The Alpha Chronicles (40 page)

Five seconds later, a very high-pitched voice sounded through the earpiece. “This is Ma… Ma… Martin on 3
rd
Avenue. We’re under attack! Everyone’s dead!”

That report was quickly followed by another, a panicked man yelling, “They’re in the warehouse! They’re in the warehouse! There must be a hundred of them!”

The warehouse?
Lou’s gaze focused on the structure, his view mostly obstructed by a block of restaurants, shops and other retail stores that resided between him and the storage facility in question. Glancing back at the bodies lying in the street, he realized the angle was right, the two muffled explosions now making sense.

Broadcasting over the static filled channel, Lou began to issue orders. “We’ve got intruders in the Elm Street warehouse. I want all LBO security personnel from all facilities to converge on downtown. Leave only a skeleton crew at your facilities and immediately send everyone else here.
”

One of Deke’s men waved his hand in the air, the signal-based communicatio
n necessary, given the incredible level of noise being generated by gunshot reports bouncing off the hard, interior walls. Deke watched as his operator flashed five fingers twice, and then pointed toward the distant hills.

We’ve got
ten hostiles approaching from the east.

Deke dispatched two additional operators to that corner and watched as the four men identified individual targets among themselves. Were it not for the
end result, the team’s activity bordered on art, a choreographed dance with exquisite, balanced timing.

Rising together, the four operators fired at once and then quickly acquired secondary targets.
An exquisite move in an foul business
, thought Deke. After breaking the back of the eastern assault, the two shooters returned to the center of the warehouse, waiting for a different corner to require reinforcement.

Over the next few minutes, the defenders of Midland Station mustered three different efforts to oust the men occupying the warehouse, all three assaults resulting in significant carnage among the attackers.
Bodies littered the streets, the cries of begging wounded drowned out by the constant discharge of weapons.

Nick scurried
to Deke’s central position and took a knee. “There’re going to catch onto this pretty soon. I can see trucks arriving with more and more of their men. Somebody with half a brain is going to stop these suicide charges and try something clever. Do you think it’s time to go up top?”

Deke pondered the question for only a moment
before nodding. “Sure, why not? So far, they’ve not even pressured us. We can handle this level of bullshit with two less people. Have fun.”

Nick and another man jogged to a nearby wall and pulled down an access ladder. The rus
ted steel rungs led to a trapdoor high in the ceiling above. Each operator pulled on a different pack and extra rifle case and began climbing.

Pushing open the hinged door, Nick bobbed his head out the opening and then quickly ducked back down – just in case someone had beat them to the spot. Seeing nothing but air conditioner units, exhaust fans
, and a couple of electrical boxes, Nick climbed out and made for the nearest HVAC condenser. The contractor soon joined him, both men scouting the area with intense scrutiny.

“That tall building one block over is the only structure I can see that we’ve got to be careful of,” the man reported. “If they get a sniper on that roof, he’ll have his way with us. Other than that, I think we’re in good shape.”

Nick agreed with the report. “You take the east corner, I’ll take the west. Let’s get off this roof after five minutes. We’ll do as much damage as possible and then skedaddle back down.”

The
contractor nodded and then added, “Good hunting,” as he scrambled for the east side.

Nick pulled the .308 out of the case and slammed home a
full magazine.
I’m going to talk to Bishop about this rifle when we’re done. I wonder if he’ll trade something for it.
Dismissing the clearly insane thought, Nick bent low and ran for the west corner.

The extra height exposed far more of the surrounding urban area than was visible from the first floor below. Without even needing the optic, Nick could see clusters of men gathering in the street four blocks away, their leaders pointing, shouting and performing other animated movements.

Nick uncapped the scope, deployed the bipod, and calculated the distance to the largest group of men. He judged the range at 450 meters, an easy reach for the .308 caliber weapon. Glancing at his counterpart, both men signaled with a thumbs-up that they were ready to engage.

An auto-loading, magazine fed, semi-automatic rif
le like the one in Nick’s hands was a significant game-changer on the modern battlefield. With a well-trained operator, the weapon was capable of projecting terminal force at over 900 meters. While bolt-action sniper rifles had possessed that same range for over 100 years, the modern replacement could deliver accurate rounds at three times the rate of fire, and that could be devastating.

Only 20 years prior, a sniper in Nick’s position would select a single target, normally whoever appeared to be in
command. While that one man was killed more often than not, the time to work the bolt and reacquire another target afforded all other combatants the time to take cover. The tactic was effective –critical - but did not result in large numbers of the enemy being taken out of the fight.

Weapons like the one now
being aimed by the two rooftop-operators changed all of that. They could deliver red-hot slugs of death as fast as a man’s finger could pull the trigger. The .308 round used by both shooters fired super-sonic bullets, which translated into the lead arriving on target before the sound of the shot could be heard by the victim. There was no warning, no time to duck.

Nick picked his three targets, judging he could fire that many rounds befor
e the men below could react. One last glance at his co-sniper signaled both were going hot at the same time. Long-distance death began pouring from the warehouse rooftop.

The optic
, click-adjusted for a drop of several inches, was ready. Nick centered on a man standing in the bed of a pickup, clearly issuing orders to a large group of armed men.

Nick whispered, “Cry h
avoc… and let slip the dogs of war.”

The former Green Beret
pulled the trigger, the weapon’s recoil aligning the crosshairs instantly on another foe – that lead on its way before the empty case of the first shot rolled to a stop on the nearby tarpaper surface.

It was a slaughter. The defenders of Midland Station weren’t combat soldiers with finely honed reflexes and nerves accustomed to incoming fire. It took the gathered throng far too long to realize they were under attack, longer still to seek cover. Even then, there wasn’t any
place of protection. Several of the faster reacting men dove for the various vehicles parked in the street, and Nick ignored them. He also ignored those who stood dazed by the carnage around them, instead focusing his shots on the men running for cover. Few made it off the street.

Round after round poured in, the withering fire quickly exhausting the targets in the open. With the street littered with bodies, Nick began focusing on the easy marks – the men hiding around the vehicles. One after another,
168-grain balls of jacketed lead punched the sheet metal originally made in Detroit. Car doors and fenders only made the impact of Nick’s shots worse for the victims. The bullet would enter one side, expand and fracture, exploding out the other in dozens of lethal fragments that shredded flesh and ended life. There was no place to hide, nowhere to escape the death raining from the muzzle of Nick’s rifle.

And then it was over. Nick watched his
rooftop partner take two more shots, and then his weapon fell silent as well. Time to go.

As Nick starte
d to disappear through the trapdoor, he stopped, something catching his eye. The sun glinted on the piles of shiny brass casings lying on the black tarpaper background of the roof. The glitter of the brass catching his eye for a moment, and then he was distracted by movement in the window of the tall office building beyond. The outline of a man was visible on the top floor, the sun positioned perfectly to penetrate the tinted glass. The man was pointing at Nick while talking into a radio.

Nick disappeared, stepping two rungs down the ladder. Looking past his boots, he said, “I just spotted something important, I’ll be down in just a second. See ya at the bottom.”

His partner acknowledged the statement with a nod and proceeded to climb down.

Nick’s precarious perch made unslinging the AR10 a difficult balancing act. Inserting another magazine was even more difficult. A few moments later, with a round c
hambered, his boots firmly locked around a rung. Nick popped out of the trapdoor opening and began firing at the top floor of the Lewis Brothers Oil headquarters building.

Lou was reversing his orders. For five minutes, he had been screaming into the radio, first trying to warn his people of the snipers he had spotted on the warehouse roof. After the two shooters had
begun slaughtering his men, his next set of commands had been for someone to get on the LBO building’s roof and kill the two men that were decimating his security staff.

After finally receiving
a transmission that acknowledged an ex-police sniper was on his way to the top of the LBO building, Lou watched in frustration as the two men below retreated back inside their stronghold.

Red-faced mad and pacing back and forth in front of the floor to ceiling windows, his vision went to slow motion as the glass beside him exploded inward, the glistening shards resembling snowflakes floating through the air. Lou’s brain couldn’t command his legs to move, the mental signals out of sync with his nervous system screaming at his muscles. Another window became a geyser of glass, the impact causing
an instinctive twist to avoid the projectiles flying at his face.

The third round slammed into Lou’s back just below his rib cage, the expanding lead exiting an inch below his
sternum. Collapsing to his knees, the dying man looked down at a golf ball-sized hole in the middle of his chest. He was dead before his face came to rest on the glass-littered carpeting.

Nick had no way of knowing if he had hit anything or not. He did speculate that top floor was where the
headman would reside and decided it wouldn’t hurt to deliver a strong message to the enemy leader. After splattering 20 rounds into the top floor, he ducked down into the interior and began his descent to the waiting contractors below.

“It’s time to fire the signal,” he shouted to
Deke over the sporadic gunfire. “We just broke their back.”

Reaching into the pack at his feet, Deke pulled
out a plastic, large barreled pistol and hustled for a door. Pointing the odd gun skyward, he pulled the trigger. The flare popped out of the muzzle and rose several hundred feet into the air before a small parachute opened, slowing the pulsating red light’s descent. It was time for Teams A and B to begin their assault.

Bishop watched the signal rocket
ing skyward and exhaled with relief. Nick wouldn’t have sent the flare if things weren’t going their way. He was also a little surprised at how soon the contractors had determined it was time to begin the final phase. Things must be going well, indeed.