James Tarr - Dogsoldiers

“Yeah, I can hear it,” Ed murmured, mostly to himself.

“Second one’s curving off, heading this way. Dropping down.” Mark paused, and his voice got a little tight. “Coming straight in.”

George snapped his fingers loudly and started barking orders quietly. “Away from the windows. Grab the sheets but leave the rest of your shit. Basement, into the basement.” He looked at Ed. “One house or two?” He was worried about one rocket taking out the whole squad.

“One. We can double up on the heat blankets, and we’ve got a wet mattress up there in the middle of the floor that might as well be lead for as well as they can see through it.”

“Me,” Cornwell, said, as he banked the big helicopter around, “I’d head south, where no one expected me to go, and then circle around back north when they got tired of looking for me.” He lost altitude and speed. “Hit the thermal.”

“I hate this shit,” Marsh, the copilot said, flipping on the Forward-Looking Infrared. “We’re going to get a missile up our ass and there won’t be a goddamn thing I’ll be able to do about it.” Under five hundred feet the helicopter’s automatic missile defense systems just didn’t have time to react to an incoming bogie.

“If these cocksuckers had a missile Eleven’d be a smoking pile of slag,” Cornwell said. “Just ask Evancho.”

“Jesus, Mike.”

“I’ve got movement,” Mark called down, not as quietly as he should have.

“What?” Ed was watching his men scramble into the small house’s basement.

“Next street north, between the houses. Someone on foot.”

“Fuck.”

“Wasn’t in a uniform. Probably a local,” George reassured the squad leader. “Besides, Army’ll be in armor when they roll up. And numbers.”

“Shit.” But George was right. “Come on down,” Ed called to Mark. “I don’t want you spotted.” The freight-train rumble of the Kestrel was getting louder and louder.

They left most of the gear piled on the floor in the dining room and kitchen and crouched in the cool basement shadows, every man in the squad staring upward with concern. They’d pinned the heat blankets up to the two-by-twelve floor supports above their heads, overlapping them as much as they could.

“FLIR’s fucking useless this time of day,” Marsh reminded his pilot.

“It’s useless during daylight this whole time of year, but sometimes you get lucky,” Cornwell responded. He floated the Kestrel two hundred feet off the deck, running straight south at barely thirty knots. Unlike some areas of the city, most of the houses here were still standing. Roof after sun-baked roof disappeared underneath the nose of his ship as the FLIR’s computer examined the thermal images it was receiving. If any of them were identified as having human profiles an alarm would sound. At this altitude the FLIR could only scan a fifty-foot-wide section of ground, but to a certain extent it could see through walls. During wintertime the thing was absolutely amazing, but in warm weather the FLIR had definite problems. During the summer the average house absorbed so much heat most of the flight crews doubted the scanner’s brain would ever be able to identify a human silhouette amidst all the thermal clutter. The copilot stared at the murky blotches on his screen and shook his head. Waste of time.

“Coming back again.”

There were muffled groans and Ed, hunkered on the basement stairs, stared upward unseeingly at the stairwell ceiling. The drywall was bubbled and stained parchment yellow. He could hear the throbbing roar as the Kestrel swung around for another pass. The chopper was running low, he could tell that just from the sheer volume of noise. Really low, and slow. The whole house had rattled on the bird’s first pass and Ed’s hair was grey from the dust that drifted down from the deteriorating drywall.

The squad below him nervously fingered their weapons in the darkness. The basement had two narrow windows near the ceiling, but the lawn outside was so overgrown hardly any light reached the cracked panes.

“I hate this shit,” Jason heard Weasel say in the dim light. He could see a faint gleam from the skinny man’s eyes as they stared upward. The small basement echoed with the sound of coughing, shuffling feet, and the clink of metal on metal. It began to grow thick with the smell of unwashed bodies.

“Is this asshole flying between the houses?” Mark said loudly, as the roar of the helicopter once again began to shake the small bungalow.

“He’s trying to draw fire,” Quentin observed.

“I’d like to oblige him.”

The clattering rumble of the helicopter came closer, and closer, and then began to fade.

“That wasn’t as close,” George said from behind Ed, crouched halfway down the basement stairs.

“No,” Ed agreed. They waited in silence as the helicopter put distance between it and the small residence, then turned and came back for another pass. This time it was obvious to every man in the squad that the helicopter wasn’t coming as near.

“Moving away,” Ed breathed in relief. He sat on the top step and stared down at George and Quentin, half in shadow at the bottom of the stairs, as the helicopter made pass after pass.

“Anybody got a cigarette?” George asked over his shoulder. That got a lot of laughs. They hadn’t seen any tobacco in months.

Weasel shuffled into view at the bottom of the stairs. “Here.” He tossed something at George, who caught it reflexively, then stared in amazement at the pack of cigarettes in his hand.

“Where the fuck did you get these?”

“Spoils of war, my man,” Weasel said. He was more excited about the three boxes of 9mm NATO ammunition he’d found inside the IMP. The 150 rounds would be enough to fill five of his MP5 magazines. He’d still have about six empties, but it was better than nothing.

“You grab any steak or chocolate while you were shopping?” Mark asked him. He hadn’t smoked in years and wasn’t about to start. Food, on the other hand….

George extracted a cigarette from the pack and stuck it between his lips, then dug around in his pockets. He finally found a battered Zippo which reluctantly ignited after half a dozen flicks. He sucked down a lungful of smoke with gusto, held it in until his face started to turn red, then blew it forcefully toward the ceiling.

“Toss me one a them.” Early’s drawl floated up from the darkness. He replaced Weasel at the bottom of the stairs.

“You smoke?” Ed asked him. Early gestured at the cigarettes in George’s hand. George tossed him the pack.

Early hefted the pack. “This ain’t smokin’,” he said derisively. He pulled one out and held it up for them to see. “But unless somebody liberated some Churchills it’ll have to do. I’d kill for a Partagas or Arturo Fuente.” He jammed it between his thin lips and handed the pack back to George. Early’s Zippo looked like it had been driven over by a tank—twice—but the flame sprung up yellow and bright with just one gentle roll of the wheel. George gave Early’s lighter a dirty look.

Ed watched the two men blissfully suck down nicotine. “You know,” Ed told them, “those things’ll kill you.” A grin he couldn’t fight split George’s face, and he shook his head. The chuckling that rolled up out of the basement warmed Ed’s heart in a way he hadn’t felt in months, perhaps years.

“Echo Two-Eight, Hotel.”

“Go ahead Two-Eight.” The Major sounded resigned to having a bad day.

“We’re rolling up, Hotel.”

“Roger, keep your eyes open.”

“Echo, this is Lima Twelve, over.”

“Go ahead Twelve.”

Cornwell watched the small column through the armored window at his feet as it wound its way through the littered streets toward the smoking Growler and stationary APC. “It’s two blocks up and on your right. You’re aiming for the smoke. I’ve got no movement and nothing on thermal. You can take that for what it’s worth. Eleven and I are on station at five hundred. Over.”