Left With the Dead (18 page)

“Did you drop the FAE?” Ellenshaw asked, stumbling along.

“Damn right,” Acheson panted. “Cover, everyone!” He pushed the older man to the ground behind a cluster of rocks, then landed on top of him. Acheson clasped his hands behind his head and hunkered down, making himself as small as possible. Beside him, Sharon did the same.

God smote the earth with a hammer.

The ground undulated beneath them as the FAE exploded, sending seismic energy radiating through the desert with the force of a tsunami, dislodging rock and dust. The entire hillside surrounding the mineshaft rose up a few feet, then slammed downwards like an abandoned building during a demolition, spewing dust and rock amidst a sound like a thunderclap. Fissures opened in the earth around the mine, including one good-sized sink hole that had lain dormant for ages. Acheson squirmed as pebbles and rocks and even a few small boulders rained down around them.

Eventually the thunder died away, leaving in its wake a dissipating cloud of filth and the sounds of settling earth.

Acheson coughed and pushed himself off of Ellenshaw. His NVGs were destroyed, the tubes smashed. He tossed them aside and shook Ellenshaw’s shoulder.

“Robert? You okay?”

Ellenshaw groaned and turned over. Blood welled from a cut in the center of his forehead. Acheson helped him into a sitting position with one hand, the other going for the first aid kit in his knapsack. At the same time, he looked for the rest of his team.

“Everyone all right? Sound off!”

Through the settling dust came coughing replies. “A fuckin boulder landed on my weapon,” Cecil reported. “Barrel’s twisted like a pretzel!”

“Too bad it wasn’t your head,” Nacho said, clambering to his feet. He inspected his MP-5 for damage.

Acheson pulled a bandage from his medical kit and pressed it against Ellenshaw’s forehead.

“Hold that here,” he said. “You’re bleeding.” With that, he pushed to his feet and trotted back toward the mine.

The hillside was a sunken, misshapen mass riddled with fissures. A fuel air explosive was the most powerful non-nuclear weapon made, ideal for blasting a landing strip in a dense jungle or collapsing an underground bunker. They were dangerous weapons to employ, but the nature of the team’s work sometimes left them with few options. Anything in the blast would be instantly immolated. Which was exactly the point.

Still... Doubt was something Acheson had learned to live with, but the nagging worry in the back of his mind was strong enough to give birth to a new breed of caution.

“Let’s take a look around and make sure we’re good to go,” he said.

“I agree,” Ellenshaw added. “This is too important to just walk away from with nothing to show for it but high hopes.”

Acheson sighed, irritated by Ellenshaw’s presence even more now that the action was over.

They spent the next thirty minutes poking around the area, looking for hidden entrances, exits, or hide sites. The lack of a search dog made it more difficult—Acheson felt another twinge of regret at the loss of Zeke—but the humans were no less apt at ferreting out the telltale clues using methods other than scent. Communication with the TOC was fruitless, and Helena offered nothing substantive. Acheson regarded the collapsed mineshaft, mindful of the fading daylight. He felt worry squirming about in his gut, but there was nothing to validate it.

“It’s never easy, is it?”

Acheson turned around. A few feet behind him stood Ellenshaw, his hands on his hips, the bloodied bandage crumpled in one fist. He also surveyed the flattened hillock before them, his expression a rueful one.

“I used to do this, before you came on board. Not as artfully, and never with such great skill, but I’ve sent a few of these... things... back to Hell on occasion. And I always had a hard time believing a mission was truly complete.”

“You ever blow one?”

Ellenshaw studied him for a moment. “A containment operation? No... never, thank God. Though there were times when I was certain I had.”

Acheson motioned toward what remained of the mine. “I halfway want to dig everything up and make sure.”

Ellenshaw nodded slowly. “I understand the feeling.”

Sharon approached. She held her MP-5 in both hands, a combat stance that communicated to Acheson her uneasiness as clearly as a flashing neon sign advertised the location of a roadside diner.

“Area is secure,” she reported. “No fortified exits or hide sites, no evidence of foot or vehicular traffic that didn’t originate with us.”

Acheson checked his watch. “Okay... let’s boogie. Follow-on attack is scheduled to commence in a little over an hour. We need to be way clear before then.” The follow-on attack would be conducted by U.S. Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle fighter-bombers carrying Longrod Penetrators, a munition that had been introduced during the 1991 Gulf War. An effective weapon, it had decimated scores of deeply buried Iraqi bunkers. On paper, their combat effectiveness stood at nearly 100%.

“Let’s saddle up, people!” Sharon said over the radio net. “We’re done here!”

The team retreated to the Humvees.

CHAPTER 3

The sun touched the peaks of the mountains to the west, bathing them in a halo of fiery orange. While Cecil drove, Acheson regarded the mountaintops from behind his sunglasses as the Humvee bounced across the desert, retracing its path to the TOC. No one spoke; there was nothing to be said. The job was done until they heard otherwise. The only thing left now was for them to get comfortable with it and perhaps celebrate the fact they had survived it. Acheson rubbed his face with one hand. Gritty sand clung to it. He had tried to scrub it off, but with no success.

“Fast movers on the left,” Cecil noted.

Acheson leaned forward and looked through the windshield, catching a glimpse of the two F-15E Strike Eagles as they slid past at 15,000 feet, their tapered noses pointed in the direction from which the two Humvees had come. Acheson had no idea what arrangements the group had made with the Air Force. More than likely, the Air Force was given a cover story, just like everyone else. Maybe they’d been told Al Qaeda had an underground hideout in the Arizona desert. Whatever worked. Acheson leaned back in his seat.

His radio headset crackled to life.

“Six, this is TOC. Steel on target,” George Sanders said over the radio. “Strike flight reports steel on target.”

“TOC, this is Six. Roger that. It’s a wrap. Start packing up. We’ll be onsite in ten minutes, over.”

“Roger that, Six. TOC, out.”

Acheson closed his eyes for a moment as the vehicle continued to hurtle across the desert at a good forty-five miles an hour. He felt the tension slowly draining out of him, leaving in its wake a jittery kind of exhaustion. He yearned to be back in Los Angeles, and the feeling made him smile. One of the most violent cities in the world, and Acheson felt safe there.

“Hey, Nacho.” Acheson looked over his shoulder. Nacho Delgado sat in the left rear bucket seat. “Zeke was tops, man. You did a fantastic job with that dog, and he went out doing exactly what you taught him. I’ve got to thank you for that. Without your dogs, some of us might be tits-up back there.”

“Thanks, man.”

“But one thing—stop getting attached to them.” Acheson nudged his sunglasses up on his nose. “Easy say, hard do, but that’s what’s got to happen. You started freaking back there, and I don’t want to see that again. Dogs I’m willing to part with. People I’m not. You reading me on this, Nacho?”

“I hear you, man,” Nacho responded softly.

Acheson pulled his SigArms P220 from its holster. He made sure there was a round in the pipe and that the hammer had been decocked. Just busywork. Something to keep his mind off the forlornness in Nacho Delgado’s voice.

###

Ten minutes later, the Winnebago RV came into view. It lay in deep shadow, as the sun was only a fiery afterglow on the horizon.

“TOC, this is Six. Crank it up and turn around, we’re getting out of Dodge. Over.” There was no response, and the RV did not move as instructed. Acheson frowned. What the hell, were the radios fritzed now?

“TOC, this is Six. You copy my last? Over.”

Cecil slowed the Humvee. “What the fuck?”

Acheson leaned forward. The door to the RV stood wide open, sagging on its torn hinges.

“Guns, guns, guns!” Acheson said over the radio. “Shake at the TOC!”

Cecil accelerated again and cranked the Humvee’s steering wheel hard to the left, sending up a cloud of dust as he veered away from the RV.

“Muthafuck!” he snarled. “We was almost
gone!
”

“Go around back,” Acheson told him. Over the radio: “Five, this is Six. You guys take the front, we’re coming in from the rear, over.”

Sharon’s reply was terse. “Roger that.”

From the back seat came the sounds of metal-on-metal as safeties were clicked off and weapons were cycled. Nacho and Julia were ready. Acheson pulled his MP-5 from its tactical carry harness and charged it up. Cecil flipped on the Humvee’s lights as he charged past the RV and fishtailed to a halt thirty feet behind it. Acheson, Julia, and Nacho bailed out immediately.

“Cecil, stay with the vehicle!” Acheson ordered the instant his boots hit the ground. “Keep an eye out!”

“Damn straight,” Cecil shot back. He already had his two-tone Colt 10mm in his right hand.

“Five, dismount and take up overwatch positions while we go in. Leave Ellenshaw in the Humvee, over.”

The second Humvee slid to a halt, kicking up another cloud of dust. Its doors flew open, and before Sharon Thomas could respond, Robert Ellenshaw flung himself out of the vehicle and ran toward the RV as fast as he could. Behind him, Chiho Hara struggled to chase him down. Acheson swore to himself as he ran.

He got to the RV first and flattened against the side of the vehicle next to the door. Ellenshaw pounded up and did the same, his jaw set, breathing hard and fast. The two men regarded each other for a moment before Acheson held up a hand and signaled that he would go in first. Ellenshaw nodded and shouldered his M4.

Acheson sprung into the doorway, his MP-5 at the ready. The disemboweled remains of George Sanders lay draped across the threshold, his eyes wide and staring and full of dust. His neck had been torn open, the hallmark of feeding ghouls. Acheson stepped on the body—there was no other way—and hurled himself into the RV. Two other bodies in similar condition lay inside. Their blood was splattered across the expensive radio consoles and the rubber-matted floor. Heather Jensen and Philip Mack had been happy people in life. They had departed it anything but.

Acheson checked the small bathroom and found it empty. The sleeping area was also vacant, the twin-sized bed unrumpled. No one had been attacked back here. Everything had gone down out in the RV’s salon.

“Where is she?”

Ellenshaw stood in the salon near the radios, and Acheson could tell his panic was cresting. Julia crept in behind him, all business. She looked over George’s body first, then at Heather and Philip. She pulled the Beretta 92F pistol from Philip’s right hand and sniffed it, then toed a single cartridge with her right foot.

“One round from Phil,” she said. “George and Heather’s weapons are still holstered.”

“Where is she?” Ellenshaw asked again, louder this time. “Where’s Helena?”

“She might’ve escaped,” Julia said. “She might be hiding nearby—”

Ellenshaw pushed past her, almost knocking Julia on her ass as he bolted out the door. “Helena!
Helena!
”

Julia straightened her gear and looked at Acheson, her lips compressed into a tight line. Acheson nodded. If the TOC team had gotten off only one round, then the chances Helena Rubenstein had somehow escaped the carnage and made it to safety were on the high side of astronomical.

“Five, this is Six.”

“Go ahead, Six.”

“TOC team is dead, Rubenstein is missing. Your team’s with Ellenshaw, but don’t go too far. Over.”

A pause. “Roger that, Six. Breaking station, over.”

“Roger. Six out.”

Julia watched Acheson as he headed for the door. “What’s the plan?”

“We stick to procedure. We clean up and get out of here.”

“We’re just going to...” Julia shrugged her shoulders after a moment, and Acheson reached out and touched her arm.

“The ROE’s clear on this, Jules. Help me with Sanders.”

The two of them lugged the corpse into the RV. When they were finished, Acheson stepped outside and hurried to Cecil’s Humvee. Ellenshaw, Sharon, and Chiho were a hundred yards away. The older man was still calling out for Helena.

“What’s the deal?” Cecil asked when Acheson walked up. “Rubenstein’s gone?”

Acheson opened the right rear door and pulled out a box from beneath the seat. It held six body bags. He opened it and counted out three, then closed the box and put it back.

“Stay sharp. We’ll be leaving in about ten minutes.” Acheson scooped up the body bags and slammed the door shut.

“What about Rubenstein?” Cecil called after him.

Acheson didn’t answer. He loped back to the RV, body bags under one arm, MP-5 in his free hand.

Ellenshaw continued calling out for Helena Rubenstein.

Excerpt:

HACKETT’S WAR

By Stephen Knight

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004W48LZQ

“This making war for cash thing is almost starting to get old,” Otis said as he lay stretched out in the hide site. Rivulets of sweat ran down his bald, black head, and his breath was heavy, almost labored. Ever since leaving the U.S. Army, he had put on forty pounds. Everyone in the company said the extra weight would kill him one way or the other. Otis presumed that meant his fat black ass was getting too slow for the battlefield, so he proved them all wrong by entering into an extreme exercise regimen that none of the other troops could match. The funny thing was, it did nothing to reduce his expanding midsection and nascent man-boobs. As long as Otis continued eating like a horse, he was going to be a hefty, hefty boy.

“Anytime you want to quit, you just let me know,” Hackett said. He was stretched out beside Otis, lying on his stomach on a hillside some 60 meters from the road. He scanned the area below through his binoculars. The humidity was high and uncomfortable, and like Otis, Hackett sweated beneath the bug spray and sun block. Unlike Otis, he was not five foot nine inches tall and two hundred and sixty pounds; he was six foot three and much leaner, tipping the scales at one ninety-five.