Task Force Mars - Kevin Dockery [105]
The pilot had been right. The secondary explosion when the power core was breached was even brighter and more powerful than the half-kiloton explosion of the nuke.
Nineteen: Prison Break
“Shit, there it goes,” Ruiz said, almost to himself. The announcement wasn’t strictly necessary: He and his Teammates all saw the flash of brilliant light like a powerful strobe piercing the night at the far rim of the city. The sudden spark of nuclear fission brightened the landscape only for a moment, but it was such an extreme brightness that it left an impression on Ruiz’s retinas even though he hadn’t been looking directly at it. The secondary reaction, thermonuclear in strength, followed almost immediately with an even brighter pulse.
Now the four men stared as a churning fireball blasted into the air, billowing upward like a living, hungry creature. It was easy to imagine the fires of hell or the churning essence inside a star as the furious, raging inferno exploded skyward. Dust and smoke and ash mingled with the flames, in some places masking it completely, in others allowing the fire to blaze through the murk like the eyes of an angry god.
The cloud of dust and debris and the fireball rose straight up into the air over the place where the planetary defense battery had been. The kilometers between them and the blast had cut the pressure wave down to almost nothing, but they still heard the sound. When it arrived, the sound was a sharp crack followed by a long, steady roll of thunder. The rising cloud began to billow outward, assuming the ominous mushroom shape that had represented a specter of doom to humankind for more than a hundred years.
“Jesus, I sure hope the LT got damned far away from there,” Ruiz breathed, awestruck.
“I believe Chief Harris may have just set a record for the biggest secondary explosion of all time,” Harry Teal said with awe in his voice.
The master chief, together with Harry Teal and Gunner’s Mates LaRue and Rodale, was still hiding in the crater that had been blasted in the side of the central pyramid at the time of the Assarn attack. The SEALS had not been molested by guards or repair crews for the twenty or so hours they had been concealed in shallow niches in the blasted concrete. Robinson, now heavily sedated, lay on his mattress in a sheltered corner of the crater; Char-Kane was staying with him, safely out of sight.
Sanchez and Marranis had taken up a hidden position in the tunnel where Char-Kane and Jackson had entered the pyramid. They had a good view of the shattered compartments just inside the great structure and maintained an open comlink to the SEALS outside the wall. Thankfully, they had had nothing to report during the long period of waiting.
On the exterior of the pyramid, each man had prepared a firing position with at least some cover as well as a good view of the approaches. They had camouflaged themselves and their redoubts with dust and rubble. Despite their firepower, they understood that their only real chance rested on avoiding discovery until it was time to begin the mission.
Now, it seemed, that time had come.
The master chief crawled over the rubble leading to Robinson and Char-Kane’s hiding place. The Shamani woman looked up in surprise as he wormed through the hole, her expression warming slightly in relief as she recognized him.
“I heard the explosions,” she said. “Was that the PDB?”
Ruiz nodded. “It’s time for us to move out. How is he?”
She touched the unconscious man’s forehead. “The fever is still very bad, but it’s not getting worse.”
“Wait here. We’ll be back as soon as we can.”
She nodded, then asked hesitantly, “The chief…Harris. He set off the bomb?”
“That was the plan,” Ruiz replied.
“I hope he got away from there very quickly,” she said with surprising fervor.
“You and me both, sister,” the master chief said. “The bomb should keep them busy for a while. They’ll be trying to get a damage assessment and figure out