“They’re shooting the van,” he said. Before Valerie could speak, he continued, “Don’t worry. The vans have the same armor as John’s suit, otherwise we’d be dead by now. We’re fine for a few minutes, but enough rounds can degrade the armor and then we’re in trouble”
She nodded. “What do we do?”
“We have no intelligence,” he said. “No way of knowing how many are out there.” He opened John’s Battlesuit case and withdrew the VISOR, staring at the flat black helmet. “I’m going out. You stay here. Deion would never forgive me if I got you killed.”
“I can protect myself,” she said fiercely. “Don’t worry about me.”
He smiled. She’s a fighter. He handed her an HK416 and a stack of magazines. “When I run to the treeline, I want heavy suppressing fire. Full auto.”
She nodded, grabbed the HK and jammed in a magazine before cycling the bolt and chambering the first round.
He popped the release on the VISOR’s helmet and it clam-shelled open. He placed it on his head and was immediately plunged into darkness. He had a moment of claustrophobia before the electronics blazed to life.
A female voice spoke softly in his ear. “Unknown user.”
“Eric Wise. Activate secondary profile.”
“Voice analysis confirmed,” the voice said.
He had trained for such a possibility, using one of the spare VISOR’s to create a backup profile tuned to his thought patterns in case John was incapacitated.
He lacked John’s enhanced musculature and carbon-graphene sheathed skeleton. He had no Implant to give him an adrenaline fueled edge or painkillers to allow him to finish his mission.
What he did have was years of training and the desire to save his team.
He took an HK416 and a nylon belt full of magazines, strapping the belt across his chest. He turned to Valerie, amazed as always by the VISOR. Her skin practically glowed in the LCD display. “Ready?”
She nodded confidently. “I was born ready.”
John peeked around the tree, looking for signs of the enemy. Gunshots echoed through the trees and he tried to guess how many fighters were hidden among them. He came up with a number close to a dozen. “Deion, I’m holed up on the west side of the clearing, but I can’t make it to your position.”
“We’re working our way back to the van,” Deion replied.
“Negative. Hold your position,” Eric said. “I’ll meet up with you.”
“What?” Deion asked. “What about Val?”
There was the sound of fully-automatic gunfire on the other end of the earpiece before Eric responded. “She’s safe.”
John breathed a sigh of relief. Even though Valerie had watched him with apprehension and dread, he still liked her. He took another peek around the thick fir as enemy gunfire stitched across the front of the tree. “I’m pinned down.”
“Roger that,” Eric said, his voice hoarse. “I’m coming from the east.” There was a long pause. “I count four enemy on the east side of the clearing. They don’t see me.”
John heard a crack-cracking from across the clearing.
“Two enemy to the east,” Eric said, “and now they know I’m here.”
John ducked around the tree and fired off several rounds before he heard another crack-crack.
“Still two enemy on the east and they’re on the move, heading south,” Eric said.
“I’m flanking,” Mark said. “I’ll be on your six.”
“Deion, take Nancy and Taylor and meet up with John on the west,” Eric ordered.
“On our way,” Deion said. “There’s two men between us. I finally have eyes on them.”
“I’m heading south to meet you,” John said. He ran, using the trees for cover. The incoming gunfire had thinned and he estimated there were only one or two men left to the north. He weaved between a pair of trees and saw the brown camouflaged back of a man twenty yards away, facing south, peppering Deion’s position with gunfire.
He carefully aimed and put two bullets in the man’s back and was rewarded when the man collapsed onto the soft forest floor.
He saw muzzle flash to his right and dove to the ground, rolling up next to a rock as the man’s partner unleashed heavy fire at his position. “There’s one to my three,” he said.
“We see him,” Deion said. There was the sound of multiple rifles to the south, a steady crack-crack-cracking that suddenly went silent. “He’s down.”
From the east, they heard the sound of rifles firing and then Eric spoke. “Enemy clear to the east.”
John stood and saw Deion and the rest of the team approaching, running in a half-crouch, using the trees for cover. There was still gunfire to the south, and he assumed someone was still firing at the vans, but the north had gone silent.
He ran to meet Deion, who appeared angry. Nancy appeared even angrier. Taylor took cover behind a tree and scanned to the north, then said, “Steeljaw, we have no enemy to the north. Copy?”
“I see one heat signature. He’s one hundred yards away and moving,” Eric said.
Heat signature? It dawned on him that Eric was using the VISOR, and for some reason he felt a stab of jealousy. The VISOR was part of the StrikeForce tech and he was the StrikeForce tech.
“You have a plan?” Deion asked.
“Valerie is safe for the moment. The VISOR’s acoustic modeling says there’s two distinct rifles to the south. We head north, eliminate that threat, then circle—”
There was a tremendous whump and the ground shook like an earthquake.
He turned to Taylor, who looked toward the clearing. The concrete entrance to the underground lab had shifted and there was a crack on the side running from the ground to the roof.
“There went the lab,” Nancy said with disgust. “This site’s been burned.”
Eric felt the ground tremble and guessed instantly what happened. He turned to Mark who was looking at him with widened eyes.
“They blew the site,” Mark said, shaking his head.
Damn.
The sound of gunfire faded to the south. “They’re pulling back,” he said. “Everyone back to the van.”
Mark nodded and headed south, careful for enemy movement. Eric ran to the body of the first man he’d killed. The man was on his stomach, faced pressed into the soft pine needles. He rolled the man over and brushed the debris from his face. The man had a large crooked nose and boxy ears, with a white scar that sliced across his chin. Eric concentrated and activated the VISOR’s internal camera. “Clark?”
“Yes,” Sergeant Clark said half a world away.
“Analyze that photo.”
There was a long pause. “Karen’s on it,” Clark said.
He ran to the next body and repeated the procedure, taking another high-quality photo. “This one, too.”
There was a pause as the photo uploaded. “Got it,” Clark said.
Eric concentrated and the thermal and infrared overlay appeared. He swept left and right and waited for the VISOR’s computer to read the imagery.
There were no heat signatures nearby.
He left the woods and ran through the clearing until he reached the concrete box. The rusted metal door was ajar and smoke billowed from around the edges. He wanted to yank the door open but caution got the better of him. He had no idea what pathogens — if any — were in the underground bunker, and he had no idea whether they were now airborne.
He hesitated. If there was anything below that could help find Liu Kong or Huang Lei, he would regret leaving. On the other hand, it wouldn’t do the OTM any good if he died before he made it back to the surface.
He looked over the door and the thermal vision showed it solid red. He placed his palm on the door, felt a scalding heat, and yanked it back before his skin could blister.