Gray Matter Splatter (A Deckard Novel Book 4) (17 page)

It was warm inside the heated cabin of their truck; everything
was quiet outside, but Deckard knew that was about to change.

The idea was to hit the warehouse and ship at the same
time, coming at the enemy by land and sea. That would split their
attention, making the enemy think for a few seconds as to what
direction they wanted to counterattack. That kept Samruk
International inside their decision-making cycle, and would give them
the precious few seconds they needed to get the drop on them once and
for all.

“Contact! Contact!” Otter yelled over the radio.

Through the windshield, Deckard saw yellow flashes blink a few
hundred meters to their front.

“Go, go! Step on it!”

The driver floored the accelerator, and in seconds the PKM gunner
in the turret above them was blazing away. They were in the middle of
a war zone, 10 things happening simultaneously. As the truck slid
across the ice to a stop in front of the warehouse, Deckard flung
open the door and jumped out.

A long hose stretched out from the warehouse and ran all
the way to the coast, to the knife-shaped vessel sitting in the ice.
Several figures on top of the ship were firing RPGs at the
Carrickfergus as it closed the distance. Muzzle blasts from their
ship answered in return.

A handful of black-clad figures were caught out in the open near
the warehouse. With the assault trucks pulling in between them and
their ship, they were cut off. Deckard’s hood blew off his head as
he pulled the stock of his Kalashnikov into his shoulder. One of the
enemy soldiers had turned and was running toward the warehouse,
hoping to find some cover and concealment. Deckard denied him this,
pumping a two-round burst into his back, then walking his rounds up
his back, neck, and into the back of his head in a technique called a
failure drill. After firing center mass, the shooter walked his
rounds up to the head and kept firing until the enemy failed. The
grape popped at the top as Deckard walked his rounds up. The
black-clad figure spilled across the ice, his Israeli-made bullpup
rifle sliding in front of him.

Another of the enemy’s number pivoted, turning around
and popping off a few rounds in Deckard’s direction. The PKM gunner
on his truck cut him down with a burst that folded him in the middle
like an accordion. The other machine gunners on the assault trucks
turned their guns on the enemy ship, aggressively firing long bursts
from side to side that chopped through the RPG-armed enemy firing on
the Carrickfergus.

Turning back toward the warehouse, Deckard saw at least a
half dozen more of the enemy disappear inside. He was already running
toward the warehouse, smelling blood in the water as the Samruk
mercenaries joined in the chase. As they ran toward the door, one,
then two of the mercenaries collapsed to the ground. Deckard hadn’t
even heard the enemy gunfire.

“No frags!” he yelled. The explosion could set off whatever
fuel source they had concealed inside. He was willing to risk a
flashbang, though, and nodded to Fedorchenko as he yanked one off his
kit and pulled the pin.

Deckard lobbed the nine-banger through the door. It went
off again and again, the distraction device serving its purpose.
Deckard stepped through the door as the banger was still popping off,
his rifle sweeping through the darkness, hungry for targets. As the
other mercenaries flowed through behind him, he picked up something
in his peripheral vision. Shifting his hips and bending on one knee,
he turned toward the threat.

Then something flashed, and Deckard’s entire world went upside
down. His vision was spinning inside his brain, his arms and legs
feeling detached from his body. Stumbling forward, he thought he
heard gunfire but couldn’t tell. His brain had somehow been
disengaged from reality, and now all he knew was that the world was
coming up to meet him. Fast.

He landed on the hard concrete floor with a thud, barely able to
get his arms out in front of him before he fell.

Two rifle shots cracked into his back, and then Deckard was
still.

* * *

The SCOPE think tank sat with their mouths ajar as Global Hawk
captured the carnage outside Barrow, Alaska. The enemy ship was
pulling out of port, tearing away from the hose refilling their fuel
tanks, spilling gas across the ice. RPG gunners were still firing at
the Carrickfergus as it stormed toward them.

The warehouse was quickly surrounded by the five assault trucks
before little figures dashed across the screen and chased some of the
enemy inside. Machine gunners on shore and on the Carrickfergus were
making quick work of the RPG gunners on the enemy ship, their bodies
flopping over the side, into the dark water.

Leaving both their dead and their living behind, the enemy
ship plowed through the ice, making way for the open water beyond.
The Carrickfergus was in pursuit, at least until the bad guys steered
their ship into a channel previously cut by an icebreaker heading
into or out of Barrow. Once inside the channel, the boat lifted up
out of the water, moving like a speed boat away from Barrow as
quickly as possible.

The think tank listened to the radio chatter as the
mercenaries yelled at each other in three or four different
languages. At times, the voices were washed out by gunfire.

“Objective secure,” someone finally announced. “Starting
sensitive site exploitation.”

Gary leaned over and pressed a button on the comms panel that
linked them to the Carrickfergus. “I want full biometrics on the
enemy bodies as quickly as possible,” the think tank leader said.

“Right, let me put out the fire on the deck of my ship if you
don’t mind,” the Carrickfergus captain guffawed.

A minute later, the biometric readings from the bodies started
coming into the SCOPE office. Pictures of faces, iris scans, and
fingerprints could all be taken by the Samruk mercenaries with a
handheld device manufactured by Crossmatch. The data would then be
streamed to the Carrickfergus and uploaded via satellite to JSOC
servers.

The four men were tense as the data began loading onto the
flatscreen mounted to the wall in front of them. Craig swallowed.
Will interlaced his fingers in front of him as he sat forward in his
chair.

The first face to show up on the screen was Asian.

“We’re running it through our databases now,” Will said.
“We’ll see if we can get a match on ID.”

The second face looked Arab, maybe, but definitely Middle
Eastern.

Craig looked over at Will.

The third face was Caucasian.

Will smiled.

The data continued to flow in as the Samruk mercenaries
took biometrics of each of the bodies. Two more pictures of Asians
came in, then another with a face so caved in by gunshots that it was
hard to tell his ethnicity. Then there was another white guy and
another Middle Easterner.

Will stood up and walked around the table.

“Chinese,” he said, pointing to the Asians displayed on the
screen.

His finger drifted over to the Middle Easterners.

“Iranians.”

“Holy shit,” Craig said as he held his head in his hands.

Will pointed to the Caucasians.

“Russians.”

“You were right,” Gary said, almost under his breath.

“These are the players in the game.”

Craig shot up in his chair.

“What the hell,” he said. “The database got a match on one
of them.”

Will turned around, seeing a new picture of a white guy with his
eyes closed. The JSOC database did get a hit—he was one of theirs.

“Army? CIA?” Gary said it almost as a curse.

Scrolling down the screen, they saw his name.

“Deckard?”

Chapter 15

“Put that down, you fucking idiot!”

One of the Kazakhs looked up at Kurt Jager as he walked into the
room. He was pressing the limp hand of one of the bodies onto the
glass fingerprint reader of the Crossmatch scanner.

“He’s one of ours.”

Kurt looked down at the Samruk commander. He was motionless.
Everyone else in the room was dead. Four of their men including
Deckard had been shot by one of the bad guys before the rest of the
mercenaries had burst in and blasted him.

The former GSG-9 commando turned on a Petzl headlamp he wore
around his neck and ran his hands over Deckard’s body. He was
confused, as he didn’t see any sign of blood or entry or exit
wounds. Thinking he felt something, Kurt pulled off one of his gloves
and felt around Deckard’s back. His middle finger entered through a
hole in Deckard’s parka.

“Ow, shit!”

He snapped his hand back to his body, recoiling away as
something burned him. Rolling Deckard on his side and looking at his
back with the white light, Kurt realized he had burned himself on a
bullet embedded in the plate carrier under Deckard’s jacket.

“Wake him up,” Kurt told the Kazakh. “He is just
unconscious.”

The Kazakh pulled a water bottle out of his chest rig and emptied
it over Deckard’s head. The wounded man immediately shot up on his
elbows, panting as if he had been holding his breath. Deckard’s
bloodshot eyes began to open.

* * *

The room had stopped spinning, but Deckard still felt nauseated
from the severe vertigo he had experienced. He had gone from balls to
the wall combat mode to having his world turned upside down and put
on queer street faster than he could blink his eyes. His vision began
to come back into focus. He squinted, trying to make out something
moving on the other side of the room.

“You’re OK, you’re OK,” Kurt assured him. “You
took a round or two in the plate. We killed the shooter before he
could finish the job.”

Deckard continued to stare forward, not daring to turn his head
and induce the brain-spinning vertigo again. Finally, his sight
cleared up, the fidelity of his vision zeroing back in. There was a
dead body lying across from him. The movement was the dead
mercenary’s foot wiggling back and forth as his nervous system
continued to fire on auto, some part of the body still working after
everything else had shut down.

“What happened?” Deckard asked.

“The ship escaped again, but we killed about ten of them in the
process.”

“Help me sit up.”

Kurt grabbed Deckard under his armpits and helped him sit
up. Of the four wounded men who had entered the room, Deckard could
see that he had been the only survivor. Something had put them all on
their ass and then one of the bad guys had walked up to each and
plugged them. Deckard had gotten a couple rounds in his back and the
next would have been in his head if the shooter hadn’t been stopped
in time.

“OK, I feel a little bit better,” Deckard lied. The vertigo
was gone but had been replaced with dread. Some of his men had been
killed and, once again, he had skated right past the Reaper.

“Good,” Kurt said. “We’ve been uploading the
biometrics on the bodies back to the States, but you don’t need
fingerprints and iris scans to know that something doesn't add up
here.”

“What do you mean?”

“They are different nationalities. Asian, Middle Eastern, and
white guys too.”

“Sounds like a joint coalition task force.”

“Well, that is what we would call it, but I’ve never seen
anything like this from the opposition.”

“All the villains in Gotham City.”

“Huh?”

“They’re having a team-up. But what the hell was it that made
us all collapse like that? I saw a couple other guys go down outside
on the way in.”

“They were blinded,” Nate said as he walked into the room.
“With this.”

In front of him he held one of the Tavor assault rifles chambered
for the 5.56mm rounds the enemy used. Attached to the side of the
rifle was what looked like a large flashlight. The former MARSOC
Marine pointed the rifle at the wall and activated the flashlight. It
blinked on and off, flashing a ghostly green on the wall.

“It is a visual disruption laser. The guys hit with it were
blinded, but their vision is already clearing up.”

“Why use non-lethals?” Kurt asked.

“Because they didn’t have any machine guns or other
suppressive weapons on shore; they didn’t have this site prepared
properly because they never planned on coming here. We caught them
with their pants down and they used the non-lethals because they can
be used as area weapons, putting down a large group of us quickly.
With that done, they can casually walk around and flip our off switch
with a bullet,” Deckard finished, pointing toward the bodies.

“So that is what they got you with.”

“No, I wasn’t just blinded,” Deckard insisted. Planting one
hand on the ground, he pushed himself up to his feet. “It was more
than that. Complete disorientation.”

Just then, Chuck Rochenoire walked into the room. “Hey, what is
this?” He reached down and picked something up off the ground. It
was boxy and black, with some kind of pull lever at the top.

“No, no, stop!” Deckard shouted just a moment too late.

The black box flashed.

Kurt Jager immediately vomited all over himself. Deckard went
crashing back down to the ground as if someone had cut his legs out
from under him. Rochenoire’s eyes rolled back in his head as he
fell backwards and slammed into the floor.

* * *

Old Uncle Joe’s hands dug into the snow like claws as he
pulled and struggled his his way over a berm that could not have been
more than knee height. Safely back on shore, he got to his feet and
dusted himself off. Reaching into his jacket, he palmed another
single of whiskey, unscrewed the cap, and swigged it down in one
gulp.

Surveying the carnage around him, Joe shook his head.

“What a time to be alive!”

Chapter 16

The blade master climbed over the brambles. He had been
struggling through them, the thorns leaving long red streaks on his
forearms and face as he scaled the approach leading up to the dark
castle. Storm clouds were gathering overhead, heat lightning fanning
out high above his head in surges that radiated across the sky in all
directions.