The Battle_No Sanctuary Page 3

  A shout from up ahead was instantly followed by a scream of agony as Linda squeezed her trigger, sending a 3-round burst into the upper torso and head of a man standing in front of her. Frank continued moving to Linda’s left, firing several times at a second man who had been near the first before finally dropping him. The pair had been standing in front of a portable mortar resting on the ground, with dozens of spare shells scattered about on the ground. Linda turned and looked down the length of the series of concrete planters they were behind, seeing another half-dozen portable mortars set up, one behind each of the concrete boxes.

  “Looks clear down that way,” Frank said, taking a few cautious steps out from the planter as he looked down his scope, trying to make sure that there weren’t any other enemies hiding the way he was looking.

  “Clear this way, too.” Linda lowered her rifle slightly and looked down at the tube and mortar shells on the ground. “Must have just been these two running back and forth between the tubes.”

  “Okay, so now what?”

  “We destroy them so they can’t use them again.”

  “Uh, quick question.”

  “What?”

  “Why don’t we lob a few shells at the buildings here? Angle them down enough to go through the windows and hey presto, take some of these guys out.”

  Linda stopped and thought for a moment, trying to recall her basic training on the small, 1-man portable mortars from her time in the Marines. With propellant contained in the bottom of each shell, dropping a mortar into the launch tube would ignite the propellant and send the shell on a high-arcing, relatively slow trajectory. The mortars in use by the attackers didn’t appear to be adjustable to low enough trajectories to fire directly into the sides of the buildings, but Linda couldn’t think of any reason why they couldn’t make it happen anyway.

  “Yeah. Yeah, okay, that’s not a half-bad idea.” She looked up and down the row of concrete planters and pointed off to the left. “Go grab all of the tubes and bring them back here. I’ll get one rigged up so that we can destroy them all after we fire off a few shells into the buildings.”

  Over the next several minutes, Frank retrieved the other five tubes and as many shells as he could carry, all while silently praying that he wouldn’t drop one in a way that could set it off. While he was busy with that, Linda rigged one of the tubes to fire directly up into the air and gathered all of the mortar tubes and shells into a cluster around it. She then rigged the other five tubes to fire in low arcs, angling them so that the shells would impact at various spots in the buildings.

  “All right, Frank, pay attention.” Linda waved for him to join her and they squatted together behind the square planter. “Get on one knee, drop a shell down into each of the tubes that are aimed at the buildings. As soon as you drop it, duck down next to the tube and do not get anywhere near the front or top of it, got it?”

  “Got it. I assume this one’s for destroying everything once we’re done?” Frank pointed at the sixth tube which was pointed directly up into the air

  “Yep. Let’s put two shells through each tube pointed at the buildings and then I’ll drop one into this tube. We’ll only have a few seconds to get away before it comes back down, but when it does it should set the whole thing off and destroy all of their mortar equipment. That’ll be the signal for the counterattack. I just hope Jackson’s paying enough attention to see it when it goes off.”

  Frank nervously picked up a shell and held it atop one of the tubes before dropping it down. He barely remembered to duck down, and as he did he felt a whoosh of air and heard a light ka-thunk as the shell was ejected out. Instead of the long, trailing, whistling arc of the mortars that had been fired at the city, though, there was almost no delay before a large explosion sounded, coming from the buildings directly next to them. Glass, plaster and metal sprayed outward and Frank scrambled to get behind the planter. Two more shells went off simultaneously as Linda dropped them in, and two more explosions quickly followed.

  Emboldened by the success of his first drop, Frank quickly chewed through several more shells, dropping a total of eight across three of the tubes before a smattering of gunfire ricocheted across the ground, sending him diving for cover yet again. “I think they’re onto us!” Frank shouted at Linda as she let loose one final shell which was followed by both an explosion and more gunfire.

  “You think?!” Linda pointed at Frank’s pack as she scooped up her pack and rifle. “Get ready to go!” Frank grabbed his rifle and pack, quickly securing it on his back, and nodded at her.

  “Ready!”

  She glanced around, making sure that the coast behind them was still clear, and pointed out at the next set of buildings a good fifty feet away. “We’ve got to make it across there and hope they don’t hit us along the way!” Frank groaned, but nodded, and readied himself as Linda held a shell at the top of the tube. She shouted as she dropped it, yelling at him to “go!” and they both took off at a sprint as the muffled ka-thunk echoed behind them.

  Linda ignored the chatter of bullets hitting the ground around her and Frank, focusing solely on running as fast and as far as she could. While firing the round directly up into the air would, in theory, mean it would come straight back down, she knew perfectly well that there were enough variables involved that it could deviate enough to potentially hit them. A slight miscalculation in the angle of the tube, a gust of wind or an imperfect propellant charge on the shell could cause such a mishap, or potentially lead to the cache of mortars being left undestroyed.

  Fortunately, however, not everything went wrong in what felt like the first time in quite a while. The whistle of the returning shell screamed out behind Linda and Frank, and they ran around the corner of the next building down just as it impacted with the outer edge of the pile of tubes and shells. A massive explosion rocked the courtyard between the buildings, shattering what few windows were still intact and catching anyone standing in the open with a blast of wind and heat. Frank wanted to peek back out to see what the damage looked like but Linda pulled on his backpack, urging him onward.

  “No time for gawking. Let’s keep going. We need to get away from that area before our troops swarm it and kill every living thing in the area. Plus, we’ve got someone to hunt down.”

  ***

  Far behind Frank and Linda, across the bridge inside a half-destroyed command center, Jackson stood next to Sarah’s cot, watching over her while listening to field reports streaming in over the radio. The mortars had stopped firing a short time after Linda and Frank had crossed over the bridge, allowing the troops inside the city to regroup and intensify their counterattack. Jackson continued to hold off on sending them across the river until he got some sort of signal that the mortars were down. The signal—in the form of a massive explosion behind the buildings—was all that he needed. Orders went out and troops loaded up into the few remaining intact vehicles they had, as well as on foot. Squads moved up in stages, keeping suppressive fire on the buildings while others crossed the bridge, until there were enough men on the northern side of the river that they could finally begin clearing the buildings that held the attackers.

  Jackson stayed in the city, helping to coordinate the assault, all while watching over Sarah, ensuring that any change in her condition was instantly addressed by the medics in the command center. The attack on the city may have been pushed back, but there was far more to the battle than a gunfight.

  Chapter 4

  Frank sighed and shook his head as he jogged along next to Linda. It had been two hours since they left the chaos of battle behind, though they could still hear the occasional explosion and sound of heavy weapons fire. Thick, acrid smoke drifted through the air, blotting out the sky and making it impossible to tell what time it was. The streets were quiet apart from the battle raging off to the south, and while Linda had initially been hopeful about their ability to find Omar’s location, she was starting to feel more than a few doubts.

  She had assumed that on
ce the mortars were taken care of, she and Frank would be able to take the Humvee and continue north in search of Omar’s location. The gunfire from the buildings had prevented them from taking the vehicle, though, and they ended up having to go on foot instead. Linda’s optimism hadn’t wavered at the start of their journey, expecting that they could pick up some sort of hint of Omar’s location from clues left behind by the attackers as they had made their way south to their emplacements in the buildings.

  Block after block revealed nothing, though, and as Linda grew more discouraged, Frank’s upbeat attitude began to grate on her. He was surprisingly positive, asking questions about Omar and his past that seemed wholly irrelevant to the situation at hand. She bit her tongue, though, until they were sitting down inside a small bookstore on the corner of an intersection taking a breather and getting a bite to eat.

  “Any idea what his—”

  “Frank.” Linda’s reply was wrapped in frustration and weariness.

  “What?”

  “Enough. Okay? Enough with the questions. None of this matters for finding Omar. Nothing about his parents or his history or his living arrangements or what kind of shirts he likes to wear will matter in the slightest when it comes to actually finding him.” She caught herself raising her voice at him and sighed before reaching out to pat him on the arm. “Sorry. I’m just frustrated by all of this.”

  “No kidding.” Frank smiled and passed her a canteen filled with water. “We’ll find him, though. It’s a big city, but we’ll find him.”

  “How is it you’re so certain?”

  “I dunno. I just get the feeling we’ll run into him sooner rather than later.”

  She shifted in her seat to face him, crossing her legs and putting on an expression of curiosity. “All right, Frank. You’ve been asking me non-stop questions. Why don’t you answer one for me? Where do you think we should look to find him?”

  “Well,” he furrowed his brow, “it seems to me that you’ve been thinking he would be close to the action. Right in the thick of it. But I don’t necessarily think that’s true.”

  “And why not?”

  “He’s been very involved in all of this mess from the start, but how many times has he actually been in the middle of it when there’s been a risk of him being caught?”

  “Hm?” Linda cocked her head to the side, not seeing what Frank was meaning.

  “Okay, so like, he created that virus that killed a bunch of people. But he didn’t personally deliver any of it. He worked to get the nukes into the country, but he never planted them in the cities.”

  “That we know of.”

  “That we know of, yes. But you see what I’m getting at? It seems like he’s been directing all of this from backstage. He’s letting his minions do the dirty work while he sits back and bides his time for… something.”

  “For what?”

  “That’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it?”

  Linda sighed, growing frustrated. “I don’t see what this has to do with figuring out where he is.”

  “It wouldn’t make sense for him to be anywhere close to the attacks on the survivor city. He’s got to be somewhere to the north. Heck, even Sarah said something along those lines.”

  “So where do we look for him, then? We’re a couple hours north of the fighting and there hasn’t been any sign of anyone around here. It’s just abandoned building after abandoned building.”

  Frank looked out through the window of the store and nodded. “That’s our problem. We need to get some perspective on the situation.” He stood up and headed out the front door, with Linda hot on his tail.

  “Perspective? What are you, a philosophy major or something now?”

  “No, you—how is it you’re a Marine Raider when I’m the one to realize that we need to get to high ground?”

  In a flash, Linda knew what Frank’s ramblings all meant. With the tall buildings all around them, they had a limited view from which to see signs of Omar’s men coming and going. For all she knew, they could be walking by a block or two away and she wouldn’t know it if they were on foot. Searching for evidence of their passage could take days or longer on foot, but if they got to an elevated position, they’d be able to see anything out of the ordinary.

  “Up there.” Linda pointed to a tall, twenty-story hotel that was the highest point in the area. “If we get up there we should be able to see anything unusual in the area.”

  Frank grinned and slapped Linda on the back. “Good idea. Let’s get moving.”

  ***

  Half an hour later, Frank held his side as he wheezed for breath. A large ‘15’ was painted on the wall in front of him, and half a floor up Linda leaned over the railing to look down. “You okay there, Frank?” Her face was red and her limp had been more pronounced while walking up the stairs, but she wore a smile that irritated Frank more than he wanted to admit.

  “Oh, yeah,” he panted, “doing just fine. Never better. Not annoyed at all to be outpaced by someone with a leg injury.”

  “Well hurry it up, would you? Just a few more floors to go and then we can take a breather.”

  “You know what?” He struggled to talk as he kept moving, taking the stairs one by one in a plodding, methodical fashion. “I think you’re taking this whole ‘perspective’ thing too seriously. Why couldn’t we just look for signs of him from the tenth floor?”

  “The roof’s better. Now quit talking and hurry up!”

  Frank groaned and shook his head but kept going, somehow overcoming the burning pain in his legs that made them feel like they were about to catch fire and shatter into a million pieces. Several minutes later, as he neared the top of the building, he heard a metallic thud and a bright beam of light cut through the dark shaft. The sound and light spurred him on and he reached the final floor just as Linda finished ascending to the roof via a ladder. Frank shut off the flashlight that he had been using and followed her up, glad that the access to the roof was large enough to accommodate him while he was wearing his backpack.

  Up on the roof, Linda was already heading toward the edge when she glanced back and gave Frank a wave. “Take a look over there.” She pointed to the opposite side of the building. “Look for anything suspicious.” With Linda heading to the east side of the building and Frank to the west, they began scanning the streets and buildings, looking for signs of life in what had—from the ground—looked like a dead city.

  Frank leaned up against a tall air conditioning vent as he scanned the city, trying to give his aching legs a rest. The cloud cover from the fires was clearer where the pair had stopped, but the air was still thick with the smell of smoke. Light—he still couldn’t tell whether it was morning, afternoon or evening—shone through the soot and dust in the air, casting rays onto the ground that moved and vanished and reappeared at the whim of the breeze.

  He looked back at Linda and called out softly, not wanting to be heard by anyone who might be nearby on the streets below. “Hey. What should we be looking for?”

  “This was your idea, remember?”

  “Yeah, yeah. What are we looking for?”

  “Anything out of the ordinary.”

  Frank rolled his eyes as he turned back to look out at the city, muttering under his breath. “Out of the ordinary, she says. Sure. That’s just incredibly helpful.”

  Visibility across the city was low, but the most defining characteristic of it was a complete lack of movement. No cars or people roamed the streets, and even the firefights carrying on to the south were far enough away that they were nigh-on impossible to see. He scanned out to the west, where the city gradually turned into apartments and then condos and then homes with yards. All of the people living in them were no doubt to the south, wondering what was going to happen to them, and whether or not they would survive the fight.

  “Frank, here. Now.” Linda’s voice was low, too, but had a sense of urgency about it. He took one final look out to the west before turning and walking over to her. H
is legs felt like rubber and every step was excruciatingly painful.

  “I really wish I had worked out more before all of this.”

  Ignoring his groans, Linda pointed out to the northeast. “Look out there. Notice anything?”

  Frank followed the path of her finger, starting close and gradually looking farther and farther until he spotted what she was talking about half a mile away. “Is that a light?”

  “Sure as hell looks like it, doesn’t it? I saw it a minute ago, bouncing and bobbing all around. I think it’s coming from inside that building and somebody doesn’t realize they’re giving us a light show.”

  “It’s not far. You think it’s him?”

  Linda looked back to the south then swept her gaze back to the northeast where the light was located. “It’s far enough away from the action to keep him safe but close enough that he can be involved.” She looked at Frank and nodded. “I think it’s him.”

  “Huh. I guess we’re heading out, then.” He turned and took a step, then groaned again and reached out for her hand. “If my spaghetti legs can make it.”

  Linda snorted in amusement and took his arm around her shoulders. “You know, it’s a good thing you’re halfway smart. Otherwise you’d be useless right about now.”

  Chapter 5

  Anticipation. The word didn’t seem strong enough to describe the feelings coursing through Frank’s entire body, and he could feel himself shaking. Each new building they passed through, each new corner they turned and each new step they took toward the place where they thought Omar might be brought greater and greater feelings of nervousness, fear and excitement. His legs, though they were still sore and felt detached from his body, were no longer of concern to him as he carefully followed behind Linda.

  She had set an aggressive pace from the get-go, going first and taking the stairs down through the building two at a time and slamming into the walls as she rounded each flight, not bothering to even slow down. Frank had tried to keep up but ended up stumbling out of the front entrance to the building to find her standing across the street, crouched low and waiting for him with an annoyed expression on her face.