Chapter 48
TAYLOR CRIED, “RUN!”
They dashed toward the stairwell. As they sprinted past the rows of tin men, every unit stepped out of the bays at once.
Taylor fired an EMP blast as they ran. A tin man fell forward and narrowly missed hitting Dixon.
They reached the door. Taylor flung it open, and they ran into the stairwell, Taylor in the lead and Dixon right behind as they bounded up the stairs.
Brodie was bringing up the rear and spun around. Three D-17s were feet from the stairwell door. He aimed past them to a line of advancing tin men toward the back of the room and pulled the trigger.
The recoil jerked his arm back as he kicked the stairwell door shut half a second before the grenade made contact and exploded.
The walls rattled and he almost lost his footing. Fumbling for another round, he ran up after Dixon and Taylor, reaching the top as the two women ran through the door. He could hear the tin men right behind him. He caught Taylor’s eye as she looked over her shoulder for him.
“Go!” He turned around as two tin men bounded up the steps about twenty feet away.
A thought went through his mind as he took aim: Suicide round. He pulled the trigger.
He was thrown back and slammed against the wall. He felt searing heat and pain as the blast filled the stairwell.
He was on the ground. Coughing from the smoke. Broken concrete all around him and on top of him. Why wasn’t he dead?
He struggled to his feet. Through the smoke emerged a horrible metallic deformity, a half-melted one-armed thing twitching toward him.
He opened the door and ran out, then slammed it behind him. With any luck that thing had lost its door-opening skills. Too bad dozens of its mint-condition buddies were on its heels.
Brodie ran through the anteroom, the adrenaline pushing away the pains all over his body from the impact.
He dashed outside. The wind was whipping through the camp now, blowing sheets of sand everywhere. He could barely see the blue sky above, and the storm clouds were close.
“Brodie!”
He hobbled through the dusty air in the direction of Taylor’s voice. She and Dixon were crouched next to an armored personnel carrier, taking shelter from the wind and sand while training their EMP rifles on the door to the Vault.
Sergeant Miller stood nearby, also taking aim with his EMP-equipped M4.
Brodie got himself to a safe distance before aiming his launcher. Through the haze he saw two Rangers holding grenade launchers at the ready.
“They’re bottlenecked!” called out Miller. “Let’s roast these bastards!”
The guy who’d been on the roof with his M2 Browning was getting a hand bringing the machine gun down.
Brodie heard the boom of distant thunder. Lightning flickered over the dark hills to the south.
The Rangers got the M2 on the ground and set up. The gunner settled into firing position.
Brodie’s eyes drifted over the Rangers as they waited, enveloped by wind and desert sand, eyes and barrels locked on the door the enemy was about to breach.
They’d found their moment at last. After months of engineered defeat and simulated death, this was it.
This was the real battle, the final battle, and it was for everything.