He darted past the wreckage. There was a body ahead. A human body. A woman.
Caroline Dixon lay face down in the road, her rifle under her body.
He stood there. He knew he needed to keep moving, that if any of the tin men were still in the area, he was dead any second. It had been a long time since someone he knew had fallen in battle. Like an old, bad memory returning to focus.
Dixon spun onto her back. “What are you doing?”
Brodie was startled. “Mourning your death. What the hell areyoudoing?”
She wiped the lenses of her sand-covered glasses. “I fell and decided to play possum. The way they see the world, I thought they might not be able to tell the difference. Especially in the heat of battle.”
“Smart. I think.”
She got up. “Did we lose anyone?”
“I think we lost a lot of people, Caroline.”
She looked at the ground. “Oh God…” She looked back at him. “Where’s Maggie?”
“I don’t know. She headed the same way as you.”
They walked a little farther west to see if they could spot her, but it was no use.
Dixon removed her glasses and wiped them again on her shirt. She looked at him. “I’m sorry, Scott.”
“You can feel guilty later. We have the answer to whether the tin men made it to the armory. We need to get there and see if it’s unguarded, and if so whether anything’s left worth taking. Then regroup indoors somewhere. It’s our only chance of survival in these conditions.”
“Agreed.”
Brodie unclipped his walkie and said into Channel 1: “Mayday, Mayday. This is Scott Brodie. Can you hear me? Over.”
He waited. Nothing but static.
In case someone could hear him, he added, “Came under ambush from tin men near the mess hall. Casualties. Headed to the armory now for possible resupply. Over.”
Again, nothing.
He cycled channels with the same message but heard no response. He looked at Dixon. “Don’t read too much into it. Radio waves get scrambled in a sandstorm.”
They jogged east along the road, back to where they had been ambushed. A lightning strike hit the hills and lit up the road for a moment. And in that moment, they saw bodies.
The first was a corporal named Dobbs. His body was pristineexcept the left side of his chest, right around his heart, which had been ripped apart by a focused barrage of bullets. A precision strike.
Next was the Ranger who had been in front of Brodie and taken one to the neck, Corporal Ewing. Near him was one of the M240 gunners, Kowalski, who had been PFC Greer’s old roommate. The heavy gun lay in the sand next to him.
Brodie shouldered his launcher and picked up the machine gun by the carry handle. It still had most of its ammo belt and must have weighed fifty pounds.
Dixon asked, “You’re going to carry that thing?”
“It’s the best run-and-gun weapon we have against them.”
There were two more bodies up ahead. As they approached, Brodie saw who it was—Corporal Khan, still wearing his infrared headset, also shot in the heart, and Sergeant First Class Mike Miller, who had taken a single round to the forehead just below his helmet. He lay on his back, eyes frozen open staring into the storm.
Dammit.
Khan’s headgear had been destroyed by bullets. Brodie set down the M240 and removed the headset. It felt like an indignity for the man to still wear it. He tossed it aside and wondered if the tin men had known what it was and targeted it deliberately. Probably. They seemed to know everything.
He looked again at Miller. It was all so unfair. So awful. Such a waste. He pledged to himself that if he survived this, whoever was responsible for unleashing these things would not.
