The Fate Of Nations: F.I.R.E. Team Alpha: Book One (24 page)

              McNamara lay behind a fallen tree. With his pistol in burst mode, he waited until his targets were within three feet of his position before rising to his knees to fire. In less than a second he fired a three shot burst into each of the four enemy soldiers in front of him; destroying the hearts and lungs. The four bodies hit the ground almost in unison.

              Williams sprang from the shadow-enveloped underbrush. His micron-sharp sword decapitated two enemy soldiers in a one, seemingly effortless, stroke. Using his blade used to deflect the muzzle of another trooper’s rile he cut the rifle in half, between the trigger-guard and magazine well, just as the trooper squeezed the destroyed weapon's trigger. With another lightning-swift cut, William sliced the trooper’s throat as he stared in disbelief at the two halves of his weapon.

              Another trooper tried to bring his weapon into firing position. William’s sword flashed again. The hand that the trooper would have used to pull his rifle’s trigger was severed at the wrist and, in one arching motion, Williams struck the enemy’s head from his body.

              Nagura drove one of her palm-knives deeply into the back of one enemy trooper’s skull, leapt over the still twitching body as it crumpled to the ground, and before touching the ground, drove her right foot into the mouth of another trooper, propelling him onto his back, fragmenting his teeth, and stifling what might been a call for help. As the trooper used both hands in a futile attempt to staunch the torrent of blood streaming from his mouth, Nagura stabbed him twice in the heart in rapid succession. Another enemy trooper turned toward her. Her blades lashed out again; one severed the trooper’s finger as it moved toward his rifle’s trigger, the other impaling him under the chin and penetrating the brain.

              To her right an enemy soldier tried to drive the butt of his rifle into her face. Nagura evaded the thrust and slammed her foot into her enemy’s left knee; feeling the bone shatter through the sole of her boot. A knee to the bridge of his nose kept him from announcing his pain with a scream. Nagura leapt on him as he fell and slit his throat.

              Sains seized an enemy soldier from behind and slit his throat before throwing his knife at a second target. Made of the same ultra-strong, micron-sharp metal as all of the blades used by the FIRE teams, and propelled by Sains’ paranormal strength, the Bowie-style knife pierced the enemy soldier’s body armor and sank into his chest to its hilt. Surging toward the two remaining members of the enemy patrol, Sains crushed one of the men’s' windpipe with an arching blow with the edge of his hand. Sains punched the last enemy trooper in the solar-plexus, and chest; crushing the sternum, collapsing his lungs, and launching him backward. He was airborne for ten feet before rolling to a stop face down on loam-covered ground. Sains ended the soldier’s pain by breaking his neck.

              “Check the bodies for documents,” Carter ordered.

              “Do we hose them down with vanishing cream?” Burgett asked.

              “No,” Carter replied. “If these guys just vanish their headquarters will send a division out to look for them. It would be too much of a mystery to ignore. We’ll leave the bodies here. We’re close to our link-up with Renner. I'll have him send a detachment from his unit back here and have them tramp all over the place to make it look like the underground ambushed this patrol. An ambushed patrol won’t seem as odd as a whole platoon going missing; Renner and his people have the enemy troops in this area pretty used to being ambushed. Let’s get out of here before the other two patrols realized they’ve lost contact with their buddies,” Carter added.

              “You think they’ll fall for that?” McNamara asked;”Especially since the Captain decapitated three of these poor fellows here in grand samurai style.”

              “The may ask some questions,” Carter responded. “But, buy the time they find the answers, our job will be done.”

              The team assumed formation and resumed their march. Thirty enemy soldiers lay dead. They had not been able to fire a shot in their own defense. The entire battle had lasted less than thirty seconds.

                           
Chapter Seven

              Thankfully, the team had had no further encounters by the time the approached the planned rendezvous. When they were within half a mile of the rendezvous Carter used hand signals to halt his troops in small grouping of trees and indicated that they should gather around him. He looked at Sains. “What do you have?”

              Sains close his eyes and extended his psychic senses. “I’ve got two people about seventy meters directly ahead; one male one female, just inside that stand of trees. Twelve more people directly ahead fifty meters behind them,” he said after several seconds.

              “I see them”, Carter said. “That should be Renner and his people,” Carter said touching William’s shoulder. “Take your section into that drainage ditch,” he told Williams, pointing a ditch a few hundred feet to the team’s right. “Cover us while we do the meat-and-greet. Everyone remember that the only ones from the underground unit who know who we are, and what our final objective is, are Captain Renner and the local underground leader. Use call signs when the underground fighters are around. They don’t need to know our real names.”  

              Williams, McNamara, Sains and Nagura moved quickly to their position. Carter retrieved his infra-red beacon from a pocket on his tactical vest, directed at the two figures Sains had located and flashed it carefully in a predetermined pattern: one long flash followed by two short flashes, a ten second pause, and then another long flash. He waited for the equally specific response from Renner before leading Roth, Burgett, and DeFontain cautiously forward.

              Just as they entered the small wooded area, a voice came from behind the one of the thicker trees. “Blueberry,” it said in clear, unaccented English.

              “Cobbler,” Carter said in response.

              A figure stepped into plane view. Carefully keeping his arms away from his body he approached Carter and his group. “Prowler?” the figured asked.

“Affirmative,” Carter said.

              “Tony Renner,” the man said, extending his hand. Renner was average in stature thickly bearded and dressed a heavy utility shirt and jeans. He appeared, for all intents and purposes, as a local worker. His eyes though, even in the dark of night, were intense and full of purpose.

              Carter accepted the handshake, “Good to meet you.”

              Another figure stepped from behind a tree; it was petite and female. Dressed in a dark green turtle neck and jeans, her hair was short and dark. She was young; no older than twenty, but she carried herself with deliberation and resolve. She made no effort acknowledge Carter.

              “This Lisa Mertens,” Renner said, speaking in French. “She’s the leader of the underground cell you’ll be working with.”

              Carter judged her as someone with no patience for pleasantries. “Ma’am,” he said with a nod.

              “It was you that freed my father?” Mertens asked, also in French.

              “My team and I did, yes,” Carter replied also in French. Now that contact with the underground had been made, all conversation would be in French; one of the three dominant language of Belgium.

              Mertens’ face brightened slightly. “He is well?” she asked.

              “He’d been through hell,” Carter told her. “But, when I last saw him, he was recovering well.”

              Mertens extended her hand. “Thank you,” she said.

              Carter took the offered hand. “No problem,” he replied.

              “We have a hide-sight about click east of here; a small, abandoned railroad maintenance yard,” Renner said. “The gear you wanted is there. We’ve got hot food and your people can catch their breath. The trip here had to a bitch: even for paranormals.”

              “It has been a long night,” Cater agreed. He turned to Defontain. “Use your IR beacon and single Harvard and his section to move up.”

              Defontain obeyed and within seconds Williams and his section had rejoined Carter. “Captain,” Carter said to Renner. “We had to take out a platoon-sized enemy patrol about five clicks from here. I want you to send a squad or two to leave some tracks and make it look like it was your unit that staged that ambush. Make sure that they really trample the up the area. They can help themselves to any weapons and equipment they find on the bodies.”

              “You wiped out a whole platoon?” Renner asked astonished. “We didn’t hear a thing.” he added, clearly impressed.

              “We specialize in being sneaky bastards,” McNamara said, grinning.

              Carter turned to McNamara. “Grumble, you and Bandaid show the Captain’s people to the ambush sight and then meet us at Captain Renner’s hide sight. Don’t get spotted by another patrol and make sure to mask your trail.”Renner sent some his fighters to comply with Carter’s order.

              “Will do, Boss,” McNamara said. He tapped DeFontain on her shoulder and the two operators gathered ten of Renner’s fighters and led them toward the ambushed patrol.

              “How heavy is the patrol activity in the area?” Cater asked Renner.

              “It got pretty heavy about twelve hours ago,” Renner said. “The WCA just raised a new conscript regiment from Belgium and Denmark. That regiment is in a temporary training camp about twenty clicks from here. It just got orders to ship out for the Alaskan front. There have been a lot of deserters since those orders came in. Most of them try to make it to the coast and get to the Antwerp Corporate Exclusion Zone, and hope the Corporate Consortium will give them asylum.”

              “The patrol we hit was on the trail of three deserters,” Carter said. “What’s to keep a patrol from finding your camp, Captain?”

              “They’ve already been there,” Renner said. “Our scouts watched them search the rail yard three hours ago, before we set up shop there. I’ve got sentries posted to give us warning if they come back.”

              “Very well,” Carter said. He faced his team. “Our hide sight is one click to the East. Form up with the Captain Renner’s people and move out,” he said. “Brains, Gambler, I want you to hold here for twenty minutes to make sure we’re not being followed, and then meet us at the hide-sight.”Sains and Roth followed orders and vanished into the night.

              “We weren’t followed.” Renner said, just after Sains and Roth had departed. “We were really careful about that.”

              Carter nodded. “I’m sure you were, Captain,” he said. “But I take comfort in my paranoia.”

               [][][]

              Renner’s team had made their camp out of two cast-off railroad cars at the center of the rail yard which had long ago had the rails themselves torn up and hauled away for scrap. Dozens of such cars were scattered about the yard along with a few rusting locomotives and cargo-trucks. A few decaying wooden buildings stood; providing homes for various birds and rodents. At the compound’s center stood a twenty foot tall tower that had once been used to direct the movements of the trains that once crowded the facility.

              A tall, powerfully built Afro-American sergeant from Renner’s Special Forces team lead Carter and Team Alpha into one of the cars where two teenagers where stirring a pot soup which they were cooking over and improvised, sterno-fueled stove. Several underground fighters looked up and cast curious, if skeptical, looks at the newly arrived FIRE team.

              The underground fighters, like Renner’s Special Forcers operators, had a hungry, war-weary look. They had been fighting for years with only the most minimal outside support. Their weapons were a mixed array of modern tenth generation Kalashnikov rifles that were the standard weapon of WCA combat forces, to barely functional M-16 rifles that were probably left over from the NATO forces that had been stationed in Europe in the last century. Carter noted, in particular, a 1903 model Lee-Enfield bolt-action rifle that had to be at least two hundred years old. The young man who carried it handled the weapon with a confidence that told Carter that, in that man’s hands, the ancient weapon was still deadly effective. These were hard, adversity tested people. They were hungry, outnumbered, and massively outgunned, but they had no concept of defeat. 

              The sergeant led Carter to one corner of the rail-car and pointed to a collection of clothing and weapons. “This is the gear you asked for, Sir.”

              “Thanks, Sergeant,” Carter said, pulling his pack off of his shoulders, and retrieved a shoe-box sized pouch from it. “Give this to your team medic. It’s medical supplies; mostly antibiotics and pain killers.”

              “We can sure use them, Sir.” the sergeant said.

              Carter nodded. “I’ve never seen a guerilla unit in the field that didn’t medical supplies,” he said.

              “You packed ten pounds of extra weight on this hump?” Burgett asked. “I would have made it ten pounds of ammo.”