He couldn’t take the credit for his tracking skills. Eric had taken him to the mountains for high-altitude training in Colorado, where he taught John everything he knew about mountaineering, orienteering, and tracking. Eric assured him it was a long-honored set of skills that Delta Operators learned in their first year, handed down from the first Delta members.
The skills had been useful since, but not as useful as he now found them. “Eric, we’ve got signs of multiple trucks, none too heavy. More than three or four, but less than a dozen.”
There was a pause, then Valerie’s voice came through the earpiece. “It wouldn’t take much to outfit the lab. I’ve got a list of the equipment that Kryzowski tracked. It would easily fit in half a dozen panel trucks.”
They continued, and in less than five hundred feet came to a clearing. A white concrete box, ten feet square, stood in the center. He squinted. The white paint was dirty and discolored from years of neglect. The gray steel door to the complex was covered in rust stains. He raised his hand and everyone stopped.
“Do you see something?” Deion asked. He stepped forward, but Mark put his hand on Deion’s shoulder.
“Let me and TM take the lead,” Mark said.
Deion nodded and Taylor and Mark joined John at the front. “What do you see?” Taylor asked.
“Nothing,” John said. “It’s weird. If this place is active, shouldn’t there be guards?” He pointed to the clearing. “There’s the entrance to the lab.”
“Estimates put it at thirty thousand square feet,” Taylor said.
He inspected the clearing and guessed the base to occupy the same footprint. “They must have dug up the ground and built it before covering it back up.”
His earpiece crackled. “There’s multiple levels,” Eric said, “but Taylor is right. There are air vents hidden in the trees, and the underground power lines run near where you’re standing.”
“It just doesn’t feel right.”
“Listen to your instincts,” Eric urged. “If they’re telling you something’s wrong, then something is wrong.”
“Excuse me,” Nancy interrupted, “but at this point it doesn’t matter. We have to move forward. The Ukrainians know the C-17 is at the Boryspil Airport. Sooner or later, they’ll send someone to investigate. We’re also near the border, the Russians will know as soon as the Ukrainians. If we’re going to find Liu Kong, we have to risk it.”
John turned and glanced at Nancy. She held her HK416 at the ready. He turned to Deion, who nodded, but before he could speak, his earpiece crackled again.
“She has a point,” Eric said, “but if John’s worried, maybe we should scout first. You could—”
Eric stopped so suddenly that John thought his earpiece might have quite working. “Eric?”
“Wait,” Eric said. There was a long pause, then Eric continued, “Okay, we have orders from the Old Man. John, head for the bunker. Everyone else, fall back and take cover.”
John sighed. “Got it.” He turned to Taylor and Mark. They shrugged, then led Nancy and Deion back the way they came before fanning out and taking positions behind the trees.
He glanced at the entrance to the underground lab. Might as well get going. Staring at it won’t make it any better.
He walked slowly through the dirt lane that led through the clearing. “Eric? Maybe you better activate Implant.”
There was a pause. “Activating now.”
He felt the sudden rush of adrenaline, his heart skipping in his chest. He paused for a moment and let the effects of the drugs settle down. His fear and hesitation fell away, and the world sharpened.
He could taste the stench of the M50 mask, stale and oily, and almost laughed at how ridiculous he must appear in the camouflaged green JLIST.
The peal of laughter was on the verge of his lips when the forest erupted in gunfire.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
John dropped to the ground and gasped for breath. It felt like a pair of hammers had struck him in the chest.
“Fall back,” Nancy yelled.
“John’s down,” Taylor screamed.
“Sitrep?” Eric asked.
“Hostiles, repeat, hostiles,” Mark said calmly. “More than six, I’d guess. John is twenty yards from the lab entrance.”
Gunfire echoed through the trees, a pop-pop-popping that reverberated weirdly as it bounced around the trees. He sucked in air, trying to get his wind back. His chest ached, but the Battlesuit’s liquid body armor had absorbed the bullets or he wouldn’t be breathing. That didn’t stop his chest from hurting or his heart from jackhammering.
“I’m good. The Battlesuit’s armor absorbed it,” he said.
“John, I’m cranking up the Implant,” Eric said.
Every nerve ending in his skin activated as the influx of drugs roared through his body, like a hot iron burning through him. He jumped to his feet, ready to take on the world.
“I’m engaging tango,” he said. He saw a man hiding behind a bush to the west. He ran toward him, feet practically flying over the thick grass. Everything around him slipped out of focus as he concentrated his attention on the target.
He recognized singing noises around him and knew that bullets were whizzing past his body. He didn’t care. The only thing that mattered was taking out the target.
“Suppressing fire,” Taylor screamed, and the team’s HK416’s began steadily crack-cracking.
The man looked up and tried to aim his AK47, his black eyes widening in surprise, but John squeezed the trigger on his HK417. He had trained extensively with Eric in shooting while running, and it finally paid off as he saw the man pitch forward, unmoving.
The man was dead or soon would be, and was no longer a threat.
He turned to the right and saw another man with a blue wool cap and a bandanna across his mouth crouching near one of the giant firs. The man’s gun barked, but it was higher-pitched and sounded soft, an AK-74 firing 5.56mm rounds. The rifle’s suppressor eliminated most of the muzzle flash, but there was still a bright flicker as the man fired wildly.
“We’ve got activity at the van,” Eric said.
John heard pop-popping over his earpiece, but he couldn’t worry about it. Bullets chewed up the ground near his feet as he ran at the man with the wool cap, until he felt an impact in his left leg.
His left foot fell from under him as he realized the man’s lucky shot had caught him in his prosthetic. He hit the ground hard and rolled, protecting his HK, and came up and carefully shot the man in the face.
The man slumped forward, the blue wool cap falling to the twigs and pine needles, and John sprang to his feet as the bullets continued whizzing past his head.
He made it to the nearest tree, a dark fir as big around as a barrel, as the bullets came closer. He took cover behind the tree, and there was zinging and cracking as the bullets found their mark, gouging chunks of bark out of the old tree.
Screw this.
The JLIST and M50 mask were constricting his movements. He yanked the M50 from his face and threw it into the forest, then removed his gloves and JLIST, which quickly joined the M50 among the dirt and moss.
Time to go on the offensive.
Eric turned to Valerie. Her face was pale and she was waiting for him to speak. He heard gunfire in the distance, but there was another sound echoing around the inside of the van, a pinging that made his stomach churn.