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8
“What the ever-long fuck happened out there, Raptor?” Duke didn’t yell. He didn’t rant, he didn’t pound his fists on the table, he didn’t even look disappointed. He just stood at the end of the rectangular dark cherry conference table and looked at the remaining half dozen TECH Ops team members.
“We got our asses handed to us, sir.”
“I see that, but how? Alpha Team was made up of experienced soldiers. There were no half-assed civilians in that group, nor Beta. So how did our two best teams get turned into sausage by a bunch of home-grown David Koresh wannabes?” Duke looked to Raptor like he’d aged ten years in the last twenty-four hours. Shelia supposed losing half your team in one shot could do that to a person.
“I have no idea, sir. We were in the back of the—“
“They were waiting for us,” Blackout interrupted her. “Sorry, Raptor, but you weren’t up there. We were. Me and Breaker were in the ballroom. I don’t know what happened to Alpha, but they caught us by surprise because they were in the building before we were. So were their weapons.”
“How the hell did that happen?” Duke asked the man.
“I have no idea, sir.” The trim man looked abashed at having to admit to Duke that he got caught with his pants down, but his gaze never wavered. He sat ramrod-straight in his reinforced chair at the table, his hands folded on the dark wood in front of him. “The first shooter I engaged was dressed like part of the catering crew, but I honestly don’t remember if they all were or not. It very quickly turned into shoot at anyone who shot at us, and try to stay alive.”
“Yeah, it was a mess, sir,” Breaker added. “Longshot went down almost as soon as the shooting started. It was like they intentionally took him out first. ‘Dozer held out for a while, laid down cover fire for the Secret Service guys and the candidates to get behind the podium and try to stay out of the field of fire. Me and Blackout were at the back of the room by the sound guy, and we were pinned down by friggin’ waiters with MP-5s.”
“Were you injured badly, Breaker?” Duke asked, taking a look at the man for the first time. He was adorned with bandages, and a strip of gauze wound around his forehead.
He shook his head. “No sir. I got a through-and-through to my left bicep that would be a real problem if I couldn’t hold my gun with my right, but everything else is just scratches.” Raptor looked over at the man, who she only knew to nod at in the breakfast line. He flexed his cybernetic right hand, the gleaming metal catchingthe fluorescent light and making him look particularly menacing as he gave Duke a grim smile. Sheila very much wanted to see what he did to the men who planned this attack when he caught them.
“Do we know who the target was, sir?” Raptor asked.
“Not yet,” Duke replied.
“Has anyone claimed responsibility?” Lone Star chimed in.
“Nothing. There’s not even chatter on the DarkNet,” Viper replied before Duke had a chance to speak. “Oh, sorry, boss. My bad.” He motioned to Duke, who chuckled.
“No, go ahead, Viper. I’ll cede the floor to your expertise in all matters cyber.”
“Good idea,” Viper said, standing up. He seemed to never stop growing taller as he unspooled his lanky frame from under the table and turned to address the team. “Usually when something like this happens you get three waves of attention-seekers. First you get the Katos, the people who want to know something about the attack because they think they can get famous. You’ll even have a few false confessions, depending on how high-profile the attack is. The only people that died today are civilians, soldiers, and cops, so you won’t have much of that. Not enough public sympathy for the glory hounds.”
“Then you’ll get the conspiracy nuts throwing their theories around. These aren’t so much people claiming to have perpetrated the attack as people claiming to see a pattern in it, and to know what happens next. They’re every bit as useless as the first bunch. Then, finally, you have the real possibilities. Most of the time you’ll have two or three groups claim responsibility for an attack, especially one that threatens the election coming up. It’s usually pretty easy to figure out who’s a poseur and who’s the real deal, just based on history and ideology.”
“But this time there’s nothing. No chatter about who it might be, no conspiracy nuts, no thrill-seekers, nobody that wants their name in the papers – nothing. And that’s weird.” He finished and sat down, but not before looking around the table at the shocked expressions on the faces of his teammates. “What? You want me to say something about Raptor’s boobs so you’ll remember it’s really me? This is my shit. If it’s online, it’s my world. And nobody knows my world better than me. I want these guys as much as anybody else.”
“So we have no idea who did it?” Blackout asked.
“And likely won’t until the forensics teams are done, or someone comes forward to claim the attack,” Duke replied.
“Or there’s another attack,” Tank chimed in from a specially-built chair at the far end of the table. His enormous frame required special consideration before he added several hundred pounds of exoskeleton to it. Now, even using titanium for most of his parts, he weighed in at nearly a quarter ton.
“Unfortunately, Tank’s right,” Duke said. “And you all know that those words coming out of my mouth feels like putting a tuxedo on a chimpanzee. But the likelihood of another attack is definitely something we need to pay attention to.”
“Where are the candidates today?” Blackout asked. “They were pretty insistent about keeping their campaign appearances. Do we need to deploy the rest of us out there to keep an eye on them?”
“They’re sequestered,” Duke said. “And no. The Secret Service seem to think that they can protect the individual candidates better without us there to call attention to things, and I don’t hate that idea.”
“There’s also the possibility that they weren’t the targets,” Raptor said, a thoughtful expression on her face.
All eyes swung over to her. “What are you suggesting, Sergeant?” Duke asked.
“I’m not suggesting anything, sir, I’m just making sure that we look at this crap from every angle. We lost fully half our operatives in that assault, sir. We’re down to four field-ready operatives and two rookies, one of which is a convicted felon with no field experience of any kind. These bastards scared the shit out of a couple of politicians, and killed some good police officers and Secret Service agents, but they crippled us.”
“She’s right, boss,” Tank agreed. “We’re supposed to be able to respond to two situations in two cities with a swing team at the base for backup, but now we could barely cover one crisis.”
“I’m well aware of the desired operational parameters of this program, Tank,” Duke said. “But I doubt very seriously that anyone specifically targeted TECH Ops by blowing a convention center all to hell and killing a dozen police officers, Secret Service agents, and civilians. Especially when you consider the fact that this entire program is Top Secret, with yesterday designed as the big reveal. Nobody who would want to kill you even knows you exist yet.”
“Good for Viper,” Lone Star said. “Because wanting to kill him is like the normal reaction whenever somebody meets him for the first time.”
“Very funny, asshole. Don’t you have a river to swim across or something?” Viper shot back.
Lone Star gave him the finger, ignoring the racist jab so as not to give Viper the satisfaction.
“So what’s the plan, Duke?” Raptor asked. “We just going to sit here and wait for something else to happen? Or are we going to find out who did this and kick their ass?”
“The FBI is working the scene. In the meantime—“
“In the meantime, I found a few trees for us to shake. Let’s go to Nebraska, and see what falls out.” All heads turned to the door, where a short woman with nondescript shoulder-length brown hair stood. She wore jeans, running shoes, and a US Navy t-shirt, but something about her decried any history of military service. She almost blended into the wall, the way Raptor’s eyes just slid over her, making her hard to focus on. Sheila shook her head, trying to clear her vision, but she still couldn’t get a good look at the woman.
She reached up and pressed something behind her left ear, and her features snapped into focus. Judging by the confused looks and the shaking heads around the table, Raptor wasn’t the only one who had trouble looking at her. The newcomer stepped into the room and took the empty seat at the table next to Viper. He gave her a long look up and down, then sat up a little straighter and pushed his chair away, a predator who suddenly realized he was no longer anywhere near the top of the food chain.
“Hello, Tara,” Duke said. “Raptor, gentlemen, meet Whisper.”
A low murmur went through the experienced TECH operatives, with Lone Star and Viper trading confused glances.
After a few seconds, Blackout leaned forward and asked the question on everyone’s mind. “You’re Whisper? The Whisper?”
“The only Whisper I know of, Gerald,” she replied, her voice completely calm, as if explaining her existence was something she did every day.
“Yes, this is really Whisper. Yes, Whisper is really real. Only about a third of the things you’ve heard about her are real, but she really is our infiltration and surveillance expert, she really is that damn good, and she really is the deadliest member of this program, and that includes Tank on Chili Night.” Duke restored order to the room without moving from his chair, his voice and presence killing the whispers.
“So you’re sneaky,” Viper said. “Good for you. What do you know about the assholes that tried to kill us?”
“Nothing concrete,” Whisper said. “I’ve been on some message boards and chat groups that I monitor, but there’s been nothing.”
“I could have told you that,” Viper grumbled.
“And you did, about ten minutes ago,” Whisper agreed.
“How did you…” Viper looked around. “She wasn’t anywhere near this room.”
“I bugged the table,” the small woman said. “There’s another one in Breaker’s shoe, but Blackout wore his dress belt to the debrief, so I don’t have any devices on him right now.”
“You bugged me?” Breaker pulled off his shoes and started trying to turn them inside out.
“I bugged everyone,” Whisper said. “It’s what I do. The only one I haven’t bugged is Duke.”
“As far as I know,” Duke said.
“As long as you’re paying the bills, you don’t get surveilled,” Whisper replied.
“Simple plan, I like that,” Duke said. “But what brings you here, Whisper? You hate meetings.”
“I hate everything, Duke, I just hate meetings a little more than most things. I’m here for the mission brief.”
“We don’t have a mission,” Raptor said.
“We do now,” Whisper countered, tossing a red folder into the center of the table. “This was authorized fifteen minutes ago based on communication I intercepted. There’s a militia group in Nebraska making noise about taking out a bunch of fascist government enslavers. That’s us, by the way.”
“Even I knew that,” Viper grumbled.
“They’ve only marched up until now, but this new chatter looks like they’re claiming responsibility for yesterday’s attack.” Raptor closed the folder and slid it across the table to Blackout, who started flipping through the few stapled papers.
“There’s not a lot here,” Blackout said.
“There never is,” Whisper replied.
“Is this enough to go after them?” Lone Star asked.
“If that’s not, this sure as hell is,” Viper slid his cell into the middle of the table. One the screen was a video of a man standing in front of a military-style compound wearing fatigues and holding an AR-15. He was shouting at the top of his lungs, largely incomprehensible screaming.
“That’s Harold Manus,” Whisper said. “Leader of the Sons of Freedom. He’s shouting to the heavens that God visited death upon the fascists, and he is the instrument of God’s will on earth.”
“Sounds like a confession to me,” Duke said. “Let’s go light this bastard up.”
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7
Except there wasn’t a fight to go back to. When the trio reached the main ballroom, they found nothing but scattered bodies and spent shell casings. The room looked like the set of a mediocre action movie, except for the dozens of dead civilians scattered across the floor. The smell of gunfire and blood mixed together into a miasma of wartime death that Raptor knew all too well. She saw on the faces of the other TECH Operatives that they remembered it, too. She didn’t know the men well, just from occasional sparring and training sessions, but she remembered both were vets, having done at least a couple of tours in Afghanistan or Iraq. She got the impression that Blackout did some wetwork in some unofficial places, too, but he never talked about those things, and she never asked.
“Fuck,” Breaker muttered as he stepped up onto the platform where they’d left the other two Bravo Team ops. Speakeasy, their surveillance and communications expert and a legendary quickdraw artist, lay decapitated in the center of the platform. Their team leader, A heavy gunner named Bulldozer, a thickly muscled white guy with a shaved head and goatee, was bent backwards over the podium at the center of the stage, his throat cut from ear to ear and his chest split open.
“Whoever did this…this shit was personal,” Blackout said, surveying the scene. He waved a hand around, indicating the entire room “Look at this shit. Everybody is taken out clean. One shot, maybe two or three if it looks like crossfire. But our guys? They wanted to hurt our people.”
The ballroom was still teeming with activity, even after the attack. Civilians screamed in pain, shouted for help, and some just sat on the floor crying. Secret Service agents and police officers walked through the room, kicking guns away from the hands of the dead attackers. The cops flipped a few of the living over and cuffed them, but the majority of the terrorists were dead.
Agent Santos caught sight of Raptor and came running. “Raptor, what was the explosion we heard? Did the candidates get evac’d?”
Raptor pulled the woman aside and spoke in a low voice. “Both candidates, their wives, and a couple of other civilians are fine. We’ve got them in the dock master’s office under guard. Two of my team are back there with them, along with some of your other agents.”
Santos let out a sigh of relief. “That’s good to hear. Our comms went down at the beginning of the attack, and our frequency has stayed jammed ever since. What about yours?”
“We’re good,” Raptor replied. “There’s a dead spot that covers most of the corridors, but the dock is good, and we can communicate in here. Whatever jammer they’re using, it must only have enough range to cover the hallways.”
“What about the explosion?” Santos repeated.
“There was a bomb. We reduced the payload, but it still did some damage to the dock. We managed to avoid any casualties, but it was close. How many did you lose up here?” Raptor looked around the room at the scattered bodies.
“I don’t have a good count on the civilian casualties or the police. We have seven agents KIA, with four more wounded, plus whatever condition the men with you are in.”
“None of them are seriously injured. It looks like we lost two in here. Do you have a sitrep on Alpha Team?”
Santos’ angular face was grim when she looked up at Raptor. “I…I’m fairly certain they were all taken out.”
Raptor felt herself stagger, and a sudden weakness passed through her phantom legs. She knew it was purely psychological, her prosthetics couldn’t get weak in the knees, but it didn’t matter. All of Alpha Team killed? That was inconceivable. “What happened?”
Santos took a deep breath. “There was an RPG attack at the far McCain Street entrance, where Cap was stationed. We believe he was killed instantly. The woman on the team, I’m sorry, I don’t remember—“
“Siren,” Raptor supplied. Tansy Grant was a communications specialist and former karaoke queen who lost her legs in a car accident and joined TECH Ops to atone for the harm she caused when her car crossed the center line and smashed into a minivan coming home from the bar one Saturday night. Raptor blinked hard. Siren wasn’t really Sheila’s usual kind of girl-pal, but being two of the women in the program had forged a very unique bond between them.
“Yes, Siren. She ran to help Cap and was killed by a suicide bomber in a followup attack.”
“Get the first responders,” Raptor said. It was a classic, right out of Chapter One of the Fuck Shit Up Playbook. A secondary explosion following an attack can often have greater impact than the first one, because it take out EMTs, Firefighters, and others who are typically considered off the target list. Except nowadays, nobody was off the target list.
“What about Rockstar and Pyro?” Raptor asked after a few seconds. “They were supposed to hold the main entrance.”
“And they did, as long as they could. But eventually they were overwhelmed. You guys are tough, and some of the shit you can do looks like Superman, but your soft bits aren’t bulletproof. Throw enough lead at you, and you go down. That’s what happened to your other two men. Apparently they went down under a hail of automatic weapons fire.”
“Dammit,” Sheila took a deep breath, trying to still the whirlwind of emotion roiling through her. Focus. None of that shit helps right now. Deal with it back at the Bunker. “Okay,” she said, squaring her shoulders. “What’s the plan? This is still your rodeo, so what do we do?”
Santos shot her a grateful look, probably just happy she wasn’t going to have to fight for jurisdiction with anyone else. Raptor didn’t give a single shit about jurisdiction, or credit, or any of that crap. Their people were dead, the men who killed them needed to pay, and the candidates still needed protection. That’s all they could focus on.
“The mission hasn’t changed, it’s just shifted location. We need to make sure the candidates are safe. This is now an active crime scene, so we need to clear out and let the FBI techs do their work. A team has been called in from CITY, they should be here any minute. I need to set up an enhanced detail with the protectees, so let’s pull all your people and all my people back to the dock office until we can get an extraction in place.”
“Sounds good,” Raptor nodded, then relayed that through comm to her team. “But you should know, nothing is getting in or out of that loading dock for a long time, vehicle-wise. We blew up a lot of shit out there.”
“That’s fine. Worst case, I think I can count on you guys to make a hole.” Santos gathered her remaining agents, relayed their intentions to the FBI agent in charge of the scene, and they headed back to the loading dock. Raptor hung back to cover their rear and to watch as Blackout knelt by Bulldozer’s side for a moment before reaching over and sliding the big man’s eyes closed. He fell into step beside Raptor, who could have sworn she saw a glimmer of moisture in his eyes.
*****
“You want us to what?” The incredulous question came from Edmund Carstairs IV, the current Freedom Party Presidential candidate. His red face shifted all the way to purple as he attempted to stare down Agent Santos.
Santos was having none of it. “I don’t want you to do anything, sir. I am telling you what you will do. You will remain inside this office while Tank creates an extraction point on the far wall. Then you and your wife will carefully step through the rubble and make your way, along with Mr. Henry and Mr. Fortuna and their spouses, to the waiting Suburban, which will take the six of you to a secure location. This is not a request, this is not an option, and this is not up for debate.”
“Young lady, I don’t know who you think you’re talking to, but I’m—“
“Shut the fuck up, you ignorant twat,” Viper’s laconic drawl cut through the room like a machete.
The candidate whirled around, somehow managing to look even more apoplectic than he had seconds before. “What. Did. You. Say. To. Me?” He asked, accentuating each word.
“I said, ‘Shut the fuck up, you ignorant twat,’” Viper replied. “I’ll be a little gentler this time if you need it. Please shut the fuck up, you ignorant twat. Santos is giving you a ride out of here in a bulletproof SUV. Fucking take it. If you don’t want it, in about thirty seconds, there’ll be a big fucking hole in the wall. It’s a lovely day for a walk.”
“Come on, Ed,” Jared Henry, the Republican candidate said. “We’ve all been through a terrible experience, let’s just get back to our airplanes safely and get this place behind us.”
“I’m sorry, sir,” Santos said. “But you will all be staying here in Albequerque for at least the next 48 hours while this incident is under investigation.”
Henry, the current leader in every major poll turned to Santos, his million-watt smile undimmed by the carnage he’d witnessed in the past hour. “Young lady, I’m not sure if you noticed, but there is an election in barely two months. This was to be one of our most important stops, but certainly not the only one, and—“
“Do I have to call every motherfucker in here a stupid twat, or can I just issue a blanket goddam proclamation that you’re all fucking idiots and let that be all?” Viper said, stepping to the middle of the room. “You,” he pointed at Carstairs. “You don’t have a snowball’s fucking chance in the first place. Everybody knows you’re in this asshole’s pocket,” here he pointed to Henry. “So this limp-dicked shitweasel,” he pointed at Vincent Fortuna, the Democratic candidate. “Just has to stand around with his wee little cock in his hand and watch you siphon off enough votes to get your twatwaffle pal Jared into the White House so you can ride off into the sunset to a cushy job at some Libertarian think tank or some other useless piece of Washington bullshit.”
All three candidates looked on the verge of aneurisms, but Viper wasn’t finished. “Now, personally, I don’t give a single fuck about any of these assholes. But Santos, she seems like she’s mostly not a moron. She’s lost a lot of friends today in the name of keeping you idiots alive. Same goes for Raptor. Me, I don’t have any friends, and don’t care if you walk out of here into the back of a safe ride, or leave in eight different body bags. But in about fifteen seconds, the big stupid one over there is going to make a hole in the wall. I’d suggest when that happens, that you exit through it. Because I sure as fuck will.”
Raptor just leaned against the wall and watched as her newest team member launched his profanity-laced tirade against the three men most likely to be elected leader of the free world. If they survived to November. She didn’t like Viper. She didn’t trust him yet, either. But he certainly had a way of getting his point across that was unmistakable. The men fell silent, glowering at the skinny hacker and probably mentally composing the emails they’d sent to the Director of the Secret Service and anyone they thought would listen at the Pentagon.
Too bad those emails would get them absolutely nowhere. Viper had evaluated the situation perfectly right from the start. He could do and say almost anything and it would have almost no consequences. He, in fact all of the TECH Ops teams, were simply too valuable to cut loose. At nearly half a billion dollars each, the only thing that was going to get them pulled from active duty and their parts reassigned was a felony, and even then it had to be one of the bad ones.
“Can I please fuck some shit up now?” Tank asked. Santos gave him a nod, and he left the office, walking over to the exterior wall. He made a big show of sizing it up, patting the cinderblocks in a few places, then he walked back about twenty feet and planted himself. He held out his arms and squeezed his fists, extending a pair of shoulder-mounted mini-guns from his back. The barrels spun in the air for the briefest of seconds, then hundreds of 7.62mm rounds spat from the rotating barrels.
The deafening roar was punctuated by Tank’s howls of glee as the bullets chewed into the soft concrete, sawing a rectangular opening in the wall within seconds. Devastation wrought to his apparent satisfaction, he strode over to the wall and kicked it with his right foot. The entire section of brick and concrete collapsed outward, covering him in a cloud of fine gray dust.
Raptor just shook her head, watching the big goof work. He was good with those mini-guns, a real artist, and strong as his namesake. Now she just had to keep him alive.
A black Suburban pulled up to the hole in the wall and the rear doors opened. A black-suited Secret Service agent hopped out of the passenger seat and stopped dead at the sight of the behemoth standing in the newly-created doorway. Tank stepped aside and gestured for the man to enter the loading dock. The agent just nodded at him and stepped up to the hole, waving at Raptor where she stood by the door of the office.
Raptor cleared the door and Santos lead the candidates and her surviving agents out toward the waiting car. They piled in and sped off without so much as a nod goodbye, peeling rubber along the street in their hurry to get their protectees out of the area.
Viper stepped up to stand next to Raptor. “I suppose this is the part where you tell me I’m a dick for talking to those morons like that.”
“No,” Raptor said, looking up at the shocked man. “This is the point where I thank you for saying what I couldn’t. I’m a sergeant in the United States Marine Corps, and I always will be. But you’re a civilian, and you don’t care anything about the chain of command, or respecting anything or anyone. That’s what we needed at that moment, and I appreciate it.”
Viper looked a little shocked, but he recovered and a grin spread across his narrow features. “So you’re saying that you want to reward my initiative?” He leered down at her.
“No, I’m saying if you ever use that kind of language when talking to me, I’ll shove your razor blade so far up your ass you can shave with it from the inside of your face. Now let’s get the fuck out of here.”
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6
The sound of gunfire echoed through the hall as Raptor and Tank ran toward the fray. They burst through the doors to see a small knot of TECH Ops soldiers surrounding the stage where half a dozen Secret Service agents tried frantically to evacuate their charges, with nowhere to take them. They were pinned to the side wall of the room, surrounded on three sides by men with guns and taking heavy fire.
“Tank, make a hole!” Raptor shouted. She leapt into the air and snapped her wings into place, rocketing toward the stage. Tank ran along below her, drawing a six-foot broadsword from his back and sweeping it in front of him in big arcs.
The armaments team realized very early on that Tank was a terrible shot, and no amount of training was going to make him able to hit the broad side of a barn from anything outside ten feet. But he was fast, and ridiculously strong, so they fabricated a titanium-bladed broadsword with an electrical current generator built into the handle, so when he hit something with it, if it didn’t slice through it instantly, it electrocuted the enemy. Tank loved it, and he trained with it relentlessly. With his power, and the strength of the blade, he could slice through cinderblock and plate armor like butter.
He used it now to slice through a trio of gun-wielding attackers who kept a pair of Bravo Team Ops pinned down. One stroke of his huge sword, and the men’s torsos separated from their legs in a fountain of blood and gore.
“Follow me!” Raptor called from above to the Secret Service agents, who hustled the candidates and their wives in a running crouch after her. Raptor flew above the agents, laying down cover fire as they ran to the back corridor. Tank covered their rear with his sword, and the Bravo Team Ops turned their attention to the four shooters on the other side of the stage.
Raptor set down in front of the open double doors she and Tank had just come through. The lead agent ran up to her and said “Is it clear back here?”
“It was two minutes ago, but keep your head down.”
“Will do.” The agent stood shoulder to shoulder with Raptor, his submachine gun sweeping the room as the other surviving agents hustled their charges into the back hall. Tank slapped Raptor on the shoulder as he went past, and she shoved the last agent through the doors.
Raptor gave one last glance to the stage, where the two remaining members of Bravo Team fought against at least a dozen shooters. She shook her head, offered up a quick prayer for their safety, then ducked into the hallway and pulled the doors shut behind her. The civilians had to be her top priority now, no matter how much she wanted to go help her fellow operatives.
Raptor flew point ahead of the Secret Service agents, with the men from Bravo Team, a Close Quarters Battle specialist named Breaker and a former SEAL named Blackout, leading the group of unaugmented humans in a sprint down the corridor. Tank fast-walked backward at the rear of the group, keeping their backs covered with his sword sheathed and minigun out. Despite his limitations as a marksman, he subscribed to the philosophy of “throw enough lead at something, eventually it will die.”
They made it to the loading dock in moments to find Viper and Lone Star waiting. The sniper was atop an abandoned passenger van, nestled in a blind made of dumpster debris, while Viper took cover behind a stack of pallets. Lone Star just nodded to the new arrivals, but Viper walked over to meet them.
“Where is our exfil, Sergeant?” Breaker asked.
Raptor set down in front of him as Viper broke out laughing. “Exfil? Jesus, son, you sound like a bad Call of Duty sequel! There’s no exfil. There’s just ex-fucked. And that’s what we are.”
“Quiet, Viper,” Raptor snapped. “We need to secure these civilians, reinforce the area, and then redeploy to the ballroom to help the rest of Bravo Team.”
“If there is any rest of Bravo,” Blackout muttered.
“I hated leaving them behind, too,” Raptor said. “But the civilians are our number one priority.” She turned to the Secret Service agents. “Were either of you part of the advance team?”
They shook their heads. Raptor looked around the empty dock. “Lone Star!” She called out. “How secure are we?”
“The dock is empty, I raised the barricade at the entrance and exit, lowered the man-gate, so it’s tough, but not impossible, to get back here. They’re going to have to want to, and I don’t think any vehicle short of a tank can manage it.”
“So pretty good. Alright, Blackout, Viper, go check the dock master’s office, make sure it’s clear. Tank, Breaker and I will cover the civilians until you get back.” It was a testament to how messed up the situation was that Viper didn’t even bitch about going to investigate the office.
As the two men jogged off to check the viability of the dock office as a hiding spot, one of the candidates, a white-haired man with a trim beard, stepped up to her. “Ma’am? My wife needs medical attention.”
Raptor turned to look at the woman, but didn’t see any bullet wounds. “What happened?”
The woman, a pretty blonde some twenty years her husband’s junior, looked up at her. “I twisted my ankle running. I need someone to carry me if we go any further.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Tank raise his hand to volunteer, but Raptor shook her head. “Ma’am, I’m sorry. You’re going to have to move on your on power, or get your husband to help you. I don’t have anyone to carry you right now.”
“But it huuuuuurts!” The woman whined.
“She’s obviously in excruciating pain,” her husband said. “I demand that you help her!” He stepped up to Raptor, looking over her with his face turning red. A wisp of white hair escaped his combover to flip down over his eyes. “You listen to me, young lady, you will—“
Raptor put a hand on his chest and pushed him back. He leaned into her, but she moved the man without any noticeable effort. “I will keep you alive. I will work diligently to keep your wife alive. I will do everything in my power to keep everyone alive, but if it comes down to one of these men carrying your wife because she got a fucking boo-boo on her ankle in a firefight where men and women died to keep you people alive, or carrying a gun that will help keep all of us alive, you’d better damn believe that man is going to carry a gun and leave your wife to limp along on her sore ankle. Do you understand me?”
“What is your name, soldier? I am going to report you to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.” The man was quivering in anger, obviously unaccustomed to “subordinates” ignoring his demands.
Raptor didn’t say a word, she just walked over to the metal door leading back into the convention center. She held up her right hand, and flicked one gleaming titanium talon from her index finger. Using the hooked claw, she scratched “RAPTOR” into the metal surface, her writing accompanied by the shriek of metal-on-metal. She turned back to the man, then pointed to the name on the door.
“There you go. I even spelled it for you.” She turned to look over the man’s shoulder. “What’s the situation?”
Blackout called back. “Dock office looked good. One door, one window. Easily defensible. I left your man Viper in there trying to establish an internet connection.”
“Sounds good. Lone Star, you stay here and keep this area clear. Tank, move something in front of that office window, then get these civilians in there and make sure nothing comes through that door that isn’t me. Breaker, Blackout, let’s go get the rest of your team.” The team nodded, and Raptor pulled open the door leading back into the dock.
As she started through, one of the Secret Service agents grabbed her arm. Raptor looked up at him, a burly bald man in his fifties. “Thank you, Raptor,” he said. “If it weren’t for you guys, we’d all be dead.”
“That’s the job, right?” Raptor shook his hand and stepped through the door, launching herself into the air in the narrow corridor and firing her jets as Breaker and Blackout filed through the door and sprinted behind her back to the fight.
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5
“Hey guys,” Vipers laconic voice came across their comms. “We’ve got a little bit of a situation out here on the loading dock. Think you cold come give us a hand?”
“What’s going on, Viper?” Raptor replied. “There’s a bunch of assholes with automatic weapons shooting up the ballroom, so we’re a little busy.”
“Yeah, but they brought friends, and those friends just ran out of the loading dock, leaving a perfectly good van behind. Only one reason a bad guy does that,” Viper said.
Raptor and Lone Star shared a look, then moved in unison through the door and back out into the hall. They turned right and sprinted for the dock. “Did you—“ Raptor’s question was cut off as feedback screeched in her ear, the sudden pain in her head knocking her off-balance. She slapped off the comm and turned to Lone Star.
“Cover my six,” she said. “I’m faster airborne.” She took a running leap and deployed her wings. They clicked into place, and a pair of mini-jets fired from her back. She rocketed down the hall, slowing at the turn and using her legs to spring off the wall like an Olympic swimmer making the turn.
Lone Star watched her disappear around the corner, a small smile stretching across his face. “I’ll watch your six, lady, but the bad guys better watch their ass.”
Raptor literally burst through the big rollup door onto the loading dock, shredding the thin metal with her talons. She landed on the dock in front of a blue panel van marked “Capitol City Catering.” Tank stood at the front of the van, and waved her around. She hopped off the dock and ran to the back, where Viper stood with his eye pressed up against the rear window.
“What do you see?” She asked.
“There’s a lot of fucking Semtex in there. Enough to turn this convention center and everything within two blocks into a smoking hole. I can’t see a timer, so it’s either buried, or it’s set for a remote detonation.” The lanky man’s former snide humor and lazy demeanor were gone. He was all business, and his focus was razor-sharp.
“Can you defuse it?” Raptor asked.
“I doubt it. The best I can do is probably get the detonator out and contained into a smaller ball of explosive material. If we can separate the electronics from the bulk of the explosive, there’s a chance we don’t all get blown to bits.”
“Again,” Tank said.
“Excuse me, Beefstick?” Viper’s head snapped up at the larger man’s words.
“Blown up again,” Tank corrected once more. “Me and the Sarge already been blown up once. I can’t speak for her, but I didn’t enjoy it. If we can not have that happen again, it’d be great.”
“Well, I haven’t ever been blown up, and it’s not on my bucket list, so I’ll see what I can do to keep it from happening,” the trim man replied. “I’m going to open this back door now and climb into the cargo area. If the van doesn’t explode the second I do that, there’s a chance we live to see tomorrow.” He didn’t wait for Raptor’s approval, he just yanked the door open and slid inside.
Raptor squeezed her eyes closed against the blast, but nothing came. “Asshole,” she muttered, then hopped back up on the dock with Tank.
“What’s the plan?’ He asked.
“Viper’s going to try and cut enough of the plastic explosive out around the detonator so that we don’t all die when the bomb goes off. He doesn’t think he can defuse it—“
“That’s good,” Lone Star said, running up behind them. “That means he’s just a dick, not a complete moron. Defusing a device is way tougher than it looks on TV. Better to reduce the yield of the device as much as possible.”
“I’ll trust you guys,” Raptor said. “I don’t know dick about explosives.”
“My experience was real up-close, but it was only the one time,” Tank agreed. “What do we do while he’s in there, wait to see if we blow up or not?”
“No,” Lone Star said. “Even if he gets the detonator core out of the device, it’s still going to have enough explosive material around it to level this building. We’re going to need to find some way to contain that blast.”
“I’m on it,” Tank said, jogging down the dock to the huge dumpsters. Raptor watched as the big man grabbed a regular dumpster by one of the handles the garbage trucks use to lift it, hefted it over his head, and ran to the back of the van carrying it.
“Ho-lee shit,” Lone Star said, his voice low.
“Yeah,” Raptor said. “I’ve seen him in the weight room. There’s not really a point. They can’t make a machine that holds enough weight to make him strain. But it’s all servos. He powers down, and he’s back to a quad. Drives him nuts, ‘cause he used to be such an active guy.”
“Yeah, like I said, I used to watch him wrestle. He was always real agile for such a giant. I knew the tech made him strong, but I had no idea.”
“You should see Cap. He doesn’t look it, but he’s just as strong. And way faster.”
“I thought you hated Cap,” Lone Star said.
“I don’t hate him, I just don’t fall all over him like everybody else does. He needs more of that in his life,” she said with a grin. “Fuck me, is that his plan?”
“Seems like a good one to me,” Lone Star said, looking at where Tank was now dragging a giant construction dumpster to the back of the van. He flipped the first dumpster on its side and ripped the lid off, then set the bigger dumpster on its side behind it. Then he walked back over to the dock and looked up at Lone Star.
“Think if we put the device under two dumpsters, that’ll absorb enough of the explosive force to keep the building from coming down on us?”
“As long as the explosion isn’t big enough to trigger the remaining plastic explosive, or we get that shit out of here ASAP, we oughta be good,” Guerrero replied.
“Okay, I’ve got the detonator, anybody got any idea what I should do with it?” Viper said, stepping out of the back of the van holding a small orb of grey material. He saw the dumpsters and nodded. “Not the worst idea I’ve ever seen.” He set the bomb guts on the ground, then flipped the small dumpster over on it.
Viper looked at the construction dumpster and just shook his head. “That’s not what this body was rebuilt for. Sorry.” He walked over to the dock and looked at Tank. “I think this is your song.”
Tank nodded, then walked over to the dumpster. One small grunt, and he toppled it over onto the other metal container with a thunderous CLANG. “Got it.”
“Now we need to get the rest of the bomb material out of here,” Lone Star said. “I don’t suppose you noticed if the keys were still in that thing?”
“Who needs keys?” Viper asked.
“Who needs a van?” Raptor countered, locking her wings in place.
“Raptor, that’s about three hundred pounds of Semtex in there,” Lone Star said.
“Good thing most of me is still under warranty…what the hell are you doing?” She shouted at Tank, who was lumbering away from the dock, the van hoisted above his head.
“Keeping you from doing something stupid,” he yelled back.
“By doing something stupid!” She watched helplessly as the big man rumbled along, slowly licking up speed until he was about two hundred yards from the others. He then planted his feet, crouched down, and hurled the van along the wide corridor housing the loading dock. The van flew another fifty yards and smashed into a wall, tumbling to a stop in a mangle of broken glass and twisted metal.
Tank came running back to the others, a big silly grin across his wide face. “Think that’s far eno—“ an explosion ripped through the dock, rocketing the pair of dumpsters up to the ceiling and sending out a shockwave that knocked all four team members to the ground. Tank took the worst of it, being on the ground level with the blast. He slammed to the ground and slid along the concrete for several feet before stopping.
Lone Star, Viper, and Raptor were standing on the dock, partially shielded from the blast by the metal containers and the dock’s own elevation, and they still ended up in a tangle of arms and legs smashed into the nearest wall.
“Get off me, Viper, you’re heavier than you look,” Lone Star said, shoving the skinny man to the side. “You okay, Raptor?” He asked, reaching down to help her stand.
“Yeah, I’m good, even after having both you two idiots land on me,” she said, taking Lone Star’s hand. “Tank, you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m good,” he called back. “Guess I got the rest of the charge far enough away,” he said with a laugh.
“We’re not dead, so I guess so,” Viper grumbled. “Now what?”
“Now you and Lone Star secure the area, make sure nobody touches anything, and take as much video as you can store while Tank and I head up front to see if the other teams are done with mop up. The comms are still fucked, so if you need us…don’t.”
“Got you, boss,” Lone Star saluted, and turned to Viper. “I’ll cover the entrance to the dock, you go block the corridor by the van.”
Raptor thought for a second that Viper must have hit his head in the explosion, because he didn’t argue with either of them, then she watched him fish a narrow cigarette out of the leg pocket of his pants, and she saw how much his hands shook as he tried to light it. She reminded herself that, no matter what kind of enhancements they put in their bodies, Tank and Viper were still civilians. And untrained, in Viper’s case. This was supposed to be a babysitting mission, with nothing more dangerous than getting blinded by camera flash and tripping on the sidewalk. Suddenly, it was a serious deal, and she had a couple of greenies under her care.
Tank jogged up beside her. “Let’s go see if the other teams left us anybody to crush. I want to see some action!” Seemed like adrenaline hit different people in different ways, she thought as she pulled open the door and started back up the hallway to the main body of the convention center.
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