Fear and Anger (The 47 Echo Series) (32 page)

“Our gunner,” the convict said, “NoKo grenade went off right next to him. You get used to the smell, and if that isn’t fucked up, I don’t know what is.”

Nick nodded and cleared his throat. He knew the thumbprint scanner was beyond the racks, near the stealth station. He’d seen enough bodies that they usually didn’t bother him, but he still wasn’t happy about walking past this guy. Still, he didn’t stop or even slow down as he passed the body, and his eyes stopped watering as he approached the back of the Razor.

By now he could see that there was something different about this particular Razor. He’d spent enough time in the vehicles in the past couple of years that he knew the exact number of steps from the front passenger hatch to the stealth station, and though he wasn’t counting, he knew he walked more than 20 steps. There was also another station next to the normal stealth one, a station that was completely unfamiliar to him.

“This is... different,” he said.

“Prototype. Extra-long range. Thumb on the plate, please.”

Nick pressed his thumb to the flat panel next to the stealth station, and as he waited for the computer to return a match for his print, he noticed that the entire area was in pretty bad shape. Consoles were blown out and patched back together. Two of the small plasma screens were broken, and there was scorched metal all around where he was standing.

“Grenade went off to your right. That’s why the stealth is wonky,” the convict said.

Nick opened his mouth to reply, but the small screen in front of him flickered on. His own picture appeared, next to the words “MORROW NICHOLAS ALEXANDER O-2 USMC 47 ECHO SRF.” Below that line was another, this one in red: “STATUS: MIA.”

“Thank Jesus,” the convict said from behind him, lowering his weapon and spinning Nick around. He stuck out his hand. “Lawrence Hardy, 223 India.”

“Nick Morrow,” Nick said, shaking the man’s hand.

“The rest of my crew will be back in a bit, but man, I hope you know how to run the systems on this bitch. We’ve been stopped over a day just trying to figure out how to run this thing with three people. We’ve had some casualties.”

“I’ve spent a lot of time on Razors. Just let me know where you need me.”

“Great. When Gil gets back, he can update you on the mission, and we can finally get this thing rolling again.”

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Retired at Twenty-One

Christopher had seen some weird shit while he was in the war, but when he and the Razor passed near-silently by an abandoned sedan with a tied-up man in black clothing flopping his way out of the trunk and worming along the ground... well, that sight ranked right up there with the weirdest. It actually reminded him of home, of the handful of times he’d worked armed robbery jobs for the local organized crime syndicate. They’d had a thing for tying dudes up and shoving them in trunks, too.

“What do you suppose that poor motherfucker’s story is?” Daniel asked as they watched the scene slide away on the rear camera feed.

“I’d say he ran afoul of someone who had seen
Goodfellas
one too many times,” Anthony ventured.

“Looks like someone fucked him up real bad, too,” Daniel said, bringing up a replay from when the Razor first drove by and zooming in on the man’s face. He was bloodied, missing teeth, with both eyes swollen and black.

“Definitely
Goodfellas
,” Anthony repeated, nodding his head.

“Normally I’d want to stop and check that out, if only to satisfy my curiosity,” Christopher said, “but it’s not like stopping’s an option. Mary?”

“Forty-three miles an hour, Chief. Can’t give you any more than that unless we want the whole power grid to collapse.”

“And what’s the other Razor doing?” Christopher asked.

“Steady at forty. We’re gaining, but painfully slowly,” Anthony said. “We’ll catch them in three hours, and it’ll be dark.”

“Not like we can see what we’re shooting at anyway,” Peter said.

“Where are we at on that? Genius squad? Got anything for me?” Christopher asked, nodding to Mary and Martin.

“Thought maybe if we could get closer and target the stealth leak, maybe the ablative armor in that spot is damaged too,” Martin said. He didn’t sound at all confident.

“Lotta maybes in that sentence, man,” Michael pointed out.

“Oh, I know it. But I’ve come up with fuck all else,” Martin told him.

“I used to date this girl back in New York,” Anthony started. He paused for a moment, then continued: “She had an ex-boyfriend who used to do this insurance scam thing where he’d get up in front of a nice car, like a Beamer or a Lexus, and slam hard on his brakes when he thought the other driver was distracted. Guy who rear-ends him is at fault, and he gets paid off.”

Christopher thought about that for a moment. The back end of their Razor was one of the toughest parts of the vehicle – it could probably take the initial impact of another Razor slamming into it at 40. But could the more-powerful ELR just push them right out of the way, or could they produce enough power in reverse to make the other Razor stop? He asked Bryce.

“Wasn’t something Dr. Auffrey covered in his briefing,” Bryce said, his eyes on the twilight road ahead of him. He glanced occasionally at the nav system, but Christopher knew the driver was giving the matter serious thought. “But with our power output as high up as it is... I guess it’s possible. It’ll fuck up the back end of our truck, but I think we could do it.”

“Y’all have three hours to come up with a Plan B, but let’s proceed with this one for the time being. Daniel, Martin – I want your help to come up with a breach plan. Anyone comes up with a better plan, just hop in and interrupt us,” Christopher said.

“Gotta interrupt you right now, Chief,” Gabriel said quietly, laying one of his massive hands on Christopher’s shoulder. “Can I get a minute?”

Christopher knew what it was about by the young man’s quiet tone and need to pull him aside. Carson, the Ranger, was either dead or about to die. He was actually surprised to see the Ranger sleeping peacefully on the rack, his chest rising and falling.

“He looks better,” Christopher said.

“Looks better. He’s not,” Gabriel reported. “His shoulder’s all fucked up, Chief. Looks like he’s been bleeding internally. I didn’t catch it when I patched up the through-and-through, but I’m guessing his subclavian artery tore.”

“What can we do for him?”

“That’s the thing – I’m not sure. I mean, I think I need to cut in and bleed off some of the pressure. It’s what the subclavian’s near that worries me – carotid artery on one side, aortic arch on the other. We get too much blood in there, it chokes off blood flow to his brain and his heart.”

“Sounds like you know what to do.”

“I’m just shooting in the dark here, man. I could kill the guy. I have him in a medically induced coma right now to try and slow down the process, but if I try to lessen the pressure and fuck it up... poor guy could bleed to death right here. If I do nothing, he’ll probably have a stroke or a heart attack in the next couple of hours. Maybe both. I don’t...”

Gabriel trailed off and sighed.

Christopher looked at the youngest member of his team, the gargantuan Mexican who always looked ready to tackle anything. He looked smaller somehow, shorter, and beaten down and dirty. He actually looked like the 18-year-old kid he was for the first time Christopher could remember since he knew the man.

“You gotta go with what you think will give him the best chance, Gabriel. You’re the medic. And if it was me on that rack, I’d trust you to make the right decision.”

“I’m, like, half a medic, man.”

“You’re the half we need. You’ve been studying trauma wound care every minute of downtime for the last couple of months. If you think you need to bleed him, bleed him.”

“I can still wait a couple of hours before making the decision. It might take care of itself. I remember reading that could happen.”

“I trust you, Gabriel. Everyone on this team does. If the time comes and you need to open him up, I’m right behind you to help in whatever you need me to do.”

“No offense, Chief, but you’d make a shitty nurse. I’ll pull Michael,” Gabriel said, attempting a smile but only succeeding in showing teeth. “I just want to warn you, though... it could get pretty goddamn messy in here.”

Christopher nodded.

“Just give me some warning if it’s going to turn into the Texas Chainsaw Massacre up in here.”

“The what now?” Gabriel asked.

“Before your time. Hell, before my time. Just keep me posted, OK?”

“You got it.”

Gabriel pulled down the rack opposite Carson’s and sat down, pulling his tablet from his cargo pocket. Christopher left him to study up on the procedure he might have to do and went back to where Daniel and Martin were working near Mary’s station.

“Ranger dead?” Martin asked.

“Still with us,” Christopher said. “What do we have so far?”

“It’s been, like, two minutes,” Martin complained.

“And since I’m super-cool, I might have something,” Daniel said, smiling and bringing up the ELR schematic on his screen. “Did you know the tops of the .50 turrets can be unscrewed for maintenance?”

“On our Razor or on theirs?” Christopher asked, squinting at the screen.

“Both. The .50s are the same on theirs as ours. It’s one of those ain’t-broke-don’t-fix-it designs,” Daniel said, pointing to the tops of the .50 turrets.

“Is it something we can do in transit?” Christopher asked.

“Usually takes a robot-thingy to do it. Like a big jar opener,” Daniel said. “We couldn’t do it under human power alone. But I was hoping Professor Kaboom here could figure out a way to blow the tops off these things.”

“Lemme take a look at those,” Martin said, shouldering his way in front of the schematic.

He studied the images on the screen, then tapped a few keys and brought up a screen full of data. No one spoke for what felt to Christopher like too long. Finally, Martin turned away from the screen and leaned back in his chair, stroking at the stubble on his scarred chin.

“Well?” Christopher said finally, breaking the silence.

“It’s a weak point, for sure,” Martin said. “It’s armored in the same way as the rest of the vehicle, same material, same ablatives. But it’s like... OK, you know when you screw two pieces of wood together? Say you pack a bunch of explosives around the exposed head of the screw. All you do is blow up the surface area. These things are threaded too deep to just, you know, pop the top. In this case, all you end up doing is making a loud noise. The ablatives can handle it.”

“So what you’re saying is it actually needs to be unscrewed. By a machine we definitely don’t have,” Daniel said.

“It does need to be unscrewed,” Martin said, still stroking his chin. “But maybe not by a machine. If we could get something with a sustained thrust, attach it above the threading point, and get enough power behind it...”

“Like, take the warhead off one of our missiles, attach it to the top, and let it spin the fucker around?” Daniel asked.

“Dammit, Daniel, that was gonna be my big idea. You stole my thunder.”

“Can you make it work?” Christopher asked.

“Let me run the math. Maybe. It’s a working idea, anyway.”

It didn’t seem like a working idea to Christopher. It seemed like a recycled plot line from a children’s cartoon. But as much as he hated to admit it, Martin was a lot smarter than he was, so he decided not to voice his uncertainty.

“Good. Work on that. Daniel, start coming up with plans C through Z. I want options.”

“Roger that.”

Christopher headed back up to the passenger seat, turned the nearest ventilator on full, and lit up a cigarette. He just needed a minute or two to himself, where no one was bringing up new problems or presenting Looney-Tunes solutions to existing ones. Thankfully, Bryce seemed to pick up on Christopher’s mood – he didn’t say a word to his commanding officer and just let him sit there and smoke one cigarette, then another. It was only after he lit the third that Bryce said anything.

“How you managing, Chief?”

“Hanging in.”

“You know what would make this situation better?” Bryce asked, his eyes still locked on the road in front of him. “Coffee. Not that crystallized, self-heating bullshit we have back there. Like real, actual, brewed coffee. I had a cup of coffee and a smoke right now, I’d be set to punch the engine out of that ELR with my own fist.”

“That’s... that’s the closest thing I’ve ever heard to a complaint from you, Bryce,” Christopher said.

“I’ve been up 38 hours straight. I may be forgetting some of my Midwestern manners.”

“Can’t do shit about the coffee, but have the rest of my smokes,” Christopher said, handing over what was left of the pack to his driver.

“We make do with what we’ve got. Like Nick would say, Marines improvise,” Bryce said, taking the pack and pulling one out with his teeth.

As his driver lit the smoke, Christopher thought – for what seemed like the hundred and twelfth time since this mission began –
what would Nick do
? But this time, instead of trying to figure out what his best friend would do if he was in command of the unit, Christopher finally realized – this was
his
unit now. Nick might not ever come back. Nick had his own style, his own way of doing things... but so did Christopher. And it was time he started acting like it.

“Listen up, everyone,” he said, standing and turning to face his crew. “I think I know how we’re going to breach that other Razor.”

Chapter Forty

Rat Fink

The “rest of the crew” Hardy spoke of was two other guys. One was a white guy, about 5’10”, muscular but only recently so – he still had a chubby baby face. The white guy’s head was shaved and he was dressed in convict BDU pants and a black Smirnoff Vodka T-Shirt. Hardy introduced him as Gil Harlan.

The other guy was tiny, maybe 5’ 2”, and Nick would have been surprised if he weighed over a hundred pounds. He was dressed in regular Army ACUs a size too large for him, and though the nametape said “Dietz,” Hardy introduced him as Andy Cruz. He didn’t look particularly Hispanic, but growing up in Southern California and Texas, Nick had met Mexicans that looked like any other white guy on the street.