The sound grew in intensity, dividing into several separate thunders, sweeping closer and setting the glass doors vibrating in their frames. A wave of dark shapes roared overhead, momentarily occluding the last stars.
Tommy and Aaron awoke screaming.
Nancy slammed the door and snapped the latch. She comforted the boys for a hasty moment, then hurried back to the windows, peering through a slit in the blinds.
The sky was empty now, but not the sea. Things were coming out of the sea! A line of great, angular monsters boiled and bellowed out of the surf.
Sand and spray spewed from track wells and dimly silhouetted gun turrets traversed hungrily. The shapes lurched to a halt momentarily, each giving birth to a horde of smaller shadow shapes, two-legged, hunchbacked, the lesser following the greater as they resumed their lurching charge up the beach.
Slender-trunked trees and bamboo fencing splintered as the raging machines circled around the building. The dark men came rushing inside. Doors crashed open. Hoarse voices shouted. In her terror, Nancy couldn’t comprehend the words.
“Is anyone in here? Are there any Americans here?”
She threw herself back on the bed and clutched her children. Down the hall, doors splintered under boot kicks. The brittle, wooden door of their room exploded inward and the furnishings stacked against it were bulldozed aside.
A terminator strode into the room, armored, helmeted, camouflaged, a lethal-looking multi-barreled weapon shouldered and leveled, the piercing red beam of a laser sight lashing ahead of him. An eyeless, visored face turned, peering into the corners.
Nancy Aimsley screamed her final scream.
The visor turned toward her. “Are you an American?” the monster inquired, lowering its weapon.
“Yes,” Nancy managed to squeak.
The monster flipped up its helmet visor. In the dimness, she saw the glint of
eyes and an amazingly warm and compassionate smile. “We’ve come for you, ma’am. We’re setting up a security perimeter and we’ll get you and your kids and everybody else moved out to the ships as fast as we
can. You take it easy now. You’re going to be okay.”
The kindly monster flipped his visor back down and strode back into the hall.
Nancy Ames hugged her children so tightly the boys whimpered in protest. They were indeed going to be “okay”. As she sobbed in silent, hysterical relief, she understood and treasured an ancient, hackneyed cliché.
“The Marines have landed and the situation is well in hand.”
Stopline Koala
Pesanggaran Highway interchange, North of Benoa Port, Bali
1334 Hours; Zone Time, October 28, 2008
For the hundredth time, 2nd Lieutenant Jordan Spokes of Marine Expeditionary Unit 7.2 ran his orders through
his mind. “Hold the highway interchange. Permit no passage south into the Regional
Intervention Force zone of operations. Aid and assist all foreign nationals
seeking evacuation. If possible, avoid confrontation with the indigenous
population.”
They were simple enough to remember, but as the young Marine officer was rapidly discovering, nothing was ever simple in war.
His LAV 25 armored scout vehicle with its embarked recon team had been assigned to reinforce the unit manning the Pesanggaran checkpoint on the main ground approach to Bali’s deep-water harbor.
It was a critical station on the security line the RIF had thrown across the Bukit Badung peninsula, and Spokes had been rather pleased to be going where the action seemed to be. But upon arrival, he found Koala Charley Five manned by only a single Australian Army squad and that he, Spokes, was now senior officer on site and the checkpoint commander.
The Australian NCO, a lean, sun-leathered man called Gregson, lithely scaled the side of the big eight-wheeled armored car, using only a single hand in the climb. The other was occupied with a half-eaten John Wayne bar from an American MRE pack.
“How’s she lookin’ from up here, lieutenant?” he asked, coming to stand beside the LAV’s turret.
“Dead quiet so far,” Spokes replied, finding himself pleased with his own answer.
The LAV and the Australian’s long wheelbase military Land Rover were drawn across the paved two-lane to create a sketchy roadblock. The infantrymen had deployed in the fields on either side of the highway, trying without much success to dig firing positions in the mucky soil.
There was nothing in the way natural cover. The checkpoint had been placed deliberately where there was none. Fire superiority and a clear field of vision were considered a better defense. Still, it made one feel very naked.
About a quarter of a mile north along the highway, a low shaggy clump of trees brooded in the heat haze. Within it lay the temples and clustered buildings of a small farming village. So far, its inhabitants had remained unseen and the road empty.
“I dunno.” The Aussie shifted the sling of his AUG Steyr assault rifle and took another
bite of the chocolate bar. “Doubt she’ll stay that way. It looks to be a pretty rum go.”
“Yeah.” On his drive across from the landing beaches, Spokes had seen the beheaded bodies of men, women and children.
Suddenly, a voice echoed up from the LAV’s interior. “Hey, LT, we got action in the village area!”
Spokes’ sensor operator crouched in the crew compartment, a laptop controller pad across her knees. To augment their local security, they’d launched a Mini-Dragon RPV on their arrival at the checkpoint and now the model-airplane-sized drone was circling above the grove, its tiny television camera peering downward.
“What do you have, Scotty?”
“I can’t exactly say, sir. But we have a big bunch of people moving fast in our
direction.”
The sun-heated rubber of Spoke’s binoculars burned the skin around his eyes as he lifted and aimed them up the
road. A figure appeared from beneath the tree shadows, running down the road
toward the check point. Through the heat shimmer, Spokes could make out it was
a man bearing some kind of burden in his arms. And behind him were other
shapes, more men running. Steel gleamed hotly in their hands.”
“Stand ready!” Spokes yelled. “Prepare to engage!”
Gregson finished his candy in a single bite and sprang down from the LAV’s deck, unslinging his rifle as he dropped. “Look alive, you blokes! We’ve got trade!”
The Aussie manning the pintle-mounted GPMG in the rear of the Land Rover drew his bolt back and the LAV’s turret indexed a few degrees as the Marine gunner acquired the targets in the sights of his 25mm autocannon. Spokes swung the OCSW 20mm grenade launcher around on its scarf ring.
“Grenadiers and shotgunners, load non-lethal! Scotty, hit the loud hailer! Warn these guys off.”
