Hell Road Warriors

by James Axler

  “Right,” Ryan agreed.

  Tamara frowned. “You don’t think I can take her?”

  Ryan smiled as he ate and drank. “Give her a full mag, at a hundred yards, and then run like hell.”

  “Oh?” Tamara challenged.

  “Yeah.” Ryan sighed as he thought about Krysty. “Because then she’s gonna be mad.”

  “Well, you want to go downstairs to the med station and claim blue-balls fatigue for twenty minutes, I won’t tell.” Tamara gave Ryan another appraising look. “You want me to take care of it for you right here, I won’t tell neither.”

  “You want to watch over me while I shut my eye for twenty minutes? You can have my pemmican and beer.”

  “Done!”

  Ryan leaned back into the sandbags and closed his eye. He power napped and waited for the worst that was yet to come.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Ryan awoke to a scream on the deck and the report of the blaster in the distance.

  “Sniper!” someone called.

  Tamara pushed the safety off her blaster. “Rise and shine, Ryan!” A crewman lay dead on the deck with his head blown off. The one-eyed man rolled up but stayed low behind cover. He beheld the Soo Locks. They looked a lot more like the ancient 1798 version than what had once been twentieth-century marvels of engineering for the Great Lakes freighters to pass through. It was no longer a true lock at all but a barrier, a place to demand a toll. A long double-timber palisade fortified the canal stretching from shore to shore with two built-up island towers in the middle and forts on either side. Catwalks and rope bridges stretched across the sections of palisade and they were dripping with pirates. Before they could reach the gates, the log chains stretched from one end of the canal to the other, barring their way.

  Bullets began striking the Queen on three sides.

  “Mr. Dix!” the captain called. “At your pleasure!”

  J.B. slid into the gunner’s chair and put on his headset. He flipped the arming switch on the LAV’s quadruple smoke dischargers on both sides of the turret and pushed the red button. “Countermeasures away!” The quad dischargers popped and arced M-90 smoke grens in a random pattern port and starboard. J.B. shouted to the third mate. “Mr. Niall! Irritant!”

  J.B. heard Niall’s boots on the hull and the click-clack of the rounds locking into the clusters of stubby mortar barrels. He watched his first salvo through his optical sight. Each gren deployed three individual bomblets with a separation puff of smoke. The grens hit the shore and red phosphorus and butyl rubber began burning together to form clouds of screening smoke on both banks.

  Niall shouted down the hatch. “Reloaded, Mr. Dix!” He jumped down on and slapped the side of the hull. “Clear!”

  J.B. pumped the red firing button a second time. The smoke dischargers popped and clouds of military-strength tear gas joined the mix of choking, obscuring fun on the banks of the canal. The smoke and gas only helped illuminate the flash of blasterfire and the crew and passengers of the Queen started homing in with deadly precision. Blasterfire from the shores immediately began tapering off. A sweet thrill ran up J.B.’s arm as he flipped the switch to arm the 25 mm blaster. He had loaded her up with M-792 High Explosive Incendiary Tracer with Self Destruct. J.B. had read the LAV’s manual of munitions. It said the HEI-T-SD round was ideal for “destroying unarmored vehicles and helicopters and suppressing antitank missile positions and enemy squads out to 3,000 meters.”

  Seemed like a good round to clear the top of a wooden palisade.

  J.B. put his sighting gradient just below the western end of the lock. He flipped his selector to Low Rate Fully Automatic to give himself one hundred rounds per minute and slid his finger around the trigger. “Firing on the lock!”

  J.B. squeezed his trigger and began traversing. The 25 mm automatic cannon began slamming off rounds almost in time with J.B.’s heartbeat, which, given the size of the hardware the Armorer had his hands around, was beating somewhat faster than normal. The tracers drew smoking lines through the air that impacted into the top of the palisade. It was almost like the palisade was a giant string of firecrackers. Each impact sent smoking wedges of wood and bloody pieces of pirate flying. J.B maintained his slow traverse and walked his fire across the canal from shore to shore. He traversed back, firing bursts from the coax at anything stupid enough to be returning fire from the shattered wall top. Smoke oozed from shore to shore. It looked bad but it was far from enough. The lock was double thick, and J.B. couldn’t blast it down. All he had done was give it a haircut. It was time to go tactical.

  J.B. spoke into his radio. “Lower the stern ramp. Send out the LAV. Send out the chain-breakers.”

  “GO!” RYAN HOLLERED. The capstan men sagged against their spars as the rear ramp hit water. Hunk and his crew ran out the whaleboat and leaped onto their rowing benches, and their three giant dogs went with them. Ryan glanced up at Six where he stood behind the engineering LAV’s single machine blaster. Six nodded. The LAV was prepped. “We are in amphibious trim, Ryan!”

  That was an ambitious statement. LAV’s were not particularly good swimmers. The crane and dozer blade made this version even worse. It had a max water speed of about six miles per hour. Ryan clambered up the side of the hull and slid down the driver’s hatch. He slipped on his headset and the diesel spit blue smoke into the cargo hold as Ryan stepped on the gas. His hatch came down with a clang. “Button up!” Six dropped down from the gunner’s position and closed his hatch. Ryan checked his driver’s periscopes and the wake of the Queen lay ahead of him like white water. Ryan eased the LAV down the ramp. Water splashed off the bow as the LAV met river. “Here we go!”

  The LAV lurched grotesquely as it suddenly went buoyant in the churning water like a 25,000-pound steel cork. Actually it was more accurate to say the LAV wallowed like a 25,000-pound hog. Ryan punched the button on the selective water drive and hit his throttle. The twin propellers in back hummed through the hull and the LAV took on purpose as Ryan flipped the toggle on his four rudders and turned the LAV out of the Queen’s wake. Ryan spoke into his radio. “LAV away.”

  McKenzie’s voice came back. “We see you!”

  Ryan shoved his throttles forward and took the LAV toward the southern shore. Bullets began rattling off the armored hull but not in any concentration that Ryan had expected. Between the smoke, the gas, the blastermen lining the Queen’s rails and, most importantly, J.B. in the turret of a LAV III, the Queen was giving a lot better than what she was getting. Ryan’s own LAV crept through the water like a sloth going for a swim. He checked his starboard periscope. By comparison Hunk and his men were slicing across the water like an arrow. The whaleboat thumped against the first log chain, and Hunk and one of his men leaped out barefoot onto the massive timber. Double bitted axes began chopping in a ferocious one-two rhythm as they hacked at the arm-thick rope strands holding the log chain together.

  In that, they’d caught some luck. The current coming down the canal was heavy going for the out-of-trim Queen, but by the same token they only needed to break one link in each log chain and the current would then sweep each chain open like a door. Ryan kept his prow aimed at the shore and his own task. Bullets began peppering the hull in earnest as the enemy became more and more aware of the behemoth crawling toward them.

  Hunk shouted breathlessly over the link. “First chain open!”

  A huge black hand slammed across Ryan’s shoulder. “I’m going up!” Six said.

  “Go!” Ryan kept his eye on the shore as he armed one of the quad smoke dischargers. “Popping smoke!”

  The commander’s hatch flung open as the grenade dispensers popped. The smoke grens soared to the shore and bloomed. In the renewed smoke screen the enemy fire turned into bright orange and yellow flashes. Six began rattling off short bursts. The LAV lurched as one of its road wheels
hit something solid. Six shouted down the hatch. “Shallow water, Ryan!”

  Hunk called across the link. “Second chain open!”

  The LAV had full-time four-wheel drive to the four rear wheels. Ryan shoved a lever in his gearbox and engaged the optional eight-wheel drive. The LAV rocked on its chassis as its road wheels hit rock and mud. He shoved the 6V53T Detroit diesel engine into low gear and the aggressive cross-country tread of the giant wheels bit into the riverbed. They weren’t sailing anymore. The LAV was driving. The vehicle hauled itself ashore like some primordial river beast that had decided to look for prey on land. Its prey was the southern tower fort of the lock. The lock fort had other ideas.

  The LAV began attracting bullets like a magnet.

  The fort was more a fortified operating tower for opening and closing the lock than a genuine fortress, but its rammed-earth walls were supported by heavy timber. It looked to be three stories tall. The top floor had firing slits cut into its face, and the embrasures were sheathed in stone. It would be impossible to burn down, and it would take a howitzer to pound it into rubble. They would have to take it by storm. Ryan hit his second smoke discharger. The radio crackled. “Third chain open!”

  The LAV lumbered toward the squat tower. The pirates had dug ditches and put up heavy stakes to impede any enemy advance. They hadn’t planned on armor. Stakes snapped and the LAV bounced violently over the ditches. It was heavy going. Six shouted from up top. “Look out!” The big man dropped down and slammed his hatch. A hailstorm of hits walked up, down and across the hull. The enemy had machine blasters, and more than one.

  “J.B.! I’m taking heavy fire! Machine blasters!”

  “Engaging!” J.B. reported. “Dark…night!”

  At this range Ryan’s periscopes gave him no view of the top floor. It sounded as though a horde of hornets was trying to smash its way into the roof of the LAV. Her armor was rated against .30-caliber blasterfire, but the armor on top was the thinnest. Ryan’s eye slit in anger. J.B.’s cannon shots burst and sent stone chips and shards of wood flying, but he wasn’t knocking anything out. Six shouted what Ryan was thinking from the commander’s chair. “The autocannon is ineffective! The stone and earth are too thick!”

  J.B.’s voice rose with urgency. “Ryan! I can’t cut through the embrasures, and I can only engage one at a time! It’s like smashing gophers!”

  Ryan could tell. Enemy fire wasn’t being suppressed. He flinched as green paint spalled from the hull over his head and stung his cheek. “J.B.!” Ryan roared. “I need something and I need it now!”

  The sad fact was that there was no better bullet stop than three feet of dirt, and the enemy wasn’t just sand-bagged in. They had three feet of dirt between heavy timbers and dressed stone. J.B. could empty an entire belt of 25 mm rounds trying to break through, and the enemy could simply move to the next firing position within.

  “Doc! Give me something!”

  Hunk shouted breathlessly across the line. “Fourth chain open!”

  The tactical clicked and popped while Doc fumbled with his radio. “Ryan! I see your dilemma and believe I have the remedy!”

  Ryan grimaced as he watched the roof of the LAV’s cabin began to dimple with the unceasing hail of .30-caliber impacts. In seconds the hull would start spalling lethal steel fragments from within. After that it would tear, and all bets would be off. “Remedy it now or not at all, Doc!”

  Doc’s voice soared over the radio as he called out orders. “Loadmaster! Ten more degrees to port! Load carcass! Captain! Speed!”

  “Half a knot!” McKenzie bawled back.

  “Duly noted!” Doc announced. “Wait for it, Ryan!”

  “Fuck waiting, Doc!”

  Doc was in his own little world of relative speed and arc of trajectory.

  “Wait…”

  A fragment of roof ripped across Ryan’s forearm in a bloody line. “We’re about to get chilled, Doc!”

  “Wait… Three, two, one…” Doc paused another heartbeat. “Loose!”

  Ryan looked back through his rear periscope at the Queen and saw what looked like an airborne, beige tombstone come revolving into his view. It was a bison skin, stuffed like a large sofa cushion, and it was smoldering. It was Doc’s burning sand. The missile hit a firing embrasure dead-on and burst apart in an explosion of sand. The forward momentum of the flight and the shape of the embrasure funneled most of the sand straight within. Anyone who had ever been to a beach knew that sand got inside everything, your clothes, your eyes, your mouth and any other available crevice. The sand mass hit and dispersed inside with the force of a catapult throw. Doc had heated his sand in red-hot iron cooking caldrons on the rear promenade.

  Iron glowed red-hot at 900º F.

  Ryan thought he could hear the screams of the burning damned within. The machine blasters instantly ceased. The tower had no visible gate, which meant it was on the other side. The LAV bucked and rocked as Ryan guided it around the tower.

  McKenzie called across the link. “Ryan! We’ve lost sight of you!”

  “Fifth chain down!” Hunk was getting excited.

  Ryan pulled around the tower and sighted the gate. More pirates than he could count on the other side of the lock sighted him. “Six!” The bigger man slammed open his hatch and got to blasting. Ryan frowned through his periscope. The door to the tower was an iron grill too narrow for the LAV to ram and they couldn’t afford to waste a demo charge on it. “Team! Get ready to deploy! Mr. Timms! Six! Winch!” Ryan pulled right up to the iron gate. Bullets began smacking the roof again.

  “Goose! Tamara! Alain! Covering fire!” The hull rang as someone up top dropped something very large on top of the LAV. Ryan hit the button and the rear ramp of the vehicle lowered and his team spilled out, keeping the hull between themselves and the slew of pirates on the lock. Édouard replaced Six on the machine blaster, sending several bursts through the tower gate. Timms snaked winch cable and hooked the iron bars while Six worked the motor. Mr. Smythe, Tamara, Alain and Goose drilled covering fire toward the top of the tower. Jak and Blacktree stayed in the LAV with the demo charges. Ryan watched as Timms circled his hand and Six engaged the winch. The LAV leaned slightly with the traction but held firm. The winch was made to pull another LAV that was damaged, rolled or bogged down and was rated for 30,000 pounds dynamic.

  Iron screamed and sparked as the lock tower gate ripped off its hinges. Six shouted across the link. “Ryan! Allez!”

  Ryan slid out of the driver’s seat and grabbed his longblaster.

  “Look out!”

  Édouard flailed and screamed as he was engulfed in a boiling gray froth that cascaded through the commander’s hatch into the turret of the LAV. Ryan flinched backward as the hissing, scalding soap and steam splattered his clothes and slopped around the crew cabin. Édouard flopped down the hatch, twisting and clawing at his face. The boiling soap clung and continued to sear. Blacktree grabbed the man by his boots and dragged him out of the bubbling puddle. Ryan grabbed a cargo cleat and swung himself over the mess and dropped to a knee beside Édouard. The smell of boiling soap and parboiled flesh was sickening. Blacktree was holding Édouard down. The man’s eyes were scalded out of his head. He had to have looked up when Tamara screamed. Foam and blood oozed past his parboiled lips out of his boiled throat.

  Blacktree looked at Ryan, who nodded. He drew his single-shot blaster, pressed it between Édouard’s heat-erased eyebrows and sent him on his way. Then he snapped open his blaster and slid in a fresh round from his belt.

  Ryan grabbed a demolition charge and slung it. “You ready?”

  Blacktree filled his hands with four more. “Yup.”

  The radio crackled with Hunk’s voice. “Sixth chain down!”

  Jak had a charge over his shoulder and was already waiting on the ramp, Colt
Python drawn. Everyone else was outside shooting.

  Ryan shouted to Alain. “Stay with the LAV! Try to get that machine blaster going! Draw some diesel to cut the soap!”

  “Oui, Ryan!” Alain ducked into the LAV and instantly started cursing in French.

  Ryan shot a glance at the other side of the lock. A rat warren of low blockhouses and cabins formed a small ville on both banks. The one on this side was about three hundred yards away, and they were taking fire from it. There were still pirates behind them in the no-man’s land along the bank. It was only a matter of time before a pack of pirates tried to rush them. “Mr. Smythe! Stay here with Six! Fight the LAV! Call in Loud Elk and his men and tell them to bring a couple of machine blasters from the Queen with them! We don’t lose this wag, and no pirate gets up in this tower behind me and my team!”

  Smythe slapped a fresh mag into his blaster. “At once!”

  “If Loud Elk doesn’t get here in time, pull out. Load the LAV, button up, run over anyone who gets in your way and swim for the Queen.”

  “You just drop that big fence of theirs, Ryan,” Smythe said. “We’ll be here.”

  Ryan slung his Scout and gripped two handblasters. “Let’s go!”

  He went through the door. The bottom floor was a windowless murk barely illuminated by the light of fish-oil lamps. It was mostly storage filled with barrels, coils of rope and other oddments. Ryan glanced up at a heavy wooden trapdoor in the ceiling and the scratches on the floor where the ladder had been. He looked at the heavy iron handles of the hatch ten feet above. “Timms! Winch!” Ryan nodded at his team. “Blacktree, Jak.”

  Blacktree stepped beneath the hatch and the albino teen scrambled up onto the big man’s shoulders. Timms charged in and handed up the hook. Jak looped it through the two handles and locked it. He hopped off Blacktree and both men stood back. “Winch away!”

  Six hit the lever and the cable went taut. Everyone stood back as the wood of the hatch flexed and creaked. One handle popped its nails and came off like a gunshot. The second creaked and held. The hatch suddenly broke in two.