Operation Wild Tarpan (3 page)

Miller cycled channels on his earpiece until he heard Northwind and Lewis.

“
—ow many?
”

“
Four M1A4 Abrams.
”

“
Just a platoon?
” Lewis rasped.

“
I, er...
”

“
Four tanks is a platoon—that’s all there is?
”

“
That’s what’s moving into Manhattan. There were another eight that haven’t crossed the river yet.
”

That added up to a tank company, and if they were on the opposite side of the river, in New Jersey, that could only be to provide covering fire. Miller checked with du Trieux, but the Northwind operator hadn’t bothered tracking the other eight with the dwindling number of drones.

“
Goddamn,
” Lewis muttered.

Goddamn was right.

Miller listened in while Lewis called Harris for instructions, but while he did, Stockman’s forces continued to move. The other checkpoints in the cordon were relatively calm, just following orders, but the situation around the command squad was worsening by the second.

More of Stockman’s soldiers arrived. They got out of their Bravos, dragging their rifles with them, and were almost immediately swallowed by a growing mob of infantrymen. Within seconds they were red-faced and ranting too, spitting insults down the avenue. The only surprise when the first gunshot came was that it took so long to brew.

A soldier huddling behind the cover of his Bravo simply stood up, sighted down the avenue, and fired. Switchblade were sandbagged down, but enough of them were peeking over the top to leave a target—two security man went down screaming, and those screams, as much as anything else, ignited the infantry mob’s bloodlust.

Miller knew soldiers never reacted all that quickly. Orders took time to sink in. Troops gathered up in position before making their move, and time got wasted waiting for one jackass or another to understand what was going on.

And in every simulated firefight Miller had been through in training, the rule of thumb was to walk or crawl towards gunfire. You only ever ran to get
away
from it.

But the Infected
exploded
down the avenue, toward the sandbagged security troops, sprinting like a wave.

Bravos lurched forward, set to rolling as mobile barricades. Troops fired from around the corners as soldiers ran from the moving Bravo to the next in a chain of screaming hatred that shed infantry at every speck of cover that could be fired from.

No orderly bounding overwatch here. Every single one of those soldiers were psychopaths racing through fire like men possessed, heedless of whether they were being covered or not, heedless of whether they were being shot at.

But the Switchblade unit were professionals. Behind their sandbags they had the superior position, but the Infected had numbers and willpower and a shitload more coordination. By the time Switchblade were ranked up against the sandbags in orderly firing lines, shooting back with the snap and crackle of automatic gunfire, the Infected were hurling grenades and following their grenades over the sandbags within a heartbeat of detonation.

They were overrun so quickly Miller audibly gasped.

Assaults did not begin that goddamn fast. They
couldn’t
. And for every member of the Infected who was wounded or killed, dozens more flooded in from every direction.

“
We need fire support!
” Lewis shouted over the radio. “
Where the hell’s that goddamn attack helicopter now?
”

“
Air support’s taking off.
” The Northwind operator’s voice was hitched, unsteady. “
They’ll be there soon. It’ll be fine.
” She clearly didn’t believe it.

“
Miller! Insurance policy, now! We’re pulling out!
”

“Roger that, Cobalt-1.” Miller lowered the binoculars on the scene of Switchblade members desperately dragging their wounded back towards the WSU Laboratory’s underground parking lot. “Doyle.”

The sniper rifle filled the apartment with noise. The window Doyle had been sighting through blew out—more from the sheer force of the muzzle-flash’s blast, than the relatively tiny .388 bullet crashing through the glass. If not for his earbuds, and the partial protection of their noise filters, Miller would have been deafened for life.

Not the suppression fire Miller had ordered, but the situation was beyond that.

Miller grabbed his M27 and charged downstairs with Morland and du Trieux.

There was plenty of cover in the streets, abandoned vehicles at the sides of the road, fuel-burners—either out of gas, or leaking bloody strands of the fungus that was breaking down what little was left.

Miller set his M27 on its bipod beside one of the abandoned vehicle, and sawed through its entire magazine in near continual streams of fire towards the two army Bravos blocking off the intersection. The rounds blew dusty hunks of brick from walls and tore paint from the Bravo’s armoured hide, puffs of smoke wherever the rounds hit. He wasn’t aiming at anyone, wasn’t trying to
kill
, merely make a noise, draw attention while du Trieux and Morland made their way quietly along the street, heads ducked, walking at a near crouch.

One of the Infected infantrymen popped up over the back of the Bravo—Miller reflexively twitched the M27’s sights over his face, pulled the trigger. It was a
reflex
, like firing at the range, no thought about it until ice flooded his veins and he realized what he was doing.

The face was gone. Between the roaring of the M27 and the brief blinding of its muzzle-flash, the face had disappeared and Miller didn’t know why, or how that had happened. There were greyish smears on the Bravo’s plating where bullets had torn gouges through the paint, but Miller didn’t know, couldn’t know, what had happened—only that the face was gone, ducked out of the way, and Miller’s hands were shaking.

He was currently wearing the near-black urban camouflage pattern Schaeffer-Yeager had provided the Cobalt teams, but he’d once worn that same uniform, that same helmet as the faceless soldier. He should have been calling for a medic, trying to see if a friendly was down—but there wasn’t, was there? That infantryman had just ducked down. Everything was fine.

Nothing
was fine—a rifleman was at the corner of a building barely sixty or seventy yards away. Miller pulled the M27 over in time to accidently pour the last of his drum magazine across the building’s side as something crashed into his chest like a mule-kick delivered in steel-toed boots.

Dead? Was he dead now? That was his first thought, scrambling down, struggling to breathe, diaphragm spasming in panicked wheezes, wind knocked out of him. There was even something damp on his fingers when he patted himself down, but his fingers came away smudged with grey-green gel—the flexshell vest under his combat webbing had stopped the rifle round. Its multiple layers—carbon-fibre/KevWeb composite weave, interlinked microcells of shear-thickening non-Newtonian fluid which hardened under impact, another layer of composite weave treated with ballistic resins—had done their job. But Miller couldn’t breathe right. Something hurt under all that, and it hurt a whole hell of a lot. As he numbly picked at the vest, he found two smashed pieces of metal that must have been fragments of the bullet, but saw no blood.

He had worse problems than breathing—rifle rounds punched through the car he was sheltering behind, shattering its windows and boring straight through its plastic body-panels. The only real protection was the engine and underlying steel frame, thickest up front to protect passengers in the event of a crash, and Miller huddled down in that tiny space, spitting up phlegm in alternation between desperate gasps and a miserable retching as he tried to force air back into his lungs.

But now that Miller was the target, that opened things up for du Trieux and Morland—and from their angle, the infantrymen had no cover at all.

Miller looked over just in time to see du Trieux lean into her weapon, her teeth gritting as she fired in quick double-taps—
blam blam, blam blam, blam blam
—Morland following her lead.

Chased away from their fire, two of the Infected bounded in the opposite direction. Behind them a civilian in ragged clothes scuttled past a dead soldier on the sidewalk and made away with his rifle, cackling as she ran off.

Another shot from above—Doyle—armour-piercing rifle rounds tore straight through the thinly-armoured roof of one of the Bravos. From Miller’s angle, he saw a grenadier collapse out of the vehicle’s door, 30mm airburst grenade launcher clattering across the street.

The first black-armoured Bravo, one of Switchblade’s, made its appearance in the distance, cruising out of the cordon. It was taking fire from all directions from the Infected infantry at the intersection, and those behind it. Something exploded to one side of the vehicle, sending it swaying side to side, but it stayed intact. The Bravos were designed to survive IEDs at close quarters, massive explosions below or to the vehicle’s sides. The thin roof was the only real weak point.

A second Switchblade Bravo followed it, then a third. By that time Miller was sucking down enough oxygen to move from his initial position, emptying out a fresh drum magazine at anything that remotely
looked
like cover.

The lead Switchblade Bravo thumped into the infantry vehicles blocking the intersection and sent them screeching apart. There were dead bodies behind them; Miller spotted one missing a face.

His hands shook, but that didn’t matter too much for pouring suppressive fire into cover. He just had to keep his hands clenched tight, keep those Infected soldiers pinned down in a recessed storefront.

There was a flash, another explosion—this one tore through the door of one of the S-Y Bravos. Smoke coiled away from the impact as the vehicle slowed, and Miller dimly made out du Trieux screaming at him. “Rocket!”

He followed her pointing finger, and unleashed hell on a window spilling the tell-tale smoke of a SMAW’s rocket launch, smashing through it and the wall for a six feet in every direction. Over, under, side-to-side—Miller’s M27’s 5.56mm rounds were unlikely to make it through a brick wall, but with enough of them, bricks would crack and shatter.

A second black Bravo pulled up beside the one that’d been hit, then a Switchblade trooper got out and took up the job of filling the SMAW window with bullets.

Miller switched drum magazines and ran for the wounded Bravo with du Trieux. The door that’d been hit had a neatly blast-cut hole in it. When they got the doors on the opposite side open, the smell of burnt meat and scorched plastic was unbearable.

Morland went in first, appearing as if from nowhere, hauling a still smoking body from the cabin and pushing them into the open doors of the next Bravo to stop. Whether the victims were dead or alive, it was hard to tell. The vehicle’s interior was a mess of smoke and occasional twitching flames, surprisingly small, but there wasn’t much left to burn after the sheer heat of the warhead’s directed blast. It had thrown a high-pressure jet of molten metal ahead of the flame, and cooled copper droplets were scattered like jewels over the blackened flesh of someone Miller dimly recognised as Mannon. The rest of Cobalt-1 were nowhere to be seen inside, just members of Switchblade Miller didn’t recognise. Two were alive, able to get out and stumble into another Bravo by themselves.

Howling, nearby. Human, loud, a roaring under the gunfire—Miller dared look back the way the escape convoy had come, towards the avenue. Soldiers and civilians ran in a rushing tsunami after the convoy.

“Miller!” Again, du Trieux screamed at him, and he found his way to her. She’d stolen one of the army’s two Bravos, the keys stripped off a faceless corpse beside it. “We have to get out of here!”

Miller lumbered closer, one step, another. Twisting his head, ducking down behind the Bravo’s frame. Morland was already inside, hanging out of an open door and firing off to the left.

“Doyle?” Miller said. He turned around, shouted it, “Doyle! We’re leaving!”

“
Pick me up at the door, would you?
”

He’d forgotten all about his earpiece. Miller pointed at the entrance his team had poured out of, and yelled at du Trieux, “There, go!” as he got inside.

She gunned the engine, slowed. Miller threw open the doors, and Doyle came sprinting out, pushing his rifle in ahead of him before clambering into the back bench seats. Du Trieux simply gunned the engine, momentum slamming the doors shut, and joined the escape convoy’s tail.

Behind them, the signature boom of a tank cannon, and the wrenching, drawn-out smash of an exploding shell turning a building to rubble. Miller twisted around and spotted rising smoke far behind the mob chasing them. Rifle rounds splattered off the Bravo’s hull behind him.

“The hell was that?” he asked, tapping over to Lewis’s circuit on the earpiece.

“
Tank
.”

“Shooting at
what
, Lewis?”

Lewis sucked down a very audible breath. “
At us. Not all of us got out, son.
”

G
ETTING ACROSS THE
East River was dicey. Stockman had just as many drones in the air as Northwind did, and Stockman’s were armed. Every instant spent in sunlight on the bridge was an eternity, waiting for a hammer to fall on the convoy. But no hammer came.

The walls of the Astoria Compound were a welcome sight, towering twenty feet above street level, higher where buildings had been integrated into its length. Windows were sealed off with sheet metal and search lights and cameras hung from every corner. A pair of heavy infantry, in exoskeletal harnesses, waved the Bravos through the armoured gate, clutching full sized machine guns in their fists.

Heavies would have been useful for dealing with the army cordon, but with hydrogen for fuel cells reserved for use in the Bravos, their exoskeletons were tied down to lithium-ion batteries and the compound’s generators. After the empty streets of the city, lifeless without electricity, watching the flash of arc-welders being used to add a fresh strip of steel cladding to the top of the compound walls was an almost religious experience. This was home, where lights came on and electrical fire burned on the borders. Fungicides had stained some of the brickwork a harsh yellow-grey, but the sickly colour was preferable to the pink and scarlet fungus eating away at the city.