“Copy all, prepping to fire.”
Salguero grinned to himself at the radio exchange. The HE blast had impacted the frat house five feet in front of his tank. If Irina hadn’t paused and brought them to a jarring halt as she turned off the tracks, the round would have hit them. As it was, the exploding HE round had given the Abrams a slight jolt, and had probably scorched a layer of paint. The noise of the explosion had been much worse.
“Irina, punch it! Go, go, go! Right at him, don’t show him anything but your nose. Gun check?”
“Gun’s up!”
The first part of the enemy tank he spotted was its canon barrel, pointing right at them.
“Stop!” he screamed into his mic as the rest of the opposing Abrams came into view. He glanced at his own targeting screen, slaved to Cruz’s gun sight. The reticle was holding at the junction between the turret and the front glacis of the enemy tank.
“Fire!”
An explosion powerful enough to rock the seventy-ton behemoth beneath him went off two feet away from where he was sitting. Contained within the breech of the canon, he still felt the concussion in his bones and teeth. He’d always loved this part of being a tanker. Nothing could beat letting loose with the big 120mm canon. He didn’t wait to see what the effect of the hit had been. With fewer than sixty yards separating them from the enemy tank, he knew it was a hit. He also knew how hard it was to kill an Abrams.
“Straight back, Irina!” he yelled into his helmet mic. “Back to the tracks.”
“Reload!”
They rocked when they went up and through the still-burning foundations of the destroyed frat house. He wanted to get behind another house, before the enemy could fire. They almost made it.
The incoming round hit them on the front of their glacis. For a brief moment, it sounded like the world’s largest sledgehammer had been swung at them. Every sensor in front of him went down, clouded out by an expanding fireball that he couldn’t see but knew was enveloping them. The temperature inside the tank rose precipitously as his gaze went over his most critical readouts. Their engine was still running, and most lights were still green. It was going to be a moment before his view screens reset, if they did at all.
“Go, Irina, back, back.” It had to have been another HE round, he knew; and he suspected that he was up against an M1-A1, the first version that had been relegated off to National Guard units. It boasted a 105mm canon versus the 120mm that their M1-A2 carried.
“Everybody OK?”
“Gun’s up!” Antwan yelled loud enough that he was sure he heard it through his helmet rather than the speakers built into it.
“Sight’s working!” Cruz reported in from the gunner’s seat. “Range finder is down!”
They’d been drilling as a team for a week, and none of them, himself included, could have held the jockstraps of his old tank crew. But he couldn’t have been more pleased. They’d just shrugged off a hit from another tank and were still functioning.
They weren’t going to need the range finder.
“Irina! Soon as we’re behind the house, go around and then straight down into the field. Drive right up alongside it. Cruz! Wait to fire until you have them broadside.”
Sam Hirai watched the Javelin missile fired by Gerry Baker streak right past the enemy tank, going over the top of its turret and across the field, until it impacted the side of a building that had already been hit by the artillery strike. Its explosion didn’t do anything other than to cause a lot of small-arms fire from the trenches to be directed at Gerry’s position.
He and Will Rodale were in the house next door to Baker’s team, creeping along the floor. A very large part of him wanted to be back inside the Bradley that had dropped them off. He hadn’t noticed any signs coming in, but from the pictures of girls in groups spread across the walls, he was guessing it was a sorority. Most of its windows had already been blown out by the artillery rounds, one of which had demolished the house on the far side of them. They had crawled and scooted along the floor until they were beneath the open window frame overlooking the Madison Bowl. He had a great view of the enemy tank, which had managed to shoot back after taking a hit from their own tank.
He propped the head of the missile over the window frame and had to come up on his knees to get a sight picture of the enemy through the Javelin CLU’s range finder. He made certain he was in direct fire mode as he held the reticle against the side of the tank and pulled the trigger to lock in the targeting. Will slapped his shoulder, and he pulled the trigger again. There was always a pause. This time, it felt as if something had gone wrong. The infantry out there, hunkered down in their hastily dug trench, was just across the street; they were going to see him any . . .
The cacophonous POP of the launching charge was caught and reflected by the parlor room and its massive blown-out bay windows. The missile ignited outside the window just past the house’s front porch, and shot over the heads of the defenders who had been firing at Baker’s team. For them, there was no mistaking where the missile had come from.
Will tackled him to the floor just as the room came apart and automatic weapons fire ripped into and through the front of the house. He heard Will cry out as something tugged at his leg, then slammed into his shoulder. A loud explosion lit up the room, and his last thought was that he’d hit the tank.
“Fire!” Drew yelled moments after the second Javelin slammed into the enemy tank. His Bradley fired a TOW missile, and he prayed that they had the sixty-five yards needed in terms of minimum arming distance. They had it. He was watching through his view screen, whose external camera was mounted just outside his hatch. The TOW impacted low on the chassis of the tank between the two bands of tracks. When the fireball cleared, he could see the tank was missing most of its wheels and track on the near side and smoke, probably from the Javelin, was pouring out of its engine compartment.
“Go, Tommy! Finish him!” The tank wasn’t going anywhere with one set of tracks destroyed, but he knew the crew inside and their gun could still be alive. No sooner had he spoken than the turret on the target tank starting spinning around towards his vehicle. Everything that made the Abrams such a formidable tank was working against him at the moment.
“Back! Back! Back!” he yelled into his mic. Just as they started to move, he caught a flash of movement as Salguero’s tank shot out onto the field, its treads rooster-tailing turf and dirt as it scrambled for purchase.
“OK, slow down, Irina,” Salguero ordered. He could see the target tank’s gun, aimed 60 degrees away from them in the direction of Skirjanek’s Bradley. That would be the last mistake he was going to allow them. His turret slewed as Cruz brought their cannon to bear in line with the side of the enemy’s turret.
“Stop!” He waited for the tank to slide to a stop on the turf. Seventy tons of steel and depleted uranium had a lot of inertia. It seemed to take forever.
“Fire!”
He watched in satisfaction as the driver’s and tank commanders’ hatches blew skyward, riding a volcanic gout of fire. The hull of the tank itself appeared strangely whole as the occupants within were incinerated.
“That’s a kill!” he radioed. “Move!” He did not want to be sitting alongside the beast when its ammunition blew.
“Forward, Irina!”
“Gypsy Team.” Skirjanek’s voice broke in. “My Bradleys, enter the bowl. Suppress all resistance. Tommy, go kill that other tank. It’s got Bruce’s team stopped. It’s up ahead of you between the admin building and the big church.
“Copy, rolling!”
“Reload!” he yelled just as an enormous explosion from the destroyed tank rocked them. He placed a destination carat on the driver’s screen. “Irina, get us there!” The sound of small-arms fire was pinging off his hull. He could understand the desire to shoot at them, but what part of tank did these idiots not understand?
Uwasi’s first Javelin had managed to knock a track off the Abrams that had stopped Bruce’s column cold. He’d fired
from around the corner of the anthropology building at the tank that sat in the courtyard of St. Paul’s Memorial Church, between the fancy- looking church and a large residence it shared a lot with. The tank had fired back a moment later and destroyed the Bradley directly behind him. He knew the only survivors from Naks’s Bradley were going to be people who had managed to dismount before they had been hit. The Bradley was still burning, its ammo popping off within the crisped shell. Gunny “Captain” Bruce was yelling at him over the air to get elevation.
He grabbed the collar of the member of the troop who had been assigned to carry his reload, Wilson something, which had confused him, because he’d always thought Wilson was a surname. “Go.” He turned the scared civilian toward the back side of the anthropology building. “Get inside, climb to the top floor.”
He fairly threw the man forward and followed after. Once inside the building, they sprinted up the ancient wooden staircases. They’d just reached the landing of the third and top floor when a massive explosion north of them rattled through the building. Uwasi figured there wasn’t a window left in any building within a quarter of a mile after Poy’s artillery. The noise from the explosion and the fight at the far end of the bowl sounded like it was just outside.
He peeked out of a window and spotted Salguero’s tank, a large Puerto Rican flag spray-painted on its front glacis, moving across the field towards them. Behind it was the flaming wreck of what had been the other enemy tank.
“Just what we need! He’ll never stop talking about it!” he shouted. Wilson was down on one knee, holding the reload case of another Javelin, looking at him like he’d gone crazy.
“What are you talking about?”
“Salguero! We have to kill this tank ourselves!”
Wilson cringed as Skirjanek’s Bradleys opened up in the distance with their M242s—the 25mm autocannon and TOW missiles could more than deal with anything the enemy had left, with the critical exception of the tank that lay one hundred yards away below them.
“Tree in the way! Come on.” He pulled back from the window frame, ducked down, grabbed a handful of Wilson’s BDUs at the shoulder, and fairly dragged the man across the wooden floors after him. It wasn’t until they reached the classroom at the end of the hall that he found a break in the foliage that presented a clear shot.
“Get it ready!” he instructed as he backed off into the interior of the room and raised the CLU to his shoulder, aiming out the window. The sight picture brought a smile to his face. They were too close to fire in top-down mode—but from their elevated position, he had a direct line of sight to the top of the turret.
He dropped to one knee and turned the CLU over. “OK, let’s reload. Hurry!” Salguero was going to drive up right behind that bastard and put a rod of depleted uranium up its ass while its attention was focused on Captain Bruce’s Bradleys. He liked Salguero; the guy was a warrior, but he did not want to have to listen to the hothead talk about how he and his stupid tank had saved their asses. Gunny or Captain Bruce would understand.
He’d drilled with Wilson for the last two days. The guy had gotten to where he could ready a reload in the dark, but now, he cringed every time one of the colonel’s Bradleys opened fire out in the bowl. The sound of the Bradley’s 25mm autocannon was a very distinct, very fast POP, POP, POP. He didn’t want to think about what the Bushmasters were doing to the enemy infantry. A TOW launched outside, its rocket engine sounding more like a humming whir in his head than the sustained whoosh of a Javelin. The explosion of its impact followed soon after, and he assumed another enemy Bradley had just died.
He clapped Wilson on the top of his head. “Hey, those are our people shooting; relax . . . breathe.”
“Ready,” Wilson breathed in a gush once he had the Javelin reload mounted to the CLU and the connections between the two secured.
He’d been watching closely. He shook his head and removed the rubber cap from the missile’s nose.
“Jeez . . . sorry.”
“’S OK, man. You’re doing great.” He breathed out, doing his best to calm his own nerves. “Get to the side of me.”
He stood and locked on to the tank below. It was bringing its gun barrel around, elevated for a target well beneath them. He saw Salguero’s tank at the edge of his vision, climbing out of the bowl onto Madison Lane. He waited for the thermal seeker to “find” the tank, and then switched the CLU over to its narrow field of view, which allowed for more precise targeting. He held the reticle over the center of the top of the turret and pulled the lock trigger. Two very long seconds later, the missile fired, ejected out of the tube by its booster and then igniting its flight motor a split second later.
He had a perfect view as the missile lanced down at an angle and struck the turret. The enemy tank exploded; the turret itself dislodged and almost popped off like he’d seen old Soviet T-72s do when he’d hit them in Syria. It was then he saw the bloom of fire from Salguero’s tank gun come roiling out from behind the churchyard’s manor house.
“Shit!”
Wilson popped his head up over the windowsill and then looked back at him. “You got it!”
“Yes, we did! You be sure to remember that!” He hoped Poy’s drone had been recording the fight. Against what he knew would be Salguero’s claim, he was going to need proof.
He watched as Captain Bruce’s and Mason’s Bradleys below them roared out from their cover and joined Skirjanek’s forces in the mopping-up activity around the bowl. There were as many white flags waving out in the bowl as there were people moving. There were a lot more not moving.
Chapter 32
“What are we going to do with them?” Jason asked, looking over Skirjanek’s shoulder at the shell-shocked enemy. Fewer than a hundred of them had survived to raise white flags. Those who had holed up inside the admin building were being escorted out under guard.
Skirjanek shook his head. “I don’t think it should be up to us.”
Jason knew who the colonel wanted to make that call. The civilians had started emerging from the dorms and classrooms within minutes of the firing having stopped and were already gathering around. Skirjanek was smart; he had just about every woman in his command acting as a community liaison officer at the moment.
Given the questions they were getting, it made sense. Some of these people had escaped from whatever hell they’d been living in and had considered Charlottesville a refuge. “Is your group safe for women? What about kids and old people? What if we don’t want to stay?”
Jason gestured at the admin building. John, Ray, Pavel, and Pro were inside with a squad’s worth of rifles, looking for survivors, two of them in particular. “Any sign of the two ringleaders?”
“Nothing yet.” Skirjanek shook his head. “I’m really hoping they didn’t survive. We have no idea how much support they might still have.”
“I’m guessing a lot less than they had, before they started shooting their own people.”
Skirjanek shrugged and offered him a grin. “We said the same thing about Saddam.”
He and Farmer had been on the top floor of the architecture and design school building during most of the battle, on the half of the roof that was still standing. Their decision to hole up during the artillery salvo had been a wise one. They’d sniped at the defenders as best they could, and both had been shocked at how long most of them had continued the lost battle. Whether these people had continued to fight out of anger or some loyalty to Cooper, he didn’t know. But he did not want Cooper added back into the mix.
“You know what I think . . .”
Skirjanek looked at him and nodded slowly before jerking a thumb behind him at the damaged building. “Same as me, I suspect. Between us, I’ve made sure Pavel does not let that woman come out of there alive. Not the kind of order I thought I’d ever give.”
Jason nodded to himself. “Not the kind of world any of us ever thought we’d live in.” He smiled. “Besides, it’s Pavel. You didn’t give him an order; you gave him permi
ssion.”
“Doesn’t make me feel any better.”
Jason didn’t answer the man. He knew Drew had made the adjustment to the end of the world; he wasn’t worried that they’d convene some sort of court-martial. But he knew the type. Skirjanek was a career officer, a West Point grad, versed at a genetic level in the old-school warrior ethos rather than the bucket of “woke” bullshit that some officers seemed to have taken away from the place in the last twenty years. In Skirjanek’s mind, dealing with civilians was a job for civilians, and that included meting out justice.
“I didn’t want to distract you while you were out looking for Pro and then prepping for this,” Skirjanek continued. “But I’ve been on the radio with Hoyt and Michelle the last two days. They’re parked south of the city with supplies, waiting for word that it’s safe to come in.”
“Michelle made the trip?”
Skirjanek gave a chuckle. “She made Hoyt cut out the dash of a JLTV to fit her wheelchair in.” Skirjanek paused and then smiled at him. “Rachel came down as well.”
It was the best thing he could have heard. He grinned to himself. “Get Michelle among these civilians.” He waved at the approaching crowds. “She’s lived their story. They’ll trust her.”
Drew nodded at one of their Humvees that had come up after the fighting. “The group that made it to the lake on the far side of the golf course doesn’t seem to be filtering back. Can you get out there, try to convince them it’s safe? Take some of Reed’s team with you, and don’t take any chances. I think it needs somebody with a little more understanding than Captain Bruce is going to be able to find at the moment.”
He’d seen the Bradley from John’s column get taken out. “Who’d we lose?”
“It was Naks’s Bradley.” Skirjanek shook his head. “He’d kicked his dismounts, so it was just him and his crew. I’m sorry, but I don’t know who they were beyond Henry Nako. I understand he’d been studying to get into law school before the virus, working at his parents’ carpet store in Pittsburgh.”
Seasons of Man | Book 2 | Reap What You Sow Page 33