Chan had made the same decision a quarter-second earlier. “Let’s light ‘em up!” he shouted. He looked at Lydia as the sound of multiple windows being broken echoed around the empty offices. “Make it rain, right here,” he told her, pointing at the lighter in her hand. Then he grabbed a Spike. Two windows down his second-in-command was leaning out the window and firing the fancy new six-shot grenade launcher straight downward. He heard the hissing roar of a Spike being fired from the next office over and a white dust cloud shot out the office doorway into the hallway.
Chan flipped the sights on the rocket up and was pressing the safety lever down as he leaned out one of the freshly broken windows. One of the Growlers was already burning. Chan focused on the Toad, which lurched and then began moving backward.
Oh no you don’t, he thought. He aimed the sights at the leading edge of the tank but then had to pause as it passed underneath the fourth-floor walkway between the building and the adjacent parking garage. As it reappeared he pressed the trigger, but just as he fired the tank slewed sideways, intending to reverse into the closest side street. The rocket missed the body of the tank entirely and hit the treads. The impact rocked the tank, which accelerated off to the side. Chan saw the massive vehicle had rolled out of its right-side track and left it on the street like a discarded snake-skin, but it still seemed able to move. Then it was gone, out of sight behind the parking garage. “Shit!”
Lydia was working like a madwoman next to him, lighting the fabric wicks of Molotov cocktails and frantically tossing them out the closest window in every direction. There had to be thirty of them in various sized glass bottles, stored in two milk crates and secreted up here, by her, over the past six months, one bottle at a time. They were filled with whatever flammable liquid she or Tom in the Fisher Building’s maintenance department could get their hands on—rubbing alcohol, paint thinner, acetone, nail polish remover, even a little bit of gel hand sanitizer—basically everything but gasoline, as that was too valuable. There were two additional crates on the opposite side of the building too, and one crate in a maintenance closet on the sixth floor of the Fisher Building.
“Just toss ‘em!” Chan shouted at her. He grabbed two bottles in each hand and threw them out as far as he could. You only had to light the first few; as long as the rest impacted an area on fire, they would ignite as well. And the entire street below them seemed to be on fire, Lydia had already thrown a dozen bottles out the window. One of the Growlers had broken away and was racing north up Cass along the sidewalk, one of its wheels on fire. The IMP wasn’t moving, it had been hit by a Spike, and a Tab, after realizing he couldn’t angle the roof gun up enough to engage them, was crawling out of the upper hatch and across the top of the vehicle. Another man was below him in the vehicle, which was bracketed by flame. One of the Growlers was split open like a burst tin can from a grenade hit. As Chan watched he saw the doors of a disabled Growler engulfed in flames open, and the two Tabs inside came stumbling out, trying to make it through the flames to the safety of the building. The soldiers made it across the street and out of sight, but before they’d disappeared from view they’d all been aflame. He could hear at least one man screaming horrifically.
There was rifle fire to either side of him, but after scanning the street he didn’t see anything left to shoot at, the soldiers were either dead and burning or had made it to cover. One IMP and three Growlers were disabled. The Toad, of course, had lost a tread but managed to escape. That tank’s crew would be worried about anti-tank rockets, but the range of the Spikes was far less than that of the Toad’s main gun, which could accurately target vehicles out beyond two miles, if Chan remembered correctly.
“Grab your shit! We need to displace before that Toad finds a spot to snipe us!” he shouted to his squad.
Lydia was looking at him wild-eyed. “Did they work?” she asked, panting. She had a Molotov in each hand. There were only a few left in each milk crate. She’d been too busy throwing to look out the window.
“Perfect,” he told her. “There’s a sea of fucking fire down there. But we gotta go.”
“Cambridge East has vehicles circling around to the north of our position,” they heard over the radio. “Engaging.”
Charlie One-Six, -Seven, and -Eight, one IMP and two Growlers, had broken off from the rest of the assault force early, as ordered, and swung west on Amsterdam, moving more slowly than the advance force. They’d driven several blocks west to 3rd Avenue, then turned north.
The railroad bridge over 3rd was actually down, and had been for some time, but none of the men in the vehicles were aware of it. They came to a brief stop, then drove up the embankment to the left, and slowly across the four sets of train tracks. They rolled through a vacant lot and turned left, then almost immediately turned right on the service drive to the Lodge Freeway. As they did two vehicles appeared directly in front of them, rising into view as they took the freeway exit for West Grand Boulevard.
“Oh Jesus Fuck, Tabs!” Harris screamed from behind the wheel of the pickup as the IMP appeared right next to them. They were so close Harris felt like he could reach out and touch the massive vehicle. He stomped on the accelerator. He wasn’t even sure the driver of the IMP had seen him yet out of the narrow port that served as his windshield, but the Tabs in the two Growlers behind it sure had.
A dogsoldier in the Tahoe behind the pickup fired his grenade launcher and took out the trailing, unarmored Growler. It veered off and crashed into the side of a building. The roof gunner on the IMP swung his .50 belt fed over and let loose a long loud burst, stitching the SUV from the engine compartment all the way to the rear bumper. Doing that distracted him long enough for Harris’ passenger to get his carbine out the window of the pickup and fire ten rounds at the roof gunner as fast as he could pull the trigger, killing the soldier.
The Tahoe behind them slowed and drifted away, every man inside it killed by the deadly burst of the heavy roof gun. Even with its flat tire Harris’ pickup accelerated away from the heavy armored IMP and the one Growler still behind it as the Tabs inside the personnel carrier were distracted, wrestling with the body of their dead comrade, trying to clear him from behind the roof gun.
Outnumbered two to one Harris knew they had to get away from the other vehicles, and even though Growlers weren’t fast he couldn’t outrun one driving a pickup with a flat tire and a man in the bed hanging on for dear life. Besides, the man in back had an RPG, and he wouldn’t be able to get it back into play while being bounced around in a car chase.
“Hold on!” he shouted, loud enough for the man in back to hear, and took a sharp right turn, then punched the gas pedal again. He heard the IMP’s engine roar behind him as the driver accelerated to pursue.
Harris looked around and suddenly realized he was on West Grand Boulevard. The Fisher Building and Cadillac Place a quarter mile ahead of him, rising up into the sky. He knew exactly where he was, and knew that meant he was racing right toward more Tabs, and had only a second to make a decision.
“You’re not going to like this!” he yelled. The Tabs had an advantage in numbers and armor. He couldn’t do anything about their numbers, but there was one sure way to negate the effectiveness of their vehicles.
Harris cut the wheel left and the pickup bounced across the grassy median between two small trees, straight for the front of an apartment building.
“What the fuck?” his passenger in the front seat had time to say before the pickup plowed through the glass front of the ground-floor business. Tables and chairs flew in every direction and the pickup clipped the corner of a counter before slamming into the far wall with a resounding crunch. Harris bounced off the steering wheel, smashing his nose, but the dash airbag deployed for his front-seat passenger.