John Gilstrap - Hostage Zero

Charlie rolled his head to make eye contact, his expression one of mild amusement. “Does this really look like a dormitory to you? This is a concentration camp. Siberia without the air-conditioning. Around here, you can fight every day or live every day. The fuck do I care how close to the shit can I sleep? This whole fucking place smells the same. Up there, back here, what difference does it make? Its not worth getting your nose broke or balls beat. It’s just not.” He shifted his gaze back to the ceiling, then closed his eyes. “Now go to sleep.”

Outside, in the distance, an engine fired up, and a moment later, bright light flared through the windows, turning the inside of the hut to day and casting sharp shadows on the walls and ceiling. Almost as one, the boys in the hut all sat up and whispered their concerns to each other.

“Well, that’s different,” Charlie said, sitting up. “People really coming to get you?” he asked.

Evan screwed up his face and shook his head. “I wish. Anybody wants to, I’m happy to come along.”

Charlie chuckled, then lay back down, placing his forearm over his eyes.

Evan followed suit, but was so many miles away from falling to sleep that he was already worried about how long the night was going to be.

After about five minutes, as the kids at the far end began to fill the room with the sounds of sleep, Charlie whispered, “You awake?”

“Oh my God, yes.”

“I want you to do me a favor. If some away team does beam down here for you, take me back to the mother ship with you, okay?”

Sometimes, it’s the stupidest images that give you the giggles.

Jonathan’s earpiece crackled, “They’re moving again. Away from you.”

Venice had been tracking the movements of the two men who had left the compound with guns, and had been fortunate enough in two four-minute cycles of pictures to catch them in the act of setting a booby trap on the trail they were walking. Because of the jungle cover, she wasn’t able to determine what munitions they were using, but the fact that it took them so long told Jonathan that it was something pretty rudimentary. By zooming in closely to the operation and using a stylus on her computer screen back in Fisherman’s Cove, she’d been able to mark the location of the trap to within a fraction of one second of latitude and longitude, and she’d already uploaded that location to the GPS devices Jonathan and his team were carrying.

It only made sense that the team would travel to the farthest point to set the first trap and then work backward. Reversing the order would be a terrific way to get snared by your own genius.

“Scorpion, I show you only about a hundred and fifty yards from the location of the trap,” Venice said.

Jonathan keyed his mike. “Keep focused on the bad guys, Mom. I’ve got the coordinates of the trap here. We’ll find it. I want to make sure that we find the second one if they set it.”

“I’m liking my decision to come along less and less every minute,” Harvey grumped. “Booby traps. Jesus.”

Jonathan admired Boxers for just letting it go. It was safe to say that the Big Guy didn’t like strangers in general-make that people in general-and he hated having tagalongs on missions. For him to keep his mouth shut on a setup like Harvey just offered took enormous self control.

It took all of five minutes for them to close the distance and arrive at the site of the first trap. When the GPS said that they were ten yards away, Jonathan brought the team to a halt and gathered them around, combining them into an unacceptably compact target, but judging the risk to be low at this point.

Besides, given the darkness of the night, they’d have been invisible to anyone more than just a few feet away.

They spoke in whispers. “Okay,” Jonathan said, “the trap they set is about ten yards up the trail. Harvey, go find it.”

“ What? ” His tone was one of abject horror.

Jonathan laughed. “I’m kidding,” he said.

Harvey brought a hand to his chest. “Holy shit.”

Jonathan turned serious again. “From here on out, we’re prepared for battle. I want weapons charged and safeties off, which means special attention to trigger discipline. Roger that?”

Harvey made a show of thumbing the safety switch on his MP5 to three-round burst. Jonathan and Boxers had both been in fire mode since they’d slung their weapons. Trigger discipline meant that you kept your finger away from the damn thing until it was time to shoot. The American public would be horrified to know the number of their sons and daughters who had been killed in various wars by some inattentive yahoo who tickled his weapon’s trigger at the wrong time.

Jonathan continued, “I’m going to go on white light to find this trap, so keep your eyes averted. Box, I want you for close cover. Harvey, stay back here and turn your back to me. One of us needs continued good night vision. We good?”

“Good as gold,” Boxers said.

“Oo-rah,” Harvey grunted.

Jonathan smiled. Oo-rah was the Marine Corps version of the Army’s hoo-ah (Marines always had to be different), and it meant that Harvey’s Inner Marine was being reborn.

Snapping his NVGs out of the way, Jonathan brought his muzzle-mounted flashlight to life and pointed it at the ground at a spot three feet in front of him. He bent low at the waist to a half-squat and advanced cautiously, scanning the light from one edge of the path to the other to search for any signs of a trip wire or other triggering device. Next to him, his hips pressed to Jonathan’s ribs, Boxers advanced in lockstep with him, his rifle trained on the trail up ahead, trusting Jonathan to find any hazards they might step on. The two men had depended on each other so completely and so successfully over so many years and through so many battles that it seemed sometimes as if they knew each other’s thoughts.

They advanced with agonizing slowness-the kind of advance that made younger soldiers impatient and frequently cost them their lives. A minute or so into it, Jonathan stopped and consulted his GPS, which said they should be within a foot or two of whatever they were looking for.

Where was it? What was it? He took another few tiny steps forward, then stopped and consulted his GPS again. “Okay, Box,” he said, “don’t move anymore, okay?”

The Big Guy froze. “Am I in danger?” he asked. He never stopped scanning for potential targets.

“I don’t know. This is definitely the spot that Venice marked, but I’m not seeing anything. I was expecting a trip wire. A grenade or something. I’m not seeing anything.”

“What about a mine?” Boxers asked.

Wow, Jonathan thought. Could these guys be that sophisticated? He pulled the light from its muzzle mount and stooped to his haunches, scanning the dirt of the path for any signs of disturbance. “I don’t suppose you have a ground-penetrating radar on you,” he quipped.

“I left it in my other pants.”

The hairs on Jonathan’s arms and the back of his neck felt electrified as he lowered himself to his knees and leaned to within a few inches of the dirt. “They’re damn good,” he mumbled. He saw nothing. Leaning closer to the ground, he moved the light to the side, hoping that the different angle might give him a different perspective.

He was about to abandon the effort and move on when he saw the brush marks. They were just light track marks in the dirt-an obvious effort to even out the ground-too regular in their appearance to be a natural occurrence. There was only one reason Jonathan could think of for someone to brush over an area like that, and it was to conceal a hole that had been dug for a mine. (If anything else had been concealed, the burier would have just used his foot-something a mine installer would be foolish to try.)