Shift Tense: Eshu International Book 2

by Patrick Todoroff

  “And watch your back,” I said.

  “And watch my back,” Tam confirmed.

  I braced my feet. Tam nodded, then put a three-round burst into one of the bullhorn officers. The Milkor bucked in my hands and emitted a stuttering cough. Six, 40mm grenades arced over the plaza, then a line of fire and smoke bloomed in the mass of soldiers along the wall.

  Immediately, I broke open the cylinder and started reloading. The Triplets’ miniguns began sweeping the corner wall. Tam was picking off officers at the pavilion. There was no return fire. I slammed the Milkor shut, reeling with a wild thrill. This was going to work.

  Then a round cracked past my head, and the giddiness drained out like a shattered cup. The TIGR’s machine gun was firing again, and the wall above me was disintegrating into dust and concrete chips.

  Twelve-point-seven caliber rounds chewed the brick and stucco. Tam was hugging pavement behind some rubble, and I flattened into a doorway.

  “Hit the TIGR!” I yelled into my radio. “Cottontail, take out that jeep!”

  Static hissed. The gunner had found the range and was hammering away at the building façade. Rounds were slamming into the concrete pillar inches from my face, gnawing away at my cover.

  “Cottontail! Hit. That. Jeep!”

  More static, then came the calm reply. “Target jeep. Acknowledged.”

  A single RPG angled in and smacked the jeep’s roof. The Triplets had claimed the high ground. The warhead penetrated the metal and exploded in the interior. The TIGR burst apart and lurched to one side, burning furiously.

  Tam was skirting up the left side of the street towards the plaza. “Thank God they’re on our side.”

  “Every time,” I muttered.

  And nearly stepped into a hail of bullets.

  The deep thump of heavy machine guns resumed, only this time there was more than one. I dived behind the tiny chassis of a Fiat. Rounds were punching through the metal, cracking around me, when Tam’s voice came over the radio. “Shit. Tin Chimps! Just came around the trucks.”

  I peered around a fender. Three SARKOS exo-armor combat suits were lumbering our way—gorillas in camouflage ceramic carapaces with Pecheneg machine guns. The orange and black tiger emblem blazed across their chest plates. Slow, ugly, armored like a walking tank, they were made for firepower and brute intimidation.

  It was working.

  As I hefted the Milkor, Poet9’s voice came over the radio, gunfire in the background. “—taking fire! Repeat—We’re taking fire! The BLADE has been shot up. A squad of those hijos de puta must have circled behind us. We need help RFN. Copy?”

  I heard Tam acknowledge, then order the Triplets somewhere, but one thought was crowding out all the rest. If the jammer was down, the government troops had their communications back.

  They could call for reinforcements.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN – Regret

  Bowna Town, near Ceel Baxay, Somaliland

  High-caliber rounds buzzed through the air like hornets, and I could still hear Poet9 yelling in my headset.

  “—fire from the tree line a thousand meters south of our position!” His magnum barked between words. “And now the cabrónes sicced GUTVs on us. I count three smart cars of death heading our way!” There was a deep knock of heavy machine guns in the background, and Curro’s carbine answering in tight, controlled bursts—just like we’d taught him.

  I’d have been totally chuffed with the boy for staying cool under fire, except one of the B7 SARKOS suits was dismantling the ancient Fiat I was hiding behind with a steady stream of 7.62mm rounds. The roof screeched off in a spray of metal and glass. I gripped the Milkor and tried to get tiny.

  Tam was across the street, tucked out of sight in an architectural crease by the entrance of a gray stone building with green awnings. Everything sucked in, he looked like a jumper on the ledge of a skyscraper. It’s almost funny how small you can make yourself once the shit starts flying.

  “We got our own problems right now,” I heard Tam answer. “I’ll get some Legion there. You need to hold on ’til then. Copy?”

  Poet9 muttered something in Spanish at once both profane and prayerful. Grace banged out again. “All right!” he snapped. “Holding on. I’ll think of something. Out.”

  Tam switched to the command frequency and ordered a squad of the Ukrainians to haul ass in a golf cart to Poet9’s last known. Their ambush west of town would have to work shorthanded. The NCO acknowledged; he’d have troops there in twenty minutes. I hoped it wouldn’t be nineteen minutes too late, but it was all we could do at the moment.

  The SARKOS’ Pecheneg machine gun abruptly started hosing the house on my right, shattering the windows floor by floor. I peeked around a perforated fender.

  The armored exo-suits were near the plaza wall maybe a hundred meters away. My grenade launcher must have grabbed their attention because all three had apparently forgotten about the Triplets on the Boorama Road. They stood there blasting the hell out of everything on our street. Typical thug tactics, but it was good enough to keep Tam and me pinned down. Shooting up buildings was going to get old fast, so I knew it was a matter of seconds before their rounds came hunting us again. We needed an out—right now. And seeing as they liked the Milkor so much…

  I radioed Tam. “Get ready to move.”

  “Roger.”

  With what was left of the Fiat in front of me, I leaned back, estimated the angle and distance ratio, and emptied all six chambers blind. The head of the road erupted and the suits’ Pechenegs fell silent.

  Time to move.

  I rolled over the sidewalk into someone’s front yard—a patch of trash hemmed in by a brick knee-wall. Tam darted forward and disappeared into a store.

  Not ten seconds later, the machine guns opened up with long, wild bursts. Somebody’s pissed, that’s for sure, I thought.

  I flinched and ate dirt. Glass crashed up and down the street as streams of bullets gnawed away concrete, brick, metal, and wood. Awnings deflated and collapsed. Doors disintegrated. The Fiat groaned and started to smoke. A balcony fell, chewed right off a second-story perch. Clouds of white dust filled the air, obscuring everything into dark underwater shapes.

  I pulled a kerchief over my nose and mouth and hugged filth. The wall in front of me was suddenly very short.

  All three going loud on us, I kept hoping the bastards’ barrels would overheat or an ammo feeder would jam, but Russian army surplus has brought carnage to the Third World for decades because it’s cheap, it’s simple, and it can take a truckload of abuse.

  I was shit out of luck lying there wishing.

  Poet9’s voice again. Curro still shooting. “Madre do Dios. What’s Ukrainian for ‘hurry the hell up’?”

  “If I knew it, I’d be saying it right now!” I shouted.

  Bullets started chipping the bricks above my head. Six inches lower, they’d chew through my cover in less than a minute.

  Time to move. Again.

  The memory of those SPLM militia crawling out on the plain suddenly in my head, I inched back toward the sidewalk. Every ounce of common sense was screaming ‘no’. My entire body was clenched, expecting to be torn up any second. I dragged myself until I was looking back toward the plaza.

  The suits were backpedaling, firing as they retreated to the plaza. Six 40mm explosive rounds, and all I scored was a scratch and dent? Damn things were tough. At least my salvo had scared them. The one on the left was heaving like a drunk, dragging a leg, slow but still deadly. It reminded me of Alejo. The other two looked fine.

  I rolled onto one side and loaded the last of my grenades. Glancing between the lumbering suits, the muzzle flash from their machine guns, and the six green egg shapes I was feeding into the cylinder, a line from a kid’s storybook ran through my head:

  “I do not like them here or there. I do not like them anywhere.”

  Truer words… I snapped the launcher shut.

  “Tam?”

  “Here,” he gasped.


  “Last of the forty mike-mike. Then I’m down to my Blizzard. Where are the Triplets?”

  “Wish I kn—”

  “Coming,” Cottontail’s voice cut in. “In position in five seconds.” A wave of relief went through me.

  I counted down in my head until ‘two’, then I rolled to my knees and put all six shots on the damaged SARKOS. It came apart, gun arm and orange-emblem torso spiraling in opposite directions. I heard Tam’s TAVOR, saw sparks at the head and shoulders of the middle suit, then suddenly an RPG hissed in from my right, and the armored gorilla shape disappeared in a flash.

  The third suit panicked and plodded as fast as it could, seeking the cover of the trucks. There were screams as it trampled dead and dying civilians. I spied what was left of the red-beret soldiers rallying around it. The Pecheneg’s snout wavered down our street, then the Boorama Road. Maybe it was jammed, maybe the soldier inside was losing it. Either one was fine by me.

  Tam started dropping soldiers with single shots from his TAVOR. I threw the empty Milkor aside and pulled out my Blizzard. Not in range, I started running forward, weaving among the burning cars.

  The SARKOS swiveled, reacting to my movement. In slow motion, I saw the barrel of the Pecheneg tracking me. I ran faster, trying to stay ahead of it. Failed.

  Then like a freeze-frame camera trick, the Triplets were there, big as linebackers, eerily fast and impossibly graceful. An accelerated danse macabre, pistols and machetes swept side to side. Red berets fell, were flung apart. The SARKOS turned to meet them, and one of the Bunnies, Mopsy I think, vaulted into the air. He soared past the SARKOS, level with suit’s shoulders. A pistol blazed in one huge fist as a grenade dropped out of the other. It bounced and disappeared down the suit’s armored head cowling.

  There was a whump, and the pilot’s helmeted head shot skyward like a soccer ball. The suit slumped over.

  At that, the last of the Duub Cas soldiers fled, pursued by howling townspeople. They would run into the Ukrainians, but I didn’t care. It was over, and I was still alive.

  Tam pulled me to my feet. “Poet9 and Curro, we’ve got to move.”

  He radioed the Triplets. The five of us ran out of Bowna, back up the hill, past the flaming APC with its headshot security detail, to where we’d left our friends.

  ***

  We found them in a rocky dimple a couple hundred meters down slope from their original position. I could see the jammer’s aerials, canted and broken like chopped sugarcane stalks. Poet9 was huddled over the box that held his Jiehao broadband transmitter. Curro was grim-faced and dirty, clutching his Kriss Super V, and he was down to his last magazine.

  There was no incoming fire from the tree line at the top of the ridge, but that didn’t mean whoever it was had bailed. A dust plume in the distance marked the Legion’s Desert Raider headed our way. I spotted three wrecked Gladiator GUTVs smoking in the underbrush. Rounds popped off inside their squat frames sounding like hammers banging inside a dumpster. It took me a minute to realize all three were facing up the hill—away from us.

  I looked at Poet9 and spotted the cables trailing from the side of his head to the Jiehao. “I hacked their command frequency,” he shrugged. “I didn’t hear any vehicles, so I took the chance someone was piloting them direct nearby. Lucky for us I was right. Little bastards put out a hellacious amount of bullets.”

  He grinned, but his eyes were bruised, his nose bloody. The data-sphere brawl had cost him. Whoever had been controlling the Gladiators hadn’t handed them over easily.

  Tam’s eyes were on the trees. “You kill whoever it was?”

  “Hope so. Scared the piss out of them at least. They stopped shooting at us.”

  “Scared the piss out of me,” Curro noted.

  “If you’re gonna leak, better yellow than red,” Tam and I said in unison.

  Curro snorted. Poet9 shook his head; he’d heard it before.

  “Just don’t tell my dad,” Curro mumbled.

  Still watching the trees, Tam chuckled. “Trust me. He knows all about it. So does your mom.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “Where are the Bunnies?” Poet9 asked. “They’re not…”

  “They’re fine,” I answered. “They’re flushing the ridge. Quietly. We need live intel for Deer Voort and the Professor.” I nodded towards Bowna. “Soldiers down there won’t be talking any time soon.”

  Poet9 and Curro both studied the smoke-filled skyline over the blackened, battered town. Intermittent gunshots echoed up from the west—the Ukrainians finishing off the last of the Duub Cas troops. “We really save them?” Curro asked.

  I looked back. “Yeah. If you can call it that.”

  “Better than the alternative,” he said.

  I didn’t disagree. It’s just that sometimes it’s hard to pretend, no matter how deserved or necessary, war isn’t anything less than a monstrous crime.

  Tam tensed and brought his rifle up as the Triplets emerged from the trees on the ridge leading prisoners.

  There were five, all in new camouflage and body armor. Two carried a wounded comrade between them, while the other two walked slightly to one side, hands in the air. It was obvious they weren’t Duub Cas or Somaliland regulars. First because they were Caucasian. Second, there was something oddly familiar about them—particularly the two with their hands up.

  At fifty meters out, I recognize the swagger, the attitude. It was Godzilla and the Wicked Witch—Anton Dratshev and Svetlana Illyanovytch, the Juggler. Alpha Security.

  Anton spotted us at ten meters. “What do you mean?” he roared. “Sending your retards to attack us? I have two men dead, and Mikail wounded.”

  Tam ignored the question. “You’re lucky it’s only two. What are you doing here, Anton?”

  The Russian sneered, smearing contempt across his already ugly face. “We don’t work for you. Deer Voort will hear about this, pidar. I report to Deer Voort. Direct.”

  “We all do, Dratshev. Answer the damn question!” Tam didn’t lower his rifle.

  The big Russian smiled nastily. “The Dutchman ordered us to follow. We make sure you keep to mission.”

  “You know we complete our missions, Anton. Like those platforms on the Black Sea,” Tam said evenly.

  The two byki were too busy dressing their friend’s wounds to notice the tension. They were thick-necked trigger-pullers looking for a paycheck—not enemies. But Svetlana, who’d been as gaunt and silent as a scarecrow beside her boss, stiffened at the mention of the oilrigs. Alpha Security had been on guard when we dropped those platforms in the water, and I was certain we were responsible for some of her recent ‘upgrades’. The mercury-slime of her optical replacements flashed my way. Grudge-bearing and revenge being Olympic sports in Russia, I knew they’d want payback.

  Tam pointed to the Gladiators. “You attack my men?”

  “Men?” Dratshev scoffed. “Looks like the same gangsters and retards to me. Except now you bring children with you.” He thrust his chin at Curro.

  Tam started to say something, but Poet9 yanked Grace out of his shoulder holster. “Vete al carajo!” he yelled. “You pinche idiotas almost killed us.”

  “Fuck you, Perez,” Svetlana lisped. “We thought you were SNA hiding up here.”

  “Do we look like Somaliland National Army to you, Ms. Eye-clops?”

  “It was a mistake.”

  “Mistake is right, Sveta. I should have recognized your spaghetti code kludge and fried your chilly ass.” Poet9 motioned toward the wrecked remotes.

  “Poydi k chertu , you little gang-banger. If I’d known, you’d be bleeding out your ears.”

  “Candy from a baby, Sveta. New Plug-and-Play won’t change the fact you’re a crazy bitch. Now you’re just a crazy bitch with Radio Shack accessories.”

  Svetlana reached for her sidearm. The Triplets brought their rifles up, and the skinny hacker let her hand drop, but leaned forward with a curled lip under her sharp nose. “Jus
t wait, little sooka.”

  “Ooooh. Did you just go all ‘squinty bad-ass’ on me, Sveta?” Poet9 mocked. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t sure.”

  “Enough! Both of you.” Tam snapped, then looked at Dratshev. “You failed to identify yourself to other contractors in the AO, and my men defended themselves against what they thought were government GUTVs. Colonel Deer Voort knows accidents happen. ‘Fog of war’ and all that. Right?”

  Anton and the Juggler fumed but held their tongues. Me, I kept my Blizzard ready and let Tam do the talking. I have to confess, any time I got near either of these characters, I wanted to drop them and be done with it. But Eshu has a habit of honoring our contracts, so until the repulsive Russian duo took obvious action against us, we had to let it go.

  Besides, I heard the whine of the Ukrainian’s Desert Raider coming up the hill, and with Bowna’s stench in the air, I figured there’d been enough killing for one day.

  Tam gestured toward the wounded soldier. “Why don’t you haul your bleeding comrade out of here? If your panties are still in a twist when we get back, we can hash this out in Deer Voort’s office.”

  He turned to the Triplets. “Make sure they get to their ride.” Then he spoke several phrases in their Zulu combat-patois. Our Killer Bunnies nodded, and the entire group started back up the hill.

  I stood next to Tam watching them go. “You’re going to regret letting them walk away like that.”

  “Yep.”

  “What did you tell the Bunnies?”

  “We’ll give Alpha’s guns back when we return to camp. They’d better have back-ups. Either that, or they’ll have to haul ass and hope they don’t run into trouble.”

  “We can always pray,” I suggested.

  Tam grinned for the first time that day.

  CHAPTER TWENTY – Mutant Bastards

  SPLM Camp, near Biye K’obe, Ethiopia

  The SPLM command bunker buzzed with the urgent murmur of electronics and technicians. Low-def feed from aerial reconnaissance drones rolled across a dozen flatscreens while a giant satellite topographic was projected on to the far wall, the enemy and allied troop concentrations rendered in brightly colored, contrasting squares—an industrial-sized Mondrian over National Geographic. The squares were moving. Both the SPLM and government forces were jockeying for position.