Plague Ship

Clear of the sonic avalanche of the bell inside the dormitory, Juan pressed his hands to his ears to try to hear what Linda was shouting.

“—t of there. Guards on the far side. Gomez is coming in. Hurry.” He was fumbling for his night vision goggles when a trio of men in gray uniforms appeared around the corner of a nearby building. Juan took a fraction of a second too long to see if they were armed. One of them opened up with a compact submachine gun, spraying an arc of bullets that blew plaster dust into the air as the rounds dug into the dormitory. Cabrillo dropped flat and fired. His aim was perfect, hitting the guard center mass, but rather than going down the man simply staggered back a bit.

“Inside!” he shouted to his team, and crawled into the corridor once again, closing the door with his foot.

He screamed, to be heard over the alarm: “They’ve got automatics and Kevlar vests. Our plastic bullets don’t even slow them down.”

“Talk about bringing a knife to a gunfight,” Eddie yelled.

A fresh barrage of autofire tore at the building’s façade, seemingly shaking the entire structure.

Linc jammed a chair under the door handle so it couldn’t be opened from outside, then reached up the wall and tore the horn off its mount, silencing it. “More like a blowgun to an artillery duel, my friend.”

CHAPTER 13

CABRILLO NEEDED ONLY A SECOND TO DEVISE A PLAN. “There’s a window in Kyle’s bedroom. The back of this building is closer to the perimeter wall.” He led them down the hallway again, flashing his pistol at anyone peering out of his room. The sight of the weapon was more than enough to encourage them to stay inside. Kyle’s roommate continued his drug-induced sleep despite the commotion. Juan charged across the room, firing several shots at the large picture window on the far wall. The plastic bullets carried more than enough kick to loosen the glass before he hurtled himself bodily through it. Shards cascaded around him, as he rolled onto the dried-out lawn, and he felt a few rip small cuts in his hands and at the back of his neck.

With multiple lights shining from the dorm rooms, he had a clear picture of the cement-block wall fifteen yards away. The guards continued to concentrate their fire at the entrance and had yet to encircle the building. Glass crunched behind him, as Murph, Linc, and Eddie stepped through the ruined window.

Juan’s actions had bought them a few seconds at best.

The explosives Eddie had planted were midway down the wall’s length, the location chosen because of the cameras rather than it being the best tactical location. To reach it, they would have to cross a hundred yards of open ground, a perfect killing field for the Responsivist guards.

“Linda, give me a sit-rep.” Cabrillo needed a clearer overview than the tiny e-paper screen on his wrist.

“Is that you who just went through a window?”

“Yes. What’s the situation?”

“There are three guards near the dorm’s entrance and another dozen or so fa

Juan could hear the drumming of the Robinson’s rotor through the evening air. “Tell Max to get moving, too. We might have to use plan C.”

“Juan, I’m on the net,” Max Hanley said over the radio. “We’re under way right now. Do you have Kyle?”

“We do. He’s fine for the moment, but we need to get the hell out of here.”

“Don’t worry, the cavalry’s coming.”

“That’s what they said at Little Bighorn when Custer showed up, and you know how that turned out.” The sound of the approaching helicopter reached a fever pitch, and just before the copter thundered over the wall Juan nodded to Eddie. There was no need to talk to each other. With plan A in ruins, they seamlessly switched to plan B. Eddie had the explosive’s detonator in his hands. He waited a beat, as a guard in a four-wheel all-terrain vehicle approached the bomb, and then casually triggered it.

A section of wall erupted in a roiling cloud of white dust and flame. The guard was blown off the four-wheeler and thrown twenty feet, before tumbling to the ground in a loose-limbed roll. His ATV had been flipped onto its side, its balloon tires spi

The team took off in a dead sprint, Linc easily keeping pace despite the deadweight of Kyle Hanley over his shoulder. When they reached the corner of the building, Juan peered around it. One of the guards who’d first opened fire was down, his face a sheet of blood from a scalp laceration caused by a chunk of cement. He was being tended to by another guard while the third was trying to get the door unstuck.

Taking careful aim, Juan cycled through the remaining four rounds in his Glock. Knowing their torsos were impervious to the plastic bullets and reluctant to kill the guards outright, he fired two low-aimed rounds at each man. The pairs of bullets wouldn’t emasculate them, but their groins were going to be swollen for weeks. They went down screaming, clutching themselves in utter agony.

“Sorry, boys. Literally,” Juan said, and relieved them of their weapons. They carried mini-Uzis, which were terrific close-work guns but useless at any meaningful range. He tossed one to Eddie and the other to Linc, who was a better shot carrying a man on his shoulder than Murph was at a firing bench with his gun bolted to the table.

The black Robinson R44 suddenly roared overhead, flying so low that the skids nearly knocked tiles off the roofs. George Adams pirouetted the chopper above the compound, using the rotor’s downwash to kick up a sandstorm. The maelstrom of grit served to cover Juan and the others, as well as keep the guards pi

Amid the deafening throb of the blades beating the air and the chaos all around them, no one knew where a fresh burst of gunfire originated. A flurry of white spiderwebs suddenly appeared in the chopper’s windshield and the copilot’s window. Embers of hot metal peeled away from the aircraft’s skin as bullets tore through its hull. George ducked and weaved the helo like a prize-fighter in the ring, but the stream of tracers continued to pour in until a gush of smoke erupted from the engine cowling.

Juan frantically changed frequencies on his radio, shouting, “Get out of there, George. Go! Go! Go!

That’s an order.”

“I’m outta here, sorry,” Adams drawled. With that, the chopper turned like a dragonfly and veered back over the wall, trailing smoke that was blacker than the night.

“Now what?” Murph asked the Chairman.

Seventy-five yards of open ground yawned before them, and already the Responsivists were up and getting organized. The Corporation team had cover in a shallow drainage ditch, but it wouldn’t last long.

Already, guards were forming search parties, their flashlights lancing out into the darkness.

“Where are you, Linda?” Cabrillo asked.

“Just outside the wall, not far from where you guys blew it open. Can you reach me?”

“Negative. Too many guards and not enough cover. I swear, this place is more like a military barracks than a wacko retreat.”

“Then I guess its time for a diversion.”

“Make it good.”

Over the radio, he could hear the sound of an engine accelerating, but Linda didn’t respond.

Thirty seconds later, the compound’s main gate was torn off its hinges and the back end of the van they had rented burst through, its bumper hanging askew. The dozen or more guards covering the facility turned at once. Some began ru

Guns opened up on Linda’s van, forty holes appearing in its sheet-metal hide before she could wrestle the transmission back into drive. The tires kicked up feathers of gravel before regaining traction, and she drove out of the withering barrage.