“Two birds. Chinooks, five hundred feet,” said a middle-aged soldier, peering out the shattered window of the store.
The rumble shifted again, growing louder.
“Uh-oh. One is coming back. They’re about to drop troops on our heads.”
Henry noticed Carlos had picked up a SAW equipped with an ACOG scope, an extra belt of ammunition draped around his shoulders. There were maybe twenty other soldiers, some standing, some sitting or kneeling in the store. Many were bleeding. Toward the shadowy rear of the store, Henry could see some who were horizontal.
“We’ve got men across the street in some of the stores, and a fifty in the church,” Captain Canella said. “I hope it’s worth it. ’Cause they’re all gonna die.”
“I gave him the thirty-second version,” Martinez said, edging his head from the door. “Captain Canella figures we should exfil now while he and his men engage.” Henry knew that tone.
“They’re inserting,” said the weekend warrior with an M4 carbine slung over his chest and a desperate look on his face. The rotor wash from the Chinook sent snow and dust swirling down the street and through the quaint hardware store. Henry’s heart rate accelerated and his chest was tight and his throat was raw. Soldiers rattled out the back door.
“We’re going to do this,” Martinez said. “I told the captain he could respectfully go fuck himself.”
“Yeah, and I told him that was—”
A bomb hit the church, and whatever it was Captain Canella was about to say ended in flying glass and smoke and a shrinking of the lungs and balls and ringing of the ears.
“Taking contact!” someone shouted.
“Engage!” Urgent and close and sounding far away. Maybe it was Canella, or perhaps it was Martinez that gave the order.
Henry left the safety of the store. Carlos hunkered down behind the passenger side of a snow-encrusted car parked on the side of the road, and as Henry took up a position by the driver’s rear tire of the old Subaru, he saw the futility in the fight. The Chinook opened up, strafing the church and then the rooftops with heavy-caliber rounds.
The enemy soldiers fast-roped from the helicopter. Henry fired at them as they landed, placing his crosshairs at chest height. He used his elbows to form a bipod and fired short bursts. He focused on a group of three ropes, and cut down every man who landed. He went through two magazines in less than a minute, rolling slightly as he thumbed the release.
“Reloading!” he yelled.
From across the street, muzzle flashes sparked from doorways and windows.
The Chinook walked tracers up the street and through the vehicle Henry and Carlos were taking cover behind, and rounds slammed through the metal and whined from the road. Henry smelled gasoline.
“Los! Move! Gas!”
“Moving! Give me covering fire.”
Henry continued to fire, now at flashes and movement, aware of the fuel spilling onto the road, the sparks all around him as rounds hit the pavement, the Subaru, and the buildings. The second helicopter, the one that had gone further north over town, came closer, and the door gunner let loose.
The attacking ground troops were nowhere to be seen. They had not marched up the road like untrained militia men who had seen too many movies. They’d taken cover, and were undoubtedly advancing, while the two helicopters pounded away.
The building across the street exploded, sending debris hurtling through the air and small pellets of angry glass into Henry’s face. Hot ash and flaming pieces of building came drifting down.
Henry ran, slipping on the snow and ice. He could feel the rounds seeking his flesh as they cracked and slapped and zipped around him.
The Subaru he’d been taking cover behind exploded, and the blast threw him face forward. He lost his weapon and smashed his chin and felt his teeth clang together. Half blind, and with his brain in a vise, he clawed for his weapon, the snow and ice digging beneath his fingernails while he groped on knees and elbows.
Hungry hands found the stock, pulled it close. The machine guns continued to rain down. They fired and fired from above and everything was broken and ripped apart. The belly of one of the birds was less than a hundred meters overhead.
Henry rolled onto his back and fired, and there was a screaming in him as he expended one magazine and then switched to another. His was the rage of a bullied child at the moment he doesn’t care if he gets his ass kicked and has to hit back because that’s all there is left and even if he gets pulverized, then he did that one thing, he punched that son of a bitch square on the nose and made him bleed. Henry screamed out loud then, a death song which mingled with the chatter of the SAW and the sirens and alarms and thudding Chinooks, a primal howl amid the smell of propellant and taste of death on his lips, which was his and theirs and he took pleasure in it. No hope, only retribution and recoil and death.
Expended cartridges pinged to the ground with a music all their own. Cursing, Henry half crawled, half ran back into the shelter of the store, slipping and swearing, angry and afraid.
Rounds ripped through the ceiling and walls. Cans of paint spewed red and white and blue on the floor, explosions of color through air thick with smoke. There were many screams and some of them belonged to Henry.
He switched magazines, his head just below where the window had been. Carlos was next to the doorway, switching out barrels for the SAW.
Henry popped up long enough to see hostiles running into the ruins across the street. He sat up again and squeezed off a burst. The tile floor inside was littered with cartridges and pieces of drywall.
“Pull back to the rear door!” Martinez shouted from behind Henry.
Carlos abandoned the SAW and was firing his assault rifle instead through the door, lying prone and exposed. Henry popped up again, acquired a target. Squeezed. Ducked back down. Enemy troops were consolidating just across the street for an assault. Probably more on each side. The Chinooks kept hammering.
“Frag out!” Henry said, lobbing a grenade across the street.
“Smoke out!” Carlos said. “Move it, Wilkins!”
Henry tried to come to a crouch, but he slipped. Blood covered the floor, and his hand was warm and slick with it. Captain Canella lay on his back, some of his face gone and his shoulder separated from the rest of his body. Rounds from the Chinook had rained down from directly overhead, tearing him apart. Henry crawled toward the rear of the store, climbing over bodies while the store came apart around him. Toward the far left corner, something exploded, perhaps a propane tank or a fire extinguisher or paint thinner. The fire spread with amazing speed, devouring the rear wall and spilling out onto the floor. There was no way he could make it to the rear exit.
He crawled back to the door glad of the unpolluted air, trying to make himself small, and readying himself for a last charge into the light.
KEY WEST, FLORIDA
In Key West, Suzanne heard a different rumor every day. One day, the war was over and the United States was a single nation again. Later that afternoon, or the next day, people would be shouting that Miami had been hit with a nuclear weapon and troops were on the way to reclaim the Keys, to force them to join with the rest of Florida at gunpoint. Suzanne and Bart spoke to a boater who swore he’d seen a Russian armada thirty miles offshore.
Radio operators communicated with people from around the nation and the world, a new kind of coconut telegraph, and a fragmented picture of the state of the nation emerged. The country was broken and fighting continued. The president was still alive, and appealing to the international community for help.
Russia had thousands of troops massed on its borders, along with divisions of armor and attack helicopters. Western Europe was panicked, China wrung its hands. The United States was alone.