“If the country holds together that long,” the President said, tiredly. His eyes looked tired; he hadn’t slept properly in weeks. “Is there no way we can take down their network again?”
“Not as yet,” Paul said, and he grinned. He couldn’t tell them everything, but if the psych teams were right, the alien prisoners might be converted to human ideals. “We do, however, have the help of one of their tech experts. If we can work on the prisoners and convince them to help, we might just manage to pull off a real surprise.”
Senator Ovitz looked at him. “You trust them to help us?” He asked. “And what if it fails?”
Paul smiled. “If it fails, Senator,” he said, “we lose. If that happens, we all die. You’re part of the old government… and, as far as the aliens are concerned, you’re marked for death.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Do not confuse “duty" with what other people expect of you; they are utterly different. Duty is a debt you owe to yourself to fulfil obligations you have assumed voluntarily. Paying that debt can entail anything from years of patient work to instant willingness to die. Difficult it may be, but the reward is self-respect.
Captain Brent Roeder pushed down on the remote control and the IED exploded. It had taken him nearly twenty minutes, using a mixture of children’s electronics and pre-packaged explosive, to make the device, but it was worth all the effort. The blast exploded from a pile of rubble and slaughtered the handful of alien guards who’d been standing there, watching the execution. There was no need to bark a command; his two remaining snipers, hidden on rooftops, started to fire down into the remaining aliens, forcing them to duck and dive for cover. For a few moments, no one would be paying any attention to the remains of the crowd, which was now running in all directions, and that would give him his chance. He ran forward, holding his pistol in one hand and a knife in the other, towards the stake.
Up close, it looked barbaric… and he hadn’t believed his eyes when he’d seen them bring out the poor bastard who was now tied to it. The insurgents in Iraq had had plenty of interesting and horrible ways to make a man die — and he’d sent a few of them to Allah himself in unpleasant manners — but he’d never burned a man alive, not deliberately. The aliens had been telling everyone that there would be a public punishment of someone for ‘treason and perversion,’ whatever that meant to them, but he hadn’t realised just what they had in mind, not until he’d seen the stake. If they’d lit it, the best his men could do was avenge the poor bastard’s death.
The man cringed away from him as Brent came up to him. “US Army,” Brent hissed, suddenly very aware of his appearance. Any Drill Sergeant would have thrown a fit and had him cleaning toilets for months if he’d dared to report dressed as he was, although neat freaks and anal-retentive morons didn’t tend to last long in the Special Forces. They were fighters first; posing in proper uniforms came a long way down the list. “Stay calm, understand?”
“Yes,” the man gasped. Brent checked him over quickly — seeing a thin man, slightly too pale for his build, with a week’s worth of stubble on his chest — and started to saw through the bonds. The alien material, whatever it was, resisted fiercely, but he sliced through it and unwrapped the captive quickly. He didn’t have any idea who the man was, but messing up the aliens fun and games was probably worthwhile, if only to remind them that the insurgents existed. “What…”
He came free in an instant and almost stumbled over the small pile of wood. “Never mind that now,” Brent snapped, as he caught his arm and dragged him back towards the rubble. The crowd, knowing what the aliens did when it came to counter-insurgency, had dispersed, but a handful of aliens had taken cover and were still trying to fire back. They were pinned down and effectively helpless — he hoped — unless they wanted to die, but the longer he kept his forces in one place, the more time the aliens had to organise a counterattack and slaughter his men. “Come with me!”
He keyed the second remote control and heard the series of explosions as they blasted through the alien complacency. If they were lucky, the IEDs would convince the aliens that they faced a third all-out insurgency, rather than a relatively limited strike aimed at embarrassing them. A handful of collaborators, men and women forced into serving the aliens, had risked their lives to smuggle in the devices, which would have the added side benefit that the aliens would no longer be able to trust their collaborators — if they ever had. He counted the explosions quickly, noted that one of the devices seemed to have failed, and then smiled in relief as a final explosion billowed up in the distance.
“Now, run,” he snapped, and led the charge down the street. The remainder of his men would have seen him flee and would be disengaging as well, while the aliens, still trapped, would be unable to impede their retreat. He felt, more than heard, the presence of alien helicopters swooping in from high above, but by now they were under some cover and fairly safe. “Don’t look back, just run!”
The area had been devastated by one of the earlier rounds of fighting, but there were still some families squatting in the remains, unwilling or unable to move. The aliens, for some reason, had started to move families into intact buildings, and then they’d stopped. It was a mystery, but not one he had any time to solve, not when the entire alien army was likely to be on their trail. They could simply devastate the area from orbit, but he was gambling on them not being prepared to shatter a few kilometres of the city just to kill a handful of insurgents. By the time they realised they’d been tricked, he hoped, the pair of them should be well away.
“Thanks, I think,” his rescued captive said. Brent had to laugh as the tension wore off. He might be still trapped in the midst of an alien-controlled city, with thousands of embarrassed and humiliated aliens coming after him, but for the moment they were safe. “I thought I was a goner there.”
“You pretty nearly were steak and fries,” Brent agreed. He checked the corridor quickly, and then opened the battered and looted apartment, recovering the suitcase that they’d hidden under the bed. “Strip off, completely, and change into what’s in the case.”
The man seemed inclined to object. “But…”
“But nothing,” Brent snapped. “Those bastards are tricky. Ten gets you twenty that you have a tracer somewhere on your clothes and if they start looking now, they’re going to find us.”
That, he noticed, got the man’s clothes off quicker than a teenage boy faced with a naked and ready girl. His body was pale, like his face and hands, but there were bruises everywhere. It didn’t look as if he’d been tortured, but the alien guards had probably worked him over once or twice, just to make the point that they could do whatever they liked to him. The alien concept of treachery and perversion might not be the same as a human concept, but they clearly took it seriously; he hadn’t seen them trying to burn anyone before.
Doesn’t mean they’re not doing it elsewhere, he thought. They’d invaded the Middle East, according to their tame humans, and so far the Arabs had just prostrated themselves before them. Brent suspected that the aliens were lying; he’d been in the Middle East and fought there, in some countries that it would have surprised the general public to know that American troops had ever fought, and he knew that defeating them wouldn’t be a pushover. Their armies were crap, commanded by poor leaders who got their jobs because of their contacts or lack of competence, but as insurgents, they were formidable. The US had killed off thousands of the incompetent insurgents, and the Iraqi Army had been completing the process, but hundreds of very experienced bastards had fled Iraq, into Saudi or Iran, where they’d started to cause trouble for the established rulers. The aliens might be having more difficulties than they were prepared to admit…