Earthfall (18 page)

M
ulligan sat in
the pilot’s seat of SCEV Five, the control column in his left hand as he steered the big rig through the shattered remnants of San Jose. The night was dark and deep, the only illumination coming from the cold, distant stars in the black sky. Despite the darkness, the SCEV ran without any external lighting. Mulligan had decided it would be in everyone’s best interest to make the rig as difficult to detect as possible, and that meant the rig’s impressive array of high intensity floodlights would remain switched off. But the darkness did not pose a substantial problem for the SCEV crew. Projected across the cockpit’s forward viewports was an infrared display of the terrain ahead, which allowed Mulligan to see what lay in the rig’s path as if he were a lion stalking a limping gazelle across the nighttime Serengeti.

Laird sat restlessly in the copilot’s seat as Mulligan drove, staring at the same thermographic imagery. A route had been highlighted on the display, and that pale yellow line was leading them directly to where SCEV Four’s active transponder said the missing SCEV could be found.

“Ah, this is a little weird,” Laird said after a moment.

“Do tell,” Mulligan said. He flexed his right hand against his thigh. When he’d blasted through the people who had tried to attack him in the warehouse, one of them had hit him in the hand with a piece of piping. The fourth finger on his hand had swelled up, and moving it was painfully difficult.

“Four’s transponder information—the elevation value is reading negative.” Laird pressed a button on the center console, and a small window opened on the infrared overlay in front of Mulligan. SCEV Four’s position information was displayed in the small box and, sure enough, the elevation value was showing as negative ten meters.

“So they’ve taken the rig underground,” Mulligan said. “Cunning bastards.”

“We have detailed data files on the area. Let’s see if I can come across any civil defense or zoning records that have any actionable information on the buildings in that area. You want the data window to stay open?”

“Negative, it’s just making the view more cluttered.”

Laird closed the window, then opened another on one of the multifunction displays in the instrument panel. Mulligan glanced over quickly, and he saw the husky captain scrolling through a map of the area.

“Bingo,” Laird said after a few moments. “Says here that there’s a parking garage on the next block. Right next to a civic center, and across from a light rail station.”

“Same route as the one we’re on?” Mulligan asked.

“Hooah, Sarmajor. We’re heading right for it.”

“Roger. Stay sharp, and switch off the gun safeties, if you don’t mind, sir.”

Laird made an affirmative noise and reached for the fire control panel. He lifted a red switch guard and flicked the toggle beneath it. When the switch moved to the ARMED position, it made an uncharacteristically loud click, followed by a distinct tone over the cockpit speakers. Anyone trained in SCEV operations would know that the turreted machine guns on either side of the SCEV’s nose had just been made operational. A red targeting reticle appeared on the viewport in front of Laird, and when he moved the grip on the center console, the reticle and the guns themselves would slew onto the designated target.

“Hot guns,” Laird reported.

“Roger, hot guns. Let’s see what we can see. Hang on, the road’s pretty torn up out there,” Mulligan said as the SCEV began to bump up and down. He slowed the rig dramatically as its knobbed tires rolled across cracked and shattered concrete. All manner of detritus lay in the street and, a moment later, Mulligan saw why. Several entire buildings had collapsed. He couldn’t tell what had caused the destruction, only that it seemed to be more recent than the nuclear attack that had destroyed San Jose.

“Parking garage is down the street and on the right,” Laird said. “I think I can see it—there. Looks kind of messed up, but at least it’s still standing.”

“I’ve got tracks through the rubble,” Mulligan said. “Lots of them. Looks like our friends actually
towed
the rig here.” As the vehicle slowly approached the parking garage, Mulligan felt his heart rate increase. If ever there was a time for an ambush, this is when it would happen. He didn’t know if any of the survivors that had attacked them had weaponry capable of penetrating an SCEV but, if they did, they’d use them soon. Not that the crew had any choice in the matter; urban terrain made long-range surveillance difficult, so they had to come in close, either on foot or in the rig. They’d tried it on foot earlier in the day, and it had only resulted in the disappearance of Andrews, Spencer, and Eklund.

The tire tracks led directly to a closed metal garage door. Mulligan looked at it through the infrared overlay, but the image fidelity wasn’t sufficient enough for him to determine how substantial the door was. And he wasn’t going to stop and check it out personally.

“Lieutenant Jordello, take control of the FLIR turret and put eyes on the building to our right. It’s a parking garage, and the entrance has been sealed off. Let me know if the door looks solid, if you would. We won’t be stopping, so do it quickly.”

“Roger that,” Kelly said from the science station on the other side of the cockpit bulkhead. Mulligan kept the SCEV moving at just above a crawl, and he looked out the side port to his left. The night was as dark as ever, and there was no sign of any illumination. No firelight, no candlelight—nothing. If the opposing force was nearby, they were certainly adhering to strict blackout routines.

“Yeah, it looks like it’s a folding metal rollup door,” Kelly reported after a moment. “Seems solid enough. Quite large, though.”

“They must’ve run semi-trucks in there,” Mulligan said. “You said there’s a civic center somewhere around here?”

“On the other side of the garage,” Laird said.

Mulligan grunted. “Makes sense. They’d roll the big rigs in whenever they had a show and offload the trailers right into the center. Okay, let’s go around the block and see what we can see.”

“Maybe we should dismount,” Laird suggested.

“Maybe we shouldn’t,” Mulligan said. “The group that attacked us, they didn’t have any projectile weapons—only clubs and bats and knives. If that’s all they have, then they’ll have a hell of a time trying to get at us as long as we remain in the vehicle. If we had more boots with us, we could do what you suggest, but we don’t. Right now, our best protection is the SCEV.”

“I got you, Sergeant Major,” Laird said. “But from the transponder data, SCEV Four is definitely somewhere inside there.”

“I know, Captain. I know. Patience.”

With that, Mulligan slowly drove around the block. He wished he felt as confident as he sounded, but he knew the situation could explode into a clusterfuck at a moment’s notice. While he was comfortable with the assumption that the opposing force—OPFOR, in military parlance—didn’t have much in the way of heavy weaponry, and almost certainly no antitank weaponry, there were still a dozen other ways for their night to be ruined even further. If the OPFOR managed to block off the street and prevent the vehicle from escaping, that would definitely put a damper on the presumed rescue mission.

As the rig pulled around the huge, domed civic center, the city remained quiet and dark. That made Mulligan nervous. The SCEV had doubtless made a large racket in its passage, even while operating on battery power—driving a multi-ton vehicle over rubble and not making a lot of noise was impossible. He saw no indication that anyone was going to investigate the disturbance made by the rig, but he wasn’t sure if that was a positive or a negative.

Time will tell.

When Mulligan made to turn right on the far side of the civic center and head back for the parking garage, he brought the rig to a sudden halt. Laird let out a long sigh when he saw what lay ahead of them.

“Man, it’s a good thing we didn’t come the other way,” Laird said.

Ahead, the street had collapsed. The concrete roadway had been transformed into millions of pieces of disjointed rubble, all of which lined the bottom of a wide crevasse. Despite the utter darkness, the infrared sensors revealed that the train station below the street had been exposed in the collapse. An old car lay upended in the rubble, its battered rear bumper gleaming in the wan starlight.

“Looks like an earthquake hit the city some time ago. That explains why this area is such a mess,” Mulligan said.

“Then why would they bring SCEV Four here?” Laird asked.

“Because the place is so fucked up, no one would bother to look around here. Cagey bastards.” Mulligan regarded the train station for a moment. He knew that the BART system had been extended from San Francisco all the way to southern San Jose. That there was a station stop at the civic center was no surprise.

“You know, we might be able to use that,” he said, pointing at the train station.

“For what? Catching a train?”

“Ingress, Captain. Ingress. There’ve got to be ways inside the civic center from there, and from the civic center into the garage.”

***

Ten minutes later, Mulligan parked SCEV Five between two decimated buildings a block away from the civic center. He preceded Laird into the second compartment and went directly to the arms locker located near the second bulkhead. It was locked, of course; only rig commanders had the keys to the small arms. He turned to Laird and motioned him forward.

“You mind opening the locker, sir?”

Laird reached into his uniform blouse and pulled out a set of keys hanging around his neck on a thin lanyard. He opened the locker wordlessly and stepped out of the way. Mulligan removed four of the eight M416A3 rifles that were secured inside and set them on the dining settee. Then he reached further into the locker and pulled out a worn, black plastic case. It had its own lock, this one biometric.

“What’s that?” Laird asked. “I don’t remember that being there.”

“That’s because I took the liberty of placing it aboard before we left Harmony,” Mulligan said. He set the case on the settee table and pressed his thumb against the biometric lock. It clicked open instantly, and Mulligan raised the case’s lid on its hinges. Inside the case’s foam-lined interior lay several blocks of white, putty-like substance, several blasting caps and their integral batteries, and two remote detonators. Mulligan examined the case’s contents with a critical eye. The C4 was a bit long in the tooth, but it should still be functional, along with the blasting caps. He checked the radio frequency detonators—they were fully charged. Everything was just as he had left it.

“Sarmajor, are those
explosives?
” Kelly Jordello asked.

“Well, you could play around with one and find out,” Mulligan said. “I like to be prepared, but I gotta tell you, I didn’t think we’d need ’em. Captain, maybe you could start handing out rifles. Everyone should take at least six magazines with them. We have no idea what we’ll run into.”

“Roger that,” Laird said. He reached past Mulligan and pulled out several pre-loaded magazines, then began slapping them inside the rifles.

“We can’t use those! Those are
people
out there! We can’t just blow them up because of some misunderstanding!” Kelly said.

Mulligan turned and looked at her directly. “Lieutenant, if we can walk in and negotiate with the people who are holding our crewmates and get out of there without firing a shot, fine—I’m all for it. But if we meet resistance, I intend to respond decisively.”

Kelly glared at him. “What’s the matter, Mulligan, wasn’t the last war enough for you?”

“Back off, Jordello. He says he’s got the skills for this stuff. Let him do what he has to do.”

Mulligan looked past Kelly. Rachel stood right behind her, holding a heavy ballistic vest in one hand and a radio headset in the other. Her expression was hard, her attitude focused. It was obvious that she wasn’t letting her dread over her husband and her hatred for Mulligan get the best of her anymore. She looked like a full-time player. Mulligan was caught completely off-guard by the unexpected alliance.

“Kelly, you and Rachel get suited up in combat armor,” Laird said. “Sarmajor, I take it we’re going to move fast and keep our exposure to the elements to a minimum?”

“Absolutely, sir.”

“Then let’s skip the MOPP gear,” Laird suggested, which surprised Mulligan almost as much as Rachel backing him up against Jordello. “The rad count’s so low we won’t need it, and it’ll just slow us down.”

“Hooah on that, sir,” Mulligan said.

Kelly wasn’t letting it go. “Jim, we can’t just go to guns on the first group of survivors we’ve encountered in—”

“We’re not,” Laird said. He popped a magazine inside another rifle, pulled back on the charging lever, and checked to ensure the safety was set before setting it down and moving to the next rifle. “We’re going in armed, and Mulligan has operational control of the mission, but no one’s going to shoot first and ask questions later. Right, Mulligan?”

“Depending on the situation, yes,” Mulligan said. He turned back to Kelly. “If we’re attacked, we’ll need to defend ourselves. We’ll give them a chance, but if they fuck it up, we absolutely
will
light them up so we can continue with our mission—remember what we’re here for, Lieutenant.”