Handoff Read online

  Handoff

  by Dean Murray

  Copyright 2011 by Dean Murray

  "If this goes on much longer, I'm going to have to kill someone just so we can see some real action."

  Pitch looked like he wanted to cuff Mouth, but even Pitch had to think twice before getting physical with Mouth. It wasn't Mouth's appearance. Compared to some of the merc's that routinely worked for the Lieutenant, Mouth was practically a choir boy. Blond hair, blue eyes and a square jaw that had been known to lure in girls who really should have known better.

  It wasn't ever the surface that tipped people off about Mouth, it was all the stuff just under the skin. Adam was pretty sure Mouth was ex-military, but if so he'd never made it through his tour to be honorably discharged. Anyone who'd spent time at the front knew you could get away with a lot when it was just you and your unit stuck in the middle of some forsaken bit of swamp, but Adam had never been in any unit that would have let Mouth pursue his more exotic vices, and Mouth wasn't known for his self-restraint.

  Pitch, an ex-sergeant from the Marines, apparently decided he couldn't let the comment pass without at least making motions to rein Mouth in.

  "Quiet. You're supposed to be pretending to be a hole in the night."

  "Whatever, Pitchy. This is just another milk run. I signed on to get stuck in, not babysit abandoned train yards."

  "I don't care what you signed on for, you signed on. That means until the Lieutenant says otherwise, you'll babysit whatever I tell you to babysit, or you'll be out on your ass again looking for work."

  For a second it looked like Mouth was going to respond, but he settled for flipping Pitch off and rolling back over onto his stomach. It'd probably been that last bit that had pulled him up short. Even a sniper as good as Mouth couldn't count on a steady stream of jobs if he was stupid enough to piss off the few merc's with the kind of contacts to put real work together.

  Mouth likely had warrants out in every state on the west coast. When you had money, little things like the police being after you weren't necessarily show stoppers, but Mouth spent it faster than even he could bring it in. If he pissed off Pitch enough for the wiry, black ex-Seal to convince the Lieutenant to drop him, he'd have to turn to wetwork to pay the bills, and he wasn't smart enough to get away with that for long.

  Satisfied that he wasn't going to have to worry about putting a round into Mouth's back, Adam rested his cheek back against the stock of his L115A3. The night sight currently letting him pierce the darkness, had cost the better part of five grand, and still was a fraction of the cost of the rifle it was mounted on.

  It rankled more than a little that the Lieutenant had brought Mouth in on this job. If someone else had asked Adam along on a stateside mission he would have told them no. There was just too much risk of getting tangled up with law enforcement. The Lieutenant had told Adam more than once that mercs made their living on the fringes of civilization, and smart ones chose the fringes not in North America.

  The call asking Adam along on this particular foray into lawlessness hadn't included an explanation as to the reason the Lieutenant was breaking his own rules, but Adam hadn't pressed. The Lieutenant had saved Adam's life six years ago when there hadn't been an upside and Adam had been his man ever since. He'd served as overwatch on the last half-dozen missions he'd been asked to join, and he'd saved the team's ass more than once.

  .338 rounds were more than capable of ripping through light vehicles at the appropriate ranges. Bringing along Mouth and his .50 Barrett was both overkill and stupid. Adam just couldn't see any scenario where they were going to run into full-blown armored vehicles this go around. Even the up-armored SUV's some of the drug cartels used in this part of Arizona didn't justify dealing with Mouth's attitude, not on a mission Adam hadn't wanted to be on in the first place.

  A burst of static signaled orders from the Lieutenant. "Our principle will be arriving shortly. Some kind of handoff occurring. Our orders are to keep him from being disturbed."

  "Right. Like I said, a milk run. Thermals aren't picking anything up, and there's nothing but desert for miles. What in the hell was Union P thinking putting a yard all the way out here?"

  "I'm serious, Mouth. Can it. We've got movement coming from this direction."

  Adam resisted the temptation to take his attention off of his slice of the horizon and rubberneck. Pitch would let him know what he needed to know. The old man had served as a spotter for nearly two decades on more continents than most people could name without looking in an encyclopedia.

  Instead Adam reviewed the layout of the rail yard. A single two story building with some kind of metal awning over the door stood just to the west of a central open compound. The snipers and Pitch had set up on the building since it gave them the most commanding vantage despite the blind spots created by the scattering of smaller structures surrounding it. The rest of the team was spread out to cover gaps between buildings and help provide eyes on the dead spots that the overwatch team couldn't see.

  "Two vehicles inbound. Looks like SUV's of some kind. They're running dark."

  Pitch's voice had dropped into the smooth cant of someone used to pointing out targets without startling his men enough to make them miss shots.

  "Damn, everything's all happening at once. I've got a pair of semi's that just came around the hill. They part of the plan or do I get to do something about them?"

  "They're expected. The handoff is supposedly container sized."

  Something flickered across Adam's scope. Too fast to be anything land bound but bigger than any bird he'd ever seen.

  "I've got movement over here, Sarge."

  The seconds dragged by as Pitch waited for Adam to reacquire it.

  "Talk to me, son. We're not expecting any more visitors."

  "Hell, Adam's just feeling left out. You've got action, I've got action; he's just sitting over there all alone with his toy rifle."

  Adam bit back a response. Only Mouth would complain about boredom and then mock someone when they actually saw something that might complicate the mission.

  "I can't find it now. It was big, but moving fast. A bit west of that third hill."

  Only the barest whisper of sound communicated the fact that Pitch had come around to scan Adam's zone.

  "I'm not seeing anything now either. Still, that hill is the closest approach from this direction, and some of the approach is hidden by those buildings so be careful."

  Adam was so busy scanning the hills beyond the buildings that he almost missed the SUV's pulling to a stop in the center of the rail yard. It wasn't unheard of for even one of the Lieutenant's contracts to go south on him, so Adam kept half an eye on the SUV's.

  A few seconds later the door to the lead SUV opened up and a heavily muscled man got out. -The Lieutenant stepped out of a shadow and approached the principal. It wasn't until the two men were standing next to each other that Adam was able to get a sense of just how huge Mr. X was.

  The Lieutenant kept up with his PT religiously. He had the kind of bulk you didn't see very often without serious steroid use, but was at least fifty pounds lighter than the man facing him.

  The conversation was thirty yards away, but the Lieutenant's open mic carried it straight to Adam's ear.

  "My men have secured the perimeter. We've picked up your two trucks already. They're about two minutes out. Once they arrive you'll be able to proceed with your transfer uninterrupted."

  Adam caught Mr. X's nod out of the corner of his eye. "Thank you. It's vital that nothing happen to my cargo. Please tell your men to be on the lookout. If anything odd happens to their electronics, it's a sign trouble has come calling."

  Adam's boss couldn't express the derision they all felt, so Mouth did it for him. "Right. Like ghosts or something. Please
. We'll either see them first, in which case we'll mow them down, or we won't see them, and the rounds incoming will be the first warning."

  Mr. X turned back to the SUV, causing Adam to tense up and momentarily drop his crosshairs on the big man's chest. When Mr. X slowly turned around, rather than the half expected weapon he instead was holding a slender girl. It didn't seem possible for someone to go from badass to parental in a heartbeat, but that's what happened.

  The girl was too old to be his actual daughter, but he treated her with a kind of gentle tenderness that felt completely out of place in the near desolation surrounding them. The frail girl was carefully set into a portable camp chair

  The Lieutenant's voice pulled Adam's mind back to the mission as the two semi tractors pulled to a stop underneath a large overhang that was all that was left of some kind of prefabricated shed.

  "Look lively everyone. People don't pay us the kind of money we're bringing in tonight without either real danger, or way more paranoia than this guy seems to have."

  The rest of the SUV occupants vacated the vehicles and began unloading one of the semi's. Adam wouldn't have believed it was possible to fit the kind of equipment they were pulling out into such a small space. Twenty minutes later they had a kind of modified crane set up next to one of the dilapidated rail cars that shared the questionable protection of the shed.

  Adam was still trying to figure out what they were going to use the crane for when one of Mr. X's henchmen, a scarred bruiser nearly as big as Mr. X, walked over to the rail car, worked a couple of levers, and then slid the whole side of the box up and out of the way.

  The matte black container inside of the rail car was just smaller than a shipping container, but unlike the pedestrian structure it was designed to emulate, it had a whole series of what looked like electrical and plumbing hookups scattered along its side.

  It looked like there was a set of rollers affixed to the bottom, but even once they were extended, it shouldn't have been possible for four men, however burly, to slide the container out of the boxcar.

  Adam did a double take as Mr. X and his men latched onto the container and pulled it out onto the rollers. A flicker of movement pulled Adam's head around, but his quick, efficient scan of the desert revealed nothing but empty sand. Adam was debating saying something to Pitch again when Mouth bit off a curse.

  "I've got movement-movement everywhere. Big assed mothers; freaking honest to life monsters."

  Adam felt his legs tighten up while he waited for Mouth to name an actual number. He couldn't take his eyes off his zone until Mouth confirmed that there were too many for one sniper to engage.

  "Give me a count!"

  Whatever Mouth said was lost in the report from his Barrett, and then the question of whether or not it was a diversion was answered as a multitude of dark shapes seemed to just rise up out of the ground at the edge of Adam's range. One second the night was still but for the echo of Mouth's shot, the next there were dozens of bestial figures sprinting towards the train yard.

  Adam fought the urge to further tense up, instead exhaling slightly as he dropped his crosshairs on the closest figure. A slight squeeze on the trigger, and his rifle slammed against his shoulder as the large-caliber round exited the barrel at nearly three thousand feet per second.

  It was a good shot, just to the right of center of mass, but although his target spun around, it didn't fall.

  Mouth was swearing, a steady litany that was only just audible between thunderous shots from his Barrett. "Damn bastard actually got back up."

  The icy whisper that had run down Adam's neck when his first shot failed to take down his target, settled between his shoulders at the knowledge that even Mouth wasn't bringing them down.

  Adam's second shot spun the nightmarish thing around again. He lined up the scope for a third shot and finally saw whatever it was go down and stay down.

  The Lieutenant's voice was partially drowned out by Adam's fourth shot. "...the hell are you guys doing up there?"

  Pitch's terse response came back before he could take his fifth shot.

  "We've got movement out here, from opposite directions, taking two or three shots to bring whatever these things are down. Some kind of huge animal."

  A quiet voice in Adam's head disagreed. Not animals. They weren't human, but even Cape Buffalo weren't up to springing this kind of simultaneous ambush.

  A second target went down and reflex had Adam ejecting his empty box magazine, replacing it with a fresh one he'd laid out just in case even though he'd been utterly unable to imagine a scenario where he'd need more than a couple of rounds to deal with whatever highly-unlikely problems Mr. X might have brought along for the evening.

  Mouth's gun roared again as Adam slid the new magazine into place with a click. Whatever it was that was running towards them, they were covering the distance too quickly.

  The third target reeled from the next shot, and now the rest of the squad's weapons started opening up in ones and twos as they started in on targets of opportunity. Pitch dropped down next to Adam, his Mk 14 already unslung, but he swore as he brought it around.

  "The principal is moving!"

  Adam lined up his seventh shot as the Lieutenant swore. "Teeth, get over there and get Mr. X into a car."

  Pitch opened fire, joining the sharp, shredding sound of MP5s from down on the ground.

  As Adam dropped his third target, something hit the building they were on hard enough that for a second he thought it was going to collapse.

  Mouth swore again, "It's coming up the side!"

  Pitch spun around, squeezing off two quick shots and then Mouth was screaming in agony.

  Radio discipline had completely broken down. The Lieutenant was yelling for order, but Clips and Lefty were both screaming about demons and Stilts had broken into some kind of rosary that Adam thought he vaguely remembered from childhood masses before he'd run away from the orphanage.

  Pitch ran dry about the time a tremendous crash signaled he'd been successful killing whatever had just ripped Mouth in half.

  The beasts were into the middle of the compound now. Adam put a round into one of the bigger ones, and noticed in passing that the lights on all of the vehicles had dimmed--it reminded him of a brownout. The scene became even more nightmarish, lit only by the moon and sporadic muzzle flashes as more and more of the team went down.

  The fourth target used up Adam's second magazine. Halfway through getting the third magazine inserted, the building creaked again and Pitch opened back up on another of the things.

  The tremors in the building provided real-time notice that it was closing the distance to them. Adam turned to help, but it was already practically on top of them. Pitch tried to roll out of the way, but it moved impossibly fast, backhanding him off the roof.

  Adam didn't have time to line up a shot, it was already spinning back around to come for him. He rolled over the edge and hoped he'd hit the false landing he'd noticed earlier.

  He was rolling when he impacted. A split second was spent debating options and then he threw himself off and fell an additional story just before a crash signaled he'd been right to vacate.

  The second landing was harder than the first-possibly because he hadn't managed to shed all of his momentum at the first landing. He hit the ground with the crunch and shooting pain of a broken leg, but fought the nausea down, ripping his MP7 free from its holster and cutting loose with a long burst as the creature tore its way out of the front of the building.

  Either the steel-cored bullets were living up to the hype, or Pitch had done more damage than Adam had thought. Whatever the thing was, it dropped like a rag doll a few feet in front of him.

  The chatter on the radio had died down; not a good sign considering the way the shadows still seemed alive with the beasts. Adam scanned the compound, looking for somewhere safe, but it was a futile gesture.

  Mr. X's bodyguards were clustered around the shipping container, the girl huddled on the ground
at their feet. They'd drawn handguns and were calmly firing into the raging horde of shadows. It seemed impossible that they'd be having much success where Adam's rounds had struggled so much to bring the creatures down, but while he was still dragging himself towards Mr. X, he saw three of the beasts go down.

  Adam distracted himself from the pain by wondering how Mr. X had gotten his people military versions of the FN Five-seven.

  A final burst of automatic fire cut off with a scream and things went momentarily silent. Adam redoubled his efforts, crawling awkwardly with his L115A3 slung over his shoulder and his MP7 in his right hand. The creatures were massing for another attack. It made no sense. They couldn't have that kind of intelligence, but Adam somehow knew that was exactly what they were doing.

  Only Adam was alive from the squad, which meant that Mr. X's people were on their own.

  Adam was still a couple of feet away when the beasts rushed. His MP7 cycled through what was left of its magazine in roughly half a second, and then he was left frantically scrambling to reload as the monster he had been targeting sprinted towards him.

  Someone grabbed him by the collar and threw him towards the girl. The pain from his leg nearly made him black out. His vision finally steadied just in time to see one of the beasts, wounded but still deadly, spring towards the girl. Mr. X dropped his handgun and jumped between the girl and her attacker.

  It was an insane move. The beast had to outweigh even Mr. X by a couple of hundred pounds, there was no way a mere human could hope to stop that nightmare of muscle, claws and fangs.

  Only Mr X. wasn't just human anymore, he'd been replaced by a smaller, more refined version of the beast he'd just clinched with.

  Wickedly sharp claws ripped into the larger creature in a shower of blood, but it was obvious that Mr. X was slowly being overpowered.

  Adam's MP7 was next to the girl, tantalizingly close but still much too far for him to reach in his current state.

  "Throw it to me!"

  Over the scattered gunfire of Mr. X's guards and the low growl of the beasts, it was impossible that the tiny, ethereal form huddled on the ground could possible hear him, but she did. The girl calmly shook her head, "No, you might hit Alec instead of the werewolf."