by Nick Cook
‘Guys, we’ve got to get back to the micro mind before Alvarez does,’ I said.
Mike and Jack spun round and we began to race towards him, dodging several soldiers standing in our way.
We were on track until the twilight zone vanished just as we passed three soldiers, and the real world rushed back in.
The mercs opened fire. Their bullets raked the jungle as we dived for cover.
I stuffed the stone orb back into my bag. ‘Retreat!’
We returned fire as best we could as we fell back into the jungle.
Jack turned to me. ‘Did you shift us back, Lauren?’
‘Nothing to do with me.’ I glanced down at my Empyrean Key. All the icons had vanished.
‘Damn it!’ Mike said. ‘Cristina must have stumbled upon a way to shut down the micro mind, which dropped us back the moment she did.’
As we ran deeper into the jungle, I stared across at him, not wanting him to be right, but knowing he had to be. The micro mind had been shut down and we were out-gunned. It seemed that Alvarez had won – for now.
Chapter Twenty
I loaded another clip into my LRS as we retreated further into the depths of the jungle, pursued by Alvarez’s remaining mercs. ‘We need to put some distance between us and them.’
‘You mean we’re simply going to give up on the micro mind after your big speech about doing whatever it took?’ Mike asked.
‘No, but we need to rethink our strategy. Our most immediate problem is that Alvarez’s next move will almost certainly be to transport the micro mind out of here as quickly as possible on those Black Hawks.’
I heard the crack of a twig behind us. I spun round just as a shape loomed out of the bushes. Part of my brain registered the burly man’s carbine as he swung it round towards me. I squeezed the trigger of my LRS and a single shot rang out with a suppressed hiss. A hole appeared in the guy’s forehead, his eyes lifeless as if someone had flicked his off switch, as he sprawled at Mike’s feet.
Mike pulled his helmet off and leant against a tree as vomit spilt from his mouth.
But I just felt numb, as if I were watching a war movie in which someone had been shot – not the person responsible for taking a life. It seemed that crossing that line was becoming increasingly easier for me. I was becoming the soldier that the fate of the world needed me to be.
Jack raised his chin towards me, as if he knew exactly what I was thinking. He took the man’s carbine from him and slung it over his own shoulder.
A rustle of leaves came from the jungle to the left, a few hundred metres above us on the slope. It was followed by a similar noise spreading out in a line through the thicket of greenery ahead, which was growing gradually louder.
I cracked open my visor so Mike could hear me. ‘We need to even up the odds of survival,’ I whispered.
‘I’m not sure that I can,’ Mike said.
‘We all need to keep playing our part if we’re to pull this off,’ Jack told him.
Mike grimaced, scraped his hand across his mouth and pulled his helmet back on.
I had a momentary pang of guilt. Losing my grip on my own sense of humanity was one thing, but forcing Mike to do the same – even if he was only tranquillising them – felt like a step too far.
I beckoned him towards me and we crouched behind a boulder. Jack took cover behind the one of the larger tree trunks. I listened to the murmur of the jungle around us, the sigh of the wind in the trees over the soundtrack of night insects. I strained my ears, searching for any hint of soldiers closing in on us. If we survived this mission, I’d be suggesting to Tom he might want to enhance the helmets with some sort of electronic listening device that could enable us to amplify barely there sounds.
Then I heard the faintest scrape of a boot on a rock. I glanced across at Jack and Mike, pointing in the direction of the noise to the right of us. They both nodded.
I held up three fingers and lowered each digit one by one. I needed to wait until this soldier was as close as possible. I lowered my final finger…
We all popped up from our hiding places, weapons facing forward, to see three soldiers creeping between the trees towards our hiding position.
Jack sprayed bullets from the carbine at two of soldiers, who dived for cover.
Neurons fired at the speed of light as I aimed and fired at the third merc. The guy staggered backwards as my rounds smashed into his body armour, but he managed to squeeze off several shots. I ducked, but Mike, his hand trembling, aimed his pistol and fired. The dart buried itself in the guy’s face below his goggles and he pitched forward.
Mike stood there staring at him, as if he wanted to be shot. The other two soldiers took aim at Mike, and I grabbed him and yanked him down behind the boulder. Their bullets hissed over his head.
‘Time to light them up,’ Jack said over the intercom. ‘Turn off your night vision and cover me.’
I killed my image-intensifier with a blink. In the darkness, my training took over and I knew the exact location of the selector on my LRS. I pushed it to its semi-automatic mode, breathed in through my nose, stood up and sprayed bullets.
The strobe of my LRS firing lit up the boulder that our opponents were using as cover. Jack appeared from behind his tree and lobbed a grenade. It arced over the boulder and I ducked down as a bright burst of light cast shadows across the jungle, turning everything briefly to monochrome.
As the blinding after-image faded away, I powered my night vision back up. Jack was already standing over the two mercs who were writhing on the ground. He fired his carbine at them at almost point-blank range. Their bodies shuddered with the impacts of his bullets and a moment later they both stilled.
Mike appeared by my side and stared down at the dead men. ‘Shit, Jack, did you really have to do that?’
‘This is a combat situation, Mike. Kill or be killed. We have to make sure these people don’t come after us.’
Anger flashed through Mike’s eyes and his hand tightened on his dart pistol. Maybe he was considering putting a dart in Jack.
Jack shoved past him and aimed his carbine at the guy Mike had shot with the tranquilliser dart.
But Mike slapped the barrel down. ‘You can’t do this, Jack.’
‘Just watch me,’ Jack replied, his tone ice-cold.
I stepped between the two men. They were an almost perfect personification of the internal conflict within me – the civilian looking for a peaceful solution and the solider who had seen enough to be hardened.
Mike’s eyes locked on mine. ‘Please, Lauren, tell him.’
I felt the heat cooling in my blood. ‘How long will your tranquilliser work, Mike?’
‘He should remain knocked out for at least an hour.’
I ran the odds in my head. An hour in a fast-moving combat situation was a long time. Anything could happen. And if by any miracle we were still alive after that, then this guy…
Jack peered at me. ‘I know how crap it is, but we haven’t any choice. Not in this situation.’
My mind locked up. I didn’t know what to do.
I slowly nodded and headed over to the guy. His eyes were closed and he almost looked peaceful. I took my LRS and placed the tip of the barrel to the temple of his head.
‘Lauren, please don’t do this,’ Mike said. ‘You’ll never be able to forgive yourself.’
I forced myself to look at the guy’s face, who was maybe in his mid-thirties. He had an old scar on his cheek and a fresh bullet hole in the side of his head. Somebody’s son. Maybe somebody’s father.
I closed my eyes as the part of my mind that was frantically agreeing with Mike tormented me. My finger trembling, I was about to pull the trigger when I felt a hand on my wrist.
I opened my eyes to see Jack looking at me. ‘I’ll do it.’
‘But, Jack—’
He shook his head, and in one fluid movement, he placed his Glock against the side of the man’s temple and fired. The guy let out a gentle sigh and died.
/> A deep grief tinged my numbness as I hung my head. There had to be a better way than this.
‘You utter bastard. That guy was defenceless,’ Mike said.
‘Kill the attitude, buddy. Not everyone here can afford to be a conscientious objector like you, just along for the free ride.’
‘Oh, you can fuck right off,’ Mike said.
I had to deal with this before it got out of hand. I forced myself to stand between them. ‘Stop it, both of you. We can tear a strip out of each other later, but not now. Got it?’
Both men looked anywhere but at me or each other.
‘OK, now we’ve got that out of the way, you can be certain someone else will have spotted that flash bang going off in the jungle. No doubt we’ll have more company any moment. We need to grab all the ammo we can.’
Jack immediately focused and I worked quickly with him, helping myself to one of soldier’s carbines as taking their ammo. But Mike stood watching us with his arms crossed. There was no point in trying to get him to take a weapon, especially after what he’d just seen Jack do.
Feet thundered through the jungle towards us, any pretence at stealth long gone. As Jack would say, we’d gone ‘well and truly loud’.
I stowed my LRS and slipped a fresh clip into the carbine. ‘Time to get moving.’
‘And then what?’ Jack asked.
‘We need to disable those Black Hawks to prevent Alvarez airlifting the micro mind out of here.’
‘You know that’s a real dangerous plan?’ Jack said.
‘It’s always the way,’ I replied as I took up the lead and began circling back through the jungle towards the plateau where the Black Hawks had landed.
‘How are we going to take out those Black Hawks when they are almost certainly heavily guarded?’ Jack asked. ‘And let’s not forget their damned Reaper drone up there ready to join in the party at a moment’s notice.’
‘We’ll need to sneak in on our Zeros. Hopefully they won’t hear us approaching until it’s too late. Then we’ll light those Black Hawks up with some of Mike’s C4 charges and get the hell out of there.’
‘And what if anyone in the helicopters spots us?’ Mike asked.
‘Then it will be the Charge of the Light Brigade all over again, so let’s just pray they don’t.’
‘With all due respect, Lauren, I think I have a better idea,’ Mike said. ‘What if just one of us heads for the Black Hawks while the other two kept under cover. And as I’m not along for the free ride, I’ll do it.’
‘Buddy, I didn’t mean what I said just now,’ Jack told him.
‘Yes, you did. Anyway, I have to do this for three reasons. Firstly, I’m the most experienced on a motorbike. Secondly, I won’t be any good to you if you’re going to ask me to shoot anyone. Helicopter with no one on board, yes, soldiers, no – even ones shooting at me. Finally, I am the expert with explosives.’
I looked across with fresh respect for Mike. ‘Are you sure? Without wanting to point out the obvious, you seemed pretty shaken up just now.’
‘I’m fine as long as I’m the one being shot at. It’s killing others I have a serious problem with. I need to do this, Lauren, for all sorts of reasons.’
‘You are definitely not just along for the free ride,’ Jack said. ‘You, my friend, have balls of steel.’
Mike snorted over the intercom. ‘Let’s hope so.’
In any other situation I would have given both of them a hug. But this so wasn’t that moment.
‘Then let’s get ourselves back to our motorbikes and pray that our luck holds out long enough for Mike to implement his plan,’ I said, then I led the way back into the dense jungle.
Chapter Twenty-One
It had taken a good thirty minutes for us to work our way back towards the motorbikes, often crawling on our bellies to avoid the rest of Alvarez’s mercs. Fortunately, we’d made it without any encounter, but my nerves were strung out like piano wires by the time we reached our Zeros.
Mike quickly opened one of his panniers and took out three of the C4 charges. He inserted the metal probes of the timer units very carefully into each pack, the tip of his tongue showing between his teeth as he worked.
‘Are you really sure about this, Mike?’ Jack asked.
Mike nodded. ‘Look, demolitions is my thing now. If I can get close enough to set these charges, we can be back in the jungle before they blow up.’
I was starting to have serious second thoughts about sending Mike into such a dangerous situation alone. ‘But what if you get spotted and a stray round hits the C4?’
‘Then it will be thank you and goodnight.’ Mike caught my horrified expression and waved a hand at me. ‘Not really. Even if a bullet punched a hole straight through a pack, it wouldn’t explode.’
‘But if the timer unit is struck it’d be another matter, right?’ Jack asked.
‘Hey, I was trying not to worry Lauren too much,’ Mike replied.
‘Thanks for the thought, but I’m a big girl and part of my job as team leader is to worry. Jack and I will do our best to cause a big enough distraction to keep all eyes on us whilst you do the dirty on their Black Hawks.’
‘Good stuff.’ Mike nodded. ‘I just wish I was religious at moments like this. I would definitely be praying to someone upstairs.’
‘Hey, you’ve been a lucky son of a bitch so far, so I wouldn’t sweat it too much,’ Jack said with the hint of a smile.
The lines in Mike’s brow smoothed out. ‘Yeah, right.’
‘We’d better get a move on before Alvarez recovers the micro mind and loads it on to one of the Black Hawks,’ I said. ‘Let’s head to the edge of the clearing with the bikes. We can be certain of one thing – at some point the shit will hit the fan. So when it does, we hightail it out of here back down this mountain and to a place with reception so we can call Niki for help.’
‘What happened to recovering the micro mind?’ Jack asked.
‘If the Overseers helicopters are taken out, it will buy us some time, hopefully enough for Niki to get here with the security team. Then together we can snatch the micro mind from the Overseers and airlift it to somewhere safe until it’s had time to finish its self-repair.’
‘Sounds like a good plan to me,’ Mike said.
‘So let’s make this happen, guys.’
Jack cracked me a salute. ‘Yes, ma’am.’
I smiled at him. ‘Idiot.’
We began to wheel our motorbikes through the jungle towards the plateau.
As we neared the edge, Jack flicked a switch on his carbine’s night-vision scope. ‘Helpfully there are thermal-imaging scopes on the Overseers’ weapons. We can use these to check whether anyone is guarding those Black Hawks.’
‘Let’s hope not. It’ll make things a lot trickier,’ I said.
Jack grimaced. ‘Don’t I know it.’
A moment later my heart sank. The first thing I saw as I peered through the carbine’s night-vision scope was five soldiers gathered around the Black Hawks. Worse still, one was sitting on the edge of the open side door, within easy reach of the mounted mini-guns. The rest were standing a short way off and had carbines in their hands. Armed and dangerous.
‘Oh hell,’ Jack said. ‘There’s not a chance you’ll be able to sneak up, Mike.’
He shrugged. ‘We should have expected this, especially after Lauren blew the shit out of the last Overseers helicopters we encountered on Orkney. But I have an alternative plan.’
‘What’s that?’ I asked.
‘I’ll sneak in on my belly, plant the C4, then crawl back out. Meanwhile you guys cause that distraction. Once I’m clear, I can use a remote trigger to safely detonate the C4 once we draw the soldiers away so they don’t get caught in the blast.’
So there it was again, Mike doing what he could to protect lives, even of those on the wrong side of this fight. I envied him trying to hang on to his humanity in this extreme situation.
‘That sounds incredibly risky to me,’
I said.
‘I’ve got this.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘I wouldn’t suggest it if I didn’t mean it.’
Jack shook his head. ‘Yep, definitely balls of steel, buddy.’
‘Even so, if you get yourself shot, I’m going to be seriously pissed off with you,’ I added.
Mike laughed. ‘Understood, ma’am.’
I rolled my eyes at him. ‘OK, Jack, we’d better start the diversion. If everything goes according to plan, we’ll rendezvous back here. But please be careful or I’ll give you hell.’
‘Oh, you can count on it.’
With a final nod to Mike, I cast a silent prayer to the sky that it wouldn’t be the last time we saw him alive. Then Jack and I set off, wheeling our bikes round the edge of the plateau, using the jungle as cover.
There was still no sign of Alvarez or Cristina. Presumably they were still with the micro mind.
We crept through the jungle in silence until we were at last on the opposite side of the plateau.
‘This should be far enough to draw the attention of those guards away from Mike,’ I said.
‘So what were you thinking exactly?’ Jack asked.
‘About half a dozen flash bangs and the same again of smoke grenades. Plus a few random shots to make them think they’re being attacked from this direction.’
‘I’m liking your style.’
I smiled at him. ‘So you keep telling me.’ For someone who was meant to be a mate, it was hard to ignore the spark that kept bursting into life between us, even in an extreme situation like this.
We parked up our Zeros and laid out the flash bangs along a thirty-metre stretch parallel to the edge of the plateau.
I picked up a flash-bang grenade. ‘Let’s get this show on the road, Jack.’
He scooped up another. ‘Oh, this is going to get real interesting and fast.’