Freedom (39 page)

The sheriff stuffed newly reloaded clips into pouches on his web harness. “These fuckers seem to know what they’re doing. They’re following the number-one rule of street fighting.”

“What’s that?”

“Stay out of the goddamned street. They’re blasting through walls and destroying the buildings behind them as they go.”

Suddenly the ASV rolled forward, firing indiscriminately. Then a colossally loud explosion echoed across the town and they could hear masonry walls collapsing and wood snapping as a whole building avalanched into the street. The ASV’s diesel engine was still advancing.

The sheriff clenched his gloved fist. “Fuck it. We’ve got to do something. We can’t just lay here.”

Ross could now see more troops coming in from the next block as he stole a glance over the Vietnam memorial Fossen was hiding behind. “Heads down, Hank. About twenty more and an ASV on that side.”

“Time to fight.” The sheriff crawled over toward Fossen. “Let’s hit the second group while they cross the street.” He took a breath. “Ready?”

Ross nodded.

Fossen nodded as well.

“On three. Two. One . . .”

They leaned around and over the edges of the solid-rock memorial and opened fire at a squad of mercenaries running across the street about a hundred meters away.

Ross fired his AK in semi-auto mode trying to focus on a line of men dressed in black body armor and tactical gear. The soldiers immediately scattered and hit the deck. At over a football field away, it was hard to tell if any of them got hit or just dove for cover.

But moments after they opened fire, the turret of the ASV escorting them swiveled in their direction and opened up with a .50-caliber machine gun.

All three of them ducked down and hugged the ground as powerful, high-velocity rounds slammed into the back of the stone memorial, eating away at the far side. Ross felt the sting of stone chips like needles on his exposed skin.

Then loud explosions erupted on the far side of the larger, World War II memorial next to them—grenades impacting with deafening concussion. Then stopped just as abruptly.

The sheriff crawled to the far side of the green, pulling a metal canister from this harness. “Far side of the street! Behind the bank columns!”

Hundreds of rounds of small-arms fire raked their position in addition to .50-caliber bullets.

The sheriff shouted over the roar. “When I pop the smoke, give it a few moments, then . . .” He jabbed his thumb toward the bank. He pulled the pin and tossed the canister over the fence halfway between both enemy forces. After a few moments, billowing clouds of white smoke began to rise—immediately raising hails of gunfire that whipped the air above them.

The sheriff led the way, rolling over the low, cosmetic fence around the green. Ross and Fossen did likewise, and followed as the sheriff half-slid and half-crawled toward the steps of the bank across the street.

They were halfway across when they heard grenades exploding among the monuments where they’d just been. Ross could see another one arching in from down the street, blasting the obelisk and toppling it. Machine-gun fire still zipped and sizzled through the air overhead, and then Fossen shouted and toppled onto the asphalt.

Both Ross and the sherriff went back and grabbed him under the armpits, leaving behind his rifle and his HUD glasses as they dragged him to relative safety behind the pillars of the bank building.

Ross reloaded his AK-47 as he stood behind a pillar.

The sheriff reloaded as well. He just shook his head and shouted over the deafening thunder in the street. “They’ve got too much firepower!” He eyed the stone walls and heavy wood door behind them. “I don’t think we’re getting out of this corner!”

“I don’t think they saw us pull back.” Ross looked down at Fossen, who was lying against the back wall, trying to sit up. A pool of blood was expanding around him.

“Damnit!” The sheriff crawled over to Fossen and put down his gun. “Hank, let me see where you’re hit!”

Fossen shook his head. “I’m in trouble, Dave. My guts are on fire.”

A bullet impacted the wall three feet to the right of him and ricocheted around the vestibule.

Fossen didn’t even flinch. “Get back to the school. Look out for Lynn and Jenna.”

The sheriff took off his HUD glasses, too, and looked into Fossen’s eyes. “We’re gonna stay right here. We’re on our own goal line, Hank. You hear me? No room to lose ground.” The sheriff grabbed Hank, and for the first time Ross noticed the dark cloth of the sheriff’s shirt was stained with blood as well.

The sheriff held on to Fossen, stopping him from sliding down the wall. “You remember, when we were kids? You remember the heat lightning? And the creek?”

Fossen nodded weakly.

There was another deafening explosion outside and the sound of shattering glass.

Fossen looked up. “Bury me next to my dad, okay, Dave? And you look out for my girls, okay . . . ?” And then his head slumped and the sheriff held him tightly, sobbing.

Ross still stood with his back to a pillar. Outside he could hear the ASVs moving down the street, troops blasting apart nearby buildings.

The sheriff let his best friend’s body slide to the floor. He left his HUD glasses as he stood with some difficulty. Then he picked up the M16 and came up behind one of the pillars.

“I’m sorry about Hank, Sheriff.”

He just shook his head and wiped his nose on his sleeve.

“Let me see your wound.”

“Fuck it. That’s not gonna be what kills me today.”

“If we’re going to try and stop them from reaching the school, then it’s pretty much now or never.”

The sheriff nodded and looked at Ross.

They nodded to each other, and then suddenly Ross saw a very strange series of D-Space alerts running through his HUD listing—all highest priority. They indicated the launch of a number of different processes he’d never heard of, but one of which caught his eye:
Burning Man Instantiated.

“Wait a minute. . . .”

The sheriff frowned at him. “What?”

Ross was tracking something moving along Main Street—a D-Space call-out unlike any he’d seen before. It was wreathed in flame and bore the name
Burning Man
, a two-hundredth-level Champion. Ross had never heard of such a level before.

It was coming their way.

“Get your HUD glasses on, Sheriff. Something’s up.”

He looked like he’d had enough games, but he moved out of Ross’s sight, while Ross tried to peek out into the street.

Ross could see two ASVs in the street, drawing fire from other townspeople in nearby buildings. Just then the building across the way detonated in a massive explosion, sending brick, wood, glass, and clouds of dust out into the street.

But through the dust an avatar approached with a confident walk that seemed familiar. It was headed directly for Ross, walking straight through mercenaries and the hull of an intervening ASV like a ghost and emerging from the other side.

The avatar appeared to be dressed in a tactical operations suit, with a bulletproof helmet and mask as well as body armor. He had twin .45 pistols in combat holsters, but was otherwise unarmed. As the avatar came to the foot of the stairs it turned to Ross and flipped up its faceplate.

Roy Merritt nodded to him and spoke in his familiar even tone.
“Everything’s going to be okay, sir. I need you to stay calm and tell me where the bad guys are. . . .”

The Major stood in a command-and-control trailer lined with dozens of LCD screens and control boards. Board operators and drone pilots in headsets sat at each station monitoring every aspect of Operation Prairie Fire from above.

The Argus R-7 surveillance blimps were barely eighty feet long, but they could loiter over a theater of operations for up to two weeks using the solar cells covering their upper surface. One of the aerospace firms in their group had developed it and had sold hundreds to dictatorships in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.

Flying at sixty thousand feet with no telltale contrail, they were all but invisible to the naked eye, and their sensitive long-range cameras could pinpoint and monitor individuals or entire communities, especially when combined with telecommunications and purchasing records. They weren’t invisible to radar or other sensors, but it was the public they were meant to monitor, not military opponents.

On the screens before him, the Argus cameras showed FLIR and color imagery of civilians in darknet communities in several Midwestern states. The forms on-screen were fleeing, fighting, hiding—but in all cases losing as the private military contractors squeezed them ever closer to their final stand.

Standing next to him was the towering South African colonel Andriessen. “Good news from your special unit.”

The Major nodded. “Yes, but they’ve lost their transport.”

Short loud beeps and red lights activated on several control boards.

“And it looks like this will be wrapped up fairly soon as well.”

The Major nodded as the beeping continued to spread along the flight line. Several flight officers pulled off their headsets and started talking urgently with their tech officers. Some LCD screens nearby were no longer showing stable close-up shots of street fighting, but instead showed whirling blurs, then blackness, then blurred lights again.

The Major walked over to a nearby flight officer who was struggling with his controls. “What’s going on? Why have we lost video?”

The officer turned off the alarms and pointed to another screen showing a row of red numbers next to critical measurements. “The temperature readings on our avionics system just red-lined. I think we’ve got a fire onboard.”

The tech officer leaned in. “Our fire suppression system did activate. So, give us a moment. . . .”

The Major looked in both directions down the line of drone pilots. There were red lights flashing on half the boards now.

The Colonel gave him a concerned look.

He started walking down the line, seeing more and more black screens. Temperature readings and pop-up messages reading
Fire!

Within a minute virtually all of the control stations were blinking red. The video screens black. What started out as a frenzied chorus of urgent talk had turned into a reading room of technicians flipping through three-ring SOP manuals.

The Major shouted down to the Colonel, still standing where he’d left him. “What the hell’s going on, Colonel?”

The Colonel looked at all the blank screens and said nothing.

“How the fuck can this happen? The Daemon penetrated our encryption somehow and overrode our avionics.” He grabbed a headset sitting on the nearby board and hurled it onto the static-free tile floor with all his might, shattering it into several pieces. “Goddamnit! What is this, fucking amateur hour? I thought we put together the best goddamn electronic countermeasures team possible.”

The Colonel apparently thought it wise to just listen until he was asked a direct question.

The entire line of board operators was now looking up at The Major. They were shut down—blind to a complex multidimensional operation that required close coordination across six states.

The Major burned holes into them with his stare, and then stormed out of the trailer. “Colonel, get these drones back on line or get more.”

“They won’t get here in time.”

“Then get amateur astronomers with binoculars in a fucking Piper Cub—but get me real-time information on my battle space. Is that understood?”

“Yes, Major.”

They were now walking among several large trailers placed within an aircraft hangar—thick bundles of power cables running from each.

A Korr Military Services communications officer stuck his head out of a nearby trailer. “Major! You need to hear this.”

He extended a pair of radio headsets.

“It’s coming over all our encrypted channels.”

The Major hesitated before putting them to his ear. He heard a vaguely familiar voice speaking over the comms. . . .