John Shirley - A Song Called Youth

Steinfeld shouted, “Where are you going, Torrence?”

Torrence opened his mouth to reply—and the reply caught in his throat when he saw Carmen pointing, and then saw what she was pointing at.

Three aircraft. A jet accompanied by two helicopters. They were side by side, in close formation, coming at them from the east over a serrated shoulder of mountain, a little more than a quarter of a mile off, and closing. It looked like one of the new stealth models of the Harrier jumpjet, shaped like a hunchbacked triangle, flat black; not particularly fast, but lethal in its copterlike maneuverability. And flanking the jet: the autochoppers, American made, equipped with sidewinders and 7.62-mm miniguns.

They could spray a target area with six thousand rounds per minute…

He opened his mouth to shout a warning but Carmen was already shouting; the others saw the aircraft now too. Levassier was looking through field glasses. He must’ve seen the Second Alliance Christian crosses on the undersides of the jumpjet’s wings, the black and silver of its trim because he shouted, “SA!”

They could hear the thudding of the chopper blades clearly now and the whine of the jet. Coming in slow for a jet.

Maybe, Torrence thought, they’ll see the Army trucks, take us for NATO.

No. They’d see we’re all out of uniform. They’ve been looking for us in this area. There are a half dozen other telltales. They’ll know.

As he thought this, he was looking around. There was no time to drive the trucks out of the way. They’d have to find cover.

The cliff face to their right, on the western side of the road, rose about a hundred feet. But about forty feet ahead of the lead truck, there was a fissure running back into the cliff. It looked as if it might be wide enough to run into, but narrow enough to give them cover. He couldn’t see anything else.

Steinfeld had come to the same conclusion. He was shouting orders. Everyone was running now; some of them with crates of ammo slung between them; some running to the lead truck, shouting at the others to get out, make for the fissure: Levassier arguing that they should get in the trucks and drive like the devil. But the trucks would make excellent targets on the road.

Torrence shouted, “Get what you can carry and run for that opening in the cliff! Go, go, go !”

The jumpjet and the copters were almost on them; they occluded the sun, sending their shadows racing like hungry panthers ahead of them. The cannons mounted on the nose of the Jump Jet were tilting downward. The jet and the autochoppers swung off to the north, and for a giddy moment Torrence thought they’d decided not to engage—but then he saw they were coming around for a strafe run, angling to follow the north-south course of the road so they could come in low. The choppers followed the jet in precise flight-path replication: they were Bell Heeldogs, unmanned, entirely automated, robot pilots responding to the orders of the human pilot in the jet.

Weariness was forgotten. Mouth dry with fear, Torrence looked around for Claire, saw her climbing out of the back of the truck, carrying a light machine gun, her face white, her lips pressed to a thin line. She was the last out. Steinfeld and the others were mostly up ahead. Someone—Burch, maybe—had gotten into the lead truck, was starting it, and driving ahead to block the gunships from the main body of guerrillas. Drawing fire.

Hot knives clashed in Torrence’s lungs as he ran to Claire, shouting, “Leave the fucking gun!” She shook her head angrily, continued to carry it, staggered under its weight. He slung the CAWS over his shoulder and wrenched the machine gun from her, tossed it aside, took her elbow, and dragged her along, knowing that if they survived, she’d lecture him about women carrying their own burdens.

But he didn’t care because now the autochoppers had let go four sidewinders. He heard a quadruple thud and the scream of rending metal as the missiles struck the two rear trucks; Torrence felt heat on his back, and the arrogant shove of shockwaves. He stumbled, but Claire steadied him and they ran on, the world dancing jerkily around them—

Something sizzled past them, drawing a line of white exhaust in the air, the line finishing in the back of the lead truck, which still trundled awkwardly up the road, and a second later the truck Torrence had ridden in all night was consumed in an orange-red ball of fire.

Heat and the zing of shrapnel. Reflections of fire shimmering from the patches of snow; a long, thudding echo off the mountainsides.

Burch, one of the best of them, was dead.

Claire shouted, “Here they come!” and tugged Torrence into the poor shelter of a boulder jutting from the cliff as the Harrier and the autochoppers bore down on them. The rocks around them spat chips and sparks as the steel-jacketed rounds impacted. Something stung Torrence’s cheek; something more slashed at his neck. He and Claire tried to press farther into the hollow; their backs were bruised by knobs of cold rock.

Torrence thought, If they pull up and turn toward us, we’re fucked. They’ll mince us.

But the killing machines kept going, chasing the main group of the rebels, who’d just reached the fissure, twenty yards ahead; Bonham paused at the opening to look back, probably looking for Claire—then he ducked inside. Carmen was crouched in the opening with her rifle propped on a small boulder; she fired, and a grenade arced up, only to bounce off the underside of an autochopper before exploding; the chopper rocked in the air but showed no other effect as it whipped by, following the Harrier.

Torrence pulled at Claire’s arm, and they were running toward the fissure, wondering if they could get to it before the choppers and the jet circled back. They ran past three bodies sprawled in red splashes. No time to see who they were.

The jet slowed, stopped in midair, and the autochoppers obediently came to heel.

Take out the jet, Torrence thought. Somebody take out the fucking jet .

The jet and its faithful dogs were coming at them, about fifty yards up, angling down, red sunlight gleaming on the cockpit and flashing off the steel curve of the autochoppers’ blind front ends.

Running hard, Claire beside him, Torrence saw an autochopper swiveling toward him and Claire, lining them up in its sights. He felt her hand in his, palm moist with sweat, fingers rigid with tension, and there were things he wanted to tell her—

And then she was pulling him into the shadows of the crevice as 7.62-mm minigun rounds screamed off the rock a few feet behind them. Someone returning fire with the ground-to-air missile launcher… a satisfying ka-whump as the missile struck an autochopper.

Torrence threw himself down into a pebbly alcove between two, low boulders, Claire hunching down beside him, both of them gasping, shaking with fear, but amazed to be alive, feeling a transitory buzz of triumph… until he saw that Potter and the Algerian were splashed over the rocks near the entrance to the crevice. They’d been caught coming into it.

Torrence felt despair drag like a heavy lead weight. But he forced himself to get up, look for Steinfeld.

There were four volunteers near the entrance to the fissure, shooting at the aircraft in order to draw fire, to give the others a chance to move back into cover, away from the road. The fissure was about forty feet deep, V-shaped; it was about eighteen feet across at the top, narrowed to a snow and pebble-packed floor, angling upward toward the mountainside; there was a slight overhang on the south side that gave them a little aerial cover. The sun shone almost directly into the crevice; the bluish light was broken up here and there by sharp blades of shadow.