Paul and Romo were only part of the side guard. Helicopters and AWACS patrolled the lengthening flank. Drones and bombers waited in the air with Hellfire III missiles. The air assets swooped out of the night sky, bringing vengeance against the Chinese raiders. Various LRSU units, together with Marine Recon and other elite soldiers, formed an early warning line thrown out like a net to catch the elusive Chinese.
The enemy hovertanks acted like ancient Scythians or Great Plains Indians. They raided, using their mobility to flee the strong and their cannons to destroy the weak: in this instance, supply vehicles or supply and fuel dumps.
Paul swayed on his snowmobile, half-asleep from endless days and nights of patrolling. His suit’s heater had been malfunctioning lately, shutting off at the oddest times. He needed to see a tech about it, but hadn’t been back to base for some time.
“To your right,” Romo said, the words reverberating in Paul’s helmet. “We’d better stop,” the former assassin added.
Paul took his hand off the throttle, letting the machine slide to a halt. In the darkness, Romo pulled up beside him.
“Eight-eight-two,” Romo said.
Using the grid coordinates on his HUD, Paul looked there. He moved his jaw, giving him extreme magnification with his binocular vision.
“They look like dots,” Paul said.
“We’ve seen these types of dots before,” Romo said. “The very top seems to have a little hump.”
After a moment, Paul grunted agreement. Romo had good eyes.
“They’re Chinese hovertanks,” Romo said.
Paul kept his head still. If he twitched even the slightest bit, he lost visual due to the distance. “Okay. I’m counting seven of them.”
“Seven,” Romo agreed.
Paul yawned. It lost him the visual, but he didn’t care now. He used the helmet radio, reporting in to SOCOM HQ, AG Washington. He spoke to the air controller on duty and quickly discovered that there weren’t any drones available in their region.
“The hovertanks are moving,” Romo said. “It looks like they’re headed in our direction.”
Paul heard a noise then. He looked up, scanning the star-studded sky. “Hey, what’s that?”
Romo glanced up. A second later, he dove off his snowmobile, landing on his chest in the snow. “It’s Chinese—a chopper! Get down. I think they spotted us.”
Paul didn’t dive. Instead, he jumped off the snowmobile and clumped to the sled. Flipping off the top, he grabbed the last Blowdart launcher.
Machine guns opened up from the enemy helo hovering in the night. Clearly, the Chinese also patrolled along the flank, not like guards but like hungry wolves. Romo was right: they’d been spotted.
Were the helos hunting patrollers? It was crazy bad luck to have this enemy machine here now. Why’s the helo so quiet? We should have heard it way before this. Paul knew the Chinese used ultra-quiet helos to hunt guerillas, with some success.
There was little discreet about the Chinese machine gun. Big, brutal bullets tore into Romo’s snowmobile. The assassin had a sixth sense about these things and moved in time, although just barely. Paul heard the bullets’ metallic screeches. It sounded like a giant throwing punches. Something metal struck his helmet, propelling his head forward. It must have been a glancing hit, though, because he was still alive and his helmet lacked a hole.
Snarling, raising the Blowdart launcher, Paul sighted the helo hovering to his left. Its heavy machine gun blazed, raining bullets at him. In a moment he would be dead from them.
Before the fatal gun-swivel brought those bullets hosing into his body, Paul calmly pulled the trigger. The ejection charge whooshed, launching the missile. Its orange contrail climbed into the sky, doing it fast.
“Get down!” Romo shouted over the radio.
For once, Paul didn’t. He watched. Maybe he was too tired to realize his danger. The missile raced up at the helo, a winter gift for the invaders. The helo pilot must have realized his danger. The machine swerved to the right, and it threw off the gunner. Bullets hammered the ground in front of Paul. He could feel them, the slugs ripping into the frozen sod. It made his nape hairs stand on end. Then the bullets stopped hitting so near, falling elsewhere.
At that moment, the missile struck the helo. Paul heard the Blowdart warhead explode, and it created a spectacular effect. Paul watched with his night-vision visor as a fireball billowed into existence. Metal rained as the helo flipped in a seemingly slow-motion cartwheel, and then it plummeted. Going down, the burning machine shed two Chinese aircrew.
Did they bail out, or were they thrown out by the centrifugal force? Paul had no idea. He knelt in the snow, watching the spectacle. The helo hit the ground with a tremendous smash. It shook Paul so that he swayed, which seemed to wake him up.
“Are you crazy?” Romo shouted. He came running, doing it much too slowly. It was difficult to move quickly in the heavy suits and the assassin was proving it.
Paul blinked dry eyes. He was so freaking tired. He just wanted to sleep. Instead, he stood up.
Romo neared, and he inspected the shot-up, tipped-over snowmobile. “It’s ruined.”
Paul turned back to the distant specks—only they weren’t specks anymore. The hovertanks had covered ground fast. He could clearly see the smaller turret and the short-barreled cannon sticking from it. Had one or more of them seen this little firefight? Yes, of course they had. How could they have missed it in the darkness?
“The hovers are coming,” Paul said.
Romo looked up, and he cursed in Spanish. He rechecked his flipped sled, and he began pulling out Javelin launchers.
“They’re coming for us,” Paul said.
“Si. That means we don’t have much time.”
Paul glanced at his blood brother. Right. They had to fight. He lurched toward him, and he helped Romo cart Javelins to his sled. He piled the extras among his own.
Flipping up his visor, exposing his face to the cold, Paul rubbed his burning eyes. His gloves dribbled snow, which slid down to his throat. Yikes. That was cold. Blinking, he closed the visor and studied the hovertanks. They were coming on fast, seven of them. Seven armored vehicles with cannons and machine guns. It would be David against Goliath out here on the open snow.
“Let’s go,” Paul said. The sleepiness had vanished from his brain. He was wide-awake as his heart pounded in his chest.
He jumped onto the snowmobile and twisted the throttle, listening to the engine whine with power. Romo sat behind him. Paul turned the vehicle and he opened it up. The back treads clattered as they zipped, and they fled across the snow before the approaching hovertanks.
Paul contacted the air controller. “Hey AWACS!” he shouted. “Do you have some kind of air support for us now?”
“No, sorry. I already told you. There’s a big attack going on one hundred miles south of you. You’re on your own for another half hour at least.”
That was just great. Army Group Washington was supposed to have everything the soldiers needed. It looked like that didn’t include the flank guards.
As he and Romo sped across the snow, Paul gave the coordinates of the seven following hovertanks. “If they get us—”
“I’m alerting Supply Company Nine now,” the air controller said.
Paul looked back. The hovertanks were faster than the snowmobile. The mothers were catching up faster than he’d expected.
“Good luck, Kavanagh,” the air controller said.