by Tom Kratman
He heard an explosion, which was almost enough to turn him around and back toward the water. Then he heard familiar voices shrieking in fear. Mindlessly, he followed the familiar. Lifting his head up he saw another sign of civilization, the red and green running lights of what had to be a rescue craft of some kind. He continued in that direction, operating off little more than autopilot and a new found will to live.
Cagle thumbed his radio’s transmit switch. “Warrington? Cagle.”
“Warrington.”
“Boss, I’ve got six wounded by the beach ready to load on the landing craft. Only problem is that one of them’s not going to make it unless he gets to the ship and TIC Chick’s care within about five minutes. A couple of others are iffy.”
“Recommendation?” Warrington didn’t even bother asking if all the wounded belonged to M Day. The world had become the kind of place where nobody really cared about the enemy’s wounded.
“More a question,” Cagle said. “Can we divert one of the gunships to carrying him out?”
“Done. Break, break. Slepnyov, did you copy that?”
“Roger.”
“You or your wingman, don’t care which one. Land as close to the LCM as practical and evacuate three of our wounded.”
“Wilco, sir.”
“There’s no time to mark a PZ,” Cagle added. “Just land and we’ll get them to you.”
“Watch tail,” Slepnyov reminded, needlessly. “I’ll land west of the boat and put my tail to the southwest.”
“Roger. Works.”
Saffron heard the helicopter as it touched down. If he’d been either less tired or more humble, he’d probably have realized that it hadn’t necessarily landed where it had on his behalf. Sadly, he was both utterly exhausted and arrogant at an automatic and unconscious level. Using the last reserves of his meager strength, he forced himself to his feet and began to run toward the swimming lights.
Right into the tail rotor. Think: Cuisinart.
“What was that?” Slepnyov’s co-pilot asked at the sudden shudder.
“Dunno. Check instruments.”
“Mmmm . . . they say we’re fine.”
“Then we’re fine. And here are our passengers now.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
My center is giving way, my right is in retreat;
situation excellent. I shall attack.
—Ferdinand Foch
MV Richard Bland, Coastof Africa city of Bajuni
TIC Chick was standing by—more precisely, kneeling by, lest the rotor take her head off—as the small hatch on the side of the gunship popped open to reveal one of the medics, pressing a thick gauze bandage with one hand while the other held an IV bag high overhead. Behind the doctor, likewise on one knee, were half a dozen other medical personnel and three two-wheeled gurneys. The medic had probably kicked the latch to open the hatch.
A closer inspection, had it been possible, would have shown that the medic wasn’t trying to stop the bleeding so much as to hold the patient’s intestines in place, where a thick fragment of 120mm had ripped open his belly, spilling them to the earth. Odds were the intestines were, themselves, ripped up, a sure path to major internal infections if not cleaned and repaired posthaste. The IV was there only to keep the man’s veins from collapsing, which would have made further injections highly problematic.
“GET THIS ONE!” Screamed the medic, quite unnecessarily; TIC Chick and company were already at the hatch, struggling to get the wounded man out while keeping his guts in. In this they were not entirely successful, a small portion of the large intestine being torn open on an exposed screw head. A vile stench immediately filled the compartment.
“Get the gurney over here!” TIC Chick ordered. The patient was not small and she and two assistants barely sufficed to hold him up while holding him together. She needn’t have shouted; one of the gurneys was wheeled under the man before she’d even finished.
“That’s the worst one, TIC Chick,” the medic shouted over the roar of the engines. “Gary said he ought to be your number-one priority.”
The doctor bridled for a moment. Harrumph. Telling me my business. Just because he’s my husband . . . Well . . . no, because he knows my business about as well as I do.
She took the IV bag from the medic and pointed in the direction of the superstructure. “Thataway! Now!”
Bajuni, former Federation of Sharia Courts, Africa
Warrington was facing north, in between the remnants of three small buildings. He could still hear Balbahadur’s croaking out some awful Scottish medley, the sound coming from his front and a little bit to his right. Suddenly to his left front, an amazing volume of fire picked up.
Thumbing the radio switch, he asked, “Andrew, are you letting your piper fall behind?”
“No, boss,” the Canuck replied. “He’s right behind me and I’m right behind the juncture of the two platoons.”
“Then what’s all that firing to your west?”
“Best guess, some of the ones we’ve been driving ahead of us we drove into some other group we haven’t reached yet.”
With a rush of static, Sergeant Moore piped in, “I think I can vouch for that. The ones facing us here suddenly turned away. And they’re fighting somebody. We’re not taking any deliberate fire at the moment.”
“Right,” Warrington agreed. “Fine. ‘Keep up the skeer.’ ”
“Huh?”
Chuckling, Warrington said, “Sometimes I forget you’re from the great frozen north. Go look up Nathan Bedford Forrest some time.”
“Yeah, sure, in my ‘copious free time.’ Hey, boss, I’ve got some fighting to do. Bug me later, huh?”
“Keep up the skeer, Captain.”
“Roger. You know, if these guys had any unity of command, they’d have pushed us into the sea—or dumped our corpses there—a while ago . . . Hey, Khan, pot that bastard!”
It pretty much went with the territory; for a night attack, in close terrain, fancy formations and maneuvers were just a little too dangerous. Instead, everyone was kept on a very tight leash and, if not exactly on line, the fire teams—little knots of men moving and shooting together, under tight control by their team leaders—did form something like a line, or a serrated knife’s edge.
Khan heard his captain’s shout, but couldn’t really see who the old man intended for him to shoot. Be nice when I make it to team leader and they give me a set of those goggles.
Then he didn’t so much see as sense a shape, about two dozen feet to his right front. That shape was a little too far out to be friendly. Khan automatically closed his left eye, then fired a short burst from the hip. In the muzzle flash he could see a man, lifting a rifle, and wearing local clothing. He fired again, and then again, though those was only in the same general direction, as the muzzle flash had temporarily done for his night vision in his firing eye.
Three bursts? Well, fire discipline was nice, but at close quarters, when you want someone down, you want him down right away.
Wonder what kept that guy here; most of the others have run. Probably in terror of Sergeant Balbahadur’s pipes. God knows, they terrify me. Funny, I thought I’d be bothered by killing somebody, and these poor bastards never did me any harm. But they’re not my family. My family’s on either side of me. So screw ’em.
Khan didn’t know it, and he couldn’t have seen it even had he known, but the rightmost man in the platoon to the right practically brushed his sleeve on a soccer stadium where a late member of the regiment, Master Sergeant “Buckwheat” Fulton, had once done to death an improbably large number of the locals for stoning a young girl whose crime had consisted of being raped.
Stocker heard in his ear, “Rightmos’ man be at de stadium, Skipper.”
“Roger. Break, break. Both platoons, our heading is now two hundred and twenty-five, I say again, two hundred and twenty-five degrees. Keep pushing ’em.”
“Wilco . . . wilco.”
The men who followed Adam’s uncle Korfa
were, as advertised, relatively well trained. Why not? He, himself, was a man of some education, to include some fairly advanced military education from not only the United States, but also the United Kingdom and the former Soviet Union, depending on who was buttering his former country’s bread at the time. What he’d learned, his men had learned.
And they’d, generally speaking, learned well. They’d pressed whoever the hell it was had landed on their turf pretty hard before the swarm of two other gangs tried to flee through them. They really hadn’t known what it was that hit them. One minute, there was nothing but the occasional shot to the flanks, more for morale and warning than with any deadly intent. The next there was a mass of firing somewhere off to the east. Then, after perhaps another twenty minutes, a mob—there was really no other word—of terrified refugees had begun pouring through their lines, chased by some kind of shrieking demon.
Some of Korfa’s men had stood and fought, if it could be said that one is fighting while gunning down men who had no thought of anything but escape. Still others had joined the stampede.
“And if I ever find out who,” Korfa muttered, “they’ll wish their mothers had strangled them in the cradle.”
Korfa wasn’t fooled by the sound. No demon, he knew. Now I know exactly what it is. The fucking British have sent in the Highlanders. I can’t face that. Take on an isolated company of Americans when I’ve got three or four thousand followers and the Americans tied their own hands behind their backs? That I can do. But we’re a skirmisher people. This chin up, stand and be still to the Birkenhead drill bullshit is not my people’s cup of tea. And if those are British regulars, in numbers—and the speed they’ve been moving says they’ve got the numbers—then my best bet is just to say to hell with the aid workers, to hell with their ship, and to hell with their medical equipment and supplies.
There must have been British subjects among the hostages my nephew took and, for a change, the Brits decided to act like men.
Can’t advance; the fire’s too fierce. Can’t stay here; I don’t even think half my men are left. Time to leave, get out of their way, then reorganize and come back after they pass. That, we know how to do.
“Warrington? Stocker.”
“Go ahead, Andrew.”
“There’s nothing to my front and that’s got me worried. Maybe there’s nothing there, but then again, maybe there are and this group has some discipline and is just waiting. Can we have the gunships do an overflight?”
“Roger. Break, break. Slep, you back from the dustoff?”
“I am back.”
“How did my man do?”
“Was alive when he gots pulled from my helicopter.”
“Okay, good. I want you to do a flyover, all around the perimeter. In particular, I want you to have a close look at the area southwest of the football field.”
“Wilco. On it now.”
“Andrew?”
“Stocker here.”
“Much as I hate for you to lose your momentum, I’d hate it more if you got caught in the open by steady, approximately trained, troops. Hold up until Slepnyov has a look.”
“Wilco.”
The MI-28 was a very capable helicopter. The Russians built a good helicopter, in general—oh, sure, short on creature comforts and bitching tiring to fly—but the MI-28 was better than most. And, most importantly, it had something nobody else on the ground did, a truly powerful thermal imager. Even the ones in the Elands were small change in comparison.
With it, Slepnyov could see, “The area Captain Stocker clear out . . . they starting filter back. Ones and twos, mostly.”
“Expected that,” Warrington said. “It’s a skirmisher military culture. Rarely stand and fight to the death. Rarely entirely give up, either.”
And, eventually, unless you’re willing to turn barbarian yourself and go all Einsatzgruppen on them, the skirmishers will wear you out. It’s as valid as our methods of war, by the only criterion that matters: Winning.
“Yes,” Slepnyov agreed. “Almost nobody . . . immediate front of Captain Stocker’s men. Few I can see are . . . dead, I think. Or maybe wounded. Or maybe . . . what’s that Americanism? Ah, yes, ‘playing possum.’ But of people who look ready to fight, I see none.
“There’s a knot, maybe a hundred or two, still fighting down by the west shoulder of the peninsula. But it’s clear until there.”
“Can you run them off?” Warrington asked. “That’s where I want Stocker to pass lines back to our side.”
“Prob’ly. Sure can try.”
“Do it. Don’t expend more than half your on-board ammunition at the attempt, though.”
“Roger. Urrah!”
Okay . . . now, once Stocker’s boys are safe behind the lines, how are we going to thin the line to unass this AO?
MV Richard Bland, Coast of Africa city of Bajuni, Africa
“Fuck the tranzis,” Pearson said. “The wounded have priority.”
“Authority to use force to make it clear to them?” Feeney asked, over the radio. His voice held a definite tone of eager anticipation.
“Whatever it takes,” the captain ordered.
“Roger.”
Yep, definitely eager anticipation, thought the skipper. Oh, well. Feeney, whatever his faults, should be able to explain their position in life to them. He promptly put the aid workers out of his mind, rotating his chair and looking shoreward to where two intermittent streams of tracers leapt from the sky to the ground.
So far, so good, there. At least from the few snatches of radio traffic we’ve been able to pick up from the line dogs. Awful damned pricey though. Speaking of which . . .
Pearson punched the intercom button to sick bay and asked, “TIC Chick?”
“I’m kind of busy right now, Skipper.” She was, indeed, quite busy, her arms more or less draped in intestine, and another eight feet she’d had to cut away sitting on a stainless steel table beside her.
“I know. Heads up; you’re going to be busier still.”
“How many?” she asked, peering intently at a bit of odiferous flesh as she wove her needle to and fro. “And how bad?”
“Nineteen, and mostly not so bad. All but two are conscious, Sergeant Feeney reports. Not happy, but conscious.”
“Okay. Teams are standing by. Wish to fuck Gary were here to help.”
“I can probably get you some help,” Pearson said. It won’t be happy help, most likely, though.
“From where?”
“The aid workers. There are doctors there.”
“Oh, right. Yeah; forgot. Send ’em down.”
“Roger. Wait.” He went back to the radio. “Sergeant Feeney?”
“Here, Skipper.”
“Next load, doctors and RN’s.”
“Already sorting them that way, Captain. Fact is, a couple of the shitheads went up with the first load because our wounded needed them.”
“Very good, Sergeant.” And just because you’re a maniac doesn’t mean you’re stupid.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
I have no right to rank with such great captains,
for I have never commanded a retreat.
—Moltke, the Elder
Bajuni, former Federation of Sharia Courts, Africa
Stocker’s wounded and his two dead had been passed through the lines previously, whenever there’d been a convenient, or inconvenient, for that matter, slowdown in the pace of the assault. That made the final passage back into friendly lines that much easier. The commander stood by, Balbahadur’s pipes—“Lilliburlero” was the tune now—still motivating the men but, more importantly for the moment, marking the point of passage. Stocker’s first sergeant counted the boys through, confirming with the squad leaders and platoon sergeants that everyone was accounted for. Tail end charlies for the event were the supply sergeant and his assistant, pulling the pins to arm and then tossing PFM-1S toe poppers for all they were worth. All Hansel-and-Gretel-like, they’d left a broad swath of the nasty little things alo
ng their sweeping route around the perimeter, in every building along that route, and up and down the alleys. Safety pins pulled, the mines would generally arm themselves within as little as a minute, and certainly within ten minutes. They had an integral twenty-four hour self-destruct mechanism, though as with much former Soviet and modern Russian material, reliability was a matter of conjecture.
That the PFM-1S’s rarely killed was not generally considered a good reason to blow one’s toes off by stepping on one. There was some reason to believe—the sudden bang followed by the heartrending shriek—that a couple of the local skirmishers, closing back in behind them, had found this out the hard way.
More or less by luck of the draw, or at least by placement, Khan’s fire team, a machine gun crew and a Vampire crew, plus one of the two Elands, had ended up covering the supply sergeant and his small party. Nobody was shooting at them, at the moment, what with the pasting they’d gotten from the gunships. They weren’t taking any chances anyway, especially now that the moon, thin sliver that it was, was casting down just about enough light to allow something like target identification and deliberate aiming. The machine gun and Eland fired at anything remotely suspicious, though the rocket launcher was holding its fire for something more worthwhile.
Then came the word for those last ten, and the Eland, to pull back.
It was almost entirely quiet inside the perimeter. So far, at least, the mines were doing their job keeping the locals at bay. Slepnyov had said they were rallying, but only by ones and twos. And those ones and twos were advancing very cautiously.
“We can account for everyone except one man,” Stocker reported to Warrington.