James Tarr - Dogsoldiers

George’s eyes slid over to look at Ed. Then he rolled his eyes. “You never did listen,” he said, his voice little better than a croak.

“Who gives the orders here?” Ed said, trying to smile, but it died on his face.

George saw the effort. “Had a good run,” he croaked. “Been fighting… since day one. Did… my best.”

“You did,” Ed agreed, nodding.

“I’m sorry… I…,” George said, and then was gone, eyes forever fixed at something far ahead.

“Fuck,” Ed sobbed, tears dropping onto George’s body. He sucked the snot back into his nose and wiped his face, blinked his eyes to clear them. He turned to Mark. “You hit?”

Mark made a face. His one leg was covered in blood below the knee, but it was dried blood. And there didn’t seem to be any other blood on him, although the Hawaiian shirt didn’t make it easy to spot stains. “Well, yes and no. Fifty, right in the edge of my plate. Bent it like it was tinfoil, think I’ve got a couple broken ribs. Was trying to catch my breath. Pretty sure I can walk.” He looked to his SAW, the barrel still smoking. “SAW’s done for. Took a round in the feed tray.”

Ed nodded, and coughed to clear his grief-constricted throat. “Take George’s carbine, he loved that thing. And some mags.” He began going through George’s pockets and the pouches on this gear, looking for whatever they didn’t want the Tabs to have. He unstrapped the sling from George’s Springfield AR and slid it across the floor, following it with half a dozen magazines.

Early was well back from the frame and kept to the shadows as he peered out the window toward the vehicles on the bridge. While they were hiding behind their vehicles, there were still a lot of soldiers out there. He sunk back down. “Cap’n, we need to go. And… not that way.”

Ed looked at Early, and the window, and nodded. “We’ll head south,” he said after some deliberation.

“South side’s pretty open, ain’t it, Cap’n?”

“Crossing the road it is, but then we’ve got a lot of buildings for cover,” Ed told him. “Why?” He detected a note in Early’s voice.

“We’ve got us an eager beaver over there on a roof gun,” Early told them.

“Think you can take care of that while I get Mark down to the ground floor?” Ed asked him. “Then you can join us for our dash?”

Early edged his eye past the window frame again and studied the scene. What was that, two hundred yards or so? He looked down at the M1A National Match in his hands. “Give me just a minute,” he said.

Ed looked down at George’s still face one last time, then patted the man’s chest. “Let’s go. Jason, help me grab this fashion tragedy.”

The two men grabbed Mark’s shoulder straps and dragged him out of the room with much groaning, then lifted the man to his feet in the hallway beyond. Jason went back into the room for George’s short-barrel carbine and magazines. A tumult of emotions raged through his body as he knelt by the man who had spent the most time trying to teach him what he’d need to know to survive.

“Jason?”

“Yeah, coming.” He had to put the sling over Mark’s shoulder, the man couldn’t lift his arm high enough to do it himself.

Early heard them go. He’d shot an M1A out to six hundred yards in High Power competition, but the farthest he’d ever shot this rifle in combat was maybe two hundred and fifty yards, and that was at scrambling targets of opportunity. This would be a precision shot. He huffed. Well, then, it was a good thing he’d been shooting a rifle since he was six.

Being careful not to make a target of himself Early looked around the shredded room but didn’t see anything the proper height on which he could rest his rifle. There was always the window frame, but he was not about to go forward and stick the end of his rifle out the window—might as well stick an I’M WITH STUPID bumper sticker on your forehead if you were going to do something dumb like that.

He backed up out of the room, pressed his left palm against the metal door frame, thumb out into the opening, and shouldered the big rifle. He cradled the scarred walnut forend between his index finger and thumb. He flicked off the safety with his fingertip and fought to get the narrow front sight in crisp focus through the rear aperture. His eyes weren’t near what they used to be… but they’d have to do.

Early would have preferred to be shooting prone or off a bench, but standing supported, especially supported against something immovable like a metal door frame, wasn’t too bad. In this position it wasn’t his heartbeat that was the major issue. It was his breathing.

He centered his front sight on the distant man’s head, which was no wider than his front sight, took a deep breath, and let half of it out, willing himself to stillness. He took up the slack on the trigger and watched his sights. There, there was the heartbeat making his sights twitch. His heartbeat was causing the front sight to bob high right, then dip low left, high right, then low left, and after every beat it would pause and re-center.

No need to rush. He took several more easy breaths, trying to slow his heart rate even further, then held his breath, pressed his finger against the trigger, adding about a pound of pressure, waited for the exact moment, and then pulled through the final pound of trigger weight in-between heartbeats.

The big rifle bucked in his hands, the empty case bouncing off the opposite side of the door frame, but his sight picture had been perfect, the trigger had broke clean—he knew it was a good hit even before he looked across the street and saw the speck of a man slumped face down behind the belt-fed.

Early didn’t have time to admire his work, but even so he was truly delighted with the shot, and scampered down the stairs like a much younger man. He was surprised there was no return fire. Perhaps, because it was just a single shot, they weren’t sure from where it had been fired.

“We good to go?” Ed asked as Early reached them. Mark was standing on his own but the pain was causing him to make faces.

“For the moment,” Early said. “They’ll probably want to stick somebody else up on that gun but we’ve got a tiny bit of free time.”

“We’ll go across the road two-by-two,” Ed told them, “and then bounding overwatch on the far side between the buildings.” He nodded at Mark. “I’ve got him, you two go first.”

Jason and Early were crouched low running across the narrow grassy median when a few wild shots cracked above their heads from the cluster of Tab vehicles. Jason hunched lower and ran faster, but the gunshots caused something unexpected.

Right in front of them was a low wall enclosing a parking lot and right before they reached it the Tab who’d taken cover behind it since his nearby IMP had been destroyed stood up, leveling his rifle in their direction. Whether he’d been hiding there, scared, or looking to ambush someone would forever be the question, but as he fired a quick burst past Jason’s ear the teenager on the run shoved his carbine at the man and fired four shots. Two hit their mark and the man went down backwards, arms akimbo.

Jason was too busy to be scared at how close he’d come to dying. He and Early took cover behind the same low wall, their eyes toward the congregation of Tab vehicles. There was no more shooting, and no one came running or driving their way. After a pause of about a minute, Ed and Mark dashed across the road as fast as they could. The gamut of expressions dancing across Mark’s face made it clear how much pain he was in, but he kept up with Ed. As soon as they were across the road Jason and Early pulled back and the foursome took cover in the alley between two buildings.

“Why aren’t they coming after us?” Jason asked as they waited for Mark to catch his breath. He’d peered around the corner but saw no sign of pursuit.