James Tarr - Dogsoldiers

George cracked open the Milkor and began reloading it as he issued orders. “Kelly, you’ve got the only other grenade launcher, move down a couple offices so one grenade can’t take us both out. Mark, you pick another office for your SAW, and focus your fire on the roof gunner, that Mk19 is the only real threat right now.”

“Roger that.” Mark’s right leg below the knee was slick with blood, and it was soaking into his boot, but they had no time to attend to the cut.

“Quentin, I want you here. On my signal, you blow out this window, then you get on the roof gunner too. Thank God they never upgraded those things for remote use.”

He finished dumping out the empty hulls and loading the cylinder with fresh armor-piercing grenades, then closed it and adjusted the optic for 150 yards. “Stand by!” he called out, loud enough for Mark and Kelly to hear. Then he took a deep breath, nodded to Quentin, and said, “Go!”

Quentin shouldered his rifle and blew out the window next to George, who turned his head to avoid getting any glass in his face. Before all the shards had even hit the floor George was spinning, putting the stock of the stubby grenade launcher against his shoulder. He leaned his left forearm against the window frame to steady his aim, put the reticle on the center of the IMP, and fired his first shot. He heard Mark open up with the SAW and heard the giant crashing chime of breaking glass.

The first grenade went high, passing over the IMP and detonating inside some decorative shrubs grown wild. George mentally swore, but he’d specifically waited to see where the first one hit before firing a second time. As the IMP jerked forward to evade, and the roof gunner spun his grenade launcher toward the threat, George aimed lower and toward the front of the moving vehicle. He fired again and again until his launcher was empty.

The explosion on the roof of the IMP from his second-to-last grenade was huge—he’d hit the belt of grenades feeding the Mk19, and the entire box had blown skyward. “IMP is down! IMP is down!” he shouted over the sound of Quentin firing right next to him. “Tabs on foot to the north.”

“Weasel!”

Weasel turned from where he was guarding the stairwell. They knew there were Tab soldiers in and around the building, but so far they hadn’t tried assaulting up the stairs. “Yeah?”

Renny was in the doorway of the corner apartment. “I can’t see any of that from here, but I think if I get up to the roof and go to the northeast corner I can do some good.” They’d all been listening to the firefight on the radio.

Weasel nodded. “On me!” He ran down the hall past the old man and toward the other stairwell, the one with roof access. “Carrells, you got anything?”

The young man was posted on the sixth-floor landing. He shook his head. “Not yet.”

“We’re heading up.”

They rushed by him. The stairwell accessing the roof was near the northeast corner. Renny followed Weasel out the door onto the gray roof and looked around, then saw his spot.

“You’re my spotter,” he told Weasel, handing him the Gen 3 Ventus. The Trijicon optic was a combination range-finder and wind reader, but it also had a 10X optical magnification, and Weasel could use them as binoculars.

Renny hooked to the right and dropped prone near the edge of the roof. The end of his rifle barrel was two feet from the roof edge. “There, you see ‘em?” Renny said, pointing, then flipped the legs of his bipod open. For under the rifle’s butt he had a black sock filled with plastic pellets—almost as good as a sandbag, but one-quarter of the weight. He’d grabbed nothing but the rifle, the sock, and extra ammo, one plastic box the size of a paperback book stuffed with twenty additional rounds.

He could hear the gunfire echoing around the city, but what caught Weasel’s eye was the narrow column of black smoke. Following it down he spotted the IMP on a residential street several hundred yards north of the Fisher Building. His eyes were good, but still he had to squint to make out the figures crouching behind it. He knelt on the roof behind Renny. He lifted the fancy Star Wars binos or whatever they were to his eyes. “How far is that?”

“Two-hundred fifty, maybe. You tell me, hit the button on the top, close right, while you’re looking through them at the IMP.”

Weasel peered at the top of the gadget, found the button marked RANGE. Then he put his finger on it, looked through the lenses again at the vehicle, and pressed the button. “Two twenty-seven,” he read. Renny grunted.

In his former spot inside the apartment, the hulk of the Fisher Building parking garage had blocked his view of anything north of Nakatomi. Moving to the northeast corner of his building had done the trick. He still couldn’t see the area immediately north of the Fisher Building, but that didn’t matter since the Tabs were two streets away. He had rubber plugs half inserted in his ears and shoved them the rest of the way in, then settled behind the rifle. He was zeroed at two hundred yards; at 227 his bullets would hit maybe an inch low, which was more or less margin of error for him at that distance, under field conditions. “Ears,” he said quietly, trying to settle his heartbeat and his breathing. He cranked the magnification up to about 15X, which gave him a good balance between zoom and field of view.

He flicked off the safety and squeezed the bag under the butt to raise it. He watched the center of the reticle drop right to where it needed to be, then it rose and fell slightly with his breathing. There were at least two Tabs behind the disabled IMP, firing intermittently at the Fisher Building. Bursts of suppressive fire from Mark’s SAW kept them there.

Renny paused his breathing and gently pressed the trigger, the center of the reticle steady on the lead soldier’s neck, willing his body to stone. The rifle bucked and he automatically worked the bolt. The reticle settled and he saw the man was down, legs kicking. The soldier next to him grabbed him by his webgear and pulled him farther behind the IMP, not knowing from where the shot had been fired.

The second soldier looked panicked, then pressed his hands against the side of the downed man’s neck. They were immediately covered in blood, bright even at that distance. Renny stilled himself and broke another shot. It felt clean. The round took the kneeling soldier where his neck met his shoulder, inside the collar of his armor, angling downward into his body. He fell backward, dead instantly.

“Damn,” Weasel said. There was a third man behind the IMP, but the body of the vehicle mostly blocked him from view. Weasel panned the binos around. “To the right. There’s a Growler. Guy in front of it, behind a wall.” He shook his head, then grabbed earplugs he had in a pocket and shoved them into place. That big rifle was fucking LOUD with that muzzle brake, Jesus. It was like being next to a grenade going off.

“On him,” Renny said quietly. Two seconds later the rifle barked loudly. The soldier fell, thrashing and screaming loudly enough for his cries to carry all the way to their roof.

“You pulled it low,” Weasel said, as Renny worked the bolt.

“Nope,” Renny murmured, not taking his eye from the scope. A soldier ran up to his injured screaming squadmate and knelt down, thinking he was safe as they were both behind the wall and out of view from the Fisher Building. It still hadn’t registered to the men they were being shot at by someone else, somewhere else. Renny fired and the 250-grain A-Tip bullet took the man under his arm, just above his armor. It traversed both lungs and his heart and exited his lower back, the exit wound the size of a baseball. The hydrostatic shock of the bullet’s passing through the man at nearly twenty-five hundred feet per second ruptured nearly every organ in his chest. He fell atop his injured compatriot with his eyes open, dead.