BeachHead: Special Missions – Part Three: Game Day
Part Three – Game Day
The day of the match, Beachhead did something that would have made Hawk suspiciously proud: he left his weapons behind. Mostly.
Before heading for the stadium, he moved the gear bag from his hotel room to the trunk of his rental car. He expected to be gone for several hours, and leaving a compact Colt 9mm carbine, its straight magazine giving away the pistol-caliber chambering, loaded tactical vest and the rest of his equipment in a hotel room that housekeeping, maintenance or anyone with the right key could enter struck him as an unnecessary risk. A locked trunk in a secured parking area wasn't Fort Knox, but it was better than explaining the contents of that bag to an overly curious maid.
He dressed for the match in the civilian clothes he'd chosen for the trip: gray shirt with the black spade and skull across the chest, sleeves rolled against his arms, faded jeans bloused over black boots and the same G-Shock that had survived more operations than anyone cared to count. His gray JanSport backpack completed the picture. Clipped discreetly to his belt was the Joe-issued transponder Hawk had insisted he carry. Beachhead had considered leaving that behind too. He hadn't.
* * *
For the first half, Wayne managed to do what he'd been ordered to do: nothing. He found his seat, watched River Plate and Vélez battle for forty-five minutes and let himself become part of the crowd. Flags snapped above the stands. Chants rolled from one section to another like artillery. Men argued with referees who couldn't possibly hear them, vendors worked the aisles, and somewhere nearby somebody had apparently decided a soccer match was an appropriate place to bring a drum.
Beachhead watched all of it and, despite himself, enjoyed it. No Cobra. No briefing. No objective. No extraction plan. Just a soccer match. Maybe Hawk had been right. The thought irritated him enough that he immediately stopped thinking about it.
The teams returned from halftime. The referee's whistle sounded, and the second half had barely begun when four explosions detonated almost in sequence around the stadium.
Beachhead felt the first concussion before his mind registered the sound. Smoke and debris erupted from one section, then another. Screaming replaced the chants. The next blasts folded into the first until the entire stadium seemed to shake. Then came the gunfire.
Not random shots. Controlled fire.
His eyes swept the stands and concourses. Two gunmen working together. Farther across the stadium, another pair. Then another burst from a different direction. Teams of two, spread out to multiply panic and stretch the response thin. For a moment an old piece of history surfaced in his mind: Mumbai, 2008. Different city. Different year. Same ugly principle.
An exit stood less than fifty feet away, and people were already pouring through it. Beachhead could have been outside in seconds. Hawk had ordered him to stay away from trouble. Duke had told him to pretend to be a civilian. Nobody, however, had told him what to do if trouble came looking for him.
He went through the exit and ran toward his vehicle in the parking lot.
* * *
The trunk opened. The gray JanSport hit the pavement, and the gear bag came out. Wayne disappeared, Beachhead clocked in.
Drop-leg holster. Gloves. Tactical vest. Loaded magazines. His 9mm Colt AR. And finally, the green balaclava.
He pulled it over his head and caught his reflection in the rental car's rear window. Beachhead stared back. Vacation was over.
He activated the transponder on his belt. Somewhere, eventually, a computer belonging to the G.I. Joe team would register that one of its operatives had triggered an emergency beacon thousands of miles from the Pit. For all the good that was going to do him in the next few hours.
Beachhead slammed the trunk and ran toward the gunfire.
* * *
The attackers had counted on panic, confusion and people running away from them. They had not counted on anyone coming back in.
Beachhead hit the first pair in a concourse while they were focused on civilians fleeing toward an exit. Both went down before they could redirect their fire. He kept moving, using the concrete corridors and stadium structure to close on the next team. By the time he encountered another pair, they had already inflicted heavy casualties on the stadium police and security detail. Beachhead dropped them as well.
The opening blasts and assault had gutted the local response. Most of the security personnel nearest the affected sections were dead or wounded, and several police officers who had rushed toward the first explosions had been caught in the follow-on gunfire. What remained was a handful of officers and stadium personnel trying to control thousands of terrified people with no clear picture of how many attackers were still inside.
Even though his Spanish wasn't good, it didn't need to be. A hand signal was universal. So was pointing toward an exit, identifying a sector and giving a frightened man something useful to do. He rallied the survivors, pushed the remaining police toward defensible positions and directed security personnel to open evacuation routes instead of trying to hunt gunmen they weren't equipped to fight.
Beachhead took that job himself.
He moved back through the stadium, hunting the scattered two-man teams and forcing them away from the fleeing crowd. Some he caught by surprise. Others fought back. By the time the surviving attackers realized the masked man moving through the concourses wasn't local police, several of their teams were already out of the fight.
But Beachhead couldn't be everywhere. People were still bleeding, trapped and terrified. So, between engagements, he began carrying the wounded out himself, one casualty at a time.
* * *
The outer parking area had become a casualty collection point. Ambulances arrived as quickly as Buenos Aires could send them. Civilians tore shirts into makeshift bandages. Off-duty medical personnel appeared seemingly from nowhere. The few surviving security officers directed traffic and helped move casualties while ordinary people who had been running for their lives minutes earlier stopped to help strangers. Damn, these are some brave friggin' people, Beachhead thought as he emerged supporting a wounded spectator who could barely keep his feet beneath him. "Medic!"
Several people looked up. One woman didn't. She was holding an IV bag above a casualty while directing two volunteers toward another wounded fan. Dark hair. Shoulder length. Deep brown eyes.
For perhaps the first time that entire day, Beachhead stopped moving. Before he could ask what she was doing, her other hand caught the bottom of his balaclava and pulled it upward just far enough to expose his mouth. Then she kissed him.
Not tentative. Not polite. It was firm, sudden and certain—the kind of kiss given when both people understood there might not be another chance.
For once in his life, Beachhead had absolutely nothing to say. Carmen released him and pulled the balaclava back into place. Her eyes locked onto his. "Don't die in there. We've got unfinished business."
Behind him, gunfire echoed somewhere inside the stadium. Behind her, someone shouted for a nurse. Two people stood in the middle of somebody else's nightmare, each about to walk straight back into it.
Beachhead gave her a single nod, and a smile under that mask. "Yes, ma'am."
He turned toward the stadium. Carmen turned toward the wounded. And they both went back to work.
