Chapter 3
Briggs was shouting something behind me, but I'd stopped listening to him the moment I picked up the rifle. I settled the stock against my shoulder, found the ridge through the scope, and located the machine gun nest inside four seconds, the way I'd been trained to when this was still my actual job instead of a cover story. One shot. The gunner dropped, and the heavy weapon on the ridge went silent for the first time since the ambush started.
The dust cloud shifted enough for me to see the real problem. Two armored vehicles, unmarked, dark green, definitely not friendly, grinding up the access road toward our position, and behind them, at least a dozen more mercenaries moving in disciplined bounds instead of the chaotic swarm Thorne's men had been expecting. This wasn't a raid. This was an extraction op, and we were the thing being extracted from.
I dropped back behind cover and crawled to the open Humvee door, where the comms radio still hung from its cradle, miraculously intact. Briggs finally reached me, sliding in beside the wrecked vehicle, his face pale under the dust and grime. "Who the hell are you?" he asked, and for the first time all week there was no sneer in it at all.
"Later," I said, and keyed the radio.
"Omega Actual, this is Evans. I'm breaking cover." I gave our coordinates in clipped, exact numbers, then the words that mattered most. "Confirming hostile heavy armor inbound, unmarked, requesting immediate air support and priority extraction, authorization Whiskey-Nine-Foxtrot-Two."
There was a beat of static, then a voice on the other end went very still in the particular way voices do when a classified authorization code lands somewhere it's actually recognized. "Copy, Evans. Authorization confirmed. Say again your position."
I gave it again. Briggs was staring at me like I'd grown a second head. "Whiskey-Nine authorization," he repeated slowly. "That's not a construction contractor code. That's not even a DOD contractor code."
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"No," I agreed, already scanning the ridge again through the M2010's scope. "It isn't."
Thorne, propped against the sandbags with a tourniquet Briggs had finally managed to tie around his leg, looked at me with something between fury and desperate hope. "Who authorized you to be on this base, Evans?"
