There wasn’t much of anywhere for his men to hide other than behind the wheels of the three vehicles, but with them pushing and shoving one another in an effort to get the best cover, they were like ducks in a shooting gallery. Men were dropping their weapons and screaming in capitulation even as they were being shot apart—but no one was listening.
A few moments later the loading dock fell silent, and Moriarty slowly reached to open the flap on his holster, drawing the pistol and pulling his knees beneath him to sneak a peek over the top of the generator.
Forrest was standing there with his M-4 shouldered and ready to fire. “Major Moriarty, I presume?”
Moriarty dropped the weapon, and Kane delivered him a butt-stroke to the side of his head, sending him sprawling across the concrete.
Fifty-Seven
Ulrich listened for the shock wave to strike the blast door, signaling that Emory had blown up the house. Counting to five, he pulled the lever and swung the door wide, running the twenty-foot length of the tunnel through the smoke and dust until he came out the other end into the dim light of the basement, where three dead airmen lay on the floor with their lungs crushed. A murky sky was visible at the top of the steel staircase, telling Ulrich the house had blown up, out and away—just as he had intended when he set the charges.
He and the other four men—Danzig, Vasquez, Sullivan, and Marty—stormed up the stairs and opened immediate fire on the stunned crowd of nearly thirty men gathered at the opening over the cargo bay, firing from prone positions on the flooring of the house. They shot the airmen down with near impunity as the airmen struggled through the deep snow in a vain attempt to seek cover. The few who tried to return fire were the first to be eliminated, one toppling over backward into the hole.
Sullivan banged Marty on the shoulder, signaling him to help reduce the men on their left flank who were taking up firing positions within the row of trucks and trailers. Marty sprayed them with grazing fire as Sullivan fired a 40mm grenade into the side of a small diesel tanker, killing five in the explosion and flushing many more from the cover of the trucks on either side of the inferno.
Ulrich and the others had eliminated the airmen near the lift elevator and were now adding to the fire directed at the trucks, where there were thirty or so Air Force men left to be dealt with.
Sullivan fired another grenade into the side of the explosives truck, killing or injuring another ten.
“Take cover!” Ulrich shouted, smacking Danzig on the shoulder and pointing toward what used to be the back porch, where the brick foundation of the house would provide them decent cover. “We’re too exposed!”
Danzig was crawling backward when he saw Vasquez’s head drop face first onto the deck, a round having struck him to the left of his nose and blowing out the back of his head. Danzig grabbed for his friend’s ankle, but Sullivan knocked his arm away and shoved him toward cover.
“He’s gone!”
Ulrich grabbed Marty’s collar and practically dragged him as Marty continued to pour fire onto the enemy, deftly switching out the empty magazine and continuing to fire like a veteran soldier. The two of them toppled off the back porch into the lee of the foundation.
Sullivan fired a grenade and blew up another truck, glancing behind him to his right as he was loading another round, seeing the Humvee ascending from below the earth. He swung the weapon around and was about to fire when Kane’s dark face emerged from the gunner’s opening in the roof.
The Humvee raced off the deck and swung wide around the compound to the west, outflanking the enemy position. Kane fired into their exposed flanks as Forrest sped through the snow, and within a few seconds the remaining airmen were throwing down their weapons and putting their hands into the air.
“Let’s move!” Ulrich shouted, jumping onto the porch and then charging across the floor to the front stairs.
The airmen were walking out to meet them with their hands raised, all of them shaggy and filthy and utterly demoralized.
“Hands on your heads!” Danzig screamed, kicking one of them viciously in the groin. “Down on your fucking knees!”
Soon there were eleven airmen down on their knees in the snow with their hands on top of their heads. Sullivan stalked the row of trucks, shooting the wounded where they lay. Forrest and Kane checked inside each of the trailers for supplies and holdouts, but all they found were two sickly women who had somehow managed to survive the hail of bullets. The truck with the cage on the back of it was in flames, the five men inside, who had been on the menu, now terribly overcooked.
“There’s only six of you?” asked a young airman in abject disbelief.
“There were seven of us!” Danzig said, stomping pugnaciously forward to deliver a rifle butt to his face, knocking him over backward into the snow.
“Linus!” Forrest shouted. “Enough!”
“Sir!”
“Weapons and ammo!” Forrest was shouting much more loudly than necessary, his ears no longer bleeding but still ringing like church bells. “We leave nothing of value up here. Kane! Get on the Cat and push that dirt back into the hole.” He used hand signals to explain himself and marched off through the snow. He climbed the stairs onto the foundation of the house, knelt beside Oscar Vasquez and turned him gently over onto his back, stripping him of his weapons and ammo. He took the dog tags from around Oscar’s neck and put them into his pocket, rooting through his pockets for anything his wife Maria might want.
Danzig came up onto the foundation and began to remove Oscar’s boots.
Forrest stared at him.
“We wear the same size, Captain.” Danzig got his first look at the ruptured blood vessels in Forrest’s eyes, pointing to his own boots so Forrest would know what he was saying.
“Won’t be any more boot factories for a while, will there?” Forrest said in a loud voice.
“No, sir.”
“What do you want done for him, Linus? We can’t let Maria see him with his face shot apart.”
“Let’s build him a big fire, sir,” Danzig said, gesturing with his hands.
“Good idea!” Forrest said, offering him Oscar’s dog tags. “It was better this way, Linus. Diabetic coma’s no way for a soldier to die.”
“Yes, sir. I have a request, sir.”
“A what?”
“Request!” Danzig said in a raised voice.
“What is it?”
Danzig pointed at the men still on their knees in the snow, making a shooting gesture with his thumb and forefinger. “I want to do the executions.”
Forrest nodded and returned his attention to Vasquez.
Danzig walked off through the snow and took a 9mm pistol from the pile of captured weapons, shooting each airman in the back of the head one at a time. None of the condemned men bothered to plead for their lives until Danzig came to the last one.
“I never touched any of those women!” the man pleaded over his shoulder. “Ask them! I never touched any of them. Ever!”
“I believe you,” Danzig said, squeezing the trigger and watching his body fall over into the gray snow.
Afterward, Forrest’s men built a large funeral pyre from the debris of the house. It was growing dark by the time they lay Oscar’s body in the center of it, dousing it with gasoline and setting it ablaze.
Kane was only just finishing with the landscaping when Forrest walked over and climbed up onto the machine with him. “We have to find a patch to weld over that hole in the lift deck!” Forrest shouted. “Any suggestions?”
Kane backed off on the throttle and sat thinking. His eyes and ears had stopped bleeding as well but both men looked a mess.