Escalation

by Peter Nealen

  So, despite the fact that there were still more of them on their feet and moving, I heaved myself up, turned, and ran. I pounded past Phil, gasping, “Last man!” My voice was drowned out by the hard, thunderous reports as he opened fire on his own, shooting fast enough that I doubted just how precisely he was aiming.

  Three seconds. That is, on average, about how long it takes an enemy to spot you, bring his weapon to bear, aim in, and squeeze the trigger. Which means that it is, on average, about how long you have to get behind cover once you move from your last covered and concealed position.

  Believe me, when you’re running upright in the dark, with bullets already snapping past your ears, three seconds feels like way too long.

  I skidded to a halt, while simultaneously spinning around and dropping on my belly in the dirt. It took a frantic second to see clearly, as my fusion goggles immediately tried to slide down over my nose, but when I did, I saw muzzle flashes flickering in the hedgerow where the enemy had popped out, but none of them trying to close in. They’d learned quick. The rapidly-cooling bodies lying in the dirt and stubble between us made for a hell of an object lesson.

  The angle between us was such that a normal peel wasn’t really going to work. The plus side was that every one of us who wasn’t moving had a shot. I picked out a muzzle flash and shot at it, making sure that I aimed low; most misses go high. It had taken some practice to make that second nature.

  I kept up the fire while the rest stamped past me, until I was the last man again. The fire from the opposing hedgerow had slackened some by then, but I could hear the ominous rumble of diesels in the distance. They were trying to find a route for the armored vehicles to get to us.

  Up. Moving. The night air was burning in my lungs, tainted as it was with smoke and dust. The last week of fatigue was catching up with me, but I kept pushing, forcing my feet and legs to move, my head ducked down to try to present a slightly smaller target to the militiamen or EDC troops who were still shooting at us.

  Down. No shot this time. I lay there, my chest heaving, my heartbeat thudding in my ears, sweat running down my face and soaking my fatigues despite the autumn chill in the air, as the rest continued the peel back. The good thing about that particular maneuver is that it can move very, very quickly.

  Up again. We were almost to the end of the field. Another hedgerow stood between us and the nearest houses, but they had been blasted into wreckage and ruin by artillery, IEDs, airstrikes, or a combination of all three. Still, they’d provide more cover.

  I found myself leading the way into the shattered neighborhood, reloading my rifle as I went. There were still a few rounds left in the mag, which went back into my chest rig, but I wanted that weapon in the best condition possible.

  We were getting low on ammo. I did a quick count in my head as I stepped past the trees, my rifle up and scanning the half of the nearest house that was still standing. I had about three magazines left. Seventy-five rounds, not counting the five or six still in nearly-empty mags. About half what I’d infiltrated Slovakia with. I wished that we could get an airdrop, but hopefully, if we managed to link up with the Nationalists, they’d have some 7.62 NATO for us. Killian and his troops would be in trouble, though. Only the US Army was currently using the 6.8mm round; they’d have to scrounge weapons and ammo. And magazines.

  Provided the Nationalists were willing to spare any. Which was, of course, provided that they agreed to help us.

  The fire from across the field was only sporadic and poorly-aimed by then, but I could hear the diesels getting closer. They’d figured that we were going into the blasted neighborhood, so the vehicles were coming down the road toward us. We weren’t out of the woods yet.

  I got about five steps before I stopped dead, holding up a hand to grab Phil before he took another step. He started, looking at me, but I pointed at what I’d just seen.

  It was hard to make out in all the rubble, but there was just enough difference in temperature that somehow, it had shown up in my fusion goggles. There was something half-buried in the collapsed brick of the wall, and a line running out from it all the way to the trees. The little nodules along that line would be the contact points. The house must have been hit the night before, or even earlier, and the Nationalists had been busy after that.

  Rock, meet hard place. We had enemy troops behind us, armor coming up on our flank, more armor out on the other flank, which also happened to be an open field, and the Nationalists had seeded the ruins, which provided the only real covered and concealed route into the town, with IEDs. I spotted another one nestled in the pile of shattered masonry at the corner. I was sure that there were more pressure plates and tripwires set on the street nearby, and in the next building.

  It made a fiendish sort of sense. From what we knew, the Nationalist forces in Vrbovè weren’t large; while they constituted more of a reinforced company, as opposed to whatever small cell had been operating in Kuchyňa, they still weren’t likely to have the heavy firepower and numbers of the big units out east, which had been largely formed around disaffected Slovak Army battalions. IEDs were a way of equalizing the battlefield. Anyone without extensive combat engineer support was going to go around the rubbled neighborhood, forcing them either onto the road, or out into the open field, which was probably being watched by dug-in machinegunners and RPG gunners.

  And the difficulty of advancing along the road quickly became obvious as a flash lit up the night, followed a fraction of a second later by a concussion that shook the ground and just about knocked us all flat. The heavy wham of the IED detonation blasted leaves off the trees and bombarded the neighborhood with a blast of splinters, dirt, rock, and shattered asphalt, as an ugly black-and-orange cloud rose into the night sky. As the echoes of the blast died away, they were replaced by the fierce crackle of flames, what might have been distant screams, and then the harsh popcorn noise as the armored vehicle’s ammunition started cooking off.

  By then, the rest of the team was inside the treeline. The incoming fire had died away to nothing after that vehicle had been destroyed, and we weren’t going to draw any more if we could help it.

  Getting Bradshaw and the rest down into town without a balls-out firefight was going to be a good trick. But we needed to make contact with the Nationalists at the very least. We’d figure that particular problem out later.

  But if I hoped that we had some breathing room, I was doomed to disappointment. With their advance halted by the IED on the road, the EDC or their lackeys weren’t giving up.

  I barely heard the distant pops, but the whiffling noise that began rising in pitch was unmistakable. And horrifying.

  There was nowhere to go, not with those IEDs in the way. “Down!” I bellowed, suiting actions to words as I dropped flat and got as close to the ruined wall as I could, all too aware that there could very well be another cluster of 155mm shells behind it, just waiting for the right shock to go off, obliterating the rest of the bombed-out house, and me with it. But if I didn’t have cover, those incoming mortar rounds were going to turn me into pink mist, anyway.

  The mortars must have been pre-registered on the middle of the neighborhood. The impacts hit ahead of us, though they still shook and rattled every bone as they hammered into the ruined buildings and the street between them, close enough that each impact felt like being slapped against the ground by a gigantic hand. Dirt and debris were blasted skyward in ugly black fountains as the mortars hit and detonated, the sheaf forming a rough circle in the middle of the neighborhood. Maybe they hoped that we’d already penetrated deeper in.

  I stayed as low and as small as I could get as the wall shuddered and quaked behind me, my teeth hurting from the ravening force of the detonations. For those few brief moments, I felt as helpless and alone as I ever have. When you’re in a firefight, you have teammates, you have some control over your own fate. You can take cover, maneuver, shoot back. When you’re under mortar, artillery, or air attack, about all you can do is try to find co
ver, hunker down, and pray.

  I was doing a lot of that, right at that moment.

  The mortars ceased, the echoes rolling out across the valley, and for a moment, everything seemed eerily quiet. Then the Nationalists responded.

  Rockets roared out of Vrbovè with snarling, ripping sounds, streaking on bright tails of flame to the northwest and the south. I couldn’t tell if it was counter-battery fire, or simply aimed at any of their enemies they had targeted, as retaliation for the mortar strike. It didn’t matter. Hopefully, it kept some heads down while we worked our way farther in.

  I was still worried about how we were going to make contact without being shot as infiltrators, but once again, I had to worry about burning that bridge when I got to it.

  I wormed my way to where Phil was in a similar near-fetal position against the base of the wall, closer to the north corner of the house. “We’ve got to get moving,” I said. “Watch for pressure plates, and hope they don’t have any of them on command-det.” If there was a trigger man sitting there with a switch wired in, and he decided that the ghillied-up figures slipping closer to Vrbovè were hostiles, we’d be paste. But there was no other way, except to try to withdraw and take our chances on our own.

  But even aside from the logistical issues of trying to get to Poland by ourselves, going back the way we’d come wouldn’t be a good idea. They’d be waiting for us. If they didn’t just drop mortars on our heads, they’d move up with those armored vehicles that were sitting to the south to gun us down as we tried to get across the fields.

  Like it or not, we were committed.

  Phil got up slowly, looking carefully at everywhere he was about to put his foot, or his hand, and moved around the corner, toward the street.

  He stopped dead almost immediately, looking around him. I stepped next to him, taking care of where I put my foot, realizing that it was going to be damned hard to spot tripwires in the dark, even with fusion goggles. A tripwire is a very thin line, and the grainy, grayscale phosphor could only focus at one distance. Let the wire be too close to focus on, and we’d never see it until it was too late, and we were chunks.

  I could see at least three mounds of rubble that looked off; they hadn’t fallen there naturally. Which meant they were packed with explosives and other nasty little surprises. I was pretty sure I could see the pressure plate strung out from one of them, but knowing what I did about these things, I thought it was entirely possible that that was the trigger we were supposed to see. Which meant there were others, that were probably better-concealed.

  Or there weren’t, on account of the time available to plant the IEDs, not to mention the training level the Nationalists had with such things. But the possibility was still there, and we couldn’t afford to take the chance.

  You take chances with explosives, you get dead. And you get your buddies dead. That much had been drummed into me as a Marine, long before I’d joined the Triarii.

  Phil studied the street for a long moment, barricaded on the corner of the building, before he apparently decided on his route. He got to his feet. “Let me get about twenty meters ahead before you follow me,” he whispered.

  A roaring burst of machinegun fire thundered behind us. The enemy had foot-mobiles approaching again. “We might not have the time,” I told him. “Just find us as safe a path through that as you can.” And please, Lord, don’t let the locals spot us and decide to blow us up, just to be safe.

  With exaggerated care, he stepped out onto the sidewalk and started forward, threading a twisting path through the gauntlet of rubble piles. I saw him scan around him, then reach up to his NVGs as he looked down at the ground. He took another step, adjusted his fusion goggles again, then repeated the process. Slow and laborious, but given the threat, there wasn’t any other way.

  I looked back, but the fire had ceased. It seemed that either Tony or Dwight had issued a warning that had been heeded. For the moment.

  Now we needed to get through before they mortared us again.

  I hissed at Greg, who passed it to Jordan, and then, taking a deep breath, I followed Phil.

  It was one of the most nerve-wracking movements I’ve ever done. The more I looked, the more IEDs I saw. They had all been camouflaged by piles of rubble or downed trees, but it had all been done hastily, so with a little effort, it wasn’t hard to pick them out. And they were everywhere. The Nationalists must have been preparing for this for a long time. There was a lot of ordnance in that wrecked neighborhood.

  Of course, they must have seen the writing on the wall as soon as Bratislava refused to honor the referendum that had called for a complete severing of ties to the EDC, after the new set of “working documents” had come out of Brussels a couple years before. This fight had been a long time in coming. They’d had time to prepare while their angry countrymen rioted in the cities and were promptly put down by half the Slovak Army, backed up by the EDC’s “peacekeepers.”

  It couldn’t have been more than a quarter klick to the end of the street, but that was a long two hundred fifty meters. There had to be an IED every ten meters. They’d been thorough. They didn’t want anyone approaching that way.

  But we finally got to the edge of the ruined neighborhood and the IED field, after what felt like an eternity. We hadn’t received any more mortar or small arms fire from the northeast. Losing that armored vehicle, plus however many men on foot that we’d shot, seemed to have taken the starch out of the EDC for the night. I suspected they’d planned on steamrolling Vrbovè, and when it had proven to be a harder nut to crack than they’d expected, it had put them on their back foot.

  Phil was crouched in the trees, well back from the edge of the field between us and the town proper. There was another hedgerow lining the road north of us, but I suspected that it was just as loaded with IEDs, and probably covered by machineguns and RPGs, or whatever recoilless rifles the Nationalists were using.

  He grabbed me as I got closer. “There are heat signatures and movement across there,” he said, pointing toward town. “I think they’re maneuvering to block anyone getting through.”

  “Probably,” I replied. “It’s what I’d do.” I knelt next to him, peering through the thick vegetation in front of us. This hedgerow was almost forty meters thick, so we had room to hide.

  At least, until some trigger-happy Nationalist decided to do some recon by fire.

  I felt a tightening in my guts. This was it. We had no partisan linkup procedures set up with the Nationalists. We probably should have made contact before infiltration and established them, just in case, but the situation in Slovakia was so messed up that not only did we not know how they’d react, but they had no way of knowing for sure that we were on their side. Slovakia was a hash of “immigrant” militias, Loyalists who had sided with Bratislava against the referendum, increasingly militant Hungarian militias in the south, politically hardline Slovak militias, Russian-backed Slovak militias, disaffected Slovak Army troops, and a whole lot of people stuck in the middle, just trying to survive.

  And the US Army had stuck itself into the middle of that maelstrom, publicly supporting the EDC, which was hell-bent on crushing the Slovak Nationalists. I wasn’t sure how I’d respond to an American making contact, looking for help, if I was a Slovak at that point.

  But it had to be done. And that meant that I had to do it.

  I took a deep breath. I didn’t want to do this. I really, really didn’t want to do this. It could very well end up being the last thing I ever did. Worse, it might not be, but it might still go very, very wrong.

  I handed off my rifle to Phil and stepped out of the trees. Raising my hands, I called out, “Dobry den!”

  I waited to get cut in half by a burst of machinegun fire. Instead, I stood there, in the open, listening for the telltale noise of falling mortar rounds, for a couple of minutes before armed figures came out of the bushes and advanced toward me, their rifles pointed at my chest.

  Chapter 18

  Standing there
in the open, staring at the muzzles of those two CZ Bren 805s, was probably one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. Including all the stuff that came later.

  I discovered a long time ago that I’m not the kind to just lie down and die, or surrender. I’m not given to looking for fights just because—aside from joining the Triarii, which was explicitly looking for fights that needed to happen, but weren’t; that’s a whole other animal—but I won’t back down from them if I know that I’m in the right. And I just don’t like having weapons pointed at me.

  But as far as I could see, this was the only option. It could mean that I was a dead man. It could mean that I’d be a prisoner for an unspecified amount of time before I was either bartered, years down the road, or shot in the back of the head behind some Slovak barn somewhere. That was out of my hands.

  But that didn’t stop the urge to suddenly yell for covering fire, turn, and sprint back into the hedgerows for my rifle. A threat is a threat, whether it’s coming from hostiles, unknowns, or friendlies. These guys were currently unknowns, but that could change, real quick.

  “I’m an American,” I said as they got closer. Both men who were closing in on me were wearing civilian clothes under plate carriers laden with magazines and grenades. So were the half-dozen or so back behind them on overwatch. “I need to talk to your commander.”

  “American?” the smaller man, on my left, asked. His voice was thickly accented. “You do not look like American Army.”

  Meaning I wasn’t wearing half my bodyweight in armor. I was in fatigues, chest rig, and a ghillie hood-over.

  “I’m not,” I told him. “I’m part of a special unit that came in to fight the Kosovars.” It was true enough. And I knew that the Nationalists had no love for the Kosovars, the Turks, or the Syrians who had been pushed into the country by the EDC. “I do have some regular American soldiers with me. They survived the Germans’ sneak attack on their base.” I also knew, from the intel briefs, just how far the German-Slovak relationship had deteriorated since the EDC had started making demands based on economic blackmail. While it was up in the air just who was really running the EDC, the French or the Germans, a lot of the Nationalists blamed the Germans, especially since the majority of the EDC peacekeepers were Bundeswehr units.