Prisoners of War

by Rick Partlow

  “Bravo five up and functional.” Corporal Yusupov. He sounded scared, and why wouldn’t he be?

  “Bravo six up,” Sgt. Orlova said with a pained grunt. “But I have major damage to the right arm. I don’t know if my chain gun is functional. I also have a shrapnel wound in the right side, but I do not believe it is too serious.”

  Damn.

  “Orlova,” he said, “I want you to circle around to the south and draw their fire. Keep moving, don’t engage. If they get too close, jet out and wait for us at rally point three. You copy?”

  “I read you, Anton.” He didn’t think he was imagining the relief in Orlova’s voice, though he knew the man would never have admitted it. They all wanted to think they were balls-to-the-wall Spetsnaz operators, scared of nothing and certainly not of death. “Good luck.”

  “To you too, Kolya.”

  He could see Kolya Orlova’s Tagan curving off to the south while the rest of them continued straight, spreading out across three different streets in their approach. He expected the missiles to fire again, but there was nothing, no more launches, and they were only a kilometer away. Which had to mean…

  “Anton!” Orlova called from his position approaching the South Lawn. “Mechs! You have Hellfires coming in from the south!”

  He could see them on thermal and lidar, though the spotlights drowned them out on optical. Their jets glared a hot white, the reactors a dull red just above them, six of them for the six Tagans.

  Except only five of us can fight.

  He loved Kolya Orlova like a brother, but watching the Hellfires split into sections, he prayed fervently to an atheist’s god that one of them would go after the disabled Tagan to give the others a fighting chance. God answered the prayer spitefully, just the way an atheist might expect, and two of the Hellfires went after his friend.

  I am sorry, Kolya.

  “All Bravo units, attack!” he snapped.

  He hit his jets, no longer afraid of the missiles, knowing the emplacements wouldn’t fire while their own squadron was engaging the Tagans. That didn’t mean the Hellfires didn’t have missiles of their own. He spotted the launch immediately, reading the familiar specs of the Mark-Ex missile and knowing just how long he had. Flares and chaff filled the sky and he cut the jets off in mid-air, his stomach staying up at one hundred meters while the rest of him joined the Tagan in a plunge toward the street.

  Instincts screamed at him, honed in years of using substandard equipment degraded from exposure and storage in wet and cold and extreme heat. They told him he was trusting his life to old, beat-up Russian gear and he was going to wind up killing himself. He ignored them and waited until he was only twenty meters off the ground before hitting the jets. The sudden boost slammed him into his restraints and it felt as if a mule the size of a battleship had just kicked him in the balls, but it managed to decelerate the Tagan at least to the point where the landing was more of a controlled crash than the out-of-control variety.

  The Hellfire pilot hadn’t been expecting the reaction, certainly not the fall, and he hadn’t even tried to evade before Anton launched his own missile, the MJK-38F. It didn’t trip off the tongue the way “Mark-Ex” did, but the Americans had always been so much better at naming their weapons. It worked just fine, though, and the mercenary pilot had no time whatsoever to try to launch countermeasures. The blast hollowed out the Hellfire, blasting the cockpit into shreds and launching the reactor compartment out the back in a ball of radioactive flame.

  He took no satisfaction at the enemy pilot’s death. He had no way of knowing if it was a man or a woman, American, Russian or even an expatriate mercenary out of Europe or South America, but he was certain whoever it was had very little choice in the life they’d been handed. It wasn’t the sort of world where you got to choose your fate or what side you were on, not unless you were one of the privileged few. And there seemed to be fewer and fewer of those every year.

  There wasn’t time to take in all the data his HUD was trying to feed him. He had to let the wave of information wash over him, take what he could from it and make a decision in the space of a heartbeat. Two of the Hellfires had gone after Orlova, he’d taken down one, and the other three were heading down the main road, New York Avenue, coming after Mischa and Giorgi and Sgt. Namestnikov. Yusupov was still on Pennsylvania Avenue, heading straight west.

  “Yusupov, jet over to New York Avenue and back up the others. I’m heading south to help Kolya.”

  It was an emotional decision, he decided, but it was a tactical one as well. The others outnumbered the Hellfires coming after them, but Orlova was alone against two mechs in a damaged Tagan. If the Hellfires took him out, they’d be coming straight up their ass while Anton and the others were trying to penetrate the building.

  Hellfires and Tagans were exchanging gunfire on New York Avenue, already too close for missiles, and Anton wanted to micromanage the battle, a side-effect of the HUD and command and control hardware the mech afforded, luxuries he didn’t usually have in combat. But he had to trust his people. Anton goosed the jets and swung over what had once been called the South Lawn of the White House.

  He’d seen it in pictures, seen the well-manicured grass, as flat as a soccer pitch. It was overgrown now, choked with weeds and even young trees, in those areas where it wasn’t dead and brown or flooded and swampy. Thrown into complex shadows from the glare of the floodlights, it took on a haunted look, the dead center of a dead city. Orlova had led the two Hellfires in a broad circle all the way back to their point of origin, all the way back to the building itself. It was a good strategy, an attempt to keep them from opening up on him with their missiles by using their own base as a backstop, and it seemed to have worked, since he was still in one piece.

  The Tagan was hovering less than ten meters off the ground, swinging back and forth in a pendulum pattern across the central columns of the White House, Vulcan rounds blowing bite-size craters out of the face of the building as the Hellfires chased him with bursts of gunfire. Troops were filing out of doorways at the front of the building, firing rifles at the Tagan to little effect, but Orlova didn’t return fire at either the Hellfires or the dismounts. Anton knew Orlova’s chain gun was damaged, but he’d either fired off all his missiles or the launcher was jammed.

  Either way, his friend was about to die.

  Anton had three missiles left and this seemed as good a time as any to use them. He targeted the Hellfire to his left first, just out of superstition rather than any special tactical advantage, and launched. The Hellfires detected him in the barest of instants between the solid green reticle of missile lock and his finger pressing the trigger and both of them tried to pull away on shimmering columns of superheated air, but there was no outrunning the MJK-38F.

  The Americans would give it a nickname. I should give it one. Something poetic and dangerous-sounding, like “Dagger” or “Lancer.”

  Whatever the Americans might call it, the missile speared through the heart of the mech on his left and the machine disappeared inside a globe of white fire, sprays of debris shooting out of it like the plumes from a firework blast. What remained of the Hellfire spilled toward the ground in slow motion, seeming to hang in mid-air in an instant of frozen time.

  The second mech wasn’t waiting around for the Russian missile with his name on it. Anton had expected him to jet away from the south entrance, try to draw them off toward his fellows, but the pilot did the unexpected and turned away from his, heading straight at Orlova. Anton thought the Hellfire was going to try to use the Tagan as cover, force him to shoot through his friend to get to the enemy, but the American designed mech brushed right by Orlova and touched down just long enough to lumber back through the freight entrance someone had blasted into the side of the wall.

  “Clever bastard,” Anton muttered.

  The pilot knew they’d be coming inside eventually and probably figured he could do more damage lying in wait in the enclosed spaces beneath the White House, where t
hey couldn’t maneuver.

  Not a bad plan, given the information he has to work with. Just not the right one, as it turns out.

  “Bravo units, status?” he barked, checking his IFF and the radar and lidar readings in his HUD.

  He could see all the transponders were live, all but one still in the air. Mischa was moving, but slowly, on the ground along New York Avenue less than half a kilometer away. He picked up one bogie that might have been an enemy mech, but it was four kilometers away and trying to circle back to the White House.

  “This is Bravo two,” Mischa reported. “I’ve taken damage to my jump-jets but my mech is still operational. Heading your way.”

  “Bravo three, four and five are up and functional,” Giorgi said. Anton cocked an eyebrow. In Mischa’s absence, Giorgi seemed to have appointed himself second in command.

  Good. About time he showed the ability to handle some authority.

  “Bravo three and five,” Anton ordered, carefully considering the words and the trust he was placing with them, “assume a patrol perimeter and keep the enemy mechs off our back. Bravo two and four, on me and prepare to dismount.” His lip twisted into something between a smile and a sneer. “We’re going inside, and we’re going on foot.”

  15

  “What the fuck is going on here?”

  Roach wanted to snap at Jenny for violating communications protocol in a combat situation, but she didn’t. First and foremost because the woman had probably forgotten more about combat than one Rachel Mata would ever know, and second because…well, it was a damn good question.

  Washington DC was a nightmare landscape even at night. Especially at night, with no lights to hint at habitation or any remnant of humanity left behind in what had once been the center of the world. Oh, there were people down there. She could see them on thermal, could see guttering cessfires squeezed between buildings, furtive shapes dashing this way and that as if they were afraid of being stalked by predators.

  And maybe they are. Not all predators run on four legs.

  In the sea of darkness, an island of light stood out, the beacon of malevolent arrogance that had once been the home of the President of the United States. She took it on faith that the man occupying it now was malevolent because he’d kidnapped her friend, but such an auspicious display of power and resources was definitely arrogant. He was inviting someone to attack and here they were…but they were not the first.

  It was obvious on thermal even from four kilometers away, a three-ring circus of mech thrusters and gunfire and the detonation of missile warheads. Roach could see the explosions without the aid of thermal optics, yellow blossoms of fire across the sky from the south and east of the White House.

  “What’s goin’ on,” Fuller said, in formation to her right, “is that the show’s already started and we’re late.”

  “Do we abort?” Jenny wondered. “We should abort, right? I mean, there ain’t gonna’ be no taking them by surprise when they’re already in the middle of a fight. We’ll be lucky if we don’t have both sides shooting at us at once, whoever the sides are in this shit.”

  “We’re not going to abort,” Roach said firmly. “This is a distraction and we’re going to take advantage of it.”

  She took ten seconds to scan the sensor readouts overlaid on the map in her HUD, getting an idea of the dispersal of forces, and she came to a decision right about the time Jenny got impatient.

  “You awake in there, girly?” the older woman wondered.

  “The action’s all on the South Lawn,” Roach observed. “I think that’s where they’re concentrating their defenses and I know it’s where the attack is focusing.”

  “That don’t mean they wouldn’t notice us trying to sneak in the back,” Fuller objected in advance of what he expected her to say.

  “They’d notice our mechs,” she agreed. “Jenny, you know how to switch your mech over to remotely piloted vehicle mode?”

  “I could do it with my eyes closed.”

  “Good. Here’s what we’re going to do. We’re heading straight down New York Avenue, but we’re going to ground-level and slow to a patrol walk. Then Jenny, you and I are going to set our mechs to RPV mode. FOG, you’re going to slave Jenny’s mech to yours. Mule, you’re going to be controlling mine and you’d better not fucking get it blown up. You hear me?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Ramirez said, sounding a bit doubtful about the whole thing.

  “We’re going to come up on the east side,” Roach went on. “When we get to a blind spot where neither side can see our approach, Jenny and I are going to bail out, and you two are going to engage the enemy mechs on the south.”

  “Just the two of us are going in there?” Jenny asked, a tinge of outrage in her tone. “You and me? Why can’t I take James along?”

  “Because we’re looking for my boss,” Roach reminded her, “and neither of you has ever met the man. Now are you going to grab that big gun of yours and go with me or do I have to bring Ramirez along and make you look bad?”

  “Oh, fuck you, you manipulative little bitch,” Jenny grumbled but without any real rancor behind the words. “You know I’m going in. You’d better be as good with a gun as you are with a mech.”

  Roach grinned. Jenny was an abrasive old coot, but she liked her.

  “We’re about to find out. FOG, lead us in. It’s time we got Nate back.”

  Nate Stout sprang awake, rising to a seated position and grabbing at the sides of his bed instinctively. The walls were shaking and a light spray of dust was coming down from the ceiling, twinkling in the glow of the nightlights, and he wondered if this was an earthquake…until he heard the rolling thunder of the explosions.

  It was an attack. But who was attacking? Hope surged inside him and died just as quickly. Bob had pissed off an awful lot of people, and was planning on pissing off a lot more. This could be just about anyone, and they might not be too selective about their targets.

  And not only do I not have a gun, I don’t even have a fucking pair of pants.

  He swung out of the bed, wincing at the pain in his leg as he put weight on it. It wasn’t as bad as it had been and he could, at least, sleep now, but it still hurt like hell to put pressure on it…

  Somewhere, a chain gun boomed with a distinctive thud-thud-thud rhythm. Tagans. Nate let go of the bed and walked to the door, gritting his teeth against the pain. It hurt, but it wouldn’t kill him. A Tagan would kill him.

  The door was locked, which wasn’t any huge surprise. He pounded against it in futile rage.

  “Hey!” he yelled. “Somebody get me the hell out of here!”

  He kept pounding and kept yelling, almost drowning out the chatter of machine gunfire, but not the chain gun that responded…or the explosion after that.

  I’m gonna fucking die in here in this stupid-ass hospital gown and no shoes. All the shit I’ve been through, and I’m going to die with my ass hanging out in the wind.

  The door unlatched and swung open, nearly knocking him over. He hopped backwards on his good leg and Svetlana Grigoryeva pushed into the room, her arms full of his clothes.

  “Put these on,” she told him, shoving the flight suit and combat boots towards him.

  “Thank God,” he hissed, ripping off the hospital gown, not caring he was naked beneath it. She’d seen everything he had to offer.

  “Don’t be thanking anyone just yet,” she cautioned him, pulling a compact handgun from a holster at her hip.

  She was dressed, he noted, in practical fatigue pants and a long-sleeved pullover rather than the alluring dresses she’d worn earlier, but somehow he found it even more attractive. He tried to put the images aside and concentrate on getting his boots on. Pushing his bad leg into the boot hurt, but he still felt immeasurably better once he had the straps secured.

  “Who’s attacking?” he asked her when he straightened back up.

  “I don’t know for sure,” she admitted. “I think it might be Russians, or mercenaries working for
them.”

  “Do they know Bob’s planning on back-stabbing them?” he asked her, eyes going wide at the thought.

  “Nathan Stout,” she admonished him, lips skinned back over her teeth, “do you wish to stand here all night and speculate on the nature of the people trying to kill us, or would you rather go somewhere else where people are not shooting at us?”

  “I’m fresh out of places where no one’s trying to kill me,” he told her, grinning lopsidedly, feeling good and not quite knowing why. “But if you’re getting me out of here, I’ll definitely follow you.”

  She nodded and stepped back out into the hallway with Nate on her heels. The section of the underground complex beneath the White House that had been converted into a clinic was deserted. Maybe it was the attack or maybe it was the hour, but the lights were dim and there was no one but the two of them edging down the corridor, Svetlana with her Makarov held at low ready.

  “I don’t suppose you brought one of those for me,” Nate ventured quietly, gesturing at her pistol.

  “I’m afraid I don’t trust you that much yet,” she said, a bit of sadness in her smile when she glanced back at him.

  “You think I’d shoot you?” he asked, a bit more challenge in the words than he’d intended. “Or are you afraid I’d shoot Bob?”

  “Robert is not here. And no, I’m not afraid you would shoot me.” The corner of her mouth turned up slightly. “I’m afraid I’d wind up having to shoot you.”

  Nate didn’t laugh, mostly because he wasn’t sure if she was kidding. Instead, he stopped talking and let her turn her concentration back to the hallway ahead of them. Through the doorways where he’d once seen cloning machinery, he now saw only bare, stripped rooms and empty hallways.

  “Bob didn’t just leave,” Nate murmured, “he cleared everything out.” He speared Svetlana with a glare. “He’s doing whatever he’s gonna do now, isn’t he? He’s on his way.”