Operation Wild Tarpan (6 page)

It was all moving too fast. Miller hadn’t ever
killed
anyone, not like this. On the previous day, that had... that had been an
accident
. He couldn’t picture attacking someone with a knife, slitting their throat—

He didn’t have to picture it, in the end.

A soldier passed within striking distance of the door, along with two of his friends. The one closest shouted, “Hey!” and raised his rifle.

Not hesitating, du Trieux pushed the barrel aside with her handgun and stabbed him twice through the face. Once in the cheek, then again in the eye.

The soldier beside him probably never knew Doyle was there.

Pushing at the back of his head, Doyle glided the tip of that knife up the back of his neck and
in
before savagely twisting it left and right.

The third solider rounded the bend with wide eyes and ran smack into Miller.

Raising his knife, Miller slashed the air across and to the left, hoping to make contact with the soldier’s throat, but he miscalculated the distance by millimetres, grazing the flesh and leaving a thin scratch.

The soldier grasped at Miller’s hands, grabbing the hilt of the blade. The two of them struggled, fighting for control of the weapon and sliding deeper into the hallway, toward Hsiung and Morland.

Wrenching his wrists, Miller aimed the blade outward, at the soldier’s soft underside to his chin, only to have his balance shift as the solider shifted his weight, and he lost the advantage.

The tip of the knife poked at Miller’s cheek, drawing blood. He could smell the stench of the soldier’s breath as he gritted his teeth and dug deep for added leverage.

There was a shot, and the pressure released.

The soldier’s body flew back, then collapsed.

Miller, propped up only by the wall of the hallway behind him, gasped for a breath and looked behind him for an explanation.

Hsiung holstered her sidearm and frowned.

Doyle swore. “If they didn’t know we were here before, they do now.”

Morland stepped past them all and entered the room, flinging his satchel off his shoulder, and removing part of the EMP from the sack. “Better make this quick, then.”

Still in shock, Miller eyed the bloody carnage surrounding them.

The soldiers took longer to die than he ever would have expected, gurgling where they’d dropped, shuddering. Du Trieux’s victim spasmed against the floor while she pulled her knife free with a grunt and crunch of bone.

Doyle wiped the blood from his blade on his victim’s pant leg.

Lying in front of him, the soldier who had fought Miller had a blast hole the side of a fist out one side of his skull.

Miller looked lamely at the knife in his hand. He pushed the back of his wrist against his mouth, forcing down another breath, and pointed at the bodies. “Get them away from the door,” he managed to say.

Doyle looked up from his post-mortem examination of a flourishing rash on one of the dead men, a lurid, flaking yellow, and nodded. “Here. Hsiung, get the legs, would you?”

While the rest of his team moved the bodies, Miller knelt down and helped Morland unpack the device.

The EMP weapon came in three parts: the antenna, the wave-guide, and the explosively pumped flux compression generator.

The antenna was a plastic-covered brick that plugged into the rest of the system with inch-thick cables. The waveguide needed to be set up around it, like a satellite dish, and set up on a tripod. Miller edged up to the nearest window, and glanced out at Marcus Garvey Park.

On the drone images, the Infected base hadn’t seemed so
busy
, but upon further inspection, the place teemed with activity.

The park was the highest natural point in Manhattan, though some of the buildings around it were far taller than the central rocky hill. A baseball field beneath the hill had sprouted dozens of command tents. An outdoor pool had two or three hydrogen-crackers set up and pulling the pool water through their reactors to produce fuel for the Bravos lined up nearby. Two-man tents were strung up among the fungus-blighted remnants of trees, and rows of antenna-covered trailers occupied the summit of the hill, crowded together on the stone-tiled plaza.

Those were the key target, the electronic warfare and communications unit. There was a watchtower up there, too—something antique, an original part of the park—and it hosted a pair of snipers.

The military encampment had spilled out onto the surrounding streets, a pair of tanks waiting for repair while another was in the process of disassembly by a work-crew of Infected soldiers and civilians caught up in the ride. In truth, they seemed to be doing more to destroy the vehicle than repair it, frantically picking it apart piece by piece.

Bringing up his binoculars, Miller swept the park, searching for officers. Some were difficult to pick out of the groups wandering the FOB, but others were surrounded by guards. It looked like some of them were forcing their fellow soldiers away, using their guards to keep an area around them clear for thirty or forty feet. Those were easy to spot once Miller saw the pattern, like bubbles on top of boiling water, clear circles in the chaos.

Were they trying to retain their individuality amongst the mob? Keep from being overwhelmed the way that captain had fallen under PFC Klansman’s influence the previous day? Miller couldn’t be sure, but made note of it.

Putting down the binoculars, he angled the EMP device’s waveguide to focus the beam’s spread across the FOB, and centred it on the trailers. The final piece of the puzzle was the flux compression generator, the part of the device that made it a
bomb
. And a powerful one.

Miller wasn’t entirely sure he understood how it worked. He’d only had a very brief introduction from the Rats who’d handed it to him. The flux generator’s core was made up of coiled wire wrapped around explosives. By charging them with capacitors, the blast forced the coil apart, boosting the electric charge so high it dwarfed lightning strikes, and all that power was forced through the device’s antenna. That, with the wave-guide, formed a focussed beam that would burn all electronics to slag, even military hardened gear.

Miller turned the mechanical timer’s wheels to set it for ten minutes, and pulled the arming pin out of the generator. He’d asked how safe the device was, and had been told it was perfectly safe. The weapon couldn’t hurt you. Unless you were anywhere physically near the thing when it blew itself apart.

“Doyle, you ready with the mines?” Miller called out the door.

“Nearly.”

“Good. We’re live,” Miller announced. He twisted the last arming key on the antenna block, and ran through the checklist one last time as the clockwork timer’s wheels rolled. “Ten minutes and counting. No need to rush this. We leave nice and orderly.”

Hsiung gave the device a worried glance. “Which exit path do you want?” she asked, holding up her phablet and its latest download from Northwind.

Miller checked it, high-stepping over the puddles where the three they’d killed had fallen. “Second option. South out. Go the way we came a few blocks, then break east for the river. Unless there’s something I’m not seeing.”

Hsiung followed, flicking through views, muttering to herself while Morland and Doyle set up an infra-red sensor for their claymores in the corridor and stairwell.

“Trix?” Miller yelled.

She joined him in the corridor, a military radio—evidently stripped from one of the corpses—dangling from her hip. The earpiece cable was wrapped through her belt. She had it cupped to her ear, shaking her head. “Listen to this,” she said, holding the earpiece out.

Miller took it, and came up against a wall of noise. At first he thought the system was jammed, too many channels lain over each other. This wasn’t the mob’s synchronized moaning chorus. These were conversations, words clear in the mess. But Miller could barely pick out individual voices.

“—
the mess tent’s shut up again
—” “—
can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs
—”

Nothing coherent. He couldn’t tell who was responding to what. He was never all that good at eavesdropping in public, focussing on one conversation out of a dozen. He could just about listen to a friend over a table in a busy restaurant, but this… This wasn’t just bad radio discipline, this was
impossible
.

Then, out of the noise he heard a trooper mention patrols near Marcus Garvey Park. Miller shook his head. “Fuck,” he muttered.

Du Trieux’s eyes narrowed. “Time to go.”

The team followed Miller down the stairwell. They paused for just a minute near the bottom floor, waiting for Doyle and Morland to finish pasting another IR sensor to the wall and wiring it to a set of claymore mines they wedged into the stairwell corners. They were leaving the device alone for just a few minutes, but Miller wasn’t taking chances.

Heads down, weapons low and camouflaged against their bodies, they shuffled around a corner a block up and ran directly into a band of troopers.

There were three soldiers in all: one in the driver’s seat of the Bravo, twisted in his chair, talking to someone behind him, the third perched on the side of the vehicle, ripped fungus spores out of the fuel line.

Just as the driver’s eyes squinted in confusion at the sight of them, the one at the fuel line shouted, “What were you doing in—?”

Then the twelfth floor windows blew out behind them.

In a flash Miller and the rest ducked down an alleyway, sprinting from the echoing shots as the troops’ bullets popped from behind them.

No time for delay. The last thing they needed was a firefight in the heart of Infected territory.

Racing down another alley, and cutting across the street at breakneck speed, the group stopped short at an abandoned store front to catch their breath.

Once satisfied they had shaken the patrol, du Trieux checked her radio. It had fallen almost silent.

The EMP explosion, on the surface, didn’t seem to have done much. There was no flash of thunder, no electrical sparking, no errors making the phablets crash. The wave guide had focussed the beam across the park alone. But if all had worked according to design, every piece of electronic equipment in the forward operating base, from wrist watches to Bravo control circuits, were now dead.

The only voices on the military airwaves now were a few scattered patrols screaming bloody murder, demanding to know what had happened, and where everyone had gone.

Du Trieux yanked the batteries and stuffed the radio into one of her pockets with a satisfied nod.

Miller fingered his earpiece as he followed the others back into the alley outside the shop. “Northwind, Wild Tarpan primary target burnt.”

“
Understood and congratulations. Return to base and await orders.
”

“En route,” he replied, jogging to catch up.

Morland, just in front of him, held open a chain fence gate, and Miller ducked through.

After another block they paused to blend into the background, staring like worried civilians as several Bravos rushed back to Marcus Garvey Park.

They then crossed the avenues towards the river.

Before they reached the shoreline a shooting star appeared in the midmorning sky, searing white as it streaked by. It exploded in a black spear of fire-dappled smoke, and another star appeared. A third, a fourth, all tumbling overhead and to the east, towards the Astoria Peninsula. They all blew apart, the blast-echoes reaching the team moments later.

“What the…” Hsiung shaded her eyes.

Morland stared gormlessly up like a child watching fireworks. Doyle knew what it was, so did du Trieux—it was up to Miller to break the news, as artillery shells tracked fire across the sky.

“Antiballistic DEW-CIWS.” He said it the way his father, an Air Force man before retirement, always had.
Dewsie-Whiz
. Directed energy weapon/close in weapon system. Miller shut his eyes, and saw white spots dancing, burnt into his retina. “Defence lasers. They’re burning artillery shells out of the air. Stockman’s shelling the compound.”

“But that’s okay, right?” Morland gaped. “They’re knocking them out of the air?”

“We only see what’s the lasers are hitting. Not what gets through,” Miller said, pointing at the horizon.

Dirty smoke rose from the direction of home.

5

I
T WAS IMPOSSIBLE
to get through to anyone at Northwind or the compound. They weren’t burnt off the air like the Army, just not answering. Busy, Miller hoped.

They counted four out of the compound’s six attack helicopters twisting into the air and slanting toward the barrage’s source. Rotors twirling, side-mounted fanjet engines screaming for every last sliver of speed, the choppers chewed the air to pieces in their desperate sprint toward the attack.

And still the shells slipped through the defensive laser-web, hammering the compound below.

Northwind might not have been answering, but the Cobalt access codes gave them the feeds off the drones circling the skies over the compound.

They watched their phablets with mounting horror. The scene was pandemonium.

Within minutes, three breaches had been torn open in the compound wall. The northern sections, where engineers had already started concrete reinforcement, held up, but towards the south, near where Miller had stood at barricade six, sections had collapsed into rubble. Infected mobs, civilian and military both, poured through the gaps like medieval besiegers, running down side streets and into the sectioned-off refugee shanties before the heavies could arrive in their exoskeletons and hold the breach.

On infra-red, it looked like one man approaching the gates was wreathed in rat-things tearing him apart, but a second, longer look showed he wasn’t under attack. The swarm was following him in, rushing past him like attack dogs, chasing a fleeing trooper down ahead.

Large sections of the compound had been walled off from one another in case of just such an attack, to help contain the damage. Members of the Rats moved in with flamethrowers, licking the streets with tongues of fire that caused as much destruction to home territory as the enemy did, but the Infected didn’t dare advance, giving the civilians a chance to flee deeper into the compound’s depths.