Apex Fallen

by C. A. Michaels

  “I think we’re pretty well off right now, all things considered. Julia’s prepped and has a plan, and Scott’s stable. The factory floor should be clear with only minimal security required during loading. And we’ve wasted a few of the local gangbangers.”

  “I didn’t get their leader, the fat bearded one,” Dan said. “He deserves to die.” Hannah looked away, a little perturbed by the resoluteness and steeled aggression in his tone. Lance just nodded, understanding.

  “The biggest risk we have tomorrow is that crowd from today showing back up. They might already be planning something to try and exact revenge or to save face, but we’ll be vulnerable if they start taking pot-shots at us while we’ve got a squadron of Chinooks on the ground being loaded.”

  “What was the original plan for your squadron?” Dan asked Hannah.

  “Scott had already involved me in the planning, in case something like this happened,” Hannah said, the worry leaving her face and being replaced by a concentrated glance towards the factory. “There are a couple of Blackhawks which will provide security, with around a squad’s worth of grunts in each. They will escort the first pair of Chinooks in at first light, will secure the LZ and will secure the objective – the factory.” Dan nodded. A squad wasn’t much, but it should be enough to hold the hack’s at bay.

  “From there we either have a choice – our preference was for a pair of Chinooks to be leaving Carson at 30 minute intervals, which means that we should only have two Chinooks on the ground getting loaded at any point in time. Twenty minutes to load, five minutes to land and get away again and five minutes fudge factor. The first Chinooks will have a platoon’s worth of guys spread across them to act as loaders, and they’ll jump in on the last Chinooks heading back.”

  “And the second option?”

  “All the Chinooks come up at once, and those that can’t be loaded or fit onto the LZ either enter a holding pattern or land and hold close by. That would burn a lot more fuel and Scott was doing everything he could to give the commander a few more hours of flying time.”

  “What do you think, Hannah? How many Chinooks will we be able to fit in the car-park by the factory doors?”

  “Two, and that’ll be tight,” she replied. “I’m thinking that the Blackhawks let their men off at the car-park LZ and then land up here, next to the Lakota. There is enough room and it will make the Chinook’s approach and landing a lot easier and safer.”

  “Only it will make this roof-top a bigger target to anyone coming in along the road, especially if they’ve got access to .50 cals next time round,” Lance said. Hannah shrugged.

  “I’m not sure, then. So bring everyone up at once and keep them in orbit?”

  “No,” Dan said, everything coming together in his mind. “The plan itself is good. We just need to buy them more security. Hannah, will the Blackhawk’s have door gunners?”

  “I can find out.”

  “Ask for them to put on some door guns. They can still land here, but we can use them as a response force if we need to scramble some firepower. Also, they’ll be able to pick up Julia and Scott, won’t they?”

  Hannah shrugged. “Sure. Even with their security guys they’ll be well under capacity.”

  “Good. That means us three can be freed up. Look, the air-mobile group itself will be able to secure this location and fend off any hacks. The real problem will be Drake’s boys, the radical ones, showing back up looking for a fight. On the objective we’re sitting targets, but if we free ourselves from this location we can push out and act as a screen against our most dangerous threat, either landing the two of us on a building or we can all keep airborne. Either way, we can find and start fixing any inbound bandits well away from our objective, and when we need more fire-support we call up the Blackhawks.”

  Lance was grinning. The more aggressive the plan; the more he liked it, Dan realized. He was a born hunter. “Sounds good,” he said. Hannah stood up and looked at the sky.

  “It’s going to be dusk soon, so I’ll get ready to call that plan in and brief the flight commander.”

  Once she had left Dan stood up, next to Lance, and both clipped their night vision goggles onto their helmet in turn.

  “What is the plan for Scott tonight?” Dan asked.

  “We’ve set up a tarp over the vents, and we’ve moved him onto a small inflatable mattress. He’s getting the lions-share of blankets tonight, and the two of us not on sentry will bunk next to him so he stays warm. He’ll be fine, though. For a pilot he’s tough and the girls did a good job of stemming his bleeding during the first few crucial minutes after he got hit.”

  Dan nodded. “Few hours on a single sentry, and if the choppers get here at first light – what’s that? – 0545 hours or something, then we’re looking at a good six hours sleep regardless, which isn’t shabby.”

  “Yeah, not bad. Listen, I was wanting to talk to you, away from Hannah, about something else... You kind of had it in your voice, when you were talking about taking out the bearded fella...”

  Dan fixed his eyes on Lance. Even in the low light he could see the mixture of anguish and hatred in his face, and he felt those same emotions mirrored inside himself.

  “Look, I know you’re the ranking officer here, and I’ll obey any orders you give me, and I’ll make damned sure that my mission is accomplished. But when I took an oath to serve my country, I swore to protect the United States of America from any enemy, foreign or domestic, and right now...”

  “Right now,” Dan interrupted him, picking up Lance’s sentiments while silencing him temporarily.

  “Right now, out there, there’s a religious zealot terrorizing Americans. We both heard his message, that the United States has fallen and that the US Army no longer exists. My mind still hasn’t moved on from that moment. Sure, I want to kill that bearded bully who killed those men today, but above all I want this Drake to hang for treason. I took the same oath as you, and there is no way I want to walk away knowing that inside my country someone is creating the exact nightmare we fought against in the Middle East. He’s Taliban, as far as I’m concerned, whether American Taliban or Pashtun Taliban I don’t care, they all triumph religious slavery over individual freedom. They’re all the same. I want to do the same to him that we did to Taliban shadow-governors. I want him dead.”

  “So after this, after we achieve our mission here, we take down Drake?”

  “Damned right. Drake and his inner-guard of henchmen. We can get Hannah to drop us off and we can do what we have been trained for. We clear and hold the area, regardless of the threat, and then we build. Classic counter-insurgency shit from Field Manual 3-24, just like in Afghan.”

  “And Iraq for me, as well. I just never thought I’d have to do it back home.”

  Hannah had returned and was standing behind them.

  “Don’t think I’m just going to drop you off,” she said, quietly. “I’m part of this, now, too. Besides, you might need a lift back to Carson once you’ve secured your part of Boulder.”

  Dan shrugged. Inside he was happy to hear that Hannah was going to be staying with them; happier than he should have been, at any rate. He didn’t want to show that emotion, though.

  “OK, so Julia and Scott can be picked up by the Blackhawks then. We’ll act as a screen for the mission throughout the morning and then, once they’re gone, we turn towards Boulder.”

  “Any idea how?” Lance said.

  “The Mesa Laboratory. That’s where the first patrol said that Drake’s radio traffic was coming from. We hit that first, we take away his voice. From there we re-orientate and move in on Drake himself. Julia lived and worked in this area so let’s ask her and find where this lab is.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The night was uneventful. Beneath them they could see the streets move through their night-vision as the hacks scampered back and forth. The power was off in the neighborhood and the hack’s seemed to be reasonably clumsy in the dark, crashing into cars and stumbling over
curbs. They were, like humans, suited to daylight, but they would roam and forage whenever it was safe. The sounds and action of the afternoon must have drawn in a lot of the infected creatures from the outlying area as they seemed to converge to the factory doors once darkness hit. There was no point shooting them; they would let the Blackhawk’s of the security force scare them off and kill any that remained. They needed to preserve their ammunition for their upcoming battles since they now knew they wouldn’t return to Fort Carson in the immediate future.

  At 0500 hours Hannah woke Dan and Lance up. She had been the last on sentry, and only had to pull an hour of stag – better to have the pilot of the group rested, Dan had reasoned, taking a couple of hours extra. He’d have had trouble sleeping anyway.

  “I’ve just been on the radio to Carson, and it is all go. The first tap is just about to leave the ground.”

  Dan and Lance stood up and stretched.

  “Let’s get some food in us, then we can wake Julia and Scott before we take off and leave them for the main body.”

  ***

  They loaded the helicopter with their packs and then passed around a lukewarm cup of black coffee as they waited for the minutes to tick by. The sun was gathering low on the horizon and they could see it was going to be a clear, beautiful day. Good for helo flying, Dan thought, but also good for long-range fire from the top of a truck. His thoughts returned to Beard and his stomach tightened. All night he’d pictured the massacre of the patrol of Suit and Fisherman and the teenaged kid, who’d all seemed like decent enough sorts making the most of a terrible situation. His mind couldn’t move on from the nagging, ever-present impulse for revenge. He wanted to be able to kill Beard up close, with either his pistol or with his knife, but he’d settle for simply knowing justice was done. It was more likely that Beard would die, if he did try to attack them as Dan thought he would, from long-range fire or from a 40mm grenade during a fire-fight. While Dan would dearly love for Beard to have a final moment of reflection, knowing that he was going to die and realizing that his death was direct revenge for his own acts of murder, Dan would settle for simply knowing that he had been killed.

  Julia and Scott were roused ten minutes before they left. Scott had had a restless sleep, with the painkillers they had given him making little difference to his pain and discomfort. Poor bastard, Lance muttered to him. They left Julia with the flask of coffee and took the tarp down. They didn’t want to move Scott and relied on Julia to shelter him from the rotor-wash with her body as they took off.

  All three of them took a turn giving Scott a squeeze on his shoulder and saying a brief farewell to Julia. For someone who was going to be left behind, effectively alone on a rooftop with an injured man needing protection and a sea of ghouls around her, she was holding up surprisingly well.

  “Give ‘em hell,” she said to Dan, as he fare welled her with a clasp of the hand and a brief hug.

  “Tell the General at Carson we haven’t abandoned our mission, and we’re still serving the same cause,” Dan said, finally. “And you take care, OK?”

  Julia smiled and pointed to the horizon. “It’s getting light. The first Blackhawks and Chinooks will be here soon. We’ll be fine, you guys stick close and look after each other.”

  Dan nodded and joined Lance in the back of the Lakota, locking his side door back. It was going to be a cold flight so early in the morning but they need to be able to see and shoot out with minimal obstacles. Julia was in the cockpit going through her warm-up routines, and once ready she swung back in her seat and gave them a thumbs-up. They responded in sort, and she flicked the final switch in the sequence. Lights in the cockpit blinked on and a buzz could be heard around them. The engine then whirred into life and the rotor blades started to turn, slowly at first, and then gathering pace. They could see Julia bracing Scott by lying over the top of him, keeping the blankets from flying away. The engine noise increased in frequency and pitch; the rotor blades reached a crescendo and then they felt the tail of the helicopter lift and dip as Hannah lifted the Lakota off the roof.

  They gathered height quickly and were able to look down at the scene around them. It was quiet and almost peaceful, as Hannah swung the Lakota around the factory building. For the first time that day Dan could see the line of bodies from yesterday’s massacre, and then he saw the other short row of bodies on the road they had first noticed when landing. It all made sense now, and Dan felt his shoulders and jaw set in even further determination to make Beard pay.

  Their flight path was lazy and irregular for the first few minutes, until Hannah’s voice crackled over their headsets. “The main body is a minute away. I’m going to lead them in, and then we will head out and start screening for anyone trying to interfere with us.” The Lakota’s nose dipped towards the south and accelerated. Out of the early morning gloom Dan could see a few metallic glints on the horizon that grew and swelled into a line of helicopters. Shark-like shapes that he could soon make out as Blackhawks were leading a pair of double-rotor Chinooks. Hannah swung her Lakota in front and led them all to the objective.

  The turned, sneering creatures below them looked up as Hannah side-slipped in front of the factory doors and slowed into a hover over the parked cars. Most of the hacks took the cue and scampered for cover, fleeing the effects of the rotors beating down upon them. Dan could see, over Lance’s side, the pair of Blackhawk’s sweep in low and fast. The pilots flared and dropped onto the car park, letting the soldiers on board hit the ground running. Dan smiled, seeing soldier after soldier exit the aircraft with their rifles raised to their shoulder, pushing out into a line. They were covered by the helo door-gunners. It was smooth, he thought, and well rehearsed. It was testament to the fact that not only did the US Army still exist, it was still able to do what it did best – dominate by force.

  The Blackhawks didn’t stay on the ground but swung away from the factory and make a sweeping path for the rooftop where Julia and Scott lay. Beneath them the soldiers had secured a perimeter for the Chinooks to land into while others had disappeared inside the factory, pulling apart the hasty barricade of barrels Dan and Lance had made alongside the parked trucks, and were hitting open the doors one by one. Like clockwork, Dan thought. Seeing everything go so smoothly filled him his satisfaction. They were delivering on their promise to the Carson Brigadier. They were achieving their mission.

  ***

  The Lakota’s flight-path took them away from the objective towards the outskirts of central Boulder. They didn’t know where to look but Dan was pretty sure he could, from a distance, make out a sizeable settlement in part of the town. Drake. He could also see, in the foothills of Boulder’s mountain range, the Mesa Laboratory that Drake’s voice was booming from. That would come later, though, as they were now focused on blocking any patrols that want to interfere in their plan.

  The presence of the helicopters would be obvious to everyone in Boulder and Dan knew that, if Beard and his crew had been making any plans to try and take another shot at them, the presence of the helo’s would have forced him to move early. It’s almost like we are challenging him, in Drake’s backyard. He might be a bully but he was violent, and his position and power depended on his service to Drake and his ability to command others. He would almost certainly have to rise to their challenge.

  “Movement, trucks, 11 o’clock,” Hannah called out after thirty minutes of flying a race-track pattern above the main highway.

  Dan craned his eyes over Lance’s side of the helicopter to see what it was.

  “OK, got it,” Lance replied. “3 clicks away still. Can you hover here while I glass them.”

  Hannah gently transitioned the UH72 from forward flight into a stable position. Lance used the opportunity to take up a stable firing position with his SCAR-H against the side of the helicopter. He had his eye on the scope only briefly before he reached up to his shoulder and keyed his mike again.

  “Break Hannah, break!”

  Hannah swept the helicopter
forward and side-slipped briefly, ending their hover.

  “They’ve got some heavy weapons mounted, looks like a couple of 50s.” A ‘50’ or heavy machine gun was bad, Dan knew, and it could easily shred a helicopter at their range. No wonder Lance got Hannah to keep the helicopter moving, so that they wouldn’t be a static target and thus harder to hit.

  “They haven’t fired yet, even though I’m sure they’ve seen us. Chances are they aren’t very skilled on the system, but I don’t want to put that theory to the test.”

  “OK,” Hannah called back over the intercom. “Do we know they’re hostile?”

  “Not certain but it is a safe assumption, heading this way with such heavy fire-power,” Lance replied.

  “This might change, things, too,” Dan said, his mind spinning over their plan now he knew they had .50’s. “They could put up a pretty good defense against Blackhawk door gunners and could easily do some pretty bad damage if they got hits on a helo.” Both Hannah and Lance knew he was making an understatement. If the technical trucks were packing 50 cal heavy machine guns, they could shred the light skin of a helicopter and literally rip apart the engine or the crew. The Blackhawks and the Chinooks made for an easy target, too.

  “Ack that,” Lance said. “Hannah, I want to put down some warning shots in front of the convoy to try and scare them off, on the off-chance they aren’t out to kill us all. After that we need to break low, get out of sight and find a position where we can ambush them from a very low hover as they come into sight. Behind a tree-line or something, ideally where we can hide our position and from somewhere you can side-slip into if they start to draw a bead on us.”

  “OK,” Hannah said, briskly, her head pivoting left and right as she scanned out of the cockpit.

  “Let me fly a couple of quick sweeps – it looks like they’re following the highway out, so we need something in this vicinity.” Hannah kept the Lakota sweeping through the air while gently swaying the nose left and the right. It was a subtle zigzag pattern from their perspective inside the aircraft but it would be enough to complicate anyone on the ground who was trying to line them up in any machine-guns sights. After a minute of searching Hannah swung the helicopter steeply to the right.