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  “Boss? What are we doing here? What’s our move?” Christopher asked.

  “Shut up a minute,” Nick snapped.

  Something was coming back to him. Something his father had told him once, about how the SEALs used to toughen up their Humvees in Iraq to help protect them from IEDs and snipers. They’d take whatever they could find around—corrugated steel, car doors, spare Kevlar vests, even plywood—and use it to add a bit of armor to the light, unarmored vehicles. Hillbilly armor, he’d called it.

  “Sorry. I think I’ve got something. You used to break into places, right?”

  “Yeah,” Christopher said.

  “That padlock on the factory gate out there. Think you can get it open?”

  “Probably.”

  “We need to see what’s inside. See if there’s anything we can use.”

  Kenneth drove the APC around to the front of the abandoned factory, and Nick and his unit kept an eye out for any movement on the cameras. When the coast was clear, Christopher hopped out and started working on the lock. Seconds later, he hopped back into the APC.

  “Couldn’t get it?” Mary asked.

  “No, I got it. Lock was cheap as shit. Rusty, too. I don’t think anyone’s been in there in a while.”

  “Kenneth, take us in. Eyes sharp, everyone. I’d really prefer not to get caught. You know, again,” Nick said.

  The factory doors were locked too, but Christopher didn’t have any trouble with them. There was no power inside the building, but Nick, Daniel and Briggs managed to lift one of the loading doors manually, and Kenneth drove the APC inside. Nick closed them in, and his people filed out, turning on their flashlights.

  “What are we looking for, boss?” Briggs asked.

  “Anything we can use to up-armor this APC. Metal’s best, but we’ll take what we can get. Split up, teams of two, and see what you can find. Keep on radios. Chris, you’re with me.”

  “Hey, look,” Christopher whispered as the teams broke up and started poking around the factory floor. “Martin’s going with Kenneth. That’s just a whole bucket of crazy there.”

  “I don’t know. Kenneth seems calmer these days,” Nick said, shrugging.

  “Yeah. Until his pills wear off.”

  “There is that.”

  “So you really think sticking some scrap metal to the APC will get us past that CDM?”

  “No. But it might help us last a few seconds longer. Maybe even enough to get to the front door. What I’d really like are some better weapons. Something that could take out the CDM first so all we’d have to worry about is the LAVs and the soldiers.”

  “Yeah, but we’d need a couple of tanks or an airstrike to pull that off,” Christopher said, shining his flashlight over a workbench. It was empty, save for a very old computer and some hand tools.

  “Yeah. I doubt even those missiles Kenneth has would bust up its armor too much.”

  “Nick. Nick, we’ve got something here,” Martin’s voice came over the radio. He sounded excited, almost giddy.

  “Where?”

  “All the way at the back of the factory. You’ll want to see this.”

  “He sounds happy,” Christopher commented as the two of them headed for the back of the factory.

  “Yeah. That’s usually not a good thing,” Nick replied.

  Two minutes later, Nick and Christopher found Martin. Daniel and Mary had also found him, and were staring at the older man, looking confused. Even Kenneth had an eyebrow raised. Nick panned his flashlight as he approached, noting several large pieces of metal stacked neatly against one wall.

  “Those are pretty big chunks of metal, all right. Good work, Martin,” Nick said.

  “What? Oh. Didn’t even see those,” Martin said, turning to face his boss. “Makes sense, though. Raw material and all.”

  He had two long, thin metal strips in each hand. They looked to Nick like metal yardsticks, except they didn’t seem to have any markings on them for measurement. Martin was softly knocking the ones in his left hand against the ones in his right, smiling widely at the clinking noise they made.

  “So what is it you’re so on about, then?” Christopher asked.

  “This,” Martin said, pointing to a large, blocky piece of industrial equipment with the metal yardsticks.

  Nick had no clue what the machine was. It looked old, a little rusty and heavy. The thing was basically a three-foot-square metal cube with a small, cylindrical protrusion on top and some controls on one side. Nick thought maybe Martin wanted to take it apart and use the metal to shore up the APC’s armor, but the thing looked solid. He couldn’t see any seams anywhere—it looked like it was all one huge chunk of metal.

  “Um…okay. And that is?” Nick said.

  “That’s an induction furnace.”

  Martin beamed, as if what he’d just said made any sort of sense.

  Nick glanced around at his people to see if any of them had a clue what Martin was talking about. Daniel held up his hands, and even Mary shook her head.

  “Uh, right. And an induction furnace is what now?” Christopher said.

  “It’s the answer to how we’re going to take out that CDM and get into the power station,” Martin told them.

  Bryce and Briggs wandered over.

  “Hey, cool. Those are some big chunks of metal,” Briggs said. “We just need some way to bolt them to the APC.”

  “I saw some tools around. I could probably work something out,” Bryce said, nodding.

  “Will you forget about the metal plating?” Martin growled. “This is much more important.”

  “Right. Nick, what’s going on here?” Briggs said, frowning.

  “Martin was just about to explain that.”

  “Induction furnace. Large power supply. Large tank capacitors. Do I really have to explain this to you people?” Martin spat, exasperated.

  “Wait. You don’t mean…that’s crazy, Martin,” Mary said, shaking her head.

  Martin looked over at Mary and smiled, showing his straight, white teeth through his scarred, uneven lips.

  “You’ve got it, kid.”

  “Okay, you two. Someone explain this to the rest of us idiots,” Nick growled. He’d had enough of Martin’s smug ooh, look at me, I’m a genius attitude. He realized his right hand was clenched into a fist, and while he told himself he wasn’t about to punch Martin in the face, he knew that was a lie.

  Mary looked at him and said two words: “Rail guns.”

  As soon as she did, Nick realized she was right. Martin was crazy.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Generator

  The basic concept behind rail guns, Nick knew, was an electromagnetic force used to propel a projectile very fast. He’d read about them years back on the Internet and knew that the Navy had built and test-fired a few of them. He’d even heard that some of the newer destroyers in the Navy had them on their decks to shoot down incoming missiles. But he’d never heard of them on a land-based vehicle, or built from crap lying around an abandoned factory.

  “I don’t know,” Mary said when he asked if the idea could work. “It’s theoretically possible. I mean, my cousin built a small rail gun for a school science fair last year. He’s really smart, but he’s twelve.”

  “And it worked?”

  “His parents had to replace his bedroom door.”

  “Right. Martin, have at it. Take whoever you need to help. The rest of you, let’s see what we can do with all of this extra metal,” Nick said.

  Martin chose Mary and Bryce to work with him, which left Nick, Daniel, Briggs, Kenneth and Christopher on armor duty. Moving the steel panels was sweaty, tiring work, and it took them a few hours to work out how to use them to armor up the APC. Their first idea—Christopher’s—was to attach them to the outside of the vehicle somehow. The panels were more than an inch thick, however, and they couldn’t figure out a way to drill through them and bolt them to the vehicle’s hull without power tools.

  “Maybe we don’t pu
t them outside,” Kenneth suggested. “Maybe we wedge them inside, against the walls and the floor.”

  “We’d have to take out the seats,” Daniel mentioned.

  “You want to be comfortable, or you want to be alive?” Kenneth asked.

  “Well, when you put it that way…”

  The crew started tearing out the seats in the back of the APC. They managed to unbolt them with the hand tools Nick and Christopher had found near the front of the warehouse, but that left small holes in the vehicle’s floor. Nick could see the concrete of the factory’s loading bay through the holes.

  “Those shouldn’t be a problem,” Kenneth assured him. “These panels will cover up the holes.”

  “You really think this rail gun bullshit is going to be able to kill a CDM?” Christopher asked as he and Nick lifted one of the metal slabs into the back of the vehicle.

  “It could. I saw some test-firing footage on the Internet once. Navy put it up on YouTube. They shot a piece of aluminum through a six-inch steel plate.”

  “So how come we aren’t using this stuff already out in the field?” Daniel asked, helping Kenneth lift a second plate.

  “That one’s too long. We won’t be able to close the back hatch. Try this one,” Briggs said, pointing to another plate.

  “You’d have to ask Mary or Kenneth to be sure, but I remember something about power problems. They take a whole lot of electricity to work properly, I think,” Nick said as Daniel and Kenneth swapped their plate for the one Briggs suggested.

  In a few hours, they had the walls and floor of the APC lined with the metal plates. There were gaps—too many for Nick’s liking—and the plates were unstable, as they were simply wedged into place. But it was better than nothing, he hoped.

  At 2200, Nick made his call. He got both Johnny Evans and MSgt. Ortiz-Gonzales on the line. He told them their plan: to assault the power station and shut down the power to the core.

  “Risky. What if they have backups?” Ortiz-Gonzales asked.

  “It’ll still take a few minutes to get enough power to their core to get their electronic frontiers up and running again,” Johnny said. “They’ll rely on the backup cores we’re taking out to cover until then.”

  “Exactly,” Nick agreed. “And in that time, our bombers can make it across the line and start hitting targets.”

  “So, here’s how I see it. Twenty minutes before you assault the power station, call us. We’ll alert the bombers to get airborne. Then, second the power goes down, we’ll take out our cores and greenlight the airstrikes. That’s when we all hit our exfil plans. That’s where your job really gets tough, Nick,” Johnny said.

  “Yeah, I know. That’s why we got the shit job,” Nick replied, sighing.

  “If anyone can make that plan work, kid, it’s you. I’ll keep Piotr on our line.”

  “And I’ll keep Convict Rice on ours,” Ortiz-Gonzales said. “We’re all set to blow our core, Colonel. Just need the word from 4-7 Echo over here.”

  “We’re in position, too,” Johnny reported. “You’ve got the ball, Nick. Run it home.”

  “Copy that. See you all in a week or so.”

  After Nick hung up the phone, he found a quiet corner of the factory, an old office strewn with papers and trash. He sat in a worn office chair and smoked one cigarette, then another. Finally, halfway through the third, his hands stopped shaking. He could go talk to his people now.

  “Okay, genius squad. How are we coming?” Nick asked, walking up to Mary, Martin and Bryce. They had two odd, long rectangular boxes set up on the floor between them.

  “Almost done,” Martin told him. “Just one problem.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Power,” Bryce said, looking up from the boxes on the floor. “I thought we might-could run them off the batteries in the APC, but these things would drain them in seconds flat. Then, dead truck. We might take out the CDM, but then we’re just a stationary target for everything else out there.”

  “I saw one of those portable generator things on the other side of the factory,” Briggs said, walking up behind Nick. “You know, the type you use when the power goes out? The gas-powered kind?”

  Martin nodded his head.

  “Sure. Not the cleanest electricity we could ask for, but I think I can make it work. How big was the generator, Briggs?”

  “I don’t know, maybe three, three and a half feet square?”

  “Okay,” Martin said, standing up and wiping his hands on his shirt. “Bryce, you probably know more about those things than I do. Gasoline engines and all. Let’s go take a look.”

  As Briggs, Martin and Bryce headed off to find the generator, Nick knelt down to take a closer look at the two long boxes. They were almost four feet long and had openings cut into one end.

  “So, will they work?” he asked Mary.

  “They should, on paper.”

  “How do we aim them?”

  “Well, that’s the problem. I can control the energy release from my computer—pull the trigger, basically—but we’re going to have to find a way to mount them to the outside of the APC. Then, we point the truck at the CDM and shoot.”

  “We didn’t figure out a way to mount the panels. I don’t see how these are going to be any easier,” Nick said, shaking his head.

  “Bryce says he has an idea. But you walked up and we started talking before he could tell us what it was.”

  “If it’s Bryce’s idea, chances are it’ll work. When you’re done here, try and grab some rest. There are some chairs in an office back that way,” Nick jerked his thumb behind him. “I’d love to say they’re comfortable, but they’re not.”

  “Doubt I’ll be able to sleep anyway. We’re about to go up against the Chinese Army’s best destruction machine with something we slapped together in five hours on a theory. Not exactly lulling me to sleepy-time land, that thought.”

  “I’m sure Briggs can give you something. And I’ll need everyone rested. Don’t make me order you to sleep. I hate doing that.”

  “Fair enough.”

  In another hour, they had the generator hooked up and loaded into the APC. Bryce raised a concern about the fumes from the running engine asphyxiating them all, but Kenneth came up with a solution. Using the AK-47s, they shot several holes into the roof of the APC to vent the carbon monoxide. The bullets tore right through the vehicle’s hull.

  “Wow. Now I’m glad we put the extra armor in here,” Christopher said. “This thing wouldn’t have protected us from small children without it.”

  Nick dug in his pack and pulled out the N-95 mask from Hefei.

  “We’ll wear these to hopefully filter out what the ventilation holes don’t,” he said.

  “A combination of the two should give us a few minutes before we start getting lightheaded,” Briggs said, nodding. “But we’d better be out of the vehicle after that.”

  “Now, about mounting these things. Bryce?” Nick said.

  “Yeah. Going to use the jacks for the APC’s spare tires. Tension-mount them to the driver and passenger portholes. It won’t last forever, but should hold them when they fire.”

  “Right. About that—how much ammo do we have for these things?”

  “One shot each. After that, the rails will get too hot and warp. They’ll be useless,” Martin said.

  “So we’d better kill the CDM first time out. Got it. Okay, I’ve got—” Nick checked his watch, “—two a.m. Sunrise is in four and a half hours. We’ll roll then. Try to get some sleep. Daniel, you and I are on first watch.”

  * * *

  “Hey, boss. There’s something about this mission you haven’t mentioned,” Daniel said quietly as the two of them sat outside the APC while the others slept.

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. Specifically, what we’re going to do after we shut down the central core. How we’re going to get the hell out of here.”

  Nick had dreaded someone asking this question. Colonel Ross had briefed him personally on that pa
rt of the plan, separate from the rest of his crew with only Johnny Evans and MSgt. Ortiz-Gonzales present. Ross hadn’t wanted to spook Nick’s men any more than they already were by the seemingly impossible nature of the mission.

  “You’re right. I haven’t mentioned that,” Nick said.

  “You’re stalling.”

  “Right again. There’s a plan, Daniel. Trust me on that. I won’t let us get caught here.”

  “All right, boss. I trust you. Just, you know. Make sure I make it out. I got shit to do back home, you know?”

  Daniel laughed.

  Nick didn’t.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Did You Wanna Die

  Nick was crouched behind the passenger seat, his boots flat on the metal plate in the floor, when the APC rolled up to the Songshan Nuclear Power Station’s front gate. As Bryce drove them slowly up to the gate, Nick saw the CDM wasn’t idling out front as it had been the day before, but he could make it out a couple of hundred feet back, slowly heading toward the gate.

  Must have just finished a patrol, he reasoned.

  “Hey, Nick? We’re getting a challenge call. They want to know who we are and what we’re doing here,” Kenneth said from the passenger seat. “Want me to respond?”

  “Nah. I got it,” Nick said, reaching over the big man and toggling the dashboard radio.

  A burst of quick Chinese filled the cabin—the challenge, repeated.

  Nick held down the transmit button, cleared his throat and responded.

  “Cao ni ma,” he said flatly.

  The CDM sped up, barreling toward the front gate, and the soldiers out front raised their weapons and trained them on the APC.

  “Jesus. What did he say?” Nick heard Mary ask from behind him.

  “I…probably shouldn’t repeat it,” Christopher answered her.

  “He said ‘fuck your mother,’” Kenneth said loudly, glaring at Nick.