A ragged “Hooah!” rose from the federal soldiers. Through the smoke, a battery of friendly M109 mobile howitzers rushed towards them at breakneck speed…about 20 miles an hour. Big, ugly and slow, but those 155 mm cannons laying down direct fire support made a beautiful sight. For the defenders, at any rate. The militiamen scattering ahead were less inspired. Another cannon blast annihilated a moving truck full of rebels and shredded everyone within 50 yards.
At a range of only a few hundred meters, each round had enough kinetic energy alone to destroy a vehicle. The 30 pounds of HE packed into each shell was over the top. The artillerymen’s .50 caliber machine guns and 40mm automatic grenade launchers, which served as mere backup weapons, chugged away at the enemy. This was no fair fight; they were just kicking someone while they’re down. Which was exactly what the Feds felt like doing.
For the first time, the floodwaters parted. The volunteers had never seen such abject destruction and rapid violence in their hours-old military careers. They didn’t have the slightest clue what to do about it. The tide melted away and gave the slow moving death mountains a wide berth. The delay gave the federal defenders time to reorganize, evacuate casualties and receive reinforcements.
“Die, you Fedefucks!” An enterprising rebel screamed over the bedlam. He raised a captured bazooka-thing to his shoulder and fired at the lead mobile howitzer. The Stinger anti-air missile sailed a good 50 feet over his target and kept on going. A federal artilleryman swiveled his machine gun and cut the pissed off shooter into pieces. He never got to see the missile eventually acquire a target and blast apart an Apache helicopter gunship coming to back up the line.
The exploding Apache’s undamaged wingman clipped a power line in his rush to avoid the debris. Whether thanks to the helicopter’s elaborate safety design features, the pilot’s skill or just a big slice of luck, the chopper somehow made a decent crash landing.
As soon as the crew slipped out of their wrecked Apache, a passing federal truck slammed to a halt. Some artillery officer waved out the window. “Hey, you two! If you can walk, then mount up! You’ve just been drafted into the infantry.”
The pilot and copilot hopped into the back of the crowded 5-ton truck, still high on adrenaline. Someone shoved rifles and sacks of ammo magazines into their laps. The senior warrant officer shook the bag of aluminum boxes. “Uh, these are empty.”
A cook, hairnet still sticking out under his helmet, slid over a wooden crate full of loose rounds. “Better load quick. We’re counterattacking in less than two minutes!”
The warrant officer studied the gung-ho soldiers around him. So many females and spotlessly clean uniforms for an infantry unit…
“You got to be kidding me.”
He chuckled at the paper pushers, medics and dismounted supply truck drivers around him. He glanced out the tailgate at the rest of the convoy of such hardened warriors. Snapping rounds into his magazine as fast as possible, he prayed some more helicopters could get airborne. Because if this was the best the Army could muster, they were screwed.
At that exact moment, shrapnel from a rebel artillery round riddled the last flightworthy federal gunship back at the airstrip. The aviation brigade commander didn’t let such petty details faze her. She kept busy dismounting machine guns from the damaged helicopters and wondered if they could somehow mount the rocket pods on the back of Humvees. She had to give up on the idea since she’d already sent most of her mechanics into town to play infantry. All she could do was find a rifle and join them.
The Feds scored surprising success with their hasty counterattack. The rear detachment troops struck back over a wide front and spread their numbers too thin…which worked in their favor. The militia, who moments ago were trying to flank one abrupt hard spot, found themselves suddenly under attack across their entire “front.” When a squad of soldiers showed up where least expected, that force became a company by the time the report got back to the overworked and under-informed rebel command posts.
The now bloodied militia regiments, assuming they were about to be overrun, gave a good account of themselves. They retreated, of course, and fast, but fighting the whole way. The nervous support soldiers, some of them firing their personal weapons for the first time since basic training, gained confidence with every retaken block. No matter how many lives it cost.
Only at a strip mall on Highway 90 did the federal counterattack run out of steam. After being forced back half a mile, one Florida National Guard sergeant commanding a militia company refused to budge another step. His regiment’s commanding officer sent him the special weapons company and all the fresh men he could dig up. The NCO carefully deployed the MG’s in mutually supporting positions and fortified the buildings as best as possible. He even pushed out a few small hunter killer teams of his best fighters, armed with half their precious antitank weapons, to keep those damn howitzers at a distance.
When the Feds stumbled into the kill zone, they immediately pulled back. Their commanding officer couldn’t allow that. He took a knee behind a school bus engine block and shouted over the machine guns smashing the windows.
“Bring up the tracks! If we let up on the pressure and lose the initiative, we’ll never get it back again!” His miraculous counterattack was so damn precarious. Only momentum kept it going. The rebels were just too numerous.
His makeshift armor unit clanked past moments later. Only a few hundred yards down the road, an AT-4 rocket lanced out from behind a Taco Bell and struck one of the federal mobile howitzers. The resulting mushroom cloud as the twenty onboard artillery shells detonated flipped two more guns on their sides. The blast obliterated every soldier in three hundred yards.
The federal commander gritted his teeth. He slid around the front of the bus and fired past the carnage. He wedged the radio mike between his cheek and rifle stock so he could yell hands free.
“Don’t stop! Push through it. We’re almost on them. Go, go, go!”
The rest of the guns didn’t get much closer. Just before they had a clear line of sight and could level the shopping mall, the rebels showed off yet another surprise. From somewhere much farther down the street a blossoming salvo of Hellfire missiles raced in. Eight more mobile cannons and light APC’s turned into flaming pyres.
What shocked the federal commander the most wasn’t that the damn Floridians had figured out how to mount advanced air-to-ground missiles onto pickup trucks. Clever, whatever, but how did they have so many that they could spare them for the flippin’ auxiliaries?
He had no way to know those missiles were all the enemy could deploy in the area. Nor that his rebel counterpart was chewing his lip and hoping he hadn’t just shot his wad for nothing. Those tank busters were the last trick up the rebel militia’s sleeve. There just weren’t enough to kill all the federal armored vehicles. If he made a mistake in the timing and misjudged the battle flow, then he had merely prolonged the inevitable defeat.
Apparently, his timing was just right.
The commander of the ad-hoc Fed force reloaded. He couldn’t risk anymore of his precious guns. He sighed into his radio.
“All right. All mobile elements: fall back and rally on my position.”
A lieutenant, firing from the ground under the bus, raised his head. “Sir, they’re artillery. Why don’t we just move them out of the combat zone and pound the enemy from afar, as designed?”