James Tarr - Dogsoldiers

“Sir?” His S3 looked at him.

“Washboard. I need to see it. Get me a vehicle.”

“Sir, I don’t—” his S3 started to say.

“I don’t want to hear it, Mike,” Parker spat. “It’s all over, they’re long gone, and I want to see just how bad it is. You told me your men have cleared all the buildings up there.”

“Yes sir,” Chamberlain said, nodding curtly, “but we’ve got to get you some plates and something more than a Growler to get you up there.” He bent over and got on the radio. The mood in the OC was somber. While there were still a few scattered elements in contact with the enemy around the city, most of the fighting was over. Washboard had been cleared. And… it was bad.

Five minutes later Chamberlain straightened up from the comms center. “Sir, we’ve got your escort. You’ll be riding in an IMP.”

“So we still have one left?” Parker said bitterly. “Good to know.”

Fifteen minutes later Parker was sitting in the back of what he all too painfully knew was one of but three undamaged IMPs in the city. Three. He had just four undamaged Toads, and surmised the only reason he had that many was because those four had never left the base. The armor plates on his chest and back were uncomfortable, and while not unfamiliar, it had been a while since he’d needed to wear armor. It was another reminder of how things had fallen apart.

He glanced around the cramped passenger compartment of the IMP. Three troops in full armor with M5 carbines were his security detail. Chamberlain was with him, as was his Political Officer. As the bad news kept coming Captain Green had said very little as the attack progressed through the morning, which concerned and unnerved Parker, but he did his best to remain stoic. His S2, Major Cooper, remained at the Ops Center, coordinating what forces they had left. The troops stationed at the roadblocks and checkpoints and food distribution centers around the city had all been pulled back to Echo Base.

The IMP was accompanied by a Growler front and rear and the short column was very carefully proceeding north toward where everything had started. Where the guerrillas had suckered him in.

Parker had his convoy stop at what his people now told him they believed to be the site of a truck bomb on Cass, just south of the New Center area. As he and his security detail got out of the armored personnel carrier, Parker looked over in time to see his people uprighting an IMP that it been flipped over by the blast. The vehicle itself appeared whole, but he was told that most of the men inside it suffered serious head trauma and two had died from the impact force. They’d already been attacked by snipers at this location so they were very paranoid, with men on lookout everywhere, rifles up, and several soldiers manning the roof guns of vehicles. A Toad sat in the middle of the road, main gun pointed outward ominously.

Parker moved among his men, exchanging a few comforting words with the wounded, assuring the angry that “We’re going to get these fuckers”, but his heart wasn’t in it. They’d suffered a huge loss. All of his aircraft, more than half of his armored vehicles. He wouldn’t be surprised if when he made his after action report to General Barnson he’d be relieved of command.

But that was in the future; now he had to see to his men, see if there was anything else he should have done, or could still do.

“Okay,” he told Chamberlain, “run me up there.”

“Washboard?” his S3 asked. “TV station?”

“Yeah,” Parker said tiredly.

“Sir, I’m still not sure…”

He glared at his S3. “Mike…” he said.

Chamberlain didn’t relent. “Sir, it’s just that we’ve cleared all the buildings, and didn’t find any guerrillas—” his eyes shot to the Political Officer, “traitors left alive, but there are so many rooms, so many corners, that its possible there are some still hiding out in the area.”

Parker rolled his eyes. “You know as well as I do that they’re all gone. Do we know, do we have any idea how they did that? Where they went? We’ve got units chasing a few stragglers down, but those drones and satellites never spotted much more than a squad’s worth leaving the area.”

“Yes sir,” his S3 told him, “we think we’ve found where they went, how they got in and out of the area undetected.”

“Don’t tell me it’s another fucking tunnel,” Parker said. From the expression on his man’s face he knew he’d guessed correctly. “Goddamnit,” he swore. He thought for a bit. “All right,” he said fatalistically, “take me up there.”

What he knew he needed to do, he realized as he climbed back into the IMP, was submit his resignation. He didn’t know if it would be accepted, they were too short on bodies, but he’d obviously seriously failed his country and his commanding officers by failing to predict, defend against, and properly respond to this enemy attack.

Several minutes later the driver of the vehicle called back to him. “Sir, did you want to check out Foxtrot element here?”

Parker stood up and moved forward. He peered out the narrow block windows. They were on Cass Avenue just south of West Grand Boulevard and he could see the remnants of the Foxtrot armor element on the street before him. They’d been hit by explosives and a hail of Molotov cocktails and all of the vehicles were black and half-melted. One tank had evaded the attack, at the cost of one tread, but if he remembered correctly everyone else in the column had been killed. He’d already seen video of this site from the drones when he’d had them do a low-altitude street-level fly-by. It had looked nightmarish through the drone’s camera and it looked even worse in person. “Negative,” Parker told the driver, “just take me to the broadcast facility.”

“Yes sir.” He drove down West Grand, and Parker peered out the slot windows as well as he could. The buildings to either side showed some damage, but it wasn’t as bad as he feared.

The soldier parked the IMP directly in front of the main entrance to the Fisher Building. Three minutes later Parker, Chamberlain, Green, and the protective detail of soldiers were on the eighth floor inspecting the broadcast facilities. There was the smell of ozone and burning plastic in the air. The control boards were just a mess. “Did they shoot it?” Major Green asked Parker.

He nodded. “Quite a bit. Looks like they had a lot of fun.”

Chamberlain walked in from the other room. “They shot the shit out of the cameras as well.” He stared down at the trashed control boards and made a face.

“How long will it take to get this repaired, and the cameras replaced, and the Voice of the People back on the air?” Green asked.

Parker and his S3 exchanged a look. Chamberlain told the Political Officer, “They might have a few spare cameras, but this board… they’ll have to rebuild it. Even if they have or can find all the parts they need, and we can find someone with the electrical engineering skills, it could be a week. If we don’t have the parts….”

“That’s unacceptable! The people need guidance! We need to manage information and opinion about what happened today.”

“Are you an electrical engineer?” Chamberlain asked her.

“Well… no,” she said, vaguely offended by the question. She had a dual degree in sociology and gender studies. Only stupid people worked with their hands.

Chamberlain gestured curtly at the bullet-ridden control boards. “Umbrage won’t fix these,” he told her, ready to lose his temper. They’d lost a lot of good men, and this pudgy, lazy, condescending… he took a deep breath, closed his eyes for a three count, then looked at the Political Officer and smiled. “We’ll do our very best,” he assured her.