by Leigh Barker
Winter opened his eyes very slowly, then crawled out from under the bed.
“Why were you holding your dick like that?” Ethan got to his feet and brushed the dust off his clothes. “It was your face you should’ve protected.”
“You maybe, but I can get my face fixed.” He patted his groin. “That gets damaged, there’s going to be a lot of sobbing women from Toronto to Tijuana.”
Ethan shook his head and looked up at the hatch.
“Where’s Ben?” Winter asked, coming over to stand beside him. He looked at Ethan and knew.
Ethan started to climb the steel steps very slowly. He already knew what he would find. But the hatch would be jammed and they’d probably suffocate in this stupid hole in the ground. He pushed it and it lifted and clanged open. He took a long breath and climbed out.
Next to the bunker was a wide, shallow crater with scorch marks showing the blast direction. The nearest huts were gone, nothing left but bits of blackened clapboard, and the old pickup was flipped on to what had been the wire fence.
There was nothing left of Ben, he’d just gone.
Ethan had seen Hellfire strikes before, but never incoming. He hadn’t expected to find Ben, but part of him had hoped for a miracle. Which was stupid, because in all his life as a soldier he’d never seen one or anything close to one. Just shit raining down from on high. And there was no reason to think that had changed.
His radio squawked and he jumped, then glanced at Winter, who was walking around the crater’s lip, shaking his head slowly and muttering to himself. Ethan keyed his radio.
“We’re here.”
“Jeez, that’s good to hear.” It was Chuck. “Everybody accounted for?”
Ethan breathed a long sigh of relief. “You’re still here, then, Gunny?”
“Take more than a little missile to put me down. I’m on the road. By the bayou. Figured I’d see if any of them were trying to—”
“Ben’s gone.”
Gunny was silent.
Ethan looked around the compound at the debris and the bodies the blast had swept up into piles like the aftermath of a twister.
“I see him!” Gunny’s voice was harsh over the speaker.
“Say again,” Ethan snapped. “See who?”
“The bastard that fired the Hellfire! I’m going after him.”
“Location!”
“One point five clicks to your south-east.”
Ethan looked to where he’d seen the missile’s smoke rising. The prepper was still there. It made no sense, he should be running. Unless… A cold shiver ran up his spine and he killed the emotion. If there’d been another missile, he wouldn’t be worrying about it now, he’d be on a cloud with a harp.
Gunny’s voice came over the radio again, breathless and distorted. “He’s running! Got a pickup.”
Ethan heard an M16, over the radio and across the water at the same time.
“Shit! Shit! Shit!” Gunny came back on a moment later. “He’s gone.”
Ethan gritted his teeth, then looked out of the gate at the road. The only road in or out of this swamp. He snatched up his radio. “Which way is he running?”
Gunny took a moment, even though he didn’t need to think about it. It was as if he was suddenly enjoying a thought. “Your way, boss. Your way.”
“Winter!” Ethan pointed towards the gate.
Winter ran across the burnt compound and stopped at the gate. He looked over at Ethan and saw him running back through the mangled huts. “What the hell?”
A moment later he came back at a dead run, the RPG cradled in his arms. Winter smiled.
Ethan pointed across the road. “The bastard is coming. Let’s say oorah!”
Winter pulled the magazine from his M16, glanced at it, tossed it aside and snapped in another full mag, then ran across the road and west for twenty, twenty-five yards. Clear of the RPG blast radius, and knelt on one knee with his M16 up and ready. No need for cover.
Ethan heard the motor coming and snapped the warhead onto the booster, stepped out into the middle of the road and waited with the launcher on his right shoulder.
A rust and yellow two-door Toyota pickup appeared a hundred yards up the road, screeching as it hung onto the bend. It slewed left and right across the road when the driver saw Ethan ahead. Then it straightened up and came on with the pedal grinding into the floor.
Ethan picked a fleck of dust off his tongue and examined it on his finger. Then looked up slowly.
The Toyota was fifty yards away and coming fast. The RPG had an effective range of three hundred yards, but he waited. He wanted to see the bastard’s face. Before he blew his head off.
He watched the pickup coming down the middle of the rutted blacktop and tracked the cab with the RPG. He could make out the shape of the man behind the wheel. The bastard. Soon to be an ex-bastard.
He took a slow breath, lowered his aim a fraction and—Winter’s M16 fired behind him, a three-shot burst that took out the Toyota’s front nearside tire and sent it into a wild spin off the road and into the trees. It almost made it through a gap that led to a soft landing in the swamp, but there was just one last tree. As there always is. It impacted the pickup behind the cab and all but tore it in two.
Ethan swore, glared at Winter, threw down the RPG and drew his Sig. A minute later he was pulling at the pickup’s driver door. It was jammed, so he had a chance to let off steam by kicking it and swearing loudly.
Winter strolled up and watched him for a minute, then stepped up onto the buckled front wheel, hooked his fingers round the broken windshield and pulled it away, then stepped back and waited for Ethan to do his thing.
Ethan glared at him one more time, jumped up onto the wheel and then onto the hood, leaned into the cab and dragged the driver out. He wore the same overalls and stompin’ boots the survivalists wore, with the addition of a dirty canvas jacket. He was bleeding all over his checked shirt from a head wound and barely conscious, so Ethan showed him due concern and threw him off the hood.
He jumped down beside him and kicked him in the ribs, to check he wasn’t badly injured. The man grunted and rolled away, then sat up slowly. Check complete.
Ethan stepped closer. “Son,” he said quietly, “your missile killed my friend, but I guess you’re sorry about that. Right?”
The man blinked slowly and tried to clear the blood from his eyes with the back of his hand. He spat crimson spittle onto his overalls and stared up at the man speaking to him like he was genuinely concerned.
“I’m just sorry I didn’t waste the whole fuckin’ lot of you like I was goin’ for.”
Ethan nodded and smiled. “Sure, I can see how us killing all your buddies would piss you off some.” He shrugged. “It wasn’t anything personal.” The smile again. “Your friends were holding a girl I’d promised to return to her mom. You understand that, right?”
The man started to push himself away, his hands pushing and his ass sliding slowly over the mud. “What you fixin’ to do to me?”
Ethan’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “Hell, I’m going to kill you. What d’ya think I was going to do with you? Take long hot showers?” He waved his left hand and drew his Sig with his right. Then looked at it and put it away. “Not going to shoot you.”
The man looked confused.
“I’m going to kick you around this road like a soccer ball. You’ll die, but it’ll be a long time coming. And it’ll hurt like…well, a lot.” He glanced at Winter. “My friend’s gonna help me with the kicking. You don’t mind, do you? I’m getting a bit old for long hours of exercise.”
The man started to scramble back, then stopped. “You can’t do that, it’s murder.”
Ethan laughed, he couldn’t help it.
“Shit, nobody’s ever going to find your body.” He pointed at the swamp. “You’ll be feeding the crocodiles—”
“Alligators, Top.”
Ethan nodded. “Alligators, same thing. Big leather things with huge teeth.” He look
ed back at the man and took a step to catch up with his slow retreat. “You could walk away from this, though, son.”
The man stopped scrabbling back.
“You tell me who put you up to it and who supplied the Hellfire, and you can walk out of here.”
The man squinted at him. “You gonna let me go? I killed your friend.”
Ethan shrugged. “Never liked him much, so yeah, tell me and you can go.”
The man opened his jacket and looked up, smiling. “Seen one of these before I bet ya.”
Ethan and Winter exchanged a look. They’d seen suicide vests before, many times. They weren’t impressed.
“You found Allah, have you, son?” Ethan said.
“Allaho Akabar!” the man said, mangling the pronunciation.
“Yeah,” Ethan said, with a slow shake of his head. “It’s the virgins, right? Seventy-two of them waiting for you in heaven?”
The man gritted his teeth and tried to stop his body shaking.
“Trouble is, son,” Ethan said, “you blow yourself up…” He waved at him. “And you go right ahead, don’t let us stop you. But when your insides are scattered all over the mud here, I’m going to find what’s left of your ass.” He took out his MTech folding knife and snapped it open. “And I’m going to cut off your nuts.” He let the man catch up. “You arrive in heaven with your nuts missing and your seventy-two virgins are going to catch the next train to the coast. Back to their mommas.”
The man looked down at his crotch, then up at Ethan and knew he meant every word. No nuts; no virgins. All for nothing.
Shit, all his life it’d been like this. You’d think God or Allah, or some such fuck would let him get some pussy, but no, not even after he was dead.
“So,” Ethan said, cutting into his lament. “You tell me what I want to know and you walk. And Winter here’ll give you a hundred-dollar bill so you can get yourself some ass at the next town.” He raised his eyebrow questioningly. “How’s that sound to you?”
The man looked from Ethan to Winter. They were both smiling. Friendly even. And a hundred dollars. He made his decision.
“I’ll tell you what I know, but it ain’t much.”
“You go ahead, son. Let me decide if it’s much or not.”
“And you’ll let me go?”
“That’s the deal.”
The man looked at Winter. “And I get a hundred bucks?”
Winter nodded and patted his pocket.
The man wiped his face with his bloody hands. “Some towel-head tol’ me about the virgins and how I’d live forever with as much ass as I wanted whenever I wanted it. All I had to do was keep saying Allaho Akabar, whatever the fuck that means.”
“Allahu Akbar ? God is great,” Winter said.
“Yeah, right, that’s what the towel-head said now I thinks about it.”
“What else did this towel-head say?” Ethan prompted.
“Said all I had to do was drive this pickup up here, wait till I see you fuckin’ the boys up, then press a button. If you got smoked, he’d give me a hundred thousand bucks. You don’t, I come get you and blow us up. I get pussy for eternity. Sweet deal either way, right?”
Ethan glanced at Winter and was surprised to see him smiling. But come to think of it, it was funny in a crazy warped kind of way.
“This benefactor…” Ethan caught the confused look. “The towel-head, he have a name?”
“Yeah.” The man’s brow furrowed as he drilled down into what he used for a brain. “Farik, Furig, some fuckin’ thing like that. These towel-heads all sound the same to me.”
“Faraj?” Ethan said, and got a nod. “Did Faraj tell you where to meet him after the job was done.” He raised a finger. “Unless you finished up in heaven of course.”
“Not going to happen now, is it.” The man sounded genuinely disappointed not to be in a million soggy bits.
“There’s the hundred dollars,” Ethan reminded him.
He seemed to cheer up. “Yeah, right. He tol’ me to meet him in—”
His head exploded. He was talking, and an instant later all that was left was his bottom jaw and his tongue.
Ethan and Winter spun and dived under the Toyota, rolled onto their stomachs and scoured the trees on the high ground for the shooter, but they knew they’d never spot him out there.
Ethan tapped Winter’s leg with his boot and got his attention. “You take a run up the road there.” He pointed at the road. “And I’ll get the location of his perch.”
“When he shoots my fucking head off!”
“You never heard of taking one for the team?”
“Yeah, course I have, but I’m fairly sure it doesn’t mean a 50-cal.”
“You’re probably right,” Ethan said. “We should maybe stay here for a while.” He looked around at the underside of the pickup. “Nice here.”
Winter gave him a long pitying look.
Ethan ignored it and keyed his radio. “Gunny, do you have eyes on the shooter?”
“Negative. I heard the shot, but in this swamp it could’ve come from anywhere. You want me to go see?”
“Negative. He could be waiting for just that. I’ve lost enough good men.”
“Roger that. You all tucked up and cozy down there?”
“Winter’s about to start a campfire for the marshmallows.”
“Stay that way. Leave it ten mikes then exfil west. Loco’ll pick you up.”
“Thanks for the advice, Gunny.” He shook his head. “But me ’n Winter’ll stick around a while. I want to take a look at the truck. When the shooter’s got bored and gone for a Big Mac.”
“Roger that. I’ll get Loco to come get us.”
“Negative. Let’s get the kids out of here first. We’ll hike out.”
Winter groaned.
They lay under the truck for twenty minutes, not talking, just calming down after the adrenaline rush of the firefight. Then Ethan crawled a little way up the slope towards the road.
“Top?” Winter said, still relaxing on his back.
“What?” Ethan hissed back.
“You get your head shot off, can I have your MTech? Always liked that knife.”
“Buy your own.”
Ethan crawled up to the side of the road and looked both ways, as if he expected to see the shooter driving away. He didn’t. He pushed himself up onto his knees, stayed there for two seconds, then dropped and rolled to his left. No 50-cal rounds tore chunks off his body, which was a good thing, he decided.
He stood up. Winter whistled from under the truck.
“You sure about that knife, Top?”
Ethan walked back to the truck, climbed onto the hood and lowered himself into the cab. He checked the glovebox and the door pocket but found nothing except junk food wrappers. Then he reached under the driver’s seat and felt around. His fingers touched something plastic, a folder. He pulled it out. It was the same as the one the airport bomber had. He checked under the passenger seat, but it was just more crap.
He jumped down as Winter rolled from under the truck and they climbed in the back to examine the Hellfire launcher. It was a tripod crudely bolted to the truck’s bed.
“Drone pod,” Winter said, leaning over the stretched three-legged launcher. He pointed to a black box strapped to the launcher. “Home-made launcher.” He pulled open the canvas cover and checked the device. “Laptop. Preprogrammed for the compound.” He looked back towards the torn wire. “Somebody knew where the missile was going before we left home this morning.”
“They’re gonna be pissed we upset their plans,” Ethan said, then jumped down from the truck. He opened the plastic folder and checked the papers. Pretty much the same stuff as before. Maps with the road to the compound marked up in yellow highlighter. A bunch of receipts for the mod work on the truck. And photographs of him and his squad. Taken directly from their marine files by the look of them. He put them away and walked back up the road to the compound gates.
Gunny came out of the
trees opposite and Winter followed them back to the crater that had been Ben Stenick’s last place on Earth.
They stood for several minutes, just looking at the scorched and blackened sand.
“Ben’s got two kids. Boys. About ready to go to college.”
“Already there, Top,” Gunny said.
Ethan nodded slowly, turned and looked around. “They’ll want for nothing as long as I’m in this world.”
“Don’t mean to be negative,” Winter said, “but that’s not much of a lifeline, is it? You being…well, you.”
Ethan looked at him steadily for several seconds and nodded again. “Guess not. Got some funds. I’ll make sure they go to the boys when I join Ben on the cloud.” He walked away with Gunny.
“Why don’t we give them the gold?” Winter asked.
Ethan and Gunny stopped and turned slowly.
“Gold?” they said together.
“Yeah, that gold over there in the old truck.” Winter pointed at the truck the blast had rolled into the wire. “I guess these survivalists don’t trust banks.”
They walked quickly over to the truck and pulled off the junk the explosion had piled onto it. In the back were four flat wooden cases. The impact had torn one of them open and a pile of gold bars was lying there shining in the sunlight.
Ethan reached in and pulled one out, holding it up and examining it.
The pale winter sun glinted off it. He turned it slowly in his hand. Not big, about three inches long by two wide and an inch thick. It had writing on it. He turned the bar upright. “One kilobar fine gold.” He shrugged. “Even I could see that.” Then he weighed it in his hand. “Couple of pounds.”
“They’ll be one kilogram, Top,” Winter said. “That’s what a kilobar weighs.”
Ethan gave him a long look, then turned the writing on the bar to face him and pointed at it. “That’ll be why they call it a kilobar, then.”
“That’s the most popular gold bar around,” Winter said. “Not like in the movies where you get a great big brick. These are used for trading and investments. The cost of trading these is low compared with their value. Great way to trade.”
“How’d you know that?” Gunny asked.