The Assault

12. THE ATTACK



[1200 hours]

[Uluru Secure Facility, New Bzadia]

CHISNALL STARED AT THE BANK OF SCREENS THAT COVERED the wall of the control room. Cameras covered every angle outside the building. Some showed the surrounding area and the fence lines. Others, presumably mounted in the monorail track, showed the view back toward the building they were in.

This place was a fortress, but no fortress could withstand what the aliens were about to throw at them for long.

Brogan lay in the middle of the room. She had not yet regained consciousness. That worried him more than he liked to admit. Was she just unconscious, or comatose?

He said, “It’s time you knew why we are here.”

“No argument from me,” Price said.

Chisnall nodded. “I wanted to tell you earlier, but my orders were for total secrecy.”

“So what’s it all about, dude?” Wilton asked. “What’s really, like, going on inside this rock?”

“That we don’t know. But with all the secrecy and security surrounding it, you don’t have to be a genius to work out that it’s vital to the Pukes. And if it’s that important to them, then it’s probably just as important for us to stop it. But how? Uluru is so big, and so solid, that we knew we couldn’t touch it, not even with a nuclear attack. So we crash-landed the Tomahawk here, right at the entrance. It’s a CL-22 warhead.”

Wilton whistled. “China Lake Two Two. Powerful stuff.”

CL-22 was the latest derivative of the immensely powerful CL-20 explosive invented back in the twentieth century. CL-20 had been developed as a propellant, but CL-22 was created for use in nuclear warheads. It was the most powerful conventional explosive on Earth.

“I thought our mission was to find out what’s going on inside the rock,” Price said.

“Partly,” Chisnall said. “But the other part is to get Fleming, Bennett, and that warhead inside the rock so they can destroy it. Whatever it is.”

“This is starting to sound like a suicide mission,” Wilton said.

“Only if we’re still here when the warhead goes off,” Chisnall said. “And I’m not planning on hanging around for that party.”

“The Monster hope you have other way out,” Monster said, “because the Monster doesn’t think we’re coming back this way.”

“There’s another exit from this tunnel,” Chisnall said. “The monorail track runs right through the rock and comes out the other side. But we’ve never seen them use it. We think it’s an emergency exit. According to our satellite imagery and ground-penetrating radar, it is blocked by two, maybe three sets of blast doors.”

“And you’re betting our lives on this?” Price said.

“Pretty much,” Chisnall said. “But it’s a good bet. The monorail runs from there out into the desert, to some kind of safety bunker. That’s our extraction point.”

“Sounds pretty hairy to me,” Wilton said.

“Did you sign up for the easy mission, Wilton?” Price said. “Sorry, that’s next week.”

“Right now we need to make sure we can hold off the Pukes long enough for Fleming and Bennett to extract the warhead,” Chisnall said.

“What’s taking them so long?” Wilton asked.

It had already been ten minutes since they had shown them where the missile lay entangled with the monorail car.

Chisnall keyed his comm. “Fleming, sit rep, over?”

Fleming came back immediately. “It’s slow going. The way the car crushed around the nose of the missile has made extraction difficult.”

“Anything we can do to help?” Chisnall asked.

“No. We’re working through it. What are our friends up to?”

Chisnall ran his eyes over the bank of monitors one more time. The area was still clear, although the Bzadians had occupied all the surrounding buildings.

“All quiet on the eastern front,” Chisnall said.

“What’s keeping them?” Price asked.

“They’re preparing for the assault,” Chisnall said.

“We’ve got movement,” Monster said, pointing to one of the monitors.

Chisnall stared. Something was crawling past a gap between two of the buildings. Something big. It emerged onto the roadway by the side of the building and stopped. A moment later it was joined by a twin.

“Holy crap,” Wilton said.

The two huge alien battle tanks barely fit on the roadway. They skulked in the shadows between the buildings, unstoppable, ironclad juggernauts.

“They’ll use them as cover,” Chisnall said. “Bring up the infantry behind them, then blow the front door.”

“What can we do?” Price asked.

“Nothing,” Chisnall said. “We are not going to engage anyone until they are inside the building. The doorway will create a bottleneck, so we don’t have to engage the entire force at once. Fleming, Bennett, we’re expecting company. How long do you need?”

“Could be a half hour, not sure.”

“What happened to ten mikes? I don’t think we have thirty,” Chisnall said.

“We’ll do our best,” Fleming said.

Chisnall picked up the remote detonator, a small black device like a remote control, with a numeric keypad and a fire button. It could be coded to any number of different explosive devices and was currently keyed to the C4 charge in the Land Rover outside. He checked the safety was on and placed the detonator carefully on the desk, next to the controls for the monorail bay doors.

Seconds ticked by, turning into minutes.

The Bzadian forces remained in position.

He picked up the detonator, checked it again, and put it back down.

Sweat trickled slowly down the back of his neck. His breathing seemed unnaturally loud in the silence.

“What are they waiting for?” he wondered out loud.

“Come on already,” Wilton said. “Bring it on.”

“You in a hurry to die?” Monster asked.

“No, you?” Wilton asked.

“You need a nervous system to feel scared, and I don’t think Monster has one,” Chisnall said.

“LT!” It was Price.

Chisnall looked back at the screen showing the area in front of the building.

A monorail car had appeared around the corner of the track. It slowed and then stopped near the battle tanks.

“There’s something strange about that car,” Chisnall said. He used the controls on the desk in front of him to zoom in.

“They’ve welded something to the front of it,” Wilton said.

It was a heavy metal wedge.

“They’re going to ram the front doors!” Chisnall said.

That would bring them right into the monorail bay, where Fleming and Bennett were working.

“Any C4 left?” Price asked. “We could blow the track.”

“A couple of packs. But I don’t think we’ve got time, and anyone who goes out there will be a leaky sieve in a matter of seconds,” Chisnall said.

“I can do it, skipper,” Price said.

“No way, Phantom. Not even you can get out there without being seen,” Chisnall said.

“Think I can, skipper,” Price said. “That channel in the center of the track. I should be able to worm my way along it. I’ll stash a pack of C4 just past the first pylon.”

“They could attack any minute,” Chisnall said.

“Then let’s not fart around anymore,” Price said.

“Okay. Remember to disable the claymores first,” Chisnall said.

“You think?” Price said.

Chisnall handed her the pack, and she disappeared. A moment later she appeared on one of the monitors, inside the monorail bay.

“Be quick,” Chisnall said. “Everybody else, get to your positions.”

He glanced down at Brogan, who was still unconscious on the floor of the control center. She was breathing steadily and there was no time to worry about her now.

Monster and Wilton headed off toward the entrance. Price moved out of view and Chisnall watched one of the screens that looked down on the monorail track. The C4 pack appeared first, sliding along a shallow channel in the track as if under its own steam. Then an arm came into view, followed by Price herself. She wormed her way along the channel, wriggling like a snake, never lifting herself up a hair more than she had to.

Price was still his most likely suspect. She was the only person he knew who could have infiltrated the hangar and tampered with the half-pipe. But it was hard to reconcile the idea of Price the traitor with the bravery and determination he was seeing on the monitor. If she was a traitor, why would she be putting herself at such risk to help the mission succeed?

The same could be said for any member of the team, he realized.

Chisnall kept one eye on the other screens. There was a lot of activity over between the buildings, but so far the tanks, the car, and the troops were remaining in position. Price was about halfway to the pylon now.

The two behemoths—the Bzadian battle tanks—began to move.

“Price, hurry it up,” Chisnall said. “They’re moving. Everybody else, ready, ready, ready.”

He pulled his visor down into combat position.

The monorail car stayed where it was. That made sense. It would wait for the tanks to close in on the building before speeding into the attack. He couldn’t see it, but he could guess that the car was full of heavily armed soldiers. If it got inside the bay, then it was all over. All their defenses depended on only a few soldiers making it through the main entrance at one time.

There was movement in the sky to the south, and three rotorcraft flew into view on one of the monitors. From the shapes of the craft, they were a couple of troop carriers and a gunship. That explained the delay while they prepared their attack. The tanks were speeding up now, rumbling over the crossroads and over the low outer fence as if it didn’t exist. At least two full squads of infantry ran behind them.

“Keep out of the entrance until they blow the door,” he said. “I think they’re going to hit it with a tank shell.”

Monster and Wilton were on the mezzanine level, well away from the blast area, but the force of the explosion could still be deadly in that confined space.

“Copy that,” Wilton said.

On the monorail track, Price had reached the pylon. She wriggled forward another two meters and pushed the C4 pack out in front of her as far as she could.

She began to wriggle backward but it was painfully slow going.

“Too slow, Price,” Chisnall said. “You’re going to have to turn around.”

“If I do that, skipper, they’ll see me.”

“There are incoming rotorcraft; they’re going to see you in a few seconds anyway.”

He keyed the code for the C4 pack into the detonator but left the safety on. If she didn’t get back inside the monorail bay, she was going to be toast.

Price quickly pushed herself up onto her hands and knees, twisted over, and lay back down in the channel, wriggling forward as fast as she could. Even that single glimpse of her was enough for the aliens. Rounds cracked into the monorail track around her.

She had made it less than a meter away from the pylon when the monorail car began to move. The tanks were halfway across the security zone now, bearing down on the inner fence. They were heading straight for the main door of the building.

“The car is moving!” Chisnall yelled. “Price, get out of there.”

He flicked the safety off on the detonator.

Price jumped to her feet and began to run. Rounds split the air around her and puffs of white flicked up around her feet. The car was only meters behind her, closing down on the last pillar. Chisnall’s thumb moved over the firing button.

“Fleming! Bennett! Get down!” he yelled. Even inside the monorail bay, the shock wave of the blast would be teeth-rattling.

There was an explosion below him and the building shook as the tanks fired at the main door. He took one more look at the slender figure of Price, the Kiwi Phantom. She was bent over, legs pumping as she sprinted along the track toward the big metal doors of the monorail bay.

“Blow it!” Wilton yelled. “You gotta blow it!”

Just a couple more seconds and she’d be safe. But Wilton was right. He didn’t have a couple more seconds. Price didn’t have a couple more seconds.

She dived.

He pressed the firing button.

There was a half breath while the detonator translated the instruction from the trigger; then a brilliant flare whitened out the screen he was watching. It cleared as the whole building shook from the blast. The window looking down on the bay shattered, and glass exploded into the room around him, clattering off his body armor and visor. Several of the monitors blanked out as the blast took out their cameras.

He had instinctively ducked down, and now he straightened, his eyes glued to the screens.

The monorail car was in midair, the metal wedge at the front aimed skyward like the nose of a rocket ship. In slow motion, it started to fall backward. It struck the remains of the rail and tumbled over as it crashed into the ground below.

Amazingly, he still had a view back toward the building. A camera on the monorail track, on one of the outer pylons, had survived. He could see the gaping hole in the monorail line and still had a view of the doors to the monorail bay. Big, heavy, and jammed by the impact of the Tomahawk, they had barely moved.

“Price? Price?”

There was silence.

“Price!”

He ran to the smashed window and looked down into the monorail bay. Would he see a body, or would there not even be that much of her to find? The bay was full of smoke and dust from the explosion. It took him a moment to find her. She wasn’t dead. Far from it. She was sitting on the floor of the bay, below the heavy rail. She grinned up at him and gave him a thumbs-up.

Chisnall shook his head in amazement and gave her a thumbs-up back. Nobody but Price could have pulled off that stunt. She must have slipped through the opening to the bay in the microsecond before the blast and dropped down to the safety of the bay’s floor.

He quickly checked on Brogan, who was okay but still unconscious. She had been shielded from the flying glass by the control desk. He spotted Price walking past the control room, heading for the entrance.

“Incoming tanks and rotorcraft!” Wilton yelled.

Chisnall raced back to the screens.

The tanks were rolling up toward the hole their guns had just blasted where the main door used to be, still providing cover for the infantry crowded behind it.

Chisnall could see two rotorcraft above them racing toward the roof of the building. Soldiers with their weapons ready crouched on the slipways over the rotorblades. The gunship held back. He forced his eyes away from the rotorcraft. The standing rockets on the roof should take care of them. Wilton had deployed four in a line across the front of the rooftop, just behind the parapet wall.

One of the tanks was rolling right toward the Land Rover parked outside the building, regarding it as merely an annoyance to be barged out of the way or crushed.

The troops were crouching and running along behind the two tanks. Ten meters to go before the tank hit the Land Rover. Chisnall keyed the second code into the detonator and rested his thumb lightly on the trigger. Around him, the building began to vibrate and the images on the screens quivered to the low bass rumble of the tank wheels on the rocky ground.

One of the rotorcraft moved over the roofline of the building, the other not far behind it. There was a flash on one of the monitors and a loud bang overhead as one of the standing rockets was triggered.

He saw the rotorcraft spin wildly out of control, falling. Soldiers flew off like a cloud of insects. The craft hit the edge of the roof and upended. For a second he was looking down on the spinning, fractured blades of the rotorcraft as it fell. It slipped sideways and struck the red rock of Uluru before hitting the ground and exploding.

Below, the big ball wheels of the Bzadian battle tank rolled over the top of the Land Rover, crushing it, flattening it.

Chisnall pressed the trigger.

There was a huge roar and a brilliant flare. The desert itself seemed to be swallowed by the explosion as dirt and dust mushroomed out around the big metal creature. The edge of the tank lifted into the air impossibly slowly. Just when Chisnall thought it would settle back down, it continued to rise, past its center of gravity, then over, while its wheels continued to grind like the legs of a nearly dead beetle.

The dust began to clear and there was no sign of the infantry. It was as if they had vanished into thin air. Then the floor of the desert began to shiver, and Chisnall realized that he was seeing the dust-covered shapes of soldiers rising up out of the desert and beginning to retreat.

The second tank began to back away, wary that the same fate lay in store for it.

“Get that fifty-cal ready, and stay frosty,” Chisnall said to Monster. Already he could see a second wave of infantry charging over the ground toward them. And the second rotorcraft was keeping well away from the roofline.

“How’s that warhead coming?” Chisnall asked as he keyed the third code into the detonator. The code for the massed charge above their heads. He made sure the safety was on. This charge would take down the whole building—at the very least.

“About five mikes,” Bennett said. “We’ve extracted it—prepping it for transport now.”

Chisnall clipped the detonator to his belt and ran out of the control room with just one backward glance at the prone form of Brogan. She would be as safe here as anywhere. Everything now depended on them holding off the enemy until the SAS guys finished whatever it was they were doing.

His coil-gun sprang into his hands as he raced down the long, featureless corridor toward the entrance. He ran out onto the mezzanine. Monster had the fifty-cal propped up at the top of the stairs. He grinned at Chisnall, ready for a fight.

Wilton stood at the other end of the mezzanine, his sniper rifle resting on one of the gaps in the thick stone wall. Price was on the ground floor laying claymores among the rubble of the demolished doorway.

“Get out of there,” Chisnall yelled.

“Almost done,” Price said.

Chisnall took position behind the wall and trained his gun on the doorway as Price skipped lightly up the stairs, stopping to arm another couple of claymores that she had wired to the underside of the metal staircase.

She took position behind the wall of the mezzanine.

From outside they could hear the sound of running boot steps.

“Hold your fire,” Chisnall said. “Let the claymores deal with the leaders.”

The sound of the boots was louder now. Then suddenly it stopped. No soldiers were in sight.

“Prepare for flash-bangs!” Chisnall cried.

He dropped down behind the safety of the balcony wall. Next to him he saw Monster screw his eyes tightly shut and clamp his hands over his ears. There were thuds from below them and he tensed, waiting for the explosions. They came with a wave and a roar of light, heat, and dust. He spun back around, raising his rifle to his shoulder.

“Hold your fire!” he yelled.

Three alien soldiers rushed into the entranceway, rifles at the ready. The claymores triggered on either side, and the three disappeared in a hailstorm of smoke and dust, thrown backward by the shock wave. It probably hadn’t penetrated their suits, but it would stun them for a while.

“Suppressing fire!” he yelled.

He let loose a long burst at the ragged hole where the door used to be. The others joined in. They were firing at shadows, but the doorway was now a death trap. No soldier would willingly run into such a maelstrom. Instead, the Pukes tried attacking from the sides, holding their weapons around the broken corners of the walls and firing blindly up at the mezzanine.

Chisnall pulled a frag grenade off his belt, set the timer for one second, pulled the pin, and threw it.

“Frag out!” he yelled.

The grenade hit the ground just outside the doorway and exploded. The firing from either side stopped. Chisnall’s ears rang from the thunder of the weapons inside the stone walls, a high-pitched whistle inside his head.

“Everybody okay?”

He got a chorus of “Oscar Kilos” in return.

“What now, LT?” Price asked.

“Hold fast,” Chisnall said. “Stay frosty, they can’t—” He stopped, listening. Below them, on the floor of the entranceway, the dust was alive. The rubble was quivering, and from outside he could hear an unmistakable rumbling.

“Tank!” he yelled. “Relocate now!”

They were too late. The outer wall of the building disintegrated with a roar, and the pressure wave knocked him backward. When Chisnall regained his feet, he saw Price and Wilton lying in the dust. Monster was just clawing himself back upright. The tank was outside, clearly visible through the broken front of the building. It rolled right up to the hole made by the explosion.

And the barrel of its gun was rising toward the mezzanine.