The Assault (17 page)

“A geep. What would it try and do, baa you to death?” Wilton said.

“That was just an example, moron,” Price said. “What if they crossed snakes and birds and produced birds with fangs and deadly venom?”

“They already did. It’s called Sergeant Brogan,” Wilton said.

“Venomous birds would be kinda scary,” Chisnall said.

“How about elephants and kangaroos?” Monster said. “If they crossed those.”

“That wouldn’t be scary, just funny,” Chisnall said.

“Not if one landed on top of you, my dude,” Monster said.

“Get Goezlin, now!” Yozi roared through the gate at a PGZ guard.

“Where are your ID tubes?” the guard asked.

“Azoh! I don’t have them, and if you don’t get Goezlin down here now, you’ll be fishing yours out of your ear.”

There was movement near the entrance, and the problem was solved by the appearance of Goezlin. He must have been watching the scene through a window or on a security monitor.

“Lieutenant Yozi,” Goezlin said. He made no movement to have the gate opened.

“Yes, sir. The prisoners we brought you earlier, sir. Where are they now?”

Goezlin did not look happy. “They are no longer here. They were required elsewhere.”

“Sir, I have reason to believe that they are not who they seemed. My team and I were attacked by the squad that brought them in. There is something very strange going on here.”

“They attacked you?”

“And killed my machine gunner. Where are the scumbugz now, sir?”

Goezlin’s eyes narrowed even farther, if that was possible. “They have been taken to help defuse an unexploded missile.”

“Where?”

“At the entrance to Uluru.”

Price came to help Chisnall set the C4 charges on the top story of the building, at the very rear, where the building met the cliff face. He created a shaped charge by stacking six C4 packs in a three-two-one pattern.

“Rock looks pretty solid,” Price said.

“That’s been worrying me a little,” Chisnall said. “If we could drill into it, I’d be happier. But at the very least these charges should bring the building down. Hopefully create enough rubble to block up the entrance. Buy us some time. Everything else look okay?”

He felt like he was asking her about her end-of-year exams instead of their plans to defend a building from alien attack.

“All good,” she said.

“Movement at the fence line,” Wilton reported from the roof.

“Looks like it could be the PGZ guys with Fleming and Bennett.”

“Okay,” Chisnall said. “Showtime. Price, get on the roof with the others and load your grenade launcher with smoke. Don’t be seen. Brogan, I want you down by the front door. I’ll coordinate from the control room. Nobody does anything except on my go.”

There was an altercation at the fence line. Chisnall watched it on one of the security monitors. The guard was arguing with two red-suited PGZ officers.

It didn’t last long. Nobody argued with the PGZ.
They got back in their vehicle and the barrier arm lifted to allow them through. The car rolled forward slowly, then accelerated.

“Wilton, give me a range on that vehicle,” Chisnall said.

“Three hundred and twenty meters. And closing,” Wilton said from the roof.

“Keep coming,” Chisnall said under his breath.

“Two hundred and eighty meters,” Wilton said.

“All units check in,” Chisnall said.

“Angel Two in position,” Brogan said.

“Angel Four in position.”

“Angel Five in position.”

“Angel Six in position.”

For a moment Chisnall found himself waiting for one more voice. But Angel Three was not going to check in. Not now. Not ever. With the odds stacked against them, they could have used Hunter on their side. More than that, Chisnall could have used a friend’s shoulder to lean on.

“Two hundred meters,” Wilton said.

Once the SAS guys were inside, the Angel Team should be able to hold their defensive perimeter long enough for the two men to do what they needed to do, Chisnall thought. But if the PGZ figured out what was really going on, then it was all going to get messy really fast.

It got really messy really fast.

“One hundred and eighty meters,” Wilton said. “LT, I got eyes on a vehicle advancing at speed down the southern approach road.”

Chisnall repositioned one of the cameras to see what Wilton was looking at. A Land Rover with two soldiers in the front seats and a bunch more on the tray.

“This is about to turn pear-shaped,” he said. “Stay frosty. What’s the range to the PGZ car?”

“One hundred and forty meters.”

“Not close enough,” Chisnall said. “Price, on my mark, lay some smoke. Two canisters.”

“One hundred and thirty meters.”

The Land Rover was sliding to a halt at the barriers. There was shouting and waving. The PGZ car, well over halfway toward them, slowed, then began to turn back.

“Wilton, take out the tires on that PGZ car!” Chisnall yelled.

There was a crack from overhead and the left front tire disintegrated, sending black pieces of rubber flying. The car slewed off the road and ground to a halt in the dirt.

Almost immediately, the back doors opened and Fleming emerged, dragging Bennett with him. The front door of the car began to open. Fleming kicked at it, slamming it shut. They began to run toward the building.

“Suppressing fire!” Chisnall yelled, and heard the fifty-cal open up overhead. Dust kicked up around the PGZ car and the bulletproof windows shattered.

The PGZ officers scrambled from the vehicle, taking cover behind it.

“One hundred and twenty meters,” Wilton said.

“Smoke, smoke, smoke!” Chisnall yelled.

A second later, a spinning canister came into view, followed quickly by a second. The canisters landed behind Fleming and Bennett and spewed out white smoke, almost instantly creating a dense fog. The soldiers, the fence line, and even the buildings behind them faded into vague silhouettes, then to nothing.

They were getting incoming fire now; he could hear the rounds hitting the building around them. The Pukes were firing blind, but Fleming and Bennett were taking no chances, running a zigzagging course toward the building so as not to present an easy target. Surely they were no more than a hundred meters now, thought Chisnall.

Monster’s fire from the roof of the building was constant. He, too, was firing blindly into the smoke. Anyone in their right minds would have hit the deck and stayed there. Wilton, also on the roof, was peppering the PGZ car, keeping the two officers cowering behind it.

The smoke swirled and parted near the fence line and the nose of the second Land Rover raced through it at speed, the fifty-cal on the back firing continuously. Fleming heard it and pushed Bennett to the ground as bullets kicked up dust around them. The faces of the enemy soldiers were clearly visible on Chisnall’s screen.

“It’s Yozi! Price, switch to frags!” Chisnall yelled.

“Copy that,” Price said.

A few seconds later he heard an explosion and saw a volcano of dirt erupt in front of the Land Rover. It lurched to the side but kept coming. Another grenade, another explosion, this one
just in front of the Land Rover. It bucked and jumped, flipping onto its side.

Fleming pulled Bennett back to his feet and hauled him toward the building at the base of Uluru.

Fifty meters, twenty, ten, then the fifty-cal on the Land Rover opened up again. The big Puke, Alizza, had wrenched it off its mount and balanced it on top of the overturned vehicle.

“Get them inside!” Chisnall yelled.

On one of the monitors, he saw the front door of the building open, just as the SAS men reached it. Puffs of rock dust kicked out of the side of the building around them and sparks flew from the heavy metal door. He could see Brogan putting her weight behind the door, starting to close it as Fleming and Bennett ran inside.

More sparks from the door, hammer blows of the heavy machine-gun rounds, then suddenly Brogan was gone. Her head snapped back and her body fell away out of sight. There was a momentary gasp on her comm, then silence.

“Brogan!” Chisnall yelled. There was no reply. “Brogan!”

“They’re pulling back,” Wilton yelled from the roof. “Booyah!”

“I think Brogan’s down,” Chisnall said. He left the control room and ran toward the entrance.

The corridors seemed endless. They felt unreal, like a movie set. He had been able to deal with Hunter’s death, but that had been different. Hunter had been dead when they had found him. Chisnall hadn’t had to see him go down, like
he had seen Brogan go down. Her head snapping backward with the impact of a bullet. Her limp, lifeless body falling.

He reached the mezzanine floor and saw Brogan lying behind the door. The door was shut, and Fleming was closing the interlocking bars around the perimeter to keep it that way.

Bennett was leaning over her. He looked up as Chisnall entered.

“Is she …?” Chisnall found the words got stuck in his throat.

“She’s alive but out cold,” Bennett said. “Took a bullet to the helmet. Helmet shattered and absorbed most of the force. I think the real damage happened when her head hit the floor.”

The ground seemed unsteady, and Chisnall grabbed at the railing of the mezzanine wall for support.

Then he keyed his comm. “Brogan’s down, unconscious. Everybody relocate to the entrance. It won’t take them long to call in reinforcements.”

He ran down the stairs and kneeled beside Brogan. Her shattered helmet lay beside her head. Blood flowed from a cut somewhere in her hairline, but it didn’t look serious. Her eyes were shut and she was breathing steadily.

“That was a little tight,” Fleming said.

“The timing was a lot closer than we expected,” Chisnall said without looking up.

“How did they get onto us so fast?” Bennett asked.

Chisnall glanced at him. There was no choice but to be honest.

“My fault. Sorry,” he said. “You remember Yozi and his team, who picked us up in the desert?”

“Yes,” Fleming said.

“We left them out there. Alive. I just couldn’t bring myself to execute them in cold blood.”

Fleming and Bennett looked at each other but said nothing.

“How long do you need to remove the warhead?” Chisnall asked.

“Ten to fifteen mikes,” Bennett said. “If all goes well.”

“You’re removing the warhead?” Price asked, arriving on the mezzanine level.

“You haven’t told your team yet?” Bennett asked.

“My orders were not to, until we were actually inside the rock,” Chisnall said.

“Maybe it’s time,” Fleming said.

CHISNALL STARED AT THE BANK OF SCREENS THAT COVERED the wall of the control room. Cameras covered every angle outside the building. Some showed the surrounding area and the fence lines. Others, presumably mounted in the monorail track, showed the view back toward the building they were in.

This place was a fortress, but no fortress could withstand what the aliens were about to throw at them for long.

Brogan lay in the middle of the room. She had not yet regained consciousness. That worried him more than he liked to admit. Was she just unconscious, or comatose?

He said, “It’s time you knew why we are here.”

“No argument from me,” Price said.

Chisnall nodded. “I wanted to tell you earlier, but my orders were for total secrecy.”

“So what’s it all about, dude?” Wilton asked. “What’s really, like, going on inside this rock?”

“That we don’t know. But with all the secrecy and security surrounding it, you don’t have to be a genius to work out that it’s vital to the Pukes. And if it’s that important to them, then it’s probably just as important for us to stop it. But how? Uluru is so big, and so solid, that we knew we couldn’t touch it, not even with a nuclear attack. So we crash-landed the Tomahawk here, right at the entrance. It’s a CL-22 warhead.”

Wilton whistled. “China Lake Two Two. Powerful stuff.”

CL-22 was the latest derivative of the immensely powerful CL-20 explosive invented back in the twentieth century. CL-20 had been developed as a propellant, but CL-22 was created for use in nuclear warheads. It was the most powerful conventional explosive on Earth.

“I thought our mission was to find out what’s going on inside the rock,” Price said.

“Partly,” Chisnall said. “But the other part is to get Fleming, Bennett, and that warhead inside the rock so they can destroy it. Whatever it is.”

“This is starting to sound like a suicide mission,” Wilton said.

“Only if we’re still here when the warhead goes off,” Chisnall said. “And I’m not planning on hanging around for that party.”

“The Monster hope you have other way out,” Monster
said, “because the Monster doesn’t think we’re coming back this way.”

“There’s another exit from this tunnel,” Chisnall said. “The monorail track runs right through the rock and comes out the other side. But we’ve never seen them use it. We think it’s an emergency exit. According to our satellite imagery and ground-penetrating radar, it is blocked by two, maybe three sets of blast doors.”