ROBIE PARKED THE SCOOTER outside the same abandoned apartment building where he had taken Decker and Jamison to meet Blue Man. His boss wasn’t here, but Robie had secure communications inside the building to contact him. And Robie had also made this derelict place his home base for now.
The sound reached his ears a few seconds before it would have been picked up by anyone not as well trained as he was.
Seconds of warning meant he got to live another day.
Maybe.
He immediately flitted for cover near the building’s front doors and pulled his pistol. There were at least five men that he could see. Where they had come from he couldn’t tell. Most likely they had already been here before he arrived. Which meant his hiding place had been compromised.
In the moonlight he could see that they wore light armor and carried automatic, combat-grade weaponry. They were advancing in a diamond-shaped attack pattern. There was no way he could fire at one without revealing his location. And his cover position could not withstand concentrated counterfire.
This dilemma presented a clear tactical first step. Since his current position was indefensible, he moved. He was through the front doors and up the stairs before any of them could gain a line of sight on him to fire. Any building that Will Robie had ever occupied had been thoroughly researched by him beforehand, and this one was no exception.
He turned left and sprinted down the hall that bisected the main floor. He reached the rear doors, knelt, and peered out. Tac lights and gun muzzles were coming his way. They were smart enough to have cut off his rear exit. This op had involved some planning. He heard the front doors opening. Robie hit the stairwell, running up three flights of stairs, popped through the door, and hustled down the hall to the last room on the left.
He unlocked the door and then bolted it behind him. He raced to the window even as he heard the reverberations of multiple feet pounding up the stairs. He never thought about calling anyone for help because there really wasn’t anyone to call—and even if there were, they would never get here in time. Robie had to rely on himself, which was nothing new for him.
He opened the window and pulled out a coil of rope that he had earlier placed behind a piece of furniture. There was also a small duffel with some things that might prove helpful, along with his comm equipment. He slung the duffel over his shoulder and tied the rope to the railing that ran around the small balcony attached to the side of the building. He looked down and now saw no tac lights or other signs of someone being down there. They must have entered the building already.
In the distance he saw the blinking lights of an aircraft as it zipped across the clear sky. The flare lights of the oil fields burned far away, looking like clusters of shiny objects.
He slipped over the side of the balcony and, using his legs around the rope as stabilizers, he methodically made his way down. As soon as his feet touched dirt, he took out his weapon, screwed a suppressor can onto the muzzle, knelt down, took aim, and shot the man who had just come around the corner. The fellow dropped silently to the ground, but the sound of the suppressed round seemed to boom across the flat, dark land like cannon fire.
What was up was now coming down, as from inside the building Robie heard the sounds of feet charging down to the first floor. He sprinted to his left even as gunfire rained down on him from above. They also had the high ground now, which was the best ground to possess. Fired rounds careened off the stucco hide of the building, and shrapnel flew off like little whirlwinds of twisted metal. Robie felt one slice into his arm, but he never slowed until he reached the man he’d killed. In one smooth motion he jerked the man up and used him as a shield while he grabbed the loaded sub gun out of his hands along with three spare thirty-round mags from ammo sleeves in his pants. As rounds slammed into the dead man, Robie waited for a pause in the firing, then dropped the body and sprinted around the corner of the building.
Reaching the front, Robie threw himself forward in a prone position and opened fire right as the group of closely massed men erupted from the front entrance.
Because of the body armor they wore, he employed only head shots, and in short order had taken out all five who had burst into his range. Those not instantly dead moaned, cried, and cursed as Robie rose and sprinted toward his scooter.
He heard another sound that caused him to change direction and then dive down, right as the bullets zipped over him. He rolled right, took aim, and strafed the field in front of him with gunfire. This would give him a few precious seconds to assess the new threat.
It was coming from two directions, ninety and two-seventy on the compass.
Looked to be six men in each group, armed and armored.
Robie felt flattered they had sent basically a platoon to take him out.
He fired off the rest of his mag to keep his enemy at bay for another few seconds, and then slammed in his next-to-last sleeve of ammo.
His scooter was out of the question now. His adversaries owned that ground.
He couldn’t run for it. They would cut him down in a matter of seconds. No help was coming, he was outnumbered ten to one, and he had two thirty-round mags and seven additional shots in his pistol. They probably had thousands of rounds to expend on him. So it was just a war of attrition now with only one clear outcome.
He thought of pulling out his phone and calling Decker, if for no other reason than to tell him what was happening and to take charge of his body. But he decided against that. That was a defeatist attitude, and that was not really in Robie’s DNA.
He looked left and then right, searching for options as the group of men in front of him slowly moved forward. Just to show he wasn’t to be toyed with, he focused on one man, leading the pack on the right. He watched the guy through the scope on his pistol and gauged his diversionary movements for about ten seconds. He discerned the pattern and took aim with his pistol, and when the man stepped to his right, it was the last step of his life.
As the man fell dead, Robie immediately rolled to his left and kept going as rounds poured into the location he had just occupied, his shot having given it away.
Then the others ceased firing and hunkered down. Robie could imagine them using their comm packs to assess the situation and arrive at a solution to the little problem represented by him.
Robie didn’t wait to confront the result of this discussion. He rolled to his left and kept rolling until he reached a planting bed that was full of dying flowers and small bushes. Tac lights were flying all over the ground as they searched for him from a safe distance, because there were limits to the accurate range of the sub gun. It was designed to be devastating in close-quarter battle, but it was for shit at long range.
He debated whether to use the tac beams as a convenient target to take out one or two of them. But doing so would only lead to overwhelming firepower directed at him. And he couldn’t keep rolling out of danger. They would figure that out and send fields of fire in every direction he could possibly take. Then it became a numbers game, and one round would eventually find him.
He assessed the situation again. It was a shitshow, to be sure. But Robie had some more cards to play.
He opened the duffel and took out two metal fist-sized canisters and a pair of headphones with a built-in battery. He put on the headphones and powered them up. He punched an engagement switch on each of the metal canisters, tossed one and then the other.
They hit the dirt about two feet from his adversaries.
The blinding flash of light was followed by an avalanche of sound, and, far more lethally, sheets of packed shrapnel traveling at speeds no person could dodge.
Two seconds later, Robie got up and fired through the smoke, emptying his mag. Then he ran to his left toward the road using an evasive zigzag movement.
He heard shots fired in his direction, but none hit their target.
When he looked back, the smoke had cleared, and he was dismayed to see that six men were barreling toward him. They must have anticipated his tactic and had kept low enough to let the shrapnel sail harmlessly over them. He turned and fired his last mag at them. Two went down, but the other four returned fire and kept charging.
Okay, the shitshow was turning into maybe his last stand.
He dropped the empty sub gun, pulled his pistol, knelt down, and took aim. He might very well get two of them before the other two got him. At this precise moment in time that might be as near to perfection as was possible.
He sighted through the scope on his Picatinny rail, as they were no doubt doing with him. He prepared himself mentally for the impact of the rounds that would end his life.
Okay, Robie, it’s been a good run, but all good runs have to come to an end.
The next instant one man dropped, then a second.
Then a third. They were all head shots, and bits of skull, flesh, and eruptions of blood covered the ground around the men as they went down.
The shots were so rapid and so precise that they almost seemed to blend together into one round fired.
The thing was, Robie had not pulled the trigger on his weapon.
As the last man stopped and gazed around, wondering where the hell the shots were coming from, the next round pierced his skull and blew out the back of his head.
He fell to the North Dakota soil without any last words.
Robie rose from the ground and looked around, his pistol at the ready. Just because someone had taken out his enemies didn’t mean they were necessarily his ally.
He whirled when he heard the sounds of methodical footsteps coming across the road. He pointed his gun at the interloper.
When the person came close enough for him to see, Robie was stunned for one of the very few times in his life. He lowered his weapon.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
Dressed all in black, Jessica Reel lowered her customized sniper rifle with her favorite scope attached. She looked him up and down, then surveyed the field of carnage behind them.
Gazing back at him she said, “What else? Saving your ass.”
I WANT TO KNOW what the hell is going on,” exclaimed Joe Kelly.
It was the next day, and he was standing next to Decker and Jamison, as they surveyed the grounds in front of the abandoned apartment building. It was strewn with dead bodies with sheets over them. Hundreds of yellow markers, denoting found shell casings and bullets, covered the ground.
“Looks like quite a gun battle went on,” observed Decker slowly.
“That I can see,” barked Kelly. “What I want to know is why.”
“How should we know?” replied Decker calmly.
“Nothing like this ever happened before you guys showed up,” replied Kelly testily.
“Doesn’t mean it’s cause and effect,” pointed out Decker.
“Have you identified any of the bodies?” asked Jamison.
“None have ID or any other traceable items. And they don’t look American to me, at least most of them don’t.”
Decker glanced at Jamison and said to Kelly, “Do you have photos of the dead?”
“Yeah, why?”
“I’d like to see them. Something might pop.”
Kelly looked at him warily and then said, “I’ll get them. Don’t go away.”
As soon as he moved off, Jamison said, “This is the building where Robie brought us to meet his boss.”
“I’m well aware of that.”
“Do you think Robie—?”
“That’s why I want to see the photos.”
Jamison gazed around. “It looks like a war zone.”
Decker nodded. “Kelly and his team have searched the building and it’s empty, but there are signs out back of another gunfight and a rope dangling from a balcony.”
“Have you tried to call Robie on that phone he left you?”
“To tell the truth, I’m afraid to try.”
“You’ll know soon enough. Here comes Kelly.”
Kelly rejoined them and handed over an iPad on which were loaded photos of all the dead men. It took about a minute to go through them. Decker and Jamison exchanged a relieved glance when they saw that Robie was not among the pictures.
“I don’t recognize any of these guys, but like you said, most of them seem foreign. Eastern Europe, the Middle East. A couple of Asians.”
Kelly took the iPad back. “It’s a hodgepodge all right.”
“Have you spoken with Mark Sumter?” asked Decker.
“Sumter, why?”
“Well, he heads up the military presence here. This might be something the Pentagon wants to know about.”
“Okay. But it’s not like the people under Sumter came here and had a pitched battle and left all these dead guys.”
“Well, you won’t know for sure till you ask him,” retorted Decker. “The government likes its secrets.”
Kelly shook his head. “It’ll take us weeks to process this scene. You think the Bureau will send up more agents now?”
“Maybe,” said Decker. “If we can show there’s a terrorist angle to this.”
“Terrorists!” exclaimed Kelly. “What would they be doing in North Dakota?”
“Well, that’s our job to figure out.”
They left Kelly and walked back to their SUV.
“You going to call Robie? I mean, he has to be involved in this.”
“The probabilities lie there.”
“But do you think he killed all those men? I mean, that seems impossible.”
“Nothing about that guy seems impossible to me.”
As they reached their vehicle Decker’s phone buzzed.
“It’s Harper Brown,” he said, checking the screen.
“Hopefully, she has some news for us.”
Decker answered the phone and Harper Brown, their friend at the DIA, said, “What the hell are you mixed up in out there, Decker?”
“I was hoping you could tell me. And how’s Melvin?”
Melvin Mars was one of Decker’s best friends. A former college football star convicted of murder and sentenced to death in Texas, Decker had proved his innocence. Mars and Brown were now dating.
“He’s great. He sends his best and told me to tell you that if you need him as a bodyguard again, don’t hesitate to call.”
“I don’t think I want him anywhere near this place. Besides, I think I have a pretty good bodyguard already.”
“Don’t let Alex hear you call her a bodyguard.”
“I wasn’t talking about her. So what do you have for us?”
“I’m thinking time is of the essence?”
“Your thinking is spot-on.”
“First things first, anyone I could find with firsthand knowledge of the Douglas S. George Defense Complex provided nothing helpful. It’s been under Air Force control since the Korean War era when it was built.”
“Has it been a radar array looking for missiles all that time?”
Strangely, she didn’t answer right away. “Well, it’s hard to tell. From what I could find out, it didn’t come online as an eye in the sky until the late sixties, well into the Cold War.”
“The Korean War was in the early fifties. What was it used for back then?”
“I don’t know. I couldn’t find out.”
“How is that possible? Don’t you have every security clearance they give out?”
“I thought I did, until I started asking questions about the place, particularly what it was doing back in the fifties. There I ran into a stone wall.”
“I understand there’s another eye in the sky around here.”
“That’s the other funny thing. The Stanley R. Mickelsen Safeguard Complex is on the eastern side of the state and is part of the Twenty-First Space Wing, and designated Cavalier Air Force Station. It’s near Grand Forks, North Dakota, and was deactivated in 1976, but it has a PARCS radar array and keeps watch out for incoming missiles and also tracks objects in space.”
“Which was how the commanding officer at the facility here described what they do. A pair of eyes in North Dakota? Isn’t that a bit of overkill, especially considering the Cold War is long dead?”
“You would think, Decker, you would think.” She paused. “What do you believe is going on up there?”
“I think the answer to that would scare the crap out of even somebody like you.”