Steve Abbott: Devil's Gambit

Sean keyed his throat mike. “Hunter, we’re at the transport. There’s too much ground-fire and we’ve got no way to fix its location. We’re going to try and move the transport out of here and get to some cover, where the team can work on the devices.”

“Better make it fast,” Hunter growled back in Sean’s ear. “These boys are going to call in backup any minute now and I want to be long gone when the rest of the North Korean army shows up.”

Sean gripped his M-4 and snuck a look round the front tire of the truck. “Roger that.” Then to Bill, “You see anything?”

“Too much smoke.”

“Cover me.” Sean slid round the front tire, pulled himself up the driver’s side of the cab and ripped open the door. It took two grisly tugs to free the driver’s near-headless body from its grip of the steering wheel. With each pull, Sean was conscious of a burning between his shoulder blades. The expectant reach for a bullet that never came. The body tumbled out past Sean and landed with a wet thud on the cracked asphalt beside the truck. Sean wiped the bigger chunks of human debris off the seat with his right arm and hopped into the driver’s seat.

The engine caught, first time. Thank Christ. “Come on Bill. Quit screwing around. Harris thumped up the passenger side. He yanked open the passenger door and used it for a shield as Sean pushed the truck into second gear towards the uncertain safety of the dock warehouses. Black toxic smoke drifted across their path, obscuring the dock for seconds at a time. Sean peered through the smoke and tried to keep his bearing.

“I expected it to be harder than this Bill.” The window beside him blew in. Sean felt the hot sting of a bullet bore through his left bicep.

Harris grabbed the wheel with one hand and steadied his friend with the other. “You and your bloody mouth.”

Sean, white with shock, still gripped the wheel with both hands. He clenched his teeth, fighting the pain. “We’ll wrap me up when I get us to the others.” He gave a hard shiver. “No worries. I felt the bastard pass clean through.”

Bullets began to slap against the driver’s side of the truck, a hard rain of sideways death on the back of the cab.

Harris yelled into his throat mike. “We’ve grabbed the flat deck with the nukes on it. We’re taking fire. Give us some cover will you Hunter! It’s coming from the southeast side of the dock.”

“Roger, help inbound.”

The smoke split a moment later into curling black vortexes, torn apart by the thundering rotor wash of Donovan’s Hind. The sound of ripping steel filled the air as the helicopter’s 23mm cannons savaged the Korean troops at the far side of the pier. The armor-piercing incendiary rounds, an angry cloud of fiery white hornets, streaked into the small enclave of soldiers who disappeared in a maelstrom of dust and fire. The rain of bullets on the cab ceased. Sean risked it and pushed the truck up another gear. Seconds later, they moved into the shelter of the warehouses.

Gayle appeared out of the smoke. Her eyes passed over the bullet holes, the shattered driver’s side window and the blood and human debris splashed across the back of the cab. She said nothing.

Harris leapt out of the cab and ran round to the driver’s side. The door was stuck. One of the Korean rounds had frozen the lock. Harris turned to Gayle. He was speckled with blood. “Sean’s been hit. I’ll take care of him. Get on the nukes.” He turned back to the door and began to hammer at it with the butt stock of his rifle.

Yevgeny tapped Gayle’s arm. “There is little time Captain.”

Gayle shook herself out of her stupor. Command flowed back in. “Right. Let’s go.” The three of them pulled themselves up on the back of the flat deck.

“Keep an eye out behind us,” Harris yelled to them. “You’re sitting ducks up there.”

Gayle pointed to the damaged crate. “That doesn’t look too good.”

Yevgeny aimed his Geiger counter at it. The meter leapt off the scale. “It’s hot.”

“Shit,” Gayle said under her breath. “What now?”

The Russian Colonel walked towards the damaged crate. “Nobody promised us it wouldn’t be dangerous, Captain.” He looked back over his shoulder at her. “Considering the alternative to the world, I am willing to die for this.” He knelt by the shipping case, popped the three latches in succession and flipped up the lid. “The base housing has been cracked. There is a good possibility this one is unusable anyway. The more sensitive electronic components have more than likely been fried by neutron activity.” He took a screwdriver from his belt. “Still, we must be sure.”

Gayle knelt beside the unit closest to her and cracked open the case. The warhead lay before her. The cone was a dull dark green drab. She swallowed hard, her throat dry with fear. This was no simulator; it was the real thing. There would be no makeup test for a wrong move. She started to remove the baseplate. The screws were tight, but yielded easily to a hard twist of the wrist. Gayle wiped at her forehead with the back of her free hand.

Harris tried to turn Sean to face him in the cab of the truck. Sean, the left arm of his fatigues drenched with blood, did little to resist. Harris pulled hard at Sean’s good arm.

“Fuck, Sean, give us a hand will you? You weigh a bloody ton.”

Sean used his injured left arm to push himself around. Harris cut the sleeve away. Sean had been right; the bullet had passed clean through. The wound, two angry red holes on either side of Sean’s bicep, had not split. Blood oozed out of the openings. There must have been two rounds. The first had shattered the window, the second had continued in behind. If the first round had struck Sean’s arm after being flattened by the window, it would have blown it clean off. Harris smacked a morphine injector into muscle above the wound. “You are the luckiest bastard I have ever known.” He put sterile gauze pads soaked with antiseptic on each side of the bicep and wound a field dressing around the pads.

Sean winced as Harris pulled the field dressing tight. He prodded at the bandage with a finger. “Wonderful stuff, morphine.”

“I’ll bet,” was the dry reply. “You’re running out of luck.”

Sean shrugged. “Not as long as the good ladies pray for me. Where’s Gayle and her lot?”

Harris nodded his head toward the back of the truck. “Behind you, trying to take all of the nastiness out of our deadly little toys.”

Sean shifted in his seat. He ran a finger down both sides of the field dressing. “I can still feel the area, so I guess there’s no nerve damage.”

“All the nerve damage is above your neck, mate.”

Sean slid himself over on the seat. “Where’s my rig? We’d better keep a lookout or some of these Korean union types are going to give us grief over doing nonunion work.” He looked past Harris into the alley. “Chun is back there with them?”

Harris spun around and dropped from the cab. “No, he isn’t. Bastard.”

Sean dropped down behind him. Time was growing short. “Don’t worry about it. He’ll probably run into some of Hunter’s lads. They’ll take care of it.”

Harris shook his head. “I doubt it. He’s a cagey old bastard. He’s got his own game to play.” Harris shouldered his rifle and moved towards the back of the truck. “Cover the front and I’ll check on the rest.”

The cinder block wall Chun crouched beside felt rough and chalky against his cheek. Knee deep in revenge now, everybody was his enemy. The Americans would kill him if he returned. He had no doubt his own people would do the same. The American sniper was good, but Sung had jumped off the dock before his bullets had found their mark. Chun could feel the closeness of his ex-deputy. The old soldier smiled bitterly to himself. Perhaps that was just what he wanted to believe. He could be wrong and Sung could be floating face down in the harbor right now. He checked the pistol clutched in his right hand. Either way, there was no going back now. At least this time, the decision had been made by him and not circumstance. Chun crept towards the back of the building and admonished himself for sitting still. Sung would not come to him, not if he knew what was healthy for him. The alley split up ahead. The branch led down a narrow crevasse between soot-stained brick that had never seen the sun long enough to burn away the moisture dripping down its walls. Garbage littered the dark floor of the split. At its far end, Chun could see the burning wreckage of the sub tender. Sung was there, like a needle moving towards North, he made his way towards the burning ship.