Ian Douglas - The Complete Heritage Trilogy - Semper Mars, Luna Marine, Europa Strike

He looked up, blinking into swirling smoke. Two more Vals were circling in the distance, as a quartet of TR-5 Peregrines angled in toward the Residence.

Time to get the hell out of Dodge. Rolling off his buddy, he gathered the unconscious Larabee into a fireman’s carry and started crawling back toward the embassy’s shattered front porch.

Rattlesnake Flight

TR-5 Peregrine transport/gunship

Mexico City, República de

México

1521 hours local time

In a swirling blast of deflected exhaust, two of the Peregrine gunships brought their noses up, tilt-jets howling as they swung to the upright, hover position, the aircraft barely moving as they drifted above the city streets in front of the embassy. A shoulder-launched rocket streaked skyward from the roof of the Sheraton; the aircraft’s active antimissile defense system, reacting with a computer’s superhuman speed, replied before the missile had traveled half the distance to the target, snapping back with a burst of radar-guided rotary cannon fire that detonated the SAM in an orange-black blossom of flame and smoke. The gunship’s main battery cut loose then, its Zeus high-speed cannon buzz-sawing into the roof of the structure with a cyclic rate of six thousand rounds per minute. Under that firestorm of depleted uranium penetrators mingled with 6.2mm high-explosive rounds and green tracers in a 7:2:1 ratio, the roof of the hotel literally disintegrated in a black cloud of whirling chips and fragments. Windows exploded, walls buckled, and much of the upper two stories of the structure crumbled into an avalanche of shattered masonry, glass, and stucco. The line of green tracers, so thick and solid-seeming it appeared to be a bright streak of dazzling green light, played briefly across the target zone, then winked out.

The tilt-jet Peregrines pivoted slowly, like hovering, airborne dragons searching for prey. Most of the mob had dispersed by now, though a number of bodies sprawled motionless in the streets or crawled slowly for imagined places of safety. Three AFVs and a heavy tank were burning in front of the embassy. A second aging M1A2 grumbled from a side street, seeking shelter from the air attacks, perhaps, but the green bolt of solid-looking flame flared once more, touching the Abrams’s turret at the engine cover. The fireball as the fuel tanks detonated roiled into the crystalline blue mountain air above the city like a black death’s-head.

The Peregrines continued to take small-arms fire from the surrounding buildings. It looked as though most of the buildings had, in fact, been occupied by Mexican troops, though the Peregrine gunners were under orders not to initiate a slaughter of Mexico City’s general population. They responded to the most serious threats, blocking incoming missiles and sending bursts of high-velocity cannon fire back at the shooters.

Enemy fire slacked off noticeably as the Mexican troops decided to stop calling attention to themselves.

Rattlesnake One

Mexico City, República de

México

1521 hours local time

Aboard the Peregrine, a red light winked on overhead. “On target,” the pilot’s voice said in Fuentes’s headset. “Opening up!” With a growling whine, the Peregrine’s aft ramp cracked open, then lowered, admitting a blaze of blue-white light from the outside.

There wasn’t room to land a Peregrine on the Residence’s front lawn. Instead, as the rear door eased open, the aircraft’s crew tossed four nylon ropes out the back; almost immediately, the first four armored Marines were fast-roping down the lines, hitting the ground hard and moving fast, clearing the area before the next man down the line hit the same spot. Fuentes followed Private Peterson, stepping off the ramp and sliding down the rope with practiced ease. The ride down was dizzying, with the Peregrine hanging like a vast, black whale just above their heads, the tilt-jets shrieking to left and right like demented banshees.

Fuentes landed with pile-driver force, nearly sinking to her knees, but then she was diving ahead, getting clear before Gunny Walsh landed on her shoulders. She didn’t remember slapping the release on her M-29, but her rifle was in her gloved hands and the liquid-crystal readout on the stock showed a full load of one hundred rounds, ready to rock and roll. She didn’t see any immediate targets; a Mex tank was burning cheerfully in a smashed-out gap in the compound wall to her right; the smoking, flame-blackened shells of a trio of Bradley AFVs were scattered along the embassy’s front drive farther on.

Near the front door of the embassy, she saw one Marine crawling with another man slung across his back. “Bellamy! Kelly! Sanderson!” she snapped off. “Deploy right! Hold the wall! Gunny! Take the others! Form a perimeter covering the main drive and the front of the building!” Fuentes double-timed it across the lawn, reaching down to help the Marine with his wounded buddy. Both men were hurt, one unconscious with head and leg wounds, the other with blood smearing his face and the dazed look of someone caught too near an exploding round.

Another Marine appeared beside her, tall, lean-faced, with a captain’s bars in dull black metal showing on his fatigue collar. WARHURST, T. was stenciled on his black combat vest. He helped her lift the wounded men and drag them toward the Residence. “Good to see you, Lieutenant,” he said.

“Sir, Lieutenant Fuentes reporting,” she told him. “First Platoon, Alfa Company. What’s your situation?”

“We’re okay now,” he said, as more embassy Marines spilled out of the building and took charge of the two wounded Marines. He turned then to face her. “Now that you and some Marine air are here. They came over the wall three or four minutes ago…civilians, at first, or at least men in civilian clothing.”

“A setup, you think?”

Warhurst nodded. “Definitely.” He held up his hand as though spreading out a newspaper headline. “‘US Marines Slaughter Helpless Civilians at Demonstration outside Embassy.’ It’ll look great on Triple-N. Especially in Geneva.”

She gestured toward a burned-out Bradley with her ATAR. “Civilians don’t usually attack embassies with tanks or AFVs.”

“Mmm, no…but they’ll say they sent in the army to restore order. I doubt that anyone will question why the army just happened to have an armored division parked across the street when the trouble started.”

Fuentes felt herself go ice-cold inside. She’d been responding to a provocation, following orders, even fighting the first battle of a war…but she’d not thought her actions could have possibly been construed as starting that war.

Gunfire continued to pop and crackle in the distance, but the area around the embassy was eerily calm at the moment. God knows what they’re shooting at, she thought. Or why. Alien cultists, possibly, exchanging pleasantries with anti-alien religious fanatics. The whole world had been coming unglued lately. Maybe all that had been needed to smash it apart was this one, last, tiny nudge.

A roar from the roof of the embassy signaled the first of the TR-5 transports lifting clear, hovering a moment, then dipping its nose and banking toward the east. An AV-32 followed, flying shotgun.

Warhurst touched the radio plug in his right ear, listening. “Okay,” he said. “Roger that.” He looked at Fuentes. “The ambassador and his family are away. Most of the civilians, too, and our wounded. Now we just have to get ourselves the hell out of here.”

The evacuation proceeded smoothly, with a choreographed precision that seemed to have been carefully rehearsed. The remaining civilians, the embassy’s CIA staff, and the rest of the embassy Marines made it off in the second TR-5. Warhurst helped get them all on the tilt-jet before it lifted off and followed the first toward the east and safety, but he remained behind on the roof to see to the evacuation of the First Platoon Marines.