Retreat Hell (44 page)

“Stop! Who goes there!” came a shout, as they entered the floodlit zone around the secure storage area.

Alonzo leaned out the window. Gesturing for Andrews to keep going forwards.

“What do we damn well look like, rebellious sepoys?” he snapped.

Mullins could see two soldiers standing in front of a double gate. They held rifles – heavy, multi-magazine weapons that he recognized as M-31s – but they were pointed at the ground.

“Gotta be sure,” said one of the soldiers. There was some kind of enlisted rank insignia on his arm, but in the shadow Mullins couldn’t tell what it was. “Here for a pickup?”

“Yeah,” said Alonzo. He opened his door and got out. When the soldiers noticed the silver bars on each arm, they saluted.

“You got the paperwork, sir?”

“Yeah,” said Alonzo. “You wanna open that gate? My last truck is blocking a rail track.”

That was probably true – they’d bumped over one not long ago.

“Hey, LT,” the man shouted. “You wanna open the gate? We’ve got a pickup here.”

“First
I’ve
heard about it,” said a voice from the other side. “He got paperwork?”

Alonzo had a black clipboard under his arm. He showed it to the two enlisted men, who glanced at it and nodded.

“Yeah, they’ve got paperwork,” the man said.

“OK, gate’s unlocked. You two pull `em open.”

“We’re going to reverse our trucks in, Lieutenant,” called Alonzo. “There room for four in there?”

“Yeah, go ahead.”

The gates, which like the walls were topped with razor wire, began to open outwards. The two enlisted men, helped by another two from the inside, pressed them flat against the wall.

“Three-point the truck and reverse it in,” Alonzo called.

“Yessir,” replied Andrews.

So far
, thought Mullins,
it’s all going according to plan. But how does Alonzo know how many guys the Army has?

A horrible thought struck him:
if things go wrong, they might think we’re
secessionists
in disguise. They’ll shoot first and ask questions later.

***

“Here we are,” said Calhoun, coming into the warehouse. He was followed by about two dozen men, who looked around skeptically. As Skorzy had instructed, they all wore black. They looked to be aged anywhere from mid-teens to late fifties, and they were all armed.

“I’m – you can call me Roger,” said Skorzy. “By now you’re wondering what you were called in for. Well, boys, yesterday afternoon the Army got themselves a big new shipment of toys. Guns, ammo, demolition charges – I’m guessing you can name it and it’s right there.”

“And we’re gonna get usselves a piece?” asked a fiftyish man with a greying beard.

“That’s exactly what we’re gonna do,” Skorzy said. “And blow the rest to blazes, if we can. Gather round me, will you?”

“Mister, I take orders from Tom Calhoun,” said another man. In his thirties, with a weatherbeaten face and brown hair. “Don’t know you from Adam. Tom, how `bout
you
outline this plan if it’s so good?”

Skorzy sighed. Fucking two-bit urban amateurs.

“Let
me
outline the plan to
Tom
, and then
he
can outline it to
you
,” he said.

“Sounds good to us,” said the man with the greying beard. “But you just remember, Mr. Roger, that we take our orders from Tom Calhoun here. Anything you wanna say, you say to him and if it’s good,
he’ll
tell it to us.”

“Fine,” said Skorzy.

I wish I was back in the mountains proper
, he thought. Where his name and face were known, and he didn’t have to deal with bullshit like this.

I’m
needed
back in the mountains proper. Should be there already.

***

The fourth truck backed through the open gate of the secure area, clumsily reverse-parking next to the other three. From where Mullins sat, he could see a guardhouse just inside the gate, with a couple of Army types standing just outside.

Sentries sat in the corner towers and paced along ramparts inside the fence. Those guys seemed intent on their jobs – they were looking, pretty attentively, at the floodlit area outside the holding area’s walls. What took place inside the area wasn’t their concern.

Unless someone raises the alarm. Then we’re fish in a barrel.

Alonzo didn’t seem worried.

“So you say you have paperwork, sir?” asked one of the men outside the guardhouse. There were gold bars on his shoulders; second lieutenant.

 “Yes, Lieutenant,” said Alonzo. Holding his clipboard, he went over to the lieutenant. The second man outside the guardhouse moved a respectable five or six feet back, holding his M-31 cautiously.

Oh, shit. They suspect something’s up. Whatever’s on Alonzo’s clipboard is bullshit.

Alonzo handed the clipboard to the lieutenant, who moved into the guardhouse to get a better look at it. From his vantage point in the truck’s cab, Mullins saw the Legion sergeant draw his taser from a hip pocket.

Saw him go over to the other man, who didn’t quite raise his rifle. Clearly he was wondering what this strange first lieutenant wanted, though.

He didn’t have time to say anything. Just as the lieutenant in the guardhouse threw the clipboard down and walked outside, Alonzo brought his taser up and in a single move lunged forwards, pressing it to the enlisted soldier’s chest. There was a blue flash and the man collapsed, quivering.

“What the–” the lieutenant began. One hand reached for his pistol.

Faster than Mullins could have imagined, Alonzo whirled and tased the lieutenant. The man collapsed in a quivering heap.

Alonzo gestured at the truck cabs – ‘come here.’

Mullins and the others climbed out and ran.

“Zag `em so they don’t wake?” one man whispered to Alonzo, finger twitching towards his sheathed combat knife.

“
Hell
no,” whispered Alonzo. “Drag `em into the guardhouse, tie their hands, gag them. I’ll be back in a moment to check. You” – he pointed a finger randomly at Johnson. “Stay in the guardhouse and answer the phone if anyone calls. Your name is” – he looked at the nametag on the lieutenant’s shirt – “Gorman. Second Lieutenant Gorman. Answer the phone that way. If they give you a sign and ask for a counter… hell, look in the guardhouse, he might’ve written `em down somewhere. If you can’t get them, don’t guess. Say something about a bad connection, put the phone down, and get me
immediately
because we’re bugging the fuck out. There’s a CG barracks right next door, but the Army won’t trust those fuckers… they’ll send their own response and we’ll have five to ten minutes before it shows. Clear on that, soldier?”

“Yessir,” said Andrews.

“Good. You others, let’s grab.”

***

“Imperil guideds,” Alonzo hissed, gesturing at a stack of crates. “Get those.
All
of those. You four, start loading `em.”

There were crates
everywhere
– hundreds of them, stacked under eight-foot-high shelters that consisted of little more than sheets of corrugated iron held up by steel poles. Alonzo paced past more stacks of crates, glancing at the serial numbers until he found something else he liked.

“HD batteries.
Sweet
. All of these. You guys.”

“What about these?” asked Kiesche, gesturing at some crates next to the goggles.

Alonzo took one glance at the stencilled label on top.

“Replacement actuators for the heavy-infantry suits. What the
hell
use do we have for those?”

Kiesche shrugged.

“No damn idea,” he said.

“Get loading
those
ones,” Alonzo said, pointing at a stack he’d passed earlier. “WP grenades. Never enough of those. You four.”

Mullins was one of those last. He picked up a crate from the stack of about twenty, carried it – it was heavy, but not impossibly so – over to the back of the nearest truck. Andrews was waiting there to take it.

“Those,” Alonzo said, when the crates of WP grenades were all taken. “Each of those has half a dozen sniper scopes –
really, really
good
ones. Be careful handling `em.”

“Yessir.”

Over the next half-hour or so, Mullins loaded crates that apparently contained radios, guided rockets, computers, flares and flareguns, sniper-rifle ammo –
those
ones required two men each to carry – and optics.

Then Johnson came running out of the guard shack.

“Boss! Sarge!” he hissed frantically.

Alonzo whirled.

“Boss, they asked us for a countersign. Gave `em the one I thought it was – it was written down – and he was silent for a moment. Then he asks me what Saturday’s was. I gave him the bad-connection spiel.”

“
Shit
,” hissed Alonzo. He checked his watch.

“Of course, it’s oh-two-hundred on the dot. Should have figured they’d check on the hour. Let’s
go
!”

Oh, shit
, thought Mullins, running for the cab of the nearest truck. Dashratha was already in the driver’s seat, starting the engine.

One of the soldiers pacing the wall, evidently noticing the frantic running, turned around and looked down.

“Everything alright, sir?” he called.

“Yeah, we’re fine,” Alonzo shouted back. Gesturing to two men who hadn’t yet boarded trucks.

“Open the gate, you two.”

It seemed to take forever for them to push the gate open wide enough to get a truck through. The moment it did, Dashratha hit the gas – simultaneously with two of the other three trucks.

“Fucking
go
,” Mullins snarled, gesturing at the one on the right. It had almost collided with his.

That truck moved forward, Alonzo climbing in as it headed out the gates. Then another truck, and then the driver of the last one gestured for Dashratha to go ahead.

Heart pounding, Mullins watched the huge Rajput drive his truck forwards. Followed by the last one.

“Lieutenant Gorman?” one of the guards outside the gate asked. Going in.

“Oh,
shit
!” he exclaimed a moment later.

From somewhere came the sound of high-powered engines. Alarms started to wail.

Alonzo leaned out the window of his lead truck as it started to power across the landing grounds.

“Hey, Army motherfuckers!” he shouted. “Semper fucking fi, assholes!”

***

Oh shit
, thought Croft, watching the whole cargo area on the other side of the landing grounds light up. Floodlights coming on everywhere. He could distantly see figures running around in the new light.
We’re under attack.

Should I do something?

He had about a hundred and seventy-five men here. True, they were as green as he was and only had one magazine apiece, but there
were
a hundred and seventy-five of them.

He looked at Sergeant Gonzalez, who seemed completely unconcerned.

Why?

“What’s going on over there, Sergeant? You know?”

Gonzalez shrugged.

“Probably just some Colonial Guard drill, sir.”

“You sure?”

“They’ve got a barracks right over there. Whole battalion of `em, the ones who guard the freight depot.”

“I think I saw that building. Didn’t look big enough for a company to live in, and they’ve got a
battalion
there?”

“Short-term posting, sir. Besides, at any given time, half or more are riding trains. Protecting `em against guerillas.”

“I hear the CGs aren’t worth much,” Croft said, more for the sake of making conversation than anything else.

“The ones here aren’t worth
shit
, sir,” said Gonzalez. “They take bribes, they steal, they sell their weapons to the enemy – you name it. Do yourself a favor, sir, and
never
give information to CGs unless you want Buddy to have it within the hour.”

“There’s
no
good ones?”

“Sure, there’s a few vetted and competent units. Lifers, not short-termers doing their two years because they can’t afford to pay the exemption. They’re all in Richmond. Governor Harris won’t send `em away unless he has
damn
good reason.”

“Incidentally, where the hell is Alonzo and his working party? I should have asked exactly where they’d be, for the sake of communication. God damn it – they didn’t bring their weapons with them. What if the terrorists
are
up to something?”