Southlands

by D. J. Molles

  He’d gone over this in his head as many times as one could in the eight hours that this plan had existed. And yet he still felt unprepared.

  It’s just because we had to execute so fast, he told himself. Just because we didn’t have time for dry-runs or better intel.

  Fuck, I hope Bellamy’s info was good.

  “Here they come,” Abe said, his voice tight.

  The rain had weakened to a drizzle now, and in the relative quiet, Lee heard the growl of tracks, and the roar of a turbine engine somewhere in the darkness.

  Lee’s heart began to bang against the inside of his armor. For a flash, he remembered the cataclysmic feeling of taking a round to the chest, the primal fear that had invaded him as he felt the life slipping out of him and he…

  Shit, I died.

  Funny, he’d never admitted it until that moment.

  “Focus,” he whispered to himself. Everyone had their mental battles going into a real battle. It didn’t matter how you dealt with it—just that you perform.

  The first shot rocked the air. The report from the massive main gun on the tank, and then a fraction of a second later, the explosion, as the northwestern guard tower shattered in a white flash.

  Screams and shouts rose from the compound. The shadowy figures that had barely been visible before now came to life as they started scrambling, trying to figure out which direction to run.

  “One more shot,” Lee called.

  The northwestern guard tower listed, the sound of creaking and groaning steel reaching them. It didn’t fall, but crumpled to one side and then hung there at an angle, black smoke belching into a black sky.

  Machine gun fire erupted from the remaining guard towers, all directed at the tank. Tracers lanced the night air, and then received gales of fire back, coming from the tank’s coaxial gun, and the Humvees that followed it.

  The sound of bullet strikes, like hammers on steel, back and forth.

  The fusillade crashed on, intensifying until it seemed like every gun was firing at its cyclic rate without stopping. It became almost a hum, or a buzz, that made the air warble.

  Then the second shot.

  The tank’s report.

  The explosion.

  Lee couldn’t see where the round had struck, but he saw the flash, and the billow of smoke.

  “That’s us,” Lee grunted, and bore down on all the bad feelings in his stomach, because there was no more time left. Now he had to execute. He had to perform.

  The grenade launcher thumped against his shoulder almost before he thought about it. Then two more reports sounded from his right and left.

  Lee watched his first round hit as he reached down to his belt for a reload.

  The ground about twenty feet behind the generator shattered and bloomed, and a figure that might’ve been a man flew apart.

  Lee had overshot the generator.

  He had a second. Maybe two or three, before someone figured out where the grenades were coming from. He needed to get this damn launcher dialed in…

  He slammed the fresh round into the breach. Raised it to his eye, using the leaf sight again, but this time using the notch above the previous one. He squinted into the glare from the work light, and fired.

  It dropped, slamming down right on the generator.

  Or near enough that it didn’t matter.

  The work lights went out.

  Lee pushed himself off the rocks, reloading as he stumbled across the treacherous footing, bounding over Tex’s body, even as Tex pulled himself up to change positions.

  Lee went prone again on the rocks. His knee struck hard, but he barely felt it. He put another grenade in. Sighted, and let it fly. Accuracy was unnecessary now. His second shot had taken out the generator—the next eight explosions were just to cause havoc.

  Fire and Light.

  Abe’s third round took the southwestern guard tower and ripped the top of it clear off. Something limp and lifeless tumbled out, bouncing off the steel girders on its way down.

  Lee ran again. Closer to the power plant now. Edging in.

  The southeastern guard tower was all that remained. But then it seemed to realize where the threat was coming from, and a sudden blat of machine gun fire spat out of it, smacking the rocks to Lee’s left and tracking toward him fast.

  Lee let his legs go out from under him.

  He hit the rocks.

  Felt the skin come off his left shin.

  A round whined through the air just over his head.

  Lee swore—at nothing in particular and at everything in general. He slipped another grenade out, popped it in, and waited for a three count.

  Three seconds.

  Waiting.

  Ages.

  The machine gun fire started up again, but this time the rounds didn’t whine, which meant they weren’t close. He heard a clatter of breaking rocks to his left and saw Tex go down with a yelp.

  Tex rolled across the jagged rocks and then held up a thumb. “I’m good! I’m good!”

  Lee popped up, already visualizing the guard tower, visualizing his sights framing it…

  Tracers zipped by, slicing the blackness just to his left.

  “Shit!”

  He dropped again before they could find him.

  A THUNK from several yards away.

  Abe’s launcher, a trail of sparks shooting from the end of it.

  BOOM

  The round struck low on the southeastern tower, catching somewhere on the stairwell to the top and shearing a series of supports.

  The machine gun fire from the tower went silent. It could have been anyone screaming, but Lee thought it was the guy inside, feeling the building beneath him lurch.

  “Hit him again!” Abe shouted.

  Lee popped up once more and fired, splitting the difference between the tower top and the stairwell and hoping for a hit on either to bring the damn thing down.

  The round whiffed, sailing straight past and impacting further into the compound.

  Another THUNK, this time from Tex, and the guard tower became a metal coffin, bright fire consuming whatever sad bastard was inside, a pressure wave reducing him to jelly.

  Lee pulled back into cover behind the slope of rocks, reaching for another grenade. “Bust that fence line!” he shouted to Tex and Abe. “Give it everything you got left!”

  The three of them started firing, and moving, and firing, edging closer across the land bridge, their rounds pulverizing the giant fences to ragged threads of metal. Opening a hole. And drawing attention from the infantry hitting the northern shore.

  Move and shoot.

  Move and shoot.

  Shit, Lee thought. This might actually work!

  TWENTY-THREE

  ─▬▬▬─

  CLEARED HOT

  The land bridge connected the power plant to a parcel of forest to the south.

  If you continued south, through that bit of forested land, with the lake on either side of it, you’d come to a clearing that cut straight through the forest, and out to the lake. In the center of this clearing was a long-abandoned railroad shunt, that might’ve, in another life, been used to ferry resources to the power plant.

  Now, beside those rusted railroad tracks, two technicals rolled to a stop with their lights off. Their tailgate towards the main land. Their dark headlights towards the lake.

  The gunners in the beds swung their machine guns to point north, into the woods, but they didn’t fire.

  McNair stepped out of the lead technical, gnashing on his chunk of gum.

  Through the trees, he couldn’t see the firefight at the power plant. But he could hear it. The near-constant chatter of machine guns raging back and forth, and the punctuation marks of what sounded like 40mm grenades thumping and crashing at an aggressive rate.

  McNair pointed along the wood line. “Positions,” he called. “By pairs. Wait for my mark before engaging.”

  Out of the technicals, his squad of Cornerstone operatives fanned out, spl
itting into pairs and positioning themselves along the wood line, with the railroad shunt to their backs. He had ten, including himself and his second, Prince, who stood beside him.

  He’d come to Texas with fifteen men, but one of his fire teams had been ambushed and slaughtered the previous day in a little town called Caddo. They’d almost had Lee Harden and Terrence Lehy dead to rights. They’d almost completed their mission.

  McNair felt a mingled hatred and despair as he remembered his boys’ last radio transmission. They’d ID’d Lee Harden…And then they’d died, screaming and shooting.

  And Lee Harden and Terrence Lehy—the two main targets—had escaped up a hillside.

  McNair had barely restrained himself from letting the two Apache gunships assigned to him simply wipe that hillside clean.

  But his mission was to take Lee out, and provide proof that he was dead. Which meant that McNair needed a picture of Lee Harden with a bullet hole in his face. Not a pile of meat scraps left over from a 30mm strafing run.

  And oh, how satisfying it was going to be when he finally took that picture.

  He couldn’t wait to see Lee’s dead face in the cold light of a camera flash.

  He couldn’t wait to piss on the body.

  In Caddo, they’d pulled back, and he’d held off on using the gunships. Then he’d coordinated with Daniels and Lineberger to give misinformation to the leak in Greeley, in order to lure Lee Harden and Terrence Lehy into a trap.

  It had worked. They’d taken the bait—hook, line, and sinker.

  Now all he had to do was reel them in.

  McNair keyed his comms, opening a channel between himself and the two Apache gunships that were in a holding pattern, several miles north. “McNair to Nordic One and Two. We are in position. You’re cleared hot. Take out any vehicles they have, and push ‘em our way.”

  ***

  The pontoon boat thumped into the mud of the northern shore, and the second it rocked to a halt everyone ditched.

  The paddlers went over first, shoving their oars onto the flat of the pontoon platform. They splashed into the water, and one of them called back, “Waist deep!” and then started charging through the water and the silt towards the shore line.

  Julia shuffled to the left, following the flow of bodies as they dumped themselves off the sides of the pontoon, everyone keenly aware of how exposed they all were at that very moment, and the only thing that seemed to be keeping them from being mowed down was the fact that it didn’t seem that the enemy had realized they were there yet.

  Out of Julia’s peripheral, as she slipped feet-first into the water, she saw the fire and flames and the back-and-forth chaos of tracer fire, and the cries of the men that were dying, and the rattle and clank of the Abrams as it trundled along, destroying everything in front of it like a horseman of doom.

  The hectic firefight was reflected in the black water she sunk into. Thick mud grabbed her by the ankles and threatened to not let her go, but someone large—probably Cheech—shoved her by the shoulder and then her feet were unstuck and she waded forward through the murk, towards the hellish destruction ahead of her.

  The silhouetted shapes of the soldiers that had been on the pontoon with her were straddling a small cliff of mud that separated the water from the land. Coming up sopping wet, and then sprinting for cover.

  Dead ahead were two large, concrete buildings that sat close to the shore and were undefended. The entire assault force stacked up behind these two buildings, the alley between them providing a clear funnel, straight towards the gates of the power plant.

  Julia saw the jumble of dark bodies against the pale concrete, all of them clustered on one end or the other. Enterprising young point men taking small peeks around the corner to gauge the progress of the tank.

  Julia hit the muddy cliff. It was about three feet tall, which wasn’t much, but it crumbled under her hands and knees as she tried to scramble up it, and her weight felt exaggerated by the gear and the soaking clothes.

  She managed to get herself up by rolling, then got up on all fours, then got her feet under her, and started running.

  She went to the left.

  Heavy footfalls beside her.

  She glanced and saw Cheech, identifying him in the darkness only by his sheer size.

  She hit the wall of the building between two troops, then put her back to the wall and gasped for air. Such a short space to haul across, but the weight and the water and the fear made it harder than it should have been.

  Cheech hit the wall near her and started yelling to be heard over the crash of gunfire. “What’s it look like?”

  The soldier he spoke to looked back at him. “I dunno, sir. I guess it looks good. We’re just waiting for the tank to hit that main gate.”

  Julia gulped a breath and spoke. “Are there any wounded? I’m a medic.”

  The soldier shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. We haven’t taken a damn round yet.”

  Cheech shrugged and smiled. “Well, I prepare for the worst, but I won’t complain when it’s easy.” He started knife-handing select individuals in the crowd of soldiers—Julia figured they were squad leaders. “Gunners keep the corners,” he bellowed. “Group by squad. One squad at a time down the alley.”

  A mess of shuffling occurred as the soldiers began to situate themselves.

  A soldier from the other building shouted, “Tank’s getting close!”

  “Squad leaders!” Cheech yelled. “Hold on the defensive wall until everyone gets across!”

  Julia became aware of a thumping noise in her ears.

  At first she thought it was her own blood pumping, but it was much too rapid.

  Then she thought it was the rumble of the tank, but she could hear the tank and somehow the sounds didn’t match up. It was something else. Something that she was starting to feel in her chest, but she couldn’t place it…

  All at once, something happened.

  Like a sudden calm in a storm.

  All the soldiers that had been shouting and shuffling, they felt it too. They heard it. They stopped, and they started to look around, but unlike Julia, they seemed to have an inkling of what it was, and their eyes were turned to the sky.

  “Everyone get down!” Cheech shouted, the tone of his voice changed.

  Soldiers hugged walls.

  The thumping became a rattle.

  Julia’s mind finally categorized the noise where it belonged.

  Rotors…

  In the lull, Julia heard the tanker over the comms in her ear: “Red Rover, can anyone advise—”

  Dragon’s fire split the night.

  That’s what it looked like to Julia, in the split second that she perceived it.

  Like two black beasts hovered in the sky over the waters, and they simultaneously let out jets of fire.

  Julia’s face lit up in the chemical light of burning rocket fuel.

  The missiles streaked overhead and impacted.

  A rending crash came from the direction of the main battle.

  Julia became aware of a pressing, buffeting wind against her face, and she saw it whip the waters of the lake, and the two dark shapes roared over top of them, their chain guns chattering. Julia watched the beach explode in a narrow line that lanced straight up the dirt and smash into the bodies against the wall.

  Cheech shouted into the radio: “They have gunships! Two gunships, firing on Red Rover!”

  Half a transmission came in after Cheech’s: “—down! Red Rover One is down! We lost the tank!”

  ***

  “The fuck was that?” Tex spat as a resounding explosion shook the ground.

  The three of them hit cover in a clatter of gear, up against the defensive cement wall, about ten yards from a man-sized opening.

  A smattering of radio transmissions answered Tex’s question, right at the same time that the roar of helicopter rotors chattered through the air.

  Tex and Lee and Abe all exchanged looks born from confusion and sudden, outri
ght fear.

  “Those’re fuckin’ Apaches,” Abe identified. “Are they shooting at us?”

  “They just took out the Abrams,” Tex sounded gobsmacked.

  “Whose are they?” Abe demanded.

  “It doesn’t fucking matter whose they are,” Lee snapped. “They’re not ours!”

  The situation slammed into him with merciless pragmatism. Lee and forty-some-odd soldiers were now trapped on a peninsula. Their objective had turned them to fish in a barrel.

  Lee hit several options in his mind, each like a roadblock: Can the infantry escape? Not in the boats—they’d be sitting ducks. Do we have any anti-aircraft? No. Can we take the power plant and hide inside? Not without the tank.

  “We gotta pull back,” Lee spat out, realizing it at the same moment that he said it. “We can’t go forward. We gotta go back.”

  There was no time to argue. They all knew it. Tex held on for another second, his face a grim mask of resistance, but then he nodded.

  Lee threw a hand towards the rocks they’d just come off of. “That’s our way out. We gotta take the land bridge.”

  Abe grimaced. “That’s four hundred yards of open space.”

  “It’s better than sitting on a fucking boat.”

  Over the comms, Cheech transmitted. “Those choppers are swinging around! We can’t sit here, Lee!”

  Lee stabbed the PTT button on his chest rig. “Cheech! Fuck the plan! South! Straight across! Move to the land bridge!”

  The thrum of the two gunships sounded like it was dimming, and then it began to get louder again. There was the chirp of tires. The Humvees were trying to make their getaway.

  “Lee!” Tex snapped at him. “You seem to be in charge, so what are we doing?”

  Lee grabbed Tex and Abe and pointed them back over the land bridge. “This was a trap,” he said. “Either Bellamy sold us out or he got sold out himself. Go across the bridge and make sure we don’t have hostiles closing off that retreat.”

  Tex and Abe sprinted away towards the land bridge.

  The distinct sound of Hellfire missiles screeched through the air, followed by three solid, chest-thumping explosions. Had that been the Humvees? Had that last pass taken out both of them?