by Justin Bell
“Ain’t pretty,” Haskell said, coming up on Davis’s left near the door. “Hopefully they don’t drop those bunker busters on us like they did Boston and Hartford.”
Davis didn’t turn, he remained standing where he was, focused and staring as the city began passing close beneath them, the smoke coiling around the rounded front of the transport, crawling up the metal panels bolted with rivets, whipping up into the composite blades and scattered to the wind. Cresting the cityscape, the smoke began to lightly dissipate, though Davis could see the smoldering wreckage of what looked like a single engine plane buried in another tall building a couple of blocks to the north. Passing over the tallest buildings, they lowered slightly and as they neared the streets, evidence of accidents and chaos faded into view, smashed and broken cars, mass transit vehicles in flames, and the tiny, distinctive shapes of scattered bodies throughout the streets and sidewalks. Davis closed his eyes and looked away.
“Coming up on the LZ,” the tinny voice reported from the cockpit.
Davis forced his eyes open again, and saw what he assumed was the target. It wasn’t a building so much as a clumped collection of buildings, a complex of sorts, though the structures were wedged tightly together, ringed by an elaborate campus of pavement. Even as they came down lower, he could make out the tall fence that ran around the entire perimeter of the data center, and he recalled one of the selling points of a facility like this. Many of them were run by ex-Navy officers, and if he remembered correctly, the man in charge of this one had actually been in charge of security for a nuclear submarine. This would not be a cake walk.
The King Stallion banked gently, coming around on the western rim of the perimeter, guiding itself toward a sprawling, but empty parking lot just south of the structure. Thankfully the facility had at least been lightly staffed when everything went down, so the normal allotment of employee vehicles wasn’t present.
“Coming into the landing zone,” the pilot reported from the cockpit, and Davis could feel his stomach lurching in response to the swiftly reducing altitude. He and Haskell made their way to the cargo area, completely ignoring the standard operating procedures telling them to remain seated during a landing. As the helicopter descended, the large cargo door in the rear clanged and began grinding, slowly working its way open, a sudden blast of cool air charging into the hold, battering the ten Marines who sat inside.
Each of them was loaded for combat as if they were air dropping into Afghanistan instead of northeast Philadelphia, fully decked out in Modular Tactical Vests equipped with SAPI - Small Arms Protective Inserts, plates that could be inserted into the MTV to provide enhanced protection from enemy fire. Some of the Marines wore enhanced combat helmets, while a few others still sported the lightweight variation.
“Coming down, Marines!” shouted Gunnery Sergeant Haskell, “deploy your M50’s!”
The men grumbled lowly, but obediently pulled their filtration gas masks down over their faces, securing the straps tight to their polyethylene and kevlar helmets. Out of the ten Marines, eight of them carried M16A2 tactical rifles, with the last two carrying M27 Infantry Automatic weapons, recent replacements for the M249 squad automatic weapon, lighter and more portable than the older belt-fed units.
Davis looked around at the men, smiling beneath his own M50 gas mask. It certainly appeared that this detachment of Jarheads was on the cutting edge. Small favors. His eyes caught on Agent Craig, who was struggling slightly, but managing to get his own filtration mask cinched up around his black kevlar helmet.
Around him, the CH-53 slammed onto the pavement with an echoing bang, the rear cargo door following with its own loud collision a handful of seconds later, and in that moment, the men were up and charging, boots clomping on metal, hushed voices barking encouragement, the low rattle of weaponry being carried across their chests.
Without a word of command, the men burst free from the rear cargo hatch out onto the parking lot, weapons snapping up, bodies fanning out in a loose semi-circle, facing out from the transport, hands clutched around tactical grips, eyes glaring out from underneath the rounded lenses of the protective gas masks.
Muffled voices spoke from around the circle, announcing the immediate area was clear, and no hostiles were present.
“Let’s go, Marines!” shouted Haskell, his voice muffled by the gas mask, directing the men to collect in an organized group and run toward the tall brick wall encircling the compound within.
Haskell and Davis took the lead with their M16’s, with Sergeants King and Lassiter close behind, both men grasping M27’s. Tanner, Holbrook, and Quail were clumped together next, all of their M16’s swiveling artfully, covering the vacant areas on each side of their group, searching for possible enemies.
Davis thought the whole operation was a little ridiculous. They weren’t in an enemy country, they were in Philadelphia for crying out loud, their only enemy was advanced structural integrity, not combatants.
But then he remembered Boston. He remembered Major Chaboth and he remembered Team Ten. They’d thought the same thing, they thought they were there to check out a biological attack, and were greeted by cold steel and hot lead instead. Suddenly, he felt a lot less ridiculous about the military maneuvers. Underwood and Rickard moved low, crouch walking near the rear of the group with Sellers and Campbell trailing behind. Both men faced backwards with their M16’s, walking steadily in reverse to keep up with the group and ensure their six was covered.
“We have a man down by the security gate,” said Haskell and Davis noticed him, too, the slumped shape of a uniformed security guard sprawled by the metal gate, leaning back against it, arms and legs splayed apart as if he had dropped to do a snow angel when there was no snow.
“Move quick,” Davis said, turning toward the trio of Corporals, who nodded acknowledgement. “Search the body, see if he’s got a key. If we don’t have to shoot or blast our way in, all the better.”
“Yessir!” they shouted and broke away from the group, darting toward the fallen body. Moving as one organism, the group broke away, separating into a coverage pattern while Corporal Tanner checked the body.
“I’ve got an ID,” said Tanner, tugging a white badge off its lanyard. The man’s head jerked as he pulled.
“Show some respect, Tanner,” hissed Holbrook.
Tanner glanced back at him. “You want me to hold a funeral and bury him before I take his ID badge, Holbrook? Gunny, we got time for that?”
“Zip it, both of you,” barked Haskell.
Davis moved toward Tanner and accepted the ID badge that was offered him and he tried hard not to look at the man’s photo or name. This would be much easier if the dead security guard was an abstract, and not an actual human being. Placing the ID card at the card reader near the gate, he was greeted with a loud approval, followed by a throb of green light. A loud clack set the gate swinging slowly inward and Davis pressed his back to it, nodding toward the rest of the group. Haskell pulled back and let the group rustle through, weapons drawn, then he and Davis pulled up the rear, following them in.
The gate closed behind them, keeping them penned into the circular campus with the growth of brick buildings rising up two stories before them. From the outside it looked like little more than a warehouse, but Davis suspected it was considerably different inside. He was far from a technical specialist, but his time with Team Ten had shown him some advanced data co-location centers, and he knew, more or less what to expect. The world seemed drowned in silence for that moment as they slowly crossed the threshold between the gate and the buildings, moving in tandem, an orchestra of muscle, armor and weaponry.
Davis moved slowly, turning east and glaring into the open area to their right, focusing on deepening shadows that grew between the building and the grass and the fence and the grass. Even in daylight, the design of the structure cast strange shadows, and the lenses of the gas masks made it even more difficult to see far in the distance. He took in the entire space ahead and around the
m.
The complex stood around 150 yards ahead, a wide paved path leading the way from the gate to the front door. Vast, grass lawns stretched out from either side of the paved path, a strange oasis of nature amid the hard structural solidity of this veritable twenty-first century castle. Situated throughout the grass in various places were rocks and trees, obviously in an attempt to look natural, but captured between the brick buildings and the tall, concrete wall, they ended up looking even more out of place. These same shadows draped over the rocks and cast dark pallor over some scattered trees, a false, makeshift park separating the massive security gate with the interior building itself. Davis wondered if there were some security protocols that demanded this, or if it was a half-hearted attempt to give employees a sense of nature in the middle of the hard brick, bullet-proof glass, and cold steel.
He hesitated momentarily. Something had moved. From one dark shadow to another, he thought he’d seen the blurring shift of movement, a darkened figure traversing one swath of blackness to another.
“Heads up,” he whispered, “we’ve got movement at two o’clock. May just be a disoriented survivor, but let’s keep eyes open and on high alert.”
“Acknowledged,” said Haskell, moving to look where Davis was looking. They were both so focused on the movement to the east, nobody saw what was coming at them from the west.
They heard it before they saw it, a sudden rattling explosion of gunfire, a sound so completely foreign to them in this environment that no matter how much they had prepared for it, they weren’t truly expecting it.
Sergeant Lassiter whirled to the left and took three rounds high in the chest, flailing backwards as more shots echoed over the vacant stretch of campus around the buildings.
“We’ve got hostiles!” screamed Haskell, moving back and spinning left, his M16A2 springing up and rattling off return fire purely by instinct.
“Cover cover cover!” screamed someone, Davis couldn’t quite tell who, as chunks of ground and grass blasted up from the ground, bullets stitching across the ground, carving a trench through the moving Marines. Holbrook moved toward Lassiter, reaching him just as he was falling, and wrapped an arm underneath his left armpit, lifting and dragging, moving backwards toward the brick building which still seemed so far away.
“I see movement!” shouted Davis, coming up to the rear of the group, his weapon shouldered, cradled with two hands as he tried to peer through the concave eyepiece. “Six bodies! No eight! Ten! There’s a bunch of ‘em!” He fired a swift burst of return fire, and he thought he saw the blurring motion of one of the enemies spiraling away and down, but he couldn’t be sure.
“Building! Building! Move toward the building!” screamed Haskell. “Holbrook, drop Lassiter, grab his 27 and get us some blasted cover fire! King, you’ve got the other 27, you guys have ‘em for a reason!”
Both men obeyed the direct order, moving like fluid through the collected group, heading west, the M27’s lifted and rattling a deafening chorus of return fire, pelting 5.56-millimeter rounds back at the group who had been firing upon them.
“Keep moving!” Haskell shouted. The Marines ducked low and ran forward, juking right, then charging left, bullets thudding into the ground and whining off a few scattered decorative rocks that had been strategically placed around the campus, put in a way to look natural, although nobody truly thought they were.
Davis frantically looked north toward the building, knowing there was at least a hundred yards of empty ground, a hundred yards of them being sitting ducks, even with the two 27’s keeping heads down to the west. His eyes roamed as he dropped low, almost feeling the rapid impact of a trio of shots hitting the ground just behind him. He could hear the muffled shouts of the enemies, barking at each other in a language he couldn’t quite ascertain from this distance and with this much gunfire surrounding it.
“Sellers, Lassiter belongs to you! Grab him and carry him, double time! I’ve got your six!” Sellers barked an acknowledgement that was little more than a hoarse shout, hefting the sergeant up over his broad shoulders and charging forward with him as Davis broke for one of the unusual looking rocks, ducking as bullets careened off its uneven surface. Pressing his shoulder to the hard stone, he leaned around it and rattled off a burst of gunfire just as Haskell fell in next to him. Not far away, Davis caught sight of Agent Craig moving forward at a low, crouching trot, hands clutching a pistol as he moved. Davis once again had to admit a begrudging respect for the intelligence geek, running through a firestorm, showing no signs of shrinking away from danger.
“What is this all about?” Haskell asked, interrupting Davis’s focus on the intel agent.
“Those guns,” Davis replied. “They sound like Kalishnikovs to you?”
Haskell narrowed his eyes, ducking low next to Davis as another chattering round of fire spat chunks of rock off to his right.
“I’ll be damned,” he whispered. “I’d recognize that old school metal-on-metal grind anywhere. Who the hell is running around Philadelphia with AK-47’s?”
Davis pulled back a little bit, watching the rest of the Marines. Holbrook and King were pedaling right, firing their M27 in sporadic, alternating bursts, well trained and well executed, and he was glad for Gunny’s iron clad training regimen. The other foot soldiers had just reached the main gate, which was enclosed in a wide brick three-walled bunker, the glass door set inside a wide recess in the building. Sparks danced off the brick wall as they watched, but the Marines themselves appeared safe, for the moment.
King shouted and stumbled backwards, one of his hands flying free of his automatic.
“We’re sitting ducks out here,” Davis hissed. “We need to head forward!”
“I’ll cover you while you break for it!”
Davis nodded, whirling around the rock and rattling off some gunfire. He saw a darkened shape fifty yards away slam backwards onto the grass, his weapon spiraling up into the air, then he ducked and charged forward as Haskell swung around behind him, firing his own M16A2.
“King, get up off the grass! You breathin’?” Davis yelled as he ran toward the fallen gunner. King nodded, pushing himself upright gingerly. “Take this and get to cover!” Davis shouted, throwing the M16 toward him. King dropped the 27 and snatched the other weapon out of mid-air. Davis dropped to a knee as rooster tails of shorn grass and clumped dirt spun up around his feet. Scooping up the fallen M27, he remained on one knee, but swiveled around, drawing down on the huddled mass of mystery men and unloading with full auto. They broke away and scattered.
“Gunny, come at me!” Davis shouted and Gunnery Sergeant Haskell did. He threw himself into a run, pounding over grass as bullets roared toward him. Holbrook fell in next to Davis and fired a quick burst before having to eject his spent mag and start fumbling for a replacement.
“Building!” Haskell screamed. “Go now!”
Holbrook nodded and peeled away, turning and running toward the building and Haskell followed him at a full clip, slipping behind Davis as he ran. The Team Ten Sergeant leaped to his feet, aiming and firing one last swift burst before his own M27 clicked empty, then he turned and ran full speed toward the building ahead.
“Move move move, get inside!” he screamed as he ran, knowing that the other fire team would be converging on them swiftly.
“Badge!” shouted Corporal Underwood, “who’s got the ID badge!”
Davis charged up next to Sergeant King, dropping his head low and reaching out toward him. “Let me hold one of your 27 mags, I need to reload!”
Sporadic automatic fire rattled from behind them, sparks punching into the bricks.
“They’re coming around! Getting an angle!” Lance Corporal Quail moved around the group, bringing up his M16 and opened fire. Davis saw darkened shapes lurch behind one of the rocks, trying to work their way closer.
“Dammit, Tanner we need that door open!” he shouted.
Tanner slapped the card against the reader as more gunfire chattered. Haskell turne
d to get a better angle, then grunted, as he felt the horse kick of bullet impact drive into his upper chest. He slammed backwards against the glass enclosure leading inside.
“Gunny!” shouted King, moving next to him, firing his own M27.
“Armor took care of it,” wheezed Haskell, though he was bent over, working to catch his breath. A scattering of rounds peppered the glass above his head, but rebounded off, skittering away into the air. Agent Craig moved up left of Haskell, his pistol raised, and he squeezed off a handful of shots toward the moving shapes in the distance.
Davis shouldered his reloaded M27 and fired toward the approaching shapes. One of them flew backwards, legs flying out as a second came around the other side of the rock. Davis shifted and fired again, sending another figure sprawling toward the ground.
There was finally a click and unlatch, the best sound Davis had heard in a long time.
“We’re in!” shouted Tanner. “In in in in!”
The door hurled open and the Marines charged in, Haskell and King moving gingerly, Sellers manhandling the limp form of Lassiter into the entryway. Davis hung back with the M27 firing wildly at approaching figures as the rest of the team pushed their way into the building. The dull whack of bullets bouncing off of bullet-proof glass thunked repeatedly to his left, and turning quickly to make sure everyone got inside, he back-pedaled himself, nearly throwing himself into the entryway, slamming the door hard behind him. More bullets pounded against glass, though the surface didn’t break or even spider web, it held amazingly tight as they pulled deeper into the lobby.
The lobby itself was wide and welcoming, a mock marble tiled floor spreading out into a vast, opened room. A single door elevator was nestled against the rear wall, next to a long oak reception desk which currently sat empty. There was another armored metal door against the left leading to what looked like some kind of emergency stairwell. The entire lobby was empty, save for the team of Marines, and outside bullet impacts against the glass lessened, then finally stopped, leaving them there in silence.