They tumbled through into the large room where the table was. One of the two women was waving her hands at Zak and wailing something. The other was nowhere in sight. A guard stuck his head in from outside. “The truck’s coming now,” he called. Dan ushered the Hyadeans across to the door and outside. Smoke clouds were billowing skywards from somewhere not far away, where flames could be seen among the trees. A truck was turning off the approach lane from the road. As several of the guards moved out from the building to meet it, the sounds of approaching aircraft came again, followed by staccato chattering of gunfire. The guards threw themselves down into the undergrowth or beside the wall of the building, a couple under the truck.
“Down!” Dan yelled. Luodine stood outside the doorway, confused. “Get down!” She came to her senses, ran a few paces, and hunched herself awkwardly by Nyarl against the base of a tree. The roars grew to a screaming din overhead. Luodine covered her head with her arms. A series of jarring concussions came, numbing the ears, and then a sharper crack, followed by what sounded like a tremendous blast of hail slicing through the trees, shredding leaves and cutting branches. Fragments of metal pinged off the truck and embedded themselves in the wall of the building. Somebody screamed.
“Come! Now! We have to go!” Dan’s voice shouted.
Luodine straightened up, dazed, her ears still ringing. Somebody grabbed her elbow and steered her toward the truck. Figures were already clambering aboard. Vrel was there. Nyarl appeared from behind her. Someone was reeling drunkenly, gushing blood from a partly severed shoulder. It was the second cook. Hands pulled Luodine up over the tailboard. The truck began moving.
The attack had hit on the far side of the roadway. Smoke was pouring from the remains of several demolished buildings among the trees, which nearer the center of the blast area had been stripped practically bare. A vehicle was hanging upended in the branches; another lay on its side, surrounded by bodies, some moving. As the truck turned right onto the road and headed back in the direction of the landing strip, Luodine made out more figures crawling and staggering amid the smoke. The sound of the attacking planes faded, and the steadier, deeper drone of higher-flying aircraft became noticeable behind the engine noise and rattles of the truck, and the voice of Dan shouting into a hand radio. A series of muffled crumps sounded somewhere off to the left. “ATG,” Zak said tightly. Luodine looked questioningly at Nyarl as they clutched the sides of the wildly bouncing vehicle.
“Air-to-ground,” he supplied. “Missiles. Incoming.”
“Troops are landing to the south and east,” Dan announced. “They’ve already taken the main river crossing. Gonna sweep the whole area.”
“Will Rocco’s group have to call off the mission?” Vrel called from the other side of the truck.
“Too late for that. They left hours ago.”
They drove past armed guerrillas hastily forming up, squads with packs running at the double along the roadside; vehicles being loaded, others racing in both directions. The background of explosions and gunfire was now continuous. At one point they had to drive off the road on a bypass flattened through the undergrowth around a truck and a car that had collided. Just past them was a blackened area, still smoking, everything flattened, where Luodine was sure she had seen a mobile missile launcher the day before. Exactly as she had wanted, she was right there in the middle of everything, and far sooner then she had ever expected. Yet she and Nyarl could capture none of it. They had left all their equipment in the flyer.
They arrived back to find the landing area in pandemonium. One entire side—fortunately, not where Vrel’s flyer was parked—was a mass of blazing vehicles and storage sheds, while across the remainder of the area figures ran frantically to load what could be salvaged onto departing trucks and carry over the wounded. Two helicopters were wrecked, but another out on the open strip took off as the truck bringing the Hyadeans pulled up. Dan waved toward the flyer and shouted at Vrel, “Make it ready, whatever you have to do.”