Out of the Black (Odyssey One, Book 4) Read Free Page A

in their initial penetration, taking some buildings down and generally causing no end of panic, and now he had millions of empty, or hopefully empty, cars out there blocking every street and alley in the whole damned city.
    His men were cutting through it. They had orders to do so without regard for the property, but it was taking time. Even with cowcatchers mounted on the tank chassis, there was a definite limit to how fast you could clear a road.
    “More pressing, sir,” Lieutenant Sky told him, “we’re already detecting troubling signs on our seismic systems.”
    “You know the orders on those. Flood the subway system with men, flush them out,” Potts ordered. “Do it delicately if you can, but do it.”
    “Yes sir. I have men moving through the tunnels faster than above ground. Anything down there is a top priority.”
    Potts grunted, but at least that was some encouraging news. He wished he could move more of his units through the tunnels but, aside from the fact that they were still evacuating people through them, there was just no way his armored units would make it cleanly through the stations they’d need to emerge from.
    The enemy were diggers, however, according to intel from the
Odyssey,
and now he was seeing that playing out on his tactical map. They had a bit of bad luck there this time, however, since there wasn’t a square inch of the entire
planet
that wasn’t covered by seismic scanners, and Potts knew for a fact that the DOD had access to every single one of them.
    Hell, even China tied their seismic data into the worldwide network. Predicting quakes that could shake down your city was a bit more important than political bullshit, and for the first time he was pleased as all fuck that the eggheads had butted their heads into his security bailiwick. Sharing data with the enemy made it difficult to maintain OPSEC, true, but now the only enemy on his scopes was decidedly unlike the Block and their allies.
    Potts heard another air defense barrage open fire, and he looked up reflexively. The ground to air missiles had been designed to eliminate ballistic missiles launched from China and were launched from a Leviathan Class submersible sitting somewhere off the coast. He tracked the missiles with his eyes, looking ahead of their course, and spotted the target.
    Eight incoming tracks, that he could see, heading for the city. Either New York or Jersey, he supposed.
    The tracks of the defensive missiles intersected with their targets as he watched, flashes of light erupting in the sky. When it was over, only three enemy tracks continued on their course.
    Definitely heading for New York
.
    “Tell the SAM division that I buy the drinks if they splash all three of those fuckers before they get in under our defense.”
    “Yes sir!”
    This job is getting uglier and uglier. If the bastards wanted a fight, I sure wish they would have picked a different battlefield
.



CENTRAL PARK WEST

    “THEY’RE JUST WALKING through everything we’ve got!”
    Lyssa grimaced, but couldn’t say anything to contradict her superior. Their guns were pretty much just annoying the enemy beasts, or whatever they were, and that was being optimistic about the whole deal.
    “Don’t we have anything heavier?” she demanded.
    “I think we have a light fifty in the truck.”
    Lyssa snorted, tossing her M-4C aside. “Why the hell didn’t you break it out in the first place?”
    “It’s a damn sniper rifle, Lyssa! Those things are right on top of us!”
    She wrenched open the back of the SWAT truck, scrambling inside as she looked around. Like many of her peers, Lyssa Myriano was a veteran of the Block War. She’d spent a sizeable chunk of her life in the Marines and handling big guns was second nature.
    The fifty was an older FN model Hecate IV, a semiautomatic anti-matériel rifle. No one had been able to explain what the NYPD was supposed to use it for. She had never seen the use of the damn thing before. It fired bullets