Project StrikeForce (17 page)

Barnwell nodded. “How does that make you feel?”

Eric squinted at him. “So this
is
a therapy
session?”

“Call it what you like. I’m just trying to assess
his performance. Yours, too. So, how
do
you feel?”

Eric thought about it. “Angry. He’s a killer, Doc.
A psychopath. And, an asshole. But he’s not, anymore. He’s completely
different, and I have to hold his hand—”

“You think he deserves something else?”

Eric pondered that. “I don’t know. What’s been
done to him, it turned him inside out. Where does his responsibility end? The
man he was, or the man he is?”

Barnwell smiled. “A very astute question. Can I
offer an observation? John is just about the right age to be someone’s younger
brother. Your younger brother?”

He laughed in spite of himself. “I feel
responsible for him, like an older brother?”

“It’s not so crazy, is it? You’ve killed men, but
you didn’t know them, not the way you know John. You didn’t train them and
mentor them and watch as they tried to impress you. You didn’t get to know them
as people. John is different. You
know
him.”

Barnwell made a lot of sense. He sighed. “I guess
I do.”

“Let’s continue. How about the bar? And Dyer?”

He took another swig from the cup. “Another
sideways situation.”

“And once again, John saved your life.”

“Without hesitation. He saved Kelly, too. Then we
found Dyer.”

“What’s your opinion of Dyer?”

Eric snorted. “A lunatic. He’d been spewing the
same hateful bullshit so long, he convinced himself he was a patriot.”

Barnwell leaned forward. “He was wearing a suicide
vest. You’re lucky to be alive.”

“Lucky? It was John. He’s impressive as hell. If
he hadn’t hit hard enough to knock us completely out of the room, we’d be dead
right now.”

“Yes, I heard. The Weave. The Implant. The drugs.
It’s almost miraculous, isn’t it? He’s operating at the peak of human capacity,
but he’s not unbreakable. He can be hurt and he can be killed, just like you.”

“There’s no way I could have broken down the door,
or knocked us out of that room. I’m in decent shape for a man my age, but I’m
not young anymore.”

“No, you’re not. An Operator has a relatively
short shelf life, before the stress on the body starts wearing away at them.
You’ve been shot, hit with shrapnel. Your last MRI shows stress and strains on
the ligaments in your knees. You’ve got mild hearing loss. No, you’re not a
young man anymore. You’re going to be thirty-seven. About the time an Operator
starts to transition out of day-to-day ops.”

Barnwell’s assessment was disturbingly close to
his own. During John’s training he noticed his own body aching and knew it was
only going to get worse. “Uplifting speech, Doc.”

Barnwell chuckled. “I’m just saying that you’ve
got some miles on you. The body is not what makes an Operator. It’s their
spirit, their mental determination. In some ways, they’re the opposite of a
regular soldier. They’re rugged individualists. You know what motivates an
Operator? Telling him he can’t do something. That’s what John needs. You have
to teach him.”

He sighed. “I’m doing my damnedest.”

“I know.” Barnwell eased back in his chair. “Dyer
killed himself rather than be taken alive.”

“Yeah. The police and FBI were not happy.”

“Fulton wasn’t pleased, but he understands. It’s
not the first time we’ve had an operation involve the local authorities.”

“We played the DHS card, but they were mad as hell
about DHS operating in their city without their knowledge.”

“They’ll suffer through,” Barnwell said.

“Doc, I’ve been thinking about Dyer. All that
bullshit about angels. Could he mean Los Angeles?”

Barnwell sat back, his fingers forming a steeple,
thoughtful. “Why Los Angeles?”

“He wants a race war. What better way to than set
off a dirty bomb in Los Angeles, blame it on a black militant group.”

Barnwell nodded slowly. “An interesting theory,
but there’s no indication that he was working with anybody else, and there’s
very few members of his organization left to interrogate.”

“What about the codes they used? The cell-phone
shielding?”

Barnwell shrugged. “You make a good point. Perhaps
you’re right.”

Eric nodded. “I asked Karen to dig deeper, try to
find the remaining members who’ve gone to ground. In the meantime, what about
drones over Los Angeles?”

“Too risky,” Barnwell said. “Every time we do a
drone overfly, we risk alerting the civilians. It creates…complications. We
have a stealth blimp, but it would take weeks to re-outfit it with radiation
sensors.”

Eric considered their options. “What about DHS?”

“Pass it along,” Barnwell said, “and they can send
a VIPR team, but it’s a needle in a haystack. You need actionable
intelligence.”

Eric grunted. “I’ll work on it.”

“And, if you don’t mind me asking, when was the
last time you had sex?”

“Kind of personal, isn’t it?”

Barnwell grinned. “I’m not one for casual
relationships, myself. I’ve been married to the same woman for almost forty
years. I make it a point to fly out every night, if I can, to our home in
Vegas. You younger folks are a different matter. We have a high single rate in
the Office. That’s why we allow the dating culture. It’s well established, and
there are rules that one must follow. It allows human contact and keeps
everyone from going stir crazy.”

“It’s been a year, maybe.”

Barnwell raised an eyebrow. “Really? Hasn’t it
been closer to two?”

“Keeping tabs on me?” Eric asked, annoyed. “I
didn’t work for the Office then.”

Barnwell laughed. “We weren’t keeping track of
you, if that’s what you’re thinking, but it’s plain as day. It was your last
relationship.”

“Yeah, I guess. I didn’t realize how much time had
passed.”

“Perfectly all right. Just consider sex a healthy
form of stress relief. One of the rules is that no rank or position can be
used. Take Karen Kryzowski. She’s married, but they have an arrangement.”

“Karen? Really? She’s attractive, I guess, but not
the first woman who comes to mind.”

“She’s reasonably fit, and moreover, quite
enthusiastic. My advice would be to get the pipes cleaned, so to speak.”

Eric coughed. “I’ll take that under advisement.”

“Just a piece of advice, though,” Barnwell said.
“Don’t even consider Nancy.”

The thought hadn’t occurred to him, but once
stated, it made him wonder. “Out of curiosity, why?”

“Suffice it to say the last relationship ended
poorly for the young man.” Barnwell shook his head and stood to leave, placing
his empty plastic cup back in the lunch-box and snapping it shut. He was almost
out the door when he turned back to Eric. “He’s stationed in Israel now and
considers it much safer than here with her.”

* * *

John woke, his eyes darting around
the room, his heart thudding in his chest. He tried swallowing, but his tongue
was as dry as the desert outside the base. He lurched out of bed, caught his
foot in the blanket, and slammed to the floor. He threw the blanket across the
room, cursing, then staggered to the bathroom.

He scooped water from the sink in the palm of his
hand and swallowed, spilling most of it down his chest.

Christ, what a nightmare!

He turned to the toilet and pulled down his
briefs. His bladder felt near bursting, but no matter how hard he tried, he
could only manage a few starts and stops of a stream. He slumped to his knees and
wondered if he was going crazy.

The memories of the dream came back. He was in
Denver, shooting the men. They were all there; the bartender, Fletcher, and the
rest. He saw blood spray in thick gouts, a fire-hose of red.

It wasn’t like that.

The men came for him, grinning, and suddenly a
pink mist exploded from the bartender’s head, then the man’s body opened as
blood and organs splattered to the ground. The bartender slipped in the gore,
sprawling in his own entrails.

Fletcher stumbled over the fallen man, then turned
back to John, a leer on his face. John stumbled backwards and shot, bullets
tearing chunks of flesh from Fletcher’s face, but still he advanced.

His heart was racing, his lungs on fire.

I’m dreaming.

Still Fletcher kept coming.

One of the young men from the bar leapt on John,
bearing him to the ground, and the coppery scent of blood was thick in his
nose, until the man released his bowels.

John heaved and tried to roll away, but Fletcher
knelt and pinned him to the ground.

Please let me wake up!

Fletcher laughed as the rest of the men
approached, smearing their blood in wide swaths across his face, rubbing it in
his eyes and nose, then sticking their bloody fingers in his mouth. He gagged
on the taste, all copper and salt, and felt his gorge rise.

Please wake up!

A thump, like a clap of thunder, shook the ground.
Then another. The men parted and Dyer stood before him with milky eyes. He
smiled and opened his mouth, his tongue waggling. “Look, boy.”

A hand gripped his head. He resisted, but the hand
twisted his head until he saw a building in ruin. There were people, some
sitting on chunks of concrete and some sprawled across the pavement, soaked in
blood. A girl in a tattered dress stared at him, holding the remains of her
left arm. A cacophony of screams filled the air.

Then, glorious silence. The building was whole
again.

He felt the relief as a physical thing.

Please wake up!

Too late. The building shook and a school bus
parked in front turned to shrapnel, the front of the building collapsing,
bodies tossed through the air. A man franticly tried to push his intestines
back in his abdomen. The man turned to him, empty eye-sockets leaking blood.

A woman lay in the rubble, her body jerking in
agony, a stalk of metal protruding from her chest, the blood scarlet against
her white silk shirt. She gurgled bloody spittle from her mouth.

Please!

And, like that, he was fully awake, still kneeling
in front of the toilet, the cold tile floor sapping the heat from his knees.

He stumbled to the kitchenette and grabbed a
bottle of water from the refrigerator, draining it in choking gulps. The cold
water was an icy spike in his stomach, but it calmed him.

He went back to the bathroom and snapped on the
light, looking in the mirror. The harsh glow cast shadows on his pale skin, his
pupils dilated. His hands shook as he traced his fingertips over his face.

He would ask Eric if this was an after-effect of
the adrenaline.

No, he couldn’t ask Eric. He couldn’t ask Doctor
Barnwell, either. It would be recorded and placed in his file. Better to keep
it to himself.

He left the light on and retrieved his blanket,
damp from sweat, returning to bed.

What the fuck?

The light peeked from the gap under his door. He
took comfort from that, as well as the light streaming from his bathroom. He
shivered, pulling the soft blanket tightly against him as he prayed in vain for
sleep.

Kandahar, Afghanistan

eion crouched on the dark rooftop,
his MP4 propped up against the parapet that ringed the roof. All they had to do
was hold their position without getting killed. He glanced over to Neil,
clutching his rifle on the east side of the roof.

Neil was nervous. They all were. He grimaced. They
had to pull together as a team or none of them would make it out alive.

Shit, I wish Steeljaw was here.

The building was nestled in a long line of single
story houses, with little space to the east and west. The back opened to a
narrow alley littered with trash and rubble. It was the safest area, which was
why he asked Jaabir to guard it.

Truthfully, he didn’t trust Jaabir, but the young
man’s life was on the line, just like theirs.

Valerie and Nancy were holed up on the first
floor. He had forgotten how much he enjoyed Valerie’s company, her smile, how
good she smelled, even in a shitty place like Kandahar. It angered him that she
was in danger.

She was right, his cowboy shit got results, but at
a high price. First his posting in Afghanistan, then Valerie as they drifted
apart.
No time for that now.

He focused on the mission, craning his neck to
assess the street layout. The fighters would come from the north, he was sure
of it. It offered the clearest path back to the main thoroughfare.

He shifted the MP4 and sighted through the ghostly
light of the night vision scope, looking to the west. There was a north-bound
street two houses over, and the fighters coming around the corner would enter
his kill zone. Neil would do the same on the right. Nancy and Val would have to
cover the same area from their windows on the first floor.

He’d parked the Toyota Helix as close as possible
to the front door, blocking it, providing Valerie and Nancy a modicum of
protection. He just hoped it was enough.

“Freeman? You there?”

Hot damn!
“Wise? That you?”

“I’m here. Delta is inbound, just hold tight.”

Eric’s voice was calm, but Deion knew better.
During Frist’s training, he learned to read Eric, and he could detect the
concern in Eric’s voice. “Go skiing in Colorado? Next time, you can have
Afghanistan and I’ll take Denver.”

There was a pause before Eric replied. “Denver
didn’t go as hoped.”

Uh oh.
“You find the caesium?”

“Still working on it,” Eric said. “Sorry I’m not
there with you.”

“We need to have a serious discussion when I get
back,” he said.

“Can the shit.” Nancy’s voice cut through the
earpiece. “We don’t have time for it.”

“Nice to hear from you, too,” Eric said. “Can you
guys do one thing? Try to not get killed.”

Deion sighed. “We’ll do our best.”

“We’ve got drone data on the screen, I see your
position. You’ve got fighters coming from the north.”

“I’m on the roof, west side,” Deion said. “Neil
Burch is on the east. Nancy and Valerie Simon are on the first floor. A local
kid is watching the back.”

“Taliban?”

“Affirmative. If AQ gets him, they’ll kill him. Or
worse.”

“He better fight, then.”

Deion nodded to himself. “He damn well better.”

 “Mr. Burch? Ms. Simon? My name is Eric. I’ll be
your Overlook, along with Sergeant Clark. Can you hear me?”

Neil and Valerie confirmed they could.

“Very good. We’re going to get through this
together. Deion, how much ammo do you have?”

“Four mags each for the M4’s, and a couple of
grenades. Plus, our sidearms.”

“Remember,” Eric said, “conserve your ammo. Slow
and steady, maximize your kill shots. Deion, it’s just like training, and
you’ve become a fair shot.”

It was true. During John’s weapons training, Deion
had learned just how good Eric was, and after Eric’s gentle coaching, Deion
found himself on a level he never thought achievable.
I hope it
’s
enough.

There was a long pause. “You’ve got enemy on the
south-bound road, ten o’clock, two hundred meters away,” Eric said. “Two men on
a motorbike with AK’s. They’ll come around the corner in ten seconds.”

“Roger that.” He turned his head. “Neil, get set.
Anything that comes from the east, you kill. Single shots only.”

Neil glanced back across the shadowy rooftop and
shook his head. “I want you to know I hate this kind of shit.”

Deion gave him a quick thumbs up, then went back
to his scope. He heard the motorbike’s engine, a soft buzz growing louder, and
the men emerged on the motorbike.

He sighted and pulled the trigger. The rifle
bucked against his shoulder and the driver slumped over in the intersection,
dead. The motorcycle’s front fork twisted, spilling the passenger in the dirt.
He came up shouting, struggling to raise his AK, when a crack rang out and
Nancy’s bullet took the man in the stomach.

“Nice shooting,” Eric said. “That’ll give them
pause, but when they come, they’ll come in a group. Mr. Burch, there’s four
coming from the east. Deion, you’ve got more coming from the north, at least a
dozen behind them. They’ve found the two in the street.”

Below, the motorcycle passenger Nancy shot tried
crawling away, kicking uselessly in the dirt. Deion considered putting him out
of his misery, but it was a waste of ammo. He would be dead in minutes.

The shouting grew louder, and the approaching
fighters cast long shadows down the street. He sighted down the scope as a man
ducked out and then behind the edge of the house on the corner.

“They’ve got trucks,” Eric informed them. “It’s
about to get hot. Remember, folks, conserve ammo. Concentrate on holding them
off.”

Deion waited for the fighter to peer around the
corner. The seconds ticked by, and when the man leaned out, Deion snapped off a
clean shot to the head. The fighter spun backwards and dropped to the ground in
the bloody dirt.

Then all hell broke loose.

Fighters ran around the corner, too many to count.
They cut loose with their AK’s, peppering the side of the building. He ducked
and came up, squeezing the trigger and dropping one man, but they continued
their forward assault until he heard a
crack-crack
as Nancy dropped two
more. The dead fighters sprawled in the dirt and the remaining men screamed,
spraying the building with gunfire.

The bullets zinged around him, chips of stone and
mortar stinging his face. He dropped and covered, then came back up and
squeezed off another round. The bullet caught a pudgy bearded man in the leg,
and the man dropped, the AK spilling from his hands into the dirt. The man
behind him picked it up and pulled the trigger, but the AK was empty, causing
the young man to scream in frustration.

Deion heard the yelling, then. “Allahu Akbar!”

“Mr. Burch,” Eric said, “prepare yourself.”

Deion heard the
crack, crack, crack
of Neil’s
rifle, then Eric’s calm voice. “Keep at it, Mr. Burch. There’s two left.”

Bullets tore up the east side of the building but
there was nothing Deion could do about it. “Val, help him out!”

Another rifle joined in, matching Neil’s
crack,
cracking.

Meanwhile, it was all Deion could do to hold off
the fighters from the west. The first group of men had retreated, but were now
joined by a horde. They would run out, spray the building, then take shelter.
He managed to pick off one more, then heard Eric’s voice. “Here come the trucks.
Deion, use those grenades.”

“I’ve got the first one,” he said.

“I’ll take the second,” Nancy joined in.

Two Toyota trucks barreled around the corner and
men jumped out, firing their rifles. Deion hugged the rooftop, then pulled the
pin from his grenade, stood, and lobbed it toward the first truck. He felt a
hot stinging pain in his left arm, bullets singing in the air around him, and
then heard screams as their grenade detonated with a loud
whump-whump
.

He fell back and grabbed his arm where the bullet had
penetrated. He winced, picking up his M4, fire screaming down his bicep. He
managed a quick glance over the edge of the building and saw men scattered like
rag dolls, in various states of dying. The remains of the devastated trucks
blocked the street, providing cover for the remaining men who popped up
randomly to squeeze off rounds.

“I’m hit, but not bad,” Deion said between gritted
teeth.

“Where?” Eric asked.

“Left arm, through and through.”

“Suck it up,” Nancy yelled from below.

Deion had an urge to scream. The whole thing was
her fault. Her interaction with Rumple caused their loss of Delta support. “I’m
okay. How’s it look from above?”

“Men are entering the building across from you,”
Eric said.

Deion gritted his teeth tighter. The road between
buildings wasn’t that wide. He popped up just as the sound of muffled gunfire
erupted in the house. He saw flashes of light through the windows across the
street. “There go the civilians,” he said.

“Hang in there,” Eric said. “There’s a CIA
Predator in the area and I’m working on rerouting it, but I have to override
the CIA’s control.”

This is officially a clusterfuck.
“How long
before we get backup?”

“Nightstalkers are spinning up the Little Birds
and a Blackhawk full of Operators. They’re leaving now.”

Deion struggled to remain calm. “We need
extraction,” he said.

“Just a little longer,” Eric responded.

Across the street, the gunfire stopped.

Oh, shit,” he said. The fighters had killed the
last of the Afghani civilians. “The house across the street, everyone. Light it
up!”

He fired at the windows across the street and the
enemy returned fire, glass panes shattering. The rest of his team joined in and
it became a raging gun-battle as the fighters on the street unleashed
everything they had.

There was a flash of light across the street, a
trail of smoke, and a deafening explosion as the enemy RPG impacted the side of
the building. He looked toward Neil but found a chasm had opened in the roof.
He could see down to the first floor. Valerie was covered in debris, her head
caught against the wall, her legs quivering.

Fuck!

“Nancy? Are you injured? Can you get to Val?”

“Christ, that was close. No, I can’t get to her,”
Nancy said over the gunfire. “The front of the house is gone, they’ve got me
pinned down.”

“What about Jaabir?”

“No idea. I don’t hear anything from the back.”

He cursed as the battle raged, the bullets pinging
around him. Another RPG from the house across the street whumped in to their
Helix and blew it apart in a cloud of shrapnel, leaving a smoking husk that
belched smoke and flames to the sky.

Neil paused long enough to holler, “They’ll take
that out of my pay!” He went back to firing, swapping magazines as his gun went
empty.

“You’ve got more enemy coming,” Eric said, voice
strained.

“We can’t hold them,” Deion shouted, as a group of
AQ fighters rounded the corner and took cover behind the trucks in the
intersection, their AK’s joining the din.

They were still taking fire from the house across
the street. He heard a scream as Nancy killed a man. The flashes of light from
the fighter’s guns lit the rooms like strobe-lights. He saw a squat man
struggle to the broken windows with an RPG launcher.

“RPG, across the street. Another RPG,” he
screamed.

He heard Eric’s voice, calm and determined. “Take
cover. Hellfire is inbound.”

He pressed against the rooftop as a whisper of
sound, like a bottle rocket, grew louder and then the explosion thumped through
his chest, his bones shaking in sympathetic vibration. His hands covered his
ears, but the sound was still deafening.

He peaked over the rooftop and saw the cloud of
fire and smoke rising in a mushroom cloud, the fire from the burning Helix
illuminating it from below. He turned his head, waiting for the rock and
gravel, but the missile had been so fierce it blew the debris far past their
rooftop and was raining down on the houses behind them.

The house across the street was gone. The Hellfire
blew the building apart and collapsed what was left. The AQ fighters stopped
firing and looked at the rubble, awestruck. Deion took the opportunity to
calmly shoot the biggest man right through the chest. The man dropped, breaking
the spell, and the AQ fighters screamed and started shooting again. He saw
another man fall and knew that Nancy hadn’t run out of ammo.

“Neil, how you doing?” he hollered.

“Still alive,” Neil shouted, “but I’m down to my
last magazine.”

“Me too,” he said. “Eric, got any other miracles?”

“No more Hellfires,” Eric said, “but I do have
some good news. Little Birds are almost there.”

The fighters behind the truck stepped out and
started to advance.

“We don’t have a minute,” Nancy yelled.

The men came in a deadly wave. The street was a kill-zone,
barely passable from debris, and the flashes from their weapons sparked in the
night.

Deion shot another fighter. The bullet struck the
man in the side of the face, but as he fell, another took his place.

Deion’s M4 ran dry. He pitched it and pulled his
M11 pistol. He saw Neil do likewise.

“Sorry, Eric. We just can’t hold them.”

Below, he heard Nancy’s pistol firing again and
again.

In the midst of all the gunfire he heard the whine
of turbines, and in the distance he saw black helicopter silhouetted against
the moonlit sky.

As the AQ fighters approached, the pair of MH-6
helicopters unleashed their missiles. The remains of the two trucks in the
intersection erupted in flames. The AQ fighters turned to run, but there was no
shelter. The pilots unleashed their M134 miniguns and the street became a
deathtrap, the high pitched whine of the miniguns piercing the night sky in a
continuous scream, the men in the street desperately trying to run away.