Hammerhead

by Jason Andrew Bond

  “You should stay on your back,” he said. “You probably have a pretty bad concussion.”

  Stacy looked to the wreckage around her, and then to the mountains over the severed window frames. Holding up her arm, she inspected the remnants of a strap on her wrist, loosened it, and tossed it into the debris. Jeffrey saw that straps had made raw marks on both of her wrists. One of her ankles still had a section of torn strap wrapped around it as well. Jeffrey undid the strap and threw it aside.

  “I have to get out of here,” she said.

  “You pretty much covered that before you passed out again.”

  “How long was I out?”

  “You lost consciousness again for about 10 minutes. I was about to try and rig a backboard and get you out of here.”

  She looked left and then right, her eyes a bit wide, on the edge of frantic.

  “No, don’t move your neck so much.” He reached out and took hold of the sides of her face, stopping her head from swiveling. She pushed his hands away.

  “Don’t worry about it, my neck is fine. I’m just sore.” She rubbed the back of her neck and then touched the bandage on her face.

  “Holy Mother that hurts,” she said.

  Jeffrey took her hand away from the bandage. “Yeah, you may have cracked your cheekbone. Try and leave that alone, and it might heal right. Now tell me, what were you doing on a ship that was being intentionally crashed?”

  Stacy looked at her hands and then shook her head, “I don’t really remember. I was running down a hallway with two other SO’s, running for our lives. But I don’t remember why.” She scowled at her hands. “Why would that be? We were on a training run.” She looked up at Jeffrey. “I remember it was a training run.”

  “It’ll come back,” Jeffrey said. “But right now, as you said, we have to get out of here. Someone has already tried to kill me twice today and you at least once. I think we can safely assume it’s somehow related. Can you stand up?”

  Jeffrey helped Stacy to her feet. She took a step, a chunk of metal under her foot shifted, and she stumbled.

  “How you doing?” Jeffrey asked.

  “Not really myself yet. The sky’s spinning on me.”

  Jeffrey kicked the command chair he had shaded her with, and it flipped upright.

  “Sit there for a moment. We need to get going, but we can take a few minutes to let you get your bearings.”

  “So how did they try to kill you?” Stacy sat down. “You seem well enough.”

  “This is going to sound strange, but a poison robotic spider.”

  “Really? You’re not messing around? A robotic spider? Poison?”

  “I don’t know that it was poison, but I can assume as much as I like here.”

  “Maybe it was just a sedative, you know, to put you to sleep?”

  “Perhaps, but I don’t think so. My transport had a bomb in the intake filled with what I’m pretty sure was sodium bicarbonate. It blew when I turned off my autopilot.”

  “A baking soda bomb? A robotic spider and a baking soda bomb?”

  “You think I’m loose a few screws.” Jeffrey said.

  “Yes.”

  “How do you put out a grease fire?” he asked.

  “You throw… baking soda on it.”

  “So if you tossed a thick enough cloud of it into the intake of a jet engine?”

  “You smother the burn, kill the motor.”

  “Yeah, the plane just falls out of the sky. They recover their device, and maybe no one is the wiser. It’s certainly easier to cover up than a large explosive device.”

  “It would have to be a lot of baking soda to smother a turbine.”

  “It was.”

  “The spider’s not very subtle. Suspicions would be raised if someone found you dead with a robotic spider stuck in your leg.”

  “Yes. I’m guessing they planned on recovering the spider. If that’s true, they’ll be close. But both methods feel overdone, arrogant. If I wanted someone dead, I’d walk up and shoot him in the face.”

  Stacy stared at Jeffrey for a moment and then said, “You have to admit it’s harder to cover up a guy with his head blown off.”

  Jeffrey nodded at that. “I think they were in a rush to implement and planned on having time to clean up their mess. I’m definitely not going to stay around with a target on my back.” He motioned for her to stand. “Do you think you can walk to my Gorilla?”

  “Your what?” she asked, but Jeffrey held up his hand to silence her.

  He heard the faint whistle of turbines. Looking over the ruined edge of the bridge windows, he watched a gunship hop over the northern mountains.

  CHAPTER 5

  The gunship, serious special ops gear with black paint absorbing the sunlight, flew directly at them. It had the look of a predatorial insect with wings like long blades, and a cockpit turned down, aggressive. A larger section behind the cockpit probably accommodated a small number of troops. A long stabilization tail extended out the back.

  “That was fast,” Jeffrey said.

  “What was fast?” Stacy said, shifting her weight to stand up.

  “No, no, no,” he said, pushing her back into the chair.

  “You told me to get up! What the hell is wrong with you?”

  “There’s a gunship coming in, looks like a new generation Kiowa.”

  “You don’t think they’re here to help.”

  “I haven’t called for help, and I know you haven’t. I’d bet my two front teeth these folks are the cleaners.” He looked back at Stacy sitting in the chair. “You’re dead, you understand me?”

  “I do not understand you.”

  Jeffrey looked at her position relative to the cockpit and then turned her chair.

  “Do you have a gun?” he asked.

  She patted her hip holster, unsnapped it, and drew her gun. She checked the magazine and slid it back in.

  “Loaded?”

  “Yes.”

  “You take loaded weapons on training runs?”

  “We’re Special Warfare, not children.”

  “Well, if they left your gun on your hip, they definitely didn’t plan on you surviving the crash. Take it out and sit on your arm like this,” Jeffrey held his hand just behind his hip.

  He gripped the sleeve of her jumpsuit below the arm patch and tore it open. “This will be a bit ugly, but what can you do?” He turned and walked over to the blue tarp, crouched down, and lifted it up. He looked back to Stacy. “How do you feel about bodies? Are you squeamish?”

  “I have only seen one body before this, my grandmother at her funeral,” she said.

  He pulled one of the severed arms, which ended above the elbow in bloody shreds of upper arm muscles. “Well, we’ll just have to toss you in the deep end.”

  A gray sleeve, splattered with black blood, covered most of the dark hair of the man’s forearm.

  The illusion might work.

  Jeffrey walked back and set the arm on Stacy’s lap, tilting the torn end onto the arm rest. He looked over his work and pulled the shred of bicep to the side, exposing the cracked, white end of the humerus. Then he smeared blood on her torn sleeve.

  Seeing Stacy turn a lighter shade of white, he said, “You’ll do fine. Just tell yourself it’s made of wax.”

  “Won’t they be able to see my shoulder isn’t damaged?”

  “I’m betting these non-combatant training squids–” He paused and then said, “No offense of course.”

  “Yeah, well, some taken.”

  He waved his hand in the air, dismissing the slight. “I’m betting their minds will lock on that bone and won’t see anything beyond it.” He looked at her, noticing her color had improved. “How are you holding up?”

  “I suppose bodies don’t bother me that much,” she said, patting the arm with her free hand.

  “Good, so you’re with me right?”

  “Like I have a choice.”

  “You always have a choice. Right now it’s live or d
ie.”

  “I’ll go with live.”

  “Good, now here’s how we pull that off…”

  …

  The gunship circled around the wreck. Jeffrey looked out at it, contemplating its size.

  “We’ll probably be dealing with six to eight troops,” he said, not taking his eyes off the gunship.

  It turned around the wreckage one more time and then touched down raising a cloud of dust. The landing ramp lowered from under the ship’s tail and several troops ran out dressed in desert pattern body armor. As they ran off in different directions, each one shimmered and vanished.

  “Oh that is not good,” Jeffrey said. He stared into the dusty air, not allowing himself to blink. His eyes watered in the warm breeze.

  Stacy sat with her eyes closed and her head to one side. “Can you specify ‘not good’ please?”

  “These guys have active camouflage. But–” and he went silent.

  Stacy said through her teeth, “But what?”

  “But there are only four so far.”

  A man came down the ramp dressed in basic black fatigues. He wore sunglasses. The breeze flicked at his mop of white-blonde hair.

  “That’s all,” Jeffrey said and looked around the cabin. He saw a panel with a picture of a fire extinguisher on it. He walked to the panel, metal debris clattering under his feet. He opened it, pulled the extinguisher out, and fired it back and forth until a fine powder floated throughout the cabin.

  “Watch for the shoulders,” he said. “The powder will settle on the shoulders.” He threw the extinguisher down and looked back out over the broken windows through the cloud of powder.

  Halfway to the wreck, the man with the blonde hair saw Jeffrey and shouted up to him, “You must be the demolitions specialist. The breaker.”

  A hint of a smile twitched at the corner of Jeffrey’s mouth.

  You have no idea.

  He felt a calm electricity glowing in his heart, glittering out to his fingertips.

  “Yes, that’s me,” Jeffrey shouted. “I’m the demolition ‘team’ out here.” He held up his fingers and curled them in apostrphes to highlight ‘team’ and grinned. “I assume you folks know there was a bit of a problem and that’s why you’ve come. There’s bodies up here! Just got a fire out as well.”

  Walking up the dirt berm, the man stepped over the ruined window frames and dropped into the bridge, saying, “Yes, that’s why we’ve come.” The man waved his hand through the floating powder as he walked over to Jeffrey. He scanned the area, looking over the tarp and then Stacy in the chair. A scar ran from his upper lip, up over his left ear. It brought his lip up into a slight snarl. The man’s gaze stayed on Stacy, so Jeffrey reached out and grabbed the man by the back of the arm.

  The man pulled his arm away and put his hand on Jeffrey’s chest. “Let’s just keep our hands to ourselves.”

  He thinks he knows his way around a fight. That’s good. You’re big, bad black-ops, and I’m just a worn-down old man who’s no threat at all.

  Jeffrey heard the thud of boots, and debris shifted on the floor by the windows. There were more boot-falls to the right and left. A gun clicked.

  This new camouflage is good; there’s no halo, no shimmer, no distortion at all.

  The blonde man tracked Jeffrey’s gaze. “Now it’s time for you to answer some questions for me.”

  Where’s the fourth soldier?

  Jeffrey could begin to make out floating panels of dust settling on the three soldiers’ shoulders. Faint outlines of their guns and forearms came into view as well. The soldiers did not train their guns on Jeffrey, but lazily on the floor.

  Where the hell is the fourth soldier?

  The blonde man looked down at Stacy. “Are they all dead?”

  “Definitely dead. They came in at probably 800 to 900 miles an hour. There was no chance for them.”

  The blonde man looked at the arm in Stacy’s lap again.

  Jeffrey reached out and grabbed his shoulder. “Who do you suppose they were?”

  The blonde man stepped close to Jeffrey, making an effort to get into his face, but his having to look up at Jeffrey diminished the effect. “You will stop making physical contact with me, is—that—clear?” He jabbed Jeffrey in the chest with his finger with each of the last three words.

  But Jeffrey was not looking at him. He was looking up at the fourth soldier, who had just stepped into view on the roof of the bridge, where the Gorilla had folded the metal back. The soldier had his back to the sun, and his outline shimmered against the sky as the armor failed to fully process the brilliance of the sun.

  Just the kind of mistake someone who had never seen combat would make. I can’t blame the guy though. Some things are just not obvious until you figure them out by watching a friend die.

  “Oh, yes sir,” Jeffrey said, holding up his hands in submission. “You’re all right by me. You see, my boy’s in the service and I always say, take the one at three o’clock, MARK.”

  The blonde man looked at Jeffrey as though he were an idiot. Jeffrey grabbed the man’s arm and yanked, spinning him so he faced out toward the desert. Wrapping his arm around the man’s neck, Jeffrey side stepped, putting the man between him and the soldier by the center windows. At the same time, Jeffrey reached down with his right hand and pulled the pistol from his pocket. He lifted the pistol and fired up into the soldier on the roof, the only one smart enough to have his gun on Jeffrey. The slug found its mark in the soldier’s face. A bright red mist and whipping cap of skull sprayed away from the crystalline figure. The soldier pulled his trigger in a death spasm and bullets ran across the floor of the bridge.

  Jeffrey turned his gun on the soldier on the right side of the bridge and heard Stacy’s gun fire behind him. He aimed directly over the two dusty shoulders and again, fired a slug into the face. A thick, red oval of blood and brain spattered across the wall. The third soldier, the one by the broken center windows, fired his weapon. Jeffrey felt a bullet slam into the blonde man, hammering the man’s torso into Jeffrey. Jeffrey turned his gun on the dusty silhouette of the third soldier. But as he turned, he heard three quick shots, and the invisible soldier’s head and neck exploded out over the broken windows into the desert.

  Jeffrey aimed his gun at the last soldier, the one to his left, but there was no need. The body had fallen to the ground, disappearing as the camouflage still did its job. On the wall, about head high, an angular spray of blood told him that Stacy had shot sure and true.

  He spun the blonde man around and looked at him. The man’s eyes searched Jeffrey’s face for the answer to the question Jeffrey knew all too well: ‘What the hell just happened?’ Jeffrey looked down and saw blood blooming around a hole in the man’s shirt. The bullet had ricocheted off something inside, blowing out the side of his ribcage, which hung open.

  Jeffrey looked back at the man’s face. “Who sent you?”

  The blonde man’s hands gripped Jeffrey’s shirt and his mouth opened and closed. His wrecked chest could no longer drive enough air to his mouth to speak.

  “I am sorry,” Jeffrey said to the man. He let go of the man, who slid off Jeffrey to the right, landing on the debris. He came to rest on his side, one elbow up. His chest sucked with each breath. When Jeffrey realized the man was not going to die right away, he reached down and unsnapped the man’s holster, pulled his gun, and threw it out over the broken window frames into the desert.

  “Do we kill him?” Stacy stood and absently handed Jeffrey the arm. Jeffrey scowled at it and threw it down.

  “No.” Jeffrey crouched down and, taking hold of the blond man’s face, turned his head. The man looked at him, his eyes wide and searching.

  “He’ll probably die,” Jeffrey said, still looking into the man’s eyes, “but he’s no longer a threat, so we leave him be.”

  Jeffrey looked to Stacy and asked, “Do you have an emergency med kit, like you might carry in combat?”

  “Sure, here,” she said and pulled a h
and-sized black case from her right cargo pocket. Jeffrey took the case from her, opened it, and took out a sealed vial of heavy pain killer. He took out the vial and the plastic wrapped syringe and filled the syringe.

  “Hey, if I don’t turn that in…,” and she stopped herself.

  Jeffrey leaned over the man, making eye contact with him. “Blink if you can hear me.”

  The blond man closed his eyes and then popped them open. His eyes went hazy for a moment.

  “Do you want this?” Jeffrey held out the syringe. “To cut the pain? Blink if you do.”

  The blond man closed his eyes and pulled them open again. Tears welled in them. Jeffrey pulled the knife from the blond man’s hip and slashed the fabric of his pants. He pocketed the knife and tore at the slash, exposing the man’s thigh. He slid the needle into the muscle of the thigh and injected the liquid. In a moment the man’s eyes closed and his face went slack.

  Jeffrey stood up. “We have a gunship to heist.”

  “Sounds fine to me, but where do we go?”

  “Right now, ‘where’ is very simply ‘not here’.” He patted her on the back. “You did all right there, shot straight.” Jeffrey’s genuine smile made Stacy smile, but then she looked back at the gore around the cabin and the man at their feet, air sucking wet in the hole in his chest.

  “Doesn’t this bother you at all?” she asked.

  “Yes.” He intended to say nothing more, but the expression on Stacy’s face made him go on, “But now’s not the time. Stuff it down until you have a time and place to deal with it. It’s important that you look at it then, not now.” He put his hands on either side of her head, a gesture a father might make. “It will keep trying to get under your skin right now. Don’t let it. You have to be sharp.”

  “I won’t, sir.”

  “Don’t call me, ‘sir’,” Jeffrey said, walking away from her and picking up one of the soldiers’ rifles. “Just call me Jeffrey.”

  Stacy picked up another rifle and wiped blood off the stock. She clicked the safety, and slung it over her shoulder. Jeffrey looked over to her.

  “Where’s the safety on this thing?” he asked.