Krieger Platoon

by Jay Ivanovich

  Jon tapped Bag on the shoulder and made the two fingered ‘I see something’ signal, then pointed at a stack of green military crates on the far end of the cat walk. Bag nodded and then took up Jon’s six as they moved slowly forward. A slight shuffle off to the side of the catwalk halted both in mid step. An instant later, the sound a heavy object landed on the deck behind them. Bag tightly clenched the grip of his rifle, then turned as fast as he could to open fire.

  As soon as he began to move however, his rifle was torn completely from his grasp and tossed over the railing and into the deep pit below. A massively powerful force shoved Bag backwards onto his back and knocked the wind completely out of him. Jon at this point had already turned, acquired the thermal silhouette in his sights, and held down the trigger; emptying a large portion of his magazine.

  The attacker tried to dive out of the way but caught the full effect directly to his chest and face. The figure dropped motionless onto the deck, now very visible, and bleeding out from…well, everywhere.

  Jon rushed over to Bag and grabbed him by the arm. “GET UP NOW!” Bag tried to shake off the stun and began to stand just as another figure rushed Jon from the back, knocking him off his feet and sending him a good ten feet forward into the deck. Gun fire began to sound from the lower decks, just as the new attacker grabbed Bag by the chest armor, stood him up against the railing, and plunged a long jagged looking knife halfway through his ceramic chest plating.

  Bag tried to scream out in pain, but struggled just to breathe through the crippling pain. He’d felt the knife deeply puncture his chest… It was a horribly abnormal and agonizing feeling. The figure uncloaked with a slight electrostatic sound and removed the mirrored tinting from his helmet face shield; Sempra smiled wickedly back at him from behind the mask. Bag struggled to reach for his side arm, but was forcibly stopped as Sempra put more pressure on the knife, removed Bag’s pistol with his other hand, and tossed it over the side.

  Sempra laughed through his helmets voice modulator, which made it sound like his voice almost underwater. “Bag, Bag, Bag. You just couldn’t stay away. I’m truly sorry it had to end like this…but I’ll say goodbye to your family for you. Oh that’s right, you still don’t know what happened to them, do you?”

  Bag’s eyes went wide in bewilderment, and he forced himself to stare right back into Sempra’s. How did he know…? How did he know about Bag’s family!? How was that even possible…unless…Sempra had something to do with it? Bag wanted to scream out in all of his fury, to rip whatever information Sempra was hiding behind before he strangled every ounce of life out of him. Bag tried to speak, tried to move, but his limbs no longer responded. He wanted to grab his own knife and plunge it through Sempra’s face mask and right into that evil and overconfident smile…but the world was beginning to darken very quickly.

  Sempra grabbed ahold of the knife tightly and put himself into a position to plunge it the rest of the way in. “Good bye, Bag... It’s been fun…”

  A bullet ripped through Sempra’s armor and right into his throat, causing him to gasp loudly in shock and pain. He released his hold on the knife and jumped up and over railing to the deck below, just as Jon fired the remaining 19 bullets in his side arm, screaming and cursing loudly in rage all the while.

  Bag rolled his head over to smirk at Jon, but the darkness fully engulfed his mind, and he felt the weight of gravity pull him downward onto the cold metal deck.

  Chapter 18 – Brought the wrong shoes…

  Sarah adjusted her ear rings and evened out the wrinkles of her brand new crimson silk party dress, purchased by the Central Intelligence Agency for just this occasion. She double checked her concealed ear piece to ensure it was functioning, and coughed twice into her shoulder as she made her way up the steps of the European Union’s Mobilized Warfare Academy. It was graduation night for the cadets, and the lush and beautiful garden court yard, was filled with hundreds of academy graduates, their dates, friends and family, and a surprisingly small contingent of guards. The main building itself looked like an old renaissance era Spanish fortress, with towering turrets and stained glass windows. It was really beautiful, actually. The whole city of New Madrid was. It had a rustic old world feel to it. Peaceful.

  The academy grounds were about the size of a large public park all together, but it was separated within the grounds between the school and main facility to the west end, and the barracks and housing to the east. The entire facility was surrounded by a high decorative stone wall, and all the buildings were of the red brick roof and stucco design found in the Spanish cities of old. The statues and busts of notable EU war heroes were illuminated with well-placed ambient lightning, which could only now be fully appreciated as night fall set in.

  Sarah coughed into her shoulder again, this time intentionally louder. Reagan laughed over the radio in response. “We can hear you just fine, Sarah.” In a sarcastic, dull kind of way.

  Sarah subtly grinned and walked with the small crowd of cadets, and various other guests, to the front doors of the main hall and ballroom. She made sure to smile cutely at the guards, dressed smartly in their European bluish-grey dress uniforms with combination hat, as she passed by. Didn’t want to arouse suspicion of course. The ballroom interior had the look of an old stone castle, with large ornate chandeliers hanging from the high wooden framework, and a beautifully crafted tile floor with the color of sandy earth tones, and beautiful crimson curtains hung flanking the floor to ceiling windows.

  Sarah made her way down a short set of stairs to the dance floor, and stood just opposite of the live band as they played some predictably slow, nameless tune. The room was alive with academy sweethearts dancing together, as well as the cheerful conversations of friends, family, and many high ranking officers from every branch of the EU military. There were even some important looking civilian individuals around. Hmm, she’d have to be careful to avoid unnecessary conversation. Though part of her wished she could actually enjoy the party…

  Sarah mentally reviewed the picture she had seen of Admiral Ambrose, who was a balding, short and frumpy looking German that liked to drink heavily. That description didn’t narrow it down all too much…but… Bingo! Just as she had anticipated he would, he was occupying a seat at the bar with several other officers about his age, speaking incoherent German and laughing obnoxiously loudly at what she could only assume was supposed to be a joke. The facial expressions of the other officers illustrated that it must have been a very poor joke. They looked desperate to escape the conversation.

  Sarah moved over to an open seat at the bar about two stools down from his position, and carefully glanced over with a baiting smile. His dress whites were a mess compared to the rest of the Officers, his shirt was unbuttoned and open, and his tie was just hanging loosely around his neck. He look liked someone had just jumped him, but she was pretty sure that wasn’t the case.

  Reagan sighed deeply into the radio. “Pierce wants me to remind you that all got to do is plant that locator beacon on him, and we’ll do the rest. Just don’t do anything crazy or you’ll probably end up in a European prison…which would be bad…”

  Sarah subtly turned her head into her shoulder and activated the concealed microphone hidden under the strap of her dress. “You aren’t helping…” She almost growled the words.

  The Admiral bowed his head toward the rest of the Officers as they stood up and left him alone at the bar, then spotted Sarah almost immediately. She forced a smile toward him and then motioned to the bar tender, who didn’t even have a chance to speak before the Admiral yelled out in a drunken combination of broken English and German. “Jose! JOSE! Buy this fraulein anything she wants! It’s on me!”

  The bar tender gave the Admiral a vexed glance out of the corner of his eye, and then very politely nodded to Sarah. “What would you like, Señorita?”

  His Spanish accent was subtle, but clear and distinguishable. Odd that he started with English though… Was it that obvious she was American? Sar
ah nodded back respectfully, and forced the dodgiest English accent she could. Thank God for British television… “Just water for now if yeah please.”

  Jose nodded, grabbed a clean glass, filled it to the brim with ice water, and even added a lemon slice. Fancy. The Europeans must be loaded if they have citrus available just like that… The Admiral moved over a seat closer and began to ramble off several horribly lame jokes, which Sarah had to force herself to laugh at. However a few minutes into the conversation, the Admiral began to eye her inquisitively. “You are English then, ja? What brings you to tonight’s celebration?”

  Sarah smiled and tried to divert the question. “I heard there are always so many fine gentlemen like yourself here, and since leaving Manchester all those years back I haven’t had many good dances.” The accent was so bad… Hopefully he was too drunk to really think about it.

  The Admiral laughed and began to rattle off his life history and all of the people he knew from Manchester, well the abridged version. Sarah smiled more, feigning interest as much as she possibly could, but mostly listening to the band as they changed songs. Sarah intentionally cut him off and glanced over toward the band. “Oh, I love the Tango. Do you dance?”

  The Admiral nodded and then extended his arm out to her. “Of course, fraulein.” The man was so drunk, Sarah practically had to carry him out to the dance floor. She rolled her eyes and subtly sighed; dealing with this was definitely worth that forced pay raise to Sergeant...

  The Admiral attempted to bow, and nearly lost his balance. Sarah just smiled and tried to be as friendly as she could, preparing to slip the grain-sized tracking beacon into one of his many jacket pockets, which she subtly held ready between her index and middle finger. The song continued, and the Admiral’s dancing skills were close to a whale floundering on the beach, and most of the other dancers gave them a wide space just out of caution. They were getting many strange looks from around the room.

  Ok! Enough was enough… Sarah pulled the Admiral’s arm in an awkward way to make him fall, and carefully ran her hand along his lower jacket pocket until the beacon fell in successfully as she pretended to help him up. Thankfully the song ended soon after that and Sarah bowed to him and excused herself. “Thank you for the dance, but I’ve got to be going to find my friends.”

  The Admiral bowed back and almost lost his balance again. Sarah casually made her way over to the approximate location of the bathroom, but made a detour down the hallway toward her real target. As soon as she was out of sight of the ballroom, she picked up her pace to a brisk walk. Reagan let out a long sigh of relief over the radio. “Nicely done… the beacon is working and we can track his position now.”

  Sarah sighed back and whispered into her shoulder. “That was the worst time dancing ever and I LOVE dancing… Next time, YOU are dealing with the high value target.” She was actually frustrated, but she said it in the form of a joke. Still, she didn’t join up to be a spy… How did Pierce think this was a good idea?

  Reagan chuckled at the comment. “Yeah yeah, promises. Ok, you need to continue going down that hallway until you come across a glass patio over on the left hand side. Once you reach the patio, the targeted building is going to be directly North East of it.”

  Sarah kept a steady pace but was careful to make it seem as if she were just sightseeing and naturally walked fast, especially as she passed by a growing number guests and cameras. No need to draw unwanted attention. Up ahead was the glass patio, and a large crowd of drunk students were laughing and joking about on the benches. Shouldn’t be a problem…

  Sarah walked straight through the middle of them but was stopped when one of the graduates stood up, blocked her exit, and then began trying to flirt with her in Spanish. Sarah just smiled and tried to explain that she had a boyfriend in broken Spanish, which ended up just making the entire group burst out laughing. She did NOT have time for this…

  The student tried to advance on her, and she simply moved out of the way and left her foot subtly in his path; he fell face first into the ground a step later. Sarah opened the patio door, and excused herself as the student’s friends tried to help him up. She let out a sigh; College kids…

  The courtyard beyond was entirely freshly cut grass with almost no walk ways; there was a row of large, three story barracks type buildings across the way and a single large house off to the side…which was probably the target. Sarah moved over behind the shadow of a tree as several guards began walking about on the far side of the field. “Reagan, what direction’s North East?”

  Reagan hesitated for a moment. “Um…it’s directly to your…5 o’clock. It’s the building with the chimney directly in the center of the roof.”

  Sarah glanced toward the house and noticed the chimney, Bingo. She glanced about to ensure the coast was clear, and then sprinted over to the shadowy back side of the building. Sarah produced the data stub Pierce had given her, and inserted it into the locking mechanism on the back door. The door popped open a moment later, and she quickly entered and closed the door as quietly as she could. The whole building was dark, but she had studied the layout of it extensively on the flight over so that wouldn’t be a problem.

  Sarah drew her concealed and silenced pistol, and slowly made her way up the main stairs and through the large double wooden doors of the study. She jiggled the handle to ensure it really was locked, and then carefully inserted the data stub and forced it open.

  The entire office was made of dark mahogany wood, and had an enormous glass window overlooking the rest of the courtyard. Every wall had floor to ceiling book shelves loaded with every type of book imaginable, and in the center of the room was a very large and thick wooden desk with a single computer work station built into the center. Her target.

  Sarah rushed over and attempted to bring the computer out of standby, just as footsteps began to sound slowly coming up the stairs and toward the office doors. She frantically looked around for a hiding place, and at the last second dove behind a large leather bound chair.

  Admiral Ambrose walked in a moment later, puffing on a long cob pipe, and not at all wearing the jacket Sarah had placed the beacon in. Damnit. Ambrose sat down on his office chair and dropped his head back across the neck rest. “You can save us both much trouble if you just show yourself now.”

  Sarah started to plan her next move, but was spurred to action when Ambrose stood up and cautiously made his way over to the exact chair Sarah was hiding behind. Sarah jumped up and pointed her pistol directly at his head.

  Ambrose put his hands out defensively, but he didn’t seem worried at all. “If you are going to kill me, please do so quickly. I don’t want to drag this out longer than necessary.” His words weren’t slurred anymore, and his German accent was barely readable.

  Sarah began to inch her way around him and toward the desk; motioning him over to the chair with her pistol. “Sit down and keep your hands up.” She stated coldly, keeping her pistol pointed in the Admiral’s direction with one hand, as she fumbled around with the data stub in the other.

  The Admiral watched Sarah’s every movement carefully. “You obviously aren’t an assassin… so perhaps you are here to find details about your President’s death, yes? Truly, what other reason would an American be here for?”

  Sarah jabbed the gun menacingly at the Admiral and shushed him, then slid the data stub home and attempted to boot up the computer to no avail. The Admiral bent over and slowly reached into his sock. Sarah took a step toward him, pistol held in both hands. “Move again and it will be the last thing you ever do!” She stared at him through narrowed eyes.

  The Admiral held out his other hand defensively as he pulled a small data stub from around his ankle. “It is not a weapon, I assure you. I must apologize for earlier, I wasn’t quite as drunk and disorderly as I made out to be. It was a necessary precaution…”

  Reagan keyed his radio just then. “Sarah, Pierce is screaming up a storm over here… Are you almost done?”

  Sarah q
uickly glanced about the room to ensure the Admiral was the only other one there, then quietly acknowledged him. “I’m working on it, stand by.”

  The Admiral began to puff on his pipe again, very slowly. “You’ve already been recorded and entered into the security system, and all you need to do to set it off is fire that weapon even once. This building and the entire Academy will be swarmed by guards in a matter of moments… I knew you were coming though, so I took several steps to ensure it wouldn’t go off immediately… like disable the alarm on the back door for instance.”

  Sarah narrowed her eyes. What was he getting at? Was he trying to trick or delay her? She wasn’t going to stay long enough to find out. “Why isn’t the computer working?”

  The Admiral began to puff heavily to further ignite the tobacco. “I disabled it…shortly after I sent out the message your military obviously received... To be honest, I lured you here intentionally.”

  Reagan came back over the radio, his tone told her that the conversation on his end wasn’t going too well. “Sarah really… Pierce is throwing a temper tantrum… do you have access to the computer yet?”

  Sarah leaned into her shoulder and whispered loudly. “Hold on! Give me a few minutes!” Then slightly lowered the pistol but kept a close watch on the Admiral. “Why would you disable your own security system? Start making sense!”

  The Admiral took a long puff off his pipe and sent several billowing trails of vanilla flavored tobacco smoke into the air. It was starting to waft through the whole room. “The European Union did not kill your President, doing so would be a total disaster for us… IS a total disaster for us. Your President did not wish to join our Union, but was still working diligently to open trading agreements with us and the rest of our colonies. It was steps farther toward true peace and cooperation than anything we have seen in a very long time… Some of us were even starting to believe it could really happen…”