The Assault (11 page)

“Sorry, Brogan,” Chisnall said.

“That’s above your security level,” Price said with a roll of her eyes.

“Right now we need to get moving. Oscar Mike in five. From now on, you don’t just act like Pukes—you
are
Pukes. We’re going right inside their biggest military base.”

“Into belly of beast,” Monster said.

Wilton and Price dug a deep hole, into which went their camo sheets and other non-Bzadian items. Then with Monster on point and Fleming helping Bennett walk, they started the last part of their trek. Chisnall walked at the rear, watching them.

Five teenage recon soldiers.

Two SAS troopers disguised as RAF officers.

One traitor.

Across the flat scrubby desert of central Australia.

Past the twisted, ruined wire of the security fences and remains of the gun towers.

Toward Uluru.

THE WRECKAGE OF THE INNER FENCE WAS A TANGLED metal cobweb lying across the remains of the dragon’s-teeth tank traps.

“Land mine,” Price said over the top of an insistent beeping from her scope.

Chisnall stopped dead. They all did. They were walking in single file, four meters apart, treading in the footprints of the person in front. Standard precautions for walking through a minefield.

Except there shouldn’t have been any land mines. The cruise missiles had ripped through here, pummeling the desert floor, punching a hole through this section of the defenses.
The churned sand of the desert should have been cleared of mines by the rippling shock waves of the explosions.

“Are you sure?” Chisnall asked, but only as an automatic reaction. Of course she was sure. She wouldn’t have said it if she wasn’t.

“Two o’clock. Distance: three meters,” Price said. “And a bit.”

“Three meters.” Chisnall breathed out slowly.

The alien mines had proximity detectors. You didn’t have to stand on them to set them off: if they detected movement within three meters, they would explode, kicking a shrapnel canister high into the air, killing or maiming everything around it.

They were just on the verge of triggering the mine.

“Back away slowly,” Chisnall said.

“Good idea, LT,” Price said. “Should have thought of that myself.”

Chisnall ignored her. Things were tense enough. Price was already moving backward, retracing her steps.

“Options?” Chisnall asked.

“Looks clear to the left,” Price said.

“Take it slowly,” Chisnall said.

“You think?” Price said.

Twice more they found their path blocked by mines. One an antipersonnel mine and one an antitank mine. They were unlikely to set off the ATM, as it was keyed to large metallic objects, but they avoided it anyway. The explosive power of the ATMs was enormous, although they were not as deadly.
Not to humans anyway. The charge was focused straight upward, without the shrapnel spread pattern of the antipersonnel mines.

They moved through the main fence and past the pulverized base of one of the guard towers. Its automatic coil-guns whirred and clicked, sensing their presence, but the bent, broken snouts just shook angry fingers at the sky.

In the distance, Uluru glowed red: a warning beacon in the early morning sun.

The two SAS men, in their RAF disguises, walked silently in front of them, their hands manacled behind their backs.

“How far is it?” Wilton asked, eyeing the red rock behemoth in the distance. It was hard to judge scale in the desert.

“We’re in the exclusion zone. It’s about two hours of hard tabbing from here to the base itself,” Chisnall said. “We want to get there while everything is still in chaos from the raid.”

From this distance, chaos looked to be an understatement. A pall of smoke hung over Uluru from what must have been hundreds of fires, burning fiercely.

“Like the fires of Hades,” Chisnall murmured.

“Call hell and tell them the Angels are coming,” Brogan said.

“I just remembered that I have this really important appointment,” Wilton said.

“Where’s that?” Price asked.

“Anywhere,” Wilton said. “Anywhere but here.”

“Not me,” Brogan said. “There’s no place I’d rather be.
We’ve really hurt the Pukes for the first time, and this is our chance to stick the knife in.”

“There’s a whole lot of places I’d rather be,” Price said.

“Yeah, like ten-buck-pizza Sundays at Hell’s Kitchen,” Wilton said.

“Mmmmm, pizza,” Monster agreed. “Best food in the world!”

“I hate to break it to you,” Chisnall said, “but there are better things in this world than melted cheese and processed meat on a bread-dough base.”

“Mmmmm, pizza,” Monster said again.

“The best thing in the world is not food,” Wilton said. “It’s when you’re shredding down the monkey trails. That’s beautiful, dude. That’s better than sex.”

“Like you’d know,” Price said.

“I know more than you think,” Wilton said, trying to look mysterious and not pulling it off.

“Really?” Price asked. “You ever even kissed a girl, Wilton?”

“Or a guy, whatever,” Brogan said.

“Shut up,” Wilton said.

“Didn’t think so,” Price said. “You want to know the best thing in the world? It’s your first real kiss. You’ll find out one day.”

“Phantom, you’ve been reading too many romance novels,” Chisnall said.

“I think I just puked in my mouth,” Wilton said.

They arrived at the lip of an enormous crater where one
of the missiles had landed. It was wide but shallow, a quirk of the explosion and the geology of the underlying rock. Rather than skirt around it, Chisnall led the team down the soft, pulverized sand. Their boots slipped and skidded down the slope, creating mini landslides. The acrid after-smell of explosive was strong here. Parts of a tail fin protruded from the earth on the far side of the crater.

“What about you, Monster?” Brogan asked. “What do you think is the best thing in the world?”

“Well, my dude, the Monster thinks that nothing beats a really good fart.”

There was a second’s silence before the entire team burst into laughter.

“Evolution kinda skipped your family, didn’t it?” Price said.

“So who wins?” Wilton asked. “Do we get to vote?”

“I’m not voting for Monster’s fart,” Price said.

“There’s no voting,” Chisnall said. “I get to pick the winner.”

“Why’s that?” Brogan asked.

“Because I’m the lieutenant,” Chisnall said. “That’s just the way it works. This is not a democracy.”

“How come you’re the LT?” Wilton asked. “You stronger or smarter than the rest of us?”

“No, Wilton, just better-looking,” Chisnall said.

“Uh-uh, LT, you sho ain’t purty,” Wilton said. “Now, Sergeant Brogan, she’s purty.”

“You want some of this, soldier?” Brogan asked.

“If you bought me flowers and a nice dinner, I’d think about it,” Wilton said.

Chisnall laughed. “I wouldn’t if I were you. She’d chew you up and spit out the grisly bits for target practice.”

“Wilton,” Brogan said, “no offense, but I wouldn’t feed you to my dog.”

“Brogan,” Wilton said, “do you ever wish you’d been born a boy?”

“No, how about you?” Brogan asked.

“Ground mobiles, ten o’clock,” Price said. “Two of them. Small. Jeeps or Land Rovers. About three klicks out.”

“Heading our way?” Chisnall asked.

“Not yet,” Price said.

“Let’s hope it stays that way,” Chisnall said.

It didn’t.

They were up out of the massive crater now. The light of the day was increasing with every minute and the clouds of dust from the vehicles were already visible without binoculars, rising in a red-gray plume to the northwest.

“They’re turning,” Price said. “Must have picked us up. Coming this way.”

Chisnall took a deep breath. This was it. Contact with the enemy. This was what they had trained for. “Okay, everybody stay frosty,” he said. “We’re just a Puke patrol returning with some prisoners.”

“Think they’ll buy it?” Wilton asked.

“No reason why they shouldn’t,” Chisnall replied. “But
the action code is
dingo
. If you hear that, all hell is about to break loose.”

“Booyah,” Wilton said. “Gonna kick some Puke butt today.”

“Not unless I give you the code,” Chisnall said. “Otherwise, we’re just a Puke patrol. Now listen up. No English. Bzadian only. Try not to talk any more than you have to.”

“Which dialect?” Monster asked.

“This from the dude who can’t even speak English,” Wilton said.

“Stick to Corziz,” Chisnall said. They all spoke at least three of the alien languages, but Corziz was the most common.

“He’s serious, kids,” Brogan said. “Anything could trip us up. It might be something about our appearance. Or a word used in the wrong way. It might be the way you blink.”

“If anything tips the alien patrol off that we are not what we seem, then the whole Angel program is for nothing,” Chisnall said.

They were well trained. That wasn’t really what worried him. What worried him was the traitor. Would he or she say or do something to give them up to the patrol? He had to be ready for that. He had to be ready for anything. Without being obvious, he moved up close behind Price.

The far-off plumes of dust grew in size, as did the lingering haze behind them. Two black dots turned into shimmering blobs, then morphed into toy cars, then into Land Rovers. Long-range patrol vehicles (LRPVs), three-seaters. A driver, a passenger, and a gunner position with a fifty-caliber
machine gun mounted high behind the two front seats. The rear of the vehicle was a cargo tray.

A few minutes later, the vehicles were close enough for Chisnall to see that they still had their Australian Army markings. The Land Rovers skidded to a halt in the soft dust alongside the Angels, enveloping them for a moment in a mini dust storm.

Showtime
, Chisnall thought.

There were no doors on the LRPVs. A tall Bzadian lieutenant swung his legs over the side of the vehicle and stepped down. His uniform had the insignia of the Republican Guards. Chisnall suspected that, judging from his height, he was probably a bobble-head.

There were many races within the Bzadian species. The bobble-heads were one of the more easily identified races because of their unusually tall size (for Bzadians) and their odd habit of nodding while talking.

Chisnall gave Bennett a harsh shove in his back as the lieutenant approached. The SAS man stumbled on his injured leg and fell.
Cruel but effective
, Chisnall thought. Fleming glared at him and helped Bennett back to his feet. The alien lieutenant glanced at the two SAS men and his nostrils flared with distaste.

Chisnall breathed out slowly. This was the moment. The first real test of the whole Angel program. Years in development and years of training, bone remodeling, skin recoloring, learning language and culture. It all came down to this. Could he and his team pass themselves off as Bzadians?
They had tested their disguises in POW camps, but those were artificial environments, and closely monitored. If they had got it wrong, then help was only a few seconds away.

This was the real deal.

The driver of the first Land Rover, a female, got out as well, and they were joined by all three soldiers from the rear vehicle. None of the aliens made any attempt to unholster their weapons, but with the spring-mounted holsters, their weapons would be in their arms in a heartbeat if required. In any case, the machine gunner on the front Land Rover—a young, nervous-looking soldier—had them well covered with the fifty-cal.

The aliens showed interest, Chisnall thought, but no alarm. So far so good.

“You’re a long way out,” the lieutenant said by way of a greeting, his head bobbing up and down as he talked.

“And glad to see a set of wheels,” Chisnall said. “It’s a long walk back. I’m Chizna.” He raised a clenched fist to his shoulder in what passed for both a salute and a greeting among the enemy soldiers.

“Yozi,” the lieutenant said, returning the salute.

“Zabet,” Yozi’s driver said. Bzadian females—the soldiers at least—usually kept their hair short, but Zabet’s hair was long and pulled back in a ponytail. It made her look almost human.

Yozi noticed Chisnall glancing up at the soldier on the fifty-cal and said, “Kezalu, point that thing somewhere else before it goes off.”

The young soldier looked a little embarrassed and raised the barrel of the gun to the sky.

“He’s new,” Yozi said, his head bobbing.

“We all were, once,” Chisnall said.

Yozi surprised him by laughing, a short bark. “Hah! Not Alizza.” He nodded at one of the soldiers from the second vehicle. “He was born with a coil-gun in each hand.”

Alizza grinned, revealing a mouthful of bad teeth, and in the midst of everything, Chisnall found himself wondering why a race with the technology to travel light-years across space couldn’t sort out a little dentistry issue.

“Looks like a lot of damage out this way,” Yozi said. He scanned the cratered landscape behind them. “The fence is gone.”