The Retreat #5: Crucible

by Stephen Knight

  “Sixty percent standing, sir. We’ve been augmented with National Guard troops and able-bodied civilians with prior service,” Boats said. “We’re still capable of maneuvering fires.”

  Muldoon snorted slightly. Tall tales never went out of fashion.

  Barker noticed that. “Issues with the reported facts, soldier?”

  Muldoon shook his head. “No, Colonel. Good to go here.”

  Cassidy jumped back in. “Sir, we’ve been given a mission from Reynolds. We’re here to—”

  “I know why you’re here, son. You want to secure Moreau before the crazies can get to her first. Reynolds wants her taken down to Florida.”

  “Yes, sir. That is correct.”

  Outside, the big guns boomed again. This time it was a sustained volley of concentration fire, a decent ten or twelve salvos that filled the ASP with thunder. Muldoon didn’t crouch this time, but the confines of the fortification seemed to amplify the noise. He still tucked in his rifle and turned to survey the rest of the troops. Only Boats didn’t react to the explosive fusillade of rounds heading downrange. Nutter, Rawlings, and Campbell all looked uncomfortable. And frightened.

  “We’ll take you to her, Lieutenant. Then you can tell your Harry Lee that she’s here, so he can move her out and let the rest of the crazies chase your mangy asses all the way to Florida.”

  TWENTY-TWO.

  The pine barrens surrounding Fort Stewart didn’t provide a shit ton of concealment for the battalion’s operations, but Tackaberry figured it was about as good as it could get. While the longleaf pines themselves didn’t offer a lot of opportunity for an enemy to mask its advance, the wiregrass was a different matter. Though there was no chance of a vehicle sneaking up on them overland, foot soldiers could do just that if they were careful and thorough. Tackaberry and his men weren’t terribly concerned about that—caution was a lost art to the klowns—but the notion that the battalion headquarters element could be scouted was something of a worry.

  Even klowns had leaders, and those leaders would very much like to know where the First Battalion, Fifty-Fifth Infantry’s tactical operation center lay. Assembly area security was light, as Lee had no recourse but to commit most of his combat power to the operation at hand. By Tackaberry’s count, there were fourteen uniformed soldiers providing area security. At this point, those lightfighters had a lifetime of experience and knew how to get things done, but their numbers were so minimal they could only sit, wait, and pray to an increasingly less benevolent God that a substantial enemy force didn’t discover the encampment.

  So Tackaberry assigned his men to make roving patrols in groups of three and report in anything unusual over the walkie-talkies they had liberated from the Underground Hotel before pulling out. The lightfighters didn’t have enough MBITRs to go around, so Tackaberry’s element—call sign Geezer, due to the element’s cumulative age being in the hundreds of years—used newer civilian gear that was actually smaller and probably more secure than their military counterparts. All the channels were encrypted, just in case the klowns had retained some ability to perform signals intelligence. It was just for communication amongst themselves; the bands used were incompatible with the military SINCGARS radios used by Lee’s people in the TOC. That meant if something went down, Tackaberry would have to flag down one of Lee’s troops to pass the intel back to the TOC. He didn’t like that his men hadn’t been issued MBITRs, nor did he appreciate the inference: that Tackaberry and his band of merry old men weren’t being taken seriously.

  Well, fuck him, then.

  Tackaberry remained inside the TOC’s security perimeter, cradling his rifle. He had been issued MOPP gear, as had the rest of his team, as a precaution against a biological attack. Everyone who was outside the TOC or a vehicle had them, but Tackaberry hadn’t fully suited up yet. The heat of the day was oppressive enough, and he didn’t want to walk right into full-on heat stroke. Like any soldier who had any sanity, he’d always hated MOPP gear. Even though what he had been issued was newer than what he had been forced to deal with over his career, it was just as cumbersome as it had been in his day and still smelled like old farts that had been filtered through dirty socks. Not very appealing, and he was certain he would don it only grudgingly in the event of an emergency.

  Gunfire came from virtually everywhere. Tackaberry didn’t know who was shooting at whom, or if the lightfighters were even in the mix somewhere. He gritted his teeth at being kept in the dark, cut out of the command decision cycle. It wasn’t his role any longer, and hadn’t been for years, but he still felt the keen desire to step in and take charge. There were aspects of the engagement that even a crusty old aviation fuck like himself could shape, and he was frustrated that he and his guys were being shunted aside.

  Make do, old dog. Make do.

  He busied himself with walking the perimeter around the assembly area with a retired African-American Air Force master sergeant named Linton. While Linton was probably a couple of years older than Tackaberry and his hair was almost snow white, his face wasn’t nearly as lined. Linton had told him the first time Tackaberry had commented on his youthful looks that “Black don’t crack.”

  It suddenly reoccurred to Tackaberry that he hadn’t known what that meant, and still didn’t as he and Linton walked through the steamy day, surrounded by combat coming from every radial of the compass. He glanced over at Linton, who was taller than Tackaberry by a few inches but was finally beginning to stoop as the years caught up with him.

  “Leon, what the hell does ‘black don’t crack’ mean?”

  Linton looked at him quizzically for a moment. “What?” Like himself, Linton carried a civilian AR-style rifle that was substantially more expensive than what the Army handed out. He had a bayonet affixed to it, and an elaborate Trijicon scope attached to the top rail. His fired 7.62-millimeter rounds, though. A real man-killer.

  “You mentioned that to me a few years ago. Actually don’t know what it means,” Tackaberry said.

  “Sir, you’re curious about that now?” Once they found themselves in a more realistic military setting, Linton had started referring to Tackaberry as “sir” or “colonel” as opposed to his first name, Kief. Old habits died hard, even in a former Air Force puke.

  “I might not have the chance to ask ever again,” Tackaberry said.

  Linton shook his head. “Sir, it means that us black folk don’t show off wrinkles and such like you white folks do.”

  Tackaberry grunted. “That’s it?”

  “That’s it, plain and simple. Sorry, no wonders of the world to reveal today, sir.”

  “Well. I guess I can cross that one off the bucket list.”

  Linton smiled vaguely beneath his thin white mustache. “You might want to think about tossing that list away, sir. Things aren’t ever going to be the same.”

  “Leon, why the hell are you calling me sir all of a sudden?”

  “You’d prefer cracker?”

  “God damn, that hurt.”

  Linton tried to smile again. “We’re in military mode, Colonel. You’re my CO, and this is how it’s done.”

  “Even in the Air Farce?” Tackaberry said.

  Linton snorted, the closest he would dare come to a laugh. “Even in the Air Force, sir.”

  “Six, Haynes.” The voice came over the earbud Tackaberry had in his right ear. He reached for the radio clipped to the right side of his vest with his left hand. The fingers of his right hand remained wrapped around his rifle’s pistol grip. There was no way in hell he was going to let go of a firearm at a time like this.

  “Haynes, send it.”

  “We got movement out here, Six. A whole lot of movement.”

  Linton gave Tackaberry a sidelong look as he pulled in his own rifle.

  “Haynes, need more clarity on that. Over.”

  “I’ll spell it out for you, Six. There’s a klown force coming right down One-Nineteen. Looks like a battalion or regiment-sized element, fully motorized, and they have
armor. I say again, they have armor. Advance elements just rolled past us. You need to pass that on. Over.”

  “Six. Just how far out did you guys go? You’re well outside the wire!”

  “Needed to go deep to put some eyeballs on the road. I’m not close enough to make out the unit, but I think I saw a Five-Seven designation. We’re thinking they’re Seventh Cavalry. If these guys are Cav, then they’re local and they’re coming home. Over.”

  “Are they klowns, Haynes? Over.”

  “Yes, sir. Unless the US military has started chaining naked, bleeding people to the front of their vehicles, then I’d say these are klowns. Lots of trucks too, sir. And they’re playing music—‘When I See You Smile’ by Bad English, just in case you’re interested. Over.”

  “What the fuck is that?” Tackaberry wondered aloud to Linton.

  “Gotta love the klowns,” Linton said as he waved over some of the lightfighters manning a fighting position near them. “Twisted motherfuckers, but they do have an operational sense of humor. Shoulda been on Carson.”

  TWENTY-THREE.

  Lee looked up at Walker when the information was relayed to him. He was surprised the cavalry unit had gotten so close undetected, and then he remembered the Merlin’s sensors were still focused on the DIVARTY ASP. He ordered the asset released to wide-area surveillance; he had people at the ASP now and didn’t necessarily need to worry about keeping eyes on it all the time. As Walker relayed that to Florida, Lee turned back to the maps. The cavalry unit would pass very close to the battalion’s HQ. If they stopped to dismount their troops, there would be some friction.

  “If they have armor, they’ll probably be going for the tank trails, sir,” Turner offered. He pointed at a spot on the map. “These actually go right by the ASP. Third ID has substantial defense in depth there, but they’re more organized against an infantry attack, not armor. We need to pass this on pronto.”

  “Inform Raptor Six,” Lee ordered Walker. “Also, let’s get eyes on that area, but presume the Cav is operating under SOP. We’ve just seen the advance recon. The main body’s going to be a couple of miles back. Recommend to Raptor neutralization fires all along One-Nineteen, starting at the exchange with One-Four-Four. Launch Inveigle. Pause Desperado in preparation to tasking them to fall back to our position. We’ll need the guns if things get hot in our area.”

  “What about Eyes, sir?” Walker asked.

  “They need to extract Moreau ASAP and consolidate with Inveigle, then start heading back to us. The sooner the better. Covering fires from artillery would be convenient to have, but let’s presume Thunder is all we’ll get. Send an immediate pulse to Thunder Six.”

  “Yes, sir. On it.”

  Lee turned to Turner. “Doug, get outside. We’re about to get danger close with the klowns. If we need to un-ass, I want you out there calling the shots. Stay plugged in to us here, but otherwise, you’re free to do whatever you see fit to keep the heat off us.”

  Turner grunted, shoved himself to his feet, and snatched up his rifle. “About fucking time.”

  TWENTY-FOUR.

  Inveigle was a two-platoon element numbering almost eighty soldiers led by Captain Hank Caruthers, who was new to the battalion and had just finished his mountaineer training before the unit was rotated into Boston. First Sergeant Weide Zhu had grown to know him during the evolution of that engagement and found him to be generally unflappable and trustworthy. But he was a closed-off sort, not the kind of leader to give inspirational speeches or react to pressure by barking out orders and getting shit done. He was the sort who studied a situation and responded accordingly—essentially the kind of officer the Army liked. In fact, he reminded Zhu of his own father, an immigrant from mainland China who was slow to act and always measured in his response. Zhu was quite certain his father was dead now, or among the laughing throngs sweeping through Alhambra, California. Zhu viewed that philosophically. Yes, his father was possibly a murderous klown, but at least he was finally having a good time.

  The problem with serving under Caruthers, filial similarities aside, was that engaging the klowns always resulted in shit flying off the rails. Caruthers would really need to step outside of his comfort zone to get things done and preserve as much of Inveigle as possible. As insurance this happened, Zhu had been detailed to Inveigle by Turner to ensure that when the shit hit the fan, the lightfighters had a steady advocate who had seen his share of shit. While Zhu’s public reputation was that of being a steady hand—he was a favorite of the troops—Turner was well aware the Chinese NCO could turn on the heat when things started to pop at the seams. Zhu and Turner had come up together. As entry-level grunts, they’d faced the heat, sand storms, and camel spiders in Desert Storm, but weren’t finally blooded until Restore Hope in Somalia. Between the two of them, they embodied half a century of military experience. While Turner was chained to Colonel Lee’s side, but he knew full well that an extremely senior NCO could make all the difference during an operation like Inveigle. And it wasn’t like Turner had to beg. Zhu was ready for doing more than checking up on the troops and acting as a chauffeur/bodyguard for the extraordinarily lame Major Walker.

  Of course, meeting the klowns head-on wasn’t something he looked forward to. Or did he? Zhu had inherited a great deal of his father’s caution, and while the life of a professional soldier wasn’t without bucket loads of risk from time to time, he had managed those risks fairly adroitly over the course of his career. While he had been exposed to explosive, frenetic combat in the past, it wasn’t something he had courted in some years. But here he was, at what might very well be the end of the world, leaning forward in the foxhole and getting ready to spray hate at his enemies all day long. It wasn’t a hundred percent atypical for him, given his occupation, but that he found himself longing for it made Weide Zhu wonder just how much he had changed since getting the orders to deploy to Boston. The Chinese had a saying: Life is short and bitter. The phrase popped into his mind suddenly as he examined his rifle for the hundredth time. Despite his preparations, he had a sense of dread in the back of his mind. The adage might prove more correct than he had previously thought.

  You’re fifty-one years old. For you, life might be bitter, but you cannot complain it was too short.

  The plan called for Inveigle to attack a small assembly area at the southern edge of the base and hammer the shit out of it, then fade back and draw in more klowns to pursue them. Using battlefield deception tactics—basically running, hiding, firing, and running again—Inveigle would essentially make a lot of noise and do a token amount of damage, enough to keep the inflowing klown masses interested, but the lightfighters would not close and destroy. They were to avoid becoming decisively engaged, and instead filter to the southwest. Once they’d shaken the klowns, they would push overland back to where Desperado would hit the post, near where Eyes had gone in. The general assumption was the klowns would be easy to pull off target, and while they were combing the pine barrens to the south to search for Inveigle, the unit would instead go to ground and provide covering fires for Desperado’s retreat. Backed by Thunder’s mortar tubes—and, he hoped, some of the bigger guns he’d heard hammering away at the klowns from somewhere inside Fort Stewart proper—Zhu felt that Caruthers’s command might be successful in its mission.

  But shit always blew up when the klowns entered the fray. They were fearless, still intelligent despite their disease, and as unpredictable as any foe in the history of combat.

  Yes, life might be bitter, indeed.

  When he advanced through the pine barrens with Caruthers and the advance team to reconnoiter their intended target—what appeared to be a rear area encampment where the klowns could rest and reconstitute after attacking the defenses around Fort Stewart—Zhu had his first inkling he might have misjudged the twenty-eight-year-old captain he was supporting.

  It wasn’t a bivouac they were targeting.

  It was a center of torture.

  For fifteen minutes, Zhu and the
rest of the advance team watched as klowns, decorated with everything from freshly hewn bone adornments, feathery scalps, and tribal tattoos to hundred-thousand-dollar diamonds, bespoke tailor-made suits, and Tag-Heuer watches, slowly turned captured civilians and military officers and soldiers into klowns. They did it in a variety of ways. They did it by pissing in their faces, by stabbing them with infected lances, by hurling offal into open wounds.

  And most horrifyingly, they did it by rape.

  First Sergeant Weide Zhu considered himself to be a very reasonable, well-ordered senior soldier of the United States Army. And so did everyone who had ever profiled him over the course of his career; one of the adjectives that usually came up was “level-headed.” While he had an emotional range just like any other man, Zhu had been able to tamp it down, secure it, and leave it tied up while he dealt with whatever crises had to be attended to. He would release the emotions later, usually alone or in the company of close friends and colleagues, where they could be reviewed when lives were no longer on the line and decisions had already been made. Four times in his past, Zhu had openly wept in front of men for whom he had nothing but the greatest of respect. And they had wept with him, for some of the things a man had to do in uniformed service was absolutely soul-crushing, and they could not withstand that final report out, where the actual human cost was accounted for.

  Every man, woman, and child who was raped was savaged first, so that whatever canal was to receive their unholy seed was already torn and bleeding. Then the klowns would line up and fuck the hell out of their target, delivering payload after payload of infected semen. Some pleaded for their lives, but most fought, even the children. Neither tactic worked. Once the right viral density was arrived at, the laughter would commence. It would start as giggles at first, then outright, uproarious laughter, along with exhortations for the rapists to redouble their efforts and give their best.