Chapter Forty-six

“Holy fuck,” Boxers exclaimed over the radio. “They turned the claymore on the cabin! They had sappers!”

Again, a more advanced, more daring move than Jonathan would have expected. “BDA?” he asked. Boxers would recognize the acronym as Battle Damage Assessment. From Jonathan’s vantage point, the view was still obscured by dust.

“Heavy to extreme,” he replied in the detached monotone of a warrior. “I’ll get you more in a minute.”

Heavy to extreme. That said it all, even as it said nothing. And it fit the tableau of destruction that stretched out in front of Jonathan. The night had gone silent again, and as Jonathan advanced on the skirmish line that no longer was, his stomach tightened. In her panic to stop their advance, Julie-and it had to have been Julie-had unwittingly exposed the one critical flaw in Ivan Patrick’s training regimen: the attackers were jammed too close together. It was instinctive among humans to seek community in the presence of mortal danger, an instinct to be overcome on the battlefield. A single claymore had killed or maimed what looked to be over a dozen Brigadiers.

As his hearing returned to normal, the silence gave way to the agonized cries of the wounded. He saw bodies and parts of bodies everywhere. Where he encountered attackers who were still alive, he disarmed them and let them be. “We’ll get help on the way as soon as we can,” he said, over and over again, even as he walked on. He wasn’t interested in prisoners, and he had neither the time nor the resources to guard them. If they lived, good for them; if they died waiting for help to arrive, such was the price of being a Bad Guy.

His earpiece crackled as a radio broke squelch, and he heard Venice’s voice. “Scorpion, this is Mother. Do you copy?”

“Where the hell have you been?” Jonathan growled.ed from wall to wall

“Julie?” he called. “Julie Hughes! Are you here?”

He kicked broken furniture and glassware to the side as he walked to the spot where he’d left the initiators. And there she was.

She lay on her right side facing him, her head oddly skewed by its angle against the timbers of the front wall. A smear of blood masked her ear and matted her hair. He approached quickly, dropped to his knee, and pulled off his Nomex glove to check for a pulse in her neck. He smiled as he felt her carotid artery strumming solidly under his fingers. He pressed his palm to his transmit button.

“All units, this is Scorpion. I found PC-Three and she seems okay. Unconscious, but a good strong, regular pulse.” Boxers would be able to fill in the blanks, and maybe Venice. Barring an unseen, serious head injury, Precious Cargo Three would be okay. He stood and walked toward the kitchen and noticed the body on the floor in there. Jesus, they’d had themselves a hell of a time. “How’s PC-One?”

Boxers answered, “He hurts like hell, but his vitals seem strong. Gonna have a leg like mine, though.”

Jonathan inhaled deeply, held it, and let it go. All things considered, it all went better than-

“Hey, Scorpion,” Boxers added. “The sheriff is down, too. Unconscious. I don’t know her status.”

Something moved in the yard out back. Jonathan was certain he’d just seen someone running, from right to left.

“Big Guy, Scorpion,” he said into his radio, getting Boxers’ attention. “PC One and Two with you?”

“Affirmative.”

“You on the black side of the lodge?”

“Negative. We’re on the green side. Problem I should know about?”

Jonathan headed for the back window and climbed through. “Thought I saw something out back. Gonna check it out.”

“Tough for me to join you, boss. I’m still workin’ on the kid.”

“It’s okay,” Jonathan said. “If you’re not there, I don’t have to worry about shooting the wrong guy.”

Jonathan dropped to the ground on the other side of the window. He rolled to his feet, in a crouch, and tucked his M4 into his shoulder. He scanned for targets.

More corpses littered the ground, but nothing moved. He pressed his transmit button and whispered, “Mother, this is Scorpion.”

“Go ahead,” Venice said.

“What does your latest satellite image show?”

A pause. “No change that I can see,” she said. “But with these four-minute updates…”

She didn’t need to complete the observation. A lot of ground can be traveled in four minutes.

He ran scenarios through his head. Maybe the guy was just running away, trying to get the hell out. He dismissed it out of hand. First of all, he was running in the wrong direction to escape. Out here, with the narrow yard and the steep, bald embankment, there was precious little cover, and it would be hard as hell to run uphill fast enough to get away from anyone.

Then he got it. “Big Guy, I think he’s going for the GVX.”

“Five minutes,” Boxers said. “Give me that and I can join you.”

“Maybe it’s Ivan,” Jonathan said.

“Four minutes, then.”

Jonathan liked the idea of a one-on-one with

On the far side of the truck, he heard rustling, the sound of feet moving across the dirt floor. He lowered himself to the ground so he could peer from under the truck. If something moved, he’d shoot it. He waited for a shadow. A noise. Anything.

Another rustle, this one farther to the left. The shooter was moving toward the pillar that Jonathan had just abandoned. Or maybe he was moving to position himself behind Jonathan. From the direction of the noise travel, either scenario was possible. Jonathan faced a choice: He could remain still or he could reposition himself to better cover on the far side of the truck. The latter would effectively corner him.

He opted to wait a little longer, hoping not to squander his advantage. He resisted the temptation to shoot at the noise because it would be a rookie mistake. The chances of hitting your target were nil if you couldn’t see what you were shooting, and in trying, you’d announce your location to the world.

The third time he heard the rustle-it was really more of a scrape this time-it was still farther to the left, well past the location of the pillar. That confirmed that the shooter was moving for position. If Jonathan could remain still enough for long enough-

A soft pop startled him, and an instant later, a blinding white light consumed the darkness. Jonathan slapped his night vision out of the way, but it was too late. The illumination flare had whited out his NVGs, and the glare dug into his eyes like spikes. Temporarily blinded, and completely vulnerable, he fired the Mossberg in the direction of the last noise, then jacked another round and fired slightly to the left, and then another slightly to the right before scrambling for cover under the truck.

With his ears and eyes all ruined for the short term, he rolled again to the far side of the vehicle and whatever cover it could provide. He was sickeningly aware that a stray bullet through one of the containers inside the truck would render a gunfight moot. Blinking rapidly, frantically, to erase the white blur on his retinas and regain some semblance of night vision, he moved toward the front of the barn. Until his senses returned, or until he knew where his opponent was, his only chance lay in his ability to keep moving.

But the same rules applied to his enemy. Sure, he no doubt looked away and shielded his vision from the erupting flare, but even now, as his eyes adjusted, Jonathan would still be invisible on the far side of the light. To get a bead, the attacker would have to cross to Jonathan’s side of the truck.

Would it be from the right or the left? He backed off from the truck to open up his peripheral vision, and to see the front door, in case the gunman pulled a fast one and tried to make a straight run for it. Two steps more and he was flat against the cowling of the tractor, directly under the overhang of the…loft!