“Recriminations later, Captain,” snapped Sandoval, fighting the rising panic in her mind. Surely she wouldn’t be blamed for this? “What do you want us to do to assist you, Ventura?”
“What do I want you to do?” came Mulvaney’s voice, heavy with disbelief. “What do I want you to . . . ?” Hacker could almost see the veins on Mulvaney’s head and neck bursting with rage, and he hoped his own were not quite so visible. “Well, Captain Sandoval,” Mulvaney continued, obviously making a major effort to get a grip on himself, “Let’s think about this. Armed insurgents are shooting at my ship and the people on it. Since thanks to your boneheaded orders we can’t get under way and get the hell out of range, and seeing as how you have an armed combat vessel sitting there with all kinds of gun-type thingies that go bang on board, do you think it might be possible, ma’am, for you to, ah, how can I put this? Maybe shoot at those motherfuckers on the beach?”
“I believe it is customary to return fire in military situations, ma’am,” said Hacker with a deadpan straight face.
“Oh, for God’s sake, put Hacker on!” roared Captain Mulvaney’s voice from the radio. Hacker grabbed the hand mike away from the stunned Sandoval without asking her permission. He figured as the senior white male on board he was going to get court-martialed anyway, so he might as well try and save the situation while he was at it.
“Derek, this is Don,” he said into the radio. “Can you tell where it’s coming from and give me any idea how many of them there are?”
“No idea, Don, but there are a lot of the bastards,” said Mulvaney. “Well over a hundred if there’s a single one. Light weapons mostly, a lot of AKs by the sound of them, but also Mike Sixteens and at least a few LMGs of some kind, plus RPGs and God knows what else. Most of it seems to be coming from the dune line about 100 yards in, 45-degree angle or so off the port bow. Can’t see any of them. They must be dug in pretty good. Some of the FATPO guys are returning fire from the deck with their own small arms, so we’re keeping their heads down, but stuck on the goddamned beach like this we’re just sitting here taking it. Even if you could get the tugs in, by the time we got the cables back up and secured, under fire, they couldn’t pull us off because by then the tide will have turned and we’ll be too high and dry. You need to get those guns of yours going and sweep this beach, get Jerry Reb to back off, but you’ll need to get clear of our stern so you can get a shot at them.”
0547 hours: “Sound general quarters!” screamed Meryl Sandoval into the ship’s public address system.
“Ah, ma’am, the ship’s company has been at general quarters for the past twenty minutes,” Lieutenant JG Day reminded her. “The drill, remember?”
“Well open fire, then!” shrieked Sandoval.
“Open fire on what, ma’am?” asked Lieutenant Day.
“They’re using the Ventura itself as a shield, trying to keep her between us and them,” said Hacker grimly. “There don’t seem to be any hostiles on the south side of the beach. We have to clear Ventura and then knock them back off the shoreline. Helmsman, ahead slow. Fire control, ship’s gun stand by.”
“Wait, you have to bring up the live shells from the magazine first,” insisted Sandoval.
“The Mark 75 is already loaded with live shells,” said Hacker. The resultant screaming match over Hacker’s insubordination could probably have been heard on shore had it not been for the gunfire and explosions.
Day interrupted. “Ma’am, Air Dog One is calling. Colonel Westerbrook wants to know if we need assistance.”
“Yes, we damned well need assistance!” snapped Hacker. “Tell him to get his gunships in here and start pounding that damned beach!”
“What do you think you’re doing?” screeched Sandoval. “I’m in command now that General Rollins is . . .”
“Deflated?” said Hacker brutally. “Very well, ma’am, we’ve got air support standing by. What do you suggest they do?”
“Tell them to hold their position!” ordered Sandoval.
“What? Why, for God’s sake?” demanded Hacker, astounded.
“We don’t know how many of the enemy there are, or where they are!” yelled Sandoval. The bridge crew all stared at her.
“No, ma’am, we don’t,” said Hacker gently, wondering if the captain was on the brink of some kind of hissy fit. “If you’ll recall, that’s why I suggested that we recon the landing zone from the air beforehand. That is why we need to get some choppers in the air over the beach, and look down and see how the hell many of them there are, and where they are.”
“Oh,” said the captain, suddenly acutely aware of the fact that she was screwing up and everyone knew it. “You’re right of course, Lieutenant. Tell Colonel Westerbrook to send in his gunships to support the Ventura.”
0548 hours: On the beach most of the media party had gone down in the first hail of NVA bullets, as per Hatfield’s orders, and were now either lying very still on the sand in sodden red puddles or crawling along blindly like squashed and bleeding beetles. Hastings and Bob Baker and several camera crew members were killed outright in the first fusillade. Sue Loomis was hit twice in the back and neck. She tried to crawl out of the line of fire for about thirty yards, and then passed out on her stomach with her face in a small tidal depression, that was slowly filling up with sea water as the tide completed its advance. She eventually drowned before she could bleed to death.
Leonard Posner, to give him fair due, died while trying to do his job. He jerked the camera back up into a standing position on its tripod, leveled it and made sure it was on, and then stepped in front of it with a microphone, his face ghastly. “This is Leonard Posner on Sunset Beach in Oregon. Just now the world was shocked and horrified to witness the death of General Roland Rollins at the hand of the fascist beasts, who are now firing at the men and women of the FATPO and the S. S. Ventura from entrenched positions along the beach here. Somehow or other we have been lured into a bloody ambush. There are bullets flying all around me, but the brave men and women of FATPO are resisting and preparing to . . .” The world would never know what Posner claimed the brave men and women of FATPO were about to do, because at that moment a .50-caliber BMG slug decapitated him, and his headless blood-gushing corpse slid down out of the camera’s view like a special effect from a zombie movie.
0549 hours: Inside the vehicle bay of the Ventura, FATPO Captain Melvin Rogers from Tulsa, Oklahoma crouched behind one of the armored Strykers, looking out and trying to see what was going on outside on the beach. Rogers was a former Marine and Pentecostal lay preacher. He had felt called by God to take up the sword of righteousness and kill his fellow white people in the Northwest in Jesus’ name, so they would stop hating their fellow man. Now, looking around him, he saw that the ship and the decreasing number of FATPO troopers in his command were in serious danger. Two columns of vehicles had been queued up to roll down the ramp and onto the beach like parade floats after Rollins’ spectacular advent. The second vehicle in the left-hand column was an eighteen-wheeler, a full gasoline tanker, and it was exposed to small arms fire from the beach, a head-on shot or a ricochet or even worse, an RPG. “We’ve got to get that tanker truck off the ship,” he yelled to Sergeant Leon Ramos. It did not occur to him to try and raise the ramp to shield the truck from the hail of gunfire, and in any case even if it had occurred to him, he didn’t know how.
“Yeah, man, I see dat!” yelled back the Mexican. “If it goes up inside the deck here we’ll be cooked like fajitas, man! But who’s gonna be fucking stupid enough to drive a gas tanker right into a bunch of flying bullets, essay?”
Rogers didn’t bother to inform Sergeant Ramos that “man” was not the correct form of address to an officer; he understood the situation was a bit informal. “I will,” he said.
“A tracer slug punches through that tank and you gonna be one crispy critter, essay!” said Ramos disbelievingly.
“That doesn’t matter,” said Rogers. “When the Rapture comes, Jesus will take me up into the
sky anyway. But someone has to go ahead of me, to get that Humvee out of the way so I can get the truck off the ship and away from here. Will you take the Humvee?”
“Sure, what the fuck, vato, might as well die out there in the fresh air as in here,” said Ramos with a shrug.
0549:30 hours: In the scraped-out command post Hatfield was watching the fighting through binoculars, which consisted by this point of Volunteers behind the cover of the dunes and some of the trees in the little hiking park plinking away at anything they saw moving on the huge looming decks of the Ventura, as well as FATPO on the decks covering behind anything metal and spraying wild bursts of fire toward the sand dunes. He yelled into his radio, “Mark your targets, dammit, you guys! Straw Bosses, tell your people don’t waste ammo! Fire only when you’ve got something to fire at! You’re just making a lot of dents in the hull!”
“Can we toss out this damned dead Jew now? And when are you going to blow the daisy chain?” Charlie Washburn shouted in his ear.
“Affirmative on the kike toss, and I’ll be popping the top to cover our disengage and E&E,” Zack replied.
“And when will that be?” asked Ekstrom.
“When the copters arrive and open up on us, or else when that Coast Guard cutter quits fucking around and starts plastering us,” said Zack. “What the hell are those swabbies doing out there? Taking a vote?” A black-painted Humvee driven by Sergeant Ramos came roaring down the ramp and onto the beach, rolling over a number of prone bodes of media and fallen FATPOs. “Shit! They’re bringing out their vehicles! They’re going to charge us!” Hatfield yelled. On top of that, he heard the whuppa whuppa whuppa of helicopters coming in fast and low. “Choppers incoming!” Then there was an inarticulate shout from both Washburn and Ekstrom as an eighteen-wheeler drawing a long silver tank lurched rumbling and roaring out onto the ramp.
“That’s it, Zack, that’s perfect!” bellowed Washburn. “Do it! Blow it now!” Zack whipped out the cell phone and flipped it open. He said a quick and silent prayer that the detonation device fitted together by Len Ekstrom in the dark would work and that the charge hadn’t been damaged or disconnected somehow by all the vibration, and he hit speed dial.
0550 hours: The earth and the sea shook beneath them all. Six huge explosions in a row hurled a massive, eccentrically shaped sheet of sand and water a hundred feet in the air. The Ventura’s bow leaped into the air and the ship came crashing back down, an immense tear ripped into her belly that made her forever unseaworthy from that moment on. There would be no pulling her back out to sea now; Sunset Beach was her grave. The unsecured vehicles in her belly were tossed over one another like kiddie toys in a sandbox, and in many cases their fuel tanks ruptured and gushed gasoline and diesel fuel. The gasoline tanker flowered into a bright orange blossom and then a column of fire that leaped into the sky, wreathing the Ventura’s forward decks in flame. Captain Melvin Rogers got his Rapture. He was called up into the sky to whatever Paradise awaits the brave but stupid, and hopefully he was not too displeased by what he found there.
The explosion sheared off part of a stainless steel railing from the Ventura’s forward promenade deck and hurled it high and straight and fast into the air, ripping through the bottom of a FATPO Blackhawk helicopter that was flying over at just the wrong moment. The railing transfixed the body of Colonel Edward Westerbrook, the senior pilot commander of the entire FATPO corps, and pinned him to the back of his seat, killing him instantly. It also severed the control cables in the cockpit. The Blackhawk flipped over and arched downward, crashing and bursting into flames, hurling metal and still-twirling rotors up and down the beach. The other three gunships broke away in panic, also pelted with earth and debris from the IED explosions. One of the Apaches had a main rotor hit by shrapnel knocked off plumb, and it became hard to control; the pilot veered away to the north, radioing to the Higby that he would try for an emergency landing further down the beach out of the kill zone.
0550:15 hours: A number of secondary explosions of ammunition and vehicle fuel tanks began to detonate on the main car deck of the Ventura as FATPO Humvees, trucks, and other items began to pop like a string of Chinese firecrackers. A number of burning FATPOs ran screaming out onto the beach, rolling in the surf to put themselves out. The NVA gunners in the dunes chopped them all down with bursts of rifle and machine gun fire. The Humvee driven by Ramos was still rolling around the beach like a scurrying beetle; an RPG round snaked out from the dunes in a sinuous vapor trail and smashed into its side. The Humvee was blown off its wheels, rolling over several times before coming to rest upside down in a tidal pool.
0550:30 hours: “Madre de Dios, what’s that?” screamed Meryl Sandoval on the bridge of the Higby.
Hacker for once was at a loss for a snappy retort. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “But something big as hell just went up on board Ventura.”
“Jesus Christ, they brought down a Blackhawk!” shouted Day in amazement. “That’s Westerbrook’s bird!”
“Captain Mulvaney, do you read?” Hacker spoke urgently into his radio. “Are you all right? What the hell happened, Derek?”
“Damned if I know,” came Mulvaney’s reply, his voice shaky and dazed. “If I didn’t know better I’d say we were torpedoed, or hit a mine. Whatever it was blew the ship’s bow into the air and we landed on our side. We’re listing to port, almost twenty degrees, God damn it!”
“Damage?” demanded Hacker.
“Sensors say we’ve got fire on the car deck and the crew reports say we have fire on the forward decks,” said Mulvaney. “I’d order abandon ship, but those maniacs on shore are still trying to kill us. Is that beaner bitch planning on giving us any supporting fire at all? Or are you guys just going to eat popcorn and watch the show?”
“We’re coming astern of you now, Derek,” said Hacker. “One more minute and we’ll be able to sight in the 76-millimeter and the starboard chain gun on the enemy positions, and clear that beach of hostiles. Then you can evacuate.”
“I think I just did,” said Mulvaney. “Don’t worry, the boy will stand on the burning deck. Now fuck up those goots for me!”
“My pleasure. Out. Mr. Day, can you make out the enemy?”
“Uh, just a few muzzle flashes in the dunes, sir,” said Day, looking through his binoculars. “They’re dug in real good, looks like.”
“You learn how in Iraq,” said Hacker. He looked at Captain Sandoval. “You see, ma’am, these people we’re today fighting aren’t white trash gangsters and thugs like you said. They’re Americans, a lot of them veterans of this goddamned war without end that Jug-Ears started back in ’01. A few years ago I was fighting on the same side as some of these men. I may even have met some of them over there. They know what they’re doing, and your underestimating them out of politically correct arrogance has gotten a lot of people killed today.”
0551 hours: “Fire control?” said Sandoval.
“Ma’am?” said the E-5 at the console.
“Open fire!” she shouted.
“Uh, open fire where and how, ma’am?” asked the rating, rolling his eyes.
Hacker stepped forward. “Fire control officer, Mark 75 gun, at 800 yards starboard range, one-second interval fire, lay down a moving barrage along the bottom of the dune line, starboard to port from ninety degrees to seventy-five degrees and back again.” He clicked the intercom. “Starboard chain gun.”
“Sir!” came the response from the sailor who was strapped in behind the multi-barreled machine gun.
“On my command see if you can shave about a foot off the top of those sand dunes, ninety degrees to seventy-five degrees, then back again, until I tell you to cease fire.”
“Aye, sir.”
“Gunners, sight in.”
“Sighted, sir,” said the petty officer.
“Fire!” shouted Hacker. The Higby’s single automatic cannon barrel boomed and flame spat from its muzzle, and the starboard Gatling gun began to spew heavy 25-millimeter slugs onto the
shore, tracer rounds leaping from the rolling multiple barrels. Shell bursts on the beach hurled mushrooms of sand into the air.
0551:15 hours: Zack Hatfield shouted, “Okay, move out!” into his radio. “Plan B, Straw Bosses, like we talked about!” The Volunteers hastily abandoned their foxholes and impromptu firing blinds as the Coast Guard shells started slamming into the sand around them, pelting back away toward the road.
On the bridge of the Higby, Hacker heard on the radio “Mama Bear, this is Air Dog Six. I see them, they’re on the move! Must be a couple of hundred of them, moving in and out among the trees and the dunes. They’re abandoning their positions on the north side of the Ventura and they’re moving south. I see RPGs and some belt-fed LMGs, and there seem to be some vehicles on a road leading up to the main highway that have people in back with LMGs and at least one Ma Deuce on a Humvee, looks like that character Hatfield’s famous ride he’s supposed to roll around town in.”
“Air Dog Six, are the hostiles departing the area?” asked Hacker.
“Negative, Mama Bear. They’re crossing the road and looks like they’re covering down in the dunes on the south side of Ventura so they can keep on blasting away at her. I’ll rocket their asses.”
“Roger that, Air Dog Six.”
“Why the hell aren’t they running away?” Sandoval wondered out loud.
0552 hours: The Apache gunship roared over the far end of Sunset Beach, turned in a tight arc and came in on a strafing run, the co-pilot inclining the twin rocket launchers and the forward Gatling gun and sighting in to blast a trench through the middle of the dunes. “Air Dog Four, I’ll do a run and then you do one from the north,” radioed the pilot.
“Roger, Air Dog Six,” came the reply.
Zack Hatfield got on his radio. “Bandits coming in from both sides,” he shouted. “Present arms to the south! Remember, lead them! On my command. Wait for it!” The Apache pilot was no fool and he came in fairly high, almost five hundred feet, and fast. The Gatling gun began to spew death in a steady stream down into the sand dunes. “Now! Rip him!” shouted Hatfield. Streams of automatic and semi-automatic fire rose in flickering plumes from the beach into the sky. One marksman could never have hit the flying machine coming at them at over 150 miles per hour, but 180 guns firing in unison wove a screen of bullets that the copter had to fly through, and Zack could see sparks from the round strikes on the fuselage and bottom of the Apache. One anonymous bullet struck the warhead of a rocket in the millisecond before the co-pilot fired the launcher, and detonated it. The helicopter exploded in mid-air and chunks of hot metal and human body parts were hurled slamming down into the ground.
The Brigade Page 82
