by Noah Mann
Elaine...
I chanced a quick look and saw her ducked fully behind a jagged mound of earth, the three soldiers with her rolling away from the explosion that had rocked their cover, already repositioning themselves.
Worse, though, was the continued rush of infantry onto the bridge as the fire against them stopped. I put the AT-4 down and took my AR in hand, about to squeeze off my first round when shooting erupted behind me and to the right, close to the edge of the hill that was our refuge. Had the enemy somehow crossed the raging river and flanked us?
No.
Schiavo looked at the same instant that I did, ready to react, but what we saw did not terrify us—it buoyed us. Sergeant Lorenzen and Private Laws were rushing forward, each firing their M4s at the advancing enemy on the bridge, momentarily stalling their progress.
“Sergeant!”
Lorenzen looked to his commander and saw her give him a solid thumbs up.
“The Osprey dropped us about a half mile north,” he explained. “We heard the fire and double-timed it.”
On the hill to the west, the SAWs were in action again, as were Elaine and Hart, an almost literal rain of lead stopping the flow of enemy onto the bridge. Another deafening blast from the lead Abrams’ cannon shook our hill this time, spraying Lorenzen and Carter with shards of stone and metal.
“AHHHH!” Lorenzen screamed as he fell to the ground and slid toward the edge of the hill.
“Paul!” Schiavo called out, moving to leave her position to pull her second in command to safety.
Only a second cannon shot from the second Abrams stopped her, the round sailing overhead, missing us, a hot wash of air from its supersonic wake making both Schiavo and I dive for cover. I looked up and saw that one of our number was not planted face down, on the ground.
Carter laws ran out onto the exposed slope of the hill, firing as he crossed the open space, reaching his sergeant as the SAWs opened up again, providing covering fire. I didn’t hear fire from either Elaine or Hart, but a glimpse across the way to their hill showed me that they were shifting positions, moving forward to have a better field of fire on the bridge.
“Covering fire!”
I followed Schiavo’s direction and brought my AR up and around the boulder, squeezing off bursts not at the troops on the bridge, but at those beyond it. Tight knots of enemy soldiers had sought cover behind the armored vehicles, using them as moving screens as the force moved slowly, but steadily, toward the crossing.
“We can’t hold this!” I shouted.
Schiavo didn’t respond, looking behind to see that Carter had dragged Lorenzen into cover, the sergeant already shaking off the concussive effects of the near miss. He picked up his rifle and, with his helmet MIA, began firing again. Once more, the Abrams both fired, simultaneously this time, at the hill across the way, obscuring it in a blossom of dusty debris.
“More coming!” Lorenzen warned.
I looked and saw what he did, a scene not unlike what I’d experienced at the checkpoint by the bridge on the Coquille River where the Seattle Hordes had rushed toward our side. The drug-crazed attackers had been decimated then. Here, I could not see that happening.
“Angela, what do we do?” I asked.
“Keep firing!”
I did, but knew that what we were laying down was not going to stop what was pushing toward us. If even a half dozen troops reached our side, they could split our force, attacking our flanks and our rear. We’d worried about the tanks at the front of their column, but it was the foot soldiers making the attack, with direct support by the armor.
“We’ve gotta take those tanks out!” I told Schiavo.
“They’re too far,” she countered.
My estimate was four hundred yards. Within the range of the AT-4, but distance was one thing—actually hitting the beasts mattered more than anything. The unguided rockets would destroy or damage whatever they impacted, but—
“The bridge!” I shouted to Schiavo. “We hit the bridge!”
“What?” she asked between bursts from her M4.
Two more cannon shots blasted the slope just in front of our position, briefly shrouding the landscape ahead.
“If we fire at the bridge, it will at least be damaged,” I said. “Maybe too much for the tanks to cross.”
Schiavo took a quick look through the haze at the bridge below. It lay less than two hundred yards from our position. We could easily strike it with both rockets.
“That thing is beaten up by the current already,” I told her. “All we need to do is weaken it more.”
“And if it collapses?” Schiavo asked, challenging me. “Then they move upstream to the next bridge. Or they withdraw. And we have to fight again.”
“We have to do something,” I said.
“Another rush!” Lorenzen told us.
Yet another wave of Unified Government troops was pouring onto the bridge, just as cannon fire from the Abrams forced the SAWs to stop shooting, Westin and Enderson taking cover.
“Angela...”
Schiavo looked to me, then to the two rockets leaning against the rocky mound that was our cover. After just a few seconds she dropped her M4 and took the AT-4 in hand. I followed suit, laying the short missile tube on my right shoulder and readying it as Enderson had shown me.
“Aim for the center of the bridge,” Schiavo said. “On two.”
I drew a breath.
“One,” she said. “Covering fire!”
Behind and to the right of us, Lorenzen and Carter began shooting, drawing the enemy’s attention toward them.
“Two!”
Schiavo and I both moved at the same instant, exposing ourselves just above the rocky ledge that shielded us. If I’d counted the time we were left without cover, I would have sworn it was minutes. But it was only a second or two, each of us taking aim at the agreed upon point, a part of the span that was not only steel and concrete at that moment, but flesh and bone as well. A dozen enemy troops had made it that far, passing the bodies of their fallen comrades. I fired my rocket just an instant before Schiavo, and before dropping back behind the boulders I saw both smoke trails sail true, the projectiles striking mid span. The blast that resulted tossed large chucks of the roadway into the air, along with limbs and torsos and a thick red spray that burst like some grotesque fireworks show.
We scrambled back to cover just as both tanks fired directly at our hill, one round detonating against the collection of massive stones in front of me, shifting its bulk a full two feet to the north, almost catching my left foot beneath as it lurched my direction.
“The tanks are holding!” Lorenzen reported.
I crawled toward Schiavo and, both of us on our stomachs, inched beyond the rocks to survey the scene with her.
“The bridge is a no go,” she said, giving me an appreciative glance. “It worked.”
Large sections of the span, roughly halfway between the north and south shores, had crumbled, blasted away by the AT-4 impacts. The way forward for the armor was impassable. But there was a downside to that.
“Infantry maneuvering!” Lorenzen said.
The enemy had lost upwards of thirty troops so far. Assuming the same number had fallen at Gold Beach, they still had over nine-hundred shooters to throw at us. And the bridge, though it had been rendered useless for vehicle traffic, was still viable for an assault on foot.
An assault with supporting fire.
Another tank round sailed high over our position, just missing the spot where Schiavo and I were hunkered down. The second tank, rolled up just behind its lead vehicle, loosed another shot, this one at the western hill. That round did not miss. Did not go high.
It impacted within ten feet of where I had last seen my wife firing from cover.
“Elaine!”
I knew she would never hear my voice yelling for her across the space between the hills, nor over the sounds of the continuing battle, but my reaction was instinctive. Schiavo began firing at the infantry wh
ich had resumed its push across the bridge, but I hesitated, straining to see through the dust and smoke to where Elaine had been. When enough had cleared, I was able to make out a form moving through the swirling haze.
But it was not her.
Specialist Trey Hart had sprinted across open terrain to where my wife lay, motionless.
“God, no...”
It was all I could think to say, almost under my breath, as I watched the garrison’s medic huddle over her, pulling supplies from his bag, focusing fully on his patient as small arms fire chewed at the terrain around him.
“Fletch!”
I turned to Schiavo as she shouted my name. She saw the shattered panic on my face and looked across to the scene that held me rapt. For a brief instant she, too, was out of the fight, fixed on the sight of her friend, my wife, lying still on the dead earth. Then, she was back in it.
“She’s alive, Fletch,” Schiavo said. “Hart wouldn’t be on her like that if she was gone. Now get back on the trigger.”
She began firing again, adding to the rounds Lorenzen and Carter were sending toward our enemy. The SAWs, too, were in the fight, both Westin and Enderson covering their friend as he tended to my wife.
Elaine...
I pushed myself off the ground and found a firing position five yards from Schiavo and rejoined the fight, shooting between two slabs of angular rock. The first glimpse of the attack since my wife had gone down was almost as terrible as that event.
“They just keep coming!” Carter yelled.
He was right. Both tanks, prevented from moving across the bridge, were now, for better or worse, stationary gun platforms, each bombarding the hills where we’d positioned ourselves. The ground troops that we’d momentarily repelled with the AT-4 fire which had weakened the bridge were moving forward in force now, maneuvering around the holes in the span’s center, bounding and firing, suppressing our ability to defend.
“We can’t hold this!” Lorenzen shouted.
I looked back to the sergeant, who never stopped firing even as he pointed out the untenable situation. Blood streamed down his face, likely from rock fragments sprayed like shrapnel from the blast which had knocked him temporarily down. At his feet I could see a half dozen empty magazines for his M4. Before long his rifle would run dry, and any thought of further defense would be little more than folly.
“I’m low on ammo!” Carter reported, confirming what I’d noticed in relation to Lorenzen. “Three mags left!”
“Angela, I’m down to four,” I said.
Schiavo didn’t respond verbally, instead switching her M4 from burst to single shot. I followed suit.
“Make every round count!” I shouted toward Lorenzen and Carter.
Across the shallow valley, atop the other hill, only one SAW was firing. Westin had abandoned his light machine gun and was now helping Hart pull Elaine into a natural depression behind the crest of the hill. He popped up from that cover with only his M4 and began firing again. That could only mean one thing.
“Westin’s SAW is out,” I said.
“I know,” Schiavo replied, still laser focused on the onslaught, firing calmly until the world before the both of us erupted in a flash and thunder.
“Colonel! Fletch!”
It was Lorenzen, I thought, calling out to us, not with warning, but with worry. I wondered briefly why he was doing that, but quickly some sense began to return. My nose burned with the stinging odor of an explosion. A close one.
We were hit...
I thought that, now, and opened my eyes, boiling dust and acrid grey smoke rolling over me. I reached to my body and felt around, probing for wounds or obvious injuries. There was no wetness, no blood, and all my extremities seemed to move as they should. Lying across my hips was my AR. My weapon. I had to get up. Had to get back into the fight. But...
Angela...
She would have gone down with me in the close hit. I scrambled to my feet, ready to look for her. As it turned out, that was unnecessary.
Colonel Angela Schiavo, former Army piano player, was already up, recovered from the blast, her helmet gone like her sergeant’s, M4 spitting single shots at the enemy swarming our way.
“Fletch, you okay?” she asked.
“I am,” I told her, and reclaimed my position between the rocky slabs.
I should have thought more about Elaine right then, but what she’d expressed before we’d boarded the Osprey was true. More true now than when she’d spoken the words to me. What we were doing mattered, and if we failed, we would fail giving our last full measure to protect our daughter, and those we loved.
“Too many,” Schiavo said, pausing for just a second as she reloaded.
I looked over and could see that it was her last magazine.
“I’m out,” Lorenzen reported to our right rear.
A quick glance his way and I saw him draw his M9, wielding the pistol, ready but holding fire for use when the enemy drew close enough for it to matter.
Carter continued firing. Schiavo, too. On the other hill, neither SAW was in action, both Enderson and Westin down to their M4s. I focused, and took aim at the lead element of troops, forty strong, no more than five yards from our side of the bridge. A hundred more were behind them, already on the span. And hundreds more were ready to cross.
We were about to be overrun.
I squeezed off one round, then another, but before I could fire a third I heard it. A most wonderful sound. Not the roar of water rushing down the gorge, but a deadly whine, like the scream of a saw blade spinning at full speed. Next I saw the ground around the troops on the bridge splinter and burst, bodies disintegrating before my eyes as the Osprey flew fast down the river, its aft-mounted minigun dragging a tail of fire left and right across the damaged crossing.
“Marines!” Carter screamed. “Yes!”
The tilt rotor aircraft swung low and fast to the south from its westerly course, a scene of utter destruction in its wake, bodies littering the bridge, and the road leading to it. Every survivor still able to fight turned their weapons skyward, unleashing a hellish fusillade against the unexpected.
“They’re taking rounds,” Schiavo said.
They were. Dozens, maybe hundreds of impacts. Small puffs bloomed from every part of the ungainly aircraft as the pilots, disregarding the safety or survivability of their bird, kept the nose pointed away from the battle, and their only weapon, manned by Major Stanley James, facing the storm of enemy fire without cover. He kept raining lead upon the Unified Government forces as the crew put the Osprey through shallow S turns and wobbles, maintaining contact with the enemy.
Until that heroic action ended in a ball of fire and flaming debris falling from the sky. A single tank round, not even a lucky shot, struck the Osprey just behind the right wing, cutting it in half, fuel tanks rupturing catastrophically. Pieces plummeted, dragging orange and black trails, leaving a swath of burning wreckage on the dead hills just south of the river.
An eerie quiet followed. One that seemed to be each side letting out a breath. One that was born of relief, and the other from grief.
“They’re coming again,” I said.
From the far side the enemy resumed its push. More than a hundred were dead already. Maybe a hundred and fifty. Two hundred. I wasn’t sure. But they still had more than enough to hand us a defeat we could not afford.
“Get ready,” Schiavo said.
She’d dropped her M4, no ammunition left to feed it, and now held her pistol. Carter was down to half of his last magazine. I had maybe ten rounds left for my AR. And on the other hill...
I took a moment to look that way. Enderson and Westin were still in position, M4s in hand. Their reserve of ammunition would be greater than ours, having used the SAWs for most of the battle. Hart was nowhere to be seen. Either he was obscured by cover tending to my wife, or...
Or he was gone, too.
“Single shots, private,” Schiavo reminded her young recruit.
I looked ba
ck to the bridge. The wave of Unified Government forces was moving across it, lead elements firing, trying to keep our heads down. The turrets atop the Abrams were swinging in our direction, cannons taking aim.
That was when we heard the roar.
Forty One
From our left it came, thundering east to west. Once again, a pause stilled the battle, both sides shifting their attention to what was coming. To what was finally coming.
The waters announced themselves with sound first, then with a wash of spray pushed ahead of the flow by the pressure wave it generated. That misty cloud rolled fast over the bridge and the low terrain at either end, obscuring all until the torrent arrived a few seconds later.
It punched into the Unified Government forces with the force of a billion tons behind it, a tumbling mass of floodwaters that swallowed every living being, and those that had already fallen. The tanks, the trucks, the people, all simply were erased under seventy feet of water that filled the gorge, sloshing against the hill just fifteen feet below our position. The low valley between me and Elaine filled with churning whitecaps, the inundation reaching north and south, seeking low spots as it raced toward the ocean.
“It came early,” Schiavo said. “Thank God it came early.”
“The lake exploded past the dam when we blew it,” Lorenzen said.
The excess volume in Lost Creek Lake had sped its flow, adding more mass to the relentless drive to the sea. It had moved quicker than I’d calculated, and I was ecstatic that I’d been wrong.
But I had little else to be happy about.
“I have to get to Elaine,” I told Schiavo.
“You can’t, Fletch. Not yet.”
I walked toward the edge of the hill that tipped down into the valley. On the other side of the swirling water, Westin was covering the flood should any survivors appear, though that was almost impossible to imagine. Enderson had joined Hart where my wife had been taken to cover. From what I could see, it appeared that he was assisting the medic. Working frantically.