Dual mini-guns projected from both sides like stabilizers.
The would-be looters were caught by surprise. Rounds of gunfire cut down a score of humans before they could even grab for their weapons. The lookouts fired back at the speeding machines, while the rest scattered for the woods, the snowmachines chasing after them at sixty, maybe seventy miles per hour.
Molly watched in horror as her meticulously planned heist turned into a bloody retreat. “Fucking Snowminators,” she hissed through clenched teeth.
The killer snowmachines were something new—the Resistance had never encountered them before. They expertly dodged the sentries’ bullets. Uranium slugs tore right through the backs of fleeing men and women. Dogs and dogsleds were shredded. Gunfire and screams filled the air. A lucky shot winged one snowmachine, sending it spinning across the beach, but it righted itself and kept on coming. Its guns nailed one of the lookouts fighting back against the unexpected adversaries. A high-powered Barrett rifle was lost in the snow.
It was the fuel run at the pipeline, all over again....
“Watch out!” Tammi shouted. She pointed wildly, even as Sitka and Doc rushed past her, almost catching up with Molly. The pregnant teen unshouldered her M-16. “Here comes one!”
A speeding snowmachine jumped the river, cutting them off from the woods. It turned toward them, its side-mounted weapons swinging into place. A burst from its chain gun caught Tom Jensen in the side. He was dead before he knew it, his shotgun clattering onto the snow-covered rocks. His blood proved even redder than his beard.
Molly was shocked at just how quickly their fortunes had reversed. At this rate, they’d all be dead in minutes. She realized their only chance was the armored railcar itself. The vertical gap looked too narrow for the Terminator to squeeze through.
She jumped onto the piled timbers, and motioned to the others.
“Into the train, pronto!”
Sitka scrambled up after her. Between the two of them, they managed to haul Doc up toward the gap. An eerie red light could be glimpsed through the opening. Molly had no idea what was waiting for them inside the car, but it had to be safer than facing the machine that had just killed Jensen. She shoved her companions through the gap.
“In you go!”
That left only Tammi in the line of fire. Taking shelter within the narrow aperture, Molly saw the young woman crouching behind a pile of fallen railway tracks. One of the Resistance’s own snowmobiles was parked nearby, but Tammi had no way of getting to it. She fired back at the Snowminator as it skied toward her at a frightening speed. The M-16 blared, but scored only glancing blows off the speeding snowmachine. Empty shells spewed from her gun.
More firepower was required.
“Sitka!” Molly barked. “Grenade!”
They had lost a lot of their heavy-duty hardware in the fire, but Molly had brought along a few just for moments like this. Reaching into her overstuffed pockets, Sitka pulled out a M67 fragmentation grenade. She lobbed it at Molly, who yanked the grenade away from the pin. The device had a 4.2 second fuse.
“Tammi! Duck!” Molly let go of the lever and heaved the grenade at the mechanized monster, even as Tammi burrowed for cover beneath her barricade. She threw her hands protectively over her belly. The instinctive gesture, so essentially human, tore at Molly’s heart. “Heads down!”
The snowmachine launched itself off the beach and jumped toward the tracks. The hurling grenade met it in mid-air. The M67 exploded, the blast tearing open the machine’s armored chassis. Flying shrapnel shredded its skis and motor. Jagged metal shards ricocheted off the mangled iron tracks protecting Tammi. Mother and baby would not be joining Roger Muckerheide today.
Molly figured this made up for not speaking at the damn wedding.
“Run!” she hollered over the fading echoes of the explosion. “Before another one gets here!”
Tammi scrambled out from beneath the smoking barricade. She looked startled to be alive. Her rifle slung over her shoulder, she hesitated briefly. Her gaze swung back and forth between the train and the waiting snowmobile
“Forget about us!” Molly ordered. “Save your baby!”
Another Snowminator headed toward them from several yards away. Molly drew her pistol and shot at the machine to draw its fire away from Tammi. The young widow got the message and clambered onto the snowmobile. She took off through a gap in the crumpled train cars, jumping the broken connectors. Molly wished her godspeed. Somebody had to pass on that stupid gown to the next poor bride.
She ducked inside the car, only seconds before a blistering hail of bullets slammed into the wall outside. For the first time ever, Molly was thankful for the uranium train’s heavy armor.
Sitka came up behind her.
“Tammi?”
Molly shrugged. “She’s got a shot.”
“May fate look out for her,” Rathbone murmured. For once, he wasn’t moved to reminisce. “She’s so young....”
But Molly couldn’t worry about Tammi any longer. They weren’t out of this mess yet. Hastily assessing their situation, she realized that the three of them were pinned down inside the derailed train with at least three Snowminators on the warpath outside. The minute they stepped out of the car, the machines would be on them. She could hear the ferocious roar of their engines through the gap in the wall.
There was no way out.
Unless....
She pulled out her PDA and keyed in a special priority code Losenko had given her a couple of days ago. It was a one-time only thing, he had explained, to be used only in case of an extreme emergency. There was also no guarantee that he would be in a position to receive the message. Under the circumstances, it was the longest of long shots.
But what did she have to lose?
She typed in a single, three-letter message.
SOS.
“Cmon, you old Russian warhorse,” she muttered under her breath, while Sitka and Doc looked on. Rathbone had his arm draped over the girl’s shoulders. Molly fired off the plea. “I don’t know where you are right now, but be there when I need you!”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Even nuclear subs needed to go to periscope depth from time to time, to take care of urgent tasks and routine housekeeping. Communications masts needed to be raised in order to send and receive messages from the outside world. Navigation needed to get a fix that would determine the sub’s actual position. Engineering needed to vent the steam generators once in a while. Even excess trash had to be ejected, an unglamorous but essential task which, for technical reasons, was best performed at shallow depths.
For all these reasons, the U.S.S. Wilmington routinely raised its periscope every forty-eight hours or so, assuming there were no enemy machines in the vicinity.
The timing of such episodes was usually left to the captain’s discretion, but Losenko had prevailed upon the sub’s current commander—Captain Lucy Okata—to schedule a visit to the surface at a specific hour. The captain hadn’t asked for a reason, and Losenko had not volunteered one.
He felt a twinge of guilt at having gone behind Ashdown’s back, but his outstanding debt to the people of Alaska was a deeper and more profound obligation. He consulted the ship’s chronometer. By his calculations, it was nearly 11 PM in Alaska. Operation Ravenwing was already in progress. He prayed that Kookesh and her allies had not encountered any unexpected obstacles, but knew that was an unlikely wish.