It was a lesson with surprisingly wide applicability.
Now, if Homer stayed in his three-foot world, maybe he could try to tip the scales in the team’s favor.
He moved out, ranging ahead.
* * *
Reyes and Brady moved in a line of two, both with bayonets mounted.
Reyes was in front, due to the gimpy leg, so he could set the pace, but smoothly panning his big tan SOF Combat Assault Rifle. Brady was in back, struggling to keep his newly acquired M4 to his shoulder, due to the ache in his right upper arm from that bullet wound. With every minute he held the rifle the pain increased, until it felt like he was being impaled with something.
Finally he mentally said Fuck it, and signaled Reyes to hold up. The M4 didn’t have a suppressor anyway, so he wasn’t anxious to use the thing. He detached the bayonet, then reconfigured the sling so the rifle would ride on his back. Then the pair moved out again, Brady wielding his knife once more.
These two hadn’t encountered a single Zulu in their sweeps of the first two enclosures. Luck of the draw, Brady figured. Maybe they’d be the ones to find an American Zulu – one in uniform, and who would actually progress their mission. That would be nice. And with the pain in his arm finally subsiding, he was able to focus and stay frosty.
Also due to the luck of the draw, the two of them were now approaching Thunderdome, the flaring white pavilion – which they could now see was bricked up on all sides with HESCO barriers. Everything was still and quiet as the grave.
As they came into its shadow, Brady halted and eyed up the structure – by far the biggest on base, with the possible exception of one or two of the aircraft hangars. He traded a look with Reyes, then moved his hand toward his mic key. But the radio spoke before he could get to it. And it was the very man he had been about to call.
“Brady, from Handon.”
“This is Brady, send it.”
“Yeah, can you join me on the spare channel?”
“Switching to Spare One now… Go ahead.”
“Yeah – remember how I told you not to go into Thunderdome because Zorn said it was empty?”
“Affirmative.”
“Yeah, well, go take a look inside Thunderdome for me. I want to know what the hell’s in there. Priority execute.”
“Yeah, no worries, Sarge, we’re there now. Stand by.”
The two Marines started circling Thunderdome, looking for a way in.
Time To Go
Kent - Three Miles South of the ZPW
Colonel Briars, officer commanding of Second Battalion, the Parachute Regiment (2 Para) watched over the rapid breakdown and pack-up of another field command post. He wasn’t sure why they bothered – and he didn’t imagine they’d even be able to pretend much longer. This had stopped being a measured withdrawal.
It was turning into a rout.
They were abandoning another set of positions, and they were doing it fast. The urgent question now was where exactly they would go from here, and how the hell they were expected to get there. Which was why Briars was standing with a radio headset to his ear, while the soldiers of his Battalion Headquarters (BHQ) section packed up everything except the radio connected to their commander’s head.
He had been on hold long enough with CentCom HQ that there could be little question he’d been forgotten about entirely. And, despite the approaching sounds of battle – firing, grenades, and the ever-present moaning (and occasional shrieking) of the dead – he couldn’t bring himself to give up.
At last contact, he’d been told that the air transport he’d been promised, a flight of Chinooks to airlift his battle-weary troopers out of there, simply wasn’t coming. He’d also been told to retreat to the nearest gate of the ZPW and get back behind it, which was just fine by him. It contradicted earlier orders, but that was par for the course even in the absence of all the madness going on now.
The trouble was, he’d also received a FRAGO (fragmentary order) that there was an artillery barrage inbound – both to help his unit break contact, and to reduce the front ranks of the dead by turning them to meat pudding. And he was supposed to stand by for confirmation of final details. But there hadn’t been any. Now they were about to continue their decreasingly measured retreat – but while also waiting for the sky to open above them with high-explosive hail.
Artillery barrages were great. But the thing about them was that everyone had to be on the same page. The FRAGO had indicated the grid squares for the bombardment, starting with the one they were currently in – and then, after destroying a shedload of the enemy, it would walk to the west to draw the surviving dead off, while the Paras went east. If that was all still true, fine and good. But they hadn’t gotten final confirmation, and now Briars couldn’t get through at all.
And they were out of time.
By his watch, the barrage would start in twelve minutes. He didn’t even know for sure that it was still happening at this point. But he damn well had to assume it was. And the great mass of advancing dead were on them again anyway.
They had no choice – it was time to go.
* * *
Staff Sergeant Bhardwaj, Private Elliott Walker’s new platoon sergeant, stood up and went to the very front of the line – moving to the point of maximum danger. “Concentrate fire!” he shouted, leaning into his weapon and triggering off. “On me!”
Elliott could hear firing behind him as well, over his head, as the section that was in reserve also laid into the volley, while swinging around the flank to support. They were all shooting like mad, but in a very coordinated way, at a pack of six runners racing at their line at an angle – and also moving in a fashion that just looked way too coordinated.
Elliott had never seen them move together like that.
And the sight of it caused something deep down in him to go cold, and become even more afraid than he’d been. If the dead were organizing against them, what chance did they have now?
But in only a few seconds every runner in the pack had been cut down, collapsing or sliding into the grass, the last of them actually tumbling into the frontmost trench on the line, two squaddies scrambling to either side to get out of the way.
Before Elliott could catch his breath, Sergeant Bhardwaj was kneeling beside him with a hand on his shoulder. “All right, Walker?”
Once again, Elliott could only nod. He was hyperventilating. Finally, he managed, “Is that normal? Them attacking all together like that?”
“Yeah, it’s what we’ve been seeing. There’s the great mass of stumblers coming behind, moving forward slow but non-stop. And then there are packs of runners roaming the front, making hit-and-run raids, bashing through sometimes, usually getting cut down. As long as we see them coming we’re okay – and as long as we stay together. That’s the main thing.”
Elliott nodded his understanding. And he liked the sound of that.
“You need anything, Private?”
There was something. Elliott racked his brain. “Radio batteries?”
“Here you go, mate, no worries,” and the sergeant pulled a pair from a pouch on his vest and slapped them in Elliott’s hand. Finally, Bhardwaj clapped him on the shoulder and stood to leave – as he was already answering a hail on his radio, on some net Elliott couldn’t hear: “BHQ, this is Charlie-Two, go ahead…”
Elliott took a couple of deep breaths as he changed out his radio battery. Then he dropped out and checked his rifle mag and reloaded. He didn’t think he’d hit anything just now, but he’d shot a lot. Once again, facing down a fast-moving and coordinated pack of runners was not something he was used to, and had definitely never been trained for.
Less than a minute later, the sergeant came back to the line of hastily scooped-out trenches, from which his riflemen were now firing slowly but steadily at the approaching ranks of dead in the distance, and he started barking orders.
“Look lively! There’s an artillery barrage coming in to screen our withdrawal. We’re moving out by sections,
while D Company covers the movement. We’re going now. Move out!” There was little preamble, and no ceremony.
Elliott got to his feet and fell in. The platoon he’d been thrown in with seemed happy to have another sharpshooter – destroying the dead farther out was better than letting them get close. Elliott would have liked to hold this position longer, and cover his new team’s withdrawal. But his brothers in D Company were doing that. They’d do a good job. And maybe, after this, he could hook back in with them.
With his best friend Amit gone, he’d really like all his next-best mates around him. Jones, Leakey, McKay, and the lads, all mucking in together again.
That was something to look forward to.
* * *
Running again. Bouncing, trying to keep drawing breaths, trying to keep his feet. Everything slightly blurry. The sun had gone away again, a thin rain had begun to fall – and mists on the ground had started to roll through once more. Elliott tried to stay on Sergeant Bhardwaj’s ass. It was comforting. He felt he couldn’t go far wrong if he stayed close to the platoon sergeant.
Except he could also hear him conferring with the platoon’s officer as they ran. They were both poking at a plastic-covered map sheet. “Definitely east after north?”
“Definitely!” Bhardwaj said. “And it shouldn’t matter, anyway – as long as we get far enough north, we’ll be clear!”
“Yeah,” and the lieutenant stuck his finger into the map, “But is that the grid square we’re supposed to be in? Or is it the northernmost one of the barrage?”
“Christ – I’m not sure.”
“Can you get battalion on the blower?”
“I can’t get anyone. The channels are saturated.”
“Does battalion even have commo with the artillery batteries?”
“Dunno. I say we just run like hell and get as far north as we can!”
Overhearing this, Elliott took deep sucking breaths and willed his legs to keep pumping. As little as he had wanted to fall off the back of the formation before… he was seriously motivated to keep up now. But ultimately it didn’t matter.
Elliott’s fate was sealed the moment he landed in C Company.
Fail Hard
CentCom HQ - JOC
Jameson stood at the shot-out windows with his mouth wide open, watching his salvation fall to Earth in great gouts of flame. The gigantic explosion in the aircraft hangar was taking down the two incoming Chinooks with breathtaking violence. Worst of all, easily worst, in a competitive field, was the individual figures he could just make out – flailing and falling and covered with flames – spilling from the cracks between the broken-apart sections of the ungainly helicopters and tumbling to earth.
Merciful God…
He instinctively brought his hands up to protect his face as all four halves of the two helos slammed into the ground in all-new fireballs and more hurtling debris. In a vague way, he knew he should get under cover. A counter-intuitive principle, but one that had been drilled into him, was: if you can see the explosion, the explosion can see you. Basically, shrapnel could fly mind-boggling distances. Miles in some cases.
But then it was all over, and nothing had hit him. But Jameson still felt like he’d been punched in the gut.
Confusingly, he now heard helicopter rotor noise. Stepping closer to the window, he craned his neck up and out… and there in the sky was Charlotte in her Apache. The mean-looking attack helicopter was rolling slightly from side to side, like it had been rocked by the explosions. But she had survived it.
And Jameson remembered he had tried to order her back to the pilots’ ready room. The one located in the hangar that was now a three-alarm fire. By staying in the air, she had perhaps just become their last surviving pilot.
Smart girl, Jameson thought.
And that was the last idle thought he was going to be able to allow himself. Because now he and his Marines were right where they had started the day – in charge of this place, and everything in it, and the entire battle for the south.
Their relief were all dead and charred and in pieces on the ground.
* * *
Out near the helipad, Private Simmonds slowly uncurled out of the fetal ball he had spontaneously rolled into, after being knocked to the ground by the force of the first gigantic explosion in the hangar. When the two helos had also gone up, then crashed to the ground in smaller but closer explosions, Simmonds had only curled up on the ground more tightly. But now as he forced his eyes open, and tried to see through the stinging black smoke and around the flaming pools of aviation fuel, he had just a single thought:
No one could have fucked up as badly as I just did. NO ONE.
He didn’t know what had actually happened to cause the cataclysmic explosion inside the hangar. Probably no one would ever know. But he had been responsible for the sweeps there, and making absolutely sure the place was safe and squared away, in advance of the command contingent from CentCom North arriving. And he also remembered joking about the grenades carried by the RMPs he had sent in there. Maybe that was related. Maybe not. It didn’t matter.
“No fuck-ups,” had been his orders.
He couldn’t have failed any harder if he’d worked at it for a hundred years.
Now he climbed to his feet and tried to imagine a way to organize some kind of rescue or recovery effort. It was impossible to imagine there was anyone to rescue – the hangar looked like a total loss, and both Chinooks were in flaming pieces spread across two hundred square meters of ground.
But he had to try. He had to do something.
* * *
And now everything was kicking off again all over – both there in the JOC, and everywhere else.
When Jameson had dealt with the first few emergencies – those related to the explosion and helo crash, and those not – he felt a tap on his shoulder and turned around. There was an enlisted woman he didn’t recognize behind him, and she had a group of civilians in tow – a woman carrying a little girl, and two young boys. “Sir,” she said, “the RMPs at the front gate sent these four up. Evidently they’re authorized to be here.”
Jameson boggled. “What – here in the JOC?”
“Um. No, sir. On base. They’ve got proper credentials.” She produced a laminated card. Jameson didn’t even look. It occurred to him that he wouldn’t have known the proper credentials if they’d crawled up his trouser leg and gnawed his knob off.
“The RMPs didn’t know what to do with them, so they’ve sent them to you.”
Jameson paused to actually look at the newcomers. The woman was mid-thirties, attractive, smart-looking – she nodded at him, seeming both alert and anxious. The tiny girl she carried was adorable, and the boys certainly seemed like nice lads. And for just one second he thought of his own childhood, in Canterbury, which now felt a million years away at the bottom of a black hole – as was, indeed, Canterbury. But of course he couldn’t begin to give a damn, or even think about these people.
“Take them somewhere else,” he said, turning away.
* * *
Second Lieutenant Miller was one of the two surviving ops officers in the JOC – one of the two people remotely qualified to keep the place running, and keep the hundreds of military units spread across the south, and increasingly the rest of the country, from falling into total chaos.
Now he pulled off his radio headset, shakily got to his feet, and started walking over to where Major Jameson once again stood gawping out the windows at the carnage around the hangar and helipad, while also taking a phone call. Along the way, he passed several tactical and comms stations that had either been abandoned, or just didn’t have personnel to man them at all. He heard a frantic voice leaking out of a radio headset lying on a desk.
“—rgently requesting confirmation of nine-line fire mission. Repeat, we need confirmation and final grid coords and parameters for walking artillery barrage. This is a priority flash transmi—”
But then he was past it and reached the commander. He
paused before speaking, waiting for Jameson to deal with what he was dealing with that second, which he gathered was a strained conversation with the Ministry of Defence, and until then he just looked upon the hellfire and carnage out the window.
“Yes, sir,” Jameson said into the phone. “I do understand that you speak for the Chief of the Defence Staff… Yes, sir… Yes, we can certainly look into that… We will, by all means. Thank you, sir.”
He then banged the phone on the window ledge before him three times, hard. “Fucking MoD! They actually let these idiots be in charge of people?”
Miller started to elbow in and speak, but he was pre-empted by a queue-jumper, who shouted around him. “Major, there’s no response from the pilots’ ready room.”
So Miller waited and carried on looking out upon the burning inferno of the main aviation hangar, and the first units from the London Fire Brigade rolling through the front gates. No, there wouldn’t be any response from there, he thought. It’s on fire. He also guessed, correctly, that Jameson was trying to get hold of the pilots to help organize another flight to pick up operations officers from Edinburgh. But Miller could already tell him that wasn’t going to happen.
Jameson cursed, only half under his breath. “Then get me, um, Private Simmonds.” But then he realized he didn’t need help for that – and instead spoke into his own team radio. “Simmonds, Jameson.”
“Go ahead, sir.”
“What’s the status of the pilots in the ready room?”
There was a terrified pause. “Completely gone, boss. There is no pilots’ ready room. Just charred bodies and warped tin. And fire.”
Jameson hurled the radio down onto the nearest desk.
Finally, Miller infiltrated into this opening: “Major, we have an urgent transmission from the ZPW Security Station South.”
Arisen, Book Nine - Cataclysm Page 20
