by F X Holden
“You got any last messages you want me to give anyone?” Bunny asked her. “You know, in case you don’t make it out?” She had a mischievous glint in her eye.
“Oh, in case I don’t make it?” Rodriguez responded. “Because of course you will.”
“Of course,” Bunny said. “Don’t you watch war movies? The tough but likable kick-ass grunt always makes it.”
“Really? And you are the tough but likable kick-ass grunt?”
“Yeah mate. The commanding officer never makes it though. Usually they sacrifice themselves so their subordinates can live, unless they are British, in which case their own troops shoot them first.”
“You watch a lot of war movies?”
“When I was a kid. So anyone you want me to contact?”
“That’s a very personal question Lieutenant,” Rodriguez said.
Bunny took a swig of water, then handed her the bottle, “OK, I’ll share first shall I ma’am? I’ve got no one.”
“No one?” Rodriguez was surprised. “No family?”
“Mother dead, no brothers or sisters, father is a rolled gold shit,” Bunny said simply. “Cousins plenty, none I ever cared about. When DARPA called, I took three seconds to say yes.”
“No … love interest?”
“Well, that’s a very personal question Lieutenant Commander,” Bunny smiled. “No. I tend to piss people off if they hang around me too long.”
Rodriguez could believe it. “I’m married,” Rodriguez told her. “He’s serving on Guam.”
“Actually I knew that,” Bunny admitted. “But you don’t wear a ring. So...”
“He wants kids,” Rodriguez said.
“Fair enough.”
“I don’t,” she said.
“OK. That’s fair enough too.”
“I do love him though,” she said. “It’s complicated.”
Bunny lifted her rifle and sighted along it, “OK ma’am, tell you what. I’ll make up some stuff at your funeral about how we were talking about him right before you sacrificed yourself to save my life. Happy ending for everyone.” She drew a deep breath. “Shame though, we never did get those tattoos.”
Bondarev dropped the telephone back into a pocket on the leg of his flight suit. Borisov looked at him, “What was that about?”
“Misdirection,” Bondarev told him. He slapped the blast door. “You have two doors and eight men, including yourself. We still have no idea who or what is behind them. What do you propose?”
“I propose Major-General that we plant explosives in that tunnel we entered through, go topside and turn this cave into a tomb for whoever is in here,” the Captain said.
Bondarev looked around him, his eye-catching on the gleaming grey skin of the amphibious Fantom still poised on the launch ramp. It was generations ahead of his Okhotniks, he knew that now. Together with the other tech and software still intact inside the base it was too great a prize to seal away like a pharaoh in a burial chamber.
“No,” Bondarev said firmly. “The mission is to take this base intact. If you are not capable Lieutenant, call in additional troops as I proposed.”
Borisov stiffened, was clearly about to reply then realized it was an act he might regret. “The Comrade Major-General has miscounted. I have nine men, including himself,” He turned looked the blast door up and down. “A positive breach charge should ensure we get this door open and stun anyone directly behind it. Myself and five men will clear the facility behind this door leaving two to cover the other door in case the Americans try to exit that way.” He nodded to one of his men, who unslung a duffel bag he was carrying over his shoulder. From within it he began pulling explosives and detonators.
Bondarev watched him, “Do you have a spare rifle?”
“No Major-General,” Borisov said, not sounding particularly apologetic. “That is why you will join the men watching that other door.”
Bondarev looked down at his little Makarov. It suddenly seemed very small indeed.
It all happened in seconds.
Dave opened the manhole cover. He held a backpack over his head with one hand, the other hand hanging on the ladder as he moved up, then as he reached a step just below the lip of the opening he put both of his hands in the air, poking out of the manhole to show he wasn’t holding a weapon.
Perri saw a movement below him, saw the Russian soldier. The same soldier he had seen in the schoolhouse in Gambell. The same one he had shot outside Savoonga!
The man was watching Dave’s hands and arms emerge with the radio and he was grinning. His uniform tunic was soaked with blood on his right side and he held that arm tucked into his chest. In his left hand he held a pistol, and as Dave was opening the manhole cover, he lifted up the pistol and sighted on the top of the tank.
Perri didn’t wait to see if he was just being careful, or meant to fire on the area of the tank where Dave had to be. Crouched with one eye to a hole in the tank, the muzzle of his Winchester XPR sticking through a hole just beneath it, he racked the bolt on his rifle, made a guess at where he should aim, and fired.
He missed!
The soldier swung his pistol around, pointed at Perri and fired three quick shots. The bullets hit the steel above his head. Perri had taken a custom built 10 round magazine from the general store when they had looted it. As fast as he could, he worked the bolt again, fired, worked the bolt, and fired again. And again. The Russian soldier went prone, resting his pistol arm on the ground as he fired up at the tank. Perri saw spurts of dust beside the Russian as his shots went wide and corrected his aim but the Russian’s semi-automatic pistol shot much faster than Perri could fire with his bolt action rifle.
Suddenly, they were both out of ammunition. Perri fell back onto his haunches, pulling the empty magazine out and scrabbling in one of the boxes for another one. Dave had jumped or fallen down from the ladder, but was standing there looking at him in shock.
Ammo! he wanted to yell at him. Where the hell was that extra magazine? He jammed the rifle into his crotch, pulled the bolt back with one hand as he felt around in the box with the other, except he couldn’t feel anything in there now, let alone the ammo. Damn hand was numb. Why was Dave looking at him like that? He looked down at his waist where Dave was looking.
Ah, hell.
Rodriguez and O’Hare had been prepared for the blast. They had heard the sound of drills as the men outside bored holes into the rock either side of the door, and placed their explosives. So just being left behind the door to starve or die of thirst was apparently not something they were going to have to worry about.
But neither of them were really trained for what was about to go down. A massive concussive blast, yeah, probably supplemented by grenades thrown in by the attacking soldiers. That was a no-brainer. They were waiting around the corner from the door, a good distance down the long corridor where they wouldn’t be exposed directly to the blast, either from the door being blown away, or from grenade shrapnel. The barrels of graphite they’d put across the end of the first corridor each weighed about 400 pounds. They had hammered timber support beams into the wall behind the barrels to reinforce them and had to hope the barrels would be able to take whatever was coming and still provide some kind of protection. Unless their attackers were armed with rocket-propelled grenades in which case they could just stand off at a distance and reduce the barrels to piles of metal and black dust.
They also had a spotlight, one of the Pond landing lights, positioned above and behind the barrels shining right at the door. Bunny had observed that if it survived the breach, whoever was out there had better be wearing suntan cream because they were going to get burned.
They were identically armed. Both had HK416 rifles with flash suppression, and belts around their waists that held five magazines each. They had no grenades themselves. No body armor, no night vision goggles, so they had the LED lights in the corridor switched on. Some of the lights were sure to be knocked out by the blast, but they expected there would still be
enough light for them to aim by. And for what it was worth, they had their flight deck helmets on. Not that they would stop a bullet, but they might just block some of the noise and protect them from flying debris.
As they sat with their backs to the wall, listening as the drills fell silent, and knowing what the silence meant, it occurred to Rodriguez they had never discussed surrendering. She knew why Bunny hadn’t raised it. She still believed they could win this fight, get out there, and launch at least one more drone.
But Rodriguez hadn’t considered surrender either. Not because she was a ‘death or glory type’; not at all.
Maybe it was just that age-old feeling that she didn’t feel like she could just give up, when so many others had given their lives - from Halifax and the others topside, to those who’d been crushed and drowned in the shockwave that followed.
Then suddenly the time for reflection was over – the world around her went white, and black, and her eardrums caved in and she found herself lying on her side with her rifle barrel jammed up under her armpit! Bunny was lying flat too, but looked like she had come through the explosion a little better - lying on her back, with her rifle crossed across her chest. Bunny rolled onto her stomach, swung around and started crawling towards the corner but Rodriguez grabbed her foot and pulled her back.
Sure enough a further series of blasts went off around the corner as the Russians threw in fragmentation grenades. The graphite packed steel barrels rocked against the timber braces holding them and some of the timber shattered, but they held, still blocking the corridor. It had taken a hydraulic dolly for Rodriguez and Bunny to get them into position, so it wouldn’t be easy for any advancing troops to shove them out of the way.
Through the ringing in her ears, Rodriguez heard boots in the corridor around the corner.
“Now!” she called, and they ran to their prepared positions, Bunny up against the far wall, her rifle between barrels, Rodriguez taking the near corner, sighting between the wall and the first barrel.
Through the still-settling smoke from the explosions she saw dark shapes advancing down the corridor toward her. Rifle on semi-auto, she worked the trigger as fast she could put the dot on a target.
Despite his bluster, Captain Borisov had never led his men in combat before. Police actions, yes. Anti-terrorist operations in Dagestan. But for the last four years he had been cooling his heels in Vladivostok, with the only real action outside training exercises being a bank robbery gone wrong in which three hostages had been killed before he was ordered to go in and end it.
In that situation, he had building plans, optic fiber and infrared intelligence on the location of the tangos and their hostages. He had multiple ingress points to choose from. His men had the advantage of darkness and night vision technology. They had hours to plan their action and more than enough personnel to execute it. In the end they lost one additional hostage, killed two of the armed robbers and captured three. None of his men had taken a bullet. It was called a success.
There was no way to get an optical fiber camera under the blast door or around the frame, nor did he have time to drill a hole. Lacking intel, his only option was to breach and move in fast to clear the area behind the door, snake formation, two by two. He didn’t like it. In fact he hated it. But he wasn’t going to let that damn VVS flyboy see a moment’s hesitation.
O’Hare and Rodriguez on the other hand had chosen the field of battle and their strategy was pretty clear. Kill, or be killed.
The naval officers weren’t trained weapons experts, but they had both received the same basic firearms training as Marines and they drilled their targets with short, controlled bursts. The return fire was also rapid and controlled, but what came their way thudded into the graphite barrels without ricocheting. The hammer of heavy weapons fire filled the corridor.
“Reposition!” Rodriguez called as soon as the weight of incoming Russian fire stuttered. She was sure she had hit a target or two and with enemy soldiers down in the corridor in front of them, the Russians couldn’t use grenades without risking their own men. She covered O’Hare as the woman pulled back out of the line of fire and threw herself down behind Rodriguez.
“Reloading!” Bunny called. “Did we hit anything?”
Rodriguez held a finger to her lips and looked around the corner. Heavy suppressive fire hammered the wall above her head but she’d seen enough. About twenty feet down the corridor, there was a dark form lying still. Behind that, another, being dragged away, and a cluster of black-clad troops falling back to the blasted doorway. She sent a few more shots after them, but then remembered her veteran father telling her a wounded enemy was more valuable than a dead one, because the wounded had to be looked after, while the dead looked after themselves. Gradually the suppressing fire died down.
The Russians would be hurting and angry now, of that she was sure. Serious harm was on its way.
Borisov cursed as he pulled his men, literally, out of the corridor. He had one dead, one wounded, and one stunned from multiple hits on his body armor and a blow to the helmet which had not penetrated.
“Shooters?!” he yelled to the only survivor out of the two troopers who had led the breach, a man who had taken a bullet in the ankle. “How many? Show me.”
Borisov handed him a tablet and stylus and his hand shook as he drew, “Hard to see because of the bloody smoke and that spotlight. Four, maybe five shooters,” the man said. “In cover. A corridor, thirty to fifty feet. Some sort of barricade. Barrels. Obstructing the corner, no way around. You could try to climb over, but it’s a kill zone.”
Bondarev had heard and seen the probing attack fail and ran over, listening. “Do you have an RPG?” he asked. “Blast that barricade and whoever is behind it.”
“No, our heavy weapons were on the chopper that turned back” Borisov replied. He turned to one of his weapons experts. “You, load counter-defilade - you are to clear those barrels and disable whoever is behind them, then follow me in. You two - on my order we rush that barricade, get grenades around the corner so we can get over the top.” He gave Bondarev a withering look. “Major-General, my men can watch that exit, make yourself useful and help this man with his injuries.”
Bondarev looked down and saw the man’s lower leg was a bloody, shattered mess.
Rodriguez and O’Hare had pulled back to the tool room at the end of the second corridor. Nothing but a small dozer was going to move those graphite barrels and they had no desire to be near them if the Russians hit them with RPGs. They hunkered down by the door of the tool room and waited. The tool room might be a dead end, but it was a very defensible one. Unless the Russians had gas, of course. Or just decided to pull back and blow the whole base to hell. There was nothing they could do but wait and see.
They didn’t have to wait long. From the first corridor she heard the crack of suppressing rifle fire then more whip-crack explosions as shrapnel began flying around the barricade and rattling around the long corridor. The flying shrapnel took out their spotlight, making the corridor suddenly seem very dark.
“Defilade rounds,” Bunny said, pulling her head back in case of a ricochet. “But no RPG. They’re not taking us seriously ma’am.”
“Men. Typical,” Rodriguez grunted.
Developed in the first part of the new century, counter-defilade ammunition together with laser targeting systems on new generation combat weapons allowed ground troops to fire over obstacles and explode the round right above the head of defenders hiding behind them. The ammunition started as large bore grenade rounds, but grew progressively smaller until even heavy assault rifles could shoot counter-defilade ammunition.
Rodriguez watched cautiously as the end of the corridor a hundred feet away was filled with flying metal and the heavy graphite barrels were perforated, spilling the fine graphite slowly out onto the floor. Their barricade wouldn’t last much longer after all.
The covering fire paused and Rodriguez heard boots thumping down the corridor again and bodies cra
sh hard against the barricade as the Russians stormed it. Grenades would be next.
“Now!” she called to Bunny and pulled her head back behind the door frame.
The GUA8/L cannon ammunition belt Bunny fixed into the ceiling pipes was 25mm laser guided fragmentary. Fired by a Fantom, it used the laser seeker on the cannon to determine when to explode the round to give the maximum chance of a kill even with a near miss. It could also be pre-programmed to detonate at a specific range if the pilot preferred. Bunny had overridden minimum safe distance protocols and set the rounds she had placed in the ceiling of the corridor above the barrels to detonate 0.01 seconds after firing.
As she pushed the button on her remote, 100 rounds of 25mm frag exploded simultaneously into the first corridor ending the very brief and extraordinarily violent war of Captain Borisov and his three men.
Mercifully, they were already dead before the grenades they were holding exploded.
From his position ten feet back where he was putting a splint and bandage on the wounded trooper, Bondarev had a 45-degree angle view into the mouth of the corridor and it was like looking into a slaughterhouse killing floor. Neither Borisov nor any of his men made it out. Smoke poured from the corridor.
“Idiot,” Bondarev cursed. Borisov’s remaining two men were still stationed further along the flight deck, watching the second door. “Hold your positions!” he yelled at them. “Prepare for the Americans to counter-attack!”
Bondarev grabbed the wounded man by his combat vest and tried to drag him away from the door, but with the weight of his gear and the rifle he was still carrying he was too heavy- He pointed at a blast deflector further up the ramp. “Get yourself over there, and get ready with that rifle, they’ll try to break out now.” The man started belly crawling, dragging his wounded leg behind him. Bondarev looked balefully over at the pristine blast door further down the deck, with only two troopers covering it. There was nothing for it; he lay on his belly at an oblique angle to the bloodied corridor, pointed his little Makarov optimistically at the entrance, and waited. He kept looking down at the other door. When they came, surely they would come from there too.