by D. J. Molles
Lucas looked at him, confused.
“In case one of us goes down,” Abe shouted.
Lucas nodded and the two men ran from the SUV, splitting directions. Lucas went for the first Blackhawk, where ten soldiers were already seated, looking a little too scuffed up to be coming fresh out of the barracks. They all leaned forward in their seats, looking out of the rolling doors to see who would be joining them. They gave no sign of pleasure or displeasure when they saw Captain Lucas Wright heading for them. Maybe a little bit of relief that they weren’t stuck with an idiot. They reached out and offered a hand, hoisting Lucas into the cargo area.
Abe ran by them, ducking instinctively from the rotors whizzing loudly overhead. The Little Bird was positioned just a short jog away, the pilot looking at him and circling his finger in the air—generally used for on the move, but more colloquially used for let’s hurry the fuck up.
Two soldiers straddled the outboard bench on the starboard side, and one on the port, holding up a lanyard for Abe and ready to strap him in. Abe took the bench, interlocked his feet underneath it, and felt the man behind him clip the lanyard to his strap and slap him on the shoulder. Maybe he said something, too, but his voice was washed away with the wind.
The copilot was leaning between the seats, thrusting an extra headset at him.
Abe took it, flexed it over his helmet so the head strap was against the back of his neck. It didn’t fit very well over his helmet and barely drowned out the rotors. He felt the sudden downward thrust, and then the unsettling feeling of being lifted as the pilot dusted off. Abe looked out, saw the ground rapidly falling away beneath his feet, and felt that old familiar tingle of fear in his toes, like at any moment he could just fall off this thing.
He had never been a fan of heights.
Abe cranked the boom mike to his mouth and spoke into it. “Mike check. You copy?”
“Yeah, we got you,” said a calm voice that could only be a pilot. “Welcome, Major. We’re call sign Copperhead-One-Three. Those big fat bastards down there are Copperhead-Two-One and Two-Five. Captain Wright’ll be in Two-Five.”
Abe acknowledged.
With their ragtag air wing consisting of only five MH-6 Little Birds and seven UH-60 Blackhawks, of which they could only seem to keep a third in working order at any time, it had been decided that, for simplicity’s sake, they would all answer under Copperhead, with specific numeric designations under that. “One” for Little Birds and “Two” for Blackhawks.
Under them, Two-Five and Two-One lifted their bulks off the pavement and raced upward with alarming speed for something so big.
The calm pilot’s voice: “Alright, let’s punch it. Copperhead-One-Three to Copperhead-Six, we’re clear the flight line and en route to Fargo Group, about twenty mikes out. We’ll be switching to go direct with Fargo.”
“Copy,” was command’s only reply.
They hit a point in their climb where they escaped from the shadow of the earth and suddenly the cockpit was yellow with sunlight. Abe shivered in the wind but felt a warm patch, glowing on the back of his neck and the side of his face. The landscape below was still dark and blue-green. The Rocky Mountains in the distance looming up out of the darkness, their white-capped peaks flashing brightly in the morning light. In the flatlands under his feet, the strange circular pattern of crops divided the landscape into even sections, reminding Abe of green quilt-work.
“Major, you’re direct.” A voice hovered in his ear.
Abe flexed his hands and toes to keep blood moving in them. “Rocky-Six to Fargo-Six, how copy?”
A smattering of gunfire in the background. Then: “Rocky-Six, you’ve got Fargo-Two. Stand by for a second, Major. Cap’s a little busy.”
Abe waited in the cold, deafening loudness. His eyes watered. He checked his watch and found that it had only been two minutes since they’d left the ground. He had the urge to look behind him at the Blackhawks that he knew were in tow, but he knew it would only give him that strange feeling of almost falling. He kept his eyes straight ahead.
Crackle. Gunfire. “Rocky-Six, you’ve got Fargo Actual. Major, I got us in a bit of a spot right now.”
Abe felt relief at the sound of Tyler’s voice. “It’s all good, Captain. We’re inbound with Copperhead. Gimme that sitrep.”
Tyler’s voice was strained but not panicked. “We’re on the bridge over the rail yard in Cheyenne. Southbound lanes. When we hit the bridge, an IED went off right behind the last vehicle in our convoy. We hauled ass, thinking it was a late fuse, but they had the bridge blockaded with a shit-ton of cars about halfway across. And while we were figuring that out, they blocked the other entrance with another shit-ton of cars. So right now, we’re trapped on a fucking bridge. Break.”
Abe stared at the side of the airframe, began picking at what he had heard. Use of an IED meant some sort of technical knowledge with explosives. Then they used it to spur the entire convoy onto the bridge, because they knew they wouldn’t stop when the explosion went off. And then they had them blocked in on both sides. It seemed smart.
Who the fuck does that? His mind grappled with it. Who knew we were going to be through there? Who knew how to get our convoy locked on the bridge?
They’d dealt with bandits before, but usually bandits popped off a couple rounds and realized they were heavily outgunned. And then they hightailed it. Some of them stuck around and tried to fight it out—the more desperate ones. But they were rare.
This seemed different.
Tyler continued. “Right now we’re all out of the trucks, hugging concrete. We’re taking steady, continuous sniper fire from three…no, four buildings that I can see. We’re down three guys—one KIA, the other two wounded pretty badly. Over.”
“Alright, we are about fifteen minutes out. Can you give us a description of the hostile buildings?”
“Yeah. At the north end of the bridge it’s two bigger buildings—a brownstone building and a red brick building—one on either side of the road. Then we’re also taking fire from a building to the west of us, down in the rail yard. It’s a funky-looking building…trilevel…with metal roofing. Over.”
Abe nodded to himself. “Rocky-Six copies. Hey, Fargo, you think we can land a couple birds on those roofs? Over.”
“Uh…” Something cracked very close to the radio mike, and Tyler let out a yelp. “Whoa…fuck…uh, yeah, reference rooftops…they seem pretty sturdy. You should be good to go.”
“Alright. Copperhead, you copy those building descriptions?”
The helicopter pilots checked in by call sign, indicating they had it.
“Copperhead, I want a top-down assault on the two buildings on the north end of the bridge and the trilevel building in the rail yard.” Abe took a breath, fidgeted with the boom mike again. “Two-One, take the brownstone on the north side of the bridge. Two-Five, take the red brick on the north side of the bridge. One-Three, I want us on the trilevel in the rail yard.” Abe repeated it for clarity’s sake, then asked for acknowledgment.
Everyone copied.
“Two-One and Two-Five, give your gunners a pass around the buildings to soften them up before you hit.” Abe racked his brain, trying to think if there was anything else he was missing. Any little element that would haunt him later as he lay awake, thinking about how he could have done it better. “As soon as we can clear a safe landing zone, we’ll need you guys to medevac the wounded to the Green Zone. That’s all I have for now.”
Abe then sat there, his legs tucked under the outboard benches, his ass beginning to ache from the tension, and the minutes went by as slowly as the creeping landscape below them. It did not take long for the urgency of the moment to give way to being pissed because he’d seen this shit coming. He’d told Colonel Lineberger that they needed to use the Little Birds for daily recon along the convoy routes, but the colonel had refused to approve the fuel usage. Said they needed to save it for QRF situations. To which Abe had responded that if they reconned the route
s, they would have less QRF situations.
The colonel had not been convinced.
For him, it was about the longevity of his operations, not the longevity of his men. In his eyes, there was a date somewhere in their black, unknown future, when they would not have any more fuel to run the birds. His only concern was extending that date as far out as possible.
This should have never fucking happened.
The headset hummed and cracked. The pilot spoke. “Copperhead-One-Three to Fargo-Six. I’ve got visual on a bit of a smoke cloud. Is that you guys?”
A momentary wait. “Copperhead, that’s correct. That’s us. Smoke’s from the IED that went off.”
“Fargo-Six, we copy. We’re ETA five mikes out right now. Have your men hold their return fire as we come in. How copy?”
“Yeah, I copy. Hold fire for insert.”
Abe leaned out just slightly, overcoming the sensation that he would fall. Out beyond the bubble of the cockpit, he could see the little brown smudge on the horizon that the pilot had been speaking of. It seemed incredibly far away, but Abe knew they would be on top of it soon enough.
“Rocky-Six to Copperhead group,” Abe called. “Two-One and Two-Five, kick out ahead of us. Take a pass at the trilevel building in the train yard on your way to your buildings. See if you can’t take a few of them out.”
“Two-Five copies; we’ll take lead.”
Almost as an afterthought, Abe raised Tyler quickly. “What floors of the hostile buildings are you taking the most fire from?”
“Stand by,” came Tyler’s strained response.
Abe waited. The black smudge on the horizon had dissipated, but it still marked their objective, and Abe could see the patchwork of farmland beginning to turn into winding, centipedal neighborhood streets, and then into boulevards with businesses clustered along either side.
Tyler came back on the line and gave them a quick lowdown. On the trilevel building, most of the muzzle flashes were coming from the top level. On the brownstone and the red brick buildings to the north, the muzzle flashes were scattered around the top two levels, but they were clustered toward the street.
The two Blackhawks had moved ahead of the Little Bird now, and they began descending toward the gray and brown urban terrain below them. Abe felt the feeling of weightlessness as the Little Bird dropped altitude, trailing behind its two larger counterparts by maybe a mile.
He checked his rifle again. One in the chamber. Safety off.
He turned, looked through the open backend of the helicopter to the soldiers on the other side. He caught their eyes and gave them a thumbs-up with raised eyebrows and mouthed, You good? They both gave thumbs-up. Abe craned his neck to look behind him. The soldier to his back slapped him on the shoulder and thrust a thumbs-up into his face.
Get your mind right. Focus.
He pictured it all. Visualized it. Stepping down smoothly from the helicopter onto the roof. Descending into the building below, silent and unheard. He pictured going through a door and seeing a man shooting from a window. In his mind, he put his rifle on the man and pulled the trigger twice, crumpling him. He was quick and he was accurate. He was controlled.
Abe could feel his heart starting to hammer. Up ahead, the scene came out of the smoky haze like a camera lens focusing. The big, open, dusty space below them was the train yard, with all its long lines of dilapidated trains just sitting, waiting to be loaded and dispersed across the Union-Pacific Railway. Bisecting the rail yard were two bridges, each with two lanes of the highway—north- and southbound lanes. He could see the cluster of mismatched army-green and desert-tan vehicles stranded in the middle of the southbound bridge and the dots of men scrambling for cover around them. In the rail yard, he could see the trilevel building, and just beyond that, he could see what he thought was the brownstone and the red brick buildings to the north.
Abe swallowed, controlled his breathing.
The two Blackhawks banked to the right, then back to the left, flying low. Abe watched the small green figure of the door gunner swing his M240 up and around toward the trilevel building and suddenly the muzzle was spitting yellow. Gouts of smoke flowed from the machine, the tracers lancing out and pounding the top floor of the building, obliterating glass and turning the walls to dust and chunks of concrete.
Copperhead-Two-Five went nose down and sped off as Two-One came in behind it, and then repeated the treatment.
The Little Bird banked, and Abe was stuck to the outboard bench only by centrifugal force. He watched the world pitch up toward him until he was almost staring directly at the ground, and then it fell away just as rapidly, and Abe was staring at sky. It was a dizzying transition, but then they leveled out and the trilevel building was directly in front of them.
Abe felt the lanyard being removed from him. He felt momentarily vulnerable. Forced himself to unhook his legs from under the outboard bench. Why did he want to ride the Little Bird again?
Better view of the battlefield.
He spun on the bench so he was facing out. He leaned over and unclipped the lanyard from the soldier next to him. Both rifles came up, already looking for targets. Going to windows and doorways and any open space or shadow that might hold a threat. Below them, the white roof of the trilevel building grew until it dominated their vision. Abe could feel them slowing for their touch-and-go.
Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast.
Stay calm and controlled.
Take it to ’em.
For a split second, just before the helicopter touched the roof, it rotated just far enough for Abe to see the bridge on the other side of the railway. And the base of it, on the southern side, clustered with cars and completely barricaded. But the cars seemed to squirm like something alive, and Abe didn’t realize what he was looking at until he was sliding off the outboard bench.
There must be hundreds of them…
His feet hit the ground.
Just before he ripped off the headset, Abe heard the pilot of Copperhead-One-Three say, “Boots down.”
THREE
Infected.
Abe came down in a half crouch. The roar of the rotors kicked up and Copperhead-One-Three lifted off away from them. Abe’s gut immediately twisted up inside of him. There had to be at least a hundred of them—maybe more. And they were moving fast, the frontrunners already hurdling over the gridlock of vehicles at the south end of the bridge. And Tyler and his group were too busy keeping their heads down to notice them coming.
How long? Abe tried to calculate, tried to register how quickly the infected were moving and how much distance they had to cover. It’s a long bridge. But at a dead sprint? Maybe a few minutes max.
Abe scanned the rooftop, urgency punching through his practiced calm. He needed to find a way down into the building, to stop the threat so that Fargo Group could defend itself. And he had very limited time to do it in.
Each of the three levels had its own roof, like a set of tiers, and in the far corner Abe could see a ladder that led to the next tier down. It was the only access point he could see. He didn’t like it because it left them out in the open, but there weren’t many choices at this point.
He ran for it.
The roof around his feet suddenly began to jolt. Black holes began sprouting up, spewing chunks of insulation and plaster into the air like tiny geysers. Abe felt his whole body tighten, like one giant cringe, but he didn’t stop running even as he waited for that bullet to snap up and get him. He planted a hand on the curved rail of the ladder to stop himself, and he looked back.
In the middle of the roof, one of the soldiers was prone, trailing red across the white roof as he crawled toward them. The bullets kept punching up, closer, and then farther away. Someone underneath them, blindly shooting at noises on the roof. One of the rounds exploded right next to the wounded soldier’s head and he became still, unwilling to move anymore.
The other two were crammed in close behind Abe at the ladder. The soldier who had been sitting behind Abe
on the ride in lurched out like he was going to make a run for his wounded comrade, but Abe grabbed his arm. He wore sergeant’s stripes, Abe noted.
“Gimme ten seconds!” Abe shouted. “You got a frag?”
The sergeant produced one from his vest.
Abe snatched it out of his hand and pointed at the roof. “Keep his head down!” Then he slapped the other soldier’s arm. “You’re with me!”
The sergeant pointed his rifle at the roof and began letting rounds loose.
Abe grabbed the side rails of the ladder and simply vaulted over the roof. He didn’t know if the other soldier was behind him, but he wasn’t waiting to find out. He hit the next tier of the roof, and he hit it hard, buckling his knees and nearly putting him on his ass. He recovered, stumbling slightly as he pulled the pin and let the paddle fly off the grenade. For a split second he was terrified that he had no place to throw it, but to his right was a long bank of windows, and the ones closest to him were already blown out. He tossed the grenade like a hot potato through the open window, and then he flattened himself up against the wall and hoped it was more substantial than it felt.
He waited, waited, waited, then—BOOM—felt it before he heard it.
Concussion that you could feel in your innards.
The feeling of a full-body impact.
The odd sensation of it ripping suddenly over your skin.
Then he felt a hard slap on his shoulder, and a muffled word came through his ringing, perforated eardrums: “MOVE!”
And he was moving. Rifle up, through the broken bay windows and onto a desk that rattled unsteadily under his feet. Abe looked at the broken jags of glass passing between his legs as he stepped through and thought about them slicing through his inner thigh and opening up his femoral artery. He got both legs in and then jumped off the desk onto a hard linoleum floor.
The interior of the building was dark. Hazy. Billows of smoke stampeded for the open windows. He could see the glow of daylight on the other side of the room. Shadows and shapes flashed across the light. If there were sounds to accompany it—footsteps or shouts—Abe couldn’t hear them. He decided that he didn’t care what the shadows and shapes belonged to.
