The RAP streaked at the disk, which must have had an automatic detection and evasion system; it angled sharply to the right—
48 meters to the enemy craft.
As the missile swerved in pursuit and closed to ten meters range, the base of the nosecone flared, sent a small HEAP round forward with an extra two-gee burst of speed.
45 meters—
The HEAP pre-munition impacted; the detonation sent a jet of molten metal into the armor protecting the disk’s machinery.
44.2 meters—
The main rocket’s IR followup seeker head rode the bright, thermal plume into the scorched and severely weakened armor—
43 meters.
The head of the main body detonated upon impact, ejecting another molten HEAP jet. The armor buckled.
43.95 meters.
Pushed by the still-accelerating motor, the depleted uranium penetrator rod spiked into the armor, ripping through as though it were paper, sucking the slower, roiling molten metal in behind it.
The disk tumbled once and disintegrated with a roar that spawned two others, each punctuated by a bright white flash: secondary explosions from destroyed munitions.
Opal smiled—and went down sideways as someone punched her in the ribs.
She tried to rise, couldn’t, discovered that her vision was hazy. Then the world came back into focus, and a local was screaming something at his followers; a surrounding thicket of AK-47 muzzles lowered quickly. She raised up on one elbow, found breathing difficult. She looked down: her body armor had a new, shiny crater just about level with her left floating rib. Score one for friendly fire.
“Well, that was a pretty boneheaded set of moves.”
She looked up at the source of the tactical critique, saw a short—quite short, really—man in his thirties walking toward her in black and brown camos. He looked at her—or rather, her rank—more closely. “I mean that in the best possible way, Major.”
She looked at him closely as well. The voice was familiar, and behind that camo face paint, unless she was very much mistaken—
He had obviously recognized her, too. “Hey,” he said, “didn’t I rescue you from assassins by snatching you off a rooftop in Alexandria this March? You and Caine Riordan?” His grin seemed about as wide as he was tall.
“Yes, and hey, yourself,” Opal answered. “Glad to see you made it off that roof. But you’re a long way from Alexandria.”
“I could say the same about you, ma’am. And, although a SEAL wouldn’t normally be in your chain of command, allow me to ask you: orders?”
“Yeah. Help me up, damnit. Jeez, I didn’t remember you being so short.”
“And I didn’t remember you being so cute, ma’am.”
A pint-sized SEAL chief flirting with an Army major who was probably born before his own mother? She looked at him sideways. So what is it with SEALs and me? Or—although it was less personally flattering—what was it with SEALs? Extra doses of testosterone in their chow? Nah, they miss a lot of meals, so they might not get enough of it. So it had to be in the beer. Yep, that would be the primary, and surest, delivery vector. But however amusing the banter, she had to put a stop to it. “I think you’ve been in-country too long…Sergeant.”
“Probably so, ma’am, but you’ll forgive me for saying that camos suit you a lot better than a bloody hospital gown.”
Have to agree with him there—and with the topic having shifted to clothing, she noted that although the insurgents were not in uniforms, there were telltale signs that not all of them were simply irate civilians. In particular, the three persons who had been on the slope with the SEAL were all wearing military boots, had lighter complexions, shorter hair, and were all roughly the same age.
She turned back to the sergeant. “Don’t continue patronizing me with this ‘order’s, ma’am?’ crap until you’ve briefed me on this unit. And it is a unit. No, don’t give me the big innocent eyes. You’ve got some regulars mixed in here.”
The sergeant nodded. “Three from the People’s Republic—they’re tunnel rats. Like me.”
Opal smiled. “Case IfUC1.”
“Huh?”
“I’ve heard of this operation by name. Back in Washington, just before heading here.” Thanks for the info, Downing. “But back then I didn’t know what it referred to. I didn’t get the joke.”
“‘IfUC1?’ That’s a joke?”
“Sure. You know what they say about rats: ‘If you see one—’”
“—There are a hundred more.” Little Guy shouldered his weapon, looked at his watch. “Well, that’s us, sure enough. A few less of us, after today. But a lot fewer of them. Thanks, in part, to you. But honestly, Major, about that charge of yours. Don’t you think that was a little too ‘gung ho’ for a commanding officer?”
Opal studied him carefully. Little Guy’s bloodless, offhanded remark about the casualties and his flippant criticism of her belied the steady gaze with which he watched his casualties—six dead Indonesians—being carried past. He looked at each face as if he were trying to memorize, or commune with, it.
She reached out and took his shoulder. “Let’s get something straight, Sergeant. I know your kind. You’ve got a mean-ass-mutha exterior concealing a mother-hen interior. And you manage to wind officers around your little finger, that way. And I thank you for your concern and your foolish flattery. But that’s the last time I want to hear your opinion on my tactical choices. Get used to high-initiative operations, ’cause that’s the kind of CO I am.”
Little Guy was still trying. “As you wish, ma’am, but you’ll meet your maker pretty quick that way.”
“My maker’s scared to meet me, and the other guy won’t have me.” Her glance bounced from her flechette-mangled helmet, to the hole in her pants leg, and ended on the crater in her armor. “As you will witness.”
Little Guy finally smiled again. “Okay, then. Glad to have you on board. Major.”
“Smile when you say that, Stretch. Now let’s unass this place. It’s going to look a lot messier in about five minutes.”
He checked his watch. “Three minutes, Major. The opposition is pretty fast on the reply.”
Following the lead of the Kopassus commando, they started heading directly over the slope that the disk had been coming down. “How do you get around?”
“What do you think? Tunnels.”
“Watch that tone, Little Guy. Besides, who builds tunnels in Indonesia? From what I remember, trying to dig tunnels here is about as promising as trying to grow roses on the moon.”
Little Guy nodded. “Yeah, but they had to build these tunnels to protect the fiber optics with which they were planning to rewire the whole country. Or so I’m told. Pretty big conduits for cables, though. Almost a meter wide, and because the system was never finished, they’re not on regional survey maps.”
“So the Arat Kur don’t know about these tunnels? Them?”
Little Guy shrugged. “Seems not. But then again, why should they?”
“Well, if there was a lot of digging going on, and a lot of talk about upgrading to—”
“Major, with respect, this is Indonesia. People talk, and people dig, and most of the time, nothing ever comes of either activity. And be aware, this was not a megacorp job. It was a joint American project which went into limbo when the Indonesians started cozying up to CoDevCo right before the Parthenon Dialogs. There’s been no work on this project for at least a year, no talk of it for six months, and no hardcopy maps of the projected tunnels have turned up. No software on them, either.” He smiled. “Except right in here.” He tapped what looked like a GPS relay.
“That’s not for GPS, is it?”
“Better not be. From what I hear, we don’t have a single satellite left. But this will show me the maps of our bombproof, scanproof tunnels. Where we have a lot more friends waiting.” He paused and met her eyes solemnly. “A lot more.”
Opal smiled. Having heard how all the pieces fit together, she knew now: this was
all Nolan Corcoran’s work. Another part of his jigsaw-puzzle plan to save Earth. It was as if his ghost were standing there now, smiling and waving them all in the direction of the tunnel, one satisfied hand on his hip. “The tunnels:” Opal asked, “do they go into Jakarta?”
“Didn’t know you were a psychic, ma’am. In fact, we’ll be moving there in just two—”
He and Opal both stopped moving, even breathing. They only listened. She gave her order—a hiss that sounded like “Cover!”—a split second before he snapped out the same word. She hit the rain-muddied ground, sank in a bit, smelled the sweet stink of natural composting processes.
The roar of VTOL jets up-dopplered into a nearby-crescendo—and passed high overhead, down-dopplering without stopping.
“They’re checking out the ravine first,” Little Guy murmured.
“Could they have missed us?”
“See this mist? Feel this heat? Thermal systems work, but they need a few stationary moments to get details. They were going too fast. But after they assess the kill-zone and come up empty-handed, they’re going to start orbiting, looking for us. Or—”
“Or what?”
“Or burn off the nearby slopes. They know that if they don’t get us fast, they won’t get us at all. As recently as a week ago, they still reconned from standoff. Now, they recon by fire. Indiscriminately.”
“So we—?”
“We make like Alice and go down our magic rabbit hole. C’mon.”
They sprinted the rest of the way down the slope, converging near a half-completed power line. They swarmed down a narrow spillway that paralleled it, veered left toward a culvert that burrowed into one of its sloping sides.
“In there?” Opal pointed.
“Yep. Connects to drainage tunnels, one of which runs under the fiber-optic conduits.”
There was a shout from the Kopassus trooper bringing up the rear. “Plane. Coming fast!”
Opal crouched into a run. “Then we’d better be faster. Double-time like your lives depend on it.”
“’Cause they do,” Little Guy added. They reached the entry and she waved them on. Little Guy and his unit crouch-sprinted into the dark maw of the tunnel, followed by the Kopassus man. She was right behind him.
A sudden concussive roar, bloom of orange-yellow light, and tumbling shock wave were right behind her.
Chapter Thirty
Northern slums, Jakarta, Earth
Riordan ducked as the stream of coil gun needles tore through the side of the corrugated metal shack, which promptly folded over on itself like a half torn sheet of perforated paper.
“That was close, Caine,” said the young Indonesian beside him, listening as the rotors of the Arat Kur attack ROV hummed into the distance.
Caine nodded. “It wasn’t sure we were in here. That was just a little recon-by-fire.” The rotors slowed, picked up in volume again. It was doubling back. Because, no matter where I hide today, they know where to find me.
Which made less than no sense. At the start of their occupation, the Arat Kur had seeded the streets of Jakarta with dust-sized nanytes purportedly able to identify and track any individuals already in their database. According to informants, the project had been an utter failure. Firstly, the entire project had depended upon meshing the visual data gathered from the Arat Kurs’ “phased array” of pervasive nanytes with the advanced biometric programming provided by their megacorporate allies. The reason for its failure had been an object of considerable speculation. Perhaps the Arat Kur had been unable to sync such different software systems; perhaps the culprit was data overload, or nanyte failure due to the hot, supersaturated air and merciless pounding of the monsoons. But there was no question that the scheme had been a complete failure—so how had multiple Arat Kur ROVs been able to track one Caine Riordan almost flawlessly for the past two hours?
The effectiveness of his guerilla cell was not a reasonable explanation for the sharply increased attention. Other insurgency groups had been far more troublesome in terms of raw casualty and damage infliction upon the enemy. Caine had concentrated on what he did best: specially prepared ambushes such as the one in the western kempang that had gained them a treasure trove of lethal Hkh’Rkh weapons. Such operations were very useful, but couldn’t be carried out too often. They took considerable prep time, and could not safely be conducted in the same region: after an attack, the Arat Kur invariably shifted a crippling density of reconnaissance and surveillance assets to that area. Also, the Hkh’Rkh had resumed their tactic of hammering any kempang that became particularly restive, ruthlessly punishing the indigenous population for ambushes which they had neither aided nor abetted.
“The ROV is coming back, Caine,” said the young Indonesian nervously.
“Don’t worry, we’ll be all right.”
“Yes, but it could still—”
Caine turned and stared at him. “Soldier, we are going to be all right.”
“Y-yes, sir.”
Caine smiled, nodded, tried to peer out the tiny sliver of sky visible between where the roof and front wall had folded over and down against the rear wall. At least I hope we’re going to be all right.
He could hear the Arat Kur ROV hovering closer, tracking slightly from side to side like a scenting dog.
Damn it, Teguh, where the hell are you with that—?
From fifty meters away, an antivehicle rocket sprang out of a fire-gutted building with a screaming hiss. Although Caine could not see the ROV’s response, he heard the familiar sounds of its chassis spinning in that direction, the pop as its short-range active defense rockets jumped toward the incoming threat.
In the microsecond before those rockets made their intercept, the oncoming missile’s warhead launched from its bus, speeding even faster toward the ROV. The minirockets jinked over, just managed to intercept it—but missed the slower, heavier projectile that had been launched right behind the HEAP warhead.
Caine heard the launch-hiss of a second wave of intercept rockets, but they were too late. The slower tungsten warhead crashed into the ROV with a sound like a screwdriver punching through a car-door—right before that projectile’s small, tail-covered back-charge went off.
The combined impact and explosion sent rotors spinning in all directions, one screeching wildly across the back of the bisected tin shack. Looking out the similar gap at the other end of the folded expanse of corrugated metal, Caine watched as the savaged chassis of the Arat Kur patrol unit was flung down with a crunch, raising a path of dust until it stopped rolling.
“Let’s go,” he said to the young Indonesian, starting to push at the fallen wall which had sheltered them. And which lifted off with weightless ease: Teguh and two of his assistants stood there, holding it up.
“I still want to know where you got those damn rockets,” Caine said as he clambered out of the trashpile that had once been a shed.
“An’ I tol’ you I promised the guy I wouldn’t say. He’s a prewar black marketeer, Caine. He means business.” Teguh trotted toward the cover of a new building, the one that housed their objective: a colonial-era cistern system.
“Yeah?” Caine replied. “Well, those rockets mean that someone is getting contemporary munitions onto Java, and if equipment is getting here, that means people can probably get here, and that means—”
“Yeah, good thinking—but stopping to think will get us dead right now. We gotta move. There will be more ROVs coming.”
Caine stopped as they came under the building’s catch-roof, and within arm’s reach of the cistern’s half-rotted wooden cover. “No. We don’t have to move. I do.”
Teguh stopped. “What you talking about, Caine?”
“Face the facts, Teguh. Whatever is going on today, the Arat Kur keep finding us because of me. This last time they flew right past the two squads we sent running away as decoys, didn’t even seem to know they were there. But me? They can find me in any building, under any car, in any culvert. We’ve lost three men finding that out.
Men we should never have lost at all.”
“Yeah, but we got four of their ROVs.”
“Teguh, listen to me: forget kill ratios. This is not a battle of our choosing. Hell, it’s not even a battle, it’s a—a rabbit hunt. The Arat Kur ROVs are the hounds and somehow, they’ve got my scent.”
“Look, don’t go thinking the world revolves around you, heh? Don’t go bule-crazy, like you did after the kempang. This is just bad luck, and by tomorrow—”
Caine looked at him. “By tomorrow, we’ll all be dead. I’m not bule-crazy, Teguh, not this time. And you know it. You just don’t want me to leave. And I don’t want to, either.”
“Shit, you think you so important I care whether you leave?” But Teguh’s eyes and the set of his mouth told a very different story.
Caine put a hand on his shoulder. “My Indonesian brother, you helped me get my head—well, out of my ass, after the kempang. But today, it’s you who refuses to see what your brain already knows.” Caine waved at the ruined ROV and the streets behind them. “They are after me, Teguh. You know it; you’ve seen it. I want to stay, but I can’t. Maybe they put some kind of transponder in my food when I was on the Arat Kur ship. Or maybe I walked through some kind of nanyte-dusted trap that actually works. I don’t know how they are tracking me. I only know this: they can find me wherever I go, and the only other people they’ve attacked today are the ones who got in their way. So you have to get the hell away from me, and I’ve got to go down this hole and hope that they can’t follow me into a tunnel. Who knows? Maybe it will block or at least degrade whatever signal they’re using to track me.”
Teguh shook his head and looked like he might start to cry. “This isn’t right, Caine. You should stay with us.”
Caine put his other hand on Teguh’s other shoulder. “It wasn’t right what happened to all those people at the kempang, but we had to accept that, too.”
Teguh looked away, reached up, patted Caine’s right hand. “You a good man, Caine. You come find me when this is all over. We’ll find some beer. We’ll talk.”
“We will,” Caine nodded, removing his hands and pushing the cistern-cover aside. “Now, get out of here.”
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