A Time To Run

by Mark Wandrey

  “Jesus Christ,” Senior Chief D.R. “Doc” Zinn, in command of the LCAC, hissed as he looked in the direction the colonel was watching. “Is the whole country like that now, sir?”

  “I don’t know,” Alinsky admitted.

  He’d elected to take Company A himself for the hardest objective. Admiral Tomlinson hadn’t agreed with that. He’d reminded the admiral that he had no say in how the Marines executed their mission. This landing would likely be the most contested of the two, but it was essential if they were to seal off the Silver Strand at a controllable choke point.

  A quarter of a mile behind them was LCAC 19. Like his own, he carried four LAV-25s, the Marine version of the Army’s Stryker light-armored combat vehicle. Another two hundred men were huddled around the LAVs, ready to assist with their off-loading and to create an armed perimeter. He dearly wished he had AMTRAKs instead of the LCAC. He could have landed considerably more men with Assault Amphibious Vehicles, AAV-P7s; he could’ve moved most of his force ashore in one wave. He’d have to send the LCAC back on a second trip, and that meant time.

  “ETA to target?” he asked the pilot.

  “Ten minutes, Colonel.”

  “Hug the western shore, near Point Loma Naval Base,” Zinn ordered.

  “Aye, aye.” Alinsky smirked. He always liked the Navy and their quirks.

  As they passed the piers, Alinsky saw they were teeming with infected. There were so many that some of them were shoved into the water by the press of bodies. The USS America was tied up there, halfway through a refit. Many more milled on her decks, as well. A lot of them wore the remnants of white uniforms. Alinsky’s jaw muscles bunched as he was forced to remember that soon he would be shooting U.S. military personnel. Infected and insane though they were, they were still his brothers and sisters in arms. This sort of thing hadn’t happened in the U.S. in more than 150 years. He bunched his fists until the nails bit into the flesh. By God, there will be a reckoning someday, he vowed.

  As LCAC 19 rounded the point, it slowed so they’d be coordinated in their actions. His craft passed the last of the Navy piers to the left. A lone cruiser was docked there that appeared to be listing badly. Ahead was the Shelter Island Yacht Basin, and opposite on the same spit of land was the America’s Cup Harbor. Once home to thousands of expensive boats, most were either now sunk or missing. A few smoked. How many had died here hoping for escape? The boat ramp seethed with hundreds of infected. Some were even swimming out toward the LCAC as it roared past at 40 knots.

  To his right, they were coming around the wider part of Coronado. A carrier was tied up there; he couldn’t remember which one. The admiral had listed it as a tertiary objective in the mission briefing. Planes and helicopters were on its deck, and hundreds more infected. Some were visible on the Navy piers as well, though fewer than on shore. Maybe this wouldn’t be as bad as they’d feared? As the LCAC began turning right, he glanced left and saw the old USS Midway, now a tourist attraction. The figure running down its fight deck didn’t appear to be sightseeing.

  They were drawing a real crowd along the San Diego side of the piers. Hundreds were growing into thousands as the Coronado Bridge climbed skyward in front of them. Several of the warehouses on the pier had big red FEMA banners on them. He grunted. So, the Federal Emergency Management Agency had used the huge warehouses as an evacuation point. Judging by the number of screaming infected running along the pier in the direction the LCAC was traveling, things hadn’t worked out very well. Earlier overflights by Marine V22 Ospreys and Navy F18s with reconnaissance gear had confirmed little or no tangible sign of intelligent activity. They passed under the bridge.

  “One minute!” Zinn said. Alinsky thanked him and went to the bridge door. The sound of the powerful drive fans and lift motors went from a loud hum to a roar as he opened the door. His XO, Major Richard Hartman, entered and handed him his Kevlar. He put it on and buckled the strap.

  “One minute!” he yelled over the roar. Hartman nodded and spoke over the radio to the LAV commanders. Immediately engines roared to life. The Marines who’d been sitting and standing next to the vehicles got up and began to check their weapons. Most of the men moved to the far sides and rear of the LCAC’s ample cargo area, while Navy crew moved forward and prepared to free the LAVs.

  The LCAC made a sharp turn and slowed. Alinsky knew they were close now, lining up with the ramp at NABC, Naval Amphibious Base Coronado. A second later, both the .50 caliber M2 machine guns began to chatter. Hartman looked at him.

  “Clearing the ramp,” Zinn said, and the other man nodded. “Brace for landing!” he barked, and the call was passed around. A second later, the turbine noise got louder, and the entire craft angled slightly upward. The .50 calibers continued to fire in continuous three-round bursts. A few seconds of climbing, and the LCAC’s drive fans suddenly cut, and the bow ramp began to drop. The huge transport started to settle, and the bow door fell.

  The front two LAV’s were released, and, with a blast of diesel smoke, first one then the other rolled down the ramp onto solid ground. One turned right, the other left. Immediately their 25mm Bushmaster main armaments began to fire. Now Alinsky was concerned.

  “Hold the next two,” he ordered, “get a platoon out to assist the LAV—” He was cut off as a dozen screaming infected ran up the ramp and leapt onto the group of Navy men who were getting the chains out of the way. Blood flew, and screams filled the air.

  “Clear them away!” Hartman barked. The nearest Marines moved, then stopped, unsure. They couldn’t fire without hitting the sailors who were being torn to pieces. Alinsky looked, eyes wide, as the lead LAV out on the concrete was suddenly covered in infected. “Mother of God,” Hartman breathed.

  “Fix bayonets,” Alinsky said, an order which hadn’t been given since Vietnam. “Fix bayonets! Get us off this damned LCAC before we’re swamped!” As the Marines overcame their surprise and began to fight, Alinsky activated his radio. “Alinsky to Admiral Tomlinson; we’re ashore and in hand-to-hand combat. Request immediate air support!” The dozen infected in front of the LCAC grappling with the now mostly dead sailors were being bayonetted by his men, just as dozens more came rushing up the ramp. The .50 calibers on the bow of the LCAC were firing continuously, as were the 25mm guns on the LAVs. He could hear the screams of a thousand infected rushing toward them. He drew his handgun and prepared to meet them.

  * * *

  “Alpha Mike Leader, Marine 2/1-A, over.”

  “We’re being overrun, I repeat, we’re being overrun. Need CAS ASAP, over.”

  “Fucking hell,” Lieutenant Jamie Ibson hissed from the front gunner seat of the Marine AH-1Z Viper. Four thousand feet below them, North Island Naval Air Station was passing by at 130 knots.

  “Weapons hot,” Captain Steve Taylor, pilot and commander, said on their internal comms before switching to radio. “2/1 this is Alpha Mike leader, inbound weapons hot. Advise friendlies?”

  “Two LAVs 10 yards off the bow, none on foot.” The voice was full of stress, and constant small arms and machine gun fire made it challenging to understand the besieged Marine. Taylor switched frequencies again. “Alpha Mike 2 and 3, on me.”

  “Copy,” Alpha Mike 2 said.

  “Roger,” Alpha Mike 3 added an instant later.

  Taylor pushed the cyclic forward, and the Viper nosed over, rapidly descending and accelerating. The two other gunships in the flight mirrored his dive precisely. The craft’s airspeed climbed precipitously close to its never exceed rating as he finally leveled out at 300 feet, and banked left. The town of Coronado raced by below, and they were flashing over Glorietta Bay.

  “Target ahead, Jamie,” he said to the gunner, who was already examining the Amphibious Base through his gunsight.

  “Oh, there are targets all right,” Ibson said. He saw what the gunship saw through an eyepiece fitted to his helmet and over his right eye. FLIR, or forward looking infrared radar, was selected and he looked across the Amphibious Base LCAC parking a
rea. A pair of large maintenance hangars were to the right of the parked LCAC, and a grassy multi-use field complete with two baseball diamonds and a tennis court in his flightpath. There were no less than 500 crazy fucking infected tearing across the field toward the boat deck. The FLIR clearly showed the LCAC heavily besieged by hundreds more who were flowing out of the buildings. It looked like someone had kicked over an anthill.

  “Target the field,” Taylor said, “break up the wave.”

  “Roger that,” Ibson said, “firing.” He selected the two M261 pods on each stubby wing, flipped the control to Ripple Fire, and squeezed the trigger. Each pod held 19 Hydra 70 missiles which fired one from each side every ¼ second in a continuous stream as long as he held the trigger down. The helicopter jerked as the missiles fired one after another. The other two Vipers fired as well.

  Aimed at the northwestern edge of the park, the gunships walked their fire across the park toward the boat basin, unleashing 48 rockets in two seconds. The munitions raced away, accelerating to 1,500 miles per hour in just a second, and flew for three seconds before the tiny radar in their noses sensed the ground was the correct distance away, and sent a signal to the warheads.

  The M255 warhead was a massive supersonic shotgun shell of 2,500 flechette darts which deployed 200 meters above the target and spread out to a kill zone 20 meters across. The tiny darts shredded anything they contacted, up to light armor. The 500 mostly-naked infected racing across the field never heard the approaching high-speed gunships; the missiles exploded in a rolling meat grinder of slaughter.

  The width of the field was hit with overlapping explosions. In two seconds nothing in the kill box was still alive. Dozens at the edge were maimed and bleeding out as the Vipers roared overhead, flaring their noses up and bleeding off speed as they spun about.

  “Going live on guns,” Ibson said. The chin-mounted 20mm chain gun was the principle weapon on the gunship. Linked via a complicated arrangement with the gunner’s helmet and eye piece, wherever he looked, the gun targeted. When armed, the three barrels spun constantly. All the gunner needed to do was squeeze the trigger to unleash 1,500 rounds per minute. With only 750 rounds in the magazine, though, sustained fire would burn through all of it in about 30 seconds.

  As an experienced gunner, Ibson fired three-second bursts at the biggest concentrations of infected. The FLIR didn’t show him what the massed people looked like, and for that he was grateful. They would largely be Navy and dependents. He kept that thought away and concentrated on his aim. The 20mm rounds were hell on anything lighter than a main battle tank. Against human flesh, it was devastating, and each round tore through multiple infected. Any that missed exploded on the concrete and caused additional shrapnel injuries. It was a slaughter.

  The three Vipers took over staggered positions as their gunners chewed the attacking mob to bloody pieces. In seconds, the pressure on the LCAC decreased, and the Marines aboard began to breathe again. Men could be seen climbing onto the two LAVs still in the back LCAC and raking the infected with their M4 carbines. Ibson carefully avoided firing any closer than 20 meters from the besieged LAVs to avoid fratricide.

  “They’re pouring from that hangar,” Alpha Mike 3 called. Taylor looked to his right and saw it. One of the hangar’s huge doors, big enough to admit an LCAC, was open just a few meters, and a continuous stream of infected was pouring out. They must have been using it like a nest.

  “Take out the hangar,” he ordered.

  “Roger that,” Alpha Mike 3 replied. “Switching to Hellfire.” A second later, a single AGM-114 Hellfire missile left the rail and shot away with a jet of fire, hitting the hangar a second later. The eight-kilogram warhead was designed to defeat tanks; it blew the shit out of the hangar door, which was only made of corrugated metal. The infected inside didn’t fare very well, either.

  “Marine 2/1-A to Alpha Mike, good support, hold one.”

  “Roger that, Marine 2/1-A, standing by.” The three Vipers slowly orbited the LCAC as the Marines cleaned up the enemy and moved out to begin establishing a perimeter. Both the LAVs that had landed were still swarmed with infected pounding, clawing and even biting at the armor. A squad of Marines used precision rifle fire to clear them away. The LAVs were covered in blood until it ran off the armor in little rivulets.

  “This isn’t battle,” Ibson said. “This is a massacre.”

  “Inbound!” Alpha Mike 2 barked. “Southwest down Tulagi Road.”

  Taylor killed their forward speed and used the pedals to spin the Viper around to face southwest. A quickly growing flood of infected was tearing down the road toward the boat basin.

  “Marine 2/1-A,” he called, “we’re going hot on missiles, be advised you have massing forces from the southwest.” Switching to inboard he said, “Fire when ready,” and leaned them toward the approaching horde. As soon as the bow was low enough, the gunner unleashed more Hydra missiles. At the first several explosions the flood of infected spread out across the parking lots and grass on both sides, racing around the explosions and the dying.

  “That’s it for the missiles,” Ibson said. “Switching to guns.” The M197 buzzed to life, hurling 20mm rounds at the rushing infected. They were concentrated groups this time. Many fell, though not nearly as many as before. The three gunships worked their fire together as long as their ammo held out, eventually running the guns dry.

  “Marine 2/1, we are out of ammo and returning to Essex.”

  “Roger that, Alpha Mike, we’re establishing a perimeter. Thanks.” As he banked his gunship around to the west, Taylor had a last glimpse of the LCAC rising back onto its cushion, turning around, and heading toward the ramp.

  * * *

  Colonel Alinsky watched as LCAC 20 roared down the ramp and back into the water. Aboard were seven dead sailors, along with twelve dead and eleven wounded Marines. In less than ten minutes, he’d lost 10% of his effectives. The men were setting up firing positions while the LAVs were unloading cases of loaded magazines, seven M240 machine guns, and a pair of Mk19s. They had other goodies to help carry out their mission, if a perimeter could be established.

  The men made use of existing cover, such as cars and equipment crates. One platoon was spread across the avenues of approach, firing steadily, as the remainder of the company armed up and improved their positions. As he oversaw the work, he called, “Company B, Company A actual, over.”

  “Company B actual, how are you doing, Colonel?”

  “Ten percent loses; our landing was heavily, I repeat, heavily resisted. Alpha Mike is already RTB. Status update?”

  “We’re offloading onto the pier, minimal resistance. We’ll establish a perimeter and wait for the Ospreys.”

  “Understand, Captain. Keep your eyes open, Nick. See you in a few hours.”

  “Roger that, Colonel. Semper fi.”

  “Oorah,” the colonel said and stuck the mic to his load-bearing harness. “Captain, how are we doing?”

  “Constant intrusion attempts to the perimeter,” he said. The field across Tulagi Road was a sea of bodies, and still dozens more were vaulting over the corpses and racing toward the Marines. “Three o’clock!” Hartman barked, and the rifle team to his right pivoted, dropped to one knee, and began firing steady semi-automatic shots. In seconds, all the attackers were down. “That field is going to be a problem. Any chance of area denial?” he asked the colonel. The commander used his radio again.

  “Marine 2/1-A actual calling Reagan, over.” As he waited for the response, the expected rain began to fall. As usual for San Diego, it went from drops to a deluge in moments. He wondered if it was foolhardy to hope it worked against the infected.

  * * *

  Lieutenant Commander Allen “Slackjaw” Phillips was the flight leader for eight F/A-18Es from the “Tophatters” of Strike Fighter Squadron Fourteen (VFA-14), who were circling above Coronado at 18,000 feet. Between the Reagan, Carl Vinson, and George Washington, the fleet should’ve had better than 150 fighters, an aerial
force almost as large as was involved in the 2nd Gulf War. Instead, they only had one carrier, the Reagan, capable of launching and recovering aircraft. The Carl Vinson could launch from her waist catapults only, but couldn’t recover, leaving only the aircraft from Carrier Air Wing-9 onboard the Reagan. Forty-eight Super Hornets of two variants.

  They’d come on station just before the Marines made their landings and could stay there for about 30 minutes. Phillips was listening in on the tactical channel, and he knew they wouldn’t be there nearly that long. He heard the Marine request for area denial and consulted his map.

  “We can accommodate you, Marines, but that’s going to chew up a lot of real estate.”

  “Understood,” the Marine said, “please drop as requested.”

  “Roger that,” Phillips said. “Flight, this is Lead, transmitting target package. Let’s give the leathernecks some breathing room.” Thirty-two GBU-32 1,000-pound bombs fell away toward the ground below. Each plane’s guidance system led the bombs onto their precise targets 18,000 feet below. A vast swath of Naval Amphibious Base Coronado went up in fire and fury.

  Ordinance on target, Phillips moved the camera with the joystick, panning it around the area. He flipped the control to FLIR and instantly stopped. There’d been some signs before the bombs, but now it was everywhere. The town was absolutely coming alive with movement. Oh shit, he thought. He called the carrier.

  * * *

  “Let’s see it,” Tomlinson said in the Reagan’s CIC. One of the big high-definition displays lit up with a line of computer text, syncing with the F/A-18 high over Coronado. It was the town itself—twenty thousand or so houses—valuable real estate. The FLIR images were shaded from black for cold to bright white for hot. The houses were light gray, streets slightly brighter, and people the brightest. There were thousands of moving white spots emerging from houses, garages, abandoned cars, and anything else that provided color. “Intel, estimates?”