The Day After Never - Covenant (Post-Apocalyptic Dystopian Thriller - Book 3) (29 page)

“Ellie was here. But she’s fine. Just scared.”

Ruby tugged on Sierra’s sleeve. “Come on. No telling where the next shell hits.”

They were halfway back to the cave when the sound of an engine roared overhead, and Terry’s plane soared by no more than three hundred feet above their heads, narrowly clearing the tree line at the edge of the valley before disappearing on a circuitous course to reach the convoy from a direction it would least expect.

Chapter 51

The Cessna vibrated alarmingly as it fought for altitude, skewing sideways when it hit a gust of rough air from the north before straightening and continuing on its course, the engine thrumming so loudly that Aaron could barely hear himself think. Terry banked over the trees and set a bearing over the lowest peaks, passing close over them.

Once the little plane was clear of the valley, the earth dropped away, the area surrounding the mountains around Shangri-La three thousand feet lower, and Terry tapped the altimeter and gave Aaron a thumbs-up.

“Eleven thousand feet. That’s about max for this thing running ethanol,” he called out in a loud voice.

“How long until we get there?” Aaron asked.

“Oh, probably no more than fifteen minutes. Want to sneak up on them from the southeast.”

“Won’t they hear us coming?”

“Nobody’s going to be able to hear anything down there if they’re firing that big gun without hearing protection. Plus, the prevailing winds are from the north, so we’ll have that going for us, too.”

“How far above them are we going to be?”

“Couple thousand feet, at least, to stay out of range of their weapons.”

“Sounds like a lot.”

“Nobody said this would be easy. But I’ll slow to almost stall speed, and you can dump a bunch of bombs once you get the hang of it. Do one at a time until you sort of get it down, and then go for broke. Less time we’re over the target, the better, far as I’m concerned.”

“We should be able to get closer. I mean, an AK’s only accurate for three hundred yards.”

“Yeah, but they’re still dangerous at double that. And if they have any .50 calibers, up to couple thousand or more, then we’re screwed. Altitude there is about six thousand feet. No way could we get to thirteen or fourteen to stay above those.”

“Not easy hitting a moving target, even with an M2.”

“You feeling particularly lucky today?”

Aaron fell silent as the plane bounced gently along, moving at 110 knots. He inspected the napalm jugs and counted twenty in all – there were still another twenty back at the strip, but they wouldn’t fit in the confined space. He tried to envision how he’d go about his approach, trying to remember the speed of fall of an object from his high school physics class. Thirty-two feet per second stuck in his mind, but there was something about acceleration…

He recalled terminal velocity as around 240 feet per second, but how long would it take to reach that? At two thousand feet, would it be…less than ten seconds? More?

Math hadn’t been his strength in school, and he wondered if Terry was any better. He was going to ask when Terry called out to him and pointed ahead, where puffs of smoke were rising from the horizon along the river.

“Thar she blows. Be there in three minutes or so.”

“Any idea how long it will take for the bombs to hit the ground? In other words, how far ahead of time do I drop them?”

“That’s a tough one. I mean, there’s your velocity moving down, but also your momentum forward from the speed of the plane. If we were standing still, you could just drop it straight over the target, but beats me how far in advance to let loose. I’d start at maybe twenty seconds and keep dropping them to see what works.”

“That’s as close as you can get?”

“Without a calculator, it is.”

“Then fly straight along the vehicles so it doesn’t go to waste.”

“Thanks for the tip. You can open the hatch whenever you want.”

Aaron took the hint and slid the rear door open and was instantly buffeted by wind. Terry yelled to him as they neared the column. “I’ll say go when you should drop the first one. Then do it every couple of seconds and watch for the effect. Try to remember which one gets closest, and that will tell you how many seconds on the next pass.”

“Not very scientific.”

“Not much in life is.”

Aaron waited for the go-ahead, a milk jug in his lap and another in his hand.

“All right. On my count. Five-four-three-two-one… Go!” Terry cried. Aaron released the first jug, counted to two, and released the next. He repeated the maneuver ten times, looking down to see the detonations once he’d released the fifth.

Liquid fire exploded along the side of one of the buses a good distance from the howitzer, scalding the men near it. The next struck one of the equipment trucks, immersing it in burning liquid. After all ten were released, none had landed near the howitzer, although they’d certainly caused substantial destruction among the fighters.

Terry banked and called over his shoulder, “Looks like the fifth one was the closest. I’ll adjust my count accordingly.”

“Let me know when to start dropping them.”

“You got it. Only this time, drop them as fast as you can.”

They did a tight loop and returned along the smoldering column for a second run. On Terry’s count, Aaron pitched jug after jug from the plane, taking care to avoid detonating the Armstrong’s mixture with an errant strike against the fuselage. He was dropping the last one when a row of holes appeared along the right wing, the tip of which sheared off moments later.

Terry fought for control and Aaron gripped the seat belt for dear life, almost missing the results of his bombing run. Two of the napalm jugs exploded near the howitzer, which fell silent as the crew was immolated. Then the plane was yawing at a precarious angle, and Terry was screaming at the top of his lungs while he fought with the controls.

“Hang on. We’re going down.”

Chapter 52

Magnus surveyed the wreckage from the napalm and screamed orders at his men. He was now down to half his original force, and his patience was at an end. He didn’t care about the buses, but the loss of the howitzer threw his entire plan into jeopardy, and he wanted his fighters on their way at a gallop within the hour.

Jude convinced him to stay with the column with a small security contingent as the repair crew attempted to fix the howitzer; the goal was to at least get the optics working well enough to do some primitive sighting. They’d lost their lead gun detail, but there were enough ex-soldiers in the Crew’s ranks to replace them.

Magnus watched as his riders swarmed across the wood bridge. The cement road was too unstable to support them, the twenty-foot gap where the charges had gone off barely held together by the rebar that remained. Jude led the charge. The horses were eager to run after a week cooped up in the trailers, and the force rode up the highway at a good clip, the sound of their steeds’ hooves thunderous.

They passed through Los Alamos without a fight, which surprised Jude after the attacks they’d endured. The air strike had been the most unexpected, and even Magnus was unable to hold Jude accountable for failing to predict it. Nobody had seen an operating plane for years, and the idea that Shangri-La had any took them by complete surprise – for which eighty men had paid with their lives before one of the M2 gunners had shot the thing out of the sky.

Once off the road, Jude followed the Apache’s directions into the canyon to his right. He’d slowed to a trot once through town, wary of ambush now that the canyon walls rose sheer on either side. The late afternoon sun shone at such an angle that the crest above blocked its light. He put two riders well out in front of the main force to watch for mines, the men’s reluctance well hidden by their bravado.

Forty-five minutes into the maze, the first disaster struck when one of the advance scouts triggered a Bouncing Betty, which liquefied the pair and shredded fifteen of the front riders to pieces. The men stopped in their tracks, and Jude ordered more fighters forward on foot, leaving their horses to be led by others. Jude had never seen the result of a bounding mine, and was shocked by how many of his men had been killed by only one of the devices, even at considerable distance. If the advance riders had been closer to the main group, he could have easily lost fifty men with one explosion instead of seventeen.

The advance men moved painfully slowly across the dry wash, and the following riders stayed in a narrow band to prevent straying from the area the walkers had confirmed safe. They discovered ten more of the mines over the next hour and marked their locations using broken branches driven into the ground beside them.

Once out of the larger canyon, the second tributary was narrower, forcing the riders to group together more tightly than Jude would have liked. He occasionally communicated with Magnus on his handheld, but reception worsened as he pushed deeper into the canyons, the cliffs effectively blocking the signal.

He’d just begun to relax when another Bouncing Betty detonated, this one in the midst of his men, killing scores instantly as the shrapnel ripped through flesh and bone at blinding velocity. The screams and moans of the dying and wounded were as horrific as the sight of body parts strewn around the blast zone, disembodied arms and heads of men and animals alike littering the canyon floor, which was awash in crimson.

Shooting from snipers above began almost immediately after the explosion, taking down more of the riders as they attempted to return fire. Jude sighted a series of caves just below the crest and ordered the men with AT4s to fire at will.

A series of explosions above silenced the shooters, leaving the canyon echoing from the roar. Jude ordered his men to dismount and continue on foot, using their animals as cover in case there were more snipers ahead.

“What about the wounded?” one of the nearest gunmen asked Jude as he surveyed the carnage.

“We have to leave them. Take ten of your best and care for them as well as you can, but there’s not much we can do until this is over.”

The sky was darkening when the boom of the howitzer resumed, and a muted cheer rose from the men as shells whistled overhead. Jude scanned the surviving force and estimated that he still had over four hundred able-bodied fighters against almost half as many defenders. He’d understood the assault would extract a high toll, but they were closing in on their objective, and he suspected he’d already seen the worst of what could be thrown at them.

~ ~ ~

Brett watched the approaching Crew and whispered to the young man next to him, “Hold on. Wait until there’s no turning back.”

The man nodded, the detonator switch in his hand trembling slightly. Brett noticed the tremor and inched closer. “You going to be okay?”

“Yeah. Just a little nervous, is all.”

“I can do this part if you want.”

The young man shook his head. “I set the charges. I’ll push the button.”

“Fair enough.”

The attacking force advanced, and when Brett calculated they were beyond the point of no return, he gave his companion the nod. The man flipped the switch, and a rapid-fire sequence of explosions rocked the ridge to their right.

~ ~ ~

Jude looked up to see whole sections of the canyon detaching and snowballing toward him with relentless force. He leapt on his horse and ordered his men forward, urging them to a run as they raced to avoid the huge rockslide.

Most made it, but the stragglers were crushed under tons of stone and vanished beneath the rubble like drowning men pulled beneath a roiling sea. Jude’s men were recovering, the dust in the air thick as fog, when more sniper fire chattered from above, accompanied by the clink of grenades landing on nearby rocks. Jude drove his horse onward, shouting instructions to his men, who returned fire at the sniper positions until more AT4s could be brought to bear. The grenades exploded, yielding more screams, and then the AT4 projectiles did their work and the snipers fell silent before they could inflict any more damage.

~ ~ ~

Brett stared at the young man’s sightless eyes beside him and shook his head to clear it. The explosion had deafened him and all he could hear was a loud ringing, like he’d stuck his head in a church bell and someone had struck it with a sledgehammer.

The steady drumbeat of the shelling shook the ground as he crawled from his hiding place and made for the final defense point. Arnold had underscored the importance of stopping the attackers before they reached the valley, where it would be a bloodbath of one-on-one fighting, and Lucas had echoed that strategy – the Crew would either be stopped in the canyons, or Shangri-La could lose everyone to Magnus’s men.

He staggered along, unaware of the blood trickling from his right ear, clutching his M4 reflexively in his hands, the only one of ten snipers left alive after the antitank weapons had done their job. That he’d lived twice after facing seemingly certain death surprised him, but he didn’t pause to think about it. He had to reach the final attack group and do what he could as long as he was drawing breath.

~ ~ ~

Magnus’s decision to send Jude into the canyon before dark had proved disastrous – one of their supposed edges being their night vision equipment. He would never have led a frontal assault given the conditions they’d met, and would have retreated and held the area under siege while waiting for reinforcements and more artillery, even if it took months. Only his fear of Magnus’s retribution had made him continue forward, and it had cost too many of his men their lives.

According to the Apache’s directions, they only had one dogleg to go before they would ascend into the valley, at the other end of which lay their final target. They’d run the deadly gauntlet, and those that remained were ready for blood, the memory of the damage inflicted on their peers vivid and fresh. They would show no mercy and kill every man, woman, child, and animal they found.

Some part of Jude’s reptilian brain sensed imminent danger as their force entered the final dogleg. The darkness that would cloak them was also a hindrance to spotting mines, and he recognized the new challenge instantly – either they’d have to make a best effort in the fading light or wait until night and attempt navigating the ravine using NV gear. Neither was a good option, but every minute he was in the narrow branch he knew he was at risk from ahead as well as above.