47 Echo

by Kupfer, Shawn

  “What is that?” Bryce asked, glancing over.

  “Looks like the lobby.”

  Bryce’s face broke into a wide smile. “I like the way you think, boss. We’re doing about forty—want to open the doors for me?”

  Nick nodded, aiming one of the Razor’s rocket pods at the lab, now rapidly growing on their front monitors.

  “Guys! Get ready to start shooting!” Nick yelled as he fired two rockets into the lab’s wall. The Razor, now only two hundred yards from the wall, rocked slightly with the force of the explosion as Bryce hammered the Razor through the newly-created hole in the wall.

  “CDMs inbound!” Christopher yelled from his turret.

  “Close the door behind us, will ya?” Nick yelled back. He heard the massive .50 caliber guns firing, tearing huge chunks out of the second floor. Nick saw the debris falling on the rear camera feed, blocking off the hole with a mountain of rubble.

  “They’ll punch through that before long,” Bryce told him.

  “Let ‘em. They can’t shoot what they can’t see. ETA on the lobby?”

  “Just through that block of offices up there.”

  Bryce stepped on the accelerator and crashed through a cluster of desks and cubicles. Nick could see what looked like scientists in white coats scattering left and right in front of the Razor. Not all of them made it. Even over the booming of the big .50 caliber guns, Nick was sure he could hear bones crunching under the vehicle’s huge tires. He tried to shut out the sound, imaginary or not, as the Razor smashed through one more wall and ended up in a large, open area surrounded by balconies looking up to the other five floors. Bryce slammed on the brakes, and Nick hopped out of his chair, shrugging into his Kevlar vest and grabbing his weapons and rope.

  “Okay, gents! Light up anything that moves! Give me five minutes, then get the hell out of here, lock the Razor, and put the weapons on automatic. Leave it in stealth mode. That should keep ‘em nice and confused for a minute or two.”

  “I’m setting the detonator for five minutes. I’ll trip it right before we roll out,” Martin told him.

  “Good man.”

  “Good luck, boss.” Bryce nodded to Nick, slipping into the seat in front of the weapons station.

  “You too, guys.”

  Nick slipped on his TotalVis goggles and jumped out of the Razor’s passenger door, slamming it behind him and breaking into a run as soon as his boots hit the carpet.

  Chapter 33

  Shut Down (Annihilation Man)

  Nick broke left from the nearly invisible Razor, the floorplans he’d downloaded appearing in a ghost image over his left eye. The plans indicated a stairwell forty feet down the hallway in front of him. As he ran, Nick pulled one of the Glock 50s from his belt and held it up in front of him. Even with extended twenty-round clips, Nick knew he only had eighty bullets to get him through the next ten minutes.

  According to the information Mary had stolen on the lab, Nick knew that there were at least three hundred Chinese soldiers and twice that many North Korean ones, in addition to four hundred staff. Eighty rounds versus almost a thousand and a half men with guns wasn’t going to get him very far, at least not if he rushed in with guns blazing.

  “We’ve got you on locators, boss. We’ll try to clear your path as much as possible,” he heard Bryce say in his earpiece.

  Nick threw open the door to the stairwell, and even before he stepped through it, he could hear shouting in Korean and a whole lot of footsteps. He was about to radio the Razor but realized he didn’t need to as he heard .50 caliber rounds tearing through the walls above him. He heard shouting and saw blood splatter onto the landing just in front of him accompanied by clouds of plaster dust.

  “You’re clear to the fourth floor,” Christopher told him.

  Nick rushed up the stairs, his boots splashing in the blood and plaster on the landing as he turned right. The steps in front of him were littered with bodies—at least twenty, by Nick’s quick count. As he stepped over the dead North Korean soldiers, Nick reached out with his left hand and snagged one of the dropped Chinese assault rifles. He ran by the huge hole in the wall Christopher had opened with the Razor’s guns, taking the stairs three at a time until he’d reached the door to the fourth floor. A test of the handle found it locked.

  According to the plans floating in front of his left eye, the door was made of bullet-resistant steel, and the locking mechanism was set to seal off the door if it was damaged or tampered with. Unfortunately, the engineers that designed the building hadn’t thought to reinforce the area around the door—Nick quickly placed four C-4 charges Martin had put together for him at each of the four corners of the door, ran up the flight of stairs to the next landing, and detonated the explosives.

  Bang! The hallway filled with smoke. As the smoke cleared, he saw the door had fallen completely out of the wall and was lying flat on the landing below.

  Nick flew down the flight of stairs, landing with both feet on the metal door. He brought up his assault rifle in front of him and ran out into the hall. Room Thirteen was at the opposite side of the floor, almost five hundred feet away. He ran down the hall, following the map displayed in his goggles. It indicated he would turn right at the end of the hall, but Nick could already hear soldiers coming from that direction.

  Nick stopped for a moment and punched a few commands into the assault rifle’s small computer, then slid it out in front of him into the hall. It began firing almost immediately, throwing bullets at just above ground level until it exhausted its hundred-round clip. Nick heard screams and shouts in Chinese. He took off his goggles and inched the right lens around the corner quickly, taking a snapshot.

  Nick slipped the goggles back on and brought up over his right eye the image it had captured—six Chinese soldiers, all on the ground, their feet shredded by the assault rifle’s attack. Nick brought up one of his Glocks and rounded the corner, firing as soon as he saw the downed Chinese soldiers. He managed to take them all out before any of them could raise a weapon. As he passed by the now-dead Chinese, he grabbed another assault rifle from the floor and broke into a run yet again.

  “One minute until we light the fuse on this bitch,” Martin radioed.

  Nick grunted a reply and turned to the left when the map told him to. He ended up facing several Chinese soldiers, who opened fire as soon as they saw him. Nick rolled to the side, ending up in an open office to his right. He stuck the assault rifle out the door and opened fire, emptying the clip. The gunfire slowed, but didn’t stop. He listened for a second and counted. He was pretty sure he heard only three guns now. He grabbed a Glock in each hand and dashed out into the hallway, firing as he ran.

  Nick ran straight across the mouth of the hallway, but he’d emptied both Glocks by the time he’d made it across. He dropped them and grabbed another, but only one gun was firing now. If he could manage to wait until that soldier reloaded, he’d have him.

  “Weapon is hot. We’re bailing. See you on the bus, Nick,” Bryce radioed. “Watch the CDMs on your way out.”

  Five minutes to nuclear detonation. Better get moving. Nick sprang out into the hallway and opened fire.

  Bullets slammed into his Kevlar vest, knocking him back but not down. The last remaining soldier was crouched behind the bodies of his fallen comrades, firing his assault rifle as soon as Nick stepped into the hall. The three shots Nick got off went wild, and he retreated back into the open office door.

  Shit. That busted up a couple of ribs, Nick swore at himself. He inched his Glock around the corner and fired five times, then popped his head out. The last surviving Chinese soldier was just popping back up from behind his corpse shield, and Nick fired five more rounds. Two of them caught the Chinese soldier in the face.

  Nick chucked the third now-empty Glock aside as he hurdled the pile of bodies. He knew he didn’t have time to stop and pick up another assault rifle. Room Thirteen was only another two hundred feet down the hall, and Nick covered the distance in less than
fifteen seconds. As he rounded the corner and came face-to-face with the room’s door, he saw a young North Korean scientist just leaving the room.

  Nick reached out a hand to grab the man. “Open that door!” he yelled.

  Before his hand could grab the young scientist’s coat, the scientist wrapped his hand around Nick’s wrist and twisted hard. Nick spun around, breaking the scientist’s hold on his wrist, and threw a quick right-handed punch at the man’s head. The scientist dodged quickly and easily, and his left foot shot out and caught Nick in his bruised ribs. Before Nick could react, the scientist landed a powerful punch to the side of his head, knocking the TotalVis goggles to the floor.

  “You’re pretty good,” Nick spat, his right foot shooting out toward the scientist’s midsection.

  “Better than you,” the scientist said, his English perfect as he dodged the kick and spun low, his leg shooting out under Nick.

  Nick jumped, landing with both feet on the ground, and fired his left hand at the scientist’s face. The scientist caught his hand and snapped the wrist to the side—Nick felt bones twist the wrong way and, after a moment’s resistance, snap. There was a momentary white-hot flash of pain, and Nick heard crunching as the scientist let go of his wrist. He knew it was broken, probably in more than one place.

  A pair of arms wrapped around the scientist’s neck from behind in a flawless MCMAP-style choke and, after a quick struggle, the scientist dropped to the floor. Christopher stood behind the scientist, two M4’s slung over his back.

  “Frankly, man, I’m hurt. You were gonna commit an armed robbery without me. That’s what I do, man.” Christopher smiled.

  “Good to see you. Let’s get the unit and get the fuck out of here,” Nick panted. He studied the small screen next to the door, which had instructions in Korean on the left and Chinese on the right.

  “What’s it say?”

  “We need a palmprint and a retinal scan to get in.”

  Christopher hauled the unconscious scientist to his feet, and Nick pressed the man’s right hand to the screen, which flashed green after a second. Nick next held the man’s right eye open and pressed his face to the screen, which again flashed green. Room Thirteen’s door popped open, and Nick and Christopher dashed inside.

  The EM-pulse prototype sat on a simple table in the center of the small room, hooked to a netbook running calculations. Nick pulled a length of rope from around his chest, cutting it off at about three feet with his Ka-bar. He quickly tied the ends of the rope to mounting rings on either end of the EM-pulse unit, then unhooked the netbook and tossed it to Christopher. Nick slung the device over his back, then took one of the M4s from Christopher.

  “We’re spun up. Three minutes, forty-five seconds,” Nick heard Johnny in his ear.

  “On the way to you,” Nick radioed back.

  “We’re not gonna have time to run back down those stairs and out of the building,” Christopher said quietly.

  Nick took the rest of the rope from his belt and held it up. “We’re taking the express elevator.”

  There was a window just outside the room. Nick tossed one end of the rope to Christopher, who started tying it to a support column just down the hall. Nick raised the M4 and sent several rounds through the window, shattering the glass. He used the butt of the rifle to clear the windowframe then tossed the other end of the rope out through the open hole.

  Nick nodded for Christopher to go first. The taller man grabbed hold of the rope and jumped out the window, rappelling down the side of the lab. Nick followed suit, and the two Echoes were on the ground seconds later.

  The helipad was a hundred yards away, and Nick could see gunfire spewing from the huge MI-26TC chopper that was already spinning up on the pad.

  “Got a lot of resistance between us and them,” Nick told Christopher.

  “Run and gun?”

  “Like a motherfucker.”

  The two men set off, rifles up and ready to fire. They were coming at the North Korean unit’s back, and the personnel in the chopper were doing a pretty good job of cutting them down. Nick and Christopher easily mopped up the rest, hopped over the corpses and ran up the steps to the helipad. Gabriel and Anthony were crouched outside the doors, rifles up.

  “Gabe. You’re shot, brother,” Nick commented, noticing the blood streaming down Gabriel’s left arm.

  “No worse than anyone else.” Gabriel grunted, helping Nick into the chopper.

  “Wheels up in twenty seconds, or we’re all dead!” Johnny yelled from the chopper’s co-pilot seat.

  Nick tossed his M4 into the chopper, hopped in and reached out to help Christopher in. As the chopper’s wheels left the pad, another bullet slammed into Nick’s armor, knocking him back before Christopher could grab his arm.

  “Fuck! Chris!”

  “I got him!” Gabriel yelled, sliding forward, his body halfway out of the helicopter. Christopher grabbed his arms, and Anthony and Nick grabbed Gabriel’s legs as the chopper lifted away from the ground, Christopher dangling underneath.

  Chapter 34

  Speak of the Devil

  The chopper was three miles away and five thousand feet up when the nuke detonated. Martin counted down, shouting over the rotor noise.

  “Four! Three! Two! One!” Martin yelled as Nick slipped on his sunglasses.

  He’d seen video of nuclear explosions before, but the reality of the sight wasn’t anything he was prepared for. Even through his polarized lenses, the flash was blinding—he worried for a second that he’d done some permanent damage until his vision started to clear. The next thing he saw was a huge mushroom cloud, and a half-second later he felt the heat of the explosion on his face.

  “Don’t worry—we’re flying upwind. Fallout’s headed the other direction,” Martin told him. The scarred guy was smiling wider than Nick had ever seen a man smile; the combination of the glowing teeth and scarred face was more than a little disturbing.

  “Holy fuck,” Peter breathed, pausing in the middle of tying a tourniquet over the bullet wound on his leg.

  “Yeah. Some days, I fucking love my job.” Martin laughed.

  “All right,” Nick said, standing and walking up to the front of the helicopter. Carson was in the pilot’s seat, and Major Evans sat next to him. “How bad are our casualties?”

  “Ryan got the worst of it. Took a bullet just below the neck. Freddie and Gabe are working on him now.”

  “He gonna live?”

  “Hope so.”

  “You?”

  “Shot a couple of times. Nothing fatal,” Johnny said, holding up his quickly bandaged right arm.

  “Yeah, I noticed Gabe took a bullet to the shoulder.”

  “Him and everyone else. Roge’s the only one who didn’t get hit, lucky bastard. You should get that hand looked at, by the way.”

  “It’s just broken.” Nick shrugged.

  “Don’t think so,” Johnny said.

  Nick looked down and realized he was trailing blood through the helicopter’s cabin. He did a quick count of the number of fingers on his left hand and came up two short—the ring and little fingers were gone. “Huh. Didn’t even notice.”

  “You’re in shock, sir. It’ll start to hurt really soon,” Carson said.

  “Marines.” Johnny shook his head.

  “I’m gonna plug this up and see if I can help with the wounded. How long until we hit the extraction?”

  “According to the coordinates your guy Bryce gave me, about two hours.”

  “Comms?” Nick asked.

  “Still jammed. Could be interference from the nuke. I’ll keep on it.”

  “Thanks, Johnny.” Nick walked to the back of the aircraft, to where Freddie and Gabriel were working to extract a bullet from Ryan’s upper chest. There were several open medical kits, and rather than disturb their work, Nick just grabbed a couple of gauze pads and some tape and wrapped the stubs where his fingers had been.

  “Hold up, Lieutenant. I should really take a look at
those. You’re bleeding pretty bad,” Freddie said.

  “Concentrate on him. I’ll live.”

  “Not if you bleed to death. Gabe? You got this?”

  “I’ll yell if I get into trouble.”

  “Good man. Let me see the hand, Lieutenant.”

  Nick sighed and held his hand out to the sitting medic. Freddie looked over the hand for a second then pulled a small device out of his medical kit. He pressed it to the stumps where Nick’s fingers used to be, and the blood flow stopped almost immediately.

  “What was that?”

  “Ultrasonic coagulation. We’ll want to keep an eye on that hand. I don’t like the looks of it. But at least you won’t bleed out now.”

  “Good enough. Got any spare supplies? I’ll see what I can do for the other guys.”

  “You have any medical training?”

  “Grew up with an older brother. In Texas.”

  “Good enough,” Freddie said, tossing one of the helicopter’s North Korean medical kits to Nick.

  “Nick! We have a problem!” Johnny yelled from the cockpit about an hour and a half later, just as Nick had finished bandaging a cut on Michael’s forehead.

  “What’s up?” he asked, running to the front of the chopper.

  “We’re getting North Korean radio traffic. I don’t speak much Korean, but I’m pretty sure it’s directed at us. We don’t answer, they’re gonna send something to blow us out of the sky.”

  “Gabe! Ryan conscious?” Nick yelled to the back of the chopper.

  “That’s a negative, sir. We’ve got him pretty sedated.”

  “Can you bring him out of it?”

  “Not a good idea.”

  “Shit,” Nick muttered.

  Mary came up to the front of the cabin, opening her netbook and typing furiously.

  “You said you speak a little Korean, right, Major?”

  “Just what I learned from Ryan. Mostly swear words, really.”