Survivors (48 page)

But he was glad for the change. He never really felt at home unless he was holding a rifle. The only way he felt he could really connect with people was when they were swanning around in his crosshairs. If he’d said anything like that before Morningstar, they’d have him in a psych eval before he could say “Section Eight.” But these days?

He was an asset.

He got to the absolute top of the grain silo and combat-crawled to a box he’d secured up there some weeks earlier, when the threat of Sawyer and the RSA seemed imminent. Before weeks passed and no one showed and everyone got complacent.

In those days, he’d risked his hide to bolt this box to the top of the tower, just in case he needed some extra shelter.

Just like Thomas with his armory in BL2, Krueger was prepared.

Having made up his mind as to which of the buildings was the other sniper’s nest, he got comfortable and sighted in after consulting his memo book for the range.

“Here we go,” he sang lightly. Slowly, carefully, Krueger moved his reticule from one structure on the rooftop to the next, keeping his eyes and mind open for a collection of shapes that might be a man.

A third shot rang off the side of the tower, impatience taking the countersniper’s edge.

“Yeah-huh,” Krueger said, seeing the slight movement in the dark that he knew was the sniper, working the bolt on his rifle.

“Gotcha.”

Brewster’s mouth moved in silent pantomime in Lieutenant Finnegan’s binoculars. He recognized “Run, goddammit, run!” Behind the last four were some more of his own men, and behind
them,
more of the walking dead.

He spoke to his radioman. “Tell Blue squad . . . is that Blue or Red? Fuck it. All three teams, order them off. I’m calling the choppers on the tangos.” He cleared his throat. “Then call the choppers on the infected.”

The radioman turned and relayed the information to both parties, then turned to look through his own binocs.

“I don’t think they’re going to make it, sir.”

Finn looked at the magnified view as a sprinter came out of a side street and tackled the rearmost of his men. “Run faster, you assholes!”

Another sprinter came from behind the shambler horde and took yet another RSA soldier.

“No time,” Finn breathed. “Tell those chopper pilots to get off their asses and run some goddamn interference!”

Frowning, the radioman relayed the further order, wondering what the hell the lieutenant was thinking. He knew that the Apaches were loaded with high-explosive rounds and nothing else. Picking off carriers while his men ran down the street wasn’t going to be pretty.

The truck started easy enough, and as they came around the front of the Fac, Thomas, Sherman, and Stiles saw the chopper start its strafing run.

“See?” Thomas asked, pointing. “And nobody wanted to go to see what the National Guard had. Good thing I went anyway. Stiles, take the wheel. I’ll hump these over.”

Grabbing the cases from Stiles, Thomas jogged to the middle of the yard and set them down. With an efficiency born from experience, the sergeant major had the first Stinger weapon-round case open and ready to go.

Stiles, watching this and shifting his glance from Thomas to the Apaches and back again, told Sherman, “Maybe you better take the wheel, sir, and let me man the gun.”

Sherman looked out at Thomas, already in motion: the BCU was in place, and the weight of the Stinger sat on Thomas’s right shoulder, with his right hand on the pistol grip. He unfolded the antenna and raised the sight assembly, plugging in the IFF unit and directly ignoring it.

Sherman looked at the helicopter, knowing the pilot would be alerted by his radar warning receiver as soon as Thomas started to lock on to him. “Maybe you better,” he said, opening his car door.

As Stiles and Sherman exited the truck, they heard the characteristic windup of the Stinger. Five seconds passed as Stiles got into the back of the truck, and that was plenty of time for the sergeant major to do his job. Neither Stiles nor Sherman could hear the tone change from where they were, but as Sherman slammed the truck door, Thomas fired.

Holding his breath, Thomas threw down the spent system and started cracking open the second weapon-round case before the missile had even found its target.

And find the target it did; on a jet of fire and rage it sped skyward, tracking the chopper’s last-minute evasion attempt and meeting it with a yellow and red blast, creating a temporary sun in the night sky.

The second chopper turned from its strafing run and approached the Fac.

“Thomas, move your ass!” Sherman yelled. Then to Stiles, “Get shooting, man!”

Thomas was mostly deaf from the weapon launch and did not hear the ex-general, but knew he had to be quick. Stiles was already there. He swiveled the SAW-249 around and was spitting lead at the second chopper in an instant.

That instant came too late. Before the first chopper’s fiery remains were settled on the street, the second chopper pilot had loosed a complement of seven Hydra-70 rockets on Thomas’s position.

The cheer wrenched from the survivors at the first chopper’s demise died in their throats as the second chopper fired its rockets. The Hydra pod spat seven glowing rods of death toward the Fac, and not even the approaching shamblers from behind stopped the survivors from ceasing their run. Brewster fell to his knees as he recognized the target.

“Oh, fuck no.”

Earth and fire geysered from the Fac yard where the ordnance struck home, obliterating any trace of the sergeant major. The truck, now driven by Sherman, started back around the side of the Fac, while Stiles on top kept up his fire from the SAW.

The chopper pilot, an experienced one, slid his attack copter around the stream of fire and repositioned to better return some of that aggression. Bullets heated the air between the chopper’s portion of sky and the Fac yard.

“Sir, there’s something else,” the radioman said. “Look here; there’s something on another radio frequency—”

Finn turned back and raised his binoculars. “Tell the pilot to stop fucking around and take that shithead out. Then turn his guns on the shack. Son of a bitch, I thought that radio equipment didn’t work?”

The pilot and gunner worked in tandem to finally strike the truck, taking out the engine and front end. As it rolled, Stiles was thrown wide, coming up painfully against the side of the Fac and waiting for the next volley to finish things.

It did not.

Instead, the chopper turned and loosed more rockets at the small radio dispatcher shack, exploding it and everything inside.

“Good work,” Finn said with a smile. “Send in the APC and extract the agent and our goddamn cure.”

Keeping his eyes screwed shut, Krueger put his head down as the first chopper exploded. It was bright enough that, even with his eyes closed and his head down, his night vision was messed up.

“Ah, shit, shit.”

He blinked rapidly, trying to clear the blobs from his sight, and could hear the chatter of the SAW as it fired on the second chopper.

Turning on the tower top, he looked up in time to see the first rocket volley.

Balanced precariously at the tower top, he thought he’d have a better shot if he was back down on the walkway, but with the constant back-and-forth of machine gun fire, he knew that by the time he got down, it would be too late for whoever was on the receiving end down there.

Added to that, the helo pilot was a good one. The helicopter jerked around in the sky, making full use of all three dimensions. Krueger grinned . . . most gunners he knew (
had known,
he thought) had difficulty adjusting for the fact that helicopters could backpedal if they needed to.

A thought struck Krueger and he dug around in his shirt pocket.

“Come on, I know you’re in there. Fuck yeah.”

Working the bolt on his rifle, he withdrew the round from there and put in its place the cartridge from his pocket, one with a green tip and gray ring. He set himself and tracked the chopper’s erratic movements and wondered, idly, if he’d be able to hit the pilot.

“Bet your ass,” he said, and pulled the trigger as the second rocket volley sped away from the helicopter.

And it
dipped.

Krueger’s shot streaked through the night, a bright white line between him and the chopper that went high, higher than he thought, even buffeted by the rotor wash as it would be, and missed the cockpit, instead hitting rotor housing above and behind the pilot. A small explosion went off there, rocking the helicopter.

And Krueger, stunned for a moment that he had missed, froze in place until the chopper began to swing around to his position. More HEDP rounds from the M-230 chain gun ate their way up the side of the tower as he scrambled for the back and hoped that whatever was inside was enough to stop the molten-metal armor-piercing rounds.

The gunner, tired of this game already, let loose one more rocket, and the top of the tower blew apart in an ever-expanding rain of metal and fire.