Free Fear and Anger (The 47 Echo Series) by Shawn Kupfer

there was still that feeling...
    “So, what do you think their deal was?” Christopher asked Yuri as the two of them took apart a soldier’s pack and started pulling out clips for AK-74Ms.
    “I think the transmission we received wasn’t so far off the mark,” Yuri said, “But that they wanted to take our weapons and supplies. The man transmitting the message was obviously one of the soldiers. It was a ruse.”
    “I suppose that makes sense. I mean, not like we’re rolling that heavy with armament, but an extra 10 rifles and an APC goes a long way on either side.”
    “Except for the Chinese,” Gregor grunted. “They have so much equipment it’s ridiculous.”
    “Then why aren’t they supplying their Renegade allies?” Anthony piped up from a few bodies over.
    “There are differing theories on that,” Yuri told him. “One being that it’s hard to get supplies this far into the Allied lines. Another being that a lot of these Renegade groups are autonomous – acting on their own, not under the command of the Chinese or the Koreans, or even other Renegade factions.”
    “What do you think?” Christopher asked.
    “I think it’s a mess,” Yuri said, shrugging and pocketing a pack of cigarettes from a dead soldier’s breast pocket.
    “Well, yeah. That, I can agree with,” Christopher said, shooting him a grin.
    “Hey, Chris. Find an excuse to come back to the truck, man. Mary’s got something for you,” Peter’s voice chirped in his ear.
    “That 7.62 ammo you’ve got there, Gregor?” Christopher asked.
    “ Da .”
    “Give it here. I’ll take it to one of my guys to reload the UAV’s guns.”
    “Smart,” Pete radioed.
    Gregor handed over the ammo box he’d just found – it was half empty. Christopher smiled at the Russian sniper, took the box, and made a beeline for the APC. Just outside, he found Michael smoking a cigarette.
    “Hey, Mike. Think you can figure out how to reload the UAV with this?”
    “They’re pretty simple PKs. No problem,” Michael said, grabbing the box and climbing to the top of the APC.
    Christopher chanced a look over his shoulder and saw that the two Russians were still busy going through the corpses, so he ducked into the APC through the back door. Mary was sitting on one of the long bench seats, closing up her netbook and stowing it in her pack. Peter was standing across from her, the tablet in his hand.
    “Figured you’d want to see this,” Peter said, handing the tablet to Christopher. The entire screen was taken up by a short dossier – though Christopher’s Russian was pretty rusty, he didn’t need to read much. He recognized the picture at the top of the file – Yuri.
    “This what I think it is?” Christopher asked.
    “Probably not. Check the next couple,” Mary said.
    Christopher swiped the screen. Another dossier came up – Gregor’s.
    “OK. This isn’t filling me with a bunch of confidence, folks,” Christopher said, looking up from the tablet at his people.
    “It gets worse, Chief. Keep swiping.”
    Christopher swiped the screen again, and a third dossier came up. Again, he didn’t need to read this one to recognize whose it was – his own face was staring back at him. He swiped again, and found himself looking at a screen full of Cyrillic text.
    “I’m better with Chinese,” Christopher said, handing the tablet back to Peter. “What am I looking at?”
    “A saved email. Orders from... well, someone. Letting them know that Yuri, Gregor, and you were rolling through here with approximately eight other people,” Peter said.
    “Y’all didn’t get dossiers?”
    “Convicts,” Peter said. “We’re not listed specifically in –”
    “In the Marines’ mission databases. Just the CO of a convict unit is listed,” Christopher said. It was sinking in now. “Someone hacked us?”
    “Hacked some pretty substantial systems at either Justice or Firebase Zulu,” Mary said, nodding. “And with the timestamp on those files –