Above Dogfish Cay
Five minutes
ago
We glided through the night, silent as bats,
our night vision painting the world below us in shades of green and
black. The three of us had tumbled out of the plane miles above the
island, and for a long time we fell in total darkness. Skydiving at
night is deceptive; after you become accustomed to the rush of air,
all sense of movement ceases and you feel as if you’re floating.
Without an altimeter to tell you the truth about how fast the
ground is rushing up to meet you there is a very real chance you’ll
find out in a last microsecond of surprise.
There was almost no wind, so we deployed our
glider chutes at ten thousand feet. There is a moment where the
resistance of the chute jolts every bone in your body, and then the
glider takes over and once more you feel like you’re floating
rather than falling. The glider has its own dangers built in
because it doesn’t feel like you’re dropping down at all. It’s so
smooth and steady.
I went through Airborne training in the
Army, so you’d think I enjoyed throwing myself out of airplanes.
You’d be wrong. I’m good at it, but I do not like it. Both Top and
Bunny were more experienced at this sort of thing. Top used to
teach it, Bunny did it on his days off. Doing it at night with no
lights to steer by, having started seven miles up, isn’t my idea of
a rollicking good time.
On the other hand, a high-altitude low open
jump means that the bad guys usually don’t know you’re coming, so
there are fewer bullets to try and dodge while you’re in the air.
Kind of a silver lining.
We saw the landing point we’d chosen from
the satellite photos and I tilted my chute forward to spill air out
of the back and drop down, but suddenly I saw a ripple of bright
flashes and heard the hollow pok-pok-pok of automatic gunfire. In
the same moment I heard Church’s voice in my ear:
“Deacon to Cowboy, Deacon to Cowboy, be
advised, the island is under attack. Identity and number of
hostiles unknown. Estimate one hundred plus hostiles. Confirm;
confirm.”
“Confirmed, dammit.” I tapped my earbud and
identified myself. “Alpha Team, report location.”
“Alpha Team is inside the complex and taking
fire,” Redman said.
“Hold tight,” I said. Back on the command
channel I yelled, “Deacon, are any friendlies on the
grounds?”
“Negative. Alpha Team is inside, other
assets inbound. No friendlies on the ground.”
“Roger that.” I tapped the earbud once more
as we circled around the line of trees and headed back to our drop
site. “Echo Team, zero friendlies on the ground. Let’s rock and
roll.”
While I was thirty feet above the dark lawn
I saw four men in the same nondescript BDUs we’d seen on the
Russians in Deep Iron. They didn’t see me. Sucked to be
them.
I cut them down.
Gunfire flashed from our right, but I was
below the tree line now. I stalled my speed and dropped to a fast
walk, hit the release, and ran from my chute. There was no time to
be neat and tidy. I headed straight for the cover of a close stand
of palms, and I could hear rounds burning the air around
me.
Bunny yelled, “Frag out!” and threw a
grenade toward the muzzle flashes. I don’t know if he got any of
them with the burst, but it gave him and Top a clear moment to
land. They split up and went into the trees on either side of
me.
The main building was on our left, the lawn
and another row of trees to our right. There was a stone path lined
with torches nearby, but half of the torches had been knocked over
or torn up by gunfire. I saw a dozen bodies littering the ground
between here and the door, and more sprawled on the
steps.
I turned and headed toward the building,
zigzagging behind trees and shrubs, firing at anything that moved.
I killed a couple of exotic ferns that got caught in a breeze, but
I also took down several of the hostiles.
“Grenade!” Bunny yelled, and slammed into me
with a diving tackle that rolled us both to the foot of the stone
steps as a blast tore a hole a few feet from where I’d been
standing. I’d never seen the throw. Top spun and chopped up the
hedges and a man screamed and toppled to the
ground.
The steps offered no cover, but the main
glass doors were intact despite dozens of impacts from
armor-piercing rounds. High-density bulletproof glass. I scrambled
to my feet and ran inside, crouching instinctively as a line of
heavy-caliber bullets whacked into the glass. It held. So I turned
and knelt to offer covering fire as Bunny and then Top ran from
cover and risked the open ground near the steps. A ricochet bounced
off the open door and pinged around the lobby for a heart-stopping
moment before burying itself in the wall six inches from Top’s
head.
“Jesus,” he muttered.
I held the door while they checked the
hallway behind me. A crash door opened and six men wearing security
uniforms rushed the hallway. Top and Bunny put them down with short
bursts and I rolled into the doorway and put half a magazine in the
next four who were running up a flight of metal stairs to this
level.
“Clear!” called Bunny, and I backed away
from the doorway.
I tapped my earbud. “Cowboy to Amazing,
Cowboy to Amazing.”
No answer.
Then, “Headhunter to Cowboy.” Headhunter was
Redman’s call sign.
“Go for Cowboy.”
“We’re hearing gunfire behind us. Sounds
like M4s.” He described his location.
“That’s a roger,” I said.
“We could use a quarterback
sneak.”
“Copy that. On our way.”
We ran down the hallway, passing several
bullet-riddled bodies and the signs of mass panic. A lot of people
had fled this way, dropping coffee cups and clipboards and
trampling the dead.
We slowed. If Redman had heard our gunfire
and could tell the difference between M4s and either the HKs used
by the Dragon Factory guards or the Kalashnikovs carried by the
Russians, then so could whoever they were fighting. The corridor
was a long curve and the ambush was exactly where you’d expect it
to be-at the sharpest point of the curve where decorative potted
trees provided cover.
Top and I tossed our party favors at them
and the fragmentation grenades ripped the ambush to
pieces.
“Hopscotch!” I called, giving today’s
code.
“Jump rope!” It was Redman’s
voice.
We moved around the bend as his people came
out from behind the meager cover they had found. Only six of Alpha
Team could walk. Two were badly wounded-one with multiple gunshot
wounds to the legs and the other with a facial lacerations from
flying glass. A third-a new transfer from the SEALs-lay in the kind
of sprawl that only looks like what it is.
“Report,” I said. “Where’s your
commander?”
Redman turned toward the heavy portal. “She
saw something and went in there just as the alarms kicked in. The
door swung shut automatically.”
“Any sign of Cyrus
Jakoby.?”
“From the way the major went diving into
that room, I think she must have seen something.”
“Can you open it?” Top
asked.
“Sure, if I had two hours and a lot of
C4.”
I pointed. “There’s a keypad. Uplink to Bug
and get him on it. If that thing has a computer control then let’s
put MindReader to work on it.”
“Yo!” called Bunny from the sharp bend in
the hallway. “We got company.”
“How many?”
“A shitload. We’re about to get outnumbered
really fast.”
I cast a desperate look at the closed hatch.
There was no time to break through. Damn it to hell. The advancing
Russians began firing and bullets tore through the air, the
ricochets turning the hallway into a killing
floor.
“Fall back!” I shouted, pulling on Alpha
Team members and shoving them down the hallway toward a set of exit
doors. Bunny picked up one of the wounded and ran with him as
lightly as if the soldier was a little child. Two other Alpha Team
operatives grabbed the second. We had to leave the dead for now.
Alpha Team looked hurt and angry. They didn’t want to leave Grace
behind any more than I did, but there was no way we could hold this
position.
We fired, we threw grenades, but we yielded
ground yard by yard, letting ourselves be driven around the curving
hallway until we could no longer see the hatch.
No bullets hit me, but as I backed around
the corner I felt like I’d taken a fatal wound to the
heart.
Grace.