Thermals

by Evan Currie

  “It’s fucking creepy if you ask me.”

  “Nobody bloody well asked you, now did they!?” Harris ground out through clenched teeth, “Now shut the fuck up and soldier, boy!”

  The squad quieted down, other than a little more pissing and moaning about being hammered into the ground in the crash. Sergeant Harris let them get away with it, mostly cause he wanted it out of their systems before the shit hit the fan like he just knew it was going to in short order.

  *****

  Colonel Pierson carried his command computer as he and the rest of his team sprinted down the block a ways from the downed Black Hawk, trailing a nearly invisible thread of fibreoptic line behind them. They quickly found a storefront that suited their immediate requirements and barged inside, sweeping the room with their assault rifles while others did fast sweeps of the alleys.

  “Down! Down! Down!”

  Pierson deposited his command and control computer against a wall while his men put the lone occupant of the store on the ground, frisking him quickly, and then cinching his wrists with plastic ties before letting him up again.

  “Who are you?” He demanded quietly of the badly frightened man.

  “Freddy Bern…This is my store.”

  The man’s eyes darted around, watching the men who were flooding in with guns, and he obviously wanted to ask but didn’t.

  “Put him in the corner, behind the counter there.” Pierson ordered, “Mr. Bern, I’m sorry, but we’re appropriating the premises for our operations. We’ll try to clean this up and get out of your hair as quickly as we can, but I can’t make any promises.”

  “What the hell is going on!?” He asked as he was half led, half dragged back to his store counter.

  “We have a terrorist situation, Sir. Please, just sit quietly and don’t distract my men.”

  Bern was starting to get his mental footing again, and wasn’t having any of it. “What the bleeding hell are you on about? Does this look like Israel or Iraq or fuckin Baghdad to you!?”

  Pierson just shook his head, but one of the soldiers dragging the man growled out a reply.

  “Listen here, pally, we just dropped about two hundred men and two billion dollars worth of machinery onto this city in flames. If it don’t look like Baghdad now…give it about thirty minutes, now shut the fuck up and keep your goddamned head down!”

  It wasn’t poetic, perhaps, but Pierson had to concede the basic truth of it.

  *****

  An alarm rang in the station just as they were about to walk out the doors, causing Anselm and the others to pause and glance back.

  “What the hell is that?,” One of the SAS man asked in annoyance.

  “Fire alarm.” Gwen said, paling.

  “Well no shit. Those burning hunks of metal must have woke someone up,” Another man muttered grimly.

  “Aw Christ,” Anselm muttered, “Will the Fire department respond?”

  “Of course.” She said, hands up, “What else would they do?”

  “Oh bleeding perfect.”

  “Shit.” Malcolm snarled, “We do not need a bunch of heros running right into the middle of a firefight. Call them off.”

  “Call them off!?” Gwen blinked in horror, "But people live in this city! We can’t leave fires unchecked!"

  “She’s right, Major.” Anselm growled, “This isn’t some random warzone. We’ve got a lot of civilians here that are going to fully expect protection from their military, police, and fire services. If it’s not provided, there’ll be hell to pay if any of us get out of here.”

  “If being the operative word, mate.” Malcolm growled, but reluctantly nodded. “Alright. Fine. Can we get information on where they’re going to go?”

  “Yeah…” Gwen nodded, “We can take the Eliicas. They’ve got links to the central systems and…”

  “They’re jammed, remember?” Malcolm growled, “Better go get the data from the computers now before we go.”

  “Uh…oh, yeah…”

  “Go on!”

  Gwen nodded quickly, then ran back inside.

  Anselm shook his head, “This is going to get really complicated, Major.”

  “Tell me about it, Interpol,” Malcolm shook his head. “Those helos are scattered all the hell too. It’s some mess.”

  Someone snorted in the background, “Least we can find the fire. Just look for the smoke.”

  A few smiled, but Malcolm and Anselm didn’t.

  “Gwen did have a good point though,” Anselm offered, “The Eliica squad cars are damned fast, we should take them. They probably have a paddy wagon here that can maybe take some small arms fire too.”

  “Right.” Malcolm nodded, “K, when the Inspector comes back, we’ll steal the cop cars.”

  One of the men chuckled, “tell me, Major…how often have you wanted to say something like that?”

  “Shut up, Tavish.”

  *****

  The rumble of thunder in the distance had faded finally, leaving Inspector ‘Pete’ looking around with a puzzled and concerned expression on his face.

  “Hey, Mate, what the hell was that?,” He asked, eyes turned to the sky across the other side of the facility. “That sound like explosions to you? I think we’d better check that out.”

  His deputy didn’t respond at all, so Pete rolled his eyes and turned around in irritation.

  “Damn it, man, are you gonna be doing the silent treatment all…”

  Pete trailed off as he found himself staring down the barrel of a pistol that was aimed right between his eyes.

  He lifted his hands automatically, his eyes widening until the whites were gleaming against the black of his skin. “Holy crap, Mate! Don’t point that thing at me! And where the hell did you get a gun? We didn’t issue pistols for deputies this time…”

  The click of the hammer cocking back snapped the police Inspector out of his indignant outrage at the reckless brandishing of a firearm, alerting him that there was something a lot more dangerous going on than poor gun safety.

  “Hey now…about that silent treatment crack, you know I was just…”

  The crack of the pistol snapped heads around to look at them and a woman screamed in the background as the black skinned Police Inspector toppled to the ground and lay unmoving. The Deputy turned on those who were still there and began snarling orders.

  “Into the facility! Move or I’ll shoot!”

  *****

  Simon Eddings, Trooper in the Australian Army, crouched on the rooftop where he’d been sent by Colonel Pierson and brought the imager up to his face to get a better look at the tower where it cut the sky in half just a couple klicks away. The Imager was a marvel of optics and electronics, bringing him right up next to the immense construct, like he was hanging on the side of the tower himself, as well as providing him with range data and other priceless pieces of information.

  Normally it would also automatically search and classify everything it recorded, scanning through military databases for profiles on known military equipment and such, however the low level jamming that was disrupting their communications was also completely screwing with the wireless networking capabilities of all his equipment. The net effect was to more than halve the effectiveness of his gear and force Eddings to use it all piecemeal rather than as a coherent system as it had been designed.

  Luckily the majority of it had been designed with just such an eventuality in mind, and his training had also been geared toward adapting to the reduced effectiveness of being cut off from communication.

  The Colonel had wanted him to find the radar installation that had guided the anti-aircraft guns, and Eddings had located it easily enough. The Phased Array Antennae were difficult to miss, located on the tower about three hundred and fifty to four hundred meters up its length, however there wasn’t a lot that he could do with the information at the moment.

  A missile strike would take it out, but Eddings’ mind was filled with images of the tower, it’s structural integrity dam
aged, toppling in slow motion from its one kilometer high throne. The damage it would inflict on the facility around it was incalculable, and Eddings wasn’t certain that it would stop there.

  He was about to draw back, return to the Colonel’s position, when movement on the ground some distance away brought him up short. Again the imager came into play, passing over the squad sized group of men who were working their way up the street toward the Blackhawk where it was parked in the middle of the street.

  Eddings crawled back along the building, looking over the other side until he found one of his squad. He held up his closed fist, catching the man’s eye, then gestured toward the approaching squad and circled two fingers in the air before clenching his fist tight again.

  The man below nodded, waving the flat of his hand down the road twice, then quickly turned to send a similar sequence of hand signals down a chain of soldiers to where ever the Colonel had setup shop.

  Eddings, satisfied with the completion of his primary duty as well as his current orders, pulled his assault rifle up close and checked the magazine nervously before flicking the safety off and settling in to wait.

  *****

  “Colonel, we’ve got a group of people approaching along the road from the South.”

  Pierson looked up from his computer link, “Civilians or Tangos?”

  “Unknown. Could be either right now, the word came from Eddings, Sir, and his comms are out so we can’t see what he sees.”

  “Alright, get people into position to mount an ambush, but I want confirmation before they open fire, son! Got me?”

  “Got you, Sir.”

  “Make sure everyone gets me.”

  “Yes Sir, no one engages without confirmation.”

  Pierson nodded, shaking his head, “This could be a right nightmare, son.”

  “Sir, no offense,” The soldier said grimly, “but from where I’m standing, it’s already a right nightmare.”

  The Colonel snorted, but nodded. “Just so. Just so. Get Eddings back here as soon as it’s clear, I want to know if he found me my radar.”

  “Yes Sir!”

  *****

  Kaseem Omar grunted as the American built helicopter came into sight, sitting crookedly on the road ahead of them, but obviously still intact and in one piece. He shook his head and held up a hand, “Hold.”

  His squad came to a stop with him, and he extended his hand, twitching his fingers in the air.

  The commercial imager was dropped into his palm a moment later, and he gestured the men back off the streets while he himself slipped into a doorway. The imager, a nifty little device that was part digital camera, part computer, part binoculars, and part a thousand and one other things crammed into one molded plastic casing, brought him right up on the helicopter as he played it over the military vehicle without finding any sign of the soldiers who had crewed it.

  It had hammered into the ground hard, he could tell, the crater in the pavement they’d just walked past was proof of that. Blackhawk helicopters were tough, though, and the men who flew them were normally quite skilled. The pilot of this one had to have been, to be sure. That or he was incredibly lucky, luckier than any man deserved to be.

  It was empty, however, which wasn’t unusual. They would have been worried about mortar use, that was how soldiers thought.

  Kaseem would have been happy to oblige their expectations, however once they’d dropped completely behind the buildings the radar system had lost its solid lock on them and they hadn’t been able to determine precisely where the helicopter had landed. They didn’t have enough ammunition to simply shell the entire city in order to get a few troops surviving from a handful of downed choppers.

  So Kaseem and his team were sent out, along with several others, to find the Aussie soldiers and eliminate them before they got any bright ideas that might put a crimp in the operation that would serve notice to the entire world that though the war on terror went on, the ‘terrorists’, the men like Kaseem who would fight and die for their cause, would never stop.

  “You see anything, Abdul?”

  Kaseem’s lips curled.

  Not even if he was forced to work with infidels who’s causes were not his own. He shook his head, “No, Joseph. Nothing.”

  He pronounced the name of his ‘comrade’ with the ‘I’ of the old way, rather than the western ‘J’, mostly because he knew it would irritate the man almost as much as being called ‘Abdul’ bugged him. Kaseem knew that, with the American attacks on the faithful, and other anti-imperialist groups the world over, it was perhaps inevitable that enemies come together to face the greater evil, but he would be glad when he could return to his home and be free of those whom he had been forced to associate.

  “You think they’re gone?”

  “Probably.” Kaseem hissed back, still examining the chopper through the imager. “We take no chances, however. Give me the radio.”

  “You got it,” The man said, pulling one of their special frequency radios from a pouch on his tactical vest and handing it over.

  Kaseem took it and keyed it open, “Command, this is squad three. We have a landing site in view, request artillery to the following coordinates.”

  Kaseem’s squad pressed in closer to the buildings around them as their squad leader recited off a series of numbers from the readings of his imager.

  *****

  “What the hell are you doing, mate?,” Trooper Eddings asked himself softly as he watched the man speak urgently into a radio through the imager, his rifle laying just beside him.

  The squad, and Eddings had no doubt that it was exactly that, had stopped when they came around the graduated bend in the road which had been blocking the blackhawk from their view, immediately moving to cover while they examined the chopper from a distance. There had been a conversation of sorts there, but he couldn’t tell what it was, then the leader had begun murmuring into a radio.

  That meant that the Tangos had pre-arranged some clear frequencies and had solid communication.

  Not good.

  A faint sound in the distance distracted him from that thought, however, something he almost recognized but couldn’t quite place. Not at first anyway. When the sound was replaced by a soft whistling Eddings’ eyes widened and he cursed as he rolled back and scrambled to his feet just as the first explosion roared around him.

  Heat and concussion pushed him off his balance, slamming Eddings back into the rooftop but he just rolled with it and came back to his feet running. The sound of the wind rushing around the guidance fins of the incoming mortar shells was now lost in the general chaos of the moment, but he knew that it was still there.

  It felt just like training suddenly, and he kept moving just like training.

  A fireball to his right told him that the Helo, with its tank of fuel, was gone now and he barely had time to recognize that fact as splashes of liquid fire rained down around him. Eddings would never know if it was miraculous that he wasn’t incinerated by the burning fuel or not, but for the moment he didn’t stop to think about it, he just ran.

  The edge of the building came up fast, but he didn’t stop. Eddings jumped from the roof of the four story building, grabbing at the concrete monorail structure as another flash of light and heat shook his world and he lost his grip and felt the sickening lurch of free fall take him.

  *****

  “What the hell was that!?”

  Gwen’s shocked cry was echoed in Anselm’s face as the unfortunately familiar sound of explosions rolled over them and a plume of black smoke and fire rose into the sky ahead of them.

  “Mortar fire.” Malcolm said grimly. “Bastards.”

  “Mortar…They’re BOMBING my city!?” Gwen raged, face reddening as her fists clenched.

  “Fuckers came loaded for bear, Major.” Trooper Tavish said softly, his hand shaking slightly as the barely controlled rage in his voice gave his emotions away.

  “Yeah. So did we.” Malcolm replied quietly. “Let them have their f
un, Tavish. It’ll be our turn soon.”

  “Too bloody right.”

  *****

  Pierson’s computer link died when the Black Hawk went up in flames, and piecing the loss of signal together with the thunderous explosion that blew out the storefront’s glass windows didn’t take a genius.

  “Incoming!”

  The single word, screamed over the sound of the explosions, might have seemed to be a little late but it triggered an automatic ingrained response in those who heard it, slicing through the residual shock of the moment like a bayonet blade. Soldiers scrambled for cover, hugging low to the ground as they unslung their weapons and put whatever they could between them and the street.

  “They’ve got artillery, Colonel!”

  Pierson’s lips curled up in a derisive scowl as he bit down on the immediate scathing comment that came to mind, and he just nodded curtly and let out a yell himself, “Watch for tangos! They may come in on the tail of the attack!”

  Men nodded, moving more calmly now as they had orders to occupy them, even though the rolling thunder of explosions still passed over them. One of them crawled over to the smashed out windows, grinding the glass on the floor beneath the padded armor on his knees and legs, and peered outside.

  “They got the chopper, Sir!”

  Pierson didn’t bother to tell the man that he already knew that, just nodded in response, “See anyone!?”

  “Some of our guys out in the street, Sir…they’re not moving!”

  “Sir! Permission to…!”

  “Hold that thought, Trooper!” Pierson ordered, scrambling forward himself. “No one goes out there yet!”

  “But sir!”

  “I said HOLD!” The Colonel growled out in a tone that brooked no argument.

  He made it to the windows himself, crouching down in a corner where he could peer out on the burning wreck that had been a Black Hawk helicopter, and watched the punding fire come down from above.

  “They’ve got the chopper, if they’ve got ground spotters nearby they’ll redirect the fire to anyone they see…” Pierson hissed, motioning his hands to tell everyone to get down and out of sight. “If they don’t see anyone moving…ahh…there we go.”