James Tarr - Dogsoldiers

Not quite three miles ahead was the exit for West Grand Boulevard.

By the time Ed made it up the wide stone steps to the lobby the two soldiers by the southern entrance were dead, mown down in a burst of fire from the charging dogsoldiers. Half the group was taking cover by the main door there, the remainder spreading out through the lobby, checking the other entrances. A few of the people who’d been in the lobby had screamed or shouted, but then they’d just run away.

As Ed passed one of the circular green marble columns, heading toward the south entrance, a double blast shattered all the glass in the entranceway. The men had tossed two grenades under the Growler idling right outside, and the Tabs inside had died before understanding exactly what was happening.

Ed waved at the dogsoldiers and pointed out the doors. “Get their attention!” he shouted. They knew exactly what he meant. Several of the men pushed through the doors and, using the destroyed Growler as cover, began engaging the soldiers on the far side of West Grand Boulevard in front of Cadillac Place. Some Tabs the far Growler as cover, and at least one soldier began firing at them from the lobby of the distant building.

Lydia flinched again at the crump of the explosion upstairs, then the scrawny woman let go of her arm. Petal’s eyes had been on her watch the whole time, but they flicked upward. “Now you can go.”

Lydia took a deep breath and nodded. “Give me thirty seconds,” she repeated to the crowd of dogsoldiers still crouched in the gloom of the tunnel, then turned, pushed open the glass door, and strode through the Concourse.

Her neck muscles felt like vibrating wire, and she kept wanting to break out in a run, but forced herself to maintain a steady walking stride—not rushing, but also not moving slow.

On the far side of the Concourse she pushed through the glass doors and entered the tunnel heading southeast toward the Cadillac Place building. It curved gently to the left, and she was halfway through it before the doors at the far end slid into view.

She fought a renewed impulse to break into a run and tried to keep her stride steady, her face neutral. As she neared the bank of doors she didn’t immediately see anyone, but there was a lot of glare off the glass. She could hear gunfire, but it was distant.

The doors into the underground level of the Cadillac Place building were secure. She grabbed the ID badge on the lanyard hanging from her belt and briefly panicked, wondering if the soldiers might have disabled the locks once the shooting started. But when she held the card against the reader the lock buzzed, and she pushed the door open.

She paused in the open door and looked around the space. Sometimes there was a soldier stationed—or hiding out from his superiors—in the lower level, but the subterranean lobby had been clear of them on her way over, and it was clear upon her return. She pulled the pistol from her waistband and held it down along her leg in a sweaty hand, hearing impossibly loud gunfire upstairs.

Lydia had walked down the tunnel; the men of Kermit and Yosemite had jogged as fast as they’d been able under their burdens, and she’d been standing there just ten seconds with the pistol in her hand when they appeared in the tunnel behind her. She waved them on, and when the first soldier reached the door she was holding open she moved to a second locked door and opened that, then a third, so the men could flood out of the tunnel more quickly.

“Give us a minute, we’ll call you up,” Barker told her, panting from the stress and exertion. Lydia nodded.

The men of Kermit and Yosemite pushed up the stairs toward the ground-floor lobby of the Cadillac Place building. The gunfire grew louder as they did. They came up behind and to the side of the four soldiers stationed in the building as they fired across West Grand Boulevard at the dogsoldiers in the Fisher Building. The soldiers’ shooting had scared away any civilians, so there was no one to warn them. The four Tabs fell where they stood, only one of them reacting fast enough to even turn toward the guerrillas coming up behind them.

“Theretherethere!” Barker shouted. He’d spotted a Tab on the far side of the boulevard, hunkered down behind a jersey barrier, hidden from the Fisher Building but completely exposed to their position. One of his men with a scope on his rifle steadied it against a door frame and took the man down with one sixty-four-yard headshot.

Barker and Chan scanned the boulevard left and right but didn’t see any other Army soldiers, and the immediate lobby of their building appeared to be clear, at least for the moment. The lobby around them was an exquisite display of neoclassical architecture, a fact which was wasted on every man there.

“Grab that chick!” Barker shouted to one of his men, pointing down the stairs, then got on the radio. “Nakatomi, Nakatomi, this is SkyBox. Your front door is clear, at least for right now.”

“Nakatomi, Nakatomi, this is Cambridge,” Brooke’s voice over the radio was clear. “We are in position east and west. Go do your thing. Shit—!” The radio transmission cut off, but not before they heard a burst of automatic fire. Barker and Chan exchanged worried looks.

Brooke nodded to young Robbie and left him at the mouth of the tunnel, then followed Rico with the rest of Sylvester to a nearby stairwell. They trudged up from the basement to the second floor, the long-vacant building dusty and echoing and dim, then moved down a short hallway. They stopped at a set of glass doors, on the far side of which were more plywood panels screwed into place. On the far side was the pedestrian walkway leading to the New Center One building.

“It’s all ready to go,” Rico said, gesturing at the wood panels. “You can rip two of them off real easy, they’re barely held on.”

“What about at the other end?” someone asked.

“Same thing. Just kick ‘em and they’ll pop right off, the two on the right. But then you’ve got the whole building to cut across. There’s usually at least one soldier wandering around either the first or second floor, sometimes a lot more. And there’s gonna be a lot of people.”

“Right.”

Brooke was as tense as she’d ever gotten, her stomach cramping. So much was riding on this, it wasn’t just a simple assault on a building. She checked her watch. “Any minute now.” The rest of their squad checked their weapons for the twentieth time and shuffled nervously.

They all paused as they heard static erupt from their radios. Brooke cocked her head, listening intently, and just a few seconds later heard a double click.

“That’s Robbie, he’s on the way. They’re on the way!” she said, a little too loudly. She nodded at the plywood sheets. “Pull those fucking things off.”

By the time Sylvester’s young runner arrived from the tunnel mouth the plywood sheets were on the floor. One of the men helped him into his backpack, then the squad was surging into the walkway. They jogged over Lothrop Street, nothing moving and nobody visible on the street beneath them, and stacked up on the far side. Rico had stayed behind and disappeared from view.

The squad stacked up on the sheets of plywood, and with two kicks each they went down. Brooke figured they wouldn’t have to go looking for the Tabs, and she was right—not fifty feet into the New Center One building they were spotted by a woman, and she screamed. It was followed up with more screams, shouts, people running, falling down.

The building was constructed like a number 8, with two open atriums divided by walkways on each floor. There were more shouts, then gunfire off to her left. She jerked her head around and saw a soldier on the far side of the atrium, on the same floor, staring at them in shock. He shot again, then went down under a barrage of return fire.