Slaughterhouse - 02

by Stephen Knight

  “Unknown at the moment, but I heard Marsh’s element took ninety percent casualties. As to how many were KIA, I don’t know, yet. Listen, I’m sorry about this. I know you probably had a lot of friends back there, and I need you to come to grips with the fact that you won’t be seeing some of them again.” As he spoke, Lee noticed the company first shirt glaring at him from behind his mask. Lee locked eyes with him.

  “Problem, First Sergeant?”

  “Well, no, Colonel, I just noticed that you weren’t wearing your MOPP gear. Would be a shame if you became a Klown, sir.” The way the man over-enunciated the rank made Lee think it had been an intentional verbal pinprick, something to get a rise out of him. All things considered, it was probably a pretty gentle slap, but it was still needless confrontation.

  “First Sergeant, what’s your mission here?” Lee asked.

  “I see to the men of Bravo Company, sir.” The older soldier kept his eyes locked with Lee’s. “I remember what my pay grade is, and I remember what the billet responsibilities are. No delusion of grandeur here, Colonel.”

  “Whoa, hey, First Sergeant Urena. Let’s dial that back a bit,” Sienkiewicz said, which Lee thought was unusually ballsy, given that a corporal was to a first sergeant what a ditch digger was to a billionaire.

  Urena flicked his gaze over to Sienkiewicz. “Corporal, I know you ain’t talking to me.” The facemask did nothing to diminish the growl in his voice.

  “Urena, square your shit away,” Lee said forcefully. “You don’t like it, turn in your weapons and file your papers. I’ll make sure someone at DA signs whatever forms they need to sign, and your merry ass is out of the Army. Those are your choices. Questions?”

  Urena glared at Lee, then snorted. “You think you have time to do all that paperwork, Colonel? I mean, you’re the guy who’s going up on charges. Uniform Code of Military Justice mean anything to you? Maybe a little dose of Article One Thirty-Four would do the Colonel good—”

  “Are you out of your fucking mind, Urena?” Cassidy spun toward the shorter, older man like a mongoose whirling on a cobra. “All the shit that’s going down, this is what you’re going to play with? Pull your head out of your ass, First Sergeant. Most of our company has just been taken down! Let’s concentrate on our mission, and forget all this other shit. All right?”

  Urena seemed about ready to take another swing at the topic, but he just nodded after a moment and went back to studying the map spread across the Humvee’s hood. The soldier manning the .50 cal in the cupola looked down on them, his face unreadable behind his facemask.

  “Roger that, sir,” Urena said finally.

  Cassidy turned back to Lee. “Sorry about that, sir.”

  “It doesn’t matter, Lieutenant. Listen, it’s a shit sandwich, and we’ve all got to take a bite. Urena’s right. This is a cluster, but we’ve got to make the best out of it. Now, you have a severely understrength company to take care of. I just wanted to make sure you knew it was coming, so you can get ready for the transition. You have some qualified people to back you up? First Sergeant, you listening to this?”

  “Yes, sir,” Urena said. “We have qualified personnel to sustain the company, sir.”

  Cassidy nodded. “He’s right, we’re good to go. We’ve got some good people, and the Bushmasters has the best FSO in the Division, sir.” FSO was the military acronym for fire support officer, an officer whose mission was to coordinate the company’s firepower in support of the commanding officer’s plan of attack.

  Lee searched his memory, but he could not recall who might be Bravo Company’s FSO.

  “All right, just so long as you’re up to speed on what you need to do. I just wanted to make you familiar with what’s been going on, since they’re your men.”

  “I appreciate you stopping for the face-to-face, sir. I’ll make sure everything’s handled, and we’ll be available to take our next assigned phase line,” Cassidy said. The guy was all business, even though he’d just been handed a fifty-pound bag of dicks. Several dozen guys he knew, including his commanding officer, had been zeroed, and he had to pick up the pieces. There was nothing to do but embrace the suck.

  “Let me know if you need any help,” Lee said.

  “Will do. You should probably get back in the column, sir. We won’t be holding this position for more than fifteen minutes.”

  “Roger that. Good luck,” Lee said, directing the wish at Urena as much as Cassidy.

  “Thank you, sir,” Cassidy said. “From both of us,” he added, to which Urena nodded without looking up from the map.

  Lee headed back to his waiting Humvee, shadowed by the anxious Corporal Sienkiewicz.

  It was going to be one hell of a road trip.

  SEVEN.

  Starter switch energized. Clock started. Hands trembling. So much laughter. It’s all so God damn funny.

  DC Voltmeter check. Fourteen volts DC current registering as N1 passes through ten percent. Two rotors with huge chords attached to a teetering rotor head are already starting a slow spin overhead, casting flickering shadows across the cockpit through the eyebrow windows. Copilot giggling over the ICS. Verify voltage continues to increase as N1 picks up.

  Exhaust gas temperature is rising normally.

  N1 acceleration is normal. Main rotor blades are fully turning now, at fifteen percent N1.

  Engine oil pressure light winks out.

  Add fuel. THUMP! The big T53 turboshaft engine catches alight, starts delivering over eight hundred ponies to the main rotor shaft. It’s hilarious, thinking about little ponies running on their sides, their little hooves kicking at a main rotor shaft. Release the starter switch once N1 climbs into the forty percent range. Rotors are beginning to slash across the sky, more like a circular wing than two really big boards tied together. Voltmeter reading increases. Transmission oil pressure light, fire warning lights: out. Rotor thumping now. Throttle twisted to ground idle.

  “I’m fucking Italian!” the copilot screams over the intercom. “You know how you can tell? My helicopter goes WOP-WOP-WOP!”

  Old joke, but it’s suddenly funnier than anything Dangerfield, Carlin, or Louis CK ever said.

  Across the flight line, eight other UH-1H Hueys are spooled up, ready for action. Four are loaded with troops. Four are mostly empty, except for the bladders full of piss, puke, and jizz.

  Everyone’s laughing.

  Everyone wants to kill.

  EIGHT.

  The first full-on ambush occurred just after the convoy left the overpass to Interstate 495 in its dust.

  Rawlings sensed it coming. She didn’t know how, but she did.

  The terrain wasn’t exactly optimal for an attack as it was mostly flat, except for the rise to their right, where a road came within a hundred or so feet of Route 2. The eastbound lanes were a mess. There had been some sort of pileup involving a bus and a tractor-trailer, and traffic had come to a dead halt. People were everywhere on that side of the highway, watching the military convoy roll past, their faces filled with panic. Apaches wheeled overhead, ominous and threatening, their rotor beats slamming out Death’s own soundtrack. Someone in the truck had fired up a boom box. Its speakers pounded out Dope’s “Die Motherfucker, Die,” a true warrior’s anthem she had listened to countless times during her tour in Afghanistan. Even in her motor company, it had been the go-to song, despite the fact that the most hazardous things they had to deal with—aside from the generally ineffective insurgent attacks—were grimed-up oil filters, flat tires, and leaking fuel bladders. While other troops were out delivering the Taliban and AQ their orders of whamburgers and french cries, Rawlings and the rest of her compatriots were relatively safe, all things considered.

  But the wrongness of the current situation was practically slapping her across the face. She was tense, coiled like a spring ready to unload, and she couldn’t figure out why. She shouldered her M4 and twisted around, aiming the weapon at the northbound lanes. She peered through the 4x optical sight mounted
to the upper rail. None of the stranded motorists seemed to be laughing, and they looked normal enough—but she knew the crazies. They could playact for a while until the moment was right for the mask to come off and the laughter to begin.

  “Shoot me. Shoot me now.”

  I did, Wade, and now you’re dead. Shut the fuck up.

  “You feel it too, huh?” Muldoon asked.

  “Feel what?” Rawlings asked, still scanning the opposite side of the highway.

  “Don’t go all belt-fed on us, Nasty Girl,” said one of the lightfighters on her side of the truck. “Belt-fed” in this circumstance meant the soldier thought Rawlings was getting too buggy, too excited beyond what the present situation merited.

  “I’m not,” Rawlings replied. In the near distance, more smoke billowed. Then, something exploded, causing an angry mushroom cloud to appear. A gas station or something similar had just gone up. Pieces of fiery debris arced through the air, trailing smoke. The deep rumble hit her a moment later, causing a vague stirring in Rawlings’s gut. She turned and looked across the truck at Muldoon. The big NCO peered at her for a moment then pushed his sunglasses up on his broad nose.

  “She’s on to something,” Muldoon said. “You guys need to suit up. Now.”

  “Come on, Muldoon,” a bucktoothed soldier with a perpetual grin said. “You taking tactical cues from a weekend warrior, man?”

  “Skeeter, you don’t gotta listen to me,” Muldoon said, reaching for his MOPP overgarment. “You were never worth a pile of shit, anyway.”

  Behind him, people moved amid the trees. Rawlings brought up her M4, and Muldoon frowned at her for an instant before putting it together.

  The soldier seated to Rawlings’s right saw it as well.

  “Klowns to the right!” He raised his rifle just as a Molotov cocktail arced through the air.

  Rawlings fired three rounds so quickly it sounded as if she were ripping off a burst on full auto. One of the figures among the trees faltered, then fell face-first to the ground. The area to the right of the column was slightly elevated, not by a lot, but enough to give the attackers a small tactical advantage. As Muldoon ripped off his sunglasses and pulled on his MOPP overgarment, several other troops began firing as well, sending dozens of rounds ripping through the trees, bushes, and infected that were moving toward them.

  A Molotov cocktail struck the side of the Big Foot’s bed and shattered, spreading gasoline everywhere. Flames enveloped the last half of the truck, and men shrieked in fear and pain. The attackers were held at bay, not by the soldiers’ return fire, but by the chain link fence that separated the road from the turnpike. That gave the soldier manning the M240B machinegun atop the truck’s cab enough time to spin his weapon around and open up, slashing at the Klowns with a withering stream of bullets.

  The Humvee behind the truck was hit with three Molotovs in rapid succession, turning it into a rolling funeral pyre covered by orange flame that danced in the sunlight. The soldier manning the machinegun in the vehicle’s cupola screamed so loudly that they heard him over the truck’s engine and the fusillade of gunfire. The Humvee accelerated suddenly, its driver probably blinded by flame and smoke. Just before it crashed into the back of their truck, it veered to the left and pulled out of the column’s formation. It slammed into a minivan in the next lane.

  The pileup that occurred as a result was a horrendous cacophony of rending metal and screeching tires. While the military convoy had been sticking to the right lane and maintaining an even fifty miles an hour, the civilian traffic in the other travel lane was going much faster. Cars and trucks piled up on each other in explosions of glass and plastic and blaring horns. Rawlings saw luggage fly through the air, tumbling end over end, strewing clothing and personal items across the turnpike and the grass median that separated the eastbound lanes from the westbound.

  At the end of her truck, a soldier was hitting the flames with a fire extinguisher that had been clamped to the side of the bed. Another soldier clad in full MOPP gear directed him, waving his arms and yelling, “I’m in charge!” through his facemask.

  “Fucking lieutenant,” one of the soldiers near Rawlings said. “Guy just doesn’t know when to shut the fuck up.”

  Rawlings was about to ask him how he knew it was the lieutenant when something caught her attention—the throbbing wop-wop-wop-wop of approaching helicopters.

  Hueys.

  Which only the Massachusetts Army National Guard had.

  NINE.

  Major Fleischer watched the small engagement on the ground. He was trying to coordinate an appropriate angle of attack to bring the fight to the enemy when his pilot spoke over the intercom.

  “Hey, Major, we’ve got National Guard aircraft coming in.”

  Fleischer looked out the canopy and saw four dots in the distance that were slowly tracking toward them. Farther downrange, another four aircraft flew in a trail formation, but their path would take them well past the column’s rear. The Longbow radar system tracked them as well, and the software that drove the system classified the aircraft as UH-1s. That would be the Guard combat support unit that had been stationed at Logan, along with the rest of the Guard assets.

  Fleischer knew from the National Guard liaison officer attached to Hanscom that Logan had been in danger of being overrun by the Klowns; hell, the battalion’s Ravens had overflown the airport just yesterday, and it was surrounded by a veritable army of lunatics. If Logan had indeed fallen, then the majority of the Guard forces there had to be written off.

  With that in mind, Fleischer thought that the Huey flight’s sudden emergence from the chaos was concerning.

  “What was their designation?” he asked. “Bosox, right?”

  “Bosox, yeah. But if Logan’s gone tits up, I figure they’re Nosox now,” Smitty said.

  “Let’s hope that’s not what’s happened.” Fleischer switched one of the radios over to the channels the battalion shared with the Guard. “Bosox, this is Tomcat Six. Over.” Nothing. “Bosox, this is Tomcat Six. You’re flying into our area of operations. You need to identify your intentions. Over.”

  “Gonna get us some chickenhawks,” came the response. The speaker was doing his best to imitate Foghorn Leghorn, all while chortling.

  Fleischer’s blood ran cold. “Bosox, this is Tomcat Six. Say again. Over.”

  “Gonna get us some BAH-GAAAWK chickenhawks, and you can call me Colonel Sanders!” the laughing voice jeered over the radio. “I like, I say, I like mine EXTRA-CRISPY!”

  The Longbow system calculated that the four Hueys were coming in at a full sprint, making a hundred thirty miles per hour, which would be their maximum speed given the heat and humidity of the day. The Apaches could cruise at a hundred sixty-five miles an hour and sprint at around one eighty-five, so avoiding the Vietnam-era aircraft wouldn’t be a problem. But fighting them off would be. While the Apaches carried a powerful suite of munitions, they were all for use against ground-based targets. The Army had toyed with outfitting Apaches for aerial engagements and had even certified the AIM-92 Air-to-Air Stinger system for their use, but those systems had never been fielded to the attack battalion. The most Fleischer’s people could do was shoot the middle finger at the Klowns in the Hueys.

  “Tomcats, this is Six. Red air. I say again, red air. Wingmen, form up on your leads. Stand by for further orders. Break. Wizard, Wizard, this is Tomcat. Over.”

  “Tomcat, this is Wizard Six. Go ahead. Over.” Lee sounded all business, even though he must’ve been handling the ambush that was still playing out below.

  Fleischer took a second to return to that situation, and he saw a major traffic pile-up was in progress. At least two military vehicles were on fire. Holy fuck.

  “Wizard, Tomcat Six. Listen, this is going to hurt, but the Klowns are coming in Guard Hueys. I don’t know what their armament is, but they are airmobile and”—he consulted the Longbow radar data—“less than sixty seconds out. Over.”

  “Ah… Tomcat, this is W
izard Six. Understand National Guard forces are coming for us in helicopters. Is that good copy? Over.”

  “Wizard, Tomcat. You have that right. Red air is inbound. Over.”

  “Roger, Tomcat. Go ahead and take them out. Over.”

  “Wizard, this is Tomcat. Sorry to break it to you, but we have no air-to-air capability. Over.”

  Lee’s businesslike tone suddenly changed. “Tomcat, this is Wizard. Are you telling me you cannot protect the column from red air? Over.”

  “Wizard, Tomcat Six. That is exactly what I’m telling you. Ground-based fires are the only option. Recommend you start slamming them with everything you have. We’ll do what we can, but don’t expect more than for us to cheer you on. Over.”

  “Tomcat, Wizard. Not good enough, Fleischer. Get in the fucking fight. Over.”

  “Lase them,” Smitty said.

  “What?”

  “Lase them! Our designators aren’t eye-safe. We might be able to blind them!” the pilot said. “Shit, the Hellfires fly at eight hundred knots, we can probably splash them with those, too!”

  Fleischer thought about it for a second. The Hellfire missile had been used in at least one aerial engagement, by the Israelis against a Cessna 152. Of course, they’d only succeeded in killing a wayward student pilot, but the precedent had been set.

  “Wizard, Tomcat. We have some tricks up our sleeve, but the timing is tight. Expect some bad guys to get past us. Over.”

  “Do what you can do, Tomcat. We’re on it down here. Over.”

  “Smitty, bring us around,” Fleischer said.

  No sooner had he issued the command than the Apache dramatically slowed while doing a hard pedal turn to the left, essentially pirouetting in the sky until its nose was pointed right at the approaching Hueys. The Apache had six Hellfires left.

  More than enough, Fleischer thought. He ordered another Apache unit farther downrange to orient toward the oncoming Hueys as well. They would take the aircraft on the left side of the formation, while Fleischer took the ones on the right. There was no chance of hitting all of them, since they would have to lase the incoming helicopters and shoot at them the old fashioned way. The Longbow system didn’t have air-to-air software mods, so it was either do it old school or call class dismissed.