by DL Barbur
I fired off half a dozen rounds fast, barely allowing the dot to settle between shots, then I paused. I saw the machine gunner’s buddy sprawled half in, half out of the truck.
“Fuck you!” I yelled in triumph. Later it would seem like a stupid thing to do, but just then I felt a savage surge of joy that I hadn’t felt since that bad day in Somalia. I’d been on the receiving end of a shit storm of bullets, and it felt good to give one back that counted.
I hammered away, shooting at the gunner until my rifle ran dry. Dalton finished his sprint. He dropped to the ground and started shooting. I stood up and started my bound, managing to stuff a fresh magazine in my rifle as I ran. Dalton had been zigging to his left during his bound, and now I zagged to my right, opening up the distance between us, and giving the gunner more visual territory he had to cover by himself now that his assistant gunner was dead.
Occupied with trying to reload my rifle and not break an ankle, I let my rush go too long. The ground around me exploded in flying dirt and rocks, and instead of picking a spot, I just flopped down to the ground in the first little depression I saw. It was like being inside a tornado. The bullets cracked inches over my head and around me, thudding into the ground and throwing dry grass and dirt in my eyes. Something whanged off my head, probably a rock and not a bullet since I stayed conscious, but it still made my teeth click together. I tried to press myself deeper into the ground and felt the sick fear that I’d screwed up, that the position I was occupying didn’t afford enough cover and my guts were about to get strewn all over the hillside.
Then there was silence. I heard the sound of the gunshots echoing around the butte for a few seconds, then a long pause with no noise. I dared to raise my head above the grass and saw the gunner messing with the gun. The feed cover was up and he was messing around with the gun.
“He’s empty!” Dalton yelled. “Go!”
I stood up on shaky legs and charged. Instead of zig-zagging back and forth we both ran straight towards the pickup. Another gun started shooting. I flinched and almost dropped to the ground. I realized the gunner in the back of the pickup down by the entrance was the one shooting. He was lighting up the cops that were trying to make their way up the road. I heard a few answering pops in return. Those poor bastards were trying to assault a machine gun just like us, only from low ground.
As we ran, I saw a guy crawl out of the back of the moving van, shut the door and run to the cab of the truck. I’d been so focused on the gun truck, I’d forgotten about those guys. Over the sound of the machine, my poor abused ears could make out the thrum of rotor blades. I belatedly realized a voice had been talking in my radio earpiece, but I had no idea what it had said. More auditory exclusion. Hopefully, it had been Jack telling me he was on his way back with Dale.
Dalton outpaced me. The guy was like a damn gazelle. Despite my effort to run faster, he pulled away, taking long leaping strides down the hill. We were closing the distance quickly, but the guy down below was working like mad to get the machine gun back in action. I could see him jerking back and forth on the charing handle frantically. I couldn’t tell at this distance, but my guess was he’d jammed the gun up and was trying to clear it.
Finally, he stopped monkeying with the gun and bent over to pick up the end of the ammo belt. We were still a hundred yards away. I started looking for a place to go to ground.
Dalton went from running full tilt to kneeling in one fluid movement. He raised his rifle, took aim and squeezed the trigger. The gunner dropped like he’d been hit with an ax.
“Nice shot!” I yelled as I drew abreast of him.
He flashed me a grin. “Let’s go take that gun,” he said, and we charged down the hill.
The Little Bird roared overhead, so low I ducked. I saw Dale strapped to the side, wearing a radio headset, triple denim, and a backward trucker cap. Jack flared the Little Bird out and brought it to a hover almost directly overhead.
I keyed my microphone. “Kill that asshole that’s shooting at the cops!”
The tail of the Little Bird gave a prim little wiggle as Jack finessed the pedals to pivot the bird and give Dale a clear shot. He raised the long barrel of the bolt action M40. I never heard the shot over the sound of the helicopter, but the machine gun stopped firing immediately. Dale worked the bolt feverishly, and put more rounds into the driver of the pickup, and the assistant gunner in the bed.
I was sucking for air as we made it to the pickup but I still managed to catch up to Dalton.
“Drive or shoot?” he yelled over the sound of the rotors.
I looked at the truck. The hood was riddled with bullet holes and the windshield was a crazed mess of cracks and bullet holes, but all four tires were holding air. The machine gun was tilted down on its makeshift mount, and where the barrel touched the roof of the cab it was actually smoking it was so hot.
“Shoot!” I yelled. I wanted to put some bullets in people.
Dalton jerked the driver’s side door open. The dead driver spilled out like a sack of meat. He was missing most of his lower jaw and had sprayed the inside of the cab with a fire hose of blood from his severed carotid. Dalton swept out the worst of the broken glass with his gloved hand and climbed into the mess.
The bed of the truck wasn’t much better. The machine gunner had caught rounds in the chest and the face. I climbed up and managed not to slip in the blood and hundreds of spent shell casings.
Fueled by adrenaline, I managed to hoist the dead guy out of the bed of the truck and dropped him to the pavement with a splat. Then I turned my attention to the gun. The M-240B fed from a long, heavy belt of cartridges held together by metal links. If the belt dragged, or worse, became twisted, it would jam the gun up in an instant. It was the assistant gunner’s job to help feed the cartridges into the gun smoothly, and if he was good at his job, he could link a new ammo belt onto the old one and make sure the gunner never ran out of ammo.
I had disposed of the assistant gunner, so now the ammo belt was dangling all the way down to an ammo can that could slide around loose on the floor of the truck. If I wasn’t careful I would twist the belt if I rotated the gun around on its makeshift mount.
I hefted the belt. I could support it with my left hand, and since the weight of the gun was held up by the mount, aim and fire with my right. It wouldn’t be perfect but I could make it work.
A couple hundred yards away, the moving truck was trundling down the reservoir access road. The Little Bird hovered over it and I saw Dale firing rounds into the cab. Over the ringing in my ears, I heard Dalton rev the engine of the pickup.
I pushed the button on my radio. “I’m ready. You ready?”
“We’ve got half a tank of gas, a leaking radiator, a shot out power steering pump and I’m sitting in a guy’s brains.”
“Hit it,” I said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The pickup jerked backward, and I held onto the gun and mount for dear life as Dalton did a herky-jerky three-point turn, then we sped off after the moving truck. Our pickup lurched each time the transmission shifted gears, and I smelled burnt hydraulic fluid.
“Tranny’s not so hot either,” Dalton said over the radio.
The little .223 caliber bullets we were shooting didn’t do much damage to a vehicle individually, but we’d sure shot a bunch of them. We were still gaining on the moving truck. The Little Bird was alongside, about a hundred yards off, and Dale was pumping rounds into the cab. Jack was maintaining some altitude so he wouldn’t plow into the rolling hills, and Dale was shooting down at an acute angle, working the bolt on the gun feverishly. I saw him stop shooting to shove more rounds into the loading port of the gun, and I wondered how much ammo he was carrying.
The moving truck was a crew cab. I saw a gun muzzle poke out of the back driver’s side door and a lick of flame from a muzzle flash as somebody fired a burst at the helo. Jack peeled off. I couldn’t tell if they’d been hit, but it didn’t look like they were going to crash. Jack started a fast circle to get back
on target.
We went around a bend in the road, and there was nothing past the moving truck but hillside, so I put the machine gun’s butt against my shoulder, sighted on the back of the truck, and squeezed the trigger. I started firing five and six round bursts into the back. Depending on what was inside, the slugs might actually penetrate through the sheet metal of the truck into the cab.
“You know,” Dalton said over the radio. “That thing is probably full of explosives.”
I stopped shooting for a second to clear the gun’s belt and keyed my mic.
“Ideas?” I asked, then went back to shooting. I wasn’t particularly keen to die if the truck exploded, but I didn’t want these assholes to get away with their little plan either.
“Hold on, I’m gonna see if the four wheel drive works, and try to get alongside.”
I was grateful for the warning. I put the gun on safe and held onto the pintle with both hands as he floored it. The pickup fishtailed back and forth with one set of wheels on the gravel road, and the other on the grass. I thought for sure we were going to spin out or roll more than once, but Dalton managed to maintain control. Right as we drew even with the truck’s rear bumper, the driver swerved over in front of us, putting his own wheels in the grass. We missed colliding by a handbreadth, and Dalton backed off a little.
The Little Bird was back. Jack zoomed in right over us, then matched speed. I looked up and saw the tail rotor was not very far over my head. Dale had the rifle hanging around his neck and was blazing away with a pistol. As I watched, the slide locked back on an empty magazine and he punched it out, letting it fall to the ground.
“I’m out of ammo for the rifle,” Dale said over his radio. He sounded both calm and apologetic.
“I’m going to switch sides,” Dalton said. “Try the tires.”
He pulled over left like he was going to try to overtake the moving van on that side again, and as soon as the driver reacted to block him, cut the wheel back over to the right and stomped on the gas. The scant warning he’d given me was just enough to traverse the gun back over and move the ammo can with my foot.
Dalton pulled past the rear bumper of the truck, and I had a clear shot at the tires. I fired a long burst.
Despite what you see in the movies, it’s actually hard to shoot out a moving tire, especially with a handgun. The sidewalls were thick on the truck tires, and the speed of rotation actually helped deflect the bullets.
All that was on my mind as I mashed down the trigger. I fired one burst and the muzzle climbed off target with no effect. I fought it down, took a half breath and fired again. Apparently, the rules were different when you shot a tire with a dozen .30 caliber machine gun bullets.
The tire disintegrated and a big chunk of rubber bounced off my helmet. The metal wheel dug into the gravel road. The truck slewed to the right, and for a second I thought it was going to roll over. The driver wisely got off the gas and fought to maintain control as it bounced across the grass. The moving truck slid to a halt, and Dalton gunned the engine of our pickup, pulling past the cargo area of the truck.
Now the cab was in my line of fire. I saw a man sitting in the passenger seat, slack-jawed with surprise. I lined up the front sight on the door and mashed on the trigger, letting twenty rounds go in one long, yammering burst before the muzzle climbed above the roof line and I was spraying the sky. I was off the trigger for a fraction of a second, just long enough to bring the muzzle back down, then I started hammering the cab of the truck with quick bursts of five and six rounds. All the glass was gone in the first couple of seconds, and the doors started to have more holes than metal. The thought of showing any mercy never occurred to me. I just kept shooting. In the Army we’d called this a “mad minute,” a way to release pent up frustration and aggression via gunfire. Usually, an officer would start screaming at us to cease fire, and the sergeants would go around kicking asses until the shooting stopped.
Today I was limited only by my ammunition. I felt the tail end of the ammo belt pass through my left hand a fraction of a second before the gun clicked dry. All I could hear was a roaring that was something like the sound of the ocean and static from a radio combined.
“Coming out,” Dalton yelled. I barely heard him. He’d wisely decided to stay in the cab of the truck while I hosed down the moving truck, rather than exit right under the muzzle of the machine gun. Even now he slid across the truck seat and came out of the passenger side.
I reached down and rooted through the empty ammo boxes until I found a full one. I opened it and pulled the end of a fresh belt of ammo.
“That’s probably enough,” Dalton said. “Somebody isn’t getting their deposit back. Let’s go check out the truck.”
I took a few deep breaths to clear my head. Dalton was standing behind the front of the pickup, his rifle half raised. He was mostly looking at the moving truck, but he was giving me the occasional brief glance. Even though we’d just been engaged in a gunfight with fully automatic weapons, charged a mobile machine gun nest, and chased down a truck full of explosives, Dalton looked as relaxed as if he were out on a nature hike. I realized he was checking in on my mental state, to see how I was bearing up after the stress of the last few minutes.
That’s when the shakes hit. I felt queasy like I might throw up, and the muscles in my jaw were quivering. It was hard to focus on anything but the cab of the truck. I realized I’d unloaded well over a hundred rounds into the truck, and I started remembering about all the lessons we’d learned about excessive force back in the police academy. I’d been reacting like I was still in the Army, but the body armor I was wearing had the word “Police” embroidered on the patches.
“Take a second and check your stuff. Then we’ll clear the truck,” Dalton said. My hearing was starting to come back. It sounded like there were hundreds of sirens coming towards us. “I want to get their phones and get them to Casey and Henry before your buddies on the police bureau get their hands on them.”
Back when I’d been in the Army, Delta guys had a reputation for being arrogant. In some ways, it was deserved, but in others, they really did live in a different world. During the fight in Mogadishu, I’d seen some men act bravely. I’d seen others lose their shit. Sometimes it was the quiet, reserved guys that turned out to have balls made of pure brass, and the big boasting muscleheads that collapsed into a fetal position and shit their pants.
But the Delta guys had impressed me with their ruthless calm. They had acted like the whole thing had been some sort of training mission, instead of a desperate, bloody firefight. Dalton was displaying that calm now. He was focused on gathering intelligence for the next step in the fight, and making sure that I had my act together. Right now he was holding his rifle in one hand, and using the other to key his radio and give Bolle an update.
I focused on making sure I was ready. That was always a good, concrete step. First, I checked myself for any new bullet holes. People had been known to get shot and not realize it until it was too late. Part of me wanted to detach the M240B and haul it around like a big rifle, or maybe like a security blanket, but rationally, I knew that was a bad idea. Instead, I checked my carbine. The scope was undamaged and turned on. I had a round in the chamber.
I forced my self to take three big slow breaths and focus on what was happening around me. Jack was doing slow orbits around the park, with Dale still on the bench. I realized I hadn’t heard from Eddie or Struecker for a while, then realized with a start that they were running down the road behind us. Struecker didn’t look like he was even breathing hard, despite the sixty pounds of gear he was carrying, but Eddie was huffing and puffing.
Struecker slowed down when he saw me looking at him. He clearly wanted to make sure I recognized him before he charged up behind us. I waved him forward and he started jogging up.
“Struecker and Eddie are coming up from behind,” I yelled to Dalton.
I let my carbine hang from its sling, in preparation to jump out of the truck, when
a burst of gunfire broke the silence. Struecker hit the ground.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
At first, I had no idea where the fire was coming from. Puffs of dust kicked up around Struecker where he lay limp in the gravel.
“He’s under the truck! He’s under the truck!” Dalton screamed.
I couldn’t see from where I was standing in the bed of the truck. I clambered over the side, slipping on a shell casing as I did so and unceremoniously falling over bed rail of the truck.
I landed hard on my right side. This was getting old. A round hit the side of the truck above my head with a sound like a beer can being crushed by a hammer. That’s when I saw Curtis, lying on his side and shooting a rifle at us. Another shot hit in front of me, spraying dirt and gravel into my face.
I was half blind from the dirt in my eyes, and it wasn’t the best position to shoot from, but I made it work. This sort of close range, furious violence was where the little carbines we carried shined. I placed the red dot of my scope in the middle of the fuzzy blob with the rifle and squeezed the trigger twice.
Curtis rolled behind the rear tire and the incoming fire stopped immediately. I sent another pair of rounds his way, just to be sure.
“I think you got him,” Dalton said.
“Go help Struecker,” I said.
I’d seen my share of gunshot victims, but Dalton’s training was far superior. That left me and Eddie to deal with Curtis. Eddie was running up to Steucker, oblivious to any more threats from the truck. That left me. I blinked my eyes until I could see better, and stood.
I went wide around the back of the truck, with my carbine, ready to shoot. Curtis was still alive somehow. As I eased around the corner of the truck with my rifle in front of me, he took in a long ratcheting breath. When he breathed out it was accompanied by a fine spray of blood droplets. A bullet had passed clean through his chest, high up on the right side. His lung was probably collapsing and filling with blood. One ankle had been obliterated and his foot hung by a shred of flesh. Judging from the trail of blood, the foot wound had happened first, when I’d lit up the truck cab, then he’d dragged himself to his position here by the back of the truck.
