He charged up the rise, the sirens cutting through the night's stillness, their reverberating wails mind-numbing. Julie was losing it as she stood at the summit, half crouched over, her arms covering her head and ears, trying to shield them from the piercing horns.
He ran to her, his eyes darting to the valley that stretched out before him and the small industrial complex that filled it. He had no more than a few seconds to appreciate the smokestacks and manufacturing building backed up to a yard full of scrap metal, and cable bales and the huge coal oil tanker that provided power for the place. What his eyes fixed on was the military barracks and the Air Force jeeps parked in front of it.
He pulled her arms away from her ears. "We've got to get out of here!" he yelled, trying to be heard above the deafening wail.
Their quickest route out was the one they'd taken in. Bolan grabbed Julie's arm and began to run, but Tater, dressed in boxer shorts and hat, stood behind an M-60 mounted on the back end of an Air Force jeep, blocking their flight fifty yards distant.
The old man tripped the bolt and began to fire, dirt kicking up around their feet from impacts.
There was nothing to do; there was only flight. Bolan turned back up the hill, determined to put the rise between him and the old man.
Bullets zinging past their ears, they crested the summit, only to see a score of men pouring out of the barracks. They were armed, and Bolan could see them mounting M-60s on the saddles of the other jeeps.
Bolan instinctively turned, running toward the nearest rock face. If they could at least find cover, they'd have a fighting chance.
"We've got to make those rocks!" he yelled to Julie, whose urge to survive overtook her fears. She clenched her teeth and ran for all she was worth.
That electric hum rent the air again. Bolan's eyes traveled upward to the source, and then he saw it — the reason for the cloudless lightning and the rumble of man-made thunder. A large cannon, brilliantly lit by floods, sat halfway up the rock face they were running toward.
"Do you see...?" Julie asked breathlessly.
"Yeah!" Bolan yelled. He could see men hurrying to fire up the big cannon, his mind spinning, wondering at its purpose. He jumped into one of the indentations, nearly tripped, then climbed out the other side. He turned to take a quick look. The security people were tearing across the sandy floor in their jeeps, swirling dirt and dust from their back wheels. Many were advancing on foot.
Suddenly the night crackled, roaring around them, as an impossibly huge beam of pink light issued from the wide mouth of the cannon mounted on the rock face. It ate the ground behind them, the sand catching fire and melting in a snaky line that drew closer on their heels.
Julie's face was dead-white, her mouth hanging open as she slowed, nearly stopping to gape up at the technological marvel that was drawing down on her.
"Come on!" he urged, running over to pull her away. The cannon shut down, then cranked up again as the jeeps sped closer.
"It's a laser cannon!" she yelled, reluctantly running with him. "We're not supposed to have…"
The cannon spit again, the ground flaming just beside them. Bolan felt the heat from the beam as he drove Julie on, charging right at the thing.
"Run right at it!" he ordered, as the beam quivered, searching for them, destroying anything it touched. "We're harder to track at a dead-line angle."
Smoke rose from the valley floor. The jeeps picked their way around the burned areas and the previous craters, gunners in the back firing at the fleeing pair.
"The rocks!" Bolan called. "The rocks!"
It was their only hope.
The laser stopped, cranked again. Bolan watched as the gunners tried to angle nearly straight down from their position as he and Julie charged beneath its range. It fired again, trying to draw in, getting no closer than twenty feet behind them. The big gun was now out of the picture. All they had to contend with was a small army charging at them.
They gained the boulders strewn around the base of the rock face, gas powered slugs tearing large gouges out of the sandstone as they dropped to cover. Bolan withdrew the AutoMag and handed it to Julie.
"I know you know how to use this," he said, bringing out the Beretta and checking its load.
"They don't even know who we are," she said, her face scrunching up every time a shot ricocheted off the rocks.
"They don't care. Nobody gets to see this."
He came up over the rock, several jeeps no more than fifty feet away. They came on straight, not figuring on resistance. Bolan was ready to kick back.
He stood, a stiff arm coming down atop the boulder to steady his aim. He picked the lead jeep, five others trailing slightly behind. Taking a sure breath, he squeezed a short burst that shattered the windshield and took out the driver, his face disintegrating as he fell to the side.
The jeep swerved, crossing the path of the vehicle on its left, which smashed full force into it broadside. The impact launched the driver through the windshield and the gunner thirty feet into the air. The gunner from the lead vehicle flew sideways and crashed through the windshield of the jeep on the right. Its driver lost control, and the vehicle glanced off some rocks, rolling over and crushing its occupants.
The other jeeps pulled up short, swerving for cover as Bolan took out a gunner, the man falling backward and somersaulting out of his vehicle.
"What's happened?" Julie called. She was hunched down behind the rock, holding the AutoMag protectively to her chest.
"They're taking up positions," Bolan said, his hand automatically reaching down to count the number of extra clips in the webbing of the combat harness.
"What do we do?"
"I'm working on it." Whatever decision he made would have to come quickly. When the men on foot arrived at the scene they'd simply form a wide perimeter and close on them from the rocks around and above. If there was high ground to take, he'd have to be the one to take it.
He turned and looked at the rock face behind them. The laser was up there with two men to operate it, but it looked as if the climb up was neither impossible nor totally unprotected. The cannon and its operators had gotten up there, and so would they.
He hit the clip release and dumped the half-used magazine, shoving in a fresh one. "When I give the word," he said, "stand up and dump the whole clip at them. Spray the area, then follow me. Ready?"
She looked at him, her eyes trusting. "Okay," she said. Bolan read her lips, unable to hear her above the blaring sirens.
He took a breath. "Now!" he yelled, both of them standing and opening up, sweeping a wide arc. The men in front of them dived for cover when they fired, as Bolan knew they would. They ran the clips dry in seconds. "Go! Go!"
They turned and started up the rocks, quickly finding the pathway between the boulders that led up the sandstone.
The troops on the ground began to return fire, but not before Bolan had gained a small tactical advantage. As he climbed, protected by rocks in front, he jammed a magazine into the Beretta and fired at the charging men.
Two men fell, short bursts from the Beretta taking them out head high and throwing them to the steaming ground. Once again the force retreated, Bolan lacing one of them across the back as he ran, dropping him to sprawl face forward in the dirt.
"Go!" Bolan yelled to Julie. "Gain some distance!"
They ran upward, a narrow passage winding its way inexorably up the rock face to the cannon above. After fifteen or twenty seconds, Bolan turned, panting, to look at his enemy from a fifty-foot advantage.
The soldiers were wising up, spreading out a wide perimeter a hundred yards long and coming at the rocks individually or in tiny groups. He could have taken the time to pick away at them, but it would have given the advantage to the others to gain ground. Instead, he opted to keep moving higher, consolidating what he'd already gained.
A hundred feet from the laser, the going got a little tougher. They heard occasional fire behind them, but most of their assailants were busily climb
ing the rocks, in hot pursuit.
"What do we do when we get there?" Julie asked.
"We'll worry about that when the time comes," Bolan said. "Are you doing all right?"
"I'd walk on hot coals to get away from those bastards!" she yelled. ''That laser..."
"What about it?"
"They'd need a generator the size of Rhode Island to run a cannon like that. We don't have things like this!"
"Remember who sent us here," Bolan said, turning to survey the situation. The valley floor was pitted with huge holes that from his position looked like dinosaur footprints. This was a manufacturing and test site.
Two men were following their path up. Bolan waited until he had a clear shot between two jagged rocks and squeezed off three shots, two of them drilling the first man through the gut. As the guy dropped to his knees, the other man hurried back to cover.
"The liquid electricity!" Julie yelled. "That's what they're using it for!"
He handed her another clip from the webbing. "Reload. Keep moving."
They picked their way up the steep face, Bolan occasionally laying down covering fire meant to buy them more time, more distance. Away from the bite of the floodlights and cloaked in darkness, they were free to pick out well-lit targets below.
But two men waited above them in the gloom, waiting to get off a clear shot.
Bolan looked up. The long barrel of the laser cannon poked out dark and ominous from the side of the rock face. He pulled three more clips from the webbing and grabbed Julie's arm to stop her ascent.
"Put it on single shot," he advised, handing her the clips. "Shoot at anything that moves."
"Where are you going?" Her eyes were wide in the darkness.
"I've got some business," he said, moving past her to take the lead. "I'll call you when it's safe."
She didn't protest this time, knowing to trust him in combat situations. He left her behind, following the path for another ten feet, then opting to climb the rocks instead.
He shinnied up the rock face, the Beretta back in its holster. Totally exposed to the ground, his dark clothes and the night itself kept him safe and unseen.
He crested just beneath the metal framework that supported the well-lit laser cannon. He crawled into the platform skeleton, inching along quietly, looking for the operators. He was dangling away from the rocks, two hundred feet above solid ground.
Then he saw them, M-16s at the ready, behind rocks on either side of the path that wound upward, ready to initiate a cross fire as soon as someone drew near. He and Julie had missed the ambush by no more than twenty feet.
Bolan wrapped his legs around one of the mini girders that anchored the platform to the rocks, then hooked his arm around it and tried to draw the Beretta. He had to twist his body to get at the gun, his legs slipping off the girder.
A groan twisted from his lips as his full weight swung from the arm still locked on the pole.
"Jake!" one of the ambushers screamed. "The platform!"
Searing pain tore through his shoulder as the men opened fire on him, his position barely protected by rigging and jutting boulders. Through waves of pain he cut loose with the Beretta, the girder sparking from ricochets.
One of the men screamed in agony, stumbling backward over the edge. His yelling stopped when he hit the rock face fifty feet down, his body continuing the tumble as deadweight.
The other man was protected, hiding.
Bolan struggled to get his legs around the girder. In doing so he was forced to wrap both arms around the structure, which made him defenseless. As he was hoisting himself back up, he saw the man run to the platform, then crouch to fire beneath the overhang. He had Bolan. He had him dead and buried.
Bolan locked eyes with the man, a huge grin spreading across his adversary's face. He brought the weapon up, shouldered it.
An automatic rattled loudly, and the grin was punched off the hard guy’s face. He tumbled off the mountain, dead long before he hit bottom.
"Mack?"
"Under here!" he called, as he shinnied down the girder and climbed under the framework to the rock face. She was waiting for him beside the platform, smoke still curling from the barrel of the AutoMag.
"I didn't do what you told me," she said.
"I'll give you hell about it later," he said, then turned to look down the mountain.
As he feared, they were charging. The troops scurried up the rocks, about thirty of them spread out in a wide area. Soon they'd reach the safety of the darkness and the high ground.
He looked quickly around, his eyes finally resting on the cannon. "Can you figure out how to work this thing?" he asked, taking her hand and climbing the three metal stairs to the platform.
"I... I’ll try."
The gun in many respects resembled the 130 mm heavy antiaircraft guns he'd seen the NVA using in Vietnam, but with a much wider mouth. It was bolted to the platform on a heavy tripod and automatic cranked for elevation and range. It was attached to a large gray box at the side of the platform by heavy cables.
Julie bent to the box, then followed the lines back, studying a small set of instruments attached to a panel beside the crude, manual sights.
"I don't know what good this will do," she said as she scanned the instrument panel. "We can't track low enough to make a go of it."
"Can you work it?" Bolan veiled, as the soldiers began to fire at them, forcing him back farther on the platform.
"Yes!" she shouted, and he ran to her side. She pointed to a dial. "You have to build up the charge to a certain level. Once you do, you can open it up, probably for eight or ten seconds before building the charge again."
"Is it ready to go?" he asked, bullets pinging against the platform.
She nodded. "It's your party! Just double-thumb these buttons once you've aimed."
"Got it!"
He grabbed the left-hand grip, using his right hand to track left on the auto-crank. He brought it all the way around until it was pointing at the mountain they were perched on. He took hold of the grips and thumbed the red buttons, the hum of the weapon shaking them violently.
Brilliant light shot from the barrel, etching into the mountain. And then it began to crumble.
Large slabs of sandstone began to be sheared from the cliff side, tumbling down the mountain, loosening other rocks as it went. The landslide was loud and devastating. The laser platform creaked, bending downward, even as the warrior cranked in the other direction, firing the rest of the charge into the rock face on the other side.
The mountain was collapsing all around them, rocks falling like huge, prehistoric animals, tons of stone dropping on the army that had exposed itself on the monstrous beast's flanks.
Julie grabbed Bolan, held on as the platform shook crazily, threatening to take them down, too. "Look," she said, pointing.
Through the ever-growing curtain of dust that was rising from the still falling debris, he could see a Huey climbing from the ground behind the barracks, machine guns mounted in its open bays.
Bolan drew down on the chopper, the platform buckling forward as small rocks pelted them from above.
He checked the charge and thumbed the buttons, laser light deflecting through the dust particles, tiny lines of it zipping off in a thousand directions.
"Damn!" Bolan yelled, shutting down the big gun.
"It's coming!" Julie raised a hand to her face to wave away the thick dust.
The warrior ejected the magazine from the Beretta and shoved another into place. "Take cover!" he yelled, moving to brace himself against the end of the platform.
Dust choking his eyes, he switched to single shot, the chopper a specter slipping up and out of the dust fog. He heard the rattle from the open bays, recognizing the sound of a .50-caliber machine gun. As the bullets impacted all around him, he stood solidly, firing mechanically, aiming for the shadowy cockpit, his one good chance of taking the chopper out.
It closed in, a rampaging elephant charging a lone hunter, Bola
n standing his ground to kill or die in the attempt. His concentration focused, he continued to fire, a sentient machine existing for a single purpose.
He could see the pilot's face, a mere fifteen feet away, chopper blades clearing the dust, the windshield pitted with bullet holes. The gunner drew down on him, screaming with battle fury as Bolan took one final shot at the pilot.
The shot drilled a hole right through the man's head, but he didn't move, didn't fall. He sat at the controls like an animated zombie, his hand moving on the stick. But the chopper knew the difference. It began to dip, then angled sideways, pitching the gunner out of the bay to his death. The machine danced crazily for fifteen seconds, then smashed into what was left of the mountain.
Bolan looked through the rapidly closing window in the dust the helicopter had made for him. He could see the building complex and distant figures of running men.
He juiced up the cannon, then thumbed the red buttons as he cranked the barrel and aimed at the huge coal oil storage tank.
The explosion was magnificent. Bolan stared in fascination as several hundred thousand gallons of fuel went up with the sound of a sonic boom, enveloping the entire complex in an incredible orange fireball. Thick black smoke rose in a majestic pillar, shot through with flames at its crown.
Bolan sagged against the laser, his arms cramped, locked onto the control pistols. He forced his hands loose, then turned, looking for Julie.
She stood behind him, a look of horror on her face, her arms limp at her side. She seemed in a state of shock, like a disaster victim.
"Are you all right?" he asked.
Her lower lip began to tremble and she ran to him, throwing herself into his arms and holding on with a death grip. She began to cry, violent, wrenching sobs.
They stayed that way for a moment, holding each other. Then they quietly picked their way down the side of the mountain and walked out of the valley of death.
They saw no one; they stopped for nothing. They didn't look behind them.
Chapter Twenty-One
Oscar Largent felt like a visitor to an insane asylum run by the inmates. He'd once heard someone say that each individual creates his own reality, and nowhere was it more apparent than in the underground control complex of Project GOG.
Fire in the Sky Page 26