Hell, Parenthetical

Hell, Parenthetical
By Stephan Michael Loy

A ten-foot section of concrete wall groaned and collapsed under Bravo 31. It crumbled to boulders, then chunks, then gravel, raising a white cloud of dust in protest against the tank’s assault. Bravo 31 rocked on the wreckage, but only for a moment until its heavy steel treads gripped ground again. Its long main gun thrust straight ahead, its aim never erring despite the vehicle’s violent claw over and beyond the new-made rubble. Another wall waited, the border to this yard, but it escaped destruction, at least for the moment, as the tank rolled to a casual stop.

Lieutenant Marty Jeffers scanned outwards from atop the tank, looking for threats both subtle and immediate. Toys, he saw. Trash cans, a plastic lawn table toppled at his entrance. He noted a propane tank standing against the nearby house. Yeah, all these people cooked by propane. He stored that discovery for safety’s sake; the nine hundred degree exhaust of his engine could set off that tank as easily as a detonator.

The house, its one visible wall at least, stood pockmarked by ejecta from the burst wall. Jeffers noted two windows, the one on the left framing bright, curious eyes in brown, dark-haired faces. Two kids, little ones. Harmless. Jeffers glanced over the top edge of the house, over to its extreme corners, into the windows again. Then he inspected the next several properties beyond this house and their neat little cinderblock homes. Over to the street five buildings up. Over to the businesses lining that street. Smoke plumed on the horizon, black and heavy. Helicopter gunships ranged overhead.

Jeffers checked the house again, saw the kids had disappeared. He looked sharply right, searching for and finding his next tank in line. Bravo 32 crouched a hundred meters off, almost hidden by intervening homes and a growth of olive trees.

“Bravo 3, sitrep,” Jeffers spoke into the microphone of his crewman’s helmet. He had pushed the helmet’s switch to ‘radio’.

“Two, ready.”

“Three, ready.”

“Four, ready.”

“Roger, out,” Jeffers acknowledged, then switched to the company frequency. He did this without looking, without dropping into the turret where his gunner, wedged between cannon and control boxes, leaned into his optics to search for targets. Where his loader checked the ammo count for both main gun and the machine gun mounted beside it. Jeffers remained exposed above the waist, standing in his commander’s station behind his .50 caliber machine gun. Four weapons on an M-1 tank: the big cannon and its coaxially mounted machine gun, both slaved to the gunner’s sights, the .50 cal mounted to Jeffers’s powered turret-atop-a-turret, and the loader’s machine gun, mounted to a raceway bordering the loader’s hatch two feet to Jeffers’s left. That weapon was now unmanned. Jeffers didn’t like it, but the loader was busy, no way around it. “Rodriguez, get up here on your gun, ASAP. After the count, you roger that?”

“That’s affirm, boss. Almost there.”

Jeffers scanned the scene again. The turret moved slowly right and left, the gunner conducting his unending hunt. The most vulnerable quadrant lay to the rear, and Jeffers flung a glance there every chance he got.

“Bravo 6, this is Bravo 31,” he spoke into his company’s net. “Sitrep. Have attained Objective Green, no contact, over.”

“Bravo 6, roger,” the radio squawked back.

Jeffers dialed the platoon net. He continued his scans and tried to think, tried to calculate his platoon’s next move.

Rodriguez popped his head and shoulders through the round hole of his loader’s position. He gripped his machine gun’s triggers. “Ten rounds sabot, four HEAT, two HEP. We need a reload.”

“It’ll wait. Watch to the rear. The back corner of that house, too.”

“Got it. Hey, there’s kids in that window.”

“Understood. Harmless, I think, but keep an eye--“

Movement beyond the other window. Jeffers squinted. Two adults, man and woman. Man in a t-shirt, twenty or thirty years old. Dangerous age. Woman in a burka. Jeffers strained to see through the window, but the sun's white reflection challenged his effort.

The man and woman were fighting. He yelled at her and she at him, both wildly gesticulating.

Jeffers measured the threat. The woman begged the man, but he would do something stupid. The screaming, yelling ones usually did. But the window stood on the loader’s side, across the turret roof from Jeffers.

“Rodriguez, possible threat in the right side window. Man and woman. Copy?”

“Copy that, boss. You want I should--“

“No. Rules of engagement. Just a heads-up.”

“Roger that.”

Jeffers returned to his scan, but kept coming back to those windows.

The man and woman darted back and forth, in view only for flashes of time. It was so hard to see; the interior was dark compared to the sunlight outside. The smoke hanging over the city did nothing to dull the intensity of that light. But the couple didn’t hide; they were too agitated for that, so Jeffers could squint and follow their movements. For the most part, they ignored him. The tank could well have been invisible except for the occasional pointing and staring.

Jeffers imagined the argument he witnessed, the fight he half-saw but could not hope to hear over the whine of his engine. The man was easy, transparent in his rage: Invaders! Dogs! They smashed my freakin’ wall! The woman begged him to get a grip.

Jeffers stared hard at the window, a cat watching a prowling dog. Don’t do anything stupid, he thought toward the man in the house. Don’t do anything dumb.

“Bravo 3, this is 6,” the radio announced.

The woman stormed up to the window, clear as day. She threw both arms toward the tank (“See? See what that is?”) Her face turned aside as she shouted toward the unseen man.

“Bravo 3, this is 6. Acknowledge, over.”

“Wait one.” Don’t do anything stupid, Jeffers prayed. The woman moved out of sight. Something ... a bare arm waving. The top of a dark haired head moved across the window’s bottom frame.

“Rodriguez, focus on the right side window. I can’t cover it with the .50 cal.”

“Got it, boss.” The loader moved the aim of his gun, centering it on the window in question. Jeffers clutched his station control, a joystick-like device below the rim of his hatch. The mini-turret whined and rotated as he swung the control stick right. In less than a second he faced to the rear, covering the loader’s erstwhile field of fire.

A head of tousled black hair appeared in the window, partly masked by the back of a chair. One of the kids. He (she?) held a glass of water in one hand. He showed Bravo 31 a thumb’s up with the other. He smiled with bright naivety. Kids and heavy machinery.

“We got a fan, boss.”

“He isn’t the one you’re watching.”

Rodriguez waved to the kid.

The man appeared in a rage, yelling at the kid so viciously that the little guy spilled his water. The man raised a threatening hand. It never struck, but it frightened the boy enough that he tumbled from the chair and out of view.

“Bravo 3, 6, over.”

Jeffers ignored his commander’s call. He made a quick visual check for security, but brought his eyes back to the window. Something would happen soon, or not at all.

The woman beseeched her man. She stood close to him, looked up at him, stroked his chest to calm him.

The man leaned against the windowsill, into the sun. He stared at Bravo 31, hate black in his eyes.

Don’t do anything stupid, Jeffers thought.

The man stared. Rodriguez stared back down the sights of his weapon. Jeffers tried not to look threatening, a challenging task from atop a sixty ton tank. He watched his surroundings as if the man didn’t matter, but his eyes kept finding the window.

The woman pulled at her man, coaxing him deeper into the house. Jeffers couldn’t see her anymore. The man still stared at the tank, one hand grasping the windowsill.

Jeffers hoped common sense would prevail. At any minute, an order would come and he would be gone, no harm done. Maybe he should answer the radio now, but he couldn’t move from the man.

Don’t do anything stupid.

One hand on the sill, the man reached down with the other.

Jeffers hardly breathed. He wanted to warn Rodriguez, but knew by the loader’s silence that he was too hair-trigger to bother. A word might set him off, and he had two hundred rounds of ammo.

The man straightened, his face a grimace of disdain. He shouted something, a great curse from the twist of his face. Then he threw a shoe.

A shoe.

It smacked the side of the tank and bounced into the dusty yard.

The man spit through the window, then turned aside and vanished.

Jeffers sagged from relief.

“Well you don’t see that everyday,” Rodriguez huffed.

“No, but I’ll take it,” Jeffers breathed, then reached for his radio switch.

An angular form at the window, too familiar over weeks of combat.

“Loader! AK!”

“Identified!”

A staccato belch of machine gun fire. Rodriguez sprayed the window and the cinderblock around it. Jeffers saw the wall collapse inward…

A blast of flame. A shudder through the tank. The propane tank.

A hail of metal and gravel clattered onto the turret roof. When Jeffers raised cautious eyes above the rim of his station, he found himself faced with smoke and flame. Rodriguez peeked at it, too, his mouth hanging open. His machine gun pointed to the sky, at rest.

Debris burned on the turret, atop the duffel bags and cases of food tied down behind the hatches.

“Put that out,” Jeffers ordered.

“What happened up there?” the gunner called from his hole in the turret.

“Cool fireworks!” the driver shouted.

The house was smoke and dwindling flames.

“Bravo 3,” the radio squawked. “What in hell was that?”

Jeffers squinted into roiling black and red. His eyes watered from the smoke. “Bravo 6, sorry. Sitrep: one irregular with an AK-47 down, three collateral damage, over.”

Silence over the net. Rodriguez, almost out of the turret, attacked flames with a handheld extinguisher.

“Bravo 3, this is 6. Roger your sitrep. New mission: move to Objective Orange, weapons loose, Charlie overwatches from Objective White. Copy?”

“Copy. Moving to Objective Orange, over.”

“Bravo 6, out.”

Jeffers tugged at Rodriguez’s elbow and signaled him back to his station. He looked again to the empty space of the house. Nothing. Nothing stood at all.

Dumbass, he thought, and clicked his intercom. “Driver, move out right, two o’clock.”

The turbine rose in pitch and Bravo 31 lurched into gear. The next wall fell, then another, then the tank hit a side road and drew up to speed.