The Med

by David Poyer

  “Listen up!” Silkworth shouted, staring in at them. “We’re two miles past the border, and three miles from the objective. This is all the briefing you’re going to have preattack. So listen good.

  “We’re in Syria now. The Syrians have backed off to let us in. We don’t know for how long. Looks like we’ll be alone with the terrorists, for a little while at least. But everything has got to go fast, and I mean fast.

  “Assault will go as follows: Over the crest of this last hill is a two-mile-wide valley plain. Airfield on the far side. Plane on the field, probably deserted, but one rifle squad from ’track seven will take it in combat order. On the far side of the airstrip is an old resort compound. The hotel itself is the tallest building. That’s probably where the hostages are.

  “We’ll stay in the ’tracks the whole way to the buildings. Dismount there in cover. Most of the force will provide a base of fire from the front. That’s the holding element. The maneuver element—that’s us, this ’track and two others, with Major Wasserman here in charge—will flank left in open order and carry out an assault through and into the objective proper, which is the hotel. We don’t know the layout, so keep your eye on me and the major. We’ll move fast and hope we don’t hit anything we can’t handle. Any questions?”

  “What about when we get in the hotel?” asked Cutford. The men looked at him. He had reversed his rifle so that it hung upside down by the sling, and Will remembered the way the men in Nam used to hold them on TV. In Nam, when he had been a child …

  “Major?” said Silkworth.

  The officer moved forward, a radioman moving with him, as if they were attached. “There’s been no time to plan that,” he said, folding a map and stuffing it into his blouse. His eyes were slits in the sunlight. “Squad leaders will have to act on their own initiative. Coordinate your men with those of the other units. Normal urban-combat procedures.”

  “Okay.” said Silkworth, taking their attention, their obedience, back with the single word. “Weapons loaded, safeties on. Out fast and take cover instantly when the ramp comes down. Driver! Close this fucking barn door and put her in gear!”

  * * *

  At that moment, sweeping in great circles a mile behind and three hundred feet above Givens’ ’track, Dan’s back suddenly prickled.

  He leaned forward, his forehead touching the windscreen, and swept with his eyes the entire column. The vehicles, strung out along what had become no more than a dirt track. The knot of men around the jeep, breaking and scattering as their briefing concluded. The dry hills, the mountains behind, ahead the last rise before Ash Shummari. And all around them, above them, open and empty sky.

  He had not stopped to think after he left Sundstrom and SACC. Instead he had gone straight to the Guam’s helo deck. He knew the air plan. He’d written it. His orders had been no armed aircraft over the beach; but Haynes had asked for two of the unarmed observation choppers, fitted with smoke generators, to be over the hotel when the column hit. He had gotten to the flight deck to find only one warming up. The other had a casualty to the transmission. Dan had sprinted across the deck, yanked the hatch open even as the crewmen turned, surprise on their faces, and thrust himself behind their seat. One of them pushed aside his throat mike.

  “What’s going on? Who are you?”

  “I’m on the squadron staff, and my wife is in there.”

  “I don’t have any—”

  “Get going, damn it! Look at your operation order!”

  That stopped them; he knew damn well none of the pilots read anything but their own flight schedules. The man turned his head front and began flicking switches.

  Then, quite suddenly, they were in the air.

  The chopper passed low over the inshore ships, barely higher than Ault’s mast. Low, gray, grim-looking, the old destroyer rode seemingly close enough to touch the land; from the helo he could see sand ridges fingering out toward her under the glittering surface. Then she flashed past, and he was over the beach. He looked down on the rear guard, digging in among the dunes a mile inland. Machine-guns and antitank missile launchers, here and there a tank crouched in cover, ready to hold a beachhead through which a retreating force could withdraw.

  Beyond that Lebanon seemed empty of life. But through the whole flight inland the pilot and copilot swiveled their heads, searching that blue sky. After a while, his back itching at the thought of a Syrian fighter, or an antiaircraft missile, he started doing it, too. They kept low, flashing so close over hill and valley that sheep scattered beneath them on the crests. Sometimes he had to look up to see them. Despite that there was no guarantee they would not be fired on, and he knew that now, as they hovered almost exactly over the border, they were in as much or more danger as any of the men in amtracs below them.

  His back prickled again. He leaned forward and reached up to slap the copilot on the shoulder. The man turned.

  “Are we going in?” he shouted.

  “Any minute, soon as we get the—”

  “Smoke!” the pilot shouted at that moment. The copilot started and reached up to thumb a switch. The helo tilted forward.

  They leapt over the last crest no more than fifty feet up, and at two hundred miles an hour Ash Shummari burst into sight.

  * * *

  The ’track’s engine roared and its treads dug into the sand. Will’s rifle was jerked from his hand and clattered on the deck. He snatched it up, feeling sick, and checked it. It looked okay. He loaded, as Cutford had ordered, pointing it at the overhead as he put the safety on.

  The nose rose, and then dipped. The engine roared, cut as the driver shifted, and then howled again at maximum rpm. The men inside couldn’t see a thing. Givens tried desperately to visualize what Silkworth had said. An airstrip—a compound—a hotel—

  At every moment, as they swayed and roared across suddenly flat land, he expected the jolt of an antitank rocket. How well armed were these terrorists? He had no idea what a terrorist looked like. Did they wear uniforms? Beards?

  Were they black or white?

  * * *

  Harisah was standing in the lobby, talking to the men from the committee, when the shout came from outside. He heard at the same instant the whock of helicopter blades, the growing whine of turbines. He knew instantly what it was, but restrained his first impulse to run for the door. That would be natural; they might have expected that, and targeted it. Instead he lowered his head slightly, and said, “They are here. Your advice?”

  “The battle, strictly speaking, is not our responsibility, Majd,” one of them said. “What are your intentions? Where do you want us?”

  “I will hold them off if they are few, or attack stupidly; and move to the upper floors if they penetrate. We will use the hostages as shields. If I judge the fight is lost, we will kill them all. The pickets and barricades should hold them long enough for me to make the decision. You will draw arms and fight with the rest.”

  “We understand. Go with God.”

  “Insh’Allah.”

  He turned from them, dismissing that now from his mind. Now was the time for battle. He thought for just a moment of the American woman. In a way she was right. This was honorable war, to fight those with arms in their hands. He hoped for victory, that he might not have to kill so many of the innocent.

  But victory or defeat, life or death, for him and for them, was not in the hands of the Majd now. For all would be, could only be, as it was willed.

  Without thought, emptying his consciousness the way he had once crawling beneath the wire into Israel, he slid back the bolt to feed a fresh round. From outside came the sound of his men firing, shouting: “God is great!” He paused at a window, looking out. Then crouched, smashing out the glass, and picked out his first target.

  * * *

  Two floors above, Susan stood half-hidden at the window, looking breathlessly out and down. From this height she could see far out across the desert. She turned, again, to look back into the room. Nan still slept. She tu
rned back to the window.

  There was no doubt in her mind now. She was watching an attack on the compound. The helicopter had disappeared, passed out of her sight, but the smoke it had laid blew along the desert floor, eddying dark around the jetliner, then hiding it. The pulsating drone of many engines grew behind its curtain.

  Then, all at once, six, twelve of the green vehicles burst out of the murk. Bigger than she had thought, they swayed roaring across the level sand, throwing up wakes of dust. At the same moment, below her, she saw men race back toward the hotel, saw them stop, turn, and throw up their weapons to aim.

  The first cracks of rifle fire split the hot air. She paused a moment longer, watching, then ducked below the windowline and crossed to the bed.

  “Get up,” she whispered. Then, above the rising clamor outside, said louder: “Get up, Bunny. Mommy needs you with her now.”

  * * *

  Bullets clattered suddenly on the hull. The men in the amtrac stiffened. One half-rose, reaching for a firing port. Cutford slapped him back into his seat without a word.

  A few seconds later the engine faltered. It cut out, and the ’track glided for a moment almost soundless; then came the snarl of the starter. The engine caught, roared; they began to reaccelerate; and then something ground viciously beneath their feet, like an animal clawing at the floor. Without thought Givens lifted his boots to avoid it. An instant later the ’track slammed upward, scraping and screaming across something hard, and came to rest tilted up and canted to the left.

  “Drop the ramp!” he heard Silkworth shout, dragging on the A-driver’s leg. The wall fell away and light hit the interior of the tank. All the men leapt for it.

  Will pounded down the ramp, rounded the flank of the LVT, and dropped with the rest. Hugging the bare ground, pumping its hot dry chalky smell rapidly through his lungs, he squinted quickly around in the sudden brilliance of day.

  Their ’track had run up over a low retaining wall of cut stone. It loomed above them to their right with its snout cocked in the air. Bullets hummed overhead; it was drawing fire. One whacked into it as he watched, blasting off a neat oval of green paint. The men were crouched partly behind its immobile mass, and partially in cover of the wall.

  Givens half-rose for a second to look over it, then ducked back down. Through the smoke he had made out an open space, a paved plaza. In the center of it was a ruined fountain. Around it was grouped three main buildings and behind them several smaller, lower service buildings. In that second-long exposure he had seen the flashes of small arms in the windows of the central building, the tallest, directly across the square. He hoped they didn’t decide on a frontal assault.

  No, flank left, Silkworth had said … a space behind the building, perhaps an alley or service road, opened in that direction; he saw the sergeant, ahead of him, pop up his head to examine it.

  ’Tracks were still arriving to their right, men dismounting. The din of engines and fifty-calibers was deafening. Givens realized the plan was already going wrong. The LVTs couldn’t get to the hotel itself; the retaining wall was too high for them to climb. Instead they were dropping their troops behind it, then pulling back a hundred yards or so to provide suppressing fire with bursts from their cupola MGs.

  He felt his need again then, and this time it was undeniable. Guiltily he pulled down his trousers and crouched for a moment in the cover of the wall. The relief was immense.

  “Advance!” Silkworth’s voice penetrated the ringing in his ears from the collision. Harner threw a just-lit butt away with a disgusted motion and swung himself easily over the wall. The others followed, rushing one or two at a time. Will got his pants up, clambered over the wall with two other men, and sprinted full out for the first building. Flashes from the far side of the square … rounds sang overhead, ripped trenches in the asphalt at his feet, and then he was behind it and in cover.

  Ahead, standing erect at the mouth of the alley, the sergeant slapped his hands over his head and spread them; open up. “Mortar squad, follow me! Givens,”—he started, still trying to get his belt buckled—“you take point to the left, Harner right. Hernandez, you’re tail-end Charlie. Staggered column, five meters apart. Use doorways, trash bins, whatever cover you can find. Keep your weapons pointed outboard.”

  Will was moving to obey him when he felt his arm gripped. It was Cutford. “I’ll take point,” the corporal muttered.

  “Silkworth said—”

  “Hey, fuck Silkworth. You think he cares for a brother like I do? Shit he does. Follow me.”

  And there was nothing to do but fall back, watching the broad neck darken as Cutford lifted his rifle and slid toward the first doorway in a narrow lane. He acquiesced in it, but he didn’t like it. That Cutford, he thought again, as he had so many times since the float began. Why doesn’t he leave me alone? Why is he always on me, giving me a hard time? This ‘brother’ baloney …

  “Come on, buddy, move,” whispered the guy behind him, some rifleman he didn’t know, and he flinched and started forward. Ahead of him, already into the alley, Cutford moved from door to door in sporadic rushes, eyes on the windows of the larger building to their right. Givens tried clumsily to imitate him, trying to recall the drowsy lessons in the troop spaces on street fighting.

  “Spread out, fuckheads!” Silkworth called behind them, and he froze for a few seconds, letting space seep between him and the point. Cutford was twenty yards ahead now, ducking into what must once have been a loading dock.

  They moved like that, leapfrogging warily along the alleyway, for two or three minutes. Once one of the guys let off a burst at a window, and got his head chewed by Silkworth. They weren’t supposed to initiate fire, not till they reached position. Givens took advantage of the halt to tip back his helmet and wipe his forehead, scratch his sweat-soaked hair. It left his brow feeling naked and he tipped it back down quickly. He realized then that the mortarmen hadn’t been issued grenades. Silkworth got them moving again and he concentrated on the next doorway, on the windows above the fire team. Was that someone moving?… no, only a curtain, flapping in the wind through a shattered window.

  Cutford … Hernandez … himself … Silkworth … Harner. Had Liebo made it? Walking into a blade sounded pretty fatal, but with a quick lift back to the ships they said you had a good chance of surviving anything but a head shot. From here, too? Where would they put a helo down here? Well, probably on the airstrip, if one of them took a sniper round. But they wouldn’t. Then he remembered Washout, and the other men, those who had screamed back on the road, under the mortars. Where were they? He’d seen no medevac for them. It had happened to his friend—it could happen to him—

  Pay attention, Will, he told himself. Sweat dripped from his nose. Jesus, your head is all over today, isn’t it.

  No. I shouldn’t say His name like that. I’m sorry.

  The alley ahead turned, angling off to the right, and as they crept closer he saw it.

  Barricade. A mass of debris, mattresses and boxes and bricks piled from wall to wall across the narrow way ahead. He lingered, checking it out, but it was Cutford, still twenty yards up, who saw danger first. He pumped his rifle twice above his head as he dropped and rolled.

  “Covah! Hostiles!”

  From above them, from the second floor of one of the buildings, came a sudden blast of sound. The pavement where the corporal had been flashed sparks and gray dust. Givens lunged for a doorway, fear squeezing his chest like a tightening rope. M-16s barked high-pitched around him, five, six weapons at once. He found himself firing too, the rifle kicking, tracking up the building. Blue smoke formed a cloud. He saw his bullets join the others as the window and the frame around it burst into fragments and dust. A weapon flashed from the barricade then and he jerked his sights down, still firing, and aimed into it. Something whacked into the concrete above his head and he ducked. He triggered the weapon again, stood momentarily surprised as nothing happened, then released the magazine. It thudded empty off his boot and
he slapped in a full one. Thirty rounds don’t last long, he thought. I better start conserving ammo.

  “Cover fire! Covering!” someone was yelling, and he aimed at the barrier again, then saw something move to the side. He swung, then jerked the rifle up just in time to miss Cutford. The corporal, on his belly, was tight against the leftmost wall, just where it curved. He was feeling at his chest. Givens ducked out, fired a burst at the barricade, ducked back, checked the window. Nothing moved.

  Cutford rolled back a foot or two, raised himself on an elbow, and tossed a grenade overhand. It went up and over the barrier. The explosion boomed away, echoed, and in the sudden silence that followed they heard a man cry out.

  “Move up, pal,” said the rifleman, rolling into his niche. “Quick, quick. I’ll cover you.”

  Me? he thought for just a moment, and then he was running, bent low, hearing the ripping fire behind him. Another rifleman was moving up on the opposite side of the alley, head lifted, eyes wary. Givens ran, his boots jarring on the pavement, tripping on loose bricks. As he reached the barricade, Cutford got up and sprayed a burst over it, moving his rifle in a figure-eight pattern, and they went over it together.

  Three men were running down the lane beyond. Two were ahead of the last, who was moving crabwise, bent to one side. Cutford paused and raised his weapon. His rifle barked once, then the bolt locked open. But the limping man was lagging even further, dragging himself along. The others looked back, but when Will fired too, they ducked away and disappeared.

  The lone man jerked to a halt, whirled round, and fell to the pavement, dropping something. Will spun, only then remembering their rear, but there was no one else behind the breastwork.

  Hernandez edged through it, hunched like a scared turtle under his too-large helmet. Silkworth appeared behind him, then two of the riflemen and then the major, Wasserman, holding his pistol with the slide back. His face was set and pale. Silkworth looked pissed. “Cover, you turds!” he bawled. “You don’t double-time in like that! Jesus Christ! Fire and cover!”