The element opened up. There was no bigger signal to pour it on than when Claymores went off fifty feet from your position, and their fires ripped through the next echelon of Infected. Bullets tore through uniforms and civilian clothing and garish body decorations to cleave open torsos and rupture organs. Of great effect were the two SAWs. They hammered at the Klowns relentlessly, slicing them down with an almost godlike accuracy, even as the targets ducked and tried to run.
Muldoon stopped firing for a moment to pull a grenade. “Frag out!” he shouted as he hurled it right in the middle of a clump of Klowns that were beginning to organize for a counterattack.
The explosion chopped them down in a heartbeat. Several writhed about on the ground, laughing their heads off as they tried to stanch the flow of blood from severed arms and legs. Several more grenades went off, sending bodies flying, a beautiful sight brought to Muldoon courtesy of the NVGs mounted to the front of his helmet.
“Thunder, Thunder, this is Crusher Three-One! Fire mission. Over,” Muldoon shouted into his radio over the noise of the rifle fire.
The term “fire mission” indicated that several rounds were to be fired, without any spotting rounds out to verify adjustment angles. That was another increase in the pucker factor. While Muldoon was well versed in the use of mortars, he had never ordered a fire mission without calling adjust fire. If he got the grid wrong in relation to the lightfighters slugging it out with the Klowns, it was going to be a very short fight.
“Crusher Three-One, this is Thunder. Fire Mission. Out.”
“Thunder, Crusher Three-One. Grid four five seven two eight seven. Enemy formation in the open. Direction twenty-four hundred, distance one hundred meters. Danger close. Over!”
“Crusher Three-One, Thunder has grid four five seven two eight seven. Enemy formation in the open. Direction twenty-four hundred, distance one hundred meters. Danger close. Out,” the mortar section leader responded.
“Thunder, Crusher Three-One. Fire when ready! Over!”
“Crusher Three-One, Thunder. Fire when ready. Roger. Out.” A moment later: “Crusher Three-One, Thunder. Shot. Over.”
“Thunder, roger—shots out. Over.”
“Crusher Three-One, Thunder. Splash. Over.”
“Incoming rounds, five seconds!” Muldoon shouted. “Thunder, Crusher, splash. Over!”
It was more like three seconds later that the night lit up when three mortar rounds, less than a second apart, impacted the street in the rear of the Klown formation. Muldoon grimaced beneath his mask. He’d hoped they would have landed a little deeper inside the group, but the rounds still had a substantial effect on the Klowns. Dozens of them died immediately, and dozens more were taken out of the fight.
But the leading edge of the Klown reinforcements had zeroed on Muldoon’s element, and they charged now, running right into the men’s fires with a furious zeal that was astonishing to behold. Scores more died, laughing until their tickers stopped ticking and their brains shut down. But there were more behind them, many more, and they had weapons. Soon, enemy fire started slapping into tree trunks and blasting leaves off the forest floor right in front of Muldoon.
“Thunder, Crusher Three-One. If we can get you for another pass, adjust fire! Drop one hundred, fire for effect! Over!” The deal was that Thunder would give them one pass then resume supporting the fight at Hays Hall. Muldoon was playing his whiny-bitch card by asking for more rounds, but he didn’t care. If Thunder turned him down, he was just going to be dead a little sooner. He got back on his rifle and started returning fire.
“Reloading!” Rawlings shouted beside him.
“Crusher Three-One, this is Thunder. You owe me a case of Guinness for each round. Fire for effect, drop one hundred. Shots out. Over.”
Muldoon didn’t have time to reply. Three Klowns made it to the tree line and crashed through the foliage, firing assault rifles and aiming for the muzzle blasts of Muldoon’s men. He heard a tick as something slipped past his helmet, a graze so light that it didn’t even alter the angle of his NVGs, but a close call nevertheless. He raised his rifle and banged out eight shots. Two of the attackers stumbled and faltered, still wheezing with laughter that his rounds failed to stifle. The third kept coming. Muldoon had missed him entirely. He went down suddenly as Nutter ripped off a burst on full auto.
“Damn, Duke! You shoot like a school girl!” Nutter shouted.
“Crusher Three-One, this is Thunder. Splash. Over.”
“More incoming!” Muldoon yelled. One of the Klowns he had shot struggled back to his knees. He was a civilian, and Muldoon recognized him as one of the public works guys he had seen around the post, a former NCO who had retired and gotten a job driving snow plows during the winter and cutting grass in the summer. Muldoon shot him in the face, and the man fell over into the brush.
The three mortar rounds landed, much closer, and Muldoon swore as the shock waves tore through the trees, kicking up a storm of grit, leaves, branches, and bloody ribbons of flesh. Muldoon continued firing, even though his sight picture was mostly full of obscurants. He had no idea whether he was hitting anything or not, but the potential to at least wound a Klown or two was worth the time and effort. Behind him, he heard the Mk 19s opening up, and he hoped their grenades would traverse parabolas short enough to hold back the attackers but not so abbreviated as to start landing among the lightfighters in the trees.
He needn’t have worried. The explosions rippled outside the tree line, pretty much dead on target.
Fuckin’-A, Sergeant Major.
But as the dust cleared, Muldoon was monumentally disappointed to discover that neither the mortars nor the grenades had dissuaded the Klowns from surging into the trees.
Then, the mag in his rifle ran dry.
THIRTY-SEVEN.
It took a lot longer than ten minutes to get Hays Hall evacuated. When the troops had built the walls surrounding the two-story headquarters building, they’d dragged one final container in place to seal the vehicle access then used a crane to hoist a second container on top of it. The crane had been taken out of commission earlier in the battle, so the only way out was to rappel from the wall or come down caving ladders.
The delay was one of the longest in Lee’s life, virtually unendurable as he crouched next to the wall with Twohy, his radio telephone operator, and four other soldiers who had clustered around him, trying to provide protection while he quarterbacked the fight from the front. Charlie Company had halted its advance and formed a trailing wedge, becoming a type of wall that the Klowns would commit suicide trying to scale.
From the roof of Hays Hall, the remaining defenders poured it on with everything they had left as the first of the soldiers trapped inside the compound made a break for it. The wounded went first, several of whom were litter-borne. Lee called for the ambulances to be moved up, so those men could immediately be transported off-site. That involved pulling some of Echo’s soldiers forward out of the blocking position they had taken in the rear. Lee couldn’t leave the ambulances unguarded, as the medics operating them were armed only with pistols. The Klowns would have loved to take them down, and Lee was quite predisposed to ensure they didn’t have the chance.
Twenty minutes after the evacuation began, the rooftop defenders had abandoned their posts. That left only the ground combatants standing between them and the Klowns. Lee ordered Hallelujah Hayes to retrograde his elements back toward Walker’s position, where they would be directly backed up by the remaining Echo formations. That way, the battalion would be more centrally located and better able to defend itself should the Klown reinforcements make their way past the small task force led by Turner and Muldoon.