CHAPTER 3

Bernie’s radio crackled. “Andresen didn’t make it,” Anya said. “I’m sorry.”

Everyone paused halfway up the slope, even the dog. Bernie found her head level with Marcus’s boots. He took one hand off the rock above him to press his earpiece.

“Okay, Anya. Thanks.”

“KR-Two-Three-Nine is inbound with Dom and Cole. Orders are to take live prisoners. Do you have an RV point?”

“Negative, Control. We’re at grid seven-echo, approximately nine-four-zero-nine-eight-zero. Tell Sorotki to stand by while we check this cave. Fenix out.”

Baird prodded Bernie in the back of the leg. The slope was about forty degrees here, a real hands-and-knees job, and he was right beneath her foothold.

“Consider me extra-motivated,” he said. “Get moving, Granny. You feeling okay? I’m only asking because I don’t want you collapsing on top of me.”

“’Course you are,” she said. Poor bloody Rory. Even after so many years, so many deaths, it still punched her in the gut. But she was halfway up a precarious hill with the palms of her gloves punctured by thorns, and about to run into the enemy. She swallowed it for later. “Yeah, let’s make them pay for Andresen.”

Bernie wasn’t expecting to find anyone home in the cave. If it didn’t have a rear exit they hadn’t spotted, then it was a place where you could only get trapped, because even the most direct path to it was a long, steep slog. On the other hand, it was a good place to lay up undetected.

And the Stranded had to stash their explosives somewhere close. Fertilizer bombs were bulky. If you had to move around on foot, you needed caches close to your targets.

Marcus scrambled onto the shelf of rocky soil where the hill leveled off. They’d come up at the side of the cave entrance. Bernie caught Mac by the scruff and put the leash back on him before he ventured in.

He’d definitely scented something. He stared unblinking into the shadows, back legs shifting impatiently like a sprinter on his blocks. Bernie gave Marcus a thumbs-up.

Marcus jerked his head toward the entrance. Send the dog in.

Bernie’s first thought was to hang on to Mac until they knew what they were dealing with. She crouched to follow him into a low space, leash wrapped around her left hand. She could let him loose and grab the rifle two-handed if they ran into trouble.

Ricochets. Shit. Can’t fire in a small space like this.

But that was what the chainsaw bayonet was for. Combined with a dog, it made her feel invulnerable. The explosion that had nearly killed her felt like it had happened to someone else—for the moment. Adrenaline was a wonderful thing.

Baird squeezed past her. She tried to elbow him out of the way before it occurred to her that he was moving forward to cover a right-hand fork in the passage. She patted his shoulder in silent apology. This wasn’t the public kiss-my-arse Baird.

And, somehow, it wasn’t pitch-black in here, either. As her eyes adjusted, she could see Baird’s scrubby blond hair lit up like a faint halo by dim light. It wasn’t from their armor indicator lights. There had to be other vents in the rock here.

A hand grabbed her shoulder and she almost shat herself before she realized it was Marcus.

“Smell,” he whispered.

The faint odor she inhaled was a cross between a greasy diner and a cow shed—old fat, burned meat, and a hint of animal shit. There was a metallic rasp as Baird pulled something out of his belt.

“Go,” Marcus said.

Now it was down to the dog. As soon as Bernie snapped the leash from his collar, he shot into the tunnel and vanished. Marcus went after him. The passage was too narrow and uneven for running, and Bernie stumbled a couple of times. Baird grabbed her webbing and hauled her upright. The diffuse light was getting brighter; she expected to hear barking and firing any second, and glanced down to check that her chainsaw indicator light was on, but she could now see what looked like a bright chamber at the end of the tunnel. Marcus stood silhouetted in the light.

“Nobody cough,” he said.

Baird edged past Bernie again and looked over Marcus’s shoulder. “Hey, talk about overkill. Look out for a trip wire. Bernie? Careful where you put your boots …”

The chamber looked so regular that at first she thought it had been built that way, but it was natural, a void left by lava. There was an opening at the top like a chimney. And most of the space was filled with old fuel drums and other rusty containers. It took her a few seconds to add it all up and realize the Stranded were making nitrate bombs, or at least storing the stuff here.

“They can’t have gone far.” Marcus poked around the floor with slow care. “Warm ashes.”

“Where’s Mac?” Bernie asked.

Marcus pointed down the continuation of the natural tunnel. Baird started examining the haul, crawling around the stacked drums as if the risk didn’t apply to him.

“I don’t see wires on most of these,” Baird said. “But that doesn’t mean we’re not five seconds away from being ground beef.”

The element of surprise was gone now, and locating this stuff at least meant that it wouldn’t be used against the COG. But Mac was still on the trail. Bernie set off after the dog, suddenly aware of bruises and pulled muscles every time she stooped to negotiate the twists in the rock. Marcus followed her.

“Great, you’re leaving me babysitting the explosives?” Baird called.

“Come on,” Marcus said. “When we get a radio signal again, call it in to Control.”

“Can you hear a Raven?”

Bernie couldn’t hear anything over her own ragged breathing now. Sorotki had their position. Shit, if he was hovering overhead now, and those bastards were making a run for it—or maybe they were already an hour away, already in some other hideout. It looked like there was another way out of the honeycomb of passages under the hill. Mac hadn’t come back.

Now she was relying completely on the faint light from three sets of armor. For a stomach-churning moment, she wondered how the hell they’d find their way out again if they hit a dead end. Somehow she’d never worried about that while going after grubs. Fear didn’t bother with logic.

And Andresen’s gone.

She kept forgetting the news, and then remembering it again every time her attention wandered from the task at hand.

Bastards.

Suddenly the ground reared up in front of her and became a rocky slope. And yes, there was light ahead, getting brighter with every step she took.

“It’ll be a frigging sheer drop,” Baird muttered. His voice didn’t even echo. “Anyone consider whether those assholes had another route out to the front door?”

“Trust the dog,” Bernie panted. She could definitely hear the chattering rotors of a helicopter now. God, she was running out of steam fast. “Most recent traces—probably the strongest scent.”

Marcus grunted. “Hey, we got comms again. Sorotki, can you hear me?”

Mitchell answered. “Loud and clear. No visual on you, but we can see the dog.”

“We’re still in a tunnel. Call the engineers to clear a cache of explosives in there. Can you set down anywhere?”

“Small patch of grass at the base of the hill. I’ll aim for the pooch. Two-Three-Nine out.”

Bernie scrambled out into bright daylight, and a dense mass of waist-high thornbushes that snagged the exposed fabric of her pants. The Stranded gang didn’t have armor, so they must have been shredded to hell escaping through here—and that meant blood, skin, and sweat traces for Mac to follow. No wonder he was excited.

“Sorotki? The dog’s still tracking.” Marcus waded through the bushes, finger pressed to his earpiece. The Raven dropped onto long grass at the foot of the slope. “We’ll continue on foot and narrow down the search area for an aerial recon.” He looked at Bernie for a second as if he was weighing up her reaction. “Stand by to extract Mataki if necessary. She should have been casevacked hours ago.”

Bernie grabbed Mac as he raced back to her. If I stop now, I won’t get up again. “What’ve you got, fella?” She put the leash on him. “Seek! Good boy.”

The dog nearly wrenched her arm from its socket in his frenzy to resume the chase. It was like water-skiing on rubble. Her spine jolted with every stride. Mac followed the line of the trees, heading deeper into the woods, where the Raven couldn’t see what was happening on the ground.

“Can’t expect the assholes to make it easy for us.” Baird jogged alongside her without so much as panting, reminding her what it was to be young and fit. “Might be leading us into an ambush.” Maybe he was chatting to keep her going. But the more stressed he was, the yappier he tended to get. “Except they’d have made it easier to follow.”

The Stranded had to be on foot. They couldn’t run their junkers through woodland like this. And vehicles were too noisy for covert action here—four-wheelers, at least.

The radio clicked. “Byrne to KR-Two-Three-Nine, I’m in your grid. Want an assist, Lieutenant?”

“Two-Three-Nine to Byrne, you got the bike?”

“Yeah. Just direct me. I can get pretty well anywhere on this. Byrne out.”

Rat bikes could handle dense woodland. And if Sam wanted to teach Baird a lesson, this was as good a time as any to do it. Mac dragged Bernie for another hard kilometer. She knew exactly how far it was because Marcus was keeping up a running sitrep on their position for Sorotki.

“They’re heading for the river,” Marcus said. “I don’t think that’s going to fool the dog.”

“Delta, I’ve lost visual on you again,” Mitchell said.

“Two-Three-Nine, go ahead of us—north—and come back down the course of the river. If the dog’s on the right track, then they might be moving along it—in it.”

“Two-Three-Nine to Byrne,” Mitchell said. “Sam, are you getting this?”

“I’m about five klicks north of you. Moving in.”

Bernie caught a glimpse of the Raven’s strobing rotors through the tree canopy as it crossed from right to left, then the engine noise faded into the distance. Marcus kept pace with Bernie, but that pace was getting slower by the minute. He held out his hand.

“Give me the damn leash,” he said.

“Leave the dog to me.”

“You’re going to drop.”

“I’m not bloody Anya,” Bernie snapped. “Stop nursemaiding me.”

In the heat of the moment, Gears said all kinds of shit to each other. It was just adrenaline. Bernie regretted it the instant she said it, but she’d have to save her apologies for later. Baird was to her right, jogging about ten meters parallel to her. There’d come a point where she had to let Mac loose, but she needed to be much closer to his quarry first, and nobody knew just how fresh this trail was—except Mac. He was acting as if he could see something she couldn’t. Maybe he could hear it. By the time they reached the river, he was practically walking on his hind legs, and she struggled to hold him. The leash was wound so tight around her hand that her fingers were numb.

“Sorotki’s on his strafing run,” Baird said. The Raven was getting louder again, heading back toward them. “Listen.”

“Better not be,” Marcus said. “Alive, remember?”

Then Mac stopped and cast around, throwing his head up from time to time. He edged down to the water—shallow, fast-moving over a pebble bed—and stood with his nose pointing upstream for a moment before lunging forward on the leash. He’d been trained to hunt silently but his excitement was forcing little squeals out of him. Marcus turned his head slowly as if he was scanning the trees, but Bernie got the feeling he was just keeping a cautious eye on Mac. He’d even been wary of the sheepdogs at Jonty’s farm. She found herself filling in gaps again as she caught her breath, wondering where Marcus might have run into a dog that made him mistrust them all that much.

“Your asshole-hound’s telling us they went in the river there,” Baird said, wading across to the other bank. The water was knee high. “Or else we’ve been chasing a frigging aquatic rabbit.”

Marcus gestured to Baird to cross to the other bank and move forward. Bernie was sure she could hear the sporadic revving of a bike. Sound carried for a long way out here. There was a moment of absolute quiet broken only by everyone’s breathing, and then Sorotki’s voice came on the radio.

“Got a visual,” he said. “Yeah, in the river. Actually in the river. Whoa, there they go. Three adult males, moving up the south bank—your left, Delta—and armed. I’m coming around again to drop Cole and Dom.”

Byrne cut in. “I’m on it, Two-Three-Nine.”

“I see you, Byrne. Head green thirty.”

The Raven looped and came straight back down the line of the river at full throttle. There was a loud crack, and Mitchell reacted: “Hey, did that bastard fire at us?”

“Confirmed, they’ve got rifles. Lost them now. They’ve gone under some trees. Okay, stand by—turning again. Then I’m dropping off.”

Bernie’s focus was cut to an instant, narrow intensity. She’d never done anything like this with the cattle dogs on the farm back home. Whatever they chased didn’t pack a rifle. As Baird splashed across the stream to follow Marcus, Mac scrabbled up the bank and almost pulled her off her feet.

“Okay, dog loose,” she said. “Delta, Two-Three-Nine, Byrne—I’m letting him go, so watch for him.” She fumbled for the clip on his collar, rehearsing the commands Will Berenz had given her. “Fix ’em, Mac. Go on. Fix.”

The dog was gone in a second. He was a big animal with a long stride, and he went off like a rocket. There was no way anything on two legs—not even Cole—was going to keep up with him. She simply jogged along, exhausted, trying to keep Marcus and Baird in sight, and knew she should have stuck to being a sniper. Her adrenaline was already ebbing, replaced by a shaky tearfulness that she’d never finish that card game with Andresen now, and a few mental flash-frames of her husband griping about her never being home on leave when he really needed her help on the farm. She hadn’t thought about the bastard in a long time.

“I’m bettin’ on that puppy.” Cole’s voice boomed in her earpiece. “He’s a natural born racin’ hound.”

Cole always managed to snap her out of it, whether he planned to or not. “Where are you, Cole Train?”

“On your right, Boomer Lady, comin’ through the trees.”

Bernie was a long way behind now. The Raven was circling high over the open ground between the patches of woodland, with Mitchell calling directions.

“They’ve split,” he said. “One’s heading back to the river and two are making for the woods.”

The rest of the noise in Bernie’s earpiece was ragged breathing and disjointed words. “Cole, Dom—take north.” That was Marcus. “Baird—you take the guy in the brown coat.”

Now the ground dipped away a little, and Bernie caught sight of the dog pelting through knee-high grass on an intercept line with the other two Stranded. Then they parted in opposite directions. If they thought splitting up would confuse Mac, it didn’t work. The dog was set on his prey—the guy in brown—and he jinked left like he was closing in on a rabbit. Baird was about fifty meters behind him. Then Mac put on a sudden spurt. Bernie found her second wind and started running again.

It was almost impossible for Bernie to take in the sequence, and not just because she felt her eyes were being shaken out of their sockets with every stride. The Stranded guy slowed, turned, and tried to level his rifle to aim. But the dog was racing at fifty kilometers an hour and simply launched himself into the air about four meters out. It was like watching a missile hit a ship broadside. Mac smashed into the man at chest height and knocked him flat. The rifle didn’t matter a damn to a dog.

Bernie couldn’t tell where Mac had sunk his teeth, but now that he’d pinned his prey down he was getting stuck in. The man was screaming, curled up in a ball. This wasn’t a police dog carefully trained to seize a specific limb and hang on. Mac didn’t know what an arrest meant.

The other Stranded guy stopped, took a few paces backward—he had a handgun—and seemed to realize he couldn’t get a clear shot at the dog. Was he going to abandon his buddy? He lost crucial seconds. He hesitated, then aimed as Marcus ran at him yelling at him to drop the weapon. Marcus really was going to try to take the guy alive, the crazy bastard. He was going to get killed. No Stranded was worth that.

“Drop him!” Bernie yelled. “For fuck’s sake—”

She stopped to aim her Lancer but in the second it took, she saw a blur of blackened metal shoot out of the trees behind the guy and cannon into him so hard that he lifted bodily into the air. The thud was sickening. The noise of the bike seemed to follow later. Sam Byrne skidded out of control, tearing up grass and soil, but righted herself and circled the bike to a halt by the man’s body. She was on him in a second with her chainsaw to his throat.

“Shit,” Marcus said. “Did you have to?”

“Yes, I did. He had a clear shot at you, and you were going to tackle him like some thrashball game.” Sam felt for a pulse, then looked up, indignant. “See? He’s not dead.”

Marcus checked for himself. “Let’s get him on the Raven.”

But the screaming went on. For a moment Bernie thought it was the man Sam had run down. But it was the one Mac was still busy savaging. Baird hovered uncertainly, trying to break it up.

“Shit, Bernie, how do I call off this thing?” Baird panted. It surprised her that he wasn’t just standing there applauding the dog’s technique. “He’s killing this asshole.”

“Say out.” She tried to yell a command that Mac would hear, but her lungs could only handle so much at once. “Out. It’s out.”

This is how I’m going to die. Trying to keep up with men half my frigging age. And a bloody dog.

By the time she reached Mac, she could see the blood. Baird was yelling “Out!” and the dog had stopped shaking and tearing, but his jaws were now clamped tight on the man’s shoulder. That was nearly me. Wasn’t it? She’d once been exactly where this man was. Only armor and fellow Gears with chainsaw bayonets had saved her.

“Mac, out! Leave! Drop him!” Bernie went through every command she’d used with her cattle dogs in the hope that something would trigger him to stand down. “Leave it! Down! Off!”

Mac lifted his head and backed away, clearly reluctant. But he did it. He even came to heel. The Stranded bomber was moaning and trying to curl up in a ball.

Marcus moved in to check him over. He let out a long breath. “Sorotki? Mitchell? We’ve got two casevacs now.”

“That’s … the … idea.” Bernie gasped for breath, bent over with her hands braced on her hips. Her legs were shaking with the effort. “Deterrent.”

Mac looked as if he was deciding between going back in to finish the job and waiting for praise. He even wagged his tail and looked up into her face: Am I a good boy? This is what you wanted, right? It was sobering to see that wonderful, adoring, anything-to-please-you expression with blood around the muzzle.

“Yeah, good boy.” She managed to suck in some more air. Tomorrow was going to hurt. “You got him.”

Sporadic fire rattled in the near distance. Dom and Cole must have pinned down the third man. Mitchell jogged toward Marcus clutching a small red plastic case and knelt down to examine the Stranded. The guy who’d been run down was unconscious. The one Mac had caught was awake and making that thin, animal wailing sound of someone in shock.

“Shit. What’s your name, buddy? Can you hear me?” Mitchell didn’t get an answer. “That thing nearly ripped his scalp off.”

“You bastards,” the man said suddenly. “You bastards. You’re worse than the fucking grubs.”

That seemed to hit a nerve with Marcus. Bernie could feel his distaste again—the gradual turn of the head like a slow-motion shake, the long blink as he shut his eyes for a moment. It never felt like it was aimed directly at her. It seemed more like his general disgust at human excess seeped out of him some days.

“Our doctor’s going to treat you right alongside the Gears you blew up,” Marcus said. “So shut it.”

He turned his back and stood with his eyes closed, talking quietly to Control. He didn’t seem happy with the answers he was getting, and looked over his shoulder at Bernie.

“What?” she said.

“These guys are a special delivery for Trescu. I don’t think he’s planning to bake them a cake.”

“Ah.” Bernie had a pretty good idea of Gorasnaya’s old reputation. “Whose idea was that?”

“Not Hoffman’s, if that’s what’s worrying you.”

“Come on, Sam.” Mitchell straightened up, first aid finished. “Give me a hand. Let’s get this chew toy back to Doc Hayman and make her day.”

Dom and Cole reappeared, dragging the third man between them. Actually, he wasn’t a man. Up close, he looked about fifteen, if that. Bernie had stopped seeing kids as noncombatants a long time ago, but it still brought her up short.

“Get your fucking hands off me,” he spat, all terrified bravado. “Where’s my dad? I want my dad. What have you done to him?”

Everyone has a dad. Even monsters. It doesn’t change a thing. His dad is blowing up my mates. And so is he.

It still wasn’t easy to ignore. But seeing the enemy’s point of view didn’t end a war any faster than reducing them to monsters. It just made it harder for her to get the job done.

Bernie hung back with Marcus while the others loaded to the Raven. Only the dog would hear what she said to him now. And Mac was too busy licking himself.

“Look,” she said. “A dog tearing you apart isn’t any more immoral than a land mine shredding you. It’s all dirty either way. They didn’t stop to worry if Andresen had a family.”

Marcus was expressionless. “You think it’s okay to hand them over to Trescu?”

“These bastards have moral choices too.” Bernie didn’t know. She didn’t even want to think about it right then. “It’s not our sole responsibility.”

“But you’d feel better if it was an honest firefight.”

“I feel better if I’m not frigging dead,” Bernie said. “And so would Jonty, if they hadn’t cut his throat. One-sided rules of engagement are for lawyers.”

Marcus gave her that here-we-go-again look. Yes, they’d had this argument before, about what actually survived if you were prepared to do anything to stay alive. It had to be a constant and painful dilemma for a man whose father helped incinerate most of Sera to save it.

“Got to envy that dog,” Marcus said, walking away.

Mac trotted after them, a nice friendly dog again. Bernie tapped her leg to bring him to heel. “Yes. He lives in the moment.”

“I meant that he sees everything in black and white,” Marcus said, and jogged off.