Read Fear and Anger (The 47 Echo Series) Online

Authors: Shawn Kupfer

Tags: #action, #military, #sci-fi, #war

Fear and Anger (The 47 Echo Series) (3 page)

BOOK: Fear and Anger (The 47 Echo Series)
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As it turned out, that wasn’t the case. Evans was just waiting until they were on the surface and outside on the street to speak. And he wasn’t holding anything back.

“Don’t,” Evans said, “I can see it in your face.”

Christopher didn’t ask what the Colonel could see. He was planning to go back into China against orders, and apparently, he wasn’t hiding it too well.

“They’re just leaving him out to dry, Colonel. They don’t give a shit that this mission wouldn’t have happened if not for him.”

“You think Ross doesn’t realize that? Or that I don’t? When you met me, I’d just left eight of my men dead in a North Korean ditch. Trust me, Sergeant, we understand.”

Christopher was going to say something the second Evans started talking, but that last bit cut him off.

“You take your team into China without authorization, you’ll just all get yanked back into the regular Echo rotation,” Evans continued.

“I’m not taking my team, sir. I’ll go alone.”

“I respect your loyalty, Sergeant. And I would expect any one of your team to say the same. But let’s think about this for a moment,” Evans said, sighing as if he was explaining the concept of properly tied shoes to a three-year old. “Your team is scheduled for training at Camp Python in Yekaterinburg. Training, I might add, that Nick busted his ass to get for you. What happens when your team shows up without you?”

Christopher said nothing. His brain tried to convince him that Evans was making sense, but it wasn’t working.

“I’ll tell you what happens. They find another Marine, this one a reject or a Special Ops washout if you’re lucky, to run your team. He’ll get them killed. You’ll get killed trying to go into China. Remember that defense grid we all worked so hard to take down? You think you can just stroll right through that?”

There was still nothing to say, but Christopher had to admit Evans was making sense. He nodded slightly and let out a long breath.

“So that’s it, then. We leave him to fend for himself.” Christopher was surprised by his own defeated tone.

“Well, now. I didn’t exactly say that,” Evans said in a low voice. A hint of a smile played at the left corner of his mouth.

Fuck yes. I knew somebody had a plan
, Christopher thought, allowing a little smile to break the plane of his face, as well.

“Here’s how I see it – they’re going to let your team rest up for a couple of days before you get shipped out to Python. Get some sleep and some food in you. I’ll come by tomorrow morning and we’ll take a little field trip.”

“To where?”

“There’s a guy at Camp Justice I need to introduce you to.”

Christopher nodded.

“You think this guy can do something?”

“I think this guy is the only one who has a shot.”

“Fair enough. Tomorrow morning?”

“0400. We’ll have to... borrow a helicopter and a pilot. I’ll work out the specifics. Just be up and ready to go when I get there, get me, Gunnery Sergeant?”

“Five by five, sir,” Christopher said, straightening to attention and throwing a crisp salute at the Ranger.

“Now go catch a fucking nap. You look awful.”

 

* * *

 

Christopher was dressed in a black BDU, smoking a cigarette on the porch of 47 Echo’s bunkhouse, at 3:30 the next morning. He hadn’t slept much, but he felt perfectly awake and ready for action. He didn’t know exactly what action he was ready for, but there was enough adrenaline flooding his system that he felt like he could run a mile in about four minutes.

He expected Lt. Colonel Evans to show up in a Cougar M-ATV, or possibly an older Humvee, but the Colonel walked out of the darkness on foot at a minute to 4:00.

“Morning, Gunnery Sergeant. Got your weapon?” Evans asked.

“Yes, sir,” Christopher said, standing from the porch steps and slinging his M4 Assault Rifle over his chest.

“I don’t expect you’ll need it for anything, but better to have it and not need it.”

Christopher noticed that Evans also had an M4 slung over his chest, and had his helmet in one hand. Christopher picked up his own helmet and followed the Colonel down the long dirt road that ran in front of the Echo bunkhouse.

“Sleep OK?”

“Like shit, sir.”

“Yeah, me too. I suck at downtime. I don’t expect we’ll have much of it, though. Rumor is we’ve got a massive Chinese strike force steaming hard towards us. We’ll have to make this errand quick – someone will shit a brick if Zulu is attacked and the three of us are nowhere to be found.”

“Three, sir?”

Evans nodded down the road, where Christopher could just make out the outline of a Cougar. As the two of them approached, the engine started up, and the headlights turned on, illuminating the road ahead of them. Evans opened the passenger door and climbed inside, and Christopher piled in through the back door. He saw the outline of a powerfully-built soldier in the driver’s seat. Before the Cougar set off, the driver turned around, and Christopher saw it was Master Sergeant Ortiz-Gonzales.

“Gunny. Congrats on the promotion,” she said, her voice flat.

“Everything ready, Master Sergeant?” Evans asked.

“We’re good to go, sir. Called in a favor with the 160th. They’ve managed to lose a Lakota to maintenance for the next six hours,” Ortiz-Gonzales said, turning to face the road and wheeling the Cougar towards the Firebase’s small airfield. The ride was short, and before long, Christopher was climbing into the rear door of a UH-72 Lakota helicopter. Ortiz-Gonzales was in the pilot’s seat, and after a quick pre-flight check, the rotors spun up.

“We’re skids up in 30 seconds,” she called out over the rotor noise.

“Maybe try not to crash this one?” Christopher said quietly to himself, thinking the rotors would drown him out.

“Heard that, Gunny. You’re lucky I like you,” Ortiz-Gonzales shot back, shooting a glare over her shoulder.

“Sorry,” Christopher grumbled. He didn’t like to admit it, but Ortiz-Gonzales kind of scared him. She was shorter than him, but her arms looked like they were made of spun steel. She looked like she could kick the shit out of him without breaking a sweat.

“But you have to admit, that was kind of funny,” Evans said as Ortiz-Gonzales turned to face forward.

“If you say so, sir.”

The Lakota lifted off quickly, and Ortiz-Gonzales swung it low over the camp as she poured on the speed, heading for Camp Justice, formerly the Siberian city of Novosibirsk. It was the main forward operating base for the American Forces in Russia – when Christopher had entered the war a little more than two years before, it had been 400 miles from the front lines. Now, it was less than 200.

Christopher had taken the flight from Zulu to Justice a handful of times, enough that he knew it took about two and a half hours. This time, it took slightly less than two. Christopher had just always assumed helicopters he was in were flying as fast as they could, but that apparently wasn’t the case. Ortiz-Gonzales was really stepping on the gas.

The sun was up when they landed at the Tolmachevo Airport in Novosibirsk, and Evans and Christopher hopped out of the chopper before the rotors had even spun down.

“Put the hood up and look busy for about an hour,” Evans yelled to Ortiz-Gonzales.

“Copy that, sir.”

Evans led Christopher through the terminal building, about half of which had been bombed at the beginning of the war. It had been partially rebuilt, but there were still wide-open areas that looked out onto the parking lot just outside. Evans walked through the parking lot to a waiting Humvee, where he opened the passenger door.

“Need you to take us to JSOC tracking, soldier,” Evans said to the driver.

“I’m waiting for someone, sir,” the driver said. Christopher noticed he was a convict, wearing the concrete-gray BDU of an Army Foxtrot.

“Yeah? Who’s that?” Evans asked.

“Captain Underwood, sir.”

“Might have noticed this oak leaf on my uniform, convict. That means Lieutenant Colonel. Now, I believe you were taking us to JSOC Tracking?”

“Right away, sir.”

 

Chapter Four

Foreign Policy

 

“Look, even if you don’t believe me, which you obviously don’t –” Nick spat, barely keeping himself from punching the steering wheel.

“That’s correct.”

“You’re allowed to give me your name, rank, and serial number.”

“Allowed to,” the pilot said, “Not required to.”

The pilot was being infuriating. Nick had expected his half-Chinese ethnicity to cause problems for him the second he had landed at Staging Area November almost two years before. While his father was a white guy, Nick took after his mother heavily in the looks department. So he didn’t really know why he’d thought the pilot would believe him about being an American citizen, and a Marine besides – apparently, saving his ass wasn’t enough. He hadn’t been able to get anything but open hostility out of the guy, not even his name. The pilot had ripped the nametape off of his flight suit when the young Corporal caught him.

As Nick drove somewhat aimlessly around Shanghai – the streets and freeways were confusing as all hell, and the Brave Warrior didn’t have a GPS – he was sorely tempted to reach across the pilot, open the passenger door, and boot the guy out onto the street at the next stop light. He knew he wouldn’t do it, though. The same gut reaction that made him save the pilot in the first place would never let him abandon the man.

Never leave a man behind.

“Fine, man. Don’t believe me. We’re still getting out of here... once I figure out how to do that.”

The pilot said nothing, just looked down at his bloody leg and scowled.

“How’s the leg?” Nick asked.

“Fuck off, Chink.”

OK, I can’t boot him out of the car. But no one could blame me for punching this motherfucker in the mouth,
Nick thought, his molars grinding together as his jaw set into a frown.

That gave Nick an idea. About 18 months ago, he’d lost the ring and little fingers of his left hand escaping from a North Korean weapons lab near Pyongyang – someone had shot them off, he assumed. He hadn’t even noticed they were gone until he was already on the escape chopper. When he’d finally made it back to an American base, the doctors had replaced the missing digits and a fair bit of his left hand with black metal prostheses. He’d never seen a Chinese soldier with similar gear, though he had seen some missing limbs every now and again. Maybe the American technology that was part of his body would convince his passenger he was who he said.

The Brave Warrior was on a freeway now, heading North at a sustained 50 miles an hour, so Nick lifted his left hand off the steering wheel and pulled off his black glove with his teeth. Without taking his eyes off the road, he held up his hand, palm out, fingers spread wide, across his chest so the pilot could get a good look at it.

“See that? American steel,” Nick said, a grin starting on the left side of his face where the pilot couldn’t see it.

Argue that one away, motherfucker.

“Bullshit. So you got black metal fingers. Good for you. You don’t think I know Chink doctors can do the same shit?”

“So your logic – and let me see if I follow this – says that some Chinese doctors, what? Ripped off half my hand and replaced it just on the off chance I met some Cracker pilot one day, saved his ass, and had to convince him I was an American?”

The pilot again said nothing. His scowl just deepened, and he resumed his intense study of his leg.

“I have some painkillers I liberated from my medic’s pack,” Nick said.

The second he said the words, his brain reminded him that said medic was now dead, his body probably being dragged through the streets outside the Songshan Nuclear Plant by angry citizens. Nick tried to chase the thought out of his head as he dug into his cargo pocket and pulled out two pill bottles. He checked the labels – one was Hydrocodone, the other was Dextroamphetamine. He put the Hydrocodone on the dashboard and stashed the other bottle back in his pocket.

“Yeah. Like I’m taking any pills from you,” the pilot scoffed.

“Your choice, man. Sit there and let it hurt for all I care.”

The freeway was long and straight, and the sun was high in the sky. Visibility was decent, though every once in a while, they’d drive through smoke wafting from a damaged building, most likely where F-35s had dropped bombs. Thanks to the lack of smoke at that particular moment, Nick could see that traffic was at a standstill up ahead. He took the next exit and got off the freeway. It was probably best to keep moving, he reasoned, even if he didn’t quite know where he was or where he was going.

“I mean, if you read the label, you’ll see it’s in English. And issued out of the pharmacy at Camp Justice,” Nick said.

That was true. The old-school brown pill bottle had “JAMC PHARMACY” on the first line, and “CAMP JUSTICE RUSSIA” on the second. It also had “US AIR FORCE 24 STS” on the last line, indicating that it had been issued to an Air Force Parajumper – that had been Ben Briggs, the medic Nick had watched bleed out in front of him only three and a half hours before.

Seems like it was days ago
, Nick thought, and decided to take a pill from the other bottle as soon as he hit a stop light. He’d been awake for the better part of three days, and the pills in his pocket would make sure he stayed that way.

The pilot made no move to reach out and take the bottle, though Nick thought he saw the man take a glance in its direction. Pilots were a pretty eagle-eyed group – came with the job – so even if he hadn’t read the specifics, he’d probably noticed the label was in English rather than in Chinese.

“Fine. Show me your dog tags,” the pilot said after a long moment.

“Special Op. We didn’t wear tags. We’re not psychotic,” Nick said with a sigh. “You really think I’d wear a sign around my neck saying “U.S. Marines” when sneaking around this deep in enemy territory? I mean, who do you think took down the defense grid so you could fly in and do your damn job?”

BOOK: Fear and Anger (The 47 Echo Series)
10.89Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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