Things became a little easier as one of the Sentinels already on the ground took control of Hale’s drop line and held it steady. A few seconds later he was standing on a city street, where he hurried to unclip his harness lest the Party Girl inadvertently soar upward and jerk him into the air.
“The last man is clear,” Richards said over the radio. “Thanks for the lift, Hollywood. Out.”
Purvis had been waiting for what seemed like an hour. As his crew reeled the drop ropes in and brought the extendable gantries inboard, he took the ship straight up.
Powerful searchlights and long necklaces of tracer fire began exploring the night sky, searching for the meat-things that had been so audacious as to invade Chimeran airspace. The Sabre Jets were long gone, having fled south, before the stinks could scramble their fighters.
Which was nice for the jet jockeys, but not for Purvis, who was still in the area.
The solution, such as it was, consisted of switching to level flight while fleeing south at little more than rooftop level. A very dangerous process indeed, especially at night, but one calculated to keep the Chimeran fighters off his ass. Because they were so fast that they couldn’t ride the VTOL’s six, and being unable to get under the ship’s belly, they were unlikely to nail Purvis with their cannons.
So it was their heat-seeking missiles he feared the most, and the only defense against them was to fire white-hot flares to port and starboard as the Party Girl ran for its life.
Meanwhile, back at the insertion point, Richards was busy sorting everyone out.
This was his fifth drop into Chicago. That made him an Ace in the parlance of his Intel peers. How many more such missions was he entitled to before his number came up? Six? Seven? Or five and out?
There was no way to know.
But given that Hale and his men were Sentinels, and he wasn’t, Richards knew he was the most vulnerable man on the team. An irony that he did his best to ignore as his subordinates went about creating a defensive perimeter and waited to see who would arrive first. Freedom First—or a heavily armed Chimeran response team.
It was a question made all the more urgent by the fact that they had been dropped into the center of a major intersection. It was too dark to see his surroundings clearly, but thanks to the photos he’d memorized, Richards knew that partially burned-out buildings surrounded him on three sides, with an elevated train station on the fourth. Any or all of them might provide protective cover, but if the Freedom First guide arrived after the team cleared the street, he might assume they had been compromised, and leave without them.
Then they would be shit out of luck.
So Richards was forced to settle for a wheel formation, with all the Sentinels facing out as precious seconds ticked away. The guide was late—five minutes late—and Richards was getting ready to retreat to the train station. He considered his alternatives. Should he leave a radio where the guide could find it? That might work, but if a Chimeran patrol happened by, it would signal the team’s presence as well.
Suddenly a manhole cover popped up out of its metal collar, fell over, and hit the street with a clang. Richards yelled “Don’t shoot!” and not a moment too soon as Corporal Vedka and Private Oshi swiveled toward the noise, ready to fire.
“Eyes front!” Hale ordered, lest the men in his sector take their eyes off the perimeter. He turned to see Richards kneel next to the dimly seen guide and exchange a few brief sentences. Then the group was on the move.
In keeping with pre-established protocols, the Sentinels armed with scope-mounted Fareyes, M5A2s, and Rossmore shotguns descended into the depths first, leaving those with Bellocks, rocket launchers, and the team’s single minigun to provide security until they, too, were ordered below.
That was when Hale dropped into the hole, felt for the rungs with his feet, and passed the M5A2 down to Private Tanner. The biggest man on the team and the proud owner of the minigun.
The cast iron lid made a harsh grating sound as Hale pulled it over, pushed the chunk of metal up, and then lowered it into place. At that point the team could lay claim to a clean insertion. An accomplishment that boosted their chances of success from damned unlikely to the realm of the barely possible.
As Hale lowered himself into what appeared to be a storm drain, the first things he noticed were the dank, fetid air and the harsh glow of a flare which had been inserted into a crack in one of the brick walls. He hit bottom, and a layer of black sediment squished under his boots as Tanner returned his weapon.
The scene that greeted him was surreal, to say the least. The Sentinels were lined up with their backs to a wall as a young woman inspected them. Except that “inspected” wasn’t the right word, since what she was really doing was looking each man over prior to sniffing him the same way that a friendly dog might have.
She had rough-cut blond hair, a pug nose, and was dressed in a leather jacket, tight-fitting jeans, and lace-up boots.
“They call her Spook,” Richards explained as she moved from Cooper to Samson. “She has an extremely acute sense of smell—and that can be quite useful down here. By memorizing what each man smells like, she’ll be able to sort them out in total darkness, if need be.”
“I see,” Hale said as the vetting process continued. “Is that why people call her Spook?”
“No,” Richards replied, “that has to do with her tattoos.”
That was when Hale noticed the tattoos on Spook’s face, neck, and hands. At first he had thought they were a trick of the light from the flickering flare. Most if not all of them were symbols which seemed to have religious or occult value, including variations on pentagrams, crosses, triangles, sigils, moons, and at least one ankh, located at the very center of her forehead. “So they’re for more than decoration?” he inquired.
Richards nodded as Spook subjected an embarrassed Private Perez to her strange form of scrutiny.
“Yeah. Spook believes that those symbols protect her from Chimeran energy projectiles, and maybe they do. You’ll notice that she isn’t wearing any body armor, yet there isn’t a scratch on her. And that’s saying something, here in Chicago!” The strange young woman completed her inspection of the men and turned to approach the officers.
“Stand by,” Richards said. “It’s your turn.”
Hale stood his ground. Spook had very direct green eyes, and they registered surprise as she examined him. She was pretty, even with the facial tattoos, and exuded a strong animal magnetism. “You have stink eyes,” she said artlessly. “And I can smell the virus on you. The others have it, too. But not as strong.”
Hale didn’t know what to say, so he was silent as Spook began to sniff his right arm. She followed the limb all the way up to his shoulder, where she paused for a moment, before licking his neck. That was something new, and slightly erotic, as Hale had the opportunity to smell her. Rather than the soapy fragrance he had come to associate with Cassie, Spook exuded a musky scent which was appealing, but in a different way. “You taste like they do,” Spook said as she pulled back. “You’re changing. Did you know that?”
Hale shrugged. “I’ve been immunized. That amounts to a change.”
Spook stared at him thoughtfully, as if deciding whether to say more, then turned to Richards.
“The station is two miles away,” she said. “The first mile and a half will be very dangerous.”
“We’ll be ready,” Richards assured her. “Lead the way.”
So Spook led the way, followed by Richards, Kawecki, Henning, Vedka, Oshi, Perez, Obo, Cooper, Samson, Dana, Tanner, and Hale.
The order of march had been determined by the type of threats they were likely to encounter, the sort of weapon that each Sentinel was carrying, and the need to place an officer at each end of the column.
The going was fairly easy at first, because the ceiling of the main tunnel was at least eight feet high, and it was wide enough for three men to walk abreast. Not that Richards or Hale would permit such a thing. Their challenge was to keep
the Sentinels spaced out so that a single explosion couldn’t kill more than one or two men.
Illumination, such as it was, came from the lights built into or taped onto their weapons. White blobs overlapped each other and roamed the ceiling, walls, and floor as the twelve-man column followed their young guide through her subterranean world.
Then the situation changed as Spook paused in front of a pipe that was about four feet in diameter. It opened into the larger drain at a point approximately three feet off the floor. After peering back, as if to make sure that the Sentinels were still with her, Spook entered the smaller tube and promptly disappeared.
Hale watched Richards and the rest of them remove the secondary weapons that were slung across their backs, and slip them into canvas drag bags which each man would tow behind him lest the barrels get caught on an obstruction of some sort. Tight spaces weren’t good, but Hale figured that Spook knew that, and wouldn’t have chosen such a route unless it was absolutely necessary to do so.
It took a full five minutes for the team to enter the pipe. Hale went last, the M5A2 carbine dragging behind him as he elbowed his way forward with the shotgun cradled in his arms. The surface beneath his chest was dry, and would remain so until the snow started to melt and the spring runoff began.
Thanks to the light projected from under the Rossmore’s barrel and reflected from one wall back to the other, Hale could see Tanner’s drag bag and the soles of his enormous boots as the other Sentinel made his way forward. It was a slow, painstaking process and Hale hated the way the tube hugged him from all sides.
At one point it was necessary for him to pull himself over the corpse of a badly mauled rat. But he’d been forced to deal with worse—much worse—and he kept on going. He was in a rhythm by then, and starting to feel better about things.
“Leapers!”
Spook yelled over the radio Richards had given her, but the horrible screeching noise spoke for itself as the cat-sized Chimera dropped out of vertical drain holes to land in the pipe they occupied. It was just about the worst thing that could have happened at that point, since none of the Sentinels could fire forward without hitting the man in front of them.
So as one of the horrors landed on Tanner’s legs, and turned to attack Hale, the only thing he could do was to thrust his shotgun barrel into the Leaper’s gaping mouth, using it as a club. Fangs broke as the weapon went in, and the stink shrieked in pain as Hale drew his commando knife, and slashed at the beast. A good twenty inches separated the two combatants, but the Fairbairn Sykes was long enough to make contact, and the tip found a major artery.
Blood sprayed the inside surface of the pipe as Richards shouted over the radio.
“Fire up into those drains! Kill them before they can drop!”
Private Russ Dana was directly in front of Tanner. He was one of two Sentinels armed with an L11-2 Dragon, which he had already used to fry one of the Leapers. Samson’s boots had been singed by the momentary belch of flames but there were no complaints as Dana rolled over to direct the flamethrower upward.
There was a subdued roar as a tongue of fire shot up through the vertical drain, found flesh, and cooked one of the falling Leapers. The body caught on an obstruction, another stink landed on top of it, and began to eat its way downward.
He and Henning sent blast after blast of liquid fire up to intercept the gibbering beasts even as one or two others managed to roll over and bring other weapons into play. Hale’s Rossmore generated a deafening BOOM, BOOM, BOOM sound as he fired upward and empty casings fell back on him. They were hot, and therefore uncomfortable, but a lot better than the alternative.
Then, as suddenly as the attack had begun, it was over, and the team was free to elbow their way forward again. Those located at the tail end of the line had no choice but to drag themselves through the bloody remains of their attackers, and the stench typical of all Chimera combined with the throat-clogging odor of cooked flesh and the harsh smell of gunsmoke.
Finally after what seemed like an eternity of crawling, but was actually only ten minutes, Hale saw Tanner’s boots disappear, followed by his drag bag. Then it was Hale’s turn, and he stuck his head out into an open chamber, where the others were waiting to pull him clear.
As before a flare was inserted into a crack, and it produced a harsh blue-green glow as minor wounds were checked. Some of the Sentinels took long drags from their I-Packs, and others looked to their weapons. Hale slipped shells into the Rossmore, and he swung the shotgun up just as something huge materialized out of the darkness.
“Don’t shoot!” Spook said tersely. “Ralf won’t hurt you… Will you, boy?”
At that point Hale and the rest of them were treated to an amazing sight as a brawny lion-sized Howler padded over to stand on its rear legs while it licked Spook’s face.
“Don’t ask,” Richards said as he appeared at Hale’s elbow. “It was wounded, Spook found the beast, and nursed it back to health. But watch what you do… Ralf will attack anything that threatens her. Human or Chimera.”
Hale had never heard of such a thing, much less witnessed it, but he was coming to realize that by living in such close proximity to the Chimera, Chicago’s freedom fighters were finding new ways to adapt and survive.
With the fearsome Ralf ranging ahead, Spook led the team through a maze of interconnecting tunnels and passageways, slogging through ankle-deep water. All were deserted, but there were signs of habitation. As Hale walked along he saw graffiti, ledges where cooking fires had scorched the walls, and in one sad case a mound of broken bricks with a white cross painted directly above it. There were occasional signs of battle, too, including areas where the walls were pockmarked with bullet holes, empty casings littered the floor, and well-gnawed bones lay scattered about.
Eventually, having traveled the better part of two miles, the team was forced to pause in front of a well-guarded steel gate. Based on appearances Hale concluded that the obstruction had originally been put in place to filter debris out of what was transformed into a raging river at certain times of the year. Twin ladders led up toward the surface, and would allow maintenance workers to remove accumulated garbage from the filtration system below the streets.
But modifications had been made—a pass-through door had been added, and two heavily armed men were there to guard it. They nodded to Spook, eyed the Sentinels warily, and kept their weapons handy as Ralf followed his mistress through the opening, followed by the SAR team.
From a point fifty feet farther on, a hand-excavated passageway led to a large subway tunnel that had originally been separated from the main storm drain by seventy-five feet of solid earth and rock. Tracks ran both ways and gleamed dully under the light cast down from fixtures above. Clearly the Freedom First rebels had some sort of power plant, and weren’t afraid to use it. Still another sign of how resourceful they were.
A flight of stairs led up to a platform where Chicago’s citizens had waited patiently for the trains to arrive. Posters advertising the merits of the city’s public transportation system hung above the wooden benches lining the wall, and another set of well-worn stairs led to the street above. The stairway was blocked by a makeshift wooden barricade with carefully placed Chimeran-made land mines, and was covered by raking fire from a large-caliber machine gun.
The weapon was positioned at the bottom of the stairway, and manned by a boy-girl team, both of whom appeared to be about twelve. They waved to the Sentinels as they passed by, and shouted greetings to Spook, who raised a hand by way of reply.
She led the Sentinels along the platform, past a shoeshine stand and an empty newspaper kiosk to a glassed-in office where the local subway sector manager had once held court. It was furnished with a huge wall map of the transit system, a calendar that boasted a topless brunette, and a beat-up metal desk. Some mismatched chairs, a bookcase filled with binders, and a coatrack completed the decor.
That was where Richards called a halt and ordered Kawecki to put half the team where the
y could defend the station, giving the rest of the Sentinels a chance to grab a bite to eat.
While they pulled out their rations, Ralf licked himself and lay down next to a bench, and Richards and Hale followed Spook into the office. The person in charge of Freedom First Chicago awaited them there. He had been a big man once, well over six feet tall, but now he was missing both his legs. He had fuzzy red hair, a craggy brow, and a fist-flattened nose. The wheelchair that supported his torso had clearly seen heavy use, and was fitted with holsters on both sides.
“Welcome!” the rebel leader said cheerfully, and he eyed Hale curiously. “My name is Jacoby. Sam Jacoby. Pardon me if I don’t get up.”
Hale chuckled politely as he went forward to shake hands. It was probably an old joke, one Jacoby likely used to break the ice and put new acquaintances at ease.
“Glad to meet you, sir,” he said as the other man’s fingers nearly crushed his. “My name is Hale.”
Jacoby took in the yellow-gold eyes, raised his bushy eyebrows, but remained silent and turned to Richards.
“It’s good to see you again, Bo. So the lieutenant has been immunized, I see. Do all the people you work with have Chimeran eyes?”
“No,” Richards replied flatly. “Only Hale. But the rest have Hybrid-fast reaction times, they can take more punishment than you or I, and they heal quickly. Very quickly, so long as they don’t take major damage. It comes in handy.”
Jacoby nodded grimly.
“Good. I’m glad to hear that the Grace administration finally did something right. God knows we’re going to need all the help we can get, if we’re going to win this war.”
“Yes,” Richards agreed soberly. “That’s something all of us can agree on.”
“So, why the visit?” Jacoby demanded tactlessly. “As you know, the government hasn’t given us piss-all since they pulled out of Chicago. Present company excepted, of course. So you must be here on a special mission of some sort.”
Resistance: The Gathering Storm r-1 Page 20
