The whole thing had taken about three seconds.
There are a lot of myths about the bite strength of dogs. Sure, wolves can chomp down at 400 pounds per square inch on average and up to 1,200 PSI when defending themselves, but dogs can’t. For dogs, the common American breeds with the strongest bites are Rottweilers, who have the strongest bites at 328 PSI, and bull terriers at 235; but shepherds are in the number-two slot with average bites at 238. Now, add a lot of combat training designed to teach Ghost how to destroy bone and tendon with six titanium teeth, and the math gets ugly.
“Good doggy,” murmured Duffy in my ear. “Coast is clear, Cowboy, but you better haul ass. Pigeon drones are picking up a shitload of thermals coming your way.”
I ran to the shed door and amped up the thermal imaging, but it bloomed way too hot, from the lava down deep. Thermals were going to be useless in there; so was night vision. I took off the glasses, swapped in a full magazine, cautioned Ghost to be as silent as his name, and eased the door open.
The space inside was built to allow access to an elevator and a set of spiraling stairs. It was hot as hell in there and my clothes were instantly soaked, despite the whole “but it’s a dry heat” thing. It felt like every drop of moisture in my flesh was being leached out. Every other spare inch of floor was crammed with stacks of equipment, and along the walls were racks of black coveralls of a kind I’d never seen before. They looked like rubber but when I touched them the material felt more like a flexible plastic. Thick, though, and a quick examination revealed that each was double-lined to allow for tubes and wiring. Small harnesses and rows of tanks gave me the answer. These were some kind of advanced coolant suits to allow Valen and his team to work down near the thermal vents.
I wasted no time and put one on. As I did, it occurred to me that Ghost could not go with me, and he couldn’t stay in the shed because there would be nowhere for him to run if the truckers came in. So I told him to go find Top. As usual, Ghost didn’t like it, but he gave the soft whuff that’s his version of “hooah.” He ran out into the night. It bothered me to see him vanish into so deadly a darkness, and I had a horrible feeling that I might never see him again.
“Sergeant Rock,” I said quietly, “Ghost is coming to you. Can’t take him down with me.”
“Roger that, Cowboy,” he said, then added, as if reading my mind, “We’ll keep him safe.”
I finished sealing the suit and as the last zipper pull locked into place, the internal works activated. Cool air flooded through the outfit, but it did not blow up like a hot-room hazmat and instead kept a normal shape. That made sense, since Valen and his team needed to be able to assemble the God Machines. One precaution I’d taken was to remove my combat harness, and I buckled it on over the suit, allowing me access to extra magazines, grenades, and fighting knives.
The suit’s cowl came complete with goggles with orange-tinted lenses that reduced glare but were nonetheless sharp. It was nice tech and I hoped I lived long enough to steal it for the DMS. Junie could probably find a use for it, too, maybe for firefighters battling California forest blazes.
I removed the sound suppressor from my gun, ignored the elevator as a damn death trap, and started down the stairs. I had an unnerving flashback to my college days, when a comparative lit teacher had us read Dante’s Inferno. As the narrator passes through the gates of hell he sees an inscription:
LASCIATE OGNI SPERANZA, VOI CH’ENTRATE
It amused me at the time, but absolutely chilled me now to reflect on the translation: Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED THIRTY-EIGHT
Top Sims moved through the night like a murderous specter from some old folktale. That’s how Tracy Cole saw it.
There were a lot of truckers out now, using flashlights mounted on rifles or shooting flares into the sky. Echo Team cycled its Scout glasses to compensate for the flashes of light and instead of being blinded, used them to pick their targets. Tate and Bunny were down among the trucks now, wiring everything with nasty items from the Toybox. Duffy was the finger of God, flicking people off the planet one bullet at a time. Cole had taken two of the militiamen out so far, both with double-taps from her Glock. She preferred handguns for night fighting.
Top went another direction, using stealth and speed to bring him close and personal, and then he used vicious kicks and a bayonet to drop and kill. He never used a wide variety of techniques; instead, like most expert fighters, relied on a few simple moves over which he had great mastery. No one saw him coming, and he killed them. It was unadorned and frank, devoid of emotion or complication. It was strange to see it, because she knew that emotional fires had to be burning in Top’s head and heart. He was a passionate man beneath all that control. Maybe that was why he never hesitated and showed no mercy at all. There was too much at stake.
They moved through the nightmare landscape of volcanic rock, twisted shrubs, and brutal death.
Bunny and Tate reached the truck that they’d followed here. Only three of the truckers were still using it to fire on the wrecked SUV. Those men were intent on their work and did not see the two hulking figures that came up behind them. They did not even hear the silenced shots that killed them.
“Open the truck,” ordered Bunny, and when they’d swung back the doors they found crates of parts identical to what had been found at Pushkin. The truck was only a quarter full, though.
“There’s not enough stuff here,” said Tate. “Shit. I think they have most of the parts already.”
“Yeah, damn it,” growled Bunny, and he called it in. There was no answer from Captain Ledger. “He must have gone down to find Valen,” he said to Tate.
“Want me to blow this stuff up?”
“No. Rig it so it blows up whoever comes looking for it. Then we’ll go set up a playground between here and the shed.”
Tate nodded and set to work. He heard footsteps and a man call out in inquiry, but didn’t turn to see what was happening because there was a sudden muffled cry of pain that ended in a wet gurgle.
“Work fast,” murmured Bunny as he lowered a dead man to the ground.
“Jesus, man, I’m working as fast as I can.”
Tate cut a look behind him in time to see Bunny fire three shots with a silenced pistol. A running man suddenly lost all coordination and fell badly. Bunny put a foot on his throat and shot him once more in the head.
“Work faster.”
“Christ,” murmured Smith, “they’re coming out of everywhere. How many of them are there? I thought there was supposed to be like… forty, tops.”
Duffy looked up from his scope at the shadowy figures swarming across the landscape. He stopped counting at sixty.
“No National Guard,” said Smith. “No backup coming at all.”
The two men looked at each other, and some truth passed between them. An understanding of the reality of this mission.
“Then we take as many of them with us as we can,” said Duffy. “We buy the captain enough time.”
Smith licked his lips and he could feel something within him change. It was something he’d read about and heard about from other soldiers. When you think you are going to make it out of a fight, you cling to the hope of survival, and sometimes that keeps you alive, and sometimes it shines a light by which the bad guys can take aim. But if hope dies in you because you know — without a shred of doubt — that you aren’t going to walk off the playing field, then you become a different person. It is no longer about winning in order to go home. The fight becomes a hunt, where all that matters is clearing as many of the enemies off the board as you can so you can be laid to rest on a mountain of their corpses. It was old thinking, maybe going back to the Vikings or the Romans or the Celts or whomever. It was the battle madness they used to write about in old epics.