by James Tarr
The soldiers weren’t searching the houses to either side, that much was clear. If their goal was just to make their presence felt in the outlying neighborhoods, Ed would’ve thought they’d all be packed into armored Growlers and cruising along at ten or fifteen miles an hour. Cover a lot more ground that way; he’d seen it done more than once.
The troops Ed was watching didn’t seem to be especially on edge; in fact, they looked rather bored. Bored, and painfully young, although maybe that was just him. They were wearing their ballistic helmets, though, even in the heat and humidity, which gave some indication as to their discipline. It also looked like they all had on the standard body armor with composite plate inserts at chest and back. As they kept coming Ed could see they were all sweating buckets. It was damnably hot, but this late in the season they should have been used to the heat. They were either new replacements or spent too much time in air-conditioned barracks.
He spotted a Sergeant on foot behind the IMP as it drew close, and the way one of the soldiers was slouching in the back of the Growler he had to be an officer, although he was too far away to see any rank.
Suddenly Ed twitched, realizing a soldier had veered off the sidewalk and was heading toward the side of the house, his house. There was another tall privet shielding that side of the porch as well, but Ed could tell the man had stopped just feet away. Spitting distance.
The IMP drew abreast of Ed, the exhaust a low grumble, its big tires quiet on the pavement. He stared with envy at the belt-fed grenade launcher on its roof. It was the perfect weapon for these neighborhoods and fired the same round as the weapon he held in his hands, but his was a break-open single shot. Theirs could fire a hundred rounds a minute. Its only drawback was that it was too big and heavy to be carried; it had to be mounted on a vehicle or a tripod.
One soldier had passed by on the sidewalk and another was drawing close as the IMP slowly swung past. Ed caught a glimpse of a gesturing hand at the back of the armored personnel carrier and then the roof gunner jerked in his perch and slumped over. A meaty smack combined with a loud SPANG! echoed down the street, then another, more recognizable sound. Gunshot.
Everyone froze for half a second, then someone yelled “Sniper!” and all hell broke loose.
The street looked like a kicked anthill as everyone scrambled. The soldier on the sidewalk in front of Ed charged directly at the porch, eyes wide. Weasel rose up and fired a long burst into the man’s upper chest and neck before he’d cleared the top step, aiming above the soldier’s armor plate. As the dead-on-his-feet soldier flew by him Ed straightened up and fired the grenade launcher at the rear of the IMP. The round exploded inside the open rear door just as several panicked soldiers were about to dive inside. Bodies flew and gunfire erupted all around.
George felt lightheaded from lack of oxygen as the soldier in front of him finally emptied his bladder and tucked himself away. In just a second he’d be able to take a normal breath, blink his itchy eyes, and…
The sound of the bullet impact and following gunshot was totally unexpected, and both men jumped. The young soldier saw the movement out of the corner of his eye and turned his head. For a fraction of a second George was still invisible to him, then his eyes went wide in shock and disbelief. George yanked his knife from its sheath and buried it in the boy’s neck, wrapping his other arm around his head. As he dragged him behind the bush George roughly sawed outward and felt the soldier kicking. He left him flailing on the ground and spun to face the street, finding the squad’s last hand grenade in his palm. Straight across from him was the Growler and he yanked the pin and heaved.
Whether he saw George, the incoming grenade, or both, one of the soldiers in the back of the Growler shouted a warning and jumped over the side. As he landed a blast at the back of the IMP knocked him off his feet, and then George’s grenade went bouncing by him to explode under the Growler. Both his legs were sheared off at the knees as the Growler lifted two feet into the air with a thunderous flash. Both men inside the vehicle died instantly from the shrapnel, as the underside of the vehicle was not armored. By the time the Growler was airborne George had his carbine up and was firing at the soldiers on the sidewalks. Most of them were less than fifty feet away, practically point-blank range.
The explosion at the IMP caused both Mark and Quentin to duck back from their windows, then they were firing at the troops on their side of the street. Mark let loose a long burst from the SAW. Two soldiers went down immediately. The others charged off the sidewalk and ducked between the houses.
“Fuck!” Mark yelled, hurtling himself across to the far side of the rotting living room. Just as he neared a small window one of the panicked soldiers appeared outside it. Mark fired a short burst, bringing the man down, but another soldier ran past the window and disappeared from view.
“Shoot boy, shoot!” Early yelled, dropping one of the soldiers on the sidewalk before the man could take two steps. Explosions near the two vehicles had bodies all over the road, men screaming. There was black smoke coming from the Growler. He heard what had to be the sniper’s weapon again, something heavy and distant, but still had no idea where the shots were coming from. He poured fire at every soldier he saw not flat on the ground, then heard shouting next door. He looked across his shouldered rifle to see Quentin trip and fall trying to exit the next house through the ragged hole in the wall. Early instinctively lunged that way. By the time Early reached the gap in his own house Quentin was up and suddenly there was a soldier running between the two houses, looking for an escape route. They shot him in the back and he slid to a stop in the tall grass.
When the grenade went off Ed heard shrapnel zinging over his head. It cracked against the bricks behind him. Weasel, up on one knee and firing, flinched and a red line appeared at his temple. Ed dropped the grenade launcher and grabbed his rifle, but before he could bring it to bear on anyone the Growler exploded into the air. None of the soldiers nearby stayed on their feet.
Those soldiers that still could were scrambling for cover, firing wildly in an attempt to keep their attackers’ heads down. The combined roar of over a dozen rifles created a wall of noise Ed could feel in his chest. He had his carbine up and fired at the soldiers trapped in the street, pulling the trigger as fast as he could. He could see their panicked expressions as they realized they’d been caught in an ambush. Receiving fire from two directions they discovered they were exposed to fire no matter which side of the vehicles they cowered behind. A few tried to run from the kill zone, but they were cut down before they could reach the safety of the houses. Bodies covered lawns and sidewalks.
Weasel had reloaded once and was firing short bursts, pivoting back and forth. “Get the driver!” Ed yelled at Weasel, pointing at the IMP. Weasel leapt off the porch and fired a wild burst as he ran into the street toward the open rear door of the IMP. Ricochets whined off its armor, but the IMP wasn’t accelerating away. It was still coasting leisurely down the street, now angling slightly toward the far curb and the burned out and rusting vehicle. Ed fired at the writhing bodies in the street between the vehicles to cover Weasel during his charge. The red circle/dot reticle of his carbine’s optical sight bounced up and down every time his gun fired, but the noise was distant, deadened by the adrenaline in his bloodstream.
Jason jumped at the sniper’s shot and then Early was spinning around, graceful as a dancer, brining his big rifle to bear on something in the street as an explosion shook the house. Jason stood frozen, his mind blank, the rifle in his own hands forgotten. Early fired, adjusted his aim, fired again, and a second explosion shook the house.
“Shoot boy, shoot!” Early yelled from behind his rifle. Jason stared at him uncomprehendingly, the wall of noise from the shooting and the explosions freezing his brain, then the big man fired again. The National Match bucked in Early’s brown hands and the smoking, spent case struck Jason square in the face. The pain brought him out of his reverie and he turned toward the window.
The scene befor
e him was a madhouse. Bodies littered the street, some thrashing, and their screams above the deafening gunfire were horrible. A huge army vehicle was almost directly in front of their house, its open rear door hazy from smoke. The four-by-four behind it was a crumpled, smoking hulk and as Jason stared he saw its back end erupt in yellow flame.
There was blood on the pavement, and severed limbs. Camouflage clad figures were running in all directions and he could hear bullets whizzing through the air nearby. Gunfire echoed off the housefronts and the noise was incredible. He was hit in the side of the head by another smoking case as Early fired again.
Jason shouldered his rifle and fired without aiming at the armored personnel carrier still rolling down the street. He heard the clang and whine of the bullet ricocheting away. The sound of his rifle discharging hardly bothered him; it was like a muffled thump, a handclap buried by pillows.
He worked the lever automatically, still transfixed by the carnage in the street. Suddenly he saw there was a soldier atop the APC just yards from him and coming closer. This time he pointed the rifle more or less in the right direction before yanking the trigger.
His second shot went wide but then he saw the soldier was already dead, slumped over behind the roof gun. Jason worked the lever of his rifle again as a soldier appeared off the nose of the IMP. He was on the far side of the street, running flat out.
Hey! One’s getting away! Jason shouted inside his head, but nothing escaped his lips. The shooting seemed to be dying down. Didn’t anybody else see him? This time Jason put his cheek to the rifle stock. The soldier looked huge against the rifle’s front sight, impossible to miss, but Jason jerked the trigger and he could see his front sight pull off the running soldier.
He worked the lever again, cursing, and concentrated. The soldier was further away now, almost out of sight, angling for a gap between two houses. Jason held his breath, took up the slack in the trigger, and put the rifle’s square front post on the soldier’s lead shoulder. The rifle bucked in his hands as the trigger broke clean, and when it came down the soldier was nowhere to be found. Then Jason saw him, lying sideways in the grass, feet kicking awkwardly. The bullet had gone in just under the man’s armpit.
Jason saw another soldier on hands and knees scrambling backward beside the creeping IMP. One handed, the soldier raised his rifle and fired a shot past the vehicle’s rear hatch. Jason saw Ed across the street running for the IMP, and knew the squad leader couldn’t see the soldier. Jason brought his rifle back up, working the lever, and sighted in. The shot took the soldier behind the neck and he dropped without a twitch. Jason blinked twice, then looked left. Early wasn’t there.
Panicked, Jason looked left and right, and there was Early at the ragged hole where the wall had caved in. Early had turned back just as Jason took the shot and had been in line to see the soldier crumple.
“No time for gawkin’!” the big man yelled at him. “C’mon!” Early charged back across the house. Jason was right on his heels out the door.
Ed was five steps behind Weasel when he dived into the rolling APC. Before Ed could do the same the IMP thudded into the burned-out car hulk and began pushing it across the concrete. The screech of metal lasted just a few seconds before the wreck slammed into the curb and stopped the IMP’s forward momentum. Ed heard cursing from inside as Weasel tripped. There was a shredded body on the floor in back and the non-slip floor was awash in blood. Ed jumped over the body and almost fell.
The IMP’s driver was dead, that much was obvious from the low-speed collision. Ed left Weasel to check out the interior of the vehicle and turned to survey the street from the darkened interior. Every soldier he could see was down, although many of them were thrashing or screaming in pain. Or both. The Growler was farther away than he’d expected. The explosion had flattened all four of its tires and eliminated whatever forward momentum it’d had. The back of the four-by-four was engulfed in flames and sitting in a burning puddle of diesel fuel. That meant the fuel tank was perforated and not likely to explode, just burn. George was on the far side of it, moving in slowly, carbine sweeping back and forth. He fired at one thrashing body, which stilled, paused briefly to check another, probing with the muzzle of his weapon, then another. The heat from the flames kept him away from the Growler and two more still forms, but their indifference to the terrific heat told him all he needed to know.
“Are they all down?” Ed yelled at George.
George, still checking bodies, looked up and down the street. “I don’t know.”
Early and the kid emerged from a ramshackle house and scanned the street. Jason looked a little stunned but Ed didn’t fail to notice him clumsily reloading his little lever-action. “Watch the street!” Early told the young man.
“You gotta come see this,” Ed heard Weasel say from the front of the IMP.
“In a minute,” he snapped over his shoulder. The air smelled of blood and burning fuel and gunfire. “Anybody hurt?” he called out. “Anybody? Where’s Mark? Q?” Ed jumped down from the APC.
Quentin appeared just then from between two houses. “We’ve got at least one on foot!” he yelled, pointing back in the direction he’d come.
“Fuck. Jason! Get over here in front of the IMP and keep an eye out. You see anybody you yell out.” Ed pointed where he wanted the young man. “You hurt?” he asked Quentin. The black man shook his head.
“Coming out!” Mark jogged into view through the tall grass and stopped on the sidewalk, breath coming in ragged gasps. He bent nearly double, letting the SAW hang from its sling around his shoulders. “Too old for this shit,” the big forty-eight-year-old panted. “At least one, maybe two, zig-zagging through the yards, tearing ass outta here.” He waved a hand in the general direction. “Think I tagged one, but I couldn’t catch them. Fuckin’ teenagers.” He hawked a big wad of phlegm onto the cracked pavement.
“You hurt? No? Nobody? Unbefuckinglievable.” Ed was still jacked up on adrenaline, his whole body vibrating. He put a fresh magazine into his weapon, his last, and looked at the mag he’d just taken out. He could see four, maybe five rounds left in it.
“We’ve still got a fucking sniper out here,” George warned everybody. “Guy could be a friendly, or he could be a fucking wingnut and start taking potshots at us, so don’t bunch up.” That got their heads swiveling.
“You guys have two minutes!” Ed yelled at them. “Grab all the shit you can carry. Ammo, water, anything that looks like intelligence. And somebody get me a body count!”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Ed clambered back into the IMP and shuffled toward the front, banging elbows and head on unforgiving steel. As big as it was on the outside, the armored personnel carrier was less than roomy. The firing platform for the roof gun took up a big chunk of the center of the compartment. The dead gunner’s body was visible from the chest down as he hung by his armpits from the hatch.
The IMP’s driver was slumped in his chair, one shoulder covered in blood from a head wound. Light came in through what passed for a windshield in the armored personnel carrier, a curving, four foot wide, four inch tall slit. The clear polymer in it was designed to stop most small arms fire and was divided into sections, or blocks, that could be replaced individually.
“What?” he demanded. Weasel, furiously opening the vehicle’s storage compartments, pointed at the block directly in front of the driver’s head. There, in the middle of it, like a mosquito trapped in amber, was a bullet. A big bullet with a silver tip.
“Our sniper?” Ed asked. Weasel shrugged. Ed looked from the bullet to the driver and back to the bullet. “So what killed him?”
“He took something in the side of the head. Shrapnel from a grenade or a stray round maybe. Back hatch was open and even though he’s got armor behind him shit just bounces around in here once it gets in.”
Ed stepped back to the roof gunner and examined him. The sniper’s first shot had hit the man in the base of the throat and blown his spine out the back of his nec
k. It was grisly. Ed forced his eyes off the man, glanced around the IMP’s mostly metal interior and grunted. “Two minutes,” he told Weasel. Then he looked down at the ammo cans Weasel had found. “Those full of anything we can use?” he asked, hardly daring to hope.
“Bet your ass.” Weasel hissed loudly, and flipped open the lid of one. There, each nestled in its own slot, were eight fragmentation hand grenades.
“Beautiful. See what else they have.” Ed scurried out the back of the carrier. He climbed up the side of the IMP, using the slat armor like a ladder, to the roof.
“You see anything?” he called down to Jason, who was standing at the rear corner of the rusted vehicle wedged between the IMP and the curb. Jason looked up at him and shook his head.
The squad was moving with directed intensity, systematically looting the bodies of anything of value. George saw Mark digging through one of the soldier’s packs he’d found blown from the roof of the Growler, pulling out items one at a time, and yelled at him.
“No no no, fuck that, we don’t have time,” George told him. He jogged over, and reached up to where his knife should be hanging from his webbing. It wasn’t there. Instead he pointed at the big blade on Mark’s hip. “Use your knife. Cut the whole thing open.” He looked up and around. “Move, people!” he yelled. “We’re living on borrowed time.” Then he jogged back between the houses to retrieve his knife.
A long time ago—it seemed like decades—when he’d first joined up, someone had shown Ed how to operate a belt-fed grenade launcher, but he hadn’t laid hands on one since and couldn’t figure out how to get the belt out of the weapon. He used his knife to pry apart the metal links and laid the rest of the ammo belt back into the oversize ammo can resting on a raised tray beside the gun. He closed it up and moved to the rear of the vehicle.