Ten minutes later, the dead vehicle had been forced off the road and the procession lurched back into motion like a fatigued snake. As the column crawled along, the highway degraded, flanked by deserted small towns already partially reclaimed by the high desert sands. As the heat rose with the morning, more tires gave out, including a front of one of the remaining pair of tow trucks – for which there was no spare. Another stop in the increasingly blazing conditions ended with Magnus making the call to leave the vehicle behind and to lead with the buses, whose bumpers and bulk were sufficient to push most obstacles from the road with judicious application of power.
The number of abandoned vehicles thinned to only a few, replaced by sand drifts that made all but one lane impassible in many places. The day wore on with progress made in fits and starts, this semi-rig losing a tire, that one blowing a line, and by late afternoon they’d only made forty-five miles instead of the hundred Magnus had hoped for. He was reclining in his Humvee, grateful for the AC as it bumped and rocked along, when a massive explosion sounded from the front of the column, followed closely by a second.
“What the hell–” he exclaimed as the windshield filled with brake lights.
The Hummer rolled to a stop and Magnus jumped out. Up ahead a cloud of black smoke drifted west along the rise, and voices cried out in alarm. He ran toward the site of the explosion and stopped in his tracks at the vision that greeted him – two of the lead buses lay on their sides, distended – blown apart by mines, as a glance at the gaping craters left by the devices instantly told him. The second bus had been towing one of the howitzers, which had been thrown like a rag doll a dozen yards from the bus to land upside down on the pavement.
“Mines!” one of his Crew lieutenants called from near the wreckage, but Magnus was already in motion, face distorted with rage. He approached the first bus, where a group was searching for survivors and, after studying the destruction, moved to the second to confirm the casualties. Each bus had carried fifty men and their gear, so in a heartbeat he’d lost ten percent of his fighters, and he wasn’t more than halfway to Los Alamos.
A string of elaborate curses streamed from him as he paced by the wounded men being dragged from the twisted carcasses of the buses. Only a few looked like they’d make it to nightfall; blood covered most of them, and several had limbs twisted at impossible angles.
Jude came at a run and stopped by his side. “Good Lord,” he exclaimed.
“Check the big gun and see if it’s salvageable,” Magnus ordered.
“Of course. I’ll set up a triage area for the injured.” Jude hesitated. “This means we’re going to have to slow down and put some men in front to sweep for mines. There’s no other way.”
Magnus nodded. He’d already come to the same conclusion. “Look for an alternate route. There’s a small road to the west that runs parallel I keep catching glimpses of. If the main highway’s mined, maybe that will be clear.”
“I’ll send a detail to look it over, but if it was me, I’d mine all the routes – I’d expect us to try to find another way and have taken precautions.”
“Just do it,” Magnus ordered, and scowled at the steep rises on both sides of the highway. “And get those ruined buses out of the road. There’s no way we can go around them.”
“I’m on it,” Jude said, turning to issue commands.
Magnus grabbed his arm to stop him. “It’s not a good sign that you failed to anticipate this. You’re my main strategist.” Jude had done two tours in the Army as a sergeant before going to jail for a triple homicide during a home break-in gone horribly wrong.
“We had no reason to expect it, Magnus. Nothing indicated they knew we were coming.”
“Your job is to foresee every possibility. Failing to just cost us dearly. See to it there are no more oversights.”
“You can depend on me.”
“I already did, and I have a hundred fewer fighters to show for it. This happens again, I’ll make it a hundred and one,” Magnus snarled, his message clear.
Jude swallowed dryly and moved to the rear of the column to organize his men. Magnus continued to stare at the carnage, his face a stony mask. In the end, Shangri-La being forewarned wouldn’t matter – sheer numbers and firepower would overwhelm them – but his victory would come at a much higher cost.
He glowered at the wounded moaning on the hot pavement as though they’d personally insulted him and then stormed back to his vehicle, waving away the flies that had appeared out of nowhere, the shadows of vultures orbiting overhead a reminder of nature’s uncaring efficiency.
Chapter 45
John, the leader of the first sniper team dispatched by Elliot to attack the Crew convoy, peered through night vision goggles at the stopped column of vehicles. He had a clear line of sight from the rise on the east side of the highway, and as darkness fell he’d watched the buses crawling forward as a score of Crew gunmen checked for mines in front of them on foot.
The sight of the two detonations that afternoon had sent a thrill through the snipers: the buses had lifted into the air, plumping like overcooked hot dogs before tearing apart and slamming back onto the asphalt. It had taken a good hour for the remaining tow truck to shift enough of the wreckage for the rest of the vehicles to get by, from which point their progress had been nearly nonexistent as the minesweepers located six more antitank devices hidden among the sand drifts that covered the highway.
Whoever was directing the Crew must have decided that there was too much risk involved in continuing after dark, the men’s ability to spot devices at night virtually nil, and the force had parked in a long line as the fighters pitched tents outside the buses. Fuel was far too precious to squander running engines all night to fend off the heat.
The tanker truck was near the back of the lineup, and John and his lieutenant, Chris, had discussed in hushed tones the best way to proceed. Chris had favored putting the .50-caliber machine gun to work on the fighters once they’d retired for the night, whereas John wanted to take out the fuel truck first. There were positives to both approaches, and they’d finally agreed to launch a strike on the tanker with the two AT4 antitank weapons they’d been given while a shooter rained death on the tents with the machine gun.
“The problem’s the sentries. Looks like they’ve got NV gear, and there are enough of them to waste us within seconds,” Chris pointed out.
“I think we have to do this three-pronged. Chris, since you’ve got experience with AT4s, you’ll be in charge of the tanker, with Eric laying down covering fire for you. Brett and I will take out as many of the nearest guards as possible with our night vision scopes, and Martin can work the Browning with Abe on ammo.”
Martin, who’d been in the National Guard for a couple of years before the collapse, nodded from his position nearby.
“Better hope they don’t have any infrared,” he said, “or Chris won’t get close enough to pull it off.” While the AT4s were rated as accurate for an area target at up to five hundred yards, in order to have a certainty of destroying the tanker, Chris would have to get within a couple of hundred, at most.
“Doesn’t look like they do, or we wouldn’t have gotten this far.”
The team consisted of six men, all combat veterans or ex-military with substantial training. This group had been entrusted with a Browning, a thousand rounds of ammunition, and the pair of AT4s, in addition to their usual assault rifles. The other teams were waiting at strategic points further along the highway – one where it cut through a canyon and beneath which they’d rigged explosives by digging from the shoulder, and the other by the Rio Grande bridge.
There had been heated arguments over whether to equip each of the sniper teams with Brownings, but after much debate, Lucas had spoken up and pointed out that the machine guns would be more valuable to them defending the canyons than deployed in the field. Lucas hadn’t needed to say that the odds of John ever returning to Shangri-La with his were slim. Everyone understood that there would be sac
rifices made to protect the many, and John had, as one of the more seasoned fighters left after Arnold’s abrupt departure, agreed to head up what he privately believed was a suicide mission.
One of the horses snorted from where it was tied out of sight on the far side of the rise, and John cringed. The guards were too far off to hear, but if they got unlucky, the mission – and their lives – would be over before it had even started.
“How long do you want to wait?” Chris asked.
John glanced at the glowing dial of his watch, a mechanical model that had lasted him decades. “Another couple of hours, at least. We’ll need to let the guards get nice and complacent. Figure they’ll probably be pulling four-hour shifts, so I’d say we hit them toward the end of the first, at…eleven.”
Time seemed to slow as they waited, but eventually the campfires dimmed and the fighters climbed into their tents. The air grew eerily silent, the only sound the occasional clank of a tool from the repair crew working on one of the rigs by solar-charged work lamps. The moon brightened in the night sky and the stars glimmered in a dazzling display, the high altitude and dry air making for a breathtaking celestial spectacle.
The sentries kept to the area near the highway, patrolling it with lackluster enthusiasm, and their movements slowed as the night wore on. At eleven John gave the signal, and Martin and Abe moved the heavy Browning M2 into position on its tripod. The gun weighed almost 130 pounds, and it took both of them to get it where they wanted it before Abe scrambled back to the horses for the last two ammo cans. They’d carried eight to their firing location in preparation for the coming onslaught, but there was no reason not to use the whole thousand rounds.
By the time Abe made it back, Martin had locked and loaded the machine gun and was ready. Each can held a hundred rounds linked together in a belt, and the M33 ball ammo would blow through brick or cinderblock like tissue paper, making it devastating even at considerable range. At the three hundred or so yards they were from the highway, it would destroy engine blocks and incapacitate vehicles, in addition to ending the lives of many of the Crew fighters.
John waited with Brett, their night-vision-equipped AR-15s switched to single-fire mode to deal with the sentries. Surgical precision would be better than indiscriminate spraying with the guards, and they wanted to conserve ammo to lay down fire for their egress – assuming any of them lived through the next few minutes.
Chris skirted the ridge and stuck to what little scrub there was as he edged toward the tanker, painfully aware that he was completely exposed if any of the guards chose to do a sweep of the area. His assault rifle was strapped to his back, and he toted an AT4 in each hand, their weight growing with every step. They’d agreed that Martin would open up with the Browning when the first AT4 projectile detonated, hopefully creating enough pandemonium for him to escape with his life.
His boot caught on a rock and he nearly went down, sending a spray of sandy gravel down the slope. He eyed the truck and guesstimated he was still a hundred and fifty yards away, at least.
The snap of a round narrowly missing his head was almost instantly followed by the bark of one of the guards’ guns. A moment later another took half his jaw off, and Chris’s world went black as the big Browning opened fire from up the hill.
The machine gun’s roar was deafening, and spent brass arced through the air as Martin strafed the guards he could see by the moonlight. John, Brett, and Eric began shooting as well, and between them made short work of many of the sentries, who were exposed to incoming fire they’d clearly never expected to contend with.
When the first ammo can ran dry and Martin loaded another belt, John called to the others, “Cover me. I’m going to try for the truck.”
He didn’t wait for a response – his best chance of reaching Chris was now, before the rest of the Crew could mount a counterattack. He had the element of surprise, and if it bought him thirty seconds, that might be all he needed.
John threw himself over the ridge and raced for Chris’s crumpled form. Bullets sprayed sandy soil around him but missed by a wide margin. His men’s weapons answered those of the Crew, and no more rounds struck his proximity. He reached Chris and scooped up the AT4s, and then sprinted toward the truck, closing the distance as the guns on the ridge peppered the column of vehicles.
He had just made it to within decent range when the Browning went silent again. He held his breath, praying that Martin hadn’t been hit and was merely changing out ammo cans. One second turned into twenty as the smaller AR-15s popped above him, and then an incoming round knocked the wind out of him like a punch to the sternum. He looked down at his plate carrier and rolled to the side as more rounds pocked the earth. Another slug struck his thigh, causing him to scream in pain. He winced at the burn and maneuvered one of the AT4s into position, peering down the sight in the moonlight at the stainless steel tank that seemed miles away now.
His finger squeezed the trigger and the projectile streaked away as more rounds struck the surrounding dirt. Flares ignited overhead, and the hillside was suddenly bathed in light. The shooting from the Crew increased markedly as John rolled toward the second AT4, but two rounds through his throat ended his life just as the tanker exploded in a massive orange-white fireball.
At the M2, the third can ran dry, and Martin struggled to load the fourth, ignoring the rounds slamming into the crest just below him. Abe grunted beside him and Martin glanced at him as Abe fell to the side, the dark dot at the side of his forehead seeming too small to end a life.
Brett’s and Eric’s weapons kept popping with the regularity of a target shooter, and Martin dismissed the fleeting idea of bolting for the horses.
He opened fire on the Humvees, loosing fifty rounds at them before shifting his aim and emptying the remainder of the belt at the men scrambling like ants toward the buses. He cut down as many as he could and was loading the fifth can when Brett’s rifle fell silent.
“I’m out of ammo,” Brett called to Martin. “Does Abe have any?”
“Yeah,” Martin yelled, fumbling with the Browning.
Martin’s expression was grim when he cocked the machine gun, ready to send another hundred rounds of destruction down the hill. He knew it was just a matter of time before he was killed, but he was going to take as many of the scum to hell with him as he could.
He screamed a battle yell and hammered at the Crew shooters, and when a stray round snuffed out his life, he didn’t know what hit him. One second he was worrying about how he could get the sixth can into play, and the next he was falling back as though pushed to the ground by a giant hand, dead before he hit the ground.
Chapter 46
Lucas had tucked in for the night. The long day’s preparations for the coming battle had drained him; Elliot and Michael had demonstrated an alarming lack of tactical know-how in mounting a counterattack. Some of the ideas the younger man had thrown out had been ludicrous, whereas others had been workable but at too great a cost in both man-hours and equipment. Lucas had wound up being dragged into the discussion as a mediator and had done his best to limit the hair-brained flyers and keep everyone focused on the achievable.
He’d suggested they focus on a workable plan to contend with shelling, possibly weeks of it, and enlisted a team to stock the underground winter quarters with supplies that would keep the population alive for a month. Lucas had also concentrated on booby-trapping the alternate routes into the valley, using explosives to create natural barriers that would force any attackers to approach on foot through narrow gullies where they could be cut down by only a few defenders. He’d set up strategic outposts on these secondary routes and deployed several AT4s and grenades for maximum defensive impact.
One of the most contentious issues had been where to locate the remaining pair of .50-caliber Browning machine guns. One would be at the final stretch of the main canyon, where it could hold off an attacking force virtually indefinitely. The terrain was their biggest asset, since the Crew would have no alternativ
e to traversing a narrow section with steep walls, a funnel from which there would be no escape. But the second gun was undecided – Lucas thought it best to locate it at the Rio Grande bridge, out of range of assault rifles at a thousand yards from where the Crew would likely be stopped when the bridge blew, but Michael and Elliot had felt that it would serve better as a last defense to the main cave that led into the underground interlinked chambers.
Lucas had argued that if the Crew made it far enough for that to be a factor, they were done for, so the emphasis should be in preventing that at all costs. Michael had pushed for a last-ditch defensive effort to safeguard the lab, the women, and children. Lucas had finally prevailed, but they’d lost valuable time waffling when he could have been attending to other matters – like ensuring the ragtag army of defenders was prepared for the worst, which was coming their way with the inevitability of a runaway train.
A soft rapping interrupted his thoughts. He rose from his bed and pulled on his jeans and shirt before padding to the door to unlock it.
Sierra stood silhouetted by the soft ambient lighting from the hall, wearing the white dress from the celebration party – a time now so removed from their current crisis it seemed a lifetime ago. She looked up at him and raised her chin slightly, her skin bronzed from the sun, and offered a flash of white teeth at his surprised expression.
“Sierra,” he whispered. She took a step forward and held her finger to his lips. The heady aroma of the vanilla-scented soap made in the valley rose from her as she pressed herself against him and lay her head against his chest, pushing the door closed with a bare foot.
The Day After Never Bundle (First 4 novels) Page 67