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  “Mary, hit it!” Nick yelled.

  A second later, the rail gun on the passenger window fired, slamming into the approaching CDM slightly off-center, peeling away two of its big gatling guns and shearing off both rocket pods on the left side of the small armored vehicle. The CDM kept coming, though, as the soldiers at the gate opened fire.

  “Again! Fire the other one!” Nick shouted.

  “Boss! Generator just took a bullet! It’s done!” Briggs yelled.

  “Capacitors should have enough kick in them still. Mary, do it,” Martin said.

  The rail gun on the driver’s side fired, falling out of the window as it did so and hitting the ground beside the APC. The round hit the CDM dead-center, and the tiny vehicle stopped dead, its sides cracked open and spewing black smoke.

  “Got him,” Bryce observed.

  “Stay away from those cracks in the armor! We got bullets coming in!” Briggs yelled.

  “Chris, get on that 50! Try to thin them out a little!”

  Christopher went for the controls for the 50-caliber machine gun mounted on top of the APC but shook his head a second later.

  “No good, boss. They’ve taken it out.”

  “Fortunately, I cooked up a little something extra,” Martin said, grinning and pulling a detonator remote out of his coat. He hit a button, and a small, muffled explosion sounded.

  Outside, Nick heard screaming. He checked the one monitor they hadn’t covered over with the armor plating and saw the gate guards on the ground. One of them was writhing and bleeding, but the rest were dead.

  “What was that?” Nick asked.

  “Shrapnel in a bucket with some C4 behind it.” Martin laughed. “Frag gun. I think I just invented it.”

  “You really creep me out, guy,” Christopher muttered.

  “Bryce, go. Those LAVs will be here any second, and we don’t have anything to return fire with.”

  “On it, boss.”

  Bryce slammed on the gas, and the APC slowly accelerated, heading for the front of the power plant’s main building. Their speed kicked up to about forty when they cleared the parking lot, and Bryce didn’t even slow down as rounds from the Mengshi LAV’s started to slam into the APC. He drove straight through the front doors and into the building’s lobby, turning sharply to the right and crashing through two offices before the truck finally came to a stop.

  “Rockets!” Nick yelled, and Christopher, Briggs and Daniel jumped out of the APC through the back hatch carrying the shoulder-mounted rocket launchers. Nick heard them fire, and three explosions followed.

  “We’re good!” Christopher yelled, and Nick grabbed his assault rifle and led his people out of the APC and into the building.

  “Martin, we’re following you. Three men forward, four rear! Go!”

  Nick heard his men firing behind them as they ran, following the signs to the main control room, no doubt mopping up the remaining soldiers pouring in from outside. They ran up a flight of stairs, Nick and Bryce taking point, then down a long hall to the main control area. As they burst into the room, Martin opened fire, killing the three technicians manning the room.

  “Kenny! Help me translate!” Martin yelled, and the two of them got to work.

  It was quiet for a moment, and Nick slung his assault rifle over his chest and cracked his knuckles.

  “Briggs, Daniel, Chris. Stay on that door,” Nick said, pointing to the way they’d come in. “Shoot anything that moves. Mary, Bryce, on me. We’re covering the other door.”

  Nick kicked open the second door with one boot and sensed Mary and Bryce fall in behind him. In front of them was a long, dim hallway. Nothing moved as they watched, fingers on triggers.

  “Nick! Big problem!” Martin shouted.

  “What now?” Nick yelled over his shoulder.

  “We’re in, but the computer core’s on its own dedicated conduit! It can’t be shut down!”

  “Just kill everything! All the power!”

  “That’s what I’m saying! It can’t be killed! There’s no way to shut it off! I can black out the whole city except for that one building! Unless…”

  Nick heard nothing for almost a full minute except for Kenneth and Martin muttering to each other and some banging on a keyboard.

  “Tell me something!” he yelled.

  “One second!”

  “Martin!”

  “One second, dammit!”

  Nick turned around to yell at Martin again but saw the older man standing right at his shoulder, grinning that creepy grin of his.

  “What?”

  “Never mind,” Martin said. “We’re all good. We might want to get out of here, though.”

  Gunfire exploded at the other door, and Nick heard someone yelp before his men returned fire.

  “Everyone okay?”

  “Leg! Took one in the leg! I’m good!” Briggs yelled.

  “Uh, seriously, Nick. We need to go.”

  “What did you do?”

  Martin just grinned wider.

  “Martin! What the fuck did you do?”

  “Disabled the safeties. Cranked everything all the way up. First thing that happens is everything overloads, then shuts down. Second thing that happens if the auxiliary safety protocols don’t come on or technicians can’t stop the overload—meltdown. Really, we need to get going.”

  “Fuck!” Nick shouted. His hand balled into a fist, but he didn’t swing at Martin, no matter how much he wanted to. “All right! Everyone, on me! Briggs, can you walk?”

  Briggs didn’t answer, so Nick ran over to him. The first thing he saw was blood, a lot of it, on the floor just outside the door Briggs had been covering. Next he saw Briggs, his face pale, pressing a field dressing to the inside of his right thigh.

  “Hey, boss,” Briggs said weakly.

  “Looks bad. Can you move?”

  “Bullet nicked my femoral. Didn’t realize until I tried to move. I’m not going anywhere.”

  “Chris, Daniel, pick him up. We’re carrying you out.”

  “Negative, boss. I got three minutes at best, unless there’s an ER in the next room over. Femoral’s torn. I’m bleeding out.”

  Nick could see it in Briggs’ face, which had turned the color of chalk. His eyes were moving slowly. The young medic’s mouth was frozen in a hard, thin line, and opened only slightly when he spoke.

  “Briggs, shut up,” Nick growled. “Chris, Daniel —”

  “Nick. I’m your medic. Without a cut-down and about eight pints of blood, I’m dead in two and a half minutes now. You go. I’ll cover this hallway for as long as I can.”

  Nick felt tears welling up, but somehow, he kept them from spilling out.

  No one gets left behind. His own words again, his own thoughts replaying themselves in his head. He’d been stupid to believe it.

  “I’m not leaving you behind.”

  “I’m already gone, Nick. Get moving.”

  “I’ll stay. Help him cover,” Nick heard Kenneth rumble from behind him.

  “Jesus, Kenneth,” Nick said, turning to argue with the big man. He found an AK-47 pointed at his face.

  “I’m not going back to being a convict. So run. Now. Me and the little guy are covering your exit. No argument. No conversation. Go, or I’ll fucking shoot all of you.”

  “See? Me and big crazy got this.” Briggs chuckled, sending a spray of bullets down the hall, dropping two men in security uniforms. “Get your people back alive, Nick.”

  * * *

  The alarms started wailing before 47 Echo was halfway down the fire stairs to the first floor.

  “Radiological alarm,” Martin told them. “Overload’s starting.”

  “Is this place going to explode?” Daniel asked as they cleared the stairs and burst outside through the fire exit.

  “Nah. Well…probably not. But we don’t want to be here when the radiation really ramps up,” Martin said.

  “How long until the power goes out?” Nick asked, pulling the phone from
his pocket.

  “Not an exact science. Two, three minutes.”

  About as long as Briggs has to live, Nick’s brain reminded him.

  They emerged into the plant’s rear parking lot as Nick flipped open the cell phone.

  “Bryce, get us a ride. Shit. I can’t get a signal.”

  “Radiation. We need to get clear, or we’re all dead,” Martin said.

  Bryce used the butt of his assault rifle to smash a nearby minivan’s window. He threw open the door and, a few seconds later, the minivan started up.

  “We’re mobile!” he shouted.

  “Everyone in the van!”

  Nick’s people were already piling in as the words came out of his mouth.

  Nick jumped into the passenger seat and slammed the door. He checked the rearview mirror, made a quick headcount, and turned to Bryce.

  “Go!”

  Bryce tore off, heading around the building for the front gate. Theirs wasn’t the only vehicle speeding away from the plant. There were several dozen others, including one of the Mengshi LAVs, which drove through the fence, opening another exit. Bryce followed it, swerving to avoid the motionless CDM between them and the downed fence.

  Nick tried the cell phone again as they barreled away from the plant. He got one bar, then two. He dialed and put the phone up to his ear.

  “Ni—” he heard before the connection terminated.

  “Shit.”

  Nick dialed again.

  “Nick.”

  He heard it clearly this time.

  “Anthony! Power’s out in —”

  Nick looked over at Martin, who pointed out the window at one of the billboards. It went to black just as he pointed.

  “Power’s out now!”

  “Copy that.”

  “We copy, as well,” he heard a Russian voice say. “Executing.”

  “Ordos is down,” Anthony reported.

  “Zhengzhou is down. Green lig—”

  The connection terminated, and Nick looked down at the phone. The signal bar was covered with an X. The cell towers don’t have any power, he realized. Bryce kept hammering, and Nick could hear the minivan’s engine whining in protest.

  “Head for the ocean,” Nick told him, closing the phone and putting both hands on his assault rifle.

  “Copy that. What’s our way out?”

  “You don’t want to know. Just hope we can make it to the waterfront in the chaos.”

  And chaos was one thing not in short supply. All around them, cars and military vehicles loaded with people, civilians and military alike, were trying to get as far away from the power plant as possible. Helicopters had seemingly appeared out of nowhere, darkening the skies, throwing huge shadows on the streets below. A few UAVs crashed into buildings, their ground-based control systems now without power.

  “Waterfront’s coming up, boss.”

  “There should be a pier around here somewhere. Boats. We’re taking one.”

  “Um, boss, I can drive pretty much anything with wheels, but I’m not great with boats,” Bryce said.

  “We’ll worry about it when we get there,” Nick told him as they turned down the long street to the pier.

  “Well, if we get there,” Christopher said, pointing out the windshield.

  Between them and the boats docked at the pier were several APCs and a whole lot of soldiers.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Riot Squad

  “Bryce, take us around. No way we’re shooting our way through that mess,” Nick said, shaking his head.

  “Copy that.”

  “What’s our backup extraction?” Christopher asked.

  “There is no backup extraction. At least, not one that anyone planned on. We’re going to have to find our own way out,” Nick said.

  “We want to start heading out of the city, though,” Martin piped up. “Depending on how good the Chinese nuclear techs are, this whole place might go Chernobyl on us.”

  Nick had been forcing himself not to think of that, but now that Martin said it, his stomach acids started to boil. So many civilians in Shanghai. So many people going about their daily lives. Destroying military targets was one thing; those were full of enemy combatants. Killing innocent civilians was entirely another. He almost wanted to throw Martin from the moving van for creating the situation, but the man had only done what Nick told him to. He’d shut down the power. And possibly killed every civilian in a city of fifteen million.

  Push that shit to the background, Nick heard his father’s voice. You’ll have plenty of time to deal with it later. Fear and anger. That’s all you have time for right now.

  “Bryce, back out the way we came in. Everyone, keep your N-95 masks on and don’t look directly at anyone outside the van. Hopefully, we can just blend into the evacuation traffic until we get clear and find a way to head for friendly territory,” Nick ordered.

  Bryce nodded and headed for the freeway, slipping his mask down over his face as he drove. His helmet covered his blond hair, but his pale skin would still be a dead giveaway if anyone looked closely. Nick just hoped everyone was too distracted by the meltdown to scrutinize every vehicle.

  “Everyone else, consolidate your ammo and be ready to fight if we have to. If we go down, we go down swinging.”

  “Beats getting captured, I suppose,” Christopher said.

  The freeway was jammed with cars when they finally reached it. It seemed as though the evacuation call had gone out almost instantly. Military and civilian vehicles alike crawled along the roadway, and Bryce merged the van into traffic and started crawling along with everyone else.

  “They’ll probably assume the meltdown was accidental until word reaches them of the other two cores going down, or the first bombing,” Mary guessed.

  “How long, do you think?” Daniel asked, his voice quiet, his words clipped.

  “No way to tell for sure. I’m not getting any signals on the computer. My guess, though? Bombers were already in the air when we shut down the grid. Another few minutes, tops.”

  “But how are they going to get the message?” Christopher asked.

  “Helicopters and military vehicles still have power. Power means radio. Once that first bomb hits, everyone’s going to know it,” Nick said, turning in his seat to face his people. He tried to think of something inspiring to say, something to give them hope. No matter how hard he thought, though, he couldn’t think of anything.

  His people looked back at him. They were tired, dirty, beaten. If they did get attacked, Nick knew they would all fight until they had nothing left, but looking at them now, he worried that wouldn’t be a very long fight. And he knew the intense military presence in Shanghai meant none of them would make it out alive. There would be time to mourn Briggs and Kenneth later—right now, Nick had to make sure he and his friends didn’t join them.

  “Uh-oh,” Bryce said, nodding down the road. “I think we’re in trouble.”

  They’d crawled perhaps a mile since they’d merged onto the freeway, and now saw the reason for the slow traffic. About a half-mile ahead, two tanks sat on either side of the road. Between the tanks, several PLA soldiers had set up a makeshift checkpoint, and they were looking into each civilian vehicle as it passed. Traffic seemed to speed up dramatically after the checkpoint, but there was no way they’d get past even a cursory inspection.

  “We’re blown,” Nick said. “If you can, get us off the freeway. It’ll look suspicious, but at least we’ll have room to move down there. Maybe lose them in the city if they decide to chase us.”

  “No exits coming up. I’ll have to throw it in reverse on the shoulder,” Bryce told him, checking the rearview mirror. “Shit. That plan’s out, too. APC on the shoulder, coming up from behind.”

  “Doesn’t seem to be slowing down,” Christopher said, checking the van’s back window. “Maybe they’ll just roll right past us.”

  “If they do, break out the second you can and get us out of here,” Nick said, clamping his j
aw tight. “If they don’t, everyone be ready to shoot.”

  He heard clips being slammed into assault rifles and bolts pulled back. Nick kept an eye on the side mirror, watching the APC rolling toward him on the shoulder. It stopped two car lengths back.

  “We’re boxed in,” Martin said, more than a bit of panic in his voice.

  “Yep. Daniel, be ready to take out their 50 gunner. He’s going to be our biggest problem. Chris, get on the door. We’ll need to bail in a hurry to handle any guys on foot.”

  Christopher nodded and put one hand on the door handle. Nick’s eyes stayed glued to the mirror, watching for any movement from the APC. After a few agonizing minutes, it started up again and rolled past on Nick’s side.

  As soon as the APC was a few car lengths away, Nick turned to Bryce.

  “Go.”

  It was only one syllable, but Bryce already had the minivan in reverse before the sound was all the way out of Nick’s mouth. They slammed into the small sedan behind them, pushing the car back a few feet. Bryce hammered the van forward, then back into reverse, and they were suddenly zooming down the shoulder backward.

  It took them just a few seconds to reach the nearest onramp, and Bryce managed to squeeze them by the cars waiting to get on. Ahead of them, Nick saw the huge APC reversing quickly back down the shoulder, smashing into civilian cars as it lumbered its way onto the ramp. A soldier appeared in the 50 turret, gun swiveled toward Nick and his crew.

  Daniel was in a crouch between the driver and passenger seat, aiming through the windshield at the APC turret, but Bryce managed to get them off the ramp and onto the road before the APC could open fire. The APC was still stuck on the ramp, its wide body unable to push by the civilian cars jamming the roadway. Bryce spun the van around and stomped on the accelerator, heading for the huge cluster of apartment buildings just under the freeway.

  Okay, boat’s out. Blending in with the evacuation is out. Cover. Buy some time, try to sneak out when darkness hits, Nick thought. It was a shitty plan, and he knew it—but the brass’ “go steal a boat or something” plan wasn’t genius, either.

  He turned to his left to relay the order to Bryce, to tell him to head back for the ghetto and the factory where they’d modified the APC, but through the driver-side window, he saw a troop truck filled with armed PLA soldiers barreling down on them.