlocked, and hurried inside. It was a mirror image of Valentine’s room. I dumped all the cash on the bed and spread it around, trying to make the money look as tempting as possible. That was one expensive distraction. Walker’s gun was still in hand, a .45 Sig 220. I pulled the slide back slightly. There was already a round chambered.
There was a crash as another dorm door was kicked in, followed by automatic weapons fire and a scream. I entered the small bathroom, shoved the pistol in the back of my waistband, and stood on the toilet. I placed my hands on the opposite wall and slowly levered myself into position, “walking” with my hands until I was above the door frame. Every bit of pressure against my left hand caused unbelievable agony. Palms pushing out and boots pushing back against the opposite wall, holding myself there by muscle tension alone, I was now out of view of anybody looking through the bathroom door.
I knew how third-world armies cleared rooms and you did not want to be at ground level.
Drops of blood fell from my lacerated face and hit the floor. My arms began to vibrate from the strain of holding myself there. My swollen, broken fingers throbbed. More gunfire ripped through the dorm. They were spraying down each room as they kicked in the doors. Hurry up.
There were shouts in the hall, someone barking orders, and then they were here. The soldiers fired, bullets shredding through furniture. Dust erupted below as projectiles shot through the bathroom walls. I held my breath as a rifle barrel appeared through the doorway under me and shot the shower square into porcelain shards. The muzzle blast pounded upward. Flinching, I slipped a bit, biting my lip and praying for gravity to fail. I held on. The rifle disappeared.
Persian. “Look at all this money!”
“Praise be! It’s a fortune, Mohammed.”
Arabic. “What’s all this? You two, keep moving.”
“But, sir!”
“Move, dog. That is an order. And close the door.”
The stomping of boots. Wait for it. Gunfire in the next room. Give him a second. I drew the Sig in my blood-soaked right hand and cocked the hammer, only one handed on
the wall now, injured and too weak to hold me, slipping. The others were still shooting.
Go.
I dropped, landing feet first in a crouch. One soldier, an officer in the desert camo of a Zubaran regular, was standing at the bed. He looked up, both hands filled with rubber-banded stacks of currency, surprise registering on his face just as the front sight covered it. Masked by the cracks of rifles in the next room, I fired.
The bullet hit him in the sinus. He went down with a spray of blood and snot painting the wall. I de-cocked the Sig and shoved it back in my waistband as I moved. This was my ticket out. I pulled off the ragged remains of my shirt as the gunfire continued and more explosions ripped through the compound.
The officer was dead, eyeball dangling on a bloody cord from the shattered orbital socket. That’s what he got for being greedy. He had a captain’s insignia on his collar. I unbuttoned the bloody uniform jacket, tore it from the twitching corpse and put it on. He was much shorter than me, and my wrists dangled naked from the sleeves. There was more stomping of combat boots outside the door now. This building was clear. I didn’t have much time. I tugged on the officer’s blue beret.
One problem, he didn’t look anything like me at all. Shit. It was dark, but I couldn’t bank on that. I needed a distraction. They couldn’t see my face.
“Sir?” someone shouted through the door in Arabic. “The colonel says we need to fire from these windows at the Americans.” They started banging.
I saw the dangling eyeball and had an idea.
Falling into the hallway, I pressed the blood-soaked pillowcase against my face. “Aaaiiiii!” I screamed, my voice unnaturally high pitched, as I had no idea what this officer sounded like. “Booby trap! Booby trap!”
“Captain!” one of the soldiers shouted. “Are you all right?”
“My eye! My eye!” I held out my hand with the officer’s eyeball in it and showed it to him. “Aaaaiiii!”
“Merciful Allah!” the soldier screamed, recoiling. “Get him out of here! Medic!”
Hands grabbed me by the arm and pulled me along, I kept my head down and weaved, crying and sobbing. Then we were outside, the rain pelting us mercilessly. The black night was lit by hellish fires, and smoke obscured everything. Good for me, as I was only partially in the enemy’s uniform. The Zubarans were in the middle of a coup, most of these guys were Sabah’s irregulars, so hopefully there were a lot of new faces. We were heading for the breach in the wall.
I looked back over my shoulder as I was pushed past the burning APC and into the rift. A couple Dead Six were leapfrogging their way toward the gate, firing at this position, their only hope for escape. Desperate and stupid, they were cut down one by one. The soldiers passed me off to other waiting hands outside the wall and returned to the fight. I discretely tossed the eyeball in a puddle.
“Hang on, Captain. I’ve got you,” someone shouted. I couldn’t see him, as I was still covering my face with the pillow. Strong hands shoved me down. There was a lot of screaming and crying around me. The army had taken an absurd number of casualties. “Ibe right back,” the medic said. All he saw on me was a head injury and it wasn’t squirting. He had more important things to worry about right now. Lifting the bloody rag, I saw the medic kneeling next to me, up to his wrists in another soldier’s pelvis, trying to clamp off a severed femoral artery. He was shouting for assistance.
Through the jagged breach in the old wall, I could see Dead Six, still fighting. There were fewer of them, and they were taking fire from multiple directions now. Most of the buildings were on fire, the rain pummeling giant clouds of steam into the air. Some Dead Six were fighting their way past the helicopter crash, using whatever cover was available. There was the kid, Valentine, and he was making a mad dash away from a bunch of pursuing soldiers. The girl, Sarah, was right behind him, as they headed for the back wall.
Seeing Sarah reminded me of what I’d noticed briefly in the brig, but that was impossible. That couldn’t have been the key. I’d gone through hell for this thing. I pulled Adar’s box out of my pocket and tried to work the puzzle, but it had been broken. The pieces had just been stuck back together. The box slid open, revealing . . . absolutely nothing.
Well, fuck me. I jerked my head up. Sarah was forty yards away, running for her life. Valentine’s leg was shot out from under him. Sarah turned, screaming, and went back for him. Then several bullets struck, and Sarah fell in a fog of blood.
I stood. I had to get that key. The medic was screaming at me to get down.
There was the kid. He got up, fell, got up again, got shot in the back, went down, but starting crawling to his girlfriend. He reached her, shell-shocked, looking for something that wasn’t there, oblivious to the inevitability of his death and the carnage around him. Several grenades exploded between us, temporarily hiding him from view. The gunpowder cloud was gradually crushed by the rain, revealing Valentine on his back.
“Cover me!” I bellowed in Arabic. Back through the breech, I sprinted through the rain, bullets screaming past in both directions as the last of Dead Six retreated, water geysering up as the newly formed puddles were struck. I slid in the mud, sprawling down next to Sarah.
Sarah was dead, eyes open, crimson stream trickling from her mouth, white shirt soaked by rain and blood. She was wearing a few necklaces, and right in the middle, riding on a fragile chain was the key. Grabbing the chains and ripping them off, I held it up to the light of the fires, other trinkets dangling below. Unlike its last holder, the key was undamaged.
I glanced at Valentine. He was badly injured, blood pouring from his head, staring, incoherent, smoking shrapnel embedded all over his armor. He’d be gone soon. I shoved Sarah’s jewelry into my pocket. The main fight was heading past me. There was a roar as Dead Six breached the west wall. Soldiers were swarming after them. I turned to leave.
Valentine stirred. He was dying, but he only seemed to care about the dead girl. He reached one blood soaked hand plaintively for her. It was the arm that I had slashed, red stain soaking through the bandage.
He was reaching for Sarah, but it felt like he was asking for my help. It was crazy. He was too out of it to know I was there.
Compassion. Criminals aren’t supposed to have any.
Screw him. But still, I hesitated. He deserves to die. But not today. Not like this. “Damn it.” I didn’t know why, but I grabbed the drag handle on the back of his web gear and jerked. Agony tore through my injured torso. I pulled him through the mud, back toward the hole.
It took the last of my strength to drag his unconscious weight through the breach. The Army had seen me run out, and not realizing who I was, welcomed me back. Dozens of Zubaran Army regulars were leaping from the backs of trucks, running into the compound to mop up the slaughter. I was so covered in blood, filth, and mud that I was utterly unrecognizable at that point.
Somebody saw the insignia on my collar. “Captain!” a soldier shouted. “What are you doing?”
“We need this one alive. Get him in the truck,” I ordered.
***
The American kid was unconscious on the seat beside me. A medic had done a competent job stopping his bleeding before we had departed, supposedly for the hospital. I had waited until we were out of sight of the compound and past several other APCs set up as a roadblock before I clubbed the driver and tossed him onto the road. I was kind of making this up as I went along.
“Reaper, I’m back.”
“Where are you?”
“I’m driving a Zubaran Army pickup south on the main road. What’s left of Dead Six?”
“Okay, I’m pulling back for a better view.” Reaper’s voice was intense in my good ear. “The last of them blew a hole in the west wall of the compound and moved south through the shanty town past the roadblocks. Looks like they’re in two army trucks. No sign of pursuit.”
They had to be going to a safe house. “Track them,” I ordered.
“They’re heading south on Balad.” He continued to g
ive me directions as I drove like a madman, keeping the hammer down and blowing through roundabouts like they weren’t there. The windshield wipers couldn’t match the intensity of the deluge, and I could barely see. Headlights flashed behind me. Carl and Jill had caught up.
Valentine moaned. He didn’t look good, pale and shaking from blood loss, and I wondered if my act of kindness/stupidity would have been for nothing. Reaper informed me as the Dead Six trucks pulled into the back of a slaughterhouse a mile south of here.
“Lorenzo, what are you doing?” Carl asked. “Do they have the key or something?”
This was idiotic. I am an idiot. Why am I doing this?
I didn’t know, but it was too late now.
“No, Carl. I’ve got it. Just hang on.” I looked down at Valentine. “You owe me,” I whispered, even though he couldn’t hear. “You owe me big.”
I arrived a moment later. The garage door of the slaughterhouse was still closing, light leaking out from beneath. I laid on the horn, and after a moment the door stopped and then reversed its motion. Leaving the kid behind, I bailed out of the cab, and hobbled toward the headlights of Carl’s van. Armed Americans came out of the slaughterhouse and approached the still-running Army truck.
I slid into the passenger seat of the van, and it was moving before the door closed.
No amount of rain could wash Zubara clean tonight.
Chapter 21:
Nefarious Master Plan
LORENZO
May 12, 2008
The light streaming through the window was blindingly bright. Cringing as the bandages around my chest tightened, I raised one hand to block the sun from stabbing through my eye sockets.
Dead Six-ARC Page 40