Collateral (Tier One #6)

With nowhere to run, Dempsey cut the wheel hard, kicking up a cloud of dust and gravel as he angled the SUV in a defensive nose-to-nose position with Chunk’s SUV.

“Stay in the vehicles,” Dempsey commanded. He had no idea if there could be more snipers, and in fact assumed there were. This was pretty clearly a well-planned and well-organized trap.

It’s not the CIA personnel they’re after. They could have raided MML anytime. It’s Ember they want . . . retaliation for our Zeta hunting spree.

He was about to make another desperate call to Wang for air support, when a kneeling Russian shooter who was spraying Dempsey’s door with rifle fire suddenly collapsed, grey-green gore painting the ground from his wrecked head.

Grimes . . . Go, girl!

A split second later, Saw announced his presence as one of the shooters from the middle truck suddenly pitched over the rail of the truck toward them, dead before he hit the ground. As the Russian shooters scrambled out of the trucks to launch their assault, Grimes and Saw worked the problem. The two snipers had set up a wicked kill box, catching the Russians in a perfect crossfire. In six or seven seconds, a dozen enemy shooters lay dead beside the trucks, but the seasoned fighters quickly compensated and repositioned—some finding a safe angle, some taking cover beneath the trucks, and others retreating back inside the cold storage warehouse. After a brief respite, the Russians resumed pouring fire on the Suburbans.

Dempsey gritted his teeth. The tactical picture was terrible. Against rifle fire, sheltering inside their armored SUVs was the best option. But this oasis of safety was an illusion. Their big black boxes on wheels were easy targets. A single RPG fired from the ground, or single laser-guided bomb dropped from the sky, would end them. And even if the Russians didn’t bring the heavy ordnance, they had a numbers advantage with reinforcements in the area. Eventually, the Suburbans would be surrounded with Spetsnaz shooters. Which left Dempsey and his squad in a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t situation. Necessity was forcing his hand . . . If they didn’t get out of the SUVs now and return fire, they’d never get another chance to do so. In a few minutes, the Russians would swarm their position.

Grimes and Saw were in an equally precarious situation. The element of surprise had given them the upper hand momentarily, but now the Russians knew they were out there. Unlike the Russian shooters, who’d taken steps to conceal their thermal signatures, Grimes and Saw were vulnerable as hell. With Russian satellites looking down, they were easy targets.

“Zeus, Yankee—reposition or exfil,” Dempsey commanded. “Bad guys have your lines; you need to move ASAP!”

As if a punctuation mark to his order, the sound of an approaching enemy aircraft from the south joined the chaotic noise of gunfire. He could hear Grimes panting in her hot mike as she evacuated her hide. A few seconds later, a burst of light erupted to his right and he turned in time to see an enormous fireball belch skyward. The shockwave hit him a heartbeat later, followed by the scream of the Russian jet’s engines as it streaked across the sky overhead.

His throat tightened and so did his chest as he waited for Grimes to check in.

She didn’t, but the sound of her rhythmic panting in his ear was the survival confirmation he needed.

“Two, One,” he said, calling Chunk. “If we don’t exit the vehicles and give ourselves covering fire, we’re screwed.”

“Agreed. What about our luggage?” Chunk came back, referring to their CIA evacuees. “In or out?”

I don’t fucking know, Dempsey thought, wracked with indecision.

“In or out, One?” Chunk pressed.

“Luggage stays in,” Dempsey barked, concluding that their only way out was in these vehicles. But before that could happen, they needed to rebuff the assault and cull the Russians’ numbers. Jaw clenched, he climbed over Bart’s lifeless body, which was slumped in a puddle of blood in the passenger seat. As he opened the passenger door, he turned to his CIA evacuees in the back. “Heads down. Stay low, people.”

“It’s not going well,” Chunk said in his ear, the SEAL’s voice barely discernible over the sound of all the rifle fire.

He dropped to the pavement and took a knee, firing immediately at the Russian shooters clustered in cover around the closest troop truck. “Home Plate, if you don’t get those F-35s on station in the next two minutes, we’re dead. Do you copy?” he called.

“Inbound already, boss,” Wang reported. “Lightning flight is using call sign Leather.”

“Zeus Two is clear and, damn, that was close,” Grimes said, breathing hard in her mike.

“One is clear,” Saw said, and moments later a second explosion rose from the roof of the building he’d been on.

Thank God.

Dempsey felt a double tap on his shoulder and looked up.

“Whadaya think, Yankee One?” An unfamiliar bearded face greeted him with a hard grimace beneath a dirty ball cap.

“Liberty, I presume?” Dempsey said, returning his attention to his optics and dropping another Russian shooter.

“Yeah, I’m Brock,” the operator and former SEAL said, dropping prone beside Dempsey to sight below the Suburban’s undercarriage.

“We can’t stay here,” Chunk called in his ear. “They’re dropping ordnance.”

“I know,” Dempsey growled, his frustration mounting. “Home Plate, where’s Leather?”

Instead of Wang, a gravelly voice said, “Yankee, Leather One—flight of two Fox-three-fives. Full stores. ETA ninety seconds. SITREP.”

“Leather, Yankee One—we are two SUVs in the rear parking lot of the target coordinates. We are in heavy contact with several dozen tangoes in three troop trucks blocking access to our only exfil route. We also have shooters in a cold warehouse just north of the trucks. Need ordnance danger close to clear a path. Say again, we need ordnance danger close to clear a path.”

“Rog . . .” the fighter pilot replied, drawing out the word with a Texas twang. “Understand danger close. Coming across now to assess.”

“Be advised, there are Russian fighter attack aircraft in the area dropping ordnance.”

“I wouldn’t worry about them,” the pilot replied with sublime confidence, as two F-35s now streaked above them at low altitude. “We got your six now, Yankee.”

Dempsey watched as the enemy shooters near the trucks, gaining confidence from believing the Ember sniper threat had been eliminated, moved to better firing positions.

“RPG in the lead truck,” Riker called, and then Dempsey heard two three-round bursts of American assault rifles. “Got him.”

“Yankee, Leather—incoming on this pass. Danger close, so stay low,” the F-35 pilot reported. “We’re flying south to north.”

Dempsey climbed over the dead SEAL in the passenger seat, struggling to get low on the floor of the driver’s side and ready to haul ass after the bombing run. He heard the rear door slam shut as Brock climbed in. Dempsey glanced back, met the GRS shooter’s steely-eyed gaze. The woman on the seat beside Brock wasn’t moving, and only then did he notice her lifeless eyes staring off into space.

“Zeus Two, back in position,” Grimes said in his ear.

We got two angels in my truck alone. Fuck me. I ain’t losing Grimes or Saw.

“Negative, Zeus, negative!” he hollered. “We’re Mike Charlie after this pass. Get to Vehicle Four and haul ass. Meet us on Hazova Road for exfil. Do it now.”

“Zeus,” Grimes acknowledged, grudgingly.

Leather flight screamed over the top of the target area—one F-35 low and the other offset and higher. Through the windshield, Dempsey saw them pull up nearly vertical, and a second later, four explosions hit—one on top of the other—turning the world bright, hot, and loud. Dempsey squeezed his eyes shut, trying to preserve his night eyes, as he blindly felt for the gearshift lever. Once his vehicle stopped shaking, he put the transmission in drive, opened his eyes, and slammed his boot down on the accelerator. The Suburban’s engine roared as the world came back into focus, and he fishtailed momentarily as the big Chevy took off.

Ahead, the Russian troop trucks billowed with flames, and several man-shaped balls of fire ran from the destruction, only to collapse in writhing, fiery blobs a few yards away. One of the flailing figures—a man completely engulfed in flames—ran directly in front of them. Dempsey’s SUV hit him, sending the burning fighter flipping up over the hood and then sliding up the windshield in a horror show—chunks of burning flesh exploding outward in all directions, leaving a smoldering smear across the windshield.

“Good fire, Leather, good fire,” he barked into his transceiver.

“Leather, standing by,” the Marine aviator replied.

Dempsey spun the steering wheel hard left, then hard right, barely navigating around the rearmost truck, which was somehow rolling to try to close the gap. After clearing the fiery mayhem, he accelerated and checked his side-view mirror, relieved to see Chunk’s SUV tight on his tail. Bullets ricocheted off passenger-side doors and windows, and then the tailgate and rear window, as they streaked away from what had only seconds before been the refrigerated warehouse—now a pyre of flame and smoke. His expression granite, Dempsey pulled the wiper control lever, activating the wipers and spraying the windshield with fluid to extinguish the smoldering globs of body grease and clear the cloudy smear that made it difficult to see.

“Yankee, you have another enemy fast mover approaching from the north,” Wang hollered in his ear, his voice a tight cord.

“Leather has him,” the Marine said, a certain joyful undertone in the cool, grumbling voice. “Fox One . . .” the pilot announced a moment later.

In his rearview mirror, he noted Chunk’s SUV falling back and increasing the spacing between them.

For when that Russian fighter drops a bomb on me . . .

He looked up and saw a flash as the incoming Russian jet was hit and consumed in a ball of fire. It streaked right to left across the sky like a meteor and crashed in the rail yard, sending chunks of burning debris arcing in every direction.

“Splash one,” the F-35 lead pilot announced. “Ivan’s wingman just bugged out—heading east into Russian airspace.”

“Nice work, Leather,” Dempsey called.

“Yankee One, Zeus is in Vehicle Four headed west on Hazova ahead of you,” Grimes reported.

“Roger, Zeus,” Dempsey replied, relieved at the news.

“Yankee, I show nothing between you and the river crossing,” Wang added with crisp professionalism. “But you’re still in range of that Russian armor north of the city.”

“Copy,” Dempsey said. “Keep eyes on.”

“Check,” Wang acknowledged.

“Yankee, Leather is staying with you as well. We’ll clear any other obstacles.”

Dempsey caught Brock’s gaze in the mirror. The man gave him a nod. With two F-35s running block for them, they’d get out, barring any unforeseen events. Unfortunately, in Ember, just as in the Tier One SEALs, their work could best be described as a never-ending stream of unforeseen events.

“Home Plate, you need to coordinate a CASEVAC site for us, and it needs to be pretty damn close. We have multiple casualties. Stand by for a count.”

“Working on it,” Wang said.

“I have a location,” Brock said from the back seat. “It’s a farmhouse in Nikolske I rented for contingencies just like this.”

“How far?” Dempsey asked.

“Fifteen clicks northwest,” Brock said and gave him the coordinates.

“Home Plate, see if that works.”

“Roger,” Wang said.

“Leather has plenty of gas to stick with you guys until dust-off,” the Marine pilot—who would definitely be receiving a case of hooch for this—added.

“Yankee Three, SITREP,” Dempsey called. Munn had not been in his ear at all since this thing began—keeping the channel clear, but now he felt his pulse quicken with worry.

“Vehicle Three is five by,” Munn said. “Four souls, all good.”

“Zeus?” he queried.

“Vehicle Four is four souls and good,” Grimes came back, but her voice sounded pained.

“No casualties?” he pressed, wondering if she’d taken damage trying to exfil her sniper hide.

The pause was long enough to put doubt in his mind, but she said, “Four souls, all good, all in the fight.”

“Yankee Two?” he asked Chunk as he accelerated west on Hazova Street, screaming across the rail bridge toward the river before the Russians could coordinate something to stop them. Once in the chaos of the city, they might actually be safer. Like them, the Zetas had probably not read others in on their operation—and they’d wiped out the team at the X, thanks to United States Marine Corps aviation.

“Vehicle Two has three casualties, all urgent surgical. We’re getting them stable best we can.”

“And One has two angels and . . .” He looked at Brock in the rearview; the man held up two fingers. “Two urgent surgicals. You got all that, Home Plate?”

“Copy all,” Wang replied.

The rail bridge thumped underneath them, and then they shot forward as the road bent right.

“Can your surgicals make it safely to the FRSS in Romania?” Baldwin asked.

Dempsey repeated the question for Brock, who did not have a headset. The GRS man shook his head in the mirror.

“Negative. Time critical for us,” Chunk chimed in, beating Dempsey to the punch.

“Understood,” Baldwin said. “CASEVAC is already in the air. We’re clearing a rendezvous for you. We’ll be taking them to contingency Bravo.”

“Roger. Copy all,” Dempsey said. Bravo meant they would be airlifting the wounded to a civilian hospital in Ukrainian-controlled Dnipro, where they’d launched this op from. Dnipro was three times closer than MK Air Base in Romania—which was over four hundred fifty miles away—and would not require flying around the Russian-controlled Crimean peninsula.

What a friggin’ mess . . .

“Hey, bro,” Brock said from the back seat.

Dempsey looked in the rearview mirror and met the man’s gaze.

“We now have three angels,” the operator said, grim-faced.

Dempsey gave a curt nod.

What a disaster this op had been. Ember’s suspicion that Maksim Kuznetsov was Zeta and that Zeta would find them had all but been confirmed. Why else would the Russians have been waiting in ambush and taken measures to hide their thermal signatures? There was no way to know if Kuznetsov had died in this fight, but Dempsey’s guess was no . . . odds were, the man was supervising from a safe location.

But it didn’t matter.

Dempsey would go on hunting Zetas until every last one of them was dead and Arkady Zhukov himself knelt in his gunsights.

But when that day finally comes, Dempsey thought, clutching the steering wheel tight with both hands, I think I’ll holster my weapon . . . and kill the bastard with my bare hands.