Dead Six

DEAD

SIX

Larry Correia

& Mike Kupari

Baen Books

by Larry Correia

Monster Hunter International

Monster Hunter Vendetta

Monster Hunter Alpha

The Grimnoir Chronicles

Hard Magic

Spellbound

DEAD SIX

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

Copyright © 2011 by Larry Correia & Mike Kupari

A Baen Books Original

Baen Publishing Enterprises

P.O. Box 1403

Riverdale, NY 10471

www.baen.com

ISBN 13: 978-1-4516-3758-8

Cover art by Kurt Miller

First printing, October 2011

Distributed by Simon & Schuster

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020

Printed in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Acknowledgements

Far more people help in the creation of a novel than just the authors. The story that would become DEAD SIX began as an online serial at
www.thehighroad.org
titled
Welcome Back, Mr. Nightcrawler
. Thank you to the good folks of THR for letting us play in their yard. We would like to thank Chris Byrne and the Gun Counter for fixing the “computer situation.” Their generosity is much appreciated. Special thanks go to Marcus Custer for his technical/tactical advice, he’s like having your own personal Jack Bauer, only without all the yelling and whispering. John Shirley helped out big time on knives as did Ogre Rettinger on information security and Jeff More on the border. Once again, Reader Force Alpha rode to the rescue with their proofing, critiques, and vast stores of useful knowledge. Thank you all.

DEAD SIX

“And by thy sword shalt thou live . . .”

Genesis 27:40

Prologue: Cold Open

VALENTINE

Sierra Vista Resort Hotel

Cancun, Quintana Roo

Southern Mexico

February 17

There was an angel standing over me when I opened my eyes. She was speaking but I could barely hear her. Every sound was muffled, as if I were underwater, except for the rapid pounding of my heart.
Am I dreaming? Am I dead?

“On your feet, damn it!” the angel said as she grabbed my load-bearing vest and hauled me from my seat. My head was swimming, and every bone in my body ached. I wasn’t sure where I was at first, but reality quickly came screaming back to me. We were still in the chopper. We’d crashed. The angel was pulling me toward the door. “Can you walk? Come on.”

“Wait,” I protested, steadying myself against the hull. “The others.” I turned to where my teammates were sitting. Several of them were still strapped into their seats, but they weren’t moving. Dim light poured through a gaping hole in the hull. Smoke and dust moved in the light, but behind that there was blood
everywhere
. My heart dropped into my stomach. I’d worked with these men for years.

“They’re dead, bro,” Tailor said, suddenly appearing in the door frame. At least one of my friends had made it. “She’s right. We’ve got to get out of here before they start dropping mortars on us. This isn’t a good place to be.”

Still terribly disoriented, I shook my head, trying to clear it.

“You’re in shock,” the angel said, pushing me through the door of our wrecked NH-90 helicopter. “What’s your name?” she asked as we stepped onto a large, tiled surface.

“V . . . Valentine,” I stammered, squinting in the early morning sun. “Where are we?”

“In a pool,” Tailor said, moving up a steep embankment ahead of me. “Ramirez is dead. Half the team’s gone.” He dropped the magazine out of his stubby, short-barreled OSW FAL and rocked in a fresh one. “Hostiles will be on us quick. You locked and loaded?”

My head was clearing. I looked down at the DSA FAL carbine in my hands and retracted the bolt slightly. A .308 round was in the chamber. My good-luck charm, a custom Smith & Wesson .44 Magnum, was still in its holster on my left thigh. I was still alive, so it hadn’t let me down. “I’m ready,” I said, following Tailor up the incline.

Our chopper had crashed in the deep end of a huge, pear-shaped swimming pool that had been mostly drained of water. It sat at an odd angle, still smoking, the camouflage hull absolutely riddled with bullet holes. The walls of the pool’s deep end prevented the chopper from flipping over, but it was leaning to the side. There were deep gashes in the tile where the rotor had struck. The rotor had blown to pieces, and fragments were scattered everywhere.

“What happened?” I asked. The angel didn’t answer at first. I remembered then; her name was Ling, the one who hired us. She followed me up the embankment, clutching a suppressed Sig 551 assault rifle.

“We crashed,” she said after a moment, as if I didn’t know that. We cleared the top of the incline. A handful of armed people waited for us in the shallow end of the empty pool. Aside from Tailor and me, only three were dressed in the green fatigues of my company, Vanguard Strategic Solutions. I closed my eyes and tried to catch my breath. Ten of us had left on this mission. Half hadn’t made it.
Goddamn it . . .

“You alright, Val?” Tailor asked. “I really need you with me, okay?”

“I’m fine,” I said, kneeling down to check my gear. “Just a little rattled.” We’d crash-landed in the middle of a deserted resort complex. The city had once been covered in places like this, but now they were all abandoned. In front of us stood a cluster of white towers that must have been a luxury hotel once. About a hundred yards behind us was the beach and ocean as far as the eye could see. The place had probably been evacuated back when the fighting started. It was dirty from disuse and littered with garbage and debris. Several plumes of smoke rose in the distance. Cancun had seen better days.

Ling brushed the dust from her black body armor. “Mr. Tailor. You’re in charge now, correct? We must keep moving.” I believed she was from China, but there was no accent to her speech.

With Ramirez gone, Tailor had just been promoted to team leader. He quickly looked around, taking in our surroundings. “And where in the hell do you want to go? This part of town is covered in hostiles.” His East Tennessee twang were more pronounced with his anger.

“Somewhere that is not
here
. I have multiple wounded,” Ling said, nodding toward the rest of her teammates, all members of the same mysterious
Exodus
organization. Like her, they were heavily armed and dressed in black. They were clustered in a tight circle near the edge of the pool, waiting for instructions. In the middle of them was a teenaged girl being tended to by their medic. “We have to get her out.”

“Look, damn it,” Tailor exclaimed. “We’ll save your precious package. That was the deal.” He jerked a thumb at the young girl as he spoke. “Let me try to get help again.” Tailor squeezed the radio microphone on his vest and spoke into it. “Ocean-Four-One, this is Switchblade-Four-Alpha.”

While Tailor tried to raise the base, our team sharpshooter, Skunky, ran over to see if I was okay. He was a skinny Asian guy and was in his mid-twenties, same age as me. “Dude, you’re alive.”

“I’m fine,” I said, standing up. “What happened?”

“They hit us with some kind of big gun right after we took off. It punched that hole in the chopper. The pilots were hit with frag. We made it a few miles, but it was too much damage. They were trying to set us down when the pilot died. That’s how we ended up in the pool.”

Tailor looked over at us, flustered. “I can’t raise the base. This is bad, really bad.”

“
Switchblade-Four-Alpha, this is Stingray-Two-Zero
,” a new voice said, crackling over our radios.

That was the call-sign for our air support. One of Vanguard’s Super Tucano turboprop attack planes roared overhead and began to circle our position. Vanguard was one of the best-funded private military companies in the business. We could provide our own air support if we needed to.

“Stingray-Two-Zero, this is Switchblade-Four-Alpha,” Tailor said. “What’s your status?”

“
We were going to ask you the same thing, Four-Alpha
,” the pilot replied. “
We’ve lost communication with the airfield. It looks bad down there
.”

“We’ve got multiple wounded and multiple KIA. We need an immediate medevac. Five of us, six Exodus personnel, and the package. Eight confirmed KIA, including the crew of the chopper.” Switchblade-Four was down to just me, Tailor, Skunky, Tower, and Harper.

As Tailor talked to the pilot, trying to figure out what was going on, I looked over at Ling and her people and at the young girl that we’d gone through so much trouble to acquire. I didn’t know who the girl was or why Exodus wanted her so badly. She had to be important, though, since Ling had offered us an ungodly sum of money to go into Cancun, guns blazing, to rescue her. The fact that we’d be violating the UN cease-fire hadn’t seemed to bother her.

Tailor let go of his radio microphone. “Pilot says there’s an armed convoy headed our way up Kukulkan Boulevard. Looks like Mendoza’s militia. They saw us go down, I guess. Couple trucks full of guys and some technicals. He’ll provide cover, but he’s low on ammo.”

“Just like us,” Skunky interjected.

Ling put her gloved hand on Tailor’s shoulder. “I need you to get your men moving,” she said. “I’ll contact my people to see if I can find out what’s going on.”

As Ling trotted off, Tailor turned back to us with a worried look on his face. “Val, Skunky, c’mon, we gotta go.” Nodding, I followed him as he waved to the others. Standing away from the Exodus people, we huddled up. “Listen up, Switchblade-Four,” Tailor said, addressing us as a team. “We’re in some serious shit here. I don’t know what’s going on back at the base. I got a bad feeling.” Tailor looked over his shoulder as an explosion detonated to the southeast. The Tucano had begun its attack run.

“This is the third time we’ve broken the cease-fire this month,” Skunky said, anxiously grasping his scoped, accurized M14. “You don’t think . . .”

“I know what
I
think,” Tower, our machine gunner, said. Sweat beaded on his dark face. “I think they
left
us here.”

That got everyone’s attention. Being abandoned in-country was every mercenary’s worst nightmare.

“It doesn’t matter,” Tailor said. “Everybody shut up and listen. I don’t trust these Exodus assholes. When we start moving, y’all look out for each other. If we have to, we’ll ditch these guys and head out on our own.”

I flinched. “Tailor, they’ve got wounded and a kid. And where in the hell do you think we’re gonna go?”

“Don’t argue with me!” Tailor snapped. The pressure was getting to him. “We’ll figure it out. Now get ready. We’re moving out. Keep your spacing, use cover, and watch for snipers.”

“
Get some
!” the rest of us shouted in response.

“Mr. Tailor, I’ve got some bad news,” Ling said, approaching our group. She had a satellite phone in her hand. “I don’t think anyone’s coming for us.”

“What?” Tailor asked, his face going a little pale.

“Something happened. According to my people, the UN shut down all of Vanguard’s operations about an hour ago.”

“The UN?” Tailor asked, exasperated. “But the Mexican government—”

“The Mexican Nationalist government dissolved last night, Mr. Tailor. I don’t have all the details. I’m afraid we’re on our own.”

“All we have to do is get to the safe areas in the city, right?” Harper asked. Since the cease-fire, half of Cancun was controlled by UN peacekeepers.

Ling took off her tinted shooting glasses and wiped her brow on her sleeve. “I don’t think that’s wise,” she said, putting the glasses back on. “All employees of Vanguard have been declared unlawful combatants by the UN. I’m sorry, but we need to go,
now
.” We all looked at each other, and several obscenities were uttered. We were now on our own in a country where we’d made a
lot
of enemies.

“They sold us out,” Tower said. “I told you!”

Tailor spoke up. “It don’t matter. Let’s move.” He took off after Ling. The rest of us followed, spacing ourselves out in a small column. Ling rallied the Exodus personnel, and they followed her as she climbed over the edge of the pool. Two of them were always within arm’s reach of the strange young girl. We quickly moved across the courtyard of the resort complex, heading for the buildings. The grass was overgrown, and the palm trees were untended.

Tailor tried to contact the pilots for an update but got no response. It was obvious something was wrong. The small attack plane zoomed back over the resort in a steep right turn, ejecting flares as it went. An instant later, a missile shrieked across the sky, trailing smoke behind it. The Super Tucano exploded in mid-air, raining burning debris into the ocean below. A Rafale fighter jet with UN markings roared overhead, turning to the east.

Our entire group froze in disbelief. This day just kept getting better and better. Beyond the noise of the fighter’s engines, the distinctive sound of a large helicopter approaching could be heard.