Authors: Shawn Kupfer
“Can you run?”
“If I ain’t runnin’, I’m dyin’.”
Nick was surprised by how little Shaw actually slowed down, even though the young Aryan was almost hopping on one foot. Two hundred yards from the choppers, Shaw collapsed again. This time, he was out cold.
“Fuck, redneck. You’re really getting on my nerves,” Nick grumbled as he tossed his M4 to Christopher. “Keep running for the choppers!”
Nick leaned down and picked up Shaw’s unconscious form, then threw the man over his shoulder. The redneck was heavier than he looked, but Nick still managed to run as he headed for the choppers. Ahead of him, he saw Christopher and the other Aryan make it to one of the Black Hawks, which immediately lifted off.
Nick’s right knee suddenly exploded in pain. He knew he’d twisted it—he remembered the exact feeling from playing football in high school. He kept running for the Black Hawk, struggling to stay vertical, but he knew he was moving way too slow.
Up ahead, Nick saw someone hop out of the remaining Black Hawk and run toward him. As the figure got closer, he recognized Gabriel Martinez.
“Got him, boss. We’ve got a flight to catch.” Gabriel grinned, lifting Shaw off of Nick’s shoulder and heading for the chopper.
Relieved of Shaw’s weight, Nick found it much easier to run. He made it to the chopper after Gabriel and Shaw and threw himself in just as the Black Hawk’s wheels left the tarmac.
Nick didn’t realize he’d passed out on the chopper until he woke up in a medic’s bay two days later. Unlike the camp and the hotel at Staging Area November, this place looked clean and modern. Nick looked around and saw several medics in light green scrubs attending soldiers in several other beds.
“Hey, 47 Echo 1153. You’re awake. How you feeling, champ?” a young Latino in scrubs asked, looking at the e-reader at the edge of the bed, which Nick guessed had his chart.
“Um…pretty good, actually. You a doctor? Medic?”
“Medic. Name’s Angel. And that’s the drugs that’re making you feel good. You should be feeling like hammered shit, really.”
“Where am I?”
“Novosibirsk.”
“I kinda suck at geography. Still in Russia?”
“Yeah, still in Russia. You came from November, right? I got a cousin who was stationed at November. Marine Alpha. You know him, maybe? Gabe Martinez?”
“Heh. Yeah, I know him. He’s in my unit.”
“Shit. Gabe went Mecho? Not many of you guys made it out of there. You know if he’s okay?”
“He helped me get on the chopper. Far as I know, he didn’t get a scratch on him.”
“Good. You see him, see if you can get him in to see me. His mom’s worried about him.”
“You’re not a convict?”
“Nope.” Angel laughed. “My ass was dumb enough to join the Reserves to try and pay for college. I mean, we’d just finished one war, right? Safest time to join. Two months later, Los Angeles happens. Rushed through my EMT-i. Been here at Camp Justice ever since.”
“Camp Justice?”
“Yeah, it’s tacky. But we’ve been pretty safe here so far. Not like November. That place is wiped off the fucking map now. Chinese lines are twenty miles north.”
“So what kind of shape am I in, anyway?”
“Couple of broken ribs from bullets to the Kevlar. Dislocated knee, which we popped back in. Bullet grazes on both arms, one on the neck. Pretty good, considering. And you get another day to rest here before they throw you back out there, so we can call that a win.”
“You know where they’re throwing us?”
“Nah. Like I said, just a medic. I’ll let your CO know you’re up. He’ll come in and fill you in on the details.”
“Thanks, Angel.”
“
De nada
, brother. Keep an eye on my little cousin, will you?”
“You got it.”
Nick looked over to the bedside table as Angel walked away. There were two newspapers on it, one in Russian and one in English. Nick tried to read the English one, but it was a military publication, and had nothing but thinly veiled propaganda. It was also at least three months old. Though it only took him a few minutes to bore of the paper, Lieutenant Neal was standing at the foot of his bed when he eventually put it down.
“Good to see you awake, 1153.”
“People keep saying that. How long was I out?”
“Two days. The doctors kept you out so you’d heal faster. Induced coma, pushed a lot of drugs that speed up the healing process.”
“How’d our unit come out?”
“We didn’t lose anyone from the 4-7. One of our replacements from the 2-1. Guy you carried to the chopper is somewhere in the hospital here—he’s gonna be all right.”
“That’s good to know.”
“Sayed’s dead. We lost forty-two Echoes securing the airport. I’ve been field-promoted to take over second in command of the Echo units.”
“Congratulations? I think?”
“Thanks. That’ll mean I need someone I can count on to help run the 47. Job’s yours.”
“What if I don’t want it?”
“You seem to forget, 1153, that you’re a convict. What you want is irrelevant. I’ve seen skills I can use, and I’m going to use them.”
“Well, in that case, happy to accept, Lieutenant.”
“It’s Captain now.”
“What’s my first job, Captain?”
“Rest up. We’re going to be taking on a few more recruits to the 47 tomorrow. I’ll need you to help them adjust to Echo.”
“Good enough.”
Neal nodded and left. As he reached the door, he turned back to Nick.
“I’ll see if I can’t get you something more interesting to read.” He smirked.
“I’d appreciate it. And if he gets a chance, could you have 1156 swing by?”
Neal nodded again and vanished down the long hallway.
***
Gabriel came in an hour and a half later, dressed in BDU pants and a dark gray T-shirt. One tattooed hand held a bulky, battered e-reader. Gabriel smiled widely when he saw Nick and waved with his free hand.
“There’s the new boss! How you doin’, holmes?”
“Feeling pretty good, actually. What you got there?”
“Marine and Army technical manuals, A-Z. Everything from the Aero hybrid UAV to the Zebra antipersonnel mine. Kind of dry, but about the only thing I could find for you to read. Unless you wanted gay porn, which I found a disturbing amount of.”
“Appreciated. And good choice, given the options. You see your cousin yet?”
“Yeah, out in the hall. Big Angel. Hell of a guy. Used to babysit my younger sister. He’ll take good care of you, boss.”
“No doubt. So what’s happening in Echo?”
“We got a couple of days of downtime. They actually have us up in a pretty sweet place—old apartment building, I think. Much better than the hotel. Running water, electricity, and everything. Now quit stalling.”
“Stalling?”
“You said we both made it out of Area November alive, you’d tell me how you ended up out here. You owe me a story, boss man.”
“So I do. You track me down a glass of water or something, and you’re on.”
Gabriel poured a glass of water from a pitcher by the bed.
Nick took a long drink and thought back. “I’m from Los Angeles. I think I mentioned that. Mom ran a restaurant there. Little neighborhood joint. As you can tell by looking, I’m half Asian—that’s my mom’s half.”
“Japanese, you said?”
“That is, indeed, what I
said
.” Nick smirked. He finished off his water and continued. “Anyway, after the attack…not a great idea to be Asian in Los Angeles. Most folks can’t tell a Korean from a Japanese, if you know what I mean.”
“My old hood, we used to call that ‘black on a Friday night.’“
“That’s pretty accurate. Asian became the new black. Vietnamese, Hmong, Thai, Japanese—didn’t matter, we were all Koreans or Chinks. Wasn’t long before we’d show up to the restaurant every morning to find fresh vandalism. Then…well, then it went beyond vandalism.
“I was working construction at the time, and helping out at the restaurant some mornings, closing it up some nights. We’d had a couple of break-ins the week before, and even caught one of them on the security cameras. Neighborhood thugs. I knew ‘em by reputation, a few of their names. We gave the video to the cops, but nothing happened.”
Nick rolled his empty water glass from one hand to the other. He really didn’t want to tell this part of the story, didn’t even want to think about it. He’d only made the deal with Gabriel because he’d fully expected at least one of them to die at Area November. Still, he hated thinking about it…hated thinking about what he saw that night. It always made a lump rise in his throat, a lump with a nice dose of anger on its heels.
“Two weeks after the attack on Los Angeles,” Nick continued, “I was headed into the restaurant just after close to help clean up. Front door was locked, just like it was supposed to be, so I went around the back. The handle was broken off, and the door was wide open. I called the police before I even went in the building, but I didn’t wait for them to show.”
Gabriel frowned—he could probably see where the story was going, but he didn’t interrupt.
“Mom and the two closing waiters were dead. Waiters were shot. Mom looked like she’d been beaten to death. Cops came in, took statements, collected evidence, even made an arrest—one of the kids who’d broken in the week before. White kid playing gangster. His trial was a fucking joke. He walked.”
“Because the victims were all Asian?”
“Nobody was saying it, but yeah. So as soon as this kid hit the streets, I was on him. Found him in a club on La Cienega with four of his boys and shot him in the face. His friends came at me, shot at me a couple of times. I shot more accurately. By the time my trial was over, we were already pretty deep into the war. I ended up here the same day you did. Think we were on the same flight, actually.”
“Man. That’s fucked up.”
“Yeah, but between this and the death sentence, I’ll take this. What about you?”
“Shit, bro. I got nothing on that. I got drunk and punched a guy out. He pressed charges. Assault, two years with my priors. Supposed to spend ‘em in Alpha, but you know the rest.”
“Well, at least you tested well enough to stay out of the Army,” Nick said with a grin.
“Yeah. Lucky me. Violent tendencies crossed with an above-average IQ, and a freakout on a military cop lands me in a suicide squad. Damn, I’m just glad I wasn’t any luckier.” Gabriel chuckled. “Listen, I gotta get back to the unit. Neal’s promotion’s going to his head. He’s got us going out for combat drills this afternoon. Enjoy the light reading.”
Nick picked up the e-reader and turned it on. Calling it “a little dry” had been a gross understatement, but it was still better than the propaganda. He poured himself another glass of water and started reading.
He was surprised when the manuals actually held his interest. The terminology was a little jargony, but he remembered more and more of it as he read. By the time he drifted off in a medicated sleep several hours later, he’d figured out all of the systems on the Razor. He was also pretty sure he could pilot a Black Hawk helicopter, possibly even an Apache Long Bow.
Fortunately, the drugs Angel had given him had blocked him from having any dreams. After the discussion with Gabriel, he really didn’t want to relive the situation in his sleep. He wanted to put it out of his mind as quickly as he could.
Nick was discharged from the hospital at six the next morning. Christopher was waiting next to the front desk in uniform, holding a new BDU jacket in one hand for Nick.
“Here you go. Buddy in the quartermaster’s office hooked me up, since your last one was all shot to hell. How you feeling?”
“Decent enough. Knee’s a little twinged, but I’ll live.”
“We’re headed to the airport. New fish coming in today—a lot of ‘em. Since Area November got wiped out, Camp Justice is our single processing point in all of Russia. Looks like we’re going to finally fill out the unit.”
“Right on,” Nick said, shrugging into the BDU jacket and buttoning up. “Neal joining us there?”
“’Course not. Low-level to mid-level shit falls to you now, boss.”
“Fair enough, I suppose.”
“Got a Humvee outside. Stole it from some Army guys. Let’s move on it.”
“You drive. I have no fucking clue where the airport is, and I think I’m still minorly high on morphine.”
“Lucky you.” Christopher smirked as the two of them walked out to the Humvee. He put on a pair of sunglasses as he slid behind the wheel and started the engine.
“Nice shades.”
“Yep, stole those too. Um, have I mentioned I’m good at stealing shit? Although not perfect, because I am here, after all.”
“You got thrown into Echo for theft?”
“Theft and shooting two people in the commission of said theft, yeah.”
“There anyone in Echo who hasn’t murdered someone?”
“A couple in the lower units for manslaughter, I think. But yeah, you gotta kill someone to go Mecho. The worse your crime, the higher your unit assignment. Well, that is, if you test well enough to go Marine in the first place. Test too low, and you end up in Army Kilo.”
“Those guys who backed us up at Area November?”
“Those’re them. Lots of low-level gangbangers there. The 25 to 32 Kilo units are all MS-13s.”
“The Mexican prison gang, huh? Sounds like a fun group.”
“They’re like us, I suppose. They get the job done,” Christopher commented as they pulled up outside the airport. The two of them walked over to the large tent set up with a Marine E sign tacked to it. “You ready for this?”
“Sure. Let’s add to the family.”
Christopher lit a cigarette then handed one to Nick. Nick lit his and inhaled deeply as the first C-5 skidded to a landing on the runway. As the first load of convicts in gray jumpsuits were herded off the plane by military police, Nick realized with a shock it had only been a week since he’d been in the same position. It felt like months.
As the first C-5 opened its cargo bay, Nick noticed one convict stood out from all the others. It was hard not to notice—this kid stalked straight off the plane with no prodding, heading over to the first processing station as if that’s where he’d wanted to go all his life. The other convicts had to be poked, prodded, directed. Not this kid. He looked eager to get started.
Nick and Christopher had time for a few more cigarettes before the first wave of convicts made it through initial processing. As they hung out in the Echo tent and smoked, Nick noticed a few more representatives from other Echo units showing up, including the short, mouthy Aryan from the 2-1, one of the guys from the 1-8 Sayed had used as a sniper. Nick nodded at the sniper guy—he didn’t remember if he’d ever gotten a name from him, but he was pretty sure the guy was coded 18 Echo 210, which meant he’d been around for a while. Two-ten nodded back and smirked. Nick held up his pack of cigarettes, and 210 shrugged and walked over.
“Thanks, man,” 210 told him. His voice was deeper than Nick would have expected from such a small guy. He had pale skin and white-blond hair.
“Sure thing. I’m Nick, by the way.”
“Bryce. Good to meet you. Glad to see you made it out of November. Hear you carried one of the guys from the 2-1 on your back to the chopper.”
“Wasn’t gonna just leave him there.”
“’Course not. Rumor is, though, the Aryans in the 21 and the 23 love you, though. That guy was pretty much their grand poo-bah.”
“Better than me having to watch my back around them, I suppose.”
The kid who had damn-near bounded off the C-5 walked into the tent at that moment and walked right up to Christopher.
“Hey, tall, dark, and probably handsome after three drinks. You Mecho?” the kid asked.
“Yeah, that’s us.”
“Name’s Daniel. I supposed to report to you, or what?”
Nick looked at the kid as Christopher checked his dog tag. He didn’t look like the soldier type, but then again, which of them really did when they first arrived? But this kid—this kid looked like he should be fronting a boy band, not anxiously waiting to be given a gun and a uniform.
“Nah. Not me. You’re coded into 18 Echo. That guy right over there, the blond one. Name’s Bryce. He’s a good guy.”
“Aw, and I wanted to hang out with you guys.” Daniel smiled. He had perfectly straight white teeth.
Bryce walked up and checked the kid’s tag.
“One-eight Echo 1313. Yep, you’re with me. Daniel, was it?”
Daniel stuck out his hand.
“At your service, boss.”
With a parting fist-bump to Nick, Bryce led Daniel off to the corner of the tent where the 18 was setting up.
“Wow. Never seen that kind of enthusiasm before,” Christopher said, blinking several times as if that would clear his surprise.
“I kinda liked him. Think we can get him reassigned to our unit?” Nick smirked.
“No. Sadly, I think this guy’s ours,” Christopher said, nodding to the huge mountain of a man being herded their way by two armed MPs.
“Four-seven?” one of the MPs asked, nodding to Nick.
“Sadly, that’s us.”
“This one’s all yours. I’d keep an eye on him if I was you—he got in three fights on the flight over. We had to sedate him.”
The huge man had long, stringy black hair, and dark eyes staring vacantly out from under them.
“You want us to leave the cuffs on him?” the other MP asked.
“You gonna behave, 1552?” Nick asked, reading from the huge man’s dog tag. Even hanging from the man’s chest, the tag was already at Nick’s eye level.
The huge man nodded slowly.
“Take the cuffs with you, sir,” Nick said, not taking his eyes off of the huge man in front of him.
“You sure?”
“He says he’ll behave.”
The MP shook his head, but removed 1552’s cuffs anyway. Nick reached out his hand to shake the huge man’s, which was twice the size of Nick’s own.
“Name’s Nick. Welcome to 47 Echo.” Nick smiled.
“Kenneth,” the huge man rumbled.
“Christopher,” Christopher waved, “or 47 Echo 311 to the bosses. Who’d you piss off to end up with us, Kenneth?”
“It’s not who I pissed off. It’s who pissed me off,” Kenneth grumbled.
“Right…um, would you like to have a seat? A smoke? Just, uh, don’t bonk me on the head and eat my brain,” Christopher said, holding out his pack of cigarettes to the giant.
“Smoking is weakness,” Kenneth growled, sitting on the bench at the back of the tent.
“He’s just a barrel of laughs, isn’t he?” Christopher mumbled to Nick, who nodded subtly.
Convicts started trickling into the Echo tent faster and faster. Nick noticed all of the convicts sent over to the two were white with shaved heads. Aryans. It probably made sense to keep them together, rather than throwing them into mixed units where they could get into trouble, he reasoned.
Apart from Kenneth, four more convicts showed up coded for 47 Echo. Unlike the recent additions to the 2-1, there didn’t seem to be any similarities evident in the makeup of these new recruits. Still, as the 4-7’s roster was now completely filled out, Christopher and Nick led them off to the next station to be tagged and, in Kenneth’s case, to have his hair cut.
Kenneth gave them no problems, but he didn’t say another word to them, even as they loaded everyone into the Humvee and drove back to the bunkhouse, a huge, sprawling apartment building swarming with uniformed convicts and armed MPs.
“Shit. Looks like they finally got him, huh?” Michael whispered to Nick as the new 47s got settled in to their large room. He nodded toward Kenneth.
“What do you mean?” Nick asked.
“You don’t know who that is? That’s Kenneth Alan Booth. He was on trial when I got arrested. Serial murders? Fifteen people in the greater Boston area?”
Nick groaned. “Oh, fuck. That’s…that’s just fucking great.”
“Sir?” one of the new recruits, Anthony Rice (47 Echo 1495) asked, walking up to Nick.
“Don’t have to sir me, Anthony. I’m a convict, same as you.”
“But you’re kinda my boss, right?”
Nick thought for a second and shrugged. “Guess I am. Still, though. Call me Nick.”
“Right, Nick. I’m, uh, just wondering…what do we eat? I haven’t had anything since I got on the plane.”
“Oh, sure. We kinda eat when we get the chance. You a big fan of food?” Nick asked.
“Love it. Used to be a chef.”
“Then you’re gonna hate these.” Christopher grinned. He opened a trunk at the far side of their room and pulled out a small, brown wrapped package.
“That’s…food?”
“In a way. FSRs—First Strike Rations. High nutritional value with a cardboard taste you’re likely to remember in your nightmares.”
Christopher tossed the package to Anthony, who grimaced as he opened it. Christopher threw packages to the rest of the unit then handed one to Nick.
“Oh, come on. What did I do?” Nick chuckled.
“Don’t worry. I’m already working the feed point in this place. We won’t be eating this crap for much longer.”
“Glad to hear it.”
As Nick’s Echo unit polished off their rations, the door to the apartment opened. Neal stepped through the door, and Nick could see two uniformed guards out in the hall.
“Morrow,” Neal said. “You’re with me. The rest of you, suit up. We may have a job sooner rather than later.” Nick followed Neal out to the hall, and the two uniformed guards trailed behind as they walked down the stairs and out the front door into the August sunshine. “We’re heading to C2,” Neal continued. “That’s Command and Control. Remember that—they’re going to expect you to know what they’re saying, and the military’s built on acronyms. You’re going to be meeting with Major Richard Harrison, CO of the Echo units. My boss, incidentally. He’s not a big fan of the convict units, so the less you say around him, the better off we both are. Clear?”
“Clear, sir.”
“Good man.”
Neal and Nick hopped into the back of a waiting Humvee, and the driver tore off down the road, making a series of twists and turns so sharp that Nick quickly found himself lost. The Humvee pulled into an underground parking garage, and the driver and a guard herded the two Echoes into an elevator.
Four more floors down, the elevator stopped, and the doors opened on a long, dark hallway. The guard led them to a huge steel door, punched in a six-digit code on the keypad next to the door, and motioned the two of them inside as the door opened.
The scene that Nick saw wasn’t unlike a normal civilian office, except that all of the men in front of the computers were in convict fatigues. One man, mid-forties and muscular, stood in the center of the room, smoking a cigarette. He had Major’s leaves on his shoulders.
“This is the guy, Captain? The one from Area November?” the Major asked.
“Yes, sir. Four-seven Echo 1153.”
“Fuck that. You got a real name, convict?”
“Nick Morrow, sir.”
“You look like a Chink, Morrow.”
“Half-Chink, sir.”
Harrison consulted the screen on his sleeve.
“Says here you speak Chink, too. Fluent?”
“Yes, sir.”
“That might come in handy. Captain Neal here assures me you can handle yourself under pressure.”
There wasn’t a question there, so Nick didn’t answer. Harrison looked up from his sleeve and continued.
“Just over an hour ago, an Aero II hybrid UAV went down approximately thirty miles north of Area November. UAVs going down isn’t anything new—the Chinese shoot those things down with a ninety-nine point nine percent success rate. Still haven’t figured out how they do it, but usually they completely destroy anything we put up without a human pilot. We’re getting an emergency locator from the Aero.”
Nick nodded, but decided against saying anything.
“If the Aero wasn’t completely destroyed, it might have valuable intel. We need a squad to go out and retrieve what they can, and we’ve got no idea what that squad may come up against in the process. You think the 4-7 can handle it?”
“We’re solid, sir.”
“Good. Captain Neal will sort you out with transport. You leave in twenty minutes. Get your men ready.”
“Roger that, sir.”
Harrison turned back to face the large screen at the end of the room.
“You’re dismissed, gentlemen,” Harrison said over his shoulder. The guard led the two of them back down the long hallway and into the elevator.
When Nick returned to the apartment, Christopher had everyone in full uniform, ready to go.
“So, boss. We got a job?” Christopher asked.
“And then some,” Nick confirmed. “Transport is meeting us out front in ninety seconds. Let’s shake a leg, folks.”
The Echoes filed out of the room, Kenneth and Nick taking up the rear.
“How ya doin’, big man?” Nick smirked at the huge convict.
Kenneth said nothing, nor did he even look at Nick. He just followed the others out to the waiting Cougar HE six-by-six idling outside. It was the first time he’d had seen one close-up, and he was actually kind of impressed by the size—it looked like a small tractor-trailer with an enclosed, long body and an M240B machine-gun turret on the top. There were sensors and cameras mounted just above the driver’s cabin—forward-looking infrared systems and night vision, Nick knew. Its six wheels were designed for chewing up off-road topography, but he guessed they’d be taking the paved roads most of the way.
“You know how to drive one of these?” Christopher asked.
“Sure. It was in the manual Gabe dropped by. All right, gentlemen. Load up. We’ll hash out a plan on the drive.”
As Christopher and Nick herded their team into the Cougar, Christopher shook his head. “I don’t love the look of this truck, I gotta tell you. One gun turret, no rockets?”
“Yeah, but it’s pretty much bomb-proof.”
“Oh. Well, that’s nice. Wait, we’re not expecting bombs, are we?”
“Tell you the truth, I’ve got no idea.”