AL:ICE-9 (9 page)

“So I guess the big question is what do we do now?” Jake asked openly, “I can’t just walk away and you’re not looking to move or you woulda been gone from here already.”

Abby interrupted Chris as he was preparing to reply, “Jake there is another group coming up from the southeast again, and this one is much larger.”

Since Jake had his external audio enabled, Chris heard the announcement. Looking to Jake for direction, Jake replied, “Abby, can you get a count?”

“Looks to be more than 100 riders, probably closer to 150. All armed, with most on horseback, although there are some in wagons. I think it’s the same group as before.”

At that, ALICE chimed in, “Jake I can confirm several of the lead riders were in the earlier attack. This group consists of 141 armed men.”

Jake didn’t even try to explain to Chris about ALICE, the look of confusion all over his face.

“Get inside and bar the gate. Oh, and tell your men not to shoot at me or mine please,” Jake stated as he turned and hotfooted it back to his hover cycle. Climbing on, he powered up and then hit the manual override to set the hover height at 100 feet. Going straight up, the hover cycle leveled off at 100 feet above the ground, giving Jake a clear view of the surrounding area.

“All units, report in please,” Jake broadcast to the group.

“Alpha 1 and 2, ready. Alpha 3 and 4. Bravo 1 and 2, turn us loose boss. Bravo 3 and 4, ready to go.”

Jake paused waiting for Sara to report. After a few seconds, he asked, “Sara, are you there?”

ALICE replied, “Jake I do not detect Sara on the rooftop where you left her.”

With that, ALICE provided an overhead of the rooftop that Jake and Sara had occupied together earlier. As she zoomed in, you could make out three bodies spread out across the area Sara last occupied. One had Sara’s knife sticking out of his chest. Scanning the rooftop, there was no sign of Sara herself.

“Crap, I shouldn’t have left her alone, ALICE can you pick up her suit transponder?” Jake asked.

“Currently it is not responding to queries, nor are there any audio responses. That however could be expected if she entered the building itself. The metals in the structure could be blocking the signals.”

Frustrated at the mixture of priorities and the perceived failure of leaving his Sara alone, Jake did a quick assessment of the situation. Panning the overhead out, he located the approaching force, estimated their rate and direction of travel, and then located his own forces spread out throughout the area.

“On my order, B Troop engages the approaching hostile force, aerial engagement only with suppression fire. Alpha 1 and 2, close on Sara’s last know location and try to locate her. Alpha 3 and 4, take hovering positions at 50 feet AGL covering the compound below me. Should any hostiles escape A Troop, you are to engage and remove any threats. Any questions?”

While Jake watched his display, he noted that no one chose to question his or her assignments. He knew they all wanted to be on point for this go around, but each took his orders without challenging his instructions. When the approaching force entered the choke point created by several buildings along their route, Jake gave the go order and as one, eight hover cycles sprang off their various rooftops and sped to their assignments.

As Jake watched the scene unfold, he whispered to no one in particular, “Sara, where are you?”

Chapter 9

Sara had been standing at the eastern edge of the rooftop, watching that crazy man that was her one true love, again risking life and limb without explanation. As he had done on previous occasions, he insisted on performing certain activities he considered extreme risk on his own, leaving everyone else to watch and worry.

With the rifle he had left her in hand, she was assessing her targets for risk to her man. The initial reaction was to target the man he was engaged with, however after some thought, she realized Jake would dispatch the man himself, should need arise. Next on her list were the two heavy machine gun positions on the rooftop behind the walls. As both were of equal risk, and neither seemed to have an advantage in lethality, she was unsure which to target first.

Finally, she decided on the rocket launcher between the two. Of the firepower directed at Jake, this was the one most likely to breach the combat suits protections. With her targets located and prioritized, she settled in and focused on the conversation between the two men, surprised at the turn it was taking.

All this apparently prevented Sara from noticing the men sneaking up behind her. Suddenly two men appeared, on her right and left. The one on the right grabbed her rifle while the left attempted to get her in a headlock. Spinning left. She drove her knee into the man’s groin, causing him to double over while driving her left hand into the throat of the one holding her rifle.

Looking out over the rooftop, she saw five more men, all running in her direction. Drawing her sidearm, she shot two in the chest. As she was lining up on the third, the man she had kneed earlier kicked out from his position on the ground, knocking the gun from her hand.

The man she had punched in the throat, now recovered, started to grab for her. Wrestling within his grasp, Sara pulled the knife from her belt and plunged it squarely in his chest. She turned as three of the running men hit her from the side and all four of them fell to the rooftop. Struggling to free herself, the fourth man savagely slammed his rifle butt into Sara’s abdomen, knocking the wind out of her. Her combat suit had prevented any serious damage, however Sara was still unable to resist as they picked her up and tied her wrists behind her.

Struggling to breathe, she was also unable to speak as the men gathered the loose weapons, drug her to the stairwell, and then they all disappeared down into the building.

----*----

Jake had to fight the urge to rush to Sara’s last known location as he watched the heads up display inside his helmet. Continuing to hover at 100 feet above the ground, he remained over the compound where Chris Wade continued the traditions established long before his birth. The two additional hover cycles below him provided air cover for the defenders below, while the entire B Troop closed in on the approaching antagonists.

Jake had selected a location where several large buildings required the approaching mass to bunch up. This continued for about a block before the riders could spread out at a cross street as they closed in on the compound. The riders split into three groups, the major part coming right up the center, as Jake expected.

As he watched, the lead element of the horsemen started entering one end of the block, while Joe and his other three troopers still had half the distance to cover from their starting points. Jake could see the smaller number of the riders choosing to go around, but not enough to be concerned about just yet.

He could see Abby and her trooper were slowly hovering around the Parsons building where Jake had left Sara. They had started a search pattern, circling the building in ever-larger circles, looking for traces of Sara. Jake felt a pang, as he again had to swallow his urge to charge off and leave his post. Sometimes it sucked being the boss.

----*----

Sara was dragged down the stairs, two men holding her up between them. As they reached the ground level, she was finally breathing normally again. Leaving the stairwell, they met two additional men who were holding a large group of horses, in what must have been the lobby of the building in its heyday.

One of the men from the rooftop approached her and, holding a square box like object in one hand and a roll of tape in the other stated, “I’m taping this to your helmet, you try anything and I will pull this string. You better believe it will take your head off.”

Sara could see the box had a pin with a string attached, if he pulled the string, the pin would come with it. As she stood between the two men holding her, the man with the box, held it to the side of her helmet and started taping it in a circling fashion, looping around the top of her helmet. It didn’t block her view but she could see the back side of the tape in her visor.

“Put her on the bay,” he told the other two men while following, still holding the other end of the string. Taking the reins of her horse, he then mounted his own, insuring to leave plenty of slack in the string. Once everyone was mounted, he led the group, with Sara’s mount in tow, through the opening that once held large panels of glass.

Carefully picking their way down the stairs in the front of the building, he led the group south and away from the gunfire to their left.

----*----

Jake had switched from the tactical display in his helmet, to ALICE’s overhead video feed in real time. He watched as Joe led a low level, two by two, strafing run on the approaching mass of horses and men. They were slightly above rooftop height of the building lining the street. He had drilled them that by coming in low, the shooters in the rear wouldn’t get a good sight on them until it was too late and they’d whip right by. If they came in too low, those on the rooftops had a good chance of jumping them.

Riding side by side in a box formation with the two pair in the rear slightly staggered to those in the front, the rear pair slowed to put some distance between themselves and the leaders. The lead pair of cycles opened up with the twin 7.62 machineguns and cut down riders and horses in twin paths down the street. As the lead pair started firing, the trailing pair went wide, firing on the groups that had split out from the main force.

As the unaffected scrambled to either side of the street, they still lost almost a quarter of the group in the first pass. There had also been a lot more return fire directed at the riders after they passed. With men and horses down all over the street, it became total chaos on the ground below the flyers.

Jake ordered Joe to pause and delayed the return pass while he assessed the damage to the group. He really didn’t want a bloodbath and hoped to see the group retreat, obviously outmatched. As he watched the riders recover, the rag-tag remnants still amounted to about two-thirds of the original force. While he watched, seeing them scatter towards the south end of the street and out any alleyways, Abby interrupted.

“Jake you need to see this, we found Sara.”

Jake switched his video feed to Abby’s helmet cam and saw a small group of horses moving carefully, but quickly south. Zooming in he could make out Sara’s combat suit, hands tied behind her back, on the horse behind the leader. She has something taped to her head and there was a string leading from there to the rider leading her horse.

“Alice, what is that thing taped to her helmet?” Jake asked.

After a brief pause, she replied, “It appears to be a military grade explosive, used in ambush and booby traps. The string is attached to a ring, which is used for a trip wire detonation. This model appears to support remote wireless detonation as well. I believe this is a mini-claymore. It has…”

Jake interrupted, “I know what that is, will any of our transmissions set it off?”

“I have set Sara’s suit to jam all local transmissions to prevent such an occurrence. Unfortunately, this means we lose all audio and video as well as positioning data. If we lose sight of her we won’t be able to track her.”

“Jake do you want me to stop them?” Abby asked.

“Don’t do anything Abby!” Jake ordered. He was not sure what this was all about but he knew it couldn’t be good if they took her. Whatever that was on her helmet, he wasn’t sure he wanted to test the suits ability to deal with it. Claymores in Jake’s time would rip someone to shreds with about 700 small metal BB’s behind a sizeable C4 charge. Granted those mines were much larger than this, but that was also over 70 years behind the one on Sara’s helmet. He was sure it was bad if that thing went off.

“Follow them at a distance, but don’t lose her. Try not to be spotted and I’ll get back to you,” He finished.

Redirecting his attention back to the earlier battle, if you could call it that, he could make out the four-hover cycles on the far side of the target area. Hovering at about 150 feet up, they were far enough up to avoid attracting too much fire, just the occasional stray round. The surviving remnants of the attacking force, those that had not run off, were cautiously heading south, and trying to skirt the death from above.

Suddenly off to his left, more gunfire erupted as a group of men had taken position in a building on the far side of the park area. He could see the muzzle flashes from at least a half dozen rifles in the windows.

“Damn, these guys just don’t give up!” Jake commented to no one in particular.

While several rounds pinged off the shield of his cycle, he slid his ride slightly to one side and then gave it a down angle, directing his guns at the structure. While the rooftop machineguns below him suddenly opened up on the building, directed at the same threat, Jake fired off two bursts from the energy cannon mounted between his machineguns.

A bright flash appeared where the wall had been and the side of the building collapsed into a pile of brick and rubble. He watched as a couple of the surviving aggressors scrambled for cover, definitely shaken up by the unexpected turn of events.

“Jake, these guys here are now in full retreat, I think that last show of cannon fire put the fear of god in them all,” Joe reported.

Jake looked back in Joe’s direction, and could see a disorderly retreat. What concerned him was it was not very hasty, more like a whipped dog trying to avoid more abuse. He didn’t expect military precision, but he kind of expected some sense of urgency.

The truth of it came to him soon enough as he realized the living were pausing to scavenged from the dead and dying as they withdrew. Jake would have attributed it to the hungry just trying to survive until he watched someone knife a wounded man who was refusing to give up a bottle of some kind of booze. As he magnified his display, he could clearly see the label read Rum. It wasn’t likely water, as bottles made for poor field canteens and on their approach, he made out a running stream not far from here. As he watched, Abby cut in.

“Jake, we are following as instructed. It looks like we are making for a large arena of some kind.”

Jake pulled up the map with Abby and her teammate indicated as icons. His map displayed a large baseball stadium, marked Dodgers, dead ahead of their path from his position. That made some sense to Jake, most stadiums had perimeter fencing as well as limited passageways into and through the structure. They also have clear areas on all approaches as parking lots generally surrounded them.

As he looked at this place, he realized it was a ready-made fort with raised ground all around and enough space to house an army. He also realized they had all but over flown this location on their approach. No wonder they went looking for Sara. They were looking for Jake’s entire team.

----*----

Sara sat on her horse trying not to do anything that might make the string her captor held any tauter. He held enough slack in the line to prevent any accidental triggering of the device taped to her helmet. However if she fell from the saddle, she was toast and she knew it.

She tried at first to contact Jake, ALICE or anyone, but so far, not one of them seemed to hear her. In addition, none of her tactical positioning displays or maps worked beyond her internal compass and life support. She left her faceplate mirrored and chose to keep quiet rather than engaging her captors. They followed her example, not antagonizing her in any exchange beyond the initial capture.

As they rode along, she surveyed her surroundings, committing the route to memory. She wanted to know her path back, should she find an opportunity to escape. After a long while she could see what she assumed was their final destination. It was a tall structure on a raised mound, overlooking all the surrounding area. She was sure that at some time in the past it was a kind of sports arena. At one point, to reach it, they had to cross over a riverbed with water running below. She was sure that the path they followed was once a roadway of some size.

Several times along the way, groups of riders passed them, all headed to the same structure at a hurried pace. Eventually they turned and headed up a roadway that led straight to what Sara was sure was, at one time, some former stadium. As they approached, she could make out armed men up on the ramps and rooftops.

Just over the bridge, they veered right, and then up a roadway, crossing a large open area. Sara was led up to the fencing circling the structure, and passed through one of the gated openings manned by armed men. They immediately passed through the opening in the stadium and then inside the building itself. Just inside, two more guards helped her off her horse. During the entire operation, the man holding the string never let go, insuring she could not bolt for freedom.