Fear and Anger (The 47 Echo Series) (20 page)

“Carson,” he said.

“Yeah, Gunny,” the Ranger said, reaching for his M4.

“You’re in charge of the team in the Razor. Once Daniel and I take out the guys at the door, I need you to lead a team inside and take the vehicle back.”

“Oh. Uh, right on.”

Christopher knew Carson expected him to choose the Ranger as Daniel’s backup, but he was new to the group. He’d never seen the young man shoot for distance. He was probably a decent shot, but Christopher knew his own skills with a rifle, and he trusted them more than a wild card, someone he didn’t know well. Daniel looked at him and nodded – the sniper agreed with his choice.

“Everyone, listen to Sergeant Richmond. When he says go, you go, clear?” Christopher said, raising his voice enough that everyone in the Razor could hear him.

“We’re clear, Chief,” Anthony said. “Y’all be careful out there.”

“Gabriel, break out the ECW gear for me and Daniel, then take over for him on cameras. Daniel, we have a party to get dressed for.”

The parkas and shells were white, which would help them blend in with the snow. There were also white rifle covers in the gear, which Daniel helped Christopher put on his M4. The scope and muzzle would still be visible, but that couldn’t be helped on short notice.

“Mary? Stealth time,” Bryce said from the front of the vehicle as Christopher slipped on his white parka.

“Going stealth now,” Mary said. The red lights inside the Razor came on.

“How long until jump-out?” Daniel asked.

“Another few minutes,” Bryce told him.

Christopher was all set now, wearing white boots, white shell pants and a white parka. The heavy clothing was uncomfortable inside the heated Razor, but he knew he’d be thankful for it the second he stepped outside.

“Hey, Chris? I think I see where the meeting’s going down,” Gabriel said a moment later. Christopher walked up to the camera station at the front of the vehicle, and Gabriel pointed him to the center screen on his console. Outlined in green and black, Christopher saw a set of four low, tent-like buildings and two vehicles, a BTR-80 Armored Personnel Carrier and a Pokpung-ho Storm Tiger tank. The APC didn’t worry Christopher much – its 30mm gun couldn’t do much damage to the Razor’s thick armor. The tank, though, was another matter altogether. That thing could cripple them if it hit them with its main weapon. He knew from experience that those things had armor-piercing shells, and he’d seen a Storm Tiger blow the front end off of a Razor with only a few shots.

“Bryce, things get fucked, I want you to rocket the shit out of that Storm Tiger first,” Christopher said.

“Roger that. Time for you and Daniel to go, Chief.”

The Razor slowed, and Christopher made his way toward the back of the vehicle, taking the M4 Daniel handed him in his right hand as he moved. The red lights inside the Razor turned off, and the back hatch opened. Mary’s station was next to the door, and she turned to Christopher and Daniel as they hopped out into the snow.

“Good luck,” she told them, keeping her voice just above a whisper.

“Thanks. Don’t let Carson forget to come pick us up,” Christopher told her, forcing a smile.

He watched as the back hatch slid closed, the Razor disappearing from sight almost instantly. He followed Daniel’s lead, breaking off to the left, belly-crawling across the snow in the completely open farmland that surrounded them.

Jesus. If I’d known we were going to be this out in the open, I would have told Carson to take this job
, Christopher thought.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Another Bag of Bricks

Nick and Black pulled over at the side of the road, and Nick got out of his car and walked around to Black’s driver-side window.

“Hop in,” Jason Black said, still all smiles. “Express train to Firebase Zulu.”

“Got a bit of a problem there,” Nick said, scanning the road in either direction for headlights – there were none – before motioning to Black to come with him.

Jason Black got out of the car. He was pretty much as Nick remembered him – about his height, built like a brick shithouse, short dark hair that was going gray. The only difference from the last time he’d seen the man was that now Black was out of uniform, dressed in brown cargo pants and a black Under Armour T-shirt.

Nick opened the F3’s passenger door and nodded into the back seat. Black stuck his head inside and saw Hansen sprawled out on the seat, the pistol Nick had given him lowered.

“Hi there,” Black said cheerfully.

“Who the fuck are you?” Hansen spat.

“He’s fun,” Black said, turning back to Nick. “Where’d you pick him up?”

“Shanghai. He’s a Lightning driver, shot down before he could make it back to his carrier.”

“Well, Nick, here’s the problem, buddy. I got one seat in there. I’d be happy to shove this guy in the trunk, but that’s filled with shit that makes the car go. No back seats, either – it’s strictly a two-person car. Can’t even squeeze both of you in one seat – extra weight will throw a whole bunch of systems to shit.”

Nick expected that, as he vaguely recognized the car. It was the Challenger Vapor, an Air Force Concept car from more than a decade ago. The radar-absorbing paint and harsh angles were the precursor to the modern stealth systems in the Razors. Last he’d heard, it lived in a museum in Ohio, though apparently that was no longer the case.

“I’m afraid it’s you, or it’s him,” Black said, shrugging apologetically.

“It’s him.”

“You sure?”

“He needs medical attention. I’m fine.”

“Nick, man... you’re a long fuckin’ way from fine. When was the last time you slept? Like, a full six hours?”

“Couple of days ago.”

“Looks more like a couple of weeks. But apart from that, we have another problem.”

Of course we do
.

“Ever hear of Unit Ghost?” Black asked, walking back around to his Challenger and reaching inside.

“Yeah.”

“Well, seems someone tipped them off. They have a description of the car, and they know you’re headed for the Kazakh border,” Black said, coming back out of the car with a large, handheld radio. “I’ve been listening in on their frequency. Riveting stuff – they missed you by minutes once at a gas station.”

“How did they find out?” Nick asked, though he was pretty sure he already knew.

“Someone in Lianyungang called it in.”

Yuan
.

“Nice ride, by the way,” Black said, looking over the hood of Nick’s car. “And completely invisible to the network through the normal means. How’d you get your hands on that?”

“Hooked up with a resistance cell in Lianyungang. I helped them liberate some QBZ-03’s, they put this together for me.”

“Resistance, huh? They tell you any interesting intel?”

“Just that the U.S. Government started the war. So no, nothing useful. Or even true,” Nick said.

“That right?” Black said, smiling widely.

“What do you mean by that?”

“Who said I meant anything? Look, Nick. Jason Black has been in the business of war for longer than you’d believe. You really think the reasons for this war matter? Or any war?”

Nick started to feel slightly dizzy, a sensation he couldn’t entirely attribute to the energy drinks mixed with amphetamines.
What the hell is this guy saying? And why did he just refer to himself in the third person?
For a moment, he forgot where he was – standing out in the open in hostile territory. He wanted nothing more than to sit Black down and figure out just what the intelligence officer knew, and just what the hell was going on around here. But Jason Black didn’t give him a chance to ask any questions – he took a breath and kept right on talking.

“The one declining superpower and the fastest-growing superpower... seems like war was going to happen no matter who set off a bomb where,” Black continued. “And I think we both know this conversation doesn’t help you get out of China, now, does it?”

Nick nodded, suddenly remembering where he was. That was the first thing Jason Black had said in minutes that made sense. Though, if he was honest with himself, he realized that everything the guy had just said had made sense – the war being inevitable, the reasons for the war not mattering. It hadn’t been long ago that he’d thought the same thing, talking to Feng outside the garage.

“I’ll just have to take my chances, and you need to get this guy to a hospital on our side of the line.”

“Best bet?” Black said, pulling a commercial GPS unit out of his car and tapping on the screen. “Cut northeast from here. Go up through North Korea.”

“That sounds all sorts of crazy,” Nick said, shaking his head.

“Not as crazy as you think. They’re expecting you to go northwest, up to the Dzungarian Gate. The border into North Korea isn’t guarded, and the electronic frontier into Russia has been blinky ever since we – you, really – fucked up their computer core. Death Jets destroyed a few of their repeaters. It’s a longer drive, but it’s a lot safer.”

“What about military outposts?”

Black stopped messing with the GPS and put it up on Nick’s dashboard.

“That has every one of them we know about all the way up until Carbon-4. That’s a PMC base five miles from the North Korean frontier. It’s the closest American installation to the front lines at the moment.”

Nick nodded. Black’s plan was starting to sound doable.

“Here. Take this – it’s set to Ghost’s comm frequency, and they’re not following me. And trade me that shitty Chinese cop gun you’ve got – I have an M4 in the car.”

Nick and Black traded weapons and got Hansen strapped into the Vapor’s passenger seat.

“Finally. Get me out of this fucking country,” Hansen said as Black moved to close the door.

“Watch your language, Mister, or we won’t stop at Dairy Queen on the way home,” Black said, slamming the door. He turned to Nick.

“Keep moving,” he said. “Don’t let anyone get a good look at the car. These guys in Ghost don’t fuck around. If they find you, run. I mean, you’re a hardcore motherfucker, but you can’t handle them by yourself. Clear?”

“Clear, Captain.”

“Good. Now, when you get back to Justice, I’ll buy you a beer. Stay alive, Lieutenant.”

Black got into the Challenger and tore off. Nick watched the car vanish into the night for a few seconds before the tail lights disappeared over the horizon – Black had to be doing more than a hundred miles an hour. He stood there in the night, breathing in deeply, not really knowing what he felt.

“Mobile Five,” the radio Black gave him crackled to life. “Proceeding on 327 National Road.”

That was the road Nick was currently standing dumbly beside. He immediately hopped into the F3, closed the door, and floored the accelerator.

* * *

It was the first time Nick had been alone since his crew left him behind. For a long time as he drove, his mind was devoid of any real thoughts. He was merely concentrating on driving – this was the longest he’d been behind the wheel since before the war. When he was on missions, he had Bryce to drive, and when Bryce was asleep, Christopher usually took the wheel. Now it was just him, the hacked commercial GPS, and the darkened highway leading east.

The muscles in his shoulders and back, tense since the first time he climbed into the Brave Warrior in downtown Shanghai, were starting to ease. It wasn’t that he was out of the woods – not by a long shot. It was that his biggest burden had vanished. Hansen was Jason Black’s problem now. He might make it to medical attention in time, he might die in the passenger seat of that slick Dodge. Both of them might get blown up by one of those huge stealth helicopters. Nick didn’t care which – it was no longer his concern. He was now only responsible for himself.

The GPS had the ultimate end coordinates of Carbon-4, and an estimated arrival time of 38 hours. Just looking at that number made Nick even more tired than the previous days without sleep. Thirty-eight hours without stopping – that would beat his previous road-trip record. When he was in college at UCLA, he’d driven from Los Angeles to Chicago at the request of his high-school girlfriend, who had just been kicked out of Northwestern. It had taken 32 hours. He never got the full story, or why she hadn’t called her parents for a ride back to LA. He didn’t even know why she called him – they’d broken up two years before.

To be honest, he couldn’t even really say why he’d made the trip. It wasn’t that he thought they could get back together. That wasn’t something he even wanted. But they had history, and he had a hard time turning his back on someone with whom he had history.

Never leave a man behind.

At the end of that trip, he’d nearly been falling asleep behind the wheel. Multiple cups of coffee, endless cans of energy drinks, and a cigarette every hour and a half was all that kept him from running off the Interstate. It was when he’d started smoking, and two months before cigarettes had been made illegal. He’d had just enough time to get addicted.

Here, the driving could have been easier. If the GPS was connected to the car, and the car was connected to the network, he could have just let the car drive itself. Just before the Los Angeles device, he’d seen a news story that China was testing a nationwide computer network that would sync up all their transit – no one knew at the time that the computer network did a whole lot more than that. Now that the network extended into North Korea and what used to be Siberia, he could have just set the car for his final destination and gone to sleep.

Now, like the Los Angeles to Chicago run, there would be no sleep. There were energy drinks, stimulants, and two and a half packs of cigarettes left. But Nick was almost a decade older, and running without decent sleep or food in weeks. And when driving from Los Angeles to Chicago, no one had been chasing him. No Special Forces unit of the People’s Liberation Army had been trying to track him down and shoot him several times in the head.

Thirty-eight hours
, Nick thought.
That’s Los Angeles to... Cleveland, maybe? Great. I fucking hate Cleveland.