The Living Will Envy The Dead (15 page)

“Right,” he said.  His voice was thick, the voice of a man used to getting what he wanted from people, or else.  “You know what we want, so give it to us, or else.”

“No,” I said.  I suppose I should have said something dramatic, or defiant, but I couldn’t be bothered.  There are a thousand versions of this story and most of them have me saying ‘nuts,’ or ‘fuck off,’ but their accuracy is disputable.  Besides, ‘nuts’ was taken when it comes to American myths.  “I want your surrender.”

He looked at me as if I were insane.  “You’re demanding
my
surrender?”  He demanded, astonished.  “Do you know who we are?”

“No,” I said, tightly.  “I see you as nothing, but thugs.  You can put down your guns, release your prisoners, and work off your debt to society, helping us all to survive.”  I smiled, coldly.  “Or you can fight and die.”

He lifted his AK-47 and started to aim it at me.  He wasn't thinking.  The AK-47 is a magnificent weapon in its way, but using it for close quarters is just plain dumb, most of the time.  It wouldn’t have mattered anyway.  I made a gesture with my hand and a pair of shots cracked out, perfectly synchronised.  Patty and Stacy blew his head off with ease.  His body collapsed to the ground, although not before I’d snatched the AK-47 from his dying hands and slung it over my shoulder.  We were, after all, desperately short of weapons.

The gang-bangers seemed to hesitate, just for a second.  I had wondered if they would turn around and try to escape – which would have made intercepting them difficult, as we had only a very limited supply of mortar rounds and AT weapons – but instead they unassed from their vehicles and took cover, firing towards me.  I’d hit the ground the moment they started to unass and crawled rapidly back towards the barricades, while the snipers fired careful shots into their mass.  They’d be slowed down long enough for us to get additional forces in place and then to deal with them permanently.  After what they’d done, I wasn't going to let them off with a warning, no sir!

“You, sir, are fucking insane,” Mac said, when I scrambled back over the barricade.  The gang was still getting organised below us, so I took a moment to check the AK-47.  As I had suspected, it was probably from a knock-off production line, maybe from Mexico or Venezuela.  The latter had been trying to run weapons into the US for years now, seemingly convinced that we were permanently on the verge of race war and if they supplied the Hispanics with weapons, they would rise up against the evil Anglos.  It was working about as well as you might expect when the Final War began and they got nuked in passing.  “You should have let me go.”

“I get to have all the fun,” I said, grinning.  I felt almost alive again.  “It’s in my contract.”

I looked over towards the defenders.  “They’ve got hostages in those vehicles, so don’t shoot them unless there’s no choice,” I ordered, wincing.  I expected the gangs to start using them as human shields any time now.  That would present us with a serious problem, although I was sure that Stacy and Patty could avoid shooting any innocent victims.  They scared even me.  “Mac, get the second reserves up into position.  I think we’re going to need them.”

The gang probably thought that they were trapped.  They might have had a point.  If they gave me enough time, I would assault their position myself, with sniper cover and even mortar fire.  It would have been a waste of the latter…but I couldn’t even think that.  If I lost one of my veterans, the cost would be proportionally worse.  I couldn’t afford to lose any of them.

“We’re going to have to press the kids harder,” I said, grimly.  A charge at them would be costly, even with the body armour, unless they surrendered at once.  God alone knew what other weapons they were packing.  What if they’d looted a National Guard armoury, or a police station, or even a gun store?  “We can’t risk this happening again.”

“They’re kids,” Mac said.  “They need more time to get ready.”

“We weren’t much older,” I protested, quietly.  “You and I joined up at eighteen.”

“And we volunteered,” Mac reminded me.  “They’re still thinking about girls, and maybe getting away from the country for a while, not about risking their lives in defence…”

He broke off as a whistle blew.

“They’re coming,” Brent shouted.

“Good,” I said, raising my voice.  “Stand by to repel attack!”

The invention of gunpowder and the constant improvement of firearms are enough in themselves to show that the advance of civilization has done nothing practical to alter or deflect the impulse to destroy the enemy, which is central to the very idea of war
.

-Carl von Clausewitz

The gang-bangers yelled as they started to advance towards us, making use of what cover they could find.  I wondered if it was meant to be intimidating, but I tended to find it more amusing than anything else.  They showed a rudimentary grasp of military tactics, but only rudimentary.  If I had found myself charged with taking Ingalls, particularly after I’d set up the defences, I would have probed around for a weak spot, not charged the strongest defence line I could find.  Their backstops, a handful of men with better weapons, fired on us from their positions, trying to force us to keep our heads down and prevent us from firing back.

“I brought up the reinforcements,” Jackson King said.  He looked grim, but determined to do his duty.  He hadn’t exactly had an easy time in the last couple of days.  Ingalls wasn't a racist town, not really, but not everyone resident in the town had been happy at the thought of a black Deputy.  Some of them had even been rude enough to say that they stayed in the country to keep away from black men.  “Where do you want them?”

“Keep them in reserve,” I ordered, calmly.  For once, I was back in my element, flashing back to Iraq.  “Let’s see how this develops.”

I studied the advancing gang-bangers as carefully as I could.  I had wondered at their decision to advance, but now I saw them clearly, I suspected that I understood why.  They looked hungry and tired, as if they were pushing themselves onwards by sheer force of will, rather than determination.  I’d seen their hostage and their leader – at least, I assumed that he’d been the leader – and both of them had been hungry.  What had happened to them between the bombs going off and their arrival here?

“We need some prisoners,” I muttered to Mac, who nodded.  Making them talk wouldn’t be difficult.  Judging by their condition, they would probably have talked in exchange for a good feed.  “Patty, Stacy, on my command, take down their snipers.”

“Yes, sir,” Patty called, from her hide.  She was almost completely impossible to spot from the outside.  Even though they knew the snipers were there, the gang obviously hadn’t bothered to try to suppress them.  “Ready and waiting, sir!”

“Good,” I said.  “Fire!”

The two girls fired as one.  The shots that had been coming towards us suddenly slacked off sharply as the snipers found their targets.  I was sure that they had hit them as well – the girls were excellent shots – but as long as they weren't firing, I didn’t care.  It might even work out in our favour if one of them had survived.  They would probably be senior members if they were allowed to carry heavy weapons like those.

(And yes, they were heavy by gang standards.  Very few of the stereotypes about gang-bangers and their arsenals of weapons are actually true.  I’d be surprised if they were anything like as well armed as we were, although it was possible that they could have looted additional weapons from somewhere along their travels.)

I smiled.  “Mac, blow the mines!”

The explosion shook the barricades.  Mac had wanted to set up Claymores, but as we had only a limited supply of them, I had convinced him to use mining explosives instead.  We’d been going through abandoned houses and property – their owners had been well away from Ingalls when the balloon went up and wouldn’t be coming back – and some mining firm had simply abandoned the explosives.  It would have been a major scandal before the War, but now…now, I was just glad to have them.  The explosion sent the gang-bangers back in shock, those that survived.  Mac’s Ranger background had served him well and he’d organised all kinds of nasty tricks for intruders.

“Not bad,” I said.  Mac gave me a wry grin.  “Shooters, mark your positions and open fire.”

The gang members were stumbling back in shock when the guards opened fire, conserving their ammunition, as I had ordered.  We couldn’t afford to run ourselves dry of ammunition, not when we might face other such battles in the future.  I was ruefully aware that this particular gang might not be the only one out there – in fact, I was
certain
that they weren't the only one out there.  They might not be
that
dangerous – although I didn’t even have an accurate count of how many there were of them – but others might well be worse.  My real nightmare was running into a rogue National Guard unit.  It might happen…

“They’re on the run,” Mac said, calmly.  The gang-bangers had started to run the second we opened fire, but only a handful made it to the relative safety of the vehicles.  I half-hoped that they would try to surrender, but instead they fell back slightly, firing a handful of shots towards us to discourage pursuit.  I wasn't inclined to give chase, not yet.  I had other concerns.  So far, we had survived without any casualties and I wanted to keep it that way.  “Want to bet they try to run?”

I shrugged.  The reserves had brought up the mortar.  The 81mm weapon would drop a shell on them if they tried to run, but somehow I suspected that they would make another try, somehow.  If they were as hungry as I thought, they would have little choice, unless they decided to resort to cannibalism.  It would probably wipe them out, in the end – human flesh is just riddled with diseases – but by the time it killed them, they would probably have eaten their way through their hostages.  I looked down at the school bus and winced.  I hoped that they hadn’t taken a bunch of children hostage.  That would really be all that I needed.

“Check weapons and ammunition,” I ordered, during the lull.  I wanted to make sure that we had enough ammunition on hand.  The National Guard, at least, had fired its weapons regularly, but I couldn’t have Isaac Chang and his men on the walls.  I needed them too much as well.  Luckily, most of the veterans knew what they were doing with them.

“We could assault them,” Mac offered, watching the gang-bangers like a hawk.  He liked them even less than I did, which I wouldn’t have believed possible.  “Ten gets you twenty they’d surrender the minute they saw us charging.”

I considered it – again.  I had expected their second attack by now, but perhaps they were just getting organised.  We could assault their position, and I was sure that we would win, but we would be devastatingly vulnerable while we clambered over the barricades as a group.  Mac, or a bunch of his cronies, could probably…

I smiled.  I’d had an idea.  “Mac, take Jackson and his unit,” I ordered, quickly.  “Get them out of CP3 and around to take them from the rear.  Take two of the machine guns and one of the AT weapons with you, just in case, but be in position to trap them against the barricades.”

“Yes, sir,” Mac said, saluting with surprising enthusiasm.  I’d half-expected a sardonic remark about how I was sending him off to commit suicide.  Soldiers can be morbid sometimes, particularly ones who think they’ve pushed their luck too far.  I think he was a little bored, as was I.  There was too much to do in Ingalls, but most of it was boring.  “Jackson, come on.”

I saw Jackson’s wince – he hadn’t really been in a real fight, unless one counted brief moments of violence – but he followed gamely, along with his section.  They had twenty-one men, seven of them veterans, and all of them slightly more expendable than some of the others on the walls.  I hated to risk any of them, but Mac wouldn’t let them endanger themselves and Jackson was smart enough to defer to his judgement.  I wished it didn’t feel so much like risking my people on the character of an untested junior officer – something that happened too often in the regular Army – but there was little choice.

A roar brought me back to reality.  The gang-bangers had finally decided what to do.  A truck, large enough to carry several heavy containers, was being moved around so that its rear pointed directly towards the barricade.  It was packed with boxes of all shapes and sizes, including several that looked as if they would fall out at any moment, and I had to bite back a laugh when I realised what they were.  The gang-bangers had been looting, all right, but they hadn’t been looting food.  They’d been looting museums and jewellery stores!  They’d probably been robbing banks as well.