No mercy

by John Gilstrap

  But the same rules applied to his enemy. Sure, he no doubt looked away and shielded his vision from the erupting flare, but even now, as his eyes adjusted, Jonathan would still be invisible on the far side of the light. To get a bead, the attacker would have to cross to Jonathan’s side of the truck.

  Would it be from the right or the left? He backed off from the truck to open up his peripheral vision, and to see the front door, in case the gunman pulled a fast one and tried to make a straight run for it. Two steps more and he was flat against the cowling of the tractor, directly under the overhang of the…loft!

  He more sensed than heard the second attacker over his head. Maybe it was an errant shadow cast by the illumination flare, or maybe it was a creaking board, or maybe even a sixth sense, but in a flash, he realized where the next attack was coming from. He raised the shotgun to a vertical position and pulled the trigger, but the man dropped onto him in time to be inside the sawed-off barrel. The powder and flash got them both though, singeing Jonathan’s eyebrows and raising a welt on his cheek. The attacker fell over the cowling of the tractor, but he never really lost his balance, landing on his feet in a power stance with — in less time than it took to aim a pistol-and he slashed at the attacker’s weapon hand, severing tendons and nerves in his wrist and causing him to drop the Beretta onto the floor. He took a step closer to the man and slashed in a wide arc up his belly and across his throat. In the shadows cast by the flare, the erupting fan of blood appeared black. The man fell like a stone.

  Jonathan whirled for a second attack, but nothing happened.

  “Dig, are you okay?” It was Boxers, calling from the other side of the door. “I’m coming in.”

  “Box, no-”

  The big man dove through the door and to the right, just as his boss had done a few minutes before. “Did you get him already?”

  “Not all of them.”

  “You look like hell. Was that Ivan?”

  Jonathan shook his head and pointed to a spot along Boxers’ wall, toward the back of the building. He let the Mossberg fall back against its sling, and traded out for the M4 again. Facing this direction, he didn’t have to worry about accidentally hitting the truck.

  The two of them moved as one, as they had so many times in the past, in so many foreign lands, Boxers high and to the right, Digger low and to the left.

  Boxers saw it first. He rose to his full height and tightened his grip on his rifle. “You in the corner! Don’t move! Not a muscle!”

  Jonathan darted ahead to get a glimpse around the corner of the pillar. A man who looked remarkably like the attacker whose throat Jonathan had just cut lay on the floor in a lake of his own blood. Boxers flipped on the tactical light on the muzzle of his rifle, and in the glare, it was easy to see that Jonathan’s snapshot Mossberg blasts had pounded at least five holes in the man’s neck and left shoulder, so large and ragged that he knew they had to be lethal.

  Boxers poked the man with his weapon. “Hey, you alive?”

  “Feel for a pulse,” Jonathan said.

  “I ain’t stickin’ my fingers in that mess.”

  Jonathan rolled his eyes. He stepped into the blood and squatted low to lift the wounded man’s chin. His eyes were open and focused, and neither one of them bore the awful scar that defined the man Jonathan wanted most to kill.

  “Where’s Ivan?” Jonathan demanded.

  The man smiled. Then his eyes lost focus as his life soaked into the filthy floor.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  The transfer went smoothly. Including Thomas and his parents and all of the surviving attackers, the Blackhawk took off just six minutes after it had touched down with a load of only eight civilians in the cargo bay. For enough money and the right connections, there were confidential solutions to every kind of problem. In about an hour, they’d all be off-loaded at an Army medical facility outside Cincinnati whose physicians and staff were used to providing outstanding medical care to people about whom it was their responsibility to know as little as possible. For Jonathan, access to the network of clandestine medical facilities both domestically and abroad was one of the great perks of his connection to the Unit.

  Jonathan watch’m staying,” he said.

  Insubordination from Boxers was more startling than sniper fire. “The hell you are,” Jonathan started to say, but he pulled the words back and opted for a softer approach. “It’s the plan,” he said.

  “Plans change all the time. I’m not leaving you here to take the heat by yourself.”

  Jonathan sighed. “Look, I appreciate the loyalty-”

  “Then shut up and send the chopper on its way. We’re running out of time.”

  Jonathan stepped around to stare him straight in the eye. Well, straight in the Adam’s apple anyway. “You’re medic trained. You can help the kid and his mom.”

  “The bird is full of medics as it is. They don’t need me. I’m not letting you take the fall, Dig.”

  “It was my mission, Box. And my fuck-up, and now this is my recovery plan. You’ve done-”

  “I’m not going.”

  Honest to God, they didn’t have time for this. Jonathan made one last try. “Tell you what. If things go wrong, and they end up taking me to jail, you can lead the mission to get me out.”

  Even in the darkness, he could see the sparkle of interest. “Out of a jail here in the U.S.? No way.”

  “If it goes that way, I’ll be counting on you.”

  Boxers shifted his gaze back to the distance as he considered it. “You know that’s impossible.”

  “I know no such thing. Not with you in charge.”

  Boxers snorted, “You are so full of shit. What about her?” He nodded to Gail Bonneville, who held both hands to her head, which had obviously not yet cleared of the cobwebs caused by the blast wave of the claymores.

  Jonathan smiled. “You know I’m a sucker for a pretty woman.” When he didn’t get the chuckle he was hunting for, he added, “The next call is hers. I made a deal.”

  Boxers rose to his full height, gaining a couple of inches as he drew in a deep breath and then let it go as a noisy sigh. “I’m staying,” he said, but as the words came out, he stammered a little. He didn’t make a habit out of saying no to his boss.

  Jonathan was stunned. He’d heard excuses before, and objections, but he couldn’t remember the last outright mutiny.

  “If we need to break out of anywhere, we’ll do it from the inside,” Boxers said. He let his rifle fall against its sling. “I’ve made up my mind, so don’t bother to say nothin’ more.”

  There it was. You didn’t get much less negotiable than that. As the Army chopper piloted by old friends powered up, Jonathan turned his back to the rotor wash and approached a vaguely familiar middle-aged man who looked like he’d been ripped out of bed and shoved into a pair of jeans and a gray sweatshirt. Boxers kept his distance. The newcomer’s expression showed equal parts horror and bewilderment.

  “Will Joyce,” Jonathan said, extending a friendly, blood-spattered hand. “Nice to see you again.”

  The man’s body didn’t move, but he cocked his head curiously. “Do we know each other?”

  “Knowt at a handshake and stuffed his hands in his pockets instead. It was a gesture designed to be nonthreatening. “Only one ground rule before we begin. You either agree to it, or I call that chopper back and I send you home. You can write whatever you want about what you see, but you can’t use any of the names of people that you talk to tonight. Agreed?”

  Will recoiled. “I can’t agree to that.”

  Jonathan made a show of pressing the transmit button. “Rescue Flight, Scorpion.”

  He’d unplugged his earphone jack, so Will could plainly hear the pilot reply, “Go ahead, Scorpion.”

  Jonathan looked to Will. “It begins here or it ends here. It’s your call, and you don’t get a second chance. Do we have a deal or don’t we?”

  You could almost see the thoughts racing through the reporter’
s head. “Just the names?”

  “Scorpion, do you have traffic for Rescue Flight?”

  Jonathan keyed the mike. “Stand by.” To Will: “All parties remain anonymous. We’ll be a whole nest of Deep Throats. No names, no personal descriptions, nothing to make us identifiable to the outside world. And I warn you not to make a promise that you’re not willing to keep.”

  Will stood there and sort of vibrated as he thought through his options. “Who’s she?” he asked, nodding at Gail.

  “I got people waiting, Will. You either want this story or you don’t.”

  Clearly against his better judgment, Will let go with a giant sigh. “Fine,” he blurted. “I agree.”

  Jonathan scanned for signs of insincerity, then keyed his mike again. “Rescue Flight, disregard. Have a good night.” He flashed a smile to Will. “Where were we?”

  “You were about to tell me what the hell is going on.”

  “First tell me what you already know.”

  Gail wandered up to stand next to Jonathan. She nodded in response to his glance to tell him that she was on the road to okay.

  Will pulled a penlight out of his pocket and clicked it on, casting a beam into the night. It settled on a corpse. “Jesus,” he whispered. He brought his gaze around to Jonathan. “I got a call at home a few hours ago telling me to meet a driver at the front door if I wanted to snag the story that would make me famous. I had two minutes to make my decision. They said it had something to do with Tibor, so I threw on some clothes, and a guy who didn’t say much took me to a farmhouse in Middleburg, where that big chopper was waiting for me. For a while, I thought I’d walked into my own kidnapping.

  “We were airborne for a half hour or so, and then we set down in another field, and just waited for instructions. I still don’t really know much about what’s going on, but they kept telling me that if I hung in there, I was going to get a hell of a story, and that no one else was going to have any piece of it.” He paused, as if pondering whether there was anymore to tell. “Is that enough?”

  Jonathan nodded. “I think that sounds about right.” He took a deep breath and prepared himself for the coming monologue. “See, we had us a bit of a war out here tonight…”

  Once he got started, it didn’t really take all that long to tell the story-at least the essence of it; the details could come later, in future interviews.

  Will Joyce listened, checking his recorder was Will Joyce. Gail came next, Boxers last.

  “And I need my radio back, please.” He knew better than to ask for his weapons.

  Irene nodded, and his radio reappeared. He reconnected himself to the earpiece.

  “Leave us alone,” Irene said to the nearby agents. “Suit back up to Level A and inventory that shed.”

  The agent hesitated again. “Ma’am, I don’t think-” Then he saw the glare. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Let’s walk,” Irene said, heading down the hill toward Jonathan’s original ambush site.

  “You come, too,” Jonathan said to Will. That Gail would follow was a given. To Irene, he said, “So, how does it feel being back in the thick of things again?”

  She switched on a flashlight to illuminate a path. “It’s been a while. I like it, but it makes the field agents nervous as hell.”

  “Nobody wants the director to get in trouble on their watch,” Jonathan said.

  After thirty yards or so, Irene brought them to a stop and lowered her voice. “Okay, let’s hear it. I know you have a plan, and that it’s carefully choreographed, so let’s just get to it.”

  Jonathan had always appreciated Irene’s bluntness. He turned to Will. “Remember your promise,” he reminded. Then to Irene, he said, “Step one. You make sure that the Hughes family is left alone, and that the pursuit to find them guilty of murdering anyone ends now.”

  Irene shook her head. “I don’t think you-”

  “I’m not done,” Jonathan said. “Step two. You prepare whoever you need to prepare for the fact that my friend Will here is going to write a blockbuster story about Carlyle Industries and their secret contract to produce bioweapons in violation of God only knows how many treaties. Once that secret is out, there’ll be no need to kill people to keep it.”

  Irene glared at the reporter, who seemed newly energized as he hovered a microtape recorder in the air between them. “Anything else?” she snarled.

  “Oh, come on, Irene, you know you find this to be as much a relief as a pain in the ass. The truth will set you free.”

  “Anything else,” she repeated, this time more as a statement than a question.

  “Two more,” Jonathan said. “First, you make known to the world what the Green Brigade was up to, and how it was transformed by Ivan Patrick from a well-meaning environmental group into the self-serving paramilitary wolf pack that it is today. If you dig a little, I guarantee that you’ll find a history of illegal weapons sales, and I’ll bet you a hundred dollars that that very kind of sale was what ultimately created this mess.”

  “Which leaves one more,” Irene prompted.

  “Yes, it does. I want you to treat my friend Will here as the designated historian for all that transpires from this. Let’s see about getting him a Pulitzer.”

  Hands on both hips, she shook her head in disbelief. “All this havoc, all these dead bodies, and no accountability. That’s what I’m hearing.”

  Jonathan chuckled, knowing he’d won. “Your glass is always half-empty, Irene.”

  Irene appealed to Gail. “And what about you Sheriff Law and Order? What are you going to do?”

  Ga driven earlier in the day. At this altitude, they could see several miles of road length, so it couldn’t possibly take long.

  But as Jonathan watched over Boxer’s shoulder, the screen betrayed nothing.

  “Wait a second,” Jonathan declared, landing a hand heavily on Boxers’ shoulder. “Go back.”

  “To where?”

  “To the cabin. To the trail at the top of the ridge. The Hugheses said they didn’t know where it went. Maybe Ivan does.”

  “Or maybe he sees this as the perfect time to find out,” Gail added.

  Boxers didn’t bother to reply. He kicked in a load of tail rotor and spun them around like a top to head in the other direction, damn near throwing them all to the deck. As the passengers yelled their protests, the pilot laughed. “God, I love my job,” he said.

  They rose to 500 feet as the nose dipped and the rotors pulled them faster and faster back toward the cabin. As the house and the barn passed below them, Jonathan saw the scope of the destruction. The blood had cooled enough to become less visible, but the bodies had not. He fought the urge to count them. That seemed somehow wrong.

  Soon the tableau of destruction was gone, and they were again cruising over the unending expanse of trees.

  Jonathan and Boxers saw the truck at the same instant, and they pointed together. “There,” they said in unison. The truck was driving faster than was prudent, given the road conditions. Even from this altitude, with very little magnification of the image, they could see the SUV barely hanging on as roots and potholes bounced it around.

  “Any ideas how to stop it?” Boxers asked. “Looks like he’s got a real road to connect to in about three miles. At his speed, that gives us about seven minutes to think of something.”

  Jonathan and Gail looked at each other. Her shrug matched his absence of ideas.

  He turned to survey the equipment they had available. The seat and deck of the Blackhawk were strewn with the flotsam of the raid on the cabin. He saw helmets and a few extra Kevlar vests. Like good soldiers in any outfit, of course, no one had left a weapon behind; but at least they had Captain Courageous’s Glock. It was something. Not much, but something. He slipped it into pouch pocket on his thigh.

  His eyes settled on a pile of coiled rope, and then he knew what he had to do.

  “You know this is crazy, right?” Boxers asked over the intercom as Jonathan made his final preparations.


  “Welcome to today,” Jonathan mumbled. In the roar of the rotor noise, no one heard him. He looked to Gail. “You’ve got to be his eyes,” he said.

  Gail nodded, but her expression belied her wholesale agreement with Boxers. This was crazy.

  Jonathan went on, “He can’t look ahead and down at the same time.”

  “I’ve fast-roped before,” Gail said. “HRT, remember?”

  “Humor me,” Jonathan said. “Given the stakes, I want to say it all out loud. Watch for speed and altitude. Box should be able to keep me in the slot, but the rest will be up to you.”

  “I’ll handle it,” she said. But she wished she could think of a better way.

  “You can’t second-guess my hand signals,” he said. “If I signal to release the rope, you release it, understand?” He’d already set the rope to release on its own if it got snagged. Since it was his crazy idea, “What are you doing!” Out the starboard side cargo door, she watched, horrified, as the lead vehicle skidded sideways in the road, and the one behind it T-boned it hard. Together, their momentum carried them into the side of the chopper with barely a bump.

  The trussed-up FBI agent’s eyes were the size of hockey pucks, somehow befitting his skin, which was the color of ice. “He’s fucking crazy!” the agent yelled.

  Gail was about to agree when she realized that she hadn’t seen the half of it. Boxers heaved himself out of the pilot’s seat and out onto the road, where he strode to the third car in the approaching line-a Nissan pickup that hadn’t hit anything, but had stopped sideways in the road nonetheless-and opened the driver’s door. She could neither see nor hear the negotiation, but the driver seemed more than happy to surrender his seat.

  Gail understood what was about to happen, and she scrambled out of the chopper to join him. Until the very last second when he stopped to let her in, she wondered if Boxers might just run her over.