Whatever the neighborhood, Ruth zigged and zagged down roads and alleyways, careful to keep her speed down so she could turn at the first hint of trouble.
Here and there, cops would catch sight of her for a while, give chase, and lose her as she twisted from street to alley to street.
It was almost as if the cops didn’t want to catch her.
“Honey, I think we have a problem,” didn’t sound at all nice from her husband.
“What kind of problem?” sounded like a dumb question, but she couldn’t think of a better one, what with her mind on her driving.
“There are tanks headed out the main expressways.”
“Tanks!” Ruth said, the same time as everyone else in the car.
“Yeah, tanks, Gunny. You know, those big heavy metal targets you like to shoot.”
“Yeah, Skipper, but I don’t have any heavy antitank rounds today,” Gunny pointed out, somewhat unnecessarily.
“I know, Gunny.”
“But they were in town, at the Presidential Palace, right?” Ruth pointed out.
“They were, but they’re headed out your way using the two expressways.”
“How fast can those things go?” Ruth asked.
“They’re doing about forty, fifty kilometers an hour,” Trouble answered, pain in his voice.
“They can’t do that,” Gunny snapped. “They’ll throw a tread.”
“Yep, you’re right, Gunny. Four, no, make that five, have thrown treads and dropped out. There are still forty-five or so headed your way.”
In the backseat, Debbie muttered something nasty.
“Honey,” Ruth said, “if Milassi has those tanks start throwing their weight around, it’s going to get real messy out here. Civilian casualties and stuff like that.”
“Those tanks were hauled in for parade duty,” Gunny remarked. “Would you give some tank driver a full weapons load to drive by the dictator?”
“Good point,” Trouble told Gunny. “Still, he’s got them moving out to intercept you. Maybe they’ve just got their weight and horsepower. Maybe they’ve got more.”
“They got any infantry with them?” Gunny asked.
“None so far,” Trouble answered.
“Well, thank God for minor favors,” Gunny kind of prayed.
“What’s Milassi’s problem?” Ruth asked no one in particular. “We burned his dope. He has no seed crop to sell. What’s he after?”
“Your head. Our ass. Their skin. Your guess is as good as anyone else’s,” her husband answered softly on net.
“It’s not like we can go back and undo what we’ve done. We’ve won,” Ruth pointed out, knowing it didn’t matter.
“He’s lost, but we can still lose too,” came from a new voice online. “This is Colonel Ray Longknife. Let’s be grateful for what we have. Whoever is calling the shots thinks tanks alone are mean enough to squish you. I think you can teach him a lesson. I understand that your gunners have some light antitank rockets.”
“Yes, sir,” Gunny said, maybe sitting up even more ramrod straight if that was possible.
“They aren’t the best rounds for poking holes in heavy tanks, but the seal between hull and turret is a weak spot, as are the rear and sides of the tanks. If you can hit a road wheel or the struts supporting it, you can stop it in its tracks. Oh, there is one other weak spot. I came across it in a history book I read from way back in the bloody twentieth.”
The colonel paused before going on. “They claimed that someone ricocheted a round off the deck and into the thin underbelly of one of those monsters. I can’t claim to have tried that one, but it’s in the history book.”
“Was it a kinetic round, sir?” Gunny asked. “Or a fused explosive like we’re firing?”
“I don’t know, Gunny,” Colonel Ray Longknife answered. “You’ll have to try it and find out.”
“Let me get this straight,” came from Mary on net. “You’re suggesting we take on these tanks?”
“What I’m saying is that Milassi is willing to kill a lot of his people to get at you and your packages. I suspect that we’ll be pressured to surrender to save him from sacrificing his innocent civilians. Given that choice, if the tankers are willing to play Milassi’s game, all we can do is kill tanks to save ourselves and the innocent,” the colonel said.
“Anyone see another way around this?” Trouble asked.
“Nobody joins the Corps for a bed of roses,” Gunny growled.
“Ooo-Rah,” answered him on net.
“I’ll start vectoring Marine rigs in on the package carriers. We’ll try to get two of them running interference for each of you,” Trouble said.
In the backseat, Debbie pulled the first of her antitank rockets from her bag and settled it in its place under the barrel of her rifle. It gave back a satisfying click.
“Lord, for what they are about to receive, may they be truly grateful,” came almost with reverence.
What Ruth heard next was not at all reverent.
“Shit, that son of a bitch.”
Trouble didn’t normally talk like that.
“What’s the matter, love?”
“Honey, there are tanks coming at you from every direction, and Milassi picked now to show us what he has. That SOB can jam our remotes, and he just did. Dear, you got tanks all around you, and, right now, I can’t see a thing.”
Now it was Ruth’s turn to say some unladylike things that her mother would not approve of.
FORTY-EIGHT
ONE OF THOSE tanks picked that particular moment to turn onto the street directly in front of Ruth.
So Ruth slammed on the brakes and backed up the few meters it took her to dodge into the alley she had just passed.
She got out of that street a split second before she would have been blown out. The wind from the 122 mm round was powerful enough as it went by to give her sedan a decided shove.
The roar from its explosion as it blew out the front of the house at the corner of the alley was deafening.
Ruth gunned the sedan, and they took off.
“Next corner, stop and let me out,” Debbie said.
Next corner had a Marine sedan waiting for them. A young Marine was already dismounted.
Cyn waved jauntily as Ruth passed. The Marine sedan fell in behind Ruth, clearly intent that the tank got at her over his dead body.
Ruth shivered but kept driving. She was just turning into another street when the tank turned up the alley.
* * *
Cyn edged her head around the concrete-block garage she was hiding behind.
The tank driver was sloppy as he made the turn. He took out the side of the building. Then again, his gunner’s fire had taken out the front of it.
Out the back door, a woman with two small kids fled. One of the kids had blood running down her arm.
That kind of shit would not go down on Cyn’s watch. She brought up her M-6, adjusted the sights for an antitank rocket, and pulled the trigger.
The rocket headed down the alley like a bat out of hell. It took the tank right between the big ugly turret with the long phallic gun barrel and the tank’s body.
Its explosion hardly marred the paint job.
“Damn,” Cyn cursed as she loaded her next round.
“Anyone listening on net, I just tried a shot at between the turret and the hull of the tank, and it didn’t work all that well. Now I’ll try to bounce a rocket under the damn thing.”
The gun’s roar was truly deafening this close-up, but the round went long, blowing up the building behind Cyn.
She refused to cringe from all the debris flying around her. That was what body armor was for. She aimed her second rocket and fired.
It hit the deck right in front of the tank, then skittered beneath it to explode behind it.
A two-by-four took Cyn in the back as the wreckage from the house settled to the deck. She shrugged off the pain as she loaded her third round.
Cyn could feel the ground rumbling through her
boots. She wouldn’t get another shot. For a second she considered waiting until the tank passed her, but she shook that idea off. This bastard would likely drive through the garage to get at her rather than risk giving her a shot at its vulnerable side.
She stepped out from her cover, aimed the round at the deck just under the shadow of the tank’s too-damn-close bow, and fired.
The rocket hit the deck—and bounced.
It hit the soft underbelly of the tank—and exploded.
For a moment longer, the tank rumbled forward. The main gun was coming down. Down until it was aimed right between Cyn’s eyes.
Then there was a second explosion, this one bigger than the first. Now flames poured out the bottom of the tank. Smoke curled from several hatches.
Cyn ran for it.
Then the whole tank blew, and Cyn found herself flying down the alley. She hit hard, but rolled rather nicely, she thought, her rifle still cradled in her arms.
Behind her, there were more explosions but they seemed aimed at the sky where the turret was hanging incongruously in midair.
It flipped several times before beginning its fall back to earth.
Cyn was glad that the wayward turret elected to fall on the side away from her. At the moment, she was feeling the pain and not at all ready to run.
Considering that other chunks of flaming tank were falling from the sky not that far from her, Cyn pried herself from the deck and began hobbling off, putting distance between her and her recent target.
The woman with the two kids came up, and with the woman on one side, the not-bleeding daughter on the other, they helped Cyn remove herself from harm.
“Folks on net, this is Cyn,” she happily announced. “Scratch one tank. Comments on tank killing. Maybe I did it wrong, but that shot for the seal between the turret and the hull didn’t scratch the paint. The first shot at bouncing one under the tank didn’t do any better. My second shot was too damn close, but it hit the deck a bit more ahead of the tank, bounced nicely, and that tank is burning rather cheerily, thank you very much.”
She paused to catch her breath before going on. “This idea of standing up front and personal with a tank sucks. I’d suggest you make like a little mouse and let it roll up next to you and then slip the rocket into the side armor. I was dumb but lucky the first time. I’ll be smarter the next time.”
“Thanks for the experience report, Corporal,” Captain Tordon said on net. “Well done. Very well done again today. Sergeant Daly, can you pick up your wayward corporal?”
“Already headed that way, sir.”
“Oh, Skipper, I got help from a mother and her two daughters after I killed that tank. One of her kids was hurt by the tank before I killed it. Would you mind if we took time out from this fine sport of tank hunting to get them to a hospital?”
“I think you’ve earned a break,” Captain Trouble said on net. “I would suggest that you drop her off outside the hospital. We aren’t exactly loved by the local management today.”
“Good suggestion, Skipper,” Sergeant Daly said. “Will do.”
Cyn spotted her ride coming up the alley toward them. She managed a weak wave.
She was glad she’d killed her dragon, but she wasn’t all that sure she had another kill in her. She hoped Ruth had picked up a couple of more Marine escorts and could afford to let her and this kind woman lick their wounds for a bit.
FORTY-NINE
RUTH TWISTED AND turned, was spotted by tanks, and lost them only to be spotted by others, or a cop car, or both.
Most of the tanks didn’t fire at her. Gunny thought that only the platoon and company commanders had carried ammo to the parade. None seemed to have ready machine-gun ammo.
Ah, who can fathom the thinking of a despot who wants to live forever?
Ruth dodged and, when necessary, the Marines escorting her took out a cop car.
Debbie fumed in the backseat that she was missing all the fun.
The two scientists regularly pleaded to be left on any street corner.
They actually thought they could just go back to their old jobs and all would be forgiven. At times, Ruth was sorely tempted to let them have their way.
Still, she kept the rear doors locked and drove despite their whining.
Tanks were getting thick on the ground. Ruth lost first one escort as it paused to distract a beast, then her second.
She was alone when a tank pulled onto the road in front of her.
“Turn here,” Gunny shouted. He’d been studying the map more and more intently. Ruth hooked a hard left.
“Stop the first chance you get,” he said.
It wasn’t much of a stop. Little more than an unloading zone, but Ruth pulled in.
“Debbie, hand me your rifle and rockets,” Gunny told the Marine who had been grumbling about missing all the fun.
“Gunny!” was her response.
“Marine, I’ve spent my entire career practicing how to take one of those beasts down. Are you going to deprive me of my one chance to actually bag one?”
With a few well-chosen words, the Marine passed her rifle and duffel bag to the front seat.
“Besides, if Ruth opened one rear door to let you out, those bozos would bolt out the other.”
The aforementioned bozos said nothing. One had been working the door handle, trying to do just that, but failed. Now he sighed.
“Drive around the block,” Gunny ordered. “If this works like I intend, you can pick me up when you drive by a flaming tank.”
“Good luck,” Ruth said, but her car was moving as soon as he closed the door.
* * *
Gunny Smith didn’t watch the woman drive off. He could hear the rumble of the tank. He had work to do.
As the aerial photo showed, a garage stood in front of him. He covered the few paces to the back door, then had to kick it in.
It was your usual empty garage. The front wooden door on the right was half-open; the one on the left was closed. Gunny shrugged. You take the fight you’re handed.
It was strange. He could feel the ground tremble under the pounding tank treads. That was not in the sims. He’d tell them to add that to the training device.
Other than that, he felt just like he had during a hundred practice sessions.
Even to the point where the first rocket refused to attach to the launcher on the M-6. He prayed the problem was with the rocket and not the launcher.
Some nice infantry god listened to his prayer.
The second rocket slid right into place with a reassuring click.
The M-6’s computer connected with the rocket’s tiny brain, and the red light came up bright on the rear of the blast deflector. He had a hot round.
And not a second too soon. The tank ground its way into view through the half-open front door.
Gunny took the approved stance, his back to the open back door, and squeezed off the rocket. He aimed for the sweet spot between the first and second road wheels, just as he shouted to give his ears a chance to survive the coming overpressure wave.
The rocket shot off right as he pulled the trigger and whooshed to exactly where he aimed.
The explosion shattered the track, and the tank came to a halt as it rolled off its treads.
“You ain’t going nowhere,” Gunny said with a grin.
Unfortunately, the side armor had held the rocket’s explosion out. The tank wasn’t going anywhere, but it was a wounded beast with a whole lot of rage still inside.
The turret swung around. The gun slammed into the garage’s wall, shaking the place to the rafters. The turret swung back out to get a stronger head of steam for the next swing, one that Gunny doubted the worn wooden shed could take.
Automatically, he’d reloaded. He fired again, shouting again as the rocket launched. He aimed for the same spot.
The tank shook this time, and the turret locked up where it was. Gunny could hear the servos struggling to move the turret, but, though the tank armor still held, the tank
’s hull was now out of true.
Gunny loaded a third rocket and fired it almost without thought.
The rocket hit again where he’d aimed the other two.
The explosion seemed smaller this time. For a second, he feared he had a dud. He was already rummaging in Debbie’s duffel for the next rocket when the full impact of the hit began to eat the guts out of the tank.
There was a second explosion, then a third. Gunny began to backpedal through the back door. The tank now gaped, a large hole in its side. Through the hole, he could see fire.
He could also see the driver trying to pull himself from the tank, but he’d forgotten to unplug his headphones, and it hung him up for just the second it took for the next explosion to catapult him up, legless, from his vehicle.
Gunny quit sightseeing, turned, and took off running. He was running past a solid brick building when the tank began to explode in earnest.
He turned the corner, to find a familiar-looking sedan waiting for him, door open and motor running.
He leapt inside and pulled the door shut as they gunned away from the curve.
“Didn’t I tell you to drive around the block?” he growled as he pulled his seat belt on.
“Do you honestly think I could drive past that thing?” Ruth said, nodding toward the exploding fire behind them.
“Hmm, maybe I should have thought that through more.”
“We’re fine,” Debbie said, though the scientists she shared the backseat with disagreed. “How’d it go, and can I have my rifle back?”
“Straight by the book,” Gunny said. “Even to the point where the first rocket I loaded refused to arm,” he said, passing said rifle to the demanding woman Marine.
“It wouldn’t dare be any other way for you, Gunny,” Debbie said with a laugh.
Ruth gunned the car up to sixty. A cop car started to get in her way, but it took one look at her, or maybe at the rising smoke behind her, and turned away.
FIFTY
CYN WAS FINALLY coming down from a wild adrenaline high. They’d dropped off the woman and her kids at the foot of the emergency entrance to the hospital. The unhurt girl had waved good-bye as her mother hurried the injured girl up the driveway.
To Do or Die (A Jump Universe Novel) Page 25