A stream of 25mm shells from the White House South Lawn ripped the Cougar next to Donaldson, and the ten men inside, into twisted, flaming chunks.
“All elements: Pop smoke and dismount!” Another fully loaded Cougar exploded; the burning men’s blood curdling screams over the radio underlined his order.
Donaldson flipped the switch for his own smoke grenade launchers and dived out. They’d modified each Cougar to carry 48 of the defensive smoke mortars. Six times the standard load out. Add in 15-second delay firing fuses between volleys and they could lay down a smoke curtain, in 360 degrees, for almost three minutes. The thick, brown clouds shielding his team should have bought plenty of time for the next phase of the operation.
It was a solid theory, at least.
Neither of the two Marine LAV-25 APC’s on the White House grounds cared about playing by the rules. They burped away into the cloud with their Bushmaster chain guns as if nothing had changed. Yet another Cougar took a lucky hit to the gunner’s ammo rack, ripping it apart with half the strike team still inside.
Donaldson ignored the blast and screamed at the dazed survivors wasting time with first aid. “Not now! Get the SMAW’s up or this was all for nothing!”
He knew the odds were slim either way. The president only needed to run 140 meters from the Rose Garden podium to the emergency operations bunker under the East Wing. How long would that take? Probably far less than the two minutes it took him to get within range.
Oh well. He couldn’t exactly call it a day and come back some other time.
The first SMAW shoulder-fired rocket boomed off behind Donaldson. He knew better, but Donaldson couldn’t help following the round in grim awe as it crested their protective smoke curtain and smashed a second floor, blast resistant window in the East Wing.
Nothing happened.
At least for a moment. The small thermobaric warhead, classified “novel explosive” by the Marines they stole them from, wasn’t your typical RPG. These weapons served a very particular purpose: to generate an unholy overpressure wave from inside an enclosed space, ramping up the destructive power by orders of magnitude. The ten-pound bomb exploded with the force of a 100-pound air dropped one… and all from deep within the building. Of course, one rocket wasn’t enough to collapse the sprawling East Wing of the White House.
The next three launched by Donaldson’s men did the trick though.
Donaldson’s team didn’t have a moment to savor their possible victory. Leveling a third of the White House stirred up a hornet’s nest. Enraged, over a hundred Secret Service agents, cops and Marines opened up all hell on the attackers. Donaldson’s remaining gunners tat-tat-tatted suppressive fire in every direction, but they were way overwhelmed. Especially when the wind kicked up and began clearing their smoke screen.
There was no cover around except for the last whips of smoke. Donaldson flipped his mike on. “Follow me!” Surrounded, there was nowhere to go but forward.
As Donaldson charged toward the White House grounds, trusting his few surviving men were behind him, his gunner did his best to make sure it wasn’t a suicide mission. Abandoning his heavy machine gun, he spun the other weapon in his turret around, a MK-19 automatic grenade launcher. The gunner didn’t bother aiming the machine gun spewing out 40mm frag grenades. He just sprayed them out in an arc until the 48-round belt clicked empty, only 25 seconds later.
The gunner, safe behind his gun shield and high-walled bulletproof glass, snagged another ammo box. If one belt killed or wounded half of the defenders, another should finish the job. He lifted the breach of the gun… just as a Secret Service sniper on the roof of the Treasury building fired down on him. The round cracked his helmet and sent him collapsing back in to the vehicle, but he was still conscious.
He was fully aware as some National Guardsman popped out from behind a tree to their side and squirted off an anti-tank rocket. The shaped charge cut right through the armored glass as easily as it melted the gunner’s screaming face. The funneled blast kept going like a lance, shooting bits of glass and bone out the other side of the vehicle.
Donaldson didn’t flinch as he emerged from the smoke, just feet from the South Lawn. En passant, he shot a surprised policeman in the eye. Diving for cover behind a squad car’s engine block, he stuck his weapon over the hood and fired blindly, with 3-round burst mode. Some National Guardsman’s body slid down the hood and hooked on the car’s grill.
Donaldson tactically reloaded and peeked around the bumper. He ignored the body, but shook his head at the perfectly intact iron fence around the South Lawn. They only had one Cougar not yet on fire. Donaldson clicked on his radio without hesitation. “1–3, you’re all we’ve got left. Make us a hole before they figure out what’s going on!”
The driver of the Cougar, alone since a sniper popped his gunner as well, didn’t say a word to the suicide mission. He just hit the gas in response.
Every warning light on his panel flashed, but his bullet-riddled engine propelled him forward anyway. Since he couldn’t see shit through all the cracks in his armored windshield, slamming into the South Lawn fence surprised him as much as the defenders.
The giant Cougar bounced over the short concrete ledge and gouged out a twelve-foot section of fencing. He made it almost to the fancy fountain before both LAV’s blew him into the next world.
Donaldson switched his radio to a different frequency. “Give me two rounds on the South Lawn and then shift to continuous fire on the North Lawn. Extremely danger close, over.”
He heard small arms fire in the background as his mortar team leader responded. “WILCO. We’ll keep it up until overrun, over.”
Someone bumped his shoulder with their knee.
“Back blast area clear!”
Donaldson threw himself flat as one of his soldiers leaned over the cop car’s hood, an AT-4 rocket launcher high on his shoulder. The rear end jutted out barely two feet from Donaldson’s face. The shooter’s warning was mere decorum. An artifact from training. The rocket man didn’t have the time for such pleasantries as making sure the rear was clear.
Instead of the heat from a rocket launch, only a wetness splatted Donaldson’s back. He rolled around as a body landed on him. Six holes in his chest, body armor cracked… the man was dead before he hit the ground. Donaldson shoved him away and snagged the boom stick. Taking a deep breath, he swung around the car’s bumper. Instead of aiming, he simply bore sighted the tube and launched reflexively at the LAV spitting at his men. Donaldson spun back around to the marginal safety behind the tire well before the anti-tank rocket even struck.
A much larger bang than all those around him proved the risk was worth it. Donaldson chucked two green smoke grenades over his shoulder without exposing himself. He counted to eight, then jumped up and raced for the fence hole.
Every one of his surviving men were doing the same thing, without having to be told. Not good. He needed a base of fire. Donaldson snagged four random soldiers, two with SAW light machine guns. “Take cover on the street and give us some suppressive fire. Don’t bound forward until we’ve taken out that other LAV.”
He didn’t have a clue how to do that yet, but the men didn’t need to know. Donaldson hurled his last smoke grenade for cover and followed his dozen remaining assault troops through the breach.
Still a hundred yards to go.
“QRF, mount up!”
Three miles away from the White House, just across the Potomac, 72 Special Forces operators filled into six warmed up Blackhawks. Four Apache gunships, each loaded down with Hellfire laser guided missiles, lifted off first. Kept on round-the-clock alert status, the quick reaction force required only 60 seconds from the first call until wheels up. The gunships only needed 45 seconds more to reach engagement range of the attackers.