Dead Six

it. “She’s right. We’ve got to get out of here before they start dropping mortars on us. This isn’t a good place to be.”

Still terribly disoriented, I shook my head, trying to clear it.

“You’re in shock,” the angel said, pushing me through the door of our wrecked NH-90 helicopter. “What’s your name?” she asked as we stepped onto a large, tiled surface.

“V . . . Valentine,” I stammered, squinting in the early morning sun. “Where are we?”

“In a pool,” Tailor said, moving up a steep embankment ahead of me. “Ramirez is dead. Half the team’s gone.” He dropped the magazine out of his stubby, short-barreled OSW FAL and rocked in a fresh one. “Hostiles will be on us quick. You locked and loaded?”

My head was clearing. I looked down at the DSA FAL carbine in my hands and retracted the bolt slightly. A .308 round was in the chamber. My good-luck charm, a custom Smith & Wesson .44 Magnum, was still in its holster on my left thigh. I was still alive, so it hadn’t let me down. “I’m ready,” I said, following Tailor up the incline.

Our chopper had crashed in the deep end of a huge, pear-shaped swimming pool that had been mostly drained of water. It sat at an odd angle, still smoking, the camouflage hull absolutely riddled with bullet holes. The walls of the pool’s deep end prevented the chopper from flipping over, but it was leaning to the side. There were deep gashes in the tile where the rotor had struck. The rotor had blown to pieces, and fragments were scattered everywhere.

“What happened?” I asked. The angel didn’t answer at first. I remembered then; her name was Ling, the one who hired us. She followed me up the embankment, clutching a suppressed Sig 551 assault rifle.

“We crashed,” she said after a moment, as if I didn’t know that. We cleared the top of the incline. A handful of armed people waited for us in the shallow end of the empty pool. Aside from Tailor and me, only three were dressed in the green fatigues of my company, Vanguard Strategic Solutions. I closed my eyes and tried to catch my breath. Ten of us had left on this mission. Half hadn’t made it. Goddamn it . . .

“You alright, Val?” Tailor asked. “I really need you with me, okay?”

“I’m fine,” I said, kneeling down to check my gear. “Just a little rattled.” We’d crash-landed in the middle of a deserted resort complex. The city had once been covered in places like this, but now they were all abandoned. In front of us stood a cluster of white towers that must have been a luxury hotel once. About a hundred yards behind us was the beach and ocean as far as the eye could see. The place had probably been evacuated back when the fighting started. It was dirty from disuse and littered with garbage and debris. Several plumes of smoke rose in the distance. Cancun had seen better days.

Ling brushed the dust from her black body armor. “Mr. Tailor. You’re in charge now, correct? We must keep moving.” I believed she was from China, but there was no accent to her speech.

With Ramirez gone, Tailor had just been promoted to team leader. He quickly looked around, taking in our surroundings. “And where in the hell do you want to go? This part of town is covered in hostiles.” His East Tennessee twang were more pronounced with his anger.

“Somewhere that is not here. I have multiple wounded,” Ling said, nodding toward the rest of her teammates, all members of the same mysterious Exodus organization. Like her, they were heavily armed and dressed in black. They were clustered in a tight circle near the edge of the pool, waiting for instructions. In the middle of them was a teenaged girl being tended to by their medic. “We have to get her out.”

“Look, damn it,” Tailor exclaimed. “We’ll save your precious package. That was the deal.” He jerked a thumb at the young girl as he spoke. “Let me try to get help again.” Tailor squeezed the radio microphone on his vest and spoke into it. “Ocean-Four-One, this is Switchblade-Four-Alpha.”

While Tailor tried to raise the base, our team sharpshooter, Skunky, ran over to see if I was okay. He was a skinny Asian guy and was in his mid-twenties, same age as me. “Dude, you’re alive.”

“I’m fine,” I said, standing up. “What happened?”

“They hit us with some kind of big gun right after we took off. It punched that hole in the chopper. The pilots were hit with frag. We made it a few miles, but it was too much damage. They were trying to set us down when the pilot died. That’s how we ended up in the pool.”

Tailor looked over at us, flustered. “I can’t raise the base. This is bad, really bad.”

“Switchblade-Four-Alpha, this is Stingray-Two-Zero,” a new voice said, crackling over our radios.

That was the call-sign for our air support. One of Vanguard’s Super Tucano turboprop attack planes roared overhead and began to circle our position. Vanguard was one of the best-funded private military companies in the business. We could provide our own air support if we needed to.

“Stingray-Two-Zero, this is Switchblade-Four-Alpha,” Tailor said. “What’s your status?”

“We were going to ask you the same thing, Four-Alpha,” the pilot replied. “We’ve lost communication with the airfield. It looks bad down there.”

“We’ve got multiple wounded and multiple KIA. We need an immediate medevac. Five of us, six Exodus personnel, and the package. Eight confirmed KIA, including the crew of the chopper.” Switchblade-Four was down to just me, Tailor, Skunky, Tower, and Harper.

As Tailor talked to the pilot, trying to figure out what was going on, I looked over at Ling and her people and at the young girl that we’d gone through so much trouble to acquire. I didn’t know who the girl was or why Exodus wanted her so badly. She had to be important, though, since Ling had offered us an ungodly sum of money to go into Cancun, guns blazing, to rescue her. The fact that we’d be violating the UN cease-fire hadn’t seemed to bother her.

Tailor let go of his radio microphone. “Pilot says there’s an armed convoy headed our way up Kukulkan Boulevard. Looks like Mendoza’s militia. They saw us go down, I guess. Couple trucks full of guys and some technicals. He’ll provide cover, but he’s low on ammo.”

“Just like us,” Skunky interjected.

Ling put her gloved hand on Tailor’s shoulder. “I need you to get your men moving,” she said. “I’ll contact my people to see if I can find out what’s going on.”

As Ling trotted off, Tailor turned back to us with a worried look on his face. “Val, Skunky, c’mon, we gotta go.” Nodding, I followed him as he waved to the others. Standing away from the Exodus people, we huddled up. “Listen up, Switchblade-Four,” Tailor said, addressing us as a team. “We’re in some serious shit here. I don’t know what’s going on back at the base. I got a bad feeling.” Tailor looked over his shoulder as an explosion detonated to the southeast. The Tucano had begun its attack run.

“This is the third time we’ve broken the cease-fire this month,” Skunky said, anxiously grasping his scoped, accurized M14. “You don’t think . . .”

“I know what I think,” Tower, our machine gunner, said. Sweat beaded on his dark face. “I think they left us here.”

That got everyone’s attention. Being abandoned in-country was every mercenary’s worst nightmare.

“It doesn’t matter,” Tailor said. “Everybody shut up and listen. I don’t trust these Exodus assholes. When we start moving, y’all look out for each other. If we have to, we’ll ditch these guys and head out on our own.”

I flinched. “Tailor, they’ve got wounded and a kid. And where in the hell do you think we’re gonna go?”

“Don’t argue with me!” Tailor snapped. The pressure was getting to him. “We’ll figure it out. Now get ready. We’re moving out. Keep your spacing, use cover, and watch for snipers.”

“Get some!” the rest of us shouted in response.

“Mr. Tailor, I’ve got some bad news,” Ling said, approaching our group. She had a satellite phone in her hand. “I don’t think anyone’s coming for us.”

“What?” Tailor asked, his face going a little pale.

“Something happened. According to my people, the UN shut down all of Vanguard’s operations about an hour ago.”

“The UN?” Tailor asked, exasperated. “But the Mexican government—”

“The Mexican Nationalist government dissolved last night, Mr. Tailor. I don’t have all the details. I’m afraid we’re on our own.”

“All we have to do is get to the safe areas in the city, right?” Harper asked. Since the cease-fire, half of Cancun was controlled by UN peacekeepers.