Resistance (25 page)

“Very
clear,” Blake replied, as he directed meaningful glances at Richards and Hale.

“And
Mrs
. Walker?” Hale wanted to know. “Are we to bring her back as well?”

“Of course,” Dentweiler replied harshly. “She's a criminal. Just like her traitorous husband.”

The briefing came to a close shortly after that, Dentweiler was escorted up to the mech deck where his VTOL was waiting, and the junior officers were allowed to remain behind.

“So,” Hale said as he and Richards made their way to the elevators. “You've been to Chicago.” “Yes,” Richards answered grimly. “I have.” Hale glanced sideways. “How bad is it?” “On a scale of one to ten, it's a fucking twelve,” Richards said. “I know you were in England—and I know it was a freak show. But this is going to be just as bad, and maybe worse. Bring your A game, Lieutenant. There won't be any second chances.”

The trip from SRPA 6 to the Chicago area was interrupted by two intermediate stops. One to refuel, and one to wait for a storm front to pass, because Echo Team had enough problems to deal with without flying into the side of a hill. Which, given the plan to come in low and fast, was a very real possibility, especially in the dark.

Except that, as Hale crouched between Purvis and his copilot, and stared out through the
Party Girl's
badly scratched canopy, what remained of the city of Chicago was anything but dark. What looked like bolts of lightning strobed between half-seen structures of uncertain purpose, fireflylike blobs of incandescence floated here and there, and clusters of tightly grouped greenish blue lights marked the location of Chimeran fortresses. A convenience at least some of the stinks were about to regret.

“Okay,” Purvis said tightly, “we're ten minutes out, so it's time to get ready. Good hunting.”

Hale nodded soberly, “Thanks, Harley. Watch your six on the way out.”

“Count on it,” Purvis replied. “Now get the hell out of my cockpit. I have work to do.”

Hale grinned, stood, and backed into the cargo compartment as Purvis spoke into his headset. “Hollywood to Eagle-Three … I'm eight out. Come on down and kick some ass. Over.”

“Roger that,” came the reply. “Stay low, stay slow, and we'll show you cargo camels how it's done. Over.”

A few months earlier Purvis might have taken exception to the cheerful arrogance inherent in the fighter pilot's transmission, but he'd seen the latest stats. Chimeran fighters were three times faster than their human counterparts, more maneuverable, and better armed. In fact, the only edge human pilots had over the stinks was skill, because, good though their aircraft were, Chimeran pilots lacked imagination and were delightfully predictable.

Still, the life expectancy of a Sabre Jet pilot was even shorter than that of a VTOL cargo camel, so Purvis let the trash talk slide.

“I'll be sure to take notes,” he promised dryly. “Hollywood out.”

Cold air roared into the VTOL's cargo compartment as the twelve-man SAR team prepared to execute one of the most difficult evolutions any of them would be called upon to carry out. The plan was to rappel from a hovering VTOL into a stink-held city in the middle of the night. It was, as Sergeant Kawecki so eloquently put it, “a chance to do something really stupid.”

Both side doors were open, the sliding gantries were extended, and the men were lined up ready to go as the
Party Girl
made her final approach, and a series of explosions rocked the northeast sector of the city. Hale knew that a Chimeran tower was located up that way, but the real purpose of the Sabre attack was to create a diversion calculated to pull Chimeran resources away from the area where the SAR team was going to put down.

The strategy wouldn't work entirely of course, but it couldn't hurt, and he was eager to improve the odds any way that he could.

Both Hale and Richards checked each and every soldier to make sure their harnesses were clipped to a descender and that each rope was properly threaded. Once that process was complete Richards took his place at the head of the line and waited for Kawecki to check
his
hookup.

Hale, meanwhile, was at the tail end of the other line, so that if Richards was killed during the insertion, he would be available to take command. That was the theory anyway, although there was always a chance that
both
men would be killed, which would leave a noncom like Kawecki to take over.

All such thoughts ended abruptly as Purvis switched from horizontal to vertical flight and battled to keep the
Party Girl
steady. It was no small job, as gusts of wind hit the ship from the west and gravity did its best to pull her down.

Hale saw the green jump light flash, heard the VTOL's crew chief yell, “Go, go,
go
!” and watched his Sentinels exit, one after another. There were no signs of ground fire, and the ship was positioned above a so-called fresh point, meaning a set of coordinates that hadn't been used before. A precaution intended to lessen the chances of an ambush. But that didn't mean much in a city
where they might be rappelling onto the roof of a stink stronghold if Purvis was the least bit off target.

Then it was Hale's turn.

As he threw himself out the door, he was conscious of the need to put a sufficient amount of space between himself and the drop ship's tubby hull, lest he smack into it. A very painful proposition indeed and one that would slow his descent in a situation where speed was everything, and mistakes could cost lives.

Hale felt a brief moment of free fall, followed by a spine-stretching jerk and a surge of fear as the VTOL lurched sideways, coming within half a foot of his dangling body. Frigid prop wash blew straight down and threatened to spin Hale around as he ran his right hand along the rope that curved around his right hip. By letting rope slide up through the descender, he was able to swiftly lower himself to the ground.

Things became a little easier as one of the Sentinels already on the ground took control of Hale's drop line and held it steady. A few seconds later he was standing on a city street, where he hurried to unclip his harness lest the
Party Girl
inadvertently soar upward and jerk him into the air.

“The last man is clear,” Richards said over the radio. “Thanks for the lift, Hollywood. Out.”

Purvis had been waiting for what seemed like an hour. As his crew reeled the drop ropes in and brought the extendable gantries inboard, he took the ship straight up.

Powerful searchlights and long necklaces of tracer fire began exploring the night sky, searching for the meat-things that had been so audacious as to invade Chimeran airspace. The Sabre Jets were long gone, having fled south, before the stinks could scramble their fighters.

Which was nice for the jet jockeys, but not for Purvis, who was still in the area.

The solution, such as it was, consisted of switching to level flight while fleeing south at little more than rooftop level. A very dangerous process indeed, especially at night, but one calculated to keep the Chimeran fighters off his ass. Because they were so fast that they couldn't ride the VTOL's six, and being unable to get under the ship's belly, they were unlikely to nail Purvis with their cannons.

So it was their heat-seeking missiles he feared the most, and the only defense against them was to fire white-hot flares to port and starboard as the
Party Girl
ran for its life.

Meanwhile, back at the insertion point, Richards was busy sorting everyone out.

This was his fifth drop into Chicago. That made him an Ace in the parlance of his Intel peers. How many more such missions was he entitled to before his number came up? Six? Seven? Or five and out?

There was no way to know.

But given that Hale and his men were Sentinels, and he wasn't, Richards knew he was the most vulnerable man on the team. An irony that he did his best to ignore as his subordinates went about creating a defensive perimeter and waited to see who would arrive first. Freedom First—or a heavily armed Chimeran response team.

It was a question made all the more urgent by the fact that they had been dropped into the center of a major intersection. It was too dark to see his surroundings clearly, but thanks to the photos he'd memorized, Richards knew that partially burned-out buildings surrounded him on three sides, with an elevated train station on the fourth. Any or all of them might provide
protective cover, but if the Freedom First guide arrived
after
the team cleared the street, he might assume they had been compromised, and leave without them.

Then they would be shit out of luck.

So Richards was forced to settle for a wheel formation, with all the Sentinels facing out as precious seconds ticked away. The guide was
late
—five minutes late—and Richards was getting ready to retreat to the train station. He considered his alternatives. Should he leave a radio where the guide could find it? That might work, but if a Chimeran patrol happened by, it would signal the team's presence as well.

Suddenly a manhole cover popped up out of its metal collar, fell over, and hit the street with a clang. Richards yelled “Don't shoot!” and not a moment too soon as Corporal Vedka and Private Oshi swiveled toward the noise, ready to fire.

“Eyes front!” Hale ordered, lest the men in his sector take their eyes off the perimeter. He turned to see Richards kneel next to the dimly seen guide and exchange a few brief sentences. Then the group was on the move.

In keeping with pre-established protocols, the Sentinels armed with scope-mounted Fareyes, M5A2s, and Rossmore shotguns descended into the depths first, leaving those with Bellocks, rocket launchers, and the team's single minigun to provide security until they, too, were ordered below.

That was when Hale dropped into the hole, felt for the rungs with his feet, and passed the M5A2 down to Private Tanner. The biggest man on the team and the proud owner of the minigun.

The cast iron lid made a harsh grating sound as Hale pulled it over, pushed the chunk of metal up, and then
lowered it into place. At that point the team could lay claim to a clean insertion. An accomplishment that boosted their chances of success from damned unlikely to the realm of the barely possible.

As Hale lowered himself into what appeared to be a storm drain, the first things he noticed were the dank, fetid air and the harsh glow of a flare which had been inserted into a crack in one of the brick walls. He hit bottom, and a layer of black sediment squished under his boots as Tanner returned his weapon.

The scene that greeted him was surreal, to say the least. The Sentinels were lined up with their backs to a wall as a young woman inspected them. Except that “inspected” wasn't the right word, since what she was really doing was looking each man over prior to sniffing him the same way that a friendly dog might have.

She had rough-cut blond hair, a pug nose, and was dressed in a leather jacket, tight-fitting jeans, and lace-up boots.

“They call her Spook,” Richards explained as she moved from Cooper to Samson. “She has an extremely acute sense of smell—and that can be quite useful down here. By memorizing what each man smells like, she'll be able to sort them out in total darkness, if need be.”

“I see,” Hale said as the vetting process continued. “Is that why people call her Spook?”

“No,” Richards replied, “that has to do with her tattoos.”

That was when Hale noticed the tattoos on Spook's face, neck, and hands. At first he had thought they were a trick of the light from the flickering flare. Most if not all of them were symbols which seemed to have religious or occult value, including variations on pentagrams, crosses, triangles, sigils, moons, and at least one ankh,
located at the very center of her forehead. “So they're for more than decoration?” he inquired.

Richards nodded as Spook subjected an embarrassed Private Perez to her strange form of scrutiny.

“Yeah. Spook believes that those symbols protect her from Chimeran energy projectiles, and maybe they do. You'll notice that she isn't wearing any body armor, yet there isn't a scratch on her. And that's saying something, here in Chicago!” The strange young woman completed her inspection of the men and turned to approach the officers.

“Stand by,” Richards said. “It's your turn.”

Hale stood his ground. Spook had very direct green eyes, and they registered surprise as she examined him. She was pretty, even with the facial tattoos, and exuded a strong animal magnetism. “You have stink eyes,” she said artlessly. “And I can smell the virus on you. The others have it, too. But not as strong.”

Hale didn't know what to say, so he was silent as Spook began to sniff his right arm. She followed the limb all the way up to his shoulder, where she paused for a moment, before licking his neck. That was something new, and slightly erotic, as Hale had the opportunity to smell
her
. Rather than the soapy fragrance he had come to associate with Cassie, Spook exuded a musky scent which was appealing, but in a different way. “You taste like they do,” Spook said as she pulled back. “You're changing. Did you know that?”

Hale shrugged. “I've been immunized. That amounts to a change.”

Spook stared at him thoughtfully, as if deciding whether to say more, then turned to Richards.

“The station is two miles away,” she said. “The first mile and a half will be very dangerous.”

“We'll be ready,” Richards assured her. “Lead the way.”

So Spook led the way, followed by Richards, Kawecki, Henning, Vedka, Oshi, Perez, Obo, Cooper, Samson, Dana, Tanner, and Hale.

The order of march had been determined by the type of threats they were likely to encounter, the sort of weapon that each Sentinel was carrying, and the need to place an officer at each end of the column.

The going was fairly easy at first, because the ceiling of the main tunnel was at least eight feet high, and it was wide enough for three men to walk abreast. Not that Richards or Hale would permit such a thing. Their challenge was to keep the Sentinels spaced out so that a single explosion couldn't kill more than one or two men.