“There, beneath me. Row of farmsteads and a tree-belt we can use, and I’ll approach low over the reservoir behind us.” It was perfect terrain for an ambush, sloping gently from the area Hannah indicated down to their killing area on the highway, just over a kilometer away. They would be well within range for their 7.62mm match-grade rounds from their SCAR-H’s to have an effect on the light-skinned trucks, but the comparative firepower of the heavy machine guns would blow them apart if they tried to duke it out simultaneously. They needed surprise on their side, and this position offered it.
“Looks good,” Lance called, and then added “I’ll need a few seconds to prep – where are the strops from the tie-down kit you had out earlier?”
Hannah waved his attention to a small compartment behind her seat. Lance busied himself with unraveling the strops and rigging them up so that they provided a rigid “X’-shaped cross between the corners of the doors. Hannah was on the radio, providing an update and a warning order to the Blackhawk pilots and gunners to be on stand-by. If they could take out or pin-down the heavy guns then the Blackhawks would be ready to come sweeping along the highway raking the trucks with their own 7.62mm firepower. Over the noise of the engine he got the general intent from Lance – the cross he had formed in the door-frame would allow him to stabilize his rifle and fire from a seated position, while Dan could lie on the floor of the fuselage and fire from the prone position. He would have to keep his legs wrapped around the seats for security, in case Hannah lost control or unexpectedly lurched the aircraft sideways, but it was a decent plan. Once his crossed rifle brace was ready, Lance rested his SCAR at the centre where the strops crossed over each other and gave Hannah the A-OK to return to the trucks.
The UH72 lurched unpredictably between various heights, slowing down as the flight-path neared the highway. Exiting the outer suburbs of the central township were a gaggle of various civilian trucks and 4WDs, all snaking their way towards the objective where the Chinooks were being loaded.
“Gentle bank, and I’ll send out a warning,” Lance said, and Hannah slowed and steadied the Lakota’s turn into a gentle curve. Lance had the end of his SCAR pushed down into the brace and he held the rifle’s stock with his left hand, giving him a solid and stable firing position. He held the weapon steady and allowed the movement of the helicopter to drift his point of aim across the vehicle convoy to a spot twenty meters ahead of the lead vehicle. He fired three quick rounds into the road, and even with the convoy driving at a decent speed his rounds impacted well in front of them. It would be hard to mistake the intent of their warning shots for what they were – a clear indication that, if they continued down the road, they were in for a fight.
Hannah accelerated and tightened her turn, and called back, calmly, “They’re firing on us now.”
It took Dan a moment to see the burning red balls of tracer arcing up from one of the trucks. Their rounds were falling well behind the UH72 as to not pose a threat to them – the gunner wasn’t giving them enough lead. So there were bandits down there, he thought. And they needed to be stopped.
Hannah pushed both the nose of the Lakota forward and raised the collective to its limit, letting the rotor-blades push through the high altitude air with all the power the engine could muster. The airframe sprinted away from the convoy. Once they were out of sight she kept the helicopter low, but swung to the north and swept over a series of gentle grass hills and reservoir lakes. The skids of the Lakota were barely clearing the occasional row of trees of buildings that sped by underneath them, and Dan could see the occasional hack staring upwards in surprise and apparent anger as they crashed through the early morning skies, low and fast. Both Dan and Lance had trouble keeping track of their current position given the speed at which they were moving and the blurred features outside them that sped by, but Hannah was in control for this phase. She started to slow their rate of advance down and dropped the helicopter closer still to the ground. They were now flying below the height of trees and buildings and Hannah kept their flight-path darting around the occasional obstacle. She lifted the helicopter above a few yards off the ground only to clear a couple of power pylons and then they were spun sideways as the Lakota skidded to a stand-still a few feet above a field of tall grass. Looking out Dan could make out a couple of barns and homesteads and made out American flag near the drive-way to one hanging loosely to the ground next to a long, empty road. A long line of poplar trees warped their way around the buildings and along the road.
“We’re here,” Hannah said, “I’ll slide us out a few more meters when you’re ready. You should have a minute or so to set up before I make the lead vehicles coming into your sight.”
Dan slipped onto the floor of the chopper, feeling a little nervous that he was no longer strapped in but making sure that he put those thoughts out of his mind. You can trust Hannah, and you need to kill Beard. The metallic finish of the Lakota’s floor, designed as an anti-slip measure for the passengers, was perfect in helping him line up and hold his SCAR into a stable firing position. Slowly and gently Hannah eased the Lakota sideways, away from the last homestead and clearing the last of the tall trees. She trimmed the nose of the helicopter and held it in a stable hover barely a yard off the ground. Dan and Lance waited, their scopes glued onto the highway.
It seemed like they had to wait for minutes but in reality, Dan reflected, Hannah was probably spot on with her estimate of thirty seconds. Time had slowed down as they anticipated the ambush and the first truck seemed to crawl out into sight.
“Wait for as many of them in our killing area as possible,” Lance said, focusing on his sight picture. Dan had already anticipated the need to let them exposed all of their convoy before they started to engage.
The vehicle convoy was a shambolic mix of civilian trucks, travelling in a tight gaggle. Poor drills, Dan thought. They hadn’t learnt from last night. Controlling a road move when vehicles were spread out was a lot harder than retaining command over a tight bunch of trucks around you, but the non-existent gap between each 4WD made for a single, large area target. Dan counted around eight trucks slide into sight, with three, maybe four crew-served guns fixed onto the cabs. The occupants were all armed with rifles, too, if the glimpse of barrels were anything to go by. As far as he was concerned everyone in these vehicles had signaled their intent and were now fair game. Hostiles, bandits, everyone of them.
“Stand by, stand by...” Lance said, his voice slow and calm, readying Dan so they could synchronize their opening shots.
“...Fire.” Both SCAR’s cracked into life, firing single rounds repeatedly, one after the other, at a rapid rate. The staccato effect of 7.62mm bullets being punched out of the suppressed rifles was barely noticeable over the noise and force of the rotors.
They followed the standard fire-plan for an ambush. Dan, lying to the right of Dan, started engaging from the far left of the target area and worked his way into the centre. Lance started with the furthest target to the right he could see and likewise walked his fire to the left. While neither man lingered in their aim to observe the effects of their fire they could see the exploding glass and swerving vehicles behind their crosshairs as they tracked continuously sideways, spewing out multiple high velocity, armor piercing bullets every second. By the time Dan’s crosshairs hit the centre vehicle in the convoy he could see the effects of Lance’s fire. None of their rounds had been delivered with pin-point precision, but they had been accurate enough. The convoy had been torn apart in the unexpected and violent fusillade.
“Get those Blackhawks in!” Lance said, speaking for the first time since opening fire. Hannah skidded the Lakota back into cover behind the tree-line. The last glimpse Dan had of the target area was of vehicles swerving and crashing into each other, while a couple of doors opened as alarmed, terrified men tried to make a run for it. At least one of the men manning the machine guns had been thrown from the back of the vehicle he was in. They had taken the convoy by complete surprise, and now intende
d to deliver a coup de grace before they could recover.
“They’ll be here in forty seconds,” Hannah announced. She must have let them know when the attack was about to start and they must have already gone airborne, Dan noted. Hannah’s initiative was proving invaluable.
“Get ready to raise us above the trees when the Blackhawks are close,” Lance said, briskly. “We can give them some cover while they start their run in.”
“That’s us now, then,” Hannah said as she gently eased the collective forward, allowing the helicopter to rise gently, settling into a hover just above the tree-line.
Dan and Lance had remained in their firing positions and reacquired the target area through their scopes. Some of the vehicles had separated from the main group, but they didn’t seem to have a pre-planned response or to have been ready for the ambush. Dan’s sight scanned to the left and settled on a man who was still behind one of the heavy machine guns. While it did look like a.50 cal, they had mounted it to the top of the wagon with what looked like wire and pickets, greatly limiting the potential effectiveness of the weapon. Dan still wouldn’t let them see that for themselves, as he fired repeatedly in the vicinity of the gunner. The slight movements in the helicopter made exact engagements impossible, but he fired enough rounds with enough precision to achieve his goal. The gunner reared sideways as one of his biceps was smashed by one of Dan’s rounds that slammed through the air at supersonic speeds. Another caught him in his stomach, either smashing through his guts or merely winging him Dan couldn’t tell, but he went down spraying a small fountain of blood out of his waist.
Lance called out on his mic “Hold fire.” Dan looked up over his scope, and saw a couple of small objects moving fast over the horizon. Blackhawks. Their path would take them across the trucks at 90 degrees to the line of fire they had been unleashing onto the bandits, and they needed to halt their fire lest their rounds and ricochets distract or inadvertently hit one of the inbound Army helo’s. Hannah pitched the Lakota forward slowly, moving from their hover but allowing them to watch the Blackhawk’s as they lined up on their attack run.
The first Blackhawk reared up over the line of trucks, banking heavily to the right, giving the door-gunner a clear line of fire onto the scene below him. The second Blackhawk hung back a few hundred meters, following the lead helicopter in an identical attack profile. As each Blackhawk banked in turn, Dan, Lance and Hannah could see the door gunners open up in a long, sustained burst into the scene beneath them. The side of the Blackhawks became enveloped in smoke and piercing muzzle flashes while a long, jagged line of tracer rounds carved out a path into the mass of trucks and bandits. It was hard to see any detail but smoke, debris and sparks erupted around the trucks as the Blackhawks zoomed over the line of vehicles and then peeled away. Smoke curled away from a few of the trucks and one in the centre flashed and then became engulfed by a small rush of flames. Whether it had crashed or the fuel tank had been ignited by tracer rounds from the Blackhawk door gunners was impossible to say – Dan was sure that the gunners could take credit for it, though. The damage was complete, and the single gun-run had torn apart the bandits. The vehicles lay smoking and abandoned while men scattered and ran, rifles in hand but no fire was returned. They had smashed apart and routed Drake’s attack before it even materialized.
“Tell ‘em to return to objective,” Lance said, his body still locked in behind his SCAR as he surveyed the scene. “We’ve destroyed them here.”
“They’ve acknowledged and are heading back now,” Hannah called back to them. “Wait – they’ve got eyes on a second group of trucks moving in!”
Shit, Lance breathed. Dan clicked as well. Drake and Beard must have planned their attack as an envelopment. One group would push along the highway; another would approach further to the east. Hannah pushed the Lakota forward and Dan hurriedly clipped himself back into his seat. He returned his eyes to the front of the helicopter and managed to crane his neck forward to see over Hannah’s shoulder.
“They’re taking fire!” Hannah called. Dan could just make out a Blackhawk, a few kilometers away from them, dance sideways as it sought to avoid a line of tracer fire arcing up from the ground. They watched as the helicopter swung violently left and then surged up and to the right, seeking to avoid the lines of tracer that were reaching up from the ground. The Blackhawk suddenly pitched to the left. The tracer fire arced off in the opposite direction and the Blackhawk sped away, untouched. They could hear Hannah release her breath loudly.
“They’re clear and bugging out.”
Without surprise on their side the Blackhawks were outgunned compared to the heavy machine guns on top of the trucks. This second group that had sought to avoid the highway and move on the factory from one of the parallel suburban roads appeared to be a lot more skilled as well as being more heavily armed, Dan noted. They had delivered fast and effective fire against the helicopter. Something inside told him: Beard.
Lance was still scanning the roads. “They’re still a few clicks away from the factory, and they need to move through the suburbs to get within range,” he said, mainly to Hannah. “We need to find somewhere along their route, ahead of them, where we can put in a block.”
“I can’t get a good position to hover in the suburbs,” Hannah called back. “Too much clutter to fly low and get a decent shooting profile.”
“No, I mean a blocking position for us, not you. Get ahead of the vehicle convoy and drop us off, on a roof or a building, or even on the street, and then get out, before they see what you are doing. We’ll fight them at ground level.”
“OK, then.” Hannah’s tone clearly conveyed that she didn’t like the idea. Neither did Dan, but he couldn’t think of anything better at that moment. They needed to regain the initiative somehow, and the 50 cals they had down below were going to chew apart any helicopter that tried to duel with them from the sky.
The Lakota’s speed gave them some breathing space as she powered the aircraft back over the factory, above the Chinooks being loaded and then skirting back down to roof-top level. They didn’t travel far before Hannah dropped the Lakota into a small side-street.
“They’ll see us if we go any further, but we’re still close to the factory, though.” They had next to no ground to yield. Both Dan and Lance slid their heavier marksman rifles into their clipped-down packs, pulling out the lighter 5.56mm HK416 assault rifles instead.
“Drop us here, Hannah, on the grass. Get the Blackhawk’s to put some point defense on the Chinooks in case we can’t hold ‘em back.”
Hannah didn’t answer but gently dropped the Lakota close to the ground. Dan and Lance swung themselves out of the UH72 and moved outwards, weapons raised ready to take on any hacks. Hannah nosed the Lakota over the buildings and then, amidst a hammering of rotor-wash that kicked up dust and stones around them, was gone.
Dan checked his arcs. A few hacks were running, scared off by the helicopter. Dan sighted one through his ACOG and fired twice, dropping it. Lance fired his rifle next to him, engaging a target out of Dan’s sight.
“We need to get to the road. I’ll try and fix them by hitting them from the side; you see if you can flank them from behind. Keep comms, but we need to move now.” Dan nodded. Immediately in front of them was the road that Beard’s convoy would be travelling on. There was a small green belt of grass and the occasional tree between them and the empty street, but nothing that would offer much by the way of concealment. Further to his left there were some thick bushes. He could at least use them to get close to the road and line up some shots. Lacking any other plan Dan started jogging to his spot. Behind him Lance disappeared towards a doorway of a nearby building.
Dan covered the few hundred meters quickly, his heart pounding and his lungs burning by the time he neared his position. He could hear the distant thump of rotor blades over his right shoulder and an increasingly loud sound of vehicles edging closer from his left. Dan slid to his knees and started to scramble into the bushes.
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Fuck! Dan whispered into his mike. Immediately in front of him a ghoul, teeth sneering and eyes wide and dilated, darted to a halt, looking equally surprised. Dan raised his 416, managed to catch a glimpse of the glowing red dot reaction sight and fired into the hack’s head. It dropped, still hissing, with half of its head a deflated, pulped mess.
“You OK?” Lance asked. Dan had forgotten that his radio set would automatically transmit anything he said or even whispered.
“Zed. Surprised me.” Dan struggled to articulate his words over his heavy breathing.
“OK. Get ready.” Lance’s voice didn’t convey any urgency, but he didn’t need to. The bandits were almost on them.
Dan crawled the last twenty meters into the bushes, gaining a line of sight to the road. He stayed low on his guts and positioned himself as best he could underneath the vegetation. His position was far from perfect but it would have to do. The first truck rolled past him, around forty yards from his location. Dan’s head spun a few plans through his mind quickly. He needed to get some HE ready. Dan placed his 416 down in front of him and started to fish his 40mm grenades out of his vest, placing them in a line in front of him. He could cycle them through his M320 faster if he didn’t have to fish around his pouches one-handed between firing. Five High Explosive Dual Purpose 40mm rounds, all dark green and menacing, were lined up with a single 40mm smoke round, a less ominous light grey color, placed slightly further to the right.
“Stand by.” Lance was getting ready to initiate. Dan’s hands reached back out for his 416, then he felt something on his leg. As he rolled over and he felt a pulling and something large and blunt strike at his thigh.
Apex Fallen Page 25
