“Solar batteries in the Razor fully charged?”
“Yeah. Fifteen hours of operational time.”
“We’ll have seven and a half under full stealth. The adaptive camouflage sucks power at double the rate.”
“Adaptive camouflage?”
“Makes the Razor…well, not exactly invisible to the naked eye, but really fucking hard to see. That’s why we’re waiting for nightfall. We’ll be able to get within a half a mile undetected. Then…well, then we’ll need to get closer. I’m going to go in myself, on foot.”
“Alone?”
“In a pinch, I can pass for Chinese. None of the rest of you can. I’ll need the latest calculations on where Petkov was calling from. Gabe and Mike can come within a quarter of a mile, hopefully provide some cover fire if I need it—but if it comes to a firefight, we’re fucked.”
“I suddenly don’t like this plan very much.”
“You and me both. But it’s our best shot.”
***
A few hours after dark, the Razor rolled to within a mile of K-13R. No one inside said a word—it wasn’t likely anyone standing just outside the vehicle could hear them if they were shouting, but no one wanted to take any chances. When the Razor crew finally found their voices, they spoke in whispers.
“You sure this adaptive camouflage bullshit even works?” Gabriel whispered.
“Yeah. Cameras on the outside of the Razor project the images they see on the vehicle’s skin. When you and I get outside, you’ll see what I mean,” Nick said. “Owen, bring up the long-range front camera, please. Let’s see what I’m walking into.”
Owen nodded and pressed a few buttons. On the dashboard screen, a green-and-white image popped up, blurry and jumpy. The Razor crew could see a hastily erected main gate with Chinese soldiers walking the fence. Out in front of the fence, someone had set up what looked like a large number of signposts.
“What the fuck are these things?” Peter asked, tapping the signposts on the screen.
The image sharpened considerably as Owen pressed a few more buttons, and everyone in the Razor cabin could now see what was posted outside K-13R.
Though it was pretty clear to everyone in the cabin, Nick said it out loud anyway, choking back the bile that was rising in his throat before the words came out. “Those would be the heads of the Russian tank crews. On pikes.”
Chapter 18
Walk Among Us
There were a lot of them, but Nick didn’t have much trouble sneaking past the Chinese foot patrols outside K-13R’s gate. He sat with Gabriel and Michael at the quarter-mile mark for a few minutes, watching the patrols make their rounds through the scope on his stolen Chinese assault rifle. There was a method to their patrols—Nick realized that if he got close enough, he’d have just over thirty seconds to scale the gate without being seen.
As soon as he made it over the fence and dropped to the other side, Nick crouched behind a wooden storage crate and looked back out toward the Razor. He couldn’t see the vehicle, nor could he see Michael and Gabriel. The two men, like Nick, were dressed in black, unmarked fatigues. Nick had left his jacket in the Razor, so he was simply dressed in black BDU pants, a black T-shirt and combat boots. He had his Chinese assault rifle and the M4 Wes had handed him slung crisscrossed over his back, and had strapped a Glock 50 to each hip. As he stood from behind the crate, he winched the straps on all of his weapons as tight as he could to keep them from rattling as he walked—no point in making any more noise than he had to.
He’d memorized the map of K-13R in the Razor, as well as the last known position of Petkov’s cell phone—the GPS on the phone was only accurate to within fifty feet. It didn’t sound like a lot of ground, but Nick knew the Russian tank commander could be in any of six different buildings, on any level. His best bet was to make it to the area as quickly as possible and take his best guess. Fortunately, there weren’t many people roaming around the camp this late at night, so Nick kept to the shadows and easily avoided detection as he crept the two kilometers into the camp, heading for the glowing red dot on the map he’d memorized.
As Nick got closer to his target area, he noticed a lot of electric lights. The closer he got, the more he could hear loud, shouting voices in Chinese and, he assumed, Korean. Nick slowed as the lights got brighter and the alley he was in emptied out into a main courtyard. He hung in the shadows at the mouth of the alley and saw what was causing all the commotion in the courtyard ahead of him.
In the town’s main square, an improvised fighting ring had been set up. On one side of the ring, a young woman in a Chinese Army tank top was standing, her hands and feet wrapped in boxing tape. On the other side, a much larger man in a North Korean Army T-shirt stood wearing similar fighting gear. Crowds of uniformed Chinese and North Korean soldiers surrounded the ring, talking loudly and drinking heavily. An older man in Chinese Army fatigues stepped into the center of the ring and raised both hands.
The crowd fell silent immediately.
“Three rounds, or to knockout. Our best—” the man in fatigues indicated the woman, “—versus yours for the Camp of the Four Winds championship title!”
The crowd started roaring again as the man lowered his arms.
Nick smirked—with all of these guys distracted with the intramural boxing match, he’d have a much easier time searching through the area for Petkov. As the fight started, he made his way around the courtyard to his target area, a small block of shops just outside the main square. The original maps had shown five freestanding buildings, but all of them had since burned to the ground. He hunkered down in the wreckage of one and closed his eyes, remembering the architectural plans he’d glanced through on the Razor—one of the buildings, formerly a liquor store, had a basement that might have survived. He made his way to that building, searched around for a moment, and found the hatch leading to the basement. It was covered by burned wood and broken bottles, which he cleared off as quickly and quietly as he could.
He opened the hatch a crack, and two gunshots greeted him. Nick fell backwards, landing in a crouch three feet back from the hatch.
“Jesus, Petkov,” he breathed, picking himself up and walking around to the back side of the hatch. He leaned down as close as he could and hissed, “Andrevich! It’s Nick Morrow. I’m opening the hatch. Don’t shoot me, okay?”
Carefully, he reached out and tried the hatch again—there were no gunshots this time, so he took that as a good sign. Nick opened the hatch just enough to slip inside, and the hatch closed as soon as his feet hit the dirt floor.
“Nick? Is that you, my American friend?” Nick heard a croaking voice from the end of the dark room.
“Yeah, it’s me,” Nick said, pulling a small flashlight from his cargo pocket and turning it on. The light fell on Andrevich, who looked like Death.
The Russian was a few pounds lighter than when Nick had last seen him, and his face was covered with dried blood. Petkov had used the sleeves of his uniform jacket and two pieces of wood to make a splint for his right leg, but his sunken face broke out in a smile as he saw Nick standing before him.
“You don’t look good at all.”
“I have had a rough couple of days, my friend.”
“Yeah, I’ll bet. Come on. We need to get you out of here. Can you walk?”
“Not quickly. But yes.”
“That’ll have to do. Here,” Nick said, reaching into his other cargo pocket and pulling out a bottle of water, “drink as much of this as you can. You’re dehydrated in addition to being all banged up.”
“Thank you.”
As Petkov drank the entire bottle of water, Nick considered how he was going to get the injured Russian out of the base. They’d need to move fast, and there was no way Petkov could climb the fence.
“You feeling a little better?” Nick asked as Petkov tossed the empty bottle to the ground.
“Yes. Much.”
“Good. Wait here. I need to go steal us a ride.”
Nic
k put his ear next to the hatch and listened. He could faintly hear the shouting from the courtyard, but nothing else. Shrugging, he pressed his back up against the hatch and pushed slightly up with his legs, opening the hatch just a crack. The coast looked clear, as near as he could tell, so he lifted a bit more and scurried out into the wreckage.
There wasn’t much close by, and Nick couldn’t remember seeing any spare vehicles sitting around on his walk in. Still, a camp this size had to have a motor pool. Just from the number of Chinese and North Korean soldiers he’d seen in the courtyard, Nick estimated there were thousands of them at K-13R. There would have to be vehicles around, and a lot of them.
Nick thought for a moment and visualized the map he’d seen in the Razor, searching it for any hint of somewhere large enough to set up a motor pool. His first thought would have been the courtyard, but the large number of cheering enemy soldiers he could still hear in the distance ruled out that option.
The next best alternative, Nick supposed, would be the industrial area three kilometers away. According to the maps, that’s where Petkov and his crew had kept their tanks—in a secure, indoor warehouse. It had been perfect for their run-and-gun missions, as they’d been able to hide the tanks when they weren’t operational.
Hoping that the majority of the camp would stay wrapped up in the fight a bit longer, Nick set off at a quick jog toward the warehouses.
As it turned out, Nick didn’t need to make it three kilometers away. He didn’t even need to go five hundred feet. Parked along the street just over a small rise from the wreckage of the shops was an older, slightly beat-up Lada Niva, a vehicle that reminded Nick of a late-model hard-top Jeep. Nick froze and dropped behind a trash can as he saw it—there was someone in the driver’s seat. He spent a couple of seconds watching, but the driver didn’t move, even slightly. Nick crept closer, his eyes locked on the man in the driver’s seat, ears scanning for any hint of motion.
He needn’t have worried, as it turned out. The man in the driver’s seat was quite dead and had been for some time, long enough for considerable decomposition to set in. Even in the body’s decayed state though, Nick could tell he had been an old man—a thick mane of white hair clung to his skull, just above where a bullet had smashed into his head.
Poor guy, Nick thought, swallowing hard. Probably didn’t evacuate the city quick enough when the Chinese hit it. Sadness rose in his chest—the guy was dressed like someone’s sweet old grandfather—but he quickly did his best to push the feeling back down. He had a job to do.
The Lada’s window was down, and the door was unlocked. Nick opened the door and gently lifted the old man’s corpse out of the vehicle, doing his best not to breathe in. He propped the body up against a nearby building and went back to the Lada—it was stained with blood and smelled terrible.
It was then that Nick realized he had no idea how to steal a car.
As he passed the flashlight over the inside of the Lada, something small and silver flashed near the gas pedal in the driver’s footwell. Nick looked closer and saw keys—the old man had probably dropped them when he was shot. He tried one in the ignition, and the Lada turned right over. Checking the dashboard, he saw that the gasoline tank was almost empty, but the solar batteries were full-up—they’d probably been charging passively for the past month or so.
Nick drove the short distance back to the hatch and knocked on it three times. Petkov peeked out, and Nick gave him the thumbs-up. The injured Russian pulled himself out of the hatch, and Nick opened the Lada’s rear door.
“You’re making me ride in the trunk, my friend?”
“No offense, but you are a little white. I look like them and I can speak their language. I’m not planning to get stopped, but in case we do, better for us both if they can’t see you.”
Petkov nodded, and Nick helped him into the cargo area. Nick looked around—the streets were still empty, and the fight was still happening in the courtyard. He took a brick from the wreckage and smashed the Lada’s one working headlight, then got in the driver’s seat and headed for the main gate.
As he drove slowly through the wrecked city, Nick noticed a small mobile phone plugged into the cigarette lighter. It, like the Lada’s solar batteries, showed a full charge. He didn’t expect it to have service, but he reasoned he might as well try. He looked around as he drove—still not a person in sight. He quickly dialed a number from memory.
“Stan Morrow,” his brother answered after the first ring.
“Hey, big brother,” Nick said, his voice catching.
“Fuck me! Nick?”
“Yep. That’s me.”
“Jesus Effing Christ, Nick! Where are you?”
“Russia. Somewhere. It wouldn’t make much sense to you.”
“Nick…fuck, man. You were just on the news.”
“Say again?”
“You were just on the news. They were—”
Gunfire exploded behind Nick, smashing out the Lada’s back window.
“Fuck! Gotta go, Stan!” Nick yelled, hanging up the phone and standing on the gas. The front gate would only be another thirty or forty seconds away by Nick’s math. As he brought the battered car up to eighty miles an hour, he heard banging from the trunk. The back seats folded down, and Petkov tumbled out.
“I am thinking the trunk is not the safest place for me,” Petkov said calmly, crawling into the front seat.
“Yeah. Look, we’re going through the fence. When I tell you to, I want you to bail out of the car. Can you get one of the guns off my back?”
Nick leaned forward, and Petkov managed to unsling the M4 and pull it to him.
“Run for the woods. We’ll have cover fire, but I hope we won’t need it. Stick close—I’ll ditch the car as close to our transport as possible. Think you can sprint?”
“If I am not running, my friend, I am dead. So I will run.”
“Good man. Fire only if you have to—there’s no way we’ll outgun them, and shooting at ’em will only tell them where we are.”
Petkov nodded, and Nick slammed the Lada through the fence. In his rearview, he could see about ten soldiers on foot behind them, shouting and firing wildly. Nick aimed for the Razor’s position, mentally ticking off a quarter of a mile.
“One…two…three…jump!” Nick yelled.
As soon as Nick hit the ground, he rolled to his left, unslinging the Chinese assault rifle as he rolled. Before he could draw a bead on his pursuers, however, the old Niva exploded in a bright, brilliant flash. Nick rolled onto his feet, looked past the flaming wreckage and saw Petkov getting shakily to his feet.
“Run!” Nick yelled, heading for the woods. He caught up to Petkov just in front of the ex-Lada and threw his arm under the injured Russian’s arms. The two of them hobbled for twenty steps before two black-suited men with guns jumped out at them—Michael and Gabriel.
“We’ve got him, boss,” Gabriel yelled, picking Petkov up on his wide shoulders and sprinting for the Razor.
The four men jumped into the back of the Razor and appeared to vanish as the hatch closed behind them.
Chapter 19
Career Opportunities
Christopher had the Razor running at thirty-eight miles an hour—just shy of the stealth mode’s top speed. Nick limped to the front of the vehicle.
Huh. Why am I limping? he wondered idly, looking down at his feet. His left foot looked normal, but the front of his right boot was missing.
Nick looked over his shoulder and saw a steady trail of blood from the back door all the way up to where he was standing. He looked in front of him—no blood there.
“Owen, get on the night-vision cameras. Keep a lookout for any Chinese patrols. Anthony, radio chatter. Anything that pops across the airwaves, put it up on the speakers.”
“Shit, Nick. You don’t look good, bro,” Michael said, looking at Nick with concern.
“I’m fine.”
“No, really, boss. You look awful. You’re all white and shit,” Pet
er chimed in. He stood up to look more closely at Nick in the red light and noticed the blood trail.
“Fuck. You’re missing half your foot, man,” Gabriel said, grabbing for the Razor’s medical kit.
“Let me take a look, my friend,” Petkov said, groaning as he pulled himself off of one of the collapsible racks.
“You a doctor in addition to being a tank commander?” Gabriel asked as Peter helped Petkov to his feet.
“Before my country fell apart, I trained as a medic. Not much use for tank commanders in peacetime.” Petkov grinned, showing uneven, nicotine-stained teeth.
“Better than what I got,” Gabriel shrugged, opening the med kit.
“Sit down, my American friend,” Petkov told Nick, moving him to the rack he’d just vacated. “How is the pain?”
“It wasn’t bad until I noticed it. Now, it hurts like a motherfucker.”
“As well it should.” Petkov turned to Gabriel. “Big man with tattoos—”
“Gabe.”
“Yes. I need you to get a flashlight,” he directed. “Aim it at the wound. I need to see what I’m dealing with.” Petkov snapped on a pair of latex gloves from the medical kit.
Gabriel pulled his flashlight from his cargo pocket and pointed it at Nick’s wrecked right foot. Initially, all any of them could see was blood and dirt, but Petkov wiped away the mess with a fistful of gauze.
“How bad is it?” Nick asked, straining to look down at his foot.
“Do not move. Gabe, flashlight a little to the right, please. Thank you. You’re missing most of your toes, and you’re still bleeding pretty bad.” Petkov shook his head.
“Hoo-freaking-ray,” Nick grumbled.
Petkov leaned in closely. “The black man. What is his name?” the Russian whispered.
“Pete.”
“Ah, yes. Pete. Do you see the small red injectors at the top of the medical kit?” Petkov said in his normal voice, leaning away from Nick.
47 Echo Page 13