“No it won’t. You’re reading it wrong. We’re just gonna skate by it.” Whipkey sighs, and Hector looks to see him squatting in their hole with his trou down. “Takin’ a dump while I can,” he mutters. “Recommend you do the same.” He pulls up his pants, slings his rucks, the heavy bag with the extra barrel, and climbs out.
The thick crack of a heavy bullet shivers the air, showering them both with friable red dirt as the earth erupts between them. “Fuck,” Whipkey hisses, dropping prone. “That was some big-caliber shit. See where that came from?”
Hector swings the barrel. His finger tightens. A long burst, return fire? He peers through the optic, but sees nothing. No smoke, no motion, no vapor. Though a faint pop arrives a second after the bullet. The bullet travels twice the speed of the sound. A long shot, which was why they’d missed. Should he fire? At last he doesn’t. He keys, “Whiskey, OP Six, sniper fire from across the ravine.”
“Roger. All hands, maintain cover. Don’t move out just yet. Resupply’s on the way. Out.”
He hasn’t fired Round One yet, but already they’re being resupplied? Maybe he won’t have to worry about ammo. They keep their heads down, sensing a distant gaze on them. Drink some water, and check the Pig.
A low motor-whine, a discreet beep behind them. Whipkey pokes a shaving mirror up. “One a the mules. Water and ammo.”
Hector nods. “Stay low.”
“Know it, dude.”
But the assistant gunner’s only halfway to the cart, low-crawling, using every bush and fold of ground, when the robot beeps again. The wheels spin. It backs away. “Here, boy,” Whipkey calls. “What choo doing? Get the fuck back here!”
But the wheels are spinning in opposite directions, fighting each other. The cart backs, then rolls forward. Halts. Then, abruptly, whips in a circle, nearly tipping over, the ammo boxes and water cans atop it jolting and clattering.
It bolts forward, narrowly missing Whipkey as he buries his head under his hands, and tears past Ramos, pitching down the slope. It accelerates, individually powered wheels whining madly, heading downhill. Toward the enemy line.
“Ammo cart’s gone rogue,” someone says on the net. “Deserting.”
“Bastards cyberjacked it.”
“Six, take it out. Copy? Take it out.”
Hector can’t believe it. Fire on their own ammo resupply? Their own water, when his mouth is parched? But orders are orders. He’s lining up the sights when the cart suddenly explodes, disassembling in a cone of dirt and black smoke. “Aw fuck,” Whipkey mutters. “Now we got to worry about fucken mines, too.”
Hector eases his finger off the trigger and sets the safety. He smacks dry lips. “Hijo de puta,” he mutters. “I coulda used that water.”
A snarl of engines grows from beachward. Huge hulks strain to climb, lumbering up, then tipping down as they crest. “At last, some fucking armor,” Whipkey yells.
At the same moment trails of fire streak down from the sky. They search here and there across the ravine from Hector and Troy, who freeze, crouched, as the earth gouts in crimson flashes, as jungle and trees are hurtled skyward, turned over, fall, and are hurtled skyward again. Pulverized amid flashes of lightning. A paler cone of fire streaks skyward from amid the maelstrom, but falters, falls back. The thunder goes on and on before gradually subsiding amid flashes and heavy booms that echo away amid the hills.
“OPs, move out and follow behind AAVs,” the net says.
Wheezing under their burdens, they trot after the behemoths, sucking diesel fumes. The Javelin team’s out on the flank. An attack helicopter flashes overhead, cants, unleashes streams of fire. The rockets impact on the far side of a hill, and black smoke rises along with a faint popping. Hector’s headache throbs behind his eyes. The fog and drizzle are growing heavier. Is that thump and hum from helicopters, or inside his head? The AAV dips and slews, treads flinging dirt as it hits soft patches. They’re headed down, skirting the ravine. He puffs and blows, trying to keep up. Some of the infantrymen are riding on the armor, forbidden in training, but apparently okay now. The Javelin team drops and sets up, sighting on something in the distance. A nonthreat, it seems, because seconds later they’re up and jogging forward again.
“Jeez, I can’t go much farther,” Whipkey wheezes.
“We got to keep up, Troy.”
For some reason Hector keeps thinking of the Line. Of Farmer Seth… He looks back to see Whipkey surreptitiously letting a mortar round slip to the ground. “That’s five pounds less,” he mutters.
“You aren’t ditching our ammo?”
“Think I’m stupid? I’ll drop chow before seven-six-two.”
Hector’s about to snap something back when he notices he’s walking on a smoothly paved road of bloody flesh. Something massive has rolled over the bodies, smashing them into a glistening paste that merges almost imperceptibly with the red soil. If not for the smell, he might not even have noticed. That was what made him recall the factory. The smells of fresh meat, ground-up flesh, drying blood, and crushed intestines. Arms and legs lie to the side, some charred, others with jagged pinkish-white bone sticking out. A head, facedown, still packaged in its helmet as if for shipping.
Then a nearly whole body, in dark woodland camo. The midsection’s scattered across the grass, but the upper body and legs are still there. The pale face looks serene. At first Hector thinks she’s a girl. Then realizes, no, just a smooth-faced, fine-featured boy. No older than he is, probably, but built smaller. A strange-looking rifle lies near an open hand.
“Get moving, keep moving,” rasps in his headset. Hector flinches. Lifts his boots carefully, trying not to step where it glistens. The melted fat, that’s what’ll be slippery. Just like when a vat of it spills, on the Line.
The amtrac’s burning, popping like firecrackers as the ammo cooks off. He and Whipkey lie prone, tucked under one of its busted tracks, hastily setting up the Pig.
“Gunners, get some fire out there,” crackles in his ears. Another M240 opens up to their right, and balls of white fire arch out. Tracers! “Must be all he’s got left,” Whipkey yells. “Losing that mule fucked us bad.”
“How we fixed?”
“Getting short, Heck. Only two more belts.”
He charges the gun and bends to the optics. They’re cracked and smeared with dirt. He flips them out of the way and goes to irons. Figures move ahead, surge at the crest, sink down. “Four hundred meters,” Whipkey mutters. Hector sets the sight and snugs the butt into his shoulder. The Pig hammers his shoulder, pushing him back. But he’s braced, boots digging into the dirt, and he walks the rounds in short bursts, die, motherfucker, die, picking up the rhythm of their rushes and putting bursts where they’ll be, not where they were. Distant figures reel and drop, stagger or just fall. Brass spews. Links tinkle. The blast, confined under the hull of the wrecked tank, is deafening. The gas, choking.
A flame leaves the low hills ahead and darts faster than they can track it somewhere to their right. A heavy, ground-quaking explosion.
The gun to their right falls silent.
With a growl of diesels, another track pulls up next to them. The turret rotates, and the .50-cal and the forty mike mike began clamoring, searching for the enemy. The noise is beyond deafening.