BAMF- Broken Arrow Mercenary Force Omnibus

by Drew Avera

“Shit,” Ramirez murmured, trying to be sympathetic but unable to keep the grin off his face. “I sure hope you weren’t saving yourself for marriage.”

  That was, finally, too much, and Ramirez began laughing uncontrollably, shaking the antenna in rhythm with his shoulders.

  “Oh, you’re just fucking hilarious, Mule,” Fuller told him, his usual equanimity absent on this particular subject. He gave the mount one last, forceful twist of the ratchet then shoved it back into his tool belt. “That’s done. Hand me the cable.”

  Ramirez pulled the end of the old, insulated coaxial cable off his belt and passed it across to Fuller. The rest of the cable hung loose down the ten meters to the pavement, and Ramirez tried very hard not to think about how far that was.

  “Why couldn’t we have walked one of the Hellfires out here to do this?” he asked plaintively, gripping the ladder a bit tighter.

  Fuller scowled, screwing the end of the cable into the outlet at the base of the antenna structure.

  “Because it would be advertising to any and all who might be watching exactly where we are and what we’re doing here,” he reminded the younger man. He motioned downward. “Now, get your ass off this ladder so I can get mine off this hot fucking roof.”

  “Gladly.”

  Ramirez didn’t mind ladders but he hated climbing off of roofs onto them, which was why he’d let Fuller take that half of the job. He picked his way down a rung at a time, carefully feeling with his foot for every step before moving the other one.

  “Jesus Christ on a Harley, you’re slow,” Fuller complained, watching him descend. “How’d someone who’s afraid of heights ever get through flight training in a mech?”

  “I’m not afraid of heights,” Ramirez insisted, not looking up at the man. “I just have a healthy respect for the power of gravity. If I get killed, I want it to be on purpose, not by accident.”

  He finally stepped off the ladder, moving to the side and holding it for Fuller to come down behind him. The older pilot placed his hands and feet on the outside edges of the ladder and slid down, bending his knees to absorb the impact. Ramirez stared at him, eyes wide.

  “I suppose I can respect that,” Fuller allowed. “Grab that ladder and bring it inside while I go connect the other end of this cable.”

  Ramirez burned himself twice more on the extension ladder getting it collapsed and carrying it through the personnel door of the hangar. Something felt different about the light as he was about to pass through the open door and he paused to glance upward. It had been glaring, unyielding sun without a cloud in the sky the whole time they’d worked on the antenna, but now a wedge of dark cumulonimbus was passing over the sun, threatening yet another rainstorm.

  “God hates me,” Ramirez said with conviction, balancing the ladder on his right shoulder and guiding it through the door.

  “Never attribute to malevolence what can just as easily be explained by indifference,” Fuller told him. The older man was screwing in the other end of the coaxial cable to an ancient transmitter, its case corroded and faded by decades of use.

  “What?” Ramirez asked in dull incomprehension, propping the ladder up on a wall beside the maintenance harness for a Hellfire mech.

  “God probably doesn’t hate you,” he clarified, finding the power cord for the transmitter and plugging it into an extension from the generator. “He probably just doesn’t give a shit.”

  He flipped a switch and the boxy, metal unit began screaming at them in static. Fuller scowled and turned down the volume, then began playing with the frequency adjustment.

  “Why wouldn’t He care?” Ramirez asked, somehow bothered by the suggestion. “You mean, like, He doesn’t care about me in particular?”

  Fuller rolled his eyes.

  “No, I mean He has a whole universe to think about, probably hundreds of thousands or even millions of intelligent species, billions of worlds, millions of galaxies…He probably has better things to do than watch over one particular poor sap on this ball of dirt.”

  Ramirez was still trying to process the concept when Fuller apparently found the frequency he was searching for and keyed the mic.

  “Hickock, come in,” he said. He paused, staring into nothing as if he could see the man at the other end of the call. “Hickock, do you read?”

  Another long pause, with no reply except static. Ramirez shook his head.

  “If he’s as paranoid as you say, why do you think he’s really going to answer to his real name on an open channel?”

  Fuller rolled his eyes.

  “You think his real name is Wild Bill fucking Hickock?” He snorted derision. “I’ve known the asshole for twenty years and I don’t even know his real name. I’m not sure anyone does.” He keyed the mic again. “Hickock, come in, over.”

  “Who the hell is this?”

  The transmission was filled with static, but Ramirez could tell the voice was male, a bit squeaky and high-pitched but definitely male.

  “It’s Catfish,” Fuller replied. “Over.”

  “How do I know it’s really you?”

  Fuller scowled, though whether it was at Hickock’s paranoia or at his neglect of proper radio procedure, Ramirez wasn’t sure.

  “Bitch, who else you think knows this frequency and both of our callsigns?”

  “I don’t know,” Hickock snapped back immediately. “Jenny, the CIA, the DoD, your mother?”

  “Ha-ha,” Fuller replied flatly, apparently giving up on the radio etiquette. “You’re a laugh riot, Bill. Look, we got a job for you. The money’s for shit up front, but it’s right up your alley. And it’s a challenge. You’d be taking on corrupt government officials, dangerous crime bosses and the Russians. You want to hear about it?”

  “This is an open channel, Catfish!” Hickock squawked in apparent alarm. “Why you gonna go and say shit like that on an open channel? There could be an armed drone just hanging off my shoulder waiting to let go a heat-seeker and take me out! You trying to get me killed?”

  There was a weird, screeching sound that Ramirez couldn’t make out at first until he finally realized it was Bill Hickock trying to make fake static sounds in the mic. It was followed by what could only have been fingernails scraping against the audio pickup and solid thumps.

  “Stop that shit right now!” Fuller snapped, then had to say it again to get past the other man’s sound effects. “Shee-itt, Bill, if there are any damned drones around, you’d be the one running them. Now you want to meet and talk about this job or not? Don’t be yanking my chain, man, I ain’t got a lot of time and there are other options out there, just not as good. What’ll it be?”

  There was silence for a long moment, and Ramirez wondered if the man had actually signed off, too afraid of being spied upon to respond.

  “Oh, hell, why not?” Bill’s tone went from paranoid to resigned. “Honest with ya, Catfish, I’m so damned bored lately, I’d set my sack on fire just for the excitement of putting it out.”

  “Jesus,” Ramirez muttered, then blanched under a reproachful glare from Fuller, realizing he had the transmit key pressed in.

  “Who the fuck was that?” Hickock demanded. “You got government stooges listening in on you, Catfish? You trying to set me up?”

  “It’s nobody,” Fuller insisted. “Just one of my people.”

  “You got people? Since when do you have people? You’ve been a loner since you got divorced, old man.”

  “Times change, even if you don’t. Meet me at the old place.”

  “Which old place?” Hickock snapped. “You think I remember everything?”

  “You remember the last place I saw you?”

  “Yeah, of course.”

  “Well, it’s the other place.”

  “Okay,” Hickock acknowledged, sounding satisfied. Ramirez shook his head in abject confusion. “1600 hours tomorrow?”

  “Earlier.”

  “Shit. I don’t like earlier.”

  “Well, we need earlier, so deal with it,
Bill.”

  “Fine, fine, see you tomorrow.” A pause. “Oh, out, I guess.”

  Fuller chuckled and hit the power button, and the background hum of static ceased in the radio’s external speakers.

  “What the fuck was that all about?” Ramirez demanded, unable to hold the exclamation in any longer. “Does he even know where you’re meeting him? And you guys never settled on a time, even!”

  “That was all just a code we worked out over the years,” Fuller explained, waving the issues away. “We always meet at old train stations, so whichever one we last met at, if I say the one before that, it means the station to the east. And time is always six hours earlier or six hours later than the one he says in the clear.” He shrugged. “It’s how he is.”

  “And you don’t think that’s all just a bit…” Ramirez gesticulated, hunting for the correct word. “Crazy?”

  “Oh, he’s crazier than a June-bug in May,” Fuller admitted readily. Then a grin split his mahogany-brown face. “But it’s a useful sort of crazy. You’ll see.”

  Chapter Eight

  Anton Varlamov had expected many perils on this mission. It was ridiculous, after all, something he would have thought had been dreamed up by an armchair general if he hadn’t known it was actually the result of taking counsel of desperation. Bringing in the largest force of mechs the Russians had ever gathered in one place on the American continent for a forced march all the way through Canada to the Colorado Rockies was a ludicrous scheme. There were Canadian militias, American army units, bandits, and the occasional nosy civilian to deal with.

  But by far, the biggest danger on this trip so far, and one he had not anticipated, was boredom. He knew how to operate a Tagan and even with a pair of U-mechs slaved to his machine, it wasn’t as if there was any other air traffic out here to worry about. So, it had become a mind-numbing tedium. Fly at minimal safe altitude over the flat, featureless Canadian tundra until the engines were in danger of overheating, then land and walk until they cooled down and do it all over again.

  The cycle had repeated itself kilometer after kilometer, and the only way Anton could track their progress was on the mapping display in his cockpit HUD. The terrain changed not a bit for hours on end, the mountains in the distance not seeming to grow any closer under the moonlit sky no matter what tale the map was telling. Progress on the ground was nearly nonexistent, a slog through bogs and around clusters of ponds, more a time-killing exercise to allow the jets to radiate away their waste heat than any attempt to cover distance.

  They’d been at it for hours and false dawn was on the horizon when Colonel Sverdlov finally called for a break. Anton felt the breath go out of his chest in a whoosh, as if he’d been holding it this whole time, and the wave of exhaustion washed over him with a whole night’s worth of fatigue stored in a single blast. He landed his Tagan and the two U-mechs slaved to it on a likely-looking piece of solid ground, far enough away from the nearest lake or pond to give him some stable footing.

  A cloud of mist and debris rose from the machines as their thrusters vaporized ground water and threw up clots of mud and grass in a twisting cyclone. When the Tagan settled down the final centimeter into the yielding tundra, Anton pulled off his helmet and laid his head back against the cushioning of the rest, finally closing his eyes. They felt like sandpaper.

  He wanted more than anything to just sit there and let himself nod off to sleep, but he knew he had to get out of the mech and move around or risk blood clots in his legs killing him from hours of confinement. He yanked at the quick-release for his harness and sagged forward without its embrace to hold him tight against his seat. The canopy release lever seemed to weigh twenty kilos, but the wash of cool air through the gap when it popped open reenergized him and he managed to push himself out of the chair.

  He heard a buzzing in his ears as he climbed down the handholds on the exterior of the Tagan and, by the time his boots sank a centimeter into the muddy ground, he realized it was from clouds of mosquitoes moving across the tundra like gossamer sheets in the wind.

  “Damn,” he murmured, waving them away and knowing it was futile.

  “Here, use this.” It was Sverdlov. Anton hadn’t realized the officer had landed so close to him, but he was walking up from behind his Tagan, handing Anton a green spray bottle.

  Anton recognized it as bug repellant and took it eagerly, spraying it over his clothes and hands, then the back of his neck before rubbing some of the excess into his hair and slapping it against his cheeks. The blood-sucking bastards began to withdraw and he let himself breathe in, no longer concerned he might take one of the damned things up his nose. The smell of the chemical was strong, almost overpowering the rotting-vegetation stink of the bog.

  “Thanks,” he told the colonel, handing the can back to him. He blinked, squeezing his eyes shut, feeling the grittiness behind the lids. “I don’t suppose you have any eye drops, do you?”

  Sverdlov barked a laugh and began fishing in his pocket.

  “You must not ride mechs as much as your superior assured me,” the older man said, pulling out a small, plastic dropper and tossing it to him. “Otherwise, you’d never have left without these.”

  “I’m qualified enough,” Anton assured him, tilting his head back and trying to force himself not to blink as the liquid dripped into his eyes. “But I had very little warning and no time at all to get to you before you moved out.”

  He blinked away the excess and was about to hand the bottle back until he saw that Sverdlov had stepped over to the side and was urinating into the scrub and lichen. It wasn’t a bad idea. He’d spent the last day peeing into a two-liter bottle inside his cockpit. He shrugged the thought off, deciding to get a bite to eat first, instead.

  At least he’d managed to grab some food before he’d jumped the transport plane. Not much and nothing good, but the protein bars he’d shoved into his thigh pocket would at least fill his stomach for a while.

  How long had it been since he’d sat down to a real meal? He thought it had been in Norfolk, in one of those hole-in-the-wall places in the Fry. He and the others had changed into mufti, civilian clothes, and indulged in hamburgers made from something that might or might not have been a farm animal. They’d been well-seasoned, either way, and the French fries had been delicious. He tried to pretend he was eating those instead of forcing down the compressed cardboard flavor of the meal bars, but didn’t have much success.

  Ah well. Food was food. That was something you learned very early in your life, growing up in Russia, unless you were one of the lucky few, the politicians or the bratva bosses or the big businessmen. For boys like him, growing up in the streets, everything was fair game, including dogs.

  He noticed Sverdlov walking back over from his bathroom break and tried to swallow a mouthful of processed soy quickly enough to get a word out.

  “Not that I don’t appreciate the rest,” he told the mech officer, “but aren’t we exposed to satellite surveillance here?”

  “According to my briefing,” Sverdlov said with a philosophical shrug, “the route we’re travelling has been carefully calculated to avoid satellite tracking. We can’t afford more than a half-hour break at a time, though, so don’t get used to the idea of sleeping until we reach the boreal forests.”

  He didn’t bother to ask how far those were. It was better if he didn’t think about it until they arrived so the waiting wouldn’t be even more maddening.

  “You seem very comfortable with this sort of thing,” he observed, regarding Sverdlov with professional appraisal. “I assume you’ve been fighting out east?”

  “I have spent the last four years measuring my dick against our Chinese counterparts,” the older man confirmed. “The five before that in Europe. I haven’t set foot in North America since I was a young lieutenant.”

  “Your record must have made quite an impression on General Popov for him to assign you to this mission.”

  “I served with his son Gennady along the Manc
hurian border, God rest his soul.” He seemed to sober, a shadow falling over his face. “He was a good friend.” Sverdlov visibly shook off the memory and smiled at Anton. “What about you? I know you’re Alpha Group, but you must have some damned high connections to manage this.” He waved above them, indicating Anton’s aerial insertion into their midst.

  Anton finished the last bite of a protein bar and shoved the empty wrapper into a pocket, wiping his hands on his flight suit, killing time while he debated how much to tell the man.

  “The downside to being in the eye of important people,” he finally responded, “is that important people are watching when you fuck up.” He shrugged. “I fucked up. Someone who should have been put down squeezed out of the trap and that’s on me. It’s why I’m here, to set things right.”

  “It’s war, Major,” Svardlov told him. “Someone like you should know better than most how chaotic and uncontrollable it can be.”

  The armor commander checked the time on the display sewn into his left sleeve and blew out a breath.

  “Damn. Time to get going. Do you need a go-pill?” Sverdlov patted a pocket. “I have a small supply if you need something to keep you alert.”

  Anton shook his head. The mild amphetamines had been used by military pilots for decades, usually with the blessing if not the complicity of their command structure, but he’d avoided them for most of his career.

  “Thank you, no. I find the crash afterward too unpleasant.”

  Sverdlov barked a laugh, heading back toward his mech.

  “You were obviously never a pilot, Major,” he called over his shoulder. “We never use the word ‘crash.’ Good luck up there.”

  Anton watched the man begin the climb back into the cockpit of his Tagan before he turned to do the same.

  “Good luck to you, too, Colonel,” he murmured earnestly.

  Given how things had turned out for the troops who’d served on his last few missions, the man would need it.

  Chapter Nine