Semper Mars(20)
“Anyway,” Warhurst added, “you did all you could do. All anyone could expect.”
Tibbs nodded, though Warhurst wasn’t sure how much he’d heard. Don’t fold on me now, Ambassador, he thought. We’re not out of this yet. Not by a long shot!
“Do you need any more help here, sir? I can send up a couple of men.”
“No, Captain,” Tibbs said, straightening. “No. We’re almost done.”
Warhurst heard a sound, a distant, hollow thud, followed by something that might have been the popping of firecrackers muffled by walls and distance. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll send for you when we have the transports in sight. Meanwhile, sir, stay away from the windows. Stay away from any of the outer walls.”
He turned and hurried from the room.
United States Embassy
Mexico City, Repúublica de
México
1518 hours local time
“Shit!” Larabee said. “Here they come!”
Bledsoe didn’t need the warning. He was already on one knee, his M-29 braced atop the sandbag barricade as he covered the embassy compound’s wall. A number of Mexicans, mostly young men, teenagers, in fact, were swarming up the wall and clambering across the top.
Some of them had guns.
“Outfield, this is Homeplate” crackled from Bledsoe’s in-ear speaker. He keyed the transceiver attached to his combat rig. “Homeplate, Outfield. Go!” he replied.
“Weapons free. Repeat, weapons free!”
“Uh…copy ‘weapons free.’ Damn it, some of these guys are just kids!”
One of the attackers, straddling the wall, raised an old Armalite rifle to his shoulder and fired, the round shrieking off the bricks of the Residence a few feet behind Bledsoe’s head. He shifted aim slightly and squeezed the trigger on his M-29, a light touch only that loosed a quick, three-round burst, exploding the gunman’s chest before the recoil had time to kick the weapon up and back in his hands. The man pinwheeled back off the wall in a spray of scarlet. More gunshots, from the upper floors of buildings across the street, probed the Residence.
“Kids my ass!” Larabee growled. He fired his ATAR in short, precisely controlled bursts, knocking several more attackers off the wall. The yells and imprecations and shrieks from the crowd outside—shrieks of pain and of white-hot fury—grew louder and more shrill. He sprayed a long burst across the top of the wall, the sound like the riffling of a deck of plastic cards, but far louder. The high-velocity stream of rounds sent fragments of stone and bullet into the arms and faces of the attackers still clinging to the top.
Then they heard the growling of heavy armor, the rumble and clank of tanks moving down the street toward the embassy.
FIVE
FRIDAY, 11 MAY
Rattlesnake One
TR-5 Peregrine transport/gunship
Inbound, east of Mexico City,
República de México
1519 hours local time
“Snakebite, this is Basket. Excalibur. I say again, Excalibur.”
Lieutenant Carmen Fuentes, US Marine Corps, pressed her hand against her Mark III helmet, pressing its left speaker harder against her ear, trying to hear above the shrill whine of the TR-5 Peregrine’s jets. “Basket, Snakebite,” she replied over her helmet com. “Authenticate force release.”
“Snakebite, Basket,” the voice in her ear said again. “Authenticate Bravo-delta-delta-one-seven. Excalibur. I say again, Excalibur.”
The release code and the word “Excalibur” were also glowing in green letters, winking on and off against the message display in the lower right corner of her helmet’s HUD, the confirmation she’d been waiting for. Things had just turned nasty in Mexico City, and First Platoon, Alfa Company, was headed for a hot LZ.
Fuentes turned in her seat and caught the eyes of the rest of her platoon. They were all suited up in Class-Two armor, which made them look a bit like astronauts in EVA hardsuits…except that these suits used an active camo surface layer that mimicked the colors and shadows and light sources around them in an eerie shifting of ill-shaped reflections. The only thing Class-One had that Class-Two didn’t, in fact, was the bulky full-support backpack that turned it into a space suit in fact as well as in appearance. She couldn’t read the faces behind the dark helmet visors on either side of the Peregrine’s troops compartment, but she knew every man and woman in the section was watching her intently.
“It’s a go, Marines,” she told them over her helmet’s com system. “Mexican forces have opened fire on our people at the embassy. Basket has just relayed the codeword Excalibur. We go in, and we go in hot.”