by J. F. Holmes
This was our second ambush in as many days, the last on the Belt Parkway. After this we would switch to something else, maybe IED’s at food collection points. Tomorrow I had a raid planned with almost a full platoon of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans who I stopped from doing something rash when I was told of a meeting at the Bayside VFW. That was tomorrow, though, live through today first.
“Don’t forget the downhill angle,” I said to the Russian again.
“I will stuff my third round up your ass if you don’t shut up,” he barked, yelled “STREL'BA!” and squeezed the trigger.
“Hey kid, watch out!” I started to say, stepping aside and clapping my hands over my ears. The back blast filled the room and the loader was thrown backwards, gold chains flying and track suit smoldering.
“HIT!” yelled the Russian over the numbing blast, then he looked back at the unconscious loader “DAMMIT GREGOR!” I was already pulling the next round out of his backpack and handing it to him, slotting it into the launcher. I pulled the kid out of the backblast area as he took aim and let the next one rip. I dashed over to the window and saw chaos unfolding. The lead truck slowly slid sideways, tilted and rolled, the crew cab a smoking wreck. In the back another slowly ground to halt, burning fiercely as our other gunner fired another round into the next truck.
“GODDAMMIT! HIT IT AGAIN!” Our second shot had bounced off the side of the van carrying the Elves, failing to detonate. The Russian started to line up another as I lifted the Barrett and settled it on the windowsill. The van had stopped, stalled or something, and I saw the human driver bail out. He started to run and an Elf fired a bolt of lightning that fried him on the spot. My first round shattered the passenger window. Too high. I dropped my aim and fire again at the incredulous pointed ear face that appeared in the scope and it vanished in a spray of blood. A blinding flash and I was shoved aside by a wave of heat. The smoking bottom half of my RPG gunner still knelt in front of the window; the rest of him floated in the air as ashes.
I grabbed the Barrett in one hand and the stupefied Gregor in the other, dragging him towards the back door and out into the hallway. Then I dropped him and hauled ass down the corridor and out the back of the building. Outside was a Jeep Cherokee with Hollis driving and two guys, national guardsmen, standing at the corner with M-4’s. “Wounded, upstairs!” I yelled, and they peeled back to go get ‘Gregor’. I held up one finger to Hollis and ran around the corner to the alley between the buildings.
We had picked this portion of the expressway because the street level was a little bit higher than the actual highway roadbed. I sat the rifle back down on top of a garbage can, leaned forward into the buttstock as hard as I could and looked over the top of the scope. Our guys would be unassing the area right now, and any more mayhem I could contribute would help.
My first shot hammered into my shoulder, rocking me backwards, and splashed off the back silvered armor plate of a mage that was hurling lighting at a building across the way. He spun around and launched a fireball down the alley, setting the building aflame, but I was already moving back around the corner. It passed by in a wave of heat and I immediately laid down, put the barrel around the corner, sighted on his chest and fired. His energy had been weakened by my prior shot and the amount of magic he was throwing around and I saw the armor get punched in. It didn’t go through but the entire thing collapsed in a concave arc. No way his ribs and internal organs survived that.
I ran back to the Jeep, tossed the rifle in the open hatch as gently as I could, slammed the hatch shut and climbed in the open passenger door. Hollis stepped on the gas before I had even shut the door and we shot out onto one of the main avenues, across an intersection and then down the street. Behind us the neighborhood on either side of the L.I. Expressway burned as a dragon rider swooped low, lighting tenements on fire.
I hoped God would forgive me, because I wouldn’t.
Chapter 39
It was three days after the Brooklyn Bridge incident when an encrypted email showed up on our drop box from JSOC. I hadn’t heard from anyone in the military in almost a week, and the internet kept going in and out.
In essence, we were to expect some visitors on Glass Bottle Beach at Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn late the next evening, and we had to be there to meet them. They had some supplies for us and a tasking. Clark, Hollis and I got there long before sunset, driving calmly through mostly deserted streets to park an appropriated Jeep Cherokee by the water. We pulled out fishing rods and got to work. No one bothered us and it was actually kind of pleasant to stand there on a summer evening with the sun going down and the skyline of Manhattan in the distance. Hollis was watching the road with an M-249 and her own NVG’s.
“Been busy, haven’t they?” said Clark, looking at the city through binos as night settled. I was scanning the sky with NVG’s, looking for dragons that might be headed our way. There were some over Long Island but none out to sea. One of their airships hovered off the coast, maybe ten miles out, perhaps on picket duty. Turning my head towards the horizon, I saw what he meant. The Elves had stretched long glowing strings of lights between buildings, like bridges between the skyscrapers. They were pretty, almost ethereal in a spider web kind of way.
“I dunno, looks too girly to me,” I commented.
He laughed and said, “Better not let Hollis hear that. Plus, I don’t know, it seems different but beautiful in its own way.”
“Yeah. Probably increased the value of the property. I bet the one percent love it. Rich bastards.” We had seen them crawling out of their holes the last couple of days, important people. Wall Street executives, movie stars, politicians, all clamoring for attention from their new masters. O'Neill had reported that the Mayor was sucking up to Lord Tavan really hard, getting ready to re-form the NYPD in conjunction with orc patrols. I made a mental note to put him at the top of my list.
I thought of O'Neill. Her blonde hair and blue eyes were … sweet, and I liked her smart ass sense of humor. I had met with her twice since the incident at the police station, and there was something there, something I hadn’t felt in a long time. She was a few years younger than me, but not much, and after my disastrous dumb ass noob Private marriage right post AIT had crumbled, well, I threw myself into getting as far as I could in the Special Forces, then Delta. Sure, there had been women, passing things, broken relationships that ended at my next deployment or during it with a Dear John email.
“Thinking about a certain Irish girl?” Clark chuckled, knowing he had hit the mark.
I shook my head. “No time for that, not right now, anyway. Plus we’re in the middle of a fight. I can’t afford to have someone who I might order to do something dangerous influencing my decisions. You know what I mean. Don’t know how you two do it.”
He glanced back at where Hollis was hidden. “Generally lying down, I’m not nineteen anymore.”
“You know what I mean,” I said.
“Has it ever been a problem?”
He was right, it had been going on for a year when I found out, and it never had. “Well, she’s not part of the Unit, like Hollis is. So no deal.” And I pushed thoughts of Shannon O'Neill from my mind.
He didn’t say anything after that, we just listened to the waves. At 22:45, a bit late but still within our window, an infrared beacon appeared about a hundred meters out, just popping out of the waves. I popped my own IR chem stick, and it flashed three times. I answered with two, all clear, and then a set of shapes appeared and struggled out of the surf, carrying a heavy object. Clark and I ran in to help them and between the four of us we managed to drag it to the Jeep. The military transport container made the battered truck settle on its shock. Damn it was heavy. I handed one of the men a data stick, sealed in a waterproof container along with a watertight box containing hard copies of all our reports. Two more men appeared with another box, this one even heavier, and they and Clark set to burying it for later. Blasting caps mostly for setting off IEDs.
While they wor
ked I pulled their team chief aside and asked him for an update on the big picture. He sighed and ran his hand through his stubbly hair and stated flatly, “Well, we’re fucked. DC is gone, I’m pretty sure the NCA,” the National Command Authority, or the President, “is at Cheyenne Mountain or some other place. I’ve been on ship doing these drop offs for the last three days to guys like you, stay behinds who are trying to stir shit up, so I don’t know what exactly is happening with the Army. All our East Coast bases are gone.”
“How’s the Navy doing?” I was hoping that maybe the Elves might be limited on how far they could go off the coast.
He drained a whole pack peanut M & M’s into his mouth and started chewing. “Lost three carriers outside Washington. Some jackass ordered them into the fucking Chesapeake along with every combat ship that could sortie. I’m telling you, there’s been some shit ass decisions made by our politicians when they got threatened. The acting SECDEF finally ordered us out to sea, and my boomer has been hiding out of the continental shelf and poking in and out of the harbors. I think the rest of the carriers hauled ass south.”
I pressed him a bit. “Nothing else about the land situation?”
“I heard from a guy at CentCom that the Elves are having a hard time in the Rockies. East Coast, they’re over the mountains and First Army is done. Next stop is the Mississippi, maybe, dunno. Like I said, we’re fucked until we find a way to counter their magic.”
“Well, I hope the intel helps. People here are rolling over because the Elves are doing a hell of a hearts and minds campaign. Food, jobs, gasoline. People are even commuting to Manhattan and some of the rich shitheads are kissing up to them.”
He grunted and spit into his mask. “Fucking sheep, going to get eaten eventually.” Whistling once, the SEAL gathered his men and they strode into the water, headed for their mini sub and the ride back to their boat, the USS Georgia or one of the other converted Special Operations SSBN’s.
I was just about to get back in the passenger side of the Jeep, thinking about the crate and wondering what my orders were, when Clark grabbed my arm and said, “Holy Shit!” Turning to look through my NVG’s I saw a flurry of motion out on the bay, back lit by the lights of the city. Something like a nest of snakes but immensely bigger created a thrashing whirlpool about five hundred meters out and then a cylindrical shape was lifted high up in the air. Bodies spilled out, some flailing and others getting gripped by tentacles. I heard a faint scream and then the entire thing disappeared under water.
“What …” said Clark, but then shook his head. “I give up. There isn’t anything I’m not going to believe anymore.” We waited at the beach, but not too closely, for an hour. No one dragged themselves out of the water and we finally said a quick prayer and headed north. At least we had the package.
Chapter 40
I wore a mask, as did the dozen or so veterans and disbanded guardsmen and reservists. Honestly, I felt like a tool, some cheap dirty civil war ethnic warlord, but hey, I didn’t want to know these guys faces and they didn’t need to know mine. It was going to be that kind of war, where they go to work five days a week and blow shit up on nights and weekends. For many of these guys their service had been a decade or two ago, and beer guts were much in evidence. Others still wore bandages from the fighting last week. They were all that I could gather, people who said they would bring other veterans to the fight.
“The target is here,” and I pointed to a printout on the wall. “MCU stadium, where the Cyclones play. There’s over a thousand POWs from the fighting last week being held captive by the Elves. Our job is to go in there and kill them.” The room broke into shouts of WHAT THE FUCK and FUCK YOU ASSHOLE! There was no use calming them down, and several stood up to head to the door. They were met by Jonesy, who just smiled and folded his arms, an immovable rock.
“Listen,” I continued when they had settled down. “Those guys have been frozen into statues by the Elves. You’ve all seen what they’ve done to captives, freeze them up and then unfreeze them when they want to torture them. Or eat them. Either way, they’re dead, and hostages for good behavior. Maybe one of their mages can bring them back, but we can’t and every day they’re in hell.”
One man stood up, his belly bulging under his plate carrier. “Why don’t you just kidnap one of them mages you keep talking about?” Jeez, I had put the word out to come to this meeting in civies and half these guys had come with weapons and full tactical kit. What did they expect us to do, storm Manhattan?
“Listen, this is going to be a very long war, and we have to be realistic about what we can accomplish. We need to buy time until Uncle Sam can get his shit together and take the city back. We have to do what we can to make the Elves’ lives hell until then. And …” I continued, “I’m not leaving any of our brothers in arms stuck in stone. Even a clean death is better than that.”
“So what do you want us to do, Major?” asked a woman. She was middle aged and wore captain’s rank pinned to her t-shirt.
“I’m not going to ask who you are, so I can’t tell if I’m caught, but I’m going to assume you have an idea of what combat means. We do what we can, and tonight, I mean later this morning, we send a message about what we will and won’t stand for. And that statue shit … well, I know what I’d want someone to do for me if I were in that hell.”
The complaining subsided and I told them my plan.
“Each of you will be tasked with bringing five combatants to this assembly area, inside the warehouse here. Captain Jones,” I gestured to him, and he grinned, “will secure the assembly area. From there designated marksmen will engage the guards. I’m expecting orcs, and these are White Hand bastards. If you see any wearing Red Arrow markings, go for incapacitation if you can, as opposed to outright killing.”
“Fuck those bastards,” growled one man. He had a bandage around his head.
“I agree. But I’m working to divide the enemy, and the Red Arrow guys might not fight so hard if they know we aren’t targeting them. I need you to put your emotions aside and follow my lead. If you can’t, well, then we have no use for you.” I pulled off my mask, tired of the charade. “My name is Major David Kincaid, 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment–Delta. For the duration of this war, I’ve been put in charge of operations for the NYC metro area. I’m not going to formally organize anything, yet, but you all will be the nucleus of whatever resistance we can mount, until the military gets its shit together and comes back.”
******
I hated waiting, and I was in the business of doing it in dangerous situations. Go figure, but the Army had taught me the importance of just the right time. Shannon sat next to me in the box van, fiddling with the timer.
“Wish you wouldn’t do that,” I said, “Explosives make me nervous.”
She laughed. “Know what I did before I joined the NYPD? I was an EOD specialist in the Navy. Two tours in Iraq. Don’t worry, I’ll be fine.”
“That would have been nice to know before we set this up,” I said as the light grew.
She laughed. Ignore the huskiness. Business. “I doubt there’s anything I could teach you commando weenies about demo, and I’ve had my own shit to do.”
I knew that. The past week O’Neill had been buried deep, working on setting up Operation Smacker, our plan to take out the Mayor. “How’s that going?” I asked.
“You can’t tell what you don’t know, Major,” she teased me. Then she grew serious. “Found a volunteer, but it’s going to be dangerous to get that close. Young guy, lost his wife and two kids when an F-18 crashed into his house in Long Island. He didn’t know for three days, he was working the evacuation from Staten Island.”
I had nothing to say to that. There were a million stories like his now. “What’s your estimate of success?”
“With Clark helping me? I’d say fifty fifty. Gonna make a hell of a bang, let me tell you.”
I had my doubts, but that was for later. My radio squelched twice and the clock hit 05:
40. I keyed it once and all hell broke loose. A kilometer away on the other side of the Belt Parkway at the MTA trainyard, where the Brooklyn orc garrison was getting ready to head out for their day patrols. There were hundreds of them who got on the train each day and got off at each station. That had started three days ago, and I wanted to disrupt their schedule. Hollis had a M2 set high on a window with a clear field of view of the train yard, and they started burning through rounds, aiming for transformers. When they hit one it went up with a dull boom and a shower of sparks that I could see above the highway.
My adrenaline shot through the roof and I had to fight to hold off on executing the plan. The watch kicked over to 05:41, then finally 05:42. There were three clicks on the radio; the QRF was rolling out from the stadium. A full company of Orcs piled out of an adjacent building, two squads of archers and a half dozen of what I had come to call ‘knights’, nobility Elves in shiny armor. Good reaction time, I’ll give them that. The boiled out of an apartment building on West 15th and Mermaid Avenue formed ranks and hauled ass. I mean, no trucks, just a dead run around the corner on Stillwell. Now we just had to wait. This was a very complex plan, and anything could go wrong. Troops that, even though they were veterans, hadn’t trained together. The waiting, like Tom Petty sang, was the hardest part. They vanished around the corner and I started the truck.
John Clark was an expert on demolitions, probably even better than O’Neill, despite what she had just admitted to. He waited until the Quick Reaction Force was well into the kill zone, just across from the Coney Island train station. Wide open to avoid civilian casualties and plenty of trash cans in front of the McDonalds to daisy chain explosives into. I was looking down the avenue and the QRF simply … vanished in a flash of light and an ear shattering CRACK an instant later.