Reflexive Fire - 01 (4 page)

   “We're almost there,” he informed the others. 

   Picking it up to a steady trot but not fast enough to lose Pat as he carried his partner, Deckard moved the rest of the way downhill to the saddle.  Between the break in the cliff face was a small, barely recognizable foot path.  Turning as the Delta men arrived, Deckard spotted two more black SUVs racing up the road towards them from below, alerted to their presence by radio or gunfire, it didn't really matter.

   “Follow the path,” Deckard said, handing one of the AK's to Pat.  Sticking the 1911 in his pants, Pat accepted the rifle.  “You'll come out on a spur, just a single finger jutting off the side of the mountain.  Take this.”  Reaching into his pocket, he handed J-Rod a pen flare gun. 

   “Fire it when you get there.”

   “And you?”

   “The pilot should already be overhead somewhere.  I'm going to slow them down, but if I'm more than a minute or two, then get out of here.”

   “You sure?”

   “Yeah.”

   Having been gunslingers their entire adult lives, neither of the men were much for goodbyes.

   Shifting J-Rod's weight on his shoulders, Pat began stomping through the muddy trail, quickly disappearing into the foliage.  With the sound of his passage fading, Deckard took a knee behind the largest tree he could find.  At this altitude the forest didn't grow into the massive triple canopy normally found in the region, but it would have to do.

   The black SUVs continued to speed up the road towards the wasted checkpoint, unaware of Deckard's position in the underbrush.  Flipping the AK's selector down one notch, the former soldier shouldered the rifle with sweat running down his face and stinging his eyes.

   Initiating his ambush on the first truck, Deckard fired, the tinted driver's window exploded revealing a bloody corpse behind it.  Effectively driverless the truck sped out of control, careening off the road and smashing into the cliff.

   The stinging in his eyes forgotten, the burn across his forearm no longer registering, he shifted his grip on the rifle and took aim at the second vehicle as armed cartel members unpacked themselves from each door.

   Panting with exhaustion, Pat set his teammate down, trading him the AK for the pen flare gun.  He could hear the faint buzz of a helicopter and hoped it wasn't the Colombian gunship searching for them.

   They easily found the finger of dirt and rock that stretched out off the side the mountain.  There was just enough open ground for a small helicopter to hover in for a high angle pick up.  Screwing a flare into place, he pushed back the spring loaded firing mechanism and released it, firing the red flare up into the sky.

   Behind them the sounds of a full on gun battle raged alongside blast after blast of what sounded like grenades detonating in the distance.  J-Rod sat in the mud, angling himself back the way they had came from, silently pulling security until their ride arrived.  Another burst of gunfire echoed through the jungle.  Pat scanned the sky as he screwed another cartridge into place on the flare gun.

   Pat fired the second flare as the gunfire grew closer.

   J-Rod trained his sights on the path.

   The trees and brush swayed as a green colored civilian helicopter buzzed right by, the pilot giving them the once over with a curious frown and a lit cigarette in his mouth, before disappearing from sight once again.

   “What. The. Fuck.”

   The Jet Ranger III completed an orbit out over the valley before swinging back toward them.  The pilot cautiously eased his way closer to the clearing, careful of the distance between the trees and his rotor blades.  As the bird came in closer, he could make out the words 'Amazon Tours' on the side of the aircraft. 

   “Let's go,” he said, picking up J-Rod.

   “What about Deckard,” he screamed back, over the sound of the rotor blades beating at the jungle around him.

   “If he's going to make it then he'll make it.”

   The truth was that the younger Delta operator had to come first for him.  He hadn't seen Deckard in years but still hoped to hell he'd hurry up and join them. 

   The pilot grimaced as he set one skid down on the ground, the other hovering precariously over the edge of the mountain.  Pat tugged open the side door and dropped J-Rod inside.

   The younger man's eyes went wide as he spotted something over Pat's shoulder.

   Glancing back he saw Deckard running down the path into the opening.  He turned and returned fire with an MP-5 he had gotten from somewhere, or taken off of someone.  Bullets swarmed around him like angry hornets, chopping through the wide palm leaves and turning the small tree trunks into splinters.

   Suddenly Deckard kicked backwards as if struck in the chest with a sledge hammer and disappeared into the tall grass.

   Pat cursed.  Grabbing the AK, he thrust the drug lord's 1911 toward J-Rod.

   “If the pilot makes a move, I want you to splatter him.”

   Taking the pistol, J-Rod nodded his understanding.

   Charging forward, Pat cut loose, sending several bursts down the jungle path as he made his way toward where he had seen Deckard fall.  Through the dense vegetation he could see the silhouettes of several sets of gun-toting cartel gunmen.

   Aiming at the closest asesino taking cover behind a sapling tree, he fired several rounds through it, dropping the man into a sprawl across the trail.  It had to be enough to buy him a few more seconds.

   Coming alongside Deckard, he glanced down, seeing the side of his face covered in blood, the MP5 laying absently alongside him.

   There was nothing he could do for him now.

   Firing another burst to keep the enemy's head down, he prepared to run back to the helicopter when he noticed the receiver of Deckard's MP5 was bent, the steel core of a bullet tunneled into the metal frame.

   “Deckard,” he said thumping him in the eye with a finger.

   Deckard squirmed as if he had just smelled something bad.

   Down range, a cartel shooter attempted to bound forward, Pat catching him in mid stride with several well placed shots.

   “Deckard!  We are leaving right goddamned now!”

   Coughing he rolled over on his stomach and saw the helicopter.

   “Go!”

   Stumbling to his feet, Deckard limped towards the Jet Ranger.

   Bullets snapped over Pat's shoulder, causing him to fire back at a muzzle flash deeper in the jungle brush.

   Realizing it was now or never, the Delta operator emptied what remained of his magazine, crisscrossing the jungle with automatic fire, the AK heating up in his hands until it went dry.

   Throwing the rifle to the ground he turned and ran full speed, catching Deckard halfway to the helicopter and tossing him over his shoulder.  His legs burned like they were full of battery acid, but he refused to slow down, not now, not so close.

   Bending at the knees, he vaulted through the helicopter's open door, him and Deckard landing inside in a confused mess.

   The pilot didn't wait for permission and peeled off under a barrage of gunfire.

   J-Rod struggled, still holding the 1911 to the pilot's head as the exterior world swirled, mountains turning into valley and then into sky as he banked away and took them into a dive.  The three Americans were weightless in the aircraft for one strange moment before slamming back into the floor.

   “What the hell is going on?” Pat asked, sliding the door shut.

   They were dumping altitude fast, the valley floor quickly rising up to meet them.

   “I don't fucking know,” J-Rod yelled back.  “The pilot speaks fucking Arabic!”

   “What?”

   “No,” Deckard sputtered.  “He speaks Kurdish.”

   Pat blinked, confused, physically and mentally exhausted.

   Deckard wiped some of the blood from the side of his face, looking surprised at the sight of it.  The bullet had struck his sub-machine gun, the splash catching him in the face and causing some shrapnel wounds.

   Trying to untangle himself from the arms and legs of the two other men, he snatched a headset off a fastener from above and slid it over his ears.  Readjusting the microphone, Deckard said something to the pilot.

   “Fuck,” he muttered, as they continued their decent down into the valley.

   “What?”

   “Johnnie says we're coming in hard.  He's got some weird feedback in his pedals.  Thinks we ate a few rounds on the way out.”

   Pat and J-Rod looked at each other.

   “Hold on,” Deckard said, listening over the head set.  “He sees a soccer field he thinks he can get us to before we drop out of the sky.”

   J-Rod's eyes were like saucers.

   Sitting up, he began fastening his seat belt, his companions following suit.

   “Hold on,” Deckard repeated, looking out the window for the field.  “Yeah, there it is.”

   The helicopter was dropping fast, the skids passing just meters above some electrical lines.

   “Where is that coming from?” J-Rod blurted.

   “Where is what coming from-” Pat said turning from the window.

   The entire cabin was filling with black smoke.

   “What the-” Deckard coughed.

   The pilot pulled on the collective pitch control, making a final push toward the soccer field as the helicopter went into free fall.

Three

Twenty four hours later:

   “I can't hear you,” Deckard screamed with a finger stuck in one ear, the other pressed up against his cell phone.  “I can't hear shit!”

   The firefight in the mountains had left him hard of hearing for the time being, and the whining jet engines on the airfield weren't helping.

   “I said, I need you in California tomorrow.”

   “What the hell for?”

   “A recent job opening,” the voice on the other end of the line said.  “We were tracking the guy who was to take the job, but he had a nasty run-in with some Chechen separatists in Ardahan yesterday.  It was over a woman, from what I understand.  I want to dangle you out there to see if you can't get hired to do the job in his place.”

   “Hired by who?”

   “I already created your cover and managed to get you a meeting with Chad Morrison through one of my contacts.  You ever hear of him?”

   “No,” Deckard said, looking back at the C130 transport aircraft.  The pilots were waiting on him.

   “He runs a black bag PMC,” he said referring to a Private Military Company.  “At the moment he is looking to recruit some fresh meat.”

   “Recruiting for what?”

   “People to protect certain industrial interests.  People like you.  Oil fields in Nigeria, alluvial diamond deposits in the Sierra Leone, Coltan Mining in the Congo, that sort of thing.”

   “Wet work.  He wants trigger pullers who don't mind getting their hands dirty.”

   “You got it.  The resume I put together is fail-safe.  You have backstops for backstops, solid covers, references with people I know personally waiting on the other end of the line if they get called.  Besides, I know he won't be able to resist your charms once he meets you in person.”

   “Fuck me,” Deckard yelled into the phone.  “You already put my name in the hat, didn't you?”

   “No, I put O'Brien's name in the hat, which is who I want you to be when you meet Morrison.”

   Deckard looked back at the aircraft.

   After Johnnie nearly killed them by dropping into the soccer field, they had improvised their way to the nearest CIA safe house in the province.  Using the communications set installed in the apartment, they had set up their extraction out of country.

   Pat stood on the C-130's ramp, motioning for him to hurry up.

   “Double my normal rate,” Deckard told the man over the phone.  “I also want you to personally supervise the recovery operation.”

   “Recovery?”

   “Of Sergeant Major Keely and the rest of his team.”

   There was a pause, and for a moment Deckard wondered if he lost the connection.

   “No problem,” came the reply.  “So, can you be in California tomorrow?”

   “I'll be there,” Deckard said, terminating the call.

   Slipping the phone into his pocket, Deckard strode towards the open ramp of the aircraft, wondering what was waiting for him in the United States.

   A wrinkled hand slapped a cellular phone shut as Deckard terminated the call on the other end.

   Somehow, the son of a bitch had pulled it off again.

   Colombia made for a hat trick having followed up assignments in Zimbabwe and Iran.

   The older man ran a hand across his chin.  He didn't get as much sun these days as he would have liked.  The exterior of the building he worked in looked like a furniture warehouse while the inside looked like a military command center despite its small staff.

   He had plucked Deckard out of the ether.  After a falling out with the US government he had gone freelance a number of years ago.  The older man was a veteran of the same world, the same battlegrounds in decades prior.  Some members of the group thought that someone as reckless as Deckard would be a liability.

   Then they had gotten word through the grapevine about the freelancer's job in North Korea.  There were whispers about a derailed train outside Pyongyang and the bodies of dead Syrian nuclear scientists.  That had been enough to put Deckard over the top as a candidate and given the Vietnam veteran the ammunition he had needed to ensure that he was accepted into the group.

   As a member, Deckard still operated independently but he now had access to the group's stockpiles, safe houses, and sophisticated surveillance equipment to make use of.

   The old man spun in his seat, looking at the picture frame hanging on his wall.  It was the only personal memento that resided in his office, the only reminder of his past life.  It was a tattered American flag that had flown over his fire base the day they had been nearly overrun at Command and Control North, or CCN, on the coast of the South China Sea.

   His organization had worked for decades to place an infiltrator in the midst of the global elite, the cartographers and king makers of world history.

   A grin tugged at the corners of his mouth as he realized that he never really had any doubt that that man would be Deckard.

   Tens of millions of dollars had been spent creating the fictional O'Brien cover.  Ghost writers had penned documents in his name, lines of credit had been opened and closed under the alias by support staff, retired spooks sat on telephones waiting to pick up and pretend to be former employers.  Everything had been set in motion years prior.

   For Deckard's sake, if nothing else, he could only hope that Lady Luck was watching over both of their shoulders.

   “Mr. O'Brien?”

   “Yeah,” the man replied, stepping forward to reveal sutures running down the side of his face.

   “Please follow me,” the attendant said.  “They are ready to receive you.”

   “They?  I'm supposed to talk to a Mr. Chad Morrison.”

   “You were meant to think so,” the attendant huffed.  “Now please follow me.”

   Deckard's jaw tightened.

   He wasn't in the mood for cryptic nonsense.

   Turning, he followed the attendant down the dirt path, allowing him to lead the way, heading somewhere deeper into the estate that sprawled across a good portion of Southern California.  The invite-only event was held once a year for America's powerful, wealthy, and- maybe most importantly- the influential.

   Morrison was supposed to be a headhunter for several major defense contractors, but now that someone had pulled a bait and switch on him, Deckard had no idea what to expect.  In this crowd, he shuddered to think what it could be.  Certainly nothing good.  If any minutia of his cover was blown, he may well be a walking dead man in a place like this.

   Following the forest trail, they passed by a former US President along with his son, the CEO of a major international corporate conglomeration, and the owner of three major news networks and a good portion of downtown Manhattan, all within a few seconds of each other.  Different people living in a different world, Deckard thought.

   Leaving the forest behind, they approached one of the lodges reserved for the event's biggest power players.  Deckard looked up at the mantle over the door.  It bore a skull and crossbones with Latin text on each side.  Deckard shook his head.  What the hell had he gotten himself into?

   The call he had received in Colombia, that had initially sent Deckard to the gathering, was from an old hand, someone deeply embedded in the intelligence apparatus that was the Department Of Defense.  Deckard trusted him, to a point, but still wondered how the DOD operative managed to secure him, if under the guise of Jake O'Brien, an invitation to what these old men called Bohemian Grove.

   Walking up creaky wooden steps, the attendant held open the door for him, closing it as he crossed the threshold.  Deckard felt like he was being taken to the woodshed, and maybe he was.  Looking around the inside of the lodge house, his chest tightened.

   The only good news was that if his cover had been blown, he never would have been ushered to such a high level meeting.

   Three men rose to their feet in unison to greet him.

   “Thank you for coming on such short notice,” the first of the three said, shaking his hand.

   “O'Brien.  Not a problem,” Deckard said.  The man opposite him didn't bother introducing himself.  It was just assumed that Deckard already knew who he was.

   He did.  Jarogniew had been a staple of the defense intelligence community since before Deckard had been born.  Belonging to
szlachta
Polish nobility, his family was hit hard during the Second World War.  Immigrating to America, he had attended the finest universities before being picked up by various foundations and think tanks.

   Jarogniew had gone to the top, acting as a national security adviser to one President and serving as secretary of defense for another.  Since that time he had somewhat retired from public life but continued to serve on councils and non-governmental organizations, even appearing as a commentator on television from time to time.

   Looking past the deep lines in Jarogniew's face, Deckard saw a look in his eyes that bewildered and chilled him all at the same time.

   “Thank you for coming,” the second man said, shaking a little too hard with one hand while squeezing a half smoked Cuban cigar between the fingers of the other.

   His name was Kammler, and at about fifty pounds overweight he was another national security adviser and also owned an international consultancy firm with clients stretching from Saudi Arabia to Argentina.  It was also a well-known fact that his phone number had been on the White House's speed dial for decades going back to the Vietnam War.

   “We've heard good things,” the third man said.  “Very good things.”

   Since Deckard's fake resume under O'Brien consisted mostly of cold blooded murder and ethnic cleansing, he could only imagine what he meant by that.  Hieronymus was another heavy hitter, maybe the heaviest.  His family was old oil and old money, owning everything from real estate to insurance companies to banks.  His foundation fielded self-appointed experts to all sectors of government and business.  Together with Jarogniew, he had founded the Trilateral Commission.

   All three were high level members of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Bilderberg Group as well.

   “Happy to be here,” Deckard said with a forced smile.

   “We have it on good authority that you are of just the pedigree we have been searching for these last few days,” Jarogniew said, motioning for everyone to take a seat.

   “What pedigree would that be?” Deckard asked.

   The former national security adviser shifted in his chair.

   “The kind of man who can get things done.  A professional.”

   “Kind words.”

   “Yes,” Kammler said, pointing to the side of Deckard's face where his sutures were.  “We can see you are the kind of man who takes a hands on approach.”

   “I have my moments,” Deckard replied, ignoring the urge to scratch at the stitches he had just been reminded of.

   “While our man, Chad Morrison, does not know you personally he says he knows of you.  Apparently, you have all the right credentials,” Kammler said, his jowls shaking with a chuckle as his two friends joined in at the inside joke.