Ed had two spikes, and George had his MGL loaded up with six of the light armor-piercing grenade rounds. Both Ed and George were crouched down in the middle of the apartment. Ed peered over the window sill at the armored vehicles in the distance. Toads were huge vehicles compared to a Toyota or Ford, but 175 yards out it seemed a tiny target try to hit with a rocket.
Ed had the Spike ready to go: sights up, safety pin out, all he had to do was depress the safety lever with his fingers and press the trigger with his thumb. He was sweating profusely and his heart was hammering in his chest. He exchanged a look with George but neither of them had to say a word. They’d been fighting alongside one another for so long no words were necessary, they each knew what the other was thinking.
There was a whooshing crack of a roar and Ed’s eyes were just able to track the path of the Spike as the rocket sped from the adjacent apartment towards the tank squatting in the middle of the distant intersection.
He stood up, George rising beside him, and lined the sights on the tank to the right even as he saw an explosion batter the tank to the left. George fired the grenade launcher beside him, the THOOMPF loud in the room, the windows before them shattering with a crescendo. As planned George was taking aim at one of the IMPs. Ed depressed the safety on the rocket launcher with his two middle fingers, checked his sights were on the tank’s turret just above the main gun, and smoothly pressed the trigger with his thumb. He was so focused on his task the sound of the rocket roaring out of the tube on his shoulder seemed quiet.
Ed tossed the empty launch tube to the side and grabbed the second Spike sitting ready beside him on the arms of a chair. It had already been prepped with the safety pin pulled and the sights deployed. He pressed it hard against his shoulder, depressed the red safety lever with his two middle fingers, and only as he was aiming at the Toad did he take a fraction of a second to eye the tank. He could see scorch marks on the turret, so he’d scored a hit, but whether he’d destroyed the sighting unit or managed to puncture the armor on the top of the turret, or both, or neither, he had no idea. He aimed at the same place, the top of the turret just above the main gun, and carefully pressed the trigger with his thumb.
This time the rocket seemed louder and he was aware of just how much dust filled the air of the apartment around him as the rocket’s exhaust, as it leapt from the tube, battered the walls. He dropped the spent tube to the floor and kicked it away, then grabbed his rifle hanging across his chest by its sling. Beside him George had fired all six grenades, and was busy reloading with his last two AP rounds. He also had two standard HE rounds. Ed had heard additional rockets being fired from the apartment next door but he’d been too focused on his task to count, so he didn’t know if they’d fired every rocket yet. They’d allocated three Spikes per tank, and George had been tasked with the IMPs, four AP grenades each.
Over the top of his rifle Ed eyed the tanks. There was smoke shooting out of the top of the tank on the right, the one at which he’d fired his rockets. It was too far away to tell for sure, but he thought he saw a hole in the top of the turret. As for the tank on the left… he saw a hatch pop open and a helmeted man stick his head and shoulders out. The Tab put his hands on the big belt-fed machine gun in front of him.
“Contact front!” Ed shouted, hopefully loud enough for his voice to carry up and down the hallway. “Machine gun!” Before he’d finished shouting his warning the man in the tank had begun firing. Ed dove to the ground to the floor pulling George down with him.
The bullets thudded into the walls behind them, the sounds of the bullets impacting drywall and wood seemingly as loud as the distant gun firing. More of the Tab soldiers opened up, the chattering of their weapons accompanied by the sound of bullets hitting around him and smacking the front of the building.
Lying on his side on the floor George finished reloading the grenade launcher. Ed rose up onto one knee and peered out the window. As he did, he saw the main gun on the still-functioning tank swing over toward him.
“Incoming!” he screamed. He grabbed George by the collar and gave him a yank as he rose to his feet and lunged toward the door. As he reached the doorway the entire building shuddered as the high-explosive tank round hit somewhere close. He fell to his knees but was back up instantly as dust fell from the ceiling. “Where’d that hit?” he started to say.
George hurled himself through the doorway and body slammed Ed into the wall as Sarah and Harris bailed out of their apartment as well. As he bounced off the wall and fell to his knees Ed saw Harris had a Spike tube in his hands.
“That thing still hot?” Ed asked him.
“Yeah,” Harris replied, “I wasn’t fast enough on the trigger.”
“No time like the fucking present,” George growled at him.
“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Harris said. “Backblast!” he called out, running into the apartment he’d just vacated. As Harris shouldered the rocket launcher Sarah looked past him through the open doorway. She saw the main gun of the Toad traversing once again, seemingly swinging over to point directly at them.
“Displace!” she screamed, running left, away from the men and around the corner. Ed and George had just turned to run in the opposite direction when the BANGWHOOSH of Harris’s Spike roasted the drywall and filled the air with fresh particles, the sound followed almost immediately by a huge explosion that tossed them to the floor and covered them with debris.
“You can see the difference between the up-armored and the regular Growlers,” Mark told Jason as they waited for the signal, crouched in the dim apartment. He pointed out the windows, the two of them keeping back from the glass and being very careful to stay down and move slowly. The last thing they needed was to get spotted by the Tab forces not quite two hundred yards away.
“Yeah,” Jason said, squinting. The windows on the up-armored Growlers looked like glass boxes clamped to the doors.
“Looks like about half those Growlers aren’t armored,” Mark said. “When the shooting starts you hammer them,” he told the teenager. “As fast as you can, put rounds into the passenger compartment, front seat, back seat, whatever, they’re probably full of troops. Once the action starts the vehicles might take off, or the soldiers may bail out of the vehicles. You shoot, and you just keep shooting,” Mark told him. “How many magazines do you have?”
“Six here,” Jason said, gesturing at his at the mag pouches across his chest, “and at least as many in my pack. Plus the one in the gun.”
Mark nodded approvingly. “Well you just keep shooting until I tell you otherwise, or there’s nothing left to shoot at.”
“What are you going to do about the armored Growlers?”
“The passenger compartments are armored. And the underside, against bombs. But there’s no armor on the sides or front of the engine compartment, and the tires are just tires. They used to be fitted with run-flat tires at the start of the war, but we trashed all of those. You’ve got to park that thing sometime, right? Well, you pour gas on ‘em, run-flats burn just as well as regular tires. Now, maybe only one in four tires on a Growler has that run-flat insert. So I can’t kill the guys in them… but I’m going to kill the shit out of the vehicles.”
When the lady Sergeant fired the first rocket Jason heard the noise more behind him echoing down the hall then he did outside through the glass. Almost immediately Mark began firing his belt-fed SAW, the gun set up on a counter in the middle of the studio apartment. Jason fired a few times, but the red dot of his optic was bouncing around so much he didn’t think he was hitting anything. He backed up to the open doorway of the apartment and braced his left forearm against the door frame. That steadied him greatly and he was able to direct his fire much more accurately at the Growlers on the far side of the freeway.