Now they could hear bullets slamming into their armor, a steady muted rumble of
lead on steel as though little men with hammers were drumming up a crazy war
dance. The war wag bucked and crashed along, its engine roaring as the slope
steepened.
“Nice place to die,” muttered Ches, then yelled, “I don’t believe it!”
Ahead, far ahead, the road had opened up, a part of it revealing red flashes,
tracer lines soaring toward them. Rounds hammered over the front of the lurching
vehicle, banged on the bulletproof glass of the windshield.
“Tunnels! Tunnels under the road! When we slowed for the slope, that’s when they
jumped us, grabbed our underside.”
Now the MG-blister above their heads awoke into deadly life and tracers curved
down toward the flapped tunnel trap, smashing into it, ripping it apart, sending
it bounding away into the shadows beyond the searchlight’s glare. O’Mara poured
fire straight into the hole, the angle of fire steepening as they roared nearer
and nearer.
Conn said, “Four’s out but seems like there’s a hand-to-hand atop Three. It’s
getting rough out there…”
Then he broke off as Ches, his voice a hoarse croak of panic, said, “Hellfire,
they got stickies!”
Ryan swung around, saw with a chill of horror four fingerlike appendages appear
from out of sight below the windshield, slap hard on to the glass and flatten
out slimily, suctioning to the smooth surface. Another four-finger hand whipped
up into view, this one clutching a flat black object, which was slammed against
the glass. The two hands vanished from sight.
Ches screamed, “Limpet mine!”
Chapter Three
RYAN STOOD LOOKING AT THE OBJECT clinging to the outside of the windshield for
only as long as it took to blink an eye, but thought and images torrented
through his mind.
The window was a goner; nothing could be done about it. If he had armor-piercing
rounds in his mag he could blast the window, punch the bomb away. But that would
still open them up to the outside, and in any case he didn’t have APs up the
spout and by the time he banged a fresh mag in, that limpet would have blown and
they’d be holed anyhow.
He wondered for an instant whether Ches, one of the newer drivers, only
recruited in the past twelve months and lacking the experience of some of the
older guys, had, as soon as the alarm had erupted, stabbed a forefinger at one
very special button on his console beneath the war wag’s massive wheel—and then
he bawled, “Back!”
The Trader plunged past him, Ches and Cohn tumbling after. Ryan’s men were
already diving for cover. Ryan jumped for the bunk room passage, hit the deck,
found himself lying beside Ches.
“The E-button!” he shouted—but the driver’s reply was lost in the roar of sound
from up front. Flame bloomed, the shock wave sending debris hurtling through the
air.
Ryan brushed glass shards off himself as he scrambled to his feet and ran for
the front of the cabin.
The screen was out except for thick, jagged ridges of glass poking up through
swirling black smoke. The metal surround near where the limpet had been placed
was sagging up top, buckled below. Two of the team began spraying foam at the
flames, killing them, and Cohn was already at his radio again, throat mike in
place, his fingers working switches.
“She’s okay. We’re still on line, still connected.”
Ryan crouched in the dying smoke, squeezing short lead-bursts out into the night
and downward, at a high angle, trying to clean off any stickies that might still
be hanging to the war wag’s snout, although he guessed that whoever was hitting
them would almost certainly be back underneath, clinging on, waiting to make the
next move.
“Get the gas masks ready, but don’t put ’em on.”
The smoke was clearing fast, the flames dead. Ches was back at the wheel again,
body armor now buckled over his chest. The spotlights still lit up the road
ahead, and now Ryan could see what looked like fireflies dancing up in the rocks
to each side—snipers homing in on them. Above, O’Mara’s MG began stuttering,
trying to keep the bastards’ heads down.