The Alpha Deception (38 page)

McCracken joined the battle at its center. He alternated between downing what soldiers he could with a stray rifle lifted from the ground, and dragging several of the wounded townspeople to safety. From the roof well beyond him, single gunshots continued to pour down, the work of an expert marksman picking off Paz’s men one at a time. Blaine had been in many battles before, including firefights in Nam in which a hundred lives were lost in a minute, but this was the worst of any he’d seen. The soldiers’ numbers severely dwindling, they nonetheless held the advantage of weaponry and position, while the residents relied on raw determination and the aid of a phantom from a rooftop above. Things improved for the townspeople when several grabbed the rifles of dead soldiers, but only a few of them could make the weapons work in any effective way. The hits they recorded were lucky. The remaining soldiers paid them little regard.

Main Street of Pamosa Springs was a sea of bodies, stirring and otherwise. The battle was now receding into the areas between and behind buildings, with soldiers and townspeople shooting at each other from positions as fortified as they could gain. Neither side controlled any special area. The distribution was random and the bullets blazed in the same manner. With vastly superior numbers, though, it was the residents who were now wearing the soldiers down. Blaine even had time to gaze up at the rooftop, but found no further sign of the phantom. It seemed as if things were winding down, Paz’s men on the verge of surrender.

Then he heard the rumbling. He knew what it was even before he saw the squat, ugly-looking monster lumbering down the street with four machine guns blasting away in every direction from within its armored walls. The army called it the “Jungle Buster,” an all-terrain vehicle featuring six-foot-high tires and a frame impenetrable to anything but a direct rocket hit. The Jungle Buster was actually of Israeli design and was used by the armed forces there in raiding the fortified and secluded terrorist training camps in Lebanon. It looked like one of those monster car-crushers with machine gun barrels poking out from where its windows should have been.

These barrels blazed orange toward all concentrations of townspeople. McCracken saw dozens felled immediately, thinking their positions to be safe and themselves victorious until the very last. Even those who tried to run were no better off, since the incredible range of the Jungle Buster’s fire made escape impossible.

“No!” Blaine screamed and bounded to his feet as the Jungle Buster squealed closer.

He had seen enough. The shallow ache in the pit of his gut was directing him now. He could take no more. Someone was going to pay for all this and it was going to start now. In the next instant he was sprinting forward on an oblique angle with the Buster’s fire. He reached it and leaped between exposed barrels on the vehicle’s side and pulled himself upon its roof with a grenade poised in his hand. McCracken yanked the pin out with his teeth and leaned his arm over to make sure he wedged it through one of the thing’s firing slats. He hurled himself off and rolled aside just before the blast sounded, sending bursts of flames through the openings which had spewed death only seconds before. The Jungle Buster kept lumbering forward for a time, then swung sharply to the right, where it rolled into the debris of a ruined building. And died.

McCracken lunged back to his feet. Sheriff Junk hobbled over to his side and around them amidst the rolling smoke, the gunfire had turned sporadic, fading out by the second.

“We did it!” Junk roared. “We fuckin’ did it!”

“Not yet,” Blaine reminded him. “The generator gun, remember?”

“Shit.”

It had to be blown up, at the very least disabled. But if there had been any hope of using Paz’s armaments to accomplish that, the flames and smoke seemed to smother it. There was no time to find the explosives required, even if they knew where to look. Their best bet in retrospect would have been to leave the western artillery battery intact and have a go at the monster beam with it. Blaine’s thoughts spun. Explosives, there had to be something he could use… .

And then he realized. What he needed was right before him. Thanks to Paz.

He started to move away, beckoning Heep to follow. “Grab as many of your people as you can and follow me.”

“What?”

“Just do as I say!”

Blaine glanced at his watch. There were exactly twenty minutes left to go.

Chapter 34

THE VANS SWUNG ONTO
the Bahnhofstrasse, Natalya’s in the lead and setting the pace for the other as it sped through the thin, late-night traffic, making fast for the Kriehold Building. Their drive on the wrong side of the road had lasted for one agonizing mile, Natalya herself squeezing her eyes closed through much of it. Suddenly she felt the brakes being applied an instant before the headlights illuminated a steel rail directly before them, blocking their way.

Damn! How could I have been so stupid?

Most of the Bahnhofstrasse had long ago been converted into a large sidewalk mall, with all traffic prohibited other than the tramcars referred to here as “Holy Cows.” The vans had now come to the mall area, and it was impossible to crash their way through the steel rail fencing which detoured all traffic to the right or left. They were barely ten blocks from the Kriehold Building, with just under twenty minutes left before the reflector would achieve orbit.

With no choice, Natalya told her driver to pull over.

“We go on foot!” she ordered as the second van came up along side.

The commandos spilled out onto the Bahnhofstrasse mall, still heavily populated by pedestrians even past midnight, since its bright lights and beautiful fountained walkways and all-night shops invariably drew a crowd. The blue-garbed figures slung rifles over their shoulders and grasped knapsacks full of explosives and ammunition as they raced down the center of the mall for the Kriehold Building which nestled with a few others near the center.

Natalya managed to stay at the head of the pack, thoughts swimming frantically through her mind. She resisted all temptation to gaze at her watch, knowing its message was useless to her now. She and the others could run no faster. The best they could do was reach the Kriehold Building and hope they were in time.

Guillermo Paz had stopped to watch the end of the battle from the outskirts of town. Right until the end he had maintained the hope that his troops would be triumphant and save him the indignity of losing his command. He was horrified to see them admit defeat by stepping into the street with their hands in the air.

It was only then that Paz got a clear look at the man who, he had come to realize, was responsible for the greatest portion of his defeat. Never mind the rest of the town, this man was a one-person army. His face was familiar. The black, gray-speckled beard and dark eyes … but from where?

Paz shuddered with fury. It was the man who had disgraced him in Nicaragua, the very same one who had stolen the Hind-D, no doubt the very same one who had strafed the town and gone after the generator gun with it just hours before! And now he was …

Paz stopped his thoughts as the next phase of the bastard’s plan grew clear beneath him. He went cold with fear. The gun wasn’t safe yet, but if he could save it, then his entire mission could be salvaged. Raskowski would pin him with a medal. He could accomplish it by himself; he had to.

He sprinted to the hillside, clambering up the slope on his short, muscular legs. The bodies of his men were littered in the dirt and rocks. He cursed them as incompetent slugs. As he neared the top, his strategy became clear: Find the most easily defensible position and use it to slow the coming approach of the townspeople. Just minutes was all he had to buy.

“Drop that rifle and turn around real slow,” a familiar voice ordered.

Paz did as he was told, coming face-to-face with the mayor of Pamosa Springs. The man was crouching on one knee and bleeding rather badly from his left side. He was breathing hard.

“Kick that rifle away from you now.”

Again Paz did as he was told. His exposed, stubbly head poured sweat, and he fought to keep the rage from showing on his raw-boned features. He positioned himself so the mayor had no hope of seeing the pistol holstered in his belt.

“I been waitin’ for this for the longest time, you bastard,” McCluskey said and Paz knew in that moment the man wasn’t going to kill him right away, which meant he wasn’t going to kill him at all. “Put your arms in the air,” came the next order. “Straight up so the fingertips touch the sky.”

Paz started to oblige, smiling warmly to display his submission. When his arms were almost fully outstretched, he launched his taut body into a dive and used his left hand for leverage as he rolled across the ground with his right going for his pistol.

The wounded mayor sprayed the dirt with fire, bullets coming close but not close enough. Paz felt their heat as he brought his pistol up and fired it repeatedly. The first bullet spun the mayor violently around and the next two dropped him. Paz smacked one more into his writhing frame just for good measure and lurched back to his feet, grasping his Kalishnikov on the way. Beneath him the people of Pamosa Springs were rushing toward the hillside, a large stream collectively holding the potential instrument of his failure in their hands with the bearded bastard at their lead.

Paz scrambled into position.

“You really think this is going to work?” an out-of-breath and hobbling Sheriff Junk huffed to McCracken, catching up to him en route to the hill.

“You’re the demolitions man. Why don’t you tell me?”

“Fuck… . You would put it on my shoulders, wouldn’t you? ‘Case you haven’t noticed, they’re not in the best of shape.”

“They’ll do,” said McCracken.

On Blaine’s orders, a throng of residents had lifted the mounds of C-4 plastic explosives from the church’s perimeter and hurried after him toward the sloping hill which overlooked the gulley containing the generator gun. His plan was to plug the hill with the
plastique
, wiring it in a way that would bring the whole bulk of land mass down upon the huge gun. Thousands of pounds of rocks and dirt and sand entombing it just might stop the generator from firing its beam, redirect it at the very least in a direction where it would do no harm.

So long as Sheriff Junk could get it wired properly.

So long as there was time for him to try.

“Fifteen minutes to system activation,” announced Raulsch in his gravelly voice.

Activity in the command vault had stabilized. As long as all readout lights continued to flash green, there was little the personnel could do other than wait for a dreaded malfunction as they sat attentively behind their monitors or CRT screens.

For Raskowski, the minutes had already passed into an eternity. He should have been savoring these final moments, but instead he was nervous, on edge, a feeling of foreboding filling him with the certainty that the enemies he had let slip from his grasp had one final card to play.

He was so caught up in these thoughts that he was not aware of Katlov’s breathless presence until the man grasped his shoulder.

“General,” came his agitated report, “deployed ground security spotters have just reported armed commandos rushing down the Bahnhofstrasse in our direction. Just blocks away now.”

Raskowski rose from his chair, still towering above the one-eyed Katlov who had spoken from floor level. “Who?” he wanted to know.

Katlov swallowed hard. “Tomachenko is at their lead.”

“The bitch!” Raskowski roared drawing attention from nearby technicians but not seeming to care. Fighting to calm himself, he turned to Katlov. “Deploy all our defenses. Condition Red. You know the procedures.”

“Da,” Katlov replied and rushed out after making the semblance of a salute.

Raskowski waited for the electronic door to close behind his security chief before speaking again. “Seal the vault,” he ordered Raulsch.

Raulsch began flipping switches on his console, deactivating the mechanism that permitted entry and switching the vault’s air supply to its own tanks, so that no foreign gases could be introduced. The vault could now be opened only from the inside and only with the special cards that both Raulsch and Raskowski possessed.

“Twelve minutes to system activation,” Raulsch announced.

The general leaned back, confident. With all these precautions taken, Natalya Tomachenko and whoever her friends were stood no chance of getting in to stop him now.

The shooting began when Natalya and the commandos were still a block away from the Kriehold Building. The building was fronted by a giant fountain adorned with falls and spouts. The first line of Raskowski’s defenses had taken cover behind it, cloaked by the night.

“They were expecting us!” one of Vasquez’s men screamed as he ducked for cover.

“It doesn’t matter!” Natalya shouted back.

The commandos responded instinctively. With their fire-power infinitely superior to that of the guards, they knew this resistance was futile. But any resistance took time, and time was the one weapon they didn’t possess. They hurled grenades immediately, a pair landing in the fountain and ripping away parts of its structure. Water gushed everywhere, adding to the chaotic rush of people screaming and charging for cover. More grenades followed the first and a path was cleared through the floodlit darkness to the building’s main entrance.

A lead phalanx had already lunged ahead of the grenade hurlers and encountered more enemy fire from inside the Kriehold’s lobby. This, too, was ended with a few grenades that shattered the glass in the huge doors, demolishing them. Natalya was impressed with the ruthlessness of Vasquez’s men. Their loyalty was fierce. Their orders were to help penetrate the madman’s stronghold and nothing was allowed to get in their way. The commandos were of one mind, one purpose. With Natalya just behind the first group, they rushed into the lobby and used their machine guns to fell the remainder of Raskowski’s inadequately armed security guards, hardly prepared to deal with such a full-scale assault.

“What floor?” one of them screamed at her.