Four hours later a convoy of five Rhinos and forty MOPs were heading south out of Changsha on secondary highways. Wit and Calinga were up in the cab of the lead vehicle. The northbound lanes were packed, but the southbound lanes were wide open.
Calinga gestured to the containment suit he was wearing and the rifle in the seat beside them. “Dare I ask where you got the money to buy all this?”
“MOPs has emergency accounts all over Europe,” said Wit. “I emptied a few of them. If we help win the war, the expense may be forgiven. If we die in the process or if the Formics seize Earth, it won’t much matter anyway.”
“Such confidence,” said Calinga.
“This won’t be an easy fight. No reason to avoid that fact.”
“So what’s the plan? You said we’ll strike key targets and sabotage. What are our targets exactly? The landers? They’re shielded. Missiles can’t touch them. The air force is hitting them with everything they’ve got and not putting a scratch on them.”
“Then we’ll have to find a way inside one.”
“How?”
“No idea. If we can reach one, we can do some recon and investigate.” He brought up a map of southeast China on his holopad. “We’ll hit the second lander first. The one in the middle. The northernmost lander near Guilin is where the highest casualties are, but it’s also where the military is concentrating. I’d rather avoid direct contact with the army right now. Let’s accomplish something first. Let’s prove our worth to the Chinese. Then they’ll ask us to stay.”
“Why not go for the southernmost lander, where the flyers are seeding bacteria into the sea? That’s serious ecological damage. The faster we stop that the better.”
“That lander is more isolated,” said Wit. “It’s at a higher elevation and harder to reach. That’s better left to the air force. Plus the casualties there are in the hundreds, whereas they’re reaching the thousands and tens of thousands at the other two. The second lander is the best strategic position as well. We can easily get to either of the other two if we suddenly have to.”
They drove for a hundred kilometers without any problems. Traffic on the northbound lanes became increasingly more congested. Soon the cars and trucks were moving over into the southbound lanes and driving in the wrong direction in an effort to scoot the traffic. Calinga kept laying on the horn and flashing his lights to prevent a head-on collision. Most of the cars swerved, but soon the traffic took on a fast and frantic pace.
“Pull over,” said Wit.
Calinga took them off the road, and by the time the other Rhinos in the convoy had followed, the oncoming traffic was in a frenzy. Two trucks collided, blocking the road. The car behind them rammed them, trying to push its way through, getting stuck in the process. A pileup resulted. Four cars. Five. Seven. Horns blared. People screamed at each other. The congestion spilled over into the roadsides, where more cars got stuck in the mud and blocked any further passage. Drivers then abandoned their vehicles and ran north on foot.
Wit then saw why. A line of six Formics with mist sprayers was walking up the grass median of the highway, spraying the vegetation and anything that moved. The mist was coming out strong in thick, steady streams, rolling across the ground at waist height like a dense fog just above the surface.
Wit spoke into his radio, addressing the convoy. “Helmets on. We’re in a hot zone. Stay put until I verify that these suits work.”
He slid the helmet over his head, and it sealed itself to his containment suit. The oxygen valve initiated, and cool air filled the helmet. Wit dropped down from the cab onto the blacktop and closed the door behind him. Crowds of people ran past him, heading straight up the highway in a panic. A few of them were staggering, coughing, wheezing, dying from the mist. A woman collapsed into his arms, eyes rolling back in her head. Wit felt helpless. He had nothing to offer her. He laid her gently on the ground away from the rushing crowd so she wouldn’t get trampled. Then he turned and pushed his way through the crowd toward the Formics. The pieces of his rifle were strapped to his hip. He snapped them together as he pushed his way forward, then he extended the barrel and popped in the magazine.
“Calinga, get on the radio. See if you can find any EMTs in the area. We need medics here immediately.”
“On it,” said Calinga.
Wit forced his way through the crowd, which was in chaos now, the people pushing and screaming and knocking others aside in a mad panic. Some of the fallen got back to their feet. Others were stepped on, kicked, and trampled. Wit helped one woman up, but he nearly got knocked down in the process.