Precipice: V Plague Book 9

by Dirk Patton

  Problem solved, he helped me open the rest of the packages and dump their contents into the pack. For good measure I added a large box of fish hooks and to top it off piled in a bunch of pocket knives and razor sharp steel arrowheads. Zipping the pack, I hoisted it up, satisfied that it was coming in at well over forty pounds.

  Now, two and a half pounds of C-4 is one hell of a lot. For reference, there’s only about six ounces of explosive in a hand grenade. It uses a different formula for the boom stuff, but it has almost identical performance. So, roughly seven times the explosive force of a grenade with about forty-five pounds of really nasty metal objects that would become shrapnel traveling at 26,000 feet per second. Yep. That should do nicely.

  Bomb ready, it was time to start the rest of my preparations. It was early evening by now and the rain I had hoped for had started. Not heavy, nothing that should make the tunnels impassable, just a slow and steady drizzle that created a level of white noise in the environment that would help me. Also, when humans are out moving in the rain we tend to turtle our heads a little bit and not be as aware of our surroundings. I was counting on the Russian troops being a little bored and with the weather, giving in to the urge to only worry about what was directly in front of their feet.

  Before I finished prepping, I stepped into the surveillance room to check on the girls. I had left one of the cameras focused on them, zoomed as much as it would. Martinez had lapsed into unconsciousness and no longer able to continue supporting her weight, Katie and Rachel had moved slightly away from her. They as well as Irina were soaked and looked exhausted.

  My jaw was clenched so tight it ached as I tore myself away and started dressing. Titus’ son-in-law hadn’t skimped on letting the US taxpayer supply his shelter. Shedding the Air Force uniform I’d taken from the BX, I dressed in black, weather-proof, rip stop gear from head to toe. The fabric was lightweight yet warm and stretched in all the right places.

  Next came elbow, forearm, knee and shin pads. Body armor layered on top of this. Not that it would necessarily stop a round from one of the Russian rifles, but it had a chance and would certainly stop any pistol rounds that came my way. A new, black tactical vest loaded down with spare magazines, a knife, my Kukri, my pistol and rifle and I already had fifty pounds on my body.

  Adding an encrypted radio so I could communicate with Titus, who would be keeping an eye on things from the shelter, I pulled on a Kevlar helmet with night vision goggles attached. A black nylon pack held the remaining two bricks of C-4, detonators, six claymore mines, a cleverly designed collapsible aluminum ladder and maps of the tunnels and town above. Ready as I’d ever be, I mused that this was the best equipped I’d been since the day of the attacks.

  “’member what I tole you,” Titus said, looking me up and down. “If I call you on the radio and say get out of the tunnels, you get your ass out fast. Just ‘cause it ain’t rainin’ heavy here don’t mean it ain’t pourin to the north. That water’s got to go somewhere. I’ll keep a close eye on it and give you as much warning as I can.”

  “I don’t know how to thank you. For everything,” I said, extending my hand.

  “Every one of them commie bastards you put down is thanks enough,” he took my hand and shook it. “Good luck to you, son. Hope you save your wife.”

  I nodded and a few moments later slipped into the tunnel when he opened the vault door.

  42

  It was much darker in the tunnel than when Titus and I had taken our tour earlier in the day. With the clouds and rain it was going to be a very dark night, and dark would come earlier than normal. There wouldn’t be a long, drawn out twilight as is common in the more northern latitudes. That was fine with me. The darker the night, the better the hunting.

  There was a stream about two inches deep and a foot-wide running in the lowest part of the tunnel floor. The debris catchers created a whooshing sound as the water passed through them, and the old detritus I’d noted earlier was causing the water to pool up in places. Nothing that would even remotely be a problem as long as I didn’t get careless and step on something in the water and turn an ankle.

  I had memorized the route I wanted to take for my first task. Turning, I lowered the night vision goggles and began moving north. The goggles turned night to day, well a day of greens and blacks, but I was able to see perfectly. I was more than thrilled to have them.

  Staying close to the wall as I moved, I frequently checked behind me. To assume the Russians hadn’t found the tunnels and decided to search them could be a fatal error. We hadn’t seen any indication, but it was still better to proceed as if there was going to be a squad of Ivans around every bend.

  “Radio check,” I heard Titus’ voice in my ear before I’d gone ten yards.

  “All good,” I replied.

  He didn’t say anything else. There was no need, and I was glad to not have the distraction of a voice in my ear while I was trying to move quietly and keep an eye out for the enemy.

  I walked for five minutes before reaching the tunnel where I would turn. Stopping before the edge, I held up a small makeup mirror that had belonged to Titus’ wife. Easing it out past the corner, I checked the next tunnel, happy to see it just as empty. Continuing to move like this took me another fifteen minutes to reach my destination. At least I hoped I had reached my destination. The bottom of one manhole cover looks pretty much like the bottom of every other one.

  Sitting my supply pack down I took out the ladder and began locking it open like Titus had shown me. As each section telescoped out of the last and clicked into place, it grew in length. The whole thing was nine feet long when fully deployed yet only weighed eight pounds. Titus had assured me it was capable of holding three hundred pounds. I was dubious, but was about to find out. With all my gear, plus the bomb, I was certainly tipping the scales at over 300.

  I looked up and spotted the two eyebolts set into the iron ring that formed the hole in the asphalt where the cover rested. The ladder had a hook on the top of each rail and slipped into place easily, the bottom swinging about a foot above the tunnel floor. Taking a deep breath, I grasped a rung above my head, put a foot on the lowest one and brought all my weight onto the thin aluminum.

  The rung under my feet bowed slightly as the whole thing swung like a pendulum because of the change in the center of gravity when I stepped on. But, it held. Making sure my feet were as close to the vertical rails as possible to minimize the stress on the horizontal rungs, I bounced a couple of times. If the damn thing was going to break, I’d rather it happen when I was only a foot above the hard concrete.

  But it held. It swayed like I used to around closing time on a Saturday night, but it didn’t bend and didn’t break. Despite Titus’ assurances, I was surprised, but it was time to go to work and quit fucking around with a ladder. Climbing carefully, I stopped when my head was bent so that my shoulder was brushing the ceiling.

  “Titus, you copy?” I breathed into the radio.

  “Go ahead.”

  “Getting ready to move the cover.”

  I had asked him to keep a camera on the man hole I had picked out as my first target. Since it was too easy to get confused in the tunnels, I wanted confirmation from him that I was at the right spot, and that there weren’t any infected or Russians in the immediate area.

  “Area’s clear,” he said a moment later.

  Holding tight with my left hand, I placed my right hand flat against the bottom of the cast iron plate. Cringing, expecting the ladder to snap at any moment and send me tumbling, I pressed against the manhole cover. As I pushed harder the ladder creaked, but it held. Exerting more force, I felt the big disc begin to move.

  “I see you wiggling,” Titus said, confirming for me I was at the right location.

  As carefully as I could, I pushed until an edge was higher than the surrounding asphalt, then began shifting my arm sideways. The cover made a slight scraping sound and I immediately stopped, changed the position of my hand before continuing. Thi
s time I moved it several inches to the side without any sound, then had to pause to reposition my hand again.

  Moving the damn thing was hard enough. Moving it without making a sound that would give me away was exponentially more difficult. My shoulders and triceps were on fire, but there wasn’t any other way to do this. Breathing hard, I kept at it until the cover was far enough out of place for me to slip through.

  It would have been nice to shed the vest and body armor to make myself smaller. I wouldn’t have had to move the cover all the way open. But there’s not much point in having body armor if you don’t wear it. Besides, a little workout for the shoulders and arms never hurt anyone.

  Climbing on up the ladder I quickly emerged, immediately dropping to a knee and scanning a full circle with my rifle. I was in an alley, the tunnel cutting across this area of town. Nothing was moving and other than the soft patter of a slow rain, it was quiet. I made one more scan, then leaving the cover open I ran for my target.

  One hundred yards from where I’d emerged I came to a stop against the back wall of the restaurant that had become the Russians’ informal mess hall. Sliding to the edge, I looked towards the front, seeing five soldiers walking away from the building. They had just left and were striding quickly, not talking, heads down in the rain.

  Titus knew the restaurant and had hand drawn me a rough sketch of the place. There were two doors that opened onto the alley. One of them into the kitchen, the other a large pantry that could accept food deliveries directly so they didn’t disrupt the cooks. There was an interior door from the pantry into the kitchen, and just to its right was a swinging door that opened into the main dining area.

  Stepping back to the pantry’s exterior door I gently tried the knob. It didn’t turn, and unsurprisingly there was a high quality lock. I could force my way in, but not without too much noise.

  “Patrol behind you, to your left.” Titus spoke in my ear.

  Before he finished speaking I had dropped to a knee, brought my rifle up and was scanning down the alley in the direction of the man hole I’d come out of. Two Russians were about fifty yards on the opposite side of my escape hatch, slowly working their way closer.

  They were checking vehicles by shining a light inside each one, then bending down and checking under. Everything about the way they moved said they’d been doing this too long and they didn’t expect to find anything. They were bored, tired and probably cold and hungry. Maybe I’d get really lucky and they would walk right past the open hole in the ground.

  Not willing to trust in luck, I moved a quick fifty yards closer to them, sticking to the edge of the alley and keeping dumpsters and abandoned vehicles between them and me. Reaching the location I’d selected before I started moving, I came to a stop behind an ancient Chevy truck. It was parked tight against a thick hedge and I’d squeezed in between the shrub and the truck’s front fender.

  With the dark bush behind me and the rusting truck hiding all but my head, shoulders and rifle, they wouldn’t spot me unless they happened to shine a light directly on where I was waiting for them. I didn’t plan to kill them unless they discovered the open man hole or me. I wasn’t quite ready to announce that I’d showed up and brought party favors. But they didn’t give me a choice when the one with the light came to a sudden stop and aimed the beam directly at the hole.

  I was already on target and all I had to do was pull the trigger. The Russian’s head snapped to the side and he fell with a clatter of weapons and the flashlight hit the asphalt. Shifting aim, I put three rounds in his buddy’s chest as he tried to dive behind a car. He flopped to the ground and didn’t move, but to be thorough I drilled a round through his skull.

  A very long time ago in… well, it doesn’t matter where. Anyway, I was there at the behest of the US Government. As usual, gunfire was involved and I put four rounds, center mass, into a bad guy. He went down and I dismissed him, certain he was dead. When I took my attention off of him he sat up and nearly took my head off with an AK-47 before one of my team mates scrambled his brains.

  My body shots, which I’m pretty sure would have been fatal, weren’t instantly incapacitating. The human body really is amazingly resilient when the whole fight or flight mechanism kicks in and the adrenaline is pumping. And I learned my lesson that day. Fortunately, it didn’t cost anyone other than the bad guy.

  Rushing around the hood of the truck, I scanned each direction of the alley as I ran to the two bodies. Not seeing anything, I grabbed the first guy by the ankle and dragged him to the open man hole and unceremoniously shoved his body through. A second later I heard the splash and thud when he landed on the tunnel floor. The second guy followed quickly and I made sure to gather up the flashlight and a couple of other pieces of their equipment and toss it all down the hole with them.

  The rain was already taking care of the blood, but I was getting antsy. I’d already been in one spot for too long. Running back to the restaurant, I paused a second, took two deep breaths and tried the kitchen. The knob turned easily, the lock disengaging and the door moving slightly towards me. Pulling it open in one fast motion, I snapped my rifle up and stared through the scope into the building.

  Several battery powered lanterns provided light, my NVGs automatically adjusting for the added illumination. No one was in the kitchen, but it was littered with opened cans and boxes of food. Apparently there wasn’t a “cook”, just each soldier came in, found what he wanted and prepared it. Stepping inside I scanned again, double checking and finding nothing, then began moving to the swinging door that opened to the dining area.

  I was halfway across the kitchen when the door was thrust open and a young kid wearing a Russian army uniform stepped through. OK, maybe he wasn’t that young, but I’ve got more hair on my knuckles than he did on his face. He wasn’t paying attention to his surroundings and had walked all the way into the room, the door closing behind him, before he saw me.

  He froze, his eyes opening wide and he started to open his mouth to shout. I shot him between the eyes from eight feet, lunging forward so his body didn’t fall and make a racket that would bring his buddies to see what was going on. Supporting the corpse with my left arm and pressing it to me like I was holding a lover, I kept the rifle up and aimed at the door with my right hand as I back pedaled to the alley. Reaching the door, I dumped him into the night, wiped his blood off my hand and moved back towards the dining area.

  Titus had told me that the swinging door looked like it had a mirror in it if you’re in the dining room, but it was actually a two-way mirror so the cook or manager could keep an eye on the buffet line without the diners seeing them peering through. Stepping up to the inside of the door I still stepped to the side and carefully peeked.

  There were probably close to a hundred Russian soldiers spread across the dining room. Some were eating, some smoking and even a couple of them sleeping. As I watched, more came in the front door and paused to shake the rain off their shoulders. I needed to do what I came for and get the hell out of there.

  Taking the back pack that contained the bomb off my shoulders, I gently pushed the swinging door open far enough to fit it through the opening. Placing it on the floor, against the wall, I stuck my arm a little farther in and shoved it into the shadows. Carefully I let the door close, then turned and ran as several soldiers began heading for the kitchen. They weren’t shouting and raising their weapons so I was pretty sure they were only coming to find food.

  Dashing through the exterior door I had to kick the body of the kid I’d shot out of the way before closing it quietly. Grabbing the corpse’s ankle, I dragged it to the man hole, shoving it through then following. Getting the cover back in place was easier than it had been opening it, but a little battle induced adrenaline will give you a good burst of strength.

  43

  I moved the three water logged bodies out of my way when I reached the bottom of the ladder, then spent two minutes collapsing and returning it to the pack. A quick search of the corps
es didn’t reveal anything of importance, but one of the two that were on patrol had a small, handheld radio in his vest. Not speaking or understanding Russian, it wouldn’t help me listen in on the enemy’s broadcasts, but there might come a time when it would prove useful. Adding it to the pack I quickly checked my map and headed farther north, looking for the right cross tunnel that would take me to my next destination.

  “Moving to second target,” I said into the encrypted Air Force radio.

  “Copy,” Titus answered right away. “Don’t look like those three have been missed yet.”

  I kept walking, exercising a lot of caution as I approached the next junction. It must have been raining a little harder as the small stream had grown a few inches wider. It didn’t look that much larger but the volume of water had increased enough to make significantly more noise as it flowed. Enough so that I wouldn’t hear a threat until it was right on top of me.

  I halted short of the corner and repeated the mirror trick, moving on when I didn’t see anything. I had turned east, and if I was remembering the map correctly was moving parallel to the northern boundary of the park where the girls were being held, about half a mile between us. I froze when the sound of a human voice reached me, rifle coming up as I tried to locate the source.

  It seemed to be coming from ahead of me and I was about to start retreating when it grew in volume and I realized what it was. Another of the roving patrols with a loud speaker, announcing that they had my wife and I could trade myself for her, the sound coming though one of the openings that drained water from the streets above. Part of me was surprised that Colonel Grushkin was even trying this. He had to have read my file. He had to know I would understand that he intended to kill Katie, and my surrender would have no bearing on that outcome.