The Tank

The Tank, Chapter 4

Chapter 4

        Cordite and his team of rag-tag tankers marched in a loose skirmish line between the abandoned cars of the highway. Their uniforms were as mismatched as their personalities: Maverik’s flight suit, Tex and Cordite’s tanker uniforms, Ratchet’s coveralls, and Cagney’s police insignia. Cagney was in the lead, but it was really Lacey who was on point, alert and anxious. Suddenly the dog stopped, nose in the air. Cagney raised her fist, signaling the group to halt.  “She smells something.”

        Tex sniffed. “So do I: beer.”

        Ratchet frowned. “Because you’re an alcoholic.”

        “Don’t have to be an alcoholic to smell a brewery.”

        Cagney shook her head. “Lacey’s not trained to alert at beer. It’s gotta either be an IED or vehicles.”

        “Let’s hope it’s vehicles.” Cordite immediately took command. “All right, hand signals only.” Then nodded his chin to the german shepherd. “Let her go.”

        Cagney slipped Lacey’s lead and the dog sauntered forward, her snout pointed first up and then down as she tried to go after the scent. Cordite’s team followed the dog, but much more carefully now. They moved in a crouch, M16 rifles raised, more like a special forces patrol than rag tag militia. They let Lacey range far ahead, but the dog always remained in sight.

        It led them down an off-ramp, away from the road, through a copse of trees and over an embankment, until she suddenly fell on her stomach.

        Cagney held her fist up again and whispered: “She found it. Just over the ridge.”

        Cordite nodded and signalled to the group. They all got on their bellies and crawled up the embankment toward Lacey. When they reached the dog, they peered over the ridge to see two technical trucks, heavy caliber machine guns in their beds, parked behind a roadside building.

        Cordite signalled the others and they slide back out of sight just on the other side of the ridge line. “I think we found some gas.”

        “Ethanol,” Ratchet corrected him.

        “Let’s hope they run on ethanol. Otherwise you’ll have to convert Bullet Magnet back to gasoline.”

        “There is no more gasoline. The oil wells were all nuked.”

        Cordite seems unconvinced. “Yeah, well, we’ll see.”

        Maverik’s flight jacket indicated that he was a Lieutenant. That meant he was only officer present. None the less, despite technically outranking the entire group, he was smart enough to leave ground tactics to someone else. “How we gonna do this?”

        “I could sneak down and start siphoning while you guys cover me from here,” suggested Tex.

        Cordite eyed the building, and its dilapidated sign that announced it as “The Roadside Palace.” “Negative. Building’s a strong point. See the reinforcements there and there?” He pointed out two sandbagged positions that armored the building under and around its windows. “Whoever runs this joint knows what they’re doing.”

        “Or what she’s doing,” Ratchet corrected.

        Everyone groaned.

        “Could be a she,” Ratchet insisted.

        Cordite steered the conversation back on topic. “Either way, if Tex is siphoning gas he’s gonna take fire from those strong points. And there’s nothing we’ll be able to do to save him.

        Tex nodded “So what’s the plan, jefe?”

         “We gotta neutralize the position from the inside out.”