The Siege
Chapter 14: Holding the Fort
By JagdPanther
Officer Miyuki Kobayakawa picked herself up off of the floor following the string of massive explosions that had occurred just outside the station. Debris was everywhere, knocked loose by the shock waves. A few lighting fixtures were dangling from the ceiling above her. One loose wire was twitching about in a pool of water steadily growing from a shattered pipe. All around her, stunned defenders were slowly recovering and beginning to return fire. The ringing in her ears was fading and shouts began to filter into her mind.
"Jake's hit! Jake's hit! Pull him out!"
"Enemies advancing! Shoot anything out there! They're all bad guys!"
"My leg! My leg! God, it hurts!"
"The Lieutenant is dead! Where's sarge!?"
"Myers! Plug his wound! Keep talking to him, don't let him go into shock!"
"Shut up! Just shut up! Fire your weapon, Clay!"
"Enemies inside the perimeter! They're breaking through! Radio! Radio! Get Captain Surai on the line; we've got enemies inside the wall! Third Platoon, forget the ones outside, everyone down the stairs! We need to reinforce the entrances!" Army Second Lieutenant Steve Vrabel jumped to his feet and began rallying his men. With the handful of men who had immediately reacted to the order, Vrabel plunged into the stairwell and down to ground level. He met the few still-capable defenders, a mix of Marines, Army troops, and police, pouring all the fire they could out of the doors and windows at enemies rushing. A pair of GP-40 grenades flew through the door, detonating beside Vrabel's platoon sergeant. The Staff Sergeant was hit bad, but his body had shielded Vrabel. The officer barely had noticed when a rifle round tore through his left shoulder, knocking him back into the crater-filled wall. Shrugging off the incredible pain, he brought up his rifle and began firing. He denied medical attention when his medic grabbed him by the web-gear, motioning for the Specialist to take care of the unconscious platoon sergeant.
Miyuki was nowhere near Natsumi. Realizing that her partner wasn't there, Miyuki called out for her, but received only shouts and gunfire in return. Shaking the last of the cobwebs from her mind, she clambered down the stairs after the last American from Vrabel's platoon. She knew that once the enemies were inside the building, they could get into the lower levels with ease where all the civilians were, completely undefended. Continuing down past he first level, she heard the grenades exploding near the entrance and an American scream that he'd been hit. Knowing that she had to get to the civilians, she tried to disregard it and went the last flight down to the cafeteria. Miyuki came face to face with Aoi, blood running down her forehead. "Aoi! You're bleeding!"
"I am? Oh! I didn't even feel it!" She felt the warm liquid as it ran down the bridge of her nose.
Miyuki grabbed the other woman by the arm and took her back along the halls, past the cafeteria doors. Inside, some other police officers, including Yoriko, along with some cooler-headed civilians were trying to calm the frantic people. Miyuki and Aoi stopped near a Marine machine-gunner with an M240 medium-machine-gun setting up the bi-pod. He and a few other Marines who had been down in the basement grabbing stored ammunition were preparing a hasty defense for the lower levels, covering all routes from the surface above. "Aoi, you have to go back in there and keep the civilians from panicking. We'll keep the floor defended, just get back in there." Shooing the other officer back into the large cafeteria, she brought up her MP5 and made sure it was loaded properly.
Moving back to the hallway where she had come down, she took up position in a doorway and braced herself against the doorjamb, leveling the submachine gun at the stairwell she had just come down a few moments before. Holding her fire, she let a group of Americans plod down the stairs and the hallway past her carrying an unconscious Staff Sergeant, his back ripped to shreds by an explosive.
"They're blowin' us away! They're inside the building!" screamed one of he Army troops, trying to maintain his grip on the sergeant's leg. Almost as soon as he finished, a Japanese grenade tumbled down the stairs and into the hallway. Miyuki ducked back inside the doorway as it went off, sending shrapnel in every direction. She popped back out just as a pair of terrorists blundered into the hallway, firing AKs wildly. Taking aim, she dropped both with short bursts to the chest.
In the other direction, from another stairwell, more terrorists and Japanese soldiers tried to take the hallway, but the Marines and Miyuki held the advantage of defending a fixed position. The Marine gunner opened fire with his machine gun, having seen a head pop out from cover and quickly disappear. The large .30 calibre rounds gouged holes in the wall of the stairwell, showering concrete fragments over the enemies. Miyuki suppressed a pair of Japanese soldiers at her stairwell with her submachine gun, firing 4-round bursts into the wall near the opening of the stairwell.
A smoke grenade rolled into the hallway and burst, filling the corridor in white smoke. Miyuki quickly reloaded her weapon and sent a few bursts into the smoke to interdict anyone trying to advance through it. She heard someone in Japanese yell, "Grenade!" and saw a small, black object arc out of the smoke and land near her feet. It skidded through her legs and rebounded off the door behind her, bouncing like a pinball into the room. She dove out into the hall as the grenade went off. Fortunately, she was out of direct-line from the grenade and none of the fragments reached her. Immediately, she saw two black forms come through the smoke, and she opened fire. But firing from the irregular position and threw off her aim, and she completely missed both targets. The slide clicked back, signaling an empty magazine, and she desperately tried to grab her pistol, but it wasn't in its holster. Before she could do anything else, the Japanese troops were on top of her.
Seemingly in slow motion, one of the soldiers began shifting her rifle down at Miyuki. Frantically scrambling to her left, she tried to get back into the room she had used as cover, but she knew she would never make it. All of the sudden, the soldier to the right of the one trying to kill her was lifted off of his feet and slammed back down into the ground. The other soldier whipped his head up and saw a Navy Corpsman charging him with a pistol. Before he could even react, the Corpsman tackled him. The Navy medical man brought up his Beretta pistol while straddling the enemy and shot him twice in the forehead. Then the Corpsman rolled to his right and grabbed one of the Japanese soldier's Type-89 rifles, swung it up, and fired the rifle into the smoke at three more black shapes coming through. Miyuki backed away from the Corpsman as he fired. She couldn't take her eyes off the limp Japanese soldier that the American had just executed.
A Marine rushed up the Corpsman and grabbed him by the shoulder. "Doc! Get your ass back here! We don't need to lose our medics! We'll take care of these guys, just get back to the aid station." The Marine Corporal forcefully shoved the Navy Corpsman back and took up position in the doorway Miyuki had held. He fired his M-16A2 on burst-mode into the dissipating smoke.
Miyuki was still stunned, lying on the ground, when the Marine noticed her and pulled her back into the room. "Are you all right! Talk to me!" he shouted, not looking at her, but still aiming down his rifle towards the far end of the hall. "You okay?"
She shook her head from side to side and tried to clear her thoughts, but the site of an execution right before her wouldn't go away. "Yes, I think so." Groggily, she got back up onto her knees and reloaded her MP5, still looking at the dead Japanese in the hall.
"Good! You have to take over, here. I can't stay. I have to go help defend the other stairwells. We don't have enough people down here, you have to help!" And with that, he jumped up, turned around, and sprinted down the hallway, a few shots from a terrorist at the stairs followed him down the corridor.
Realizing that she had a job to do, she brought up her weapon and returned some of the fire, but she wasn't as into the fight as she had been before. 'No, I can't think about that! He was trying to kill me and that American saved me. I can't think about it like he was defenseless. Damnit! Back to work!'
Another grenade rolled into the hallway, and again she ducked inside the room for cover. Once again after it had exploded, she leaned back out and fired in defense of the hall. It was just her and six Marines defending the entire lower level of the station.
Up two floors, Natsumi Tsujimoto shoved the ceiling tiles off of her. When the explosions had occurred, ceiling tiles had collapsed all along the hall, covering her. Regaining her senses, she tried to locate Miyuki, but she wasn't around. Now on her knees, Natsumi checked her rifle to make sure that it was still in working order, and made her way to the window to return fire. Peering over the edge, she saw enemy troops rushing the building. Some technicals were approaching, firing their .51 calibre machine guns at the building, trying to suppress the few defenders manning the line at the moment.
Bringing up her rifle, she fired several bursts into the advancing mass. Quickly, she was forced to dive for cover as massive amounts of return fire began to center around her. An officer from Riot-Control pulled her back from the window.
"Don't do that. They'll rush the entrances. Go cover the stairwells. Let the Americans drop grenades on the ones outside and call in air support. Just keep them from getting up here." The officer let her go and made his way down the line to a couple other police officers trying to do the same thing Natsumi had done. "Keep back from the windows! They'll nail you! Stay in cover!"
Some Army personnel were crouching before the inside walls and arcing hand grenades out the windows down onto the rushing enemies below. Unfortunately, enemy hand grenades were flying up at the windows in increasing numbers. Everyone took whatever cover they could when the explosive balls began littering the hallway and started detonating. Natsumi crawled behind a doorway just as a grenade plunked down where she had stood before. It exploded without causing any harm to her, but sent shrapnel screaming down the hallway. Outside, she heard a police officer scream that he was hit. She peered out and saw the riot-control officer rolling back and forth on his stomach. His back was ripped to shreds.
Braving another volley of RPGs from across the street and more grenades flying in the windows, Natsumi rushed out into the hallway. "Come on!" she yelled, grabbing the officer by his arms and dragging him into the room she had been in. An RPG exploded in the hallway, completely obliterating the next room over. Ceiling tiles collapsed and light fixtures swung free in her room. Figuring the back of the room was safer, Natsumi pushed the officer under a table to shield him from debris. "Just hang on! I'm going to go get help."
"No, no! Stay in here, I'll be okay. You'll get killed if you go back out there. I'll be fine, don't you worry." The officer managed a faint smile, but it quickly disappeared when a new surge of pain washed over the man. "Water, I just need some water. That's all." He kept expanding and closing his fist, trying to do something to keep his mind off of the pain, but there was really nothing he could do to forget about the 10 pieces of shrapnel.
Natsumi unhooked her canteen from her belt and unscrewed the cap. Handing it to the officer, she said, "Here. Drink as much as you want." She knew that he needed help fast. "I don't care. You need help right now. I'm going to go, anyway. Just stay put." Without waiting to hear another objection, she quickly ducked out of the room and sprinted down the hall as fast as she could and as low as she could. She found a sizeable portion of the Americans clustered in the stairwells, dropping grenades down between the gaps in the flights of stairs and firing their rifles down at terrorists and JSDF troops trying to go up the stairs. Turning down one of the inner hallways, she found the aide station for that floor. Inside there were many wounded men from the bomb attacks and grenade volleys. All of the medics were frantically working to save as many as they could, but they were running out of medical supplies in a hurry. She could see that if the officer were going to get medical attention, she'd have to bring him here.
Without a second thought, she rushed back out into the hallway and back to the room. She found the riot-control officer still under the table. Except he was already dead by the time she returned, feeling for his pulse and finding none. He was still clutching the canteen in his left hand, but there was something different that she couldn't place her finger on. She went around to the other side of the table. The officer's eyes were still open and he was staring at a picture of his wife and two daughters. It had fallen from his grip and was lying on the floor. Carefully, she rolled him onto his back, closed his eyes, and folded his right arm over his chest, slipping the picture into his fingers in the process.
For the second time during the siege, Natsumi felt the urge to curl up into a ball and cry. But the grenade explosions and gunfire raging just outside the door kept her from doing so. She took the ammo from the officer's web-gear, since the ammo happened to be for Type-89 rifles, and restocked her own ammunition pouches. Before leaving the room, she made an objective list of what she had to do. 'Objective One: Find Chief. Objective Two: Find Ken. Objective Three: Find Miyuki. Overall Objective: Defend the station from being overrun.' She took a deep breath. 'The Chief should be one floor up on this side of the building. Take the inner stairwell, it's fifteen meters to the left outside the door. All right, here goes nothing.'
The brown-haired female Traffic cop ran out the door, dodging around debris as she went. She saw a grenade land on the floor in front of her, and quickly she stopped and thrust her legs back, tripping over a piece of a joist and falling flat on her back. The grenade never went off. It was a dud. Natsumi wiped her forehead, staring at the grenade, wondering if it detonate while she was still lying there, but another police officer, one of the ones the riot-control officer had yelled at earlier, crawled out a door next to her and grabbed her by the web-gear, dragging her inside.
"Hey! Don't just lie there! You'll get killed." He motioned for her to come deeper into the room where it was safer. Inside, there was a Marine and an Army grenadier tending to another police officer. He had taken a piece of shrapnel from an RPG to the left shoulder. The officer was biting on a folded up rag and grunting loudly as one of the Marines tried to hold him down. The Army Private, First Class used a pair of forceps from his small aid kit to remove the shrapnel, which was sticking out of the officer's shoulder. Removing the piece, he deposited it on the ground and began putting a field dressing around the wound to stem the bleeding. "You are fine. You are fine," the Army soldier said in simple, but understandable Japanese. He tightened the dressing down and patted the officer on the shoulder.
Natsumi looked back at the officer who had dragged her into the room. "No, I have to go out there. I need to find the people from my department." She got an incredulous look from her fellow police officer. "Don't ask. I just have to." Checking her rifle, she started to crawl back to the door.
"Wait," called the officer. "Here, take these." He handed her a couple grenades. "You're going to need them. Try not to expose yourself if you need to fire. There's too many of them."
She took the grenades and thanked the officer, and then she left. It was only a couple meters to the hallway with an inner stairwell. In a fast low-crawl, she moved into the hallway and to the stairwell. Already a few Americans were there covering it, making sure no one was coming up. Before the soldiers could react and stop her, she burst past them and ran up the stairs to the next landing, where she came face-to-face with four rifle barrels. A Marine radio-operator grabbed her and dragged her into the hallway. "Don't do that! Do you want us to kill you?" Not caring if she had understood him or not, the Marine turned back to covering the stairwell. Behind him, a Marine Lieutenant was calling for the TOC and Captain Surai, but he wasn't getting an answer.
"There's nothing at all! I can't raise anyone! Rich, take the radio off of your back. You sure this thing didn't get hit by shrapnel or debris?" The Lieutenant removed the radio from Lance Corporal Rich Mercaw's back. "Damnit." He pressed his finger into a dime-sized hole in the side of the radio. "We can't contact anyone. I need to find another radio."
Natsumi got back into a crouch and moved down to the end of the hall. She peeked around the corner and saw no one left in the hall, at least not alive. There was a dead Army trooper about fifteen meters away, multiple grenades having completely collapsed the walls behind him. Just then, she saw two figures dart out from the rubble of the walls and hoist the soldier onto their shoulders and jump back into the rubble. 'Chief?'
Quickly moving down the hall, she flicked her rifle over to full-automatic and sprayed rounds down while she ran, hoping she hit something. Diving into the rubble, she found the Chief and several Army soldiers huddled behind debris and over-turned tables. One Army soldier was collecting grenades from his buddies and beginning to fling them out the windows, several meters away. 'Objective One: Completed.' "Chief!" Natsumi dropped behind the table with the Kachou. "Found you!"
"Where's Miyuki?" he yelled over the din.
"I don't know. We got separated when the bombs hit. I was trying to find you, Ken, and Miyuki. Found you, so that's one down." She reloaded her rifle while she talked.
"Why did you come looking for us?" a quizzical expression coming across his face. "You came all the way back here through hell just to find me?"
Cocking her head to the side, she thought for a moment. "I have no idea why. There was another officer, and, he, well he saved my life. I was doing something dumb and he stopped me. Then he got wounded; I helped him, and went for a medic. But by the time I got back, he was dead. He died looking at a picture of his wife and kids. I just... I just... I couldn't think of anything else but finding my friends. I don't want to see anyone else die." Looking at the dead Army trooper in the room, she shook her head. "But I guess that won't be the case."
"Tsujimoto, I understand that it's hard. But we still have our jobs to do. I'm glad you're looking for everyone. If we get everyone together, we'll all have a better chance at survival." Unslinging his AK-74, he flipped it over to full automatic. "To tell you the truth, I wanted to do the same thing. I don't want to lose any of my best officers anymore than you want to lose your friends. So let's go. Where do you think the closest one is?"
"I think Ken is down one floor, at the front of the station."
"Then let's head there. Keep your head down and move fast." The Chief took Natsumi over to the door and they waited for one of the Army soldiers to toss an M67 fragmentation grenade out the window. Then they rushed down the hallway, low and fast, to the first inner hallway with a stairwell. Once again they found the same group of Americans covering the door. Shuffling past them again, Natsumi bounded down the steps with the Chief. They came out onto the next floor and made their way towards the front of the building through a winding hallway. Along the way they passed groups of police and Americans covering stairwells. The most remote of the stairwells was still being used to ferry troops down to the lower levels to help. Troops above that level were either heading down to the ground levels to help defend the building or heading all the way up to the top to help interdict the enemies still in the streets around the station. They came out to the front of hallway.
RPGs had completely blown away sections of walls. Large portions of the hallway were clearly visible from the outside. There were no police or Americans in the hallway. Crouching at the end of the inner hallway, the Chief and Natsumi tried to decide what to do. "There's no way we can traverse this. We'll be mincemeat." Checking his rifle to make sure it was on automatic, Kachou surveyed the broken floor and decimated wall.
To their side, two sets of arms reached out and dragged them through a doorway. "Don't stay out there. It's a death trap." Natsumi and Kachou looked up to see Ken and another officer.
"Ken! We were just coming for you." Natsumi got up off her butt and came to a kneeling position. "What happened out there?"
"When the bombs went off, they started throwing everything they could at us. RPGs, heavy machine guns, grenades, everything. There's a pair of APCs sitting out there firing their 35mm cannons at anything that moves on the first few floors. A tank is somewhere, but we can't see it, and it's firing what the Americans are calling armor-piercing darts, which is as near as they can describe it in Japanese to me. They don't explode, but they still plow through anything they touch. Apparently, they can't call air or artillery onto them because no one can see them, they're too afraid to stick their heads up long enough to find out." He leaned back against a wall and listened to the gunfire from below. "They must be having a hell of a time down there. We were going to go down and help, but a couple Marines wouldn't let us go down. They stopped us. They're only letting Americans go down to the lower levels."
Natsumi blurted out, "What? No way. We're heading down there to find Aoi and Yoriko and make sure they're all right. I got separated from Miyuki earlier. I have no idea where she is. Why aren't they letting you down?"
"I don't know. Only Americans are heading down. Well, not even that. They're only letting a few Americans down, too, the rest they're sending back up."
Kachou spoke up. "They don't want to overcrowd the stairwells and have friendly forces shooting at each other. That's why. The enemies are probably all over the first floor by now. We're probably only holding the stairwells, the upper levels, and maybe the basement. Maybe. We want to go down there and find out, though."
"How are we going to get down?" asked the other officer, Hideki Honda, another Traffic officer. "The Americans still won't let us go down. We probably won't even be able to get past the guards on any of the stairwells up here."
"Have to try," said Natsumi. "The only stairwell we can use is that one back along the route that we came that the Americans are using to get people up and down between the levels. I think they still hold the ground floor of that one."
"Let's go, then. No sense in sitting here. Can't do anything about the enemies who are below us from this room." Honda got up from his crouch and moved to the door. As soon as he got to the door, 35mm round came slicing through the room, blowing chucks of wallboard everywhere. He dove for the ground near the doorway, and was almost run over by an American plowing through the door.
"Damn! That was fun!" He had just run down the hall, getting shot at by the Type-89 APCs all the way. "Made it in once piece, too!" Sitting down, Delta Sergeant AJ Carlson unscrewed the cap from his canteen and took a sip. Carlson looked at the four officers in the room, and noted that they all wielded weapons. "All right, I need all of you to come with me. We need to reinforce the bottom floor. The enemies aren't even trying to come upstairs. They're just trying to get downstairs," he said in perfect Japanese. "Let's go!"
Natsumi shrugged and followed the Delta Force man out the door. She was followed closely by her compatriots as they made their way down the inner hallway and back to the only stairwell held on all levels by the defenders.
"Move out of the way, guys, I'm taking them down to reinforce the basement," Carlson bellowed at the Marines holding the doorway. "Move it." He led them downstairs. Passing the first floor, they all saw a pair of Army soldiers keeping watch with two light machine guns along with a Marine with an M-16A2.
One of the Army soldiers opened up with his S.A.W. at a target that had presented itself at the end of the hallway. "Die, damnit! Get away from this friggin' door!"
"This is all our defense right here? Damn. All right, let's keep going." The D-Boy's calm under the pressure amazed the four cops he had in tow.
On the basement level they found the new reinforcements that had already come down. A rag-tag squad of Marines, Army troopers, and police was covering all the doors and open stairwells leading up. Carlson deposited Honda with a group of Marines near where they had come down. "In case the enemies get though to this stairwell, you stay here and help defend it." Continuing on, Carlson deposited Ken and Kachou at the far end of the hall from Miyuki, except no one knew Miyuki was down there. Approaching Miyuki's position, Carlson said, "Hey, isn't that your partner over there?"
Sure enough, Miyuki was propped up against the same door, only now there were two Army troopers and Delta Sergeant, First Class Chris Stevens helping her. They had moved some debris out into the hallway to use as cover. Pieces of studs, slabs of drywall, a desk, some overturned filing cabinets, and even a couple computer towers formed the wall.
"Miyuki!" Natsumi yelped, upon noticing her partner, covered in concrete dust that had been blown free of the walls by grenades and gunfire. "How did you get down here?" Miyuki's usually velvety black hair was a terrible mix of white, gray, and a few patches of black visible through the dust.
"After I got separated from you, I just came down here," she replied, sliding back down behind the debris to cover her while she wiped her forehead.
"Yo! Carlson!" Stevens whooped, catching the movement out of the corner of his eye. "Glad you found me some help. Those bastards keep trying this stairwell." Almost to prove his statement, a JSDF soldier stuck his rifle around the corner and sprayed a few shots wildly. "I'm out, give me a grenade."
AJ Carlson handed his fellow Delta operator a fragmentation grenade. Taking the grenade, Stevens pulled the pin and let the spoon fly off. He cooked the grenade, let the fuse burn, for four seconds before rapidly throwing the ball of explosives at the stairwell entrance. The grenade forcefully ricocheted off of the wall and bounced slightly up the stairs and then detonated. By cooking the grenade, Stevens eliminated the possibility of it being thrown back. Two dead JSDF troops slumped out into the hall from the blast.
The minutes dragged on, with the defenders repulsing every attempt to take the lower level of the station. Of course, it was only a matter of time before the superior-in-numbers enemy force began to take the upper hand.
"Colonel Nakatani, sir, the troops are reporting that they have successfully entered the station. They currently hold the ground-level floor of the station, but the Americans and remaining police are tenaciously holding onto the basement and upper floors. The stairwells have become death traps for the men." Lieutenant Tanaka was standing beside Nakatani as he watched the night sky from the window. "The troops are attempting to cut through the floors of the ground level to reach the basement."
"Very well. Just make sure they know from the building plans what they're standing over. I don't want those plans damaged. I do not want to go through this entire siege and then lose the plans because some imbecile can't figure out that he's standing over a room that isn't even supposed to exist in that building."
"Yes, sir."
Sighing, he continued. "And what is the status of the fight against that small group of Americans away from the station?"
"Still not very good, sir. They are continuing to hold on tightly to their position while using artillery and air support as shield. Every time we try to assault the position with heavy weapons, they are immediately targeted and destroyed."
"They must move closer. Get so close that the Americans cannot use their support any more. Grab them by the belt-buckle and do not let go."
"Yes, sir."
Around 0220 Hours that morning, Officer Hideki Honda was sitting up against a wall. He was near a turn in the hallway, which led to the East side of the basement in the station, where Carlson had brought the Japanese police down. The turn down here was mirrored one level up, where the hallway made the same turn directly above. Unbeknownst to the Americans guarding that stairwell above, there were several terrorists and JSDF troops just around the corner and above in the hallway preparing C-4 plastic explosive blocks for action.
Laying strips in a circular fashion, the enemy soldiers tied them all together with det-cord and strung it back down the hallway to another turn. This would be the test breach to see if the method that a JSDF Lieutenant had come up with would work. If anything, at least it would kill some Americans, he thought. Attaching the cord to a detonation module, the Lieutenant shooed his men and the terrorists back into cover, and twisted the handle.
One floor below, Hideki Honda jumped halfway out of his skin as a huge section of floor was blown down several meters away and around the turn in the hallway. A Marine Sergeant immediately regained his balance from the shock of the explosion and rushed around the corner just in time to see a couple of grenades plop down through the gaping hole in the ceiling. "Holy Mother! Grenade!" he screamed, backpedaling around the corner.
Both grenades went off, sending debris and shrapnel everywhere. The Sergeant took one of his own grenades, cooked it, and bounced it off the far wall from where it went down the hall. It exploded in time to catch a terrorist diving through the hole. He was immediately thrown back, but two JSDF troops who were still above missed the explosion and were unharmed. They jumped down through the hole. Both soldiers recovered from the fall and turned to go back towards the corner and subsequently to the stairs and up. If they could flank the Americans covering the stairs, they could open up a floodgate of JSDF troops to go down into the basement.
Honda came next to the Marine Sergeant who was waiting at the corner. The Marine Sergeant readied his rifle to fire, but just as the first JSDF soldier cleared the corner, the rifle jammed. "Shit!" The JSDF soldier brought up his rifle and put three rounds into the Marine's chest, instantly killing him. His body was flung back into Honda, who couldn't deal with the sudden weight on him, and was pressed down to the floor. The other two Marines opened fire, dropping the first JSDF soldier. But his partner hadn't made the turn. He was sitting back at the corner, cooking a grenade. Popping out for just a second, he tossed it down the hallway. It exploded, catching the two Marines in the open. One Marine was killed, but the other was wounded and knocked unconscious. Honda knew he was alone in the hall and stopped trying to get out from under the Sergeant.
Playing dead, Honda watched through barely-open eyes as the JSDF soldier stalked around the corner, shortly followed by two terrorists and the JSDF Lieutenant who had come down after the lead two JSDF troops. The Lieutenant stopped over the Sergeant's body to make sure he was dead, and he checked the pulse to make sure. Nothing. He was just about to check Honda's pulse when one of the terrorists said, "No, we don't have time. We have to flank the Americans now." Looking up, the Lieutenant nodded and pressed up the hallway. Honda sighed. He was safe for now.
Within a few seconds, he heard gunfire, but it wasn't from the stairwell. More JSDF troops had dropped in through the hole in the ceiling around the corner and were meeting counterattacks from defenders in the East side of the lower level, trying to keep the enemies from advancing any farther.
Another roar of gunfire erupted above him. The Lieutenant and his terrorist and JSDF compatriots had flanked right behind the Americans guarding the stairwell above. The Army machine gunners and Marine rifleman were caught completely unaware. Honda closed his eyes, knowing that they were probably dead. Now that the enemy had two routes into the basement, they began to come down. Honda counted thirty JSDF troops and terrorists coming down the stairs, some going towards the West side, others passing him to go to the Eastern side. All he could do for now was to continue to play dead and hope no one bothered to check him or move him.
The explosion that had ripped a hole in the ceiling of the basement went unnoticed by most of the defenders. They had just written it off as just another grenade or larger explosive, but not the enemy coming from directly above them as opposed to the stairs. Carlson and Stevens turned around when the explosion went off, but shrugged and returned to guarding the stairwell. Only after hearing the eruption of enemy gunfire within the halls, and not from the stairs, did the defenders realize what was going on.
Miyuki's eyes went wide. "They're on the lower level! One of the stairwells failed!"
Just as she finished, a Marine turned the corner down the hall and shouted. "They blew a hole in the ceiling and took one of the stairwells! We've got company, everyone keep sharp! They may try to come through another point in the ceiling! Don't bunch up, spread out, and it they try it again, just fire everything up through those holes!"
Natsumi shot Miyuki a glance. "What did he say? I didn't understand all of that."
"He said that the enemies blew a whole in the ceiling and are down here. And if they try it again, fire everything you have up through the hole." Miyuki was scanning the ceiling now, wondering if the sections right over her and Natsumi would be the next ones to go. More explosions out to the other side of the station signaled that more sections of ceiling were being blown out.
Carlson reloaded his rifle and listened to the action. "They're only going over the other side. What the hell is going on? Are they trying to overload one side and get us fighting on the same level again? This is really starting to piss me off."
"I don't know. They've been fighting this whole battle weird. It's almost like they're trying desperately to protect something in the process of attacking." Delta Sergeant, First Class Chris Stevens popped off two more rounds at a movement he thought he saw in the stairwell. "I've got a bad guy with an AK in the stairs. Give me another grenade." Taking the explosive device from his partner, Stevens pulled the pin, cooked the fuse, and chucked the grenade. More debris flew out into the hallway along with another dead terrorist, his AK's stock ablaze in his hands. "Quality."
From the other side of the station came more sounds of fighting, but the East side remained quiet, only a few scattered but heated engagements to hold the stairwells. Then it became completely quiet. Several minutes passed with almost not shots fired at all. "What's going on?" asked Natsumi, "This is really creepy."
Miyuki squinted as she scanned the ceiling above her. "I have no idea." The two female officers checked their ammunition and waited for the eventual assault. But it still didn't come. Checking her watch, Miyuki noted that it was 0255 Hours. "Ah, what the hell."
In their defensive positions in the basement, they had no way of knowing that up above, the JSDF troops and the terrorists were looking over floor plans for the station. For the moment, they were neither attacking nor defending. They were stagnant on the first floor and the West end of the station's lower levels, which they had complete control of. No one was bothering with going up, because they knew their target was below. First and foremost they had to retrieve the data, locked away somewhere safe in the East end of the basement. After the data was found, they could get it out of the station and then finish eliminating the Americans, preferably quick with the tanks and APCs using their explosive ordinance, thought most of the attackers. But their orders were to hold the station and defend against an American counter-attack, which meant that they would have to clear the building after the data was found.
"We know it's somewhere in the East end," remarked a terrorist leader. "Just where exactly, we don't." He puffed at a cigarette, something he hadn't done in almost a day, while he traced over the floor plans.
A JSDF Captain flipped the page on the plans. "Okay, there are three lower levels, but we can only access the lowest two from service shafts here in the East-15 Corridor. But the East-15 Corridor could be one of the places where the data is."
"What is the data in, anyway?" asked another JSDF man.
"A computer terminal that's locked up in a secret room not on the plans. If else, we wouldn't be having this conversation right now," replied the terrorist leader. "We have to look for a gap in the floor plans big enough to house a small room. Something like a gap that shouldn't be in-between two rooms that doesn't have any ducts running up through it."
The JSDF Captain rubbed his face with open palms. "I say it's not even on that level. I say we just take the first lower level and then get into the levels with the firing range and cells. There's plenty of unaccounted for space down there next to the generator houses and the range. I doubt it's near the cells, besides, that's the West end."
An aide entered the shattered remnants of what was once the first floor break room. "Captain, it's Brigade S-3. They want to know what's going on and what's taking so long."
"I do not need this right now," complained the Captain as he took the radio handset from his aide. "Haruyo, we're trying to locate the area that the data could be kept in right now, but it is taking more time than we thought. We don't want to risk destroying the room and the data somehow."
"Look, just get it done. The Colonel is about a step away from slitting my throat and coming down there to do it himself." The Operations Officer sighed audibly over the line. "Please, just hurry up. He's going to go insane."
"What, you mean he's not insane already? Shit, Haruyo, this entire thing is crazy. I'm just following my orders. I've got no reason to actually care. We'll get it done, just give us some more time."
"You don't have more. Get it done, Hiroaki."
The JSDF Captain threw the receiver back at his aide. "He's complaining that this stupid operation is taking to long. No, really? I had no idea that attacking a heavily populated Japanese city with one brigade combat team while going up against an American battalion in a fortified position would be so hard. And if that wasn't enough, we're only here to collect one damn piece of data and then let the big guns destroy this place. Oh, if only I hadn't got involved in this crap."
"Be careful what you say, Captain," the terrorist barked, adding a particularly fiery tone to the other man's rank. "You may not care, but there are plenty of people around you who do. If you continue saying that, you might find yourself forcefully relieved from command."
Hiroaki fingered his pistol's grip. "Are you threatening me, you little piece of shit?" Pulling out the SIG-Sauer P228, he flicked off the safety. "I won't have some third-rate asshole who only cares about getting this data and couldn't care less about the safety of his own men, mine, or any of the civilians around here telling me that I'm going to be relieved."
"Hey! Back off, damnit!" yelled the other JSDF officer as he grabbed the Captain's arm and shoved the terrorist back with his other arm. "None of this! None! Now we've got a job to do, so quit arguing."
The terrorist shrugged off the JSDF officer's arm and flipped his middle finger at the Captain. "Just watch yourself."
Reholstering his pistol, the Captain shook his head. "Right." They gathered back over the floor plans and continued to debate where the best place to attack was to get to where they thought the data terminal would be. After another few minutes, they finally settled on a location.
"Here. We'll attack here and secure the hallway. Explosives to take down the ceiling here and here, and the terminal is just around the corner behind these walls. Absolutely no grenades after the ceiling is down. I don't want any stray fragments making this all for nothing. We move quickly, we hit hard, we get the data, and we get the hell out."
A few floors up, United States Marine Corps Captain Vincent Surai was sitting up against an overturned filing cabinet pondering the situation at hand. "This sucks."
"Really?" responded another Marine.
Surai just raised an eyebrow at the enlisted man.
"Sorry, sir."
"Nah, that was just asking for a sarcastic response." He rubbed his face and sighed. "Well, anyone got any bright ideas? I'm fresh out. Virtually everyone is out of grenades, seems like every radio in this building has been put out of commission, casualties are continuing to rise, ammunition is running ridiculously low, and we've got about two battalions of idiots with guns in and around the building but not trying to come up here and kill us. Well, actually, I do have dumb ideas, though. We could have everyone jump out the windows and surprise the crap out of these people. Maybe they'll think we're actually reinforcements parachuting in without chutes. They'd have to surrender to the craziest people in the world, Marines and Army Infantry who parachute without chutes. Or we could always just sit here and wait for them to come up here. Kind of what we're doing now, right?"
The other defenders in the room just smirked as Surai continued to provide comical options for them to undertake, but everyone knew that what he was saying actually was the gist of their options for real. There wasn't much that they could do with what they had. A few radios actually were working, though. An Army Lieutenant up near the roof had his working and was still in contact with Camp Zama. Unfortunately, they were failing to tell him that they weren't in contact with the onsite commander, Captain Surai. At times in the U.S. Military, information moved at about the pace of molasses in Antarctica in January.
Arizuka and Kinoshita were near Surai. A Navy Corpsman was changing a dressing on Arizuka's leg, which was still bleeding slightly from a gash received from falling debris during the bombing of the wall about an hour and a half ago. It was just about 0335 Hours. After the Corpsman finished, he scuttled over to a hole in the wall and slipped through it to another room to tend to anyone else he could find.
Kinoshita was with an Army Specialist trying to fix Surai's radio, which had been knocked out when debris hit it. "Move the flashlight left a bit, I can't see," she said. Holding a pair of tweezers, she tried to splice a new wire into the antenna jack. She had cannibalized the wire from another radio set that had been completely destroyed. "Just a little bit more... There." She crimped the wire around a contact that she had rubbed down with her fingernail file. Next was the issue of reattaching the cracked antenna. Luckily, it fit, but the connection was still a bit loose. Some tape commandeered from a drawer in the next room remedied that. The Specialist was amazed at her knowledge of the set. "Radios are all the same, basically. This one is a lot more complicated that the ones we use, but its basics are still the same."
When her hands began getting a little cramped, she turned things over the Specialist while she held the light. Army Specialist, Fourth Class Richard Walls finished up the more complex tasks that Kinoshita had left, including fixing the Harris Satellite Receiver organic to the radio. For a few more minutes he fiddled with the innards of the set, attempting to repair connections. After he was finished, he put down the small tools and propped the radio against the wall and tried turning it on. Immediately the Harris Frequency Screen on the PRC-117F began flashing. "Houston, we have lift-off. Hell yeah!"
Surai moved over. "Thanks for helping, Kinoshita. And you too, Specialist. Okay, let's see if we can get someone, anyone, on the horn here." Sliding on his butt closer to the gaping holes in the wall which opened into what as once a hallway, but now little more than an open space between the third and fifth floors, Surai tried to get the antenna closer to the open air and better reception. He was still under cover and couldn't be seen from the outside. Typing in some of the frequencies that he had memorized, he crossed his fingers and said a little prayer. The Marine Captain thumbed the talk button and spoke into the handset. "This is Alpha Six, is anyone on this channel? Over." Silence. "This is Alpha Six, is anyone on this channel? Over." Silence. "I repeat, this is Alpha Six, is anyone on this channel? Over." He sighed and was about to type in another freq when the sweetest words he had ever heard came over the set.
"Alpha Six, Zama-Six. Go."
The Marine sank into the floor in joy. "Oh, thank God." He thumbed the button again. "Alpha Six. We managed to fix our radio and we're back in contact. Over."
"Alpha, hold for confirmation of identity."
'Confirmation of what?' Surai looked at the handset quizzically. "Alpha Six, what the hell does that mean? Over." He thought for a moment. 'Oh, yeah. They want to make sure I'm not an enemy who managed to get hold of a radio set and wants to play havoc with us.' The Captain continued to lie on the floor while he waited for Zama to come back with a question that only he would know the answer to and clear him of suspicion. It seemed like hours, but was actually only about a minute.
"Alpha, Zama. What was the name of that Finnish nut-job peacenik who always tried to get on base at Keflavik?"
His mouth almost dropped through the floor and down to the basement. 'You've got to be kidding me. They're asking me THAT?' "Hey, first of all she wasn't Finnish. She was Norwegian. Get it right. Secondly, what do you mean 'tried?' She always got on base. That's why you never trust those retarded APs (Air Patrol, the Air Force's police) to do a Marine's job. Third, her name was Rebekka Soerland. Happy now? Over." He could almost hear the laughter, tens of kilometers away. When Surai was a young Marine Lieutenant, fresh out of training, he had been assigned to Keflavik Naval Air Station on Iceland. There was a particular Norwegian girl who loved toying with the Americans, and Surai had finally booted her off base and arrested by the local police when she managed to get into his quarters.
"Alpha Six, hah hah, you're cleared. Just making sure, son. What's your SITREP? Over."
"Sir, quite frankly, it's really bad. We're low on just about everything and I know that the first floor has already been overrun and probably so have the lower levels of the building. I have no contact at this time from any of my men or the Army troops that were down there. We hold the second floor and up. There have been no attempts by the enemy to take anything above the first floor, yet. Currently it's just a stalemate. We're not doing anything; they're not doing anything. I've got way to many casualties to try a direct assault. Anything that moves in the hallways is guaranteed to be killed. Hell, I don't even have a hallway. They busted it up so badly with RPGs and grenades that it collapsed along a twenty-meter stretch down onto the third floor. I'm moving what medical supplies and ammunition I have left around through holes they we're making in the walls. Over."
"Hold on as best you can, Captain. We're still trying to get the armor force set up outside the Ward, but it will take more time. Hopefully it will start rolling at about 0700. That's what we're shooting for. If you haven't noticed, I've stopped artillery around you for now. Almost all the enemies are too close to the building to try and strike them and not hit the building itself. I don't want to weaken it anymore than it already is and have it come collapsing down on you. Unfortunately, the Japanese have also moved up their man-portable surface-to-air missiles and their AAA platforms. They haven't shot down anything yet, but they've winged some aircraft and I've had to pull them back. That means they can't strike at the tanks and APCs that have also moved up to the building. There're about ten tanks and thirteen APCs on your porch. Over."
"Oh, perfect. Thanks for the update, sir. Always good to know what's going on in the world." Rapping his fingers on the floor, Surai tried to think of anything else that he might need to say. "What's the status of Delta Five-One, Sir? Over."
"They're holding their own for now. It's been a hell of a fight, but they're still kicking." Several explosions from the depths below cut off Walker. "What was that?"
Flipping the button again, Surai replied. "I think they're trying something again, Sir. I'll get back to you; I need to find out. Alpha Six out." Inching back away from the debris and back into the dark recesses of the room, Surai yelled over the now-increasingly loud gunfire, "God! What does a guy need to do to get some sleep around here! Every other minutes it's bang-bang this, boom-boom that!"
A section of ceiling had been blown down in front of them only a few minutes before, and now they were retreating back down the hallway. The four Americans and the two female police officers took turns covering each other as they made their way to better cover. Grenade fragments and rifle fire were piercing through the growing plumes of thick, gray, acrid smoke. It was to the point where they could hardly see two meters in front of them.
Already, the defenders at the opposite end of the hallway had abandoned their position and were covering their own withdrawal. But as they pulled back, two more ceiling sections were blown down close to each other, causing a catastrophic failure of the walls. Debris tumbled into the hallway, cutting off the stairwell. The enemy had inadvertently closed off their own assault route by using too many explosives. Ken and the Chief retreated back down the hallway when their American counterparts fell back, letting the Deltas, the Army troopers, and the two women defend the rest of the hall. "We need to go reinforce the other routes! They can handle this!"
Finally turning the corner, the two Delta Sergeants ordered the two women to withdrawal to the cafeteria and defend it. The Americans would make the final stand in the halls. "If they break through the last lines, fire everything you have at them! Don't let them get to the civilians!" Carlson's words were almost completely drowned out by the cracking of rounds hitting the concrete walls around him. Stevens held his M4A1 around the corner and depressed the trigger, sending a full-auto hail of bullets down the hallway, hoping that he would hit something.
With immense reluctance, Natsumi and Miyuki got up from their crouches and began to move back down the halls towards the cafeteria just as another thunderous explosion ripped the ceiling out from in front of them. The blast hurled them both backwards, dropping them like tons of bricks onto the cold floor. Natsumi tried to prop herself up and bring her rifle to bear on the hole above her, but it was no use. Her arm wouldn't work. 'If I could just move my arm,' she thought. Even straining as hard as possible wouldn't do the trick. Using her other hand, she reached for her pistol and grabbed it. She flicked off the safety and fired several rounds into the smoke-filled air floating around. A terrorist body thunked down on the debris in front of her, dead, a shot from her pistol having gone right through his forehead. Reaching the end of her clip, she again tried to move her other arm to bring up the rifle, but it still wouldn't move. As two more enemies dropped through the hole, she began to panic. Twisting her head up and around so she could see her arm, she almost had a stroke. Miyuki's soot-blackened body was pinning her arm to the ground. "Miyuki! No!"
A JSDF soldier noticed her shadowy form on the floor through the smoke and brought his rifle up, but a row of tiny holes was stitched up his body. The bullets from the Army PFC's rifle threw him back into the other enemies that had dropped in. Carlson rushed over to Natsumi and Miyuki. Grabbing Miyuki's body, he dragged her off of Natsumi. While continuing to receive covering fire from the Private, the Delta Sergeant propped Miyuki against the wall before helping Natsumi up. "She's still alive!" Reacting to another threat, AJ Carlson whipped around and pumped buckshot from the shortened 12-gauge shotgun slung under his M4A1's barrel into a terrorist trying to shove the dead JSDF soldier off of himself, giving a whole new meaning to the term, "ripping him a new one."
Natsumi knelt next to Miyuki, who stirred a bit. "Miyuki! Miyuki! Are you all right? Come on, speak to me!" More and more gunfire screamed about the halls, making it impossible to hear anything about a full-lung scream. "Say something! Please!" The brown-haired officer shook her friend's arm, trying to rouse her more.
Miyuki shook her head from side to side, trying to clear the cobwebs. "I'm okay! I can still fight." That was not really the case, as Miyuki was obviously unable to stand, but tried to anyway. Her legs were paralyzed. The sharp blow that she had received to her back when she was thrown back had temporarily knocked out her ability to feel or use her legs, but at the time she couldn't tell. Her senses were going berserk and the lack of feeling below her torso wasn't even registering with her current thoughts. Slowly, she regained the use of her legs, and seeing her try to stand was like watching a newborn giraffe attempt to walk. It was quite pitiful.
Two grenades plopped through the opening in the ceiling, and Carlson, reloading the shotgun, saw them roll to a stop on separate sides of the hall, in the middle of the remains of the ceiling. Spinning around, he screamed, "Grenades!" and dove for the two women. He covered them as best he could. Twin explosions ripped through the halls, sending fragments all over. Given the proximity to the blasts, Carlson took several hits. Most struck his Kevlar-armored torso, but a few struck his still exposed legs. The Delta slumped to his side clutched his legs, screaming that he was hit. The Army PFC rushed over to the downed Sergeant, First Class to help, but not before a JSDF soldier came down through the hole, firing as he dropped. Several rounds slammed into the PFC's side, flipping him around and nailing him to the floor. He was dead before he hit the floor. The other Army Private unloaded his entire clip from his M-16A2 into the smoke, felling the JSDF soldier. He moved up in a crouched stance, reloading his rifle, and then firing more blind shots into the smoke to deter more enemies.
The force of the blast hitting Carlson had knocked Natsumi into Miyuki, reversing their positions from before, with Natsumi now pinning Miyuki down. Natsumi saw Carlson on the floor to her right; the big Delta was still rolling around, blood seeping from between his finger as he tried to apply pressure to the wounds in his legs. Next to Natsumi, her black-haired fellow policewoman tried, once again, to regain her senses.
Now Miyuki's vision was beginning to swim. She couldn't distinguish any lines; everything was just a big blur. "Natsumi. I can't feel anything," she whispered, knowing that there was no way her partner would hear it over the thundering battle around them. Officer Miyuki Kobayakawa felt around for her MP5. 'I can't stop, I can't give up. Have to move. Have to fight. Have to protect the civilians.' Miyuki managed to find the strength to get up onto her elbows just as Natsumi lifted herself up and grabbed her Type-89.
Officer Natsumi Tsujimoto flashed her partner a faint smile and twisted around onto her butt. "Come on, we have to move!" she yelled, but she couldn't get up fully. The pain was too great. Neither of the women could get up.
Behind her, the Army Private was still firing his rifle into the smoke. Behind him, Sergeant, First Class Chris Stevens was down to his final two magazines for his rifle when he turned to his side and screamed, "AJ, last mags!" He stopped short of turning back to the fight when he saw his fellow Delta, hit and down, in the hallway a few meters away. "AJ!" A rifle round tore through his left arm, spinning him around in his kneeling position, and exposing his side. Another round pierced the less-protected side panel of the armor, slamming him into the floor. "Ahhhh! I'm hit!" In desperation, he brought his rifle up purely on adrenaline and loosed an entire clip on auto right into the chest of a terrorist rushing up to the corner, firing his AK wildly. Stevens kicked with his legs to get around the corner and pushed himself back towards AJ Carlson. Both Deltas were in extreme pain.
Eighteen-year-old Army Private Michael McCray from Moscow, Idaho was the only remaining fully-function defender left in the hallway. He had joined the Army and volunteered for the Infantry before he had even graduated high school. All he ever had wanted to do was to serve in the military. Now he was defending five casualties in a horrible battle over a single computer terminal. Michael fired the last rounds of his magazine into the hole above as more JSDF troops reached the corner of the hallway behind him.
To McCray's left, Stevens tried to keep his pistol steady, but the pain in his side was too great. Gathering his last strength, he yelled at the young Private. "Enemies behind you! Look out!" came from his mouth right before the blackness overtook his vision and all of his senses failed him. Stevens' helmeted head clattered to the floor with a faint click that no one could hear.
Dropping to his right and spinning around, McCray leveled off his rifle and put a three-round burst through a JSDF trooper's chest, killing him instantly. Another JSDF soldier tried to take the fallen one's place, but met a similar fate. Michael McCray's rifle continued to pour fire at the hallway, but he couldn't go on forever. The slide ratcheted back on his rifle, signaling an empty clip. He knew he was out of ammunition. Private McCray dove for Stevens' rifle, but it was empty, too. Next he went for Stevens' pistol. Dropping the clip, he counted two rounds in the magazine and one in the chamber. The young enlisted soldier raised up the pistol and aimed at a lone terrorist that he could barely make out through the smoke. The terrorist had his rifle up and was advancing down the hallway. He didn't notice that McCray was still alive until he saw the muzzle flash of the pistol for the third time.
First shot wide left. Second shot wide right. Third shot. The third shot entered the man's skull right between his eyes dropping him like a stone. But as a dying spasm, he triggered his Type-89. A steady steam of bullets worked their way along the floor, the final two striking McCray in the shoulder and the back. McCray grunted under the pain. Clutching the pistol in his hands, McCray tried to fight back the fiery power of the pain, but it wasn't to be. He finally and reluctantly relented, letting the blackness take him.
Behind him, Natsumi and Miyuki were just finding the strength to get up. They saw that all four Americans were down. Carlson struggled to apply a bandage to his worst wound, the events of the past few seconds having completely passed him by. Miyuki and Natsumi struggled over the body of the Army PFC, dead, near McCray and tried to help Carlson up. They were going to make a break for the cafeteria, but he too fell unconscious, the strain of moving proving too much.
Two JSDF soldiers dropped through the hole in the ceiling above, smoke flowing down with them, like it was being dragged along. As the lower pressure created by their falls met with the higher pressure in the hall below, the smoke clashed and spun around in circles. If it weren't a battle scene, it would've made a nice screensaver for a PC in a cubicle of a deprived engineer somewhere. Natsumi saw the movement out of the corner of her eye and spun around. It was almost a scene from the Matrix as she brought up her rifle in slow motion, pushing Miyuki away with her other hand. She triggered a burst of rifle rounds.
The first few rounds went wide, but the next five or six struck home, killing the soldier to the left. But the one to the right had already reacted. The firing pin ignited the charges in the cartridges. As the gas created expanded, it forced the bullets past the speed of sound and out of the end of the rifle. Out of all the rounds he fired, just two were headed for the women. Natsumi was shifting to her left when the bullets struck her shoulder. The armor piercing 5.56mm rounds lanced straight through the thinly protected area of the armor over her right shoulder. Both rounds exited her body and continued on to what was right behind her. Entering just above Miyuki's collarbone, the first round exited without causing much damage. The second round ripped through her chest, exiting through her right shoulder blade. That bullet finally lost all its kinetic energy and flattened itself out against the rear wall of Miyuki's Kevlar vest.
Natsumi was thrown back violently to her right rear. She landed atop Miyuki, who had already hit the ground before her. Miyuki was out cold already, blood streaming from her shoulder and chest. As Natsumi lay in Miyuki's and her own blood, she couldn't help but think about two things. Her partner and best friend dying slowly below her, and an American Lieutenant two kilometers away, fighting for his own life. Just as she blacked out, she hoarsely gasped, "Miyuki. Arleigh. I'm hit."
The JSDF soldier who had shot her walked up to the two women and looked down at them. Several more terrorists and JSDF personnel turned the corner at the end of the hall and came down through the hole in the ceiling. Three Americans and two Japanese policewomen were unconscious at their feet. They were about to make sure all of them were dead.
"Who cares? Just shoot them all a few times. That'll make sure."
"I cannot believe I shot two women."
"Once again, who cares? Move it, we've got a job to do."
"I shot women."
"Oh, to hell with this. If you have some friggin' rivers to cry, go do it. Just get out of my way." The terrorist egging on the JSDF soldier got fed up with the delay and was just bringing his AK-74 to bear when a burst of machine gun fire sliced through his torso. The other attackers spun around in horror as shadowy figures moved through the smoke, firing machine guns from the hip. Before anyone could even think to aim, they were cut down with relentless fire.
Marine Sergeant Dale Lennox and Army Staff Sergeant Ken Swiatowski moved forward, firing two M240 machine guns from the hip. They were followed by three more Army troopers and two Marines. If there was one overall theme of U.S. Military training, it was that the "Rambo" movies were good example of fiction, and not to be taken seriously, especially when it came to firing machine guns from the hip. Of course, in battle, that sometimes proved otherwise when the body overrides the mind's basic survival and intelligence functions.
"Grab the bodies and get them back to the cafeteria!" bellowed "Sweet" Swiatowski. He fired up into the hole in the ceiling to deter any enemies above while Lennox covered the hallway corner with fire. "No one gets left behind! Don't leave their weapons, either!"
"Sarge! Sarge! These two are still alive!"
"So are these two!"
"And this one, too!"
"Well, then get them the hell back there! Move it, damnit!" Sweet continued to pour fire upwards as the other troops grabbed the bodies of four unconscious defenders and one dead defender. "Lennox! Let's go!"
"Roger that!" Dale Lennox jumped up from his kneeling position and backpedaled over the debris, covering the team in its wake. More grenades plopped through the ceiling hole as he retreated towards the turn in the hall. A few fragments reached out at him, but he was already turned and gone.
As the enemies came down into the hallway, they surveyed the carnage. Dead terrorists and dead JSDF, but no dead or wounded defenders.
"What the hell happened here?" muttered a JSDF soldier as he stepped over the unrecognizable body of a former comrade in arms. "This is quickly becoming not worth the cost."
It was 0420 Hours. Low on ammo and low on able-bodied personnel, the defenders tightened up into their last perimeter, holding the ends of corridor East-15.
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