Not that there’ll be much left to defend with. The battalion had been expending its munitions at a fantastic rate. It was difficult to know how much longer the unit could maintain its current tempo, especially with Echo deployed in a battle formation. While the unit was still supplying the battalion, it was doing so with only a small percentage of personnel. No one was able to keep a good count of what was going down to the company level, and the battalion had been fighting pretty much the entire time on the road to Drum. Lee hoped—prayed, actually, which was the first time he’d resorted to that in quite a while—that they could pull Mountaineer out of Hays Hall and get the hell out of Fort Drum.
“Colonel!”
Lee turned. Two Alpha Company lightfighters were escorting another man with them. Unlike the lightfighters, the newcomer didn’t have any MOPP gear on, though he was armored up and carried an M4 carbine. He was shorter than Lee but more squared off in a heavy-jawed sort of way that reminded Lee of Sergeant Major Turner. The olive-skinned man had bright green eyes that shined beneath a furrowed brow.
“Colonel?” the man echoed.
Lee felt the blood leave his face. The man was Brigadier General Salvador, the deputy commanding general of the 10th Mountain Division.
Lee saluted.
“Sir, you need to get behind the line!”
Salvador looked Lee up and down then leaned forward, staring right at the subdued lieutenant colonel oak leaf insignia on Lee’s armor. He raised his eyes back to Lee’s masked face.
“I don’t know of any Colonel Lee attached to the First Battalion. Who the hell are you, soldier?”
Lee decided not to sidestep the issue. It wasn’t very important at the moment, anyway. “Harry Lee, former S-3, First Battalion, Fifty-fifth Infantry Regiment,” he said. “You need to get off the battlefield, General. As in, right now.”
“The S-3? So you’re a captain?” Salvador snapped. “Why the hell are you wearing lieutenant colonel insignia? Where’s the XO, Walker?”
“Major Walker is not here, sir. If you follow these soldiers, you’ll be taken to him, and he can fill you in on everything that’s gone down since the battalion pulled out of Boston. I’m busy here.”
Salvador pushed his way forward and got right in Lee’s mask-covered face. “Are you out of your fucking mind? Do you have any idea how badly you’ve basically butt-raped military tradition, not to mention how many regulations you’ve violated? Boy, you’re in some serious trouble here!”
Lee looked at the two soldiers who had accompanied the general. Both were half crouched because of the gunfire ripping through the air, and not all of it was coming from the battalion. The Klowns were rebounding since Hayes’s company had pulled back. The void had given the infected enemy time to regroup, and they were focusing solely on Charlie Company, hammering them with everything they had.
“Get this man out of here!” Lee yelled at the pair just as several soldiers still manning the wall above them opened up with full automatic gunfire.
Everyone dropped to the ground, including Salvador. The general might have been pissed, but he hadn’t forgotten he was out in the open, in the middle of a shooting war. Something buried itself into the shipping container wall behind him with a sharp noise, and Lee looked back to see an arrow lodged there.
Higher up, one of the infantrymen manning a defensive position was reacting to the fact he had one stuck in his left thigh.
Oh, fuck!
“Get Salvador out of here!” he shouted, bringing up his rifle.
The soldier with the arrow in his leg started shaking as the first wave of giggles hit him, and he immediately lowered his weapon and opened up on the men below. One of the soldiers who had escorted Salvador jerked as several rounds struck him. Next, Salvador grunted and started discharging his M4 into the ground. Lee’s RTO curled up into a ball as the general’s errant volley stitched a trail right in front of him. Lee pulled his rifle’s trigger, sending three bullets through the infected soldier above him, just as the others on the wall brought their own weapons around and began firing on the same man. The infected soldier danced a ballistic-driven jig as a score of rounds slammed into him, driving him off the wall and out of Lee’s view.
Lee turned to the men beside him. The first soldier who had been hit was lying face down on the ground, a puddle of blood forming near his head. Salvador thrashed next to him, his left hand clamped over his right shoulder, where his short neck met his body. Blood pulsed from between his gloved fingers. His eyes were wide with fear and shock. He knew he’d been hit, and he knew it was bad.
“Get him out of here!” Lee shouted to the remaining soldier and the RTO. “Twohy, get him to a medic, right away!”
More people ran toward them, and not all of them were in uniform. Lee took up a fighting position, but one of them threw up his hands, waving in the darkness.
“No, no! We’re from Hays!” the soldier shouted.
“How many of you are left inside?” Lee asked.
“I think we’re it, other than wall security. They’re on their way out now.” The man looked down at Salvador as the Twohy helped the other soldier heave him into a fireman’s carry. “Shit, is that the general?”
“It is,” Lee said. “Help these men get him out of here. Twohy, you know where the ambulances are?”
“Yes, sir,” said the RTO.
“Then get him to Nightingale, right now!”
“On it,” Twohy replied, and the group moved off, carrying the injured general with them.
Lee turned back to the fight. Charlie Company was continuing to fall back. They were extracting a healthy penalty on the Klowns. Bodies were stacked up four deep only a few hundred meters away. But the Klowns kept coming, clambering over the dead and twitching near-dead and cackling with glee as they retaliated with assault rifles and hand grenades of their own. One of the containers down the line exploded when an AT4 round burrowed into it and detonated, sending red-hot shrapnel whirling through the air. The fire had come from behind the Klown lines. The crazies were bringing some heavy weaponry to the party, which meant it was time for the battalion to beat feet.
“Wizard, this is Six!”
Walker came back immediately. “Six, this is Wizard. Over!”
“Wizard, are we about done with the extraction? We’re losing the line over here. Chaos is being pushed back. Time’s up, we have to go. Over.”
“Six, this is Wizard. Roger, we’ve got a few stragglers, but they’ll be out in less than two minutes. We’re ready when you’re ready. Over.”
“Wizard, Six is ready right now. Pull Alpha back under covering fires, then do the same for Charlie and any other forward units. Start that right away. Over.”
“Six, this is Wizard. Roger that.”
THIRTY-EIGHT.
Muldoon rolled onto his side and snatched a fresh magazine from his harness. Rawlings started firing again, shouting behind her mask as the Klowns toppled to the brush right in front of her. Nutter ripped off another blast on full auto then shouted that he had to reload.
On the other side of Nutter, a soldier got to his knees and hurled a grenade, yelling “Frag out!” Before the lightfighter could cover, he jerked backward with a choked scream as a bullet tore through his mask. The soldier toppled onto his back and lay still, his legs curled up beneath him.
Muldoon fired three rounds into the Klown rifleman staggering through the brush. The attacker’s movements were made clumsy by the fact he didn’t have night vision gear and was laughing like Frank Gorshen’s Riddler from the classic Batman TV series. More shapes loomed behind that one, and they returned fire. Muldoon heard bullets crack as they zipped past, missing him by mere inches.