Indivisible (Overlooked by Liberty) (20 page)

      
"We can't."  Chaos replied in a submissive tone, "Is it all right if an attack pack and medic go over and picks up the boys and the wounded Virginians?"

      
"Oh, certainly."  Tumult looked at his watch again.  "I think you know where we're at."  He waved to his men across the city at the Bunker Hill Monument and walked over to Wolfenstein's group to pick up a Masada wrapped in a blanket.  Tumult unraveled it and looked at the circuit board taped to the stock, with a small condensor mike attached to it.  "So this is how you communicate now.  You beam over to someone's little beanie and speak."  He pointed a red beam at the hat of one of Wolf's men and spoke into the device.  "Hello there."  The soldier jerked from the overpowering reception at such close range.  "Can you hear me?" asked Tumult.  The soldier nodded yes.  Tumult walked over to the man and took his hat and receiver.  "I appreciate the fact that you share your technology with the other triads, little brother."  He rewrapped the weapon and hat in the blanket, "One word of advice on this escape plan of yours:  Create a diversion that will keep the Feds occupied."  He walked to the door, looking at his watch one last time.  His attack pack had gone before him.  "Are you boys coming with us or what?"  Tumult walked down the stairway.

      
Chaos pointed to Der Dutchman's pack as a signal to go.  They scurried about collecting their gear.  He moved close to Helen, speaking softly, "I don't want you to go.  I'll send a medic to stabilize him 'til they get him to the wharf.  And they can bring back the Rousells." 

      
"Would you rather lose one of your men?  You really don't have medics.  Believe me, Chaos, after what I've been through this past year, nothing can hurt me."

      
"But Helen, it would hurt me if something happened to you."

      
She grabbed her two backpacks and followed the others, looking back before entering the stairway.  Their eyes met as she disappeared through the doorway.

      
Chaos turned the opposite way and scanned the skyline toward the JFK building.  He wondered if he was making the right decision staying in Boston to get Max; Tumult's instincts were always right.

      
Suddenly, "Pooh, pooh, pooh," came three silenced shots from the Masada pointed toward the Old State House.

      
Mountain Boys attacked the Masada's tripod from all directions.  The first one there tackled the weapon.  "Holy shit!" said Bird Dog.  "How the hell did that happen?"

      
Chaos pulled up binoculars to scour the city below.  A faint flurry of gunfire came from the rally in front of the Old State House.

      
City Police began firing into the crowd.  The protesters dispersed in terror.  A semicircle of officers remained--two of them lay dead within the ranks, with four dead civilians sprawled and bleeding on cobblestone.  A sizable chunk of stone had been split from a rock marking the first Boston Massacre.

(Two hours later)

      
Prudential and Hancock Towers gleamed and swayed, stretching far above natural heights--discrediting Babel's folly and affirming human capability.  Made of glass and steel, they flexed in heavy winds--several feet at times--as a sparrow fluttered to and fro toward a crevice in the Old South Church below.  Chaos watched the small bird's struggle.  A Navy, ZF-4 Pursuit plane streaked past at subsound; the jet's roar chased the craft a quarter mile behind it.

      
The ZF-4 went well beyond the Hancock tower to pitch and roll for a return sweep of the building.  This time the craft took a lower path and launched an AT-2 Shredder missile, then launched a second Shredder seconds later as the ZF-4 veered off target.  Copilot Bronsen guided the missiles in through fiber-optic cable the size of fishing filament.  Through her virtual-reality visor, she flew on the tip of the Shredder--accuracy on such a weapon could not be understated.  The first missile blasted a gaping hole in the glass observatory two floors down, taking out a stairwell in the building.  Racing through the first hole, the second missile entered the interior of the building and detonated at the elevator hub.  Smoke billowed out the stairwell leading to the roof as Mountain Boys came out from behind the smokestack.

      
"Get out the Masadas.  If they make that mistake again, we'll nail them," Chaos talked tough, but he wondered why the jet had shot missiles below the apex of the building and didn't strafe the rooftop.  "How is it down there?" he asked one of the men who emerged from the smoke.

      
"The north side got hammered.  The stairway and main shafts are collapsed.  There doesn't seem to be any fire though.  Just smoke."

      
Pooh!  Pooh!  Pooh!  One of Wolfenstein's bunch fired on Army Regulars running into the base of their building.

      
Splat!  A bullet caught a rebel in the head making him slump to a heap on the roof's tarmac top.  The bullet continued through, hitting Step-n-Time in the thigh.  "Damn!" he dropped to the roof and immediately yanked a wrap from his side pack and bound it.  Everyone dropped to the rooftop.  Rebels on that side of Hancock Tower peeked over the two-foot knee-wall through their Masada scopes or binoculars.

      
Steve Morrison was crouched beside the Mountain Boy hit with the bullet.  Speckles of blood dotted the reporter's face and neck.  He sat below the lip of the wall looking dumbfounded.

      
Splat!  Another rebel got hit squarely in the binoculars on the other side of Morrison.  The young Vermonter fell with his splintered face on Morrison's lap.  "Oh God!" the reporter exclaimed.

      
"I see him.  I see him, sir," yelled a rebel.  "He's 97 degrees southeast.  About a kilometer out."

      
Wolf looked down at his map below the lip of the building, "On top of the New England Life Building."

      
Chaos yelled across the tower, "Hold it, Wolf.  You have to assume there's snipers on every side."

      
"Jet coming, sir!"  The Mountain Boys with Masadas set their weapons at an estimated lead-speed of 300 to 400 mph, at a trajectory of one kilometer.  As the jet approached, eleven riflemen rose, propped their weapons on top of the wall and fired.  Four of Wolfenstein's pack rose at the same time, sighted in on the New England Life Building, and fired on the sniper.

      
Splat!  Splat!  Two more Mountain Boys' heads popped open like melons.  But two of the bullets from Wolf's pack smacked the face of the Army sniper.  Blood spattered up into the facemask of the trooper.

      
Smoke seeped from the ZF-4's engine.  Instead of banking and firing a shot, the craft tilted in the direction of Logan International Airport.

      
Wolf got a good look at the sniper through his scope, "They're wearing thermo-suits, sir," he reported to Chaos.  Thermo-gear looked like a camouflaged, space suit with a twenty-foot vacuum hose extending out the end to a vent fan.  It sucked air through the gear to cool its occupant.  The thermo-gear prevented heat signature to appear through an infrared scope, making a sniper difficult to spot.

      
Splat!  A third rebel received a bullet through his shoulder that went through his chest cavity and out the opposite side.  Chaos saw the hit and realized the shot had come from the direction of the Prudential Tower.  Splat!  Another Mountain Boy downed, caught through the thick of the neck.

      
"Everyone, to the west rim!" Chaos yelled.  The Prudential Tower was the only building tall enough to allow snipers to shoot effectively into the top.  Mountain Boys huddled against the west wall for cover.  Syntax got shot in the hand on his run to the other side, leaving a trail of blood from where he was hit.

      
Wolfenstein grabbed the paralyzed Steve Morrison by the scalp en route and pulled the reporter to his feet, tugging him to the other side of the building by his hair.  Steve hit the knee-wall hard with his shoulders and back.  "Thanks, Wolf," said Steve after recovering.  Wolfenstein looked back at him as he flipped levers on his rifle and shook his head in dismay at the dazed reporter.

      
Mountain Boys detached the scopes of the Masadas and individually popped up and scanned the Prudential for targets.  Upon locating one, they reattached the scope behind the wall and came up for a shot.  "Got one, three meters left of the north corner."  The scene looked like a shooting gallery arcade from the Prudential's viewpoint, with Mountain Boys popping their heads up and down at various places across the west side of the John Hancock Tower's roof.  "Got number two, midsection and back in."  Leg-men like Bird Dog popped up with binoculars to spot targets; they retreated below the lip to yell out coordinates, "Target, seven meters north of the corner, on the edge."  Three Mountain Boys with Masadas popped up for the target, calling out the kill simultaneously: "Third target down, seven meters north of the corner, on the edge."

      
As the Mountain Boys systematically spotted and shot Army Regulars, another ZF-4 swooped in from the other side of the Hancock and leveled another AT-2 Shredder missile at the third level down, taking out the other stairway.  The smoke buildup below forced more Mountain Boys out of the building.

      
Chaos crawled over to confer with Wolfenstein.  "What do you think their strategy is with the missiles, Wolf?"

      
"I can tell you that a group of Regulars ran into the base of the building.  Our boys below the blowout points can keep them from coming up the stairwells but I don't know if we can get down to support them--or get off the building at all."

      
"My thinking too, by surgically striking only the top floors, there isn't much damage done to the building.  The Feds must think most of us are here," Chaos speculated, "and by knocking out the stairs and elevator shaft they think they've got us trapped."

      
"And they're right," Wolf replied.  "But we still have over 200 guys scattered around in the city.  All we have to do is get enough open space to laser a message to them.  If we didn't have to fend off snipers from the Prudential Buil--"He noticed a small speck in the sky.  From the speed and proportions of the craft, they recognized one of their model planes.

      
Chaos and Wolfenstein turned to one another recalling the model planes they had brought with them.   It was the Starling, a brown and black-colored plane with the name Starling Striker painted on its wings.  The craft flew a fraction of the speed of ZF-4s, but as it passed near the Hancock Tower, the Mountain Boys held their fire and watched Starling buzz by, zigzagging through air currents.

      
Down on the street, half a mile away, one Mountain Boy aimed his infrared gun at the model plane as another rebel held binoculars to the technician's eyes.  The man's tongue lashed vigorously about his open mouth as he moved the levers side to side, controlling the fragile but deadly craft as it fought the currents 790 feet up.

      
Federal soldiers saw it coming.  The Starling jerked side to side, finally floating through a broken panel of glass to the Prudential Tower's innards.  "Whooooom!" Flames from the blast blew out three glass wall panels from their mounts.  Another panel, nearly intact, plunged in a free fall toward the street.  A looter carrying a TV looked up to see the glass literally pass before his eyes and shatter into tiny fragments that exploded on contact with the pavement.  Particles shredded the man's pants and lacerated his legs.  He felt lucky until he looked for the TV he had held; it lay broken on the pavement with the bloodied stubs of his arms on each side of it.

      
Mountain Boys continued firing as Federal Troops withdrew from the Prudential Tower.  The rebels fired shots at glass panels surrounding the hole so winds could feed the flames. 

      
Chaos smiled at his troops' expertise and crawled back to the northeast side of the building with Henchman's attack pack.  They signaled the communications node near the JFK building.

      
Shots were still fired by Federal troops, but they were from lower elevations on surrounding buildings and from further away.  Though outnumbered, the Mountain Boys had regained the edge of higher "ground."  The rebels could now look downward at Army snipers on three sides.

      
Steve Morrison pulled a digital camera out of his coat pocket and zoomed in on the Prudential Tower.  Smoke and flames billowed out of the hole just below the top floors.  Dead Army Regulars were scattered randomly near roof lips and walls, they lay draped over their weapons.  The Mountain Boys had their heads over the kneewall on the west side still scoping the tower.  Shooting from the Prudential had stopped; other rooftops on the west side of the Hancock Tower couldn't harbor Federal snipers. 

      
The reporter noticed a Federal soldier lying face down on the rooftop of the Prudential Tower.  The soldier's head rose and appeared to be scoping in on their location.  Steve pulled away from the camera's eyepiece and looked at the others along his side of the building to see if they had seen.  No one appeared to be startled.  Steve looked again through his camera to see if he was imagining things, and saw a flash from the muzzle of the Federal Trooper.  "Look out!"  He leaped over to Wolfenstein and pulled him down from the wall as the bullet popped the scope of the Masada he had been looking through.