The Valley of Shadows - eARC

by John Ringo

  * * *

  “The garage is a no-go.” Durante reported. “The armored roll door is shut, and it takes so long to open that by the time we emerge, they’ll have shifted even more guns to cover it. Assuming we actually exit the garage in the BERT, we still can’t drive very fast because we have to navigate the barricades. The MRAP is fifty meters past the entrance ramp—too big to fit inside the garage and too far for us to reach without getting most or all of us shot as we cross the open street.”

  Durante delivered his report to the group of survivors still huddling well back from the third-floor planters. He spoke over the fire that continued to probe the lobby area and adjacent floors. So far it had claimed three more victims.

  Tom nodded and looked over at Kaplan.

  “I went far enough to see that the basement level has zombies,” the operator said with a shrug. “You can see them through the glass doors. Sixty, maybe more. Assuming we can clear those out, we still have to fight downwards to the platform level where, you know, the zombies are coming from. We could risk crossing under the street and coming up next door, but the cops are gonna have line of sight into every bottom floor. Hell, they could already be in the building waiting.”

  Tom nodded again.

  “Why not stay here?” asked the MRAP driver. Tom hadn’t even learned his name yet.

  “Yeah!” Astroga said, piping up. “Now we’ll get to confirm whether jet fuel actually can melt steel I-beams! Ouch!”

  The last was in response to Copley’s patented head smack bouncing off her helmet.

  “Thanks, Sergeant,” Tom said, trying for a withering glare, to which the young soldier seemed immune. “What she said; this building is on fire, plus what would we be waiting for? I can’t think of anyone in a position to rescue us. So, we rescue ourselves. We need to evac to the RHIBs we stashed near Battery Park. We’ve got to break contact here and make it there far enough ahead of the cops that we can get the boats out of the shed and stay well outside of small arms range.”

  “And then what?” asked the MRAP driver.

  “One thing at a time,” Copley said. “What do we need now, sir?”

  “Rope a dope. We’re going to make a distraction in one direction and boogey out in the other.”

  * * *

  “Team two,” one of the overwatch teams said on the radio. “Movement on the garage door, north side.”

  “Let them come all the way out before you initiate,” Dominguez radioed. He was a little relieved. The smoke was getting really thick. “Team Two, orient north and prepare to engage. Team One, stay on the front. I am en route to the garage side.”

  He would have more of Matricardi’s people in his hands.

  Finally.

  * * *

  Joey Tradittore peeked around the corner. All the cops in view were looking towards the bank. He twitched his hand forward, and three Cosa Nova shooters took up staggered positions to his left.

  He slowly raised his hand and the safeties on his men’s weapons snicked off.

  * * *

  Stu Pegaso was a five-year veteran of the force when the Plague hit. After the precincts consolidated the second time, he ended up working directly for one of the spine-harvesting teams organized by OEM. It had been unpleasant work, but worth it to get the vaccine for Fran and their kids.

  All of them were dead now.

  He would die content if he could kill the fuckers that did it. The captain said it was the Jersey mob guys. He’d promised scalps.

  That was good enough for Stu. They were on the side of the angels, weren’t they?

  Damn straight.

  The BERT truck nosed out into the daylight as soon as the hood cleared the bottom of the armored garage door. It paused when the door reached the armored panel that had been lowered over the windshield, and then jerked forward again as soon as the door cleared the roof. The truck clumsily mounted the long exit ramp more slowly than a man could walk. The tac team watched it ascend and then, a hundred meters later, nose into a concrete bollard, failing to navigate the turn onto the street.

  Pegaso pursed his lips. Something funny was going on.

  Blocks behind him, he heard automatic fire start again. Even as he raised the radio to call Ding, he could tell that the sound of the firing was different. And there was more of it.

  * * *

  “Someone is shooting at the cops!” Kaplan reported.

  The group had filtered through the pedestrian underpass to the adjacent building. They heard automatic fire start again. Several cops ran across their field of view, the last man being chopped into ribbons as they watched.

  An Atlas truck lurched into the intersection to provide cover for the retreating cops, gun muzzles bristling from the firing ports. Before the occupants got more than a few rounds off, a series of very rapid overlapping booms sounded as the truck was covered in explosions. The cab roof of the black painted truck flew off under the jackhammer of explosions and the armored compartment collapsed inwards. The concussion of the explosions blew in the glass of their new building.

  “The fuck?”

  Tom couldn’t hear Durante’s surprised yell, but any experienced soldier could lip read that much.

  “Grenade launcher,” he hollered in Durante’s ear. “Someone has brought a Mark 19 to the party. Friends of yours?” he asked Risky.

  She shook her hair to get the debris out of it. A few pebbles of safety glass fell out. The formerly immaculate make up was smudged with black, and her sleek dress was overlaid by her old plate carrier. The heels really set off the entire ensemble.

  “Maybe,” Risky said, then thought about it and shrugged. “Probably. We had one, but the standard of training in Matricardi’s men is…”

  She shrugged again.

  Tom peeked about the corner of the now empty window frame. He could see more than half a dozen black suited forms lying very still in the street. The grenadier had shifted targets to some other group out of line of sight, but the glass still danced on the floor from the vibration of rapid explosions.

  “Grenade launcher. Fucking A!” Kaplan calmly shook the glass out of his hat. “I knew we forgot something from our shopping list.”

  “Quit bitching and pick your targets,” Durante said grumpily.

  “You’re just wishing you’d thought to add it to the list, aren’t you?” Kaplan replied, servicing targets.

  * * *

  The tarot card that Ding had been tapping against one fingernail crumpled in his fist.

  “They’ve got a fucking grenade launcher,” Team One radioed. “It’s murdering us. The Four Unit is gone, just gone! Most of Tac Team One is down hard, the rest are out of the fight or pinned. I can see half a dozen shooters and two Suburbans. Looks like Cosa Nova.”

  Dominguez tightened his grip on the radio handset.

  “Team Two, pivot back, the garage is a decoy,” he said, squeezing his words past gritted teeth. “They’re trying to pincer us from the west. Fire up anything that moves. Three Unit, engage the SUVs with the SAWs. Snipers, get that grenade launcher!”

  He looked at his map. They had to kill the ambushers quickly and reestablish a cordon. Previously, he would have been content to allow the bank’s people to escape however they might as long as he finished off Cosa Nova. But now, he knew that Smith was behind this, not just Matricardi. So be it. He would kill them all.

  * * *

  Tom felt the trip hammer of concussive tremors continue.

  “The shooter’s going to have to reload soon. The cops are reorienting now to face towards the attack. As soon as they look the other way, we hit them from the other direction and blow through the line. Get ready to move.”

  * * *

  Pegaso had been pulling perimeter duty, dropping the occasional zombie while the remaining high-risk warrant teams assaulted the bank. He heard the staccato crash of explosives and the radio calls peter out as most of Tac Team One went down.

  He heard orders to assault the hostile vehicles and
responded by gathering up his immediate group and sprinting around the bank, collecting more of his people from perimeter duty along the way.

  They sprinted down the street on the flank of the SUV with the grenade launcher and turned the corner in time to see the stubby barrel of the weapon pivot and orient on his group. He made out the features of the young gunner just as the muzzle of the weapon bloomed orange.

  Thunder.

  Darkness.

  * * *

  The young Cosa Nova shooter felt like a god.

  He sat behind the tripod mounted Mk 19, whose snout poked out of the back of the Suburban. He continued to obliterate anything that moved, chugging through grenades five and six at a time. He didn’t know the difference, but his weapon fired dual purpose grenades. The “High Explosive—Dual Purpose” ammunition was designed both to defeat military armored personnel carriers and level entire buildings. Overlapping grenade bursts threw shrapnel for fifty meters, on one occasion reaching far enough back that he injured one of the Cosa Nova men.

  Oops.

  Despite the mishap, that particular burst was sufficient to critically damage a second police vehicle, this time a large white boxy truck resembling a fire rig.

  Out of the corner of his eye he spied a group of cops pelting down the cross street. A quick twist of the launcher and he dropped another string of grenades in the center of the group. When the smoke cleared, he saw a few slowly crawling figures and lofted more rounds their way.

  His own vehicle bucked with recoil as he neared the end of the ammunition belt. The last half dozen grenades splashed among another group of black garbed and armored cops sheltering behind the smoking wreckage of another Atlas truck. His fire tore through the boxy rig, and left the cops scattered across the sidewalk. He smiled as he lifted the feed tray and began the simple reload process, reaching for another heavy string of grenades.

  He never heard the police sniper round that struck his temple, splashing his brains against the inside of the SUV.

  * * *

  “Center head.”

  The police sniper called his shot across the tactical radio link.

  “I think that we dropped the grenadier, but we’ve lost a lot of men.” The last FBI agent had lasted through the fight, and he huddled in the lee of the last police truck remaining in front of Bank of the Americas.

  Captain Dominguez’s voice replied right away.

  “What is the status on the bank?”

  Rounds cracked overhead and the FBI agent ducked. His liaison officer poked his head around the corner of the truck in time to catch a bullet between the running lights. More fire pocked the truck.

  “They are bugging out, my way,” the agent said. “Lots of fire.”

  “Hold till I get there.” Dominguez’s voice was insistent. “We got the grenadier. As soon as I clear the intersection I am sending some relief.”

  “No point,” the agent answered. “This is all going to be over in a few minutes, either way. I hope this was worth it. I guess it doesn’t matter.”

  The special agent set the radio down and once more tried to remember what his family looked like before he found their mutilated corpses. Then he took a deep breath and readied himself.

  * * *

  Tom led the diminishing knot of escapees down Stone Street, first away from the remaining sounds of combat, and then turned to circle the fighting. He’d lost the soldier who drove the MRAP and another of his security staff, and Kaplan was wearing a bloody head bandage.

  Oldryskya trotted beside him. She looked at his face, which was drawn and tense.

  Behind them the remainder stayed in a compact group. Durante brought up the rear.

  Copley sped up and pulled abreast of Tom.

  “What’s the plan, sir?”

  “I haven’t heard the grenade launcher in a while,” Smith said, looking both ways. “Unless Matricardi has more people than I expect, the cops that are left will take him for certain. He saved our ass, so we are going to return the favor. Then we E and E in whatever vehicle we can and head to the boats.”

  Kaplan cracked off a round, dropping an infected that was loping towards them.

  “Damnit, noise discipline!” Tom snapped.

  “You want maybe we let them take a few bites before we shoot, Boss?” Kaplan caroled back.

  Tom took in the rest of this group without slackening his pace.

  “Make sure you have a fresh mag in your weapon.”

  Ahead, the shooting slowed to a sporadic crackle and then ceased.

  Tom halted the group and risked a look around the corner. There were at least half a dozen police officers oriented in his direction, hunkered down behind vehicles and inside doorways, effectively blocking their path. At least they had force parity, finally.

  Sort of.

  He gestured to Kaplan, pointing to the upper floors behind them and to the side. Kap nodded and tapped Oldryskya, who followed him back and upwards, to get an angle farther down the street.

  Tom took in the rest of his people, composed of Durante, the roof security element and the two remaining guardsmen.

  “Sergeant, detail Astroga to get our back,” Tom instructed. “She keeps the cops from swinging behind us without us knowing. Hold off on infected unless they close. Then you take control of the fire element. As soon as you break cover, our top cover is going to burn through a magazine each on rapid fire, which they can only sustain for a few seconds, so don’t dawdle. By then you need to be in fresh cover across the street and shooting. When I hear your base of fire pick up, Durante and I run the slot and flush the left side. By then the top cover is reloaded. Do that, and we can blow through this group.”

  Copley gave his head a single shake and circled up with the little group. Most were composed. A few were understandably pale. Astroga smacked the last Cosa Nova shooter on his butt and offered him a manic grin.

  “Don’t worry, we’ll tell your ma’ you died brave.”

  “Check out Rambette,” Copley said, grinning. “Astro, you’re an admin clerk, not Rambo.”

  “But I wanted to be infantry…”

  * * *

  Durante leaned in close.

  “You figure we can rush them, just like that?” he said, his voice low. “This is bring your fobbit to work day, Boss.”

  The breeze, driven by the ocean that lay just out of sight, carried the smell of building fires, long since familiar. Tom looked up, but even though they hadn’t moved very far from BotA’s headquarters, his bank was out of sight, hidden by the serried ranks of skyscrapers. Looming far overhead the walls of buildings allowed the late afternoon sun to slant downwards at irregular intervals.

  “Kapman knows what he is doing,” Tom said, looking back at the team as they prepared. “The rest are just for noise. I figure that one of us should make it. Hell, we both might. But we’ve got to do this fast. If I let Dominguez consolidate, he’ll pin us again. That means death, on this street, the next or the one after that—but we’ll be done.”

  “That would be bad,” Durante agreed. He looked down the narrow Manhattan road and then watched Tom roll his shoulder, settling his gear more comfortably. “You know, this reminds me of that job in Jordan, near Petra. Remember what you said?”

  Ahead of them, the darkened street beckoned, a concrete and glass valley filled with deepening shadows.

  “Yea, though I walk in the valley of the—?”

  “No, no,” Durante replied. “Not that old saw. You said, ‘I sure wish we had a flight of two F-16s with JDAMs.’ And then, like fucking magic, they showed up. You gonna pull another rabbit out of your hat or are Kapman and Risky all we got?”

  “The second one,” Tom answered. “They’re just gonna have to be enough.”

  * * *

  “When you have a clear headshot, give me a ‘ready up’ and I’ll initiate,” Kaplan said. “As soon as I do, take the shot, then put the rest of your magazine, single aimed rounds, as fast as you can into any cover that you see.”
<
br />   Oldryskya was tucked into the back of the room, invisible from the street. She picked out a man wearing the ruins of suit, holding a radio.

  “Ready up.”

  * * *

  Despite expecting it, Tom still twitched when the first two shots cracked downrange, one right on top of the other. Immediately afterwards, his two designated marksmen began to fire one shot every half second. Before those two exhausted their magazines, the main group began firing rapidly, the sound of the rifles reverberating against the concrete and glass borders of the path that Tom and Durante would storm.

  Tom waited until the firing reached a steady crescendo and then moved as fast as he could down the sidewalk, his rifle at the high ready. Moving briskly down the street with a rocking heel and toe stride, the pair moved faster than a walk, but slower than a trot. Tom kept every sense strained to the utmost, letting his combat instincts process the information faster than he could ever hope to do deliberately. His world was narrowed to the crystal clear focus on the red dot in the center of his optic and the somewhat fuzzier shapes of the cars and doorways that hid his targets.

  * * *

  Under severe stress, humans can begin to perceive time differently. Influenced by the changes in their neurochemistry, in turn brought on by the severe stresses of combat, even seasoned special forces soldiers were found to experience changes in how they processed sensory inputs and experienced time. Competitive shooters speak of being able to perceive the details of their pistol firing, the action operating and ejecting a case—something that happens in a fraction of second.

  This is also true of how humans under stress can perceive sound. Sound is merely the movement of energy through matter via longitudinal waves. The human ear logarithmically parses sound impulses, allowing humans to both detect the quietest whisper and tolerate noise as loud as gunfire.

  For values of the word tolerate.

  Normally, a gunshot is heard as a single, overwhelmingly loud cracking sound. Persons without hearing protection will immediately perceive a high ringing in their ears as the cochlear cells respond to the painful amount of sound energy. This ringing, or tinnitus, overlays other auditory inputs, and severe enough tinnitus can blanket all other sounds, rendering a person functionally deaf. Even a single brief firefight can bring short-term deafness and varying levels of permanent hearing loss.