Earthfall (23 page)

“Okay, let’s fall back and try to get to Five,” he said. “I don’t want to get into a stand-up fight with these numbers.”

“Damn straight,” Laird snapped, frustration and stress evident in his voice. He had good reason to be short. Leona was wounded, and she would slow them down. “We’ll have to get upstairs to the train station and crawl up through the debris field. We’ll need to find someplace where we can get Eklund squared away first, though.”

Andrews started to answer, but something whacked off the side of the car in a blurring flash. He had the distinct impression it was an arrow. A moment later, something flared out in the garage, and a small boy ran toward them with a bottle in one hand. A flaming rag stuck out of the bottle’s neck. Andrews raised his rifle, but it was too late—the boy hurled the bottle at them and sped toward a car, vaulting across its empty engine compartment and disappearing behind its bulk before Andrews could establish a lane of fire. The bottle tumbled toward them, and he pushed Rachel aside as it shattered against the ground at their feet, erupting in a ball of flame that washed out the NVGs, causing them to whiteout from the overload.

Two dozen people emerged from the darkness, screaming war cries as they charged forward, holding spears, machetes, bows and arrows—and captured assault rifles.

***

Pushing his way upward, Mulligan eased his way out of the rubble that threatened to crush him. It took some doing, and clawing through the debris in pitch-black darkness didn’t make things any easier. He knew he was severely scraped up; how many diseases was he exposing himself to? How much bacteria had gotten into his blood stream? As he dug his way out of the wreckage, he found he was laughing at himself. Of all the things to worry about now …

His right hand found a void. He carefully pushed his way toward it, slipping beneath the twisted remnants of an I-beam, practically swimming in a sea of shattered concrete. His left shoulder met a piece of piping, and his progress was stalled until he could squeeze past it. He had to move slowly. The last thing he wanted was to cause the wreckage surrounding him to settle further and leave him forever entombed in San Jose.

Finally, he pushed into the void and found it was actually a way out of the rubble. Cool night air whispered across his sweaty, battered body as he clambered out of the twisted mess of metal, plastic, concrete, insulation, and wiring. Once he had fully extricated himself, he collapsed on top of the debris field, gasping for air. He hurt everywhere, so he just lay there, getting used to the pain. His eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and he saw more than half of the roof had caved in, leaving some stray supports remaining; they held up nothing but empty air. Night sky loomed high overhead, full of faintly twinkling stars. From somewhere beneath the wreckage on the other side of the arena, he heard other people moving through the debris with painful grunts and whines. They weren’t his people, so he wasn’t going to investigate. Slowly, he sat up on the hard rubble and checked himself for any serious injuries. He was phenomenally lucky—only scrapes and some small cuts. They were painful, but not life-threatening. The thick body armor and elbow and knee pads he wore had likely saved him from greater injury, for which he was deeply thankful. More troubling was the fact he had lost most of his gear. His rifle was gone, his night vision goggles were smashed, and his radio headset was missing, probably somewhere in the rubble. He was happy to discover he still had his knife and flashlight.

More than enough …

In the distance, he heard gunfire—lots of it. He sat motionless for a long moment, listening to the sounds of combat. It definitely wasn’t coming from outside, which meant the team from Harmony Base was trapped somewhere inside the building.

Mulligan slowly clambered to his feet. He pulled a long length of steel piping from the wreckage and, using it as a walking stick, slowly began picking his way across the field of rubble.

T
he battle in
the parking garage was hardly a one-sided affair.

Andrews was surprised by the ferocity shown by the survivors of the San Jose attack. Even though they were outgunned—mostly—they continued to attack the team from Harmony Base from all sides. They weren’t terribly dumb about it, either. They would show themselves, feint a charge, then retreat as Andrews and the others opened fire. Then another attack would roll up on them from a different direction, forcing the SCEV team to divide their fire. The attackers moved like wraiths, fading in and out of the darkness so quickly that it was hard to get a bead on them, flitting from decrepit vehicle to support pillar and back again. The Molotov cocktails they occasionally hurled weren’t particularly effective—Andrews and Laird kept the others moving so they wouldn’t get fixed in place where they could be easily firebombed—but the weapons had an unexpected side effect. They caused the NVGs to overload occasionally, which deprived the team of their primary tactical superiority—night vision.

Then there were the two survivors with the captured rifles.

“Jesus, just how many of these guys are there?” Choi shouted as he reloaded. They were going through their ammunition much faster than planned. Even though Mulligan had instructed them to take as many magazines as they could carry, they had only a finite amount of munitions.

“A lot more than we’d thought,” Andrews replied. He saw furtive movement in the darkness and raised his rifle, but he did not fire. Instead, he looked from side to side, keeping his weapon oriented on the original target, and he saw a group of four individuals running toward his position. They held axes and spears. Andrews turned to engage them and, as he did, one of the survivors with an assault rifle let loose a burst on his position. The gunman’s aim was poor, and the bullets hit the car Andrews and Choi were crouching behind, but they slashed through the thin sheet metal. Choi recoiled, cringing.

Andrews kept his cool and squeezed off four shots at the group, which continued to advance. One went down, then another. The remaining pair split up and ran into the darkness, but Andrews followed one and fired two shots at the figure just as it slowed to hide behind one of the reinforced concrete support pillars. The body jerked as the 5.56-millimeter rounds passed through it before it slowly wilted to the floor.

“Choi, get on your weapon,” Andrews ordered. “I want you to engage that shooter and take him out.”

“Where is he?” Choi finished reloading his weapon, hit the bolt release, and brought it to his shoulder.

“Behind that truck over there, about seventy meters to your right. See it?”

“Roger, but can’t see him!”

“Target the truck. Laird!”

“Go ahead!”

“Put a forty into that truck—the one Choi is targeting!”

“Got it!” Laird turned from his position with Kelly and raised his rifle. He put his hand on the M320’s pistol grip and prepared to fire the forty-millimeter grenade downrange as Kelly sniped at another group of attackers. An arrow slashed right past Andrews’s head.

Laird fired, the grenade launcher under his rifle ejecting its high explosive payload with a hollow puffing sound. A moment later, the truck was torn apart by a bright, sparking explosion that sent shrapnel whirling. The people hiding behind the truck fled in two separate directions.

“You want the guy with the rifle,” Andrews reminded Choi.

Choi started firing immediately at the group peeling away to the right.
Crack-crack-crack-crack!
Andrews sighted on the group to the left and fired single shots, aiming carefully. Two combatants fell to the floor while the rest scattered, taking cover behind another truck.

“Got him!” Choi crowed. “
I got you, you stupid fuck!
” he shouted into the darkness. At the same time, something flashed to the right, immediately followed by another report. Choi grunted as he shifted sideways. Andrews spun and ripped off a burst on full automatic. Another shooter was out there, and he tried to fix him or her in place with full-auto fire. It didn’t work; the assailant scuttled behind a distant row of dusty, cannibalized cars.

“Tony?” Andrews kept his sights on the cars, waiting for the shooter to reappear.

“I’m good—the armor took it,” Choi said. A moment later: “Oh,
shit!
”

“What is it?”

“The shooter I dropped—I was distracted, and someone else just picked up the weapon!”

We have to get out of here,
Andrews thought.
And we need to do it now.

“Kelly! Come forward with Choi!” Andrews put his hand on Rachel’s shoulder as she crouched between him and Choi, keeping her head down. She was the only one who was unarmed. When Kelly joined them, Andrews waved her into his position, then scurried to where Laird had set up behind a thick support column. Leona was lying behind a nearby car, working on her leg with a medical kit. Like Rachel, she had no weapon, but she did her best to keep an eye out for any incoming bandits.

“Jim, we have to get to Five,” Andrews said. “These fuckers are going to fix us in place, and then just wait until we use up our ammo. We can’t get into Four, and we can’t stay here. We need to get to Five.”

“I’m behind you on that, but it’s going to be one tough fight,” Laird said.

“How many forties did you guys bring with you?”

“All of them, the full twenty-four in the ordnance locker.” Laird paused to fire at shapes moving in the gloom. “But we lost Mulligan’s, so that leaves us with seventeen now. You’re right, we should start going through them and tear these bastards up.”

“Negative, that’s not what I was getting at. Law’s people have been coming down on us hard, but so far, they haven’t been able to circle around behind us—and that’s where the garage entrance is. Any chance we can use the M320s to blast through the door?”

Laird’s face lit up. “Jesus H. Christ, maybe so! Damn, why didn’t
I
think of that?”

“I’ll need you to take Kelly, Rachel, and Leona with you. You and Kelly can use your grenade launchers to try and blast a hole big enough for us to slip outside. Choi and I will hold them back. I’ll need your spare magazines. We’re going to have to pour it on big time to make them keep their heads down.”

Laird frowned. “I don’t think it’ll take that many shots to open up the door. One of us should be able to do it, and I can move faster on my own—”

“Lee’s wounded and Rachel’s essential personnel,” Andrews said. “We can’t care for them this close to the enemy, and they’ll slow our fallback. Much better if you and Kelly take them with you—you’ll be able to protect them as well as open up our line of retreat. And if worse comes to worst and things get too hot, you can take them to the SCEV.”

Laird didn’t seem to like that, but he didn’t say anything as he and Andrews continued to scan the darkness through their NVGs. Andrews saw two scraggly fighters round a severely shot-up pick-up truck. One went to light a Molotov cocktail, and Andrews opened up on them with a quick burst. The bottle exploded in the man’s hand as a bullet passed through flesh, bone, and glass, spraying both of them with whatever flammable liquid was inside. The bullet hit with enough authority to vaporize some of the fuel, and the flaming wick set it alight—along with the two fighters. They screamed and rolled around on the floor, and Andrews serviced both of them with two shots each.

“You keep shooting like that, we don’t have anything to worry about,” Laird said, suitably impressed.

“You have to get them out of here, Jim,” Andrews said. “We need to open the back door, but if all of us can’t make it, you need to get Rachel and Lee out of here. We’ve already lost Spencer and probably Mulligan, so you guys are the last game in town.”

“I get that. All right, let’s pass the word.” As Andrews started to rise, Laird grabbed his arm. “I’m not going to cut and run at the first sign of trouble, man. But if I have to, we’ll hole up in the rig and cool our heels for a few. Choi knows the way, so if we get separated, you can still find us. Hooah?”

“Hooah,” Andrews replied. “Get Leona squared away.” He got to his feet and returned to his original position. As he slid down beside Kelly, he squeezed Rachel’s shoulder.

“How you doing, hon?”

“I’m hanging in there, sweetie,” Choi said, between rifle shots.

“I’m good,” Rachel said.

“Awesome. You’re falling back with the others. Choi-boy and I will hold the goblins back while you guys make a back door and get out of here.”

“You and
who?
” Choi asked. Andrews ignored him.

“Where are we going?” Rachel wanted to know. “Aren’t you coming with us?”

“Laird will give you the details, and yes, we’ll be right behind you,” Andrews said. He turned to Kelly. “Take Rachel to Jim. He’ll brief you on what needs to happen.”

“Roger that,” Kelly said. “You ready to switch?”

“Affirmative,” Andrews said. “On my count … One, two, three!”

Kelly leapt from her firing position and Andrews replaced her. He shouldered his weapon and sighted on a target hiding behind the derelict hulk of an abandoned car. He fired two rounds through the sheet metal and was rewarded with a cry of pain. At the same time, another Molotov cocktail came cartwheeling toward him from the darkness to his right. Choi fired over his head, and the bottle exploded into a thousand glass fragments. The flaming wick still ignited the fuel the vessel carried, and liquid fire landed on the concrete. The glow ruined the efficiency of Andrews’s night vision goggles, and he pushed them up on his forehead.