Jerome Preisler - Net Force--Attack Protocol

He needed to get him into Percy Three.

Behind it, Wasserman was helping the last couple of evacuees in his group toward the hatch. Both were moving with difficulty. He saw Howard struggling with Larocca’s weight and immediately started toward him.

“Sir, I’ll give you a han—”

He’d barely taken a step when the hedgehog’s machine gun pulsed again. Howard heard a loud, fleshy slap .

“My God,” Larocca said. “I’m hit.”

He slipped in Howard’s arm, his eyes wide. Howard glanced down and realized the lower part of the young man’s body was gone. His right leg was on the ground. His left hip and leg hung from his torso by a bloody chunk of meat. That was it. There was nothing else left of him below the waist. Howard could see his intestines lumping out into the snow underneath him.

He slipped some more. His eyes rolled, his face bunching up in a strange contortion of pain and puzzlement. Three seconds after the bullet tore into him, he made a sound like a cough and then shuddered and died with Howard’s arm still hooked under his shoulders.

He was gone. Just like that.

Gone.

Howard’s eyes met Wasserman’s for a split second, the two men exchanging identical looks of shock, horror, and dismay. Then Howard let go of the body. The ’hog’s machine gun was still firing. But one of the Pumas had loosed a grenade at it, forcing an evasive feint, and the bullets chewed into the ground wide of his position. He scrambled back behind the C&C to where he and Larocca had stood just moments ago.

Then the machine gun stopped firing.

Perched on his haunches, he leaned slightly past the edge of the hatch to peek into the lane between the two wagons. Walt was there in the buffer. It hadn’t budged. Its gun was still silent. It was waiting. For what?

His answer was another burst of heavy fire. But not from Walt. It was coming from his left—the north side of the lot. Shooting through the lane between Percy One and Percy Two.

He glanced over there.

Nash.

The ’hogs had glided to roughly nine and twelve o’clock around the circle of wagons. They had lined him up in the holes. Pinned him down. And not just him.

Wasserman was crouched behind Percy Three with his two evacs. They had been outside its open hatch when Walt’s machine gun cut loose. And now they were stuck there. They couldn’t budge. If they moved so much as an inch away from the wagon they were done.

Like Larocca.

Howard glanced at his remains in the snow. The Ma Deuces could down an aircraft, and they had kept sheeting the private’s soft flesh with ammunition. There wasn’t much left that was recognizable as human.

He knew it wouldn’t do any good to stay put. The ’hogs would eventually find an opening between volleys from the Pumas and shoot him where he was. Or he would move half an inch at the wrong moment, and that would be it. One way or the other, they would nail him.

As if to underscore his conclusion, the two ’hogs opened fire in unison. Bullets spat into the snow from two sides. The robots’ aim had tightened in.

He was thinking he would need to make some quick decisions, when the C&C’s hatch lifted back open, brushing against his right arm.

“Get in, sir!”

Howard glanced inside. It was Fernandez. Shouting across the packed rear compartment. The sergeant had swiveled around from the front cabin and leaned his head between its seats.

“Shut the hatch!” Howard shouted.

“Sir—”

“I said shut the hatch!” Howard barked. “Keep those motherfuckers dancing. Aim high!”

He crouched there on the balls of his feet as more .50s plowed into the snow to his left. Fernandez looked out at him another split second, then turned his head back around.

The hatch descended silently on its pneumatics.

Howard peered up the lane between the C&C and Percy Three as the Strikers pumped out round after explosive round, all going high . Walt bobbed and dipped and scrambled to avoid them, Nash doing the same evasive jig to his left.

Attaboy, Julio , he thought.

Still squatting low, he reached back for his grenade launcher and jammed it against his shoulder. Its forestock was down, and its lock sight was up.

Then he saw Walt’s gun swivel toward him. The ’hog was getting a bead on him even as it dodged the Puma’s shells. Its gun fired, and bullets spanged against the C&C’s hatch.

It had gotten closer. But not close enough. It was off balance. And off its mark.

Howard pressed his eye to his lock sight, found his range, and waited a millisecond as the ’hog dropped down to avoid another elevated Striker round.

“You go high, I go lower ’n low,” he growled.

And aiming for the lowest point of its drop, he squeezed the grenade gun’s trigger. He felt it buck hard against his side, then felt a sharp and terrible stabbing pain in his chest. It was like a hot knife.

Howard didn’t care what was going inside his body. It didn’t matter to him. He saw the 40x46 mm round bloop from the barrel of his weapon and go rocketing through the lane, straight and true, smoke braiding out behind it. The projectile rushed up on the ’hog just as it bobbed below Julio’s grenade, slammed into it just above its suspension. Both rounds exploded with an earsplitting bang.

Walt spun like a top. Its chassis seemed to bulge outward, fire and smoke gushing from inside it. Buzzing, whirring, and clicking, the ’hog tottered forward and back, swayed left and right, and then fell sideways to the ground.

Beside Howard, Wasserman had already yanked a cartridge from his belt, palmed it into the receiver, and taken aim at Walt. With a long-range weapon like the M320, it was equivalent to shooting point-blank.

The detonation blew the ’hog to pieces. Its gripper arm and sensor arrays went flying. Metal components rocketed into the air, fanned outward, and rained down onto the Pumas’ armor, ringing and clanging like church bells.

Howard glanced to his left. Nash was still in motion, pouring fire from its machine gun and ducking rounds from the Pumas.

Getting up on one knee like a mortarman, he pivoted around toward the ’hog and slapped another round into the blooper.

“Wassy!” he hollered without looking around at him. “Go fuckin’ low!”

He pulled his trigger, heard Wasserman’s launcher discharge behind him. The projectiles swished toward Nash and connected with thudding eruptions of sound. Their combined explosive yield flung the ’hog up off the ground and propelled it backward for several feet, a bright orange-and-blue skirt of flame rippling and flapping around it.

The duo hit the robot again as it landed in the snow, their shells blasting through its armor to split it nearly in half. Smoke and flames gushed upward from inside it. Torn from its sprockets, the ’hog’s right tread momentarily hung from them like a drooping, ragged rubber banner and then began melting into slag.

A few seconds passed. Howard pushed up off his knee, not caring about his pain, rising in slow stages to his feet. When he was fully upright, he paused at last, studying what was left of the robot.

“Later, shitcan,” he muttered and turned toward Wasserman.

The E3 would never forget his huge, white, gap-toothed grin. The image would resurface at unexpected times for the rest of his life. There was something almost frightful about it. He couldn’t have given a reason why. He just knew how it made him feel. Like he’d glimpsed something better left unseen.

After a long moment, Howard took a step toward him.

And then stopped.

He raised a hand to his chest. His other hand released its grip on the blooper so it hung loosely from its rig. The berserk smile was gone. In its place was a kind of grimace.