“Brace yourselves. This is going to hurt,” Logan said, and dropped to the floor, his back snug against the base of the control panel.
The trained slowed a little bit more, and then it crashed into the boulders and trees with a deafening roar that stretched into the night.
CHAPTER 34
Cole and Thomas crossed the tracks at a sprint and angled toward the reverse L-shaped building Skybird had called out earlier. Cole glanced to his right and saw six weapons ranges from twenty-five to one hundred yards long. These guys built this place with everything in mind.
“They’re at least twenty yards into the forest. I’m getting IR signatures, but the canopy is partially concealing them,” Skybird said.
Cole increased his pace, and Thomas matched him. Twenty seconds later, they reached the edge of the forest. On this side of the base, it was eerily quiet, although Cole thought he could hear the tiny engine of the ScanEagle UAV several thousand feet above them. The sounds of the surrounding forest grew in intensity, as if the animals and insects had realized the battle at the base was over, and they were emerging from their hiding places to resume their nocturnal behavior.
“They’re at least thirty-five yards ahead of you and moving at a steady pace,” Skybird said.
“Roger,” Cole replied, as he pulled a Night Owl iGEN night vision monocular from a pouch on the left side of his Kevlar vest. He pressed the top front button and looked through the monocular. The next-generation night-vision device used an infrared emitter on the side of the monocular, which filled the entire eyepiece with the view in front of them. The image lit up in the monocular and created a whitish scene with high contrast. The wall of trees was illuminated, and the path the vice president had taken was clear. A gap in the trees and bushes led into the darkness, and Cole had a large enough field of view to move forward. Beats the hell out of the early generation of AN/PVS-14s, he thought, remembering his infantry days before he chose to try out for Special Forces, ultimately ending up in the First Special Forces Operational Detachment–Delta, colloquially referred to as Delta Force. New names, including the recent Combat Applications Group and Army Compartmented Element, would never change it. Thanks to Chuck Norris and Hollywood, the Unit would always be called Delta Force.
“Going radio silent. Walk me on them. I’ve got night vision on.”
“Roger,” Skybird acknowledged.
Cole turned around to Thomas, and said, “Stay right behind me—and I mean right behind me, as in put your hand on my shoulder as we move. Stop when I stop, and be prepared for anything. This is going to get dicey.”
The Venezuelan was unfazed. “After the day we’ve had? Bring it on, bitches.”
Cole suppressed most of a laugh. “You’re brave or crazy, but either works right now. Get ready.”
Cole slung the M4 Commando around and onto his back and withdrew the suppressed Glock. With the Night Owl in his left hand, the pistol offered greater accuracy and maneuverability in the nighttime forest.
He stepped into the woods, and the world behind him disappeared. Instinctively, his senses heightened, a sensation as comfortable and familiar to him as breathing. He just hoped that Thomas wouldn’t panic when things got intense, as he knew they would. The night had a way of amplifying everything.
Cole moved quickly, the Night Owl allowing him to navigate easily through the dense woods. He knew it was impossible to be perfectly silent in the woods, another myth perpetuated by TV and film. The trick was to minimize the noise and come down softly with each step.
“They’ve stopped. You’re approximately twenty-five yards from them,” Skybird announced.
What the hell? Why stop now? Cole thought.
“There’s a third signature, ten yards from them. I can’t tell who it is,” Skybird said.
Cole moved quickly. They’re meeting someone in the forest, but who? He knew that regardless of who it was, this wasn’t good for himself and Thomas.
“Twenty yards out. Keep going in the same direction. They’re still not moving. Third signature is a little closer but appears to have stopped,” Skybird said. “I do not—I say again—do not have a good visual. The canopy is too thick.”
No turning back now, Cole thought, and picked up the pace.
Ten yards farther he stopped and studied the forest in front of him. Less than thirty feet away, kneeling next to the base of a very large tree, were two figures. Cole couldn’t identify from behind which one was the vice president. Great. I can’t shoot either one then. Need a better vantage point.
With Thomas’s left hand still on his right shoulder, Cole carefully crept to the right in an attempt to gain a better vantage point on the two kneeling men. In the whitish light of the monocular, the two men stared into the forest to their left. Must be waiting for the other guy to join them, Cole thought. Cole stopped, and both men now filled the field of view of the Night Owl.
The man on the right turned to the right, as if distracted by a noise Cole couldn’t hear, and this time, there was no mistaking the features of Vice President Baker. Finally have you in my sights, unfortunately for your partner, Cole thought, and raised the Glock. He aimed it at the back of the Venezuelan soldier. He found the idea of shooting another warrior in the back distasteful, but there was no other choice. The shadow war in which they were engaged had forced all of Task Force Ares to make hard choices, and he knew this was just another one.
He moved his finger off the trigger guard onto the trigger, which was when the terrifying roar of an enormous jungle cat shattered the silence. A jaguar. It has to be. Panic flooded his system, and he froze, calculating his options. A second roar erupted from the right, no more than thirty to forty feet away. This can’t be happening. Jaguars don’t hunt in packs . . . unless it’s mating season.
Thomas’s hand painfully tightened on his shoulder. I know. I know, Cole thought. Like the vice president and the soldier, he knew there was nothing to do but wait to see what the jaguars did.
As if personally mocking them, Mother Earth added another variable to the intense standoff, and the ground started to shake violently.
Breaking his silence, Cole said, “Get ready.” His panic turned to anger, anger that the target of their hunt was directly in front of him, and yet, as if the Fates conspired to stop him, one more obstacle had been thrown in his way: another predator had chosen to hunt the same target. The anger turned to rage, and clarity washed over him. Either we get him or we all die right here. He doesn’t get away from this one, no matter what.
“Oh my God. It’s not a person. It’s an animal. It’s moving right toward—” was all Skybird had time to speak into Cole’s ear as his urgent warning was drowned out by the aftershock and the horrified scream of the jaguar’s prey.
* * *
The engine shook violently back and forth, and Logan wasn’t sure the train would reach the barricade of boulders and trees. Just might fall off the tracks and die that way, realizing a moment later he’d thought too soon.
The engine crashed into the boulders with a deafening explosion that sent a vibration rattling through every surface. Logan was pressed hard against the panel, but he held his hands over his head and pressed down, which prevented his head from whipping back against it.
Several grunts of pain and one shout mingled with the roar of the crash as the train rapidly decelerated. Logan couldn’t distinguish between the aftershock and the trembling from the slow-motion train wreck. Six half one dozen, or whatever the fuck that stupid saying is, he thought, praying the ride would end. This makes me actually want to ride Amtrak, he thought, something he’d vowed never to do again considering how mismanaged and dangerous the public railway system was.
There was a loud crash from the back of the engine, and the train suddenly accelerated as the first and second cars broke free. More booms and crashes reverberated from behind the engine, and Logan realized the other two cars had derailed. We’re next, he thought, and on that point, he wasn’t wrong.
With the sudden burst in speed, increased by the decline of the tracks, the train hit a curve to the left and started to lean to the right. The train suddenly dropped as the front of the engine hit a patch where the track had been destroyed, leaving nothing but a ten-foot gap where the section of track had crumbled to the side. The nosedive was brief, but the engine struck the tracks and earth, taking an enormous gouge out of the forest floor and digging forward. As the forward momentum violently ceased, the engine fell to the right, and the rear of the car slid around, shattering small trees that lined the dirt road along the tracks. The engine landed on its right side and kept sliding, and dirt and debris shot into the cab through the ruined window.
Just as Logan thought the train wreck would never end, it struck something hard and stopped dead in its dirt tracks.
Logan’s back hurt, but he knew it was a soft-tissue injury that he’d fight through until the day and mission were over. Santiago and Marcos were shaken up, but neither seemed to have suffered any major injuries. In fact, as Logan glanced around, by some miracle he’d thank God for later, none of the occupants was seriously injured.
“Is everyone alive?” Logan asked as he tried to stand on the right side of the engine, which was now the floor.
A series of English and Spanish responses confirmed they were, and Logan said, “Good. Now, let’s get the hell out of this death trap.”
Marcos stood up, a laceration on his forehead trickling blood down the right side of his face, creating a black line in the darkness. “Well, I can cross ‘nearly die in a train wreck’ off my bucket list.”
“Keep hanging out with us, and this will become so commonplace you won’t even notice it. Be just like riding a bike,” Logan said.
“A bike that could tear you limb from limb,” Marcos retorted.
“And I thought you SF guys were tough,” Logan shot back, and moved to the rear of the cab and bent down. He pushed on the narrow door, which now lay horizontal near the floor. It opened slightly, but then struck something solid. “Not this one. I guess we have to climb up and use the other one,” Logan said, pointing to the horizontal door at the top of the cab.
Santiago climbed up, using the back wall of the cab and its shelves as footholds. Within seconds, he had pushed the door outward and up so that it rested against the side of the engine, propped open. He looked back at the surviving men and said, “See you hombres on the outside,” and disappeared out the narrow door.
“I think that’s the first semi-joke I’ve heard him utter since we met him,” Logan said.
“I’m sure nearly dying in a train crash brought out the best in him,” Marcos replied, quickly turning serious. “I just hope someone stayed up at the base in case Baker tried to make a break for it.”
“Let’s just get the hell out of this cab,” Logan said.
Minutes later, freed from the confines of the cab and standing on the left side of the engine, which had become the top of the train in the crash, Logan surveyed the wreckage. The passenger car had flipped off the right side of the tracks, still attached to the boxcar. At least the front part of it, Logan thought. The boxcar had split in two during the crash, and the rear half had tumbled off the left side of the tracks, smashing into trees before coming to rest.
“Hey!” a familiar voice shouted from below. Logan looked down and saw Jack standing behind the open driver’s-side door, one leg still inside the running SUV. “Are you going to stand there all goddamned night and stargaze, or can we go?” Jack shouted. The two SUVs had navigated around the wreckage and parked next to the engine. “I assume the traitor wasn’t on the train. Cole called it as you were racing to hop on. We need to get back up to the base. He stayed up there.”
Logan looked at Marcos, a fresh intensity visible on his face. “Never doubt my guys. Ever,” he said, and hopped off the train and dashed to the front passenger side of Jack’s J70.
* * *
Through the night vision monocular, Cole saw the enormous beast in a dark blur as it pounced on Vice President Baker’s sole escort. The cat had to weigh at least 250 pounds, was nearly six feet in length, and stood as tall as a Great Dane. To see a jaguar up close was terrifying, and as the big cat knocked the Venezuelan soldier to the ground, Cole could only imagine the man’s horror.
The beast pawed at the man’s shoulders, shredding his uniform and upper chest with its long claws. The man shrieked, but the noise was muffled by the squirming and muscular body on top of him. The cat opened its jaws, exposing four long teeth like vampire fangs with a small row of teeth between the upper and lower fangs. With one of the most powerful big-cat bites in the world, the jaguar gripped the struggling man’s head between its jaws and squeezed with more than a thousand pounds of force. Cole imagined the sickening crunch as the large teeth punctured skull and brain, and the screaming ceased, the man’s temporary terror permanently ended.
“Run this way or die, now!” Cole screamed to the vice president over the growling of the cat. “Shoot the other one, Thomas!” The chaos was pure and complete, exponentially exacerbated by the dark forest and intermittent illumination.
The vice president fell backward and away from the jaguar, which still had the dead man’s head inside its mouth. He turned over onto his hands and knees, and in a pure panic, scrambled toward Cole and Thomas. It was all the window that Cole needed, and he opened fire with the suppressed Glock.
Several shots struck the jaguar in the shoulders and the skull, and releasing the soldier’s ruined head, the cat howled in fury and pain. It looked up, directly at Cole, but then shifted its bleeding face toward the vice president. Oh no you don’t, Cole thought, but it was too late.
In a dying attempt, as if to spite Cole and prevent him from obtaining what was rightfully the jaguar’s prize, the cat lunged at the vice president. A huge paw dug into the back of Baker’s right calf, but the mountain cat slowed, as if finally realizing it had been shot multiple times. Cole lowered the monocular, as a beam of brilliant light illuminated the scene.
Several shots rang out from behind Cole as Thomas turned on the high-power LED flashlight attached to his rifle and fired at the second jaguar, which had started to spring toward the fallen vice president.
Cole ignored the loud shots and stepped forward, sighting on the neck of the jaguar. In one last act of defiance, the jaguar bit down on the back of Baker’s leg, and the vice president let out a shriek of pain. Cole fired several rounds into the neck of the dying beast. The animal roared in pain and fury, as if outraged that its life was being taken this way. Blood poured down the side of the animal and onto Baker’s leg. Cole raised the Glock and fired into the side of the animal’s head, stopping its cries and killing it. Its enormous head dropped onto the bloody leg of the vice president, as if resting on him instead of trying to kill him moments before.
The second jaguar nearly reached the vice president, but several shots from Thomas’s AK-103 struck the cat in the side and in the head. Unlike its partner, the cat was stopped in its tracks by 7.62mm bullets, and it collapsed to the forest floor, its head several inches away from the vice president, who trembled in shock and pain at the sudden ferocity of the attack.
Silence once again reasserted itself inside the mountain forest as the aftershock ended, bookmarking the end of the sudden animal attack and brutal violence.
The vice president looked backward and found the strength to crawl forward, freeing himself from beneath the hold of the dead jaguar. He turned to his left and saw the second animal, and he moved a little quicker, eager to put some distance between himself and the dead predators.
“If you try anything, and I mean anything, what I will do to you will make you wish these two had got to you first. Am I clear?” Cole asked, anger in his voice. Not a hunter of animals, a part of him was disgusted that they’d had to kill two magnificent, endangered beasts.
“Yes,” Baker replied simply.
“Good. I’m Cole Matthews, and I assume you know who I am,” Cole stated.
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br /> Baker recognized the name from the brief he’d been provided with on Task Force Ares after the events in Sudan, and he understood, finally, that his long run had ended. There was nowhere left to go, no options to exercise, and no one left to help him. His future lay in the hands of the man who’d just saved him from a savage death, but he understood that what was in store for him might not be that much better, depending on how other events he’d already put into motion had unfolded.
“Thomas, can you please bandage his leg and then help him up? I’m not sure he’s going to be able to walk on that. It looks like it hurts,” Cole said.
“You got it,” Thomas said.
He opened a pouch and pulled out a package of QuickClot Combat Gauze and a roll of medical tape. Within seconds, he’d placed the gauze over the bite and taped it in place. “It’s hasty, but it will stop further bleeding until we can clean it out and sew it up. Now, let’s get you up,” Thomas said, and the vice president put his arm around his shoulder. The two men stood up, and Thomas gave Cole a thumbs-up with a huge grin. “What’s next, boss?”
“Next, you’re going to call off your dogs in Maryland,” Cole said. “Where’s your phone? In the backpack?” he said, indicating the black pack that had fallen off Baker during the attack.
“Yes,” Baker said, and then paused. “But it doesn’t matter.”
A sense of dread fell over Cole, and even before he asked the question, he already knew the answer. You’re not going to live through the night if you did what I think you did. But he asked anyway. “And why is that?”
The vice president looked at him, held his gaze, and responded, “I ordered the strike at the first sound of the drones because I knew it was you guys who’d come for me. And once I called, the team had orders to go silent and off the grid once the mission was complete, no matter who tried to reach them.”
Cole looked at his digital watch. “Christ. That was more than twenty minutes ago. You better pray that our friends are still alive, because if they’re not, Logan will try to find another one of these frisky kitties and feed you to it piece by piece as you watch.”
Rules of War Page 21