Patriot Dawn: The Resistance Rises (27 page)

Jacks truck pushed through and moved to halfway between the gate and the ‘L’ shaped barracks building
, twenty five meters from the closest windows on the end of the building. The truck gunners were firing at any identified targets as their support fire from the ridgeline switched left away from them, concentrating now on the headquarters building and the remaining guard bunkers.

They were in amongst a storm of fire, and as Jack stood in the front of the truck bed he could see the muzzle flashes of enemy fire coming from the windows of the building in front of him
, the crack of the passing rounds just more noise amongst the cacophony around him.

The second truck came through the gate and swung to the right to where the Apaches were parked. The truck drove over and through the Apache
ranks, stopping on the far side with the gunners providing covering fire. The platoon leaped out of the back and took up fire positions in cover around the Apache park while Jim led his demolition team to the helicopters.

Just then, the gunner just to the right of Jack was hit in the shoulder. He gave a gasp of pain and dropped back into the truck bed. Jack grabbed the 240 and started to send bursts of three to five rounds through the closest windows where he could see enemy muzzle flashes. Jack felt a hand on his shoulder and move
d to the side to let one of his fighters take over the gun, allowing him to resume his command role.

Jack gave the order and his truck advanced to the ‘L’ shaped buil
ding, parking right up against the end of the foot of the ‘L’. Caleb’s platoon was waiting in the truck and as soon as it stopped they were up and posting grenades through one of the end windows, their chosen breach point.

As soon as the grenades went off, the entry team was in. They used white light flashlights mounted to their weapons once they were inside the building, and Olson pushed hi
s squad through to clear through the first few rooms.

Caleb’s squads
started to systematically clear the upper floor of the building. The squad leaders controlled their men, breaking down into four man teams to clear the rooms. As they went they hung cyalume sticks out of the windows of cleared rooms to show their progress to those providing fire support.

As soon as the last of the assault platoon
was inside the building, Jack moved the dump truck away from the building, off to the left, to where the gunners could suppress into the depth of the FOB and also cover the lower floor of the ‘L’ shaped building and any escaping enemy..

In the building, t
here was a central corridor with rooms off to the sides that had been offices but now had been largely co-opted into accommodation. Some of the rooms had entry points only off the corridor, others had internal connecting doors. This gave the squad leaders the choice of moving through the connecting doors if they were available, or room to room down the corridor if they were not.

It lar
gely came down to communication and the use of link men, with leaders sequencing and organizing the teams to flow through the rooms. They had to hit each room with aggression and try to seize the initiative through the use of aggression and grenades while they still had a supply.

The rooms were not that large and they usually used a
single team to hit each one, a two man assault team breaching the room with the team leader following rapidly on their heels.  The fourth man would act as link and cover man in the corridor. If there was a connecting door the next team in sequence would usually flow through the room and that door, or if not they would move down the corridor to the next door and breach through it.

Coordination had to happen between the teams clearing each side of the corridor to ensure the team on one side did not pass an un
-cleared room on the other.

It was tough fight inside the building, room to room,
blasting their way through initially with high explosive fragmentation grenades and then moving to flash-bang stun grenades, until they even ran out of those. Sometimes if a room looked like it would be a tough breach the team leaders would step in to lead the entry by example, but in general it was more effective with them in a command and coordination role.

At one point Olson’s team
rotated back to point squad and they pushed down the corridor to breach the next door on the left. They had already turned the corner and were clearing the long side of the ‘L’. McCarthy and Phillips were the breach pair up front with Gibbs behind him as the link/cover man. McCarthy and Phillips stacked on the door with Olson close behind them. Gibbs pushed out right so he could cover down the corridor.

McCarthy checked the door while Phillips prepped his hig
h explosive grenade. The door was locked. McCarthy moved out in front of the door, looked at Olson, who nodded. McCarthy then looked at Phillips, nodded, and front kicked the door. It went flying inwards and Phillips tossed the grenade low through the door just as McCarthy moved back into cover. The door hit the wall and rebounded. As it came flying back, a burst of fire from inside punched a series of holes in it. Just then, the grenade exploded with a concussive crack.

Olson screamed, “G
o, Go, Go!”

McCarthy went
through the door, followed closely on the heels by Phillips. He shouldered the door aside to the right and went left, swinging his barrel through the center of the room and then towards the corners. His white light illuminated the room as it arced across, furniture scattered around, the smoke from the detonated grenade still obscuring the air. Phillips went right, mirroring the procedure. Olson came in and stepped to the left side of the door, the ‘fatal funnel’.

No t
argets, no enemy.

The room was cluttered with furniture. McCarthy and Phillips moved towards the opposite corners. As he moved along the wall, McCarthy hit his shin on a cot bed
, tripped, and went flying forwards over it, ending up in a tangled heap. As that happened, there was a burst of fire from the far left corner, from behind some sort of filing cabinet. The burst passed over the top of McCarthy, stitched along the wall, and hit Olson in his ballistic plate, also hitting the bolt assembly on his M4, disabling his rifle.

Olson grunted as he was punched back into the wall, winded. He dropped to his knees, let go of his M4 and rapidly transitioned to his pistol
on his battle belt, firing into the darkness of the corner.

Phillips was in the far
right corner and he started rapidly firing rounds into the furniture that was scattered around on the outer side of the room. McCarthy rolled up, kicked the cot bed from where his legs were entangled in it, and pointed his light into the corner. He caught sight of a Regime soldier crouched behind the filing cabinet, fully geared up in body armor and helmet.

McCarthy started firing
into the corner, panicked, to no effect. He saw the soldier swing his M4 back towards him, the white light on McCarthy’s weapon giving away his position.

Get a grip.
Hips and Heads, Hips and Heads.

McCarthy
lowered his barrel and shot the man several times through the hips. The soldier screamed and fell back into the corner. McCarthy got up, crossed the room, and finished him with a shot to the head.

They checked behind the rest of the furniture before calling out “ROOM CLEAR, NO EXITS!” The call was passed back to the next team in rotation by Gibbs in the corridor. Olson grabbed the dead guy’s M4
to replace his, and they got ready to go again.

“What the
hell was that McCarthy?” Olson said to him, punching him on the shoulder.

“What’s that?” said McCarthy.

“I never told you to get your kip on. What’s the deal with you, every time you see a freakin’ cot bed you have to try and get in it. And what was all that rolling around on the floor showing off about? Douchebag!”

“Yea,
screw you McCarthy,” chimed in Phillips, grinning.

“Assholes,” said McCarthy, “next time I’ll just not bother saving your sorry asses.”

Olson shook his head.

They all grinned, the adrenaline coursing through their bloodstreams.

Brothers in arms.

As soon as they had cleared the upper floor of the ‘L’ shaped building Caleb pushed his squads to the north west windows and started them suppressing into the depth of the base, focused on the headquarters building. Jack moved the truck up level with them so the gunners could also engage.

             
Jack then called in 3
rd
Platoon to clear through the lower floor of the ‘L’ shaped building. They moved in from the right side, covered by their assault truck, which was parked on the opposite side of the building to Jack.

Tracer fire was streaking in both directions across the FOB, from Jacks fire support and his assault
trucks, and from the machine-gun and rifle positions of the Regime defenders. The Regime forces had abandoned the lower floor of the ‘L’ shaped barracks building and fallen back to the headquarters building. This made 3
rd
Platoon’s clearance job easier, but they still had to enter and clear each room to confirm it empty.

As
much fire support as the Resistance had, they could not suppress everyone, and it was a tough fight.

The mortar rounds, once they had initially switched fire, had smashed up the large hanger building pretty well and then
switched fire again onto the far perimeter. Concurrent to the assault onto the ‘L’ shaped barracks building Jim had led his demolitions team and was laying charges on all the Apaches.

They w
ere using a design of Jims that modified the EFP to breach the armor on the Apaches, and they were placing the devices to do as much irreparable damage to the aircrafts essential systems as possible. As well as the modified EFPs, they were also using thermite charges to melt and burn as much of the metal parts as possible.

Now
, with Jack’s assault trucks and Caleb’s 1
st
Platoon in support, 3
rd
Platoon now rapidly pulled out of the building and reloaded onto their assault truck, driving forward under heavy covering fire, crossing the gap between the ‘L’ shaped building and the headquarters building and parking up below the windows.

3
rd
Platoon breached into the end of the building just as Caleb’s platoon had done and began the systematic room clearance, trying to kill as many of the Apache squadron as they could find, as well as the infantry who had withdrawn to the building.

There was still sporadic fire coming from the far perimeter and also from isolated groups of enemy who had withdrawn towards the north west side of the FOB.

The MFC now called a cease fire due to the proximity of Resistance fighters. The mortars stood by to provide fire on call, perhaps to suppress any reinforcing or fleeing enemy. The one barrel continued to put up illumination.

Jim came on the net and gave the code word for charges set, which also meant that they had only ten minutes left before they blew. Jack called the platoons back to the trucks, which meant the fight in the headquarters building had to be abandoned, and they started pulling back towards the gate.

The battle had lasted about
an hour by now and the armored Regime QRF column from Harrisburg had rolled down the I-81 and cut across the back roads towards the bridge. It was a mixture of armored Humvees and MRAPs, the heavy armor would have taken too long for such a rapid response task. The QRF was mounted in twelve vehicles.

             
The first four vehicles crossed the bridge and turned left onto the four hundred meter stretch where the ambush lay. As the fifth vehicle, an MRAP, was on the bridge there was an explosion and the bridge fell away, taking the MRAP down to splash massively into the river below.

             
2
nd
Platoon’s ambush opened with a volley of daisy chained EFPs, hitting and knocking out two of the vehicles. Two MRAPs remained, their turret gunners firing up the slope towards the winking muzzle flashes of the Resistance ambush. The AT-4 rockets came streaking down the hill, impacting into the remaining MRAPs. All four vehicles were destroyed, two of them burning on the road with ammunition starting to cook off inside.

             
A gunner tried to get out of one of the MRAPs, the flames licking up around him from inside the vehicle, catching his clothing on fire. He pulled himself out of the turret and then fell, rolling down and slamming into the road. He was soon put out of his agony by the impact of multiple 5.56mm rounds.

The remainder of the
Regime column, halted across the river, was able to engage and they brought heavy machine-gun fire down onto the ambushers. There was a group of farm buildings around which the ambush party had set up and they started to break contact and withdraw through the buildings.

Under Alex Lambert’s direction t
hey broke contact and headed away to the south west and into the woods where they had stashed their vehicles.

Meanwhile, Jack had pulled the assault trucks back to the secondary ECP, loading the platoons up on board. He halted there to cover the Apaches and interfere with any attempts to remove the explosive charges. The truck gunners were still engaging enemy within the FOB.