Standing Before Hell's Gate

by William Alan Webb

  “What about you, Loot Hack?”

  He knew they used the term out of fondness, but he still hated that nickname. “I’m gonna radio a sitrep to Kicker and then deal with that Bradley and the Abrams.”

  “You can’t fight an Abrams with an LAV.”

  “So I’ve been told.”

  #

  Chapter 76

  Let me go now into the land where only dwell the lost,

  For I have done my duty as I saw it, but at fearful cost.

  Tomb along the Appian Way outside of Rome

  Near Gallup, New Mexico

  1722 hours, April 30

  For what seemed like the fiftieth time, Captain Sully started to have their field radio operator request a situation report from Field Goal, the radio call sign for Lieutenant Hakala’s First Platoon, and for what seemed like the fiftieth time he stopped himself. You either trusted your subordinates to report at the earliest possible time or you didn’t. So outwardly he kept a stoic demeanor while inwardly wanting to scream.

  “Kicker, this is Field Goal, do you copy?”

  Finally! “Roger that, Punter. What does the smart bird eat?”

  “The early worm, over.”

  “Affirmative, over to you, Field Goal.”

  Hakala reported their position and the battle unfolding below them in succinct detail, including the presence of the Bradley, the confirmation of at least one M1 Abrams, and the likelihood of a second. Sully folded his arms and closed his eyes as he listened, trying to visualize the scene for himself. Distortion wasn’t too bad, which he owed to Punter being on a high ridge.

  When Hakala finished, Sully took the receiver from the operator. “Roger that, Field Goal, sitrep received.” He wanted to say out and end the conversation there, but he couldn’t. That would be hanging Hakala out to dry. “What are your proposed courses of action? Over.”

  He knew what was coming even as he repeated a plea in his mind: don’t say it, don’t say it, for God’s sake, please don’t say it. But he knew that Hakala would say it, and right on time, he did.

  “Request permission to engage hostile forces.”

  “By hostile, do you mean Sevens?”

  “Affirmative.”

  Sully figuratively lifted his boot and stepped into the Rubicon. “Permission granted, on my authority. This is a direct order for you to intervene on behalf of citizens flying the American flag. Do you copy?”

  “Affirmative. Field Goal out.” Without his noticing, every single person with a reason to be near the CP, and some who didn’t, had listened in. When Sully spotted First Sergeant Meyer, he gave the order. “Assemble the company,” he said. “At least…” He let a faint crease to the corner of his mouth serve as a smile. “…those who aren’t already here.”

  #

  More than one hundred people surrounded him, so many that Sully had to climb on the back of his LAV-25 to be heard. Once there, he didn’t have to ask for quiet. As the waning afternoon sun lit him like a spotlight, nobody else spoke, or even whispered.

  “First Platoon is at this moment actively engaged in the defense of the place called Shangri-La. This community lies more than one hundred miles to the east and flies the American flag over its compound, which to me indicates that it falls under our mission of liberating and protecting anyone with allegiance to the United States of America. To that end, First Platoon asked for and I granted permission to use any means necessary to accomplish that mission. I will soon pull out to support them.

  “However, as you may have heard, General Steeple has taken command of Operation Overtime in place of General Angriff, and has ordered us to stand down in the face of our enemy. We are not to engage in combat with the forces we refer to as Sevens, not even in self-defense. My orders to First Platoon violate that order from the commanding general. To put it bluntly, I’m disobeying a direct order because I believe that order is morally wrong and possibly illegal.

  “But I can’t order any of you to do the same. If I do, and you obey me, then all I will have done is throw the onus onto you of proving why you obeyed my orders. That’s not fair. Anyone who wishes to accompany my crew and I, we will accommodate as long as space allows. For those who wish to stay behind, no ill will or stigma will attach to you, since you will actually be the one in compliance with orders from above. Are there any questions?”

  Only one man raised his hand. “Is time of the essence, Cap?”

  Sully nodded. “It is.”

  “Then with all due respect, sir, why are we still standing around here?”

  #

  Chapter 77

  When you’re slapped you’ll take it and like it.

  Sam Spade

  Overtime Prime

  1729 hours, April 30

  With Master Sergeant Schiller’s help, Amunet Mwangi had set up a makeshift office in the Crystal Palace’s small conference room. She was busily leafing through a report from Chain Saw about the state of readiness of Overtime’s spread-out forces when a priority message popped up on the computer monitor. She scanned it, printed it, and took it into the office of the commanding general, where Steeple leaned back reading something on his tablet. He looked up with a questioning expression she knew very well.

  “Sitrep from Task Force Kicker.”

  Steeple closed and rubbed his eyes. “All of these code names give me a headache. Who is Kicker again?”

  “Dog Company, 1st Marine Light Recon Battalion. They’re over in New Mexico.”

  “Make a note to change their designation to Delta Company, not Dog. This isn’t 1950. Now, what about them?”

  “One of their platoons on a long-range reconnaissance has met and engaged in combat with an army of Sevens.”

  Steeple stiffened, laid the tablet aside, and leaned his elbows on the desk. When he clasped his fingers as if in prayer, Mwangi knew what would come next — narrowed eyes and a soft, dangerous voice. “Did I not order them to avoid conflict with the forces of the Caliphate regardless of the circumstances?”

  “That you did, Tom. That you did.”

  “And they acknowledged receipt of the message?”

  “They did.”

  “So this is direct disobedience.”

  “It gets worse. The remainder of Dog Company is on the move to support First Platoon.”

  “So a whole company is in mutiny?”

  “That’s about the size of it.”

  His face turned so red she thought he might have a stroke. “Warn them that unless they comply with my orders immediately, they will be considered a rogue unit and enemy of the brigade. As such, they will be open to any and all possible retaliatory actions, including artillery and air strikes.”

  Mwangi hesitated. She’d never seen her boss that angry before. Usually she could talk him out of his more damaging orders issued during a tantrum, but this time she wasn’t sure that she could. “Is that really a good idea?”

  “That is an order, Colonel! Have two Golden Eagles fuel and arm themselves with anti-armor packages, and order the artillery battalion to ready its fastest road machines to prepare for movement.”

  “Okay,” she said, stunned by his vehemence. This wasn’t the Tom Steeple she knew. “They’ll need escort.”

  “See to it.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “We’re going to put the fear of God into those bastards, do you hear me? Better yet, the fear of Tom Steeple… I want to crucify them. God, I hate Marines. Do we have any other units in the vicinity?”

  “We do, Tom, another Marine company. Echo, not far north of Dog Company.”

  “Would they respond to my order to oppose their fellow Marines?”

  Mwangi paused and ran a tongue over her lips. “They’re also marching to the sound of the guns.”

  #

  1730 hours

  Muhdin knew the M1 with him on Highway 4 had nine rounds of ammunition left, while Bashara’s only had eight. Five of those nine rounds were armor-piercing, largely useless against most non-fortified
targets, but an excellent choice for smashing through a massive tree. It took a little while for the tank to clank its way forward, and he used the time to clear the highway of men and debris, offering a clear target ahead. Five hundred yards from the fallen bur oak it stopped, rocking back and forth on a worn-out suspension.

  Once the gun had stabilized, it fired. The round raced past hundreds of men lying in roadside ditches with a shoop sound. In less than a second it passed over the tree, over the heads of the people behind the tree, and out of sight. Muhdin cursed. How could they miss at that range?

  The second round struck dead center on the bole and blew the tree in two. Wood splinters cut down defenders in a fifty-foot swath around the blast site. The Abrams fired a third round before Muhdin could stop it and that one struck to the right of the first hit, completely blasting one half of the tree off the road and opening the highway to traffic.

  With a roar, the Pir Baba Regiment rose and charged the opening. Two defenders showed themselves in the gap between the two halves of the tree and were cut to pieces by the Bradley’s chain gun. Here and there an infidel stood up and fired, and a few of his men fell, but the vast majority didn’t. They poured through the opening and began to spread out. Muhdin climbed aboard his Bradley and ordered it forward. The turret rotated this way and that, looking for targets.

  #

  Muhdin was thirty yards before the shattered tree when his men began streaming backward, away from Shangri-La, with tracers zipping past and through them. One man had his left leg vaporized by a direct hit, collapsed to one side, but used his remaining leg and arms to pull himself forward until a second shell shattered his head like a pumpkin. Images of the previous year flashed through Muhdin’s mind, when his men had disappeared over a hill only to come streaming back in the face of cannonfire from American AFVs. Surely Allah could not be cruel enough to allow that to happen again?

  “Ready your other TOW missile,” he commanded. “Load the main cannon with armor-piercing rounds.”

  “Armor-piercing, Blessed General?”

  “Do it!”

  Ten seconds later, an eight-wheeled armored vehicle sped past the tree so fast it nearly rolled over to the left. Several of his men were run down before they could move. Clearly seen on its side was a white star.

  “Fire, fire!” Muhdin screamed.

  The gunner fired the TOW, which theoretically shouldn’t miss since it was wire-guided. But the new machine moved too fast directly toward them, as if it intended to ram, and the missile flew harmlessly past it on the right. Nor could the Bradley’s turret track fast enough to take aim. But ten yards from the Bradley in the two o’clock position, the American machine opened fire with its own Bushmaster.

  At point blank range, the 25mm armor-piercing rounds easily penetrated the Bradley’s defensive armor, exploding and chopping up the men inside like a butcher grinding meat and fat for sausage. Standing in the commander’s hatch, Muhdin felt a searing pain across his stomach, and then something hot and wet drenched his pants. The Bradley shuddered under repeated hits and smoke curled up from within the hull.

  The strange enemy vehicle circled and fired more rounds into it from the left side. Muhdin pushed up with his arms to get out as red hot steel splinters peppered his arms. Flames licked at his feet, but he felt a weight holding him down. Reaching down, he felt the body of the vehicle commander leaning against his legs. By touch, Muhdin realized the big shells had blown off half of the man’s head.

  Bleeding and with agony radiating from the wound in his upper groin, the general gritted his teeth and pushed himself free of the mangled turret. The eight-wheeled enemy vehicle had come around and stopped. He’d swung his legs over the side and was about to jump down when two things happened within microseconds. The enemy Bushmaster tracked toward him and stopped, and Muhdin looked down its barrel. Then something supersonic zipped by the fatally wounded Bradley and struck the enemy directly in the glacis plate. It blew up with such violence that the turret flew into the air, and kept blowing up as secondary explosions rent the twisted metal.

  Sitting on the now flaming Bradley, Muhdin stared at the equally flaming mass twenty yards down the highway, trying to understand what had just happened. Then it dawned on him: the M1! A 105mm shell had crushed the American. Limping away from his own burning AFV, he realized with a start that there was still ammunition there to cook off, including the remaining TOW missile and most of a load of fuel.

  Two of his men let him loop an arm over their shoulders, and they helped carry him fifty yards down the road before internal explosions began to wrack the Bradley. Only after they helped him sit did Muhdin see the drying blood and gobs of gray stuck to his pants from the vehicle commander’s brain.

  Horrified, all he could think was to get the pants off. He stood to unbuckle his belt when new cannonfire erupted. A dust trail from down the ridge at his back followed a second enemy vehicle which had come up behind the M1 and fired into its vulnerable rear with its Bushmaster. With his pants halfway down, Muhdin could only stare in horror as the Abrams absorbed hit after hit.

  #

  Chapter 78

  Duty is the essence of manhood.

  Lt. General George S. Patton

  Shangri-La

  1732 hours, April 30

  Even at a range of thirty feet, Lieutenant Hakala couldn’t be certain his rounds would penetrate the Abrams’ rear. It was, after all, a main battle tank, and the LAV-25 was distinctly defined as not being an AFV. But the one most vulnerable area of an M1 was the rear and his gunner put round after round into the engine and fuel area. The grinding whine of the tank’s engine increased, like someone hitting the gas while in first gear, and then abruptly shut down. Smoke curled from cracks in the hull.

  Nearby Sevens opened up with rifles, spraying the thinly armored LAV from close range. Worse, instead of bailing out of the injured tank, the crew decided to fight it out. While the Bushmaster kept hammering its rear, the big turret began to slowly rotate. Hakala knew the Abrams had emergency hand cranks to operate the turret in case it lost engine power. He could only stay in place for a few more seconds. Either the gun would do to them what it had already done to Alpha Two, or the Sevens would bring up an RPG. Fortunately for him and his crew, the gun had been aimed directly forward and it took a long time for it to rotate one hundred eighty degrees so it could bear on the LAV. It made it to about one hundred twenty degrees before fire reached the Abrams’ fuel tank.

  Both Hakala and his gunner had been inside the turret, so when the tank exploded the rain of shrapnel and flaming fuel didn’t kill them instantly. The blast wave shook it like an angry mob overturning a police car.

  “Back up, back up!” Hakala yelled into the intercom mike, trying to keep his voice calm. Through the periscope, he made sure nothing obstructed their rear, and saw stunned and injured Sevens scattered everywhere from the Abrams’ blast wave. Several of them lay in the highway. He watched one man on his hands and knees, in their path, look up and see the LAV speeding toward him. Instead of scrambling away, he raised an arm. Hakala watched his face stretch in terror and then felt the bump bump bump bump of the LAV’s eight big tires flattening him into the asphalt.

  One hundred yards south of the still exploding Abrams, he called for a stop and climbed out onto the turret, holding the fire extinguisher. Burning gasoline had shattered both headlights, and the two spare tires slung under the downward-angled front had caught fire. Hakala inhaled smoke filled with bits of melted rubber and coughed. Then, as if things weren’t bad enough, two Sevens between them and the Abrams started firing at him. They missed and the bullets ricocheted into the woods, but it would only take seconds for them to correct their aim.

  Then the hammering chatter of their M240 7.62mm machine gun added to the general chaos. Both Sevens flew backward under multiple hits. While his gunner gave him cover, Hakala put the fires out, even though he had to dismount to finally extinguish the tires.

  Once he’d climbed back
into the commander’s seat, the driver got on the intercom. “We’re sittin’ ducks, Loot!”

  He took two seconds to decide between going back up the ridge, where they’d make a perfect target for an RPG, or racing down the highway into Shangri-La. His brain instantly decided there was enough room to get by the Abrams, although with ammunition still cooking off it was risky. But the smoke palls from the Abrams, the Bradley, and Alpha Two’s LAV-25 worked as well as smoke grenades for blocking vision.

  “Go!” he said. “Straight down the highway past that tree!”

  Without hesitation, the driver hit the gas and the LAV accelerated past forty miles per hour. At that speed they couldn’t avoid any unexpected dangers, but hitting them without an RPG was nearly impossible. Swerving in and out of smoke clouds and squishing bodies, they rocketed past the tank, the Bradley, and their own comrades in the flaming LAV without incident, and made it past the tree into the relative safety of Shangri-La.

  #

  1738 hours

  Abigail Deak sat with her back against the bole of a still-standing bur oak as explosion after explosion threw shrapnel into the other side of the tree. The last thing she’d seen was a second one of those strange green… she didn’t know what else to call it other than tank… show up and start shooting at the other tank, the one that had blown up the tree thirty feet from where she now sat. She peeked around the tree and watched flames come out of the big one until a sheet of flame rose high into the sky and sent some huge piece of the tank flying skyward. Hot pieces of metal fell like hail as she pressed against the oak in a tight ball.

  She didn’t realize she was panting until the green eight-wheeled tank with the white star roared past the tree and stopped thirty yards up the highway. Somebody screamed in pain and Abigail saw others rushing to help someone who lay on the pavement, a jagged piece of metal sticking out of his leg.