by James Tarr
“I think I can get an angle on him,” Renny said. He jogged, wincing, down the hall further into the building, then through a door into what had been a coffee shop. He was peering around a display board, trying to decide if he needed to climb onto a counter, when there was a huge volume of full-auto fire seemingly right on top of him, and screaming.
Renny ran for the door, pain forgotten, flipping the selector on Sarah’s SBR to full-auto. He barreled through the doorway into the corridor and found himself behind three Tabs, two of whom were advancing on Weasel. His eyes took the scene in at a glance—one of the Tabs was down on a knee, blood pouring out of him. Weasel was on his back, scrambling backward, MP5 nowhere to be found, eyes wide, blood all over the wall behind him.
With a wordless shout Renny opened up on the two soldiers from six feet away. They spun as the bullets hit their armor and helmets, necks and shoulders, one man falling away, the other firing a wild burst even as he went down. Renny slipped on spent cases and fell to the marble floor, landing hard.
He saw stars and fought to sit up. As he did he raised his weapon and tried to fire at the soldiers but nothing happened. Renny looked stupidly at his rifle, after a few seconds realizing he’d emptied the magazine. With a grunt he pulled his Glock, shot the one thrashing soldier, then swung his gun over to the man Weasel had injured and put a round in the back of his neck. He heard pounding feet and twisted his body to see a Tab soldier come running around a corner into the corridor, his rifle up. The man Weasel had been shooting at outside.
The man’s rifle actually blocked his view of Renny on the floor, just for a fraction of a second, but that was enough for Renny to start firing his Glock. He hit the man three times in the thighs and the soldier fell and skidded across the slick marble floor. Renny stuck his gun out and, one-handed, the muzzle of his suppressor four inches from the man’s face, emptied the rest of the magazine.
With a groan Renny got to his knees and crawled past the men, leaving Sarah’s rifle, empty Glock still in hand. He found Weasel backed up into a corner, panting rapidly. His hands were grasping.
Renny grabbed the MP5 and dragged it over to Weasel, who clutched it to his chest. His face was pale.
“Where the fuck did those guys come from?” Weasel gasped.
Renny looked over his shoulder at the bodies, then past them down the hallway. “The church, I think.”
Weasel blinked. “So did we get all of them?”
Renny nodded. “I think so.”
Weasel coughed. “Finally,” he sighed. “Fucking Detroit, seriously, I hate this city,” he said softly with a smile, and died.
Renny closed his eyes and said a little prayer for the man, then said another for himself. Then he fought to stand up, a girlish whine escaping from his mouth. He looked down. He’d been hit again, the rifle bullet going right underneath his vest. Afraid of what he’d find, he reached down and carefully felt around. There was an exit wound in his back, just above his hip bone. His hand came away slick with blood. Dripping with it.
He stood there, breathing slowly and shallowly, as every breath hurt. Renny looked from Weasel to the four soldiers sprawled in a pile, then, very carefully, walked into the corridor and stepped past the dead men. He’d gone twenty feet before he realized his Glock was still in his hand, slide locked back. He didn’t have the energy or the inclination to reload it, and just stuck it in the holster across his chest as is.
Pushing out the door into the alley, stepping over the bodies of the two Tabs he and Weasel had killed earlier, he half-expected to die in a hail of gunfire, but they had, in fact, seemed to have killed all the men pursuing them. Every step pain, Renny made his way to their Growler. His door was still hanging open. His pack was on the floor, and he stared at it for a long time. Could he lift it? Put it on?
“Do it,” he growled at himself. “Do it.”
Both bullet wounds he’d suffered were soft tissue injuries. No support structures—bones, ligaments, etc.—had been hit. No muscles had been severed, just punctured. So, physically, he could pick up the pack. It would just hurt. A lot. He stared at it, working hard to come up with excuses as to why he couldn’t, or shouldn’t. Renny looked across the vehicle at the steering wheel. He supposed he could simply drive away. He just…didn’t feel like it. He’d had enough running for one day.
His yell turned into a sharp scream as he lifted the pack, but he got the straps over his shoulders. Then he reached for his rifle. He wasn’t sure how long it took him to gather his pack and rifle—it could have been thirty seconds or three minutes. Between the pain and the blood loss he was finding it hard to focus.
Rifle in both hands he turned and looked up. His eyes moved back and forth, then he nodded. He slowly made his way back into the building, through the corridors toward the front of the place. The small lobby looked out on a small park across the street that, strangely enough, seemed well maintained.
Renny admired the bushes and trimmed grass across the street for a while, then turned and shuffled to the elevators. While the commercial building seemed uninhabited, the power was on. God Bless the Blue Zone. He pressed the UP button, and if he hadn’t been so tired he would have looked surprised when the elevator doors opened right in front of him with a cheery ping.
Mark fired at a dashing soldier and the man fell to the sidewalk, grabbing his leg and shouting. Two other soldiers darted from nearby cover and grabbed the man, some thirty yards distant from the McDonald’s. Ed braced his Geissele against the window frame, ignoring the intense shooting from the other Tabs providing covering fire, flipped the selector forward, and emptied the magazine at the three men as the two tried to pull the third to safety. The two men standing fell down, and only one got back up, crawling out of sight behind a car wash, his shoulder soaking red. The soldier with the leg injury reached a shaky arm out to him, beseeching, and Mark fired again. The man’s arm dropped and he was still.
“Reloading!” Ed shouted, ducking down. He stuffed a fresh mag into his gun, slapped the bolt release, then looked down at his chest. Two mags left. Plus the one in the gun. Well, at least they weren’t going to die for a lack of shooting back. They’d been giving the Tabs hell for ten minutes and had killed at least five, maybe ten, but there were still more out there. “Jason!” he shouted. “Keep an eye on that drive-thru!” He didn’t want another repeat of earlier.
“Yeah,” the kid shouted back from behind the counter.
“How you doing for ammo?” Ed shouted at Mark. The big man checked, then held up two fingers. Ed nodded.
Suddenly there was an explosion from the rear of the building, followed by shouting and shooting. Ed pushed off from the wall and charged into the kitchen, which was hazy with smoke. He didn’t see Jason at first, just the bright rectangle of sunlight where the rear door used to be. A silhouette appeared in the doorway and Ed dumped half his magazine on full-auto into the soldier. The man let out a strangled cry and staggered away. Ed reached the doorway and took cover to one side. He peered out and saw the soldier crawling across the gravel just outside the door.
Ed shot him four times in his back just below his vest, then turned. At first, all he saw were bodies in camouflage fatigues. Then he saw Jason, on the floor underneath one of the men. Ed heaved the corpse off the boy, who was covered in blood, but his eyes were open and blinking.
“Jason! Jason!”
“I’m okay!” Jason shouted. “But I can’t hear, it’s just ringing. They blew the door with a grenade.”
Ed laughed and pulled him to his feet, then waved him toward the dining area. He took up a spot near the door and quickpeeked. He couldn’t see anyone, but their position was getting infinitely more precarious. The Tabs were closer and trying to surround them. He jogged back to the front, the pain in his foot a distant annoyance. “Things are getting spicy!” he called to Mark.
“Good,” Mark shot back. The bandage around his thigh was heavy with blood. “I was getting bored.” His head jerked up at a hissing cra
ck down the street, and he looked at Ed. It was a suppressed rifle…but none of the Tabs had been using suppressors.
Ed lunged toward the wall and peeked out just as another mild crack echoed down the street, then a third. A soldier fell bonelessly across the sidewalk, obviously dead. Ed had time to blink, then there was a volley of loud booming shots that rolled up and down the street like thunder. The Tab with the shoulder injury who’d crawled to safety suddenly appeared, backpedaling across the sidewalk and into the street. Another loud boom and he dropped, missing his helmet and half his head.
“The fuck?” Mark wondered.
Ed didn’t have to wonder. He knew. He recognized the sound of that rifle, and when Early stepped out from behind the car wash and waved at them Ed wasn’t surprised at all.
Mark blinked. “So it appears we’re not going to die in a McDonald’s.” He looked from Ed to Jason and back. “To be honest, I’m not sure how I feel about that.”
Parker had made two calls to Lydia, but they’d gone unanswered. She worked right downtown in the Cadillac Place building, and that’s exactly where the guerrillas had attacked. He wouldn’t say he was worried, not yet, but he was very definitely concerned. However, he had far more pressing concerns on his mind right now, and did not have the manpower to send anyone to check on her.
“I’m going up,” he announced, staring at the screens of his operations center.
“Sir?” His S3 looked at him.
“Washboard. I need to see it. Get me a vehicle.”
“Sir, I don’t—” his S3 started to say.
“I don’t want to hear it, Mike,” Parker spat. “It’s all over, they’re long gone, and I want to see just how bad it is. You told me your men have cleared all the buildings up there.”
“Yes sir,” Chamberlain said, nodding curtly, “but we’ve got to get you some plates and something more than a Growler to get you up there.” He bent over and got on the radio. The mood in the OC was somber. While there were still a few scattered elements in contact with the enemy around the city, most of the fighting was over. Washboard had been cleared. And…it was bad.
Five minutes later Chamberlain straightened up from the comms center. “Sir, we’ve got your escort. You’ll be riding in an IMP.”
“So we still have one left?” Parker said bitterly. “Good to know.”
Fifteen minutes later Parker was sitting in the back of what he all too painfully knew was one of but three undamaged IMPs in the city. Three. He had just four undamaged Toads, and surmised the only reason he had that many was because those four had never left the base. The armor plates on his chest and back were uncomfortable, and while not unfamiliar, it had been a while since he’d needed to wear armor. It was another reminder of how things had fallen apart.
He glanced around the cramped passenger compartment of the IMP. Three troops in full armor with M5 carbines were his security detail. Chamberlain was with him, as was his Political Officer. As the bad news kept coming Captain Green had said very little as the attack progressed through the morning, which concerned and unnerved Parker, but he did his best to remain stoic. His S2, Major Cooper, remained at the Ops Center, coordinating what forces they had left. The troops stationed at the roadblocks and checkpoints and food distribution centers around the city had all been pulled back to Echo Base.
The IMP was accompanied by a Growler front and rear and the short column was very carefully proceeding north toward where everything had started. Where the guerrillas had suckered him in.
Parker had his convoy stop at what his people now told him they believed to be the site of a truck bomb on Cass, just south of the New Center area. As he and his security detail got out of the armored personnel carrier, Parker looked over in time to see his people uprighting an IMP that it been flipped over by the blast. The vehicle itself appeared whole, but he was told that most of the men inside it suffered serious head trauma and two had died from the impact force. They’d already been attacked by snipers at this location so they were very paranoid, with men on lookout everywhere, rifles up, and several soldiers manning the roof guns of vehicles. A Toad sat in the middle of the road, main gun pointed outward ominously.
Parker moved among his men, exchanging a few comforting words with the wounded, assuring the angry that “We’re going to get these fuckers”, but his heart wasn’t in it. They’d suffered a huge loss. All of his aircraft, more than half of his armored vehicles. He wouldn’t be surprised if when he made his after action report to General Barnson he’d be relieved of command.
But that was in the future; now he had to see to his men, see if there was anything else he should have done, or could still do.
“Okay,” he told Chamberlain, “run me up there.”
“Washboard?” his S3 asked. “TV station?”
“Yeah,” Parker said tiredly.
“Sir, I’m still not sure…”
He glared at his S3. “Mike…” he said.
Chamberlain didn’t relent. “Sir, it’s just that we’ve cleared all the buildings, and didn’t find any guerrillas—” his eyes shot to the Political Officer, “traitors left alive, but there are so many rooms, so many corners, that its possible there are some still hiding out in the area.”
Parker rolled his eyes. “You know as well as I do that they’re all gone. Do we know, do we have any idea how they did that? Where they went? We’ve got units chasing a few stragglers down, but those drones and satellites never spotted much more than a squad’s worth leaving the area.”
“Yes sir,” his S3 told him, “we think we’ve found where they went, how they got in and out of the area undetected.”
“Don’t tell me it’s another fucking tunnel,” Parker said. From the expression on his man’s face he knew he’d guessed correctly. “Goddamnit,” he swore. He thought for a bit. “All right,” he said fatalistically, “take me up there.”
What he knew he needed to do, he realized as he climbed back into the IMP, was submit his resignation. He didn’t know if it would be accepted, they were too short on bodies, but he’d obviously seriously failed his country and his commanding officers by failing to predict, defend against, and properly respond to this enemy attack.
Several minutes later the driver of the vehicle called back to him. “Sir, did you want to check out Foxtrot element here?”
Parker stood up and moved forward. He peered out the narrow block windows. They were on Cass Avenue just south of West Grand Boulevard and he could see the remnants of the Foxtrot armor element on the street before him. They’d been hit by explosives and a hail of Molotov cocktails and all of the vehicles were black and half-melted. One tank had evaded the attack, at the cost of one tread, but if he remembered correctly everyone else in the column had been killed. He’d already seen video of this site from the drones when he’d had them do a low-altitude street-level fly-by. It had looked nightmarish through the drone’s camera and it looked even worse in person. “Negative,” Parker told the driver, “just take me to the broadcast facility.”
“Yes sir.” He drove down West Grand, and Parker peered out the slot windows as well as he could. The buildings to either side showed some damage, but it wasn’t as bad as he feared.
The soldier parked the IMP directly in front of the main entrance to the Fisher Building. Three minutes later Parker, Chamberlain, Green, and the protective detail of soldiers were on the eighth floor inspecting the broadcast facilities. There was the smell of ozone and burning plastic in the air. The control boards were just a mess. “Did they shoot it?” Major Green asked Parker.
He nodded. “Quite a bit. Looks like they had a lot of fun.”
Chamberlain walked in from the other room. “They shot the shit out of the cameras as well.” He stared down at the trashed control boards and made a face.
“How long will it take to get this repaired, and the cameras replaced, and the Voice of the People back on the air?” Green asked.
Parker and his S3 exchanged a look. Chamberlain told the
Political Officer, “They might have a few spare cameras, but this board…they’ll have to rebuild it. Even if they have or can find all the parts they need, and we can find someone with the electrical engineering skills, it could be a week. If we don’t have the parts….”
“That’s unacceptable! The people need guidance! We need to manage information and opinion about what happened today.”
“Are you an electrical engineer?” Chamberlain asked her.
“Well…no,” she said, vaguely offended by the question. She had a dual degree in sociology and gender studies. Only stupid people worked with their hands.
Chamberlain gestured curtly at the bullet-ridden control boards. “Umbrage won’t fix these,” he told her, ready to lose his temper. They’d lost a lot of good men, and this pudgy, lazy, condescending…he took a deep breath, closed his eyes for a three count, then looked at the Political Officer and smiled. “We’ll do our very best,” he assured her.
“I would expect nothing less,” she shot back.
Parker sighed. “Let’s head back over to the hangars.” He looked at his S3. “I want someone posted here. I don’t want this place trashed any more than it already is. Don’t want any cameras or parts walking off.”
“Of course, Sir.”
Parker stared unseeing at the bulkhead of the IMP as they traveled south to the aircraft hangars. The IMP parked just north of the hangars on one of the helipads. Parker jumped out of the back of the IMP and stomped over between the two hangars.
He stared furiously at the burning, mangled carcasses of what used to be his air assets. Chamberlain saw the dark look on his face and knew better than to comment. He simply stood nearby, waiting for questions or commands.
Abruptly Parker strode toward the street bordering the hangars on the south and grabbed the Commander of a Toad sitting nearby, securing the area. For whatever good that did. What was the phrase, closing the barn door after the cow had already escaped? He had the man show him the tunnel in the parking garage of the adjacent apartment building.