by John Chapman
Within three miles he knew where he was. Filled with renewed confidence, Martin navigated the county backroads until he made it to Hwy 173, then turned east. This highway would take him right to State Street, where he could check in with the Black Knight Troop at Walmart, and get a relief mission started to go help Dan and his Charlie teammates. Felling his oats, and wanting to hurry, Martin gave the 113 some gas. He was only a few minutes away from help now.
Martin didn’t see the ice underneath the snow on the unplowed road as he approached the downhill S curve in the two-lane road. When the road tracks of the 113 hit the almost inch of solid ice, Martin felt the vehicle lose traction, and his lack of experience driving the APC sprung up to screw him. His first reaction was to steer into the spin, as he would do in an ambulance. The problem was he wasn’t driving an ambulance. Martin didn’t fully understand the differences in steering dynamics involved in driving a vehicle that was steered by applying power to tracks, instead of turning the front wheels. What he thought were gentle steering inputs caused a bad overcorrection, turning the vehicle’s slide into an out of control spin.
Really God? Really! was Martin’s last thought before the M113 plowed into the solid row of trees lining the edge of the golf course. The force of the APC demolishing the first tree slammed his face, just under his helmet, into the rim of the driver’s hatch. His loss of consciousness saved him from the horror he would have felt when he was thrown from the driver’s compartment as the armored vehicle smashed through the trees like a bomb going off.
*
ABC Food Superstores Distribution Center
Near Intersection of Hwy 62 and Hwy 44
“Sounds like the dongs are getting themselves motivated,” the east wall machinegunner commented as he listened to Theo’s guys whooping and hollering to the south. Dan grinned and replied, “Motivated Dongs was my punk-jazz fusion band in college. We played a lot of frat parties.” Both assaulters laughed loudly, and Dan had to shush them. The guys calmed down and Dan said, “I’m going to go check in with the south wall. That yelling was probably them psyching themselves up, so expect to see them soon.” The assaulters nodded and Dan moved off the wall.
When he got to the southwest corner of the roof, he saw Richard and the Charlie team assaulter had set up pretty nice firing positions. Both of them were in the prone position about three feet back from the wall, looking through the drain openings at the bottom of the parapet. As he approached them he saw they were moving from side to side, trying to get as wide a view as possible through the 12 inch wide by 8 inch tall openings. He dropped to the prone next to the assaulter, and saw a Velcro name strip on the back of his Multicam plate carrier that said ‘Anderson’, and said, “Hey Anderson. Cold enough for ya?”
Anderson came off the ACOG optic on his 16” BCM carbine and chuckled, “It’s so damn cold bro. I’m kicking myself for making fun of guys for buying all that Arcteryx gear.” He paused to shake his head at his own stupidity and continued, “Only activity was a bunch of ghetto squealing a few minutes ago. I haven’t seen anything move yet.” Dan said, “Yeah we heard it too. Sounded like someone was pumping them up to attack.” Anderson nodded and said, “They need to get on with it. I’m freezing my wedding tackle off.”
Dan crawled over to Richard and asked him, “You doing alright sir?” Richard replied, “Never been better son. I have a gun and there are gooks in the woods. What more could a guy ask for?” Dan smiled and said, “I saw a coffee pot in your office. Do you have a thermos anywhere? I’d like to get these guys something hot to drink before this kicks off.” Richard said, “I do. It’s in the credenza below the coffee pot. Good job watching out for your guys.” Dan nodded and crawled away until he was far enough from the wall to stand up without being seen.
He quickly went down the roof ladder and into Richard’s office. The coffee pot was hot and full, and Dan quickly found the thermos and filled it up. The coffee smelled a little stale, but no one would care. Dan grabbed a few disposable cups, screwed the thermos lid on tight, and headed back up to the roof. He went back to Richard and Anderson’s position, and poured each of them a small cup of coffee. Anderson asked, “Can I pour it down my pants?” Dan replied, “In this cold it’s not like there’s anything outside your body to burn.” Anderson laughed and said, “That’s no joke.” Dan poured Richard a cup, then moved back to the machinegun position on the east wall.
The guys were happy to have the coffee, and after they had a cup Dan pushed them through more dry drills with the M240 machinegun. Dan worked with them on loading, reloading, malfunction clearance, and fire control. He knew he wasn’t going to turn them into Ranger Regiment machinegunners in 10 minutes of dry-fire, but he wanted to get them as ready as he could in the time he had available. Dan knew he should be on the gun for this attack, but he was responsible for the entire fight, and wanted to keep himself free as long as possible.
JR got on the radio, “Knight Three, Sniper One. Movement to the south. Can’t tell numbers yet, but there is a group of black males in street clothes filtering through the woods, moving from south to north, about 100 yards out. They are on a line to come out about 50 yards east of the west end of the building on the south side, if that makes sense.” Dan replied, “Roger, that makes sense.” JR continued as soon as Dan let off his PTT, “Do you want me to pin them down now?”
Dan thought about it, and replied, “Not yet. I’d like to see if they have a second group before we let them know we are here. I also want them to commit to moving out into the open. We don’t have enough ammo for a drawn out ‘pop goes the weasel’ fight.” JR replied, “Roger. I’ll keep you updated. Be advised once the group to the south gets to the edge of the pavement, I won’t be able to engage them; at my elevation, my view is blocked by the building.” Dan said, “Roger.”
Phil broke in over the radio, “Knight Three, Three-Charlie-One. We have dongs crossing the east driveway heading north, about 75 yards from the building. Counted four so far, all armed with long guns. One of them was the scout dong.” Dan acknowledged Phil and tried to visualize the battlefield. He struggled with the decision of when to initiate the defense of the building. If he waited until the enemy committed to a course of action he had a chance to mow them down in the open. The problem was, in order for his guys on the roof to engage, they would have to expose themselves. His fighting positions up here sucked. Phil’s team was in a good spot to flank the enemy’s east element, but Dan wasn’t sure if that would be the dong’s maneuver element of not. If they hunkered down behind cover on that side Phil would have to advance and assault through their position. He trusted Phil would advance on a fighting enemy, but he had no idea if the guys with him had the stones to attack with the aggressiveness required to pull that off.
If he initiated now, they could pin the enemy down farther away from the building, and disrupt whatever plan they had in motion. He really didn’t want to get into a long drawn out fight with these assholes, but he was confident the dongs they were facing would fall apart under fire. If they started now, he had the chance of breaking the fight down into a bunch of little gunfights, allowing him to focus his combat power on one small group of dongs at a time. His only hesitation was the amount of ammo the team had for their carbines. Everyone had between six and ten mags, and that may be cutting it close if this thing went on for a while.
Dan thought about the advantages his team had over the dongs, and realized the decisive factor was training. His guys had an advantage in marksmanship. Stopping this attack further away from the building would maximize that advantage. He made his decision, “All Knight units, Knight Three. We are going to attack now. Pin and hold these dongs by the throat where they are, and we will pick them off one at a time. Conserve ammo and make your shots count. Remember, we’re all we got. Sniper One, initiating on you.”
JR smiled as he heard the command. He was already tracking a dong in a bright red puffy jacket about 150 yards to the south. The dong was armed with a Kel Tec
PLR 16 .223 caliber pistol, with a drum magazine of some sort in the magwell, and was confidently walking down an open row between trees, straight at JR’s position. He centered the one mil dot of the Horus retile on the dong’s upper chest, let out his breath, and allowed the Tikka rifle to fire when he reached the natural respiratory pause at the bottom of his exhale. The suppressed round removed the dong’s heart from his body, and after cycling the rifle JR watched as the guy slowly crumpled to the ground.
While no one but JR heard the gun go off, everyone in the little valley heard the suppressed shot break the sound barrier, and the ‘a hand just slapped a chunk of meat’ sound of that round smacking flesh; but the suppressor masked the shooting’s origin so effectively the dongs couldn’t figure out where it came from. In the woods on the east side of the building, Theo’s head came up, recognizing the sound for what it was. “Find cover and get down.” Theo said in a stage whisper. So, the sniper didn’t leave after all, he thought.
On the roof, Dan was down in the prone behind one of the drain openings on the east wall, about 40 feet to the left of the machinegun team, looking for targets. He saw some hurried movement in the woods about 50 yards out, but nothing defined enough to shoot at. He heard JR fire another suppressed shot, then heard several unsuppressed shots come from the woods to the south. He looked to his rear, but couldn’t see his guys on the southwest corner. He was considering going to check up on them, mainly because there were obviously good targets over there, when he heard JR fire again, followed by both Anderson and Richard’s unsuppressed carbines laying down some fire.
Richard and Anderson did indeed have some good targets. JR’s third shot had flushed out some of the dongs to their front, about 75 yards out. Richard fired first, putting a few rounds on a guy in a green parka and white hat, who was standing next to a tree getting ready to shoot in their general direction. He watched as his first two rounds went wide, and was pleased to see his third and fourth rounds connect with the dirtbag’s abdomen. This was Richard’s first time shooting with a red dot sight on a rifle, but he kind of liked it. He moved on to find another target, leaving the guy he’d shot to writhe around on the ground in pain.
Anderson was having less luck. He’d fired five rounds so far, at two different folks, and as far as he could see all of them were clean misses. He found the spot where the last guy went to ground, and waited. Within 10 seconds, the dong stuck his head up to see what was going on. Anderson controlled his breathing and trigger, and was rewarded when his sixth round fired in this apocalypse smacked the dong in the forehead, snapping his head back.
The dongs started firing back in earnest, and Richard and Anderson were forced to move after a few rounds made it through the drain openings in the parapet, passing too close for comfort. Both of them crawled to different drain holes and set up again as JR poured precision rifle fire into the line of dongs trying to take cover just inside the wood line on the south side of the facility. In less than a minute JR was able to use five rounds to put three of the dongs down hard, and was now firing slowly into probable hiding places, trying to keep the bad guys’ heads down until the two assaulters he could see on the southwest corner of the roof could displace to new firing positions. He fired the last round of his 10-round magazine before the assaulters were ready to work again, so he dropped the stock of his Tikka precision gun and scooted to his right, picking up his Hodge Defense AU-Mod 2 carbine, equipped with an Aimpoint T1 and 3X magnifier. He snapped the magnifier into place and got a quick sight picture.
Several dongs were up and shooting again, and JR settled his dot on the center of the Cleveland Browns logo on the chest of a dong who was shooting at the building with his SKS rifle. JR sent three Federal Gold Medal Match 69 grain 5.56mm rounds screaming through his Surefire suppressor, and the worthless football fan with the cheap commie rifle was disappointed in his winless Browns for the last time. JR looked for more targets. He knew trying to gain fire superiority with a semiautomatic rifle was doomed to fail against any professional enemy, but he hoped it was possible against these dumbasses.
In the woods to the east, Theo was trying to get in a position to see the target building. Only 12 of his guys had made it across the east driveway before the shooting started; and not knowing where the sniper was, Theo used simple hand signals to tell the guys who hadn’t crossed the open area yet to just stay there. He moved west to a tree where he could see the warehouse, and brought his Smith & Wesson M&P 15 carbine up to his shoulder. Looking through his 4X ACOG TA1, he started scanning the building’s roof looking for the sniper. Not seeing anything on the east end of the warehouse, he started scanning down the south side of the huge structure towards where he could hear his base of fire team shooting.
When Theo got towards the far west end of the south side of the building, about 600 yards away from him, he stopped. He had a hard time holding the rifle still enough to focus on something at that distance, but he was pretty sure he was seeing smoke and snow being blown out one of the rain spout drain things. He thought he’d found the sniper.
Theo quickly retreated the 30 yards to where he had his guys gather up, and told them, “Alright, time to get ours. There is a sniper on the far south roof,” he paused to show them which direction was south, “We can move up on this side without him seeing us. Who has a gauge?” meaning a shotgun. Two of his guys nodded, and one of them said, “Yeah, that’s what’s up!” as he showed off his Kel Tec KSG 12-gauge shotgun with the laser sight. He wasn’t really sure how to use the complicated shotgun, but he wasn’t going to tell these guys that.
Theo nodded once and said, “Alright, you’re with me. When we get to the building we are going to use your shotgun to breach one of those doors on the east side.” Theo got his guys split into two teams, and explained that only one of the teams would be moving at a time, while the other team was ready to fight. The gunfire on the south side of the building had died down a little, and Theo wanted to get the movement done while that sniper was engaged, so he pushed his guys to the edge of the woods, placed the team on the left to cover the first movement, and ordered the team on the right to move out into the open, stopping at the line of semi-trailers parked around the facility’s perimeter.
Phil and his guys had used the time after getting in position on the northeast side of the warehouse wisely, and were in fairly good fighting positions looking for targets when the first dongs stepped out of the east woods. He keyed his PTT and said, “Knight Three, Three-Charlie-One. Dongs are coming out of the woods to the east.” Dan replied, “Roger, I got ‘em. We will initiate on you.” Phil responded with two mic clicks and carefully turned to the assaulter next to him, whispering, “When I fire, light them up. Pass it on.” The assaulter nodded and passed it on.
When Phil figured the word had reached the end of his small line, he put his Aimpoint’s dot on the dong farthest from him. As he prepped the shot, the dong stopped and got down on a knee next to the front stands of a semi-trailer about 50 yards from the building, and about 75 yards from where he sat. The trailer’s stand partially blocked Phil’s view of the dong, but he had enough meat in the guy’s side available to make a good shot. Phil let out a breath, then fired two rounds at the guy. Both 55 grain 5.56mm rounds struck the dong under his right armpit and he fell down.
By the time Phil’s second shot was leaving the barrel, the three carbines next to him unleashed a wall of rapid, aimed fire at the six other dongs in the group near the trailer. Phil could feel the noise and concussion of four rifles firing simultaneously in such close quarters in his chest, and he struggled to find another target. Seeing one of the dongs running east, away from the fight, Phil centered his red dot between the guy’s shoulder blades and pressed off several rounds. He must have missed, because the dong kept running, escaping into the woods and out of Phil’s sight.
On the roof, Dan waited patiently for Phil to fire while he watched a second group of dongs break cover and advance while the first group waited near the traile
r. These guys are doing a bounding overwatch, Dan realized. Deciding he didn’t like the idea of hood rats using real tactics, he determined none of these dudes were going to make it out alive. We have to kill the good ones early, Dan thought, as he heard Phil initiate the ambush. From his rollover prone position, Dan centered his Aimpoint dot on the chest of a dong in a Cleveland Indians sweatshirt and an orange beanie in the second group.
As Dan pressed the shot, the guy ducked down and turned to his right in response to the sound of gunfire in that direction, and Dan’s round hit him on the left side of his nose. The 5.56mm FMJ pierced the dong’s septum and blew off the tip of his nose, and the guy dropped his AK and grabbed his face with both hands. As Dan was moving on to another target he saw his machinegun team on his right pick the 240 up and set it on the parapet. Within seconds his assaulters had the gun running, shooting short bursts into the exposed group of dongs below as they ran back towards the woods.
Theo was wondering what kind of buzzsaw his guys walked into on the right when he saw a big dude in full kit with POLICE patches on it stand up on the eastern edge of the warehouse roof, and haul a freaking belt fed machinegun into view. He was momentarily transfixed by the horrible elegance of the ambush he’d walked into. As he watched, the machinegun opened up on his second team, who were caught in the open while bounding forward. Snapping out of his frozen stupor, Theo brought his M&P 15 to his shoulder and found the machinegunner on the roof in his ACOG. Seeing the guy was a cop, from the POLICE patch on his plate carrier, Theo centered the crosshair on the pig’s face and started pulling the trigger.
Dan saw muzzle flashes from the woods to his right, and heard the unmistakable sound of rounds hitting a human head close by. As he quickly focused on tree where the shots came from, he saw the 240 falling off the roof and stop in midair somehow, in his peripheral vision. He shook off the sight and let loose at least half a 28-round magazine at the spot the shots had come from. He saw a rifle fall, followed quickly by a dong in ACU’s. The army dong was still alive, at least for now, based on the way he was rolling around on the ground in agony. He watched as the Theo pulled a tourniquet out of his left BDU pocket and began applying it to his right leg. Dan knew how much leg wounds and the application of tourniquets hurt from first-hand experience, and hoped it was extra painful for that soldier turned murderer.
