Stephen Knight - Slaughterhouse

The Humvee behind the truck was hit with three Molotovs in rapid succession, turning it into a rolling funeral pyre covered by orange flame that danced in the sunlight. The soldier manning the machinegun in the vehicle’s cupola screamed so loudly that they heard him over the truck’s engine and the fusillade of gunfire. The Humvee accelerated suddenly, its driver probably blinded by flame and smoke. Just before it crashed into the back of their truck, it veered to the left and pulled out of the column’s formation. It slammed into a minivan in the next lane.

The pileup that occurred as a result was a horrendous cacophony of rending metal and screeching tires. While the military convoy had been sticking to the right lane and maintaining an even fifty miles an hour, the civilian traffic in the other travel lane was going much faster. Cars and trucks piled up on each other in explosions of glass and plastic and blaring horns. Rawlings saw luggage fly through the air, tumbling end over end, strewing clothing and personal items across the turnpike and the grass median that separated the eastbound lanes from the westbound.

At the end of her truck, a soldier was hitting the flames with a fire extinguisher that had been clamped to the side of the bed. Another soldier clad in full MOPP gear directed him, waving his arms and yelling, “I’m in charge!” through his facemask.

“Fucking lieutenant,” one of the soldiers near Rawlings said. “Guy just doesn’t know when to shut the fuck up.”

Rawlings was about to ask him how he knew it was the lieutenant when something caught her attention—the throbbing wop-wop-wop-wop of approaching helicopters.

Hueys.

Which only the Massachusetts Army National Guard had.

Major Fleischer watched the small engagement on the ground. He was trying to coordinate an appropriate angle of attack to bring the fight to the enemy when his pilot spoke over the intercom.

“Hey, Major, we’ve got National Guard aircraft coming in.”

Fleischer looked out the canopy and saw four dots in the distance that were slowly tracking toward them. Farther downrange, another four aircraft flew in a trail formation, but their path would take them well past the column’s rear. The Longbow radar system tracked them as well, and the software that drove the system classified the aircraft as UH-1s. That would be the Guard combat support unit that had been stationed at Logan, along with the rest of the Guard assets.

Fleischer knew from the National Guard liaison officer attached to Hanscom that Logan had been in danger of being overrun by the Klowns; hell, the battalion’s Ravens had overflown the airport just yesterday, and it was surrounded by a veritable army of lunatics. If Logan had indeed fallen, then the majority of the Guard forces there had to be written off.

With that in mind, Fleischer thought that the Huey flight’s sudden emergence from the chaos was concerning.

“What was their designation?” he asked. “Bosox, right?”

“Bosox, yeah. But if Logan’s gone tits up, I figure they’re Nosox now,” Smitty said.

“Let’s hope that’s not what’s happened.” Fleischer switched one of the radios over to the channels the battalion shared with the Guard. “Bosox, this is Tomcat Six. Over.” Nothing. “Bosox, this is Tomcat Six. You’re flying into our area of operations. You need to identify your intentions. Over.”

“ Gonna get us some chickenhawks, ” came the response. The speaker was doing his best to imitate Foghorn Leghorn, all while chortling.

Fleischer’s blood ran cold. “Bosox, this is Tomcat Six. Say again. Over.”

“ Gonna get us some BAH-GAAAWK chickenhawks, and you can call me Colonel Sanders !” the laughing voice jeered over the radio. “ I like, I say, I like mine EXTRA-CRISPY !”

The Longbow system calculated that the four Hueys were coming in at a full sprint, making a hundred thirty miles per hour, which would be their maximum speed given the heat and humidity of the day. The Apaches could cruise at a hundred sixty-five miles an hour and sprint at around one eighty-five, so avoiding the Vietnam-era aircraft wouldn’t be a problem. But fighting them off would be. While the Apaches carried a powerful suite of munitions, they were all for use against ground-based targets. The Army had toyed with outfitting Apaches for aerial engagements and had even certified the AIM-92 Air-to-Air Stinger system for their use, but those systems had never been fielded to the attack battalion. The most Fleischer’s people could do was shoot the middle finger at the Klowns in the Hueys.

“Tomcats, this is Six. Red air. I say again, red air. Wingmen, form up on your leads. Stand by for further orders. Break. Wizard, Wizard, this is Tomcat. Over.”

“Tomcat, this is Wizard Six. Go ahead. Over.” Lee sounded all business, even though he must’ve been handling the ambush that was still playing out below.

Fleischer took a second to return to that situation, and he saw a major traffic pile-up was in progress. At least two military vehicles were on fire. Holy fuck.

“Wizard, Tomcat Six. Listen, this is going to hurt, but the Klowns are coming in Guard Hueys. I don’t know what their armament is, but they are airmobile and”—he consulted the Longbow radar data—“less than sixty seconds out. Over.”

“Ah… Tomcat, this is Wizard Six. Understand National Guard forces are coming for us in helicopters. Is that good copy? Over.”

“Wizard, Tomcat. You have that right. Red air is inbound. Over.”

“Roger, Tomcat. Go ahead and take them out. Over.”

“Wizard, this is Tomcat. Sorry to break it to you, but we have no air-to-air capability. Over.”

Lee’s businesslike tone suddenly changed. “Tomcat, this is Wizard. Are you telling me you cannot protect the column from red air? Over.”

“Wizard, Tomcat Six. That is exactly what I’m telling you. Ground-based fires are the only option. Recommend you start slamming them with everything you have. We’ll do what we can, but don’t expect more than for us to cheer you on. Over.”

“Tomcat, Wizard. Not good enough, Fleischer. Get in the fucking fight. Over.”

“Lase them,” Smitty said.

“What?”

“Lase them! Our designators aren’t eye-safe. We might be able to blind them!” the pilot said. “Shit, the Hellfires fly at eight hundred knots, we can probably splash them with those, too!”

Fleischer thought about it for a second. The Hellfire missile had been used in at least one aerial engagement, by the Israelis against a Cessna 152. Of course, they’d only succeeded in killing a wayward student pilot, but the precedent had been set.

“Wizard, Tomcat. We have some tricks up our sleeve, but the timing is tight. Expect some bad guys to get past us. Over.”

“Do what you can do, Tomcat. We’re on it down here. Over.”

“Smitty, bring us around,” Fleischer said.

No sooner had he issued the command than the Apache dramatically slowed while doing a hard pedal turn to the left, essentially pirouetting in the sky until its nose was pointed right at the approaching Hueys. The Apache had six Hellfires left.

More than enough, Fleischer thought. He ordered another Apache unit farther downrange to orient toward the oncoming Hueys as well. They would take the aircraft on the left side of the formation, while Fleischer took the ones on the right. There was no chance of hitting all of them, since they would have to lase the incoming helicopters and shoot at them the old fashioned way. The Longbow system didn’t have air-to-air software mods, so it was either do it old school or call class dismissed.

Fleischer reached for the ram horn grips on either side of the targeting display. He thumbed on the laser rangefinder/designator and slewed the TADS toward the first target, the lead Huey heading toward the column. Using the Heads-Out Display mounted between the two multifunction displays on the console before him, he flicked on the laser. Light invisible to the human eye lanced out and struck the approaching Huey, and the TADS read the laser’s reflected light. Transferring that data back to the Apache’s fire control computer, the system was able to separate the target from its background, and feed that data to the main system bus.