Out past the falling figures, the front gate appeared. It was a straight shot.
But the gate itself was closed.
And the heavy-gauge, concrete-reinforced steel bar was still down.
They didn’t slow. Instead, Todd gunned the engine and accelerated up this stretch of straightaway, and directly at the barred exit.
* * *
Kate wasn’t sure what to freak out about first – her doubts that the gun truck could smash through the gate and fence without crashing or being badly damaged, perhaps even disabled. Or that they would make it through – and then they would be it. One vehicle, two guys, just her and the surfer dude, striking out for the horizon, with God only knew what lay out beyond it – or what was waiting for them in the wilds of Africa, well beyond the safety and shelter of an American mili—
“—the AT4 out! Get it out!”
This was Todd, screaming at her over the wind and engine noise. He was evidently having to repeat himself. Kate’s vision refocused close in on the forty-inch-long tube, flared at one end, and 84mm in diameter, that was lashed to the roll-bar in front of her face. She let the M2 go and yanked at the bungee cords that held the AT-4 rocket in place.
“Have you ever shot one of those?”
“Yeah!” The bungees didn’t want to cooperate, so she got her knife out and slashed them. “But only with practice rounds!” Bunker-busting warheads were kind of expensive for training purposes, at least where she came from.
Her hands were trembling again – or maybe it was the motion of the hurtling vehicle, the suspension of which was not engineered for comfort – but she managed to find and remove the safety pin at the rear of the tube. She then took up the best firing position she could, given where she was. As per training, she also turned around, verifying that no one was present in the back-blast area. Because the AT-4 was recoilless, it was almost as lethal to anyone standing behind it as in front.
“Take your time!”
Somehow, she didn’t think he meant that. The gate was swelling and blasting at them at a thousand miles an hour now.
She yanked off the front and rear sight covers and the sights popped into position. She removed the first safety by moving the cocking lever forward. Then she took aim, while holding down the red safety lever – the second safety. There was only one step left to discharge it. She put her thumb on the red firing button…
Motion ahead caught her eye.
Two figures were coming around either side of the guard shack beside the gate. They were MPs. One of them looked like the NCOIC she had seen earlier, now with his side arm drawn. She couldn’t tell whether he was healthy or not.
She had also forgotten that the hands tend to go where the eye does, and her aim had drifted off slightly to the left.
The truck bounced over something in the road, probably a body.
The sound of a bomb erupted by her right ear as the rocket fired, sonic booms warping out ahead of the hurtling truck, and with no discernible delay the guard shack went up in a crashing explosion of black smoke.
She’d just killed both the MPs, and anyone else who was in there.
“Goddammit,” Todd said, over the radio this time. “That was our only one.”
He twisted the wheel and took them into another shuddering right-hand turn, obviously willing to do just about anything to keep them alive at this point – except stop. Kate watched the mostly demolished security shack spin away out of view, hot tears once again leaking from the corners of her eyes.
This time she didn’t wipe them away.
The wind pulled them right off her face.
Sergeant Major Badass
Camp Lemonnier - Near the Main Gate
Absurdly, Kate realized her hat was gone.
Some of the atrocious back-blast of the AT-4 must have pulled it right off her head. She’d had that hat forever, through every one of her deployments. She loved that hat.
“Get the fifty up! Get the fifty up!”
Kate blinked and realized they were all about to die, and she was worrying about her hat. Maybe she really was a girl after all.
Thunk-thunk-thunk, Ma Deuce was right where she left her – good to go and instantly banging away. Kate faced forward, firing at standing or lurching figures in the road in front of them. She didn’t like those guys’ odds against the steel cattle catcher gate on the front of the blasting six-ton truck. Then again, she really didn’t want to see how many they had to hit before the suspension got gummed up or they threw an axle. As it was, they were ramping over bodies like it was a gentrified neighborhood with too many damned speed bumps.
For some reason she recalled the memorably crass words of the guy who had trained her on this weapon. He said the M2 was great because of its knock-down power – because “it really puts their dicks in the dirt.”
They hung a shrieking right, back in toward the center of camp, and then an equally G-force-pummeling left. Now, closer in, the haze of hanging smoke was making it hard to see more than a hundred feet ahead. Kate paused firing and heard a steady pop-pop-pop’ing sound. She realized they were back near the JOC. The swirling smoke blew away for a moment and she did a double-take.
Ahead and coming up fast was Command Sergeant Major Zorn, still alive and on his feet, standing in the open door of the JOC – and discharging his side arm, a Colt 1911 .45. At his feet were two discarded M4s and a lot of empty mags, and there was a ring of bodies out about twenty yards from him. He wasn’t moving – just standing erect and firing one-handed.
Holy shit… Kate could almost see, or maybe just remembered, the Ranger tab on the man’s shoulder. The guy might have been an asshole, but he was clearly a major badass, and evidently an unkillable one.
And then he disappeared into the haze again.
The squealing of the tires and another turn brought her attention back to the front, and she resumed thunk-thunk-thunk’ing away. Then Todd spoke in her ear, only audible because of her pricey Peltor ear-pro, which muted gunfire and explosions, but amplified voices, and piped radio traffic straight into her brain.
“We’re gonna go out one of the side entrances. Only, last time I checked, it wasn’t in use – it had concrete barriers in front of it. Your job: fuck that shit up!”
Kate blinked and nodded. She knew .50 BMG rounds would eventually crumble concrete – pretty quickly, in fact. She just had a hard time imagining she’d have enough time to make that happen. Then again, she had no choice but to make it happen.
The absence of alternatives clears the mind marvelously…
She worked out now that Todd had taken them on a wide loop south through the base – presumably so they’d have some runway as they approached the other exit, which was also on the northern wire, but to the east of the main one.
Maybe she could do this after all.
And then the weapon jammed.
The Browning M2 heavy machine gun is so perfect in design that it hasn’t been updated since World War One. Among its innumerable virtues was the fact that it never jammed.
And somehow Kate had gotten this one to.
And she thought: This must be why I’m not an 18-Bravo weapons sergeant…
She hauled on the charging handle for all she was worth, but the bolt wouldn’t budge. She yanked and yanked, but couldn’t clear it – there was a badly bent shell casing wedged in the ejection port.
“I’m jammed!”
Todd hesitated one beat. “Drive!”
When she looked down and forward, he was practically already climbing into the back of the truck. He was certainly as far out of the driver’s seat as one could be while still steering the damned thing. She slithered forward and into his spot from the passenger side. They didn’t crash – they’d just lost momentum in the break between feet on the accelerator, which might almost be worse.
There were nightmare figures converging on them from the sides, and filling the road up ahead.
* * *
Wriggling her hips as her Ghostex
crawled up her ass on the cracked upholstery, Kate jammed the gas pedal, and stole a look in the rear-view. She saw Todd’s big bicep swell maximally beneath the Crye as he hauled on the charging handle, cleared the chamber, and got their main gun up again. And she looked on as this blond surfer dude/golden god masterfully rocked the M2, with the sun rising right behind him.
Who were these guys? She hadn’t yet begun to understand them. But she’d seen enough already to count herself hellaciously lucky to be with them. Later, she would learn that most of the world had gone down like she nearly did first thing this morning – in confusion and terror, and with it all happening too fast to even understand what was going on. That Kate hadn’t was solely because she’d just gotten stuck in with one of the most adaptable and fast-moving military teams in the world. Now, she hunkered down slightly as the five-inch brass casings showered down around her.
But, more importantly, bodies also started to tear apart and hit the ground ahead of them. She had the vague, utterly horrifying impression that even these terribly maimed figures were not dead, but still animated, moving in chunks on the ground… but that was surely just their residual motion as they got knocked down by the force of the rounds. Right?
She was starting to appreciate that there wasn’t any time to think about any of this. Now, she simply steered to avoid the biggest piles of bodies and parts. The Humvee’s center of gravity was spectacularly low, and its stability legendary, but she didn’t want to tempt fate, nor knock her gunner around any more than strictly necessary by ramping over torsos.
Focusing farther out again she saw the smaller gate coming up fast.
It was blocked by God knew how many big concrete barriers – and which were basically designed to stop vehicles with bombs in them driving through. And, six tons and low center of gravity or not, she did not like their odds against those things…
Todd’s fire was trained dead on them now, and she could see chunks of disintegrating concrete falling away and a thick and spreading haze of cement dust. He was fucking that shit up, but she seriously doubted whether he was doing so fast enou—
The firing stopped.
She looked back and saw he was changing out ammo cans.
Fuck!
Advancing crowds of bodies swarmed in her peripheral vision. She was afraid to take her eyes off the road – and equally afraid to look at the barriers ahead.
“Todd…!”
“Just smash through! The truck’ll take it!”
Fuck, fuck, fu— and then Kate’s vision went black and she felt herself flying across the passenger compartment to the left and nearly out of it, clinging to the wheel just to stay in the fucking vehicle. As her vision spooled back up after the impact, her head darted to the left.
And it was the second gun truck. It had slammed into them as it pulled up alongside. And Kate could instantly see why. Brendan was driving it, accelerating, jaw clenched, eyes squinted, looking like he was in a game of chicken – one he intended to win. Huddling in the passenger seat, looking like he was about to die, but still manning the machine gun on the swing-arm, was Elijah. And standing up in back, erect, solid, looking cool as a cucumber, was Kwon.
Also, he was now wearing her ARMY baseball cap. What the fuck…? She suddenly had this image of Kwon spotting it on the ground as they roared by and leaning over the side of the blasting truck to scoop it up. That was pretty fucking ninja. But not as ninja as the fact that he had now their own AT-4 cued up on his shoulder. And that’s why he’s the weapons sergeant…
Once again, the world exploded just to the side of her head, sonic booms tore up the space-time continuum out to their front, and with no delay at all, what was left of the concrete barrier erupted in a short, sharp, black explosion.
“Punch it!” someone shouted in her ear, she didn’t even know who.
She punched it.
And just before they entered the smoke and dust and whatever was still intact at the entrance, she stole another look behind her. As she accelerated, a gap was opening between them and the third truck – which was slowing just enough to let the second one merge back in between the two.
Somehow, they were all back together. They were all still alive – and a convoy again.
And everybody was shooting, in all directions.
Visibility dropped to zero for a fraction of a second – and then they were through – no, then they hit the gate itself, which lay behind the barriers, and hadn’t been destroyed by the rocket blast, but merely obscured by the dust and debris. But this splintered under the force and momentum of the lead truck and rocketed away to either side.
And then they were through.
The dirt road opened up in front of them, and spread out, welcoming.
They’d gotten free.
Eyes Front
Camp Lemonnier - Outside the North Wire
Until they hadn’t.
Kate couldn’t resist stealing a last look in the rear-view. Their little convoy was still intact, and still together. But behind them, and spilling out around their big halo of dust plume, she could see a whole fucked-up foreign legion of misshapen bodies surging forward, pouring out of the now blown-wide-open gate, all still following the sound of the vehicles and the weapons.
This was like the second coming of their last-second escape from the garage – except now they were being chased by a much more horrible, stomach-turning kind of detonation, a slow-motion animated meat explosion. Kate was just trying to pull her eyes away from this horror show when her attention was grabbed by something farther back down the road, and almost stranger – a big white SUV parked up on the verge with what looked like a guy aiming a rifle ove—
“Staff Sergeant – eyes front!”
It was Todd screaming at her, for the good reason that she was about to steer them off the road and into the culvert.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
Jesus. She had one job: to watch the road, and steer the fucking vehicle. And that was a damned deep culvert. It might have flipped even the super-stable Humvee, and definitely could have gotten them stuck. Now she straightened out and the wobble went out of their path as she breathed deeply of the smoky air.
“Where are we going?” she shouted over the wind noise.
“Bush camp!”
She nodded. That sounded good enough. Anywhere but here.
She bore down now and focused – determined not to look anywhere, ever again, but straight ahead at the road. Unfortunately, off to their left was Djibouti Town. Their path was gradually veering away from it, heading west up the coast… but right now it was still visible, and it took all she had not to rubberneck. Fires were burning in the still-thin light, and smoke drifted, though for some reason the sporadic gunfire of the night before had died down.
Much worse was that she had the vague impression of human figures crawling across the muddy ground between the road and the town. She’d never been so transfixed by something she wasn’t looking at, and anyway she still had that combat tunnel-vision the adrenaline always causes, where everything’s indistinct outside of a very narrow cone dead ahead an—
“STAFF SERGEANT!”
Todd’s shout was mixed with high-pitched squealing this time. And only now did she see the group of Somali kids break from the treeline on the right side of the road and blast out in front of them, totally heedless of their danger – because they were being chased.
Kate locked the brakes and twisted the wheel to the left, G-forces trying to pull her into the passenger seat now, the truck swerving six inches in front of the child at the head of the group, and then swerving back onto the road, only that kick-ass low center of gravity keeping them on four wheels, and she heard the screaming of engines and brakes from behind and dared look in the rear-view again…
The vehicle immediately behind, the one with Brendan, Elijah, and Kwon, locked up its brakes, but was too late to miss the kids to the left, and so they swerved right – which meant it plowed right through the crowd of sick bastards p
ursuing the kids. Meat flew, but the truck swerved back and managed to stay on the road.
The third vehicle probably couldn’t see the kids at all initially, and swerved left just to avoid crashing into the second truck.
That had them barreling straight at the crowd of kids, who were moving right to left, and just stepping off the road now. Tiny limbs and hair braids were right in the path of 12,000 pounds of steel going 70mph.
Peter Price cranked the wheel all the way to the left.
And the last gun truck went both left-side wheels into the culvert.
And then it was pirouetting around its lengthwise axis, spinning through the air like a Michael Bay film come to life, but at least missing the children. The driver had sacrificed himself for them.
And as Kate fought the shuddering wheel and tried to level them out, she suddenly knew who had been in the back of the third truck.
It was Jake, Master Sergeant Redding.
She knew because he was now flying in a high parabola through the air.
* * *
He was the lucky one. He had been sticking out the weapons turret and was thrown clear.
When the truck came to rest, Pete, the driver, ended up pinned, only his upper body clear of the upturned vehicle, its engine still screaming and four big tires spinning against nothing – and its massive steel body pressing him mercilessly into the mud. He didn’t scream. But he didn’t speak either.
He was trying to breathe.
Kate had finally stopped their truck and gotten it turned around – the turning radius of the Humvee was also somewhat legendary, but not in a good way – and reached the new crash site second. Brendan, Kwon, and Elijah were already there, out of their vehicle, and trying to set security.
And they were already shooting.
Their first tactical objective was putting down the half-mown-down crowd of diseased sons of bitches who had been chasing the children across the road. This was easier said than done, because they’d been knocked in all directions like ninepins by the second truck when it came through.
Arisen : Nemesis Page 9
