by Rod Carstens
Then it dawned on her. There were too many people out in the street like sitting ducks; it was too open. She didn’t like it. The combat sim had said Tanner’s team would leave the area. Still…
The tiltrotor was making its approach now, coming slowly down the boulevard from the west at about thirty feet. The gunships were covering from high orbits above. Suddenly out of the corner of her eyes she caught sight of a figure in black darting out of an alley. Before she could react, the figure lifted a ’96 and fired. The front of the tiltrotor disappeared in a series of violent explosions. The pilot, suddenly blinded by the explosions, jerked the ship up. Then it lurched down as he tried to regain control. That was when she saw the sliding wire in the lights of the tiltrotor. The ship’s side slipped into the wire which caught the tiltrotor between the fuselage and the left wing. It held long enough to throw the ship completely out of control. It spun to the left and crashed into the ground with the tearing, grinding sound of metal against concrete. Anke smelled the aviation gas just before it ignited in a fireball. The left wing was torn off and flew into the team guarding the gang members in the middle of the street. She watched in horror as both gang members and her troops were crushed into bloody pulp by the wing, and its engine spun through them.
Muller dove back into the doorway just in time to be missed by a wildly spinning blade. There were screams and cries from the street. She pulled herself up and rushed out toward them. All her people who had been covering the prisoners were down along with the prisoners, either injured or killed, crushed under the weight of the wing. The tiltrotor was nothing but a giant pile of useless metal burning brightly. The front wall of the building where the sliding wire had been anchored was slowly crumbing onto the wreckage of the plane. The figure in black was gone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Resource Security Force
Team Sixteen
Rally Point Fourteen
2015 hours
Rally Point Fourteen was an old police substation. With concrete walls and cleared fields of fire it made an ideal rendezvous point for a team in trouble. These designated Rally Points were determined by each team prior to their insertion into an area, so it would be difficult for this Special Action Team leader to figure out exactly which one they would use.
Tanner paused on a mound of rubble just a block away. He waited and searched the street and storefronts before he silently moved in a crouch across the open ground around the station. Then he saw a figure standing still just outside the rear entrance. He threw himself into cover and waited for the firing to start, only to recognize his attacker as a mound of bricks. He had not put his night-visions back on after he had taken them off to ambush the tiltrotor. He slipped in the front door, worked his way past the booby traps to the top floor. Always the high ground.
He paused in the hall outside the room Cat and Matos were in and called out, “Cat it’s me.” If he hadn’t, with things going the way they were, she might have shot first and asked questions later.
“Come on in,” Cat replied.
She was working on Matos in the light of her headlamp. He was propped against the wall, apparently asleep. IVs were in both arms. His breathing was normal. Cat was injecting wound sealer directly into a gaping hole in his thigh. The sealant filled the wound and stopped the bleeding, and the antibiotics began to treat any contamination. She started bandaging the wound and Tanner looked around the room for the first time. It was starkly empty and dirty with years of accumulated trash from teams that had used the Rally Point. It struck Tanner how much like his own life the room was in many respects, with Cat and Matos as the only two good, decent things left in an existence where there were only dirty and empty things left. He felt closer to them now than ever before.
“How’s Matos?”
When Cat turned to answer him, she saw his arm and crude bandage. “What the fuck?” she said, rushing to him.
As she was taking off the bandage Tanner had put on, he said, “I had a run-in with two gang types.”
“This is a pretty good laceration. Let me clean it and re-bandage it.” Cat pulled the bandage off, cleaned the wound up, then injected it with wound sealer and re-bandaged it so it was done right. “Did you get any painkillers on board?”
“Yeah, one local and then the big one.”
Cat frowned and injected his arm with another local. “That should hold you for most of the night. I can’t leave you alone for five minutes without you getting into trouble.”
“You know me, always looking for a party,” Tanner said. “How’s Matos?”
“Sleeping now. The round blew a bloody great hole in his thigh but somehow missed his femur and femoral artery, so I was able to control the bleeding. With all the stuff I have on board he should be able to put weight on his leg, but he can’t move fast. His thigh is a mess. I’ll know more in a few hours. This is as far as he goes for a while.” Cat stood up and pulled out the pack of cigarettes Tanner had given her earlier. She offered Tanner one, then lit them both. They stood there silently, enjoying their first moment of peace in hours.
“What next?” Cat asked.
“Who knows?” Tanner said, slowly sitting down and resting his pack against the wall. “God, I’m tired.” He looked up at her.
“Come on, Vin, think. What now?”
Tanner was so tired he couldn’t think. “Have you got any Green Monsters?”
“Yeah.” Cat reached into her pack and handed him the amphetamine. Tanner washed it down quickly with water from his canteen. It was getting low; one more thing to think about. Cat took one too.
“I’m afraid we’re going to need more of these before this is over,” Cat said.
Tanner took a long, deep drag. The cigarette tasted wonderful, and he relaxed just a little bit. He closed his eyes. Think. I got them into this mess and I have to get them out of it. He took another drag before he said, “Okay, here’s the plan.”
Tanner stood up wearily. He wished the amphetamine would hit him sooner. “I want you two to hold up here. I’m going to try to make it to one of the caches. I’ll bring back what I can carry and move the rest so they can’t find it. Without those supplies we’ll only last a few days before we’re reduced to a three-person gang foraging for weapons and food.”
“What about those Special Action types?” Cat asked, a frown crossing her face.
Tanner smiled for the first time since this thing had started.
“I nailed their troopship as it was coming in for the pickup, then it ran into my zip line. It fell down go boom.”
Cat looked surprised then laughed and shook her head. “Only you with your dumb luck.”
“I think the loss of the tiltrotor is going to slow them up enough for me to beat them to the cache.”
“I should think,” Cat said with a smirk, clearly impressed with the downing of a tiltrotor. “I would have liked to see that.”
“Yeah, I got lucky.” Tanner crushed out his cigarette and began emptying his pack of all unnecessary equipment so he could carry as much as possible coming back.
Cat walked over to him. “Look,” she said, “I’m not happy about this whole thing. You should have thought before you said anything. I know one thing though—we’re going to get out of this. I don’t know how or when, but we’ll make it. We’ve been through too much before for even this to get us.”
Tanner looked at her for a long moment. He knew how upset she had been earlier, so it was good to hear some encouraging words from her. “Thanks. You always know what to say.”
Cat just smiled. Tanner finished his unpacking and picked up his weapon. He stood and glanced down at Cat. Their eyes met for a moment, then he walked out the door. Cat took the last drag on her cigarette as she stared at the empty doorway for several moments. She flicked the butt of her cigarette away and turned to Matos. He was mumbling something.
“Why us? Why us?”
“It’s all right. Quiet now,” she said softly. But he was right, she thought. What in
the hell was going on?
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Special Action Team
2045 hours
The replacement tiltrotor was taking off with the wounded and prisoners, turning the street into a hurricane of dust, dirt, and debris. Anke Muller ducked into the shelter of a doorway. A second tiltrotor waited to land with reinforcements. She was running out of time, and the casualties her team had suffered made things just that much more difficult. Tanner and his team were proving to be more trouble than they were worth. The combat computer advised that she should strip the remaining caches and leave the team to fight it out with the gangs for food and ammunition. She could have Steiger put out a BOLO stating that some gang members had killed the team and to shoot anyone in RSF uniforms on sight. That way they couldn’t show their faces to government troops; they would be as good as dead.
While it was a solution, she did not like it. She had never failed on a mission before, and she didn’t want to fail on this one, even if it was a last-minute add-on. But she had little choice. She needed to prepare for the snatch operation on her primary target. Failing that part of the mission would have much bigger consequences than losing Tanner.
The replacement tiltrotor was making its approach. The wings slowly rotated from their horizontal position to the vertical. The ship hovered, then carefully lowered itself onto the boulevard. Anke ducked and ran toward the rear of the ship, then up the ramp to her seat. The rest of the survivors from her original team loaded up with the replacements she had asked for from dispatch. As the tiltrotor lifted off, she could see the gunships prowling overhead, keeping a much closer watch this time.
“I want you to take us to these caches. I’m giving your ship the coordinates,” Muller told the pilot.
Anke punched the send button, and her computer sent the caches’ coordinates to the ship for the pilot.
“Roger. We’ve got them. Any particular order?”
“Yeah, let’s just take them from closest to furthest away.”
“Got it. I’ll give you an ETA to the first cache as soon as I can.”
“Good.”
If they were lucky and ran into Tanner and his team, she would take them out. Otherwise she would ignore them and concentrate on her primary target. She couldn’t risk the loss of any more people. In fact the number of personnel she had already lost was going to eat into her mission bonus. Tanner wasn’t worth this much money. She would make sure she got the primary target—the bonus on his head was the largest anyway. Tanner’s team was secondary.
Muller looked out the tiltrotor’s window. The city was silent and black out here, with only the occasional dimly seen light from a cooking fire visible in the darkness. Although they seemed deserted, she knew the streets were busiest and most dangerous now, as gangs came out to forage and raid. Idly, she wondered where Tanner and his team were. She wouldn’t want to be in his shoes right now. But then Tanner wasn’t going to have to tell Steiger about the two tiltrotors. He would have a fit. She chuckled to herself. It would do him good.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Resource Security Force
Team Sixteen
Vin Tanner
2050 hours
Tanner was making good time toward the nearest cache. He had been in this area for a month. He knew it by heart—but more than that, after close to ten years in the RSF, he had learned how to move at night. It was second nature to him now. This was his time in the Wild Zones. With his night-vision glasses down he was able to choose the best routes through the buildings and rubble while avoiding the well-traveled paths. Night was when all of the inhabitants of the area came out. The settlers and the gangs would use it for all manner of reasons.
There were no gang wars or overly aggressive gangs in the area. Most of the settlements had some sort of agreement with the gangs. Payoffs in food or other things worth bartering would usually satisfy them. That was why what happened earlier with a direct attack on a settlement was so unusual. He hadn’t seen something like that in a long time. He wondered why the gang had gone to war with the settlers, especially considering how they handled the attack. He shook his head. He had better pay attention to what he was doing before he ended up dead out of carelessness.
He barely felt the laceration on his arm. The painkillers had worked their magic, and the bandage had stopped the bleeding. He stood in the shadows of the entrance to a building on the corner of 97th and 88th. Nothing. All was quiet and nothing moved, but still he waited, watching and listening. Then he slowly moved across the street, sticking to the shadows cast by the buildings. He did not take a direct line across the street he moved carefully from one shadow to the next varying his speed and never taking a straight line down the street. He caught the smell of a cooking fire but couldn’t tell where it was coming from. The smell meant there were people around, but from what he could tell they were minding their own business.
He had to step carefully as he moved across the street. It was littered with boards, bricks, broken doors, and all manner of debris from a dying city. A burnt-out van stood in the middle of road, and when he reached it he crouched down in its shadow and waited.
He heard footsteps coming toward him. Carefully Tanner brought up his rifle. The footsteps were getting louder, and he heard hushed voices.
“Dad, I am walking carefully.”
“Son, I can hear you. Can you hear me walking?”
“No, but…”
“There are no ‘but’s out here. Now you said you were old enough to come on this scavenge, now prove it.”
Two figures emerged around the edge of the van. A large man and a boy. They were both well dressed for settlers, with tattered but serviceable pants, old nylon jackets, and well-worn shoes. The man had a rifle of some sort and a pack. The boy had a pack and a long stick with what appeared to be a knife attached to the end so it could be used as a weapon. When the boy walked past the end of the van, he looked at Tanner. His eyes got huge.
“Daddy! Daddy!”
“Would you hush before someone hears us?”
“But daddy…”
The man turned and froze when he saw Tanner. Tanner left his rifle pointed at the boy. According to regulations he could take them both out because they would compromise his mission. Well, he wasn’t on a mission. He didn’t have to worry about regulations anymore. Carefully he brought one finger up to his lips in the classic shh sign. Then he waved for them to move on. The man stared, too flabbergasted to say anything. Tanner again motioned for him to leave.
The man hesitated, then grabbed his son by his shirt and pulled the boy to him. Carefully he backed away, making sure he kept his rifle slung on his shoulder so Tanner would not mistake any movements as threatening. Tanner watched them carefully back away until they were out of sight. Then he heard them running away. It felt good to let someone just move on when they were no threat. Those two must have been from the little settlement he had seen by the park. They were two prime examples of why this area didn’t fit the criteria for a Free Fire Zone declaration. When he could no longer hear them he crossed 97th. He would be at the cache in the next ten minutes at this rate. Another ten minutes to strip it and load his pack, then another ten, fifteen at the outside, and he would be back with Cat and Matos.
He was about to cross 88th. Once across the street it was only a short way to the caches. He started to move but froze when a gang car rounded the corner down the block. Then another car followed. They had walkers covering the two cars. This was a major sweep—they were out for trouble or they knew where some scavengeable site was in the area. He went flat in a debris pile on the corner. When he dropped into the debris he smashed his arm against some bricks. It hurt like hell even through the painkillers. He gritted his teeth against the pain as he watched the gang. He could feel the blood running down his arm. He was bleeding again.
They were moving slowly down the street when another car came around the corner and joined the other two, followed by even more walkers. The gangs
were out in force tonight, Tanner thought. He was trapped. He was hiding in the ruin of a collapsed apartment house, surrounded by a scavenging gang. They were making a sweep looking for goods and anything usable. Being in a ruin, he felt safe because there was nothing usable left around him worth a second look. The Special Action Team was going to have the time it needed to set up an ambush or strip the caches though, anything they wanted to do, and all he could do was hide and wait. He was losing time, and he had very little time left to lose.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Resource Security Force
Team Sixteen
Rally Point Fourteen
Cat Vasquez
2055 hours
Cat was replacing an IV on Matos who was resting quietly after the last injection when she heard voices. No one could have gotten up here, she thought, not past the booby traps. But the voices were getting louder, coming her way. Just as she grabbed her M96, the door burst open and two huge, bare-chested men with pistols drawn charged into the room.
“Well, well, look what we have—” one of them began with a grin.
Cat’s ’96 cut off the rest of his sentence. Both men were blown back and fell to the floor leaving blood streaks on the wall. Cat ran to the door and looked down the dark corridor. She slipped on her night vision. In the green light of her glasses she saw more men around the corner with guns drawn. She let a burst loose, catching one of them before the rest ducked back around the corner for cover.
“We’re going to get you bitch!” someone yelled.
“Just wait till I get my hands on you,” another said and laughed.
Cat checked her ammunition and grabbed what was left of Matos’s. Enough to last for a while if she was careful. But she was trapped. With Matos unable to move she couldn’t use gas or explosives to make an escape. She kicked and rolled the bodies of the two who had burst into her room into the hall. They might slow any others who tried to come through the door. In the meantime she could use grenades to even up the odds.