And now the walking dead had arrived.
And they were already starting to pile up against the north wall.
* * *
“How far?” Kate asked. She was leading Baxter through the labyrinth with her M4 up, weapon-mounted light illuminating the path ahead, but with him giving her directions from behind.
It wasn’t that she was so anxious to escape the underground dungeon of the Stronghold. It’s that she wanted to get up to wherever the fight was, wherever the rest of her team was engaged. She knew they were going to need every gun. And she needed to be doing her part.
“It’s close,” Baxter said, his rifle at low ready, and one eye on their rear.
But that’s when they rounded a corner – and ran out of tunnel.
Because it had collapsed.
The smell of fresh earth, must, and mold washed over them. The pile rose diagonally from floor to ceiling with red and black dirt and rock, and the tunnel around them suddenly didn’t look any too stable. With as many RPGs and 40mm grenades as Kate thought she could hear going off, she was amazed no one had anticipated this.
She turned to face Baxter. “How do we get around?”
“We’ll ne—“
But she body-checked him into the wall and came up firing.
The repair party – or some party, carrying not just shovels but AKs – was here.
And Kate and Baxter were now cut off by them, backs to the dirt wall.
Immediate Action Drill
The Stronghold - Godane’s Chamber
“Enough, kaffir,” Godane said to Brendan’s back. “Put your gun down and you may live a little longer.”
Brendan had a pretty good idea what that extra life would entail. Either being held as a hostage and bargaining chip, if Triple Nickel were winning the battle up top. Or being crucified on one of the towers, if not.
He took a step closer to Elijah, his back still to the room.
“No closer, Bren.” Elijah shuffled back a half-step, his weapon still up.
“Go ahead, Eli. Take the shot.”
Brendan sounded as if he had nothing to lose. He took another step forward.
Eli depressed his weapon from Brendan’s chest to his right thigh, and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. His eyes widening, he pulled the charging handle – and a perfectly good round ejected and fell to the floor. He looked back up at Brendan.
The team captain was holding something up between two fingers, roughly the size and shape of a knitting needle.
“My firing pin,” Elijah said. Then he quoted Brendan back to him: “‘Neither of you shoot unless I tell you to.’”
Brendan nodded, almost imperceptibly. “I knew it had to be you. I didn’t want to believe it. It was impossible. But I was out of explanations.”
Brendan tossed Elijah his firing pin.
And as his eye involuntarily went to it, Brendan moved like lightning – knuckle-striking him in the throat then spinning in a blur around behind him, pulling his forearm across his throat.
The Praetorians were already firing, a storm of 7.62 rounds from their full-auto AKs tearing up the entire front of the room.
Brendan brought his own rifle up under Elijah’s right arm.
And he tried to engage, from behind cover.
* * *
Jake continued hurtling across the parapet toward the armored guard tower. He had a new 40-round mag in his MP7 and the weapon back up to his shoulder.
Two defenders spilled out of the structure and Jake dropped them both with measured bursts – but all at a run. They both tumbled cinematically off the parapet to the inner courtyard twenty feet below.
In a mental blur, Jake considered the advisability of tossing a flashbang – or, perhaps better yet, a real grenade – into that armored guardhouse before charging inside. But he’d have to stop or at least slow down to throw it, then wait for it to go off – and speed and violence of action were everything for him right now. They were what was allowing him to scatter and defeat a much larger force.
That’s what he told himself.
Just as he told himself he had to come up here to take out this tower.
But he also knew there was almost certainly still a large RPG cache in there, and it was almost certainly still being guarded by al-Sîf. And if he simply blew up the guardhouse, he’d never have the satisfaction of killing the man – with his own two hands. He kept running, and was through the door in another second.
Senses moving in slo-mo, he saw and engaged two shooters in the open.
They went down.
Too late, he sensed more than saw another one covered up, just a rifle barrel and optic. Perfectly positioned. Waiting for him.
Jake took four rounds to the chest, knocking him back out the door.
He collapsed to the parapet, the force of the impact knocking his MP7 from his hand, which went clattering off the parapet to the ground far below.
* * *
There was zero cover in the sudden and intimate firefight in the half-collapsed tunnel – but Kate arranged for her and Baxter to take cover behind a wall of lead.
Executing a one-man immediate action drill, she killed one, wounded one, and drove the rest under cover. She was already advancing to close with the enemy by the time Baxter got his weapon up – and by then she had driven them back around the corner.
Now it was simply a gunfight, two on two. And Kate, even with her non-SF tactical training, immediately got the sense she could handle this one. Even Baxter, with his rudimentary training, was engaging effectively, and appeared to be up to the job.
Basically, these guys were not tactical superstars.
On the other hand, Kate and Baxter were still trapped in there, with the collapse to their backs. But if they could shoot their way out before reinforcements came, she liked their odds.
Now, if we can just keep the rest of the tunnel from collapsing on us…
* * *
Four high-velocity rounds to the ceramic plate, fired nearly point-blank, will cause just about anyone to reconsider his position. It even worked for Jake.
It was actually only the force of those rounds knocking him over, and making him briefly do the limbo, that caused the followup two to miss his head. As it was, they were so close to his face that they burned, and the snap of the collapsing air pockets was like a punch to the jaw.
Flat on the deck, his whole torso buzzing from the impacts, rounds flying over his head now, his MP7 gone, his first move was to recover his primary weapon – his Beowulf. But it wasn’t lying by his side as it ought to be. It wasn’t anywhere. He patted at the front of his chest until he found the flapping end of his single-point sling, which had been severed by one or more of the rounds that had caught him square in the chest. He didn’t have time to look over the edge, but he had every expectation it was lying down in the mud with his MP7. That was some bad luck.
It was also a shame, because he knew the .50-cal was one cartridge that would defeat al-Sîf’s body armor. It might or might not penetrate it. But the shock it delivered would kill the man inside it anyway.
But now that ship had sailed.
So now Jake went ahead and pulled a grenade with one hand – not even noticing whether it was a frag or a flashbang, but just cooking it off and tossing it into the guardhouse – and pulled his high-capacity .45 from its chest rig with the other.
And by the time that grenade went off, he was going to have to be up on his feet and moving again – fast.
And using his last gun to best effect…
* * *
7.62 rounds will often pass right through a human. Luckily, Elijah had in both his front and rear ceramic plates, which made him an excellent human shield for Brendan, who was taking cover behind him.
And shooting around his own personal Brutus.
Bullets were impacting everywhere, the roar and flash and smoke and stench overwhelming. Bren could feel Elijah taking hits, then took two himself in rapid sequence – a round grazing his
elbow, another striking his boot, sending scorching pain across his foot.
He had to block out the pain and noise to keep operating effectively – and to continue to engage the two Praetorians, who were hunched over and firing flat out. They were also moving in opposite directions, making two dynamic targets instead of one static one. Brendan was vaguely aware that Godane had ducked down behind his desk. He ignored this, and instead fired rapid single shots to his left, while now having to hold up Elijah’s body weight…
The Praetorian on the left went down, shooting the whole way, but either his fire or more probably the other guy’s cracked into Bren’s SCAR, shattering the EOTech sight and splintering the receiver. Bren let the weapon go, pivoted, and pulled Elijah’s pistol from its chest rig. Thank fuck it had a round chambered, because he only had one hand to operate it. He emptied the pistol into the Praetorian on the right, until his body armor also failed, and he went down to the deck, still firing all the way down.
Suddenly – silence.
Brendan lowered Elijah to the dirt floor, then regarded the carnage all around him. The last two Praetorians were riddled with rifle and pistol rounds. One of them had been hit in the jaw. Brendan shook his head. Whatever else, these guys were real gunfighters – tough, brave, and resolute. They had gone down shooting and died in a pile of their own brass.
Bren dropped the mag out of Elijah’s pistol and reloaded it. Only then did he check to see if Eli was still alive. He had absolutely no idea what he was going to do if he was. The man’s eyes were still open – and seemed almost to focus on Brendan for a second. Bren couldn’t interpret the look on his face. But then he immediately expelled a rattling breath.
And he didn’t take another one.
Rising and holding the dead man’s pistol forward and down, Brendan rounded the desk… but there was no Godane behind it. He’d managed to slip out the rear door during all the chaos, probably crawling the whole way. Bren also saw there was blood on the floor back there, so he’d been hit.
Hope he chokes on it.
Brendan checked the bodies of all four Praetorians. All were good and dead.
Finally, he came back around and regarded the only other movement, not to say life, in the room. It was the Zulu – Zulu Zero, if Zack were to be believed. It was still chained to the wall and going spastic now, probably from the heavy metallic scent of blood that filled this tomb. It looked like a body that had been dug up after six months and cursed with reanimation.
It truly looked like death warmed over.
Brendan laid the handgun on the desk, unslung his assault pack, kneeled down and zipped it open. He spared another look at Eli’s body, then looked back up at the Methuselah of the Dead, the oldest of his tribe – and he thought: Damn. Now I’ve got to carry that son of a bitch out of here by myself.
He got his aid kit out, and keeping one eye on both entrances, wrapped up his wounds – not expertly, but sufficient to get the bleeding stopped.
Then he dug out his dual flex cuffs, hood, and body bag.
And he bagged up his precious cargo.
Sword to a Knife Fight
The Stronghold - North Armored Guard Tower
It was the flashbang and not the frag, which was probably just as well, Jake figured – as he blasted into the guardhouse right behind it and saw the piles and stacks of RPG rounds. This place was basically one big fucking magazine.
He’d bounced to his feet with his .45 and run straight at the entrance even as the grenade was going off, blasting inside with hot air scouring his face, firing his weapon one-handed as he came through the door.
There were no longer fifteen defenders in there, not live ones anyway – a variety of a-S guys were already down on the deck with canoes for heads, and Jake had one guess who had done that. But it was the ones on their feet that were his concern, and they were fortunately moving through cotton wool because of the effects of the flashbang, and Jake saw the whole scene and fight in vivid slo-mo because of the time-dilation effects of adrenaline.
He put a lightning double-tap into one on his feet to the right, then traversed his weapon and did the same to one on the left, simultaneously hooking the guy around his neck with his left elbow and spinning around his body to use it as a shield while he gunned down two in the corners – not stopping but merely turning his momentum into centripetal force as he swung around the dying man like a dual-star system, watching impassively as rounds struck the body before him, then launching himself forward and triggering off again at…
…fucking al-Sîf, who was still perfectly covered up by the back wall, rifle across the top of a crate, and who seemed to know Jake was coming for him.
Still barreling forward, Jake went for head shots but unexpectedly al-Sîf rose from behind cover, coming erect while firing, and Jake’s heavy rounds went low into his vest, knocking him back. Jake’s slide locked as the .45 went dry and he left it in mid-air and powered forward with great kicks of his legs, then dove over the top of the crate into the al-Shabaab commander, knocking the rifle from his hands.
Down on the deck, the two locked onto each other in a vicious ground grapple, from which, clearly, one man at most was going to emerge alive.
* * *
Forty feet below, deep underground, Kate was inching forward to press their advantage – when she saw a dark dot fly through the cone of glare from her weapon light, bounce off the wall to her left, then drop to the ground.
Son of a bitch.
She depressed her weapon and light, found the grenade at her feet, snatched it up and tossed it underhand right back around the corner. This time it bounced off the far wall, dropped to the ground at their opponents’ feet, and instantly exploded.
That literally couldn’t have gone any better.
Motherfuckers should learn to cook their shit off, Kate thought, turning to Baxter and raising her hand for a high-five.
But then came the sound of cracking timbers – and the ceiling came down.
Not, thank fuck, over their heads – but above the intersection ahead, and on the heads of the guys they’d just grenaded.
And it turned out the grenade hadn’t killed all of them – and neither did the collapse. Now Kate and Baxter listened to the sounds of men suffocating underneath the giant pile of earth and rock and wood. It was impossible not to empathize, to feel the horror of being unable to get air, trying to breathe dirt…
Better them than us, Kate thought. She panned her light around and onto Baxter. The collapse had taken out the little overhead lighting there was. Getting the dirty young man in her cone of glare she said, “You okay?”
He coughed. “Good to go.”
“Okay. Gimme your helmet.”
Baxter squinted. “What for?”
“Unless you’ve got an entrenching tool in that pack, we’re going to need it to dig ourselves the hell out of here.”
Baxter undid his chinstrap and removed the helmet. “Yeah,” he said, glancing upward. “And we’ve got to do it before the others leave us behind.”
Kate refrained from adding: Or before they’re all dead. She knew that was likelier than them leaving their teammates behind.
She paused and took a deep lungful of air. She could already feel it getting close in there. When she looked at Baxter, she knew they were thinking the same thing, whether she voiced it or not.
And before we both run out of air and suffocate.
* * *
Jake and al-Sîf exchanged a lightning series of blows and gouges, like two alley cats shrieking and scratching in a cloud of fur and claws, then separated and bounced to their feet.
Standing at his full height in a combative stance, al-Sîf had about thirty pounds and three inches on Jake. But they were both in rippling, ass-kicking shape, with no discernible body fat on either of them.
As neither broke eye contact, each seemed to recognize the other as a badass of the first rank. It wan’t mutual respect. Just recognition.
Jake’s eyes darted to his dr
opped .45 on the floor, and the other discarded weapons near dead hands, most of them loaded. Al-Sîf glanced back at his Bushmaster on the ground behind the crate. Jake’s gaze followed, and he recognized the weapon – and al-Sîf recognized that he did.
Now Jake’s mouth turned to a tight line and his eyes went dead like those of a big cat about to take down prey. He unsnapped and drew his Yarborough knife from the sheath taped upside down to his chest rig. This was, and had been for years, almost certainly the oldest operational Yarborough knife anywhere in the SF groups. Never mind that probably no one had actually used one in a fight since Vietnam.
Knife-fighting was frowned upon by spec-ops guys. They knew it took three to five minutes for someone to bleed out, and meanwhile you had an angry dying man to deal with. And afterward everyone involved in a knife fight went to the hospital, even the winner. It hardly even mattered if you won. Nobody with half a brain ever brought a knife to a knife fight.
But Jake didn’t give a shit about any of that right now. In his head now was only one thing: I’m going to gut this son of a bitch. But I’m going to skin him first.
Al-Sîf drew his namesake sword – the giant Moorish scimitar.
This wasn’t as unfair as it looked. In the tight quarters of the cluttered guardhouse, it would be unwieldy, it would be hard to find enough room to swing it properly – and it would take a hell of a lot more time to move than Jake’s knife.
Both were content, though.
Jake to beat The Sword at his trademark game.
And al-Sîf to stand or fall by it.
* * *
Up at ground level, Zack was feeling very alone again. He knew from radio traffic that Jake was fighting on the wall above and behind him. He could also see Todd on the opposite side of the courtyard, dropping Hellhounds on anything that moved. But he was still feeling increasingly isolated and exposed. He knew Godane’s men could walk up on him any time – either from out in the courtyard or, worse, from the darkness inside the building behind him.
And he didn’t know what the hell he was going to do when they did.
Meanwhile, he bzzz’d off short bursts from the minigun at anything that popped up in his field of vision. He was trying to conserve ammo, as he didn’t relish having to reload this thing, which would mean being defenseless for however long that took. He’d reloaded it once after the fight kicked off, and after he’d burned through an entire can clearing the walls on the south side. He hoped he might be able to do it faster now. But he doubted it.
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