“Just up the street. I can see you from the window.” The virtual beacon turned the building blue in my visor.
“Are the streets clear?” I asked.
“Not entirely. I sent my snipers up to the roof to clear a way for you.”
I heard sporadic gunfire. The crack of rifles echoed through the streets.
“Call your boys in,” I said. “We’ll catch up with you, but for now, I want everyone tucked in safe.”
“Harris, those tanks are getting closer.”
“I got it,” I said. “Just bring your squad in.”
“Philips, let’s move out,” I said. Feeling a little awkward with a gun on my back and both hands full, I hunched over and sprinted as best I could up the street. We ran one block, then another before the shelling started. When I looked back, I saw searchlights from the tanks. Then, hearing another shell fired, I ducked against a storefront. It was a three-story Laundromat, of all things, with an all-glass fascia, but it was the only choice we had. At least I knew it was empty.
“Philips, in here!” I yelled. I pushed the door open and ran for the stairs. Philips and I climbed to the top floor and hid behind a row of washers.
“Oh, shit,” Evans said. “Look at all those specking Mogats.”
At that very moment, the tanks fired a barrage of shells. The Targs fired at the train. They pounded it.
I could see the whole thing from the third floor of the Laundromat. Shells and rockets slammed into that train, sending it sliding, jostling the cars back and forth. It reminded me of shooting at an empty can to see how long you could keep it in the air. Eventually, several cars rolled upside down.
The gases did not mix. Brown and gray gases began oozing from the windows and doors of the train. The brown gas crept along the streets like a tide, swelling nearly two feet in the air. Targs might have been fast, but they were not built for sharp turns at top speeds. The first row of tanks on the scene cut sharp and managed to avoid the gas. The tanks that followed did not. Line after line of Targs stampeded into the deadly fog and stalled.
From my third-floor vantage point, I saw dozens of tanks stall in the distilled shit gas mist. I could also see hundreds beyond them that the gas would never reach.
Around the train station, I saw the carcasses of the tanks that I’d gassed. They sat totally immobile, looking like stones. No, not stones. With their curved backs and squat, low-slung profiles, and their green camouflage, they looked like gargantuan frogs. At least the Targs looked like frogs. There were twenty Rumsfelds in the mix. From up here, they looked more like armadillos.
The distilled shit gas I’d fired at the Rumsfelds would have dissolved the wiring in the tanks as well as the drivers. I shot the Targs with noxium gas. They would still work, so long as you didn’t mind sitting in the puddle of what once was an enemy soldier.
A half mile away from the train station, the nearest traffic ramp spewed out a river of green personnel carriers. Our men had put up a fight there. Beside the ramp, a couple of trucks lay on their sides; but the men we sent to hold that ramp were dead or in retreat, and now tens of thousands of Mogats poured out.
From here, I could also see the nearest elevator station. When the reinforcements came, they would funnel through buildings like that one. I imagined ten thousand soldiers storming through each station, M27s raised, grenades in their hands. Sooner or later they would need to destroy the elevator stations so that they could lower their tanks and gunships.
“Talk to me, Evans,” I called on the frequency for squad leaders.
“They stopped shooting,” Evans said.
“Can you see the street around your building?” I asked.
“I can’t see the street from here,” said Evans.
“No windows?” I asked.
“I’ve got a window,” Evans said. “I just can’t see the street. There are too many specking Mogats on it. Those speckers are everywhere.”
“How long can you hold out? I’m going to try to make it over to your building,” I said. Not much had changed since I left Little Man; I was still committing passive suicide.
“We barricaded the entrance,” Evans said. “They might be able to bash through with their tanks, but I’d hate to be the first man to come through that door. We may go down, but we are not going down easy.”
“Is Philips with you?” Thomer broke in.
“He’s here,” I said.
“And he’s okay?”
“Not a scratch on him,” I said.
Thomer did not answer. I figured that he probably switched bands and called Philips directly.
“Master Sergeant, there’s no point in coming here,” Evans said. “We’re cooked.”
I laughed. “Evans, we’re all cooked. I don’t know about Philips, but I’d rather go down with my platoon.
I’d lost a platoon a few years ago. I still remembered every man in that platoon by name. Sometimes I heard them in my sleep. “We’ll find a way to reach you, Evans. Just hold on.”
“What about your friend, the giant with the rifle?” Evans asked.
“His name is Freeman. He came here hunting Crowley.” I said this more to myself than to Evans.
“You mean Amos Crowley, the Mogat general?”
“Crowley is a field general. He likes to go down to the field to fight with his men. He’s down there somewhere right now. At least he should be. He’ll be sleeping with Napoleon and Caesar if Freeman spots him.” I did not believe what I’d just said. In truth, I regretted bringing Freeman on a suicide mission.
“Are the Mogats outside your building, too?” Evans asked.
I looked out the window. The path back to the train station was almost clear. Most of the tanks and troops had gathered around the tenements. The street around the building in which my platoon had hidden looked like a parking lot.
“Nope,” I said, trying to sound cheerful. “All’s clear.”
“You should stay put,” Evans said.
“Are you shitting me?” I asked. It might have been the combat hormone speaking by then. If someone had shot me in the head at that moment, I think I might have leaked out more hormone than blood or brains. “Just keep some men by the back door. Philips and I are on our way.”
I switched frequencies. “Philips.”
“Thomer says I should shoot you. He says I should shoot you and lie low until the Army comes.” Thomer must have listened in on part of my conversation with Evans.
Philips stood in front of the window staring down at the street. The sky had turned dark during the time that we hid in the Laundromat. Bright lights shone all over the city, and fires blazed near the train station and some of the traffic ramps.
Philips removed his helmet as he viewed this panorama. He stood still as a tree holding his M27 by the butt in his limp right hand, its muzzle pointing straight at the floor. “Look at all those specking Mogats. Hell, with that many men, they don’t need to shoot us. They can just wait till we run out of bullets, then trample us to death.”
I pulled off my helmet and stood beside Philips. Neither of us spoke for a time. Then I pointed to the building where the rest of the platoon was waiting. “They’re only six blocks away.”
He said, “Damn, Master Sarge, you can’t possibly think we’ll survive those six blocks.”
“You know what, Philips, I really hate being called Master Sarge. The rank is master sergeant, not master sarge.”
He smiled but did not answer.
Still glaring at Philips, I replaced my helmet. It was at that moment that the lights went out.
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
