The Alpha Deception (37 page)

“Prepare to jettison protective cone,” said Raulsch.

“Ready, sir,” responded a technician.

“On my mark … now.”

A single button was pressed. Twenty thousand miles above the surface of the Earth, the top part of the satellite launched to replace Ulysses jettisoned and fluttered into space, a fact recorded by a series of green lights in the command vault.

“Prepare to open reflector,” Raulsch ordered next.

“Ready, sir,” followed another technician.

“On my mark … now.”

This time a series of switches were flipped. In outer space, the exposed aluminum spread out to the sides like a fan, a full seventy yards across at its widest point, its precise angle of tilt controlled by the preprogrammed targeting computer.

General Raskowski sat in his elevated chair just behind Raulsch’s station, observing it all the way a father might the birth of his first child. His attention focused primarily on the flashing lights which indicated the preprogrammed selection of targets. Before him, on a small control desk, was a single black button. As soon as the reflector achieved orbit, he would press it and the beam in Pamosa Springs would begin to fire. The initial strikes would center on the eastern seaboard, starting with Washington. In a matter of a few short minutes, nearly forty million people would perish. Black carbon dust would swirl over vast metropolitan graves, soon to encompass the entire dying nation. He shifted impatiently in the stiff confines of his uniform, stopped from enjoying these final moments by concern over the whereabouts of McCracken and Tomachenko. They were out there, aware of what he was about to do, and until he at last depressed the black button he would not feel safe.

“Forty-seven minutes until system activation,” announced Raulsch.

Natalya’s vans made great time through the night from Winterthur to Zurich, but late-night road construction had shut down all three lanes on her side of the road. Natalya felt the grip of frustration. She breathed rapidly, fought to steady herself. The road was a sea of headlights, shining ahead into the murk for as far as she could see. On the other side of a six-inch median strip, sparse traffic moved in the opposite direction. She reached over for her driver’s shoulder.

“Cross it!” she ordered.

“We’ll be going in the wrong direction. No turnoffs for—”

“Cross it and go in the right direction!”

The man looked at her only briefly before turning the lead van’s tires over the strip and against the flow of oncoming traffic, with the other van close behind.

It had been over thirty years since Sheriff Junk had lobbed grenades, and these felt totally different from any he had handled way back then. He was glad they were lighter because had they been too heavy the best he’d have been able to manage was three before his arm went. His first two lobs were right on target in the abandoned freight yard and the next four almost as good. Troops crumbled from left to right; the rest scattered in the direction of the town instead of offering resistance. Heep scrambled back for his rockets.

McCluskey, meanwhile, met no resistance at all. The soldiers on the hillside seemed numbed by inactivity and they fell like the targets in a shooting gallery. Dog-ear loved the feel of the M-16. Its gas-propelled shells made it a breeze to control. No kick whatsoever. He’d read all about the problems with the M-16, how the gas got stuffed up somehow and the thing would jam or misfire. Well, this one was behaving just fine, thank you.

He had taped a pair of clips upside down against each other, so when it came time to reload, a quick snap in and out and he would be ready to keep firing. A second or two was all it took but even that was too long, for it allowed a soldier who had found his rifle along with his senses time to put a bullet in Dog-ear’s side followed by a second which grazed his head. Dog-ear gritted the pain down long enough to sight down on the bold gunman and send a dozen bullets in his direction. Enough found him, the rest Dog-ear saved for those soldiers searching futilely for cover.

The pain had him down by the time the second clip was exhausted but, lying prone, he managed to snap a fresh one home and maintain his vigil. He could forget all about joining the others in town but, what the hell, you can’t have everything.

From his position of cover in Pamosa Springs, Blaine had no way of knowing just how successful the efforts of Dogear and Sheriff Junk had been. He knew little for sure until the Laws rockets started jetting in. From his doghouse, he couldn’t see the immediate blasts, just the smoke, debris, and flames kicked up in their wake. Four came in rapid succession, a pause, and then two more blasts on Main Street itself. Perfect!

Blaine saw Paz’s soldiers spilling into the street, firing their rifles blindly through the showering debris. The three soldiers charged with guarding the church’s rear, though, held their positions stubbornly, only their eyes cheating around the corner.

Move, Blaine urged them silently. Move!

He had hoped to avoid using his rifle on them for fear the resulting clamor would drag reinforcements to the area. But if he timed the shots with the backlash of the rocket explosions, the rest of Paz’s men would never hear them. Blaine estimated the angle involved. From his present position, he did not have a clear shot at the soldiers as they were standing. And there was the fuse line that needed to be severed to be considered as well. A rush into the open was called for. Three men to cut down before they got him or, worse, managed to set off the
plastique
… .

McCracken timed his charge into the street for the next rocket blast which came fifteen seconds later and hurled blasted debris high into the air. He rushed forward and sideways, directly into the line of possible fire from the church guards and did not fire himself until he was sure he had them. The guards saw him but took too long to react. Blaine hit his trigger and rotated the barrel of his gun. All three crumbled. One dropped to the base of the steps and two spilled down from the porch. Blaine pulled the fusing down toward him and snapped it with his teeth. The wire dug into his lip but with the explosives disabled the blood didn’t faze him.

McCracken lunged up the steps and crashed his shoulder against the door, turning the knob as he did. The door was locked and took his charge without so much as giving. Blaine heard heavy boots clacking down the side street adjacent to the church and reached back for his rifle.

For his part, Sheriff Junk figured his depleted supply of Laws rockets signaled it was time to turn the remaining ones on the primary targets composing the artillery battery on the western edge of town. The firing of the rockets had become routine. It was the numbness of his ears that bothered him along with a stiffness in his arms and shoulders he fought down. The range to the battery was longer, but Junk was expecting no problems. He adjusted the range meter accordingly and raised another of the disposable bazookas over his shoulder.

Biting his lip against a sudden bolt of pain in the joint area, he focused through the sight on the guns. They were big and menacing, yet as a demolitions man, he knew disabling them was as simple as knocking out their stands to send them crashing downward.

Heep fired the rocket and watched a black streak whisk through the air, gathering speed. The expected burst of flames was brief and hardly dramatic, but the first of the big guns tumbled sideways like a slain giant. He got even luckier on his next two shots, finding ammo dumps with both of them, which coughed fire and smoke high into the air.

“Fucking A,” Heep muttered through his pained grimace, starting another Laws upward.

No time to play it safe …

Blaine leaped over the church’s porch and met the charging soldiers head on. There were just two of them but they were spaced apart and firing as they ran. McCracken caught one in his first spray and exhausted his clip in the other’s direction as he rolled out of line of that man’s burst. His arms were scraped raw by a poor dive and he looked up to see huge mounds of plastic explosives wedged into the church’s brick construction.

The sight seemed to recharge him. He rolled behind the cover of an adjacent building as rifle bullets kicked cement fragments up everywhere around him. He came to a halt with his pistol out and aimed at the shape still moving toward him. He took the man down with two shots, then lurched back to his feet and bolted for the church’s rear doors once more. The windows were too high to utilize as a viable escape route so he was left with the heavy, chained doors.

“Stand back!” he screamed and stripped a grenade from his belt, hoping those inside could hear him.

He pulled the pin and rolled the grenade across the porch, lunging to the ground for safety.

The explosion coughed splinters and shards everywhere. From inside, the door was ripped off its hinges. A stream of humanity started out; a screaming, wild pack with no clear path or destination, though a clear purpose lay before them.

“Follow me! Hurry!” McCracken shouted and took the lead toward Main Street.

A soldier staggered before him with his guts hanging out as Guillermo Paz made his way in a crouch across the street to a shop containing additional weapons. He was halfway there when the front of the building exploded outward. All of Main Street seemed to be burning, buildings reduced to flaming shells that sent splinters into the smoky air. The crackling continued, easily mistaken for gunfire, causing still more confusion in troops still rushing about the street looking for someone to shoot at.

All the jeeps he could see were demolished. Worst of all, Paz had lost contact with his men on the hillside. They were either dead or disabled and could no longer be relied on for help. But the generator was going to remain safe even if he had to defend it himself.

The horrible roar of the mob crossed onto Main Street, as Paz scrambled behind a building en route to the hills.

Once freed, only a few of the residents, women carting children and old people, had veered away from the battle. And only the very first to emerge noticed McCracken at all, the rest giving no consideration to the means of their freedom, just glad for the freedom itself.

Blaine hid himself among them, blending, slowing his pace occasionally as those around him reached down for a stray rifle or one still gripped by a soldier’s corpse. Others opted for sections of wooden planks or steel shards separated from the structures that had once occupied Main Street.

McCracken searched for Paz as he ran in the center of the mob. His troops had been reduced to chaos, the ones still in the streets trying hard to run from the mob once their clips were exhausted. Those soldiers the enraged citizens of Pamosa Springs were able to catch were pummeled with whatever the citizens were able to get their hands on. Buildings continued to burn and cough up fragments, smoke dissipating with the wind to reveal jagged holes in walls and roofs courtesy of Sheriff Junk’s rockets. The residents seemed not to notice. Their fury continued, increased, fed on itself.

Heep had stopped firing the rockets at the first sign of the mob rushing into the street. Exuberantly, almost near tears, he stuffed a host more grenades into his pockets and grabbed his M-16. Signaling his intention to the wounded Dog-ear, he started down for Pamosa Springs, hobbling the whole way.

McCracken moved with the stride of a commander who knew his troops were winning. The fires at the western edge of town signaled the ruin of the final gun battery, which left only foot soldiers between him and the gulley containing the generator gun. And at this rate men would prove little bother so long as the tide in the battle of Pamosa Springs continued to go his way.

His greatest enemy remained time, one perhaps too great to overcome with barely twenty-five minutes to go before the beam was activated.

Before him, Sheriff Junk emerged from the side of a building, steadying himself against it with his M-16 blasting toward a congestion of fleeing soldiers. Blaine veered away and had reached Heep’s side just when the spits started. Just more crackling, he thought at first, but soon all around him bodies of the residents of Pamosa Springs began to go down. Blaine hit the cement hard and rolled to the sidewalk within the cover of a still-standing drugstore as bullets traced the ground around him. He judged their trajectory and knew instantly they were coming from above, from soldiers who had strategically managed to gain rooftop positions where they could fire down at will.

Sheriff Junk hit the ground wincing in pain next to him. “What the fuck… .”

A squad of Paz’s soldiers had charged out from positions of cover they had fled to, grabbing the offensive again, firing into the hordes of helpless who had delivered themselves into a slaughter.

Blaine saw the grenades hanging from Heep’s belt. “The grenades! Quick!”

Heep passed a few over, realizing his intention, and together they rose, ripping the pins out with their teeth and hurling the promised death upward in the direction of the rooftops. Not being sure where the fire was coming from, they relied on instinct to aim their lobs. The blasts followed quickly and just as quickly the fire from above ceased.

But the issue seemed only delayed, for Paz’s troops had control of the town again and were massing in the center of Main Street, moving in a fast walk forward, shooting at anything that moved. A few broke off toward Blaine and Heep, who were firing desperately in an attempt to subdue them. Blaine heard Junk’s clip click empty and leaped sideways to shield him with the rest of his bullets. Hardly enough, though, to stop the soldiers, a fact Blaine had just accepted when he caught the sound of heavy-caliber machine gun fire an instant before he was ready to accept death. Nothing else registered besides the fact that Paz’s soldiers were dropping all about him, cast once again in the role of the ones scurrying for cover. Blaine looked up into the sun and caught the extension of a machine gun’s barrel supported by a tripod peering down from the rooftop of a building further up the street.

Who, damnit, who?

He recalled Dog-ear’s story of a mystery avenger as he lunged back to his feet after casting a quick glance toward Heep who was scrambling for one of the downed soldiers’ guns. Again the tables of the battle had started to turn with the residents of Pamosa Springs confronting the rest of their captors.