by Tom Kratman
“Acknowledged,” Alexander said, his voice equally calm.
Turning to the rest of the helicopter’s occupants from his perch near the open door, Alexander held up two fingers. The Germans and Zulus nodded acknowledgement and checked that their weapons were chambered and their equipment secure to disembark the helicopter. Alexander removed the headset and secured his own helmet.
The helicopter formation split into three distinct sections headed for their specific LZs with the unladen birds leading the way and unloading their troops first. The gray-green-white ground outside the helicopter grew closer and closer in Alexander’s night-vision monocle until he felt the wheels hit the jungle floor. He did not need to give orders. His chalk flowed out the sides of the helicopter, avoiding the forward area of the rotor cone so as not to receive a fatal haircut.
Alexander kneeled next to a tree and turned inward, watching the gray-white thermal shapes of his men encircling the LZ, going to the prone or kneeling in the bush and pointing their rifles and machine guns outward. NCOs and officers communicated with hand and arm signals as the rotor wash stirred the wet night air into a constant thrum.
Mjanwe alone stood straight up, a chem-light in one hand and a radio hand mic pressed to his ear with the other. He was the only Zulu soldier old enough to have experienced helicopter operations back on Earth, which was why the Legionnaires had chosen him for advanced training in LZ control.
Under Mjanwe’s careful guidance, the first slung-load helicopter came to a hover just meters above the ground and sank, slowly, towards the jungle clearing. The helicopter’s engines strained to stay aloft in ground effect in the humidity. Slowly the canvas bag settled to the ground and the cables holding the bag slackened and then dropped to the ground. The canvas fell aside revealing a pallet of razor wire and pickets.
They repeated the process five times to get the rest of their palletized equipment and ammunition onto the LZ. All told, it took less than an hour. Alexander allowed himself a grin of satisfaction at his men’s efficiency as the last of the helicopters, unburdened, turned north and headed back for the border.
“What the fuck is that?” One of his troops shouted.
The random exclamation and a series of flashes drew Alexander’s eyes left, faint orange trails of smoke rose from the jungle.
“Oh, shit,” he said. “Thenjiwe, give me the aviation net, now!”
It took his cousin less than a second to flip the frequency knob and hand the hand mic over to Alexander.
“Dragon Elements, SAMs at your six, say again, SAMs at your six, go evasive!”
The helicopters broke and dipped, scattering their neat formation in a dozen directions, but it was too late for two of the aircraft. The nearest helicopter was over the river when the missile intersected its flight-path. It was consumed in a brilliant orange flash and reduced to twisted and burning metal, plummeting, its forward momentum carrying it to the opposite bank. The explosion washed out Alexander’s night optics for a moment, but flash-suppression safeguards prevented him from being blinded.
Alexander turned to his operations officer, Commandant Bongani, not as grizzled as Adjutant-Chef Mjanwe, Bongani was still visibly older than the other Zulu officer though not yet middle-aged. Although Bongani was hobbled from an unfortunate encounter with a scimitar cat, Alexander found the older man’s intellect and maturity indispensable despite his physical limitations.
“Bongani,” Alexander said, as the remainder of the helicopters moved away unscathed, “Inform Scipio of confirmed SAM threat.”
“Yes, sir,” Bongani said, turning to his RTO.
“How the hell did they get SAMs? We don’t even have SAMs,” Thenjiwe said.
“From the UN contingent here, obviously,” Alexander said.
“But why would the UN soldiers here have brought them in the first place?” Captain Kwanele, the Charlie Company commander jogged up and joined the conversation. He was an exceedingly handsome young officer with chiseled jaw and serious dark eyes. “The insurgents can’t put up a kite, much less a helicopter.”
“They have them to sell them to the insurgents, of course, sir,” Adjutant-Chef Mjanwe said, his expression grim.
“Come on,” Alexander said. “It just became even more vital we secure those docks. We may not see another helicopter for some time.”
To the east, gunfire and explosions punctuated his words.
Two Kilometers Southeast of Savannakhet
It was zero-five hundred and the sun’s weak rays were just beginning to creep across the jungle floor, scattering light on a textbook clusterfuck.
Leaving Commandant Bongani with the headquarters troops and the Germans to set up the battalion operations center and hold the docks, Alexander led Kwanele and his men through the mounting morning heat toward the sound of the guns. Alpha and Bravo were still southeast of the neck of the peninsula formed by the oxbow, arrayed in a roughly vee shape.
They had already sacrificed a kilometer of jungle to avoid becoming encircled or overrun. There were only four more kilometers left to Savannakhet. And while they were holding, there was a gap between them they couldn’t close. It was up to Kwanele’s Charlie Company to seal it off.
There’s no way the CLF moved a force this size and had them ready to attack so quickly without prior warning, Alexander thought. We had an operational security breach.
The rattle of automatic weapons fire was suddenly much more immediate.
“Contact front!” Alexander could hear the spot reports as his Zulus began to return fire. “Five men, two hundred meters, engaging!”
“Contact front, three men, one-fifty, engaging!”
“Contact front, one squad, two hundred, engaging!”
Alexander checked himself from snapping out orders, allowing Kwanele and his platoon leaders to manage the immediate fight. He relayed the development to Bongani for report to higher. He stayed close enough to the battle to see what was going on with his own eyes, but far enough back to avoid become decisively engaged himself.
Alexander watched as two Charlie company soldiers hit the jungle floor on their bellies. One calmly sighted in his grenade launcher, while the other, a light machine gunner, triggered controlled bursts at the enemy ahead of them. The grenadier sent a 40mm high explosive grenade hurling into the enemy, shredding an entire fire team that had been clumped together. The Zulus crawled forward a few feet, then sprung up and sprinted to another decent sized tree before repeating the process.
Their advance was replicated all along Charlie’s line. The CLF regulars, no longer facing the Zulu with overwhelming numerical superiority, lost their momentum.
A tight group of three soldiers in CLF khaki stayed on their feet two seconds longer than they should have, allowing one of Charlie’s medium machine gun teams to cut them down with a well-aimed burst. Another enemy fire team lay in the prone in one clump of trees without moving, thinking themselves concealed, but ultimately inviting a fragmentation grenade right on top of their position.
The gray burst of metal fragments killed two of the men instantly, two others lay on the ground, screaming in pain, their entrails lying on the roots of the trees they’d been hiding behind.
Alexander paused for a moment, brought his rifle to his shoulder and squeezed the trigger twice, ending one man’s suffering with a controlled pair that left two neat entry wounds in his chest and softball sized exit wounds in his back. The young prince tracked to the left slightly to put the other man out of his misery, but two loud cracks from Thenjiwe’s rifle eliminated the necessity.
The slaughter culminated as the dense jungle vegetation died off into a clear area leading up to a rocky ridge that stretched a kilometer across most of the neck of the Savannakhet peninsula. The fleeing CLF fighters fell one by one, shot in the back as they attempted to make it to the threadbare safety of the rocks. Once again the gunfire was distant, the immediate area quiet. Alexander noticed, for the first time, the whistle of mortars flying from LZ Black, over
their head, east to where Alpha and Bravo were locked in combat with enemy’s main body.
Finally! Alexander grinned as the detonations sounded over the ridge. Not sparing a moment to relax, Alexander sprinted to find Kwanele. He started issuing orders as soon as he found him.
“Get your company arrayed on the forward slope of that ridge,” he said. “I’m going to Alpha and get them to reorient their line to tie in with your position, send your XO to Bravo Company to collect their XO and adjutant, then have them all meet me here.”
“Yes, sir,” Kwanele said. “Why do you want the XOs and adjutants?”
“They’re going to help me lay out our next defensive position here and tie in the obstacles the Germans will lay out,” Alexander said. “After the ridge line, this clearing is the only decent-sized engagement area we’ve got before we’re back in the town. You’ve got to hold the enemy as long as possible to give us the chance to prep the next line of defense.”
UN Headquarters, Khoi Dau Moi
The operations center in Arcand’s headquarters was arrayed in a bowl of work stations around a central situation map table where Schwartzengrosse and Arcand stood. Those without an immediate task listened intently to Arcand’s conversation with the Zulu’s commander.
“Assegai, this is Scipio,” Arcand said, keying his hand mic. “Confirm you have engaged the enemy’s main force.”
When the radio crackled to life small arms fire and explosions were audible over Alexander’s tinny, distorted voice.
“Scipio, Assegai,” he said, and even over the EM spectrum, Arcand could hear tension and annoyance lacing the call-signs. “We are engaged by an enemy force of at least regimental strength or higher, equipped with Italian small arms and other unidentified modern small arms, over.”
“Roger, Assegai,” Arcand paused, took a deep breath. “How long can you hold?”
The radio was silent for several seconds. Arcand resisted the urge to key his mic again, knowing that jostling the commander in the field was not merely impolite, but potentially dangerous.
“Scipio, at this rate I estimate we can hold this ridge for the rest of the day. If we can make it until nightfall we’ll withdraw to hasty fortifications to the northwest. We should be able to hold there for twenty-four hours, unless the enemy decides to overwhelm us with a sheer frontal assault. Beyond that I don’t know.”
Arcand looked at Schwartzengrosse for a long moment, silently seeking his chief of staff’s advice. The German officer’s face was motionless, deathly serious for a long moment. Then he nodded once, firmly.
“Assegai,” Arcand keyed the mic again. “Do what you can. I’m accelerating our time table. I’ll be on the ground with 2 REP tonight.”
“Roger, Scip—”
Alexander’s transmission was cut off abruptly by a thunderous explosion.
“Assegai! Assegai,” Arcand shouted into the mic. “Alexander, what was that? Report!”
“They’ve brought those heavy Italian mortars into play,” Alexander said. “I have to go. Contact my Operations Center for further updates. Assegai, out.”
The Ridge, Southeast of Savvanakhet
The dirt and grass, trees and rocks beneath his battalion appeared gray-white-green once again through Alexander’s night optics as he watched the men of his Alpha and Bravo Companies creeping past Charlie Company’s lines. The enemy had, perhaps wisely, refused to press the attack at night given that every single Zulu was equipped and trained with their night optics while the enemy only had a handful of captured devices still working.
Alexander sat with his back against a rock, half-eaten field ration in his hand. Thenjiwe lay fast asleep less than a meter away, his head tilted back over the radio in his assault pack. They had held the line against almost continual attack through the day as Alexander had said they would. More than half of them were wounded, half of that too badly to fight, and nearly a quarter of his men on the ground were dead, but they’d held, and inflicted far more death then they’d been dealt.
Unfortunately, the enemy had reinforced faster than Alexander’s Zulus had been able to attrit them. Even though they had massacred the first regiment they’d made contact with two more fresh regiments. Intel’s estimates were that it would take the enemy at least three days to mass that large a force on Savannakhet.
Alexander had ordered a methodical, subtle withdrawal under cover of night. Alpha and Bravo, holding the flanks, sent their left and right most fire teams, respectively, back through their lines to Charlie Company. From there their own XOs and adjutant-chefs guided them down the back of the ridge to their new battle positions, through the wire and mine belts that the Germans had been placing all day. The rest of the companies followed, at staggered intervals, by teams, crews, and platoons.
Kwanele found him almost an hour after the withdrawal began.
“Sir,” he said in a low voice. “You should go. Alpha and Bravo have completed their withdrawal. We’ll begin ours as soon as we receive word they’re through the obstacle belt.”
Kwanele, like Alexander, was covered in dust from shattered rock, mass quantities of sweat having drawn irregular lines in the coating. He was, additionally, peppered with minor wounds from fragmentation and stone splinters. He’d been superb in command of the defense, remaining calm and unflappable, even as the last CLF assault had come within hand grenade range of their lines. It wasn’t as if Kwanele needed his battalion commander there.
But there was nowhere else Alexander needed to be more, at the moment, and no place where things could go wrong as quickly as at the point of withdrawal. Beyond that, Alexander remembered something, a scrap of dialogue from a book of allegorical fantasy Father Piter had shared with him:
“For this is what it means to be king; to be first in every desperate attack and last in every desperate retreat . . . ”
Alexander shook his head.
“No, Kwanele,” he said. “I will remain until you are ready to withdraw. If the enemy detects our movement, this will be the decisive point.”
“As you wish, iNkosi,” Kwanele said.
“Why is it my subordinates always resort to my royal title when they think I’m being a stubborn ass?” Alexander said.
“Sir, I wouldn’t dare suggest a thing of either my prince or my commander,” Kwanele said, grinning.
“I might,” a new voice entered the conversation from the darkness. Mjanwe joined the two officers, careful to stay low and avoid casting a human silhouette against the rocky hillside.
“Well, adjutant-chefs have privileges a mere captain dare not usurp,” Kwanele said with mock solemnity.
“You’re damn right you don’t, sir,” Mjanwe said with a snort. “The last elements of Alpha and Bravo are in position down the hill. We have forward-slope observers hidden and set in the jungle on both flanks, everyone else is withdrawn.”
“Excellent,” Alexander nodded in satisfaction. “Captain Kwanele, you may begin your withdrawal.”
Kwanele and Mjanwe moved off to begin coordinating the withdrawal. Alexander kicked his RTO gently on the shoulder. Thenjiwe awoke with a start, looking around groggily.
“Whaazzat, I wasn’t sleeping, cousin . . . ”
“Of course you weren’t,” said Alexander, so tired he didn’t correct the familial address. “Get up, we are leaving.”
To his credit, Thenjiwe was ready to move in less than a minute. He looked around perplexed.
“Hey,” Thenjiwe said. “Why did they stop shelling us?”
“Limited ammunition,” Alexander said. “They aren’t good at adjusting fire in daylight; they would be wasting rounds at night.”
“Oh,” Thenjiwe said, nodding.
Each step down the rocky hillside was a trial as, under full pack, Alexander tried his best to move quietly and rapidly while small stones crunched and slid out from underfoot and larger ones clacked against each other and attempted to catch his ankles. Alexander wasn’t, quite, the last man down, but he and Thenjiwe traveled with
the last squad off the line. So focused was Alexander on his footing that he didn’t notice Mjanwe traveling next to him until the old warrior spoke.
“Fall in behind me, sir,” he said. “There’s only one lane through the minefield. Thenjiwe, pick up the flags as we go through.”
Thenjiwe did as he was ordered, clearing the flags that marked the safe path through the minefield as they passed through. Every second he was still standing out in the open, surrounded by mines on either side was pure hell on Alexander’s nerves. If the enemy put it together that the Zulu had completely abandoned the ridge and surrounding jungle, they could be up on top and firing down at the exposed rear of the column any second.
Alexander breathed a sigh of relief as they crossed the last set of flags. They were still fifty meters from the woodline of the jungle and he could barely make out the closest fighting positions. As he got close enough to discern them, he could see that the positions were dug in chest deep and most had at least some overhead cover in the form of cut down tree trunks.
The Germans and Alexander’s headquarters troopers had done yeoman’s work preparing the battalion’s battle position, but already he could see a glaring flaw. While the battle positions were well placed, he could tell, even under night optics, that there were no alternate or supplementary positions for the battalion. If the enemy did get their position registered for their mortars, the Zulu would have no choice but to stay in their holes and take it.
Then again, it occurred to Alexander as he, Thenjiwe and Mjanwe slipped into a bigger hole slightly back from most of the other positions. Our position may not have enough depth for alternate and supplementary fighting positions anyway.
We’ve made bricks without straw, that’s for sure. But will it be enough to stop a force nearly ten times our size?
Drop Zone Green
5 Kilometers Southwest of Champasak
Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck, Arcand thought as he struggled with the risers on his parachute.