The Living Will Envy The Dead (51 page)

“Clever,” Mac said, examining the lead ‘tank.’  “We should have thought of that.  I think they’ve actually taken a tractor engine out of the tractor and placed it in another vehicle entirely, just to give them the right structure for a tank.”

I had to agree.  Every third person in the countryside has some mechanical knowledge, ranging from kids who don’t want to have to pay expensive repairmen to work on their cars, to experienced former tankers and maintenance officers who want to run a quiet gas station, while building their dream vehicles.  The Warriors wouldn’t have had any difficulty finding people with the right set of skills to build tanks from the First World War…and hell, they might well dominate the remainder of the United States.  There had to be some more modern tanks left somewhere, but God alone knew where.  I had thought about sending an expedition to the USMC base at Quantico, but judging from the apparent Russian targeting pattern, the Marine Corps base had been singled out for special attention.  It would be something to do later, when the war had been won and our survival was assured.

“If we get out of this alive, we’ll build some of our own,” I agreed.  The concept was so simple that it should have occurred to one of us, particularly the ones who had spent most of their lives studying warfare.  On the other hand, First World War tanks hadn’t had the firepower of their later siblings, nor the survivability.  They might reach the minefield intact – which was looking increasingly likely – but there was no guarantee that they would survive the first mine.  First World War tanks were historically weak on underbelly armour…and it was just possible that the Warriors had made the same mistake.  “They’re not going to get past the mines.”

I hoped I was right as the first wave of Warrior vehicles crept up closer to the breech in the first wall and came face to face with the second wave of defences, while trying desperately to suppress our covering fire.  Their armoured vehicles might be relatively safe from our rifles and machine guns, but their soldiers didn’t even have police-issue body armour, which suggested just how important they were to their superiors.  They kept advancing regardless, ignoring the increasing number of their comrades who were shot down like dogs, as the tanks advanced into the minefield.  There was a pause, chillingly pregnant with possibilities…and then the lead tank went up with a tremendous explosion.  The shockwaves detonated other mines, sending red-hot shrapnel through the air and scything down dozens of Warriors, but the remainder held their positions.

“Section Six, you’re up,” I said.  The Warriors were trying to funnel hundreds of their soldiers through the breech now, heedless of the danger from mines…or wire, or IEDs, or other unpleasant surprises, trying to push their way through by brute force.  The better-trained ones were hanging back, carrying Mortars into engagement range, and preparing to bombard the trenches and our inner defences.  “Hit them as hard as you can.”

“Engaging,” the reply crackled back.  We’d positioned the Mortars carefully and computed all of the possible angles of attack.  I hadn’t predicted the exact location of the breech, but I hadn’t needed to predict it to have the mortars prepared before the attack began.  The operators opened fire at once and started to pound the Warriors as they flooded through the breech…and started to die in the minefield.  “Shells away, sir!”

I watched, as dispassionately as I could, as the Warrior attack started to disintegrate.  They might have been prepared for mines and rifle fire – hell, they’d brought along a very good counter to the latter, while the former could only work once – but they hadn’t expected the mortars so soon, with such accurate fire.  The shells landed amongst their lead forces and blew them into bloody chunks of flesh.  The survivors hesitated, caught between the devil and the deep blue sea, and then stumbled forward blindly.  They ran right into the barbed wire and were rapidly caught, pinned down and unable to disentangle themselves.  Their screams were nightmarish and, even though I knew it was what the Warriors wanted me to do, I gave the order.

“Stacy, Patty, take them out,” I ordered.  I should have left them alive, perhaps, in the hopes that it would convince the remainder of the Warriors to give up, but the noise had been too much to bear.  They died, one by one, and it was probably a relief to them, after everything they’d been though.  The remainder of the Warriors kept advancing, now under the cover of their own mortars, and I realised that they were going to push through the second defence line.  They had detonated almost all of the mines.

My radio crackled.  “Boss, this is eye in the sky,” it said.  The balloon had gone up again at first light, in more ways than one.  “They’re bringing up more vehicles and hundreds more soldiers…and they’re targeting all three gates.”

I nodded, too tired to swear.  The enemy strategy might have been cold-blooded and utterly ruthless, but it made an evil kind of sense.  They’d pinned us down, forced us to divide our strength to defend all three of the routes into Ingalls…and forced us to expend all of our antitank ammunition.  They might have problems getting the tank-like vehicles over the mines, but if they had some left when they broke through the final defence line, we would be reduced to rolling grenades under the vehicles and praying.

“If we get out of this alive,” I said, to Mac, “remind me to get the Constitutional Convention to make it a law that everyone has to have plenty of weapons and ammunition in their homes.  If we’d had a much bigger ammunition dump…”

“We would have broken the Warriors like twigs,” Mac agreed.  “Should we make it legal that everyone has their own tank as well?”

“You’re not helping,” I said.  The thought reminded me of an old retired Marine somewhere east who’d had his own private museum of former military vehicles, all still in working order.  We’d looted a set of vehicle museums and used them to outfit part of our army, but we hadn’t recovered any working tanks.  There had been a set of tanks on display, but a brief examination had revealed that – owing to safety regulations – the innards had all been removed.  I just hoped that the stupid bastard who’d come up with that idea had been killed in a most horrible manner when the bombs went off.  He’d doomed us all.  “We may have to pull back to the town itself.”

My radio buzzed.  “Another truck bomb approaching, sir…”

The explosion shook the ground, blowing both a massive hole in the defences and the Warrior ranks.  It was yet another display of their fundamental lack of concern for their own people, but this time, as they swarmed through the gap, they ran into a carefully-prepared minefield.  This minefield didn’t explode until they were almost at the third wall, despite the presence of strands of barbed wire and other nasty surprises, and then detonated, with every mine going up simultaneously.  We’d primed it just right.  They lost their legs, but they survived the blasts…if only for a given value of survived.  Their screams echoed out on the air.

“Poor bastards,” Mac said.  The Warriors seemed almost to be wavering, as they had before, but their leaders sent another line of fanatics into the breach before their wavering could turn to outright mutiny.  The two sides duelled mortars rapidly as the next set of vehicles emerged, only to be bracketed by my mortars and brought to a halt, burning merrily away.  If the drivers survived the first shots, they died horribly, burned to a crisp or killed when the ammunition started to detonate.  “How many of the fuckers do they have?”

I keyed my radio.  “CP1, CP3, report,” I ordered.  “What’s happening to you?”

“Holding them at the first line,” CP1 reported.  “They’re holding back, sir; they’re just keeping us pinned down!”

“They’re snared in the second line,” CP3 said.  “We’re killing them by the bucket load, sir!”

“Oh, good,” I said.  That meant that the Warriors, having forced a practicable breech at CP2, were concentrating their efforts on making the hole wider and breaking through.  It was almost reassuring to know that they had some limits on their manpower; as odd as it might seem, I hadn’t believed it beforehand.  “Mac, we may need to go nuclear.”

Mac gave me a sharp glance.  “Are you sure you want to use the gas?”

“I think we’re running out of options,” I said.  The Warriors were continuing to bombard us with mortar fire and their shells seemed never-ending.  Their targeting wasn't that good, but as a distraction, it was hellishly effective.  It was also killing our people behind the lines, despite our best efforts, and setting parts of the town on fire.  It might even prove decisive in the long run.  “Give them enough time and they’ll be through the walls and into the town.  If that happens…”

“We’re fucked,” Mac agreed.  Even if we drove them back out of the town, the resulting damage would finish Ingalls.  “Is there anything from Richard?”

“Nothing new, but he wouldn’t have sent anything,” I said.  We’d agreed on a series of communications codes for transmission, if there was a problem, but the system was limited.  The Warriors would probably be listening in to our transmissions and, despite our best efforts, we didn’t have a properly secure net.  “We can only hope that he’s coming as we planned.”

A mortar shell landed near enough for us both to feel the wave of heat.  “I know,” Mac said.  “I’ll give the order at once.”

I peered through the growing haze of smoke and fire surrounding the defence line. “Wait a moment,” I said, as a line of Warriors spilled over a wall and into one of the manned positions.  There was a brief and savage hand-to-hand fight, and then the Warriors were forced back out again.  “Give the order to fall back to the final line now, and then order the mortars to go to rapid fire, danger close.”

“Yes, sir,” Mac said.  He keyed his own radio and started to issue orders.  “They’re on their way, sir.”

I nodded.  Danger close is a military term for calling in a strike – air or artillery, mainly – significantly close to your own forces.  It’s not something regarded as a good idea – back during the war, you needed to get authorisation at first from higher up before you could do it – because of the risk of a blue-on-blue, a friendly fire incident.  It had been chancy enough in Iraq, but far more so here, without any of the precision weapons we’d deployed in the sandbox.  I wouldn’t have taken the risk, but we needed time to evacuate the outer defence lines and the only way to get that time was to hammer the Warriors silly.

The explosions grew louder and more constant, hacking away at the remains of our own defences as well as the Warriors who were swarming over them, but it provided enough cover to get our men out of the area.  I watched as Warriors, stunned out of their fanatical trance by the blasts, staggered around, looking as if they were wondering what the hell they were doing there.  Shell-shock had probably brought them back to their senses, but in their current state, they were not going to survive long enough to rebel against their former masters.  I considered, just for a moment, trying to rescue them, but it was too late.  The Warriors had sent in a massive line of fanatics, pushing through the gap we’d opened for them.

I took a long breath and keyed my radio.  “Section Ten,” I said, feeling as if I was going to be sick, “you are cleared to open fire.  Four shells only, I repeat, four shells only.”

The problem we had faced with deploying the gas was that deploying chemical weapons of any kind isn’t quite as easy as the media makes it sound.  Sure, you can pump them out of the air vents, if you happen to have air vents (we didn’t), but it’s a lot harder to deliver them by artillery fire.  It’s actually worse for biological weapons.  Use the wrong delivery system and you’d end up destroying your own weapon.  Section Ten had a pair of specially modified mortars and I was sweating even that.  A lucky enemy shot and we’d be hoisted on our own petard.

“Shells away, sir,” the mortar team sent back, finally.  “Holding further fire.”

I watched, as dispassionately as I could, as the gas started to billow around the Warriors.  We’d chosen something simple enough – I won’t go into the details, for obvious reasons – that had to be breathed in to be effective.  The chemists had claimed that they could produce a genuine nerve agent, one that would kill even if it touched a person’s bare skin, but I had rejected that concept with horror, not least because it might be just as effective at killing us.  The gas we’d produced had to be breathed in and didn’t have a long life.  It required a certain concentration to be effective and that wouldn’t last for long.  The Warriors didn’t see the gas or didn’t recognise the danger and kept coming forward.  They died in twitching agony.

“We’re going to burn for this,” I said, watching their struggles.  They didn’t stand a chance.  They didn’t even have facemasks, let alone any other kind of protection.  Daniel had hinted that the Warriors had gas programs of their own, but they hadn’t prepared for it at all, or maybe they just hadn’t rated the Warriors they’d sent against us as worth saving.  How many of them, I wondered desperately, did they want to die?