Cris, pleurs, larmes viendront auec couteaux,
Semblant fuyr, donront dernier assaut,
L’entour parques planter profonds plateaux,
Vifs repoussez amp; meurdris de plinsaut.
Cries, weeping, tears will come with knives,
Seeming to flee, they will deliver a final attack,
Parks around to set up high platforms,
The living pushed back and murdered instantly.
The Regency Warehouse was two buildings down from where my group had holed up the night before and turned out to have much nicer accommodations, considering the fact that there were plenty of chairs, sofas, and even a few mattresses in stock. We put a half-dozen people on rotating guard duty, and the rest of us, myself included, slept as much as we could.
I awoke slowly to the familiar feel of someone shaking my shoulder. “Leeland, wake up!”
I saw upon opening my eyes that the sun was beginning to set. Ken stood over me smiling. I had slept the day away. Considering how exhausted the last few days’ activities had left me, I wasn’t terribly surprised. Even after all the sleep I had just gotten, I still felt a little groggy.
“Good grief,” I growled. “Don’t you ever sleep?”
“Not when I’m surrounded by bad guys.”
That got my attention. “What’s going on? Is it starting?” I grabbed my gear, scrambling to strap my weapons in place.
“Calm down, Lee. No need to panic. Just thought you ought to know. Billy spotted Sarah.”
“Where?”
“Come on, I’ll show you.”
We headed to the third floor, where Billy and three others knelt just inside one of three windows to watch the activities around the stadium. Ken and I carefully crept over to join them.
Billy handed Ken a small pair of binoculars. “She’s still out there at the front fence.”
Ken peered through the window. A moment later he offered the binoculars to me. “Just at the edge of the chain link near the entrance.”
Sure enough, there was Sarah at the front of a crowd of people. She had worked her way to the edge of the refugees and now stared out through the fence at a tank that barred her escape. She wore a desperate expression. She had no way of knowing we were there. “Anyone signaled her?”
Ken shook his head. “Thought maybe you should do it. She knows you best.”
“Okay, what do I do?”
He handed me a small mirror. “Don’t let anyone else see you. Catch her attention, then we hold up this sign.”
They had managed to cut a piece of plywood to fit inside one of the windows. Painted on it in black lettering, large enough to be easily seen, was the short message: “10:45 — GO TO VOGLER FERT.”
Ken indicated the setting sun. “You have to get her attention before the sun goes down.” He took back the binoculars. “Get to it.”
Ken turned to watch her through the binoculars while I tried to capture the last rays of the sun in a two-inch square mirror. I played with the angle for a few seconds, shining the reflection on the wall in front of me until I got it right. Then, trying to hold the same angle, I slowly stepped to the opened window and swept the tiny beam of light toward Sarah.
Almost immediately, Ken stopped me. “She sees it. Hold up the sign!” I tucked the mirror in my pocket, while Billy and another man held up the sign.
Abruptly, Ken laughed. “Okay, put down the sign. She got it.”
We dropped back behind the wall. “What’s so funny?” I asked.
“She’s a smart lady.” She saw the sign and signaled back. Two full hands of fingers, followed by four on the right and five on the left. She didn’t want there to be any doubt she’d gotten the message.
“Good,” I responded. “But now we’re on a schedule.” I looked at my watch by the fading sunlight. “We have just over four hours ’til things get crazy here. So how do we get the Astrolite to that tank?”
“I wish I knew. Only thing I can think of is going in through the sewer system and trying to get over to that gutter near the stadium.”
I peeked over the edge again. “That’s still a good ten or fifteen feet away from the tank. We’ve got to get closer than that!”
He sighed. “I know. I’m open for suggestions.”
“Sensei?” Billy sounded tentative.
“What is it, Billy?”
“Um, I think I might have an idea.”
Ken briefed us on what to expect from the tank, drawing what knowledge he had of the Abrams from his Gulf War experience. His opening comments were somewhat less than inspiring. “About the only way you’re going to do any damage to that monster is to time it so one of the charges goes off underneath it in the rear. That’s where the armor is lightest. You can forget about doing any damage to the front. I heard about tests where they fired repeated rounds from a one-oh-five millimeter, one after the other at the exact same spot. It took seven shots, one right inside the other, to pierce the armor in front. We just don’t have that kind of firepower. Even if it doesn’t pierce the armor, though, it will likely blow the treads and immobilize it. Once you see it’s incapacitated, get back to us, and we’ll all go home.”
Ivory raised his hand. “’S’cuse me?”
“What is it, Ivory?”
“Well, this might sound dumb, but… well, I saw this cop show on TV a long time ago where some loony got hold of a tank and was driving down the street. He was runnin’ over cars and streetlights and shit like that.”
Ken nodded. “I saw that show. The tank he was in was an older M-60. What about it?”
“Well, when the cops got to the tank, they just climbed up on top and got into it with some bolt cutters. How’d they do that?”
“The tanks are designed where, if the crew is incapacitated, medics have a way to get in. The old M-60 had four hatches. The commander’s hatch, the gunner’s, and the driver’s are all on top.” He sketched a rough diagram on the wall with a piece of chalk. “With an escape hatch underneath.”
He drew another diagram beside the first. “With the Abrams, they got rid of the bottom hatch. The three top hatches are here, here, and here. This one,” he indicated the left-hand top hatch, “is the only one that can’t be locked from the inside. Instead, it’s made where you can run a lock through the dogging arm and an eyelet. It’s the same design carried over from the old M-60.”
Ken turned back to Ivory. “On that show you’re talking about, the police simply cut that lock and opened the hatch. Unfortunately, our circumstances are different.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because that tank was manned by only one person. He wasn’t able to man the guns and drive at the same time. With a full crew, no one would have ever gotten close to the tank without being shot to pieces.” He searched our faces, making sure that he’d made his point. “Any other questions?”
“As far as a pep talk goes, Ken, this one needs some work,” I quipped.
That got a few chuckles, but Ken squashed them immediately. “I’m not here to cheer you up. I’m trying to make you see that what you are about to try is gonna make last night seem like a cakewalk, and they kicked our butts last night. I want you scared. Because if you go into this scared, maybe, just maybe, you’ll stay alive long enough to get back to your families.”
There was a controlled fury in his gaze. You could see that he hated sending us out there, and that he hated that it had fallen to him to command this mess. But you could also see that he was determined to do the best he could.
“Leeland, pick your squad.”
Team Mohammed left at 8:00 p.m. Billy, Wayne, and I were one fourth of the group of familiar faces I had chosen. I wanted people I knew with me.
Two carried the ice chest of Astrolite, two more carried a wooden crate that Wayne indicated had tools and other paraphernalia we would need, and yet another pair carried the chest of HMTD. The rest of us scouted ahead.
It was our job to find an appropriate place, plant the Astrolite, and draw the tank into our ambush. The idea was Billy’s, but Ken named the team. Since we couldn’t go to the mountain, we were bringing the mountain to us.
The trick was to find someplace close enough to get the tank to investigate without calling in for reinforcements while they left their post, yet it had to be far enough away that we could plant the charges without being seen. Our team had two sets of night vision goggles to help us scout the area, and even then it took us more than half an hour to find our spot.
As with most things in life, we had to compromise. We settled on the intersection of Dullas and South 23rd, a few blocks east and one south of Eagle Stadium. There was nothing special about the location except for the number of potholes in the street.
“Madre de Dios,” Rene muttered, looking with distaste at the poorly maintained street. “Okay, now what?”
Wayne took off his night vision goggles and hung them on his belt. I took my cue from him and did the same with mine. He jerked his thumb at the street, and answered simply, “Now we dig.” And we did.
The potholes were pretty severe in places, as road repair was not exactly high on the list of priorities for the Rejas City Council. We pulled the asphalt out of some of the deepest holes, working mostly by feel in the darkness. Digging by hand, I laughed to myself as I contemplated the irony of the situation.
“Que es… What is funny?” Rene hissed. You could always tell when she was agitated. It was at those times that her Spanish accent was most prevalent.
I shrugged to show that it wasn’t important. Then realizing she couldn’t see me, I explained, “For years we’ve bitched and moaned about potholes. But tonight, if we didn’t have them, we’d be up a creek.”
She grunted and turned back to digging, obviously wishing she hadn’t asked. Rene Herrera had been like that as long as I’d known her. Gruff was the way her acquaintances described her. I found that particular adjective to be a bit of an understatement.
We soon broke through to the soil beneath, digging several of the potholes out enough to hold a beaker of Astrolite. After completion of the sixth hole, Wayne called the rest of us into an open door. Inside the darkened building, we held a quick meeting by the light of a couple of subdued flashlights.
“I really think that these six should be plenty to cover the area,” Wayne started. “Hell, from what I read in your books, Leeland, six one-quart charges will probably be enough to completely erase the intersection altogether.”
“You think we should save the rest, in other words.”
“Yeah.”
“All right. Let’s plant the charges and move to a safe detonation distance.” I paused to think. “Uh, just how far do we need to go to be safe?”
Wayne shrugged. “Who knows? Best guess is about a block. Maybe more.”
“You don’ know for sure, though?” Rene prodded.
He snapped, “Well, you know, Rene, it’s not like I do this every day!” I guess he realized how he sounded because he immediately shook his head. “Sorry, I didn’t mean that. Guess I’m a little nervous.”
Surprisingly, she brushed it off. “No problema,” she told him. “Ever’body in the same boat here. We all nervous.”
I turned to the rest of the group. “Billy, you’ve already proven that you can handle this stuff. Pull out six beakers and six caps. Wayne, you know exactly what you had in mind with them. Show him how to assemble the charges.” Wayne turned Billy and led him back to the ice chests.
“The rest of it goes back to the main group. Rene, you and Slim take the chest of Astrolite back as soon as Billy and Wayne have unloaded what they need.” They nodded and went to help unload.
That left six people and six blasting caps. Unfortunately, I needed more warm bodies with me to lay the ambush. Time for a snap decision. “Okay. Matthew, Alan, Emily, I want each of you to grab two caps and take them back to the main group. Same as earlier today. One at a time, slow and careful.” I shone the light on my watch. “It’s ten fifteen. You have half an hour to go three blocks. I don’t care if it takes the whole time. Just don’t get caught, and don’t trip!”
They nodded and trotted off to grab their gear and the explosives.
Turning to those remaining, I continued, “The rest of us get to plant the mines and play decoy. It’s going be up to us to draw that tank and as many foot soldiers over here as we can. The more of them we can draw into the ambush, the fewer our people in the stadium will have to deal with.”
By the dim light of a covered flashlight, I looked at the grim faces around me. “Any questions?” No one answered. “Okay folks, let’s get going.”
I walked over to where Wayne and Billy worked on assembling the second of our charges. The first sat on the floor next to them. “What can we do to help?”
Wayne answered without turning, concentrating on what he was doing. “There’s a car battery, some tools, and coaxial wire in that box over there.” He jerked his chin toward the gear. “Leave one roll of the wiring here and splice the rest of it into six continuous lengths leading over to a building about a block away where you can still see the intersection.” He appeared to think for a second, then shook his head. “I think I can localize the explosions, but I don’t know for sure if it’ll work. Still better to keep a block away. Billy and I will bury these charges and wire them up. You just get the rest of the stuff far enough away that we can set them off without killing ourselves.”
One thing caught my attention. “You say you can localize the explosions?”
He didn’t answer right away, and I knew better than to interrupt his concentration as he carefully replaced the rubber stopper in the beaker with a tube of HMTD. When he finished, the glass beaker was plugged by another rubber stopper with a test tube attached to it, sticking down into the Astrolite. Two wires, each about two feet long protruded from the other end. Using exaggeratedly slow movements, he set the second beaker on the floor next to the first.
When he looked up, my flashlight showed beads of sweat on his forehead. “We use shaped charges,” he replied.
Sam asked before I could. “Shaped? How do you shape a liquid?”
“You put it in pre-shaped containers.” He held up one of the unprimed beakers. “If we bury these suckers upside down, the main force of the explosion should go straight up, assuming that those books of yours are right, and that I understood them.”
I didn’t get it, but there was no time for more explanation. “Okay, I’ll take your word for it.” I turned to get the wiring supplies he had mentioned.
“Leeland!”
“Yeah?”
“Whatever you do, don’t connect the wiring to the battery until we get there. I didn’t have time to get fancy with the detonator. You just connect the wires, and it all goes boom. I don’t want to be wiring one up when that happens.”
I chuckled. “Gotcha.”
“Edwin, you help Wayne and Billy. Sam, Ivory, help me get the wiring set up.”
It took fifteen minutes to complete the wiring, leaving the battery and remainder of the coax behind an old checkout stand inside a long-deserted convenience store. We ran back to see if we could help Wayne and the others.
They were carefully turning the fifth charge upside down and setting it gently in one of the holes. Wayne held it in place, while Billy and Edwin scooped the dirt in around it. I shuddered a bit when I saw Wayne sprinkling a generous pile of nails into the dirt before the rest of us cautiously finished burying it. When complete, all that was left sticking out of the ground was a pair of wires that Wayne rapidly connected to the ends of one length of the coaxial running down the street. I looked up and saw similar wires leading to the other four holes.
I turned away and cupped my hand over my flashlight, letting only enough light through to see my watch.
10:34.
“Almost time!” I hissed.
We all worked together on the final charge. At 10:38, we were carefully laying broken asphalt and gravel on the last spot and scattering debris to cover the wiring.
“Is that good enough to hide the wires?” Billy indicated a few places where wire emerged briefly from small piles of dirt and broken asphalt.
“It’ll have to be. We’re out of time,” I said. “We have smoke bombs that should cover it. Between that and the shooting, we’ll just have to hope they’re too busy to notice.”
I turned away to shine the light on my watch again. “It’s time.” When we left the plant that morning, I had brought along my last eight smoke bombs. I had given four to Ken, passed three more out to my group, and kept one for myself.
It was selfishness that caused me to split the group as I did, sending Ivory, Sam, and Edwin off in one squad, and keeping Billy and Wayne in my group. I justified it by telling my conscience that I would work better with people I knew well, but there was a niggling in my brain that accused me of wanting to keep my friends close at hand. My response was the same one I repeated so often lately. No time to worry about it now.
Moving back down to Dullas, we picked positions just out of sight from the stadium. I saw Sam and Ivory go into a building across the street from us, while Edwin went around behind it, presumably to sight in around the back corner.
Billy stayed outside at the corner of the building into which Wayne and I went. The two of us inside picked windows facing the stadium and waited. I glanced one last time at my watch. 10:44.
Time. I clicked on the radio. “Ken?”
“Ken here. You about to start?”
“Yeah. Make sure everyone knows they have to sit the first few minutes out, or this is all for nothing.”
“Already done.”
“Good.” It seemed that there should be something else for me to say, but nothing came to mind.
“Leeland?”
“Yeah?”
“Good luck, man.”
“Thanks, Ken. You too.” Some things just couldn’t be put into words. “Out.”
I turned back to Billy and Wayne. “Ready?” They nodded.
“Pick your targets and make each shot count.”
I took a couple of deep breaths to steady my nerves and sighted in on one of the guards. There was no partying going on. They were actually standing guard. Larry must have really reamed them for the mess we made the night before. Unfortunately for them, they had stupidly increased the lighting in the area, showing us the juiciest targets.
I heard Ken’s voice in my head telling me as he had a thousand times before, “Steady… take a deep breath, and squeeeeze…”
My shot signaled the rest of the group, and everyone opened fire. Four of Larry’s men dropped before anyone knew what was happening. They quickly figured it out, though, and men scrambled for cover as they searched for their attackers. It didn’t take but a few seconds for them to figure out our general direction, and only a few seconds more for Wayne and I to figure out that the front of the building we were in consisted of nothing more than facade and sheetrock. Bullets tore through it like so much wet tissue. The only thing that saved us was the simple fact that Larry’s men didn’t know exactly where we were. Still, bullets ripped through the flimsy sheetrock, zinging around the warehouse and forcing us to scurry for more substantial cover.
Huddled behind a desk, Wayne yelled, “This isn’t working quite the way I imagined it!”
I ducked as the bookshelf I hid behind spat bits of paper at me. “Jeez! We’ve gotta get out of here! Billy! Cover us!”
He didn’t answer, but the rate of fire from the doorway increased significantly.
“Go!” I yelled at Wayne, but he was already scrambling through the door. When he got there, he began shooting with Billy.
“Come on, Lee! They’re moving this way!”
Things were moving faster than we had expected. Running for the door, I felt a slight tug on my sleeve. A sudden pain across my forearm that told me I’d been grazed. I wriggled my fingers and knew the damage was minor, but that was all I could tell in the darkness.
Billy continued to fire into the guards as rapidly as his finger could pull the trigger, and I saw several men fall as a testament to his aim. Wayne had evidently discovered, as I soon did, that there wasn’t nearly enough room for all of us to sit and fire from the same corner; he was already heading back down the street and around the corner to another position. I scrambled to follow him.
Halfway down the street, I heard Billy’s rifle go silent. He’s been hit! I thought, as I turned back to help, but I saw with relief that he was simply changing clips. Then my heart skipped a beat when I heard the unmistakable sound of the Abrams starting up. Billy heard it, too. I could tell by the stance of his kneeling silhouette as he looked up at the behemoth moving towards him.
“Get out of there!” I yelled. “Pull back!”
I saw him raise his rifle for one last shot before he bailed from his position, legs pistoning wildly as he ran.
He was about thirty feet away from me when the corner where he had just been kneeling disintegrated in a deafening blast that knocked me off my feet and set my ears to ringing. Bricks, bits of sidewalk, and burning wood flew in a deadly whirlwind, and Billy was suddenly airborne, flying amidst the maelstrom, until he landed in a tangled heap, unmoving as the debris fell on him.
“Billy!” Sprinting, I reached him just as the front of the building across the street where Sam and the others were hiding exploded in a similar, deafening fashion. I dove to cover Billy’s body with my own as the cloud of masonry and fiery lumber pummeled us.
Wayne tugged on my arm and yelled. With my ringing ears, I couldn’t tell what he was saying, but he yanked the ring from his smoke bomb and dropped it in the street before helping me pull Billy from the rubble. We dragged him by his arms as we ran down the street to where I had stashed the detonator.
Once inside, I saw Wayne trying to tell me something, but I still couldn’t hear a thing through the ringing in my ears. “I can’t hear you!”
He looked concerned and turned my head from side to side, examining my ears. I felt him touch the skin beneath my left ear and watched as it came away dark and wet. Before that moment, it had never occurred to me just how black and forbidding blood looked by firelight.
My stomach clinched at the sudden realization that I might be deaf for life, but there wasn’t time for the thought to scare me too much. If the next few minutes didn’t turn out better than the last few had, my life wouldn’t last long enough to worry about it.
Wayne grabbed my shoulders and pointed me at the detonator setup, then turned me back to face him. His mouth moved, and he pantomimed and pointed. It looked like he wanted to get across the street to set up a crossfire.
I nodded. “Okay, I got it. Go!”
He reached into my belt pouch, pulled out the last smoke bomb, clapped me on the back, and poked his head out of the doorway. Then, he sprinted across the street. I saw him duck into a storefront on the opposite side and disappear into the shadows.
Peering back down the street, I saw three of Larry’s men emerge from the dissipating smoke. They hugged the shadows and searched through windows, searching for us. It was eerie seeing them creep closer, yell at one another, and occasionally fire into one of the empty buildings, but unable to hear any of it. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a flicker of movement, and the last smoker landed among them. Wayne.
Some of them must have seen the direction it came from because they dropped to the ground and fired at the building where he had disappeared. I raised my rifle and fired into the group, but I hastily ducked back at the sudden appearance of several bullet holes in the wall beside me. I whirled to find Wayne pointing his rifle at me.
Why was Wayne shooting at me? He saw me looking his way and dropped his rifle to pantomime touching the wires together.
He must have seen the tank. It must be time.
Then I saw him jerk once as a bullet spun him around. Two more found his back, and he dropped from sight just before the front of the building disintegrated in another blinding explosion.
“Wayne!” I could feel the rawness of my throat as I screamed, but my ears were still useless. The only sound I heard was my voice echoing faintly in my skull.
The ground still trembled from the explosion as I dropped my rifle and dove for the detonator. A silhouette in the doorway warned me that I wasn’t alone, and the muzzle of a rifle sought me out in the relative darkness of the building.
My movement gave me away, but there wasn’t time to let whoever it was distract me. I had to connect those wires. Ours was a macabre, slow motion race-me fumbling to connect wires to battery terminals, and the thug in the doorway struggling to find me and shoot.
It was a close thing, but he won the battle.
I won the war, though, as his shot went wide hitting the wall nearly three feet in front of me just a split second before I made the connection. The world shook, and my attacker flew forward-within reach.
My fear and rage at losing my squad, the people who had trusted and depended on me, now had a target and was unleashed in a moment’s insane fury. My next actions involved a gouged eye and crushed esophagus, but everything else was lost in madness.
At some point, I realized that the man was dead, and my throat was raw. Must have been screaming was my confused thought, but for the life of me, I couldn’t remember doing so.
Stumbling over masonry and dirt, I made my way to the door and peeked around the corner into the street, into carnage, into the aftermath of an explosion powerful enough to blow a hole in the bottom of the tank and mangle the tracks. It had been enough to shred every exposed person within a city block with asphalt and nails.
No one moved on the street as I staggered outside. Dust drifted, and flames danced in small scattered groups, but there wasn’t a hint of life. A slight popping in my right ear hinted that at least some of my hearing was returning, but it took a moment for me to realize I was hearing the sounds of gunfire.
I decided that Ken’s group must be moving.
Four weary minutes and two long blocks later, I found myself approaching the outskirts of another battle.
Sarah led a massive wave of people who had made it halfway across Stadium Drive before a few of Larry’s men had caught on to what was happening. When those men turned their guns on the emerging crowd, the folks still inside the stadium had no idea what was going on in the darkness ahead, only that freedom waited beyond the gates. They pushed forward, while those in front pulled back, seeking shelter from the deadly crossfire. The great press of escaping Rejans stalled-and died.
By the light of trashcan fires, I saw our people stumbling over their own dead and wounded, surging to and fro like some panicked horde of lemmings, shoving one another into the waiting crossfire of Larry’s men. One silhouette stood out from the others, its appearance inhuman in the firelight. It was Sarah, wearing the goggles she had worn into the stadium the previous night. She frantically directed a small knot of people armed with rifles and handguns by pointing and gesticulating to help them pinpoint Larry’s guards, but the darkness worked against her. Although the targets were plainly visible through her goggles, Larry’s men were nothing more than shadows to those she was directing.
My right ear was working at about half capacity, and I could hear the screams of people over the gunfire. Where was Ken? There should be more support.
Seeing Sarah reminded me that I had my own goggles on my belt, and I slipped them on, praying they still worked. They did.
Scrambling closer, I could see that there were actually only two groups of snipers shooting at the crowd. The first group consisted of two men with their backs to me ducked behind a rusted-out abandoned Dodge. Suddenly, I realized I had left my carbine lying between Billy and the nameless soldier I had killed.
I drew my machete and Bowie and, once more, I attacked from behind and killed before my victims knew I was upon them. So much for honor in combat.
Grabbing one of the dead men’s rifles, I looked up to see the muzzle flashes of two rifles from the ground floor window of a building across the street. The angle was wrong, and I couldn’t get a clear shot at the owners, but I figured I could at least keep their heads down while some of our people got clear. Glancing down at the unfamiliar weapon, I found a lever over my right thumb. Select fire.
Taking aim at the window, I quickly discovered that a fully automatic M-16 was much harder to hold on target than the movies portrayed. Still, the sudden shower of bullets proved enough to cause them to duck for cover, giving two of Sarah’s armed partners time to rush the building and get to either side of the window. Working together, they whirled and fired several rounds inside. One of them fell, but the other waved the crowd on. Sarah and the escapees began scattering through the streets.
I stepped out from behind the car and waved to get Sarah’s attention. “Sarah!” I winced again at the pain in my throat and hoped she would recognize my voice. With my impaired hearing, I couldn’t even tell if my voice carried over the background noises, but I saw her turn toward me and give a thumbs up as I wove my way toward her through the racing crowd.
“Good timing, Sensei. That was getting hairy.”
I looked at the bodies on the ground. Friends and neighbors. Ken had warned us that we would lose people, but I had never imagined it being this bad. There must have been thirty bodies and even more wounded.
I shook my head. “Not good enough. Too many of us are dead.”
Sarah grabbed my shoulder. “It would’ve been worse if you hadn’t come along when you did. We’d have lost a lot more.”
“But you were supposed to have more support! Where’s Ken? We had over forty people waiting to help you! Where are they?”
She looked at me incredulously. “Are you kidding? Can’t you hear the fighting?”
“What?”
“The tanks. Jeez, Sensei! There were two more tanks. Ken’s people went to draw the other tanks off! They sound like they’re about a mile away now.”
“What?” I shook my head, dumbfounded. “My ears are a little messed up, Sarah. I can’t hear too well.”
“What happened?” She looked at me with sudden concern.
“That first tank happened,” I said bitterly. “There’s no way they can last long against two of them!” I reached for the radio at my belt and turned it on. “Ken! It’s Leeland! Ken! Can you hear me? Everyone is out of the stadium, pull back! Pull back, Ken!”
No response. I handed the radio to Sarah. “My ears must not be working well enough. Can you hear anything?”
Sarah lifted it and tried the same thing for a few seconds before shaking her head. “Either it’s not working, or they just can’t hear us.”
“Okay, then can you take me to where they’re fighting?”
She watched the flood of people scurrying past us into the darkness. “Yeah, I can take you. Everyone here knows where to meet up. Come on.”
She led me through the darkened streets to the east side of town. The closer we got, the more I could hear. And the more I could hear, the worse things sounded. By the time we reached the fighting, I could easily hear the chatter of rifles and machine guns firing, the chaos of the battle. With both of us wearing goggles, we were able to avoid scattered groups of Larry’s men, and we soon found our way to a group of our own people.
Rene busily shouted orders to a squad of several men as Sarah and I first approached them in the narrow lane between two buildings. Further up the street, I saw a white flash that nearly blinded me, and I ripped the goggles from my face. The flash was followed a second later by the sound and vibration of an explosion. The tanks were up there somewhere.
I turned to see Sarah watching me through the insectoid goggles. “Try infrared,” was her only comment.
I nodded. Knowing Rene as I did, I wasn’t about to get closer until I knew she was expecting me. “Rene!”
Her rifle whipped around at the sound of my voice. “?Quien esta?”
Spanish? She must be scared to death. “Leeland and Sarah, coming in from the rear!”
Squinting toward me, she finally decided not to shoot. “Vaya con sus manos. Chinga! Come een weeth your hands where we can see them!”
Raising our rifles above our heads, Sarah and I joined Rene’s group. As we walked up, I saw four men trying to staunch the flow of blood from two others. Neither of the wounded looked to be in very good shape. Still more men and women leaned panting against the wall.
Incongruously, for the first time ever, I actually saw Rene Herrera smile. It was a frightening thing. Completely feral. “Glad to see you made it, Jefe. Where the others?”
“Dead.”
She turned away. “Sorry.”
“Not your fault.” It’s me they trusted. My fault. “Where’s Ken?”
She pointed several blocks up the road to an old Sears store. “In there.”
There had dozens of Larry’s men hidden behind a barricade of abandoned cars that had been pushed completely across the street to form a solid wall of metal from which they could indiscriminately fill the walls of the department store with holes. With my goggles, I could see about a dozen people firing back from inside the building.
I pulled out the radio. “Ken? Leeland here.” After a short pause, I tried again. “Ken?” Still no response. I sighed. “I guess the radio’s dead after all. Rene, do you know how many other groups of our people are around here? We’re going to hit those guys from behind and break Ken and the others out of there.”
“Three more.”
“Are they as big as your group?”
She shook her head. “Not three groups. Three more people. Ken send us out to try to stop the tank. We get out the back just before they surround the building.”
I counted the rest of her group. Ten people, two of them wounded, plus Sarah and me, and the three others that she mentioned.
I started to rise. “It might be enough if we hit them from behind. I gotta-”
Rene grabbed my arm and yanked me back down. “You gotta get you self killed? ’Dat what you gonna say? ’Cause if you planning to move into dis street, dat’s what gonna happen!” She indicated several bodies in the middle of the road. “They think they can walk out there, too.” She pointed up the street. “Machine gun somewhere ahead. We don’ know for sure where it is.”
She pointed to two other storefronts. “Banditos there, an’ there. Don’ know how many.” Then she pointed to the top of a four-story office building. “Tha’s where the other three from our group are.” Finally, she pointed to the deep patch of darkness next to the office building. “But look close, en de side street.”
I flipped the goggles back down over my eyes, and my heart skipped a beat. The muzzle of a tank cannon pointed down the street. The rest of the thing remained hidden behind the building, but there was no mistaking the cannon protruding into the street. For the moment, the tank sat motionless, but I had little doubt that eyes watched from within, alert for any sign of movement. Ken had warned us that the tanks were equipped with a full sensor array. There was little chance that anyone would be able to approach an Abrams unseen.
“They just got here a couple seconds before you,” she added. “We think they’re trying to figure out what happened to the other tank.”
I took the goggles back off. “Other tank? There’s another one?”
“Sort of.” Once more, she treated me to that frightening grin. “The other tank, she don’ work so good no more.”
“What?”
“Look all de way aroun’ de corner. Up on de sidewalk on dis side.” I started forward.
“?Cuidado!” she hissed. “Don’ move fast, or they see you!”
Following her directions, I slipped on my goggles, hugged the wall, and eased forward to the corner; I peered cautiously up the street to find the second tank sitting as motionless as the first. The only difference was that the cannon on this one was completely destroyed, looking much like the remains of Elmer Fudd’s shotgun after Bugs had plugged the end with his finger.
“What the hell happened?”
She indicated one of the wounded men lying back in the shadows. “Frankie there, he say he know how to stop the tanks. He say el cannon must be clean. Very clean. He pour a bucket of concrete inside, and they shoot him with the little machine guns on the top, but the next thing we know, the whole thing explode! She don’ move since then. We figure the explosion also get the people in the tank.”
I thought back to the flash that Sarah and I had seen just before we spotted Rene’s group. That must have been the explosion of the cannon, which meant that all this happened just a few minutes ago.
“Rene! This just happened?”
“Si. A couple minutes ago. Why?”
I looked across the street to the tank peeking out from between the buildings, then to the office building where Rene had said our people were hidden. Inspiration struck. “I think I might have a way to pull our butts out of the fire if we move fast enough.”
I looked down through my goggles as I descended from the top of the office building. Hanging from a makeshift rope of cut and tied extension cords, I shook my head. “Leeland, what the hell have you gotten yourself into?”
The little voice in my head ignored the question, instead concentrating on trying to make me see just how foolish I was being. “Get someone else to play hero!” the voice screamed. “Go back home to your wife and kids while you still can!”
“If I don’t do this,” I answered, “there won’t be any home to go to, and I might not get the chance to ever see them again.”
I looked down once more. Almost there. In my head, a jumble of prayers and curses swirled-mostly prayers. For an avowed agnostic, I seemed to be praying an awful lot lately. Dropping closer to the tank, I prayed it would stay in place for just a few minutes more, that none of the extension cords would come untied, that none of the enemy noticed a man dropping down the side of the building like a spider clinging to a strand of silk, that none of the millions of things that could go wrong, would go wrong. The more I thought about what I was doing, the more foolish it seemed.
Tightening my grip, I yanked hard on the cord twice to signal a stop. Three feet below, the top hatch of the tank waited. Larry’s men evidently hadn’t seen the show Ivory had mentioned earlier that evening. Or perhaps they simply never expected anyone to get close enough to try the hatch, and so hadn’t bothered to put a padlock on it. Why should they worry? They had one-hundred-eighty-degree coverage from the two small M-240 machine guns on front and three-hundred-sixty-degree coverage from the more powerful top mounted fifty caliber. Combine that with the sensor package on the tanks, and a person would have to be crazy to try getting to that hatch.
So there I was. By coming in from above, I hoped to bypass all of that.
I switched the goggles from infrared to night vision and studied the dogging lever on the far left hatch. It seemed straightforward enough. Slide the lever up and pull. Satisfied that I knew how to open it, I took the goggles off and once more hung them on my belt before readying my rifle. I eased my foot out until only the toe was left in the loop.
Taking a deep breath, I pushed off from the side of the building and swung out over to the far side of the tank. And jumped.
The sound of my feet hitting the armored top of the tank sounded incredibly loud to my ears, but I wasted no time worrying about it. I yanked up the hatch, finding it lighter than I had expected, or perhaps it was just well balanced, and stared into the surprised eyes of a man sitting a few feet below. I fired point blank and tried not to gag at the mess I made of his face as I kicked him out of his seat onto the floor. Dropping inside, I slipped in the blood and landed clumsily on my butt. I turned to see another man sitting slightly above and to the right, struggling for his pistol. Panicked, I fired wildly as I struggled to my feet. My shot missed, and the man ducked. I got back to my feet as he unsnapped his holster and slid down toward me. I realized my rifle was a disadvantage in the tight quarters; I was forced to shift back to get another shot off. I hit him in the neck, and he fell forward, trapping my M-16 between us. A third man to my left swung his pistol in my direction. He was only three feet away. It should have been an easy shot, and would have been, if I could have gotten my rifle free.
Instead, heart pounding with fear and adrenaline, I dropped my rifle, clapped my left hand over his and twisted the pistol backward, causing his finger to pull the trigger about the time that he saw the barrel pointing at his own chest. His eyes widened in fear, and then glazed over.
I yanked my rifle out from under the second man and looked around frantically, searching for another opponent.
Over that quickly? My heart pounded with unspent adrenaline, and the little voice was back. Ken had said to expect four men.
As if my thoughts were the trigger, the tank lurched into motion, first forward, then left. The sudden movement threw me off balance, and I fell back into the seat, feeling the warm, sticky blood that coated it soaking into my pants. What the hell? I checked the bodies, thinking perhaps one of the men had fallen on the accelerator. I searched closely for anything that might be a means of driving this tin can, but there was nothing I recognized as such. In a panic, I started flipping levers and pushing buttons, hoping to find something by chance.
I did, though it wasn’t at all what I expected. There was a stick-on label that read “TURRET” over a console. Next to it was what looked like a kid’s video game joystick. I pulled tentatively on the joystick and saw the turret begin to turn, and an opening appeared in front, growing larger by the second. A separate compartment for the driver, I realized, just as a hand with a pistol appeared through that opening.
I flipped the lever on my rifle to Auto and fired a half a dozen rounds into the tiny compartment. The driver twitched once and fell forward in his seat with the Abrams still accelerating.
Before dropping into the tank, my hearing had been slowly returning, but the firefight in the enclosed cabin brought back the familiar ringing that had been my constant companion since the blast that had thrown Billy. Touch, sight, and smell kicked into overdrive to compensate for my lost hearing. Suddenly, the scent of gunpowder and blood was overwhelming, the feel of blood seeping through my clothing from the seat nauseating.
Standing in the seat, I prepared to climb out of the tank. It looked like I was going to have to jump, and I wanted to do it before the Abrams built up too much speed. Then I saw where we were headed. Larry’s men were dead ahead, cheering and waving at the tank, unaware that it was driving itself and would run over their barricade in less than a minute.
They thought I was one of the crew. It was too good an opportunity to pass up. I looked at the fifty caliber machine gun in front of me and took the grips in hand. It only took a few seconds to find the manual controls, and only a few more to give Larry’s thugs the surprise of their lives. The last man went down just seconds before the tank crashed into the barrier of cars; the lurch as the Abrams flattened the automobiles dropped me back into the seat. There were only seconds left before I slammed full speed into the side of the Sears building.
In retrospect, it probably would have been smarter for me to have just closed the hatch and stayed inside the tank than to have jumped, but by the time I realized just how fast I was really going, my choices were rather limited. I was already outside, on top of the tank with the department store rushing at me at about forty miles an hour. It was either jump or take my chances sitting on the outside of the tank as it slammed into the building. Visualizing a wall of bricks falling on top of me, I decided to jump.
The ground rushed up at me, and then there was darkness.