Siege Line

by Myke Cole

Mankiller smiled and grabbed his wrist. With the travois, it had been relatively easy, but Schweitzer weighed much more than a normal man, and without the even grip and leverage, it proved too much for her. She looked up, embarrassed. “Guess I’m a little tired.”

  “Guess so.” Ghaznavi smiled, grabbed Schweitzer under his armpit, and helped drag him forward.

  “There’s not a whole lot of dignity going on here,” Schweitzer said as they managed to get him bundled into the folding chair.

  “Other duties as assigned, Petty Officer,” Ghaznavi grunted. “Damn, you’re heavy. Putting you on a diet when we get out of this.”

  Schweitzer looked ridiculous, more puddle than man, but his head was high enough to see the horizon, and if anyone put a bullet in it, well, Mankiller supposed that would be all the warning they’d need. She turned and went into her office. The rest of them were thoughtful enough to leave her alone, but she could do nothing more than slump in her chair and stare off into space, neither sleeping nor thinking, just existing, conscious only of the steady beat of her heart and the rhythm of her breathing. For now, at least, she still had that.

  Everything around her, sound, sight, time itself, faded back, and she drifted in a blissful state of no-thought. She had no idea how long she was in her office, sitting in silence, was only conscious of a vague irritation when Schweitzer’s voice pulled her out of her reverie. “They’re coming.”

  She knew she should hurry, leap to her feet and race to the window, rally the troops and get in the fight. But she didn’t have it in her. She felt like she weighed more than Schweitzer, her arm straining to lever herself out of the chair.

  The first gunshots were ringing out by the time she made the door, and she could see Calmut in the window, working the bolt action on the .22 as fast as he could. He’d at least gotten the shotgun away from the idiot who was trying to fire it long-range. It lay propped up against the window beside him.

  Cort was the only operator in the station, and he’d taken up position in the doorway, firing single shot by single shot.

  “Howdy, Sheriff,” Schweitzer said. He’d dragged himself out of the chair and lay on the floor beside Calmut. “Looks like the Little Bighorn out there.”

  It did. She couldn’t see any Golds, but the horizon was boiling with enemy troops darting in and out between the buildings, not even bothering to fire, leapfrogging from cover to cover, drawing down on the station.

  “They’re gonna rush us,” Mankiller said. She leaned out the window, motioned to the few villagers out at the truck barricade. “Come on inside.” She tried to keep the panic out of her voice. “We need to tighten up in here.” It would be close quarters, but defending a small hardpoint against such overwhelming odds would be a hell of a better bet than trying to fight them in the comparatively open ground outside.

  She turned to Ghaznavi and Desmarais. “Call your flankers in,” she said. “We need to turtle up.”

  Ghaznavi tapped the useless radio on her hip. “And how do you propose I do that? Yell real loud?”

  “Shit,” Mankiller said. The jammer prevented their internal comms just as easily as it did their efforts to call for help. Hopefully, they would come back on their own or else find a place to hunker down and snipe at the enemy, maybe draw some of the pressure off.

  She brought the Alaskan up and sighted in. The enemy were moving too fast for her to draw a bead without risking a miss. She pushed her hand into her pocket and fumbled around, realized with a start that she was out of ammo. She had no idea how many more boxes of .375 were in the cabinet. Maybe only one. Maybe none at all. She dropped the Alaskan and reached for the 870.

  The enemy didn’t give her too long to think about it. A moment later, she saw the thick, dark wedge of a crew-served weapon propped up on the hood of a car, two men working frantically on the feed. It was too far for her to be sure, but the barrel looked enormous. A .50 caliber heavy machine gun, maybe. Hopefully, not a minigun, whose 20mm fire would turn the station to splinters in a matter of seconds.

  “Big gun’s up!” Mankiller shouted. “Cover!”

  She hit the deck as the gun opened up. Thuka thuka thuka thuka. It was a .50 cal, all right. The splinters raining around her testified to the heavyweight rounds. The station shuddered, groaned, as if a storm were tearing it off its foundations. In a way, Mankiller supposed, one was. Calmut dove over Schweitzer, trembling there until Mankiller grabbed him by his collar and dragged him off, pushing down on his back until he lay flat on the floor. Fortunately for them, the gunner didn’t have a low-enough angle to hit them, and she watched as the rounds made short work of the lintel above her office door. She heard glass shattering beyond and saw her pictures falling to the floor.

  She tried to roll onto her hands and knees, thought better of it as the gunner walked his fire down, trying to hit the defenders he correctly assumed were cowering on the floor. “If they’re tryin’ to take me alive,” she called to Schweitzer, “they got a funny way of goin’ about it.”

  Schweitzer’s reply was lost in the storm of fire, the rounds stitching their way down the wall, inching closer. Could the gunner get the angle? If he could, they were dead. She looked around frantically, saw Cort and Desmarais flat on their stomachs in the entryway. Maybe she could crawl over them, find some way to get around the gunner’s flank. It would have to be quick and . . .

  The shooting stopped. Well, the impact of the rounds stopped, the rain of splinters showering the back of her neck stopped, but the pounding rhythm continued. She paused, listening. No, not the same. Not the thuka thuka thuka of the gun. A softer, more distant sound. Whup whup whup whup.

  Helicopter rotors.

  “Airframe coming in!” She jumped to her feet, raising the 870. It would be one hell of a shot, but if she could get a slug perfectly placed on the tail rotor, she might be able to . . .

  She saw them immediately. Two olive-green shapes in the sky, their twin rotors churning the gray sky around them. She’d flown in them more times than she could count, in training at Yellowknife and on missions over the shattered scree of Kunar Province. They were Chinooks, the huge transport helos that moved everything from troops to tanks. Her heart jumped into her throat. If those were reinforcements coming for the enemy . . . But then a gust of wind forced one of the huge green helos to tack, bringing the fuselage into view. Mankiller’s knees went weak with relief as she saw the red maple leaf inside the blue circle. The good guys. “Mársi Sezús,” she whispered, turned to Calmut. “Ollie! Cavalry’s coming!”

  “Pour it on!” Desmarais shouted. He opened up with his pistol, the rounds spitting out so quickly that Mankiller could tell he wasn’t bothering to aim. She could hear burst fire coming from off to the station’s right. Nalren, most likely, following her boss’s lead. It made sense. With help on the way, there was no longer any need to conserve ammunition. The important thing now was to keep the enemy’s heads down, distract them so that the helos could touch down safely.

  The thought of draining their dwindling supplies of ammunition made Mankiller’s stomach clench, but trying to make it stretch was foolish now. If those helos didn’t touch down, ammo or no ammo, they wouldn’t be able to hold much longer. She crouched, set the 870 in a groove dug in the shattered window frame, and worked the slide as fast as she could, focusing only on keeping the shotgun pointed in the general direction of the enemy. Within moments, all the guns in the station were blazing as the villagers followed their lead and sent rounds downrange as fast as they could. Mankiller could see dark shapes moving between the buildings, but it was impossible to tell if they were doing any damage, or if the enemy even noticed.

  A chattering roar rose above the din of the shooting, and Mankiller saw columns of white-orange erupting from the Chinook’s sides: the miniguns opening up. She could see the frost churning on the ground below them. One house, she thought it might be Jackie Metcalfe’s, who’d always brou
ght a pan of brownies (never cut up) to the station like clockwork every Sunday, collapsed in a shower of dust as the column of fire passed over it, spraying splinters and broken glass. Mankiller instinctively glanced to her left, saw Jackie crouched in a corner, pointing a deer rifle out through a hole in the wall. If she noticed that her house had just been turned into toothpicks, she gave no sign.

  Mankiller grunted in satisfaction. Houses could be rebuilt. The people who lived inside them were what mattered. She turned back to her weapon, racked the slide, felt it lock to the rear. “I’m dry!” she shouted, scrambled back to the cabinet, seeing Calmut take her place out of the corner of her eye.

  Someone had had the bright idea to unrig the springs on the doors, and they hung open, the mostly bare shelves making Mankiller’s stomach clench all over again. She fumbled through three boxes of 9mm, felt her hand close over the hard plastic tray that held the .375. Twenty rounds. She shuddered and snatched it, upending the tray into her pocket. A bullet snapped past her face, plucking splinters from the doorframe. Maybe a stray, maybe someone drawing a bead on her. It didn’t matter. She knelt, ducking behind one of the cabinet’s open doors, dropped the 870 and reloaded the Alaskan, stood, and raced to Calmut’s side. No sooner had she gotten on the gun sights then she heard the heavy thuka thuka thuka of the .50 cal opening up again.

  She could see the tracer fire racing upward from the Loon. A building blocked her view of the tavern’s narrow balcony, but the gunner had probably set up there. The Chinook pilot was good, and the huge helo danced with an agility that belied its size, but she still saw a few sparks fly from the aft rotor, a thin trail of black smoke rising up. The Chinook shuddered, rocked, held position, the guns opening up, shredding the Loon’s roof while the other Chinook descended. As Mankiller watched, the back ramp swung open and fast ropes dropped out. She stared at them, as if her gaze could make her rescuers move faster. “Come on,” she whispered. “Come on.”

  No figures appeared from the helo. Instead, one appeared on the roof, scrambling up through the wreckage, vaulting over the remnants of the brick chimney, and taking a knee, a long black tube appearing over its shoulder.

  Mankiller’s throat closed. It was a moment before she could force air through it, screaming as if the helo pilot could hear her. “RPG!”

  In every movie Mankiller had ever seen, RPG rounds flew slowly enough to see, their course almost leisurely compared to the instant impact of a bullet. In real life, RPGs and bullets moved just as quickly. No sooner had the tube sparked than the back of the Chinook detonated, the fast ropes disintegrating in a flash of bright white. The tail rotor spun away, turning sideways and bouncing off the Loon’s shattered entrance. The windows along the fuselage exploded, and its guns stopped firing as puffs of orange flame belched out of the gun ports. The helo sagged, the ramp falling off as the tail dropped toward the ground.

  Maybe the pilots survived; maybe the blast didn’t reach the front end. It was a crazy thought, and proved false a moment later when the cockpit windows shattered, kicked out by a fireball that grew until it consumed the helicopter’s entire hundred-foot length. It shuddered for an instant, then exploded with a bang that made Mankiller’s ears ring even from this distance, showering the houses below with smoking metal fragments, none of them bigger than a toaster.

  A second RPG round streaked past the other helo’s nose, and the enemy gunners immediately turned their weapons on it, the lines of tracer fire arcing upward from houses deeper into the village. The helo jerked up as the pilot reacted to the blast, a rookie move that in this case saved it, yanking it out of the path of the .50 cal fire. The helo dipped as the pilot corrected, tried to get back in the fight, but the inbound fire was withering and, without his wingman to draw some of it off, too hot to handle. The remaining Chinook rose higher, and Mankiller’s hope died.

  Because she knew there was no way it could get through now. It would have to wave off or risk a suicidal touchdown, the troops scrambling off under the enemy guns. She cursed herself for hoping the pilot would risk it. She wanted to live, but not at the cost of condemning all those people to death.

  Fortunately, the pilot wasn’t crazy. The broadside guns began to sweep left and right, covering fire designed to cool the fight down while the pilot generated the lift they needed to get higher. The helo’s nose rose, and then it was banking sharply away, the portside gun going silent as it faced the sky. The guns on the ground gradually stopped firing as the Chinook gained altitude, still trailing smoke from its rear rotor, its aft trembling. It leveled, shrank as it gained altitude and distance, heading back over the still surface of the lake, to Yellowknife and safety.

  Mankiller slowly lowered her rifle, staring openmouthed over the wreckage of the town beyond. Nothing moved, the quiet so complete it was as if time had frozen with the helo’s departure.

  It was Calmut who broke the silence, his voice confused. “I don’t understand, boss. Are they comin’ back?”

  Mankiller shrugged. Because it didn’t matter.

  They would undoubtedly be back, and with a force large enough to crush any resistance they encountered, magical or otherwise. But assembling such a force would take time.

  And by the time they arrived, it would be far too late.

  CHAPTER XVI

  THE COMPANY OF WOLVES

  Mankiller stared at the drifting ash, the smudge of greasy smoke that had once been her hope of salvation. It seemed to take forever for all the wreckage to tumble out of the sky, bouncing in the steaming gray snow. She could hear the soft patter of debris bouncing off the corrugated metal of the Loon’s collapsed awning. Her stomach clenched at the thought that some of that fallout was the remains of her rescuers.

  “Boss.” It was Calmut, his voice on the edge of panic. The implications of the downed helo were dawning on him, on everyone. After going on a spending spree with their ammunition, they were suddenly without help. He needed her to say something, something that would give them the strength to rage on against the enemy they now had absolutely no hope of defeating.

  But Mankiller was empty. She stared at the shower of wreckage and felt her bones turn to rubber. An exhaustion rose within her, greater than anything she’d thought possible, until the act of keeping her eyelids open seemed to be more than she could manage. It was over. She would sit . . . no, she would fall down right where she was and lie there until the monsters out there in the village came to claim her. The tank was empty. She had fought so hard, met with defeat at every turn. It was God’s will that they lose. There was nothing more she could do.

  “Boss,” Calmut said again, touching her shoulder this time. The need was there in his voice, and Mankiller realized it had always been there, not just for him but for everyone, from Joe to Sally to the mayor to every other resident of Fort Resolution. Always needing her to hold them up, to protect them, to carry them along.

  And now, with the burning remains of the helicopter making their way down to the hole in the Loon’s roof, when she needed to be carried, who would do it?

  She knew the answer, and it gave her the strength to speak. “’S all right, Ollie.”

  “That was our ammo. Our meds.” Calmut’s voice was close to breaking. “Our troops.”

  “We’re okay.” Mankiller turned to face him. The effort of keeping her eyes open and her face determined made her knees shake, and she prayed that Calmut couldn’t see it. “That was jus’ a recon. It went bad, but that jus’ means they’ll be chompin’ at the bit to get back out here. In case there’re survivors.”

  Calmut looked at the wreckage. “Don’t think there’s any survivors.” He crossed himself.

  “Yeah, but they don’t know that,” Mankiller said. “They gotta check, not to mention takin’ care of us. They’ll be back.”

  “We’re almost out of ammo,” Calmut said. “Christ, Sheriff. I ain’t goin’ back out into town to get food.”

 
The words bubbled out of Mankiller’s mouth before she knew she was going to say them. “You don’t have to. You jus’ hole up here and I’ll bring it all to you.”

  Calmut was so shocked that he only stammered, moving his hands in useless circles.

  Ghaznavi appeared from around the corner of Mankiller’s office where she’d been hiding from the storm of fire. “There’s a cache around here?”

  “Not a cache,” Mankiller said. “My Grampy’s stores. Got everything we need and then some.”

  “Absolutely not,” Desmarais said. “He’s the whole reason we’re here, to keep him safe. That’s not going to be served by leading the enemy to him.”

  “I didn’t say nuthin’ ’bout leadin’ anyone,” Mankiller said.

  “But you might do it regardless. I can’t allow that.”

  Mankiller felt anger boiling in the back of her throat. She welcomed it, if only because it pushed some of the exhaustion aside. “Maybe you don’t read so good,” Mankiller said, stabbing in the direction of the bronze placard outside the bullet-pocked walls of the municipal building. “This is Treaty 8 country. You don’t get to allow or not allow anything.”

  Desmarais looked exasperated. “This isn’t a sovereignty issue, damn it. We’re in the middle of a military operation and I’m the leading—”

  Mankiller turned to Calmut. “Ollie, did Stewart bring the sledge back?”

  “Yeah, boss,” Calmut said. “It’s in the garage. Full o’ wood chips, though.”

  “’S all right,” Mankiller said. “Harness is out there with it?”

  “Far as I know,” Calmut said.

  “Okie.” Mankiller turned back to Desmarais, eased around him to the door.

  “Where are you going?” Desmarais asked.

  “I’m gonna hook up to that sledge, and I’m gonna throw Joe and your boy Schweitzer there on it, and then I’m gonna haul the damn thing in harness up to my Grampy’s place.”