“You shut up, you,” Early told him.
Sarah realized there wasn’t much more she could do, not in a dim stairwell. His body armor would help hold the compress in place, and that would have to do. Together she and Early dragged Quentin to his feet and started moving down the stairs once again, holding the wounded man up by his shoulders. They reached the ground floor and roughly shoved through the exterior door, looking around wildly. They saw a Growler by the far corner of the building and the other members of the squad were between it and the building. Early saw the Growler’s door was open and just from the body language of the men by it, the men he’d fought alongside for so many years, he knew that it was drivable.
“This way,” he told Sarah. “Wounded get to ride in luxury.” They were halfway to the vehicle, struggling to hold up Quentin who seemed to be fading fast, when Early saw his squadmates scatter, most heading back inside. A familiar sound echoed off the parking lot asphalt. He traded a frowning glance with Sarah.
“Kestrel,” she grunted unhappily.
“What happened?” Weasel asked from behind the wheel of the Growler as they arrived.
“He fucking got shot,” Sarah snapped at him.
“Well, get him in the back,” Weasel said, not perturbed at all by being yelled at. He looked out the windshield. There were slopes on both sides of the freeway from the service drives down to the freeway itself and they were wildly overgrown with grass, shrubs, and trees. At ground level the far service drive, and the Tab vehicles there, weren’t visible at all. Which meant the Tabs couldn’t see the Growler he was sitting in, although Weasel was well aware of their drone above his head. He spotted the Kestrel to the west, doing a loop high above the damaged Toads and IMPs. He was torn between driving away—where he’d be sure to be targeted by the helicopter—and running back into the building, cornered once again. A glance at the door showed him the rest of his squad hunkered down in the stairwell, Ed looking as indecisive as he felt.
The interior of the police station smelled like a mildewy barbecue pit. The fire which had roared through it at some point in the past had seriously damaged the building. Most of the interior seem to be shades of grey.
“Where the fuck are the stairs?” Ed said, looking around.
“Over there,” Mark said, pointing.
As they reached the third floor the noise of the Kestrel was briefly loud above them as it made a pass right over the building. As they reached an office on the west side of the former police precinct they saw the Kestrel hovering five hundred feet above the damaged Tab column. It rotated in their direction and immediately fired two rockets. Both men threw themselves to the floor as the rockets headed straight toward them.
The rockets passed over the police station and exploded against the sixth floor of the apartment building they’d just vacated. The Kestrel wasn’t hovering in one place, the pilot didn’t want to make a target of himself or his aircraft, it was moving back and forth, side to side, and doing small circles, almost like an impatient man pacing.
Both men on their knees, Mark looked at George, and then down at the grenade launcher in his hands. “You really think you can hit that bird with that?” he said dubiously.
“I’ve got to try,” George responded. He looked out and saw the far service drive was busy with activity now that the Tabs had air cover. Bodies were being pulled out of vehicles, and the wounded were being treated and placed into the back of one IMP. Several Growlers had laagered up around it.
There was a huge roar like a giant zipper and both men looked to see the Kestrel firing its mini-gun. The thirty-caliber bullets chewed up the apartment building behind them at fifty rounds a second. Every fifth round was a tracer so it looked as if there was a laser beam extending from the helicopter over their heads.
“I wish it was closer,” George admitted.
“I don’t,” Mark shot back.
“I mean so I can hit it,” George growled. He wondered if there was some way to sucker the helicopter in closer to them, but this pilot seemed a bit too cautious for that, he was hammering the apartment building from hundreds of yards away, at least five hundred feet in the air, while keeping the bird more or less constantly moving.
The men didn’t know it but what they were looking at was the only functioning Kestrel left in the city, all the others had been successfully destroyed, and the pilot had no wish for his aircraft to join the disabled list.
“Do you have a full belt in there?” George asked.
Mark shook his head. “No, but I can swap it out.” And he proceeded to do just that. “What’s the plan?”
“The plan is none of us are getting away from here alive while that bird’s still in the air. I know it’s hardened against small arms fire but between the four grenades I’ve got and a full two-hundred-round belt from you I’m hoping we can scare it away or damage it enough to put it on the ground. But the longer we take to do it,” he said, pointing out at the Tab’s ground forces, “the better chance they’ll have of getting their act together and coming over here and kicking our ass.”
George grabbed his radio. “Theodore, give us one minute, we’re going to try to down the bird.”
“Copy,” Ed responded.
George stared out at the bobbing and weaving helicopter as Mark fed the SAW a fresh belt. Any one of the four grenades in his launcher was more than powerful enough to down the bird… if he could just hit it. The problem was the rounds were relatively slow, at least compared to bullets, and had very curving trajectories. Hitting a moving target whose distance could only be guessed at would be hard as hell, maybe as much a matter of luck as skill. He eyed the maneuvering aircraft. While it never stopped moving, the pilot seemed to be swooping back and forth in the same pattern. He squinted and tried to do the math in his head—the Kestrel was roughly five hundred feet in the air and maybe two hundred yards out, so what would be the distance to it? After a moment of indecision he adjusted the optic on his grenade launcher for 275 yards. And the flight time would be two, maybe even three seconds. How far would the helicopter move in that amount of time?
“We don’t down it fast, it’s going to eat our lunch,” Mark warned. There was a loud metal slap. “I’m good to go.” He was set up on an overturned desk.
George looked at the big man beside him in his shorts and glorious middle-finger-to-fashion Hawaiian shirt and gave him a nod and a smile. “Then go fast, and don’t suck.” He took a deep breath. “On my go. Burn out that fucking barrel. And don’t forget to lead that bird.” He suddenly looked around, and scrambled backward to a second desk. On his knees behind it he braced the elbow of his support hand atop the desk and aimed out the empty window frame. Much steadier. Still, the distant helicopter looked small as a sparrow.
George picked a spot in the air, took up most of the weight in the trigger, and waited for the right moment. When it came he broke the trigger and the stubby grenade launcher bucked in his hands. Mark let loose with the SAW, the full-auto roar deafening in the small room. George didn’t wait, he found his spot and fired again, and again, and again, while Mark never let up off the trigger.
As he dropped the launcher from his shoulder it seemed to George that he could see his last two grenades arcing through the air, they were so slow, rising up, then dropping toward the distant helicopter. The first two had clearly already missed, and the third one dropped through the air fifty feet from the Kestrel, which abruptly jerked as the pilot reacted to Mark’s incoming fire. The helicopter slid sideways through the air… right into the last grenade, which exploded against the side of the fuselage with a huge flash. The bird went spinning sideways, trailing a thick cloud of smoke, and went down in the middle of the Lodge freeway.