by David Lucin
Orbs of white shone through the trees ahead.
“Careful,” Courtney whispered through the radio. She was attached to Second Squad, on Jenn’s right, while Dylan accompanied Yannick’s Third. “Those are headlights.”
When the channel was clear, Dylan added, “Go prone. We’re crawling the rest of the way.”
Jenn lowered herself to her belly. Everything depended on her platoon, as well as the Second, Third, and Fourth, coming to within range of the horde’s barricade of vehicles without being seen. These woods offered excellent cover for the approach, but the Khan clearly suspected they would serve as the launching point for an attack. Hence, the headlights.
With her rifle cradled in her arms, she leopard-crawled forward until she reached a two-lane road. There, at the edge of the wood line and about a hundred meters from the headlights, she came to a stop and propped herself up on her elbows.
The bright white of the headlights obscured the barricade itself. Fortunately, for this stage of the attack, Jenn didn’t need to see it; her platoon would be delivering cover fire only. As long as the Khan’s forces were focused on defending this side of the barricade, Morgan’s strike force in Pine Ridge Village—the remnants of Fifth and Sixth Platoons that escaped the battle on Route 66—should be able to flank the position from the west.
Should. The plan sounded so simple when Liam explained it at the airport, and Jenn took great comfort in seeing his arrows crush the White Horde like a vise on the whiteboard. She had her doubts now, though. As she’d learned after the ambush on I-40, the Great Khan was far from stupid, despite the blue face paint and the deer antlers. What would go wrong this time? What surprise did he have up his sleeve?
Some snow beneath her had melted, soaking her pants, and snowflakes kept landing on her eyelashes. The sounds of battle from the Skydome grew quieter by the minute. Strange. She thought they would have gotten louder as more men and women joined the fight. Had the defenders withdrawn deeper into the stadium, or had they already been defeated? Was the Militia too late?
Worry flared in the back of her mind, distracting her like a persistent itch. The longer she lay here and the longer Sam was trapped inside the Skydome, surrounded by coldblooded murderers, the worse the itch became. Only fighting could scratch it.
Screw all this waiting around. The counterattack needed to happen—right now.
Twelve minutes passed, according to her watch. They felt like two hours. Just as she was about to radio Dylan and ask him what was taking so long, he reported, “Everyone’s in position. Ready weapons.”
Finally!
She shut her eyes and put a hand to her chest, to Val’s cross. What would Val have said at a time like this? Be relaxed, Jenn. Do what you can do. Imagining those words of encouragement softened that itch, but only by a little.
“On my mark,” Dylan ordered. “Aim for those headlights first.”
Jenn flicked off the safety on her M4 and selected semiautomatic; she only had two spare magazines, so every shot had to count.
Her finger found the trigger, and she zeroed in on the closest set of headlights. And then, from Dylan, “Now!”
Gunfire erupted around her as she squeezed off her first shot. Within a second, the headlights pointed at her squad had all gone out. White spots continued hanging in her vision, so she blinked frantically to drive them away.
As her eyes adjusted to the dark, the barricade came into view. It appeared small from this distance, but she made out a line of trucks, cars, and vans parked bumper to bumper. She focused her iron sights on a pickup with a camper attached to the box when a geyser of snow shot up a few feet in front of her. Her brain responded a millisecond later, and she flinched backward but kept her belly to the ground.
“Stay down!” Dylan said over the radio. “They’re returning fire!”
Muzzle flashes flickered behind the barricade, illuminating patches of fluffy powder that had settled on the vehicles. Initially, she only saw a few, but soon, there were more than she could count.
To her rear, wood splintered and cracked. On her right, someone screamed.
Every muscle in her body tightened, like she’d been zapped with a Taser. She twisted her head, searching for whoever had been hit. Not far down the line, one of Aiden’s troopers, Olivia Moon, had rolled onto her back.
Jenn’s heart stopped, and she saw a flash of Val bleeding out in the Go Market parking lot. Where had Olivia been shot? The chest? The stomach?
Without a second thought, Jenn popped into a crouch and scrambled over. Beau had already leaped into action and was en route with his backpack of medical supplies.
Olivia, a pencil-thin Korean girl with braces, writhed and kicked and clutched her left bicep. Blood seeped between her fingers, coloring them red. Jenn fell to her knees beside her trooper, relieved. If Beau could stop the bleeding, a gunshot wound to the arm wouldn’t prove fatal, not in the short term. “I’m here,” she told Olivia. “You’re all right.”
The girl’s howl of pain said otherwise.
“Where’d she get hit?” Beau dropped his backpack and reached inside, producing a towel.
“Arm.” Jenn wanted to help but didn’t know how. Could she put pressure on the wound? Maybe hold Olivia still while Beau did whatever he had to do?
He balled up the towel and pressed it hard to Olivia’s bicep. She cried out and arched her back, but he refused to relent. “I got this,” he said to Jenn. “She’ll be fine for now.” He waved toward the barricade with his free hand. Telling her to continue firing?
She balked, struck by guilt. Shouldn’t she, a squad leader, stay with her wounded soldier?
“Go!” he shouted. “Keep shooting!”
His mention of shooting made her aware of the gunfire roaring around them; she’d been so focused on Olivia that her ears had tuned it out. The girl’s face was contorted in a violent grimace, but Jenn repeated Beau’s words in her head: She’ll be fine for now.
She forced her attention to the barricade. Hatred, hot and powerful, welled in her core. The person who shot Olivia was back there somewhere, and she wanted him to feel the same pain Olivia was feeling now.
Gritting her teeth, she shouldered her weapon, aimed, and pulled the trigger. Then pulled again and again until her magazine ran dry.
She ejected it into the snow. As she reached into her jacket pocket in search of a spare, a deep, familiar boom rumbled across the battlefield. A second boom followed, along with a flash of bright orange light that vanished as quickly as it appeared.
The mortars! Jenn pumped an imaginary fist. How had she forgotten about them? A few shells remained after Holbrook, and although they wouldn’t end this battle on their own, they could cause confusion and chaos among the horde. Anything to help even the odds. Anything to bring her one step closer to Sam.
“Morgan’s on the move,” Dylan reported. “Keep up your fire. Do not allow the defenders to pull back from this flank.”
Two more shells exploded. Both fell behind the barricade, near the center of the parking lot. When a few seconds passed without a fifth explosion, Jenn realized the mortars had run out of ammo. Too bad. Four 81mm shells were better than zero, though. Hopefully they landed among crowds of defenders, blasting them apart like she’d done to that trailer outside Holbrook. A morbid thought, but the Khan would do worse to her people in the Skydome. She’d see every one of his followers killed if it meant protecting the innocent residents of Flagstaff.
Chatter lit up the platoon channel. Most of it was nonsense to Jenn’s ears. As she inserted her fresh magazine, a throaty staccato drowned out the clack-clack-clack of rifle fire. It reminded her of Rusty the combat drone, but both of the Militia’s LCDs had run out of ammo and were in emergency shutdown mode.
Her blood turned to ice, and the surge of confidence she felt after hearing the mortars was whisked away. The Khan didn’t have his own drone, did he? Or a regular .50-cal? A single one of those could hold off an entire platoon of Militia. Worse, the soun
d came from the west, where Morgan and her unit were attempting to flank the White Horde. If they were pinned down, unable to advance, the rest of the Militia would need to launch a frontal assault in order to capture the barricade. While Jenn ached to end this fight and end it now, charging headlong into enemy weapons fire was about the last thing she wanted to do.
“Jansen,” Dylan said through her radio.
His voice made her jump in surprise. She withdrew her support hand and brought it to her mic. “Yeah,” she started, struggling to hear herself over the cacophony of battle. “Jenn here.”
“I’m coming to you. Stay put. I’ll be there in a second.”
She didn’t need to ask why: the .50-cal had to be dealt with. Attacking a machine-gun position or an LCD sounded even less pleasant than attacking the barricade head-on, but if someone had to take this risk, she’d volunteer. Her self-preservation instincts begged her to reconsider, showing her visions of being torn in half by .50-caliber bullets. She did her best to ignore them.
The volume of defensive fire from the barricade had dwindled; now only a few muzzle flashes flickered in and out of existence. Had the defenders been killed, or had they moved to another part of the line? The western flank? She hoped not. If she was going to make a move on this machine gun, she’d prefer fewer bodies over there, not more.
“Jansen!”
Dylan’s shout drew her attention. She glanced toward his voice and saw him crouch-running through the trees, hunched at the waist, rifle in one hand. He dropped prone beside her and aimed his weapon at the barricade but didn’t fire.
“We need to take out the machine gun, don’t we?” she asked. “Please don’t tell me it’s a drone.”
“Not a drone.” He brushed snow off his beard. “It’s a .50-cal mounted in a pickup, according to Morgan.”
Phew. A .50-cal was frightening, yes, but few things frightened her more than a .50-cal on legs.
“Morgan attacked from Pine Ridge,” he continued. “She made it to the barricade. Then that gun started sweeping the front and she had to withdraw.” Someone on the radio announced that he was low on ammo, prompting Dylan to cover his mic with his hand. “You up for this?”
Was she? When she first heard the machine gun, she told herself she’d volunteer to take it out. Now that Dylan had asked her, though, she second-guessed herself. She blamed those persistent self-preservation instincts, but who knew how many would die if she didn’t work up the courage to fight?
Rubbing her empty ring finger, her thoughts on Sam, Espinosa in his arms, she spoke with as much conviction as she could muster: “Yes.”
“You’re sure?”
Not enough conviction, apparently. “Yes, I’m sure. Now let’s get moving, before I change my mind.”
Dylan took command of the squad and led them east, across San Francisco Street and into another stand of ponderosa pines, where he lay flat behind a shallow berm. Jenn lay next to him as he peered at the barricade through a pair of binoculars.
“See anything?” she asked.
“Take a look.” He passed her the binoculars and then reported to Captain Townsend that the squad was in position.
When she brought the binoculars to her eyes, her vision went green. It took a few seconds for her brain to adjust, but when it did, she saw about three hundred feet of open parking lot between this berm and the White Horde’s defenses. A few headlights shone bright, but only a handful of sentries manned this section of the line. Although a full platoon would have trouble sneaking up to the barricade, thirteen troops, if they were careful and quick, might be able to reach it without being seen.
To the east, pinpricks of light flickered in and out of existence as the main battle raged on. Jenn was tempted to zoom in with her binoculars so she could see how the fight was progressing, but the boom of the Khan’s .50-cal drew her focus to the west, where flashes of yellow illuminated the machine gun. As Dylan had said, the weapon was mounted in the bed of a pickup truck. From here, Freddie could take out the gunner with his M24 sniper rifle.
If there had been a gunner.
Dread clawed its way up her spine. “Is that thing AI-controlled?”
“What?” Dylan snatched away the binoculars, took another look, and cursed under his breath. “Morgan didn’t say anything about an AI gun.”
Jenn gnawed on her bottom lip. Machines programmed to kill—what a profoundly disturbing concept. Rusty gave her the creeps, despite having saved her life, and she kept her distance from the Militia’s LCDs whenever they were active. They wouldn’t attack her, but she still didn’t trust them. No software was perfect; errors always snuck into the code. How was she supposed to take out an AI gun, anyway? Give it a computer virus? “Can Freddie shoot that thing from back here?”
Dylan shook his head. “They’re covered in plate armor for that reason. Another .50-cal would do the trick, but nothing smaller will work. Underneath, where the weapon mounts and the ammo’s loaded, the armor’s weaker.” His radio squawked, so he turned down the volume. “You still got bombs in your bag?”
“Yeah, two. The lighter’s in my pocket.”
“Okay, you’ll need to plant one on the bottom side of that gun, then blow it.”
You can’t be serious, she almost spat. Who did he think she was? Some special ops commando? If this task had seemed daunting at first, it felt next to impossible now. But he was counting on her. The whole Militia was counting on her. No, Flagstaff was counting on her, especially Sam. She wouldn’t let them down.
“Got it. So what’s the plan? Two teams here in an overwatch position while one runs up to the barricade? Then we move the other two teams up while the team at the barricade covers them with suppressive fire?”
“Exactly.” He pointed through the trees. “You see that set of headlights up there?”
“Yep, I see them.”
“Okay, about seven cars down, to the right, there’s a few sentries, then another pair of headlights. I’ll send Novak’s team up first.”
Jenn almost laughed at how casually Dylan outlined the plan. He could have been reciting a grocery list. Either he’d become adept at burying his fear or he didn’t feel any at all. Jenn felt enough for both of them. She had confidence in her troops and confidence in herself, but this wasn’t training anymore. Never in the dozens of times her squad practiced bounding overwatch had anyone fired back.
“You make it sound so easy,” she said. “You want me to tell everyone?”
“No, I got it. Hang tight.”
He pushed himself up and scurried down the line. After explaining the plan to the team leaders, he told Aiden to give Jenn his two bombs, so she now carried four. She then lay with Freddie’s team in the center of the squad’s line. His skin was a sickly white, and every so often, he had to stifle a cough by bringing a fist to his mouth. Wyatt couldn’t stay still, fidgeting and bouncing on his elbows. Either he was eager to get this done or afraid of getting started. Jenn could never tell with him. Tanis had shut her eyes and murmured what might have been a prayer. Kaydence appeared unfazed, his focus on the enemy’s defenses. His bold, stony demeanor helped steady Jenn’s nerves.
She restlessly tapped her M4’s trigger guard as she waited for Quinn’s team to get into position on the left of the line. Once all four of them had crouched behind the berm, Quinn said over the radio, “Dylan, we’re ready.”
“On three,” he replied, then began counting down. Instead of saying “three,” he shouted, “Go!”
Freddie’s and Aiden’s teams opened fire on the barricade while Quinn and her grunts scrambled up the berm and into the parking lot. Staying clear of the headlights, they soon vanished into the darkness.
Muzzle flashes lit up the White Horde’s line. Jenn answered with shots of her own. When she’d emptied half a magazine, a flurry of new muzzle flashes appeared to the left. Before she could process what happened, Quinn declared over the radio, all business, “We got them. Coast’s clear. But hurry up. I can already see reinforcem
ents coming this way.”
With a whoop, Jenn slapped the snow in celebration. “She did it!” she said to Dylan.
“I know, I know, I saw.” She almost heard the eye roll in his voice. “We gotta move. Go, go, go!”
He led the charge up the berm, and the troopers followed. Tanis slipped on a patch of ice, but Wyatt helped her stand, and together, they dashed into the parking lot.
The instant Jenn left the cover of the trees, the hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. These three hundred feet of open ground might as well have been a mile. Gunfire continued from both the eastern and western flanks, and with every step, she expected to be gunned down, if even by a stray bullet. More than once she thought about turning around and retreating to the safety of the berm, but she pressed on, pumping her legs as fast as they could move.
Ten feet from the barricade, she dove forward, behind a white Dodge pickup. Tanis and Wyatt fell into position on her left, Freddie and Kaydence on her right. Past them, Aiden and his team, minus Olivia but plus Dylan, aimed their weapons into the parking lot and opened fire. Dylan was shouting orders, but Jenn couldn’t hear what he was saying.
Her heart hammered in her chest, and her mind swirled, making her lightheaded, almost delirious. Stamina fading, she wanted to collapse onto her backside, shut her eyes, and rest, but that .50-cal rattled away incessantly, like a taunt, a constant reminder that the path to Sam went through an AI killing machine.
She harnessed the last of her strength, blew her lips, and peeked over the hood of the Dodge. Inside the White Horde’s defenses, a smattering of other vehicles, some of which belonged to Flagstaff, dotted the parking lot. Small teams of two or three defenders bounded from one to the other, coming this way. Yet more vehicles crowded around the Skydome’s main gate.
Quinn’s team had begun firing as well, but toward the west, where another group of defenders was scrambling to find cover. Dylan and Jenn made eye contact. “Jansen,” he said into his radio, having to shout over the incessant clap of rifle fire. “You’re up. We’ll hold position here. Go take out that gun.”
