by Peter Nealen
“Where are the rest?” he asked, as they shuffled past him.
“I don’t know,” Jenkins grunted. “They went in after Bevan. We were holding the team room and the tunnel intersection. The bad guys rushed us anyway.”
“Get him out there,” Flanagan said, keeping his eyes and his muzzle pointed down the tunnel, deeper into the complex. “Where are you hit, Kirk?”
The pained breath the bearded man took didn’t bode well. “Think I’ve got a sucking chest wound,” he said. “Getting hard to breathe.”
“Get him out there, get a chest seal on him, and stab him,” Flanagan snapped. He didn’t know how long it had been since Kirk had been hit, but sucking chest wounds were nothing to screw around with.
He waited until they were well past him, then started falling back, careful not to turn his back on the tunnel for long. If they’d been cut off, he didn’t expect that it would be anything but a matter of time before a second counterattack came after them.
Glancing over his shoulder, he saw that they were out of the tunnel, Jenkins almost dropping Kirk as he tried to lower him to the inside of the parapet. Kirk was wincing, even as Gomez shoved Jenkins out of the way, knife in hand and a pair of adhesive chest seals sticking out of his chest rig. Gomez started cutting Kirk’s shirt away while Jenkins watched, breathing hard and wide-eyed.
Flanagan turned and raced the rest of the way back outside, barricading himself on the tunnel entrance, his rifle still trained up the passageway. “Jenkins, make yourself useful and get on security,” he snapped. It still amazed and aggravated him sometimes how much Jenkins had to be reminded to do things. The guy made a big deal about his SEAL background, but he was pretty much the low man on the team, performance-wise.
He hadn’t done anything egregious enough for Brannigan to kick him to the curb, yet, but sometimes Flanagan found himself kind of wishing that he’d go ahead and leave or get fired for something dumb before he got another Blackheart killed.
Maybe he was being unfair. But a small team can rarely afford to carry one of its members.
He kept his thoughts to himself as he watched the tunnel. Was that movement down there?
Then a harsh buzz sounded overhead and Curtis swore, the curse getting cut off by a short burst of machinegun fire. The drone that had just dived toward them shattered into a hundred pieces of plastic and aluminum, tumbling down onto the hillside.
“I think we’re going to have company soon,” Curtis said. “About time. I was starting to think that the boys inside were going to get all the action.”
“Shut up, Kevin,” Flanagan growled. Then there wasn’t time for any other comments or observations.
A muted pop sounded from deeper into the tunnel, and a canister about the size of a Coke can sailed through the air to hit the rock floor of the tunnel, spewing a thick, white cloud that quickly filled the passage.
Flanagan thought it was smoke, at first, but then he felt the first peppery bite in his nostrils.
“CS!” he roared. “Get the hell out!”
He started scrambling back from the tunnel mouth, wishing he had a frag to lob back at the team he knew was coming down on them, probably equipped with gas masks, just as a storm of bullets raved overhead, the snaps of their passage through the thin mountain air thick enough to form a crackling roar. A few glanced off the rocks above them, showering him with chips of shattered stone and ricocheting away with angry whines.
The tear gas was already starting to billow out of the tunnel and into the redoubt, though. If they stayed much longer, they were going to be sitting ducks.
He pumped half a dozen rounds into the clouded tunnel to give the enemy something to think about as Curtis and Bianco returned fire up the hillside toward the second defensive position. Flanagan’s eyes were starting to stream, and he was suppressing a cough that wasn’t going to hold back much longer.
“Get out!” he croaked, grabbing Jenkins and shoving him toward the parapet as Curtis’ and Bianco’s fire beat back some of the incoming machinegun fire. Gomez was still slapping the last chest seal on Kirk, who was looking gray.
“Come on, man,” he said, hooking an arm under Kirk’s armpit, while Gomez took the other one. Kirk’s breathing was getting noticeably labored, but there was only so much they could do while under fire. “We can’t stay here.”
Kirk wheezed as he sat up, momentarily forestalling them as the two men started hauling him over the parapet. He reached for his rifle and his chest rig, barely grasping them, and clasped them to his chest as Flanagan and Gomez dragged him over the lip and onto the hillside outside. The covering fire lulled for a moment as both Curtis and Bianco bailed, Bianco already starting to cough as the tear gas attacked his throat.
No sooner had Kirk’s boots cleared the parapet than figures loomed out of the spreading cloud of CS gas, led by a massive shaved ape of a man in tight-fitting black fatigues and carrying an MP7. All four of them had gas masks on.
Flanagan dropped Kirk, slapping his hand back onto his rifle, and opened fire almost before he’d spotted his own sights. That close, he almost didn’t have to.
His first shots hammered into the black-clad man, hitting him in the shoulder. The impact rocked the man, but didn’t stop him. It did, however, throw his aim off, sending the burst of 4.6mm rounds high and right, over Flanagan’s shoulder, and buying him a split second’s worth of time.
He got his buttstock into his shoulder as the black-clad giant bore down on him, and dumped three more rounds into him. The first two could have covered a fifty-cent piece over the man’s sternum. The third blew through the bridge of his nose, shattering the faceplate of his gas mask and blasting out the back of his skull. His momentum carried him forward as he fell, and his head bounced off the parapet, inches from Flanagan’s muzzle. Plastic crunched as the remains of the mask shattered against the concrete.
The men in gray behind him dropped flat as Bianco twisted around, dragging his MAG-58 with him, and stitched a long burst over the top of the parapet. More rock chips and grit showered down as the 7.62mm bullets chewed into the hillside above the tunnel.
“Down!” Flanagan bellowed. He’d only counted four of the bad guys, but they were now out in the open, and those four had cover. “Into the creek bed!” It felt a lot like retreating, but he didn’t see as they had any other choice.
They scrambled down the bank, chased by gunfire from above as well as from the four men huddled in the redoubt they’d just dismounted. Fortunately, none of the closer enemy shooters were confident enough to stick their heads up and aim; they’d just watched their leader get his head blown half off, and then almost lost their own to very close-range machinegun fire. They were going to try to get fire superiority first.
Bullets snapped and cracked around them, kicking up gouts of dirt and shattered rock, clipping off bits of the tough, arid vegetation as they slid and stumbled down into the dry creekbed, where several gray-clad bodies still lay uphill from them. In a moment, they were down behind cover, but the enemy had the run of the hillside above.
Flanagan got his feet under him and popped up over the bank, in time to catch one of the gray-clad security men peeking over the parapet, only a few yards away. He took a hasty shot; he missed, but the man’s helmeted head vanished. However, a moment later, Flanagan was forced back down behind cover as another long burst of machinegun fire raked the bank in front of him. The machinegunner up above, in the second defensive position, was hammering them hard.
“We’re going to have to move up,” he said, as more fire from both directions cracked overhead, kicking dirt and grit onto them from the near side of the bank as well as digging gouges into the far side. “We’re dead if we stay here.” He looked at Kirk, who was up on a knee, though he was obviously in a lot of pain; he was pale and his chest was heaving. “You going to make it, Kirk?”
“Try and fucking leave me,” Kirk snarled, though his voice was more of a weak rasp.
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” F
lanagan said. “But I think you’re going to stay with Kev and Vinnie. Mario, George, and I will be the maneuver element.” He looked at Curtis, who was huddled under the bank, his MAG-58 pointed up toward the higher position, though he was still under cover, just ready to pop up and lay down fire. “You guys give us a couple minutes to get a little higher, then give ‘em hell. We’ll try to move in and see if we can take that upper position.”
“Roger,” Bianco said. He was in a similar position, just farther back down the creekbed. He’d be in a better position to engage the redoubt that they’d just bailed out of.
Flanagan didn’t say anything more. It wasn’t his way. He just got his feet under him, staying crouched in almost a duck walk to stay below the top of the bank, and started up the draw.
It was a punishing movement. The sandy bottom of the creekbed didn’t make for the best footing, and his back and his knees started to ache almost immediately. The effort of continuing to move in that position soon had him gasping for breath, but the bullets snapping overhead provided plenty of incentive to stay as low as possible. Only the need for haste kept him from getting down on his belly and crawling.
But as the bank dipped to his right, he suddenly had to do just that. They had moved out of the Front machinegunner’s cone of fire, but when he glanced up, he could just see the faint outline of the fortified position above them, over the top of the bank. And Curtis hadn’t opened fire yet.
His timing couldn’t have been more fortuitous, though. No sooner had he hit the dirt than he looked up and spotted movement in the brush ahead, just around the slight bend in the creekbed.
So, the Front was trying to flank them again.
It didn’t take much to get his rifle aimed in. He hadn’t been low-crawling, with it held off to one side in one hand. And as soon as the sights covered the blurry silhouette of a man in gray, half-concealed by the bend and already starting to aim his AUG, Flanagan squeezed the trigger.
He hammered three shots into the man, who flopped with a blood-curdling scream. He kept screaming, too; Flanagan hadn’t killed him outright, but he was in a lot of pain.
That was when Gomez slithered up beside him and shot another one on the near bank. Sand and grit blasted away from his muzzle, and despite the rattle and crackle of small arms fire, Flanagan thought he heard a body slump and fall.
Then Curtis opened up from behind them, pouring a long burst up the mountainside. That gave them the opening they needed.
Flanagan and Gomez hardly needed to communicate except by a glance. They both scrambled up to their feet and rushed forward, each moving to the nearest bend in the creekbed before dropping down behind the best cover they could find. In Flanagan’s case, that was the bend itself. Gomez had to wedge himself back into a slight, crumbling overhang on the far side.
He’d lost track of exactly where Jenkins was, aside from behind them, but he was more focused on the threat in front of them, as the Front shooters opened fire, realizing that their flanking maneuver was compromised. More bullets gouged sand out of the creekbed, but the two Blackhearts were already down and aiming in.
Flanagan quickly tracked in on a man down on a knee, several yards behind the one Gomez had shot. He blasted him, pumping a round into his front plate before punching a hammer pair into his skull from twenty yards away. The man flopped like a landed fish, and then Flanagan was shifting targets, only to see the next man fall on his face.
Then they were up and moving again. Behind them, they could hear the MAG-58s roaring, pouring five- to eight-round bursts into the Front positions.
They had to move fast. The machinegunners didn’t have enough ammo to keep this up indefinitely.
The two of them surged up the creekbed, heads down and legs pumping as the sand kept slipping and giving under their boots. They didn’t just make a run for it; there was no telling how many more Front shooters were up that way. Instead, they dashed from cover to cover, even when that cover was little more than an undercut in the bank or a faint curve in the bed.
Two more loomed suddenly ahead of them, both bent almost double to stay below the banks, the same as the Blackhearts. Flanagan almost ran right into one of them. In fact, his muzzle was practically touching the man’s chest when he pulled the trigger.
The impact of the bullet was like a hammer blow, and the man in gray staggered and fell to a knee. It gave Flanagan the split second he needed to lift his barrel a few inches and blast him in the face.
The muzzle blast tore skin and blood splashed from the puckered, smoking entry wound in the man’s forehead. He fell onto Flanagan, leaking blood and brains from a smashed skull. Flanagan heaved the corpse away, not even feeling disgust in the heat of the moment at the blood splattered on him. He was more worried about staying alive.
Gomez was tangled up with the second man, who had stumbled so close that he’d tried to grab Gomez’ rifle instead of shooting him. They struggled in the sand; Gomez was a strong man, but his opponent outweighed him by what looked like a good thirty pounds, and had already hooked a boot behind his leg. The two of them went down in the sand, thrashing.
Flanagan didn’t dare try to shoot the Front soldier. He might hit Gomez, given how closely they were grappling.
But he wasn’t an indecisive man by nature. Yanking his short but razor-sharp knife out if its sheath, he dashed across, risking another enemy’s fire from farther up the draw, slinging his rifle to his side as he went.
He slammed into the man from behind, grabbing his high-cut helmet and yanking backward, almost pulling the man off of Gomez by main force. He felt more than heard a crack of popping vertebrae as he pulled, and then he jammed his knife blade up under the man’s jaw.
For a brief second, the man stiffened, transfixed by the cold steel penetrating into his brain. It was as if he hadn’t quite figured out what had happened just yet. Then he spasmed and went limp.
Flanagan flung him off and helped Gomez up. Jenkins had caught up, and was on a knee where Flanagan had been a moment before, his rifle still pointed up the draw, but he wasn’t shooting.
The bursts of machinegun fire from below were getting somewhat more hesitant and sporadic. Curtis and Bianco must have been getting worried about their ammunition supplies.
“Move,” Flanagan rasped. They couldn’t afford to get bogged down, not then and there. And they still had about another fifty yards to go before they could get up out of the creekbed.
They kept going. That fifty yards felt more like fifty miles. In some places, the bank was high enough that they could sort of run, crouched down almost double and still under cover. In other places, they had to crawl. But finally, if he was judging things right, they were past their target, and could come at it from above and on the flank.
Flanagan paused under the bank, gasping for breath. He was thoroughly smoked; only sheer cussedness was keeping him moving. But that cussedness had gotten him through a lot over the years, and he wasn’t going to stop then.
They’d come too far to quit. Besides, quitting meant dying, and he was pretty sure that Rachel wasn’t ready for that to happen.
He looked at Gomez and Jenkins. Jenkins looked a lot worse than he felt; the man looked about ready to collapse. Gomez, infuriatingly, was as calm and collected as ever.
Flanagan keyed his radio. “Gambler, Woodsrunner. Shift fire in ten seconds.”
“Roger,” Curtis replied.
Gomez hefted a rock from the creekbed in one hand. Flanagan looked at it, and figured it out in a moment. He grinned tightly. Gomez was a sneaky bastard.
Flanagan found another rock about the same size and plucked it out of the sand. They didn’t have frag grenades, but the rocks were about the right size, and might make the machinegunner up there panic just long enough to give them an advantage.
They clambered up over the bank quickly, fighting for purchase on the crumbling earth beneath them. Then they were up, barely a dozen yards below the emplacement, where a man in gray was leaning into an HK 21, c
oming back up as Curtis lifted his fire.
Both men heaved their rocks, which clattered into the emplacement behind the machinegunner. But he must have been too deafened by the machinegun fire to have heard them land, because he didn’t even flinch.
There was nothing for it. Flanagan rose up, steadying his sights on the man’s helmeted head even as the machinegunner noticed him out of his peripheral vision. The man turned toward him, his eyes widening, and started to swing the machinegun toward the creekbed, but Flanagan and Gomez both shot him first.
His head jerked back under the twin impacts, then slumped down onto the HK 21’s buttstock before he slid out of sight under the parapet.
Flanagan rushed forward, leading the way over the lip of the parapet with his rifle. The machinegunner had been alone; apparently, the site’s security detachment was getting spread a little thin. He hauled himself laboriously into the emplacement, covering the tunnel entrance in the back, as Gomez followed.
Only then did he notice that Jenkins had lagged well behind; the former SEAL was just then getting out of the creekbed.
Flanagan let it go. It could be dealt with in the hot wash after the mission.
If there was a hot wash.
He turned downhill, laying his rifle atop the parapet and finding the lower emplacement through his scope. The tear gas had mostly cleared away, and he had a good shot at the three men still trying to shoot at Bianco and Kirk.
He aimed slightly low; shooting downhill added some interesting complexities to the ballistics he was estimating on the fly. He didn’t have the time or the mental energy to do the math. So, he just aimed at the base of his target and fired.
The man jerked. A hit. Flanagan shot him again, just to be sure, then shifted fire to the next man, who had just noticed they were taking fire from uphill. By then, it was too late, and as the man lifted his AUG to shoot back, Flanagan’s bullet took him through the collarbone, smashing through his lung. He dropped, the faint sound of his gurgling screams drifting up the hill to the emplacement.