Echo Effect Read online

  “Possibly.”

  “Yes, dear. Possibly. Once I turn this machine on, there are no guarantees that you’ll wake up. It’s possible you won’t,” he said.

  “We’ve gone over that.” She gave him an arctic glare.

  “Assuming you survive, we’ll train you the best we can. That’s part of the package you paid for. Reconnaissance. Weapons handling. Your physical abilities will put you a cut above your average hired gun, but training is very important. Be sure to go through all the virtual reality modules. Those will take twelve to sixteen weeks. After that, you’re on your own.”

  Vala tapped her foot. She wanted to ask a question, but she found it difficult to word without being offensive.

  “How did...you... Why did you—” Vala started, gesturing at him.

  “Ah, yes... My reasons... Well, my operation was very personal as well, but not quite as heroic as your situation. Let’s just say I was heartbroken, and I acted out of desperation. Hmm. Maybe I thought being someone else could get back the one I loved. Looking back, it was the worst decision I ever made,” he said in a low tone with his head down.

  After a long moment, he cleared his throat. “Still willing to go ahead with it?”

  “Let’s do it,” Vala said, hiding her shaking hands behind her back.

  I have to find Michael, I know he’s out there…

  Chapter Two

  Several weeks earlier…

  “Four minutes!” Lieutenant Wheeler barked back into the helicopter at Michael and his Ranger strike team. If any were nervous, they hid it well. They had done this dozens of times. Some of them appeared like factory workers on an assembly line as they checked each other’s gear.

  “Any changes from the intelligence report on troop strength, sir?” Michael asked. Even though the lieutenant was technically in command, the men looked to Michael for leadership.

  “Still looks like about the same, ninety strong. No activity around the LZ though. Should be a quiet insertion.” Wheeler kept his face buried in his tablet.

  “Should be.” Michael whispered to himself. He’d heard that before.

  Michael was tall, standing generously above six feet. His shoulders were broad and remarkably robust sitting atop an otherwise lean swimmer’s shape. To any onlooker, it was obvious Michael was built for power and speed. A lethal and necessary combination in Michael’s line of work. His perfectly symmetrical dark eyes were brown under most conditions, but when the light hit them just right, a touch of amber glowed around his pupils. They shined above his all-American jaw line revealing a deep sense of purpose that commanded his team’s unwavering allegiance.

  As the quadcopter nearly brushed the treetops, Michael’s legs swayed back and forth below the open door. The cool night sky prickled his heated skin. He raised his night vision and stared off into the mountainous North Korean wilderness, deceptively peaceful in the moonlight. It didn’t look much different from his native state of Alaska, not at night anyway.

  “Hey, Mike, you are going home after this one, right?” Sergeant Daniel Naben clicked in over the inter-squad radio. He flashed his trademarked goofy smile around his gapped front teeth.

  “One way or the other,” Michael responded casually.

  “Well, let’s hope it isn’t the other way. I got your back.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of.” Michael grinned. Daniel laughed, stepping across the chopper beside Michael.

  “Ah, you’ll be with her in less than a week.” Daniel said, patting him on the shoulder.

  “That’s what they told me three weeks ago.” Michael rolled his eyes.

  “That’s the Army for ya. How is she doing? Any word?” Daniel asked. Michael’s fiancé, Vala, had recently been diagnosed with an unknown mutation of spinal muscular atrophy. Years of military budget cuts eventually halted experimental medical coverage for undocumented diseases, including Vala’s.

  “We just found a doctor that has a plan for treatment. It’s extremely expensive, but he seems confident at least.” he replied.

  “Great news.”

  “Yeah, the doctors on base referred me to him, we’re going together to start treatment when I get back.” Michael said.

  “Leaving one war to fight another.” Daniel said.

  “Looks that way.” Michael said raising an eyebrow. His mission was to sell the house his dad willed to him for a down payment on her treatment, then get an apartment. But since he was in a war zone, he needed a backup plan in case he didn’t make it back. He’d secretly qualified for a military contract that promised a designated beneficiary a massive payout, enough to undergo Vala’s treatment.

  The requirements for the contract were that Michael have extensive combat experience and be in the top five percent of aptitude marks, focusing on intelligence and decision making. The other stipulation was that the military science division would take possession of his body if he was killed or severely injured.

  “I know it’s easier said than done, but let’s handle tonight first, we need you with a clear head.” Daniel said.

  “One step at a time.” Michael replied. The thing is he’d been doing the opposite. During the night, he was a Ranger serving on combat missions, but during the day he was a researcher combing through medical journals and making phone calls to doctors.

  Michael had also been on more combat missions than any other Ranger in his outfit. Not because he volunteered, but because his superiors wanted him out there. He was that guy. The one that got things done.

  “One minute!” Wheeler spouted. The all-electric whirlybirds barely muffled his nasally voice.

  Michael stood up and circled a finger over his head at the twelve men he’d served with for the last several months. He met each of their eyes for a split second as he grabbed the rope, preparing to rappel down into the darkness.

  With a deep breath, he inhaled the chilled air and held it for a moment before exhaling. He checked his weapon for the fourth time.

  Beside him, Sgt. Daniel Naben glanced down and snickered at Michael’s dated gun. He was one of only two Rangers in his unit still using a projectile-based firearm, whereas most everyone else had upgraded to laser-based weaponry.

  Daniel powered up his sleek, plastic laser. “I’m surprised you don’t have a sword too. Stay away from my head this time. That thing is kinda loud.”

  Michael just shrugged. It was an unusual characteristic, considering most Ranger units carried the same weapons. However, Michael felt a connection with the projectile weapons, he liked the raw feedback and recoil. The relationship was solidified in his youth, growing up around guns and wildlife in the Alaskan woodlands. He fired his first rifle at six years old, barely strong enough to hold it correctly. Much like his dated weapon, Michael likened himself to men of old, specifically WWII. He admired their grit and self-sacrificing ambition to serve.

  Wheeler chimed in over the radio. “Remember, men, this is just armed recon. If there’s a nuke here, we secure the area and let our robot friend EVE work her magic. If the target’s too heavily defended, we back off and shadow them. Don’t force the enemy into a ‘use it or lose it’ scenario. No hero shit. Our priority, as always, is making sure they can’t ever point that thing towards home.”

  “Don’t see why we can’t just call in an airstrike. Wham, bam, thank you, ma’am.” Daniel threw up his hands with a whispered kaboom.

  “Because the Koreans aren’t exactly known for their quality construction. As much as I’d like to blast the fucking thing to hell, we can’t risk an accidental detonation. All those civvies, they don’t deserve it.” The North Korean army had strategically placed warheads near their civilian populations, so even the slightest risk of detonation wasn’t an option.

  Michael looped the rappelling rope in his hand, yanking on it tightly as he listened to Wheeler. He was a new commander, a “butter bar” as they called the twin golden bars marking a second lieutenant. Generally, a more senior commander should be running this type of high-priority
op. With so many thousands of suspected nuclear sites to inspect though, there just weren’t enough big dogs to go around.

  Wheeler at least seemed confident, despite his inexperience. Some said he was former enlisted, but that didn’t matter much to Michael. All he cared about was his men, his country, and getting home to Vala who desperately needed him. Time wasn’t on her side.

  “Twenty seconds!”

  The Rangers looked toward Michael while spot-checking their gear as the stealth chopper reached its drop altitude. They knew the drill. As thrilling as this first taste of combat seemed for the new commander, he had no idea what these men had already been through.

  “Rope out! Go! Go! Go!” Michael slid down the swinging snake first. He shot down the rope as the green exterior light faded on the tree next to him, slowly dissipating into the blackness as he reached the bottom.

  He landed with a thud, dashed forward to the nearest tree and flicked his rifle up. A holographic visor dropped from his helmet, the tactical display filling up with green dots in seconds. He cycled to a perfect combination of night vision and infrared until he could see even better than in broad daylight. He could already detect several small rodents in the distance, but no humans.

  As soon as the last Ranger’s boots hit the ground the chopper flittered off. The crew would fly around for the next hour doing fake touch and go insertions to confuse the enemy.

  “Everyone good?” Michael questioned, checking an interface tab on his visor that displayed the condition of each of his team members.

  “We’re solid, Staff Sergeant,” Daniel confirmed.

  “Alright. Everyone on me. Wedge formation, but mind your spacing. These bastards love their booby traps. The target is about 800 meters out. Let’s make Butter Bars look good,” Michael ordered.

  “Um, you know he can hear you, right?” Daniel snickered in his squad comm.

  “Of course I do. No offense, sir.” Michael glanced back at Wheeler and smiled. Daniel shook his head. “You don’t want to ever go home, do you?”

  “Butch, any radiation?” Michael asked before they got too deep. Even though most of the nuclear missiles were shot down in the first war, radiation blanketed the atmosphere and tended to float down in the weirdest places.

  “Some hot spots here and there, but tolerable while we’re here. Unless you guys wanna build a bonfire or something, maybe hang out?” Butch shrugged, scanning a device on his wrist.

  “Ha, yeah, speaking of bonfires. You guys remember the one at Mike’s that almost burnt down his house?” Daniel said.

  “I do,” Michael chuckled while they marched.

  “Barely. I had a few too many beverages, but I do remember Vala kicking everyone out. Kinda frightening actually, with the yelling and all, but then I realized she weighs less than my thigh,” Butch replied.

  “You still woulda had your hands full.” Michael shook his head, glancing over at Butch.

  “Probably. How’s she doing anyway?” Butch asked.

  “No symptoms yet, but I need to get back to her.” Michael replied. He squinted his eyes, glancing down at the ground for a moment. He thought about her original diagnosis and when she would begin to see indicators. He understood the risks. Vala could lose control of her motor skills at any time and be bound to a wheelchair, bedridden, or worse.

  Michael had a strategy in place for when he got back to the states to pay for her treatment. Along with selling his home, he had better than average credit for a medical loan. He’d also been saving his money, considering he had little expenses on deployment. Michael figured if he could piece it all together, they’d have a chance to afford the rounds of nanobot surgery and medication.

  “Understandable Mike.” Butch nodded.

  Butch was the technical guru, a burly man with a perfectly manicured, unauthorized black beard. No one really knew if the nickname was because his stepdad was an actual meat butcher or some other reason. There were a few bets on its origin, but no winners.

  “Alright, let’s cut the chatter. Lip sync only,” Michael ordered. Lip sync was a nifty option. A small device on the Ranger’s chinstrap could interpret individual mouth movements so accurately it would translate to audio inside the other soldier’s earpieces while maintaining total silence.

  “You know, my wife hates when we use lip syncing on missions…” Butch moved his lips as his voice was perfectly simulated throughout their helmets.

  “Why?” Daniel asked.

  “Because when we talk afterwards, I’m still lip syncing. Anyone else do that?” Butch asked.

  “Yep, Vala notices it too. She thought I was singing a...”

  Michael and the team flopped to the ground reflexively as a tactical warning light flashed in every Ranger’s visor.

  “Sensor drone, 10 O’clock, 140 meters,” Butch said.

  The mobile little scouts used a sound-based radar that could detect human heartbeats out to a kilometer.

  “Our torso damper is near 90%. I’m surprised it can detect our heart rates so far away,” Daniel said.

  “Stay put,” Michael mouthed. He raised up in a crouch and hurried about sixty paces away from the unit. He slid behind a large tree, putting it between himself and the drone.

  “Staff Sergeant?” Wheeler blinked as Michael snapped off part of his torso damper, baiting the drone in.

  “Guys, this is a pretty beefy drone with two minigun laser turrets on deck,” Butch said.

  The robot veered towards Michael’s position, spooling up its turrets in anticipation. Michael leaned around the tree and drew a bead on the dark vessel. The metallic spherical drone bobbed up and down like a blowfish as it hovered through the misty forest.

  “That thing is thirty meters from you,” Daniel said as all the Rangers drew their weapons on the drone. “Just give the order, Mike.”

  “Mike?”

  “Fifteen meters…”

  “Hold,” Michael ordered, signaling them to stay low.

  As the drone approached the large tree, it circled cautiously first, but Michael shuffled around the trunk. The drone slowly orbited the tree behind Michael just far enough to point its weapons away from Michael’s men, completely giving the Rangers its backside.

  “Fire!”

  The Rangers pelted the attack drone with a merciless barrage of laser fire, cutting it to pieces and scorching the tree Michael was hiding behind, setting the bark on fire. The drone crumpled to the ground in a pile of smoke and debris.

  “Target down.” Daniel sighed as Michael fled from behind the burning tree. Butch smiled as he ran out, scratching his beard.

  “MT-SOL978 attack drone. Only weak point is its backside. Cute but kinda risky, Mike. That drone could have ripped through the tree if it wanted to,” Butch said.

  “It should have. Artificial intelligence at its best. Probably needed confirmation on a target first.” Michael adjusted his torso damper under his body armor. “We’ve got only minutes before they send out another one to inspect, or worse. Follow me!” He waved his men on toward the main objective.

  The Rangers raced after him, swiftly pushing toward the objective, sacrificing stealth for speed. After a few minutes, Michael could see the target installation surrounded by a double-layered chain link fence.

  Daniel adjusted the settings on his laser and sliced open the fence with a flick of his wrist. While the team filed through, Michael ordered four Rangers to stay behind, stalking the perimeter as snipers.

  “I’m dialed in on their network. Picking up alert chatter on their comms. They’re suspicious about why that drone isn’t responding,” Butch said.

  “I know. Follow me,” Michael replied. He used his visor’s holographic display to help him navigate through the installation, most of which was filled with cargo and transport vehicles. They stayed close, pushing through sets of dark, twenty-meter-long cargo bins for cover and flanking wide around the nuclear warhead.

  “They’re at full alert now. Must have found the destroyed drone,”
Butch said. About that time, an alarm blared above them.

  “Dammit. Maybe we shoulda did the bonfire.” Daniel mumbled.

  “We’ve come this far. There’s no backing out now,” Michael said as his eyelid quivered under the stress. They could hear men giving orders and boots pounding the pavement all around them. The sounds came from the direction of the downed drone.

  Butch buried his face in his tablet. The holographic display illuminated his face with a light blue tint as his eyes skipped toward Michael. “I’m picking up a steady hotspot. Warhead must be through this next set of cargo bins and on the other side of an armored flatbed truck. Here. Looks like they were about to load it up for transport. We have three guards protecting it.” Butch explained, showing Michael on his tablet.

  “Warhead assembled?” Wheeler jumped in.

  “Umm. Let’s see, zooming in…Negative, we can open fire, but I’d play it safe though, grenades or explosions are not recommended as usual.”

  “Let’s get it done,” Michael said. Wheeler cut his eyes at Michael, but nodded his head in agreement.

  They pushed through the next set of cargo bins, climbing over boxes of ammunition, drone parts, and explosives in the process. Just outside the cargo bin door was their objective.

  “On my command, other side of this door, standard breach and clear, three targets within fifteen meters. Hit ‘em hard and fast…” Michael led with his team stacked close behind him. He gripped the aluminum door handle with his hand.

  He thought about Vala at home, then glanced back at his men and nodded. So many people back home were counting on him. He felt the pressure resonating around his neck as Daniel patted him on the back. “Ready.”

  Michael slammed the door open as they fanned out with guns blazing.

  Michael’s rifle boomed over his team’s zinging laser weapons. They dropped all three targets instantly. Two of them had their backs to the Rangers while the last one didn’t even have time to raise his weapon. The blaring alarm assisted the breach, dampening the chaos of the takedown.