The Assault

by Brian Falkner

  13. THE TUNNEL

  “MOVE!” CHISNALL YELLED. “MOVE!” HE GOT ONLY GROGGY stirrings from his team.

  The round shape of the battle tank blocked all the light, turning the day into twilight. The barrel of the gun rotated as it rose toward him. He tried to will his legs to walk, to run. But there was no time.

  The fifty-cal began to fire. Through the swirling clouds of dust, Chisnall saw Monster, sighting down the barrel, emptying his magazine at the Bzadian battle tank. An act of desperation. Machine-gun rounds would have no effect on a tank.

  It all seemed to be in slow motion: the rising of the tank’s gun barrel, the fire from the fifty-cal, the sparks from the end of the barrel as the rounds impacted. Now Chisnall realized what Monster was doing: He was pouring his fire right down into the barrel. Huge fifty-cal machine-gun bullets were spitting directly into the small black circle that was the mouth of the gun.

  There was a loud crack from the tank and the barrel of the tank’s gun bulged and then split as the shell detonated inside it. Fractured pieces of metal flew out into the air.

  “Good effort, Monster!” Chisnall yelled in excitement and relief.

  “Cheese and rice!” Monster said, looking more surprised than anyone.

  The tank began to back away, its main armament destroyed. Then it lurched to a halt, dead in the water.

  Wilton and Price were on their feet now, looking dazed.

  “Are you okay?” Chisnall asked.

  Price shook off dust like a dog shaking off water. “Just winded,” she gasped.

  Wilton gave him the thumbs-up.

  “Let’s move,” Chisnall said. “Relocate to the far end of the corridor.”

  Chisnall slung his rifle and went to pick up one end of the fifty-cal. Monster grabbed his hands before Chisnall could touch it, spitting on the barrel as he did so. The spit sizzled and evaporated instantly.

  Idiot! Chisnall thought. Burned hands were all he needed right now. He should have known that the barrel of the gun would be red-hot. Monster handed him a thick cloth and he wrapped it around the barrel.

  Boot steps sounded in the shattered entranceway and enemy rounds sprayed up into the ceiling of the corridor as they ran. They set the fifty-cal on the floor at the end of the corridor and Monster lay behind it. Wilton kneeled at the doorway, his rifle propped on his knee. Price and Chisnall took opposite sides of the doorway. Anyone foolish enough to stick his head around the other end of that corridor was going to lose it, real fast.

  They waited. They could hear sounds coming from the other end of the long corridor, but there was no sign of anyone.

  “The tank shell took out the stairs,” Price said. “They’ll have to bring up some ladders.”

  “That won’t take long,” Chisnall said.

  “We’re done.” It was Fleming’s voice on the comm. “We’re Oscar Mike.”

  Finally!

  “Monster, stay here,” Chisnall said. “Keep their heads down. Price, Wilton, on me. I’m going to open up the doors to the tunnel.”

  They ran for the control room with the others and had just reached it when he heard the heavy stutter of Monster’s fifty-cal in the corridor behind him.

  Brogan was sitting up but looked dazed.

  “Brogan!” Chisnall tried to keep the relief out of his voice. “Are you okay?”

  “I … I think so,” she said. She seemed vacant.

  “Can you walk?”

  “I don’t know.” Her voice came from somewhere far away.

  Chisnall hoped it was just the aftereffects of the concussion and not something more permanent.

  “Price, Wilton, take her with you. Get her inside the tunnel when I open the doors.”

  He found the controls for the inner bay doors and shoved them open. Through a long glass window that looked out on the monorail bay, he could see the two SAS men already in the bay and waiting. Behind the wreckage of the car and the Tomahawk, the doors began to open.

  Price and Wilton appeared on the stairs, Brogan stumbling between them.

  “Grenades!” Monster yelled from the passageway.

  “Get out of there!” Chisnall yelled.

  “Monster did this already,” Monster said, running at full speed past the door to the control room.

  The grenades in the passageway exploded in a series of sharp cracks.

  The inner tunnel doors were almost fully open now. Chisnall took a grenade and set the timer to the maximum: sixty seconds. He placed it on the control desk and pulled the pin, then shoved the bay door controls back into the closed position.

  He sprinted out into the corridor, only to be greeted by a hail of fire from the entrance. He threw himself back into the control room as chips flew from the stone walls around him, peppering his body armor.

  He had two grenades left. One was a flash-bang. He pulled the pin and watched the safety lever spin away into a corner of the room. He threw it, hard, on an angle against the wall of the corridor so that it bounced off and along toward his attackers. Almost immediately, there was a blast of light and a crack of thunder, and he was moving, diving through the doorway of the control room and rolling across to the corridor opposite. A hard left turn and another short corridor, and the monorail bay was ahead of him. He pulled out his sidearm as he emerged into the bay on the upper observation level. Below him, Monster was climbing over the wreckage toward the closing bay doors. More firing came from behind. He snapped off a couple of quick shots with his pistol, not aiming.

  He didn’t have enough time. He could see that now. The big metal doors were already half closed and he still had to get down to the platform and past the wreckage. If those doors shut, he would be trapped on the wrong side of them, and the grenade in the control room would make sure that he remained trapped.

  Monster was already ducking through the rapidly diminishing gap. Chisnall ran a few meters along the upper level and then hurdled the guardrail. He landed on his back on top of the wreckage and twisted around, sliding down the crumpled top of the car.

  At the bottom of the car, a jagged piece of metal snagged his body armor at the elbow, jolting him to a stop. He wrenched it free and hurled himself at the gap in the doors. He managed to get his upper body through the opening and then snatched his legs inside as the gates clanged shut. A clamor of rounds struck the doors with staccato metallic clangs. Then came a dull, distant thump that was almost certainly the frag grenade in the control room.

  The Bzadians would have to blow these doors open now.

  “What kept you?” Price asked.

  “I had to check my e-mail,” Chisnall managed, sucking in air. “Status updates, that kind of thing.”

  Price smiled.

  They were inside, Chisnall realized. Inside Uluru. As far as he knew, they were the only humans ever to go there.

  A circular tunnel stretched away inside the rock. The tunnel was perfectly round and perfectly straight. Whatever tools the Pukes had used for their tunnel digging, they were very powerful and very accurate. Strip lighting ran the length of the tunnel, fixed to the ceiling at the highest point. It was bright but faded as the tunnel disappeared around a corner. He looked at the walls. Not just perfectly round, but perfectly polished as well. They gleamed like marble.

  “It’s all gray in here,” Wilton said. “Why isn’t it red?”

  “Uluru is only red on the outside,” Chisnall said. “It’s rusty.”

  Wilton clearly didn’t believe him, but Chisnall couldn’t be bothered explaining.

  The monorail line extended out along the floor of the tunnel in front of them. There was no time to wait and admire the view. A banging on the big metal doors sounded behind them.

  “Let’s go,” Chisnall said.

  Fleming and Bennett each had one end of the warhead. It was a cylindrical object that, to Chisnall, looked like an oversized waste-disposal unit. Thick black wires emerged from dark gray rectangular boxes on the underside of the device and plugged into the end of it. At the top
were two silver tubes, protected by thick metal plates. Metal handles attached to the plates allowed the two of them to share the weight of the warhead, although Bennett was clearly struggling.

  “Monster, give them a hand with that,” Chisnall said, and Monster took Bennett’s side.

  “Blow the C4,” Wilton said. “Blow it now.”

  “I can’t risk it,” Chisnall said. “There’s enough explosive up there to bring down the whole tunnel.”

  Even as he spoke, a series of explosions sounded behind them and a lip of smoke curled through the narrow gap between the doors.

  “Sounds like grenades,” Price said. “They haven’t had time to bring up any demo charges.”

  “Let’s move it,” Chisnall said.

  The curve in the tunnel was about a hundred meters away. If they could reach that, he would feel safer about blowing the tunnel entrance. They had plenty of time before the aliens could bring up some heavy demo and blow the doors.

  He was wrong.

  They were barely fifty meters into the tunnel when a booming crash sounded behind them and the big metal doors shuddered.

  Chisnall had just enough time to look back in a state of shocked confusion when a second explosion shattered the doors, sending them flying off their hinges into the walls of the tunnel. With the team trapped in the narrow confines of the smooth tunnel walls, the shock wave blasted them off their feet, and Chisnall saw the other Angels go flying, scattered like tenpins.

  The rotorcraft. They must have evacuated the area, then used the gunship, hovering outside to blow the outer doors, to fire right through the opening into the bay. There was no need to wait for demo charges when you had a gunship to use instead.

  “Blow the entrance!” Price yelled.

  Chisnall, in a daze, reached for the detonator at his waist.

  It wasn’t there.

  Shadowy figures were emerging through the smoke and haze behind them, and the air was alive with the crackle of bullets. The walls were exploding in puffs of rock around them.

  He saw Bennett go down, hands clutched to his neck, a dark liquid bubbling up between his fingers. He saw Monster start to rise and get hit, flung forward on his face like a rag doll. And then he saw the detonator. It had been knocked from his belt and had fallen into the channel in the middle of the monorail track. Rounds flew around him, punching holes in the dust that filled the air of the tunnel. He tumbled over into the channel, his fingers closing over the detonator. He flicked off the safety.

  “Good night,” he said, and pressed the trigger.

  And then everything was gone.

  14. YOZI

  [MISSION DAY 5]

  [1240 hours]

  [Uluru Secure Facility, New Bzadia]

  YOZI WAS ON THE FIRST RUNG OF THE LADDER WHEN THE world turned gray.

  Zabet was just ahead of him, Alizza right below him.

  He and his squad had been detained by Goezlin and his PGZ goons after the prisoner scumbugz had got away, and they had been questioned like criminals—as if they were somehow involved in whatever Chizna was up to.

  What was Chizna up to? Yozi had no idea. There had been a movement on Bzadia that was opposed to the acquisition of Earth as a new home for the Bzadian race. But they were generally peaceable, nonviolent types who were mainly opposed to the bloodshed inherent in an invasion. It was hard to believe that they had suddenly turned militant and infiltrated the army.

  It was also possible that there was some kind of power struggle going on within the army. That had happened before. And possibly Uluru and its powerful secrets could be the cause of the problems. But that didn’t quite feel right to him. So the only real possibility that remained was that Chizna and his team were working for the scumbugz. But why?

  By the time Goezlin had let them go, they found themselves at the back of a crowd of angry soldiers desperate to get inside the building. The entranceway lay in rubble, blasted by tank shells. The only way in was via two ladders up to the mezzanine floor. That made for slow going.

  Yozi had muscled his way to the front of the crowd. Anybody who objected had to argue with Alizza. Nobody did.

  He had just put one foot on the ladder when he heard the blast. A second later, the shock wave of broken rock and rubble exploded through the corridor above him. In that second, Alizza saved his life.

  Alizza wrenched Yozi off the ladder, throwing him sideways. He dived on top of Yozi as a torrent of dust, rock, and smoke exploded out above them. Chunks of rock crashed down around them. When it finally stopped, Yozi was amazed that he was still alive. He opened his eyes. The first thing he saw across the dust-choked floor was the face of Zabet.

  She hadn’t been so lucky.

  Alizza pushed himself upward, shaking off dust and rock.

  Yozi quickly checked Zabet for signs of life, but it was clear there would be none.

  He looked at Alizza, then at the pile of rubble in front of them.

  They began to climb.

  15. DARKNESS AND DUST

  [1245 hours]

  [Uluru Secure Facility, New Bzadia]

  DARKNESS AND DUST. DUST AND DARKNESS.

  Chisnall was heaving great clogging balls of dust out of his lungs in gut-wrenching coughs, interspersed with dry heaves. The darkness was absolute. The strip lighting in the tunnel had vanished in the blast. He tried to move his arms. The right one responded, but there was no movement from his left, if it even still existed. He eased his right arm forward and found his combat visor, flipping it up.

  He remembered the rag that Monster had given him to hold the hot gun barrel. He found it in a pocket and pulled it out, holding it over his mouth and nose and breathing through it.

  For the first time, he got air. Harsh, acrid, smoke-laden air that smelled of gun oil, but it was air. He hawked and spat, clearing some of the grit from his throat. His water canteen was on his right rear hip. He found it and took a small swig, rinsing it around his mouth and spitting it out before putting the cloth back over his face and drawing another breath.

  He was lying mostly on his left side, down in the channel in the monorail track. He rolled onto his stomach, and his left arm suddenly started working again. He must have been lying on it. Pushing himself up onto his elbows and then back onto his knees, he could see absolutely nothing. Nor could he feel anything, but that was a good thing. No pain, at least nothing excruciating, so hopefully no major injuries. Lucky again.

  He had a flashlight. He should know which pocket it was in, but his brain felt as thick and heavy as the air in the tunnel. Thoughts and facts tumbled over and swirled around in random patterns. He fumbled until he found the light, and switched it on. Dust particles immediately made a flowing curtain in front of his face. It did not seem as thick now, and somehow he got it into his brain that the dust would be gradually settling. That the higher he got, the less dust there would be.

  He stood up, and the air cleared a little more. He stepped up out of the channel onto the monorail track and found that he could breathe without the rag. He shone his flashlight through the swirling dust to the smooth rock walls of the tunnel. There was no sign of his team.

  He had been the only one down in the channel, he remembered, and hoped that didn’t mean he was the only one who had survived.

  Chisnall turned back toward the tunnel entrance, but that was completely gone. All that he could see was a massive pile of rock. The flesh of Uluru.

  The smooth walls and ceiling had been replaced by a myriad of cracks and deep fissures. Overhead, a web of fractured rock extended almost to the curve in the tunnel ahead. It looked unstable, an avalanche waiting for a trigger to start its headlong rush down a mountainside.

  Still he could see no one.

  Had he killed his entire team?

  The shock of the explosion was gradually wearing off, and a few connections were starting to flicker together into some sort of reasoning inside his brain.

  “Angel Team, response check,” he called, fighting off the icy
grip of panic that clutched at him.

  Silence.

  “Angel Team? Angel Team!”

  He frantically dived back down into the thick soup of settling dust and scrabbled around with his hands. He could feel only the rubble-coated floor.

  “Angel Team!”

  He stood and moved forward, sliding his feet across the ground to avoid stepping on anyone.

  Still nothing. No one.

  Trying not to panic, he took a deep breath, dropped back to his hands and knees, and felt around through the dust. His hands closed on an ankle.

  Chisnall felt his way up the body to the arms and thrust his hands under the shoulders, lifting the person up out of the thick dust. It was Wilton, and he was alive, although breathing shallowly, lips coated with rock dust. Pushing Wilton up against the wall of the tunnel, Chisnall held him there with an arm across his chest. He pulled Wilton’s visor back and splashed water over his face. It ran down his chin and neck in gray rivulets. He squeezed Wilton’s cheeks together and poured water into his pursed lips. Wilton gagged, choked, and spat, and his eyes opened. He looked weak and groggy.

  “Can you stand?” Chisnall asked.

  Wilton said nothing, but his eyes turned toward Chisnall.

  “Can you stand?”

  A weak nod.

  “Stay here, stay upright. The dust is thicker down low.”

  Another weak nod.

  Chisnall took another deep breath and plunged back down into the swirling currents of dust. His hand touched body armor, and he hauled Brogan up and repeated the water routine. Once more, and Price was sitting with the others. He heard a cough from behind and found Fleming farther down the tunnel, toward the entrance. He was sitting up, leaning against the tunnel wall.

  “Are you okay?” Chisnall asked.

  “I’m not sure,” Fleming said. “I can’t move my legs.”

  He couldn’t move them, Chisnall could see, because a huge boulder covered them, almost sitting in Fleming’s lap. He didn’t want to guess what they were going to find underneath that boulder.