“All the business of war, and indeed all the business of life, is to endeavor to find out what you don’t know by what you do; that’s what I called ‘guessing what was at the other side of the hill.’”
-Arthur Wellesly, 1st Duke of Wellington
Another loud thud. Plumes of flame and black smoke shot up less than fifty meters from their position. The marauding Apaches had hit another car that had been abandoned by the roadside, igniting its fuel tanks and sending everybody veering.
The bumpers ahead slanted sharply right, then disappeared through the hail of smoke. Whitman pulled them through it and broke hard left again. He swore several times as he struggled to get their wheels righted, praying they didn’t stop suddenly or get hit by the hail of bullets that were falling around them.
“Watch out!” she yelled, as another explosion landed against the median to their left. A cloud of dirt and concrete was thrown up in front of them and Whitman couldn’t turn away in time. The windshield was peppered with chunks of both and cracked, and the force threw them to the right again.
“Shit, hang on!” Whitman cried, cranking their wheel to left. It was no use. Every crank of the wheel failed to change their course in time, and they jumped from the road and mounted the sidewalk. Somewhere beyond the curb, they came to a stop…
Dust rose all around them. Saunders put her hands to her helmet and tried to still the pounding inside her skull. She looked up to see what lay directly in front of them. A storefront window loomed large, a dusty nude mannequin staring back at her from behind the glass, flanked by display stands with no display items to speak of.
Was she suffering from head trauma and imaging things? Because at the moment, the eyes on the mannequin seemed to be following her even though they were no longer moving…
“Cocksucker! I think we broke the axle!”
Saunders looked over at Whitman, his face all hazy and distorted. He did look to be stroking the wheel, lamentably, as if mourning the loss of his baby. She snapped to when the leg beside her kicked and grazed her shoulder. Her head cleared further when she realized that their last maneuver may have very well have taken their gunner’s head off.
“Batista? You still okay?”
He moaned loudly. “Yeah. Good thing we stopped. A few more feet, I’d be-”
“Heads up!” Majorca yelled from the back. Saunders looked to his sector, did not see the choppers coming, but heard the rotors.
“Where are they?”
“They’re coming for another pass! I think they got us locked!”
Saunders looked at the storefront window, grabbed her SCAR. “Everybody, into the building now!”
Majorca’s door was open first, followed shortly behind by her and Morris. Batista was out of the gun well and jumping the roof when she noticed Whitman still inside.
“Billy! Get the fuck out!”
“I’m sorry,” he said, kissing his hand and pressing it to the wheel. Saunders didn’t have time to chastise him for the overly masculine display. What was it with boys and their machines?
“Into the store,” she yelled. The front door was directly in front of her and she took hold of the handle. The damn thing wouldn’t budge. The rotors sounded like they were getting a hell of a lot closer too…
“Stand back!” She raised her SCAR and popped off three rounds. The window shattered, the mannequin following over as thousands of shards descended upon it.
“Inside!” she yelled, gesturing with her gun. One by one, they jumped through, Majorca tucking and rolling as he rolled over the little stand that was holding the mannequin and other display tables aloft. She was the last in, and flew into the storefront just as the shrieking noise of rockets sounded a few hundred meters away.
Majorca and Batista grabbed her arms and pulled her towards them. With the added force of the explosion, she and her entire squad went flying halfway through the store and landed face first or head first on the store room floor. The last thing she remembered before temporarily blacking out was the smell of moldy carpet…
* * *
“Eyes front!” he yelled, as another explosions towards their rear and the driver tried to straighten them out again. Behind them, just about everything seemed to be engulfed by flames thanks to the enemy chopper’s rockets. And up ahead, there were plenty of clouds of flying dirt and exploding rounds sent up from the automatic fire.
Braun was had been thrown sideways in his seat several times now and tried to get steady, propping his rifle up on his leg with one hand while grabbing the roof mounted handle with the other. He looked ahead and counted their bumpers to make sure they still had everyone.
He counted two. Third was in the lead, and the one directly ahead was second.
He turned to their gunner and slapped his leg. The repeated rounds he was squeezing off made hitting necessary just to get his attention. “Francesco! You got eyes on Viper One One’s Victor?”
The drumming of the gun and the jingling of brass cases on the roof stopped momentarily. He looked down a second later to shout back.
“They’ve crashed, sir! And ditched! The second chopper’s firing on them.”
Braun would have cursed aloud, but there was no time. He grabbed the wheel from Vasquez and began turning it for him. The young driver quickly objected.
“Whoa, sir! What are you doing?”
“Turn us around! First Squad’s trapped back there!”
“Sir, I-” he was saying, but quickly found resistance to be futile. Adding his strength to Braun’s, they cranked the wheel around as he slammed on the brakes. Everyone in the cab was thrown to their right and Francesco was nearly thrown from the roof. Somehow, they had turned a full one-eighty and were now facing back towards the turn they had fled seconds earlier. The destroyed gun nest was smoking on the little traffic island up ahead to their left. And closer at hand on the same side of the road, 1st squad’s Humvee was burning in the store front window.
“Gun it!” Braun ordered Vasquez. The driver hesitated a second, but pushed the gas when the chopper’s bullets began to kick up asphalt around them again. Francesco’s gun began thrumming again too, .50 cal rounds getting off and zipping directly for the enemy chopper’s nose. They had made it a few dozen meters when Braun realized they were just driving into the maelstrom and he didn’t even know why. Running to pull Saunders and her squad out of harm, obviously. But he needed a plan.
Given the look of terror on his face, Vasquez was clearly worried about the same thing.
“Sir, what do I do?” he asked.
Braun looked around hastily. From the sheltered turnoff on their left to the line of trees in the open lot on their right. None of them would provide any cover should the choppers open up with their rockets again. And given that they the pilots had IR displays to go by, trees and hedgerows would even conceal them from plain sight. Right now, the only thing not plainly visible on their scopes was all the flaming wreckage that lay between them.
That’s when it hit him. He pointed ahead to first squad’s vehicle and the shop front it had crashed into.
“Put us next to first’s Victor. Bring us under that overhang. The smoke and flame out to confuse their gunner.”
“Right, sir!” Vasquez replied, gunning the gas harder and aiming for the storefront. Braun had just enough time to get on the horn and order his vehicles to turn around and give them the new order.
“All Vipers, this is One Actual. Come about and move your Victors to the flaming spots on the roadside. Turn off your IR beacons, and deploy on foot to covered positions, over.”
He got only one reply before everything in the cab began to get intensely noisy.
In the distance, the nearest chopper began to lower itself to get a better sight on them. Nearing the storefront, smoke and flames began to get between them and made a mess of sighting. More rounds impacted around them and sent pieces of road up and through their windows. Vasquez yelled as some came through his window and cut his face.
“Private!” Braun yelled, reaching across to grab the wheel. He heard Francesco scream next and looked up. But in his case, his yells were coming in the form of words.
“Look out! Look out!” he screamed.
Braun looked at the road ahead and saw the wreck of One One’s Victor. He saw the storefront they had just smashed through. He saw how close they were to them now, and how they weren’t slowing down.
“Shit! Hang on!” he cried.
Francesco’s knees hit him in the back of the head and sent him forward. Then the vehicle was rocked by a massive shock that sent everyone else in the cab forward too. A second, smaller thud hit them next, and everyone was thrown back into their seats.
Braun slowly became aware of moaning and groaning going on around him. His eyes began to register things too, albeit through a thick haze. Everything looked incredibly bright, and the dancing colors were both spectacular to behold and menacing. He tried moving his head and experienced a sharp pain. His world went dark for a second as his eyes clenched shut and his complaints were added to those of the men around him. His next experience was that of the Platoon Sergeant tapping him from behind.
“Sir… sir, we gotta move! They’re still firing sir!”
He opened his eyes again and steadied himself with one arm against the dashboard. He could see the dancing lights now, the flames of 1st squad’s vehicle and how they had buried their front bumper into them. He looked back and saw Grayson, urging him on with anxious-looking eyes. He saw Francesco too, who had fallen sideways into Gorman but was alive and moving, and trying his best to get off Gorman’s lap and out the back door.
Even Vasquez seemed okay. His face was lacerated, but he nothing vital looked hit. At the moment, he was struggling with his seat belts and fighting to get himself free.
“Sir, we gotta go!” Grayson repeated.
“Ugh, yeah!” Braun replied, reaching for his own restraints. “Get the others to cover now, Sergeant! I’m right behind you!”
He pressed at the buckle release on his straps, and nothing happened. Braun looked left and saw that Vasquez was now free and getting out on the driver’s side. Gorman and Francesco were already to the storefront and appeared to be jumping through the front window, which was shattered all to the hell. Only Grayson remained, staring at him from just a few feet from the passenger window.
He ducked as an explosion erupted in the middle of the street. Braun struggled harder but nothing was happening. Grayson pleaded him with some more, his voice becoming desperate and most annoying.
“Sir! You have to get out! You’ll die here!”
Braun yelled in frustration, partly to shut him up but mainly because of the damn belts that wouldn’t obliged him. Grabbing his knife, he turned the serrated edge up and dragged it under the chest strap. It snapped away quickly, and he got to the one around his waist.
“Sir -!” Grayson’s pleads were drowned out by another explosion. Behind him, the others were yelling too now.
“Get inside!” he yelled, and snapped the belt strap. Next thing he knew, he was running as fast as he could and nearly bowled Grayson over. Multiple explosions came from the street now and threw up chunks of hot asphalt, rock, and even glass. Braun ducked and rolled and landed inside, Grayson laying by his side and several more lined up at his feet.
When he got his wits about him, he was staring up at a strange, yellowing ceiling, and a friendly hand that was reaching down to help him.
“LT,” she said, smiling faintly. “Glad you came back for us. I was starting to think you forgot…”
