Shadow Ops 3: Breach Zone (20 page)

Two
Gahe
slid through the throng, screening an advancing giant from the worst of the gunfire, until a figure in a black uniform rolled around the side of the crane and stretched out a hand, sending a torrent of flame shooting over them. The
Gahe
shrieked and withdrew, the goblins and giants falling back beside them as the Pyromancer made the cloud of fire dance, fed by whirling shreds of trash and corpses, and swept it across the barricade front.

Harlequin flew closer, pausing short of the Blackhawks. He gathered cloud cover, agitated the air molecules, expanding them rapidly, raising a thunderclap that shook the few unbroken windows in the buildings around them.

The heads below him looked up; dozens of the rocs and wyverns broke off from the Blackhawks, turning to face the new threat. He smiled and kicked off, floating backward and sideways, getting out of the Blackhawks’ line of fire as the helos went broadside with the remaining stragglers, shredding them with columns of 20mm fire. The defenders on the barricade below cursed and slapped at their shoulders as the hot brass fell on them.

Whatever the Terramancer Whispered, the creatures saw the futility of engaging an Aeromancer with helicopter gunships at his rear, and the rocs and wyverns scattered, winging away with a defiant scream.

Many of the defenders were cheering themselves hoarse. The wiser ones were silent, slumped over their guns, grabbing the few minutes of rest he had bought them. Harlequin flew down to alight on one of the overturned buses. A banner had been raised over it, torn and soiled. It was a repurposed baseball pennant, stitched over with the NYPD and army logos. Beneath it, someone had scrawled
BARRICADE 3. ROCK STEADY
.

It was pathetic, slapdash, and torn, but it was a sign of morale, and that was good.

A haggard-looking National Guard captain jogged her way up the rubble to meet him, sketching a salute with a shaking arm. Relief blossomed on a face that clearly hadn’t seen sleep in far too long.

‘You command here?’ Harlequin asked her.

She nodded. ‘For what it’s worth, sir. I’m sharing command with the NYPD. They’ve got a sergeant here.’

‘A sergeant in charge of all this?’

She shrugged. ‘It’s what they could spare. The rest of the city outside the Breach Zone has gone crazy. The looting in Queens alone has half the force tied up. Central Park is in the middle of the biggest smoke-out in national history. We’re undermanned.’

He shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, I’m . . .’

‘I know who you are, sir,’ she cut him off. ‘I’d guess that anyone with Internet access in the past year knows who you are. For what it’s worth, I get what you did and respect it.’

He looked up at her, surprised. He scanned for her name tape, but it was covered by her body armor. Her eyes were old beyond the fatigue, and her nose had been broken more than once. It gave her that look of hard competence combined with empathy that he liked to see in soldiers.

‘How are you holding up?’

She sighed, beckoned, and he followed down the pile of vehicles and out from behind a raised crane boom draping camouflage netting and providing inadequate shade to a medical triage area crowded with wounded. His eyes widened.

A wall of civilians thronged against metal police barricades, practically buckling from their combined weight. A mixed line of soldiers and police shored the barricades up, pushed the crowd back with batons and rifles held crosswise. A few of the police were in riot gear. Some of the soldiers were using ballistic shields borrowed from NYPD tactical units.

All were badly needed on the barricade behind them.

The crowd of civilians was a mixed bag. Some were reporters waving cameras and microphones. Others looked like anarchists and malcontents in their perennial black hoodies and jeans, bandannas covering their faces in anticipation of tear gas that was being used against the goblins to their south. Others looked like religious fanatics, holding icons high, eyes closed and hands raised in prayer.

‘Holy shit,’ Harlequin said.

‘Pretty much,’ the captain agreed. ‘Some of them think it’s the Second Coming. Others think we’re hiding some kind of experiment gone wrong and want to see the truth for themselves. Others have family and friends trapped in the Breach Zone and are demanding to go in after them. A few are property owners wanting to check on their buildings. It’s like this at every barricade.’

‘They need to be evacuating,’ Harlequin said.

She nodded. ‘Yes, sir. I tried telling them that. You can’t hear a bullhorn over all that shouting. I’m honestly tempted to just let them through. Give ’em a chance to see what’s waiting for them south of the intersection.’

She shook her head, smiled ruefully. ‘But I can’t do that, can I?’

Harlequin sighed. ‘No, Captain. You can’t.’

‘Well, we’re expending roughly fifty percent of our manpower just keeping these people back. It can’t go on like this. We need help.’

‘I’m getting it for you.’

‘Respectfully, sir?’

‘Speak freely.’

She met his eyes. ‘You’re not getting it fast enough.’

Harlequin’s stomach turned over. ‘Help’s coming. I promise.’ The words sounded lame in his own ears. ‘How’re you handling the
Gahe
?’

She sighed. ‘We were doing okay at first, sir. The SOC LE support element was able to do for them, but they’ve been coming more often, and there are more of them. We’re stretched pretty thin on that count, too. You know our regular ordnance just goes right through them.’ She shuddered.

‘I know. Help’s on the way in that department, too.’

She nodded. ‘Yeah, Barricade One radioed that your Elementalist had arrived. They were able to repulse their attack with her help and she’s working up elementals there to dispatch to us. Should be here shortly. Thanks for that, sir. I know trafficking in Probe magic is going to generate some blowback for you, but I also knew that after what you did for FOB Frontier, I knew you’d do anything to save soldiers. Huah.’

Harlequin blinked. ‘What?’

‘What, what, sir?’

Harlequin blinked again and swallowed. It wouldn’t do this captain’s morale any good to learn that he had no idea what she was talking about. ‘Nothing. Sorry. I’m as tired as you are. You said the Elementalist was over at Barricade One?’

‘Yes, sir.’ She nodded. ‘Intersection of Houston and Broadway, just over . . .’

‘I know where it is,’ he said. ‘I need you to dig in and hold on here. You make those fuckers pay for every inch of ground.’

Her smile went grim, and she saluted again. ‘To the last bullet and the last man, sir. They won’t get through while we draw breath.’

Harlequin returned her salute and leapt back into the air, flying toward a tall building, its art deco water-tower housing crowded with snipers. A few toy-sized remote-controlled drones circled, relaying information on the enemy positions to the ground. A quick look down told Harlequin all he needed to know. The enemy were numerous, they were everywhere, and more were inbound.

A few of the snipers on the tower waved to him as he passed overhead and came into sight of Barricade One. Huge shipping containers had been flown in by helicopter or dragged by truck and overturned. One of the giant metal rectangles’ doors hung open, the packed rubble inside spilling out.

Mortars were set up in a church’s main steeple, raining fire down in front of the barricade, forcing the goblins to take cover. A few rocs and wyverns circled in the distance, but while they scattered as Harlequin approached, they were already keeping well back.

A moment later, Harlequin saw why.

Man-sized funnels of air, nearly invisible save for the dust whirling within them, hovered over the battlefield. The last time Harlequin had seen one, it had swept him off the high-school roof he was in charge of securing.

Air Elementals.

A moment later, Downer came into view. She appeared to be flying of her own accord, but as she came closer, he could see she was suspended in one of the whirling funnels, grinning. Harlequin landed on the roof opposite the steeple, motioning for her to join him. She waved as her elemental brought her over, dropped her steadily on the rooftop, then spun off on its own mission.

‘Just what the fuck do you think you’re doing?’ he asked.

‘Saving your barricade,’ she replied, folding her arms across her chest, ‘or did you think they were going to handle the
Gahe
on their own?’

‘I needed you to stay in Battery Park! I ordered you to . . .’

‘Oh, I’m sorry. Am I still in the fucking Army? Or am I a contractor? Did my conditional pardon get reinstated when I wasn’t looking? I’ll have to admit, my current legal status and chain of command is rather confusing at the moment.’

‘Sarah, I do
not
have time for this! You get your ass back to Battery Park, or . . .’

‘Or you’ll what? Send me back to a cell? Did you think my elementals would just stay here without me?’ She kicked the side of the crumbling water-tower housing beside her and raised her hand. The tumbling brick and mortar flowed out and re-formed into something approximating a hulking outline of a man. It took a step toward Harlequin, hunching its shoulders and sending a shower of desiccated concrete to the roof beneath it. ‘Did you honestly think I’d stand still for it? I am done being the government’s bitch.’

Harlequin thought about Suppressing her, decided against it. For all her bluster, she and her elementals were helping the fight, albeit at a different point than he’d expected. She was a serious force multiplier wherever she wound up, and the situation at Barricade Three had kindled a sick fear in his gut.
You should have put her here in the first place, and you know it. You’re overwhelmed.

Maybe. But he was still the incident commander, and he needed to be able to control his assets. Hewitt was enough of a problem as it was.

‘Okay,’ he said, patting the air with his palms, ‘but you have to understand that magical resources are at a premium here. I need to be able to focus them where they’re needed most.’

‘I’m a person, not a resource,’ she said, ‘and I am where I’m needed most. You think I’m blind? You’ve been running around like a chicken with your head cut off, and most of your staff thinks you’re the Antichrist. While you were off partying at the UN, I figured I’d get the lay of the land. It’s not lying so well up here. If I hadn’t put elementals in the fight, we’d have lost this barricade before you showed up. There are a few
Gahe
making it down to Battery Park, but most of them are coming out of the gate and heading straight up here. They know the juiciest parts of the city are north, or, at least, Scylla does.’

He smiled inwardly.
Not a little girl anymore, that’s for damn sure. And a natural head for strategy.
He burned at the thought of how the McGauer-Linden Act had forced them to this moment. Who knew the kind of officer she would have made if she’d only been given half a chance?

Harlequin looked over his shoulder at the battlefield before Barricade One. It was clear for now, the enemy withdrawn to the cover of nearby buildings or overturned cars. But he could see even from this distance that the street was rimed with a thick, glittering crust. It shimmered, tinted gray, like dirty snow. Evidence of the
Gahe
’s failure to break through the barricade. At least one of them had died in that space.

His mind screamed at him to fight her, to show some spine, to be a leader. But he couldn’t argue with the facts. She’d put herself in the right place. She’d averted what could have been a catastrophe. All great leaders had one trait in common, they trusted their people.

He sighed. ‘You’re right.’

‘I am.’ It began as a question, but she managed to make it a statement at the last moment.

‘You are. I’m overwhelmed. You did it right. I should have had you here all along. Thanks.’

She stammered before settling on, ‘You’re welcome.’

‘I need three of you, Sarah. We can do for these goblins and whatever else all damn day, but the
Gahe
are going to get through. Help’s just not coming fast enough. I keep thinking that if we can just hang on a little while longer, we’ll get what we need to stop this.’

She blinked, still stunned to find him agreeing with her.

‘I don’t suppose you can break off some of your elemental . . . cohort? Send them back to Battery Park?’

She shook her head. ‘Doesn’t work that way.’

‘They . . . they need to stay close to you to keep alive?’

‘No. They won’t leave me.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘They love me. They won’t leave me. Well, not far and not for long, anyway. You have to remember that they’re sentient. They can think for themselves.’

Harlequin arched an eyebrow. ‘They love you. They tell you this?’

‘No, but I can feel it. They know I made them. I’m . . . I’m their god.’ She looked down, embarrassed.
In all the years I knew her, I never once asked her what it was like.

‘When I first came up Latent, they were my friends, you know,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t exactly something I could talk to people about, so I talked to them.’

Harlequin tried not to let his remorse show. She’d been a target to him, then a tool. Never once had he stopped to consider anything else.

‘Did they listen?’ he asked.

She smiled. ‘They did. Much better than most people. More importantly, they understood.’

‘I’m sorry, Sarah,’ Harlequin surprised himself by saying, ‘for all of it. I’d take it back if I could.’

Her eyes narrowed, some steel came into her voice. ‘I thought we were past the part where you talk down to me. I don’t need your sorry. Never asked for it.’

‘I know, I’m saying it for me. To get it off my chest. I wish I had a dozen more like you.’

‘So you could win this fight.’

‘That, too, yeah.’

Downer no longer sounded angry. ‘It’s your own damn fault, you know. Who knows how many Latents might have helped if you hadn’t forced them to choose between Selfer and SOC? Heck, some of them are probably in this city.’