Fear and Anger (The 47 Echo Series) (25 page)

Or America’s war, possibly
, Nick admitted to himself, remembering his conversation with Jason Black.

The F3 had an iPod dock, so Nick clicked the device into the holder and started scrolling through the playlists. He hoped the guy who formerly owned the thing had been the type to bypass the Great Firewall of China and steal some decent music. Having to listen to horrible Chinese pop and rap for the next twelve hours would be worse than silence. The first thing that caught his eye was Texas Death Machine, a thrash-metal band from England. Most of their stuff had come out when Nick was in grade school, but his brother Stan had a few of their albums. They were loud, aggressive, and screamy – perfect for Nick’s mood. He pressed “play” and turned the volume way up.

It took him a few songs before he realized that blasting the stereo was probably a bad idea. There was no way he’d be able to hear the stolen radio over the music, so he turned the volume down to a much quieter level.

“Huh. This stuff doesn’t sound near as good when it’s not really, really loud,” Nick said to himself, shrugging and scrolling through to see what else he could find.

He found a compilation of punk from the late 70s and early 80s – a box set, they used to be called when he was a kid. Nick hadn’t listened to much punk when he was younger – his brother Stan had been the one to fill the angry, rebellious youth role in the family – but he’d gotten into the genre recently, thanks to Mary. Her dad was in a punk band when she was young, and her love of the music was contagious. Everyone in 47 Echo was pretty familiar with the work of The Misfits, Black Flag, The Sex Pistols, and The Dead Kennedys now.

This compilation had bands Nick had never heard of – Gogol Bordello, NOFX, Fugazi – in addition to the ones he knew. Still, all of it was appropriately aggressive, and all of it sounded just fine when played at a medium volume. As he drove, he wondered if he’d be able to hear the stolen hand radios over the more reasonable volume, but he got his answer soon enough when one of the radios sent out a burst of static. He checked – it was the one he’d stolen from the Special Ops guys in Binzhou.

The static pulsed again a few seconds later, but this time, words followed it. A message, in English.

“American operative,” a voice came from the radio. It was male, monotone, flat. “We know you have a radio tuned to this frequency. Respond.”

“Yeah, that’s likely,” Nick scoffed.

“We are willing to discuss terms for your peaceful surrender and return to your forces,” the voice said. Again, flat, monotone. Like a computer doing a bad impression of a human being.

Nick was about to say something sarcastic back to the voice, and reached for the radio to do so, but his hand froze as the other hand radio – the one Jason Black had given him – started transmitting.

“The transmission is in progress. As soon as he responds, get the locator running,” another voice, this one definitely human and speaking Mandarin, said.

“Affirmative. We’ll be able to get a location if he stays on the line for ten or more seconds,” another voice, also human, responded.

“And if he doesn’t respond?” the first voice asked as the message in English repeated itself on the first radio.

“Five minutes, maybe ten. We’ve advised all Beijing Special Forces to abandon that frequency. If his radio is on, we’ll get it eventually.”

“Well, fuck that,” Nick muttered, rolling down his window and grabbing the radio. He tossed the radio out onto the street, smiling to himself as he rolled the window back up.

“American operative,” the radio still on the passenger seat repeated. “We know you have a radio tuned to this frequency. Respond.”

Shit! I threw out the wrong radio!
Nick yelled at himself, grabbing the only remaining handset and tossing it out the window, as well.

The only sound in the F3’s cabin was now the end of a punk song Nick had never heard before. Nick felt sweat on his upper lip, even though it was chilly outside and the window was still down.

“Calm down,” he muttered to himself, trying to quiet the subtle nausea in his stomach – the kind of feeling he got from knowing he’d just made a huge mistake. “At least they can’t track you anymore.”

The words failed to reassure him as the next song on the iPod came up – he recognized it as The Misfits instantly.

Hey, bright side – at least I can turn this up as loud as I want now.

Nick cranked the volume as high as it was go and slowly increased the pressure on the accelerator. All at once, he was reminded of driving to the construction site in the early morning, working on an apartment complex in Culver City – getting up at four in the morning and driving the darkened, abandoned freeways. At the same time, he remembered high school, remembered sneaking out at two in the morning, borrowing his brother’s car and just driving for hours while the streets were empty. The cool air blowing in through the window and the faint smell of the ocean... it was familiar. Almost comforting. Almost like home.

It was an experience he and Christopher had in common – driving through the dark, late at night, in someone else’s car. Christopher had a different ocean, of course, and most of the cars were stolen, but both men had the same experience from their high-school days. Christopher – a guy he probably never would have spoken to before the war, a guy whose path would never have crossed with his own. Despite being on different coasts, the two ran completely different lives. Nick got up every morning and drove to a job, worked for eight hours, caught a meal, and helped his mother at her restaurant. Christopher smoked dope, slept until three in the afternoon, and spent the night running cons or breaking and entering. In the real world, they’d never hang out together. Now they were brothers.

Nick hoped Jason Black had been able to get a message to Christopher, to let him know Nick was alive and still running. He didn’t know what his crew was up to, what kind of asinine mission Sawyer Ross had sent them on in his absence, but if Christopher was in command of 47 Echo, he didn’t need to waste any energy worrying about Nick.

Nick tried to put his friends out of his mind and focus on the road – he didn’t need to waste energy worrying any more than Christopher did.

“Eyes front, foot on the gas,” Nick told himself, taking a deep breath through his nose and blowing it out slowly through his mouth.

When his phone rang an hour later and it was Jason Black on the other end of the line, Nick was almost not surprised. The Air Force Captain – or perhaps not, Nick realized – didn’t bother to say hello, or to wait for Nick to. He just started talking.

“Couple of dead PLA spec ops guys, another one all fucked up. Blown up helicopter. Your work, I presume?”

“Yeah,” Nick replied.

“You might really have a few issues you need to work out, man. Just sayin’.”

He hadn’t really talked to Jason Black much over the last couple of years – three times, to be exact. But Nick was curious and fascinated at the same time.

He acts like there isn’t even a war on
, he thought. From Black’s tone of voice, it was like he was calling a buddy on a slow Tuesday night to bullshit while the Lakers game was at halftime.

“Looks like Ghost is hip to your route, or at least where you’re headed in a general sense,” Black continued. “If I were you, I’d expect heavy resistance at the North Korean border. That’s where they’ll try to set up a choke point.”

“I had a feeling. Any suggestions?”

“Yeah. Try not to get killed.”

“OK. Let me rephrase. Any
helpful
suggestions?”

“I ain’t got much for you, I’m afraid. I’d pitch in and help out if I could, but this blue-suiter you saddled me with won’t keep. I tried to get our nearest FOB to send a Death Jet to help fuck up Ghost’s program, but...”

“No go,” Nick said, nodding.

“Well, sort of. They kinda don’t believe you’re still kicking. And since I’m not supposed to be here – they think I’m off at Rattlesnake running a surveillance upgrade – I can’t convince them otherwise. You’re –”

“On my own. Got it.”

“Sorry, Lieutenant.”

“I’ll deal. Any idea what I’m looking at? Numbers-wise?”

“We don’t really have an accurate count. Ghost is pretty secretive.”

“Well, it
is
right there in the name. But I’m guessing you have a ballpark?”

“We estimate the total unit strength somewhere in the high hundreds. You’re high-priority, but they got other shit to do. If I were a betting man, I’d say... fifty? A hundred?”

“Outstanding,” Nick said flatly. “What about equipment? Ordinance?”

“Whatever they need, they get. Helicopters, explosives, shit we probably haven’t even seen yet. Funding for Ghost is black-book, but we know it’s a lot.”

Nick dug into his front pocket and pulled out a pack of the Red Suns Feng had given him. With one hand, he thumbed open the pack, drew out a cigarette, and tossed it in the general direction of his face. He surprised himself by catching it by the filter in his mouth. He pulled the lighter from the pack, lit the smoke, and took a deep breath.

“You still there, LT?”

“Yeah. You’d better have decent beer on ice when I get back. I mean IPA or better. Preferably Los Angeles local.”

“That’s the spirit. Now move your ass. I got a couple hundred bucks on you.”

The line went dead – whether Jason Black hung up or the connection dropped didn’t really matter. They didn’t have a hell of a lot more to say to each other, anyway.

“Ah, well,” Nick said to himself, turning the volume on the stereo back to maximum. “At least I won’t have to deal with the stimulant detox when I’m dead.”

Chapter Thirty-One

Walking In The Dark

“Let me guess. There’s a problem,” Christopher said without turning around in his chair.

He’d thought it was Carson coming up behind him, but the voice that answered was definitely of a higher register. Still, Christopher probably would have said the same no matter who was approaching his perch in the Razor’s passenger seat. The fact that it was Mary coming to see him really didn’t make any difference – it was that kind of day. Hell, it’d been that kind of
mission
.

“Problem is the right word,” Mary said, her voice dropping as she walked up to the side of his chair. It was only loud enough for Christopher and Bryce to hear when she continued: “Fucking showstopper might be even more appropriate.”

“Don’t suppose I could get you to sugarcoat it? Couch the bad news in some good news?” Christopher said, sighing.

“Um... we still have some of those vegetarian MREs you like,” Mary said, her voice flat. It was obvious she was really stretching for something that could be considered “good news.”

“Mikey is the one who digs on those,” Bryce reminded her softly.

“Shit. You’re right. Sorry, then, Chief. No good news.”

“Fine. Better just hit me with the bad news.”

“Stealth leak is gone.”

“We lost it when we stopped to lose our leash?” Bryce asked, careful to keep his voice low.

Mary shook her head.

“No. We weren’t stopped that long – I managed to pick it up again thanks to the NoKo listening posts. Then, about ten minutes ago, the trail just vanished. No intermittent signals, no squawk. Dead air.”

“NoKos?” Christopher asked.

“If they still have it, they’re not telling.”

“What could cause that?” Christopher asked, glancing at both Bryce and Mary. The two of them knew the Razors better than anyone onboard – if either of them had ideas, he wanted to hear them.

“Complete signal shutdown,” Bryce said, shrugging.

“Like, pccccch?” Christopher asked, miming an explosion with his hands.

“Possible, but unlikely,” Mary told him. “We’d have probably picked up something on the NoKo net, if not on our own sensors when the Razor’s solid fuel blew.”

“So, then...” Christopher said, drawing out the last word.

“They stopped. Shut everything down. Engine, comms, adaptive camo. Everything. Killed all the power,” Mary said.

“Why do that?” Christopher asked.

“Two reasons I can think of,” Bryce said, stifling a yawn and checking the nav system. “One, they met up with a contact and decided to dump the Razor early. Load that thing on a flatbed and be rid of us. Two...”

“They detected the leak,” Christopher said, catching on. “They stopped to cover for the night and try to patch it, or try to contact their handlers to come get their new truck.”

“That’s my guess,” Bryce said.

“Mary?”

“I agree, Chris. They’re stopped and covered.”

“Then we might have one more shot to grab them,” Christopher said, forcing himself to grin. He suddenly realized why Nick didn’t smile much these days.

“If we’re lucky,” Mary said.

“Go wake up Pete and Carson,” Christopher told Mary. “Then you three start working on your best guess on where they could have covered. I want your top three possibilities ASAP, clear?”

“On it, Chief.”

“Bryce, throw us in park at the next good spot. I want you and Daniel on weapons. Make sure everyone’s locked and loaded with enough extra rounds to drop a pissed-off rhino.”

“Roger that,” Bryce said, nodding.

“Martin!” Christopher yelled loud enough for their demolitions expert to hear from his chair at the back of the vehicle.

“Yeah?”

“Start putting together the nastiest shit you can come up with!”

“Chief, you’re my favorite person ever,” Martin shouted back.

* * *

“I mean, there’s no way to know for sure,” Peter said, shrugging. “All four of these make excellent hide spots.”

Christopher had asked for three possible cover locations for a 28-ton all-terrain vehicle that was now visible to the naked eye. His team had come up with four, and couldn’t confidently rank them in order of most to least likely.

“So what? We take our best guess?” Gabriel asked, an eyebrow arched high as if to say
please tell me that’s not the plan
.