Callsign Cerberus Read online

  Removing the throat-mike hook-up, Kane stepped out of the Deathbird, ducking his head beneath the vanes, striding through the dust devils the rotor-wash had created. The other two choppers were alighting behind him, but not as expertly as Grant had maneuvered theirs.

  The craft were not easy to control. Grant, who was rated the best Bird jockey in the Cobaltville Division, had experienced his fair share of close calls over the years. Though it wasn’t common knowledge except among the handful of techs and mechanics, the Deathbirds were very old, dating back to the years before Night Eternal. They were modified AH-64 Apache attack gunships, and most of the fleet had been re-engineered and retrofitted dozens of times.

  Kane had never asked where all the ordnance had come from. He was familiar with enough post Nukeday history to know that Stockpiles, caches of material and technology, had been laid down by the preNuke government just in case of a national emergency. He also knew that many of the original barons had built their power bases with the Stockpiles, but all of that was a long time ago, nearly a century before the Program of Unification.

  The rest of the hard-contact team tumbled out of the Deathbirds. Unlimbering their Copperheads, the six men fanned out in the standard deployment of firepower. They spread out with about twenty feet between them. Backlit by the burning Vulcan-Phalanx gun tower, they cast long shadows over the canyon walls and floor.

  Carefully the squad worked its way forward. No one spoke over the helmet transceivers. They were all experienced fighters and needed no last-minute warnings or pep talks.

  They visually searched the rocks for snipers, scanned the ground for trip wires or motion-activated blasters. They gripped their Copperheads in gloved hands, selectors switched to full-auto. All of them knew the remote uplands of the Colorado hellzones had claimed their fair share of Magistrates, so anything moving in the shadows would have been decimated by six streams of continuous fire.

  “Where the fuck are they?” Pollard whispered over the helmet link. “They know we’re here.”

  “Cut the backchat,” snapped Salvo.

  They moved on slowly through the canyon, every man watching the man ahead of him, glancing back at the one behind, peering into the dark depths at something that might have stirred, avoiding small mounds of sand that might conceal an antipersonnel mine.

  Kane snatched a backward glance. The gun turret continued to belch plumes of dark smoke, curling and twisting into the sky, visible to anyone for miles around. He wondered where Reeth, a small-time slagger specializing in the smuggling of outrunners into the baronies, had gotten his hands on such tech and firepower.

  According to doctrine, all the Stockpiles had been discovered and secured decades ago, so it didn’t seem reasonable the smuggler had stumbled across one overlooked in the program.

  Salvo’s voice rasped in his ear. “Halt.”

  Obediently the squad stopped.

  Over the helmet link, he said tersely, “Kane. Take the point.”

  Kane expected the order. For the past few years, he had always been assigned the position of point-man. He was never quite sure why, except that his superiors knew he was very good at it. When stealth was required, most men moved uncertainly, even clumsily in the armour, but Kane could be a silent, almost graceful wraith.

  He had never led a contact team into an ambush and, in fact, had prevented an entire squad from being ambushed during a Pit sweep the year before. Kane no longer bothered to question why Salvo always chose him to be the advance scout. If he hadn’t, he would have volunteered. When he acted as point man, he felt electrically alive, sharply tuned to every nuance of what he was doing. Only when performing his duties as point man did all doubts about his choices in life vanish, and he knew that this was the work he had been born to do.

  Kane moved quickly, heel to toe, his image enhancer bringing into sharp relief everything around him. He moved instinctively from cover to cover, from shadow patch to shadow patch, automatically placing his feet so they raised a minimum of dust and didn’t dislodge loose stones. He studied places where sentries and blastermen might be lurking.

  Thunder boomed in the distance, accompanying a purple flash of heat lightning. A storm approached, bringing not fresh, clean rain, but the acid-tainted rain of the hellzones. His armour was treated to withstand exposure to toxins, but a shower of acid rain, even if only a drizzle, wasn’t something to take lightly. This region of Colorado, on the borderlands of Terra Infernus, had recovered only minimally from the Nukeday. Its peculiar geothermals attracted chem storms. Almost all hellzones did. Though fewer hellzones existed now, there were still a number of places where the geological or meteorological effects of the nuking prevented a reasonable recovery. Those regions were designated as Terra Inferus, hell on earth.

  The west coast of the United States was one such region, where most of California was under water. The best known hellzone was the long North East Corridor, a vast stretch of abandoned factory complexes, ruins and overgrown cities. Washington, D.C, otherwise known as Capitol Hole, was still the most active hot spot in the country, ground zero of Terra Infernus. Fortunately, this region of Colorado was only warm, not hot, but it still attracted its share of chem storms.

  A hundred yards past the Vulcan-Phalanx gun tower, the canyon twisted in a curve, then cut straight south. It yawned open into a wide, stony expanse, half encircled by the overhanging rim of a cliff. Thousands of years had eroded the rim down to a series of stair-like ridges.

  Below the jutting ridges of rock was a vast, sprawling complex of ruins — interlocked buildings of mud and stone, abandoned, rebuilt, expanded and abandoned again over the long track of time. A massive structure cut into the rock of the canyon loomed above an open courtyard, protected by the overhanging cliff shelf.

  The Cliff Palace fortress was a monument to the highly evolved Pueblo Indian culture many thousands of years ago. According to the briefing, the ruins had fascinated pre-dark archaeologists and tourists. Once, the complex had been a maze of hundreds of rooms, hundreds of kivas and a labyrinth of twisting passageways.

  The last people to reign over the Cliff Palace were long, long dead. What remained was still grimly formidable. But the thick adobe walls had gaping holes, and many of the interior buildings were half-collapsed. Most of the structures were without roofs.

  Kane felt a distant wonder that even a fraction of the Cliff Palace was still standing. The savage earthquakes birthed by the Nukeday hadn’t dropped the sheltering cliff rim atop it, nor even shaken many of the ancient dwellings to their foundations. Acid rainstorms had bleached out much of the stonework but not seriously corroded it.

  His lips quirked a mirthless smile. The holocaust had virtually vaporized cities barely a hundred years old, but had spared settlements that had watched inestimable centuries crawl by.

  Creeping to a heap of broken shale, Kane hunkered down behind it. Ahead of him was a short open space, then a shallow drop into an old drainage ditch. The far bank of the ditch butted up against the base of the outer wall. It was a yard thick but barely seven feet tall.

  A sentry walked the wall. He was only a hundred feet away, shouldering a sniper rifle. Though the light of the rising moon was uncertain, Kane identified it as a Dragunov SVD, outfitted with a telescopic sight. Though the weapon was old, it looked to be in pristine condition.

  Salvo’s voice rasped in his ear. “Kane. Report.”

  Not daring even to speak, Kane used one finger to tap a brief coded signal into the microphone mounted in the helmet’s jaw guard. The taps were transmitted back to the squad, telling them to hang back.

  Salvo didn’t speak again. One oversight or distraction on the part of the point man could cost the lives of the entire team. The only reason Kane was alive and able to tap out a code signal was that he weighed all options before choosing one, and paused for a moment to reconsider before implementing any decision in a hellzone.

>   Carefully he drew the combat knife from its sheath. The heavy tungsten-steel blade was blued, muting all reflective highlights. Transferring the Copperhead to his left hand, Kane gripped the knife in his right, waiting and watching the sentry.

  The man wasn’t looking in his direction at the moment, but he would eventually. The pile of shale concealed Kane as long as he remained motionless, but he had to cross that open space and get into the ditch if he wanted to take the sentry down without gunfire.

  The sentry turned in Kane’s direction, his eyes shifting slowly past the heap of broken rock and sweeping beyond it. He turned to look in another direction. Like a coiled spring, Kane rushed from around the rock pile, crossed the open space and down into the shadows of the ditch.

  It was only four feet deep, and he went down flat on the bottom of it. He belly-crawled forward, along the base of the wall. When the sentry started to turn in his direction again, he froze. He learned long ago that at a distance, especially at night, what did not move merged into the terrain. The sentry’s eyes passed over him again. The man was looking for invaders in obvious hiding places, not in places with no apparent concealment within spitting distance of his position.

  The sentry turned away again, and Kane rose from the depression and climbed up the opposite bank. His back pressed against the wall, he slid carefully along until he crouched directly beneath the sentry. He waited in the night shadows until he heard the grate of shoe leather against stone, then his left arm snapped up, slapping the barrel of the Copperhead against the man’s ankles.

  In mid-step, the sentry stumbled and lost his balance as his legs entangled. He fell right into Kane’s waiting arms. The rifle clattered and slid into the ditch. The man groped for it, but he didn’t have time to reach it or cry out before Kane pressed the barrel of the Copperhead against his throat.

  His polycarbonate-shod knee slammed into the small of the sentry’s back and arched him forward against the pressure of the Dragonuv’s barrel. The point of the razor-keen, double-edged knife in Kane’s right fist plunged between two ribs, sinking deep.

  Kane maintained the pressure on the knife. The man clawed at the barrel of the Copperhead. From writhing lips, he husked out two half-gagged words, “Sec man!”

  The sentry’s body convulsed briefly, and then went limp, and Kane slowly lowered the deadweight to the ground, pulling the knife free. Gingerly, with the metal-reinforced toe of a boot, Kane prodded the man over onto his back. Blood, black in the wavering light of the night sight, flowed over the edge of the ditch. The man was scrawny, sharp featured, lank of hair and limb. His hands were callused, the fingers blunt and short nailed. He looked around forty years of age, which probably made him closer to twenty-five.

  All in all, he looked like typical outrunner trash. His use of the “sec man” label marked his origins in the wild hinterlands beyond the baronies. Only people raised far from the influence of the city-states still applied that obsolete term to the Magistrates.

  Kane started to push the body down into the ditch, and then he froze and leaned forward, staring at the outrunner’s face. His hair covered a transceiver plug in his right ear, and his shirt collar had concealed the miniature microphone affixed to his throat. His hissed “sec man” hadn’t been an insult but a warning.

  Dropping back into the ditch, Kane pulled the corpse with him. He climbed out on the opposite side, taking cover again behind the pile of shale. He heard nothing from the other side of the wall. Resheathing the knife, he waited for a count of sixty, and tapped out the move-up-carefully signal on the microphone.

  It occurred to him Reeth may have abandoned the Cliff Palace either when an alarm was activated or the Vulcan-Phalanx gun was triggered, and he had left a single guard behind to alert him to the identity of the intruders. Kane was able to half convince himself that was Reeth’s strategy.

  Turning, he looked across the canyon. The figures of the team moved shadowlike around the bend in the wall, pressed against the darkness. Kane tapped the all-clear code, and the five men eased forward. When they were crouched down around the heap of shale, Kane pointed to the wall and indicated they should go over it rather than walk around looking for a gap.

  Salvo nodded brusquely, and the team slid down into the ditch, then climbed up on the opposite side. MacMurphy and Pollard made stirrups out of their hands and heaved Kane high enough so he could see what lay on the other side of the wall. He investigated the top with his fingertips, searching for alarm wires. Then he slowly chinned himself upward.

  He saw nothing but walls and a maze of passageways. There was no one in sight, which meant, he hoped, no one could spot him. Cacti grew out of the packed earth at the ends of the once-solid wall on either side of him. The windows of the caved-in towers were black.

  Lithely, Kane pushed off from the hands of his comrades, bringing one leg up to one side, and crawled atop the wall. It was nearly three feet wide, and he stretched out flat along it. For a moment he didn’t move, just listened and looked. Hands hooked on the edge, he lowered himself noiselessly inside the compound. He dropped to one knee, Copperhead at the ready, waiting for the team to scale the wall and join him.

  When everyone was up and over, they moved through the complex toward the Cliff Palace itself. Because of the narrow footpaths, they weren’t able to assume the standard deployment. Kane once again took point, leading the team through deep shadow between roofless walls that had once enclosed living quarters. They passed doorways leading into nothing but darkness. The footpath took a sharp turn, and the team spread out across the courtyard, watching the dark windows above them.

  A sudden flash of brilliant light flooded the courtyard, instantly turning the deep twilight into high noon.

  CHAPTER TWO

  KANE FROZE ONLY for an instant before reacting instinctively and lunging into a narrow corridor of semidarkness between two crumbling walls. The ground was slippery with pebbles and littered with fallen roof beams. Through his helmet transceiver, he heard his team cursing in surprise and anger. He knew the others would be diving for any available cover.

  The glare of the floodlights concealed their source somewhere on one of the ridges below the cliff overhang, about a hundred feet up. But the voice, amplified by a loud-hailer that split the silence, left no doubt that the Magistrates had strolled into an ambush. The words were harsh, muffled by his helmet, but still easily understood.

  “You’re trespassin’!” the high-pitched, nasal voice declared. “Lay down your weapons and return to your machines.”

  Kane peered around the edge of the doorway and scanned the towering ramparts. Though his visor reduced the glare, he still had to squint. The lights were arranged in double rows, a half a dozen atop another, spaced twenty feet apart. Gunmen were probably behind the lights, provided with clear views and fields of fire.

  Salvo’s voice shouted into his ear. “Milton Reeth! You are obstructing the duty of authorized enforcers of Baron Cobalt’s law. By Code 7b of the Territorial Jurisdiction Act, you must surrender yourself to our custody.”

  After a moment of echoing silence came a loud, contemptuous laugh. “Salvo, you rad-gelded back-stabber! I knew you were behind this! Too late for you to crawfish on me now, you”

  The rest of Reeth’s words were swallowed up by the deep hammering of a Copperhead. Salvo raked the ledges in sweeping, left-to-right arcs of gunfire. Three of the spotlights shattered in eye-searing blazes of blue sparks. From behind the lights, blastermen opened up with full-auto fire. Spear points of flame flickered from the darkness.

  The Cliff Palace complex filled with the staccato stuttering of autofire as a chain reaction from the pinned-down Magistrates sent a steady steel-jacketed rain storming up toward the ridges. Small fountains of dirt and rock sprouted from the ground. Kane heard two distinct cries of pain.

  “I’m hit!” Pollard bellowed.

  “Shit!” screamed Carthew. �
��Shit! I can’t see!”

  The Magistrates knew better than to dig in and return double streams of autofire. Bullets knocked up great gouts of earth from the courtyard, chewed off chunks from the half-demolished buildings all around them. Hanging out of his sheltering doorway, Kane extended his Copperhead and directed short bursts at the floodlights above him. Two of them flared up in brief novas of yellow and blue.

  His teammates tried to find their way back toward the ruins, and he continued to fire upward, covering their retreat. Pollard limped badly as he ran, and Grant and MacMurphy’s progress was slow as they dragged Carthew along the ground. Salvo brought up the rear, firing in sweeps at the light array, hosing bullets indiscriminately and hitting only stone.

  Even with the illumination from the ridge dimmed somewhat, the men were clearly visible targets for the barrage of slugs punching cross-stitch patterns in the ground all around them. Shifting position, Kane transferred the Copperhead to his left hand and stretched out his right, tensing the tendons. The Sin Eater sprang from its holster, the butt snapping down and slapping securely against his palm. At the same time, he leaped out from the doorway and corridor, both blaster barrels up and smearing the darkness with flame.

  Heavy-calibre bullets pounded into the cliff rim, fragments of rock flying in all directions. Ricochets buzzed and whined through the air. Spent, smoking casings spewed from the ejector ports of both blasters in counterpoint to ripping reports of the Sin Eater and Copperhead. Sustained bursts of full-auto only wasted ammunition, but his focus was on creating a diversion, not scoring hits.

  As he hoped, the blastermen behind the lights centred their sights on him. Bullets exploded dirt all around his black-sheathed figure, striking sparks from stone. Kane wasn’t really aiming, but he felt a surge of savage satisfaction when a shadowy shape pitched out of a cleft behind a floodlight to fall headlong to the courtyard.