Chapter 27
Lang’s Burg
Cecil Blackwood let his empty flask fall to the floor. He was sitting in the common room of the old building he’d shared with Zak and Anna for so long, and without them it felt very empty. Slumped down in a low, cushy chair, he watched the screen on his handheld and wished he had more to drink.
This was supposed to be his moment of liberation. He’d done it, he thought. He’d endured. Now, his salvation was at hand! His sister Catherine, the great and mighty privateer, had arrived to rescue him from Aristotle Lang! It was the moment he’d dreamed of since the original ransom demand was sent more than local year before, even though he’d tried very hard not to cloud his mind with hope. Now, as he watched a video feed of the Andromeda conducting a short-hop atmospheric flight, he despaired. It would take his sister weeks to deliver the alien artifacts to Lang’s buyer, and weeks more to return to Zanzibar. What then? Would he let Cecil go then, or would he have more demands? What would happen when Catherine became fed up with Lang?
As near as he’d been able to discern, the old warlord hadn’t had much luck finding ships willing to haul his goods. Shooting down a damaged and off-course transport ship and picking the crash site for scrap is not a good way to endear yourself to spacers, and Lang’s men had done just that several months before. Making matters worse for Lang was the fact that the board that ran Freeport had forbidden any ships using their services from doing business with him. Given that it was the only place in a very long way to buy reaction mass or resupply, there hadn’t been any crews willing to risk defying Frank DeWitt’s edict.
A ship conducting a surface-to-surface short hop is an odd thing to watch, Cecil thought drunkenly. A ship like the Andromeda probably had a maximum thrust-to-mass ratio of eight or ten to one, more than enough to allow it to hover over the surface with ease. It was still an odd thing to watch, this big, gray, ballistic shape, seventy meters tall, launching a few thousand meters into the air, tilting slightly and slewing sideways, then coming back down at the designated landing site. The ship disappeared in a massive cloud of dust and smoke as it neared the surface. The particulate cloud was all that could be seen when it touched down, and even with the Zanzibaran wind it took several minutes to clear up.
The video feed was coming from one of Lang’s vehicles. Lang was letting Cecil watch as a courtesy, he said, to show him that he wasn’t going to betray his sister. He didn’t know where the landing site was, exactly, but he thought he recognized a terrain feature in the background. He hadn’t heard the rumbling of the ship’s engine, so it had to be far away. Too far away, at least, for Cecil to make a run for it, which is what he really wanted to do. He contemplated it briefly, his courage as enhanced by alcohol as his reflexes were inhibited by it. But what would it accomplish? Lang’s Burg was on lockdown. His building was being watched, and there were guards at the door. He’d convinced the warlord to let Zak and Anna go, but the Avalonian aristocrat was worth a great deal more to Lang.
Despairing, Cecil briefly thought of just slitting his wrists and having done with it. To hell with Lang, and to hell with this miserable, Godforsaken rock! The thought of suicide was brief and unserious, though, and Cecil knew it. He didn’t have the will to go through with it. He didn’t want his sister to have come all this way, only for him to end his own life. He wasn’t going to take the coward’s way out, especially not as she was securing his release. As he observed the Andromeda, now barely visible through the cloud of dust, slowly open its cargo bay hatch, Cecil clung desperately to the hope that this would all work out somehow in the end. That hope was all he had.
“Whatsa matta, Mista Cecil?” Bianca said sweetly as she sauntered into the room. The dusky Zanzibaran woman was clothed only in a pair of very short shorts and a cropped, low-cut top that showed off a lot of cleavage and her midriff. She lowered herself to her knees behind the chair, wrapping her arms around Cecil and resting her chin on his shoulder. “Why so sad? You sista come to get you, neh? You leave soon. You leave poor Bianca behind forever.” Her thick, guttural Zanzibaran accent made her sound unintelligent, but Bianca was anything but dumb. She played the fool, Cecil suspected, but she was a survivor.
As he studied her smooth brown skin, pouty lips, and dark eyes like deep pools of water, something stirred within Cecil, and it wasn’t just in his pants. This woman’s affection and companionship had carried him through the worst experiences of his life, through his seemingly endless captivity, and now? Was he really going to just leave her behind?
“Lang said that if we did all he asked, he’d let you come with me,” he said slowly, trying not to slur his speech. Cecil was no stranger to alcohol, and even the thick local hooch would wear off before too long. He just needed to rest until then, and having Bianca’s soft, warm body pressed against his was certainly relaxing. “Would you like that?”
“I neva been offa Zanzibar before,” Bianca said. “I born here, I live here, I think I die here.”
“Don’t talk like that,” Cecil said, squeezing her hand. “I want you to come with me.”
“You take cara me, Mista Cecil?”
“I take care of you,” he assured her. “I’m a nobody here, a prisoner, but back home, I’m well off. You’ll never want for anything again. You’ll never have to be afraid, or go hungry, or any of it, ever again.”
“You . . . you promise?” she asked.
“Of course I promise, Bianca! Don’t talk like that. You’ve been here—” before Cecil could finish, Bianca was kissing him passionately, hands running through his hair and unbuttoning his shirt from behind. She paused only to stand up, strip her insubstantial clothes off, straddle him, and lower herself back down. Her perfect breasts and shapely legs rubbed against him as she kissed him, filled with more passion and lust than she’d shown in a long time. It was as if she was freshly reunited with her lover after a long absence. Cecil had had sex with Bianca countless times, but as she arched her back in pleasure, hands on his shoulders, moaning his name, the Avalonian realized something: this was the first time she’d ever made love to him. It was different, she was different, and he found himself hoping, praying to the God he didn’t really believe in that he’d find a way to take her with him like he promised. At that moment, all they had was each other, and he couldn’t bear the thought of leaving her behind.
A few hours later, Cecil found himself sitting up in bed, lost in thought. According to his video feed, the Andromeda was finishing up loading Lang’s cargo. It was slow going because they’d had to raise the containers one at a time via crane, but the ship would be lifting off again before first light. His passionate sex romp with Bianca had moved from the chair, to Zak and Anna’s work table, to the kitchen counter, to finally the bedroom. He was tired, but the good kind of tired, and the physical effort had sobered him up some.
Bianca was asleep, naked, her black hair splashed over her pillow. She snored occasionally as she slept, which Cecil thought was adorable, and seemed to be completely at peace. He gently ran his hand across her back, feeling the smooth skin and noting the scars; he’d never asked where she’d gotten them, but her back and arms had several ugly scars that she was self-conscious about. He wondered if Lang would let her go with him. He wondered if she really wanted to. After all, she was a concubine, a whore. Would she not tell him anything he wanted to hear? Wasn’t that her job? He knew damned well that she’d been spying on him for Lang the entire time, too.
The remarkable thing was that Cecil didn’t care about any of that. He knew he was being a fool, but he didn’t care. He’d bedded hundreds of women in his life, from bar girls to lofty aristocrats, but Bianca was the first woman he’d ever loved. He had to find a way to get her off of this rock, he just had to! Even if . . . even if she didn’t really love him. Even if it was all an act. She deserved a better life than what fate had given her.
There was no way Cecil was going to be able to sneak her out, but maybe if he talked to Lang, pleaded with him, humbled himself and appealed to the old warlord’s enormous ego, maybe then he’d really let her go. Cecil hated the thought of groveling in front of that son of a bitch. He hadn’t lived the life of adventure his sister had, but he liked to think he wasn’t a coward, and he certainly had his pride. Even still, for his sweet Bianca, he’d do whatever was necessary.
Quietly slipping out of bed, Cecil pulled on his pants and went to get cleaned up. He’d contact Lang tonight, as soon as he was finished. The bastard ought to be in a good mood, he reasoned, now that his first shipment of arms was going out.
He didn’t get two steps before Lang’s Burg was rocked by a huge explosion.
* * *
Concealed under a cloak of active thermoptic camouflage, some six-hundred and seventy-five meters away, Devree Starlighter watched the fireball erupt through the high-powered smart scope mounted atop her rifle. From her position on one of the rocky outcroppings overlooking Lang’s Burg, she was able to see everything with little risk of being spotted.
“Holy shit,” Randy Markgraf whispered. He lay next to her, also cloaked, once again serving as her spotter. He watched the fireworks through a pair of electronic binoculars. “Direct hit to their hydrogen tanks.”
The Orlov refugees of Sanctuary had long been training a militia to defend their new home, and over the years had quietly amassed an impressive, if patchwork, arsenal of weaponry. A guided missile, launched from a truck kilometers away, had shrieked in from above, slamming into the hydrogen tank farm. Swiveling her rifle on its bipod, Devree found another target, and used the laser of her scope’s rangefinder to designate it. She keyed her microphone. “This is Overwatch. Impact confirmed, target destroyed. Requesting fire for effect, three rounds, air burst, twenty meter spread. Area target, vehicle motorpool, designated now, how copy?”
One of the Sanctuary Militiamen responded in a thick, almost mechanical accent. “Roger. Firing now.” Far to the south, a heavy-duty off-road truck with an improvised launcher sent three more missiles roaring into the night sky, in the direction of Lang’s Burg. The truck immediately moved, tearing across the flat, rocky desert at high speed, staying mobile in case Lang’s forces were able to get off counterbattery fire.
The missiles had no target, but were searching for the reflected laser that would tell them where they were needed. Devree watched a video feed from one of the weapons on her eyepiece, appearing black-and-white as its sensor scanned in the near-infrared. There was little to see until the glowing fires of the Lang’s Burg tank farm appeared, as did her laser in the town’s motorpool. A bracket appeared around the laser dot, and the missiles dove, screaming in from above, toward their designated target. They detonated in the air, sending lethal fragmentation tearing through the mostly unarmored vehicles and the men who had been running for them after the first explosion. At least a half-dozen of Lang’s men died immediately, and several others were down and wounded.
“Good hit,” Devree transmitted. “No sign of return fire. We caught ’em with their pants down.” She adjusted her grip on the powerful, semiautomatic, 14.5mm heavy rifle in front of her, switched her smart scope to thermal, and scanned for targets. The particular barrel the weapon was presently using was wrapped with an integral sound suppressor. While it hardly made the powerful weapon silent, it was enough to hide her position from a distance, especially with the racket of explosions, alarms and the shouts of men in Lang’s Burg.
“Cowboy-Six copies,” Marcus Winchester said. “Fire Support,” he said, addressing the missile truck, “hold fire for now. Overwatch, we’re almost in position and will be entering the town soon. Stand by.”
“Overwatch copies,” Devree said, a predatory grin splitting her face beneath her respirator mask. “Gotcha covered, Boss.”
* * *
Beneath the town of Lang’s Burg was a network of access and service tunnels, meant to allow maintenance of the settlement’s infrastructure and allow for disposal of its waste. Dating back to before the war, much of it had fallen into disrepair over the years, and aside from some easily disarmed alarm systems had been left unguarded.
It was through these tunnels that Marcus Winchester led his four-man team. The roar of the fires above could be heard even down there, in the darkness beneath the settlement. The mercenaries navigated via night vision googles, weapons at the ready. The only other thing moving down there was the occasional giant, mutated rat. Some of them were as big as dogs, and they were quite aggressive, but the heat and noise from the chaos above was driving them in fear from the tunnels. They ran past the team’s feet, paying the human interlopers no mind.
Marcus paused, flipped up his goggles, and studied the tactical map on his handheld. His face was dimly illuminated by the screen. “This is it,” he said, indicating a nearby ladder. “We’ll surface in the southwest corner of the town, here,” he indicated, pointing at the small screen. “The building Cecil Blackwood is staying in is here, not far away. Four stories, hard to miss. Tanaka, take point.” Marcus flipped his goggles back down and pocketed his handheld.
Ken Tanaka nodded once and proceeded up the ladder, his short 5.8mm carbine slung behind his back. He disappeared up the manhole and his teammates moved in closer to keep eyes on him while maintaining security in the tunnels. At the top of the ladder, Ken tried, as quietly as he could, to undog the hatch. “It opens,” he said quietly. He lifted the hatch only slightly, scanning the surface with a fiber-optic camera. “It comes out in an alley by the wall. It looks dark, no sign of movement. I’m going up.”
“Be careful,” Marcus warned. “Stack up on the ladder,” he told his team. Ken quietly opened the hatch, the orange light of the fires burning in Lang’s Burg pouring into the manhole, and disappeared from view. Marcus was next up the ladder. He peeked over the top of the hatch; Ken was crouched a few meters from the manhole, carbine shouldered, covering the alleyway. He lifted himself up onto the dusty street and took a knee beside Ken. Next was Hondo with his machine gun, and finally Wade, who had covered his teammates in the tunnels until they were all clear of the manhole.
Wade shot his team leader a thumbs-up. Marcus nodded, indicated forward with a hand signal, and the team of mercenaries was on the move.
Devree Starlighter’s calm soprano voice crackled in Marcus’ earpiece. “I’m scanning on thermal, can’t see you.”
“There are structures in the way. We came up behind the dome-shaped building. How’s it look?”
“They’re running around like crazy down there,” Markgraf answered. “I’m watching through binos and the drone feed. Dozens of people running around, most of them armed—Lang’s militia. All the noncombatants seem to be hunkering down inside. They’re trying to put the fires out, treating the wounded. I count at least six guards around the target building.”
“You want another volley?” Devree asked.
“Negative,” Marcus said. “Not going to risk killing noncombatants if we don’t have to. Stand by. Cowboy-Six out.”
The team stacked up on Marcus as he peeked around a corner. In order to get to the building Cecil was in, they’d have to cross the main thoroughfare of Lang’s Burg. “Shit,” he snarled quietly.
“Mother-humping skags are everywhere,” Wade agreed. “In the street, on the roof. How you wanna do this?”
“I’m calling in the heavy. War Wagon, this is Cowboy-Six, you copy?”
“Aye,” Halifax said. “You ready for us?”
“Roger. We need to draw the crowd away from the target building.”
“Understood. I’m ready.”
“We’ll cover you,” Devree said.
“I appreciate that, lass,” Halifax said. “The heavy is moving.” Just outside the gates of Lang’s Burg, a large cargo truck donated by the Orlov refugees was waiting. Hidden in its tall cargo bay was Benjamin Halifax in his powered armor suit, crouched down, with the primary engine turned off. The truck was self-piloting, so as not to risk any more people than necessary. Merchant vehicles, delivering goods and services, crisscrossed the wastelands of Zanzibar constantly, and did plenty of business with towns occupied by Lang’s army. An unmanned truck would have raised suspicion, but its approach had been timed to coincide with the attack. The gates were locked down, and no one was paying attention to the lone truck stuck outside.
That is, until Halifax made himself known. Monitoring the feed from the aerial drone, Marcus watched as the hulking powered armor suit pushed itself off the bed of the truck and stood up, tearing through the nylon cover. The truck’s suspension compressed as the armor stepped off and landed on the ground. Stepping around the vehicle, it fired off a pair of high explosive rockets at the main gate.
“I’m coming in,” Halifax said tersely. Marcus acknowledged, watching the massive suit run toward the hole in the gate and use a manipulator claw to make the hole big enough for it to enter through. Once inside, it opened fire with its machine gun, rockets, and plasma gun, and hell came to Lang’s Burg.
“He’s through,” Marcus said to his team. The guards on the target building kept to their posts despite Halifax’s rampage. Their funeral. “Wade, Ken, you two pop smoke to cover us. Then we’ll move.”
Wade nodded. He and Tanaka stepped forward, smoke grenades at the ready. It was easy to be sneaky amongst the chaos engulfing the town. Simultaneously, they tossed the grenades into the street ahead, filling the air with even more smoke than there had already been.
Marcus keyed his radio mic. “Overwatch, we’re assaulting the building. Fire at will.”
“Roger,” Devree said. A few seconds later, the militiaman on the roof’s chest burst open as a high explosive, armor piercing round tore through it. His mutilated body tumbled over the edge of the roof and plummeted to the street below.
The two men by the door looked stupidly at the corpse before them. Marcus snapped off a three-round burst, killing the one on the left while Wade fired a single, well-placed 8mm APHE round and dropped the one on the right. “Move, move, move!” Marcus ordered.
Halfway across the street, bullets began snapping through the smoke like angry hornets. “Contact left!” Hondo shouted, taking a knee and bringing up his 8mm machine gun. The heavy weapon roared in the narrow street, sending a stream of bullets in the direction of the incoming fire. Halifax’s heavy armor suit rounded the corner, flanking the position the fire had been coming from. With a brilliant, blue-white FWASH, he fired his suit’s plasma gun. Men screamed and metal burned as his weapon found its mark.
Marcus, Wade, and Ken scrambled to the front entrance to the structure, a metal door at street level. It was locked, but Wade was placing a breaching charge even before Marcus told him to. The demolitions expert snapped his head up in surprise when Tanaka fired off a burst from his carbine, but went right back to what he was doing. “Ready!” he said. “Get back!”
* * *
Confused and terrified, Cecil huddled against the wall of the upstairs common room, away from the windows, with Bianca in his arms. Out of nowhere, half of Lang’s Burg had exploded and was on fire. Now there was gunfire coming from right outside, men were shouting, and it was chaos in the streets. Three of the men guarding him had rushed into the building and locked the doors behind him. They were downstairs, clutching their weapons nervously. Cecil was staying up on the fourth floor, where his living quarters were. Gunshots rang out from below. In their near-panic, convinced that someone was trying to get inside, the guards were firing through the walls of the ground level.
Cecil’s handheld vibrated in his pocket. What? Keeping an arm around Bianca, who was squeezing him so tightly he could barely breathe, he retrieved his mobile device and tapped the screen. There was one text message from an unknown sender: They’re coming to take you to your sister. Get ready to move.
Cecil’s eyes went wide. “Bianca!” he said excitedly. “Get—” BOOM! Cecil’s ears popped as something exploded downstairs. The whole building shook, showering him with dust.
“Cecil, what happening?” Bianca cried as gunfire echoed through the building.
“Get ready to run, love!” Cecil said, trying to sound courageous. “This is our chance!”
“I don’t undastand!” she said. “Run where?”
“Away from here!” he shouted, standing up. He pulled the terrified woman to her feet. “Come on, this is our only chance! We’ve got to—” Cecil froze, looking down the barrel of a pistol.
“Oh no, rich boy,” a burly militiaman said. “I think you go nowhere.” He held a clunky weapon in his right hand. His left was covering a bleeding wound on his neck. His goggles were cracked. “You gon run? You gon run from Mista Lang?” He raised the weapon to eye level.
“No!” Bianca screamed, pulling away from Cecil. She flung herself at the guard. Cecil tried to stop her, but it was too late. She grabbed the gun, pulled downward, and a shot rang out. In shock, horrified, paralyzed, Cecil watched as Bianca fell, seemingly in slow motion. Her hands moved to cover the wound in her abdomen. She collapsed to the floor like a puppet with its strings cut, blood oozing out of the wound.
The militiaman gazed down at her for a second with a confused look on his face. His dark eyes met Cecil’s, and he raised the gun again. Cecil was frozen, unable to move, staring helplessly at Bianca.
BRRAAP! A stream of bullets ripped through the guard from the side. He went limp and flopped to the floor, dropping the weapon with a clatter. Before Cecil could even react, a trio of armed men poured into the room, weapons raised, checking all the angles. They were dressed out in brownish-tan mottled camouflage fatigues, armor, helmets, respirators, and smart goggles.
“Clear!” the lead announced.
“Clear,” the other said, checking to the right.
“Clear!” the third man, taller than the other two, agreed. He covered the doorway they’d come in from.
Ignoring the newcomers, Cecil regained control of his body and ran to Bianca. He dropped to his knees and slid to a stop at her side, eyes wide, staring helplessly at the wound. She was still conscious, still alive, and her dark eyes met his. Her lips moved as she tried to speak, but Cecil shushed her. “Don’t talk!” he said. “I’m . . . I’m going to fix you! Just—”
“Cecil Blackwood?” one of the camouflaged men asked. Cecil looked up at him, in shock. The man had lowered his weapon, but still struck an imposing figure. “I’m here to take you home.”
Cecil shook his head. “You’ve got to help her!” he shouted, placing his hands on Bianca’s wound. There was so much blood! “Please, she’s going to die!”
“We have to go, now!” the man said, looking around. “Come on!”
“I’m not leaving without her!” Cecil shouted, wondering just how much clout he had with the three armed men who had just killed all of his guards. “Please!”
The man swore aloud, then turned to the shorter of his two teammates. “Ken, help her. Stabilize her for transport. Halifax,” he said, apparently talking into a radio, “Sitrep!”
As the team leader listened to his radio, the man named Ken slung his weapon behind his back and retrieved a medical kit. His face was hidden behind a respirator and goggles, but he sounded reassuring all the same. “Abdominal wound,” he said, stating the obvious. He dug through his kit and retrieved an emergency wound seal. “Missed the spine. If I can stop the bleeding, we can move her. We’ll treat her on the ship.” He ripped open the package the seal came in. “Lift up her shirt.”
Cecil did as he was told, lifting up Bianca’s blood-soaked shirt to expose the wound. Ken wiped off the smeared blood with a sterile cloth, then placed the wound seal over the hole in Bianca’s midsection. She cried out in agony as he pressed it against her, her eyes pleading with Cecil, but it needed to be done. “Hold here,” Ken said, nodding at the seal. “Keep pressure on it. Make sure the seal is good.” As Cecil kept pressure on his lover’s wound, Ken retrieved an auto injector, pulled off the cap, and jammed it into Bianca’s thigh. “This will help with the pain, keep her from going into hypovolemic shock. She won’t be able to walk. Can you carry her?”
“How far?”
“As far as necessary! Can you carry her or not?”
“I can!” Cecil insisted. “I’ll carry her! Thank . . . thank you.”
“Is she ready to go?” the leader of the trio asked. Ken nodded in reply. “Good. We’ve been here too long. Come on, Mr. Blackwood, it’s time to get the hell out of here.”
“Bloody well don’t have to tell me twice!” Cecil said, grunting as he picked Bianca up in his arms. “Let’s go!”
* * *
“They’re coming out,” Markgraf said, watching the chaos below through his binoculars. Hondo and Halifax were covering the front entrance as the rest of the team came out. Much of the resistance had given up, afraid to tangle with the powered armor.
“Overwatch, Cowboy-Six,” Marcus said over the radio. “Egressing now, package in tow. Cover us until we get to the truck if you can. Relay all to the ship. How copy?”
“Overwatch copies!” Devree said excitedly. “You need to hurry, Cowboy-Six. The drone has spotted a convoy of fourteen vehicles inbound from the south, ETA ten mikes.”
“Understood. Can we get any more fire support from our friends?”
“Negative, they bugged out. They were too exposed where they were. We’re on our—look out!” Devree snapped off a shot at a militiaman who had appeared on a rooftop with a shoulder-fired missile launcher. Even with its recoil stabilization, the powerful rifle bucked against her shoulder with a sound like the cracking of a whip as it sent a fat, armor-piercing slug downrange. The missile-carrier’s head nearly separated from his neck as the round struck his spine, the impact looking like a hot splash on thermal. “He’s down,” she said coldly.
The sniper team had moved since the assault on Lang’s Burg began. Devree had been a law enforcement sharpshooter, not a military scout sniper, but she knew better than to stay in one place for too long. Even with thermoptic camo and suppressed weapons, it was only a matter of time before they were spotted, so it was critical to stay mobile.
She watched Halifax engage a group of militiamen with the plasma weapon on his suit; its report was a white hot flash on thermal and a blue-white streak to the naked eye, a terrifying weapon that sent Lang’s thugs fleeing for their lives.
“That’s right, run along now!” he said, laughing over his suit’s PA system. He followed up with a long burst from the armor’s machine gun, and led the others toward the gate of Lang’s Burg. The team was going to use the large truck the suit had arrived in as an escape vehicle.
Markgraf tapped Devree on the shoulder. “We need to go.” Moving quickly in thermoptic camo could give your position away, so the sniper team had slowly stalked across the rocky hills above Lang’s Burg. They had gone unnoticed so far, but with reinforcements on the way it was only a matter of time before their luck ran out, and the team was headed for the gate. It was definitely time to go.
Driving the point home, an indicator light flashed in Devree’s goggles. “The proximity alarm!” Markgraf said. “Get down! Fire in the hole!” As the sniper team hit the dirt, he mashed the remote initiator. BOOM! The explosion echoed and rolled through hills, even over the roar of flames and sporadic gunfire coming from Lang’s Burg. A couple hundred meters behind them, the sniper team had set up proximity warnings and remotely detonated directional fragmentation charges, just in case someone tried to sneak up on them. Their drone was now kilometers away, shadowing the incoming convoy, but the sensors had stopped their attackers from getting the drop on them.
“Come on, Devree,” Markgraf said, “we need to get the hell out of here, now!”
She nodded jerkily, face hidden behind smart goggles and respirator mask. The two mercenaries low-crawled down the rocks until some solid cover was between them and Lang’s Burg. Markgraf took a knee, shouldering his boxy 4.5mm caseless assault rifle, and covered Devree while she disassembled the huge antimateriel rifle. She removed the magazine from its well behind the grip, detached the scope, and pulled the barrel out. The whole thing broke down quickly, fitting into a more manageable carry case.
Far below, through more than a kilometer of rugged, rocky terrain, the sniper team had a parked their vehicle and concealed it. The plan was to make to it the vehicle and head straight to the ship, linking up with the others if they were able to catch up with them. It was an inelegant plan, but there weren’t many roads on Zanzibar and few places to hide on the open wastes. Heading directly for the ship was the fastest, easiest, and least-chance-of-going-south plan Marcus could come up with. As he had explained to the team, he wasn’t a fan of elaborate multistep op plans. In his experience, he’d said, they usually went to shit after the first shots were fired.
The key now was getting to the vehicle and escaping without being cut off or surrounded by Lang’s militia, who were converging on Lang’s Burg with a vengeance.