David Baldacci: The Forgotten

It had been neatly done, Puller thought.

There were six shooters.

Puller looked around for the vehicles they had come in, but saw none.

Then he thought the shooters were actually Lampert’s bodyguards.

A second later he noted the lumps of flesh lying around the ground.

They were the bodyguards.

This was a new force to be reckoned with.

And they hadn’t come by car.

Puller considered deliberately the tactical situation.

There were three of them, six on the other side.

In his mind the other side was woefully undermanned. They should have sent more guys.

Puller counted to three, rolled out, and opened fire with the MP5. It was a feint only. Again, he was aiming at nothing. He was drawing attention. A moment later he drew counterfire. They were totally focused on him.

Carson’s weapon fired twice. One of the shooters went down. Another clutched at his arm and dropped his weapon. Good as out of the fight.

Two down, four to go.

And that was before Mecho struck from the rear.

The two shooters nearest to the big man went down a second later. One with a bullet to the medulla. The other with a knife strike to the heart.

Even with a wounded arm Mecho had more than enough strength to wield a killing blow with the blade.

Four down, two to go.

The two remaining shooters shifted their attention to Mecho.

Now it was Puller’s turn.

He did a zigzag run to the left and then shot back to the right.

He lined up his targets and squeezed off two shots from his Mu.

Head shots both.

Kill shots both.

Six down. Zero to go.

But then Puller’s mind went back to the hotel room at the Sierra.

In a millisecond his brain worked through the facts.

Six shooters against four. You had to take out Lampert’s guards. You had to allow for possible losses in that confrontation even with a surprise attack. All the lumps of flesh were dressed in the uniforms of Lampert’s security detail. So no losses there. Six was their full strength.

They had to assume that Puller and company might be here. That meant they would be seriously outgunned when combined with Lampert’s detail.

Puller had to assume that the shooters were from Rojas. And Stiven Rojas was a smart guy. Smart guys did not send underwhelming force.

The millisecond over, Puller reacted.

“Second wave coming,” he called out.

Carson and Mecho instantly moved to cover and took up new firing positions.

Puller slid back and over to Landry. She looked up at him pleadingly. “For Chrissakes, Puller, take the cuffs off and give me a gun. I’ll help fight.”

Puller reloaded and looked over at her. “Don’t think so, Landry. You already tried to kill me once. I’m not into second chances.”

“I’m defenseless here.”

“Nah, you’ve got me. And I’ve got every incentive to keep you alive.”

“What incentive?” she snapped.

He leaned close as he slapped a fresh clip in his MP5. He whispered in her ear, “To make sure you spend the rest of your life in prison.” He set the MP5 on full auto.

“Puller, please,” she sobbed.

He ignored her.

The second wave was about to hit the shore.

And it was going to hit a lot harder than Tropical Storm Danielle had.

But then Puller had an ace up his sleeve. At least he hoped he did.

Otherwise, they were dead.

The second wave was far more sophisticated than the first.

That made Puller think that the first wave was just a feint. It had cost them Diaz, reducing their force by twenty-five percent. Losing six guys for that was smart if you had a lot more guys to throw into the battle.

Turns out they did.

Twenty by Puller’s quick count. They moved in hard clusters of four each. They wore body armor and had major firepower, far more than Puller’s MP5. They took up tactical positions that were in the form of a classically designed pincers maneuver.

Puller looked at Carson and she looked back at him.

They both recognized the tactic and they both clearly understood the inevitable outcome it would produce.

Puller lifted his MP5. There was an old Army mentality that his father had taught him.

There is absolutely no shame in going down fighting.

He fired his full thirty-round clip in a sweep at the two clusters in front of him. Two of the men dropped and were not going to rejoin the fight.

Puller reloaded.

He had used thirty rounds to kill two. There were eighteen foes left. He clearly didn’t have enough ammo to kill them all.

They were a smart, well-trained unit, because they deployed their force on one target and brought to bear overwhelming fire on that target.

The car Puller was taking cover behind was riddled and a number of the rounds passed right through the thin metal and nearly took Puller’s limbs off. He had no choice but to retreat.

Carson laid down fire to allow him to do this and thus she became the next focal point of the enemy force.

Her position was obliterated by the concentrated firepower. She was not so lucky in her retreat. She went down with wounds to both her leg and arm.

Puller did not rush to her side, because that would have kept the enemy guns on her. He fired back from his new position and the counterfire once more swiveled to him.

He ran farther away from Carson’s position, dodging gunfire by running unpredictably. After doing it for years in the Middle East the muscle memory was well established in his limbs. He almost seemed to know where the aim of his opponents was going.

The men confronting him now should have mapped out fire grids and placed rounds in every conceivable path Puller could choose. Then he would be dead.

But they didn’t and he wasn’t.

He made it to safety before turning and firing back with his MP5.

It was only he and Mecho left now. Two against nearly twenty.

But that was about to change.

Puller’s cell phone vibrated. He pulled it out, glanced at the screen.

He thumbed a one-word response.

Now.

General Julie Carson’s orders were about to be executed.

All heads turned as though connected by string to the sounds coming from the north of them.

The MH-60L DAP was basically a modified Black Hawk chopper with major firepower added, including Hellfire antitank missiles, rockets, and 7.62 miniguns. Operated by the Army’s 160th Special Ops Aviation Regiment, nicknamed the “Night Stalkers,” it was a versatile battle platform. Fortunately for Puller, there had been one stationed at Eglin for a joint Army-Air Force exercise. It thundered over the wall and into the Lampert estate. Its 30 mm cannon zeroed in and then lined up on the clusters of men crouched with their weapons waiting to overrun a vastly smaller opponent.

Some of the men pointed their guns at the chopper. When two of them stupidly fired at the aircraft, Puller thought to himself, Wrong move.

He lay flat on the ground, his hands over his ears.

The 30 mm cannon opened up. It could lay down compact fields of fire at over six hundred rounds per minute. It created what the Army termed a nonsurvivable event. In less than ten seconds nearly twenty mostly obliterated men lay on the ground.

The chopper landed and Puller raced to it after laying his MP5 down. The last thing he wanted was a 30 mm cannon pointed at him.

The door of the chopper slid open.

“We need a medic,” shouted Puller over the whine of the blades. “Got a one-star with gunshot wounds.”

After grabbing bags of equipment a doctor and a medic jumped off the chopper and followed Puller over to where Carson lay.

Her face was white but she was conscious.

Puller knelt down next to her as the doc and medic prepared their equipment. He gripped Carson’s hand as they hooked up bags of blood and saline and stuck IV lines into her.