by J. F. Holmes
“You remember the plan?” I asked.
“Yes, we are to wait for the Russians, I mean Fox Company, to become decisively engaged, and then open fire. Aim for joints in armor or arms and legs.”
“Great.” Although a few of his men and women were armed with modern AR-15 variants, the majority of them had either FAL’s or M1 Garand’s. I was more than happy about that; both fired heavy caliber rifle rounds that MIGHT punch through orc armor, from what I had seen, and give the Elves a hard time. Hell, even getting hit by one of those things without penetration was like getting smacked by a baseball ball bat. “If you see any magic users, I want every ounce of fire you have poured on them.”
“Will we be able to kill them?” he asked. “Yahweh is on our side, of course, but sometimes He will send trials to his people to test our faith.”
“God is on nobody’s side, Rabbi.” I had given up my Catholic faith long ago after seeing the evils that existed in the world.
“Perhaps you should pray to Saints Browning and Stoner. I do!” he said, and that gave me a laugh.
“Do you have any night vision equipment?” He answered no and I asked him to send a runner to Zivcovic’s people to get some, and then told him about the gargoyles. He didn’t seem very surprised.
“There have always been demons, major. Some inhabit men’s souls and some manifest themselves in other ways. When this is all over, I have a … friend you should talk to. He dabbles in things that maybe should be left alone. If, however, this is to be a long trial of faith, then perhaps Abraham Moshi is the man who we might turn to.”
“Is God going to approve of turning to the dark side?” I asked, amused.
He smiled and said, “In Judaism there isn’t always the distinction of good and evil that Christians have such a hard on about.”
“A hard on? Really?”
That brought a laugh. “I was born and raised in Brooklyn, Major, long before I became a Rabbi.”
“OK, well, got to check on one more thing. Shalom!” I bid him.
“Next year in Jerusalem, Major!” and he saluted me.
Good men are hard to find, as the expression went, and I left one to go talk to some more of them. Behind the buildings I smelled diesel fumes and saw chrome glistening in the moonlight, felt a slight rumble under my feet and turned the corner.
In front of me sat three FDNY pumper trucks and several dozen firefighters. As I approached in the moonlight, they fell silent and all turned to me. One stepped forward and I greeted him in a bear hug. My cousin, Captain John Kincaid, squeezed my ribs so hard I thought they might break, even with my ammo carrier and plates.
“Dave, it’s been a long time. When that PD Special Unit officer came through the firehouse looking for volunteers, we jumped. How’s your mother?” His Long Island accent gritted on my nerves; I had worked my ass off to get rid of mine.
“Probably killing Elves in Florida. I don’t get down there much. Are the kids and the wife safe?” Last I remembered, he had six boys, I think.
“I got word they’re in Rhode Island, but who knows how safe they’ll be. We’ve got a job to do,” he said, putting all his fears and worries behind him and focusing on the task at hand.
I made a circling motion and the firemen gathered around. “Listen up, everyone. How many of you have combat experience?” Half a dozen raised their hands.
“Good, make sure your friends know that it’s OK to piss yourself in fear. Fighting a fire is tough, but it can be beat, and so can these guys. Your targets are the dragons, or anything else that looks like it’s going to start playing with matches. That’s it. Do what you can, then bug out.”
One raised their hand and said, “Sir, what about massed formations? Our water cannon can knock the hell out of them.”
“No, it won’t kill them, that’s better left for our crew served weapons. Remember, this is a delaying fight. We’re not going to stop them forever; we just have to hold the line for a while. Oh yeah, if you can keep the buildings from burning down over our heads, that would be cool too.”
That brought a tired, muted laugh to them, and I wondered at the hell that they had been going through for the last two days. I was interrupted by the roar of a dirt bike and someone in full combat gear came ripping around the corner, no lights on. He saw the trucks and skidded to a stop. “Is Major Kincaid here?” asked the man, not getting off the bike.
“Right here!” and I hurried over.
“Verbal orders sir, and some intel,” he said, handing me a piece of paper torn from a notebook. “They’ve taken the Triboro and the bridges between Manhattan and the Bronx. We’re going to roll back behind you and retreat over the Verrazano. Your position has to hold and will be last in line to pull out. Williamsburg Bridge is holding but the Manhattan Bridge got hammered hard. We’ve committed our reserves there; we think that’s where they’ll make their major push.
“Reinforcements?” I asked, knowing the answer.
He shook his head no and said, “Anything you want me to bring back to the TOC?”
“Tell Colonel Flynn we’ll hold to the last.”
He shook his head and kicked the bike back in gear. “Tell him yourself when you’re dead. The TOC got raided by invisible flying fucking monkeys. The S-3, Major Falise. is in charge now.”
“Gargoyles,” I corrected him, but he had already whipped the bike around and gunned it.
Chapter 23
I jogged back to the CP, climbing the stairs, wondering when the next attack would come. I needed sleep, but my mind and body were buzzing. I passed soldiers who were racked out on the floor, others cleaning weapons and breaking ammo out of shipping boxes, loading magazines. A few more were eating take out from some Chinese place down the block, and I gratefully took a bowl of noodles.
“LT,” I said to Wells, holding up the bowl, “send someone to get those people to move out, even if you have to do it at gunpoint. And tell them thank you.”
“Already tried, sir. They just said, ‘we live in interesting times.’”
“Their choice,” I shrugged. God, I was tired. “How are you holding up?”
It had been what, six hours, maybe eight, since I had met this kid? He had seemed baby faced then, a child playing at war, but he had been doing a hell of a job getting shit organized behind my back. If we survived, I was going to put him in for some kind of medal. “Wells, you’ve done good,” I told him. “I want you to start organizing an evac plan, including something for the wounded. If it looks like we’re going to be cut off or overrun, you take them and GTFO.”
“I’ll stay and -” he started to say, but I cut him off.
“You’ll do as you’re ordered, lieutenant. This is going to be a very long war, and the country is going to need smart, competent people to fight it. So your job is going to be to survive and get as many able bodied people into the fight as possible in the future.”
At that moment we were interrupted by Staff Sergeant Kowalski, who yelled back from his position at the front of the building, “INCOMING!” Then there was a brilliant flash and my world vanished.
I’d been close to an IED before. One blew up under the truck in front of me in a convoy outside Tikrit when we were hunting some bad guys. This was kind of similar, an all encompassing thing that enveloped you and turned off all of your senses, but different. I was slow to recover, things ticking back on, one by one. First my hearing; screams, shouts, random gunshots, yells, orders. Then I felt things, the hammering of someone firing a machine gun by holding the trigger down. That’s going to burn out the barrel, my disjointed thoughts said.
Shaking my head to clear it, I yelled, “CEASE FIRE!” at the top of my lungs and was gratified to hear sergeants repeating the call. The machine gun stopped and the individual shots dwindled. I couldn’t see anything, but Hell, I had worked in the dark before.
“CAN ANYONE SEE?” I yelled out, when we had restored some order. “IF YOU CAN, MOVE TO THE FRONT AND MAN THE WEAPONS. IF YOU CAN’T, STAY WHERE
YOU ARE.”
I put my hands up and felt my eyes, and they came away covered with some kind of sticky goo shit. Where it had come from and what it was, I didn’t know, but I started scrubbing furiously with my sleeve. Light returned, but barely, vague shapes moving around. Fuck it, I got to my feet and moved to the front. “GIMME A SITREP AND HOLD YOUR DAMN FIRE!” I yelled as someone yelled and a random gunshot popped off.
The plan was for the Russians, with higher quality and newer weapons than the Jews, to engage and draw them into the open area of the ramps right between the two higher buildings and in line with our building, and then hit them with everything all at once. A long range engagement was going to work to the Elves’ benefit, blowing all our ammo before we could mass our fires, so it was imperative that we let them get close.
“Major, we got heavies moving down both sides of the bridge, bears and trolls or whatever you call them. Not a lot of orcs but a shitload of archers. Behind them are ranked companies of … of swordsmen, I guess. I can’t see an end to them.”
That was Kowalski. “You can see, sergeant?”
“Yessir, I was in the bathroom taking a shit!” he yelled back, probably more than I needed to know, and I headed towards the sound of his voice, tripping over some office furniture. “Over here!” he called, and a hand fell on my shoulder.
“How fast are they moving?” I asked.
He paused, then said, “Regular steady march rate. Huh, I would have thought they’d be coming at a rush.”
“That will change once they clear the barricades, then they’ll double time. Get me some water, I gotta be able to see. Then get some onto the heavy weapons gunners,” I directed. We needed that firepower. “Then have the medics start treating people. We’ve got maybe five minutes, let’s use it.”
“You have some water on you in a camelback,” he said, “I’ll take care of the rest.”
Feeling like an idiot, I said, “Let me know if anything changes.” Then I pulled the camelback off and started squirting water on my face. It was nice to know that our enemies could screw up, too. That blindness trick would have been a hell of a lot better right at the moment they broke into a rush. It was like the Brits in World War One stopping a barrage on the Western Front before the troops went over the top, allowing German machine gunners time to get back from their guns.
My vision slowly cleared and I heard the bark of guns off to our left. That would be the Russians engaging, a harassing fire designed to make the enemy hurry into the kill zone. The barricades had been set just in front of the east tower, and the claymores halfway past that, closer to us, so they were being cautious. Our next kill zone was right up in our faces, on the off ramp approaches where the road was in full view of our positions.
I could see now, though my eyes hurt like someone had poured sand in them. The archer companies peeled off to either side about three hundred meters out and started firing towards Zivcovic’s position. Magic or not, you aren’t going to change the laws of physics and their position had several floors of reinforced concrete to stop plunging fire. Well, maybe magic DID change the laws of physics, but a projectile is a projectile is a projectile. I smiled at that, then grimaced as lances of pure light reached out from the magic users and started hitting the front of the building. Apparently they were pretty damn accurate because one blew something up, a wash of flame that sent small stick figures tumbling out of the window on fire. In response, the entire face erupted in gunfire, heavy automatic fire from Kalashnikovs and a few RDP machine guns. The one that had shot the lance of energy was bowled over when a ton of lead hit him. Then the missiles launched.
A Javelin anti=tank missile warhead can piece almost two and half feet of hardened steel armor in direct attack more. There were three launchers, and each one sought out one of the huge, I guess you would call them trolls, which had seemed to be shrugging off .50 caliber rounds like so many raindrops. “Well, here comes some thunder, fuckers!” I said out loud as the missiles detonated. I had worried that they might not track on such a low heat target, but all three impacted center mass. There had been five of the huge, armored creatures, and then there were two, and a ragged cheer went up from the men around me.
The Elves response was immediate. One stood high on the back of a wingless dragon, said something while pointing his arm, and a PORTAL opened up under the corner of the building occupied by the Russians, just like the one I had seen in Central Park, except horizontal. An entire section broke and slid through, disappearing downwards, and then the hole snapped shut. The rest of the structure leaned drunkenly for a moment, then stabilized. More arrows and lances of fire hammered the front of the building and the Fae charged directly down the roadway; all their attention focused on the Russians’ defensive position. In the lead were the two surviving trolls, who far outpaced anything else. They actually jumped the fifty feet off the bridge and rushed at the entrance to the Russians’ building, trampling over the two gun positions in the front, leaving smears of blood and bone.
“Holy shit,” said Kowalski next to me. The rest of the horde, led by the mounted magic users, pounded down the roadways.
“Time to dance,” I answered, and yelled as loud as I could, “OPEN FIRE!!!!!”
Chapter 24
One really has to see it to appreciate how much damage and destruction a modern infantry company can bring to a fight. Granted, we weren’t a regular unit, and we were short on ammo but … we slaughtered them, and it was fucking GLORIOUS. Even as I write this, I can feel the blood pounding in my veins, my heart hammering, the breath sucked out of my lungs. On top of that I really could put away, finally, the lingering reluctance that one human has to kill another. We hammered them, these alien invaders, and I rejoiced.
My position had the majority of heavy weapons, but the Russians weren’t out of the fight either, despite the fires raging in their building and trolls rampaging through the ground floors. I knew from experience that people engaged in combat will stay in a burning structure far longer than a civilian would under ordinary circumstances. The madness was like that, but I was grateful as tracers ripped out into the night. On the opposite side the Hasidim were emptying magazines into the crowded ranks as fast they could, concentrating their heavier .30 caliber rifle fire on the magic users who stood out like glow sticks in a night vision device, their spheres of power flickering as they absorbed more and more punishment. Finally one flickered and went out, and my snipers went into action. CRACK, CRACK CRACK, the beautiful female Elf I had first heard call to me like a siren, asking me to yield on Seventh Avenue, two days and a million years ago, was knocked backwards off her bear. She tumbled down into the street as another .50 round spread the bears’ brains out into the East River.
For my part, though I wanted to join in, I stood and watched, directing the fire of my one artillery piece, the 40mm grenade launcher, while keeping an eye on the big picture. “Save your rounds, sergeant, if they break I want you to check your fire.”
“No problem, sir, but I think the Russians are having a hard time with those trolls,” he indicated with a jerk of his head to the left.
I picked up my binos and saw that their fire had slacked off, and there were flashes from weapons firing on full auto, inside the building. Grenades started crashing, blowing out whatever windows were left, and I actually heard the roar of the trolls over all the gunfire. I turned to the runner next to me and told her to raise the flag for the Russians to pull out. I hoped Clark would make it, but they were on their own now.
Movement on the bridge caught my attention, and I saw it, what I had been expecting. Dug in infantry giving you a problem, you bring something to collapse their defenses or burn them out. As I had hoped, the winged dragons were staying well clear of our battle space, concentrating instead on the bridges north of us. What we got were two of the wingless ones charging down the roadway, headless of their own troops, scattering orcs left and right as they charged forward into our killing field. They actually skidded to a halt and
reared up, small gouts of flame coming out of their mouths, and I swear I was closer to death then I had ever been since, well, since yesterday. That’s when the pumper trucks hit them. I don’t know how many gallons per minute they could shove out, but three of them hammered into the two creatures, scattering dead bodies around and pushing them backwards.
It was as if someone had dropped a red hot rock into an ice cold pot of water. An instant gout of steam and one of them actually rolled on the ground, screaming and choking. The other, slightly behind, tried to shoot flame and it crashed into one of the streams of water, then I couldn’t see anything at all. The fog was thicker than a San Francisco evening and I wished for some infrared goggles but … wish in one hand and shit in the other. No one fired; there wasn’t anything to shoot at. I could hear the dragons screaming, but it was a scream of pain that slowly receded.
“Tell the FD guys to beat feet, leave the trucks and get the hell out of here,” I told the soldier next to me, and he took off running. “Get me a squad, have them meet me in front of the building,” to another. To Staff Sergeant Kowalski I said, “I’m going to see what’s going on out there. Redistribute ammo and start getting ready to pull out. Find some place to put the heavy weapons so that they won’t get found easily and put a shitload of grease on them.”
“Pull out? But we just kicked their asses!” he exclaimed.
“And what comes next is going to be even bigger, or we’re going to get cut off. Do it! Stand by for the signal, though and be ready to do a fighting retreat. Move it, now.” We were coming to the end game and there was no time to screw around.
Then I heard a horn blare from the back of the building, and I smiled, jogging back to the stairs and coming out the door. There were still sounds of fighting coming from the Russians’ position, and as per the plan, the Jews of Company G were moving out. They had done what I asked, but instead of filing north to go back to their homes, they headed south, towards the other building.