Surviving the Dead 03: Warrior Within (52 page)

The general smiled at his joke, but no one laughed. Great Hawk’s obsidian eyes glittered blankly, his expression unmoved. After a brief, awkward moment, Jacobs’s smile faded and he continued. “Take as many prisoners as you need to, and keep the collateral damage to a minimum if you can. That said, your priority is to dismantle the insurgency. Period. Anything else takes a back seat, and that includes sparing non-combatants. Is that clear?”

No one spoke, we all simply nodded. There were a lot of things I could have said to that, but in all honesty, the general was right. We would make every effort to minimize the body count, but when the bullets started flying, there would only be so much we could do. If the Legion troops stationed at Haven really cared about their families, then they would surrender peacefully. If they didn’t, well … we would do what was necessary. The people of Hollow Rock had never wanted this fight. The Legion had brought it to our doorstep. Now, we were going to end it.

“All right then,” Jacobs said. “You all have your orders. Let’s get this over with.”

We all stood up and filed out of the conference room. On the way out, I caught Mayor Stone exchanging a glance with Gabriel. It was brief, only a few seconds, but there was a lot in their eyes as they looked at each other. I wondered if anyone else noticed.

I pedaled my bike home and sat down in the living room. Allison still hadn’t gotten home from the clinic, and only a few weakly burning coals remained in the fireplace. I thought about getting another fire going, but decided I didn’t have the energy. What little mental fuel I had left, I needed to save for when Allison got home.

She wasn’t going to be happy when I told her I was leaving again.

Legion South looked just as abandoned as Legion Central had, but my FLIR scope told me a different story.

There were six sentries on the roof, but they stayed well back from the edge, making them invisible from the ground. Another ten patrolled the perimeter just past the tall grass bordering the treeline. There had been two on the water tower where I was watching from, rotating out every few hours with the other patrols. We had left them alone until word came down to secure the perimeter and get ready for the final assault to begin. Gabe and I decided that the water tower would be a good spot to watch the show, but first, there was the minor problem of the two Legion troops currently occupying it.

My M-110 had solved that problem nicely.

The AC-130 gunship was en route from Pope Air Force Base, but it would be a little while longer before it arrived. In the meantime, Grabovsky and Echo Company had begun their assault on Legion West. They’d encountered stiff resistance, and had lost several men. Grabovsky himself had been wounded as well. Not life-threatening, but he would be out of commission for a while.

The reward for their efforts was more than a hundred dead or mortally wounded Legion troops, a massive stockpile of guns, ammo, and supplies, and documentation revealing the location of all the Legion’s supply caches. The price our people paid was six dead and eleven wounded, counting Grabovsky. I couldn’t help but wonder if it was worth it. Maybe it would have been better if we’d said to hell with the supplies, and just bombed the shit out of the place. I knew it wasn’t my call to make, but it still bothered me.

At least I didn’t have to worry about that at Legion South. As soon as the gunship arrived, it was going to rain death on the Legion as fast as its 40mm Bofors and M102 Howitzer cannons could pour it out. The only concern now was waiting for Great Hawk and Marshall to check in from Haven. Steve had set up our radios to listen in on the satellite uplink the Apache would be calling in on. It had required extra equipment, and extra weight for all of us to carry, but keeping everyone on the same page was more than worth the inconvenience. 

My earpiece buzzed, and a slow, resonant voice spoke. “Alpha, Hawk, how copy?”

Speak of the devil
.

“Loud and clear, Hawk. Give me a sitrep.”

“Something is wrong here, Alpha. Haven has been abandoned.”

The radio was silent for a few seconds. I could imagine Steve’s face pinching down as he absorbed the news. In the silence, distantly, I heard the drone of the AC-130’s engines approaching.

“What do you mean abandoned, Hawk?”

“There is no one here. The houses are all empty, and rigged with homemade explosives. If I had not been here, our men may have walked right into them. I found a tripwire on the first house my team searched, and radioed to the other fire teams to be on the lookout. Every one of these houses was set up to be a death trap. It looks like they left through the tunnels, and then blew the entrance behind them to keep us from following.”

The sound of four turboprop engines turning in unison grew louder. A few of the sentries on the roof turned in the direction of the gunship and started motioning to the others.

“Shit,” Steve said. “They knew we were coming.”

“It gets worse, Alpha,” Great Hawk intoned.

“What happened?”

“We found the slaves. They are all dead, shot execution-style. The Legion left their bodies piled in a house they were using as slave quarters. It looks like the people here left in a hurry, and did not want to deal with the slaves slowing them down.”

While Steve and Great Hawk spoke, the sentries below realized what was going on above their heads and retreated down the stairwell back into the factory. Through my thermals, I saw the gunship arrive on station and wheel around, presenting its port side, slowly beginning to tip is wings in a pylon turn that would allow it to pulverize the factory with a stream of sustained fire. Gabe activated an illuminator and directed it at the factory, highlighting the target clearly in the aircraft’s FLIR.

“Hawk, withdraw your troops and radio the Chinook. Get your people out of there.”

“Acknowledged.”

Less than a minute after the last sentry vanished down the rooftop access, the door opened again the four men came out, running in pairs. One man in each team was carrying a long cylinder with optical sights mounted to the top. One of the men stopped, brought what looked like a night vision scope to his face, and searched the sky. He pointed in the direction of the gunship and motioned to the others.

What the hell?

Beside me, I heard Gabe curse and key his radio. “Alpha, Wolf, there are two SAMs on the rooftop. Repeat, two SAMs on the rooftop. Radio the gunship and get them the hell out of here.”

“What?”

“SAMs goddammit! Surface-to-air fucking missiles! Stingers! Get that plane out of here now!”

The radio cut out as Steve switched frequencies.

“Come on, Eric, shoot the fuckers!”

Gabe dropped the illuminator and picked up his .338. I remembered that I was holding an M-110, and hurriedly raised the scope. Through the crosshairs, I saw both men carrying missiles take aim. I remembered what Gabe had told me about Stinger missiles, how effective and easy to use they were. How they were heat-seekers that could bring down an aircraft as big as a 747.

The gunship was smaller than that.

Gabe’s rifle fired next to me, and again, I marveled at how fast he could sight in and shoot. I was coming along as a sniper, but I wasn’t at Gabe’s level yet. It took me a couple of seconds longer than him to sight in, let out half a breath, and squeeze the trigger.

It was a couple of seconds too long.

Gabe’s round hit its target just as he was firing the Stinger. The impact from the powerful slug knocked him forward, and his missile flew straight out over the treetops and detonated a few hundred yards distant, its propellant sending it streaking into a tower supporting high-tension wires. The explosion snapped the heavy wires, causing them to whipsaw through air in a flailing path of destruction that would stretch for miles.

At the same instant that I pulled the trigger on my M-110, the Legion troop on the rooftop fired his Stinger. The missile shot forth from the tube, and then the propellant kicked in, sending it streaking toward the gunship. The man who fired it didn’t live long enough to see what happened next—my bullet took him through the heart, and he was dead before he hit the ground—but I did.

The only explanation I could come up with was that Steve hadn’t radioed the pilot in time for him to deploy countermeasures. If he had, the white-hot flares would have lit up the night sky and diverted the missile, and disaster.

But that’s not what happened.

Instead, the missile careened upward almost faster than my eyes could follow, blazed a trail straight to the gunship, and exploded into one of the port-side engines. Half of the wing on that side sheared away, leaving only a flaming stump behind. The massive airplane rolled over like a huge, bloated bird shot in mid-flight, and plummeted nose-down, spiraling toward the Earth.

As I watched, my heartbeat fluttered in my chest, I stopped breathing, and I felt a sinking sensation, as though I were standing on the gunship’s one remaining wing and falling down with the doomed flight crew. It seemed to take forever for the plane to descend, foot by agonizing foot. Lower it fell, closer and closer until finally it hit the ground with a thundering
PHOOM
that set the forest around it swaying, and made the water tower under my feet shudder and heave. An orange ball of fire bloomed into the night sky, billowing upward in an impossibly expanding mushroom cloud. The surrounding forest—bereft of rain for the past several weeks—was dry as kindling and went up like it was covered in gasoline. A few seconds later, even as far away as I was, a blast of heat struck me like the hand of an angry god, sending me shrinking back with my arms over my face.

Gradually, the heat faded and I got to my feet, slowly lowering my arms to stare at the wreckage.

The mushroom cloud dissipated, revealing the remains of the gunship covering a huge swath of blasted ground, and for hundreds of yards in every direction, the surrounding trees had burst into flame, catching and spreading in a furious blaze. All I could do was stand and stare. Dimly, I wondered how the hell the Legion had gotten their hands on Stinger missiles.

And then, coming to mind unbidden, I remembered the map General Jacobs had shown us. I remembered the tunnel system, and the yellow highlighter marks that traced its path. I remembered looking at Haven and Legion South, and seeing the thin yellow band connecting the two. No side tunnels, no deviations. Just a straight line from point A to point B.

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.”