The Reaper Plague (24 page)

“
No. I sympathize, but
that’s bad tactics. You take out the generators,
then
I’ll
tap the guards in my night scope. While I do, you steal a truck and
crash through that fencing. We have to rely on Grusky to have the
prisoners ready to overpower the guards, and we have to help them.
Then instead of two people we’ll have hundreds. Someone will know
where the rest of our people are – the women, Rick, whoever. If we
have a little luck we’ll clean out this nest in one fell
swoop.”

Repeth’s protest died in her throat, because
he was right. “Okay. One fell swoop it is. What does that mean,
anyway? Never mind, tell me later mister college smarty-pants
officer. Here, take the radio.” She clipped it onto his shoulder
strap.

He choked a chuckle. “Okay. I’ll call in the
diversion in one minute. Get moving, Little Miss Reaper.” Muzik set
himself in position with a clear view of the whole south side of
the prisoner barracks, cover from the sides, and a fallback route
to his rear. Then he made the radio call and waited for the lights
to go out.

Repeth circled around to the west, keeping to
the zone outside the artificial lighting, not looking at the bright
lights. She navigated by the sound of the big diesel engines
running, eventually finding the generators in a fenced-in yard to
the north. Unfortunately they were accompanied by two light armored
vehicles just like the ones that had assaulted them earlier. In
fact, they could be the same ones, though there was no way to
tell.

Absent explosives – something she did not
have – she would have to sneak into the yard and shut the
generators down by hand.
Gonna be hard – everything is lit up.
There’s a catch-22 for ya – generator power to the lights that
illuminate the generators.
Then she thought of another
possibility as she noticed the open rear door on one of the
LAVs.

Sloppy.

Working her way around, eventually she was
able to see directly into the cramped interior compartment of the
vehicle. There were several uniformed troops in it, but they
weren’t moving.

In fact, they were asleep.

Really sloppy, and just what I need.

Without waiting to think it through or talk
herself out of it, she silently charged the open hatch, PW10 tight
to her shoulder as she made her rapid approach under the bright
lights. No one responded until her boots hit the ramp. Then she
fired short bursts on full automatic until everyone inside was
incapacitated.

She was fairly sure that the confines of the
vehicle and the noisy generators would cover the faint sounds of
the suppressed shots. She tossed the infantrymen out of the back
with several convulsive heaves, but kept their weapons inside.

Dragging the unconscious turret gunner out of
his position and down the ramp to join his buddies, then the
driver, she started up the LAV’s engine. She frantically tried to
recall everything she’d learned about how to operate one of these
things. She managed to get the ramp closed, its electric whine
filling the inside, then she spent a precious two minutes working
out how to drive it. Once she was sure how, she crawled back into
the turret space.

One more minute and she was ready to try out
the 25mm electric chain gun. “Here goes nothing,” she said out loud
and rotated the turret to aim at the other LAV. She lined up the
gun very precisely, using its optics to place the crosshairs on the
lower outer edge of the enemy turret, where it met the body of the
vehicle. Then she depressed the trigger.

Vibration rattled her bones as the electric
motor screamed, driving the mechanism that rotated shells through
the gun breech. Explosive sound pummeled her as the 25-millimeter
rounds fired and then impacted her target at less than fifty yards,
point-blank for such a weapon.

Her guts twisted as she saw the deadly effect
of her gun on the other vehicle. She had tried to fire at a place
that would disable and lock up the enemy turret without necessarily
killing the people inside, but the LAV rocked and then exploded.
One of the rounds must have ricocheted inside and set off ammo or
fuel.

This is war
, she reminded herself with
gritted teeth,
and they have Rick and the others
. She
rotated her turret, walking the heavy bullets across the
generators. A moment later they caught fire and ground to scattered
halts with horrible, tortured-machinery noises. Abruptly the
compound plunged into darkness as much of Fredericksburg lost
power.

Glowing dashboard lights were now the only
illumination, but that was all she needed to drop into the driver’s
seat and pilot the vehicle forward, her head out the small front
hatch. She crushed a small car and ran over some garbage cans
before she got the hang of it. She could see people running
frantically hither and thither but none of them fired at her
vehicle. They had no reason to think it was hostile.

Thirty seconds was all it took until the
makeshift prison compound was in sight. Dozens, perhaps hundreds of
figures poured out of the barracks and rushed toward the fence.
Shots rang out and she screamed in frustration as she could see the
startled guards indiscriminately gunning people down. She swerved
to hit and crush one, reminding herself of the lives she saved by
doing so. “Get back from the fence!” she hollered over the noise of
the engine and the shooting, and turned toward the barrier.

Some prisoners saw what she was doing and
dragged others back, but there were too many to just bull through.
She’d end up crushing them. Instead, at the last second she swerved
to strike the fence at an oblique, tearing it loose from its steel
poles and then driving down it lengthwise as she gunned the engine.
The eight wheels and powerful power plant of the twenty-ton vehicle
dragged post after post out of the earth, but eventually enough
debris piled up in front that she ground to a halt. By that time
she had ripped almost the entire west fence down. Prisoners escaped
in a wave behind her.

Someone pounded on the hull behind, but she
couldn’t see who. Then Butler materialized next to her driver’s
vision hatch. “Hey, Sarge,” he greeted her, giddy with his release.
“Great job! Need any help in there?”

“
Yeah, I’ll drop the ramp,
then I’ll pull it right up. We need fighters, not passengers,” she
replied. “If you can get a few of our people in there we can use
the 25-mike and the gun ports.” She reached for the ramp
control.

Thirty seconds later she started backing up
as the ramp was still rising. She had to gun the engine to get
loose of the tangle of fence poles and wire fouling the front of
the LAV, then she swung the vehicle in a tight circle and began
hunting.

“
Butler,” she yelled back
into the turret, “can anyone else drive?”

“
I can,” came a high young
voice. Repeth switched places with a compact young female MP from a
different platoon, and immediately climbed up to open the
commander’s hatch in the turret. Butler took his place below her on
the gun. He handed up headphones and she saw him put his
on.

She said over the intercom, “The best thing
we can do with this thing is keep the chaos going, break up any
enemy counterattacks, especially if there are more armored vehicles
around. All the prisoners should be running for the rendezvous
point to the southeast. Driver, turn left along the prison
perimeter and look for enemy. Butler, engage any enemy vehicles or
heavy weapons you see. I don’t know how much ammo we have. I’ll try
to pick off singles.” She snapped a shot with her PW10 at a
Fredericksburger in uniform just as an example. She missed, but he
dove for cover.

A Humvee rounded a corner ahead, top-mounted
.50 caliber machinegun firing at fleeing prisoners. “Target front!
Humvee, one hundred meters! Engage.”

“
Target front, Humvee, one
hundred meters, firing.” Butler replied calmly. The electric turret
whined as it centered. Repeth crouched in the hatch as she saw the
fifty line up on the LAV, then the 25mm chain gun spoke. Five
rounds punched through the armored jeeplike vehicle. The shockwave
of the shells as they holed the compartment burst enemy eardrums
and rendered them unconscious even when missing them
entirely.

The enemy gunner, strapped into his seat
behind the fifty, kept firing grimly. “Ram them!” Repeth yelled
unnecessarily into the intercom, and the driver accelerated,
steering for the now-immobile Humvee. Twenty tons met four, no
contest; the gunner’s body whiplashed and the force threw him clear
as his harness snapped.

“
Halt!” she barked. When
the LAV came to a stop Repeth stood up in the hatch and blinked,
trying to sort out which patch of darkness was the fallen gunner.
She carefully lined up her PW10, thumbing the selector switch to
semi-auto, and fired at the man lying there unconscious. Far from
executing a fallen enemy, she was trying to wound him with a
Needleshock round, which would fill his bloodstream with Eden
Plague and save his life. On the third try she saw his leg jerk.
“Get going! Head west!” she snapped, and the LAV swung back the way
they came.

As much as she wanted to try to find the
women – and Rick – she knew her best tactic was to keep commanding
the LAV, hunting the enemy. She spent the next twenty minutes
racing back and forth, east and west, disabling or destroying
several more Humvees and trucks, driving back the enemy where she
found them. Old Town Fredericksburg, filled with wooden and brick
buildings dating back to the Civil War and Reconstruction, was
burning merrily in several places, giving her plenty of light to
see by. Butler had gotten the thermal sights working and soon they
were unopposed by anything that could hurt them.

She wondered where the other LAVs were. Eight
of them had taken part in the attack on the battalion, and she
accounted for two – theirs and the one she had destroyed. Assume
one or two were down for maintenance after the combat action, and
she was waiting for the other ones to show up. If the LAV unit
commander had any smarts at all – questionable, given how they had
been employed in the attack – he would keep what he had as a unit
and gang up on her.

“
Butler,” she called
through the intercom, “Do we have anything portable to handle
armor?” She hadn’t had time to check herself.

“
There’s an old AT-4 down
here. The gun is the best thing we have.”

“
Unfortunately the other
LAVs will have guns too. We can’t win a four to one standup fight.
We have to hit and run. Butler, if we spot another LAV, try for a
mobility kill. Shred their tires. It’s more of a sure thing;
penetrating their armor with the twenty-five is iffy, and
immobilizing them is as good as out of action as far as we are
concerned.”

She raised her head cautiously out of the
hatch and directed, “Driver, back up into that old barn there.” The
Old Town area was dotted with such anomalies, preserved from
earlier times. “What’s your name anyway, soldier?”

“
Lockerbie, Master
Sergeant. And it’s Senior Airman.”

She skillfully backed the vehicle into the
barn, tearing its wooden door off its hinges in the process but
otherwise placing it perfectly.

“
Touché.” Repeth wondered
where an Air Force Security Police troop learned to drive armored
vehicles. “Drop the ramp.” She took off the headphones, climbed out
the hatch and jumped off the side of the vehicle. From outside the
ramp she looked into the interior, where four troops she didn’t
recognize sat clutching captured weapons. “Hand me that AT-4. The
tube there. Anyone here know how to use it?” They all shook their
heads. By their expressions and uniforms she thought they were all
support troops, not MPs.
Dammit, I told Butler to get
fighters.
“Anyone here ever crew a track or armored
vehicle?”

More murmured denials.

“
Well, that kills that
idea.” Just then came the hammering sound of a 25mm gun. “Hear
that? That’s an enemy vehicle. We have to find and engage them,
keep them away from the escapees. You four, did they tell you where
the escape rendezvous is? Yes? You need to go now. I know you don’t
want to get out of this nice armored ride but we are going straight
toward a fight where we’re the underdogs, so you’re actually safer
on foot. Keep moving, shoot at anyone you have to, but keep moving,
all right? If you get lost go east until you hit the river then
work your way south. Swim if you must, the river flows southward
and you can drift out of enemy territory. Keep those weapons. Go
now. Go!” She grabbed the nearest one and shoved her down the
ramp.

They went reluctantly and she cursed the
timidity of support personnel in a combat zone. “Hurry!” She walked
inside and yelled, “Raise the ramp! Let’s get going.” She climbed
past Butler back into the command hatch, dragging the AT-4 with
her. She wedged it down by her feet, with no fixed plan, just the
germ of an inkling that it might be useful. In training, Spooky had
said to always consider all your weapons and their possible
application.

Lockerbie nosed the LAV out of the barn and
onto the road as Repeth put the headphones back on, then lifted the
earpieces at the front, allowing her to hear and hopefully
triangulate on the direction of the 25mm noise. “Take the next
right, then go up one block, then I think left.”

As they took the last left she could see an
enemy LAV ahead, perhaps two hundred yards south along the road.
Unfortunately it was between them and their escape route, and that
meant merely immobilizing it wouldn’t help them very much, though
it would keep the enemy from pursuing.
No battle plan survives
enemy contact
, she thought, then a wry motto popped into her
head:
Semper Gumby. Always Flexible.
DJ Markis had quoted it
to them during one of the frequent times he came to train with the
Free Communities Special Operations teams.