Slaughterhouse

TWELVE.

Muldoon clambered to his feet, shrugging off Nutter’s attempts to help him. The Huey had finished its first strafing run and was banking around for another pass. One of the Kiowas seemed to stagger in the air, its nose swerving left then right as it moved downrange, descending. The aircraft looked fine, but something was definitely wrong with the pilots, and Muldoon wondered if they had been hit by one of the Huey gunners.

The Kiowa rolled to the left, sideslipped, and crashed into the trees on the other side of Massachusetts 2. Its four-bladed main rotor slashed through the leafy canopy, ripping it asunder with a great tearing noise as the small armed reconnaissance aircraft disappeared from view.

“Whoa! You see that shit?” Nutter asked, awe in his voice.

“Shoot the fucking Huey!” Muldoon bellowed. He grabbed his M4, tucked it in tight against his shoulder, and peered through the scope on its top rail.

Muldoon sighted on the Huey as it came around again. The gunner on the left side of the aircraft was leaning out of the aircraft, supported only by his safety belt as he manhandled an M240 machinegun. Muldoon was momentarily torn. He knew he should try to kill the pilots—that would end the run right then and there—but the machinegun would inflict a lot of harm before he could do that. He heard a chorus of popping noises, like dozens of firecrackers going off all around him. The troops were opening up, finally getting organized. A shrill voice rallied the men into action. It wasn’t Lieutenant “I’m in Charge” Crais. It was the woman, Rawlings.

So she’s hard core. Who knew?

The gunner in the Huey opened up, walking rounds across the highway, through the civilian traffic on the eastbound side, then through the convoy in the westbound lanes, then finally into the truck, where several troops went down. The rest retreated, momentarily abandoning their lanes of fire in the name of survival.

Muldoon sighted on the Huey’s cockpit and began firing on semi-auto as fast and as accurately as he could. The aircraft was a long ways off, but still inside his personal attack radius. He was rewarded with the image of Plexiglas puckering beneath the impact of several rounds, and the helmeted figure behind the windscreen flinched and jerked.

But the helicopter kept coming. Muldoon swung his rifle to the left, going for the pilot in the helicopter’s right seat. Rounds from the M240 slapped the ground around him. Nutter grabbed his arm and pulled mightily, yanking Muldoon right off his feet.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Muldoon shouted, as 7.62-millimeter bullets rained all around them.

“Saving your ass!” Nutter yelled back.

The two men buried their faces in the dirt between the tall weeds. Muldoon heard the rotor beat of the Huey change dramatically, and he rolled over onto his back, bringing his M4 around. The helicopter was banking away once again, but at an angle that was so extreme it had to fight to stay airborne. Something fell away from it, plunging toward the shattered, bullet-torn Bigfoot that sat only fifteen feet away from his and Nutter’s position. The thing landed in the back of the truck, and fluid exploded everywhere. The soldiers in the bed of the truck shouted.

And then, they began to laugh.