Chapter 11 - The Rat in the Command Bunker
The rifle was three feet from Sofia’s face when Cole Mercer did something that defied every law of self-preservation he had lived by for twenty-five years.
With a wild, guttural roar that sounded more like a wounded animal than a man, the chained Sergeant Major threw his massive, chained body sideways across Sofia, taking two rounds directly into his chest.
The impact drove Mercer down onto Sofia, his blood hot and thick through her torn jacket.
The shooter paused for a fraction of a second, surprised by the sudden human shield.
That fraction of a second was all Marcus Vance needed.
Vance stepped around the smoking rear of the transport van, his shotgun roaring twice in rapid succession. The heavy buckshot caught the shooter squarely in the chest and neck, launching him backward into the brush where he lay motionless in the mud.
The remaining two attackers, seeing their leader down and hearing the distant, wailing sirens of approaching backup from the county sheriff’s department, broke contact, melting back into the dark pine forest like ghosts.
The silence that followed was suffocating, broken only by the crackle of the burning state trooper cruiser and Mercer’s ragged, wet gasping.
Sofia pushed herself up from the mud, her left arm hanging limp, her shoulder throbbing with agonizing heat. She looked down at Mercer.
The heavy man was lying on his back, pink foam bubbling at the corners of his mouth. The two rifle rounds had punched through his right lung.
“Why?” Sofia gasped, pressing her gloved hand against his chest wound in a desperate attempt to slow the arterial bleed. “Why did you do that, Mercer?”
Mercer looked up at her through eyes that were already turning cloudy and distant.
He coughed, a wet, rattling sound, and managed a faint, bloody semblance of the arrogant sneer he had worn in the mess hall.
“A Marine... doesn’t hide... behind a woman,” Mercer whispered, his fingers feebly clawing at the muddy gravel. Then his eyes drifted toward the dark sky. “Miller... Diaz... tell them... tell them I’m sorry.”
His hand fell limp into the mud.
His chest stopped moving.
The man who had terrorized Camp Redstone, who had ruled through fear and arrogance, was dead on the side of a rural highway, drowned in his own blood twenty miles from the base he thought he owned.
Vance knelt beside her, his face grim, his hands checking Sofia’s shoulder wound.
“Through-and-through,” Vance said, his voice tight. “Missed the artery. You’re going to live, Sofia.”
“The phone,” Sofia gasped, her teeth gritted against the agony. “Marcus... the contractor’s phone.”
Vance moved quickly to the dead team leader, searching his vest until he pulled out a ruggedized, military-grade satellite communicator. The screen was still active, displaying an open text thread.
The last incoming message, received four minutes before the ambush, read:
*‘Scrub the convoy. Target package Ramirez and Mercer confirmed. Clear the flightline for Departure 1 at 0530.’*
The sender was tagged as **COMMAND ELEVATION — PENTAGON DLA.**
Vance looked at Sofia, the horror dawning on his face.
“They’re not flying out of Redstone,” Sofia said, using the Suburban’s bumper to pull herself up onto her feet. “The Antonov isn't coming to the base. It’s staging at the private regional airstrip in Talladega.”
“Sofia, you’re bleeding out,” Vance said, grabbing her good arm. “The paramedics are two minutes away. You need a trauma surgeon.”
Sofia ripped a field dressing from her belt with her teeth, jammed it into the wound beneath her collar, and looked Vance dead in the eye.
May you like
“Those boys died alone in that creek, Marcus,” she said, her voice shaking with an iron fury that cut through the pain. “I am not letting this plane leave the ground.”
***
