From the monitor in the White House, the president and the National Security Council members watched as the animals rose in the last fifty feet, then dust obscured the remaining men of one of the tunnel teams and the pilot who had at first rescued them, and then they him. A moment later when the dust cloud cleared, the men were gone and the only thing that remained was the large hole where they had been making their last stand.
The president lowered his head, and the other members just closed their eyes against the scene.
Sam Fielding adjusted his binoculars and scanned the area below them for any sign of life from the brave stand the tunnel team had made on the open plain of the valley. Then he tensed as he saw another of the teams exiting the earth about a half a mile from the massacred first team. Then he shifted position and saw they had already been spotted by the animals. At least three of them were now streaking toward the second tunnel team from two miles out.
'Sir,' Lisa said at his side. 'I have Colonel Jessup on the radio asking permission to cover that team.'
'Tell them permission denied. I have a small surprise for those motherfuckers. Tell them to hold position for two minutes. I'm going to buy them some time,' Fielding said as he lowered his field glasses. He looked at Lisa. 'Go, go.'
Lisa turned and sprinted into the tent, knowing the pilots on the radios were going to scream bloody murder because they were now ordered to watch the men on the ground get chewed to pieces.
But Sam Fielding knew they would never have time for the fighters to cover them, nor the helicopters to land and get all of the survivors on board before the animals struck. So he would buy them the time they needed with something he had had the foresight to airlift in.
He heard the sound of the engines and looked up. The AWACS was there, and he knew the big 707 had painted the desert terrain and was sending out a position on the attacking creatures. He smiled and turned for the command tent.
Lisa was trying to pacify the angry Jessup and the Blackhawk pilots when Fielding ordered her to contact his field artillery, code-named Gunslinger.
The commander of the three M109A6 Paladin self-propelled howitzers received the radio call from Command Site One.
'This is Gunslinger. Affirmative, we are tracking on GPS relay from the air force. Standing by for fire mission, over,' said the captain in the lead Paladin.
'Fire at will, Captain,' came the call from Fielding.
'Lock and load Excalibur!' the captain called from his command seat.
The loader opened the automatic ammo-storage door and pulled a brand-new piece of untested ordnance straight from the Aberdeen proving grounds. The Excalibur round weighed forty pounds and had compressed, funny-looking fins on the back end that told any expert in the world this couldn't be an artillery round.
The round was loaded into the M284 cannon and it immediately started communicating with the Paladin's computer-fire system. The round was fed constant updates as to its target, and the fins, which were still compressed against the sleek shell, would automatically be set accordingly after it left the tube. The information was relayed by military satellite to the orbiting AWACS and then to the small dish antenna atop the strange-looking tank.
'Fire!'
The three Paladins simultaneously spat fire and smoke as they hurled three GEO positioning smart rounds from their 155 mm cannons at the three moving targets. The Paladins were fed constant information from the AWACS overhead, and their own Global Positioning Systems cross-referenced with the big plane, which received signals made by the animals' vibration caught on the portable VDF bomblets dropped on the valley floor earlier, and now the targets were painted, as the tank commander had told Fielding earlier, three ways from Sunday.
After leaving the muzzle of the cannon, the fins popped free of the outer warhead and started to make their minute adjustments of trim and angle, sending the rounds right or left depending on the changing aspects of their individual targets. This is what basically amounted to an enemy's worst nightmare, a smart bullet.
The heavily damaged team that had just exited the ground watched as one of the animals split off and the other two stayed together in tight formation as they sped toward them. The soldiers as one all stood and started aiming their weapons at the large plumes of dirt and sand as the wakes grew closer to them, a mere two hundred yards away.
Suddenly a thunderbolt wrenched the sky overhead as the first Excalibur found its mark, exploding exactly on top of the creature on the left, sending pieces of it flying skyward. The second animal veered away from the explosion and altered its angle of attack, but it only made it another thirty feet before the second Excalibur round also changed its aspect to target via a minute adjustment at the last minute by its small tail fins, changing the flow of air over the surface planes of the fins and sending the warhead to the right, with the Global Positioning System calling the shot. That round exploded three feet in front of the beast, tearing it apart and flooding the surface with its flesh and blood and immediately collapsing the tunnel it was in back sixty yards.
As the soldiers and Event Group members stood stunned, the third Excalibur caught the other animal as it came from a roundabout direction from the first two. They were silent at first, then they collapsed to the ground in exhaustion. They had been saved, at least for the moment, by something none of them ever knew existed, a lightweight, forty-pound artillery shell with a brain the size of Einstein. It was a new sword for the working soldier called Excalibur. But they also couldn't know there were only three hundred rounds in the entire American arsenal. And that the three Paladins had only fifty on hand.
Fielding was pleased as he watched the attack and knew the pilots in the Blackhawks were satisfied as they swept down to evacuate the team on the ground.
'My God, that was impressive,' Virginia Pollock said at his side.
'Yeah, it's too bad we only have forty-seven more rounds, and those will be used to save the lives of any more survivors down there.' He looked at Virginia. 'We're going to need a lot more than a few experimental artillery shells to survive this day.'
'Well, the engineers that my boss requested are here, and so is the president's special gift. They're drilling as we speak.
Fielding removed his helmet and rubbed his forehead. 'God, I hope those murdering bastards cooperate and head to the exit door.'
Sarah watched as two Delta Force men stabbed the darkness ahead with their powerful lights. The tunnel was wide, almost like that of a large concrete storm drain. Sarah chipped away part of the wall and looked it over in the light.
'This has been compacted, that's why there's no excess dirt from the tunneling, only at the surface. It's literally compressing the soil as it drives through the ground,' she said, looking from the sample to the man next to her.
The hole was hot and humid and smelled badly of rotting meat and sweat. They had been traveling downward for the past hour and forty-five minutes and had to stop and breathe the clean air supplied by their oxygen tanks. Now two point men waved them forward, and once again they started moving.
Suddenly one of the men held up a hand and made a fist, then opened it and gestured for them to lie low. He then waved for Sarah to come forward.
'What is it?' she asked in a low tone.
'Listen, sounds like a freight train,' the Delta sergeant said.
Sarah placed a gloved hand to the smooth wall, then she removed her helmet with her other hand and listened.
'Whatever it is, it's coming this way,' the commando said in a whisper.
'And coming fast,' added Sarah as she stepped back from the wall and removed the safety on the XM8, making the deadly automatic ready to fire.
The remaining thirteen members of her team did the same. They took up various positions for defense, using the four-man pack defense they had discussed. The one thing they did that was exactly the same was to point their weapons at the far wall as the vibration grew lou4er in the tunnel. Dirt and sand started to slowly come off the roof of the unnatural cave in soft splatters, then in whole chunks.
'It has to be the mother' Sarah said softly, almost speaking to herself. 'It's too damn big to be the smaller ones. Look at the VDF, it's off the scale.'
As quickly as the vibration started, it stopped. Whatever was on the other side of the tunnel wall was only
