Scorpion: A Covert Ops Novel (Second Edition) (31 page)

As Avery
retreated back down the stairs, one round smacked against his vest. He felt it
even through the layered ceramic plates, like taking a blow from a baseball
bat. His upper body bucked against the hit, and he nearly fell off his feet. He
heard the whip-like crack as another supersonic round broke the air inches past
his head. Then another searing hot round cut through the flesh and meat of his
left biceps. His left hand went instantly slack, giving out beneath the barrel
of his rifle. His vest caught another bullet, knocking him down the last couple
stairs to the landing, in the temporary safety of the stairwell.

Catching his
breath, Avery became conscious of the warm, sticky sensation of blood pouring over
his arm. He’d been shot before. Once, while in the army, and he hadn’t even
known until after the enemy contact, when another soldier spotted and pointed
out the hole in the fabric of his BDUs. The pain didn’t bother Avery, the
adrenaline and endorphins took care of that, for the short term, but he didn’t
much care for the thought of the dirty, fragmented led embedded inside his torn
muscle, hindering his ability to fight, leaving him susceptible to infection.

 But there was
nothing to be done about that now.

FIDO, as they
said in 75
^th
Rangers, Fuck it, drive on.

More 5.45mm spat
above him into the upper stairwell wall behind him.

They couldn’t
see him, but the Russians were determined to keep him pinned down until they
reached his position to finish him off.

Avery replaced
his left hand beneath the barrel of his M4, squeezing his grip tight through
the pain in his arm. He sucked in a couple deep breaths to oxygenate his body
and clear his head. Then, when there was a lull in the incoming fire, he sprung
up, breaking cover, and fired back at the Russians from the stairs. One of them
yelled out, but not because he’d taken a bullet. Avery’s shots had gone past
him, but his weapon jammed, as AKs were prone to do.

Avery’s eyes
caught a flash of movement some ten feet behind the Russian shooters. Squinting
against the cordite and smoke haze burning his eyes, he saw Cramer and Litvin,
along with three bodyguards, who were kitted up like spetsnaz, as they stepped
out from behind the open door and ran down the corridor in the opposite
direction.

As Cramer’s
group disappeared through another door at the end of the corridor, Avery ducked
his head below the floor level, against more incoming fire. He heard the footsteps
of the first two Russians coming closer. He heard the confidence in their
voices that they’d wounded him and would corner him and finish him in the
stairwell.

Avery dropped
his rifle, letting it clatter down the steps, and switched back to his SOCOM
pistol. The pain in his arm worsened, and he was no longer able to support the
M4 sufficiently. He rested the pistol on the stair next to him, selected a
flashbang from his vest, released the pin, waited a second, reached up, rolled
it down the floor, and flinched when a round of 5.45mm struck the floor barely
an inch from his hand, kicking off sparks.

 A split second
later there was the tremendous ear shattering blast made louder by the close
confines and the acoustics of the corridor. Even in the stairwell, through his
clenched eyelids, Avery still saw the brilliant white flash, and took comfort
in knowing it was a thousand times worse for his opponents.

Avery sprung up
from the stairs, extended his right arm with the SOCOM pistol level in front of
him, left leg bent with that foot on the next step in front of him. He tracked
his targets, his mind making the split-second assessment of their threat
potential and determining the order in which to eliminate them. The pain in his
left arm grew in intensity, but if he let the pain hinder him, he was dead.

One Russian had
moved farther back down the corridor, away from the stun grenade, but his wide,
glazed-over, flickering eyes stared right at Avery without seeing him. Disorientated,
he was in the process of shouldering his rifle, hoping to get a lucky shot,
knowing that Avery would be coming back up the stairs any second.

The second
Russian was on his knees, barely five feet away from the destroyed shell of the
stun grenade. His hands fumbled around on the floor for the AK-12 he’d dropped,
and he nearly fell over.

 The first
Russian fired his AK-12 blindly and randomly, but his aim was too high and off-center.
The shots went wild and sparked off the walls and ceiling, not coming within four
feet of Avery, who was calmly advancing down the corridor, closing the gap
between them.

 He shot the first
Russian twice in the face. He dropped his rifle and collapsed as Avery shifted his
aim down and to the right and pulled the trigger on the second Russian as the
man’s fingers graced the butt of his rifle on the floor. His head snapped back,
and his body went instantly limp.

  The corridor
cleared, Avery planted his back against the wall, hit the mag release with his
right hand while his left reached painfully for a new magazine from his vest.
He clumsily reloaded and chambered a round before proceeding down the corridor,
hoping that Poacher or Flounder would catch up with him soon.

1:34. There were
three more rooms on the third floor, each behind a heavy steel door, and Avery
stopped at each one. One room was a storage space, the other a kitchen with a
lounge area. The room that Cramer and the Russians had fled from was a large
office space with desks and computers. All of them were deserted.

Reaching the end
of the corridor, Avery kicked open the door that Cramer and Litvin had
disappeared behind, and found himself staring into the cold exterior night, and
felt the air blowing against his face. He cleared the threshold and stepped
outside onto a narrow, rickety catwalk that extended twelve feet through the
air, thirty-five feet off the ground, to a connecting platform on the mixing
tower.

Cramer and
Litvin were abandoning ship and going for the Kamov, Avery realized.

He followed his
SOCOM pistol across the catwalk, his boots clapping against the metal surface. There
was sufficient exterior lighting that his eyes’ photoreceptors acclimated
quickly to the night. He heard the rattling crackle of AK fire coming nearby,
but it wasn’t directed toward him.

Halfway to the
platform, in the shadows, Avery discerned a figure crouched over the handrail
at the edge of the platform, firing his AK-12 off into the hills where Reaper
was positioned. The shooter faced away from Avery and was so focused on finding
the sniper that he was completely oblivious to the movement on the catwalk and
anything else taking place around him.

Another man lay
sprawled four feet from the shooter. Blood dripped from beneath the destroyed
head and through the small square spaces in the platform’s gridded surface. Reaper
had managed to get at least one of them.

Avery glanced upward.

Above, on the
next platform up, Cramer, Litvin, and another spetsnaz escort continued working
their way up the tower, climbing the narrow ladder to the next scaffolding. The
spetsnaz shooter stayed behind on the scaffolding and covered Cramer and Litvin
with his AK-12 as they scurried up the next ladder. Once they reached the top,
the spetsnaz shooter turned and swiftly and effortlessly scaled the ladder to
catch up to them.

The next
platform above them was at the top of the tower and supported the Ka-226.

Avery stepped off
the catwalk onto the platform. He kept against the cylindrical curve of the
tower, following its contour.

Eight feet way,
the first Russian shooter, who had been engaging Reaper, fired another burst
toward Reaper’s position in the hills. The clattering of his rifle masked
Avery’s approach. After letting off one last burst, the Russian sprung onto his
feet and ran around to the other side of the tower, to the ladder, eager to
make it to the helicopter with the others and not be left behind.

 Avery came
around the tower in the opposite direction and met the Russian face-on as the
man turned the bend. The Russian stopped dead in his tracks, surprised, as if
Avery had just materialized in front of him out of nowhere. Avery shot him
twice in his armored chest and then reached out and pushed him out of the way.
The Russian flipped over the handrail and plummeted to the ground, where he
broke his neck on impact.

Avery took the
SOCOM pistol into his left hand, grabbed onto the eight-foot tall ladder with
his right, and hauled himself up, his movements becoming sluggish and slow,
uncoordinated. He became increasingly dizzy and lightheaded, telling him his
brain wasn’t getting enough blood. He focused on his breathing, taking deep,
slow breaths, in and out.

Nearing the next
level of the tower, Avery heard the Kamov’s twin turbines and coaxial rotors power
up, encouraging him to pick up the pace, but his body felt too weak and very heavy.
He ignored the pain and forced himself up the ladder. He didn’t know what he
could do to stop that helicopter from taking off, but there was no way he was
going to allow Cramer to get away again.

Reaching the top
of the ladder, as he stood up, Avery lost his footing on the last rung and
stumbled forward onto the platform, landing on his chin, splitting it open,
dazing him, and nearly knocking him out right then and there.

He rolled over onto
his back. Staring up the ten feet length of the next ladder, he saw Cramer
looking down at him from over the ledge of the next platform. He expected
Cramer to alert the others, expected a Russian to point his rifle down at him
and hose him full 5.45mm. But Cramer never said a word. Holding eye contact
with Avery, expressionless, he shook his head once and then turned away.

 Sparing the life
of a former friend, or something else, Avery didn’t know, but it was Cramer’s
mistake.

Five feet to his
right, Avery saw the bodies of the two Uzbek guards Reaper had sniped when the
team first arrived on-site. He saw the RPG-7s leaning upright against the
handrail, the bulbous heads indicating they were armed and ready to go.

Avery worked his
way back onto his feet, and dragged his weight forward to the edge of the
platform, unable to move fast enough. He felt cold and feint. He thought he
must have lost a lot of blood, though he didn’t think his brachial artery was
hit. If it had, he wouldn’t have made it this far. At the moment, he didn’t
care either way, as long as he had enough life left in him to see this through.

He jammed the
SOCOM pistol into its holster and snatched up one of the RPGs, surprised at how
heavy it felt. He threw the launcher’s sling over his head and left shoulder,
with the launch tube lying vertical across his back. He lumbered across the
scaffolding to the ladder, grabbed onto it with his right hand, allowing his
left arm to hang at his side. Gasping for air, he painfully hoisted himself up,
one rung at a time, fighting against the helicopter’s rotor wash, which blotted
out all sound around him.  

At the top of
the ladder, he pulled his weight onto the platform and fell over onto his side.
Landing on his left arm, he felt the sting of the bullet fragments compressed
beneath his weight.  He rolled over, came up on all fours, and then propped
himself up onto one knee.

The helicopter lifted,
two hundred feet overhead now, steadily gaining altitude.

Avery struggled
with the fourteen pound, four foot long rocket launcher. He took three sluggish
tries before finally getting the RPG into position, with the wooden heat shield
set on his shoulder.

He’d never fired
the RPG-7 before, but he thought it couldn’t be too damned difficult, if every
amateur Third World terrorist, insurgent, and pirate were capable. He thought
this should be an easy target, long as he didn’t pass out before he took the
shot.

Looking through
the optical sight, he angled the launcher skyward, fought to hold it still. He acquired
the helicopter as it arced around, turning into the west, presenting its tail
rotor to him. He fought to keep the tiny red dot centered over the moving
target, and he hesitated, wanting to make sure the target stayed in his sights
and that he didn’t waste the shot.

Finally, he hit
the trigger.

The RPG bucked
in his hands, and he felt the heat of the back blast when the launcher’s booster
ignited the gases and shot the high explosive anti-tank rocket out of the tube
at nearly four hundred feet per second.

Unable to
support the launcher’s weight a second longer, reeling from the recoil, Avery’s
left arm sagged. The launcher rolled from his grasp and clattered against the
steel deck, rolled away from him.

He wouldn’t get
a second shot.

His eyes
followed the thick gray contrail of smoke through the sky and into the rear undercarriage
of the helicopter, beneath the tail boom and between its rear wheels.

The HEAT warhead
detonated on impact. Shards of searing, jagged metal shrapnel shredded the
engine and fuel lines and ripped through the passenger pod, slicing, eviscerating,
and burning anyone strapped inside, blowing out the glass of the cockpit and
cabin windows.  

The Ka-226
dipped, carried forward by its own momentum even as it lost altitude.
Nose-first, it collided against the rocky hillside. Each blade snapped off
against the ground in a shower of sparks as the rotor continued spinning
around. The burning, smashed fuselage rolled down the hill, bouncing off
boulders and smashing against crevices. When it finally came to a stop against
a thick, steep outcropping of rocks seventy feet later, at the bottom of the
hills, the Kamov resembled a burnt and mangled aluminum can. Flames reached the
ruptured fuel tank, kicking off a secondary explosion that engulfed the remains
of the fuselage, and a dense column of black, oily smoke carried sixty meters into
the sky.