The Remaining: Trust: A Novella Read Online Free PDF Page A

quilt-work.
    “Major, you’re direct.” A voice hovered in his ear.
    Abe flexed his hands and toes to keep blood moving in them. “Rocky-Six to Fargo-Six, how copy?”
    A smattering of gunfire in the background. Then: “Rocky-Six, you’ve got Fargo-Two. Stand by for a second, Major. Cap’s a little busy.”
    Abe waited in the cold, deafening loudness. His eyes watered. He checked his watch and found that it had only been two minutes since they’d left the ground. He had the urge to look behind him at the Blackhawks that he knew were in tow, but he knew it would only give him that strange feeling of almost falling. He kept his eyes straight ahead.
    Crackle. Gunfire. “Rocky-Six, you’ve got Fargo Actual. Major, I got us in a bit of a spot right now.”
    Abe felt relief at the sound of Tyler’s voice. “It’s all good, Captain. We’re inbound with Copperhead. Gimme that sitrep.”
    Tyler’s voice was strained but not panicked. “We’re on the bridge over the rail yard in Cheyenne. Southbound lanes. When we hit the bridge, an IED went off right behind the last vehicle in our convoy. We hauled ass, thinking it was a late fuse, but they had the bridge blockaded with a shit-ton of cars about halfway across. And while we were figuring that out, they blocked the other entrance with another shit-ton of cars. So right now, we’re trapped on a fucking bridge. Break.”
    Abe stared at the side of the airframe, began picking at what he had heard. Use of an IED meant some sort of technical knowledge with explosives. Then they used it to spur the entire convoy onto the bridge, because they knew they wouldn’t stop when the explosion went off. And then they had them blocked in on both sides. It seemed smart.
    Who the fuck does that? His mind grappled with it. Who knew we were going to be through there? Who knew how to get our convoy locked on the bridge?
    They’d dealt with bandits before, but usually bandits popped off a couple rounds and realized they were heavily outgunned. And then they hightailed it. Some of them stuck around and tried to fight it out—the more desperate ones. But they were rare.
    This seemed different.
    Tyler continued. “Right now we’re all out of the trucks, hugging concrete. We’re taking steady, continuous sniper fire from three…no, four buildings that I can see. We’re down three guys—one KIA, the other two wounded pretty badly. Over.”
    “Alright, we are about fifteen minutes out. Can you give us a description of the hostile buildings?”
    “Yeah. At the north end of the bridge it’s two bigger buildings—a brownstone building and a red brick building—one on either side of the road. Then we’re also taking fire from a building to the west of us, down in the rail yard. It’s a funky-looking building…trilevel…with metal roofing. Over.”
    Abe nodded to himself. “Rocky-Six copies. Hey, Fargo, you think we can land a couple birds on those roofs? Over.”
    “Uh…” Something cracked very close to the radio mike, and Tyler let out a yelp. “Whoa…fuck…uh, yeah, reference rooftops…they seem pretty sturdy. You should be good to go.”
    “Alright. Copperhead, you copy those building descriptions?”
    The helicopter pilots checked in by call sign, indicating they had it.
    “Copperhead, I want a top-down assault on the two buildings on the north end of the bridge and the trilevel building in the rail yard.” Abe took a breath, fidgeted with the boom mike again. “Two-One, take the brownstone on the north side of the bridge. Two-Five, take the red brick on the north side of the bridge. One-Three, I want us on the trilevel in the rail yard.” Abe repeated it for clarity’s sake, then asked for acknowledgment.
    Everyone copied.
    “Two-One and Two-Five, give your gunners a pass around the buildings to soften them up before you hit.” Abe racked his brain, trying to think if there was anything else he was missing. Any little element that would haunt him later as he lay