“You’ll destroy everything!” he said.
“I know,” said Pete.
As he worked, he swore he heard laughing outside the tower.
“We’ve almost got them!” said Carlson. She was breathless with excitement. They were against the very door to the tower. She’d seen it in pictures a dozen times, grainy satellite photographs of it, and a few times through the magnified optics of her scope, when she dared get that close. But here she was. She slammed her fist on the door to the tower, more from excitement than from frustration.
As she backed up, her marines kept shooting at it, but the bullets were having little effect, barely denting the door. The thing had been built to withstand a sustained attack.
“We’ll get through it eventually,” said the sergeant as he reloaded.
“Maybe,” said Carlson. “But how much time do we have?”
Banach had stepped away and was looking at the rocky bluff that faced them. “Let’s go up there,” he said, pointing. “We can easily shoot at the tower from there.”
“We’ll be exposed…” said the sergeant.
Carlson thought it over. From the bluff, they could shoot out the windows — there was no way they were as solid as that door. Then, maybe lob a grenade into the tower. From their current position, while they might shoot their way through eventually, it could take hours. In the meantime, they could be summoning help, arming themselves, destroying everything of value, who knows?
“Let’s do it,” she said. “I want to kill them quickly.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said the sergeant, already leading his men up the rock face of the bluff.
She and Banach looked at each other. “Having fun?” she said.
He nodded. “Nice to see these guys earning their pay for a change.”
They scrambled up the bluff behind the marines. As she neared the top, she saw what was left of her submarine out at sea, a few floating scraps still being bombed by the relentless drones. Just in front of it was the wounded Polaris, badly damaged but untouched by the swarm. She felt a pang thinking about her lost boat. But it was balanced by the relief she felt at escaping with her life, and the thrill of the hunt.
“Almost all the windows are out!” said Banach after a few minutes of shooting from atop the rise. The men inside had stopped showing their faces; they were hunkered down, panicked, no doubt, perhaps contemplating surrender. Banach had a small pistol out, but the commandos around them had the bigger guns, automatic rifles and a grenade launcher that Carlson had been only vaguely aware was onboard. She admired the efficiency of the marines as they worked, the sergeant barely said a thing as they took their positions, covered one another, and shot accurately at the windows. There was something medieval about it, she thought, besieging a tower on an island. And as in any siege, time was on their side. Soon, several windows of the tower had been completely shot out.
The marines stopped shooting momentarily, and the sergeant addressed the man with the grenade launcher. She couldn’t hear his words, so deafened was she by the firing that had gone on all around her, but she knew what he was saying. The same thing she might say to a brash OOD who had a torpedo in the tube, the outer doors opened, and the bearing of the enemy. Take your time, he must be saying. Make it count.
The soldier got down on one knee, squinted through the sight, exhaled, and fired. The grenade launcher made a satisfying BLOOP. The grenade flew directly toward the tower but hit low, bouncing off the side and exploding as it fell toward the ground. The sergeant leaned in and calmly spoke to the soldier again, who nodded and adjusted his stance. His second shot flew directly through one of the windows they had blown open with their bullets.
And then it passed directly through a shattered window on the other side. It exploded harmlessly in the air.
There was a moment of silence, and then they all burst out laughing.
“What a horrible shot!” said Carlson, laughing with the rest.
The sergeant put his hand on the shoulder of the soldier with the grenade launcher, moved him slightly to his left, so that his next shot wouldn’t pass all the way through.
Before he could shoot, there was a sudden change that Carlson became aware of on a subconscious level. The drones that had been hovering all around them, watching their fun but not participating, suddenly jerked in their flight paths, as if jolted by a sudden and important set of new instructions. A large contingent of them formed into a V and flew directly toward the Polaris. The drones that had been directly over their heads dipped ominously, their buzzing engines deepening by an octave as they changed course.
Almost immediately, the bombs began falling.
The first one landed in the middle of the commandos, shattering their bodies, sending three of them rolling down the hill. The man with the grenade launcher was cut almost in half, leaving his weapon behind as he rolled into the sea. The gray rock of the bluff was suddenly red with the blood of her men.
Carlson was shocked to realize she wasn’t hit, even as the bombs continued to fall. She followed the dead bodies of the marines, rolling down the bluff, thinking that the drones might take her for one of the dead.
Banach followed her down. They were in that slight crevice in the rock now, between the bluff and the rest of the island, but the drones weren’t fooled at all. An explosion went off right in front of them. She was turned away, but Banach lost an eye in the explosion; his face was covered in blood.
Banach pulled himself upright, still alive, and dragged himself on top of her. At first she wasn’t sure what he was doing and started to get angry with him, could barely breathe from the suffocating weight of his body on top of hers. Then she realized that he was trying to protect her.
It won’t work, she thought. The drones saw the concentration of bodies, alive and dead, as an attractive target and wouldn’t stop until they were obliterated. He might absorb the first blast, maybe the second, but the drones were relentless, and her death was inevitable. Banach was so close, the whole length of his body atop her, that she could feel his weakening, dying pulse through her uniform. Each explosion forced him down harder on top of her, as if he were a lover trying to tighten his embrace. A bomb exploded directly on top of them, and his heartbeat stopped. His blood poured over her face, and her arms were pinned by the rock walls, her hands unable to clear her eyes. His dead body absorbed another blast, and then another. How gallant of him, she thought. But she would have preferred to die atop the bluff in the first blast, she realized, looking out at the sea.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Moody watched from the deck of the Polaris as the three rubber boats zipped by her on the way to Eris Island; two from the Typhon boat, and one from the escape trunk of Polaris. The Polaris boat contained just Pete and McCallister, and no guns. The Typhon boats in contrast were crammed with men, all of them carrying weapons. She could take no satisfaction in the imminent, brutal deaths of those two traitors, because it would mean that Typhon would soon take Eris Island. And the cure.
The drones continued to bomb the Typhon ship. It was sinking rapidly even as the boats escaped it. They zipped by Dr. Haggerty, who was pathetically waving his arms at all parties, seemingly shocked that no one wanted to save him. She didn’t understand it. She felt a creeping, familiar aggravation, much like she had when Hamlin had arrived with his secret orders. Once again, so many people seemed to know exactly what was going on, while she did not. Haggerty went under for good at about the same time the Typhon submarine did.