“Well? Did they stop?” Lopez asked.
“Sorry, they are still coming straight for you. They may be carrying handheld thermal imaging, they aren’t getting it from the satellite.”
“So what do we do?” Prenner asked.
Lopez hesitated only for a moment, then smiled. “Set up a welcoming committee.”
* * *
There wasn’t a whole heck of a lot of cover in these bare hills, but Davidson made due with what he had. A meager bush he stole from the other side of the path and an old piece of tin that had as many holes as it did cover.
All the better to poke his rifle through.
The rest of the men were scattered along the trail up to the SUV which was hidden as best it could be behind a rock formation. Bunny was back in the vehicle, ready to hit the gas if given the order. Lopez was none too thrilled with the option, but they needed his gun out here where the Chinese were.
It was always difficult to set up an ambush on the run. They hadn’t had time to pick out exactly the best spot. They had the higher ground at the least. And at the least the region was too large and the border too long for the Chinese to lay down an effective mine field.
Those were all the pros. The cons were that they were out of their element. The Chinese knew the area. And oh yah, they were outgunned like twenty to one.
But that could all be leveled by a good ground game. A few well placed shots and an RPG or two could turn this situation around. Then of course they would have to boogie out of here before reinforcements came, but luckily the closest back up the Chinese had was over an hour away. They just needed to survive the next ten minutes.
Davidson scanned as far down the trail as he could. Still no sight of the soldiers, but it was dark. He switched to thermal. Still nothing.
“They should be on you any second,” Stark reported.
“Stark, I’m not seeing anything. Not even any ghosting of signal. There’s nothing out there, not even goats,” Davidson reported.
“There you should see them now!” Stark announced.
“Nothing, dude,” Lopez moaned. “I mean, nothing.”
“That can’t be… that can’t…”
“But it is,” Levont stated. “Something’s wrong.”
That’s when they heard Bunny’s scream.
* * *
The soldier had Bunny by the hair. At first she was in panic mode. How the hell had someone snuck up behind her? Stark had promised the patrol was coming from the east.
Breathe. She could hear Davidson in her mind, telling her to breathe.
And she did and shockingly it cleared her mind. Davidson and she had actually practiced this scenario. It wasn’t all that rare for an attacker to grab a woman’s long hair as a leverage point.
She reached back with her hands, found her attacker’s face and gouged. And she had one-inch acrylics on. It was the man’s turn to scream. Bunny jerked her head out of his grip and groped for the gun on the seat next to her.
Clearly they wanted to take her alive otherwise she would have just gotten a bullet in the back of the head, but the Chinese probably wanted to know what in the hell an American team was doing in Akasi Chin.
That didn’t mean they wouldn’t decide she was too much of a hassle and use that bullet instead.
Chaos reigned over the com. Everyone was shouting. Stark. Lopez. Davidson. They were arguing, reassuring her they were on the way, all at once.
Well, she couldn’t wait. Finally she grabbed the gun, swung it around and fired at the man coming in the window at her. A bright red stain spread on his green uniform as he fell backwards. Another man came at her, suffering the same fate.
She tucked herself into the driver’s foot well as gunfire erupted all around her.
Okay, now she really was trapped. The guys better get here soon or she was done.
* * *
“Stark, what the fuck is going on?” Lopez demanded over the com as Davidson leapt over another boulder, trying to get into position to cover Bunny.
“I don’t know, I don’t know,” Stark lamented. Davidson couldn’t be angry with the man. He knew that the tech had feelings for Bunny. He would never in a hundred years do anything to bring her to harm.
So it had been an honest mistake. Not a mistake. It was pretty clear that the Chinese had somehow fooled Stark and performed their own ambush. You could never underestimate your enemy. Especially not the Chinese.
As he crested a hill, the interior of the SUV was lit by bursts of gunfire. Dear God, Bunny was in the middle of it.
He couldn’t allow his fear to interfere with his job. He swung his rifle up, taking three quick shots, not really aiming, but firing in the general direction of the muzzle flashes.
That got the area quiet, pretty quick. That didn’t necessarily mean that Bunny was safe but for now the fireworks were extinguished.
Now came the cat and mouse game that Davidson coveted.
He scanned the area. Now his thermal scope was working. He leveled the muzzle and took the shot. Another man down. Was that seventeen or were Stark’s original numbers even correct?
An answering shot chased Davidson behind a rock. Five against seventeen, not too bad if that was all there was.
“Bunny!” Prenner yelled out. Davidson didn’t have to. He could see her heat signature nice and orange. She didn’t even seem wounded, or at least not enough to lower her body temperature.
“No harm!” she yelled back, although she sounded a little shrill. But at least his assessment was confirmed.
“Stark, I need intel,” Lopez barked over the com.
“You don’t think I know that?” Stark sounded pretty despondent.
* * *
Stark had to fight back tears. He had screwed up, big time. It was crazy, everything was in control, then it wasn’t. And now not only was the team in danger, but Bunny was pinned down by at least three gunmen.
Not that he would know that from his screens. His screens still showed the fake gunmen, still creeping up the path from the east instead of scaling the hill to the west.
How could he have made such an egregious error? How could his screen be so wrong, so very wrong? He trusted his screens. He loved his screens. How could they betray him like this?
“I can’t believe it,” his mother hissed. “They back-hacked me.”
That was unbelievable. Except he had to believe it because it just happened. The Chinese had been investing heavily in training their state sanctioned hackers. They had breached the NSA and Pentagon, but to fool his mother? They were using their A team.
“Can we override it?” Stark asked.
“Now that I know what they are doing, I’m going to cram it back down their throats.”
Talking like that, his mother sometimes scared even Stark, but she was on his team so everything was good.
“Give us just a minute,” Stark told the team.
“Not sure if Bunny has a minute,” Davidson stated. “They’ve been quiet which usually means they are repositioning. I’ve lost them on thermal.”
“Come on, come on,” Stark’s mother stated as she typed her little guts out.
“Got it!” she announced.
CHAPTER 17
After so many moments of silence, the renewed gunfire was nearly deafening. Apparently Stark had figured out what the hell had happened and turned the table on the Chinese.
“Bunny!” a shout came over her com. It was hard to hear with the rattle of bullets piercing the car’s metal frame.
“Bunny! You’ve got to start the car and drive over the hill,” Stark yelled in her ear.
“A little pinned here,” Bunny explained.
“They’re bringing the tank,” Stark explained.
Okay, that wasn’t cool, not at all.
She snaked her hand up and turned the SUV on. She wasn’t raising her head above the steering wheel. Instead she just moved the transmission into drive, then with her hand, hit the gas pedal.
The SUV lurch
ed forward, grinding over the rough terrain. She wasn’t quite sure where the hill Stark was talking about was, but it had to be forward.
“Turn left!” Stark yelled.
Bunny complied. She heard a muffled scream. Apparently Stark was using the SUV as a weapon as well as a get-away vehicle.
Then she felt like she was airborne. Was she ever going to come down, then the SUV landed practically nose first into the ground. It tilted nearly ninety degrees up, then crashed back down to land.
Bunny touched her forehead, it was bleeding. From what she wasn’t sure.
Then a loud crash sounded from above her. Someone had jumped onto the top of the SUV. She pulled up her gun, but Stark yelled, “It’s Lopez!”
To prove the point, Lopez stuck his head into the car, upside down. “Just me, Chica.”
He slid into the car as Bunny crawled over the hump between the seats to get out of his way. The corporal skidded them around, then headed back up the hill.
“I thought we were supposed to get away,” Bunny whined, knowing she sounded like she was whining, but she’d really liked the idea of getting away, way, way, way away from here.
“Oh come on,” Lopez scoffed. “They’ve got a tank. You think I’m driving away from that?”
Of course he wasn’t. She just wished she didn’t have to come along for the ride. Not that she was going to jump from the car. Besides that not sounding too fun, it also left her alone again and after this little episode, she’d rather be in the middle of the firefight, then unprotected on its flank.
They flew back over the small ridge. Bunny peaked her head up for just a moment. Prenner, Levont and Malvern were moving forward, tightening the noose on the Chinese troops that were trapped where the SUV used to be. Davidson was firing from some high point, knocking pieces off the violent chessboard.
Lopez mowed down a few as they made their way across the plateau. Now Bunny could hear the grind of the tank as it made its way up the back way.
“It’s a tank,” Bunny stated feeling like maybe Lopez just didn’t understand the situation. “And this is an SUV.”
“Got it,” Lopez said, winking at her. “But even tanks have their weaknesses.”
“Like what?” Bunny asked.
“Like this…”
Lopez accelerated right toward the tank’s side. It wasn’t a full sized tank, it was one of those rapid response mini-ones. Still its armor looked thick and the large gun on top, swiveled around to aim at them.
“Hang on!” Lopez shouted which seemed to be the man’s anthem. Perhaps they would put it on his gravestone.
Bunny just ducked back under the dash to hide in the passenger’s side foot well. It just seemed the most rational response she could have.
Then they hit something, hard, really hard, and still Lopez didn’t let off the gas. Bunny couldn’t help but sneak a peek. They had rammed the tank and were now in the process of tipping it over.
“Kind of like cows,” Lopez explained, nearly standing up, he was pushing on the gas pedal so hard.
To her amazement, the tank tipped over, its tracks grinding round and round but unable to move the tank.
“Ha! The tortoise maneuver!” Lopez announced, then drew his weapon, picking off the two men escaping the tank.
“Stark, what is the state of play?” Malvern asked over the com.
“There are seven left, but three are fleeing. Only four are holding position.”
“Davidson?” Malvern asked.
* * *
“I’ll handle it,” he responded to their new CO who so far was the best of the sorry bunch they had had.
There were times when he felt bad about shooting men in the back, but not tonight. They had targeted Bunny. They did not get to walk away from that. Plus they couldn’t allow them to get to their reinforcements with their team number and direction of travel.
He only had to use three bullets to take down the deserters. It did not escape Davidson the fact that he was doing the Chinese’s job for them. Those men never would have been allowed to live if they had reached home.
“They are done.”
Davidson swung his rifle around to study the current war theater. The other four men who stayed had dug themselves in, but not in exactly strategically ideal positions. They were scattered over the area, unable to provide any real support or cover for one another.
“Should we take any prisoners?” Lopez asked, Davidson assumed to Malvern. That was a step in the right direction.
“For what purpose?” Malvern countered.
“None,” Lopez asked. “Just checking to see if your big brain could think of any.”
So Lopez hadn’t really been asking, he’d been testing Malvern. Ya, that sounded a lot more like Lopez. He was seeing if Malvern had the stomach to finish this. In the heat of battle it was easier to take the shot. When it came to picking off the stragglers, some people got a little queasy.
Davidson just had to remind himself that these were hardened Chinese soldiers. Soldiers who would wipe out entire villages if they helped the local rebels. These were not innocents by any stretch of the imagination.
And he noted that the soldiers hadn’t even tried to raise the white flag. They knew to do so would mean their certain death back home.
“Switching to armor piercing rounds,” Davidson stated. That rifle was far heavier and not nearly as accurate. And the kick on it? It threatened to dislocate his bad shoulder.
He put it up anyway, using his thermal scope to pinpoint the closest man’s position.
He aimed and fired. The bullet blowing through the rock. It didn’t have quite enough power to then penetrate the soldier’s armor, but it did knock him out from behind cover. One of the other men took it from there.
The rest were just as easily routed. Once the ratio got down below ten to one, it was almost too easy.
Davidson raised his rifle. “That’s it, right?”
“You are clear,” Stark responded. “Great job and again, sorry about earlier.”
“Shit happens,” Lopez responded as he opened the SUV’s doors. “Who wants a ride?”
* * *
Stark leaned back in his chair, letting out a long sigh of relief as he watched the team load back into the SUV and make their way out of Chinese territory. Not that the disputed lands would be much better, but according to the satellite, the real satellite, they should have a straight shot at the ancient church without intersecting with any other patrols.
“You could have told them it was my fault,” His mother said. “I was the one that was duped by that redundancy system.”
Stark shrugged. “I may be a lot of things, but a bad son, I am not.” Sure, he could have thrown his mom under the bus, but would that have really made him look any better? Besides, his mom had hacked into the Chinese mainframe, maybe gotten duped for a bit, but then turned the tables.
She still rocked in his book.
“Is the ground penetrating satellite up and running over the church?” Stark asked.
“Working on it,” his mother grumbled. He knew her pride had been just as injured as his with their snafu. Even though these things happened during an epic hack, his mom’s pride was bruised.
He picked up a plate of her homemade chocolate chip cookies and offered it to her. “Does someone need a cookie?”
His mother frowned, but he noticed she took one and nibbled at the edge as she always did.
Feeling like his mom was on the mend and still feeling super relieved that Bunny was fine, Stark began scanning all of the satellite feeds from the area. There were so many, there were almost too many. The US, Russia, UK, China, India, Pakistan, France, and Germany all have blanketing coverage of the area on their own, then multiply it by about ten.
It was crazy, but as everyone else had discussed if World War III broke out, it would probably be over this region. Forget North Korea, this was the hot bed. Because if Pakistan struck India then the US or its allies would strike Pakistan. Then Russia wo
uld attack the US or China. It was never good when you could have a multiple answer question in regards to who would nuke whom and in what order.
And now the Righteous. Stirring the stupid pot. Not good, not good at all. He wasn’t going to be able to relax until Bunny was out of Kashmir.
“On line,” his mother said. “And it looks like it has a fairly sprawling underground complex.
Stark snorted, what uber secret religious fanatical compound didn’t?
* * *
Bunny startled awake as the SUV pulled to a stop. She lifted her head off of Malvern’s shoulder, wiping the corner of her mouth in case she had drooled.
They must have arrived at the church otherwise Lopez would never have stopped the car. Because deceleration just wasn’t naturally in his repertoire. She blinked twice to focus her vision.
Off in the distance was a small, rock built church. It appeared that the only adornment was a cross carved out of the façade. Light shone through, casting a long crucifix on the ground.
“Well, there’s no sneaking up,” Lopez commented.
The terrain between them and the church was unbroken field. Dry without even a stick to hide behind.
“Then why are we parked so far away?” Bunny asked.
“We’re just out of RPG range,” Prenner noted.
Ah, those RPG’s. The terrorist’s best friend.
“And your plan, Lopez?” Malvern asked.
The corporal shrugged. “Stark says they went in there about an hour ago and haven’t come out yet.”
“I understand,” Malvern replied. “But what is the plan?”
“Oh, I thought it was obvious,” Lopez stated. “We go knock on the front door.”
Malvern frowned. “Really? That’s it?”
“Well,” Lopez answered. “There’s no roost for Davidson. We’ll send two men around the back, but at some point we’ve got to go in there and I don’t see why we don’t try the front door first.”
“What about those tunnels Stark saw under the church?” Levont suggested
“Sorry,” Stark apologized in her ear. “We can’t figure out where the exits are so I can’t guide you to any openings.”
Bunny opened her door. “We might as well get this over with.”
Bull's Eye Sniper Chronicles Collection (The Second Cycle of the Betrayed Series) Page 20