“Good thing,” I agreed. If his demolitions men were former SEALs, we were in good hands. The Army and Marines had talented demolitions experts, but the SEALs were in a class of their own.
O’Doul drove through the broken city desert and into a ghost town where two- and three-story buildings stood untouched and abandoned. The doors of all of these structures hung open, and a few had broken windows; but for the most part, the war had passed them by.
“Welcome to the new capital city of Terraneau,” O’Doul said.
A network of squat five-story buildings spread out around the area like a maze. Sky bridges ran between the buildings, connecting them like a strand of spider’s web. There was no mistaking these for anything but government buildings, they were too ugly to be anything else.
“You stashed your arsenal in a government complex?” I asked.
“Under the complex,” O’Doul said. “We saw the aliens knocking buildings down and thought it might be safer underground.”
We made the same mistake on New Copenhagen. We placed our arsenal in a parking lot under a large hotel. The strategy backfired when the Avatari destroyed the hotel.
As we drove down the ramp leading underground, I checked back with Thomer and Hollingsworth. Thomer had found Herrington’s beacon and the mountain in which the aliens had dug their mines.
Having seen the enormous entrance carved into the granite face of the cliffs and read the meters showing the toxicity level of the air, Doctorow became as cooperative as a newly minted cadet. When I put him on the line with O’Doul, he gave the order to mobilize the militia.
When Hollingsworth’s transport touched down, the militia sent trucks out to the airfield to bring him and the rest of my men into town.
Holding on to the unreasonable hope that he might respond, I tried to reach Herrington as well. I could not adjust to the idea that I no longer had Sergeant Lewis Herrington watching my back.
Four men with M27s stood at the entrance to the parking lot. They opened the iron gate, allowing us to enter the first level of the garage. The sound of industrial generators echoed through the structure.
We drove down one level and parked outside a fenced enclosure. Looking through the chain link, I saw that Doctorow had indeed stockpiled enough weapons to start a galactic war. From outside the fence, I saw shelves covered with M27s and rocket launchers. Pallets with crates of ammunition lined a wall. Behind the shelves and pallets stood three rows of Jackals—fast-moving jeeps with overpowered engines, rear turrets, and light armor.
A dozen armed guards stood inside the fence. When they saw O’Doul approach, they unlocked the gate. I followed, entering the organized madness of an armory made by the kind of men who submit to an alien occupation.
The armory had stacks of combat armor, more likely salvage than surplus. A fleet of tanks sat in one corner of the garage. They had both gas-spewing Rumsfelds and powerful LGs. These vehicles would be worse than useless against the aliens, their slow speeds would make them easy targets, and their armor would offer no protection against Avatari light rifles.
Taking a cursory look around, I saw rocket launchers, grenade launchers, rifles, pistols, cannons, landmines, and robot defense units called trackers. “We’re going to need particle-beam cannons and handheld rocket launchers,” I said.
“We have enough rockets to send your men out with a thousand launchers each,” O’Doul said.
“And all of yours, too?” I asked. “I’m going to need men and vehicles.”
“I’m not sending my men out there,” O’Doul said. Sending men to rig tunnels was one thing; sending men into battle was another.
“Doctorow told you to give me whatever support I need,” I said. “I need vehicles, I need drivers, and I need men to fight on the line.”
O’Doul did not like it, and I got the feeling he did not like me, but he knew I was right. He ordered his men to load trucks with particle-beam cannons and handheld rocket launchers, and the men went to work.
Hollingsworth arrived a few minutes later. Looking at the stacks of weapons, he gave a low whistle, and said, “Man, you have enough shit here to overthrow an empire.”
I hoped he was right.
The underground garage/armory had seven levels, but at this point in the mission, the back of the third level was what interested me.
The rear wall of the third level opened to an underground train station. There were no lights in the station, just a platform that disappeared into utter darkness.
“Welcome to the blackest spot on Terraneau,” O’Doul said.
“I’ve seen assholes more brightly lit than this place.” I noticed that as he relaxed around me and my Marines, he became more and more profane.
“Where’s it go?” I asked.
“It’s the Norristown subway system. Where do you think it goes?” He stepped onto the platform and shined a torch out toward the tracks. The light was not especially bright. It dissolved into the blackness a few feet in. The area in the beam was a gleaming, polished, magnetic railway system hidden under a blanket of darkness so dense I felt like I could breathe it.
“Hit the lights,” O’Doul yelled to the guards.
A string of bulbs lit up along the ceiling. Instead of illuminating the tunnel, they produced a series of dim bubbles that vanished in the distance.
I put on my helmet and stepped through the opening. Even with night-for-day lenses, I could not see very far. I saw the plasticized world around me clearly enough—twenty-foot-wide platforms on either side of the tunnel; six magnetic tracks laid out like stripes that rolled out as far as the eye could see; and dead monitors, which had not displayed train schedules for years. Without juice running through them, the magnetic tracks were simply four-foot-deep grooves.
“You’re going to use these tunnels to rig your charges?” I asked.
“Unless you have a better idea,” O’Doul said.
“How solid are the tunnels?” I asked. “Are you going to be able to get to the zone?”
“We’ve mapped every inch of these speckers, Harris. I know my way around these bitches better than the guys who ran the trains. You just deliver the aliens to the right place at the right time, and I’ll cream their asses.”
“How are we planning to get the bombs in place?” Hollingsworth asked. Like me, he had his helmet on. “There is no way in the world that these guys are going to power a big system like this with a couple of emergency generators.”
“You let me worry about that,” O’Doul said. “The bombs are my problem; the aliens are yours.”
“Begging your pardon, sir, the bombs are my problem, too,” Hollingsworth said. “My orders are to coordinate efforts between your militia and our Marines. I’m staying with you.”
“Speck. What the speck!” said O’Doul. Judging by his language arts, he had become totally at ease around us.
O’Doul, Hollingsworth, and a small army of drivers would shuttle the charges to the target area on the west side of town. They could probably have loaded all of the explosives into a single commuter train had the trains been running. Instead, they loaded the explosives onto the gas-powered sleds that the transit authority had used for tunnel maintenance.
Their job was to set the trap; my job was to kick the hornet’s nest. I was taking 73 of my 148 remaining Marines along with 200 men from the local militia to meet the Avatari. All we had to do was lead the specking aliens into O’Doul’s blast zone, then get the hell out of there before the bombs went off. We would definitely take casualties on this one. We were dealing with the Avatari, and the one thing you could count on with those bastards was death and destruction. But if we ran a hit-and-run offense, I thought we might limit the breakage.
I had my men stock up on rocket launchers and grenades. If we were forced into a close-range fight, we would use particle-beam weapons. That would be the last resort. When O’Doul asked me what weapons I thought his drivers should take, I gave it to him straight, “All they will need are body bags and Jackals.”