MEETING ENGAGEMENT-Containment Protocol part 5
40-foot predators, hunting them. Fiction. 2000 words, 10-minute read.
[Lt. Booker, and his tank platoon have just encountered a pack of hunting tyrannosaurs…]
Find the rest of the Containment Protocol tale here: https://raytabler.substack.com/s/containment-protocol-serial
Part 1 (the beginning), ... Part 4 (last episode), Part 6 (next episode)
MEETING ENGAGEMENT
by Ray Tabler
Booker confirmed visually that the other three Abrams and the two Bradleys were following his orders before turning his binoculars on the approaching T-rexes again. The beasts stopped about four hundred yards away. They stood in a disordered bunch on their massive hind legs, blunt heads raised in the air.
It didn’t come as much of a surprise that the T-Rexes sported feathers. Booker had adsorbed in school that dinosaurs actually were closer to birds than lizards. Hence, the feathers. A russet, almost downy fluff covered most of the bodies. Spikey, blue-green crests of shimmering feathers sprouted from the tops of the heads, trailing halfway to the base of the tails along the back. Idly, a part of Booker’s brain wondered why the T-Rexes had bodies which would blend into the prairie, and heads that wouldn’t.
“What’re those big lizards doing now?” Booker muttered.
Nohfa spoke. Booker looked at her, then at Muñoz for a translation.
“She says they smell us.”
“What?”
“Look at us.” Muñoz swept a hand at Fred. “We’re all covered in dino blood from the running fight through the scavengers.”
It was true. Booker had forgotten. Even though some of his face and his coveralls were still sticky with gore. Amazing the things that slip your mind when events overtake you.
“They can smell that from so far away?”
“Look at ‘em.” Muñoz shrugged. “They’re acting like giant bloodhounds.”
“Shit!” Booker decided to put the question aside. Whether the damned things could smell them or not really didn’t matter when a pack of forty-foot predator were hunting them.
“Fine.” Booker spoke to Muñoz, and pointed at Nohfa. “Get her over to one of the Bradleys, and make sure you both get inside. None of this riding on top bullshit.”
“She won’t like that.”
“I don’t give a damn. Drag her ass over there by the hair if you have to. She’s the whole reason we’re on this crazy patrol in the first place. And, I don’t want her to end up as a T-rex snack!”
“That’d look bad in the after-action report. Wouldn’t it? Aren’t you worried about me too?” Muñoz grinned.
“You already signed a release form. Do your job.”
Muñoz laughed. Before Nohfa realized what was going on, Muñoz pushed her off of Fred, and leaped after. She hit the grass, rolled, and came up spitting fire.
“Rusty, head for the dinos as fast as you can, before that wild bitch gives Muñoz the slip and comes after us.”
Rusty laughed and gave Fred the gun.
“Wilma, Barney, and Betty, follow Fred. Line abreast. Pebbles or Bam Bam, Muñoz is coming your way with the indig.”
“We see ‘em.” Sergeant Ennis, Bam Bam’s track commander radioed. “Hoo wee, she looks pissed!”
“Just get ‘em inside, button up, and keep her outta my way.” Booker ordered.
“Roger.”
The dinos, apparently satisfied with their scent fix, were on the move again. The four of them spread out some, like they were going to envelope the Abrams. That struck Booker as displaying a disturbing amount of intelligence for a beast which was supposed to have a brain the size of a walnut.
“Jackson, put a round in the closest one.” Booker ordered.
“Will do.”
Pensky plucked a main gun round from the rack and shoved it into the breech with a loud grunt. “Up!”
The gun breech clanged shut. Fred’s hydraulics, already a mostly ignored background whine, altered pitch as Jackson traversed the big gun to lay on the dino and adjusted elevation.
“On the way!” Jackson called out, and triggered Fred’s primary weapon.
An ear-splitting CRACK echoed across the prairie as Fred’s gun fired. The gun breech opened, and baseplate of the expended round ejected to rattle around in the catch bin with a metallic ringing. Pensky tensed, ready to grab another round from the rack. He longed to see what was going on outside.
Booker watched the tank round fly across the distance, and impact the flank of the right-most T-rex. There was a flash, followed a heart-beat later by the sound of the exploding projectile, and the bellow of the dino. He studied the effects through his binoculars.
The projectile had been a HEAT (high explosive antitank) round. This type of shell was designed to exploded on contact, penetrating and driving hot, plasma vapor through the armor of an enemy tank. That’s exactly what it’d done to the T-rex. But the result was different. A plasma jet into an enemy tank cooked the crew and set off un-fired rounds, to knock out the tank. The HEAT round barbequed a chunk of the T-rex, which might’ve eventually killed the beast. The immediate result, however, was just to drive the already angry animal into a murderous frenzy.
“Shit! That just made him mad.” Booker radioed to the platoon, in an icy voice which didn’t reflect the surprise he felt. “Use penetrators. Fire at will.”
The automatic blast door to the magazine slid open. Pensky grabbed a penetrator round from the rack, and pivoted to shove it into the breech. The breech slammed shut. “Up!”
The hydraulics moaned as Jackson tried to keep the sights on the bobbing dino. “Jumpy sonuvabitch.” He muttered. “On the way!”
CRACK. Rattle.
Booker cursed as the dense, metal penetrator rod plowed into the sod, making soil blossom in a cloud behind where the T-rex had been a split second before. The sounds of the other Abrams’s guns hammered at his ears to the left. At least one of the rounds hit home. The T-rex Betty targeted screamed even louder than the one the HEAT projectile hit.
Booker spared a quick look at Betty’s target. The dino was still up, but gouts of blood spouted from the entry and exit wounds. The penetrator rod had evidently passed clean through the beast, doing damage in the process. Betty’s dino was still approaching, but seemed markedly less enthusiastic about the whole idea of eating an Abrams tank.
“That’s encouraging.” Booker encouraged himself.
“Up!”
“These Goddammned things got a lot more moves than a tank.” Jackson complained, struggling to anticipate the jerky motions of his target. “On the way!”
CRACK. Rattle.
“Up!”
Skill, or maybe luck, sent the penetrator rod through Fred’s dino where the tail joined the body. It roared with a painful timbre, that Booker felt in his gut as well as his ears.
“Yeah!” Jackson shouted.
Booker assessed the dino’s condition. The rod looked like it severed the thing’s spine, at the base of the tail. That wound was probably not life threatening, in itself. But the tail dragged the ground behind the T-rex. Which was both extremely painful, and threw off its balance. The beast could no longer run. It could barely move. The T-rex whined in agony.
“Finish it off, Jackson.” Booker ordered.
“Up!”
“I’ll put the thing out of our misery.” Jackson acknowledged, adjusting his aim.
“Wait one!” Booker shouted.
Jackson hesitated. He heard it too.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
It was the sound of Bradley chain guns firing behind them.
“This is Bam Bam. We got two more of those damned things coming over the crest of the hill.” Ennis radioed.
“Sonuvabitch!” Booker twisted in his hatch.
Two T-Rexes, tiny in the distance, ran down hill at Pebbles and Bam Bam in a jerky but rapid pace. The Bradleys ran before the dinos, hurling 25-mm rounds from the backward-facing turrets. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom.
“Mulroney, take over here and kill the remaining dinos to our front. Wilma, stay with the other tanks. I’m going to help Pebbles and Bam Bam. Rusty, get us over there, fast.”
Mulroney acknowledged the new orders. Rusty sent Fred into a sharp turn, and headed for the Bradleys. Grass, sod, and mud flew from Fred’s spinning tracks.
Booker jerked his head to left and right, making sure no more dinos then the two groups engaged lurked for a fresh attack. The fight behind him raged on. Crack. Crack. Wilma’s and Betty’s guns fired, dispatching a T-rex each. Or so Booker hoped. Mulroney would have to manage that part of the battle on his own. Booker now had his hands full with another.
The scene ahead grew with an agonizing slowness, despite the fact that Fred, Pebbles, and Bam Bam approached each other at top speed. Somehow, the two dinos overtook the Bradleys before Fred closed the distance.
The faster T-rex ran alongside Pebbles, roaring and snapping at the vehicle. It lurched into Pebbles, momentarily lifting her right-hand track free from the ground. The turret on top of Pebbles rotated, and sent a steady stream of 25-mm lead lumps into the dino’s flank. Boom. Boom. Boom. Blood spurted from the impact wounds. The only effect from the one-inch-diameter acupuncture was to further enrage the dino.
Bellowing, the T-Rex leaned in and chomped on the chain gun’s barrel. Booker could hear the Bradley’s turret machinery whining as it fought against the dino’s grip. Pebbles’ tracks spun uselessly. The dino held the Bradley in place. The T-Rex planted its massive hind legs, and twisted the gun in steely jaws.
“Up!” Pensky shouted, down in the bowels of Fred’s turret.
“On the way!” Jackson triggered Fred’s main gun.
CRACK.
Because the dino clamped on Pebbles was stationary, Jackson was able to line up for an accurate shot. The penetrator rod hit the beast at the hinge of its massive jaw on the near side, and exited just behind the angry eye on the far side. For a long, breathless moment, the dino simply stood there, jaws still locked on Pebbles’ chain gun. Then, it toppled over and lay still on the churned-up sod, meaty legs and claws thrust skyward. Walnut-sized or not, Jackson’s shot must’ve skewered the T-Rex’s brain.
The continued fire from Bam Bam’s chain gun shook Booker out of a momentary fascination with the brain-shot dino which had been munching on Pebbles. The other T-Rex was circling Bam Bam, snapping at the 25-mm slugs fired at it like a dog trying to catch water from a hose. Bam Bam’s turret traversed, keeping the dino under fire. Booker almost laughed at the situation, but sobered when he realized that it was deadly serious.
“Jackson, shoot that damned thing before it charges Bam Bam.”
“Sure thing, El Tee.”
CRACK.
Rattle.
“Up!”
The last dino staggered sideways, suddenly no longer interested in Bam Bam. The back end of the penetrator rod from Fred’s gun hung out of one of its hind legs. The T-Rex wailed in pain, hopping on its good leg. Booker was no expert on dino anatomy, but it looked like the rod had broken some load-bearing bone.
“Just stay still, you big, dumb lizard.” Jackson whispered into his gun-sight.
CRACK.
Rattle.
The T-Rex had been facing Fred, mouth wide open, when Jackson took the final shot. The first six inches of the penetrator rod sprouted from the top of its head, blood spurting spasmodically from the exit wound. Eyes rolling up, the dino slowly collapsed into a heap. It rolled downhill a few yards before fetching up against a stunted tree.
The world seemed deathly quiet after with the absence of bellowing, wailing dinos. It wasn’t quiet, though. There was the rumble of the Bradleys’ diesels, and the moan of Fred’s turbine engine, accompanied by the whine of main gun hydraulics. But Booker’s ears still noticed the lack of dino sounds.
Booker twisted to see how the other tanks were faring. “Mulroney, report.”
“Just finishing the last one off, sir. Jesus! This bunch do take some killin’.”
In the distance Barney’s gun cracked, and the remaining upright T-Rex collapsed and thrashed a bit before dying. Booker let out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding.
END
Tune back in next week for Part 6 - TROPHIES
Find the rest of the Containment Protocol tale here: https://raytabler.substack.com/s/containment-protocol-serial
Part 1 (the beginning), ... Part 4 (last episode), Part 6 (next episode)
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Wow! That was messy! Lots of action, death, and dismemberment…..Now what?
I noticed the characters from a certain animated television show were referenced here...