Hostage Zero

He didn’t wait for an answer. He turned on his heel and ran toward the growing conflagration, his rifle at the ready. This was the nightmare scenario-the one that he had driven home a thousand times to Unit wannabes when he was an instructor at the OTC-operator training course. On an 0300 mission, the precious cargo was the mission. Everything was secondary to the rescue. And by God, once you have the PC in your grasp, you never do anything to risk their safety. Yeah, well, that was the training course. He’d survived it once and taught it three times, and he knew for a fact that there was no scenario involving the incineration of a dozen children.

The fire grew with startling speed. In the ten or fifteen seconds that it took Jonathan to cover the distance, the far end of the barracks was fully involved. The screams from inside were as terrifying a sound as he’d ever heard. He was certain that they were screaming words, but he didn’t try to catch them. The timbre of the voices told him everything he needed to know. As they closed within the last few yards, Harvey sprinted past him to get to the door first. Jonathan didn’t think the little guy knew how to move that fast.

A burst of machine-gun fire from close behind made Jonathan slide to a stop and bring his weapon to bear. It was Boxers, and his weapon was up, his eyes focused to the southwest corner of the compound. He followed his sight line and turned in time for a second burst to drop a soldier who’d been readying a shot of his own.

“Make it fast, Dig!” Boxers shouted. “This is spinning out of control. We are officially in trouble.”

Jonathan could count on two hands the number of times he’d heard his friend sound this unnerved. Whatever advantage they’d earned through their massive diversion had now been lost. In fact, the diversion itself had become their biggest problem. With the element of surprise squandered, this whole mission would come down to marksmanship.

Harvey pulled on the barracks door, trying to get it open. It was not lost on Jonathan that none of the local soldiers or bosses were doing anything to help the children.

“Move, Harvey,” Jonathan barked. He let the M4 fall against its sling, and raised the Mossberg. He jacked the breech open, ejecting one of the buckshot rounds, then reached to his bandolier of shells and thumbed out a slug round. He slipped it into the breech and closed it before sweeping Evan and his friend behind him. He placed the muzzle two inches away from the shackle loop, calculated the ricochet angle, then pulled the trigger.

The Mossberg bucked, and the lock disappeared. He slid the bolt to the side, pulled open the door, and children tumbled out into the night. They coughed and cried, their faces blackened with soot and smoke, but Jonathan didn’t see any burns. Next to him, Harvey did his best to examine them as they streamed by. Apparently, they were all healthy, because he didn’t stop any of them for further treatment.

A ripple of bullets chewed the wall just to the left of the door, followed an instant later by the sound of the gunfire that launched them. The children yelled and scattered, causing Jonathan to reflexively look for Evan. He was still right where he was supposed to be, his friend close enough for them to share a heartbeat.

As much as he wanted to bolt out of there, he had to look inside to make sure that he hadn’t left any living children to burn. He cleared the two steps in a single stride. Keeping close to the floor, where the air was still breathable, he crawled a few feet inside and took a look. Just an empty room on this end. On the far end, a wall of fire had become a living monster, consuming everything. If someone had been left behind, they were dead now.

He scooted back outside.

The children from the burning barracks weren’t going anywhere. They clustered around Boxers and Harvey, and now that Jonathan had rejoined the scene, they clustered around him, too. One boy of about twelve who appeared in the firelight to be missing his right eye and ear from an old injury grabbed Jonathan by his web gear and said in Spanish, “What do we do? Where do we go? Please take me with you.”

Others were doing the same with Boxers and Harvey. These kids were in a total panic, yet somehow they knew that the strangers with the rifles provided a better future than the locals who paid for their labors.

Jonathan said nothing. What could he say? This mission was coming unzipped in enormous proportions.

“We’ve got to move!” he shouted to his team.

“Guns to the north!” Boxers yelled.

Jonathan pivoted right and dragged Evan to the ground by cupping the back of his neck with his left hand while shouldering his M4 with his right. A dozen or more men in various stages of uniform undress had left their instinct to fight the fires and were dialing in to the real threat. Word was passing quickly among them, and many were assuming shooting positions. Jonathan dropped two with two three-round bursts.