Running Black (Eshu International Book 1)

by Patrick Todoroff

------------------

  Hester watched as Poet9 went over and checked Gibson’s pulse.

  “He’s dead. Satisfied?” Poet9 said.

  “Only that my job is done,” the small agent replied.

  “Shithead.”

  Two explosions went off outside the Command Center. We all looked up at the security monitors to see Dawson-Hull troopers closing in. Hester leapt up onto the window frame.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” I asked.

  “My bosses will contact you once you’re back in Belfast. I’ll put in a good word. I’m sure they can find a couple of odd jobs that need doing.”

  “What if we don’t want a paycheck from your Savile Row bastards?” Tam called out.

  Hester shrugged. “Your choice. But it’s a shame to waste talent. Accidents happen, and I’d hate to see you left out in the cold.”

  “Hey,” Poet yelled. “They’re your guys. Think you could lend us a hand?”

  Hester looked over his shoulder. “If you can’t get out of this on your own, it saves my Savile Row bastard bosses the trouble of ringing you up, doesn’t it?” With that, he climbed through the window and disappeared out of sight.

  Poet gritted his teeth. “I should have shot him.”

  I looked over at Gibson’s tiny body. “Maybe you should have.”

  There was another explosion, followed by the chatter of automatic weapons and the whine of ricocheted bullets off metal. Every screen showed nothing but Dawson-Hull Special Deployment troopers.

  “We need to vacate before someone finds us and thinks we killed all these people,” Poet said.

  “There a back way out of here?” I asked Tam.

  “Hell if I know.”

  We took cover outside the main door behind a row of electric carts. The British were closing in fast and furious from all directions, and every APAC soldier we could see was either dead or surrendering.

  Poet9 peered over a hood. “They’ve got a whole damn army out there.”

  “Everything but tanks,” I said.

  “A tank would be good right about now,” Tam agreed.

  Then out of the distance, over the noise of gunfire, we heard the roar of a heavy engine and the rumble of a large vehicle headed our way.

  “If it wasn’t for bad luck…” Tam said.

  “We’d have no luck at all,” Poet and I both finished.

  The three of us stared, and there, coming down the main avenue into the Legation was an ancient, steel-sided, six-wheel garbage truck. And it was headed right for us.

  “What is that?” I asked.

  It tore through the fence and pulled up right in front of the Command Center. Rounds were sparking off its thick plate sides and cab. It sat there, the driver gunning the engine. Suddenly the passenger door flung open.

  “Come on. Hurry, hurry,” Alejo yelled.

  “Are you nuts?” I managed to say.

  “Hey! You can always get a fanatic to do something stupid, right? Now get in here. We’ve got a submarine to catch.”

  The three of us dove for the door.

  EPILOGUE: FALLOUT

  Alejo drove like a mad Spaniard, barreling through fences, over barricades and dividers, right through the middle of the assault. Nothing stopped that old truck and in less than ten minutes, we’d screeched to a halt on the bottom floor at the very tip of the South Arm. We were right at the water level and the floor was swamped knee deep with waves crashing into the sides of the Dock some twenty meters overhead.

  Alejo’s Bible-smuggling friend was the captain of an old decommed Russian sub: an Oscar II class nuclear leviathan. No wonder the Islamic Federation had such a hard time stopping him. We slipped down through a hatch and in five minutes we were below the waves and headed out to sea.

  Between the extraordinary quiet, the kindness of his crew, and the encased calm of the sub, it was like we’d fallen into another world. He took five days to bring us all the way back to the coast of Ireland. We made it ashore one foggy night and have been laying low in our apartments in Belfast ever since.

  The Triplets killed the three APAC agents. We found out later they were some kind of secret clone Executive Hsiang sent after us. The Dawson-Hull commander in Spain, a nasty piece of work named Eames, had the bodies burnt, but only after emptying full clips into them just to make sure. From what we can tell, Cottontail drew them into a trap using himself as bait. There’s mention of an explosion, and he smiles when he talks about killing the cold-eyed woman. Flopsy and Mopsy killed the other two. They were despondent when I told them about Gibson. They still won’t say his name, but I think they’re getting past it.

  Doc Kalahani took that position in Belfast Children’s Hospital. He comes around for a hot cuppa once or twice a month, checking up on us, telling stories about the kids in his ward. He smiles more these days. Al and Carmen are somewhere in the Bloody Nose of Africa, Somaliland I think, doing humanitarian work among the refugees. We get an e-card from them every month. Funny, they lost everything but seem happier than ever, if that’s even possible. Curro on the other hand is here in Ireland with us. He runs errands, does chores, and Doc K. got him some shifts at the hospital. He says there’s nothing for him back in Barcelona, and he hates the heat in Africa. Personally, I think he’s angling for a spot on our next mission. Tam told me the other day he’s seriously considering bringing him along, as logistics support, mind you. Alejo found out and wants us to teach him everything we know. Carmen says we better not or she’ll come after us. Regardless, Tam has Jaithirth putting out feelers for our next contract.

  We’ve got some stipulations next time around.

  Not that we’re hurting for credits. Not at all, in fact. It seems Gibson got creative when he was in the APAC Grid. When we finally checked, our bank accounts showed twice the amount we expected. On top of that, the Garcías mysteriously ended up with a substantial amount of Asian Pacific stock. More of Gibson’s handiwork. They sold it all straight off, cashing out before D-H could pull the plug.

  So far, there’s been no obvious bloodletting in the corporate arena. I guess London’s still rifling through the Consortium’s database, grabbing everything that’s interesting. At Eshu International, we’ve got one eye watching the skies for fallout.

  Belfast smells like wood smoke, fog, and old stones. Tam and I have spent the last month replacing lost and broken equipment, repairing gear, generally healing up and thinking a lot. I even picked up a Bible and read a bit of it. I told Al, which Tam thought was a huge mistake, and now he and Carmen forward these devotionals to me. Tam calls them “holy spam”.

  I keep meaning to go through them and look up the scripture references, but I’m still “buffering” as Poet9 would say. Tam swore he’s going to wait until he’s at least forty before he even thinks about looking into the “God thing”.

  I think of Gibson every now and then. The other day Carmen told me he’d asked her if he had a soul after that night we argued in the cellar. I’m sure he did. A good one too. And wherever he is, I have the feeling he’s safe and happy.

  I can’t prove it. Call it instinct.

  FINISHED?

  IT'S NEVER FINISHED.

  Read on for a Sneak Peek at the next Eshu International novel

  SHIFT TENSE

  Coming Fall 2011

  More Information at the author's blog:

  Hot Space Station Justice

  (http://CCGlazier.wordpress.com/)

  SHIFT TENSE

  Fall 2011

  CHAPTER TWO: TINKERBELL PAYLOAD

  Latvian coast, Merger of Baltic Nations. 50 km south of Ventspils.

  Pitch black at two a.m., a winter storm was shrieking off the Baltic Sea while I dangled upside down like a giant origami bat.

  Fifteen empty meters under me, scrawny I-beam at my back, swarms of ice chips pinged off my faceplate like glass slivers. A single abrading note sang through the skeletal metal around me, and I couldn't move a muscle.

  Sometimes I hate my job. />
  Twenty minutes to extraction, I had been climbing a small crane to provide top cover when a Soviet-era KA-50 "Werewolf" assault chopper dropped out of the sky so fast I slipped in a rush to disappear. That's why, blood rushing to my head, I was hanging off a ladder clutching eight girthy kilograms of Vychlop .50 cal sniper rifle and trying very hard to look like a piece of machinery.

  Rotors loitered behind me in the brittle air, suspicious and sadistic. The prying white of a searchlight snapped on, hard shadows suddenly lurching back and forth.

  One minute.

  I blinked away eye spots and exhaled slowly. The armored vest tightened around my chest, gathered under my arms like it wanted to slither off and wrap around my head.

  Two minutes.

  My knees started screaming from being locked around the ladder rung.

  Three minutes.

  My chest and shoulders glazed stiff with icy build-up. My stomach muscles trembled as the sweat ran inside my helmet from my neck into my eyes.

  Shadows expanded, the shredding closed in. Lingered.

  Four minutes. Five.

  Sometimes I really hate my job.

  Then, as fast as it came, the copter darted off and began probing the trees along the dirt road from town. The engine roar faded, the wind came back. My heart started again.

  "Oh, oh. Oryol is sumamente pissed," Poet9's voice sang in my helmet.

  "The explosion woke up the whole damn place." Tam snapped.

  "You told Mopsy to stop the van."

  "I didn't mean with a rocket launcher."

  "Well, there must have been eight Ivan's in it." Poet9 tried to sound reasonable.

  Tam sighed. "Which is why that Werewolf will be back. They're not sure if we've left yet."

  "Hey," I gasped. "Can I. Move now?"

  "Oh... yeah. Sure." Tam answered

  I unfolded carefully. "You want me up or down?" I set the heavy rifle on a beam next to me, wiped the ice off and tugged my body armor back into place. "We'll need the Finger of God if company's coming."

  "Not with that thing in the air. Find cover on the ground. Triplets will watch the road. I need you to help Curro with the ladies and hustle them into the boat when it arrives. We need to vacate the premises right fucking now."

  "Speaking of the ladies ..." I started climbing down.

  Curro’s soft Spanish lilt came over the radio. “The ladies are here under the dome with me. Daughter's a little scared, but Mom's got it under control. We're ready when you are.”

  Curro was hunkered down under a tiny thermal-masking pop-up in a clump of trees some twenty five meters away from the shore. The "ladies" were our objective for this run: the wife and young daughter of a Ukrainian micro-robotics engineer who'd gone over the wire to Microsoft International. Somehow the Americans had finagled our services from Dawson Hull, our usual employer, and that's why we were hiding with his family by an abandoned fishing pier on the Latvian coast on a winter night being chased by Russian security.

  Now I know DH hadn't grown a conscience and gotten all family friendly. There must have been some heavy boardroom deals to send Eshu International on an errand for the Americans, but our swift and silent extraction had turned into a smash and grab, so it wasn't the best time to speculate on corporate relations. Our immediate concern was to get them - and us - out safe.

  My boots touched gravel and a siren started wailing in the distance. Security at the RSC Energia campus must have checked the apartment and connected the dots. I jogged away from the crane, keeping an eye on the road. "The Ravens up?"

  "Oh yeah, " Poet9 breathed. "All three. Carrying surprises, too."

  I knelt behind a small tin-roofed shed near the longest of the three piers. "Not again." I heard Tam say.

  "You'll love it. Pure genius." Poet9 answered.

  "So where's our ride?" I asked.

  "Coming. I sent the ready signal." I could almost hear Tam's finger stroking the trigger.

  “Oh, muy bueno” Poet9 snorted. “Can anyone say ‘blue screen of doom’? DH should have let us do our own exit, instead of relying on the Microsofties. We have a perfectly good STAB of our ---”

  "You're not helping." Tam interrupted. "Curro, I'll call once we see the boat. Stay under wraps until then. No heroics."

  "Si."He answered.

  I had just found a decent spot out of the knifing wind when Cottontail's voice sounded out. "Contact. Two vehicles approaching on the dirt road. One truck and one SUV."

  "Raven Two has three more vehicles less than five minutes behind 'em." Poet9 added.

  Tam was already up and sprinting toward the Triplets. "Activate mines. Engage vehicles when ready," he said crisply. "Poet, maintain the Raven feeds. Jace, be ready for that boat."

  "Roger that."

  Tam vanished into the tree line and I ran to a small rise next to a garage. More like a trash pile, it wasn't the best position, but it gave me a little height, and some sickly scrub brush provided a hint of cover. Most important, I had a clear shot up the road. I watched Poet9, his massive Walther in one hand, lug the Raven's Boss Box over to where Curro was hiding, then I flicked on my rifle's optics and sighted on the approaching headlights.

  A small Korean cheap-jeep blossomed in my scope. Light colored, it charged toward us, bouncing and swerving like a thing possessed. The Russian muscle wanted their principles back. Behind it, I could see an old Mercedes panel truck struggle to keep up. The jeep slewed around the bend spraying sand, righted, then shot forward straight towards the first pier.

  And exploded.

  Mine one.

  The big truck slammed to a halt. With the wash-out compensators in the scope, I could see figures leaping out of the back, fanning out to either side, their body shapes swimming in the green-white glare of burning jeep. They ran forward then scuttled back from the flames. No survivors there.

  If we were very lucky and the Russians very stupid, the jeep had been carrying their officers.

  The men from the truck dropped out of sight and assumed defensive positions. Ten seconds. Thirty. No shots, no motion. Seemed no one wanted to take the chance and knock on our door.

  Then someone started barking orders. Either there'd been an officer in the truck or some Alpha-type wanted a promotion. So much for luck. Eventually, six of the Russian security soldiers appeared, wary, unwilling to leave the protective bulk of the Mercedes.

  I found the loud one in the back and settled crosshairs on his torso. Real commissar type. He was bellowing, urging the rest of them forward with big slashes and chops of his arms. My finger took up half the slack. I waited for Tam's signal.

  There was motion on either side of the road: things scurrying through the grass. I squeezed the trigger as the spider mines went off; the boom covered by a rapid Crack-Hiss. The officer tumbled back and suddenly there was screaming.

  Claymores with legs, Tam calls them. With the brain of a gerbil, Poet9 always added.

  Screams turned to moans turned to wind again. I swept the area through the scope. Flames were the only thing moving. Ten, maybe twelve men had just died, and I was the only one of us who fired a shot.

  Poet9 updated us. "Raven One has zero movement in killbox, but Raven Two has those three other vehicles coming fast. There's a fourth one leaving town. Cossacks are riding hard."

  "Raven Three?" I asked.

  "No contacts on the water."

  "Helicopter?" Tam demanded.

  "No sign of it."

  "Screw the helicopter. Where's. The. Damn. Boat?" I demanded.

  "It's coming." Tam snapped back.

  "Three vehicles have stopped half a klick out. Figures dismounting." Poet9 said. "Carajo. Fifteen. No, twenty plus, coming our way. And we're out of mines."

  Tam muttered something foul in Korean then ordered the Triplets forward. Cottontail spoke one short, sharp word in his Zulu combat argot, and the three big clones ghosted into the woods.

  I chinned the video from Raven One, and the Oryol boys popped up on my helme
t's H.U.D. Twenty one of them were spread out in a skirmish line, trotting along the road in a hurry. These guys wanted the ladies back something fierce. Most sported compact AK-9 assault rifles but I spotted at least four Pecheneg LMGs and a RG8 40mm grenade launcher. What Oryol Security lacked in finesse they made up in blunt force trauma.

  The Ivans were about a hundred meters from the curve in the road when three grenades exploded, followed by the deep stutter of H&K G46s. "Contact." Cottontail said simply.

  The Russians' response was almost immediate. Definitely not mall security wash-outs. They reacted fast and vicious, opening up with everything they had. Continuous muzzle flash washed out the drone's video, so I cut the feed and waited. The chainsaw roar ripped through the night for a full minute then fell silent all at once.

  Cottontail's voice sounded in my helmet a second later. "Repositioning to beta."

  I smiled.

  I brought up Raven One again, and this time the view was from behind the Russian troopers. Sixteen figures were now creeping toward the bend.

  Not bad. Not good, but not bad. And they were heading straight to our Nightingale.

  An old trick out of the Spec Ops black bag, a Nightingale Device is a one meter by one and a half meter mesh net rigged with firecrackers and cherry bombs. Add a remote detonator, press 'play' and it looks and sounds like a platoon unloading on full auto.

  The Russians were around the bend, four teams leapfrogging down the road in angry spurts. They had blood in their teeth and they knew we were still here.

  Seventy five meters from the first pier, Cottontail spoke again. "Engaging, beta"

  First, the Nightingale erupted on the right and the Oryol teams swung into it like it was another ambush, furiously unloading into the woods again. I saw bushes and small trees collapsing. Thirty seconds into their response, the Triplets hit them from behind, Another five went down, and the rest scattered like leaves in a gale.