Fear and Anger (The 47 Echo Series) (2 page)

“OK, chief. Target on your back. Your face was all over the place before the power went out. What’s your move?” Nick mumbled as he slung the Type 95 over his shoulder.

There were three possibilities, as near as he could figure. One: surrender. With the meltdown they’d caused at Shanghai’s nuclear plant, he doubted the local authorities would treat him nicely. The Geneva Convention would be out the window. They’d torture him – to death if he was lucky. No go.

Two: break for the water. Try and get a boat, get to Japan. Japan was neutral in this particular conflict, politically anyway. Nick had heard rumors they were allowing Americans to use a few coastal cities as airbases, all on the down-low, of course. But that was their first escape plan from Shanghai that morning, and the ports had all been insanely guarded. He’d most likely be captured, which was essentially surrendering. Nope.

Three: overland. The long way. Walk out the same way he’d walked in, through all of mainland China and Outer Mongolia. While the toughest of the three options, it was probably also the one that offered the most success. If he could make it out of the city, he could disappear. China was a big country, and Nick looked Chinese. He spoke Mandarin and Cantonese. It would take a while – it had taken them weeks to get into Shanghai working as a team – but it was also his best chance of making it out alive.

No better time to move than now
, Nick reasoned, cracking the warehouse door nearest the street and taking a peek outside. There would still be a fair amount of chaos in the streets. The power outage, the American fighters dropping bombs on the city... if he could keep his head down and find a ride, he actually had a shot.

The street outside the warehouse was calm, but that was why he and his team had picked this area in the first place – it was deserted. Nick walked outside, keeping his hand on the pistol in his hip holster as he walked, eyes scanning for any other human beings in uniforms. He also kept an eye out for any cars he could steal, though they’d pretty much have to be running with the keys in them. He’d started out the war as a convict, but he never learned how to steal a car. He’d just learned how to kill.

As he came out of the warehouse district, he heard voices. Shouts. Sirens. A cacophony of emergency sounds, the closest a city could get to screaming. His right hand gripped the pistol tighter as he walked, ready to pull it and start firing in a quarter of a second if the need arose.

It didn’t. As he approached the first major intersection, a bank building on one corner and a smoking pile of rubble on the opposite corner, he could see that no one was paying attention to his shit. They had their own problems to deal with, mainly those of the victims of the building reduced to concrete dust. Several Chinese Army medics were on scene, but they were overwhelmed with the amount of bloody casualties volunteers were pulling from the rubble.

Must’ve been the F-35s
, Nick thought, remembering seeing the Navy jets streak across the skies hours before.
They said they were only going to bomb military targets. This looks like it used to be an office building
.

One of the medics looked up at him as he passed, but said nothing. Nick nodded to the young man, who returned the nod – a short, cursory head bob – before returning to the 20-year-old kid in a shirt and tie now missing most of his left arm. Nick just kept walking. There was nothing he could do here, nothing except get himself caught. And if the Navy had started bombing civilian targets... well, the torture thing was all but a certainty now.

“We’ve got the pilot!” Nick heard someone yell from the other side of the rubble pile. As he walked around the building, he could see that it hadn’t been bombed – the remains of a Navy F-35 Lightning II, part of the rear stabilizers and single engine, was sticking out of the pile of rubble. Not bombed, then – the building was hit when the F-35 had gone down. That made Nick feel slightly less horrible about being in the American military.

“Is he alive?” someone else yelled, but before the original voice could respond, Nick heard something he hadn’t expected to hear again – a Southern drawl.

“Get your goddamn hands off me, asshole!”

It was a male voice, strong, deep, but panicked. Nick knew the feeling – being on your own in enemy territory was no picnic. He moved towards the sound of the drawl, his hand still heavy on the Type 77 on his hip.

He caught sight of the pilot as he rounded the wreck of the F-35. The man in the flight suit was almost a block away, being marched toward the demolished office building at the end of an assault rifle. The soldier holding him at gunpoint couldn’t be more than 19 years old, but his jaw was set and his shoulders were squared. He was angry, and Nick could see it from down the street.

He could also see that the pilot’s flight suit was stained with blood from the right knee down, and he was hobbling badly. The kid with the assault rifle didn’t seem to care about the severity of the pilot’s injuries – he kept pushing the man forward with the barrel, and when the pilot fell, the soldier leveled the rifle at his head.

“Agent Chen, MSS!” Nick yelled, jogging to meet the young soldier and his downed captive. He held his faked credentials high as he ran – they said his name was Agent Li, but that cover was well past burned. He only hoped the kid wouldn’t look too closely.

The kid looked up at him, glaring into Nick’s eyes. He didn’t have any intention of studying Nick’s faked ID. He just wanted to shoot this
guizi
– this foreigner – in the head and hang his corpse from a streetlight. His rifle didn’t move a centimeter, its barrel still deadshot-aimed at the side of the pilot’s skull.

He caught a glimpse of the pilot as he approached – young guy, pale skin, blond hair. The wrecked leg wasn’t his only wound – there was a large, oozing laceration on the left side of his temple. Even as messed up as he was, the kid looked alert, and just as angry as the soldier who was about to ventilate his skull.

“Lower your weapon, Corporal,” Nick shouted. “This man is a
guizi
dog, but he needs to be questioned.”

The soldier didn’t move a bit. He still glared at Nick, and still held his weapon to the young aviator’s head. Nick got close enough to touch both of them, shoving his fake ID back into his pocket as he did.

“I said lower your weapon. Do it now. I’m taking custody of this prisoner,” Nick growled, slowly drawing the Type 77 from his holster and aiming it at the pilot.

He didn’t take his eyes off the young soldier, but he made sure his moves were slow and deliberate, and that the pistol was aimed nowhere near the pissed-off Chinese Corporal. He knew the rank insignia on his lapels indicated he was a Major – that and his fictional association with the Ministry of State Security meant the kid should have listened to him instantly. It seemed to be taking ages, but the soldier eventually lowered his weapon a couple of inches. That was as good as he was going to get out of this guy – the anger in his eyes was almost a solid, physical force covering both Nick and the pilot.

“Good man,” Nick said, keeping his voice deep and steady and making sure his eyes stayed locked on the young Corporal’s. The more he stared, the more the kid backed down, until his barrel was pointed at the filthy street.

Nick finally let himself look past the young soldier, down the street to where he’d captured the pilot. Parked haphazardly, with the driver’s door still open, Nick saw a BJ2022 – a Brave Warrior utility vehicle. It was the small version, which was still the size of a large sport-utility vehicle. It was the People’s Liberation Army’s basic kickaround jeep, based on the Russian GAZ trucks of a decade ago. There had to be about a half a million of them in service, and Nick guessed they wouldn’t miss one.

“That your truck back there, Corporal?”

The soldier opened his mouth to respond, but before he could speak, he was interrupted by the pilot, who’d managed to struggle into a sitting position.

“Would one of you fucking Chinks just shoot me already?” he grumbled.

Without looking, Nick placed his right boot on the pilot’s left shoulder and pushed, sending him back to the pavement. That brought a smile from the young Corporal.

“Yes, sir.”

“I’m borrowing it. What unit are you with?”

“
Guǐ
,” the soldier said, flatly, as if no other explanation was needed. Nick searched his brain for the meaning –
Ghost
.

Nick nodded as if he understood, because the young soldier clearly expected it to mean something to him.

“I’ll make sure it gets back to you.”

Without giving the soldier any chance to argue, Nick hauled the pilot to his feet and dragged him away, towards the idling Brave Warrior. As soon as they were a hundred feet or so from the Corporal and the medics working on the office-building victims, Nick spoke quietly to the pilot he was marching down the street.

“Stay calm,” he said in English. “I’m getting both of us out of here. Just keep quiet and act like I’m taking you somewhere you really don’t want to go.”

“You are taking me somewhere I don’t want to go,” the pilot growled back.

“Which part of ‘keep quiet’ was so goddamn hard for you to understand? I don’t want to have to knock you out, but I will.”

“You speak English pretty good for a Chink,” the pilot spat.

“Really? You’re just not getting it, are you?” Nick said with a sigh.

The pilot didn’t say anything to that, thankfully. Nick managed to drag him the rest of the way to the truck in silence. He lifted the pilot into the passenger seat, keeping the pistol aimed at him in case he decided to run. Keeping the gun up, Nick crossed around the front side of the Brave Warrior and climbed into the driver’s seat. The engine was still running – the Corporal must have done a quick jump-out when he saw the pilot wandering around. Nick slammed the driver’s door and put the truck in gear.

“OK. We’re heading out of the city, but it’s only fair to warn you, I don’t really know where we’re going. Keep your head down below the windows, if you can,” Nick said.

“I’m not doing a fucking thing you say,” the pilot mumbled. “I don’t take orders from Chink army officers.”

“Well, that’s fortunate. Because I’m a U.S. Marine. Lieutenant Nick Morrow, 47 Echo SRF,” Nick said as he turned the truck around and motored away from the crash site.

“Bullshit,” the pilot spat.

“Well, you’re going to be a hell of a lot of fun,” Nick said, sighing.
 

Chapter Three

Another Bag of Bricks

Rush hadn’t understood the need to go get Nick, Christopher told himself. He just hadn’t gotten how important the guy was to the team, hell, to the damn war. But there were people back at Firebase Zulu who would understand, who would greenlight the rescue mission as soon as Christopher and his team touched down on the helipad. He kept telling himself that as the Air Force C-17 winged them to Camp Justice, and was so sure of it by the time he landed that he spent the entire helicopter trip from Justice to Zulu planning the rescue mission in his head.

It was a good sign, then, when an Army convict ran up to him as soon as he stepped off of the Black Hawk helicopter at Firebase Zulu. The convict was a messenger, dispatched to tell Christopher and Ortiz-Gonzales that they were to report to Colonel Sawyer Ross, the commander of all of the Special Forces at Zulu, immediately. It was even more encouraging when Christopher saw Lt. Colonel Johnny Evans in the office with Ross – they were there to discuss the rescue mission. Christopher was sure of it.

First, the debrief. Christopher had expected that, and quickly ran through the events of the mission – the attack on the city’s nuclear plant, the loss of their medic Ben Briggs. The rescue by Ortiz-Gonzales. The fact that they’d had to leave Nick there. Then Ortiz-Gonzales gave her report. Then Evans gave his. And just when Christopher was about to blurt out “what about Lieutenant Morrow,” Evans beat him to it.

“Any word on Lieutenant Morrow, sir?” Evans asked.

“No, Colonel. He’s a smart guy—when he realized a rescue wasn’t on the way, he probably went ghost and did it fast,” Ross said.

“So when does the rescue mission go into China, sir?” Christopher asked.

“It doesn’t. We managed to place some deep-cover operatives inside the mainland during the blackout, and they’ve been told to keep their eyes and ears open for Lieutenant Morrow. But the Chinese have obviously beefed up border patrols since we bombed the shit out of them. No chance of getting even a small team in, at least not yet.”

“But, Colonel –”

“I know, Sergeant Lee. I hate the shit out of the situation, too. But I can’t get men killed on the hopes of saving one Marine, no matter who that Marine is.”

“Then let me go alone, Colonel. I know the country, at least a little bit. I could do it,” Christopher said.

“I’m afraid that’s also an impossibility. You’re taking over command of 47 Echo, Sergeant, with a promotion to Gunnery Sergeant. And 47 Echo needs a Marine commander, especially now with the Chinese and the North Koreans planning a retaliation for the bombings.”

Christopher opened his mouth to speak again, but Johnny Evans cut him off with a look. The younger man stayed silent, grinding his teeth instead of speaking.

“That’s all for the moment. You’re dismissed. Get some rack time and some decent food—you’ve all earned it,” Ross said.

Christopher sat in his chair for a long moment. His brain wasn’t processing what he’d just heard. No rescue mission. Nothing. Nick was really on his own.

“I said you’re dismissed, Sergeant,” Ross repeated, nodding toward the door.

“Right. Sorry. Yes, sir,” Christopher mumbled, standing and throwing a salute at his commanding officer before following Evans out of the room.

The elevator ride from Ross’ subterranean office was silent, and Christopher got the distinct impression that Evans had nothing to say. What could he say in that situation? He had to be as confused and pissed off as Christopher was.