“Thunder, Crusher Three-One. Fire when ready! Over!”
“Crusher Three-One, Thunder. Fire when ready. Roger. Out.” A moment later: “Crusher Three-One, Thunder. Shot. Over.”
“Thunder, roger—shots out. Over.”
“Crusher Three-One, Thunder. Splash. Over.”
“Incoming rounds, five seconds!” Muldoon shouted. “Thunder, Crusher, splash. Over!”
It was more like three seconds later that the night lit up when three mortar rounds, less than a second apart, impacted the street in the rear of the Klown formation. Muldoon grimaced beneath his mask. He’d hoped they would have landed a little deeper inside the group, but the rounds still had a substantial effect on the Klowns. Dozens of them died immediately, and dozens more were taken out of the fight.
But the leading edge of the Klown reinforcements had zeroed on Muldoon’s element, and they charged now, running right into the men’s fires with a furious zeal that was astonishing to behold. Scores more died, laughing until their tickers stopped ticking and their brains shut down. But there were more behind them, many more, and they had weapons. Soon, enemy fire started slapping into tree trunks and blasting leaves off the forest floor right in front of Muldoon.
“Thunder, Crusher Three-One. If we can get you for another pass, adjust fire! Drop one hundred, fire for effect! Over!” The deal was that Thunder would give them one pass then resume supporting the fight at Hays Hall. Muldoon was playing his whiny-bitch card by asking for more rounds, but he didn’t care. If Thunder turned him down, he was just going to be dead a little sooner. He got back on his rifle and started returning fire.
“Reloading!” Rawlings shouted beside him.
“Crusher Three-One, this is Thunder. You owe me a case of Guinness for each round. Fire for effect, drop one hundred. Shots out. Over.”
Muldoon didn’t have time to reply. Three Klowns made it to the tree line and crashed through the foliage, firing assault rifles and aiming for the muzzle blasts of Muldoon’s men. He heard a tick as something slipped past his helmet, a graze so light that it didn’t even alter the angle of his NVGs, but a close call nevertheless. He raised his rifle and banged out eight shots. Two of the attackers stumbled and faltered, still wheezing with laughter that his rounds failed to stifle. The third kept coming. Muldoon had missed him entirely. He went down suddenly as Nutter ripped off a burst on full auto.
“Damn, Duke! You shoot like a school girl!” Nutter shouted.
“Crusher Three-One, this is Thunder. Splash. Over.”
“More incoming!” Muldoon yelled. One of the Klowns he had shot struggled back to his knees. He was a civilian, and Muldoon recognized him as one of the public works guys he had seen around the post, a former NCO who had retired and gotten a job driving snow plows during the winter and cutting grass in the summer. Muldoon shot him in the face, and the man fell over into the brush.
The three mortar rounds landed, much closer, and Muldoon swore as the shock waves tore through the trees, kicking up a storm of grit, leaves, branches, and bloody ribbons of flesh. Muldoon continued firing, even though his sight picture was mostly full of obscurants. He had no idea whether he was hitting anything or not, but the potential to at least wound a Klown or two was worth the time and effort. Behind him, he heard the Mk 19s opening up, and he hoped their grenades would traverse parabolas short enough to hold back the attackers but not so abbreviated as to start landing among the lightfighters in the trees.
He needn’t have worried. The explosions rippled outside the tree line, pretty much dead on target.
Fuckin’-A, Sergeant Major.
But as the dust cleared, Muldoon was monumentally disappointed to discover that neither the mortars nor the grenades had dissuaded the Klowns from surging into the trees.
Then, the mag in his rifle ran dry.
THIRTY-SEVEN.
It took a lot longer than ten minutes to get Hays Hall evacuated. When the troops had built the walls surrounding the two-story headquarters building, they’d dragged one final container in place to seal the vehicle access then used a crane to hoist a second container on top of it. The crane had been taken out of commission earlier in the battle, so the only way out was to rappel from the wall or come down caving ladders.
The delay was one of the longest in Lee’s life, virtually unendurable as he crouched next to the wall with Twohy, his radio telephone operator, and four other soldiers who had clustered around him, trying to provide protection while he quarterbacked the fight from the front. Charlie Company had halted its advance and formed a trailing wedge, becoming a type of wall that the Klowns would commit suicide trying to scale.
From the roof of Hays Hall, the remaining defenders poured it on with everything they had left as the first of the soldiers trapped inside the compound made a break for it. The wounded went first, several of whom were litter-borne. Lee called for the ambulances to be moved up, so those men could immediately be transported off-site. That involved pulling some of Echo’s soldiers forward out of the blocking position they had taken in the rear. Lee couldn’t leave the ambulances unguarded, as the medics operating them were armed only with pistols. The Klowns would have loved to take them down, and Lee was quite predisposed to ensure they didn’t have the chance.
Twenty minutes after the evacuation began, the rooftop defenders had abandoned their posts. That left only the ground combatants standing between them and the Klowns. Lee ordered Hallelujah Hayes to retrograde his elements back toward Walker’s position, where they would be directly backed up by the remaining Echo formations. That way, the battalion would be more centrally located and better able to defend itself should the Klown reinforcements make their way past the small task force led by Turner and Muldoon.
Not that there’ll be much left to defend with. The battalion had been expending its munitions at a fantastic rate. It was difficult to know how much longer the unit could maintain its current tempo, especially with Echo deployed in a battle formation. While the unit was still supplying the battalion, it was doing so with only a small percentage of personnel. No one was able to keep a good count of what was going down to the company level, and the battalion had been fighting pretty much the entire time on the road to Drum. Lee hoped—prayed, actually, which was the first time he’d resorted to that in quite a while—that they could pull Mountaineer out of Hays Hall and get the hell out of Fort Drum.
“Colonel!”
Lee turned. Two Alpha Company lightfighters were escorting another man with them. Unlike the lightfighters, the newcomer didn’t have any MOPP gear on, though he was armored up and carried an M4 carbine. He was shorter than Lee but more squared off in a heavy-jawed sort of way that reminded Lee of Sergeant Major Turner. The olive-skinned man had bright green eyes that shined beneath a furrowed brow.
“Colonel?” the man echoed.
Lee felt the blood leave his face. The man was Brigadier General Salvador, the deputy commanding general of the 10th Mountain Division.
Lee saluted.
“Sir, you need to get behind the line!”
Salvador looked Lee up and down then leaned forward, staring right at the subdued lieutenant colonel oak leaf insignia on Lee’s armor. He raised his eyes back to Lee’s masked face.
“I don’t know of any Colonel Lee attached to the First Battalion. Who the hell are you, soldier?”
Lee decided not to sidestep the issue. It wasn’t very important at the moment, anyway. “Harry Lee, former S-3, First Battalion, Fifty-fifth Infantry Regiment,” he said. “You need to get off the battlefield, General. As in, right now.”
“The S-3? So you’re a captain?” Salvador snapped. “Why the hell are you wearing lieutenant colonel insignia? Where’s the XO, Walker?”
“Major Walker is not here, sir. If you follow these soldiers, you’ll be taken to him, and he can fill you in on everything that’s gone down since the battalion pulled out of Boston. I’m busy here.”
Salvador pushed his way forward and got right in L
ee’s mask-covered face. “Are you out of your fucking mind? Do you have any idea how badly you’ve basically butt-raped military tradition, not to mention how many regulations you’ve violated? Boy, you’re in some serious trouble here!”
Lee looked at the two soldiers who had accompanied the general. Both were half crouched because of the gunfire ripping through the air, and not all of it was coming from the battalion. The Klowns were rebounding since Hayes’s company had pulled back. The void had given the infected enemy time to regroup, and they were focusing solely on Charlie Company, hammering them with everything they had.
“Get this man out of here!” Lee yelled at the pair just as several soldiers still manning the wall above them opened up with full automatic gunfire.
Everyone dropped to the ground, including Salvador. The general might have been pissed, but he hadn’t forgotten he was out in the open, in the middle of a shooting war. Something buried itself into the shipping container wall behind him with a sharp noise, and Lee looked back to see an arrow lodged there.
Higher up, one of the infantrymen manning a defensive position was reacting to the fact he had one stuck in his left thigh.
Oh, fuck!
“Get Salvador out of here!” he shouted, bringing up his rifle.
The soldier with the arrow in his leg started shaking as the first wave of giggles hit him, and he immediately lowered his weapon and opened up on the men below. One of the soldiers who had escorted Salvador jerked as several rounds struck him. Next, Salvador grunted and started discharging his M4 into the ground. Lee’s RTO curled up into a ball as the general’s errant volley stitched a trail right in front of him. Lee pulled his rifle’s trigger, sending three bullets through the infected soldier above him, just as the others on the wall brought their own weapons around and began firing on the same man. The infected soldier danced a ballistic-driven jig as a score of rounds slammed into him, driving him off the wall and out of Lee’s view.
Lee turned to the men beside him. The first soldier who had been hit was lying face down on the ground, a puddle of blood forming near his head. Salvador thrashed next to him, his left hand clamped over his right shoulder, where his short neck met his body. Blood pulsed from between his gloved fingers. His eyes were wide with fear and shock. He knew he’d been hit, and he knew it was bad.
“Get him out of here!” Lee shouted to the remaining soldier and the RTO. “Twohy, get him to a medic, right away!”
More people ran toward them, and not all of them were in uniform. Lee took up a fighting position, but one of them threw up his hands, waving in the darkness.
“No, no! We’re from Hays!” the soldier shouted.
“How many of you are left inside?” Lee asked.
“I think we’re it, other than wall security. They’re on their way out now.” The man looked down at Salvador as the Twohy helped the other soldier heave him into a fireman’s carry. “Shit, is that the general?”
“It is,” Lee said. “Help these men get him out of here. Twohy, you know where the ambulances are?”
“Yes, sir,” said the RTO.
“Then get him to Nightingale, right now!”
“On it,” Twohy replied, and the group moved off, carrying the injured general with them.
Lee turned back to the fight. Charlie Company was continuing to fall back. They were extracting a healthy penalty on the Klowns. Bodies were stacked up four deep only a few hundred meters away. But the Klowns kept coming, clambering over the dead and twitching near-dead and cackling with glee as they retaliated with assault rifles and hand grenades of their own. One of the containers down the line exploded when an AT4 round burrowed into it and detonated, sending red-hot shrapnel whirling through the air. The fire had come from behind the Klown lines. The crazies were bringing some heavy weaponry to the party, which meant it was time for the battalion to beat feet.
“Wizard, this is Six!”
Walker came back immediately. “Six, this is Wizard. Over!”
“Wizard, are we about done with the extraction? We’re losing the line over here. Chaos is being pushed back. Time’s up, we have to go. Over.”
“Six, this is Wizard. Roger, we’ve got a few stragglers, but they’ll be out in less than two minutes. We’re ready when you’re ready. Over.”
“Wizard, Six is ready right now. Pull Alpha back under covering fires, then do the same for Charlie and any other forward units. Start that right away. Over.”
“Six, this is Wizard. Roger that.”
THIRTY-EIGHT.
Muldoon rolled onto his side and snatched a fresh magazine from his harness. Rawlings started firing again, shouting behind her mask as the Klowns toppled to the brush right in front of her. Nutter ripped off another blast on full auto then shouted that he had to reload.
On the other side of Nutter, a soldier got to his knees and hurled a grenade, yelling “Frag out!” Before the lightfighter could cover, he jerked backward with a choked scream as a bullet tore through his mask. The soldier toppled onto his back and lay still, his legs curled up beneath him.
Muldoon fired three rounds into the Klown rifleman staggering through the brush. The attacker’s movements were made clumsy by the fact he didn’t have night vision gear and was laughing like Frank Gorshen’s Riddler from the classic Batman TV series. More shapes loomed behind that one, and they returned fire. Muldoon heard bullets crack as they zipped past, missing him by mere inches.
“Be an awesome time to shoot the fuckers in the face, Duke!” Nutter shouted, his voice a high-pitched shriek as he frantically tried to reload his M4.
Muldoon obliged, firing six rapid shots into the approaching gunmen. One of them curled up with a giggle and fell to the ground, while another only laughed harder while one of his arms flopped uselessly at his side. The third ducked to the right, putting a small tree between him and Muldoon as he blindly fired around it. His rounds went high, killing nothing more than leaves and possibly a couple of robins in the tree branches overhead. Rawlings drilled the Klown twice, and he sagged to the ground, gurgling.
Muldoon heard shattering glass as a sudden glow grew in feverish intensity, almost as if the small forest they lay in had been hit by a nuclear weapon. He smelled gasoline, and as his NVGs went into white-out, he knew that one of the Klowns had tossed a Molotov cocktail at them. Flame burned, bright and hot, and it found more than just gasoline to feed it. Dried leaves and brush and tree trunks that hadn’t seen a decent rain in quite a few weeks added fuel to the blaze, and thick smoke billowed.
Muldoon flipped up his NVGs. The fire was only twenty feet away, and he could see Lee’s boys—Murphy and Foster—retreating from the conflagration. In fact, Foster frantically slapped at the flames on his uniform with his gloved hands while Murphy, his SAW slung across his chest, dragged the man away.
Muldoon didn’t have time to worry about it, because more Klowns rushed into the trees. He cut several of them down, but more than a few wore body armor, and he had to hit them repeatedly to have any effect.
Then, his magazine ran dry again.
“Reloading!” he shouted, turning onto his side to reach for a fresh mag as more Klowns pushed their way in.
One of them spied Rawlings and lunged for her with a hitching whoop. The Klown raised an ax over his head.
“Fuck!” Rawlings screamed. She fired her M4 directly into the Klown’s crotch.
The man howled with laughter as his pelvis disintegrated beneath the force of several full metal jacket rounds. He collapsed to the ground, still swinging the ax as he fell. Rawlings turned at the last moment, and the ax head plunged into the earth beside her.
Muldoon lashed out with his empty rifle, and the M9 bayonet at its tip pierced the man’s chest. That only made the Klown laugh louder. The laughter amidst the sound of the sucking chest wound was a horrible sound, but Muldoon kept stabbing him, again and again. He could feel the heat of the blaze mounting, and the fire roared as it consumed every combustible in its path. Nutter finally
got his rifle loaded, and he fired two rounds into the Klown as it sagged, falling away from Muldoon and his bayonet.
“Thanks for nothing, Nutter!” Muldoon yelled as he pulled his rifle back and yanked a fresh mag from his vest. “Rawlings, you all right?”
“Good to go,” Rawlings said.
“Gotta pull back, Duke!” Nutter shouted. “This fire’s getting too hot!”
“Roger that,” Muldoon said, slapping the magazine into his rifle and hitting the carrier release. Click! The M4 was back in business. “Fall back fifty meters!” He fired several shots through the growing smoke, hoping to keep the Klowns off balance long enough for the team to retreat. “Nutter, Girard is down, grab him!”
“Hooah!” Nutter grabbed the fallen soldier’s vest and dragged him through the brush.
Rawlings hung back while the rest of the soldiers vacated their positions, joining Muldoon in firing at the shapes that swam about in the smoke.
“Go on, Rawlings! Fall back!” Muldoon snapped.
“What about you, Sergeant?”
“Don’t worry about me—I’ve got this! Get the hell out of here and reform fifty meters back!” He paused long enough to pull a grenade from his vest, yank the pin, and hurl it into the smoke. “Frag out!” That was his last one.
Muldoon crouched down as Rawlings reluctantly retreated, sidestepping away, rifle held at low ready. The grenade exploded, and the detonation caused a chorus of laughter just outside the tree line. The weapon had put a hurting on the enemy, even if they thought it was great fun.
He checked the area, and saw that all his soldiers had pulled out. He got to his feet and made to follow them. More figures emerged from the smoke suddenly, guffawing with manic glee when they saw him. Muldoon swore and turned to engage them, and found he couldn’t. His rifle got hung up momentarily in a vine-laden bush. Four Klowns rushed him with a communal, cackling howl.
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