Striker (The Alien Wars Book 2) (9 page)

“He’s crazy,”
Molly said.

“It’s his only
choice,” Mike muttered. “I hung back too long. If the ladder had been in the
right position just a few seconds earlier, he’d be here right now.”

The conversation
ceased as the aircraft approached the ground. It was still spinning when it
smashed into a group of trees.

“Maybe he can
climb out before it catches fire,” Molly suggested.

Suddenly, the
Destructor exploded. A trail of black smoke rose up into the air.

Molly grimaced.
“Or maybe not.”

Glancing around,
Kenneth focused on
Mount Shasta
barely two miles away. It looked massive, bigger than the mountains
at the ski resort at
Lake Tahoe
and even taller than the mountains that he had seen in
Stanislaus
National Forest
. As it was still winter, snow covered a large part of the mountain,
all the way down to the tree line.

“What are we
going to do?” Derek asked.

Mike frowned as
two Strikers appeared out of the clouds and headed toward them. “If the pilot
of the Destructor had enough time to contact his superiors, we’re in trouble.
Deep trouble.”

As the two
Strikers roared past and circled them, a voice came through a communication
device. Mike quickly replied in the same language.

“What do they
want?” Derek asked.

Mike sighed. “They
want us to follow them back to
Mount Shasta
.”

“But we can’t go
there!” Kenneth spluttered. “Once they see us, they’ll kill us”

“I know, I know.”
Mike studied the intricate map displayed on the small screen to the right of
them. “I’m trying to think of somewhere safe we can go.”

“How long will
they wait?” Molly said, gazing up at the Strikers as they continued to circle.

“Not long. If—” The
communication device beeped again. He listened before switching it off. He rubbed
his stiff neck. “If we don’t head for the mountain in two minutes, they’ll open
fire.”

Kenneth cursed as
he paced back and forth. “Do you have someone at
Mount Shasta
that you can
trust?”

“Well, yes, I—”
Mike said.

“Can you contact
him now?” Kenneth interrupted.

“I’ll try.” Mike
switched on the communication device and spoke into it.

Kenneth glanced
at his watch. “We have ninety seconds left.”

As the seconds
passed and there was no reply, Mike stopped talking. “He’s not picking up.”

“Maybe he was
caught,” Derek said.

Mike sighed.
“Probably.”

“So what do we
do?” Molly said.

Mike sighed. “I
don’t know.”

The seconds
quickly ticked away. When their time was up, the enemy aircraft shot red bolts just
inches in front of the Striker.

Mike took the
controls and banked the Striker toward the mountain. “I have to obey them. We
have no choice.”

The enemy
aircrafts took up positions on either side of the Striker as they headed in the
direction of
Mount Shasta
.

“What do you
think they’ll do to us?” Derek said.

“I don’t know,”
Mike admitted.

Kenneth tried to
think of what they could do, but the two Strikers on either side of them
complicated matters. The clouds parted and
Mount
Shasta
came into full view.

Even if they did
think of something, it would be too late.

~*~*~

Logan
surveyed the
street outside the hospital. A few leaves rustled on the ground, but not a
single soul could be seen. He headed inside and caught sight of Jet. He was
lugging a fancy M-6 battle rifle in his hand and had an older AK-47 slung over
his back.

“Where did you
find those?”
Logan
asked.

“Out back, next to a dumpster and a few rotting corpses.”
Jet handed the bulky AK-47 and a few magazines to
Logan
, but he held
on to the
sci-fi-looking
M-6. “There’s some ammo left
in them. Not much, but some.”

Logan
glanced down
the hallway as Lucy and Xavier approached. “Did everything go all right?”

Xavier nodded as
he showed the others the bandage on his leg. “It’s going to be a bit painful
for the next twenty-four hours, but I’ll be all right. Now, did you find a car
for us to use?”

“Yes, it’s right
outside,”
Logan
said. “There weren’t many to pick from in the underground parking
lot, but I chose the one that had the most gas. Also, it was the easiest to hot
wire.”

Xavier noticed
the weapons. “They’ll come in handy if we’re attacked.”

“That’s what I
was thinking,” Jet said.

“Let’s go,”
Xavier said, hurrying toward the door.

Xavier had
already climbed into the blue Volvo when the others exited the hospital.
Logan
had a final look
around and was just about to head to the car, when he stopped and stared.

Down the street,
half a block away, a figure was crouched in the open. He held something over
his shoulder. A moment later, the man disappeared in a cloud of exhaust.

“Incoming!”
Logan
lunged for
Lucy, throwing her down and under him as the RPG tore down the street.

A split second
later, the deadly projectile slammed into the Volvo.

The force of the
exploding Volvo threw
Logan
, Lucy, and Jet to the ground.
Logan
climbed to
his knees as soon as the shrapnel stopped zinging. He ignored the flaming wreck
singeing the back of his neck and scurried over to his gun. A hailstorm of
rounds stitched the air around him.

“Run! I’ll cover
you.” He popped up and spotted the rocket man now rocking a drum-fed machine
gun. The man trudged their way, slinging spent brass in his wake.

“Damn!”
Logan
reached down
and scooped the fallen M-6 off the ground. He fired tightly controlled pairs, doing
his best to make sure his last few rounds counted. He hit nothing, but the
gunman’s poorly aimed fire lessened as he sought his own cover.

Logan
took
advantage of the lull and tore off across the lawn. Over his shoulder, he spied
two new shadows advancing on the hospital, darting behind cover on occasion,
and trying to conceal
themselves
.

“Why’d you stop?”
Logan
caught up to Jet and Lucy, sliding hard into some shrubbery next to
them. Blood dripped from a wound on Jet’s right arm.

Logan
stared into the
distraught face of Lucy. “You have to go to the parking lot and find us another
vehicle.”

“I’m not leaving
you,” Lucy hissed.

Logan
gently took
his fiancée’s face in his hands. “I don’t want us to separate either, but
there’s at least three men out
there,
and there might
be more. We have to get away before they surround the hospital. We can’t do
anything if we’re trapped in here.”

Jet rose up,
clutching the AR-15 in his steady hands. “I’ll stay and shoot.”

Logan
saw that
Jet’s hands were unsteady. “No, you’re wounded. Go with Lucy and find us a car.”

“Okay.” Jet gave
his weapon to
Logan
. “You’ll need this.”

“Thanks. Now get
going.” He waited for Lucy and Jet to head inside before he focused his
attention on the Volvo.

That one look
took him back to
Iraq
, back to the suicide bombings. He had seen many
Humvees
blown up, but he had also seen a lot of civilian vehicles blown up. That was
the worst part about wars: the innocent victims. They didn’t deserve to die, but
die they did.
By the truckload.

Logan
was ripped
from his thoughts as a bullet tore through the glass of the hospital door and
nicked his shoulder. He ducked down and rushed for cover, hiding in front of
the
smoldering
wreck of the Volvo. He knew it wasn’t
the best place to hide, but he didn’t have any other option.

With a firm grip
on the AK-47, he inched forward to the front of the car and peered around. He
saw one man kneeling behind a trash can, another behind a wrecked military
jeep, and another on the roof of an apartment building.

It didn’t take
long to count his handful of remaining bullets. Knowing it was going to take
time to hot wire a vehicle, he waited. There wasn’t any use in wasting rounds.

He inched back
and turned around to discover one of the men, the one who had fired the rocket
launcher, stalking down the sidewalk.

They spotted each
other at the same time.
Logan
pulled the trigger on his weapon first. A stream of lead shot
toward the man. Clutching his chest, he crumbled to the pavement and twitched
uncontrollably.

Logan
inched back
to the front of the car, careful to keep himself behind the engine block. The
other men were advancing. Before he could find his mark on the closest one, the
men opened fire.

A round zipped
through the car’s
aluminum
sides just inches away
from his grinding teeth.
Logan
crept back. This was going to be harder than he had first thought.
He waited for the endless gunfire to stop or at least slow, but it didn’t.

In between the
suppressive fire, a scampering sound to his flank gave away the game. While one
shooter kept him pinned down with steady fire, the others
maneuvered
in to deliver the kill shot.

He inched toward
the front of the Volvo and tried to get a shot off. The continued barrage of lead
forced him to stay concealed. All he could do was
stick
his weapon around the corner and fire blindly, hoping to at least go out in
style.

~*~*~

As the Striker
approached
Mount Shasta
, Derek pressed his nose to the
viewport
. “Where
are we going to land?”

“I can’t see a flat
spot, let alone a runway,” Molly said. Just as she spoke, a long piece of
snow-covered rock started to move. Astounded, the group watched as a black hole
opened halfway up the mountain.

“How did they do
that?” Derek asked.

“Camouflage,”
Mike said.

“What if we skirt
along the treetops?” Kenneth interrupted. “We can head for
Stinson
Beach
, where
my brother will be waiting. We have to try something. God knows what they’ll do
with us.”

Mike smiled. “I
was just thinking the same thing, about skimming along the treetops I mean. But
we’ll need to wait until the last possible moment.
That’s
when they’ll least expect
it.”

As the seconds
passed, Kenneth wondered if they would be forced to land first. He hoped that
they wouldn’t, because then they would only have to contend with one aircraft.

The Strikers
slowed and hovered next to the mountain’s runway. The communication device
crackled. Mike listened. He grimaced. “They want us to land.”

“We’ll have to
flee now,” Kenneth said.

“You’re right.
You’d better strap yourselves in. It’s going to get bumpy.”

The teens and
Kenneth hurried back to their seats. They had just strapped themselves in when
Mike yanked the controls to the left before pulling down on them.

The aircraft
swept toward the ground. Within seconds, both Strikers swung around and followed
their aircraft. A heartbeat later, they opened fire, spitting out red bolts.

Mike dodged the
energy blasts as he neared the ground. When he felt he was as close to the
trees as he could manage, he
leveled
out the aircraft
and increased the speed.

The ground
flashed by as the Striker roared across the landscape. Mike tried to avoid as
many red bolts as possible, but with two aircrafts pursing them, it was
impossible to avoid them all. Whenever one hit, the aircraft shook from side to
side.

“Can you fire back
at them?” Molly said.

“I could, but I
don’t want to. If I enrage them too much, they’ll call in support,” Mike said. “It’s
hard enough to fight off two, let alone five.”

“How much damage
can those aircrafts do to us?” Kenneth said.

“Two hits in the
same spot
is
enough to pierce the
armor
.
So, if they have good aim, they’ll go for the engines. If they get hit …” Mike
didn’t bother to finish the sentence.