Harden

by D. J. Molles

  The target leaned out before she could figure it out.

  She shifted her rifle in his direction.

  He saw her. His muzzle swung and pointed right at her.

  She fired.

  She watched his muzzle bloom.

  He collapsed.

  She didn’t.

  She rolled back into cover, breathless, unbelieving, elated. “I got him,” she wheezed.

  Abe’s voice over the comms: “My shooter’s down.”

  Mitch responded. “Roger, ours too.” He gave Julia a thumbs-up. “Julia got him.”

  “Everyone hold what you got,” Abe transmitted. “Blake, can you hold our base of fire? We need Morrow to help clear the structure. Logan’s down.”

  “I’m moving to you,” Morrow responded.

  Mitch grabbed Julia’s arm and hauled her to her feet.

  “Are you okay?” Julia asked him. “You got hit during entry.”

  He twisted to show the left side panel of his armor. There was a darkened, ragged hole in the nylon plate carrier, but the bullet hadn’t penetrated the armor. “I’m good,” Mitch said. “Just knocked my wind for a second. Go help Logan.”

  THIRTY-TWO

  ─▬▬▬─

  NUEVAS FRONTERAS

  Lee made it to the bottom of the hill.

  He saw the road leading into the airport through the trees ahead of him. He paused at a large tree, breathing hard. A coughing fit came on. He hacked into his arm. When he got his breath back, he keyed his comms.

  “Julia, get me a casualty report as soon as you can.”

  “I copy,” she answered. “I’m workin’ on Logan now.”

  Lee was about to push off the tree when Deuce stiffened at his side and let out a low growl.

  Lee snapped his rifle up in the direction that Deuce was facing, ears completely up, tail unmoving. He heard rustling in the brush. Lee stared at the forest, letting his eyes drift, trying to catch the movement.

  Carl emerged. He stopped short as he saw Lee, and stood still for a moment until Lee ported his rifle. Deuce relaxed. Wagged his tail once.

  Carl looked more exhausted than Lee, if that was possible.

  He jerked his head towards the gates. “Let’s go.”

  Lee caught up to him. “You good?”

  “Yeah, I’m good.”

  They exited the woods about twenty yards from the gate. Lee saw Blake, kneeling at the front of the still-smoking truck, his SAW propped up on the ruined hood.

  Lee’s eyes went to Buildings One and Two. They hadn’t cleared those yet. How many more hostiles were in those buildings? He hadn’t seen anyone coming or going, but that didn’t necessarily mean…

  Carl halted in his tracks. Put an arm out to catch Lee.

  “What?” Lee said.

  Carl’s head turned northward, away from the airport. Down the road to where it curved out of sight. “You hear that?”

  Lee held his breath to listen. By the time the sound hit his brain and he identified it, Carl was already making for the woods again. Lee jumped after him, keying his comms as he went. “Blake! Vehicles incoming! From the road! Behind you!”

  Lee bounded into the woods and spun around, sliding into a prone position behind some underbrush. Deuce was there, right on top of him. Lee smacked the dog on the rump and snapped, “Go!”

  It wasn’t a learned command. Deuce simply knew he didn’t want to be present, and he bolted into the woods like his tail was on fire. Lee knew that he wouldn’t go far. He’d maintain a line of sight with Lee.

  They’d cleared the road just in time.

  Looking to his left, Lee saw the shapes of vehicles through the trees, coming around the bend in the road, now in the straightaway, their engines roaring as they accelerated for the gates.

  Shit shit shit! Lee thought. Who the fuck is this?

  “Blake, they’re coming up quick!” he transmitted, then looked to his right, where he could see the soldier jumping up from his position and wheeling around to face the road, his machine gun at his hip. “Get cover!”

  What Lee wanted was for Blake to sprint for Building Four and get his ass to safety.

  What Blake did was raise the M249 to his shoulder and let off a sustained rattle of automatic fire, spraying the incoming vehicles.

  There was the sound of bullets hitting sheet metal, hitting concrete, ricocheting, spattering through the woods.

  The sound of tires screeching.

  The lead vehicle took the brunt of Blake’s spray. It veered off the road and hit a tree, ejecting a body through the windshield that crashed through the woods like it had been shot out of cannon.

  The other vehicles skidded to a stop along the road directly in front of Lee, some of them angling sharply for the shoulders. They started shedding men. Out of doors. Out of truck beds. Armed men, shouting in a language Lee didn’t know.

  Nuevas Fronteras.

  How did they know?

  Blake ran for the back end of the blown-up pickup. He vaulted over the side of the bed as the first strings of return fire peppered the ground where he’d been. He shoved his SAW up onto the cab and started blind-firing to get heads down, to give him a tiny window to get up into his sights without catching a bullet to the dome.

  Lee pressed himself into the dirt, thinking, You stupid, ballsy fuck!

  Blake wasn’t getting cover for himself. He was making a stand.

  With his face pressed to the ground, Lee couldn’t see Blake anymore. But he could hear the rhythm of the fight, and that told a story all its own. He heard the return fire from the intruders rapidly taper off in the face of a chattering machine gun, and then the machine gun’s fire became more measured.

  He’s up, Lee knew. He’s in his sights. He’s pacing his shots.

  A burst of five rounds.

  A pause.

  A burst of three.

  Shouting, directly ahead of Lee.

  Someone screaming, wounded.

  A body thrashing through the brush.

  A spray of leaves and dirt.

  A boot skidded to a halt, inches from Lee’s face.

  Lee stared at the tread pattern.

  Raised his head, just an inch, to see over the sole.

  Legs.

  A body.

  A torso. A head. A rifle.

  The man was alive.

  He was completely focused down the road.

  He had slid into concealment, right where Lee was, stopping short of being literally on top of Lee. And he never looked back. He kept staring through his rifle sights, his chest heaving.

  Lee couldn’t breathe. It would be too loud.

  His heart hammered. Lungs ached.

  He released his grip on his rifle.

  Slowly slid his arm back to his plate carrier. To the knife.

  Lee’s foot shifted. Rustled leaves. Somehow, it managed to happen right in a space of dead air between Blake’s bursts of machine gun fire.

  The man inches in front of Lee jerked his head up, started to look over his shoulder.

  Lee leapt. Took the man on the back. Hooked his left arm hard around the man’s head, so that his forearm was planted over the man’s mouth, muffling his scream of surprise.

  Then he rolled.

  Onto his back. The man on top of him. Lee wrapped his legs around the man’s waist, hooked them, then thrust his hips, so that the man’s body was splayed out wide and vulnerable, and he yanked back on the man’s head as hard as he could, exposing the neck.

  Lee put the knife into him. Into the side of his neck. And then a quick swipe out, severing the carotids, and the windpipe. Just the spine and about six inches of skin keeping the head on.

  The man’s body thrashed. Made an unearthly noise out of his severed windpipe.

  Lee lay below him, holding tightly to him, while the blood spewed out, rained down, a waterfall of it. Lee turned his face away from it. He felt it, warm and horribly intimate on the side of his cheek. Pooling in his ear. Dripping towards his left eye
so that he had to squint it closed.

  With one eye open, he looked across the forest floor amid the shouting and the gunshots, and he saw Carl watching him, but there was no expression on Carl’s face. He appeared to simply be waiting for Lee to be finished.

  Carl’s fingers squirmed up. Pointed further into the woods. He clearly mouthed the word: Peel.

  Blood touched Lee’s lips.

  He nodded once in response.

  The body on top of him shivered. Made a final, violent twitch. Then became dead weight.

  Lee held it for a moment more, then gently let it roll to his left side.

  He kept eye contact with Carl the whole time.

  Carl’s fingers, counting down.

  Three.

  Two.

  One.

  Carl came up onto one knee, sweeping his rifle up. He started firing and racking his bolt as fast as he could manage.

  Lee stumbled out of the tangle of limbs, scooped up his rifle and sprinted for the woods. Everything was a rush of greens and browns. He found the thickest trunk that was within fifteen yards of him and dove behind it. He posted the rifle to the side and started firing.

  Carl moved at the sound of Lee’s rifle, jolting out of the brush and tearing through the woods. He ran past Lee, and Lee kept firing. He listened for the sound of Carl’s rifle.

  A clear and throaty whu-BOOM.

  He turned and ran.

  Bullets skipped after him through the woods. Leaves and small branches fell around him. The convoy was gaining their bearings to the surprise attack on their right flank and was shooting back.

  Lee felt a hammer-blow square in the center of his back. He almost pitched forward, but managed to keep his feet. A second later a bullet zipped his right shoulder, ripping through the meat of it.

  Lee posted behind another tree. His lungs were a ragged mess. He hacked as he turned and fired. Bullets shattered the side of the tree, spraying his face with splinters. He didn’t have the wind to shout to Carl, but they were moving on command of each other’s rifle reports now, a panicked sort of rhythm establishing itself.

  Running back towards Lee, Carl’s left leg bloomed red, and he stumbled, caught himself on the ground and scrambled on all fours behind a fallen log.

  Lee wiped sweaty wood out of his face. Coughed. Got his bearings.

  They were heading back up the hill.

  He heard someone in his ear. It was Abe.

  “The fuck’s going on out there? Someone fucking answer back!”

  Lee shot a glance towards the airport. He could no longer see Blake through the trees, but he could still hear the chatter of his machine gun.

  But for how much longer? Blake had been maintaining a near-constant stream of fire. Had he reloaded yet? Blake only had one additional soft mag for the M249. A total of two hundred rounds. And when you were firing that constantly, two hundred rounds went fast.

  Lee felt the urgency to coordinate with the rest of his team inside the airport. He looked over at Carl, laying on his back behind the log, sprays of woodchips erupting from the opposite side of it while Carl tried to check his leg wound.

  “Carl!” Lee yelled to him. “Can you move?”

  Carl didn’t answer, just held out a thumbs-up.

  The convoy was concentrating their fire on Lee and Carl’s position now. Lee thought about making a run for it, but knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that they’d die if they did. They’d lost the initiative. They were pinned.

  “Mitch!” Lee transmitted. “Mitch, are you free and do you have any more forties?”

  Mitch came back, sounding strained. “Lee! I got forties! What do you need?”

  Lee closed his eyes to the cacophony of death all around him. Tried to picture the layout of the airport in his mind. “Are you in Building Four? Near the side door?”

  “Yes. Tell me what you need.”

  From that position, Mitch wouldn’t be able to see the convoy through the trees. But Lee could.

  “Mitch,” Lee tried to speak clearly. “Standby one second. Blake, can you copy? I need you to copy me buddy.”

  It took four agonizing seconds for Blake to find the time to answer. The machine gun continued to fire in the background as Blake yelled into his mike to be heard: “I copy! I’m runnin’ outta ammo here!”

  “Blake, when Mitch starts firing grenades, you split from your position and get the fuck to Building Four, you copy?”

  Blake tried to answer, then a scattering of rounds-on-metal were audible and Blake yelped. The machine gun fire came to a stop. “Fuck. Goddammit. I’m empty. I copy you. Get me the fuck out of here.”

  “Mitch,” Lee commanded. “Arc a round over the trees, towards the road. You want to hit the road, about fifty yards out from the gate. I’ll guide you in. How copy?”

  “Copy. Ready.”

  “Carl!” Lee yelled. “Get ready to move!” Then he transmitted again. “Mitch, send one.”

  Distantly, Lee registered the heavy KA-THUNK of a launcher sending out a 40mm grenade.

  Lee waited.

  BOOM

  He leaned out from cover for the quickest of peeks and heard a bullet buzz-whine past his ear.

  A cloud of dirt and smoke, just inside the trees to the right flank of the convoy, but the distance was good—right smack dab in the middle of the convoy.

  Lee hugged cover again. “Splash,” he told Mitch. “Shift fire to your right, about fifteen yards.”

  Another distant thump of a report.

  Another long second of flight-time.

  BOOM

  This time Lee heard men screaming, and their screams were terrible and beautiful to Lee. Immediately, the withering fire on Lee and Carl’s position stopped. Lee managed another tiny peek, just to confirm. This time he saw the impact was right in the middle of the road.

  “Mitch, you’re right on! Send everything you got!” Then Lee shouldered his rifle and yelled, “Carl! Move!”

  Out from cover, this time low on the base of the tree, Lee sighted through his rifle and found the shape of a man hiding at the rear-wheel of one of the vehicles. He fired and watched the man go down.

  Behind him, Carl thrashed through the woods.

  Mitch’s rounds started hitting, one after the other, destructive blows shattering down on the middle of the convoy.

  Lee turned and ran. This time Carl and Lee didn’t stop. They pointed their faces for the top of the hill, and they ran until they couldn’t run anymore, and then they jogged, and then they staggered, breathlessly, wounded, shot, desperate, to the crest of that hill.

  Somewhere along the way, Deuce picked them up again, whining and then yapping, and then whining again, his ears flattened out and his tail between his legs. Lee hoped to God that it was just the hellacious gunfire, and not the scent of something else.

  At the top of the hill, they collapsed at the sniper’s hide that Lee had abandoned only ten minutes before. They heaved for air. Lee felt like he was hacking up a lung. But neither of them took the time to catch their breath. There was no time.

  Carl ripped his small IFAK free of his rig, and hurriedly set to packing his leg wound.

  Lee eyed the hole in his shoulder. It was starting to stiffen up, but the blood had only soaked the top part of his arm. Treating it was low priority in his mind.

  Lee posted up on the downed pine tree once again, and scoped the convoy. He couldn’t see all of it. He could only see the tops of a few of the vehicles. Some of the vehicles had made it into the compound, had skirted around the ruined truck where Blake had made his defense.

  “Blake,” Lee wheezed into the comms. “Did Blake get out?”

  But Lee answered his own question before anyone else did.

  Halfway between the ruined pickup truck and the corner of Building Four, Lee saw a shape on the ground. He felt his heart skip, drop, squirm. He brought his rifle up. Looked through the scope.

  It was Blake.

  Still alive.

  He had no machine
gun now. He’d abandoned it, empty, in the truck.

  He was crawling for cover, his legs dragging behind him, a pistol in his right hand, firing blindly at the attackers that he was trying to get away from, while his left arm clawed across the pavement, gaining only inches when he needed yards.

  When Lee opened both eyes, he saw the huddled shapes of his teammates at the corner of Building Four, but they couldn’t get around the corner to help Blake. The side of the building was getting chewed up by a constant barrage of shots from the attackers.

  Little puffs of concrete dust around Blake.

  The pistol went dry. Locked back.

  Blake put both hands into crawling.

  Lee’s original estimate of five vehicles had been off—there were almost a dozen. Two of them had already made it into the gate, and the men were stacked up behind them, using them as cover, while three more inched forward, the men shuffling alongside of them like infantry alongside a tank.

  Everyone was either shooting at the corner of the building, or at Blake.

  Too many targets.

  Lee started firing. Aiming and firing.

  He got two shots off and went empty.

  “Motherfuck!” Lee shouted, then said to Carl, more out of ingrained habit, than any real need: “Reloading!”

  Lee dropped the empty mag. Shucked a new one from his pouch. His eyes remained fixed on the airport the whole time, so that even as he reloaded as fast as his practiced hands could manage, he saw the moment when the bullets finally found Blake.

  One found him, stopped his crawling. His hands still reached, but he didn’t seem to have the strength to pull himself any further.

  Lee seated the mag, sent the bolt forward in the same motion.

  Another found Blake, and after that, Blake never moved. A third and fourth found him. Jolting his body. Puffing dust and blood off of him. Then a final barrage of four or five rounds skittered over him, and then the attackers turned their attention back to Building Four.

  “I’m up,” Lee breathed, like the fight had been punched out of him. But when you fight so much, and for so long, when it’s all you’ve ever known, then even when it’s punched out of you, you keep going by force of habit.