Independence Day: Crucible (The Official Prequel) Read Online Free PDF Page B

“You’re welcome.”
    The F-18s had made their pass—smoke and flames were everywhere. Hiller began to limp as fast as he could toward the allied lines. After about a hundred yards he hunkered down behind what was left of a wall and looked back.
    The flash of green energy that disintegrated the concrete about six inches from his face wasn’t encouraging, and he ducked way down. He couldn’t be sure how many were following him, but thought he’d spotted as many as three.
    “It’s a cakewalk,” he said. “Ain’t nothin’ but a cakewalk.”
    He sprang up and ran for the next cover, a cluster of buildings another twenty yards away, trying to ignore the grinding pain in his ankle. If it wasn’t broken, he thought it was doing a damn good imitation.
    He came under fire just as he ducked behind the nearest structure. He looked back and saw them coming over the first wall, about ten of them. They were gaining on him.
    “Oh, no, fellahs,” he said. He picked one and started squeezing off rounds. His first two kicked up the dirt, but then he got two solid hits on one of them, and it staggered. The others came on.
    He looked toward the United Nations positions. All that separated him from them was about two hundred yards of open ground. About a hundred and ninety-nine too many.
    He changed clips and waited for the aliens to get closer, determined to take a few more with him.
    Then he heard the thunder of low-flying jets. He threw himself flat behind the building as the oncoming enemies vanished in a blaze of napalm. Even with concrete protecting him, the heat was shocking. He smelled something burning and realized it was his own hair.
    When it was over, he climbed painfully to his feet and continued toward the Russian lines, turning now and then to make sure none of the aliens had survived to follow him.
    They hadn’t and they didn’t.
    As he approached the allies he lit his cigar, thinking that lately he had spent way too much time walking away from fires.

3
AUGUST
    The sea the Romans had once called “Our Sea” had been a busy place for millennia, but now it was dangerously awash with craft from aircraft carriers to rafts made of plastic jugs strapped together.
    Dikembe shuddered to think how many hundreds or thousands must be dying daily there on the Mediterranean, fleeing death and destruction only to encounter more. The captain of the yacht, a Belgian named Jaan, gave orders to rescue those nearest to drowning, but drew the line at a hundred, a quota they quickly filled.
    Without Hailey and the crew, Dikembe was acutely aware that he would probably be among those masses doomed to reach the bed of the Mediterranean rather than the farther shore they sought. When it was time for him to go, he expressed his thanks to her as best he could.
    “You could just stay on with us,” she suggested.
    “I appreciate that…” he said, “and everything else. But—”
    “You need to get home,” she said. “I know. If I knew where my parents were, I’d be there so fast…”
    “I truly hope they’re okay,” he said.
    “Me too,” she said. She leaned up and kissed him.
    “Okay,” she said. “I’ve got a little present for you. It’s not really mine to give, but in the shuffle, I don’t think it will be missed.”
    The “present”—to his delight—turned out to be a motorcycle.
    * * *
    Algiers was rubble, so they dropped him in Tunis, where he began the dangerous, dubious business of crossing the Sahara.
    The days blurred together. Few of the roads he traveled were paved for any great length, and many were little more than tracks. Finding fuel was at times challenging. He had American dollars, in addition to his pounds, which some people were still accepting. At other times he had to perform chores to fill up. On those occasions he felt more honest.
    Most of the great cities on the African continent were on or near the sea, so the interior hadn’t been as severely affected, especially the rural regions.