Luckily the mercenaries had not seemed to care about the unmanned surveillance drones Ross had brought with him. Neither had they been able to jam darknet radio communications. Ultrawideband was proving quite resilient. But then, the mercenaries appeared more interested in killing everyone than jamming their radios.
The chattering of gunfire punctuated by the louder cracks of hunting rifles filled the air. Ross leaned out from behind a masonry support pillar, looking both ways down Greeley’s empty Main Street.
It was littered with broken glass, debris. A burning car stood in the middle of the road at the end of the block. Bullet holes had chipped the concrete and bricks, and several of the buildings on Main Street were already burning from rocket and missile attacks. Beyond that was a wall of roiling black smoke and flames. Burning houses. Every few moments he heard another deafening boom, and debris would fly hundreds of feet into the air.
They were destroying the town block by block.
Ross looked to the center of the road where a fenced green with a World War II memorial and benches stood. The street ran around it to either side. The memorial was a tall granite obelisk with a thick square base about the width and height of a man and was flanked by defunct cannons plugged with concrete.
Ross could see OohRah and Hank_19’s call-outs behind it. He clicked on their call-outs and spoke into the comm channel. “Hank! You guys need me?”
OohRah’s call-out flashed as he replied.
[OohRah]: “We could use another set of eyes behind us. Come on over. Move quick and stay low. We’ve been sniped.”
Ross took another glance and ran to the center of the street at a crouch. He hopped the low iron fence at the edge of the green, and dove behind the monument, using the smaller Vietnam memorial nearby to provide cover from the opposite direction.
Hank and the sheriff nodded to him.
Ross brought his AK-47 to bear, watching their flank. “Where are they?”
The sheriff was pushing rounds into a spare clip while Hank kept watch down Main Street. “Pick a direction and start walking. You’ll find ’em soon enough.”
Fossen nodded. “Crazed gang members to the east, professional military to the west.”
“Or so the costumes tell us. . . .”
Ross examined the memorial stone. “This should be good cover.”
The sheriff shook his head. “Not from a grenade it won’t be. We can’t let them get close in.”
Another ear-stabbing boom sounded from the east end of town. “What the hell are they doing?” Ross brought up a D-Space video panel that showed an overhead view from a surveillance drone. He could clearly see the line of advance and the wasteland the private contractors were leaving behind them.
The sheriff ground his teeth. “They’re tossing demo charges into houses. Shooting flamethrowers into cellar windows. Burning everything.”
Ross could clearly see it when viewed from above. Then the drone flew into a cloud of smoke and the image was lost. He nodded behind him. “What happens when they reach the middle school? There must be six hundred people in there.”
The sheriff peered through his M16 scope over the rim of the memorial. “We’ll either have to stop them from reaching it or die trying. Everyone else is digging in, too.”
Hank_19 kneeled down and nodded grimly to Ross. “My wife and daughter are in there. I don’t care about losing the farm. You can always rebuild buildings, but . . .”
Ross tapped him. “If you need to go back and be with them, I’ll understand.” Ross looked to the sheriff.
The sheriff nodded.
Fossen shook his head. “No. If we just hold out, we might still have a chance. Look at the darknet feeds. My daughter says they’re going haywire. These attacks here in the Midwest are a threat to the whole network. I’ll bet no single thing has ever been upvoted this high.” He looked to Ross. “The world is watching what happens here.”
The sheriff shrugged. “So what? So what if everyone cares? What does that do for us? The situation we’re in isn’t going to be solved by angry posts and best fucking wishes. Public outrage has never stopped these bastards.”
Fossen looked determined. “Jon, we’re just second-level. What can a twelfth-level Rogue do that could help us?”
Jon cleared his throat. “I can get into and out of places and networks without being detected, but in this type of situation . . .”
There was suddenly a deafening explosion that broke the last of the windows along Main Street.
They all ducked down, but peered over the rim of the memorial to watch the far end of the street. An M1117 armored vehicle flanked by twenty or thirty well-equipped soldiers on foot suddenly rounded the corner. The ASV swiveled its top turret and fired grenades into the upper-story windows. The walls and windows erupted with flames and flying debris.
A camera crew in helmets and body armor rounded the corner as well, filming the action as soldiers fired grenade launchers into the doors of shops on either side and raced through the openings while their comrades raked the walls and streets with gunfire.
Tracer bullets whined past and Ross and the others ducked down as stone fragments rained down on them. Metal whined into the sky.
“Jesus Christ!”
“I see the propaganda unit is here to film our saviors in action.”
Fossen crawled on his belly to look down the side street. “They’re coming down the next block, too.”
There were more explosions in the buildings down the street. Ross snuck a quick glance to see the ASV turret and its coaxial machine gun focused in their direction. The rest of the soldiers were nowhere in sight.
The sheriff stuffed newly reloaded clips into pouches on his web harness. “These fuckers seem to know what they’re doing. They’re following the number-one rule of street fighting.”
“What’s that?”
“Stay out of the goddamned street. They’re blasting through walls and destroying the buildings behind them as they go.”
Suddenly the ASV rolled forward, firing indiscriminately. Then a colossally loud explosion echoed across the town and they could hear masonry walls collapsing and wood snapping as a whole building avalanched into the street. The ASV’s diesel engine was still advancing.
The sheriff clenched his gloved fist. “Fuck it. We’ve got to do something. We can’t just lay here.”
Ross could now see more troops coming in from the next block as he stole a glance over the Vietnam memorial Fossen was hiding behind. “Heads down, Hank. About twenty more and an ASV on that side.”
“Time to fight.” The sheriff crawled over toward Fossen. “Let’s hit the second group while they cross the street.” He took a breath. “Ready?”
Ross nodded.
Fossen nodded as well.
“On three. Two. One . . .”
They leaned around and over the edges of the solid-rock memorial and opened fire at a squad of mercenaries running across the street about a hundred meters away.
Ross fired his AK in semi-auto mode trying to focus on a line of men dressed in black body armor and tactical gear. The soldiers immediately scattered and hit the deck. At over a football field away, it was hard to tell if any of them got hit or just dove for cover.
But moments after they opened fire, the turret of the ASV escorting them swiveled in their direction and opened up with a .50-caliber machine gun.
All three of them ducked down and hugged the ground as powerful, high-velocity rounds slammed into the back of the stone memorial, eating away at the far side. Ross felt the sting of stone chips like needles on his exposed skin.
Then loud explosions erupted on the far side of the larger, World War II memorial next to them—grenades impacting with deafening concussion. Then stopped just as abruptly.