James Tarr - Dogsoldiers

“Remember when they’d have a dozen birds up at any one time?” he asked his backseater. “We don’t even have that many left total.” He scanned his front, then left and right, then his bank of instruments, before starting the sequence all over again. The most pertinent information—speed, altitude, remaining fuel, and weapons status, were illuminated on the HUD of his helmet visor.

“That’s because this isn’t considered a combat zone anymore,” Lieutenant Casey Jenkins said, the very sound of the words distasteful to him. “The war’s out west. Don’t complain too much,” he warned his commanding officer. “They’re talking about shipping tanks to the front, and if it happens helos will be next.” His head swiveled left and right as well, scanning for danger. Minor G-forces pulled at him as the Captain put the bird through a gentle S-curve following the unused interstate.

“I know, it’s just that—” Evancho’s eyes moved up from his instruments and locked on the two vehicles halfway across the secondary bridge less than three hundred yards from his bird’s nose. He was more than close enough to see the rifle muzzles sticking up from the bed of the pickup truck.

“Tangos Tangos Tangos!” he yelled, arming the helicopter’s missiles with a flick of his thumb. He nosed the bird down, centered the orange aiming reticle in his visor’s HUD on the vehicle, and pulled the trigger on his joystick. It had taken the captain only two-point-nine seconds from the time he spotted the vehicles to trigger the seventy-millimeter missile, but instinctively he knew they were too close for a second missile to arm itself in flight before impact. The pilot thumbed the switch back to Guns as he roared over the bridge and released a wild burst from his nose cannon at the lead vehicle. He immediately threw the Kestrel over into a high-G banking turn to come back around. He heard Jenkins grunt through his earphones.

Ed was looking out the front of the SUV at the houses lining the south side service drive when someone yelled “Kestrel!” He looked over and the helicopter was right on top of them, having appeared from nowhere, a missile already streaking from one of the pods under its stubby wings.

“Move!” George yelled at Quentin, as the driver floored the overburdened SUV. Everyone in the Expedition was shoved back into their seats as an explosion behind them pushed the sluggish vehicle forward. A huge roaring BRRRRRRT! filled the sky above them as the helicopter fired a long burst from the electric Gatling gun under its nose. The SUV lurched and filled with smoke and the smell of ozone as a line of thirty-caliber bullets, fired at a rate of fifty per second, ripped through its thin steel body like a chain saw.

Ed got his carbine up and fired a wild burst at the retreating helicopter as he felt the SUV shudder under the impact of the bullets. The vehicle immediately began slowing down, and they’d barely reached the service drive, much less the adjoining sidestreets, but behind them Franklin’s Toyota had exploded in a ball of flame. There was nothing left of the cab but twisted metal and flames shooting ten feet into the air. Ed could only stare at it in shock.

The dive had cost them a hundred feet of altitude but as Evancho pulled the Kestrel out of the hard bank they still had seventy knots of airspeed. He saw immediately the missile had found its mark. The pickup was on fire, not moving, with bodies on the pavement all around it. The other vehicle was crawling along, smoke pouring from under its hood. Muzzle flashes caught his eye, and he heard the tank, tank of bullets bouncing off the bird’s armor. He leveled the chopper out and fought to get the targeting reticle on the second vehicle, finger poised over the trigger.

The missile had penetrated the Toyota’s thin sheet-metal body and exploded in the rear of the pickup’s cab, killing all four people inside instantly and igniting its fuel. Everyone sitting in the bed of the truck had been blown backwards by the blast. John and Tavon had been killed instantly.

Arnold found himself lying on his back in the middle of the bridge, twenty feet from the rear of the burning truck. He rolled over, his ears ringing unmercifully, and saw the Kestrel three hundred yards out in a banking turn. He looked around for his rifle but couldn’t find it.

“Go! Come on!” Ed yelled at Quentin, who seemed to be fighting with the wheel. The Expedition was barely moving at a jog.

“I’ve got it! I’ve got it! You’re going to be okay!” Ed heard George’s strained voice from the front seat.

Ed leaned forward over the front seat, his eyes burning from the acrid smoke filling the car, and saw the front seat was swimming in blood. George was frantically trying to stem the bleeding from Bobby’s femoral arteries. The burst of machine-gun fire had cut diagonally across both the young man’s thighs, nearly severing them both, and into the engine compartment, where the heavy bullets had destroyed the engine. Bobby was slumped against the door, groaning, eyes half closed, pale from shock and blood loss.

“Jesus! Fuck!” There was shouting and chaos from inside the vehicle as the squad saw the Kestrel coming back for another pass while their own transportation slowed to walking speed. Ed fumbled for the door handle as some in his squad began firing at the helicopter.

Arnold saw Tavon crumpled on the concrete, obviously dead, the RPG beside him. He tried to stand up but there was something wrong with his balance, so Arnold crawled over on hands and knees. He wrestled the launcher tube from underneath the young man’s body, fighting the urge to look up at the Kestrel. He could feel the thrum of its rotors in his bones, so he knew it was close.

Sticking out of Tavon’s pack were the grenades themselves, but they were spares. As he succeeded in pulling the launcher from underneath Tavon’s body Arnold saw there was a grenade already in the tube. It was when he hefted the RPG onto his shoulder that Arnold noticed for the first time his sleeves were on fire. He couldn’t feel any pain, and his only concern was that the flames wouldn’t ignite the grenade before he had a chance to fire it.

As he raised his head the Kestrel was right there, coming in low, maybe two hundred yards out. The pilot had overcompensated coming out of the bank and was in the process of leveling the bird out when Arnold put the RPG’s crosshairs on the orange cockpit. He instinctively adjusted for distance, pulling up until the RPG was aimed just above the incoming helicopter’s rotors, and pulled the trigger.

“This is Kilo One-Three, Kilo One-Three,” Jenkins said quickly, keying his radio. He hoped somebody was paying attention. “We’ve got two vehicles with tangos—RPG!” he yelled, seeing the distinctive smoke-trail.

Evancho had just started applying pressure on the trigger when his backseater had screamed the warning. His eyes were still on the smoking SUV, and just for a second he wondered if Jenkins had mistaken the curls of grey smoke oozing from underneath the Ford’s split hood for an RPG’s discharge. Then he saw the incoming round, and yanked the stick, pulling the Kestrel into another hard turn, but that half second of hesitation had been enough. The helicopter’s cockpit glass, while more than strong enough to deflect the occasional rifle bullet, was not designed to absorb a direct head-on hit from an armor-piercing rocket-propelled grenade. The grenade exploded as it penetrated the curved glass, killing both men inside instantly.

Trailing smoke from its shattered windscreen, the helicopter’s momentum kept it moving forward even as the power going to its rotors died. It made a graceful, curving arc straight into the Ditch’s eastbound lanes. The copter hit the concrete with a huge crunch .