Gust Front lota-2

by John Ringo

  They had set up with the guns ready to fire, and Keren had automatically laid them in and set up the plotting board, but now they were just resting. Eventually he was planning on finding somebody in the mass who had some idea what was going on. But for now he was content just to chill. They had done their bit and more.

  So the radio call, an unknown station trying to log onto their net, was unexpected.

  The ANCD listed the caller as the Fiftieth Division Artillery Fire Direction Center. But the hacking on the first day of battle made him cautious. He took the mike back from Elgars. She stepped out of the Suburban with a whispered, “Gotta go.”

  “Whiskey Four Delta One Five, this is Echo Three Golf One One. Authenticate Victor Charlie, over.” There was no such authentication line. It was a trick.

  “Golf One One, there is no such authentication, over,” said the confused voice on the radio. On reflection the voice sounded a bit rote. It could be a very good voice processor and Keren was suddenly glad he had used the old trick.

  “Sure there is, Delta. Figure it out or get off my net.”

  There was a brief silence on the radio. Keren suddenly realized that Elgars was striding steadily towards a cluster of soldiers about seventy meters in front of the platoon. From the set of her shoulders there was a problem and as he watched she drew his 9mm Beretta out of her BDU cargo pocket. He had assumed from her words that she meant to find a latrine; that was obviously incorrect. He flipped frequencies.

  “Sergeant Chittock,” he yelled. “get somebody out there to cover Elgars!”

  The private had walked into the midst of the group and up to a beefy soldier showing the admiring crowd his .50-caliber sniper rifle. As Keren looked on in horror she placed the barrel of his Beretta on the back of the soldier’s head and thumbed back the hammer. It appeared that she was about to pull the trigger.

  One of the group lunged towards her but stopped at a burst of overhead fire from the .50-caliber machine gun on Three Track. The heavy machine gun would chop the entire group into hamburger if the gunner dropped the barrel a few inches lower. The tracers drifted past Washington’s Monument and towards the distant enemy.

  By this time the crews from the two tracks were deployed and had their weapons out. The array of leveled rifles and grenade launchers convinced the crowd that making an issue of the lady’s informal declaration of war would be inadvisable. Sergeant Chittock apparently talked Elgars into walking back to the Suburban. She was carrying on a continuous harangue directed at the now white-faced holder with the sniper rifle. Several of his former admirers were not looking so admiring.

  Keren switched frequencies again as the milling crowd, herded by the platoon’s weapons and covered by the two machine guns on the tracks, made its way towards the Suburban.

  “Whiskey Four Delta One Five, this is Echo Three Golf One One, over.”

  “Golf One One, this is One Five,” said a different voice than the previous. “What is this authentication problem? And where have you been?”

  “Delta, we got some shit going down here, sorry. Authenticate Victor Charlie or get off my net.” Keren was rapidly tiring of the game but he was bound and determined not to get screwed by orders from nowhere again.

  “Echo Three Golf One One, this is Whiskey Four Delta One Fiver. I authenticate Khe-Mother-Fucking-San. Now are there any other stupid radio tricks you want to play?”

  Keren smiled. “Negative Delta One Five, welcome to the net.”

  “Roger, what is your position and status, over?”

  The group of individuals, covered by the rifles of the platoon, had nearly reached the Suburban. Sergeant Chittock was now carrying the sniper rifle and the Beretta. Things had definitely gotten interesting. Keren was spot-on for a bit of boring in the near future.

  “Delta, I’m going to have to put you on standby soon. We’ve got a personnel problem that has gotten out of hand. Our location is on the east side of the Washington Monument mound just short of Fifteenth Street. We’re a one-twenty mortar platoon with two remaining tubes on tracks. We have approximately twenty rounds of H-E left per gun and some flares and Willi-Pete. We badly need resupply of diesel, beans and bullets. We’ve been in the goddamn last rank of the goddamn retreat since fucking Dale City and we are about done in. That is our status. Over.”

  “Roger, Golf One One,” said the voice, cooly. “Understood. We’ll try to scrounge up some supplies for you. Get back to us when you’re under control. Out.”

  Keren nodded to the unseen fire center and flipped back to the platoon frequency. The confrontation outside had been reduced to fluent cursing on the part of the female soldier. Keren got out of the Suburban and lifted his palms in a calming gesture as Sergeant Chittock handed him his Beretta back. “Okay, one at a time. What the fuck just happened?”

  “This son of a bitch…” “This lying cunt…” “She said he…”

  Keren lifted the 9mm and fired it towards the Potomac. “I said one at a time. Sergeant Chittock?” He held the pistol barrel up and pointed downrange. If anyone was wondering why a Specialist Fourth Class was ordering around a sergeant, they weren’t asking.

  The sergeant’s round and normally friendly face was creased in hard lines. “She says this is her rifle and that this soldier and some of his friends raped her an’ took it off of her.”

  Keren thought about that. He had seen Elgars in several moods and easily rapable was not one. “Okay.” He turned to Elgars and held up a finger in warning. “Calmly,” he emphasized, “explain.”

  She took a deep breath and crossed her arms. “I was a sniper with the Thirty-Third. Bravo Company, Second Battalion Five-Ninety-First Infantry. We were in Third Brigade. My platoon got attached to the Twenty-First Cav in that rat-fuck at Dale City. I was on the west side when it all came apart. I ended up with these clowns.” She jerked her thumb at the beefy specialist who had been holding the sniper rifle. “I don’t know where the rest of them are, but he was with a truck unit. I stuck with them at Lake Jackson ’cause I didn’t know where the fuck to go. He was always wanting to try my rifle and he tried to cop a feel a couple of times. I didn’t think about it. That kind of shit happens all the time.

  “Then when it came apart again, I had just decided to catch some rest. We were in the back of a truck headed up the road to Manassas.” She paused and took a deep breath.

  “I woke up with two of ’em holding me down and Pig-Breath here pulling down my pants. When the three of ’em were done they dumped me by the side of the road with that piece of shit rifle and one fuckin’ magazine. I guess they thought we were the back side of the retreat.” She took another deep breath. “Which was where you found me.” She looked at Keren with eyes smoldering. “I want my fuckin’ piece back and Pig-Breath charged! I’d prefer castrated, but I wanna stay out of Leavenworth myself.”

  Keren nodded at her when he was sure she was done and turned to the beefy specialist. He noted in passing that his nametag read “Pittets.” It was obvious where Elgars had derived the name Pig-Breath.

  “What do you have to say?” he asked evenly. He was ninety-nine percent certain that Elgars was telling the truth. But since for some ungodly reason everyone was looking to him for judgement, he had to be impartial.

  “This cunt is lying,” snarled the heavyset specialist, flexing his fists. “I’d never met her before she walked up and stuck a fuckin’ gun to my head. She just wants my rifle, the bitch, and I can’t believe you’re letting her fuck me over like this!”

  Sergeant Chittock grabbed Elgars by the collar of her BDUs just in time and got an elbow in the stomach for his pains. But she subsided after she realized who she’d hit.

  Keren nodded again. He rubbed the stubble on his chin in thought and nodded a last time. “What’s the serial number of the piece?” he asked Pittets.

  The beefy specialist blinked a few times. “Why the hell would I memorize a serial number? I don’t see what that…”

  “BR 19784,” Elgars hissed. “It
stands for Barrett Rifles. And my initials are scratched on the bottom of the receiver pan. A-L-E.” She smiled thinly. “If I’ve never met you, I’ve never met the rifle, right, Pig-Breath?”

  Keren looked at Sergeant Chittock, who was searching the rifle for the serial number. He stopped, then looked up at Keren and nodded.

  Keren’s face tightened. He looked at Pittets. “Wrap him up with hundred-mile-an-hour tape and strap him to the side of One Track. We’ll turn him over to proper authorities if we ever find them. If he makes too much noise, put a piece of tape over his fat mouth.”

  “Hey,” shouted the specialist as willing hands dragged him towards the Mortar Carrier. “You can’t do this! I’ve got rights…”

  Elgars hefted the rifle and tried to support it with her broken left wrist. She grimaced and let the barrel drop.

  “Well,” said Keren with a grim expression. “You’ve got it again. What the hell are you going to do with it?”

  She slid the butt to the ground and opened the bipod one-handed. “Well, first I’m gonna give ’im a good bath,” she said. “Then I’m gonna zero ’im back in.” She lowered it onto its bipod and sat crossleg alongside. “What I don’t know is how I’m gonna reload the magazines.”

  “Well,” said Keren with a faint smile. “I guess you’re gonna need some help.”

  CHAPTER 68

  Washington, DC, United States Of America, Sol III

  1048 EDT October 11th, 2004 ad

  “Is there something we can do to help, L-T?” asked Sergeant Leo. The Old Man looked as despondent as the NCO had ever seen him. Even worse than when he thought they were gonna run out of chow.

  The lieutenant sat on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial looking at the reflecting pool. It was another perfect fall day, as all these awful days of death and devastation had been. It was as if nature was laughing at them all for their silly games of war. The only effect of the kinetic bombardments, so far, had been to make for some spectacular sunsets and sunrises.

  Lieutenant Ryan had chosen the perfect spot to capture the reflection of the Monument in the water. He was vacillating between hysteria and depression, both riding on a knife edge. He was an academy graduate whose first professional responsibility had, from his point of view, gone better than anyone had any right to expect. Lucking onto the Missouri had permitted him to slaughter the Posleen. And his platoon had performed like veterans under fire.

  So they got lost from their unit. It wasn’t their fault. There wasn’t a unit to rejoin. So now they were talking behind his back about how the WPPA was going to have to recover his career. After turning most of a division of Posleen into paste.

  And now this.

  He’d only been in combat for a few days, but he felt he’d developed a “gut.” And his gut call was that the Posleen were gonna wipe out the only controller for the demolition charges. That meant that they would capture the bridge. At that point the fucked-up units on the Mall would shatter like glass. And the Posleen would own America’s core.

  Losing the Mall would cut the heart out of the States. Hell, it would have a major effect on the expeditionary forces. Americans complained about their government all the time, but that was not the same as hating the symbols on this historic piece of ground. And all because a single stupid officer wouldn’t pay attention to what a manual, an experienced junior officer and good common sense told him.

  But Ryan was an officer. And a professional officer at that, a product of the long, gray line.

  “I’m fine, Sergeant.” He stood up and took a deep breath. There was a hint of smoke smell from the fires to the south where the Marines had mined the Pentagon with micronukes. He fixed what he thought was an expression of reserved contemplation on his face.

  I was right, thought Leo, we’re fucked. The last time the L-T had gotten that constipated-possum look was just before they latched on to the Mo and got all the fire-support any rational human being could want.

  Leo knew what was bothering the L-T and agreed. He was, after all, a demolition instructor. And the captain was totally fucked-up. When the L-T mined the 123 bridge, Leo had been ready to help on the design. But the L-T figured just the right amount of demo and not only had three ways to blast, but different firing points for all three. That was way over the limit to conservative, but the Old Man was a belt-and-suspenders kind of guy. Which was just fine by an NCO missing two fingers from his left hand. Cutting corners around demo was a baaad idea.

  “How are the men?” the lieutenant asked. He stopped whatever he was going to say next and his breathing deepened as he dropped into thought.

  Leo cocked his head to the side. “They’re fine, sir. We got a resupply of chow and ammo. Hell, we even managed to scrounge some wheels.” He leaned over to look at the officer who had suddenly stopped paying attention. “Sir?” He looked the way the L-T was looking but all he could see was the reflecting pool and the Monument.

  The lieutenant closed his eyes for a moment, then they flew open. “Get them up here,” he snapped. “Full loadout. Now!”

  “Yes, sir!” said the sergeant and started trotting down the steps before he wondered why. But he continued on. The Old Man was nobody to cross.

  The lieutenant strode across the echoing room dedicated to either the greatest humanist or the greatest tyrant in American history, take your pick, and stopped at an innocuous side door. He had visited the Memorial as a kid and wondered where it went. Someone had already shot the lock off and he stepped into the small room beyond. The staircase he had fully expected to see dropped into the stygian depths and he smiled. Fuck with his country would they? Fuck with engineers would they?

  The last of the platoon was starting down the stairway when the first gout of plasma slammed into the Memorial.

  * * *

  The wash of ionized deuterium caused the marble face of the Memorial to sublime. The gaseous carbon mixed with the carbon from the squad on the portico and was blown away in the wind from the superheated air. The flight of God Kings was at first unnoticed, but the rapidly approaching saucers could be seen all along the Mall as their cannons continued to wash the area between the Memorial and the bridge.

  * * *

  Kenallurial shouted in pure joy as his tenar flared out. So this was the te’naal battle madness that was spoken of. He felt whole for once, concentrated wholly on the task. The thresh burned beneath his guns, and that was good. The far side of the bridge was taken and the hated military technicians had been overcome for once. He detached Arnata’dra to begin clearing the demolitions as he charged the huge building.

  There did not seem to be an entrance on this side, but that was no barrier. He floated the tenar up to the level where the hated technicians had been set up and landed. There was no sign of their devices, but wires still lingered, melted to the face of the rock in places or dangling on the ground. Without knowing their purpose he was loath to touch them; that was Arnata’dra’s province.

  He raised his talons in triumph. Let Ardan’aath belittle this accomplishment. A bridge across the river was in the hands of the Host. Let the thresh despair.

  CHAPTER 69

  Washington, DC, United States of America, Sol III

  1050 EDT October 11th, 2004 ad

  So this is despair. Jack Horner looked at the two messages in the light from the hatch of the swaying Bradley. The ACS battalion was at the intersection of U.S. 1 and Capitol Avenue. They were barely ten blocks from where the President was under attack.

  They had been planning on leaving their canisters when they were almost at the Mall. The incoming lander, however, had forced them to ground. Once they were on the ground they were not a target to the lander, but anything flying was fair game. They were assembling even as he read the conflicting messages. If he sent them north to the refugee camp that was under attack they would still not be able to save the President, who was probably already dead. They might be able to save a few more civilians, but the President’s Guard was probably going to do the job
just fine.

  So that meant south. But by the time they got there the Posleen were going to be deployed. Which meant that most likely the battalion would be overrun just like those poor bastards at Lake Jackson. It was precisely the sort of place where he had told his subordinates to use regular forces to stop the Posleen, not the ACS. The suits were a finite resource. He should use the Hundred and Fifth to try to stem the tide. Using the ACS would be the wrong strategic decision.

  But the Hundred and Fifth wouldn’t stop the crossing. They were weak as a twig even with the “band of heroes” that he could throw in. They would break just like the other units; you can’t stiffen a bucket of spit with a handful of buckshot. And then the Posleen would be across the Potomac. And that meant backing up to the Susquehanna. And ceding Maryland and Delaware to the Posleen. And the Washington Mall. When it came right down to it, it was the battalion or the monument. And he just could not make the professional choice.

  He shook his head and tapped his AID. “Nag, get me Major Givens of the ACS.”

  * * *

  Mike watched Major Givens giving unseen thumbs-up signs as he tapped one armored boot on the ground. O’Neal had six different battle maps up on his display and the lander to the north, President or no President, was not the problem. Standing around and discussing it was just making it harder. He popped off his helmet, clamped it to his side and took a whiff. The one thing the suits did not replicate well was smell. There was a hit of wood smoke from the mess around the mall. Some less savory burning smells in there as well. Probably the Pentagon. And the slight waft, even from here, of unwashed humanity. Soon, soon, there would be the stench of slaughtered Posleen. Or his name wasn’t Michael Leonidas O’Neal.

  There was no room for failure; the choice was success or the ferryman. He inhaled the last fresh air he was going to smell for a while and felt his center finally click into place. No doubt. No fear. No failure. He’d sworn it on the graves of his dead.