Black Knights, Dark Days

by Fisk, J. Matthew;

  Don’t make me do this, I silently begged. It was the voice of the teacher. I had worked for a year at a ranch for troubled teenagers. I had taught Spanish in their high school and led the younger kids in a daily physical fitness program that emulated military basic training. After school the younger ones liked to play army. I taught them basic drills like movement-to-contact or react-to-contact. I could hear their laughter now, transposed eerily like a psychotic soundtrack over the gunfire and shouts. The teacher in me, the one who loves kids and longs to bring healing to injured young hearts, was pleading with my hands to stand down. Let them take your life, just don’t kill them. The warrior in me, the one who wanted to survive and see my wife and family again, said, Sit down, Teach. I’ve got this.

  Time seemed hardly to pass, those thoughts racing through my mind in less than a second. I squatted a little lower in the turret to super-elevate the gun. I put all three small figures within the iron, unforgiving circle of my front sight post. The vehicle bucked once as Riddell ran over something. I paused. The platform steadied. I reacquired the target and depressed the butterfly trigger with both thumbs. The Deuce roared as bullets licked the wall greedily just below the children, climbed quickly and devoured them all. There was dust and there was blood, a fine red misty cloud of it. With half-inch slugs I had killed forever the better part of my soul.

  Introspective self-flagellation would have to wait. If I did my job today, I would have years for it. I continued to scan for targets as we hurtled south, engaging anything that moved. Bullets continued to snap and whine past my head and careen off of the armor. The Deuce, hungry as ever, continued to feed.

  

  Perry knew their luck couldn’t last forever, but he was surprised that they had made it as far as they did, perhaps 200 meters or more. He saw a large pile of busted concrete in their path and turned the wheel hard to miss it. Their bumper lost contact with Red 3 for just a second. When they re-engaged, Taylor’s truck hit the right rear and sent Davis and his crew spinning. Every fan of the show Cops could tell you that this is called the PIT maneuver, used regularly to put a fleeing felon out of commission. It worked like a charm—or curse—on Red 2. They spun around a perfect 360 degrees and went sailing over the pile of concrete.

  

  Taylor was able to muscle his vehicle to the left at the last second without slamming in to them and came to a stop even with Perry. Their gaze locked, both of them staring with wide eyes. He looked over and could hear Davis shouting at him to keep pushing. Taylor nodded and threw the victor into reverse. Within a few seconds, they had locked bumpers again. His foot was heavy on the gas, but this time they were going nowhere.

  Shit, what now?

  Taylor backed up a few feet and then tried to ram them off of whatever had them high-centered. The bone-jarring crush of metal had no effect on their forward movement. He kept his foot on the pedal, engine revving, working his steering wheel back and forth.

  Taylor spared a glance at his vehicle commander and saw that the man was dazed and unresponsive. He turned back to Bellamy and cried, “We ain’t going nowhere. This Humvee is dead.”

  “Keep trying,” shouted Bellamy as he continued to fire his weapon.

  The tires began to smoke with the effort and then, suddenly, nothing. The engine still roared, but his vehicle was not moving at all. Jon Taylor was aware of Swope pulling up on his side.

  “What’s going on?” his platoon sergeant yelled.

  Taylor turned to him, eyes wide with terror. “It won’t go anywhere. We’re dead.”

  

  The only two Bradleys without a dismount squad attached belonged to the commander and the executive officer, Lieutenant Clay Spicer. York seized his chance. “Hey, Mike Golf.” The Mike Golf, or master gunner, was busy getting Captain Denomy’s track ready for battle. “We’re getting on with ya’ll whether you want us or not.”

  The Mike Golf looked out and waved them in. “Get on. Let’s go.”

  York eagerly piled in and took a seat on the bench closest to the turret so that he could put on the CVC, a combination light helmet and radio. Lovett, Rusch, and other soldiers eager to help also loaded into the troop compartment. Winkler, a mild-mannered Kentucky native, wanted to squeeze in, too, but room was scarce.

  As York adjusted his microphone and began to listen to the frantic radio chatter, he called out, “Winkler, there’s no more room. Just go jump onto that LMTV. Tyrell, you and Arteaga go with him.” As the trio hustled over to the cargo truck without complaint, York realized for the first time what they were about to do. A city-wide ambush was in progress, and they were about to attempt to ram several unarmored vehicles through it.

  I think I just sent those guys to their death. He suddenly felt really selfish for jumping in the back of a fully protected Bradley while he sent his soldiers to ride in the open air. As the ramp closed, sealing them inside, he wished that he could take it back.

  

  Riddell quickly found that his way forward was blocked by a cul-de-sac of scrap metal walls at the intersection of Colorado and Delta. The L-T smacked my leg. I dropped down on my haunches to hear what he wanted.

  “Can you see them over this shit?” he demanded.

  I popped back up and twisted to my left. At first, I found it difficult to pick out anything other than trash and wrecked cars, but suddenly movement a little further south caught my eye. “Sir. They are almost a hundred meters south of the intersection,” I yelled.

  

  “Push us. We’re dead.” Jon Taylor could hear Denney yelling desperately to him. He had the accelerator mashed to floor for only acoustical effect, it seemed. Robinson dismounted to inspect Taylor’s undercarriage. “What’s going on, Taylor?”

  “We ain’t going nowhere. We’re not moving.” Taylor mashed to gas as punctuation.

  Robinson lay down on his belly to look as Taylor continued to gun the engine. Fluid was spurting from the transmission in an arterial spray. Not good. “Dude! Your transmission is gone!”

  

  Red 4 pulled up on the right side. Swope was talking rapidly on the radio. Rogers leaned across, eyes full of worry, and demanded, “What’s going on?”

  “Both trucks are dead,” yelled Denney, “We can’t go anywhere.”

  Swope told Rogers to back up and attempt to push both vehicles forward. The ad hoc train wouldn’t budge. Just then Coleman saw a man pop out of an alley to their south with an RPG. As the man brought it to his shoulder, Shane Coleman laid him out. He saw movement from a rooftop directly above where he had just killed the rocketeer. Quick as thought, he snatched up his M16, drew a bead on the black-clad figure, and shot him center mass.

  Rob jumped up and ran over to Swope’s window. “Hey, the transmission on Red Three is shot, and Red Two done caught up on something. What you want to do?” Rob’s normally soft Southern drawl had disappeared. Swope told Rogers to stop pushing lest they disable another vehicle. Swope knew they had to get off the street, vehicles be damned.

  

  Joe Thompson tried to prepare himself as he watched the vehicles in their own company begin to line up. Without waiting to be told, he went to the lead vehicle—a cargo truck operated by the headquarters section—and waited to load up. He had volunteered for duty during the initial invasion of Iraq as a truck driver. He had never taken part in a fight, but he was used to the adrenaline rush one felt before running in to a hot zone. One by one, other soldiers made their way over and gathered around the truck. Tyrell—the tall black kid from Brooklyn—joined Justin “Timberlake” Rowe, Arteaga the reformed gangbanger, Kentucky-born Tim Priddy, and Deaver, who had doom writ large across his Nordic face.

  

  Wild heard the unmistakable sound of a .50 caliber machine gun approaching from the north. He could make out Red 1’s victor now appearing from behind a pile of metal, Chen facing north. Wild shifted his sector of fire to the left even as his heart began
to swell with relief. Red 1 stopped on the far side of the intersection beyond a wide median and a wall of junk. He could hear the L-T shouting, “Come on. Move!”

  Wild yelled back, “The Humvee’s down, the Humvee’s down.”

  

  The L-T ordered Riddell to turn the vehicle around and pull up next to the disabled vehicles. Riddell executed a 23-point turn to accommodate both the numerous obstacles and the wide turning radius of his victor. Aguero, impatient in the best of times, growled, “Meet me over there when you get out of this mess.” He opened the door and quickly began picking his way around, over and through everything that stood between him and his men.

  

  Denney saw the L-T sprinting toward them on foot, puffs of dust and chunks of concrete exploding all around the man’s feet, as the enemy continued to display their lack of marksmanship. He felt a burst of hope that they might just make it after all.

  

  As Shane Aguero waded through enemy fire, he had time to think—even as his lungs seemed to fill with lava from the effort in dashing about in full gear—that this was pretty damned cool. He was suddenly the star of the best first-person shooter game ever. It was so surreal that it might as well have been a game. He saw as he approached that the lead vehicle was caught on something. Several people, including Robinson and Davis, had dismounted and were in various stages of problem solving, to include Stage 0, completely clueless. Red 3 and 4 were pooling their efforts to push him off. Swope, red-faced, was screaming something at the drivers. What the hell?

  Sprinting full out for 150 meters with an extra 40 pounds of gear is not an easy feat. Lieutenant Aguero, a very fit man of 30 winters, was winded when he reached his platoon sergeant. “Why…aren’t…we moving?” he panted. Oh, Jesus, this sucks.

  Sergeant Davis yelled, “My vehicle won’t move and Red Three just lost a transmission.”

  Alarm rising in his heart, Aguero cast a glance to Haubert’s vehicle, wondering briefly where he was. At that moment, as if the Humvee had been waiting for the L-T to witness the event, he saw the transmission pan drop out of the vehicle. Oh. Shit.

  Robinson, having long decided that the vehicle was a lost cause, sprinted over to his L-T. “I don’t know what you’re going to do, but we better get the hell up off of this road.”

  Oh, to have the luxury of time to properly respond with the necessary sarcasm, Aguero thought. “Good point,” he said.

  Aguero took a deep, calming breath and said, “All right, pull all the sensitive equipment and ammo of the Two and Three, cram everybody into whatever still rolls, and we’ll duck down an alley until help comes.” His eyes darted around, looking for the most defensible position. His gaze locked on to an alley just to the south. The entrance was commanded by a large three-story building that he thought would make a good base of operations. “There, we go there,” he said, indicating the ground that he hoped would not become their Little Big Horn.

  “All right, you heard him. Get everything off Two and Three and load everyone into the eleven-fourteens,” yelled the Platoon Sergeant.

  “Ain’t no way we’re all going to fit,” Davis responded.

  “Squeeze everybody you can, then. Last few we’ll cover. It ain’t that far to walk,” Swope drawled.

  “Who’s walking?” laughed Davis.

  

  Davis and Robinson ran back to their soldiers, shouting as they went for everyone to grab their gear and get into a vehicle. Trevor Davis had decided that he would remain behind to make sure the radios were disabled and everything that could be an advantage to the enemy was pulled off.

  

  Wild grabbed his CamelBak and pulled the machine gun from the mounting bracket, hardly feeling its weight. A belt of six or seven rounds of a 200-round belt dangled from the feed tray, testifying to number of targets he had engaged already. He ran over to Taylor’s Humvee, hurled the 240 in the back, and jumped over the spare-tire rack. He popped up and screamed, “Let’s go.”

  Taylor looked back at him with pure terror. He said, “My Humvee’s broken, it won’t move. They shot the transmission.”

  Wild, who had been too busy to keep up with current events, was stunned. Every expletive he had ever learned or heard flashed through his mind. Unable to find one that adequately expressed his dismay, he said nothing. Davis, erasing the commo codes from the radio, looked back and noticed where his soldiers had gone. “Not there. Get in one of the up-armors.”

  Now you tell me, Wild thought.

  He grabbed his M16 and jumped to the ground, moving quickly toward Red 1 as Riddell pulled up opposite the platoon sergeant to provide them more cover. Too quickly, as it turned out. As his hand grabbed the door handle, he had a nagging feeling that he was missing something.

  

  Davis finished purging the encryption data. As he waited for the blinking LED that would tell him that he was successful, he felt a jarring impact to his weapon as his hand went numb. Cursing, he let the rifle hang by its strap and looked at his gloved hand. He saw no holes, blood, or missing digits. He tried to wiggle his fingers and could manage to do so only with effort. No time to worry about it now.

  The radio LED blinked one final time and winked out. Task complete. He looked up as Wild ran across and piled into the L-T’s vehicle, newly returned as they were from their romp up north. He cast his glance into the bed of the Humvee and noticed that Wild had left his machine gun.

  

  Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Wild cursed himself roundly as he turned back to the Humvee he had just abandoned to retrieve the weapon. Davis waved him off. I’ve got it already, the gesture told him. The young soldier hadn’t felt so inept since basic training. Mentally smacking his forehead, he vowed to pull his head out of his own fourth point of contact.

  

  Coleman, still rattled by the numerous rounds that had ricocheted off of his turret shield, felt something bump his legs and he jumped involuntarily. He glanced down and saw Private Perry looking up at him. Shane adjusted his legs so that Derrick could squeeze into the middle. He was peripherally aware of others piling in, but did not dare take his eyes off the road for another second. The young NCO tried to slow his breathing and racing pulse. This was actually kind of fun, when you got down to it. Fun for someone familiar with the extreme-sports-skater-punk lifestyle he had joined the Army to escape. Terrifying—but fun just the same.

  

  Fowler sucked on a cigarette as though it were his last as everyone clambered aboard the LMTV, those with longer limbs assisting the vertically challenged. Fowler had never seen any of them move so fast. He noticed that people he didn’t even know were asking if they could come, too. They were told, sometimes impolitely, to go somewhere else. He was peripherally aware of Specialist “Ski” Wodarski in the turret—in between the driver and shotgun seat—attending his M2 .50 cal while Sergeant Hunter, the supply NCO and driver, performed last-minute checks to his vehicle.

  

  Bellamy knew they were bugging out, but he wanted to stay on the gun as long as possible to cover everyone. He had already killed nine people now and didn’t mind if the tenth never showed up for the party. In the back of his mind, he heard a voice reminding him that today was his wedding anniversary with his ex-wife. He continued to wonder if they were going to survive and relished the hope that he would be able to consider life’s regrets in the morning.

  Behind him, Bellamy heard someone shout, “OK, get in this one. Everybody get in this Humvee.” He looked back and realized he was going to be late for the ball, perhaps even as in the Late Justin Bellamy. He saw nobody near him except Davis and that Swope’s vehicle was already packed with soldiers, their faces almost comically distorted against the bullet-proof windows.

  Wasting no time, Bellamy jumped down and ran toward Red 4 as Red 1 took off for the alley. A red-faced and clearly angry Swope yelled, “Where’s your weapon?”

  “Doc’s got it. Le
t me in.”

  “Your 240.”

  Bellamy looked back at the vehicle he had just left which now seemed eight miles away rather than eight meters. Yep, there it was, all right. Big, healthy machine gun sitting there in the dying sunlight. Justin took a deep breath and dashed back. He leapt up onto the back with unconscious grace and plucked the weapon from its mount. He also snatched up a can of ammo. His eyes danced over the few remaining items, an AT-4, someone’s shotgun, bottles of water. He looked up and saw that the platoon sergeant was advancing south to cover their retreat. He only had two hands and couldn’t carry it all, so he jumped down and beat feet toward the alley behind Red 4. As he ran, he stepped on the ammo belt that hung from the gun like a long brass tongue. The belt disconnected, but not before sending him sprawling into the dust. Bellamy was back on his feet so quickly that one might have mistaken his fall as an optical illusion. Feeling only terrified, and not even remotely embarrassed, he snatched up the partial belt of ammo and kept running.

  

  Deaver eagerly yearned for the fight and was completely sure that they were all about to die. He noted the truck’s thin aluminum sides that protruded barely three feet from the floor, which was lined with a single layer of sandbags. He helped Tyrell and Thompson roll the tarp off the top so that they would have better visibility. Deaver desperately wanted to draw their exposure to someone’s attention, wanted to shout that 40 men were about to die instead of 20. His fatalistic nature took over, though, and he knew that no one would—or could—pause long enough to listen to reason. Besides, his friends, Fisk and Denney, were out in that mess.

  

  Trevor Davis noticed movement on a rooftop to the east. He smoothly took up aim, waited for the natural pause in his breathing, and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. He went through the process of correcting a malfunction to his weapon that all soldiers learn in basic training. This so-called remedial action will correct 90 percent of misfires, allowing the return of the joyful sounds of 5.56 millimeter death. Davis felt no joy in that moment of awful silence. He cocked his weapon to the left as if to say, “What’s wrong? Did I hurt your feelings?” That’s when he noticed that his rifle had a gaping hole in the receiver, just above where his right hand squeezed the pistol grip. No wonder his hand was numb—he was lucky to still have one.