The Assault (10 page)

Until now.

The craft hovered above them, its electronic eyes—and the eyes of its crew—examining the top of the hill minutely.

“I think they’ve rumbled us,” Brogan said quietly on the comm.

The gunship moved slowly away, holding off about a hundred meters.

Chisnall opened his mouth to say something else but never got the chance. The front edge of the craft dipped as it accelerated into attack mode. There was a series of flashes from the rocket pods on either side of the cockpit and the hilltop was engulfed in a thunderstorm of sound and fury. Pulverized rock flew into the air and waves of concussion blasted through the rocky ridges. Chisnall hugged the floor in a steep-sided crevice and saw wedges of rock flying above
his head. He fought for breath and heard a cry of agony over the comm.

Another wave of rockets lashed the hilltop, then another. Only the jagged crevices of the rock saved them from the percussive blasts. The rotorcraft lifted its nose into the air and headed away, back to its base.

“They’re withdrawing!” Wilton yelled. “Booyah!”

“Watch the scope, watch the scope!” Chisnall yelled.

“Here they come,” Price called. “Two fast movers heading our way.”

“They’ll take out the entire hill,” Brogan said.

“Get out of here, now!” Chisnall yelled. “Over the back!”

It was the only option he could see. To get down on the opposite side of the hill from the approaching jets.

“Three klicks out,” Price called.

Bennett appeared close to him, and Chisnall grabbed his arm, helping him limp across the ragged hilltop. Bennett was heavy and much larger than Chisnall and the going was slow.

“Two klicks.”

Fleming appeared on the other side of Bennett and the three of them stumbled toward the southern end of the rock.

“One klick!”

The hill dropped away and they scrambled and fell through a patch of porcupine grass, the needles stabbing at any exposed skin. Then the ground beneath their feet disappeared completely and they were falling over a small bluff.

They hit another steep slope hard and were sliding and rolling. Chisnall crashed into a tree halfway down and stopped there, winded, as Bennett and Fleming continued sliding past him. Above him, the hilltop exploded into a massive ball of flame, sucking all the oxygen out of the air. Huge orbs of flame streaked with charcoal leaped into the night air. Benda Hill erupted like a volcano. The land around it turned orange, then yellow, bathing in the fiery anger of the hilltop above.

“Angel Team, status check,” Chisnall gasped into the comm.

“Angel Two. Oscar Kilo.”

“Angel Four. Oscar Kilo.”

“Angel Five, I took a shrapnel hit from the rocket attack, but the body armor held. I’m Oscar Kilo.”

“Angel Six. Oscar Kilo.”

Chisnall scrambled down the hillside to Fleming and Bennett. Both were breathing heavily and blood was seeping from a deep gash on Fleming’s face.

“You guys okay?” Chisnall asked.

“I don’t think that did my leg any favors,” Bennett said. “But I’m no worse off than I was before.”

Fleming just nodded. He found a gauze pad and held it firmly to the gash on his face.

“Is that all you got?” Wilton yelled at the sky.

“Price, what are those fast movers doing?” Chisnall asked.

“Looks like they’re coming back for more,” she said.

Inzusu watched the jets on his radar as they wheeled around.

Of all the jobs in the Bzadian Army, his had to be the most boring, but by that definition, also one of the safest. For which Inzusu was grateful. Not for him the terror of combat on the front line.

This was the most excitement he had had since starting this job. Human jets over New Bzadia. Intruders within striking distance of the base.

Lozpe was his supervisor today. Inzusu didn’t like him much and fortunately rarely saw him, as Lozpe was the kind who supervised from his office with his head on his desk. He rarely ventured out onto the radar floor, unlike Czali, who was constantly pacing, moving from one screen to another.

Right now, however, Lozpe was hovering right next to Inzusu, watching the jets lining up their next attack run.

A subtle change in the light patterns on the very fringe of his radar drew Inzusu’s eyes in that direction. A smattering of dots. At first he thought it was interference or maybe a chaff cloud, because the pattern was so dense and so widespread.

The radar system clearly thought so too. Its basic intelligence struggled to define the strange signal. What did it mean? The fuzzy signal moved closer, resolving itself from a cloud to a series of distinct dots. Thousands of them. So
many that the analysis computer was struggling to identify and deal with each one individually. There was a pause as the system interrogated the airspace and waited for a response from any aircraft in that area.

Nothing came.

Inzusu was starting to get alarmed now, although the radar had not yet identified the dots as a threat.

His brain and the signal analysis computer both set off warning bells at the same time.

None of the signals was broadcasting an identification code.

They were enemy aircraft.

“Azoh!”

His hand hit the alarm button by the side of his keyboard even as he felt Lozpe’s breath on the back on his neck.

“What is it? What have you got?” Lozpe asked, not yet registering the cloud pattern at the top of the screen.

“Enemy aircraft inbound,” Inzusu said, his voice barely a whisper.

“Where?” Lozpe seemed confused. “What are they throwing at us today?”

Inzusu pointed to the fuzzy mass at the top of the screen.

“Everything,” he said.

Chisnall could see the Bzadian fast movers in the distance, arcs of light in the sky, circling around for another attack.

“Bring it on,” Wilton roared.

Chisnall searched desperately around them. They were out in the open now, with no chance of evasion and no cover. Sitting ducks.

“Wait!” Price’s voice. “They’re peeling off.”

“You’re sure?” Chisnall asked.

“Why?” Brogan asked.

Chisnall said nothing, his eyes fixed on the darkened night sky. The troop carrier was bugging out as well.

The air defenses around Uluru exploded into life.

“What the hell?” Brogan said.

“The raid,” Chisnall said. “It’s started.”

“What raid?” Brogan asked.

“Let’s get back up the hill,” Chisnall said. “I want a ticket to this show.”

They worked their way around to the gentle northern slope of Benda Hill and back up to the top. Their former defensive positions were now crumbled, blackened rock. They had got out just in time.

Bzadian fast movers were streaming in from the east and west to meet the threat from the north, and there were constant flashes in the sky above them.

“They’re too small to be fighters,” Inzusu said. His fingers flicked over the display, spinning it, zooming it. “They’re drones, probably predators.”

“How many planes have we got up against them?” Lozpe asked.

“Not enough,” Inzusu said. He watched the screen for another few seconds. It was alive with swarms of Bzadian defenders moving to intercept the intruders. Missiles were flying in both directions. He saw two defenders get hit simultaneously and tumble from the sky. The predators were firing antiair. That was unusual.

Surface-to-air missile (SAM) sites around Uluru lit up. Inzusu glanced at one of the live-cam feeds. He saw fiery lines streak up into the sky as the SAMs engaged the enemy, but there were matching streaks of lightning emerging from the sky and tracing back down the path of the SAMs.

Every time a SAM battery fired, it gave away its position, and the scumbugz had advanced anti-SAMs. The SAM batteries had to keep moving constantly to avoid becoming a target.

He could feel the concussions now, vibrating through the ground as missiles impacted above their heads.

“Wait a minute,” he said, his eyes flicking between the radar screen and the analysis readouts.

“What is it?” Lozpe asked. When Inzusu didn’t immediately answer, he repeated the question. “What is it?”

“It’s all antiair and anti-SAM,” Inzusu said. “Everything. The entire attack is aimed at our defensive aircraft screen and our SAM sites. They’re not attacking any other ground installations.”

“Which means?”

“They’re softening us up.”

He reached for the radio but got only static. He looked at Lozpe in horror. “They’ve jammed our comms.”

“And our radar.” Lozpe seemed dazed, as if shocked by the speed and scale of what he was seeing.

Inzusu turned back to the radar screen in time to see a cloud of white noise descend over it, blocking all the signals. The enemy was systematically destroying their defenses and jamming the radar and communications.

That could mean only one thing.

A glow in the sky ahead of them grew rapidly larger and turned into a Bzadian jet—a big one, a type two. It was heading straight for them, its wings on fire.

It passed so low overhead that they could feel its heat before it crashed and sent up a fireball in the desert to the south.

“Booyah,” Wilton said quietly.

Ahead of them, the sky was alive with the constant thunderclap of explosions.

A faint noise was flicking at Chisnall’s ears. He turned his head slightly and was greeted by a sudden roaring sound and a blast of air.

“What the—” Brogan said.

It was a missile. Ground hugging, to avoid radar. It streaked past the hill they were on at such a low altitude that they were actually looking down on it as it passed.

What kind it was, Chisnall couldn’t tell. The speed at which it was traveling meant that it was no more than a
rush of air and a streak of light, followed a few seconds later by a massive, screeching explosion and billowing flame from the north.

“Take that!” Chisnall yelled.

An entire submarine fleet had been dodging icebergs in the Southern Ocean in complete radio silence and full stealth mode. A few days earlier, the group had turned north and quietly made their way toward the coast of Australia. Waiting for the signal.

Another missile passed them, and another, and suddenly the air around the hill seemed alive with massive insects attracted to the heat and light of the burning base at Uluru.

It was a fireworks show like none that had ever been seen before. It seemed unearthly and weird to be sitting high on a rock as the missiles streaked past below them.

Tomahawks, Exocets, Silkworms, Russian Granat missiles, and more. They honed in on the now largely undefended Uluru military base. With the alien fast movers busy engaging the predators and the SAM sites relocating or being destroyed, the missiles approaching from the south were relatively unimpeded.

Then came the second wave.

And the third.

The ground itself seemed to be flexing and undulating.

The desert was on fire.

Not all the missiles were accurate. A number fell short, in a series of explosions that rippled across the twin fences and the defenses of the outer perimeter.

“What the hell is going on?” Wilton asked.

“We’re sending them a message,” Chisnall said.

“Booyah,” Monster said.

Up to now, Earth forces had been on the run, fighting defensive actions, trying to hold back the unstoppable Puke army. Now, for the first time, Allied forces were taking the fight to the Pukes, striking deep in the heart of New Bzadia, at their biggest military installation.

“Yeah, now get the hell off our planet,” Wilton said, but his voice was low and subdued. Even he was shocked by the sheer volume of the ordnance that was raining down in front of their eyes.

“You knew about this raid in advance,” Brogan said in a slightly accusatory tone as they scraped their way back down the northern slope of Benda Hill.

“I know lots of things that you don’t know,” Chisnall said. “That’s why I’m the leader.”

“Anything else you want to share?” Brogan asked.

“Nope.”

“Thought not.”

At the base of the hill, behind the clump of boulders, the Angels squatted in a circle and Chisnall consulted his GPS tablet.

“Okay, here it is,” Chisnall said. “The big raid is our cover.”

“They put on this whole show just for us?” Monster said. “Cheese and rice!”

“No, not just for us,” Chisnall said. “But with all the confusion and destruction, we should be able to get in relatively easily. They’ll have plenty on their minds without double-checking ID from every grunt in the field. The missiles took out a large section of the fence and the minefield. That’s our welcome mat.”

“You’d think someone would have mentioned this at the mission briefing,” Brogan said.

Chisnall stowed the tablet and looked around the team. “Up till two days ago, less than three people in the world knew about this raid. Some people knew parts of it, for planning and coordination, but almost nobody had all the parts of the jigsaw. And the target was under wraps until yesterday. Most of those involved in the planning thought they were attacking a base in Singapore.”

“Why all the secrecy?” Price asked. “Don’t nobody trust nobody no more?”

“Something like that,” Chisnall said. “My orders were to tell no one until the raid began. If the Pukes had found out about this, it would have been a disaster for our side. But right now is the best chance any human has ever had to get inside Uluru and find out what they’re up to. So let’s not hang around here gossiping all day.”

“Booyah!” Wilton said.

“What about the RAF guys?” Brogan asked.

“They’re coming with us,” Chisnall said.

“What?” Price said.

“You’re nuts, LT,” Brogan said. “No offense, skipper, but on this you’re nuts. We can pass ourselves off as Pukes, but they can’t.”

“We’ll treat them as our prisoners,” Chisnall said. “It’ll give us extra credibility. Once we’re inside the base, they can hide out somewhere, until we’re ready to leave. Then our extraction team can pick them up as well.”

“How exactly are we being extracted from this mission?” Brogan asked. “That part I’m not quite clear on.”