Ralph Peters

by The war in 2020

  And the inevitable was approaching. The enormous chanting of the mob had virtually surrounded the headquarters complex, although the bulk of the Azeris remained out of sight, hidden in buildings, alleyways, behind rubble, walls, and wreckage. Only a few stray figures could be seen, scuttling through the twilight. The mob was marshaling its strength, just below the crest of the hill. Beyond the no-man's-land of burned-out ruins.

  Kloete sucked down a last dose of smoke and flicked the butt over the wall. His features remained hard and clear in the deserting light.

  "Noisy bunch," he said. "Aren't they, General?"

  Noburu nodded. Kloete had never been too anxious to pay a full measure of military courtesy to Noburu, and he made no move to rise or salute. His attitude seemed to say, "We're all equal now and we'll be even more equal before the sun comes up again."

  "You have ammunition?" Noburu asked, touching the bandage layered over his scalp. It had begun to itch.

  Kloete grinned. "Enough to make the little buggers angry. After that, I can just take this thing apart"—he slapped his weapon—"and throw the bloody pieces at them."

  The chanting stopped. Initially, a few ragged voices continued, but they soon faltered into the gathering darkness. In the absence of the vast wailing, the racket of a later age was clearly audible: heavy machines on the move.

  "The relief column," Akiro declared, his voice sweet with wonder.

  Noburu caught him by the shoulder. "No. If it were the relief column, they'd be shooting."

  Above the mechanical growling, a single high voice sang out. It sounded like a Moslem call to prayer.

  In reply, the crowd howled so loudly that the concrete shivered beneath Noburu's boots.

  Kloete reared up, staring into the fresh pale night settling over the courtyard and the walls.

  "Tanks!" he shouted. "The bastards have tanks."

  In agreement, the first main gun sounded. The round hit the far wing of the headquarters complex, sending a shock wave through the air.

  "Here they come," a Japanese voice screamed from a lateral position.

  With a wave of noise, the crowd surged out of the shadows. Off in the distance, on the fringe of the city, the slums were burning, cordoning off the city with fire. Why was it, Noburu wondered, that in times of disruption the poor burned themselves out first? Despair? A desire to be clean of their scavenged lives?

  A single Japanese weapon opened up nearby, then stopped firing after expending a few rounds. His men were holding their fire, waiting until they could get the highest return on each bullet paid out. They did not need orders now. Every man understood.

  Noburu could see three tanks crawling toward the gate and the breaches in the wall. It was hard to listen past the thunder of the crowd, but it sounded as if even more tanks were following the first machines.

  That was it, then. There were no antitank weapons. No one had imagined a need for them here.

  The tanks fired above the crowd, hammering the headquarters building with their guns. The shots seemed random and undisciplined. But they could not help having an effect.

  The quickest members of the mob dashed through the gate and scrambled over the breaches in the wall. They stumbled across mounds of shattered masonry, firing wildly and shrieking.

  The Japanese held their fire.

  Kloete drew out a lean commando knife and teased it twice over the broken stucco that lipped the roof before returning it to its sheath.

  "Sir," Akiro cried, "you must take cover."

  Noburu turned to the younger man. Akiro stood upright beside him, unwilling to go to ground before his superior did so. But the aide's eyes glowed with fear in the dusk.

  "In a moment," Noburu said. He wanted to look his death in the face.

  Akiro began to speak again, then choked and staggered against Noburu, grasping the general with uncustomary rudeness. Noburu had felt the warm wet of the young man's blood peck at his own face.

  The aide clutched Noburu's arm, astonished. He remained on his feet, with his insides slipping out of his ripped trousers. He looked at Noburu with the innocence of an abused pet dog.

  "Akiro," Noburu said.

  The aide relaxed his grip on his master and collapsed onto the cement. Freed from the constraints of muscles and tight flesh, the young man's lower internal organs flowed out of him as though fleeing his death and attempting to survive on their own.

  Akiro's eyes remained open, and his head moved slightly on the intact axis of his spine. He looked at Noburu with a hopefulness the older man could not bear, as though Akiro expected the wise old general to fix him and make everything right again.

  "Akiro," Noburu said, reaching out to steady the boy's witchings, which continued to expel the contents of his torso.

  The aide's lips made a word that Noburu could not decipher.

  "Akiro," Noburu repeated.

  The tension went out of the boy's body, and the terrible vibrancy left his eyes.

  Kloete opened up with the light machine gun, firing short bursts and cursing. The other machine guns kicked in, as did a few automatic rifles. Noburu kept waiting for the rest of his men to open fire. Then he realized that there were no others.

  He picked up Akiro's automatic rifle, wiped off the wet mortality on his trousers, and knelt beside Kloete and the South African NCO. The three men fired over the edge of the roof. Noburu had stopped thinking now. He gave himself up to the trance of action, trying to fire as calmly as if he were on range.

  The lead tank surged ahead of the crowd. It shot point-blank into the headquarters, following the main gun round with bright tracers from its machine gun. Tides of bodies fell to the Japanese weaponry, but there seemed to be no end to the mob. The space between the headquarters and the wall grew dense with the living and the dead.

  In the blaze of the firefight, Noburu saw one of his men lash from a side door, charging without a rifle. In the last seconds before the man threw himself on top of the tank, Noburu recognized the swell of the grenade in the man's hand.

  The explosion drove the nearest members of the mob to their knees. But it did not stop the tank.

  "Sonofabitch," Kloete spat. The machine gun had licked empty.

  The tank fired again. The building shook beneath them.

  The South African NCO fixed a bayonet to his rifle. Kloete drew out his sidearm. He stood up carelessly, cursing and leading his targets, one by one. Noburu fired and watched a dark form tumble.

  The line of machine gun tracers crisscrossed down below as the remaining Japanese fired their final protective fires.

  Noburu heard a noise that did not fit.

  Something was wrong. There was a great hissing, a new noise for which he could not account. Up in the sky. As though enormous winged snakes were descending from the heavens. Dragons.

  The lead tank disappeared in a huge white flash that dazzled Noburu's eyes. A stunning bell-like sound was followed by an explosion. His vision of the world crazed into a disorderly mosaic. But he could see the tank burning.

  "I can't see," the South African NCO howled. "I can't see."

  The explosion had been as bright as a sun come to earth. The tremendous force of the impact made Noburu's head throb under its disordered bandage. He tried to see into the sky.

  Two more explosions drew his eyes back to the earth.

  Thank God, he thought, sinking down into himself. Oh, thank God. He found the thought that he was going to live unexpectedly pleasant.

  The hissing and sizzling grew louder. The drone of engines began to emerge from under the cowls of their noise suppressors.

  Someone had heard. Someone had monitored one of the radio transmissions. Someone had managed to muster an air-mobile relief force.

  Kloete glanced over at Noburu between shots.

  "Looks like your mates came through," he said. Then he straight-armed his pistol down at the mob.

  The massed attackers wavered at the destruction of their armored support. The tanks had promised the
m a magic victory. Now the tanks were gone. In the midst of the swarm, high voices sang out prayerlike encouragements.

  Noburu still could not see the relief aircraft in the darkened sky. He tried to place them by the sound of their engines. But his ears were ringing. The blast had shocked his senses. And his hearing was half-gone at the best of times.

  Nonetheless, it annoyed him that he could not identify the hissing, descending ships.

  Whatever kind they were, they were welcome.

  As if at an invisible signal, the mob surged forward again. In the suddenness of the rush, the lead figures gained the building. Noburu rose to his full height to spend his last bullets where they were most needed. But he could already hear the distinct echo of fighting inside the headquarters.

  Perhaps the relief force would be too late after all. By minutes.

  He followed a running figure through the firelight, leading him carefully with his sights. When he was certain he had the man, he squeezed the trigger.

  Nothing.

  He drew out his pistol. But the man he had targeted had already made his way to the shelter of the building. Down in the belly of the headquarters, something exploded.

  "Your boys are fucking slow," Kloete screamed. "They're too fucking slow."

  Noburu fired and dropped a running man. The figure rolled over, clutching his knee.

  There were too many of them. The attackers were already swinging themselves up to enter the building's second floor windows, leaving no point of entry untried. The last Japanese gun had been silenced.

  The noise of the aircraft loomed in heavily. A pillar of fire descended from the heavens, followed by another, then a third. Noburu recognized the accompanying noise: Gatling guns.

  Heavy bullets rinsed over the packed courtyard. The rounds were so powerful that they did not merely fell their victims but shredded them and threw the remnants great distances.

  Kloete ducked, hugging the roof. Noburu followed his example. The South African was laughing like a wild man, his behavior insanely inconstant.

  Beyond the lip of the wall, the fury of the crowd turned to wails of despair. Noburu could feel the intruders scrambling to avoid the godlike weapons, and he could picture the oversize rounds rinsing back and forth across the courtyard. Sometimes the old weapons were the best.

  Noburu went cold. Underneath him, the sounds of combat within the headquarters building punctuated his horror.

  He had realized that none of the new Japanese systems in the theater of war mounted Gatling guns.

  Behind him, the dream warrior laughed and laughed and laughed.

  The sound of the aircraft was deafeningly close now. He could begin to make out their swollen black forms against the deep blue sky. Each time one of the ships unleashed another burst from its Gatling gun, the cone of fire was shorter, closer. The Gatling rounds made a sharp crackling sound as they split the cobblestones amid the dead and the dying.

  "Americans," Noburu said to Kloete.

  Perhaps the noise was too much. The South African merely stared at him in incomprehension.

  "The Americans," Noburu shouted, cupping a hand beside his mouth.

  Kloete looked at him as if the general had gone mad.

  The rotor wash began tearing at their clothes. The big ships were settling, hunting for places to nest.

  The dream warrior howled with glee, goading Noburu to laugh along.

  No. He was not giving up so easily. He pushed the phantom away.

  One of the descending aircraft was heading directly for the helipad.

  "Come on," Noburu shouted, already moving. "We've got to let somebody know about—"

  The noise was too great. He scrambled toward the passageway that led to the elevator and the stairwell. It would take too long to route a message through the computer with the system locked down. The only hope was the old radio.

  It had to work. Tokyo had to be informed.

  He turned his head to hurry Kloete and the NCO along. But the roof erupted in a holiday of sparks. One moment he was watching the scrambling forms of the two South Africans. An instant later, their bodies disintegrated as the approaching gunship's Gatling cleared the rooftop helipad.

  Noburu threw himself into the deepest corner of the passageway until the drilling noise of the gunnery stopped. He felt as though he had been stung by dozens of wasps. Masonry splinters, he calculated, glad that he could still function. He threw himself into the shelter of the stairwell, just as an enormous black monster settled onto the roof.

  "This way," Kozlov shouted. Taylor followed the Russian across the helipad, ducking under the flank rotor of the M-100. The roof was slick with the spread remains of several corpses so badly shot up they were barely recognizable as human.

  Meredith moved up past Taylor, weapon at the ready, determinedly shielding the older man. Hank Parker followed, lugging a man-pack radio over his left shoulder and shepherding the young warrant officer who held the magic keys in his briefcase.

  A few surviving members of the mob who had been stranded in the courtyard fired up at the spectacle on the roof, but they seemed to be too dazed or shaken to make their efforts tell. Meanwhile, other M-l00s settled across the parade ground, their Gatling guns sweeping the living and the dead across their chosen landing zones. American soldiers leapt from the lowering ramps and hatches, their short automatic rifles clearing each fire team's path toward the headquarters building. Protected by lightweight body armor and face shields, here and there an American fell backward, knocked down by the force of a bullet, only to rise from the dead and follow his comrades into the fight.

  Taylor scanned the scene just long enough to make sure that the three birds designated for the assault had put down safely. In the low heavens, a last M-100 patrolled above the near streets, now and then issuing a spike of fire that warned the rest of the world to keep away.

  There wasn't much time. Even as the raiding force approached Baku, enemy relief columns had been shooting their way into the city from multiple directions. The lone M-100 flying cover shifted its fire from axis to axis in the ultimate economy of force effort, striking the long columns selectively, blocking as many streets as possible with burning combat vehicles. But all of the main guns desperately needed recalibration now and the Gatlings, too, were down to their last reserves of ammunition. Here and there, the combat vehicles from the relief columns snaked their way inevitably into the labyrinth of streets. Worse still, the strategic down-links feeding the M-l00's on-board computers showed a fleet of enemy aircraft over the Caspian Sea, flying on an axis whose aim was unmistakable.

  Taylor followed the others into a passageway littered with chipped masonry. Kozlov yanked open a steel door and was about to rush headlong into the stairwell. But Meredith caught him, knocking the unarmed man out of the way. Kozlov tripped back against a wall just as Meredith hurled a grenade into the darkness. The S-2 turned and pulled Kozlov to the ground with him.

  The explosion rang so loudly from the concrete stairwell that it sounded as though the entire building would collapse.

  "Let's go," Taylor shouted.

  But, once again, Meredith was quicker. He took the lead, spraying short bursts into the smoke and crunching over litter splintered off the walls. Taylor threw a compact flare past him into the recesses of the stairwell.

  No one fired at the light, which was little more than a pale glow in the shroud of smoke left by the grenade. It was very hard to see.

  But there was no time to waste.

  Standard drill, learned in L.A., perfected in Mexico. Taylor slapped Meredith on the shoulder.

  "Go."

  Meredith pounded down the stairs, laying down a burst as he made each corner. The bullets punched at the walls, rebounding, making quick spiderwebs of light.

  "One flight clear," Meredith shouted.

  Taylor turned back to Hank Parker and threw a hand in the direction of Kozlov and Ryder. "Keep those two here until I blow the whistle. Then get down those stairs as fast
as you can."

  The colonel hustled after Meredith.

  "Three floors," Kozlov called after him. "It is three floors of stairs."

  Taylor caught up with Meredith, then pushed past him, taking his turn in the two-man drill. Meredith covered him. The smoke bothered Taylor's lungs, and he felt faintly dizzy. He realized that he still had not recovered completely from the futile rescue attempt of the day before. The smoke had eaten into him.

  But he kept going, holding his short-barreled automatic rifle tight against his side. He had entirely forgotten the pain in his hand.

  Beyond the stairwell, the building echoed with rifle fire and shouts in three distinct languages. On the ground and upper floors, the Japanese defenders were battling the Azeris hand-to-hand, with the Americans slashing in behind, fighting everybody.

  But the other American efforts were only distracters. Supporting strikes. Everything depended on getting Ryder down to the computer room before somebody blew the machine apart.

  "Clear," Taylor yelled. He crouched against a wall on the next landing. Meredith's boots clambered down the concrete steps, closing on him. The younger officer slapped Taylor's shoulder and moved past him like a shadow. It was the best they could do. An emergency drill. There was no time for a careful, completely thorough clearing operation.

  This time Meredith went all the way down the stairs without firing his weapon. The earlier bursts had met with no response. And the bullets had nowhere to go from the bottom of the stairwell except back up toward the firer.

  Speed, speed. All risks were justified now.

  "Clear to the bottom," Meredith shouted. "I'm at the door."

  Taylor pulled a sports whistle from under his blouse, drawing it up by the lanyard. He blew two blasts, then scrambled down toward Meredith. From above, the rest of the party made a terrific racket stumbling down the stairs. Taylor popped another of the disposable mini-lights to guide them. It was hard to believe that the Japanese had not yet alerted to their presence. The fighting out in the corridors had not lost any of its intensity, and Taylor figured that the defenders had their hands full and probably could not do anything even if they were aware of the new threat posed by his ragged team.