“Brian’s for Prowler,” Sains said into his radio, the need for radio silence being gone. “Harvard and Dancer are in.”
“Roger that,” Carter responded. “You and Gambler can join us at the gate.”
“Roger that,” Roth said, “moving there now.”
Roth and Sains rejoined the team just as McNamara was preparing to blast the building’s main doors with a shoulder fired missile. The building, having gone into automatic lock down mode as soon as Team Alpha had begun their assault, was now protected by four-inch thick steel doors at the main entrance.
“Gas! Gas! Gas!” Carter shouted in to his radio.
Each member of the team quickly donned gas masks and assured themselves that their IBOS suits were sealed against chemical agents. As soon everyone had reported ready, McNamara launched his missile.
Designed to destroy battle tanks, the seventy-millimeter IMS-7 missile rendered the massive steel doors into bits of molten shrapnel; leaving only small shards of twisted metal on the hinges. Before the last pieces of debris had settled, Carter and Burgett had each tossed a drinking glass sized ganister of nerve gas into the smoldering doorway.
Unable to the see through the dust and smoke from the missiles explosion, the twenty five enemy troops that had gathered in the building lobby to repel Team Alpha’s assault could only hear the metallic clanking of the gas canister as the hit the floor and skidded across it. Carter heard on enemy soldier scream “grenade!” before the sounds of several men choking violently could be heard.
Carter led the team through the slowly clearing clouds of smoke and dust. They encountered enemy troopers that were convulsing in the last seconds of their lives. White froth forced its way through the doomed men’s lungs and out of their mouths even as their lungs swelled and tried to in vain to expel the invading gas.
Five minutes later the first floor had been cleared of enemy troops. The nerve gas having dissipated, the operators removed his filter mask and changed used the electro-chromatic skin of their IBOS suits to change their color from black to slate-gray; roughly matching the buildings walls.
“Boss, won’t this lockdown mean that the blast doors in the evacuation tunnel are closed now too?” McNamara asked.
“Negative,” Burgett answered. “The tunnels is connected the Central Command’s security system; not the barracks.”
“Boss,” Sains interrupted. “I’ve got a read on Mancuso and his body guards. They’re evacuating him through the tunnel, just like you called it. They’re moving down from the tenth floor now. Mancuso’s fat ass is slowing them down. They can’t fight and carry him at the same time.”
“Right,” Carter said. “Gadget, you’re with me. We’re going after Mancuso. Grumble, you take everyone else and secure the maintenance room. Make damn sure you warn us when you deploy the gas. When that’s done proceed as originally planned.”
“Boss,” Sains added. “I think one of the bodyguards is psychic.”
“Can you tell if he’s read any of us?” Carter asked.
“I don’t think so. I know he wasn’t aware that I scanned him. I didn’t go too deep into his head so he wouldn’t notice I was there in case he could back track me. I can’t say for sure, but I’ll bet that his abilities are active; not passive like mine.”
“So, he’s a sender, not a receiver,” Carter concluded.
“Right,” Sains confirmed. “Sorry I can’t tell you more, Boss.”
“Don’t sweat it,” Carter replied as he moved toward the first floor’s main hallway with Burgett close behind. McNamara led his group toward the basement.
Together, Carter and Burgett smashed through the locked inner lobby doors with their shoulders and ran toward the buildings opposite end; shooting their way through a dozen enemy troops who had rallied and taken up firing positions in the doorways of the rooms that lined the hallway.
Reaching the entrance to the stairway that would lead them to the evacuation tunnel; they found it locked. “It’s reinforced,” Carter observed. “We’ll have to blow it.”
“Right,” Burgett agreed, retrieving the appropriate explosives from a pocket on his combat vest.
“Harvard from Prowler,” Carter said into his radio.
William’s reply came quickly. “Go ahead, Prowler”
“Mancuso and his protection detail are trying egress through the tunnel,” Carter informed Williams. “They should be below you. Close on them and cut off their retreat.”
“Roger, that,” Williams replied. “Dancer and I are on the eleventh floor now, will advise on contact with Mancuso.”
“Ready to light the candle, Boss,” Burgett advised Carter.
Carter took a step back. “Do it.”
“Firing!” Burgett said as he pressed the button on his remote detonator three times in rapid succession. Four small, directional charges blasted the hinges out of the door and disintegrated the lock. The door fell into the, now open, stairwell.
“Be alert,” Carter ordered as he led Burgett into the stairwell, “we don’t know what abilities those bodyguards have.”
The stairway was a spiral, scaffolding-like staircase that descended four hundred feet into a sub basement and ascended to a helicopter landing pad on the barracks’ roof. Gunfire could be heard from above as Williams and Nagura fought their way downward.
“Let’s move,” Carter said.
[][][]
At the other end of the building McNamara shot open a door to different stairwell leading to the basement. A squad of First Earth Guardsmen instantly began firing up at them. Team Alpha returned fire; their ultra-powerful weapons driving the enemy troops back; wounding them despite their body armor and pulverizing chucks of the wall.
“Frag out!” McNamara yelled, as he threw a grenade down the stairs. Sains mimicked his actions half a second later. The explosions filled the stairwell with smoke and dust that the Alpha operators charged into. Most of the enemy troopers had been wounded by the grenade blasts, three had been killed. The surviving enemy troops were killed were they lay. McNamara cautiously approached the stairway’s exit door and began to open it.
“Down!” Sains shouted, shoving McNamara to the floor.
Heavy caliber gunfire ripped through the walls and threshold; sending fragments of concrete spraying into the room. The first few rounds missed McNamara by inches. Instinctively, McNamara flattened himself on the floor. The rest of the volley kept the other Alpha members in the stairwell.
“All call signs, be advised; we have two mark-23 powered armor suits in the building!” McNamara yelled into his radio as he fired a burst of return fire.
Sains grabbed McNamara by the ankles and dragged him back into the stairwell. “Are they counter attacking?” McNamara asked, as he got to his feet.”
Sains reached out with his reached out with is more than human senses. “No, they’re holding their position in the hallway; blocking us off from the maintenance room.”
“They must have figured out what we were up to when we used those first gas canisters in the lobby,” McNamara concluded. “They probably transferred the power armor here to help protect Mancuso.” McNamara deduced. “Gambler, load the SPM-21 with armor piercers. We’ll lay down cover. Make sure you hit the soft spots.” Roth changed her rifle’s magazine and nodded that she was ready.
“On three!” McNamara ordered.
Years of unrelenting training allowing the Alpha operators to fire without to hitting each other in the close quarters. The team dispersed into the corridor, firing controlled bursts of gunfire into and faceplates of the lumbering combat exoskeletons; interfering with the vision of the armors pilots. The Mark-23s sprayed undirected return fire down the hallway with shoulder-mounted, twenty millimeter semi-automatic cannon.
The Alpha operators, rolled, jumped and dove under the torrent of cannon rounds as they charged the powered armor suits; their more than human speed and reflexes allowing them to maneuver in a surreal, acrobatic display that would have otherwise been
impossible on such closed quarters.
Alpha’s battle rifles and sub-machine guns could dent the enemy’s armor but not penetrate it. The Mark-23’s were essentially humanoid-shaped tanks that the operator wrapped around himself. Hydraulic motors and micro-gears amplified the user’s strength one hundred times, and its weapons systems could defeat main battle tanks. Their armor, with the exception of more thinly armored areas around the limbs and joints, could repel all but the heaviest weapons.
While the others pelted the armored troopers with a rain of bullets, Roth took careful aim from the threshold at the end of the corridor. Her first shot struck one of the armored suits in a centimeter wide area of weak armor just below the chin. The diamond tipped, forty-caliber, armor piercing round sliced through the armor and obliterated the pilot’s throat. The armored trooper ceased to move when he dropped to its knees and fell, face forward, onto the floor.
Roth’s next shot struck the second Mark-23 just below the right knee; spinning sideways and forcing down onto its uninjured knee. Roth fired again. This time, her shot found the thin armor at the side of the neck; just behind the ear. The armored suit seemed to sag and also ceased to move.
McNamara rushed to the first armored trooper and as he lay face down and fired a burst into the base of the neck at point blank range. At such close range his sub-machinegun round breached the thinner rear armor and produced small, blood-spurting holes in the helmet. Defontain then used her battle rifle to repeat this process on the second armored suit.
[][][]
Nagura heard McNamara warn of the presence of powered armor, just as one of her palm daggers pierced the soldier’s foot pinning it to the floor. She thrust the other dagger upward, through the chin to impale his brain. Withdrawing both blades, she rolled sideways to avoid a burst of enemy gunfire causing it cut down another enemy soldier. Nagura pounced on a third trooper. Rolling beneath another volley of bullets that he fired, she shattered the soldier’s knee with a dance-like kick and buried one her daggers into his left eye socket to the hilt.
Nearby, William’s sword severed another enemy soldier’s legs at the knees the cut across his neck in a single, flowing motion. Deflecting another enemy’s muzzle way from his torso with flat of his blade, Williams smashed the heel of his palm onto the soldier’s nose; shattering it and forcing the head violent backward; snapping the neck cleanly as Williams slashed his sword across the midsection, cutting through to the spine. Williams spun to his right, avoiding a gunshot from the enemy squad leader. Before the squad leader could squeeze his trigger again, Williams covered the twenty feet between them in an eye-blink, cut the muzzle from his rifle, and fragmented his jaw with a lightning fast kick to the chin before driving his sword into his enemy’s abdomen with a spinning, backward thrust.
As the last member of the squad they were fighting fell, another squad appeared at other end of the tenth floor hallway they were fighting their way through. Simultaneously, the two Alpha troopers brought their machine-pistols into play. With a coordination that seemed precisely choreographed, they directed their fire toward opposite ends of the squad’s loose formation; each working their way toward the middle of the ragged enemy line. Stunned by the speed of the Alpha operator’s reaction to their arrival, the newly arrived squad was cut down before they could open fire. Nagura and Williams continued to fight their way downward, clearing enemy resistance as they did so.
[][][]
Carter and Burgett had just acknowledged McNamara’s warning concerning the powered armor. “Are we going up after them?” Burgett asked, peering up the spiral staircase where he knew Mancuso and his guards were currently descending.
“No,” Carter said. “Harvard and Dancer will drive them to us. We’d be easy targets trying to get up the stairs. They’re responding to our attack as though it was an assassination attempt; they think were just here after Mancuso.”
Carter paused for am moment. “I can hear them,” said.
At that instant Carter and Burgett were assailed by searing pain in their heads. It was like vibrating heat that spread from their heads to saturate their bodies. It was as though they were on fire while being dragged through cactus. Thousands of tiny needles seemed to simultaneously and repeatedly pierce the skin and scrape the bones beneath. It was flameless heat burning nerves without actually harming flesh. Burgett screamed, his hands holding his head in an instinctive, futile attempt to block out the pain.
“One of them is an attack psychic!” Carter shouted, having to let his rifle dangle across his torso on its sling so he could use his hands to steady himself against a wall. Nearly incapacitated by the pain, he looked over his shoulder and saw one of Mancuso’s green and gold clad bodyguards rush from the staircase and shoot Burgett three times with a large, semi-automatic handgun. The rounds knocked Burgett backward and slammed him against the wall. He dropped, unmoving to the floor into a growing pool of blood.
In too much agony to do anything else, Carter summoned all of his discipline and endurance and hurled himself at the bodyguard. Carter felt the impact of a bullet strike him in the fraction of a second before he propelled his enemy into the wall opposite of where Burgett had fallen. Still fighting the pain of the psychic attack, Carter seized the bodyguard by the sides of his head, shoved both of his thumbs deeply into his enemy’s eyes, and began to repeatedly smash his head into the reinforced concrete of the wall. He felt the skull shatter after it had hit the wall three times; making a sickening crunching sound. Carter continued the pounding until blood and bits of bone fell together on the floor.
The psychic assault had stopped as the man died but, before Carter senses had fully recovered, he heard footsteps as someone descended the metal staircase. The second bodyguard was suddenly only feet away from him, turning his handgun on Carter. Carter raise his rifle from where it had been slung across is body and squeezed the trigger. Nothing happened. The first bodyguard’s bullet had struck it as Carter had charged him; jamming the firing mechanism.
He darted to the right just has the second bodyguard fired; the shot missing his head by a fraction of an inch. Carter charged his enemy again. Carter swept the pistol aside with is left hand, thrust the heel of his right palm into the bodyguard’s chin and, in one blindly fast motion, used the edge of the same hand to knock the weapon from the bodyguards grasp.
Carter tried to draw his own sidearm but, before his hand could reach it, the bodyguard drove the flat of his right hand into Carter’s chest, and hooked his right foot around Carter’s leg to smash the heel in to the back of his knee.
Carter toppled backward and landed hard. Reflexively, Carter covered his head and throat with his forearms; defending against the rain of killing blows he knew he would follow. A booted foot was driven into his abdomen; forcing the air from his lungs. Another kick slammed into his side, cracking several ribs.
Guided by instinct and years of training, Carter’s hands caught his enemies foot has he lifted it for another strike and twisted it until his foe had no choice but to pull away or have his ankle dislocated. Carter shoved the foot away and tried again to draw his sidearm.
The bodyguard fell atop him and seized his hand just as his fingers coiled around the pistol’s grip. Forced to hold onto the gun to stop his enemy from taking it away from him, Carter drew a knife from its sheath on his left thigh and began to repeatedly stabbing the bodyguard in his sides and back. Most of the thrusts glanced of his ribs and created only shallow wounds, but one slipped between the ribs and pierced a lung. A flow of foamy, frothing blood spurted from his mouth along with the sound his labored, gasping breaths.
Abandoning his attempt to disarm Carter, the bodyguard tore Carter’s damaged rifle from its sling and raised it, a two-handed and club-like, over his head; bringing it down in a desperate, skull destroying blow.
Carter blocked the blow with his left arm, feeling the bones of his forearm shatter like glass. In the same instant, drew his sidearm and fired. The first shot tore through bodyguard’s l
ower abdomen as Carter raised the weapon from the holster. The second went into the man’s chest. The third struck under the chin, effectively removing the man’s head from the nose up.
Carter pushed the blood covered corpse away and crawled to Burgett’s unmoving form; praying that he still lived. Feeling for the arteries in Burgett’s neck he found a strong, regular pulse. Carefully rolling the unconscious operator onto his back, he searched for wounds. Two bullets and struck Burgett’s battle vest and failed to penetrate; the third had grazed his left shoulder and penetrated the weaker armor there. The IBOS system and already stopped the bleeding.
Carter retrieved the field medical kit from a pocket on his own vest and removed a small capsule. Breaking the capsule open, he moved it back forth under the unconscious man’s nose.
Burgett awoke to an acrid, burning odor. “Boss?” he asked, batting at the offensive capsule.
“You OK?” Carter asked.
“Define OK,” Burgett countered.
“Can you stand?” Carter asked.
Burgett pulled himself up to his knees, still bracing himself against the wall. Cater used his right hand to haul him the rest of the way to his feet. “I’m good,” Burgett said, his head clearing.”I just had the wind knocked out of me.”
“Can you fight?” Carter asked.
Burgett took hold of his rifle and nodded. “Good to go,” he said. “What about you, Boss?” gesturing to Carters injured arm.
“Yeah, that’s well and truly broken,” Carter said. “The IBOS is doing a pretty good job with the pain, though.”
“I wonder why both of Mancuso’s guards didn’t rush us while the psychic was mind-fucking us. If they had, we would have been screwed.”
“I don’t think he could direct is power; he affected every one with his a certain range,” Carter surmised. “The other bodyguard had to stay out of range so he didn’t get hit by the psychic as badly as we did.”
Seeing that Burgett had sufficiently recovered, Carter moved toward the staircase. “Let’s get Mancuso,” he said.
The Fate Of Nations: F.I.R.E. Team Alpha: Book One Page 24