Manhunter

by Chris Ryan

  ‘Stay the fuck down!’ Mallet hollered.

  Bullets zipped narrowly overhead, spattering into the wall behind Bowman, gouging out chunks of masonry. Through a slender gap in the parapet he saw the rebels in the middle assault team go static at a baseline four metres ahead of the depression. Tongues of flame licked out of their weapon muzzles as they started putting down suppressive fire on the rooftop. The assault group on the right flank advanced four metres, drew level with the middle team, then half disappeared into the ground cover. The front two assault groups took over the fire-support role, aiming at the parapet while the third team ran forward and hit the same baseline as their comrades.

  The rebels are pepper-potting, Bowman realised. Fire-and-move tactics. They were advancing incrementally, one group moving forward while the two others covered them with sustained fire. The most efficient way of moving across exposed ground. Two of the teams could engage their opponents at all times, forcing them to keep their heads down while their muckers rushed ahead to establish a new baseline.

  ‘This isn’t a rebel force,’ Loader shouted. ‘It’s a fucking army. These guys are trained soldiers.’

  Webb yelled at Bowman, drawing his attention to the group of rebels to the left. Bowman shifted round on his belly, shoved the Gimpy barrel through a small aperture in the parapet. He aimed at the assault team as they ran forward, hit them with a couple of short bursts moments before they disappeared behind a dip in the ground.

  ‘Go right, go right! Rebels moving!’ Webb shouted.

  Bowman slid round to a new firing position. The team on the opposite flank was now breaking forward. He put in three more bursts, saw the tracers punching into the rebel ranks, reached the end of the belt.

  ‘Changing mag!’

  He yanked the bolt back, flipped open the top cover and cleared the freed tray. Then he grabbed a fresh belt from the stack, replaced the cover, stared down the sights. Webb bellowed at him to go left. Bowman saw the middle fire team emerge from cover and opened up on them, killing two more rebels before they went static again.

  The guys on the rooftop were communicating with one another constantly. Giving orders, making sure that every member of the team knew exactly what they were doing. Webb and Mallet were shouting out enemy movements to the two guys on the Gimpys, directing them on to target and taking out key individual figures. Anyone rallying the troops or whose body language suggested they might be a senior officer. The quickest way to win the battle, Bowman knew. Take out the commanding officers.

  Mavinda’s voice sounded in his earpiece.

  ‘Enemy attacking from the west flank,’ he said. ‘Machete Boys. Forty of them.’

  Bowman glanced across his shoulder. Through the gaps in the western parapet, he caught sight of the line of Boys swarming forward, firing on the gun pits on the west side of the garden. The ragtag leftovers of the earlier assaults.

  Loader was looking in the same direction. ‘Where the fuck did they come from?’

  ‘Must have snuck in through the fence.’

  ‘Shit. Just what we bloody need.’

  The Boys were the sacrificial lambs, Bowman realised. Sent in by the Russians to draw the defenders’ fire away from the main attack. They weren’t crucial to the plan. If they got within close proximity of the stronghold, it was a bonus. If they failed, it didn’t matter. They would still tie the opposition down.

  ‘The Russians know what they’re doing,’ Loader growled.

  Mallet spoke into his mic.

  ‘Major, tell your men on the west to concentrate on the Machete Boys. Whatever you do, keep them from the stronghold. We’ll take care of the enemies to the front.’

  The defenders were constantly shifting firing positions, targeting each assault group as they advanced four metres before going to ground again. Then the team switched their aim to the next group breaking cover. Loader fired at them with short spurts from the other Gimpy. Webb dropped targets with the AWC. Mallet had switched to his C8 rifle for the closer-range stuff. But the barrage of rebel gunfire was unrelenting. Dust and masonry whipped up around the men on the rooftop. With all the shit flying past them, Bowman and the others found it harder to aim. The rebels were now twenty metres inside the estate, edging forward slowly but steadily. Like the tide creeping in.

  In the tail of his eye, Bowman glimpsed several rounds smacking into the northern garden wall as some of the rebels trained their fire on the mortar pit. A few others aimed at the gun pits scattered across the front of the stronghold. But the majority targeted the GPMGs on the rooftop. Bowman felt the hot carriage of air as a bullet winged past him and glanced off the generator.

  ‘Jesus,’ he said.

  ‘This is nothing like the last attack,’ Webb said.

  ‘Tell me about it,’ Loader shouted. ‘These guys actually know how to fucking shoot.’

  Mortars splashed into the soft ground around the rebel groups. A few men were torn apart by the bombardment, but most were sheltered behind the dips in the ground. Bowman saw an orange flash below the parapet as Gregory opened up with the platoon GPMG in the front gun pit. The assault teams continued to advance despite the appalling fire pouring down on them. They knew how vital it was to maintain momentum during an assault.

  Bowman put in another burst at the rebels and stole a glance at the ground to the west. To his surprise, he saw that the Machete Boys were a hundred metres inside the fence and closing fast. Mallet yelled an order at Loader. The latter uplifted the GPMG and swung round to the west-facing parapet. He went prone and gave the Boys a few spurts from the Gimpy. Then he shifted back round to the north side, fired at the main group.

  ‘We’re juggling here!’ he shouted. ‘We’re in trouble, John!’

  Mallet got straight on the comms to Casey.

  ‘Pull back fifty metres. Repeat, fifty metres,’ he said. ‘Hit them with some near-surface bursts.’

  There was a brief pause as Casey set the fuses on the mortars to near-surface detonation. At the front of the estate, Bowman saw the middle assault group spring up from ground cover and start towards a new baseline. The two teams on the left and right flanks began putting down suppressive fire on the GPMGs on the rooftop, covering the middle team’s advance. Bowman came to the end of another belt and hastily reloaded. His fourth belt. Six belts of 7.62 mm brass left.

  In the next breath, he heard a sequence of dull pops as Casey launched the mortars at terrific speed. The bombs plunged to the earth and detonated half a metre above the surface. Which gave a much wider spread than an impact-burst bomb. Men screamed as a deluge of shell fragments tore through them, slashing through flesh and lacerating vitals. Three more mortars dropped into the stretch of dead ground between the front and rear assault teams, wreathing the ground in greyish smoke.

  ‘That’s it!’ Loader roared. ‘Fucking give it to ’em!’

  With mortar shells exploding all around them, the two groups of rebels to the rear struggled to keep up their sustained fire on the stronghold. The middle assault team suddenly came under an intense hail of fire as Bowman, Loader and Gregory poured bursts into them from the Gimpys. A handful of figures peeled away from the group and fled towards the breach in the fence. One stout rebel in a beret, presumably the commanding officer, gestured frantically at his men, urging them on. Webb dropped him with a single well-placed shot. With no one to organise the men, panic swiftly set in. The remaining fighters turned and bolted.

  ‘They’re on the back foot!’ Mallet roared. ‘Target the other groups!’

  Bowman and the others continued plugging away with the GPMGs. The two outer assault teams swiftly broke contact, running pell-mell for the breach. Half a dozen rebels were struck down, nailed in the back before they could escape the estate. The rest scrambled back across the clearing in a disorganised rabble. Mallet ordered Casey to lob in a few more mortars. Bombs pounded the clearing, throwing up clods of earth and fragging several rebels before they could escape.

  With the main attack repu
lsed, the gunfire from the west flank quickly abated. ‘Enemy retreating!’ Mavinda yelled over the radio. ‘The rebels are pulling back.’

  Bowman looked past his shoulder through an opening in the parapet. He glimpsed the Machete Boys beating a hasty retreat across the plain.

  ‘They won’t be hassling us for a while now,’ Loader said.

  ‘Alex, are you OK down there?’ Mallet asked.

  ‘I’m fine,’ she reported. ‘But I’m almost out of ammo.’

  ‘How many?’

  She paused. ‘Four bombs. That’s it.’

  Bowman said, ‘It’ll be harder next time. That mortar was our trump card. We’ve just used it. And we haven’t got another.’

  He looked at his watch: 08.31.

  ‘Where the fuck is D Squadron?’ Loader ranted. ‘They should be here by now, for Chrissakes.’

  ‘I’ll check,’ Mallet said as he grabbed his phone. Bowman looked round at the treeline and the surrounding terrain, the tension building in his chest. The minutes dragged. Like the last quarter of a football match. They were still winning, but the scoreline was much closer now. The enemy had pulled back a couple of goals. The defenders were clinging to their lead by the skin of their teeth. Hanging on, physically drained, waiting for the final whistle to blow. Bowman was running on fumes. I don’t know how much longer we can hold out, he thought.

  Mallet hung up.

  ‘What’s the news?’ Bowman asked.

  ‘Six hasn’t heard from D Squadron since they landed. Half an hour ago.’

  Loader checked his watch and grunted. ‘The airfield’s only twenty miles away. A straight run on the main road. What’s taking them so long?’

  ‘Maybe the Russians have sent out a force to ambush them,’ Webb said.

  ‘Could be,’ Bowman said. ‘The way they’ve masterminded this attack, it wouldn’t be a surprise.’

  Loader said, ‘Whatever’s holding them up, those fellas need to get a move on. Foot to the floor, like. We’re in the shit here.’

  ‘It’s out of our hands now,’ Mallet replied. ‘Nothing we can do about it except sit tight.’

  ‘Christ, no,’ Webb said as he stared at the woods. ‘It can’t be.’

  ‘What is it?’ Mallet asked.

  Bowman planted his left hand on the Gimpy stock and scanned the trees. At first, he saw nothing except the mortar-churned earth, the shrapnel-slashed bodies, the blood.

  Then he spotted the figures charging out of the gloom of the forest, and his heart sank.

  ‘Oh, fuck!’ Loader shouted. ‘There’s more of them. They’re coming again!’

  Thirty-One

  The rebels streamed forward in a loose throng, sprinting across the open ground in the same formation as the first wave. Except the second wave was bigger. Eighty or so fighters. Sixty men, plus the twenty survivors from the initial attack. The defenders on the rooftop stared at them in shock for a moment. Then their training instincts took over. Mallet shouted into his mic, screaming at Casey to pop off the few remaining bombs at the treeline. Bowman and Loader aimed through the holes in the parapet and squeezed off bursts from the Gimpys at the mass of figures flooding towards them. Mortar shells battered the clearing, killing half a dozen of the rebel fighters. The machine guns picked off a few more. The rest ran on unscathed towards the demolished stretch of the perimeter.

  ‘I’m out of bombs!’ Casey said over the radio. ‘Switching to my rifle.’

  ‘Where did this lot come from?’ Loader shouted.

  But Bowman already knew. The first wave had been sent in to soften the opposition up. The Russians had kept the second force in reserve, waiting behind the trees in case they were needed. As soon as the first assault had failed, the Russians would have brought these guys forward to finish the job.

  In a few seconds, they’re going to sweep through the gap in the fence, he thought. And we’ve got no mortars left to hit them with this time.

  As he took aim, a torrent of bullets slapped into the section of parapet eight inches to his right. Bowman quickly pulled back from the edge. The rounds ate into the coping, spitting out clouds of dust across the rooftop. One bullet narrowly missed his cheek before it embedded itself in the wall behind him. Loader and Webb shrank away from the parapet as sustained bursts of gunfire accurately raked their positions.

  ‘Who the fuck is shooting at us?’ Loader yelled.

  Bowman said, ‘The Russians must have set up a support position. Somewhere along the clearing.’

  ‘Whoever it is, they’re getting close.’

  The rounds were coming in thick and fast. They were getting hit by something heavy. Another PKM machine gun, perhaps. Or something similar. The Russians would have established by now that the main fire was coming from the top of the mansion. They would have positioned a lone shooter behind cover, with orders to put down sustained fire on the parapet to cover the main attacking force. One PKM could do the job. They were brutally efficient weapons. Effective to a range of 1,000 metres, with a rate of fire of 650 rounds per minute.

  Another smart call from the Russians, Bowman thought. They’ve been more than a match for us today.

  ‘I’ll deal with the shooter,’ Mallet said. ‘You lot focus on the main group.’

  They belly-crawled over to new firing points further along the northern side of the parapet. Mallet traded his C8 rifle for the meatier .50 cal and lay flat on his stomach, observing the ground to the right of the arch as he looked for the muzzle flash from the shooter. At their twelve o’clock, the main KUF force was pouring through the breach. They speedily divided into multiple assault teams and started pepper-potting forward. A carbon copy of the first attack.

  Bowman and Loader brassed up the middle group with four rapid bursts, then backed away before a chunk of the parapet disintegrated under a savage volley of machine-gun fire. They shovelled their weapons to the left, laid flat on their stomachs, fired, scurried back. Rounds whizzed through the perforations and smacked into the low wall behind the soldiers. Loader swore as a chunk of debris tumbled down on him.

  ‘Locate that fucker, John! We’re getting hammered!’

  Between the rounds coming in from the front and the north-east, Bowman and Loader were under almost non-stop pressure. With no mortars to drop and the extra fire support, the frontal assault teams were advancing with greater speed than the first wave. A few of the enemy wielded RPGs or machine guns. Several others were gripping newer Russian assault rifles with grenade launchers fitted under the barrels.

  ‘These bastards are gonna be right on top of us in a few minutes,’ Bowman shouted.

  ‘It’ll be sooner than that,’ said Loader, ‘if we can’t put the drop on that shooter.’

  As he spoke, the concealed shooter fired at them again, driving the men back from the parapet. The incoming burst was suddenly interrupted by the boom of the .50 cal as Mallet popped off two rounds at the shooter. The latter replied with a frenzied burst. Mallet fired a third time. The rebel machine gun still kept on peppering the rooftop. Mallet fired and got the dead man’s click as he reached the end of the ten-round clip. He set the weapon down, grabbed his rifle. Shouted into his mic.

  ‘Alex, stick an RPG in! Right of the arch. Corner. Engage!’

  Bowman glanced down at the mortar pit, fifty metres to the north-west of the mansion. He spied Casey breaking cover from behind the rock wall, the RPG-7 launcher propped up on her right shoulder. She knelt down, took aim at the spot Mallet had identified next to the archway. Fired.

  Flames gushed out of the flared opening at the back of the tube. The grenade whooshed across the front grounds of the estate and slammed into the turf next to the arched entrance, flattening the sentry box and another section of the fence.

  ‘Throw another one in there,’ Mallet said to Casey. ‘He’s still firing. Wallop the bastard!’

  Bowman looked down. Casey was beside the mortar pit, jamming the stem of a second rocket into the tube. A handful of the rebels concentrated their fire
at her, spattering the nearby wall with lead. Casey held up the RPG in spite of the rounds flying past her, aimed at the archway through the launcher’s flip-up sights. She fired again. The missile hissed across the front drive and smashed into the base of the archway with a crashing boom, burying the technical beneath an avalanche of rubble.

  The shooter fell silent.

  Then Bowman became aware of a movement at his ten o’clock, at the periphery of his vision. He saw a couple of figures kneeling beside the nearest assault team, their rifles elevated at angles as they popped off rounds from their under-barrel 40 mm grenade launchers. Aiming them directly at the mortar pit, two hundred metres away.

  He screamed over the radio at Casey.

  ‘Alex! Incoming! Get the fuck down!’

  Fifty metres away, Casey turned and ran towards the mortar pit.

  The first grenade fell twenty metres short, splashing into the soft grass twenty metres north of the mortar. The second detonated to the south, ten or twelve metres from the edge of the pit. Outside the kill radius of a Russian grenade. But well within fragging range. The force of the explosion lifted Casey off her feet and threw her to one side, spraying her with fragmentation as she slammed head first into the garden wall. She crumpled to the ground beside Lanky’s ragged body.

  Mallet instantly got on the radio. ‘Alex, are you there?’

  No response.

  ‘Shit,’ Webb said.

  Mallet tried again.

  Nothing.

  Without a moment’s hesitation, Loader ditched the GPMG, seized his rifle and the medical rucksack dumped near the skylight.

  ‘I’m going down,’ he said.

  He set off across the roof before anyone could argue with him. Rifle in one hand and the medical rucksack in the other. He barrelled through the fire exit, disappeared down the stairwell.

  ‘Patrick, get on that Gimpy,’ Mallet ordered.

  Webb snatched up the spare machine gun. He swept aside a pile of rubble blocking one section of the parapet, stabbed the barrel through the hole. Bowman refocused on the battle, looking for targets.