Day of the Delphi

by Jon Land

  “He’s got us pinned down,” Traggeo told him, his eyes sweeping the crevices and ledges above for the gunman’s position.

  A peculiarly even coating of snow hung over his stubble-lined head. His blazing eyes swept the mountain again.

  “I’m going after him,” Traggeo said. “You try to make it back to the mine.”

  “The mine?” Kreller raised.

  “We’ve walked into a trap meant to keep us away from it. Whoever’s doing the shooting isn’t alone.”

  “The warheads …”

  Traggeo nodded and slid sideways enough to ensure the angle of his climb would allow the mountain to serve as cover. Kreller followed Traggeo’s impossible progress through the snow and ice briefly before starting to inch his way back in the mine’s direction.

  Kreller had just rounded the length of the curve, shoulders pressed against ice-layered rock, when a rumbling found his ears. He came cautiously away from the sheer rock wall in order to catch sight of the sound’s source.

  His eyes bulged.

  One of the trucks carrying the nuclear stockpile was barreling through the snow, lights on and engine grinding in low gear. The truck took the curve leading onto the straightaway just ahead, and Kreller saw that incredibly it was pulling both of the cargo trailers. It swerved as its tires fought to maintain their desperate purchase on the road through the snow’s hold. The second of the trailers fishtailed madly, drawing sparks when it scraped against the mountainside.

  Kreller held his ground and leveled his rifle on the cab as the truck bore down on him.

  Johnny Wareagle ducked an instant before the windshield fractured. Glass blew into the truck’s cab, the storm fast to follow. He clung to the wheel and felt the thump of the big truck slamming into the gunman and hurtling him aside.

  Troop 116 had been all too happy to assist Johnny in implementing his plan. Even with their help, though, the process took dangerously long, forcing Sal Belamo to hold off the enemy by himself for a much greater than anticipated duration.

  The trailers Wareagle was hauling whiplashed madly from side to side, and a dangerous curve was coming fast. Johnny knew applying the brakes now would send him off the mountain and shifted the truck into its lowest gear to regain control. He let the heavily armored trailers kiss the mountain’s side and ride against it through the curve. Sparks flew out and dissipated harmlessly in the snow.

  As Johnny steered the big truck on, the back trailer grazed up against the stalled Sno-Cat and pushed it even closer to the edge. The road dipped into another straightaway and Johnny eased off on the gas to let the big truck coast. He was experimenting with the brakes when he saw Sal Belamo waving his arms on the side of the road. Johnny couldn’t risk trying to bring the truck to a complete stop, so Belamo had to run to catch up, the last stretch covered in a long leap to the passenger side sill. He managed to grab the mirror and kick his legs up after him.

  Wareagle leaned over and threw the door open. The door nearly brushed against the mountain as Sal Belamo pulled himself all the way inside and closed it behind him.

  “Thanks for stopping,” Sal huffed. “You ask me, they should take your license away.”

  Johnny wiped the melting snow off his forehead and aimed the big truck through the storm.

  Traggeo had stopped his climb up the mountain when he heard the sound of the truck’s engine. A brief crackle of gunfire followed and then the two-trailer rig slid toward him, its windshield shattered. He had fully expected an unknown enemy to make a concerted effort to seize the mine’s contents. But driving a double-hitched rig out through this storm? The thought was too incredible for him to even have considered it. What kind of man would attempt such a thing?

  Even if Traggeo had been able to angle himself for a clear shot at the crazed driver, a direct hit would almost surely result in the precious cargo being lost over the mountain’s side. No, he had to catch up to the rig and somehow take control of it.

  Toward that end, he began a rapid descent of the ice-encrusted mountain. He was halfway down when the rig slid by, allowing him to catch a glimpse of the driver. In that instant everything became chillingly clear.

  Johnny Wareagle!

  To the victor of this battle would go the spoils of the trailers’ contents. But more important to Traggeo was being granted a second chance to slay the legend. Win this battle and the scalp of Johnny Wareagle would be his. With it would come the legend’s vast power, Traggeo certain the spirits would have no choice but to accept him.

  The rig had passed out of sight down the mountain by the time Traggeo reached the road and rushed for the Sno-Cat.

  The satellite feed hooked up to Mount Weather and Samuel Jackson Dodd’s space station served a far larger purpose than simple entertainment. It was also an eye that could see the whole of the battle as it unfolded. Cantrell had always expected some pockets of limited resistance. It was the satellite, though, that was making it possible for him to deal with this unexpected, and organized, opponent his Delphi troops had to contend with. The explosion at the Old Post Office Tower had dealt him a devastating blow that instantly cut his manpower by a third. The ever-so-crucial timing of the operation would be considerably off as a result. Cantrell scrambled to compensate and redirect his forces accordingly.

  He had divided the screen into eight sections, one of which featured an overview shot of the Mall, where sniper fire had begun cutting down his men there at will.

  “The observation deck,” the general realized, and worked his controls until a shot of the remnants of the Old Post Office Tower replaced one of the eight images pictured. Barrel flashes coming from within its tower confirmed his suspicions. “Ground control, we have sniper fire originating in the Old Post Office Tower. Neutralize it.”

  Seconds after the command was issued, Delphi marksmen stationed atop the Washington Monument turned their attention away from fleeing bystanders and onto the observation deck of the Old Post Office Tower. They opened up with a nonstop barrage of automatic fire at shapes they had no reason to expect were not friendlies until now. Instantly the shapes vanished. But the firing from the observation deck continued to the east toward the Capitol, the one perch the Monument snipers could not home in on.

  “Destroy the tower,” Cantrell ordered. “Repeat, destroy the tower.”

  “We got trouble at the Capitol Building, Mac,” Arlo Cleese told Blaine over the walkie-talkie.

  “On my way,” McCracken returned and spun round to begin a dash down the Mall.

  The sound of explosions made him turn back toward the observation deck of the Old Post Office Tower. Rockets from hand-held launchers had obliterated the top floor and a good portion of those immediately beneath it. Flames peeked out from gaping fissures in the tower’s white-stone structure. Melodic, almost ghost-like strains of the Congress Bells filtered into the air as debris slammed into them. Five good men and a prime advantage had been lost.

  Blaine gritted his teeth and rushed on. Night was descending, and he held to the hope that this would favor the hit-and-run tactics of the Midnight Riders. They had split into a dozen teams focused entirely about Constitution, Independence, and Pennsylvania avenues. McCracken ran into the first team huddled amidst the masses behind the cover of the Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial.

  “Feels pretty strange for this to be keeping me alive,” said a balding man who must have spent the years that had claimed the listed names protesting the war.

  McCracken placed his hand against part of one of the year’s rolls, struck by a different sort of irony. “It does at that.”

  Delphi troops were spilling their way up from the area of the Lincoln Memorial. The Riders swung toward them and opened fire with their automatic weapons, taking the Delphi troops totally by surprise. A covered truck passing on Constitution Avenue screeched to a halt and jolted into reverse, Delphi reinforcements hanging from its rear ready to lunge out to join the battle. McCracken charged toward the truck and pulled the pin from one of Cleese’s stock
of grenades as he ran. It was airborne in the next instant, followed immediately by a second. The first hit the ground and rolled under the chassis when the truck came to a stop. The second wobbled toward the truck’s open-flapped rear.

  The explosions came within an instant of each other. The truck spun sideways when the first erupted, swallowed in heavy flames. The second explosion caught those men who had already managed to drop down.

  McCracken turned round to see another horde of enemy troops storming his way from the southwest. The Delphi’s intelligence was incredibly precise. Their ability to know the source of every explosion, ambush, and attack was severely restricting the effectiveness of what should have been a brilliant guerrilla-type strategy.

  How were the Delphi able to mount reactive strikes so accurately?

  Blaine stole a glance at the darkening sky. Much of the day of the Delphi was about Prometheus, about satellites orbiting thousands of miles overhead. Could one of Dodd’s be—

  Of course! That was it!

  McCracken left this team of Riders to the battle and started across Constitution Avenue. He kept his pace as fast as he dared without revealing himself, staying low on the sidewalk to use the parked and abandoned cars as cover. Minutes later he reached the trio of buildings known as the Federal Triangle without incident and rushed toward a familiar monolith with an M stenciled near the top. What better place to make his way through the city than beneath it, where the eyes of Sam Jack Dodd could never find him?

  Blaine sprinted the last stretch to the Federal Triangle Metro station and plunged down the stalled steps of the escalator.

  The sixteen-member Hostage and Rescue Team on the Hoover Building’s top level had already suffered six casualties by the time director Ben Samuelson got there. The enemy was using rockets and grenades to pummel the structure. The steel blast shutters had buckled and even caved in at several points, allowing dusk and enemy fire to filter in.

  Samuelson helped tie tourniquets round a pair of leg wounds, then armed himself with a scope-equipped M16 and took the place of one of the downed men in an empty port. The remaining team members fanned out across the once-fortified floor.

  “You better have a look at this,” one of them called from his port overlooking Pennsylvania Avenue.

  Samuelson crawled over and peered down to see a dozen or so figures had entered the battle on their side, taking the Delphi troops laying waste to the Hoover Building by surprise. They weren’t police and they certainly weren’t soldiers. Their ambush worked spectacularly at first, but the tide changed as the enemy became aware of the new combatants’ presence. Since they had failed to leave themselves a clear escape route, the figures found themselves trapped and forced onto the defensive. Samuelson seized the opportunity to order his marksmen to concentrate their efforts on trying to catch the opposition in a cross fire. The friendlies, though, whoever they were, had already been overwhelmed by the hail of Delphi bullets concentrated in their direction. Those who tried to flee were cut down even faster than the ones who held as fast as they could to their cover.

  “Who are they?” Samuelson asked out loud. “Who the hell are they?”

  “Bad news,” Arlo Cleese told Kristen, lowering the walkie-talkie from his ear.

  “What?”

  “Team that managed to take the White House right out from under these bastards is under siege. Not enough firepower. Fucked big time.”

  “What are you gonna do?”

  “Just one thing avails itself, sister.”

  And Cleese pulled himself through the curtain and into the driver’s seat of the van. Incredibly, a number of civilian vehicles were still braving the battle in search of flight or at least safety. Cleese chased the ponytail from his face, gunned the van’s engine, and steered it into a sharp U-turn toward the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.

  It didn’t take long before the White House came into view. Initially, in a surprise charge, a pair of Midnight Rider teams had overcome the attacking Delphi troops from the rear. They managed to secure a hold on the building’s front, only to face dozens of reinforcements rushed into the area. They had expended virtually all their ammo and grenades in repelling the opposition’s advances and could continue to do so only if Cleese found a way to get them restocked.

  Surging down Pennsylvania Avenue toward the ravaged White House, there was only one option he could see.

  “Hold on,” he told Kristen.

  She watched him smile and then chuckle. He was laughing hysterically by the time the van lunged toward a chasm blown out of the iron fence enclosing the grounds and past the corpses of a number of marines who had died trying to fend off the Delphi’s initial assault.

  A hail of bullets trailed the van as it surged onto the White House lawn. The sound of several shells testing the van’s armored steel skin reminded Kristen of popcorn popping as she slid back into the rear to get the equipment ready for immediate dispersal. She felt a thump to her leg, like a hard kick, and looked down to see blood spreading through her jeans. Her hands went for the wound instinctively and felt the mangled flesh.

  “Heeeeeeeeee-yahhhhhhhhhhhhh!” Arlo Cleese’s bellow rose above the sounds of the gunshots, and he pushed the van up the White House steps on three blown tires. He jerked the wheel sideways at the last to bring the passenger side door even with the entrance. The fresh supply of armaments could now be distributed from some semblance of cover. Pushing down the shock from her wound, Kristen began passing the heavy machine guns and rocket launchers up to Cleese in the cab of the van. She could see blood flowing down his right arm as he handed the weapons to those beyond.

  She had just crawled up to join him when the hands that had lifted the fresh weapons out reached in for the two of them. Kristen watched the scene dazedly as she was carried into the front of the White House. Between eight and ten surviving Riders hurried to get the tripods set up and the pair of 50-caliber machine guns in place atop them. There were six portable rocket launchers as well, and a half box of grenades to be distributed down the short line offering resistance.

  By the time they set her down, Kristen couldn’t feel her leg anymore. It was all she could do to crawl to the window to watch the battle raging outside. She smelled acrid smoke and realized part of the White House was burning. Dimly, she registered a stubborn fire alarm continuing to wail from one of the floors above.

  Kristen caught glimpses of the remaining Riders struggling to repel another determined assault by the Delphi. Their new machine guns clacked off with little pause and the already distinctive thumping poof! of grenade blasts were sounding with regularity. A trio of off-target Delphi rockets smashed into the White House’s second level and showered remnants of the ceiling down upon her.

  A Rider wearing a bandage around his head dragged a resistant Arlo Cleese into the foyer and deposited him next to Kristen.

  “Can you fucking believe this?” he moaned, trying to rub the life back into his right shoulder, which was even more mangled than her leg. “I can’t even hold any of the fucking guns I delivered.”

  “We’re going to die,” she said flatly.

  Cleese pulled a half-gone marijuana cigarette from his jacket with his good hand and then flicked a lighter against it.

  “Not if our friend Mac has anything to say about it.” He inhaled deeply and then held the joint out to her. “Care for a toke, sis?”

  The switch thrown at Mount Weather had crippled the city’s famed Metro in its tracks, the vast tunnels reduced to nothing more than safe havens for those who had managed to flee the battle aboveground. McCracken charged past hundreds of terrified faces in the dim emergency lighting. The air conditioning had died along with the power, and already the heat was stifling. The lack of circulation made the rank stench of fear all the worse.

  Blaine had been careful to choose the proper feed line to take him in the direction of the Capitol Building and followed the cement walk as far as he could before leaping down onto the dead tracks. He then picked up his p
ace again, conscious of the echoing clip-clop of his shoes against the rail ties. The best chance the Midnight Riders had now was to hold firm to the prime landmarks on the Delphi’s target list, like the Capitol Building, long enough for help to arrive.

  The route from the Federal Triangle complex to the Capitol was elbow-shaped, L’Enfant Plaza station lying at the bend. McCracken sped on again after pausing there long enough to catch his breath, and reached the Capitol South station to find it empty except for a few dozen refugees from the battle. Bounding up the steps of another stalled escalator, he reached the top and the outdoors out of breath. In the failing daylight Blaine could hear the sounds of rocket and light arms fire, and could see constant flashes of light reaching him from nearby the Capitol.

  A block later his knees nearly buckled at the sight of it. The Capitol’s marble dome had been splintered by rockets and its topmost portion had caved in. The rest of the dome looked like the bottom chunk of a shattered glass. Additional chasms had been dug out of the stately fronts of House and Senate, as well as the Rotunda centered between them. The long steps leading up to all three were littered with bodies, both Riders and Delphi by all appearances. The Riders, though, were holding firm in their defense of the building. Vastly outnumbered and unquestionably running low on ammo, they held their ground determined to repel any direct assault that would lead to the building’s total destruction.

  But the massive concentration of Delphi troops lining 1st Street and Union Square would not be denied much longer unless Blaine could find a way to stop their mounting force. He had the night’s first darkness now to conceal his approach. But what was he going to approach with? What could he possibly use to …