Author's Note: Doggone it, but life interfered with hobbies again. As such, it got me off track with my plot. I ended up totally trashing the first version of this chapter and rewrote it. This is how it came out, though it might get some cosmetic updates as I go. Thanks for being patient!
Chapter 8
He finally got the shower he craved. Flint wanted to stand under the hot steaming water for a lifetime, but there was work to be done. Scarlett had taken charge of Suarez once more while he got cleaned up and back in order. He took another look at himself in the mirror, satisfied that he was looking better than when he had previously looked. More sleep would be good when they got the mission done, but the six hours he had snagged were a start.
When he entered the hall, he found Leatherneck standing outside one of the bunkrooms, leaning against the wall, running through hastily prepared mission notes. He looked up at Flint as he approached.
"You still look like hell," the marine said.
Flint gave an amused look. "At least I have a reason. What's yours?"
Leatherneck hedged, but he finally got it out. "I don't like this plan, Flint," he said, almost in a whisper. "I think it's downright reckless."
Flint could hardly argue. "I know," he admitted with a sigh, "but I don't believe we have a choice. If she's right - and no one can argue the satellite images - then we have to trust her."
"I'm glad you feel that way, because you're stuck with her. At least I get paired with one of our own."
"I'll make you a deal," Flint said, "just see this through like you said you would, and I'll never ask anything of you again."
Leatherneck gave it a moment, then screwed up his eyes in contemplation. "Just what is it that has you so convinced? From what I hear in the briefings, she doesn't have squat to be pulling us into this."
Flint was honest. "I can't put it into words," he said, "but I know this is something we have to do."
Leatherneck was incredulous. "Did you ever stop to think she's playing us? Maybe she's a snakehead?"
Flint was not in a position to argue. "I've thought about it a lot, but I do know if we don't do something, we'll be making a mistake." He eyed the marine. "You thinking of backing out?"
"Hell, no," Leatherneck answered vehemently. "All I'm asking is for you to be the C.O. we've come to know in the past. I've been a part of dangerous missions, but not like this."
"I'm keeping my eyes open."
Scarlett and Suarez entered the hall at the opposite end. They had changed into the black jump suits provided for the mission. Suarez walked with confidence, as though she were really accustomed to nature of the business. She looked as military as anyone he had ever seen, not the uncomfortable being as he had seen many times when medical personnel were tapped to go on covert ops.
She walked up to where they were standing. "Sergeant," she said in greeting to Leatherneck.
"Ma'am," he said in reply, though it was less than cordial.
Flint cleared his throat when he sensed the tension growing. "Well, that about handles the pleasantries. Let's get loaded up."
He led the way to the weapons room where she grabbed a cart sitting inside the doorway. Suarez moved through the racks of guns and munitions like she had been there on a regular basis. She shopped what was available, pulling plastic explosives, detonators and a sidearm for herself. The last selection she made was of her main weapon. She carefully picked up a G36 from the rack. She checked the chamber, looking satisfied that it was clean. She pulled the frame stock back, locking it into place.
Suarez looked at Flint and realized the group had been watching her every move, analyzing her choices, wary of her selections.
"You're free to bring whatever you'd like," she told them, like a teacher guiding students. "But you need travel as light as possible."
The G36 happened to be Flint's weapon of choice on a mission, as well, though he worried that she might see his choosing it as a sign of camaraderie. She handed him several magazines from the shelf and took more for herself. She ordered the weapons on the cart into piles, evenly distributing the supplies to each of them.
She looked at them. She stood on one side of the cart, facing them. The metaphor was visible – they were on one side, she was on the other, with something separating them. She was not a part of the team. She was a separate and hardly even equal in the group. Suarez had made sure of that. To what end, Flint did not know. He imagined so many other ways she could have gone about taking Cobra and whatever or whoever was helping him out of commission. Why she had chosen this way was an answer only she knew.
They loaded the munitions in to mission packs and headed for the hangar. The riggers were waiting for them. Black packs containing their chutes were lined up on the floor. Handlers stepped to attention as Flint approached.
"At ease," he told them. "Let's get the show on the road."
The riggers picked up the packs and began strapping them on to the jumpers, cinching up straps and checking each device. Flint girded his back against the weight, feeling himself pulled backward by the bulk of the pack. He looked at Suarez, checking to see if she was struggling at all. If she felt any discomfort, she did not show it. She handled herself with confidence, with an air of experience that matched his own and the rest of the team. They allowed the riggers to finish their work. The jump plane had been towed to the front of the hangar. The ramp had been lowered, and cargo handlers waited to help them aboard.
Flint called for the team to head to the jump plane. The pungent smell of grease and fuel pierced his senses, flooding his mind with pleasant memories of his childhood when he would go to air shows with his father. He longed to ride in the aircraft that used that fuel, leaving his own trail in the sky, which those on the ground could follow up into nothingness. He loved the feel of an aircraft's engine as its power thumped in his chest at full speed. He also loved the feeling of freefall as he leapt from one of those aircraft into the openness of Earth's atmosphere, feeling the total freedom and rush it gave to his senses. Night jumps were even more exhilarating. More than once, he had slipped a look from underneath his nightvision at the blank nothingness of the night sky and the unknown below him.
The ramp began to close once everyone was seated aboard the C-130. Their packs had been loaded with explosives and ammunition, following Suarez's instructions. Flint checked his watch. They were right on time. The plane began taxiing toward the runway. It halted and waited for the moment to take off into the night sky. When the control tower gave the go ahead, its engines roared. Flint felt the force exerted on his body as he leaned to the left in the rack chair. The nose pitched up as the plane gained altitude, pushing him even harder. He saw Suarez instinctively clutch the bar that ran under her legs for support. The plane continued to climb. It banked around and around, all the while gaining altitude. The air began thinning as the coldness of higher space began creeping into the pressurized cargo area.
Flint issued the order for them to put on their masks. He checked his watch. They were to jump in four minutes. He began the ritual of checking the packs of the jumpers. Everything seemed in order. At last, Scarlett gave Flint's rigging a final check, pitching him a thumbs-up when she was satisfied.
He motioned to the airman at the ramp to begin opening the back end of the plane. Cold air swept over them as the fuselage was exposed to the brisk night air. Flint watched the red light near the door, waiting for it to turn green. He checked his weapon one more time, locking and loading. Suarez stepped in front of him.
"I'll lead you down," she said. "We'll open at two-thousand feet, not a moment sooner."
He saw Scarlett glance at Leatherneck. Although the full masks they wore obscured most of her face, he could see a look of resentment in her eyes.
"You heard her," Flint said, siphoning off any chance for his team to disobey orders, "two-thousand feet. Get ready to jump."
Suarez neared the edge of the ramp and waited. As soon as the light turned green, she was off into freefall. Flint followed a second later, as did Scarlett and Leatherneck. Flint oriented himself and began a controlled descent. Through the nightvision, he saw Suarez square herself and buoy her body against the rush of air until she was in line with the rest of the group. They formed a circle, falling together toward a massive mountain that invited them with open arms.
Flint checked his altimeter. They were falling fast. The frigid night air pounded against his body, permeating his jumpsuit with a cushion of ice. The trip down was quick. They were within the jump window, according to Suarez's information. He looked down and saw the tiny buildings forming on the side of the mountain. The base was definitely there. There was one road leading in and out of the compound, obscured by the rough landscape. He saw their target. The outbuilding was a pinpoint of a square on the northeast corner of the base.
"Here we go," Suarez announced through the helmet mic. "In three, two, one!"
They simultaneously pulled their ripcords, sending chutes trailing up in the sky above them. The wind caught the fabric, billowing out the airfoil until the channels within it were fully buoyed on the frigid air. The harness on Flint's rigging snapped up tight against his body as the chute fully deployed. His body, moments earlier weightless and free falling, was now suspended in the atmosphere in a controlled descent.
"Follow my lead," Suarez ordered. She began spiraling down toward the outbuilding toward a small zone behind it that was flat and dark. Her descent was sharp and determined.
Flint followed suit, concentrating on his landing zone and avoiding looking at the world spinning out of control around him. The green of the nightvision helped him to hone in on the target. He watched as Suarez straightened out and extended her legs for landing. She dropped in on the zone with precision, setting down exactly where she had shown them. He was determined to match her, if only to eliminate her chance to point out that she was more adept at the feat. He pulled on the cords that led to the foil, first the right, then the left, banking until he was nearly on top of Suarez as she hurriedly gathered her chute and got out of the way.
He heard his chute flutter as he neared the ground. He pulled hard on both cords, steadying his approach until he dropped neatly onto the ground, touching down with both feet. He immediately began pulling in the cords as he heard Leatherneck's approach. Flint looked up in time to see the sergeant coming down on the zone. Scarlett was not much higher, landing last in the group. They, too, secured their chutes, gathering them quickly and piling them out of sight.
Suarez waited for them near the outbuilding, weapon at the ready. He heard Leatherneck and Scarlett lock and load behind him and join up at the building.
Suarez checked her watch. "We go in thirty seconds. There's a guard unit running around here. They're on a round now. They'll pass by here. Then we'll go."
Flint shivered involuntarily against the chill of the night. Winter came sooner to the higher elevations. The wind was stronger, blowing arctic air across the landscape unimpeded. His hands were warm. The Nomex gloves he wore resisted the cold completely. He tightened the grip on his weapon as he heard footsteps approaching. Suarez held up a fist to tell the group to hold still as the patrol passed on the other side of the building. Flint's heart beat faster at the prospect of confrontation. For as many times as he had seen combat, the danger of it still thrilled his body, making it taut with anticipation.
He heard faint voices above the wind as the patrol's leader rambled on about the state of affairs in the Cobra empire. Suarez kept her fist up, telling the team to continue holding position. Flint, however, began getting nervous. The corner of the outbuilding did not provide adequate coverage. All it would take is one alert guard to look left and the mission would be blown. He looked nervously to Suarez, but she was concentrating on the patrol, as if timing their steps. The moment they passed, she lowered her hand and moved forward around the corner of the building. She almost seemed to glide, her steps silent and precise.
She opened the door and corralled the team inside the tiny structure. It took a moment for Flint to realize where they were once she closed the door again. He had expected they would take some stairs to get to the elevator. Instead, they were in the car. A tiny control panel lit up in his nightvision like bright runway lights. He pulled off his goggles. The rest of the team did the same.
"Ready for some fun?" Suarez asked no one in particular. She moved to the panel and tapped the last button in the columns of choices. The care began descending downward in to the mountain. He felt the muscles in his ease when gravity was lessened on them as the car moved downward to its final destination.
Suarez studied her watch. She looked up at Flint. "Change in plan," she announced quietly.
"You're kidding me?" he asked, incredulous.
"We're off schedule by sixteen seconds, according to my calculations."
"So, what do we do?" Scarlett asked. "Wait it out?"
"If we were ahead, yes," Suarez said. "Unfortunately, we're behind schedule."
Flint's ire rose. "I thought you had this all planned out?"
"Evolutions, Flint," she said, sounding bored with the explanation. "I never said it was going to be a perfect plan."
Leatherneck, always to the point, pressed Suarez. "So what happens now?"
"We all go to the power plant together. We'll split into two teams to set the charges. That should bring us more into alignment with the schedule."
She looked at her watch again, then at the countdown on the elevator. They were six floors away from the bottom of the shaft. "I'll take point," she told them.
The elevator reached the bottom of the shaft. It shifted the weight of those aboard as it came to a complete stop. Suarez waited for the door to open, then slipped into the tiny corridor leading up to the lift. Flint was almost parallel with her in the hall as they moved. He saw a change in her demeanor. She looked stressed for the first time. She was breathing heavily as they neared the end of the hall. She held up her hand again, indicating the team should hold position.
"Hold here," she told them in a whisper. "I'll clear the way."
Then she moved in silence into the hallway. Flint stole a look around the corner in the direction she was heading. A guard stood with his back to the hall, scuffing at his boot with the other foot, not paying attention to what was coming behind him.
Suarez moved with silent speed toward him. Flint saw her hand drop down to her utility belt as she unsheathed a k-bar knife. He knew immediately what she intended to do, and it was not to be a moment of negotiation with the trooper. She crept up soundlessly behind him, her body catlike. In one smooth leap, she sprang forward, clutching a hand over his mouth and pulling the blade across the front of his throat. He struggled against her grasp for only a moment before she plunged the blade into the side of his neck, almost to the hilt. When she pulled out the blade, tiny spurts of blood spewed from the trooper's body. She cradled his weakening form with one arm, laying him gently to the floor as he died. Without a moment's hesitation, she grasped the collar of his uniform and began dragging him back into the small passageway.
Flint stepped out into the hall to help her. Together, they brought the trooper's body back to where there was the offshoot in the hall to the elevator. Scarlett and Leatherneck vacated the space and assumed guard positions in the main hall.
Suarez looked down at the trooper. He was young, probably recruited off some college campus with promises of glory. He had not lived life enough to know what was out there. Flint saw the doctor close her eyes. She looked as though she were seeking forgiveness for the act, regretting that she had to do it.
She bent down and cleaned the blade of her knife on the soldier's uniform. Then, without a word, she put it back in the sheath, where it was ready to be used again if necessary. The whole series of acts was shocking to Flint. There had been times when he had killed up close and personal, but he had never watched someone do the same. He half expected Suarez to be completely emotionless about it, but he saw the look of regret in her eyes and knew killing the guard was the last thing she wanted to do.
The trail of blood in the hall was masked by the darkness of the corridor. Unless someone looked very hard, the evidence would elude the naked eye at first glance.
Suarez picked her way to the head of the group again and peered around the corner into the main corridor. She stepped out, implying they should all follow. Flint checked both directions before proceeding. Suarez was three steps ahead of him, moving silently and quickly down the hall. She was just short of a trot in her speed, walking heel to toe, checking the corners as she went. The journey was not that far. She pulled them down another small corridor to the right after about a hundred feet. Its layout matched that of the elevator's passage, only this time, the door off the end led to a shaft with a ladder.
Flint looked down the tube. It was a large cylinder, big enough for two to stand at the bottom fully concealed to either side. At the bottom, he saw light illuminating the exit to the escape route. The ladder made a large L-shape from its connection to the wall at the top of the shaft, making it possible for them to climb down the backside of the ladder. Again, Suarez took the lead and began the descent. The bottom looked so far away to Flint that he thought they would never reach it. Halfway down, Suarez swung around to the back of the ladder so she would have a straight-on view of the portal at the bottom when they got there. She moved quickly. He had to work to keep up with her. Scarlett and Leatherneck followed, spacing themselves from Flint as a precaution.
It was almost a hundred feet to the bottom of the shaft. Flint kept a silent count in his head of how many rungs they had traversed. When he reached fifty, he started running through their exit scenario. He hated the idea of relying on Suarez to take point, but he was left with no choice. Leatherneck had put it best that the plan was shoddy at the very least.
He looked down at Suarez. She was nearing the bottom of the shaft. He picked up his pace to get down there as quickly as possible without making more noise than necessary on the rungs. When he reached the bottom, Suarez was waiting for him, checking around the corner of the shaft's exit. Scarlett and Leatherneck remained on the ladder, waiting for room to land.
Without reason, his mind turned to Allison again in that moment. He thought about how she looked at him as he left her. She knew he was going to do something dangerous. Even in the haze of pain and medication in the aftermath of a critical wound, she knew. There were so many things he wanted to tell her, but there had neither been time or opportunity. Now, he wondered if he would ever get the chance again.
Suarez readied herself at the door. She ticked down three seconds on her hand and bolted out into the corridor. Flint followed exactly two steps behind her. He heard Scarlett and Leatherneck wait a few seconds and do the same. He could hear the rumble of the generators in the distance. Suarez moved forward confidently, checking her watch every minute or so as if timing their movement. The main corridor was wide and empty when they first entered it. They enjoyed the advantage that nothing would surprise them from behind, but Flint still had no idea what lay ahead. They were following Suarez blindly into the unknown.
They came to a right turn in the corridor. Suarez stopped and did a quick look around its edge. She turned back to Flint. She motioned with her hands what she wanted him to do. She affixed a silencer to her G36, and did the same. He moved forward for a quick look around the corner to find his target. He had been trained to do it lightning quick so as not to be seen by the casual observer or bored guard. He saw his mark, a Cobra guard standing lazily in front of the door, not paying attention.
Suarez positioned herself next to Flint and silently counted down again. At the count of three, she leapt forward and fell to one knee. He rounded the corner and brought his weapon up, squeezing the trigger twice as Suarez did the same. The guards never had time to react. They were dead before they hit the floor.
She did not wait even a moment before moving forward to begin dragging her target off to the side of the hall. Flint followed with his, laying it across the guard's comrade.
She looked at the team. "It's a straight shot from here to the generation plant. You'll be able to avoid confrontations with the right timing."
"Goodie," Leatherneck grumbled.
Suarez rolled her eyes at the marine's sarcasm. She turned to the door, opening it a crack and looking beyond to the next section. Once Flint was inside the next section, he saw what she meant. There were small alcoves at even intervals down both sides of the corridor that would easily hide them from view. They used them as they proceeded, snaking in and out of hiding toward their target. She once again motioned for the team to continue forward but did not follow them. Flint backtracked to her location. She was already making her way in the opposite direction.
"What the hell are you doing?" he whispered sharply.
"What I came here to do," she said quietly. "You go make sure that plant gets taken out, and I'll do the rest."
"Like hell you will," he countered.
"This isn't the time for discussion, Flint. I have a mission, and so do you. You have to do your part, or all of this will be for nothing."
"I'm under orders to babysit you, and that's exactly what I intend to do."
Suarez craned her neck, stretching taut muscles. "Have it your way, tough guy," she said.
Flint bristled at the term. That was Jaye's pet name for him, and it somehow seemed so wrong to hear Suarez calling him that.
"Get moving," he said through clenched teeth.