Nelson forced himself to look away from the gruesome horror and stole a glance at his Driver’s Integrated Display. The tank was travelling at almost thirty miles an hour when it reached the shoulder of the road, and he stomped his foot on the brakes.
The Abrams stopped on a proverbial dime, slewing its seventy-odd tons of armor plating broadside.
The wild bucking ride shook Thurlow’s head from side to side. He dropped down inside the fighting compartment and slammed his hatch closed. The final jolt as the tank reared up onto the shoulder of the highway almost dislocated his spine.
“Open fire!” Thurlow ordered. Dan Fox turned the coaxial machine gun on the front rank of the undead horde and blazed away.
“Nelson, swing us around for Christ’s sake. I want us pointing down the highway so we can charge the bastards.”
“Are you serious?”
“Hell yeah.”
Nelson locked the left hand track, gunned the engine, and turned the tank on its axis until it faced the burning buildings of Königstädten. The tank’s huge steel tracks churned gouges out of the asphalt.
“Now what?”
“How are we off for fuel?”
Nelson flicked a glance sideways at the readout on the DID. “About half a tank.”
Thurlow frowned and made a quick mental calculation. They were ten miles on the wrong side of the Weisenauer Bridge. There was plenty of fuel to get them back across the Rhine – provided nothing unforeseen happened, even allowing for the inevitable traffic jams as they wound their way through the column of refugees trudging towards the same choke-point. In addition, they had a spare four-gallon can of fuel on the tank’s Bussel rack for emergencies.
“Standby,” Thurlow said.
He opened his hatch slowly and stared down the highway. The road was barricaded by the shattered corpses of hundreds of undead ghouls, savaged by the coaxial. Some of them still writhed and twisted, dragging themselves forward on splintered stumps, but for the moment the relentless hail of machine gun fire was holding the horde in check.
Behind the tank, the refugees continued to run east. Thurlow could hear their shrill panicked screams above the idling engine and the roar of the coaxial. He shot a glance across the ploughed field and caught sight of the remaining two Abrams. They were stationary in the dirt, surrounded by a swarming sea of infected. Thurlow’s eyes went wide with horror.
“A-One-Six, this is A-One-Five. Lieutenant, get the hell out of there!”
The undead were scrambling over the stranded tank’s turret, pounding their fists on the steel hull and howling like wolves. As a kid, Thurlow had seen a scorpion overwhelmed by an army of ants. The terrifying scene playing out before his eyes was nightmarishly similar. The two tanks were completely submerged, their turrets turning like flailing limbs to swat the undead away.
“A-One-Five, we’ve got a dead engine. Repeat. We’ve got a dead engine. We’re stranded.”
“Christ!” Thurlow reeled. The second Abrams had stayed to cover the stricken Platoon Leader and had, itself, also been overwhelmed. There was no sign of Feguluzzi in ‘Alligator’.
“A-One-Three, what’s your status?”
“We’re fuckin’ stalled,” the tank commander’s voice was bordering on hysteria. His name was Hasther.
“You’ve got engine trouble too?”
“No. We charged into a wall of these filthy fuckers and crushed them into the fuckin’ mud. But now my driver thinks the rear drive sprocket has been jammed up with fuckin’ bones and shit. We’re beached, man, and we need help.”
“Christ!” Thurlow swore with bitter, impotent frustration. He glanced at his watch. German engineers had scheduled the bridge over the Rhine for destruction in about four hours. Everything and everyone not on the west bank of the river before then was doomed.
The clock was ticking…
Thurlow knew that if he abandoned the refugees on the highway to help sweep away the undead swarming over the two tanks, the ghouls would charge down the highway and savage the column. Thousands would die. If he abandoned his Platoon Leader and Hasther’s crew in A-One-Three, he was signing all eight men’s death warrants.
He turned and stared back along the highway just as Fox on the coaxial fired another long withering burst into a fresh attack by the undead. They were sucked back by the furious hail of fire, like a wave receding from a beach, and then surged again, snarling as the machine gun cut them down. They were relentless, each persistent attack edging the tideline of dead bodies closer and closer to the Abrams. In a matter of minutes, Thurlow knew he would be compelled to retreat to cover the refugees…
“Get your ass back to Mainz, A-One-Five!” a fresh voice suddenly broke across the Platoon net, ebullient with jovial zeal.
Thurlow frowned. “Feguluzzi?”
“None other, One-Five.”
Thurlow stared across the open field. From the fringe of the woods he saw a tree topple, and then ‘Alligator’ suddenly smashed through the fringe of underbrush and came into sight, skidding her tail from side to side through the dirt as she jounced into open ground.
“Yeeeahah!”
Feguluzzi sounded like he was drunk – or drugged.
“What the fuck are you doing, man? Where have you been?”
“I got lost,” sudden sobriety came into the tank commander’s voice; it was a contrite tone of shame and embarrassment that lasted just a moment. “But I’m back now, man, and I’m ready to rumble.”
“What’s your plan One-Four?”
“I’m gonna’ hose these sumbitches off the Lieutenant’s tank and then give our boy Hasther a helpin’ hand to get goin’ again. Don’t worry about us, One-Five. You’ve got your job protecting the refugees. We’ll meet you on the other side of the Rhine.”
A long flickering tongue of flame leaped from ‘Alligator’s’ turret. A split-second later a sound like heavy canvas tearing reached Thurlow’s ears as Feguluzzi’s coaxial machine gun sprayed the undead clambering over the two swamped Abrams. Thurlow watched on for a long moment and sensed that Feguluzzi’s heroic charge was also suicidal. He lowered himself back down inside the tank and closed the hatch, his expression dark and solemn.
“Nelson? Reverse. Catch up to the tail of the column,” Thurlow’s voice was heavy as lead. “We’re retreating to Mainz with the refugees.”
AOJI-RI CHEMICAL COMPLEX
NORTH KOREA
Captain Tim Scott stood inside the chemical plant’s perimeter fence and stared south. He felt a premonition of foreboding. His heart thumped like a drum inside his chest, his throat was dry, and sweat ran down his back. He saw the Russian helicopters dip below a wooded fold in the ground and plunge suddenly out of sight, about a mile away from where he stood. Scott felt an instinctive shiver of trepidation.
Part of every Special Forces mission briefing included clear instructions from command on the ROE’s for the operation. But the planners of this raid had never figured on the sudden arrival of a Russian assault team. Scott had no clear Rules of Engagement. His training urged him to caution; a firefight could lead to all-out war. But foremost in his mind were his mission orders, and if the Russians directly interfered with the operation he would be compelled to use force, and deal with the consequences in the aftermath.
“Shorty,” he barked over the comms. “Get that drone to the south. I want to see what the Russians are up to.”
Seventy yards away, hunched on the dusty ground near one of the large factory buildings, Specialist Gill manipulated the controls and sent the RQ-11 buzzing into the distance. Scott waited impatiently. He heard the drone fly overhead and kept his eyes fixed on the fold of ground to the south. The three Russian helicopters suddenly rose back into the sky.
For a moment the Hips hung in the air, dark specs against the low grey cloud. Then the choppers put their noses down and came racing back towards the chemical plant. Scott felt a sudden sick sense of alarm.
The Mi-8’s flew low and fast, directly towards the plan
t. The sound of their beating rotors was a thunderstorm of roaring noise and swirling dust devils that formed a dirty screen of haze. The helicopters flashed overhead and reared up suddenly over one of the main factory buildings.
Scott turned and keyed his comms. “Prepare to repel an attack!” he shouted the warning. “Everyone cover the choppers. We are weapons free! I repeat. We are weapons free!”
Long thick black ropes spilled from the open doors of the Hips and Scott suddenly understood. “They’re going to fastrope onto the factory roof! Everyone get eyes on the Russian choppers. When the enemy comes out of those birds, we give ’em hell!”
The assault was coming.
*
Colonel Igor Stovsky crouched behind a dense screen of bushes to the east of the plant and studied the perimeter fence carefully. He saw the Americans begin to move with sudden alarm as the helicopters approached. They abandoned their positions around the fence and began to concentrate towards the buildings in the center of the clearing. Stovsky could grudgingly appreciate the skill of his enemy. The Americans were well trained. They moved with economy, taking up new firing positions to cover his hovering helicopters. As the fastropes dropped from the open doors of the Mi-8’s, the Americans seemed to tense for action.
Stovsky smiled. He clapped a Captain crouched beside him on the shoulder.
“Vladimir, the honor of victory is yours. You may begin the attack, but do it swiftly, and be ruthless,” the Colonel warned. “The Americans have been distracted. They will be confused by the threat of an attack from within, and perhaps uncertain about whether to engage us for fear of sparking a war. We have no such fear. We must capture the plant. Kill them all while their backs are turned, and before they realize that the helicopters are empty.”
The platoon of Spetsnaz special operators broke from the fringe of the woods and surged towards the Aoji-ri plant. They moved silently, using the bodies of the fallen undead to conceal their advance until they were within fifty yards of the open gates. Colonel Stovsky checked his wristwatch. He had ordered the helicopters to hold their position over the main buildings for thirty seconds. Time was ticking down. Any moment the choppers would circle away to the west, and the Americans would realize the stunt was an elaborate ruse. He watched his men go forward. They were running, crouched, covering each other in textbook movements. Stovsky could find no fault. In a few seconds they would reach the gates and open fire on the hapless Americans. The battle would be brief and lethal, his surprise attack complete.
*
A shot rang out – a single round that made Captain Tim Scott spin on his heel in bewilderment. He recognized the sound of the retort. One of his men had fired.
But at what?
Scott saw Nathan Power kneeling beside a set of concrete steps, his weapon to his shoulder, M4 aimed into the dusty distance. Scott turned wildly and his eyes grew wide with breathless shock and sick dismay.
“It’s a feint! It’s a feint!” Scott shouted into his comms. “The Russians are attacking through the main gate!”
Scott was furious. He had fallen for the Russian trick like a naïve schoolboy and he had drawn his men away from defending the perimeter, just as the enemy had wanted him to do, and now the Russians were surging into the plant through the factory’s gates. “Open fire!”
The Americans had scant cover. They were standing in the open ground. The best they could do was drop to the dirt. The Russian Spetsnaz opened fire. Two Special Forces operators were flung backwards. One man carried a SAW. He was punched off his feet by two hits, his helmet spinning in the air as bullets snapped his head back. The second operator killed in the opening seconds was Shorty Gill, thrown to the dirt by three rounds. One struck him in the neck. He sagged to his knees, his expression astonished as bright red blood washed down his chest. He locked eyes with Captain Scott. Gill’s mouth hung open and he gasped. Scott stood paralyzed with shock and sick guilt until the operator’s eyes slowly closed and the life went out of him.
A rough hand seized the stunned captain’s arm. “Snap out of it!” Nathan Power shouted. The Americans began to return fire. The sound of battle intensified. Dust and smoke drifted in the air. “They caught us off guard. Now you have to get the initiative back. Do it!”
The Spetsnaz assault was a determined attempt to get to the center of the complex and turn the battle into a street fight between the maze of buildings. Scott shook himself and his eyes hardened with resolve. The Americans were only taking small arms fire. He puzzled over that fact for several seconds while all around him the battle raged. Then he understood. The Russians couldn’t risk damaging the buildings. They wanted what the Americans had come for – research information on the origins of the plague.
Captain Scott used the one weapon he knew the Russians could not.
“Frag the fuckers!” he shouted. He lobbed a grenade towards the steel wire gates and the ‘crump’ of the explosion flung a volcano of dust and rubble into the air. The shock of the explosion made the ground tremble. Then the air became filled with grenades as the Special Forces operators took murderous revenge.
Assault rifles snapped. Russian fire slammed off the buildings. The rapid fire of M4 rifles and the crack of Russian counter-fire ebbed and flowed as both sides grappled for ascendency. A Special Forces operator hugging the wall of a factory building was struck in the leg and face by Russian bullets. He screamed in pain as he went down. Two Spetsnaz operators were slammed to the ground by a frag grenade. The shocking force of the explosion hurled one of the Russians into the air and shredded the uniform and flesh from his upper body.
Just sixty seconds had passed since Nathan Power’s shot had warned of the impending attack, and yet already the battle was reaching its climax. American grenades had stifled the Russians. Momentum had been lost. The fight threatened to bog down into a sniping duel as targets emerged briefly and then disappeared again in the swirling smoke and haze.
Six of Scott’s men were down – four dead and another so critically wounded he would not survive long enough for evacuation. The Russians had suffered heavier casualties, but still they fought on stubbornly, unable to close on the Americans, and unable to blast their way forward without support fire from the Hips that circled like big black vultures over the battlefield.
The Americans had found small shelter around the buildings. Scott barked orders.
“Phipps, Kelso. Take a SAW and get your butts inside that building. Find some high ground!”
The two operators broke down a factory service door and burst into the gloomy interior. Narrow steel steps led to a first floor gantry. Phipps and Kelso smashed windows and stretched themselves out on the uncomfortable platform. They opened fire.
The devastating firepower of the SAW tore into the Spetsnaz positions and drove them backwards. Two of the Russians leaped to their feet and tried to flank the Americans, firing from the hip as they jinked laterally towards the small research building. The SAW caught both men in a furious flail of flying bullets and cut them down. The battlefield became swallowed in another billowing cloud of dust. Captain Scott sensed the shift of momentum. He pushed himself to his feet, his ears ringing from the deafening clamor of combat.
“Go for them!” he shouted, his voice savage. “Push them back!”
It was the truest test of battlefield courage; calling on men to dash forward into a hail of enemy gunfire. The Special Forces operators did it instinctively. They went into the smoky confusion in short sprints, firing at the dull ghost-like shapes as they emerged through the dust storm. Two more Spetsnaz operators went down in the dirt from head shots but one of the Special Forces operators also took a hit. The man’s right arm snapped back in a spray of blood, struck by a bullet in the bicep. Without breaking stride the operator switched his rifle to his left hand and wedged the butt into his armpit. He gritted his teeth and kept firing, right arm dangling and trailing blood into the dirt.
Tim Scott saw a dark figure loom out of the confusion to his left. He sw
ung his M4, firing even before he had the target in his sights. The Spetsnaz operator wore a black balaclava and goggles. Scott saw the whites of the man’s horrified eyes at the same instant his bullets struck. The Russian’s mouth opened to shout and then his body began to jerk like a puppet on the end of strings. He staggered backwards and collapsed to the ground. Scott ran on, filled with a mad keening battle rage that misted his eyes red and filled him with a brutal thirst for revenge. The Russian commander had bested him, and for long seconds the Spetsnaz troops had held the advantage. But the frag grenades and the SAW’s unassailable position in the factory window had turned imminent defeat into near victory. Now his fierce counter-attack had the Russians under immense pressure. Scott saw the steel posts that marked the chemical plant’s gates loom in the distance. They had almost re-taken the perimeter fence. He felt a wild thrill of exultation and relief. He had snatched victory from the jaws of defeat. It was his last thought; a moment of chest-swelling pride and satisfaction.
The Russian bullet that killed Captain Scott was the last stuttering spat of defiance from the Spetsnaz operators. A single shot struck him in the throat and tore out through the back of his head, shattering the base of his skull and killing him instantly. For a split second a bright cloud of blood vapor hung in the air to mark the place where he fell.
*
Colonel Stovsky could tell by the staccato sounds of the battle that all was lost. Smoke and swirling billows of dust still shrouded the chemical plant – but he was a veteran soldier. He could read the sounds of warfare like a musician reads musical notes. The crescendo had ended. The battle had reached its mournful denouement.
“Tell the men to retreat to the woods,” he growled at his radio operator. Fat oily tears of shame stung his eyes. He blinked them away and thrust out his jaw manfully. “The attack is over. Order the choppers back to the LZ to evacuate us.”
Dead Storm: The Global Zombie Apocalypse Page 58