The young soldier grinned. “Yes Sir!”
The IMP rolled to within twenty yards of the idling personnel carrier without incident. The troops moved up either side of the street, moving in quick dashes from cover to cover, searching the houses and in-between them, wondering if they were next in line to be ambushed. They passed the IMP nosed into the rusting vehicle hulk, checking the street half a dozen houses past the burning Growler. By that time the Captain was out of the APC and striding forward down the middle of the street.
It was as bad as he’d feared. The street was littered with silent forms, the bodies of his men. He saw at least one man with this throat cut—the ARF was very consistent, they didn’t leave their wounded, and they didn’t take prisoners. The ambushed patrol hadn’t been under his command, directly, but every man in it had at one time or another served under him. Dead, all dead. Christ, would this war ever end?
His Lieutenant came running up to him. “Looks clear.”
The Captain nodded. “Make sure they keep their eyes open, Reed. Do a thorough check for wounded, every house and yard within a couple hundred yards from here, but I don’t think we’re going to be that lucky. And I want eyeballs on the street at either end of the engagement zone.” He pointed.
“Yes Sir.” Lieutenant Reed started barking out orders and the few soldiers still up near the houses grudgingly moved toward the street to help with the dead. They didn’t want to see the bodies, perhaps recognize someone they’d spoken to the day before, but they all knew they had a job to do.
The Captain stood near the back deck of the lost patrol’s IMP and surveyed the carnage. The Growler was still burning and probably would for hours. It was in the middle of the street and no danger to anything, so they’d let it burn. He peeked inside the IMP.
The floor was awash with blood, but the personnel carrier didn’t appear seriously damaged. He carefully stepped over the mangled body at the rear deck and checked on the driver and door gunner. No surprises. The bodies looked like they’d been hastily searched. They’d been relieved of their spare rifle mags and probably anything that either was or looked like intelligence. The IMP’s driver looked all of seventeen. The Army, which was growing increasingly short on bodies, was now drafting seventeen-year-olds, and talk was they were going to drop the age to sixteen.
“What a fucking waste,” he spat.
There’d been eighteen men in the patrol and out the back hatch of the IMP he could see a dozen or so bodies. The rest, he was sure, would be found in and around the nearby houses, shot as they’d tried to escape the killing zone. He seriously doubted whether any of the soldiers had made it out, but until the body count was in he still held some small piece of hope in his heart.
There was a big ammo box on the back hatch of the IMP, its lid cracked. The Captain frowned at it, then stepped off the deck and looked up at the roof. Yeah, that’s where it came from.
I wonder why they didn’t take it? he mused silently. He walked back to the box and flipped open the lid. There was a faint ting! and he felt something brush past his ear. He looked around, not seeing anything, knowing it hadn’t been a gunshot, then looked down into the ammo can. There was a nearly full belt of grenades filling the can, plus a thermite hand grenade someone had stuck in there against regulations. The Captain had just enough time to notice the grenade’s handle was missing before it blew and set off the whole can.
“Holy shit! What was that?” Cornwell spun Lima Twelve in a tight arc as a massive fireball bloomed near the open rear door of the disabled personnel carrier five hundred feet below him. Bodies flew through the air and the IMP jumped ten feet into the air and toppled over onto its side. The shockwave from what had to be a bomb shook the helicopter and for just a few seconds he had to fight the controls.
“Hotel! Hotel! This is Lima Eleven. We’ve got an explosion on the ground, unknown source, multiple casualties, over.”
“Roger that.”
“Was that a mortar?” Eleven asked, curving his bird away from Twelve just in case they started taking incoming fire. He scanned the horizon for missile exhaust trails. He glanced back at the carnage on the ground. “Goddammit.”
Ed was standing in the kitchen with George as the squad’s number two man sorted gear. They could feel the explosion in their feet.
“What the hell was that?” Quentin asked, sitting on the basement stairs.
“I left them a little present,” Weasel said from the basement shadows. He explained what he’d done.
“Nice,” Mark said. “You think that’d be enough to take out the IMP?”
“Sure sounded like it.” He looked at the squad leader. “Add that to the scoreboard for the inning. A Kestrel, a Growler, and an IMP. All we need now’s a Toad and we win the scavenger hunt.”
“We really ought to be further away, after that,” George said quietly to Ed. Ed nodded, but both men knew leaving the house was riskier than staying put.
George cracked an ammo can and peeked inside to make sure it was the right one, then carried it over to the top of the basement stairs. “Earl,” he called down softly. “How many mags do you have for your rifle?”
“Loaded? After this little dustup? One. Barely. Got six or seven empties on me.”
George handed the can to Quentin. It was passed down the stairs to Early, who sat against the cool basement wall to open it.
“Gonna be a pain to de-link all that, but I didn’t think you’d mind,” George called out with a smile.
Early pulled a shiny belt of ammo from the can and a big smile broke across his face. It was the real stuff, not the popgun rounds everyone else carried, and the same type of ammo he had in his rifle now, so he wouldn’t have to re-zero. “Naw, don’t think I will. Hot damn!” He preferred using a hammer to de-link, but a loose brick would do the job just fine.
“Oh. Weasel, here.” Weasel moved to the bottom of the steps and George dumped several objects into his hand. Weasel looked to see four fully-loaded pistol magazines. “Nine millimeter. That’ll fill at least a couple of your MP5 mags.” George headed back into the kitchen.
“Hell yeah. Sweetness!”
Ed chuckled and stared at the huge pile of confiscated gear still in the kitchen. “Jesus, how much did we get?”
George shook his head. “Enough to share, if we need to. Or trade. Who knows what kind of shape other squads’ll be in once they make it to the RP. Half the guys on that patrol were armed with old M4s for whatever reason. Between what I stripped off their bodies and an ammo can full of loaded mags in the IMP we’ve now got over ninety mags of five-five-six between the four of us that’re using them, if you can fucking believe it. And at least two spare canteens of water each.” He laughed and shook his head. “No food, of course. Well, three meal packs to split between seven guys. What’s that, about five hundred calories a person?”
“More like a thousand. And better than nothing.”
George shrugged noncommittally. “Thirteen hand grenades, mostly frags, plus eleven rounds for your grenade launcher. We grabbed three M4 carbines that look older than I am, but at least that means they were never fitted with chips. I’m thinking we pull the bolt carriers out of two for parts and give the third to Jason.”
Ed continued shaking his head as he stared at all the looted gear. “Jesus, we’re rich.”
Early knelt in the dim living room and helped Jason wrestle on the gear someone had stripped from a fallen soldier specifically with the young man in mind. There was a spot of blood on one strap that Jason eyed warily, but he didn’t say anything as Early helped him into the uncomfortable harness. He hated the new rifle they’d given him, it didn’t point naturally at all, but he knew he’d have to get used to it.