by Trent Reedy
When we reached South Capitol Boulevard, the situation was different. A couple dozen people stood around the far side of the street. A lot of them were dressed almost as if they were going to the beach, with the guys in ragged, faded T-shirts or shirtless, and bikini-topped women. Could they be from the college? A bunch of them tipped back beers. Some held up signs complaining about police brutality or the wars in Iran or Pakistan. I reminded myself to focus on my duty.
“Group, halt!” McFee ordered.
With a final “left-right,” we stopped marching. I sneaked a look to my left. McFee had a map up on his comm. He ran his finger along it, then looked up at the street sign before checking the map. He sighed and then came to the position of attention. “Left face!” We all quarter turned to the left to face him. “On the command of ‘fall out,’ you will fall out and take a knee in a security perimeter around me. Fall out!”
“Move it!” Sergeant Meyers positioned his guys in a circle. I took a knee facing the street. Sergeant Kemp nodded at each of us in his team as if checking we were okay. Then Meyers joined the lieutenant in the middle of the circle. After a moment, Meyers called for Specialist Sparrow, our Radio-Telephone Operator, to stick with the lieutenant so he’d be able to use the radio that she carried in her pack.
“Go home, pigs!” a hot redheaded girl in a tank top and tiny, tight jean shorts shouted.
“Get out of here! We don’t need no Army here!” someone called from the middle of the group.
“Hey hey! Ho ho! All these soldiers got to go!” They took up the chant.
What was their problem? We were just coming to fix things downtown. A guy with a beard and those nasty, white-boy, wannabe dreadlocks stepped away from the crowd, halfway out in the street. “What’s the matter? You lost? Go home!” he shouted at us. The crowd cheered and started moving to join him. Dreadlocks Guy locked eyes with me. I tightened my squeeze on the pistol grip of my rifle. He pointed at me. “This isn’t the war in Iran. If we didn’t waste so much money on you military people, maybe the university would be funded better and tuition wouldn’t be so high!”
“Bring it in close, men!” McFee called. I was glad to get away from the crowd as I went to join the others. “Okay, listen up.”
“That’s right! Run away!” Dreadlocks shouted.
“Pussies! I’ll kick their asses!” Luchen elbowed me as we came up near the lieutenant.
“They never lifted a finger to defend this country,” said Specialist Sparrow. “We fight to protect their freedom of speech, and they wanna give us trouble?”
“I said listen up!” McFee shouted. His eyes flicked from us to the protestors in the street.
“At ease on that tough-guy stuff,” Kemp said to us. “We’re professionals. We have a job to do.”
Sergeant Meyers glared at the crowd. Lieutenant McFee wiped his hand down over his face. “Okay. Um.” He pointed toward the street. “So our mission is to secure this road right out here. We’re going to move out to the middle of South Capitol Boulevard and move in an, um, kind of diamond formation north above University Drive. We’ll stop all traffic and, ah, people who are trying to get to the riot downtown that way.”
“Remember your military bearing,” Kemp said. “Do not say one word to those protestors.”
“And stay alert!” Sergeant Meyers said. “They may start getting violent. Watch to see if they have weapons. It’s called situational awareness.”
Sergeant Kemp shook his head. “Yeah, yeah, but try to calm down. Keep under control. These people out here are just mad about a lot of different things. They’re probably harmless.”
“But don’t be complacent,” Meyers said.
Watch for weapons? What did these guys think was going to happen? I hoped the other Guard units around the city were having a better time than us. From the shouting and sirens coming from downtown, I was glad I wasn’t one of the police officers assigned to break up whatever was happening down by the capitol building.
We formed up into two tight wedges. Alpha team was in the forward wedge. Sergeant Kemp had point. Me and Luchen were staggered back at an angle to his left and right. Bravo team marched behind us, forming a diamond with Staff Sergeant Meyers, Lieutenant McFee, and Specialist Sparrow in the center.
“Group, halt!” Lieutenant McFee ordered when we approached the crowd. He stepped up until he stood right behind Sergeant Kemp at the front of the diamond. “Okay, listen,” he shouted to the crowd. “Our orders are to secure this road out here. I’m going to have to ask you to please step back.”
“What if we don’t want to?” the hot girl said.
McFee tried again. “Okay, folks, you’re going to have to move.”
“He didn’t say please this time!” Dreadlocks called out.
Sergeant Meyers stepped up next to the lieutenant and shouted at the long-haired guy, “Get the hell out of the way, you hippie piece of shit! You will move voluntarily or we will move your sorry asses for you!”
“Come on, Meyers,” Kemp hissed.
The crowd wailed. Instead of moving away from our formation, they came closer. “This is bullshit,” Dreadlocks yelled. “We have rights! We got every right to be here.”
“Hell yeah!” Another college guy held up his can of beer. He chugged the rest of it and threw it at us. The empty can landed about six feet away. The drinker cracked open another beer and clinked it against his friend’s can. “Hell no! We won’t go!” he shouted.
Others joined him in the chant. What was their problem? This wasn’t a party. Why wouldn’t they move?
“Sir, we can’t afford to lose control here,” Kemp said. “Let’s go around them. We have to move up the street to block the road off at our assigned point.”
The lieutenant nodded. “Sergeant Kemp, guide the formation around the crowd to the left. We’ll move around them. Everybody stay tight. Forward, march!” We walked forward, sweeping toward the side of the crowd, but the protestors shifted over in front of us again. “Okay, Sergeant. Straight through the crowd then,” said McFee.
“Hold your weapons tight,” Sergeant Kemp called out.
There were so many protestors. Some were staggering drunk. Some looked mad. Others laughed. It was chaos, and we weren’t even downtown to the real disturbance yet. The tip of the diamond formation reached the crowd. The group parted around us, but they were standing close.
Too close. One of the guys grabbed the end of my M4’s barrel. I tried to pull the weapon back, but he had a good grip. “Let go,” I said through gritted teeth. What the hell did this guy think he was doing? I wanted to punch him, but I couldn’t let go of the rifle.
One of my guys came flying past me in a blur. His butt stock nailed the gun grabber in the face. The crack was so loud, at first I thought the rifle’s stock had broken.
The protestor fell flat on his back, both hands to his face as thick red blood gushed out from between his fingers. “You broke my nose, man!” he said.
A couple people crouched down around him. Sergeant Meyers wiped the guy’s blood from his weapon. “Never lose control of your weapon, Private. Never,” he said to me.
People in the crowd screamed with anger. They had been backing up a little, but now they moved forward.
“Fix bayonets!” Lieutenant McFee called out.
Oh shit. Bayonets? I had never used a real bayonet. In basic training we’d practiced just with fake rifles with little metal rods welded to the end. The drill sergeants had made us shout stuff like “red blood makes the grass grow green.” Broken Nose Guy’s blood wasn’t growing anything. I absolutely did not want to mess with the bayonet.
My hand shook as I reached for the pouch on my vest, but I unsnapped it and pulled the knife out. Then I pushed its little housing onto the catch under the barrel of my M4. Now my rifle was kind of like a sword too.
We moved forward again, holding the ends of our weapons a little higher so the crowd could see the blades. They seemed to get the message this time. They parted an
d moved out of our way a lot faster. Finally, we stepped out into the middle of South Capitol Boulevard and marched in diamond formation up the street to where it split into two one-way streets.
One of the distant sirens got louder as a police car sped toward us. Half of its lights on top were smashed, and the windshield was spiderwebbed with cracks on the passenger side. They were driving fast, so I didn’t get too good a look, but the face of the cop riding shotgun was bright, bloody red. He must have been cut up pretty bad.
The crowd followed us. A rock flew from somewhere behind us and hit the ground a few feet to my left. We turned to face them and spread out at the point where the street split, with no more than a few yards between each of us. We had blocked the road.
The protestors settled down about twenty yards away, still chanting and shouting, cussing us out, and daring us to put down our guns to give them a fair fight. Someone set off what must have been fireworks — little black cats, probably. At the first crack I jumped and tensed up on my weapon. Good thing I wasn’t on the firing range. I was shaking way too much to hit any of the pop-up plastic targets.
Specialist Sparrow stepped over to me. “I’ve been hearing some crazy stuff over the radio,” she said. “The police are having trouble keeping the mob from breaking through the barricade around the capitol. Some cops have been injured. I think that last ambulance that went through might have had a cop who was stabbed. There must be four or five platoons in the area, all on this frequency. All bad news.”
“So it’s not getting any better down there?” I asked.
She shook her head. “Sounds like it’s getting worse. One Guard squad called in and said fights are breaking out even between protestors. It’s like —” She stopped and pressed the radio handset tighter to her ear, holding up a hand for me to be quiet. She pushed the transmit button. “Last calling station. Last calling station. This is cobra three one. Say again, over.” Cobra was the 476th Engineer Company code name, so she was identifying as the first squad of third platoon. “Roger that. Wait one, over.” Sparrow shot me a tense look and then called out for the lieutenant. “Sir, we got orders coming in.”
The lieutenant rushed over, took the handset, and called up to higher. He typed some things down on his comm. “Roger. That’s a good copy. Wilco. Cobra three one, out.” McFee tossed the handset to Sparrow, squinted his eyes shut, and pushed his fists against his temples. Then he checked the empty street in front of us. “New mission,” he said. “Governor Montaine is ordering the Guard units to tighten the perimeter until we’ve moved into the downtown area. We’re going in to stop the disturbance.”
“Finally, we can put an end to this shit,” Sergeant Meyers said. “Show these bastards who’s boss!”
McFee held a hand up. “Negative. Okay? We’re … You know, this is probably no big deal here. Heading down there to help the police make some arrests or … um … for presence. Kind of … Okay. Anyway. Squad wedge formation. We’re heading straight up this street about a dozen blocks right to the capitol.”
“I’ll take point,” Sergeant Meyers yelled. “Alpha team back to my left. Bravo back and to my right. Sparrow, stay in the middle to keep the radio close to the LT.”
The sun was down as we moved off in a big V pattern up Capitol Boulevard. As we moved, the protestors we’d already run into kept shouting and making fun of us. Some of them rushed past, running downtown. We had to let them go. There was nothing we could do about it.
Blocks and blocks away was the dome of the capitol building. In the growing darkness, red and blue lights flashed on the massive crowd with their protest signs. Beyond that, over the tops of the buildings off to the right, a plume of smoke rose up into the sky, with another ahead and far off to the left. We passed at least two burned-out cars on the side of the road. Four or five businesses had their windows busted. Sirens seemed to blare all around us.
We marched closer, coming within a block of the real riot. Now that stuff back closer to where we’d landed looked peaceful by comparison. A huge mob of people pressed against the metal barricades that had been set up around the capitol building. They were all yelling, shoving, and screaming. One man was pushed into a woman. Another guy, maybe her boyfriend, shoved the first man, who responded with a hard jab. In seconds, others had joined the fight. Off to our right, a few squads of police with huge clear plastic riot shields and clubs tried to break up a different fight among the protestors. Some of the crowd had moved on the cops, flanking them. A few of them had stolen some of the riot shields. It was like every pissed-off person in Idaho had saved up their anger for years and decided to let it all out tonight here in Boise. This was pure hell.
The lieutenant finally halted us at the intersection of Capitol and Bannock, right at the edge of the main part of the riot. He held the radio handset to his ear but shouted to us, “Our orders are to hold position here and wait for other units to get into place.”
It was a sea of chaos in front of us. People held signs: DON’T TREAD ON ME! OCCUPY IDAHO! NO GOVERNMENT SPY CARD! DOWN WITH PRESIDENT RODRIGUEZ! TIME TO THROW OUT THE TEA BAGGERS! Signs with pictures of donkeys hanging from ropes. MONTAINE SUCKS! Signs with dead elephants.
“What is this protest even about?” I said. “Whose side are these people on?”
PFC Nelson wiped his nose with his hand. “Looks like we got all sides.”
Sergeant Kemp stepped up to us. “Both parties, plus maybe some others. Some drunks. Crazy biker-type guys. And enough news reporters to cover it all. This here’s real bad.”
Other Guard units came in from all directions to set up a perimeter in a circle around the crowd. I drew in a deep breath. It was a relief to see at least a couple hundred Guardsmen and know my unit wasn’t alone out here.
An Army Black Hawk helicopter swooped in among the TV news camera drone copters. It flew in circles around the immediate area, shining a bright spotlight down on the chaos below. “ATTENTION!” a voice blasted out of a loudspeaker on the chopper. “THIS IS AN ILLEGAL ASSEMBLY. RETURN TO YOUR HOMES. THIS IS AN ILLEGAL ASSEMBLY. RETURN TO YOUR HOMES… .”
“Everybody get your ProMask on. They’re going to CS gas the whole area.” Lieutenant McFee handed the radio handset back to Sparrow.
“Oh shit,” Sparrow said next to me. “I hate this thing.”
Everybody hated the gas mask. I pulled open the Velcro flap on my carrier case, yanked the mask out, and pushed it to my face. At once my cheeks and chin began to burn a little. Some idiot hadn’t cleaned his mask from a two-week summer training session when the guys must have been in CS. Still, getting a whiff of the tear gas live was worse than any residue left in the mask. I pulled the web of elastic straps down behind my head and tightened the buckles on the bottom two, then put my hand over the front of the mask and pressed hard while blowing out. Then, while my hand covered the filter canister, I sucked in. The mask tightened to my face. A good seal. Now with every breath I took, I sounded like Darth Vader.
Some of the people in the crowd were shouting stuff at us. Getting closer. I watched them through the little blurry windows in my mask. One guy shouted something I couldn’t understand. He lit a rag that stuck out of a bottle. Then he took a few running steps before he let the thing fly.
“Get down!” Sergeant Kemp shouted. I dropped to the ground. The bottle crashed on the street maybe fifteen or twenty feet in front of us. Fire and broken glass erupted all around it. Some people in the mob cheered. There were only nine of us in the squad, ten with the LT. If the rioters attacked us, what were we supposed to do?
The lieutenant pulled our two team leaders close and said something to them. Both of them quickly loaded a forty-millimeter gas grenade into the M320 grenade launchers mounted below their rifle barrels. Seconds later, I heard the popping sound of the launchers firing. Kemp had fired short so the gas round would hit the street about twenty yards in front of us and then bounce toward the crowd, spraying white hard-core nasty tear gas. Ribbon fired a second round the same way.
The other Guard units must have had the same orders, because a faint white cloud developed at the edge of the crowd. Weirdly, nobody seemed to notice for a moment. Then more screams and swears erupted out of the crowd. Some people ran away. One guy vomited in the street as he rubbed his eyes. Stupid. Rubbing your eyes in a cloud of CS gas was the dumbest thing to do. It made it burn ten times worse. Sergeant Kemp fired one more gas round. The protestors scrambled to get away, but bumped into each other as they tried to get out of the gas. Then the wind must have shifted, because some of the gas drifted back toward us. The exposed skin of my hands and neck burned like crazy. It must have been terrible for the protestors in the worst of it.
“THIS IS AN ILLEGAL ASSEMBLY. RETURN TO YOUR HOMES.”
“Okay,” the lieutenant called out. He said something else, but I couldn’t hear him over the roar from the crowd and the helicopter.
“What did you say, Lieutenant?” Sergeant Meyers said.
Nobody could hear anyone when we were talking with these stupid masks on. The lieutenant passed the word down the line, like that telephone game they used to make us play in school. Luchen’s mask came up next to my face. “The squads are going to start moving forward. We’re going to move up in a wedge.”
Oh no. What kind of plan was this? We were supposed to march forward into the crowd and … what? Stab them with our bayonets? Part them until they closed in behind to surround us?
McFee ordered our squad ahead with a hand motion. Sergeant Meyers, on point, held his rifle up above his head with both hands in a kind of “raise the roof” gesture. We started forward. Kemp looked back at us guys in his team before moving up. I walked after them on the far left. Inside my mask, I could hear my every breath heavy and loud. I kept my thumb on the safety switch of my weapon with my finger right next to the trigger.