Without law 20, p.3
Without Law 20, page 3
We even had one group actually surrender, though that didn’t matter to me. They could surrender all they wanted, but the damage was already done, and if they felt they didn’t have to follow the Geneva convention or any basic laws of human decency, then I wouldn’t, either.
“There was no other reason for it,” Anna said. “They must not want anyone to know they found it instead of making it.”
“Why would that matter?” Tara asked.
“If it’s a naturally occurring substance, then someone else could come along and take it from them, and they’d have no way of getting more,” Paige explained. “They want to keep it a secret so they’re the only ones with access to it.”
“How much do you think they got?” Bailey asked, and in my rearview mirror I saw her eyes widen to saucers.
“It’s got to be a lot.” Minji shook her head. “They have all those tankers full of it, and every single one of their plasma guns. I can only imagine how much plasma they’ve pulled out of the earth at this point.”
“Geez,” Tara breathed. “You’re right, they’ve probably got an entire system set up like they’re drilling for oil or something.”
“Honestly, I’m a little surprised you realize people drill for oil,” Anna teased. “But yes, I bet they do.”
“Hey, I’m not a total idiot,” Tara scoffed.
“No, not a total one.” Anna grinned, and Tara reached up and smacked her playfully on the shoulder.
“He’s pulling over,” Paige said with a point in front of us.
The SEALs ahead of us pulled the jeep off to the side of the road, and I followed suit.
“We close?” I asked Jerry once we were all out of the vehicles.
“Yeah.” He nodded and pointed to the trees on our right. “They should be through there maybe a half mile or so.”
“Alright,” I said, and I looked at my team. “Everyone ready?”
“Let’s fucking do this,” Tara said, and her eyes narrowed on the tree line.
“Are you alright?” Anna asked with a raised red eyebrow. “You seem a little more… hostile than usual.”
“Yeah, are those pregnancy hormones getting to you?” Paige asked.
“Maybe,” Tara conceded. “I feel like I might cry if I don’t kill something soon.”
“Ummm… I’m not really sure how to respond to that,” Anna said, and her brow furrowed as she looked over at me.
“Don’t look at me,” I laughed. “I have no idea how to respond to that, either.”
“I get it,” Bailey said with a small smile and a nod.
“You do?” Anna asked with a puzzled look.
“Yeah,” Bailey agreed. “It’s like, she’s really sad about everything that’s happened, and if she thinks about it too much she’s going to cry.”
“Exactly!” Tara blurted, and she pulled Bailey in for a hug. “Finally, someone understands me.”
“I feel that way sometimes.” Bailey nodded. “And it’s not something I like to admit, but a little bit of revenge does seem to help.”
“Bailey, you sweet, crazy bitch,” Tara chuckled. “I love you so fucking much right now.”
“Damn, that’s kind of dark, Bails,” Paige laughed.
“Just being honest.” Bailey shrugged.
“Eh, when you’ve been a soldier long enough, shit like that doesn’t seem dark anymore,” Hammer said with a nod at Bailey and Tara. “It’s normal.”
“See?” Tara asked Anna, and she put her hand on her hip and gestured to herself and Bailey. “We’re the normal ones here.”
“Whatever you’ve got to tell yourself,” Anna muttered and looked away.
“Ladies,” I said to call their attention back to the matter at hand.
“Right, right,” Tara said. “Let’s go fuck these assholes up.”
“Jerry,” I said with a gesture to the woods in front of us. “Lead the way, please.”
“Alright,” he agreed, and he pulled out his standard issue M9 and headed toward the tree line.
I pulled my H&K MP5 and followed right behind him. Tara was right behind me with her silenced Ruger, and Anna after that with her M9. Minji had her M9 as well, and Paige had her plasma weapon out at the moment, though I knew she had her M9 with her as well. Usually, the brunette preferred her shotgun, or the Atchisson shotgun we’d gotten a while ago, but it wasn’t the time for a weapon like that. Her plasma gun was a good choice for her, though, especially since she wasn’t the greatest shot of the group and she was confident in the increased accuracy the plasma gun had.
Bailey was last in the line of women, and she had her .50 cal Barrett slung over her shoulder. The petite blonde slumped to one side as she tried to counterbalance the weight of the massive gun. The weapon weighed at least thirty pounds, and that was before adding the rounds in, and I knew it could be quite the burden on her. She never seemed to mind, though, and I’d stopped trying to help her carry it a long time ago. She was sweet, but she was stubborn as hell, and she was bound and determined to carry her own weapon.
It was a mentality I admired, but also found adorable. I’d be more than willing to help her, but she insisted a sniper wasn’t good at their job if they couldn’t carry their own weapon, and there were times I couldn’t argue with that. Quite often, I needed to send her off to get a vantage point while I took care of something else, and she always managed to get her weapon set up well without me.
The forest was dense in this area, and Jerry led us through the brush carefully. Every now and then he turned around and pointed forward to show us there was a large branch or something we’d need to step over. I was surprised at how well he did leading the group since he was so young and wasn’t in any position of power, but he’d clearly been out in the field for a while, so it made sense he’d picked up a trick or two.
After about ten minutes of us walking through the brush, Jerry stopped and held up a fist to stop the rest of us as well.
Everything was quiet for a second, then I smelled a slight scent of smoke, and I knew there was a fire nearby.
Jerry cocked his head to the side and led us to the left. The further we went, the more I could smell the fire, and I knew we were getting closer.
After a few minutes, I heard voices, too, and just then Jerry crouched down and crawled up to a cluster of trees nearby.
I gestured for everyone else to stay where they were, and after a moment, Jerry turned around and waved us over to him. We followed his lead and crouched down to get over to the trees, and once we were there, I realized there was a clearing just past the tree line we were at.
The area beyond the trees was the park Jerry had talked about, and though it was overgrown, it was clear this wasn’t the same forest area like we’d walked through to get here.
There was a playground just to the right, and the area was filled with those strange wood chips that often were found in play yards, though I never understood why those seemed like the best option to whoever was building them. They seemed far more dangerous than grass to me, but I just shook my head and took in the scene before me.
The NK troops had parked their vehicles in the grass nearby, and they’d set up camp near the playground so they had flat ground to make their fire. They had a pot on the flames, and I could smell something cooking along with the scent of the burning wood.
There were seven men gathered around the fire, and another three standing near the vehicles smoking cigarettes. None of them seemed concerned in the slightest, and I felt my lip pull into a sneer as I watched them nonchalantly going about their day.
One of the men used a spoon to taste test whatever was on the flames, then he pulled the pot off and set it to the side to cool.
“What’s our plan here?” Anna whispered.
“Minji,” I said. “What are they talking about?”
If we could find out something before we had to interrogate them, all the better. I didn’t doubt these assholes would crack easily, but if we got information without the added step it would save us some time, and we didn’t have a lot of that at the moment, so any extra we could get was a good bonus.
“They’re talking about the attack on Douglasville,” Minji whispered after she listened for a minute. “They know we have the MiGs…” she stopped to listen again. “And from the sounds of it, these weren’t patrol guys at all, they were at the attack but managed to escape.”
I nodded and looked back to the men in the clearing. I wasn’t surprised some of them had managed to get away. The area we’d bombed was huge, and with how many soldiers were down there, I knew some were bound to escape.
I let the men talk for a minute longer, but they started to laugh, so I looked over to Minji and raised an eyebrow.
The dark-haired woman shook her head, which I took to mean that they weren’t saying anything of value anymore, so I caught the attention of the rest of the group and gestured for them to get ready.
“Everyone pick a target,” I whispered. “And make sure you have the shot. Nobody shoots until I do, but I want to know your targets first so there’s no overlap. We have one chance to get this right.”
“Who are we leaving alive?” Tara asked.
I glanced back out to the men gathered around the fire. All of them looked like they were foot soldiers, but then I noticed one of the men near the vehicles had extra decorations on his jacket.
“There’s a superior officer back by the vehicles,” I whispered. “Does everyone see him?”
The group nodded.
“That’s who we’ll leave alive,” I said.
“Got it,” Hammer agreed.
“I got the guy at the far end of the fire here,” Rivers, one of the SEALs, said with a nod to the soldiers.
We went down the line, and everyone else claimed a target as well. Between the SEALs and the girls and I, we had just the right amount of people to take these assholes down. Actually, we had one too many, but I told Jerry to sit this one out while the rest of us finished the job.
It wasn’t that I didn’t trust the young soldier to hit his target, but I didn’t know him well enough to know whether or not he would. I was confident in the rest of my team, and if anybody needed to sit this one out, it would be the guy I hadn’t worked with before.
I nodded to the group and prepared to shoot.
My target was the man cooking near the fire, and I leveled my H&K MP5 at his head and held it steady for a second. I was just about to pull the trigger when the familiar crackling sound of a radio filled the air.
For a split second, I thought it was one of our radios, and we’d just blown our cover, but then the NK soldier reached down by his foot and pulled up a walkie talkie.
My target held the device up for everyone to hear as a broadcast came over the airwaves and filled the now silent area.
I held my breath as I listened to the voice speak in Korean and communicated a message I didn’t understand. It lasted about a minute, but the soldier continued to hold the radio up in case it wasn’t finished.
“What did they say?” I asked Minji.
“Just the same thing they said before.” The Korean woman shrugged, and her eyebrows pulled together with confusion. “There was nothing new.”
“The same thing about the trains, or what?” Anna pushed.
“Yeah, the trains.” Minji nodded. “It just said the trains would arrive in two days’ time and the attack would happen then, too.”
“We already knew that,” Tara muttered.
“Still nothing about the kind of weapons on the train?” Paige pushed.
“No.” Minji shook her head.
“Do you think they’re doing that on purpose?” Bailey whispered.
“You think they know we’re listening?” Paige asked, and her eyes widened slightly with concern.
“I don’t know.” Bailey bit her lip. “Maybe.”
“Or at least, they think we could be,” I said. “They’re smart enough to prepare for the worst.”
“I guess that’s fair,” Tara agreed.
“We’ll just have to find out from them what kind of weapons we’re dealing with,” Anna said.
“There’s no guarantee they’ll know, either.” Minji frowned.
“They know,” I said and narrowed my eyes on the superior officer. “The officer does at least.”
“Right,” Minji said with a nod.
I leveled my submachine gun at my target once more, but just then he set the radio down since another broadcast hadn’t come through, and he said something to the soldier sitting next to him. I would have shrugged it off, but I heard Minji gasp next to me, and I turned to see all the color drain from her face.
“Minji, you gotta stop doing this,” Tara whispered fervently. “Spit it out, bitch.”
“What did they say?” I asked seriously.
“The weapon on the train,” she gulped, then paused as she looked back out to the men who were still chatting.
“Did they say what it was?” Anna pushed.
“What are they saying?” Bailey asked, and she looked back and forth between Minji and the soldiers.
“They’re talking about the weapon.” Minji shook her head and looked at me. “But I know what it is now.”
From the look on her face, I knew this wasn’t going to be good.
“What is it?” I asked grimly.
“It’s a nuke,” she said, and her eyes glistened with emotion as they landed on mine.
Definitely not good.
Chapter 3
“Did she just say a fucking nuke?” Tara whispered.
“Holy fucking hell,” Paige breathed.
“A nuke, like a nuclear bomb, right?” Tara asked. “Please tell me that’s not right. There are other types of nukes, right? That’s a code name for some super tiny weapon, yeah? Yeah?”
“Tar,” Bailey said, and she bit her lip.
“Well, fuck,” the platinum-blonde whispered, and she closed her eyes and let out a deep breath.
“What do we do to counter a nuke?” Paige asked. “They’re like, the most dangerous weapon on the planet.”
“Right now, we’re going to do what we came here to do,” I said. “We know what the weapon is now, and we can use that. Minji, have they said anything else noteworthy?”
“No.” The Korean woman shook her head, and her face pulled into a grimace. “They’re back to sharing… stories… of raping women they captured.”
“Alright, get ready, everyone,” I growled. “It’s time now.”
My team nodded to me, and I nodded back and aimed my MP5 once more. I lined up my shot with the man’s head and waited for him to settle into position before I pulled the trigger.
My target looked at the soldier next to him, laughed, and turned back to the fire.
I took a deep breath and released it as I pulled the trigger.
The soldier’s head snapped back from the impact of my blast, and he fell over the log he’d been sitting on so his feet shot up into the air as the rest of his body tumbled to the ground behind him.
A split second after I let the shot off the air was filled with the sound of gunfire as my team took down their own targets. I watched as soldier after soldier went down. Most were dome shots, but a couple of them were quick, and they tried to dodge, so the bullet caught them in the chest or throat instead. They bled out quickly, though, and the only man left standing was the officer I’d earmarked for interrogation.
The asshole tried to pull his weapon and duck behind one of the vehicles, but I quickly fired off a shot that came within an inch of his head, and he stopped dead in his tracks.
“Minji,” I said. “Tell him it’s in his best interest to drop his weapon and turn around.”
“On it,” the Korean woman replied, and she called out to the man in her native tongue.
The sonofabitch had the audacity to respond.
“What did he say?” I asked Minji.
“He wants to know who he’s talking to,” she whispered.
“What the fuck,” Tara scoffed. “Is he serious right now?”
“Yeah, he knows we just killed all his friends, right?” Anna asked with a raised eyebrow.
“Tell him he’s not going to be talking to anybody if he doesn’t put his fucking weapon down,” I said through gritted teeth. “And make sure to mention that if he wants to walk away from this alive, he should keep his questions to himself.”
“Damn,” Tara snickered. “I like when Tav gets all cutthroat.”
“It is pretty sexy,” Minji breathed, and her eyes widened when I looked at her. “Oh, lord, I said that out loud, didn’t I?”
“You did,” I chuckled, and I looked back to the man still standing in the clearing. “Now, let him know what I said, please.”
“Right, right.” Minji nodded and called out in Korean.
The officer turned around, narrowed his eyes, and looked into the woods for a moment, but ultimately, he put his weapon down and took a couple steps forward.
“Hammer,” I said. “You and the SEALs stay here and cover us.”
“On it,” the large man replied without taking his gaze off the officer in the field.
“Jerry, you’re with them, too,” I added.
“Roger that,” the young soldier said.
“Girls, come on,” I said and then slung my weapon but kept my hand on it as I led them out of the woods and into the clearing from the side, so that Hammer and his guys could keep a clean line of fire to cover us.
The Colonel’s eyes narrowed on me but then widened when he saw the five women trailing along behind me. Everyone was always surprised to see the girls, and even though I knew why, it still got to me.
They may be beautiful women, but they’d earned their place next to me ten times over, and I was tired of people underestimating them simply because of their size. I knew for a fact that Tara could take any opponent out with her bare hands, and Bailey could get a kill shot on them before they even knew what hit them. My girls were well-trained, and they shouldn’t be judged by their appearance alone.
