Free Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 10 by Wings of Fire (v1.1) Page B

low-crawled behind a
doorway that led to yet another passageway underground. “Stalkers, status
check,” he ordered. He knew where the big explosion was, knew who had been
assigned to attack that area, and he dreaded what he was going to learn....
“Castor is secure.”
                 “Nike
secure.”
                 “Taurus
secure. I got my bell rung, but I’m secure.”
                 “Pollux?”
No reply. “Pollux? Paul ?” Patrick
checked his electronic display for any sign of Paul’s transponder. Nothing.
“Castor is en route to Pollux’s last location,” he said. He hit his jump-jets
and quickly propelled himself toward the massive explosions to the east.
Patrick didn’t have to check his heads-up display to know that Briggs and Wohl
were on their way to join him.
                 But
there was no way to reach Paul’s last location. An area the size of at least
four square city blocks was totally engulfed in flames—the very streets seemed
to be rivers of fire, and the sky was thick with roiling waves of heat and
smoke. Patrick was able to move forward another halfblock with great difficulty
before system failure warnings and low-power warnings started to ring. There
were several Libyan soldiers in the area, but they seemed stunned both by the
devastation and by the strangely armored figure before them.
                 “Patrick.”
It was Hal Briggs, suddenly appearing beside him as if from nowhere.
                 “I’m
going in.”
                 “You
can’t. No one can survive that, not even in a BERP suit.”
                 “I’m
not leaving my brother behind,” Patrick said. “I left David Luger behind in
Siberia, and he survived only to be tortured for five years by the KGB. I won’t
let that happen to my own brother.”
                 “You
can’t do it. It’s suicide.” He paused, studying his electronic visor and
downlinking the status of Patrick’s battle armor system. “You only have ten
minutes of power remaining, and that’ll get sucked away fast inside that
inferno. My power is down to three minutes. Let’s go back to the exfil point
and recharge the suits. By then, maybe the fire will have been knocked back,
and we can all go in and find Paul.”
                 “No.
I’m going in.”
                 “How
are you going to find him in thatV
                 “I
don’t know, but I’ll find him.” Patrick didn’t know what was guiding him—it
wasn’t any sensor scan or transponder beacon. He had always believed there was
some sort of bond, like a telepathic link, between him and Paul, but it was
something he always dismissed as simply two guys being raised together in a
house full of women. Whatever it was, Patrick was relying on it now. As Hal
Briggs and the amazed and terrified Libyan soldiers looked on, Patrick
jet-jumped into the hellish flames.
                 System
warnings flashed in his electronic visor, and his skin felt as if it was going
to vaporize right off his body, but he kept going. Moving inside the fire was
actually easier than he had thought. His battle armor’s sensors detected any
large debris around him, so he was able to sidestep the pieces of vehicles and
buildings without walking into a burning trap. The multiple blasts had leveled
most everything, so all he had to do was avoid the larger pools of burning
rocket fuel and continue on. Three or four jumps, and he was in the center of
the inferno.
                 His
power was nearly gone. The last estimate he had was five minutes remaining, but
the estimate just a minute before that said ten minutes, so in reality he had
only a few minutes to get out before the battle armor completely shut down.
Patrick knew if that happened, he would be instantly baked alive inside the
armor like a potato in a microwave oven—crispy on the outside, well-done on