George cleared his surroundings then turned and covered the approach of the rest of the squad; Jason, followed by Early, Sarah, Mark, Quentin, then Ed. Kelly had peeled off from George’s group to rejoin Flintstone, not wanting to join in on their “Fucking stupid-ass suicide mission,” as he called it.
They moved into the building silently, not sure how close any Tabs might be, and took up defensive positions. When Ed was halfway across the lot something caught George’s eye. He squinted and saw a moving dot high in the air north of the Fisher Building. A drone, and not one belonging to Almighty.
Someone to the south on the ground opened up on full-auto when Quentin and Ed were still in the open, but didn’t hit anything but pavement and parked cars. It was an M5, George’s seasoned ears told him, and they were tough to control on semi-, much less full-auto. Still, both men sprinted all out, then checked themselves for hits after they made it into the building.
“Quigley, Theodore’s in your building, on the east side,” Ed said quietly into his radio, still panting. “You want to talk us into your position? We just took some fire from south of the building.”
There was a long pause. “Seriously?” Weasel sounded incredulous. “You were supposed to bail.”
“We’re not heading into the tunnels with all these Spikes,” Ed said firmly. “Not when there’s something to shoot them at right here. You’ve got Tabs in the building?”
“Yeah, yeah. Maybe. Not sure where, now. Watch your ass. We’re all up on six. There’s a stairwell at the northeast corner, take that up. Morons. Over.” Despite his casual insult he sounded delighted they were there.
Jason was behind Ed and Early as the squad moved slowly and quietly into the building, down a hallway, and began climbing the stairwell. The day before, after Morris’ briefing, Jason had been charged with adrenaline; it seemed he had joined the war effort at just the right time. Here he was with less than a week under his belt and he’d be involved in the largest offensive in the city since the start of the war. But… ever since that afternoon briefing his life has been nothing but a mixture of boredom and misery. Or misery and exhaustion.
The trek to get to the skyscraper codenamed Nakatomi under eighty pounds of gear had been the most horrific thing he’d ever done in his life, especially crawling the last 300 yards through a narrow pipe, which if anyone had asked he would have guessed at half a mile or a mile in length, it had seemed so long and painful on his hands and knees. Then he’d been with the group which had staked out the lobby. The few Army soldiers stationed inside it had been gunned down by the running men ahead of him so quickly he hadn’t seen them fall, and then… Nothing. Nothing until the enemy armor showed up across the street and he, like everyone else with him, shot at it, not with any hope of doing damage, but rather as a distraction. The IMP grenading the north entrance had been exciting and loud but not dangerous to him at all. In fact, it all still seemed a bit surreal to him. He’d been more scared during the ambush of the Army patrol, which now seemed like it had happened weeks ago. Now they were in yet another building, but at least he hadn’t had to crawl through a tunnel to get there.
The fifth- and sixth-floor landings were covered with Tab bodies, and the air was thick with the smell of blood. Weasel met them on the sixth floor, beaming. “You guys are fucking nuts, I love it. Come on up.” His face and webgear were splashed with generous amounts of dried blood, none of which seemed to belong to him.
“It’s your house, were do you need us?” Ed asked.
“There’s four stairwells, one on each corner, plus a fancy one on the front—the south side. We don’t really have enough bodies to cover them all, so I’d like one guy here…”
“Quentin,” Ed said.
“Got it,” Quentin said, posting himself at the top of the stairs as Weasel led the squad down the hallway and turned a corner.
“’Nother guy here,” Weasel said, pointing at a stairwell door.
“Early.”
“Yeah boss, on it.”
Weasel pointed at a nearby open doorway. “Renny was in there, but then we went up on the roof for a bit. Dude can fucking shoot, I’ll give him that. Now we’re all hunkering down inside, you’ll see why. C’mon.” He led the way west down the long side of the building.
“Most of the apartments seemed empty, but any people still here have to be long gone now after all the shooting,” Weasel said. He gestured to their left, where closed doors lined the hallway. “Those open onto the south-side apartments, which look out onto West Grand. Killed an IMP out there with an RPG, but we’re all out of ammo for it. Got a few Tabs on foot out there still, somewhere.”
“One of them fired at us running over. How many doggies you have here?” George asked him.
“Left, after the Tabs pushed in and up the stairs? Me, Old Man Quigley, and two of the guys from RoadRunner. That’s it. We lost two, but we made ‘em pay. You think that stairwell you came up is bad with bodies, you should see the northwest one, got blood running down four floors like a horror movie. Assholes.” He flashed a mean grin and gestured to the left. “Got a fancy open staircase here, lots of glass. No way to cover it without exposing yourself to the street outside, so we’ve got it trip-wired with grenades on the second-floor landing. Better to dart across than drag ass.”
The building was a giant rectangle, and the west and east side corridors were shorter. Around the corner to the hallway accessing the west-facing apartments the squad reunited with Renny, as well as Harris and one of his men. All of them were crouched in the hallway, away from a nearby open doorway. Renny gave the men of Theodore a nod.
“Appreciate the moral support, but I’m not sure what else you’re going to be able to do here,” Harris said. Although the sight of all the slung Spikes lifted his spirits.
“Take a look,” Weasel told Ed, nodding at the open doorway.
“Carefully,” Renny added, his big rifle resting on its butt beside him.
Ed slid up to the open doorway and edged his eye past the frame. Beyond was a small but nicely appointed studio apartment. Against the left wall were cabinets above and below a stove and dishwasher. To the right was an open-air bedroom. Directly across from the door was the double window.
“Jesus,” Ed breathed. The drone’s video feed hadn’t really done the scene justice. He pulled back, grabbed his binoculars, then held them vertically and peeked past the doorframe again, looking through just one lens. He looked back and forth a bit, ducked down to cross to the other side of the open doorway, then looked some more from that angle. “Take a look,” he told George, handing him the binos.
The west side of the apartment building was just over one hundred yards from the near service drive of the Lodge Freeway. The far service drive was perhaps an additional seventy-five yards further away.
The Tab forces were arrayed along the far service drive as if it was the parking lot after a rock concert, with most of the vehicles turned to face toward the threat. Two Toads, two IMPs, and what had to be ten Growlers. A few Growlers were positioned a quarter-mile north, and one was equidistant south, but the majority of the vehicles were spread across West Grand in a skirmish line.
The Tabs were all buttoned up inside their vehicles. They seemed to be waiting for some signal before proceeding. Maybe they’d been instructed to stand back until the other forces approaching from the south could gather some intelligence on the dogsoldiers still in the area.