by Rod Carstens
She waited until she heard a number of voices around the corner down the hall. She took one of her grenades and pulled the pin. She let the handle fly and counted. One-one thousand. Two-one thousand. Then she threw it as hard as she could against the far wall of the hall. It hit and bounced around the corner. There were yells and a large commotion as the gang members tried to get away. Two were pushed out into the hall by the others. Cat cut them down just as the grenade exploded. There were screams and moans from around the corner.
“We’re going to come for you, bitch!”
“You’ll be sorry when I get ahold of you!”
Cat fired a three-round burst as her answer. She examined the room as if for the first time, looking for weaknesses. It was a concrete room with a concrete ceiling, floor, and walls. It had one door and she was standing in it. It was a good place to make a stand, but it was also a lousy place to make a stand because you couldn’t escape. Matos groaned and moved his leg, then went back to sleep. She couldn’t leave him and she couldn’t carry him and fight off the gang members. She was pretty much screwed. Her only hope was Tanner. The gang didn’t know about him. They might not be watching their backs too closely. He could come up from behind while she hit them from her side. Not much of a plan, but then she didn’t have many options. Maybe her luck had finally run out. After everything, going out in a shitty little concrete box. Oh, well Cat thought. You takes your ticket and takes your chances.
She had been able to work her way out of the brothel contract and onto the Resource Security Force. Most of the other girls had thought she was crazy; they had it good. They got the best food and accommodations, and the men and women who frequented the house that had bought her were from the top of the richest one percent. They paid huge sums for the services of the girls and boys. They were pampered by the house. No one tried to escape; it was the best they could hope for. Sleep with people for as long as you could before you got too old and they kicked you out. If you were lucky some rich man or woman would buy you for their household. Otherwise it was a downward spiral as you were sold to cheaper and cheaper brothels until you were all used up.
Cat had never wanted that as the way she went out. She wanted to make her own decisions, find her own way. She would live and die on her own terms. She had been lucky—one of the richest men in the Confederation had taken a liking to her. He’d wanted to buy her, but she begged him to help her out of that life and into her own life. He turned out to be a decent man. One of the few. He bought her contract and then helped her get into the Force. She would visit him whenever she had leave. She would stride down the halls of his Mega in her uniform and watch the reactions of the other residents. Some had been old clients. She loved it, and when she saw him, she offered to do anything he wanted. All he wanted to do was listen to her stories and tell her how proud he was of her and what she had accomplished. Turned out he really cared about it. It wasn’t about the sex. When she told him about her and Tanner he had been very happy for her. No, she had been very lucky. If this was the end of her string then so be it. Her one regret was he would never know what had happened to her and would worry. She wished he could know that she was not afraid, just sad it had to end this way. It had been a good ride. She was surprised she’d lasted this long.
Someone darted across the corridor. Cat missed with a burst from her ’96. Now someone was in the next room.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Resource Security Force
Team Sixteen
Vin Tanner
2058 hours
The gang was slowing, working its way systematically down the block away from him. Those walking would go through a building or rubbish pile looking for anything useful. While they did, their cars covered from the street. Then they would move to the next promising building, with the walkers moving single file down both sides of the street. A walker would signal and the others would stop. Then they would investigate what the walker had seen. If it was anything they thought they could use, other walkers would load the find into one of the cars. Meanwhile someone would throw open a hatch in the roof of the car and stand up, guarding the others while they scavenged. They were slow and thorough. They knew what they were doing. They might not be a gang—just a well-organized settlement. He would have to observe them longer before he could tell for sure. He didn’t have the time. Especially if he was wrong.
Tanner kept glancing at his watch. They had taken close to half an hour to move a block. If they didn’t get moving, he wasn’t going to get to the cache in time. The Spec Act Team would have been there and gone or have set up an elaborate ambush. The gang finally crossed 97th and moved on to the next block. Their Tail-End Charlies were good—they kept turning around to watch their backs.
He glanced at his watch. He couldn’t wait any longer. He had to risk it. He waited until the three tail-enders had turned back to facing forward. Now, he thought. Tanner was up and running, afraid to look back. He was careful with his footing, making sure that he didn’t dislodge any of the debris in the pile where he had been hiding. Once on the solid ground of the empty lot next to the debris pile, he ran full out, crouching low, using the high grass and bushes for cover. He made it to the street, hesitated for a quick look both ways, then ran across.
Tanner could almost feel eyes on him. He threw himself into the nearest doorway and flattened against the wall facing the street. The Tail-End Charlies were just now turning around and glancing in his direction. He had made it. Now all he had to do was make his way through several more blocks of empty buildings and cross two more streets. Nothing to it, he thought sarcastically.
There was no way he could beat the Spec Act if he moved the way he would normally move through this much territory. He had to move fast. So he took off, trying to use every trick he knew about moving through an urban environment as quickly as he could. He took chances he normally never would have, running through the street, entering rooms as if he lived there, running down hallways. All he could think of was making it to the cache before the Spec Act Team. By pure luck he made the site of the first cache. He rounded the last corner, his lungs burning from the effort, his legs heavy from the exertion. He was just in time to see a tiltrotor lift off. He flattened himself against the nearest wall. The tiltrotor banked almost lazily and headed east.
Tanner was afraid he knew what that meant. He moved cautiously as he approached the cache site, just in case they’d left an ambush behind. Tanner moved through the empty hotel. The hallway floor was now a dirt floor after years of neglect. The fluorescent lights overhead had long ago been broken or salvaged for usable parts. Overhead pipes hung with whole sections missing after someone scavenged them. He reached a set of stairs that led up to the penthouse. He chanced turning on his headlamp to examine them. There were no fresh footprints in the years-old dust that covered them. He slowly moved up the stairs to the penthouse. If the Spec Act team was going to leave an ambush, it would be here at the cache. He moved slowly until just his eyes were above the top of the stairs, with an old panel hanging off the wall behind him to hide the silhouette of his head. He waited several minutes for any sound or sign of an ambush. Nothing. Carefully he took the last two steps and entered the room.
It had once been an expensive room with great views of the city. Now it was a dirt-and-debris-filled, stinking mess. He looked around and found where the Spec Act Team had rappelled into the room. The debris had been thrown about where they’d loaded up the supplies in the cache. They’d loaded up the supplies and taken them up the fire stairs to the roof and the tiltrotor. He smashed his fist into the wall in frustration.
Just as he had feared, they were going to strip all the caches and let them fight it out with gangs for survival. Without sophisticated equipment and ammunition, they had very little chance for survival in a Wild Zone. What in God’s name were they going to do now? For the first time Tanner really began to wonder if they were going to make it.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Resource S
ecurity Force
Team Sixteen
Rally Point Fourteen
Cat Vasquez
2115 hours
Cat fired again and caught the dark figure that had shown too much of itself. The figure disappeared around the corner, followed by screams and the sounds of someone being dragged away. Cat smiled to herself. They weren’t going to get her without paying for it. At least he hadn’t made it across the hall to the room next to hers. Several had, and she could hear them talking and planning how to breach the wall. It would take them a while and a lot of work, but it was possible. She doubted they had any breaching explosives, so they would have to do it by hand. Once they got to a certain point, she would have to cover both the hallway and the wall. It only took a small hole to stick a muzzle through and fire blindly. The shit was truly getting deep.
Tanner had been gone over an hour. Even being careful he should have been back by now. If he was dead, so were she and Matos. Without some outside help it was only going to be a matter of time. They could just wait for Cat and Matos to run out of ammo and come for them either down the hall or through the wall. Cat needed to know one way or another. She looked down at her radio. The battery didn’t show any charge at all, but she knew she could squeeze out at least one more transmission. She was going to have to chance a radio call to Tanner. Cat had held out as long as she could. She was just going to have to keep it short so the Spec Act Team could not get a fix on her location. Even if they did, she preferred a quick end to the one the gang had in mind.
“Tanner, this is Vasquez mayday, mayday, mayday,” she called.
She waited. No answer. She depressed the “panic button,” which doubled her output but would use up any remaining power in the radio’s batteries.
“Tanner, this is Vasquez. Tanner, do you read?”
She waited. There was more movement in the hall, so she let off a burst. Tanner probably wasn’t even monitoring his radio, she thought. No reason to think that she would be using it, and every reason to think the Spec Act Team would be listening, trying for a fix.
“Tanner, this is Vasquez mayday, mayday, mayday,” she tried one last time. The batteries were gone. The meter didn’t move.
Well, that’s about it. Matos groaned behind her. She had just given him another round of drugs, and he would be out for some time. She had to save two bullets, she thought, one for herself and one for Matos. She pulled out her nine-millimeter from her thigh holster and double-checked that she had a full magazine and a couple more in her MOLLE. It was down to that. She looked around the dirty, dank concrete room. No regrets, this was your choice, Cat thought, but it could have been in a nicer place. Like the ones she’d escaped.
Someone moved in the hall and fired. The rounds blew chips of concrete into her face. Cat returned the fire.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Resource Security Force
Team Sixteen
Vin Tanner
2125 hours
Tanner was making good progress back to the police substation. He had gotten away with running down streets and crashing through rooms again. He was in the doorway of a building on Alden. He waited in the shadows for a long moment, looking and listening for movement. Nothing. He took off and sprinted into the street. Just as he was in the middle of the two-lane street, two gang members came around the corner of Washington and Alden.
“We got something!” one yelled and fired a shot at Tanner.
Tanner let off a quick burst in their direction, but it was way wide and just kicked up concrete. They both fired more shots at him as they dove for cover, but both missed. He was lucky they only had civilian bolt-action rifles. He dove into an open doorway on the far side of Alden. Concrete chips and dust covered him as the next two shots were closer than the others. He heard the footsteps of the two running toward him. He stood and got off a quick three-round burst. One went down, and the other took cover behind an abandoned car. Tanner saw a gang car with other gang members round the corner in response to their scouts. They knew they had someone with an automatic weapon. It would be a real prize if they could kill him and get it. The weapons were so prized it would be well worth any casualties.
He turned and ran into the building. The roof had collapsed long ago, so he found himself in the midst of what looked like a small forest. Trees and bushes had taken hold where the floor had been. He tripped and fell over part of the roof that was now covered with vines and moss. The footing was slippery, and he had to slow down before he fell and hurt himself. The bushes, trees, and debris combined to provide him with an ideal place to slip the gang if he could just get to the other side. Then he heard voices close behind him.
“Shit. Watch out, this fucking place is a jungle.”
“Are you sure he came in here?”
“Yeah. I told you he shot Kell from the doorway into here.”
“Well, the two of us aren’t going to find him in here. We’re going to need help. Get the rest and let’s cover all the exits before he slips away.”
Tanner began to move as quietly as he could. Even with his night vision it was hard to choose his footing. He thought he saw the crack of a doorway across the building. He had to get out before they sealed it off. He slipped on a moss-covered piece of the roof, and his foot splashed in a deep puddle. A round cracked by his head and he instinctively ducked, even though it was too late. The guy over there was no fool. He had found a place to hole up and was just going to wait for him to make a mistake. Tanner thought about putting a few rounds in the general direction of the guy, but he decided that would just be a waste of good ammunition. He needed a distraction. He found a piece of concrete about the size of a grapefruit, then threw it in the opposite direction of the one he was going in. He got lucky. It hit a pile of debris and caused several other pieces of concrete to fall.
“Ahh!” Tanner yelled.
In the huge, open room his voice echoed so you couldn’t tell where it came from. The guy fired at the sound, then another fired from another position he was unaware of.
“We got him.”
“Come on, I got his pistol.”
He could hear them splashing, stumbling toward the debris. In one quick move he ran toward the door that he had seen in his night vision. He only hoped it would lead outside.
It wasn’t a door but an old boarded-up window. Carefully, Tanner examined the boards covering the window. He could slip out of the crack between the wall and one of the rotting boards. Before he moved, he glanced outside. Gang members were everywhere, but none were near him yet. If he could get out of the building, he might be able to slip away.
An empty debris-and-weed-filled lot was directly in front of him. He carefully slipped out between the board and the building, keeping low. He low-crawled into the lot so he could hide among the weeds and debris. It would be hard to find him now, but he couldn’t move, and he was worth spending time finding given his weapons. He slowly raised his head up to get an idea of how many were looking for him. There were two cars in the street facing the building, and he lost count of men and women at a dozen—and that didn’t count the ones inside. He was screwed.
“He’s not in that damn building, I tell you. He made it to the lot. He’s got to be hiding out there somewhere. Out here!”
More gang members came out of the building. They were spreading out and beginning to carefully search the empty lot. Tanner pushed himself deeper into the weeds and debris. Then, in his earpiece, he heard, “Tanner, this is Vasquez mayday, mayday, mayday.”
The transmission was filled with static, but he clearly heard her. Tanner’s stomach knotted in fear. She was in some deep shit he had never heard her call a mayday in all the years they had been together.
There was a pause as she waited for him to respond to her call. He keyed his mic twice—the signal that he had heard her but could not respond. He waited for her to let him know she had heard his signal. Nothing. Only silence that seemed to go on forever.
Then, once again, “Tanner, t
his is Vasquez mayday, mayday, mayday”
She had not heard him. She would have said heard his signal. Fuck. They were in the shit and he was trapped. All he could do was wait and hope. Hope something would give him an edge or a chance to escape. It was about to drive him crazy. He had to fight the desire to just stand up and make a run for it, having it out with the gang as he went. He was fed up with running and hiding. But he waited. It was the only chance Cat and Matos had. He had to survive and get back to them.
Two of the gang were walking toward Tanner. They were carefully scanning the ground around them as they moved. These two were not turning away they were heading directly towards him. He griped his rifle tighter. He was going to have to try to fight his way out.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Special Action Team
Patrol Area Bravo
2130 hours
Anke Muller was finally pleased about something on this damn mission. She had stripped the last of the supply caches. Oh, Tanner and his might last for a while, if they were quite resourceful, but it wouldn’t be long. The computer came back with a week as it’s estimate of how long they would might hold out. She was only sorry they had eluded her. Tanner’s team would have been icing on the cake, but now that she knew where her real target was hiding, she had to attend to more important business. It was time to take him out. She was waiting on the replacements for the people she had lost.
Anger flashed through her when she thought of them. Tanner and that damn team had cost her money. The men and women she had lost would come out of her bonus. Maybe after she had disposed of her primary target, Steiger would let her settle the score. He had been close to hysterics when she told him about Tanner’s escape. The powers that be must have been putting a lot of pressure on him. There was a lot more going on here than she understood. That could be good or bad. Good if she performed well, bad if she didn’t.
