It had been two days since General Jacobs had called a meeting in that room. Two days to get our troops and equipment into position. Two days that Gabe and I had spent reconnoitering Legion South, and chewing on our own impatience.
Two days of warning for the Legion.
Someone had escaped the assault on Legion Central. That was the only explanation. Someone had gotten away, and had made a beeline for Haven. The math made sense. They could have covered the distance, even if they were on foot, in just over a day. It would have been hard travel, but not impossible. That coincided with the amount of time it took for Steve to break Lucian. Then they had another two days to kill the slaves, pack up what they needed for the journey, and high-tail it through the tunnels. But that only left one destination. One connection to that lonely furrow drawn from one spot on the map to another.
Legion South.
And then there was the one person from Lucian’s retinue that was still unaccounted for.
Aiken.
He must have somehow evaded the AC-130’s FLIR and fled to Haven. Knowing what a sadistic bastard he was, it was probably his orders that had compelled the people living at Haven to execute the slaves prior to escaping.
Which meant there could be as many as five hundred souls in that factory. Men, women, and children, along with any weapons that had been stashed in the tunnels between Legion South and Haven.
Motion on my left distracted me, and I looked over to see Gabe leveling his rifle at the two surviving men on the factory roof. He sent a round downrange, and one of them fell. He worked the bolt and fired again. The explosion must have shaken him up, because that round missed its mark and sent up a plume of dust next to its intended victim. Gabe cursed, cycled the bolt, and fired again. This time he hit his mark.
“Eric, come on, man. Get back in the fight.” His hand came up to his mike. “Alpha, Wolf. Me and Irish are okay. How’s your team?”
“Wolf, Alpha. We’re okay. Alpha Two, report in.”
“We’re fine. A little shaken up, but otherwise okay.”
There was silence for a few moments while Steve pondered his next move. “Command One, Angel is down. Repeat, Angel is down.”
General Jacobs’s voice came over the net. “What the hell is going on out there, Alpha?”
“Sir, our intel was wrong. They just hit the gunship with a Stinger. It’s down, sir. They’re gone.”
Another silence.
“Alpha, I need you to keep it together, son. This is not your fault. There’s no way you could have known they had that kind of firepower. We’ll deal with that problem later. Right now, I need you to keep those insurgents from escaping, do you understand?”
“Yes sir.”
“Good. I’ll get Hawk and his unit headed your way. You’ll have air support and reinforcements there in less than twenty minutes. There won’t be many troops, just what they can fit onto the Chinook and the Pave Hawk. Have your men cover all of the egress points and fire on anyone that tries to come out. Do you copy?”
“Yes, sir, I copy.”
“Make it happen.”
Steve said, “All right, there are five exits. Two on the north side, two on the south, and the main entrance on the east side. I’ll take Alpha One and cover the north side. Alpha Two, you take the south doors. Wolf, Irish, do you have eyes on the east exit?”
“Affirmative,” Gabe said.
“Good. Shoot anything you see coming through that door.”
“Can do.” Gabe shifted his weight and settled into a more stable firing position.
“How many rounds do you have for that thing?” I asked, sitting down and leveling my M-110.
“Only about fifty or so. How about you?”
“A hundred 7.62 rounds, and a hundred-eighty 5.56.”
Gabe shook his head. “My six-eight can’t reach that far, so there’s no way in hell your NATO rounds are gonna get there. Once we’re dry for the big guns, we’ll have to move to a closer firing position.”
I looked around, seeing only trees. “Like what?”
“I don’t know. Maybe we’ll climb a tree or something.”
I glanced at him, hoping he was joking. He wasn’t. “Well, we’re not at that point yet. Let’s just make every shot count, okay?”
“I always do. Now listen, I want you to cover the front door. I’m going to keep an eye on the roof. When people start coming out of those doors, Alpha squad is going to fire on them. Pretty soon, the Legion’s going to get tired of that, and send people up onto the roof to take them out. Remember what I taught you about fighting an enemy that’s firing on you from an elevated position?”
I thought about the twenty-four Army Rangers and one Green Beret deployed around the factory. That was a lot of space to cover and not a lot of people to do it. “Yeah. I remember.”
“When that happens, I’m going to suppress their fire for as long as I can. Sooner or later, they’re gonna figure out where the shots are coming from, and return fire.”
I swallowed. “Gabe, is this supposed to be helping?”
“I’m just making sure you know what we’re gonna be up against. If they have long-range weapons, we’ll have to abandon this tower. It they just have the Kalashnikovs, they won’t be able to hit us at this range. You might hear a few rounds bouncing off the struts underneath us. Just ignore it.”
“Yeah, sure. Great idea. Ignore the bullets. Got it.”
Gabe shot me a frown, and then turned back to his rifle. “Just stay focused.”
I took a deep breath to clear my head, adjusted my grip on my rifle, and waited. As I sat there, it occurred to me that the Legion might have installed additional exits in the tunnel to Haven. If they had, we wouldn’t see anyone coming out of the factory. They would all go that way.
“Alpha, Irish.”
“Copy Irish.”
“Do we know where that tunnel is? You know, the one from here to Haven?”
“We know what Lucian told us. At this point, I can’t trust that intel anymore. Why?”
“Because if we don’t see people coming out soon, that means they have another escape route somewhere in the tunnels.”
“Believe it or not, Irish, that did occur to me.”
“Copy. Just making sure.”
I sat and waited. My breath formed a fog in front of my face and, after a few minutes, the cold began seeping into my limbs. I resisted the urge to squirm around and get some blood flowing, and kept my attention on the door. No one showed up. Another minute went by. Still no one. I was starting to think things were about to get much more difficult.
And then I felt a thump.
Not like the one I’d felt when the gunship had gone down, but still pretty powerful.
“Gabe, did you feel that?”
“Yeah, I did.”
“What the fuck was it?”
“Hell if I know. Felt like an explosion. I don’t see anything, though. You?”
I scanned around. “Nope. Nothing.”
“Hmm. Weird.”
I put my eye back on the scope just in time to see the front door open. A body appeared in the doorway. I fired, the round crossing the distance in a blink and hitting the figure in the chest just as he cleared the door. Another appeared behind him and I gave him the same treatment. Then more came. I got two of them, but they were coming faster now, fanning out and running in a serpentine pattern toward the treeline.
“Goddammit, I can’t get all of them.”
I kept firing until I ran out of ammo, and had to pause to reload. As I did, more Legion troops emerged and ran for cover.
“Just keep at it, get as many as you can,” Gabe said.
Steve’s voice sounded in my ear. “We’ve got contact.”
From the north side of the factory I heard the staccato crack of rifles firing on the fleeing marauders. I kept up my end of the bargain and got as many troops coming out of the east entrance as I could, but it was like swatting mosquitoes in a swarm. The rest of the squad had
better luck, probably because they were in three-man fire teams, and I was all by myself.
“This is Alpha One. The bad guys on our side retreated into the factory. How are you doing over there, Alpha Two?”
“Same story. We dropped a dozen or so, and they stopped trying to come out.”
I keyed in. “Great. Mind sending some guys over to the east side? I’m getting my ass kicked over here.”
The Ranger in charge of Alpha Two keyed in. “Roger, en route.”
A few seconds later, his squad appeared, moving through the forest toward my position. In short order, he had his men fan out and begin picking off the Legion troops. It didn’t take the ones inside long to figure out what was happening to their friends, and they vanished into the darkness beyond the door.
“Okay, Alpha, looks like we got ’em hemmed in,” I said.
“Copy Irish. Keep your eyes peeled.”
“Now here comes the fun part,” Gabe said.
“What?”
“Just wait.”
As he said it, the rooftop access door slammed open and men began fanning out on the rooftop, heading for the areas where they had taken fire.
“Holy shit.”
Gabe’s voice was fearful.
Gabe’s voice was never fearful.
This was not good.
“What?”
Rather than answer me, he clicked his mike. “RPGs! They’ve got RPGs!”
“Copy Wolf. Take ’em out.”
I shifted my aim and saw what Gabe was looking at. Several troops on each side of the roof carried those evil, pointy cylinders that all Americans, inundated with decades of television depicting terrorists, have grown to dread.
Five of them were pointed right at us.
Staring at those wicked little rockets, a familiar feeling began creeping up on me. It began as a cold ball in my chest that grew and expanded, turned liquid, and flowed outward into my arms, my hands, and up to my face. I could hear my own heartbeat. My vision narrowed, going gray at the edges. Sounds acquired sharpness and clarity, my sense of touch became acute, my nerve endings booming their messages in thundering flashes. I could smell the sharp, acrid scent of wood smoke on the air as the nearby forest fire whipped itself into a frenzy. The rough texture of the trigger grated against my finger like sandpaper. The weld of my rifle stock against my cheek was achingly cold. Each breath I took rasped in my ears like an amplified respirator.
Down on the rooftop, my enemies moved with glacial slowness. The crosshairs on my scope lined up with the first one as though moving on their own. I felt a thump, and realized that it was the stock bucking backward against my shoulder. The marauder in my scope fell, and before he hit the ground, I was sighting in on another one. Another thump. This time, the round slammed through the center of his face and blew a fist-size hole out the back of his head. I didn’t wait to see him go down, I was already picking my next shot.
A blast of wind came from my left. The noise that followed told me it was Gabe firing his weapon.
Twice more my hands moved. My eyes followed. I didn’t think, I just went with it. The last marauder aiming a rocket at me fell face-first to the rooftop.
And then the world came back in a rush.
It was as if someone had flipped a switch, canceling out whatever strange calmness had come over me. My vision re-expanded, the coldness inside of me receded, and I could hear and feel things normally again.
All five marauders on our side of the roof were down. On the north and east side, several others had gone prone at the precipice, aiming their rockets in the general direction where the Rangers had taken cover.
“I’ll take the ones on the east side,” Gabe said. “You take north.”
“Got it.”
I shifted my aim and began firing, but not before two of them fired their rockets. The warheads streaked out into the night and blasted into the forest close to the Rangers’ infrared signatures. Being the trained professionals that they were, they had gone flat to the ground behind cover to avoid the explosion and the shrapnel that came with it. When the smoke cleared, all but one of them were back on their feet, firing their weapons. The one who stayed down wasn’t moving.
Goddammit, Riordan. Get to work.
Gabe had already put down three more on his side, but I’d only accounted for one. I adjusted my grip, took a single, steadying breath, and fired. Got one. Another breath, another pull of the trigger. That was two. Then three. Four.
The ones who weren’t dead or dying realized they were being sniped, and withdrew from the edges of the roof. One of them pointed his launcher at the water tower and, before I could get a bead on him, he fired.
Faster than the blink of an eye, it seared a trail straight toward my position. For a brief, heart-stopping instant, I thought I was done for. I thought I was going to end my life, after everything I had survived, in a ball of fire while sitting on the catwalk of a water tower in middle-of-nowhere Tennessee.
I needn’t have worried.
RPGs are not precision weapons. They are heavy, tough to aim, and not terribly accurate at long range. Hitting anything with them at distances over three hundred yards is like trying to shoot a bird in flight with a bow and arrow.
Gabe and I were more than four hundred yards away, and it was our saving grace. The rocket careened off to my right, missing the water tower by at least twenty yards. Beside me, Gabe calmly swiveled his rifle and fired a single shot that blew the offending marauder’s heart out through his spine. His few remaining compatriots witnessed his demise and decided that discretion was the better part of valor. Gabe and I kept up a steady stream of fire as they retreated, taking out two more of them before they disappeared down the roof access stairway.
“Alpha Two, Alpha One. What’s your status.”
“One man down. The rest of us are okay. How about you.”
“No casualties. Wolf, Irish, you okay up there?”
I answered, “I about shit my pants when that RPG went by, but other than that, we’re fine.”
“That was damn good work, you two. You saved our asses.”
“Anytime amigo.”
Gabe tapped me on the shoulder. “Hey, look at that.”
The fire caused by the crashed gunship was growing with incredible speed, leaping hungrily from tree to tree. I had heard stories about how quickly forest fires could spread, but had never before seen it in person.
It was, in a word, terrifying.
In the short amount of time that went by while I was concentrating on the firefight, the inferno had crossed the distance between the AC-130’s wreckage and the field around the factory. As fast as it was moving, it would reach Steve and the Rangers in just a few short minutes.
“Alpha, Wolf. I don’t know if you can see it from where you are, but there’s a big goddamn fire headed your way. You have to get your men out of there right now.”
A few seconds went by. No answer.
“Alpha, do you copy?”
“I copy,” Steve said tersely.
“Move your men toward the water tower and get climbing. There’s not much foliage on this hill, we’ll be out of the fire’s path. It’s your only chance.”
A few more seconds. “Actually, no it’s not.”
Gabe and I looked at the fire, then at each other, confused. “Alpha, there’s nowhere else to go, believe me. I’ve got a hell of a view. You have to get moving, right now.”
“Negative, Wolf. Alpha Two, do you still have your LAW?”
“Affirmative, Alpha One.”
“Relocate to my position. We’re going to make our own entrance, and we’re going straight at these motherfuckers.”
“Copy, Alpha One, on our way.”
The little white dots that were Alpha Two began running for Steve’s side of the warehouse. I blinked a few times, not quite believing what I was hearing.
“Alpha, what the fuck are you thinking?” I said. “You’re outnumbered God knows how many to one. This is suici
de.”
“Don’t underestimate me, Irish. I’ve taken on a hell of a lot worse odds. We have plenty of ammo, grenades and, most importantly, night vision and radio comms. It’s pitch black in that warehouse, and the Legion doesn’t have radios. We’ll have the advantage. Besides, like you said, they might try to escape through the tunnels. I can’t let that happen, not now. It’s time to end this. You two stay on overwatch and advise Great Hawk and his men when they get here. We’re going in.”
“I hope you know what you’re doing, Alpha.”
“Watch and learn, my friend. Watch and learn.”
I watched.
Alpha Two reached Steve’s men. One of them kneeled down, hefted a LAW canister to his shoulder, and fired. Even from half a kilometer away, I felt the thump when it hit the factory, leaving a gaping hole where a door used to be. Steve ordered his men forward. In seconds, they were all inside, and I lost sight of them. From here, all Gabe and I could do was listen in on the radio.
“Alpha Two, contact. Thirty meters, straight ahead.”
“Copy, moving to flank.”
I heard guns firing.
“Clear, Alpha One. Moving up.”
“Copy, right behind you.”
Another voice, someone I didn’t recognize. “Alpha One, something’s wrong.”
“What is it?”
“I’m up on one of the service ladders on the west side. All the enemy troops are crammed together near the south wall. There’s only a couple of dozen of them. Aren’t there supposed to be-”
Another voice broke in. “Shit, Alpha, we gotta get out of here, the whole fucking place is wired!”
“What?”
“I’m near the east wall. I just found a bomb on one of the support struts, and spotted another one near the roof. Look around, man, they’re fucking everywhere.”
A moment’s pause. “Shit, he’s right. Alpha Squad, fall back, fall ba-”
It was the last thing he ever said.
Dozens of charges detonated all at once, spread out around the periphery of the factory, lashed to each of the support beams. The noise was horrendous. The roof and walls collapsed in on themselves, sending up a gigantic cloud of dust and debris. The wind created by the fire blew it up and over the treetops, swirling and mingling with the smoke.
Surviving the Dead 03: Warrior Within Page 39
