Dead Six (2 page)

Tailor grabbed my shoulder and pulled me along. “Move, move, move!” he shouted, breaking into a run.

“Into the hotel, quickly!” Ling ordered. Behind us, a huge Super Cougar transport helicopter descended past our crash site and set down in the courtyard. Like the fighter jet, it bore UN markings. More than twenty soldiers, clad in urban camouflage and blue berets, spilled out of the chopper. They fanned out and immediately started shooting at us. Rounds snapped past my head as I ran across the hotel lobby. I jumped, slid across the reception desk, and crashed to the floor below. I landed on top of Tailor. Harper landed next to me.

“What do we do?” I asked, climbing off of Tailor. The water-damaged lobby was illuminated by hazy daylight streaming through the huge, shattered skylight. The wall in front of us was pockmarked with puffs of plaster dust as bullets struck. The reception desk was heavily constructed out of marble and concrete, so it provided decent cover. The hotel interior was ruined from disuse and stunk of rot.

“Why are they shooting at us?” Tailor screamed.

Ling was crouched down next to Tailor. She shouted in his ear. “I
told
you, they declared you unlawful combatants. We broke the cease-fire. They’re just following orders!” She then reached up, leveled her assault rifle across the counter, and ripped off a long burst. “Protect the child!” The Exodus operatives under her command obeyed her order without hesitation. The two men guarding the young girl hustled her, crouched over, to the very back of the room. The rest started shooting, causing the UN troops outside to break their advance and dive for cover.

I glanced over at Tailor. “What do we do?”

Tailor looked around for a moment, the gears turning in his head. He swore to himself, then raised his voice so he could be heard over the noise. “Switchblade-Four! Open fire!”

My team was aggressive to the last. Tower opened up with his M60E4. The machine gun’s rattling roar filled the lobby, making it difficult to hear anything. I saw a UN trooper drop to the ground as Skunky took the top of his head off with a single, well-placed shot from his M14. Harper’s FAL carbine barked as he let off shot after shot.

I took a deep breath. My heart rate slowed down, and everything seemed to slow with it. I was
calm.
I found a target, a cluster of enemy soldiers advancing toward the lobby, and squeezed the trigger. The shortened alloy buttstock bucked into my left shoulder as I fired. One of the UN troops, much closer, tried to bolt across the foyer. Two quick shots and he went down. Another soldier crouched down to reload his G36 carbine. The palm tree he was hiding behind didn’t conceal him well. The blue beret flew off in a spray of blood as I put two bullets through the tree.

I flinched. Something wet struck the right side of my face. Red droplets splashed my shooting glasses. Ducking back down, I reflexively wiped my glasses, smearing dark blood across them. Harper was lying on the floor, a gaping exit wound in the back of his head. Bits of gore and brain matter was splattered on the wall behind him.

I tugged on Tailor’s pant leg. He dropped behind the counter. I pointed at Harper. My mouth opened, but I couldn’t find anything to say. “He’s dead?” Tailor asked, yelling to make himself heard as he rocked a fresh magazine into his weapon.

I nodded in affirmation. “We have to move! We’re gonna get pinned down!”

“Got any grenades left?” Tailor asked. I nodded. He got Ling’s attention. “Hey! We’ll toss frags, then I’ll pop smoke. They’ll find a way to flank us if we stay here.”

Ling shouted orders to the rest of her men. Tailor and I pulled fragmentation grenades from our vests and readied them.

“Frag out!” We lobbed them over the counter. The lobby was rocked by a double concussion as the explosives detonated nearly simultaneously. Dust filled the room, and the remaining glass in the skylight broke free and rained down on top of us. Tailor then threw his smoke grenade. It fired a few seconds later, and the lobby quickly filled with dense white smoke.

“That way!” Ling shouted, pointing to my right. At the far wall was a large doorway that led into the main part of the hotel. Her men filed past us at a run, stepping over Harper’s body as they went.

One of Ling’s men stopped. He was a hulking African man, probably six-foot-four and muscular, so broad that the rifle he carried seemed like a toy in his hands. “Commander, come on!” Behind him, a Chinese man fired short bursts through the smoke, keeping the UN troops busy as we fell back into the building. Then came the young girl, flanked by her two bodyguards.

The girl looked down at me as they hustled her by, and everything else dropped away. Her eyes were intensely blue, almost luminescent. Her hair was such a light shade of platinum blond that it looked white. It was like she was looking right through me. ’m sorry about your friends,” she whispered. At least, I could’ve sworn she did. I don’t remember
seeing
her say anything, but I definitely
heard
her.

Tailor grabbed me by the arm. “Val,
go
, goddamn it!” It snapped me back to reality. He shoved me forward and we followed Ling’s people into the building.

LORENZO

Disputed Zone

Thailand/Myanmar Border

September 6

Men with AK-47s waited for us at the gate, illuminated by the headlights of our stolen UN 6x6 truck. The guards approached the windows. One of them was wearing a necklace strung with dried human fingers.

“Decorative bunch,” Carl stated.

The voice in my radio earpiece was not reassuring. “Lorenzo, I’ve got three at the gate. Two in the tower. FLIR shows
lots
of movement in the camp.” Reaper was a quarter mile up the hill, one eye on the glowing blobs on his laptop screen and the other on the road to make sure the actual United Nations troops didn’t show up.

I was signaled to roll down the window. Complying let in the humid night air and the scents of cook fires and diesel fuel. The lead guard shouted to be heard over the rumble of our engine. My Burmese was rusty, but he was gesturing with the muzzle of his rifle toward the only building with electricity, indicating our destination. I saluted. The guard returned it with a vague wave.

The heavy metal barricade was lifted and shuffled aside. Carl put the truck into gear and rolled us forward. “They bought it.” The gate was shut behind us, effectively trapping us in a compound with a thousand Marxist assholes. My driver smiled as he steered us toward the command center. “That was the hard part.”

“For you,” I responded as I took my earpiece out and shoved it back inside my uniform shirt. Scanning across the compound showed that our aerial reconnaissance had been spot-on for once. The main generator was right where we thought it would be, ten meters from the loading dock. The machine was a thirty-year-old monstrosity of Soviet engineering, and our source had reported that it went out constantly.
Perfect.

More soldiers, if you could use the term for a group this disorganized, were watching our big white truck with mild curiosity. Many of the local peacekeepers moonlighted smuggling munitions, so our presence was not out of the ordinary. I opened the door and hopped down. “Wait for my signal,” I said before slamming the door.

Carl put the truck into reverse and backed toward the loading dock as a pair of soldiers shouted helpful but conflicting directions at him. The truck’s bumper thumped into the concrete. The tarp covering the rear opened, and a giant of a man stepped from the truck and onto the dock. My associate, Train, spoke in rough tones to the thugs on the dock, pointing to the waiting crates of mortar rounds. They began to load the truck. The rebels paid him and Carl no mind. The various UN peacekeepers they had on the take changed constantly. Only the officers, like I was pretending to be, actually mattered.

The guard at the entrance held the door open for me as I walked up the steps. The building had once been part of a rubber plantation, and this had been a reception area for colonial-era visitors. It had been rather nice once but had slid into the typical third world shabbiness of faded paint, peeling wallpaper, and spreading stains. The air conditioner had died sometime during the Vietnam War, and giant malarial mosquitoes frolicked in the river of sweat running down my back. There was a man waiting for me, dressed nicer than the others, with something that casually resembled a uniform. The guard from the door followed me inside, carelessly cradling his AK as he stood behind me.

“Good evening,” the warlord’s lieutenant said in heavily accented English. ”We were not expecting you so soon, Captain.”

“I need to speak with your commander,” I said curtly.

He looked me over suspiciously. I had practiced this disguise for weeks. The fake beard was perfection, my coloring changed slightly with makeup, my extra inches of height hidden with thin-soled boots and a slight slouch, and my gut augmented with padding to fill out the stolen camouflage uniform. I had watched the Pakistani captain, studying his mannerisms, his movements. I looked exactly like the fat, middle-aged, washed-up bureaucrat hack from an ineffective and corrupt organization.

Since the receptionist didn’t pick the AK off his desk and empty a magazine into my chest, I could safely assume my disguise worked. I watched the guard over the tops of the Pakistani’s spectacles. I had replaced the prescription lenses with plain glass after murdering the real captain this afternoon. Finally the lieutenant spoke. “Do you need more money?”

“Those border checkpoints won’t bribe themselves open,” I responded, my accent, tone, and inflection an almost perfect impersonation. I made a big show of looking at my watch. Carl and Train had better be loading that truck fast. “I must be back soon or my superiors will suspect something.”

“General is busy man,” he said, the sigh in his voice indicating what a bother I was being. He gestured toward his subordinate. “Search him.”

I raised my arms as the soldier gave me a cursory pat down. I was, of course, unarmed. I couldn’t risk the possibility that one of these amateurs might take their job seriously. Bringing a weapon into the same room as a rebel leader was a good way to get skinned alive. The search I received was so negligent that I could have smuggled in an RPG, but no use crying over spilt milk. I lowered my arms.

“Let’s go.” The lieutenant motioned for me to follow. The three of us went down a hallway that stank of cigarette smoke. The light was provided by naked bulbs that hummed and flickered with a weak yellow light. We passed other rooms flanked by soldiers. Quick glances through the windows showed village laborers, mostly old women and children, preparing narcotics for shipment. Revolutions need funding too. Finally we reached a set of double doors with a well-fed guard on each side. These boys were bigger, smartly dressed, wearing vests bristling with useful equipment, and kept their rifles casually pointed at me as we approached.

The general’s personal bodyguards and the lieutenant exchanged some indecipherable dialog. I was patted down again, only this time it was brutally and invasively thorough, making me glad that my weapons were in the truck. The guard pulled my radio from my belt, yanking the cord out from under my shirt. He started to jabber at me.

“Regulations require me to have it at all times,” I replied. The guard held it close to his chest, suspicious. “Fine, but I need it back when we’re done here.” The two led me into the inner sanctum while the lieutenant and the first guard returned to their post. That just left me with two heavily armed and trained thugs to deal with. The odds were now in my favor.

Now this room was more like it. Most warlords learned to like the finer things in life. While their army slept in mud huts and ate bugs, they lived plush and fat. Being the boss does have its perks. The furnishings were opulent, but random and mismatched, a shopping trip of looting across the country. It was twenty degrees cooler as a portable AC unit pumped air down on us.

The warlord was waiting for me, reclining in an overstuffed leather chair, smoking a giant cigar, with his feet resting on a golden Buddha. This man had spread terror over this region for a generation and grown obscenely rich in the process. He’d also become soft and complacent, which worked to my benefit. He was grizzled, scarred, and watching a 56 inch TV on the wall, tuned to some situation comedy that I couldn’t understand. The volume was cranked way too high. “You want see me, Captain?” he grunted, puffing around the cigar. “What you want?”

He was ten feet away. I had a guard standing at attention on either side of me. “If I am to continue smuggling ordnance for you, I will need more money.” I put on an air of meekness, of subservience, while in reality I was taking in every detail, calculating every angle. My pulse was quickening, but I gave no outward indication. I coughed politely against the cloud of Cuban smoke.

“Eh? I already pay you. Pay you good. Maybe too good . . .”

“They set up another checkpoint just north of the river. I’ll need cash to pay off the garrison commander there.”

The warlord sighed as he stood. “UN troops so greedy.” He limped over to the wall and pulled back a tapestry, revealing a vault door, just where the informant had said it would be. “Old days, we just kill each other. Peacekeepers make it so complicated now. Peacekeepers . . .” He snorted. “No better than my men, but with pretty blue hats.” No disagreement from me on that one. The UN was less than useless, though their ineptitude created plenty of business opportunities for men like me. “Maybe someday my country not have war. Then my men get pretty blue hats, and we can go to other countries and rape
their
women and take
their
money. Hah!”

I waited patiently for him to spin the dial. That vault was state of the art, rated TXTL-60, and would have required quite some time and a lot of noise for me to defeat on my own. Better to just have the man open it for you. I glanced over at one of the waiting guards. He had a Russian bayonet sheathed on the front of his armor. He smirked, taking my look to be one of nervousness. After all, what did he have to worry about from a middle-aged Pakistani who was just padding his paycheck? The guard turned his attention back to the TV.