Ghostmaker by Dan Abnett Read Free Book Online Page B

field-map’s edge so that the plate displayed a different section of the chart-slide. “The approach is straightforward. The Bokore River runs along the wide valley floor. It is broad and slow-moving, especially at this time of year. Most of the way is choked with bulrushes and waterweed. We can move down the river channel undetected.”
    “You’ve scouted this?” Gaunt asked.
    “My squad returned not half an hour ago,” Rawne said smoothly. “The Bluebloods had tried it a number of times, but they are semi-armoured and the mud was too great an impediment. We are lighter — and we are good.”
    Gaunt nodded. “Corbec?”
    The big man sucked on his cigar. His genial eyes twinkled and it made Milo smile. “We move by dark, of course. In the next half-hour. Staggered squads of thirty men to spread out our traces.” He tapped the map-screen at another place. “Primary point of entry is the old city Watergate. Heavily defended of course. Secondary squads under Sergeant Cluggan will attempt to storm the wall at the western sanitation outfalls. I won’t pretend either way will be a picnic.”
    “Objective,” Gaunt said, “get inside and open the city. We’ll move in squads. One man in every ten will be carrying as much high explosive as he can. Squad leaders should select any man with demol experience. We provide cover for these demolition specialists to allow them to set charges that will take out sections of wall or gates. Anything that splits the city open.
    “I’ve spoken to the Blueblood colonel. He has seven thousand men in motorised units ready to advance and take advantage of any opening we can make. They will be monitoring on channel eighty. The signal will be ‘Thunderhead’.”
    There was silence, silence except for the relentless hammering of the Basilisk guns.
    “Form up and move out,” Gaunt said.
    Outside, Ortiz stood talking to several of his senior officers, one of them Doranz. They saw the Ghost officers emerge from the dugout and orders being given.
    Across the emplacement, Ortiz caught Gaunt’s eye. It was too loud for words, so he clenched his fist and rapped it twice against his heart, an old gesture for luck.
    Gaunt nodded.
    “Scary men,” Doranz said. “I almost feel sorry for the enemy.” Ortiz glanced round at him.
    “I’m joking, of course,” Doranz added, but Ortiz wasn’t sure he was.
    Midnight had seen them waist deep in the stinking black water of the Bokore River reed beds, assailed by clouds of biting flies. Three hours’ hard trudge through the oily shallows of the old river, and now the sheer walls of Voltis rose before them, lit by cressets and braziers high up. Behind them, like a distant argument, the Basilisks spat death up into the heavens, a distant, rolling roar and a series of orange flashes on the skyline.
    Gaunt adjusted his nightscope and panned it round, seeing features in the darkness as a green negative. The watergate was thirty metres across and forty tall, the mouth of a great chute and adjoining system that returned water to the Bokore once it had driven the mills inside the city. Gaunt knew that somewhere sluices must have been lowered, and the flow staunched, closing off the chute’s operation. Sandbagged emplacements could be made out up in the shadows behind the gate’s breastwork.
    He adjusted his micro-bead link. “Corbec?”
    Colm Corbec heard his commander in the darkness and acknowledged. He waded forward through the reeds to Bragg, who had hunkered down behind a rotting jetty.
    “When you’re ready…” Corbec invited.
    Bragg grinned, teeth bright in the starlight. He dragged the canvas cover off one of the two huge weapons he had lugged on his shoulders from Pavis Crossroads. The polished metal of the missile launcher had been dulled down with smears of Mirewood mud.
    “Try Again” Bragg was a spectacularly lousy shot. But the watergate was a big target, and the missile rack held four melta-missiles.
    The night exploded. Three missiles went straight up the throat of the chute.