Standing in the Storm

by William Alan Webb

  But before he could move, the first man over the crest flew backward in a spray of red. A second wave reached the crest and he saw them raise their rifles and start shooting at something on the other side. Then something ripped through them, too. Many rolled backward, dead. Yet more men poured over the crest and disappeared down the other side.

  1639 hours

  Hundreds of men wearing white robes poured over the hill waving guns. Some knelt to loot the Marine bodies lying in the dirt, while others kept running until they spotted the five LAVs speeding right for them. Dennis Tompkins saw a few of the weapons he dreaded most, the rocket-propelled grenade. But for the sake of the Marines scattered over the hillside, they couldn’t stop.

  “RPGs, watch it, watch it!” he yelled into the mike, forgetting radio discipline. “Open fire, but don’t hit the Marines!”

  Swiveling the pindle-mounted 7.62mm machine gun, Tompkins heard Schiller start blasting away with the Bushmaster. The other four LAVs joined in. Bullets clanged off the turret, but he squeezed the trigger and watched tracers arc toward the mob running at him. The firefight was quick and one-sided. The combined firepower of five chain guns and ten machine guns mowed down the Sevens by the dozen. Only one man fired an RPG round, and it missed. The other survivors broke and ran.

  1641 hours

  Muhdin heard the staccato chatter of chain guns beyond the hill. Within seconds, the ugly snouts of more of those damned AFVs moved into view atop the hill. Their chain guns and machine guns cut wide swaths in his men.

  Where had those come from?

  It was too much to expect men who were not trained infantry to continue an assault in the face of automatic cannon and machine gun fire. The enemy gunnery was accurate, efficient, and deadly. No man dared show himself. A few men began crawling backward. Then others joined them, and then still more. Soon they all were crawling, duck-walking, or outright running back the way they had come.

  “No!” Muhdin screamed, standing straight. “No! Go forward, you cowards. Forward, forward!”

  It was no use. Against the deafening din of battle, his voice was like the flapping of a bird’s wings high overhead. Panic spread through the ranks and a retreat turned into a run-for-your-life rout. The turnaround stunned him.

  The Superior Imam would not understand this. He would ask what measures Muhdin had taken to reverse the situation. It was his life on the line now. The Emir often told him he was too soft on his men. His enemies could use the failure of this attack as clear evidence of that accusation as truth. Unless, of course, he could prove otherwise.

  Four machine-gun crews had been firing at his men to remind them of what awaited cowards. But they had been shooting to threaten, not to kill. That was about to change.

  “Get ready to fire!” he yelled to the machine gunners. “If they’re running, kill them! No mercy to cowards!”

  “My brother is out there,” one of the gunners yelled. “I cannot kill my brother!”

  “Do as I tell you!”

  But it was too late. The other machine gunners refused to kill their friends and family. One threw down his gun, then another. Fleeing men ran past without a shot being fired, and then the gunners joined in the general flight. Disgusted, Muhdin debated whether to draw his pistol and charge the enemy himself, or take his chances with the Emir. The pistol remained in its holster as he whirled and stalked from the battlefield.

  1652 hours

  “Hold your positions,” Tompkins said into his helmet mike.

  The sudden silence seemed ominous. Hundreds of bodies littered the desert before the Marine positions and the air reeked of gore, but nowhere did he see a living enemy. After two minutes without a threat, he knew the danger had passed.

  “I think that’s what you call close,” Thibodeaux said.

  “If that’s not in the nick of time,” Tompkins said, “I don’t know what is. C’mon, let’s dismount and help the wounded.”

  Once on the ground, Tompkins glanced at a mesquite tree not far from the hill. A prairie falcon met his gaze. After a loud scree! it flapped away north.

  Chapter 43

  They shall not pass!

  General Robert Nivelle at the Battle of Verdun, 1916

  The fighting at the Marines’ main line of defense was brief but violent. Burning wrecks littered the old interstate, including all three M1A1 Abrams. The Sevens kept their tactics simple — drive as fast as possible right at the defenders, shoot at them with everything you had, and keep going until you died or got through. Dozens of cars, trucks, tractor-trailer cabs, and SUVs went up in flames. Some careened out of control, some rolled over and over, flinging bodies in all directions, and others exploded. One flaming man ran from a burning Ford truck, screaming for help, until his RPG blew up and scattered him all over the desert.

  1707 hours, July 29

  “Missile at two o’clock!” Bunny Carlos said in a loud but businesslike tone. “All flares expended.”

  Racing over the desert at more than 200 knots, Joe Randall saw the flash eight hundred yards away and knew it was a Stinger. Working in microseconds, his brain reviewed the problem, listed his options, and calculated the odds. With the missile coming in from his right front, and counter-rotating rotors that moved left faster than right, the only possible evasive action was a left turn as hard as they could stand. Even with a G-suit, it was risky. They might surpass six Gs of gravitational force. In theory their suits could handle nine Gs, but at such low altitude, even a momentary blackout could be fatal.

  Randall had to time it to the second. He could not make the move too soon. A homing missile going the opposite direction would first have to pass its target to pick up the heat signature. It would have already accelerated past nineteen hundred miles per hour. Once past the Comanche, the missile would then execute a one-hundred-eighty degree turn before locking onto the heat source. The turn would slow it down and cause it to loop around, both of which would buy time. If the missile traveled one hundred yards past its target before beginning a turnaround, and the target flew at two hundred miles per hour, Randall calculated he might have two seconds to shake it off.

  “Hang on, hard left,” was all he said, but Carlos understood. So far that day the Stingers had all been older models, homing on infrared signatures only and not UV, so their flares had worked. But the flares were all gone.

  The small missile raced past them on the right and Randall jammed the stick hard left. He strained to keep the massive gunship from nosing straight into the ground. Tank Girl was agile for such a massive aircraft, but momentum in helicopters was never easy to control. And when they were as large as a Comanche, it was especially hard.

  Tilting at a thirty degree angle, both men felt the gunship skidding, which would be fatal if they couldn’t stop it. Blood drained from their brains as the G-forces increased. Straining every muscle to hold Tank Girl steady against the forces ripping at the airframe, Randall had an instant’s glimpse of men firing up at him with small arms. They seemed close enough that he could have reached out and snatched them up like some huge raptor. Then the rotors bit the air again and Tank Girl straightened out like a car on a roller coaster. The missile corrected course a second time and kept coming.

  Randall held the rocketing helicopter ten feet off the ground. The backwash created a dust cloud, but did nothing to stop the Stinger. The desert around them was flat, but he needed some irregularity in the terrain or they were dead. Then he saw his chance. A big truck passed in front of a hill, with a wide ditch beyond them both. It wasn’t much, but it was all he had.

  “It’s gaining fast.” Carlos’s voice took on an urgent edge.

  Both knew they had three seconds left. No time to think, just to react. Randall’s calculations didn’t register as a conscious thought.

  Carlos understood the plan as if he shared a mind with Randall. Centering the truck in his gunsight, Randall pressed the 30mm trigger and Carlos fired off the last ten Dragonfire missiles. In the next three seconds many thing
s happened, too fast to follow.

  Hundreds of exploding cannon shells obliterated the truck, blowing pieces of it all over the desert. It began to roll, and then the Dragonfires hit. The missile detonations ignited the fuel tanks and the whole thing became a giant tumbling fireball. Flames mushroomed skyward and Tank Girl headed straight for them.

  Once again Randall had to wait until the exact microsecond to avoid hitting the flaming wreckage. He and Carlos yanked Tank Girl straight up. Smaller helicopters could execute such a maneuver with little forward skid, because their momentum versus lift capacity and thrust was more favorable. But enormous gunships carrying the massive firepower of a Comanche were, by definition, heavy. That, combined with the forward momentum generated by traveling at 200-plus knots, meant Tank Girl lacked the crisp response of a lighter aircraft.

  Tank Girl responded by skidding right at the boiling flames. Almost perpendicular to the ground, she gained altitude but it seemed to take forever, although in reality it was microseconds. The Stinger had closed to within one hundred yards when the rotors regained lift and the helicopter screamed skyward at an eighty-degree angle. The tail dragged through the top of the flames, scorching the paint.

  But the danger wasn’t over. If the Stinger was an older model, it would hit the flaming hell below. But if it locked onto their ultra-violet signature, the fire would have no effect. They couldn’t wait to find out if it hit the truck, because it would be too late. They had to immediately hide their UV signature and force it to make another target selection. Worse, as a helicopter bleeds off upward speed, the motion of the rotors that provide lift when the aircraft is in level flight begin to pull it sideways. Then, as the aircraft tilts backward, it flips it upside down and drags it toward the ground. The danger wasn’t only behind them, but in their very motions.

  In three seconds of real time, Tank Girl roared straight up and stood on her tail, with the flames from the burning truck licking up at her. Then, as her speed bled away, Randall and Carlos fought to bring her nose down before she flipped over. As stall speed approached, the huge helicopter pivoted forward and fell. The nose plunged down. They had to level out or slam into the desert. Randall realized they weren’t going to make it. But just beyond the truck, the hill shielded a dry riverbed. The extra twenty feet of depth was just enough to avoid disaster as Randall fought her into straight and level flight at an altitude of five feet.

  The Stinger followed Tank Girl’s path upward until she fell behind the hill, which blocked her UV signature. With no target to follow, the missile’s dual IR/UV sensor homing system searched for a new target and found the roaring fire two hundred feet below. Two seconds later, it became one more explosion in the mass of fire.

  When Tank Girl regained lift, her powerful engines drove her forward, away from the battlefield. Joe Randall shook as he navigated down the riverbed.

  “Everything looks good.” Carlos’s quavered.

  “Does it? Good… good.”

  “Damn, Joe,” Carlos said. “I mean, damn!”

  “I know. Fuck. I can’t believe we did that.”

  Both men fell quiet, content to let their helicopter speed north. Finally Randall eased them back into open sky and up to three thousand feet. They were just west of I-17. They flew over the ruins of a small city in the valley below, including an airport.

  “Black Canyon City,” Carlos said, pointing down.

  “Dead Canyon City is more like it,” Randall said.

  Palls of smoke stretched across the I-17 corridor to the south. Each column marked the pyre of another vehicle, and there were hundreds of them. They had accounted for fifteen by themselves. But where were the other helicopter gunships? Somebody else had to be available by that point.

  But the Sevens had broken through the Marine line and a veritable flood of trucks, cars, and assorted vehicles moved north through the valley. Randall tried to count them, but it was hopeless. There were too many.

  “Prime, this is Ripsaw Real, do you copy?” Carlos said.

  “Go ahead, Ripsaw.”

  “Urgent! We are approximately ten miles south of the crossroads of I-17 and Highway 169, altitude three thousand. A large number of enemy vehicles are heading north, speed thirty-five. We are low on fuel, but can monitor to verify they turn toward Prescott.”

  “Ripsaw, can you give an estimate on numbers?”

  “Wild guess only, Prime; visibility is obscured by their dust cloud. Probably no less than three hundred vehicles, but could be double that. Strongly advise air strikes immediately.”

  They could do nothing more than watch the tidal wave of steel and chrome drive on beneath them and wish they had ammo. When the lead vehicles turned onto Highway 169, they had a definitive answer to the enemy’s destination.

  “Prime, this is Ripsaw. It’s load and lock time. You’re about to have company.”

  Chapter 44

  I have never, on the field of battle, sent you where I was unwilling to go myself; nor would I advise to go a course which I myself was unwilling to pursue.

  Nathan Bedford Forrest

  1739 hours, July 29

  Over the years, Nick Angriff had practiced with his weapons on a regular basis. He hadn’t had time since Overtime Prime went active, but he was confident he could put the Desert Eagles’ rounds on target every time. Since the first time he’d fired a weapon, he’d been a crack shot, just like his father. Both of his girls had inherited not only his accuracy but his reflexes.

  He also cleaned his own weapons and knew his Desert Eagles were combat ready. One was missing its optic sight, lost during his last action in the Congo and never replaced. He preferred loading his own ammo, but there had not been time. Boxes of non-practice ammunition were part of his personal belongings, three hundred grain action express rounds designed for accuracy and lethality, so he loaded those. Despite the Desert Eagle’s recoil, Angriff’s strong wrists and forearms allowed for their easy use. Once, he had fired the full seven rounds of a Desert Eagle in under three seconds, hitting the target at forty-five feet with all seven.

  Inside the Mobile Command Center, soldiers ran down the aisles, trying to find their combat gear. Angriff ordered Norm Fleming to stay behind with four communications specialists. Every other man and woman were to find a gun and assemble outside the MCC in ten minutes. No exceptions.

  As he buckled on the shoulder holsters that held his twin Desert Eagles, Colonel Walling stood by.

  “Artillery is forty-five minutes from being in range, give or take,” Walling said. “For air support, three Apaches and two Comanches are either in the hangar or almost back. Counting flight time, their ETA is thirty-five to forty minutes. Three Marine companies have disengaged and should be in position to cover the approaches to Prescott from the east within an hour.”

  Angriff sighted down the barrel of one of his Desert Eagles. Satisfied with the sights’ alignment, he slid the big gun into its holster. “And the enemy will be in the refugee staging area when?”

  “Twenty minutes, twenty-five tops,” Walling said.

  “So you’re saying it’s up to us to buy at least half an hour.” It was not a question.

  “That’s what I’m saying.”

  Angriff pushed a .32 revolver into its ankle holster and put on his helmet. It still had three stars, not five. “Good. I hate to let everybody else have all the fun.”

  He strode for the rear entrance, followed by every person in the command center. The remaining headquarters company personnel assembled in the small clearing, about fifty men and women. None were combat veterans. They were clerks, radio operators, computer techs, and staff officers. But everybody had an M16 and most wore helmets, and they held their weapons with confidence. Angriff had insisted from day one of activation that every person on the base knew how to field strip and clean an M16, and take weekly target practice.

  Walling started to call them to attention but Angriff waved him off. Almost by instinct, they formed a semi-circle. He started to speak, b
ut saw four people standing to his right that he didn’t expect: his Zombies. He recognized Nipple, Wingnut, and Glide.

  “What are you doing here?” He addressed the question to Nipple.

  But Glide answered. “It’s our mission, Saint. We’re your security detail.”

  “I…” He started to protest, but realized he could use four dangerous killers right about now. “I’m glad to see you. Bring plenty of ammo.” He turned back to the rest of them. “Here’s the sitrep.” He pointed northeast, indicating the ribbon of highway at the mountain’s foot. The volume and gruffness of his voice conveyed strength and inspired confidence. “Two hundred enemy vehicles will be here any minute. They are probably loaded with troops. If they continue toward Prescott, they will overrun the area where thousands of sick refugees are receiving emergency medical treatment. Then they can hit the rear of our forces and this entire brigade will face destruction. That is not going to happen.”

  He moved among them, looking each man and woman in the eye, patting a shoulder here and shaking a hand there. When he came to Nipple, she kept her arms crossed and her expression dared him to touch her.

  “We are going to engage the enemy and force him to fight us. We are going to stop him and we are going to kill him. We are going to keep on killing him until either we are dead or somebody saves our asses, but we are not going to let him into Prescott. We’re Americans, by God! Every damned one of you is an American patriot with a gun! And there is nobody on the face of this Earth more dangerous to the enemies of freedom than an American patriot with a gun!”