by James Tarr
“I know, right?” Randa said.
They were in the Town Residences apartment building in the middle of the Blue Zone, looking across one of the narrow surface streets to the two aircraft hangars. The hangars were fifty yards apart, their main doors facing each other. Past the hangars, to the north and northeast, were the helipads. To the northwest, barely two hundred yards away, was Echo Base, the Tabs’ headquarters.
“We’re fucking right on top of them.”
The hangars were seventy-five yards away from the apartment building, and frantic with activity. Air crew were running this way and that. One Kestrel had been towed out of the hangar on the right and was just starting to head toward a helipad, and a second Kestrel was emerging from the other hangar. Thor’s eyes went wide. He’d never been this close to this many enemy soldiers before. Even though the plan had been for them to pop up right in the middle of the Blue Zone, hell, right in the middle of the Army base, it had seemed somehow less than real to him. Now, looking down at the hangars and helicopters and Tabs running around the concrete in the bright morning sun, it was very, very real.
“Cock it,” Thor said to himself, working the cocking lever on the rocket launch tube. “Depress the safety. Fire.” As the iron sights danced over the moving Kestrel his thumb found the button…then he paused.
Idiot. He only had one chance to do this right. Lives, his life and the lives of his men, depended on him not fucking everything up.
He took a breath, paused, locked the rocket tube down tight against his shoulder, lined up the iron sights as perfectly as he could, depressed the big safety button with his two middle fingers, then gently pressed the trigger with his thumb.
There was a giant hissing explosion, some angry cross between a gunshot and a grenade, and the pane of glass in front of him disintegrated as the rocket shot from the tube. Thor was buffeted by the exhaust gases ricocheting around the apartment, which filled with plaster dust blown off the walls and ceiling. The Kestrel was eighty-two yards away as the rocket streaked toward it. Thor missed his mark, by two feet, but the rocket still struck the helicopter at the rear of the fuselage, just forward of the tail. The explosion spun the Kestrel sideways and smoke began pouring from the hole.
“Fuck yeah!” Randa shouted as Thor tossed the empty tube aside.
There was a boom and a cloud of glass as the team in the apartment next to them fired an RPG at the second Kestrel, now fully out from the hangar. The rocket missed the helicopter by three inches, skimming over its nose and exploding on the concrete just past it. The helicopter rocked but appeared undamaged.
“Dammit,” Randa shouted. She flipped the selector on her M4 to full-auto and loosed a burst to blast out the window in front of her, then took aim at the Kestrel. She guessed the distance, adjusted her aim, and then pulled the trigger on the M203 underbarrel 40mm grenade launcher. She was aiming for the engine mounted high up on the side of the bird, just below the main rotor. The helicopter was angled away from him, and she jerked the trigger, so instead of hitting the engine the grenade flew through the open rear co-pilot’s access door and exploded inside the cockpit, shredding most of the electronics.
The third team fired a Spike through the roof of the close aircraft hangar. Whether the rocket detonated on the thin aluminum roof or inside the structure and the resulting blast opened a rent, the end result was a ragged gaping hole in the roof directly in front of them. Randa loaded another grenade and fired it toward the hole in the roof, as did another of the dogsoldiers in the next apartment. Randa had eight grenades for her M203 and was eager to use them all. They heard the explosions inside the hangar but couldn’t see what damage they were doing.
Thor had an angle inside the left hangar. Its main door was open and he could see perhaps a third of the darker interior, including a portion of another helicopter. He heard grenade launchers firing with loud THOOMPS and grenades exploding in the distance as he unhooked the second Spike from his pack—each one weighed eighteen pounds, no wonder his back was toast—and went through the firing procedures quickly. He stepped to the side a bit, carefully lined up his sights on the open hangar door, and fired the rocket. It streaked to and through the open hangar door in a second, exploding inside, but he couldn’t see what damage it made.
The aircrew in and around the hangars were running and taking cover. The two Kestrels were the only visible aircraft, and they were now both disabled. He grabbed his radio. “Eagle Eye to RoadRunner, Eagle Eye to RoadRunner, go, go, GO! All Eagle Eyes, provide covering fire.”
The apartment building had begun to take incoming rounds from soldiers inside the base. Thor looked across at the Tabs’ headquarters, Echo, and saw figures streaming from the building, heading in their direction. There were soldiers everywhere, like ants.
“Suppress Echo, suppress Echo!” he said into the radio. “Randa, send some forties over there.” He grabbed his rifle, used the window frame to brace, and began firing aimed shots at the soldiers in the distance. Randa and two of the other dogsoldiers in adjacent apartments fired grenades at the distant building, and Thor watched the first volley of grenades arc through the air; one fell short, the others exploded directly in front of the office building. Bodies were flung aside, and the glass in the front doors shattered. Then he saw movement, and looked down to see every one of the dogsoldiers not up on the seventh floor, all twenty-four of them, charging across the street toward the hangars.
Thor braced his support hand on the window frame and took aim at the soldiers around the electric building, firing in their direction. He fired a few shots, then cranked the magnification lever on his Trijicon scope all the way to 8X. He looked back through the scope. Much better.
He fired quick, aimed shots. He was trying to hit the soldiers, but he was also trying to keep them pinned down until RoadRunner could accomplish their objective. He burned through one magazine, then another, not trying to conserve ammo, hearing the other members of Eagle Eye doing the same. The SAW gunner two apartments over was loosing continuous short bursts.
Thor did another reload, then looked down to his right. The Leland hotel was barely one hundred yards away, and he saw a small group of soldiers clustered by its front entrance. They couldn’t get a good angle on him or his men, but as he watched they took off at a run, headed in his direction. Most were armed with handguns.
“Oh shit.” He grabbed a grenade off his vest, pulled the pin, leaned out the window, and heaved it in their direction. He watched it arcing down toward them, but pulled his head back before it blew so he didn’t get hit with shrapnel. The grenade detonated behind the group, and two went down. He stuck his head back out in time to see the rest of the group make it past the corner, out of his sight. “We’re going to have company,” he yelled toward the open apartment door behind him. “Somebody cover the hallway!” Then he looked down toward the hangars.
They’d dropped their backpacks inside the parking garage so they could move faster. The dogsoldiers of RoadRunner fired their rifles as they ran, more to clear the way before them than trying to actually hit anything. A few slowed down to aim and fired grenades at the open doors of the hangars. There were concrete barriers along Bagley Street to prevent anyone from accidentally wandering on foot or by vehicle into the hangar/helipad area. The dogsoldiers climbed and hopped over the waist-high barriers and charged toward the hangars, splitting into two groups, one for each hangar.
Harris was at the front of the left group, running toward the side of the hangar. He drew close to the corner, and one of the dogsoldiers with him popped out and fired a 40mm grenade through the big hangar door. Harris pulled the pin on a hand grenade, let the lever fly, then charged forward and tossed it inside. The second group was doing the same at the other hangar. Most of the air crew were unarmed, and unarmored, and had run for cover either north, away from the hangars, or gone to ground inside the hangars.
As soon as the grenade exploded Harris waved the SAW gunner forward and the man spun around the corne
r and let loose. A full fifty-round burst, spraying left and right, as the squad spread out behind him in the open door. Harris could see figures moving around at the back of the hangar and heard rounds cracking by his head. The man next to him knelt down and took aim with his Spike. He forgot to check over his shoulder to made sure no one was in the backblast area before firing the rocket, and one dogsoldier was spun to the side by the gases and fell to the concrete, stunned and burned. The rocket hit the side of a Kestrel in the back of the hangar and the bird exploded.
Every dogsoldier armed with a grenade launcher was firing them at the helicopters inside the big hangars. Harris heard rockets firing behind him, at the other hangar. “Go, GO!” he shouted, waving everyone forward. They charged between the helicopters, firing at anyone they saw, until they found themselves at the rear of the hangar. There’d barely been a dozen soldiers inside the hangar, mostly mechanics and air crew, and what few had been armed mostly sported pistols. Harris checked to make sure they were all dead, then turned to the reason they were there. Most of the helicopters appeared to be damaged by explosions, but not all.
“Who’s got hand grenades? Everybody else out to the door, cover us. Grenades, one per bird, pick a spot, inside the cockpit if it’s open, if not inside an engine or whatever. Don’t forget to pull your fucking pin.” The grenade currently in his hand he’d picked up off the floor. Whoever had thrown it had forgotten to pull the pin. “I’ll go first, when I run by you pull your pin and do yours, then follow me. Ready?” He lifted his grenade high, then pulled the pin and finger-rolled it into the open cockpit of the cargo helicopter in front of him. Then he began running toward the open hangar door. The other men did the same. They’d almost reached the door when the grenades began exploding, and he dove around the corner of the building as a grenade caused some sort of sympathetic detonation in one of the Kestrels. The blast sent fire out the open door and forced a rent in the roof.
He looked across the concrete and saw the other group at the second hangar. He waved to get their attention just as he saw them beginning to run away from their target. The crump and flash of grenades inside the far hangar made him smile. He did a quick count. It looked like they were down at least one man.
“Let’s go! Get the fuck out of here!” he shouted, but it was unnecessary, everyone in RoadRunner was heading back south toward the apartment building. He became aware of bullet cracks above his heads, rounds whipping back and forth between the soldiers behind him and Eagle Eye ahead of them, providing covering fire. Most of RoadRunner was over the barriers and across the street when the Toad rounded the corner at the end of the block.
“Contact right!” Harris screamed.
The M240B belt-fed machine gun atop the tank opened up on them, and the dogsoldier in front of Harris stumbled as he was hit. Harris grabbed him and dove into the entrance ramp of the parking garage, temporarily out of sight of the tank, blocked by the thick concrete walls.
Someone inside the tank got excited, and the main gun fired. The 120mm shell passed between two running men and exploded fifty feet beyond them. The blast was enough to knock them down, and the recoil from the main gun caused the next burst from the M240B to go high. By the time the tank settled the last of RoadRunner was disappearing into the gray parking garage.
The tank swung out wide, the turret rotated, and when the main gun was reloaded the tank fired. The 120mm HEAT (high explosive anti-tank) round impacted the front of the parking garage, which erupted with a roar, then collapsed.
The Toad could not fit inside the parking garage or climb over the pile of rubble, and buttoned-up inside the sixty-ton beast, looking at viewscreens better suited to long-distance engagements, neither the gunner nor the commander of the tank could see well into the dimness of the dust-filled parking garage. The M240B raked back and forth, the bullets bouncing around the interior of the concrete structure. Then the tank suddenly reversed, backing rapidly up the road, chewing stripes into the concrete. One IMP and two Growlers roared up toward the corners of the apartment building and began directing fire toward the seventh floor.
When the Toad had retreated a sufficient distance to get the proper elevation, the main gun tilted up and swung over. The window frames devoid of glass made it easy to spot the correct floor.
The Toad rocked, and the brick exterior of the apartment building burst outward in smoke and a flash, the center unit on the seventh floor totally erased.
Get a drone over there!” Parker shouted, staring at the firefight at the hangars in the feed from one of the security cameras mounted on the outside of Echo. The hangars were too far away, and the resolution too grainy, for him to make out enough details. Figures running, and explosions. The guerrillas seemed to be firing from the nearby apartment building. “How the hell did they get inside the perimeter without getting spotted?” No one had an answer for him. There’d been no alarms or alerts, no vehicles running the checkpoints, so they somehow must have infiltrated on foot.
“Drone up!” one of the operators called out, and everyone moved toward her, eyes on her screen.
The drone was two hundred feet above the ground, swooping toward the action from the northeast, and its wide-angle HD camera provided them a full-color hi-res picture of the action on the ground. Parker saw flame and towering columns of smoke pouring from between the two hangars. Behind him he heard his S3 on the radio, ordering troops to the area. The command center was a maelstrom of figures running back and forth and loud radio traffic.
“There!” Parker said, pointing. He’d spotted a group of dogsoldiers between the hangars. As the drone flew through thick black smoke and out the other side he lost sight of the men for a second, but then they were back. Running now, heading south, toward the nearby parking garage. Next to it was an apartment building, and halfway up the building he saw missing windows, and muzzle flashes.
“They’re retreating there,” Parker said. “Get some troops to surround those buildings. And get me a flight status on my aircraft!”
“Yes sir.”
As he watched he saw a Toad roaring in from the west and begin engaging the retreating guerrillas, and an IMP and several Growlers approaching from the east side at speed. The guerrillas weren’t getting away, that much seemed clear. He watched the Toad fire its main gun almost point-blank into the parking garage, and then spray the collapsing rubble with its machine gun. The dogsoldiers who’d somehow penetrated his base would all be dead very soon, of that he had no doubt. His concern now was how much damage they’d done to his small fleet of helicopters. None of them had been in the air at the time of the attack.
“I’ve got a second drone on station in five seconds!” another operator called out.
Parker turned and saw the feed on the man’s monitor. Having just taken off from the roof of the building behind Echo, the drone was coming in from the northwest, gradually gaining speed and altitude.
“Show me the other side of that apartment building!” the S3 ordered the operator.
“Yes sir.”
The camera showed the drone flying south, then turn east and head toward the low parking garage, and the apartment building beyond. When it was still several hundred yards away the observers saw two vehicles exit the west side of the parking garage. They swerved through a parking lot, bounced across Michigan, and raced south on a narrow side street.
“Send some troops in pursuit of those vehicles, but concentrate on that building,” Parker directed. “There are still a lot of terrorists inside there.” He’d seen at least fifteen and probably more enemy troops on the ground by the hangars. Less than half that many could fit inside two vehicles, and they had no easy way out of the base. “And what’s going on at Washboard?”
“The two platoons are en route right now sir. ETA five minutes or so. Do you perhaps want to pull them back…?”
“No, the terrorists here are trapped in that building, and I don’t want the ones at VOP to get away. I want that building surrounded ASAP.”
“Gogogogo!” someone was shouting.
Harris rolled over the injured man he’d tackled into the parking garage. It had been a race against time. They’d known they would only have a short window—a very short window—to do all the damage they could to the aircraft in the hangars before armor rolled up, and they’d almost made it. “Grab your packs!” he shouted needlessly, as all of RoadRunner was doing just that.
Dogsoldiers snagged their heavy packs on the run and headed toward the door in the side of the apartment building. Harris spotted his pack and had just laid a hand on it when he realized the man he’d tackled hadn’t gotten up. The man was facedown on the concrete, lying angled across one of the yellow parking spot lines.
Harris dragged his pack over to the man and knelt down. He grabbed the man’s shoulder and flipped him over, only to see staring dead eyes. “Shit.” Less than half the group, the slower-moving doggies, were still in the parking garage. He was in the process of standing up when the garage exploded around him.
He lost consciousness for a second and then came to, covered in dust, a chunk of concrete the size of a football on his chest. He could taste blood, but couldn’t hear anything other than a whine. He blinked once, twice, then there was a weird staccato thumping he could feel in his chest more than hear. Harris looked over to see the top of the Toad past a pile of collapsed cement and rebar, firing its belt-fed over his head into the garage beyond in one long burst. Then it reversed, he wasn’t sure why.
Coughing, he rolled over and got to his hands and knees. There were several other dogsoldiers nearby, some moving, a few clearly dead from the blast.
“Let’s go, let’s go!” he shouted, getting to his feet. He grabbed and kicked and punched those still alive, getting them to their feet. He grabbed his backpack, pulled it out from under a piece of concrete the size of a card table, turned—and saw the door leading back into the apartment building was blocked by rubble.