It hadn’t been enough though. They’d started swarming all over us. One of them clubbed Eric over the head with his rifle and I saw Eric go limp. Two men grabbed him and started to run out of the building, dragging Eric behind them. I struggled with three guys working to restrain me. They were big but undisciplined fighters. It took me a while, but I’d somehow gotten the better of them. I stood and looked at the chaos around me. Most of my team seemed intact, but Eric was nowhere in sight. The last time I saw him, he was being hauled out of the building we were in, toward the center of that shit-hole of a town.
I turned to Tim and told him to get on the radio and get an evac helicopter to the rendezvous point. I was going to find Eric. I gave Tim ten minutes. If I wasn’t back by then, he had orders to get the hell out of there. He had the information we’d collected and it was imperative that we got it back to HQ, regardless of the cost. I could tell by looking at Tim that he didn’t like that one bit but knew better than to argue. He knew I was right, but that didn’t mean he had to like it. He paused for a moment and looked at me. Then he turned, signaled the others, and disappeared out the back of the building.
I took off running. From our previous intelligence on this group and our workup on this operation, I knew the building they would probably take Eric to. It was heavily fortified and hard to sneak up on. It was a good position to defend and the most likely spot they’d head. But the element of surprise was on my side. They weren’t expecting me to crash their fucking headquarters. I knew I couldn’t waste time waiting until they could regroup or get fortified. I didn’t get very far, though, when I saw someone lob a grenade in my direction. I ran perpendicular to it as fast as I could before it exploded, but it caught me nonetheless. I was far enough away when it exploded that it wasn’t lethal, but it peppered my back and legs with shrapnel. The blast knocked me down and the concussion ruptured blood vessels all over my body.
That was the last thing I remembered until I woke up face down in the dirt.
My head was mostly clear now, but hurt like a sonofabitch. I knew all I needed to know. I knew why I was running and I knew where I was going. I also knew I’d weaken soon. I was bleeding, and that’s never good. So I just kept moving, and moving quickly.
As I ran, I checked the magazine to see how many rounds I still had. Not enough. I would have to make each shot count.
No time! No time!
I picked up the pace and started to sprint. Eric was in trouble and that was enough motivation for me. Standard operating procedure for these assholes would be to film Eric’s execution, likely through beheading, for propaganda purposes. That just wasn’t going to happen so long as I was alive.
The fortified building I was sure they were holed up in was just ahead. Hopefully they hadn’t had time to stage lookouts — I’d find out in a minute. I kept pressing ahead. They were probably just inside, hurrying to get their camera equipment set up.
Nobody was shooting at me — yet — which was a good sign they didn’t know I was there. I took a bead on the front door and kicked it in while at a dead run. It slammed open and everyone in the room looked at once in my direction, startled and angry. Eric was on his knees in the middle of the room — alive — with one big guy holding onto him. He was bleeding profusely and his head was down with his chin resting on his chest.
The surprise at my sudden entrance lasted just long enough for me to put two into the head of the guy to my left. The guy to my right went down with two center mass shots. That was it. I was out of bullets. I dropped the AK-47, took my knife out and lunged at the guy closest to me. He stopped being a threat when he could no longer breathe through his throat.
In the confusion of the moment, Eric summoned his remaining strength, reached up to the guy holding him, caught him around the neck, pulled him over his shoulders, and slammed him to the ground. The man was large by anyone’s standards, and no doubt a capable fighter, but one on one nobody could best my guys. Within minutes, Eric and I were the only ones still breathing. As I looked down, I saw I was standing in a pool of blood, some of it probably my own, and my world and everything in it became vague.
As I woke up, I struggled to open my eyes, which wanted to close again immediately. My lips were parched; and as my mind gained consciousness, the pain returned. Only this time it was more like a dull throb and not the stabbing sensation and searing heat I’d felt earlier. I wasn’t laying in the dirt, either. This time I was on a cot of some kind and mostly just felt groggy. I’d been told morphine does that to you. Trying to get my bearings, I opened my eyes and kept them open this time to look around. I was in what looked like a tent or some kind of field hospital and everyone around me was Caucasian, allowing me to relax. Tim was standing there, looking at me.
“Hey, Nick. You’re finally awake. I thought you were gonna milk this and stay sleep all day. How you feeling?” he said with a smile on his face.
“I think I stubbed my toe,” I replied. “How bad is it?”
I knew two things. Tim was as fine a Special Forces medic as there was. And he wouldn’t lie to me.
“You’ll live,” he said. “But we need to get you to a real hospital.”
Still groggy and not knowing how I got there, I had to ask. “What about Eric?”
“You really don’t remember?” asked Tim, as he adjusted the IV drip in my arm. “He’s a little worse for wear but you got him out. He’s on a helo heading for a hospital. He’ll be fine.”
I relaxed a bit, but only a bit. “And the others?”
Tim stopped fiddling with the IV and looked me in the eyes. “We took some casualties. We lost Billy and Dave. But the others are okay.”
I sank back in my bed. I felt defeated. Billy and Dave gone. My eyes stung and my breath got shallow. I’d known both of them well. It was cliché to say I spent time with them, drinking beer at their homes and having dinner with their wives and families.
Tim saw my despair. “Hey, are you kidding me?” he said. “You got the rest of us out of that shithole in one piece. None of us would be alive if it weren’t for you. You got bullet holes all over your damn body. Your back is full of shrapnel, and your legs look like Swiss cheese. And that was before you got Eric out of there.”
He paused for a moment, looking closely at my face, no doubt trying to tell if I was still dazed or trying to absorb all this information.
“You left a path of destruction from one end of that town to the other. There were dead guys all over the place. And many of them appeared to have died from knife wounds. We were waiting at the evac point getting ready to ex-fill out of there when you came limping over the hill, with your right arm under Eric’s shoulders and your Yarborough in your left hand, dripping blood.”
Tim then lowered his voice to a whisper. “That was the most awe-inspiring display of reckless bravery I’ve ever seen, man… or will ever see.”
I wasn’t sure but it looked like Tim’s eyes were tearing up as I put my hand on his arm just before dropping into to a drug-induced unconscious state.
CHAPTER 1
Jansen and Stone bobbed up and down in their small boat just offshore from The Headlands Nuclear Power Plant, making every effort to look like they were fishing instead of making plans to seize control of the plant. With chiseled features, a three-day growth of beard, and clothes that smelled of fish guts and seaweed, they could easily have passed as two drifters making their way up and down the Pacific coast, booking passage as temporary help on seagoing trawlers, instead of the mercenaries they were. Even though they were the ones there to observe and study the plant from the ocean side, they were sure the paramilitary security force employed by The Headlands was also observing them. But that was of no concern to them today. For as much as the security force worried about unwanted visitors from this direction, Jansen and Stone knew the security force personnel were confident that the plant was unassailable from the ocean. Jansen and Stone wanted to reassure themselves of the same thing. They wanted no surprises once they were inside.