15. The Trap #2
Rook cuts the lights. Darkness swallows the track.
"Bronco, lights off. Hold position." I key the radio, keeping my voice low. "We've got a potential—"
An IED detonates fifteen meters ahead.
The blast shreds the road surface, launching a column of mud, gravel, and shrapnel into the canopy.
The concussive wave hits the windshield with a crack that spiders the tempered glass corner to corner.
The shockwave punches through the cab, compressing the air in my lungs, and the world goes white for a fraction of a second.
Then the gunfire starts.
Automatic weapons from the elevated position on the right.
Muzzle flashes strobe through the tree line—four, five, six distinct positions in a staggered line running parallel to the road.
Rounds punch through the Hilux's body panels with the sound of a pneumatic riveter, each impact sending sparks and fragments of sheet metal spinning through the cab.
I'm out of the vehicle before the first burst finishes. My boots hit the mud, and I drop behind the engine block—the only part of the Hilux that will stop rifle rounds. The M4 comes up. I shoulder the stock and acquire the nearest muzzle flash through the ACOG.
Breathe. Squeeze.
The rifle cracks. The muzzle flash on the ridge goes dark.
"Contact right, six shooters in the tree line." Rook is out, crouched beside the rear wheel, returning fire in controlled pairs. "Classic L-shape. They've got us in a kill zone."
The Land Cruiser's horn blares—Bronco's signal.
The M249 opens up from behind the diesel's engine block, hammering the elevated position with a sustained burst that shreds vegetation and splinters tree trunks.
The noise is apocalyptic, the deep bass of the belt-fed weapon shaking the ground beneath my boots.
Hammer works the far side of the Land Cruiser with his carbine, calling the positions by number so Bronco can walk the belt onto them. Left two. Center. Center again.
Cipher crawls out of the Hilux's back seat, clutching his tablet in one hand and his sidearm in the other. Blood streams from a gash above his left eyebrow—shrapnel from the windshield.
"Cipher. Status."
"I'm good." He wipes the blood from his eye with the back of his wrist. "The tablet's still live. I can—"
A round punches through the Hilux's fender six inches from his head. He drops flat.
"Stay down." I transition to the next muzzle flash. Squeeze. The chevron settles, and I take the shot. The flash dies. "Rook, flank left. Use the ravine. Get below their sight line and roll up the position from the south end."
"Moving." Rook drops below the road edge and disappears into the undergrowth.
I reload. Magazine two.
The firefight settles into a brutal rhythm.
Bronco's M249 pins the center of the enemy line with suppressive fire while I pick off the flanks with precision shots.
The hostiles return fire in disciplined bursts—not panicked, not spray-and-pray.
These are trained shooters executing a rehearsed ambush.
But they're not pressing the attack.
The realization surfaces between trigger pulls. The volume of fire is consistent, but static. A competent ambush force with elevated terrain would send a flanking element through the ravine to roll up our blind side.
These shooters aren't maneuvering or closing the distance. They're stalling, not killing.
Containment. Not elimination.
They don't want us dead. They want us here.
I chamber a fresh round and scan the tree line through the ACOG. The remaining muzzle flashes are holding position—four shooters maintaining a steady rate of fire from behind heavy cover. They're content to keep us pinned.
Why?
If the Consortium knew our route—and they clearly did—they had the intelligence to position an overwhelming force.
Thirty hostiles from the radar installation could have flooded this road and wiped us out.
Instead, they deployed six shooters in a static ambush designed to fix us in place and hold our attention while the main effort strikes elsewhere.
Elsewhere.
The logging facility.
Lily.
"Ivy." I key the radio. "Ivy, respond."
Static. Dead static.
"Ivy, this is Wraith. Respond immediately."
Nothing. The channel is empty. The frequency that was clear seven minutes ago is a wall of white noise.
The silence pours into my skull like ice water.
The same silence. The same dead channel.
Kandahar comes back in a single frame: the ridge, the scope, the radio crackling to nothing while my men bled out in the valley below. The empty magazine. The hollow click of a firing pin striking an empty chamber while the people I was supposed to protect died one by one in the dust.
The paralysis lasts less than a second.
It's the longest second of my life.
"Wraith." Bronco's voice cuts through the radio. "You good?"
I'm not good. I'm the furthest thing from good that a human being can be while still operating a firearm.
The woman sleeping in my arms forty-five minutes ago is in danger, and I'm pinned on a jungle road by a containment force specifically designed to keep me from reaching her.
"The ambush is a diversion." My voice comes out flat. Controlled. The operator speaking while the man inside screams. "They're hitting the facility. Lily and Ivy are the target."
The radio silence from Bronco stretches for a beat. Two.
"Shit." One word. All the confirmation needed.
"Rook, abort the flank." I key the radio. "Get back to the vehicles. We're moving."
"Copy. Thirty seconds."
I'm done conserving ammunition.
I rise from behind the engine block and advance into the kill zone. The M4 barks in rapid succession—three, four, five rounds punching into the nearest concealed position. Bark and wood splinters explode from the tree trunk. A body tumbles from the elevated hide, crashing through the undergrowth.
Magazine three.
I push forward, crossing the open ground between the Hilux and the crater left by the IED. Rounds snap past my head—the sonic crack of supersonic projectiles splitting the air inches from my skull. I don't flinch. The flinch reflex died in the Kandahar desert, a lifetime ago.
Another muzzle flash. I pivot, align the chevron, and squeeze. The flash goes dark.
Bronco shifts the M249's fire to the remaining positions, the heavy rounds chewing through cover and concealment with indiscriminate fury. The belt-fed weapon is a blunt instrument, but blunt instruments win firefights when precision takes too long.
Magazine four.
Rook emerges from the ravine behind the last two shooters. His M4 cracks twice. The gunfire stops.
The silence that follows is heavy. The jungle holds its breath. Brass casings litter the mud around my boots, the spent brass steaming in the humid air.
I don't stop moving.
"Cipher, can you get the Hilux running?"
Cipher is already under the hood, his hands moving through the engine compartment by feel. "The IED shredded the right front tire and cracked the radiator. She's dead."
"Everyone in the Land Cruiser. Now."
We pile into Bronco's vehicle. I take the passenger seat. Rook drives. Cipher bleeds quietly in the back, pressing a bandage against the gash above his eyebrow with one hand and scrolling the tablet with the other.
"I can't reach Ivy on any frequency." Cipher's voice is tight. "Primary, secondary, and the emergency fallback channel are all dead. It's not jamming—the frequencies are live, but there's no response."
"How far to the facility?"
"Fourteen klicks back the way we came." Rook throws the Land Cruiser into gear and cuts a tight three-point turn on the narrow track, the diesel roaring in protest. The tires spin in the mud, catch, and the vehicle lurches back down the road. "Eight minutes if I don't hit anything."
Eight minutes. In eight minutes, a trained assault team can clear a building, secure the occupants, and disappear into the jungle.
I reload. Magazine five.
Four rifle mags remaining. Two for the SIG. The Ka-Bar. The folding blade.
Every round I burned in the ambush is a round I don't have for whatever's waiting at the end of this road. The doubled loadout that felt excessive ninety minutes ago is now dangerously thin.
The Land Cruiser screams through the pre-dawn darkness, the headlights carving wild arcs through the mist as Rook attacks the switchbacks. The diesel howls, the cracked windshield vibrating with every rut and pothole.
"Bronco." I don't turn around. "How much belt do you have left?"
"Two hundred, give or take. Burned the first belt."
"Save it. If the facility is compromised, I need that gun on the approach."
"Copy."
The jungle thins as we descend the ridgeline. The canopy opens in patches, revealing the pre-dawn sky—dark gray just beginning to bleed orange at the eastern horizon.
Then I see it.
Through a gap in the tree line, low on the horizon, an orange glow pulses against the gray sky. The color is wrong for dawn. Too concentrated. Too bright. The light flickers with the telltale rhythm of open flame, casting a shifting halo above the canopy that bleeds into the mist like a wound.
"Wraith." Bronco's voice is quiet. "That's the logging facility."
She's in there. She's in there, and I left her. I left her sleeping on a bed with the taste of my promises on her lips. I walked out the door, and I left her.
The Land Cruiser hits the straightaway and Rook floors it. The diesel screams. The jungle blurs. The war I planned to fight is behind me.
The war I'm going to lose is ahead.