He crouch-walked back to the rest of the group, who were resting on the hillside near a spring, a welcome sight after hours of marching through the wilderness. Thankfully, they had passed by a cattle farm on their way, and one dead steer later, Cal was near one hundred percent. That brought back memories of Area 51 barbecues…. They hadn’t eaten since the night before, and it wasn’t likely they’d eat again until well after the upcoming engagement.
“Two vehicles. I count at least eight uniforms, guessing probably close to twenty total, including a couple who were just sent out of the clearing,” Frank whispered to the group, who were taking turns gulping water from the trickling spring. “At least two in civvies. What are you getting, Maggie?”
“Just one, passing by on the roads on either side of us,” she replied glumly. “Someone angry, anxious — and looking for something, but at those speeds, I don’t know how they would. And… wait.” Maggie cocked her head a moment, then ducked down and whispered, “We have company.”
Frank heard the snapping of twigs below the ridge. He held up his hand for quiet and pulled his gun. Crouching forward, he peered off the side of the ridge…
… and saw four soldiers heading up a deer trail toward them.
Looking back, Frank held up four fingers, then pointed at Maggie and Ellis — the two best shots after him. Waving them forward, he turned his attention back to the patrol below. They hadn’t heard anything.
Frank carefully aimed his weapon. “They’re wearing helmets and vests. Aim for the necks. At this angle, it’ll go through the body.” Frank turned to the others and pointed to his own neck, then at the guards. Ellis and Maggie nodded. It would have to do.
Frank took a moment to lock eyes with Cal, who looked grim and saddened. He wanted to say something to him — he’d coached many a greenhorn just before their first firefight — but the soldiers were too close. Frank simply nodded at him and turned back to the task at hand.
Collins coached Frank through the prep — positioning his arms, breathing, aiming. And then he fired.
One of the men dropped immediately. He quickly shifted to another target, who conveniently looked up just in time for Frank to place a bullet between the eyes, at the same time that Maggie and Ellis squeezed off their shots. The two others went down — but one rolled down the hillside, shouting in Czech the entire way. “Jsou zde! Jsou tady! Jsem zraněný!”
They’re over here! Man down!
“Move,” Frank hissed. He took the time to take one more shot, silencing the shouting man permanently.
Everyone was on their feet, and Frank quickly made his way down off the ridge. They would circle around and try to come at them from the road. If possible, they’d commandeer a vehicle and race for the border. If not, well… it would get ugly fast. As planned, they kept Cal and Yushchenko in the middle — the Ukrainian because he remained the objective, and Cal because, frankly, Frank knew Cal wouldn’t shoot anyone. However, he was a good last line of defense, because he could drop people with a touch without killing them. Best to play to people’s strengths.
Frank rushed ahead as quietly as possible, planting his feet on rock and avoiding brush as best he could. He stopped suddenly as he heard another twig crack, whirling around with his gun before him. There — thirty yards off, looking away — was another soldier. A single shot felled him. There were no shouts. A straggler.
For now.
“Get to the—”
The voices went silent.
Frank whirled around, gun still raised, looking. There was nothing but tall trees and dappled sun. In the far distance, he could hear soldiers in combat gear trying to move quietly and failing — the Czechs and Russians would be after them. And if they had Variants, they’d be right there with ’em — if they weren’t already on top of his position.
And he’d just lost his Enhancement. Shit.
Ellis raced down the hillside, one hand around Yushchenko’s arm as the mud and rock threatened to send them both over the edge and into a dense copse of trees — trees probably teeming with Reds.
“You tell me right here, right now, what the hell else we could be up against, old man,” Ellis growled quietly as they rushed down the trail. “You tell me right now before I shoot you in the goddamn head.”
And the funny thing was, Ellis meant it. Screw orders, screw MAJESTIC-12, screw it all. His job here wasn’t to find out what the Russkies knew about Variants, or get this goddamn Red over the border. His job was to make it home alive to see his wife and kids, and he’d be damned if some intelligence operation was gonna get in the way of all that.
Yushchenko, perhaps, sensed some of that. “If there are others, they will not be able to use their Enhancements while the negative field is active,” the colonel said as he tried not to slip and fall, prompting Ellis to help him remain upright despite his better judgment. “It is when you feel your power returning that you should be worried.”
“I’m already goddamn worried,” Ellis retorted. “Who else could be out there? Your guys, your Variants.”
Yushchenko wrenched his arm free from Ellis’s grip but kept walking. “That was not part of the agreement.”
Ellis stepped in front of the colonel and put his pistol to the man’s forehead. “You’re gonna tell me, comrade, or so help me, I’ll kill you. And then what happens to your precious family, huh? Because I tell you what, I care a lot more about seeing my family than yours right about now.”
Yushchenko looked wide-eyed, then looked off over Ellis’s right shoulder. Ellis turned to find Cal, standing there, looking on, impassive. “Reason with him,” Yushchenko said, half-pleading, half-ordering.
Cal looked from the Russian to Ellis and back again. “Colonel, we ain’t gonna get out of this unless we know what we’re up against. So, maybe Mr. Longstreet puts that gun down, and you tell us what they got down there.”
Before Yushchenko could answer, Maggie interrupted from behind. “I’m back up. We’re not being blocked.”
And then Ellis’s pistol disappeared from his hand.
He turned to see a young man, no more than seventeen, smiling right next to him, holding his gun right up against Ellis’s chest. “We’re already here,” he said in Russian-accented English.
Then he fired, and Ellis looked down to see blood seeping from his abdomen. His body blossomed into exquisite, unrelenting, all-encompassing pain. It was the last thing he remembered.
Cal had never seen a man shot before. There was a flash of crimson from behind Ellis’s back, blood spattering onto Maggie’s face as she rushed forward. Cal saw the deep red spot expand across Ellis’s white shirt as he sank to his knees, a grimace of agony and… something else… on Ellis’s face. Fear.
The Russian teenager who’d literally come out of nowhere grabbed Yushchenko’s arm just as Cal ran toward him. Cal leapt forward to tackle him, grabbing him in a bear hug, determined not to let him escape — and they both landed in a thicket of trees that sure as heck wasn’t anywhere near where he’d been a second ago.
Cal heard the click of a gun and instinctively used his left arm in a sweep. The shot missed his ear by less than an inch. Cal grabbed the wrist and began to drain the boy.
“Yob tvoyu mat!” the Russian spat as he struggled. But the struggling grew weaker as the boy aged, rapidly crossing though middle age and into his dotage in three seconds, while Cal felt himself get younger and stronger once more.