Wild Card (67 page)

I forgot to breathe and my heart forgot to beat.

I got lucky again. A twitch to the right sent me through the smallest gap in the trees, and still, the slap of a branch against my toes almost sent me wheeling out of the sky.

By the time I’d gotten my heart working right again, I had my first view of the ranch. Still way over the pines.

Coming down on trees? Broken ground? Doesn’t matter. Never try and stretch the glide. Pick the least worst place. Concentrate on getting down in one piece.

More good advice from my instructor that I was going to have to ignore; there were Nagas down near the ranch and I wouldn’t have a weapon until I retrieved mine from the cemetery.

The instructor was right.

With the sun down behind the mountain now, distances became hard to judge and I got it wrong. The angle wasn’t good enough and I should have deployed the chute sooner.

There are a couple of ways I could get to the cemetery, I thought as I crashed through the tops of the last few pines, my chute slowing me just enough.

One of them was to be carried in a pinewood coffin.

When the world stopped tumbling, I was barely six feet off the ground and the chute was wrapped around one of the tallest trees. I’d made it with nothing more than scratches and bruises.

I hit the release and dropped into the snow.

There were Nagas coming to find out what the noise was. The snow had drifted chest high in the cleared area and I had to run in slow motion, wading through it to get to the curving shield of the yew trees.

I could hear their cautious, crunching footsteps in the darkness as I knelt by my cache and dug down. I felt the shape of the bag. My fingers were becoming number and number with the cold, till they were clumsy as hooves. I’d forgotten gloves. Stupid. Stupid. And the zipper was frozen as well.

The first one came around the side, about fifty feet from me, pointing a gun in front of him. He couldn’t see clearly, and was quite rightly unwilling to make himself a target by shining a flashlight. He could just about see the chute moving in the wind, and that kept his attention.

With my wolf eyes, I could see him easily enough.

I got the zipper open, one link at a time.

A second Naga came around the other side. A third slightly behind him. All of them focused on the chute and the darkness under the pines. They were easing around the edges of the clearing. I had a few seconds before they realized what the chute was, and saw my trail in the snow.

My hands found the cold MP5 and I slid it out quietly, automatically checking the safety and single shot selection. I’d left it with the magazine in and the silencer attached.

Just in time. The first one stopped. He’d seen my tracks and started to swivel toward me.

Tap. Just one shot—no time for the triple hit routine. He was still falling when I fired at the other two. Tap, tap. The one unintentionally shielding the other. Tap.

Both hit. Falling. One screamed, the sound bubbling horribly with blood.

Back to the first. Tap, tap into his body.

Again on the others. Tap, tap.

I waited. No movement and no sound meant nothing yet.

Reaching behind me, I pulled the rest of my gear out of the bag. My harness, the comforting bulk of the HK Mk 23 in a holster, a knife, a couple of grenades and some spare ammunition. The Colonel’s TacNet system. Not exactly as much as I wanted going up against an unknown number of Nagas, but as much as I was going to get.

There was still no movement from the Nagas. I took a chance and quickly unzipped the batsuit, dropped it and hurriedly shrugged the harness into place. Then I crept over to the bodies, keeping low to the ground and scanning in every direction.

There was nothing to see, other than darkness in the snow and a few wisps of steam coming off the blood. Nothing to hear but the lament of the wind. And nothing to smell but death.

I couldn’t see their faces, to my relief. Even Nagas are people, and I have enough to haunt my nightmares already.

I checked for pulses without success, took their ammunition and hid their weapons beneath a tree.

Then I started running. Gray would be making for the ranch, coming down the mountain in a curve. We’d had enough time on the drive out here to look at a map and get a feel for the layout of the ground and the possible routes down.

I switched the TacNet on now. There was a risk that a base system could get an ID and location on me, but the comms talk suggested the Nagas on the mountain had lost contact with command. I flicked through the channels and found encrypted conversation on one. I tried the standard encryption option that the Naga at the top of the mountain had set on his comms system, and it gave me an entry. They weren’t skipping between options. Sloppy work, but I wasn’t complaining. And the Nagas didn’t have the comms discipline of Ops 4-10. This group was getting seriously twitchy.

“Fox One-Oh-Oh, this is Fox One-Two-Oh. Still no contact Groups Lima and Kilo.”

“Shit,” someone swore into an open mike.

“Shut up,” a voice with authority said. Sounded like a sergeant to me. “Fox One-Oh-Five, update.”

Silence.

“Fox One-Oh-Five? Fox One-One-Seven?”

The one who’d sworn spoke again. “They’re behind us, Sarge. They’re at the ranch.”

“Shut up!”

The Naga sergeant was getting rattled. His command circuit had gone silent. Teams on the mountain had disappeared. I assumed that’s who Kilo and Lima were.

I had no idea what experience his troops had, but I knew the feeling of being out in the cold and dark, alone against an enemy that seemed more powerful with every passing minute. An open comms policy meant they all knew their promised extraction team wasn’t coming. Now they had someone behind them.

Give it up now. Go home.

“Fox One-Oh-Oh, this is Fox One-Three-Oh. I have contact with vehicles turning off Route 85. Eighteen vehicles. That is one eight vehicles.”

The pack was coming back, but with the state of the road, it could take them anything up to an hour to get here.

Another few seconds of weighing the odds, then I heard the sergeant again.

“Fox One-Three-Oh and Fox One-Two-Oh, Fox teams West and North, clear to proceed to alternate extraction point three. Report passing Fox team East.”

“What about us?”

“If you don’t can it, Fredricks, I’ll fucking plug you myself.”

Silence.

The sergeant was staying put at the moment, but he was having trouble controlling his own team, let alone any others. Fox team South would be the nearest to the ranch, on the south side. That’d be where he was. I’d guess that Fox team East was being left in place to cover the route to extraction point three. There was a road out there on the east side and they probably had trucks waiting. It was a retreat, but an orderly one. Much more orderly than I’d like.

I slowed down. I didn’t dare run straight into them, and although there’d been nothing on the comms, I’d bet long odds that the sergeant had turned some of his team around to make sure they’d see anyone coming up behind them.

Things were still in my favor. If they’d had their normal mission preparation, I’m sure they’d have included IR scopes, but life had gotten more rushed for the Nagas recently. It was likely that they couldn’t see in the dark, but I could.

I spotted their outlying scouts ten minutes after the TacNet went quiet, and I just made it in time—there was a call on the TacNet about movement up the slope. That had to be Gray or Ursula.

I drew a bead on the nearest scout.

Everything seemed to happen at once.

There was gunfire over to my right. Without thinking about it, I used it to mask the quiet sound of shots with my silenced MP5. One down and one missed—the second scout had jerked his head around to see what was happening behind him.

Gray broke cover, fired two more quick shots down at the Nagas and disappeared.

What the hell was that about? A diversion?

Gray and Ursula must have joined forces.

The problem was, the Nagas were alert. No one chased Gray. But the scout I’d missed reported the direction of my incoming fire accurately and I saw movement on my flanks.

If I got surrounded, it was all over. I moved back as quickly as I could without exposing myself, trying to outflank their flankers.

There were more shots from above, but they weren’t aimed at me. It couldn’t tell if that was Gray firing or the Nagas.

Damn!

What was going on? If Gray was firing, I was sure he didn’t have Emily with him. Ursula must have Emily. That meant this had been a diversion for her to get past. Had Gray’s appearance done enough? Or had my attack ruined their plan?

This was the old familiar fog of war, and it forced me from the strategic goal of getting Emily safely away, back to the basic tactic of making sure I wasn’t captured. What I wouldn’t have given for Julie and a couple more like her with me.

I wasn’t sure how stretched out the Nagas line was. Maybe I could get past them. I slipped down a bank and started making my way up to the left.

Almost immediately I stopped and eased into cover. There were the stealthy sounds of someone moving quietly ahead of me. I’d been flanked already. Their line must have been longer than I thought.

I still had the edge. With my wolf eyes, I could see the warmth of their bodies and they couldn’t see me. I hoped.

I held my position and felt my concentration flow down into the MP5, along that matte black barrel and out into the cold night. All I needed was a smudge of body heat to cross in front of me and I had one dead Naga.

Then I could hear a second person, a third, a fourth. Little squeaks of snow underfoot. Sighs as their passing brushed snow off the pines. Breathing.

And I could feel the Call.

Not Alex. Ursula.

I took the pressure off the trigger.

Ursula could sense me too, but I couldn’t tell her that there were three Nagas closing in on her. She had wolf senses as well, so maybe I didn’t need to tell her. I crept sideways, feet coming down softly, toe first, side first, like a cat’s paws, soundless.

Where’s Emily?

I could see glimpses of the pursuers, ruddy faces and hands seeming to float from tree to tree in the dark, puffs of hot air streaming behind them as they breathed through open mouths, heads turning back and forth, always searching.

Ursula was to my left. Once I got a good look, her size was unmistakable. Her bulky shadow was misshapen—she was carrying Emily. She was moving the quietest, but that meant she was the slowest as well. They were gradually gaining on her.

The trees were thick and her trackers were still spaced out. I couldn’t get a shot at more than one at a time and as soon as I did, the flare from my gun would give away my position.

More movement, behind the last Naga. The big blur of several people close together. Too close together, what did they think they were doing?

Too many, though. I had to make them chase me and give Ursula a chance of escape.

As soon as I came to that decision, I put it into action.

I dropped the first Naga. Single shot to the head. Lined up the second.

They were turning.
Not
toward me; to face something behind them.

Shit! Huge! Kodiak bear!

No wonder the Nagas turned that way.

With a roar that seemed to reach down and liquefy the air in my lungs, the bear emerged from the darkness like a shaggy locomotive and struck before the Nagas had even finished swinging around.

The closest Naga was simply tossed aside, with his whole chest caved in.

I hit the other one with a single round as he fired at the bear, and then a massive paw shattered his skull and it was over.

No more Nagas following. The blur I’d seen was the Kodiak.

Even for a Kodiak, he was freaking enormous—a thousand pounds or more. He made a big target and he’d been hit a couple of times in the side, but that hadn’t slowed him down.

Would the wounds piss him off?

It was Gray, wasn’t it?

He slid to a stop, and stretched up on his hind legs to over twice my height, then thumped back down on all fours, spraying snow in all directions.

Freaking hell.

A head that was bigger than my chest swiveled to look at me and his mouth opened.

Yeah, I could fit my head in there, but I wasn’t going to.

I really,
really
hoped it was Gray.

I slapped him on the shoulder.

“Go,” I said, pointing down to ranch. “Take the lead. I’ll make sure no more are following.”

I caught a hint of Ursula, still moving through the trees, concentrating on her task and trusting Gray and me to get on with my ours. The woman was good. Kodiak-Gray lumbered down to overtake, and they all picked up speed.

Good.

I turned my attention back upslope.

The Naga sergeant had had enough. The TacNet bubbled with terse Fox team South calls as they leapfrogged in alternating groups towards the east rendezvous.

Bug out, boys and girls.

That didn’t mean there wasn’t someone assigned to come after us, but the forest upslope remained still as I went through my own ‘run and pause’ routine.

The TacNet buzzed me with an emergency communication tone. Not on the Nagas’ frequency, on the frequency the colonel had set for us.

I tuned back in and reset the encryption options.

“Yes,” I said shortly, crouching in the lee of a boulder and scanning the silent, black forest above me.

“Amber, it’s Naryn. I’ve come downtown to help if I can. Update me please.”

I grunted a report in staccato sentences between bouts of running and listening for Nagas. He didn’t interrupt, didn’t ask for clarification of irrelevant details and grasped the urgent problems immediately. That didn’t mean I wasn’t going to be in trouble for everything that had gone on in the last few days, just that he wouldn’t do it tonight.

This Naryn, I could work with.

“Get Ursula to bring Emily to me at once,” he said.

“She’s been through enough—”