The Assault (25 page)

They reached the first air filter, a fine mesh grille that clipped to both sides of the shaft. It had been left unclipped and was leaning back against the left side. The shaft was a little wider here to accommodate the size of the filter. Monster reached down and clipped it back into place after he passed through.

Eighteen minutes.

It was Alizza who spotted the hatch on the shaft leading into the huge air pump. Two bolts that should have held it shut were hanging loosely. He flung the hatch open with a
metallic clang and gave Yozi a foot up into the shaft. Then Yozi reached back down and helped Alizza up.

There were sounds ahead of them. Sounds of scuffling, scrabbling hands and feet, echoing through the narrow tunnel back to them.

Yozi wasted no time, propelling himself forward with Alizza close behind. They climbed the rungs in the vertical section two at a time and stopped only when a dark barrier blocked the way. Yozi risked a flash of his utility light. An air filter. Clips at all four corners held it in place.

Yozi unclipped three of the clips when the filter slipped from his grasp and clanged to the floor.

The sound of the filter falling was like an alarm bell to Chisnall.

Someone was coming up the shaft behind them. How close were they? Chisnall wasn’t waiting around to find out. He could see light ahead of them, a glowing hole that grew larger as he approached the end of the shaft.

Then he was out, grabbing at the rocky edge and hauling himself onto the red rock of Uluru. He was on top of the rock—no, not quite. Sloping, rocky walls hemmed him in on three sides. He was in a huge cleft in the top of Uluru. The air shaft behind him was just a hole in the rock, protected from the elements by a hood and a metal grille that now lay on the ground. Some scrubby trees stuck at awkward angles out of boulders in a river at the base of the cleft.

A river?

That was when he realized it was raining. The rain was constant and heavy, with huge droplets that exploded off his visor. Gushing water ran down the slope, disappearing around a sharp corner in the rock. It seemed incongruous, here on the top of this normally dry red rock.

The children were sitting in a group, holding on to each other, huddled against the rain on the flattest part of the slope. Brogan sat with them, playing a simple hand game with two of the younger ones. Price stood behind Brogan, covering her with her sidearm without making it obvious. Wilton was starting to climb up the rocky face of the cleft, no doubt to get a better view of what was around them. Price held up the transmitter when she saw Chisnall.

“I’ve been pressing it for ten minutes and nothing,” she said.

He looked up, suddenly worried. Could the walls be blocking the signal? He examined the cleft. Could they climb up with the transmitter? How long would that take?

“Press it again,” he said, but there was no need.

From the top of the rock, a dark shape emerged. It was a Bzadian rotorcraft, a giant metal umbrella giving them brief respite from the rain, although the downwash of the blades bent back the trees and threatened to blow them all from their precarious perch. Then it passed over and dropped down, lower and lower. The markings on the side of the craft came into view: a giant red cross. A medivac rotorcraft.
It nudged closer and closer until the edge of the outer ring was touching the rock.

“Wait here,” Chisnall yelled over the roar of the machine.

He scrambled down the cleft to the rotorcraft and leaped from the rock onto the slipway over the blades, running up and into the craft itself.

The two pilots, humans, looked around as he stuck his head up into the cockpit.

“I’m Chisnall,” he said.

“What’s with all the kids?” one of them asked. “We came to pick up eight soldiers, not a freaking school trip.”

“Change of plans,” Chisnall said. “We need to take them all.”

“Can’t take that many,” said the copilot. “These things only hold about fifteen people; there must be forty of them.”

“They’re little,” Chisnall said.

“I won’t get lift,” the pilot said. “Not with all of you.”

“Then just take the kids,” Chisnall said. “And this one.” He pointed to Brogan. “Lock the cockpit door and don’t let her in under any circumstances. She’s a traitor and dangerous.”

“That’s still too many—” the copilot began, but the pilot cut him off.

“We’ll try,” he said. “What about you?”

“We’ll find our own way out of here,” Chisnall said.

The pilot shook his head as if he thought Chisnall was crazy. “We’ve got a backup rotorcraft waiting over at Lake Amadeus. Wait here, and I’ll get them to pick you up.”

“There’s no time,” Chisnall said. “It’s only minutes before that warhead explodes. We’ll try and get clear of the rock first.”

“Okay. I’ll let them know to come for you.”

“Understood,” Chisnall said. He ran quickly back down the slipway to the rock. The edge of the craft dipped slightly as he stepped carefully off onto the damp, slippery rock.

“Get them on board,” he said. “Just Brogan and the kids. The rest of us are going to have to find our own way home.”

“What the hell?” Wilton said. “She killed Hunter, and she gets a free ride home?”

“The rotorcraft can’t take us all,” Chisnall said. “If we’ve got any shot of getting out of here alive, it won’t be with dragging Brogan along.”

“Easily solved,” Price said. “Just throw her off the edge of the rock. Then there’s one more place on the rotorcraft.”

“And who gets that?” Chisnall asked. “You?”

Price looked at him steadily for a moment, then looked away.

Chisnall pointed to the transmitter that Price was holding. “They know everything. She’ll be put on trial. And who knows, maybe they’ll get information out of her that can help win this damn war.”

“And we’re still expendable, right?” Price said.

“Yes, but we’re not expended yet,” Chisnall said.

THEY WATCHED THE CRAFT DEPART, OVERLOADED AND struggling to gain lift. It almost didn’t make it. Tipping and tilting dangerously toward the rock face, the craft somehow found its wings and clawed its way into the air.

To any aliens who saw it, or any Bzadian radar stations that were still operational, it was just one of their own hospital ships. There were dozens of them buzzing over the base since the air raid. Even if they suspected it, what would they do—shoot down one of their own medical craft?

Hovering off the northwestern coast of Australia was a huge task force. Massed ships and squadrons of planes waiting, circling, providing an umbrella of safety. If the rotorcraft could reach that umbrella, it would be safe.

Monster stood at the entrance to the shaft, his sidearm trained on the black hole that led back down into the rock.
He tapped an ear and pointed into the shaft. He could hear their pursuers. They must be close.

“Okay, we’re Oscar Mike,” Chisnall said, stepping carefully to avoid the steadily rising watercourse.

He looked around. Up or down?
Down
, he thought. He didn’t know what a China Lake warhead plus a room full of fuel cells would do to the big rock, and he didn’t want to stick around to find out. He peered down the steep slope and took a step down the cleft, looking for a safe way to descend, away from the torrent of water the stream had now become.

His foot slipped and he went down hard, sliding down the wet slope toward the water. He grabbed at one of the trees to stop himself, but the branch cracked and gave way, and suddenly he was in a raging, whitewater deluge, heading full throttle toward the edge of the cliff.

Price reached out as he passed, grabbing at his arm, but there was no way she could hold him and her fingers slipped on his wet armor. The water twisted him around just in time to see her overbalance. Wilton reached out to help, and then they were both in the water as well.

It was not a smooth ride. Boulders and scrub hammered and clawed at him as the edge of the rock approached. Then suddenly the watercourse swept around to the left, away from the cliff’s edge, dumping him into a much faster river that flowed down the deep scar across Uluru.

He went under, struggling for air, then popped back to the surface as the watercourse widened and the water shallowed. Beneath him was a bed of scraggly rocks, and he was
sure he hit each one, arms and legs flailing, as the water surged down.

Then the canyon narrowed again, the water deepening and the speed increasing. The slope was much steeper here. He made another sharp turn to the left and in front of him he saw certain death: a clump of massive boulders. The water was hitting the boulders at full force, smashing and spraying up into the air, then over and around them.

He braced himself for the impact.

The first boulder rose up above him, but a giant hand from below seemed to lift him as the water surged up and over. His boots scraped the top of the boulder; then he flew through the air and splashed back down into a torrent on the other side. He kept his head above water long enough to look back and see Price flying over the same boulder with Wilton right behind her, arms windmilling through the air.

Finally the ride became smooth, like a waterslide at a fun park, and steeper again. A sharp turn to the left, a sweeping curve to the right. He saw the ground approach, a pool of darkness in the shadow of the cleft in the side of the rock. Then with a whoosh and a roar of bubbles he was underwater—deep underwater—and sinking.

He tried to swim up to the surface, but it was impossible in his heavy armor and boots. His outstretched arm connected with a rock on the edge of the pool, and he dragged himself forward underwater, his lungs screaming. He felt a shock as a large object exploded into the water beside him—Price.

Chisnall reached over and grabbed her, pulling her along with him.

Another surge of water as another body hit the deep pool, and then another.

His hand closed on a metal bar, and he used it to pull himself up. Then he found another bar, a metal railing out of the water. He looped an elbow around it and pulled Price up beside him. She coughed, choked, and vomited water, but her other hand had a steely grip on Wilton’s collar and a moment later he, too, was grasping the metal railing, gasping, choking, but alive.

“Monster?” Chisnall called out.

“Here,” came a voice that he could not have been happier to hear.

He turned and saw the big Hungarian clinging to a rock on the far side of the pool.

“You fall in too?” Chisnall grinned.

“Fall in? My dude! The Monster jumped in,” Monster managed, gasping in air. “You guys looked like you were having so much fun.”

“Anybody break anything?” Chisnall asked.

“All Oscar Kilo,” Wilton said.

“I think I sprained my wrist,” Price said. “I’ll be fine.”

“The Monster thinks he sprained his arse,” Monster said. “But he can walk.”

“Let’s get out of here,” Chisnall said. “Try and put some distance between us and this rock before those Pukes in the air shaft catch up with us.”

“Where the hell are we?” Wilton asked.

“The rock pool at Mutitjulu,” Chisnall said. “We’re not far from the main entrance, if I remember the geography of Uluru correctly. How long have we got before the warhead blows?”

“Don’t know,” Monster said.

Chisnall swung a leg over the railing and waded through the knee-deep water on the other side. It became more and more shallow until he was on a concrete path. Before the Pukes came, this was the trail that had brought tourists to the rock pool. They had been clinging to the tourists’ safety fence. Now the whole lot was underwater, and judging by the surging water that flowed down from the side of the rock, it was going to get deeper quickly.

He stared for a moment at the raging waters above his head, finding it hard to comprehend that the four of them had come down that and survived.

Price was holding her sprained arm with her other hand. He stopped.

“Let me look at that,” he said.

“I’m Oscar Kilo,” she said with a gritted smile.

He ignored her and took her arm. Her wrist hung limply and at an odd angle.

“Sprained? Like hell,” Chisnall said. “It’s broken.”

That was the hand he had hauled her out of the pool with, but she hadn’t screamed, hadn’t complained at all.

“We’ve got bigger things to worry about than my wrist,” Price said, looking back at the rock.

It was hard to disagree with that.

“Rip off your bomb squad markings,” he said, and helped Price with hers.

Ahead of him, through the thundering rain, Chisnall could see the sweeping curve of the monorail track heading left, back toward the entrance of the rock. The concrete path they were standing on came to a fork, one branch leading back toward the entrance and the other heading out among the buildings and streets of the Bzadian base.

The last place he wanted to be when the warhead went off was near that entrance. But he changed his mind as a dark shape caught his eye.

“This way,” he said, heading to the left.

“Are you sure, LT?” Monster asked.

“Look,” Chisnall said, pointing.

Through the high-security fence that blocked off access to the tunnel buildings, they could see the abandoned battle tank, its main gun shattered. It sat next to the remains of the Uluru entrance building, a jumble of stone blocks. Beyond it, a huge, wheeled crane had just lowered the edge of the second battle tank to the ground. The tank that had capsized earlier. The tank’s crew stood around it, waiting for the crane to unhook.

The Angel Team got to the fence and skirted around the outside to the gaping hole where the tanks had originally busted their way through.

A technician climbed out of an access panel of the first tank as they approached.

“How is it?” Chisnall asked, as if he had every right to be there.

The technician looked around, protecting his eyes from the rain with his hand. If he was surprised at the sight of the four bedraggled soldiers, he didn’t show it. Everybody was soaking wet anyway, Chisnall realized, from the thunderstorm.

“It’ll be pretty shaken up in there,” the worker said, “and the main gun is out, but I got the electrics working again. Are you the maintenance crew?”