“Cover me,” he muttered. Tom and Markus provided cover, shooting at any enemy heads that showed themselves, while Mathew slipped down towards the ambush scene. The human eye was naturally lazy, attracted to light. He should be invisible in the shadows, at least until he started shooting. An enemy body appeared in front of him and he almost squeezed off a round before he realised that the enemy’s head had been blown off. He must have caught a series of rounds from the light machine gun the SEAL team had placed close to the ambush site.
A trio of enemy fighters were hiding behind the remains of a car, trying to fire uncoordinated bursts back towards their ambushers. It wouldn’t have been a bad tactic if they’d known what they were doing, but as it was they were doing little more than forcing the SEAL team to duck from time to time. Spray and pray hadn’t worked in the Middle East and it wouldn’t work in America. They had no idea Mathew was behind them until he shot them all neatly in the back of the head. A badly-wounded enemy fighter, lying on the ground, waved desperately to Mathew; one look and Mathew knew that no medical centre would be able to save his life. He hesitated, remembering that he was looking down at a collaborator, and then remembered simple humanity. A single shot ran out and the wounded soldier went onwards into the next world.
Four more SEALs materialised out of the darkness and advanced forward, their weapons and combat goggles sweeping for enemy fighters. One fighter, a young man barely out of his teens, was found trembling behind one of the smashed containers they’d used to build their roadblock. The SEALs dragged him out, tied his hands, and placed him up against one of the wrecked cars. He wasn't a hardcore enemy fighter, Mathew noted, nor did it appear that he had any real training at all. He’d already shat himself and the stench was noticeable, even against the stench of burning gasoline.
Mathew pointed his gun right into the young man’s face and he started to whimper. Mathew felt nothing, but disgust. It was possible to feel sorry for the men and women who had been forced into serving the Snakes – either through having their family as hostages or by being brainwashed into becoming pod people – yet it was impossible to feel anything for a young man who had abandoned his country to serve the aliens of his own free will. He clearly wasn't a pod person, or he would have gone for Mathew’s throat by now. Pod people had no sense of self-preservation. They could have given the Iraqi insurgents lessons in suicide tactics. The aliens had wiped them of everything, but a desire to serve, whatever the cost.
“Here’s how it’s going to work,” Mathew said, pressing the gun against the young man’s mouth. “You answer my questions and I’ll leave you here to be found by your friends. If you lie to me, or I think you lie to me, I’ll cut you up badly and leave you here to bleed out and die. Do you understand me?”
The young man nodded frantically. Mathew wasn't too surprised. The real hard cases, the men who wouldn’t talk even if they were put through the water treatment or beaten to within an inch of their lives, were normally recognisable to a trained interrogator, who would put them aside for careful interrogation. It would hardly be the first time Mathew had extracted information from an enemy fighter who had gotten in way over his head, but it had always left him feeling dirty. Torture, however disguised, was not honourable. It was unworthy of anyone who wanted to call himself a trained soldier.
“Good,” Mathew said. “Now…let’s see, shall we?”
He bounced questions off the young man’s head for seven minutes, while the remainder of the SEALs searched the dead bodies and removed any number of ID and useful tools. They’d have to be dropped off at one of the safe houses for careful inspection before they were taken anywhere near one of their hiding places; Mathew wouldn’t have put it past the aliens to slip a tracking implant on the ID or one of their tools, just so they could track it back to the resistance headquarters. The young man knew very little, unsurprisingly. He’d been seduced into joining the aliens because his family was starving and his father had been thrown in one of the detention camps. A not unfamiliar story to Mathew, but one that had been largely unknown in the United States, at least before the aliens had arrived. They were building a real police state, with death camps and a constant heavy surveillance of everyone who lived within their boundaries. How long would it be before they broke the human race down to nothing more than slaves?
Shaking his head, he gagged the young man and then left his hand cuffed to one of the cars. His friends would find him, although Mathew had no idea what they would do with him. They’d probably demand to know why he was still alive when all the rest were dead, but it had really been nothing more than the luck of the draw. Or maybe they would kill him to encourage the others. The human race hadn’t needed any lessons in savagery from the Snakes. Hell, there were people on the internet who believed that most of the bad reports came from humans exceeding orders from their masters, rather than atrocities carried out by the Snakes, or at their direct command. Mathew knew that that was a lie. Snake infantry forces had been carrying out reprisals almost from the exact moment they’d landed on Earth.
“Dude,” Carl whispered, as the SEALs started to make their way back out of Washington. They’d head due west, and then cut down in hopes of avoiding pursuit. “We’ve got choppers inbound.”
Not ours, of course, Mathew thought, with a grim smile. There had been a time when all aircraft were automatically friendly, even if they weren't American. Now the only ones who were flying were the aliens and their collaborators. The airlines had gone bust and most of their pilots had been sucked into flying for the aliens, or had managed to desert before they’d been rounded up.
“Get the Stingers ready,” he ordered. “But remember our orders. Only shoot if you’re sure that there are no Snakes in the craft.”
It wasn't an order that made any sense, but he wasn't going to disobey it unless there was a really good reason. Breaking the chain of command – such as it was, as his team were technically either deserters or dead – would have meant that they were nothing more than bandits, doomed to a slow collapse into barbarity. How long would it be before the locals made peace with the aliens and worked with them to hunt down the resistance if the resistance preyed on them? And they would, eventually. The stockpiled supplies wouldn’t last forever.
The three helicopters swept into view, brilliant spotlights shining down at the ground. Mathew allowed himself a tight smile, even as he prepped the Stinger and took aim at the lead helicopter. The collaborators clearly hadn’t spent any time in actual combat, outside the riots and protests that turned the cities into war zones for a few days or hours. It didn’t seem to have occurred to them that showing themselves to the enemy so blatantly was a bad idea. They could have hunted the SEALs using infrared sensors while drifting high overhead, or sent in one of the latest model of Predator drones to track them down and drop a Hellfire on their heads. Chances were that the CIA had taken them all out before the aliens landed, but who knew for sure? What remained of the US military was in absolute chaos.
He clicked the seeker on and the Stinger locked onto its target. A second later, he pulled the trigger, dumped the stock on the ground and started to run. If the enemy reacted fast enough…but they didn’t. Their reactions were too slow. The Stinger punched its way into the cockpit and detonated inside the helicopter. Moments later, the other two missiles hit and the helicopters exploded. Mathew whistled and the SEALs started to run. They’d meet up with higher authority, reload and then get back to the war.
As one, the SEALs ghosted into the night.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Washington DC
USA, Day 70
No one would have mistaken Mary Archer for a SF soldier, but that was something of the point. As a young woman, she had served in the army as a cultural expert, working with SF teams in the jungles of Latin America on a number of missions that had never been mentioned to the US public. She was fiercely proud of her service and of the number of tough violent men who’d respected her and treated her as one of t
heir own. And there was no way she was going to allow an alien invasion to take her country without at least trying to strike back at the enemy.
Her first inclination had been to pose as a prostitute, but it hadn’t taken more than one look in the mirror to remind her that her youthful days were over. Besides, she had never been a beauty, even as a teenager. Instead, she donned a suit and sat in a wheelchair pushed by a limping man with a cane slung over his back. No one would have realised, just by watching, that the limp was feigned and the cane was heavy enough to serve as an offensive weapon. All they’d see would be a young grandson taking his grandma out for a walk. And they would see what they expected to see and walk onwards.
The collaborators had taken over a bar two blocks away from her house. Many of them had been young and foolish; they’d joined the Witnesses before anyone realised that the Galactic Federation wasn't going to bring them a new world of peace, prosperity and total fairness. Some of the useful idiots – Mary had no truck with Marxism, if only because she’d seen its effects at first hand – had deserted when they’d realised what was truly being asked of them. Others had stayed, either because they still believed, they didn’t care or they were too scared to desert. Mary had no truck with them either. Being young wasn’t a sin, but stupidity – as her former CO had once pointed out – was inevitably punished by the universe. The collaborators had known what they were doing, once the Snakes had obliterated Tehran. Any that remained and worked for the aliens were fair game.
Her wheelchair squeaked as she was pushed up the steps and into the bar. The sound of loud music came from within, one of the deafening rackets that passed for music these days, rather than something that was actually catchy. Mary pursed her lips in disapproval before remembering that she was supposed to be a sweet old granny and managed to smile at one of the ladies sitting on the doorstep having a smoke. One of them – young Kathy Patron – almost made her heart break. Kathy had had excellent prospects before the economy had collapsed and her father had been taken away by the aliens for the dread crime of serving his country in the Gulf. Now, she was nothing more than a common prostitute. Mary almost whispered something to her before thinking better of it. It would only draw attention to her.
The interior of the bar was dim, with dozens of men and women dancing together, moving as best as they could to the irregular beat. None of them looked at Mary; none of them even considered why someone would bring his grandma to a bar intended for the young. Mary reached under the blanket and grasped the assault rifle she’d brought back from her military service. It had been totally unregistered, an ace in the hole in the event of any burglar deciding to burgle her house. As far as she was concerned, gun control laws – human or alien – didn’t apply to her.
She glanced up. Saul, the young would-be Marine who was playing her grandson, nodded back at her. Mary produced the weapon from under the blanket in one smooth motion and stood up. She didn’t need the wheelchair at all, even at seventy-five years old. But no one looked past a wheelchair. They thought a crippled person was helpless. Few considered just how much could be hidden under a wheelchair.
A handful of the dancers noticed her and opened their mouths, but Mary opened fire before they could say anything – or run for their lives. The assault rifle kicked more than she had expected, but the bullets tore into the crowd and sent them screaming to the floor, their bodies hitting the ground with chilling thuds. Blood flooded the slippery wooden pine they’d been using as a dance platform as they started to bleed to death. None of the bartenders appeared to be armed; Mary almost gunned them down before changing her mind. They’d only done what they had to do to survive – and besides, rumour had it that some of the serving staff had been poisoning the collaborators.
Behind her, Saul had produced a heavy pistol and had picked off the girls smoking outside the building. Mary felt bad about that, but she wasn't going to bother complaining too loudly. Saul was a good lad and besides, the dead whores would convince others not to sleep with the collaborators. It was much better than tarring and feathering the sluts. Smiling grimly to herself, she turned, reloaded the assault rifle, and allowed Saul to precede her back out into the open. There was no sign of any police response, but Mary knew that the aliens would react. She had to be away before they arrived, or she’d be killed. And she had so many more collaborators to kill.
“This way,” Saul said. Mary was nowhere near as spray as she’d been while on active duty, but she could still move at a fairly respectable clip. They were well on their way, hiding the weapons in the bags Saul had carried in his coat, when two police cars roared past them in the other direction. “I think they’ve noticed us.”
Behind them, the C4 they’d left in the wheelchair exploded. Mary felt bad about the cops – unless it was one of the collaborators who had survived the hail of bullets – but they were serving the aliens, if only by trying to save the collaborators. Maybe they’d track her down, maybe not; unlike Saul, she was too old to go underground. Her heath wouldn’t survive roughing it any longer.
“A good day’s work,” she said. Two other collaborators lived nearby. They wouldn’t expect an old woman to be a threat, at least not until it was too late. “Let’s go see Mr Patel, shall we?”
***
The line of military trucks would have fascinated Timmy, once upon a time. At seven, he had told his daddy that he wanted to be a soldier, just like his father, uncle and several of his father’s friends. His father had laughed and promised him that he would allow Timmy to join as soon as he was old enough, but until then he’d better keep up with his studies, just in case. Timmy had learned more from books and instruction manuals than he’d learned from school, including how to take apart and rebuild remote-control cars, planes and other gadgets.
And then the aliens had arrived. Half-formed dreams of joining a real space force had died when the aliens had shown their true faces. The fifteen-year-old teenager had watched in horror as his father was dragged off by a team of collaborators and sworn revenge. Timmy hadn’t been supposed to know what was in his father’s lockable truck, nor was he supposed to know how to get in – and he did know that his father would have given him a sound thrashing if he’d been caught trying to get inside it. He wouldn’t have minded, now, if it would bring his father back to him. Instead, all there was left for him was revenge. There was no hope of honourable service as long as the aliens ruled the Earth.
Making an IED wasn't actually difficult. Badly-educated insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan had been doing it for years, although a large number had been killed or maimed by their own devices. Timmy had been on every military-related course and adventure holiday he could find since he’d been ten years old. He knew enough to set up a primitive IED, one that packed enough punch to seriously upset his target. The tricky part had been fitting it into one of his remote-controlled trucks.
No one was on the streets now, apart from the aliens and their collaborators. Timmy braced himself and turned on the truck, sending it forward and onto the road. His hiding place wasn't perfect, but they probably wouldn’t see him unless they got very lucky. The truck, about the size of a small dog, would certainly be noticed, yet the only way they could stop it was by shooting it. Timmy intended to flick the switch and detonate the IED if they started firing, if only to buy some time to escape.
He heard someone shout from the lead truck just before his improvised IED rolled under the wheels. In Russia, he’d read, they’d trained dogs to carry explosives under tanks. The principle was the same here. He flicked the switch and the IED exploded under the lead truck. The blast was far larger than he’d been expecting, knocking him backwards and shattering every window in the street. He pulled himself back to his feet and gaped at the results. The lead truck was simply gone, while two more were wrecked and burning. Flames licked around them as their surviving crew jumped out, weapons in hand. The soldiers in the remaining trucks were leaping out as well, firing at imaginary enemies. Timmy had no idea what
they thought they were shooting at, but none of the bullets came anywhere near his hiding place. Their shots went through broken windows and shattered doors, probably injuring or killing anyone unlucky enough to be nearby. Timmy felt a pang of guilt as he started to creep away. It sounded as if the enemy soldiers were getting organised and once they started searching thoroughly, they might find him.
Luckily, he’d taken the advice in his father’s tactical manuals and prepared his escape route first. The rear of the house he’d chosen as a staging post – it belonged to one of his teachers, who had fled the city when the aliens arrived and never returned – possessed a neat garden, one that opened into a drainage ditch. It was simple enough to crawl through the pipe and out into the other side, under the houses on the other side of his teacher’s house. He’d done it often enough as a kid when he and his friends had dared each other to risk the pipe.
The shouts behind him were growing louder. Timmy took off his rucksack as he dived into the pipe and started to half-crawl along it. It stank worse than he remembered, but then he’d been a kid back then. Now, he almost got stuck twice in the pipe. Sheer fear kept him going, somehow; he slipped and slid his way to the far end of the pipe. No one had tried to block the far end. He was suddenly very aware that he was filthy and stank of shit and worse. It smelt as if the entire city used the pipe for their personnel waste disposal.
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