by Chuck Dixon
“Like a cat watching a mouse hole,” she said and looked at his face, glowing white.
“That’s it,” Dwayne said and touched her shoulder. “Shoot if you even think you see something. False alarms are forgiven in a free-fire zone.”
“Is that what this is? A free-fire zone?”
“Biggest one I’ve ever been in.” He smiled.
“Every unfriendly here is already dead.”
The Winchester boomed and Dwayne moved away to his position, leaving Caroline alone in her hide.
SMALL KNOTS OF SKINNIES moved out from points all along the tree line. They split up and entered the waving grass in a broad, shallow skirmish line. This was the kind of screening line they used to herd game before them. When those hunters were twenty paces clear more skinnies emerged behind them. The process continued until four ranks of hunters were making their way up the gentle slope to the mesa in a more or less organized line of march.
“Jesus,” Dwayne breathed. “There’s thousands of the fuckers.”
“It’s the Little Big Horn,” Chaz said, “and we’re Custer.”
“Not too late to switch sides, Jimbo,” Hammond said.
“Go to Hell, white man,” Jimbo hissed and picked out another skinny in the NOD’s scope.
A hunting chief in a tall headdress of long feathers collapsed backward with half his head gone. The rest pressed forward.
“Light it up!” Renzi called from the .50.
Two flares lit the sky and the ranks crossing the open ground hesitated for just a beat and then rushed forward at a run.
The Ma Deuce roared to violent life and tracers streaked down to meet the first rank in long looping arcs that looked like strings of pearls. Heavy slugs tore a bloody gap in the front wave and created a haze of dust and chopped grass. The second wave raced through waving their clubs and shaking their spears overhead. Renzi walked the rounds down the rank dropping dozens of skinnies with each burst. He was covering the broad path from the open slope to the mesa top and quickly ran through the first 500-round can.
“Feed me!” he called over the cacophony of horns and war shrieks growing louder as the skinnies rushed up the grassy slope. Chaz jumped from his position behind some piled rocks and tore open a fresh can and placed the first round from the belt in the Browning’s action. Renzi let the lever go, pressed his thumbs to the trigger plate and began hammering away again.
The rest worked their rifles with controlled fire. Jimbo used the Winchester to clear the tree line, finding more skinnies moving into the open for a reserve wave.
Dwayne was on semi-auto and picking out individual targets closing on the mesa edge. As quickly as he could pull the trigger, he swung the ring sights to find another skinny and drop them center mass. The ranks were breaking, becoming less organized and the skinnies began to knot together as they sprinted for the rocks just beneath the Rangers for the final short climb. Their discipline was falling apart, but they were still moving forward.
Hammond dropped the SAW and hopped over the rocks with the shotgun in his fists. He leaned out and pumped round after round of buckshot and flechette into a dense crowd of skinnies gathered to clamber up the rocks to the mesa. He couldn’t miss if he tried. They fell back screaming in a greasy heap.
“Shoulda brought claymores!” he shouted and thumbed more rounds into the smoking shotgun breach. But you go to war with what you have not with what you wish you had.
Jimbo fired another flare off into the sky and laid the scope on skinnies running low along to their right. He nailed three, but lots more made it out of sight to cover around the north face. He swung back to drop a horn blower. More skinnies leapt the twitching form as it dropped into the grass. Beyond the rear ranks, a large untidy mob of skinnies moved from the tree line five football fields distant. Much of this new crowd were juveniles; kids and adolescents anxious to come in for the kill.
Skinnies were now close enough to fling spears up over the mesa edge to land harmlessly on the rocks behind the Rangers. Stones followed and began to clatter all around them. That meant the kids were here and adding to the barrage. Chaz pulled rings from frag grenades and sent them over the edge in underhanded tosses, one following the other.
“Fire in the hole!” he called a half second before the grenades went off in a close series of thuds that sent a dense cloud of dust drifting over the mesa. The stones falling around them abated but didn’t stop entirely. Chaz was struck by rocks dropping on him and pulled the case of grenades farther from the ledge.
The attackers weren’t backing down. This wasn’t a feint or recon in force. It was a full-on assault; a forlorn hope. The skinnies had never been in a real set-piece battle much beyond a momentary fracas with a neighboring tribe— over before it got started. They knew fuck-all about reserves or tactics. They were treating this like a hunt, and on a hunt, you went all in every time. This rush was their whole strategy. Bring down the prey or die trying.
Caroline fought down her own fear to ignore the sounds away to her left and keep her eyes focused on the length of rocky ledge Dwayne assigned her. She was watching for climbers. She wondered if he really expected her to guard their flank or was finding a kinder way to keep her away from the fighting and out of harm. She also wondered if all his confidence was just a mask for the harder truth. Maybe they were doomed. Maybe they would die here in this strange place so many ages before their births.
Dense shadows were projected from the rocks and brush each time the flares were launched. The shadows imitated movement and made her jumpy. Jumpier, anyway. The M4 atop her stacked-tote redoubt was supported on a bipod mounted at the end of the barrel. She checked again that the selection lever was set to semi-auto. Her hand was slick with sweat and pained her from clenching her hand on the grip. She willed herself to relax, breathe in through her nose and out through her mouth like at her yoga class.
A flicker along the ledge. A sideways movement of light like a crab scuttling back and forth. It was joined by another. She focused through the NOD scopes to try and determine what she was seeing.
They were hands on the ledge, hands of a climber fluttering for purchase then pulling himself up. A head came level with the ledge and then another. A scowling face, ghostly white, was staring right at her. She jerked the trigger and the M4 bucked back, the shot going high. She stood up and lowered the barrel. More figures rose up over the ledge and crouched on the rocks to look for the source of the sudden noise, to look for her.
She leaned into the rifle and pulled the trigger three more times. Gouts of sand kicked up in front of the growing group of hunched figures.
“Chill out,” she hissed to herself and lined the ring sight up on the lead aborigine who was drawing a flint ax from where it was tucked in a belt tied about his waist. He looked left and right for his attacker. She squeezed slow and even. The round took the aborigine in the thigh and knocked him sprawling. The rest spread out to run out over the mesa top in her general direction. Two of them were running straight for her position. The others were lost to sight either side.
She ignored a spear that whisked past her. She pumped more rounds at the group and another fell back, but the rest moved toward her at a steady pace, mouths working and eyes wide. They had her located and directed their attack to her position.
A hand slammed into her back and knocked her to the ground. The NOD harness flew from her head.
“Stay down!” Dwayne shouted. “Fire in the hole!”
A ping and metallic click followed by a blast that shook the earth under her and warmed the air above her. Dirt rained down on them both. Dwayne’s weight was off her and he stood, firing the M4 on full auto.
“Little help!” he called, and she remembered she was part of this fight, not observing it. She found her rifle and sent round after round into the dark, no idea where the attackers were or if her rounds were finding targets.
Dwayne walked toward the ledge swinging his rifle back and forth and firing deliberate shots. He was m
oving toward the danger, not away. She ran to catch up with him. Being close to this big man, so calm in the face of the horror springing up all around, was her haven.
Together they walked and fired all the way to the ledge of rock at the lip of the mesa. She was firing blind and hoping to hit or at least scare something, he was choosing his targets and bringing them down as they either attacked or ran away. She saw the bodies of aborigines, some of them children, lying dead as they moved past. She felt nothing. She caused their deaths and felt not the slightest pang or remorse. Perhaps later, she would.
At the ledge, Dwayne drove his heel into the face of a skinny levering himself up onto the rocks. That sent the red-painted figure screaming down into the dark. Caroline walked rounds down the rocks along the edge to discourage other climbers. Dwayne pulled rings on three canister grenades and dropped them over the ledge one after the other.
“Cover your mouth,” he said and ushered her back with an arm around her shoulder. “CS gas.”
She could taste a bitter tang in her mouth as a yellowish cloud drifted up from below. Caroline turned away to see the bright flash of the tripod-mounted .50 firing, stabbing into the night in long bursts.
“Toss one of these over the drop every twenty seconds,” Dwayne said and pushed a cardboard case of CS grenades into her arms. “And hope the prevailing wind doesn’t shift.”
“Yes,” she said with more confidence than she felt.
“Slow count. Pull the ring and underhand it away from you. Ever play softball?”
“Uh huh.”
“Just like that. I’ll be right back,” Dwayne said as he moved away. “I have to cover Ricky while he switches that barrel out.”
And she was alone again mouthing, “Twenty…nineteen…”
STANDING AT THE HEAD of the broad slope, Hammond fired directly into a mass of skinnies charging toward the mesa top. Jimbo switched to an M4 and was down on one knee adding his suppression to Hammond’s. The skinnies climbed over the bodies of their tribesmen to throw spears and axes and rocks.
Chaz and Dwayne carried the Ma Deuce while Renzi followed with ammo cases. They were dropping back to a prepared position, earthworks of sand and rock closer to the field area. Chaz held the super-heated barrel shroud wrapped in a shirt, but he could still feel the heat even through his combat gloves.
They set the big .50 on its tripod and Renzi dropped the ammo cases to begin fitting their last new barrel into the weapon. The current barrel was burnt nearly smooth, and if it was left in place any longer, it would swell and no longer be able to be removed.
Renzi worked quickly to pull the spent barrel out and fit in a new one. They needed the power of the Ma Deuce to hold back the tide. Every second it sat silent the skinnies grew bolder.
“Fall back!” Dwayne shouted to the others, and he and Chaz offered cover fire. Jimbo sprinted back as Hammond rolled a pair of baseball grenades packed with HE down the slope. The blasts tossed a clutch of skinnies and body parts high into the sky. He turned to run, and a spear point struck his back and drove him stumbling to his hands and knees. The spear was deflected by Hammond’s body armor, but the hammer shot to his kidneys drove the air from his lungs and made each step agony.
Jimbo was almost to the earthworks and read the dismayed expressions on the faces of his brother Rangers. He turned and ran back to where Hammond was trying to rise with a trio of skinnies almost on him, clubs raised to strike. On the run, Jimbo fired his M4 and took two down with multi-taps to their heads and torsos.
The third skinny fell when Jimbo swung for his head with the butt of the rifle. The buttplate punched a hole in the skinny’s temple, and the wound sprayed blood in a shower. Down the slope, the main attack force was recovering from the most recent grenade blasts. They were moving forward in a stumbling phalanx bristling with spear points.
“Off your ass, Lee!” Jimbo hooked a hand under his arm.
“Left leg’s numb,” Hammond growled. “Your whole sorry hide is gonna be numb if you don’t hustle!”
Together they hobbled to the earthworks under a crisscrossing skein of tracers from Chaz and Dwayne. They dropped flat when the Ma Deuce lit up again. Hammond and Jimbo hugged the ground and felt the concussive wave and flash of heat wash over them from big .50.
“Get your dicks in the dirt!” Dwayne called out between bursts.
The pair crept on their bellies around the earthworks as the .50 hammered at the screaming gang of skinnies behind them. A mob of howling savages drenched red in the blood of their cousins raced to the mesa top and spread out on the flanks. Spears and stones rained down on the Rangers in increasing numbers. It was a steady barrage now with no sign of letting up. More skinnies hauled themselves over the rocks along the ledge and joined a group swinging out to the right to encircle the emplacement.
“Caroline!” Dwayne stood atop the rough earthwork and fired short bursts at skinnies sprinting hard to cut around them. The flanking hunters swarmed into a cloud of yellow vapor billowing before them. They slowed to a convulsing, gasping rabble on hands and knees and rolling on the ground clawing at their own eyes, vomiting convulsively.
Caroline stumbled from the fog with her t-shirt pulled up over her mouth and nose with one hand. She hugged the M4 to her with the other arm and was stumbling blindly. Dwayne rushed out to catch her as she fell to the grass. He grabbed her by an arm and guided her from the cloud of tear gas to the relative shelter of the earthworks.
“Last can for the Ma Deuce!” Chaz called. He was pulling rings from frags and tossing them as fast as caution would allow into the dark around them. Hammond lay propped against a dirt mound and firing a rifle. Jimbo worked the Minimi now. Renzi crouched to transverse the .50 left and right in short disciplined bursts.
Skinnies crowded onto the mesa, absorbing horrific close range fire and creeping closer over their dead and dying. Some held the bodies of their cousins as shields.
Stones struck all around the Rangers’ position. The fringes of the cloud of C-4 was carried closer to them on the wind, and the stinging gas was beginning to infuse their eyes and mouths.
Dwayne’s M4 clicked empty, and he dropped it to pull a Sig Sauer from his waistband and emptied it at the encroaching mass of hooting skinnies. Despite the hammering they were taking, the horde felt the tide shifting their way. They grew bolder and ran straight into the line of fire to pitch spears over the earthworks.
Caroline sank to her knees as her overheated rifle jammed up, an empty round stove-piped in the action. They’d take her back, and they’d kill these brave men and eat their flesh while she watched. And her fate would be…what? She looked through swelling eyelids to see a handgun lying on the grass. They wouldn’t take her. She didn’t want to see any more of this world. She just wanted it to end. She reached out for the pistol and felt a chill wash over her as her fingers touched the cool metal.
Dwayne’s boot came down painfully on her wrist. She released the pistol, and he reached for her arm to pull her to her feet.
“You feel that?” he shouted with his mouth close to her ear to be heard over the tumult of weapons and voices.
She could see her breath. The chill wasn’t fear, it was in the air. The temperature had dropped suddenly and dramatically. She turned to see a thick white mist spreading out to cover the grass all around them.
“The field!” she called back. “The Tube is operative!”
“Fall back!” Dwayne yelled repeatedly and slapped the shoulders of the other Rangers.
Jimbo was up and helping Hammond stand. Chaz was squatting atop the earthworks and had a cardboard carton of frags open. He pulled the ring on the one packed in the center.
He stood and lifted the box above his head. “Heads down!” he shouted and threw the whole damned thing in an overhead heave toward the skinnies rushing closer over the grass.
The resulting blast lifted him on a concussive wave and threw him back over the earthworks where he lay dazed. Renzi tumbled down by him. The carton
of grenades went off in a tight sequence of explosions throwing arcs of shrapnel into the massed skinnies and scything them down like harvest grain.
Dwayne hooked Chaz under the arm and dragged him back into the frigid mist with Caroline’s help. Jimbo and Hammond stood firing their M4s one-handed, Hammond leaning on his brother Ranger for support.
“Fall back, Ricky!” Jimbo called.
“Move it, Renzi!” Dwayne joined in. “Haul your ass!”
Renzi either couldn’t hear them or was ignoring them. He was back up at his post behind the Ma Deuce and pouring tracers downrange at the skinnies trying to regroup there. Empty shell casings tumbled to the ground at his feet with a clatter.
Dwayne took a step to join Renzi, to force him to surrender his position and join them in retreat. Renzi turned his head to look back, an unlit Marlboro clenched in his teeth. A wild berserker look flashed in his eyes. It was exhilaration. It was madness. His breath came in vapor in the chilling air as he barked a laugh. He turned away to swing the big .50 back and forth at the closing pack of naked fiends.
Caroline yanked hard at Dwayne’s arm, and he moved to her to help her pull Chaz into the spreading cold, back to a world they knew. Back to The Now.
20
What Goes Around
Caroline was the first to emerge from the field, and Doc Tauber left the control array to meet her with a crushing embrace. He held her tight to him on the metal walkway until they were separated and shoved clear by the rush of Rangers moving from the Tube.
Staggering, Chaz dropped Hammond to the floor. Dwayne and Jimbo took up positions at the foot of the ramp and trained weapons into the Tube.
“Renzi!” Dwayne called into the mist. “What’s going on?” Tauber said. “You left someone behind?”
“We were on the run, Mo,” Caroline said. “It all went wrong out there.”
A figure was moving swiftly out of the mist in the Tube field. Tauber stood frozen to stare at a squat man who raced from the fog. He was swinging some kind of stone-bladed ax over his head. His body was smeared in red, and his face painted white. A roar rose from his wide-open mouth and filled the Tube chamber. The animal sound was drowned out by rapid explosions from Dwayne’s rifle. Jimbo joined in as three more naked men leapt into view out of nothingness. Their lifeless bodies tumbled to the foot of the walkway, spraying blood.