by Peter Nealen
The woman looked at Wade and blanched. Because he was looking at her with a predatory stare that made it abundantly clear that he wasn’t joking. He was dead serious.
She looked from Wade, to Price, to Brannigan. There was no pity there. The true seriousness of her situation started to dawn on her, and she wilted a little.
Wade apparently decided that she was taking too long. He started to move away from the door; he was leaving his security position, but he didn’t have to go far.
“There’s a chemical shower for emergencies,” she said quickly. “Bleach and ethanol. And there’s an incinerator for disposing of samples.”
“That’s not going to do the trick,” Price snapped. “Especially if somebody has to suit up and go in there to start the shower.” He glared at the woman. “And I’m guessing that the shower’s for containment loss, not to destroy anything that’s sealed up or frozen.”
She nodded jerkily.
But Brannigan was thinking, his eyes narrowed. “If there’s a chemical shower, then there has to be chemical storage,” he mused. His gaze sharpened as he pinned the woman with his stare again. “Where is it?”
She hesitated, as if aware that there really was no going back from here. Then she bowed her head. “It’s in the trailer. Everything is contained there.”
“What are you thinking?” Price asked.
“Chemicals that can kill bugs are usually pretty flammable,” Brannigan said. “Have your boys got any incendiaries?”
Price nodded as understanding dawned. “We brought a few thermites, just in case,” he said, “though we were generally thinking of burning our own gear if we had to E&E.” He frowned. “Though, I don’t know about you, but I’m not keen on going inside a biological weapons laboratory to throw a thermite. The fuses on those things aren’t exactly long.”
“I’m not either,” Brannigan confessed. “Even without the biohazard, I wouldn’t want to walk into a closet full of volatile chemicals and pop a thermite. But it’s got to get done. Otherwise, we’ve captured some intel and killed a few people, but we haven’t shut this down.”
“What if we didn’t have to go inside?” Max suggested. “That trailer doesn’t look like it’s really hardened; a thermite should burn right through it.”
“The trick is placing it right,” Price said. “If we put it in the wrong place, it might not burn the whole thing.”
Brannigan loomed over the woman, his hand on his rifle, his voice hard. “Where are the chemicals in the trailer?”
She looked for a moment like she was going to refuse to answer, then wilted further. “They’re at the opposite end from the air conditioner,” she said.
“Fuck,” Bianco said abruptly. Brannigan and Price both turned to him.
“What?” Price asked.
“You didn’t notice?” Bianco asked. He pointed to the map of the compound that was up on the wall, including fallback positions, casualty collection points, and strongpoints. “That puts it on the far end of the trailer from here, and exposed to those bastards back at the motor pool, that your guys have been trading shots with.”
Price pursed his lips, staring at the overhead imagery, thinking. “We can lay down some covering fire,” he said. “There should be enough ammo left for the Shrikes. Then somebody can get close and toss an incendiary.”
“Or we could be thorough about this,” Wade said. He turned his intense stare on Price. “I don’t particularly like leaving a job half-done, especially when it’s this bunch.”
“What are you thinking, Wade?” Brannigan asked.
“If we just hold here, shoot at ‘em, and try to burn it and run, then we’re already on the defensive,” Wade said. “If I was them, I’d already be moving people to block our way out while the others set up a demonstration to keep our attention pointed at the motor pool.” He looked Brannigan in the eye. “I say we sweep the whole compound, kill everybody with a gun, smash the vehicles and comms, then burn it and run.”
“Bit of a tall order with less than a dozen men,” Price said. “And I’m pretty sure none of us have more than about half a loadout left.”
“Then we’re careful with our shots,” Wade said. “Offense is better than defense.”
Brannigan nodded. He wasn’t inclined to argue the point. Wade was right, and when a smaller unit went up against a bigger one, it often paid to be aggressive. It was how they had done so much damage in the citadel on Khadarkh, after all. And Wade hadn’t even been there for that one. “All right,” he said. “Price, set one of your guys to guard our detainee here. The rest of us are going to move. Base of fire is on the trailers here. Make sure you move fast, and check your targets. With visibility as lousy as it is, make sure you know who you’re shooting. A-zone shots only.”
He checked his own magazine as he spoke. Three rounds down; that meant he had fifty-seven left. Not a lot, but if he was careful, it should last. He just had to make sure he was making kill shots and not wasting rounds on suppression. That was what Price’s Ares Shrikes were for.
“Price, keep your base of fire element here,” he said, his mind racing as he pictured what he could of the compound, helped by the chart on the wall. “The bad guys think we’re pinned here, so let ‘em keep thinking that. We’ll fall back to the wall, where we inserted, and then sweep along it to come at their flank. Keep together; zones of fire are going to be tricky, especially in this storm.”
He looked around the room. Their prisoner still looked a little shocked and sick, as the enormity of what was happening sunk in. The mercenaries, of both groups, were grim, dusty apparitions of death. Game faces were on. They were ready. Even Price nodded, tight-lipped, ready to roll.
“Let’s go.” Without another word, his L1A1 held ready in his hands, Brannigan went back through the door they’d entered, heading for the outside.
Price’s mercs had the captured Humanity Front personnel against the walls in the next trailer over, their hands on their heads and their foreheads pressed against the walls. One of the techs started to turn to look as the assault element went through, only to get a sharp rap behind the ear with a SCAR 16 barrel. “Eyes front,” the young man wielding the rifle snapped.
Then they were bursting outside, back into the storm.
The haboob hadn’t let up, though for a few minutes it had seemed like it might be dying down, as the wind battering the sides of the trailers had lessened slightly. But now it was howling at full force, and Brannigan had to resist the urge to duck his head and turn away from the blast of grit smashing into his face. His ballistic glasses, scoured and scratched as they were, were keeping most of the sand out of his eyes. And he needed to see as best he could. “Turtling” would get them all killed in here.
About six of Price’s guys, two with the Ares Shrike belt-feds, were on a knee along the sides of the trailers. The Shrikes were both posted at the far corner, pointed toward the covered, tactical vehicle motor pool, where most of the fire had been coming from, but the rest hadn’t dropped security; they were covering the other corner as well. Price hadn’t skimped on finding professionals for this job.
He didn’t pause at the threshold, but pushed out into the storm, heading back the way they’d come, toward the HESCO ramparts, his rifle up in his shoulder, Wade right behind him, his own muzzle just visible out of the corner of Brannigan’s eye. The big former Ranger was eager to get stuck in, and probably would have taken point if Brannigan hadn’t jumped the stack.
Too bad. I’m not really a Colonel anymore. If I want to take lead, I get to take lead.
He rapidly paced between the tents on one side, and the containers on the other, swiveling to scan any gaps as he passed, even as the men behind him hurried to cover down on them so that he could turn back to the front. In moments, they had cleared the support yard and were closing in on the rampart.
Which was when movement caught his eye and he swiveled, bringing his rifle to bear, his eyes finding the sights as they came level.
H
is finger was already tightening on the trigger as he centered the man with the stubby F2000 bullpup in his aperture. He hesitated for just long enough to verify in his own mind that the target was legit, hardly enough to slow the trigger’s travel to the rear.
The rifle thundered, the bullet blasting through the bridge of the man’s nose and snapping his head back. He slumped against the HESCO barrier, bounced off, then fell heavily in the dirt.
Wade had already shifted as soon as he saw Brannigan tracking in, and his own rifle barked a split-second later, hammering the next man behind to the dust.
Both men kept moving, driving forward, Brannigan breaking into a sprint for the HESCOs, just as a bullet snapped past his ear. Wade fired again, and as he hit the barrier with his shoulder, Brannigan tracked toward the source of the shot, only to see the third man fall on his face.
He was breathing hard, but didn’t spare more than a brief moment at the wall. He paused just long enough to scan behind him, lifting his muzzle slightly to clear Wade, Bianco, and Price as they closed to join him, checking his six down the wall.
“Looks like they were trying to cut us off,” Price said, having to raise his voice to be heard over the roar of the storm.
“Looks like,” Brannigan agreed. “Let’s go break up their party, shall we?” He turned and started along the wall, moving carefully to watch the bodies as he passed them. He hadn’t seen this particular set of bad guys play possum in order to ambush their adversaries yet, but it was only a matter of time. It had become common enough practice among the various enemies of the West in recent years.
They paced down the wall, passing the tents, Brannigan moving his muzzle with his eyes from tent to generator compound, to guard tower looming out of the murk. There was movement in the guard tower, and he dodged to the cover of one of the hardened generators, just as a bullet smacked off the steel with a loud bang. He held his fire; he didn’t have a target, and he couldn’t afford to waste a bullet.
They also couldn’t afford to get pinned down. He was sure that the enemy had comms with their react force, and that those armored vehicles, along with the shooters inside, were already on their way back.
If the full strength of what they had seen of the Humanity Front’s security force got there before they could secure the compound and burn the lab, the Blackhearts were in trouble.
Keep ‘em occupied for a little bit longer, Joe.
Chapter 25
Flanagan shifted his rifle minutely to the left and fired, just at the same time that Curtis let off a loud, ripping burst from that Shrike. He thought he saw a shape flinch, and maybe fall, but it was hard to tell in the shadows of the bank and the acacias, especially in the gloom of the storm.
He brought his eyes off the sights to scan the wadi again. He was pretty sure one of the probes had been a diversion for the other one, but in the howling, swirling miasma of dust and sand, it was impossible to tell which. He knew that these guys weren’t going to be so stupid as to set up a Polish firing squad in a wadi, so one of them must have been drawing fire. He couldn’t spare the attention to check on Curtis’ sector, but when the burst wasn’t repeated, he yelled, “Kev, you still up?”
“Yeah, I’m here,” Curtis yelled back. “I’m not happy, but I’m here. Damn, am I glad my ancestors got kidnapped from this place!”
“Just watch your sector!” Flanagan growled, suppressing a cough. Even with his mouth and nose covered, some of the dust was getting through, and it was hard to breathe. He kept scanning, his eyes squinted almost shut against the dust that was still blowing in around his sunglasses. It felt like everything was getting slowly abraded away, even as his body ached from lying in the prone for the last small eternity. He was starting to stiffen up after the run down the wadi.
There was no more movement aside from the trees swaying violently in the wind and the grit whipping in waves across the ground. He held his position, his muzzle tracking with his eyes, waiting.
Flanagan was a hunter. He could be patient. He wasn’t going to be lured out of their little bolt-hole, nor was he going to be prodded into wasting ammunition spraying at every shadow.
If he hadn’t already been as still as a stone, he would have frozen, straining his ears. He could have sworn he heard something…
A moment later, he was sure of it. There was the faint rumble of diesels getting closer, slowly. The Hawkeis were closing in.
He took his face off his buttstock to look around one more time, even though he was already pretty sure they were in a good spot. The terrain was just too nasty close in for even good four-wheel-drives to get right on top of them. And even if the Hawkeis could get right on top of them, they needed some standoff to use their turrets.
Unless...unless they found a way down into the wadi, and they’re just going to drive up the streambed and shoot straight into our little cleft, here. It wasn’t a comforting thought, and his blood suddenly went cold as he looked down into the wadi itself. There would be no escape if the enemy did that; they’d be turned into hamburger in moments, and if they tried to climb up out of their refuge, he had no doubt that there were at least two more Hawkeis placed to cut them down as soon as they stuck their heads up.
They had no explosives left, and they hadn’t had RPGs at all. Vernon had an underbarrel grenade launcher, but he was out of rounds for it.
But Flanagan wasn’t going down without a fight. “It sounds like they’re coming,” he shouted. “Aim for the cameras on the CROWS. If we can knock ‘em out, they’re going to have a hard time shooting us.” What came after that, he didn’t know, but it all might boil down to dying while spitting in their enemy’s eye, anyway.
He got as low into his little crevice as he could, pointing his rifle down toward the wadi. His only hope at that point was to be able to get a shot at the CROWS sensors before they could spot him, and if the gunner was on point, then the gun would already be pointed at the crevice in the bank of the wadi, anyway.
The rumble of the engines was getting louder, but none of the vehicles had quite appeared yet. Then, suddenly, machinegun fire erupted from the northwest, hammering rounds into the side of the hole, mere inches above Flanagan’s head.
He shrank down, trying to burrow into the dirt. He couldn’t see the vehicle that was firing at them. Vernon was beside him, similarly trying to get as small as possible.
Bullets hammered away the dirt above them, kicking up clouds of grit and fragments and showering them with dirt and bits of rock. The cracks of the bullets were almost physically painful; even more so was the growing, panicky sense that the machinegun fire was just keeping their heads down, while their adversaries maneuvered around to shoot them like fish in a barrel.
Flanagan wormed his way farther down in the cleft, trying to get into position to at least kill a couple of them if they came up the wadi. Twisting himself into an extremely uncomfortable position, halfway on his side, wedged into a crack in the hardened mud, he got his rifle in his shoulder and waited, his heart pounding and his breath rasping behind the facewrap, which was increasingly caked with mud from the sandstorm blowing grit against the cloth, dampened by his breath.
The longest burst yet chewed into the dirt overhead, showering him with more grit. Then the fire suddenly fell silent.
He didn’t move, but held his position, waiting. It could simply be that the bad guys had gotten their coordination wrong, and that the ground element was behind when the gunners needed to reload.
But no figures appeared in the wadi, and the machinegun fire didn’t start up again. In fact, as he strained his ears, he couldn’t hear the diesels anymore, either.
Still he waited, even as he heard Curtis start to fidget. With no targets and no incoming fire, the only sound being that of the storm, all of their nerves were starting to get frayed.
Finally, cautiously, he came up out of his cramped position, stifling a groan of pain as he unfolded his lanky body. He got up on a knee and scanned the wadi, carefully examining every shado
w, every bit of cover on the far bank, before he climbed up farther.
He got to the top of the cleft and very slowly eased his head up. A blast of grit caught him in the face, and he blinked and squinted.
The higher ground to the southeast was empty. There was no sign of the Hawkeis that had set up there. He looked the other direction, toward the supporting vehicles that had come from the northwest. Nothing. The Sahel was empty, lashed by wind and dust.
He stayed low for a long moment, scanning carefully. He suspected that he knew why they had pulled off so rapidly, but at the same time, he was wary. It might still be a trap.
But as the seconds ticked by with no new attack, he knew that their diversion was over. And somehow, miraculously, they’d survived it.
He stood, peering through the dust toward the crossing, but there were too many trees in the way. He suspected that they’d cross-loaded the personnel and headed back, rather than try to get the crippled Hawkeis out of the wadi. It wasn’t that important to check. They weren’t going that way, anyway.
He keyed his radio. “Kodiak, Woodsrunner,” he called. “I don’t know if you can hear this, but be advised. The react force is heading your way. We’re moving to the RV point.”
***
Brannigan heard what might have been the echoes of a transmission, but the storm was playing havoc with comms. He couldn’t pause to answer it even if he’d really heard it, either. There were more pressing problems.
The man in the corner guard tower wasn’t playing. He had the entire maneuver element pinned down, and wasn’t showing himself for more than the brief second it took to take another shot. From what little he could see, Brannigan was pretty sure he was lying prone on the floor, with only his eye and his rifle exposed around the open door leading off the tower.
From his elbow, he heard Wade curse, then say, “Somebody give me some covering fire. Keep that fucker’s head down.” A moment later, without waiting for a reply, the big man was moving.