Fear and Anger (The 47 Echo Series) (26 page)

“Or do we split up, steal some local transpo,” Michael started, “Check each location and keep in contact on 1-9 Victor?”

“That was my first thought,” Christopher said. “On paper, that gives us the best chance of finding them quick.”

“There are problems with that, though,” Carson said. “Availability/reliability of local transport. Fact that we’re sure they can’t transmit, but not sure they don’t have hand radios that can receive 1-9 Victor. And worse, say a short-handed team catches them in local transpo? Outgunned doesn’t even begin to cover it.”

“So, what, then?” Anthony asked. It was the first time Christopher had heard him speak in hours.

“Bryce?”

“I managed to put together a course that’ll hit all four spots,” Bryce told them, bringing up a map on the large plasma. “It’s about 40 square miles, but if we hump it, we should hit ‘em all before sunup.”

“Yeah,” Carson said, “problem is, we don’t know how long it’ll take them to fix their leak, if that’s what they’re doing.”

“I’ve already given the Chief an estimate on the minimum damage they could have,” Mary said. Christopher could see the exasperation on her face – they’d gone over this already, and yet, Carson was bringing it up because he didn’t like Christopher’s original decision. He felt heat rushing to his face and hoped the red lights inside the Razor masked his flushed skin.

“Hey. Staff Sergeant. We have a problem here?” Christopher said, trying and failing to keep his voice from showing his anger.

“No problem, Gunnery Sergeant.”

“Then stop pushing for a plan I’ve already decided against. We clear on that? Because your ass can walk home if you prefer.”

“Solid copy. Sorry, Gunny.”

“Don’t be sorry. Just cut the bullshit.”

Carson opened his mouth to say something, apparently thought better of it, closed his mouth, and nodded. Christopher could see what the Ranger was up to. He didn’t care one way or the other whose plan they went with. He just wanted to show everyone who he thought
should
be running this mission. He wanted everyone to see Christopher the way he did: a joke, a two-bit con man who shouldn’t be in charge of a Chik-Fil-A, much less $14 million worth of military hardware and nine other lives.

Christopher made a note to have a conversation with Peter. They needed a signal to knock this guy the fuck out if he became a problem.

The rest of the 47 Echo crew stood silent, visibly uncomfortable, like kids who had just watched their mother tell their father he was terrible in the sack.

“Bryce, we’re not getting anywhere just sitting here. Get back on the wheel. The rest of you, gear up – weapons, TotalVis, armor. We’re going to need to search these areas on foot, and I want each of you ready for whatever might pop up out there. Let’s move, people.”

Peter and Bryce got moving first, but the rest of the crew followed almost instantly. In a moment, they were all busy at their stations, and the Razor was rolling again. Carson was standing over Anthony’s shoulder at the comm station. Christopher tapped him on the shoulder.

“Let’s talk, Sergeant.”

“Sure thing, Gunny.”

Finding a place on the fully loaded Razor to have a private conversation wasn’t going to happen. The closest thing to isolation was the currently unoccupied middle section of the vehicle, where the four fold-down racks were currently up. Christopher leaned against the wall and motioned for Carson to lean in close.

“Look, man. I know you think I’m just a criminal scumfuck who lucked his way into a pardon. There’s no way you think I should be running this mission.”

Carson started to say something, but Christopher held up his hand and continued.

“Truth be told, I don’t give a fuck what you think. Fact is, I am in command. These are my people. You either fall in line with that and do your goddamned job, or you may find that you’re right. That I am just a criminal scumfuck. And a criminal scumfuck will just shoot you in the head and leave your body to rot out here. And my people will back me up that it was North Koreans or Chinese who shot you, ‘cause guess what? You’re on a truck full of criminal scumfucks, pal. Next time you feel the need to show everyone how smart you are, remember that.”

Before Carson had a chance to reply, Christopher turned his back on the young Ranger and stalked back up to the front of the Razor. He dropped into the passenger seat and strapped himself in tightly. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Bryce start to open his mouth.

“Unless it’s mission critical, bro, I’d stow it for now,” Christopher said, sighing.

“It could be,” Bryce said. It was impossible to tell by his tone whether he was joking, but then, it always was.

“Fire away, then.”

“Good job handling the Ranger. He’s been acting like he thinks he calls the shots for a while now. He needed some readjustment.”

“But?”

“He’s a kid, Chief. Kids are fucking stupid. They do stupid shit, and say stupid shit. Remember? You used to be one.”

“Your point, Bryce?”

“Ranger school and all that shit has this kid brainwashed to think he’s a stone-cold killing machine who’s 100 percent on top of his shit. There’s a reason they do that.”

Christopher wanted to tell his driver to just shut the fuck up and drive, but the last two years had taught him that Bryce rarely spoke this much. If he was talking, it was because he had something to say – and when Bryce had something to say, it was best to listen. The guy was only a few years older than Christopher, but he seemed wiser than a man three times his age.

“Make your point, Bryce. I’m too goddamn tired.”

“We need him to think he’s still on top of his shit, or he’s a liability. I’m not in your shoes, but if I was, I’d make sure to put him back in a position where he feels like he’s got some measure of control pretty soon. You’ve shown who’s top dog, but you might have shut him down a little too hard.”

Christopher closed his eyes and nodded.

“After a nap. Wake me up when we hit the first point.”

“Roger that, Chief.”

Chapter Thirty-Two

Wrong ‘Em Boyo

Nick thought he’d made it five hours without stimulants, without reaching into his pocket and taking twice as many pills as the label suggested. He looked at the clock. 

It had been an hour and a half. 

On the plus side, it had been almost a thousand miles since he’d mistakenly thrown the Ghost Unit radio out the window, and it had been uneventful. He’d driven through most of a daylight cycle, and the sun was just now starting to set. 

He didn’t feel what he’d call “alert,” but he felt awake
enough
. He wasn’t likely to crash the car, and he wasn’t hallucinating his brother or his father was in the car next to him. All things considered, he was in better shape than he had a right to expect. 

That’s the way
, he told himself.
Look at the positives. You’re physically uninjured, which is a miracle in and of itself. Sure, you’re all hopped up on speed, but once you make it back to friendly territory, a little sleep and decent food will patch that up. And according to the GPS, the North Korean border is only an hour away. You’re almost there, kid. Just keep your eye on the road.

Nick had never been able to give himself any sort of functional pep talk, so he was surprised when he started feeling more confident. It was probably just that he was so tired, but man... when his brain laid it out like that, things seemed doable. Workable. Like he was actually going to make it out of this completely insane situation pretty much unscathed. 

Even as he had the thought, Nick felt himself straighten up in his seat, felt his shoulders push back and his chest puff out. 

He was going to beat the odds. Again. 

Sure, there was still the matter of probably a hundred highly-trained, well-outfitted PLA Special Operators lying in wait for him... but he’d either make it past them, or he wouldn’t. No sense in worrying about it until he had to. And he hadn’t picked up any evidence of a large unit the closer he got to the North Korean border – no suspicious helicopters, no APCs or tanks barreling down on him, no assault vehicles ramming him off the road. Maybe Jason Black was wrong.

Over the course of the next forty-five minutes, Nick managed to convince himself that Jason Black was, indeed, wrong. He was approaching the Amur River, formerly the border between Russia and China, though now North Korea had a huge chunk of former Russian soil. Black’s GPS had Nick taking a small, wooden regional bridge across the river, then shooting off into back roads into the forests. Even if there were a hundred Ghost operators out here, Nick realized, they would have to be spread very thin – the border was huge. If they placed people at every crossing the GPS had loaded... well, it was possible he’d be looking at maybe ten people.

Totally doable.

Just as Nick had the thought, he saw the helicopters. There were three of them, and they were all huge, and almost silent. He’d seen the design before, at an outpost outside of Datong. He’d also seen the same type of chopper level a four-story building with gunfire. “Doable” had just gone out the window.

It’s maybe five seconds before they open fire, and bulletproof or not, you’re fucked unless you do something
, Nick thought, turning off all the car’s lights – headlights, running lights, even dashboard lights – and switching his TotalVis goggles over to night vision. It wasn’t ideal – night vision tended to fuck with one’s depth perception – but it was better than giving the choppers lights to target in on.

He jammed the gas and zigzagged the car on and off the road, trying to make it harder for the choppers to get any sort of lock on him. They’d still get him, but Nick was going to be damned if he was going to make it easy on them.

It took Nick a full 30 seconds of this
Dukes of Hazzard
routine before he realized that no one was shooting at him. The helicopters, bristling with guns, were floating silently just in front of him, keeping pace but not taking any action.

“It’s because they want you alive, dumbass,” Nick said, shaking his head, straightening out the car, and slowing down to a respectable 60 miles an hour. It wasn’t as if he could outrun them – even the cheapest commercial chopper could go faster than his supercharged little sedan – and smashing into a tree at 100mph wasn’t the way he wanted to go. He’d just have to keep heading for the border and wait for Ghost to make its move.

The choppers had probably been flying a search pattern, Nick realized, hoping to pick up a lone car headed for North Korea. His freakout and subsequent display of high-school-level evasive driving had done nothing but confirm that yes, indeed, this was the car they were looking for.

Stupid, stupid, stupid. You didn’t used to fuck up this much.

Nick hated to admit it, but his abused, REM-starved brain had a point. He’d been a shitshow for the last few days, making one bad decision after another. And this most recent fuckup would probably land him in a Chinese prison for the rest of whatever life he had left before someone decided to torture him to death.  

The North Korean border was only ten minutes away now, and aside from the choppers floating just ahead of him like bored phantoms, there was no sign of any Special Operations presence. The helicopters kept on course with the road, almost as if...

They’re leading you right into the kill zone.

Nick blinked a few times as if that would clear his mind as well as his vision, but both remained spotty. He had two options, as near as he could figure: continue down the road and take his chances with whatever Ghost had waiting for him, or try to off-road it. The sedan wasn’t built for off-road, and there was still the small problem of crossing the Amur River. The only bridge nearby he knew of was the one on his GPS, and there was no telling how far he’d have to go in either direction to find another one. Besides, even if he did, the choppers wouldn’t have much problem beating him to the next bridge, too.

“When one has made a decision to kill a person, it will not do to go about it in a roundabout way. It is best to charge in headlong,” Nick mumbled under his breath before he realized what he was saying.

The
Hagakure
. His dad made him read it more than once. The things his father had said had kept him alive thus far, so why not this one, too?

Bet I can cut it down to seven minutes if I floor it
, Nick thought, jamming the accelerator to the carpet.

For a few minutes, nothing changed. The helicopters hung a couple of football fields ahead of him, matching his speed but making no attempt to intercept. Nick wondered if they might be drones, but their size precluded that – if he was to guess, each one had room for 20 or more troops, even with all of the weapons systems pointing out from every angle.

It was odd. Part of his brain knew he was caught, that the best thing for him to do was stop, throw his weapons as far from him as possible, and get used to the idea of being a POW. But the rest of him clung to the belief that he’d find a way out of this alive, and that he’d get to see his friends again. Logic seemed to hold no sway with the latter part of his brain; it was operating exclusively on adrenaline, on fear and anger.

Fuck them. No way I’m stopping now.

A mile and a half from the bridge, one of the helicopters finally broke formation, swooping low over the roadway a hundred yards ahead of Nick’s car. It didn’t stop or slow down, but a large screen on the back of the chopper flickered on. It displayed two syllables – “
停止
”.

Stop.

That was all it said, and the message wasn’t repeated in English. That was a bad sign – it meant they knew who they were dealing with, and they knew Nick could read Chinese. How they found his information was something he couldn’t worry about now, though. He was focused on disobeying that single command.

The speedometer was already at 140, but Nick gave it a little more gas, coaxing the sedan up to 155. The chopper floated away from the road, rejoining its two friends back in formation. Nick watched it ascend, then got his eyes back on the road. As he did, he immediately saw the reason the chopper had displayed that command.