There were a lot of people running around the hospital floor. Yelling and shouting, but he could hear the shooting and the explosions outside over the noise.
He wasn’t staying here. Not while a fight was going on.
He slid off the bed and found he could walk with much less pain than expected. It was probably the drugs, but it didn’t matter. He was not sitting this one out.
Langer stepped over to the pile of his clothes, which someone had been nice enough to wash and fold, and started getting dressed.
“You’re not leaving,” said a nurse from the doorway, shocked that he was upright. “You’ll open your incision and bleed out.”
“Ma’am,” Larry Langer replied. “Where’s my gun?’
Banks and his team heard the thunder of the artillery battery from nearly two miles away. It was coming from what appeared to be an open field along County Road 20 about two miles west of 231. An excellent place to set up – everything they needed to shell was within the eight-mile range fan.
“Let’s go!” he said, as the artillery let go another volley. Every minute that passed brought more steel death down on Jasper. They moved out fast on a beeline for the firebase.
Cannon had set up his team on both sides of Route 231. The intact PSF cruiser sedan they had captured was parked on the shoulder, and a uniformed PSF officer sat on the hood. There was a fair amount of military traffic, which would ignore the slacker PSF officer. Kunstler wouldn’t. This was the MSR, the main supply route. The PBI Inspector had to pass through here some time.
To the south, as he waited, Cannon could hear echoes of the battle for Jasper.
Davey Wohl’s mission was to slam the door shut behind the attack force, and that’s what his guerrillas did. They moved down out of the hills and woods to converge on the south side of the bridge over the White River on Route 231. That was the door.
The second infantry company tried to cross and was turned back by the volume of fire. The enemy dismounted and the forces shot at each other across the river. The PRA soldiers were not particularly motivated to cross 100 meters of open bridge roadway under the guns of dozens of shooters with scoped rifles.
Davey Wohl moved from position to position, ensuring his people were properly using cover and concealment. He didn’t count on the PRA employing snipers too.
The 7.62 millimeter round caught him in the back of the neck crossing Route 231 to get to some of his troops. Two of his men were wounded trying to drag him back in. But no PRA soldier crossed the bridge that night.
The roadblock was at 231 and 8th Street, not far from the courthouse square. The block was a set of logs fitted together and wrapped in razor wire. The tanks could smash the logs, but the wire would tangle in the gears of their tracks. Cardillo saw it and immediately ordered his force to turn off eastward at 9th Street.
While the Crusader Company tanks were fighting through the ambushes on the way to the center of town, Turnbull had driven over and gotten ahead of them. Now he was waiting there for the armor to come, praying his plan would work.
The AT-4 light rocket launchers had made three mobility kills on the M1s along 231 – the guerrillas fired them close, right at the treads, since the rockets would bounce off the depleted uranium composite armor of the sides and the turret. If you got a mobility kill, the tank was still a mighty dangerous pillbox – but it was just that, a pillbox. The guys in it had to come out eventually to eat.
Turnbull paced across the rooftop with several other insurgents, who were preparing their weapons. It was dark, and that gave the armor something of an advantage with its night vision gear. The tanks made the turn and roared under them.
Turnbull waited.
“Come on,” he whispered.
An explosion, a big one. He could hear the gears and track grinding below. Turnbull peered over the edge.
One M1 directly below him was up on the sidewalk, smoking. The one behind it, with the commander in the cupola blazing away with his .50 cal, was pulling around it.
“Now!” Turnbull shouted. Lights came up from the high schools portable floodlights hooked to a generator. The entire road below was illuminated like daylight, and that disoriented the tankers for a moment.
The street was covered by dark objects. The lead tank dodged them, but the next didn’t. The mine exploded under its body, lifting the tank and blowing out its treads. It stopped. When the commander tried to get out of the hatch, someone shot him.
Turnbull leaned over with his M4 and began spraying the gunners standing in the turrets. Then the rest of the guerrillas arose, with their Molotov cocktails lit, and threw them down on the tanks below.
Flames erupted on the tanks, on their engines, their turrets, their tracks, and on the street itself. One of the fire bombs went into an open hatch and detonated inside. That tank veered left into the abandoned hardware store across the street, stopping about 20 feet inside it.
Cardillo watched his lead tank get taken out and immediately knew it was an anti-tank mine. He screamed it into his intercom, and his driver dodged the two mines lying in the street to his front. He went for his machine gun again, but flaming objects were raining down on him, and he knew what they were too. Just before he ducked into the hatch and pulled it closed, he saw the tank behind him detonate a mine.
Inside his tank he could hear the faint sound of bullets hitting the exterior armor. The guerrillas were on the roofs of the buildings surrounding them. The tactical response was obvious.
Eliminate the buildings.
“Target, right, HEAT!” he shouted and the loader slammed a 120 millimeter shell into the breech. The turret spun.
“Fire!”
The building buckled and collapsed under Turnbull’s feet, or at least it felt like it did. The roof split and Turnbull fell ten feet to the second floor in a cascade of dust and debris, along with some other fighters. Unfortunately, so did some of the unlit Molotovs, which rolled inside and fell, spreading gasoline throughout the second floor.
“Oh, hell no,” Turnbull said. “Get out!” he yelled, and ran to the shattered side window facing the alley. It was another ten feet down. He jumped.
The building shook apart from a second HEAT round as he leapt, and the wall fell inwards behind him. He hit the ground hard, but instinctively executed a passable parachute landing fall. The meat of his buttocks and thigh took the brunt of the fall, and felt like it. But he didn’t break his ankles and he could still move.
Cardillo, from inside his tank, ordered the second round into the building where the guerrillas were. That took it down. No more Molotovs.
He keyed the mic.
“Quebec One-Seven, this is Crusader Six! Fire mission! Fire mission! Over!”
“Crusader Six, this is Quebec One-Seven, go!”
“My position! Troops in the open!” He read out his grid coordinates. The cannon cockers acknowledged.
Three M1s were either burning mobility kills or parked inside a building along 8th Street. There was one tank that had gone ahead and another still on Route 231. That one was shooting anything that moved not only with its coaxial and turret machine guns but with its main gun.
The ground shook as the tank fired, and Turnbull could hear the groan of collapsing buildings. Guerrillas were running all around and firing, but with no organization or purpose.
Turnbull pivoted and there was a ghost standing before him. A ghost with a .357.
“Larry? What the hell?”
Langer smiled, but the front of his shirt was drenched with blood. His incision had ripped open.
“I ain’t never walked away from a fight before,” he said. “Ain’t starting now.”