Dogsoldiers

by James Tarr

  The squad stacked up on the sheets of plywood, and with two kicks each they went down. Brooke figured they wouldn’t have to go looking for the Tabs, and she was right—not fifty feet into the New Center One building they were spotted by a woman, and she screamed. It was followed up with more screams, shouts, people running, falling down.

  The building was constructed like a number 8, with two open atriums divided by walkways on each floor. There were more shouts, then gunfire off to her left. She jerked her head around and saw a soldier on the far side of the atrium, on the same floor, staring at them in shock. He shot again, then went down under a barrage of return fire.

  “All the way across!” Brooke shouted. She waved her men on and kept her carbine pointed over the railing at the lobby one floor down. A soldier came running into the lobby from a hallway, responding to the gunfire. Brooke saw his camouflage clad legs first, and by the time he’d moved into the lobby far enough to spot her and the squad she was firing, aiming at his unarmored thighs as they were the biggest target. He went down, screaming. From the immediate and voluminous outpouring of blood she could tell she’d hit his femoral artery. She left him to bleed out in front of a giant steel sculpture of a bicycle or farm implement or something, Brooke wasn’t sure.

  She followed the squad across the building, all of their rifles up and ready, scanning their surroundings, and they instinctively ducked as they took incoming rounds. The two dogsoldiers in the lead dove to the floor, and the two behind them, disregarding all safety, leaned over the railing and hammered bullets at the two soldiers down below. The Tabs had taken cover—but poorly—behind the corner of a bakery sticking out into the lobby, and after firing ducked behind the wall. The dogsoldiers fired blindly into the wall, which was more decorative than anything else, and the two soldiers fell in a bloody heap.

  “Anyone else? You guys see anyone else?” Brooke shouted, spinning in a circle, rifle up. The building still echoed with screams, and people ran here and there, but indoors the camouflage uniforms of the Tabs made them stick out, and for the moment Sylvester seemed free of enemy combatants. “You okay?” she asked Robbie. The side of the young man’s neck was bloody.

  “Yeah, it’s just a scratch I think,” he said, touching it.

  “Then let’s go. Everybody haul ass,” she yelled, pointing. “You four, head for the hotel.” Sylvester split up—half the squad including one of Morris’ loaners headed for the walkway leading to the adjacent St. Regis hotel, and the other half made for a stairwell.

  She grabbed Robbie by the shoulder and had him cover their rear as they advanced up the stairs all the way to the top floor of the building. It took them a while under their loads, and by the time they reached it they were all panting heavily.

  They stood in the eighth-floor hallway. Through the open door to her right was a small meeting room, and outside its windows she could see both the Fisher Building and the west end of Cadillac Place. She heard four clicks on her radio, that meant that the rest of the squad had made it to their spot on the top floor of the hotel, at the east corner.

  Her radio jumped to life. “Nakatomi, Nakatomi, this is SkyBox. Your front door is clear, at least for right now.” She recognized Barker’s voice.

  She grabbed her radio. “Nakatomi, Nakatomi, this is Cambridge,” she said, still breathing hard from trudging up six flights of stairs carrying close to seventy-five pounds of gear. “We are in position east and west. Go do your thing. Shit!” She’d spotted the glass-walled elevator on the far side of the atrium rising into view. Three soldiers were inside it.

  Brooke and the three men with her opened up on them, killing one man before he could get out of the small car. Another went down and crawled out of sight. The third found some cover and popped out to fire at them. The third time he popped out from cover in the exact same place he was hit in the face and neck and went down.

  She signaled and two of her men moved forward, around the curving walkway, to check to make sure all three soldiers were dead. After a few seconds they signaled all clear.

  “I don’t want that fucking happening again,” Brooke spat, her ears ringing from the gunfire. She was unimpressed with the Tabs’ tactics, it was like they didn’t know how to fight if they weren’t buttoned-up in armor. “I want somebody out here, eyes, watching our backs. I want to know if the Tabs are coming before they actually get here.” She pointed. “Robbie.”

  “You got it.”

  She grabbed the radio. “Nakatomi, Cambridge. Sorry for the interruption. We are in position.” She and the remaining two squad members moved into the nearby meeting room. It was at the southwest corner of the building, and she had a great view. The Growler in front of the Fisher Building was smoking, and a camouflage uniform-clad body was just visible on the ground behind the second Growler parked in front of Cadillac Place.

  “Nakatomi reads you,” Ed’s steady voice responded. “Heading up.”

  “SkyBox, Cambridge East,” Brooke heard over the radio, the tense voice coming from one of her men positioned at the far end of the hotel. “You’ve got a squad of Tabs on foot heading to your building from the east. Five, maybe six, ETA about ten seconds.”

  Brooke peered to the left out her windows, but didn’t have eyes on the call out. Maybe the pedestrian walkway six stories below her, running from the east end of New Center One to the central tower of the Cadillac Place, was blocking her view of the soldiers.

  “SkyBox copies.”

  Barker quickly gestured to the men around him but they’d heard the exchange on their radios. The building was so big it had several lobbies connected by a wide hallway, the floors gray marble which had seen better times. Long-defunct stores lined the hallway, which had an arched roof and gold-leaf detailing. They’d studied the floor plans of the building and knew the Tabs had several routes they could take into and through the building to get to their position, but the simplest and quickest was the hallway running from one side of the building to the other between Cass and 2nd Avenue.

  The Tabs weren’t yet in sight. Some of the men took up defensive positions in the lobby and in the doorways lining the hallway, facing east. Others moved toward the alternate avenues of approach and covered them. Lydia had just come upstairs and Chan waved her back down.

  “If they come this way, wait for me to fire,” Hannibal hissed, hiding behind a column to peer down the hallway. He could see daylight at the far end.

  There had been a long enough lull in the shooting that several of the building occupants stuck their heads out of doorways where they’d been hiding. As soon as they saw the guerrillas they darted back out of sight, one woman with a terrified scream that made Hannibal roll his eyes, but at the scream he saw movement at the far end of the hall. He pulled back behind the marble column and signaled for the men to stay hidden.

  Hannibal waited until he could hear the thud of running boots before popping out from cover. Three Tabs were jogging down the middle of the hallway and Hannibal opened up on them. Almost immediately all of the men around him did the same, and the Tabs fell to sliding stops on the floor before they could return fire.

  But there’d been only three soldiers. “SkyBox, three Tabs down over here, look out for the rest,” Hannibal said into the radio. He’d barely finished speaking when he heard gunfire deeper in the building. There was a narrow corridor there. He left half the men to cover the main hallway and pushed toward the fighting with the rest of them. They approached cautiously, weapons up, but before they got close enough to see anything there was a loud blast from a grenade, some fierce screaming, a second grenade detonation, and then the shooting and screaming stopped as if someone had thrown a switch.

  “SkyBox is clear, we got the other three over here,” they heard over their radios, Chan’s voice breathless but recognizable. “We’ve got one man down,” he spat. “All SkyBox to the rally point,” he ordered flatly. “And somebody get that lady, bring her back up.”

  The building had thirty-one elevators, bu
t they’d been told only one bank was working, and it not very reliably. That was why nobody in the building was working above the fourth floor. However, the elevator they were interested in was the freight elevator, set off alone and apart from the others. It continued to function.

  Lydia led the men to the freight elevator, but large as it was only eight of the fourteen remaining members of Kermit and Yosemite (plus Morris’ loaners and Lydia) could fit into it. “Go, and send her back down ASAP,” Hannibal told Chan. The two squad leaders shared a look, then Chan nodded.

  “Defensive perimeter,” Hannibal said. The freight elevator was in a back hall, and hopefully, after all the gunfire, nobody would come exploring and find them there before the elevator returned. Their plan was to disappear, at least for the moment. It seemed to take forever, but finally they heard the big metal box descending toward them. Lydia was alone in it.

  The men backed into the freight elevator, packing it, and waited for the doors to close. No one appeared in the hallway before them. Then the elevator began its slow trek upward, creaking constantly.

  Ed wasn’t alone in not wanting to climb eight flights of stairs, but if there were any soldiers stationed at the VOP broadcast offices upstairs when the elevator doors opened it would become a kill box. Still, the elevator would be much quicker, and they could get attacked climbing the stairs by soldiers above them just as easily as they could trying to exit the elevators. So he split the men, sending more than half up the stairs, and the rest up in two elevators, leaving six to cover the lobby.

  He rode up in the elevator with Weasel, Mark, and one of Hannibal’s men. When the elevator reached the eighth floor they all had their rifles up, fingers tense on triggers as they hugged the walls. The doors slid open, and…nothing.

  The lobby was small and at one point had been nicely decorated, but the furniture was aging badly. They pushed out and cleared the corners. Not just lights, but lights and the faint coolness of air conditioning on their cheeks was a bit disconcerting. And, above their heads from hidden speakers, was faint music. Ed couldn’t remember the last time he’d heard music. It had been months.

  On the far side of the lobby was one receptionist and a secure door. The slender young man stared at them with an open mouth and wide eyes. The second elevator dinged and four dogsoldiers piled out, ready for killing. They stopped abruptly, seeing everything was under control.

  Ed walked up to the receptionist and leaned against the counter. “Hi,” he said with a smile. “We’re here to interrupt your regularly scheduled programming.”

  “What?”

  “Open the fucking door and take us back,” Hannibal growled over Ed’s shoulder.

  “There any Tabs back there?” Mark asked the receptionist.

  “What?”

  “Soldiers! Are there any soldiers stationed back there to watch the broadcast?”

  “Oh. No.”

  One of Hannibal’s men grabbed the terrified receptionist and pulled him out of the way. They waited. Mark walked over to the stairs and opened the door. “Hurry up you fat bastards,” he called out cheerfully. Fifteen seconds later the men who’d taken the harder route up appeared, sweating and blowing hard. They did not find Mark amusing.

  Ed found the button beside the desk to open the door heading into the back, looked around to make sure everyone was ready, and then hit it.

  It was all rather anticlimactic. Two minutes later Ed was standing with George and Hannibal in the broadcast booth as the dogsoldiers who’d climbed the stairs up to the eighth floor stood around panting and waiting for their heartbeats to slow. Two broadcast producers were sitting before a dozen screens. Some showed the newsroom set just on the other side of the soundproof wall, others were paused to display video ready to be played at the touch of a button. The control panel in front of them looked more complicated than the cockpit of an airliner. Several of the squad members were on the set, looking very out of place with their armor and rifles, making sure the cameramen stayed where they were. The male and female “anchors” had been removed from the set after the live feed had been killed from the booth. The two talking heads seemed to be having nervous breakdowns and were hugging each other in a nearby dressing room, under guard.

  “You’re good? You know what I want?” Ed said.

  “Yeah, yeah,” George said, waving him on.

  Ed moved onto the news room set and sat behind the desk. George moved where Ed could see him. Hannibal stood behind the two producers in the broadcast booth. “Which is the feed that shows what’s going out?” he asked the two very nervous men. They weren’t used to having enemy soldiers with rifles standing behind them.

  “Right there,” one said, pointing at a screen showing nothing but static.

  “Right. Okay, you get a camera on him, and when I tell you to, you put that feed out on the air. And when I tell you to cut it, I want it back to static. Immediately. Got it?”

  The men nodded. One said into his headset, “Mike, center up on him there.” The producer pointed at the resulting image on one of the monitors. “Is that okay?”

  Hannibal nodded. “That’s fine. Everybody be cool and calm and nobody will need to get shot. You guys ready?” he called to George through the open door. George looked at Ed, who was waiting patiently, and gave a thumbs up.

  “Waitwaitwait,” George said. He strode out of the booth and over to Jason, who was looking around the studio with wide eyes. “Kid, gimme your…no, wait, never mind, you don’t have your lever action any more. Early!”

  “Yeah boss,” he said laconically.

  “Give Ed your rifle.”

  “And I’d be doing this why?” he asked, even as he strode across the studio floor.

  “Because it looks like a piece of shit if all you know is ARs. But the Captain’s suppressed carbine looks high speed. We are not trying to look high speed.”

  “Gotcha.” Ed tucked his Geissele behind the desk, and laid Early’s giant wood-stocked M1A across it.

  “Okay, now we’re good,” George said, with a thumbs up to the booth.

  “All right, on my count, you put that out live,” Hannibal said, pointing at the image of Ed. “Five,” he said loudly. “Four, three,” and then he pointed to George, who pointed to Ed.

  Ed looked off to the side, waited several seconds, then said in a confused tone, “Is it on? Are we on?” He turned and seemingly with some difficulty found the live camera. “My fellow Americans,” he began, “you’ve been lied to for too long. Voice of the People does nothing but spew hate and lies. You need to rise up and fight with us…”

  “Cut it,” Hannibal said.

  “What?”

  “Cut it!” he growled, and the image of Ed disappeared into static as he was in mid-sentence.

  Hannibal nodded to George. “Okay, they’ve cut it,” George said, as Ed continued talking. “How long do you want to give it?”

  Ed glanced at his watch. “Thirty seconds should sell it.”

  Hannibal bent down until his head was between the two men seated at the control panel. “Do I need to reiterate what ‘cut it’ means?” he asked quietly.

  “No,” the nervous producer said, “it’s just, I wasn’t expecting you to…never mind. We’re good.”

  “You guys ready for the sing along?” Ed said. The set lights were bright and the cameras and the people behind them were just faint shapes to him.

  “Yeah, we’re good,” George said.

  “Then let’s count it down.”

  George looked at Hannibal, who nodded and said, “Okay, I’m going to count down again. Let’s start from five, and when I fucking say ‘cut it’, cut it. Five,” he said loudly, “four, three, two…” He pointed at George, who pointed at Ed.

  Ed rose half out of his seat, looked off-camera in a different direction, waited half a second, then demanded angrily, “Are we back? What happened?” He glanced at the cameras, then back to the side.

  George pointed at the two dogsoldiers with him and they st
arted shouting angrily in the background as Ed said, “Lock down what’s causing that. You said you knew what you were doing, how their system worked.”

  “Cut it,” Hannibal said quietly.

  “I’ve got—” Ed was saying when the feed cut to static again.

  “And we’re good,” Hannibal said, stepping halfway out of the booth.

  “How was that?” Ed asked, stepping out from behind the desk. “Think that sold it?”

  “You’re a regular Robert DeNiro,” George assured him drily.

  “Is he that guy who played the same character in eighty-seven different movies and then went crazy?” Hannibal said. He looked at Ed. “I totally bought you as a clueless idiot.”

  Ed made a face. “Thanks, I think.” He pointed. “Now let’s get all these people out of here. It’s gonna get spicy real quick.” He grabbed the M1A and held it out. “Early, your howitzer.”

  “I’ma try and do a thing, first,” George said, striding into the broadcast booth. On the control panel in front of one of the men was a phone, presumably his. George grabbed it and began thumbing through it. The man opened his mouth but then thought better of complaining.

  After about thirty seconds of quick finger work on the touch screen George smiled and nodded. Then, from his vest, he produced a radio he’d taken off a soldier downstairs. He pointed to the input jacks. “Can you plug your phone into this radio, get it to play the music directly?”

  “Umm…” The man was about to ask why, but decided not to. He peered at the radio. “Yeah. I just need…” He dug around in a nearby drawer and after a second pulled out a cable. George set the radio down and gestured at the man. He only needed a few seconds.

  “So if I hit Play, that’s going out over the channel? Do I need to keep holding down the transmit button?”