The Abrams tanks were firing wildly as they entered the square, desperate to at least do some damage before getting destroyed. The 120 mm cannons and .50 caliber machine guns roared and barked as the tanks bounced into the square, careening over sidewalks and cars, most of the shots going wild. The weapons tore into storefronts, trees, park benches, and the still-smoldering hulks of the cars and trucks the mrill had destroyed during their advance. Everything seemed to be exploding at once, and Ben used the chaos as cover for his own, more effective attack. The mrill were concentrating their fire on the tanks, which exploded like sealed food cans shoved into camp fires. Ben saw the mrill aiming at one of the tanks trying to circle around the burning, popping wreckage of another Abrams. Before they could fire, Ben snapped off a volley of shots, killing two of the mrill and sending the third tumbling backward. The tank roared into a clearing in the square, lowered its turret to aim at the cluster of mrill, and fired one shot before it was torn apart by another squad of troops . . . but it was a magnificent shot.
The General Dynamics M1028 round was more like a massive shotgun shell than a traditional tank round, packed with tiny tungsten balls to shred infantry or punch holes into concrete or cinderblock walls. The 1,098 hardened spheres, each 9.5 millimeters across, screamed out of the barrel at more than 1,400 meters per second.
Even the mrill didn’t move that fast.
The pellets, moving at roughly four times the speed of sound, mulched a small plot of trees in the square and then plowed through a cluster of mrill troops, turning them to mulch as well. Two mrill soldiers simply ceased to exist in any visible form. Their rifles exploded, sending wild bolts of electricity arcing in every direction.
The air now stank of electricity and explosives. The mounting human losses were staggering. There were at least 60,000 dead, both military and civilian. It was hard for any mind, even Ben’s augmented brain, to grasp that number. The piles of shattered hardware were also overwhelming. He’d never seen so much military equipment destroyed in such a short time. Tanks, planes, helicopters, ships, trucks. Crushed and stomped by the thousands. The nation’s capital was on fire. What wasn’t on fire had simply been turned to dust, for miles in every direction. Even if the mrill disappeared right now, this would go down as one of the costliest wars in history.
A jagged landscape of ruined, blackened tanks now blocked the streets heading out of McPherson Square, so the mrill started bombarding the wreckage, carving a canyon through the ruins. A few wounded soldiers were killed in this secondary assault, and Ben felt his hatred threaten to overwhelm him again. It was all he could do not to charge head-on at the mrill force. The writhing, impotent rage had no outlet, and he felt it would consume him; that he would die of bitter guilt before the mrill could kill him.
A dozen artillery shells, arcing in from the southwest, slammed into the mrill position without warning. A handful burst in midair, while the rest slammed into the ground. The staccato explosions reverberated through the battered square, gouging the concrete, puncturing the few remaining windows, and excavating craters in the ground. Several of the mrill were knocked to the ground, and Ben fired and fired and fired.
An Air Force AC-130J “Ghostrider” gunship was also coming on station. The massive airplane, bristling with a 30 mm cannon, bombs, and missiles, was built to slowly circle ground targets and grind them into powder. It was a devastating and demoralizing weapon—at least against human enemies. Ben had worked with them multiple times in his previous life. The gunships were tasked to Special Operations Command, and often served as angels on the shoulders of SEALs, Rangers, and other SpecOps boots on the ground. The ships were outfitted with a mix of weapons, and these new Ghostrider units were outfitted with the most sophisticated sensors and tracking technology known to man. Ben knew that the sixty or so mrill cutting a swath through downtown DC possessed technology about which man knew almost nothing, and they would destroy the lumbering aircraft as easily as they had the massive Abrams tanks.
“Ghostrider, acknowledge, this is US Navy Lieutenant Benjamin Shepherd. Acknowledge immediately. Yes, I can hack into your secure connection. You probably have about five seconds to acknowledge my communication and break off before the enemy zeroes you in.”
To his credit, the pilot barely hesitated before responding.
“Copy that. Breaking off and awaiting instruction. Damn glad you’re still with us, sir. Let us know what you need.”
“Sit tight, pilot. I’m gonna conference you in with the artillery units positioned half a klick south of here. You’re going to need the distraction, but it’s gotta be timed perfectly. You’ll probably get half a full pass before you’ll need to withdraw and maybe we can get a second shot. No hero bullshit. There will be Klondike bars in hell before the mrill drop their guard for more than a couple seconds.”
“Roger that,” the pilot said and chuckled. “I never liked Klondike bars, anyway.”
Ben scanned through the thicket of radio transmissions pouring in and out of the defensive emplacements near the White House. It was a tangled mess back there, and the snippets of conversation he intercepted contained an undercurrent of panic beneath the river of military jargon. He found the command frequency and dialed in.
“All US military forces stationed at the White House, this is Lieutenant Ben Shepherd, United States Navy. I am engaged with the enemy at the southwest corner of McPherson Square. I need an artillery barrage in the northeast corner of the square in sixty seconds to provide a diversion for an inbound Air Force AC-130 gunship. Strike coordinates are 38 degrees, 54 minutes, 8.5 seconds north, 77 degrees, 2 minutes, 1.8 seconds west. We’ve got sixty-some tangoes advancing on the White House, and this is our shot to clear their ranks a bit before its close quarters combat on the White House lawn. Acknowledge.”
There was a moment’s silence, then garbled conversation as multiple voices tried to jump in to respond. A deep southern accent cut through the jumble.
“Goddammit, radio discipline. This is Colonel Hank White, 1st Battalion, 201st Field Artillery. I’ve still got thirty-five M109A6 Paladin artillery units functional. I’m tasking them all to your strike coordinates. Mark sixty seconds . . . now. Good luck, son.”
“Aye aye, sir,” Ben said. “AC-130 captain, do you copy that?”
“This is Captain Tim Hackwell, and I damn well copy. Inbound in fifty-six seconds.”
35
Colonel White ordered his artillery units, scattered across Arlington National Cemetery in defensive positions near the Pentagon, to prepare to fire. The heavy machines clanked as they repositioned to face northeast. The motorized 155-mm howitzers could deliver an artillery shell at a distance of more than 24 kilometers with pinpoint accuracy. They’d need that accuracy now.
The thirty-five Paladin units had left a trail of shredded grass and dirt behind them through the manicured mall, like fingers raked through the ground. They were stationary now as each four-man crew slammed home their shells. Each unit could fire as many as three rounds in fifteen seconds. White, parked a few dozen feet behind the cluster of Paladins in an armored Humvee, wondered if they’d get fifteen seconds before the mrill drones returned. The aliens had destroyed more than a dozen of his units in a strafing run minutes earlier; thankfully a handful of the Chinese drones had chased them off. The smoking, splintered hulks still dotted the landscape like fresh gravestones.
Medical units had poured out of the Pentagon to search for survivors, though the mrill weaponry had ensured that there were none. The medics were pulling what was left of the bodies from the vehicles and laying them on the churned meadow of the cemetery, the dead above resting on the dead below. Surprisingly, the mrill seemed not to have recognized the significance of the Pentagon itself, and the massive building stayed untouched.
“Twenty-four seconds to mark,” White said into his headset, trying to ignore the procession of bodies being laid out behind his diminished unit.
The men had been well drilled and most were veteran
s of the recent campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq. Whatever the nature of the enemy they were facing and the friends they had already lost and were likely still to lose, they knew their jobs. The “First West Virginia,” as the National Guard unit was known, had a history dating back to the American Revolution and was the ancestor of parts of the Maryland and Virginia Rifle Regiment.
The fire teams plugged in the coordinates and White scanned the sky for a last check of incoming mrill drones. Radar just seemed to draw them in, so it had been shut down. For all the technology packed into the Paladin, the team was mostly driving and shooting blind. He hoped the coordinates were accurate.
“Four seconds to mark,” White said into his mic.
Three mrill drones dropped out of the clouds about half a mile away and raced toward the artillery team. White gripped the dashboard, and the driver next to him tensed.
“Fire!”
The thirty-five barrels erupted in a drumroll, rocking each machine back on its treads.
White knew the men were reloading already, but the drones were here, and their green bolts walked up the green grass, pulling it apart, then ripping open the heavily armored Paladins. Four were obliterated instantly. A pair of antiaircraft guns, modified Phalanx 20 mm Gatling guns, hastily deployed in the Pentagon parking lot, opened fire, sending a stream of shells into the sky to bring down the drones. The military had been forced to shelve its surface-to-air missiles, as they simply could not get a radar lock or track a heat signature from the alien ships. That meant the soldiers were firing the massive Phalanx machine guns manually, tracking the drones visually on a high-resolution camera and firing the gun using a joystick control in a small shed hardwired to the gun emplacements about fifty feet away.
The Phalanx guns, originally designed to track and destroy incoming anti-ship missiles for the navy, packed a massive punch. Visually tracking the mrill drones was an almost impossible task, though, and the fire teams could only hope to distract the mrill long enough for the Paladins to fire off another volley or two.
One of the Phalanx guns raked directly across the hull of a mrill drone in a fantastically lucky hit. The explosive rounds tap-danced across the exotic armor, unable to penetrate the hull, but knocking the ship off course. Now all three drones turned toward the Phalanx guns. The Paladins fired another volley, a rolling thunderclap. One of the drones swooped across the field of fire at that exact moment and was hit by an artillery shells. This round, a 155 mm, high-explosive shell designed for tearing apart tanks, buildings, and infantry packed more than enough force to puncture the ship. A blinding explosion filled the sky, putting the still-struggling sun to shame, and the drone was yanked sideways. A jagged hunk was torn from its hull, and the wounded machine spiraled into the ground, furrowing into the soft dirt. The other drones, ignoring their downed companion, methodically raked the Phalanx emplacements, destroying them in moments.
But they’d done their job. The Paladin artillery units rocked on their heels one more time, hurling explosive shells at the mrill forces on the ground for a third time. White ordered the units to disperse. He harbored no illusions about escaping, but knew the additional time it took the drones to hunt them down represented a few more seconds that Shepherd could use to attack the mrill infantry. Maybe just enough time.
The drones, hovering in midair and glistening in the full sun, spun on their axis like no earthly aircraft White had ever seen. Their gun barrels hung low, and the bellies of the ships glowed a faint blue through the crisscrossing metallic structure. At least White thought it looked metallic. Just one more mystery to take to my grave, he thought without bitterness as the weapons swung to target his vehicle.
Then a massive sound, like a giant stomping his foot, filled the air. Crump, crump, crump. The AC-130 had arrived and was pounding the mrill infantry. White could see the fireballs and mushrooms of smoke to the northeast. He could feel the vibrations through the ground. The drones hesitated for a moment, then rose and zoomed off to the confrontation. Before they could rise thirty feet off the ground, a pair of green bolts sizzled through the sky from the south and lanced the two drones, blowing them apart. Two of the Chinese drones whistled through the air, their supersonic booms doing nothing to subdue the wild, ragged cheers of the soldiers on the ground.
White grinned, then roared.
“Keep firing, dammit. Everything you’ve got.”
The artillery crews turned back to their work with savage joy.
White turned to his lieutenant.
“Don’t know if we’ll make it to supper, but we’ll make damn sure these bastards don’t either.”
Lieutenant Daniel Fish smiled.
“I’m still full from breakfast, sir. I’d rather be working.”
McPherson Square had almost literally been turned upside down.
The small plot, less than two acres of formerly tranquil grass and trees, park benches, and a statue of its Civil War namesake, looked now like the tortured surface of some volcanic, primordial planet. Jagged craters were formed, destroyed, and reformed as explosives and artillery mingled with the electric green crackle of mrill and brin weaponry. The air was a choking brew of dust, ash, and smoke, and splotches of fire dotted the uneven terrain. The buildings surrounding the square looked like the shattered faces of drunken barflies who’d somehow ended up in a ring with a heavyweight boxer. Chunks of masonry dripped from the mangled structures and shattered on the ground, adding to the noise, haze, and chaos. Soldiers fired haphazardly from the rubble on the south side of the square at the scattered mrill, the space too choked for any kind of vehicle to enter, while the AC-130 gunship above pounded the enemy infantry with bombs and 30 mm shells.
Ben slipped through the whirlwind, continuing to fire. He danced across the precarious rubble and bounded over the jagged craters in the ground. A building loomed ahead, and he scaled it in three giant vertical leaps, his feet and hands finding purchase on window ledges and fire escapes. He poured green fire into the shrinking body of the mrill force, picking them off one by one.
The three remaining mrill ground troops and the two remaining robots had been bunched up, concentrating their fire to plow through the last cluster of buildings between them and the cannon on the White House lawn. The battering ram had disintegrated as their numbers dwindled. The enemy troops and robots dispersed, fanning out like arms on a rake. The soldiers in the square tried to keep them in their sights, but the mrill troops vanished, activating their cloaking systems.
Ben’s jamming signal had originally disabled their cloaking tech, but the mrill on the ground had finally managed to overpower his signal—at least for a moment. He knew they couldn’t fire while invisible, as nearly all the nanomachines in their bodies had to be retasked to maintaining the visual illusion. The mrill would disappear, move to a new position, reappear for a second or two to fire, and then move on. The robots weren’t equipped with the cloaking technology and weren’t quite as mobile as the mrill foot soldiers, though what they lacked in stealth they made up for in armor, and bullets zinged harmlessly off their hides as they marched forward, red eyes glowing.
The AC-130 gunship overhead went silent. The robots were getting too close to the soldiers’ positions. The robots seemed impenetrable and the mrill troops were impossible to track.
But Ben could see the mrill, or could at least see the heat signatures of their rifles.
He spotted the infrared blur of one of the weapons racing up the side of a crumpled building, where the mrill fighter would have an open line of fire into a squad of soldiers. He ordered his own nanobots to direct most of their resources to reestablishing the jamming signal. It meant losing his own ability to turn invisible, but he had no choice. He couldn’t let those soldiers die while he could do something about it.
He turned and slung his rifle onto the roof of the building across the street, a 55-foot shot put. The clattering sound of it landing on the cement roof was lost in the roar of the battle, and he needed to be as nimble as po
ssible. Even before the rifle landed, he launched himself up the side of the building. He bounded dozens of feet at a time, his feet finding slim edges, his hands growing thin adhesive pads similar to those on a gecko’s toes. He couldn’t dangle from a flat wall by just his hands, but the sticky pads allowed him to momentarily cling to the rough surface as his feet found purchase and propelled him further. It was, despite the furor, exhilarating.
Ben hauled himself over the cornice and landed on the balls of his feet on the dirty roof. He retrieved his rifle and crept to the edge of the rooftop. The scene below almost defied belief. A jagged ravine ran from the northeast, where the mrill had originally landed, down to the square. The charred, blackened trench was littered with bodies, mostly human, some mrill, as well as chunks of crushed and shredded civilian and military vehicles. The scar cut straight through buildings, and mangled wires spit sparks through the tangles of crumbled masonry, twisted steel rebar, and mutilated furniture that sagged out from the vivisected structures. Fires burned everywhere. A blackened fire truck, torn in half, its red and blue strobe lights still spinning lazily, had been abandoned at one street corner. No firefighters were in sight. Can’t blame them. It was an active battlefield and the mrill would kill them as promptly as they did the soldiers. Maybe they already had.
To the southwest, now just a stone’s throw away, the White House was still pristine, but the lawn was stuffed with soldiers and marines. The defensive cannon bathed them in crimson light every time it fired, making them look like scurrying ants in a puddle of blood. The stench of burning plastic and flesh filled the air. Ben was momentarily paralyzed at the horror of it all. If this isn’t what hell looks like, then the devil needs to take some notes.
The First Protectors: A Novel Page 32