"No sweat, Fontaine. We done worked it out. Smitty's going to fire one round, two if he can get away with it...and ain't that that going to ring our chimes, back here?...then crawl left and back to us while I cover. No problem." going to ring our chimes, back here?...then crawl left and back to us while I cover. No problem."

" 'Ring our chimes'? You sure Smitty worked out the backblast problem?"

"Oh yeah...we got just enough ventilation...just enough to live through it, that is."

The roaring diesels of the PGSS suddenly grew louder. Fontaine heard, distinctly, "Backblast area clear!"

Then it seemed like the world blew up.

It was overkill, really. The rocket Smithfield was using was an AT-4. Brutally, even impractically, heavy for a one-man weapon, it had been designed to defeat heavy armor, armor much heavier than any LAV boasted.

Thus, within less than a second after Smithfield had fired, the warhead had reached its target. The cone shape began to deform on striking, crushing a piezo-electric crystal within. This created a momentary surge of electricity that raced down to the warhead detonator. This exploded, causing the rest of the explosive in the warhead to likewise detonate.

That explosive was also shaped into a cone, but in a mirror of the ballistic cone to the front, this cone was recessed. Most of the explosion was, in effect, lost in every direction. Yet a portion was not. In the hollow cone hot ga.s.ses collected. These were held and focused by the surrounding explosion. The collected ga.s.ses then formed a plasma jet, moving at phenomenal speeds...straight towards and right through the armor of the PGSS LAV.

If the defenders of the facility had been partially and momentarily stunned by the serious backblast emanating from the AT-4, the recipients of that fire were more than stunned. One unfortunate, the one right in the path of the shaped charge's blast, felt only a momentary flash of agonized burning before the hot ga.s.ses forced into his body caused his torso to literally explode.

Being covered with bits of flesh and slime was the least of the occupants' problems, however. The sudden overpressure, pressure which could not escape the sealed armored vehicle, burst the eardrums of every man trapped inside. Most were knocked out, outright. Several took serious interior damage to vital organs from the concussive blast.

And then the vehicle began to burn....

"The b.i.t.c.h is burning!" shouted an exultant Smithfield as he began to prep his second AT-4 for firing. "Hah, hah...look at it...."

The burst of machine gun fire coming from another of the approaching LAVs brought the soldier's celebration up very short.

"Oh f.u.c.k...oh, f.u.c.k," whispered the sergeant, looking down at red ruin and spurting blood. Drilled through a thousand repet.i.tions for operation of the ant.i.tank weapon, the man's hands continued to go through the motions even as his life leaked away. But the hands moved so slowly...so slowly.

Smithfield looked up to seek a new target. He did not need to look very far or very hard as the bulk of a LAV loomed above, a scant 15 feet from the hole.

What the f.u.c.k? I'm dead anyway. He raised the weapon, took a hasty aim and... He raised the weapon, took a hasty aim and...

"My G.o.d!" exclaimed Silva as Smith's inert body came to rest a few feet to his right where the force of the blast had blown it. One glance was enough to confirm; Smithfield was very dead, his blasted and shot-up body actually smoking. A faint glow outside the smoke-filled hole in the wall suggested very strongly that Smith's final shot had been as true as his first.

Silva poked a finger in one ear, rooted around briefly, then settled back onto his machine gun and began to hammer out a staccato concert for the benefit of the PGSS men just beginning to ooze through the hole.

Harrington eased back on his stick as the helicopter arrived over one corner of the WCF's roof. He took a quick glance below, then turned to his crew chief with a nod.

The crew chief on one side and the door gunner on the other tossed the thick coiled cables out of the troop doors. The cables' free ends descended rapidly to the roof below. Above, great black nylon loops affixed to pipelike projections jutting from either side held the ropes in easy reach of the PGSS men. The crew chief, mirrored by the door gunner, took positive control of the PGSS troopers, easing them to where they could easily grasp the ropes. Those men grasped the ropes, looking straight ahead into the distance.

At the command, "Go!" one man to either side began the slide downward.

Ahead, in the pilot's seat, Harrington eased his stick ever so slightly to port. The helicopter responded, sliding to the left unnoticed.

Below, the first pair of descenders touched down without incident about fourteen feet from the edge of the roof. The second pair were closer to that edge, much closer.

The third and subsequent pairs...

"Arrrgh! Jesssuuus!"

"That motherf.u.c.ker did it on purpose!" screamed one of the four, only four, men of the chalk who had landed safely. The other nine had, much to their surprise and chagrin, discovered that the rope ran out about seventy feet above the ground. Both surprise and chagrin had been brief phenomena, rapidly replaced by panic-stricken shrieks. The shrieks, too, had subsided very quickly as the men, by twos, had slammed into the hard-packed ground. These now lay in crumpled heaps-dead or very badly injured.

The angry survivor raised a rifle as if to fire at the helicopter. Only the door gun, pointed unerringly at his chest by the door gunner, dissuaded him from firing.

That gun never wavered as a chuckling Warrant Officer Harrington pulled pitch to go back for another load.

It was funny how he had named the only man who could save him now...snickered Harington, silently. Just wait til Top Henry hears about this. Now how the h.e.l.l do I explain my way out of this one? Oh, I know...

Harrington keyed a microphone on the general frequency. "All flights inbound the objective area, be advised, we have some high winds gusting over the roof. My bird was blown off position about fifteen or twenty feet while I was fast-roping some people in...it was pretty ugly." He looked back at the target building and smiled.

"Motherf.u.c.kers," repeated the PGSS man as he watched the helicopter recede into the distance.

"Never mind that," insisted his leader. "We'll fix that a.s.shole after we take the building. Now, help me carry this breaching charge."

With that those four survivors, plus the others landed nearby, raced for a place believed to be sheltered from any explosives the defenders might push through the roof. There, they began to lay out a doughnut ring full of shaped plastic explosive.

Bullets caromed off walls with malevolent cracking sounds before continuing on their half-spent way farther into the building. From a sandbagged shelter Pendergast fired nine short bursts from his rifle before pressing the magazine release and seating a new magazine. Farther back and below, a b.l.o.o.d.y hand snaked out to grab the spent magazine as it bounced. Empty magazine retrieved, the wounded guardsman who had grabbed it attached a small device and frantically force-fed more rounds, in ten round clips, into it.

From behind, a man with a blood-streaked face crawled into the bunker with Pendergast and the other. He reached a distracting hand to Pendergast's shoulder. "Sergeant Major..." the troop gasped out. "They're on the roof...I mean through the roof...all over...we ain't gonna hold 'em...."

Pendergast looked from the newly arrived troop to the other. Both wounded pretty bad. And I can't leave here. Both wounded pretty bad. And I can't leave here.

"Can you make it to Major Williams, son?"

The newly arrived soldier gulped unconsciously and nodded.

"Go then. Tell him. Tell him we're holding okay here too...but I don't know for how long."

New-filled magazine seated in the rifle, the sergeant major turned back to the serious business of discouraging unwanted guests.

Williams helped ease the bleeding and exhausted soldier to a chair as he digested the news. Reaching a sudden decision he looked around the command post. One junior lieutenant, a sergeant, James...and a number of people whose eyes just became much wider in their heads. One junior lieutenant, a sergeant, James...and a number of people whose eyes just became much wider in their heads.

"Jimbo...take over here. I'm going to go try to seal the breach in the roof."

Captain James nodded weakly, then began to pull himself to a sitting position. Ordinarily he should have stayed in the makeshift infirmary...yet he had insisted his place of duty was here in the CP. His eyes wandered to a curious device with four playing cards, blue pattern printed, attached to it.

"I can do this. Go," he half whispered.

Williams saw where James' eyes had come to rest. He drew his pistol from its holster with his right hand, grabbed the company guidon with his left, then ordered, quietly, "Do it then. Take over. The rest of you"-a hand swept in the other eighteen or so men in the room-"fix bayonets and follow me."

Smoke filled the air in the upper half of the unblocked corridor, causing the necessarily tight little knot of troopers following Williams to have to crouch half bent over. Somewhere, some portion of the building must have caught fire Somewhere, some portion of the building must have caught fire, mused the major. Might help; might hurt. No telling. Might help; might hurt. No telling.

From nowhere, seemingly, a rifle-bearing man in the black battle dress and helmet of the PGSS appeared. The agent appeared confused as much as anything. Possibly he was in shock, as sometimes happens with soldiers in sustained, close and vicious combat.

Williams raised his pistol, took two steps towards the disoriented agent, aimed and fired. The bullet entered the victim's head having pa.s.sed squarely through the bridge of his nose. Both eyes were forced out of the man's head even as his brains scattered across the light green painted wall behind him.

Waving his pistol forward, Williams repeated the refrain, "Come on; follow me."

The smoke grew worse, chokingly worse, as the group ascended a broad flight of stairs. "Don masks," Williams ordered, though he knew this would not help if the fire-wherever it was-had sucked all the oxygen from the air. "Forward."

From chokingly thick with smoke the air soon became a gaseous mora.s.s of blinding fumes and sooty embers. Williams could see precisely nothing. He felt the tension and fear of uncertainty emanating from the men following him.

"Nothing is good," he whispered to himself.

"Sir?"

"We can't see, right?"

"No, sir...not a G.o.dd.a.m.ned thing."

"That means they can't see either, right?"

"Yes, sir...ohhh."

"Right. We've been here before. They haven't. Let's go...quietly. And remember; we have this corridor b.o.o.by trapped about fifty yards ahead."

Onward they crept, silently. Ahead were shouts and orders. None sounded quite like Army standard. Nor were the accents, in general, quite right.

"Bayonets only," ordered Williams, wishing he had one himself; that or a good sword. Oh, well, the guidon will do for a spear. Oh, well, the guidon will do for a spear. "Come on...and once we hit 'em? 'Keep up the skeer.' " "Come on...and once we hit 'em? 'Keep up the skeer.' "

Williams holstered his pistol and reversed the guidon, gripping it firmly in both hands. Then, with a fierce toothy grin, sharklike, he advanced.

The first PGSS man was taken from the rear. Concentrating on some problem up ahead, that man never heard the stealthy approach of the Texans.

Williams' eyes registered neck-to-b.u.t.tocks Kevlar and decided that the only way in was right through the aramid fibers. He drew the guidon back a bit, then with an open mouthed, predatory glare he drove it forward, all of his bodily weight and strength behind it. The sharp point of the ferule touched the tightly woven fibers and slid slightly until reaching a small s.p.a.ce where two of them met. The point parted these, parting likewise the next several layers. A small f.l.a.n.g.e on the ferule hung up on the fibers. No matter, the point only penetrated three inches into the PGSS man's back-missing his spine by several inches-but the force of the thrust, along with the surprise, knocked the wind from his body. He went down, gasping for air.

Williams, on the point, pressed onward. Behind, another of his men tore the helmet from the fallen PGSS man, half strangling him in the process. That guardsman then proceeded to beat his victim's skull in with his own helmet.

Bayonets slashed; rifle b.u.t.ts crashed. In moments the corridor had turned into a swirling orgy of struggling, screaming, cursing and fighting men.

And then it was over. Williams saw the last actively resisting enemy physically picked up by a bayonet point thrust under his armor and into his groin and then tossed, screaming, upon the tangled and matted up wad of barbed wire that had been blocking the corridor. He released the corpse of the man he had strangled and looked around. The guidon was broken in two, though the smoke was too thick to see more than the kindled upper half of it. To his right another guardsman was rhythmically cursing as he raised his rifle over and over to smash it downward into the red paste face of what might have been a PGSS woman woman. All the others were gasping for breath except for two who had had their own masks torn off in the fight and were choking and vomiting as they frantically attempted to reseat their masks.

A headcount revealed there were four Texans dead or so badly wounded that they could not go on. No one bothered with a headcount for the PGSS as they were very dead indeed.

Williams grasped the remnant of the guidon in his left hand, redrew his pistol with his right, and ordered, "Forward," while pointing the pistol up a broad stairwell.

They met the enemy-the next wave of the enemy-as they were coming down the very stairs the Texans were going up. This time, with fresh men facing worn ones, with momentum on the side of the PGSS, and worst of all without the surprise that had made the previous encounter such a relatively easy victory, the Texans could not win.

Yet they died hard. Williams met the first of the PGSS' thrusting bayonets with a sweeping block from the guidon. Then he plunged his pistol forcefully into the soft spot under the jaw of the bayonet wielder and pulled the trigger to create a shower of brains, blood and red-speckled bone.

To Williams' right a Texan went down to a bayonet thrust that just cleared the man's Kevlar collar before plunging seven inches into his neck. Williams swept his pistol rightward but a rifle-smash from the PGSS blocked his arm, hurling the pistol away.

Undeterred, Williams plunged in. Dropping to one knee, he used the dullish spearpoint of the guidon to pierce the thigh of one likely target. He heard a dull, m.u.f.fled curse then lunged through the forest of flailing legs to come to grips with his foe.

Crenshaw felt the piercing point as a wedge of fire burning rather than cutting into his leg. It did not slice the muscle so much as it tore it asunder. The pain was so great that he could barely mutter a curse before losing control of his body. With an unintelligible, agonized gasp he fell to the stairs.

His eyes rapidly lost focus as his brain tried to deal with the pain. His fuzzy near view was blocked by a tangle of legs as his far view was by the smoke, and the ex-Marine could not truly see the clawing hyena that tore its way up his body in a desperate effort to reach his throat.

"Hh...Help," he barely squeezed out. "Help me."

No need; as the Texan clawed his way upward four PGSS bayonets drove downward. Crenshaw breathed a sigh of what would have been relief had his thigh not been so horribly gored.

As he began to pa.s.s out, he heard someone...His XO? He wasn't sure...yet someone shouted for a medic and to "get the captain the h.e.l.l out of here. And no quarter!"

Williams barely noticed as his life's blood drained away, barely noticed the dozens of booted feet trampling him on their way past. Behind and below him he could, dimly, make out the sounds of his soldiers going down with a bitterly hard fight.

He thought, We needed more men...we could have held if we'd had more men...the rest of the battalion...

Then, without a whimper, he died.

Santa Fe, New Mexico His breath coming short and harsh, Tripp felt the exhilaration and the terror of impending combat. Around him, ahead of him...but mostly behind him, his battalion's tracks began to turn over, one after another. The soft whine of the tanks' engines was lost amidst the thunderous roar of the Bradleys' diesels.

Just ahead of Tripp stood a lone police car from the Santa Fe Police Department. The officer standing beside the patrol car looked expectantly upward. Tripp nodded, slowly and deeply. The officer jumped in, started his sirens, and began to lead the battalion forward at a fast clip.

Useful that that cop decided to attach himself to us, thought Tripp. No telling what accidents we might have had with civilian autos crossing our path at every intersection.

Civilian bystanders, drawn by the sirens, came out to watch the battalion's progress. A few, understanding, cheered.

The column raced on, the leading police vehicle changing the lights by remote control at each intersection.

Tripp's mind wandered to that portion of his men cut off in Fort Worth. He thought that it would go hard on them when the PGSS a.s.sault finally went in, very hard...terminally hard.