Martin Grise, Black Trident
excerpt
Black Trident Publisher: Retailer: Amazon Date: April 14, 2021 Length: 323 pp.; 771 kb ASIN: B092LT24HV |
In the novel Black Trident., a rebel group called the Arauca Liberation Army has seized the department of Arauca in Colombia in 2046. The Colombian government, already stretched thin battling numerous insurgencies, hires a private military company named Executive Security Solutions (ESS) to recapture the breakaway province. And ESS operatives are no slouches; they are poached from the world’s most elite military units with promises of high pay. In chapter 13, an ESS commando known as a Nightstalker is tasked with capturing an ALA war hero.
Chapter 13: 16 May 2046
Figueroa felt like he was lying in a coffin. He didn’t have to do this very much anymore, given the ESS general strategy of hit and run, butcher and bolt. But he’d done it more times than he cared to count when he was with the Foreign Legion, sleeping in slit trenches while conducting reconnaissance on enemy targets for days on end, bagging his own shit and packing it out so as to leave no trace of his passing. His present discomfort brought back memories of missions past, the people in them and everything that had happened. Serbia, Mozambique, Senegal, Brunei, and indistinct others all blended together in his memory. But at the moment, he was laying inside an artificial log that had been created to match one in the small Miquel Martin Park in Tame, Arauca.
A month earlier, Figueroa’s CO had ordered him into his office to discuss a new mission.
“Got a war hero on our hands,” said the major. “Yesena Cortez. She was decorated by the ALA for courage under fire during the initial attack. Now they’re using her for propaganda.”
“I’ve seen her on the news.”
“Sure. She’s doing a speaking tour around Arauca. Drawing big crowds.”
“Want her dead?”
“No,” said the major with a smile, “alive. I mean, the Colombians do. They think it’ll really dent enemy morale to see her on TV again - but in a jail cell. And if they can get her to renounce the ALA on live TV, well, ya know...”
“All right, I’ll see what I can do,” said Figueroa.
“I’ll push the data your way.”
The Nightstalker reviewed the information. Cortez was traveling throughout the province and giving hour-long talks, very inspirational, in fifteen different locations over the course of a month. She would be accompanied by a security platoon as she traveled. Figueroa reviewed her itinerary — no doubt attained by electronic snooping he himself had helped enable — and turned over all the options. Ambush the convoy? Grab her out of her hotel room? But in the tactical maps of Tame his discerning eye spotted a unique opportunity.
He worked for a few days on acquisitions; then he was again summoned to his CO’s office.
“New info for your snatch mission,” said his superior. “Looks like they’re setting up a trap for you.”
“They know I’m coming again?”
“Don’t think so. It looks like they’re just anticipating an attack. Now they’ve got three more platoons traveling with her, setting up roadblocks around each speaking engagement. Hell, maybe they’re just using her as bait to nail you or another Nightstalker. You’d make a nice propaganda coup.”
“Did you know this before?”
“No.”
The major met Figueroa’s stare and suppressed a shiver of revulsion. It was difficult to gaze into those unblinking, unfeeling eyes.
“Just wanted you to know,” said the major. “Do you need to change your plan?”
“No.”
“How many men do you want?”
“None. Just me.”
The major looked at him in some surprise. Figueroa stared back, statue-like.
“Very well. It’s your ass.”
Figueroa then spent two busy weeks in Tame, arriving every night by noiseless electric motorcycle from FOB Hato Corozal. He crept around the moonlit town, the lights blacked out against Colombian aircraft. The local ALA command did not seem to think their backwater made a likely target for attack and were lackadaisical with patrols. Figueroa easily evaded them as he minutely inspected the park where Cortez would deliver her speech, as well as nearby buildings. First, he photographed everyday items, like trash cans and mailboxes, shooting them from all angles; then he picked locks and slipped into buildings, examining the interiors of shops, homes, and garages, his portable radar measuring the thickness and composition of walls and floors. Afterwards, he submitted requisitions to New York, where a small group of highly-skilled craftsmen completed the order to his specifications and flew the items to Bogotá, from where they were shipped to the FOB.
Figueroa returned over successive nights and, dodging the patrols, changed the town to better suit him. He climbed onto balconies and replaced boxes and pots of flowers with ones that appeared identical, and carefully buried the originals in the woods outside town. He used a post hole digger to bury small canisters in the park, bagging and removing the excavated soil and clearing his footprints. He mounted new chimney pots and exhaust fans on commercial buildings in places they were unlikely to be noticed. He dug shallow holes in the park and added newly-delivered stumps, adding leaves and deadfall to make them look authentic.
Two nights from the event was the hardest part. Figueroa tried to figure out how to do it alone, but couldn’t; he had to call in another Nightstalker for the evening. An electric helicopter from Wizard Squadron silently delivered a handmade log and both Nightstalkers to the woods outside the town, and the pair carried the log into the park through the pitchy streets. They manhandled the original log away and tossed it into the woods. Then they dressed the new log in debris and proceeded into a commercial three-story building a block away from the park. The ground floor was a cell phone store, now closed since all the towers were offline; the second floor was a warehouse, and the third an insurance agency that had been closed since the ALA had turned the province into a legally-recognized war zone, driving local premiums hopelessly high.
The Nightstalkers planted a charge on the ground floor and went up the steps to the roof. Figueroa closed the metal door behind them, securing it with an ESS proprietary padlock. Seconds later, another high-flying helicopter dropped a large drone - a loud, eight-motor variety used to carry supplies to troops in the field or to lift a critical item out of the AO. This one sported a metal loop at the top of the fuselage. Its onboard computer guided it as it silently auto-gyrated onto the roof with the Nightstalkers. Figueroa then took a canvas bag full of climbing rope from his back, drew out one end of the rope, tied on a carabiner, and attached it to the bottom of the drone. Then he hooked a grapnel tied to another coil of rope to the ledge at the edge of the roof, and the pair rappelled to the ground. Figueroa sent a remote signal to the grapnel, which retracted its tines, sending grapnel and rope to the ground. They recovered the gear and went around the corner just before the patrol arrived. They jogged easily into the pastureland at the edge of town to where the helicopter would retrieve them.
“Whatever you’re doing out here,” said the second Nightstalker, “Command must want it very badly.”
An ALA team arrived the next morning to inspect the area. ESS drones watched as their dog teams searched for explosives; Figueroa’s devices contained chemicals masking the scent of their active ingredients, and Figueroa had furthermore sprayed them with a compound that anesthetized the dogs’ noses, and added scents in other places to distract the dogs away from his tools. The team searched the park with metal detectors, but did not get a return from the buried, plastic-and-nonferrous devices.
The next day, another team arrived and began erecting a wooden stage on the stage that Figueroa had already set. They raked the open space before the stage but, as Figaro had guessed from studying the arrangement of previous speeches, they went nowhere near his fake log, which sat seventy-three feet to stage left.
The day before the show, the stage was completed, flanked by speakers and ALA banners. In the late afternoon, Cortez and her bodyguard detail arrived, bedding down for the night in the hotel the local ALA garrison used for a headquarters. At dusk, other ALA units arrived to set up roadblocks at intersections outside of town. Later, Figueroa slipped through the darkened streets, which were alive with many more patrols; he reached the new log, very close to where riflemen were guarding the stage all night. The top of the log opened, and he crawled into the tiny space and pulled the lid shut. The space was tomb-like, with just enough room for him to move his legs slightly to keep them awake and to piss into a Nalgene bottle. It was only for twelve hours, unlike the old days.
Like an astronaut in a capsule, Figueroa double-checked the status of all his equipment. Then he set an alarm in his suit, as well as another proximity alarm, and let himself sleep a few hours. The show was scheduled for nine in the morning.
When the alarm woke him, he swallowed a caffeine pill and checked his camera feeds. The sun was up — it was a rosy pink dawn — and ALA troops were preparing the stage and testing the PA system. ESS had several more drones of various types around the town, sending video to the Nightstalker’s helmet. The colorful daylight feeds in his screens looked alien to him; a third of his life was spent looking at green night vision. He rotated his ankles to prepare himself.
The minutes climbed towards nine, and people drove or walked to Miquel Martin Park. Armed troops maintained a cordon in front of the stage and people spread their blankets out in the grassy area before it. Vendors of arepas and lechón wound through the growing crowd. Finally, at five minutes to nine, a caravan of SUVs arrived and pulled up to the rear of the stage. Cortez, her squad of bodyguards, and local ALA officials dismounted.
“Nightstalker One, Kingpin. We have a problem.”
“What is it?”
“The ALA set up a SAM team near the extraction site. Wizard cannot extract while it’s there.”
Figueroa brought up the feed Kingpin was referencing. It showed two men, one with a shoulder-launched SAM, and the other, his bodyguard, with an assault rifle.
“Stand by,” said Figueroa.
He was carrying only a submachinegun and a pair of grenades. The 3D model of the town showed that he would not have line of sight on the SAM team from the top of the commercial building; not that a submachinegun could make the six-hundred-foot shot, but even if he grabbed a Kalashnikov or Dragunov from someone, it would still be useless.
“Kingpin, I’ll eliminate the SAM team before Wizard arrives. Continue with the operation.”
“Understood.”
Figueroa heard cheers in his audio feed. Cortez and the ALA’s chosen mayor for the town had taken the stage in a flourish of dramatic music over the PA. A squad of gunmen took up positions around the perimeter of the stage, viewing the crowd from behind sunglasses with stony faces.
The mayor approached the microphone to mediocre applause from the crowd of several hundred people. His speech seemed to Figueroa more of a name-dropping exercise to remind everyone of how well-connected he was in the ALA. He gave a short introduction of the guest of honor, listing her feats of courage during the insurrection. Then he turned the microphone over to Cortez, and the crowd jumped to its feet and exploded in applause, waving ALA banners and posters.
“Compañeros, good morning!” she said.
Figueroa switched to a special command channel and took one last look at his diagnostics screen. Green lights all the way down.
“We come together today to celebrate our liberation, to celebrate the new future we have built for our children!”
The crowd roared enthusiastically.
“Execute November Alpha,” said Figueroa, and the situation changed dramatically.
Flower boxes, potted plants, trash cans, and other sundry items exploded, sending guided smoke shells to precisely-plotted positions over the park. Their detonations instantly covered the park in a thick black smoke, a strong eye and nose irritant, impenetrable even to infrared light. A box of Christmas orchids threw a trio of flashbangs over the park, the reports of which deafened everyone but Figueroa, and the buried tubes extended masts which burst above the soil, and their transmitters bathed the park in ultrasonic sound. Finally, a powerful compressed air gun hidden in the fake stump fired a guided dart into Cortez’s arm, stunning her with an electric shock and injecting a powerful sedative. The dart also emitted an ultrasonic frequency which appeared as a red dot in Figueroa’s augmented reality inside his hermetically-sealed helmet.
Figueroa popped the lid on his hiding spot. In the dense smoke, all he could see were the ghostly blue images of trees, people, and the stage, all illuminated by ultrasound waves. Most of the people were on the ground, hands over their faces; they were deafened, but their constant screams filled the air like the cries of souls in hell.
Figueroa forced his stiff legs into a run, straight through the smoke to the red dot on the stage. He jumped over prone civilians or dodged standing ones like a rugby player, knocking some aside as he plunged through the crowd. He had only seconds before the smoke cleared.
He jumped onto the stage, stumbling in the unnatural view - he saw one of the bodyguards groping blindly for Cortez and fired a burst from his suppressed submachinegun into the man’s back. Then he picked up the HVP, who felt very light and limp, hoisted her over his shoulder, and stepped off the back of the stage. His next waypoint glowed brightly in his AR. He ran straight to the edge of the park and across a street to a home abutting the commercial building at the rear. He was at the edge of the smokescreen now.
“Nightstalker One, flares up,” said Kingpin. “Expect reinforcements.”
“Got it. Send a quadmotor drone to the roof of building Alpha-Two.”
Before he finished speaking, Figueroa had opened the front door of the house with a key made from a lock solution he’d acquired on one of those busy nights; he knew the house was empty from the video feed of a cybernetic beetle buzzing around inside. Luckily for the two parents and twin girls who lived there, they’d opted to attend the rally, where they were only gassed. Figueroa was prepared to treat civilian interlopers rather harshly.
Figueroa stepped in, closed the door, and threw the deadbolt. He was a bit safer now.
One of his arms was around Cortez’s legs; with his free hand he found his remote trigger in a pocket, hit the button, and heard the explosion as smoke shot out from under the bathroom door.
He pulled open the door and was looking through a large hole in the wall into the back of the empty cell phone store. He stepped through and found the stairs up. The beetle buzzed past his head and up the stairs ahead of him to ensure his path was clear.
“Kingpin, activate self-destruct timers in my AO.” Thermite charges in all the meticulously-crafted items flown in from New York would vaporize chipboards and melt metal and plastic parts, leaving nothing useful to the enemy.
He went up the steps, pausing to drop one of two grenades on the stairs, set for proximity detonation to dissuade pursuers, and continued up the stairs, noting from the beetle’s feed that he was alone.
He flipped another switch on the remote which shattered the lock on the exterior door at the top of the stairs. He pushed open the door and dumped the HVP unceremoniously on the rooftop next to the cargo drone and the bag of rope. He secured the door with a real lock and crouched low to stay out of sight.
The quadmotor drone he had requested was there on the rooftop.
“Nightstalker One, Wizard Flight. Ready to start my approach, but the SAM team is still up.”
“They’re about to die, Wizard. Start your run.”
“Roger that.” The pilot could’ve refused, Figueroa thought. Good thing I’ve got a gutsy one.
Figueroa took his last grenade and placed it next to the smaller drone, and from a pouch he withdrew that most precious tool, a roll of duct tape.
He taped the grenade to the underside of the drone and set it for remote detonation.
“Kingpin, send this drone to the SAM team. Right between their heads.”
The officer in New York saw in the feed what Figueroa had just done.
“Nightstalker One, you are not authorized to destroy a drone — “
“Field contingency!” snapped Figueroa. “It’s my call. Do it now!”
“Understood,” said the officer with a shrug. With those magic words, Figueroa had absolved him of any responsibility for company property.
The drone buzzed away and Figueroa watched the feed. The operator was clever, steering the drone down to just a meter off the ground and racing it through the streets.
Figueroa drew a harness from the rope bag and secured it around his unconscious prisoner. Then he took the rope connected to the cargo drone and clipped the other end to her harness, and clipped a short line from a D-ring on his armor to the same rope.
The drone came up behind the SAM team atop the building, then climbed steeply to the rooftop and stopped suddenly between their heads. They turned and looked at it blankly.
Figueroa hit the switch and the feed went black. He heard the report in the microphones and saw the puff of smoke in a feed from an overhead drone.
“SAM team is down,” said Kingpin.
The Nightstalker looked at the clock in his AR. “Kingpin, launch the cargo drone.”
The drone revved its motors and climbed sixty feet, pulling taut the rope connected to the two figures on the rooftop. It wasn’t powerful enough to lift them. The smoke below was clearing.
“Here it comes,” said Kingpin.
The operator fired the four rockets on the drone, pulling both passengers straight up at six Gs. It reached five thousand feet and hovered - at that altitude, a difficult target for anyone on the ground who could still see.
The helicopter was already at altitude and approaching at full speed with a hook extended from the bottom of the fuselage. Grabbing the loop at the top of the drone at this speed would have been very challenging for the pilot, so the computer handled it, controlling the drone, helicopter, and adjustable hook together to make the catch. It yanked the two passengers into a pendulum whiplash which stretched, but did not break, the rope. The helicopter turned for the FOB.
Too bad my hero’s unconscious, Figueroa thought; this would definitely challenge her courage. But she’ll have another chance to test her nerve when we get to Bogotá. I’m pretty sure of that.
*
* *
“This is a remarkable book set in an ecologically-ruined earth of the near future, focused on men who are adapted to that world and who therefore are ruined... Bleeding-edge tech displayed in action throughout.” — David Drake, author of Hammer’s Slammers
Copyright © 2021 by Martin Grise
