***
They shut and secured the doors behind them. The other three had moved to the lower level to help cover their return.
“What happened?” Scott asked once the last of the doors had reached the floor.
“Massacre,” Lance said, his previous sorrow replaced by an ever-hardening sense of determination and anger. “A fucking massacre. Drake’s boys shot them all in the smoke and then fled. God-damned cowards.”
Scott, Julia and Hannah glanced between themselves. Lance nodded, avoiding taking his anger out on them, knowing it would have been hard waiting and not being able to influence any of the events that unfolded beneath them. At least he and Dan had been up close and knew how hopeless their position had been.
Scott’s voice was gentle but firm, and Dan could see the senior officer in him coming out. So far he had been happy to yield the lead to Lance and, to a lesser extent, to Dan, since they were soldiers by trade and had the experience they needed to achieve their mission. While they had been in the firing line with Drake’s boys Scott had been resting, and he had obviously been thinking ahead.
“Look,” he said, “let’s leave the factory and return to the chopper. Julia made a survey from the second floor while you were clearing through the smoke, and she’s got enough of an idea to come up with a good plan for the loading tomorrow. We’re risking a lot if we stay here. If we get back to the roof we’ll be better positioned to secure ourselves from the hacks and from the,” – Scott waved his hand outside – “from those zealots.” Julia nodded in agreement.
“OK,” Dan and Lance said, almost at the same time. Dan wasn’t sure how Lance was feeling but he knew it would be a relief to get back to a secure location, and they could relax a lot more on the roof-top than they could anywhere else inside the building.
“And we’ll lead,” Scott finished. “You men take up the rear, and let us get everyone back to the roof.” He waved a hand to silence Lance’s protests. “It’s fine. We’ll take back the MP7s and it should be a simple matter of clearing back where we’ve already been. No surprises, just the same route. Take a breather while we move and let us take point for a while.”
Dan smiled briefly as they exchanged their primary weapons again. Despite the shock of seeing Suit and some of his men gunned down, at least their team was unscathed and their mission achievable. Hold out one more night and then back to Carson, he told himself.
***
The move back was slow, methodical and uneventful. Julia and Hannah dropped a few hacks in the ground floor foyer as they regained access to the stairwell, but the open spaces worked to their advantage. Locking the door behind them, Dan walked up the stairs last in the group. He felt ancient and weary, completely worn down by events. His body armor, which felt light enough when he had donned it in the morning, now cut into his shoulders and weighed down his chest, and the packs they picked up at the base of the stairs weren’t helping, either.
Hannah drifted back from the front and briefly chatted with Lance, before drifting back to Dan. The stairs, while narrow, easily allowed them to walk side by side.
“How are you holding up?” Hannah asked, her voice quiet but calm. Despite his fatigue Dan felt himself smile.
“OK,” he said. “And I’ll feel a damn-sight better when we’re sitting down getting some food into us.”
Hannah smiled back at him and briefly squeezed his arm. Dan wasn’t sure what magic she had used on him, but after that brief exchange he felt a lot better. The weight of his vest lessened on his frame and his entire posture picked up.
Dan was the last of the team to step out onto the roof, taking special care to close the door behind him securely. He couldn’t lock it after Scott had sledge-hammered it open, but he wanted to make sure it was jammed shut and wouldn’t just swing open in the night. He’d had enough surprises as it was.
Lance was away from the rest of the group, scanning the horizon when Dan turned around. The others were near the helicopter, crouched by their bags getting some drinks out.
“What do you want to start with?” Hannah called out to Dan, catching his eye as he re-shouldered his pack for the last few meters he need to cover to reach them.
Dan never got a response in. From the corner of his eye he saw something small explode in a cluster of shards against the concrete roof, and then small shards of cement and supersonic projectiles screamed past him, a small crack echoing in their wake.
“DOWN DOWN DOWN DOWN!” Lance screamed, louder than before.
Dan, at the same time, yelled out “CONTACT!” and threw himself sideways, seeking to avoid the impacts and small explosions of bullets pummeling into concrete. He fell onto his pack, the Eberlestock cushioning his fall, his fingers automatically going to the quick release clips on the straps. A few seconds after the first rounds landed he heard the echo of a machine-gun in the distance, a sound somewhere between the dull thud of an industrial washing machine and the higher pitched crack of golf clubs smacking tees of a driving range. The fire was relentless, constantly spitting projectiles all over the roof they were on, sending chips and fragments of concrete into the air.
After three seconds of remaining low, fighting with his pack the fire ceased for a second. Dan could hear a loud moaning from behind him but he knew better than to focus on that. Win the fire-fight. Use everything you’ve got to win the god-damned fire-fight. He was fighting with his pack, trying to extract the SCAR, so that he would be able to answer the machine-gun’s fire with something substantial in return. As nice as his 416 was as an assault rifle, he wanted to be able to delivery heavy, accurate firepower in return, and not simply unmask his position with the muzzle flash of a 5.56mm weapon. Dan struggled briefly with the weapon sleeve in his pack and then managed to pull lose the SCAR. The heavier weapon felt reassuring in his hands, as he left his carbine next to him and rolled over to survey the scene.
Everyone was hunkering down, staying low. Hannah and Julia had pulled Scott into cover behind a large, heavy extractor duct in the roof and were applying pressure to his thigh. Scott was grim, pale and quiet, moaning slightly but otherwise conscious. The three were covered from the incoming fire for the time being. Further along, closer to the edge of the roof was Lance. He lay prone on the roof, his weapon pointed in the direction of the fire but he was looking back to Dan, trying to catch his attention.
“They’re trying to catch the entire roof in their beaten zone,” he yelled, referring to the pattern of fire a machine-gun as it plunged into the ground. “They aren’t directing their fire at all. It’s just a general spray in our direction.” Dan stayed low, pushed up against the nearest air-conditioning duct he could find. It mightn’t stop one of the machine gun rounds but it would at least low it down.
“I’ve got my SCAR out, but I need to get into position and I need a target indication,” he screamed back. Lance nodded under his helmet.
“OK, stand by then.” Lance rolled back onto his stomach and fed a 40mm grenade off his chest into the M320 grenade launcher under the barrel of his 416. Remaining prone he angled the barrel of the carbine higher into the air, lining up an invisible parabolic arc between the grenade launcher and the target.
Dan couldn’t see exactly what Lance was doing but he knew he’d have opened up a metal ladder sight on top of the grenade launcher and would be putting the target between the marks that best estimated the range. A loud, popping thump reached him and he saw Lance crack open the grenade launcher to the side and swiftly insert a second round. He fired the second 40mm grenade as soon as he had regained his sight picture, barely pausing once the weapon was loaded.
From the distance Dan heard the low, shuddering thud of the first round impacting on the ground and he took his cue. He leapt onto his feet, his body bent over and low. Dan sprinted, staying doubled over, zigzagging side to side along his route until he was alongside Lance.
The machine-gun fire had ceased after the first crump of the 40mm impacting, and the second grenade served to keep the g
unner distracted while Dan was vulnerable in his bound from cover to cover. It was unnerving being on the receiving end of high explosive natures, with the sound, shock-wave and fragmentation serving as a far more effective means of surprise and suppression than a single bullet. Even if you missed the target, which was easy to do when you were firing the first couple of 40mm and had yet to adjust for range and wind, the effect of unexpected explosions erupting around you would have all but the most disciplined of an enemy stunned and suppressed for a brief instant.
That was all Dan needed, and he took advantage of the few seconds respite between machine-gun bursts. Sure enough, Dan was able to crawl behind a low piece of cover before the machine gun fire resumed.
“Light machine-gun, think it’s a PKM or similar,” Lance said to Dan.
A PKM was a machine gun version of an AK rifle, heavier and longer, but it was only good for short or mid-ranged engagements. If they had been on the receiving end of a heavy machine gun, like a .50 cal or a 14.5mm, then the entire roof around them would be getting churned apart and they’d have little hope of doing anything but hunkering down and hoping for the best. Dan’s mind flicked back to the PKM he’d seen on top of the first patrol’s truck, which one of Beard’s men had taken over. No doubt they were one and the same.
Dan scanned to his front and could see two small plumes of light, whitish dust being blown away from the highway, no doubt the remnants of Lance’s 40mm grenades.
“Reference 40 mil plumes, central between them, around 900 meters, five trucks parked up in line. Central truck, two in from the right is the technical.” Lance was referring to a civilian truck that had a crew-served weapon mounted on it – a cheap man’s fire-support vehicle or ‘technical’ – and Dan knew that would be his main target.
The machine gun fire had resumed, with the PKM rounds resuming their haphazard pummeling of the roof-top. Dan thought he could hear a metallic clang as one to two rounds smashed into the delicate fuselage of the UH72 Lakota. Now he was focused on his surroundings and the initial burst of adrenaline had given way to training, he could tell that the fire was wild, inaccurate and encompassing the entire area, rather than hammering a selected point. They were lucky – they could respond, without being subjected to brutal and lethal automatic fire every time they tried to move, which would have been the case if they were up against professionals.
He still needed to act fast, though, to avoid Beard’s men getting a lucky round in. Beard’s group had already been lucky once, and had hit Scott, and he didn’t want anyone else getting whacked. Dan quickly set the SCAR up for firing, with the bipod legs extended and the briefest checks on the range turrets to ensure they were still at the neutral point. He would use ‘aim-off’ on the sight to adjust his fire, rather than pre-set the dials for a first-round hit. There was no need for surprise; he just needed to deliver accurate fire, fast.
Lance had set up three 40mm grenades next to him and, as he saw Dan ready his rifle, he loaded the first of the egg-shaped grenades.
Dan swept his sight picture onto the row of trucks parked up on the road. Keeping the gun-truck central in his sight picture he reached up and twisted the magnification of the sight so that his field of view zoomed in on the gunner. Leaving it set at around 10 times magnification he settled back and placed his non-master hand on the stock of his weapon, sandwiched in behind his jaw and against his neck. Lock it off, nice and steady.
He could hear Lance loading and firing the first of his 40mm grenades but he blocked out the sounds and focused on his cross hairs. He was firing at a target 900m away and he selected the fourth mil-dot down on the vertical bar, lining it up on the gunner’s centre of mass.
The crump of the first grenade exploding reverberated from the distance and through his sight he could see Beard’s men jump and scatter slightly. They were flighty and unused to being on the receiving end of fire. Worse, tactically speaking, was their tendency to stand in bunched groups, watching their gun hammer away at the rooftop Dan and his team were on. Amateurs.
Dan lined up and fired his first shot as Lance fired another grenade. Dan kept his eye fixed on his scope until he saw a flash against the side window of the cab, slightly low and to the left of where he had been aiming. He instantly corrected his point of aim, moving the cross-hairs up and right slightly, and then fired six rounds in three seconds.
The second grenade went off as his 7.62mm match grade rounds found their target, smashing both the PKM machine gun, the box of ammunition that was feeding into it and the gunner’s torso apart in a repeated hail of accurate, lethal rounds all crashing into the same, small area in a matter of seconds.
The noise caused by the exploding rounds distracted Beard’s men for the briefest instance, and Dan selected and fired another set of four rounds at the driver of the vehicle before Beard’s cohorts realized their gunner had been killed.
Dan felt a small surge of righteous satisfaction inside him he took in the result of his fire. The windscreen of the gun-truck had been caved inwards and the driver lay sideways, his head a bloodied mess. The gunner had been thrown back off the cab and was now out of view, and while Dan couldn’t tell for sure he guessed that if he wasn’t dead he was very close to it.
Dan felt invincible, killing with such ease at such a distance. Beard. Kill Beard. Dan’s excitement was replaced with cold, consuming anger as he recalled the massacre of Suit, Fisherman and the rest of the men and kids they had seen outside the factory. Dan moved the scope low across the rest of the gathered men, searching for the large arms and rotund stomach of the arch-typical bully. For an instance Dan thought he had him, but then the sight picture was obscured and misty.
“God-damnit!” Dan spat. “They’ve popped smoke, again!”
“OK, that’s good, they’re bugging out,” Lance replied, his voice neutral and calm. Sure enough, Dan kept his sights on the edge of the smoke and he could see four trucks rolling away. He held his fire. He was pretty sure that he could see passengers in the vehicle who weren’t part of Beard’s group – perhaps some of Suit’s men, who had been spared, or some innocent survivors who had been picked up. Despite feeling elated and energized by the ease in which he had killed and the satisfaction of exacting vengeance on Beard’s group of bandits, Dan didn’t want to add to see any additional suffering if he could avoid it. His cross-hairs followed the trucks as they drove away, west, towards Boulder. Once the truck disappeared from sight he scanned back across the scene of the contact. The gun-truck remained on the road, the driver still slumped in his seat, the PKM abandoned on the roof’s pintle-mount. It was obvious who had won that engagement. From behind them they could hear Julia and Hannah work on Scott, and Dan remembered that their victory had not come without a cost.
***
Dan let Lance return to the group while he stayed at the end of the roof, acting as sentry in case Beard’s patrol returned. He didn’t expect they would, after having withdrawn behind a smoke screen after being subjected to his SCAR-H’s firepower, but he scanned the highway and surrounds just in case.
After ten minutes Hannah brought a small box of ammunition over and a drink bottle.
“Here,” she said. “Lance said that you might want some more.” Dan took the box of 7.62mm ammunition and nodded. He wasn’t exactly low on ammo, but a top-up was a good idea. He took the drink bottle offered and took a deep sip from it.
“How’s Scott?” he asked.
“Good,” Hannah said, her face contorting into a small frown. “We’d managed to stop the bleeding by putting a tourniquet over the top of his thigh, as we were worried he was going to bleed out on us. Lance is quite handy with combat first aid and Julia’s not too bad herself, and between them they got some clotting agent and bandages onto his wound. They’ve taken the tourniquet off now, and there isn’t any bleeding, so his arterial artery hasn’t been severed. He’ll be OK and we’ll get him back to Fort Carson.”
“What then?” Dan asked. “I mean, do they have a surgery opera
ting?” Hannah’s face kept the slightly pained look on it.
“There are one or two doctors, but when we left they were completely flooded by cases and had next to no resources. Hopefully the med situation at Carson will be better now, but Scott will make it. His leg might be stuffed and I’m not sure if they’ll be able to operate to get the bullet fragments out anytime soon, but he’s going to survive. That’s the main thing, I guess.”
Dan nodded. “That’s a relief to hear. It could have been a lot worse, for all of us.” Something was nagging at the back of Dan’s mind, and then it dawned on him.
“Hannah, the helicopter – the Lakota, is it OK? I thought I heard it taking a few strikes.”
Hannah looked at him and bit her lip slightly.
“I’ve done a quick inspection while it’s still light, but it was only a walk around and a few pre-flight checks. It did take a few hits and the co-pilot’s side of the cockpit saw the worst of the beating. A few divots along a rotor blade, too, but that’s all I could see. She should still be air-worthy.”
Dan looked up as Lance walked over to them. He’d taken his SCAR out his pack, as well, and was walking with the heavy marksman rifle as his primary weapon. His HK416 was slung over his back.
“Well, Scott’s going to be OK, but we’re going to need a plan for tomorrow,” Lance said quietly as he neared them.
Hannah piped up again, speaking to Dan. “I’ve already told Lance, but as part of my pre-flight checks I powered up and managed to raise Fort Carson on the HF radio. It’s a weak signal which makes it hard to get hold of them, but it will get clearer in the evening as the cloud cover will help us bounce the HF radio signals back and forth, with less interference from the heat in-between us that’s currently causing static.”
“That’s good news, then, which has been lacking for the most part of the day,” Dan said, somewhat wryly. Lance shrugged.
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