The Chimera Vector

Chapter 2

Chapter Two

Sophia braced herself.

Jay pumped the brakes and pulled hard on the steering wheel. He swung the Cruiser to one side, lining her and Damien up perfectly with the Citroën as it roared past.

The HK53 was heavy in her grasp. She sighted the driver and opened fire. Her weapon kicked hard. The Citroën’s windscreen turned white.

Damien fired too, taking out the front passenger. Together, they put an extended burst into the soldiers in the back seat. It was over in seconds, leaving the sedan to rattle slowly into the darkness behind them.

Then silence.

Sophia changed mags, then opened the door. Damien stepped out in front of her, toggling the flashlight on his weapon and lighting the way. Sophia kept hers off while she stood behind him. Aiming over his shoulder, they advanced together, splitting off when they reached the Citroën. She toggled her flashlight and kept it painted on the destroyed windows, hoping to blind any survivors.

Jay’s footsteps weren’t far behind, but he would be focusing on the surrounding terrain with his thermogenic vision.

The rusty hood looked like it was covered in crushed rubies. Sticky and wet.

‘They’re toast,’ Damien said from the driver’s side, his breath fogging in the cold.

He indicated with his barrel to what was left of the two heads. In the back seat, three more heads, like split watermelons.

‘Jay, get an IED.’

‘You got it.’ He rushed back to their Land Cruiser.

She opened the back door on her side of the sedan. A young soldier fell out, face down. His body glistened red. She looked through at the other door as Damien opened it. Another soldier tipped sideways. Damien caught him mid-fall. His head lolled.

Trembling in the center of the back seat was—surprisingly, a woman—and more surprisingly, her head still intact. Her round face and white T-shirt were dotted crimson.

What the hell’s she doing in there?

Sophia nodded to Damien. He leaned in to grab her, but the woman resisted, clawing at him. He pulled her out and dropped her onto the dirt. She kneeled there, mumbling incomprehensibly.

‘She doesn’t count, does she?’ Damien asked. ‘The “no witnesses” thing.’

Before Sophia could respond, he nodded to her nine o’clock.

Another vehicle. Wider, higher. Humvee. Its headlights lit up the whole area, making her squint. It pulled up twenty meters short, hip-hop music rattling hillbilly armor. A shortage of armor kits had forced the soldiers to improvise with scrap metal.

‘What are they doing over the border?’ Damien asked.

‘Must’ve been nearby, heard the crash.’ Sophia said into her throat mike, ‘Jay, leave the IED.’

‘Copy that.’

She nodded at Damien. ‘You’re up.’

The music died. Four, no five, American soldiers—Marines, by the looks of things—climbed out and approached her team, dusted boots crunching on grit. They were dressed in desert camouflage, night-vision monocles flipped back on helmets. Their M4 carbines gleamed in the headlights of their Humvee.

Sophia took a step back and let Damien handle it.

Three marines approached, leaving two at the Humvee and one behind the wheel.

‘Lemme guess,’ the staff sergeant said. ‘They don’t know a stop sign when they see it?’

‘You boys are far from home, yeah?’ Damien said, standing in front of the Citroën so they couldn’t get a closer look. He spoke with a mild northeast England accent, as briefed.

‘Nah, see I think that’s you,’ the staff said. ‘Should I ask what you’re doing in our backyard?’

‘Rubicon Defense Services,’ Damien said. ‘Just passing through.’

One of the marines stepped around the kneeling, surviving woman and splashed a light into the vehicle. He didn’t look impressed.

‘Some passin’ through you did here,’ the marine said.

‘Haven’t seen mercenaries around here in a while, especially not Brits.’ The staff stepped around Damien, his gaze fixed on the vehicle. ‘You know you’re on the wrong side of the border.’

‘Yeah,’ Damien said. ‘We’re aiming to be on the right side soon … if it weren’t for those soldiers.’

The staff leaned in to inspect the vehicle, then scraped the stubble on his chin with a calloused hand. ‘Soldiers, huh?’

Damien stood his ground, but said nothing.

You need to say something.

The staff gave Sophia a polite nod. ‘Ma’am.’

‘Sergeant,’ she said.

‘Just the two of you mercs?’ he asked.

‘Contractors,’ Sophia said.

Sophia resisted the urge to glance back at their Land Cruiser. The Humvee had gone right past, leaving it completely in darkness.

The staff sergeant sidled up beside her, inhaling the cold air. ‘How about we shed some light on this here m******e, contractor?’ he said. ‘You were running behind schedule. Your friend here made a bad call out. You acted on that call out.’ He turned his head to see her reaction. ‘Is that a fair assessment?’

Sophia looked at the bodies slumped in the back seat. They weren’t Takavaran at all. Just civilians.

Shit.

She resisted the urge to swallow. Her best course of action right now was to flatter him. But not too much, he’d see through it.

‘Not much gets past you,’ she said.

‘A little bit of shrapnel, that’s all,’ he said. ‘Got rolled by bandits just south of here. Put half my squad in hospital and two of ‘em in the dirt.’

‘I hope they pull through,’ Sophia said.

‘They will.’ His lower lip jutted outward slightly—tobacco lodged in a wad between his lower teeth and lip. ‘If you want my goddamn honest opinion’—he gestured to the dead bodies in the back seat—‘you’re lucky they ain’t bandits. We’d be in a world of trouble right now.’

Sophia nodded. ‘We’re sorry for the mess.’

‘You know, back in the Middle Ages they had contract warfare. You have the cash, you can hire an army,’ the staff said. ‘They had niches in the marketplace where they became specialists. Just like today, right?’

‘I guess,’ she said.

Where are you going with this?

‘Rubicon mercs holed up with us … their specialty was k******e drones.’ The staff sergeant sucked on the tobacco under his lip. ‘So tell me, what’s yours?’

Sophia cleared her throat. ‘Make things look like an accident.’

He gestured to the Citroën. ‘You better get to work on that.’

With that, he slowly made his way back to the other marines. Except when he reached them, he turned on his heel.

‘You know, I did hear that Rubicon withdrew to Kirkuk a couple of days back. One of those tactical retrogrades,’ he said, lifting a hand off his weapon to gesture in air quotes. ‘So … just how behind schedule you runnin’, exactly?’

‘A few days,’ Damien said. His fingers were white over his carbine. If she could see it, they could too. ‘We ran into some resistance,’ he said.

‘Dangerous place you’re riding through,’ the staff said, turning and finally making his way to their Humvee.

Sophia forced herself to relax. But not too much.

‘Unsupervised mercs have a tendency to go AWOL around these parts,’ the staff called out. ‘And when they go AWOL, they become bandits.’

He stopped walking. So did his escorts.

Sophia held onto her carbine.

‘The thing about bandits is, they start taking things that don’t belong to them,’ the staff said, turning back around. ‘Shootin’ up civilians. Ambushing American soldiers.’

The two marines on either side of him stiffened.

‘Never did get them all.’ The staff sergeant leveled his weapon at Damien. ‘They were Brits though.’