Trackers Omnibus [Books 1-4]

by Smith, Nicholas Sansbury

  “Yes, we have already contacted them,” Raymond said.

  “Good,” Charlize replied. “How far out is our HSM squadron?”

  “Five minutes,” Thor said. “We have a strike group one hundred miles south of this location, but I’ve re-rerouted the USS Michigan and the USS Georgia to intercept. If this is the other North Korean submarine, they won’t escape our tentacles.”

  Charlize took a seat at the table next to Raymond. She wanted to stand, to appear strong, but she needed to conserve her energy. Albert handed her the coffee she had left in the conference room.

  “You’re a saint, Big Al,” she said, looking up at him. “Why don’t you go get some rest?”

  Albert opened his mouth, closed it again, and then said so quietly that only she could hear him, “I need to stay busy. Besides, I’d like to stay here with you until they find your brother and son.”

  “Have a seat, then,” she said, tapping the chair to her left.

  Charlize blew on the coffee and then took a sip. The minutes slowly ticked by as the choppers on screen tore over the waves in the early morning sun. If this really was the final North Korean submarine and they managed to sink it, then Charlize could focus entirely on the recovery efforts without fear of another attack.

  And on the raid of the Castle, she thought. Charlize was trying her best to focus on her duties as Secretary of Defense, but worries about Ty and Nathan kept interrupting her concentration.

  A crowd formed as the Seahawks closed in on the location. Several of the Royal Navy aircraft also moved into position.

  President Diego and several other members of his Cabinet filed into the room. On screen, the container ships appeared. Charlize and Albert left the table and walked over for a better view.

  There were six of the ships moving in a single-file line through the water. Thousands of metal shipping containers were stacked on the decks. Their contents would save countless lives—but only if the supplies made it ashore.

  “They’re about twenty-three miles from port,” Thor reported. He remained standing with one hand cupping his jaw.

  “That’s close to New York,” Raymond said. “What if they’re planning another attack?”

  Charlize nearly dropped her coffee on her lap when the middle ship of the small fleet exploded on the monitor. Shipping containers shot into the air like firecrackers and then plummeted back to the sea.

  “Someone get me a SITREP!” Thor shouted.

  “It’s definitely a North Korean sub,” Raymond said. “Just got a report from Eagle 1. He saw the torpedo trail. They’re moving in for the kill.”

  “They better hurry before that sub dives,” Charlize said.

  The choppers on screen passed over the other container ships, providing a view of the decks and the supplies there. Then the view rolled east, away from the ships and after the sub.

  “Eagle 1 and 2 are preparing to fire,” Raymond said. “Stand by.”

  The lead Seahawk swooped lower, so close that Charlize could see through the clear water. The rotor drafts rippled the water in all directions like a boulder had been tossed into a pond. Several MK-54 torpedoes streaked away from the chopper and slammed into the waves, spearing down and down, the trails bubbling. A geyser of water shot up into the sky a moment later.

  The other Seahawks moved into position and unloaded their payloads into the ocean. More geysers burst into the sky. There was a pause just long enough for Charlize to think that they’d somehow missed. And then a massive red explosion blossomed out of the ocean like a flower on fire.

  “Stand by,” Raymond said again.

  Charlize clenched her burned hands until they ached, waiting in anticipation for the report.

  “Eagle 1 just reported in. Target destroyed,” Raymond said with a relieved smile as the room erupted into cheers and applause.

  A hand gripped Charlize’s shoulder. She turned, thinking it was Albert, but this time it was President Diego.

  “Congratulations, Madame Secretary,” he said. “Now let’s go see what we can do about rescuing your son and brother. Those strike teams from Buckley are in the air.”

  — 20 —

  Raven stopped when he heard a distant chopping noise. He flipped his night vision goggles into place and scanned the terrain, wishing he had Creek’s hearing. Seeing nothing, he fell into a run with his rifle at the ready. As he hopped over a fallen log, it became clear the sound wasn’t from a motorcycle. It wasn’t even coming from the road—it was coming from the sky.

  Black Hawks.

  Now that he’d recognized it, the sound was unmistakable. It was the sweetest song he’d ever heard.

  At the edge of the forest, he crouched and dropped to his stomach. From there, he scoped the sky, still not seeing the birds. He lowered the sights to the back entrance to the Castle. The three men who’d been guarding the road were moving frantically. They carried a log away from the dirt path and dumped it into the grass. He zoomed in on dust rising through the trees. The rattle and clutter of engines sounded.

  Raven was about to have company. He chambered a round and looked up just as the Black Hawks zoomed into view. Four of the birds buzzed in from the south, moving in combat intervals over the valley. Colton had gotten the call for help through to Charlize after all, but the cavalry was on the wrong side of the damn mountain!

  The Sons of Liberty were escaping out the back door. Across the meadow, several trucks raced out of the forest. Raven scrambled for a better sniping position. He had to stop them before they got away.

  He pulled out extra magazines from his vest and lined them up in the dirt. Then he set up the rifle and secured the bipod.

  The first of the pickup trucks tore out of the clearing, kicking up a curtain of dust. The driver jerked east onto a road Raven hadn’t seen from his vantage earlier. A Humvee followed the lead vehicle. Three more pickups and a second Humvee sped out of the woods.

  Dirt bikes and several motorcycles raced alongside, tearing up the grassy shoulder of the road. There was no way he could stop them all, especially when they were moving in the opposite direction, but he could slow their escape and provide the military time to catch up to them.

  Raven aimed for the lead biker. He pulled the trigger with the sights lined up on the wheel. The round hit the tire, sending the bike to the ground and the driver cartwheeling into a tree at the side of the road. The other bikes fanned out, but the trucks halted, bottlenecked on the road behind the crashed bike. Two men got out to move the bike.

  A squeeze of the trigger dropped the first man, but the second dove for cover.

  Answering gunfire cracked in the next valley, followed by an explosion that echoed through the night.

  The battle had started.

  Raven focused his fire on the first Humvee before the gunner in the turret could find him. The first two shots pinged off the armor, but the third hit the man in the cheek. He slumped back into the vehicle without firing a single shot from the M240.

  All at once the doors opened and men jumped out into the road, opening up with automatic rifles on his position. He ducked down, rounds whistling over his head. Then he rolled to the side behind the largest boulder and waited.

  He couldn’t wait forever. He could hear the rest of the convoy moving again.

  The fleeing Sons of Liberty continued the assault, pinning Raven down with rounds that licked the dirt to either side, cracked off the rocks protecting his back, and slammed into the trees towering overhead.

  When this was over, Raven promised himself to get a job where nobody would ever shoot at him again. Maybe Gail Andrews would hire him to work in her art gallery.

  He exhaled and then dared to look through a gap between the boulders. The lead truck was moving again. In the back of the pickup behind the Humvee, he spotted a knot of small figures. The children were all piled into the bed, holding onto each other.

  He had to stop that truck.

  Raven ran for the woods. Rounds splintered the bark around h
im, sprinkling him with shrapnel. A jagged piece stuck him in the neck, stinging like a massive wasp. He ducked behind a tree and pulled the splinter from his flesh.

  “Goddamn,” he grumbled.

  The shots peppered the trees to his left and he darted to the right where he took a knee behind a gangly juniper tree. The entire convoy was moving again and the sky was still void of choppers.

  He had to get closer.

  This is not a good idea…

  Raven slid down the slope and took off in a sprint across the meadow, keeping as low as he could in the high grass. He tried to keep to the shadows, but the moon was bright tonight. Even with the camouflage paint on his exposed skin and his military fatigues, it was only a matter of time before he was spotted.

  He checked the convoy. There was a thousand feet between him and the nearest vehicle, but they were moving at a fast clip. He was never going to make it across in time.

  Raven opened his mouth to gulp the air as he ran, his lungs greedily accepting the oxygen as he pushed himself to the limits. He ran like a madman, focused on the bobbing heads of the children in the bed of the pickup. He spotted another prisoner, much taller than the others, slumped with his back against the cab.

  Nathan was still alive!

  Gunfire zipped by Raven. He had finally been spotted. Instead of diving for cover, he took a knee and aimed at the tires of the pickup carrying the hostages. A round whizzed by his face as he fired a burst at the truck. One of his shots punched into the bumper, but the second and third shredded the rear tire. The truck swerved off the road, nearly tipping over into the meadow.

  The bark of the M240 pushed Raven to the dirt. He rolled on his side to escape the high caliber rounds that pummeled the ground where he had been a moment earlier. There wasn’t a much more viscerally terrifying sound than the big gun. Raven greatly preferred being the guy firing the gun instead of the guy crawling away on his belly and praying not to get shot.

  Not quite five hundred yards away, men were piling out of the second Humvee, which had reversed to help the disabled pickup. Three of the men ran to the truck, while the other three strode in his direction, weapons shouldered but holding their fire. These were trained soldiers, unlike the grunts Raven had taken down in the forest. He hoped Fenix was one of them so he could send the evil son of a bitch back to his Maker.

  Your time is up, Shunka Sapa.

  Rounds whizzed all around Raven as he dug his elbows into the ground. A bullet stung his trap muscle, taking off a layer of skin and forcing him lower. It was just a flesh wound, but that didn’t mean it was painless.

  He had trained for this exact thing, moving his body like a snake under barbwire while rounds cut the air above his helmet. Only this time he didn’t have a helmet. And he was alone, facing an army of zealots who’d just as soon spit on his brown-skinned corpse.

  Raven pushed his face against the dirt, tasting the cold earth. He was in battle mode, his senses on full alert, aware of every noise and movement. The gunfire moved to his left, giving him a window to fire off suppressed shots.

  He reached forward and snapped the bipod into place. Then he pushed the butt of the rifle in the pocket of his shoulder. A bullet hit the dirt in front of him as he searched for someone to kill.

  He centered the sights where he’d seen the flash from a muzzle. In the fading glow, Raven spotted the gunman and squeezed a round into his gut. Then he roved the muzzle to the left, where he shot another soldier making a run for the Humvee. The others all crouched for cover.

  Two dirt bikes buzzed down the road, returning to provide covering fire, but Raven kept his attention on the turret of the Humvee, where the gunner was roaming back and forth for a target. He held a breath in his chest and fired a shot that took off the man’s baseball cap. The surprised gunner had just reached up to touch his shaved head when Raven planted a bullet between his eyes.

  The soldiers who had run to the pickup were unloading the children now. One of them had a child flung over his shoulders. Raven put a bullet in the man’s kneecap, blowing bone and gristle onto the road. The soldier dropped the kid on the ground as he screamed in agony, clutching his mangled leg.

  Both dirt bikes jolted onto the field in his direction. Raven took the first driver out with a shot to the arm, knocking him off the bike. The second biker lowered his helmet and raced for Raven as if he were going to plow him over.

  Big mistake, bucko.

  Raven fired two shots that both missed, but the driver had to put the bike down to avoid the third. Raven shot the man as he skidded through the grass.

  Two minutes had passed since Raven had blown the tire on the pickup. It was amazing how much damage and chaos he had already inflicted. Screams, gunfire, and confused voices rang out from the road where the two vehicles remained. In the chaos, Raven spotted two men dragging Nathan toward the Humvee.

  As much as he wanted to take them down, Raven couldn’t get a clear shot and searched for another target. The final two men who had fired on him earlier were moving back to the truck. One of them turned and unloaded a burst in his direction.

  Rolling to his right, Raven crawled to find a new position. He had to keep moving or he was going to lose Nathan, Ty, and the other kids.

  Over the gunfire came the chop of helicopters—a sound that made his heart fire like one of the automatic rifles trying to kill him.

  He popped back up to look for the birds but instead saw a man standing in front of him, tattooed right arm covered in blood where Raven had shot him. The biker bared his teeth and raised a knife the size of a machete.

  One of the children screamed for help, and Raven’s blood boiled over.

  I don’t have time for this shit.

  Raven smacked the biker in the face with the butt of his MK11. He landed on his back, and Raven finished him off with a blow that caved his nose into his skull.

  A big black bird suddenly emerged over the mountain and then swooped down over the forest. The door gunner in the troop hold fired on the escaping convoy with green tracer rounds.

  “Hell yes!” Raven shouted. He kept low and advanced across the final section of the meadow. The Black Hawk drew the fire of the soldiers on the road, giving Raven an opening.

  He fired a shot into the back of a soldier who was aiming at the helicopter. The next shot never came, the twenty-round box magazine empty. Raven pulled his side arm and sprinted through the grass. Warm blood ran down his chest from the flesh wound. He ignored it and focused on the road.

  The second half of the convoy had escaped, but one of the pickups had returned to help load up the hostages. Raven counted four more of the men still trying to move the kids into the Humvee. Some of the children were fighting back, kicking, screaming, and biting. Nathan lay in the dirt, reaching out for one of the children who was dragging limp legs across the dirt.

  For a split-second, Raven thought the kid had been shot. Then he realized who it must be.

  “Hold on, Nathan. I’m coming!” Raven shouted. He raised his handgun and bolted toward the little boy whose life he had promised to save.

  ***

  Nathan extended his broken arm. He could only see Ty out of his right eye, but what he could see made him damn proud. Ty was determinedly dragging his paralyzed legs toward Nathan, keeping his head low during the gun battle as the world erupted into chaos around them.

  He had Sardetti blood in him—that was for certain.

  “Stay where you are!” Nathan shouted. “I’m coming for you.”

  All around them, gunfire cracked and bullets flew, some of them at the sky, others at the meadow. The Black Hawk circled overhead, the door gunner picking targets carefully. It wasn’t the 7.62 mm rounds that had Nathan worried, though. Most of the SOL soldiers—if you could call them that—were lousy shots.

  He caught a glimpse of return fire from the meadow and finally saw the figure that had ambushed the convoy. A slender man wearing camouflage paint ran across the field at a breakneck pace, a ponytail bounci
ng up and down.

  “Raven, you crazy son of a bitch,” Nathan mumbled. He felt a smile form across his broken jaw. Grinning hurt like hell, but he couldn’t hold it back.

  “Uncle Nathan!” Ty shouted.

  “It’s okay, buddy, just stay down!”

  Shouts rang out from all directions. Digging his elbows into the ground, Nathan moved toward Ty. The Sons of Liberty were falling apart, shouting and firing wildly.

  Fenix’s voice rose above the din. “Take down that fucking chopper!”

  Boots squelched into the mud near Nathan’s head. “Going somewhere, Major?”

  Rolling to his side, Nathan looked up at the General. His features were stone, and his eyes were cold and calculating. Nathan had no doubt Fenix was going to kill him now.

  “I love you, Ty,” Nathan said, his voice coming out in a croak. “Don’t look, buddy. Okay? Just look away.”

  A flash of motion came from his peripheral vision. Raven was firing madly with his pistol. He took down a soldier to Nathan’s right. The body hit the dirt between Nathan and Ty. It was the smallest possible mercy, blocking the boy’s view of whatever happened next.

  Fenix was raising his M4 at Raven. Using every ounce of strength he had left, Nathan kicked Fenix in the back of the knee, throwing off his aim. The rounds whistled through the air less than a foot from Raven’s side.

  The General let out a grunt and stumbled. He collapsed to one knee in the dirt but quickly pushed himself up and grabbed his rifle. Raven used the stolen moment to grab Ty and pull him behind a truck. Two skinheads grabbed Fenix, trying to haul him back to the Humvee.

  “We have to go!” one of them shouted.

  The Black Hawk whined overhead, smoke hissing from the engine where a shot had penetrated the armor. Fenix laughed and yanked out of their grips.

  “Get off me, you cowards.” He fired his rifle at the disabled chopper. The rounds lanced into the bird and the pilots pulled away.

  “I guess if I can’t sell you Montgomerys, I got to kill ya instead,” Fenix said. He redirected his rifle at Nathan’s head.