by Peter Nealen
Ott had blanched a little at the words “90mm cannon,” and nodded jerkily. Michaels was a bit more composed, but Hank could still see him gulp as he took the explosive.
“Now, show me where you’d start setting these in.” There was no reason not to keep teaching; the more these kids could learn, the more useful they’d be.
And the more they could hurt the bad guys when and if the Triarii had to move on.
Michaels hefted the IED in his hands, though he kept a firm grip with both hands as he did so. While a charge like that wasn’t going to go off if only dropped, he clearly respected the explosives enough that he wasn’t going to get careless.
He turned toward the berms. “My first thought would be to embed them in the berms, but they’re blocking off the road, and would be hitting from the front.” He glanced at Hank as if looking for confirmation that he was on the right track, but saw only the Triarii section leader’s impassive features and dark eyes watching him.
“Most armored vehicles have a sloped glacis in front, which might shrug off the penetrator.” He was thinking aloud, turning his eyes back toward the road. “So, hitting it from the front might not kill it, and if it’s got a 90mm, then we might not get a second chance.” Which, if they were dug in and concealed properly, wasn’t necessarily the case, but Hank let him proceed. They still wanted to take that armored car out first and quickest.
Michaels pointed. “If we set them in alongside the road, aimed slightly up, we should be able to hit them on the flank, taking advantage of the straighter and thinner side armor.” He looked over at Hank again, though not without a curious glance at West, whom he hadn’t seen before.
Hank nodded. “Good answer. Daisy chain, or individual det?”
Michaels squinted as he thought. “Daisy chain?”
Another nod. “They’re going to be stacked up against the berms, so best to set them all off at once. We might miss a few, but if we can get the bulk of them, then the shock should hopefully help us mop up the rest.” He reached into the back and pulled out another EFP, handing it to Ott. He didn’t bring up the second, bigger column that West had warned him about. One problem at a time, at least for these kids to think about.
Must be nice, only having to worry about one problem at a time.
Generally, he preferred to be able to focus on the immediate mission, to the exclusion of most other concerns. However, in his current position, he had to balance the tactical and operational concerns with local relations, coordination with Spencer and 2nd Squad up in Terlingua, the Texas Rangers, the militia, and Wallace’s overall regional command, not to mention the second and third order effects of every decision he made. He’d had to get a lot better at multitasking, as well as thinking in strategic terms.
Hmm. Keep another ten, place them aimed straight up, buried at the ford points. Disable the first one, tie up any vehicles behind. The river itself was too shallow for that to do much more than slow the enemy down, but every little bit helped.
He pulled two more EFPs out. “Ten should do it, spaced about twenty yards apart. Make sure they’re not aimed higher than about six feet at the center of the road; otherwise we might miss.” Handing one of the EFPs to West, he grabbed a long coil of shock tube. Time fuse would take too long; this setup would have to be a combination of command wire and shock tube, which burned so fast that it seemed almost instantaneous.
“Let’s get to work; we don’t have a lot of time.”
Chapter 7
The inside of the command trailer was tense, not a little because most of the squad was there, standing or leaning against the walls, in full gear and carrying their rifles. The only ones missing were Huntsman and Coffee, who were outside finishing up some last-minute preps on the vehicles.
LaForce was next to the door, short, stocky, and dark, his unruly black hair currently unhindered by his helmet. He was listening carefully to the radio, even though Hank had the main one set to the tac net with the speaker on.
Fernandez loomed next to him, six-foot-two and barrel-chested, his salt-and-pepper goatee the only hair on his head. The big Cuban often got ribbed since the section had been assigned in the Southwest for being “the biggest Mexican” any of them had ever seen, but he had usually taken it in stride, responding with jokes about the shit-talker’s intelligence or stature. As usual, he was quiet before action, staring at the floor, rubbing his chin with one thumb.
Moffit wasn’t a big man, but he wasn’t small, either. He’d always looked a little dumpy, his longish, dirty blond hair disheveled, but he was quiet, disciplined, and was rapidly becoming the squad’s go-to man for fieldcraft. He had a talent for it. Blond or not, nobody had ever quite been able to figure out his ethnic background, since he was deeply tanned, and there was a faintly Oriental slant to his blue eyes.
Vega was one of the new guys, tall and skinny, with a prominent nose and a chest that always looked slightly sunken. When he moved, though, the muscles under his coppery skin could be easily seen; he was wiry and a lot stronger than he looked. He kept looking up at every crackle on the radio, his fingers drumming on his rifle.
Evans completed the squad’s “short guy triad” with LaForce and Huntsman. Older than either of the others, he was almost as thickset, though more chiseled, his square jaw made somewhat more pugnacious by the scars on his face. He was shifting his weight constantly, flexing one massive hand.
Bishop was probably the calmest of the lot. He looked a lot like a kid, with his round, baby face despite his shaved head and unfortunately wispy blond beard. He was a lot older than he looked; he’d retired from the Army as a Master Sergeant.
Taylor was slightly shorter than Hank, and ugly as sin. His permanent squint and salt-and-pepper hair buzzed down to a silvery fuzz didn’t help anything. Taylor had been all around the world before he’d joined the Triarii, and if some of the things he’d said implied what Hank thought they did, he’d been in some dark, dangerous, and violent places, and had gotten out alive, albeit with a lot of blood on his hands.
Reisinger was sitting on the floor, his long face looking worried. Reisinger always looked a little worried, though, so Hank didn’t think he was actually as nervous as he looked.
Doc Travis, who could have been Bishop’s brother, had let his blond hair grow out a bit, and had started a mustache that really just looked dirty at this point. He was going through his med bag one more time, just to be sure.
Faris was getting downright fidgety, playing with a knife in one hand. It was an older Benchmade, that could be swung open as soon as the locking tab was pulled back. So, he was pulling the tab back and swinging it open and shut, open and shut.
“Relax, Teagan. You’ll wear yourself out before the fight even starts.” Hank was sitting on a storm case, leaning back against the wall, his rifle across his knees and his helmet on the table next to the radio, which he had turned up.
Still, better an aggressive, hard-charging Teagan Faris who can’t wait to get stuck in than the lazy, undisciplined, conceited Teagan Faris I had in Phoenix, who kept taking his own fuckups out on his squad.
Maybe it had been the crucible of the horrific last stand that had gutted the section in San Diego that had seared a new leaf into Faris’ soul. Or maybe he was just one of those who wasn’t suited to a leadership position, and now that he only had to worry about his own performance, he was doing better. Hank couldn’t be sure. But the change was a welcome one.
He just wished that it hadn’t come with so many nightmares.
“Why are we still sitting around in here?” Faris might have gotten a lot more disciplined and a lot more aggressive, but that didn’t keep him from complaining when he didn’t think that things were going right. “We know they’re coming, right? Why are we waiting for them to come to us?”
“We’ve known they’re coming for the last couple of hours,” Hank pointed out mildly.
“Yeah, that’s kind of my point.” Faris still wasn’t getting it.
Hank looked
over at him and raised an eyebrow. “And why haven’t they moved in that time?”
Faris frowned. He wasn’t the only one, either; several of the others had been getting noticeably restive.
Then the light came on in LaForce’s eyes. “They’re waiting for something.”
“Like what?” Faris still wasn’t happy. “The rest of that fucking regiment or whatever to show up, so they can wash over the town like a fucking tidal wave?” Faris was learning some new metaphors.
“Maybe. But I don’t think so, and if I did, we wouldn’t be sitting here in the middle of town while the militia stay out on the defensive positions with West watching them.”
Faris’ frown deepened. LaForce was thinking. But Huntsman got it first.
“Those trucks that West saw meeting with the Subaru on the way in.”
Hank snapped his fingers and pointed at the thickset redhead. “Give the man a prize.”
Understanding dawned. “You think…”
“I have reason to.” Hank pointed toward the north. “Why else would they roll across that heavy, and then just sit there? They know they got their noses bloodied last night. Add in what West saw at the visitor’s center…”
The radio’s crackle interrupted him.
“Tango India Actual, this is Orphan One.” The callsign had been Arturo’s idea, and Hank hadn’t been able to talk him out of it. He was just glad that Margaret Radcliff wasn’t listening in.
“Send it,” he replied.
“They’re moving.” Arturo’s voice was hushed, but still managed to be high and rushed with excitement. “Six guys just came out of the rental cabin you told me to watch. They’re getting into two pickup trucks…they just turned onto the highway, moving your way.”
“That’s our cue,” Hank said, standing up and slinging his rifle. “Time to dance.”
The others were on their feet in a heartbeat. “Sneaky bastards,” LaForce growled. “Get everybody looking at the heavy stuff on the highway, then the gang-bangers that snuck in while we were working stab us in the back.”
“That were escorted in,” Hank pointed out grimly as he stormed out the door. “We’ll deal with that later.”
The gun trucks were parked just outside the trailer, and it took a matter of seconds to get everybody in and the engines fired up. Then they blasted out of the RV park in a cloud of dust and flying grit, having already been parked facing the highway.
Hank had put some serious thought into the ambush. He’d had a pretty good idea where their infiltrators would be holed up, based on the Subaru owner’s identity. And that put the RV park right in the right place, if they moved fast enough.
The two pickups were just picking up speed on the highway when the Humvee and the two big pickups with bed-mounted machineguns came roaring down the hill toward them.
“Hold on!” Reisinger bellowed as he bore down on the road, aiming the F350 just forward of the lead pickup.
For a second, as they bounced violently off the road and onto the shoulder before surging up onto the highway, it looked like they were going to ram the white F-150 broadside. But the other driver blinked first and yanked the wheel over, swerving toward the shoulder. He hit the softer dirt, lost traction, and started to spin out. Desperate, he overcorrected, and the truck tipped over, still moving fast enough that it rolled twice before coming to a halt on its side in a cloud of dust.
The next one back had braked hard and was trying to reverse out. But the other two Triarii gun trucks were moving fast, coming up on either flank, and as hard as the gangster driver was stomping on the gas, that truck couldn’t reverse as fast as they could drive forward. The driver suddenly turned sharply, probably trying to pull a Y-turn, but before he could throw the vehicle back in “Drive,” the 2500 had braked, and Coffee hammered a 7.62 burst into the Nissan Titan’s hood.
Either that got the message across, or it did enough damage that the driver didn’t want to risk it. The Nissan stopped.
By then, Reisinger had brought the F350 to a stop, only a couple yards from the rollover. Hank kicked his door open and flowed out, his rifle coming up to cover the wrecked pickup over the Ford’s hood as he moved.
Evans and Moffit were right behind him, while Bishop stayed on the gun, covering the wreck. Reisinger had pulled the F350 out in front of the stricken pickup’s hood, so he had a good shot.
Hank circled around, keeping his distance. There was movement inside the cab; they hadn’t hit that hard. So, they were still dangerous.
Glass shattered; someone had kicked out the rear window. Hank moved toward the bed, Evans right next to him, both rifles leveled.
A young man with a shaved head and tattoos crawling over his arms and neck was halfway out of the smashed window. He was bleeding from his forearms, and looked slightly dazed, but as he caught their movement out of the corner of his eye, he looked up, into a pair of suppressed rifle muzzles, held by two big men in full gear and helmets.
The man’s eyes widened, then his face hardened, and he snatched at the old Skorpion machine pistol in a shoulder holster at his side.
It was suicide. There was no other term for it. Almost as one, Hank and Evans spattered the man’s brains across the bed of the truck with a pair of harsh cracks.
Hank stepped to the right, angling his muzzle toward the smashed window. The other two men in the truck were still tangled up, one of them apparently unconscious. The other was trying to get out from under him. He was bleeding, too, and it looked like the man Hank and Evans had just killed might have climbed over both of them.
Hank locked eyes with the conscious man, who had a stylized “MS” tattooed on his forehead. Even without the stare of sheer hatred, that tattoo told Hank he was going to have to kill this man.
His finger was already tightening on the trigger as the man struggled to bring a weapon around. Except that it wasn’t a gun. Hank blew the man’s teeth back through his brainstem at the same time he registered that the marero had a grenade in his hand and had been trying to get the pin out.
More suppressed gunfire rattled farther down the road as the Triarii in the other two trucks dealt with resistance from the second truck. From the sounds of it, that resistance hadn’t lasted long, and there probably weren’t any survivors.
Keeping his rifle trained on the inside of the cab, Hank pointed to the unconscious gangster. “Pull him out.” When Evans slung his rifle across his back and crouched down to take hold of the man’s shoulders, he stopped him. “Carefully. Make sure he’s not wired.” Suicide bombings weren’t normally narco or even SdA tactics, but that marero lying on top of the unconscious man, his brains currently leaking all over their prisoner’s denim jacket, sure hadn’t wanted to be taken alive.
Evans was careful, checking the dead man’s body after gingerly pulling the grenade out of his grasping hand, then moving on to his prisoner, who was starting to move. As he began to tug the man out from under the corpse, the marero started to come to and fight him, which prompted a pressure hold under his jaw. The man groaned, but stopped fighting as Evans hauled him out onto the dirt, rolled him onto his belly, and put a knee in the center of his back. The man groaned again; Evans was short, but he was not a small man, even without his gear.
Hank slung his own rifle and stepped around, crouching in front of their captive. Reaching down, he grabbed the man by his longish hair and pulled his head back so that he could look up at him. The man squinted painfully up at the hatchet-faced Triarii section leader.
“I’m only going to ask this once. How many others?”
“Que?” Hank pulled on the man’s hair, twisting his head so that he could see the dead marero in the truck bed. Then he slammed the man’s face down in the dirt, wrenching his head back up and making his spine pop.
“I’ve got a whole lot of trouble on the way, and not a whole lot of time. If you don’t want to join your buddies as buzzard food, I suggest you start talking.”
There’d been a time when Hank wouldn’t even hav
e considered following through on the threat. He’d had a particular code of honor burned into his very soul from the moment that he’d set foot on the yellow footprints on Parris Island. It wasn’t entirely the Marine Corps’ code, either. But it still overlapped a lot. And part of that code was that he was a killer, but not a murderer. Killing this man in cold blood would cross that line.
And yet…
Knowing the strength of the force already on its way, and the memory of what had been done to the Doogans still fresh in his mind, he was getting mighty tempted. And the man on the ground must have seen it in his eyes.
“Two! There are two more, man!” Blood was mingled with the dirt in the man’s mustache, and was still trickling out of his nose. “They were going around to the south!”
He shook him, hard. “Where?”
“I don’t know, man!” The man grunted as Evans put a bit more weight on the middle of his spine. “We didn’t have a fucking plan!”
Hank snarled soundlessly as he let go of the man’s hair. He straightened as the other two gun trucks pulled up alongside.
“Hey, you snagged one!” Coffee was looking down from the gun mount. “Better than we did—we had to kill all three of ‘em.”
“Zip this piece of shit up and throw him in the bed,” Hank snarled. “Somebody stand on him; we’ve got to move. Two squirters got out without Arturo seeing them.” He keyed his radio. “All Mike Elements, this is Tango India Six Four Actual. Be on the lookout for two military aged males within the perimeter, reported to the south. We’ve got a couple squirters. Identify before engaging, but don’t let them run loose.”
Evans had already hauled their prisoner to his feet and was frog-marching him toward the RAM 2500. Hank headed back toward the F350, where Bishop had swiveled the gun to cover the highway in front of them. As Hank and Moffit got back in, Reisinger glanced over at Hank.