Chapter 12. Onion Bun

By Irene

Everybody heard “Onion Bun” over their coms. The codeword Tony used was selected as something he could say whether he was successful or not, it started the timeline for the barrage. As soon as he said it the bank of individual status lights in the control room when from White to Red, and moments later, to Yellow. There was a delay built in before the shooting started, so the tank could rumble into position on the path, where it would bottle up anybody who escaped from the falling fire and steel rain in the celebration area.

The shooters assigned to the tank took up positions, with their coms dialed in to Jambo’s frequency, he would call the shots. Single individuals did not merit the attention of the tank’s machine guns or the 152 mm crowd pleaser. The tank gave the second code word when it was ready and sighted in. The third code word was given from the command room where we were watching the life of the party on the pyramid, figured the time was ripe.

Tony’s wife was experiencing the last few turns of the chest spreader’s handle.

Watching the feed from the drone hovering over the pyramid, the tank commander saw all the Aztexs, every man and woman of them, was clustered very tightly around the pyramid as the sacrifice inched towards the natural heart-wrenching conclusion. This had not happened Saturday night, then the crowd danced and cheered, perhaps because there was no blood drinking planned. The crew directing the mortars saw the same thing on their screens. Targeting was set with a final adjustment for wind, the mortar lights blinked to yellow as the adjustment were made. Instead of walking their volleys through the whole field every tube was now targeted at the tightly packed crowd, around the edge of the group. Based on orders from the nerds, looking at the plotted impact points for each, the crews made slight final adjustments to the mortars. The lights all went green again.

It was time. I gave the order “drop” to the mortar operators. Each shell dropped about 2.7 feet down the barrel, struck the fixed firing pin at the bottom of the pipe, then went back up the barrel with rather more velocity, allowing it to arc out over the distance to the target.

(Some mortars have a trigger, but we were using basic lightweight infantry models with a fixed firing pin activated by dropping the shell.)

Reaction time of the mortar crews was dead on, a symptom of a lifetime of drag racing where hitting the light is so important. The eight shells arched over the marsh. The submunitions were triggered to release by time in flight, altitude and RF signal proximity. Together the mortar shells exploded overhead, each deploying dozens of flaming steel bullets over the crowd, in an arc around the back the mass.

When the tank the commander heard the “drop” command, he counted off the pre-computed time of flight needed for the mortar fire to reach the target, less a delay for his own gun’s time of flight, then ordered “fire.” The huge gun on the tank belched fire, firing a HE shot that was unlikely to hit anybody. It exploded about 3/4s of the way down the party field from the pyramid. No Aztexs saw the tank up the path, but they all saw, heard and felt the shock wave of the HE explosion which came from tens of yards away in the only direction of escape. The blast was such that their scrambled minds would reject that direction as an option. The explosion in the field caused most of the people standing to dive to the ground or crowd towards the pyramid. Both options worked for us, when the mortar shells popped in flight overhead about 35% of the dense crowd took hits from the submunitions spewed by the shells. Immediately after the tank blast the command land mines set at the bottom of the pyramid tore into the crowd, shredding bodies closest to the pyramid. Those who could move were even more inspired to press towards the pyramid, crowding in providing a denser kill zone for the second volley. The mortar aim adjustments were already computed, lights went from yellow to green again.

“Drop.”

Usually “duck and cover” is a good idea if you are shot at directly (all of them had been shot at in the past), one naturally wants to present a smaller target area. But since the mortar shells were spitting out flaming metal bullets from directly overhead, it had the opposite effect, those people grabbing the ground presented the largest possible target area, and caught the most fire for the first few volleys. After that it didn’t matter much.

For Tony’s wife, the first volley came at the worst possible time in a series of terrible hours.

Sunday night’s main activities started with a little sex and violence appetizer, served with selected drugs, to set the mood. That was all foreplay. The main show started when Tony’s wife was taken from the jail, tied standing in a hand-pulled cart, naked, spread-eagle. During the short ride she was sodomized with vigor by Doggo, the incoming head of the LA Aztexs. The cart was pulled to the stage for her show. Once she was tied standing on the pyramid the charges were read in German, Carlos found it a brutal language and really, the crowd did not care about the specifics. She had suggested the Pablo as a target, but had declined when she was given a chance to lead the assault, claiming she could do the most to help the attack using her magic in a supporting role. Obviously her magic wasn’t much good. She “let Tony go” as a sacrifice, so she must love him more than she loved the gang. Finally the leaders told the crowd that she could be redeemed if she “led the dead battalion of Aztex warriors” watching over this vital mission, aiming their automatic weapons as they fired. The drug crazed assembly, who were approaching a peak in terms of unbridled excitement, loved every syllable of it.

After almost an hour of disgusting and painful preliminaries, Tony’s wife was given IV drugs and oxygen via a nasal cannula so the pain would not kill her. Finally her chest was opened with a stone knife (a 600 year old obsidian blade - it still survived) and a filthy well-used rib spreader was inserted and cranked open while she looked down in pure agony and horror. Carlos Jaguar, the High Chief of the gang, actually had his hand around her heart when the tank fired the HE blast into the field. The same second the flaming bullets from the mortar sub-munitions rained on the crowd, like flaming death pissing from demons in the heavens. At the explosion some people hit the ground where they were. The rest of the people pressed forward, towards the pyramid, embracing the mine explosions that tore them apart. Some were far enough gone that they cheered like it was part of the fireworks. Others knew better, but there was no place to go until the bodies started to pile up. Then it was too late.