Midnight Skills

by William Allen

  He was amongst the dying men in a few steps, and he didn’t waste bullets on the bleeding forms before he focused on his next target. He didn’t need long to spot his next victims.

  Where Luke had ricocheted one of his grenades into the faces of a half dozen enemy soldiers, he now saw one of the still-mobile Cougars maneuvering to cover the wounded. A few were motionless, dead or unconscious, but several others continued to scream and beg for help. Backing toward them, Luke knew the driver was moving with the likely intent of rendering aid. Hunkered down in a pile of bodies, swapping magazines for his M4, Luke felt a nasty, inhuman grin split his features.

  “See the truck trying to play medevac? Leave it for me,” Luke broadcast. After receiving multiple ‘Roger’ responses, Luke began his low crawl across the road and toward the massive armored truck, just now popping open its rear doors and deploying a two-man security team. Keeping his head down and adjusting his sling, so the carbine rode close to his chest, Luke closed the distance in a series of sprinting crawls. He was totally vulnerable at this point, visible not only to the guard covering this side of the MRAP, but also to any soldiers who happened to be looking out the narrow side windows on the vehicle. Luke gambled his life the guard was too distracted by incoming fire to pick up the movement, and the windows on this truck were too high off the ground to allow for observation.

  The crossing took one minute. Sixty seconds of nerve-wracking, careful motion as Luke acted like a tiger stalking his prey, while gunfire cracked and popped only inches over his head. While his body worked, his mind raced through possible scenarios given the situation.

  After seeing the results of Corporal Mansour’s failure to respect Mr. Hand Grenade, Luke remained leery of the small but deadly little devices, but he did find the time to read the U.S. Army Technical Manual before acquiring these latest two he carried for his own use. The M67 had a four second fuse, and Luke knew better than to try the Hollywood stunt of ‘cooking’ off that fuse. First, though, he needed to neutralize the two guards.

  Luke considered the kukri, but quickly dismissed it when he palmed the Springfield and eased up on one knee, hugging the metal hull of the Cougar. His motion must have triggered the nearest guard’s peripheral vision, for the man began to swing his shouldered M4 in Luke’s direction, but he was behind the curve in the OODA loop. The guard died somewhere between the Observe and Orient stage of the exercise, taking two rounds from the .45 under the chin. Luke stood smoothly and placed two more rounds into the face and goggles of the second, offside, security man, who only had time to turn when his partner fell. Luke didn’t see a medic yet, and figured the man was still getting his gear together.

  “No time like the present,” Luke murmured to himself, and he took a quick look around, scanning for more enemy troops. He saw none close, even as the firing intensified.

  Dropping the still-smoking pistol back into its holster, Luke plucked one of his hand grenades from the secure pouch on his chest rig. He flipped off the safety clip, withdrew the cotter pin with the thumb and forefinger of his left hand, and pitched the green spherical fragmentation grenade high and straight through the nearest of the two open doors. As soon as the metal ball left his hand, Luke shoved the nearside door shut and dropped to the asphalt. He landed on one of the still-writhing wounded soldiers.

  “Quit your bitching,” Luke growled. “I’ll get to you in a second.”

  The muted boom of the explosion wasn’t as loud as Luke had come to expect, but the thin stream of smoke wafting out from the still open door on the other side quickly grew in intensity, especially after the first body came tumbling out to join Luke on the frozen ground. The man’s blue camouflaged uniform now showed black with flash burns and red with shrapnel wounds, and his screams quickly rose to drown out all other sounds in the immediate area. Luke saw part of the man’s face was missing, as was one of his hands.

  Drawing his pistol again, Luke nimbly hopped up on the bumper of the Cougar and risked a quick peek inside. He glimpsed the remnants of two, maybe three bodies in the mix of scattered limbs and organs. Nobody capable of resisting, anyway. This scene reminded Luke of something he’d seen before, but by this point in his young life, the choice of which of his horror show memories sparked the recollection was too great to identify in the scant second of viewing. He knew it would come to him later, if he was still alive.

  Despite the blast damage, Luke thought the CROWS weapons console might still be operational. The design was supposed to be robust enough, a buck private couldn’t eat it or fuck it, so Luke decided to take a chance and slid forward into the smoking charnel house of a troop deck. Luke saw the forward-facing setup, recognizing the familiar joystick and low-resolution screen of the Common Remote Operated Weapon Station.

  Luke was nearly inside before a sudden blossom of pain erupted in his exposed left leg and the teen soldier felt like he’d been hit with a baseball bat right below the knee. A baseball bat covered in spikes, anyway.

  Lurching forward again, Luke managed to slide himself inside before reaching over and dragging the second of the twin doors shut. The metal clanged and shuddered, and Luke knew that was the sound of more gunshots impacting the armored door like furious hail. The door latched, but Luke sensed the seal was slightly warped by the earlier explosion inside. The smoke also began to gather in the enclosed space.

  Luke cast about in the murky light of the troop compartment, checking for threats and dismissing the shredded forms of the previous passengers. Dead, or already headed that way. He clocked the hatch leading to the driver’s section when the door cracked, and just as the barrel of a submachine gun appeared, Luke was already firing. He dumped a magazine from the M4 through the half-open hatch and into the forward compartment, ignoring the few ricochets that buzzed fiercely in the enclosed space.

  By now, the wound in Luke’s leg was leaking at a noticeable rate, and the sergeant paused after changing magazines to address the situation. His heavy pack contained a full-on trauma kit, but it might as well be on the moon for all the good it did him at the moment, so he made do with the fat gauze dressing and a dash of QuickClot retrieved from his simple first aid kit. The wound was a through and through, punching out a chunk of his calf and likely breaking at least one of the bones. Felt that way to Luke, anyway.

  Then, using the M4 more as an oar than a crutch, Luke slid across the blood-slicked steel floor, shoving bodies and parts of bodies out of the way while he approached the front of the MRAP. He felt fairly certain he’d hit the soldier in the shotgun seat, but Luke wasn’t sure about the driver until he saw the back of the man’s head split open like a gory piñata. The big CAT engine continued to idle, but the Cougar wasn’t going anywhere for the moment.

  Easing over to the CROWS controls, Luke sank down in the hard-plastic seat and took a few seconds to refresh his memory of the layout. He found the joystick and boom camera controls to be the same as he remembered from what they had at home, and Luke invested a minute in panning around to take in the scene of devastation outside. The jerky motion of the moving camera feed, coupled with the dizziness brought on by his blood loss, made Luke’s stomach lurch, and he fought not to throw up all over the now-cooling corpses at his feet.

  As he sat there, Luke also noticed the ringing in his ears beginning to fade and he could finally hear the radio earpiece once again. Reaching down, he found the switch and sent a call out on the network.

  “This is Shamrock Six, checking in. Can I get a status?”

  “Six, this is Five,” came Corporal Silcott’s almost instantaneous reply. “If your target is down, then we have stopped all five vehicles. Still engaging dismounts, but…you seem to have killed most of them. Still taking fire from the gunports and mounted weapons on three trucks, but we think they are almost out of ammunition.”

  Luke was gratified to hear Dwayne’s voice, and he could see and hear what the corporal was saying. The volume of fire coming from the other three trucks was diminishing even as Luke watched.
Incoming fire, on the other hand, was growing when Luke’s father and the rest of the relief force arrived on the scene and set up their few remaining crew-served weapons.

  Slouched back into the hard seat, Luke continued to pan the camera, getting a feel for the battle space and trying to understand what he was seeing. Now that he had a chance to think, Luke realized the attack, and the reaction by the stormtroopers, didn’t make much sense. As soon as Luke’s squad executed their ambush, the DHS thugs should have pushed harder to fight through the blocking force. The attack from Second Squad was hurried, and the numbers were against them. Five MRAPs with trained troops and all these machine guns should have gone through the blocking force like shit through a goose.

  Then, it hit Luke. The nice uniforms of the men he’d killed. Clean uniforms. These weren’t front line soldiers. They might have polished boots and fresh-issue weapons, but they didn’t strike the young sergeant as any kind of elite fighters, either. They reminded Luke of something else. Bodyguards, he realized with a start.

  “They weren’t attacking,” Luke whispered to himself. “They were retreating. While escorting someone who required a guard detail.”

  Rotating the camera slowly, Luke studied the layout of the other four Cougars and tried to ignore the pain growing in his wounded leg. Now that the shock was wearing off, Luke felt like the bullet-torn limb was on fire. As his eyes took in the arrangement, he concluded whoever was being protected must be in that truck with the shredded wheel, struck in the first few seconds of the attack. The others were arrayed to provide the best cover they could.

  “Gunny, switch to Channel Seventeen,” Luke said, feeling his excitement rise when he thought about who might be in that stranded vehicle. He needed to let his father know, and he still wasn’t sure he trusted Captain Bishop.

  “This is Gunny.”

  “Dad, I think this was a mistake,” Luke said, suddenly pleased to hear his father’s voice.

  “Well, it sure looks that way,” came the bemused response from Sam Messner. He recognized his son’s voice, though it sounded off. Strained, in a way he hadn’t heard since the boy lost his mother. Since Claire died, Sam thought with a wince of pain.

  “No, Dad,” Luke replied with a sigh, reminding his father that for all his maturity, Luke was still only seventeen. “I mean, they weren’t coming here looking for a fight. I think they were trying to evacuate somebody, and we were just in the way. An unexpected encounter. These aren’t experienced combat troops. They’re bodyguards.”

  As Sam listened, he thought about what he was seeing.

  “Middle truck,” Sam said, analyzing in seconds, a scene that’d taken Luke minutes to unravel.

  “Yes, sir,” Luke replied, impressed yet again by his father’s savvy. Shifting in his seat, Luke stifled a wince when he jostled his throbbing leg.

  “Why try to reach me in private? And what’s wrong with you? Are you okay?”

  “I don’t know who’s listening,” Luke confided, and he was telling the truth, just not all of it, as he answered his father’s questions. “And one of those guys got a piece of me when I was boarding the truck. Bleeding pretty good earlier, but I got a bandage on it.”

  “You want me to try to get to you? If your man Silcott can get some covering fire coordinated with Sergeant Garza, I can slip over to your back hatch.”

  Sam spoke in a rush, and Luke knew it was his father, not the seasoned Marine non-commissioned officer, who was speaking to him now. A concerned parent who was terrified for his son.

  “Dad, I’m okay for now. But if you want to end this fight quickly, I’d focus on that truck and shoot the shit out of it. Keep the suppressing fire on the other trucks, but really get that one rocking.”

  “Luke, we don’t have any more missiles left on this side of the perimeter,” Sam explained, and Luke laughed. “It will take time to get more over here.”

  “If that’s a civilian stuck in there, you think they’ll figure out the bullets won’t penetrate, or that we are low on anti-tank weapons?”

  “Point taken. Let me loop back with the major and get this thing coordinated. We sure don’t want them whistling up any reinforcements on top of us.”

  “If you see Major Keller,” Luke responded, stressing the word see for emphasis, “have him contact General Hotchkins. Tell him we got Chambers cornered and need some reinforcements of our own.”

  “Paranoid much?” Sam asked, unable to avoid giving a chuckle at his son, despite the gravity of the situation.

  “Dad, I’ve been in this particular fight for Joplin from the front lines,” Luke said, and he no longer sounded like a teenager. “While General Rayburn and General McMillan were otherwise occupied, I might add. Yeah, they’ve had a lot on their plate, but they could have helped before they did. I’m still not feeling the warm and fuzzies for them. Just be careful.”

  From his long pause, the reticence from certain military commanders, and their willingness to let the various National Guard units bleed themselves, wasn’t lost on Sam Messner. Fucking politics, even when civilization hangs in the balance.

  “Be safe, son. We’ll be there to get you as soon as we can.”

  “Take your time, Dad,” Luke replied before depressing the firing stud and stitching a line of fire across a trio of Homeland troopers. “Like I said, this is kinda what I do.”

  When Luke finally passed out from blood loss and the trauma, he was out of targets and the ammunition tray on the M240 held less than a dozen rounds. Five minutes after that, the hatch popped on the stranded MRAP and slowly, like timid little mice, the men in their high dollar suits and delicate shoes emerged out into the blowing, ice-laden wind.

  CHAPTER 67

  When Luke regained consciousness, he didn’t open his eyes at first, or allow his body to react in any physical manner. He could tell he was on some kind of military cot, he was somewhere indoors in a lowlight environment, and his leg hurt like someone was actively torturing him. Beyond that, he could tell little through his slitted eyes.

  After an eternity of agony that only lasted roughly ten minutes, Luke caught movement from the corner of his eye. He waited, and recognized PFC McKenzie, the medic recruited by Dwayne to Second Squad. Luke barely recognized the young man. He was stoop-shouldered and head-down, but he walked by with a purpose. Luke’s low, almost raspy hiss, caught the medic’s attention and he stopped in his tracks.

  “That you, Sarge? Finally awake?”

  Luke blinked, knuckling his eyes while he sat up gingerly.

  “What’s our status?”

  Luke hated people who answered a question with a question, but he assumed Kenzie’s had been a rhetorical one.

  Kenzie gave a sigh, rubbing his face in turn. In the forty-watt illumination, Luke couldn’t read much from the man’s features other than exhaustion.

  “We’re back in the silo complex,” Kenzie finally replied. “Major rotated us back yesterday, just as soon as we got reinforced. Corporal Silcott’s got us a space back over off the driveway floor, but near the door instead of the pit.”

  “Where am I? And how long was I out?”

  “This is one of the tool cribs” Kenzie gestured around, and indeed, Luke could see the vague outline of hand implements and small machinery lining one wall. “Sergeant Roland got us set up in here as a temporary clinic, while we are waiting on transport. Can’t say much for the décor, but it has lights and usable power outlets, as well as being situated far enough inside that we aren’t freezing. Oh, and I guess it’s been about twenty-four hours since we brought you in.”

  Luke glanced around once again, then gestured for Kenzie to step closer. Now that the medic mentioned it, Luke could also make out the sounds of others, likely more wounded, in the space as well.

  “How many did we lose?”

  Kenzie looked down, then half-turned to stare out at the back wall.

  “Drew’s gone, and so is Cameron. The new guy, Gus, he didn’t make it, either.” Kenzie gave a sigh, then
seemed to rally as he continued. “Eddie caught one in the side, but he should recover. Frank’s got a broken ankle, to go along with that cut I sutured up earlier, but everybody else from the squad is okay.”

  Now, it was Luke’s turn to look away. They’d lost three, and another three wounded. Granted, two of those were newbies, on loan from Major Keller, but still, the news felt like a kick in the nuts. He now had a squad with three effectives. Dwayne, Abbie, and Kenzie. Not even enough to mount a guard rotation.

  “Eddie and Frank, are they in here too?”

  “Yeah. In fact, I tried to keep us together in here, so Frank’s got the next bay,” Kenzie gestured, past Luke’s head, “and Eddie is in the one after that. You got the first bunk in, past the door. We’ve got five more in here, wounded from the other squads.”

  Luke nodded, dully absorbing the information. Then he thought about his other friends.

  “David and Angel?”

  “Not a scratch on either one of them, though I don’t see how. They went with your father to get you out of that truck, and not all of the Homeland thugs were dead yet. Looked pretty hairy, but your father, man, that guy’s scary good at this stuff. Fighting and killing, I mean.”

  “Yeah, he’s a beast when his dander is up,” Luke agreed with a dry chuckle, then winced, his leg reminding him of why he was laying on a cot in the first place.

  “How bad’s the pain?” Kenzie asked, once again all business.

  Luke grunted before replying.

  “I’ll live, I guess. Not my first rodeo.”

  Now, it was the private’s turn to offer a little laugh.

  “Yeah, I saw that second bellybutton thing you got going on,” Kenzie pointed out. “How the hell did you survive that? I mean, before sure, but that wound’s only like six months old or so. Our healthcare system has taken a beating since the pulse.”