by ear-splitting booms.
He blinks and remembers visiting his uncle’s ranch on July Fourth when he was a kid. At night, stuffed on hot dogs and birch beer, he and his cousins retreated into the pastures, alive with fireflies and the singing of the dog day cicadas, and watched the fireworks light up the sky and explode with terrifying bangs.
Knock it off, he tells himself. He has done well armoring his mind against the destruction of the past as well as the terrifying idea of future extinction. His only weakness is the escape offered by pleasant memories of home. These memories helped get him through Iraq but here, they will only slow him down and make him weak when he needs to stay sharp and focused. There is a time and place for pain. . . .
The Way of the Warrior and all that. The macho stuff the lifers talk about. It is a philosophy that tells you to embrace pain so that it makes you stronger. Well, that certainly applies here and now. He wants his feelings cauterized. In his case, there is nothing macho about it. He simply believes that a lot of his men will die if he does not stay strong, uncaring, unfeeling.
The shooting suddenly cascades into a deafening, crackling roar punctuated by flashes, pops and booms he can feel deep in his chest.
“That’s FPF,” Knight murmurs.
Final protective fire. A defensive tactic. When it is put into play, the unit fires every weapon it has to stop the enemy from advancing and save itself from being overrun. It is the option of last resort. The meaning is obvious: Alpha is in trouble.
Bowman is amazed at the number of Mad Dogs. In the past five hours, they must have doubled in population. The easy explanation is they overran the hospitals and infected thousands of people in their beds, along with a full night and day of infecting anybody who ventured outside their homes. There must be tens of thousands at this point, possibly even hundreds of thousands, running towards the sounds of the gunfire from all over the city. The average rifleman carries more than two hundred rounds. If every bullet for each of their weapons found its mark, a single company could theoretically kill twenty thousand of the enemy.
Would even that be enough?
He reminds himself that First Squad alone, burning through almost all of its ammo, killed hundreds of Mad Dogs in less than fifteen minutes. Alpha can win this fight.
Kemper, Vaughan and Sherman join the officers at the parapet, their eyes gleaming.
Eleventh Cavalry air units are buzzing over the battle, weaving around the skyscrapers. An Apache helicopter suddenly buzzes low and fires a pair of Hellfire missiles at the street.
Kemper flinches and says, “Christ, that’s close.”
A second helicopter drops a TOW missile, guides it to its target, then veers off like an angry hornet. Fireballs expand and rise above distant buildings. Heat and light.
Kemper adds, “Unless. . . .” But says nothing more.
Bowman nods. Unless the friendly units are serving a dual purpose on the march. Either they make it to the rendezvous and consolidate and therefore become an effective player in this game, or serve as bait to lure the enemy into a killing zone for the Cavalry. General Kirkland, leader of the Sixth ID, may have issued a standing order to his air units to destroy concentrations of Mad Dogs regardless of whether there are friendly units near the target.
This does not piss him off. Bowman understands its logic. Kirkland is desperate and flailing and fighting to win to save a dying country, staking everything on this one night. Bowman realizes that he would do the same thing in the General’s shoes. It is basic utilitarianism: The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Military decisions in war are often based on such ethics.
Confirming Kemper’s suspicion, Sherman looks up from the radio and says, “They’re not calling in those air attacks. They’ve got men down.”
“Sir, I. . . .” Vaughan says, struggling for words.
“We need to get out there right now,” Lewis says, finishing for him.
“We will follow our orders and stay in position,” Bowman says, looking through his binoculars.
“Sir,” Lewis pleads. “Let me take out Second Squad.”
Bowman glares at him. “That’s a no go, Sergeant. Are we clear?”
“Crystal,” Lewis says tersely.
Bowman sounds confident, but is actually feeling anything but. In fact, he is itching to get Charlie into the game. Could this be a decisive battle? he wonders. Is Lewis right that we should spread out and shoot down every Mad Dog as early as possible before it becomes too late? Should I lead my men out there to support Alpha or Delta, and perhaps put an end to this once and for all?
Or is it already too late—for Alpha, for Delta, for all of us?
It all depends on the infection rate, Bowman knows. Manhattan has more than one and a half million people living on it. If one percent of them are now infected, that would be about sixteen thousand people. If five percent, it would be eighty thousand.
If ten percent, it would be a hundred and sixty thousand.
“Warmonger is reporting a large body of Mad Dogs from the west,” Sherman says.
Even when given clear orders, Bowman believes a field commander must act on his own initiative as facts change on the ground. On the other hand, a commander must recognize that he does not have perfect situational awareness and should never make emotional decisions. The fact is, nobody really knows what is happening. Everybody is guessing. And bucking orders to support Alpha or Delta, the two companies closest to Charlie’s position, would be a major risk to his own boys.
On the other hand, American soldiers are in trouble out there and need help.
The only way to find out would be to literally “do or die.”
As if reading his thoughts, Bishop says, “We’d never get there in time, Todd. There’s nothing we can do.”
“War Pig is calling in a danger-close fire mission,” Sherman says.
“We have arty support?” Knight says, incredulous.
Bowman shakes his head. Quarantine said nothing about artillery support. Artillery is a sledgehammer, too unwieldy for this situation. Even after everything he has seen, it would be almost too fantastic to contemplate— American artillery, planted miles way, firing HE rounds for effect into the middle of New York City.
In any case, the request itself is a bad sign. That’s Captain Reese, a good officer and a cool hand in a firefight, leading Delta. A danger-close fire mission is when an arty strike is called in within six hundred meters of your position. Practically on top of your own head. It’s another sign of desperation. Like Alpha, Delta is in trouble.
“What the hell?” Bishop shouts.
The skyscrapers are suddenly going dark in groups, as if a series of giant light switches controlling the glittering skyline of New York City were being flipped off one by one. The streetlights shut off. All of the lights shut off.
Kemper says simply, “Blackout. . . .”
The world is plunged into darkness.
The gunfire suddenly slackens, becomes haphazard.
The men gasp. The boys out there were caught flatfooted by the dark. Would they have time to put on night vision goggles or produce battlefield illumination? If they could get their NVGs on, they would have the advantage and might even turn the tables.
They see the flashes in the west and south where the companies are making their stand. The gunfire in the west sputters and slows.
Then it stops.
The men gasp again. Either Reese fought his way out, or he and his boys are dead. Surely, he got through and is back on the march. It is hard for these men to conceive of an entire company being destroyed.
In the south, a single flare rockets up into the sky and deploys a small parachute, producing a fiery, eerie glow as it begins its lazy descent to the earth.
Immediately, the gunfire intensifies, but then it too sputters, stops, flares up, dies.
The helicopters buzz in closer, firing missiles, raking the streets with devastating strafing fire. Then one by one they detach from the engagement and fly away.
