Trial by Fire - eARC (44 page)

As if in response, the opposite slope seemed to explode. Along the full length of the Hkh’Rkh column, from the now half-rotated skirmish line all the way back to the Arat Kur and overwatch sharpshooters, a sudden blast of flame and smoke jetted down from eight meters up the opposite ridgeline. Stretching a hundred meters back beyond the entrance into the dead-end ravine, the long line of explosions echoed quickly off other slope, sounding like two roars in fast sequence. However, even that double-blast didn’t drown out the vicious whine that filled the air around Opal, shredding leaves, pulping and spattering wood fragments from the tree trunks to either side and snatching the helmet off her head into the brush behind.
Directional mines—fitted with
flechettes
?

Opal’s speculation was drowned out by eager shouts in
behasa
; the “fleeing” insurgents had reversed direction and were charging back into the kill zone they had prepared. Well back from the entry to the ravine, the Arat Kur remotes were orbiting in their automated distress pattern.
Scratch one Roach
. A number of the Hkh’Rkh, still standing, wheeled unsteadily toward the charging insurgents. Most of their armor seeped dark red in multiple places as they trained their weapons on the approaching farmers and truck drivers.

From the far slope, Opal heard the distinct crack of a weapon like hers: an eight-millimeter CoBro liquimix assault rifle, set on high velocity. One of the Hkh’Rkh went down. Another crack: another Hkh’Rkh dropped out of sight. Then at least three more rifles—caseless, from the sound of them—joined in, the weaker weapons double- and triple-tapping every target they engaged. Opal stayed low and used the moment to think. With a rebel victory almost in hand, what might still go wrong? What might have been overlooked? It had been a sound box ambush, made devastating by her unexpected contribution. Everything was probably accounted for—

Except for a second Arat Kur. What if the second half of the invariably paired Arat Kur hadn’t been a casualty? And what if he hadn’t been on the ground but waiting, watching, from one of their airborne sleds?

Opal stuck her head up—and heard, rather than saw, the answer to her question: the high, thin whine of downsized turbofans were just barely audible, if one listened carefully between the rolling, firecracker sputtering of small arms. But where—?

Of course, from behind the Indonesians. On the opposite side of the gorge, a broad disk was already sweeping down the slope toward the rear of the ambush line that had triggered the claymores and was now busily picking off the Hkh’Rkh survivors. Damn: they didn’t expect the Arat Kur sled, couldn’t hear it, wouldn’t see it. And there was no time to do anything except—

Opal stood, heard bullets close around her. She hit the magazine release for her rifle’s underslung launch tube: the columnar magazine fell out, sprinkling twenty-five millimeter rocket-assisted projectiles at her feet.

A bullet—whose, she could not tell—cut through her right trouser leg.

She pulled an antivehicle RAP off her web-gear, inserted it in place of the magazine, slapped the cover up. Locked and loaded.

Wood chips sprayed up past her eye. Someone was coming awful close. But no time for cover.

She sighted the weapon, centered the scope on the approaching disk, saw the combat-suited Arat Kur it carried, like a cubist roach riding bareback on a pie-plate. The laser range finger indicated seventy-six meters. She changed the integral laser to target designation mode, activated the warhead’s self-guidance package, snapped on the arming range override, saw the red “0” illuminate, and squeezed the trigger.

In that fraction of a second, the Arat Kur vehicle had closed to fifty-eight meters.

The antivehicle weapon—an extended rocket-assisted projectile, or “stick RAP”—exited the launch tube with a dull thump: the launching charge. A split second later, only five meters out of the barrel, that small clearing stage tumbled away and the rocket motor kicked on.

51 meters to the rushing enemy craft.

The RAP streaked at the disk, which must have had an automatic detection and evasion system; it angled sharply to the right—

48 meters to the enemy craft.

As the missile swerved in pursuit and closed to ten meters range, the base of the nosecone flared, sent a small HEAP round forward with an extra two-gee burst of speed.

45 meters—

The HEAP pre-munition impacted; the detonation sent a jet of molten metal into the armor protecting the disk’s machinery.

44.2 meters—

The main rocket’s IR followup seeker head rode the bright, thermal plume into the scorched and severely weakened armor—

43 meters.

The head of the main body detonated upon impact, ejecting another molten HEAP jet. The armor buckled.

43.95 meters.

Pushed by the still-accelerating motor, the depleted uranium penetrator rod spiked into the armor, ripping through as though it were paper, sucking the slower, roiling molten metal in behind it.

The disk tumbled once and disintegrated with a roar that spawned two others, each punctuated by a bright white flash: secondary explosions from destroyed munitions.

Opal smiled—and went down sideways as someone punched her in the ribs.

She tried to rise, couldn’t, discovered that her vision was hazy. Then the world came back into focus, and a local was screaming something at his followers; a surrounding thicket of AK-47 muzzles lowered quickly. She raised up on one elbow, found breathing difficult. She looked down: her body armor had a new, shiny crater just about level with her left floating rib. Score one for friendly fire.

“Well, that was a pretty boneheaded set of moves.”

She looked up at the source of the tactical critique, saw a short—quite short, really—man in his thirties walking toward her in black and brown camos. He looked at her—or rather, her rank—more closely. “I mean that in the best possible way, Major.”

She looked at him closely as well. The voice was familiar, and behind that camo face paint, unless she was very much mistaken—

He had obviously recognized her, too. “Hey,” he said, “didn’t I rescue you from assassins by snatching you off a rooftop in Alexandria this March? You and Caine Riordan?” His grin seemed about as wide as he was tall.

“Yes, and hey, yourself,” Opal answered. “Glad to see you made it off that roof. But you’re a long way from Alexandria.”

“I could say the same about you, ma’am. And, although a SEAL wouldn’t normally be in your chain of command, allow me to ask you: orders?”

“Yeah. Help me up, damnit. Jeez, I didn’t remember you being so short.”

“And I didn’t remember you being so cute, ma’am.”

A pint-sized SEAL chief flirting with an Army major who was probably born before his own mother? She looked at him sideways.
So what is it with SEALs and me? Or
—although it was less personally flattering—
what was it with
SEALs
? Extra doses of testosterone in their chow? Nah, they miss a lot of meals, so they might not get enough of it. So it had to be in the beer. Yep, that would be the primary, and surest, delivery vector.
But however amusing the banter, she had to put a stop to it. “I think you’ve been in-country too long…Sergeant.”

“Probably so, ma’am, but you’ll forgive me for saying that camos suit you a lot better than a bloody hospital gown.”

Have to agree with him there—
and with the topic having shifted to clothing, she noted that although the insurgents were not in uniforms, there were telltale signs that not all of them were simply irate civilians. In particular, the three persons who had been on the slope with the SEAL were all wearing military boots, had lighter complexions, shorter hair, and were all roughly the same age.

She turned back to the sergeant. “Don’t continue patronizing me with this ‘order’s, ma’am?’ crap until you’ve briefed me on this unit. And it is a unit. No, don’t give me the big innocent eyes. You’ve got some regulars mixed in here.”

The sergeant nodded. “Three from the People’s Republic—they’re tunnel rats. Like me.”

Opal smiled. “Case IfUC1.”

“Huh?”

“I’ve heard of this operation by name. Back in Washington, just before heading here.”
Thanks for the info, Downing.
“But back then I didn’t know what it referred to. I didn’t get the joke.”

“‘IfUC1?’ That’s a joke?”

“Sure. You know what they say about rats: ‘If you see one—’”

“—There are a hundred more.” Little Guy shouldered his weapon, looked at his watch. “Well, that’s us, sure enough. A few less of us, after today. But a lot fewer of them. Thanks, in part, to you. But honestly, Major, about that charge of yours. Don’t you think that was a little too ‘gung ho’ for a commanding officer?”

Opal studied him carefully. Little Guy’s bloodless, offhanded remark about the casualties and his flippant criticism of her belied the steady gaze with which he watched his casualties—six dead Indonesians—being carried past. He looked at each face as if he were trying to memorize, or commune with, it.

She reached out and took his shoulder. “Let’s get something straight, Sergeant. I know your kind. You’ve got a mean-ass-mutha exterior concealing a mother-hen interior. And you manage to wind officers around your little finger, that way. And I thank you for your concern and your foolish flattery. But that’s the last time I want to hear your opinion on my tactical choices. Get used to high-initiative operations, ’cause that’s the kind of CO I am.”

Little Guy was still trying. “As you wish, ma’am, but you’ll meet your maker pretty quick that way.”

“My maker’s scared to meet me, and the other guy won’t have me.” Her glance bounced from her flechette-mangled helmet, to the hole in her pants leg, and ended on the crater in her armor. “As you will witness.”

Little Guy finally smiled again. “Okay, then. Glad to have you on board. Major.”

“Smile when you say that, Stretch. Now let’s unass this place. It’s going to look a lot messier in about five minutes.”

He checked his watch. “Three minutes, Major. The opposition is pretty fast on the reply.”

Following the lead of the Kopassus commando, they started heading directly over the slope that the disk had been coming down. “How do you get around?”

“What do you think? Tunnels.”

“Watch that tone, Little Guy. Besides, who builds tunnels in Indonesia? From what I remember, trying to dig tunnels here is about as promising as trying to grow roses on the moon.”

Little Guy nodded. “Yeah, but they
had
to build these tunnels to protect the fiber optics with which they were planning to rewire the whole country. Or so I’m told. Pretty big conduits for cables, though. Almost a meter wide, and because the system was never finished, they’re not on regional survey maps.”

“So the Arat Kur don’t know about these tunnels?
Them?
”

Little Guy shrugged. “Seems not. But then again, why should they?”

“Well, if there was a lot of digging going on, and a lot of talk about upgrading to—”

“Major, with respect, this is Indonesia. People talk, and people dig, and most of the time, nothing ever comes of either activity. And be aware, this was not a megacorp job. It was a joint American project which went into limbo when the Indonesians started cozying up to CoDevCo right before the Parthenon Dialogs. There’s been no work on this project for at least a year, no talk of it for six months, and no hardcopy maps of the projected tunnels have turned up. No software on them, either.” He smiled. “Except right in here.” He tapped what looked like a GPS relay.

“That’s not for GPS, is it?”

“Better not be. From what I hear, we don’t have a single satellite left. But this will show me the maps of our bombproof, scanproof tunnels. Where we have a lot more friends waiting.” He paused and met her eyes solemnly. “A
lot
more.”

Opal smiled. Having heard how all the pieces fit together, she knew now: this was all Nolan Corcoran’s work. Another part of his jigsaw-puzzle plan to save Earth. It was as if his ghost were standing there now, smiling and waving them all in the direction of the tunnel, one satisfied hand on his hip. “The tunnels:” Opal asked, “do they go into Jakarta?”

“Didn’t know you were a psychic, ma’am. In fact, we’ll be moving there in just two—”

He and Opal both stopped moving, even breathing. They only listened. She gave her order—a hiss that sounded like “Cover!”—a split second before he snapped out the same word. She hit the rain-muddied ground, sank in a bit, smelled the sweet stink of natural composting processes.

The roar of VTOL jets up-dopplered into a nearby-crescendo—and passed high overhead, down-dopplering without stopping.

“They’re checking out the ravine first,” Little Guy murmured.

“Could they have missed us?”

“See this mist? Feel this heat? Thermal systems work, but they need a few stationary moments to get details. They were going too fast. But after they assess the kill-zone and come up empty-handed, they’re going to start orbiting, looking for us. Or—”

“Or what?”

“Or burn off the nearby slopes. They know that if they don’t get us fast, they won’t get us at all. As recently as a week ago, they still reconned from standoff. Now, they recon by fire. Indiscriminately.”

“So we—?”

“We make like Alice and go down our magic rabbit hole. C’mon.”

They sprinted the rest of the way down the slope, converging near a half-completed power line. They swarmed down a narrow spillway that paralleled it, veered left toward a culvert that burrowed into one of its sloping sides.

“In there?” Opal pointed.

“Yep. Connects to drainage tunnels, one of which runs under the fiber-optic conduits.”

There was a shout from the Kopassus trooper bringing up the rear. “Plane. Coming fast!”

Opal crouched into a run. “Then we’d better be faster. Double-time like your lives depend on it.”

“’Cause they do,” Little Guy added. They reached the entry and she waved them on. Little Guy and his unit crouch-sprinted into the dark maw of the tunnel, followed by the Kopassus man. She was right behind him.