“Get a drone over there!” Parker shouted, staring at the firefight at the hangars in the feed from one of the security cameras mounted on the outside of Echo. The hangars were too far away, and the resolution too grainy, for him to make out enough details. Figures running, and explosions. The guerrillas seemed to be firing from the nearby apartment building. “How the hell did they get inside the perimeter without getting spotted?” No one had an answer for him. There’d been no alarms or alerts, no vehicles running the checkpoints, so they somehow must have infiltrated on foot.
“Drone up!” one of the operators called out, and everyone moved toward her, eyes on her screen.
The drone was two hundred feet above the ground, swooping toward the action from the northeast, and its wide-angle HD camera provided them a full-color hi-res picture of the action on the ground. Parker saw flame and towering columns of smoke pouring from between the two hangars. Behind him he heard his S3 on the radio, ordering troops to the area. The command center was a maelstrom of figures running back and forth and loud radio traffic.
“There!” Parker said, pointing. He’d spotted a group of dogsoldiers between the hangars. As the drone flew through thick black smoke and out the other side he lost sight of the men for a second, but then they were back. Running now, heading south, toward the nearby parking garage. Next to it was an apartment building, and halfway up the building he saw missing windows, and muzzle flashes.
“They’re retreating there,” Parker said. “Get some troops to surround those buildings. And get me a flight status on my aircraft!”
“Yes sir.”
As he watched he saw a Toad roaring in from the west and begin engaging the retreating guerrillas, and an IMP and several Growlers approaching from the east side at speed. The guerrillas weren’t getting away, that much seemed clear. He watched the Toad fire its main gun almost point-blank into the parking garage, and then spray the collapsing rubble with its machine gun. The dogsoldiers who’d somehow penetrated his base would all be dead very soon, of that he had no doubt. His concern now was how much damage they’d done to his small fleet of helicopters. None of them had been in the air at the time of the attack.
“I’ve got a second drone on station in five seconds!” another operator called out.
Parker turned and saw the feed on the man’s monitor. Having just taken off from the roof of the building behind Echo, the drone was coming in from the northwest, gradually gaining speed and altitude.
“Show me the other side of that apartment building!” the S3 ordered the operator.
“Yes sir.”
The camera showed the drone flying south, then turn east and head toward the low parking garage, and the apartment building beyond. When it was still several hundred yards away the observers saw two vehicles exit the west side of the parking garage. They swerved through a parking lot, bounced across Michigan, and raced south on a narrow side street.
“Send some troops in pursuit of those vehicles, but concentrate on that building,” Parker directed. “There are still a lot of terrorists inside there.” He’d seen at least fifteen and probably more enemy troops on the ground by the hangars. Less than half that many could fit inside two vehicles, and they had no easy way out of the base. “And what’s going on at Washboard?”
“The two platoons are en route right now sir. ETA five minutes or so. Do you perhaps want to pull them back…?”
“No, the terrorists here are trapped in that building, and I don’t want the ones at VOP to get away. I want that building surrounded ASAP.”
“Gogogogo!” someone was shouting.
Harris rolled over the injured man he’d tackled into the parking garage. It had been a race against time. They’d known they would only have a short window—a very short window—to do all the damage they could to the aircraft in the hangars before armor rolled up, and they’d almost made it. “Grab your packs!” he shouted needlessly, as all of RoadRunner was doing just that.
Dogsoldiers snagged their heavy packs on the run and headed toward the door in the side of the apartment building. Harris spotted his pack and had just laid a hand on it when he realized the man he’d tackled hadn’t gotten up. The man was facedown on the concrete, lying angled across one of the yellow parking spot lines.
Harris dragged his pack over to the man and knelt down. He grabbed the man’s shoulder and flipped him over, only to see staring dead eyes. “Shit.” Less than half the group, the slower-moving doggies, were still in the parking garage. He was in the process of standing up when the garage exploded around him.
He lost consciousness for a second and then came to, covered in dust, a chunk of concrete the size of a football on his chest. He could taste blood, but couldn’t hear anything other than a whine. He blinked once, twice, then there was a weird staccato thumping he could feel in his chest more than hear. Harris looked over to see the top of the Toad past a pile of collapsed cement and rebar, firing its belt-fed over his head into the garage beyond in one long burst. Then it reversed, he wasn’t sure why.
Coughing, he rolled over and got to his hands and knees. There were several other dogsoldiers nearby, some moving, a few clearly dead from the blast.
“Let’s go, let’s go!” he shouted, getting to his feet. He grabbed and kicked and punched those still alive, getting them to their feet. He grabbed his backpack, pulled it out from under a piece of concrete the size of a card table, turned—and saw the door leading back into the apartment building was blocked by rubble.
“Eagle Eye, Eagle Eye,” he shouted into his radio, not really able to hear his own voice, and then the tank fired its main gun again. He flinched, and started jogging into the parking garage, waving the others to follow. “All elements of RoadRunner that can make it to you are en route. Don’t wait for us. Repeat, DO NOT WAIT. It’s Plan B for us.”
Thor burned through another magazine, trying to keep the troops near Echo pinned, and then glanced down. Smoke was pouring out of both hangars. The troops of RoadRunner were massed in the center and then started running back toward the apartment building.
“They’re coming back. Covering fire,” Thor said into his radio. The SAW, silent for a time as the gunner loaded it with a fresh belt, opened up again. Thor got a new magazine into his rifle, let the bolt fly, and fired a few rounds over the heads of the dogsoldiers on the ground as they ran toward him. There were maybe two dozen bodies scattered on the ground between the hangars and Echo, but most of the Tabs had taken cover inside the building and were firing from there. Most of the soldiers working at Echo were officers, not combat troops, which meant they hadn’t been wearing armor. “Eagle Eye, get ready to displace.” Bullets from the soldiers returning fire were hitting the bricks of the apartment building like raindrops, but few of them seemed well-aimed.
As the last of RoadRunner began crossing the street Thor heard the huge whine of a turbo diesel and, probably unwisely, stuck his head out of the window frame to look left. “Shit. Toad! Toad!” he shouted, then got on the radio. “Eagle Eye, displace. Displace!”
He heard a heavy machine gun open up below them, then the tank’s main gun fired and the whole building trembled. Grabbing his pack off the floor—it was a lot lighter without the two Spikes—Thor shouldered it as he headed out of the apartment. A dogsoldier was halfway down the hallway at the stairwell. “I think we’ve got Tabs down there,” the man said worriedly.
“Well, we’re not taking the elevator,” Thor barked. He paused and moved to the side and counted the bodies moving past him. “Go, go,” he spat when the last man passed him. He charged forward, only to see the half-dozen men paused on the first flight down.