47 Echo

By Shawn Kupfer

Russia, 2019. Combined Chinese and North Korean forces have taken increasing amounts of territory in a war that is devastating the world.

Nick Morrow is a convict conscript assigned to 47 Echo—a suicide squad. No one cares whether they live or die, as long as they complete their missions. Under the command of a Marine Corps with nothing but contempt for its squadron of felons, they are on a mission to defend what’s left of war-ravaged Russia.

A half-Chinese drifter, much isn’t expected of Nick. Like the other members of 47 Echo, he’s viewed as little more than cannon fodder. However, Nick’s sense of honor, analytical mind and skills on the battlefield just might be what the squad needs to survive the meat-grinder that is the front lines of this bloody war. But can Nick himself survive the brutal crimes that haunt his past?

Dear Reader,

A new year always brings with it a sense of expectation and promise (and maybe a vague sense of guilt). Expectation because we don’t know what the year will bring exactly, but promise because we always hope it will be good things. The guilt is due to all of the New Year’s resolutions we make with such good intentions.

This year, Carina Press is making a New Year’s resolution we know we won’t have any reason to feel guilty about: we’re going to bring our readers a year of fantastic editorial and diverse genre content. So far, our plans for 2011 include staff and author appearances at reader-focused conferences such as the RT Booklovers Convention in April, where we’ll be offering up goodies, appearing on panels, giving workshops and hosting a few fun activities for readers. We’re also cooking up several genre-specific release weeks, during which we’ll highlight individual genres. So far we have plans for steampunk week and unusual fantasy week. Readers will have access to free reads, discounts, contests and more as part of our week-long promotions!

But even when we’re not doing special promotions, we’re still offering something special to our readers in the form of the stories authors are delivering to Carina Press that we’re passing on to you. From sweet romance to sexy, and military science fiction to fairy-tale fantasy, from mysteries to romantic suspense, we’re proud to be offering a wide variety of genres and tales of escapism to our customers in this new year. Every week is a new adventure, and we want to bring our readers along on the journey. Be daring, be brave and try something new with Carina Press in 2011!

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Happy reading!

~Angela James

Executive Editor, Carina Press

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Dedication

For Lisa, who puts up with me when I’m insufferable and writer-ish.

Contents

Copyright

Chapter 1: War Now

Chapter 2: Suspect Device

Chapter 3: Kill The Poor

Chapter 4: Under The Gun

Chapter 5: Death Comes Ripping

Chapter 6: Soundtrack to a Killing Spree

Chapter 7: New Blood

Chapter 8: Communist Eyes

Chapter 9: Ripper

Chapter 10: Seeing Red

Chapter 11: City of the Dead

Chapter 12: Autonomy

Chapter 13: Thirsty and Miserable

Chapter 14: Search and Destroy

Chapter 15: Saturday Night Holocaust

Chapter 16: What We Do Is Secret

Chapter 17: Skulls

Chapter 18: Walk Among Us

Chapter 19: Career Opportunities

Chapter 20: X Offender

Chapter 21: Runaway Return

Chapter 22: New Direction

Chapter 23: Into the Dark

Chapter 24: We Are 138

Chapter 25: The Warrior’s Code

Chapter 26: Good Guys Don’t Wear White

Chapter 27: Trenches

Chapter 28: Boredom

Chapter 29: Death Before Dishonor

Chapter 30: Chemical Warfare

Chapter 31: Room Thirteen

Chapter 32: We Got The Neutron Bomb

Chapter 33: Shut Down (Annihilation Man)

Chapter 34: Speak of the Devil

Epilogue

About the Author

Chapter 1

War Now

“What size boots you wear?” The old man hacked as he led Nick through the open-air morgue, his hand already hovering close to the feet of the nearest corpse. The old man was yelling, but Nick could barely hear him over the C-5 engines winding down behind them.

“Uh, twelve.”

The old man grabbed the corpse’s feet, lifted them up, and checked the stamps on the undersides.

“Whaddya know. Twelves. Well, one twelve, one eleven and a half.”

Coughing wet, brown mucus onto the dirt, the old man unzipped the sides of the boots and pulled them off the corpse. He tied the laces together and tossed them in Nick’s general direction—Nick managed to catch them before they smacked him in the face. He slung the boots over his shoulder and followed the old man through the field of bodies.

“See that desk down there? That’s where you wanna go,” the old man said as he pointed.

“What do I do when I get there?” Nick asked.

The old man was already heading back toward the front of the morgue area. If he heard Nick’s question, he gave no indication—he was already coughing phlegm on the next poor sucker in line.

A uniformed soldier poked Nick in the side with the barrel of his M4 rifle.

“Move along, shitbird.”

Nick nodded and headed in the direction the old man had indicated. He walked through the rows of bodies, trying not to breathe in—some of them had obviously been in the sun for a couple of days. Even breathing through his mouth didn’t totally kill the stench; the metallic taste of blood was strong on Nick’s tongue. The closer he got to the desk at the end of the long central row, the more bare the bodies became—first missing boots, then uniforms, then limbs and implants. The ones right next to the desk were barely identifiable as humans anymore.

“ID?” the man behind the desk growled. He was younger than the man who’d thrown the boots at Nick, but not by much. He was also a lot fatter, and the stripes on his shoulder identified him as a Staff Sergeant.

“Um…Nick Morrow.”

“No one gives a shit about your name, fuckwad.” The fat sergeant sighed, reaching across the desk and grabbing the dog tags hanging from Nick’s neck. “Four-seven Echo, 1153,” the sergeant read. His fat fingers (of which there were only three on his right hand) tapped the number into his computer. Nick couldn’t see the screen, but he knew his file had popped up immediately.

“Here you are. Eleven fifty-three, male, twenty-nine years. Oooh. Multiple Homicide. Aren’t we just the little badass?”

Nick said nothing, and the fat sergeant just shrugged. With one of the fingers on his mangled right hand, the sergeant pointed off to the left.

“See those big-ass tents over there? Go to the one labeled Echo. You wait there until someone tells you where to go. You get me?”

“I got you.”

“Sergeant. I got you, Sergeant.”

“Whatever.”

The fat sergeant snapped two of his fingers together, and another uniformed soldier appeared. The soldier slammed the butt of his rifle into Nick’s stomach, dropping him to the dirt instantly.

“Little tip, convict. Show the proper fucking respect at all times. Get me?”

“I get you, Sergeant,” Nick coughed out.

“Better. Much better. Tent Echo, convict. Move!”

It took a little effort, but Nick picked himself up from the dirt and headed off in the direction of the tents. There were five of them, and each had a large sheet of paper pinned to the front—A, B, C, D and E. Nick had no actual military experience, but he wasn’t an idiot—he headed for the large, open tent labeled E, where he could see several people milling around inside.

As he approached Tent E, a uniformed soldier held up one hand to stop him. Not wanting another rifle slammed into various parts of his anatomy, Nick stopped and let the soldier check his dog tags.

“All right. Four-seven Echo. Back right corner of the tent. Find yourself a seat, then sit and shut up. Clear?”

Nick had no idea what the two stripes on the man’s sleeve meant, but he figured “sir” would be the correct attribution to keep himself from getting hit again.

“Clear, sir.”

“Ain’t no sir, jackass. Corporal. You’ll get it soon enough. Now move along.”

Nick nodded and headed for the back right corner of the tent, where there was only one other person waiting. The man was slightly taller than Nick, just under six feet, and thin. He had jet-black, close-cropped hair and green eyes. As soon as Nick got close, the man raised a hand in greeting.

“Hiya, sport. You mind?” the man asked, reaching for Nick’s tags.

Nick shrugged, and the man read the numbers.

“Four-seven Echo. Right on. Looks like we’re in the same unit, pal. What’s your name?”

“Nick Morrow.”

The man stuck out his hand, and Nick shook it.

“Christopher Lee, or as the COs like to call me, 47 Echo 311. Good to meet you, Nick Morrow. You don’t look like a Morrow, though. You half-Chink or something?”

“Mom was Japanese.” It was a practiced lie. Nick decided shortly after getting jumped in County Jail not to admit that his mother was actually first-generation Chinese.

“Japanese. Right. Stick with that if anyone asks. Me, I don’t care, but you’d be surprised how some of these convicts got a hate on for the Chinese. So how many you kill?”

“Excuse me?”

“Nobody gets into 47 Echo without at least one body on them—murder in the second at least. So, how many you do?”

“I was convicted of five.”

“Five, eh? That beats me any day of the week. Well, before I got here, anyway. You smoke?”

“It’s illegal.”

“It’s illegal back home,” Christopher corrected. “Gotta look at the good in the situation. They don’t give a shit about us, so we can get away with pretty much whatever we want, long as we do our jobs.”

Christopher pulled a red pack of cigarettes with Chinese writing across it. He pulled out one cigarette for himself, lit it, and offered the pack to Nick, who lit his own smoke. Though he’d quit smoking years ago, the heat of the smoke in his mouth and the thick, cottony taste of tobacco were comforting, even here.

“How long you been here?” Nick asked.

“Couple of months.”

“How many guys in our unit?”

“As of right now? You and me. I don’t want to freak you out or anything, but better you hear it from me now than one of those asshole COs. I’m all that’s left of 47 Echo. After the last mission, well…”

Christopher stared past Nick for a good twenty seconds, just smoking his cigarette and looking out at nothing.

“Yeah. I get it,” Nick said after it was clear that Christopher wasn’t going to elaborate. “So what are we looking at for an assignment?”

Christopher finally looked back at Nick and shot him an awkward half-grin.

“There are a lot of possibilities, sport. Not one of them good.”

“Lovely.”

Christopher handed over the half-empty pack, and Nick stuck it into the front pocket of his gray Service Tribunal jumpsuit.

“You can go ahead and hang onto those. I got plenty more.”

“Thanks.”

“Hey, you could be in a position to save my ass sometime soon. Half a pack of kinda crappy Chink smokes isn’t any skin off my nose, but you need them—or anything else—you just let me know.”

“Right on.”

“Four-seven Echo, 1153!” Nick heard someone yell.

“That’s you.” Christopher nodded.

“Yeah, I know,” Nick said with a smirk. He waved to Christopher and headed in the direction of the voice, which turned out to be a uniformed soldier at least five years younger than he was.

“I’m 1153,” Nick told the soldier.

“So you are. Lieutenant Jim Neal, 47 Echo’s new CO. We need to get you processed, tagged and uniformed. Four-seven Echo 311!” Neal yelled before Nick had a chance to say anything.

Christopher appeared at Nick’s side, grinning widely.

“Aw, shit. Jimmy Neal in the house!”

“Lock it up, 311. Take 1153 over to processing. I want him squared away in twenty minutes. Clear?”

“Clear, sir.”

“Move.”

Christopher headed out of Tent E, and Nick followed. As they walked, Nick finished off his cigarette and tossed it into the dirt.

“You’ll like Lieutenant Neal. He’s a good guy. He ran 22 Bravo—we worked with them about a month ago. One of the few COs I wouldn’t stab if I had the chance.”

“He’s a Lieutenant?”

“Was, anyway, when he was in the regular Marines. He did something bad—wouldn’t tell me what—and they court-martialed his ass down here with the rest of us convicts. A lotta COs get here that way. Unlike us, though, they do a tour with the prisoners, they get to go back to being citizens.”

“Must be nice.”

“Well, assuming they live, that is. Neal must’ve fucked up again somehow to get 47 Echo. Bravo was a safer unit. Echo’s…”

“Yeah. A suicide squad. I know.”

“Yeah? How?”

“My court-appointed told me about it when I got sentenced. Offered to appeal. That…didn’t go so well, obviously.”

“Hey, ‘least you got a lawyer who gave a shit. Mine actually laughed at my sentencing.”

“And yet, here we both are, yeah?”

“Suppose. This’s you.” Christopher nodded at a low, open tent with a short line outside. All of the men in line were dressed in the same gray jumpsuit as Nick himself—two uniformed soldiers stood outside with M4 rifles at the ready.

“They really think we’re gonna run?” Nick asked Christopher under his breath, nodding at the two guards.

“Happens. Guy gets scared enough, doesn’t care that he’s in a foreign country in a prison jumpsuit with no money and no transportation. Guy just wants to run. Doesn’t want to die out here. Ends up getting shot anyway, but not killed.”

“Really?”

“Can’t afford to lose a man completely. Shoot him in the leg, patch him up, put him back in a unit. Probably best not to run, y’know? ’Case you were considering it.”

“I wasn’t. But thanks.”

The line was moving along pretty quickly, and Nick was three back from the opening of the tent in a couple of minutes. He could now see what Neal had meant by “tagging”—a soldier with a paramedic’s armband was using a large-bore jet injector on a seated convict in a gray jumpsuit. Another soldier was issuing a uniform to a second convict.

“RFID chip?”

Christopher nodded. “Yep. GPS, too.”

“Great.” Nick sighed.

“Man, fuck that,” the convict in front of them in line muttered without turning around. Even from behind, Nick could tell the man was muscular, covered in tattoos, and at least three heads taller than either Christopher or himself.

“Wonder why they put it in the neck?” Nick wondered aloud.

“Guys lose limbs out here more often than you’d think,” Christopher explained casually. “They can replace them with bio-prosthetics and get the guy back out in the field, but if a guy takes one to the neck or head, chances are he’s done. This way, they only have to implant once.”

“Makes sense.”

“Rumor says there’s a tiny little explosive charge in the tracker, too. Guy goes rogue, gets captured, and boom! goes the jugular.” Christopher yawned.

“Fuck…that!” the convict in front of them yelled, suddenly rushing at the soldier on the left side of the tent’s entrance. He caught the man off-guard, snatching his M4 away and knocking him to the ground.

The convict started firing wildly, pulling the trigger as quickly as he could, probably not realizing that the weapon was an automatic. Most of his shots went wild, sailing through the air harmlessly as convicts and soldiers alike hit the ground. The convict didn’t seem to notice—he was just firing and screaming, slowly backing away from the tent as he did so.

“Motherfuckers! You stay the fuck away from me!” the convict yelled.

Christopher hit the ground like everyone else, but Nick was on the move. The tattooed convict’s back was still to him, and Nick realized he had only a second, two at the outside, to shut the guy down. Nick spun fast, his right foot slicing through the air in a wide arc. He felt his leg jolt at the knee as his heel slammed into the tattooed convict’s skull.

The convict spun around from the force of the impact, turning to face Nick just in time to see the boots in Nick’s left hand swinging into his face. As the convict dropped to the ground, Nick kicked the M4 back to the still-stunned soldier who had lost it.

“Jesus Effing Christ! Nice fucking moves, Nick!” Christopher blurted, pulling himself up from the dirt.

“Reaction,” Nick said with a shrug.

The paramedic rushed out of the tent, passing the unconscious tattooed convict entirely, running to the side of a dropped soldier bleeding from his gut.

“Well, shit. Hope you liked that guy whose ass you just kicked, pal.” Christopher clapped a hand on Nick’s shoulder.

“Not particularly.”

“That’s too bad. He shot a soldier—I’m guessing that just bought him a ticket into our unit.”

“Outstanding.” Nick sighed. “Making friends already.”

Chapter 2

Suspect Device

By the end of the day, there were four men in 47 Echo, counting Christopher and Nick. Christopher had already told him that a full unit was ten plus CO, so Nick didn’t expect to be assigned until there were more of them. He was wrong.

In addition to himself and Christopher, the new additions to the unit were twenty-two-year-old armed robber and killer Peter King (47 Echo 1154), and thirty-four-year-old double-murderer Michael Riley (47 Echo 1155). Michael was affable, talkative, and generally likeable. Peter had said barely a word since he’d been assigned to the unit.

“All right, Echo. We’ve got one more joining us in the morning—1153, I think you’ve met him already. Once he gets his head stitched up, the gentleman you met in line will be reassigned from 31 Alpha to 47 Echo. Soon as that happens, we’re on the move,” Neal told them, reading from the screen in his hand.

“Without a full unit, sir?” Christopher asked.

“Correct, 311. We’re supporting 18 Echo.”

“Doing what, exactly?”

“Need to know, 1153. Need to know. Gentlemen, 311 will show you to your bunks. Grab some sleep now. Who knows when you’ll get another chance.”

Neal turned off the screen in his hand and walked away. Christopher motioned to his three charges.

“Follow me, gents. You think the processing area’s shitty, wait ‘til you see where they got us sleeping,” he said with a wink.

“Ain’t they afraid we’re just gonna run off?” Peter asked, looking around as the three of them fell into step behind Christopher.

“Holy shit! You can talk?” Christopher laughed. “Look around you, Chief. See all those Marines with guns? You take off, they’ll shoot the shit out of you. Plus, where you gonna go?”

Christopher spread his arms wide. Apart from soldiers, convicts and bodies, there wasn’t much to see.

“See this area we’re in now? Used to be the central park of this city. Then China bombed the place off the map. You run, you’ll just find ruins in every direction for ten, fifteen square miles.”

“About that, Chris,” Nick said.

“Yeah?”

“Just where the fuck are we, anyway? They landed us at what looked like a commercial airport, chucked us in the back of some big trucks, and dropped us off here.”

“You’re in Staging Area November, formerly known as Irkutsk, Russia.”

“They got to Russia already?” Michael asked, shaking his head.

“More of it than you want to know, pal. You’ve heard of the front lines? This ain’t them, but you can sure as hell see them from here.”

“Shit.” Peter shook his head. “Anyone got some smokes?”

Nick wordlessly offered the pack to Peter, who took one.

“Don’t let a CO catch you smoking that, by the way. Neal’s cool, but some of the others can be real bitches,” Christopher warned.

The four of them walked for a few minutes until they came to half of a large, long rectangular building. Several heavily armed soldiers guarded the front of the place.

“Welcome to what’s left of the Hotel Angara, folks. No power, no running water, beds like plywood. Home, for the moment. Shall we?” Christopher led his men past the guards and down a long, dark hallway lit sporadically with chemical glowsticks. They stopped at a room numbered in Cyrillic—“47E” had been haphazardly spray-painted over the lower half of the door.

“One hotel room for four guys?” Peter asked.

“Hey, usually it’s for ten, so don’t bitch. Oh, yeah. Gotta warn you—when the place was hit by bombs a few months back, the water mains broke. Soaked everything. It smells pretty awful in there.”

Christopher opened the door. It wasn’t locked, Nick noticed. In fact, the deadbolts had been removed completely, leaving a small hole in the door. Inside were five beds and a large mess of pillows and blankets on the floor. There was no other furniture in the room—the only evidence that it had once been a place for tourists to stay was a stained, framed picture of downtown Irkutsk hanging on the west wall.

And Christopher was right. It stank. The odor reminded him of a dumpster behind a Chinese restaurant crossed with wet dog.

Nick chose a bed and sat on it, folding his booted feet under him. Fortunately, the mattress was a little hard but not completely uncomfortable. Unfortunately, the beds also seemed to be the source of the smell. Michael and Peter also grabbed bunks, but Christopher stayed standing, opening the window a crack and lighting a cigarette.

“Man. I thought I lived in a shithole back in Detroit.” Peter said, looking around the room, his nose wrinkling.

“That where you’re from, kid?” Michael asked.

“Yeah. You?”

“Boston.”

Christopher grinned. “I could tell that just by looking at you, Riley,” he said, blowing out smoke. “You look Irish enough to be named Shaun O’Shaunnesy.”

Michael smirked. “Oh yeah? And where do you hail from?”

“Daytona.”

“Went there on spring break in college. Shit town,” Michael shot back.

“I agree. Which is why this place doesn’t seem so bad to me,” Christopher said.

“Yeah, you know, if you squint your eyes, it pretty much looks like the place I stayed on spring break. Kinda smells like it, too.”

Christopher and Michael shared a laugh.

“What about you, Nick? Where you from, man?” Christopher asked.

“Nowhere interesting.” Nick smiled halfheartedly. “Just outside of Los Angeles.”

“Oh, man. Were you in the city when—”

“Yeah,” Nick cut Christopher off.

The silence was immediate, and broken a minute later only by the sounds of a loud scuffle down the hall.

“Ignore that,” Christopher waved his hand at the door. “Happens all the time. Some unit gets convinced another unit has a better room than they do, try to forcibly switch. No one fucks with Echo rooms, though. We kinda scare the crap out of them.”

***

The next morning, guards walked up and down the halls pounding on doors at five. “Look alive, convicts!” they yelled.

Nick rolled out of bed and jammed his feet into his secondhand boots. Despite being two slightly different sizes, they seemed to fit just fine. He zipped the sides of the boots tightly to his feet. Although he was sure he’d slept last night, he didn’t feel terribly rested.

“Hey, bro. Can I get another one of them smokes from you?” Peter asked, groggily sitting up in the next bed.

“Yeah, sure thing.”

Nick held out the pack, and as Peter took a cigarette, Nick noticed the Thug Life tattoo on the dark skin of his forearm.

“Gang?”

“Yeah. Pretty stupid, considering where I ended up.”

“I don’t think anyone in this unit can throw stones at you for that, man.” Nick smirked, shrugging into his BDU jacket.

“Four-seven Echo! Front and center, ninety seconds!” one of the guards in the hall yelled.

“Better hurry, kids. Trust me, they fucking mean it,” Christopher told them, quickly buttoning his uniform coat and zipping up his boots.

All four men were standing in the hall in full uniform when Lieutenant Neal walked up a minute later.

“Punctual. Good start, boys. As you know, we’re hooked up with the 1-8 this morning. Their CO, Captain Sayed, is running this mission, so he’ll fill you in on the details. Follow me.”

Neal led his four-man squad outside, where they met another unit led by a small but muscular black man, a Captain in convict fatigues. Nick also noticed, standing off to the side, the man he’d knocked out in line the day before, now in uniform and not looking happy at all.

“Thanks for finally joining us, 47,” Sayed boomed. “All right, you convict fuck-ups. Listen up. We’re detailed to Port Baikal just south of here. Command set up comms to monitor the area two months ago. Yesterday afternoon, for undetermined reasons, those comms quit sending. We’re on our way down to find out why.”

“Sounds like fun,” Michael muttered from behind Nick.

Sayed’s gaze immediately locked onto Michael. “You’re new, kid, so I’m going to let that go this time. Next time you speak without being asked something, I’ll snap your fucking cracker spine like kindling. We clear?”

“Clear, sir,” Michael replied.

“That goes for all of you newbs. The men in my unit know that if you shut the fuck up and do your damned jobs, you ain’t gonna have problems with me. And trust me, people, you do not want problems with me. Lieutenant Neal, load your men up.”

“Yes, sir!”

Neal turned to his men. “Weapons are already on the van. Reviewing your files, I see you all were arrested for crimes with various firearms, so I trust I don’t need to tell you how to use them. Today will function as your basic training, gents. Keep your eyes open and listen for orders from either myself or Captain Sayed. Any questions?”

Both Michael and the new guy raised their hands.

“Good. Keep them to your fucking selves. On the van. Move!”

Neal waved his hand in the direction of the second of two parked GAZ Sobol vans—both more than a decade old and clumsily converted to hybrid solar. Nick followed Christopher to the van, and as Christopher got in, Nick felt hot breath on his ear.

“Don’t think I forgot how I got into this shit unit, pal. Next time the COs aren’t looking, you and me are gonna have a little rematch, and I won’t fall for a fucking sucker punch this time.”

Nick got on the van, sat down, and turned to face the new kid. “First off, I didn’t punch you. I kicked you in that ugly melon of yours. And second, the sucker ain’t the one doing the punching, pal.”

“Eleven fifty-six! Stop fucking standing around, and get on the fucking van!” Neal yelled.

The rest of 47 Echo loaded up quickly, followed by three members of 18. Neal started up the van and followed the lead vehicle away from the hotel. With the noisy old engine rumbling, Nick and Christopher could talk without Neal hearing them.

“Jesus. This piece of crap is what they’re sending us out in?” Nick asked, his eyes wide as he scanned the dirty interior of the aging van.

“You expect them to give us decent equipment? Spend money on a bunch of convicts? Wait ‘til you see the guns. They’re museum pieces. Little tip—you get into a situation, try and pick up an enemy weapon if you can. They’re in better shape than ours by a mile.”

Nick nodded. “Know anything about the new kid? Eleven fifty-six?”

“Yeah, found out a bit last night from Neal. Gabe Martinez. One of those Latin gangs. Convicted of assault. Would’ve had a slot in Alpha if he hadn’t freaked out and shot a real soldier. And he already doesn’t much like you, but you knew that part.”

***

Slightly more than two hours later, the vans stopped on a long, desolate road. Neal turned off the ignition and turned to face his men.

“All right, people. As you’ve no doubt noticed, we’re not sneaking up on anyone in these things. We’re on foot from here in. Three-eleven, you’re on weapons. Let’s move out.”

Christopher and Neal were the first off the van. Christopher opened up the back doors of the van and shook his head. “Come on, L.T. Really?” He shook his head again.

“At least this batch works. Tested them myself,” Neal said apologetically.

“All right, folks. Line up and get your shitty, shitty guns,” Christopher said, holding up a pair of Ruger 9mm pistols.

After getting his gun and one extra clip of ammo, Nick fell into step behind the other soldiers. Christopher caught up to him a moment later and walked next to him as the combined unit headed down toward the lake shore.

“Any idea what we’ll find when we get there?” Nick asked.

“Hopefully not a whole platoon of pissed-off Chinks.” Christopher shrugged.

Chapter 3

Kill The Poor

In the roughly mile and a half the unit walked on foot, Nick made it a point to learn as much as he could. The first thing he noticed was that 18 Echo’s weapons were quite a bit better than 47’s—in most cases, they actually had assault rifles rather than decades-old pistols. He also noticed that Sayed made Neal take point rather than leading the way himself.

He learned even more talking quietly to Christopher as they walked.

“Lake Baikal is kind of a barrier between us and the Chinese forces. Intel says they’re massing on the other side, and that it’s only a matter of time before they swarm across and take Irkutsk. When that happens, we’re fucked.”

“So that’s why they’re so freaked about monitoring devices going down?”

“Yeah. Even with all the cons they keep funneling through Irkutsk, we really don’t have the strength to defend Area November. They open us up there, they can use it to invade a whole lot more of Russia than they already have. ’Specially since we got renegade Russian forces coming at us from the northwest.”

“Looks like I picked the wrong time to get convicted of murder.”

“Didn’t we all, though. Didn’t we all.”

Sayed held up his hand, indicating the line of soldiers behind him should stop. They had reached the bottom of a small hill covered in tall grass—Sayed consulted a screen on his uniform sleeve and quietly consulted with Neal. Nick was close enough to hear most of what they were saying.

“GPS says the first marker’s just over the hill,” Sayed said.

“That jives with my info.”

“I’m picking up a weak signal. Couple of the comms are still active, but enough have been knocked out of their network to cut their effective range to a couple of miles.”

Neal said something Nick couldn’t make out. Sayed motioned for the unit to follow him up the hill, then to drop down when they neared the top. Sayed, Neal, Christopher, Nick and two of Sayed’s men all formed a line in the front. Sayed pulled out a pair of binoculars, and Neal followed suit.

“See ‘em, Jimbo?” Sayed asked after a moment.

“That’s affirmative.”

Christopher pulled out his own pair of compact binoculars and looked through them. He passed them to Neal—two short, rough Asian men in dark blue pants, white shirts, and heavy blue jackets were standing by the lake shore. One of them had a small device in his hands, and was turning it over, inspecting it.

“Looks like we found the source of the problem,” Sayed growled. “Fucking Chinks.”

“They’re not Chinese,” Nick said without thinking, zooming in with his binoculars.

“I don’t recall asking you a goddamned thing, convict,” Sayed spat out.

“Regardless, sir, they’re not Chinese. They’re Mongolian.”

“How do you know that?” Neal asked.

Because I’m not a fucking idiot, Nick wanted to say. “The script on their jackets. It’s Mongolian. The symbols are Mongolian Police.”

“Neal, shut his hole. Two-ten, 1412, I want you to take up positions and mow these Chink bastards down.”

Nick looked over at Neal—he could see that his Lieutenant didn’t agree with Sayed one bit.

Fuck. What’s the worst they can do to me? Nick thought, standing on his haunches and inching closer to Sayed.

“Captain Sayed, sir,” Nick started.

“I thought I told you to shut the fuck—”

Sayed didn’t have a chance to finish his sentence. Nick cold-cocked the officer in the jaw with his right fist, immediately dropping him. Sayed twitched once on the ground, bleeding slightly from the mouth, but Nick knew he hadn’t killed the man. He could see his chest rising and falling evenly.

“Two-ten, 1412, cancel your previous order,” Neal said quickly. “Three-eleven, take 1153 into custody for striking an officer.”

Christopher nodded and took a zip-tie from his cargo pocket. He loosely tied Nick’s hands behind his back. Neal caught Nick’s eye and winked.

“All right, gentlemen. Here’s how we’re going to play this…”

Nick could only watch as Christopher, Michael and two of the 18 soldiers approached the two Mongolian policemen. The four convicts walked up slowly, hands empty and open at their sides so as not to spook the two cops. Nick would have expected a similar reaction from the two police, but instead, the cops jumped up and down excitedly and waved their arms. One of them ran up and hugged Christopher.

“Um…yeah, sir. I think we’re dealing with non-hostiles,” Christopher’s voice crackled over Neal’s radio.

“All right, 311. Bring them back here. We’re taking them back to Area November with us.”

“Copy that.”

As Christopher’s small detachment escorted the two Mongolian cops over to rejoin the rest of the unit, Nick noticed that both policemen were frightfully thin and their shoes had worn down to almost nothing. He guessed they’d come most of the way from home on foot, on very little food and no water.

“Six-eighteen, 1412, you’re carrying Captain Sayed back to the vans. The rest of you, double-time. Just because we haven’t seen any Chinese forces yet doesn’t mean there aren’t any. Let’s move.”

As the unit started to jog back to the vans a mile and a half away, Christopher sped up to run beside Nick.

“Man. You just like hitting people, don’t you, kid?”

Nick tried to shrug, but it wasn’t easy with his hands tied behind his back. It took the unit just under eight minutes to make it back to the vans and less than two minutes to load up. Christopher was driving the second van—Neal made sure to keep Nick in the first, away from Sayed should the Captain wake up and want to shoot him.

Nick was sitting next to the Mongolian cops in the van’s third row. The two cops were still smiling widely and talking excitedly to each other in quick whispers. Nick tried to pick up what they were saying but found it tough, as he didn’t speak Mongolian at all.

Gabriel Martinez was in the seat in front of Nick and turned around to face him, grinning. “And to think I was pissed at you for getting me thrown in with you fucking Mechoes. You’re about to have it much worse than I did, pal. Sucker punching didn’t work out for ya this time, did it?” His voice had a definite edge to it, an animal growl that made his smile look feral and filled his words with bile.

Nick smiled. “Ah, to be young. Remember, kiddo. Sucker ain’t the one doing the punching.”

***

Neal immediately turned Nick over to a pair of uniformed Military Police as soon as they reached Staging Area November. He assured Nick this was for his own protection because Captain Sayed was in Echo for shooting a junior officer who’d disagreed with him in the real Marines. The MPs took Nick to a holding cell in what had once been the bottom level of a parking garage. The cage had been set up in a corner of the garage, bracing two floor-to-ceiling iron grates against the concrete walls. Two armed guards stood in front of Nick’s cage, waiting for Nick to try something, anything.

Nick, however, didn’t plan on attempting escape. He decided instead to sit on the small folding chair in the cell and say nothing. He guessed there wasn’t a whole lot more they could do to him—he was already in a suicide squad, and Nick had figured out relatively quickly that the powers-that-be didn’t want to waste able-bodied soldiers.

The combined Echo unit had returned from Port Baikal just after one in the afternoon—it was well past nightfall when someone finally appeared to deal with Nick. A tall, thin man in regular Marine fatigues walked out of the relative darkness of the parking garage to the dim circle of light thrown by the glowsticks attached to the cell grates. One of the guards grabbed a folding chair propped up against the concrete wall just outside the cell and set it up across from Nick’s chair.

As the Marine sat down on the other side of the grate, Nick caught a glimpse of oak clusters on his shoulder. Either a Major or a Lieutenant Colonel. The ranks were starting to come back to him now.

“Four-seven Echo 1153. I’m Lieutenant Colonel David Markham. The convict units are under my direct supervision.”

Nick had no idea what to say, so he just nodded.

Markham consulted a small screen in his hand. “Looks like you’re in here for striking a senior officer. I’ve already talked to your CO and men from both the 4-7 and the 1-8, so I really don’t need your input…but I am curious. Why did you hit Captain Sayed?”

“To be honest, sir, he was making a reckless decision and, just for the hell of it, was going to kill the two men we brought back.”

“I realize you’re new here. The penalty for striking a senior officer is usually a transfer to the next unit down, but you’re already pretty much as low as you can go. For you high-numbered Echoes, such an offense would usually buy you a couple of days in the box.”

“The box, sir?”

“You’d rather not know, trust me. But in this case, I happen to agree with what you did. Doesn’t hurt that the two men you brought back had valuable intel, either. We do need soldiers who can think. I am surprised, though, that you had an objection to killing these two men. Your own record is not, as they say, lily-white.”

“True, sir. But I figure the only way I’m going to stay alive out here is to use my head.”

Markham grinned. “I like you, Morrow. All right. You’re released. Try to steer clear of Captain Sayed. He’s been warned to stay clear of you, but I doubt he will.”

Nick had been released and escorted back to his unit before he realized that Markham hadn’t used his number. He’d called Nick by his real name.

Four-seven Echo was just returning to their room at the half-hotel when Nick arrived. Christopher, who Nick had thus far only seen smiling or grinning, wore a blank expression. The other three men in the unit also looked completely worn-out and pale. Though he’d just spent several hours in a makeshift jail, Nick looked more awake and in much better spirits than any of his comrades.

“Oh, good. They didn’t kill you or anything,” Gabriel said wearily.

“No, they just let me go. Talked to the bigwig in charge of all us convicts. What the hell happened to you guys?”

Christopher nudged open the door to 47 Echo’s room with his boot and dropped down on the closest bed. He wearily lit a cigarette and took a drag. He didn’t seem to have the energy to move the pack from where it fell against his chest.

“Soon as we got back, they detailed us to the Irkutsk Airport in Klyuchevaya. Happens sometimes—we provide extra security for incoming convicts,” Christopher explained, little puffs of smoke accompanying every few syllables.

Nick took a seat on the bed next to Christopher’s—the other men had already sprawled out on the rest of the bunks. Peter was also smoking a cigarette, and through the haze of smoke surrounding the young man’s face, Nick could see that his eyes were only half-open.

“C-5s came in just like normal. Only this time, when the planes opened up, no convicts. Just one Air Force flyboy who told us to start loading equipment,” Christopher explained.

“Shit was heavy, yo,” Peter grumbled from his bed.

“We must have loaded up four, five planes in four hours. And I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a C-5, but they’re fucking big. We loaded those motherfuckers to the roof.”

“With what?”

“Shit in boxes,” Michael said. “Comm equipment. Tents. I’m guessing everything in the damned camp, but that’s probably just my sprained back talking.”

“Then one more Galaxy landed. This one started unloading stuff—armored vehicles. Three of them. Boxes of weapons. Decent ones,” Christopher said.

“So what’s going on, you think?”

Christopher shrugged and finished off his cigarette. “I didn’t get a chance to ask any of my usual sources. Neal vanished as soon as we got to the airport. Didn’t see any of my guys from other Echo units. Saw a few Alpha guys and a Delta I know, but they didn’t know any more than I do, which is shit. My guess, though?”

Nick nodded. “I’m guessing we’re evacuating Area November. Like, quickly.”

“Those Mongolians you had us bring back must’ve scared the shit out of someone,” Gabriel said, shaking his head. “Someone gimme a smoke.”

“Fuck you, kid. You’re not even eighteen yet.” Christopher grinned weakly, tossing the pack across the room.

Gabriel caught the pack and pulled out a cigarette. Nick handed the young man a lighter.

“Fuck you right back, man. I will be next week.”

“Well, that’s all sorts of depressing,” Michael said.

“So we’re getting out of here?” Nick asked Christopher.

“Well, someone is. I’m thinking someone has to stay behind and cover the evac. And guess who gets all the shit jobs around here?”

Chapter 4

Under The Gun

Four-seven Echo hadn’t been in their room more than three hours when a soldier kicked their door open.

“All Echo units, report to Command,” the soldier barked before heading down the hall to kick in another door.

“Shit. Here comes the bad news.” Christopher groaned, rolling off of his bunk and jamming his feet into his boots.

“You really think they’re gonna make us stay behind as cannon fodder?” Michael asked as the five of them walked out into the hall.

“You haven’t been here long, but there’s a saying floating around: if it’s a suicide job, it’s a Mecho job,” Christopher told him. “Cannon fodder is pretty much what we’re here for.”

“Great. All I did was punch some guy in the face, and now I’m gonna die,” Gabriel said with a whine.

At the end of the hall, 47 Echo joined with several other Echo units heading out into the night. Nick didn’t know where Command was, but he assumed whoever was leading the hundreds of convict Marines did, so he just followed the pack. None of the Marines talked much. Nick decided he’d stay quiet, as well.

Command turned out to be a movie theater with all the seats removed. The Echo units filed in, filling the place to capacity. Two armed soldiers stood on the corners of the stage in front of the ripped silk screen, weapons pointed down at the floor but ready to spring up at a moment’s notice. As Nick looked around, he guessed there were more than four hundred Echoes present, and all of them looked worried.

Thirty seconds after the theater doors closed, Lieutenant Colonel Markham walked onto the stage. When he spoke, his voice was amplified by a pair of castoff speakers set up near the two soldiers—Nick looked closely and saw Markham was wearing a throat mic.

“Good evening, Marine Echo. For those of you who don’t already know me, I’m Lieutenant Colonel Markham, commander of all Marine Convict units. According to intelligence we received this afternoon, Staging Area November will soon come under attack from the south by Chinese forces and from the north by renegades from the former Russian Federation. We are therefore immediately evacuating all personnel from Area November.”

“Here it comes,” Christopher muttered from Nick’s left.

“Unfortunately, we’ll need someone to keep the airport secure during the evacuation. Two hours ago, five units from Army Kilo landed to help in that effort. We will be supplementing them with our five most experienced Echo units—18, 21, 36, 41, and 45.”

Michael elbowed Nick and smirked. “Looks like we dodged a bullet,” he chuckled.

“Unfortunately, 21 Echo is running six men short after their last mission, so we’ll be combining them with 47 Echo for the duration of this operation.”

“Fuck,” Michael spat.

“All other Echo units are to proceed immediately to their COs for evacuation assignments. The Echo units I’ve just mentioned are to stay behind here and await further orders. Dismissed.” Markham walked off the stage without another word.

The doors at the back of the theater opened, and two guards appeared, each with an RF-scanner. As the convict Marines left the room, the guards scanned each of their necks, noting each man’s unit aloud. More than once, Nick saw a guard push a man from one of the just-condemned units back into the room.

“Well, boys.” Christopher shrugged as the room began to empty. “It was nice knowing all of you.”

When the shuffling in the room finally subsided, slightly more than a hundred men stood in the empty theater. Some of them had officer’s insignia on their shoulders, but the vast majority were dressed in the same, blank-shouldered convict fatigues as Nick’s. Lieutenant Neal found his way through the theater to his men.

“Hey, L.T. Nice shit job we got us here,” Christopher said, shaking his head.

“Yeah. And the 2-1’s missing a CO, so I get to fill in for him. Everyone in our shop accounted for?”

“All here, sir.”

“These gentlemen behind me are the remains of the 2-1,” Neal said, indicating four large, rough-looking white men with shaved heads.

“Shit,” Michael muttered under his breath to Nick. “I think they’re Aryans.”

“They’re what?” Nick whispered back.

“Skinheads. Neo-Nazi types.”

“Our first task, gentlemen, is to demo the hotel. From there, we’ll join 18 Echo and the Army Kilo units at the airport to cover the evac. Best data-modeling calculations put the first Russian units in town in less than an hour, so we have to move fast.”

“Please tell me we’re not rolling out in shitty third-hand bullet-magnet minivans again,” Christopher said.

Neal smirked. “Not hardly. We managed to get one of the Razor Fighting Vehicles for this mission. It’s waiting outside, so let’s load up.”

The combined 21 and 47 Echo unit followed Neal out of the theater. Parked in the street were three Razor Fighting Vehicles, each with two double .50 caliber machine-gun turrets on top and side-mounted rocket pods.

“I call shotgun!” Christopher laughed.

“Lock it up, 311. You’re my second on this one—I want you on the comms. Load up, gentlemen. Seven-fourteen and 903—you boys have experience with the 50s, so I want you in the gun turrets.”

“Sir,” one of the shaved-headed convicts said with a nod.

“Eleven fifty-three, your file indicates you used to work as a building contractor, correct?”

“Yes, sir.” Nick nodded.

“Good. You’re in charge of the demo team—I want you to bring that hotel down to rubble.”

“I can handle that. Mike, Pete, Gabe, you’re with me.”

Nick’s three 47 compatriots nodded. The entire unit climbed into the Razor and sealed the massive rear hatch—once the two assigned men were in the gun turrets, the vehicle was actually somewhat roomy. Neal fired up the huge twenty-four-cylinder engine and pointed the Razor back toward the hotel.

“Four-twenty-one—in the back, you’ll find our weapons. I want each man issued one M4, one Glock, extra ammo. We’ve got two minutes to the hotel—I want everyone loaded up by then.”

“On it,” one of the 21 soldiers replied, heading toward the back of the vehicle.

“I just saw one of those dudes had a Nazi symbol on his arm,” Peter whispered to Nick.

“Fantastic.” Nick sighed.

“Told you. Aryans. Let’s just try not to get on their bad side—they don’t like the blacks, the Irish, or the…what the fuck are you, anyway, Nick?”

“Half-Japanese.”

“Oh, yeah. They really don’t like you.”

“On the upside, Chris’ll probably be okay.”

“Well, thank Allah for that.” Peter’s voice was flat.

“Hey, boss! We got some bullet-proof vests back here!” the Aryan coded as 421 yelled from the back of the van. “Five of ‘em!”

“Give them to the demo team,” Neal yelled back.

The Aryan handed off the vests to his teammate from the 21, the shortest of the four Aryans. The short one walked through the vehicle, handing vests to the four members of Nick’s demo team.

“Let’s see…one for darky, one for chinky, one for mickey, and one for spicky.” The short Aryan chuckled as he tossed the vests to their new owners. He slammed the last vest into Gabriel’s massive chest.

“Careful, Napoleon. CO isn’t going to be watching your ass every second,” Gabriel growled.

“Whatever, spicky. I count four of us and one of you.” The short Aryan shrugged.

“Both of you, shut the fuck up, will you? I need to confer with my team. Unless you like the idea of just sitting around waiting for the Russians and the Chinese to start throwing missiles at us,” Nick said.

The short Aryan opened his mouth to say something else, but Nick’s glare stopped him before he started. Instead, the Aryan just shrugged again and headed toward the back of the Razor.

“Hey, Nick. You like to hit people. You wanna punch the shit out of that guy?” Gabriel asked as the demo team huddled together.

“Already on my to-do list, kid. Now, listen up. What you’re looking for out there are structural supports—big beams, basically. They’re going to mostly be around the outside of the building. We’ll want to plant the explosives heaviest there.”

Michael nodded. “What about the half of the building that’s already blown up?”

“We can pretty much ignore that entire side of the building. Once we kill the other three sides, that side’ll finish collapsing easy.”

“We’re here. Demo team, grab your weapons and ordinance and get moving,” Neal shouted as the Razor rolled to a stop.

As Nick and his team headed out the door, 21 Echo 421 handed them each an M4 rifle, a .40 Glock pistol, a Kevlar helmet and a backpack with C-4 charges and detonators. Nick tossed his backpack over the Kevlar’s straps on his shoulder and led his team out into the night.

The hotel was quiet now. Everyone had evacuated more than an hour ago. The wind was still, and the only sound that broke the uniform silence of the night was the Razor’s massive, idling engine. It seemed right to Nick to keep his voice as low as possible.

“Mike, Pete, you take the south face of the building. Remember, supports. Wrap them nice and heavy then pop a detonator into the C-4. I’ve got the remote with me. When you’re done there, meet Gabe and me on the west side of the building. Fast as you can, gents.”

Michael and Peter nodded and hurried off, and Gabriel followed Nick to the north side of the building.

“Hey, Nick. Chris tells me you’re in here for killing a whole bunch of people,” Gabriel whispered as the two of them jogged around the building.

“He’s correct. If you consider five a whole bunch,” Nick said.

“Don’t seem right. I know guys who killed people. You don’t seem like them. For one, you had a job at some point.”

“How about this, Gabe? We live through the night, and I’ll tell you the story.”

As Nick and Gabriel worked quickly to secure the C-4 to the hotel, the earpiece in Nick’s helmet clicked on.

“Move your asses, kids.” Christopher’s voice buzzed in his helmet. “Sentries just north of the airport have major traffic coming in, and radar’s showing a bunch of birds in the sky from the south. We don’t get out of here soon, we don’t get out of here at all.”

“Gotcha,” Nick mumbled back. He wasn’t sure if he was transmitting.

“You hear that, too?” Gabriel asked Nick.

“Yeah. Apparently, we’re on comms.”

“That is correct, Nick. I can hear you, and I’m reporting back to Neal. Now keep moving.”

Nick ignored Christopher and turned to Gabriel. “You see what I’m doing with this pillar? Wrapping it low with double-charges then putting in detonators?”

Gabriel nodded.

“Good. Take the rest of the explosives and find a pillar that looks like this one on the western side of the building. Do exactly as I’ve done here. Run.”

Gabriel grabbed the backpack from Nick’s hand and took off running—for a big guy, the kid was fast, and it was only a couple of seconds before he was out of sight.

Nick finished setting his charges about thirty seconds later and set off after Gabriel. “Mike, Pete, can you hear me?”

“Yeah,” Michael’s voice came through the helmet speaker.

“How’s your progress?”

“We’re done. I think. Heading for the west side of the building. I see Gabe, but not you.”

“I’m on my way there now. Gabe?”

“Another minute, man.”

“Fast as you can. Chris, can you guys bring that big-ass truck around to the west side?”

“I think we’re gonna beat you there.”

“Right. Ask Neal what the effective range on these detonators is.”

“Hold on…he says half a kilometer.”

“Should be fine. Oh, there you are,” Nick said as he spotted the Razor idling next to Gabriel.

“Charges set,” Gabriel told him.

“Everyone back on the bus!” Neal yelled through the open driver’s window of the Razor, pointing to the sky behind him. Nick didn’t look—he didn’t have to. In the clear night, he could plainly hear the sound of many, many helicopter blades getting very close, very quick.

Nick stood at the Razor’s open doorway, first pushing Gabriel, then Peter, then Michael through. He had just made it in and slammed the door behind him when the first bullets started hitting the vehicle’s metal skin.

“Fuck. Fuck. We’re dead,” Gabriel whispered.

“Calm down, kiddo. These things can take a direct hit from a five hundred-pound missile. We’re fine.” Neal laughed, rocketing the Razor away from the building.

Nick counted to ten then pressed the button on the detonator remote. Through the back portal of the Razor, he saw the bottom of the hotel belch fire for a half-second. Then the entire building collapsed in on itself. Through the smoke and the dust, Nick saw the black shadows of helicopters scanning the ground with searchlights. In seconds, he guessed, they would be after the Razor again, firing on it until it reached the airport, but for now it was quiet in the vehicle.

The quiet lasted all of six seconds—then the ground started to shake and fire flashed outside the Razor’s windows.

“What the fuck is that?” Peter yelled.

“Rockets. They’re trying to get a lock on us,” Neal said, slamming down on the accelerator.

“Are those bigger than five hundred pounds?” Gabriel asked as the two Aryans in the gun turrets opened up, firing round after round into the sky.

Chapter 5

Death Comes Ripping

The airport was only two miles away, and Neal didn’t let off the accelerator once on the drive there. Several more rockets exploded near the Razor as it drove, but none hit the vehicle directly. As they approached the airport, Nick looked over Christopher’s shoulder at one of the many screens on the vehicle’s mammoth dashboard—an infrared image showed the airport, crisscrossed by moving red lines.

“What’re these?” Nick asked, tapping the lines.

“That’ll be gunfire. A lot of it.”

“Cut the chatter, 311. Get Captain Sayed on the comm,” Neal spat.

“CO 1-8 Echo, this is Razor 4-7 Echo. Do you read?”

Sayed’s voice crackled over the speaker in the center of the dashboard. The automatic weapons fire was so loud, it was almost impossible to hear him.

“Go for CO one-eight!”

“Sayed! Neal. What’s your status?”

“Encountering heavy resistance. Razors have set up at the end of the runway, covering the C-5 airlifts! We’ve taken a lot of casualties, Jimbo. We could use some help.”

“Roger that. We’re thirty seconds from your position. Unfortunately, we’re not alone.”

“I’ve got SAMs set up for your welcoming party.”

“SAMs?” Nick whispered to Christopher.

“Surface-to-air missiles.”

“We copy. Coming to you now. If you could knock a few of these choppers out of the sky, I’d appreciate it.”

Nick saw five spots on the infrared display flash. Before Sayed could even finish saying “rockets loose,” the entire unit heard a series of loud explosions behind the Razor. A half-second later, bright orange flashes lit the inside of the huge armored vehicle.

“Ooh, shit. That got ‘em,” one of the Aryans in the turret yelled.

Neal slammed on the brakes.

“All right, Echo! Grab your guns and roll out! Captain Sayed is now in charge, so listen for his orders!” Neal threw open the door to reveal Captain Sayed and twenty other convicts huddled down, firing to the north. “Move!”

Nick was still loaded with his gear from the demo mission, so he was the first out the door. He took up a position between two convicts—Army, he noticed, and simply started shooting his M4 in the same direction they were. It didn’t take long for him to see what they were shooting at—several hundred men in dark green uniforms rushing toward them.

Well, this isn’t how I thought I was going to die, Nick told himself, shrugging and pumping as many rounds as he could toward the oncoming masses. He expected to be afraid, but he felt nothing. Where the thoughts and feelings normally lived in his head, there was nothing but a smooth, constant dial tone. Adrenaline, he guessed.

“They’re not wearing body armor!” the Army soldier next to Nick yelled in his ear. “Aim for center mass! Take out as many of these motherfuckers as you can!”

As soon as the convict next to him finished his sentence, he jerked back and hit the ground, bleeding from the head. Nick kept firing, stepping on the dead soldier’s weapon with his left foot—he had the feeling he’d need it very soon.

The dark and the smoke made it hard for Nick to see what he was supposed to be shooting at. Christopher took the place of the dead soldier and whacked the side of Nick’s helmet. A visor slid down over Nick’s eyes, and suddenly everything was lit up in brilliant green hues.

Night vision, Nick realized. He had a much easier time aiming and burned through three clips in the next minute. He knew he’d taken out at least a dozen enemy soldiers, but he didn’t seem to be making a dent—wave after wave of them just kept coming, and the waves were getting closer to the small emplacement of soldiers taking cover behind the massive Razor.

Nick grabbed the dead soldier’s M4 from the ground and tossed his in its place. He fired until the clip ran out, then turned to the Army soldier on his right.

“We got any more SAMs?” he shouted above the gunfire.

“Two!” the soldier shouted back.

“Where?”

The soldier jerked his head to the right, past Christopher. Behind one of the Echoes from the 18, Nick saw a canvas bag with two dark green cylinders poking out of it. Nick smacked the side of his helmet again, raising the visor. As he lifted one of the cylinders out of the bag, he noticed it had instructions printed right on the weapon.

“Well, that’s convenient.” Nick smirked. The Echo in front of him turned slightly.

“What are you doing? There’s no incoming aircraft!” the Echo yelled.

“You’re correct there,” Nick said, smacking the side of his helmet to activate the night vision again. He lifted the missile launcher to his shoulder and turned back to the oncoming hordes of Russian soldiers. He held his breath, aimed at the center of the detachment, and pressed the trigger button.

There was less kickback than Nick expected as the missile zoomed out of the tube toward the advancing Russian detachment. Through the night vision, Nick saw a few of the Russian soldiers start to scatter, but they were too close—there wasn’t enough time to get out of the missile’s way.

The explosion almost shorted out the helmet’s night-vision visor. As the green flash subsided, Nick saw a huge, smoking hole in the ground, surrounded by dead Russian soldiers. The twenty or so the explosion hadn’t killed were heading away from Nick and his unit as fast as they could.

“Whoa. That was interesting,” Christopher said, standing from his crouched position and slapping Nick on the shoulder.

Lieutenant Neal appeared from next to the Razor, his hand on the side of his helmet. Nick caught a glimpse of Sayed, who was waving two of the Aryans from the 21 over to him.

“We’ve got incoming Russian Armor, and it’s fucking big,” Neal told them.

“How soon?” Christopher asked.

“It’s going to be here in about a minute,” Neal replied. “I’m going to need some of you to take the Razor and keep it busy.”

“Looks like we’re elected, Chief,” Christopher said, looking over to Nick.

“Three of the C-5s are away!” Sayed yelled. “Two more and we’re out of here!”

Nick shrugged.

“I’d rather be inside the Razor than out here,” he told Neal.

“No. Jimbo, I do not want that man inside the Razor,” Sayed yelled, stalking over to Neal and Nick.

The occasional bullet still whizzed by, but Sayed didn’t seem to mind. The two Aryans he’d been talking to—the same ones who’d manned the turrets on the Razor—flanked him on either side.

“Captain, I understand you have a problem with this man. I do. But he’s the best man for the job.”

“Besides, it’s a high-risk mission. Pretty good chance I’m gonna get killed.” Nick smirked.

“Hadn’t thought of that. We still have business, little man,” Sayed warned.

“Hey, we both live through this, we can settle up after,” Nick told him.

“Oh, you can believe we will.” With a dismissive wave of his hand, Sayed turned to the two Aryans behind him.

“You two are on turrets in the Razor. Three-eleven is in charge—you listen to him like you’d listen to me or the Lieutenant, you got it?”

“Got it, sir.”

“Load up. We’re burning time we don’t have,” Neal ordered. Christopher threw open the door to the Razor, and everyone piled in. Chris took the wheel and started up the twenty-four-cylinder engine. Nick took the seat next to him as the two Aryans climbed into the turrets.

“I’m gonna need the position on the Russian Armor,” Christopher told him. “Center screen. Pretty much idiot-proof.”

“That’s fortunate,” Nick said as he tapped the center screen. A remote-camera image of six rolling Russian assault vehicles popped up on the screen, highlighted in the now-familiar night-vision green.

“Where are these images coming from?”

“Unmanned drone. See that blue button on the left of the screen? That’ll send the armor’s position to the nav system.”

Nick pressed the indicated button, and the Razor began to roll.

“ETA, twenty seconds,” Nick read from the screen. “What do you think our chances of survival are?”

“Six of them, one of us? Just by the straight math, approximately not good.”

“Pretty much what I thought. So what do I do here?”

“Left screen’s the targeting system for the rocket pods. Pretty simple—drag the crosshair, double-tap to fire. Might want to start doing that…right now.”

The Razor’s cameras showed the six Russian assault vehicles—a small line at the top of the targeting screen identified them as TX-49 Heavy Assault Vehicles. The targeting crosshair appeared, and Nick dragged it onto the lead assault vehicle’s cockpit. He quickly double-tapped the crosshair and saw the rocket enter the camera view. A second later, it exploded against the front of the lead TX-49.

As the explosion cleared, Nick saw that the rocket hadn’t even put a dent in the Russian vehicle. All six of the Russians opened fire at the same time, rocking the Razor violently on its suspension. The Aryans up top opened fire as well, but they weren’t doing any damage that Nick or Christopher could see.

Suddenly, the Razor stopped dead. The engine wasn’t running.

“Shit. That’s not good.” Christopher sighed.

“What the fuck is going on down there, man?” one of the Aryans yelled from his turret.

“Just shut up and keep shooting!” Christopher yelled over the large-caliber bullets pinging off the Razor’s skin.

“Not to repeat that guy, but what the fuck is going on, Chris?” Nick asked.

“I don’t know. It’s like it just stopped working. Diagnostics aren’t saying anything, but the damn thing doesn’t want to restart.”

“Are we…out of gas, maybe?”

“Don’t be stupid. We’re not out of…oh, shit. We are out of gas. Switching to reserve tank.”

A half-second later, the Razor rumbled back to life.

“We have about twenty seconds until those TX-49s hit the airstrip and have a clear shot at our birds. Any ideas?” Christopher asked.

“Yeah. Back up, fast as you can. We’re not going to get anywhere trying to go straight at them—it’s like two guys in full body armor throwing pebbles at each other.”

“Why back up?”

“Trust me. Just back up.”

Christopher shrugged, put the huge Razor into gear, and slammed his foot on the accelerator. With a lurch, the massive vehicle shot backwards. Nick already had his targets locked in and fired every one of the Razor’s twenty-three remaining rockets.

“You, uh. You missed,” Christopher mumbled, pointing to the targeting screen, which was blinking red.

“No he fucking didn’t,” one of the Aryans said with a laugh. “Raise your blast shields, man.”

“Those fifty-cal rounds will tear right through the windows without the blast shields,” Christopher argued.

“You hear any rounds, man?”

Christopher listened for a second—the bullets had, indeed, stopped banging against the Razor’s hull. He reached down and hit a few buttons, and the blast shields in front of the Razor’s windshield slid open.

Through the clearing smoke, Christopher could easily make out six Russian TX-49 Heavy Assault Vehicles, buried nose-first in the ground just before the concrete of the airstrip.

“What the fuck did you do?” Christopher asked, shaking his head.

“Took the ground out right in front of them, is what he fuckin’ did.” The Aryan laughed from the turret.

“Just kinda surprised they didn’t think of it first,” Nick admitted.

A hatch on the rear of one of the TX-49s opened, and a man with an assault rifle started to crawl out.

“Hey, redneck! You wanna keep these guys inside their little cars?” Nick yelled to the Aryan.

“On it, Chinky!”

A short burst exploded from the front turret, bouncing the emerging Russian clear out of the back of his vehicle. The Aryan sprayed a few more bullets at the motionless assault vehicles to encourage their occupants not to get out.

“Razor 4-7, this is CO 4-7 Echo,” the radio jumped to life.

“Um, yeah. This is them. Uh. Razor 4-7 Echo,” Nick said.

“Last C-5 is away. Looks like you neutralized that Russian Armor.”

“Got ‘em pinned down for the moment, sir.”

“Set the turrets to keep them that way, then haul ass back here. Our chopper is skids up in three minutes.”

“Roger that.”

“Redneck! You got a name?” Nick yelled back to the turrets.

“Shaw!”

“Right, Shaw! You know how to set those turrets to automatic?”

“On it!”

“Once you get that done, grab your boy and your shit! We’re out of here!”

“Right on!”

A few seconds later, Shaw and the other Aryan dropped out of the turrets, slinging their M4s over their shoulders. Nick heard the .50 caliber turrets fire off a few rounds, then again three seconds later. He kicked open the Razor’s back hatch and waved his three crewmen out, then followed at the rear.

“Choppers are just outside the main terminal. We’d probably better, you know…run like hell,” Christopher suggested.

Without a word, all four Echoes took off as fast as they could. A few Russian ground troops were still scattered around the airstrip, and bullets bit into the concrete around the four as they ran. Nick fired a few blind bursts from his M4 as he ran, but he doubted he hit anyone. The three Echoes in front of him also fired sporadically, but none of them were stopping to actually aim—they were probably hoping, as Nick was, that their bullets would deter the remaining Russian troops from converging on them in any sort of numbers.

Almost a half-mile away, Nick saw two UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters with their rotors spinning up. “Run faster!” he yelled to his crew.

“Razor 4-7 crew, this is CO 4-7 Echo. We have visual on you. We have incoming Chinese artillery, so you might want to hump it,” Neal’s voice sounded in their helmets.

“Right,” Nick panted. He hadn’t had to run for as long as he could remember.

Shaw took a tumble in front of Nick. Without slowing down, Nick hooked his arm under the young Aryan’s and hauled him to his feet.

“Run much, redneck?” Nick grumbled.

“Think I busted my ankle,” Shaw spat.

Nick glanced down as the two of them hobbled toward the choppers and saw blood trailing from Shaw’s left foot.

“Nope. Think you got shot in it.”

“Fuck. Isn’t that awesome.”

“Can you run?”

“If I ain’t runnin’, I’m dyin’.”

Nick was surprised by how little Shaw actually slowed down, even though the young Aryan was almost hopping on one foot. Two hundred yards from the choppers, Shaw collapsed again. This time, he was out cold.

“Fuck, redneck. You’re really getting on my nerves,” Nick grumbled as he tossed his M4 to Christopher. “Keep running for the choppers!”

Nick leaned down and picked up Shaw’s unconscious form, then threw the man over his shoulder. The redneck was heavier than he looked, but Nick still managed to run as he headed for the choppers. Ahead of him, he saw Christopher and the other Aryan make it to one of the Black Hawks, which immediately lifted off.

Nick’s right knee suddenly exploded in pain. He knew he’d twisted it—he remembered the exact feeling from playing football in high school. He kept running for the Black Hawk, struggling to stay vertical, but he knew he was moving way too slow.

Up ahead, Nick saw someone hop out of the remaining Black Hawk and run toward him. As the figure got closer, he recognized Gabriel Martinez.

“Got him, boss. We’ve got a flight to catch.” Gabriel grinned, lifting Shaw off of Nick’s shoulder and heading for the chopper.

Relieved of Shaw’s weight, Nick found it much easier to run. He made it to the chopper after Gabriel and Shaw and threw himself in just as the Black Hawk’s wheels left the tarmac.

Chapter 6

Soundtrack to a Killing Spree

Nick didn’t realize he’d passed out on the chopper until he woke up in a medic’s bay two days later. Unlike the camp and the hotel at Staging Area November, this place looked clean and modern. Nick looked around and saw several medics in light green scrubs attending soldiers in several other beds.

“Hey, 47 Echo 1153. You’re awake. How you feeling, champ?” a young Latino in scrubs asked, looking at the e-reader at the edge of the bed, which Nick guessed had his chart.

“Um…pretty good, actually. You a doctor? Medic?”

“Medic. Name’s Angel. And that’s the drugs that’re making you feel good. You should be feeling like hammered shit, really.”

“Where am I?”

“Novosibirsk.”

“I kinda suck at geography. Still in Russia?”

“Yeah, still in Russia. You came from November, right? I got a cousin who was stationed at November. Marine Alpha. You know him, maybe? Gabe Martinez?”

“Heh. Yeah, I know him. He’s in my unit.”

“Shit. Gabe went Mecho? Not many of you guys made it out of there. You know if he’s okay?”

“He helped me get on the chopper. Far as I know, he didn’t get a scratch on him.”

“Good. You see him, see if you can get him in to see me. His mom’s worried about him.”

“You’re not a convict?”

“Nope.” Angel laughed. “My ass was dumb enough to join the Reserves to try and pay for college. I mean, we’d just finished one war, right? Safest time to join. Two months later, Los Angeles happens. Rushed through my EMT-i. Been here at Camp Justice ever since.”

“Camp Justice?”

“Yeah, it’s tacky. But we’ve been pretty safe here so far. Not like November. That place is wiped off the fucking map now. Chinese lines are twenty miles north.”

“So what kind of shape am I in, anyway?”

“Couple of broken ribs from bullets to the Kevlar. Dislocated knee, which we popped back in. Bullet grazes on both arms, one on the neck. Pretty good, considering. And you get another day to rest here before they throw you back out there, so we can call that a win.”

“You know where they’re throwing us?”

“Nah. Like I said, just a medic. I’ll let your CO know you’re up. He’ll come in and fill you in on the details.”

“Thanks, Angel.”

“De nada, brother. Keep an eye on my little cousin, will you?”

“You got it.”

Nick looked over to the bedside table as Angel walked away. There were two newspapers on it, one in Russian and one in English. Nick tried to read the English one, but it was a military publication, and had nothing but thinly veiled propaganda. It was also at least three months old. Though it only took him a few minutes to bore of the paper, Lieutenant Neal was standing at the foot of his bed when he eventually put it down.

“Good to see you awake, 1153.”

“People keep saying that. How long was I out?”

“Two days. The doctors kept you out so you’d heal faster. Induced coma, pushed a lot of drugs that speed up the healing process.”

“How’d our unit come out?”

“We didn’t lose anyone from the 4-7. One of our replacements from the 2-1. Guy you carried to the chopper is somewhere in the hospital here—he’s gonna be all right.”

“That’s good to know.”

“Sayed’s dead. We lost forty-two Echoes securing the airport. I’ve been field-promoted to take over second in command of the Echo units.”

“Congratulations? I think?”

“Thanks. That’ll mean I need someone I can count on to help run the 47. Job’s yours.”

“What if I don’t want it?”

“You seem to forget, 1153, that you’re a convict. What you want is irrelevant. I’ve seen skills I can use, and I’m going to use them.”

“Well, in that case, happy to accept, Lieutenant.”

“It’s Captain now.”

“What’s my first job, Captain?”

“Rest up. We’re going to be taking on a few more recruits to the 47 tomorrow. I’ll need you to help them adjust to Echo.”

“Good enough.”

Neal nodded and left. As he reached the door, he turned back to Nick.

“I’ll see if I can’t get you something more interesting to read.” He smirked.

“I’d appreciate it. And if he gets a chance, could you have 1156 swing by?”

Neal nodded again and vanished down the long hallway.

***

Gabriel came in an hour and a half later, dressed in BDU pants and a dark gray T-shirt. One tattooed hand held a bulky, battered e-reader. Gabriel smiled widely when he saw Nick and waved with his free hand.

“There’s the new boss! How you doin’, holmes?”

“Feeling pretty good, actually. What you got there?”

“Marine and Army technical manuals, A-Z. Everything from the Aero hybrid UAV to the Zebra antipersonnel mine. Kind of dry, but about the only thing I could find for you to read. Unless you wanted gay porn, which I found a disturbing amount of.”

“Appreciated. And good choice, given the options. You see your cousin yet?”

“Yeah, out in the hall. Big Angel. Hell of a guy. Used to babysit my younger sister. He’ll take good care of you, boss.”

“No doubt. So what’s happening in Echo?”

“We got a couple of days of downtime. They actually have us up in a pretty sweet place—old apartment building, I think. Much better than the hotel. Running water, electricity, and everything. Now quit stalling.”

“Stalling?”

“You said we both made it out of Area November alive, you’d tell me how you ended up out here. You owe me a story, boss man.”

“So I do. You track me down a glass of water or something, and you’re on.”

Gabriel poured a glass of water from a pitcher by the bed.

Nick took a long drink and thought back. “I’m from Los Angeles. I think I mentioned that. Mom ran a restaurant there. Little neighborhood joint. As you can tell by looking, I’m half Asian—that’s my mom’s half.”

“Japanese, you said?”

“That is, indeed, what I said.” Nick smirked. He finished off his water and continued. “Anyway, after the attack…not a great idea to be Asian in Los Angeles. Most folks can’t tell a Korean from a Japanese, if you know what I mean.”

“My old hood, we used to call that ‘black on a Friday night.’“

“That’s pretty accurate. Asian became the new black. Vietnamese, Hmong, Thai, Japanese—didn’t matter, we were all Koreans or Chinks. Wasn’t long before we’d show up to the restaurant every morning to find fresh vandalism. Then…well, then it went beyond vandalism.

“I was working construction at the time, and helping out at the restaurant some mornings, closing it up some nights. We’d had a couple of break-ins the week before, and even caught one of them on the security cameras. Neighborhood thugs. I knew ‘em by reputation, a few of their names. We gave the video to the cops, but nothing happened.”

Nick rolled his empty water glass from one hand to the other. He really didn’t want to tell this part of the story, didn’t even want to think about it. He’d only made the deal with Gabriel because he’d fully expected at least one of them to die at Area November. Still, he hated thinking about it…hated thinking about what he saw that night. It always made a lump rise in his throat, a lump with a nice dose of anger on its heels.

“Two weeks after the attack on Los Angeles,” Nick continued, “I was headed into the restaurant just after close to help clean up. Front door was locked, just like it was supposed to be, so I went around the back. The handle was broken off, and the door was wide open. I called the police before I even went in the building, but I didn’t wait for them to show.”

Gabriel frowned—he could probably see where the story was going, but he didn’t interrupt.

“Mom and the two closing waiters were dead. Waiters were shot. Mom looked like she’d been beaten to death. Cops came in, took statements, collected evidence, even made an arrest—one of the kids who’d broken in the week before. White kid playing gangster. His trial was a fucking joke. He walked.”

“Because the victims were all Asian?”

“Nobody was saying it, but yeah. So as soon as this kid hit the streets, I was on him. Found him in a club on La Cienega with four of his boys and shot him in the face. His friends came at me, shot at me a couple of times. I shot more accurately. By the time my trial was over, we were already pretty deep into the war. I ended up here the same day you did. Think we were on the same flight, actually.”

“Man. That’s fucked up.”

“Yeah, but between this and the death sentence, I’ll take this. What about you?”

“Shit, bro. I got nothing on that. I got drunk and punched a guy out. He pressed charges. Assault, two years with my priors. Supposed to spend ‘em in Alpha, but you know the rest.”

“Well, at least you tested well enough to stay out of the Army,” Nick said with a grin.

“Yeah. Lucky me. Violent tendencies crossed with an above-average IQ, and a freakout on a military cop lands me in a suicide squad. Damn, I’m just glad I wasn’t any luckier.” Gabriel chuckled. “Listen, I gotta get back to the unit. Neal’s promotion’s going to his head. He’s got us going out for combat drills this afternoon. Enjoy the light reading.”

Nick picked up the e-reader and turned it on. Calling it “a little dry” had been a gross understatement, but it was still better than the propaganda. He poured himself another glass of water and started reading.

He was surprised when the manuals actually held his interest. The terminology was a little jargony, but he remembered more and more of it as he read. By the time he drifted off in a medicated sleep several hours later, he’d figured out all of the systems on the Razor. He was also pretty sure he could pilot a Black Hawk helicopter, possibly even an Apache Long Bow.

Fortunately, the drugs Angel had given him had blocked him from having any dreams. After the discussion with Gabriel, he really didn’t want to relive the situation in his sleep. He wanted to put it out of his mind as quickly as he could.

Nick was discharged from the hospital at six the next morning. Christopher was waiting next to the front desk in uniform, holding a new BDU jacket in one hand for Nick.

“Here you go. Buddy in the quartermaster’s office hooked me up, since your last one was all shot to hell. How you feeling?”

“Decent enough. Knee’s a little twinged, but I’ll live.”

“We’re headed to the airport. New fish coming in today—a lot of ‘em. Since Area November got wiped out, Camp Justice is our single processing point in all of Russia. Looks like we’re going to finally fill out the unit.”

“Right on,” Nick said, shrugging into the BDU jacket and buttoning up. “Neal joining us there?”

“’Course not. Low-level to mid-level shit falls to you now, boss.”

“Fair enough, I suppose.”

“Got a Humvee outside. Stole it from some Army guys. Let’s move on it.”

“You drive. I have no fucking clue where the airport is, and I think I’m still minorly high on morphine.”

“Lucky you.” Christopher smirked as the two of them walked out to the Humvee. He put on a pair of sunglasses as he slid behind the wheel and started the engine.

“Nice shades.”

“Yep, stole those too. Um, have I mentioned I’m good at stealing shit? Although not perfect, because I am here, after all.”

“You got thrown into Echo for theft?”

“Theft and shooting two people in the commission of said theft, yeah.”

“There anyone in Echo who hasn’t murdered someone?”

“A couple in the lower units for manslaughter, I think. But yeah, you gotta kill someone to go Mecho. The worse your crime, the higher your unit assignment. Well, that is, if you test well enough to go Marine in the first place. Test too low, and you end up in Army Kilo.”

“Those guys who backed us up at Area November?”

“Those’re them. Lots of low-level gangbangers there. The 25 to 32 Kilo units are all MS-13s.”

“The Mexican prison gang, huh? Sounds like a fun group.”

“They’re like us, I suppose. They get the job done,” Christopher commented as they pulled up outside the airport. The two of them walked over to the large tent set up with a Marine E sign tacked to it. “You ready for this?”

“Sure. Let’s add to the family.”

Christopher lit a cigarette then handed one to Nick. Nick lit his and inhaled deeply as the first C-5 skidded to a landing on the runway. As the first load of convicts in gray jumpsuits were herded off the plane by military police, Nick realized with a shock it had only been a week since he’d been in the same position. It felt like months.

Chapter 7

New Blood

As the first C-5 opened its cargo bay, Nick noticed one convict stood out from all the others. It was hard not to notice—this kid stalked straight off the plane with no prodding, heading over to the first processing station as if that’s where he’d wanted to go all his life. The other convicts had to be poked, prodded, directed. Not this kid. He looked eager to get started.

Nick and Christopher had time for a few more cigarettes before the first wave of convicts made it through initial processing. As they hung out in the Echo tent and smoked, Nick noticed a few more representatives from other Echo units showing up, including the short, mouthy Aryan from the 2-1, one of the guys from the 1-8 Sayed had used as a sniper. Nick nodded at the sniper guy—he didn’t remember if he’d ever gotten a name from him, but he was pretty sure the guy was coded 18 Echo 210, which meant he’d been around for a while. Two-ten nodded back and smirked. Nick held up his pack of cigarettes, and 210 shrugged and walked over.

“Thanks, man,” 210 told him. His voice was deeper than Nick would have expected from such a small guy. He had pale skin and white-blond hair.

“Sure thing. I’m Nick, by the way.”

“Bryce. Good to meet you. Glad to see you made it out of November. Hear you carried one of the guys from the 2-1 on your back to the chopper.”

“Wasn’t gonna just leave him there.”

“’Course not. Rumor is, though, the Aryans in the 21 and the 23 love you, though. That guy was pretty much their grand poo-bah.”

“Better than me having to watch my back around them, I suppose.”

The kid who had damn-near bounded off the C-5 walked into the tent at that moment and walked right up to Christopher.

“Hey, tall, dark, and probably handsome after three drinks. You Mecho?” the kid asked.

“Yeah, that’s us.”

“Name’s Daniel. I supposed to report to you, or what?”

Nick looked at the kid as Christopher checked his dog tag. He didn’t look like the soldier type, but then again, which of them really did when they first arrived? But this kid—this kid looked like he should be fronting a boy band, not anxiously waiting to be given a gun and a uniform.

“Nah. Not me. You’re coded into 18 Echo. That guy right over there, the blond one. Name’s Bryce. He’s a good guy.”

“Aw, and I wanted to hang out with you guys.” Daniel smiled. He had perfectly straight white teeth.

Bryce walked up and checked the kid’s tag.

“One-eight Echo 1313. Yep, you’re with me. Daniel, was it?”

Daniel stuck out his hand.

“At your service, boss.”

With a parting fist-bump to Nick, Bryce led Daniel off to the corner of the tent where the 18 was setting up.

“Wow. Never seen that kind of enthusiasm before,” Christopher said, blinking several times as if that would clear his surprise.

“I kinda liked him. Think we can get him reassigned to our unit?” Nick smirked.

“No. Sadly, I think this guy’s ours,” Christopher said, nodding to the huge mountain of a man being herded their way by two armed MPs.

“Four-seven?” one of the MPs asked, nodding to Nick.

“Sadly, that’s us.”

“This one’s all yours. I’d keep an eye on him if I was you—he got in three fights on the flight over. We had to sedate him.”

The huge man had long, stringy black hair, and dark eyes staring vacantly out from under them.

“You want us to leave the cuffs on him?” the other MP asked.

“You gonna behave, 1552?” Nick asked, reading from the huge man’s dog tag. Even hanging from the man’s chest, the tag was already at Nick’s eye level.

The huge man nodded slowly.

“Take the cuffs with you, sir,” Nick said, not taking his eyes off of the huge man in front of him.

“You sure?”

“He says he’ll behave.”

The MP shook his head, but removed 1552’s cuffs anyway. Nick reached out his hand to shake the huge man’s, which was twice the size of Nick’s own.

“Name’s Nick. Welcome to 47 Echo.” Nick smiled.

“Kenneth,” the huge man rumbled.

“Christopher,” Christopher waved, “or 47 Echo 311 to the bosses. Who’d you piss off to end up with us, Kenneth?”

“It’s not who I pissed off. It’s who pissed me off,” Kenneth grumbled.

“Right…um, would you like to have a seat? A smoke? Just, uh, don’t bonk me on the head and eat my brain,” Christopher said, holding out his pack of cigarettes to the giant.

“Smoking is weakness,” Kenneth growled, sitting on the bench at the back of the tent.

“He’s just a barrel of laughs, isn’t he?” Christopher mumbled to Nick, who nodded subtly.

Convicts started trickling into the Echo tent faster and faster. Nick noticed all of the convicts sent over to the two were white with shaved heads. Aryans. It probably made sense to keep them together, rather than throwing them into mixed units where they could get into trouble, he reasoned.

Apart from Kenneth, four more convicts showed up coded for 47 Echo. Unlike the recent additions to the 2-1, there didn’t seem to be any similarities evident in the makeup of these new recruits. Still, as the 4-7’s roster was now completely filled out, Christopher and Nick led them off to the next station to be tagged and, in Kenneth’s case, to have his hair cut.

Kenneth gave them no problems, but he didn’t say another word to them, even as they loaded everyone into the Humvee and drove back to the bunkhouse, a huge, sprawling apartment building swarming with uniformed convicts and armed MPs.

“Shit. Looks like they finally got him, huh?” Michael whispered to Nick as the new 47s got settled in to their large room. He nodded toward Kenneth.

“What do you mean?” Nick asked.

“You don’t know who that is? That’s Kenneth Alan Booth. He was on trial when I got arrested. Serial murders? Fifteen people in the greater Boston area?”

Nick groaned. “Oh, fuck. That’s…that’s just fucking great.”

“Sir?” one of the new recruits, Anthony Rice (47 Echo 1495) asked, walking up to Nick.

“Don’t have to sir me, Anthony. I’m a convict, same as you.”

“But you’re kinda my boss, right?”

Nick thought for a second and shrugged. “Guess I am. Still, though. Call me Nick.”

“Right, Nick. I’m, uh, just wondering…what do we eat? I haven’t had anything since I got on the plane.”

“Oh, sure. We kinda eat when we get the chance. You a big fan of food?” Nick asked.

“Love it. Used to be a chef.”

“Then you’re gonna hate these.” Christopher grinned. He opened a trunk at the far side of their room and pulled out a small, brown wrapped package.

“That’s…food?”

“In a way. FSRs—First Strike Rations. High nutritional value with a cardboard taste you’re likely to remember in your nightmares.”

Christopher tossed the package to Anthony, who grimaced as he opened it. Christopher threw packages to the rest of the unit then handed one to Nick.

“Oh, come on. What did I do?” Nick chuckled.

“Don’t worry. I’m already working the feed point in this place. We won’t be eating this crap for much longer.”

“Glad to hear it.”

As Nick’s Echo unit polished off their rations, the door to the apartment opened. Neal stepped through the door, and Nick could see two uniformed guards out in the hall.

“Morrow,” Neal said. “You’re with me. The rest of you, suit up. We may have a job sooner rather than later.” Nick followed Neal out to the hall, and the two uniformed guards trailed behind as they walked down the stairs and out the front door into the August sunshine. “We’re heading to C2,” Neal continued. “That’s Command and Control. Remember that—they’re going to expect you to know what they’re saying, and the military’s built on acronyms. You’re going to be meeting with Major Richard Harrison, CO of the Echo units. My boss, incidentally. He’s not a big fan of the convict units, so the less you say around him, the better off we both are. Clear?”

“Clear, sir.”

“Good man.”

Neal and Nick hopped into the back of a waiting Humvee, and the driver tore off down the road, making a series of twists and turns so sharp that Nick quickly found himself lost. The Humvee pulled into an underground parking garage, and the driver and a guard herded the two Echoes into an elevator.

Four more floors down, the elevator stopped, and the doors opened on a long, dark hallway. The guard led them to a huge steel door, punched in a six-digit code on the keypad next to the door, and motioned the two of them inside as the door opened.

The scene that Nick saw wasn’t unlike a normal civilian office, except that all of the men in front of the computers were in convict fatigues. One man, mid-forties and muscular, stood in the center of the room, smoking a cigarette. He had Major’s leaves on his shoulders.

“This is the guy, Captain? The one from Area November?” the Major asked.

“Yes, sir. Four-seven Echo 1153.”

“Fuck that. You got a real name, convict?”

“Nick Morrow, sir.”

“You look like a Chink, Morrow.”

“Half-Chink, sir.”

Harrison consulted the screen on his sleeve.

“Says here you speak Chink, too. Fluent?”

“Yes, sir.”

“That might come in handy. Captain Neal here assures me you can handle yourself under pressure.”

There wasn’t a question there, so Nick didn’t answer. Harrison looked up from his sleeve and continued.

“Just over an hour ago, an Aero II hybrid UAV went down approximately thirty miles north of Area November. UAVs going down isn’t anything new—the Chinese shoot those things down with a ninety-nine point nine percent success rate. Still haven’t figured out how they do it, but usually they completely destroy anything we put up without a human pilot. We’re getting an emergency locator from the Aero.”

Nick nodded, but decided against saying anything.

“If the Aero wasn’t completely destroyed, it might have valuable intel. We need a squad to go out and retrieve what they can, and we’ve got no idea what that squad may come up against in the process. You think the 4-7 can handle it?”

“We’re solid, sir.”

“Good. Captain Neal will sort you out with transport. You leave in twenty minutes. Get your men ready.”

“Roger that, sir.”

Harrison turned back to face the large screen at the end of the room.

“You’re dismissed, gentlemen,” Harrison said over his shoulder. The guard led the two of them back down the long hallway and into the elevator.

When Nick returned to the apartment, Christopher had everyone in full uniform, ready to go.

“So, boss. We got a job?” Christopher asked.

“And then some,” Nick confirmed. “Transport is meeting us out front in ninety seconds. Let’s shake a leg, folks.”

The Echoes filed out of the room, Kenneth and Nick taking up the rear.

“How ya doin’, big man?” Nick smirked at the huge convict.

Kenneth said nothing, nor did he even look at Nick. He just followed the others out to the waiting Cougar HE six-by-six idling outside. It was the first time he’d had seen one close-up, and he was actually kind of impressed by the size—it looked like a small tractor-trailer with an enclosed, long body and an M240B machine-gun turret on the top. There were sensors and cameras mounted just above the driver’s cabin—forward-looking infrared systems and night vision, Nick knew. Its six wheels were designed for chewing up off-road topography, but he guessed they’d be taking the paved roads most of the way.

“You know how to drive one of these?” Christopher asked.

“Sure. It was in the manual Gabe dropped by. All right, gentlemen. Load up. We’ll hash out a plan on the drive.”

As Christopher and Nick herded their team into the Cougar, Christopher shook his head. “I don’t love the look of this truck, I gotta tell you. One gun turret, no rockets?”

“Yeah, but it’s pretty much bomb-proof.”

“Oh. Well, that’s nice. Wait, we’re not expecting bombs, are we?”

“Tell you the truth, I’ve got no idea.”

Chapter 8

Communist Eyes

Though the Cougar was designed to roll on broken terrain, it was a hell of a lot of fun to drive on the roads. Nick’s enjoyment of the huge truck’s power was short-lived though, at least for the moment, as he only had to drive it to the airport to be picked up for the next leg of 47 Echo’s journey.

Irkutsk—formerly Area November—was several days’ drive away across the vast unknown of Siberia, and the bosses wanted the Aero found fast. Nick and his crew would be hitching a ride on an old CH-47 Chinook helicopter, which would wing them a couple hundred miles to the Southeast at an impressive one hundred ninety-five miles an hour. Then, fifty miles north of the city they’d recently escaped, the Chinook would drop them off. If 47 Echo found anything worth saving, the Chinook would be back to pick them up. If not…well, Nick figured, he’d have plenty of time to get to know his unit on the long drive back.

“Raise the chopper on the radio, Chris. Let ‘em know we’re on the way,” Nick said to Christopher, who was riding shotgun.

“Right on. Phantom 1-1, this is Cougar 4-7 Echo.”

“We copy, 4-7 Echo. You fellas need a lift?”

Nick saw the rotors on the huge chopper spinning up as the Cougar crested a small hill. “If you’re going our way, 1-1 Phantom.”

“Roger that, 4-7 Echo. Give us one minute, and we’ll be happy to let you tag along.”

“We copy,” Christopher said as he terminated the connection.

Through the front windshield of the Cougar, Christopher and Nick saw the Chinook take off.

“Wait. Weren’t they supposed to take us with them?” Peter asked from his position behind Christopher’s chair.

As 47 Echo watched, some heavy-duty straps fell from the bottom of the chopper. From a small shed, four convict-uniformed Army soldiers walked out under the hovering chopper. One of them waved the Cougar forward.

“Um…I don’t think we’re riding in the chopper, guys,” Nick said as he put the Cougar back into gear and drove where the ground crew directed him. Nick stopped the Cougar when indicated and turned off the engine.

“You don’t mean…” Peter stammered.

“Yeah, I think they do mean exactly that,” Nick nodded as the four-man ground crew started crawling all over the exterior of the Cougar. A few minutes later, one of them pounded on the hood of the truck and gave Nick the thumbs-up. Nick returned the gesture.

“Everybody, I suggest you sit down and hold on to something,” Nick warned.

He could hear his crew scrambling behind him, quickly grabbing onto anything that looked solid. A couple of seconds later, the men of 47 Echo felt the Cougar’s wheels slowly leave the ground. Out the window, they saw the ground start to fall away as the Chinook lifted them into the air.

Nick quickly adjusted to the slight bobbing and swaying of the tow-hitched Cougar, but a couple members of his team weren’t so lucky. One of the new guys, a thin, pale guy named Reggie, was already turning green. Nick really hoped none of them puked—they’d be in the Cougar for a while, and it wasn’t as if they could just crack a window.

“Anthony!” Nick called, turning around in his seat.

“Yeah, boss?”

“Check around, see if we have any water in the truck. Sixteen fifty-nine’s looking a little pale.”

“Sure thing.”

“Reggie? You gonna be all right, newbie? You gonna throw up?” Christopher asked.

Reggie waved his hand. “I’m alright,” he croaked.

“Found some water, boss!” Anthony yelled from the back of the truck.

“Pass it around. Small sips, everyone. We could be living in this truck for days, so let’s conserve as much as possible,” Nick told them.

“Tell you straight, Nick, I’m not loving the hell out of this flight, either,” Christopher said in a low voice. “You sure this is safe?”

“Safe enough for Mecho, I suppose,” Nick said, biting his lower lip. “And at least safe enough for the pilots, who I’m guessing are ‘real’ Army. Unless they’re training convicts that get assigned to Army units a whole lot better than they’re training us.”

Christopher chuckled. “Um…they are. The lower you get on the food chain, the less they train you, and the more dangerous your missions. Guys in the chopper are probably whatever Army’s version of Alpha is.”

“That’s depressing. I think we’ll be fine, though. They’ve done lifts like this thousands of times, and these Chinooks have been around in one form or another since Vietnam.”

“Great. So we’re strapped to a fifty-year-old chopper staffed by convicts. I feel better already.”

Nick tried to ignore the thoughts Christopher had just put into his head as he turned around and addressed his men. “We’ll hit the landing zone in about three hours. If any of you can get some sleep with the noise and the motion, I’d suggest that now’s the time to do so.”

Then Nick himself put his head back against his seat and closed his eyes. In three short breaths, he was out—but he made sure before he fell asleep that the radio in his helmet was switched on.

***

“But I don’t understand why Daddy won’t be home for six months.” Nick pouted. He was four years old, and his mother had just told him that his father, Alex, wouldn’t be able to take him to his first day of school like he’d promised.

“Daddy has a very important job, Nick,” his mother told him. “He’s in the Navy. He’s a SEAL.”

“Daddy’s not a seal. He’s a person.”

He saw the confusion on his mother’s face, saw her holding in laughter while trying to figure out how to explain what his father did for a living.

“Your daddy travels all over the world to help people, Nick. He doesn’t get to choose when he goes, but he always comes back home to us.”

“Okay. But he’s not a seal.”

“All right, honey.”

***

“Phantom 1-1 to Cougar 4-7 Echo,” the radio crackled in his ear.

“Go for 4-7 Echo,” Nick said, waking from his dream instantly but coughing slightly.

“We are now zero-five minutes from the landing zone.”

“Okay.”

“Say again?”

“Sorry. I, uh, copy.”

“Callback for retrieval will be at 0530 local. That gives you four hours, 4-7 Echo.”

“Right. Thanks for the ride, gents.”

“Our pleasure.”

A few moments later, the Cougar’s wheels hit the ground. Nick sent Michael and Peter outside to release the straps and told them to remember what they’d done in case they needed to hook it back up again. It took them less than two minutes to clear the straps, and the Chinook lifted back into the air and vanished into the night.

“All right, guys. Time for a quick drive. Chris, you got the locator on the Aero?” Nick asked as Michael and Peter got back into the truck.

“Yep. Still transmitting. Coordinates are in the nav system.”

“Look alive, folks. I have no idea what we might run into out here, but I’d like not to get killed by it.”

A series of mumbled and grunted affirmatives came from the back of the truck, and Nick started up the engine and headed where the navigation system told him to.

“Hey. You read the manual on this thing, right?” Christopher asked after a few minutes.

“Yeah.”

“I’m not going to blow anything up if I smoke in here, am I?”

“Nah, you’re fine. Light me one while you’re at it.”

Christopher lit two cigarettes and handed one over to Nick. Nick pushed the Cougar up to fifty miles an hour—just shy of the vehicle’s maximum operational speed, but he knew the thing could take it. It could probably hammer up to sixty-five in a pinch, but Nick hoped he didn’t have to test that out. The road was smooth and clear under the Cougar’s wheels, and just for a moment, Nick imagined he was driving a nice, new hydrogen-powered SUV down the Santa Monica Freeway, rather than an armored vehicle full of convicts to God-knew-what.

It only took twenty minutes to reach the Aero’s coordinates. Nick stopped the truck when the nav system told him to. He could see the white UAV about two hundred feet ahead, nose dug into the ground and missing a wing.

“All right, kids. We’re here. I want everyone to load up. I’m assuming most of you know how to shoot a gun. If you don’t, speak up now.”

No one said a word.

“Right, then. Let’s get out there, pull the recorders from the Aero, and get the fuck out of here.”

Gabriel opened up the back doors, and 47 Echo poured out of the truck. Nick opened his door, as well, taking the M4 that Christopher handed down to him.

“You stay here on the radio. Watch the screens for anything that could be, you know, coming to kill us,” Nick said.

Christopher nodded.

“Good luck out there, boss.”

It was seconds after Christopher said those words that automatic gunfire ripped through the air.

“Get down! Cover! Cover!” Nick yelled into his helmet radio. In front of him, he saw his men scatter toward the side of the road, ducking down behind a broken-down Lada Kalina. The eight Mechoes crowded behind the small sedan, which was quickly getting torn up by gunfire. “Chris! Can you see who’s shooting at us?”

“They’re half a klik to the south. I have ‘em on screens now. Six men on foot.”

“Half a kilometer? How the hell are they hitting from that far away?” Nick fired a spray of bullets to the south as he ran to join his men behind the Lada.

“Chinks have some damn good tech. Computer-aided telescopic sights, I think. I’m pulling the Cougar around in front of the UAV—should cover you long enough to yank the memory and the optics.”

The huge armored truck shot past the Lada, spinning to a stop so that its passenger side was facing south. Bullets started pinging off the side of the Cougar.

Nick motioned his men forward. “Quick as you can, guys. I think we have about a minute until they get here.”

Reggie pulled the bottom hatch off the Aero, and Nick saw the inside—jammed with 10-terrabyte hard drives and 500-gigabyte flash memory modules.

“Those, those, and those. Yank ‘em straight out. Don’t worry about ripping any wires loose,” Nick said, pointing to the drives and the flash memory. “Anthony, you’re with me. We’re pulling the optics out of the tail. Ones in the nose were probably smashed when the thing crashed.”

Anthony nodded and followed Nick around to the side of the UAV. The tail was a good eight feet above them.

“See the camera?” Nick yelled over the gunfire bouncing off the nearby Cougar.

“Yep.”

“You’re going to get on my shoulders, then rip it out any way you can.”

“Got it.”

As Anthony climbed onto Nick’s back, then stepped up on his shoulders, Nick radioed back to the Cougar. “How’s the truck holding up, Chris?”

“It could take small-arms fire all day. And these cats are just in range of the big gun up top. Let’s see how they like this,” Christopher radioed back.

Nick heard the M240 on the top of the Cougar swivel right, then start throwing rounds.

“Got two of them,” Christopher said. “Tracking the other four, but they’re splitting up.”

“Range?”

“A hundred meters.”

“Reggie! Mike! Pete! Cover behind the Cougar and start taking out some enemy fire!” Nick yelled down to his men.

The three Mechoes took up positions to the front and rear of the vehicle and started firing.

Anthony hopped down from Nick’s shoulders, the camera in one hand. Gabriel and Kenneth were just stuffing the last of the drives into their packs.

“Um, Nick—hurry.” Christopher’s voice sounded tight.

“Almost there.”

“Get there faster. We have three CDMs inbound, and inbound fast. Forty seconds until they’re in weapons range.”

“CDMs? What the fuck are CDMs?”

“Chinese Death Machines. Remember that mission only I came back from? That was one CDM. We have three. I say again. Hurry the fuck up, boss.”

Chapter 9

Ripper

“Load up! Now!” Nick yelled, throwing open the Cougar’s back door and jumping inside the vehicle. He stuck his arm out to Wes, one of the new convicts, and helped him into the truck. His crew quickly poured into the vehicle. In half a minute, everyone was aboard except Reggie, and Nick held his arm out to the kid. Reggie grabbed it.

Nick barely even heard the noise, a loud high-toned rattle, before Reggie just disintegrated in front of his eyes. Nick fell back into the truck, holding the charred remains of Reggie’s forearm. Kenneth quickly slammed the door shut behind him.

“Chris! Drive this thing!” Nick yelled, tossing the forearm to the floor and running to the command module. Trying not to think about what he’d just seen—a man ripped to nothing by gunfire—he jumped into the passenger seat as Christopher hit the gas. Nick could smell poor Reggie’s blood on his uniform. He shook his head hard and looked straight ahead out the window. Not the time to fall apart, Nick. Hold it together.

Bullets were slamming into the Cougar so fast that it sounded like a torrential thunderstorm on corrugated tin. Christopher slammed the accelerator to the floor, and the Cougar jumped up past sixty.

“How long do you think we can take these bullets?” Nick shouted over the deafening impacts.

“I’d say not long. I think we’re faster than they are, though. Let’s just hope they don’t shred the tires before we can prove that,” Christopher yelled back.

Nick toggled the Cougar’s rear cameras. He needed to see what kind of machine was trying to disintegrate the Cougar as easily as it had vaporized Reggie. The screen flickered to life, and between hits to the bulletproof glass covering the camera lens, Nick caught a glimpse of three dark green vehicles, each about half the size of the Cougar, firing from quadruple GAU-8-style gatling guns mounted to the front. Thanks to the thousands of huge rounds slamming into the back of the Cougar every second, Nick couldn’t get a very clear look, but it did appear that the chase vehicles were falling behind.

“Boss! We got denting back here!” Anthony yelled.

Nick turned around to look at the back of the truck, and saw that the rear door was starting to buckle. “Shit. Everyone, as close to the front of the vehicle as you can get. Chris, if you can push this motherfucker any faster, do it.”

Nick took control of the M240 and spun it around to face the pursuing CDMs. He aimed for the center vehicle and toggled the “fire” switch. He was greeted immediately by a flashing “weapon malfunction” message.

“Gun’s not working,” Nick told Christopher.

“I’d be surprised if it’s still there.” Christopher shrugged.

The bullet impacts slowed a bit, then stopped altogether.

“We’re out of range of their guns, anyway.” Nick sighed.

“Yeah. Now all we have to worry about is rockets,” Christopher said.

“This thing was designed to survive explosions. I hope it’ll still hold up with all the damage we’ve taken.”

“We’re about to find out. Missiles inbound,” Christopher replied as warning sirens blared throughout the truck.

“Everybody hold on to something!” Nick yelled.

The first rocket shot by within inches of the Cougar’s passenger side. The flame from the rocket’s jets lit up the inside of the truck for a half-second as the projectile sailed harmlessly by. He felt the heat of the rocket even through the triple-thick bulletproof window.

“They missed,” Michael breathed.

“They’re more than a half-mile away,” Christopher told them. “Out of visual range. They’re firing on instruments.”

“Then how are they not hitting us? They were tearing the shit out of us on instruments back at the Aero,” Anthony asked.

“They’re shooting at where their instruments predict we’ll be. Pretty tough at sixty-four miles an hour,” Nick said.

“So we’re okay?” Pete asked.

Christopher shook his head. “Those CDMs aren’t short on rockets. Even if they miss with ninety-nine percent of them, we’re still getting hit a couple of times. And I doubt this thing can take even one now that those guns have softened it up.”

“Agreed,” Nick said. “Juke this motherfucker like you’re driving drunk, Chris. Make it as hard for them as possible. The rest of you, get your gear on. We may have to bail out and do it quick.”

“Can’t we just call the helicopter to come get us?” Gabriel asked.

“Nope. We’ve still got more than three hours until they’re in radio range. ‘Sides, those CDMs could rip our ride straight out of the air in half a second. We’ve gotta lose ‘em somehow and get to the extraction point.”

“Talking of, I’m not heading that way anymore. No use leading them to our way out,” Christopher said.

“Good thinking. Where’s the nearest town? Maybe we can lose them in some buildings,” Nick said.

“According to our maps, six miles to the east.”

“Inhabited?”

Christopher shook his head. “Evacuated a month ago.”

“That’s where we’re going, then. Fast as you can manage.”

“Roger that. Um…shit.”

“What?”

“We have a new problem. I’ve got incoming contacts. Ground vehicles. At least ten, coming right at us.”

“Fuck. Looks like we go left or right, then,” Nick said.

“These things are moving fast. We won’t be able to outrun them, too,” Christopher said.

“Outstanding.”

“Wait—we’re getting a message.” Christopher toggled the truck’s comm system.

“RF friendlies, coming through. Repeat, RF friendlies, coming through,” the speakers crackled. The voice on the other end was deep and heavily accented.

“RF friendlies? What the fuck does that mean?” Peter asked.

“Russian Federation, I think,” Nick said, nodding to Christopher. “Put me on with them.”

Christopher toggled the comm system and nodded back to Nick.

“RF friendly incoming, this is Cougar 4-7 Echo.”

“Greetings, 4-7 Echo. Looks like you have some stalkers on you. Do you need a hand?”

“We’d appreciate it.” Nick smiled.

“Head to our position. We’re sending a unit to deal with your problem,” the voice came back.

“Do it, Chris.”

Christopher headed toward the source of the transmission, and in less than a minute, the Cougar crew saw ten Russian TX-47s rumbling toward them. The lead vehicle stopped in front of the Cougar while the other nine tanks raced past it. All of them had the same words painted in Cyrillic on their olive-drab bodies in red paint.

“What’s that say?” Michael asked.

Owen, the last of the new convicts and who hadn’t spoken a word up to that point, piped up. “It’s in Russian. It means ‘Invaders Must Die.’“

Nick toggled the rear cameras, and his crew crowded around to watch the monitors. The nine Russian tanks formed a line across the road, completely blocking off the Cougar from the approaching CDMs. As the three Chinese vehicles crested the hill, all nine Russian tanks opened fire, their massive front cannons lighting up the night. They kept firing as quickly as their crews could reload, spraying bullets from their front-mounted machine guns between salvos.

The lead CDM took a direct hit front and center, and two of its gatlings peeled away from the frame. The other two CDMs quickly turned around and drove the other direction, and the Russian tanks concentrated their fire on the immobile lead CDM.

It was all over in a few seconds, and the last remaining CDM was a smoking black shell.

“I think we got him,” the voice on the radio said. “Come on out and say hello.”

Nick nodded to Gabriel, who put his hand on the latch to the Cougar’s back door. Before he could turn the latch all the way, the back door fell off of its hinges and clanged to the road below. Nick couldn’t help chuckling as he led his men out of the Cougar. He stopped chuckling as he stepped over what was left of Reggie’s arm.

“Hey! American friends!” Nick heard the voice from the radio outside the Cougar. It belonged to a tall, thin man in a dark green uniform. Nick didn’t know Russian ranks, but he guessed the man was at least a Colonel from the way he carried himself.

“Nick Morrow, 47 Echo Second-in-Command,” Nick said, sticking out his hand.

“Andrevich Petkov, Russian Federation fourteenth Armored Division Commander.” The thin man smiled, shaking Nick’s hand enthusiastically.

“Thanks for the assist, Andrevich.”

“Always glad to help, my American friend. Shall we go take a look at your stalker?”

Nick nodded and followed Andrevich’s lead. As they walked past his tank unit, Nick saw that the men inside were now sitting on top of their tanks, smoking cigarettes. Nick lit one up himself as he and the Russian tank commander approached the motionless CDM.

The smell was horrible, like rotted meat and burned hair. Andrevich put on a pair of thick gloves and opened the hatch at the back of the CDM. Nick and the Russian commander were greeted first by a huge cloud of smoke, accompanied by the smell of what Nick could only guess was burned flesh.

He was right. As the smoke cleared, Nick could see that the inside of the vehicle was relatively undamaged, but its pilot had been cooked into his chair. He’d apparently tried to turn and let himself out of the vehicle when the shells had started hitting, but he obviously hadn’t made it—all he’d done was ensure that his charred death mask, frozen in mid-scream, was staring at Nick and Andrevich when the smoke cleared.

“Well…that’s about the most awful thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” Nick said, resisting the urge to turn and vomit.

If Andrevich was bothered by the corpse at all, he certainly didn’t show it. He grabbed the corpse by the shoulder with one gloved hand and pulled it from the seat, the body’s melted polyester uniform peeling away as Andrevich tossed the body out onto the road.

“Look at the inside of this thing. My, my. So many fancy toys.” Andrevich smirked.

Nick had to admit that Andrevich was correct, and looking at the inside of the CDM was the easiest way to avoid staring at the barbecued corpse on the asphalt behind them. There was, unfortunately, no way to ignore the smell.

The pilot’s cabin was small, just enough room to turn the chair around, and mounted at the very back of the vehicle. Every available surface was crowded with flatscreens, buttons, and lights. An assault rifle was strapped to the cabin’s low ceiling, and Nick took it down.

“The Chinamen, they have nice guns, eh?” Andrevich chuckled.

“That they do.”

“Where are you stationed, Second-in-Command Morrow?”

“We’re out of Justice at the moment.”

“There’s a friend of mine at Justice. A Major Harrison, used to work in Intelligence. You think he’d be able to do something with this?”

“I’m sure he’d like to try.”

“Then I suggest you take as much of it back as you can carry.”

“Agreed. Anthony! Kenneth! I want you two to tear as much of the tech out of this thing as you can! You’ve got one hour, so work fast. The rest of you, we’re going over the Cougar to see how bad the damage is.”

“We’ll stick here to help you out. Anything we can do, you just ask.” Andrevich grinned.

“Thanks, sir. I’m sure we’ll take you up on it.”

Christopher and the rest of the Echoes started to walk around the Cougar, inspecting the damage. With a passing nod to Andrevich, Nick joined the rest of his crew at the Cougar. He walked up to Christopher and put a hand on his shoulder.

“Chris. The Russians. Do what you do,” Nick muttered.

“On it, boss.” Christopher smirked.

Peter walked up next to Nick as they checked out the passenger side of the Cougar, which looked like a dented tin can. Nick paused over the rear tire on the passenger side. It was completely shredded.

“Hey, Nick,” Peter started.

“Yeah?”

“I thought we were fighting the Russians, man.”

“Some of ‘em. When the Chinese declared war, about half of the Russian Army decided to side with them. The other half decided not to.” Nick shrugged. “So in addition to fighting the Chinese and the North Koreans, we’re in the middle of a Russian civil war.”

“Why would the Russians want to side with the Chinks?”

“Look at your history, kiddo. Russia was Communist for a long time, and there are still a lot of hard-liners around. They’d jump at the chance to go Commie again.”

“So how can we be sure these Russians are on our side?”

“I’d say the fact that they toasted that CDM puts them in our camp.” Nick lowered his voice. “But don’t worry. We’re keeping an eye on them.”

Peter looked over at the Russian tank crews, who were laughing with Christopher over by their parked vehicles. A quick count showed that the Russians outnumbered the Echoes four to one. He shook his head. “Man, I sure hope so.”

Chapter 10

Seeing Red

The Cougar limped back to the pickup zone, and from the rattling in its engine, it wouldn’t be worth salvaging. Andrevich was kind enough to provide two of his tanks as escorts, as the Cougar had lost its only weapon running from the Chinese.

At 5:15 a.m., Nick tried to raise the Chinook. “Phantom 1-1, this is Cougar 4-7 Echo.”

“Go for Phantom 1-1,” the response crackled back.

“We are standing by at the pickup zone.”

“Roger that. Your transmission is extremely weak.”

“We’ve taken a lot of damage. Cougar’s probably a write-off.”

“We copy. Set it to demo, and we’ll detonate from the air. Status?”

“Mission successful. One casualty. Some extra Chinese tech stolen for good measure,” Nick said. He couldn’t help smirking.

“Roger. We’ll be touching down in one-four minutes.”

“Copy that. We’ll see you in one-four.”

Nick switched off the comm system, then joined his men outside. “All right, folks. We’re to set the Cougar to blow. Grab everything and strap it on your backs—we get to ride in the helicopter this time.”

“Thank Christ,” Christopher said, loading his pack with cartons of Russian cigarettes.

“What’d you trade for those?” Michael asked.

“Just charm, pal. Just charm. Here, have a carton.” Christopher grinned, handing one of the long boxes to Michael. Michael smiled and wedged the carton into his overstuffed pack, moving aside some salvaged Chinese hard drives to make everything fit.

Nick slung his new Chinese assault rifle over one shoulder then his M4 over the other. He hoped they’d let him keep the Chinese rifle—he’d tested out the computer-augmented sights and had managed to knock a bottle of water off the top of the Cougar from a half-mile away. The rifle had immediately stopped firing after, but still, Nick wanted to take a look at its tech.

As he saw the Chinook approaching in the distance, Nick’s helmet radio clicked on.

“Nick, my American friend,” Andrevich said.

“Hey, Andrevich. We’re just about ready to get out of here.”

“Excellent. I need you to deliver a message to Major Harrison for me. Can you do that?”

“Sure. I owe you one.”

“You owe me nothing, but the message is this: tell him that Post K-13R is seeing red. Can you say that back to me?”

“Post K-13R is seeing red.”

“Outstanding. I hope to see you again someday.”

“You too, Andrevich. And thanks much for the help back there.”

“Any time, my friend. Any time.”

Nick couldn’t help but think that Andrevich, who had sounded cheerful every time he’d spoken to him, sounded just a little sad as he signed off from the radio. The Chinook landed a few minutes later, and Nick ushered his team into the chopper. Christopher was the last one to load up, and Nick walked with him.

“So what did you think of our Russian friends?” Nick asked as the two of them walked up the Chinook’s ramp.

“Good bunch of guys. They’ve been out here doing hit-and-runs on the Chinks for months now. Hope we get a chance to work with ‘em again, really.”

Nick nodded—he agreed completely, but he couldn’t help but wonder what Andrevich’s cryptic message was supposed to mean.

Nick caught a couple of hours of sleep on the flight back to camp. He woke up once convinced the helicopter had come under enemy fire, but when he opened his eyes all he saw was the bored, half-asleep faces of his team.

“How you holding up, boss?” Christopher asked from his position next to Nick.

“Doing all right, I think.”

“I’m sure glad we had you at the wheel for this one. Last time I came across one of those CDMs, I had to hide out under ten bodies ‘til extraction.”

“I think we can attribute that more to the Russians than to me.”

“Nah. I saw your brain chugging away back there. You would have figured something out if they hadn’t come along.”

“Tell that to Reggie.”

“Reggie shoulda moved his ass. But you had a plan, didn’t you?”

Nick shrugged. “I might have.”

Christopher winked almost imperceptibly. “Yeah, you did. It’s a shame you’re not going to be running all of our missions—I feel better with you in charge than Neal any day.”

Nick just shrugged again, closed his eyes, and went back to sleep.

***

As soon as the chopper touched down outside of Justice, Neal was waiting next to the same Humvee that had carried them to Command and Control the day before. He waved Nick over as the rest of 47 Echo unloaded the chopper. Nick took the pack with the Aero’s salvage and walked over to the Humvee.

“Major Harrison wants us in C2 immediately,” Neal told Nick.

“Thought he might,” Nick said. “Chris! Get that Chinese tech squared away and into the Humvee!”

“On it, boss,” Christopher yelled back. He, Gabriel and Kenneth carried the five packs full of salvaged CDM tech over to the Humvee.

“What’s all this?” Neal asked as the three men loaded the bags into the back of the Humvee.

“It’s everything we could pull out of a neutralized Chinese Death Machine,” Nick replied.

“You killed a CDM out there? That’s impossible.” Neal shook his head.

“Impossible or not, sir, we’ve got most of the tech here to prove it.”

The Humvee’s driver let out a low whistle, then stopped when Neal shot him a look.

“I believe you’re supposed to be taking us to C2, correct, convict?”

“Yes, sir. Sorry about that, sir,” the Humvee driver stuttered, jamming himself behind the wheel and starting the engine.

Two MPs led Nick and Neal to the elevators, with the driver tagging along to help carry the bags of salvaged technology. Down the long hallway, Nick noticed that the driver had a unit patch for 31 Alpha, the unit Gabriel was supposed to have been assigned to before he shot up the processing tent.

The door to Command and Control opened. Major Harrison stood in the center of the room again, his gaze this time fixed on the door. “Morrow. Mission report, now.”

Nick filled him in on the mission to salvage the Aero then paused in the story of the run from the CDMs. “Do you know a Russian Armored Division commander named Petkov, Major?”

“I do.”

“He saved our asses out there. He said he had a message for you.”

“Let’s hear it.”

“He said to tell you that Post K-13R is seeing red.”

Harrison stood still for a moment, then slowly, quietly and deliberately spoke a single word:

“Fuck.” After a few long moments, he looked up at them. “You’re dismissed. Give the 4-7 a couple of days off, Neal. We’ll need at least that to sort through all this tech they brought in.”

Neal nodded and led Nick back out through the long hallway and to the elevator. As the guards left them, Neal turned to Nick.

“What does that mean? The message?” Nick asked.

“Specifically, I have no idea. But I know what ‘seeing red’ means. It means that Chinese or North Korean forces are mobilizing on the area.”

“Post K-13R.”

“Wherever that is, yeah. Looks like you have a couple of days of downtime. Sorry about that. I’m afraid there’s not a hell of a lot they’ll allow convicts to do when they’re not working.”

“We’ll manage. Question, sir.”

“Yeah?”

“I picked up some Chinese artillery in the field. The computer-aided parts of the rifle appear to be nominally functional, but I was wondering if I could hang onto it, see if I could bring it back to operational condition.”

“If anyone asks, I don’t know a thing about it.”

“Clear on that, sir.”

“Your men will probably be getting back to the apartment by now. I’d suggest getting as much rest in as you can. The Major said a couple of days, but if a situation comes up, I doubt that timeline will hold. Can I get you a Humvee back to the apartment building?”

“Nah. Think I’ll walk it.” Nick shrugged.

“Fair enough.”

Neal headed off to the left, and Nick suddenly realized he had no idea where the COs put themselves when they weren’t on mission. He blinked away the thought as he saw Christopher hop out of a slowly moving troop truck in front of him.

“Hey, boss. Heading back to the apartment?”

“Yep. We supposedly have a couple of days off.”

“Awesome. I’ll use that to get us some better rations, whatever else I can get my hands on.”

“How do you manage to do that, anyway?” Nick shook his head with a chuckle.

“I dunno. People just like me. Always have, I guess. I’ve never had a hard time talking my way around a situation. I end up making connections around the base, then connecting them to other connections, then taking a bit off the top.”

“Shit. I don’t even like talking to most people, and I don’t mind talking to you.”

Christopher smiled. He pulled a pack of Russian cigarettes from the cargo pocket of his convict fatigues (he’d apparently talked one of the other Echoes into carrying his pack to the apartment) and lit one. He offered the pack to Nick, who took one and lit it from the offered flame Christopher held out.

“See? That’s my gift. C’mon, I’ve gotta meet some guys about some stuff. Come on along—it’s better than sitting around the apartment with a bunch of other convicts.”

“Yeah, why not. Where are we heading?”

“We’re off to see the Air Force.”

Christopher led him to a low brick building a half-mile down the street. It looked to Nick like the building had once been an auto shop, but the garage doors had been replaced with reinforced concrete and the windows had been covered with thick steel plates. The front access door had been replaced with what looked like a blast door.

Pulling a magnetic card from his pocket, Christopher walked up to the blast door and passed the card over the scanner to the door’s left. A short beep sounded, and the door popped open.

“Where’d you put your hands on that?” Nick asked.

Christopher grinned. “Someone dropped it.”

“Forget I asked.”

“I’ll do that. C’mon. Let me introduce you to some guys.” Christopher ushered Nick inside, and they were met by a young man in a blue uniform.

“Christopher. Not a good time, bro.”

“Busy?”

“Could say that. Intel’s coming in off the chain. Wait out here. I’ll see if Captain Black’s got time for you.”

The young man disappeared through a set of double doors.

“Didn’t know there were convicts in the Air Force, too,” Nick commented.

“Oh, there are. They have to test off the charts. Lotta hackers and criminal mastermind types. But these ain’t them. These guys are real Air Force, Special Ops.”

“What are they doing talking to the likes of you?”

“Like I said, people like me.”

The young man stuck his head out the door.

“Two minutes, Christopher. Make it quick, yeah?”

Christopher nodded and walked through the door, so Nick followed. The room they entered was filled with computers manned by Air Force officers.

One of them spun his chair around and smiled widely at Christopher. “Chris, my man.”

“Jase.”

“Sorry I don’t have a bunch of time. We’re up to our asses in work. What can I do for you, pal?”

“Feed point. It’s horrible. They have us on FSRs. You got anything for that?”

Captain Jason Black considered for a minute then nodded. “Yeah. Restaurant in the old quarter. Run by some of the Army guys, cooks for some of the brass. You let them know I sent you, they’ll hook you up. Drop by after lights-out, they always have a bunch left over.”

“You’re a lifesaver.”

“Eff that. I still owe you one. So who’s this guy?” Captain Black asked, nodding at Nick.

“Oh, my manners. This’s Nick Morrow, my SIC.”

“You the guy who pulled the Chinese tech out of the CDM?” Black asked.

“That’s me.”

“Heard you ran into some shit around K-13R.” Jason nodded appreciatively.

“What’d you just say?”

“Post K-13R. Small town just north of Area November.”

“Russian Armored Division based out of there?”

“Yeah, Russian Federation fourteenth Armored.”

“Shit.”

“I know. We just got word—they got wiped out by Chinese forces. How did you know so fast?”

For the second time that day, Nick felt like he wanted to vomit. “Any survivors? From the fourteenth Armored?” he managed to spit out.

“Nothing comin’ out of K-13R ‘cept Chinese soldiers.” Black shook his head.

Chapter 11

City of the Dead

“Anthony, care to undertake a little extra mission?” Nick unzipped the sides of his boots and stretched out his feet.

“Official order, sir?” Anthony asked.

“Again, not a sir. And no, but I think you’ll dig this one. You, especially.”

“Am I going to get in trouble with the COs?”

“Only if you get caught, but you’re with Christopher, so you won’t.”

Anthony nodded. This seemed a good enough answer for him.

“Right on. Chris’ll be waiting outside in fifteen. Gabe, you’re going with.”

“Right on, boss.” The huge Hispanic youth grinned.

“Good luck, men. We’re all counting on you.” Nick lay back on his bed and closed his eyes.

He awoke thirty minutes later to the smell of cooked meat. Nick first thought he was dreaming of the pilot of the CDM, and indeed, that image flashed in his mind just before he opened his eyes. When he actually opened them though, he saw the small table in the apartment loaded down with barbecued steaks.

“Mission was a success, sir.” Anthony grinned, indicating the spread at the table with his arms.

“Plates?”

“Got ‘em, boss,” Christopher said, handing a dish filled with steak and potatoes to Nick.

“Outstanding work, gentlemen. The Army guys give you any trouble?” Nick asked, plowing into the first real meal he’d had in weeks.

“Nah. Captain Black called ahead for us. We’re hooked up for as long as we’re at Justice, assuming no one catches on,” Christopher said.

“How’d you wrangle this, Chris?” Peter asked, filling his plate.

“I find it’s best not to ask,” Nick told him.

As he sat back to eat, Nick noticed that Kenneth was filling his plate with potatoes, looking at the meat with disgust. Michael was standing next to the huge man, and seemed to notice as well. He playfully punched Kenneth in the shoulder, and the huge convict’s head whipped around. His eyes locked onto the smaller man, staring him down.

“Not a fan of steak, Kenneth?” Michael muttered sheepishly.

“I’m a vegetarian. Meat disgusts me.”

“So I can have yours, then?”

Kenneth just stared at Michael. After a long moment, Michael took another steak and walked over to his bunk, which was right next to Nick’s.

“I tell you, boss. That motherfucker creeps me out.” Michael shook his head as he started to eat.

“Don’t let him get into your head. In fact, my advice is just to give that guy as much latitude as possible.”

The two of them watched as Kenneth sat on his bunk, his back to the rest of the unit, and started shoveling potatoes into his face. The huge man finished the entire plate in under a minute then set the empty dish down on the floor next to his bunk. For the next several seconds, both Nick and Michael waited for him to get up, to move, to do something…but the big man just sat frozen in place, staring at the wall.

“Don’t think that’s gonna be a problem, boss,” Michael assured him.

Nick filled up on three plates of dinner, then helped Christopher and Anthony clean up.

“Hey, guys,” Anthony said. “Thanks for tracking down some better food. The war part I can handle, but if I had to keep eating those FSRs, I probably would have killed myself within a month.”

“Sure thing. Tomorrow, I’m going to see if I can wrangle some books or something. We’ll need some way to keep ourselves busy during downtime, and we can only tell each other how we got here so many times,” Christopher told them.

“What’d really be helpful is a computer,” Anthony said.

“That’d be nearly impossible. We get caught with a book, it’s a slap on the wrist. We get caught with anything that would let us communicate with the outside world, all of us are spending some time in the box.” Christopher shook his head.

“That’s the second time I’ve heard that mentioned. What, exactly, is the box?” Nick dried a plate and put it away in the kitchen.

“Trust me. You don’t want to know.”

“You ever been put in the box?” Nick asked.

“Nope. My last SIC was, though. Came out of there 15 pounds lighter after four days. Could barely hold his rifle when the CDM jumped us. Whatever they do to you, I don’t want to experience it.”

Anthony shivered. “Yeah, me neither.”

The three of them finished cleaning the dishes and putting them away.

Anthony turned to Christopher. “Think I can get a pack of those Russian smokes from you? I could really go for a cigarette right now.”

“Sure thing, man.” Christopher headed to his bunk and pulled his pack out from under it. He fished out a carton of cigarettes, ripped it open, and tossed a pack to Anthony.

“Smoke it out on the balcony. It still smells like food in here, and I’d like to keep that going for a while,” Nick said.

“Yeah, I was thinking the same thing.” Anthony winked, flipping a cigarette into his mouth and heading out onto the apartment’s small balcony. He was outside for about two minutes before Nick suddenly stood up.

“Problem, boss?” Christopher asked.

“Nah. Kid just got me thinking that I wanted a cigarette too.” Nick smirked, grabbing one from his own pack and opening the balcony door.

Anthony’s head whipped around as the door opened, and he quickly slipped something small and black into his BDU cargo pocket. “Uh, hey, boss,” Anthony stammered.

“Anthony,” Nick said as he closed the door. “Whatcha got there, kid?”

“Nothing,” he mumbled.

“C’mon, Anthony. Let’s pretend I’m not stupid, okay? Looked like a mobile phone to me.”

Anthony sighed, blowing out smoke, as Nick lit up his own cigarette. “It is. I found it in the CDM when Kenneth and I were taking it apart. Doesn’t seem to work though. You’re not going to tell the COs about this, are you?”

Nick shrugged. “You make sure you don’t get caught with it, and make sure it doesn’t bring any trouble my way. You do that, and I’ll forget I saw it.”

“Thanks, Nick.”

“No problem. You do manage to get that thing working, though, you let me know. Deal?”

“Deal. So, I’m wondering something—some of these guys, I can see how they got here. You, Chris, Pete, Michael, Gabe…you guys seem pretty normal. How’d you all end up here?”

“I’ll tell you if you tell me how you got here.”

Anthony laughed and lit another smoke.

“How much time you got?”

Nick smiled and opened his arms, indicating the dark night around him. “Looks like we got nothing but time at the moment, kid.”

“Right you are. My story isn’t exactly interesting, though. All I did was kill a guy.”

“So, didn’t we all. Details, man. Details are what makes the story.”

“Well, I’m from a small city in Nebraska. Lincoln. Ever heard of it?”

“Yeah. Football team comes from there, doesn’t it?”

“That’s the place. Ever been?”

“Nope.”

“Well, if you had, you could see why I wanted to get out. I moved to New York at seventeen, got a job running errands at the New York Times Network. Nothing big, just gopher-type stuff. I made shit money, just enough to rent a room in a larger apartment an hour from the office. I still had the car my folks had given me back in Lincoln. Not like I could drive it in the city, though. It stayed parked outside the place I lived.”

Nick finished his cigarette and tossed the butt off the balcony. Both he and Anthony watched as it turned end-over-end, finally landing three stories below on the empty street behind the building.

“So, anyway, one day I got home from work to see some guy breaking into the car. I lost it. I went off on him. I just kept hitting him and hitting him, even when he wasn’t moving, wasn’t getting up. When the cops came a few minutes later, I attacked them, too. Then, Taser, pepper spray, jail, court, plane, here.”

“So you’d been in the city a while before this happened,” Nick said after a moment. It wasn’t a question.

“Four and a half years.”

“Which would make you twenty-two, twenty-three.”

“Yeah. I look older than I am. Always have.”

Anthony lit another cigarette and pointed the lit end at Nick. “Your turn. Story time.”

So Nick sat back and told him the story. Anthony paid attention—Nick could see he had the younger man on the edge of his seat. Nick had never had anyone concentrate on his words like that before. It looked as though Anthony was committing every detail to memory, as though he was supremely interested in what Nick was saying. It was a bit of an ego boost, and Nick didn’t mind it one bit.

“Wow, boss. I mean, wow. I’m not a lawyer or anything, but before the whole Los Angeles thing, you never woulda spent a day in jail for that. Maybe manslaughter, maybe probation, but the cops would have caught and charged the hell out of those kids in the first place.” Anthony shook his head.

“No use dwelling on it now. I’m here. Better than death row, anyway.”

“Yeah. Slightly.”

“I’ll take it. At least here I have some small measure of control over what happens to me. The decision to stay alive is in my own hands…when they strap you into the electric chair, you’ve got no chance.”

“And here you have a really, really small chance.”

“Like I said, I’ll take it.”

“But what about when the war is over? If we survive it, I mean? You really think they’re just going to pardon us and let us back out on the streets?”

Nick dug another cigarette out of his pack and lit it.

“Tell you the truth, Anthony, I try not to think about it. I try to think about surviving into the next day, then the day after that.”

Anthony nodded. “That makes sense, I guess. I’m just glad we’re with someone who knows what he’s doing. How long did they train you for?”

“They didn’t.” Nick smiled. “And I’ve only got about a week in at this point.”

“That’s…well, that’s almost unbelievable, man. You just seem like you’ve been doing this forever.”

“Some of it’s bred in. My dad was in the military growing up, so…it’s not like I have experience really, but I’m a little familiar with how it all works.”

“You seem more than a little familiar.”

Nick shrugged as Christopher popped his head out the door.

“Sorry to interrupt your little gab session, kids, but we have a problem. Big, big problem,” Christopher told them.

“What’s up, Chris?”

“Kenneth. He’s gone. You’d think one of us would see a dude that big leave, but nope. He just fucked off somewhere.”

“Shit. Any idea where?”

Christopher pointed out into the dark street. “Out there in the city somewhere. Guards downstairs haven’t seen him, either. Must’ve gotten by them too.”

“So what’s the problem? Let him go. Big motherfucker creeped me out, anyway,” Anthony said.

“Not that easy. We lose one of our own…well, let’s just say that’s not something they look kindly on,” Christopher said.

“What? The box?” Anthony asked.

“Or worse.”

“Chris, tell Gabe to grab his boots. You, me, him and the kid here are gonna go find him. He couldn’t have gotten far.”

“What do you want me to tell the rest of the guys?”

“Tell them to cover for us as best they can. Looks like we’re about to see some more of the city.” Nick sighed.

Chapter 12

Autonomy

“Fuck. Let’s just hope he hasn’t gotten outside the green zone.” Christopher shook his head.

“What the fuck’s the green zone?” Gabriel asked.

“The camp itself. We’ve only taken up about a quarter of the city. If he gets outside of that, he’ll be a lot harder to track down. He may even be able to find a car someone left behind when the place got evacuated.”

“We don’t want that, in case any of you were wondering,” Nick commented.

“So how do we track him down without getting caught?” Anthony asked.

“Hey, Christopher. You said that some convicts—hacker types—made it into the Air Force, right? You know any of them?” Nick started.

“Yeah, one. He’s based out of Moscow.”

“Can he track the chip in Kenneth’s neck?”

“I see where you’re going. Yeah, he could, but we’ve got no way to get in touch with him, unless one of you has a phone or a computer that I don’t know about.”

Nick shot a look at Anthony, but the young man only shrugged.

“Wait, though—” Christopher said. “We may not need to get in touch with him at all. There’s a much easier way to get the info we need, I think. And all we have to do is steal a jacket.”

It took a second, but something clicked in Nick’s brain.

“Right. Captain Neal’s BDU jacket. Has that screen embedded in the left sleeve. That can track the GPS chip?”

“Sure. He has to keep track of his rowdy employees one way or another, doesn’t he?”

“Right. Good an idea as any. Where are they bunking the officers in this town?”

“You have to be shitting me.” Gabriel shook his head.

“I count fifteen guards. For, like, a hundred COs? Maybe? That seems a bit much,” Anthony said.

“They had some problems a while back with some convicts trying to kill their COs. Now they’re under guard. Probably camera surveillance in the building, too,” Christopher explained.

“So how the fuck do we get in?” Gabriel asked.

Nick studied the guards patrolling the front of the large brick apartment building before he spoke.

“Some of those guards are convicts. Marine convicts. Chris, that a pretty easy job? Like, an Alpha job?”

Christopher nodded.

“Where’s the Alpha bunkhouse?”

“No, need for that, boss,” Christopher said, reaching into his left cargo pocket. He pulled out a series of unit patches—two Bravos, a Delta and an Alpha. The patches had Velcro on the back, just as the Echo patches did.

“Great. Now the question—who gets to go?”

“Gabriel and I know that building pretty well. One of our first jobs here at Justice—while you were still comatose, Nick—was cleaning out a bunch of the extra furniture for the convict buildings. Shitty job, but it looks like it may help us out after all.”

“I’ll go,” Gabriel said eagerly.

“No.” Nick shook his head. “I appreciate the enthusiasm, kiddo, but this is a custom-made job for Chris. If anything gets hairy, he’s got a better chance than any of us of talking his way out of it.”

“Shit. You’re right, of course…but I would’ve preferred to let the big guy take all the risk,” Christopher grumbled, pulling off his Echo patch and replacing it with the Alpha one.

Christopher was gone less than ten minutes. He returned to the group still wearing his convict BDU jacket, though the sleeves were rolled down and the jacket was buttoned all the way to his throat.

“Any problems?” Nick asked.

“Nope. Just a good thing Neal’s shorter than I am,” Christopher said, opening his jacket to reveal Neal’s BDU jacket buttoned underneath.

“Well, don’t keep us waiting, man. Where’s the psycho?”

Christopher rolled up the sleeve on his own BDU jacket, revealing the screen embedded in the sleeve underneath. With a few quick taps, the screen flickered to life.

“Shit. Anyone remember Kenneth’s Echo designation?” Christopher frowned at the screen.

“Fifteen fifty-two,” Nick replied instantly.

Christopher tapped the number into the screen. A half-second later, his sleeve beeped.

“Yep. Got him. Already a mile and a half east of here. Dangerously close to getting out of the green zone.”

“We need transport. Gabe, ever steal a car?”

“Learned when I was twelve, boss.”

“Good. Get us something that’ll hold five people, and do it fast and quiet.”

“On it.”

“Chris, keep your eyes glued to that screen. Anthony, see if you can rustle us some nonlethal ordinance. I know we stopped using it before the war started, but there should be some lying around here somewhere.”

Christopher pointed down the street.

“Fifth building down, on the left. Junk storage and shit weapons they assign to convict units. That’s your best bet for something nonlethal.”

“Right on. Any guards?”

Christopher shook his head. “Nah. They really don’t give a damn about the nonlethal stuff anymore. I think they just keep it around in case of a convict uprising.”

“Well, that’s comforting,” Anthony bitched as he set off down the street.

“Worst case, Chris,” Nick said as they watched Anthony go, “he gets out of the green zone. What’s he going to find?”

“Couldn’t tell you for sure. I’ve heard rumors that it’s not completely evacuated. He’ll almost certainly find transport and some sort of weapon though, so we probably want to catch him before he gets that far, if we can manage it.”

“How long do you think we have?”

“Ten, fifteen minutes. Hopefully the kid gets us a ride by then, or we’re fucked.”

As if on cue, Gabriel pulled up in a battered, thirty-year-old Humvee. Christopher yanked open the passenger door and hopped in, and Nick climbed into the back.

“Surprised this thing still runs,” Christopher said, wiping dirt off the inside of the windshield with his sleeve.

“Hey, keys were in it and it was unlocked. Time’s of the essence, if I’m not mistaken,” Gabriel shot back.

“You’ve got that right. Straight ahead, fifth building on the left. Anthony’s picking us up some gear,” Nick said.

As the Humvee approached the storage building, the three Echoes saw Anthony walking out the front door with a pistol-grip shotgun and a box of shells.

“I thought I said nonlethal,” Nick said as Anthony climbed into the back seat.

“This is nonlethal, boss. Specially designed rounds to stop suicide bombers without killin’ ‘em. Feels like a battering ram to the chest. I did…read an article on them a couple of years ago,” Anthony said, handing the shotgun over to Nick. “I also got these.”

Anthony pulled a pair of pistol Tasers from the cargo pockets of his BDUs. He handed one to Christopher and kept one for himself.

“All right, Gabe. Drive. Chris’ll tell you where you’re headed.”

“Due east. Big psycho’s moving fast, so get as much speed out of this heap as you can,” Christopher told him, staring at the screen on his sleeve.

Gabriel cranked the wheel to the left and pushed the pedal to the floor. The Humvee shuddered at first, then slowly accelerated down the empty street. The engine protested, rattling and clicking loudly as Gabriel slowly brought the vehicle up to speed.

“Great. You stole the one clunker in our entire camp.” Christopher shook his head.

“I was wondering why no one was guarding it,” Gabriel said.

“I thought we sold most of these things to the Iraqis when the Cougars started rolling off the line,” Anthony said.

“Apparently not all of them,” Nick said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they were sending Kilo units out in this thing. Seems about as good as the vans they had us in last week.”

“Take your next right, then straight on for almost a mile,” Christopher told Gabriel.

Gabriel nodded and eased off the pedal a bit as he turned—the tachometer needle shot up a bit, and the truck accelerated a little faster. “Choke on this thing’s all fucked up,” he commented, easing the truck up to forty-five miles an hour, “but we should be able to make it work all right.”

“How about headlights? We got those?” Christopher asked, pulling out the knob for the lights. One of the Humvee’s forward lights kicked on, illuminating Kenneth standing in the middle of the road a few hundred feet ahead of them. Gabriel stood on the brakes, and the Humvee came to an immediate stop, throwing Nick and Anthony into the backs of the seats in front of them.

“Well, at least the brakes work,” Nick grumbled, pulling himself off the floor and opening the Humvee’s back door. He racked the shotgun and walked around to the front of the Humvee as he felt his three teammates fall in behind him.

“Kenneth! C’mon, man. Let’s not make this any harder than it has to be, okay, Chief?” Nick yelled. “Just hop on back in the truck, and we’ll all go back to the apartment.”

Kenneth started to run toward the four Echoes.

“Don’t think he’s coming quietly,” Christopher said.

As Kenneth ran, he pulled two butcher’s knives from behind his back. Nick aimed the shotgun and squeezed the trigger. The round smacked dead-center into Kenneth’s chest. The huge man staggered slightly, but kept coming. Nick fired two more rounds, but the effect was the same.

“Shit. Tasers,” Nick hissed. Christopher and Anthony raised their weapons. Nick heard them pull the triggers, but nothing happened.

“Dead batteries!” Anthony yelled.

“Back behind the truck!” Nick ordered, and his three teammates were only too happy to oblige. Nick stood his ground, however, shuffling his right foot slightly behind his left. Kenneth was just about on him when Nick fired his right hand straight into the big man’s nose.

Kenneth’s head snapped back violently, and he dropped one of the knives to the pavement. The big man didn’t fall, however—he turned his head back toward Nick, his nose smashed and gushing blood. The large man growled and swung the other knife at Nick’s face.

Nick ducked under the blade, shooting his right hand into Kenneth’s exposed rib cage. Without waiting for the man to slash at him again, Nick quickly moved around behind Kenneth and jumped on his back, wrapping his arms around Kenneth’s neck and squeezing as hard as he could. Kenneth bucked forward, sending Nick flying onto the hood of the Humvee. Nick saw the knife coming straight down at his face.

He kicked his right leg high and felt it connect with Kenneth’s skull. The knife missed its target, slamming into the truck’s steel hood and breaking in half. Nick quickly rolled off the hood and brought his hands up just in time to block a wild, powerful right-handed punch from Kenneth.

Though his arm took most of the impact, Kenneth’s fist still knocked into the side of Nick’s head. Pain shot through his spinal column as his head snapped to the side, and Nick was immediately thankful Kenneth hadn’t hit him full-force. He’d probably be dead if he had.

The big man’s strike had left him off-balance, and Nick shot his right leg out into the hollow of Kenneth’s left knee. Kenneth dropped to one knee, and Nick fired a quick right hand into the side of the big man’s head. Before Kenneth’s head recovered from the blow, Nick slammed his right elbow into the big man’s jaw as hard as he could.

Kenneth dropped to the ground, twitching.

“Someone get me something to tie this bastard up with,” Nick groaned, blinking rapidly to stave off the headache Kenneth’s hamhanded punch had given him.

Chapter 13

Thirsty and Miserable

After they got Kenneth up the building’s fire escape, Nick ordered Gabriel and Christopher to return the Humvee and the stolen BDU jacket. Peter and Michael helped Nick secure Kenneth to one of the chairs in the apartment with some spare bedsheets.

“All right, kids. We’ve got eight hours until anyone’s looking for us tomorrow morning. There’s nine of us. An hour watch each, and one of us gets a pass tonight. Hopefully, big guy won’t wake up,” Nick said.

“You take the pass, boss,” Anthony said. “I’m still keyed up—I’ll take the first watch.”

“If Kenneth comes around, wake me up. We can always hope he’s calmed down, but I doubt it.”

“Will do.”

Nick’s head was killing him, and he was exhausted. He remembered reading somewhere that if one had a concussion, one shouldn’t sleep—he really hoped he didn’t have one, because he passed out as soon as he hit the bed.

The next thing he knew, it was light out, and the door to their apartment flew open. A quick check showed all of his men were in their beds, except for Kenneth, who was still strapped to the chair.

Captain Neal thundered into the apartment with two MPs behind him. He pointed one thin finger at Gabriel. “That one.”

The two MPs hauled Gabriel to his feet and started dragging him toward the door.

“Hold up, sir. What’s this all about?”

“Two soldiers in Army Foxtrot positively identified our man 1156 here stealing a Humvee last night,” Neal growled.

“Foxtrot needs to have their eyes checked,” Nick said, rising from the bed. “Wasn’t him who stole the Humvee. It was me.”

Nick walked over to the two MPs and spoke softly to the one on the left.

“You want to let go of him now. Let’s not have this get ugly,” Nick whispered.

“Look, you’ve got one more day on leave. One of you is spending it in the box,” Neal said.

“And that would be me,” Nick told him.

“Fine. Take him.” Neal sighed. The two MPs let go of Gabriel and grabbed Nick’s arms. Gabriel moved to say something, but Nick glared hard at the younger man. Gabriel slowly closed his mouth. The MPs marched him out of the room, and Nick heard the door behind him slam shut. As the MPs escorted him down the hall, Neal stopped in front of them.

“You didn’t really steal the Hummer, did you?” he asked Nick quietly.

“Near as makes no difference. I was responsible.”

Neal shook his head.

“Damn. You would have made a good Marine, Nick. A real one. I’m actually sorry I have to do this.”

Nick just shrugged as the MPs led him away. His hands were cuffed and a black hood was thrown over his head, and Nick felt himself pushed into an elevator. As the doors opened, he was bundled outside and thrown into the back of a truck.

The ride was a short one, and Nick felt someone pull him from the back of the truck and lead him into another building. The hood was yanked off, and Nick caught his first glimpse of the box.

It was in a room with about nine others exactly the same shape and size, about five feet high by five feet square. The outside of the box was smooth, gray and featureless except for a small hatch on one side. Each box had a small LED on top. Four of them were on and showing red, but the rest were dark.

The same MPs who had taken him from the apartment were there with him now. One of them raised his sidearm to Nick’s head, while the other released him from his handcuffs and opened the door to the nearest box. A quick shove from the MPs sent Nick stumbling in, and the door closed behind him.

It was completely dark and silent in the box, and Nick wondered if that’s what the punishment was supposed to be—sensory deprivation. If so, he reasoned, he could handle that. He’d just wedge himself up against the wall and try to sleep through it. He hated being bored, but being bored for twenty-four hours wasn’t going to break him.

He quickly found out it wasn’t going to be sensory deprivation or mere isolation. Nick heard a low hum coming from the top of the box. He looked up, hoping his eyes would adjust to the darkness and show him where the hum was coming from, but he didn’t have any luck. There was no ambient light at all.

The hum slowly built into a whine, its pitch rising until it began to hurt Nick’s head. Just as the whine leveled into a long, loud tone, Nick realized it was getting warmer in the box. Warm quickly became hot, and hot became scorching. Nick slumped against the wall, but it burned his back even through his clothes.

Great. So, loud annoying noises, uncomfortable heat, and I have to stay standing. Maybe this isn’t going to be so easy after all.

Sweat started to trickle down his brow, so he knew the temperature increase wasn’t just in his mind. Nick pulled off his uniform T-shirt and used it to wipe the sweat from his forehead and hairline. The shirt came away soaked in his hands, and he realized he was sweating a lot more than he’d initially thought.

“You don’t have to worry when you’re sweating. It’s when you stop sweating that you’re in trouble,” Nick mumbled to himself.

It was easy to lose track of time without any sort of reference point—no light, no sound other than the long, toneless whine, no one to talk to. Nick forced himself to slowly count to sixty to mark off a minute. Even as he was counting, the one minute felt like ten.

Nick tested the floor with his hand. It, at least, didn’t seem to be heating up, so he lowered himself carefully, crossing his legs in a half-lotus position. The less he moved, he figured, the better off he’d be. He draped his soaked shirt across his lap and felt the sweat from his face and chest dripping into it as he slowly breathed in.

Nick had dealt with heat before. When he was ten, he’d wandered away from his mother and older brother on a trip through Death Valley. It’d been two hours before his brother had finally found him, and he’d been sweating just like this. He’d lived through that, and he’d only been ten years old and asthmatic besides. He could live though this too—the asthma had gone away when he was fourteen, and he’d gotten in a lot better shape in the nineteen years that had followed.

Of course, there hadn’t been this annoying goddamned noise in Death Valley. And at least he’d been able to see. When he was growing up, his mother had tried to teach him all about his culture. She’d made both him and his brother speak Chinese throughout their childhood and taught them about Kung Fu, about Buddhism, and about meditation. Nick had been a good student of the first two, but a terrible student of the last. He wished now that he’d paid more attention to the meditation, had learned how to put his mind somewhere else.

Such a skill would have come in handy in the box.

Nick’s throat started to hurt, and he swallowed hard. He licked his lips only to find them papery and dry. Lifting the shirt from his lap, Nick leaned his head back and twisted one sleeve over his open mouth. The sweat from the shirt did little to slake the powerful thirst he was starting to feel, but it was better than nothing. He’d have to conserve the sweat, he knew, so he only drank the smallest bit. As he swallowed, he felt blood in the back of his throat.

Nosebleed, he realized. The same thing had happened in Death Valley. His nose had started gushing just before Stan had found him. That had been about two hours, and he’d been in the box for a lot longer than that.

All right. Assuming I’ve only been in here two hours, that means I still have twenty-two to go. The last two hours have felt like five, so I need to do something to keep my brain occupied.

“And talking to myself probably isn’t going to help at all,” Nick mumbled in reply to his own thoughts.

Nick tried to concentrate on the last book he’d read—the specs Gabriel had brought him in the hospital for all of the military equipment. It felt like weeks ago, but Nick knew it had only been a few days. Trying to think of something other than time, Nick slowly repeated, out loud, the first words of the book.

“MQ-19 Aero UAV, Unmanned Aerial Vehicle. General Electric/Applied Warfare Inc., U.S. Air Force contract number DB-1812-482-XL,” Nick said quietly to himself. He remembered the words just as if they were right in front of him on the old, battered e-reader—he’d always had an outstanding visual memory.

By the time he’d made it to the Jackal light-combat vehicle, Nick realized he’d stopped sweating.

Don’t panic, he told himself. You panic, you’re just going to ramp your temperature up even further.

Nick figured he should try to hydrate as much as he could, but when he lifted the T-shirt from his lap, it was warm and dry. He’d squeezed it pretty aggressively somewhere around “G” in the manual, but it had still been quite damp then. He felt the cuffs of his pants—they were dry as well.

All right. Maybe now it’s time to panic.

Of course, he realized it didn’t matter if he panicked. It didn’t matter what he did at all. His situation wasn’t going to change until his time was up. The best he could do was sit there, stay as still as possible, and hope it wasn’t standard procedure to let convicts die in the box.

He tried not to think of the words heat stroke, instead focusing his thoughts on slowing his respiration and bringing down his hammering heartbeat. He’d read somewhere once about lizards going into torpor when the temperature got too hot or too cold, slowing down their systems and going into a state of near-hibernation to survive. He doubted such a thing would work for humans, of course, but there had to be something valid in the principle.

If he could just slow his system down enough, reduce his body’s need for water, it might be easier to get through the rest of the time in the box. Just how much time that was, though, Nick had no idea. It could have been fifteen minutes, or it could have been eighteen hours. He’d given up trying to figure out how long he’d been there.

He was already bored of the manual—he’d pretty much already proven to himself that he had the thing memorized. He started to think about the last TV show he’d seen, but most of the TV back home had been pre-empted by the news months ago. The last report he’d seen before his arrest and trial was the report on expanding the Prisoner Conscription Act to death-row inmates. Military enrollment numbers had been at an all-time low, he remembered, and Congress had abolished the Draft during the second term of the Obama administration. When the war with China broke out, prisoners seemed the only way to go—a force of more than three million men and women who were just taking up space Stateside.

At the time, Nick had shook his head and said “poor dumb bastards.” Two days later, his mother was dead. Two days after that, he was sitting in jail charged with five counts of murder.

Nick was just remembering the feel of the jail cell in the Los Angeles County Correctional Facility, remembering how huge it was compared to the box, when the door slid open. The light that streamed in through the door blinded him, and he threw up one arm over his eyes. Someone used the arm to drag him out of the box and onto his feet.

“Time to go back to work,” he heard someone say from across the room.

Chapter 14

Search and Destroy

As Nick’s eyes slowly adjusted to the light, he saw that Neal was the one who had spoken to him. Neal didn’t look happy at all, but then, he rarely did. Despite his real Marine uniform, he was a convict as well, and probably didn’t have much more to smile about than anyone else in the unit.

“Showers through the door to your left. Get yourself cleaned up and into a clean uniform. You’ve got five minutes, clear?”

Nick nodded slowly. His head felt about eight times its normal size. He quickly showered and put on the clean uniform hanging over the door—it was a 47 Echo convict BDU, but clean and new unlike the one he had been wearing for the last several days. Nick zipped up the sides of his boots, made sure his jacket was buttoned properly, and stepped back out into the box room where Neal was waiting. As the two of them walked out of the room and into a long hallway, Nick caught a glimpse of Neal’s digital watch—it was 0215. He’d been in the box a few minutes north of eighteen hours.

“Here. Drink this,” Neal said, handing him a bottle as they walked.

Nick uncapped the bottle and drank deeply. It was water, but something tasted a bit off about it. Still, he was thirsty, and finished the entire liter in less than thirty seconds.

“Mostly water, but there’s some amphetamine in there, too. You’re going to need to come back online and do it fast. We pulled you out early because you’re needed.”

Nick simply nodded.

“Come on, Morrow. Start talking. I need to make sure you’re not crazy from the heat.”

“What’s the situation?” Nick asked, tasting the dried blood on the backs of his teeth.

“I can’t tell you, because I don’t know yet. But Major Harrison told me to come get you. You, by name.”

“Nice to be wanted, I suppose.”

“Your unit’s on lockdown, but they might need to move on zero notice. Think they can handle it?”

“My unit’s solid, sir.”

“Even the big motherfucker you had tied to a chair?”

“That’s a problem I can handle.”

“Yeah, I think you can.” Neal nodded as the two of them climbed into a Humvee. Neal started the engine and slammed the pedal to the floor, heading for Command and Control.

Nick and Neal didn’t talk on the now-familiar elevator ride and the walk down the long hall to Command and Control. As Nick expected, Major Harrison was waiting for them behind the door, but he wasn’t alone—Lieutenant Colonel Markham stood right next to him. Both of them were obviously waiting on Nick.

“Major. Colonel,” Nick said with a nod.

“Morrow. Sorry to pull you out of the box. I know you were probably looking forward to another six hours of hell, but we’ve had a situation come up, one that needs your special skill set.” Harrison frowned.

“Here to serve, sir.”

“That tech you salvaged from the Chinese armor—a lot of it was damaged by the heat or the impact of the Russian guns. We managed to pull some data off of one of the drives, and I need you to take a look at it. Harrison tells me you’re fluent in Chinese?” Markham asked.

“That’s correct, sir.”

“We’ve got a few translators on the camp, but they’re all working on some transmissions we picked up earlier in the day. We could send it to Moscow, but that would take time. I’d very much like to see what’s on this drive as quickly as possible. Think you can handle that?”

“Sir.”

Harrison pointed Nick over to a small flatscreen bench to which the drive was connected with a spiderwebbed nightmare of differently colored wires. Nick sat in front of the bench, quickly bringing up the drive’s main menu.

“Communication control, sir. All of the CDM’s incoming and outgoing traffic ran through this drive,” Nick said, reading quickly.

“CDM?” Markham asked.

“It’s what the Mechoes are calling the QZS-22s, sir. Chinese Death Machines,” Harrison told him.

“What kind of information do we have here, Morrow?” Neal asked.

“Email, media files, radio transmissions. A few of the files are corrupted, but…” Nick tapped a series of icons, and a male Chinese voice poured out of the bench’s hidden speakers.

“Can you understand what that Chink’s babbling about?” Harrison asked.

Nick nodded, then began to translate. “Area November. They’re calling it Camp Ghost. They’re telling him that there’s an incoming vehicle. A Cougar. That must’ve been us.”

Markham shook his head. “They shouldn’t have been able to detect you from that far off.”

“The message is from a listening post called Underground Seven. They’ve got them at least fifty miles north of Ghost. They knew we were there before we even got close to the Aero. Right as we got dropped by the Chinook, sounds like.”

Another voice came on the line, still speaking in Chinese. Nick listened for a moment.

“This is the CDM’s pilot. He’s advising that he and his unit—the other two CDMs—are breaking off from perimeter patrol to intercept.”

The voice cut off.

“That’s all for that particular message.”

“Dig through and see what else you can find,” Markham said, clapping Nick on the shoulder and starting to walk away.

Nick started looking through the emails saved to the hard drive when he heard something faint from the station next to his, where an Alpha communications officer was wearing headphones. He leaned in closer, and could just hear the transmission the Alpha was receiving.

“Repeat, this is Razor 4-7 Echo. We are heavily damaged and approaching Camp Justice. Does anyone read us?”

“Captain Neal,” Nick said, spinning around in his chair. “You said my unit is on lockdown, correct?”

“Right,” Neal said.

Nick pulled the headphones from the console next to his, and the transmission flooded from the bench’s speakers.

“Say again, this is Razor 4-7 Echo, approaching Camp Justice. We are heavily damaged and have wounded. Is anyone copying?”

“Then who the hell is that?” Nick asked.

UAVs flying forty miles out from Camp Justice confirmed it. There was, indeed, a lone Razor limping along the M-52 highway traveling at about twenty miles an hour. All of the Razor’s blast shields were locked down, but the numbers on the vehicle’s hull confirmed it was the same Razor Nick and his people had crewed back at Area November.

“How’s that possible?” Nick asked. “I thought we detonated it from the choppers.”

“Signals must’ve gotten jammed,” Neal shrugged. “Once they realized there was no one in it, it probably didn’t take too long to break in and shut down the guns.”

Lieutenant Colonel Markham ran his hands through his hair and turned to the communications officer in front of the bench now displaying the Razor’s image.

“I want you to get in contact with the Razor. Tell it we’re receiving and talk it in.”

The communications officer nodded and started transmitting.

“Morrow, Neal, get back to your unit. Current speed, that thing’ll be here in about two hours. I want five Echo units armed and waiting for this thing to open. We’re going to direct them to the main garage. Get it cleared of all nonessential personnel and make sure we can lock it down at a moment’s notice. I want prisoners, not bodies. We clear, gentlemen?”

“Yes, sir,” Neal answered, leading Nick out of Command and Control and back down the long hallway.

When Nick made it back to 47 Echo’s apartment, he saw Peter cleaning a nasty cut on Owen’s forehead. Everyone else was asleep, and the only light in the apartment came from a small table lamp in the kitchen where Peter was working on Owen’s wound.

“Hey, boss. You don’t look so good,” Peter said quietly, nodding as Nick walked in the door.

“What happened here?”

“Got too close to the big guy. Got head-butted,” Owen grunted.

“So he never did calm down, then.”

“’Fraid not.” Peter sighed.

“We need to wake everyone up. We’ve got work to do,” Nick told them.

“What are we gonna do about Kenneth?” Owen asked.

“I’ll handle him. You two get everyone else suited up and ready.”

Peter nodded and flipped on the lights. The seven sleeping Mechoes all woke up near-instantly, even Kenneth, who was still tied to the chair. Nick walked to the center of the room.

“Good morning, kids.”

“Jesus, boss, you look awful,” Anthony commented.

“I’m fine. We have a job to do, so get ready to move out in five minutes. We’ll be meeting four other Echo units in front of the building, so let’s look sharp, yeah?”

As his men set about getting ready, Nick walked over to the huge man tied down in the chair and squatted to be on eye level with him. Kenneth lunged at him, but his makeshift restraints held him back.

“Easy there, big guy. We don’t want to have a repeat of last night, right? You getting knocked the fuck out by a guy my size can’t be good for your self-esteem, now, can it?”

Kenneth growled, but said nothing.

“Now, I know you weren’t going to use those knives to carve up a Sunday roast. I’m thinking you were out to kill a bunch of people, am I correct?”

Kenneth nodded.

“Good. You behave, I’ll make sure you get to kill as many people as you want. We are in a war, after all. You step out of line the slightest bit, I got absolutely no problems putting a bullet in your skull. We understand each other here?”

“Fine,” Kenneth spat.

Nick untied the sheets from the chair, and Kenneth stood up, stretching out his limbs.

Jesus. Is he getting bigger? Nick asked himself, though he knew it was impossible. He was still in awe of the size of the guy, and still had trouble believing he had actually knocked Kenneth out. It’s like a big dog, he thought. Don’t show any fear in front of him, and he won’t attack.

Nick knew hiding his fear around this monster wouldn’t be easy, though.

“We’re good to go, boss,” Christopher said, walking up next to Nick. “You look like you could use one of these.”

Christopher handed Nick a cigarette, which Nick quickly lit.

“So how was it? The box?”

“About seventeen different kinds of horrible.”

“I’m shocked you’re still walking around.” Christopher shook his head as Nick led them all out of the apartment and toward the elevators.

“I’ve got some amphetamines running in my system, apparently. I’ll live.”

“Well, just in case you do slow down, I’ve got a couple of things that might help keep you moving,” Christopher told him. “Amphetamines aren’t really hard to come by in this place. They issue them to you if you’re doing a long guard duty or something. You need ‘em, you let me know.”

“Um…thanks, but I’m fine.”

“Suit yourself.”

The elevator doors opened on the first floor—in the apartment building’s lobby, Nick could see that several other Mechoes had already gathered, including the 2-1, the 2-3, and the 1-8. Bryce, who wore the insignia of the 1-8’s Second in Command, caught Nick’s eye and nodded. Nick smirked back.

Neal was standing with Shaw, the convict from the 2-1 Nick had saved back at Area November. Apart from a minor limp, Shaw seemed to be doing all right. He and two of his Aryan brethren were picking up armloads of M4A1s and passing them out to the rest of the men gathered in the lobby. Shaw saw Nick across the room and shot him a big grin. Nick simply nodded.

“Shit. This is a lot of manpower. What did you say we were doing again?” Michael yawned from behind Nick.

“We’re getting our truck back,” Nick answered.

Chapter 15

Saturday Night Holocaust

Nick and his unit shared the back of a large troop truck with the 1-8 and the 2-1. The truck was old—an M923A1 five-ton from the 1990s—and was tailing a much newer MTVR seven-ton. Nick gathered his men around him and waved over Shaw and Bryce as the truck bounced down the street toward Justice’s West Gate. Shaw had a little difficulty stepping over the other men with his still-healing ankle, but he still made it over to Nick fairly quickly.

“How’s the leg, Shaw?” Nick asked quietly.

“They hadda replace a bit of the bone with steel. Still gettin’ used to it. Better than bein’ dead, though.” Shaw winked at him.

Bryce joined them, his new recruit Daniel trailing a few steps behind.

Nick nodded and addressed the other two SICs. “All right, gentlemen. I’m sure you all remember Area November.” Shaw and Bryce both nodded. “To cover our escape, we left a Razor there firing on some disabled Russian assault vehicles. It was supposed to demo as we took off, but something went wrong. That very Razor is about ten minutes away from the West Gate, claiming to be…well, me and my guys.”

“Fuck that. Probably lousy with fucking Chinks,” Shaw spat.

“I don’t doubt it in the slightest, which is why we’re all here. Command wants us to surround the vehicle and take whoever’s inside into custody. Let me be clear on this: Command wants hostages, not kills.”

Bryce nodded. “Makes sense. We can’t interrogate corpses.”

“What we need is a big show of force. How many of them Chinks you think can cram into a Razor, anyway?” Shaw asked.

“They take out all the seats, maybe twenty,” Nick answered.

“And there’s fifty of us. Should be able to scare ‘em into standing down,” Bryce said.

“That’s the plan. Captain Neal is filling in the 2-3 and the 3-6 as we speak. Now, I’m hoping we don’t have to shoot, but you hear a CO shout ‘weapons free,’ you shoot anyone coming out of that Razor, dig?” Nick said.

“You got that fuckin’ right.” Shaw smiled.

Nick’s helmet radio clicked on.

“CO 4-7 Echo to SIC 4-7 Echo,” Neal’s voice came over the radio.

“Go for SIC 4-7 Echo,” Nick said.

“Nick, we’ve got the Razor coming in ahead of schedule. Looks like they were able to squeeze a little more speed out of it after all. My truck’ll lead it in, yours will follow behind. Deploy your men as soon as we hit the parking garage, clear?”

“Crystal, sir.”

“Good man. Look alive. ETA West Gate in two minutes.”

“Copy that.”

Nick’s helmet radio clicked off, and he quickly relayed the information to Shaw and Bryce. They headed back to their units to brief their men, and Nick turned to his own crew.

“You heard all that, right, guys? Don’t have to repeat myself?”

“Yeah, Nick. We got it. They confirmed that really is our Razor?” Christopher asked.

“Hull markings match. It’s ours.”

“I still have the control codes memorized. We need to, we can pop it open from a Command screen,” Christopher said.

“Good to know. All right, look alive, brothers. We’ve got about ninety seconds before we find out who jacked our ride.”

Nick slung his M4 and raised the Chinese assault rifle to his shoulder. The thing still wasn’t up to full functionality, but the distance scope seemed to work all right. He flicked on the scope and targeted on the West Gate—about a half-mile out, he caught sight of the Razor lumbering along the highway toward the gate. The blast shields were still down, so there was no way to see who was driving.

The Razor looked to be riding low. Nick guessed they had packed the inside with armored soldiers. He brought the rifle down and readied his M4, then clicked his helmet radio over to the Command frequency.

“Razor 4-7 Echo, this is Justice Patrol Three,” Nick heard Neal’s voice. “We have you on visual. Proceed through the West Gate and follow our escort truck to the main repair center.”

“This is Razor 4-7 Echo, we copy,” the same voice Nick had heard in Command and Control replied.

Nick’s truck idled as the Razor rattled through the West Gate. Nick could hear that the Razor’s hydraulics were pretty much shot by the way it creaked as it rolled over the gate’s threshold. The Razor fell in formation behind Neal’s truck, and Nick’s truck followed close behind.

For a half-mile, the Razor followed Neal’s truck toward the center of the camp. They were about four minutes away from the main repair garage, but when the lead truck took a right, the Razor continued straight on, picking up speed.

“SIC 4-7 Echo to CO 4-7 Echo,” Nick radioed on Echo’s main frequency.

“Go for CO 4-7 Echo,” Neal radioed back.

“The Razor’s gone off the reservation, Captain. It’s picking up speed, heading for the center of the camp,” Nick radioed.

“Fuck,” Neal spat. Nick heard shuffling on the other end of the line. “We’ll cut around and try to head ‘em off.”

“CO 4-7, this is 311,” Christopher radioed. “Sir, transmit code five-zero-seven-zero-six-eight-zero-seven-three-dash-four-two-one Roger Bravo Sierra via your command screen. That’ll slow ‘em up a bit.”

“Roger that, 311.”

A few seconds later, the Razor’s rear hatch popped open and hit the street, dragging sparks along with it. Nick saw only two Chinese soldiers inside, huddled over a large, metallic object. The soldiers looked up, shocked, then crouched over the huge silver tube and started pressing buttons.

“Nuke!” someone yelled. “They’ve got a fucking nuke in the Razor!”

Nick reached for his M4, though he knew he didn’t have much of a chance of hitting anything at better than forty miles an hour on bumpy roads. As he climbed toward the roof of the truck, he heard two quick pops of gunfire.

“Hostiles down,” he heard someone say through his helmet radio.

As Nick made it to the truck’s roof, he saw Daniel, the young kid from Bryce’s unit, lying flat on the roof of the truck, his M4 pointed toward the back of the still-speeding Razor. The two Chinese soldiers Nick had last seen busying themselves over the device were now splayed across it, both shot through the head. Daniel looked over at Nick and winked.

“Jesus Christ, kid,” Nick said, giving an appreciative whistle. “That was some damn impressive shooting.”

“Name’s Daniel. Not kid. And thanks. Want me to take out the driver, too? Betcha a hundred I could do it in one shot.”

“No, that’s all right. They probably want him alive for questioning. ‘Sides, I think Captain Neal’s got him handled.”

Nick and Daniel grabbed onto the windowsills as their truck slammed on the brakes. Ahead, Neal’s seven-ton shot out of a side street, ramming full-on into the Razor’s passenger door. Though the seven-ton was technically a lighter vehicle, it was travelling at more than twice the Razor’s speed.

The Razor skidded to the side and slammed into the corner of a brick building, taking down the entire side of the structure. Nick motioned for his men to fall out of the five-ton and surround the crashed Razor. He and Daniel slid down the front windshield of the truck and hopped off the hood, bringing their weapons to bear on the immobile vehicle half-buried in brick.

As the thirty Mechoes from the five-ton hit the street, they were joined by the other twenty from the back of the seven-ton. Nick took point, Daniel on his left.

“Right behind you, boss,” Nick heard Christopher whisper as they slowly advanced on the vehicle.

“Alive. We need the driver alive,” Neal radioed.

“Anyone got eyes on the driver?” Nick radioed softly on the main Echo frequency.

“This is 2-3 Echo 6-1-7,” someone said back. “I’m on top of the seven-ton. I’ve got movement on thermals in the driver compartment. Looks like he’s trying to dig his way to the nuke.”

“Shit. Daniel, Chris, let’s move.”

Nick broke into a run, and Daniel, Christopher and a few others Nick couldn’t see followed suit. Nick dashed through the hole the Razor had left in the building, quickly going around the front of the vehicle and yanking open the driver’s door. He could see other Mechoes pouring in through the back hatch, but as he climbed into the Razor, Nick was closest to the driver—a young Chinese man just pulling the body of one of his comrades off of the nuke.

“Chuò!” Nick yelled.

The young Chinese looked over at Nick, who had his M4 aimed directly at the man’s forehead, and considered for a second. He slowly raised his hands.

“Daniel, Chris, get this guy out of here,” Nick ordered, not taking his aim off the driver.

Daniel and Christopher grabbed the driver by his raised arms and dragged him from the Razor. Nick toggled his helmet radio.

“Hostile secure, Captain,” he radioed.

“Good work, Nick,” Neal’s voice sounded in his helmet.

Nick pushed the corpse the rest of the way off of the device and noticed two characters blinking in red on a small screen where the young Chinese soldier had met his end.

“Fuck. Captain, you’re gonna want to call someone,” Nick said.

“What’s the situation in there, Nick?”

“This thing’s armed, sir.”

“Goddammit. Is it counting down?”

“No, sir. Just armed.”

“Well, that’s better, but not much. Can you disarm it?”

“I wouldn’t even know where to start, sir.” Nick was sweating and his hands were shaking. He tried to focus his mind on keeping his hands still rather than on the huge bomb right in front of him.

“Hold your position. I’ll radio for EOD, but you’re going to need to stay and help them translate.”

Nick placed his hand, steadier now, over his helmet mic. “’Course I will.” He sighed under his breath.

“Did not read your last transmission,” Neal’s voice buzzed in his ear.

Nick pulled his hand away from the mic. “Roger that, sir.”

***

The 415th Explosives Ordinance Detachment rolled up in a brand-new black Cougar 4x4. There were three of them in the vehicle, all dressed in real Army uniforms. The driver of the Cougar got out and walked over to Nick, who was sitting on the Razor’s hood smoking a cigarette. The rest of his unit had already pulled back and were helping evacuate the camp in case the bomb disposal failed.

“What do we have here?” the driver asked Nick.

“Nuclear.”

“Outstanding. Russian?”

“Chinese.”

“Great. I don’t think we’ve got anyone who speaks Chink.”

“That’s why I’m here.” Nick shrugged, hopping off the Razor’s hood and flicking his cigarette into the wrecked building.

The driver turned back to the Cougar, where one of his crew was shrugging into a bulky bomb-disposal suit with the help of the other.

“Rico! Don’t worry about the suit, man. Nuke,” the driver yelled.

Rico nodded and started peeling off the suit. A few minutes later, all three of the bomb-disposal techs were standing next to Nick inside the wrecked Razor, looking over the device in question.

Rico let out a low whistle. “Hey, Mecho. You remember the bomb in L.A.?” he asked.

“I was there when it went off.”

“That was a one-kiloton bomb, and you saw what that did. This one’s twenty times that size. It goes off, and this whole fuckin’ installation’s not even a memory.”

“That’s comforting.” Nick’s hands started to shake again, but he crammed them in his pockets. “Can you guys disarm this thing?”

Rico shrugged and made a noise that sounded vaguely like “I don’t know.”

“Don’t listen to him.” The driver smirked. “If your Chinese is any good, we shouldn’t have a problem.”

Rico pulled a small screwdriver from a case on his belt and removed the panel just to the left of the blinking screen, revealing a mess of wires.

“Jesus. It’s like a little kid built this thing. It’s a fucking mess in here. Hey, Mecho, what’s your name, man?”

“Nick.”

“Nick…I need you to tell me what the fuck this says right here, yeah?”

Nick leaned over the panel, and he and the three EOD techs went to work.

Chapter 16

What We Do Is Secret

Nick quickly learned the names of the guys in the EOD—apart from Rico, there was Spence (the driver) and Scott. The three members of the team moved quickly, assuredly, as if they had done this a thousand times before. Curious, Nick asked them how many times they had disarmed a nuclear bomb. Soon after, he wished he hadn’t.

“Never. But we’ve done a simulated one,” Scott told him.

It didn’t take long for Nick to feel like the fourth wheel on a tricycle. Aside from the occasional symbol the guys needed translated, he kept very much to the back of the Razor, becoming one with the wall. He watched them work, and listened to their short, clipped communications.

“Rico—”

“Got it.”

“Hand me the—thanks.”

“See the—?”

“Yep.”

“You got—”

“Right here.”

As fascinating as it was to watch them work, Nick still couldn’t help being jumpy. One wrong move, he knew, and he’d be dead before he knew anything had even happened. Still, he couldn’t stop himself from twitching every time one of the EOD techs moved a wire or made an adjustment.

“Hey, Nick. You all right over there, buddy?” Rico asked, looking up from his work and wiping sweat from his brow.

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine.”

“You look like you’re just waitin’ for this thing to go boom, man.” Scott smiled at him.

“Kinda, yeah.”

“Well, hate to disappoint you, but we’re done,” Rico said. “This baby’s only dangerous now if you drop it on your foot. So, you know, you can breathe now.”

Rico motioned for Nick to follow him out of the Razor, and the four of them walked back out to the EOD Cougar. Rico opened the driver’s door and grabbed a radio extender off the dashboard. “Four-fifteen EOD to Command and Control,” he said.

“Command and Control, copy.”

“Nuke disarmed. Recommend you dispose of the entire Razor—nuke’s welded to the floor plating.”

“We copy. Come on home, 415.”

“Roger that.” Rico tossed the extender back on the Cougar’s dashboard.

“Can we give you a lift, man?” Spence asked, climbing behind the Cougar’s wheel.

“Sure. Don’t know where I’m headed, though—pretty sure my unit’s been evacuated with everyone else.”

“Hey, just ride with us, man. We’re heading back to C2—well, eventually. Sure someone’ll be there to tell you where to go.” Rico smiled.

Nick shrugged and climbed into the back seat next to Scott. As Spence started the engine, Scott reached into a large ammo box and pulled out four huge bottles of Klinskoe beer. He opened one and held it out to Nick.

“Thanks. Thought we were heading back to Command and Control?” Nick smirked as he took a drink.

“We are. Eventually.” Scott winked, handing beers to Spence and Rico. “But for right now, we’ve got an empty city, a bunch of beer and a fast truck. If you’ve got a couple more of those cigarettes, I’d say we’ve got the makings of a party.”

Nick pulled three packs of Russian smokes from his cargo pockets and handed them out to the EOD crew. Spence slammed on the gas, and Rico flipped on the in-dash radio, to which he’d hooked up an MP3 player.

The black Cougar tore down the empty streets, blaring loud thrashcore and knocking over street signs. Nick surprised himself by bursting into a long, loud whoop, his first laugh since his arrest.

It took an hour to make it the three miles to Command and Control, mainly because they sped through every other street in Novosibirsk first. Nick was three beers up and feeling slightly drunk—even before his arrest, he wasn’t much of a drinker. The three EOD techs, however, acted stone sober as they led him to the elevator. There were no guards around this time as they walked down the long hallway to the blast doors outside of Command and Control.

“Nick, man. Don’t say anything unless they ask you a direct question, yeah? You’re a little tipsy, bro,” Rico whispered as the doors opened.

Nick nodded.

Major Harrison was in his usual spot, next to an Army Colonel Nick hadn’t met before. The Colonel turned to them as they walked in.

“City sweep complete, sir,” Rico said, saluting the Colonel and standing at attention.

“As you were, Sergeant Torres. Good work. The engineers have the Razor encased in concrete, and we’ll be flying it out to the Baltic Sea in a couple of hours. You did good work, there.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“This one of your men, Major Harrison?” the Colonel asked, nodding at Nick.

“Yes, sir. That’s the SIC of 47 Echo.”

“He was a real help to us, sir. We wouldn’t have been able to defuse the bomb without his translations,” Rico added.

“Good job, Echo. I hear you’re making quite a name for your unit. Haven’t lost but a man since you took over. You don’t know how rare that is in this game.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“The convict units are helping move everyone back into the Camp. It’ll take a few hours. You look beat, Echo. You a coffee drinker?”

“Used to be, sir.”

“Come on. I could go for a cup right now.” The Colonel smiled. “You boys are dismissed. Have a drink and get some downtime.”

Rico saluted and led his unit back out through the blast doors. Nick followed the Colonel to a small kitchen just off the main control room, where the Colonel poured two mugs of jet-black coffee from an old, stained auto-drip machine.

“So what’s your momma call you, Echo?”

“Nick, sir.”

“Well, Nick. You been in the service before?”

“No, sir. Construction.”

“From what I’ve heard, you’re natural military. You’ve done some good work in the last couple of weeks, not to mention you punched out that prick Sayed. Never liked that guy.” The Colonel chuckled, handing one of the cups to Nick.

Nick took a sip—he’d almost forgotten how much he missed coffee.

“Like I said, I’ve heard about you. That doesn’t happen, normally—you convicts outnumber us in the real Armed Forces almost five to one, but we never hear specific names. ‘Cept for you and your crew. There’ve been rumblings. I hear something is about to change for your crew.”

“Any idea what?”

“Sure. But wouldn’t want to spoil it for you.” The Colonel smirked. “My name’s Ross, by the way. Sawyer Ross. Call me crazy, but I don’t think this cup of coffee’s the last we’ll see of each other.”

“Good to meet you, Colonel Ross.”

Ross smirked and finished off his cup of coffee.

“Feel free to stay here and have another cup. I’ve got to get back to work. I’d say you’ve got three hours before you have to report back to your unit—if I were you, I’d just use that time to relax. You look like seventeen different kinds of hell, son.”

Nick nodded and poured himself another cup of coffee.

“Well, look at this! Savior of Camp Justice, in the flesh! Can I get your autograph, man?” Peter smiled as he walked in the door to 47 Echo’s apartment.

“Shut the fuck up, Pete.” Nick laughed.

The rest of the unit was behind Peter, some of them carrying packs over their shoulders. They all looked tired, but most of them were smiling. Nick did a quick head count as his unit filed in and came up one short.

“Where’s Kenneth?”

“Tried to fight one of the Kilo gangbangers. Got jumped by about ten more of ‘em. They’re all doing twenty-four in the box.” Christopher shook his head.

“Well, I won’t mind the quiet. I talked to Captain Neal a few minutes ago—we’ve got six hours of downtime, then we’re off on another job. I don’t know about you guys, but I don’t actually remember the last time I slept. I’m knocking myself out for the next five. Do what you feel like, but keep it down, all right?”

Nick’s men nodded their understanding, so he threw himself on his bunk, closed his eyes, and fell asleep within three breaths.

When he woke and checked the digital clock on the wall, Nick saw that four hours had passed. The sun was still up, but only just—it was starting to sink below the rooftops. His men were all passed out, except for Anthony, who sat out on the patio messing with the mobile he’d taken off the CDM’s pilot. Nick rifled through Christopher’s pack, found a pack of cigarettes, and took one. He walked out onto the patio and lit his smoke.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Anthony move to put away his phone.

“Don’t worry about it, Anthony. I’m the only one up.”

“Hey, boss. Just trying to get this thing, you know, working.”

“Really? I would have thought you would have given up with that by now.”

“Well, I mean, I don’t know much about tech stuff, but it’s—”

“Not fixing the phone. I know it works. I would have thought you’d have given up with the act. I’ve figured out who you are, and what you’re doing with the phone. You never killed anyone, man.”

“Then I should really sue someone for putting me in Echo.” Anthony laughed.

“Nope. Because Echo’s exactly where you wanted to be, even though you’re not a criminal. Your face was familiar to me the first time I saw you, Anthony. Just took me a little time to put it together.”

“Oh, yeah? Where do you think you know me from?”

“‘Adventure Vacations in Thailand.’”

Anthony’s smirk fell. “You read that?”

“Yep. That, and ‘Motorcycle Travels Across The Middle East.’ Good stories, both of them. Still with the New York Times Network?”

“Yeah. Look, I’ll tell you the whole story sometime soon, I promise. But I’ve gotta finish this story and get it sent to them. You’re not gonna tell anyone, are you?”

Nick smiled. “Wouldn’t do me much good if I did. Besides, freedom of the press. I dig it. Just be very careful. I’ll cover for you as much as I can, but don’t make me cover too much, yeah?”

“Appreciate it, boss.”

“Now…finish up. We’ve got a briefing to get to in an hour.”

***

“Good evening, 47 Echo. As you can plainly see, we have a new Razor for you, as the last one’s busy sinking to the bottom of the Baltic.” Neal addressed the eight men standing outside the apartment building.

The new Razor looked much like the old one, except that this one was painted black rather than olive drab. The blast shields were up and the rear hatch was open—Nick could just see inside, and was pretty sure there was at least one station that wasn’t standard issue built in near the back of the vehicle.

“Before I get to your mission, I have some news,” Neal continued. “Four-seven Echo is being repurposed.”

“Repurposed, sir?” Christopher asked.

“That’s right, Three-eleven—or, should I say, Mr. Lee. From now on, you’re no longer to be referred to as numbers. You’ve earned back your names.”

Murmurs sounded through the group, but Nick silenced his men with a look.

“Your unit is now called 47 Echo SRF. SRF stands for Special Reaction Force. Congratulations, gentlemen—you have the distinct honor of being the first Special Forces convict unit.”

“This mean our jobs are gonna get less dangerous?” Michael asked. There wasn’t a trace of sarcasm in his voice.

“I’m afraid not.” Neal smirked. “If anything, they’ll be more dangerous. But there is a bright side. All of you were serving life sentences. If you choose to remain in the SRF, you will be released and your criminal records expunged, should you survive to the end of this war.”

Murmurs again ran through Nick’s assembled unit, but this time he did nothing to stop them. Neal nodded. “You have a half an hour to decide if you wish to remain in the unit. Should you choose to leave the 47, you’ll be added to the 46 and the 48 and serve much as you were before. I’ll be back in thirty minutes to hear your decision, and to give those of you who remain your mission.”

As Neal turned his back and walked away, Nick looked at his men. Each of them nodded in turn.

“Sir,” Nick called after Neal. The Captain turned around.

“No need to wait a half an hour. We’re all in, sir. What’s the job?”

Chapter 17

Skulls

“Right,” Nick said. “Let’s load up, 4-7. We’ve got a long way to drive and not much time to get there. Chris, you’re on the wheel. Pete and Mike, guns. Anthony, comms. Gabe, targeting station. Owen, camera control. I’m going to try and figure out the new station as we drive. Wes, I want you to check our personal weapons and assist Pete and Mike if they need help reloading. Chris, you got the coordinates?”

“In the nav system.”

“Then start this big bitch up, and let’s get moving.”

Christopher turned over the huge twenty-four-cylinder engine, slammed the Razor in gear, and set off where the nav system told him to go. Nick sat down at the new station near the back of the Razor.

Anthony was just a few feet away, setting the comm beacon to transmit back to Camp Justice as soon as they left the green zone. “So what’s this new station do?”

“Makes us invisible. Like ninjas.” Nick smirked.

“Fine. Don’t tell me,” Anthony grumbled.

The night before, while Nick had been sweating his life away in the box, Major Harrison had received a call from Post K-13R. The call had only lasted forty-five seconds—just long enough to trace it to a cell tower—but Harrison was convinced it was Colonel Petkov. Somehow, he’d survived the attack on K-13R, gotten his hands on a cell phone, and called his old friend on his private line.

There had been a lot of static on the call, so the computers couldn’t positively verify Petkov’s voiceprint, but Harrison was convinced it was his friend. Petkov had given his coordinates, said he had important information, and warned that K-13R was crawling with Chinese and North Korean soldiers. The line had then gone dead, and Harrison had started putting together a mission profile for his new Special Forces team.

They’d be taking the Razor off-road, in an almost straight line to K-13R. With the underground listening posts and a sky full of Chinese UAVs, they couldn’t risk sending any more than one Razor, and they couldn’t carry it in via chopper—therefore, they’d all be stuck in their new Razor for three days. There were enough FSRs and bottles of water for eight men for more than a week, and they’d be making contact with Neal back at Camp Justice once a day until they got within a hundred miles of K-13R. Then they’d be on their own.

The first day passed pretty uneventfully. They drove through fields, small streams, and thick woods, but the Razor handled it all as if it was driving on level two-lane blacktop. Neal sent them some further information—plans for K-13R, a dossier on Petkov, AWACS recon on the site—which Nick studied before catching a few hours of sleep. He relieved Christopher at the wheel and drove through the next eight hours, wishing the whole time he had music to keep awake.

As the sun started to drop below the horizon line on the second night, Christopher nudged him on the shoulder.

“How’d you sleep?” Nick asked him.

“Well enough. Why don’t you catch a couple of hours of rack time, have one of those tasty FSRs. I’ve got the next stretch here.”

“Sounds good. Wake me up if anything happens, yeah?”

“God, I hope something does happen. This mission’s worse than downtime so far.” Christopher smirked, sliding into the vacated driver’s seat.

Nick climbed into one of the Razor’s fold-out racks—Gabriel and Peter occupied two others. Nick fell asleep quickly, thankful for his ability to pass out nearly anywhere. He dreamt of Chinatown in Los Angeles and the first time his father Alex had taken him there when he was five. His brother Stan was away at summer camp, and his mother was visiting relatives in Hong Kong—it was just Nick and his father in the house for three weeks. His father took leave from the Navy and decided he and Nick would explore the city.

Nick remembered Alex was surprised his mother had never taken him to Chinatown before. It was where they had met eight years before, and strangely, it hadn’t been Nick’s mother who had lived there. It had been Alexander himself, then twenty-two and straight out of SEAL training, living in a small, cheap apartment and driving a $65,000 car.

On the day Nick and his father visited, the city had been drenched in rain all morning, but the rain had stopped as soon as Alex parked the family Pontiac along the street. He took Nick to a small restaurant called Triple Happiness, and the two of them took a table near the kitchen. Almost immediately, an old Chinese man came running out of the kitchen, talking loudly and smiling at Alex.

“Nick, this is Mr. Ho. He owns the restaurant and the apartments above. I used to live here before I met your mom.”

Nick didn’t understand—why would his father live in a restaurant?—but he remembered being frightened of this animated old man who sat at the table, talking loudly and constantly hitting Alex playfully in the shoulder.

“Aye yah, so you’re back in Los Angeles, eh, Hero Alex? You been fighting over in Africa? I hear that on the news.”

“Somalia? Nah, my unit wasn’t there. We were in Eastern Europe at the time. Food was horrible. You want to make us something good for lunch, Leo?”

“You got it, Hero Alex!”

The old Chinese man scurried away, and Nick tugged on the sleeve of his father’s leather coat.

“Dad?”

“Yeah, kiddo?”

“Why’d he call you Hero Alex?”

“Just a silly nickname, kiddo. Like when Stan calls you Little Devil.”

Nick nodded. This made sense to him. He and his father had lunch and explored Chinatown for the rest of the day—it was one of Nick’s best memories of his father. It was 1996, and Chinatown wouldn’t descend into chaos, violence, starvation and anarchy for another twenty-one years.

The dream shifted. Nick was now thirteen, sitting in Baltimore/Washington International Airport with his brother Stan. They were supposed to have been spending the summer with their father in Annapolis, but plans had changed—it was only mid-June, and the two boys were waiting on a flight back to Los Angeles. Stan was on his cell phone, talking to their mother.

“It’s not his fault. His unit got called up—in case you haven’t been watching the news, we’re kind of invading Iraq and Afghanistan at the moment,” Stan said, frowning.

Their mother said something on her end of the line, and Stan’s frown got deeper. Nick’s brother was seventeen, and had ended up looking decidedly more like their father with his sandy hair and green eyes. Nick himself had turned out looking almost exactly like their mother. The two teenagers barely looked related at all.

“Hey, come on, Mom. I know the two of you got divorced, but you don’t have to give the guy shit. Yeah, I’m saying ‘shit.’“

Nick could hear his mother yelling on the other end of the line, but he couldn’t make out what she was saying.

“Fine. But that’s the last thing he needs. He’s going off to war, and he doesn’t need you calling him and yelling at him about me and Nick having to come home early. Look, just don’t call him, all right? We’ll be home this afternoon.” Stan hung up the phone and looked over at his brother. “Hey, bro. We still have a couple of hours before our flight. You hungry?”

Nick shrugged.

“C’mon. I saw a McDonald’s down the hall. I won’t tell Mom if you don’t.”

Nick stood to follow his brother, but someone suddenly laid a hand on his shoulder and shook gently.

Nick opened his eyes and found himself back in the Razor. Anthony was standing over him, his face a tight mask of concern.

“Hey, boss. Sorry to wake you.”

“No problem. What’s up?”

“We’re getting some traffic. Really faint, maybe a hundred miles off. Can you take a listen for me?”

“Yeah.” Nick yawned, swinging his legs clear of the rack and stretching as he stood. He followed Anthony the few paces to the comm station and put on a pair of headphones. What he heard was mostly static. He listened carefully for a few seconds and managed to pick up several words in quick, clipped Chinese. Nick nodded.

“What are they saying, boss?”

“It’s a perimeter patrol. Looks like they’re further into this area than our intel would have us believe. Time to see how this new station actually works,” Nick said, taking off the headphones. “Chris! Cut our speed to forty miles an hour, yeah?”

“You got it, boss.”

Nick activated the new station, and the dim lights in the Razor suddenly turned red.

“What the fuck was that?” Anthony said.

“We’re running in stealth mode. No radar signature, comms are set to receive only, vehicle’s running silent on half-cylinders from our hybrid drive.” Nick made sure his voice was loud enough for everyone in the Razor to hear. He didn’t want to repeat himself.

“Well, that’s great—until someone sees a huge black vehicle rolling around.”

“We’ve got a countermeasure for that, too. But it takes a lot of power, so we’re not turning it on just yet.”

“Looks like we’ll make K-13R in about ten hours,” Christopher told him.

“Stop us twenty miles or so out and find some cover. We’re not going in until nightfall,” Nick ordered.

“Roger that.”

The next ten hours passed quickly. Anthony kept monitoring the comm frequencies, and they managed to avoid Chinese patrols all the way to their destination—another ruined town twenty-five miles west of K-13R. Christopher found an empty warehouse in which to park the Razor, and Nick let the men out two at a time to stretch their legs a bit.

“Okay, boss. Five hours until dark. What’s your plan?” Christopher asked as the two of them smoked cigarettes just outside the Razor’s back hatch. Though it was unlikely anyone was around to hear them, Christopher’s voice was barely above a whisper.

Nick had been attempting to piece together a plan of action ever since the Razor had gone into stealth mode. He’d had some ideas, but he was thankful Christopher was there to bounce them off of.

“Solar batteries in the Razor fully charged?”

“Yeah. Fifteen hours of operational time.”

“We’ll have seven and a half under full stealth. The adaptive camouflage sucks power at double the rate.”

“Adaptive camouflage?”

“Makes the Razor…well, not exactly invisible to the naked eye, but really fucking hard to see. That’s why we’re waiting for nightfall. We’ll be able to get within a half a mile undetected. Then…well, then we’ll need to get closer. I’m going to go in myself, on foot.”

“Alone?”

“In a pinch, I can pass for Chinese. None of the rest of you can. I’ll need the latest calculations on where Petkov was calling from. Gabe and Mike can come within a quarter of a mile, hopefully provide some cover fire if I need it—but if it comes to a firefight, we’re fucked.”

“I suddenly don’t like this plan very much.”

“You and me both. But it’s our best shot.”

***

A few hours after dark, the Razor rolled to within a mile of K-13R. No one inside said a word—it wasn’t likely anyone standing just outside the vehicle could hear them if they were shouting, but no one wanted to take any chances. When the Razor crew finally found their voices, they spoke in whispers.

“You sure this adaptive camouflage bullshit even works?” Gabriel whispered.

“Yeah. Cameras on the outside of the Razor project the images they see on the vehicle’s skin. When you and I get outside, you’ll see what I mean,” Nick said. “Owen, bring up the long-range front camera, please. Let’s see what I’m walking into.”

Owen nodded and pressed a few buttons. On the dashboard screen, a green-and-white image popped up, blurry and jumpy. The Razor crew could see a hastily erected main gate with Chinese soldiers walking the fence. Out in front of the fence, someone had set up what looked like a large number of signposts.

“What the fuck are these things?” Peter asked, tapping the signposts on the screen.

The image sharpened considerably as Owen pressed a few more buttons, and everyone in the Razor cabin could now see what was posted outside K-13R.

Though it was pretty clear to everyone in the cabin, Nick said it out loud anyway, choking back the bile that was rising in his throat before the words came out. “Those would be the heads of the Russian tank crews. On pikes.”

Chapter 18

Walk Among Us

There were a lot of them, but Nick didn’t have much trouble sneaking past the Chinese foot patrols outside K-13R’s gate. He sat with Gabriel and Michael at the quarter-mile mark for a few minutes, watching the patrols make their rounds through the scope on his stolen Chinese assault rifle. There was a method to their patrols—Nick realized that if he got close enough, he’d have just over thirty seconds to scale the gate without being seen.

As soon as he made it over the fence and dropped to the other side, Nick crouched behind a wooden storage crate and looked back out toward the Razor. He couldn’t see the vehicle, nor could he see Michael and Gabriel. The two men, like Nick, were dressed in black, unmarked fatigues. Nick had left his jacket in the Razor, so he was simply dressed in black BDU pants, a black T-shirt and combat boots. He had his Chinese assault rifle and the M4 Wes had handed him slung crisscrossed over his back, and had strapped a Glock 50 to each hip. As he stood from behind the crate, he winched the straps on all of his weapons as tight as he could to keep them from rattling as he walked—no point in making any more noise than he had to.

He’d memorized the map of K-13R in the Razor, as well as the last known position of Petkov’s cell phone—the GPS on the phone was only accurate to within fifty feet. It didn’t sound like a lot of ground, but Nick knew the Russian tank commander could be in any of six different buildings, on any level. His best bet was to make it to the area as quickly as possible and take his best guess. Fortunately, there weren’t many people roaming around the camp this late at night, so Nick kept to the shadows and easily avoided detection as he crept the two kilometers into the camp, heading for the glowing red dot on the map he’d memorized.

As Nick got closer to his target area, he noticed a lot of electric lights. The closer he got, the more he could hear loud, shouting voices in Chinese and, he assumed, Korean. Nick slowed as the lights got brighter and the alley he was in emptied out into a main courtyard. He hung in the shadows at the mouth of the alley and saw what was causing all the commotion in the courtyard ahead of him.

In the town’s main square, an improvised fighting ring had been set up. On one side of the ring, a young woman in a Chinese Army tank top was standing, her hands and feet wrapped in boxing tape. On the other side, a much larger man in a North Korean Army T-shirt stood wearing similar fighting gear. Crowds of uniformed Chinese and North Korean soldiers surrounded the ring, talking loudly and drinking heavily. An older man in Chinese Army fatigues stepped into the center of the ring and raised both hands.

The crowd fell silent immediately.

“Three rounds, or to knockout. Our best—” the man in fatigues indicated the woman, “—versus yours for the Camp of the Four Winds championship title!”

The crowd started roaring again as the man lowered his arms.

Nick smirked—with all of these guys distracted with the intramural boxing match, he’d have a much easier time searching through the area for Petkov. As the fight started, he made his way around the courtyard to his target area, a small block of shops just outside the main square. The original maps had shown five freestanding buildings, but all of them had since burned to the ground. He hunkered down in the wreckage of one and closed his eyes, remembering the architectural plans he’d glanced through on the Razor—one of the buildings, formerly a liquor store, had a basement that might have survived. He made his way to that building, searched around for a moment, and found the hatch leading to the basement. It was covered by burned wood and broken bottles, which he cleared off as quickly and quietly as he could.

He opened the hatch a crack, and two gunshots greeted him. Nick fell backwards, landing in a crouch three feet back from the hatch.

“Jesus, Petkov,” he breathed, picking himself up and walking around to the back side of the hatch. He leaned down as close as he could and hissed, “Andrevich! It’s Nick Morrow. I’m opening the hatch. Don’t shoot me, okay?”

Carefully, he reached out and tried the hatch again—there were no gunshots this time, so he took that as a good sign. Nick opened the hatch just enough to slip inside, and the hatch closed as soon as his feet hit the dirt floor.

“Nick? Is that you, my American friend?” Nick heard a croaking voice from the end of the dark room.

“Yeah, it’s me,” Nick said, pulling a small flashlight from his cargo pocket and turning it on. The light fell on Andrevich, who looked like Death.

The Russian was a few pounds lighter than when Nick had last seen him, and his face was covered with dried blood. Petkov had used the sleeves of his uniform jacket and two pieces of wood to make a splint for his right leg, but his sunken face broke out in a smile as he saw Nick standing before him.

“You don’t look good at all.”

“I have had a rough couple of days, my friend.”

“Yeah, I’ll bet. Come on. We need to get you out of here. Can you walk?”

“Not quickly. But yes.”

“That’ll have to do. Here,” Nick said, reaching into his other cargo pocket and pulling out a bottle of water, “drink as much of this as you can. You’re dehydrated in addition to being all banged up.”

“Thank you.”

As Petkov drank the entire bottle of water, Nick considered how he was going to get the injured Russian out of the base. They’d need to move fast, and there was no way Petkov could climb the fence.

“You feeling a little better?” Nick asked as Petkov tossed the empty bottle to the ground.

“Yes. Much.”

“Good. Wait here. I need to go steal us a ride.”

Nick put his ear next to the hatch and listened. He could faintly hear the shouting from the courtyard, but nothing else. Shrugging, he pressed his back up against the hatch and pushed slightly up with his legs, opening the hatch just a crack. The coast looked clear, as near as he could tell, so he lifted a bit more and scurried out into the wreckage.

There wasn’t much close by, and Nick couldn’t remember seeing any spare vehicles sitting around on his walk in. Still, a camp this size had to have a motor pool. Just from the number of Chinese and North Korean soldiers he’d seen in the courtyard, Nick estimated there were thousands of them at K-13R. There would have to be vehicles around, and a lot of them.

Nick thought for a moment and visualized the map he’d seen in the Razor, searching it for any hint of somewhere large enough to set up a motor pool. His first thought would have been the courtyard, but the large number of cheering enemy soldiers he could still hear in the distance ruled out that option.

The next best alternative, Nick supposed, would be the industrial area three kilometers away. According to the maps, that’s where Petkov and his crew had kept their tanks—in a secure, indoor warehouse. It had been perfect for their run-and-gun missions, as they’d been able to hide the tanks when they weren’t operational.

Hoping that the majority of the camp would stay wrapped up in the fight a bit longer, Nick set off at a quick jog toward the warehouses.

As it turned out, Nick didn’t need to make it three kilometers away. He didn’t even need to go five hundred feet. Parked along the street just over a small rise from the wreckage of the shops was an older, slightly beat-up Lada Niva, a vehicle that reminded Nick of a late-model hard-top Jeep. Nick froze and dropped behind a trash can as he saw it—there was someone in the driver’s seat. He spent a couple of seconds watching, but the driver didn’t move, even slightly. Nick crept closer, his eyes locked on the man in the driver’s seat, ears scanning for any hint of motion.

He needn’t have worried, as it turned out. The man in the driver’s seat was quite dead and had been for some time, long enough for considerable decomposition to set in. Even in the body’s decayed state though, Nick could tell he had been an old man—a thick mane of white hair clung to his skull, just above where a bullet had smashed into his head.

Poor guy, Nick thought, swallowing hard. Probably didn’t evacuate the city quick enough when the Chinese hit it. Sadness rose in his chest—the guy was dressed like someone’s sweet old grandfather—but he quickly did his best to push the feeling back down. He had a job to do.

The Lada’s window was down, and the door was unlocked. Nick opened the door and gently lifted the old man’s corpse out of the vehicle, doing his best not to breathe in. He propped the body up against a nearby building and went back to the Lada—it was stained with blood and smelled terrible.

It was then that Nick realized he had no idea how to steal a car.

As he passed the flashlight over the inside of the Lada, something small and silver flashed near the gas pedal in the driver’s footwell. Nick looked closer and saw keys—the old man had probably dropped them when he was shot. He tried one in the ignition, and the Lada turned right over. Checking the dashboard, he saw that the gasoline tank was almost empty, but the solar batteries were full-up—they’d probably been charging passively for the past month or so.

Nick drove the short distance back to the hatch and knocked on it three times. Petkov peeked out, and Nick gave him the thumbs-up. The injured Russian pulled himself out of the hatch, and Nick opened the Lada’s rear door.

“You’re making me ride in the trunk, my friend?”

“No offense, but you are a little white. I look like them and I can speak their language. I’m not planning to get stopped, but in case we do, better for us both if they can’t see you.”

Petkov nodded, and Nick helped him into the cargo area. Nick looked around—the streets were still empty, and the fight was still happening in the courtyard. He took a brick from the wreckage and smashed the Lada’s one working headlight, then got in the driver’s seat and headed for the main gate.

As he drove slowly through the wrecked city, Nick noticed a small mobile phone plugged into the cigarette lighter. It, like the Lada’s solar batteries, showed a full charge. He didn’t expect it to have service, but he reasoned he might as well try. He looked around as he drove—still not a person in sight. He quickly dialed a number from memory.

“Stan Morrow,” his brother answered after the first ring.

“Hey, big brother,” Nick said, his voice catching.

“Fuck me! Nick?”

“Yep. That’s me.”

“Jesus Effing Christ, Nick! Where are you?”

“Russia. Somewhere. It wouldn’t make much sense to you.”

“Nick…fuck, man. You were just on the news.”

“Say again?”

“You were just on the news. They were—”

Gunfire exploded behind Nick, smashing out the Lada’s back window.

“Fuck! Gotta go, Stan!” Nick yelled, hanging up the phone and standing on the gas. The front gate would only be another thirty or forty seconds away by Nick’s math. As he brought the battered car up to eighty miles an hour, he heard banging from the trunk. The back seats folded down, and Petkov tumbled out.

“I am thinking the trunk is not the safest place for me,” Petkov said calmly, crawling into the front seat.

“Yeah. Look, we’re going through the fence. When I tell you to, I want you to bail out of the car. Can you get one of the guns off my back?”

Nick leaned forward, and Petkov managed to unsling the M4 and pull it to him.

“Run for the woods. We’ll have cover fire, but I hope we won’t need it. Stick close—I’ll ditch the car as close to our transport as possible. Think you can sprint?”

“If I am not running, my friend, I am dead. So I will run.”

“Good man. Fire only if you have to—there’s no way we’ll outgun them, and shooting at ’em will only tell them where we are.”

Petkov nodded, and Nick slammed the Lada through the fence. In his rearview, he could see about ten soldiers on foot behind them, shouting and firing wildly. Nick aimed for the Razor’s position, mentally ticking off a quarter of a mile.

“One…two…three…jump!” Nick yelled.

As soon as Nick hit the ground, he rolled to his left, unslinging the Chinese assault rifle as he rolled. Before he could draw a bead on his pursuers, however, the old Niva exploded in a bright, brilliant flash. Nick rolled onto his feet, looked past the flaming wreckage and saw Petkov getting shakily to his feet.

“Run!” Nick yelled, heading for the woods. He caught up to Petkov just in front of the ex-Lada and threw his arm under the injured Russian’s arms. The two of them hobbled for twenty steps before two black-suited men with guns jumped out at them—Michael and Gabriel.

“We’ve got him, boss,” Gabriel yelled, picking Petkov up on his wide shoulders and sprinting for the Razor.

The four men jumped into the back of the Razor and appeared to vanish as the hatch closed behind them.

Chapter 19

Career Opportunities

Christopher had the Razor running at thirty-eight miles an hour—just shy of the stealth mode’s top speed. Nick limped to the front of the vehicle.

Huh. Why am I limping? he wondered idly, looking down at his feet. His left foot looked normal, but the front of his right boot was missing.

Nick looked over his shoulder and saw a steady trail of blood from the back door all the way up to where he was standing. He looked in front of him—no blood there.

“Owen, get on the night-vision cameras. Keep a lookout for any Chinese patrols. Anthony, radio chatter. Anything that pops across the airwaves, put it up on the speakers.”

“Shit, Nick. You don’t look good, bro,” Michael said, looking at Nick with concern.

“I’m fine.”

“No, really, boss. You look awful. You’re all white and shit,” Peter chimed in. He stood up to look more closely at Nick in the red light and noticed the blood trail.

“Fuck. You’re missing half your foot, man,” Gabriel said, grabbing for the Razor’s medical kit.

“Let me take a look, my friend,” Petkov said, groaning as he pulled himself off of one of the collapsible racks.

“You a doctor in addition to being a tank commander?” Gabriel asked as Peter helped Petkov to his feet.

“Before my country fell apart, I trained as a medic. Not much use for tank commanders in peacetime.” Petkov grinned, showing uneven, nicotine-stained teeth.

“Better than what I got,” Gabriel shrugged, opening the med kit.

“Sit down, my American friend,” Petkov told Nick, moving him to the rack he’d just vacated. “How is the pain?”

“It wasn’t bad until I noticed it. Now, it hurts like a motherfucker.”

“As well it should.” Petkov turned to Gabriel. “Big man with tattoos—”

“Gabe.”

“Yes. I need you to get a flashlight,” he directed. “Aim it at the wound. I need to see what I’m dealing with.” Petkov snapped on a pair of latex gloves from the medical kit.

Gabriel pulled his flashlight from his cargo pocket and pointed it at Nick’s wrecked right foot. Initially, all any of them could see was blood and dirt, but Petkov wiped away the mess with a fistful of gauze.

“How bad is it?” Nick asked, straining to look down at his foot.

“Do not move. Gabe, flashlight a little to the right, please. Thank you. You’re missing most of your toes, and you’re still bleeding pretty bad.” Petkov shook his head.

“Hoo-freaking-ray,” Nick grumbled.

Petkov leaned in closely. “The black man. What is his name?” the Russian whispered.

“Pete.”

“Ah, yes. Pete. Do you see the small red injectors at the top of the medical kit?” Petkov said in his normal voice, leaning away from Nick.

“Yes, sir.”

“Would you hand me one of them, please?”

Peter grabbed one of the injectors and handed it to Petkov, who held it up in the flashlight beam.

“Ah. Excellent.”

“What’s that?” Nick asked.

“Morphine. You’ll be needing this in just a moment. You—” Petkov said, pointing at Michael.

“Mike,” Michael said.

“Mike. Does this vehicle have a repair kit?”

“Yeah.”

“Get it for me, please.”

Michael nodded and produced the repair kit, which Petkov opened and rifled through, finally withdrawing a small, gun-shaped instrument. He clicked the trigger experimentally, shooting a small jet of blue flame into the air. Grinning again, Petkov set the torch down on the floor then injected the morphine into Nick’s leg.

“I am sorry. Even with the morphine, this will hurt. A lot. But I need to seal the wound before you bleed out. Do you understand?”

Nick was already starting to feel lightheaded from the morphine, but he managed to spit out the word “yes” anyway.

“Very good. Now, please, try not to move. I would hate to do more harm than good.”

Petkov clicked on the flame and set it to Nick’s foot.

Jesus. Someone really can’t stomach the sight of blood, Nick thought. I wish whoever it is would stop screaming.

As Petkov turned off the torch, the howling stopped, and Nick realized that the shouts had been coming from his own mouth.

“There. See? That wasn’t so bad. Are you still conscious, my friend?”

Petkov’s words floated into Nick’s brain through a haze of pain and clouds of opiates. Nick could barely see, but he found he could speak.

“Still awake,” he managed to croak.

“You won’t be for much longer. I got the bleeding to stop. Pete, please hand me that brown bottle…no, the one next to it. Thank you. Nick, my friend, I am going to bandage the wound, and then we will need to elevate—”

That was the last word Nick heard before his eyes slid shut and he fell into a dark, deep, dreamless sleep.

When he woke, there was daylight streaming through the Razor’s open blast ports. The other three collapsible racks had been pulled down, and Peter, Christopher and Gabriel were asleep in them. Nick swung his legs clear of the rack, suddenly remembering the damage to his right foot just before it hit the deck. The quick jolt of intense pain brought him fully awake, and he put most of his weight on his left foot as he stood and walked to the front of the Razor.

Owen was driving, with Petkov in the passenger seat. The two of them spoke in quiet Russian.

Petkov turned as he heard Nick approach. “Ah. How are you feeling?”

“Foot hurts, but I’ll live.”

“Not much foot left, really. They might be able to save your big toe when we get back.”

“I noticed we’re off stealth. How long have I been out?”

“Two days. You woke up once, but I put you back under. I am not surprised you do not remember it.”

“So we’re a day from Camp Justice?”

“No, my American friend. Three hours.”

“Andrevich knows the area a lot better than we do. He was able to point out a quicker way back. Once we got off stealth, we cranked it up to eighty.” Owen grinned.

“Anything interesting happen while I was sleeping?”

“Not really. We avoided some Chinese patrols about thirty-five miles north of K-13R. Anthony recorded a bunch of radio traffic for you on the first day, but we’ve heard nothing since.”

“We back in touch with Captain Neal yet?”

“Yes. I spoke to him twenty minutes ago. I hope you do not mind, but while you were incapacitated, I took command of the mission,” Petkov told him. “Now that you’re awake though, the ship is yours.”

Petkov slid out of the passenger seat and gestured to Nick that it was his. Nick sat down, already grateful to be off of his feet.

“And now, I think I shall sleep. Please do wake me when we arrive, yes?” Petkov smiled, heading for the rack Nick had just left.

“So, you speak Russian, then?” Nick asked Owen.

“Yeah. Mom was a Russian Jew. Made sure I was raised with both languages.”

“Sounds familiar,” Nick said. “My mom insisted my brother and I speak Chinese and English from the time we were born.”

Nick slipped on a pair of headphones and reviewed the Chinese radio traffic for the rest of the drive. The gist was that a civilian vehicle had run the blockade at the Camp of the Four Winds, and that four men had escaped into the woods. Patrols had found no trace of them, but all nearby listening stations were put on alert. There was no further traffic about their mission, just random patrol reports and routine radio traffic. Nick saved the audio files in case they turned out useful to the intel people, then took off the headphones.

He could see Camp Justice in the distance, and two Cougars were already on their way to escort the Razor home.

***

Neal came to visit Nick in the hospital, just as the doctors were finishing his prosthetic toes. They wouldn’t function quite as well as real ones, but they were better than nothing, the doctors had told him. The pain was almost gone now—the doctors confirmed that by cauterizing the wound, Petkov had indeed saved his life.

Neal wasn’t alone when he walked into the room. Lieutenant Colonel Markham was with him. Both of them looked serious, and Markham was carrying a thin manila folder.

“Did Petkov make it to Command and Control, sir?”

“Yes, Nick. Job well done. Your men are adjusting to their new barracks, a two-level house near the other Special Forces units. But I’m afraid we have something of more critical importance to talk about.” Captain Neal frowned.

At a nod from the doctor, Nick hopped off the table and walked around experimentally. It hurt a little, but the new toes functioned just fine.

“Just tell me what the mission is, sir. I’m ready.” Nick smirked.

“No mission, son. At least, not for you,” Markham said, handing Nick the file folder.

“What’s this?”

“These are your release papers, Nick. Your conviction was overturned just after you left to fetch Petkov. You’re no longer a convict. There’ll be a plane leaving to take you to Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany in three hours. From there, you’ll be flown commercially back to Los Angeles. You’re a free man, Nick.”

Nick opened his mouth, but nothing came out.

“We don’t have much in the way of civilian clothes, I’m afraid. What you have on will have to do,” Neal told him.

“Wait. What?” Nick finally managed to spit out.

“It seems that someone in the press got a hold of your files. There was an article on you a little over a week ago on the New York Times Network site. Shortly after that, the judge in your case was dismissed from service. It turns out that he was convicting anyone of Asian ancestry that came through his courtroom, regardless of evidence. Several convictions were overturned, and yours was one of them.”

Nick sat still for a moment. His brain was working so fast and hard that he had trouble pulling out a single thought.

“What if I don’t want to go back?”

Markham shrugged.

“We can’t hold you, son. Your sentence was reviewed by another judge, who commuted it to time served plus probation for the first count, self-defense for the other four.”

“Will I at least get a chance to say goodbye to my men?”

“I’m sorry, no. We can’t allow civilians to fraternize with convicts. But I’ll tell them for you,” Neal said. “As soon as the doctor clears you to go, you’ll be headed for the airport. Good luck, Nick.”

Before Nick could think of anything else to say, Markham and Neal left the room.

“Well…shit,” he sighed.

The doctor shrugged.

Chapter 20

X Offender

“Technically I’m supposed to cuff you until you’re officially released from our custody, but you’re not gonna give me any trouble, are you, guy?” the Federal Marshal asked, checking the Glock 50 in his holster.

“I’m actually planning to sleep most of the time, so, no.” Nick shrugged.

“Good man. So, this used to be a commercial airport, huh? Barely looks like it now.”

As Nick and the Marshal sat on a long, plastic bench near what had once been a departure gate, they watched a crew of Army convicts unloading a factory-new Cougar from a C-5 out on the runway. Behind them, a crew of mechanics was checking the vehicle as soon as it rolled off the plane, giving a thumbs-up to the waiting motor crew. Once the first Cougar was off the plane, the process started over with another.

“You know where they make those things now, right?” the Marshal asked.

“Nope.”

“Rock Island, Illinois. Place called the Rock Island Arsenal. Same little island where they used to put together the Humvees. I’m from around there.”

Nick nodded. Words couldn’t express how much he didn’t care where the Cougars were built, but he was going to be stuck with this guy for the next twenty hours or so. He might as well attempt to make small talk.

“So where do they have you stationed, Marshal…”

“Raines. Aaron Raines. Sorry, thought I introduced myself back at the hospital complex,” Raines said, holding out a hand. Nick shook it.

“So where do they have you stationed, Marshal Raines?”

“Tampa. I got the call they were letting one of you guys go, and I was on the first flight across the Atlantic. Beats sitting at a desk in a suit and tie all day—not like we’ve got much to do since all the criminals are out here nowadays. Hey, you know where we can get some food?”

“Trust me. You don’t want what they call food here. We’re heading to a commercial airport in Germany after the airbase, right?”

Raines nodded.

“I’d wait until you get there to eat. Your stomach will thank you.”

As Raines considered that, a large, buzzcut Air Force Sergeant walked up to them. “Raines? Morrow?” he asked.

“That’s us.”

“Your ride’s here, gentlemen. Runway one-five. Sorry about the accommodations, but it’s only two hours.”

The sergeant motioned for the two men to follow him, then led them out onto the tarmac to a waiting C-130 Hercules. Nick and Raines walked up the ramp and found two empty jump seats, which wasn’t difficult—the plane was full of cargo, but apart from the flight crew, there was no one else aboard.

“Wheels up in five, guys!” the pilot called from the flight deck. “Strap in!”

Nick tightened his harness then helped Raines with his. True to his word, Nick was asleep as soon as the plane left the runway.

***

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is your Captain speaking. On behalf of Delta and the crew of flight one-seventeen, I’m happy to welcome you to Los Angeles International Airport. The local time is 2:47 p.m. Temperature is a rather pleasant eighty-two degrees.”

Nick forced his eyes open as the plane taxied to the terminal. He could have slept another several hours, but it was time to get off the plane and…do…something. He had no idea what was waiting for him outside the plane, and no idea what he was supposed to do with his life now. He should have felt happy that he was home, but where the happiness should have been, there was nothing. No joy, no apprehension, no anxiety—just a feeling of blankness.

“All right, compadre. Soon as we hit the end of that jetway, you’re a free man. You feelin’ good?” Raines smiled at him, unbuckling his seat belt and adjusting the holster at his side.

“Sure,” Nick lied. It sounded unconvincing, even to him.

“What’s the first thing you’re gonna do when you get out of here?”

Raines’ friendly manner had been wearing on him since Frankfurt, but Nick reminded himself he only had to deal with the guy for a few more minutes. No reason to stop being polite now.

“Probably visit my brother. I haven’t seen him since my trial.”

Raines and Nick exited the plane. As they walked down the jetway, Raines handed Nick the file folder Markham had given him back at Camp Justice.

“You’re free, my man. Stay out of trouble, yeah? You don’t want to end up back there, am I right?”

Nick nodded.

“I’ve got a flight back to Tampa to catch. Take care of yourself, Nick.” Raines smiled and headed left out of the jetway.

Nick headed right, toward the sign marked Exit. As he approached the end of the secure terminal area, Nick saw his brother Stan, along with his two-year-old niece Lia and thirteen-year-old nephew Cedric, waiting for him.

As Stan saw Nick, he broke into a huge smile. “Look, kids! There’s your uncle Nick!”

“Hey, Stan.” Nick smiled wearily as he limped toward his brother.

“You all right, Nick?”

“I’ll tell you about it later. Hey, big man. How you doing?” Nick smiled at Cedric.

“Uncle Nick.” Cedric nodded. The kid was wearing black clothes, not unlike Nick’s own, and had a copy of Starship Troopers held in one hand. Nick took no offense to his nephew’s lack of enthusiasm—he remembered being thirteen.

Nick reached down and picked up Lia, swinging her high in the air. She laughed, and Nick put her up on his shoulders.

“Man, Lia. You’re getting big.” Nick smiled, turning toward his brother. “Thanks for meeting me.”

“Wouldn’t consider letting you come back on your lonesome, bro. Sara would have been here, too, but, y’know…work.”

“No problem. How is she these days?”

“Oh, fine. I talked to her the other night—you’re staying with us until you get settled. No arguments.”

“None forthcoming.” Nick yawned.

“You have any bags we need to pick up?”

“Nope. Wearing everything I own.”

Stan nodded and nudged Cedric, whose nose was firmly buried in Heinlein’s work. The four of them headed out to the parking deck, Lia still riding on Nick’s shoulders. Stan led them to his model-year Chevy Ronin and unlocked the doors with his keyless entry fob.

“Nice new ride,” Nick said.

“Yeah, promotion at work. I’m running my department now. I can talk to someone about getting you a job there if you want.”

“Yeah, maybe. I doubt I’m Homeland Security’s ideal employee, though.”

“Don’t be too sure. They need Chinese and Korean translators bad. With your level of fluency, you’d be a rock star.”

“Cool. We’ll talk about it more later, okay?”

Stan nodded as the Ronin’s electric drive spun up and they shot out of the garage, headed for Santa Clarita. The Ronin’s engine made almost no noise, so it was silent in the cabin. Apparently, Stan had decided to spare his brother the annoying, repetitive children’s music Lia usually demanded in the car. Lia herself was quiet, staring at the back of Nick’s head. Cedric spent the entire drive reading, so Nick and his brother pretty much had the ride to catch up.

“So, the limp?”

“Got half of my foot blown off by an exploding Lada.”

“Ouch! When? And what is a Lada?”

“Yesterday. Maybe the day before…I’m jetlagged as all hell. It was whenever I called you. About a minute after I hung up.”

“And you’re walking already?”

“They fit me with a robotic prosthetic. It’s fine.”

“Well, we’re going to have a nice, home-cooked meal, and you can relax for a bit. Sara won’t be home until late, anyway. Oh, and I managed to snag your old car from before your trial, so that’s back at the house, too.”

“Appreciate it.”

“Not that you’ll be able to drive it right away. I talked to some guys at the office, but it’ll still take a couple of days to get your citizenship status back.”

“I kind of expected that.”

“Well, here we are,” Stan said, pulling his Ronin into the driveway and hitting the switch to open the garage. Inside, Nick saw his baby—his 1996 Jaguar XJS V-12. He’d had to convert it to hybrid to make it street-legal, but apart from that, the car was all original, showroom condition, and still blindingly fast.

Stan herded his kids out of the car. Cedric headed straight for his room, as thirteen-year-olds were programmed to do, and Stan put Lia down for her afternoon nap.

“Want a beer?” Stan asked.

“Fuck yes.”

Stan laughed and grabbed two bottles of Guinness from the fridge. Nick and his brother stepped out onto the back patio. As they settled in, Nick pulled a pack of Russian smokes from his cargo pocket and lit one.

“Jesus, Nick. Those are illegal,” Stan choked, barely managing to keep a mouthful of beer from spewing over the patio table.

“Calm down. It’s a misdemeanor ticket if I get caught, and unless the LAPD is hiding in your hedges, I think we’re fine.”

“All right. Give me one, then.” Stan chuckled.

Nick handed his brother the pack and lit his cigarette for him.

“So how was it over there? We never heard word one about the convict units until that NYTN story broke. Sounded pretty brutal.”

“It’s a meat grinder. We’re outnumbered and outgunned, even with the convict units.”

“Bet you’re glad to be out of there, then.”

“Yeah,” Nick said. His voice was flat, but Stan didn’t seem to notice.

***

“Look, cut the guy some slack, huh, Sara?”

“He’s been sitting around the house for four days straight now.”

“Yeah, and he can’t really go anywhere until his citizenship comes back, can he? What’d you expect him to do? Hop in the car, go job hunting, and get thrown in County when they pull him over and find out he has no driver’s license, no legal rights?”

Stan was trying to keep his voice down, but Sara wasn’t bothering. Nick could hear them clearly from the guest room at the back of Stan’s house.

“I thought you were going to talk to someone at Homeland Security.”

“I did. It still takes time, Sara.”

Nick quietly crept out onto the back patio. He could still hear Stan and Sara arguing, but at least he couldn’t make out their words clearly anymore. He took a seat in one of the patio chairs and stretched out his legs. Across the yard, he noticed Cedric sitting in another chair, reading.

“Hey,” Cedric said quietly.

“Hey yourself, big man.”

“They’re fighting about you again, aren’t they?”

“Yep.”

“Don’t take it too hard. They fight a lot lately.”

Cedric put his book down and walked across the patio.

“So you were in the shit over there, huh?” the boy asked.

“Yeah, you could say it that way.”

“Kids at school say the Mechoes are pretty hardcore. It’s one of the few reasons they don’t beat the shit out of me for being part Chink.”

“Chinese.”

“Whatever. I’ve got it better than the Kwon brothers. They get messed with every other day. I don’t get these kids. I very much doubt Richie and Evan Kwon had anything to do with the attack on L.A. or anything after, but the jocks still beat the crap out of them for being Korean. They’re not even North Korean. They’re from Inglewood.”

“Yeah. Don’t expect that to get better before it gets worse. And it’s gonna get a lot worse as we get deeper into this war and keep losing it.”

“You really think we’re going to lose?”

“I don’t think we’re going to win.”

Cedric shrugged—this seemed to make perfect sense to him. “So what are you going to do now? Go out there and get a job, I guess?” he asked.

“I guess.”

“Any idea what yet?”

“As a matter of fact, yes. I know exactly what I’m going to do.”

The next day was Sunday. When Cedric awoke, Nick was nowhere to be found. He’d wanted to talk to his uncle more, but Nick wasn’t in the guest room, out on the patio, or anywhere in the house. He decided to check the garage, to see if maybe his uncle was working on the sweet car they’d been storing for the past several months.

Nick wasn’t there, but there was a note addressed to Cedric under the driver’s side windshield wiper. It said, “When you hit sixteen big man, it’s yours. Take care of it.”

Chapter 21

Runaway Return

The last month hadn’t been pleasant for 47 Echo. Christopher had done his best to command the unit, but they’d lost Wes and Owen at the Battle of Neryugn. They’d still gotten away light compared to some of the other Echo units—two hundred dead in total from Echo, almost double that from Charlie and Delta. The 4-7 Echo had been the first in on a mission to try and secure an airfield that the Chinese had taken months before. They’d managed to hold it long enough to land the troop planes—then the CDMs popped up from underground and slaughtered hundreds before they could get back out again. While the 4-7’s mission was a success, the operation as a whole had been a resounding failure.

To make matters worse, Kenneth had abandoned the unit. His tracker wasn’t responding, and command had no idea where he was. In the commotion, the big man had managed to slip away, vanishing into the night without a trace.

The Marine and Army convict units had fallen back to Aldan, just inside Allied territory. Aldan had been renamed Firebase Zulu, and sat directly on the front lines, ten miles from the Chinese troops.

Now only five men strong, 47 Echo SRT was assigned a small house just down the street from the new Command and Control building, a former mineral-processing facility with direct access to below-ground mining facilities.

Christopher and his men were recovering from the beating they’d taken at Neryugn and waiting on their next assignment. Gabriel was still nursing a broken arm, and Anthony had a slight limp from a bullet he’d taken in the thigh. Captain Neal showed up unexpectedly on their second afternoon of convalescence, walking into their house with a thin file folder.

“What’s up, Captain? Another mission already? We’re kind of beat, and short on men,” Christopher greeted wearily.

“No new mission yet. Just some reorganization going on over at C2. Major Harrison’s finished his sentence and been sent back to the regular Marines. I’ve been tapped to replace him as Echo Commander.”

“So who’s gonna be our new boss?” Peter asked.

“New guy. Regular Marine. Coming in today.”

“What’d he do to get assigned to Echo?” Michael grumbled.

“He requested it. Your unit, specifically. Guess your special forces exploits have made you pretty well known.”

“Yeah, well, our recent record hasn’t been too impressive. Last month’s been kinda shit for us,” Christopher said.

“Yeah, I think you’ll get along with your new Lieutenant just fine. He’s bringing some replacements from the other units in with him. You’ll be back up to full strength in two days. Also, the Lieutenant will be taking over my position as Second-In-Command of all Echo units, so make it easy on him, yeah?”

“We’ll do what we can, boss.”

“Good men. Mr. Lee, you want to come with me to Command and Control? Your new commander should be there any time now.”

“Yes, sir. Rest up, guys. I’ll be back in a bit,” Christopher told his men. He was greeted with halfhearted affirmatives and at least one groan.

As Christopher and Neal walked down the street to Command and Control, Christopher scratched idly at a bullet graze on his shoulder.

“So, this new guy—he have any Special Forces experience?”

“Some, sure.”

“Why in hell would anyone in the real Marines request this shit duty? All due respect, of course, sir.”

“Of course.”

“But you wouldn’t even be here if you hadn’t been sentenced to it, right?”

“Correct.”

“So what’s that say about this guy? He must be some kind of psycho. Man, I wish we had Nick back.”

Neal opened the door, and the two of them saw Lieutenant Colonel Markham talking to a man in Marine fatigues. The other man had his back to them.

“Like I said, I think you’re going to get along with your new commander just fine.”

The other man turned around and smirked at Christopher.

“Holy motherfucking Christ. Nick!”

“That’s Lieutenant Morrow to you, convict,” Nick shot back, chuckling.

“Sir!” Christopher shot him a crisp salute.

“Lieutenant, the unit’s yours,” Neal told him.

“Thank you, Captain. Mr. Lee, let’s take a walk. We need to recruit some new members,” Nick said, saluting his superiors before he ushered Christopher out into the cold sunshine of the Eastern Russian autumn.

“Shit, um, Lieutenant—” Christopher started.

“Fuck the Lieutenant bullshit. That’s only in front of the bosses,” Nick cut him off.

“All right, Nick. What the fuck are you doing back here? I thought you’d have headed for the hills as soon as the ink was dry on your release papers.”

“I was escorted to those very same hills. Moved in with my brother. Had a job interview all set up, was on my way to becoming a functioning citizen in polite society again. Then, Sunday morning, I said fuck it. I didn’t want polite society, not the one that’s over there now.”

Christopher shook his head.

“Look at me, Chris. Just a matter of time before I got picked up again for being Chink on a Friday night. And there was no way I was leaving you guys out here to have all the fun for yourselves. Nothing for me out there. The only real friends I have are out here.”

“About that…Owen and Wes—”

“I was briefed. You guys did a hell of a job at Neryugn. It’s amazing any of you walked out of that pit of hell.”

“I fucked up, Nick.”

Nick looked over at his friend and saw that he was barely keeping it together. Christopher’s eyes were starting to lose focus, and Nick knew he was replaying the battle in his mind.

“You did nothing of the kind. You did as well as anyone could have. Better, in fact. I hope you don’t think being bumped down to my SIC is a reflection on your work at all. They wanted to give you your own unit, and still will if you want.”

“No. I’d rather stick with you, brother. So you’re a real Marine now. An officer. How the fuck did you manage that?”

“Walked into the Marine recruiter at Long Beach. Place was empty—one crippled sixty-five-year-old Marine working the office. Recruitment’s been a problem, apparently. I sat down in his chair and told him I wanted to join up. He asked if I had any military experience, I told him I had a couple of months in 47 Echo.”

“Bet that fucked with his head.” A bit of Christopher’s characteristic grin crept back into the corners of his mouth.

“Thought the old guy was going to have a heart attack. He recognized me pretty quick after that, told me to wait right there. Phone calls got made. I had to meet with a lawyer to sign a statement saying I hadn’t been coerced or forced to join up. I told them exactly where I wanted to go, and they were only too happy to fast-track me into this special accelerated OTS at Quantico.”

“OTS?”

“Officer Training School. Two weeks, plus the time I’d already done in Echo, and I was on an Air Force bird for Justice. Caught a ride with an Army helo from there, and here I am.”

“You’re fucking insane, man.”

“Good thing for you I am, too. We’ll need it on our next assignment.”

“That doesn’t sound good.”

“Don’t worry. I have it all planned out.”

“Strangely, that does make me feel a little better. So, where are we headed?”

“The Echo bunkhouse. We’re poaching a few from what’s left of the 1-8, then picking up a specialist from Army Kilo and one from Air Force Delta Flight.”

“Sounds like a lot of leg work.”

“Yeah. We’d better get started, I guess. I have some alternates lined up in case my first choices turn us down, but the Mechoes are pretty much a lock.”

Christopher nodded and waved them past the guards at the converted high school that housed the remainder of the Marine Echo units.

“So that’s the deal. You agree to join the 4-7, you’re a free man with no criminal record soon as the war’s over.”

Daniel shrugged his broad shoulders. “That’s if I survive that long, which judging by your mission profile, I probably won’t. ‘Course, after Neryugn, I doubt my survival’s any more assured in the 18. But why me?”

“That shot you made back at Camp Justice. There are maybe four, five guys in the world who can shoot like that. You did it twice in two seconds without even taking a breath,” Nick said.

“Wasn’t a big deal,” Daniel said dismissively, fighting a smirk.

“Where’d you learn to handle a rifle like that, anyway?” Christopher asked.

“Might not think it to look at me, guys, but I grew up with a gun in my hands. Daddy had me out hunting almost as soon as I could walk. You go to where I’m from in North Carolina, you’ll find a dozen and a half kids just like me.”

“So what’s the word, Daniel? You in?”

“Might be a bit of a problem there. I’ve got an…attachment here in the 1-8.”

“If you mean Bryce, yeah, I noticed that. We’re asking him to join, too.” Nick nodded.

“And you’re okay with us? With queers in your unit?”

“Couldn’t care less. Both of you do your jobs, and both of you are damn good at it. All I need to know right there.”

Daniel smiled. “Well, all right then. Bryce is in, then I’m in.”

“Good man. If he agrees, the two of you know where our unit’s set up?”

“Sure. Just down from C2. Better digs than here, anyway.”

“A lot better.” Christopher grinned. “We even have Blu-ray XL.”

“When you get back to the one-eight, let Bryce know we’re here to see him. You’re not to tell him why, just tell him to come here and meet with us. Clear?” Nick told Daniel.

“Clear, sir.”

“You’re dismissed.”

Still grinning, Daniel rose from his chair and walked out of what had once been the principal’s office, headed down the hall for the gymnasium where the rest of the 18 was set up.

“So Daniel’s gay?” Christopher asked after the young man had gone.

“How did you not notice that?”

“Didn’t care, I guess.”

“Good. Keep it that way. Bryce’ll agree. I’ll bet you a carton of cigarettes on it.”

“No bet here. ‘Sides, I’m down to my last three packs. Gotta find a new supply chain sometime soon. My contacts either stayed in Justice or got blown to hell at Neryugn.”

“We’ll make a supply run later. Now, where are they keeping the Army convicts around here?”

“Warehousing ‘em. Literally. Couple steel-framed hangars out past the refinery. Somehow stayed standing when the Chinks bombed the hell out of this place. What do we want a grunt convict for, anyway? They’re not the brightest bulbs, you know.”

“This one is.”

Christopher nodded toward the glass door, and Nick saw Bryce limping down the hall. Nick straightened up behind the desk and put on a serious face. When Bryce came in and sat down, Nick explained the situation just as he had to Daniel. Bryce expressed the same caveat—he was in if Daniel was—and like that, 47 Echo had two new members.

Nick and Christopher commandeered a Cougar and drove over to the hangars teeming with Army convicts. As they entered the first hangar, they realized there was no semblance of organization inside. Convicts from different units milled around or slept on cheap bunks scattered all around the huge, open building.

Nick checked the screen on his jacket’s sleeve, then grabbed the first SIC he saw. “Two-eight Kilo 9215. Know him?”

“Shit, sir. Everyone knows that psycho. I’ll take you to him.”

The SIC led them through the masses of Army convicts to the far corner of the warehouse, pointing to a man sitting on a bunk with his back to them. Nick thanked the SIC, who nodded back and disappeared into the throng of green uniforms.

“Martin Chase?” Nick asked the man.

“Yep. And you’re Lieutenant Nick Morrow, 47 Echo SRF,” Martin said without turning around.

“How’d you know that?” Christopher asked.

Martin pointed to his ear, then to the ground. “I keep informed.”

“You know why we’re here, Martin?”

Martin turned to face them, showing a heavily scarred face. One ancient slash ran its way from just above his left eye to his upper lip, and his right cheek looked to have recently healed from a severe burn. His features twisted into a grin. “Well, you’re using my first name, so my guess is you’re going to ask me to join up.”

“That’s correct.”

“Great. I’m in.”

“Gather your stuff and meet at 47 Echo’s barracks by nightfall. I assume you know where it is?” Nick asked.

“Of course. I’ll be there in an hour.”

“Welcome to the 4-7, Martin.”

Martin nodded and started gathering up his belongings. Nick and Christopher headed back out to the Cougar. As Nick started the engine, Christopher lit a couple of cigarettes and handed one to him.

“So, I gotta ask. What’s up with…uh, Martin, was it?”

“Martin Chase. Arsonist. Bombmaker. Tests as brilliant, but violently failed the psych profile, so he landed in Kilo instead of Echo. He’s suicidal and unstable, but he’s fucking great at what he does. And we need someone good at demo.”

“And a basket-case as a bonus. I can’t wait to see what kind of a winner we’re stealing from the Air Force.”

Nick laughed.

Chapter 22

New Direction

Their last addition was en route from Camp Justice, so Nick drove the Cougar to 47 Echo’s barracks. His men were happy to see him, if confused, so he ran through the whole story yet again for them.

Nick found he had his own room. He tossed his duffel onto the bed and took his boots off. His metallic toes clicked against the floor as he stretched them out. It was the first chance he’d had to sit down since he’d arrived at Firebase Zulu that morning, and he was looking forward to just relaxing for a few minutes when he heard a knock on his open doorframe.

“Hey, boss. So you’re back,” Anthony said. His voice was flat.

“Yep. Looks that way.”

“I wrote that article, you know. The one that got them to reopen your case.”

“I figured.”

“So why’d you undo that? Why’d you come back here?”

“Why do you think? It’s because I don’t want you and the other guys to die.”

“Tell that to Wes and Owen. Or Kenneth, if you can find him.”

“Yeah, I know. I mean, Kenneth, I couldn’t give a fuck. But Owen and Wes…I read the report, but it just listed them as killed in action. What happened?”

“We dropped in from a Black Hawk at two in the morning. Humped two miles on foot until we made it to the airfield. Light Chinese patrols, and we wiped ‘em out pretty easy. Christopher called for the birds to land, but there must’ve been a comm station somewhere we missed. As the troop planes were unloading, about a hundred CDMs rolled in on our position and started tearing the shit out of everything. Our fighter escort managed to help keep them off our backs, and we got the survivors back onto the three troop planes the CDMs didn’t blow up.”

“Yeah, that was mostly in the report.”

“Our extraction was the same Black Hawk that brought us in. We managed to find a truck at the airfield that still ran, one of those old ones that drives ladders up to incoming planes. Wes took a bullet to the face before we even got the truck started. Owen was the last in, and Chinese troops cut him down as we were escaping. Most of us took a couple of bullets, but Owen bled out on the escape flight. We’d made it to about 2000 feet before we realized Kenneth had escaped.”

Nick shook his head sadly. “We stop losing men today, Anthony. I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure we all make it to the end of this war.”

Anthony frowned. “How can you manage that?”

“I’ll manage it. And that’s why I came back.”

Nick got about half an hour to rest before the screen on his sleeve beeped—his scheduler was reminding him he had to get to the Special Forces briefing at C2 in ten minutes. Fortunately, it was only two minutes away on foot. Nick rose from his bed, strapped on his boots, and walked out into the house’s living room. Christopher was stretched out on the couch, reading a thick, leather-bound book.

“Whatcha reading?” Nick asked.

“Don’t know. It’s in Russian.”

“Is it good?”

“I’ve read better.”

“Come on. SF briefing in eight minutes.”

Christopher rolled off the couch and tossed the book on the coffee table.

“Fine by me. Never did like Russian literature anyway.”

Christopher and Nick walked the short distance to Command and Control, where Nick badged them into the secure meeting room on the fourth sub-level. They were still a few minutes early, but the place was already standing-room only. Christopher was the only convict in the room, and had more than one strange look shot his way.

“Good evening, gentlemen,” Colonel Sawyer Ross said, walking to the front of the room.

Everyone in attendance snapped to attention.

“As you were,” Ross said, looking out over the men before he spoke. “Here’s what we know at the present time. Chinese forces are holding steady ten miles to our south. Earlier today, however, they advanced on Firebase Victor, fifty-five clicks southeast of here. Army lost more than three hundred regular men and more than four hundred from the convict units. Survivors will be coming into Zulu by chopper. There aren’t many of them. Captain Haddix, you’ll be absorbing the remains of ODA-188 into your unit.”

“Sir!” one of the Army officers near Nick shouted.

“In the coming days, gentlemen, all of your units will have special assignments, thanks to a large amount of actionable intelligence provided by Lieutenant Morrow of 47 Echo.”

A few heads turned to look at Nick, but they quickly turned back to face Colonel Ross.

“Specifics of your assignments have already been communicated to your commanding officers, in most cases. Those of you who have not yet received assignments will before the end of the day. One other note before we wrap up—” The screen behind Ross flickered to life, showing a blurry image of what looked like a small fighter plane streaking through the daytime sky. “This image was captured at the attack on Firebase Victor. We’re not sure exactly, but witness reports indicate it’s a heavily armed UAV. There’s some kind of field emanating from it that’s made it impossible to get a weapons lock on it. Any information you gentlemen can discover on this thing will be immensely helpful.”

The image switched off.

“Questions?”

None of the assembled soldiers said a word.

“You’re dismissed, then. Except for 47 Echo and Company G, second MSOB. I’ll need you gentlemen to stay behind a moment.”

As the room emptied out, Nick watched to see who wasn’t leaving. A Marine Lieutenant and Gunnery Sergeant hung at the back of the room. The Lieutenant shot Nick a thumbs-up and a wide grin.

“Why does that smile make me nervous?” Christopher whispered to Nick.

“Thank you for staying behind, gentlemen. Lieutenant Morrow, Mr. Lee, meet Lieutenant Nathan and Gunnery Sergeant Mendel, G Company, second MSOB,” Ross said, walking to meet them at the back of the room.

“MSOB?” Christopher whispered.

“Marine Special Operations Battalion,” Nick whispered back as the two of them walked across to shake hands with the two Marines.

“You’re 47 Echo, right? Man, you’ve made the society pages. Good to meet you in person.” Nathan held out his hand, and Nick shook it.

“I have a special assignment for your team, Lieutenant Morrow,” Ross said. “Lieutenant Nathan and his unit will be your backup. You’ve had some time to assess your unit’s combat readiness. How do they look?”

“A little beaten. They’ll hold, sir.”

“Good. You’ll leave in two days. Lieutenant Nathan, your unit’s fresh in from Magadan, so you’ll be leaving to secure Echo’s extraction point this afternoon.”

“Understood, sir. And the extraction point is?”

Ross tapped the screen on his sleeve, and the huge screen at the front of the room flickered on again. A satellite photo of Russia appeared, showing Firebase Zulu and slowly zooming out.

“Your hold point—and Echo’s extraction point—is approximately four hundred kliks south-southwest of Firebase Zulu.”

“Shit. I mean—” Nathan said.

“No, Marine. Shit is right.” Ross nodded.

“That’s North Korea, sir.”

“You’re correct, Marine. Used to be Russia, but not anymore. I’m sending the exact coordinates and the latest Aero reports to your screen now. You should have a clear path. You’ll take two of the newest Razors with full stealth, find somewhere to hole up, and wait for 47 Echo’s transmission. Are we clear?”

“Clear, sir.”

“You’ll want to go load up, then.” Ross nodded toward the door.

Nathan and Mendel snapped to attention and saluted. Ross saluted them back, and they both walked out the door.

“If that’s their mission, I don’t even want to know what we’re up to,” Christopher muttered, shaking his head.

“I’m sure you don’t, convict. But your CO already knows and assures me your unit is solid to handle it. Morrow, are we good to go here?”

“Good to go, Colonel.”

“Outstanding. I’ve arranged what you asked for. Each of your men will have fifteen minutes to call home before you leave day after tomorrow.”

“Much appreciated, sir.”

“Least I could do. Rest up for the next couple of days. The doctors will be by to check up on your men tomorrow morning. Good luck, Echo.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Nick saluted, and Christopher awkwardly followed suit. As they walked back down the street toward their barracks, Christopher was silent. Just before Nick reached out to open the door, Christopher stopped him.

“Nick—he’s letting us call our families.” It wasn’t a question.

“Yeah. Yeah, Chris, he is.”

“He doesn’t expect us to come back, does he?”

“I don’t think he does, no.”

“Are we going to come back?”

Nick smiled. “Come on, Chris. Of course we are. I’ve got a plan, remember?”

Nick debated all the way up until his allotted phone time whether he was actually going to call anyone. He hadn’t told Stan he was going back into the Marines, nor had he contacted him during the two weeks he was at Quantico, though he’d had plenty of opportunities. Any conversation was bound to be awkward, but Nick ultimately decided he owed his only living family a sense of closure. He picked up the cell phone a Marine Alpha had brought to their barracks and dialed—it would be mid-afternoon in Los Angeles, so Nick tried his brother’s office number first.

“Department of Homeland Security, Los Angeles electronic surveillance section. Agent Rozansky.”

“Agent Rozansky, hey. Lieutenant Morrow, USMC. I’m looking for Agent Stanley Morrow.”

“One moment, sir.”

The line clicked, and soon Nick’s brother picked up.

“Agent Morrow. It is my duty to inform you that this call is being recorded. How may I assist you?”

“Stan. It’s Nick.”

“Hey, Nick! Good to hear from you, man! How’s life in the Marines?”

“You knew?”

“The lawyer you met with called us the day you left. He needed to let me know you’d listed me as next of kin.”

Nick suddenly felt a little stupid. He should have guessed that would happen. “Oh,” was all he said.

“So where do they have you stationed, or can you tell me?”

“I really can’t.”

“Yeah, thought as much. Since you’re in the real Marines now, I guess you’ll get to call every once in a while, huh?”

“Hopefully. How are Sara and the kids?”

“Kids are good. Sara’s…well, Sara. She’s proud of you, though, for joining up. We all are.”

“And Cedric?”

“Waiting for the day he turns sixteen. You really going to give him the Jag?”

“Yeah. By the time I get back from my six-year hitch, I’ll look pretty fucking silly driving the thing. It’s a young man’s car, Stan.”

“Well, I thought you looked pretty fucking silly driving the thing the second you turned twenty-five.” Stan chuckled.

“Yeah, you’re probably right. Hey, listen…I don’t have a whole lot of time on the phone. I just wanted to call and let you know I’m all right.”

“I’m glad you did, brother. I can’t tell you how proud of you we all are out here.”

“Thanks, Stan. You take care of yourself, all right? My love to Sara and the kids.”

“And theirs to you. Be safe out there, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Dad would be proud too, Nick.”

Nick’s voice caught in his throat for a second. “Yeah. Yeah, I suppose he would. I’ll call when I can, Stan.”

“Until then, bro.”

Nick hung up the phone. He’d intended to tell Stan more—that he might not be coming home again. But he’d decided as soon as he heard his brother’s voice that he didn’t want that to be the last conversation they had.

Nick walked back out into 47 Echo’s living room and tossed the phone to Gabriel. “You’re up, kid.” Nick smiled at him, swallowing hard to keep the lump in his throat at bay.

Chapter 23

Into the Dark

The doctors had cleared everyone for duty, and Nick and his men had all made their calls home by noon the next day. At two in the afternoon, Nick and Christopher were sitting on the front porch of 47 Echo’s barracks, smoking cigarettes. The screen on Nick’s sleeve flashed. He tapped it a few times and read the email that appeared.

“What’s up, boss?”

“Last permanent member of our team just showed up.”

“Permanent member?”

“Yeah. We’re going to have a special ridealong on this mission, too.”

“Ah.”

“So, I’m off to the helipad to make a pickup. You want to roll with?”

Christopher shrugged and flicked his spent cigarette out into the street. “Sure. Beats sitting around here sweating the mission.”

“Come on. You can drive the Cougar.”

The Western helipad was only a four-minute drive away, but Christopher managed to kill off another cigarette while he was driving. As they approached the helipad, they saw a Black Hawk with its rotors just spinning down. Christopher parked the Cougar fifty feet back from the chopper, and he and Nick hopped to the pavement.

The chopper’s door slid open, and two huge men in Air Force fatigues hopped out, each carrying a large, black case.

“Which one’s ours?” Christopher asked.

“Neither.”

A small woman with short, black hair, dressed in the convict gray of Delta Flight, bounced out behind the two huge Airmen and stretched her arms above her head.

“That’s her.”

Christopher’s right eyebrow shot up. “It’s a her?”

“That’s Mary Katherine Wells. Before she got arrested, she was one of the most infamous digital criminals in the U.S. She hacked Homeland Security, the TSA, the IRS and pretty much any other government acronym you can think of. We want to get into and out of North Korea alive, we’re going to need her.”

“She ever been in a combat situation before?”

“Nope. They’ve had her in an office in Justice since she was convicted six months ago.”

The two Airmen approached and saluted Nick, who saluted back. They loaded the two cases into the back seat of the Cougar then headed back to the chopper.

As Mary approached, she raised her hand in a salute. “Delta Flight 4175, reporting for duty, sir.”

Nick saluted then stuck out his hand. Mary looked at it for a moment before shaking it.

“Mary. I’m Nick. We use names in this unit, not numbers.”

“Okay…Nick. Um, I haven’t been briefed on the mission yet, Lieutenant.”

“Join the club,” Christopher grumbled.

“We’ve got another member of the team joining us from Justice. He’s supposed to be on the next chopper in. Soon as he gets here, I’ll run the mission briefing. You brought all your gear?”

“Yes, sir.”

“The ‘sir’ bit isn’t necessary. You can just call me Nick. Everyone else in the unit does. Welcome to 47 Echo, Mary. We’ve got you set up in your own room in our bunkhouse—assuming our mission specialist gets here on time, we leave tomorrow morning.”

Nick gestured to the Cougar, and Mary climbed awkwardly into the back seat. Christopher fired up the engine, and they headed back to the barracks.

“Sir?” Mary shouted from the back seat.

“Just Nick, please.”

“Right, right. Nick. Um, any chance of getting some food? I haven’t eaten in what feels like days.”

“Yeah. We’ve got some dinner being delivered from the Army kitchen on the Firebase in a couple of hours. Not as good as the officers’ food at Justice, but it’ll do.”

“As long as it’s not those nightmare FSRs.” Mary smiled.

Christopher laughed. “I think you’re gonna like 47 Echo, lady.”

The newly augmented unit prepared dinner in their bunkhouse. Nick noticed that most of his men were giving Mary a wide berth, looking at her only from the corner of an eye, treating her almost as if she were an alien rather than just a girl. Nick was considering saying something when someone knocked on the door to their barracks. Gabriel, who was sitting closest, opened the door. Through the open kitchen door, Nick could just make out a young Asian man in Air Force blues standing outside, his hat in his hand. His short sleeves didn’t do much to hide the tattoos covering both of his arms.

“Uh, hi. Tech Sergeant Pak. I was told to report to a Lieutenant Morrow?”

“Yeah, man. Come on in. You hungry? We got Chicken Kiev in here like a motherfucker.” Gabriel smiled.

“Yeah. I could eat.” Pak nodded, looking at the table piled high with Chicken Kiev, steamed rice and boiled vegetables. “Man. When they told me I was riding with a convict unit, I expected stale FSRs and water packets. You guys always eat this well?”

“Whenever we can scam it, sure.” Gabriel pointed Pak to an empty chair.

Nick walked into the room at that moment, and Pak stiffened up and threw a crisp salute. “Sir! Technical Sergeant Ryan Pak, reporting as ordered, sir!”

“Calm down, Ryan.” Nick chuckled. “I’m Nick. You’ve met Gabriel, I see. I’ll introduce you around in a second. Sit down. Eat something. Nice ink, by the way.”

“Sir…you’re Chinese, sir?”

“Half. Mother’s side. Like I said, have a seat, man. I’ll explain everything, but right now, I’m starving. Let’s eat, folks.”

Obviously still a bit confused, Ryan sat down, and plates started circulating around the table. As everyone filled the dishes in front of them, Nick introduced Ryan to the unit.

Before everyone started to eat, Nick pointed at Ryan with his fork. “Hey, Ryan. Why don’t you tell everyone what it is you do.” Nick smiled, cutting into his Kiev.

“Oh, right. Uh, like I said, Tech Sergeant Ryan Pak. I’m a translator. Korean. Not quite sure why I’m riding along yet, but, uh, hi.”

“Korean?” Michael asked.

“Yeah. We’re definitely going to need it where we’re headed,” Nick told them.

That seemed as good a time as any to start laying out the mission, so Nick put on a couple of pots of coffee as Peter and Anthony cleared the table. As soon as everyone had a mug in front of them, Nick stood up and walked to the screen at the far side of the dining room. “All right, folks. Here’s the situation. Some of you were with us when we managed to pull a bunch of hardware out of a CDM near Post K-13R. Initially, it looked like only one of the drives we pulled was salvageable. Thanks to our friends in Air Force Delta Flight,” Nick nodded at Mary, “that assessment turned out to be premature.”

The screen flickered on behind him, showing a screen full of Chinese characters.

“I don’t expect any of you to understand this, but Delta Flight managed to salvage nearly ninety-seven percent of the information the CDM had. This has yielded information for a combination of missions that Command and Control is calling Operation Knockout. All of the Special Forces units in a four hundred-mile radius have been called to Firebase Zulu, and all of them have parts to play in Knockout.”

“Including us, looks like,” Michael piped up.

“Yep. Ours is the most dangerous, and probably the hardest of the missions.”

“Of course,” Anthony mumbled.

“Now, let me first say that there’s no way we can even be sure of this intel. We’re basically acting on little better than a rumor here, but if what Delta Flight pulled out of those Chinese servers is true, we have to do something. Mary, you want to take this? It was your work hacking into the Chinese Army network that got us the information.”

Mary looked surprised. “Wait, that’s what we’re doing?”

Nick nodded.

“Well, crap. Uh, okay. Like the Lieutenant said, I found enough information on some of those drives to attempt a hack into the Chinese Army network. I got in, with the help of one of our translators back at Justice, and we found numerous references to some kind of…project. Something big, something they’re working on deep in North Korea.”

“What kind of project?” Christopher asked.

“We’re not sure. Something both Chinese and North Korean scientists have been working on for the past three months. We don’t have many details—just the name, really. Project Zhu.”

“What’s that mean?” Daniel asked.

“Roughly translated, it means ‘Bad Omen,’” Nick replied.

“Oh. Awesome,” Christopher said, rolling his eyes.

“We leave at 0430 local tomorrow morning. We’re taking the same Razor we took to K-13R, and only travelling at night under full stealth. We’ll have some backup about two hundred and fifty miles away, but for the worst part of it, we’re on our own,” Nick told them. “I’d suggest getting as much sleep as possible.”

“Boss, question?” Martin chimed in for the first time all night.

“Yeah, Martin.”

“How the hell are we going to get into North Korea, even with stealth?”

“Gentlemen and lady, some of you have already met him, but for those that haven’t—meet David John Bryce, the best T-5 truck driver the world ever saw.” Nick smiled at Bryce, who tipped an imaginary hat back at Nick. “Finished, what was it, second in the Dakar rally two years ago?”

Bryce nodded.

“You ever handled something as big as a Razor, Bryce?” Anthony asked.

“You know what a T-5 is, kid? It’s about the same size as a Razor, maybe a little bigger. Drove a modified one that was definitely heavier than our Razors in the Baja extreme and finished first.” Bryce shrugged.

“All right. Definitely our man.” Christopher grinned.

“I’ll want to meet with you all individually before we leave to discuss your mission responsibilities. For now, though, relax. Get some rest. We’re going to be stuck in the Razor for a long time, so snatch whatever privacy you can.”

Nick finished off the last of his coffee and headed outside for a cigarette.

“So, I hear they offered to let you command the mission from here,” Christopher said, walking out onto the porch and standing next to Nick.

“Sure. Standard operating procedure for convict units. Real marines have a chance to stay behind and command through their SIC for the really dangerous ones.”

“And you decided to come along?”

“Staying behind was never an option in my mind. I’m with you guys on this one, and the next one, and so on. Whole reason I came back.”

“All right, then, bro. What’s my job on the mission?”

“You’re still my SIC, Chris. You’re there to second-guess any dodgy decision I might make. If and when I get killed, you’re in charge of the unit and the mission. Which means you’ll need this.” Nick pulled an e-reader from his coat pocket and handed it to Nick.

“Which is?”

“Full mission specs. All the classified stuff I’m not allowed to tell the rest of the unit. Anything happens to me, you read that.”

“Nothing’s going to happen to you, boss.”

“So we both hope. But gotta be prepared just in case. Now, before you head back into the house, I need you to track down a couple of things for the mission.”

“Something Command didn’t already hook you up with?”

“Stuff that we’ll need your special talents to procure.” Nick grinned.

“Well, all right, then.”

Nick told Christopher what they needed, and the tall, thin man nodded and walked off into the darkened base.

After another cigarette, Nick crawled into the Razor to make sure all of the equipment he’d requested had been loaded. The interior of the Razor was huge, but it was going to be cramped for the next couple of days, loaded down as it was with weapons, ammo, FSRs, water packets, MREs, Mary’s computers and Martin’s explosives and tools. He expected the mission to take almost two full weeks, in and out—he wasn’t looking forward to the smell once they’d all been cramped inside for a while.

His quick inventory revealed that everything he’d asked for had been loaded, so Nick hopped out of the Razor and closed it up. Michael was sitting outside smoking, and he waved at Nick.

“What’s up, Mike?”

“Hey, Nick. I hate to sound like Captain Bringdown, but this mission doesn’t seem like one we’re coming back from.”

“Don’t worry, my man. We’ll be fine.”

“Man, I hope you’re right.”

Nick hoped he was right, too.

Chapter 24

We Are 138

The first three days had been easy enough—Nathan and G Company had already mapped out a route clear of Chinese patrols, so Nick and his crew didn’t see another soul as they rolled toward the new North Korean border. There seemed to be nothing but time to kill. Nick spent it reading, helping Anthony monitor comm channels, and getting to know the new members of his unit.

Thankfully, Christopher had managed to scam an MP3 player, and Mary had wired it into the Razor’s system, so they didn’t have to make the drive in silence this time. Nick quickly realized he’d have to implement a time-sharing policy on the music, however—the tastes of his crew ran from Mecho Thrashcore to late 1970s punk rock.

As they approached their extraction point, Peter’s selection of classic hip-hop was on. Nick cut off the music as Daniel attempted to locate the other two Razors on camera.

“Got anything yet?” Nick asked, looking over Daniel’s shoulder at the screen.

“Negative. Sure we can’t just call them?”

“Can’t take the chance on our transmissions getting picked up. We’ve got approximate coordinates that Lieutenant Nathan took from the satellite photos of the area—if you haven’t found them by the time we reach those, we can try signal lights.”

“Roger that. I’ll see if I can’t track ‘em down before then.”

“Chris? How much time before daylight?”

“An hour and ten,” Christopher replied.

“If you can locate our boys before then, that’d be helpful.” Nick smirked, clapping Daniel on the shoulder.

Nick walked to the back of the Razor, careful not to disturb Martin, Gabriel, Michael and Ryan, who were passed out on the collapsible racks. Mary was sitting at the stealth station, keeping one eye on its status screens while keeping the other on an open netbook.

“How’s our power consumption looking, kiddo?” Nick asked quietly.

Mary slipped the earbuds out of her ears. “Sorry, sir. What?”

“Jesus, kid. Start calling me Nick. I asked how our power consumption was looking.”

“Not too bad. Solar batteries are down sixty percent, which means we have maybe three, three and a half hours left under full stealth. Solid fuel’s barely below the top line.”

“Whatcha got going on the netbook?”

“Not a lot,” Mary said, turning the small computer’s screen to face him. Nick saw she was playing a game of Solitaire.

“Gotta respect the classics.” Nick grinned. “How you holding up? I know this is a little different to what you’re used to.”

“I’m used to sitting at a desk looking at a screen. I’m sitting at a desk now, looking at a screen. Just, this desk moves,” she said, miming the moving Razor with her hand through the air. “Not bad so far. Just not looking forward to when the bullets start flying.”

“Hopefully, we won’t have to deal with that.”

“You really believe that?”

Nick shook his head.

“Boss!” Daniel hissed from the front of the Razor. Nick winked at Mary and made his way up to the passenger seat.

“What’s up?”

“Think we’ve got ‘em. Four-story office building with an underground parking level. No energy signature, but that’s where I’d hide a Razor or three.”

“Bryce?”

“Gotta agree with my man. Better than average chance that’s where they’re holed up.”

“Take us in. Flash the signals as soon as we clear the entrance—don’t want them firing on us.”

“Right on.” Bryce smoothly turned the huge vehicle toward the office building. As they slid underground, Daniel flashed the signal lights on the front of the Razor. Almost immediately, Nick saw the return signals flash on camera, coming from the dark at the far end of the garage.

“All right, Bryce. Find the valet and park this big bitch. I could use a good leg-stretch.” Nick smiled.

Bryce nodded and headed for the signals. On the cameras, they saw a single man with glowsticks leading them in to a parking space. When he held the glowsticks straight up, Bryce stopped the Razor, its hybrid engine idling silently. Thirty seconds later, someone knocked on the passenger door. Nick opened it and saw Gunnery Sergeant Mendel standing there, shoving the glowsticks into his cargo pockets.

“Welcome to the Las Vegas Hilton, folks. I’m your casino host, Gunny Mendel. Please completely shut down anything electronic in your Razor—we don’t want any random UAVs picking up an energy signature.”

“Do it,” Nick said as he turned to Bryce, who shut down the engine and started turning off the Razor’s systems one by one.

Mendel handed a few more glowsticks into the cabin. “We’ve got solar collectors camo’d outside—my guys will hook up your Razor, and I’ll get a couple of extra men on guard duty down here.”

“Appreciate it.” Nick cracked his glowstick and hopped out of the passenger door, landing solidly on his feet in the pitch-black parking garage. “Where’s your CO?”

“Lieutenant Nathan’s sacked out, sir. He’s been running day watch, I’m on night watch. He’ll be up in an hour or so. We’ve got some quarters set up on the second level of the building, away from the windows. Your men who need to sack out can rest up there. I’m sure you and the L.T. will want to convo—he’s set up on the fourth level.”

“Right. Okay, kids. Follow Gunny Mendel—he’ll get you set up with a place to sack out. Chris, come with me—we’re going to chat with Lieutenant Nathan.”

“Coming, boss.”

As Christopher hopped out of the Razor, Mendel tossed him a lit glowstick, which he caught in his left hand. Mendel pointed to the stairwell with another glowstick, and Nick and Christopher set about to climbing the darkened stairs to the fourth floor.

“So where are we, exactly?” Christopher asked.

“Just across the North Korean border. Still another few days from our destination.”

“And that is?”

“Just outside of Pyongyang.”

“Shit. The Lion’s Den.”

“And then some.”

“Well, look at the bright side. At least we’re not in the Razor. Michael snores.”

Nick passed his glowstick over the wall as they climbed yet another flight of stairs. He saw the number four and gestured to the door with his glowstick.

“Wish they could turn some lights on in here.” Christopher shook his head, passing his glowstick over the door, looking for the handle.

“Power might be off in the building. Even if it’s still connected, they wouldn’t want the Chinese or the Koreans to track them through the grid,” Nick said as Christopher found the handle and opened the door. The two of them stepped into a long hallway dimly lit by a single crank-powered lamp.

“G’morning, Lieutenant. Glad you found us.” A young Marine smiled at Nick.

“Good morning, Corporal. Your L.T. up and around yet?”

“Rousing for day watch now, sir. Can we offer you gentlemen a bit of breakfast? MREs, I’m afraid, but better than nothing.”

“Appreciate it.”

The young Corporal—Parker, by his name tag—led Nick and Christopher down the hallway and through a door that opened up onto a large, open office floor crammed with cubicles. Corporal Parker dropped into a crouch, gesturing for Nick and Christopher to do the same. They followed suit, and the three of them crept along the base of one of the cube walls. They stopped at a cubicle set up with four chairs.

“So what’s with the crawling around?”

“Gotta stay off the windows. Chinese see movement up here, we’re 138,” Parker said, a half-grin creeping onto his face.

“What’s 138?” Christopher asked, nodding as Parker handed him an MRE.

“You guys didn’t hear? You’re not the first unit to get sent into North Korea. About two weeks ago, an Air Force AWACS was shot down. Command at Zulu sent in a detachment of the 138th Rangers to go for the pilot and the data.”

“And?” Nick asked, opening his MRE.

“Poof. Gone. Never heard from again.”

“Well, that’s encouraging.”

“They were Army. What do you expect?” Parker chuckled, spooning some dehydrated fruit into his mouth.

“Lock it up, Parker,” Lieutenant Nathan snapped as he appeared in the cubicle’s entryway. “Report?”

“Scopes were clear all night, sir. The tech geeks at Rock Island’ll be glad to know we didn’t see the Razor coming under stealth.”

“Excellent. You’re dismissed, Corporal. Head on down to three and get some rack time.”

“Yes, sir.”

Parker gathered up his MRE and crept to the door. Seconds later, he was gone.

“Sorry about Parker, Lieutenant Morrow. He’s kind of an idiot,” Nathan said, glaring after the vanished Corporal.

“It’s Nick. And no worries.”

“Right. I’m Wyatt.”

“So, Wyatt—was it true what he said about the Ranger unit?”

“Hundred and thirty-eighth Rangers, Operational Detachment Alpha? Sadly, yeah. Twelve men, sent into NK sixteen days ago. Haven’t heard thing one.”

“Expect to?”

“No. Not really. Though I suppose it’s possible. Command hasn’t picked up any traffic saying the Chinks or the Koreans captured them. Like I said, haven’t heard anything.”

“Where was the AWACS reported lost?”

“Couple hundred kliks off your route. Don’t expect you’ll be the ones to solve that particular mystery. Besides, they’ve already been listed MIA. Command’s not gonna risk another unit to go out and find a dozen corpses.”

“Nope. They’ll just risk ours on a rumor,” Christopher mumbled.

“He’s a cheerful one, isn’t he?” Nathan grinned, ripping open another MRE.

“So what have you seen so far? We looking at much resistance?” Nick asked.

“We’re not seeing much, really, but we’re limited to traditional optics. I don’t want to risk cameras or drones. About three miles from here, though, is where the electronic frontier kicks in. Anything sends up a signal that’s not supposed to be there, the Koreans will lock onto it and send everything they’ve got handy.”

“Which is a lot, according to the last UAV flyover we got. Chinese have armed them up good, and they weren’t even hurting for weapons before.” Christopher shook his head.

“Yeah. In addition to the North Korean armor and air cover that was patrolling the border last year, the Chinese have given ‘em CDMs, armed UAVs, electronic counterintrusion tech, cameras, listening posts…really, it’ll be amazing if you make it twenty miles from here.” Nathan shrugged.

“What about our stealth? Any idea how it’ll hold up to all of this?” Christopher asked.

“The cameras’ll be a breeze. Silent running should keep the listening posts from picking you up. It’ll all depend on how good their electronics-detection technology is—it shouldn’t be able to penetrate the Razor’s skin, but there’s no guarantee there.”

“And you wonder why Chris is so cheerful.” Nick smirked.

“Only thing I can say for sure is that you can’t, under any circumstances, use anything electronic during the day when the Razor’s powered down. Your solar collectors won’t show up on their scans, but anything else—a computer, a cell phone—and they’ll have you. Hand radios in short range should be okay, though.”

Nick nodded. “About that…what about comms? Any safe frequency you know of?”

“There’s one we’re pretty sure the Chinese haven’t broken the encryption on, but I wouldn’t risk it unless it’s absolutely necessary. Channel Victor 1-9 in your comm system. We’re monitoring it at night, so if you need to get to us, that’s the one to use. It’s low-freq, though, so it’ll be useless for calling us after a day or two.”

“Thanks for the info, Lieutenant. I’m going to go down and catch some rack time. Mind getting me up in five hours or so? A few things I’ll want to check out before we get rolling.”

“Yeah. Offices down on level two have been set up for you and your crew. Ain’t the Vegas Hilton, but it’s a damn sight better than the drop-downs in the Razors. I’d suggest sleeping with your gun by your rack—we get raided, and you’ll know it. All the power in the building will kick on.”

“Thanks for the hospitality, Lieutenant.”

“Me captured office building es su captured office building,” Nathan said, waving his hand to indicate the empty office around them.

On the second level of the building, Nick found that individual small offices had been set up for each of his crew. He found an empty office, kicked off his boots and settled on the cot on the floor. After a second’s thought, he grabbed his M4, thumbed the safety off, and set it on the floor next to him.

Chapter 25

The Warrior’s Code

To keep everyone on a rotation, Nick had four of his men keep day watch with Nathan’s crew. Those four, unfortunately, didn’t get to crash out in the makeshift apartments on the building’s second level—quite a lot more comfortable than the Razor’s drop-down racks, which were little better than canvas stretchers. Still, to their credit, Martin, Gabriel, Michael and Ryan didn’t complain one bit. Ryan, in fact, still looked mostly confused about what he was doing hanging out with a bunch of convict Marines. He didn’t say much at all.

Nick and the rest of 47 Echo were loaded up and ready to roll by twilight. Before they started up the Razor’s systems, Nick, Bryce and Christopher studied the satellite photos and planned out their route. There was only recent UAV data for about two thirds of the trip. The last AWACS data they had came from the last transmission of the downed Air Force plane, and was dated from early October. That made it more than two weeks old, and horribly out of date. Past about three in the morning, Nick realized, they’d be on their own as far as recent intel.

“What time’s sunrise projected?” Christopher asked as they looked over the printouts.

“A little after 0730.”

“Bryce? How far’ll we get by then?”

“On power-saving speed, I’d say about…” Bryce pointed at a small cluster of buildings on one of the satellite photos, “…here. Should make it by around 0600 or so. Oughta give us time to scout a spot to hide the truck.”

Nick waved Anthony over.

“What up, boss?” Anthony asked, looking down at the satellite photos.

“Channel Victor 1-9,” Nick said.

“Yeah. Special Ops low-freq channel. Encryption’s supposed to be unbreakable.”

“We’re gonna need you to keep your ears on that one, as well as scanning for Chinese and North Korean traffic. Can you handle it?”

“Sure. I can program that one in hardline without sending up any flags.”

“Good man. You get anything on that channel, you come get me.”

“Roger that, boss.”

“Prep the rest of the guys. We go stealth in ten minutes.”

Anthony nodded and headed back to the Razor. Nick confirmed the route with Christopher and Bryce then loaded his men up. Bryce and Daniel were in the front two seats. Nick walked up to stand behind them.

“Nice and easy now. Soon as Mary gets our stealth up and running, bring the systems up one at a time.”

The Razor’s rear hatch clanged shut, and Mary called out from the back of the truck a few seconds later. “Stealth systems online and running.”

“Fire it up, gentlemen. We got a lot of road to cover.”

It took less than two minutes for all of the Razor’s systems to come up. Bryce zoomed the huge vehicle up the ramp and out into the night. As soon as they were safely underway, Nick settled into an empty chair and busied himself running through intel reports on North Korea.

What information he found was either out of date or unconfirmed. The last solid data they had was from the AWACS that went down more than two weeks before. Before that, they had a confirmed report back in March of a shipment of two hundred CDMs by rail from a factory in Beijing. Nick assumed that there were a lot more than two hundred CDMs in North Korea now, along with several thousand Chinese troops.

Nick wasn’t terribly worried about the CDMs. They were armed to the teeth, sure, but the Razor could outrun them in a pinch. Air cover, though, was another story. Every UAV or fighter Command sent into North Korea had been shot down without making it far inside, which meant that the Chinese had supplied their North Korean allies with some pretty impressive fighter support, anti-aircraft ordinance, or more likely both. The Razor was fast and tough—but versus a fighter wing equipped with thermobaric ordinance, Nick doubted they’d last thirty or forty seconds.

He looked up from his intel reports and noticed that four hours had passed—it was now just before midnight. Slowly, Nick stood, stretched his legs, and walked back to the stealth station. Mary was listening to her iPod again, but she pulled her headphones out as soon as she saw him approaching.

“What are you listening to there?” Nick asked, dropping himself in the seat next to her.

“Old-school stuff. You’d probably hate it.”

“Try me.”

“Ever hear of the Misfits?”

“Sure. A bit before my time, or yours for that matter. What are you, twenty?”

“Twenty-three.”

“I think they stopped recording before you were born, then. My brother was into them for a while in his teens. I remember him walking around the house with that creepy skull shirt on and rocking out with his headphones in.”

“Yeah, that’s them. My dad played in a punk band when he was a kid, so he got me into this kind of stuff.”

“Put it in the rotation on the MP3 player up front. You don’t have to hide back here with your headphones in. You’re part of the unit, kiddo.”

“Yeah, I know. But these Marines kinda creep me out. I know we’re all convicts here and everything, but it’s still weird being the only chick in the crew.”

“Well, you don’t have to worry about Daniel and Bryce, anyway.”

“Yeah, but they’re all the way up there. That’s, like, walking.” Mary smiled.

Nick chuckled.

“Boss. Traffic,” Anthony called from the middle of the Razor.

“On my way,” Nick called back. As he walked toward the comm station, he shook Ryan lightly. The young airman woke quickly.

“What’s up, boss?”

“Traffic.”

“Right behind you.” Ryan hopped off his bunk and followed Nick to the comm station.

“All right. Who do you need? Me or Ryan?” Nick asked, leaning over to look at Anthony’s console.

“Uh, neither, boss. We got chatter on 1-9 Victor.”

“Put it on the speakers.”

Nick could barely make out the voice, as the transmission was full of static. Anthony made a few adjustments, and the signal cleared up a bit.

“—ond. Repeat, this is 1-3-8 Ranger, in need of assistance, transmitting on 1-9 Victor. Any friendlies, please respond.”

“Shit. I think I know that guy.” Ryan shook his head.

Christopher’s head spun around from his position at the weapons station.

“Did I just hear what I think I heard?” he asked.

“Yep. Gentlemen—it looks like we’ve found the missing 138th Rangers detachment,” Nick said.

“Can you get a location on that signal?” Ryan asked, squinting at Anthony’s screens.

“Workin’ on it,” Anthony replied, punching a few more keys.

“While you’re doing that, put me on with him,” Nick said.

Anthony handed over a headset with a mic, and Nick slipped it on.

“One-three-eight Ranger, this is 4-7 Echo. We copy. Identify, please.”

Almost thirty seconds of static passed before the voice came back on the line. “Four-seven Echo, this is 1-3-8 Ranger, Major John Evans. Ident seven-seven-Sierra-Lima-Indigo-four.”

Nick looked over at Mary, who was already up and punching the identification code into the computer. She turned to Nick and nodded—the code checked out.

“Ident confirmed, Major. This is Lieutenant Nick Morrow, Marine 4-7 Echo SRF. What’s your situation, sir?”

“Situation’s all sorts of not good, Lieutenant. Might go so far as to say fucked. There are four of us left, and we’ve been evading Chinese and North Korean patrols for days. We’re out of food, and we’ve got wounded. Can you give us a hand?”

“Hold this freq, Major. Be right back with you.” Nick pulled off the headset and crouched down next to Anthony. “You got a location?”

“Yeah, boss. Thirty miles southeast of our present route. Pretty damned close.”

“Then why does the transmission sound so shitty?” Ryan asked.

“Channel 1-9 Victor is secure, but it’s low-power. Plus, I’m getting a lot of interference. I think our Asian friends have some low-level blocking and jamming going on.”

“So what are our chances of raising Lieutenant Nathan back at the extraction point?” Nick asked.

“Less than none, boss. We’re barely getting a thirty-five-mile radius as it is.”

Christopher shook his head. “Dammit. No way we can get them to roll out in one of their Razors to pick up those guys.”

“Chris, I want you and Bryce to get back on the satellite maps. Re-route us so we can grab the Rangers, then find cover before dawn.”

“You sure that’s wise, Nick?”

Nick sighed. “Nope. But we’re not gonna leave soldiers out there to die. Get back to me as soon as you have something.”

Christopher nodded and headed to the front of the truck. Ryan tapped Nick on the shoulder.

“Mind if I talk to the Rangers? I know the Major. We’re friends from back in the world.”

Nick handed him the headset. “Let him know we’re trying to figure out a way to get to him, but that we are coming.”

“Copy that, sir.” Ryan slipped on the headset. “Ranger 1-3-8, this is 4-7 Echo. Respond.”

“One-three-eight Ranger. Go ahead.”

“Johnny. This is Ryan Pak, brother.”

“Ryan! Holy fuck, what are you doing out here?”

“Bailing you out like you bailed me out back in Denver. Hold tight, buddy. We’re working a way to come get you right now.”

“That’s good news.”

Nick left Ryan to talk to the Rangers and walked up to the front of the truck, where Christopher and Bryce were looking over the satellite photos. On Bryce’s screens, Nick could see the green-and-black images of the North Korean landscape sliding by at thirty-five miles an hour.

“So how’s it look?” Nick asked.

“In a word, bad.” Christopher shook his head. “We pull off our route by more than ten miles. We’ve got nowhere to cover come daylight.”

“Shit. That’s what I hoped you wouldn’t say. Show me where we are now,” Nick said.

Christopher pointed to a spot on the map. Just ahead of the area Christopher indicated, Nick saw a small cluster of buildings.

“What have we got there?”

“Small town. Inhabited, according to the AWACS reports. We’re gonna pass within two miles of it.”

“We can make that town, or pretty close to it, without fucking up our schedule, right?” Nick said.

Bryce nodded.

“Should.”

“Right. How long until we hit it?”

“Six, seven minutes.”

“That’s where we’re headed. Get us within half a mile.”

“Roger that, boss,” Bryce said.

Nick started to walk back to the comm station, and Christopher was right behind him.

“What are you thinking, Nick?”

“Something very stupid, probably. Ryan—hand over the comms to Anthony and get your blacks on. You and I are going on a field trip.”

As the Razor neared the settlement, Nick took over the camera station and scanned the area. After a few minutes, he found what he was looking for—a small box truck. He pointed it out on the screen. “There. That’s what we’re taking. Get me to within a half-mile of that truck. Then Ryan and I are jumping out. We’ll grab the Rangers and catch up to you at the cover point.”

Christopher shook his head. “That’s…that’s not really a safe plan, Nick.”

“It’s not really a safe mission, bro. We’ll keep in radio contact as long as we can, but once daylight hits, shut down the Razor’s systems just like Gunny Mendel told you to.”

“Why are you two going?” Daniel asked. “Why not take Mike or Gabe?”

“If we get stopped, Ryan and I can pass for locals. I’d have a tough time explaining an Irishman or a Mexican. Doubly tough, being that I don’t speak Korean and all.”

“What do we do if we get traffic with no one to translate?” Anthony asked.

“Mary’s got a program that can get you the gist of what’s being said. It’ll have to do, but I don’t think you’ll get a ton. We’ll be back with you—hopefully—around daylight.”

“I still think this is a bad plan, boss.” Christopher shook his head.

“I tend to agree with you, but it’s the only one we’ve got. Ryan, you ready to go?”

Ryan nodded, slipping a portable radio set to 1-9 Victor into the pocket of his black BDU jacket.

“All right. Bryce, slow us to a stop. Here goes nothing.”

Chapter 26

Good Guys Don’t Wear White

Ryan and Nick stayed low as they ran, though there were few lights on in the small town ahead of them. As the Razor rolled away, back on course for its daytime cover location, Nick made it to the driver’s door of the box truck and found it unlocked. He and Ryan climbed into the truck and quietly closed the doors. Nick reached for the steering column cover and began to yank it off, but Ryan put a hand over his.

“Check it, boss. Looks like someone got to stealing this one before we did,” Ryan nodded at the ignition, and Nick saw that there was a screwdriver jammed in where the keys should have been.

Nick twisted the screwdriver experimentally, and the engine turned over.

“Huh. What do you know. Thanks, random thief-guy,” Nick said, backing the truck onto the road.

Ryan folded out his copy of the satellite photo on his lap. “All right. You know where we’re headed?”

“Generally. We’ll have to get a better fix as we get closer. You see anything around the area where four big-ass Rangers could be hiding out?”

“No. But if there’s one thing about Johnny, it’s that he’s not gonna do something you’d expect.”

“So how do you know this guy?”

“Before the war, we both lived in Denver. Same neighborhood. I ran a bar. He came in all the time. We were in a band together.”

“Oh, yeah? What kind of band?”

“Hardcore punk. Old-school.”

“Shit, Ryan, you’re what? Twenty-five?”

“Twenty-six.”

“You even remember punk?”

“A little. When I was, like, four. But I listened to a lot of the old stuff. Better than that Mecho Thrashcore bullshit by a long shot.”

“You talked much to Mary? Think you two would get along really well. She’s into the old-school punk, too. Misfits. Shit like that.”

“Right on, man.”

“So tell me more about this guy Johnny.”

“Uh, let’s see. Johnny was a Ranger before the war. Iraq, Afghanistan. Then he got out, became a cop. Five years on the Denver PD, then he went back in when I did. Good guy. Tough as shit. I’m not surprised he survived.”

“My dad was in Iraq. Back in 2005. Navy SEAL.”

“Yeah? What’d he do when he got back?”

“He didn’t come back.”

“Oh, shit. Sorry, boss.”

“Don’t worry about it. It was a long time ago.”

“That why you joined up?”

“I didn’t. I got convicted of murder and sent out here two months ago. Then my conviction got overturned, and I got sent back home. But there was no way I was going to leave my boys here on their own, so I went to the recruiter after I’d been home a couple of days.”

“That’s…that’s fucking hardcore, Nick. I joined up because I didn’t want to get my ass kicked by rednecks who couldn’t tell a North Korean from an American.”

“And they put you to work as a translator?”

“Yeah. Supposed to be a desk job. This is my first operational situation. Don’t mind telling you, I’m scared as shit.”

“They tell you how to shoot that Glock in Basic?”

“Yeah. But it was Air Force Basic, so, you know. Not well.”

“Easy enough. Point it at the thing you want to kill and pull the trigger. Hopefully, we won’t need to fire a shot. I want to do this as quietly as possible. If we can do this without seeing a soul other than your boy and his crew, I’ll be happy.”

“Speaking of my boy, I should probably check in with him, eh?”

“Do it.”

Ryan pulled out the radio and turned it on. “One-three-eight Ranger, this is 4-7 Echo. Do you copy?”

“We copy. That you, Ryan?”

“Yeah, Johnny. We’re inbound. Twenty, thirty minutes tops. What’s your status?”

“We’ll keep until then. Just make it as fast as you can—we’ve got NoKo patrols crawling around here like fucking roaches.”

“Roger that. Sit tight. I’ll raise you again when we’re closer, and you can talk us in.”

“Affirmative. Thanks, Ryan.”

“Stash the radio. We’ve got headlights behind us,” Nick hissed.

“Shit. What do we do?”

“Depends on if we gotta stop. If we do, depends on what language they start speaking. Be cool.”

Ryan, Nick could see, was not being cool. In fact, the young guy was sweating, and his eyes were darting around. He was about three seconds from freaking out. Nick popped the straps on his leg holster and turned toward Ryan.

“Chill out, bro. We’re on a public road. Headlights aren’t exactly out of the ordinary.”

“Right. Right. They’re splitting.”

“What?”

“The headlights are splitting. One’s going left, one’s going right.”

“Motorcycles.”

“Looks like.”

“North Korean Army uses ‘em. They’ll probably just pass us by.”

The motorcycles accelerated, pulling up next to the box truck’s open front windows. Nick stared straight ahead, and the motorcycles accelerated, cutting in front of the truck and slowing to a stop. Nick stepped on the brakes, stopping just short of the two North Korean Army officers who were dismounting. One of them yelled something at him.

“That Korean?” Nick whispered.

“Yeah. He wants us to get out of the truck.”

“All right. Let’s do that, then.”

Ryan nodded and reached for his door. Nick was out on the street first, Glock in hand. He fired five quick shots, dropping both of the North Korean officers.

“Let’s get them and their bikes into the back of the truck, fast.”

Ryan’s face was quickly turning ash-gray. He extended one trembling finger at one of the soldiers on the ground. “He’s still moving,” Ryan choked.

Nick raised his Glock and fired once, sending a .40 caliber slug into the moving soldier’s brainpan. “Solve your problem? Now, we gotta move them fast. You know how to ride a motorcycle?”

Ryan nodded, still staring at the two dead soldiers.

“Good. Get them in the truck. I’ll handle the bodies.”

Ryan stood still.

“Now, Sergeant!” Nick snapped, and Ryan jumped into motion, hopping onto one of the still-running motorcycles and tearing off around the truck. As Nick grabbed one of the dead soldiers by the leg, he heard the truck’s rear door slide up. Nick grabbed the other dead soldier’s leg with his right hand and started dragging them back around the truck. Before he’d made it halfway there, Ryan jogged past him and brought the other motorcycle around. Both motorcycles now in the truck, Ryan helped Nick pick up the two soldiers’ bodies.

“Sorry I freaked out, sir.”

“Drop the sir. It’s fine.”

“It’s…I’ve just never seen a dead body before, you know? Never seen someone killed.”

“You are aware we’re at war, right? I mean, that fact didn’t manage to slip by you, did it?”

“I was at a desk.”

“You’re not at a desk now. That door secure?”

Ryan checked the door—it didn’t move. “Yep.”

“Good. We have some Rangers to pick up.”

“One-three-eight Ranger, this is 4-7 Echo.”

“One-three-eight Ranger, go ahead.”

“Hey, Johnny. From our triangulations, we’re about a mile away from your location, but we don’t see anything yet.”

“What’s your speed?”

“Forty-five miles an hour.”

“Stop in forty seconds. We’ll come to you.”

“Roger that. We’re in a white—”

“White box truck. I have eyes on you.”

Ryan switched off the radio and smirked.

“Shit. Your boy is good, Ryan.”

“Yeah. Yeah, he is. Forty seconds, boss. Time to slap the brakes.”

Nick nodded and slowly depressed the brake pedal. As the truck rolled to a stop, three lights clicked on, one directly in front of the truck’s cab, the other two off to the sides.

“Identify!” Nick heard from outside the truck.

“Chill out, Johnny! It’s me!” Ryan yelled back.

“Yeah? What’s the third song on our set list?” the voice came back.

“‘TV Party’!”

The lights immediately clicked off, and a face appeared at Ryan’s window. The man was in his early forties, with a thin beard and a blood-soaked bandage above his right eye. Despite his ragged condition, the man had a huge smile on his face.

“When they let you out of the office, brother?”

“Special for this mission.”

“Not to pick us up, though.”

“Fortunate happenstance. Come on, let’s get your people loaded in the back of the truck.”

“Carson, Mon, get Freddie loaded up. Let’s move,” Johnny said.

“Ryan, give them a hand. We have to get moving if we want to catch the Razor before daylight. Major, sorry if I’m a little short with you, but time is very much a factor.”

“Understood, Lieutenant. This is your command, I’m just a ride-along. And I appreciate the hell out of you going off-mission to help us out.”

“Anytime, sir. Now, let’s get loaded. How severe are your wounded?”

“Monica, Carson and I are okay. Freddie’s not holding up so well. Do you have a full med kit on your Razor?”

“We do.”

“I can hold him until morning, but Monica really needs to get in there and patch him up before then.”

“We’ll do anything we can, sir. Where were you hiding?”

“Spider-hole. Dug it fifty meters north of here.”

“Good cover?”

“Yep.”

“We came across a North Korean patrol on the way in. Think we can stash them there?”

“Put ‘em in the hole, and they’ll never be found.”

Nick nodded.

“Ryan, get ‘em loaded up, then have the Major and his people help you stash our North Korean friends. We’ve got twenty minutes, tops. I’ll go stash the bikes.”

“I’ll help you with the bikes, sir. There’s a small river near here where we can dump them,” another voice said.

“You do that, Carson,” Johnny said. “Monica, you got Freddie ready to move?”

“Yes, sir. I’d really like to get him looked at in the next couple of hours. His vitals are pretty weak, sir.”

“Faster we load him, the better.”

“Come on, Carson. Let’s clear out the back of that truck,” Nick said, hopping out of the cab and landing next to a huge soldier in Army BDUs.

“Roger that, sir.”

Carson followed Nick to the back of the truck, and when they opened the doors, the interior lights popped on.

Nick immediately noticed that the bikes had saddlebags—he rifled through them and found a small medical kit in each one. “Um, girl soldier!” he yelled. “Sorry, I forgot your name.”

“Monica, sir. Staff Sergeant Monica Andrews.”

“Right. Monica. Found some Korean med kits. We’re stashing them in the front corner of the cargo area for you.”

“Thank you, sir!” Monica’s voice floated out of the darkness.

“All right, Carson. Let’s go make these things disappear.”

Nick and Carson started up the bikes and rode them out of the truck, and Nick followed Carson about a half-mile through the dark until they heard water. Carson stopped suddenly, and Nick had to lay his bike down to keep from hitting him. As he slid across the grass, Nick managed to get himself untangled from the bike just as he and the motorcycle slid into the river.

“Sorry about that, sir!” Carson yelled.

“Don’t worry about it,” Nick sputtered as he pulled himself out of the water. “At least the bike’s hidden.”

Chapter 27

Trenches

As Nick drove the truck toward the cover location, he checked his watch. It was barely five-thirty in the morning. They’d passed the Razor at some point, but neither Nick nor Ryan had seen it. His left knee twinged as he pushed in the clutch to downshift to fourth gear—he must have messed it up when he wrecked the motorcycle. Nothing a couple of hours of sleep won’t cure, he told himself.

“What is that, anyway?” Ryan asked, looking at the cluster of low buildings just ahead of them.

“Used to be a garment factory, according to intel,” Nick said. “It’s been condemned. Contaminated groundwater, some sort of radiation thing.”

“Lovely.”

“Quiet, anyway. No one wants to get near a quarantine zone. Just, you know…don’t drink the water. Or touch it. Probably best not to look at it, really.”

“I think I’ll just spend my time in the Razor. Gotta be some comm frequencies that need monitoring.”

“Speaking of,” Nick said, picking up the radio from the dashboard. “Razor 4-7 Echo, this is CO 4-7 Echo. You copy?”

A few seconds later, Anthony’s voice came over the line in a sea of static.

“We copy. Getting a fix on you now.”

“I’ll save you the trouble. We’re in visual range of the cover point.”

“Yep. We can confirm. Christopher asks if you can scout us a place to stash the Razor.”

“That’s affirmative. Tell Christopher to have Gabriel stand by with the med kit.”

“Copy. You take wounded?”

“One of the Rangers. Wounded before we got there. Also tell Chris I’m going to need some of the specialized supplies he scammed back at Zulu.”

“Roger that. Bryce expects us to be there in forty, forty-five minutes.”

“Copy that. See you in forty.”

Nick clicked off the radio and winced as a quick jolt of pain shot through his left leg.

“You okay, Nick?”

“Yeah. I’m fine. I just wrecked one of the North Korean bikes before I put it into the river. Caught my leg under it for a minute. I think I just twisted something.”

“You want me to take a look at it when we get back to the Razor? I did my EMT-B in Basic.”

“I think it’ll be fine, honestly. I just need to rest.”

“I’ll say. When was the last time you slept?”

“Caught a couple of hours at the extraction. Before that…don’t remember. Feels like days. Sometime around the initial SF briefing, maybe?”

“You been hitting the amps?”

“Nah. Amphetamines make me jumpy. We’ll have several hours of daylight, so I’ll have plenty of time to crash out. Hey, that look like a loading dock to you?” Nick nodded to a large door at the back of the largest building.

“Yeah. Yeah, it does.”

“Think that’s big enough for the Razor to drive into?”

“Wide enough, tall enough, sure. We’ll have to look inside to see if it’s deep enough to fit the whole thing. It’s a big bitch, that truck.”

“Well, let’s do that, then,” Nick said, shifting down into third and slowly heading for the large door.

He slowed the truck to a stop and hopped out. There were no handles on the outside of the door, but there was a small metal door hanging open a few feet away. Nick pulled the flashlight from his hip pocket then pulled the Glock from its holster. He clicked the flashlight on and raised the Glock—Ryan mimicked his movements as the two of them walked, guns up, into the darkened building.

Nick swung his flashlight around inside—as near as he could tell, he was standing in a cavernous, empty room.

“Yeah, this looks plenty big enough for the Razor,” Ryan whispered.

“Big enough, yeah. But we’ve got a slight problem,” Nick said, aiming his flashlight at the ceiling.

Ryan looked at the beam and noticed a small motor attached to a long, thick screw. “Shit. Powered door. Looks heavy, too. We got any power in this building?”

“Even if we did, we couldn’t use it. Go let the Rangers out of the truck. We’re going to need to look around to make sure the place is secure. It looks like the five of us are going to have to figure a way to get this door up in the next half hour.”

As Ryan left to get the Rangers, Nick looked around for anything they could use to help raise the heavy rolling door. He saw the tracks along the ceiling that the door would slide on. Assuming they could get a rope attached to the top of the door, the five of them might be able to hoist the door with nothing more than their own strength. The Rangers, however, had been without food or rest for God knew how long, so they probably weren’t in any shape to do a bunch of heavy lifting.

Ryan came back into the building, followed by three more lights—the Rangers with their flashlights taped to their M4s.

“How’s your man?” Nick asked as they walked in.

“Slightly more stable. I was kind of working in the dark, but I think I stopped his bleeding,” Monica told him.

“You the team’s medic?” Nick asked.

“Nope. Freddie was. I’m hoping your medic can give me a hand.”

“We’re a convict unit, Sergeant. We don’t get a medic. Ryan has some EMT training, and so does another guy in my unit. They’ll help you as much as they can, and we’ve got a full trauma kit and field surgery tools in the Razor. We’ll do what we can for him.”

“So, how are we gonna get that door up, Lieutenant?” Johnny asked.

“No idea, sir. I’m open to suggestions.”

Carson’s light panned around inside the room. “Um…I think I have it, sir.”

“This would have been a lot easier if we’d kept the motorcycles.” Nick tested the rope one more time to make sure it was secure. One end was tied to the top of the door, and the length of the line ran more than a hundred feet back through the building, then draped over a roof support, then ran left out of a high shop window. Somewhere outside, the other end of the rope was tied to the idling box truck’s bumper.

Nick picked up his radio and pressed the button.

“All right, Carson. Nice and slow. We see any sign the rope isn’t going to hold, I’ll tell you to stop.”

“Copy that, sir.”

Nick could see the rope tighten then watched as the heavy metal door slowly slid up on its tracks. The rope seemed stable enough, but Nick was worried it would fray around the windowsill or the roof support. As soon as it was up a good fifteen feet, Nick radioed for Carson to park the truck.

“Razor 4-7, what’s your ETA?” Nick radioed.

“Two minutes, boss. We have the door on cameras now. We’ll be heading straight in. Christopher wanted to know if you saw anywhere we could set up the solar collectors.”

“Yep. There’s an outbuilding just over from the main that’s already got solar panels on top. We should be able to put ours right on top of those without anyone noticing.”

“Copy that. We see it. Coming to you now. Do you have eyes on us?”

Nick looked out the open door and saw nothing. “Nope. Sure don’t.”

“That’s comforting, then. Means this stealth shit actually works. Bryce requests that you keep everyone clear of the doors and our parking spot. Wouldn’t want to run anyone over.”

Nick motioned with his hands for everyone to flatten themselves to the walls. The air around the door seemed to shimmer, and Nick heard the quiet hum of the Razor’s hybrid engine.

“We’re in,” Nick’s radio chirped.

“Carson, drop the door.”

The door rolled down as slowly as it had gone up, and the rope went slack.

“Outstanding. Untie the rope and stash the truck. Then get in here,” Nick said as the air stopped shimmering, and the Razor seemed to pop in out of thin air. The engines immediately shut down, and both doors and the back hatch popped open. Gabriel was the first one out of the back hatch.

“Hey, Gabe. Right up there. Help Ryan and Sergeant Andrews out with the wounded Ranger. Shout if you need anything from me.”

Gabriel nodded and headed in the direction Nick indicated. Martin and Peter were already heading back outside with the solar collectors. Nick was impressed at the speed with which his men moved. Christopher walked over to Nick and tossed him a pack of cigarettes.

“Special provisions, as requested.” Christopher smiled.

“You guys have any trouble?”

“Nah. Once you and Ryan left, it was as boring as it always is. We picked up some North Korean transmissions, but they were headed away from us. We recorded them for the flyboy anyway.”

“Good man. Get everything set up and a day watch going. Snag the Rangers some food and water. I’m crashing out in the Razor for a few hours, but come get me if anything happens.”

“Yeah, I was just about to suggest you get some sleep. I’m not into dudes or anything, but I was just noticing that you’re not your usual, dashing self. You look like shit, actually.”

Daniel walked by, popping a clip into his M4. “I am into dudes, and you do look like shit, boss. No offense.” He smirked.

“I agree,” Bryce nodded.

“Thanks, guys. Really. I’m off to sleep, okay, mom? And mom?”

Bryce laughed as he and Daniel moved toward the door. Nick was too exhausted even to chuckle. He just trudged into the darkened Razor, nodded to Mary as she walked out, and climbed into one of the top racks. Less than a minute later, Nick was asleep.

“I don’t want you to take the boys to play war games anymore,” Nick’s mother said.

“It’s not war games, it’s paintball.” His father sighed. “And Nicky’s really damned good at it. Kid’s not even ten, and he’s a hell of a player.”

“I know what you’re doing, Alex. I don’t like it. I don’t want you getting the kids into all of this Army stuff. They’re not going to join the military and waste their lives.”

From his vantage point at the top of the stairs, Nick could see his father’s face tighten up. “Waste their lives? You mean like me?”

“You know that’s not what I meant.”

“No. I’m interested now. What exactly did you mean, Sue?”

Nick’s mother threw her hands up in the air and walked out of his field of view. “Forget it. I can’t talk to you when you’re like this.”

“Like what? What am I like? Besides a guy who wasted his life in the Navy, of course.”

Nick’s mother walked back into his visual range, shrugging on her jacket. She had her car keys in her right hand. “Leave it. I’m going to pick up Stanley from soccer practice. I think we just both need a chance to cool down.”

“I’m cool, woman. I’m super-cool.”

Nick’s mother just shook her head and walked out of the house. A few seconds later, Nick heard the car start up. He waited another couple of minutes before he walked downstairs—his father was in the living room, taking apart a Beretta M9 on the table.

“Hey, Nick. I’m proud of you for the paintball game this afternoon.”

“Mom’s not.”

“You heard that, huh? Your mom just wants you to have it better than we did growing up. I want that, too.”

“But I like playing paintball, Dad. It’s fun.”

“And you’re really good at it. Next Saturday, we’re going over to the base, and I’m going to show you how to shoot this.” Alex smiled, nodding to the Beretta on the table.

“Cooool,” Nick said.

“Just don’t tell your mom, okay?”

“Okay.”

Chapter 28

Boredom

Nick managed to catch almost five hours of sleep, the most he’d had in recent memory. When he awoke, he found the three Rangers had occupied the remaining drop-downs. Moving quietly so not to wake them, Nick swung himself out of the rack and walked softly out through the Razor’s back hatch.

“You’re s’posed to be asleep, boss,” Gabriel told him quietly, shifting his M4 from his left to his right shoulder.

“Oh, I was. All quiet out here?”

“Pretty much. Me and Ryan and the girl Ranger got their medic patched up, we think. He had enough shrapnel in his legs that I doubt they’ll be much use ever again. But he woke up for a bit, and he’s relatively pain-free, thanks to the drugs.”

“Everyone else?”

“Mostly crashed out. Me, Marty, Mike and Ryan are on day watch. So far, we been watchin’ wind blow and paint dry.”

“Quiet’s good. Quiet means no shooting.”

“So, what are we gonna do about those Rangers? Pretty cramped in the Razor as it is already, but we aren’t just gonna leave ‘em here, are we?”

“No, we’re not. We don’t know that this place is any more secure than where they were hiding, so they’re coming with us.”

“Marty said we might could give them some of our food and meds and swing back for them on the way out. I figured we’d probably want ‘em along for experience and extra guns, if nothing else.”

“My thoughts exactly,” Nick told him, neglecting to mention that their chances of coming back out were up in the air.

“So how we gonna make the seating work in the Razor?”

“Well, we’re going to go down to three bunks so the medic can stay off his feet. That means we’re gonna have to sleep in shifts of three rather than four, so don’t expect to get a hell of a lot of sleep. As far as chairs go, we’ve got twelve for fourteen people, which means we’ll also be taking shifts on our feet. If we need the room to move around, we’ll have to stick two people up in the turrets out of the way. We’ll make it work.”

“Marty ran some math on the extra weight and fuel consumption and all that shit. Said we should still be all right running off of solar with the extra crew. He’s a smart motherfucker, that guy.”

Nick checked his watch. “Grab some rack time. Who’s been out the longest?”

“Uh, Mary, Pete and Anthony.”

“Get them up quietly, then get the rest of your watch to get some sleep. I’ll take those three for second-shift day watch.”

“Roger, boss. Marty’s got Daniel’s scopes set up on that scaffold up there.” Gabriel pointed to Marty, who was lying nearly invisible above the huge loading dock, scanning out the top windows with Daniel’s rifle. “He says that’s pretty much the best vantage point we’re gonna get.”

“Send Pete up that way then send the other two to me.”

Nick took over Gabriel’s position next to the door after sending Mary and Anthony to cover the other two entrances into the building. He sat at Gabriel’s post for what felt like two hours before he finally checked his watch—twenty minutes had passed. He was glad they weren’t being slaughtered by hundreds of Chinese and North Korean troops, but Nick found himself wishing that something would happen.

“Boss, you got your comms on?” he heard Pete’s voice in his ear.

Shit. Careful what you wish for. Nick swore at himself before toggling his radio.

“Yeah, Pete. What’s up?”

“Think I saw a cow, boss. Please advise.”

Nick chuckled and toggled his radio. “Is the cow wearing North Korean or Chinese colors?”

“That’s a negative, sir.”

“Sir? Confirmation on the cow, due west,” Mary radioed.

“I think I had eyes on a squirrel earlier, boss. Think they could be working together?” Anthony radioed.

Nick laughed. “I know it’s boring, guys, but we have to stay alert. We get incoming, we’ll only have a couple of seconds to respond. Keep your heads on swivels and your ears open, read me?”

“Roger that, sir.”

“And keep eyes on that cow. I don’t trust him.”

A few hours later, Johnny walked out of the Razor and joined Nick at his post.

“Get much sleep?” Nick asked.

“Few hours off and on. More than I’ve gotten in the last couple weeks, really.”

“So who’d you piss off to get a mission into the heart of North Korea?”

“I’ve been asking myself that question a bunch lately. I don’t think it was because we pissed anyone off, per se—just that they wanted the mission accomplished. They needed success.”

“Which is why they didn’t send a convict unit.”

“Correct. No offense. Command probably just figured an experienced operational detachment would have a better chance of getting to the AWACS crew.”

“And did you?”

Johnny shook his head. “Nope. Looks from all evidence like they survived, but they were gone by the time we got there. A lot of the tech was ripped out of the bird, but we demoed what was left. Then they were on us. NoKo Army. Whole battalion of ‘em.”

“It’s amazing any of you survived.”

“It was training. Training and luck. Eight of us managed to get away. They’ve been hunting us for the last week, picking us off one by one. We were lucky you came along—we had twenty rounds between the four of us.”

“Wish I could say you were out of the woods now, but I can’t guarantee that. We might be getting back into the same kind of trouble very soon.”

Johnny nodded, taking the cigarette Nick offered. “I guessed as much, what with a convict unit and a stealth Razor. What’s your mission, Marine?”

“No offense, sir, but we’re a pretty informal unit. You can just call me Nick.”

“Good enough. Your mission?”

“Acting on some intel we pulled out of a CDM, Command thinks that there’s a lab outside of Pyongyang that’s brewing some nasty shit. Shit that could lose us this war faster than we’re losing it on numbers alone.”

“I think that’s why the AWACS was out this way. Try to get eyes on that same lab. They got blown out of the air before they got within two hundred miles of it.”

“Assuming our speed holds, we should get a hell of a lot closer than that tonight.”

“I’ll help any way I can. My people will do the same.” Johnny nodded his head back at the Razor to indicate the sleeping Rangers.

“We’re going to be planning out tonight’s route in an hour or so. Any intel you guys have picked up will be invaluable.”

“Happy to. Anything else you need from us until then?”

“No, not really. We’ve got day watch covered. Five hours until we roll, so do whatever you want until then.”

“Fuck. I hate downtime.”

“Yeah. Yeah, so do I. But it’s kind of a necessity. The adaptive camouflage works during the day, of course, but it works a hell of a lot better at night.”

“So that’s why you’re rolling at night and covering during the day. Smart.”

“Yeah. The dark helps us out a lot. Fucks with my guys, though. We haven’t been on what you’d call a normal schedule for quite some time now. Price of being Special Forces, I suppose.”

“I wasn’t aware that there were any Special Forces convict units,” Johnny said, raising an eyebrow.

“We’re the only one.”

“How’d you manage that?”

“Training and luck. More the latter than the former.”

“Hey, boss. You still on?” Peter’s voice sounded in Nick’s ear.

“Yeah, Pete. What’s up?”

“Flash on the scope. Maybe two miles out to the southeast. Headed right this way.”

“All right. Keep me updated. Anthony, get everyone up and armed. Might be nothing, but we should probably be ready to scrap in case it’s not.”

“Roger that.”

Johnny headed back toward the Razor, turning over his shoulder as he walked. “Five-fifty-six?”

“Couple extra boxes under the comm station.”

Johnny nodded as he walked through the Razor’s back hatch. Nick could hear his voice boom inside the vehicle. “On your feet, Rangers! Carson, grab some ammo from under the comm station and load us up. We may have a situation on our hands soon, and I want the two of you on point.”

Christopher walked up next to Nick, yawning and lighting a cigarette. “Sounds like we may have some company soon.” He rubbed his eyes.

“Yeah. Have Gabriel and Mike get the wounded Ranger into the Razor, then lock it up.”

“You got it.”

As Nick’s men moved around him, he slung his M4 over his shoulder and climbed the narrow staircase to the scaffold. Peter had one eye screwed to the scope of Daniel’s M40A3 rifle.

“Anything yet?”

“Not much. Single vehicle. Guessing speed’s about twenty miles an hour. Not exactly burning to get here.”

“I’m sending Daniel up to swap out with you. Report to Chris downstairs, and he’ll give you shit to do.”

“Gotcha, boss.”

Nick patted Peter on the shoulder and walked back down the staircase. He located Daniel and pulled him aside. “Hey, brother. Need your eyes up on the scaffold. Pete’s got your rifle up there. Soon as you can tell what that thing is, hit me on the radio.”

“On it.”

It didn’t take Daniel long to make the switch, and less than five minutes later his voice was in Nick’s ear.

“Got it. It’s a tank. BMP-3 or BMP-1. North Korean Army, I’m guessing.”

“ETA?”

“Another five minutes or so, assuming it doesn’t change course.”

“Thanks, Daniel. Keep me posted.”

Nick motioned Martin over.

“Yeah, chief. What’s up?”

“BMP-series tank. What’ll kill it?”

“Depends. If it’s a BMP-3, it’s got a bit more armor. BMP-1s and 2s are pretty easy to crack. I’ve got enough stuff for any of ‘em, though.”

“Assume a BMP-3. Put a package together, but I hope we won’t need it.”

“Copy that, sir. Can I grab Pete to help me out?”

“Sure.”

“It’s a BMP-1, Nick. Old one,” Daniel’s voice sounded in his ear. “Saw a couple of ‘em when I was back in the 1-8. We’ve got him outgunned like mad.”

“Martin! BMP-1!”

“Right on.”

Nick looked around and saw that his men were armed and ready. He smiled to himself—he had no idea why the unit worked so well, but at times like this, he was glad it did. Nick quickly filled Johnny in on the approaching BMP-1.

“You see a bunch of those around here. Kinda rare to just see one. I’d advise caution. There’s probably more of ‘em out there.”

“I agree.”

“They’ve stopped, boss.” Daniel’s voice came over the radio. “Fifteen hundred feet out or so. Couple of guys are popping out now. North Korean uniforms. Looks like they’re on a smoke break. I count four.”

“Keep eyes on ‘em. Maybe they’ll finish up their break and just drive off.” Nick toggled off his radio and turned to Johnny. “What’s the standard crew compliment on one of those vehicles?”

“Three crew, up to eight passengers.”

“One of ‘em’s going back into the vehicle. He’s bringing someone out with him. Prisoner, looks like. Hands behind his back. Hood. Shit, boss.”

“What is it?”

“He’s wearing a U.S. Army uniform.”

Chapter 29

Death Before Dishonor

“Nick, they’re kicking him down on his knees. Looks like they’re going to execute him.”

Nick’s mouth was dry, but he still managed to speak. “You have a shot?”

“That’s affirmative.”

“Take them down.”

“Fuckin’ A.”

“What’s going on?” Johnny asked, just as four loud pops echoed through the loading dock and shattered glass fell onto the concrete floor.

“Targets neutralized,” Daniel reported.

“Chris! Take four men and hide those bodies, and bring that soldier back here. Bryce, think you can drive that tank?”

“Probably.”

“Get it out of sight as soon as possible. Ninety seconds, people. We don’t know if anyone’s watching.”

“You sure that’s a good idea?” Johnny asked over his shoulder.

“Nope. Not at all. But I didn’t leave you guys out there to die, and I’m damn sure not leaving him out there.”

“Him? Him who?”

Nick quickly filled Johnny in as Christopher and his detachment filed out the door. By the time he finished explaining it, they were back with the bound soldier in tow.

“Stashed the bodies in the tank. Bryce got it running, found some trees to ditch it under. It’ll work for air cover, but if someone comes by on the ground in the next three hours, we’re fucked,” Christopher told him.

“Understood. Good work. How’s the prisoner?”

“Just about to find out.”

Gabriel removed the soldier’s hood, and Johnny smiled. The man under the hood was black, in his early forties, and had obviously been beaten. His mouth was covered in duct tape, but his eyes went wide with relief when he saw Johnny.

“Take his restraints off,” Johnny said. “That’s Master Sergeant Carl Rogan. He’s my SIC.”

Gabriel cut the zip-ties that bound Rogan’s hands, and the Master Sergeant reached up and pulled the duct tape from his mouth.

“Major! Shit, sir, am I glad to see you. Even if you are hanging out with Marines and criminals now.” Rogan laughed, standing shakily and saluting his commanding officer.

“At ease, Roge. Figured you for dead.” Johnny grinned, saluting back.

“Almost was. Bullets shredded my body armor and knocked me into the wreckage of the AWACS. Must’ve knocked me out. When I came to, I was in this hospital…more like a lab, I think…and they were pulling bullets out of me. They questioned me for, I dunno, days. When I didn’t give ‘em anything, they put a bag over my head and threw me in a truck. Now I’m here.”

“Do you know where they were keeping you?” Nick asked.

“No, sir, uh, Lieutenant. I wasn’t conscious when they brought me in, and I was hooded when they brought me out. It looked like some kind of science lab, though. Not like a regular hospital. There were a lot of computers around. Even the room they kept me in wasn’t so much a cell. Seemed like a storage room.”

“What kinds of questions did they ask?” Nick asked, nodding to Bryce as the young man rejoined the group.

“Weird stuff. Like what kind of intel we were acting on to send in the AWACS. They asked a lot of tech questions, too. Couldn’t have answered ‘em if I wanted to. I don’t even know what the hell they were talking about.”

“Anything you can remember would help, but we’re leaving in three hours. We’ve got some fold-down racks in the Razor. They’re horrible, but they’re better than the floor. Get some food in you and try to grab some sleep,” Nick told him.

Rogan shot a look at Johnny.

“Do as the man says, Roge. It’s his mission. We’re just along for the ride.”

“Yes, sir.”

Christopher led Rogan off toward the Razor.

Nick lit a cigarette and offered one to Johnny, who waved it off. “Nah. I’m supposed to have quit years ago.”

“Fair enough. And thanks for that, but this isn’t just my mission anymore. It’s our mission. Do me a favor?”

“Like I said, anything I can do to help.”

“As soon as it gets dark, we’re going to find someplace to stash those four North Korean soldiers. Then I’d like you and your team to take command of the BMP-1.”

“I was hoping you’d say that.”

“We’ll roll together. Take Ryan with you. You can roll point. We’ll be able to get a lot closer under North Korean colors, and you guys might pick up some transmissions through the NoKo network that we’re locked out of. You got someone who can wheel?”

“Monica’s one of the best there is.”

Nick nodded as he blew out smoke. “Let’s help Christopher and Bryce plan out the route.”

Christopher and Bryce joined Johnny and Nick, bringing with them the maps and satellite photos and unfolding them on a concrete slab.

“What’s up with the old-school? Why aren’t we just using the nav computers in your Razor to plot a course?” Johnny asked.

“We’ve got intel that the Chinese tech can pick up our energy signatures. The handhelds we’ve been using to talk on 1-9 Victor don’t put out enough power, but anything bigger probably does,” Nick told him.

“Fuck. That’s how they were tracking us. We had a couple of computers we’d salvaged from our M-ATV. We were trying to use them to get our position and find a way out.”

“What’s an M-ATV?” Christopher asked.

“Army talk for Cougar,” Nick told him. “Still got them, Major? The computers?”

“Nah. Last one got junked when they blew up Freddie’s legs. He had it in his pack.”

“We can use our tech when the Razor’s in stealth mode—probably best not to turn anything on otherwise. Bryce? How are we looking?”

“Good. Any idea what the top speed on that NK boat is?”

“Twenty-seven, twenty-eight miles an hour off-road. Maybe forty on.”

“We’re about one-eighty-five, one-ninety from our destination here.” Bryce pointed to the laboratory complex on the map. “At an average speed of thirty miles an hour, with the BMP-1 on point, we’re looking at just over six hours. Can still make it tonight.”

“Two hours to look around before daylight. Gotta say, not loving that timeframe for an incursion,” Christopher said, frowning.

“What about a cover location nearby? We might have to spend another day in the vehicles before we figure out what’s going on in there,” Nick said.

“Great. You guys are starting to smell, you know that?” Bryce deadpanned.

“Major, you know of anything along this route,” Christopher asked, tracing a line with his finger along the path Bryce had plotted, “that’s going to fuck with our program?”

Johnny grabbed Christopher’s hand and moved it back along the route about an inch and a half, stopping it on a small town about halfway along the trail.

“Here. We were here about six days ago. There were a lot of CDMs gathered here. About four or five units of ground troops, too. We managed to sneak away from them, but there were only six of us on foot. Two twelve-ton vehicles’ll be harder to get by, stealth mode or no.”

“Bryce, if we re-route, how much time do we lose?”

Bryce looked at the map for a few moments. “Assuming the detachment’s still there, we need to swing about ten miles wide of them to make sure they don’t pick us up. Extra hour, at least.”

“That cuts the arrival pretty close. Cover location?”

“We’re kind of short on info here.” Christopher shrugged. “Couldn’t tell you if any of these outbuildings are secure for stashing the Razor. My guess is no, but these satellite photos are from before the war.”

Nick looked around and spotted Mary talking to Ryan near the Razor. He waved her over. “Hey, Mary. Power question—will we have enough power to run the Razor in stealth mode during daylight tomorrow and still pick up enough solar to keep it in stealth at night?”

“Theoretically, yeah. But we’re going to have to switch to solid fuel for at least a couple of hours. And you know how that bitch eats fuel,” she said.

“Rough estimate?”

“Half our solid gone. It’ll fuck us if we have to top-speed it, but we’ll be fine if we can crawl out the same way we crawled in.”

“Thanks, Mary.”

Christopher checked his watch. “Dark in an hour, boss. Who do you want on body detail?”

“I’m going. I need to get my legs stretched anyway.”

“I’m with you,” Johnny said.

“I’ll go. I could use the air. Been inside too long,” Mary said, stretching her arms over her head.

“Right. Two more, and we should be good. Mary, go find us a volunteer.”

“And I’ll get Monica to come with and start familiarizing herself with the BMP,” Johnny said.

It was dark out, but Nick and his detail adjusted quickly. Gabriel and Michael had joined the detail and were helping Johnny and Mary pull the bodies out of the BMP-1. Nick and Christopher were scouting for a secure dumping location, smoking cigarettes as they walked north of the grove of trees where Bryce had parked the North Korean tank.

“Something ghoulish about this, boss.” Christopher shook his head. “Something about hauling around corpses just to get outside…it’s not right.”

“I was thinking that, too. But, you know. Fresh air, stretched legs. Get past the dead bodies, it’s not such a bad gig.”

“You’re a pro at looking on the bright side, Nick.”

“Speaking of bodies,” Nick said, stopping momentarily to snuff out his cigarette on the heel of his boot, “why do you think they drove Rogan all the way out here to shoot him?”

“Dunno. Especially if we’re assuming he came from the lab near Pyongyang. Long drive just to dump a body. ‘Specially in that antique,” Christopher said, jerking his head back at the BMP.

Nick’s right hand shot up, stopping Christopher from taking another step. Nick nodded his head down at the large, open pit in front of them.

“Think that might be why,” Nick said.

No more than five feet in front of the two men, spanning at least a hundred feet square, was a large open grave. There was no way to tell how deep it was—it was filled with bodies in Air Force, Army, Marine and convict uniforms. On top of the pile, closest to Nick and Christopher, were three men in flight suits and several more in the dark green BDUs of the 138th Rangers.

“Holy fuck,” Christopher breathed.

“Get back to the BMP. Pull Major Evans aside and tell him. Quietly.”

Christopher nodded and slowly backed away. A few seconds later, he was gone.

“Well…at least we found somewhere to stash the bodies,” Nick said to himself, trying not to look at the dead faces twisted in pain staring back up at him.

Chapter 30

Chemical Warfare

After the detail dumped the four North Korean soldiers’ bodies in with the hundreds of American casualties, Johnny, Monica and Nick took a look inside the BMP-1. It was an old tank, but a large amount of Chinese tech had been quickly added to its systems. Wires still hung from hastily installed touch-screens, and the passenger area had been filled with computers and surveillance equipment.

“Think you can wheel this big bastard, Monica?” Johnny asked as Monica slid into the pilot’s seat.

“Drive, sure. But these displays and readouts aren’t gonna mean much to me, sir.” She shrugged.

“That’s why Ryan’s coming along. He should be able to figure out what all this shit does,” Nick told her.

“Four-seven Echo secure and ready to roll, sir,” Anthony radioed. “One-three-eight Ranger’s in position to open the doors for us and join their CO in the BMP.”

“Roger that, Anthony. Go stealth and power up. We’ll bring the BMP out and switch the necessary personnel in front of the cover location.”

“Affirmative, sir. See you in a minute.”

“Hey, Nick. Can you make anything of this?” Johnny asked, nodding to a netbook that had been wired to the BMP’s comm system. The screen was scrolling characters in Chinese.

“Yeah.” Nick read from the screen. “It looks like an interface to the Chinese Army comm network. Internet, radio decryption. This must be how the NKs and Chinese forces share intel.”

“So we’ve got access to the whole Chinese Army network?”

“Well, we’ve got an access point, anyway. Still a lot of logins and encryption we’d have to break. And I suck at that, personally.”

“Our tech person’s dead. You got anyone who can maybe break those encryptions?”

“Mary probably could, if I was there to translate for her. But one thing at a time, Major. We’ve got a mission to complete first.”

“No doubt. But if we can get into the Chinese Army network, we might know what we’re walking into.”

Nick felt like physically reaching up and slapping himself on the forehead like he’d seen people do in old movies. “Shit. I hadn’t thought about it that way. I’d hate to leave my team, but—”

“But you could keep them safer if we get better intel as we roll.”

“Exactly.”

Nick toggled his radio. “Razor 4-7, come in.”

“Yeah, boss,” Anthony’s voice came back almost instantly.

“Put Chris on the line, will you, Anthony?”

“You got it.”

“What’s up, Nick?” Christopher asked.

“Hey, Chris. Slight change in plans. We found some tech over here that we might be able to use to get intel on where we’re headed. Gonna need to transfer Mary over to the BMP, along with me. Think you can babysit Razor for this leg of the trip?”

“I can handle that, boss. We could use someone to run the stealth station, though.”

“Carson can help your boys out,” Johnny said.

“Take Carson from the 1-3-8.”

“Copy that. You keep in touch over there. You know how me and your mother worry,” Christopher radioed.

“Roger. We’ll keep our handhelds tuned to 1-9 Victor—you need anything, just come straight through at us.”

“Affirmative. Don’t turn grunt on us over there, Nick.”

“No worries.” Nick laughed, toggling the radio off.

Nick spent the next four hours in an uncomfortable chair, working with Mary to see if they could crack the Chinese Army network. A few times, he looked at the rear camera feed to determine if he could see any evidence of the Razor following their smaller vehicle. No such luck.

“Checking for the Razor, boss?” Mary smirked. “You won’t see it on cameras. Ever. Designed that way.”

“Still tough to get my head around. We wouldn’t have believed this kind of tech about ten years ago.”

“Actually, a lot of it was around ten years ago. Air Force was working on it back then, using high-performance civilian vehicles. Ever hear of the Challenger Vapor?”

“Yeah, heard of the Challenger. Remember when they re-released it about a decade ago. Wanted one bad.”

“Air Force and some contractors took one of those and loaded it with tech, even the same radar-absorbing paint and camera systems the Razor uses. Only thing it didn’t have was the adaptive camo, really, but it had plenty of other goodies to make up for it.”

“They still make ‘em?”

“They only made one, I think.”

“In service?”

“Nah. It’s at a museum somewhere in Ohio.”

“How do you know all this shit?”

“I worked at a desk, remember? Lot of downtime. No unsecured ‘net access since I’m a convict, so I read a lot of the Air Force project files.”

Nick nodded. “Any luck on the hack?”

“Broke the logins. Now it’s just making sense of the data when we find it. Different encryptions for different categories. And I have no idea what I’m looking at until you translate it.”

“Any way they can pick up our intrusions?”

“Don’t think so. I’m covering my tracks.”

Nick rubbed his eyes and peered at the netbook’s screen. “This right here—this says ‘Advanced Research Projects.’ My guess is that’s where we’re headed.”

“I’ll get started on breaking the encryptions. Can you write down the Chinese for Pyongyang? So I’ll know it if I see it?”

Nick pulled a small pad and pen from the front breast pocket of his black BDU jacket and scrawled on it in large characters.

Mary took the paper from him, looked at it, and shook her head. “Man. How does anyone learn to actually speak this language?”

“I grew up speaking both. Not so bad that way.”

“No offense to your culture, Nick, but it’s really giving me a fucking headache,” she said, blowing a stray strand of hair out of her eyes.

Nick got up to stretch out his legs. The BMP was nowhere near as spacious as the Razor, even in the back passenger area where he and Mary and Ryan had set up. He found he couldn’t even stand completely without hitting his head on the top of the compartment. At just over five and a half feet tall, Nick felt sorry for the six-foot-four Major Evans.

“Ryan? Our North Korean friends saying anything?” Nick asked, looking over Ryan’s shoulder.

“Oh, they’re saying a lot. They’ve got frequencies that cut through their own jamming. Approved, official frequencies, I’d guess. I’m also picking up a bunch of low-power transmissions fading in and out about every twenty miles or so. Getting a lot of chatter on those that’s pretty damned critical of the North Korean government, the Chinese government, the war, you name it.”

“Pirate radio?”

“I think so.”

“Are you getting those transmissions on transmit-only channels, or can they receive?”

“Based on the computer’s analysis, some of them can receive. Not many.”

“Log those frequencies. They may come in handy later, and I’m sure intel wants to know about them. Log all the official ones, too.”

“Already on it. I’ve also managed to get access to some North Korean Army emails. I think this,” Ryan said, bringing up an email in Korean on his screen, “is the duty roster for the CDMs on guard around the Pyongyang lab.”

“How many CDMs are we talking?”

“Twenty-five. Ten in reserve if the lab gets put on alert status.”

“Movements and vehicle placement?”

“They’re attached.”

“Translate and download to Mary’s netbook. I’m sure the guys on the Razor will want to see this.”

“Roger that.”

“Good work, Ryan.” Nick grabbed the handheld and switched it on. “Razor 4-7 Echo, this is BMP-1.”

“Hey, Nick. Anthony’s crashed out. What can I do you for?” Martin’s voice came back.

“Chris still awake?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Grab him for me, would you?”

“Sure.”

Christopher’s voice came down the line a few seconds later. “What’s up, boss?”

“We’ve managed to pull some intel. Twenty-five to thirty-five CDMs on guard around the lab.”

“Lovely. Considering one could probably blow the hell out of us.”

“Yeah. How’s the stealth running over there?”

“Fine so far. Solid fuel’s still right near the top, so we should be able to proceed with daytime stealth mode as planned.”

“Good. Looks as if we’ll need it. I’ll get back to you with more as I have it. How’s everyone holding up over there?”

“We’re solid, boss. Got four racked out right now. The medic managed to drag himself to an open chair. Said he was tired of lying down. He’s been running Gabriel through more EMT stuff for the last couple of hours.”

“Good to know. Call if you need anything, yeah?”

“Will do.”

Nick turned off the radio and walked back to his chair. Mary was flying through screens of information now. She’d apparently broken the encryption, because the words on the screen made sense to Nick. He read a few words about highly classified material, about how only those personnel with a level 12 clearance would be allowed to log in.

“You got in,” Nick said.

“Looks like it. I found a file tagged with the characters you wrote down for me. Breaking the logins now.”

A few seconds later, the screen filled with characters. Nick read from the screen aloud: “China/North Korea Advanced Research Projects Alliance—Kim Jong Il Pyongyang Research Facility.”

“This what we’re looking for?”

“Yep. That’s it. Click that link,” Nick said, tapping the screen. “Should be a breakdown of their current development projects.”

Mary clicked the link, and a new page loaded.

Nick read silently, tightening his lips.

Mary turned around and noticed the look on his face. “What? What does it say?”

“The page is detailing something called Project Youxia. I’m not a tech guy, but as near as I can tell, it’s a virus. A virus that targets Caucasoid gene markers only.”

“A disease engineered to kill white people?”

“Yeah. That’s the best way to put it.”

“Is that even possible?”

“Looks like they think it’s more than possible. Apparently, they expect to have it ready to release in less than a month. This says they’re going to use it in weaponized form when they attempt to push North toward Magadan in three weeks. That’ll be the first test of the virus.”

“I don’t know the demographics exactly, but if they deployed something like that on the battlefield, it would take a huge chunk out of our forces. I mean, just using the 47 and the 138 as a representative sample—”

“Ryan, Pete, Rogan and maybe me and Gabe. That’s all that’d survive. But think further. If they take Magadan, which they probably will if their virus works as planned, they could launch missiles full of the stuff across the Bering Strait into Alaska and Canada. Maybe even the mainland U.S.”

“That’s…that’s horrible. We have to do something about it.”

“Agreed. But that’s not the worst part. This is,” Nick told her, pointing to a small grouping of characters at the bottom of the page.

“Why? What’s that mean?”

“It says ‘Project one of six.’“

Chapter 31

Room Thirteen

Nick crawled into the cabin of the BMP. It was already crowded with Monica, Rogan and Johnny at their stations. Nick barely had room to stand, but he wasn’t going to be there long.

“Hey, Nick. Looks like Monica managed to squeeze a couple more MPH out of this crate.” Johnny smirked.

“That’s good. I’ve got Ryan searching the North Korean grid for a cover location. We need to stop and have a meeting.”

“You sure that’s a good idea?”

“It’s necessary. We finally found out what we’re walking into, and it ain’t pretty.”

Johnny nodded, toggling a few switches on the panel to his left. “Your mission, Lieutenant. Let us know where we’re headed.”

“Ryan will be up in a few minutes with a destination.”

“Roger that.”

He hadn’t thought of the BMP’s passenger area as spacious until he crawled out of the cabin. With only two other people in a space that was designed for eleven, Nick stretched his arms and legs as much as he could before he walked over to Ryan’s workspace. “What’ve we got?”

“I think this’ll do it,” Ryan said, pointing to a spot on the map displayed on his netbook’s screen.

“Pretty close to the lab. You sure we can stop there?”

“It should be abandoned. It’s a bombing test range, but there’s not anything on the schedule for the next couple of days.”

“Right. Let’s just hope we don’t run into any unscheduled tests. Get this info up to Monica then let Bryce know. After that, I want you and Mary to put together all the intel we’ve gotten to this point for the guys on the Razor.”

“We’ll get everything transferred over to Mary’s netbook and, y’know, make sure it’s in English.”

“Good man. Let me know if you need anything from me. Otherwise, I’m going to try and catch a nap.”

“In here? Where?”

Nick looked around the passenger area, which was crowded with electronics and weapons. He noticed a spot in the back corner of the vehicle, about three feet square.

“Looks like that corner’s elected.” Nick sighed, balling up his BDU jacket for a pillow. He didn’t expect to be able to relax, what with the noise from the ancient tank’s engine, the smell of its diesel, and the intel he’d read through—but in less than a minute, he was asleep.

“Boss,” Nick heard.

“Yeah,” he groaned, coughing a bit.

“Hey, boss. We’re rolling up on the bomb test range,” Mary told him.

Nick opened his eyes and let them adjust to the low light in the BMP’s passenger area. He rolled to his feet, stretching out the kinks in his back as he stood. “Have we been in contact with the Razor?”

“Yes, sir. They shot ahead of us and have parked in that structure up ahead,” Ryan said, pointing out a bombed-out shell of a two-story building on the BMP’s front camera feed.

“All right. How do we look for recon? Our cameras or the Razor’s caught anything close by?”

“Nope. And the airwaves are quiet, too. I’d venture no one goes near this place when it’s not in use.”

“Which makes them smarter than us, I suppose.” Nick stuck his head into the pilot’s cabin. “Monica, would you take us as close to the Razor’s cover spot as you can? The more cover we have, the better.”

“Copy that, sir.”

“Thanks.”

A few moments later, Monica had the BMP parked about four hundred feet from the Razor, safely tucked between a fallen retaining wall and the side of a bunker. There was just enough space to open the back door. Nick led the BMP crew out and across the field to the Razor’s cover building. Nick’s crew was already standing outside the Razor, though he couldn’t actually see the huge vehicle—with the 4:30 a.m. darkness and the Razor’s stationary position, the thing was functionally invisible.

“Boss,” Christopher whispered, raising his hand.

“Hey, guys. Sorry for the change in plans, but we really need to have this conversation in person. Everyone inside the Razor, yeah?”

The inside of the Razor was a bit cramped with fifteen bodies inside, but after seven hours in the BMP, Nick didn’t mind. He had Mary hook up her netbook to one of the Razor’s larger plasma monitors then turned to address his men. “All right, folks. We’ve found out what’s going down in the lab ten kliks away, and ‘nasty’ doesn’t even begin to cover it. For starters, there’s a virus that targets Caucasoid gene markers—as Mary put it, a disease that kills white people. That’ll be deployed in three weeks.”

The Razor crew fell silent.

“Unfortunately, that’s not all. There are five other projects in development at the lab, and some of them are worse. You’ll have the day to look at them, because we’re not going in until tonight.”

“Um…boss…going in? Shouldn’t we just destroy the lab and get the hell out of here?” Christopher asked.

Nick nodded. “Oh, we’re going to destroy the hell out of it. Martin, Mary’s got all of the specs on the building. I want you to work with her to figure out just how to make that happen. But before we do that, there’s something we need to steal. Something that could give us a fighting chance in this war.” Nick nodded to Mary, who brought an image up on the screen. It was a floor plan of the lab’s fourth floor, and the image quickly tracked through the halls and stopped on a very small room near the back of the building. “This is Room Thirteen, ladies and gentlemen. I know it doesn’t look like much, especially compared to the rest of the lab, but this is where we’re going to find the technology that could turn this whole thing around.”

“Wait, wait. Back up a minute. How are they going to deliver this virus?” Anthony asked.

“A weaponized aerosol, loaded into a warhead and detonated about two hundred feet above a battlefield,” Nick answered.

“No way that’ll work,” Johnny said. “Our missile-detection systems’ll spot that thing hundreds of miles away and take it out before it gets close enough to do any damage.”

“Ah. And that’s where we get to Room Thirteen,” Nick replied, nodding to Mary.

She punched a couple of keys, and an image of a small, cylindrical machine popped up on the screen.

“This is the project in Room Thirteen. They’re building a bigger one down on the main floor, but this one actually works.”

“And that’s…what?” Michael asked.

“This is an electromagnetic pulse cannon,” Nick said. “Broad strokes…fire it at a target, it knocks out anything electronic in its blast radius.”

“Point it at a Razor, and all the tech in the vehicle goes dead. Computers, comms, hybrid drive, all of it?” Christopher asked.

“The small one on the screen here, sure. That’ll take out a couple of Razors. The big one they’re working on is designed to be carried by an MI-26TC helicopter, and has a blast radius of three square miles.”

“Shit. That could wipe out an entire Firebase,” Carson said.

“Correct. Which means no missile defense, and only the older vehicles would even run. Then the Chinese fire in the virus warhead, which’ll wipe out a bunch of our forces…and then they can just roll on in with their fully operational CDMs and mop up whatever’s left, which won’t be much—six or seven guys with M4s, effectively.”

The Razor went silent yet again.

“Which is why we’re going to steal it and use it against them. We’ll grab the schematics for the large device and grab the operational prototype. I know it’s not in our mission profile, but the possibilities this weapon represents are just too important to ignore. I’m sure Colonel Ross would at least want us to try, anyway,” Nick said.

“It’s a big risk, but I tend to agree,” Johnny said, looking around the Razor for any signs of disagreement. There were none.

Nick continued, “Mary will hack every design note on the device out of the Chinese Army network, along with everything we can find on the virus. Then we blow the joint and run like hell.”

“Blowing the joint…that’s gonna take some doing, boss,” Martin said, thumbing through the building schematics on one of the Razor’s screens.

“What do you need?”

“To completely turn the place into rubble and make sure it burns hot enough to vaporize all traces of the virus? Thermobaric might work, but best bet’s nuclear. One, two kilotons oughta do it. Relatively small device. I can do that.”

“Please don’t tell me we’ve been riding around with a nuke this whole time,” Peter said with a groan.

Martin ignored him, instead turning back to Nick. “I can get it done. But is this electromagnetic pulse cannon thing really worth stealing? Why not just blow the place, hack the data and go on home?”

“I thought about that,” Nick told them, unslinging one of the Chinese assault rifles he’d found in the passenger area of the BMP. “Take a look at this.”

“Yeah. Chinese assault rifle. Seen one of those before, remember, boss?” Gabriel said.

“Yep. Remember those nifty computer-amplified sights? All the cool tech toys on the rifle and in the CDM?” Nick asked, yanking the power pack from the weapon and tossing it to Gabriel.

Gabriel caught the rifle in both hands and looked it over.

“Go ahead. Shoot one of us. Me, if you want,” Nick said with a shrug.

“I’m not gonna shoot you, boss.”

“Right. Toss it back,” Nick said, catching the weapon when Gabriel threw it back to him. He pointed the rifle at the floor and pulled the trigger several times. Nothing happened—not even a dry clicking noise to indicate the gun wasn’t loaded.

“The Chinese are way ahead of us in tech. Problem is, you kill the power to ninety-five percent of their devices, and they don’t work. A CDM’s guns are all computer-controlled. UAVs fly on computer brains. Their uniforms are augmented with battlefield computers, their helmets with site-visualizing screens. Even the rifles won’t shoot without power.” Nick smiled.

“Those CDMs are shielded like a motherfucker, though,” Bryce piped up.

“Not from an electromagnetic pulse.” Daniel smiled. “I remember my physics. That’ll stop ‘em dead, armor or no.”

“You’ve got that right, Daniel. And good on you for paying attention in high school physics.”

“College, Nick.”

“Even better.”

“But say they manage to bring one of those to a fight anyway,” Rogan proposed. “They could shut us down, too.”

“You’re right. They could conceivably rebuild the EM-pulse cannon and use it on us. But these,” Nick said, holding up his M4, “fire just fine without power.”

“Right. Fine, then. But how do you suggest we get in there, set up a nuclear device, steal tech, and get out without dying in the blast?” Johnny asked, arms crossed.

“Believe it or not, I have a plan for that.” Nick smiled.

“Oh, man. I do not like the look of that smile one bit.” Christopher shook his head.

“We’re lying low here during the daylight hours. Continue with the sleep and day watch shifts as usual. I’ll be coming to each of you to discuss your part in the operation as the day progresses. Martin, I think it’s fairly obvious what your job’s going to be.”

Martin nodded, his scarred face twisting into a full smile. “I’ll get started on my prep work.”

“Hey, Marty, man. You never answered me. We haven’t been riding around with a damn nuclear bomb in here, have we?” Peter asked.

Martin just kept smiling as he walked toward his pile of gear.

Chapter 32

We Got The Neutron Bomb

Mary and Ryan had gone back to the BMP with the Rangers to start their hack on the Chinese and North Korean networks. Nick loaded a program on Mary’s netbook to help her translate the Chinese enough to complete her work, as he knew he’d be needed elsewhere.

Nick sat at the comm station, watching Martin pull a military-issue duffel bag from his gear and drag it to the center of the Razor.

“That looks heavy,” Michael said.

“About a hundred and sixty pounds. So not exactly light,” Martin said with a grunt.

“Ah, shit,” Peter said, shaking his head. “That’s what I think it is, isn’t it?”

“Back in the day, they would’ve called this an SADM—Special Atomic Demolition Munition. I hacked one together at the boss’ request,” Martin said, nodding to Nick.

“So what does that mean in English?” Peter asked.

“It means, yes. We have a nuclear bomb. A little bit more powerful than the one that blew up in L.A., am I right?” Nick asked Martin.

“Yeah. One in L.A. was estimated at 1.1 Kilotons. This one has a yield of 1.58. It’ll turn the lab into a crater, turn the virus into ions, and do some damage at least three kilometers out.”

“How the hell did you ‘hack together’ a nuclear bomb?” Michael asked.

“It’s not that hard. Shaped charges, uranium, timer. Simple,” Martin said, shrugging.

“Can the guys inside defuse it before it blows?” Christopher asked.

“Well, they are scientists, so I’m sure they probably could. If they could get to it, which they won’t be able to do,” Nick said.

“How do you figure that?” Daniel said.

“We’re going to do to them what they tried to do back at Camp Justice. We’re going to lock it inside the Razor and run like hell.”

“And us? How do we get out?” Christopher asked.

“We’re going to split into two and a half teams.”

“Two and a half?”

“Yeah. Two, and then the first team will split off again. Here’s how I see it working: the first team will be on distraction. Throwing a lot of gunfire at the lab. Then one part of the first team—me, specifically—will split off and grab the EM-pulse prototype. First team’s going to be directly in the line of fire, and I have to warn you, the survivability matrix on that one’s not great.” Nick let that sink in for a moment before he continued. “The second team will be securing our escape vehicle. Major Evans will be leading that team. I’ve already spoken to him.”

“And who’ll be on that team?” Martin asked.

“Whoever, apart from you and Bryce, doesn’t volunteer for my team. Sorry I have to order the two of you specifically, but I need your special skills for my part of the operation.”

Martin nodded.

“No big, boss. I was facing life plus back home.” Bryce shrugged.

“Thanks, Bryce. I’m going to need two more volunteers.”

“I’m going,” Daniel said.

“Thought you might. Glad to have you aboard. Who else?” Nick asked.

“Yeah, what the hell.” Christopher sighed, raising his hand.

“Thanks, brother. All right. The rest of you will grab your weapons and report to Major Evans as soon as it gets dark. In the meantime, you’ve got,” Nick checked his watch, “five hours. Time’s yours, though I’m afraid we can’t leave the Razor. Air-filtration’s on though, so smoke if you got ‘em.”

Nick turned back to the comm station and downloaded a few files from the Razor’s central computer onto his e-reader. As his crew shuffled around him, he began studying the lab’s floor plans, committing his route to memory. He ran through the schematics on the EM-pulse prototype—seventy-eight pounds, just light enough for him to carry on his own and still run for the escape vehicle.

After he walked through his plan several times, Nick gathered the gear he’d need. He loaded four of the Glock sidearms and attached their holsters to his belt—he didn’t want to have to waste time reloading. Nick also grabbed fifty feet of high-tensile nylon rope, a Marine-issue KA-BAR and a pair of TotalVis goggles. He took off his BDU jacket and hung it over the back of the comm station’s chair. He wasn’t going to need it, and it would only slow him down.

All his preparations took just over an hour, and Nick found himself at a loss for anything to do.

Worst part is the downtime, he remembered his father telling him when he was thirteen. Alex had just been called up to go to Iraq, and Nick had asked about what it was like to go to war. It was the last time he saw his dad.

You wanna do something, anything to help ensure the outcome of the mission. But you can’t. You overprepare, you’ve got too much going on in your brain when you get in there. Thinking too much is just gonna get you killed. You wish you could just catch some sleep, but you’re too keyed up. So what do you do?

“You sit, and you wait. It’ll come soon enough,” Nick whispered to himself, sitting down in the comm station chair, crossing his legs and closing his eyes. He concentrated on slowing his breathing and his heartbeat until those were the only thoughts in his head.

“Major Evans on the comm, sir,” Anthony told him some time later.

Nick cracked open one eye and checked his watch. Thirty minutes to go time.

“All right. Let’s get this party started,” Nick said, taking the handheld comm from Anthony. “Major Evans,” Nick said into the radio.

“Yeah, I think we’ve been through enough in the last couple of days. You can call me Johnny,” he said with a chuckle over the line.

“Fair enough.”

“We’re all set over here. The worms and Trojans are loaded, ready to rip the hell out of both networks on the word ‘go.’“

“Looks like we’re less than a half an hour from deployment. I’ll be sending over my guys in fifteen. Keep an eye on them, yeah?” Nick tried to smile when he said it, to keep his voice light, but his words came out flat and serious.

“Like they were my own.”

“You got the location on our ride?”

“Yep. And Ryan coded this BMP into the duty logs of the vehicles guarding it. We should be able to get right up on it, but when the shit goes down…well, let’s just say we’ll have a fun time keeping it.”

“My guys are bringing up all the weapons and ammo from the Razor. Burn it all. Either we make it out, or it’s no good to us anyway.”

“Roger that. Your guys briefed on our part of the scheme?”

“Broad strokes. They’re all yours to assign as you please.”

“How’s Freddie?” Johnny asked. “He conscious still?”

“Getting stronger, but he still can’t walk. Gabriel’s going to be able to carry him no problem, though.”

“That the big guy? Tattoos?”

“Yep.”

“All right. Nothing left but to get to it, I suppose.”

The channel was silent for a moment. Nick had no idea what to say, but when he realized Johnny wasn’t saying anything either, he broke the silence.

“Suppose you’re right. We’ll wait for you to roll out then follow after ten minutes. Hit any snags before then, and flag us on this channel. After that…well, we’re probably not going to have much time for chatter.”

“Probably not. It’s been good working with you, Marine.”

“You too, Ranger.”

Nick cut off the connection and turned to his men. “Team two, load up. You’re transferring to the BMP in ten minutes. It’s cramped as hell in there, but it’ll be much more pleasant than it’s going to get in here.” Nick smirked.

“Don’t feel right leaving you here, boss.” Anthony shook his head as he slung an M4 over his back.

“You’ll see me again in a half an hour if all goes to plan. Until then, follow Major Evans’ orders just like you’d follow mine, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Keep an eye on the rest of our guys and make sure they do the same. Can I count on you for that?”

“You got it.”

Nick had to try hard to keep his voice even. He knew his mission wasn’t exactly the safest, knew Major Evans was an experienced commander…but still, he was worried about his men. His friends.

“All right. Be safe out there.”

“You too, boss.”

A few moments later, Nick watched on the Razor’s night-vision cameras as his men scurried across the field to the hidden BMP. They loaded up in less than a minute, and Nick’s handheld clicked on.

“Team two is ready to go,” Major Evans reported.

“Okay. Rangers, lead the way.”

“I see what you did there,” Johnny said with a laugh. “See you in about twenty.”

The BMP started up and rolled toward the lab ten kilometers away. Nick watched it recede on the horizon, then rolled his neck and cracked his knuckles.

“All right, guys. Let’s get in our places. Bryce, you’re obviously on the wheel. Martin, you’re prepping the bomb, of course. I’ll take the weapons station, which leaves you two in the turrets.” Nick nodded at Daniel and Christopher.

“Just one thing before we plunge into that pit of hell,” Christopher said, his face a mask of stone.

“Yeah, Chris?”

“We survive this, I expect beer. Lots and lots of beer.”

Nick laughed. “You’re on.”

The Razor was running on stealth and halfway to the lab when Nick’s radio went off again.

“BMP-1 in position.”

“Razor 4-7 Echo inbound. Time to get ugly,” Nick radioed back, then put the radio in his cargo pocket. He put a wireless earpiece in his left ear, paired it to the radio and switched it on, but no further transmissions came in from the BMP.

“Weapons live, gentlemen. We’re about to arrive at the lab.”

“Where do you want me to park this big bitch, Nick?” Bryce asked.

Nick brought up a floor plan of the lab on the flatscreen between them. He flicked through some images until he settled on one of the first floor. “Hmm. How about there?” he replied, pointing at the center of the image.

“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.”

“Then you know how it’s supposed to sound.”

“Pretty much.”

“Here. Say this,” she said, showing him the screen.

Johnny nodded and switched on the radio, repeating the phonetic pronunciation Mary had typed up for him. The radio was silent.

“Think that worked?” Nick asked.

Carson pointed at the chopper’s rear camera feed. Two North Korean MI-17 helicopters were taking off in pursuit about three miles back.

“Um…nope,” Johnny said.

“Shit. What kind of weapons do we have on this crate?”

“Just what we carried on with us.”

“That’s not good.”

“What’s going on?” Christopher asked, limping to the front of the chopper.

Nick tapped the screen, indicating the rapidly approaching North Korean attack helicopters.

“Shit. It’s the cops.” Christopher sighed.

“Yeah. Pretty much, except they’re loaded way heavier than any cops I’ve ever come up against,” Nick said.

“So let’s just pull over.”

“I don’t follow,” Nick said, furrowing his brow.

“No, I get it,” Johnny said. “He’s right. I used to be a cop. They wanted us shot down, they would’ve already opened fire. They want to see what we’re up to. We land, it could buy us a minute or two, put them on the ground with us. Then we’d have a shot at taking them out.”

“All right,” Nick said. “Find a spot and land this thing. Daniel! You up for some target practice?”

“Fuckin’ A, boss.”

“Load up. We’re going to be hitting ground soon.”

“Copy that.”

“Hey, Nick? I’m getting a hit on 1-9 Victor,” Johnny said, tossing his headset to Nick.

“This is CO 4-7 Echo broadcasting on channel 1-9 Victor. Anyone copy?” Nick said.

“CO G Comp, second MSOB,” Lieutenant Nathan’s voice came across the line. He sounded bored.

“Nathan! Nick Morrow. We’re inbound in a stolen Chinese helicopter. Approximately eighty miles from you, and about to take a lot of fire.”

“We’ll call in some backup and start heading your way. We ditch stealth, we can be there in a half an hour.”

“Fast as you can. We’ll try to stay alive until you get here.”

“Hang tight. We’re loading up now.”

Nick cut the connection and grabbed hold of the back of Johnny’s chair as the helicopter started to descend. On the chopper’s rear-camera feed, he saw that the two North Korean helicopters were following suit.

Nick picked up an M4 and joined Daniel at the stolen chopper’s rear-side hatch. “How ya doin’, Daniel?”

“Good, sir. I was lucky. Kevlar took most of the damage.”

“Think you can clip a helicopter pilot through the canopy of his chopper?”

“I do love a challenge, boss.”

“Nathan’s on the comm, Nick!” Johnny yelled. “Says we’ve got four Apaches inbound at NES!”

“What’s NES?” Daniel asked.

“Never Exceed Speed,” Nick answered. “Better than two hundred twenty miles an hour.”

“Shit. That’s fast.”

“Yes. Yes, it is. If they launched from the front line, that means they can be here in ten minutes. Probably less. Carson! New plan!”

“Sir?”

“This thing’s faster than those choppers. Take us as low as you can, then punch the speed and run like hell. We’ve got AH-64s inbound. Move this thing around like you’re on meth, and they might not be able to get a lock on us.”

“On it, sir!”

“Shit. And I was looking forward to making that shot.” Daniel grinned, slinging his rifle behind his back.

The ground came up fast. Nick kept his eyes glued to the rear-camera feed. The North Korean attack choppers dove with them. For a moment, it looked like they were actually gaining on Nick and his people. As Carson brought the huge chopper to within four hundred feet of the ground, though, the MI-26 began to pull away. The two MI-17s opened fire, and Carson juked the massive chopper from side to side.

“Everybody hold onto something!” Nick yelled. A few bullets ricocheted off the chopper, but most of them went far wide. Even with the computer-augmented targeting systems on the North Korean choppers, the distance, speed and frantic motion of the bigger ship made getting an exact target lock nearly impossible.

Or so Nick hoped.

He made his way to the front of the chopper, bracing himself against Carson and Johnny’s chairs. “How we doing up here?”

“Just shy of a hundred sixty knots. Really pushing it. Computers say they’re doing just over a hundred thirty-five knots. Their rockets can travel a hell of a lot faster than that, though,” Carson said.

“We have flares? Chaff? Anything we can throw off to confuse the rockets?”

“Prayers.” Johnny shrugged. “This is a cargo heli, stripped down for the EM-pulse weapon. We’re lucky there are still chairs in this crate.”

“We’ve gotta keep ‘em busy for a couple of minutes. Daniel! You’re gonna get a chance to make that shot after all. Round up two more guys and grab all the ammo we have left.” Nick grabbed four paracord straps and carried them to the back of the chopper. “Johnny, open the rear hatch just a crack. Everyone else, strap in,” he ordered, passing the straps to Daniel, Michael and Christopher.

The four of them hooked themselves to the chopper’s superstructure and belly-crawled to the narrow opening in the rear hatch, poking their rifles behind them.

“Fire when ready, gents.” Nick smiled, pulling the trigger on his M4. He doubted whether any of their bullets hit the mark, but at least he felt like they were doing something.

The MI-17s were more than three miles back—little more than blotches in the sky—but maybe they’d get lucky and clip one of them.

“Incoming rockets! Everyone hold on!” Johnny yelled from the front of the chopper.

“Keep firing!” Nick yelled, reloading his M4 and dumping another clip out the back of the chopper.

The four men slid to the left as the huge chopper banked. Nick felt the heat of the rocket as it passed by his side of the chopper, missing by a few feet.

“That one was too close,” Christopher muttered from beside him.

“Yep. Just keep shooting, yeah?” Nick asked.

“For all the good it’ll do.” Christopher sighed, switching his M4 for one of the stolen Chinese assault rifles and looking through the sights. He held his breath and squeezed the trigger. A half-second later, one of the MI-17s exploded in a brilliant fireball and fell out of the sky.

“Shit, Chris! What’d you do?” Michael yelled, slapping Christopher on the shoulder.

“Don’t think it was me.” Christopher smiled, nodding to the four AH-64 Apache helicopters screaming toward the one remaining MI-17.

“This is 101st Apache, Captain Reed. Hear you boys needed a hand,” a young, cheerful voice exploded over the chopper’s speakers.

“Good to see you, Captain. This is Major Evans, 138 Ranger. We’d love an escort home,” Johnny radioed back.

Nick unhooked from his straps and made his way back to the cockpit. He saw the other MI-17 explode on the rear camera feed.

“Sure thing, Major. Y’all can just relax—we’ll have you home in a jiffy.”

Epilogue

“Turn left on Dale Mabry Drive,” the navigation system said in its not-unpleasant voice. The windshield flashed a subtle left arrow just above Nick’s eyeline.

“Thank you, car, but I have been here before,” Nick grumbled, making the computer-suggested left.

His flight had been terrible. The plane had been delayed an hour at LAX, which left him with nothing to do but sit around. He’d forgotten to take anything to read, planning instead to catch some sleep on the first leg of the flight. That didn’t happen. The Los Angeles to Atlanta leg of the journey was a turbulence-fest. Then he’d had to rush to make his connection to Tampa, which was on a small, ancient turboprop Nick barely considered a plane.

Still, with all the delays factored in, he was early for the meeting. Not that he wanted to be, or was even particularly looking forward to it, but he was early nonetheless. Nick drove his rented GMC Ghost to the front gate of MacDill Air Force Base and showed the guard his ID.

“Welcome to MacDill, Colonel,” the young Airman Basic at the gate said, raising the steel bar across the road. He looked all of nineteen years old.

Nick nodded an affirmative as he piloted the Ghost through the base. The nav system kept telling him where to go, unaware that he’d made this drive a couple of times just after his ten-year service in the war. Still, Nick hadn’t been able to find the off switch for the GPS—wasn’t even sure there was one—so he did his best to tune it out as he drove up to CENTCOM headquarters. He found a place to park the car and shut down the hydrogen engine then stepped out into the muggy Florida afternoon.

“Major Morrow!” he heard someone yell across the parking lot. Looking around for the source of the voice, he saw Johnny Evans walking toward him. Evans was wearing his uniform, and had a silver star over his sternum.

“General Evans,” Nick said, smiling.

“How the hell have you been, Major?”

“It’s Lieutenant Colonel now. Well, to be more accurate, it’s Mister—I retired about a year ago.”

“Man. Lieutenant Colonel. I remember when you were a buck Lieutenant, two months north of being a convict. Hey, how’s the hand?”

Nick held up his left hand, which from the wrist to fingertips was made of black metal.

“Good. Just had it adjusted a week or so ago. Kept crushing my coffee cups,” Nick said, flexing his fingers. He could faintly hear the servo motors whirring, but he knew he’d tune the sound out soon enough.

“Good to hear. Glad to see I’m not the only one they called in for this thing. Drove up here last night from Fort Benning,” Johnny said.

“You’re still in?”

“Yeah. Got the command of the 138th Rangers Training Battalion. Scaring the crap out of all the newbs,” Johnny said, smiling.

“So your info has to be better than mine,” Nick said. “Do you know what this is all about?”

“They didn’t tell you?”

“Nope. Just got a courier sent to my door two days ago with a letter requesting that I come down here this afternoon.”

Johnny looked around and put his hand on Nick’s shoulder. “Come on. Let’s grab a cup of coffee, and I’ll fill you in.”

Johnny led Nick into CENTCOM headquarters and found an office with a coffeemaker. It was staffed by a few young Air Force officers, all of who snapped to attention as soon as they saw Johnny.

“General on the deck!” one of them said.

“Hey, guys. Give us a minute?”

“Certainly, sir!” the same young officer replied, quickly leading his men out of the room and closing the door behind him.

“You just love doing that, don’t you?” Nick asked, smirking as Johnny poured two mugs of coffee from the autodrip machine.

“Hey, they’re the ones who gave me a star. Military should expect me to abuse it every now and again. Cream? Sugar?”

“Black’s fine.”

Johnny handed Nick a mug, and the two of them sat down on opposite sides of a desk. “So, here’s the deal. The North Korean and Chinese governments are suing the U.S. military.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Wish I was. They say all the damage we caused in the war has negatively impacted their ability to survive. A nice, heavy infusion of cash will make it all better according to them, but…you’ve seen the news. We’re in kind of shit shape on that front.”

“So why am I here, then?”

“Same reason I am. They sent a long statement with the lawsuit—and in that statement, both 47 Echo and 138 Ranger are mentioned a bunch of times. You beat us, I think—three hundred and twenty-two mentions to two-eighty-nine. I’m trying not to take it personally.”

Nick sipped his coffee and shook his head.

“So they want me to…what? Answer for the charges, or something?”

“I don’t think anyone’s willing to go that far just yet. I think they just want to get everything straight on paper before they tell the Chinese and the North Koreans to go fuck themselves,” Johnny said.

***

“Lieutenant Colonel Morrow. Thanks for joining us here today,” the man seated at the center of the long table in front of Nick said. The nameplate in front of him identified him as Lieutenant General Jason Grimes, U.S. Air Force. Nick had never met the man, but knew who he was—the commander of CENTCOM, the United States Central Command. Next to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he was one of the most important men in the military.

Flanking Grimes on either side were several more Generals and Admirals from all branches of the armed forces. Nick spotted a lone Colonel at the end of the table, but everyone in the room still outranked him.

“I go where I’m needed, sir,” Nick answered. It seemed the right thing to say.

“Before we begin, let me make something very clear. We are not here to present any charges against you personally or your unit as a whole. No one’s looking to lay blame for anything here. What we are doing, Colonel, is attempting to set the record straight on a host of issues brought forth by the governments of China and North Korea. Are we clear on that?”

“Yes, sir.”

“So you can relax,” an Admiral named Hoppe said, winking.

“Copy that, sir.”

“All right. We have a lot of ground to cover here, so General Feaster, why don’t you start,” Grimes said.

“Thank you, sir. Colonel Morrow, the first thing we’d like to discuss is the discharge of a 1.58-kiloton nuclear device inside North Korea’s borders, just outside of Pyongyang. Are you familiar with the incident to which I’m referring?” a tall, thin man with salt-and-pepper hair near the end of the table said, standing up.

“Yes, sir.”

“Now, the North Korean government alleges that you destroyed a medical laboratory with almost two thousand people stationed there, both civilians and military personnel. Why don’t you tell us what happened? Apart from what we have in the official report, of course.”

Nick hadn’t read the official report—didn’t even know there was one. Though the incident was more than eleven years ago, he had no trouble recalling it like it had just happened, so he told the bigwigs his story.

As he was coming to their rescue by the Apache helicopters, the Colonel at the end of the table—an attractive blonde woman in her early forties—put up a hand to stop him. “So your story is that this was a military lab where we got the EMP prototype from. That I get,” she said. Nick squinted to read the nameplate in front of her—Marie Gayman.

“That’s correct, Colonel Gayman.”

“We knew the medical lab claim was bullshit, if you’ll pardon the language. But what the North Koreans claim, beyond the loss of life, of course, is that the incident caused permanent contamination of the area, and directly contributed to extending the war another nine years. What are your thoughts on that?” she asked.

“I’d say they were right in that it extended the war, Colonel,” Nick said. He heard some muttering from the assembled command staff, so he quickly continued. “But not in the way they’re alleging. The way the war was going back then—still early on, mind you—our forces wouldn’t have lasted another three months if that lab had stayed operational. The Electromagnetic pulse project was only one of many at that location, all of which were scheduled to deploy and kill a whole lot of American soldiers quite soon. I believe destroying that lab kept us in the game and gave us a fighting chance.”

Nick had already answered questions like these years back, but he understood why they were asking him now. They couldn’t just pull data from his reports, as most of those were still classified. They needed paperwork, testimonies to back up their counterclaims to the Chinese and North Koreans.

“A chance that ultimately led to us winning the war, would you say?” Hoppe asked, tapping some notes into the data pad in front of him.

Well, I wouldn’t say we really won anything, Nick thought. “I would, sir,” he said instead.

“Excellent, Colonel. Now, the next incident we’d like to speak to you about is the situation in Shenzhen…”

The meeting broke up for the night just after eight, with the promise of at least another full day ahead of them. Nick walked out into the cooling Florida evening and loosened his tie. He hated wearing suits, but it also felt wrong to show up to this thing in uniform now that he was retired. He took off his suit jacket and rolled up his sleeves, revealing the tattoos covering both arms. A walk to stretch his legs after six hours of sitting would be good, he reasoned, so he headed for the bay. He could see it off in the distance, only a couple hundred yards away.

As he walked along the shoreline, he looked around. It seemed as though he was alone, so he reached into his suit jacket and brought out a pack of cigarettes, quickly lighting one and inhaling.

“You know that’s illegal, right?” he heard a familiar voice from behind him.

“Hey, Chris. What are you doing here, brother?” Nick said, turning around, his face breaking into a wide smile.

“I work here, boss. Now, give me one of those smokes or I’m calling…ah, hell, I’m calling no one.” Christopher was in uniform, a Major’s oak leaf over his sternum.

Nick hugged his friend, then handed him the pack.

“Andrevich send these to you?” Christopher asked, inhaling.

“Yeah. Sends me a carton or two every month. Sad thing is I had quit before he started sending ’em, but it seemed a shame to waste them. So, are the bigwigs asking you a bunch of questions this week, too?”

“Nah. They don’t give a shit about what I’ve got to say. They’re interested in hearing it from you before they tell you the news.”

“News?”

Christopher smiled and inhaled deeply from his cigarette.

“Man, I miss these things.”

“The news, Chris.” Nick was smiling as he said it, but a small part of him felt like punching his old SIC in the gut. He knew Christopher was purposely fucking with him, and he didn’t have the patience for it after being interrogated for most of the day.

“Right. The news is…well, this,” Christopher said, reaching into his BDU jacket and handing an envelope to his old friend.

Nick opened the envelope and read aloud from the letter inside. “As of this date, unit 47 Echo is reactivated by Executive Order—” Nick broke off and looked up at Christopher. “Dammit. I guessed this might be coming.”

“The rest of the unit’s already reported in. All we need is our boss back,” Christopher said. “We got him?”

“Like I’d let you ship out without me. What’s the mission?”

Christopher laughed and shook his head. “Come on, boss. You know they never tell us that before we go. Otherwise, we just might say no.”

“Nah. We’re way too dumb to do that,” Nick said, laughing with his friend as they walked by the dark, calm bay.

About the Author

Shawn Kupfer was born in 1978 on Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota and grew up in various military towns throughout the United States and Europe. After a stint as a semipro kickboxer in Florida and an EMT in Omaha, Shawn graduated with a degree in journalism from the University of Nebraska. He has worked as both a writer and editor for various publications.

He started the Twitter Novel Project in 2009 and has since written and published five novels 140 characters at a time. Shawn currently lives in Raleigh, North Carolina, with his wife and two dogs.

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ISBN: 978-1-4268-9110-6

Copyright © 2011 by Shawn Kupfer

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All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

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Table of Contents

Copyright

Chapter 1: War Now

Chapter 2: Suspect Device

Chapter 3: Kill The Poor

Chapter 4: Under The Gun

Chapter 5: Death Comes Ripping

Chapter 6: Soundtrack to a Killing Spree

Chapter 7: New Blood

Chapter 8: Communist Eyes

Chapter 9: Ripper

Chapter 10: Seeing Red

Chapter 11: City of the Dead

Chapter 12: Autonomy

Chapter 13: Thirsty and Miserable

Chapter 14: Search and Destroy

Chapter 15: Saturday Night Holocaust

Chapter 16: What We Do Is Secret

Chapter 17: Skulls

Chapter 18: Walk Among Us

Chapter 19: Career Opportunities

Chapter 20: X Offender

Chapter 21: Runaway Return

Chapter 22: New Direction

Chapter 23: Into the Dark

Chapter 24: We Are 138

Chapter 25: The Warrior’s Code

Chapter 26: Good Guys Don’t Wear White

Chapter 27: Trenches

Chapter 28: Boredom

Chapter 29: Death Before Dishonor

Chapter 30: Chemical Warfare

Chapter 31: Room Thirteen

Chapter 32: We Got The Neutron Bomb

Chapter 33: Shut Down (Annihilation Man)

Chapter 34: Speak of the Devil

Epilogue

About the Author