James Tarr - Dogsoldiers

“Oh shit.” He grabbed a grenade off his vest, pulled the pin, leaned out the window, and heaved it in their direction. He watched it arcing down toward them, but pulled his head back before it blew so he didn’t get hit with shrapnel. The grenade detonated behind the group, and two went down. He stuck his head back out in time to see the rest of the group make it past the corner, out of his sight. “We’re going to have company,” he yelled toward the open apartment door behind him. “Somebody cover the hallway!” Then he looked down toward the hangars.

They’d dropped their backpacks inside the parking garage so they could move faster. The dogsoldiers of RoadRunner fired their rifles as they ran, more to clear the way before them than trying to actually hit anything. A few slowed down to aim and fired grenades at the open doors of the hangars. There were concrete barriers along Bagley Street to prevent anyone from accidentally wandering on foot or by vehicle into the hangar/helipad area. The dogsoldiers climbed and hopped over the waist-high barriers and charged toward the hangars, splitting into two groups, one for each hangar.

Harris was at the front of the left group, running toward the side of the hangar. He drew close to the corner, and one of the dogsoldiers with him popped out and fired a 40mm grenade through the big hangar door. Harris pulled the pin on a hand grenade, let the lever fly, then charged forward and tossed it inside. The second group was doing the same at the other hangar. Most of the air crew were unarmed, and unarmored, and had run for cover either north, away from the hangars, or gone to ground inside the hangars.

As soon as the grenade exploded Harris waved the SAW gunner forward and the man spun around the corner and let loose. A full fifty-round burst, spraying left and right, as the squad spread out behind him in the open door. Harris could see figures moving around at the back of the hangar and heard rounds cracking by his head. The man next to him knelt down and took aim with his Spike. He forgot to check over his shoulder to made sure no one was in the backblast area before firing the rocket, and one dogsoldier was spun to the side by the gases and fell to the concrete, stunned and burned. The rocket hit the side of a Kestrel in the back of the hangar and the bird exploded.

Every dogsoldier armed with a grenade launcher was firing them at the helicopters inside the big hangars. Harris heard rockets firing behind him, at the other hangar. “Go, GO!” he shouted, waving everyone forward. They charged between the helicopters, firing at anyone they saw, until they found themselves at the rear of the hangar. There’d barely been a dozen soldiers inside the hangar, mostly mechanics and air crew, and what few had been armed mostly sported pistols. Harris checked to make sure they were all dead, then turned to the reason they were there. Most of the helicopters appeared to be damaged by explosions, but not all.

“Who’s got hand grenades? Everybody else out to the door, cover us. Grenades, one per bird, pick a spot, inside the cockpit if it’s open, if not inside an engine or whatever. Don’t forget to pull your fucking pin.” The grenade currently in his hand he’d picked up off the floor. Whoever had thrown it had forgotten to pull the pin. “I’ll go first, when I run by you pull your pin and do yours, then follow me. Ready?” He lifted his grenade high, then pulled the pin and finger-rolled it into the open cockpit of the cargo helicopter in front of him. Then he began running toward the open hangar door. The other men did the same. They’d almost reached the door when the grenades began exploding, and he dove around the corner of the building as a grenade caused some sort of sympathetic detonation in one of the Kestrels. The blast sent fire out the open door and forced a rent in the roof.

He looked across the concrete and saw the other group at the second hangar. He waved to get their attention just as he saw them beginning to run away from their target. The crump and flash of grenades inside the far hangar made him smile. He did a quick count. It looked like they were down at least one man.

“Let’s go! Get the fuck out of here!” he shouted, but it was unnecessary, everyone in RoadRunner was heading back south toward the apartment building. He became aware of bullet cracks above his heads, rounds whipping back and forth between the soldiers behind him and Eagle Eye ahead of them, providing covering fire. Most of RoadRunner was over the barriers and across the street when the Toad rounded the corner at the end of the block.

“Contact right!” Harris screamed.

The M240B belt-fed machine gun atop the tank opened up on them, and the dogsoldier in front of Harris stumbled as he was hit. Harris grabbed him and dove into the entrance ramp of the parking garage, temporarily out of sight of the tank, blocked by the thick concrete walls.

Someone inside the tank got excited, and the main gun fired. The 120mm shell passed between two running men and exploded fifty feet beyond them. The blast was enough to knock them down, and the recoil from the main gun caused the next burst from the M240B to go high. By the time the tank settled the last of RoadRunner was disappearing into the gray parking garage.

The tank swung out wide, the turret rotated, and when the main gun was reloaded the tank fired. The 120mm HEAT (high explosive anti-tank) round impacted the front of the parking garage, which erupted with a roar, then collapsed.

The Toad could not fit inside the parking garage or climb over the pile of rubble, and buttoned-up inside the sixty-ton beast, looking at viewscreens better suited to long-distance engagements, neither the gunner nor the commander of the tank could see well into the dimness of the dust-filled parking garage. The M240B raked back and forth, the bullets bouncing around the interior of the concrete structure. Then the tank suddenly reversed, backing rapidly up the road, chewing stripes into the concrete. One IMP and two Growlers roared up toward the corners of the apartment building and began directing fire toward the seventh floor.

When the Toad had retreated a sufficient distance to get the proper elevation, the main gun tilted up and swung over. The window frames devoid of glass made it easy to spot the correct floor.

The Toad rocked, and the brick exterior of the apartment building burst outward in smoke and a flash, the center unit on the seventh floor totally erased.

“Get a drone over there!” Parker shouted, staring at the firefight at the hangars in the feed from one of the security cameras mounted on the outside of Echo. The hangars were too far away, and the resolution too grainy, for him to make out enough details. Figures running, and explosions. The guerrillas seemed to be firing from the nearby apartment building. “How the hell did they get inside the perimeter without getting spotted?” No one had an answer for him. There’d been no alarms or alerts, no vehicles running the checkpoints, so they somehow must have infiltrated on foot.

“Drone up!” one of the operators called out, and everyone moved toward her, eyes on her screen.

The drone was two hundred feet above the ground, swooping toward the action from the northeast, and its wide-angle HD camera provided them a full-color hi-res picture of the action on the ground. Parker saw flame and towering columns of smoke pouring from between the two hangars. Behind him he heard his S3 on the radio, ordering troops to the area. The command center was a maelstrom of figures running back and forth and loud radio traffic.

“There!” Parker said, pointing. He’d spotted a group of dogsoldiers between the hangars. As the drone flew through thick black smoke and out the other side he lost sight of the men for a second, but then they were back. Running now, heading south, toward the nearby parking garage. Next to it was an apartment building, and halfway up the building he saw missing windows, and muzzle flashes.