Escalation

by Peter Nealen

  With more time to observe, it became apparent that for all the firepower that Chris and I had seen getting thrown around the night before, most of the fighting had been fairly irregular. The burned-out husk of an AMX-10 on the side of Highway 499, north of us, was halfway in a deep crater, that must have been from an IED blast. Even as we watched, a salvo of five rockets blasted out of the trees in the distance, on the edge of Vrbovè, aimed at somewhere south. When those five were it, with no further activity before a howling barrage of artillery fire slammed into the same area, blotting out the dim outline of the house in a cloud of dust, smoke, and fire, I suspected that the Nationalists had followed the playbook of every insurgent since the advent of modern war. Shoot and scoot. The men who had launched the rockets were probably far away by the time the counter-battery fire hit.

  “Damn, this is a shit sandwich, isn’t it?” Phil asked.

  He wasn’t wrong. There were drones in the sky on multiple levels, and we could hear the distant rumble of fast-movers as well as the growl of helicopters. The helos were steering clear of the town itself; the anti-aircraft fire they’d taken the night before must have shaken them up. The sheer cost of modern military equipment meant that lives were less valuable than vehicles or helicopters.

  The air cover wasn’t the only problem, though. There were vehicles on the roads and in the fields, mostly standing off a couple of klicks from Vrbovè itself, but with clear fields of fire on all the major thoroughfares leading in. Most of them appeared to be hastily up-armored militia technicals or Slovak Army BVP-2s, but there were plenty of German Pumas, Belgian Griffons, and French AMX-10s in the mix. There were even the low, predatory shapes of tanks squatting in hedgerow to the south; I couldn’t see them clearly enough to know if they were German or Slovak. Both countries used the Leopard 2, anyway, so it would be hard to say even close up.

  “Well, we don’t have much of a choice but to take a big bite, do we?” I asked. Scanning the ground below us, I thought I saw a bit of a gap. It wasn’t even a gap, so much as it was a covered and concealed route through the cordon that the EDC had slapped around the town. The vehicles were mostly up by the roads, probably because there was definitely some wetland near the 499, which would be rough going for armor trying to go offroad. They’d get stuck worse than that Stryker had gotten stuck in the mountains.

  “Might mean getting wet, but I think I see a way in,” I said. I pointed out my planned route, which was partially dependent on the enemy being as weak-minded and averse to discomfort as a lot of our allies were. Phil scanned it with his eyes, nodding slightly, once again one hundred percent the professional soldier and point man.

  “Got it, boss,” he said. “Leaving rucks here?”

  “I don’t see another way,” I said. “We’re going to have to do some crawling, and I don’t know about you, but I’m not thrilled with the idea of trying to do that with close to seventy pounds on my back.”

  “Me, neither,” Phil replied. “You ready?”

  “Let’s go.” We slipped back into the trees and moved deeper into the woods to link up with the rest. I gave a down-and-dirty brief of our route and the plan.

  “Don’t take this the wrong way, Deacon,” David said. “But the linkup plan is kinda shit.”

  “Oh, I know,” I answered, refusing to rise to the bait and get defensive with Dave. That never ended well for anyone involved, and letting that happen during a brief like this was a bad, bad idea. “We don’t have a lot of choices, though. Kidd’s been trying to get through to the Nationalists in Vrbovè for the last couple of days, but either he’s on the wrong channel, they’re not interested, or they’ve been too busy to answer. Judging by what we can see out there, my money’s on A and C.”

  I looked around at the darkened, painted faces. “Any other dumb observations?” I asked. “Or, miracle of miracles, any smart ones?”

  “As much as it pains me, I agree with Peanut,” Jordan said. “This isn’t smart. There’s a lot more likely to go wrong trying to contact the Nationalists. We’ve already managed to resupply once. We don’t exactly need fuel anymore. Why not just head for the border?”

  “Poland’s a hundred thirty klicks away,” I replied. “Hungary’s almost the same distance, and across a lot flatter, more open terrain. Personally, I think we’ve got a better chance of survival if we can link into the Nationalists’ network. We could do it on our own; we did it on the way in. These kids?” I jerked my thumb toward where Killian’s soldiers were dug in. “They wouldn’t make it halfway there. And like it or not, we’ve got them hanging around our necks, now. Unless anybody really wants to turn their back on the whole reason we came into this hell in the first place, and leave a bunch of Americans to the wolves?”

  Nobody had an answer to that. It was tough, it was dangerous, but that was what we’d trained for. And despite the more practical considerations, I think that all of us were just mad. I know I was. I’d joined the Triarii because I’d been sick of what the Marine Corps was continuing to descend into. But I hadn’t quit being an American just because I’d put on that patch.

  I pointed to Phil. He turned and headed downhill and toward the town.

  It was deceptively quiet; the fighting of the night before must have given the EDC pause. Given the number of blasted, burned-out hulks we’d seen on the way, that shouldn’t have come as any surprise. The only sounds were the distant rumble of vehicles on the ground and in the sky, along with the occasional distant pop of a gunshot.

  Phil threaded his way down through the woods, sticking a little bit more to the south from where he and I had observed the fields and the lay of the land.

  Reaching the edge of the woods and the beginning of the first hedgerow that formed our route, he got low and started moving even more slowly. I let him get a few meters’ head start, then followed.

  That kind of movement gets excruciating after a while. You have to stay low, below the tops of the bushes. That means bending down, which gets to be murder on the lower back after a shockingly short time, no matter how fit you are. Meanwhile, you’re trying to watch every step so as not to make too much noise, while simultaneously keeping your head on a swivel to watch for threats, keep track of your teammates, and look ahead so that you don’t get so focused on where your feet are at that moment, that you wander off into the open, or expose yourself from a direction you weren’t thinking about.

  Those who say that infantrymen are just crayon-eating knuckle-draggers? I’d like to see them try it. It’s a thinking man’s game, if you want to stay alive in places where it ain’t easy.

  Phil paused at the end of the hedgerow. We had to either cross an open stretch of field, if only about fifty yards, or else turn sharply north to stay in the cover of the hedgerow. That would take us much too close to the formation of BVPs and AMX-10s on the 499 for comfort, particularly in that spot.

  He stayed where he was while I caught up. He didn’t even whisper, but pointed due east, toward the town and across the field. He was more comfortable with taking the direct, if somewhat exposed way. I looked north, then south. My fusion goggles could just pick out a glimmer of heat signature down that way; there was an armored vehicle in the hedgerow to the south, about two fields away. There was closer cover and concealment, but it seemed that the Nationalists had mauled them badly enough that they were keeping some standoff.

  Still, modern thermal sights could see an awfully long way. Better not to take too many chances. I squeezed Phil’s shoulder to get his attention, pointed to my eyes, then pointed south. He looked carefully for a long moment, then nodded, and motioned to indicate crawling on his belly. I nodded.

  It was going to be rough going, but low-crawling is always better than getting blown apart by machinegun fire or worse.

  I looked back to make sure that Greg and Jordan were keeping up, as Phil got down and started to worm his way forward, finding a furrow in the by-then fallow field. His ghillie hood-over helped break up his outline and a little of his therm
al signature, but it wouldn’t have disguised him enough if it had been daylight.

  Ghillies don’t work the way movies and video games would have it.

  With Phil a few yards in front of me, I got down on my belly, making sure that my rifle muzzle was up out of the dirt, and started following him.

  Low crawling is not fun. It is painful. It is slow. Especially when you are trying to avoid detection, it makes it even slower. Hartrick liked to call it, with an evil glee, the “Skull Drag.” Because you’re trying to make yourself part of the ground while you inch forward with your elbows, knees, and toes.

  The dirt seemed to fill my nose as I crept along behind Phil. It quickly started working its way into my sleeves, my gloves, and my belt. Not that I’d been exactly clean for the last few days, but fresh grit has a way of getting even more uncomfortable.

  The dirt wasn’t the worst part, though. The worst part was the feeling of being as exposed as a bug on a plate. We were in the open, and while, when I turned my head first to the north, and then to the south, I couldn’t really see any of the enemy armored vehicles, that didn’t mean that the skies were entirely clear, either. I couldn’t look without stopping, so I just prayed that no drones flew directly overhead, or that if they did, their operators were asleep at the switch.

  Phil got to the next hedgerow and scrambled up to his feet. I was just over a minute behind him. Even as I got out of the open and started to pick myself up, I thought I heard a faint, humming buzz.

  “Shit,” Phil whispered urgently. “Recon drone.” He had his rifle up in his shoulder, pointed at the sky, but fortunately, he held his fire. A gunshot was going to draw just as much, if not more, attention. We had to hope that we hadn’t been spotted, that the drone was watching inside the town.

  I got up on a knee next to Phil, grabbing him by the shoulder and turning him to watch ahead, while I covered the rest of the team crossing the field. Greg had almost reached us, getting a little higher in his hurry to get out of the open.

  If I hadn’t turned back to cover, I might not have seen the figures coming out of the trees to the north. They weren’t in what I would call any kind of formation, but they were armed. And they damned sure weren’t ours.

  Even so, I held my fire, just in case they were a random patrol, or even some of the EDC’s troops trying to probe the edges of Vrbovè. Maybe the drone hadn’t seen us. Maybe these guys had nothing to do with us.

  But they weren’t moving east, toward the town. They were coming south, toward us. And the buzz of that drone overhead was getting louder.

  “Hurry up,” I hissed. “But stay down.” I wasn’t even watching the others at that point; I was watching the oncoming gunmen. They were sloppy, bunched up and walking upright across the field. Not well-trained.

  Not that that would be much consolation if they opened fire on us at that range, in the open. We didn’t have enough cover. And if they shot like they patrolled, they would make up for their training with volume of fire. And quantity ends up having a quality all its own.

  I raised my rifle as Greg got past me and struggled to his feet. I could only see a bit of his movement out of the corner of my off eye; my fusion goggles were focused entirely on the men coming closer, and they didn’t have a great field of view. But after a moment, I saw his IR laser switch on from behind me, dancing toward the figures in the field.

  “Turn that off,” I hissed. I didn’t know if they had NVGs or not, but it hadn’t been a good bet to assume that the bad guys didn’t have night vision for the last decade.

  I was too late, though. One of them yelled, and then all hell broke loose.

  Greg switched off the laser just as muzzle flashes flickered along the ragged line of advancing skirmishers, and he and I both dropped flat at the same time. Jordan had almost reached us, but rolled to one side, bringing his rifle around even as I searched for my sights and bullets snapped overhead, ripping the vegetation behind us to shreds.

  My OBR’s short-dot scope could be set to zero magnification, and the reticle was illuminated. Through the fusion goggles, it wasn’t clear; it may as well have been a red dot. But that was about all I needed right then. I put the fuzzy blob of white on the nearest muzzle flash and squeezed the trigger.

  Flame spat from the muzzle and the 7.62 thundered twice before I shifted to the next man in the line. The pale outline of the man I’d shot flopped backward, pumping more rounds uselessly at the sky. They had NVGs, but they were still spraying fire wildly at us, so they could see, they just couldn’t see well. Probably old Gen IIIs or Gen IVs, without our thermal capability. Still, the muzzle flash from my rifle would be like a beacon.

  More flashes were erupting across the field as the team reacted to contact. I shifted my aim to the next man to the left of the one I’d just dumped, but Greg had knocked that one off his feet, so I kept shifting my aim left, even as I crabbed to my right, trying to get away from the position I’d just announced by my muzzle blast.

  Four men were down in as many seconds, and the rest were running for cover or throwing themselves flat in the aftermath, still shooting wildly back at us. They weren’t even trying to aim; some of the bullets were far enough away that their passage sounded like a hiss instead of a snap. One was crawling on hands and knees back toward the trees, until I put a bullet into his center mass and he flopped on his face.

  Taking stock, I got back up on a knee. “Let’s go!” I barked. There was no point in noise discipline at that point. We’d gone loud, in a big way. “By twos, toward the town!”

  Some of the survivors had reached the trees, and were spraying more fire at us. I returned a rapid five shots, aiming just below muzzle flashes as best I could, before Dwight tore into that treeline with a long burst of automatic 7.62 fire. That was my signal, and I got up and grabbed Phil. “On me!” I barked, and we plunged into the hedgerow, heading east as best we could.

  So much for quietly infiltrating Vrbovè.

  Chapter 17

  I dashed forward, skidding to a halt as I spun around and dropped prone. The hedgerow itself had proved to be too thick for us to stay inside it while trying to break contact; Phil and I were both hugging it, but had had to push into the field to the north just so that we could get some distance.

  Getting my rifle into my shoulder, I searched for targets. I wasn’t going to waste ammunition on suppressive fire at that point.

  I saw a brief flicker of movement, but it looked like the sheer ferocity of our counterattack had given them pause. They hadn’t expected to run into soldiers out in the open, and when they’d lost at least six in the first few seconds, that was going to shake their morale. I hoped that they were running scared, but we weren’t going to take chances.

  Hope is not a plan, to use the hoary old turn of phrase.

  Jordan pounded past me, squeezing between me and the hedgerow, almost stepping on my back. I could hear him panting, but he was in good shape—better than I was. Greg was behind him, and he was sounding a little more ragged. Greg wasn’t the biggest PT stud on the team.

  The two of them pushed past us and kept going, stretching out a few more meters before setting in. By the time they dropped flat, Dwight and Chris were passing.

  The technical term for the maneuver was the “Australian Peel.” We hadn’t necessarily set out to do it that way, but the confined nature of the terrain had pretty well mandated it.

  In pairs, the rest of the team peeled past, until Tony thudded past me with a gasped, “Last man.”

  I stayed where I was for a moment, scanning the field and the far hedgerow for the enemy. I didn’t want to get up and move only to get caught in the open just as more shooters came out of the trees and opened fire.

  For a long minute or two, the field was quiet and still. I could hear the vehicles revving up on the road, and distant shouts. Somewhere behind us, gunfire rattled in the night, but it sounded like it was on the other side of town.

  Naturally, as soon as I levered myself up onto a knee,
six men came out of the trees.

  They were moving carefully; they didn’t know where we were anymore, presuming they were even a part of the same patrol we’d shot to pieces. I froze, hoping that my ghillie would break up enough of my outline to lose myself in the vegetation behind me.

  Maybe it did, maybe it didn’t. The machinegunner who hefted his HK 21 to hip level and sprayed a long, stuttering burst of fire at the hedgerow didn’t seem to be aiming at anything in particular. It was recon by fire, or simply him hosing down any place that might have an enemy with bullets.

  My money would be on the latter, but at that point, it was hardly pertinent.

  I dropped on my belly, my chest rig and magazines digging into my ribs, as Phil shot the machinegunner, the single bark of his rifle silencing the HK 21’s thunder. The man stumbled, then fell on his face in the dirt.

  Phil had already been aimed in. By the time he dropped the machinegunner, I was just getting my eye to my scope. I transitioned to the next man just as they whole group opened fire, spraying bullets at the hedgerow as they threw themselves on the ground.

  I fired just as they dropped, my shot missing my target by inches. He got low, almost out of my sight, but I aimed and fired even lower, just about right at the ground in front of him. I didn’t think I’d actually hit him, but I sure blasted a bunch of frag and dirt into his face, because he reared back in pain. At less than three hundred yards, it wasn’t that difficult a shot. The rifle surged back into my shoulder with a heavy boom. My thermals showed a faint, light-colored splash, and he slumped.

  I fired two more shots at the lumps I could just barely see, then hauled myself up and hauled ass toward the town behind us.

  It’s always a temptation, in such a position, to stay put, behind cover, and pick off as many of the enemy as you can. The problem with that is, while you might be stationary, that doesn’t mean that all of the enemy are. And a small unit like my ten-man team would be too easily flanked and wiped out. They had numbers that we didn’t.