No Sanctuary Box Set: The No Sanctuary Omnibus - Books 1-6

by Mike Kraus

  “Sarah, just—look, is there anyone else here who can help coordinate?”

  Sarah’s eyes were screwed shut and she whispered her response, trying to hold herself together as the medics worked on what was left of her leg. “Most of the officers were taken out when they hit command. I have to coordinate it.”

  Linda looked down at Sarah and took the older woman’s hand, gripping it tightly in her own. Sarah’s hand felt cold and weak, losing much of the strength she had shown only a moment earlier. “Jackson?” Linda kept her eyes on Sarah as she spoke.

  “What is it?”

  “I need you to take over here. Keep an eye on Sarah and start rounding people up to get that distraction ready.”

  “Linda, I—”

  “Save it, Jackson. Frank and I are heading across the bridge in that Humvee we took in. Once we get across and disable the mortars we’re going to immediately go after Omar. As soon as the mortar fire stops, rally the troops and kick these assholes in the teeth!”

  “Can’t you just take a couple more people with you?”

  “Nope.” Linda shook her head and looked back down at Sarah. “Do you have any of the high-gain trackers left?”

  Sarah nodded again. “Storage. Yellow boxes.”

  “That’s enough!” One of the medics shouted and pushed Linda back. “If you want your friend here to live, you need to go!”

  Linda didn’t fight the medic, but looked at Jackson as he stepped back as well, giving the medical personnel room to work. “Make sure she lives, Jackson.”

  “Will do. When do you want the fifteen minutes to start?”

  “No need; I’m going to pick up a tracker so you can monitor us. Just keep the receiver pointed at the bridge and as soon as you see us waiting, get the distraction started.”

  “Those things have such a narrow field of view that it’ll be useless once you get very far—”

  “Jackson? Just do it. Okay?”

  Lieutenant Jackson nodded and gave both Linda and Frank a pat on their backs. “Stay safe. As soon as those mortars are down we’ll hit ‘em like they never thought possible.”

  “Make sure you do.” Linda smiled at him before motioning to Frank. “Come on, let’s get moving.”

  ***

  “What are these things, anyway?”

  Linda fiddled with a small, matchbox-sized device she had pulled out of some thick foam padding in a large yellow crate. The device finally emitted a soft amber glow on one side and she slipped it into her pocket. “Tracking devices.” she said, grabbing a laptop-sized black rectangle from the box and depressing a switch on the side. The top of the device flipped open and a small screen appeared, along with several buttons. Linda handed the device to Frank. “Press the green button in the middle and point it at me.”

  Frank pressed the button and the screen on the tracker lit up. As he angled it toward Linda the screen brightened, showing a blinking icon along with an estimated range between the tag in her pocket and the tracking device. “Huh. Nice. Why are you carrying that, though?”

  Linda took the tracker back from Frank and shoved it into her pack and they started moving toward the Humvee. “Comms are a mess right now, but nobody uses these things anymore and they’re super easy to pick up. They’ll be able to track our approximate location and use that to help coordinate the counterattack.”

  “Seems… crude.”

  Linda shrugged. “Whatever works. If we can get through on the radio, great. If not, though, we’ve got a backup. Plus, there are other uses for these things, too.”

  Frank started to ask what she meant but was distracted by the whistle of an incoming mortar that exploded a few dozen feet away, sending shards of concrete and asphalt spewing in all directions. Linda’s hurried but calm demeanor changed in an instant and she broke into a run, shouting at Frank as more whistling became audible in the distance. “Let’s go, let’s go!”

  They reached the Humvee and threw their gear in the back, then Linda jumped behind the wheel and Frank climbed in next to her. The engine coughed and sputtered as it started, but after a few choice words from both Linda and Frank it finally roared to life. Linda threw the vehicle into drive and took off, winding around the command center and the maze of HESCO bastions and sandbags to get to the north end of the barricade. A chain link fence had been placed across the road, and she pressed down on the accelerator as they approached it, ignoring the shouts from the soldiers positioned behind barriers on either side.

  The fence split open with a loud crash and the metal scraped and screeched against the Humvee as the vehicle pushed forward, heading into what was essentially no-man’s land in between the city and the nearest bridge north over the river. The bridge had several large trucks parked at the southern end, with the rearmost one only half there, having been nearly completely destroyed during the initial attacks. The other trucks were abandoned by their drivers at the time, but the way in which they were positioned offered excellent concealment and cover from the attackers to the north.

  Linda pulled up next to the trucks and grabbed the radio from the console, switched it on and started talking loudly into the microphone. “Base, this is Rollins and Richards. We’re at the bridge. Start the diversion, over.” A squelch of static and a torrent of voices called back and she shook her head, trying to pick up any trace of a reply from Jackson. After a few seconds she called out again. “Jackson, this is Rollins! We are in position! How copy?”

  No discernable response followed yet again, and Linda shook her head as she put the radio back down. Frank looked at her with a raised eyebrow. “Now what?”

  “We wait and hope that Jackson heard us but either can’t reply or his reply’s getting lost in all of the…” She trailed off and turned around in her seat, looking behind at the barricade in the distance.

  “What’s that?” Frank asked as he turned around, noticing the same thing she had. The sporadic fire from the northern edge of the city had stopped, and the only sounds of battle to be heard were from the attackers across the river. A few moments later, though, the situation drastically changed.

  An explosive amount of fire erupted from behind the barricade as every able-bodied soldier threw all that they had into suppressing the enemy’s attack. Small arms fire focused on pinning down snipers in the building windows while large-caliber machine guns and even a few rockets spread their damage out, spraying bullets and explosions across the breadth of the area where the attackers were entrenched.

  So great was the amount of fire that the enemy forces were momentarily taken aback. Most of the attackers ducked for cover, moving into back rooms of the building as they tried to find a location to stay alive. Knowing that the heavy level of suppressive fire wouldn’t last for long, Linda threw the Humvee back into gear and sent the vehicle lurching forward. The right side scraping noisily against the metal of the trucks and Frank winced at the sound, pulling away from the door for fear of it tearing off in the commotion.

  The drive across the bridge took less time than Frank thought as Linda deftly wove a path back and forth both to avoid obstacles and to keep from presenting an easy target to anyone who might be watching them. Across the bridge the road diverged to the right in a long, arcing turn as it dove back down toward ground level. Linda followed the path of the road until the concrete guardrail vanished, at which point she took a hard left, crossing over through what used to be carefully manicured grass and flowerbeds. The Humvee bumped and jostled over the soft ground, throwing their heads up against the roof and then slamming them back down into the poorly-padded seats.

  “Do we have to go this way?” Frank shouted over the noise of the vehicle. “There’s a perfectly good road right next to us!”

  “They’re not going to stay distracted for long. We need to get back behind the buildings and find the mortar locations before they start firing at us!” Frank groaned at her reply and did his best to stay in his seat, the straps over his shoulders doing little to help.

  A mom
ent later, after an exceptionally hard thump followed by the sound of some part of the vehicle’s frame being put under enormous strain, they bounced up a short flight of stairs and passed through the space in between two of the buildings where much of the attacker’s fire had been coming from. Frank craned his head around to see through the window, trying to catch a glimpse of anyone in the buildings, but it was impossible to see between their speed and bumping along.

  “Get ready, Frank!” Linda shouted at him and he glanced at her before looking out through the windshield. “Mortars were coming from just beyond the back of the buildings somewhere. As soon as I stop, get your gear and get to cover. Shoot anything that moves, got it?” She looked at him and he nodded in response. “I’m serious, Frank. You have to kill anything that moves, otherwise you’re going to die.”

  “I got it!” Frank replied, trying to convince her that he would be able to handle himself, though the assurance was more for his benefit than anyone else’s. He would have followed her past the gates of Hell and beyond if she asked him, so he hadn’t even blinked an eye when she pulled him along on what was rapidly starting to seem like a suicide mission. Handling himself in the field, though, in spite of his willingness to do anything to help, was a different matter.

  “Let’s go, go, go!” The Humvee lurched to a stop, Linda opened her door and Frank was suddenly thrust into the middle of the fray. His hesitation and reluctance melted away, reminding him of when he had turned a corner all those… days? Weeks? Months? It felt like years ago when Sarah had sent him out to scout for supplies to save Linda’s life, and he had undergone a transformation during that time. Each day, before heading out, he felt nervous and afraid, wondering how he could possibly do the things he was being asked—no, demanded—to do. Yet every single day, without fail, as soon as he got into the thick of it, he performed flawlessly.

  The change in his attitude and mindset was instantaneous. He threw off his straps and jumped out of the vehicle, dropping low as he grabbed the pistol from his leg holster and pressed his back up against the open door of the vehicle. No threats were immediately visible off to the right side of the Humvee so he kept moving, standing up and opening the back door, retrieving his pack and his rifle. The pistol went back into its holster and he flicked the switch on his rifle to single-fire.

  “On me!” Linda shouted and Frank ran around the back of the Humvee, hurrying to catch up as she headed for a series of large concrete blocks behind the building filled with plants and a single large tree in each one. The smell of gunpowder grew strong as they approached the nearest block, and they both circled around the same side, slowing their approach with Linda in the lead and Frank just behind to her left.

  A shout from up ahead was instantly followed by a scream of agony as Linda squeezed her trigger, sending a 3-round burst into the upper torso and head of a man standing in front of her. Frank continued moving to Linda’s left, firing several times at a second man who had been near the first before finally dropping him. The pair had been standing in front of a portable mortar resting on the ground, with dozens of spare shells scattered about on the ground. Linda turned and looked down the length of the series of concrete planters they were behind, seeing another half-dozen portable mortars set up, one behind each of the concrete boxes.

  “Looks clear down that way,” Frank said, taking a few cautious steps out from the planter as he looked down his scope, trying to make sure that there weren’t any other enemies hiding the way he was looking.

  “Clear this way, too.” Linda lowered her rifle slightly and looked down at the tube and mortar shells on the ground. “Must have just been these two running back and forth between the tubes.”

  “Okay, so now what?”

  “We destroy them so they can’t use them again.”

  “Uh, quick question.”

  “What?”

  “Why don’t we lob a few shells at the buildings here? Angle them down enough to go through the windows and hey presto, take some of these guys out.”

  Linda stopped and thought for a moment, trying to recall her basic training on the small, 1-man portable mortars from her time in the Marines. With propellant contained in the bottom of each shell, dropping a mortar into the launch tube would ignite the propellant and send the shell on a high-arcing, relatively slow trajectory. The mortars in use by the attackers didn’t appear to be adjustable to low enough trajectories to fire directly into the sides of the buildings, but Linda couldn’t think of any reason why they couldn’t make it happen anyway.

  “Yeah. Yeah, okay, that’s not a half-bad idea.” She looked up and down the row of concrete planters and pointed off to the left. “Go grab all of the tubes and bring them back here. I’ll get one rigged up so that we can destroy them all after we fire off a few shells into the buildings.”

  Over the next several minutes, Frank retrieved the other five tubes and as many shells as he could carry, all while silently praying that he wouldn’t drop one in a way that could set it off. While he was busy with that, Linda rigged one of the tubes to fire directly up into the air and gathered all of the mortar tubes and shells into a cluster around it. She then rigged the other five tubes to fire in low arcs, angling them so that the shells would impact at various spots in the buildings.

  “All right, Frank, pay attention.” Linda waved for him to join her and they squatted together behind the square planter. “Get on one knee, drop a shell down into each of the tubes that are aimed at the buildings. As soon as you drop it, duck down next to the tube and do not get anywhere near the front or top of it, got it?”

  “Got it. I assume this one’s for destroying everything once we’re done?” Frank pointed at the sixth tube which was pointed directly up into the air

  “Yep. Let’s put two shells through each tube pointed at the buildings and then I’ll drop one into this tube. We’ll only have a few seconds to get away before it comes back down, but when it does it should set the whole thing off and destroy all of their mortar equipment. That’ll be the signal for the counterattack. I just hope Jackson’s paying enough attention to see it when it goes off.”

  Frank nervously picked up a shell and held it atop one of the tubes before dropping it down. He barely remembered to duck down, and as he did he felt a whoosh of air and heard a light ka-thunk as the shell was ejected out. Instead of the long, trailing, whistling arc of the mortars that had been fired at the city, though, there was almost no delay before a large explosion sounded, coming from the buildings directly next to them. Glass, plaster and metal sprayed outward and Frank scrambled to get behind the planter. Two more shells went off simultaneously as Linda dropped them in, and two more explosions quickly followed.

  Emboldened by the success of his first drop, Frank quickly chewed through several more shells, dropping a total of eight across three of the tubes before a smattering of gunfire ricocheted across the ground, sending him diving for cover yet again. “I think they’re onto us!” Frank shouted at Linda as she let loose one final shell which was followed by both an explosion and more gunfire.

  “You think?!” Linda pointed at Frank’s pack as she scooped up her pack and rifle. “Get ready to go!” Frank grabbed his rifle and pack, quickly securing it on his back, and nodded at her.

  “Ready!”

  She glanced around, making sure that the coast behind them was still clear, and pointed out at the next set of buildings a good fifty feet away. “We’ve got to make it across there and hope they don’t hit us along the way!” Frank groaned, but nodded, and readied himself as Linda held a shell at the top of the tube. She shouted as she dropped it, yelling at him to “go!” and they both took off at a sprint as the muffled ka-thunk echoed behind them.

  Linda ignored the chatter of bullets hitting the ground around her and Frank, focusing solely on running as fast and as far as she could. While firing the round directly up into the air would, in theory, mean it would come straight back down, she knew perfectly well that there were enough variables in
volved that it could deviate enough to potentially hit them. A slight miscalculation in the angle of the tube, a gust of wind or an imperfect propellant charge on the shell could cause such a mishap, or potentially lead to the cache of mortars being left undestroyed.

  Fortunately, however, not everything went wrong in what felt like the first time in quite a while. The whistle of the returning shell screamed out behind Linda and Frank, and they ran around the corner of the next building down just as it impacted with the outer edge of the pile of tubes and shells. A massive explosion rocked the courtyard between the buildings, shattering what few windows were still intact and catching anyone standing in the open with a blast of wind and heat. Frank wanted to peek back out to see what the damage looked like but Linda pulled on his backpack, urging him onward.

  “No time for gawking. Let’s keep going. We need to get away from that area before our troops swarm it and kill every living thing in the area. Plus, we’ve got someone to hunt down.”

  ***

  Far behind Frank and Linda, across the bridge inside a half-destroyed command center, Jackson stood next to Sarah’s cot, watching over her while listening to field reports streaming in over the radio. The mortars had stopped firing a short time after Linda and Frank had crossed over the bridge, allowing the troops inside the city to regroup and intensify their counterattack. Jackson continued to hold off on sending them across the river until he got some sort of signal that the mortars were down. The signal—in the form of a massive explosion behind the buildings—was all that he needed. Orders went out and troops loaded up into the few remaining intact vehicles they had, as well as on foot. Squads moved up in stages, keeping suppressive fire on the buildings while others crossed the bridge, until there were enough men on the northern side of the river that they could finally begin clearing the buildings that held the attackers.

  Jackson stayed in the city, helping to coordinate the assault, all while watching over Sarah, ensuring that any change in her condition was instantly addressed by the medics in the command center. The attack on the city may have been pushed back, but there was far more to the battle than a gunfight.