Dogsoldiers

by James Tarr

  “All right,” Tony said, then cocked his head. “Man? I thought Sheila was up there.”

  “She was. John relieved her. Apparently she and Weasel have been getting…reacquainted.” His mouth bent at the corners.

  Tony shook his head. “Christ. You think they could have picked a—never mind. We gonna have to wait on them now?”

  “No.” Ed shook his head.

  George cleared his throat, what might have been a smile coloring his features. “Weasel’s more of a sprinter than a marathoner,” he added helpfully. Mark choked back a laugh.

  “Well, let’s get out of here before he gets his second wind,” Tony said. “Jesus. Mike!” he called softly up the stairs. “We’re rolling.”

  The two squads piled into their respective vehicles with a chorus of grunts and clanking metal. Weasel’s face was flushed as he clambered over the tailgate of the Ford. Mark grabbed him by the shoulder straps of his armored vest and helped pull him in.

  “What she sees in your scrawny ass I have no idea,” the SAW gunner said cordially. Weasel just smiled at Mark and hunkered down in the corner.

  “She doesn’t care about your syphilgonertaids?” Mark asked with concern.

  “My what?”

  Mark smiled and moved on. “I haven’t had sex in so long I should qualify as an honorary virgin,” he said sadly, shaking his head.

  “Don’t you have a kid?”

  “Yeah, but maybe my hymen grew back when I wasn’t looking.”

  “Your what?”

  The SUV was already running and as soon as the last of his teammates was aboard Quentin nosed it out from between the two houses. George was wedged between Quentin and Bobby in the front seat and their three heads swiveled back and forth as the overloaded Ford rolled down the short drive. The Toyota pulled out from its hiding place a second later, loaded down with Franklin squad. Jeff, Tavon, Arnold, and Mike sat in the pickup’s open bed, looking in every direction. John was driving, and Ed spotted Sheila with her dimpled smile and tight brown curls in the front passenger seat. Tony and the other Mark were tucked into the rear of the truck’s extended cab. The pickup pulled out right behind the Expedition as Quentin accelerated toward the Ditch.

  “Get off my ass!” Quentin growled, as John demonstrated the Toyota’s superior acceleration, his grin visible through the truck’s windshield, but then the truck sank back as Quentin slowed to take the turn onto the service drive. A hundred feet down was the crossover where, once upon a time, westbound cars U-turned so they could hop on the interstate heading east. All eyes, in both vehicles, watched the far side of the freeway, alert for any signs of danger.

  Captain Paul Evancho, pilot of Kilo One-Three, kept the Kestrel, the Army’s latest two-seater attack helicopter, two hundred feet off the deck as he followed the snaking pavement at eighty knots. Low and Slow, they called it, looking for trouble. He hated it, but orders were orders—fly low enough that any nearby assholes in the area with guns might be tempted to take a shot—then take them out with rockets and guns. He wished his command structure didn’t have so much faith in the armored glass and titanium that surrounded him, as he would have much preferred to be doing his patrols at 1000 feet AGL. One-Three was one of three birds up on patrol, but Kilo One-Eight and -Nine were south of the city trying to track down a squad of guerrillas that had shot up a patrol that morning. Nobody killed this time, thank God.

  “Remember when they’d have a dozen birds up at any one time?” he asked his backseater. “We don’t even have that many left total.” He scanned his front, then left and right, then his bank of instruments, before starting the sequence all over again. The most pertinent information—speed, altitude, remaining fuel, and weapons status, were illuminated on the HUD of his helmet visor.

  “That’s because this isn’t considered a combat zone anymore,” Lieutenant Casey Jenkins said, the very sound of the words distasteful to him. “The war’s out west. Don’t complain too much,” he warned his commanding officer. “They’re talking about shipping tanks to the front, and if it happens helos will be next.” His head swiveled left and right as well, scanning for danger. Minor G-forces pulled at him as the Captain put the bird through a gentle S-curve following the unused interstate.

  “I know, it’s just that—” Evancho’s eyes moved up from his instruments and locked on the two vehicles halfway across the secondary bridge less than three hundred yards from his bird’s nose. He was more than close enough to see the rifle muzzles sticking up from the bed of the pickup truck.

  “Tangos Tangos Tangos!” he yelled, arming the helicopter’s missiles with a flick of his thumb. He nosed the bird down, centered the orange aiming reticle in his visor’s HUD on the vehicle, and pulled the trigger on his joystick. It had taken the captain only two-point-nine seconds from the time he spotted the vehicles to trigger the seventy-millimeter missile, but instinctively he knew they were too close for a second missile to arm itself in flight before impact. The pilot thumbed the switch back to Guns as he roared over the bridge and released a wild burst from his nose cannon at the lead vehicle. He immediately threw the Kestrel over into a high-G banking turn to come back around. He heard Jenkins grunt through his earphones.

  Ed was looking out the front of the SUV at the houses lining the south side service drive when someone yelled “Kestrel!” He looked over and the helicopter was right on top of them, having appeared from nowhere, a missile already streaking from one of the pods under its stubby wings.

  “Move!” George yelled at Quentin, as the driver floored the overburdened SUV. Everyone in the Expedition was shoved back into their seats as an explosion behind them pushed the sluggish vehicle forward. A huge roaring BRRRRRRT! filled the sky above them as the helicopter fired a long burst from the electric Gatling gun under its nose. The SUV lurched and filled with smoke and the smell of ozone as a line of thirty-caliber bullets, fired at a rate of fifty per second, ripped through its thin steel body like a chain saw.

  Ed got his carbine up and fired a wild burst at the retreating helicopter as he felt the SUV shudder under the impact of the bullets. The vehicle immediately began slowing down, and they’d barely reached the service drive, much less the adjoining sidestreets, but behind them Franklin’s Toyota had exploded in a ball of flame. There was nothing left of the cab but twisted metal and flames shooting ten feet into the air. Ed could only stare at it in shock.

  The dive had cost them a hundred feet of altitude but as Evancho pulled the Kestrel out of the hard bank they still had seventy knots of airspeed. He saw immediately the missile had found its mark. The pickup was on fire, not moving, with bodies on the pavement all around it. The other vehicle was crawling along, smoke pouring from under its hood. Muzzle flashes caught his eye, and he heard the tank, tank of bullets bouncing off the bird’s armor. He leveled the chopper out and fought to get the targeting reticle on the second vehicle, finger poised over the trigger.

  The missile had penetrated the Toyota’s thin sheet-metal body and exploded in the rear of the pickup’s cab, killing all four people inside instantly and igniting its fuel. Everyone sitting in the bed of the truck had been blown backwards by the blast. John and Tavon had been killed instantly.

  Arnold found himself lying on his back in the middle of the bridge, twenty feet from the rear of the burning truck. He rolled over, his ears ringing unmercifully, and saw the Kestrel three hundred yards out in a banking turn. He looked around for his rifle but couldn’t find it.

  “Go! Come on!” Ed yelled at Quentin, who seemed to be fighting with the wheel. The Expedition was barely moving at a jog.

  “I’ve got it! I’ve got it! You’re going to be okay!” Ed heard George’s strained voice from the front seat.

  Ed leaned forward over the front seat, his eyes burning from the acrid smoke filling the car, and saw the front seat was swimming in blood. George was frantically trying to stem the bleeding from Bobby’s femoral arteries. The burst of machine-gun fire had cut diagonally across both the
young man’s thighs, nearly severing them both, and into the engine compartment, where the heavy bullets had destroyed the engine. Bobby was slumped against the door, groaning, eyes half closed, pale from shock and blood loss.

  “Jesus! Fuck!” There was shouting and chaos from inside the vehicle as the squad saw the Kestrel coming back for another pass while their own transportation slowed to walking speed. Ed fumbled for the door handle as some in his squad began firing at the helicopter.

  Arnold saw Tavon crumpled on the concrete, obviously dead, the RPG beside him. He tried to stand up but there was something wrong with his balance, so Arnold crawled over on hands and knees. He wrestled the launcher tube from underneath the young man’s body, fighting the urge to look up at the Kestrel. He could feel the thrum of its rotors in his bones, so he knew it was close.

  Sticking out of Tavon’s pack were the grenades themselves, but they were spares. As he succeeded in pulling the launcher from underneath Tavon’s body Arnold saw there was a grenade already in the tube. It was when he hefted the RPG onto his shoulder that Arnold noticed for the first time his sleeves were on fire. He couldn’t feel any pain, and his only concern was that the flames wouldn’t ignite the grenade before he had a chance to fire it.

  As he raised his head the Kestrel was right there, coming in low, maybe two hundred yards out. The pilot had overcompensated coming out of the bank and was in the process of leveling the bird out when Arnold put the RPG’s crosshairs on the orange cockpit. He instinctively adjusted for distance, pulling up until the RPG was aimed just above the incoming helicopter’s rotors, and pulled the trigger.

  “This is Kilo One-Three, Kilo One-Three,” Jenkins said quickly, keying his radio. He hoped somebody was paying attention. “We’ve got two vehicles with tangos—RPG!” he yelled, seeing the distinctive smoke-trail.

  Evancho had just started applying pressure on the trigger when his backseater had screamed the warning. His eyes were still on the smoking SUV, and just for a second he wondered if Jenkins had mistaken the curls of grey smoke oozing from underneath the Ford’s split hood for an RPG’s discharge. Then he saw the incoming round, and yanked the stick, pulling the Kestrel into another hard turn, but that half second of hesitation had been enough. The helicopter’s cockpit glass, while more than strong enough to deflect the occasional rifle bullet, was not designed to absorb a direct head-on hit from an armor-piercing rocket-propelled grenade. The grenade exploded as it penetrated the curved glass, killing both men inside instantly.

  Trailing smoke from its shattered windscreen, the helicopter’s momentum kept it moving forward even as the power going to its rotors died. It made a graceful, curving arc straight into the Ditch’s eastbound lanes. The copter hit the concrete with a huge crunch.

  “Somebody get me a tourniquet!” George’s blood-slick hands kept slipping off Bobby’s mangled thighs as Quentin wrestled the dead vehicle onto the service drive. Everyone else in the SUV saw the RPG hit the Kestrel dead center and explode, killing the bird. It dropped out of sight. Quentin began fighting the wheel to get the big Ford to turn onto the first side street. The vehicle was moving at a crawl, its momentum nearly spent.

  “Who was that?” yelled Ed.

  “Arnold!” Mark shouted, seeing the potbellied man for the first time. The Franklin squad member was on his knees in the middle of the bridge, batting the flames out on his sleeves.

  Ed finally found the door handle and flung it open. The rest of the squad bailed out of the disabled vehicle behind him. “Take defensive positions!” Ed shouted at them, pointing at the nearby houses, as he ran toward the flaming pickup. “Watch for more birds!”

  Ed saw Arnold stagger to his feet, not on fire anymore but trailing smoke. He looked around dazedly for the Kestrel, not sure where it had gone down, as Ed ran back out onto the bridge toward him.

  “Help me get him out of here!” George yelled.

  “Oh my God.”

  “Grab his legs!”

  George and Mark lifted Bobby’s limp body out of the Expedition and set him on the concrete near the curb. George yanked out a knife and started cutting away Bobby’s shredded trousers. “Early! Get over here.” Early was the only other member of the squad besides George with formal first aid training. The gutter began to fill with blood.

  “Already here Cap’n.” The two men bent over the still form in the middle of the street as the rest of the squad took cover nearby, nervously scanning the skies.

  The heat from the Toyota was so intense Ed had to put his hand up to shield his face thirty feet away. He saw a few dark shapes inside the shattered cab, through the roaring flames, but whether they were seats or their occupants was impossible to determine. There could be no question that everyone inside the cab was now dead.

  On the far side of the truck, through the shimmering waves of heat, Ed saw Arnold stumble drunkenly to the edge of the bridge and look down at the helicopter wreckage through the tall chain link fence designed to thwart suicidal jumpers and delinquents wanting to drop items on passing cars. Back when there had been passing cars.

  The flames were baking Ed’s face like an oven. “Arnold!” he yelled, but his voice was lost in the roaring flames. Ed held an arm up beside his head to shield it, closed his eyes, and ran past the wreck. He reached the far side and opened his eyes just in time to see Arnold lose his balance and nearly topple over the railing. The RPG launcher slipped from his hands and fell out of view through a rent in the chain link. Then Arnold looked up at the sky and fell backward onto the pavement.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Ed leapt over bodies and ran to Arnold, on his back on the concrete. The big man’s limbs were sprawled awkwardly.

  “Arnold! Arnold!” Ed yelled at him, checking him for injuries. His sleeves were still smoking. Ed’s hands and gaze moved up the soldier’s body, checking for cuts or obvious broken bones. Then he looked at Arnold’s face, and saw the man’s eyes were open and unblinking. “Shit. Arnold?” He dropped to his knees and started CPR.

  “Jesus!” Weasel cursed as he ran past the burning truck, shielding his face. He joined Ed at the railing and looked around at the scene. “Goddamnit.” Then he looked down at Arnold. The man’s body shifted from side to side as Ed did chest compressions.

  “Wait.” Weasel stopped him with a hand on his sleeve. He stared down at Arnold. “He’s dead.”

  “No, he’s—” It was then that Ed noticed the hunk of metal sticking from the man’s skull, and the blood leaking out of Arnold’s left ear. “Fuck.”

  The pool of blood surrounding Arnold’s head was reflecting the orange flames shooting out of the truck. The loss of one more man hit Ed in the stomach like a hammer, but he pushed himself up and away from the body. “Help me,” he told Weasel, as he began checking the bodies on the bridge for signs of life. It took the two of them less than a minute to determine Franklin had no survivors.

  “Motherfuckers. Motherfuckers.” Weasel was staring at the burning pickup just a few feet away, seemingly oblivious to the heat. Sheila’s body was inside that inferno. His only comfort was that it had been quick for her, and that was no comfort at all.

  “Weasel. Weasel! Grab their gear and any intelligence. Personal items. Can’t afford to leave anything.” Ed was pawing through the pockets of the fallen, with disappointing results. Franklin had been as short on ammo as they were. From the four bodies blown free of the wreckage Ed and Weasel recovered just five magazines, two of them only partially loaded.

  One of the Toyota’s tires blew from the heat, sounding like a shotgun. Ed flinched involuntarily, then glanced up at the towering column of black smoke roiling up from the burning truck. It was over a hundred feet tall already and could be seen for miles. The helicopter had also probably radioed their position, if not their strength as well, which meant they were tempting fate with every second they stayed there. Thank God there’d only been one helicopter, or they’d all be dead.

  The two men ran back across the bridge to the ruined E
xpedition. Ed waved Weasel toward one of the nearby houses to take up a covering position and then stopped behind George and Early and looked down.

  George squatted in the street, staring down at Bobby. He ran a bloody hand through his short, graying hair, then started pulling equipment from the teenager’s gear. Early looked up at Ed but said nothing.

  “There was nothing I could do,” George said through clenched teeth, patting Bobby’s pockets. “Both his femoral arteries were shredded. As soon as he was hit he was dead.” He concentrated on what he was doing, not looking at anything or anybody.

  Looking between his two soldiers Ed stared at the blood-soaked pantlegs. What looked like a gallon of blood filled the curbside gutter and was trickling toward the storm drain. There was so much of it he could smell it. He shifted his weight and looked over George’s shoulder. Bobby’s pale, lifeless face stared up at the sky, eyes open and glassy.

  Ed gritted his teeth and his hands shook as they squeezed his carbine but he didn’t let the anger distract him. “We’ve got to get moving.” When that didn’t get a response, he added, “We’ve got to leave him. Army’ll bury him.”

  George sagged with a sigh. “I know,” he said. George stood, pocketing the rifle magazines he’d taken off Bobby. Early rose without a word. He looked at Ed without expression, then raised an arm and signaled for the squad to get ready to move. Ed could see his men prone on nearby porches or squatting behind bushes, looking over their rifles in every direction, and he glanced around quickly to get his bearings. The street they were on had overhead tree cover as good or better than any nearby. Ridgedale, if he remembered correctly, although the street sign had been torn down long ago to confuse those unfamiliar with the area. He pointed south.