The Gates: An Apocalyptic Novel Read Online Free PDF Page B

Safeties went
off L85 combat rifles. All done in silence.
    The men were ready.
    Tony kept his hand where it was. Keep holding.
    The engine noise rose in pitch.
    The convoy was close.
    Almost time. Almost…
    “Engage!”
    Tony flinched. His hand was still in the air,
signalling for everyone to remain holding, but the men leapt out of cover and
raced up the hill.
    Ellis had his rifle pointed and was bellowing at his
men like a lion. “Engage, engage, engage.”
    “You fool,” cursed Tony, as he shouldered his
rifle and ran up the hill. None of them could be sure what they would find
there until they reached the top.
    When Tony got there, he saw it was bad.
    The convoy was still fifty metres away. The flat,
hard ground of the desert had carried the engine noise and made the vehicles
sound closer. If the men had waited just another five-seconds, the enemy would
have been close enough to engage, but now, Tony realised in horror, they were
screwed.
    A volley of British Army grenades took flight,
arced through the sky, plummeted back towards the ground.
    Multiple explosions shook the air and kicked a
cloud of dirt up off the desert floor. Nobody could see or hear anything.
Confusion reigned.
    Then the enemy convoy screeched to a halt just
outside the border fence. Their vehicles were unharmed—the British grenades had
missed them—and armed ISN soldiers spilled out into the desert, surprised, but
in no way deterred. They used their car doors as cover and opened fire upon the
hill. Private Green went down in a red mist as a bullet took off the top of his
head. Two more privates and a corporal went down right next to him. Four men
dead in a single second.
    Tony zeroed in on the nearest car in the convoy—a
banged up Toyota Corolla—and pulled his trigger. The first burst ricocheted and
sent sparks off the bonnet, but the next round hit an ISN soldier in the throat
and sent him cartwheeling to the ground.
    The dirt kicked up two feet in front of Tony,
making him turn and leap for cover, ducking down behind the hill. By that time,
Lieutenant Ellis had already fallen back, and so had all the other men with
half a brain.
    “Our grenades fell short.” Ellis stated.
    “No shit!” Tony growled. “Why did you give the
order?”
    “Because I felt it right.”
    “Well, it was sodding wrong.”
    Ellis cleared his throat. “We need to focus on our
next move now, Staff Sergeant, not the past.”
    “I agree. We need to flank ‘em. They have too much
cover to keep trading shots back and forth like this. It’ll degenerate into a
case of who has the most ammunition, and we don’t know what they’ve in the back
of that van.”
    Ellis flinched as a bullet whizzed past his head,
but he stayed calm and kept talking. “Okay, I concur. I’ll split the men into
two-”
    “No, we don’t split up. Our only cover is here and
that’s where the unit needs to stay. I just need two men.”
    “You’re going yourself?”
    “Damn right I am. The men acted on a bad order and
that’s our fault.”
    The corners of the Lieutenant’s mouth crinkled,
and he looked offended at the implication, but he settled on a guilty look and
nodded. “Take any two men you want, Anthony.”
    Tony chose the two men nearest, for it didn’t
matter whom. There were no heroes in the unit yet, just a dozen well-drilled
kids. The two men he chose were Corporal Blake and Private 2 nd Class
Harris.
    “We break south along the fence,” Tony explained,
“and try to get an angle on ‘em. The fence will stop us from getting behind their
cover, but if we can get at their flank, we can take ‘em out while the rest of
the unit suppresses ‘em from the front. You be careful, Harris, you’re a big
bloody target.”
    Both men nodded, a mixture of excitement and knicker-wetting
fear on their faces.
    “On my command. Ready…
    “… Go!”
    The three British soldiers raced down the hill,
heads down and zigzagging. Tony was a decade older than Corporal Blake