Fear and Anger (The 47 Echo Series) (30 page)

Ghost.

“Don’t think I’m going anywhere anyway,” Nick said, gesturing to his right leg. “Think I blew out my knee.”

His knee hurt, sure, but Nick was almost certain he could stand on it. He’d taken most of the impact and short slide on the outer part of his right foot – a part of his body the U.S. Marine Corps doctors had thoughtfully replaced with black metal prosthetics a year before when the distal three toes had been blown off.

“All the same, let’s just stay still, all right?” the man said, his gun aimed dead-center at Nick’s forehead. The gunman’s face was calm, his eyes clear and unblinking, like he’d backed an injured rattlesnake into the corner of his house and was just waiting for the right moment to swoop in, chop its head off, and throw it into the back yard.

“Fine. Not moving,” Nick said, dropping his hands to the pavement.

“Good man. You led my boys on quite a chase, Lieutenant Morrow. That thing back at the border? Insane.”

“Your boys?

“Oh, yeah. Me. Major Chen. Trenton Chen. I’m in charge of Ghost.”

“Trenton?”

“My parents gave me a Chinese name, but it’s embarrassing. Not
too
popular to go by your Westernized name these days, but better than the alternative. All right. Slowly, into the car. You’ve probably already figured out that we’re not out to kill you, but I can certainly fuck you up pretty badly. Clear?”

“You’re going to have to help me up,” Nick said, sighing.

“Fuck that. Crawl.”

Nick pushed himself up onto his hands and left knee, keeping his right leg limp and useless behind him. He was still pretty sure the damage was minimal, despite the arcing jolts of pain extending from his toes to the bottom of his spine, but there was no use in letting
Trenton
know about that.

“Around the car. Passenger seat. If you suddenly think about reaching for that M4 on your back, I’ll draw your attention to about ten meters back down the road,” Trenton said, jerking his head to the right.

Nick looked, and his M4 was sitting perfectly along the centerline of the road. It was well out of reach, but he hadn’t even realized it had come off his back in the crash. His pistol was gone too, but he couldn’t see where it was. He started to crawl, slowly, around the back side of the car, dragging his right leg behind him. The blood trickling along as he crawled helped sell the leg as useless, and worried Nick slightly. He hadn’t thought he was that badly injured.

Chen walked in front of Nick, backpedaling, keeping his QBZ-95 trained on him at all times.

“Really, jumping out of the car and scrambling over a fucking tank. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it,” Trenton said. “That’s not something they’re teaching at Parris Island.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Nick said. He was sweating, and the jolts of pain were getting worse. He wasn’t sure he was
acting
like his right leg was useless anymore.

“San Diego?”

“Nope.”

“Oh, that’s right. You’re one of the
xingshi
soldiers.”

Nick didn’t say anything. Trenton had used the word “criminal” rather than “
quifan
” – convict. He meant it as an insult. Nick didn’t bite. He just kept crawling, rounding the back of the car and heading for the passenger door.

“Door?” Nick said as he got closer.

Without taking his eyes off Nick, Trenton backed up two steps and reached for the door handle. As he opened the door, Nick made his move, launching himself into the air with everything he had.

The tackle wouldn’t impress the NFL scouts back home – Nick hit more door than he did person – but it did the job. The door slammed into Trenton, and Trenton fell back. Nick heard the Major’s head thud against the pavement, and as he got his feet under him and moved around the door, he could see Trenton was down, but not yet out. His eyes were glazed over, and he was fumbling for the pistol in his belt. Nick didn’t give him the chance to pull it.

He dove, landing on top of the Major. He felt his left knee drive into Trenton’s rib cage, felt bones cracking underneath it. Trenton made a sound, half-cough, half-yelp, but Nick drove his right fist directly into the Major’s face.

Punching someone in the head was a bad idea under normal circumstances. The skull was hard, full of jagged teeth and solid bone that could break every bone in one’s hand. There were only a few spots Nick could hit without doing as much damage to his fist as he did to Trenton’s face – the nose, the eyes, the area just under the eye sockets. Nick hit none of these, his punch landing on Trenton’s lower jaw. He brought his left down on the Major’s face, this time scoring a perfect hit on the left eye. His right, now streaming blood, smashed into Trenton’s nose. The Major was out, but that didn’t stop Nick from delivering another left into Trenton’s cheek.

“Should have worn a helmet,
Trenton
,” Nick spat, pulling himself to his feet.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Machine

“Burning daylight out here, Chief,” Peter’s voice floated over the comm line.

“All right,” Christopher said, sighing. “Make one more sweep of the outbuildings and come on back to the truck.”

“Well, that doesn’t sound good,” Bryce said, pouring a cup of coffee from the dispenser behind the driver’s area. He handed it to Christopher.

“We either miscalculated their hide spots, or they managed to fix the Razor before we could find them and are back on the way to Pyongyang,” Christopher said, taking a sip of the strong black brew. “Either way, it looks like we’re going to plan... shit, Bryce. What plan are we on now?”

“Plan K, I think.”

“Right. Martin’s plan. The one I don’t like.”

“Cheer up, Chief. He was telling me there’s almost no way we can get clear before someone discovers a bomb that size. So chances are good we’ll go up with everyone else.”

“And that’s supposed to cheer me up?”

“Best I’ve got at the moment.”

“Yeah. Get with Martin and set our course. We’ll roll as soon as Peter and his team finish their sweep.”

“Roger that.”

Christopher finished off his coffee, then made another. He was halfway through that one when Peter radioed again.

“Nothin’ out here, Chief, unless you like antiques. Found a pretty cool pocket watch.”

“All right, Pete. Get your team back on the truck, but hang outside a minute. I’m coming to you.”

Christopher shrugged into his Kevlar and strapped on his helmet. Mary’s drones had pretty much assured them they were alone at the mine, but Christopher didn’t want to be unarmed and unarmored if that suddenly changed. He opened the back door and saw Peter, Daniel, Mary, Anthony, and Gabriel walking back to the Razor, their weapons dangling from their chest straps. Christopher went outside, squinting against the sunlight and wishing he’d grabbed a pair of goggles on his way out.

“Sorry, Chief,” Daniel said as he passed Christopher.

“Can’t find what’s not there, Daniel.”

“Still... sorry.”

“On the truck. We’ll be rolling in a few.”

As the rest of Peter’s team loaded up, Peter hung back a few feet and lit a cigarette. Christopher sipped from his coffee as the door closed behind the team.

“What’s up, Chris?”

“You heard Martin’s plan. Looks like we have to seriously consider it now.”

“Yeah. I don’t see any other real options.”

Christopher finished off his coffee and pulled out a cigarette.

“There’s one. Go into Pyongyang and try to find the Razor. Take it out conventionally.” He lit the cigarette and dragged deeply.

“Thought we rejected that plan. Low chance of success, zero survivability.”

“Martin’s plan has a similar survivability,” Christopher said, “and a downside none of us considered.”

“Such as?”

“We go nuclear – take out a major city in North Korea – this thing heats up in a way we don’t want. A way no one wants. We nuke Pyongyang, they nuke Fairbanks. They nuke Fairbanks, we find a way to nuke Shanghai. Shanghai goes down, they take out Los Angeles. See where I’m going?”

“Yeah. And all those ICBMs start flying around, and those old Soviet systems wake up and start nuking every major city in Europe and North America,” Peter said, shaking his head. “How’d we miss that?”

“We were thinking of the mission. Never thought of the big picture,” Christopher told him. “My fault.”

“Hey, I didn’t think of it either,” Peter said.

“Yeah, but it’s not your job. It’s mine.”

“So we go into Pyongyang. John Wayne the hell out of it. If by some chance we kill the Razor and make it out, we’re good. If we make it out without killing the Razor...”

“We fail. We go back to being regular-ass convict soldiers. China reverse-engineers the stealth and rolls through and takes over the world. I’ll take that over triggering global thermonuclear war.”

“Yeah. Me too. At least there’ll be a world left for us to be miserable in,” Peter said, finishing his cigarette and tossing it off into the dirt.

“Think the team’ll go for it?” Christopher asked.

“Go for it? It ain’t a democracy, Chief, no matter how much you like them and how much we like you. The team will follow orders. You’re in charge, Chris. You’re the man. We all respect that. Well, ‘cept for the Ranger, but he ain’t in much condition to argue.”

“Thanks, Pete.”

“I didn’t do anything, Chief.”

“Yeah, but in case I don’t get to say it later – you’re a hell of a second.”

“Just doin’ my job.”

“You’ve done more than that,” Christopher said. “You’re –”

His radio clicked on, cutting him off.

“Chief, I need the two of you back on the truck, now. We have to roll. I’ll explain when you get here,” Anthony said.

“Open up. We’re coming in.”

The back door opened, and Christopher and Peter jumped aboard. No sooner were they inside than the door clanged shut, and the Razor’s engine started up.

“Explain, Tony,” Christopher said, covering the distance to the comm station in several steps.

“Yeah. Do me a favor, turn off your hand radios? Both of you?” Anthony asked.

Christopher reached down and turned off his hand radio, and saw Peter do the same. Anthony checked his screens and smiled.

“Confirmed. We need to go. Bryce has the coordinates.”

“Go, Bryce,” Christopher yelled up to the front of the truck. He turned his head back to Anthony. “Well?”

“A pulse. It passed within 20 miles of us. Steady, regular, and transmitting on 1-9 Victor,” Anthony explained, tapping his screen.

Christopher took a look – there were several bands displayed on the monitor, communication frequencies Anthony kept an ear on as a matter of course. The top band, in red, was labelled “19V.” As Christopher watched, the band spiked, then went back to flat. As the Razor started to move, it did so again. There were ten seconds in between the spikes.

“What is that?” Peter asked.

“It’s a hand radio. Set to 1-9 Victor. It’s probably damaged,” Anthony said, holding up his own radio. “If one of these things gets knocked around really good – like, the speaker and mic are dead, but the transmitter and the power source still work – there’s an emergency circuit. A locator beacon.”

“And that’s what we’re getting here?” Christopher said.

“Yep. Hand radios come with the Razors. If one got damaged in the attack, then got power restored to it... boom. Locator switches on.”

“Why wouldn’t they have just turned it off?” Daniel asked, walking up to stand behind the comm station.

“If the front got smashed in, the locator light would be off,” Anthony told them. “They probably don’t even know the radio is working.”

Anthony swiveled in his chair and pointed back at Mary’s station.

“We charge the radios back there. And that’s where we think Martin’s grenade went off. Shrapnel could blow off the front of one of these things, and the locator would still be functional. It’s buried pretty deep in the device,” Anthony explained. “If they got the stealth station back up and running, maybe a radio that was still on the charger pulled power. That’s my guess.”

“If they repaired the stealth, how are we reading it?” Peter asked.

Mary stood up and walked over to the rest of the group.

“They might not have repaired everything. You have one panel on the outside go out, or one circuit not up to full power. These systems are complicated, and they aren’t meant to have their controls hit by a fragmentation grenade. It’s not like they’re flush with spare parts over there, so they might have done a shit repair job,” she told them.

“Convict labor,” Christopher said. “You get what you pay for.”

“Exactly,” Mary said, nodding. “They leave a minor stealth leak, and the comm signal could get out. And since it’s low-power, they might not read it. Those things only have a thirty-mile range, after all.”

“And here’s the thing – the NoKos don’t have this frequency,” Anthony said, his words fast, almost jumbling together. “We know that. It has to be an American signal. Chinese and NoKos haven’t broken this encryption, and there’s very little chance they can clone the locator signal. It’s too specific.”

“Where is it now?” Christopher said, taking off his helmet and hanging it on its post.

“Fifteen miles northwest, heading back to the main road. It’s on the course we’d take to Pyongyang.”

“That tears it. Bryce, catch up to that signal. Push this thing as fast as it’ll go,” Christopher ordered.

“That’s a problem,” Bryce called, not turning around. “It’s doing 40. We can do 35 under full stealth. Unless it stops –”

“We’ll lose the signal in three hours,” Anthony told him.

“How the hell is it doing 40? I thought we were faster than they were,” Christopher asked.

“No idea, Chief. Maybe they’re pulling power from nonessential systems. But they’re hauling, at least as much as a Razor under stealth can haul,” Mary said.

“Shit. Always something, isn’t it? Get on our power. Do what you can to increase our speed,” Christopher said. “We’ve got a chance here, people. We’re not letting these motherfuckers get any further. Are we clear?”