EndWar: The Missing

by EndWar

  She was about to rub grit from her eyes but instead cursed the zipper cuffs. Her wrists were sore now, probably bleeding.

  Aslan finally returned with two bored-looking guards. His gaze instructed her to remain silent. She was too groggy to argue. He removed her cuffs, and next came the glorious relief of bringing her arms in front of her torso where they belonged. Now her shoulders protested. She sighed through the mixture of stiffness, pain, and relief.

  “We have an area where you can clean up,” he said. “Come with us.”

  “Thank you,” she answered, her voice sounding younger, thinner, barely there.

  He led her toward the back of the cave, down another tunnel and into another cavern where bright light and a sudden blast of icy wind had her lifting her palms toward the source: an exit to the surface wide enough to permit a car. To her right lay several four-wheel-drive pickup trucks, old beaters from the 1990s, their flatbeds covered by tarps. A third pickup was being loaded by four men transferring crates from a pallet balanced on a small forklift. She couldn’t read the labels on those crates, but judging from their shape and size, she assumed they were rocket launchers or rifles.

  Aslan continued toward the loading area and a secondary tunnel within which stood, to her surprise, one of those tall, portable toilets, the kind used at country fairs and construction sites, the ones that smelled so inviting. Next to that abomination was a sink rescued from some blown-up apartment, its cabinet battered and scorched. A garden hose snaked down from a large water bottle suspended from the toilet and was draped into the sink. Indoor plumbing. A cracked mirror had been duct-taped to the side of the toilet for the men to shave.

  “Five-star accommodations,” she muttered.

  The guards took up positions on either side of the tunnel, and Aslan escorted her toward the portable toilet. He flicked a glance over his shoulder and then shoved something into her hand—the satellite phone.

  His eyes widened, he nodded emphatically, and then he turned back to the guards.

  She stepped into the toilet, shut the door, and with trembling fingers, thumbed on the phone, opting this time to send a text and update her position. They were close to one of the exits, much closer to the surface, and she received two green bars indicating the phone had acquired a weak link to the satellite and was on the network.

  But then she froze, realizing that Brandenburg and her people should be able to intercept the call—or at the very least discover that a satellite phone signal had been sent from their position.

  Too late now. However, if Aslan had a plan to escape, they’d best act on it soon. Very soon.

  “Neptune Command, this is Siren, over,” she whispered.

  “Go ahead, Siren.”

  “I’m in the mountains, captured by the Forgotten Army. They have a weapons depot in the caves, my current position. Send QRF if possible, over.”

  “Roger that, Siren. NSA has an agent in your area. He’ll contact you.”

  “Thanks, just get me out of here. Siren, out.”

  A faint commotion outside began just as she pocketed the phone, then pushed open the door to find Aslan standing over one of the guards, pulling a knife out of the man’s neck. The other guard lay beside him in a bloody heap.

  “We’re leaving now,” he said curtly. “Did you contact your people?”

  “Yes!”

  “Are they coming?”

  “I hope so . . .”

  He held a remote detonator high enough for her to see, the LED burning green.

  “What is that?”

  “What do you think?” He slammed down his thumb. Red light.

  She gaped as he faced the men still loading the pickup truck, lifted his arm, and now there was a pistol locked in his grip. He fired four rounds, dropping the entire team—

  Just as a series of concussions rocked through the cave, followed by a much louder chorus of booms that began opening cracks in the cave’s ceiling, with debris tumbling down.

  At the same time, a much deeper rumble shook through the place, like the slow, low roll of a timpani drum, the reverberations finding their way into Halverson’s chest. As she rushed to catch up with Aslan, two massive blasts, much closer than the others, had her screaming, “What did you do?”

  He faced her and pointed to the lead pickup truck. “Get in there, now!”

  Four more men came running into the tunnel, but Aslan was already swinging up a rifle snatched from one of his victims. He jammed down the trigger—even as they returned fire.

  The cave behind them collapsed with a hissing of dust and booming of rock smashing down, layer upon layer, as even more significant thunder shook the entire mountain, the ground feeling spongy and unstable.

  Halverson glanced up, just as a massive chunk of stone dropped not two meters away from the truck. She climbed into the cab as Aslan ripped open the door, hopped in, and seized the key, starting the truck and throwing it in gear before he even shut his door.

  “I thought I was supposed to help,” she said, dumbfounded. “Looks like you got it figured out!”

  “I’ll try to get us off the mountain, but she has spotters everywhere. They’ll know where we are. We won’t last long without your help.”

  “We should’ve gone at night.”

  “No time. They were planning to move you.”

  “Well, it is what it is . . .”

  Aslan steered them toward the cave exit, rolling straight up a rocky road that spilled into the forest. She stole a look back, where she noticed several sets of camouflage netting rolled up but used to conceal the exit from gunships. The maw between those nets was exhaling dense clouds of smoke and dust.

  “For the past month I’ve been wiring the entire place to blow,” Aslan said, his voice still shaky. “Then you came. And I knew the time was right.”

  “Why?”

  “Because our message has been lost. And because I am my father’s son.”

  Halverson checked the side-view mirror, where billowing black smoke formed a long chute that began rising high above the mountain, like an old Wild West smoke signal beckoning everyone and his mother to come over and have a look at the Chechen and American pilot trying to escape. “Oh, God, you really did it, didn’t you . . .”

  Aslan smiled grimly. “Why not?”

  She dragged her palms across her face. “We could’ve done this quietly. You turned it into a fiasco. And you destroyed property that belonged to the United States.”

  “You don’t understand what they planned to do with those weapons. You don’t know how many people I just saved.”

  “Well, here’s hoping you add two more to the list.”

  Just ahead lay a tree with a black band tied around the trunk. Aslan took a hard left, and they rumbled across a dry riverbed, bouncing over the rocks.

  After a moment, she blurted out, “I’m sorry.”

  “Look, I don’t expect you to get it. Just listen to me. She’ll assume we’ll take one of the shipping trails. We won’t. It’s going to get a little bumpy.”

  “You think she’s still alive?”

  “I couldn’t plant a charge in her quarters, but I’ve been slowly poisoning her. I thought she’d be dead by now.”

  “Oh, this just keeps getting better.”

  “Shut up and listen to me. She has six observation posts on the mountain. Two men in each. They’ll come after us.”

  “How? We blew up the trucks, right?”

  He took a deep breath, stole a look over his shoulder. “Shit, here they are.”

  She checked the mirror. Two men on dirt bikes with rifles slung over their shoulders came flying up and over a rise, both airborne for a second, engines buzzing before slamming hard onto the riverbed. The lead man’s rear tire spun out for a second before he recovered and accelerated, his partner falling in behind him.

&nbs
p; “Shit, Aslan, if you knew they were coming, why didn’t you hook us up with more rifles and grenades?”

  “I did my best in the time I had. The charges were more powerful than I thought . . . Now get to work!” He shoved the rifle into her hands.

  She braced herself, then guided the AK through the open window and hung outside, arm braced across the doorsill, trying to level the gun on the lead biker.

  Seeing this, he suddenly broke right, leaving his colleague vulnerable. Halverson slammed down the trigger—just as the truck rebounded over a rut and her bead went wide, shredding pinecones that showered the riverbed.

  She swore and shouted for Aslan to find a more level path, even as the lead biker now came up alongside them, checking the trail, gripping the handlebars with one hand, then reaching into his hip holster to draw his pistol.

  But Aslan was faster, shoving his own pistol toward the man and firing four rounds, one of which hit the biker in the neck, and suddenly he had both hands on the wound and lost control, falling backward off the bike like a surfer being crushed by a wave. The motorcycle twisted forward, then dropped and launched into the air, boomeranging across the trail to smash into a tree and snap in half.

  “Nice! One more!” shouted Halverson.

  “Three more!” he corrected.

  She craned her neck. “God damn it!”

  Another pair had joined the party, and Halverson shoved herself a little farther outside the truck, balancing precariously on the window. Her teeth set in exertion, she lifted the rifle once more, fighting for a clean shot.

  The moment she opened fire, all three bikers scattered, the first two veering right, the third swinging left. She kept her bead on that third one and got him—two rounds to the shoulder that punched him off the bike. If the bullets didn’t kill him, the fall had, his bare head rebounding off the stones.

  Her satellite phone vibrated in her pocket, and she pulled herself back inside and answered.

  “Major Halverson?”

  “Yeah, who is this?”

  “My name’s Thomas Voeckler. They sent me to get you out.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Just north. Uploading my GPS now.”

  “You got an APC? A gunship? What do you got?”

  * * *

  Voeckler wasn’t sure how to answer Major Halverson as he crouched near the pair of pines, smelling the fires and spotting the black smoke coiling up over the treetops. What was going on up there?

  He winced and replied, “Uh, right now, it’s just me, but I’ll get you out of there!”

  “Just you? Jesus Christ, we’re in a truck, heading down the mountain. Got three guys on dirt bikes following. I hope you’re heavily armed!”

  Voeckler eyed the Makarov in his other hand, thought of the AK slung over his shoulder. “Yeah, okay. Right. What’s with the fire?”

  “Forgotten Army had a weapons cache up there. We blew the shit out of it!”

  A chill struck hard across his shoulders. “You did what?”

  “We blew it up!”

  He closed his eyes. “Are you kidding me? I’ve been trying to locate that cache!”

  “Well, I found it. We’ll link up with you shortly. Halverson, out!”

  Voeckler couldn’t believe what he’d just heard. After all his hard work, Halverson had unwittingly accomplished his mission. What kind of cruel fate was that?

  Then again, he’d head back to Langley with two feathers in his cap instead of one. The Bear’s smuggling operation was gone, as was the man. All Voeckler needed to do now was smuggle Halverson out of the county.

  The thrumming of gunships sent his gaze skyward, through the canopy—

  And there they were, a mechanized flock of three Mi-24s with camouflage-pattern fuselages, each carrying at least eight troops determined to ruin his day.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Mountains near Spetsnaz Headquarters

  Fort Levski

  Bulgaria

  The wolves were still tracking Lex and his men, the hunters now the hunted, and Lex was concerned about the team’s attention being divided between the enemy sniper and observation posts and the hungry pack behind them.

  As they moved into a much denser stretch of forest, with the nearest Spetsnaz sniper’s nest some thirty meters below, Lex called for a halt and gathered the team. “Gentlemen, when in combat they say the best medicine is fire superiority.”

  “Hell, yeah,” said Borya.

  “Well, that old saying gets me thinking—”

  “About fire superiority?” asked Slava. “Because all you gotta do, boss, is give the order.”

  “No, big guy, I’m talking about medicine.”

  “Boss, can we talk instead about the wolves?” asked Vlad.

  “We are,” said Lex. “Here’s the deal. We each have an MRE, right?”

  They nodded, and Slava tapped his pack where his Meal, Ready to Eat was stored. The packaged high-carb, high-calorie entreé and dessert were the lifesaver of many combatants. Admittedly, MREs were hardly gourmet restaurant food, but the military had come a long way in improving the taste and nutritional value of grunt chow, keeping warriors fueled and alive when the op sent them thousands of miles away from the nearest Pizza Hut or Mickey D’s.

  Lex went on: “So we have our MREs, and we also have some nitro, epi, and morphine in our med packs.”

  Borya grinned crookedly. “I like it, boss. We inject the pain meds into the food, leave it behind as bait for the wolves, they eat the stuff and get all loopy. Nice.”

  “That sounds great. Except for one problem—”

  They all faced Vlad, who added, “If we blow all our food and drugs on them, what happens if one of us gets hit?”

  “We take it like a man,” said Slava.

  Vlad’s tone hardened. “I’m serious. We need those drugs.”

  As Lex thought about Vlad’s concerns, Borya tossed out another question:

  “Hey, boss, what if the drugs kill the wolves?”

  “You’re going to worry about that?” asked Slava.

  “Look, I’m an animal lover,” Lex said. “I hang out with you smelly bastards, right? But this is a chance we’ll have to take. It’s them or us. I don’t think we’ll kill ’em, though. I think we’ll be able to lose them. Vlad, tell you what. You give us your MRE, but you hang on to your pain meds for the team. Good compromise?”

  He nodded.

  “Then let’s get to work.”

  They gathered up the MREs, tore open the packets, and began injecting the meat loaf, garlic herb chicken, and boneless pork ribs with the various medications. They even shoved in some aspirins and acetaminophen for good measure.

  “Spread out the packets,” Lex instructed. “We don’t want the dominant male eating everything.”

  “Boss, what if this just whips them into a frenzy?” asked Vlad.

  “Then one of us will have to sacrifice himself for the team,” Lex said, gesturing for them to move out.

  While he didn’t look back, he imagined Vlad’s expression and how the sergeant was shaking his head.

  “Keep on keeping us honest,” Lex called back to him.

  An abrupt rustling from behind had Borya waving them forward and mouthing, “Here they come!”

  They jogged away toward the next cluster of trees, their breaths even heavier in the deeper shade, the ground turning harder. They ducked and faced the area where they’d left the bait.

  One by one the wolves entered, then darted straight for the packets, two of them fighting over one pack while the others dropped to all fours and ate.

  “Let’s get the hell out of here,” Lex said, giving Borya a hand signal to take point.

  Lex fell in behind his assistant, thumping hard and fast through the forest, the pine needles and stones grinding under his feet. He nearly lost
it on a patch of ice and began to fall backward, but Slava’s forearm was there, driving him up to catch his balance.

  “Whoa, thanks,” Lex said.

  “You’re getting old, boss.”

  “No, just a boot malfunction.”

  “Oh, okay,” Slava answered, chuckling through his reply.

  “Hey, that looks good,” Lex said, pointing to a depression in the mountainside beneath a narrow ridge. The south side of the ridge was piled high with ice and snow, forming a natural lean-to. “We’ll hole up there and send out the drone.”

  “Sounds good,” said Slava, hustling up ahead of Lex.

  Once the team slipped into the cover of the depression, Borya reached into a hip holster. He withdrew the UAV and tossed it away like a Frisbee, its quadrotors automatically firing up to launch it through the trees. The remote/touch screen attached to his left forearm showed two camera images, along with a third box displaying a map overlay of the drone’s course and the previously marked enemy positions.

  “Send it back to the wolves,” said Lex.

  “En route,” answered Borya.

  They watched as the UAV flitted around the branches, using a combination of Borya’s input and obstacle sensors so that if Borya took his finger off the touch screen, the drone would switch to autopilot and maneuver itself, deftly avoiding the three-dimensional gauntlet of canopy.

  Two of the wolves were lying down, their limbs twitching involuntarily.

  “Feeling no pain now,” Lex remarked.

  Borya shifted the UAV up for a wider shot, but none of the others were visible.

  “Where they’d go?” asked Lex.

  “Uh, boss?” called Vlad. “We got a problem.”

  Lex turned his head to come face-to-face with three of the wolves, no more than five, six meters away. They’d come around the snowbank to ambush the team, the largest one lowering his head, baring his teeth, and beginning to growl . . .

  “You were worried about killing them?” Slava asked Borya. The burly man reached back and drew his knife. “This will not be pretty.”