Escaping Extinction - Part 3
"Guardsman!" Eddy shouted over a volley of gunfire.
A young, terrified ISAF guardsman sprinted up to him. "Yes, sir?"
"Get to the comms center and send a message to Base Adowa," Eddy ordered, purposefully exaggerating a calm tone to ease the guardsman who was on the brink of hyperventilating. "For some reason I can't get through. Tell them to send air support on my authorization, alpha-one-seven-niner. That’s code for an airstrike."
"Yes, sir," said the guardsman, starting to run away. Eddy swiftly grabbed his arm.
"Hey. Hey!" Eddy eased. "Once you get through I need you to meet me in the med-block, okay?"
"Ye-yes, sir," the guardsman stuttered, clenching his P90.
"It's Jackson, isn't it?"
"Yeah, it's Jackson, sir…"
Eddy smiled. "We'll get through, yeah?" he said, gently patting the guardsman's cheek. "We'll win."
The guardsman didn't answer. He just nodded and ran off.
Eddy cocked his own weapon, running towards the station's medical facility. A streak of bullets strafed the ground a few feet to his left, making him stop. He turned around, got on one knee, and opened fire with his P90, taking aim at a group of attackers attempting to force their way in through the station's main entrance.
"I've got at least eighty contacts within fifty meters of the south fence line and closing!" a guardsman radioed frantically. "East, west, and north perimeters still look clear!"
"Eighty!" another replied, dread consuming their voice. "We've only got a detail of thirty!"
"Crap," Eddy mumbled. He got back to his feet and started running towards the southeast corner of the square compound. Dodging further gunfire, he climbed a ladder leading up to the perimeter container wall’s top gangway, joining a group of his warring guardsmen at the front of the station.
"Sir," said one of them, looking over her shoulder, "I don't know how much longer we can hold them off!"
A whistling noise made everyone immediately look up. It was a mortar.
"Incoming!" Eddy shouted. "Heads down, heads down!"
The mortar impacted the container wall no more than twenty to their left, knocking an unfortunate guardsman right off the wall and over the chain link fence.
"Woah…" one guardsman muttered, picking his head back up.
"Who the hell is attacking us?" asked another angrily.
"I don't know," Eddy replied, glaring out into the savannah's darkness. "But I can certainly guess." Muzzle flashes lit up the surrounding shrubbery as if they were fireflies. "Help is on the way though!" he assured. "We got an air strike coming!" Eddy looked back towards the station's comms center, hoping he wasn't lying. To his horror, the comms center was ablaze. A huge explosion rocked the main entrance, blowing its gate into bits of shrapnel and tipping over the heavy armored vehicle that was meant to protect it.
"Oh God."
…
Jackson kicked down the comms center’s door, holding his rifle up ready to fire. Scanning the room through his gun’s flashlight beam and laser sight he saw only lifeless, bloody bodies sprawled out over computer consoles and across the floor. The ceiling was coated in flames. Jackson surmised the room had taken a direct hit from an RPG.
Through the falling, burning chunks of ceiling, Jackson made his way over to the station’s emergency broadcast transmitter. He saw it had not been activated. Using the force of his plastic elbow pad, Jackson smashed through the transmitters protective glass case and activated the device, letting the entire world know there was a problem.
Next, he made his way to a microphone. Moving a corpse to the floor, Jackson grabbed the tip of a mic and said, "Base Adowa, Base Adowa! This is Mikumi Station. We are under attack! We are under attack by an unknown adversary. Require immediate air support. Authorization alpha-one-seven-niner! Authorization alpha-one - "
He looked up to see a rocket propelled grenade screaming straight towards him through the comms centers shattered front window.
"Shit!" he cried, ducking below a console. The RPG exploded just outside, tossing a blinding spray of dirt through the window and over Jackson's eyes. Seconds later he felt a second blast come from overhead. The comms center’s communication boom crashed through the ceiling, landing inches from his face. As he scurried backwards in shock he touched another body. It was Captain Okoro.
…
"Contact left!"
"Main gate is compromised! We're barely holding it. Hostiles now within ten meters," someone radioed. "All UNIRO personnel are locked in the central science lab!"
"Any word on how long we gotta wait on that airstrike, sir?!"
"Afraid not!" Eddy shouted through the battering of his P90 against his cheek. "We're on our own until we get…"
Eddy stopped firing. He had an unbelievable idea. He turned around and stared at the parked cargo jet sitting behind the station, a Phoenix 7. The attackers hadn't reached it yet.
"Hey!" he cried, tapping the guardsman next to him. "I've got an idea. Cover me!"
"What? When, now?" another asked, confused.
Eddy started sprinting down the gangway. "Trust me, you'll know when!" he shouted back.
…
Jackson crawled over the comms center’s floor, just barely below the thickening smoke. He reached the doorway and rolled down the small staircase that led up to it. The entire semitrailer he had just been in was now on fire. Looking to his right he saw that the main gate had been destroyed. Five guardsmen were fighting for their lives trying to defend it. He watched two simultaneously run out of ammo, each one shot within seconds. Several grenades took care of the rest.
A brief lull let the smoke clear. Over a dozen hooded men in green military fatigues with AK47's slowly made their way into the compound, shooting each of the dead guardsmen a few times just to be sure.
"Hostiles have entered the station," Jackson announced into his radio in a hushed tone, moving to hide behind the staircase. "I, I count at least fourteen armed hostiles. They are headed for my position fifteen meters north of the main gate."
Suddenly a new round of gunfire broke out as guardsmen atop the container wall, receiving Jackson's message, realized that they were being flanked from within their own facility. Seeing his chance to run, Jackson took off towards the wall, laying down fire as he did over the compromised entrance.
"Come on, kid!" he heard someone shout from above him in the southeast corner.
Jackson reached a ladder and climbed it. At the top he tripped onto the gangway.
"Come on, Jackson," a guardsmen grumbled, hurryingly pulling him to his feet. "Get up! Fight ain't over!"
"Where is… Where is Guardsman Simmons?" Jackson furiously panted, trying to collect himself. "I radioed Base Adowa but I don't know if my signal got through. I also activated the station’s emergency distress transmitter."
"Best news I've heard tonight!" yelled the guardsman who had pulled him up. "And I don't know where Simmons is. He told us - "
"I'm right here!" they heard Eddy call, climbing up the same ladder Jackson had just used.
"Where did you go, sir? I thought you said you wanted cover?"
"I should have been more specific," Eddy chuckled. "I didn’t mean cover for myself, I meant it for that!"
Eddy pointed with his laser sight up into the night sky to the west. Jackson and the other six guardsmen standing beside him on the gangway saw the blue beam hit a large darkened mass that was outlined by moonlight.
"Is that?"
"Yep!" Eddy smiled. "Lay down cover fire for it so they don't blast it out of the sky!" he screamed as he let loose his magazine over the chain link fence.
"Open fire!" shouted another guardsmen in a blitz of adrenaline.
Jackson watched the flying mass quickly descend in altitude heading straight for the line of attackers outside the front fence of the station. As it descended, ground lights suddenly illuminated the mass, revealing it to be the Phoenix 7 aircraft that had been on the station's runway only minutes earlier. Its huge white fuselage lumbered down from the sky, crashing a few hundred feet to the west of the front fence, ripping a fiery path of destruction across the grassland.
"Take that you bastards!" a guardsman yelled excitedly as the plane broke apart, its left wing ripping off first. It and the debris cloud it was forging careened into the line of attackers as the disintegrating hulk slid from west to east. One by one each muzzle flash was replaced with a spread of orange flames that opened up across the grassland like a volcanic fissure.
What was left of the Phoenix came to a stop two hundred feet to the east of the station. For the first time since the battle had started, there was silence.
"Nice move, sir!" nervously laughed a guardsman. "I guess it was sort of an air strike. How'd you do that?"
"Every Phoenix has the ability to fly unmanned," Eddy replied, combing the wreckage for survivors with his laser sight. "I set the controls and let it do its thing. Jackson!"
"Yes, sir?"
"How did that radio call to base go? Good news?"
"I don't know, sir. The mic was hot but I don't know if my transmission got through. The comms center’s communications boom was hit."
Eddy worryingly bit his lip. "Okay," he said, trying to conceal his concern. "It's okay."
"Sir," Jackson said sadly. "Captain Okoro is dead."
Eddy swallowed his anger, eyeing the young guardsman over his weapon pulled up against his cheek. He pointed back behind him at the animal cages without turning around. "She'd be proud of us, of you, Jackson. Those animals are safe. That’s what matters."
A diesel engine revved loudly behind the row of flames. Everyone still patrolling the front wall involuntarily brought their weapons to the noise.
"What is that?" Jackson asked, a crack forming in his words.
"I don't know, but it sounds big," answered a guardsman, readying to fight. "This isn't over."
"No it's not," Eddy reaffirmed, his finger on the trigger.
The revving intensified.
"Anyone have a visual?" Eddy asked over his radio.
"Nothing, sir," answered one of the accompanying guardsman. "The brightness of the flames are making it hard to seeing anything behind them."
An RPG zoomed through the Phoenix's debris path and into the chain link fence ten feet to the right of Eddy, destroying it. His white helmet dropped over his face. Lifting it back over his eyes, he saw an enormous black and yellow articulated dump truck plow through the wall of fire he had created as if it were not even there. A bulldozer blade was attached to its massive grill. Around its cab windows were cages. In its deep bed were dozens more armed attackers. Its tires lifted the bottom of the chassis at least five feet off the ground. Smoke billowed from its cab mounted exhaust pipe.
"The fuck is that?!" shouted one of the guardsman in astonishment.
Eddy knew they weren't going to be able to stop it. Traveling at least forty miles per hour the multi-ton leviathan was going to smash through the south fence in mere seconds.
"Fall back!" Eddy waved. "Fall back!"
No one even took the time to climb down a ladder. Everyone just jumped from the gangway, rolling over the dirt below. Eddy and Jackson jumped together just as the truck tore through the chain link fence. The containers behind it offered little resistance as the truck’s blade peeled them apart.
Jackson looked up as three guardsmen were run over, their bodies flattened by the rampaging truck. Once past the perimeter, the truck’s huge tires quickly locked, causing the vehicle to skid roughly to a stop.
Eddy, Jackson, and two other guardsmen ran behind some pallets stacked with supplies.
"Everyone stay down, stay down," Eddy whispered into his radio. "Do not engage. I repeat, do not engage."
One by one the invaders made their way up and over the truck's bed. Big green duffle bags were tossed out and machines guns handed over the side. Eddy counted twenty armed men by the time the bed was empty. The last one to come out appeared to be the leader. He began shouting orders in an African dialect; Eddy did not know which one. Wasting no time, the man pointed to the animal cages at the back of the compound, directing the attackers towards them.
"What's he saying?" Jackson whispered, crouched against a box.
"I don't know," Eddy replied, peeping his head around the same box. "But they are who I thought. Poachers. They're here for our animals." Eddy looked over his shoulder at Jackson and the other two guardsmen. "They're going to take their horns and tusks, sell on the black market, and get rich. They'll kill them."
Eddy checked his P90's clip. It was just about empty. He took out a new one and gave it to Jackson.
"Here. Take it," he instructed. "I'm going to stall them… Before they can harm those animals."
"Sir, you can't go out there unarmed."
"They see me with a gun they'll shoot me no questions asked. Believe me, I can stall them. I know how to strike up a conversation with these guys. Not my first time."
Eddy unclipped his P90 from his white Kevlar vest and un-holstered his side arm, giving both to Jackson.
"Sir," Jackson bemusedly gasped, "are those few animals really worth your life?"
"Elephants cry, Jackson," Eddy calmly smiled as he always did. "They mourn their dead. Killing them as we do is nothing short of genocide to me." He gave the young guardsman an extra clip for his sidearm. "The second you get a call from those drones laze that dump truck, no matter where I am. Understood?"
"Yes… Yes, sir," Jackson gulped.
"The truck is too close to the science lab where all of the UNIRO personnel are. You gotta get them out before the strike."
"To where?"
"Anywhere but here," Eddy smirked, sprinting around the box and towards the truck.
Jackson tried to reach for him but a guardsman tugged him back. "No! Wait, sir!"