Authors: Shawn Kupfer
There were a lot of them, but Nick didn’t have much trouble sneaking past the Chinese foot patrols outside K-13R’s gate. He sat with Gabriel and Michael at the quarter-mile mark for a few minutes, watching the patrols make their rounds through the scope on his stolen Chinese assault rifle. There was a method to their patrols—Nick realized that if he got close enough, he’d have just over thirty seconds to scale the gate without being seen.
As soon as he made it over the fence and dropped to the other side, Nick crouched behind a wooden storage crate and looked back out toward the Razor. He couldn’t see the vehicle, nor could he see Michael and Gabriel. The two men, like Nick, were dressed in black, unmarked fatigues. Nick had left his jacket in the Razor, so he was simply dressed in black BDU pants, a black T-shirt and combat boots. He had his Chinese assault rifle and the M4 Wes had handed him slung crisscrossed over his back, and had strapped a Glock 50 to each hip. As he stood from behind the crate, he winched the straps on all of his weapons as tight as he could to keep them from rattling as he walked—no point in making any more noise than he had to.
He’d memorized the map of K-13R in the Razor, as well as the last known position of Petkov’s cell phone—the GPS on the phone was only accurate to within fifty feet. It didn’t sound like a lot of ground, but Nick knew the Russian tank commander could be in any of six different buildings, on any level. His best bet was to make it to the area as quickly as possible and take his best guess. Fortunately, there weren’t many people roaming around the camp this late at night, so Nick kept to the shadows and easily avoided detection as he crept the two kilometers into the camp, heading for the glowing red dot on the map he’d memorized.
As Nick got closer to his target area, he noticed a lot of electric lights. The closer he got, the more he could hear loud, shouting voices in Chinese and, he assumed, Korean. Nick slowed as the lights got brighter and the alley he was in emptied out into a main courtyard. He hung in the shadows at the mouth of the alley and saw what was causing all the commotion in the courtyard ahead of him.
In the town’s main square, an improvised fighting ring had been set up. On one side of the ring, a young woman in a Chinese Army tank top was standing, her hands and feet wrapped in boxing tape. On the other side, a much larger man in a North Korean Army T-shirt stood wearing similar fighting gear. Crowds of uniformed Chinese and North Korean soldiers surrounded the ring, talking loudly and drinking heavily. An older man in Chinese Army fatigues stepped into the center of the ring and raised both hands.
The crowd fell silent immediately.
“Three rounds, or to knockout. Our best—” the man in fatigues indicated the woman, “—versus yours for the Camp of the Four Winds championship title!”
The crowd started roaring again as the man lowered his arms.
Nick smirked—with all of these guys distracted with the intramural boxing match, he’d have a much easier time searching through the area for Petkov. As the fight started, he made his way around the courtyard to his target area, a small block of shops just outside the main square. The original maps had shown five freestanding buildings, but all of them had since burned to the ground. He hunkered down in the wreckage of one and closed his eyes, remembering the architectural plans he’d glanced through on the Razor—one of the buildings, formerly a liquor store, had a basement that might have survived. He made his way to that building, searched around for a moment, and found the hatch leading to the basement. It was covered by burned wood and broken bottles, which he cleared off as quickly and quietly as he could.
He opened the hatch a crack, and two gunshots greeted him. Nick fell backwards, landing in a crouch three feet back from the hatch.
“Jesus, Petkov,” he breathed, picking himself up and walking around to the back side of the hatch. He leaned down as close as he could and hissed, “Andrevich! It’s Nick Morrow. I’m opening the hatch. Don’t shoot me, okay?”
Carefully, he reached out and tried the hatch again—there were no gunshots this time, so he took that as a good sign. Nick opened the hatch just enough to slip inside, and the hatch closed as soon as his feet hit the dirt floor.
“Nick? Is that you, my American friend?” Nick heard a croaking voice from the end of the dark room.
“Yeah, it’s me,” Nick said, pulling a small flashlight from his cargo pocket and turning it on. The light fell on Andrevich, who looked like Death.
The Russian was a few pounds lighter than when Nick had last seen him, and his face was covered with dried blood. Petkov had used the sleeves of his uniform jacket and two pieces of wood to make a splint for his right leg, but his sunken face broke out in a smile as he saw Nick standing before him.
“You don’t look good at all.”
“I have had a rough couple of days, my friend.”
“Yeah, I’ll bet. Come on. We need to get you out of here. Can you walk?”
“Not quickly. But yes.”
“That’ll have to do. Here,” Nick said, reaching into his other cargo pocket and pulling out a bottle of water, “drink as much of this as you can. You’re dehydrated in addition to being all banged up.”
“Thank you.”
As Petkov drank the entire bottle of water, Nick considered how he was going to get the injured Russian out of the base. They’d need to move fast, and there was no way Petkov could climb the fence.
“You feeling a little better?” Nick asked as Petkov tossed the empty bottle to the ground.
“Yes. Much.”
“Good. Wait here. I need to go steal us a ride.”
Nick put his ear next to the hatch and listened. He could faintly hear the shouting from the courtyard, but nothing else. Shrugging, he pressed his back up against the hatch and pushed slightly up with his legs, opening the hatch just a crack. The coast looked clear, as near as he could tell, so he lifted a bit more and scurried out into the wreckage.
There wasn’t much close by, and Nick couldn’t remember seeing any spare vehicles sitting around on his walk in. Still, a camp this size had to have a motor pool. Just from the number of Chinese and North Korean soldiers he’d seen in the courtyard, Nick estimated there were thousands of them at K-13R. There would have to be vehicles around, and a lot of them.
Nick thought for a moment and visualized the map he’d seen in the Razor, searching it for any hint of somewhere large enough to set up a motor pool. His first thought would have been the courtyard, but the large number of cheering enemy soldiers he could still hear in the distance ruled out that option.
The next best alternative, Nick supposed, would be the industrial area three kilometers away. According to the maps, that’s where Petkov and his crew had kept their tanks—in a secure, indoor warehouse. It had been perfect for their run-and-gun missions, as they’d been able to hide the tanks when they weren’t operational.
Hoping that the majority of the camp would stay wrapped up in the fight a bit longer, Nick set off at a quick jog toward the warehouses.
As it turned out, Nick didn’t need to make it three kilometers away. He didn’t even need to go five hundred feet. Parked along the street just over a small rise from the wreckage of the shops was an older, slightly beat-up Lada Niva, a vehicle that reminded Nick of a late-model hard-top Jeep. Nick froze and dropped behind a trash can as he saw it—there was someone in the driver’s seat. He spent a couple of seconds watching, but the driver didn’t move, even slightly. Nick crept closer, his eyes locked on the man in the driver’s seat, ears scanning for any hint of motion.
He needn’t have worried, as it turned out. The man in the driver’s seat was quite dead and had been for some time, long enough for considerable decomposition to set in. Even in the body’s decayed state though, Nick could tell he had been an old man—a thick mane of white hair clung to his skull, just above where a bullet had smashed into his head.
Poor guy,
Nick thought, swallowing hard.
Probably didn’t evacuate the city quick enough when the Chinese hit it.
Sadness rose in his chest—the guy was dressed like someone’s sweet old grandfather—but he quickly did his best to push the feeling back down. He had a job to do.
The Lada’s window was down, and the door was unlocked. Nick opened the door and gently lifted the old man’s corpse out of the vehicle, doing his best not to breathe in. He propped the body up against a nearby building and went back to the Lada—it was stained with blood and smelled terrible.
It was then that Nick realized he had no idea how to steal a car.
As he passed the flashlight over the inside of the Lada, something small and silver flashed near the gas pedal in the driver’s footwell. Nick looked closer and saw keys—the old man had probably dropped them when he was shot. He tried one in the ignition, and the Lada turned right over. Checking the dashboard, he saw that the gasoline tank was almost empty, but the solar batteries were full-up—they’d probably been charging passively for the past month or so.
Nick drove the short distance back to the hatch and knocked on it three times. Petkov peeked out, and Nick gave him the thumbs-up. The injured Russian pulled himself out of the hatch, and Nick opened the Lada’s rear door.
“You’re making me ride in the trunk, my friend?”
“No offense, but you are a little white. I look like them and I can speak their language. I’m not planning to get stopped, but in case we do, better for us both if they can’t see you.”
Petkov nodded, and Nick helped him into the cargo area. Nick looked around—the streets were still empty, and the fight was still happening in the courtyard. He took a brick from the wreckage and smashed the Lada’s one working headlight, then got in the driver’s seat and headed for the main gate.
As he drove slowly through the wrecked city, Nick noticed a small mobile phone plugged into the cigarette lighter. It, like the Lada’s solar batteries, showed a full charge. He didn’t expect it to have service, but he reasoned he might as well try. He looked around as he drove—still not a person in sight. He quickly dialed a number from memory.
“Stan Morrow,” his brother answered after the first ring.
“Hey, big brother,” Nick said, his voice catching.
“Fuck me! Nick?”
“Yep. That’s me.”
“Jesus Effing Christ, Nick! Where are you?”
“Russia. Somewhere. It wouldn’t make much sense to you.”
“Nick…fuck, man. You were just on the news.”
“Say again?”
“You were just on the news. They were—”
Gunfire exploded behind Nick, smashing out the Lada’s back window.
“Fuck! Gotta go, Stan!” Nick yelled, hanging up the phone and standing on the gas. The front gate would only be another thirty or forty seconds away by Nick’s math. As he brought the battered car up to eighty miles an hour, he heard banging from the trunk. The back seats folded down, and Petkov tumbled out.
“I am thinking the trunk is not the safest place for me,” Petkov said calmly, crawling into the front seat.
“Yeah. Look, we’re going through the fence. When I tell you to, I want you to bail out of the car. Can you get one of the guns off my back?”
Nick leaned forward, and Petkov managed to unsling the M4 and pull it to him.
“Run for the woods. We’ll have cover fire, but I hope we won’t need it. Stick close—I’ll ditch the car as close to our transport as possible. Think you can sprint?”
“If I am not running, my friend, I am dead. So I will run.”
“Good man. Fire only if you have to—there’s no way we’ll outgun them, and shooting at ’em will only tell them where we are.”
Petkov nodded, and Nick slammed the Lada through the fence. In his rearview, he could see about ten soldiers on foot behind them, shouting and firing wildly. Nick aimed for the Razor’s position, mentally ticking off a quarter of a mile.
“One…two…three…jump!” Nick yelled.
As soon as Nick hit the ground, he rolled to his left, unslinging the Chinese assault rifle as he rolled. Before he could draw a bead on his pursuers, however, the old Niva exploded in a bright, brilliant flash. Nick rolled onto his feet, looked past the flaming wreckage and saw Petkov getting shakily to his feet.
“Run!” Nick yelled, heading for the woods. He caught up to Petkov just in front of the ex-Lada and threw his arm under the injured Russian’s arms. The two of them hobbled for twenty steps before two black-suited men with guns jumped out at them—Michael and Gabriel.
“We’ve got him, boss,” Gabriel yelled, picking Petkov up on his wide shoulders and sprinting for the Razor.
The four men jumped into the back of the Razor and appeared to vanish as the hatch closed behind them.
Christopher had the Razor running at thirty-eight miles an hour—just shy of the stealth mode’s top speed. Nick limped to the front of the vehicle.
Huh. Why am I limping?
he wondered idly, looking down at his feet. His left foot looked normal, but the front of his right boot was missing.
Nick looked over his shoulder and saw a steady trail of blood from the back door all the way up to where he was standing. He looked in front of him—no blood there.
“Owen, get on the night-vision cameras. Keep a lookout for any Chinese patrols. Anthony, radio chatter. Anything that pops across the airwaves, put it up on the speakers.”
“Shit, Nick. You don’t look good, bro,” Michael said, looking at Nick with concern.
“I’m fine.”
“No, really, boss. You look awful. You’re all white and shit,” Peter chimed in. He stood up to look more closely at Nick in the red light and noticed the blood trail.
“Fuck. You’re missing half your foot, man,” Gabriel said, grabbing for the Razor’s medical kit.
“Let me take a look, my friend,” Petkov said, groaning as he pulled himself off of one of the collapsible racks.
“You a doctor in addition to being a tank commander?” Gabriel asked as Peter helped Petkov to his feet.
“Before my country fell apart, I trained as a medic. Not much use for tank commanders in peacetime.” Petkov grinned, showing uneven, nicotine-stained teeth.
“Better than what I got,” Gabriel shrugged, opening the med kit.
“Sit down, my American friend,” Petkov told Nick, moving him to the rack he’d just vacated. “How is the pain?”
“It wasn’t bad until I noticed it. Now, it hurts like a motherfucker.”
“As well it should.” Petkov turned to Gabriel. “Big man with tattoos—”
“Gabe.”
“Yes. I need you to get a flashlight,” he directed. “Aim it at the wound. I need to see what I’m dealing with.” Petkov snapped on a pair of latex gloves from the medical kit.
Gabriel pulled his flashlight from his cargo pocket and pointed it at Nick’s wrecked right foot. Initially, all any of them could see was blood and dirt, but Petkov wiped away the mess with a fistful of gauze.
“How bad is it?” Nick asked, straining to look down at his foot.
“Do not move. Gabe, flashlight a little to the right, please. Thank you. You’re missing most of your toes, and you’re still bleeding pretty bad.” Petkov shook his head.
“Hoo-freaking-ray,” Nick grumbled.
Petkov leaned in closely. “The black man. What is his name?” the Russian whispered.
“Pete.”
“Ah, yes. Pete. Do you see the small red injectors at the top of the medical kit?” Petkov said in his normal voice, leaning away from Nick.
“Yes, sir.”
“Would you hand me one of them, please?”
Peter grabbed one of the injectors and handed it to Petkov, who held it up in the flashlight beam.
“Ah. Excellent.”
“What’s that?” Nick asked.
“Morphine. You’ll be needing this in just a moment. You—” Petkov said, pointing at Michael.
“Mike,” Michael said.
“Mike. Does this vehicle have a repair kit?”
“Yeah.”
“Get it for me, please.”
Michael nodded and produced the repair kit, which Petkov opened and rifled through, finally withdrawing a small, gun-shaped instrument. He clicked the trigger experimentally, shooting a small jet of blue flame into the air. Grinning again, Petkov set the torch down on the floor then injected the morphine into Nick’s leg.
“I am sorry. Even with the morphine, this will hurt. A lot. But I need to seal the wound before you bleed out. Do you understand?”
Nick was already starting to feel lightheaded from the morphine, but he managed to spit out the word “yes” anyway.
“Very good. Now, please, try not to move. I would hate to do more harm than good.”
Petkov clicked on the flame and set it to Nick’s foot.
Jesus. Someone really can’t stomach the sight of blood
, Nick thought.
I wish whoever it is would stop screaming.
As Petkov turned off the torch, the howling stopped, and Nick realized that the shouts had been coming from his own mouth.
“There. See? That wasn’t so bad. Are you still conscious, my friend?”
Petkov’s words floated into Nick’s brain through a haze of pain and clouds of opiates. Nick could barely see, but he found he could speak.
“Still awake,” he managed to croak.
“You won’t be for much longer. I got the bleeding to stop. Pete, please hand me that brown bottle…no, the one next to it. Thank you. Nick, my friend, I am going to bandage the wound, and then we will need to elevate—”
That was the last word Nick heard before his eyes slid shut and he fell into a dark, deep, dreamless sleep.
When he woke, there was daylight streaming through the Razor’s open blast ports. The other three collapsible racks had been pulled down, and Peter, Christopher and Gabriel were asleep in them. Nick swung his legs clear of the rack, suddenly remembering the damage to his right foot just before it hit the deck. The quick jolt of intense pain brought him fully awake, and he put most of his weight on his left foot as he stood and walked to the front of the Razor.
Owen was driving, with Petkov in the passenger seat. The two of them spoke in quiet Russian.
Petkov turned as he heard Nick approach. “Ah. How are you feeling?”
“Foot hurts, but I’ll live.”
“Not much foot left, really. They might be able to save your big toe when we get back.”
“I noticed we’re off stealth. How long have I been out?”
“Two days. You woke up once, but I put you back under. I am not surprised you do not remember it.”
“So we’re a day from Camp Justice?”
“No, my American friend. Three hours.”
“Andrevich knows the area a lot better than we do. He was able to point out a quicker way back. Once we got off stealth, we cranked it up to eighty.” Owen grinned.
“Anything interesting happen while I was sleeping?”
“Not really. We avoided some Chinese patrols about thirty-five miles north of K-13R. Anthony recorded a bunch of radio traffic for you on the first day, but we’ve heard nothing since.”
“We back in touch with Captain Neal yet?”
“Yes. I spoke to him twenty minutes ago. I hope you do not mind, but while you were incapacitated, I took command of the mission,” Petkov told him. “Now that you’re awake though, the ship is yours.”
Petkov slid out of the passenger seat and gestured to Nick that it was his. Nick sat down, already grateful to be off of his feet.
“And now, I think I shall sleep. Please do wake me when we arrive, yes?” Petkov smiled, heading for the rack Nick had just left.
“So, you speak Russian, then?” Nick asked Owen.
“Yeah. Mom was a Russian Jew. Made sure I was raised with both languages.”
“Sounds familiar,” Nick said. “My mom insisted my brother and I speak Chinese and English from the time we were born.”
Nick slipped on a pair of headphones and reviewed the Chinese radio traffic for the rest of the drive. The gist was that a civilian vehicle had run the blockade at the Camp of the Four Winds, and that four men had escaped into the woods. Patrols had found no trace of them, but all nearby listening stations were put on alert. There was no further traffic about their mission, just random patrol reports and routine radio traffic. Nick saved the audio files in case they turned out useful to the intel people, then took off the headphones.
He could see Camp Justice in the distance, and two Cougars were already on their way to escort the Razor home.
***
Neal came to visit Nick in the hospital, just as the doctors were finishing his prosthetic toes. They wouldn’t function quite as well as real ones, but they were better than nothing, the doctors had told him. The pain was almost gone now—the doctors confirmed that by cauterizing the wound, Petkov had indeed saved his life.
Neal wasn’t alone when he walked into the room. Lieutenant Colonel Markham was with him. Both of them looked serious, and Markham was carrying a thin manila folder.
“Did Petkov make it to Command and Control, sir?”
“Yes, Nick. Job well done. Your men are adjusting to their new barracks, a two-level house near the other Special Forces units. But I’m afraid we have something of more critical importance to talk about.” Captain Neal frowned.
At a nod from the doctor, Nick hopped off the table and walked around experimentally. It hurt a little, but the new toes functioned just fine.
“Just tell me what the mission is, sir. I’m ready.” Nick smirked.
“No mission, son. At least, not for you,” Markham said, handing Nick the file folder.
“What’s this?”
“These are your release papers, Nick. Your conviction was overturned just after you left to fetch Petkov. You’re no longer a convict. There’ll be a plane leaving to take you to Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany in three hours. From there, you’ll be flown commercially back to Los Angeles. You’re a free man, Nick.”
Nick opened his mouth, but nothing came out.
“We don’t have much in the way of civilian clothes, I’m afraid. What you have on will have to do,” Neal told him.
“Wait. What?” Nick finally managed to spit out.
“It seems that someone in the press got a hold of your files. There was an article on you a little over a week ago on the New York Times Network site. Shortly after that, the judge in your case was dismissed from service. It turns out that he was convicting anyone of Asian ancestry that came through his courtroom, regardless of evidence. Several convictions were overturned, and yours was one of them.”
Nick sat still for a moment. His brain was working so fast and hard that he had trouble pulling out a single thought.
“What if I don’t want to go back?”
Markham shrugged.
“We can’t hold you, son. Your sentence was reviewed by another judge, who commuted it to time served plus probation for the first count, self-defense for the other four.”
“Will I at least get a chance to say goodbye to my men?”
“I’m sorry, no. We can’t allow civilians to fraternize with convicts. But I’ll tell them for you,” Neal said. “As soon as the doctor clears you to go, you’ll be headed for the airport. Good luck, Nick.”
Before Nick could think of anything else to say, Markham and Neal left the room.
“Well…shit,” he sighed.
The doctor shrugged.