A World Slowed

by Rick Tippins

  The bird shuddered slightly, beginning a slow turn to the right as the pilot’s voice came across the radio. “Five out, boys and girls.”

  John looked out the window and could see the city sprawled out under the aircraft. John glanced at the crew chief, who was readying the fast ropes in preparation for the team’s speedy departure from the aircraft. Aerial recon indicated the target area was too confined to set a Black Hawk down, and flying farther away to a parking lot would void the element of surprise. This particular target was apparently very important to the rebuilding of America, and the higher-ups wanted no chance of him getting spooked and taking off.

  With all electronic gear down for the most part, he would be impossible to track or locate. The only electronic gear working these days were inside structures that were structurally hardened to withstand an EMP attack. This very helicopter had been parked inside a hardened hangar and, after the flares subsided, the old bird fired right up and flew like a charm. Problem was, there were only about twenty in the entire country.

  The plan was to drop half the team in the rear yard, and then the bird would shift, dropping the rest of the team in the front yard. The helo would leave, and the team would follow a surround and call out type operation. There would be no bursting through the front door and getting shot, at least not today.

  The big bird flared nose up, the pilot bleeding off airspeed and altitude at the same time. The team stood and moved to the door as the crew chief pushed the fast ropes up to the opening. John stole a glance at the pilot as he eased back on the cyclic, lowering the collective in unison. John could see the man’s feet fairly dancing on the pedals, keeping the big bird straight and in trim. This pilot wasn’t the best John had flown with, but he wasn’t bad.

  As the target house slid under the big helicopter, the pilot eased the cyclic forward and pulled up on the collective, bringing the craft into a hover over the backyard. The ropes went out, and four of the team members disappeared out the side doors, clinging to the ropes as they rocketed to the ground. The entire operation took less than five seconds.

  The pilot had positioned his steed so that the front yard was directly to his nine o’clock, and he easily slid the big bird to the left, stopping over the front yard. John and the other two went next, leaving the big bird empty except for its crew. Once the last operator was on the ground, the pilot pulled power, driving the giant machine back into the air.

  The pilots John was used to working with would have been climbing before the last man had cleared the fast rope. Hell, when they were inserted riding in on the outboards of the Little Birds, those pilots could be downright scary. The little birds were a small aircraft made by McDonnell Douglas Helicopter Systems, and were designated MH-6 Little Bird. The aircraft was small, nimble and could get guys into places a Black Hawk just wouldn’t fit. The little birds had a crew of two and came in various configurations ranging from an armed version to the transport version John and his folks rode on from time to time.

  The pilots would come in so fast; John was sure they’d splatter on a rooftop like flies. Then came the g-forces and somehow the little bird’s skids would kiss the rooftop and, as eight hundred pounds worth of gunfighting operators left the aircraft, the tiny helicopter would simply spring back into the air with little to no input on the controls by the pilot. The pilots told John and his boys that, if they didn’t get off with the group, the bird was leaving regardless.

  It never happened, but John would have felt pretty fucking stupid if he hadn’t gotten off in time and ended up, in the air, watching his unit take down a building. If that happened, he knew he would be eating shit for it when the op was done.

  John was last out of the thundering bird and hit the ground running for the cover of a large truck. John’s old pilots also would have put him closer to the target house and not out in the street. The rotor wash from the Black Hawk pounded the men on the ground as the bird climbed out and away leaving the team in a growing quietness.

  John always felt a peacefulness envelope his spirit after an insertion; his body would go through an adrenaline dump that accompanied the chaos of experiencing a multitude of sights and sounds as he sat in whatever aircraft was doing the ferrying. He would try not to go deaf from the roar of the aircraft’s engines. The transition from yelling over a headset inside a thundering helicopter to whispering to his team after the aircraft left was a welcome and tranquil relief. There were a few times when the noise of the rotors had immediately been replaced with gunfire; those times were few and far between. He and his running dogs tried not to get dropped into firefights since they tended to result in crashed helicopters, injured men, and sometimes the outright death of all involved.

  Most of the time, they made several false insertions on their way to the actual insertion point, unless it was a hard target in a built-up area like a town or city, in which case, they got on board, flew straight to the target site, fucked a bunch of shit up, and left.

  John remembered being dropped off in Afghanistan on top of a mountain and how quiet and peaceful it would feel after the insert bird was gone. Those twenty or thirty minutes while they got comms up and acclimated to their surroundings were some of the most peaceful times of his life. Ironically, they were oftentimes followed by some of the most asshole-clinching, ball-sack-shrinking times of his life as well.

  When he died, if they ever were able to do a forensics study of his brain, it would show so many highs and lows he was sure it would look like a chart of America’s economy over the past thirty years. He was okay with that; he didn’t like the in-between. He craved the highs and needed the lows to recover. John had no use for the in-between stuff.

  John clicked the radio twice and received the same from the team in the backyard. They were all in place, and it was time to start calling this guy out so they could move to the pickup landing zone (LZ) a mile away in a Target parking lot. John took a deep breath.

  “Barry, it’s John. I’m with the government and we’ve been sent here to pick you up.” John was careful not to use the word take when addressing these folks. No one wanted to be taken anywhere. People were already scared, and more than a couple of gunfights were caused by the thought of a government that had already failed them coming in and taking them away from their home.

  Here in San Jose, California, the chances of a gunfight were less than, let’s say, somewhere in Texas or, worse yet, Idaho, but John had been surprised before, and he didn’t intend to get shot by some computer nerd who had played just a little too much Call of Duty and owned half a dozen guns he knew nothing about.

  John waited a full thirty seconds before repeating his announcement and, still nothing. After the third attempt, John keyed his mic. “Hold on the back and lock down the sides. We are moving on the front.”

  All he got back were two clicks. He smiled to himself, he taught them well, and they were starting to come along in their tactics.

  As John left the cover of the truck, a voice boomed out from the dark house. “What do you want?”

  John didn’t know why, but he nearly shit himself. “We’re here on behalf of the president himself. He is asking you to come with us, and you will be briefed on what they need from you.”

  Silence followed and John wondered if he imagined the voice. Then it came again. “How do I know you won’t just shoot me when I open this door?”

  John shook his head. Jesus Christ, why did these intellects always have to be so damn paranoid? “’Cause if I intended to shoot you, you’d be shot already, and I wouldn’t be standing out here talking to you.”

  “I choose not to go with you,” came the voice.

  John moved back to cover and took a knee. “Listen, we are who we say we are. Who else is flying around in a fucking Black Hawk these days?” Jesus, John thought, who would have been flying around this neighborhood in a Black Hawk even before the lights went out?

  The man’s refusal took John by surprise. All the others were suspicious, but when they came
to believe John and his little crew were really with the government, they nearly ran into their arms and the safety, or ill-perceived safety, of government protection.

  “I demand you leave and do not return,” the voice boomed back.

  John had been briefed in regard to a refusal and, although they were briefed, no one thought it would really happen. It hadn’t happened to date, to any of the teams.

  “Well, there’s the problem, my friend. The president told us to ask first and, if you didn’t willingly come, to force you to come.”

  More silence.

  “I’d really rather not force anyone to do anything, if you get my drift.”

  The silence continued.

  “So please come on out, and let’s go see what they need from you.”

  John had been briefed on Barry, and he knew there was a grading system in regard to how valuable a target was to the government. The grading system was a 1 to 10 system, with 1 being the lowest priority, and Barry had graded out at a 10. He was the first 10 John had gone after, not that he cared what number was assigned to his targets.

  He couldn’t care less what some computer geek graded his target at; what he cared more about was the guy’s background and his experience with violence and firearms. Just because the guy could figure out how to get the Hoover dam operating on vegetable oil or some other infrastructure bullshit, John didn’t care. His concerns were about staying alive and keeping his troops alive.

  This Barry guy hadn’t raised a single red flag during the intel briefings John attended. The intel guys weren’t even sure if he’d still be alive, with all the violence in the cities these days, not to mention water and food shortages…check that, shortage wasn’t the correct term for something that simply no longer existed. The folks in these built-up areas were experiencing a food and water absence.

  John sat behind the truck, wishing the guy would just come out so they could move to the evac LZ, when a long string of automatic gunfire erupted from the rear of the target structure. Before the rattle of gunfire subsided, the garage door opened, exposing a man sitting astride a motorcycle. The man had a pulley system linked to the overhead garage door and had opened the door by hand. The bike’s engine leaped to life, which shocked everyone on the mission, and then it simply rocketed across the front yard, turning easily onto the street before disappearing into the night.

  John was already up and running in the direction of the bike, calling for the bird to get eyes on and track the guy. After a terse reply from the pilot, John switched his radio back to team comms, getting a situational report from the team members on the back side of the building. The rear team reported no one was injured, and were oblivious to the fact that a motorcycle had literally jumped out of the garage and sped off into the night. This target undoubtedly had no wish to be part of the gentrification of the country.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  John slowed his run to a walk, his mind racing, trying to assemble a plan of action for a situation that was evolving at breakneck speeds.

  “Hold the structure,” John barked into his lip mic. John figured there were at least two guys in the building, and he was absolutely sure he’d only seen one person on the motorcycle. He was also pretty sure it had been a man even though he was wearing a helmet. John was not a motorcycle enthusiast, but he’d been to motorcycle schools and had actually used motorcycles overseas a few times.

  He had a rudimentary working knowledge of the different gear and motorcycle models. This guy rode some sort of dual sport-style motorcycle, which appeared loaded down pretty heavily. The rider was wearing a helmet, so John could not say if it had or had not been their target, Barry.

  Finally, he stopped in the middle of the street, turned, and ran back to the house. Once at the house, he switched channels, calling the air crew and asking for their status. They were still circling and had not located the bike at that time. John switched back to the team channel.

  “Move to breach point,” he whispered into the mic. He knew the team members at the rear of the structure would already be staging to the side of the rear sliding glass door. He and the rest of the team moved to the garage, cleared the empty room, and staged on the door leading to the interior of the house. Again, he keyed the mic. “Three, two, one,” he hissed into the mic.

  On one, the team deployed flash bangs into the structure. The noise was deafening as the devices momentarily brought the interior of the house to life. Before the deafening sound of the flash bangs subsided, the two teams swept into the house. John was as careful as he could be, watching for booby traps while clearing the interior of the residence. The team used night-vision goggles and infrared lasers, or PEQs, to scan each room. This allowed the team to work in complete darkness, leaving an enemy without goggles at a distinct disadvantage.

  Within thirty seconds the house was cleared, leaving John standing in the middle of the family room near the back of the house, staring at something that gave him a bad feeling. Mounted on a table, slightly back from a window, was an AK-47 assault rifle. The trigger had a small line attached to it that led out to the garage. There had only been one person, and he pulled the line activating the weapon as a diversion before he rode straight through his perimeter and off into the night.

  “Well, goddamn,” John said to himself. “Bastard got us.”

  John’s earpiece crackled.

  “Boss, we got company out front, ’bout twenty or thirty not-so-friendly-looking dudes.”

  John crouched, moving through the house towards the front room. “Are they armed?”

  “Hell yeah, they are. Every single one has a rifle,” came the response.

  John stood back in the shadows of the front room and brought his rifle’s scope to his eye, and he could see at least fifteen heavily armed men moving towards the front of the house.

  “Boss, they’re trying to surround the house. Guys are moving towards the side yard.”

  John leaned into the earpiece as if he might miss some crucial piece of information. He knew he couldn’t allow the team to be flanked, but wasn’t quite sure how he could stop this from happening in the short amount of time it was going to take the group out front to achieve this tactical maneuver. John had endured as many bad situations as he had good ones and, this, he thought, wasn’t a good one. Sooner or later he was going to pay one way or another with either a limb or his life.

  He thought briefly about speaking out and attempting to negotiate with these people, but as quickly as the thought entered his mind, he swept it aside as not effective and only offering an advantage to his opponent. The armed group outside hadn’t actually fired a shot or physically threatened John and his small team, but the fact that they were tactically maneuvering on them left little doubt in his mind as to their intentions.

  Food was most likely their first priority, and what little rations the team carried would be seen as a gold mine once the group pulled it from John’s and his team’s dead bodies. He wasn’t going to let that happen.

  He keyed his mic. “We are about to be contacted, people. Make ready for a fight. Rear team, hold the flanks and rear. We will come to you—through the house.” He quickly switched channels, hailing the helicopter crew. “We are about to have heavy contact back at the target building, need immediate gunship support. Be advised bad guys are armed with rifles. Break.” John looked back out at the group, who were now nearing the front yard. “Watch your altitude and monitor our progress to LZ Kilo Mike Mike.” John instructed the flight crew, referring to an alternate pre-planned extraction site. Before the helicopter crew could answer, John switched back to his team channel.

  John set the stage, and now all there was to do was fight. He learned long ago that the man who threw the first punch always started the fight with a one-punch lead. He raised the rifle to his shoulder and, with lightning speed, sent seven rounds downrange. Seven armed men in the front yard went down, four for good and three screaming with horrific wounds, out of the fight and most likely headed to the
ir graves within the next few hours.

  As John turned to move, the two team members in the front room with him began firing into the advancing body. In unison, every member of the hostile group opened up on the front of the house, shattering windows and splintering wood frames around doors and windows. John had never been faced with such dismal odds in all his life. All the shooting drills he ever ran never addressed how to wipe out twenty-five bad guys before they wiped you out. This was going to be a running gun battle.

  John had practiced shooting drills firing at up to five targets for speed, but any more than that, a man needed to become fluid, harder to track. He needed to move in order to keep the enemy shifting and off-balance. If they were moving, John knew the enemy would have a much tougher time putting accurate fire on him and his team. A moving target was extremely hard to hit, and a moving target who was returning accurate fire was even more of a handful.

  As John turned and took his first step, two things happened that sickened him. He felt a round slam into the rear plate of his body armor, and he heard a softer slap as a second round found someone else’s softer armor. He didn’t fall, but he sure as hell wanted to as the round pounded into his back. He heard a cry from behind him and saw one of the two team members down while the other stood over his downed partner, pouring rounds through the shattered front windows of the little house.

  John reached back, grabbed the downed man’s web gear, and pulled him into the next room. The windows and walls of that room were already leaking bullets like salt out of a shaker. John pulled his wounded comrade into the room and dropped to the ground just as he heard a loud thwack come from the front room.

  No scream or cry followed the sound as John slid facedown towards the door, trying to assess the situation in the front room as bullets continued piercing the tiny house’s walls. John realized his team was not engaging the enemy, leaving him with a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.