by Tom Kratman
* * *
The Guard didn't use their radios, too afraid of the transmissions being intercepted. Instead, they used the intercom system the WCF had had when they first occupied it.
"Major Williams, this is Davis down in the command post. Whatever you just did riled up a hornet's nest. I've got reports of troops advancing on all sides. I'm only catching glimpses of them on the security cams but I think they're serious."
Instead of answering directly, Williams flipped his intercom to make an announcement to the entire defending force. "Listen up, everybody. Hold your fire until I give the word. But keep me posted."
Using a periscope the engineers had jinned up for him from some broken bathroom mirrors and spare lumber (for a video camera similarly mounted would not only have been heavier, but might have needed hard-to-find batteries), Williams observed as small groups of black battledress-clad men advanced on the walls of his post using whatever cover—and that not much—was available.
When they reached the last of that sparse cover, though, those men stopped.
Williams called to all walls to report.
"Wall two: they've stopped advancing. . . . Wall three: looks like they've held up about where we cleared fields of fire to, but there aren't that many of them on this side. . . . Major, this is the rotunda. They've got a man behind nearly every one of those pylons by the walkway. And I think there's more in the deadspace past those."
Williams thought it curious that with combat so near his heartbeat had slowed, the nervousness had evaporated and that sullen, sinking feeling he had been carrying in the pit of his stomach had disappeared. He did not hesitate any longer. "Sergeant Major, take the reserve platoon and all the machine guns and reinforce the rotunda. You can fire if they try to assault; don't wait for my command."
"Sir!"
* * *
Sawyers thought it would be a fine thing if he could take the building even before the rest of the brigade showed up. He mused, silently, Not that anyone told me to take it on my own. Then again, nobody said not to and I was told to try to get them to surrender. That would have been taking the building back too. Seems like a simple extrapolation to me. . . . Besides, I'd truly like to get the bastards that shot up my unit at that old priest's mission.
"Sir, the last company reports they're in position on the other side of the building."
"Thanks, Ricky. Send to all companies: open fire. Tell B Company they can begin their assault anytime."
* * *
Half frantic, Pendergast pushed, prodded and physically shoved the machine gunners and the reserve platoon into their positions. "Move it, damn it, move it. We haven't got all fucking day. And remember, hold your fire until I say to shoot. This might turn out to be nothing."
Whatever Pendergast may have been feeling inside, to the men pushed, prodded and shoved he merely seemed very determined, perhaps even eager.
The positions themselves were set back some few feet from the once glass-clad, now boarded and sandbagged, floor-to-ceiling windows. The set back gave the positions, and the men inside them, a measure of protection from the concussion of shaped charges and demolitions that might be detonated against the walls. Most of these positions, made of wood and metal, sandbags and furniture, had but a single, narrow, slit of a firing port in those walls. This also made it all but impossible for an attacker to suppress those positions with rifle fire as the men inside were offset from the slits, their sectors of fire interlocking outside the building. There were also a few very strongly built bunkers that were right up against the walls. The men in these, machine gunners mostly, had much wider fields of fire.
With a grunt of satisfaction at seeing the last men slithering into their battle stations, Pendergast himself got down on his belly and crawled to a well-camouflaged observation post to watch developments.
At the OP, Pendergast selected two of four claymore clackers, one in each hand. These were wired, each to a different claymore mine, the mines themselves buried under broken glass from the windows and daisy chained together with explosive cord, called "det cord." Setting off either one would cause a chain reaction that would spill over ten thousand ball bearings outward from the rotunda.
From outside, rifle fire began to crack and splat against the walls.
* * *
"Hold your goddamned fire," the sergeant major shouted above the din, reminding the men. Even so, men snugged rifles closer to shoulders while others inspected linked machine-gun ammunition for kinks.
One near hit split a sand bag and drove sand and dust into Pendergast's eyes. By the time he had blinked away the grit and looked out again, a smoke screen was building.
"Top, I can't see shit," called one gunner.
"That's 'Sergeant Major' to you, son. Just hold your fire."
Pendergast raised his eyes to the view port. Goddammit, can't see a damned thing. Can't hear much either. Wish I had one of those new thermal imaging rifle sights I was reading about a few months back. Then I could see through this damned smoke. Wish we all did. Might as well wish for the moon.
* * *
Outside, there was a steady crackle of small arms fire from the men behind the pylons. Behind those, in the dead space—low ground protected from direct fire—grenadiers with 40mm grenade launchers popped up to fire small smoke shells before ducking back down to reload.
"Goddammit, I wish I had one lousy section of mortars to lay smoke," fumed the B Company commander as he watched his grenadiers load and fire, load and fire the little 40mm, smoke grenades. "We'd have a screen then, a real one."
Even so, though, the grenades weren't doing a bad job. When he judged the time right, the screen adequate, he ordered forward two squads of men carrying much larger and more effective hexachloroethane, HC, smoke grenades. These they began to toss forward once they had crawled within throwing range of the screen laid by the grenadiers.
From both the forty-millimeter jobs, and the hand-thrown grenades, a mild cross wind blew an impenetrable screen; impenetrable by sight, that is.
That was when the commander ordered his assault team forward.
* * *
"Oh, you stupid, stupid bastard," fumed Pendergast as he heard the shouts and scuffle of approaching men. "What the hell did your men ever do to deserve having an idiot like you in charge? Didn't anyone ever tell you the difference between cover and concealment?"
Pendergast flipped the safeties off of the two clackers he still held in his hand. As the temporary plywood wall resounded with the impact of one or more men slamming against it, he muttered, "Lord, for what they are about to receive . . ."
Then Pendergast squeezed the clackers.
* * *
Electricity, a mild charge actually, raced down the wires to two widely spaced claymores. At the mines, the charge nudged the otherwise fairly insensitive blasting caps into action. Deciding that the charge was sufficient, the caps did their job, exploding inside the pound-and-a-quarter of C-4 held by each of the two mines.
The Composition-4, a very high explosive, also shocked into awakeness, duly detonated, fragmenting both the case and the layer of seven-hundred-odd resinated ball bearings to its front. Those twin explosions likewise set off the det cord running from the fuse wells in the mines that had no fuses in them.
As fast as the ball bearings were moving, it was as nothing compared to the speed of detonation of the det cord. Before the projectiles had managed to travel much more than a foot, the second set of mines likewise detonated as the exploding det cord reached them. These in turn set off another strand of det cord each, which likewise set off another pair of mines.
In all, fifteen claymores, packing over ten thousand ball bearings, went off within approximately one one hundred and fiftieth of a second.
And that was not the worst of it.
This close to the blasts, the worst of it was the glass from the deliberately broken out windows that had served to cover and camouflage the claymores. This was no lightweight stuff; nothing but the
best for the Treasury Department. The glass shattered under the blast, yes. But it shattered into fragments even more lethal than the ball bearings.
Those men nearest the wall, the one squad that had reached it first, were literally torn into fragments—chunks of bloody, disassociated meat. Farther away, where the glass had lost some of its initial velocity due to its relatively low density, it merely ripped and blinded.
The ball bearings were denser. They continued on unless stopped by something. In the case of twenty-seven "agents" of the PGSS, that something was human flesh. They went down as if scythed, arms flying and torsos hurled backwards.
Body armor stopped many of the glass and steel fragments, of course. Body armor did not cover arms, legs and faces.
Those ball bearings that did not impact on a body, which was—indeed—most of them, continued on. Some of these went too high and were lost. Others buried themselves in the ground. In at least one case, however, a chunk of fourteen that had remained stuck fast together by the resin impacted on a grenadier who had neglectfully left his armored vest open. The chunk of steel and resin stayed together until it was halfway through his body. At that point, under the stress of rapid deceleration, the ball bearings said their goodbyes to each other and began to take somewhat different tracks out of the body.
And then, of course, came the glass—following the ball bearings dutifully. These slivers and splinters left a swath of screaming, face-tearing, blinded men in their wake.
Dutifully, the B Company commander had had his own head up, watching for signs of progress from his assault team. His eyes registered, indeed it was the last thing they ever registered, the sudden billowing of the smoke screen as the claymore on the far side of it detonated. Before another image could register, the man's face and eyes were hopelessly shredded by shards and splinters.
The commander felt nothing, at first; just the sudden shock of losing his vision. Then his ears were assaulted, first by the blast, then by the rising tide of horrified, anguished screams from the torn, bleeding remnants of his company.
Then came pain and, with the pain, realization. Following the realization of what had happened came the realization that it was to be permanent.
The commander added his screams to those of his men: "I'm bliiinnnddd!"
* * *
Pendergast fought down the nausea that threatened to engulf him. Ah, Jesus, you poor bastards. Drawing in a deep breath he shouted to the half-stunned defenders, "Fire!"
* * *
Sawyers didn't need to be told to understand what had happened to his B Company. The ashen faced, trembling, vomiting and demoralized remnants that staggered out of the smoke, some dragging bodies and parts of bodies with them, told all that was needed.
One man—Sawyers didn't recognize him through the sheet of blood on his face and the strange, uncertain, staggering gait—walked right into the path of unseen tracers. The burst took him in the legs and spun him end over end.
It was a very long burst. Before it ended, and while the man was still flying, one bullet—at least one—passed into the man's body where the armor did not cover, at the juncture of neck and shoulder.
"Those murdering motherfuckers!" he hissed to the media type that followed him. "Did you see what they did to my man? Did you get it on film?"
Not waiting for an answer, Sawyers tore the microphone from Ricky's hand and screamed into it at the company facing the wall opposite the one B Company had tried, unsuccessfully, to breach. "A Company! Get me in! Get me a goddamned breach in that fucking wall!"
* * *
Down in an office labeled "Security," deep in the bowels of the WCF, Davis' eyes scanned the closed circuit cameras that ringed the building. Tapping the intercom, he announced, "They're going to try for Wall Four."
* * *
The B Company commander had been a not very bright treasury agent with a degree, transferred in for the chances of advancement. The A Company commander, a solid little fireplug of a man, was an ex-Marine infantryman with a combat action ribbon and a bronze star from the Second Gulf War. He had transferred in because he liked combat action and the PGSS had seemed like a good place for it.
The ex-Marine had heard the sound of the blasts, clearly—heard the screams, faintly—and had a very good idea of what the two added up to.
"Forget the effing smoke for now," he ordered his grenadiers. "I want HE grenades at every possible place along or in front of that wall."
Within seconds the dull crump of exploding 40mm high explosive could be heard hitting the base of Wall Four. The A Company commander had no certain idea of how effective they were. In truth, he hardly expected to set off a string of daisy-chained claymores by sympathetic detonation of the HE. He did expect to displace those claymores, to ruin their preset aim.
But, sometimes, one's expectations are exceeded. One round of 40mm HE, stray or random, managed to hit almost exactly dead center on almost the exactly most central claymore. The resulting small explosion resulted in a dozen larger ones.
Ball bearings, another ten thousand of them, arced out. Unfortunately for the defenders, they arced out where the PGSS should have been had they assaulted directly.
"Anyone hit?" queried the commander through his radio.
"Negative . . . Negative . . . Third platoon. I've got two minor wounded. . . . Negative."
"Ring team in!"
* * *
"The claymores went off prematurely," Williams heard Davis announce over the intercom. "I can't see a damned thing."
"Ah shit," the major muttered, then pressed the intercom button. "Pendergast? Sergeant Major? If you can hear this still, I'm taking what I can scrape together and heading for Wall Four. Join me as fast as you can or we're screwed. . . ."
"Fontaine? Go carry that message to the sergeant major. Run, boy!"
Williams turned to the half dozen men immediately nearest him. "The rest of you; follow me!"
* * *
Through blind, unaimed fire sprinted the half dozen men of the "ring team." Identified by and with their "ring"—a linear shaped charge twisted into a donut shape and used to blast a fairly precise circular hole in the wall of a building to be assaulted—the ring team duty was about as popular as carrying a flame thrower into fire had once been. Even so, they sprinted despite carrying the awkward charge. The men cursed the ring charge even as they cursed the nearby crackling fire that plucked at their fragile lives.
"Godammit. One fucking LAV, just one, to carry us up and give us a little supporting cannon fire . . ."
"Shut up, Corson. The LAVs will get here behind the Army's Third Corps," answered the squad leader.
And then they were at the wall. "Slap it up, slap it up." With practiced precision—this commander had spent more time training and rehearsing his men than he had on political lectures—the team affixed the charge to the wall.
Charge firmly in place, the leader pulled the friction igniter attached to the fuse that led to the blasting cap. Then the team sprinted back a half dozen meters, screaming, "Fire in the hole! Fire in the hole! Fire in the hole!"
* * *
Captain James happened to be standing, pistol in hand and shouting encouragement to his men, a scant few feet from where the entrance charge was set. When it detonated, a shower of disassociated bricks first pummeled him into unconsciousness, then half buried him in one corner of the room.
This was all that saved his life for in the next moment the ring team began deluging the wide-eyed, shocked and terrified defenders of the room with fragmentation grenades. Even where the light fragments did no harm, the concussion in that enclosed space was stunning, deadening—in the case of every other man in the room but James, deadly.
Into that confused, smoke-and dust-filled maelstrom burst the ring team, bayonets fixed and blood in their eyes.
* * *
"That's the signal, boys," announced the fireplug at seeing the distinctly green smoke from the signal grenade popped by the ring team. "Now on your bellie
s . . . crawl up to the breach. But crawl fast."
* * *
"Faster, dammit," Williams demanded of the men slithering under the mass of corridor blocking wire suspended above. "We've got one chance to kick their asses out of the building or it's room to room and we'll all be dead before nightfall."
Where the hell is Pendergast? he wondered.
* * *
"Firs—. . . I mean . . . Sergeant Major," Fontaine fought to make himself heard over the din of continuous machine-gun fire reverberating inside the rotunda.
"What the fuck is it, Fontaine?"
Huffing and puffing with the effort made to bring word to Pendergast, Fontaine briefly stopped trying to speak, drew a breath, then shouted, "Major Williams sent me to tell you . . . Wall Four is under attack and he's going to try to hold it. He said you were supposed to come, too. He ain't got too many men with him, Fir—. . .uh, Sergeant Major. Maybe half a dozen."