Nightstalkers

CHAPTER 19

As darkness loomed in the east, Moms, with some trepidation, sent the team out to patrol Senators Club to track down the remaining Fireflies. Nada had laid out the entire facility in a grid pattern and assigned sectors to each element.

She sent Eagle out in the modified golf cart to patrol the golf course, which seemed logical, except instead of clubs in the bags strapped to the rear, he had a variety of weapons, and the cart was actually the shell of a cart layered over the ATV frame and engine.

Mac got to ride on a Segway dressed in a security uniform, and Moms warned him not to take it apart to see how it worked until the mission was over.

Kirk didn’t get to go. His bandaged hand might raise questions, so he got to pull over-watch. He sat amidst the computer monitors and monitored, the grid pattern taped to the bottom of one of them so he knew where each element was going and could track them.

Nada took one of the SUVs to drive about the place and carry some bigger weapons and special gear in case one of the recon personnel made contact. Doc wasn’t exactly the recon sort, plus he told Moms he had work to do.

Moms went with Roland and walked out the front door, because Moms believed the best recon was boots on the ground, even if in this case it was her tennis shoes and Roland’s boots. As the golf cart, Segway, and SUV scattered, they had barely made it to the sidewalk before Scout appeared.

“Well, hey there, Moms and Hulk.”

“That’s not my name,” Roland said.

“Shouldn’t you be doing homework or something?” Moms asked.

“Summer,” Scout once again reminded her. “The overlords have had their repast and are now safely ensconced in their room after their daily quota of wine.”

“You shouldn’t talk about your parents that way,” Roland said.

“Who said they were my parents?” Scout asked. “I never called them my parents. My parents died when I was two in a plane crash and I’ve been passed through six foster homes since then.”

Roland flushed. “I’m sorry.”

Scout laughed. “Got you.”

Roland took a step forward but Moms put an arm across his chest. Not that her arm could physically stop Roland, but her pinky could stop him in gesture. He halted but glared at Scout.

“Do you always do that to people?” Moms asked. “Pull their leg?”

Scout shrugged. “Never.”

Moms shook her head and was about to say something when a big BMW slowed and a window slid down with a rush of cold air floating out.

“Hey, Doctor Carruthers,” Scout said.

“Hey, Greer.” He looked past her at Moms and his eyes settled on Roland. “You all right?”

“Sure.” Scout reached out and took Roland’s meaty paw in her tiny hand. “This is my uncle George from Wichita.”

Carruthers’s eyes immediately glazed over at the mention of a place he’d never been and had no desire to see.

“Uh, hello, sir,” Roland managed to say, resisting the urge to tighten down on Scout’s hand.

“And?” Carruthers asked, shifting his gaze back to Moms and running his eyes up and down her body in its civilian clothes, which caused Roland to take a half step forward while Scout hung on with all her might, a pretty useless attempt, but it was the attempt that brought sanity back to Roland.

“This is my aunt Betty.”

“Hello, Aunt Betty,” Carruthers said. “So you and George are married?”

“No!” both Moms and Roland said at the same time.

“You see,” Scout said, sliding into the exchange smoothly, “Betty is George’s sister. They run a big farm outside of Wichita.”

“A farm.” The way Carruthers said it, you’d think they were running a prison.

“Nice to meet you,” Moms said. “We just love this place. It’s so big and wonderful and so, so,” she searched for more adjectives, “green.”

“You really are from Wichita,” Carruthers said. “Take care.” And with that he powered up the window and drove away, keeping to fifteen miles an hour to take the speed bumps.

“Greer?” Moms asked.

“Everyone here a doctor?” Roland asked.

“Enough are,” Scout said, ignoring Moms’s question, “that I just call everyone doctor. It’s better to err on the side of caution.”

“Like the Acmes,” Roland observed, for the first time agreeing with Scout.

“Isn’t your world full of titles and rank?” Scout asked as Moms started walking down the sidewalk, Roland on one side, Scout on the other.

“The big part is,” Roland said. “The army and the other agencies, but not us.”

“Why not?”

Moms answered. “It’s not good for cohesiveness and team building and trust.”

Scout laughed. “Who sounds like a brochure now? But aren’t you in charge?”

“Of the team,” Moms said as they passed under a streetlamp that flickered on, activated by the dwindling daylight.

“And who is in charge of you?”

“Too many questions,” Moms said as she paused on the corner and looked about. “This way,” she said.

Upstairs, Kirk watched Moms, Roland, and Scout talk off the guy in the BMW. Then he walked down the hall to the master bedroom. He’d heard someone go by a little while ago. The bedroom was empty, but he heard someone in the closet, the one with the watch winder.

Kirk walked in and saw Doc sitting cross-legged on the floor, a pile of papers spread out in front of him along with a cell phone.

“What’s that?”

Doc was startled. “Winslow’s notes. And his phone. The phone is locked, but I bet Mac could break the code.”

Kirk just nodded.

“I’m on your side,” Doc said. “The more we know, the better equipped we’ll be to battle the Fireflies and the Rifts. I want to figure out what Winslow was doing. Compare it with the data from the Can. Maybe we can learn something.”

“I didn’t say nothing,” Kirk said. “And you’re over-explaining. I’ve got to get back to over-watch.” He paused. “How about sending that stuff to Support? Let Ms. Jones take a look at it. Especially the phone.”

Doc stared back at him, then began gathering it all together.

It was a beautiful sunset to the west. Eagle wasn’t distracted by it. He drove the cart on the path that wound along the golf course, scanning left and right.

“Hey!” A florid-faced man was waving his golf club. “Hey, you!”

Eagle turned and rolled up to the foursome gathered around the sixteenth hole. “Yes, sir?”

“What the hell is that back there?” the man jerked a thumb over his shoulder.

“To what are you referring?” Eagle asked, looking in that direction and seeing nothing but a long fairway.

“You need to get that fixed,” the man said. “You people charge an arm and a leg for membership and I expect better than this.”

“Yes, sir.”

Eagle saw another golf cart coming from the other direction, driven by an attractive young woman with blonde hair tucked back underneath her pink golfing cap. She pulled up right next to the hole, short of the most distant ball. “Good evening, gentlemen,” she drawled. “Might I interest y’all in some cocktails?”

Eagle, and whatever was wrong with the course behind them, was immediately forgotten as the four went over to get their drinks and chat up the woman, who was a lot sharper than her fake drawl, as she was watching Eagle and not the men, wondering who he was and what he was doing here.

Support hadn’t taken over every job in Senators Club. The number of people required to keep these people in the lifestyle they were accustomed to strained even the resources of Fort Bragg. Apparently the blonde golf-cart bar-girl wasn’t one Ms. Jones had considered needing replacement.

Eagle got back in his cart, resisting the temptation to flame the golfers with the rig that had replaced the headlight.

He ignored the path and went down the fairway, as this foursome was the last of the day and no one was coming up behind them. The cause of the complaint quickly became apparent as he spotted a dark line cutting across the fairway.

Eagle stopped the cart next to it, but he didn’t have to get out to know what it was — any soldier who’d spent time around either the armor or mechanized infantry recognized the pattern in the torn-up grass: a tracked vehicle had cut across the golf course. A big one.

Eagle looked right. A half-built house was on the edge of the fairway. The bright red netting that was supposed to separate construction from golf course was torn to shreds.

“What happened here?” Golf-cart bar-girl said, pulling up to Eagle. She had lost her accent. “And who are you?”

Now that she was closer, Eagle could see she wasn’t a girl, but a woman, with lines around her eyes and a weariness that said she had not planned on selling drinks to rich good ole boys on a golf course her entire life, but dreams didn’t always come true.

Eagle prepared to launch into his usual “We’re the government” spiel, but decided, Fuck it. “Something bad. Very bad. You don’t want to be around for this.”

“You’re government, aren’t you?” she asked, stealing his spiel.

Eagle nodded.

“Yeah. Lots of new faces, especially in security. Can always tell a soldier. My husband was a Marine.”

“What’s he do now?” Eagle asked as he looked in the other direction, toward where the tracks disappeared into the forest.

“He’s holding down the fort in Section 60 in Arlington. Fallujah.”

Eagle turned from the path of destruction. “I’m sorry. I’ve got quite a few friends there.”

The woman looked at the scars on the side of his face. “I can tell.” She nodded toward the track. “Need any help?”

Eagle shook his head. “I’ll be bringing some friends here to take care of this. Best you stay far away.”

The woman stuck out her hand. “I’m Emily.” She gave a weak smile. “Just call service at the Golf Center if you or your friends need anything.”

He shook her hand. “Eagle.”

Her smile deepened. “For real?”

Eagle shrugged. “We gave up our names when we took this job.”

“Then it must be an important job.” Emily headed back to her cart, but paused and looked over her shoulder. “Don’t lose any more of your friends, okay? I’ll be praying for you.”

“Thank you.”

She drove off toward the clubhouse.

Eagle got back in his cart and headed toward the trees. He paralleled the tracks. According to his handheld GPS, there was nothing this way but forest and the fence surrounding Senators Club. As he passed into the trees, he could hear the sound of a large diesel engine running. He stopped as visibility was halved going into the woods. Since the cart’s headlight didn’t work, having been replaced by a flamer, Eagle reached into one of the bags and pulled out his night-vision goggles and put them on. He proceeded forward with more caution.

Eagle spoke over the team net as he slowed down further, having to drive the cart in one of the ruts to avoid uprooted and splintered trees. He was glad Mac had left the ATV’s suspension in place. “I’ve got a very strong possible. Sixteenth fairway, going southwest into the trees. I’m following.”

Moms replied immediately. “We’re scrambling. What’s the Firefly in?”

“Wait one.” Eagle moved forward at a crawl.

Kirk’s voice came over the net. “One of the Wall probes just went dead.” There was a moment of silence. “Eagle, the one that went out is directly in front of you, fifty meters away.”

“That’s not good,” Doc said over the net.

Eagle swallowed hard. He hit the brake and halted the cart as he saw the perpetrator. “It’s in a backhoe. A big one. Tracked. Long articulated arm with a large shovel on the end. Already torn up the fence and the shovel is reaching out and digging up the ground outside in a trench. It’s moving left to right slowly. Probably searching for the next probe. Tell Mac to load up.”

“We lose four probes,” Doc said, “we lose containment. But how does it know about the probes?”

“We’re on the way,” Moms said.

They all switched to night-vision goggles as the sun’s last rays faded in the west. The two SUVs were parked behind them, and despite actually being on the golf course, they’d left the shirts and shorts behind in favor of camouflage and body armor. They were parked right where the backhoe had plowed into the woods. Eagle’s golf cart was on the trail of destruction heading into the woods.

They’d left Scout on her front porch with firm orders not to leave the house this night. Not for any reason.

For once she got their seriousness and promised.

Roland had his backpack flamer, and everyone had their personnel weapons, with Nada now carrying the M-203 in addition to his MP-5. Given the suspected target, though, Mac was the key man. He’d had one of the SUVs loaded with shaped charges, AT-4 antitank missiles, and an FGM-148 Javelin fire-and-forget missile system. He took a laser designator and handed it to Roland as he transferred other gear over to the golf cart.

“A complete ATV would be better,” he complained as he loaded the cart.

“We use what we have,” Moms said. “You’re the one who modified it in the first place.”

“Yeah,” Mac said, grinning, and Moms realized he’d set her up. “I didn’t have enough time to do it as well as I’d like, especially the suspension, but…”

“Yeah, yeah,” Nada said. “We get it.”

“How far to the target?” Mac asked.

Eagle checked his GPS. “Two hundred and twelve meters from where I last saw it. It’s moving pretty slow, because it’s tearing up the fence and a trench along the outside, searching for the probes.”

“I don’t like that,” Doc said.

“And it’s going east?” Mac asked, focusing on the kill, not the problem.

“Yes.”

Mac turned to Moms. “Do you have Excalibur on call?”

“They airlifted in one gun.” Moms nodded and help up a finger. “Kirk, get me our Eighteenth Field Artillery Support.”

Kirk dialed up the correct frequency on the PRT, then held it in front of Moms so she could read the correct call signs on the backlit screen.

“Lion Six, this is Nightstalker Six, over.”

The reply was immediate. “This is Lion Six, over.”

“We need Excalibur prepared for a fire mission. Let me know when it’s ready. We will send you the code for our designator. Over.”

“Excalibur is already loaded, and we will sync as soon as you give us the authorization code. Over.”

“Do you have our location? Over.”

“Roger. Over.”

“It will be danger close to us when we call it in. Understand? Over.”

“Danger close. Roger, we’ll put it on the dime. Over.”

“Stand by. Out.”

Moms nodded at Kirk and he sent the authorization code.

On the edge of the small open field that was the FOB, a single M777, 155-millimeter howitzer had its barrel aimed toward Senators Club. It had been sling-loaded in by a CH-47 Chinook as part of the Support package Ms. Jones had specified. It had a gun crew of five, and if any of them wondered why they had their big gun loaded in the middle of North Carolina, none of them were talking about it to their battery commander.

It beat being in Afghanistan on a firebase.

The round in the howitzer was the M982 Excalibur, a GPS-guided munitions that could take the location of a lased target and blow the hell out of it. The howitzer had a range of twenty-five miles, so Senators Club was easily in range, along with most of Chapel Hill, Durham, and some of Raleigh. This particular gun crew, during one fire mission supporting a Ranger patrol that had been ambushed in Afghanistan by a much superior Taliban force, had fired twenty-five Excalibur rounds at the targets lased by the Rangers. The targets were eighteen miles away on the other side of a range of mountains. All twenty-five rounds landed within ten meters of the designated targets and over sixty insurgents were killed and the patrol broke the ambush.

In layman’s terms, that meant the Excalibur was a very effective long-range killer and the 155-millimeter round packed a lot of punch.

“Let’s go,” Moms said.

They moved into the woods, Moms in the lead, as always. Behind her, Mac drove the cart with the Javelin, missiles, laser designator, and other tools of the trade. Nada and Eagle were on the right of the wedge, while Kirk and Roland were on the left. Doc was in the center.

They reached where the fence had been. A pile of mangled iron was all that remained of a twenty-meter section. Moms pointed at a hole. “The probe was there. Doc?”

Doc moved forward, Roland and Kirk providing cover, and pulled a probe out of his backpack. He slammed it into the ground and activated it. Kirk checked his PRT. “It’s live, but this thing has taken two more out that way.”

He didn’t need to point as everyone could see the path the tracks had torn along the fence line. The backhoe was dragging its shovel along the ground, taking out a foot of soil, easily uprooting the probes that had been fired into the ground by Eagle from the Snake.

“They ain’t never been this smart before,” Nada said.

“How do they even know about the probe and the Wall?” Doc asked.

Nada paused. “The dog. Skippy. It jumped into the Wall around the house. I thought it was trying to attack me, but maybe it was checking out the Wall?”

“But then how could this Firefly know?” Doc asked. “You flamed that Firefly.”

“Enough speculating,” Moms said. “Mac, prep the Javelin.”

Mac opened up the tripod for the Javelin and set up the weapon system. Not as powerful as the Excalibur in the howitzer miles away, it was an immediate fire-and-forget solution to put some hurt on the opposition if needed. Mac had the control for firing it wired into a remote system strapped to his wrist.

Once the Javelin was ready, they moved along the fence and could hear the engine up ahead and the screech of metal getting mangled. They went down into a stream gulley and climbed out, the earth torn up from the treads of the metal beast that had gone ahead of them easily visible. Everyone froze when the backhoe went silent.

“Wait,” Moms said.

They stood still for several minutes. One of the hardest things for a soldier in a combat situation to do is to wait on the enemy to make a move, for the enemy to make a mistake, even if, as in this case, the enemy was several tons of machinery.

After ten minutes, there was still no indication of movement ahead. Reluctantly, Moms waved the team forward and they moved down the swath of debris, Mac maneuvering the golf cart.

Kirk suddenly paused. “Hold on. Something’s not—”

Headlights sprung alive, close and to the right, blinding them by overloading their night-vision goggles. As they ripped them off, they could hear the roar of the engine powering up as the shovel on the arm came slamming down, narrowly missing Mac, but severing the cart in two. The backhoe was large, over twelve feet high with a thirty-foot articulating arm, terminating with an ugly-looking clawed shovel. Mac rolled to the left as the arm lifted and thudded down into the ground, so close it caught the sling on his MP-5, pinning him in place. The rest of the team began firing, but the rounds ricocheted off the metal, going in all directions, tracers arcing every which way.

“Cease fire! Cease fire!” Moms screamed over the radio, realizing they were more likely to kill each other with the ricochets than damage the machine.

The arm lifted for another attempt at killing Mac, but he anticipated it, leaving his MP-5 behind and running to the rear half of the cart, Kirk joining him as they grabbed AT-4s. The arm swung, knocking the cart and Kirk twenty feet in a tumble, Mac ducking and just barely getting grazed, which still sent him flying ten feet.

Now that they were farther away, Roland began firing his machine gun, the rounds ricocheting off the metal. Nada fired a forty-millimeter grenade and it exploded in the cabin of the thing, ripping it to shreds, but not slowing the machine in the slightest.

This was no curling iron.

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?”