Brendan put his hand out. Jake took it.
“That’ll do.”
PART THREE
“And I will set my jealousy against thee, and they shall deal furiously with thee: they shall take away thy nose and thine ears; and thy remnant shall fall by the sword: they shall take thy sons and thy daughters; and thy residue shall be devoured by the fire.”
– Ezekiel 23:25
Dead Men
ma’Qal (“The Stronghold”) - Just Outside the Walls
The sun had cracked the horizon but did not yet penetrate the thick bush. The dense trees and heavy undergrowth rose up menacingly to either side, creating something like a tunnel, one filled with darkness and silent menace – or perhaps it was more like a funnel.
Hopefully not a fatal one, Todd thought.
He was driving the lead vehicle in what might be the last ever Triple Nickel caravan, as it rumbled along the rutted and washed-out forest track. The road only went one place, so there had been little navigation to do for the last hour.
But there had been some steering required – mainly around the intermittent hazard of walking dead men in the road.
The front edge of the herd had arrived.
As they traveled south they began to pass through it, like the thin outer edge of a gas giant in the vacuum of space, or the first sparse drops of rain at the edge of a heavy storm coming in. They were just ones and twos, and not many of those, stumbling forward mindlessly, lone scouts in front of an unimaginably large Persian army of the dead, coming to flood the plains of Greece.
For the most part, the two trucks could steer around them, or wait for them to cross the road like wild animals, or occasionally run them over. Nobody felt like shooting, not this close to the herd they knew was massing out there.
Plus they anticipated they were going to need every round.
Now, finally, the oppressive embrace of Galmudug fell away to either side and they emerged into the slight clearing that surrounded the towering and spiky walls of the Stronghold. Most of the Triple Nickel guys had been hearing rumors about this place for years, so it was like driving into imagination, or dark fantasy.
This was the heart of darkness.
It was also the fell hand wrapped around the body of Staff Sergeant Kate Dunajski. And her body was theirs, just as theirs were hers. She was in there somewhere. And nobody in either of these two gun trucks was leaving without her.
Getting hold of Zulu Zero and, if Zack were to be believed, increasing humanity’s ultimate chances for survival, was also on the list of essential mission objectives. But that type of salvation seemed very distant, amorphous, an abstraction.
Kate was real. And they could all see her face with perfect clarity.
The two trucks rumbled to a stop before the gates.
And now Godane made them wait.
Todd, in the driver’s seat of the lead vehicle, tapped his horn.
Jake punched him in the shoulder – hard.
Finally, the massive log-pole gates began to swing open. When there was enough of a gap, Todd put it in gear and rolled forward, the other truck following on his bumper. As before, during their mission to Camp Lemonnier, he knew exactly where he was going. Their plans were precise. He followed the mud ruts around a couple of outbuildings and emerged into a more open central area.
He didn’t stop until he was dead center in the middle of the giant courtyard.
Then he pulled ahead and swung out into a wide left-hand arc, continuing through 270 degrees and going around the nose of the other truck – which did a regular ninety-degree left-hand turn, both of them continuing until they were side-by-side. It was a tight little choreography, and it ended with the two trucks facing opposite directions, driver’s side to driver’s side.
Todd’s truck faced the south wall of the fortress, the other the north.
The two trucks looked like they were cross-decking, ready to shoot over each other’s shoulders. Like two buddy gunfighters in Main Street at high noon, about to take on the villain’s entire gang.
Which was exactly what they were.
Above them, and all around on every side, al-Shabaab fighters stood on the parapets on the inside of the walls, pointing weapons down at them. The six guard towers also bristled with emplaced machine guns, as well as guys with RPGs on their shoulders. There were at least a hundred men visible, all of them covering the two invading trucks of Crusaders.
They were truly in the belly of the beast.
* * *
And both gun trucks looked something like medieval battle wagons now. If the gun turrets on top were manned, it wasn’t obvious – because the steel gunner shields had been extended up and over, completely enclosing anyone inside. Each turret also sported two emplaced weapons, pointing in opposite directions – the stubby barrel of a grenade launcher, and the three linked barrels of a minigun.
Beneath the turrets, the first one looked like an up-armored, somewhat tricked-out Humvee. But the second looked like some serious Mad Max shit. This was the dune-buggy-style gun truck, which had previously lacked doors or a roof. Now it was covered with welded-together steel plates, which enclosed the whole driver and passenger area, the bumpy welded seams criss-crossing its surface like the stitched-together face of Frankenstein.
Jake stepped out of the Thunderdome-mobile and reached up onto the roof of the other truck. Strapped there, halfway between the front edge and the turret rising up behind it, was Godane’s Predator GCS, packed up in its aluminum case. Jake stuck a big blob of putty-like substance to the top of it, which then showed a stubby antenna sticking off it, and a blinking light. He then held his left hand aloft.
He was clutching what looked like a pistol-grip game controller.
He then turned to face the arena, and spoke aloud – very loud.
His booming voice filled the courtyard and rose to the parapets. “Nin dhintay kiciya!” he shouted, then repeated it in English. “Dead-man’s trigger!”
Still holding his hand aloft, Jake scanned the walls until he found them.
Godane – and, behind and beside him, al-Sîf. They stood just outside one of the guardhouses and were flanked on either side by a half-dozen al-Shabaab fighters, most of whom were nearly a head taller than the rank and file who ringed the parapet, and were much more heavily armed. They even wore body armor.
Godane’s Praetorians.
Having located the enemy commanders, Jake did a careful 360-degree survey of the walls and guard towers, just to be sure. And it was as he expected.
Kate was nowhere to be seen.
Nodding once, he returned to the truck, dead-man’s trigger in one hand, and the pistol grip of his rifle in the other. Todd reached across to open the door for him and he climbed in and pulled the door shut.
Both trucks revved their engines up to a throaty roar.
Then with no warning, preamble, or visible sign, both simultaneously popped their clutches, spun mud ten feet in the air, and blasted off in opposite directions.
The Mad Max truck accelerated wildly for fifty meters then braked for an equivalent distance, skidding to a frantic but perfectly positioned stop, right in the narrow space between two of the larger and more solid buildings that backed onto the south side of the wall. With the wall to its nose and the buildings on either side, it was in an extremely well-covered position.
At the same time, the other truck accelerated madly for about the same distance – but then hardly braked at all as it crashed into the front of a large building that backed onto the north wall. It blasted right through the front door with a concussive crash and came to rest with half the vehicle sticking out of the violated structure.
That back half included the weapons turret.
A percussive thunk-thunk-thunk-thunk-thunk sounded from the stubby barrel pointing out of the turret of the south truck, the one between the buildings.
And a sound like a chainsaw going through a knotty tree erupted from the spinning barrels protruding from the tur
ret of the north truck, and the building it was sticking out of.
And, not quite instantly, two things started to happen to the Stronghold.
The men standing at the top of the wall on the parapet started to come apart.
And the guard towers started to explode.
Get it Done
Camp Price - Garage
[The Night Before]
Todd flipped up his welding mask and killed the big acetylene torch in his thickly gloved hand. Then he took off one glove and pulled out his expensive JBL earbuds. Metallica’s “Damage, Inc.” was leaking out of them, at a volume Zack couldn’t believe, given the size of the speakers, and their proximity to Todd’s brain. The crunching guitars, bashing snare drum on the downbeats, and Smaug-like vocals spilled out of the tiny speakers at a volume Zack would have hesitated to use in a college dorm.
“Do me a favor and knock next time, dude,” Todd said. “So I can snuff the torch before you crack the door.”
“Light discipline,” Zack agreed. “But what makes you think I didn’t knock?”
Good point, Todd’s expression said.
Zack stepped into what looked like nothing so much as a scene from The Road Warrior. Sheets of heavy steel were stacked everywhere, gigantic weapons systems rose half out of crates, and two urban-assault-looking vehicles hulked in the dim light in various states of modification, like Transformers frozen halfway between four-legged dinosaurs and main battle tanks.
“How’s it going?”
Still sticking up through the weapons ring, Todd shucked his other glove and said, “Well, affixing the mounting kits for both a GAU-19 minigun, and a Mk 47 grenade machine gun, on a single turret ring, definitely presents some unique engineering challenges.”
“Can you do it? Will it work?”
Todd laughed. “It’s not whether I can. It’s: do I have to. Most of my job is making it work. Whatever it is.”
Zack leaned against the other vehicle. “And in the time you have.”
“Yeah. That, too.”
If Zack hadn’t ever before seen quite this level of skill in metallurgy, he’d certainly seen the mindset before. It was pure spec-ops.
It was: Get it done.
Climbing down from the ring and then out through the vehicle, Todd said, “The bigger job is actually extending the gun turrets. These already have the I-PGK turret shields – the Improved Gunner Protection Kit, which are some of the best available. But now I’ve got to extend them all the way up and around. When I’m done, if I do it right, only the barrels, cameras, and optics will be left sticking out. Only full protection for the gunners is going to keep them alive in the shit storm we’re going to be bringing down on ourselves.”
Zack squirmed. “And who exactly are these gunners going to be?”
“You and me, dude. But don’t worry, it’s gonna be awesome.”
Electric Death
The Stronghold - North Gun Truck
Zack shouted out loud as he kept the red trigger on the right pistol grip of the minigun depressed and traversed his elevated barrel from right to left, keeping his red-dot sight about three feet above the parapet on the south wall. This was shockingly easy to do, because there was virtually no recoil from the huge weapon – in part because it was welded to a six-ton truck, but mostly because it fired so fast that all the reports blurred into one unbroken thrumming. And it was that electric, predatory power – electric death, really – that coursed through his hands and arms and caused Zack to yelp, almost involuntarily.
That, plus the result he was seeing on the other end.
Dozens of their enemies were being cut in half at the sternum, or at the shoulders if they crouched down, or sometimes at the thighs if they tried running for it. Todd had been right when he said that if this was a video game, it would be a crappy one.
Because it was too damned easy.
Zack’s biggest challenge was keeping his focus as large chunks of the wall and guard tower above and behind him rained down on his turret and vehicle and for about as far as he could see in every direction. This would be Todd, dismantling the guard tower with his Mk 47 from the other side of the courtyard. Zack couldn’t see the fat 40mm rounds arcing in over his head. But he could definitely feel the effect. It was like being in the ground floor of a building demolition.
But that notwithstanding, he kept his red dot where he wanted it – and in ten seconds every al-Shabaab fighter arrayed on the south wall and parapet was dead, dying, and/or in chunks and/or falling down into the courtyard, along with their weapons, many of which had also been cut in half.
It was the intoxicating power of the man-killing device that made Zack shout. But it was when he realized he was actually sawing off the top of the wall that he also started laughing.
He stopped laughing pretty quickly when the first massed RPG attack started raining down on him. Sometimes the battle goes your way for a while.
Then it goes the other guy’s way.
* * *
A few seconds earlier, he had been down inside the vehicle – buckled in and tucked up and bracing for impact, as they raced across the courtyard and straight into this building at high speed. The crash had been violent and jarring, but if anybody had been injured they weren’t complaining about it. And even as Zack unbuckled himself with shaking fingers, climbed up into the turret, and got on his gun…
The other three occupants were hauling ass out the doors and spilling out into the building, weapons up and seeking targets, and instantly moving fast – straight into the interior.
And from there down into the bowels of the underground complex.
It was Brendan in the lead – completely kitted up and loaded for bear. He wore a lightweight tactical helmet, clear shooting glasses, chin mic curling around his emotionless face. Bulging off his torso was full body armor including side plates, tactical pouches stuffed to bursting with rifle and pistol magazines, plus more than a few grenades in various flavors. Hanging down beneath the vest in front was one of those catcher’s-groin-protector looking flaps the Delta guys wore, with an extra four mags stuffed in its pouches.
It even provided a little groin protection. It might stop some shrapnel.
Shit got dark fast as they moved inside, so Brendan switched on his weapon-mounted light, with the button on the vertical foregrip of his SCAR-L, which stuck out before him with its long custom suppressor. The darkness lit up in a cone ahead, and Brendan instantly found the stairs and took them down.
In his back pocket, leaping down the steps behind him, was Baxter – also heavily kitted up, at least for an intelligence analyst. He wore the same body armor, a less elaborate tactical vest with only six rifle mags, and carried an M4 – because it was what he was trained on – but tricked out with some accessories on the rail. He also wore an assault pack on his back, stuffed to bursting – and he had a second M4 slung over his shoulder and cinched to the pack, to keep it from bouncing around.
Pulling rear security was Elijah, kitted out much like Bren, with his own SCAR, pistol, and mags, but fewer of them. On his back was his big medic’s ruck. If someone went down, he could keep that person alive and stabilize him to about seventy percent of the capability of a hospital emergency room. This was miles ahead of what had been possible before the radical advances in combat medicine of the last decade and a half.
Then again, if more than one or two people went down, they were all dead anyway. It was already about three hundred to seven.
Ignoring the sounds of chaos and combat fading behind them in the outer courtyard, Brendan kept his game face welded on as they descended into the menacing darkness – his vision and hearing ranging out in all directions, totally clued in, wired up, and switched on. In the cramped and twisting warren, this was going to be CQB – extremely close-quarters battle – and the difference between life and death would be measured in microseconds and millimeters.
Not slowing or looking back, but counting on the others to stay on him, Brendan turned the ninet
y-degree kink in the first stairway – and his suppressor banged into the face of a shocked al-Shabaab guy. He and his buddy, toting AKs and wearing vests full of mags, were racing up the stairway, right into the group of three descending – probably responding to the crash of the gun truck into the building.
Bren shot the first one in the face twice, and as he fell, did the same to his friend. The range went from one inch to one foot. The result was the same.
Brendan stepped over the bodies, getting blood in his assault boots, hit the landing, stuck his head out in the corridor, cleared in both directions, then carried on down.
Their final destination: the very sub-basement.
Dumb Son of a Bitch
Camp Price - Team Room
[The Night Before]
“I agree with your assessment,” Baxter said. “It’s a safe bet she’ll be down in the cells. Tucked away.”
Brendan nodded. He leaned over the table, arms crossed in front of him. “You don’t think Godane will even give us a look at her? Pretend to be making the trade?”
Baxter shook his head. “No, why would he? Once he’s got us inside the walls, he’ll figure he’s holding all the cards. Plus he actually will think we’re stupid enough to believe him – that he’d just let us all go once we give him the GCS.”
Brendan nodded. “So we can act on that basis. We don’t even need some clever, pretend, plausible insurance policy against getting double-crossed.”
“Exactly,” Baxter said. “Because we already know we’re going to get double-crossed. And that dumb, arrogant son of a bitch will have no trouble believing we’ve just walked into his trap.”
Brendan smiled. Zack was right – this was an excellent kid.
Elijah was the third occupant of the room. He listened, but so far didn’t contribute.
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