Hostage Zero (39 page)
“The bigger the fireworks, the better our chances,” Jonathan said. He smiled at his team. “Everybody ready?” He phrased the question for both of them, but the target was Harvey.
The medic nodded.
“Remember the girl they raped,” Boxers said. “The people they killed. Nothing we do can beat that.”
Jonathan gawped at his friend. That was as close as he’d ever heard the Big Guy get to being sensitive. And he seemed to mean it. How about that?
Jonathan led the way back into the cover of the shadows. Staying inside the dark perimeter, they circled clockwise around the compound, over the northern end on their way to Evan’s hut. Animated voices rolled out of the hut at the very northern edge of the perimeter—Building Delta. From what Jonathan picked up, it was the idle chatter of men off duty—a combination of good-natured insults and sexual innuendos.
Boxers placed a hand on his shoulder to get his attention, then poked a thumb at the barracks and mimed an explosion with his hands. Jonathan shook his head and gave him a thumbs-down. As tempting as it was to place a charge on the barracks building just for the hell of it, there was a lot of ground to cover between here and the exfil point, and it made no sense to squander resources.
As always happened with modern planning tools like satellite imagery and computer mapping, Jonathan felt as if he’d already been here. The layout of the compound was exactly as he’d anticipated. Distances were a bit deceiving—in this case, the place was bigger than he’d expected it to be—but once you got accustomed to the scale, the relative position of the buildings and the nature of the terrain came to feel very familiar.
Finally, they’d worked their way around to Evan’s hut, the one they’d designated as Building Golf (letter
G
in the military alphabet). From the black side like this, the compound was invisible to them, and they were blind to the positioning of the soldiers. Jonathan placed a gloved hand on the wooden siding of the hut and leaned on it. Pretty stout construction, overall.
G
in the military alphabet). From the black side like this, the compound was invisible to them, and they were blind to the positioning of the soldiers. Jonathan placed a gloved hand on the wooden siding of the hut and leaned on it. Pretty stout construction, overall.
Jonathan beckoned Harvey close enough so that his words were more breath than whisper. “Remember, as soon as we cut the power, snap your NVGs in place and don’t look at the fire.”
When he looked at Boxers, the Big Guy already had his cell phone open and ready to send the signal to his detonators. Jonathan slipped his own out of its narrow pocket on his thigh, thumbed the three-digit code, and hovered his thumb over the send button.
“On three,” Jonathan said, and then he bounced his arm with the phone as if they were playing a game of rock-paper-scissors. “One, two ...”
C
HAPTER
F
ORTY
HAPTER
F
ORTY
After a while, Charlie stopped translating the whispered threats that were directed toward Evan. They were going to kill him in his sleep or put a snake in his cot. It was all stupid shit that was not entirely unlike the crap that went on in the dorms at RezHouse when no adults were around to hear. Of course, such words were idle noisemaking back in civilization. Out here, they carried the weight of a promise.
Charlie had done his best to make him believe that they were all talking through their butts—that they’d get the crap kicked out of them by Victor if anything happened to him—but the combination of heat and artificially lit darkness made the threats seem very real.
Better to die on the street than get in the car.
Well, one thing was for sure. There wouldn’t be many more—
The whole world came apart.
The explosions combined into a single shock wave, ripping the night apart with a devastating burst of sound and pressure. Even on the far side of the hut, the concussion hit Jonathan like a fist in the chest.
In the first milliseconds, total darkness enveloped them just as surely as if they’d blinked their eyes shut. Then, just as the first half-second was expiring, the night seethed yellow-orange. Gasoline drums launched like missiles through the destroyed walls of the storage hut, spewing roiling trails of fire that splashed to the earth like flaming latticework, setting the entire world ablaze.
Almost immediately, automatic weapons fire added to the cacophony. It started as a single burst from somewhere nearby, and then others joined from different parts of the compound. One of the great mistakes made by inexperienced or frightened soldiers was to fire indiscriminately at whatever you think is the source of your fears. If your adversary knows what he’s doing, it’s always a mistake.
Jonathan counted to three silently, then went to work. With his M4 at the ready, the stock pressed into his shoulder, and his body bent at the waist, he swung the corner to his left, cleared the short side of the building in five quick strides, and then turned the corner again. What he saw impressed him.
Boxers by God knew how to build one hell of an inferno. The explosion of the fuel shed had launched a literal rain of fire over the compound, igniting hundreds of spot fires from tiny to large. Only ten seconds into the assault, the big center structure—the one that Jonathan had identified as the factory—was consuming itself with fire, growing exponentially as the flames found additional stores of processing chemicals and touched off secondary explosions. Behind him in the dormitory shack, the children had begun to scream.
Their screams were nothing compared to the sound that tore the night from the other side of the compound—the sound of people on fire.
The sentries who had been posted to the door were completely absorbed by the diversion of the drums. With their rifles at the ready and their backs turned to the door they were assigned to guard, they uselessly scanned the yard for targets. Jonathan killed them both with single shots to the head.
See guy with gun, kill guy with gun
. The Hollywood sense of honor, in which it was cowardly to shoot someone in the back, was pure fiction. The trick in real warfare was to kill the bad guys before they could pose a meaningful threat to the good guys. If he’d let the sentries live, he’d just have to confront them again on the way out.
. The Hollywood sense of honor, in which it was cowardly to shoot someone in the back, was pure fiction. The trick in real warfare was to kill the bad guys before they could pose a meaningful threat to the good guys. If he’d let the sentries live, he’d just have to confront them again on the way out.
Harvey appeared on Jonathan’s right, looking for all the world like a dedicated warrior. His weapon at the ready, he sank to a knee and took over the work of covering the door. “Don’t you have a job to do?” he asked Scorpion.
He did indeed. Per the plan, Boxers had taken bolt cutters to the lock, and the bolt was ready to be slid out of the way. Jonathan joined him on the stoop and locked his gaze just as he’d done so many times in the past. Once the door was crashed, Boxers would go in high and to the right to engage targets, and Jonathan would go low and to the left.
The snapped their night vision back into place and threw open the door.
Evan was terrified. The explosion startled the crap out of him, and the gunfire was downright horrifying, but it was the blast of heat through the windows that completely undid him. He rolled out of his bed onto the floor and curled himself into as tight a ball as he could manufacture. Throughout the barracks, all pretense of toughness or machismo evaporated. They were now a roomful of boys who were terrified of dying.
Next to him, Charlie was on the floor, too, doing his best to slide under his cot. Evan’s mind screamed to get out of here—to claw at the wire over the windows or maybe slam his shoulder into the door to bust it open—but his body refused to respond. He was frozen. He’d heard that expression before—frozen in fear—but he had no idea that it was possible in the literal sense.
“What’s happening?” Evan screamed to Charlie.
The other boy’s eyes were wide and red. He shook his head.
Evan heard two gunshots, really close ones, and then a rattling sound at the front door. It was like every bad dream he’d ever had, where the monster is clawing at your door to get in, and you can’t do anything to stop it.
He shot another panicked look to Charlie, then flattened himself on the floor as if to dissolve through the wooden planks.
Please God
, he thought. But then he realized he didn’t know what to pray for.
, he thought. But then he realized he didn’t know what to pray for.
That’s okay,
Father Dom had told him once.
God sees your heart. He doesn’t need to hear your words.
Father Dom had told him once.
God sees your heart. He doesn’t need to hear your words.
So just
please God
would do.
please God
would do.
The door burst open, and the monster entered. Actually, it was two monsters, and they had guns.
“
En el piso!
” one of them yelled. He was huge—from this angle bigger than the door he’d just come through. “
En el piso!
”
En el piso!
” one of them yelled. He was huge—from this angle bigger than the door he’d just come through. “
En el piso!
”
Immediately, on the far end of the room, there was a clatter of beds and people as boys dropped to the floor.
“Evan Guinn!” the other one yelled.
Something dissolved inside him, launching him to a new plane of fear. They were coming to kill him. Then all of that changed with the man’s next words.
“Evan Guinn, we’re here to take you home!”
Inside on the left was for shit—literally, it turned out—so after a quick glance to clear that part of the room, Jonathan shifted his attention to the right.
Boxers yelled, “On the floor!” in Spanish, and then repeated it. To a person, the kids obeyed. Instantly. And kids they were, too. Not a whisker among them.
By Jonathan’s estimate, they were already two minutes into the assault, and that meant they were behind schedule. It wouldn’t take long for somebody to connect the dots on what they were doing, and then the heat of the fire would pale in comparison to the heat of the battle.
“Evan Guinn!” Jonathan yelled. Details of skin tone and hair color were hard to discern with the NVGs in place. “Evan Guinn, we’re here to take you home!”
Two seconds later, there he was. The closest bed to the door on the eastern side of the building. He saw the boy first as movement, and then there was the mop of hair and the white skin. So much for skin tone and hair color being hard to discern. In here the kid was as visible as chalk on a blackboard.
“I’ve got him,” he announced to Boxers.
“Roger that,” Boxers said. The Big Guy sidestepped closer to the western wall to give Jonathan space to grab Evan, but he kept his weapon trained on the room.
The boy was still finding his feet when Jonathan grabbed his upper arm to help. When he was in the aisle Jonathan stooped to the boy’s level and snapped the NVGs out of the way. “We’re the good guys, Evan. From America. We’re here to take you back where you belong.”
In the dancing, deflected light of the fires, Jonathan saw the kid’s eyes go wide. “Mr. Jonathan?” he said.
Jonathan smiled. “The one and only.”
“What are you doing here?”
“That’s a very long story,” Jonathan replied. “For now, I need you to keep quiet, stay close to me, and let’s see if we can all get out of here alive.”
One of the other children scrambled to his feet and rushed toward them, but Boxers planted a hand in his chest, stopping him in his tracks. “Take me with you,” the boy said.
The English startled Jonathan, but he started for the door anyway.
Boxers said, “Go back to bed, kid. We’re here for just one.”
“No!” the boy shouted. “Evan, you promised!”
Evan squirted out of Jonathan’s grasp and buttonhooked around his hip to beckon Charlie to join them. “Come on,” he said.
Jonathan grabbed Evan’s arm again, tighter this time. “No,
you
come on.”
you
come on.”
“But he’s my friend.”
“You’ll make a new one,” Boxers growled. “Scorpion, we need to move.”
With his rifle trained on the other boys, he started to back out as Jonathan half pushed, half dragged Evan through the door. “Mr. Jonathan, Mr. Jonathan, listen to me. That’s Charlie. He was the only one who helped—”
“We can’t,” Jonathan said. “We just can’t.”
Evan yelled, “Come on, Charlie! He said you can come!”
Boxers appeared at the door, his jaw dropped. “What the hell?”
Jonathan was stunned. And then the other kid was there. Well, shit. What was he going to do, shoot him?
It would take less time to capitulate than it would to argue. “Fine,” he said. Then, to Boxers, “Let—”
A chorus of screams whipped Jonathan’s head to the far end of the compound, where the fire had reached the farthest of the barracks—Building India—and was starting to consume the west wall—the one that faced the interior of the compound. Tongues of flame licked up the siding and up to the eaves and the thatched roof. At a glance, he realized that the fire would be rolling into the interior of the building through the high windows. If they didn’t do something, the children would burn to death.
Harvey said, “Boss.”
Jonathan shot a look to Boxers. “We have to,” he said. He let go of Evan’s arm and said to the boy, “Stay with me. Step for step, you understand?”
He didn’t wait for an answer. He turned on his heel and ran toward the growing conflagration, his rifle at the ready. This was the nightmare scenario—the one that he had driven home a thousand times to Unit wannabes when he was an instructor at the OTC—operator training course. On an 0300 mission, the precious cargo
was
the mission. Everything was secondary to the rescue. And by God, once you have the PC in your grasp, you never do anything to risk their safety. Yeah, well, that was the training course. He’d survived it once and taught it three times, and he knew for a fact that there was no scenario involving the incineration of a dozen children.
was
the mission. Everything was secondary to the rescue. And by God, once you have the PC in your grasp, you never do anything to risk their safety. Yeah, well, that was the training course. He’d survived it once and taught it three times, and he knew for a fact that there was no scenario involving the incineration of a dozen children.
The fire grew with startling speed. In the ten or fifteen seconds that it took Jonathan to cover the distance, the far end of the barracks was fully involved. The screams from inside were as terrifying a sound as he’d ever heard. He was certain that they were screaming words, but he didn’t try to catch them. The timbre of the voices told him everything he needed to know. As they closed within the last few yards, Harvey sprinted past him to get to the door first. Jonathan didn’t think the little guy knew how to move that fast.
A burst of machine-gun fire from close behind made Jonathan slide to a stop and bring his weapon to bear. It was Boxers, and his weapon was up, his eyes focused to the southwest corner of the compound. He followed his sight line and turned in time for a second burst to drop a soldier who’d been readying a shot of his own.
“Make it fast, Dig!” Boxers shouted. “This is spinning out of control. We are officially in trouble.”
Jonathan could count on two hands the number of times he’d heard his friend sound this unnerved. Whatever advantage they’d earned through their massive diversion had now been lost. In fact, the diversion itself had become their biggest problem. With the element of surprise squandered, this whole mission would come down to marksmanship.
Harvey pulled on the barracks door, trying to get it open. It was not lost on Jonathan that none of the local soldiers or bosses were doing anything to help the children.
“Move, Harvey,” Jonathan barked. He let the M4 fall against its sling, and raised the Mossberg. He jacked the breech open, ejecting one of the buckshot rounds, then reached to his bandolier of shells and thumbed out a slug round. He slipped it into the breech and closed it before sweeping Evan and his friend behind him. He placed the muzzle two inches away from the shackle loop, calculated the ricochet angle, then pulled the trigger.
The Mossberg bucked, and the lock disappeared. He slid the bolt to the side, pulled open the door, and children tumbled out into the night. They coughed and cried, their faces blackened with soot and smoke, but Jonathan didn’t see any burns. Next to him, Harvey did his best to examine them as they streamed by. Apparently, they were all healthy, because he didn’t stop any of them for further treatment.
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