Authors: Shawn Kupfer
As Nick’s eyes slowly adjusted to the light, he saw that Neal was the one who had spoken to him. Neal didn’t look happy at all, but then, he rarely did. Despite his real Marine uniform, he was a convict as well, and probably didn’t have much more to smile about than anyone else in the unit.
“Showers through the door to your left. Get yourself cleaned up and into a clean uniform. You’ve got five minutes, clear?”
Nick nodded slowly. His head felt about eight times its normal size. He quickly showered and put on the clean uniform hanging over the door—it was a 47 Echo convict BDU, but clean and new unlike the one he had been wearing for the last several days. Nick zipped up the sides of his boots, made sure his jacket was buttoned properly, and stepped back out into the box room where Neal was waiting. As the two of them walked out of the room and into a long hallway, Nick caught a glimpse of Neal’s digital watch—it was 0215. He’d been in the box a few minutes north of eighteen hours.
“Here. Drink this,” Neal said, handing him a bottle as they walked.
Nick uncapped the bottle and drank deeply. It was water, but something tasted a bit off about it. Still, he was thirsty, and finished the entire liter in less than thirty seconds.
“Mostly water, but there’s some amphetamine in there, too. You’re going to need to come back online and do it fast. We pulled you out early because you’re needed.”
Nick simply nodded.
“Come on, Morrow. Start talking. I need to make sure you’re not crazy from the heat.”
“What’s the situation?” Nick asked, tasting the dried blood on the backs of his teeth.
“I can’t tell you, because I don’t know yet. But Major Harrison told me to come get you. You, by name.”
“Nice to be wanted, I suppose.”
“Your unit’s on lockdown, but they might need to move on zero notice. Think they can handle it?”
“My unit’s solid, sir.”
“Even the big motherfucker you had tied to a chair?”
“That’s a problem I can handle.”
“Yeah, I think you can.” Neal nodded as the two of them climbed into a Humvee. Neal started the engine and slammed the pedal to the floor, heading for Command and Control.
Nick and Neal didn’t talk on the now-familiar elevator ride and the walk down the long hall to Command and Control. As Nick expected, Major Harrison was waiting for them behind the door, but he wasn’t alone—Lieutenant Colonel Markham stood right next to him. Both of them were obviously waiting on Nick.
“Major. Colonel,” Nick said with a nod.
“Morrow. Sorry to pull you out of the box. I know you were probably looking forward to another six hours of hell, but we’ve had a situation come up, one that needs your special skill set.” Harrison frowned.
“Here to serve, sir.”
“That tech you salvaged from the Chinese armor—a lot of it was damaged by the heat or the impact of the Russian guns. We managed to pull some data off of one of the drives, and I need you to take a look at it. Harrison tells me you’re fluent in Chinese?” Markham asked.
“That’s correct, sir.”
“We’ve got a few translators on the camp, but they’re all working on some transmissions we picked up earlier in the day. We could send it to Moscow, but that would take time. I’d very much like to see what’s on this drive as quickly as possible. Think you can handle that?”
“Sir.”
Harrison pointed Nick over to a small flatscreen bench to which the drive was connected with a spiderwebbed nightmare of differently colored wires. Nick sat in front of the bench, quickly bringing up the drive’s main menu.
“Communication control, sir. All of the CDM’s incoming and outgoing traffic ran through this drive,” Nick said, reading quickly.
“CDM?” Markham asked.
“It’s what the Mechoes are calling the QZS-22s, sir. Chinese Death Machines,” Harrison told him.
“What kind of information do we have here, Morrow?” Neal asked.
“Email, media files, radio transmissions. A few of the files are corrupted, but…” Nick tapped a series of icons, and a male Chinese voice poured out of the bench’s hidden speakers.
“Can you understand what that Chink’s babbling about?” Harrison asked.
Nick nodded, then began to translate. “Area November. They’re calling it Camp Ghost. They’re telling him that there’s an incoming vehicle. A Cougar. That must’ve been us.”
Markham shook his head. “They shouldn’t have been able to detect you from that far off.”
“The message is from a listening post called Underground Seven. They’ve got them at least fifty miles north of Ghost. They knew we were there before we even got close to the Aero. Right as we got dropped by the Chinook, sounds like.”
Another voice came on the line, still speaking in Chinese. Nick listened for a moment.
“This is the CDM’s pilot. He’s advising that he and his unit—the other two CDMs—are breaking off from perimeter patrol to intercept.”
The voice cut off.
“That’s all for that particular message.”
“Dig through and see what else you can find,” Markham said, clapping Nick on the shoulder and starting to walk away.
Nick started looking through the emails saved to the hard drive when he heard something faint from the station next to his, where an Alpha communications officer was wearing headphones. He leaned in closer, and could just hear the transmission the Alpha was receiving.
“Repeat, this is Razor 4-7 Echo. We are heavily damaged and approaching Camp Justice. Does anyone read us?”
“Captain Neal,” Nick said, spinning around in his chair. “You said my unit is on lockdown, correct?”
“Right,” Neal said.
Nick pulled the headphones from the console next to his, and the transmission flooded from the bench’s speakers.
“Say again, this is Razor 4-7 Echo, approaching Camp Justice. We are heavily damaged and have wounded. Is anyone copying?”
“Then who the hell is that?” Nick asked.
UAVs flying forty miles out from Camp Justice confirmed it. There was, indeed, a lone Razor limping along the M-52 highway traveling at about twenty miles an hour. All of the Razor’s blast shields were locked down, but the numbers on the vehicle’s hull confirmed it was the same Razor Nick and his people had crewed back at Area November.
“How’s that possible?” Nick asked. “I thought we detonated it from the choppers.”
“Signals must’ve gotten jammed,” Neal shrugged. “Once they realized there was no one in it, it probably didn’t take too long to break in and shut down the guns.”
Lieutenant Colonel Markham ran his hands through his hair and turned to the communications officer in front of the bench now displaying the Razor’s image.
“I want you to get in contact with the Razor. Tell it we’re receiving and talk it in.”
The communications officer nodded and started transmitting.
“Morrow, Neal, get back to your unit. Current speed, that thing’ll be here in about two hours. I want five Echo units armed and waiting for this thing to open. We’re going to direct them to the main garage. Get it cleared of all nonessential personnel and make sure we can lock it down at a moment’s notice. I want prisoners, not bodies. We clear, gentlemen?”
“Yes, sir,” Neal answered, leading Nick out of Command and Control and back down the long hallway.
When Nick made it back to 47 Echo’s apartment, he saw Peter cleaning a nasty cut on Owen’s forehead. Everyone else was asleep, and the only light in the apartment came from a small table lamp in the kitchen where Peter was working on Owen’s wound.
“Hey, boss. You don’t look so good,” Peter said quietly, nodding as Nick walked in the door.
“What happened here?”
“Got too close to the big guy. Got head-butted,” Owen grunted.
“So he never did calm down, then.”
“’Fraid not.” Peter sighed.
“We need to wake everyone up. We’ve got work to do,” Nick told them.
“What are we gonna do about Kenneth?” Owen asked.
“I’ll handle him. You two get everyone else suited up and ready.”
Peter nodded and flipped on the lights. The seven sleeping Mechoes all woke up near-instantly, even Kenneth, who was still tied to the chair. Nick walked to the center of the room.
“Good morning, kids.”
“Jesus, boss, you look awful,” Anthony commented.
“I’m fine. We have a job to do, so get ready to move out in five minutes. We’ll be meeting four other Echo units in front of the building, so let’s look sharp, yeah?”
As his men set about getting ready, Nick walked over to the huge man tied down in the chair and squatted to be on eye level with him. Kenneth lunged at him, but his makeshift restraints held him back.
“Easy there, big guy. We don’t want to have a repeat of last night, right? You getting knocked the fuck out by a guy my size can’t be good for your self-esteem, now, can it?”
Kenneth growled, but said nothing.
“Now, I know you weren’t going to use those knives to carve up a Sunday roast. I’m thinking you were out to kill a bunch of people, am I correct?”
Kenneth nodded.
“Good. You behave, I’ll make sure you get to kill as many people as you want. We are in a war, after all. You step out of line the slightest bit, I got absolutely no problems putting a bullet in your skull. We understand each other here?”
“Fine,” Kenneth spat.
Nick untied the sheets from the chair, and Kenneth stood up, stretching out his limbs.
Jesus. Is he getting bigger?
Nick asked himself, though he knew it was impossible. He was still in awe of the size of the guy, and still had trouble believing he had actually knocked Kenneth out.
It’s like a big dog
, he thought.
Don’t show any fear in front of him, and he won’t attack.
Nick knew hiding his fear around this monster wouldn’t be easy, though.
“We’re good to go, boss,” Christopher said, walking up next to Nick. “You look like you could use one of these.”
Christopher handed Nick a cigarette, which Nick quickly lit.
“So how was it? The box?”
“About seventeen different kinds of horrible.”
“I’m shocked you’re still walking around.” Christopher shook his head as Nick led them all out of the apartment and toward the elevators.
“I’ve got some amphetamines running in my system, apparently. I’ll live.”
“Well, just in case you do slow down, I’ve got a couple of things that might help keep you moving,” Christopher told him. “Amphetamines aren’t really hard to come by in this place. They issue them to you if you’re doing a long guard duty or something. You need ‘em, you let me know.”
“Um…thanks, but I’m fine.”
“Suit yourself.”
The elevator doors opened on the first floor—in the apartment building’s lobby, Nick could see that several other Mechoes had already gathered, including the 2-1, the 2-3, and the 1-8. Bryce, who wore the insignia of the 1-8’s Second in Command, caught Nick’s eye and nodded. Nick smirked back.
Neal was standing with Shaw, the convict from the 2-1 Nick had saved back at Area November. Apart from a minor limp, Shaw seemed to be doing all right. He and two of his Aryan brethren were picking up armloads of M4A1s and passing them out to the rest of the men gathered in the lobby. Shaw saw Nick across the room and shot him a big grin. Nick simply nodded.
“Shit. This is a lot of manpower. What did you say we were doing again?” Michael yawned from behind Nick.
“We’re getting our truck back,” Nick answered.
Nick and his unit shared the back of a large troop truck with the 1-8 and the 2-1. The truck was old—an M923A1 five-ton from the 1990s—and was tailing a much newer MTVR seven-ton. Nick gathered his men around him and waved over Shaw and Bryce as the truck bounced down the street toward Justice’s West Gate. Shaw had a little difficulty stepping over the other men with his still-healing ankle, but he still made it over to Nick fairly quickly.
“How’s the leg, Shaw?” Nick asked quietly.
“They hadda replace a bit of the bone with steel. Still gettin’ used to it. Better than bein’ dead, though.” Shaw winked at him.
Bryce joined them, his new recruit Daniel trailing a few steps behind.
Nick nodded and addressed the other two SICs. “All right, gentlemen. I’m sure you all remember Area November.” Shaw and Bryce both nodded. “To cover our escape, we left a Razor there firing on some disabled Russian assault vehicles. It was supposed to demo as we took off, but something went wrong. That very Razor is about ten minutes away from the West Gate, claiming to be…well, me and my guys.”
“Fuck that. Probably lousy with fucking Chinks,” Shaw spat.
“I don’t doubt it in the slightest, which is why we’re all here. Command wants us to surround the vehicle and take whoever’s inside into custody. Let me be clear on this: Command wants hostages, not kills.”
Bryce nodded. “Makes sense. We can’t interrogate corpses.”
“What we need is a big show of force. How many of them Chinks you think can cram into a Razor, anyway?” Shaw asked.
“They take out all the seats, maybe twenty,” Nick answered.
“And there’s fifty of us. Should be able to scare ‘em into standing down,” Bryce said.
“That’s the plan. Captain Neal is filling in the 2-3 and the 3-6 as we speak. Now, I’m hoping we don’t have to shoot, but you hear a CO shout ‘weapons free,’ you shoot anyone coming out of that Razor, dig?” Nick said.
“You got that fuckin’ right.” Shaw smiled.
Nick’s helmet radio clicked on.
“CO 4-7 Echo to SIC 4-7 Echo,” Neal’s voice came over the radio.
“Go for SIC 4-7 Echo,” Nick said.
“Nick, we’ve got the Razor coming in ahead of schedule. Looks like they were able to squeeze a little more speed out of it after all. My truck’ll lead it in, yours will follow behind. Deploy your men as soon as we hit the parking garage, clear?”
“Crystal, sir.”
“Good man. Look alive. ETA West Gate in two minutes.”
“Copy that.”
Nick’s helmet radio clicked off, and he quickly relayed the information to Shaw and Bryce. They headed back to their units to brief their men, and Nick turned to his own crew.
“You heard all that, right, guys? Don’t have to repeat myself?”
“Yeah, Nick. We got it. They confirmed that really is our Razor?” Christopher asked.
“Hull markings match. It’s ours.”
“I still have the control codes memorized. We need to, we can pop it open from a Command screen,” Christopher said.
“Good to know. All right, look alive, brothers. We’ve got about ninety seconds before we find out who jacked our ride.”
Nick slung his M4 and raised the Chinese assault rifle to his shoulder. The thing still wasn’t up to full functionality, but the distance scope seemed to work all right. He flicked on the scope and targeted on the West Gate—about a half-mile out, he caught sight of the Razor lumbering along the highway toward the gate. The blast shields were still down, so there was no way to see who was driving.
The Razor looked to be riding low. Nick guessed they had packed the inside with armored soldiers. He brought the rifle down and readied his M4, then clicked his helmet radio over to the Command frequency.
“Razor 4-7 Echo, this is Justice Patrol Three,” Nick heard Neal’s voice. “We have you on visual. Proceed through the West Gate and follow our escort truck to the main repair center.”
“This is Razor 4-7 Echo, we copy,” the same voice Nick had heard in Command and Control replied.
Nick’s truck idled as the Razor rattled through the West Gate. Nick could hear that the Razor’s hydraulics were pretty much shot by the way it creaked as it rolled over the gate’s threshold. The Razor fell in formation behind Neal’s truck, and Nick’s truck followed close behind.
For a half-mile, the Razor followed Neal’s truck toward the center of the camp. They were about four minutes away from the main repair garage, but when the lead truck took a right, the Razor continued straight on, picking up speed.
“SIC 4-7 Echo to CO 4-7 Echo,” Nick radioed on Echo’s main frequency.
“Go for CO 4-7 Echo,” Neal radioed back.
“The Razor’s gone off the reservation, Captain. It’s picking up speed, heading for the center of the camp,” Nick radioed.
“Fuck,” Neal spat. Nick heard shuffling on the other end of the line. “We’ll cut around and try to head ‘em off.”
“CO 4-7, this is 311,” Christopher radioed. “Sir, transmit code five-zero-seven-zero-six-eight-zero-seven-three-dash-four-two-one Roger Bravo Sierra via your command screen. That’ll slow ‘em up a bit.”
“Roger that, 311.”
A few seconds later, the Razor’s rear hatch popped open and hit the street, dragging sparks along with it. Nick saw only two Chinese soldiers inside, huddled over a large, metallic object. The soldiers looked up, shocked, then crouched over the huge silver tube and started pressing buttons.
“Nuke!” someone yelled. “They’ve got a fucking nuke in the Razor!”
Nick reached for his M4, though he knew he didn’t have much of a chance of hitting anything at better than forty miles an hour on bumpy roads. As he climbed toward the roof of the truck, he heard two quick pops of gunfire.
“Hostiles down,” he heard someone say through his helmet radio.
As Nick made it to the truck’s roof, he saw Daniel, the young kid from Bryce’s unit, lying flat on the roof of the truck, his M4 pointed toward the back of the still-speeding Razor. The two Chinese soldiers Nick had last seen busying themselves over the device were now splayed across it, both shot through the head. Daniel looked over at Nick and winked.
“Jesus Christ, kid,” Nick said, giving an appreciative whistle. “That was some damn impressive shooting.”
“Name’s Daniel. Not kid. And thanks. Want me to take out the driver, too? Betcha a hundred I could do it in one shot.”
“No, that’s all right. They probably want him alive for questioning. ‘Sides, I think Captain Neal’s got him handled.”
Nick and Daniel grabbed onto the windowsills as their truck slammed on the brakes. Ahead, Neal’s seven-ton shot out of a side street, ramming full-on into the Razor’s passenger door. Though the seven-ton was technically a lighter vehicle, it was travelling at more than twice the Razor’s speed.
The Razor skidded to the side and slammed into the corner of a brick building, taking down the entire side of the structure. Nick motioned for his men to fall out of the five-ton and surround the crashed Razor. He and Daniel slid down the front windshield of the truck and hopped off the hood, bringing their weapons to bear on the immobile vehicle half-buried in brick.
As the thirty Mechoes from the five-ton hit the street, they were joined by the other twenty from the back of the seven-ton. Nick took point, Daniel on his left.
“Right behind you, boss,” Nick heard Christopher whisper as they slowly advanced on the vehicle.
“Alive. We need the driver alive,” Neal radioed.
“Anyone got eyes on the driver?” Nick radioed softly on the main Echo frequency.
“This is 2-3 Echo 6-1-7,” someone said back. “I’m on top of the seven-ton. I’ve got movement on thermals in the driver compartment. Looks like he’s trying to dig his way to the nuke.”
“Shit. Daniel, Chris, let’s move.”
Nick broke into a run, and Daniel, Christopher and a few others Nick couldn’t see followed suit. Nick dashed through the hole the Razor had left in the building, quickly going around the front of the vehicle and yanking open the driver’s door. He could see other Mechoes pouring in through the back hatch, but as he climbed into the Razor, Nick was closest to the driver—a young Chinese man just pulling the body of one of his comrades off of the nuke.
“Chuò!”
Nick yelled.
The young Chinese looked over at Nick, who had his M4 aimed directly at the man’s forehead, and considered for a second. He slowly raised his hands.
“Daniel, Chris, get this guy out of here,” Nick ordered, not taking his aim off the driver.
Daniel and Christopher grabbed the driver by his raised arms and dragged him from the Razor. Nick toggled his helmet radio.
“Hostile secure, Captain,” he radioed.
“Good work, Nick,” Neal’s voice sounded in his helmet.
Nick pushed the corpse the rest of the way off of the device and noticed two characters blinking in red on a small screen where the young Chinese soldier had met his end.
“Fuck. Captain, you’re gonna want to call someone,” Nick said.
“What’s the situation in there, Nick?”
“This thing’s armed, sir.”
“Goddammit. Is it counting down?”
“No, sir. Just armed.”
“Well, that’s better, but not much. Can you disarm it?”
“I wouldn’t even know where to start, sir.” Nick was sweating and his hands were shaking. He tried to focus his mind on keeping his hands still rather than on the huge bomb right in front of him.
“Hold your position. I’ll radio for EOD, but you’re going to need to stay and help them translate.”
Nick placed his hand, steadier now, over his helmet mic. “’Course I will.” He sighed under his breath.
“Did not read your last transmission,” Neal’s voice buzzed in his ear.
Nick pulled his hand away from the mic. “Roger that, sir.”
***
The 415th Explosives Ordinance Detachment rolled up in a brand-new black Cougar 4x4. There were three of them in the vehicle, all dressed in real Army uniforms. The driver of the Cougar got out and walked over to Nick, who was sitting on the Razor’s hood smoking a cigarette. The rest of his unit had already pulled back and were helping evacuate the camp in case the bomb disposal failed.
“What do we have here?” the driver asked Nick.
“Nuclear.”
“Outstanding. Russian?”
“Chinese.”
“Great. I don’t think we’ve got anyone who speaks Chink.”
“That’s why I’m here.” Nick shrugged, hopping off the Razor’s hood and flicking his cigarette into the wrecked building.
The driver turned back to the Cougar, where one of his crew was shrugging into a bulky bomb-disposal suit with the help of the other.
“Rico! Don’t worry about the suit, man. Nuke,” the driver yelled.
Rico nodded and started peeling off the suit. A few minutes later, all three of the bomb-disposal techs were standing next to Nick inside the wrecked Razor, looking over the device in question.
Rico let out a low whistle. “Hey, Mecho. You remember the bomb in L.A.?” he asked.
“I was there when it went off.”
“That was a one-kiloton bomb, and you saw what that did. This one’s twenty times that size. It goes off, and this whole fuckin’ installation’s not even a memory.”
“That’s comforting.” Nick’s hands started to shake again, but he crammed them in his pockets. “Can you guys disarm this thing?”
Rico shrugged and made a noise that sounded vaguely like “I don’t know.”
“Don’t listen to him.” The driver smirked. “If your Chinese is any good, we shouldn’t have a problem.”
Rico pulled a small screwdriver from a case on his belt and removed the panel just to the left of the blinking screen, revealing a mess of wires.
“Jesus. It’s like a little kid built this thing. It’s a fucking mess in here. Hey, Mecho, what’s your name, man?”
“Nick.”
“Nick…I need you to tell me what the fuck this says right here, yeah?”
Nick leaned over the panel, and he and the three EOD techs went to work.