Seventy-five percent of that population had been evacuated and was now streaming south toward safer climes. The cities and towns north of Portland were bracing for the next wave of attacks, evacuating the population north toward Canada and assembling barricades and weapons for if the Army failed.
So far as Arthur knew, no one had asked the Canadians to do more than take in the evacuees. They’d set to that task with their usual determined hospitality, but he couldn’t help but wonder what resources their Ministry of the Paranormal could have provided for this fight.
No one had asked. The Canadians hadn’t, so far as he knew, offered. Everyone was watching to see what happened when the US Army went in.
The demonic assault force closing with the Guard position was slowing, heavy artillery shells wrecking empty houses and abandoned streets alike as they hammered down. From the video Arthur was seeing, however, the big demons weren’t being hurt.
“Even the HE shells are just bouncing off these guys,” Bantam hissed. “I’m watching it and I can barely believe it.”
“Who’s running our artillery?” Arthur asked.
“Major General Dougal McGill,” Bantam replied. “We’ve got a dedicated channel.”
Arthur grabbed the radio his colonel passed him.
“McGill, this is Purcell,” he told the artilleryman. “Are you seeing the same video I’m seeing?”
“The one where six-inch shells are hitting these shits head-on and they keep walking?” the General asked dryly. “I’m seeing it. I’m not sure I’m believing, but I’m seeing.”
“The little guys we can splat with standard artillery, but the big buggers are just going to bounce conventional ammo. Do you have those surprises we sent over?”
“Every gun has at least a few standing by,” McGill confirmed.
“I suggest we switch over to a full salvo of the AG-shrapnel, then move the regular shells onto their follow-up force,” Arthur said. He wasn’t sure whether the other Major General was senior or not, but working together was the better plan.
“I was hoping to hold them for later, but yeah. I am not watching those Guardsmen die, not at this point.”
“The bastards have taken an entire American city, General McGill,” Arthur said quietly. “Not one foot more.”
McGill chuckled.
“Let ’em tread on this.”
The guns were silent. Ten seconds. Twenty. Thirty. A full minute passed as the gunners reloaded their weapons with munitions for the new fire plan.
And then they spoke again. McGill had taken Arthur’s “suggestion” and applied his own twist to it. He had enough guns that hitting the lead assault force with all of them loaded with silver would be overkill.
Instead, two hundred massive shells dropped onto the toad demons, airburst shells that detonated ten feet above the ground to spray the region with fire and molten silver.
At the same time, two hundred more shells, mostly from smaller weapons but backed with rockets and a dozen other weapons systems, slammed into the follow-on force of shadow demons.
The assault didn’t waver. It didn’t come apart. It just…ceased to exist.
Arthur couldn’t hear the Guardsmen from here, but he could see them in the video, cheering for the artillery fire that had probably just saved their lives.
“All units standing by for next fire mission,” McGill announced. “Let them come.”
The fog over Portland concealed a lot of things from overhead, but AWACS planes with infrared scanners and ground-penetrating radar helped reveal many of them. Arthur wasn’t sure why neither the dragon nor the bat demons had decided that the spy planes needed to be taken down and it made him nervous, but he wasn’t objecting.
Pierce’s army moved north, passing the fortified mall the artillery had saved an hour before. As tanks rolled past, the exhausted soldiers who’d covered the civilian evacuation began to stream back in the other direction.
“Make sure we have hot food and ready beds for those people,” Arthur told the officers around him. His own staff had reclaimed the command center now, but he’d kept most of Pierce’s logistics and resource management teams.
He’d use everyone to hand to make sure that the soldiers who’d allowed over three hundred thousand people to be evacuated got the thanks and rest they deserved.
“No resistance so far,” Bantam noted. “Pierce is well inside the last perimeter they established. Where did they go?”
“Some moved up for the attack on the Guard,” Arthur noted. “The rest… Is overhead seeing anything ahead of Pierce?”
“Nothing so far.”
“That’s not right,” the SOCOM General muttered. “They have to know we’re coming. Even if the demons didn’t realize we’d move heaven and earth to take an American city back, they seem to have enough humans sitting at the Herald’s ear.”
“Wait.” Bantam looked over one of the techs’ shoulder. “What’s that?”
Arthur looked at the camera and shivered. People were starting to file out into the streets ahead of the lead tank elements.
He couldn’t tell if they were armed from the overhead, but hundreds of people were now milling about the street. No organization. No structure. Just…filling the street.
“That’s a human shield,” Arthur said grimly. “Which means it’s a trap.”
Pierce had served in the Middle East as well. Arthur was quite sure the Army General could see what was being done. There was no point in harassing him with the obvious.
“Lead elements are slowing. Troops are dismounting and moving forward, with the Bradleys and Abrams for cover.”
Arthur found himself wishing for proper visuals. He had gun-camera footage from the vehicles and overhead infrared and radar from the AWACS, but the still-shifting fog made it almost impossible for him to tell what was going on.
He almost missed the start of the shooting. One moment, Army troops were moving into the crowd, checking on people to see if they were okay, starting to shuffle the civilians off the street and out of the way of the oncoming tanks.
The next, most of those considerate soldiers were dead or wounded as the crowd of “civilians” produced concealed weapons and opened fire. Shotguns, hunting rifles, pistols, a handful of police automatic weapons…it was a terrifyingly deadly assortment that opened fire at point blank range.
“My God, they’re all armed,” someone half-screamed. “What do we do?”
“Defend yourselves!”
Gunfire echoed both ways. More soldiers fell, but they had body armor and military-grade weapons—and the machine guns of the tanks and other vehicles closing up behind them.
It was a massacre.
“Mind control,” Arthur whispered. “It had to be.”
“Sir?” Bantam asked. The Colonel had clearly heard him. He sounded sick.
“Part of the warning I got was that the Herald would be using mind control to turn locals into foot soldiers,” Arthur told his subordinate, controlling his rising nausea with the will of years of practice. “He’s using our own damn people against us.”
Bantam swallowed.
“What do we do?” he asked, unconsciously echoing the squad leader from earlier.
“We don’t tell Pierce’s people,” the SOCOM General ordered. “It won’t help them to know. They have to protect themselves first.”
38
The Army had finally moved.
That meant Black Echelon was moving as well. People were swarming across the Overlook Hotel’s parking lot, strapping themselves into the various helicopters and aircraft available.
The ground vehicles were being left behind. They could have been sent ahead, but no one had expected to have enough time. The Echelon’s Seraphim loaded themselves aboard the heavy-lift helicopters by squad, while the Black Echelon teams themselves boarded the handful of Pendragons.
Echelon Two was already on the scene, infiltrated in the night to find the ground. The three Pendragons Riley had managed to acquire in t
he end were enough for every team but Echelon Five.
David’s team was taking a very different form of transportation. One that was significantly snarkier than the helicopters.
“Watch those straps,” Charles snapped. “That spot tickles.”
The aircraft maintenance crew using shipping straps, buckles and climbing harnesses to set up thirteen spots on the dragon’s back just laughed at him. One redheaded woman specifically leant in and pressed a kiss against the spot he was complaining about.
“Well, that helps,” he concluded with a chuckle. “Commander White! Are you ready?”
David shook his head as he gestured for his people to join the air crew and strap themselves in.
“Ready?” he asked. “To ride on the back of a dragon into battle against the nearest approximation to the Antichrist I ever expect to see? With all of humanity’s future in the balance?
“How can I be ready for that?”
The dragon chuckled again.
“You can’t,” he said readily. “Well, I mean, you can be ready for the Antichrist part, that’s easy, that’s just what you do. But riding a dragon?” Charles shook his head. “No mortal’s ever ready for that. Far more intimidating.”
David laughed.
“Fair enough,” he told the dragon. “I have one last thing to take care of,” he continued, spotting Kate heading toward him across the airfield.
He met her halfway, wrapping her in his arms and holding her tightly for a long moment.
“You take care of yourself, you hear?” he told her.
“You first,” she replied. “We’ll be right behind Charles, using our chaff and jammers to help get him through safely. But…” Kate shrugged. “All of this is to get you or one of the Elfin Lords in blade’s reach of the Herald. We’ll cover you all the way in, but you, Sir Battle Seer, better be coming back to me.”
“If I die today, I don’t know about it yet,” David replied, then kissed her fiercely.
They came up for air a moment later to a chorus of applause around them, and he grinned like a schoolboy.
“No, my dear, I am coming back,” he told her. “You are coming back. We are all coming back,” he said loudly enough for everyone to hear him, “right after we send that pale son of a monster and the assholes who brought him to the Masters they serve!”
Kate smiled at him, but her eyes were still worried—for everyone, he knew.
“Good luck,” she said softly. “My love.”
Two simple words took his breath away and he was suddenly holding her again, leaning his forehead into hers and drawing strength from the incredible woman he did not deserve.
“My love,” he whispered back. “That’s…one hell of a motivator, isn’t it?”
“You manage to get your nearly-unkillable ass killed and I will make you regret it for all eternity,” she promised. “Now go!”
Charles leapt into the air, a rush of wind slamming David and the rest of Echelon Five into their harnesses. Helicopters lifted off around them, Pendragons and heavy-lift choppers like taking to the air as Black Echelon finally moved into action.
David didn’t have any of the augmented-reality wargear he was used to going into combat with. Echelon had radio headsets and enchanted body armor, but they didn’t have the hyper-modern systems ONSET had equipped their teams with.
“Fifth Army is continuing to move in,” O’Brien announced over the radio. David could make out the sound. He wasn’t sure how many of his team could. You could only hear so well from the back of a dragon flying at full speed. It would take them nearly ninety minutes to reach the edge of Portland—ninety minutes in which everything could change.
“No notable resistance so far,” the werewolf continued. “They’ve collided with a few detachments of armed militia. Probably mind-controlled.”
“It’s something more than that,” David noted. “From what I Saw…I’m not sure there’s anything left of the original people in there anymore.”
“I hope not,” O’Brien said. “Though…gods, I really want to kill this bastard.”
“We’ll kill him,” Riley said firmly. “Keep your ears open, people. The situation on the ground is fluid.”
“Do we have a final strike location?” Kate asked.
“You do now,” Joseph Reginald’s voice cut in. “The Herald has abandoned the wreckage of the Stadium and moved back to the harbor front. The Air Force left most of the Eastern Promenade a burnt-out hellhole; I’m guessing it feels homey to him.”
“The Eastern Promenade is pretty large,” Riley pointed out.
“Well, the portal is sitting at Fort Allen Park, or what’s left of it, and he’s at the other end. Looks like a sports complex. Baseball diamond, tennis courts? Guy likes his sports facilities, it seems.
“He’s holding court on the baseball field, and they’re using the condos and houses around him for his human staff. Plus, well, human shields,” the vampire concluded. “The Army will have to go through the entire city, cross bridges that I would have rigged to collapse, and fight his entire little demonic swarm to get to him.”
“We’ll deal with him,” Lord Riley said harshly. “Pilots, Charles—you’ve got that location? Then, let’s move. Wherever the Herald’s troops have gone, they’ve got to be focusing on the fact that there are four freaking divisions heading their way.
“Even demons aren’t arrogant enough to ignore that.”
“We hope,” David heard someone mutter.
The airborne convoy arranged themselves around the dragon and headed east. David tried to keep track of everything around him for a few minutes but was forced to give up. Even his senses really weren’t up to the task of trying to track helicopters and planes while clinging to the back of a fifty-foot-long flying lizard.
Accepting that, he tried to reach out and See what was ahead of them. His first few attempts to do so simply left him feeling foolish as he managed to achieve absolutely nothing.
He wished that he’d taken the time to ask Walker for lessons before her death, but he’d been focused on making sure Echelon Five learned at least some teamwork and cohesion. His own newly expanded powers had seemed less important then.
You’re trying too hard, a familiar voice said inside his head.
David jerked in surprise, only to receive the perfect impression of Ix winking at him.
Are you in my head? he demanded.
Nah. Seers are just pretty obvious when they’re trying and failing, the demon told him. Breathe, boss.
Somehow, having the demon in his team telling him to breathe wasn’t very relaxing. Though that brought up another thought…
Are you safe to have with us? he asked bluntly. You couldn’t go up against Ekhmez for fear he could command you.
That was then, Ix replied genially. This is now. I went looking for knowledge and power—and found both. The impression of a toothy grin came over the link. Let the Herald try to control me. I am bound to this world now, not to the Masters.
I have made my choice. It is irrevocable, and so I am doomed with the rest of you if the Masters succeed—but it denies them power over me.
David shook his head. About half of what Ix said still went right over his head—and he’d been drowned for knowledge at the bottom of a lake by a helpful minor goddess.
I trust you, he told the demon. If you say you can fight with us, I’m not turning down the help.
He felt the demon chuckle back at him, then turned his attention back to his original effort. It would help everything immensely if he could See what was coming.
And then, of course, half-distracted by Ix’s teasing, he Saw.
It wasn’t the same armor formation he’d seen in his first vision of Portland under demon control. This group hadn’t come under fire yet. Tanks and Humvees formed a forward perimeter, and in the distance David could see more tanks and APCs ahead of the formation his vision was focusing on.
A central group of vehicles, several marked with more antennae and
dishes than the rest, moved slowly at the heart of a clearly protective cocoon. David was no soldier, but even he could guess he was watching a mobile command post make its way into the outskirts of Portland.
They hadn’t reached the bridges into downtown yet, but the Army was definitely moving into the city itself from the surrounding suburbs. There had to have been some resistance, but David could almost feel the paranoia radiating off the troops surrounding the command vehicles.
Nothing significant had interrupted their advance yet. There were more troops advancing on Portland than people living in the city, and the demons that had occupied the city hadn’t reacted yet. Something wasn’t right, but they didn’t know what.
Neither did David. He simply knew that something was wrong with even greater certainty than the Army soldiers…and had about ten seconds’ warning before everything went to hell.
Even if he’d been on their radio channels or had some idea of what was coming, he wouldn’t have had enough time to warn them. All he knew was that the mobile command post he was looking at was about to die.
There was no visible sign that anything was going wrong…until the moment the half-shattered road between the Army vehicles moved.
The golems unfolded out of the street in the middle of the formation. Bones of concrete and steel were wrapped in black tarmac as the Pure animated the ground itself against their enemies.
The central command vehicle was caught between two of the creatures. They crushed it in moments, massive fists punching through armor like tissue paper. Tanks twisted to track the enemy, turrets spinning far faster than they were designed for as their crews tried to save their escortees.
Cannons and machine guns opened up, filling the street with fire—but it was already too late. A dozen golems had risen out of the ground and the entire command group was just…gone. The creatures ignored the machine guns as they closed with the tanks.
The heavy cannon on the armored vehicles themselves were more effective. Golems hit by depleted-uranium penetrators, the descriptively named “silver arrows” of the US Army tank corps, went down in pieces and didn’t get up.
Stay of Execution Page 23
