Hostage Zero (40 page)
A ripple of bullets chewed the wall just to the left of the door, followed an instant later by the sound of the gunfire that launched them. The children yelled and scattered, causing Jonathan to reflexively look for Evan. He was still right where he was supposed to be, his friend close enough for them to share a heartbeat.
As much as he wanted to bolt out of there, he had to look inside to make sure that he hadn’t left any living children to burn. He cleared the two steps in a single stride. Keeping close to the floor, where the air was still breathable, he crawled a few feet inside and took a look. Just an empty room on this end. On the far end, a wall of fire had become a living monster, consuming everything. If someone had been left behind, they were dead now.
He scooted back outside.
The children from the burning barracks weren’t going anywhere. They clustered around Boxers and Harvey, and now that Jonathan had rejoined the scene, they clustered around him, too. One boy of about twelve who appeared in the firelight to be missing his right eye and ear from an old injury grabbed Jonathan by his web gear and said in Spanish, “What do we do? Where do we go? Please take me with you.”
Others were doing the same with Boxers and Harvey. These kids were in a total panic, yet somehow they knew that the strangers with the rifles provided a better future than the locals who paid for their labors.
Jonathan said nothing. What could he say? This mission was coming unzipped in enormous proportions.
“We’ve got to move!” he shouted to his team.
“Guns to the north!” Boxers yelled.
Jonathan pivoted right and dragged Evan to the ground by cupping the back of his neck with his left hand while shouldering his M4 with his right. A dozen or more men in various stages of uniform undress had left their instinct to fight the fires and were dialing in to the real threat. Word was passing quickly among them, and many were assuming shooting positions. Jonathan dropped two with two three-round bursts.
Bad guys opened up from what felt like every compass point. It was panicked fire, largely unaimed and therefore not particularly dangerous, but the old adages of war still applied: If you throw enough lead out there, something’s bound to get hit.
The children scattered. Most of them. In the barracks hut behind them—Building Hotel, the one still locked but not burning—children screamed and pounded on the walls, no doubt terrified by the bullets that missed the intended targets and slammed through the wooden panels as if they were not even there.
Jonathan and Boxers both dropped to their bellies to present smaller profiles, Jonathan’s body covering Evan, who was squirming like a grounded fish to get the weight off him. “Get the PC under cover!” Jonathan yelled to Harvey, who seemed momentarily to be frozen in place, neither standing nor crawling, but stuck somewhere in between.
“Harvey!”
That snapped him back to awareness.
Jonathan rolled off of Evan. “Take Evan behind Building Hotel and sit on him. Anybody comes close you don’t recognize, shoot him.”
For the first time, Harvey seemed to fully understand the stakes, to become fully aware of his surroundings. He stooped low, grabbed Evan under his armpits, and pulled.
Evan needed no additional encouragement. Once he was free of Jonathan’s weight, he darted like a loose rocket behind the center hut. Charlie, too. Harvey had to hurry just to keep up.
“We can’t stay here!” Boxers shouted. Bullets kicked up dirt in the space between them, and the Big Guy drilled the shooter.
Jonathan knew he was right. There was no way to spirit Evan out through all of this. Two- and three-man battle teams were forming all over the compound now. Their movement and their muzzle flashes marked their locations, but with so many of them and one common target, it was only a matter of time.
“We can’t defend this position!” Jonathan yelled, firing at a running target and missing.
“Oh, ya think?” Boxers yelled back. He dropped a magazine and slapped in another one.
“We’re gonna move left,” Jonathan announced, this time using the radio so Harvey would know, too. “Harvey, stay put. Box, our rally point is the black side of the burning barracks.” He dropped a magazine that still had six rounds in it and inserted a fresh mag of thirty. “Okay, Big Guy, you shoot everything north of two-seventy, I’ll take everything south. Covering fire!”
Moving with remarkable harmony, they let go with a hail of barely aimed bursts of machine-gun fire as they rose to a deep crouch and made their move for cover. Jonathan dumped his first thirty rounds in seven seconds and two seconds later had a fresh mag that he emptied in six seconds. The goal here was not to kill—although he’d take whatever he could get—but rather to land rounds close enough to the enemy that they hit the dirt. Another basic rule of warfare was that you can’t cower and kill at the same time. Calmness under fire was the single deadliest trait that separated professional soldiers from amateurs. Well, that and the ability to hit what you’re aiming at.
To Jonathan’s right as they moved to cover behind the inferno that used to be Building India, Boxer managed to unload ninety rounds with such speed that Jonathan never heard his pauses to reload.
Jonathan arrived to relative safety in the shadow of the burning building first, followed by Big Guy just a couple of seconds later.
“No return fire,” Boxers said. His eyes were wide with anticipation, his face as anxious as a kid awaiting his turn with Santa. “We can take them.”
Jonathan nodded. Covering fire, or suppressing fire, was as much a test as a strategy. You learned how thoroughly the enemy cowered under fire. If the roles had just been reversed, and two amateurs had been fleeing a dozen pros while randomly shooting into the night, the amateurs would have been easily dispatched.
“We have to move fast, though,” Jonathan said. “We’ll roll them up from left to right.”
“They’re gonna seek shelter in one of the remaining buildings,” Boxers predicted.
Jonathan smiled. “With any luck.” Hand grenades were invented for eliminating enemies hunkered down inside buildings.
There was no need to review the strategy. They’d both done this drill so many times that it was nearly as instinctive as breathing.
When the radio broke squelch, Mitch Ponder heard the sounds of battle before he heard any voices.
“They’re blowing up the whole factory,” Victor shouted in Spanish. “Huge explosions! There must be twenty of them! Hurry!”
Without having to be told, the pilot cranked up the engine of their luxurious, leather-upholstered Sikorski S-76 chopper. They’d been standing alert, thirty miles away in the yard of a business associate, awaiting the attack that Ponder had known was on the way. The spin of the turbine woke up the machine gunner in the back.
“Everything’s on fire!” Victor hollered. “They’re killing everyone. The factory is being destroyed.”
Something jumped in his chest. “What do you mean,
destroyed
?”
destroyed
?”
“Listen!” The mike remained open, and in his mind, Ponder had visions of Victor holding it out a window. The sound of gunshots was unmistakable.
“Well, stop them,” Ponder commanded. “You’ve got a whole fucking army. I know because I paid for their weapons.”
“We will try,” Victor promised. “But I can no longer guarantee the safety of the white boy.”
“Fuck the white boy,” Ponder spat. He owed a debt to the American secretary of defense, but nothing was worth the millions he would lose if the factory was destroyed. Most cocaine manufacturers were lucky to manufacture a few kilos a month; his operation made hundreds of kilos a week. There was no bigger operation anywhere in South America. “It’s better to keep him alive, but if he has to die, he has to die. We’re on our way.”
He nodded to his pilot, and the ground dropped away as the rotors bit into the humid night. As they cleared the trees and pivoted north, the glow of the attack was evident on the horizon, a dome of yellow and orange that tore the darkness like a floodlight.
“My God,” Ponder muttered. It wasn’t supposed to go like this. He’d agreed to shelter the Guinn boy at the factory because it was the only place under his control where he could be constantly watched and where he could earn his keep.
Victor and his soldiers were supposed to have stopped the rescuers from taking the boy. This helicopter was supposed to have been the last-resort insurance policy to be used only if the rescue had succeeded and the attackers disappeared into the night. Equipped with forward-looking infrared technology, and with each of the crew members wearing night-vision goggles, there would have been no hiding for invaders retreating through the jungle.
In a perfect world, they wanted the Guinn boy to stay alive; but if he died, no one would ever have to know. The father would be told that he was fine, and they would manufacture reasons not to show his picture again. If that turned out not to be enough to keep the man from talking, well, that was not Ponder’s problem.
The distant dome of light pulsed and grew brighter. Ponder set his jaw, ready to kill.
C
HAPTER
F
ORTY-ONE
HAPTER
F
ORTY-ONE
Because the enemy was likely to expect them to emerge from the far side of the building, Jonathan and Boxers instead emerged from the same spot where they’d entered. They cut left when they were clear of the building, through the searing alleyway between the barracks fire and the factory fire, shooting the same fields as before.
When it felt like they’d passed their enemy’s left flank, they buttonhooked to the right and began killing in earnest. Any silhouette with a gun was a legitimate target.
They moved together, their bodies nearly touching, firing and reloading without pause, zigging and zagging at random to frustrate any effort to stop them. This wasn’t about covering fire anymore. This was all about accuracy on the move, firing two bullets at a time, each pair finding their target and killing it. Where an enemy shooter presented a frontal profile, Jonathan went for a double-tap, a bullet in the heart followed by a bullet in the head. If it was a sidelong silhouette, he aimed for the ear. If they were running away, the choice target lay between the shoulder blades.
Where they pointed their weapons, people died. Jonathan made no attempt to count, but he knew for a fact that he dispatched five in the first ten or fifteen seconds. The enemy returned fire, but it was all wild and random. As far as Jonathan knew, not a single round came within five feet of him. By comparison, not a single round that left his muzzle missed its intended target.
Twenty seconds into the assault, the enemy was at a dead run, their instinct to survive obliterating their desire to win. All but a few ran in straight lines, among the surest ways to meet one’s maker during a firefight.
Jonathan and Boxers never slowed. Where bodies clogged the path, they vaulted over them. Under other circumstances, with an enemy who was better trained or more operationally aware, this kind of full-on assault would have opened the door for a counter-flanking maneuver, where bad guys would hold back and wait for the attackers to pass and then assault from the rear or the side. As they charged forward, Jonathan continued to check his six o’clock, but the maneuver never materialized.
They charged northward along the eastern edge of the compound, and as they passed what was left of the gasoline shed—Building Alpha—Jonathan saw asses and elbows retreating into Building Bravo, which, judging from the construction design was a mirror image of the kids’ barracks, but minus the locked doors and wired windows.
Jonathan and Boxers slid to a halt against the near wall of the building, well below the window, but easily vulnerable to anyone who thought to shoot a rifle through the thin siding.
The shooting had stopped, but Jonathan knew that the silence couldn’t last.
“I say we blow the building,” Boxers whispered.
Jonathan agreed. It was the only—
He glanced out into the center of the compound. “Oh, shit,” he breathed.
Evan thought this was like living the scariest movie he’d ever seen—only the explosions were real and the bleeding bodies were real. All of it was real. There wasn’t a single moment of the past few days that made any sense to him, but this topped the charts. People were dying, for God’s sake. Things were blowing up.
And Mr. Jonathan! Jesus. He’d always seemed like a tough guy and all—friendly, but in a hard kind of way—but never in a million years did he imagine the man killing people to rescue him. He felt like his head had been stuffed with glue. There was too much going on for him to understand any of it.
“Evan, what’s happening?” Charlie said way too loudly, unused to the sudden silence. “Who are these people?”
“The guy out there is Mr. Jonathan. He’s—”
“Quiet,” snapped the man who’d joined them back here. Evan had never seen him before, but he seemed nervous. He had the helmet and the gloves and the gun of a soldier, but he seemed scared. That was the thing about Mr. Jonathan: he didn’t seem even a little bit scared. Evan didn’t know if he liked that or not.
“Who are you?” Evan asked. He changed his voice to something north of a whisper but south of a shout so that he could still be heard.
“I’m a friend. My name is Harvey, and I need you both to stay quiet.” As an afterthought, he held out a gloved hand. “You’re Evan Guinn. Nice to meet you.”
Evan cocked his head, confused, but he shook the man’s hand. “Nice to meet you, too.”
“I’m Charlie,” the other boy said, thrusting his hand between the two of them.
“He’s my new friend,” Evan explained. “He’s been here a long time. They killed his parents.”
Harvey shook Charlie’s hand, too, but something changed in his face as he did. He looked sad. “Well, I hope we can find you a nice home,” he said.
“What are we doing?” Evan asked.
“We’re getting you out of here.”
“But
how
?”
how
?”
Harvey gave him a funny look, as if he didn’t know the answer to the most obvious question in the world. “Watch and learn,” he said.
“Are we hiding?” Charlie asked.
“Damn straight we’re hiding,” Harvey answered. “Their job is to eliminate the threat to you. My job is to make sure you stay safe while they do it.” As if to punctuate his point, he readjusted the grip on his machine gun. “To get to you, they’ve got to come through me.”
Harvey heard the tough-guy words coming from his mouth, and he nearly cringed. He hadn’t felt this terrified since The Sandbox. Nor had he felt this alive. Warfare was the God-awfulest experience life had to offer to anyone; but out here, in the middle of this firefight, he recalled the addiction he’d felt back in the day. Bathed in mortal terror, the world became supernaturally vivid; the colors brighter, the fear sharper, the jubilance greater. It wasn’t until after it was over, when the enemy dead and friendly dead all looked human again, that the remorse and doubts sneaked in to steal your soul. It wasn’t until it was all over that the thrill transformed to horror.
At this moment, the reality of his life back home—the tent, the perpetual state of fear, and his general sense of uselessness—felt light-years away. They felt as if they belonged to someone else. Here he was in the middle of a by-God war, and he had something worth fighting for. Something worth dying for. He remembered his drill sergeant from a million years ago in Basic Training telling him that the only life worth living is the one worth dying to protect.
He’d understood the words intellectually back then, but now they resonated in his heart. Maybe he needed to lose everything once before he understood the need to protect those things that were important to him. These two kids were his responsibility. If they died out here, it would be his fault, but if they lived to see tomorrow, that would be his fault, too. His victory.
God help anyone who threatened that.
Out in the compound, one of the boys ran in a tight, panicked circle, clearly not knowing what to do. He stopped at the body of a soldier who’d fallen dead just thirty feet away. Jonathan remembered shooting him.
He didn’t know where the other children had gone, but this one was very much in harm’s way. Jonathan yelled, “
Tú! Niño! A cubierto!
” You! Boy! Take cover.
Tú! Niño! A cubierto!
” You! Boy! Take cover.
The boy didn’t respond. Instead, he wandered closer to the corpse, where he bent at the waist to look more closely at the face. Then he stomped on it with his heel. Once, twice, then a third time.
Jonathan spat a curse under his breath. “
Parar!
” he yelled. “
No hagas eso!
” Stop! Don’t do that! But the kid wouldn’t listen. “Shit. Cover me, Box.”
Parar!
” he yelled. “
No hagas eso!
” Stop! Don’t do that! But the kid wouldn’t listen. “Shit. Cover me, Box.”
“What the hell are you—”
Jonathan was already gone. The kid kept kicking the corpse. No cadre of soldiers would stand by and watch—
Gunfire erupted from Buildings Bravo and Delta, ripping the night and the ground. And the boy. He dropped where he stood.
“Motherfucker!” Jonathan yelled, and he brought his M4 to bear, spraying the windows and walls just inches from Boxers, who in turn unleashed withering fire on Building Delta on the north end.
Return fire ceased as the enemy dove for whatever cover they could find.
After reloading, Jonathan knelt and scooped the boy’s limp body into the crook of his left arm while he emptied another mag with his right as he ran for cover.
Back in the shadow of the building, he skidded to a halt and let the boy slide to the ground. Most of his throat was gone, and two holes had been punched through his chest. In the light of the fires, the boy’s fixed pupils looked as lifeless as glass.
“He’s gone, Dig,” Boxers said. “Nothing you can do.”
He couldn’t have been more than eleven years old. That’s a blink. What had the kid been thinking? What would have driven him to stand in the open like that and assault the body?
“Dig, we gotta go. He’s dead. Fuckers killed him.”
Jonathan felt terrible thoughts encroaching on his consciousness, and he pushed them away. This was warfare, for God’s sake, where the entire world consisted of current facts and future objectives. The past becomes irrelevant the instant it passes. You can’t worry about the dead at the same time that you’re planning to protect the living. But he was so young.
“Focus, Dig,” Boxers said.
“Fine,” Jonathan said. “None of these assholes gets out alive. Not one.”
Boxers nodded. “Works for me.”
Jonathan reloaded his carbine, then let it fall against its sling as he lifted a fragmentation grenade from his vest. “Keep their heads down in Building Delta,” he said. “I’m gonna frag these fuckers in Bravo and then roll ’em up.”
“You’re making me hard,” Boxers grinned. He slid a fresh magazine into his rifle. “Say the word.”
Jonathan settled himself with a deep breath. “The word.”
Standing to his full height, but using the corner of the barracks for cover, Boxers aimed at the farthest building and raked the front windows with three round bursts.
Jonathan used the cover to push out in a crouch and moved to the left, down the front of Bravo, keeping his left shoulder pressed against the wall. Behind him, Boxers threw out an amazing volume of fire, while ahead of him, in Building Bravo, nobody seemed to know what to do.
Jonathan nestled the spoon of the grenade in the web between his thumb and forefinger and pulled the pin. He duck-walked three feet out from the wall, barely in sight of anyone with the courage to peek out, and let the spoon fly. At this range, he didn’t want to give the enemy time to throw it back, so he let it cook off for two seconds before he threw it through the open window.
“Frag away,” he whispered into his radio, cuing Boxers that an explosion was coming. Jonathan dropped to the ground and two seconds later was rewarded with the crisp
bang!
that meant victory. The screams of the wounded followed instantly. He moved down two windows and repeated the procedure. “Frag away.”
bang!
that meant victory. The screams of the wounded followed instantly. He moved down two windows and repeated the procedure. “Frag away.”
After the second detonation, it was time to finish the job up close and personal. “I’m going in,” he said into his radio.
“Rog.”
Jonathan snapped his night vision back into place and reached for the Mossberg again, stretching it against its bungee sling. All of this in one continuous motion as he charged up the three steps to the stoop and kicked open the door.
Outside, Boxers reduced his rate of fire by two-thirds. It made no sense to waste the scores of rounds in suppressing fire when the man he was covering was inside a building and invisible.
The instant he crossed the threshold, Jonathan pivoted right to clear the area behind the door and damn near yelled when he came face-to-face with a soldier. The man just stood there, disoriented and bleeding. The man held an M16 in his hands, but it seemed foreign to him. Such was the disorientation that commonly followed a blast in close quarters.
The temptation to let him live gave way to the reality that once recovered, the dazed soldier would be lethal again. Jonathan killed him with a blast from the Mossberg at point-blank range, shredding his chest with nine .32-caliber pellets.
Then he turned left and took his time strolling down what was left of the center aisle between the ranks of bunks. When he kicked at an arm that was protruding from under a bunk, intending to check if its owner was alive or dead, the arm itself skittered freely across the floor.
Ahead and to the right, a man writhed in agony, his midsection wet and black in the night vision. Jonathan assessed the wound as lethal and had just decided to let him be when the man raised a bloody pistol. Jonathan shot him.
Fifteen seconds after he’d entered the room, Jonathan pressed his mike button. “Bravo’s clear. I’m coming out.”
“Holy shit, they’re running!” Boxers’ voice announced in his ear. He started shooting again.
Jonathan darted to the open door and dropped to his knee, switching again to his M4. He watched as a stream of men poured out of Building Delta. They stumbled and bumbled out the door and down the stairs, some of them dropped by Boxers’ bullets, but most just tangling their feet in their panic to get out. They streamed into the woods on the far side of the compound.
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