Enemy One (Epic Book 5) (59 page)

With every passing second, Logan’s breaths grew more brooding and intense. His jaw was clenched so tightly, he could have snapped an iron bar between them. It was taking everything inside him to prevent himself from going ballistic.

It wasn’t enough.

Snarling loudly, Logan raised his broken chaos rifle, spun around, and slammed it into the dusty ground.

“Hey!” said Marty, several feet away. The Cajun marched toward him. “Watch ’dat thing, those things are expensive!”

Pointing to the burning facility, Logan erupted. “Remington was here and we let him
bloody
disappear!”

“We do not know that Remington was here,” said Chiumbo, nearing them from the direction of several injured soldiers from another Vulture. “We do not know that any of the soldiers on the ground here were Remington. No one verified it.”

“That’s really going to help me sleep better tonight!” said the Australian.

Running his hand through his tussled brown hair, Marty sighed in exhaustion. “Look, chief, they got us today—there ain’t no doubt about ’dat. But ’dere’s gonna be other days. We already know ’dis guy is good. He wouldn’t have been able to pull off what he did at
Cairo
if he wasn’t.”

It did nothing to calm Logan down. “Meanwhile, your world-renown pilot flies into a bloody explosion—”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” said Marty, eyes narrowing as he raised a hand. “Watch y’self now, chief.”

“It’s
my
fault, all right? The buck stops with me!” Logan snarled. “I wasn’t perfect, which means we weren’t perfect, which means Remington is high-tailing to wherever it is he’s hunkering down! I’m sorry, but I don’t plan on handling that well.”

Stepping between them, Chiumbo focused on Marty. “We forget what Marshall has seen. Someone he respects was kidnapped by this man, Remington. Was Captain Faerber not emotional at the death of his son?” Marty’s glare remained, though he drew an intentionally calming breath. The Mwera lieutenant went on. “An angry outburst is to be expected, and we will not hold it against him.” Before anyone could interrupt him, he continued on. “This is war. Everything here,” he motioned all around them, “all that you see, is a trench. We are in it. The acknowledgment of failure is not to be run from, it is to be learned from—and learn, we must.”

“Yeah, we’ll bloody learn,” the Australian answered flatly. When the other two men eyed him suspiciously, he went on. “I mean that, gentlemen. We’ll bloody learn. It starts with me.”

“That is good to hear,” Chiumbo said, pausing for a moment. “Now, let us go and retrieve the rest of our team then wait for another transport to return us to
Novosibirsk
. We regroup, and we pursue again.” His expression grew stern. “This was not a victory on Remington’s part. This was a ‘lucky break.’ His luck will run out.”

Leaning past Chiumbo, Marty held a fist out to Logan. “Hey. We gonna get ’dis guy. All right?”

After a moment of reluctance, Logan bumped the fist with his own. “Right.” His positivity was forced, but it was there.

Casting his eye skyward toward the radio tower, Chiumbo queued up Lisa. “Can you see anything up there, Tiffin?”

“Smoke and dust,” the sniper replied.

“Well, then,” Chiumbo said, looking at Logan and Marty once more. “One of us must go search for Minh on his own.”

Logan raised a hand. “I’ll go.”

The Mwera lieutenant raised an eyebrow.

“No, I’ll be fine,” said Logan, sensing the wariness. “I’ll go track him down.”

“Very well.” Chiumbo looked at Marty. “Go check on Sasha and Pablo.”

The Cajun bellowed sardonically, “Check on ’dem? ’Dey oughta be checkin’ on us!”

As if on cue, a voice from the other team—Sasha’s—cut through the conversation. “Comrades, are you all right?”

“We’re fine,” answered Marty. “Get your butts back in front. Time to regroup and reload.”

There was a pause. “I think regrouping and reloading might have just gotten easier,” Sasha said.

The three men up front swapped glances. Chiumbo lifted his comm. “What do you mean?”

Through the comm, Sasha inhaled a breath. “Pablo just found something the outlaws left behind—and it’s big.” Logan, Chiumbo, and Marty looked at one another. “I think we just found the break that we needed.”

Tuesday, March 20
^th
, 0012 NE

1749 hours

Norilsk, Russia

THE RIDE BACK to
Northern Forge
was uneventful, which was a very good thing. EDEN knew the
Pariah
’s last known whereabouts and the direction it was heading. Scott almost expected more Superwolves to cut the cursed transport off somewhere, though thankfully such a cut-off never came. For all practical purposes, they were home free, even if the process of actually
landing
at home was going to be a bit more complicated.

Landing the
Pariah
without vertical thrusters wasn’t something Scott was concerned about. After all, Travis had done that once already. What concerned Scott was Tiffany’s mental state. The blonde was frazzled—he could see it and feel it in her rigidness. As chatty as her default status seemed to be, for the Valley Girl to not say a thing after doing what she’d just done spoke volumes. This one would take a while to recover from.

And so Scott simply enjoyed the view in a way he’d never done before: without a glass canopy to protect him. It was strange how after the aerial feats they’d just pulled off, flying without a canopy almost felt serene, particularly as daylight gave way to dusk. It was like flying a convertible under an orange and purple sky. With every minute that passed, the fear that’d gripped him so terribly dwindled. They were going to get out of this. They’d all have their feet on the floor of
Northern Forge
again.

Except for Travis and Donald.

It wasn’t until well after they were underway with Tiffany at the helm that thoughts of the deceased entered Scott’s mind. Travis was dead. Travis Navarro, their comic-book-reading pilot, was dead. The heaviness that hit his heart was a deep one. It went far beyond the loss of just
the
Pariah
’s pilot, and in a sense, its advocate. This was the loss of a dear friend. A loved one for them all.

How is this going to affect Boris?

The Fourteenth had gotten used to surviving. The last death they’d faced that had impacted them to any degree was Captain Clarke. No unit was supposed to lose their pilot—not this way.

As Scott leaned back in the pilot’s seat with the wind pressing against him, memories of Travis drifted through his mind. He’d always been an endorser of Scott in the unit, even when Scott was new and hadn’t rightfully earned the trust of everyone else. Travis was a dreamer—and oftentimes a
day
dreamer. He’d been accused by some of being lazy, and perhaps that was true to an extent, but no one could question whether or not he was dedicated. Travis was the reason the
Pariah
was still running, long before it’d been shipped off—supposedly—to
Atlanta
for repairs. The
Pariah
was Travis’s faithful companion. His feral dog. Who could claim ownership of the
Pariah
now?

His arms tightened instinctively around Tiffany’s waist as they hit a spell of turbulence. Right then, he had his answer. Tiffany was alive because of the
Pariah
. That cursed transport had flown her to
Novosibirsk
and saved her and her comrades’ lives on its own. Perhaps no one else was
supposed
to claim ownership of the
Pariah
. Maybe choosing an owner was the
Pariah
’s decision. Could a torch choose who it got passed to? If so, the onus was on Tiffany to decide whether or not to accept it—whether or not to
truly
become a part of the Fourteenth, even if only by circumstance. He’d honor whatever decision she made.

Donald…

Of the Fourteenth, only Scott, David, Becan, and Jayden had known Donald from
Richmond.
The demolitionist’s death wouldn’t impact the other members of the Fourteenth as traumatically as Travis’s would, but Donald was a friend to Scott and his fellow transfers. He was Scott’s “offensive lineman.” He was a good person. Scott may have been closer to Travis due to proximity, but he refused to let that diminish the death of Donald Bell.

Scott didn’t know Javon or Tom terribly well—at least not as much as the Fourteenth had gotten to know Tiffany—but he knew what they must have been feeling. Donald hadn’t been gunned down by the Bakma, or crushed by a Ceratopian neutron blaster, or bitten in half by the gaping maw of a canrassi. He’d been killed by someone wearing an EDEN uniform. What Falcon must have been feeling was the same thing Scott was feeling now in regards to Travis.

Unless the Falcons blame us for Donald’s death…

But how could they? If anything, the Fourteenth had come through for them, rescuing the Falcon survivors from the Great Dismal Swamp on their own accord. While their circumstances certainly weren’t pleasant, it wasn’t because of some injustice served to them by Scott and his comrades. The anger Falcon already felt toward EDEN for shooting them down in the first place would only grow stronger.

Lilan needs to harness this anger. He can use it.

Scott shook his head, ejecting the thought from his mind. Now wasn’t the time for that. What Lilan needed to do was be there for his operatives. That was the only thing that mattered right now.

I still think like a Nightman.

Scott had Thoor to thank for that.

As Scott’s thoughts transitioned from one train to the next, the terrain beneath the
Pariah
transitioned, too. In a span of several hours, the forests grew denser, then snow-covered, then sparse again as they approached the global tree line. The farther north they traveled, the more the temperature dropped. Even with Scott’s heater on full blast, he was shivering. He couldn’t imagine how cold Tiffany must have been. The blonde was shaking constantly. It was an aspect of flight he hadn’t thought about, and he was fairly sure she hadn’t, either. It made him wish his heaters were external—at least that way, some warmth from his armored suit might seep through to her. As it stood, though, she was protected by her flight suit and nothing more. At least she was handling it—at least for now.

In time, the familiar mountainous terrain of northern Krasnoyarsk Krai showed itself. Norilsk was just around the corner. Easing the stick forward, Tiffany brought the
Pariah
’s nose down for what Scott presumed was a run at the valley where
Northern Forge
was located. The temperature was even more blustery there, with fresh snow slamming into their faceplates as they neared the valley, forcing Tiffany to wipe the residue from her flight suit’s visor. The blonde was getting pelted hard.

At long last, the mountain face of
Northern Forge
was revealed. Her hand shaking in the frigid air, Tiffany pulled back on the throttle. The rate at which the
Pariah
slowed down was almost jolting. Reaching for the cabin’s comm, she brought it to her lips to presumably warn the base of what was imminent, though fell shakily silent once the comm was by her. She was too frozen to talk.

“Do you want me to tell them?”
Scott asked.

Tiffany nodded without words and put the comm up, missing the holder and causing the cord and microphone to whip back through the air. Scott snagged it. Queuing up
Northern Forge
, he said,
“This is the
Pariah
! We’re coming in without vertical thrusters! Open the door and clear the hangar!”
Upon releasing the microphone button, he asked Tiffany,
“That all right?”
She nodded silently again.

The channel crackled as a Russian accent replied to Scott. Scott couldn’t understand a word, the man’s voice lost amid the roaring of wind. In the event that the man was asking Scott to repeat himself, Scott relayed the message a second time.

As the mountain base came into view, Scott could see that the hangar doors were already open. Parked in place right where it’d been before the mission was Tiffany’s Superwolf. The autopilot worked. The good fortune almost felt alien.

Scott cast a quick look at Becan as the
Pariah
made its turn for approach. The Irishman was still sitting rigid, his head down as if zoned out or unconscious. As the transport drifted slowly through the open hangar doors of
Northern Forge
, Scott felt Tiffany’s body finally relax. Even before the Vulture clunked down in place beside the Superwolf, she seemed to almost sink into him. This was a broken, decimated girl.

Welcome to the Fourteenth.

The
Pariah
fell onto the concrete, its already-deployed wheels bouncing harshly as it came to a rest. Along the back of the hangar wall stood a row of wide-eyed technicians, each one staring at the vacant space where a canopy was supposed to be. In the midst of them, an operative emerged, pushing her way through the crowd of larger men as her dark, inverted bob bounced in place. As soon as Esther’s brown eyes locked onto the cockpit, she gasped.

Tiffany leaned her head back, resting it atop Scott’s shoulder as her entire body slumped. Reaching forward, Scott pulled off her helmet as strands of her sweat and ice-soaked hair rose with the helmet then fell.

“Hey!”
Scott said to her, his voice instinctively booming until he realized he no longer needed to scream. When he addressed her, Tiffany quickly sat upright. Grabbing the harness, she detached it and lifted it up into its housing. Standing shakily up from Scott’s lap, the tattered Valley Girl reached out her hand to steady herself. Rising up exhaustedly behind her, body swaying all the while, Scott pulled off his own helmet and tossed it to the cockpit floor. His focus went straight to the gathering crowd. “We need the doctor, we have wounded!”

“What happened?” Esther asked, calling out from below the
Pariah
’s nose as the others acknowledged Scott’s orders. “Where’s Travis? Where the hell is your
windshield
?”