The question on everybody’s mind is about the big picture.
“We’re treating a short march in Manhattan like a combat patrol,” says Hicks. “Who exactly is the enemy and what is the threat level, Sarge?”
“Civil authority is breaking down,” Ruiz says. “As we saw last night, the police here can’t control the growing number of Mad Dogs. We’re not cops. We don’t have non-lethals. But we have to defend ourselves. We have been cleared to shoot anybody who attacks us even if they are unarmed. If you have time, call in the target. If you don’t, take your shot. We are taking no chances with the Mad Dogs. Understood?”
“Hooah, Sergeant,” says Hicks.
The other boys simply nod sullenly. They’re not buying any of it, but they know better than to ask questions that have too fine a point.
“There’s one more thing I want to tell you before we move out,” Ruiz continues. “LT sent out a scouting party that got back just a little while ago. Word is we may see some horrible things while we’re on the move. I will understand if what you see makes you sad, mad, whatever.” His face darkens. “But if you break discipline and put the rest of the platoon in danger, I will put my boot so far up your ass I will be tying my laces in your mouth. Understood?”
“Yes, Sergeant,” the boys answer.
“Like you mean it, ladies.”
“Yes, Sergeant!” they shout.
“Any other questions?”
McLeod opens his mouth, but says nothing.
“All right then,” Ruiz tells them. “Now fix bayonets.”
Full battle rattle
The platoon steps off, two column files bristling with bayonets and strung out over sixty meters of ground. The boys are in full battle rattle, each carrying weapon and ammo, body armor, rucksack and two canteens full of New York City drinking water. It is a lot of weight but the boys feel light without their two-and-a-half-pound helmets. The air is muggy and the temperature is climbing in this late, last gasp of summer, making them sweat in their universal camouflage uniforms colored dark tan, light gray and brown in the desert/urban pattern. They move with weapons loaded, safeties off and cleared hot. Each soldier in the main column is spaced about two meters apart. Despite the low-grade racket caused by their clinking and banging gear, the platoon moves relatively quietly, shocked into silence by the scenes of devastation they’d been warned about by their squad leaders.
Behind them, the doctors and nurses who turned out to see them off begin to retreat back into the hospital, looking worried.
“Jesus,” Williams says after several blocks, wagging his head. “This is mad, major-league, mother of all wacked.”
“Are you rapping, Private?”
He glances behind to see McLeod, who grins and waves breezily over his weapon.
“Thought you were all nervous back there. This shit don’t bother you?”
McLeod stares back wearing an innocent expression. “What are you talking about?”
Williams shakes his head in wonder.
The truth is that after nearly a year in Baghdad’s most dangerous neighborhoods, seeing dead bodies and scorched property has become routine for PFC McLeod. The fact that the bodies are now American does not bother him. Instead, he feels annoyed. They offend him. McLeod has gotten through most of his young life using scorn and derision as a way to rationalize his failures, avoid traumatic stress reactions, and generally feel superior to everybody else. Scorn got him through Iraq, for example. He considered the Iraqis to be suicidal for continually taking on the world’s most powerful military, and therefore one couldn’t be blamed for helping by killing them.
And these New Yorkers, well, what we have here is a bunch of rich, successful people who got their comeuppance with a strong lesson in How the World Works. Specifically, that bad things happen to everybody regardless of who you are or what you’ve done, so it doesn’t really matter who you are and what you do.
“When was the last time we were asked to fix bayonets?” Williams wants to know. “Boot camp?”
“What I don’t get is if it’s so bad out here that we can’t walk a mile without a bullet in the chamber and bayonets fixed, then why didn’t we just stay where we were?” McLeod wonders aloud. “It’s like they’re trying to get us killed.”
“All I know is this place gives me the creeps,” says Williams. “There must be hundreds of dead people on First Avenue all the way up to the East River Tunnel. And nobody’s picking them up for burial. For some reason, that’s the worst part of it.”
From the back of the file, they can hear two guys from First Squad sing:
Study up on weaponry,
The M16, the M15,
Sammy knows the enemy,
Flim flam, big slam, tell the Major what you see.
Hut, hut, hut, hut!
The boys are starting to clown around to get their spirits up. Like McLeod, the other boys of Second Platoon have seen the worst and are already adapting to it, taking it in stride, getting their swagger back while they let their rage build up bit by little bit. Right about now, the new ROE does not sound so shocking to them. If Mad Dogs did this, then the soldiers are itching for some payback.
“Don’t tell me Rollins is trying to rap back there,” Williams adds, disgusted.
McLeod laughs. “Oh, man. It’s even better than that. Him and Carrillo are actually singing that old Blondie song, ‘Military Rap.’ That’s brilliant.”
“Blondie who?”
“Come on, dude. Blondie. Blondie!”
“Like I said. Who?”
“Oh, man, this is really great,” McLeod says with genuine feeling. “This mission has finally found its rock and roll soundtrack.”
He suddenly notices that the singing cut off abruptly several moments ago.
“Private McLeod, shut yer dicktrap!” Sergeant Ruiz roars inches behind his ear, making him jump. “We are in a potential combat situation, and that means no singing and no chatting with the other girls! Williams, your muzzle’s lazy: Don’t point your weapon at Hawkeye’s ass! He’s on our side! Johnston, put that goddamn camera away: Stay alert and watch your sector, you moron! And Hawkeye, what the hell are you looking at up there? You’re supposed to be leading this platoon.”
“Sorry, Sergeant,” Hawkeye responds.
“Right now you are the eyes of this platoon and you are looking at everything except the street. What’s the problem, son?”
“Well, I never been to New York before, Sergeant,” Hawkeye says shyly.
“What’s that, Private?”
“Somebody told me the United Nations was around here somewheres.”
“You were sightseeing,” Ruiz says in disbelief.
“Yes, Sergeant. Like I said before, I am sorry about it.”
“Get a good look before it’s gone, Hawkeye,” says McLeod.
The squad leader shakes his head, darkening with barely controlled rage. “Stay sharp and keep it zipped, ladies!” He turns around and sees Corporal Hicks trailing him, looking pale. “Corporal, I could use your help keeping this freakshow in line.”
“Yes, Sergeant.”
Ruiz lowers his voice. “You all right, Ray?”
“Yes, Sergeant,” Hicks says. “I just saw. . .she looked like my. . . . Never mind, Sergeant. It doesn’t matter.” He looks dazed.
“Put it out of your mind, whatever it is,” Ruiz growls. “We got a job to do.”
“Roger that, Sarge,” says Hicks.
Hawkeye suddenly turns and extends his flattened palm for all to see.
Immediately, the column stops.
Security halt
The boys get behind the nearest cover and crouch, continuing to scan their sectors and provide three hundred sixty-degree security around the platoon. Within moments, Lewis’ column on their right also scatters behind cover and stops.
Hawkeye makes a throat-cutting gesture, indicating danger ahead, and then taps his chest twice, asking for the squad leader to come forward.
Keepin
g low to the ground, Sergeant Ruiz scurries to join Hawkeye.
“What you got?”
“Not sure, exactly. But listen, Sergeant.”
Ruiz closes his eyes. He can’t hear anything. He wonders if maybe the platoon should do a listening halt, where they all get comfortable and settle into a complete silence. Finally, he says, “I don’t hear—”
Hawkeye raises his hand, silencing him. Ruiz raises his fist for the platoon to see, telling them to freeze. Don’t move an inch.
The screams become audible, carried on the shifting breeze on an east-west street ahead of them, barely penetrating the background hum of New York City.
“Some kind of trouble up there, seems to me,” says Hawkeye. “Kind of sounds like a girl screaming for help.”
“Like a lot of people screaming,” Ruiz says. “Screaming bloody murder.”
He keys his handset and softly relays what he has learned to the LT.
Bowman, about forty feet behind him, replies on the commo.
Is the sound coming from Thirty-Eighth or Thirty-Ninth Street, over?
“We think it’s Thirty-Ninth Street, over,” says Ruiz, glancing at Hawkeye, who nods.
War Dogs Two actual to all War Dogs Two squads: Fragmentation order follows, break. We will take an alternate route to the objective, break. Turn left here at Thirty-Eighth Street and proceed west, over.
“Turn on Thirty-Eighth. That’s a solid copy, out.”
Hawkeye looks down at his rifle wearing a sour expression. There are American civilians up ahead in trouble and the LT has ordered the platoon to march the other way.
Ruiz nudges him. “We’re not police, Hawkeye,” he says. “There’s danger all around us here. LT’s intent is to get the platoon to the objective on time and in one piece. It makes sense.”
“I guess so, Sergeant,” says Hawkeye. “I mean, it’s not my place to say.”
The Sergeant’s eyebrows lift in surprise. He has never seen his boys so uncertain and sour about a mission. “You heard the LT. Go on, then. Lead us out of here, Private.”
“Roger that, Sergeant.”
Ruiz stands and moves his arm in a wide forward-wave, giving the signal to advance.
Hey, Army! Can you hear me?
The platoon hauls itself back onto its feet, grunting at the weight of rucksacks and armor and weapons and water, and trails after Hawkeye, making the turn onto Thirty-Eighth Street. Soon, they cross Tunnel Approach Street, where they weave their way through a pile-up of cars that crashed into each other during the night and became hopelessly ensnarled in a massive sculpture of chewed-up metal. Nearby, an ambulance is parked, its doors open and its lights still eerily flashing, a dead man lying on a gurney outside atop a glittering carpet of broken glass. His throat has been torn out.
They are moving into a residential neighborhood. As they approach the middle of the block, they hear the screams.
The cries appear to come from all around them, as if a crowd of howling ghosts were passing through them, making them shiver.
Then a man shouts down at them from an open fourth floor window, “Hey, Army!”
The soldiers of Third Squad look up at him.
The man is young, with swarthy skin, long black hair and heavily muscled arms.
“There are these two guys banging on my door trying to get in and I have to go out and pick up my insulin,” he says. “Can you help me out here?”
Negative, Ruiz hears over his handset.
“Keep it moving,” he tells his squad.
“The screaming is coming from these buildings,” Williams says. “Hardcore, dawg.”
“Hey, Army! Can you hear me down there?”
Williams glances up and sees people leaning out of other windows.
“Are you going to do something about these homicidal maniacs?” an old woman shouts down at them, immediately joined by a chorus of others.
“Isn’t there anything we can do for these people, Sarge?” says Williams.
“Keep moving,” Ruiz says.
The falling girl strikes the blue Toyota Camry on McLeod’s right with a heart-stopping crash, her face plunging through the windshield in a spray of blood and hair. The car sags for a moment at the impact, setting off its grating car alarm.
“Christ!” McLeod shrieks, almost dropping his SAW.
Three of Lewis’ boys open up on the fourth floor window, making the swarthy man flinch and duck back inside.
“Cease fire, cease fire!” Lewis is shouting. “What are you shooting at, dumbass?”
Kemper’s voice grates over the radio: War Dogs Two-Five to all War Dogs Two squads, cease fire, over.
“Hold your fire,” Ruiz tells his squad. “Keep your cool.”
The squad is gathering around the corpse.
Keep it moving, out.
“Her freaking leg’s twitching,” McLeod says. “Oh, God.”
“LT says, keep moving,” Ruiz tells them, raising his voice to be heard over the car alarm. “There’s nothing we can do here.”
“LT’s got no heart,” Williams says, shaking his head. “That shit is ice cold.”
“She’s dead, Private,” the Sergeant says. “And we’re not. Let’s go. Now.”
Williams is starting to get a bad feeling about this mission, and his hunches are usually correct. He can feel the boys around him tense up, mad and powerless and itching to fire their weapons at something. He has a feeling that once they start shooting, they will all cross a threshold, and they may not like what they find on the other side.
“War Dogs Two-Three to War Dogs Two-Six. Coming up on Second Avenue now, over.”
Proceed north on Second Avenue, over.
“Affirmative. Turn onto Second Avenue, out.”
A moment later, Ruiz gets back on the commo.
“War Dogs Two-Six, this is War Dogs Two-Three. You better get up here, over.”
I see them. On my way, out.
The intersection of Forty-Second Street and Second Avenue is dense with people fighting each other around a line of cop cars set up to block off access to Forty-Second. Several food delivery trucks are parked beyond, half unloaded.
There appears to be a pitched battle in progress.
Not here to reenact My Lai or Custer’s Last Stand
The LT has called together the NCOs into a close huddle and tells them the situation on the ground has changed and as a result there is a new OpOrder for the unit. He speaks quickly, as the unit’s presence has begun to attract the attention of desperate civilians in the area and the platoon needs to get back on the move fast. The people stand as close to the platoon and its umbrella of protective firepower as possible, wringing their hands and begging for help, while Third Squad holds them at bay.
“I can’t contact Captain West,” he says. “We appear to be on our own.”
The non-coms glance at each other.
“Think we should take another route and go around?” says McGraw.
“Negative. We already tried that. We’re now on Third Avenue and out of time. We pushed our luck as it is. I think this is like Iraq where the bad guys sleep from four to eight and then the bullets start flying. This city is waking up and it is like an ocean rising under our feet. We’re just going to have to push through or we could be overrun before we reach our objective.”
“Roger that, sir,” the NCOs tell him.
They know as much as he does because he told them about Private Richard Boyd, the soldier who was bitten by a Mad Dog and within hours turned into a Mad Dog. The soldier who made him aware that the rules of the game had changed.
The infection is spreading at an exponential rate.
The Army gave him a big hint that this was happening with the bizarrely aggressive ROE. New York gave him a big hint with all the gunfire indicating flashpoints of Mad Dogs attacking Army and police units. And the Mad Dogs themselves gave a big hint when they began showing up everywhere in force.
But he knows they are spreading infection through the
ir bites and spreading rapidly because PFC Richard Boyd went AWOL in an almost perfect state of health and several hours later turned up bitten and a Mad Dog.
Every hour, there are more infected and fewer of everybody else. At some point, it could be hours, tomorrow or the next day, the streets of New York will likely become too dangerous to walk even for a platoon of U.S. infantry armed to the teeth.
There isn’t a military on the planet that has the force to meet this threat. Infection will keep spreading and spreading until there is simply nobody around to bite.
It’s a simple numbers game.
“Stand back,” Hawkeye says to the civilians.
“As you can see—” Bowman pauses as a civilian runs by, emptying a .38 at a pursuing Mad Dog and missing except for the last shot, which topples his assailant. The man continues on, stumbling and crying, unaware that he now has a dozen rifles trained on him. “We are facing a major open danger area ahead. The government is distributing food, and some type of riot appears to be in progress, which we are not going to try to suppress or we’ll end up with another bloodbath on our hands. Understood? Speed is going to be our ally. We will cross the intersection in a platoon V formation, with each squad acting independently once we enter the open danger area. Any questions?”
“Satisfactory, sir,” says Ruiz.
“Stand back, Ma’am,” says Hawkeye.
“The rally point is the other side, if clear, or the Company HQ, if not. The squads getting across first will set up a defensive line until the platoon is reunited. Lewis, you will take the left. Ruiz, you will be going up the middle with HQ and Weapons Squad; I want good security for our gun team as they’re going to be useless in this fight but I have a feeling we’re going to need their services later. Okay? McGraw, you’ve got the right.”
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