Mac knelt and raised an AT-4 to firing position on his shoulder. “Backblast clear!” he yelled, waited two seconds even as the clawed bucket rose up over his head, then fired, aiming for one of the treads. Flame blossomed behind Mac as the 84-millimeter HEAT (high-explosive antitank) round hit the backhoe’s left tread and blew it apart. Mac dumped the empty tube and dove out of the way as the shovel crushed the rear of the golf cart.
“Back up! Back up!” Moms ordered, seeing what Mac had done.
Mac grabbed Kirk, who’d had several ribs broken from the blow that had knocked him flying, dragging him back, and Kirk kept a firm grip on the AT-4 he’d retrieved.
The machine kept coming forward. It pulled along the tread until reaching the break, and then the road wheels continued pushing it off. The backhoe slewed to the left as the intact tread still had traction.
The machine halted for a moment, as if the Firefly were considering the situation.
Mac let go of Kirk and grabbed his AT-4. He fired, breaking the other tread.
“All right,” Moms said. “We’ve got a stationary—” She paused as the arm reached forward, extending to the end of its length, dug down into the ground, and then pulled back, lurching the rest of the backhoe forward toward the team.
“They never go easy,” Nada muttered.
“Javelin,” Moms ordered.
Mac aimed the designator and pressed the fire button. Behind them, the Javelin roared to life, shot up into the air, arced over their heads, and came straight down into the engine of the backhoe. The explosion reverberated the team back with a shock wave.
For several seconds there was an echoing silence. Doc ran over to Kirk, who was trying to stand up, but unable, the pain from his broken ribs excruciating.
“Shit,” Nada muttered as the backhoe’s arm began to move, eerily silent, no engine power, but the Firefly somehow providing power to the machine the same way it kept animals that were dead moving.
Roland slammed home another hundred-round belt of ammunition into his machine gun and Nada kept pumping out forty-millimeter rounds, taking bits and pieces off the edges, but doing little real damage.
“Nada,” Mac said. “The hydraulic lines to the bucket, along the arm.”
“Got it,” Nada said, understanding what Mac wanted.
Lowering the M-203 and tucking his MP-5 to his shoulder, Nada fired single round after single round with the precision of a surgeon. The nine-millimeter bullets cut into the lines, hydraulic fluid spraying out. Without the pressure, the arm began to slow down and then fell to the ground with a heavy thud.
Another short pause in the battle.
Then the road wheels that supported the track spun furiously, and even without track, they moved the vehicle forward. And even without hydraulic fluid, the arm lifted up in the air and poised to do more smashing.
The backhoe slithered down the trail toward the team and Moms realized it would be on them faster than they could retreat.
“Lion Six. Fire for effect on laser! Danger close. Danger close.”
Mac leveled the laser designator at the backhoe.
The voice of Lion Six came over the net. “Shot over!”
“Shot out,” Moms said as everyone scrambled back for cover, Roland helping Doc haul Kirk back.
“Splash over,” Lion Six warned, indicating Excalibur was five seconds from impact.
“Splash out!” Moms screamed.
Everyone dove, eating dirt.
The Excalibur round hit the center of mass of the backhoe. The blast lifted everyone a few inches off the ground and slammed them back down. Pieces of backhoe and metal shrapnel whistled by. Through it all, Moms was watching. As the smoke cleared, out of the pile of rubble that had been the backhoe, a small golden Firefly arose, and then dissipated.
“Everyone all right?” Moms asked as she got to her feet.
“Kirk’s got a couple of broken ribs,” Doc reported from where he was checking the wounded man’s chest, “but otherwise he’s okay.” He pushed a syringe into Kirk’s arm. “That will help with the pain.”
“Got an itsy bit of shrapnel,” Mac said. “Only hurts when I frown, so I’ll keep smiling.”
Moms and Nada ran over to him, kneeling at his side. Mac was seated with his back against an uprooted tree.
“Doc!”
Doc raced over. A piece of backhoe had slashed through Mac’s body armor and cut a furrow along his left side. Blood was freely flowing.
Doc reached into one of the front pockets on his combat vest and pulled out what appeared to be a shaving can painted blood red. It had two nozzles side by side. He pointed it at the wound and sprayed, the two streams meshing just before reaching the gash. One stream was fibrinogen and the other thrombin, forming an instant bandage with 85 percent more efficient blood-clotting abilities than any other coagulant. Ms. Jones made sure the Nightstalkers got the latest gear, especially stuff that would keep them alive.
Moms ran over to Kirk. “Get me the Support freq.”
Kirk was ahead of her, no longer feeling any pain, focused on the mission.
“Support Six, this is Nightstalker Six. I need a priority one medevac. Over.”
“Shucks,” Mac said on the team net, “this is just a scratch. No need for a priority one.”
“Medevac en route. ETA six minutes. Over.”
“We’ll mark the LZ with IR strobe. It’s on the edge of the golf course. Out.”
The team was gathered around Mac.
“We can move him?” she asked Doc.
His hands were crimson. “Yes. It’s mostly controlled. But we need to move fast. He’s lost a lot of blood.”
Moms was about to issue an order when Roland simply reached down, lifted Mac gently in his arms, and then began running back toward the golf course.
“Nada, you secure this until Cleaner arrives.” She shook her head. “Call him in, okay?”
Nada was steady as a rock. “I got it.”
Moms ran after Roland and Mac.
“This is a bit more than a girl’s bathroom and a cleaning iron,” Cleaner said, surveying the damage.
“Yeah, I know,” Nada said.
Cleaner walked forward on his carbon-fiber prostheses. He’d lost both legs just below the knees on a Nightstalker mission years ago.
“How’s Mac?”
“They got him to Womack at Bragg,” Nada said. “He’s going to be fine. Probably just have a nice scar.”
“We all have nice scars,” Cleaner said as he walked around the crumpled remains of the backhoe. “All right. I’ll bring in some heavy equipment, get the trees cleared out, plow down the damage. Announce we’re renovating this part of the golf course. It’s weak, but what are they gonna do? Sue us?”
CHAPTER 20
Back in the house, Doc was tending to the minor scrapes and bruises everyone had accumulated during the Fun on the Golf Course. Eagle had over-watch. Roland was at the dining room table, cleaning the stack of weapons from the previous night’s activities. It turned out that sometime during the battle, a huge chunk of the machine had landed on Roland’s foot, but his steel-toed boot combined with the churned-up dirt had saved him from any significant damage. So, of course, Doc was giving him a lecture on foot fungus, which he’d discovered while checking it. It seemed Roland had fungus in abundance.
“That would be two Purple Hearts,” Doc said to Kirk. “You keep it up, you’re going to get one posthumously.”
“Technically, according to regs,” Nada said, “since we’re on the same op, it would still be one Purple Heart.”
“We don’t do medals,” Moms said, wiping sweat and dirt off her forehead with a formerly pristine white towel in the bathroom off the kitchen, then wrapping it around her neck to absorb the sweat that was still flowing despite the air conditioning. She slumped down in an armchair, promptly staining it with forest, golf course, and backhoe detritus. Nada walked over and knelt next to her. “You all right?”