Cascadia Fallen: The Complete Trilogy, page 88
John Cronin moved the barrel up as soon as his eyes and hands crossed the protective threshold of the building, on the far side of the parking lot to his north, shooting at the truck and machine gunner. He felt a round rip through his throat at the same moment two others tore through his legs. John hit the ground and clutched at his open esophagus.
“Dad!” the wounded Tucker screamed. Earl stare in disbelief from less than two blocks to the east, unable to do anything but watch.
The shot had missed John’s cervical spine, but it nicked the carotid artery as it destroyed his neck muscles. The former Seattle police officer died of hypovolemic shock, knowing his son was a hero, and wondering if they would soon meet in Heaven.
30
Violence of Action.
Tahoma’s Hammer Plus 40 Days.
Alpha, Delta, and Echo squads of the Peg-Leg Posse unit were quickly approaching the zone that the unknown parachutist had fallen into. “Delta One!” Phil yelled into the radio. “Can you get eyes on that closer belt-fed?!”
“I need thirty seconds, Actual!” he heard Nick Williams say back into his headset.
Phil’s Echo squad was lining up behind the cover of the broken monorail tracks, waiting on Josh’s Alpha squad to call that they were set.
“Alpha stacked at Point Zulu!” he heard Josh bark into the radio, indicating the corner of Taylor and Denny. He didn’t want to give the street names on the air. “We can move north as soon as that thing is eliminated!”
Nick and Buddy were sprinting up a slightly angled piece of the former Space Needle’s broken legs, a part that had held close to a hundred feet in length and was about thirty feet high where the north end had settled on a piece of the monorail tracks. He slid to a stop on his knees in the grit and gravel, holding his aim from a kneeling position. It was only one-block to the fifty-cal that was laying suppressing fire.
Ka-Boom! The machine gunner’s head exploded east with the sudden insertion of a 7.62 mm projectile, ending the barrage of gunfire that had trickled to short bursts after John Cronin’s demise. “Now, Peg-Leg!” Buddy yelled into the radio upon Nick’s shot.
Phil’s squad and part of Nick’s all clambered over the broken monorail segments and began to bound east. Phil could see a presumably dead body at the far end of the block. They reached the vehicles just west of the downed man. Phil had Jerry pull out the homemade FLIR scope and scanned past the pilot in the hotel parking lot. “There! And there!” He began to pinpoint where the Cartel were hiding to his team, rendering their smoke less-effective.
Josh’s crew had eyes on the same body. They were between two fairly tall buildings, sprinting to make up the longer distance than Echo squad. Josh saw the driver of the Humvee two blocks farther get out and suffer a similar fate as his gunner had a few seconds earlier. He and his squad favored the building on the right and slowed to a stop as they approached the corner. Phil’s crew was stacked up on the left side of the same intersection. “Smokes!” Josh heard Phil yell into the radio. The entire Peg-Leg Posse had loaded up on the canisters provided by the USS Halsey. Four canisters quickly began to fill up their half of the parking area, intermingling with the thinning waft coming from the north.
As the yellow and purple plumes began to spew south and southwest of the hotel parking area, Josh did one last scan and saw the parachute fabric. He heard Phil begin to call out specific positions of approaching cartel that had been identified with the homemade FLIR scope. “Contact!” he yelled. “Moving! Alpha, push right! Multiple hostiles by those flipped over vehicles to the northeast!”
Phil and Echo did the same to the north, each of the squads laying suppressing fire over Tucker. They could occasionally make out enemy soldiers as the smoke thinned. Pop! Pop! No less than six rifles from the squads were barking at any given second. The sounds of gunfire ricocheted off the buildings, covering the music of the brass hitting the ground. Acrid gunpowder smoke added to the fog-of-war created by the cannisters. Phil and Charlie took up a spot to Tucker’s left, keeping cover behind part of the driveway’s covering-structure. Josh and Joe did the same thing on the right side, forming an arch with Phil and Charlie to protect the wounded pilot. A cartel member stepped out of the mixed smoke to within six feet of Joe, who sent two rounds through the man’s face. “Reloading!” Joe called out, as he peeled off the line, immediately replaced by Vince. Glenn did the same thing with Charlie as he stepped off the line, crouch-running back to a dumpster for cover. Josh spied the one giving orders and shot him squarely in the plate carrier, sending him rolling under a pickup truck. Back on the Space Needle pile, Nick scanned for the machine gun on the Gates Building, but he was too close and low in elevation to get a shot.
“Who are those guys?!” Jessica screamed past all the gunfire.
“I dunno!” Earl screamed back, still trapped…still trying to get into the fight. “But I’m glad they’re on our side!”
“Daaadddd!” Earl could hear Tucker yelling, emotion roiling from the young man who’d just seen his father ripped apart by a machine gun.
“Hang tight, Tucker!” Earl yelled. He was south of the Cartel advance, but the smoke from the canisters was obscuring most of the ground approach from the north. What it didn’t do, however, was prevent that machine gun from pinning Earl’s fireteam down to their corner. All they could do is watch as this well-trained band of strangers moved-in to shield Tucker Cronin from capture and a certain, painful death.
Tony kept his giant frame as low as he could as he ran up to Tucker, laying on the ground behind the two fireteams that were shielding him. “Can you move?!” the big man asked.
The distraught young man yelled, “I think my hips are broken! You need to cut my harness!”
“I gotcha!” Tony said. “Don’t worry, big man!” Tony yelled. He used his knife to slice through the paramotor leg and shoulder straps. He reached down and picked Tucker up under his armpits, hefting him onto his shoulder. Tucker cried out in pain as the Mack-truck sized rescuer began to run south to the next block.
“Peg-Leg! Fall back!” Phil ordered. “Center peel!” As rhythmically as when they approached, the team began to cover and peel back. As some would run for a spot, they would plant themselves and provide covering fire as the remainder walked backwards, firing. As they ran out of ammo in their magazine, they would turn and run, reloading on the move, and pass their teammates. They would plant themselves and repeat the process. The next-to-last man would always hit the last-one on the shoulder so they knew they were the most exposed. Charlie grabbed the fallen John Cronin, the big linebacker grabbing the dead man in a fireman’s carry, using the ‘ranger roll’ that he’d learned in one of Phil’s tactical classes.
Throughout it all, Phil had noticed a small team pinned down to the east. They were obviously friendlies, having been taking fire from the north the whole time. Using hand signals, he told the approaching man and two women to stop. He mentioned that they were falling back to their rally point in the south. The big man a block east gave Phil the okay sign.
“Drive!” Rey yelled at his soldier, who had never seen his boss lose his cool so...volcanically… There were still a few trying to make their way back to the Humvees.
“What about—”
“Drive!” Rey yelled again, this time holding his pistol up to the temple of the young pawn. He threw the rig into gear and stabbed the accelerator pedal with a booted foot, sending the captured National Guard rig back to the north. “Head to the pier!” The soldier took the most direct route they’d discovered through the Queen Anne neighborhood and past the broken rail-lines to get to the command ship over by the grain elevator.
Rey sprinted up the pier, leaving a pair of guards behind a sandbag bunker in the parking area with confused faces. He made his way up the brow, forward and up five levels to the office behind the ship’s bridge. He found a couple of the ship’s compliment who had been in the radio room, monitoring the action.
“Jefe!” one of the exclaimed. “There was an explo—”
“Get hold of Oso Negro!” he yelled, referring to his Cartel’s headquarters in Mexico. It was named after a fabled story of a wounded black bear that had slayed thirty men before they finally brought it down. “And send out the emergency evacuation order!”
Phil took a quick assessment of his Peg-Leg squads in the Slaughter Peninsula National Guard’s secure staging area down the hill near the waterfront. They were in the Olympic Sculpture Park. Most of the Guard had taken up operations linking with the elements approaching from the south, clearing out the remaining cartel and gang units that had been cut-off from their headquarters. He noticed that four familiar faces were absent, including Eli, Josh’s brother. The remaining Slaughter Peninsula Posse members were gulping water, eating protein bars, and topping off magazines. “To open, how are our fallen?” he asked, dreading the answer.
Lonnie spoke up. “We’ve lost Madison, Bobby, and Tyson,” he said with a deep sadness in his angry voice.
Jeff had been obviously crying. “My dad was shot in the leg! He’s lost a lot of blood! The medics from Bartlett are trying to operate on him!”
Phil was overcome with emotion, his eyes swelled with tears. He was taking a knee on his good leg, forearms on the other knee. He looked back up at his crew laying on the hillside around him. “It’s okay, everyone. Take a moment to get it out. We’ll be able to grieve properly when we’ve sent these bastards to Hell!”
Earl wandered up to Phil’s team, and recognized it was a good time to be quiet. Phil cast a glance up and decided to stand. “Come on over,” he said.
“We just wanted to come over and offer our appreciation for saving our man, back there,” Earl said. “Name’s Earl. The rest of my team is checking on him.”
“You guys were a pretty small unit,” Phil said, wondering.
“Just the tip of the spear. We had never planned on trying to rescue a downed pilot. Murphy…” he admitted, looking around at Phil’s unit. “Anyhow, didn’t mean to interrupt. Just sayin’ thanks.” He turned to leave.
“Make sure and tell that kid that we’re all proud of him,” Phil said. “What he did may be the thing that wins this for us. How’s he doin’?” he asked, causing the tall Ranger to stop and turn.
“He’ll recover. But his old man bought it trying to save him. That’s who you guys scooped up in the retreat. That’s something the kid’ll have to learn to live with.” He turned to leave again. “Someday…” he said as he wandered off.
Phil noticed that the Guard personnel in the area were starting to gear up. He looked at Jeff, who suddenly realized that hope wasn’t quite dead. He scanned the remaining members of his team. “You should get that bandaged,” he suggested to Glenn, who had been grazed in the retreat from their rescue operation. “Anyone else with scrapes and sprains, get them looked at. I’m going to go find out what our next mission is.” These Guardsmen are getting ready for something…
Phil took a long pull off his hydration bladder hose. Need to fill this thing, he realized. Drained it in less than three hours. Charlie caught up to Phil as he was walking under a ten-by-twenty pop-up canopy being utilized as a hasty Command Post. Adam saw them both, and shut down the conversation he’d been in. “Hey, guys,” he said with a look of dread on his face. “Charlie, I…”
“I saw,” Charlie said. “Direct hit. Nobody could’ve survived that.”
“Doesn’t that make you the ranking Sheriff Officer?” Phil asked earnestly. Charlie didn’t reply, he just gave Phil a look that said, ‘not now’.
Phil picked it up from the tall deputy and turned back to Adam. “We’re here to find out what’s next…”
Adam held out an electronic tablet for Phil to take. “Good timing. We’re getting ready to send everything we got straight up these train tracks.”
“What am I looking at?” Phil asked semi-excitedly. “Is this…today? Now?! Where did you get this feed?!”
Adam pointed up. “Our Raven.” He was referring to his unit’s hand-launched reconnaissance drone. “And our friends pulling security at the submarine base have a Reaper sending us images, too.”
“A Reaper?!” Phil damn near screamed. “Are they done playing this ‘we can’t get involved’ game, yet?” Phil knew he wasn’t giving them full credit for the operation they’d performed hours earlier. He was just venting that it had taken them so long to help.
“Phil,” Charlie said trying to calm his friend down, who wasn’t listening.
“Just have them send a missile up those guys’ hind-quarters and finish them off!”
Adam just gave Charlie a look, who said, “Phil!”
Phil took a deep breath and then sighed it out. “Sorry,” he muttered as he started looking at the tablet. “What am I looking at here?”
“A retreat,” Adam said. “Twelve minutes ago, they started moving en masse toward that ship on that grain pier.”
“What?!” Phil handed the tablet to Charlie as he stepped out into the mid-morning sunshine. He reset his frequency on his little radio and keyed it up. “Rampage! Rampage! You still got your ears on?!”
Twenty seconds later, he heard Jennifer get on the radio. “We’re here, Peg-Leg!”
“We’re going to meet you where you dropped us off in ten minutes! Copy?”
“Copy! Ten minutes!”
The other two had followed him out when they saw him key up his radio. Adam said, “Phil, what’re you doing? We have a ground assault moving forward!”
“They’ll shred you guys alive, Adam! They’ve had drones, mortars, and RPGs every step of the way! You really think they haven’t pre-ranged some heavy weapons on those train tracks to cover their escape?”
He ran right past the water refill station and back to his team, who were starting to fall asleep. “Peg-Leg! Mount up! This one’s gonna hurt!”
The Rampage pulled up to the east side of the grain elevator’s pier to offload the first group of Peg-Leg operators. Nick heard artillery and RPGs but realized those were impacting the rail cars to the south. They’re going after the ground assault, he realized. Every soul on board was laying as low as they could on deck, using machinery and the side of the boat for cover, trying desperately to return the fire they were receiving.
On the quick, one-kilometer cruise after being picked up, Phil had ordered Lonnie and the remaining few members of Bravo to join Josh and Alpha on the boat’s second insertion. “Now, Delta and Echo!” Phil hollered as he led the scramble off the fishing boat.
The big diesel engine didn’t take too long to start backing up with the reverse thrust that Jennifer’s father had applied. He slipped it into neutral to give the fifteen or so fighters time to scramble off the boat. A bullet impacted his port side cabin window, sending cracks throughout the safety glass. Then a second hole. The old captain reengaged the transmission and throttled the prop as high as it would go in reverse. The two squads of Posse members had barely taken foot on the pier, each of them scrambling for cover.
The elevated beltway above was held almost a hundred feet over the pier by a steel structure. There were four primary and one back-up booms that could telescope out over a waiting ship and use giant hoses to start dumping grain from the conveyor. There were a few electrical panels, a couple of mooring bollards, and the legs to the structure—ballistic cover was difficult to find from the cartel’s incoming rounds. Buddy Chadwell took a shot in the gut and fell to the ground, writhing in agony. Jeff pulled him over to a pile of mooring line and dragged him behind it, laying on Buddy to try to protect him. “Keep moving!” Phil ordered. “We need to make our way to that brow!”
Nick looked up at the grain elevator from the safety of the leg closest to the Seattle side and end of the pier. I need to get up there! I bet they already have a shooter up there themselves! The tower on the south end of the pier was a crisscross framework of load-bearing legs, and both horizontal and vertical diagonal bracing that gave the platform the strength it needed to carry tons of weight. There were five of these on the pier, with each being a spot that tethered one of the giant hoses. At the top, the conveyor connected them all on two levels—an enclosed room with the grain-hauling belt, and an open-air machinery space at the very top. Nick took the battle rifle off his front, needing the space to be able to climb the tower, leaving him with his sniper rifle and a pistol. He began to climb the framework, trying to get up to the conveyor deck before his whole team was killed.
By that time, the boat had made a speed run to the north end of the pier. Jennifer told her dad to keep it tight to the giant ship, keeping them out of easy sight of the various cartel riflemen on board. The battered little boat sped past the ship and turned hard to starboard where the pier angled over toward the shoreline with a different section. Before he hit a third, small pier extension that jutted north, Captain Smith once again parallel parked on the angled pier by jamming reverse throttle. “Everyone off!” Josh yelled, hopping onto the pier. They all took cover and began firing at the cartel who were still trying to board the pier from shore, effectively trapping those already near or on the ship between Alpha and the Delta-Echo squads to the south. While Lonnie and several others held off the advance from shore, Josh started trying to provide Phil and Charlie’s advance some covering fire.
As Joe Santillan tried to run across the pier to take cover behind a different part of the conveyor tower, he took a shot directly in the head, dead before his body buckled at the knees and crumpled to a heap. “Joe!” Josh yelled, too late. He tightened his own cover up. “Echo, this is Alpha! I think there’s someone sniping from the top!”
31
