“Got a better view out the front upstairs,” Ed told him, jerking his thumb at the ceiling. “There’s a wet mattress up there. A soaked mattress will hide you from infrared in the middle of a snowfield in January,” he said, not telling the big man anything he didn’t already know. “Pull it off the bed and set it up so you can dive under it quick if you need to.” Mark nodded and grabbed the SAW, now ten pounds heavier, with a grunt.
“Here,” George said quietly as Ed came back into the kitchen, pointing at a stack of loaded magazines. Ed counted six.
“Excellent,” he said.
“You’re going to get more, I just haven’t finished inventorying everything,” George told him pointedly. The two men looked at each other. Finally George shook his head. “Can you believe that?” he asked.
Ed shook his head and smiled. How they’d managed to not just survive but get through the incident without suffering any injuries, other than the small cut on Weasel’s forehead, was a minor miracle. He grabbed the magazines and began quickly stuffing them into the pockets of his vest.
George had the kitchen counters piled with confiscated gear. Among the many items were three old M4 carbines that had been stripped from fallen soldiers. Ed pointed at them questioningly.
“Spare parts,” George told him. “And maybe one for the kid.” Ed nodded in understanding, then his eyes shot toward the ceiling. The rest of the squad heard it too, and the rustling as they checked their gear ceased.
“Kestrel,” Mark called softly down the stairs.
The helicopter came curving in from the west, a thousand feet off the deck, the pilot aiming for the column of oily black smoke rising slowly in the afternoon air.
“That’s gotta be it,” the copilot confirmed, nodding at the smoke, after checking the GPS.
The big bird circled once high above the smoke, then dropped down low for a closer look.
“Christ,” the copilot muttered.
The pilot keyed his radio. “Hotel Four, this is Lima Eleven, over.”
“Go ahead Eleven.” The Major at the other end didn’t sound like he was expecting good news.
“Hotel, we’ve got one vehicle on fire, another stationary, surrounded by what looks like at least a dozen friendly KIA. Nothing’s moving, no sign of hostiles. It’s over, over.”
“Roger Eleven. Circle the area, see if you can spot the Tangos heading out. I’ve got Lima Twelve heading your way, ETA three, over.”
“Roger that.”
“Hotel to all air and ground assets, per protocol we will be switching to the alternate channel. I repeat, switch over to your designated alternate channel now, over.”
The pilot spoke over his shoulder. “You keep your eyes on that SAM radar. I don’t want to get a Spike up my ass.”
“I thought that was just a bullshit rumor.”
“You mean like the Gators pushing north and west far enough to hook up with the Longhorns?”
“What’s he doing?” Ed called softly upstairs.
“Circling around to the north.”
Ed nodded and went back into the dining room. Early had one of the dead soldier’s rifles and was explaining to Jason how to operate it. “I know it’s an ugly piece of shit,” he heard Early murmur, “but even John Wayne wouldn’t use a lever action in this war.”
“Who’s John Wayne?”
“Do we have satellite coverage?” the Major in charge of the air wing, such as it was, asked loudly, not turning around. The operations center behind him grew quiet.
“No,” the Sergeant tasked with knowing such things answered, after checking his watch. “We’re right near the end of a forty-two minute blackout window.” The blackout windows were getting longer and more numerous. At the start of the war they had numerous Keyhole reconnaissance satellites over the city at any one time. Now they only had coverage nine or so hours a day… spread out over twenty-four hours.
“Goddamnit,” the Major growled. His headset came to life.
“Lima Twelve is on station, over.”
“Roger Twelve. Be advised we have ground units en route, ETA six minutes, over.”
“Roger Hotel Four. Four,” the Kestrel pilot asked, “any chance we have a bird overhead that we can roll back the film on, see which direction the Tangos went? Over.”
“Negative, Twelve. Just checked on that myself. Keep an eye, over.”
“Roger, over and out.” Mike Cornwell, the pilot of Lima Twelve, switched channels to talk directly with Eleven.
“Eleven, this is Twelve, you check south at all?”
“Negative, just done circles north, over.”
Cornwell turned to his copilot. “Now, if you didn’t want us to spot you, where would you go?” He grinned.
“Got two out there now,” Mark called softly down the stairs. The first circling Kestrel had been joined by a second from the north.
“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.