Operation Fortitude
Chapter 7
Hellfire
"Assassin Two, this is Hammer Three, inbound on your position…care to explain what the hell that is down there?" the pilot of the swooping AH-1 SuperCobra inquired over the radio.
"Raven's gone berserk! We need to calm her down somehow!" Bradford said.
"Roger that Assassin Two. Hammer Three One and Three Two moving to attack," the pilot said.
"Look at the size of that thing!" his partner said.
"Stay frosty. Follow my lead," as he dropped down and prepared to fire.
Robin was in a world of shit. The most composed member of his team had just snapped, and was possibly getting ready to annihilate the city. He had to work quickly.
"Cyborg! Try to raise the 'copters on the radio! Get them to focus on the insurgents! I've got to try and get her out of this!" Robin yelled to his teammate.
"Gotcha!" Cyborg replied as he began trying to get the Cobra pilots on the radio built into his arm.
Running, ducking, dodging, weaving, Robin defied every rule about firefights, and possibly some of the laws of physics and probability.
Running up to where Raven was rearing upward, getting ready to wipe out a team of Marines that had taken cover near some vehicles, and began yelling to try to get her to calm down.
"Raven! You have to stop! You have to snap out of it!" he yelled, trying to get her attention.
"All those who have driven me to this will perish. No mercy," Raven said. Apparently the battle with Trigon hadn't quite taken all the demon out her.
Shit.
Racking his brain for solutions, he had to dive for cover as he heard a missile fly overhead.
BOOM!
Apparently the Marine Corps just said 'fuck you' to the designers of the Jump City Arts Center. To be fair, there were probably a dozen enemies in the building.
As long as Cyborg was working to keep them from attacking Raven, Robin didn't care. He had to focus on getting Raven back to her usual self.
"Raven! Please! You have to get control back!" Robin yelled.
"Your concern is touching. However, it is no longer your worry," Raven said as she set her eyes on a SuperCobra circling around for another missile launch.
Bang!
Pink waves crashed around Raven, and she stumbled for a moment, trying to regain her balance. While this was happening, a boxing glove came flying out of the air and struck her in the head. She crashed to the ground, unconscious.
It would seem that Jinx and Speedy had found their position.
"Well, that seemed to work pretty well. Let's try and keep her from going crazy next time, huh?" Jinx said.
"Speedy, Jinx, nice to see you. Thanks for the help. As you can see, demons were the last thing we needed to deal with," Robin said as rounds whizzed overhead.
"Get to cover! TH is still active here in the area!" Harris shouted to them.
Sprinting to cover, Robin filled in Jinx and Speedy on the situation.
"We hit an IED. Two seriously wounded Marines, one lightly wounded. They had Raven help out the corpsman responding to the attack, and she got bitched at a little by Sergeant Harris over there, and snapped. Oh yeah, we called in air support," Robin concluded as a SuperCobra flew overhead again and unleashed a missile on a house full of enemy infantry who were probably hating life at the moment.
"Nice to see the military finally go balls to the wall on this little operation of theirs," Jinx said.
"Where do you need us?" Speedy asked.
"Go reinforce that squad over there by what's left of the Arts Center. They're about to assault the position just ahead and could probably use some help," Robin said.
"We're on it," Speedy said as he started laying down arrow fire and Jinx started sending out waves of…whatever she sends out. Probability disruptor matrixes or something…you could probably do a case study for decades on exactly what her superpower was.
As the Marines started clearing out more houses, Robin checked to make sure the corpsman was taking care of the wounded.
"How are they, Doc?" he asked.
"I stabilized them, but we need to get them out of here. Those two," he said, motioning towards two still bodies, "lost a lot of blood. We need to get them out of here immediately. PFC Bowman should be good to get back in the fight. Just took a piece of shrapnel to his arm," Doc Lloyd said.
"Right. Has the lieutenant been notified?"
"Yeah, I gave him an update. We're really caught in the shit here, so a casevac is going to be pretty difficult. But I think we might be able to push through up ahead. You'll have to talk to Sergeant Harris. He's been making all the calls in this one."
Walking away from Doc, Robin looked to see Starfire taking care of Raven. Looked like she was coming around.
"Robin! Raven should be okay, but I worry for her. What if she changes back?"
"We'll have to keep an eye on her. Move up and support the Marines."
"Yes Robin."
Starfire vaulted upward and flew towards a squad readying to enter a building.
"You here to help?" a grizzled sergeant asked her.
"Yes. Where do you need me?"
"Take point and lay down some good fire. We'll sweep in and take out the bad guys while they focus on you. Roger? When you feel the bump, it's time to move."
Starfire posted up in front of the squad, and the Marines stacked up behind her. As they made last second preparations for entering the building, Starfire wondered if she would be able to do her job without hurting anyone unnecessarily. She was proud of the fact that she'd never killed an enemy in battle, and she didn't plan on breaking that trend.
Feeling the bump from the Marine behind her, she blasted the door and began firing bolts in every direction. It was only after she felt a very hard thwack in her back did she realize that she was still in the doorway.
"Move motherfucker! Get out of the fucking door!" the Marine yelled.
Stung from his harsh words, she moved quickly out of the way and kept on keeping the enemy's heads down. It wasn't until she saw one of them go down did she grasp how real the situation was.
Hit by a perfect hammer pair of bullets to his chest, it exploded as he fell backwards, his hands still gripping his weapon. As his friends turned to look to see what happened, the Marines poured into the building and began slaying bodies.
Seeing them take out their targets with ruthless efficiency, Starfire could feel herself start to lose her composure. This shouldn't be happening- she'd seen heavy fighting before. Why did this affect her more than the other fights?
"Left side clear!"
"Right side clear!"
"Overhead clear! Room's clear! Check the bodies! See what we can dig up!" she heard the sergeant she had talked to outside yell out.
"Excuse me, sir, I think I need to step outside…I am not feeling well," Starfire said meekly.
"That's fine. Your help saved my Marines. There's no way we could've taken these guys without your help. Go see who else needs help," the sergeant said.
Walking outside, Starfire saw Jump City, her adopted city, the city she had come to love, in chaos. Marines were running to and fro buildings, she could hear helicopters flying overhead and launching missiles, and the unmistakable stench of death hung in the air. Seeing a fire team pinned down behind some cars by a machine gun, Starfire flew up to the team to see how she could help.
"We're pinned down! Our SAW gunner got hit! If you cover us we can get him out of here! Cover on my mark!" the team leader yelled.
Readying herself, she jumped out on the team leader's word, and began spraying towards the machine gun position.
Checking to make sure the Marines were getting out okay, Starfire continued her assault on the gun position. She hoped the others were doing better than her.
Across the way, towards the Arts Center, Speedy and Jinx kept on laying down fire to cover their approach to the Marines stacked up against the building. Coming up on the squad, they noticed that the Cobras that were providing air support had left.
"Where'd they go?" Jinx asked.
"They ran out of missiles. Serpent Five and Serpent Six are coming on station here in a minute. Brass doesn't want us without a constant overwatch from the helos," the squad leader said.
"Hey Bergman! We're a little exposed here! Let's get moving!" a Marine called from the back.
"Just shut the fuck up! You do your job, I'll do mine, good to go?"
"Just don't get us all fucking killed!"
"Insolent cocksucker…anyways, there's three entrances. I'm taking the first team in, Lance Corporal Williams is taking team two in, and you two are going to lead team three in. Roger?"
"Why us?" Speedy asked.
"Gotta use you guys somehow, and a couple guys in team three took some shrapnel. They're fine, but I'd like some extra firepower with their team," Bergman said.
"Got it," Speedy said.
"We'll do what we can," Jinx said.
Running to link up with team three, Jinx looked around at the city. Fires were burning, rubble and Marines were everywhere, and the roar of battle consumed the area.
It was her kind of town now.
Linking up with team three, Jinx and Speedy took the front and prepared to enter the building.
"We'll kick it open, you guys go in and start wrecking shop. Roger?" Lance Corporal James said.
"Got it," Speedy said, stacking up behind Jinx while he prepped an arrow.
James stood next to the door, counting down.
"GO!" he yelled as he kicked the door wide open.
Jinx and Speedy moved through the doorway, laying out a path of destruction while the Marines came in behind them and began shooting the men inside.
"Gimme an AADRAC!" a Marine yelled out. (AADRAC-a general direction and area of an enemy)
"2 o' clock, second floor!" Speedy yelled out.
Moving his sights to the enemy, the Marine was suddenly shot in the side of the head. He crumpled to the floor, his body still.
"Shit! Sutton's down!" another yelled.
"Worry about the enemy!"
"Frag out!" James yelled.
Everyone took cover while the grenade went off. Jinx felt sharp pains all through her leg as she was hit by shrapnel.
"Fuck!" she screamed out.
"Rasmussen, get the 9-line going! Get support in here, and get Jinx and Sutton out of here!" James yelled.
Rasmussen started to reply only to be shot in his side by an AK, the heavy 7.62 tearing through his chest cavity.
For the first time in his Marine Corps career, Lance Corporal James was terrified. He'd been on three combat deployments, seen some of the heaviest fighting in the current century. But nothing had prepared him for the brutal savagery of this battle.
He yelled for support, not knowing and not caring if and when they would come.
Jinx watched the Marine yell, tried to stop her bleeding, and tried to get a grip on herself before she went into shock.
Well, this is all fucked up, Jinx thought to herself.
It seemed no matter how many times the military fought in an urban environment, they never fully realized the problems going in. The one time she figured they did was in Fallujah, when they expected sixty five percent casualties.
She finished applying the dressing she'd taken from the Marine next to her. With her bleeding stopped, she began to calm down a little. She saw Speedy returning fire to her right, and began moving over to him.
Once she was over there, she began helping him. There were still eight motherfuckers still in the room, and she was getting tired of yelling just to hear herself.
"Goddamnit! Speedy, on three! We're blowing these fuckers away!"
"You got it!"
"One, two, three!"
On three, the two unleashed everything they had. Jinx was firing waves as fast as she could conjure them, and Speedy was firing so many arrows it sounded like a machine gun was in the room.
Once the dust settled, James got up. He was stunned to see the sudden barrage from the two heroes. He hadn't quite expected them so ready to take lives. They'd been briefed that most of the heavy lifting would have to be done by the Marines, with the heroes playing more of a support role. If they were ready to kill though, this made their job a hell of a lot easier.
"Wish you guys could've been like that from the start. It's all starting to change. Those Cobras you saw today? Just the beginning. That's the word anyways. They're deploying arty, tracks, hell, I heard they're rerouting the entire Third Regiment here, and almost every tank at Pendleton is getting ready to come here.
"I really hope you guys don't have houses or property here. Cause I have a feeling to save this city, we're gonna have to destroy it," James said.
"In other news, battles continue to rage in Jump City, as Marines, metahumans, and local law enforcement wage a brutal street by street fight with the terrorist organization known as Thor's Hammer. Live with more is Dan McNeely. Dan?"
"Jump City used to be a popular tourist city situated nicely just a stone's throw from Los Angeles. Now? You would be hard pressed to tell Jump from Fallujah. Marines and Army Rangers continue to pour into the city, more buildings are taken every day, and what little that was left of the civilian populace has been evacuated.
"It's one of the largest refugee problems in history, and for one of the few times in history, the United States is having to deal with it inside our own borders. Camps have been set up a few miles away from the coast, and many in the country have already donated hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of equipment, food, and medical supplies.
"The prevailing question, the one that everyone is asking, is 'when can we go home?' It's a question that's been difficult to answer. DoD officials estimate that about fifteen percent of the city has been cleared, a far cry from the fifty or so expected by this stage of the operation. But nobody expected the level of resistance that has been encountered in the city.
"Already the Marines have taken eighty casualties, among that almost fifty KIA. Most of the dead and wounded were taken in the latest battles today, when three companies of Marines and three precincts of police launched an assault on the Midtown area, a known stronghold possibly containing several high ranking Thor's Hammer officials. No word has been given on what the estimated enemy casualties are.
"And some disturbing news has been discovered. While only fifteen percent of the city has been cleared, the military's strategy has been to target large areas known to have a high concentration of enemy personnel within them. The intel taken so far suggests this may not be an isolated incident.
"In fact, they're worried that something could spring up somewhere else. And soon. I'm Dan McNeely, reporting to you live from Jump City."
"Jimmy, all I need is a timeline. How long can we hold out?"
"Given the way they're ramping up operations, and given the number of troops we have left, I estimate two, maybe three more weeks. Four if we can get the mines going."
"It is unfortunate we had to start here, but Jump was the only place we could start without attracting undue attention. I must say Jimmy, I'm impressed with your plans. Orchestrating a mass evacuation was the only way we would've been able to move our supplies to cells in other cities without them being checked too thoroughly. Now, how is our other plan coming?"
"We've located a man with the skills and experience necessary to pull off the job. I'm flying to Gotham tomorrow to meet with him."
"Excellent. Now that we've grabbed the country's attention, let's give them some more shocking news. Dead Marines are tragic, but the death of a superhero, especially one of their golden boys, is truly soul-crushing. Ensure Robin is not killed before we enact Phase Two."
"Yes sir."
"I grew up knowing that this country would need a radical shift in philosophy to protect itself from future horrors. I just hope I still have a country left to lead when this is all over."
The two men looked at each other. Such moments in life are rare, knowing that the balance of the country, indeed the world, rested on their shoulders.
That night in Jump, as Marines holed up in houses they had fought so bitterly to clear, a sense that things would continue to go the way they had been settled in. A sense that the darkness that came before the dawn had not yet set in. A sense that more of their friends would be killed.
They were right.
