Dogsoldiers

by James Tarr

  “Negative, Twelve. Just checked on that myself. Keep an eye, over.”

  “Roger, over and out.” Mike Cornwell, the pilot of Lima Twelve, switched channels to talk directly with Eleven.

  “Eleven, this is Twelve, you check south at all?”

  “Negative, just done circles north, over.”

  Cornwell turned to his copilot. “Now, if you didn’t want us to spot you, where would you go?” He grinned.

  “Got two out there now,” Mark called softly down the stairs. The first circling Kestrel had been joined by a second from the north.

  “Yeah, I can hear it,” Ed murmured, mostly to himself.

  “Second one’s curving off, heading this way. Dropping down.” Mark paused, and his voice got a little tight. “Coming straight in.”

  George snapped his fingers loudly and started barking orders quietly. “Away from the windows. Grab the sheets but leave the rest of your shit. Basement, into the basement.” He looked at Ed. “One house or two?” He was worried about one rocket taking out the whole squad.

  “One. We can double up on the heat blankets, and we’ve got a wet mattress up there in the middle of the floor that might as well be lead for as well as they can see through it.”

  “Me,” Cornwell, said, as he banked the big helicopter around, “I’d head south, where no one expected me to go, and then circle around back north when they got tired of looking for me.” He lost altitude and speed. “Hit the thermal.”

  “I hate this shit,” Marsh, the copilot said, flipping on the Forward-Looking Infrared. “We’re going to get a missile up our ass and there won’t be a goddamn thing I’ll be able to do about it.” Under five hundred feet the helicopter’s automatic missile defense systems just didn’t have time to react to an incoming bogie.

  “If these cocksuckers had a missile Eleven’d be a smoking pile of slag,” Cornwell said. “Just ask Evancho.”

  “Jesus, Mike.”

  “I’ve got movement,” Mark called down, not as quietly as he should have.

  “What?” Ed was watching his men scramble into the small house’s basement.

  “Next street north, between the houses. Someone on foot.”

  “Fuck.”

  “Wasn’t in a uniform. Probably a local,” George reassured the squad leader. “Besides, Army’ll be in armor when they roll up. And numbers.”

  “Shit.” But George was right. “Come on down,” Ed called to Mark. “I don’t want you spotted.” The freight-train rumble of the Kestrel was getting louder and louder.

  They left most of the gear piled on the floor in the dining room and kitchen and crouched in the cool basement shadows, every man in the squad staring upward with concern. They’d pinned the heat blankets up to the two-by-twelve floor supports above their heads, overlapping them as much as they could.

  “FLIR’s fucking useless this time of day,” Marsh reminded his pilot.

  “It’s useless during daylight this whole time of year, but sometimes you get lucky,” Cornwell responded. He floated the Kestrel two hundred feet off the deck, running straight south at barely thirty knots. Unlike some areas of the city, most of the houses here were still standing. Roof after sun-baked roof disappeared underneath the nose of his ship as the FLIR’s computer examined the thermal images it was receiving. If any of them were identified as having human profiles an alarm would sound. At this altitude the FLIR could only scan a fifty-foot-wide section of ground, but to a certain extent it could see through walls. During wintertime the thing was absolutely amazing, but in warm weather the FLIR had definite problems. During the summer the average house absorbed so much heat most of the flight crews doubted the scanner’s brain would ever be able to identify a human silhouette amidst all the thermal clutter. The copilot stared at the murky blotches on his screen and shook his head. Waste of time.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  “Coming back again.”

  There were muffled groans and Ed, hunkered on the basement stairs, stared upward unseeingly at the stairwell ceiling. The drywall was bubbled and stained parchment yellow. He could hear the throbbing roar as the Kestrel swung around for another pass. The chopper was running low, he could tell that just from the sheer volume of noise. Really low, and slow. The whole house had rattled on the bird’s first pass and Ed’s hair was grey from the dust that drifted down from the deteriorating drywall.

  The squad below him nervously fingered their weapons in the darkness. The basement had two narrow windows near the ceiling, but the lawn outside was so overgrown hardly any light reached the cracked panes.

  “I hate this shit,” Jason heard Weasel say in the dim light. He could see a faint gleam from the skinny man’s eyes as they stared upward. The small basement echoed with the sound of coughing, shuffling feet, and the clink of metal on metal. It began to grow thick with the smell of unwashed bodies.

  “Is this asshole flying between the houses?” Mark said loudly, as the roar of the helicopter once again began to shake the small bungalow.

  “He’s trying to draw fire,” Quentin observed.

  “I’d like to oblige him.”

  The clattering rumble of the helicopter came closer, and closer, and then began to fade.

  “That wasn’t as close,” George said from behind Ed, crouched halfway down the basement stairs.

  “No,” Ed agreed. They waited in silence as the helicopter put distance between it and the small residence, then turned and came back for another pass. This time it was obvious to every man in the squad that the helicopter wasn’t coming as near.

  “Moving away,” Ed breathed in relief. He sat on the top step and stared down at George and Quentin, half in shadow at the bottom of the stairs, as the helicopter made pass after pass.

  “Anybody got a cigarette?” George asked over his shoulder. That got a lot of laughs. They hadn’t seen any tobacco in months.

  Weasel shuffled into view at the bottom of the stairs. “Here.” He tossed something at George, who caught it reflexively, then stared in amazement at the pack of cigarettes in his hand.

  “Where the fuck did you get these?”

  “Spoils of war, my man,” Weasel said. He was more excited about the three boxes of 9mm NATO ammunition he’d found inside the IMP. The 150 rounds would be enough to fill five of his MP5 magazines. He’d still have about six empties, but it was better than nothing.

  “You grab any steak or chocolate while you were shopping?” Mark asked him. He hadn’t smoked in years and wasn’t about to start. Food, on the other hand….

  George extracted a cigarette from the pack and stuck it between his lips, then dug around in his pockets. He finally found a battered Zippo which reluctantly ignited after half a dozen flicks. He sucked down a lungful of smoke with gusto, held it in until his face started to turn red, then blew it forcefully toward the ceiling.

  “Toss me one a them.” Early’s drawl floated up from the darkness. He replaced Weasel at the bottom of the stairs.

  “You smoke?” Ed asked him. Early gestured at the cigarettes in George’s hand. George tossed him the pack.

  Early hefted the pack. “This ain’t smokin’,” he said derisively. He pulled one out and held it up for them to see. “But unless somebody liberated some Churchills it’ll have to do. I’d kill for a Partagas or Arturo Fuente.” He jammed it between his thin lips and handed the pack back to George. Early’s Zippo looked like it had been driven over by a tank—twice—but the flame sprung up yellow and bright with just one gentle roll of the wheel. George gave Early’s lighter a dirty look.

  Ed watched the two men blissfully suck down nicotine. “You know,” Ed told them, “those things’ll kill you.” A grin he couldn’t fight split George’s face, and he shook his head. The chuckling that rolled up out of the basement warmed Ed’s heart in a way he hadn’t felt in months, perhaps years.

  “Echo Two-Eight, Hotel.”

  “Go ahead Two-Eight.” The Major sounded resigned to having a bad day.

  “We’
re rolling up, Hotel.”

  “Roger, keep your eyes open.”

  “Echo, this is Lima Twelve, over.”

  “Go ahead Twelve.”

  Cornwell watched the small column through the armored window at his feet as it wound its way through the littered streets toward the smoking Growler and stationary APC. “It’s two blocks up and on your right. You’re aiming for the smoke. I’ve got no movement and nothing on thermal. You can take that for what it’s worth. Eleven and I are on station at five hundred. Over.”

  “Roger Twelve. Vehicles in sight now.”

  The Captain leading the column switched his radio over to the ground channel. “Two-Four and Two-Six, take the street to the east, Two-Five and –Seven, the one to the west. We’ll roll up slowly.”

  “Roger Eight.”

  “Roger, breaking off now.”

  The Captain watched out the slowly opening rear hatch of the IMP he and ten of his men sat in as the first two Growlers behind him peeled off to the right. The next two turned left, each vehicle loaded with five soldiers and equipped with a pedestal-mounted heavy-caliber machine gun.

  The IMP rolled sedately along, the trooper manning the belt-fed grenade launcher on the roof nervously scanning the houses to either side. The two pairs of Growlers roared up the parallel streets to either side in hopes of flushing out any potential ambushers.

  The Captain watched the nervous faces of the young men crowded into the personnel carrier. Barely more than kids, most of them, looking to him for reassurance and guidance. Once, he’d have been able to give it to them. Now, he wasn’t so sure. The back hatch stopped, fully descended. The soldiers nearest the hatch raised their weapons and scanned the passing houses.

  “Eight, this is Four. Got nothing.”

  “Seven here. Nothing moving.”

  The Captain stood and shuffled up the compartment to stand next to the driver. He peered out through one of the window blocks and saw they were about a hundred yards from the ambushed patrol’s IMP.

  “All right,” he called out, turning back to his men. “I want two lines, either side of the street. Keep your intervals. I’m going to keep this thing rolling for a bit. You start taking fire get your ass back in here. Move.”

  As his soldiers stood and began hopping off the tailgate of the slowly moving IMP, weapons up and scanning the nearby porches, the Captain got back on the radio. “Four, Seven, you stay on your streets, opposite the smoke, and sing out if you see anything. Five and Six, roll up the south end of this street and hold up about fifty yards out. Keep a man on the gun and one behind the wheel, I want everyone else checking for survivors and hostiles.”

  “Roger that.”

  “Let’s hope.”

  The Captain smacked the leg of the roof gunner and the man looked down through the hatch, hands tight on the grenade launcher. “We start taking fire I want you to put rounds in every fucking house you can see. There’s fifty rounds in that can and it better be empty before you get off the trigger.”

  The young soldier grinned. “Yes Sir!”

  The IMP rolled to within twenty yards of the idling personnel carrier without incident. The troops moved up either side of the street, moving in quick dashes from cover to cover, searching the houses and in-between them, wondering if they were next in line to be ambushed. They passed the IMP nosed into the rusting vehicle hulk, checking the street half a dozen houses past the burning Growler. By that time the Captain was out of the APC and striding forward down the middle of the street.

  It was as bad as he’d feared. The street was littered with silent forms, the bodies of his men. He saw at least one man with this throat cut—the ARF was very consistent, they didn’t leave their wounded, and they didn’t take prisoners. The ambushed patrol hadn’t been under his command, directly, but every man in it had at one time or another served under him. Dead, all dead. Christ, would this war ever end?

  His Lieutenant came running up to him. “Looks clear.”

  The Captain nodded. “Make sure they keep their eyes open, Reed. Do a thorough check for wounded, every house and yard within a couple hundred yards from here, but I don’t think we’re going to be that lucky. And I want eyeballs on the street at either end of the engagement zone.” He pointed.

  “Yes Sir.” Lieutenant Reed started barking out orders and the few soldiers still up near the houses grudgingly moved toward the street to help with the dead. They didn’t want to see the bodies, perhaps recognize someone they’d spoken to the day before, but they all knew they had a job to do.

  The Captain stood near the back deck of the lost patrol’s IMP and surveyed the carnage. The Growler was still burning and probably would for hours. It was in the middle of the street and no danger to anything, so they’d let it burn. He peeked inside the IMP.

  The floor was awash with blood, but the personnel carrier didn’t appear seriously damaged. He carefully stepped over the mangled body at the rear deck and checked on the driver and door gunner. No surprises. The bodies looked like they’d been hastily searched. They’d been relieved of their spare rifle mags and probably anything that either was or looked like intelligence. The IMP’s driver looked all of seventeen. The Army, which was growing increasingly short on bodies, was now drafting seventeen-year-olds, and talk was they were going to drop the age to sixteen.

  “What a fucking waste,” he spat.

  There’d been eighteen men in the patrol and out the back hatch of the IMP he could see a dozen or so bodies. The rest, he was sure, would be found in and around the nearby houses, shot as they’d tried to escape the killing zone. He seriously doubted whether any of the soldiers had made it out, but until the body count was in he still held some small piece of hope in his heart.

  There was a big ammo box on the back hatch of the IMP, its lid cracked. The Captain frowned at it, then stepped off the deck and looked up at the roof. Yeah, that’s where it came from.

  I wonder why they didn’t take it? he mused silently. He walked back to the box and flipped open the lid. There was a faint ting! and he felt something brush past his ear. He looked around, not seeing anything, knowing it hadn’t been a gunshot, then looked down into the ammo can. There was a nearly full belt of grenades filling the can, plus a thermite hand grenade someone had stuck in there against regulations. The Captain had just enough time to notice the grenade’s handle was missing before it blew and set off the whole can.

  “Holy shit! What was that?” Cornwell spun Lima Twelve in a tight arc as a massive fireball bloomed near the open rear door of the disabled personnel carrier five hundred feet below him. Bodies flew through the air and the IMP jumped ten feet into the air and toppled over onto its side. The shockwave from what had to be a bomb shook the helicopter and for just a few seconds he had to fight the controls.

  “Hotel! Hotel! This is Lima Eleven. We’ve got an explosion on the ground, unknown source, multiple casualties, over.”

  “Roger that.”

  “Was that a mortar?” Eleven asked, curving his bird away from Twelve just in case they started taking incoming fire. He scanned the horizon for missile exhaust trails. He glanced back at the carnage on the ground. “Goddammit.”

  Ed was standing in the kitchen with George as the squad’s number two man sorted gear. They could feel the explosion in their feet.

  “What the hell was that?” Quentin asked, sitting on the basement stairs.

  “I left them a little present,” Weasel said from the basement shadows. He explained what he’d done.

  “Nice,” Mark said. “You think that’d be enough to take out the IMP?”

  “Sure sounded like it.” He looked at the squad leader. “Add that to the scoreboard for the inning. A Kestrel, a Growler, and an IMP. All we need now’s a Toad and we win the scavenger hunt.”

  “We really ought to be further away, after that,” George said quietly to Ed. Ed nodded, but both men knew leaving the house was riskier than staying put.

  George cracked an ammo can and peeked
inside to make sure it was the right one, then carried it over to the top of the basement stairs. “Earl,” he called down softly. “How many mags do you have for your rifle?”

  “Loaded? After this little dustup? One. Barely. Got six or seven empties on me.”

  George handed the can to Quentin. It was passed down the stairs to Early, who sat against the cool basement wall to open it.

  “Gonna be a pain to de-link all that, but I didn’t think you’d mind,” George called out with a smile.

  Early pulled a shiny belt of ammo from the can and a big smile broke across his face. It was the real stuff, not the popgun rounds everyone else carried, and the same type of ammo he had in his rifle now, so he wouldn’t have to re-zero. “Naw, don’t think I will. Hot damn!” He preferred using a hammer to de-link, but a loose brick would do the job just fine.

  “Oh. Weasel, here.” Weasel moved to the bottom of the steps and George dumped several objects into his hand. Weasel looked to see four fully-loaded pistol magazines. “Nine millimeter. That’ll fill at least a couple of your MP5 mags.” George headed back into the kitchen.

  “Hell yeah. Sweetness!”

  Ed chuckled and stared at the huge pile of confiscated gear still in the kitchen. “Jesus, how much did we get?”

  George shook his head. “Enough to share, if we need to. Or trade. Who knows what kind of shape other squads’ll be in once they make it to the RP. Half the guys on that patrol were armed with old M4s for whatever reason. Between what I stripped off their bodies and an ammo can full of loaded mags in the IMP we’ve now got over ninety mags of five-five-six between the four of us that’re using them, if you can fucking believe it. And at least two spare canteens of water each.” He laughed and shook his head. “No food, of course. Well, three meal packs to split between seven guys. What’s that, about five hundred calories a person?”