by James Tarr
“Go.”
The squad jogged down the sidewalks on both sides of the street in two ragged lines, more interested in putting distance between them and the downed chopper than being stealthy. Ed was last in line on the left. Quentin was half a dozen steps in front of him as they began jogging down the sidewalk, and he turned and jogged backwards for a while, staring back at the bridge and Bobby. He looked at Ed, but all Ed could do was shake his head. After a few more seconds Quentin turned back around, his expression both sad and full of rage.
“Go! Go!” Early urged Jason, as the boy seemed reluctant to move.
“But what about—?” he began, as the squad began moving out.
“Ev’ry body that’s comin’ is here,” Early growled. “Move, boy.”
The spreading arms of mature maples, beeches, and birch trees kept most of the sidewalk in shade, but after a hundred yards there wasn’t a man among them who wasn’t soaked in sweat in the humid heat. The houses to either side were single story red brick block houses with small lawns, maybe a tenth of which were still being maintained to one degree or another. None of the residents poked their heads out as the squad went by, but there were definitely eyes on them.
Ridgedale ended four-tenths of a mile from the service drive in a T-intersection. The experienced fighters increased their intervals as they neared the intersection. So far they hadn’t heard the growl of approaching armor or the freight train roar of 4-blade helicopter rotors, but they knew as soon as that Kestrel had gone down an alarm had gone off in the military’s operations center.
At the T the squad turned right and again spread out on both sides of the street. It ended a hundred yards up. George was in the lead and he slowed to a walk as he moved between the houses on the west side of the small cul-de-sac. Past the back yards he could see the overgrown field he was looking for, but he paused between the brick walls to catch his breath and scan the area with his eyes and ears. The squad spread out around two houses and watched the sky.
Jason knelt between two overgrown yew bushes and tried to fight down his panic. Bobby was dead? It didn’t seem possible. He was a kid, hardly older than Jason himself. It had to be a mistake. But he knew it wasn’t. He’d seen the blood as they’d pulled Bobby from the SUV. It had been everywhere. He’d never seen so much blood. He could still smell it. And once they’d laid him in the street Bobby’d never moved. The explosion of the rocket—had it been a rocket? He didn’t really know—had been louder than anything he could have imagined. He’d felt it in his chest, and his ears were still ringing. Jason found he was gripping the lever action so tightly his fingers began to hurt. He stared down at the rifle. It belonged to his father. His father, who didn’t see a reason for the war, didn’t understand why people felt they had to fight, who’d never taken a stand for or against anything in his life, and who’d never pointed the Marlin at anything other than deer.
“You okay?”
Jason looked up to see Early standing over him, looking concerned at the expression on Jason’s face. Jason glanced from the big rifle in Early’s knuckly hands to the slender lever action in his own, then up at the big man’s face.
“I’m fine.”
Early regarded him with appraising eyes for a few seconds, then nodded. Then the look Jason had given his rifle sunk in.
“Sheeeit,” he cursed quietly. “We shoulda grabbed you Bobby’s rifle. And armor.” He glanced back past the houses the way they had come. “Cain’t go back now. My fault.”
Jason again looked down at the weapon in his hands, then back up at Early. “I’m okay.” Something in his voice made Early give him a second look.
George moved out, still on point. He slipped through a gap in the chain link fence encircling the house’s back yard and moved in quick strides into waist-high grass beyond. The slightly elevated field sat at the edge of the small bedroom community’s indoor/outdoor recreation complex. George avoided crossing the field directly as it would expose them unnecessarily. He reached the weed-choked gravel drive behind the ice arena building and followed it west. The men spread out in a line behind him, mostly hidden from view by the arena building on one side and the raised field with its high grass on the other.
The air was calm and quiet but for the sounds of a few birds as the squad prowled forward at a fast walk. They were trying to be careful and cautious, but at the same time there was still far too little distance between them and the crashed Kestrel. At the far end of the tan brick building the land opened up and George paused. He peered around the bricks to the left and could see a section of the municipal parking lot. Only a few cars were in sight, and while some looked drivable they were all unoccupied civilian vehicles. Even if they held fuel, which was doubtful, there was no time to hotwire one of them, and none of them was large enough to hold the entire squad, which meant they’d have to hotwire two. At least he didn’t see any tanks, or IMPs, or troop trucks disgorging enraged soldiers by the dozen.
The gravel access road continued on, wending its way between the city pool on the left and a baseball diamond on the right. The padlocked pool hadn’t been used in years and was bordered by a ten foot concrete wall. Arborvitae, which were now twenty feet tall, had been planted around the ugly wall in an unsuccessful attempt to conceal it, or present a more attractive alternative. The baseball field was enclosed by a chain link fence and still looked serviceable. To the north, past left field, more small houses could be seen.
The squad jogged from behind the ice arena to behind the pool one at a time, then continued moving west in two lines on either side of the road. Past the pool and the baseball diamond were several acres of woods, which would conceal them from eyes on the ground and in the air.
Ed was still the last in line, guarding their rear, and his head jerked up as he heard it, perhaps echoing off the wall of the ice arena. “Go! Go!” he said sharply, jabbing at the trees. Faces looked back at him, but they started running even before they heard the helicopter.
Ed jogged backwards towards the trees, scanning the sky to the south. He heard the squad crashing into the brush behind him, and hoped the tree cover overhead was thick enough to shield them. The gravel under his boots turned to the muffled thud of composting leaves and he glanced over his shoulder. He was ten feet from the treeline, and most of his men were already invisible inside the patch of woods.
Ed could tell just from the sound that the helicopter was another Kestrel. He moved twenty feet inside the treeline before he knelt beside a tree trunk and looked up. He tried to spot the helicopter through gaps in the trees and finally saw it to the east, coming in low and fast.
The Kestrel was visibly slowing as it went by about half a mile to the east, heading north toward the crash site. Ed lost sight of it as it banked hard. He could hear the sound of its engine and rotors changing as it circled over the downed copter. Whether the helicopter kept airborne watch over its crashed brethren until ground units could arrive or started circling the area looking for them would depend upon a number of variables, the biggest of which were how many helicopters were up and how far away the closest ground units were. Ed preferred to not find out.
“You grab the RPG?” George called to him softly.
Ed shook his head. “Dropped in the ditch.” Even if the fall onto concrete hadn’t damaged the launcher, it would have taken them five minutes to retrieve it. Five minutes he didn’t think they had, and he’d been right. Which was just another piece of bad luck, as RPGs were very, very useful.
The squad leader stood and faced the dense patch of forest. The air was stuffier inside the trees, but slightly cooler out of the sun. He was soaked in sweat, more from the humidity than anything else, but he’d grown accustomed to that—he’d been sweaty since May. The smell of dirt, and bark, and a hundred plants whose names he should know but didn’t filled his nose, replacing the noxious odor of burning rubber. It took him a few seconds to even spot one of his men crouching in the thick undergrowth. It was amazing to him just how much wilde
rness could be found in the most built-up urban areas. He signaled for them to move out and half the squad appeared around him, rising silently from the long grass and wild shrubs, facing outward in a defensive perimeter. A cloud of mosquitoes decided that moment there was nowhere they’d rather be than inside Ed’s nose, and he huffed in quiet misery as he followed the backs of his men.
Noise was more of a factor than speed in the woods and they picked their way carefully around patches of dried leaves and over crumbling deadfalls. The farther they got from the crash site the more important noise discipline became.
The original plan had been to roll south on the Pres until just before the city border, then hide the Ford inside one of the numerous abandoned commercial buildings nearby and continue on foot. The Tabs, however, now knew they were in the area. Ed had no way of knowing if the helicopter pilot had had time to radio their troop strength before Arnold shot him down, but the search and rescue teams would, for their own safety, have to assume there were still a few guerrillas in the area. The Army would either expect them to continue south on their mission, if they had one, or retreat back north, but they’d check at least half a mile in every direction just to be thorough. How much they did beyond that would be an indication of how well informed they were about survivors.
The squad moved west through the trees for several hundred yards until more houses came into view. They could still hear the Kestrel circling in the distance, and Ed thought he heard the faint growl of diesel engines as well. Army vehicles.
They reached the street bordering the far side of the woods and spread out in a line. Every man in the squad studied the row of houses on the far side of the concrete ribbon, watching and listening. These were compact houses, little more than cubes of red brick with bumpy roofs and small, detached garages, half of which were falling down. But there were many mature trees lining the streets, which was good. Ed really wanted to move farther south through the woods, but the sound of diesel engines was louder in that direction and they had to get out of the trees quickly, while they had the chance, before the Kestrel pilot got tired of circling over the wreckage. The trees made for excellent cover, but the other side knew that as well.
Ed pointed at Quentin and Weasel and together the three of them sprinted across the street and did a quick check of the nearby yards. The men didn’t find anybody hiding in the bushes, and so he signaled to the rest of the squad. They came running across in pairs without incident, then the squad cut through the fence-enclosed backyards to the next street, then dashed across that. Then they started heading directly west through the backyards between two parallel east-west streets.
The ever-present chain-link fences made for slow, arduous going, but they didn’t dare travel down sidewalks or streets. The Kestrel swung over them twice, but each time they had plenty of warning. Half the houses were vacant, with yawning doors and windows indicating that at some point in the past they’d been looted, but the men didn’t like diving inside buildings they hadn’t checked out first unless actually under fire. However, the back yards were so small they were never more than a dozen feet from a ragged patio awning, or some overgrown ornamental tree they could hide under. When the temperature got over eighty they’d learned the Kestrel’s thermal imager was undependable if they were under roofs, so as long as they couldn’t be seen with the naked eye they should be okay. Should be.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The four two-man sniper teams had flown in on one of the regular weekly supply planes, then ridden in buttoned-up IMPs to the base downtown. They’d already spent some time looking over maps of the area, and once they arrived they all took at least one overflight of the city in a rotary wing to get a proper look at the place. It was even more of a shithole than they’d been told, but still it seemed to be full of people, and they should have a lot to do. It helped that the rules of engagement were simple.
They weren’t regular Army incompetents, they were Special Forces, so they did things a little differently. They wouldn’t be supporting regular Army patrols, no matter how much the full bird colonel in charge of the base would have preferred, and had in fact demanded of their unit commander, to no avail. Instead, they stripped off their camouflage fatigues for civilian clothes, to better blend in, and then moved out of the base into the city on foot, in the middle of the night, using their NODs. Intelligence said the guerrillas in the city didn’t have much night vision capability, so they thought their best bet was to move around at night and then be in position by dawn.
Every team had a different sector of the city, and the plan was to be out beyond the wire for three days. They had enough water and food for four, just in case.
Keeley and Hulce were Anvil-6, and had chosen their first hide well. They were set up in the second floor of a small office building on the northeast corner of a major intersection about six miles north-northwest of the military base. It had taken them all night to hike in, but being able to see in the dark made things much easier. They saw a number of people, unarmed locals, who never saw or heard them passing, and a surprising amount of wildlife, dogs and possums and a raccoon, all of which had no problem seeing the men in the dark.
Through the fractured windows they could see south along Meyers for a third of a mile, and through the ragged gap in the bricks of the west wall they could see west on McNichols for three-quarters of a mile. Hulce was prone atop a desk six feet back from the windows, positioned so his bullet would pass between two angular pieces of pane somehow still stuck in the frame. The men had actually pushed two desks together, and if he needed to Hulce could rotate behind the rifle and look west through the foot-wide hole in the bricks.
Both of the men were sniper trained, but this mission Keeley was tasked with support, and Hulce was the designated sniper. He was toting a suppressed bolt-action .300 WinMag, and Keeley had a sound-suppressed M5 to back him up and provide site security, as well as be the eye on the spotting scope. Hulce also had a suppressed PDW in his pack for close-range defense, if the need arose, but it would take him some time to get to it.
As the sun rose on the city they began to see movement, but no guerrilla activity. A few people walking here and there, but none of them were armed or wearing armor. Keeley diagrammed the site in his logbook and used the laser rangefinder to get the exact distance to several landmarks both south and west of their location. They worked out the drop of his rounds at that distance and Hulce made notes on the sheet of paper in front of himself. This way he’d be able to dial in the drop and get on target more quickly.
Keeley had both 8X binoculars and a 30X spotting scope set up on a tripod. The binoculars didn’t have nearly the same magnification, but they had a much greater field of view. He glassed the area with the binos, and if he saw something that warranted further investigation he went to the spotting scope. Hulce stayed on the variable power riflescope, and at 10X he had a good balance between magnification and field of view.
After they’d been in position close to an hour, switching vantage points a few times, they decided Keeley should take the southward eye, as there was a wide sixty-degree field of view out the front window, something better tackled with binos. Keeley would stay on the rifle pointed west down McNichols through the hole in the bricks. Three hours after dawn they still hadn’t seen any guerrilla activity, but there was much more movement on the street. At any one time Hulce could see a half a dozen people on foot. They weren’t guerrillas, just local residents, although they more closely resembled starving or crazy refugees.
Hulce’s eye was drawn to some activity on the left side of the street. It was on the far side of the service drive to the expressway which angled southeast toward downtown. Two men were arguing in front of a low brick building. There was a shopping cart between them laden with junk and that seemed to be the subject of debate, but the sniper had no idea which of the men the cart belonged to.
“Got something, maybe,” he said softly, trying not to jostle the image in his scope. “Couple hundred yards
down, south side of the street. You want to get the spotting scope over here?”
“On it.”
Keeley moved around the desks and planted the spotting scope between his partner’s splayed legs and oriented it over his head and paralleling the long rifle barrel made even longer by the suppressor. The end of the suppressor was five feet back from the opening in the bricks. “Two hundred…okay, I see them,” he said as he got the spotting scope in focus. He quick-glanced down at the notebook in his hand. “Far side of that service drive lazed at two-forty, so they’re two-fifty or a hair more. You need me to laze it?” He got back on the spotting scope, but was ready to grab the laser rangefinder if necessary.
“Nah. Maybe if it was twelve fifty.”
Through the thirty times magnification of the spotting scope Keeley could see the two men clearly. Both were dark-skinned, one thicker, one rail skinny, both wearing baggy clothes that hung off them. And they were in a very heated argument, pulling back and forth on the shopping cart. The two men were too distant for their shouting to be heard. “They’re not Tangos,” Keeley said, stating the obvious. He could see the lettering on the side of the tan brick building behind them, just visible above wildly overgrown bushes. It was a branch of the city’s public library…or had been.
The tug of war with the shopping cart ended. The skinner of the two men reached into the cart and withdrew something wrapped in a rag. He looked around, then unwrapped the object and showed it to the other man. It appeared they were engaged in a business transaction.
“Confirm,” Hulce said softly, eye to the scope, which was still at ten power magnification.
Keeley was bent over the spotting scope. “Gun,” he said simply, confirming identification of the object. A revolver, actually, they were close enough for him to see that much detail.