Bad move, Franzie. You old Rogue readers all know that I press 450 pounds 155 reps, day in, day out, hung out or hung over, on the outdoor weight pile at Rogue Manor. So, lemme tell you newcomers something: I am one very strong motherfucker. That attribute gives me a lot of fucking leverage when I need it most—like right now.
I rolled atop him, my right hand still clamped around his knife wrist. I slammed the arm up and back, trying to loosen his grip on the weapon. But Franz wasn’t giving up. He brought his arm back, whipped the blade around, and caught me a glancing blow on my upper bicep.
Oh, fuck, I hate to get cut. But getting cut wasn’t about to stop the intensity of my struggling. In fact, it made me more implacably, virulently deadly, dangerously bloodthirsty.
Oh, yes, this motherfucker was about to pay.
But not yet.
Mister Murphy must have snuck up on us, because somehow, Franz managed to wriggle out from under me. In a fucking frenzy he clawed, elbowed, slashed, and kicked. It worked: it moved me back just far enough for Franz’s steel-tapped heel to catch me under the chin in a kick to my Adam’s apple that must have started with his eyelids.
Because I saw fucking stars. Belay that. I saw the whole Milky fucking Way. Things went all black and white. I couldn’t grab a breath. My vision was fuzzy and faint.
And then he was back, up close and personal enough for me to tell you that he’d been eating something with garlic in it not too long ago. He shoulder-tackled me, knocking me back across the floor, tangling me up in the armor again, the big-bladed Taiho coming up, up, up, toward my chin. The sonofabitch wanted to take out my carotid artery.
Not now, ScheiBkerl, not ever.
I flailed at him. He was fucking implacable, his face a mask of rage and hate. The knife came up. I grabbed it with my left hand, swung inside and rolled, using my hip to pivot the two of us—and toss him onto his back. But Franz has been through the same martial arts courses I have. So he knew precisely how to break my hold, deliver a fucking effective knee to my rib cage, and follow it with a roundhouse kick that swept me right off my feet.
I whirled and scrambled away, regained my balance and tackled him, driving him into the stone floor. We rolled around, each trying to gain the advantage—something that is much harder than it sounds when your opponent has a nasty knife and he keeps trying to slice off parts of your body with it.
My right arm caught on something cold as we rolled. Instinctively, I grabbed and held on. It was one of the suit’s two vambraces—heavy, unjointed forearm protectors with ornate, pointed tops.
I ripped at it, and the fucking thing came free of the picture wire. I took the vambrace and jammed it, pointed edge up, from below, the spined tip cutting deeply into Franz’s chin.
The blow slapped his head back, he bellowed like a fucking stuck Schwein. I jackhammered him again, working the sharp, pointed tip at the top of the vam-brace into his throat. He gurgled in a way that told me eloquently that I’d hurt him serious. I didn’t give a shit: I was having a good old time. And anyway, I didn’t have to be told anything. Franz’s actions spoke louder than his gurgles. The fucking knife dropped away from my throat.
Too bad Franzie. It was time for him to die.
Now I used my weight to pull him down, down, into a vortex of pain. I kicked the Taiho clear. Wouldn’t need it, because I saw something better. My right hand dropped the vambrace then reached out for another weapon: the mace that had hung from the suit’s gauntlet.
No, it wasn’t fun holding Franz down. He was a strong motherfucker, and I had a hell of a time maintaining a grasp on him because my hands were wet with my own blood. Moreover, Franz knew all the tricks of the trade. He worked out regularly, too. But all that didn’t matter, because I didn’t have to like it—I just had to do it. And Do It I did. He struggled, but I was having none of it.
I was thinking about Fred—and how he could have died. I thought about his dead shooters, and that this traitor to the uniform he’d once worn was responsible for killing Fred’s shipmates. I thought about all the shooters who have died because assholes like Franz Ulrich betray their shipmates, and their nations. Oh, my friends, the list of traitors is far too long. Jonathan Pollard. Buckshot Brannigan. Aldrich Ames. Grant Griffith. Edwin Wilson. LC Strawhouse. John Walker. Werner Lantos. Ehud Golan. Bentley Brendel. And now, Franz Ulrich.
My fingers found the hilt of the mace—I pried it loose from the wire attaching it to the gauntlet and wound tightly around its sturdy wood shaft. Brought the head up, around, and swung the fucking thing just like it was a hammer and I was laying decking.
The first blow caught Franz on the cheek. It shattered his jaw. That one was for Fred’s men.
He screamed in pain, which made me feel real good.
The sonofabitch tried to crawl away from me. He kicked out again, but he was hurt, and he had no power in his legs anymore.
I swung the mace in a big arc and caught him in the knee. As he reacted to that, I hit him again, smashing the other knee; shattering his patella and both condyles. He roared in agony. But he kept moving, dragging himself across the stone like the robot in the original Terminator movie, moving slowly, inexorably, toward the Taiho, six yards away.
I pulled myself off the floor and went after him. I used my height and my weight, swinging the fucking mace in a paroxysm of fucking vengeance. My goal was KISS: break every fucking bone in his fucking body—and then kill the cockbreath.
My first blow caught him in the shoulder, snapping his clavicle. He tried to roll away, but there was no escape. I brought the mace down in a two-handed blow and caught him in the sternum, cracking his fucking chest open.
I looked down at him. The motherfucker was drooling now, bloody spittle running down into the ripped, soiled black cashmere turtleneck. His eyes peered up at me, uncomprehending because the motherfucker was already in terminal shock.
Too bad. I wanted him to know what was happening. I reached down and grabbed him by his short, steel gray hair, and put my face down next to his so he could read my fucking lips.
“You’re a fucking cockbreath,” I told him. “You’re a fucking traitor.”
He tried to say something, but no words escaped. Just more spittle.
I gave him a Roguish smile. “Auf wiedersehen, Franz, you ScheiBkerl.”
I smacked his head back onto the floor. From the “I dropped a melon on the floor” sound of the impact, I probably gave him a bad concussion right then. But frankly, a bad concussion was about to be the least of his problems.
I stepped back, took the mace, held it like a golf club, checked my swing, and addressed the business end to the side of Franz’s head. As the spiked round tip of the mace touched him, his eyes rolled in my direction. That’s when he realized what was about to happen.
Oh, his eyes were r-e-a-l expressive. But the motherfucker couldn’t move. He was dead in the water. Maybe I’d severed some spinal nerves. Maybe he was beyond motion. I didn’t know, and I didn’t give a rat’s ass. My body hurt like hell. My right hand was wet with blood from the cuts on my arm. But the blood, and the pain, meant fuck-all right now.
There was work to be done. I gauged distance, power, stroke, and force, then drew the mace head back over my right shoulder, and—fore!—let fly.
I am no golfer, but believe me, my form was Tiger Woods, Arnold Palmer, Greg Norman Great White fucking Shark perfect, right then. I used more than enough backswing to give the mace an incredible degree of raw, kinetic drive. My shoulders, my arms, my wrists, all fused symbiotically to achieve a perfect, powerful, hole-in-one stroke.
Thwummmp. It was a hole in one, all right—a big hole in one big asshole. The mace head buried itself just above Franz Ulrich’s ear, and right below the zygomatic arch. The force of the swing (and, yes, I remembered to follow through) sent a big, bloody divot of Franz’s brain matter ten feet down the room.
Just to make sure he wouldn’t bother me again, I changed position and hit him a second time, caving his fu
cking Kraut skull in from the top.
I left the mace buried in his head, retrieved my long-lost Taiho, and shoved it back in its Kydex sheath. I readjusted the rucksack. I repaired my belt with duct tape from my fanny pack, reloaded the MP5, unflipped the security flap on my USP, and then limped toward the staircase that I instinctively knew led to Lothar Beck.
Indeed, the night’s mission wasn’t over yet. Not by a long shot. The American ADMs were here—and I wanted ’em back.
22
0125. I LINKED UP WITH BOOMERANG AND NOD. IT WAS both joyful and irksome that neither of them looked much the worse for wear. Bone tired, sure. Grungy, too. But still ready to go. That was them. As for moi, Nod gave me a critical once-over and shook his head. “Hey,” I told him, “there’s nothing wrong with me that the juice from a liter of Bombay Sapphire couldn’t cure.”
Nod, his expression somewhere between disbelief and bemusement, slit my BDU blouse sleeve, applied antiseptic, wrapped the four-inch slit on my arm with gauze bandage, and taped it securely to staunch the bleeding. “It could use some staples,” he said.
“I’ll get the fucking thing stitched later,” I told him.
Nod checked his handiwork with a critical eye and decided that it would do for the present. Then he repaired my slit sleeve with duct tape. “Right, Skipper. Anything you say.”
I hate patronizing, don’t you? But to be honest, I was too fucking tired, too fucking pinged, and too fucking dinged to do anything about it right then.
Besides, all those wonderful endorphins were fading by the second. My arm was throbbing, my knee hurt like hell, and there was another traitor to kill. I started to pick my gear up. “Let’s just fucking go to fucking work, okay?”
“I really do like your ironic repetitive use of the F-word, Boss Dude,” Boomerang said, his head going up and down like one of those goddamn doggie toys you see in the rear windows of 1956 Chevys.
There is an ironclad rule about officers smacking enlisted men upside the head that I considered violating at that point. But any thoughts of mischief were interrupted by the sound of gunfire below. I wasn’t here to play around. I was here to TCB. I turned the radiation detector on (I was gratified to see that my recent bout of balls-to-the-wall physical exercise hadn’t damaged it), and peered down at the readout. Just as I’d guessed: the signal was getting stronger every step we went closer to the stairway. Oh, I knew I was headed in the right direction.
That, of course, was precisely when the fucking thing emitted a pair of plaintive bleeps and abruptly shut down on me. Was it the batteries that had died? Or was it the fact that the cocksucking, motherfucking device had been dropped, flopped, and whopped as a result of my recent activities. I didn’t know, and there was no time to care. I was on my own now. But at least I had a vague idea of where I had to go.
0129. I took point, moving cautiously in the shadowy half-light. The stairway was right out of one of those 1930s Hollywood Errol Flynn costume epics: wide stone stairs, perfect for swordplay. Except I didn’t have a sword. I’d do my dueling with an MP5, thank you very much. I kind of expected big candelabras or sconces, lighting my way.
The firing was much more sporadic now—at least what I heard of it. That meant that Fred and his group were taking care of business, and that my second three-man squad was also hard at work mopping up the malefactors.
I descended stealthily but steadily. No time to waste. I cut the pie, checked for threats, and finding none, moved on, inexorably downward.
It was a long stairwell, and the air grew noticeably cooler as we descended into darkness. At the bottom, we turned a sharp corner and were greeted by a thick, iron-reinforced door. Light emanated from underneath—and shouting, too. I approached cautiously and tried to raise the latch. It was immovable. I tested the door. It was obviously barred and bolted from the inside. Unlike modern doorways, most of which can be shot open with a submachine gun, you can’t fucking shoot the bar off a damn medieval door because the wood is too thick, and the straps are too heavy. You need a ram, or a big fucking shotgun, or similar, to shatter the strap hinges and blow the fucking door open. Or you need explosives—ribbon charges, for example, or C-4.
Tell you what: the next time I hit a castle, I’m gonna make sure someone is carrying a fucking breaching shotgun, a lot of fucking T.K.O. shells,93 half a dozen two-pound blocks of C-4, a satchel full of breaching charges and lots of fucking detonators. That way, doors like this one won’t stop us. But that wasn’t the case tonight. Tonight, we were locked out in the dark, holding our limp szebs94 in our flippers, while who knows WTF Lothar was doing behind that fucking door.
“Whoa—” Nod was rummaging through his pockets. He withdrew a dark plastic vial and unscrewed the top of it. Inside was a chunk of C-4 about thrice the size of a sugar cube. “This is the last of John Suter’s stuff,” he stage-whispered, dumping the three-quarter-inch lump of plastic explosive into the palm of his hand.
Great. Now we could blow the door. My elation lasted for all of three seconds, which is how long it took me to factor in that all the detonators were in Duck Foot’s fanny pack, and who knew where the fuck Duck Foot was.
Boomerang obviously had his own ideas about what to do. He held his long, calloused palm under Nod’s nose. “Gimmee,” he hissed.
Nod relinquished the cube. Boomerang worked it, rolling the explosive into a round ball. Then he pressed the plastique, doughlike, up against the big door’s middle strap-hinge. It stuck there like a wad of chewing gum. “I’ll be back,” he growled in an almost passable Schwarzenegger.
Boomerang sprinted up the stairwell. I dropped to the ground and tried to peer under the door, but there was no way to look past the uneven stone floor. But there were fucking people in there, and they were doing something, because we could hear ’em moving.
0132. Boomerang was back. He was carrying a fucking five-foot-long flintlock rifle with an ornately inlaid stock, and a six-foot-long pike. I looked at him. “WTF?”
“Dig it, Boss Dude.” Boomerang took the rifle and sat it butt end on the floor. He retrieved a powder flask from his pocket and dumped what can only be called a shitload of granular black powder down the muzzle of the rifle, found a wad of cloth, and tamped the cloth home with the wood ramrod. Then he opened the pan cover, added a spritz of powder to the flash pan, and closed the cover again.
Boomerang picked the rifle up, retrieved the ball of C-4 from the strap hinge, and tamped it just into the crown of the flintlock’s muzzle. Then he pulled back the cock. He wedged the butt of the weapon into a crack in the stone floor, and tapped the weapon with his foot to make sure it was set firmly. The muzzle, C-4 barely extending, was smack up against the thick, wrought iron strap hinge of the big door.
“Stand back.” He pushed us back up into the stairwell, took the pike, and reached it around toward the trigger. “Fire in the hole, Boss Dude . . .”
Let me tell you something about black powder. It is much more volatile than smokeless powder, and much more explosive. The fucking flintlock was louder than a goddam DefTec No. 25. It was so loud I thought my eardrums had ruptured. All I could hear was ringing. When I was able to see through the smoke, I saw that the door frame had shattered, and the door itself was ripped off its hinges. Geezus, that stuff is effective. There was nothing left of the flintlock except for a few splinters of wood from the stock. The rest of it had been fucking vaporized. I think that if the C-4 hadn’t blown the hinge, the fucking black powder would have done the job by itself.
Show Time. I went through the door first, scanning through the thick smoke and squinting at the bright lights. There were one-two-three black Mercedes diesel trucks lined up, twenty yards away, on the far side of this cavernous chamber, engines running. I tried to see whether anybody was behind the wheel, but couldn’t tell.
Nod’s voice cried out, “Threat, Green Ten—”
I turned left, acquired the target and fired a three-shot burst that brought him down. Over my right shoulder, I hear
d the abrupt chatter of Boomerang’s MP5, then Nod’s. I kept moving to my left, my back up against the wall, scanning and breathing as I searched for targets, making my way abreast of the trio of trucks. I wanted to know where the fucking exit was because I didn’t want these guys going anywhere.
A throaty growl from my twelve o’clock. The truck closest to me gunned its engine, and from somewhere in the cab—I couldn’t see a silhouette of his head—the driver popped the clutch. The fucking truck jumped forward, heading straight at me.
I fired a burst into the windshield, but the goddamn thing kept coming. Fired another burst—longer than the first. But the truck didn’t slow down. I tucked and rolled as the fucking thing careened into the wall, jumped onto the running board, yanked open the door, and sprayed the interior of the cab one-handed. Maybe the driver was already dead, but I wasn’t about to take any chances. I head-shot him, reached in, and shut the ignition off.
Jumped off, ran back, and checked the rear. I opened the latch, stood clear, and raised the gate.
No reaction. Stuck the business end of the MP5 around, and took a peek.
The fucking thing was empty.
I heard bursts of automatic weapons fire from the far side of the chamber—and rounds hitting the star-boardmost truck. My boys were really earning their pay tonight.
I closed the cargo gate and latched it, changed MP5 mags—it was my last one—then made my way around the far side of the bashed-in cab. Sixty feet away, on the far side of the irregular-shaped chamber, was a roll-away, corrugated steel door, the kind that’s operated by a continuous chain. A lopsided figure in black was feverishly pulling at the roll-chain.
I brought my MP5 up and fired a burst into the gear mechanism, freezing it.
Lothar Beck yanked on the chain and realized that it was useless. He turned toward me, his face a mask of hate and disgust.
Then he lurched to his left, scampered tha-whomp, tha-whomp, behind the truck closest to him, and disappeared from view.
Option Delta Page 31