Whiskey Delta – Chapter 7

“One hundred rounds do not constitute firepower. One hit constitutes firepower.”

- Gen. Merritt Edson, USMC

They hit what felt like another speed bump and everyone in the cabin was tossed from their seats again. Each time, Mill could be heard slapping against the ringmount, his kit rattling against his belt and the .50 cal bouncing against its mount. Dezba knew from being in that spot many times that it wasn’t a comfortable spot to be in when the ride got dicey.

Dezba took his eyes off his sector for just a moment to eye the road ahead. No speed bumps per se, but the entire street had been paved in such a way as to ensure that the asphalt was strategically sloped. Every time they hit an intersection, they dropped. Every time they proceeded in front of another property block, they jumped up again.

Apparently, this was some city planners idea of keeping traffic slow at the edge of town. If that person weren’t already dead, Dezba figured there would be a pretty long line of people willing to oblige them right about now.

When hit the next bump, Mill finally cursed aloud.

“How the fuck am I supposed to monitor for Whiskeys when we keep bumping around like this?”

“Just keep your eyes peeled, Private,” Dezba said. “We’re almost clear of this area. Then we can look forward to dirt roads and potholes soon.”

Mill grumbled and pulled his .50 cal up again. “If we did see any trouble right now, I wouldn’t be able to hit the broad side of a cow’s ass!”

Dezba put his eye to his scope again and watched his sector. Nothing but open lots and spacious properties separated by stretches of dirt. Everyone knew that the edge of town was where all the clinics, athletics facilities and adobe-themed hotels were. The windows were all dark, the cars in the lots abandoned, and anything of value just left in lying around. Nothing but the stark reminder of the chaos so many had left behind some months before.

In the back, Majorca had the far better view. Looking to the east, he had an eye on the BCT’s armored fist as it moved down the main highway. In the front, there was a handful of M1A1′s, swiveling their turrets back and forth, searching for any telltale signs of enemy intrusion. At their sides and holding up the rear were the BCT’s compliment of Strykers and LAV’s. For the moment, their guns were silent, the few Whiskeys that had wondered out to escape the flames from the bombing were now dead at the edge of town.

So in spite of the bumps and the wheels grinding, they had perfect quite for the time being…

“Look at that fucking phallic display!”

Fuck, Dezba thought. He knew it was only a matter of time before Whitman took the quiet as an invitation to start in on something. Don’t answer, he told himself, trying to psyche the same message to the others. But of course, it didn’t work.

“What are you talking about?” asked Jones, the squad’s newest addition. The new guys always made the mistake of asking Whitman to elaborate on his asinine observations.

“I mean, you look at tanks advancing on a target, you’re basically watching a big, Freudian display. It’s just like cavemen waving around the biggest club, or the gangsta on the block who’s got the biggest gat. It’s all about intimidating your enemy with the size of your cock.”

Jones laughed. “Oh yeah, what about tactics, sound strategy?”

“Sublimation, man! I mean, just think about it. Army calls this sort of thing ‘penetration’. We’re penetrating the enemy lines. It’s even in the names. Remember Operation Desert Shield back in ’03?”

“Bill, you fucking Hotel Bravo!” said Mill. “’03 was Iraqi Freedom. Desert Shield was in ’91.”

“Whatever, man! Point is, sounds like a brand of condoms, don’t you think?”

“Rough Riders is the name of a condom,” Majorca replied.

“Isn’t that a football team?” said Jones.

“And what are sports if not more of the same homo-erotic shit, what guys do to forget the fact that they don’t have a pair of spread legs in front of them?”

“This is news to you, Billy Bob? Our entire existence is predicated on that fact,” Mill said, lamentably.

Whitman nodded, summarizing it as he always did: “More fucking equals less fighting.”

That should have ended it. But a few more seconds of silence pushed Whitman into drawing yet another connection.

“Nuclear missiles are pretty phallic too, if you think about it.”

Dezba couldn’t stay silent any longer. “Jesus, Billy, why the hell does everything have to come back to cocks and vaginas to you?”

Whitman bellowed. “What else do I got to do? I’m surrounded by cocks and I aint getting no vagee-gee, sir!”

That made Dezba smile, the memory of Billy being surrounded by plenty of eligible ass just the other night, but still managing to strike out repeatedly. It was entertaining, but had they known it would mean more of his bullshit, they might have spoken him up to the ladies a bit. Alas, they couldn’t do that to any of those girls. They all seemed too nice.

Up ahead, they spotted the Burger King sign looming large above their path. One of the Abrams scanned to that side of the highway and let lose a shot. It impacted in the lot and send flaming debris in all directions.

“Whoa, there’s a hit!” Whitman yelled.

More explosion as the fuel tanks from the few cars that remained in the lot exploded. The tank’s gun crews began opening up with their 7.62 and .50 cals, putting anything that could still be moving in the lot down. Whiskeys must have converged on the burger place looking for fresh meat, only to find that it had been dead for some time.

“They sure like cutting it close to us, don’t they?” said Jones.

“The Mage picked the route, kid,” replied Majorca. “‘Danger Close’ is his motto for a reason.”

Whitman brought the vehicle to the right to stay on the dirt road. The rest of Bravo Company converged behind them and stuck to the edge of the road, hoping to avoid the heat from all the acrid flames that were consuming the burger joint. Dezba put his nose up, hoping to catch the scent of burning cow. But all he could get was the aroma of burnt plastic and garbage. A sick, acrid kind of stench.

That’s when Mill began rappiing on the roof of the vehicle.

“Sarge! I got movement at our three o’clock!”

Dezba’s eyes darted left. The tree line was almost as dense on this side too; luckily, he could make out something on the tall rooftops that lay beyond them. A bunch of dark spots that were moving on top of the roof. He tried spotting them through his scope, but the distance, combined with the trees, was making it hard to get a clear look.

“Whiskeys?” he yelled up to Mill.

“Can’t tell,” he yelled back. “I think they might be civvies.”

Dezba looked ahead and spotted the road where they were supposed to be making their turn to rejoin the armored column on the highway. Odds were, they were just spotting some Whiskey’s that had wandered up onto the roof and couldn’t get back down. But if they were civilians, there was no way they could bypass them and leave them behind. With no cover, food, or water, they wouldn’t live long enough to be eaten.

“Private, pull us up onto the the shoulder up there!”

Whitman looked ahead. “Where?”

“To the right, pull over to the right up there!”

Whitman obliged, pulled a hard right once they cleared the dirt road and landed on the side of West Alameda. He drove for a few more seconds, just long enough to clear the last of the trees and giving them enough room to park the Company. Dezba had a full view of the tall buildings and the lot directly in front of it now. What’s more, he could see the profiles of many bodies on the roof. And unlike Whiskeys, which seemed to just amble around until they smelt fresh flesh, these ones were clustered and focused.

Focused in his direction, like they were watching…

Putting his rifle down, Dezba picked up his binocs and began surveying. He could see them perfectly now, roughly a dozen or so people huddled together and waving their hands and shirts in the air. He couldn’t quite make out their faces, but he could sense that they were watching him hopefully. Whatever else they had experienced, these looked to be people who felt safe at last.

The squad’s box began to crackle from the noise of the rest of the company. Every vehicle parked behind them was demanding to know why they’d made this sudden turn and why they’d stopped. Eventually, Braun cut in and contacted Dezba’s squad directly.

“Viper One, this is Viper Actual. Interrogative, why have we stopped en route to the objective, over.”

Whitman grabbed the receiver and held it to where Dezba could take it from him when he was done surveying.

“A community college,” he whispered.

“What’s that, sir?”

“It’s a fucking community college” he said over his shoulder. “High roofs, good view of the highway. They must have known that when help came, they’d be able to flag it easiest from that building.” He put the binocs down and grabbed the receiver, paused to say one last thing before getting on the horn with the LT. “G2 didn’t even think to designate this place a safe spot. What the hell were they thinking?”

“Always trust intelligence to fuck up a situation.”

“Now we got to get it unfucked,” he keyed the comm. “Viper Actual, interrogative. Do you see those civilians atop the Community College, over?”

The LT took a second to get back to them. “Viper One, that’s an affirmative over.”

“Viper Actual, recommend we approach in force and mount a rescue. Likely there are several Whiskeys occupying the building over.”

“Viper One, hold your position. Viper Actual coming up.”

Dezba hung up the phone and opened his door. Mill noticed him jumping out of the cab and yelled down to him. His gun was trained on the roof and he looked about ready to open fire on it.

“Ho, sir! What’s going on?”

“LT’s coming forward. We’re going to discuss revising the ROE. Just stay put and don’t shoot anything that looks like it might be living.”

Mill nodded and went back to watching the perimeter. Within seconds, the LT came running up to their vehicle, his weapon in hand. When he got to Dezba’s side, he walked with him around the front bumper and set his eyes on the rooftop. The people began to wave more frantically now, the site of people getting out and looking at them inspiring new bursts of energy.

“Sergeant Dezba,” he said. “How many bodies do you count up there?”

“At least a dozen, sir.”

“And I take it you’re recommending that we revise the timetable to extract those people?”

“That’s what we’re here for, isn’t it?”

Braun looked back to the college. Dezba knew what he was thinking. Any time spent here would mean more time taken to rescue the others, and the timetable was drawn up with a very small margin for delay. By telling the townspeople to break cover, they were effectively asking them to brave whatever Whiskeys stood between them and the pickup points. The longer they made them wait, the greater the likelihood that there would be casualties. No matter what they had dropped in to help them with, untrained civilians could only last so long against those roving bands of monsters.

The LT took a deep breath and answered finally. “One-Hundred-Fiftieth is going to have to give us a thermal on that roof. They confirm the existence of mobiles, we can justify the change to the ROE.”

Dezba nodded. Whiskeys weren’t known for giving off much of a heat signature, so a thermal image of the roof would prove that they were seeing human beings and not flesh-eating monsters.

He also breathed a sigh of relief. He had a feeling the LT would come through. But of course, their was still the matter of spanking it up the line and getting Haynes to sign off of the new objective. He could tell from the look on the LT’s face that he didn’t like the odds of that too much. Haynes was not one for revising plans sent down by the Mage, nor did he care much about saving a few strays if it meant putting some of his own in jeopardy. Apparently, he seemed to think that was the lesson of all this, something people should have learned when the First Wave hit.

“Hold here,” he said. “I’m going to have to radio this in.”

“Sir?” Dezba called to him before he could move away. “What if the Colonel doesn’t approve the change? Are we just going to leave those people there?”

Braun shrugged. “He says move on, we move on. Not much that can be done about that.”

“Yes, sir.” Dezba replied, and let him leave without further discussion. The LT double-timed it back to his vehicle and rounded the other side, disappearing into the cab to make the call. Returning to the passenger side of his own vehicle, Dezba hand his rifle to Whitman and hopped back inside.

“So…?” Whitman asked, giving him his weapon back as soon as he was secured. “What’s happening?”

“We sit tight and wait for the LT to get this operation approved, that’s what.”

Whitman nodded and hummed thoughtfully. “If we end up pulling up a dozen plus people from that place, they might just hang a medal on you.”

“Yeah, and if ol’ Hazer says no and all we do is end up holding up the advance, he’ll might ream my ass for dereliction.”

Everyone in the cab made the same sound, a pained “Oooh” at the prospect of the Hazer dealing some hard discipline on his ass. In the meantime, all they could do was wait and watch. And sweat like a motherfucker in the morning heat! Their AC really wasn’t doing much for them right now. Which reminded him…

“Keep the engine going,” he told Whitman. “We might have to pull in there in a hurry.”

“Alright! I finally get to jump out of a moving vehicle!” Mill added, rapping the roof a few times.

“Jase, you’re on the roof, asshole. For you, that jump’d break your fucking neck!”

“Tuck and roll, dipshit. Tuck and roll.”

Dezba ignored them and checked his weapon. Still waiting… The people on the roof seemed to be getting tired. If he could spot their faces now, he guessed that some of the vitality he sensed earlier would be disappearing. He was sure they would be asking questions too, like why the hell were they just sitting there? Why weren’t they coming in to save those people? What kind of pussy-ass bitches were they anyway? Good questions, he thought. Valid questions.

The squawk crackled. Dezba grabbed the receiver before anything even came out of it.

“All Vipers, this is Viper Actual, be advised. There has been a change in the ROE. I repeat, there’s a change in the ROE. All Vipers are to converge on the lot to our left and deploy into the college ground ASAP. Twelve plus civilians awaiting evac, over.”

Dezba couldn’t help but notice the upbeat tone in the LT’s voice. So they were a go!

“Punch it, Whitman! Get us up there!”

Whitman gunned the engine and cranked the wheel to their left. This was followed by an equally sharp turn to their right as they came blazing into the parking lot and then to an abrupt stop. Whatever hopes Mill had entertained about jumping off while they were still moving had been dashed.

“Fuck, Billy! Learn to drive!” he yelled.

It was too late, Billy was out the door with his rifle in hand. Majorca, Jones and Dezba were right behind him. As first Squad, they moved onto the front walkway and secured the front door while the other vehicles took up spots beside theirs. Second and Third Squad, with the LT leading the way, moved up behind them a few seconds later. Fourth hung back and watched their flanks to make sure no Whiskeys were popping out of the bushes and coming towards them…

Moving up in squad formation, they reached the building and secured the front foyer. As expected, the smell of death hit them as soon as the doors were open. But a quick check confirmed that it was deserted. As soon as all squads reported clear, the LT pulled them in and began briefing them on their new operation. A map mounted on the wall provided them with their plan of attack…

“Deployment by the numbers, work your way up the halls and secure all rooms before moving on. First Squad, punch to the north side, secure the floor area of the large building at the rear. Second Squad, take to the East and secure any additional civilians that might be stuck in there. Third Squad will provide check out the west building, then link up with First once they secure the large building and cover them while they proceed to the roof. Any questions?”

“No sir” all around.

“Alright, then. Let’s save us some people, people!”

This time, hoots all around and they began to move with a purpose!