Quarrels tried to maneuver Samantha and himself past the bandit who was now blocking the way. He raised his pistol. “Let go of her,” the bandit said. “She’s ours.”
“Sure, yeah,” Quarrels said, releasing his grip from Samantha. “Take her.”
The bandit moved to Samantha and Quarrels struck out at him. In the blink of an eye, Quarrels stabbed the bandit in the neck with his bad hand, with his middle finger. The finger jammed into the bandit’s carotid artery, shutting off the blood flow to the brigand’s brain. He yelped and then his eyes rolled back and he fell to the ground, unconscious. Samantha looked down at him, then back to Quarrels who held the finger up in the air. “See. It’s good for two things,” he said, smirking.
He reached in his pocket and pulled out the explosive. Then he pressed a button on it and lobbed it to the ground a dozen feet away. Samantha stared at the explosive and then bolted after Quarrels who was shimmying down a decline to a concrete pad at the rear of the vault. There were two SUVs idling, and one of them had a trailer where the kayak from inside the vault had been mounted on the roof, the motorcycle hanging from a hitch carrier above the rear bumper.
Xan appeared around the other side of the door as shouts echoed from behind and—
BOOM!
The explosive Quarrels had tossed, detonated, buying them a few precious seconds. Xan grabbed Samantha by the wrist and hauled her into the SUV. She slumped into her seat and caught the reflection of the wooden crate she’d seen earlier. It was sitting at the very back of the SUV. Doors were closed and before Samantha could utter a word in protest, she was being driven out toward the mountains.
RANE FLINCHED at the sound of Quarrels’ explosive. He moved with his men around the side of the vault and saw two things: smoke rising from the small blast and one of his men, lying on the ground. Beyond this came the screech of tires and he saw the SUVs with Xan and the others, vanishing across a dry creek bed.
He had thoughts about sending some of his men to chase Xan and the others, but then he realized they were as good as dead anyway. Besides, he didn’t have enough personnel to spare. The true battle was yet to come, the confrontation with the Marines. Turning back, he searched the horizon, watching the smoke continue to billow up from the vehicles destroyed by the glider.
“She’s coming,” he said to his men. “The girl’s mother. The Marine. She’s on her way.”
“What do you want us to do, sir?” one of the bandits asked.
“We’ll go out to greet her,” Rane said. “If this be our time to cross over, we shall do so boldly.”
He followed his men back into their machines and then they drove off toward the east to meet Quinn.
18
Eli drove the Jeep like a madman, redlining it down over the road that rose and fell, following the contours of the land. The machine shot through the intersection of a small town, whipping past deserted buildings and abandoned cars. Quinn pointed to a small spiral of smoke in the distance and Eli drove toward it. The shadow of the glider passed overhead and Quinn angled a hand outside and gave a thumb’s up.
Giovanni, seated in the back of the Jeep, tapped Quinn on the shoulder. “Those weren’t resistance fighters back there.”
“Dead enders,” she said with a nod. “Scavengers, bandits. Looks like they linked up with Xan and the others.”
Eli shook his head. “Them aliens are looking better and better. At least they don’t turn on each other. What you see is what you get.”
Giovanni leaned back, deep in thought. “This is the natural order of things.”
“How’s that?” Eli asked.
“Milo’s steeped in military history,” Giovanni replied. “He knows about guerrilla war and counter-insurgency stuff. He told me that any time a foreign power invades and the people fight back, they eventually split into different groups and turn on each other. He said the same kind of bandits and insurgent groups rose up in Cuba, Greece, Iraq…”
“What do they want?” Eli asked.
Quinn shot Eli a look. “What everyone wants. Power.”
Giovanni leaned over Quinn’s seat and pointed. “We’ve got echoes, boys and girls.”
Quinn could see dust rising up in the distance, just beyond the point where the road curled over a hill and vanished from sight. She could tell by the plumes that there were likely several machines either driving to meet them or idling, waiting to spring an ambush.
“Pull over,” Quinn said.
Eli stopped the Jeep on a gravel verge as Quinn exited, cradling her rocket launcher. Giovanni stood next to her, slapping a magazine into his assault rifle. They both watched the glider overhead, gaining altitude, moving toward the brow of the hill that was at least a half mile away. Quinn closed her eyes and quietly prayed that Samantha wasn’t with whatever awaited them over the horizon. If she was, they’d stand little chance of finding a way to safely rescue her. More likely, they’d be forced to surrender and hand over their weapons once again to Xan, or the groups of killers who were in league with her. She hoped like hell that it didn’t come to that.
THE MOOD in the glider was tense. Hayden and the other warriors surrounded Cody, looking over his shoulder. He was trawling through the multi-colored map of the landscape below, tracking various objects. He tapped the console and powered up a real time image of the Jeep below, the road, and the things that waited for the Jeep on the other side of the hill. Everyone could see four armored SUVs, the ones containing Rane and his crew, waiting to attack the Jeep. Cody sifted through the imagery, zooming down and around the SUVs, but nothing was entirely clear. Rane was visible and a few of his men, but Cody couldn’t be sure who the other shadowy forms were inside the vehicles.
“I can’t tell who’s inside,” Cody said.
“Can’t you dial down?” Milo asked.
“I’m already granular,” Cody replied, pinching the screen, drawing to within a few inches of Rane’s smirking face.
“Who’s that asshole?” Renner asked.
“Corpse number one,” Hayden offered.
Cody shook his head. “Not until we get some clarity.”
Hayden smiled. “Your wish is my command.”
The big man grabbed the flight controls and slotted them down. The glider eased up and then nosed toward the ground, slicing through the air, dropping from several thousand feet to several hundred in the span of a few seconds.
RANE and his bandits scrambled out of their SUVs and took cover in a series of culverts that lined both sides of the road. They’d spotted the Jeep earlier and had been preparing to ambush it when the glider appeared. Rane began a profanity-laced mumble, momentarily unnerved by the sight of the craft. In all the time he’d watched the alien operations from afar, he’d never seen a glider operating by itself. What was unique about this moment? And why the hell hadn’t the glider attacked the Jeep? He tried to process the significance of this and then his jaw locked. Fuck it, he thought. He’d attack both of them.
Whistling to his men, Rane dropped down into the culvert, assault rifle in hand. He looked up as one of his warriors, a musclebound bruiser with a mohawk, picked up a goodie from back in the armaments vault, a weapon called a squad automatic rifle, a SAW that weighed over twenty pounds with ammunition. The fighter held the thing up like a pistol. The female bandit next to him clutched a machine-gun with an undermounted grenade launcher and two more of the bandits carried light anti-armor weapons and surface-to-air missiles. He smiled. They were ready to give and receive.
The glider scythed down through the air and Rane held up several fingers.
“Wait on it,” Rane said. “Three, two, one … NOW!”
The bandit with the SAW rose up out of his hiding place and went “cyclic” on the glider, blowing through nine-hundred rounds of ammunition in a minute. It was a sight to behold and Rane rose and fired out his own gun as the others did likewise.
He watched the rounds from his fighters ricochet off the alien glider, which veered off, slicing close
enough to the ground to kick up an enormous cloud of dust and debris. Realizing that the confusion of the moment would buy him some time, Rane decided to call an audible. He shouted to three of his men and ran back up toward the SUVs. The men clambered inside the largest SUV and Rane ordered them to head east as fast as they could. They would use the chaos as cover to attack the Jeep.
THE INCOMING GROUND fire continued to pelt the glider, but did little damage. Hayden flew the machine down past Rane and his men, Cody still struggling to match the identities of everyone below. He swiped through the faces of the bandits and then zoomed back to the SUVs, but still couldn’t discern whether Samantha was hidden inside.
“We gotta smoke them out!” Cody yelled. “I need to be able to see who’s inside the rides!”
“I’m not firing at them!” Hayden shouted back. “I can’t!”
Cody looked over. “It’s the only way!”
Hayden piloted the glider back down and around as the console started blinking. The bandits had fired a pair of surface-to-air rockets.
“How about now? Still not willing to fire at them?” Cody asked.
Hayden pointed to the console which was blinking red. Cody scanned the controls and realized they’d lost nearly all of their weapons.
“Must have happened when we crash landed,” Hayden said.
Cody’s gaze found his. “We’ve only got one weapon left.”
QUINN STOOD next to the Jeep, rooted in place, paralyzed with fear and indecision, her rocket launcher on the ground near her feet. Somebody had opened fire on the glider, but the glider hadn’t returned the favor. Wasn’t that the sign? Wasn’t that what Hayden had told her? To wait for the glider to open fire, to bring the hammer down? The glider hadn’t returned fire because Samantha was probably on the other side of the hill. That had to be it, Quinn thought to herself.
“What’s the good word, Quinn?” Giovanni asked.
Quinn didn’t respond, she was too busy watching the rockets fired by Rane’s men spiral up into the air with witch-like screams, roaring after the glider.
“QUINN!” Giovanni shouted.
Snapping out of her daze, she looked over.
“What the hell are we doing?!” he asked again.
The horn on the Jeep suddenly sounded.
Quinn looked over to see Eli pointing to the hill. An SUV was visible, driving over it, accelerating, heading directly toward them.
“We’ve got to get ready to defend ourselves,” Giovanni said to Quinn.
“Wha – what if Samantha’s in there?”
Giovanni leaned in close to her. “You know how it is. We can’t sacrifice everybody for one person.”
Quinn glared at him. “My kid’s not expendable.”
Giovanni reached for the rocket launcher and Quinn grabbed his wrist. “Do not do this, Giovanni.”
Giovanni shoved her to the ground and grabbed the launcher, taking up a position in a ditch by the side of the road. Quinn hesitated, and then she lunged at him, her hands around his throat.
HAYDEN LEANED INTO THE CONTROLS, powering the glider back up into the air while simultaneously watching the missiles accelerate and lock onto the glider.
“Those suckers are searching for a signature,” Cody said, studying the missiles on the glider’s console.
“Heatseekers,” Hayden said to himself. “Old school missiles.”
“You want me to get Renner ready?”
Hayden shook his head. “Where’s our heat signature located?”
“The engines.”
“What happens if the engines were off?” Hayden asked.
“Um … no heat signature.”
Hayden smiled. “Exactly.”
Cody’s face fell. “But you can’t kill the engines.”
“How come?” Hayden asked.
“Well … gravity for one.”
“What else?”
“Um … we’d die,” Cody added.
Hayden reached down and tapped on the console as Cody’s mouth unhinged. “What the hell are you doing?!”
Hayden killed the power to the glider.
All sound leeched from the cabin of the glider and there was a moment that it simply drifted through the sky like a kite.
Then it began falling straight down.
Toward the incoming missiles.
Cody closed his eyes and screamed.
Hayden was too down in his zone to notice.
He piloted the glider manually, flying it like some shuttle in an old-school video game.
One missile approached, then another.
Hayden juked his hand left and right, able to manually manipulate the glider’s rudders, the craft slaloming between the missiles, which flashed harmlessly past.
Hayden’s eyes flicked from the controls to the altimeter.
The glider was two-thousand feet off the ground and dropping fast.
“H-how did you do that?” Cody asked, his teeth chattering.
“I’m not scared of nothin’,” Hayden replied. “I got ice in my semen.”
“That’s a lovely visual,” Cody said, watching Hayden tap the console. Both of them expected the engines to roar to life, but they didn’t.
“C’mon, Hayden,” Cody said. “Power them up.”
Hayden eyed the altimeter again: seventeen hundred feet.
“You h-hear me?” Cody stuttered.
Hayden was silent as the glider dropped to fifteen-hundred feet. The ground was spreading out before the cockpit window as Cody lurched over and scanned the console. His fingers danced across the translucent surface and the engines finally roared to life, Hayden grabbed the controls and pulled back as—
The glider swooped low over the heads of the bandits who continued to fire on it, the sound like hail slamming against a tin roof.
Vaulting back up, the glider rocketed several thousand feet into the air in the blink of an eye.
That’s when Cody spotted two things: two SUVs speeding off, nine or ten miles beyond where the bandits were, and an immense body of water that the SUVs were driving toward. Recognition washed over Cody. He remembered seeing one of those SUVs back at Shiloh. It was Xan! “My God,” he said to himself, then louder, “That’s where they are!” he pointed at the body of water. “That’s where Xan’s going!”
Hayden nodded, scanning the water in the distance. “That’s where the aliens are.”
“That’s where they’re taking Samantha,” Cody replied, zooming in on the retreating SUVs. “We have to go after them.”
Hayden pointed down. “We gotta save Quinn’s ass first.” He grabbed the controls and yanked the glider down and around, heading back toward the bandits and the bridge that lay on the other side of the hill. Cody and Hayden scanned the bandits who continued to fire on the glider.
“WE GOTTA TAKE THOSE BASTARDS OUT,” Hayden growled. “You know what we’ve gotta do.”
“
Cody nodded. “Silent, but deadly.”
Cody reached down and tapped the flight controls, opening a console on the glider as a flurry of sharpened, metal darts began dropping down.
Down on the ground, the bandits watched the sky blacken as thousands of metal darts fell toward them. They shouted and ran for cover as—
WHUMP! WHUMP! WHUMP!
The spikes began thudding down.
Kicking up plumes of dirt and debris.
The bandits raced for the SUVs.
But they were a fraction too late.
The darts slammed into the ground, then pounded into the SUVs…
…Ripping open the roofs.
...Tearing the hoods off like the tops on tin cans.
The bandits concealed inside were eviscerated.
Several bandits witnessed this on the outside and galloped in the opposite direction, away from the SUVs and the approaching cloud of darts.
They were fast.
The darts were faster.
WHUMP! WHUMP! WHUMP!
Metal met flesh, the bandits cut down, m
id-stride.
A metal dart cleaved the skull of the bandit who’d been firing the SAW, splitting him down the middle, the two halves of his body flopping to the ground in a red wash.
The glider sharked past overhead, continuing to drop the darts as it cleared the top of the hill, pursuing Rane’s SUV which accelerated down toward the bridge and the Jeep.
Rane’s men were firing their guns, pummeling the Jeep.
Eli jacked the Jeep into gear and reversed it wildly back down the road. Quinn and Giovanni were outside on the ground, still struggling for the rocket launcher, trading blows in a ditch that lay just below an embankment that flanked the road. Quinn saw the glider dropping the metal darts, but still wasn’t sure if Samantha was in the approaching SUV or not. She snatched the launcher tube away from Giovanni as he squared up on her, fists raised.
“Gimme the goddamn thing!” Giovanni shouted.
She shook her head. “Not until you promise me that you won’t use it!”
“What the hell good is it if I can’t use it?!” he replied, incredulous.
Quinn swung the launcher like a bat at Giovanni who ducked under it. He grabbed the metal tube and yanked it back. Quinn was on him in a flash, trying to pry the launcher from him.
“You’ll kill her if you open fire!” Quinn screamed.
“You don’t know if she’s even in there!” Giovanni replied, stabbing a finger at the approaching SUV.
“We can’t take the risk!”
Giovanni planted a boot on Quinn’s knee and shoved her to the ground.
“I love you, Quinn, but if we die, so does the planet.”
He hoisted the launcher and churned up the hill. Quinn hesitated, then she pushed herself up, screaming, charging after him. She vaulted forward and tackled Giovanni as—
BAROOM!
The launcher accidentally fired with a gaseous WHUMP!
Giovanni and Quinn fell to the ground, watching the rocket arc wildly forward like a burning flare, before hitting the middle of the road.
Syndicate Wars: False Dawn (Seppukarian Book 4) Page 11