“You can ask him in about ten minutes,” Tess said.
The thousand-metre-tall Black Mountain swiftly grew ahead of them as Tess struggled to keep up with the demonically speeding Oswald Owen. Accelerating into each bend, and again on each straight, spinning across junctions, and scraping against barriers, O.O. left a trail of rubber, paint, and sparks in his wake. The prisoner chained in the back of his truck received as much attention as the speeding cars from the increasingly large doorstep-crowds. But even the sight of a handcuffed captive, hurled hither and thither, would be forgotten when the broadcast was made.
The orchestral music, playing low through the truck’s stereo, abruptly stopped. For a heart-skipping moment, Anna thought they were too late, but instead of Ian or Erin’s voice, the music returned.
The two-vehicle convoy sped through the university, down Tourist Drive, and made a sharp turn onto the winding, rising, paved road signposted to the mountain’s summit. O.O.’s truck nearly didn’t make it, losing a wing mirror as he attempted a handbrake turn between two of the large lumber-harvesters parked at the roadside.
“Are you deforesting the mountain?” Toppley asked, as Tess braked, changed gear, and took the turn more slowly.
“Making a palisade,” Anna said. “But only as practice. It’s one of many old skills we have to relearn.”
Above, the soaring communications tower had disappeared behind the bushy canopies of the closely planted needlewoods. Ahead, O.O.’s truck had disappeared around the winding road’s next bend. Tess sped up, and Anna caught sight of O.O’s truck just as a burst of gunfire drummed against its side. Glass shattered. The entire truck seemed to shudder. The prisoner went limp. O.O. braked, but Tess sped up.
“Two o’clock, fifty metres back,” Toppley said.
“You have to stop!” Anna said.
“Not yet,” Tess said, overtaking O.O’s truck as another burst of gunfire came from the woodland. Their wing mirror exploded. Bullets slammed into metal, and Tess slammed on the brakes, bringing their truck to a halt just beyond O.O.’s.
“When I say—” Tess began, but Anna had already thrown open the door and jumped out.
She sprinted into the undergrowth, shotgun raised. Leaves and mulch fountained two metres to her left so she zagged to the right, behind a thick trunk, then darted left, diving to the ground even as a shower of bark erupted from the tree behind which she’d sought shelter.
She fired, once, blindly in the direction of the shooter, picked herself up, and sprinted on until a heavy figure knocked her to the ground.
“Stop!” Clyde hissed, pushing her low as a burst came from behind, another machine-bark replied from ahead.
“Get off!” she hissed.
“Stay low,” Clyde said, easing to the side, but pushing her gun barrel down. “Wait for the signal.”
A stereo trio of metal thumping into wood came from ahead, ending in a softer, wetter, impact, a muted hiss, a truncated scream.
“Clear!” Elaina called from ahead.
“Stonefish!” Zach added.
“Sorry about that, ma’am,” Clyde said. Springing to his feet far more lithely than Anna, he reached down to offer her his hand.
“Anna Dodson,” Tess said, catching up, and speaking in a tone that had echoes of her father in every syllable. “Don’t you ever do that again.”
“A leader’s gotta lead, Tess,” Anna said.
Far closer than she realised, barely ten metres away, Elaina and Zach stood over a corpse, with their weapons aimed up the hill. Clyde jogged ahead of them, reaching the corpse before Anna and Tess. He bent down, taking the dead man’s submachine gun, then the ammo from the webbing pouches slung across the body armour.
“Heckler and Koch MP5,” Clyde said. “But it’s not ADF. These mercenaries didn’t arm themselves with our weapons. They’re well-armed,” he added, reaching down to pluck a grenade from the dead mercenary’s webbing. “But these are concussion grenades, flash-bangs. Three of them. And this bloke was alone. Do we advance?”
“Does he have a radio?” Tess asked.
“No.”
“Then back to the trucks,” Tess said. “But bring the grenades.”
At the trucks, Leo was bandaging Sophia’s arm.
“Are you okay?” Anna asked.
“I got shot,” Sophia said, sounding more bewildered than hurt. “I actually got shot. With a bullet.”
“It’s a through-and-through,” Smilovitz said. “But she’ll need a hospital.”
“The prisoner’s dead,” O.O. said. “Might even have been the target.”
“Not from that range,” Clyde said.
“Deploying only one sentry suggests, right here, right now, they’re short-handed,” Tess said. “That man didn’t have a radio, but they’ll have heard the shots. We’re running out of time.”
A sudden blast of trombones and timpani blared from the radio.
“Turn that off!” O.O. snapped, reaching past Zach, into the truck, to switch off the radio.
“But that proves they’ve not started broadcasting their victory rally,” Zach said. “We’ve still got time.”
“What’s your name, kid?” O.O. asked. “Zach, right?”
“I’m not a kid.”
“No, you’re a soldier,” O.O. said. “And right now, soldier, you’re going to drive this woman to the airport. To win a revolution, you’ve got to control the airport and the transmitter. Smiley, have you got the explosives?”
Dr Smilovitz grabbed the bag from the front of the cab. “You want me to blow up the transmitter?”
“If all else fails,” O.O. said.
“Sophia,” Anna said, speaking to the injured woman. “Tell Hoa Nguyen what’s happened. If Captain Hawker is back, tell him, too. Either way, hold the airport, and prepare an army for an assault.”
“An assault where?” Sophia asked.
“Wherever the shooting is,” O.O. said. He pointed at Smilovitz, then Clyde. “Smiley, you and the soldier drive the ute to the top. Make some noise. We’ll hike the long way, come in from behind. You’ll either be the distraction for us to make an assault, or we’ll be the distraction while you blow the place down. A pincer movement, that’s how we’ll win this battle.” Everyone except Tess and O.O. turned to Clyde, whose curt nod marked his seal of approval.
“I’ll drive them,” Anna said. “Oswald and I shouldn’t face the same risks. What’s that rule of Dad’s, if a job’s to be done, get it done now. Go on, Tess. I’ll see you at the top.”
Hunched forward, steering wheel clenched tight, feet tensed, Anna drove the truck up the hill. Clyde was in the passenger seat, with Toppley and Smilovitz in the bench-row behind. Anna’s eyes searched the shadows, but her mind already dwelled on revenge. Within minutes, and without another shot being fired, they reached the mountain’s crest. Beyond the car park to the lookout point, there was only the barest hint of a view; the trees, in full autumnal majesty, obscured the world beyond their nightmare stretch of tarmac. That was the extent of her universe, the road ahead, and and it was quickly running out.
Ahead, the transmitter rose like a space-age monolith, seeming to grow taller as they approached. But the road curved, dipped, and climbed, as it circled the mountain’s peak, and the transmitter was abruptly hidden.
“Get ready to bail,” Clyde said. “Out and to the back of the vehicle.”
“I’ve only ever done this the other way,” Smilovitz said. “When Flo and I were driving away from the people trying to kill us. But you sound like you’ve done this before. You’re a soldier?”
“A charity worker,” Clyde said.
“What kind of charity work involves gunfights?” Smilovitz asked.
“The kind I hoped I’d never have to do again,” Clyde said.
Anna hunched behind the wheel, making herself as small as possible. The trees thinned, and through the gaps she saw the entrancing peaks of distant mountains, tempered by the increasingly frequent glimpses of the tower.
And it was.
To their left, a stone retaining wall squatted nearly two metres high, on the other side of which were a row of adolescent trees, stunted by exposure. Beyond those was the levelled ground of the tower’s main car park. To her right, a moderately sturdy bar-and-pillar crash barrier prevented rainy-day visitors accidentally ploughing into the wooded slopes below. But ahead, a camouflaged Humvee blocked the road.
The moment Anna saw and recognised it, she braked. But their unseen assailants had seen them, too. Bullets sprayed the road in front, the ricochets bouncing up to thud into the tyres. A second burst went high, as a mercenary with an EF88 assault rifle failed to hit the large target right in front of him.
“Out! Out! Out!” Toppley yelled.
Clyde had already grabbed Anna’s collar, pulled her low, and had dragged her halfway outside, through the passenger door, before she’d had time to think.
By accident more than design, the car had stopped at an angle to the road, the front against the stone retaining wall, the rear only a metre from the crash barrier. Clyde pushed Anna down and behind the relatively thicker cover of the wheel-arch as a third short burst from the assault rifle spanged into the truck’s engine block. As quickly as it took for the merc to switch the selector to fully automatic, it was followed by a magazine-emptying burst that smashed into engine, door, window, roof, and then the sky.
“Amateurs,” Toppley muttered, the word dripping with scorn.
“Cover me,” Smilovitz said.
“Why?” Anna asked, but the scientist had already opened the truck’s rear door.
Toppley fired a burst from around the rear of the vehicle while Clyde fired from the front, and the scientist grabbed the bag containing the explosives. From ahead, return fire drummed against the road, the car, and a good portion of the trees on the down-slope to their right.
“Two shooters,” Clyde said as they all took cover once more. “An assault rifle and a submachine gun, one either end of the Humvee.” Another, different, gun barked. “Three shooters,” Clyde amended. “Shotgun.”
“This takes me back to my youth,” Toppley said, ducking down as another erratic burst slammed into the truck.
“Their aim is terrible,” Smilovitz said as lead pattered against the retaining wall.
“Killed is killed,” Clyde said, ducking low to peer under their vehicle. “Amateur or a sniper, makes no difference if they hit.”
“What’s the plan now?” Smilovitz asked, crouching low, behind the rear wheel.
“Distract or attack,” Anna said. “Any suggestions how?”
“We need the high ground,” Toppley said. She pointed back the way they’d driven. “That pillar, supporting the retaining wall, will give us some cover. Go there, climb up to the car park where we’ll have the advantage of elevation. Shall we say on three?”
“Make it ten,” Smilovitz said, both of his arms inside the bag, his hands moving frantically.
The assault rifle fired another magazine-emptying burst, most of which slammed into the engine. The exposed tyre burst under the impact of a dozen bullets, and the truck sank as it settled onto the rim. From the engine, a wisp of smoke drifted upwards, thin, but already growing thicker.
“Time’s up, Leo,” Anna said. “What are you planning?”
Smilovitz removed a brick of plastic explosive into which he’d inserted a timer. “Any of you play baseball? No, of course not. What is it down here, cricket, right?”
“Give it to me,” Clyde said.
“Timer’s thirty seconds,” Smilovitz said.
“On ten, we shoot. On twenty, we run,” Anna said, edging back along the road. She stood, firing. The shotgun roared, the slugs going wide, but the sound, to which Toppley added her submachine gun, gave Clyde cover to throw. Even as the brick was in the air, all three ducked down.
“Think it was short,” Clyde said.
“Doesn’t matter, on my mark, fire,” Anna said. But their enemy fired first, the bullets slamming into and through the bodywork as the four dived back to the ground.
Clyde aimed his submachine gun beneath the truck, firing a short burst.
“Ten seconds left,” Smilovitz said.
“Run!” Anna said, just as the world shook. Her faltering sprint turned into a diving fall as expanding air roared past. Tarmac and fragments of glass and metal tore into her clothes, her skin, as she rolled to a halt, then to her feet, grabbing Toppley, and hauling her over to the wall. Behind, their truck was now on its roof, smoke pouring from the engine. But flames were licking around the Humvee, on its side, and turned parallel to the road.
“Up!” Anna said. “Up!” Still dazed from the pressure of the explosion, from the wall of sound, the rain of debris, she was slow to formulate a longer sentence. Instead, she pushed Toppley up the side of the wall. Clyde, gun raised to his cheek, fired a quick burst towards their enemy, but Anna couldn’t see his target.
She hurled her shotgun to the top of the wall, then threw herself up after it, rolling to a crouch next to Toppley, who knelt, looking dishevelled, but amused, aiming her weapon towards the tower.
“That wasn’t thirty seconds,” Anna said as Smilovitz followed, Clyde hot on his heels.
“Please don’t tell Flo,” Smilovitz said. “She’s always saying I’m terrible at math.”
“No movement by the Humvee,” Clyde said, crouched by the edge of the wall.
“They’re dead?” Smilovitz asked.
“Or they ran,” Clyde said.
“Worry about that later,” Anna said. “We’ve given Oswald his distraction, but we can’t stay here.”
There were no sentries in the car park, and only one vehicle, a camouflaged MRH-90 medium-transport helicopter. A type she knew, and recognised, from Lignatiev’s publicity photographs before the last election.
“Ian was retraining as a pilot,” Anna said. “I’ve seen photographs of him in that helicopter.”
“Everyone has,” Clyde said. “I never trust anyone who uses service as a tool to further their own ends.”
“That’s his way out, is it?” Smilovitz asked. “Give me a minute. I’ll catch up.”
Before Anna could ask why, the scientist sprinted towards the helicopter. Clyde ran on ahead, through the car park towards the tower. Toppley ushered Anna after him. She’d managed ten steps when a distant shot made Clyde double over in a crouch, but he also doubled his speed, so she did the same. Eight running strides later, another shot cracked across the mountaintop, and this one was closer.
Clyde took cover at the top of the curving slope that formed an exit to the car park leading back to the road on which the Humvee and their truck now merrily burned.
“They’re shooting at Oswald?” Anna asked.
“Defo,” Clyde said, twisting his head as he surveyed the windows of the telecoms tower ahead of them. “I see movement. No hostiles.”
“There are civilians in there,” Anna said. “Broadcast technicians. Some reporters. Even some pundits and musicians. I’m not sure how many, but it must be at least fifty.”
A flurry of shots sounded from the far side of the tower.
“Someone should have come to investigate the explosion,” Toppley said, as Smilovitz ran to a staggering halt next to them.
Anna glanced back at the helicopter. She’d been expecting an explosion, but the copter was still intact. “You disabled it?” she asked.
“No one will fly away from here in that,” Smilovitz said.
“We can’t hold this position,” Clyde said. “Not with that footbridge there to our left. Looks like it leads straight to the tower’s second floor. Advance or retreat?”
Anywhere out in the open would leave them exposed to a sniper up in the tower. Another footbridge led from the tower to the ri
ght of the road, while the mountain’s slopes were so well managed, a footpath wasn’t needed for a descent. If the mercenaries ran, they had an almost certain chance of escape.
“Advance,” Anna said.
With Clyde in the lead, they ran down the slope, and back onto the road. Ahead, parked outside the entrance to the tower were two black SUVs, both seemingly empty. Clyde kept his rifle aimed at the tinted windows as he approached, but he should have been looking at the door.
“Down!” Toppley said, firing as Anna half-pushed, half-dragged Clyde behind the vehicle.
Smilovitz, still running, emptied his entire magazine into the doorway. Clyde motioned Anna to advance around the rear of the SUV while he took the front, but when Anna swung around the vehicle, the black-clad figure in the doorway was dead.
“I saw two,” Anna called, advancing to the body, sprawled amid shattered glass.
“The other ran,” Toppley said, running over to stand between her and the glass doors.
“They’re all trying to escape,” Clyde said, picking up the dead man’s submachine gun. “There’s no magazine.” He plucked a mag from the mercenary’s webbing. “He had ammo, but he forgot to load his gun. Who are these people?”
More shots came from inside: a flurry, a burst, a double-tap.
“If we go inside, we’ll be caught in the crossfire,” Toppley said.
“The SUVs,” Anna said. “We use them as cover, and stop the mercenaries driving away.”
“On the politician,” Clyde said.
In a close pack, they retreated, guns raised, while inside and beyond the tower, gunfire rose in increasing ferocity.
A pair of figures in camouflage and body armour ran into the lobby beyond the broken doors. Even as Clyde fired, they dived back down the corridor they’d run down.
“I’m going in,” Clyde said. “Flush them out. You three stay here.”
“No,” Anna said. “We—”
“The walkway!” Toppley said, pointing ahead and above, where the walkway formed a bridge over the road. On it, four figures ran. All in camouflage, but one wore a far more professional uniform than the others.
Life Goes On | Book 3 | While The Lights Are On [Surviving The Evacuation] Page 27