Standing in the Storm (The Last Brigade Book 2) Page 18

  Parfist shook his head. “No time for questions, baby. It’s a long story, and you won’t believe it until you see it with your own eyes. But the good guys are back.”

  0323 hours

  Lester Hull ticked off details with his fingers. Had he forgotten anything? It was the day of days for his republic. Instead of bartering for enough fuel to get by for a few months, they would secure their energy needs for years, long enough to finally begin rebuilding society according to his vision. True, the price was high. Replacing four thousand workers, with their attendant skills and talents, would be difficult. Maybe impossible. But without gasoline, the Republic of Arizona could never rise above a primitive subsistence level, and the price per slave was better than he’d dared hope. The Chinese must either be awash in gasoline, or desperate for workers, to pay what they were paying.

  He would never admit that he felt twinges of empathy with the slaves, but it wasn’t like they had ever been citizens. They had all lived in far-flung villages outside the authority of the ROA, so there was no actual loss as such, just lost potential. Assuming, of course, it was not some elaborate Chinese trap.

  It was time to leave for the field headquarters. Hull took a last glance at his mirror and turned off the small electric lamp. Stepping into the hallway again, he saw only one guard. “Where’s Lehandro? Why isn’t he back with those women?”

  “I don’t know, General,” the second guard said. “He should’ve been back by now.”

  “Go find him, dammit!”

  Hull glanced at his watch and paced in a small circle. From the other direction, he heard footsteps on the tile floor and saw someone approaching, holding a candle. As the figure drew near, he recognized the sagging jowls of Norbert Cranston, the man in charge of the day’s operation.

  “What are you doing here, Bert? Shouldn’t you be in the field?”

  “Can’t you hear it?” Cranston pointed to his right.

  “Hear what?”

  “Engines! Lots of them, getting closer, and some of them sound like tanks.”

  “Tanks? What the hell?”

  “It’s an unmistakeable sound,” Cranston said. “That’s assuming theirs sound like ours.”

  “I don’t understand. Who is theirs?”

  “The Chinese! Who else could it be?”

  At that moment the guard ran back down the hall. “General Patton, Lehandro’s dead and those women are gone!”

  “Dead how?”

  “Somebody knifed him right here.” The guard gestured to the side of his throat. “There’s blood everywhere.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Hull said. “It’s got to be the chinks. Somehow they found out that girl and her mother were here, and the little bastards snuck into my headquarters! They’ve got the women and now they’re moving into town before we’re ready. Shit! Bert, get the men organized. If they know I’m here, then this is where they’re headed. Get somebody on the sirens. And find those women. They can’t have gotten far!”

  Chapter 29

  The gods conceal from men the happiness of death, that they may endure life.

  Marcus Anneaus Lucanus

  0336 hours, July 29

  Thanks to his night vision goggles, they had avoided milling guards while navigating the maze of halls and rooms. In less than three minutes, they found the unsecured window. Parfist turned to his wife and slid the goggles down. Starlight filtered through the grimy window glass and he saw the faint outline of her familiar face.

  “Once you’re outside, take Kayla and run directly across the street. Once you’re in the hotel, you should be okay. There’s soldiers over there, but they are not the General’s; they’re on our side.”

  “Richard, what are you talking about? Aren’t you coming with us?”

  “Listen to me, Lisa. We only have a few seconds. I’m staying here until you are across the street, then I’m following you. But you can’t wait for me, do you understand? You have to get Kayla to the high school. These soldiers have already released the prisoners there, and they are watching Rick for me. Run as fast as you can and don’t wait for me. I’ll probably catch up before you get there, but if I don’t, you can’t stop. You have to keep going. There are trucks on the way to take you and the kids to safety and you’ve got to be on them. Can you do this?”

  “I don’t understand any of this!”

  “I know you don’t, but for now you’ve got to do what I tell you. Can you do that?”

  She hesitated. “I can do that.”

  “You’re an amazing woman. I’d be stupid not to love you. Now, get out of here.”

  At that moment they heard distant yelling and the muffled sounds of people running in the halls. A siren began to wail.

  “Go!” He almost pushed his wife out the window. Once outside, she helped her daughter through, blew her husband a kiss, and took off running, hand in hand with Kayla. Parfist could not breathe as they ran. He pulled up the night vision goggles and watched them, and his temples pounded with the real possibility that somebody might shoot them. Once they disappeared into the hotel across the street and turned right toward the high school, he let out his breath.

  The siren echoed over the city. He had only heard it once before, a long time ago when there had been some unknown emergency in Prescott. Now it was nearby, loud and grating on the nerves. Oo-wah. Oo-wah.

  Instead of following his wife and daughter, he turned back to the interior of the courthouse. Fighting could break out at any time, but he was hoping for that. The chaos of combat was his best chance to finish his mission. General Patton said he’d wanted to meet Lisa’s husband. Richard Parfist was going to introduce himself.

  0336 hours

  “Bulldozer One One Two, this is Copperhead. You’re cleared to the courthouse, over.”

  “Roger that, Copperhead. Any burps with tubes along my route?”

  “We’re spread thin, One One Two. You should be good, but eyes up anyway. Look for friendlies every few hundred yards. They’ll pass you along. Flash code is two short, one long, two short. If you don’t see that, shoot to kill.”

  Corporal Tanya Marscal put Joe’s Junk in gear and the Abrams lurched forward at a moderate pace. Fast, but not too fast. Despite the need for speed, Morgan Randall was taking no unnecessary chances. She ordered Joe’s Junk buttoned up. It restricted their ability to see enemy infantry, but also negated the danger from snipers.

  Leading the long column of vehicles through an urban landscape was the hardest possible mission. A tank’s greatest advantage was its ability to kill at long distances. The biggest danger of fighting in a city was the buildings, where a single man with a rocket-propelled grenade could hide in ambush. A well-placed RPG round could kill an Abrams and its crew. Randall’s crew was her extended family and losing one of them would break her heart.

  “I’m feeling blind, boss,” Joe Ootoi said on the intercom.

  “Me, too,” Randall said. “So work your periscopes like your life depends on it.”

  It was a hard call. Staying buttoned up risked ambush. And while it was true the commander’s station had six periscopes, providing a 360 degree view, even when using night vision gear she couldn’t see everywhere at once. Yet if they opened the hatch for a better look, a sniper could be waiting on the roof of any building they passed. So the hatches stayed closed. Their lives depended on the SEALs and MARSOCs having cleared the route.

  Prescott had an inner core of homes and businesses that had stood for generations. But as the city had spread to the suburbs, profit had trumped permanence. Moving west into the old town, the column rumbled past the remains of crumbling strip malls and fast food restaurants. Looters had long since stripped them of knives, metal cookware, and anything else of value. A stand of southwestern ponderosa pines had grown through the collapsed roof of a mall on the edge of town. Cacti and flowers pushed through cracks in the asphalt parking lot. Randall scanned this through the surreal prism of night vision lenses.

  The highway widened from tw
o lanes to four. Their speed increased. They came to the fork where the broad highway veered right. Going straight led through a more congested area, but the highway on the right was a chimera. The briefing intel indicated that road had a wide trench caused by a sinkhole years before. It was a dead end. Morgan Randall kept going straight.

  A MARSOC team on the right flashed the recognition code using an infrared flashlight, passing Joe’s Junk on to the next team a few hundred yards west. Randall was turning to scan the left side of the road when the world exploded around her. There was a loud whang! The Abrams rocked to the right, stunning the crew. Her vision sparkled red, but within seconds Randall had recovered and scanned the shadows, where she saw a figure running down a side road. She aimed the fifty-caliber machine gun using the controls installed with the TUSK package. A stream of tracers pursued the retreating shape. She missed to the left but corrected fire until bullets poured into the man who had fired the RPG. His green shape flew sideways, then he rolled to a stop.

  “Anybody hurt?” she said into the intercom mike.

  “Tanya’s got a headache,” Toy said. “Otherwise we’re good.”

  “Hey, Morgan,” Tanya said. When she got excited, her slight Ukrainian accent became more noticeable. “Looks like the TUSK armor took most of it, but she seems to be pulling to the left a little. We might have a bent sprocket.”

  Within the confines of their tank, Randall’s crew called her by her name, although Ootoi called her boss. None of them ever questioned her authority, so she saw no need for formalities.

  “Shit,” Randall said. “Can you tell how bad?”

  “I can hold her. Just don’t ask for anything fancy.”

  “No promises. Do the best you can. Let me know if it gets worse.”

  “You hear that, boss?” Toy said. “Sounds like a siren.”

  Randall pushed back the tactical headset and paused to listen. The whine and rumble of the Abrams drowned out almost everything else. She concentrated on filtering out the familiar sounds of her tank in motion. And then she heard something else, faint but unmistakable.

  “I hear it, Toy,” she said. “You’re right. It sounds like a tornado siren. Shit.”

  What to do? They were approaching Montezuma Street, the intersection where they would turn right and head to the school. But if the enemy was already alerted, there was a good chance they would have to fight their way out. Which meant that every minute they hesitated gave the enemy more time to deploy to stop them. Without orders to the contrary, as the lead tank it was her job to keep moving.

  The next MARSOC team waved her to a stop. Randall hesitated. Stopping the entire column in what was clearly unsecured territory put the entire mission at risk. But the Marines would not have told her to pull up unless there was danger ahead.

  “Tanya, the jarheads want us to pull over,” she said.

  “I see ’em, boss. Do I do it?”

  “Slow down but don’t stop.” Despite possible snipers, she opened the hatch and motioned a Marine closer to the Abrams. “I’m cleared all the way through!” She shouted over the engine noise.

  “Enemy occupies a big building ahead on the left. Wait here until we assess the situation.”

  “No can do. We’re going through.”

  “Can’t allow that, ma’am.”

  “I didn’t ask you, Corporal.” She disappeared back into the tank. “Move out, Tanya.”

  “Boss, they’re waving us down. Do I stop?”

  There was no hesitation this time. “Negative. Speed up and get ready for a right-hand turn on my signal. We’re going through, come hell or high water. Load up. Toy, shoot first and apologize later. Marty, HEAT until I tell you different, but have KE at the ready.”

  “You sure you wanna do this, boss?” Toy said.

  “Time is of the essence. Our orders are to rescue people, and we can’t do that sitting on our asses. Copperhead cleared us to the courthouse, so let’s go see what’s there. If this goes south, I promise not to tell your new commander how much you all suck.”

  0341 hours

  “Sir, Bulldozer One One Two just blew through a stop signal, hauling ass,” Sergeant Schiller said.

  “Bulldozer One One Two?” Angriff said.

  “Yes, General.”

  He shook his head. “She takes after her mother.”

  0341 hours

  “Bulldozer One One Two, this is Bulldozer One One. You ignored a stop. Explain.”

  “We were cleared by Copperhead all the way through, One One. We’ve already taken one hit and stopping now could expose the entire convoy to attack. Our orders are to keep moving no matter what.”

  “All right, Morgan, I’ve got your back, but I think it’s about to get hot.”

  Chapter 30

  Twilight gathers and none can save me,

  Well and well, for I would not stay…

  Robert E. Howard, from “Lines Written in the Realization That I Must Die”

  0343 hours, July 29

  If Hell existed, a real place where tormented souls spent the afterlife, Norbert Cranston knew it would sound like this. The screeching wail of hand-cranked emergency sirens bothered him more than any other noise. He didn’t know why. He had vague memories of a movie that had scared him as a child, but he could no longer recall the details. He only endured the noise because he had to.

  The design of the Yavapai County Courthouse in Prescott had been the result of a national contest. The intent behind building the courthouse was for it to last forever. The walls were granite over reinforced concrete. Its neo-Classical design was so stout and intimidating, it stood like a giant mausoleum. By its nature it made an excellent bunker, which was the chief reason Lester Hull had chosen it as the headquarters for the Republic of Arizona.

  Hull had also ordered a sprawling underground warehouse dug in the adjoining park, connected to the courthouse. Escape tunnels led in all four directions; Lester Hull was nothing if not careful.

  The original roof sloped too much for standing on, so Hull had built an observation platform that wrapped around all four edges. Stairs to the platform led up to a trap door in the ceiling of the floor below.

  Standing on the east side of the wooden platform, Hull and Cranston tried to pick out approaching vehicles. Hearing them was impossible over the sirens. Finally, Hull had had enough of the noise and waved for them to stop.

  “I don’t see anything,” he said once the sirens’ echo faded. His binoculars were not designed for night use.

  “There, General!” said a man near the northeast corner of the platform. “Down around the cornfield. I see something moving.”

  Hull focused in the direction indicated and picked out… something. Like a subtle ripple on a black backdrop, something moved their way. As he tried to focus the binoculars, there was a bright flash, then the boom of an explosion. He turned away and squinted. Colors sparkled in his vision for a few seconds and then faded.

  “RPG,” Cranston said. “Whoever they are, we hit one of the bastards.”

  Below them, men slid into defensive positions around the courthouse. The city was alive with Guards and Security Police moving to assigned positions, while the populace scrambled for a safe place to hide. As the dark shapes came into focus as definitely being tanks, squads of LifeGuards ran for the other side of the street to lay down crossfire.

  But halfway across, machine gun and rifle fire ripped into their ranks, knocking several men backward while others lurched and fell. Survivors knelt in the middle of the street and returned fire. Sparks flew as bullets ricocheted off the asphalt. Then, out of the darkness to their right, a column of Abrams tanks sped toward them with machine guns blazing. The remaining Guards flung down their weapons and fled.

  “Son of a bitch,” Hull said. “Those are our tanks.”

  In the light of gun flashes, Norbert Cranston picked out details as the first tank turned right onto Montezuma Street.

  “No, they’re not,” he said, unable to comprehend what
he saw. “Those are American tanks, but they’re not ours.”

  One of their M249 light machine gun opened fire from the roof of the old brewery across the street. Wood splinters cut Cranston’s cheek as an enemy gunner returned the fire. Guards on the ground used the elm trees for cover and joined the firefight. Another machine gun blazed away from behind the bronze statue honoring Buckey O’Neill, which stood on a marble pedestal in the park.

  O’Neill had once been mayor of Prescott. He’d ridden up San Juan Hill with Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders, and died there. Hull admired O’Neill and had resisted suggestions to melt his statue down for its bronze. The sturdy statue and its enormous square base also provided excellent cover.

  An RPG round screamed from Court Square, glancing off the turret of the second tank in the column before exploding across the street. The turrets of the second and third Abrams had already been traversing, but now they had a hard target.

  Bullets began striking the platform near Hull and Cranston. Seeing the M1s preparing to fire, Cranston grabbed Hull’s shoulder and pulled him close. Yelling over the gunfire, he said, “We’ve got to get below!”

  Sighting down Cranston’s pointing arm, Hull saw the third tank’s cannon barrel elevating. He nodded and they ran for the stairs. Seconds later the building shook as a 120mm shell vaporized the machine gun and its crew.

  0346 hours

  When he discovered Patton wasn’t in his quarters, Richard Parfist moved from doorway to doorway searching for him. Twice he avoided men hurrying somewhere. He felt encumbered by the rifle but was unwilling to give up its firepower.

  At each room, he put his ear to the door and listened for anyone inside, but hearing anything was impossible over the wail of the siren. Halfway through the first floor, he had not opened any doors and desperation was setting in. The longer it took, the more likely he was to get caught. When the sirens tailed off and ended, he froze. What had happened?