“Natalia, sniper!” he shouted, as he quickly grabbed Tommy by the legs and dragged him next to the wall below the line of sight of the enemy sharpshooter. Miller rapidly assessed Tommy’s condition.
“Oh fuck that hurt!” his second in command shouted out, his eyes coming to focus on Miller’s face.
Miller located where the bullet had struck Tommy, directly above the heart, his vest having absorbed the impact. “You’ve been shot before, suck it up buttercup.”
Tommy tried to sit up but immediately fell backward. “Nope, pretty sure this time is the worst. Oh god, it fucking hurts!”
Miller accessed the medical webbing that ran along the inner layer of Tommy’s vest. It indicated an abnormal heart rhythm. “Alright buddy, you just lay there and try and relax.”
Tommy nodded, “What’s the point of being nearly immortal if you can’t be invincible?”
“I can’t get a line of sight on the shooter,” Natalia said over the squad line.
Miller frowned, “Tommy needs the medical drone. I can’t move him with that shooter on the top of the theater."
Walter came over the line, “I’m moving to extract.”
Miller responded with a shout, “Negative, you keep the assets away from here! If we can’t get out on our own, you leave us and get to a safe zone.”
“Bullshit, I’m not leaving any of you!”
“Follow orders Walt,” Natalia said, her voice making it clear that he shouldn’t argue with Miller any more.
Tom grabbed Miller’s arm. “Leave me and go get that prick. I’m not going to keep us pinned down.”
Miller shook his head. “Haven’t left you for decades old buddy, sure as shit not doing it now."
Tommy rolled his eyes. “Oh for god’s sake, it’s not like were screwing,” he laughed at his own poor attempt at a joke and his facial features compressed in pain. “The only way I’m getting out of this is if I can get to that medical drone, and I can’t do that while that sniper is up there and while we’re playing grab ass.”
Miller nodded, realizing he was losing perspective. Tommy, looking him directly in the eye, said, “I really want to live forever buddy, so please go kill that asshole so Walter can pick us up”
Miller laughed and slapped his old friend on the shoulder. “Don’t go anywhere,” Miller cautioned and moved away, hugging the wall and staying crouched below the windows.
“Nat, I’m going to need suppressing fire in a second.”
“Waiting for your signal.”
Miller arrived at the wall directly opposite the door they had entered from and double clicked the com. An instant later the sound of repeated triple bursts from Natalia’s rifle reverberated off the walls, directed at the top of the theater. Miller pushed off, rocketing forward like a swimmer off the starting block. He bolted through the door, processing that a bullet had slammed into the frame mere inches from his right ear. He changed direction sharply throwing himself to the ground and clearing the sniper’s line of sight. Natalia’s fire stopped at nearly the same time.
Miller quickly made his way to the corner opposite Natalia. “Cover fire while I advance on the back of the structure.”
“Understood."
Miller double clicked again and this time they both leaned from cover firing upon the rifleman’s location. A second later he erupted from the relative safety of the corner still firing up at the top of the opposing structure, covering the distance in seconds, and placing himself along the wall. A brief feeling of excitement filled him as he felt his body follow his commands without complaint. Not long ago such activity would have left his sixty-seven year old frame drained, assuming he could have even performed at this level. Now though, there was no joint pain, his muscles felt light and responsive, and his thought process was clear. While the situation was dire, he couldn’t have felt better physically.
The virtual field of vision projected on his contacts noted that he had consumed half of his ammunition. As Natalia and the rifleman above exchanged fire, he quickly swapped out the partially spent clip for a fresh one from his vest. He moved along the side of the theater, turned around the corner, and came face to face with two men. All three of them had their rifles at the ready. Miller made a snap decision, throwing himself back around the corner as he pulled the trigger of his weapon. He watched as one of the men flew directly backward. He also felt a sledgehammer impact his right shoulder flinging him further around the corner.
He hit the ground hard, rolling himself up onto a knee, and leveling his rifle. He immediately advanced to the corner, disengaging the lock on the weapon and folding it in half and to the left. The optics on the barrel transmitted an image to his contacts, and he watched as it went around the corner. He caught a glimpse of the man on the ground, with his friend kneeling beside him but facing his direction. A fraction of a second later the wall exploded in a shower of brick and dust as the still vertical opponent opened fire. Miller immediately pulled the rifle and his hands back around to safety as the blocks making up the corner began to dissolve under the barrage of bullets.
Whoever this guy was, he was fast. These men in black armor were clearly well-funded, organized, and trained. “Natalia, I’m pinned."
“That makes two of us. The shooter on the roof has me locked up behind this building. Did you happen to take any grenades with you?”
“Nope.”
“I’ve got some friends that can help,” Walter said over the radio. Miller pulled up the video feed from the car and was greeted to the sight of it barreling toward the guy he was just exchanging fire with. The man placed himself between the car and his wounded friend. Miller winced as he watched bullets ricocheting off the front windscreen leaving small streaks where they hit. Walter directed the car to turn left presenting its right side to the man. It came to a skidding stop on the grass of the Washington Monument. A barrage of gunfire overwhelmed all the ambient noise of battle taking place throughout the city, and Miller felt the reverberations of bullets slamming into back of the theater.
As suddenly as it began, it ended. He snapped the rifle around the corner of the building and saw both of the black suited men laying in pools of their own blood. The SUV was twenty yards away and he could barely make out the three figures that were advancing on the two prone men. They seemed to blend into the background with their uniforms and armor shifting colors to match whatever was behind them. Miller’s tactical system detected the changes and outlined each person in yellow, though every few steps it would wink out as the system lost track and had to reacquire. He didn’t really need the tactical tracking though, years as a Navy SEAL made it almost second nature for him to identify Marine Special Operatives and their adaptive camouflage. After all, when it had been state of the art, it had been issued to soldiers such as himself.
“Friendly coming out!” Miller shouted, exiting from behind cover.
He came around the corner, he hoped for the last time, as three Marines took up position a few feet from the back wall, two of them with their weapons trained on him and one with his rifle aimed at the roof line.
“Identify yourself!”
He stopped moving forward, the barrel of his rifle pointed at the ground. “Miller.”
The center Marine immediately shifted his aim to the roof line, and the last one dropped the barrel of his rifle and waved him over. Miller jogged over to them. They were slightly easier to see now as the camouflage wasn’t perfect at adapting to close angles.
“Just the one up there?” the Marine asked, her tone of voice full of irritation.
“That we know of, my team has the other side covered. Do you have a drone in a can, so that we can get a view up there?”
She shook her head. “Nope, gonna have to do this the old fashioned way.”
“That’s risky.” He pointed to the cylindrical pouch on her vest, saying, “Grenade would be the safest bet.”
She was a good foot shorter than him, but for the first time in years he felt as if someone h
ad managed to look down on him. “I don’t give a shit what’s safest. I got a POTUS trapped in the White House bunker and I need intelligence on the pricks that have the Secret Service pinned down. That asshole up there is going to be my singing canary. Tell your team to check their fire, we’re heading up.”
She and another Marine went straight to the ladder on the back of the theater when a single gunshot rang out. The Marines quickened their pace. The man dropping down to a knee and propelling his female commander up to the ladder which didn’t reach the ground.
“Natalia report.”
Natalia said over the radio, “I didn’t fire on him and it sounded like a side arm. I think the guy offed himself."
A second later the Marine was over the edge and onto the roof. Several seconds after that, the two Marines below shifted their aim from the roof to the perimeter of the area. “What’s the situation?” Miller asked one of them.
“I don’t say shit to private security. You’ll have to wait for the LT,” the man said with a slight Southern drawl.
Miller stepped forward and said, “I’m a SEAL, always will be, and I have a man who needs medical attention, so tell me if we’re clear.”
He couldn’t see his expression through the visor and adaptive cloth he had wrapped from his nose down to his neck but he could tell the man wasn’t going to cooperate. He turned to see the Lieutenant jogging up. “We’re all clear; Collins, Reagan, get Travis and Kay ready to advance on the White House."
“Yes ma’am!” Both men spun and hustled toward the restrooms.
“Walter, get over to Tommy.” Miller ordered.
The SUV jumped forward and arrived at the building with a rear passenger door opening and the medical drone striding out to retrieve Tom from the structure. Natalia rushed in just before it. Every fiber of Miller wanted to pull the machine’s video feed and check on Tommy to make sure he was okay, but he had to think about the overall mission. “Any chance I can find out what happened up there?”
The Lieutenant stared toward the White House, the fence line having been breached at several points. He assumed by massive explosions due to the size of the craters at the breaches. Heavy machine gun fire streaked into the façade of the building and return fire peppered the lawn before it. “Dude redecorated the rooftop with his brains, not much to tell" she replied with her eyes locked on the battle before them.
“You find anything on him?”
“Other than a golden cross underneath all that armor and an absolute desire to avoid being captured, no nothing," she responded, her eyes never left the sight before them.
He knew what must have been going through her mind and was fairly certain it was what he was contemplating as well. “You lost most of your unit. What good do you think you’re going to do over there?” he said to her, but in part to himself.
She laughed, “Did I hear right over the com, you’re a former SEAL?”
He nodded, “Always a SEAL."
She spit on the ground. “Our first decent President in a long time is under siege in an icon of our nation while Congress burns because a bunch of domestic dip shits, you tell me what you’d do and I’ll let you know if you can still call yourself that.”
He stood there, his jaw clenched, “We did just save your life, a little bit of appreciation might be in order.”
She looked at him, yet again making him feel inferior. “We are so damn far past the point of giving a crap about people who manage to do the absolute bare minimum for this great country of ours. If you don’t bring it a hundred percent, you ain’t shit. Now you and your people are skilled, but the question is, are you still SEALs?”
“We’ve got too many wounded,” he said, as her entire team came trotting up.
She grabbed a Marine whose head was bandaged, with his vision partially obscured by the fabric covering one eye. “See this handsome son of a bitch right here? This is Travis. Travis let the nice man know if you’re wounded.”
“No ma’am, I’m ready to go.”
She patted him on the shoulder and glared at Miller. “That’s the difference between soldiers and rent a cops, no excuses.” She looked over her team. “Let’s move out and turn these insurgents into fertilizer for the Rose Garden. Oorah!”
“Oorah!” they shouted back and began moving in the direction of the battle ground that was the White House. She looked him over one last time. “You want gratitude. Well, get my man to a medical station, and I’ll consider reviewing my opinion of you.” With that she was off, sprinting to catch up to her team as they made their way to whatever fate awaited them.
He hung his head for a second, the weight of not being there for his nation when it needed him most pressing down upon him. He watched the Marines fade into the distance. Their adaptive camouflage making it impossible for him or his optics to identify them past fifty yards. He pulled himself up. He had given his word to protect the Patterson family and he was a man of his word, but once they were at the Spire, he’d have to make a decision as to where his loyalty truly lay, with one family or with millions of them.
He spun on his heel and trotted over to the SUV where Tommy was being helped into the passenger seat by Natalia and the drone. “Had me worried there Tom.”
Tom came to a rest in the seat, his face getting some of its color back. “I was worried too, but the doc here shocked the hell out of me to get everything pumping like it should."
Miler turned his head to the robot, “How long until he can fight?”
“In his current condition, it is highly inadvisable for him to engage in combat."
Tommy sneered at the machine. “I can hold my rifle. I can fight,” he said, shouldering the weapon.
Miller smiled, made sure his legs were out of the way, and closed the door. He made his way to the back and looked over Walter and their critically wounded Marine passenger. “Walt, how you doing?”
Walter nodded toward the man next to him, teeth gritted in pain, his dark skin stained with his own blood, “Kid is the one you should be checking on.”
“What’s his condition?” Miller asked, the drone stepping up next to him. Miller looked at the IV hanging from ceiling and the small device on the man’s chest. The soldier’s left knee was missing from the knee down, wrapped tightly in bandages. Much of his uniform was singed and large sections of it were removed, exposing red flesh with a sheen.
“He has suffered a complete break of the spinal cord resulting in quadriplegia. Installation of a cardiopulmonary regulator was required, and I stopped the bleeding from the multiple lacerations across his lower extremities. I was forced to perform an amputation and have applied sufficient coagulants to prevent additional blood loss. He has second and third degree burns over much of his body and antiseptic has been utilized. He is in need of immediate and comprehensive medical attention beyond what I have the ability to provide.”
“Keep him comfortable,” Miller told Walter. He closed the lift gate and walked to the front. “Mount up drone, we are out of here."
Miller sat in a front seat and instructed the car to continue down the pre-planned path. The vehicle jumped forward, and they began to speed over the lawn and back onto pavement. He turned back and looked into the second row. Maria sat on her mother’s lap, her head still nestled against her blouse. Eva brought her eyes up from her daughter’s head, strands of her hair clinging to her chin as she raised it.
“Aaron.”
“Yes ma’am?”
“We need to get home. This is only going to get worse.”
Miller couldn’t disagree. It had been less than an hour since this sequence of events had started at the museum and nearly his entire squad was combat ineffective due to injury. They hadn’t been this banged up since they were pulled from South East China and that was over twenty years ago.
Maria raised her beautiful brown eyes up to him, locks of her hair draping down her face and obscuring it slightly. “Mr. Miller are we going to be okay?”
He reached his gloved ha
nd back toward her, gently grasping hers as it reached out to meet his. “Darlin’, I won’t let anything hurt you or your mom.”
“But what if you aren’t here?”
“No matter what, if you need me, I’ll always be there for you."
She smiled weakly and retracted her hand. He smiled back at her and turned. Rapidly approaching was the 14th Street Bridge. On their side of the Potomac River sat several heavily armored vehicles, including an M1-A3 main battle tank. Its squat barrel pointed past them as they slowly advanced on this recently established military checkpoint. A text box appeared on the vehicle’s center console identifying its origin from the United States Marine Corps and ordering them to transfer vehicle control to a military AI system. Miller tapped the button on the screen, and the vehicle began to slow down as it approached.
“Must not think we’re a threat if the big boy ain’t targeting us,” Tommy said.
Miller shook his head as he replied, “That’s ‘cause the chain guns on those APCs are."
The vehicle slowed and then stopped at an armored personnel carrier placed in front of the bridge. A small flat drone with treads zipped under the SUV scanning for bombs and, if necessary, ready to deliver a localized EMP to kill the car. Miller lowered all the windows in the SUV and looked up at the Marine that approached his door while another walked down the other side. Even though he couldn’t see their faces behind the fabric bandanna and the opaque visors, he was certain they were communicating everything they saw in the car and evaluating the information the drone’s sensors were returning. The man approached the door of the vehicle, rifle drawn. “Out of the car and hands where I can see them.”
Miller opened the door and stepped out, letting his rifle hang from the strap around his shoulder, both of his hands in the air. “My name is Aaron Miller, Lieutenant Commander US Navy, retired.”
“Don’t mean shit. We’ve had guys breaking their oath all day.”
Miller winced internally. While he had suspected some level of treason due to the commandeering of the drone’s controls, he had hoped it wasn’t true. “I’m currently working private security for Multi National Robotics. I have two high priority assets in the vehicle, three members of my team, and a wounded Marine who is in need of immediate medical attention."
The Spire Page 4