“I heard he took a bunch of his men with him.”
“Fourteen, to be exact,” Elliot said. “Look, if anyone wants to turn tail, that’s their prerogative. Nobody is being forced to stay, of course. There’s every likelihood some of us won’t make it through this ordeal, so I wouldn’t blame anyone if they decide to leave. But I’d also remind you that you’ve lived in safety and comfort for years because of collective effort – you and your neighbors pulling together and overcoming obstacles as a team. I believe that we can defeat this threat, acting as one. Between all the mines and booby traps, our natural defenses, and our determination, we can preserve our way of life. I’m of the opinion it’s worth going to the mat for.”
Another voice from the back, female, spoke out. “No guarantee we’d live very long if we left, either. It’s hell out there. We’ve all heard the reports. At least here we know the terrain and we can trust each other. I’m going to stay. This is our home, and I’m willing to defend it.”
A chorus of voices rose with affirmations and it quickly became evident that the possibility of an exodus had been avoided.
Elliot allowed the crowd to digest the news and then called out, his voice strong, “We’re going to need to assemble sniper crews to hit the trail. Figure eighteen men and women – three groups of six. We’ll also need people to assign to blowing the bridge. The rest will be deployed in the canyons and strategic locations in the valley.”
Richard spoke up again. “They can get across north of the bridge. There are three other crossings up by Espanola.”
“That’s why we’ll equip the bridge crew with sufficient explosives to destroy those as well. First order of business will be to blow the Rio Grande bridge, then ride hard to the north and blow the others. They’ll have to backtrack, and the highway runs far out of their way – with a few mines strategically located to buy us more time.”
When the assembly broke up, Sierra stopped Lucas with a hand on his arm. “Lucas, I know you’re still angry, but we need to talk.”
Lucas shrugged off her touch. “Not a lot to talk about, is there?”
Sierra’s voice quieted, and Ruby, sensing the tension, led Eve and her piglet a discreet distance away. “That’s where you’re wrong,” Sierra said.
Lucas’s jaw clenched. “So talk.”
Sierra sighed. “Lucas, our night together was…it was everything I could want.”
“But not enough to keep you from running off first chance you got. What’s that old saying about actions speaking louder than words?”
“I know, but you have to put yourself in my position. Imagine you had a son. And you found out he was alive. You fulfilled your obligation to get Eve to safety, you met someone…special…but your son is still out there, and you’re his parent. What do you do?”
“I’m smart enough to know he’s not really out there.”
“That’s what you keep saying. But you don’t know. That’s just a guess. I’m telling you that if there’s even a remote chance he’s alive, you’ll find him. That’s what being a mother is all about. You don’t give up on your child. You never –” Sierra choked up momentarily, and wiped away a tear. “You never give up,” she said, staring defiantly into his eyes. “Otherwise, what kind of human being are you?”
“Word that comes to mind is ‘alive.’”
“It’s not worth living if you allowed your child to die when you could have saved him.”
Lucas looked away. “Sierra, that was just something Garret said to get to you. And it worked. But you have to recognize it wasn’t real. It’s just technique, nothing more.”
“Maybe. But if you’re wrong, my son’s alive, and he’s out there, and I need to do everything I can to find him. I have no choice.” She paused. “That’s why I left. You would have done the same.”
Lucas didn’t say anything. Like arguing angels on the head of a pin, there was no way of responding to a hypothetical built on a probable lie. He took a calming breath, and when he spoke again, his voice was low. “You didn’t just leave, Sierra. You snuck away without telling me.”
“Because you would have stopped me.”
“Damn right I would have,” he agreed.
“So I did the only thing I could.” She cleared her throat. “Lucas, I don’t want you to hate me. I want to stay here with you. But I also need to do what’s right.”
“What’s right is to stay alive.”
Sierra nodded silently, but Lucas could see the wheels turning behind her eyes. He stiffened when she moved close to him and tiptoed to kiss him, and turned away as her lips rose to his.
She surprised him by grabbing his jaw, forcing his mouth back to hers, and kissing him hungrily. When she finally pulled away, she was panting slightly.
“That’s real, Lucas. Out of everything, that’s the most real. If I could undo leaving when I did, believe me, I would. Please…don’t let one bad decision ruin it for us. That’s all I ask.”
Before he could answer, she was walking away. Ruby’s eyebrows rose as he watched Sierra depart, hips swinging with a rhythmic stride that commanded his attention.
Chapter 44
The Crew army was able to roll out of Albuquerque before sunrise, the repair crews having again worked through the night on vehicles that were proving increasingly unreliable with every mile. Duke and Aaron had scoured the city for parts and had spent most of the past eighteen hours negotiating or outright seizing whatever was on the list the repairmen required. The local militia had given the Crew a wide berth after advising them to keep their convoy outside the town limits, and Magnus had made a strategic decision not to take the city just to prove that he could – they’d seen hundreds of armed militia waiting as they’d rolled toward the main entrance, and Albuquerque wasn’t worth losing men over.
Tires were proving the hardest items, which Magnus had anticipated from the warnings of the repair crew chief. Duke had sourced any that appeared in reasonable shape, but even the best of the rubber was questionable from age, and nobody had much confidence in their new acquisitions.
Luis had materialized in Albuquerque and, after introducing himself as the head of the Locos, had reported on Cano’s death – another blow to Magnus’s plan, albeit a minor one.
“You don’t know who did it?” Magnus had snapped when Luis finished.
“No. I assume it was a raiding party from one of the bandit gangs in the area. I asked around town, and apparently there are more than a few of them.”
To Luis’s relief, the Crew boss hadn’t asked about the man who’d radioed in the location of Shangri-La, being obviously preoccupied with weightier matters. He’d ordered Luis to report to Jude with the same dismissive disdain that Cano had shown, eliminating any hope Luis had fostered of better treatment.
Magnus had debated running at night when the pavement was cooler, to save wear on the remaining tires, but circumstances prevented him from doing so, there being too many vehicles that required patching up to make the final distance to Los Alamos. As it was, even with a predawn departure, he had slim hope of making it by nightfall. The highway north was littered with abandoned cars and trucks, forcing the tow trucks into duty every few hundred yards.
When one of them stalled with a screech like a wounded animal, he stepped from the Humvee and marched to where it had been attempting to heave a panel van off the road.
The driver opened the hood and recoiled at the smoke rising from the engine and the strong odor of burning oil. He looked over the motor and shook his head before turning to Magnus with a scowl.
“Must have thrown a rod or something,” he reported.
Magnus signaled for another tow truck to push the ruined one from the highway, wincing as the first rays of the rising sun blinded him. Only a few miles out of town, and they were already stalled. A part of him realized that his vision of racing across the wasteland to eradicate his enemy had been overly optimistic; but he was committed now, and he had never been closer to his objective. Just one final
hundred-and-something-mile stretch and the battle would be joined. Then he would be vindicated, the upstart enclave that dared compete with him leveled and its inhabitants slaughtered as a cautionary tale to others.
Ten minutes later, the dead vehicle had been forced off the road and the procession lurched back into motion like a fatigued snake. As the column crawled along, the highway degraded, flanked by deserted small towns already partially reclaimed by the high desert sands. As the heat rose with the morning, more tires gave out, including a front of one of the remaining pair of tow trucks – for which there was no spare. Another stop in the increasingly blazing conditions ended with Magnus making the call to leave the vehicle behind and to lead with the buses, whose bumpers and bulk were sufficient to push most obstacles from the road with judicious application of power.
The number of abandoned vehicles thinned to only a few, replaced by sand drifts that made all but one lane impassible in many places. The day wore on with progress made in fits and starts, this semi-rig losing a tire, that one blowing a line, and by late afternoon they’d only made forty-five miles instead of the hundred Magnus had hoped for. He was reclining in his Humvee, grateful for the AC as it bumped and rocked along, when a massive explosion sounded from the front of the column, followed closely by a second.
“What the hell–” he exclaimed as the windshield filled with brake lights.
The Hummer rolled to a stop and Magnus jumped out. Up ahead a cloud of black smoke drifted west along the rise, and voices cried out in alarm. He ran toward the site of the explosion and stopped in his tracks at the vision that greeted him – two of the lead buses lay on their sides, distended – blown apart by mines, as a glance at the gaping craters left by the devices instantly told him. The second bus had been towing one of the howitzers, which had been thrown like a rag doll a dozen yards from the bus to land upside down on the pavement.
“Mines!” one of his Crew lieutenants called from near the wreckage, but Magnus was already in motion, face distorted with rage. He approached the first bus, where a group was searching for survivors and, after studying the destruction, moved to the second to confirm the casualties. Each bus had carried fifty men and their gear, so in a heartbeat he’d lost ten percent of his fighters, and he wasn’t more than halfway to Los Alamos.
A string of elaborate curses streamed from him as he paced by the wounded men being dragged from the twisted carcasses of the buses. Only a few looked like they’d make it to nightfall; blood covered most of them, and several had limbs twisted at impossible angles.
Jude came at a run and stopped by his side. “Good Lord,” he exclaimed.
“Check the big gun and see if it’s salvageable,” Magnus ordered.
“Of course. I’ll set up a triage area for the injured.” Jude hesitated. “This means we’re going to have to slow down and put some men in front to sweep for mines. There’s no other way.”
Magnus nodded. He’d already come to the same conclusion. “Look for an alternate route. There’s a small road to the west that runs parallel I keep catching glimpses of. If the main highway’s mined, maybe that will be clear.”
“I’ll send a detail to look it over, but if it was me, I’d mine all the routes – I’d expect us to try to find another way and have taken precautions.”
“Just do it,” Magnus ordered, and scowled at the steep rises on both sides of the highway. “And get those ruined buses out of the road. There’s no way we can go around them.”
“I’m on it,” Jude said, turning to issue commands.
Magnus grabbed his arm to stop him. “It’s not a good sign that you failed to anticipate this. You’re my main strategist.” Jude had done two tours in the Army as a sergeant before going to jail for a triple homicide during a home break-in gone horribly wrong.
“We had no reason to expect it, Magnus. Nothing indicated they knew we were coming.”
“Your job is to foresee every possibility. Failing to just cost us dearly. See to it there are no more oversights.”
“You can depend on me.”
“I already did, and I have a hundred fewer fighters to show for it. This happens again, I’ll make it a hundred and one,” Magnus snarled, his message clear.
Jude swallowed dryly and moved to the rear of the column to organize his men. Magnus continued to stare at the carnage, his face a stony mask. In the end, Shangri-La being forewarned wouldn’t matter – sheer numbers and firepower would overwhelm them – but his victory would come at a much higher cost.
He glowered at the wounded moaning on the hot pavement as though they’d personally insulted him and then stormed back to his vehicle, waving away the flies that had appeared out of nowhere, the shadows of vultures orbiting overhead a reminder of nature’s uncaring efficiency.
Chapter 45
John, the leader of the first sniper team dispatched by Elliot to attack the Crew convoy, peered through night vision goggles at the stopped column of vehicles. He had a clear line of sight from the rise on the east side of the highway, and as darkness fell he’d watched the buses crawling forward as a score of Crew gunmen checked for mines in front of them on foot.
The sight of the two detonations that afternoon had sent a thrill through the snipers: the buses had lifted into the air, plumping like overcooked hot dogs before tearing apart and slamming back onto the asphalt. It had taken a good hour for the remaining tow truck to shift enough of the wreckage for the rest of the vehicles to get by, from which point their progress had been nearly nonexistent as the minesweepers located six more antitank devices hidden among the sand drifts that covered the highway.
Whoever was directing the Crew must have decided that there was too much risk involved in continuing after dark, the men’s ability to spot devices at night virtually nil, and the force had parked in a long line as the fighters pitched tents outside the buses. Fuel was far too precious to squander running engines all night to fend off the heat.
The tanker truck was near the back of the lineup, and John and his lieutenant, Chris, had discussed in hushed tones the best way to proceed. Chris had favored putting the .50-caliber machine gun to work on the fighters once they’d retired for the night, whereas John wanted to take out the fuel truck first. There were positives to both approaches, and they’d finally agreed to launch a strike on the tanker with the two AT4 antitank weapons they’d been given while a shooter rained death on the tents with the machine gun.
“The problem’s the sentries. Looks like they’ve got NV gear, and there are enough of them to waste us within seconds,” Chris pointed out.
“I think we have to do this three-pronged. Chris, since you’ve got experience with AT4s, you’ll be in charge of the tanker, with Eric laying down covering fire for you. Brett and I will take out as many of the nearest guards as possible with our night vision scopes, and Martin can work the Browning with Abe on ammo.”
Martin, who’d been in the National Guard for a couple of years before the collapse, nodded from his position nearby.
“Better hope they don’t have any infrared,” he said, “or Chris won’t get close enough to pull it off.” While the AT4s were rated as accurate for an area target at up to five hundred yards, in order to have a certainty of destroying the tanker, Chris would have to get within a couple of hundred, at most.
“Doesn’t look like they do, or we wouldn’t have gotten this far.”
The team consisted of six men, all combat veterans or ex-military with substantial training. This group had been entrusted with a Browning, a thousand rounds of ammunition, and the pair of AT4s, in addition to their usual assault rifles. The other teams were waiting at strategic points further along the highway – one where it cut through a canyon and beneath which they’d rigged explosives by digging from the shoulder, and the other by the Rio Grande bridge.
There had been heated arguments over whether to equip each of the sniper teams with Brownings, but after much debate, Lucas had spoken up and pointed out that the machine guns would be
more valuable to them defending the canyons than deployed in the field. Lucas hadn’t needed to say that the odds of John ever returning to Shangri-La with his were slim. Everyone understood that there would be sacrifices made to protect the many, and John had, as one of the more seasoned fighters left after Arnold’s abrupt departure, agreed to head up what he privately believed was a suicide mission.
One of the horses snorted from where it was tied out of sight on the far side of the rise, and John cringed. The guards were too far off to hear, but if they got unlucky, the mission – and their lives – would be over before it had even started.
“How long do you want to wait?” Chris asked.
John glanced at the glowing dial of his watch, a mechanical model that had lasted him decades. “Another couple of hours, at least. We’ll need to let the guards get nice and complacent. Figure they’ll probably be pulling four-hour shifts, so I’d say we hit them toward the end of the first, at…eleven.”
Time seemed to slow as they waited, but eventually the campfires dimmed and the fighters climbed into their tents. The air grew eerily silent, the only sound the occasional clank of a tool from the repair crew working on one of the rigs by solar-charged work lamps. The moon brightened in the night sky and the stars glimmered in a dazzling display, the high altitude and dry air making for a breathtaking celestial spectacle.
The sentries kept to the area near the highway, patrolling it with lackluster enthusiasm, and their movements slowed as the night wore on. At eleven John gave the signal, and Martin and Abe moved the heavy Browning M2 into position on its tripod. The gun weighed almost 130 pounds, and it took both of them to get it where they wanted it before Abe scrambled back to the horses for the last two ammo cans. They’d carried eight to their firing location in preparation for the coming onslaught, but there was no reason not to use the whole thousand rounds.
The Day After Never - Covenant (Post-Apocalyptic Dystopian Thriller - Book 3) Page 20