Karel shrugged. “Let’s hope we’re all still breathing at the end of this.” She looked at her watch. “Three. Two. One.”
Four explosions in unison signaled the start of the decoy operation.
Karel made her MP5 ready and her team did the same, pulling their goggles down over their eyes.
Each member of the ten-person team, Maxine had been told proudly by Clitheroe, had bought and paid for their own equipment, and had spent their weekends training and getting into shape––some shapelier than others, Clitheroe had laughed, patting his stomach. Every woman and every man in the group were ready for this, and they were ready to help Maxine get her man out of the medical center. The Third Maryland Defenders were ready to do their duty.
“Go! Go! Go!” Karel hissed, and as one they began swarming over the wall.
Inside, the medical center was dark and smelled bad. It had been under siege by Clitheroe and his Defenders for nearly three days, Maxine had been told. There was no sanitation, and no one had been able to leave the building to get water or get rid of waste. The smoke from the fires outside insinuated itself throughout the building as they moved down the corridor beyond the service entrance and into the main bulk of the building.
Only two of Carron’s men had been in the vicinity of the service door as the Defenders had approached it. They’d been shot where they stood. The crack from Karel and the others’ weapons had been almost totally covered by Clitheroe’s actions out front. Once inside, they secured the space, easily finding the access way into the building. Leaving two Defenders to keep the service area clean of Carron’s men, Maxine and the rest followed Karel.
A shadow in the shape of a uniformed soldier appeared up ahead. Karel took him cleanly in the flak jacket, knocking him over backwards. The soldier—a black-haired, musclebound specimen with bad teeth—tried to return fire with his sidearm, but two more bullets from Karel, sent into his legs, put his aim awry. By the time Karel got to the bleeding soldier, her team had taken up defensive positions covering all points of access to the corridor, and covering the angles up an exposed stairwell.
Crashes and flashes from outside flickered along the halls. The hefty stutter of heavy machine gun fire from the roof echoed through the building. Karel knelt by the soldier who was writhing in pain, trying to stop the flow of blood from his shattered knees. His nametape read JACKSON.
“We have medics waiting to come in, Jackson. When we have finished here, all I have to do is tell them where you are and you’ll get treatment. Now, you don’t want me to forget where you are and what’s wrong with you, do you?”
Jackson’s face was white with shock, his mouth trembling and his eyes wet with tears. “Carron’s not going to surrender… I was coming out to give myself up.”
“Don’t lie to me, Jackson; it does nothing to help my memory. If you were going to give yourself up, you would have by now.”
Jackson clammed his mouth shut.
“Where is Doctor Banks?” Maxine hissed, joining Karel by Jackson. She began taping a wound pad from her pack over one of his wounds and Karel flashed her a look. Maxine ignored her; Karel rolled her eyes.
“We need to move out of here, Karel,” Zimmerman, one of Karel’s men, said. “Anyone comes down the corridor, we’ll be caught like rats under a bucket.”
Karel nodded and turned back to Jackson. “Answer the lady’s question, soldier. And answer it now.”
“I don’t know. Upstairs, I guess. They brought him in two days ago. They don’t tell us squat. Just expect us to die like dogs.”
Neither Karel nor Maxine were convinced by Jackson’s sudden conversion to the good side, but right now he was all they had. “Floor?”
“Top. The fifth.”
“Why does it always have to be at the top when there are no elevators?” Maxine muttered.
Karel smiled grimly. “One day, doing this will be easy.” Then Karel shook her head and shot Jackson through the forehead.
“You can’t…” Maxine began, but Karel put a hand over her mouth. “Did you believe him when he said he was ready to switch sides?”
Maxine shook her head.
Karel gestured at him and explained, “He was just telling us what we wanted to hear. Any of us would do the same in a similar situation. If we left him here while we went up, you can guarantee he’d have tried to raise the alarm. Anyone who had stayed in here this long while we were pounding them was ready to stay and die. Let’s go. Move out.”
Maxine took one last look at Jackson’s twisted body and wide-open eyes, picked up her pack, and followed the Defenders to the stairs. She knew in her mind that what Karel said was true, but it didn’t stop it hurting her nursing sensibilities. She knew she had to focus on Doctor Banks, though, and through him, Storm.
They moved quickly up through the floors. What was left of Carron’s men—perhaps thirty or so by Clitheroe’s estimate—were up on the roof, firing from their positions over towards Lincoln Elementary. They passed windows where Maxine saw the Morse code of white-hot tracer fire helping Carron’s men find their targets in the dark, smoke-filled air.
They came under fire two floors below their destination, as three of Carron’s men shot from behind overturned tables on a landing between flights. They opened fire with their M164As, chewing up the stairs and sending bursts of plaster over Karel’s team. Zimmerman took a round in the shoulder as he pushed Maxine facedown onto the concrete and shot upwards. Karel threw up a stun grenade which blasted the stairwell magnesium white and drove nails of intense sound into Maxine’s ears. The soldiers behind the tables were disorientated—one ran back up the stairs and was cut down by Karel leading from the front, and another tried to climb over the railing and drop down the middle of the stairwell, but misjudged his grip in his panic. He fell, smashing into the concrete below like a combat-uniformed pinball.
The last soldier raised his weapon and began to fire. His eyes had been so blinded by the flash that he couldn’t have hit an eighteen-wheeler from ten yards. Zimmerman, dropping his MP5 and pulling out his Glock G45, took the soldier out of the brief exchange with a bullet to the chin that sent him down in a spray of blood and bone.
They climbed over the tables and continued up.
On the fifth floor, there were still sharp sounds of battle echoing around the medical center. Karel told her team to search the wards and the offices while Maxine helped Zimmerman with his wound. He was in a little pain, but still buzzing on the adrenaline of battle, his eyes bright and showing he wanted to be with his team. The bullet had drilled deep into Zimmerman but hadn’t smashed his collarbone. “There’s no exit wound, so someone will have to dig the bullet out.”
Zimmerman smiled. “When we find your doc, I can be his first house call.”
Maxine put kaolin-infused WoundStat Combat Gauze into the wound and thumbed it in to pack the hole. The kaolin would staunch the bleeding, and the gauze would cover it until they could get him to the doctor or a medic.
“Pressure,” she said, hauling Zimmerman’s other arm across his body and putting it in place over the gauze. Zimmerman looked unhappy that he wasn’t immediately able to return to the fray, but complied with Maxine’s order.
“Maxine?”
It was Karel, calling from the other end of the room. She was standing next to a pair of double doors that had been pulled open by two of her team. All three were pointing their weapons through the doors. “I guess we’ve found your doctor.”
Maxine ran to Karel, but skidded to a halt.
Looking through the door was like coming upon a secret magical door which looked right into the past. Through the doors, illuminated by yellow oil lamps, was a room that may have once been a modern operating theater. But the lights were dead, and the faces of the electronic equipment were blank and black. There were five people in the room.
Two were soldiers. Hands high, weapons at their feet. On an operating table, General Carron lay back with a stick between his teeth and a half-drunk bottle of
whiskey in his hand. He was covered in theater sheets all the way down his body to his knees. His left leg below that was black and swollen with infection. The skin was broken and discharging pus. The stench from the wound was wafting from the room and clogging Maxine’s throat with its rich, bitter-sweet debasement. Holding Carron’s hand was the pinch-faced Major Johnstone, the officer Maxine had managed to escape from when she’d been on her way to be executed. Johnstone’s face was a mask of shock. Next to Johnstone, poised with a bone saw to begin a traumatic amputation of Carron’s leg, was Doctor Banks.
The distance collapsing between this tableaux of barbaric, two-hundred-year-old battlefield medical practices and what might have been humane and safe now banged like a thunderclap in Maxine’s skull.
This horror was exactly what was going to happen to Storm…
“So,” Doctor Banks said, adjusting his grip on the bone saw, “shall I continue… or not?”
28
Josh, Tally, Poppet, Henry, and Greene left the ranch at three a.m., through the cellar door that led out from under the building on the aspect directly in opposition to the tree line. Tally had had to argue with her father hard to get him to allow her to come along, but in the end, he’d relented; she was fit, she was fast, and she would be an asset to the attack if things went to plan.
They skirted the pasture without lights, their clothing dark and their faces blackened with combat face paint from Henry’s bag. They were armed with sidearms, shotguns, MP5s, and from the pack on the horse Josh had brought, an RPG and three rockets gifted to him by Jayce. Henry carried them in his pack. They were to be used, Josh said, as a last resort. This was not a kill-mission, and he’d made that very clear, which Tally herself had been glad of. Running these guys off the land was more than fine, and threatening and roughing them up a bit would hopefully suffice to get their meaning across.
Her dad’s plan was to capture the guys––however many there were––up on the ridge, making it clear to them that the Jefferson and Standing families were not willing to compromise on their position, and that they would defend the farm to the last if that’s what Creggan and his men wanted.
Josh had explained that this, of course, wasn’t what they really were going to do—if worse came to worst, they would have to acquiesce until the group was fit to travel. But giving Creggan’s men a good show of force, and maybe even exploding one of the RPGs nearby… well, maybe that might give Creggan pause and allow a dialogue between the two sides which would explain the deception over Maria and form the basis of a negotiated settlement. There was no way, Josh had argued with Donald, that those at the M-Bar could stand up to Creggan’s forces if they came en masse. So, this show of force and giving the watchers sight of the ‘RPG deterrent’ might just bring them to the table. Donald had argued that he’d rather die than give up the M-Bar. Meanwhile, Josh had said that it was his children in the firing line, and so it wasn’t Donald’s decision to make anymore. That had hit home for Donald, and he had nodded, but Tally had been able to see how unhappy her grandfather was. He wasn’t ready to negotiate a settlement––he was ready to shoot and kill, whatever the consequences.
She admired his grit, but her dad had been right. They needed to buy time. Storm couldn’t be moved yet. It would probably kill him if they tried. Storm’s condition was stable, yes, but he was still in a lot of pain and would need the surgery Maxine had gone to organize. Until that facet of the conundrum was dealt with, they had to try to prolong the time before fighting at the ranch, or avoid a full-scale battle entirely.
Tally had been incredibly relieved to see her dad again, though; it had been such a difficult decision to leave the coast and travel north, but the fact that it had worked out so well––more by luck than judgement, it had to be said––made the wrench of making it worthwhile. Her dad had told her a little of what he’d encountered in Savannah, and she had told him the twists and turns of her own journey. Both of them had been through the wringer, but perhaps felt stronger because of it. This was another reason she wanted to go with her dad and the others to confront Creggan’s men on the ridge. She wasn’t letting her dad out of her sight again. That Henry had supported her pitch to her father—that she should come along, that she could handle herself, and that she would be an asset rather than any hindrance—had helped, too, and made her admiration of him even greater. There was something resilient and sound about Henry that, in safer times, might have made her feel slightly stronger things for him. She still might, she’d told herself a few times. She hadn’t decided yet.
The party, single file, with Henry leading and Josh bringing up the rear, made its way across the blackened plain swiftly in the cool night. Only the rustle of the grass and the lowing of the cattle in the pasture in the distance complemented their soft footfalls. Grandpa, who’d struggled with the role he’d been given to stay back and keep watch on Laurent, Storm, and Maria, had given them the best idea he could about where the shot had come from on the ridge, and the cover there. Tally knew her father had insisted that her grandpa stay back because he couldn’t trust him not to shoot first and ask questions later, thus wrecking his plan. He’d been smart not to say anything like that to him directly, just couching it in the terms that his father-in-law would be more accepting of—that he’d be better at defending the property with all the others gone.
The Barnard’s Nebula was bright and high in the sky. Its jagged edges were more pronounced, its smudge becoming a broad smear of light. A badge of desecration worn on the breast of heaven. Every time Tally caught sight of it, she immediately wanted to avert her eyes from the very symbol of the world’s realignment as a post-technological planet in the grip of a myriad of madnesses. She thought that she’d never again be able to look up to the stars with anything like a feeling of awe. And that was a sharp, vinegar-in-a-paper cut pain on top of all the others. How much more would the phenomenon take away from those survivors left to pick up the pieces?
The black tree line of spruce where the plain became the steady foothills of Alleghany Mountain came up as a ragged tear against the dark blue of the night. They made the trees without raising an alarm and began to move more slowly than their race over the grass had gone, slinking up to where Donald expected Creggan’s spotters to be.
Henry raised his fist and the line came to a halt. Tally was behind him as her dad came up. Henry pointed ahead. It was difficult to pick sights out clearly in the gloom, but fifteen yards ahead, she could see four figures, three of them sitting and one prone, this last one holding a rifle pointed down the valley towards the M-Bar.
“I’m sick of these sandwiches, Ray. The bread’s stale, and a rat would turn his nose up at the cheese. I need a hot meal.”
“Shut up, Spencer. Your mewling is sticking in my gullet. If you want to go back to Creggan and tell him you’re not happy with the culinary arrangements, then be my guest. I’ll tell your sister you died well.”
“Ray, all I’m saying…”
There was a fast rustle of clothing, a thud, and a yelp. “There was no need…”
“Shut up, or the next time I’ll smash your nose so hard you’ll be able to sniff the back of your neck!”
While this exchange had been going on, the M-Bar team had been taking up their positions in the prearranged fashion.
Henry, Tally, and Greene to the right; Josh and Poppet to the left.
Tally finished her count of fifteen in her head and tore the cap off the road flare she was holding, exposing the striking pad; she pulled the cover off and lit the flare. The sudden flash of red light illumined the tableaux of Creggan’s men, and she tossed the red, fizzing tube into the middle of them.
The four men dived away, scrambling for their guns.
Josh, Henry, and Poppet moved forward, their weapons ready.
Josh fired over Creggan’s men’s heads. “Don’t make me shoot you, boys. Let’s keep this friendly. Get on your knees and put your hands up.”
Creggan’s men did as they were told
. “You kill us and Creggan will bring fifty men here.” The voice had come from the guy who’d been identified as Ray by the so-called Spencer. He had a black Stetson jammed on his thin-faced head. Next to him was a chubby guy in a white hat. The man who had been prone on the ground with the rifle hadn’t had a chance to get up, and so he’d simply rolled over, sticking his hands comically into the air all the same. He got up and joined the others on their knees.
The fourth—a drooping, mustached, pock-faced man with hooded eyes that were made ever more so by the guttering red light from the flare—still hadn’t put up his hands.
There was a gun in a holster on his thigh, but at the moment he wasn’t reaching for it. Neither was he complying with Josh’s instructions.
“Don’t just take Ray’s word for it,” Mustache said, flicking his eyes to Ray. “Gee, if you don’t hand over your weapons, I’ll just kill you all myself.”
Tally looked at her dad. His machine gun was pointed squarely at the man who was speaking with such confidence and disdain.
“Trust me,” the man continued, “you are in a world of trouble; up until now, Dale has been more than patient with you. He was even prepared to let Laurent be collateral damage in the process since he seems to be enjoying more of your hospitality than expected. Dale said that if Laurent was stupid enough to get himself taken by a bunch of amateurs, he didn’t care about getting him back. But you hafta understand, there’s a natural order of things around here now. What you might call a pecking order. We peck down. So… you gonna shoot me and start a war?”
“Now, Greene,” Josh said.
There was a hiss and an ignition, then a shoosh, and a tree twenty yards away blew apart in a gout of flame and flying splinters. Greene giggled, and Josh gave him a look that made the giggle freeze in his throat. Tally could tell her dad’s glance said, Not the time and place. Back at the ranch, Greene had told Josh while they’d been planning that he was keen to be on RPG duty. He’d told them he “couldn’t shoot pistols for taffy” and had argued that, as they didn’t know how much resistance they were going to get from Creggan’s men, that him “standing at the back with just the one job make sense, yeah? While you all handle the bad guys.” Josh hadn’t had time to argue, and Tally had thought Greene sounded reasonable––he had settled down, after all––so she hadn’t even argued against it. Henry had just shrugged when she’d looked at him questioningly.
Supernova EMP- The Complete Series Page 49
