Divided We Fall (5 page)

“So it’s not getting any better down there?” I asked.

She shook her head. “Sounds like it’s getting worse. One Guard squad called in and said fights are breaking out even between protestors. It’s like —” She stopped and pressed the radio handset tighter to her ear, holding up a hand for me to be quiet. She pushed the transmit button. “Last calling station. Last calling station. This is cobra three one. Say again, over.” Cobra was the 476th Engineer Company code name, so she was identifying as the first squad of third platoon. “Roger that. Wait one, over.” Sparrow shot me a tense look and then called out for the lieutenant. “Sir, we got orders coming in.”

The lieutenant rushed over, took the handset, and called up to higher. He typed some things down on his comm. “Roger. That’s a good copy. Wilco. Cobra three one, out.” McFee tossed the handset to Sparrow, squinted his eyes shut, and pushed his fists against his temples. Then he checked the empty street in front of us. “New mission,” he said. “Governor Montaine is ordering the Guard units to tighten the perimeter until we’ve moved into the downtown area. We’re going in to stop the disturbance.”

“Finally, we can put an end to this shit,” Sergeant Meyers said. “Show these bastards who’s boss!”

McFee held a hand up. “Negative. Okay? We’re … You know, this is probably no big deal here. Heading down there to help the police make some arrests or … um … for presence. Kind of … Okay. Anyway. Squad wedge formation. We’re heading straight up this street about a dozen blocks right to the capitol.”

“I’ll take point,” Sergeant Meyers yelled. “Alpha team back to my left. Bravo back and to my right. Sparrow, stay in the middle to keep the radio close to the LT.”

The sun was down as we moved off in a big V pattern up Capitol Boulevard. As we moved, the protestors we’d already run into kept shouting and making fun of us. Some of them rushed past, running downtown. We had to let them go. There was nothing we could do about it.

Blocks and blocks away was the dome of the capitol building. In the growing darkness, red and blue lights flashed on the massive crowd with their protest signs. Beyond that, over the tops of the buildings off to the right, a plume of smoke rose up into the sky, with another ahead and far off to the left. We passed at least two burned-out cars on the side of the road. Four or five businesses had their windows busted. Sirens seemed to blare all around us.

We marched closer, coming within a block of the real riot. Now that stuff back closer to where we’d landed looked peaceful by comparison. A huge mob of people pressed against the metal barricades that had been set up around the capitol building. They were all yelling, shoving, and screaming. One man was pushed into a woman. Another guy, maybe her boyfriend, shoved the first man, who responded with a hard jab. In seconds, others had joined the fight. Off to our right, a few squads of police with huge clear plastic riot shields and clubs tried to break up a different fight among the protestors. Some of the crowd had moved on the cops, flanking them. A few of them had stolen some of the riot shields. It was like every pissed-off person in Idaho had saved up their anger for years and decided to let it all out tonight here in Boise. This was pure hell.

The lieutenant finally halted us at the intersection of Capitol and Bannock, right at the edge of the main part of the riot. He held the radio handset to his ear but shouted to us, “Our orders are to hold position here and wait for other units to get into place.”

It was a sea of chaos in front of us. People held signs:
DON’T TREAD ON ME! OCCUPY IDAHO! NO GOVERNMENT SPY CARD! DOWN WITH PRESIDENT RODRIGUEZ! TIME TO THROW OUT THE TEA BAGGERS!
Signs with pictures of donkeys hanging from ropes.
MONTAINE SUCKS!
Signs with dead elephants.

“What is this protest even about?” I said. “Whose side are these people on?”

PFC Nelson wiped his nose with his hand. “Looks like we got all sides.”

Sergeant Kemp stepped up to us. “Both parties, plus maybe some others. Some drunks. Crazy biker-type guys. And enough news reporters to cover it all. This here’s real bad.”

Other Guard units came in from all directions to set up a perimeter in a circle around the crowd. I drew in a deep breath. It was a relief to see at least a couple hundred Guardsmen and know my unit wasn’t alone out here.

An Army Black Hawk helicopter swooped in among the TV news camera drone copters. It flew in circles around the immediate area, shining a bright spotlight down on the chaos below. “ATTENTION!” a voice blasted out of a loudspeaker on the chopper. “THIS IS AN ILLEGAL ASSEMBLY. RETURN TO YOUR HOMES. THIS IS AN ILLEGAL ASSEMBLY. RETURN TO YOUR HOMES… .”

“Everybody get your ProMask on. They’re going to CS gas the whole area.” Lieutenant McFee handed the radio handset back to Sparrow.

“Oh shit,” Sparrow said next to me. “I hate this thing.”

Everybody hated the gas mask. I pulled open the Velcro flap on my carrier case, yanked the mask out, and pushed it to my face. At once my cheeks and chin began to burn a little. Some idiot hadn’t cleaned his mask from a two-week summer training session when the guys must have been in CS. Still, getting a whiff of the tear gas live was worse than any residue left in the mask. I pulled the web of elastic straps down behind my head and tightened the buckles on the bottom two, then put my hand over the front of the mask and pressed hard while blowing out. Then, while my hand covered the filter canister, I sucked in. The mask tightened to my face. A good seal. Now with every breath I took, I sounded like Darth Vader.

Some of the people in the crowd were shouting stuff at us. Getting closer. I watched them through the little blurry windows in my mask. One guy shouted something I couldn’t understand. He lit a rag that stuck out of a bottle. Then he took a few running steps before he let the thing fly.

“Get down!” Sergeant Kemp shouted. I dropped to the ground. The bottle crashed on the street maybe fifteen or twenty feet in front of us. Fire and broken glass erupted all around it. Some people in the mob cheered. There were only nine of us in the squad, ten with the LT. If the rioters attacked us, what were we supposed to do?

The lieutenant pulled our two team leaders close and said something to them. Both of them quickly loaded a forty-millimeter gas grenade into the M320 grenade launchers mounted below their rifle barrels. Seconds later, I heard the popping sound of the launchers firing. Kemp had fired short so the gas round would hit the street about twenty yards in front of us and then bounce toward the crowd, spraying white hard-core nasty tear gas. Ribbon fired a second round the same way.

The other Guard units must have had the same orders, because a faint white cloud developed at the edge of the crowd. Weirdly, nobody seemed to notice for a moment. Then more screams and swears erupted out of the crowd. Some people ran away. One guy vomited in the street as he rubbed his eyes. Stupid. Rubbing your eyes in a cloud of CS gas was the dumbest thing to do. It made it burn ten times worse. Sergeant Kemp fired one more gas round. The protestors scrambled to get away, but bumped into each other as they tried to get out of the gas. Then the wind must have shifted, because some of the gas drifted back toward us. The exposed skin of my hands and neck burned like crazy. It must have been terrible for the protestors in the worst of it.

“THIS IS AN ILLEGAL ASSEMBLY. RETURN TO YOUR HOMES.”

“Okay,” the lieutenant called out. He said something else, but I couldn’t hear him over the roar from the crowd and the helicopter.

“What did you say, Lieutenant?” Sergeant Meyers said.

Nobody could hear anyone when we were talking with these stupid masks on. The lieutenant passed the word down the line, like that telephone game they used to make us play in school. Luchen’s mask came up next to my face. “The squads are going to start moving forward. We’re going to move up in a wedge.”

Oh no. What kind of plan was this? We were supposed to march forward into the crowd and … what? Stab them with our bayonets? Part them until they closed in behind to surround us?

McFee ordered our squad ahead with a hand motion. Sergeant Meyers, on point, held his rifle up above his head with both hands in a kind of “raise the roof” gesture. We started forward. Kemp looked back at us guys in his team before moving up. I walked after them on the far left. Inside my mask, I could hear my every breath heavy and loud. I kept my thumb on the safety switch of my weapon with my finger right next to the trigger.

Oh God
, I prayed.
Please help me get out of this one. This stuff isn’t cool anymore. I just want to —

Something smacked into my mask and my weapon went off. Through the cracked plastic of my mask’s eyepieces, I saw the flash out of the end of my barrel.

“Hold your fire!” someone shouted.

“Oh shit,” I said. How had that happened? Someone threw a rock and hit me and I was surprised. Must have accidentally —

Another gunshot went off. Wasn’t me. A third shot.

“Who the hell is shooting!?” Sergeant Kemp yelled from somewhere.

Our formation had stopped now. A rock hit me in the chest. Screams came from the crowd. The cracked lenses in my mask blurred my vision. When I closed my left eye, I could barely see around the white cracks in the right lens. I started to pull my mask up, but someone grabbed my wrist.

“Keep that mask on, Private,” said Sergeant Kemp. “You don’t want —”

Another shot.

“The protestors got guns!” Sergeant Meyers called out. “Shoot ’em! Aim for the ones with guns!”

“No! No! No!” Sergeant Kemp pushed Luchen’s barrel down. I didn’t even try to shoot, but went down on one knee.

Protestors scrambled to get away. Another Guardsman, far enough away to be from one of the other Guard units, raised his M4 and fired. One, two, three rounds. Blood sprayed from some guy’s neck, his head snapped back like a yo-yo, and his Broncos hat went flying. Another round sliced through a man’s chest and cut into the belly of the woman behind him. Both dropped. Another guy’s hip shattered as he was hit. He screamed as he fell, his leg at a wrong angle. I hoped it was just the way my lenses messed up my vision.

Another soldier fired. I couldn’t tell who. One, two. Three, four. Four more people fell as they ran. Screaming people trampled a teenage girl in their rush to escape. A bullet cracked through a storefront window behind us to our right. Someone inside screamed. Some dumbass reporter kept shouting at the cameraman who was filming him and the shooting.

The Black Hawk finally silenced its loudspeaker and flew away. The capitol square was mostly empty now. Except … Out where the protest had been, there was blood. There were bodies.

“Let’s go! Let’s get some field dressings on these wounds,” Sergeant Kemp yelled. “Casualty treatment. Move it!” He ran forward and I followed. Some of the other guys might have been with us. I think Lieutenant McFee stayed in the intersection, sort of waiting there on his knees.

We reached the first person on the ground. “I can’t see shit. I’m taking this thing off!” I said.

Sergeant Kemp grabbed my mask and held it on my face. “Private! Private, listen to me. There are cameras all over the place — TV news crews, comms. You do
not
want them to see you. Keep your mask on. Keep your armor vest on to hide your name tape. You do
not
want to be identified. Got it?”

I nodded. Sergeant Kemp went to his knees next to the body on the ground. He put his ear over the person’s mouth. Then he rose up and put his fingers to the neck. He shook his head and ran off.

But I stayed. It was the redheaded college girl from before. The angry girl who had been so beautiful and alive. But now her tank top was ripped down the side, and meat and bone stuck out from below her left breast. Her blood spread out in a pool beneath her. Her mouth was open like it had been when she was shouting at the protest. Like she was screaming at me now.

But she was silent, and the breath was gone from her. She’d never shout … or speak or laugh, ever again. Her lifeless eyes were open and the way her head was tilted … she was … staring right at me.

I dropped to my knees, holding my weapon across my stomach. Her sticky blood was still a little warm as it soaked through the knees of my pants. I gagged once and then puked, hot and sour-sweet. It filled the bottom of my mask. Burned up in my nose. I had to pull the thing off my chin to let the vomit run out on my chest. Then I put it back on and tried not to barf again with the taste and smell filling the air I was breathing.

I wished I’d never been called up for this mission. Wished I’d never enlisted. I wanted to get up and walk away. Go and never look back. But I couldn’t move. This girl wouldn’t let me.

She looked at me like she knew. She was dead because of me. I’d fired the one shot that spooked everybody else. I might as well have killed her myself.