“You coming?” he asked the three dogsoldiers who hadn’t yet charged up the stairs. “Work smarter, not harder.”
Randa, the number two in Mickey, eyed the small elevator dubiously, then shrugged her shoulders. “Sure, what the fuck.”
As the remainder of the dogsoldiers packed the elevator, Thor looked past a shoulder at the elderly female resident, who appeared very confused. “Making the world a better place, ma’am,” he assured her.
The elevator was not fast, but still they arrived on the seventh floor before the soldiers working their way up the stairs under their heavy loads. The hallway was carpeted, and narrow, and ended in a short T intersection. A gray-haired woman appeared at the end of the hallway as they drew close, rifles up. She stood in the open doorway of the apartment to the right. She had one hand up, and empty. There was a pistol in her other hand, held down along her leg.
“You’re late!” she snapped at them, looking nervous and angry. She was dressed in a uniform shirt and pants—apartment building maintenance.
“Yeah, yeah,” Thor panted.
She pointed at the doors in front of them. “Those are already unlocked.”
“Go!” Thor said, pointing. Everyone knew their place, and men poured past him, two and three per apartment. Thor strode past the woman to find a dead man on the floor of the apartment. He was in an Army uniform, and his throat had been cut. He looked surprised.
“He’s too heavy for me, you’re going to have to drag him out of the way,” she told them. “I cleaned up the blood a little so you didn’t slip.” She looked past Thor. “Randa.”
“Hey Barb,” Randa replied, panting. She unslung her backpack once again.
“Plan B’s good to go,” Barb told them.
“Right, thanks,” Thor said. “Things are going to get real loud real quick,” he warned her, dumping his backpack on the wood laminate flooring.
“These open?” Randa asked her, tossing furniture out of the way to get at the windows.
“No. I got to go, I got more shit to do for this thing.” Barb stuffed the pistol into her waistband.
“Shit. Shit! SHIT!” Randa exclaimed, looking out the window, as Barb disappeared through the open door. “Thor!”
“Yeah, yeah, coming.” The AT5 Spike was strapped to the outside of his pack. Once he had the straps undone he was heading to the window with the rocket launcher in his arms, muttering the deployment steps even as he did them. “Pull the safety pin, shoulder stop to the shoulder, grab the front sling strap with your left hand and pull back, pop the covers on the iron sights….” As he did the last, and the sights of the weapon popped up, he got to the window and looked out. “Jesus Christ.”
“I know, right?” Randa said.
They were in the Town Residences apartment building in the middle of the Blue Zone, looking across one of the narrow surface streets to the two aircraft hangars. The hangars were fifty yards apart, their main doors facing each other. Past the hangars, to the north and northeast, were the helipads. To the northwest, barely two hundred yards away, was Echo Base, the Tabs’ headquarters.
“We’re fucking right on top of them.”
The hangars were seventy-five yards away from the apartment building, and frantic with activity. Air crew were running this way and that. One Kestrel had been towed out of the hangar on the right and was just starting to head toward a helipad, and a second Kestrel was emerging from the other hangar. Thor’s eyes went wide. He’d never been this close to this many enemy soldiers before. Even though the plan had been for them to pop up right in the middle of the Blue Zone, hell, right in the middle of the Army base, it had seemed somehow less than real to him. Now, looking down at the hangars and helicopters and Tabs running around the concrete in the bright morning sun, it was very, very real.
“Cock it,” Thor said to himself, working the cocking lever on the rocket launch tube. “Depress the safety. Fire.” As the iron sights danced over the moving Kestrel his thumb found the button… then he paused.
Idiot. He only had one chance to do this right. Lives, his life and the lives of his men, depended on him not fucking everything up.
He took a breath, paused, locked the rocket tube down tight against his shoulder, lined up the iron sights as perfectly as he could, depressed the big safety button with his two middle fingers, then gently pressed the trigger with his thumb.
There was a giant hissing explosion, some angry cross between a gunshot and a grenade, and the pane of glass in front of him disintegrated as the rocket shot from the tube. Thor was buffeted by the exhaust gases ricocheting around the apartment, which filled with plaster dust blown off the walls and ceiling. The Kestrel was eighty-two yards away as the rocket streaked toward it. Thor missed his mark, by two feet, but the rocket still struck the helicopter at the rear of the fuselage, just forward of the tail. The explosion spun the Kestrel sideways and smoke began pouring from the hole.
“Fuck yeah!” Randa shouted as Thor tossed the empty tube aside.
There was a boom and a cloud of glass as the team in the apartment next to them fired an RPG at the second Kestrel, now fully out from the hangar. The rocket missed the helicopter by three inches, skimming over its nose and exploding on the concrete just past it. The helicopter rocked but appeared undamaged.
“Dammit,” Randa shouted. She flipped the selector on her M4 to full-auto and loosed a burst to blast out the window in front of her, then took aim at the Kestrel. She guessed the distance, adjusted her aim, and then pulled the trigger on the M203 underbarrel 40mm grenade launcher. She was aiming for the engine mounted high up on the side of the bird, just below the main rotor. The helicopter was angled away from him, and she jerked the trigger, so instead of hitting the engine the grenade flew through the open rear co-pilot’s access door and exploded inside the cockpit, shredding most of the electronics.
The third team fired a Spike through the roof of the close aircraft hangar. Whether the rocket detonated on the thin aluminum roof or inside the structure and the resulting blast opened a rent, the end result was a ragged gaping hole in the roof directly in front of them. Randa loaded another grenade and fired it toward the hole in the roof, as did another of the dogsoldiers in the next apartment. Randa had eight grenades for her M203 and was eager to use them all. They heard the explosions inside the hangar but couldn’t see what damage they were doing.
Thor had an angle inside the left hangar. Its main door was open and he could see perhaps a third of the darker interior, including a portion of another helicopter. He heard grenade launchers firing with loud THOOMPS and grenades exploding in the distance as he unhooked the second Spike from his pack—each one weighed eighteen pounds, no wonder his back was toast—and went through the firing procedures quickly. He stepped to the side a bit, carefully lined up his sights on the open hangar door, and fired the rocket. It streaked to and through the open hangar door in a second, exploding inside, but he couldn’t see what damage it made.
The aircrew in and around the hangars were running and taking cover. The two Kestrels were the only visible aircraft, and they were now both disabled. He grabbed his radio. “Eagle Eye to RoadRunner, Eagle Eye to RoadRunner, go, go, GO! All Eagle Eyes, provide covering fire.”
The apartment building had begun to take incoming rounds from soldiers inside the base. Thor looked across at the Tabs’ headquarters, Echo, and saw figures streaming from the building, heading in their direction. There were soldiers everywhere, like ants.