Authors: Shawn Kupfer
The chopper was three miles away and five thousand feet up when the nuke detonated. Martin counted down, shouting over the rotor noise.
“Four! Three! Two! One!” Martin yelled as Nick slipped on his sunglasses.
He’d seen video of nuclear explosions before, but the reality of the sight wasn’t anything he was prepared for. Even through his polarized lenses, the flash was blinding—he worried for a second that he’d done some permanent damage until his vision started to clear. The next thing he saw was a huge mushroom cloud, and a half-second later he felt the heat of the explosion on his face.
“Don’t worry—we’re flying upwind. Fallout’s headed the other direction,” Martin told him. The scarred guy was smiling wider than Nick had ever seen a man smile; the combination of the glowing teeth and scarred face was more than a little disturbing.
“Holy fuck,” Peter breathed, pausing in the middle of tying a tourniquet over the bullet wound on his leg.
“Yeah. Some days, I fucking love my job.” Martin laughed.
“All right,” Nick said, standing and walking up to the front of the helicopter. Carson was in the pilot’s seat, and Major Evans sat next to him. “How bad are our casualties?”
“Ryan got the worst of it. Took a bullet just below the neck. Freddie and Gabe are working on him now.”
“He gonna live?”
“Hope so.”
“You?”
“Shot a couple of times. Nothing fatal,” Johnny said, holding up his quickly bandaged right arm.
“Yeah, I noticed Gabe took a bullet to the shoulder.”
“Him and everyone else. Roge’s the only one who didn’t get hit, lucky bastard. You should get that hand looked at, by the way.”
“It’s just broken.” Nick shrugged.
“Don’t think so,” Johnny said.
Nick looked down and realized he was trailing blood through the helicopter’s cabin. He did a quick count of the number of fingers on his left hand and came up two short—the ring and little fingers were gone. “Huh. Didn’t even notice.”
“You’re in shock, sir. It’ll start to hurt really soon,” Carson said.
“Marines.” Johnny shook his head.
“I’m gonna plug this up and see if I can help with the wounded. How long until we hit the extraction?”
“According to the coordinates your guy Bryce gave me, about two hours.”
“Comms?” Nick asked.
“Still jammed. Could be interference from the nuke. I’ll keep on it.”
“Thanks, Johnny.” Nick walked to the back of the aircraft, to where Freddie and Gabriel were working to extract a bullet from Ryan’s upper chest. There were several open medical kits, and rather than disturb their work, Nick just grabbed a couple of gauze pads and some tape and wrapped the stubs where his fingers had been.
“Hold up, Lieutenant. I should really take a look at those. You’re bleeding pretty bad,” Freddie said.
“Concentrate on him. I’ll live.”
“Not if you bleed to death. Gabe? You got this?”
“I’ll yell if I get into trouble.”
“Good man. Let me see the hand, Lieutenant.”
Nick sighed and held his hand out to the sitting medic. Freddie looked over the hand for a second then pulled a small device out of his medical kit. He pressed it to the stumps where Nick’s fingers used to be, and the blood flow stopped almost immediately.
“What was that?”
“Ultrasonic coagulation. We’ll want to keep an eye on that hand. I don’t like the looks of it. But at least you won’t bleed out now.”
“Good enough. Got any spare supplies? I’ll see what I can do for the other guys.”
“You have any medical training?”
“Grew up with an older brother. In Texas.”
“Good enough,” Freddie said, tossing one of the helicopter’s North Korean medical kits to Nick.
“Nick! We have a problem!” Johnny yelled from the cockpit about an hour and a half later, just as Nick had finished bandaging a cut on Michael’s forehead.
“What’s up?” he asked, running to the front of the chopper.
“We’re getting North Korean radio traffic. I don’t speak much Korean, but I’m pretty sure it’s directed at us. We don’t answer, they’re gonna send something to blow us out of the sky.”
“Gabe! Ryan conscious?” Nick yelled to the back of the chopper.
“That’s a negative, sir. We’ve got him pretty sedated.”
“Can you bring him out of it?”
“Not a good idea.”
“Shit,” Nick muttered.
Mary came up to the front of the cabin, opening her netbook and typing furiously.
“You said you speak a little Korean, right, Major?”
“Just what I learned from Ryan. Mostly swear words, really.”
“Then you know how it’s supposed to sound.”
“Pretty much.”
“Here. Say this,” she said, showing him the screen.
Johnny nodded and switched on the radio, repeating the phonetic pronunciation Mary had typed up for him. The radio was silent.
“Think that worked?” Nick asked.
Carson pointed at the chopper’s rear camera feed. Two North Korean MI-17 helicopters were taking off in pursuit about three miles back.
“Um…nope,” Johnny said.
“Shit. What kind of weapons do we have on this crate?”
“Just what we carried on with us.”
“That’s not good.”
“What’s going on?” Christopher asked, limping to the front of the chopper.
Nick tapped the screen, indicating the rapidly approaching North Korean attack helicopters.
“Shit. It’s the cops.” Christopher sighed.
“Yeah. Pretty much, except they’re loaded way heavier than any cops I’ve ever come up against,” Nick said.
“So let’s just pull over.”
“I don’t follow,” Nick said, furrowing his brow.
“No, I get it,” Johnny said. “He’s right. I used to be a cop. They wanted us shot down, they would’ve already opened fire. They want to see what we’re up to. We land, it could buy us a minute or two, put them on the ground with us. Then we’d have a shot at taking them out.”
“All right,” Nick said. “Find a spot and land this thing. Daniel! You up for some target practice?”
“Fuckin’ A, boss.”
“Load up. We’re going to be hitting ground soon.”
“Copy that.”
“Hey, Nick? I’m getting a hit on 1-9 Victor,” Johnny said, tossing his headset to Nick.
“This is CO 4-7 Echo broadcasting on channel 1-9 Victor. Anyone copy?” Nick said.
“CO G Comp, second MSOB,” Lieutenant Nathan’s voice came across the line. He sounded bored.
“Nathan! Nick Morrow. We’re inbound in a stolen Chinese helicopter. Approximately eighty miles from you, and about to take a lot of fire.”
“We’ll call in some backup and start heading your way. We ditch stealth, we can be there in a half an hour.”
“Fast as you can. We’ll try to stay alive until you get here.”
“Hang tight. We’re loading up now.”
Nick cut the connection and grabbed hold of the back of Johnny’s chair as the helicopter started to descend. On the chopper’s rear-camera feed, he saw that the two North Korean helicopters were following suit.
Nick picked up an M4 and joined Daniel at the stolen chopper’s rear-side hatch. “How ya doin’, Daniel?”
“Good, sir. I was lucky. Kevlar took most of the damage.”
“Think you can clip a helicopter pilot through the canopy of his chopper?”
“I do love a challenge, boss.”
“Nathan’s on the comm, Nick!” Johnny yelled. “Says we’ve got four Apaches inbound at NES!”
“What’s NES?” Daniel asked.
“Never Exceed Speed,” Nick answered. “Better than two hundred twenty miles an hour.”
“Shit. That’s fast.”
“Yes. Yes, it is. If they launched from the front line, that means they can be here in ten minutes. Probably less. Carson! New plan!”
“Sir?”
“This thing’s faster than those choppers. Take us as low as you can, then punch the speed and run like hell. We’ve got AH-64s inbound. Move this thing around like you’re on meth, and they might not be able to get a lock on us.”
“On it, sir!”
“Shit. And I was looking forward to making that shot.” Daniel grinned, slinging his rifle behind his back.
The ground came up fast. Nick kept his eyes glued to the rear-camera feed. The North Korean attack choppers dove with them. For a moment, it looked like they were actually gaining on Nick and his people. As Carson brought the huge chopper to within four hundred feet of the ground, though, the MI-26 began to pull away. The two MI-17s opened fire, and Carson juked the massive chopper from side to side.
“Everybody hold onto something!” Nick yelled. A few bullets ricocheted off the chopper, but most of them went far wide. Even with the computer-augmented targeting systems on the North Korean choppers, the distance, speed and frantic motion of the bigger ship made getting an exact target lock nearly impossible.
Or so Nick hoped.
He made his way to the front of the chopper, bracing himself against Carson and Johnny’s chairs. “How we doing up here?”
“Just shy of a hundred sixty knots. Really pushing it. Computers say they’re doing just over a hundred thirty-five knots. Their rockets can travel a hell of a lot faster than that, though,” Carson said.
“We have flares? Chaff? Anything we can throw off to confuse the rockets?”
“Prayers.” Johnny shrugged. “This is a cargo heli, stripped down for the EM-pulse weapon. We’re lucky there are still chairs in this crate.”
“We’ve gotta keep ‘em busy for a couple of minutes. Daniel! You’re gonna get a chance to make that shot after all. Round up two more guys and grab all the ammo we have left.” Nick grabbed four paracord straps and carried them to the back of the chopper. “Johnny, open the rear hatch just a crack. Everyone else, strap in,” he ordered, passing the straps to Daniel, Michael and Christopher.
The four of them hooked themselves to the chopper’s superstructure and belly-crawled to the narrow opening in the rear hatch, poking their rifles behind them.
“Fire when ready, gents.” Nick smiled, pulling the trigger on his M4. He doubted whether any of their bullets hit the mark, but at least he felt like they were doing
something
.
The MI-17s were more than three miles back—little more than blotches in the sky—but maybe they’d get lucky and clip one of them.
“Incoming rockets! Everyone hold on!” Johnny yelled from the front of the chopper.
“Keep firing!” Nick yelled, reloading his M4 and dumping another clip out the back of the chopper.
The four men slid to the left as the huge chopper banked. Nick felt the heat of the rocket as it passed by his side of the chopper, missing by a few feet.
“That one was too close,” Christopher muttered from beside him.
“Yep. Just keep shooting, yeah?” Nick asked.
“For all the good it’ll do.” Christopher sighed, switching his M4 for one of the stolen Chinese assault rifles and looking through the sights. He held his breath and squeezed the trigger. A half-second later, one of the MI-17s exploded in a brilliant fireball and fell out of the sky.
“Shit, Chris! What’d you do?” Michael yelled, slapping Christopher on the shoulder.
“Don’t think it was me.” Christopher smiled, nodding to the four AH-64 Apache helicopters screaming toward the one remaining MI-17.
“This is 101st Apache, Captain Reed. Hear you boys needed a hand,” a young, cheerful voice exploded over the chopper’s speakers.
“Good to see you, Captain. This is Major Evans, 138 Ranger. We’d love an escort home,” Johnny radioed back.
Nick unhooked from his straps and made his way back to the cockpit. He saw the other MI-17 explode on the rear camera feed.
“Sure thing, Major. Y’all can just relax—we’ll have you home in a jiffy.”
“Turn left on Dale Mabry Drive,” the navigation system said in its not-unpleasant voice. The windshield flashed a subtle left arrow just above Nick’s eyeline.
“Thank you, car, but I
have
been here before,” Nick grumbled, making the computer-suggested left.
His flight had been terrible. The plane had been delayed an hour at LAX, which left him with nothing to do but sit around. He’d forgotten to take anything to read, planning instead to catch some sleep on the first leg of the flight. That didn’t happen. The Los Angeles to Atlanta leg of the journey was a turbulence-fest. Then he’d had to rush to make his connection to Tampa, which was on a small, ancient turboprop Nick barely considered a plane.
Still, with all the delays factored in, he was early for the meeting. Not that he wanted to be, or was even particularly looking forward to it, but he was early nonetheless. Nick drove his rented GMC Ghost to the front gate of MacDill Air Force Base and showed the guard his ID.
“Welcome to MacDill, Colonel,” the young Airman Basic at the gate said, raising the steel bar across the road. He looked all of nineteen years old.
Nick nodded an affirmative as he piloted the Ghost through the base. The nav system kept telling him where to go, unaware that he’d made this drive a couple of times just after his ten-year service in the war. Still, Nick hadn’t been able to find the off switch for the GPS—wasn’t even sure there was one—so he did his best to tune it out as he drove up to CENTCOM headquarters. He found a place to park the car and shut down the hydrogen engine then stepped out into the muggy Florida afternoon.
“Major Morrow!” he heard someone yell across the parking lot. Looking around for the source of the voice, he saw Johnny Evans walking toward him. Evans was wearing his uniform, and had a silver star over his sternum.
“General Evans,” Nick said, smiling.
“How the hell have you been, Major?”
“It’s Lieutenant Colonel now. Well, to be more accurate, it’s Mister—I retired about a year ago.”
“Man. Lieutenant Colonel. I remember when you were a buck Lieutenant, two months north of being a convict. Hey, how’s the hand?”
Nick held up his left hand, which from the wrist to fingertips was made of black metal.
“Good. Just had it adjusted a week or so ago. Kept crushing my coffee cups,” Nick said, flexing his fingers. He could faintly hear the servo motors whirring, but he knew he’d tune the sound out soon enough.
“Good to hear. Glad to see I’m not the only one they called in for this thing. Drove up here last night from Fort Benning,” Johnny said.
“You’re still in?”
“Yeah. Got the command of the 138th Rangers Training Battalion. Scaring the crap out of all the newbs,” Johnny said, smiling.
“So your info has to be better than mine,” Nick said. “Do you know what this is all about?”
“They didn’t tell you?”
“Nope. Just got a courier sent to my door two days ago with a letter requesting that I come down here this afternoon.”
Johnny looked around and put his hand on Nick’s shoulder. “Come on. Let’s grab a cup of coffee, and I’ll fill you in.”
Johnny led Nick into CENTCOM headquarters and found an office with a coffeemaker. It was staffed by a few young Air Force officers, all of who snapped to attention as soon as they saw Johnny.
“General on the deck!” one of them said.
“Hey, guys. Give us a minute?”
“Certainly, sir!” the same young officer replied, quickly leading his men out of the room and closing the door behind him.
“You just love doing that, don’t you?” Nick asked, smirking as Johnny poured two mugs of coffee from the autodrip machine.
“Hey, they’re the ones who gave me a star. Military should expect me to abuse it every now and again. Cream? Sugar?”
“Black’s fine.”
Johnny handed Nick a mug, and the two of them sat down on opposite sides of a desk. “So, here’s the deal. The North Korean and Chinese governments are suing the U.S. military.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Wish I was. They say all the damage we caused in the war has negatively impacted their ability to survive. A nice, heavy infusion of cash will make it all better according to them, but…you’ve seen the news. We’re in kind of shit shape on that front.”
“So why am
I
here, then?”
“Same reason I am. They sent a long statement with the lawsuit—and in that statement, both 47 Echo and 138 Ranger are mentioned a bunch of times. You beat us, I think—three hundred and twenty-two mentions to two-eighty-nine. I’m trying not to take it personally.”
Nick sipped his coffee and shook his head.
“So they want me to…what? Answer for the charges, or something?”
“I don’t think anyone’s willing to go that far just yet. I think they just want to get everything straight on paper before they tell the Chinese and the North Koreans to go fuck themselves,” Johnny said.
***
“Lieutenant Colonel Morrow. Thanks for joining us here today,” the man seated at the center of the long table in front of Nick said. The nameplate in front of him identified him as Lieutenant General Jason Grimes, U.S. Air Force. Nick had never met the man, but knew who he was—the commander of CENTCOM, the United States Central Command. Next to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he was one of the most important men in the military.
Flanking Grimes on either side were several more Generals and Admirals from all branches of the armed forces. Nick spotted a lone Colonel at the end of the table, but everyone in the room still outranked him.
“I go where I’m needed, sir,” Nick answered. It seemed the right thing to say.
“Before we begin, let me make something very clear. We are not here to present any charges against you personally or your unit as a whole. No one’s looking to lay blame for anything here. What we
are
doing, Colonel, is attempting to set the record straight on a host of issues brought forth by the governments of China and North Korea. Are we clear on that?”
“Yes, sir.”
“So you can relax,” an Admiral named Hoppe said, winking.
“Copy that, sir.”
“All right. We have a lot of ground to cover here, so General Feaster, why don’t you start,” Grimes said.
“Thank you, sir. Colonel Morrow, the first thing we’d like to discuss is the discharge of a 1.58-kiloton nuclear device inside North Korea’s borders, just outside of Pyongyang. Are you familiar with the incident to which I’m referring?” a tall, thin man with salt-and-pepper hair near the end of the table said, standing up.
“Yes, sir.”
“Now, the North Korean government alleges that you destroyed a medical laboratory with almost two thousand people stationed there, both civilians and military personnel. Why don’t you tell us what happened? Apart from what we have in the official report, of course.”
Nick hadn’t read the official report—didn’t even know there was one. Though the incident was more than eleven years ago, he had no trouble recalling it like it had just happened, so he told the bigwigs his story.
As he was coming to their rescue by the Apache helicopters, the Colonel at the end of the table—an attractive blonde woman in her early forties—put up a hand to stop him. “So your story is that this was a military lab where we got the EMP prototype from. That I get,” she said. Nick squinted to read the nameplate in front of her—Marie Gayman.
“That’s correct, Colonel Gayman.”
“We knew the medical lab claim was bullshit, if you’ll pardon the language. But what the North Koreans claim, beyond the loss of life, of course, is that the incident caused permanent contamination of the area, and directly contributed to extending the war another nine years. What are your thoughts on that?” she asked.
“I’d say they were right in that it extended the war, Colonel,” Nick said. He heard some muttering from the assembled command staff, so he quickly continued. “But not in the way they’re alleging. The way the war was going back then—still early on, mind you—our forces wouldn’t have lasted another three months if that lab had stayed operational. The Electromagnetic pulse project was only one of many at that location, all of which were scheduled to deploy and kill a whole lot of American soldiers quite soon. I believe destroying that lab kept us in the game and gave us a fighting chance.”
Nick had already answered questions like these years back, but he understood why they were asking him now. They couldn’t just pull data from his reports, as most of those were still classified. They needed paperwork, testimonies to back up their counterclaims to the Chinese and North Koreans.
“A chance that ultimately led to us winning the war, would you say?” Hoppe asked, tapping some notes into the data pad in front of him.
Well, I wouldn’t say we really won anything
, Nick thought. “I would, sir,” he said instead.
“Excellent, Colonel. Now, the next incident we’d like to speak to you about is the situation in Shenzhen…”
The meeting broke up for the night just after eight, with the promise of at least another full day ahead of them. Nick walked out into the cooling Florida evening and loosened his tie. He hated wearing suits, but it also felt wrong to show up to this thing in uniform now that he was retired. He took off his suit jacket and rolled up his sleeves, revealing the tattoos covering both arms. A walk to stretch his legs after six hours of sitting would be good, he reasoned, so he headed for the bay. He could see it off in the distance, only a couple hundred yards away.
As he walked along the shoreline, he looked around. It seemed as though he was alone, so he reached into his suit jacket and brought out a pack of cigarettes, quickly lighting one and inhaling.
“You know that’s illegal, right?” he heard a familiar voice from behind him.
“Hey, Chris. What are you doing here, brother?” Nick said, turning around, his face breaking into a wide smile.
“I work here, boss. Now, give me one of those smokes or I’m calling…ah, hell, I’m calling no one.” Christopher was in uniform, a Major’s oak leaf over his sternum.
Nick hugged his friend, then handed him the pack.
“Andrevich send these to you?” Christopher asked, inhaling.
“Yeah. Sends me a carton or two every month. Sad thing is I had quit before he started sending ’em, but it seemed a shame to waste them. So, are the bigwigs asking you a bunch of questions this week, too?”
“Nah. They don’t give a shit about what I’ve got to say. They’re interested in hearing it from you before they tell you the news.”
“News?”
Christopher smiled and inhaled deeply from his cigarette.
“Man, I miss these things.”
“The news, Chris.” Nick was smiling as he said it, but a small part of him felt like punching his old SIC in the gut. He knew Christopher was purposely fucking with him, and he didn’t have the patience for it after being interrogated for most of the day.
“Right. The news is…well, this,” Christopher said, reaching into his BDU jacket and handing an envelope to his old friend.
Nick opened the envelope and read aloud from the letter inside. “As of this date, unit 47 Echo is reactivated by Executive Order—” Nick broke off and looked up at Christopher. “Dammit. I guessed this might be coming.”
“The rest of the unit’s already reported in. All we need is our boss back,” Christopher said. “We got him?”
“Like I’d let you ship out without me. What’s the mission?”
Christopher laughed and shook his head. “Come on, boss. You know they
never
tell us that before we go. Otherwise, we just might say no.”
“Nah. We’re way too dumb to do that,” Nick said, laughing with his friend as they walked by the dark, calm bay.