by Mich Moore
moving like a wild thing in the artificial haze. "We're surrounded!"
Helen pulled down her mental checklist. First, she ordered Howell to sit with the others in the back of the ICV and then pulled shut and locked the steel door that separated the cockpit from the rest of the ICV. Next she tried the radio again. It was indeed dead. She then flipped up a metal box and pulled down hard on a metal ring. A distress flare with a GPS transmitter attached was launched. Its speed and trajectory would prevent the enemy from shooting it down. Then she grabbed the black box that was always kept locked beneath the commander's seat. Inside lay ten elongated grenades attached to Velcro fasteners. She pulled out a single piece of paper and began reading off the activation codes. As soon as she completed a set of numbers, one of the explosives would let out a tiny arming chime followed by a green "GO" light switching on at its base. Her hands shook. Redstone had made it abundantly clear from the very beginning: The DAT must never fall into enemy hands. These were her orders, and she was duty-bound to follow them. Pete was gazing at her, clearly sensing her distress. He placed a comforting hand in her lap. She squeezed it hard. God help us.
An amplified voice boomed down at them like an angry deity. "Come out with your hands up! You will not be harmed! You have SIXTY seconds!"
Suddenly Pete's comm screen came alive. "Help!"
Helen found herself babbling at the AI. "Don't worry, Pete. We're gonna be all right. Everything's fine."
"Help!" He repeated. He moved so that his left side was now facing her. The cover to the DAT's monitor slid up and the screen lit up. The first image that popped up was that of Bugs Bunny.
" ... FORTY SECONDS."
Helen groaned miserably. "Not now, Pete." She started to push him away when the cartoon abruptly vanished and was replaced by ghostly images, blurry and out of focus. There was a thick layer of shimmer near the top of the picture.
" ... THIRTY SECONDS."
Pete moved closer to her. Helen squinted at the screen. What? And then it dawned on her. "Those are the helicopters outside."
Helen stared hard at the feed. "The perspective's wrong." A logic process began to form in her mind. "I—" Helen started to say.
"... TWENTY SECONDS."
And then it hit her. "It's the other DATs!" Pete had patched into the DATs' visual network. It was them! And they were on the other side of the bridge! Help had arrived! "Thank you," she whispered.
"... TEN SECONDS."
The LEDs on the grenades shone like Christmas tree lights. She hastily called out the de-activation codes. One of the Patriots began to bang on the steel door. Helen shouted. "WAIT!"
Her eyes became glued to Pete's monitor. She watched as the view of the St. Louis police armada came into sharper focus. The DATs were closing the distance between them. Fast.
"... FIVE. FOUR ... "
The helicopters could now be clearly seen. And she could make out two of the choppers slowly turning on their horizontal axis until they were now directly facing the oncoming DATs.
Helen could barely contain herself. "THEY SEE THEM!"
And then something truly unexpected happened. The angle of attack abruptly changed. The bridge's asphalt road receded from view, and the St. Louis skyline rose up in the distant background. The helicopters were now equal to the horizon.
Helen shouted, "They've gone airborne!"
"... THREE. TWO. ONE."
Outside, the enemy did not have time to react. The DATs launched their Stinger missiles as they flew right into the police helicopters. Searing flashes of light lit up the bridge for kilometers around like a great torch. Men were screaming and cursing and shooting wildly. The DATs landed some distance away and then spread out in line formation. On a silent signal they dropped into their brace stance and froze.
The remaining enemy forces began to stagger about like drunken men. A convoy of St. Louis National Guardsmen arrived in armored trucks. Men and women in riot gear poured out onto the simmering bridge to give aid to injured. A squad of five men stepped forward, brandishing protective shields and carrying cargo ropes. They began to advance on the unmoving DATs. A burly steam shovel moved in behind them. Its shovel had been heavily padded and given large pincers. The Guardsmen quickly surrounded the still lifeless DATs and then quickly threw their ropes around each of their necks. Each man began to pull on their ropes, dragging the AIs along the ground and towards the shovel's pincers.
Suddenly, long knobby rods, about half a meter long, swung out from the AIs' sides. The men stopped in their tracks. Someone shouted. "STAND BACK!"
The robots came alive.
The ropes were ripped out of the Guardsmen's hands and tossed away. Lights on machine's foreheads snapped on and stayed on. In spite of being ordered to stand their ground, the men began to walk backwards, away from the alien machines and towards the bridge's railings. The fear was contagious. Soon there was a steady stream of foot traffic headed in the opposite direction, back towards the safety of St. Louis.
Tiny puffs of white smoke were the only clues that Death had been unleashed. Ten small bombs were launched directly onto their backsides. The St. Louis National Guard convoy disintegrated into a towering wall of flames. The bridge swung violently from side to side but refused to buckle. Black silhouettes unwittingly performed a ghoulish dance as trucks and bodies were blown into the air with crushing forces. Mercifully, it was over in a matter of seconds. The smoke began to clear immediately. All that remained was red hot, charred, twisted metal.
The DATs, dented and scorched, fell into their crouch-with-tail-tucked-below position, their faces pointed towards the smoking ruins. Minutes passed before Helen led her people out of the ICV.
Five unmarked helicopters appeared in the eastern skies and dropped down onto the bridge just before dawn. Men in suits scurried out from underneath the whirring blades. A youngish man dressed in a rumpled velvet jacket and knickers was in the lead. Helen recognized him. It was Frederick Fields, the department head of the DFP. He walked over and gently took her hand into his.
"Hello, Major Avery." He squeezed it. "I want to personally congratulate you and your team on a job well done."
He escorted her over to the waiting medi-vac chopper. Pete was by her side all of the way. She felt extremely lightheaded but managed to remain coherent. "We have people missing."
"I know," he replied with the thinnest outline of emotion. Fields's attention was drawn around to the blast craters still smoking on the ruined bridge. Some of the recovered bodies of the St. Louis Guard had been stacked near the largest of them. His eyes stuttered and then looked away. "I can't help but think that war should be more civilized."
Helen removed her helmet. "Yes, sir." Her face was greasy and white. "Have you heard anything about Lieutenant Colonel Palladino's condition?"
"Yes, I have. Multiple gunshot wounds." And then he smiled down at her. "But he's going to pull through."
At that moment, with Sergeant Dakota's blood stuck to the bottom of her boots, Major Helen Avery felt like declaring herself the luckiest woman in the world. It was going to be all right. Instead she returned to her ICV and tidied up the mess that had been made there.
12
Camp David, Maryland
The rain showed up right on time to give weight to the sorrows being borne beneath the misty gloom surrounding the small burial. The steady water appeared as tears from heaven. The cluster of large black umbrellas huddled close to the two coffins draped with American flags. President Douglas Haverson stood unsteadily between his good friend Brett Hunter and his mother-in-law, Brooke Montague. Blake Lively, Ted Jameston, Matthew Grodin, and Prime Minister William Tennyson stood in a row behind him, heads bowed, as the priest offered the prayer for the dead.
"Ashes to ashes, dust to dust ... Today we commit the souls of Kelly Haverson and Theresa Haverson to you, oh Lord. Please shelter their souls, and show mercy to those left behind. All for Your honor and for Your glory. From everlasting to everlasting. Amen."
The twen
ty-one-gun salute was pantomimed at the request of Kelly Haverson's mother. Afterwards, the coffins were slowly lowered into the deep pits dug for them.
Vice President Ted Jameston's cell phone vibrated in his vest pocket. He separated himself from the clutch of mourners.
It was Freddy Fields. "I realize that this is poor timing, but I need you and Matthew and the prime minister to return to the Situation Room immediately."
"What's happening?" Jameston asked, fearing the worst.
"I don't want to discuss it over the phone," he replied testily.
"All right. What about the president? Is he in on this?"
"Mightn't it be best for the president to spend time with his family—and his physicians—for now?"
"Right." Jameston lowered his voice. "I wish you people would get it through your thick skulls that that was not a suicide attempt. It was an accident. Accidents do happen."
"Mr. Vice President, I don't have time to discuss semantics with you. You can call it an accident if that makes you feel better."
Jameston became livid. "How dare you speak of the president in such a disrespectful manner. Douglas Haverson equals fifty of you!"
"Sir, sir, please. I meant no disrespect. I apologize. But this is still fresh. He's lost his family. He's losing his country as he knows it ... it's got to be taking a toll on him. He needs time to heal, wouldn't you say?"
Jameston snorted. "Yes. I would agree with that." There was some commotion in the