The Assault

by Brian Falkner

  “Only one, maybe two,” Brogan said.

  “Strange,” Chisnall said. “It’s not big enough for a patrol.”

  “Why the hell are they using MP5s?” Brogan asked.

  [0110 hours]

  [Perimeter Fence, Uluru Military Base, New Bzadia]

  Kezalu stopped singing.

  Yozi glanced up at him. They had been scouting the perimeter fence for two hours and Kezalu had been singing for most of it. Yozi wasn’t sure if Kezalu even realized he was doing it. He had a fine, clear, young voice, and the others in his squad had long since learned to tune it out.

  Kezalu was on the fifty-caliber machine gun, mounted high on the Australian Army Land Rover. It was one of the few human weapons they actually used. Most Earth weapons were so primitive, heavy, and underpowered that they were not worth bothering with. But the big fifty-cal, although huge and unwieldy, fired such large projectiles that they could punch through body armor, vehicles, even buildings. And the weight of the weapon was not an issue if it was rack-mounted on top of a vehicle.

  The Land Rovers were primitive, internal-combustion vehicles, and nobody much liked them. They had appropriated hundreds of them from the Australian Army when they had sent it running, however, and they were well suited to the rough desert terrain.

  Kezalu had been singing a song from his homeland, the kind of song that only a young, innocent soldier, straight out of basic training, would sing. In some squads it would be seen as a sign of weakness, and the other soldiers would have beaten it out of him after the first day. But Yozi did not hold with that, and the members of his squad knew it, so they left Kezalu alone.

  But Kezalu had stopped singing. He cocked his head to one side, as if listening.

  “Stop the engine,” Yozi murmured to Zabet, the driver.

  She complied immediately, flicking the Land Rover into neutral and letting it coast slowly to a halt. Yozi twisted around in the oversized (human-sized) chair and signaled Alizza in the Land Rover behind them to do the same.

  Kezalu took off his helmet, listening. This time, without the rumble of the noisy engine, Yozi heard it too. They all did.

  The sound of gunfire. The short popping sound of coil-guns answered by the hard cracking noise of a machine gun.

  A human weapon.

  Yozi aimed a flat hand in the direction he thought it was coming from and looked up at Kezalu. Kezalu shook his head and aimed his own hand slightly to the left of Yozi’s.

  “Call it in,” Yozi said.

  Zabet nodded and reached for the comm.

  Wilton was hammering away on his coil-gun, laying down a constant stream of fire that would use up his entire ammo supply in a few minutes if he didn’t slow down.

  “Cease fire, cease fire,” Chisnall called, and the firing stopped.

  Echoes of the noise seemed to be rebounding off the big rocky hillside in front of him, but he knew that was just his ears adjusting to the sudden silence of the desert.

  There was a short burst from the boulders in front of them.

  “MP5s, are you sure?” Chisnall asked.

  “I’m sure.”

  “Hey, scumbugzzz,” he called out in English, but in his best Bzadian accent. “Hey, scumbugzzz. Stop you shooting, yezzz.”

  The voice that came back was unmistakably English.

  “Lay your weapons on the ground and raise your hands above your heads. We have you surrounded.”

  No, you don’t, Chisnall thought. Not with just one or two of you.

  “I coming out, yezzz,” he called out, and then said quietly on the comm, “I don’t think they’re Pukes.”

  “Careful, LT,” said Brogan in his ear. “It could be a trap.”

  “Phantom, you know what to do,” Chisnall said.

  He raised his weapon high above his head and stepped out from behind the rock.

  There were no shots.

  He walked forward, keeping the coil-gun above his head, then unclipped it from the holster spring and slowly laid it on the ground. He did the same for his sidearm and advanced toward the boulders, keeping his hands high.

  “That’s close enough, thanks,” the voice called. “Now the other chaps.”

  Chisnall dropped the accent. “Who the hell are you, soldier?”

  “There’s a platoon of us,” the voice said.

  “No, there isn’t,” Chisnall said. “There are two or three of you at the most, and if there was a platoon in this vicinity, I’d know about it.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Lieutenant Ryan Chisnall, Allied Combined Operations Group, Recon Battalion,” Chisnall said.

  “You look like a Puke,” the voice said.

  “I’m no more Puke than you are,” Chisnall said. “Good disguise, though, yezz?”

  “Keep your hands on top of your head,” the voice said. “And come behind the boulders.”

  Chisnall walked forward slowly, making no movements that might alarm the men. He stepped between two of the boulders.

  There were just two of them, one injured. Both in their twenties or early thirties. Both in the uniform of the British Royal Air Force. They had just one weapon between them, an MP5. Brogan was right.

  “Dammit, you really are a Puke,” the man said as Chisnall rounded the rocks. He aimed the gun at Chisnall’s face.

  “No, I’m not,” Chisnall said. He flipped up his combat visor.

  “You damn well look like one,” the man said. “Tell your men to lay their weapons on the ground and come over here.”

  “They’re already here,” Chisnall said with an even smile.

  “G’day, mate,” Price said from behind the men.

  The man looked around at the gun next to his head. Price, the Kiwi Phantom, had used Chisnall’s approach as a cover to slither silently around behind them. Nobody had heard her—not even Chisnall, who knew what she was doing.

  Chisnall reached forward and took the MP5 off the soldier, flipping the safety as the other Angels approached.

  “Believe it or not, we are humans,” he said. “I’m from California.”

  “Well, you look like Pukes.”

  “Believe me, we ain’t happy about that either,” Wilton said.

  “Who are you?” Chisnall asked.

  “Pilot Officer Sean Fleming. This is Flight Lieutenant Theo Bennett, Royal Air Force, Sixty-First Squadron.”

  The injured man nodded but did not speak.

  “What’s your story?” Chisnall asked.

  The team squatted down in a semicircle around the two men.

  “We were part of the raid on Townsville. Got chased by the Pukes halfway across Australia. They winged us and we managed to eject, but the skipper landed on rocks, banged up his leg a bit. We’ve been evading ever since.”

  “Any plans to get you out?” Brogan asked.

  Fleming shook his head. “If we could get to the coast, maybe, but there’s not much chance of that with the skipper’s leg. How about you? What are you doing here?”

  “That’s classified,” Chisnall said.

  Fleming nodded. “I thought as much. Five kids dressed as Pukes in the heart of Puke land.”

  Chisnall turned to Brogan. “I want to debrief these men on enemy activity in the area. Retrieve the backpacks and set up a perimeter. Full alert. Pukes may have heard the shooting.”

  Chisnall waited until the others had vanished into the darkness of the desert, then shook Fleming’s hand warmly. He made sure his comm mike was off.

  “The uniform looks good on you.” He grinned.

  “I think so too,” Fleming said. “How’d I do?”

  “Convincing. You almost had me fooled.”

  “Good to see you again, kid,” Fleming said. He winced. “Sorry, I know you hate being called that.”

  “Don’t worry about it. Good to see you too. But what the hell was all that shooting as we approached the RV?”

  “There were supposed to be six of you,” Fleming said. “We thought you were a real patrol, and
you were just about to walk over the top of us.”

  “Just as well you SAS guys can’t hit the side of a barn at ten paces with a shotgun,” Chisnall said.

  “If we’d been aiming at you, you would have known all about it,” Fleming said. “I fired high in case it was you.”

  “You just about took my head off by that boulder,” Chisnall said.

  “Only because you stuck it up at exactly the wrong time,” Fleming said.

  “Where’s Hunter?” Bennett asked, speaking for the first time. He was clearly in pain.

  “He’s dead. Snakebite,” Chisnall answered.

  “The desert is a dangerous place,” Bennett said.

  “Yeah, and not just the wildlife,” Chisnall said.

  Bennett looked closely at him. “It wasn’t an accident?”

  “I doubt it.” Chisnall told them about the laser comm unit and the half-pipe.

  “Any idea who did it?” Bennett’s voice was low and dangerous.

  “None,” Chisnall said. “And it was done under cover of a sandstorm so the satellites wouldn’t see.”

  “Tricky,” Fleming said.

  “Are you still go for the mission, with the leg?”

  “It’s not as bad as it looks, Lieutenant. I’ll be okay. Besides, it’ll add authenticity,” Bennett said.

  “No problems avoiding the Pukes?” Chisnall asked.

  “They know we’re here, somewhere,” Fleming said. “They’ve been looking high and low.”

  “Yeah, we saw a lot of search activity,” Chisnall said.

  “They haven’t found us yet.” Fleming grinned.

  “Good,” Chisnall said. “What time are the fireworks?”

  “I’ll call it in now,” Fleming said. He opened a small satchel and took out a laser comm unit, identical to the one Hunter had carried. “The carrier group is already in position.”

  “Any danger to us?” Chisnall asked.

  Bennett shook his head. “We’re well outside the fire zone.”

  “Okay. After you’ve called it in, bury the laser comm. Don’t let my guys see it.”

  Bennett nodded. “We won’t be needing it again.”

  “LT.” It was Price’s voice on the comm.

  “Copy,” Chisnall said, turning his comm mike back on.

  “I think we’ve got company. A slow mover just broke off from the activity up around Uluru. Heading this way. Someone must have heard the shooting.”

  Chisnall looked to the north. There was nothing visible in the sky.

  “How long have we got?” he asked.

  “Maybe ten mikes, if we’re lucky.”

  “Copy that. Brogan, get the team up the hill. Cover all approaches. Camo down, and no movement unless I give the word.”

  He didn’t say it out loud, but the success of the mission depended on them not getting spotted. For a few more hours at least.

  “Clear copy, LT,” Brogan said.

  “Will you be okay getting up there?” Chisnall asked Bennett.

  The hill was steep, although there was a more gradual slope on the northern face.

  “I’ll be fine, but I think it’s a bad idea,” Bennett said.

  Chisnall glanced around. “There’s nowhere else that’s defendable. The hill would give us height advantage and good fields of fire if they do find us.”

  Bennett shook his head. “Too exposed. A couple of mortar rounds and we’d be dingo food. Just tell your team to spread out and camo down.”

  “Sir, no, sir.”

  “You realize you are talking to a colonel.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I was running combat operations against the Pukes when you were still a twinkle in your daddy’s eye.”

  “That’s probably not true, sir. And I have mission command.”

  Fleming said, “The kid has good instincts, Colonel. And we don’t have time to argue.”

  Bennett said, “Okay, looks like you’re in charge, Lieutenant.”

  Chisnall nodded. He hoped he wasn’t making another huge mistake.

  6. ULURU

  [0240 hours]

  [Benda Hill, New Bzadia]

  ULURU BY NIGHT HAD A PHYSICAL PRESENCE, EVEN though it was little more than a dark, distant mass against the star-scattered sky. It was easy to see why the Aboriginal people revered it. Folklore had it that anyone who removed as much as a stone from Uluru would be cursed. The aliens had been burrowing into Uluru for years. If the story was true, then the Bzadians were in for the mother of all curses.

  Chisnall hoped it was true.

  Uluru might have been dark and silent but the land around it was quite the opposite. From the top of the hill, Chisnall’s binoculars picked up a blaze of lights in the mass of encampments, barracks, supply stores, and defenses around the rock. Roads were lined with lights and a monorail ran in a wide circle around the rock before disappearing into a cleft in the rock face.

  A constant stream of trucks and smaller vehicles flowed on the roadways around the big rock. Uluru remained almost invisible, except when one of the rotorcraft passed over it, the craft’s downlights creating a vivid red burst of sandstone in the blackness.

  In between their hill and Uluru was a massive electrified fence, topped by a long line of lights, deadly sparkling baubles. Outside the fence was a minefield. A secondary, smaller fence ran outside that, no doubt to stop any patrols or animals from wandering into the mines. Inside the main fence were the heavy concrete pyramids called dragon’s teeth: tank traps. At fifty-meter intervals were concrete towers with narrow slots at the top. Each one held a heavy-caliber coil-gun linked to a motion sensor. Cameras on the top of the towers covered every angle. The only way in or out was through the gate stations on the western and eastern approaches to Uluru. And outside the smaller fence, dead kangaroos and dingoes—just large enough to trigger the automatic guns—rotted where they had fallen.

  The place was impregnable.

  Chisnall tried to bury his face in the rock, holding his breath as the enemy rotorcraft hovered overhead. He used his hands and feet to hold the straps on each corner of the camo sheet to prevent it from moving or flapping in the heavy downdraft from the rotor blades.

  The top of Benda Hill was a ragged jumble of rocks and crevices—natural foxholes that offered almost perfect cover against an attack.

  A gunship, bristling with heavy weapons and rocket pods, had flown over the hill but had not detected the Angel Team or the British soldiers.

  Chisnall checked the time. They had been hiding under their camo sheets for more than two hours. The Pukes were still searching. Most of their activity had concentrated on a scrubby area southwest of Benda Hill. That area offered many places to hide, and the Pukes had turned it over with a fine-tooth comb. Like Bennett, the Pukes seemed to have regarded the top of the hill as too exposed and had ignored it.

  Until now.

  The craft hovered above them, its electronic eyes—and the eyes of its crew—examining the top of the hill minutely.

  “I think they’ve rumbled us,” Brogan said quietly on the comm.

  The gunship moved slowly away, holding off about a hundred meters.

  Chisnall opened his mouth to say something else but never got the chance. The front edge of the craft dipped as it accelerated into attack mode. There was a series of flashes from the rocket pods on either side of the cockpit and the hilltop was engulfed in a thunderstorm of sound and fury. Pulverized rock flew into the air and waves of concussion blasted through the rocky ridges. Chisnall hugged the floor in a steep-sided crevice and saw wedges of rock flying above his head. He fought for breath and heard a cry of agony over the comm.

  Another wave of rockets lashed the hilltop, then another. Only the jagged crevices of the rock saved them from the percussive blasts. The rotorcraft lifted its nose into the air and headed away, back to its base.

  “They’re withdrawing!” Wilton yelled. “Booyah!”

  “Watch the scope, watch the scope!” Chisnall yelled.
/>   “Here they come,” Price called. “Two fast movers heading our way.”

  “They’ll take out the entire hill,” Brogan said.

  “Get out of here, now!” Chisnall yelled. “Over the back!”

  It was the only option he could see. To get down on the opposite side of the hill from the approaching jets.

  “Three klicks out,” Price called.

  Bennett appeared close to him, and Chisnall grabbed his arm, helping him limp across the ragged hilltop. Bennett was heavy and much larger than Chisnall and the going was slow.

  “Two klicks.”

  Fleming appeared on the other side of Bennett and the three of them stumbled toward the southern end of the rock.

  “One klick!”

  The hill dropped away and they scrambled and fell through a patch of porcupine grass, the needles stabbing at any exposed skin. Then the ground beneath their feet disappeared completely and they were falling over a small bluff.

  They hit another steep slope hard and were sliding and rolling. Chisnall crashed into a tree halfway down and stopped there, winded, as Bennett and Fleming continued sliding past him. Above him, the hilltop exploded into a massive ball of flame, sucking all the oxygen out of the air. Huge orbs of flame streaked with charcoal leaped into the night air. Benda Hill erupted like a volcano. The land around it turned orange, then yellow, bathing in the fiery anger of the hilltop above.

  “Angel Team, status check,” Chisnall gasped into the comm.

  “Angel Two. Oscar Kilo.”

  “Angel Four. Oscar Kilo.”

  “Angel Five, I took a shrapnel hit from the rocket attack, but the body armor held. I’m Oscar Kilo.”

  “Angel Six. Oscar Kilo.”

  Chisnall scrambled down the hillside to Fleming and Bennett. Both were breathing heavily and blood was seeping from a deep gash on Fleming’s face.

  “You guys okay?” Chisnall asked.

  “I don’t think that did my leg any favors,” Bennett said. “But I’m no worse off than I was before.”

  Fleming just nodded. He found a gauze pad and held it firmly to the gash on his face.

  “Is that all you got?” Wilton yelled at the sky.

  “Price, what are those fast movers doing?” Chisnall asked.