The GPS pinged again, as she glided ten thousand feet up above the patchwork quilt of vine-growing fields. One mile out.
"Jake?"
He was poring over his radar readout. "Nothing. On broad I'm getting ghost signals off some the structures below and the mountains to the east. On narrow it's all clear. Overhead the sky is empty."
Anna turned the Pilatus into a spiral, affording her a clear view down on the fields.
"Is that-?" she started.
"Yes," Jake answered. Far below, barely visible at such a height, there was a white smudge that could be a building or large vehicle or…
"I'm reading an active signal off it," Jake went on, "it's definitely a live antennae. They could have radar through it too, in which case they'll definitely be reading us."
The gun turret.
This was the plan. Everything had been gamed out every way they could imagine. If the drones were not up yet, then this flyover would tease them out.
"Turn the narrow beam facing down."
"Done," Jake replied, and peered at the screen as fresh results came up. "I can read the bunker, through the earth. It's a large dense mass just where we expected, right on coordinates. I'm not reading any missile launches."
The moments teased out and sweat trickled down Anna's neck. If the bunker launched a ground-to-air missile they'd have seconds only to react; punching out the door and firing one of their sparkler flares to draw the fire. The GPS continued to ping and the twin radars gave their low, insistent beeps.
"Jake?" Anna asked.
"Still nothing. If they have eyes then they can see us, but they haven't launched. It looks like we're clear."
Anna ran one more circle, scanning the land below for anything that could hurt them; demons, men in shielded suits, a tank, but the vineyards looked peaceful and silent.
"I'm taking us back," she said, and banked the plane sharply right, back toward Bordeaux.
Peters guided her over the radio, like a missile shot from the eastern seaboard and finally delivering its payload to the earth.
"Little wind," he warned as she dropped altitude over Bordeaux. "Some weeds on the asphalt but it's an easy run, just a little short. Hit my footprint exactly, if you can. You never know which parts might have warped."
"Roger that."
She finished a broad circle and the airstrip came into sight over the Garonne; she'd have to almost clip the innermost razor wire fence to hit the onset of the runway, but this was something she'd trained for. She pushed the nose harder down and the little craft responded with violent juddering and a spill of smoke from the right engine.
"Is that-" Jake began.
"It's fine," Anna said. "We're on fumes."
The ground rushed up and the plane raced on. There was such a difference in speed from being high and being low. High up speed was grace and beauty, a landscape gliding by effortlessly, whereas up close like this it was a violent kind of tearing away of the earth underfoot; faster than any human should go.
"Brace yourselves," she called as they plummeted in, then pushed the stick down as the fence rushed up. The plane hit the ground with a jolting THUD, bounced once, almost pinwheeled away to the left, then settled into deceleration as the engines reversed and air braking began. The air filled with their roaring.
Five minutes later they were at a standstill, on chocks next to Peters' Avanti. He waved up from the asphalt. So this was France.
"Well done," Lucas said from in back.
She turned. Jake was already climbing out, Wanda and Macy were following, leaving the two of them alone with the dying engines and a bay-load of equipment. Lucas still had his hand protectively on the electron microscope. A month had passed and his throat had healed well, so his voice almost sounded normal.
"We're just getting started," she answered.
* * *
They'd practiced their supply runs in Maine, assuming modern military bases would be much the same the world over. Once inside the outer fence, a world of munitions opened up; there was SWAT-type equipment on the surface in the hangars and ammo stores, such as rifles, body armor, armored Humvees. To get to the heavier weaponry you had to burrow deeper, through heavy plate-iron doors into underground repositories of explosives, missiles, tanks and bombs.
Every person in their team had their shopping list. Some were sourcing, tuning, charging and fuelling a fleet of four Humvees. Some were blowing open the safe doors to get at the explosives and gas stored within. Some were lifting the radar off the Pilatus and bolting it onto an armored Humvee.
Everyone had a job, even Lucas; to work with Jake on getting their hydrogen line scanner mounted and operational on a cart.
Within an hour all the contents of the two planes was out on the parched gray apron before the first of two low hangars. The bunker buster bombs were the most important. There was no telling if they'd have these here. They were specialist weaponry, essential for digging in to the ground.
There were also machine guns, munitions belts, a laser-targeting kit paired with an artillery and five basic shells, the five surface-to-air missiles and launcher, two RPGs, a flamethrower and gas tanks, a heavy-duty drill kit, grenades and spare car batteries. Jake was starting the process to mount the launcher to one of the Humvees, while others were prepping, loading, arming, reinforcing and outfitting like a well-oiled machine.
Anna threw herself into it. They all did. The clock was ticking.
* * *
Three hours later they were closing on the bunker site over land, out in the fresh country air that smelled of fermented grapes for miles around, hovering in the air like an alcoholic fog. The roads leading through the country were minor and narrow, lined with gorse bushes and rustic vineyard fencing, so Anna took to rolling her Humvee directly through the vineyards, tearing a hole in the dense vegetation. Furrows in the earth kept them bouncing in their seats, while vine stems and leafs battered by in a constant sappy barrage.
The GPS began to beep rapidly as they closed on the bunker. The white smudge Anna had taken for the antennae tower soon loomed up over the interwoven branches, crisp and sharply defined now.
"Four autocannons," Peters radioed from the second Humvee in the convoy, coming at it from an angle of one hundred and twenty degrees to the right. His voice was a bark that barely registered above the cough and bristle of the vineyard coming apart beneath their wheels. "Just like Salle's."
"Any electrical signal rising off them?" Anna called to Jake in back.
"None clear," he answered, listening intently through a handheld microwave dish pointed through the windshield. "Just a low buzzing."
"Is that caused by the shield?"
"It's not the same frequency as ours, but I think so."
This was essential information; one of the theories they'd been batting around for shutting the demons down without first hacking into the bunkers. Each demon had a different shutdown code on the hydrogen line; that seemed clear since only the button inside each bunker was capable of shutting them down. The working theory was that those shutdown codes could be tied to the frequency of the shield. It was possible. It was just one of the projects Lucas had volunteered for, claiming success in it meant they wouldn't have to infect the bunkers at all, to get at the off buttons.
"Keep that in mind," Anna said, "now all stop and everyone ready."
She hit the brakes hard and the Humvee skidded to a bumpy, sliding stop some two hundred yards from the gun turret, lodged in the middle of a thicket of cascading vines. Ropey tendrils with thick fleshy green leaves pressed up against the window. The engine roared down, leaving briefly the roar of two other vehicles nearby cutting out too, followed by silence and the ticking of the engine.
"Ollie," Anna called.
"Roger that," he answered, and somewhere one hundred and twenty degrees to the left he pushed open the ceiling hatch in his Humvee with the laser-targeter on his shoulder. He'd remained the best shot with heavy weaponry ever since he took out a demon on the
run as it bore down on Amo near Albuquerque.
"I think it's about to-" Jake said, then the air was split by a cacophonous-
RATATATATATATATAT
"Hoods up!" Anna shouted into the radio, and pushed the spring to raise the reinforced-armor front hood, blocking the windshield.
A grunt came through the radio, followed by an, "Oh shit!" and a thud from Ollie.
RATATATATATATATAT
"All four cannons are firing!" Ollie shouted. "One almost took my goddamn head off."
RATATATAT THUMP THUMP RATATATAT
Armor piercing rounds strafed the front of Anna's Humvee, plowing into the hood plating and shaking the whole vehicle as the autocannon fixed its targeting, digging at the hood like a ballistic woodpecker, every shot of the dozen fired per second hitting dead on, too fast to distinguish.
THUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUMP
The stink of burnt paint and atomized metal filled the inside of the cab, everything vibrated and Anna could barely hear herself shouting into the radio.
"Did you get a read, Ollie?"
"Maybe!" he shouted back.
"So light it up."
"Aye aye!" Feargal shouted from his Humvee in back, well out of range. "Loading, programming, firing."
There was no sound of the artillery load ejecting or whining by overhead, as there was no sound other than the endless THUUUUUUUUUUUUMP of the autocannons drilling into their armor, but some ten seconds later there was an almighty-
BANG
Which didn't stop the pummeling of the power drill on the hood plate, but did lessen the noise some.
"Ours has gone down!" Wanda shouted from her Humvee, one hundred twenty degrees to Anna's right.
"Hit it with everything you've got," Anna shouted. "Feargal, again! And Jake?"
"I'm on radar," Jake called back, "like we thought, they've launched. I'm reading three drones in the air already circling for height."
"Feargal?"
There was another BANG and the THUUUUUUMP of the autocannon against Anna's front hood faded to nothing.
"Switching over to ground-to-air," he answered. "Targeting the lead drone now. Damn, they're so damn small."
"Ollie can you target them with the laser?"
RATATATATATAT THUMP
"We're under fire again," Ollie called back. "The thing's revolved, it's got us pinned down with one of the reverse heads."
"Wanda!"
"On it."
This time Anna heard the whoosh of the rocket shoot out of the tube through the radio, followed by an answering BANG that didn't diminish the RATATATAT THUMP.
"It's revolved on us too," Wanda called. "Two heads still up, I missed."
Anna cursed.
"I've got a drone in sights, maybe," Feargal called. "Shall I take it or the autocannon?"
"Take it, I'll deal with the cannon."
"Roger that."
Anna reached back and Jake put an RPG in her hand. "Three in the belt, one in the tube," he said, before turning back to his radar screen, beeping still and feeding live information to Feargal.
Anna snagged the RPG and kicked open the side door, snapping a vine and squeezing out of the gap. Outside the noise of shells firing and hitting solid metal plate to left and right felt like the total chaos of being inside a hurricane. The two remaining autocannons were pinning down the two other Humvees, steadily boring through their armored hoods. Only she was free to move, but if the cannons were to strafe over and just one slug hit her?
Hydrostatic shock would kill her in seconds, yanking the blood from her body and out through the wound, even if the wound was not itself fatal.
No time like the present. She kicked her foot onto the ladder on the Humvee's flank and yelled into the radio mounted on her shoulder.
"Humvees advance!"
Wanda and Peters rogered back, and Anna pointed at Jake through the window as he lurched forward to drive the engine on. It coughed back to life and began to roll forwards.
Anna clung on to the side. Everywhere was the RATATATATAT. A brief foray cut over toward her Humvee, slugs THUMPed off the front screen, and she barely swung round to the back and into shelter in time, clinging to the Humvee's back rail.
RATATATATATATATATAT
THUMP THUMP THUMP
Ollie and Wanda were pinned down, and they were the best shots. Only Ollie could hit the mark at two hundred yards. But at one hundred?
Anna counted and waited as the Humvee forced a path through the vineyard. Peeking over the top she saw the autocannon tip, where the four guns were sheltered by four leaf-like hoods, revolving to keep fire on all three Humvees.
RATATATATATAT
THUMP
RATATATATATAT
They were all pinned down. The guns were working in concert, aiming to hold them there long enough for the drones to cycle up, so they could rain chaos from on high. There was no more time.
"Feargal, come on!" she shouted, then yanked on the railing and vaulted herself bodily up to the Humvee roof. Instantly the battlefield transformed, and she saw the muzzle flashes of the two dazzling autocannon, saw the two other Humvees, now each blazing under heavy fire like a welder's torch.
She set her feet as the Humvee rumbled on, raised the RPG to her shoulder, and sighted down the tube. Was it one hundred yards yet? The gun turret revolved and to her right and left the autocannons strafed over, cutting lines through the vine foliage.
RATATATATATATAT
She pulled the trigger.
WHOOSH went the rocket. The Humvee trundled on as if in slow motion.
RATATATATATAT
THUMP
A slug chewed into the Humvee roof by her foot, sending out flecks of metal that scored her calf.
THUMP went another, spraying her face with heat and tiny paint particles, then
BOOM
The head of the gun turret burst in a blazing red and orange fireball. The roar of incoming bullets stopped at once, followed by a host of firecracker explosions as the munitions in the autocannon train down the turret shot off like popcorn.
In the sky overhead, as if mirroring the explosions on earth, another explosion bloomed like a second sun. Peering against the sun, as the Humvee rolled on toward the concrete block, Anna tracked the missile's smoke trail back to Feargal kneeling atop his Humvee.
"Hell yeah!" Jake called through the radio. "Did you see that?"
"Two more, Feargal!" Anna called back. Her legs trembled. She stared up at the sky, but the drones were too small and too high already.
A second fireball burst, smaller and higher, from which the sound was a muted BANG. Anna watched for the third.
"Almost," Feargal said.
"Get it."
"Sending you the telemetry," said Ollie, kneeling now on his roof too and aiming the laser-targeter.
"Got it," Feargal said, and out shot another missile on a string of black smoke. They all watched it jet up into the bright sky, until-
BANG
A third fire mushroomed, the highest of all.
Cheers broke out across the assault squad. Anna let the RPG tube slide to clink against the Humvee's roof, and took a deep breath of cold and cordite smoke.
Phase one complete.
13. HYDROGEN LINE
Anna stood with Feargal, Wanda and Ollie atop the concrete block, looking up at the blackened pole of the gun turret. The hooded 'leaves' had fallen away now and lay on the rich brown loam below, leaving the warped barrels of the autocannons exposed to the sky, like stunted branches.
Julio had seen this same sight, she wondered. He'd taken out the Maine gun turret and the drones alone. Now she was here, facing the same decision. She wanted to talk to Ravi about it, not because he'd understand but because he'd listen. But Ravi wasn't here.
She looked out.
Jake was out there now with Lucas, surveying the vineyard. They didn't know where the bunker access points were, not with any more precision than the general radar sweep had given them from above, so they were mapp
ing it now with the hydrogen line scanner.
Feargal held his rifle across his chest, alert and on watch. Wanda and Ollie too. Peters and Macy were taking care of logistics; bringing the Humvees up into a protective circle round the block, getting out the cook fires and heating up some rations.
They had less than a day now before the demon from this bunker came back, along with any friends it had managed to convert. In addition, at any minute the manhole to the bunker could pop open and people could emerge in shielded suits, shooting first and asking questions later.
"I'm going up," she said.
Feargal frowned. "Up where?"
Anna pointed, then laid her hands on the gun turret. It was much wider around than the mast of her catamaran, but irregular joints in the pole provided handholds enough for her to climb.
"Are you sure-?" Ollie began, always cautious, but by that point Anna was already climbing. She dug her fingertips in, balanced on her toes, and ascended. Soon she was above head height, and already the metal was growing warmer to the touch as she closed on where the rocket had blasted it.
At the top sixty-odd feet high, she hooked an elbow around one of the thick, twisted autocannon barrels and rested her feet in an alcove dug into the metal.
Apparently these turrets were designed to go up and down. It was how they got the demon out; she'd learned that from diagrams in the Maine Command. She tried to imagine the people in their bunker somewhere nearby, underground. They wouldn't know what she was doing now, with all their cameras and drones knocked out. Probably they were desperate. They wouldn't know the ocean were coming. They only knew their demon was coming to save them.
Anna sighed. They had to be scared, deep down in their nest. They would have seen her plane above, and they'd just experienced their two main lines of defense destroyed in less than a minute. If that didn't put them in the mood to talk, she didn't know what would. She hadn't wanted to talk, hadn't wanted to give them that much chance, but Amo's orders had been clear, and Lucas' logic was undeniable.
The Bordeaux countryside was beautiful from up here, out of the lingering fog of gunpowder and powdered metal. The heavy scent of rotting grapes filled the air, enough to make her feel drowsy and a little drunk. Vineyards stretched away in all directions; gnarly brown boughs slathered with verdant green foliage and clumps of budding spring grapes. The sun was falling, though the air felt balmy on her skin.
The List (Zombie Ocean Book 5) Page 15