The plan was to make the Tabs focus on the Fisher Building and to think, for as long as possible, all the dogsoldiers in the area were inside it, and act accordingly. To do this required two things—troops on the ground floor of the building to fight off the initial attempts to enter it, and men up on the eighth floor, where the Voice of the People was situated, to convince the Tabs they were still concerned with sending a guerrilla broadcast out over the airwaves.
The ground floor of the Fisher Building was a sieve—there were four main entrances, two tunnels, a second-story walkway, and then there were myriad windows and doors at sidewalk level leading into the now-closed ground floor stores. They knew they wouldn’t be able to hold the building for very long at all, once the Tabs decided to assault it in numbers, with or without armor support. But that wasn’t the plan. The building wasn’t the objective.
It was the bait.
George stared out through the eighth-floor windows. He was standing in the office of some sort of VOP executive and even though he was sweating under his armor he could feel there was actually, unbelievably, air conditioning operating in the building. Small offices lined the front of the building, connected by a hallway. George was in the center office with Kelly, one of Flintstone’s people, who was armed with an M4/203, a full-auto military carbine with underbarrel grenade launcher. Mark was in the office to their right, Quentin in a small conference room to their left. Their windows looked south, across West Grand Boulevard and down the length of 2nd Avenue past the Cadillac Place building. If they needed to, they could run to either end of the hallway and look east and west down West Grand, but George had a hunch at least some of the Tabs wouldn’t be able to resist driving straight up 2nd toward the old skyscraper.
George’s radio sprang to life. “Almighty, Almighty, and everybody else out there, elements of RoadRunner Oscar Mike to your AO, ETA five. Alpha mission at least ninety percent accomplished, repeat ninety percent.”
“Out-fucking-standing!” Mark shouted, his voice echoing down the hall. George was nervous—hell, they were all scared as hell, he hadn’t nicknamed their all-volunteer group the Suicide Squad for nothing—but hearing that the mission against the Tab’s airfield had been a solid success put a smile on his face.
George took a few deep breaths and wiped his sweaty palms on his thighs. “How long you been with Flintstone?” he asked Kelly, just to say something. Kelly was blonde and looked about twenty. Just a baby-faced kid, from George’s perspective.
“About a year and a half.”
George nodded. Long enough.
“You’re Bodycount, right?”
George made a face. “I hate that fucking name.”
The radio chirped to life again. “All Bravo units, this is Almighty. Enemy units spotted south of your position, heading northbound on Cass, about one minute out. Growlers, IMPs, and at least one Toad. Will advise number when possible.”
George moved up close to the glass and peered to his left, toward Cass. He couldn’t see it. Whatever was happening was out of view on the other side of the bulk of the Cadillac Place building.
“Advance armor elements breaking off, heading west, remainder slowing down. Stand by.”
“They’re cutting over to Second!” George shouted, loud enough for Mark and Quentin to hear him. “Back up from the windows and wait for my signal.” He knew he was repeating something they already knew, but he couldn’t help himself.
A few seconds later Morris himself got on the radio. “Bravo units, this is Almighty Actual. Three Growlers and an IMP northbound on 2nd Avenue. They appear to be scouts.” He paused. “Nakatomi, this is your show now. Over.”
From his excellent vantage point George had spotted the vehicles before Morris was done talking. He took a deep breath and watched the IMP and Growlers roll slowly up 2nd Avenue, straight toward him. It was unnerving, seeing enemy armor coming straight for him and not running for cover. Or shooting. They paused just a few feet short of West Grand, and remained there, four vehicles abreast.
George grabbed his radio. “Nakatomi Ground, this is Tower. Time to chum the water a bit. Please get their attention.”
In the lobby, using one of the thick columns for cover, staring out the south doors at the IMP and Growler far too fucking close for comfort, Ed keyed his radio. “Roger that. Chumming.” Like every veteran dogsoldier he had a natural and well-earned fear of enemy armor, and every cell in his body was screaming at the thought of deliberately provoking an IMP. He was accompanied by four dogsoldiers including Early and Jason, all of whom were using the marble walls to shield themselves from view out the busted doors. He stabbed his hand toward the vehicles. “Light ‘em up! Aim for tires and windshields.”
Using the columns, the security desk, and the wall for cover the men around him opened fire on the vehicles on the far side of the street.
Up on the eighth floor George could hear the gunfire through the glass, echoing off the face of the buildings opposing him. He saw a few sparks as bullets glanced off the front of the IMP, but neither it nor the Growlers responded to the gunfire by advancing closer to the building.
“Tower, engage!” George shouted, not bothering with the radio. He gestured at the window in front of him, and Kelly blew it out with a long full-auto burst with his M4/203. Mark had his SAW set up on a desk, and began firing short bursts down at the vehicles. Quentin, in the conference room, began working the trigger of his S&W AR-15, watching the red dot bounce over the Growlers down below.
The vehicles were not quite two hundred feet from the front of the Fisher Building, and eight stories down, and weren’t moving, either forward or back. “Not getting any closer.” Which had been the hope. “I guess we do it from here,” George said to Kelly. He took a deep breath, adjusted his Springfield AR slung over his back, then looked down at the unfamiliar weapon in his hands.
“I don’t know what that is, but I want it,” George had said not long after Julius had brought them into what everyone called the Guns and Ammo room at the sports complex the day before. And he’d greedily grabbed the item in question.
“That is a Milkor M32A1,” Julius told him. “That thing is almost fifty years old,” he’d said, gesturing at the six-shot grenade launcher in George’s hands. It was, in effect, a giant revolver with a stock and a very short barrel, topped with a pivoting red dot optic.
“It looks new,” George said.
“Well, that one is. I mean the design is old, and proven. What’s new, or newer I guess, are the improved munitions we’ve got for them. Initial versions of what we brought came out over twenty years ago. The original designs were announced and had very cool names, Hellhound and Draco I think, but they never went anywhere, the military never adopted them even though they offered actual armor penetration, something the standard 40mm grenade generally doesn’t do. We found samples, and the schematics, a few years ago, and our engineers developed an even better version—which is what you’ve got there, a dedicated light-armor piercing thermobaric 40mm round.”
“How much armor?”
“Not a Toad, there’s just not enough space in the round. A standard 40mm HE round will take out a Growler, but won’t do anything to an IMP. These rounds, on the other hand, will penetrate the armor on an IMP. Sometimes. Depending.”
“Sometimes? Depending?”
Julius shrugged. “I’m not going to lie to you. It still won’t do anything against the slat armor on the sides, that stuff defeats this just as well as it does everything else. You need to hit bare hull, and the closer to a perpendicular impact the better. If you hit it on a sharp angle, or the IMP has extra bolt-on armor plates on the top, reactive or not, it won’t penetrate. But the great thing, at least from your perspective, is that these grenades have a rainbow trajectory, and you’re going to be firing them from an elevated position. So having them impacting at a solid downward angle against the top deck is a pretty good bet. Upon impact there’s an internal firing pin which hits a detonator that ignites an advanced explosive, and that sends an armor-piercing jet of molten metal into and hopefully through the armor. If it does, there’s a good chance you’ll kill or at least temporarily disable everyone inside that vehicle. It kills with heat and overpressure, generally, as opposed to shrapnel. Unfortunately, there’s no such thing as a free lunch—because it’s a shaped charge, when you’re shooting at targets in the open, it has a slightly reduced kill radius.” He gestured at the pallet. “We brought quite a bit of it. Maybe more than you’ll be able to carry.