“A lightning bolt strike,” I tell him, catching my breath.
“Did the Wing Commander get out?” Josh asks, clearly disoriented.
“He didn’t have a chance, I’m afraid.”
“Bloody hell,” he says sombrely and starts to cough heavily, still bent over as if he is going to be sick.
“Captain Richards, receiving, over?” Flight Lieutenant Alders’ voice comes over my headset.
“Receiving.”
“Sir, I can’t land on the helipad, it’s too damaged, so I will get into position off the East side of the building to pick you up, over.”
“Hold position, and stand by, over,” I order.
My wits start to return after the latest catastrophe and I start to weigh up our options, the priority is getting the holdall back to base. I struggle as I try to add up how many of us there are left to get back to base, my cluttered mind hindering me. Eventually, with a little help from my fingers, I count twelve people including the pilot Alders, who need transporting. That’s too many for the Lynx to carry; it is rated to carry a maximum of nine people, so even with favourable conditions, which we are very far from, it would be a no go. Surely Alders knows that?
“Alders, receiving, over.”
“Receiving, Captain.”
“The Lynx is rated to carry nine people isn’t it, over?” I ask.
“Yes, but if we dump equipment, it will handle twelve, Sir,” he replies, forcing me to think again.
We have just lost one helicopter and a good man that was trying to land, and now I am considering letting Alders hover off the side of the building, in a thunderstorm for the remaining men to jump onboard and overload his helicopter while we will inevitably be under attack by Rabids, which they will as soon as the Browning stops shooting. His offer is very tempting nevertheless; the last thing I want is for us to be stranded here—my son, stranded—but in the end, I have to make a decision and the mission takes priority.
“Alders, return to base immediately, over.”
“Captain, I can’t leave you here,” he protests.
“Picking us up is too risky; the holdall has to get back. Return to base now, that is an order, understood, over?”
The radio goes silent for a moment and the Lynx above doesn’t break from its position.
“Returning to base, Captain, I will come back for you if I need to, you can count on it, over.”
“Thank you, Flight Lieutenant, but I trust Lieutenant Winters is already making arrangements, over,” I say in hope.
“Received, good luck, over and out.” Alders signs off as the Lynx breaks position, swoops around and then powers forward with urgency in the direction of RAF Heathrow.
Silence ensues as me and my team watch the Lynx fade away into the rain, all of us, I am sure, with a feeling of foreboding and dread as to what will happen now.
Yet more gunfire erupts, which in a weird way I welcome because it snaps me out the feeling of helplessness growing inside me and back to action. Lieutenant Winters hasn’t responded to my reference to him. I know he has been monitoring our communication for the entire mission, that is why I haven’t updated him, but I would have expected to hear of him now.
“Lieutenant Winters, receiving, over?”
Still nothing; have comms failed at base? Was my assumption wrong and he hasn’t heard a thing that has happened, or is it because of the weather?
“Lieutenant Winters, receiving, over?” I ask again, now worried that we really are stranded.
“Receiving, Captain,” he finally says.
“Bloody hell, Winters, I thought comms had failed, over!”
“Sorry Captain, I was onto flight command, trying to arrange an emergency Evac for your team. The good news is that I’ve managed to get transport arranged, but the bad news is it’s a forty-five-minute ETA, over.”
“Negative, Lieutenant, we haven’t got the ammo to hold out for forty-five minutes, we are running low as it is, so get it here quicker, over,” I tell him, as I look over at the empty ammo cans on the floor by the Browning.
“Sorry Captain, I was trying to do just that, that’s why I was off air. They can’t get it to you any quicker. I had to screw them down to forty-five minutes. They are overstretched, it’s chaos there, Sir, over.”
“Keep on to them, we need evac A-SAP, Lieutenant, over.”
“I will do my best, Captain, over and out.”
Fuck, things are going from bad to worse, I think to myself and they are sure to get worse still; the fuel tanks on Buck’s Lynx haven’t ruptured yet and the Browning still has ammo, neither of which will last.
The rain comes down, lightning flashes, thunder rumbles, the Browning erupts and my brain strains to figure out how we are going to hold on for another forty-five minutes. We haven’t been here for that long now, yet we have lost two men, one of them my best friend. A Lynx has crashed, and our ammo is depleted. I’m struggling to formulate any kind of coherent defence.
Chapter 17
Josh seems to have got over his close escape from the plunging Lynx. I know it will hit him at some point. The torment of his experiences over the last two days, especially yesterday in the Tower of London—where God only knows what horrors he witnessed as his regiment was torn to shreds—will hit him. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder will creep up on him over the next few days as he has time to sort through his memories and starts to file them in his head. The shock of what he has seen will start to bed in, he will start to relive the horrific events and the guilt of surviving when so many of his friends and comrades did not, will start to pull him down. I know this from my own experience of PTSD, but unfortunately, he doesn’t possess the coping mechanisms I have been taught and honed over many years to deal with the stress. Even my well-practiced methods don’t mean my demons go away; they never do, they are always there haunting me, as Emily will attest to.
Right at this moment, I have got to make sure that Josh and the rest of us have a chance to deal with our demons, somewhere down the line. We have got to stand our ground on this rooftop for another forty-five minutes. The only other option is to take cover inside the building and that would mean surrendering the roof to the Rabids, surrendering our only evac position. That is not an option, we make our stand here on this desolate piece of ground, we make our ammo last and we fight the enemy.
“Ammo, check!” I shout as Josh and I join the rest of our team across from the mouth of the doorway, the Browning silent for a moment.
“Just reloaded, last can,” Watts spits out to me from behind the Browning, his concentration focused ahead of him. Dixon on his left flank and Downey on his right flank have their rifles aimed in the same direction and both update me with what they are still holding.
We need to conserve the last remaining can for the Browning; it will be vital to cover our evac when it finally arrives.
“Okay, listen up. Watts, conserve your ammo, only fire if you absolutely have to. Dixon, take first shot, then you Downey, then me and then Josh. I will throw down grenades if they build up. We gotta make the ammo last forty-five minutes, understood?” Just as I finish, Dixon fires twice, taking out another Rabid.
“Understood, Sir,” Dixon says, his gaze not wandering.
Rabids only try to attack sporadically, in ones and sometimes twos. They are all despatched quickly by Dixon, with the help of Downey when needed but I don’t have to fire my poised M4. My gut still tells me that it is just to test our defences, sacrificing a few of their kin to do it. A larger more determined attack is coming, I can feel it, so what are they waiting for?
My question is quickly answered, the crashed Lynx’s fuel tanks finally blow, and it happens.
The blast from the left, behind us, is dulled by the seven floors of the Orion building that separate us from the explosion. The decibels it creates are further saturated in the pouring rain. The boom is still loud enough and together with the flash of orange light from the detonation, it is the trigger the Rabids have been waiting
for.
They don’t catch us by surprise, and we haven’t been distracted by the explosion; we are prepared for the assault. Dixon fires first, shooting early as we see the first of the Rabids’ heads appear above the pile of bodies on the stairs. Dixon’s shot is excellent, straight through the forehead of the beast whose head whips back and it drops, yet another body added to the malingering pile.
Following straight behind the first doomed creature are two more, and this time, Dixon and Downey both fire their weapons. One is hit, but it’s only a body shot, which it doesn’t even register, and it doesn’t slow it down. It breaks out into the open air before one of Dixon’s rapid-fire bullets splits its head. The second evades Downey’s shots completely as it springs up onto the side of the stairwell wall, grabbing onto the door frame near the top and seemingly to defy gravity, it springs into the air from there and comes hurtling towards us.
As the third in line to shoot, I do, firing at the flying creature as gravity does finally take hold of it and it arches down towards the rooftop. My automatic fire hits the Rabid in multiple places but it isn’t until it hits the ground that I get my headshot and kill it.
Dixon and Downey are now almost constantly laying down rapid gunfire into the doorway as Rabids keep coming. Josh joins in the defence and takes down his fair share of targets while my concentration stays on the flying Rabid.
With my Rabid down, I release my M4 to hang at my front and grab two grenades, pulling the pins as I do. The three men firing are just about keeping the horde at bay and Watts has resisted getting in on the action, conserving his ammo as ordered. I wait for a gap and throw the first grenade through it and down into the stairwell, shouting “GRENADE!” as it goes. Before the grenade explodes, the second one is following down, and I have taken back hold of my M4.
Two explosions meld into one as the grenades go off, and as the blast escapes through to the roof, it brings with it Rabids. The force of the blast throws three catapulting out of the stairwell, but a blast that would stun or kill normal people doesn’t faze the Rabids they hit the rooftop and spring up immediately. Their flesh torn and burnt, they dive at us; one comes directly at me before I have time to aim my rifle. I manage to step sideways out of its path and spin to bring my rifle around to bear on it. As I’m about to shoot it, Josh’s rifle opens up from beside me, filling the Rabid with bullets. His fire quickly finds the Rabid’s head and it drops, just in front of me. Josh doesn’t pause to evaluate his kill and neither do I; we are back on task fast, our fire back at the stairwell, defending our position.
Dixon and Downey are concentrating their fire on the door too, having despatched the other two Rabids that were blown out from the stairwell. The Rabids keep coming and I’m getting very concerned with how much ammo we are expending holding them back. Watts has reverted to using his rifle from behind the Browning, to pick off any Rabids that are missed. I don’t see any other option but to use more grenades to try and stem the flow of these fucking relentless creatures.
I pull the pin on one grenade and throw it down, trying to put more force into the throw and aiming higher into the stairwell in an attempt to get it further in and reduce the risk of the explosion blowing any Rabids out again. It’s pot luck though. The grenade goes off with no Rabids blown out and I throw another down. My theory is that a succession of smaller explosions won’t blow any out and do enough damage over the spread to stop them coming, or at least slow them down.
A total of four grenades explode inside the stairwell, smoke billowing out of the top of its doorway and into the dark rainy sky. Thankfully, following the fourth grenade exploding, the Rabids’ attack ends, at least for now.
“Nicely done, Sir,” Watts congratulates.
“Thanks, but let’s not count our chickens. Stay ready; they will come again!”
That I am sure of. They will keep attacking, they can smell prey nearby. We need to get the fuck off this roof. We still have thirty minutes until evac and that was only estimated, it could be longer. I hold out no hope that it will be quicker. Not with how this mission has panned out so far.
“Lieutenant Winters. Receiving, over?”
“Receiving, over,” he answers almost immediately.
“Latest ETA on evac, we are in the shit here, over!”
“Still no better, Sir, they are prepping for take-off, over.”
“Prepping for take-off? Are they taking the piss? Order them into the air now, over!”
“I’m sorry, Sir, I’ve tried everything I can to speed things up, over.”
“For fuck’s sake, at this rate, there won’t be anybody here to pick up. Apart from Zombies that is, over.”
“I will try again, Captain. Please hold, over and out.”
“Please hold,” Dixon interjects. “Is this guy for real? Does he think we are trying to get a taxi to the airport?”
Thankfully, he doesn’t say it over the radio for Winters to hear.
“I am sure he is doing all he can,” I say, trying to calm the men, even though anger boils inside me. How can they leave us out here with our arses out? If we still had the contents of the safe, you can bet your bottom dollar Colonel Reed would have had birds in the air immediately. I will have to thank him next time I see him, I promise myself. So much for trying to do the right thing. “Okay, let's do an ammo check, while we can.”
“Captain Richards, receiving, over?” Flight Lieutenant Alders’ voice comes through my headset, taking me completely by surprise as he should be almost back at base.
“Receiving, Flight Lieutenant, over.”
“Evac, ETA, five minutes, over,” he tells me, but I struggle to understand what he means.
“Explain yourself, over,” I tell him.
“I’m on my way back to pick you up, ETA, five minutes, over.”
“You can’t possibly have got back to base and back here that quickly, over.”
“I haven’t been back to base, I’ve put down in Richmond, dropped off most of the team and the holdall and turned around, over.”
“Alders, you had your orders, the mission takes priority.”
“It is, Sir, it will just be a bit late. The holdall is safe and none of us was just going to leave you behind, especially Alice. She was quite insistent, weren’t you Alice?”
“You got that right, Sir,” Alice says, “we are coming to get you!”
For a moment, I think about ordering them to turn around and complete the mission as ordered. The moment is only fleeting though, and my relief is shared by the rest of my team on the roof, that is plain to see.
“We will be ready, thank you,” I tell them.
“Well that’s a relief,” Josh says, smiling.
“We aren’t off this roof yet, son, stay alert.” Josh’s game face returns immediately, and he goes back behind his raised rifle.
Alders is going to have to pick us up from the north side of the building. That means the Lynx’s door gun won’t be able to cover the stairwell, I think, running through how we will evac. The south side has the burning Lynx at its base, giving off heavy black smoke and it could still explode further. That smoke is also affecting the east side, which is a no-go anyway because of the mangled helipad frame. We don’t want to be climbing over that, we need a swift exit and the west side has all the buildings communication antennas and arrays lined up, high into the air.
The north side is the only viable option and the Browning is going to have its work cut out, covering the evac, as is the person who is going to be behind it.
It dawns on me that there hasn’t been any lightning recently. The rain is still pouring down by the bucket load and the wind is still strong. Does that mean the thunder and lightning have passed, and perhaps our luck is changing? I bloody hope so, but I curse myself for thinking it and probably jinxing it.
Dixon fires off two shots in quick succession as if to chastise me for even thinking our luck is changing. The Rabids aren’t done with us yet, and I hear Dan’s voice in the back of my mind t
aking the piss for letting my mind wander, so I redouble my concentration.
“Take the right flank, with Josh, Lance Corporal,” I order Watts, behind the Browning. “I’ll take over, here.”
Watts’ chiselled face looks surprised and aggrieved by my order as if it is some kind of personal slight against his competency, which it is not. I see that he is about to make some sort of protest and tell me that he has it covered, but I tell him that he has his orders before he can. Watts stands aside and relinquishes the Browning to me, not looking too happy, and joins Josh on my right.
“Alders, receiving, over?” I say into my comms unit.
“Receiving, we are three minutes out, I can see the building, over.”
“Received. Evac point is the North East side of the building to your left of the rooftop door, over.”
“Received and understood, over.”
“Get into position as quickly as possible. The noise of that Lynx will kick things off here, over.”
“Received, over and out.”
“Right,” I say, “this is it. When the Lynx arrives, I will cover the Evac. Evac point is over there,” I say, pointing to the right side of the building behind the stairwell door. “Josh and Watts, you're first to go. When you’re on board, cover Dixon and Downey’s retreat. The Lynx’s door gun won’t be accurate enough. Then I will make a break for it with your cover, understood?”
Everyone says “Yes Sir,” apart from Josh.
“I’m not happy with that plan, Dad.”
“It’s the only way to do it. You have your orders.”
“Dad, it leaves you too exposed!”
“Someone has to cover the evac, Josh. It’s manageable unless someone has a better plan?”
Nobody does and silence ensues.
“Okay then, standby for Evac,” I tell them.
In the distance, the sound of a helicopter starts to pierce the constant patter of rain falling onto the rooftop. I risk a quick look around behind me to where it will be approaching from and see the Lynx’s lights floating in the air, through the rain and not too far away.
Capital Falling Trilogy Box Set [Books 1-3] Page 43