The Third Bullet (64 page)

“One in.”

“Two in.”

“Three in.”

He scurried in, movements smooth, fast, practiced, the gun locked to shoulder, scanning for threat, finger riding the light trigger, ready to put a burst into anything ahead.

He could feel them. They were so close. The shout from the leader, some Brit tough guy, Mick Jagger on steroids, followed by fusillades from all points on the compass that filled the universe with bad news and drove him down so he felt he could shrink into the earth, the cold blade of fear that maybe this time was the time. Then it passed; he had his war brain back and knew exactly how it would work. They’d close the circle, driving him back, and there’d be no place to go. Then it would be over.

He slithered around a rock, forced himself (tasting dust, feeling pain to knees, elbows, and skin) through the low tangle of brush, found a path between more low rocks that seemed to reach center, and scurried ahead.

He saw it.

A red-orange hunting vest, crumpled but vivid, the only primary color in a landscape that ran from dull to duller brown, even with the sun above. He scrambled to the signal, dug behind it until he encountered a canvas strap, and pulled. Fifteen pounds of canvas gun case emerged from hiding. A quick unzip.

It was the Thompson M1A1, thirty-round mag, like the gun with which his father had shot his way across the Pacific. Nick had gotten it here from Aptapton’s widow just in time.

Thank you, Nick. Once again, you save the old man’s bacon. Thank you, Aptapton, for your love of guns, especially the old tommys.

He slid the bolt back, locking it, admitting a .45 ACP to position to be swept up and fired as the first round in a burst. Six other loaded stick mags lay in pouches on a belt curled into the case, and he pulled the belt around him and cinched it tight.

At that moment, a young man—perfect commando, from Oakley tactical boots to green-brown face paint—enough firepower on him to take out a platoon, crept into the space between two boulders not twenty-five feet ahead. They felt each other in the autistic Zen of predators, made a flash eye contact, and got down to business. Swagger beat him on the action curve by a tenth of a second, jacking a ten-round burst into his legs, knocking him down and askew, tearing up limbs and hips but not spending bullets against the armor vest. The guy went down hard, and in a second his twisted lower extremities were wet and red to the world.

Swagger slipped back into the brush.

“Fuck, fuck, he has a tommy gun, a goddamn tommy gun!” screamed Blue Two.

“Are you hit?”

“He blew my goddamn legs off, oh, shit, I can’t stop the bleeding.”

“You hold, Two, don’t panic, use your clotting agent and tie it down to stop the blood flow, we will be with you soon. Hold on, mate.”

“Ah, fuck,” said Two.

Blue Leader had recognized the sound of the .45s instantly and knew it was of the Thompson declension because the rate of fire was well above grease-gun speed. He was not surprised, disappointed, stunned, or breathless. The surprise of it did not occur to him; nor would it ever. The fact that he was hunted as much as hunter did not matter. His hard practical mind simply went through steps.

New situation.

Armed target.

Full auto, heavy bullets.

Savvy, experienced operator.

One man lost.

Need to triangulate, lay heavy fire (back to MK48s), and close to engage. He will be tricky, he will—

Another burst of Thompson fire roared through the atmosphere.

“Blue Three?”

“I’m good, I think he hit One, off to my left. Blue Leader, I am moving on the fire.”

“Do not rush, Three—I will lay down cover on the sound of his gun, move under my cover.”

“Roger.”

He rose, readjusting weapons at speed as he came, got the MK48 up, and fired a hundred .30-caliber rounds into the rocks and brush where the Thompson fire had sounded, and saw and felt what he always saw and felt, the world being ripped to dust and supersonic grit, the blur of the ejection of the spent shells arching to the right, the urge of the muzzle to rise—after all these years, it was still so bloody cool!—while his sharp eyes scanned for movement or target indicators.

The Brit’s gunfire whistled overhead, eating up the world that it struck, raising smeary clouds of fractured dust. Swagger knew the other operator would move under the fire, and he drew the Thompson hard to shoulder, waiting, waiting, as six inches above his head, fleets of supersonic FMJs flew by, seeking his destruction and—

The gun quit as round one hundred passed through it. Swagger jerked up hard and saw to the right the advancing operator in the hunch, not fast enough to get into cover before his time ran out. Swagger acquired and fired in almost the same instant and put a burst into him, watching the bullets lift a straightaway of dust eruptions, then went down fast and crawled, again just under the line of fire of
the team chief, who’d gotten a quick new belt into his gun and used it up in the search.

Swagger thought he’d hit his guy, and when he had a chance, as the boulders grew oddly larger, he went to his feet and curled around, putting his target between him and the remaining shooter. In seconds he got around enough to see the downed man, rifle on the ground, wrapping a bandage tight around a bad thigh bleeder. Swagger screamed, “Hold!” But the man went for his weapon—stupid SEAL motherfucker, hard to the end!—and Swagger had to fire three into his only target other than the head, which was the root of the man’s arm where it disappeared into the hole on his vest. He opened a hideous wound, shattering arm and clavicle, rendering the gunman maimed for life. Even still, the man stayed in the fight, shaking off the destruction, looking up in rage and betrayal, his teeth white against the green-brown jungle of his face, and reached awkwardly with his off hand to acquire the 1911 holstered diagonally across the front of his armored vest. Unfortunately, it was tilted to favor the dead hand and tightly Velcroed in, and by the time he got it, Swagger was on him and hit him a butt stroke in the head. He went down soggily, maybe dead, maybe with a concussion to render him eternally stupid.

Swagger noted that this one too had smokers on his web belt beneath the vest, and though the vest was a temptation, he knew he didn’t have enough time to get it off the SEAL and on himself, so he pulled off three smokers, pulled the pins, and tossed them in the direction from which Team Leader’s fire had come.

Smoke! Who would have thought of that? From three points just ahead of him, red, green, blue, catching in the wind, blowing mistily across the scrap of flat if rough ground that comprised the hilltop. It was like a screen of myth, impenetrable, masking all movement. Brilliant improvisation. This old bastard was too good!

Blue Leader dropped hard, feeling vulnerable. He knew he was
alone, it was man on man. If he could get close enough to get to hand-to-hand, victory was his. He had about nine black belts and knew shit for which there wasn’t a name and no books had been written. He unlinked the heavier MK48, first disconnecting the belt box and tossing it far, then opening the breech latch so this bad boy couldn’t use it against him. He toyed with the idea of dumping the carbine and making it a pistol fight, which would give him much more maneuverability and let him get to full play on his superior toughness, speed, and stamina. But this old one was a trickster who knew a thing or two and might be circling around or might be, at the same time, two hundred yards downhill, racing like a demon, knowing that in distance lay survival.

He stood, eased forward as the smoke ceased from the two rightmost grenades, and tried to see a target. Nothing. Swagger was somewhere ahead. But Blue Leader saw nothing. This was room-clearing, really, two men squatting as they worked their way through a maze, guns at the ready. Who would see whom first, who would fire first, who would win?

He eased left, then right, feeling the whip of wind, feeling the warmth of the sun. He pushed off his watch cap, ripped off and tossed ears and throat mike for total concentration. He negotiated the avenues between the rocks and brush with care, in that commando crouch, and it happened that, as he edged around a boulder, something flashed in his peripheral and he was on it fast, to see a man withdrawing because he didn’t have a shooting angle, but Blue Leader did and fired, knowing that he’d hit.

He waited.

Nothing.

“Swagger, give it up. I know I hit you. I saw the blood. It’s no good going out like a rat.”

No answer. Was he dead?

He squirmed ahead a few feet and was rewarded with a blood track.

Got him!

Got him!

Got—

Swagger hit him hard with the crown of his head, a smash that skulled both of them into incomprehensibility, but Swagger, expecting it, got in his follow-up and clocked him harder with the inverted barrel of the old weapon.

Blue Leader went so still that he couldn’t have been faking, but in the next second, he tried to fight his way out of the grog and Swagger was on him. He pressed the muzzle hard into the throat, and with his other hand, he ripped the man’s fighting knife away, unlatched the Velcro on the Wilson and tossed it, pulled and threw the M-6 as hard as he could.

He leaned over the Brit, pressing the blunt Thompson muzzle into the neck. “What’s your rank, troopie?”