Gray Matter Splatter (A Deckard Novel Book 4) (36 page)

* * *

Deckard moved with Shatayeva’s platoon, Nate and Dag
backing up his play as they drove deeper into the compound. The
volume of enemy gunfire was increasing, leading him to believe they
were closing in on the earthquake weapon. Now they were back under
the breach, the interior illuminated only by the florescent bulbs
that hadn’t been blown out in the explosion. From the main chamber,
the enemy had barricaded themselves down a side corridor in a
prepared position constructed from refuse and packed snow.

Two of the Kazakhs lobbed grenades, which detonated
ineffectively in front of the barricade. Deckard reached into his
parka and gripped a party favor he had been saving. Clicking a button
on the metallic egg, he threw it as far and as high as he could,
rocketing it like a baseball pitcher down the corridor. It gained
both depth and height before cutting loose a flash of light. The
seizure grenade that had taken down Deckard in Alaska worked just as
well against the enemy. Their limp bodies hit the ground, their guns
falling silent.

The mercenaries ran down the corridor, firing bursts of
gunfire into the barricade. Clearing around it, they hosed the Oculus
commandos down with lead as they kicked and twitched in the throes of
their collective seizure.

Deeper down the corridor, a few shots rang toward the
mercenaries. The mercs returned fire toward doorways and muzzle
flashes. Deckard leveled his rifle. Suddenly, he felt like he’d hit
a brick wall. Stumbling forward, his vision exploded, whiting out.
Oculus was lazing them again, the beams bouncing all around the
corridor of ice.

Attempting to keep his rifle pointed ahead, he squeezed off a
couple of rounds before the world spun so much around him that he
fell to his knees. Around him, the Kazakhs were cursing in Russian.
Nate was down beside Deckard, his fingers limply gripping his rifle,
his dexterity deteriorated.

Oculus gunmen burst out into the corridor from one of the
doorways, their shifting forms dancing in front of what was left of
Deckard’s vision.

They had him dead to rights.

Chapter 34

At the ASX mine, Nikita’s HK417 cracked, the shot taking the
farthest gunman down with a round that carved through his lungs at an
oblique angle.

Upon hearing Nikita’s shot initiating the attack, David and
Evan opened fire on a second Oculus member who had been patrolling
down a small embankment, out of the sniper’s view. The two Sirius
Patrol men took him down with precision fire, and the Tavor rifle
slipped from his grasp as he collapsed to the ground.

The Danes entered and cleared the first structure, barreling
their way through the door. A Chinese man wearing overwhites hunched
over a small stove. He looked up at them. He had been warming a flask
of tea. Evan stared slack-jawed at the bloodied bodies of two of the
mine’s engineers who lay in a bloody mess off to the side of the
shack. The Oculus commando saw a small opening as they were
momentarily distracted and reached for a pistol on his hip. David
swung his M-10 rifle toward the interloper and fired, the round
coring a hole through the would-be killer’s skull. The exit wound
splattered the walls red with brain matter.

“Holy shit,” Evan gasped.

Sirius Patrol had been in existence for over 50 years, but this
was the first time the unit had ever killed anyone in the line of
duty.

“Come on,” David said. Opening the door, he instantly rocked
back and fell over as bullets slammed into the side of the hut and
punctured holes through the door. The Danes instinctive reaction
saved his life. Outside, another gun joined the barrage, quickly
turning the small structure into a sieve.

* * *

Kurt Jager ducked as one of the Chinese commandos picked
up and hurled Ivan, their mortar sergeant, toward him. The Kazakh
spun through the air and crashed into a wall. After clearing the
armory inside the ice base, Kurt and a dozen other men who had
rapelled into the icy depths found themselves in another open room.
The Chinese super soldier had fled here after his men had been
killed. Cornered, he had attacked with superhuman strength, the likes
of which the German had never seen before.

Out of ammunition, the commando had ambushed the mercs, taking
several down with a knife before it got stuck in a collarbone. That
didn’t slow him down much, as he simply took the fight hand to
hand. Kurt leveled his AK, only to have the barrel swatted away with
a kind of speed that no one should possess.

Next, the commando yanked the barrel, making Kurt lose his
footing. Grabbing him by the neck, the Oculus killer yanked Kurt
right off his feet as the other mercenaries surrounded him.

“Back away or I will kill him,” the genetically modified
assassin said, his words spoken in near-perfect english.

The Kazakhs held their ground, rifles trained on the enemy as he
backed away with his hostage.

Kurt looked out of the corner of his eyes, spotting the reason
why this particular chamber existed. There was a well in the center
of the room with a black cable running down inside it. He understood
at once that this was the base’s aquifer. The Danes had run an
electrical heating component down into the well they had drilled out.
Once heated, the ice would melt and become their source of drinking
water.

“Lay your arms down. This fight is already over. You are too
late.”

The Kazakhs held their ground. Dropping their weapons was just a
bridge too far, hostage or no hostage. Kurt couldn’t say he blamed
them. This man was clearly hard to kill. He knew he would have to
time his move carefully, because he was only going to have one shot.
The hand around his throat was like a vise. The Chinese commando
wasn’t actually trying to choke him to death though, not yet.

Reaching down, Kurt grabbed the hilt of his Randall fighting
knife. In one smooth motion, he drew the knife from its sheath,
twisted his abdomen away, and plunged the eight-inch steel blade into
his attacker’s stomach.

The commando howled, releasing Kurt from his grip. Just as he
reached for the knife stuck in his midsection, Kurt body checked him
as hard as he could, putting every ounce of his weight into it. With
his hands still around the hilt of the blade, the commando bucked
backwards and toppled over, going head-first down the well.

His screams were cut off as he splashed into the ice-cold water
below.

The Kazakhs rushed up, ready to empty their magazines down the
well.

“Hold on,” Kurt said. “I’ve got this one.”

Pulling the pin on a fragmentation grenade, he let the spoon fly
and dropped it down the well.

“
Gwai lo
!” a shout came from the bottom of the well.

The mercenaries backed away as the grenade blew and collapsed the
well in a gust of freezing air.

* * *

“I don’t have them!” Nikita said over the radio, unable to
acquire the two Oculus troops firing on the Sirius Patrol.

But Aghassi did. The two gunmen were walking toward the hut the
Sirius Patrol currently occupied, firing on automatic as their
streams of autofire crisscrossed each other. From his vantage point
high up in the opening of the mine, Aghassi looked down the iron
sights of his Kalashnikov and aimed center mass. One Oculus member
flinched as he was hit, Aghassi following up with another two quick
shots that put him down for good.

The second gunman spun around, not knowing where the shots
were coming from. Aghassi helped him out with a burst of fire that
stitched him up from groin to chest.

With the shooting over, the two Danes came walking outside in a
daze, both holding their weapons at the low ready.

“Nice job!” Aghassi called down to them, giving the team a
thumbs-up.

* * *

Two dark forms fell in front of Deckard.

He never heard the gunshots, his ears ringing, his brain feeling
like it was exploding behind his eyes. He came up on all fours,
gunfire raging around him. Then the single shots could be faintly
heard above everything else. It had to be Aslan, Nikita’s sniper
partner, down at the end of the corridor, firing over the prostrate
forms of his teammates.

Deckard forced himself up, holding his AK loosely in his hands as
he tried to force his body to function. Tripping, he stumbled up
against the wall and cut loose with a burst from the hip, spraying
fire downrange. Next to him, he felt Nate grabbing his parka, the
former MARSOC Marine also trying to pull himself up and get back into
the game.

“We can do this,” Deckard said, although he couldn’t hear
his own voice.

Walking on wobbly feet, he helped Nate up and then ran to the
nearest Kazakh, pulling him off the ground. The dead bodies of Oculus
soldiers and a few of their own men littered the ground. Deckard
pushed himself deeper into the corridor. Seeing their commander
stagger forward, the others had no choice but to will themselves on
to the completion of their mission.

Large steel doors hung ajar where the Oculus commandos had
emerged. Deckard glanced inside and was greeted with the popping of
several more shots. Sidearming his last frag grenade through the
door, he held back one of the Kazakhs who, in a moment of
disorientation, tried to chase the grenade through the door. It went
off with a
whoosh
. The mercenaries followed the explosion
inside, where they found another large chamber filled with dead or
dying enemies.

There was only one way forward, and Deckard charged, just as the
ground began to shake beneath their feet.

* * *

Jiahao fired a burst from his Tavor rifle, the shots
peeling back the Russian’s scalp. He flew backwards with arms
stretched into the air before sprawling across the floor.

Driven back by the mercenaries, the Oculus leader was not leaving
any room for further discussion from his men. An Iranian backed away
from the device as Jiahao moved to it and began keying in the
destruct sequence. They were out of time to execute their planned
attack, so he would bring the house down on top of them before he let
the imperialist killers-for-hire take control of the geophysical
weapon.

Shun strode into the chamber, covered in someone else’s
blood, which had drenched his overwhites in crimson. A light
vibration was already thrumming under the soles of their boots.

“Orders?” Shun asked.

“This battle is over, but the war continues,” Jiahao said.

“We fight to the death.”

“Not here. Take whatever men you can and make your way to the
garage. Blow the charges and save yourselves if you can.”

“It was an honor, Jiahao.”

“And you, Shun. You have been a good soldier.”

Shun offered a small bow and then disappeared into a side tunnel.
The Iranian looked over at Jiahao, wondering if he was to receive a
pardon as well. Jiahao nodded toward the tunnel that Shun had escaped
into.

“Go.”

The Oculus commando did not need to be told twice.

Jiahao unslung his rifle, gripped it by the stock and barrel,
then smashed it down on the control pad several times, destroying the
keypad and touchscreen. The weapon would destroy itself and everyone
around it in minutes.

* * *

Deckard recoiled as shards of glass-like ice came crashing
down in front of the entrance to the geothermal power chamber, where
the device was located. The entire ice base was beginning to vibrate
and become unstable. The roof was already deteriorating, the entire
entrance to the antechamber collapsed and blocked off.

“There has to be away around,” Nate said. “Let’s skirt
around the edge and look for another tunnel leading in.”

Deckard nodded. As they backtracked looking for another
way into the chamber, he saw that Nate, Aslan, and two other Samruk
mercenaries were still on his back. The others had become separated,
engaged in other firefights, or killed.

“Look, I’m calling landslide on this objective. This
place is toast. It’s over,” Deckard said loud enough so the men
could hear him over the cracking ice above their heads and under
their feet.

“Is there a
but
in there somewhere?” the former Marine
asked.

Everyone was looking for a pardon at this point.

“I need a confirmation on the super soldiers’ and the
weapon’s destruction. They might be the only thread that can lead
us back to their masters. You can roll; I don't have the heart to
order any more men to their deaths today.”

Aslan said something in Russian.

“What was that?” Nate asked.

“He said, ‘Fuck that,’” Deckard replied, rolling his
eyes.

“Let’s go, the enemy is probably heading for an escape hatch
anyway. We’ll get out that way.”

“Sure about that?” Deckard asked with a frown. Clicking his
hand mic, he then spoke into his radio. “Landslide, I say again,
landslide!”

It was the code word to evacuate everyone off of the
objective immediately.

“Landslide, landslide!” other voices shouted over the assault
net, making sure everyone heard the order. Just then, a large chunk
of ice broke free from the ceiling and crashed just behind Aslan. The
walls on both flanks were also starting to shake violently. The
mercenaries looked around them with some hesitation as snow shook
from the ceiling like massive flakes of dandruff.

Their distraction was broken by a single gunshot that
cracked through the corridor.

Smoke wisped from the barrel of Deckard’s Kalashnikov, his
single shot having felled an Oculus commando dashing across the
corridor up ahead from one tunnel to another. Several shots greeted
the mercenaries in return as more of them quickly crossed the
corridor. Taking a knee, Deckard let loose a burst just in front of
the feet of another Oculus shooter, driving him backwards into the
passageway he had just been in.