by Noah Mann
“Neil!”
I started toward him, but never made it. The main door blowing in with a cloud of fire and smoke stopped my progress and threw me to the floor.
“Fletch!”
It was a warning cry my friend let out, the words stretched out, almost distant, my stunned brain processing what was happening in some weird slow motion. There was his shout, and there was movement, from both Neil and near the door. My friend lifted his AK with one hand and brought it to bear. Fast splashes of flame leapt from its muzzle. Dark shapes near the door dove and ducked, their own weapons firing. But only for an instant.
Then, at least in the immediate space that surrounded us, it fell quiet, just gunfire from beyond the walls drifting in. Neil ran across the room, firing at the mangled entryway, bursts meant to deter any entry.
“Fletch! Can you get up?!”
The foggy world I’d tumbled into began to clear. Maybe it was just the momentary effects clearing on their own. Or the presence of my friend and the urgency about him. Whichever it was, my wits returned as though I’d been doused with icy water and I pushed myself up from the ground, AR that dangled from its harness coming quickly to bear in my grip.
“I’m good,” I said.
A stream of rounds poured through the doorway, chewing at the toppled file cabinets. Neil and I retreated to the stairwell, my friend almost tripping over the rubble mounded at the bottom. I could still hear fire from above, Elaine firing quick, controlled bursts, the sound seeming to shift after each time she fired. That told me she was moving positions at the top of the tower as she tried to cover both advances she’d seen.
“Elaine needs help up there,” I told Neil just before something small and solid and metal sailed through the door and thunked across the concrete floor.
A grenade.
I grabbed my friend and pulled him behind the concrete wall between the main room and the staircase. The instant we were both behind that solid cover a deafening CRACK shook the space around us. Smoke and flame and debris blew past us from the main room and rose up the tower stairwell as if it were a chimney.
“They’re gonna come,” Neil told me.
Before I could agree he was clearing himself around the corner and firing across the main room toward the door, trying to deter the attackers. The shoulder of his jacket was soaked dark, blood seeping through from the wound he’d just suffered. It was the same shoulder in which he’d been stabbed by a desperate father in a desolate Utah town.
“Watch that shoulder,” I told my friend.
“What shoulder?” he shot back, expressing the inner toughness and resolve I knew him to possess.
“I’m going up,” I told him.
Between a fast magazine change he gave me an even faster thumbs up, acknowledging my plan. I turned and looked up through the rising smoke as my friend continued trading fire with the attackers trying to fight their way in.
Eight
I never made it to the top.
Halfway up, after climbing over knots of curled steel and chunks of mangled concrete, I reached the hole that had been blasted in the wall of the lighthouse tower. I paused just before the scorched opening and glanced out. Fifty yards to the west I saw movement and muzzle flashes at the same instant that Elaine’s fire from above paused, the sound of an empty magazine from her MP5 hitting the tower floor indicating why. That momentary halt in fire was, apparently, what the group of attackers near a small outbuilding had been waiting for as one of them stepped into the clear around the corner and brought a slender tubed weapon to his shoulder, conical projectile at its tip silhouetted by muzzle flashes from his comrades’ covering fire. Anyone who’d paid any attention to news from war-torn areas of the globe in the decade before the blight would have recognized it immediately.
“RPG!” I shouted.
The words had no sooner passed my lips when a gout of flame pulsed from the weapon, its operator firing before I could bring my AR to bear. The projectile rocketed from the tube launcher and dragged a tail of hot white smoke behind as it flew directly toward a spot twenty feet above me. The top of the tower.
“Elaine!”
Another explosion rocked the structure, more debris falling, a rain of steel framework and broken glass chasing Elaine as she dove into the stairwell. Her body tumbled down the steps, bouncing off the outer wall, one leg catching on part of the railing that hadn’t been blasted to bits. If not for one simple visual cue I might have thought her dead or badly injured—both hands still held her MP5, the weapon tucked tight against her chest.
“Are you all right?!” I shouted, more fire coming now, rounds bouncing off the tower and whizzing past through the hole next to me.
“I’m okay!” Elaine screamed back, rolling to a sitting position on the opposite side of the hole. “Where’s Neil?”
I didn’t have to answer. From below we could both hear him firing and ducking, rounds coming his way angling through the door and ricocheting in the base of the tower.
“Another RPG in the right place and we won’t have a building to defend,” Elaine said.
I couldn’t disagree. All we could do, though, was fight from the position we had. With the weapons we had. Against the enemy that was presenting itself.
Elaine leaned toward the hole and fired bursts to the south. Then I leaned in and fired toward the west, trying to keep the group pinned at the outbuilding. A trio of them stepped into the open and began returning fire, pinning us against the inside wall for cover.
“Neil!” I called out. “We lost the top!”
“We’re about to lose the bottom!” he shouted back.
I looked to Elaine. Both of us knew what had to be done. Staying put was a death sentence.
“We have to go on offense,” she said.
We had no impenetrable bunker to retreat to here, as we’d had outside of Cheyenne. Our choice right here, right now, was to fight and win. Or die.
“I’ll cover,” I said.
I leaned into the opening and fired bursts at the two groups advancing from the west and east, Elaine darting across the hole in the tower to join me on the lower side. Immediate fire came back at me, tearing at the scorched hole in the concrete. Below, Neil was still holding off part of the southern advance which had reached the building.
“How many do you think there are?” Elaine asked.
“Ten or twelve.”
I figured two trying to breach the main door. I’d seen four near the outbuilding and glimpsed the same number to the south. Which didn’t account for any who’d slipped around the sides of the structure we couldn’t see. We were blind in here.
BOOM!
A huge explosion shook the building from below. Smoke jetted up the tower past Elaine and me. I clambered down through the acrid haze, climbing over the debris from multiple explosions, just in time to see my friend. He wasn’t dead. And he wasn’t holding his position near the wall anymore.
He was running into the main room.
“Neil!”
I jumped the last few yards to reach the spot where my friend had been, Elaine coming up right behind. Neil was firing at the door as he moved across the battered space. I swung my AR around the corner toward the door and saw that the opening which had been there was now larger by a factor of three, the last blast we’d heard having ripped a hole large enough to drive a small car through. Through that gaping wound in the structure I saw shapes. And movement. And staccato flashes from muzzles spraying rounds into the building.
“Neil, what are you doing?!”
My question was almost absurd. Knowing why my friend had left cover would do nothing to change the situation we now faced. But, as I dropped to one knee and began laying down what fire I could to cover his dash into danger, an understanding of what he was trying to do came together piece by piece.
The bodies we’d seen upon entry were still there, but they’d been tossed about by the subsequent explosions.
The bodies were those of soldiers.
> Armed soldiers.
Soldiers with guns.
And grenades.
If we were going to fight back, on a more level playing field, we needed to at least give as good as we were getting. And that was what Neil was attempting to do as he reached with his wounded arm, snatching up grenades which had fallen loose from the soldiers who’d carried them into their last battle. He did this while firing his AK one handed, stopping only when he reached meager cover on the far side of the room behind a battered pillar, the rebar within its structure exposed by the most recent blast.
“They’re closing on the door!”
I yelled the warning to my friend as I tried to fire, but a steady stream from some heavier automatic weapon kept forcing me back to cover. Just behind, Elaine tried to move past, to a stubby wall at the very base of the stairs, but the same fire kept her planted against the tower wall.
“Take cover!”
Neil gave the warning just before I heard a series of metallic clicks. Three, I thought, distinct amidst the cacophony of gunfire. He’d pulled the pins on a trio of grenades and, from the sharp thuds that came next, also three in number, he’d hurled them through the widened entrance where they’d landed and skidded across the concrete pad outside.
BOOM!
BOOM! BOOM!
The explosions popped off like giant cherry bombs, sharp and quick, one, then two more in quick succession. Just a fast pulse of air from the blasts washed into the space, the majority of their force spent outside.
Outside where someone screamed.
“Move!” Neil shouted.
From his position he could see directly outside, and had made the decision that making some move was the best course of action. I had no place, nor any inclination, to disagree, and I moved quickly around the corner of the wall, Elaine right behind, the three of us heading for what the main door had become.
More screaming pierced the sudden quiet, followed by gunfire aimed at the tower we’d abandoned. And there was shouting. In a language that sounded almost certainly Russian. Neil took a position to the right of the opening, Elaine and I to the left. I brought my AR up and scanned the dim exterior, tracking the sounds of the voices and the obvious cries of pain. One man was down, and it sounded as though there were two of his fellow soldiers trying to help him.
“We’ve gotta get to the boat,” I said.
“If it’s still there,” Elaine said. “And afloat.”
Right then, Neil tucked his AK in tight against his cheek and began firing bursts into his slice of the tactical pie. The return fire was immediate, along with more screams in Russian. More than had been there just seconds before.
“They’re reinforcing,” my friend said across the space that separated us.
That was the worst of all worlds. The groups that had been moving in from the west and south were, if Neil was right, now converging on this one point. The way in. And our way out.
“There’s no back door,” Elaine said.
I’d seen what she had. The stairwell was the only way out of this main room. If we wanted another way out, we’d have to make it ourselves. And we had no way to breach the thick stone walls.
Brrrrrrr-brrrrrrrrrrrrrrr-brrrrrrrrrrrr.
A controlled stream of full auto fire poured into the main room through the blown entrance. The machinegun the attackers had brought with them was now positioned to pin us.
“We’ve gotta move!” Neil yelled above the sound from outside, and the constant timpani of ricochets threatening to cut us down at any moment.
I stuck my AR around the corner and fired a series of bursts. Elaine went low and did the same, shooting past my knees. Neil, too, was adding to the attempt at suppressing fire. But all our resistance did was drawn more of the hellish rain of lead upon us. Chunks of stone peeled away from the wall that protected us. Bits of the ceiling cracked and fell at our feet. The structure, which had withstood a series of blasts both high and low, was signaling that it could take no more.
“One more RPG and this thing comes down on us!” Elaine shouted.
She was right. They didn’t have to shoot us down or blow us up. Even a miss with an explosive weapon would bury us alive. I looked across to Neil, his gaze meeting mine.
“We don’t have a choice!”
I wondered if those were the last words my friend would ever speak to me. Then I nodded and dropped the magazine from my AR, loading a full replacement. We were going to need every round of ammunition we had. And that might still not be enough.
“I’m going first,” Elaine said just behind me.
I chanced a quick, disapproving look back at her.
“I’m faster than both of you,” she said.
That she was right pissed me off.
“Go left,” I told her.
She nodded and checked her MP5 as Neil fired a series of aimed shots toward muzzle flashes coming from the dead woods.
“We’ll get to the trees, then down to the water,” Elaine said, a fatalistic smile softening her determined expression. “Then to the boat and outta here.”
“Yeah,” I said, playing along with what we both knew was likely a last ditch, and futile, chance at survival. “That should work.”
She snickered lightly and I looked across to Neil.
“Elaine’s got the lead,” I told my friend, and he nodded as he continued to squeeze off rounds.
“Okay,” Elaine said. “Try to keep up.”
She shifted to my side, weapon up and ready. Just a few steps would put her beyond my position of cover. Out into the line of fire. I hated that this was happening. And I hated even more that I was powerless to change the situation.
“One,” she said, beginning her countdown.
Our countdown.
“Two.”
She rose up beside me. Ready to move as incoming rounds ticked off the floor and splintered the walls behind us.
“Thr—”
I stopped her mid word as she started past me, hand coming off my AR’s grip to block her. Something had caught my eye. Just a glimpse. Like stars suddenly brightening in the distance over the trees against the night sky. Dozens of fiery orange spots appeared in close proximity to each other and grew larger. And larger. And larger.
“Get down!”
I screamed the warning to Neil as I grabbed Elaine and pulled her back, dragging her as far behind the wall as I could. From the corner of my eye I saw my friend hesitate, then leap away from the opening as an awful shriek rose. Like screaming fireworks raining down upon us.
Right after that the earth shook from a series of rippling impacts that seemed to surround the lighthouse. Explosions rocked the structure. Cracks appeared in the walls, and those that had already been created by the ongoing fight widened. Smoke poured in. Flame, too, licked in from the penetrations opened on the west side of the main room.
Hell had been brought to this small slice of Mary Island. And we were right in the middle of it.
Part Two
The Unit
Nine
The silence was jarring. But it was not total.
Where seconds before there had been gunfire and screaming and urgent commands shouted in Russian, then a final volley of detonations that seemed to pepper the landscape surrounding the lighthouse, now there was just a hushed crackle of smoldering debris and a rhythmic thrumming drawing closer by the second.
I turned toward the gaping hole in the building’s front and slipped to my right, past Elaine, chancing a look outside.
“Eric,” she said. “Be careful.”
Across the opening from me, Neil had recovered from the earth shaking blasts and was also creeping forward to survey the situation outside.
“Neil.”
My friend looked to me and gave a thumbs up. He was okay, his wounded shoulder and arm still usable. In battle terms, he’d gotten a scratch. Something that would have sent him to the hospital in ordinary times.
These, most definitely, were not ordinary times.
He stilled and listened for a moment.
“Helicopter,” he said.
“It has to be one of ours,” Elaine said. “They laid down that fire.”
She was at least half right. It was the ‘ours’ identifier that concerned me. Something that could have been ‘one of ours’ had tried to slaughter Neil and me at my Montana refuge. Being certain of allegiances was no longer a slam dunk. The blight had turned more than the landscape to shades of grey.
“It’s closing in,” Neil said, gauging the sound from the unseen aircraft. “That’s no Blackhawk.”
No, it wasn’t. There was a deeper, harder resonance to the timbre of the chopper. For lack of any better description, it sounded big.
“Here it comes,” I said.
The bass whop whop whop of the big craft’s rotors grew louder, the thing passing directly over, a single weapon aboard it opening up as it flew above. A weapon whose sound was frighteningly familiar to Neil and me.
“Minigun,” my friend said.
I nodded. It was the same type of weapon, a Gatling gun on steroids, that had nearly chewed the both of us to bits back in Montana. The major difference here was that it was not firing at us.
“It’s spraying the tree line,” Neil said, watching from just inside the blasted door, low on his belly, AK ready to fire from his prone position.
“No one is shooting back,” Elaine said.
“After that rocket barrage, who’d be dumb enough to,” Neil said. “If they’re even alive.”
It had been a volley of rockets, fired expertly to carpet the compound outside with deadly shrapnel. Sparing us while saving us.
“It has to be friendlies,” Elaine said.
I wanted to believe that. I truly did. Because we sure as hell could use some friends right then.
“It’s coming back,” Neil reported.
The helicopter had flown over, fired briefly, and was now swinging around. Maybe for another pass.
It turned out not to be that at all.
From the darkness above a brilliant, burning object fell as the aircraft passed over and continued over the barren forest. It landed in the clearing and bounced, the hot white light it gave off almost blinding.
