The sheriff crawled to the far side of the green, pulling a metal canister from this harness. “Far side of the street! Behind the bank columns!”
Hundreds of rounds of small-arms fire raked their position in addition to .50-caliber bullets.
The sheriff shouted over the roar. “When I pop the smoke, give it a few moments, then . . .” He jabbed his thumb toward the bank. He pulled the pin and tossed the canister over the fence halfway between both enemy forces. After a few moments, billowing clouds of white smoke began to rise—immediately raising hails of gunfire that whipped the air above them.
The sheriff led the way, rolling over the low, cosmetic fence around the green. Ross and Fossen did likewise, and followed as the sheriff half-slid and half-crawled toward the steps of the bank across the street.
They were halfway across when they heard grenades exploding among the monuments where they’d just been. Ross could see another one arching in from down the street, blasting the obelisk and toppling it. Machine-gun fire still zipped and sizzled through the air overhead, and then Fossen shouted and toppled onto the asphalt.
Both Ross and the sherriff went back and grabbed him under the armpits, leaving behind his rifle and his HUD glasses as they dragged him to relative safety behind the pillars of the bank building.
Ross reloaded his AK-47 as he stood behind a pillar.
The sheriff reloaded as well. He just shook his head and shouted over the deafening thunder in the street. “They’ve got too much firepower!” He eyed the stone walls and heavy wood door behind them. “I don’t think we’re getting out of this corner!”
“I don’t think they saw us pull back.” Ross looked down at Fossen, who was lying against the back wall, trying to sit up. A pool of blood was expanding around him.
“Damnit!” The sheriff crawled over to Fossen and put down his gun. “Hank, let me see where you’re hit!”
Fossen shook his head. “I’m in trouble, Dave. My guts are on fire.”
A bullet impacted the wall three feet to the right of him and ricocheted around the vestibule.
Fossen didn’t even flinch. “Get back to the school. Look out for Lynn and Jenna.”
The sheriff took off his HUD glasses, too, and looked into Fossen’s eyes. “We’re gonna stay right here. We’re on our own goal line, Hank. You hear me? No room to lose ground.” The sheriff grabbed Hank, and for the first time Ross noticed the dark cloth of the sheriff’s shirt was stained with blood as well.
The sheriff held on to Fossen, stopping him from sliding down the wall. “You remember, when we were kids? You remember the heat lightning? And the creek?”
Fossen nodded weakly.
There was another deafening explosion outside and the sound of shattering glass.
Fossen looked up. “Bury me next to my dad, okay, Dave? And you look out for my girls, okay . . . ?” And then his head slumped and the sheriff held him tightly, sobbing.
Ross still stood with his back to a pillar. Outside he could hear the ASVs moving down the street, troops blasting apart nearby buildings.
The sheriff let his best friend’s body slide to the floor. He left his HUD glasses as he stood with some difficulty. Then he picked up the M16 and came up behind one of the pillars.
“I’m sorry about Hank, Sheriff.”
He just shook his head and wiped his nose on his sleeve.
“Let me see your wound.”
“Fuck it. That’s not gonna be what kills me today.”
“If we’re going to try and stop them from reaching the school, then it’s pretty much now or never.”
The sheriff nodded and looked at Ross.
They nodded to each other, and then suddenly Ross saw a very strange series of D-Space alerts running through his HUD listing—all highest priority. They indicated the launch of a number of different processes he’d never heard of, but one of which caught his eye: Burning Man Instantiated.
“Wait a minute. . . .”
The sheriff frowned at him. “What?”
Ross was tracking something moving along Main Street—a D-Space call-out unlike any he’d seen before. It was wreathed in flame and bore the name Burning Man, a two-hundredth-level Champion. Ross had never heard of such a level before.
It was coming their way.
“Get your HUD glasses on, Sheriff. Something’s up.”
He looked like he’d had enough games, but he moved out of Ross’s sight, while Ross tried to peek out into the street.
Ross could see two ASVs in the street, drawing fire from other townspeople in nearby buildings. Just then the building across the way detonated in a massive explosion, sending brick, wood, glass, and clouds of dust out into the street.
But through the dust an avatar approached with a confident walk that seemed familiar. It was headed directly for Ross, walking straight through mercenaries and the hull of an intervening ASV like a ghost and emerging from the other side.
The avatar appeared to be dressed in a tactical operations suit, with a bulletproof helmet and mask as well as body armor. He had twin .45 pistols in combat holsters, but was otherwise unarmed. As the avatar came to the foot of the stairs it turned to Ross and flipped up its faceplate.
Roy Merritt nodded to him and spoke in his familiar even tone. “Everything’s going to be okay, sir. I need you to stay calm and tell me where the bad guys are. . . .”
The Major stood in a command-and-control trailer lined with dozens of LCD screens and control boards. Board operators and drone pilots in headsets sat at each station monitoring every aspect of Operation Prairie Fire from above.
The Argus R-7 surveillance blimps were barely eighty feet long, but they could loiter over a theater of operations for up to two weeks using the solar cells covering their upper surface. One of the aerospace firms in their group had developed it and had sold hundreds to dictatorships in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.
Flying at sixty thousand feet with no telltale contrail, they were all but invisible to the naked eye, and their sensitive long-range cameras could pinpoint and monitor individuals or entire communities, especially when combined with telecommunications and purchasing records. They weren’t invisible to radar or other sensors, but it was the public they were meant to monitor, not military opponents.
On the screens before him, the Argus cameras showed FLIR and color imagery of civilians in darknet communities in several Midwestern states. The forms on-screen were fleeing, fighting, hiding—but in all cases losing as the private military contractors squeezed them ever closer to their final stand.
Standing next to him was the towering South African colonel Andriessen. “Good news from your special unit.”
The Major nodded. “Yes, but they’ve lost their transport.”
Short loud beeps and red lights activated on several control boards.
“And it looks like this will be wrapped up fairly soon as well.”
The Major nodded as the beeping continued to spread along the flight line. Several flight officers pulled off their headsets and started talking urgently with their tech officers. Some LCD screens nearby were no longer showing stable close-up shots of street fighting, but instead showed whirling blurs, then blackness, then blurred lights again.
The Major walked over to a nearby flight officer who was struggling with his controls. “What’s going on? Why have we lost video?”
The officer turned off the alarms and pointed to another screen showing a row of red numbers next to critical measurements. “The temperature readings on our avionics system just red-lined. I think we’ve got a fire onboard.”