by James Tarr
He swallowed nervously. “Can’t you use your rocket? Or is it only for outdoors?”
She frowned at him, not comprehending his comment for a second, than whipped her head around to look over her shoulder. “I’m such a dumb bitch,” she swore. She had a Spike strapped to the outside of her pack, but had forgotten all about it. “Listen, make sure they’re not running up here, or getting close enough to chuck ‘nades.” She dumped her pack on the floor and unstrapped the rocket.
She got it ready to fire, then paused. “Question is, once I touch this off, do we head for the stairs and get the fuck out, or do we follow it down the hallway and fight it out? Rocket might kill them all, but it might not.” The Tabs were fifty, maybe sixty feet down the hallway, which with no cover might as well have been a mile. Charging down the hallway, if any of them were still in shape to shoot back, would be close to suicide.
Robbie swallowed again. “You think the rest of the squad is dead?” he asked, his face pale.
“Yeah, I do.”
He scrunched his face up into a red ball. “You shoot, and I’ll run down the hall first. I can run faster than you.” His eyes dipped down to her big chest and back up.
She wasn’t offended. The boy spoke the truth. “Fuck yeah you can. Let’s do this.”
Should she pop her head out once, just to take another look? Probably not, whenever she did that they always fired a few rounds, and probably sat there waiting for her to reappear. Best to catch them by surprise.
Brooke took a deep breath, then another, then told Robbie, “Watch your eyes and ears, this might be messy.” The rocket tube was too long to fit through the door frame sideways, she’d either have to lead with the nose or point it downward as she moved through and then jerk it back up. She depressed the safety, took half a step toward the doorway until her elbow was right there on the threshold, took another breath, then stepped out into the hallway with one foot, raised the rocket, pulled it tight against her shoulder, centered the sights in the middle of the end of the hallway, and pressed the trigger as the Tabs at the end of the hall began firing at her.
The rocket jumped from the launcher with a whooshing clap and the air around her filled with dust and smoke as the end of the hallway convulsed in cloud and fire. She fell on her ass in the middle of the hallway, out of the way, and Robbie came charging through the doorway.
Brooke struggled to her feet, grabbed her rifle, and took off after Robbie as fast as she could. She heard a few shots. By the time she reached the L-corner at the end of the hall Robbie was standing uncontested amidst four bodies and chunks of the wall destroyed by the rocket. She spotted another four Tabs in the side hallway, apparent victims of a firefight with Cambridge East.
“We need to find East, see if they’re still alive,” she panted.
“Yeah,” Robbie said, hoarse and wide-eyed. He then noticed her left arm. “Hey, you okay?”
“I’ve felt better,” she groaned. She leaned against the wall, then slid down it until she was sitting on the floor. She glanced at her arm. The rifle bullet had hit her just above the elbow and nearly ripped her lower arm off. It didn’t really hurt yet, which was the weird part. Blood was pouring out of the ghastly wound. “Do you have a tourniquet? I think I’ve got one in my pack somewhere. Probably need it to keep from dying.”
The wound didn’t hurt at all until he tightened down on the tourniquet, but then it hurt so much she screamed, and passed out.
“Fucking hold them!” Barker shouted down the third-floor hallway. Half his squad was near the middle of the huge building, fighting back Tabs who had tried to sneak up one of those stairways. He and Petal and Bruce were holding the westernmost stairwell. He wasn’t sure how many soldiers were below them, but every time he tried to peek over the railing they blew half a magazine at him on full auto, the bullets bouncing everywhere. Both his arms were bleeding from ricochets, and Petal had a nasty cut on her temple. He’d tossed two grenades down the stairs, without effect. Or maybe they’d done a lot of good, but there were too many Tabs below them holding the second floor. So far Kermit had lost one soldier in the melee, and Barker didn’t want to lose any more.
“How many Goddamn stairwells does this building have?” he swore. It was mostly a rhetorical question; he vaguely remembered from the briefing there were ten. Or maybe it was twelve.
“Too fucking many,” Bruce said, as they heard more shots from the dogsoldiers trying to hold the middle of the building.
“Chan, Chan, where the fuck are you?” Barker spat into his radio. “We’re stuck on three. Repeat, we’re stuck on three.” He waited, but there was no response. They could hear faint shooting from the other end of the building, though, which meant Yosemite was still fighting.
“The longer this takes, the worse it is for us,” Petal growled. Her hair was matted with blood.
“You know they gotta be sending for fucking reinforcements,” Bruce added.
“I know, I know, shit.”
“Should we give up one stairwell and just push down the other in force?” Bruce wondered. “Grenades, whatever? Dropping bombs on ‘em from the rooftops is one thing, but I don’t want to be fighting Toads and IMPs on the street.”
Barker didn’t disagree. Suddenly he spun to the two of them. “Hold these stairs. I just got a really stupid idea.” Then he ran off down the hall toward the center of the building. Petal and Bruce exchanged a look.
Bill and Seattle had personally scouted the building out three weeks previous, during ‘Uncle Charlie’s’ final frantic preparations for the mission. After having spent years working sniper and counter-sniper insurgent operations, neither man could believe the building had actually been left standing. It was too choice of a location for surveillance or sniping, but perhaps because it was in the middle of the supposedly secure ‘Blue Zone’ no one had apparently worried about its potential use by dogsoldiers.
Built in 1920 as the Cadillac LaSalle Sales and Service center, the six-story cube-shaped building was cement and stone, with subdued art deco styling. It sat two blocks north of the I-94 freeway where it cut east-west through the middle of the city. It was the tallest building heading south until you crossed over I-94, and as a result from the sixth floor there was an unobstructed view southwest to almost directly east, to the bridges over the freeway and beyond. They could see every surface street crossing the below-ground I-94 between I-75 and I-10, the Lodge Freeway. Seven streets, seven bridges, from 3rd Avenue to the west to Beaubien to the east, roughly three-quarters of a mile. From west to east—Beaubien, Brush, John R, Woodward, Cass, 2nd Avenue and, finally, 3rd Avenue. They’d memorized the maps, had images of the entire area in their heads.
Cass was the most direct route from the gate of the military base to the New Center area, but Woodward was the widest street. The first force had driven straight up Cass. The next wave of Tabs—and they were all betting there would be, another one—could roll north up any one of those streets, or the Lodge, or all of them all at once, as they all ran straight to West Grand Boulevard and beyond.
There were enough broken windows in the vacant and graffitied office/retail building during that initial scouting trip that busting a few more on the top floor in the middle of the night—part of their prep work for the mission—didn’t draw any unwanted attention. They’d dragged a second desk into the large office which occupied the center of the south side of the building as well.
The two of them entered the building with their handguns out and very cautiously worked their way up to the top floor, but the building still seemed to be empty. After calling out to Morris they sat their gear down by the desks and then quickly boobytrapped all the stairwell doors so no one could approach them without getting a nasty surprise.
The desks were ten feet apart, and set back from the windows, and the men set up their rifles on them angling outward. They’d been trained as snipers first and observers second, and old habits died hard. For this mission they were running DMRs, Designated Marksman
Rifles, in this case Lanxang Tactical Cas-22s. While they used the same operating system as an AR-15, these were hand-built and hand-fitted precision battle rifles with stainless fluted 18-inch Lothar Walther barrels that would do groups far better than an inch at one hundred yards. They were tipped with SIG suppressors to help keep their position hidden for as long as possible if they had to shoot.
But…if they did have to shoot, they’d lased all seven bridges and knew exactly how far away they were. The opposite side of the Cass Avenue bridge, directly south of them, was just two hundred yards away. The 3rd Avenue bridge, farthest to the west, was a hair over five hundred yards. The furthest bridge was Beaubien, over seven hundred and fifty yards away. All their magazines were loaded with Black Hills’ specialty Mk 262 Mod 4 ammo, a 5.56 load featuring 77-grain TMK bullets optimized for performance at distance. The rifles were topped with Vortex Razor HD Gen III scopes. Their 1-10X magnification range was a good compromise and allowed the rifles to be used at close range if they had to fight their way clear.
“Bipod or backpack?” Seattle mused aloud.
“Backpack,” Bill said without hesitation. “You might have to do a lot of lateral movement.” From the Beaubien to the 3rd Avenue bridge was over 120 degrees of swing.
Seattle just grunted, then looked down at the electronic device on the desk. It, not the rifles, was their primary weapon. It was why they were in that building.
The two men stood two yards apart, behind the desks, binoculars up to their eyes, scanning each intersection in turn.
“Soon?” Seattle wondered.
Bill shrugged behind his binos. “Could be thirty seconds, could be twenty minutes. I don’t think it’ll be longer than that, if they’re hoping to catch us in those buildings.”
Their radios were clipped to their chests, and they clicked to life. “Almighty to all squads, Almighty to all squads. Eye in the sky shows enemy reinforcements en route. Four columns, proceeding north up the Lodge, Cass, Woodward, and John R. They’re moving cautiously. Total of at least thirty vehicles. ETA three, possibly five mikes. Over.”
Bill and Seattle looked at each other, then at the building around them. “Well fuck, I guess we guessed right,” Bill said.
Seattle looked at the encrypted multi-channel wireless detonator sitting on the table. “Jesus, I’m glad we thought to label the frequencies, this could get hairy.” His heart was hammering in his chest, and fresh sweat broke out all over his body. He looked from the detonator to his partner. “You want the honors? You’ve got rank.”
“Yeah.” Bill wiped his sweaty hands on his thighs and busied himself with the detonator, flipping it on and making sure it had power and signal. They’d stuck strips of tape all down the side of it, with the list of pre-set frequencies and the streets to which they corresponded. “They could veer off onto another street and the drone might not see it in time, so keep your eyes open.”
“Roger that.”
The two men, binoculars glued to their faces, swung left and right like metronomes.
“Enemy spotted!” Bill shouted suddenly. “Cass. Maybe a couple blocks south of I-94, heading this way.”
Seattle swung his binoculars left and right, checking the other streets. The other Tab elements weren’t in sight yet. “Nothing else in view.”
Bill grabbed the detonator and clicked it to the frequency pre-set labeled “Cass”. He held it in one hand while using the other to hold the binoculars up to his eyes. The column of vehicles on Cass Avenue was moving slowly, tentatively. Bill flipped off the safety and waited. “Come on baby, come to Papa,” he murmured.
Seattle was looking left and right. “Still nothing elsewhere.”
The armored column was barely one hundred yards south of the bridge over I-94. An IMP and a Growler were in the lead, followed by at least four more Growlers, an IMP, and at the rear of the column Bill saw the squat shape of a Toad.
As the armored force crawled north at slightly better than walking speed, on their right was a four-story office building, part of a local university. On the left was a six-story parking garage. The roof gunners on the IMPs were slewing their weapons back and forth, checking every window and shadow. The street was one lane in each direction, with parking on both sides. There were a few vehicles parked or abandoned on the street, but not many.
Past the office building on the right was a tavern, then a Carhartt retail outlet, then the bridge, which was very exposed.
From his perch on the sixth floor of the old Cadillac LaSalle building Bill watched the lead vehicles pass the rusted white van parked on the street just before the tavern. He waited until the second pair of vehicles, two Growlers, were abreast of the van, then hit the switch.
The scene through his binoculars disappeared as the four hundred pounds of C4 packed into the body panels of the rattle-trap minivan exploded. Every window still in a frame within two hundred yards was blown out, and the glass in the office windows near Bill and Seattle cracked as the huge blast wave hit their building a fraction of a second after detonation. They felt it in their chests, and their feet.
“Jesus,” Seattle said. There was now a huge cloud expanding where the convoy had been. They’d positioned the van so the blast would reflect off the faces of the office building on one side and the parking garage on the other. They caught just a glimpse of the lead IMP on its side and a Growler on its roof before the cloud of dust and smoke covered them. Movement caught his eye and he looked over, then jerked his binoculars up to his eyes. “John R!” he shouted excitedly. “John R!”
Bill switched the detonator over before looking up. The column on John R street had just appeared south of the bridge when the explosion occurred two blocks from them. They paused in shock, then they accelerated, the hope being that speed would carry them through any danger zones. Bill watched four Growlers followed by an IMP racing across the open bridge to the near side of the freeway.
“They’re racing up Woodward too!” Seattle called out. Assuming they were also targets of IEDs the other convoys were racing to get out of what they suspected were kill zones.
Bill didn’t let himself get distracted. On the northeast corner of John R and the service drive was a long two-story apartment building. It was old and constructed of crumbling red brick. A pile of rusted metal in front of it once had been a compact car. There was also a big roll-away Dumpster on the street before it, full of lumber and crumbling drywall, broken glass and plastic bags. After ten years of sitting out in the weather it was so badly rusted it was falling apart. Bill waited until the middle of the racing convoy was passing the dumpster, then hit the button on the detonator. The 110 pounds of C4 in a shaped charge inside the Dumpster blew outward in a fan-shaped explosion. Three Growlers were immediately destroyed, and all of the IMP’s wheels facing the Dumpster were shredded.
Bill didn’t have time to admire his handiwork—he switched the transmitter over to the Woodward setting and looked up. The third convoy was already racing across the bridge, IMPs and Growlers and two Toads. The Woodward Avenue bridge over I-94 was six lanes wide, and the vehicles were using every lane.
On the northeast corner of the bridge was an overturned car which had been there for years. It was collapsing with rust, and two-foot-long stalks of grass were growing up through its body. Combat engineers had managed to secrete ninety-two pounds of C4 inside it and Bill blew it without hesitation. The blast completely destroyed two Growlers, killing the Tabs inside, and flipped two others, but the remaining vehicles avoided immediate destruction because of their distance.
The Woodward IED was actually the closest to their hide, and it shattered their cracked office windows, the glass hitting the floor and the desks in front of Bill and Seattle. They watched the remainder of the Woodward column assume a defensive perimeter and Tabs bailed out of the IMPs and Growlers to tend to their wounded. Many of the soldiers seemed to be stunned by the blast.
Seattle swung his binoculars over to John R. The severely damaged IMP was limp
ing along and had turned west, hoping to hook up with the Woodward detachment for security. The Growlers behind it remained where they’d rolled after the blast, the men inside dead.
He then checked Cass. The cloud over Cass was thinning. The front of the office building was crumpled and cracked. Growlers were mangled and flipped, and one of the IMPs had toppled over onto its side. The Toad at the rear of the column appeared undamaged, as did the IMP that had been traveling with it. The IMP moved forward to the north end of the scene to provide security, and the Toad set up at the south end. Shapes could be seen staggering around the street. That column was no longer combat effective, they’d be taking care of their wounded for quite some time.
The two men exchanged a look. They’d inflicted a lot of hurt on three out of the four Tab detachments, but there were still a lot of men and vehicles heading toward the dogsoldiers. Even more as soon as the Woodward group collected their injured. It was too bad the Tabs hadn’t split up into seven columns, and used every bridge…there’d been surprises waiting for them on six of the seven. The combat engineers had smuggled half a ton of C4 into the city for this party. Seemed a shame not to use it all.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Barker pounded down the hallway and grabbed Miller’s loaner—he couldn’t remember the man’s name—and shouted, “On me!”
The man had been trained well; he’d been assigned to Kermit, and Barker was in charge of the squad, so he immediately peeled away from the stairwell door he’d been guarding with three other men and followed the short squad leader.
Barker ran down the hall, around a corner, and then stopped and hit a button. “What are we—” the man behind him said, then blinked. They were back at the freight elevator. He gave Barker a look.
“They’re fucking us on the stairs. Everyone knows you don’t take the elevator when there’s a fire or a gunfight, so maybe this is so stupid it’s smart.”