Flashback

Nick crouched and fired, hitting two of them in the visors. He whirled before their bodies fell, threw his heavy duffel bag over his shoulder, and grabbed Sato with his free hand, dragging the big man back around the bend in the riverbank and out of direct line of sight of the two attackers behind them.

There were twenty or thirty more figures with guns between them and the burning vehicles, most watching the flames. But some noticed Nick and the red-armored giant—it was hard to miss seeing Sato in the early-afternoon sunlight—and that dozen or so turned and started firing.

Sato used his left hand to reach across his big belly, pull the heavy Browning Hi-Power MK IV semiautomatic pistol from his clip, and then crouched as he began firing. Nick shot three of the distant figures through their visors and dropped them before the others started throwing themselves down and scattering, still returning heavy fire. Left-handed, Sato dropped three who were slow in finding cover.

“Got any…?” gasped Nick. He turned and looked around the corner of the bank and immediately jerked his head back as automatic-weapons fire churned up the dirt and roots there. There were at least twenty-five hostiles with them in the riverbed now, approaching cautiously.

Nick threw himself on his belly, swung his head and both arms around the corner, and shot four of them. The others dropped to prone position or scattered, but most kept firing at him.

“… ideas?” finished Nick.

“Hai,” grunted Sato. The security chief’s face was blood-covered, although it seemed to be due to cuts from his head banging around in his helmet during the initial explosion.

That’s it? thought Nick. Hai? The dry riverbed was about a hundred feet across to the north side from which they’d come. There was no real cover out there except for one dead cottonwood trunk, washed downriver long ago, possibly in the spring when there’d been enough water here to wash things downriver. But it was a small-diameter tree trunk, rotten at its core, and Nick knew that slugs from the attackers’ assault rifles would go right through it.

Still, it would be harder to be flanked out there. Nick pointed to the fallen tree, grabbed the heavy duffel, and crouched in preparation for the sprint. Odds were excellent that he’d be hit before he got to the trunk.

“No,” grunted Sato. “Stay here, Bottom-san. Fight.”

“That’s the fucking plan?” demanded Nick. He’d meant to put a little irony in the statement—devil-may-care irony if possible, Beau Geste irony—but it came out as a pathetic combination of squeak and whine and squeal.

More infantry were dropping down in front of them, ignoring the last of the ammo cooking off from the burning Oshkosh. The attackers were aiming more carefully now, their slugs kicking up dirt all around Sato and Nick. For some reason, Nick found himself more worried about the guys behind him around the corner of the riverbank. Nick realized that it had always been the unseen that scared him most, not the obvious threat.

Nick handed an egg crate of grenades to Sato and then tugged the bulky Negev-Galil flechette sweeper from the duffel bag. It felt to Nick like it took him forever to rummage around in the bottom of the bag before he came up with the nylon strip holding the five heavy flechette mags. He tugged the first one out, slapped it in, and stood, leaning around the edge of the bank.

There were about two dozen armored men—or men and women—less than sixty feet from him with more unfriendlies milling on the bank above. All of them started shooting at him at once. One of the taller forms shot Nick square in the chest, but not before Nick triggered the ugly Negev-Galil.

About thirty thousand mini-flechettes swept the area clear, turning the walking figures into bloody rags, tatters, and shreds of armor and shattered visor. One pair of legs stood alone and separate, no longer connected to groin or hip. One of those legs fell over but the other remained standing.

Nick fell back against the bank. He couldn’t breathe.

“Are you all right, Bottom-san?” asked Sato. The chief had thrown the grenades Nick had handed him and was now firing—clumsily—the old M4A1, its archaic grenade launcher working hotly. When that was out, he dropped it into the dirt and lifted his Browning MK IV pistol and fired it left-handed. Running figures went down and most did not get back up.

“Urrrr,” gasped Nick. The round hadn’t penetrated his armor but he was pretty sure that he had a second broken rib somewhere around his breastbone. He slapped in the second flechette box, extended the ugly weapon around the edge of the bank hajji-style, and fired off another cloud of flechettes, moving the blocky muzzle even as he fired. It was like swinging a fire hose.