“Count it off, Six,” whispered Jax.

“Yeah. Mark, one, two…”

 

SPLAT.       

 

An enemy soldier fell backwards into the plaster wall behind him, the back half of his skull a new contribution to the world of fine art.

Jax reached out of the dark and pulled a man’s head into his chest. He plugged the man’s nose and covered his mouth with his left hand, then cut with his right. He felt the knife slide through the neck, puncture the trachea, then slide through the other side. The body fell face-down, still alive for a few more seconds. One of his legs kicked in protest, fingers trembling while all the pressure leaked into the dirt.

At the other corner of the school building, Mock stood behind a body just like Jax, with Six’s kill between them.

There was a school full of children and seven more soldiers on the other side of the wall. Jax strained his ears, grasping for sounds beyond his human senses. Muffled banter in Punjabi. Whispering. A child crying. Tense, but calm. Looks like they didn’t hear us.

“Rayleigh, you’re up.”

“Right, one sec.”

Four pickups were parked haphazardly in front of Mayfair’s house, full of dents and covered in rust.

Thud.

A disk made a small puff of dust as it struck the dried mud beneath the engine area of one of the trucks.

Thud.

Thud.

Thud.

Four tiny green lights glowed in the dirt.

“Short range EMP. Mark, one, two…” The green lights flashed red, then died. “Vehicles disabled.”

“See? New kid ain’t so bad,” buzzed Six.

Rayleigh emerged from a bush near the house, crouching low as he collected the used pulse grenades.

Jax gave Atlas an update. “Line-of-sight to the house obstructed. We’ll cover the front door.” While he, Mock and Rayleigh crouched outside the front door, Jax listened to the others over the comm link.

“Okay, guys. Let’s rescue our princess. Reaper, please do the honors.”

“Heh, sure. Mark, one, two…”

Crunch.

Thump-thump-thump-thump-thump.

It took Reaper five steps to break the back door and reach the room they kept Mayfair, and another four to kill his captors. By the time their surprised shouts in Punjabi began to form sentences, they were already dropping to the floor, either already dead or feeling their strength and life rush out of their bodies.

Jax heard furniture turn over and glass break as four dead bodies fell over.

“Clear,” reported Reaper.

“Let’s go.” Jax jerked his head toward the house. The front door was locked, so he put more strength into his grip and turned the knob until the lock snapped. Mock and Rayleigh stepped inside behind him and they took a left down a short hall that opened up into wide office.

Jax took a look around. Built-in shelves lined the walls, full of books. No windows. A solid wood desk sat at the far end, pushed up against the wall behind it. Lounge chairs, a coffee table, and a couch had received similar treatment to clear the center of the room, where Mayfair sat bound in an office chair throne of blood. To complete the set, Reaper had decorated with four corpses.

Reaper was covered in glossy patches of blood. If he wasn’t wearing all black, he’d look like something out of a horror flick.

Atlas whistled through his face mask. “Three seconds? Reaper, you getting rusty?” He winked.

“Like you can do better.”

“Ha!”

Bertrand Mayfair was the definition of a mess. White. Bald. Fit, but with a bit of middle-age belly. White and tan clothes loudly advertised European tourist, save for the crushed nose, purple eye, twisted fingers, multiple stab wounds and what looked like more blood on the outside than inside by this point. That knife wound in his right thigh was dangerously close to his femoral artery. Jax spied a tooth in the carpet near the desk. A punch to his jaw must have knocked him unconscious just before they breached the house.

“Uhhhh…”

Atlas crouched square in front of Mayfair. “Rise and shine, Bert!”

Mayfair’s head wobbled, then he jerked up, back straight, eyes wincing from the sudden flood of pain racing through his body as his senses came into focus. He squinted around at the cluster of six fully-armed masked soldiers in night gear crowded into his now very cramped office.

“The hell?” Mayfair tried to get up, but the zip ties on his ankles and wrists still restrained him. “Americans?” He looked Mock up and down, probably noticing his height. “Wait, are you kids?”

Atlas lightly touched Mayfair’s right thigh.

“aaAAAH!”

“Bert, it would be best if you didn’t ask the questions tonight. Catch my drift?”

Mayfair nodded.

“We are here to get you out and take you somewhere safe. But first, I need any and all sensitive information you have stashed around here.”

“My computer…” Mayfair gestured to the desk, apparently too tired to turn his head.

A heavy beige box of a laptop displayed a progress bar for a password guessing program, the guesses blinking in and out too fast to read. Rayleigh went about stashing the laptop into his bag.

“They wanted my password. That’s what this was all about.”

“Right. Anything else? Anything less twenty-first century, perhaps?”

“No, no. Just the laptop.”

Liar loomed in the background, staring over Atlas’ shoulder. “He’s lying.”

“Oh, yeah? Now that’s no way to treat your friends, Bert.” Atlas pushed his thumb into Mayfair’s wound.

The volume of Mayfair’s scream was shocking.

“You know, the acoustics in here are really nice. Did you soundproof this place?”

“Who the FUCK are you?!”

Atlas put his thumb in again, followed by an ear-splitting roar. It was amazing the man still had any air left in him, considering he’d been tortured for two days already. He might look like shit, but he was definitely an intelligence expert.

“I thought we agreed you were happy not asking the questions tonight. If you must call me something, you can call me ‘Ground-One’. ‘Boss’ also works, if you’re feeling chummy. Right now, Bert, you are number two on our list of priorities. If you want to remain on that list, it is in your best interest to act in our best interest. So. Where might I find additional intelligence material, if I was so inclined?”

Mayfair was still catching his breath after all that screaming.

Huh. Huh.

“Ayn Rand.”

Haaa.

“Top shelf. Behind you.”

Liar turned around and grabbed a fat paperback novel at eye level. He flipped through the pages and pulled a blue USB thumb drive out of a hole carved out of the inside pages. The thumb drive disappeared into Liar’s vest.

He tossed the book to Atlas, who read the cover and displayed it for the rest of the group. A copy of Atlas Shrugged. Atlas shrugged, and everyone snickered.

Mayfair trembled at the laughter. He clearly didn’t get the joke, which likely made the laughter all the more ominous and wicked.

A grin slid across Jax’s face. He thinks we’re about to shoot him.

“I gave you what you want. Can I get up now? Please?”

“Is that all? Nothing else in the house? The entire compound?”

“Yes. YES. That’s it!”

Atlas turned his head to Liar, who nodded. “Looks like we’re telling the truth. Wonderful!”

Snick.

Wump.

The man flopped onto the ground as all his bonds snapped in a blink. Atlas sheathed his dagger.

“How’s his condition?”

Liar knelt down and patted Mayfair’s body here and there. “Nothing life-threatening. He’ll be limping, but he can walk if he needs to. He’s low on blood. Needs a transfusion. Within about three hours, or… well.”

Mayfair's eyes went wide. “Wait, seriously? The closest hospital’s—

“Shut. Up.” Atlas turned his head to the side for moment. “Six. How’s the situation outside?”

“All clear,” Six whispered through the comm link. “Hostiles do not have line-of-sight. No one’s left either building since we cleaned up three in front of the school.”

“What about your side, Ember? Anything newsworthy?”

“Everything’s quiet over here,” Ember replied. She sounded like she was going to sigh in angst any second. She must be bored sitting in the woods by herself. Six could lie utterly still in a nest for days as long as she had her rifle, but… Six was Six. At least to Jax, playing lookout by yourself in the middle of Pakistan sounded annoying as hell.

“Fantastic. We’ll exfil back to the woods the way we came, then cut over the mountain and meet Extraction-One at Exfil Site Charlie.”

“Wait!” All eyes turned to Mayfair, who staggered to his feet. “The kids. They’ve got all the children as hostages. We’ve got to save them.”

“Your charity cases are not part of my mission.”

“Fuck your mission! They’re forty meters from here being held at gunpoint by those monsters!”

“You have clearly never seen a monster before.”

“Didn’t your guys just kill these arseholes like they were nothing? This would be easy for you. Would it even take you ten minutes?”

“We don’t have a way to transport the children to another location. Look. Those Hezbollah or whatever are going kill them or they won’t. If they don’t, you’re not gonna be around to care for them either way. There is no version of this story where their lives get easier. Those kids were fucked the moment those thugs showed up. Tough shit.”

“You bloody arsehole!” Mayfair rushed at Atlas. Jax stuck out his foot and tripped him. The man tumbled forward and ended up flat on his face.

Their leader was right. Honestly, Jax wasn’t sure who really had it worse, himself or those orphans. This British dumbass needed to move on. They didn’t have time for this. Jax could feel the others weren’t all convinced it was the right choice, but Atlas was Alpha. They could complain about it back at base all they wanted.

Atlas looked at Mock. “Get him up. We’re—

“Hold up,” Six interrupted. “Atlas, we’ve got something on the radio from outside the valley.”

“Are the bounding rods still working?”

“Yep. No signals are getting in or out, but I’m picking up comms from outside the boundary. I’ll patch it through…”

Angry yelling crackled in Jax's ear. Sounded like Russian. What the hell are the Russian’s doing here? Were they just speaking Russian, or was Russia actually operating out here?

“Rayleigh. Translate,” Atlas ordered.

“Huh?”

“It’s Russian, right? Hurry up.”

“Uh. Well. I don’t... speak Russian.”

“What?”

“I don’t speak Russian.”

“Yes you do. I read your file! They taught you French and Russian.”

“They taught me Romanian.”

Everyone groaned.

Atlas looked at the ceiling with his hands on his hips. “Why. Would you learn. Romanian.”

The boy froze stiff. “I…”

“So no one can translate this?” He already knew the answer. They’d all learned Punjabi for the mission, but Command never said anything about Russian involvement. There was no way to predict this.

Six chimed in again. “Incoming convoy. Looks like Pakistani military trucks. ETA four minutes.”

Things were getting weirder by the second. Time to go.

Atlas made it official. “We’re leaving. Now.”

“Wait.” Six sounded nervous.

“Now what?” There was a tangible bite in his voice at this point.

“They have a heli.”

Shit. They couldn’t leave now. An airship would have night and heat vision on board. It could easily track them through the forest at ninety miles an hour. It would be child’s play to escape if they used their full abilities, but this mission was on-the-books. Synergy was off-limits.

“Well fuck me. We’ll have to take it down.” The Alpha looked at Mayfair and slapped him on the shoulder. “Looks like you might get your wish after all, Bert.”

Or they’ll all end up dead. Jax decided not to point out that possibility.

“Priority is securing the VIP.”

Jax looked at Mayfair. “Do you have a basement?”

“It’s right off the kitchen down the hall.” The man was visibly happier now that saving his students was part of the mission. He was actually smiling.

You do know this whole compound is about to be Swiss cheese, right? For an intelligence spook, this guy was a class-A idiot.

Atlas handed down the orders. “Liar, Rayleigh. Take Mayfair to the basement. Next time I see him, he better not have a single scratch on him that he doesn’t already have. And see if you can staunch some of the bleeding in his leg.”

“Yessir!” Rayleigh shouted. Liar made up for the overreaction by not saying anything at all.

“Me, Jax and Mock will draw fire with a frontal assault on the convoy from the house to distract the enemy from firing at the school building.”

Mock and Jax nodded.

“Reaper will join Ember and flank them from the side.”

“Roger that,” Ember responded through the comm link.

Atlas looked at Reaper. “Wreak havoc.”

Reaper’s eyes gave away the smile hidden beneath his face mask. “Always.”

“Six, you’re on support. If you have a shot, take down that bird so we can go home stalker-free.”

“No problem. Convoy ETA ninety seconds.”

“Alright. Let’s kill some strangers. Go.”

Jax led the way down the hall, turned to the front door, and stepped into the night. He ran to a truck that may have once upon a time been yellow, crouched down and drew a combat knife in a backhand grip.

 

dun-dun-dun-dun-DUN-DUN-DUN-DUN.

 

Six’s worried voice buzzed in his ear. “Guys, something’s wrong. That heli’s coming in way too hot…”

Jax peaked above the hood of the truck.

A few soldiers from the school building were running out to see what the sound was. With his improved night vision, Jax looked at the helicopter. A slender body with sharp angles. Stubby wings loaded with weapons. No passenger compartment. Two sets of rotor blades, stacked on top of each other. That was a hunter-killer chopper. What the hell? That is definitely not something the Pakistanis can afford.

“Shit! They’re firing! Ordnance inbound!”

Pop!

Pop!

Pop!

Three white lights ripped through the air toward them. There wasn’t time to dodge. Jax turned around into a ball and covered his head with his forearms.

He heard the missiles scream as they devoured the air between them. He didn’t hear an impact. The blast wave raged through his bones faster than sound, rendered the front porch to splinters and threw him backward into the truck. As the oxygen around him ignited, a second wave struck the truck from the other side, flinging Jax and the vehicle into the building.

Lungs empty. Eyes on fire. Limbs everywhere and nowhere. Steel and glass and wood and concrete burned all around Jax as the world span and span.

And then everything stopped. Except the pain.