Apache Dawn, - [little bear else holmelund minarik txt] 📗

This is taking too long—there’s so many people!

“From what I can tell, comms are down net-wide—we are cut off from reinforcements. That means it’s time for us to drop the hammer and do what we do best, SEALs.”

“Hooyah, Master Chief!” was the chorused response.

“All right, then,” said Cooper, checking his weapon one more time. “Let’s show these cocky little fuckers what happens when you show up uninvited at our house. Team 2, flank right. Team 1, left.”

“They’ve gained entrance to the hospital,” warned Mike, standing on a parked car’s hood to see over the mob of running civilians.

“All right. I want controlled bursts, and keep it accurate. We got a lot of wounded civvies on the ground, so watch your step and keep your footing. If you go down, you’re going to have a hard time getting back up.”

“Hooyah,” someone grunted.

“Like a cattle drive back home,” observed Tank.

The ground shook violently as they started to move forward. Most of SEALs were thrown to the ground, along with the civilians. It was like a giant hand had just come along and toppled everyone in one swipe down the street. Cooper could see through the flailing arms and legs, a huge explosion erupted, lighting up the sky briefly—he guessed it was somewhere downtown. The shockwave blew out windows and set off car alarms in the wave that rolled toward them. Bits of flaming paper floated on the breeze. Debris rained down on the surrounding buildings and the screaming throngs of panicked civilians.

“What the hell?” someone yelled.

Another explosion shook the ground like a small earthquake. Cooper found himself on his back on the sidewalk, under a woman in a hospital gown. She screamed hysterically and clawed at his face, begging for help. His mind had enough time to register that she reminded him of Allie, before he shoved her roughly aside.

Thunder rolled through the sky from the north. Bits of glass fell from above—busted out of windows overlooking the street. The ground trembled again and Cooper glanced up and shielded his eyes. It was like some sort of nightmarish rain.

“Coop!” said Mike, struggling to his feet on the other side of the street. He pointed up into the evening sky. “We got some big fuckin’ missiles inbound!”

Cooper rolled to his side and fought the urge to hold onto the ground as it shook again. He could feel hands grabbing his legs and feet, voices screaming for help and crying out in pain. He risked a glance up where Mike had pointed and his heart froze in his chest

Holy shit.

His training kicked in and the cold rationalization hit him that if the missiles were nuclear, then nothing would make a difference in the next fifteen seconds and everyone around him—his brothers in arms, all the civilians—would be burned to a crisp and obliterated in a ball of fire and radiation.

If they were conventional missiles, though…

“Stay on target!” Cooper said as he knocked a man away from his rifle. He picked himself up off the street and elbowed through the crowd. A hand slapped his face and he had to pause and adjust his night-vision goggles.

“Mission first—we have to get into that hospital!” he yelled. “Weapons-free!” Cooper roared as he raced forward and fired his carbine in three-round, tightly controlled bursts. The wall of civilians parted in front of him as they tried to escape the gunfire.

He could see muzzle flashes out of the corner of his eyes—his SEALs were advancing in step with him. He smiled. If this was going to be the end of their world, if they were going to die in a nuclear holocaust, then by God, they were going to go out like SEALs: teeth bared, guns blazing, advancing on the enemy, and taking no prisoners.

Cooper ignored the shrieks and screams of the enemy soldiers as they fell under the hail of bullets unleashed by his team. He was surprised to see that despite the hot-leaded hell he and his men had created in their rear, the mass of soldiers seemed to surge forward, hellbent on gaining entrance to the besieged hospital.

The ground rumbled and Cooper looked down to see his feet above the ground. Then all he saw was empty sky, then concrete rushing up to meet his face. When the earth stopped vibrating, he coughed and pulled the night-vision goggles from his face. The smell of concrete dust filled his nose and made his eyes water.

First thing he noticed, upon getting to his knees, was that the fleeing crowd was thinning out at last. Only the weak, the wounded, and the stragglers remained near the hospital now. And the dead. They were everywhere, covering the ground in twisted, broken shapes. Arms and legs stuck up at wrong angles where people had been trampled to death in the mad stampede to escape the North Koreans.

His ears were ringing and everything seemed to moving slow as the flaming paper drifting through the air. Cooper looked down at his hands—black gloves covered in fine-gray powder. He brushed himself off and peered through the smoky darkness. The world had been transformed in a heartbeat.

No longer could he see orderly buildings and street lamps and parked cars. All he saw was a wall of smoke. Here and there in the grayness, a burning car or a fire in a building made a bright point, but otherwise, only things within about twenty feet were visible. He swallowed. He didn’t want to look at those things—the bodies of the civilians, the body parts, the faces, locked in horror-filled screams that would never be heard, the struggling forms of people still alive, still desperate to get up and get away…

He heard one of his men coughing over the squad’s comm-net. Cooper blinked to clear his head and focus again on the mission. He slapped the side of his rifle to clear the dust.

“Jesus…”

“Guess it wasn’t a nuke,” said Tank’s deep voice.

Someone else grunted a bitter laugh.

“Swede, gimme a hand—I’m stuck over here…” gasped Mike.

“On it,” was the reply.

Cooper looked up at the sky. Only two more missiles were up there, falling like shooting stars to the north. He put them out of his mind and turned back to the task at hand. Before him, scattered among the dead civilians—and a growing number of dead Koreans—was the remaining mass of invaders, all struggling to force their way into the hospital.

“Lot of NKors got inside,” said Charlie, voice steady as steel.

“Changing mags,” Cooper called out. He took a knee to quickly switch the empty magazine from his MP5 and slap in a fresh one. Jax staggered by, still shooting and tapped Cooper on the shoulder to let him know it was safe to stand again.

“I’m out,” said Tank in a calm voice, taking a knee to switch magazines, exactly as Cooper had done it, ten feet to his left. Cooper watched out of the corner of his eye as Mike’s small form stepped up to signal Tank it was safe to rise again. He grinned. Precision. Deadly precision. He stepped over another North Korean body and moved forward.

Over the constant staccato of his team’s gunfire, he could hear the roar of jets overhead. Explosions scorched the air in the distance and seemed to be getting closer. And on top of everything, the screams of civilians. He saw people racing up and down the streets in a wild, mob-like stampede, leaving buildings to witness or flee the gunfight. Some even had cell phones up, trying to record the movie-like violence.

A jet streaked by overhead, turbine engines whining. Cooper looked up from the controlled carnage to see afterburners glowing in the night sky like twin stars. A building exploded with a tremendous roar down the street as the jet banked hard left and screamed west. In the distance, through the haze of smoke, he could see toy cars and tiny people tossed through the air from the shockwave as the building collapsed in a billowing plume of smoke and dust.

“Damn civvies are everywhere,” said Sparky. “This is ridiculous—hey, get the hell out of here! Move!”

“This is some serious shit, man,” yelled Jax over the din. “They got fast-movers past NORAD, ICBMs…how the hell is this possible?”

“Stow it—we’ll worry about that later! Charlie, go,” ordered Cooper. Whatever North Koreans had pulled on America, his team would respond after they secured the President.

“Right flank that breach,” Cooper said as he raced forward over the bodies and dying enemies to secure the blasted-open north entrance. Smoke was billowing out of the hole, rendering his night vision nearly useless. Charlie slammed against the wall on the other side of the gaping hole and nodded. Cooper looked to his right to see his fireteam spreading out and covering the entrance.

Farther behind Charlie, the other fireteam was doing the same. He took a quick scan of the immediate area and counted at least twenty dead or dying North Koreans. He grinned. Poor bastards never had a chance. Just the way he liked it.

Another jet screamed low overhead, splitting the night sky as it streaked away trailing smoke, fire, and destruction. The smile faded from Cooper’s face. North Koreans doing ground strikes in downtown L.A…where the hell was the Air Force?

Cooper watched as Charlie took a second to slap in a fresh magazine and stow the partially spent one in his tactical vest. He checked his weapon and nodded at Cooper. He looked back at his fireteam and flashed the hand signal to cover the lead elements. Cooper did the same and watched as his team took knees and scanned all sectors, looking for someone to shoot. Other than the occasional North Korean that rolled over half-dead, there was really no one that needed dispatching. His SEALS had been efficient, brutal, and lethal. They had used the element of surprise and had wiped out at least twenty enemy soldiers—marines by the look of their uniforms.