Chapter 2: Exit Base Balad

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Sophia braced herself.

Jay pumped the brakes and pulled hard on the steering wheel. He swung the Cruiser to one side, lining her and Damien up perfectly with the Citroën as it roared past.

The HK53 was heavy in her grasp. She sighted the driver and opened fire. Her weapon kicked hard. The Citroën's windscreen turned white.

Damien fired too, taking out the front passenger. Together, they put an extended burst into the soldiers in the back seat. It was over in seconds, leaving the sedan to rattle slowly into the darkness behind them.

Then silence.

Sophia changed mags, then opened the door. Damien stepped out in front of her, toggling the flashlight on his weapon and lighting the way. Sophia kept hers off while she stood behind him. Aiming over his shoulder, they advanced together, splitting off when they reached the Citroën. She toggled her flashlight and kept it painted on the destroyed windows, hoping to blind any survivors.

Jay's footsteps weren't far behind, but he would be focusing on the surrounding terrain with his thermogenic vision.

The rusty hood looked like it was covered in crushed rubies. Sticky and wet.

'They're toast,' Damien said from the driver's side, his breath fogging in the cold.

He indicated with his barrel to what was left of the two heads. In the back seat, three more heads, like split watermelons.

'Jay, get an IED.'

'You got it.' He rushed back to their Land Cruiser.

She opened the back door on her side of the sedan. A young soldier fell out, face down. His body glistened red. She looked through at the other door as Damien opened it. Another soldier tipped sideways. Damien caught him mid-fall. His head lolled.

Trembling in the center of the back seat was—surprisingly, a woman—and more surprisingly, her head still intact. Her round face and white T-shirt were dotted crimson.

What the hell's she doing in there?

Sophia nodded to Damien. He leaned in to grab her, but the woman resisted, clawing at him. He pulled her out and dropped her onto the dirt. She kneeled there, mumbling incomprehensibly.

'She doesn't count, does she?' Damien asked. 'The "no witnesses" thing.'

Before Sophia could respond, he nodded to her nine o'clock.

Another vehicle. Wider, higher. Humvee. Its headlights lit up the whole area, making her squint. It pulled up twenty meters short, hip-hop music rattling hillbilly armor. A shortage of armor kits had forced the soldiers to improvise with scrap metal.

'What are they doing over the border?' Damien asked.

'Must've been nearby, heard the crash.' Sophia said into her throat mike, 'Jay, leave the IED.'

'Copy that.'

She nodded at Damien. 'You're up.'

The music died. Four, no five, American soldiers—Marines, by the looks of things—climbed out and approached her team, dusted boots crunching on grit. They were dressed in desert camouflage, night-vision monocles flipped back on helmets. Their M4 carbines gleamed in the headlights of their Humvee.

Sophia took a step back and let Damien handle it.

Three marines approached, leaving two at the Humvee and one behind the wheel.

'Lemme guess,' the staff sergeant said. 'They don't know a stop sign when they see it?'

'You boys are far from home, yeah?' Damien said, standing in front of the Citroën so they couldn't get a closer look. He spoke with a mild northeast England accent, as briefed.

'Nah, see I think that's you,' the staff said. 'Should I ask what you're doing in our backyard?'

'Rubicon Defense Services,' Damien said. 'Just passing through.'

One of the marines stepped around the kneeling, surviving woman and splashed a light into the vehicle. He didn't look impressed.

'Some passin' through you did here,' the marine said.

'Haven't seen mercenaries around here in a while, especially not Brits.' The staff stepped around Damien, his gaze fixed on the vehicle. 'You know you're on the wrong side of the border.'

'Yeah,' Damien said. 'We're aiming to be on the right side soon ... if it weren't for those soldiers.'

The staff leaned in to inspect the vehicle, then scraped the stubble on his chin with a calloused hand. 'Soldiers, huh?'

Damien stood his ground, but said nothing.

You need to say something.

The staff gave Sophia a polite nod. 'Ma'am.'

'Sergeant,' she said.

'Just the two of you mercs?' he asked.

'Contractors,' Sophia said.

Sophia resisted the urge to glance back at their Land Cruiser. The Humvee had gone right past, leaving it completely in darkness.

The staff sergeant sidled up beside her, inhaling the cold air. 'How about we shed some light on this here massacre, contractor?' he said. 'You were running behind schedule. Your friend here made a bad call out. You acted on that call out.' He turned his head to see her reaction. 'Is that a fair assessment?'

Sophia looked at the bodies slumped in the back seat. They weren't Takavaran at all. Just civilians.

Shit.

She resisted the urge to swallow. Her best course of action right now was to flatter him. But not too much, he'd see through it.

'Not much gets past you,' she said.

'A little bit of shrapnel, that's all,' he said. 'Got rolled by bandits just south of here. Put half my squad in hospital and two of 'em in the dirt.'

'I hope they pull through,' Sophia said.

'They will.' His lower lip jutted outward slightly—tobacco lodged in a wad between his lower teeth and lip. 'If you want my goddamn honest opinion'—he gestured to the dead bodies in the back seat—'you're lucky they ain't bandits. We'd be in a world of trouble right now.'

Sophia nodded. 'We're sorry for the mess.'

'You know, back in the Middle Ages they had contract warfare. You have the cash, you can hire an army,' the staff said. 'They had niches in the marketplace where they became specialists. Just like today, right?'

'I guess,' she said.

Where are you going with this?

'Rubicon mercs holed up with us ... their specialty was kamikaze drones.' The staff sergeant sucked on the tobacco under his lip. 'So tell me, what's yours?'

Sophia cleared her throat. 'Make things look like an accident.'

He gestured to the Citroën. 'You better get to work on that.'

With that, he slowly made his way back to the other marines. Except when he reached them, he turned on his heel.

'You know, I did hear that Rubicon withdrew to Kirkuk a couple of days back. One of those tactical retrogrades,' he said, lifting a hand off his weapon to gesture in air quotes. 'So ... just how behind schedule you runnin', exactly?'

'A few days,' Damien said. His fingers were white over his carbine. If she could see it, they could too. 'We ran into some resistance,' he said.

'Dangerous place you're riding through,' the staff said, turning and finally making his way to their Humvee.

Sophia forced herself to relax. But not too much.

'Unsupervised mercs have a tendency to go AWOL around these parts,' the staff called out. 'And when they go AWOL, they become bandits.'

He stopped walking. So did his escorts.

Sophia held onto her carbine.

'The thing about bandits is, they start taking things that don't belong to them,' the staff said, turning back around. 'Shootin' up civilians. Ambushing American soldiers.'

The two marines on either side of him stiffened.

'Never did get them all.' The staff sergeant leveled his weapon at Damien. 'They were Brits though.'

*

Open ground, nowhere to run.

Crack.

The sound reverberated through the night.

'Contact!' a marine yelled from the Humvee.

They'd see Jay's gunshot through the Land Cruiser window and turn him to Swiss cheese. He had to get out of there. A vehicle door opened on the other side. Jay was relocating.

Sophia dropped to one knee and fired.

Silhouetted in the headlights, the staff sergeant stumbled and fell face-first onto the dirt road. Hard.

Sophia flattened out on her stomach, one leg bent. Damien did the same, dropping one of the marines with a short burst.

The staff sergeant was still alive, staring across the dirt at her. His mouth opened like a purse. Saliva, thick with tobacco, oozed down his chin.

Sophia ignored him and fired on the left-hand marine. A gust of wind howled past, filling her nostrils with gasoline and the coppery tang of blood. Rounds cracked past. One broke the sound barrier inches from her head with the snap of a bullwhip.

She squinted through the Humvee's headlights and found her target. The third marine toppled onto one side, arms loose and gangly.

The staff sergeant reached slowly for his pistol, but his arm was trembling and he couldn't grasp at his holster. Sophia put a round through his nose. He slumped, face down into the dirt, and lay there like a plastic figurine.

Sophia hit the pressel switch on her collar. 'Three down. Are you there, Jay?'

'Two down,' Jay said. 'Can't see shit in the Humvee. Should be one more.'

'I hear movement,' Damien said.

It was the girl from the Citroën. She took off, but in the wrong direction. She ran between them and the Humvee.

Sophia rose into a crouch, only to watch gunfire tear through the girl. She slumped beside the dead staff sergeant, locks of hair blowing in the breeze.

Sophia fired into both headlights, bathing everything in darkness.

'Front seat,' Jay said. 'Front seat!'

'Pin him down,' she said.

He opened fire, decorating the windshield with thick, white impacts the size of dinner plates—except they didn't penetrate. But it was enough to cover her as she crossed open ground and circled around to one side of the Humvee. She could see the marine behind the wheel, side window down, reaching for his weapon.

Jay fired off some single shots, drowning out any sound that Sophia's boots made. She closed the gap and realized he wasn't reaching for a weapon at all, but a radio.

Then he saw her.

Wrangling his carbine over the steering wheel, she had only a second to close the gap. He drew his pistol instead—firing as his arm extended. The first round struck her. She felt the blow like a sledgehammer to her chest, sidestepped—gasped for breath—then came in beside him. She pulled his forearm down on the window frame. Bone shattered through the inside of his elbow. She cracked the stock of her carbine into the side of his neck. It struck his carotid sinus and sent a sudden surge of blood to his brain.

In an instant, his body's self-defense kicked in, slowing his heart rate and dilating blood vessels to drop his blood pressure. She didn't need to do much else except watch him slump forward, unconscious. His forehead hit the steering wheel and the horn blared.

Sophia's nostrils burned with the smell of sweat and urine. She'd just killed half a squad of marines, and a local family caught in the wrong place at the wrong place.

'Soph!' Jay yelled over the horn.

A marine staggered to his feet, bloodshot eyes focused on her. He gripped his weapon in blood-coated hands—

There was no gunfire. Instead, he hunched over abruptly, eyelids twitching. Then collapsed.

Jay was behind him, teeth clenched, breathing heavily. He looked in pain. Sophia rushed over to find no blood. Jay was unscathed, but the marine's flesh smelled burnt.

'You zapped him?' she asked.

Jay nodded, then dropped to his knees. He'd discharged a high-voltage electric shock, leaving him exhausted. She hauled him up over her shoulder and helped him to the Land Cruiser, propping him on the back seat.

Behind her, Damien methodically moved from body to body, checking their pulses. He stopped at the marine behind the wheel.

'Uh, we have a problem,' he said.

Sophia swapped to her only full mag. 'Define problem.'

'He called for reinforcements. They're coming across the border now.'

Sophia exhaled, watching her breath fog into the night air.

'OK,' she said. 'I think we'll need two IEDs.'

*


15 hours later

Sophia couldn't remember anything.

Her throat burned and she couldn't swallow. She was ... somewhere brightly lit—too well lit, it stung her eyes. No vehicles, no gunfire. Had she been in a firefight?

She squeezed the trigger. The Minister of Defense's head popped like a grape.

Was that a dream or a mission? She couldn't remember. Instead, she was lying in a hospital bed while a pair of military police sergeants stood outside, their attention on a television in the opposite ward. She could see them through the curtains. One had a long, crooked nose and pencil-thin lips. The other was a few inches taller with flushed cheeks.

Her ward was empty, save for two beds on her left. She managed to turn her head in that direction. Beside her was a young, unshaven man. He had pale olive skin, dark greasy hair and a nose slightly too big for his face. Damien.

He didn't look injured. But as he leaned against the bedhead, she saw the patient on the next bed. With even shorter hair, higher cheekbones and darker olive skin, Jay was hard to miss. There were quite a few Hispanic operatives, but Jay was Pardo: mixed-race Brazilian. At a stretch, he could pass for light-skinned Arabic, which made him a popular choice for Middle East operations.

'They said Iranian missiles could hit the States in five years,' the MP sergeant on the left said, speaking softly.

The sergeant on the right laughed. 'Slow missile.' His voice sounded like gravel.

Sophia tried to move her fingers but felt nothing. She could hear the news reporter talking on the television.

'The United Nations representative for Human Rights was killed in a suicide bombing last night. The US Secretary of State said the bombing underlines the absolute moral bankruptcy and brutality of those who planned and executed it. A previously unknown terrorist group, the Holy Jihad Brigades, issued a statement claiming responsibility.'

Sounded more like a cover-up for an assassination. Sophia wouldn't be surprised if the real culprit was an operative just like her.

Her memories shifted like a prism.

She squeezed the trigger. The United Nations' representative's head popped like a grape.

'Who do they think...' Damien's voice croaked from beside her. 'What did we do out there?'

She could remember now, but it was all wrong. The events were different, the faces were different, the people were different. Even lying down, she felt dizzy.

She opened her mouth, pulling dry lips apart. 'I don't know.'

'We made it over the border,' Damien said, under his breath. 'I remember that part.'

'Where are we now?' she asked.

Damien rubbed his eyes. 'Looks like Camp Anaconda.'

'My anaconda don't want none.' Jay started rapping to himself.

'Or Joint Base ... whatever it's called now,' Damien said. 'Seriously Jay, stop.'

Sophia's gaze wandered to the MPs posted outside. 'They're guarding us. That's not a good sign.'

'Hey.' Damien leaned over to whisper. 'Did we plant the IEDs?'

Her arms and legs tingled. 'I don't know.'

The Iranian girl slumped to the ground, locks of hair blowing in the breeze.

Whatever sedatives she'd been given, they were starting to wear off. Her fingers flexed when she told them to. The fog was beginning to clear from her mind and something inside her was convinced she had to get away from here.

Struggling to sit upright, she looked at the vital signs monitor beside her. It was measuring her pulse rate, blood pressure and respiratory rate. She knew as soon as she detached the wires from her body it would start beeping, alerting the MPs. But right now they were adequately entertained with the latest celebrity breakup.

Jay stood and peeled tape from the needle in the back of his hand. Sophia whispered for him to stay down, but as usual he didn't listen. She could already see a blood-pressure cuff hanging loosely from his right arm.

Jay removed it and quickly wrapped it around Damien's arm. The monitors didn't have a chance to beep.

Damien caught Sophia's gaze with large hazel eyes. He held a finger to his lips.

Sophia used sign language to say to Damien, What are you doing, idiot? She didn't know the sign for 'idiot' so finger-spelled it instead.

Damien nodded, then turned his attention to Jay, who had just clipped a pulse oximeter onto Damien's fingertip. One by one, Jay peeled the electrodes from his body, transferring them immediately to Damien, right next to Damien's own electrodes. Jay's vital signs monitor hadn't beeped yet.

Commercial break.

The first MP was pacing now. His crooked nose strayed dangerously into view and then moved away.

Barefoot, Jay hobbled from the end of his bed to Damien's, then to Sophia's. He paused, his gaze locking with hers. He held his hand out, palm down, indicating for her to wait.

She shook her head. No. But Jay was already staggering for the ward entrance, his movements unsteady and sluggish. She peeled the tape from her own needle. She couldn't just sit here and wait for Jay to screw up.

Jay half-collapsed against the wall. Sophia could hear his heavy breathing. The second MP paced inside, eyes narrowed and complexion chalk white. His eyes widened when he saw them awake.

Jay was behind Chalky, limbs moving simultaneously: knee into the back of Chalky's thigh, hand slamming into his shoulder blades just to the right of the spine, and the other hand pulling his left shoulder back. All three movements sent the MP in a counterclockwise spin to the floor.

Sophia pulled the needle from her arm and got to her feet. Crooked Nose stormed into the ward, chest puffed, to find Chalky lying on his stomach and Jay staggering over him.

Crooked Nose drew his pistol. 'Turn around!' he yelled. 'On the floor!'

Jay wasn't anywhere near close enough to attack the armed marine.

Crooked Nose eyed Sophia. 'Hands where I can see them, princess!'

Sophia raised her arms. Dizziness burned through her. She tried to remain upright and not pass out. A slight glance over her shoulder showed Damien lying in bed, eyes closed.

Chalky pulled himself to his feet while Crooked Nose mumbled into his radio. 'Echo Five Charlie to Echo Five Golf, we need assistance in Ward Three East Eighteen to Twenty Four, over.'

Jay was on the ground between the two MPs. Chalky kicked him in the ribs and Jay grunted in pain, folding into a fetal position.

'Limbs spread!' Chalky said.

Jay spread his arms and legs, but kept one knee slightly bent. Sophia knew why.

'Echo Five Charlie to Echo Five Golf, patients trying to escape,' Crooked Nose said into the radio. 'One patient, aggressive behavior, attempted assault. Patient restrained, over.'

Sophia's mouth felt dry. All she could think about was Crooked Nose's bony finger resting on the trigger of his M9 pistol. A bead of sweat trickled down his skewed nose, hung from the tip. Sophia waited for it to drop. The wait seemed eternal.

Crooked Nose's attention shifted to Jay. 'Five minutes. Let's get this joker tied up.'

He held his pistol in one hand and dug into a pouch for plasticuffs. Crouching, he wrapped one of Jay's legs with a pair, then moved to straighten his bent leg. Chalky was standing in front of Jay, near his hands.

Jay moved quickly. He

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