Ed frowned. The Tabs had to know there were dogsoldiers in the apartment building not too far from their front, heck there was a disabled IMP on West Grand right in front of it, but they seemed unconcerned. Maybe they thought their numbers provided some measure of protection. Maybe they suspected the dog soldiers were all out of armor-piercing weapons.
Ed pulled back and studied the squad filling the hallway before him. He counted. “Six Spikes left, total?” He looked at George.
“And I’ve got eight AP rounds for this thing,” George said, hefting the six-shot grenade launcher.
“They won’t do shit against a Toad,” Ed told him. He chewed his lip. “As for the Spikes, yeah we’re up six floors, but they’re way out there. I’m worried that we won’t have enough of a down angle to penetrate the armor, if we do manage to hit what we’re aiming at.”
“You can get up on the roof for a little more height, but you’re exposed as shit up there,” Weasel said helpfully.
George scratched his head. “We have to assume as soon as we try anything they’re going to blow the shit out of this entire building.”
“Sarah, you back up?”
She had the controller and viewscreen for Almighty’s drones, but had packed it away for the move across the open parking lot. She’d pulled it out of her pack as soon as they’d reached the sixth floor. “Yeah,” she said distractedly. The drone was one thousand feet up, directly over their building. “There’s a Growler on the north side here, parked close, but I don’t see any movement.” She and Ed had met up with her commanding officer as Morris and Conrad had come jogging into the Concourse beneath the Fisher Building. He’d left it up to her whether she would escape with him into the sewer tunnels or join with Ed and the others on their more-than-risky mission to back up Quigley and inflict additional damage on the Tabs. It hadn’t been a hard decision for her.
“I think that belonged to the dead guys in the stairwell,” Weasel said. “Came with the IMP we killed.”
“Tabs have a drone up as well in the area,” Ed told them. “I don’t feel like pulling out the satellite window sheet at the moment, so let’s just assume they’ve got satellite coverage as well.”
“If you can hit the front of the Toad’s turret with the Spike you won’t disable it, but there’s a good chance you’ll blind it so they can’t use the main gun,” Sarah reminded Ed and George.
Weasel eyed the drone controller in Sarah’s hands. “You talk to Morris? How’d we do?” he asked Ed.
Ed looked at Harris. “Sounds like all the Kestrels they had are done.”
“Everything in my hangar was toast, and the other hangar was blown to shit too,” Harris said.
“From what Morris told me and what I’ve seen from the drone, including Outlier’s IEDs, sounds like we killed one Toad and damaged another. Took out at least five IMPs and maybe a dozen Growlers. So that’s their whole air wing and at least a third, maybe half their vehicles, not counting Toads. Killed forty, maybe fifty Tabs in addition to whoever died inside the vehicles. So what is that, eighty to one hundred enemy KIA total? Morris was very happy.”
“They had their asses well and truly kicked,” George agreed. Hopefully their success was being repeated in all the other cities behind enemy lines where the ARF had planned similar operations.
“How bad is it for us?”
Ed shook his head. “At least twenty dead, probably more.” The dogsoldiers didn’t count wounded as casualties, not when you could still fight. “Maybe a lot more if Eagle Eye got hit hard. They’re underground so they’re out of radio range. Hell, they’ve probably dumped their radios so they can’t be tracked. RoadRunner got pretty banged up, and SkyBox had a bit of a fight getting back down to the lobby. That IMP took out four of Flintstone’s people when it grenaded the north side of Nakatomi. And we lost everybody in Sylvester but one. Cambridge East and West were wiped out.”
“Brooke?” Jason blurted before he could stop himself
Ed shook his head. “Dead.” He looked around at the faces surrounding him. “Right now we’re about the only squad that hasn’t lost anybody.”
“Not for lack of fucking trying,” Mark growled. His leg still hadn’t stopped bleeding from the office furniture shrapnel thrown around by the Toad’s main gun, but it had slowed to a throbbing ooze.
Ed peered at the feed on the tablet in Sarah’s hands, then went back and peered out past the door frame again. “What’s that building right next to us? I can’t even see it from here, it’s too short.”
“McDonald’s. At least, it used to be,” Weasel told him. “And next to that is the old Third Precinct headquarters of the po-lice. Three stories. Looks like there was a serious battle there at some point, a vehicle drove through the back wall, there’s bullet hits all over the front by the door, and half the windows have black smudges on the outside, looks like the inside must have burned. It sits right on the near-side service drive.”
“You haven’t been inside it? Or the McDonald’s?” Weasel shook his head.
“That police building isn’t as tall, but it’s a lot closer,” Ed observed. George was at his shoulder.
“Same firing angle,” George agreed. “But half the distance. So anyone there should be able to aim a little better.”
“As soon as their drone spots you going into that building those Toads are going to level it,” Sarah said. “Take about six main gun rounds to turn it into rubble.”
“Don’t you have a drone jammer?” Jason asked. He’d barely been able to pay attention to the conversation, all he’d been thinking about was Brooke. Dead. He’d been hoping after all this that the two of them would get some more time together. Now that was never going to happen. He found himself fighting back tears, and wiped at his face angrily.
George shook his head. “It’s designed more for the small infiltrators. Bug and bird size. It won’t work on the ones they’re using, they’re probably a thousand feet up, like ours.” He paused, and looked at the ARF Sergeant. “Right?”
Sarah blinked. “Unless it’s the size and weight of a small child, it won’t do anything against what they’re using.”
“They know there’s a group of us here, and even if those fuckers on the service drive leave us alone those other assholes clearing the New Center buildings are eventually going to head this way, and we’ll get pinched,” Weasel observed. “Shit, they’ve got enough vehicles over there already to surround this building. I’m guessing they think we’re just one random squad and all the other doggies are hunkered down at Nakatomi, which is why they’re ignoring us. For now. But we’re dead if we stay here, and we’re dead if we try to make a run for the tunnel mouth. Or we’ll get there and they’ll pour in after us and kill us and then everybody else. Probably have flamethrowers on standby just for such an occasion. The only way to attack them is across that bridge, which is a total killing ground. We’re pretty much fucked.” He didn’t seem too upset about the pronouncement.
“Not with half a dozen Spikes and eight armor-piercing grenades we’re not,” Ed said confidently. “They’re sitting there like they’re untouchable, like they’re on the moon or something. They’re two hundred yards away. They think just because they can’t shoot worth a shit that nobody else can either. They haven’t had to deal with serious anti-armor weapons in so long they’ve gotten out of the habit of fearing what we can do, even after the ass-kicking we gave them this morning.” He looked around at all the faces turned to him and gave them an evil grin. “We’re going to show them the error of their ways. Hell, d’you see? Half those Growlers out there don’t have any armor, maybe they’ve run out of the up-armored ones. We can mess them up bad.” He shook his head. “But it’s not going to be quick or easy, I’ll tell you that.” Ed looked around the crowded hallway at the faces peering at him. “I need a count of how many hand grenades we have as well as standard forty-millimeter rounds. We’ve got to make something happen,” he announced.