Escalation

by Peter Nealen

  At least for a while.

  I glanced down at my watch, shielding the illumination with my hand. 0331. We were supposed to be kicking things off by now. I keyed my radio.

  “Weeb, Deacon,” I called. Rybàr had just walked up to the Alligator and was watching me out of the corner of his eye while he spoke softly into his own radio.

  “Stand by, Deacon.” Scott sounded more than a little stressed.

  I glanced at Rybàr. “Our friends aren’t going to stand by for much longer, Weeb,” I said softly.

  “Roger,” was all he said in reply.

  Rybàr was openly watching me by then, as the seconds ticked away. I checked my watch again. 0345.

  I wasn’t sweating. Not quite. But I wasn’t comfortable, either. There were all sorts of ways this entire plan could go bad, and the perception that we weren’t pulling our weight, regardless of the actual cause of the delay, was only one of them.

  Finally, Scott’s voice crackled in my earpiece again. He sounded harried and more than a little pissed. “Deacon, Weeb. We’ll be in position in ten.”

  Another glance at my watch showed me that it was 0350. So, we were kicking this off half an hour late already. I couldn’t help but feel a twinge of anger; I knew it wasn’t my team behind the delay, and the odds that it was Bradshaw’s section were pretty slim, too. Which meant it was the Army unit.

  “Ten more minutes,” I told Rybàr, keeping my voice even and level. He didn’t respond at first, except to check his own watch.

  “I have elements running behind schedule as well,” he admitted. It was an olive branch, and for the moment, I was more than happy to take it. Fortunately, he’d detailed Skalickỳ to a different part of the growing column of rag-tag trucks, technicals, cars, and two MRAPs that were clogging the street around the church and the police station. “We will launch the attack in ten minutes.”

  Of course, there’s always somebody who doesn’t get the word. He’d barely finished speaking when a series of loud thunks announced the mortars going loud early.

  Rybàr’s head snapped around at the sound, as the rounds arced away with a fading, dopplered whirr. He looked pissed. I just keyed my radio. “Weeb, Deacon, you need to push. The mortars just went early.”

  If he swore—which I was pretty sure he did—he waited to key the radio until afterward. “Copy, Deacon,” he said. “We’ll do what we can.”

  Ten minutes doesn’t seem like a long time, but once the shooting starts, it can be an eternity.

  Rybàr climbed into the Alligator as the mortars started to hit with a rolling series of crumps off to the southeast, the flashes lighting up the sky behind the buildings. I followed suit; I didn’t want to get left behind just because my guys couldn’t get into position fast enough.

  Rybàr was on the radio, rattling off more orders. Rockets were ripping away into the night, as the next mortar salvo went up. That one should have been aimed at the unit that Scott, Bradshaw, and Killian were facing. The noise of the heavy ordnance almost drowned out the stuttering roar and crackle of small arms fire along the edges of town.

  Rybàr yelled orders, cranking down his window and sticking his Bren 805’s muzzle out. I followed suit on my side, saying a quick prayer that my guys would make it through.

  A moment later, as more flashes flickered to the south, accompanied by several heavy thuds and a long, ripping burst of machinegun fire, the column lurched into motion and started to push north, up the 499.

  It was a little surreal. We were rolling like a regular convoy, while all hell broke loose around the edges of town.

  It wasn’t a swift or a smooth exit, either. The lead elements, about a block ahead of us, weren’t rolling quickly, but were advancing by fits and starts, as if the drivers, or the vehicle commanders, were nervous about venturing too close to the growing conflagration off on the edge of town.

  And the sound of that conflagration was starting to get worrying. A trio of loud bangs might have been either cannon fire or Matadors impacting. But the crackle and roar of small arms fire was only intensifying. I craned my neck to try to see, but we were still in town, with bombed-out buildings and rubble-and-sandbag barricades blocked my view.

  Heavier fire thundered from the north. That definitely sounded like armored vehicles. More small arms fire. I was sweating, my fingers flexing unconsciously around my rifle. We still had three blocks left to get clear of the buildings, and the lead vehicles weren’t speeding up. In fact, as a barrage of artillery fire suddenly screamed down out of the sky to hammer the north end of town, they stopped altogether.

  Rybàr was yelling orders into his radio, shouting hoarsely to be heard over the earth-shaking thunder of the impacting artillery shells, that were throwing big fountains of smoke, dirt, and debris up above ugly orange flashes. One struck an already half-blasted house at the end of the street, sending an arcing cascade of shattered masonry and plaster out over the road before the remainder of the house’s roof caved in.

  “Deacon, Weeb!” I wasn’t sure if Scott had just called me, or if I hadn’t been able to hear him over the thunder of the arty.

  “Send it, Weeb!” I yelled back, hoping that I could be heard over all the other noise and Rybàr’s Slovak bellowing.

  “The AMXs are down, but there’s something else farther up the road that’s got us under fire while the foot-mobiles are hunkered down and mag-dumping at us!” he shouted. “The artillery’s hitting the Nationalists in town, but we’re pretty well pinned!”

  That was bad. It was bad enough that we were half an hour behind schedule, with the sun due up in less than two hours. If my guys couldn’t move, they were going to get left behind and slaughtered.

  “Roger,” I acknowledged. I turned to Rybàr, who looked up at me, his handset still pressed to his ear.

  “My men are pinned down by small arms and armored vehicle fire,” I told him. “We need to take the pressure off them, somehow.”

  He didn’t reply right away, and though I could see the wheels turning behind his eyes, my stomach clenched. This was it. If he decided to just go ahead and push, especially with that arty pounding his positions at the north end of town, then we were screwed.

  In which case, I was going to go out there and rejoin my team, or die fighting the Nationalists to do it.

  At that point, it had nothing to do with anybody’s cause. It didn’t even have anything to do with loyalty to Americans over Slovak Nationalists. It was way more personal than that. That was my team. My brothers. I wasn’t going to save my skin by leaving them to die.

  Finally, though, he nodded. “We will have a narrow window between artillery barrages,” he said. “They have not yet coordinated their batteries well enough to keep constant fire missions up. Take Sỳkora’s section and move up quickly, link up with Hornick at the forward positions, and push forward to relieve the pressure! Sỳkora is in that MRAP, up there.” He pointed. “He speaks English well, and is an aggressive fighter.” I noticed, in passing, that Rybàr’s accent got thicker under stress.

  I must have hesitated for a moment. I know I was wondering if I was going to catch a bullet in the back if I ran toward the gunfire. Whatever happened, Rybàr caught it.

  “Go,” he said. “I need your men, and unless that strongpoint is broken, we will take heavy losses getting out of the town. Skalickỳ can complain later.”

  With an abbreviated nod of acknowledgement and thanks, I kicked the door open and spilled out onto the street, running toward the MRAP that Rybàr had pointed out. The column was completely halted by then; whether because of the heavy cannon fire that was starting to crack overhead or the slowly dwindling arty, I couldn’t tell. Not that it mattered that much.

  I climbed up on the running board and banged on the door. Or tried to. A fist against inch-and-a-half armored glass doesn’t do much. Still the movement caught the vehicle commander’s attention, and he cracked the door open.

  “Where’s Sỳkora?” I asked.

  “I am Sỳk
ora,” the young man with the wispy mustache, wearing a camouflage jacket and low-pro plate carrier replied. He had a Bren 805 across his lap.

  “Orders from Rybàr,” I said. “You and I are supposed to take your section and link up with Hornick, then push up and clear out the foot-mobiles in that strongpoint up ahead.”

  He didn’t hesitate, but started getting out of the MRAP, forcing me to step down to the street in the process. “Good,” he said. “I didn’t want to sit here and wait for a shell to drop on my head.” He turned toward the back of the towering armored vehicle, barking orders in Slovak. A moment later, the rear door swung open, and more Nationalist fighters, in a similar hodge-podge of clothing and gear, piled out, while Sỳkora grabbed me and hurried toward the panel truck ahead, repeating the order.

  “Come on,” he said, “if we go up the main road, we will be sitting ducks. There is more cover this way.” He immediately turned off to the west, heading around behind the row of houses just up a low hill. There were more trees, but precious little of what I’d call cover, aside from the houses. Vrbovè wasn’t all that big, and we were getting to the end of it. But it was farther away from the area being pounded by the artillery, and his route put the houses between us and the impacts, so there was that.

  We moved quickly, keeping as low as we could. I couldn’t forget about those tanks to the south, but they seemed to be preoccupied with the RPG-75 and Matador fire, and were holding their positions. They also didn’t seem to be firing on random foot-mobiles, either, which was good.

  So far.

  Sỳkora ran ahead, almost doubled over, down the line of fenced and walled yards, keeping as much as possible to the trees between the narrow fields out behind the houses. He wasn’t bounding, except maybe to pause for a second before sprinting across a particularly open area. Time was precious, and speed was security.

  While I ran, I keyed my radio. “Weeb, Deacon,” I called between panting breaths. “I’m moving up on your right with a section of Nationalist fighters. Watch your fire to the right.”

  “Roger, Deacon,” Scott replied. “Hurry up. It’s getting hot here.”

  Sỳkora paused at the last house, and seemed to be talking to someone out of sight while I rushed to catch up. My back was aching and my knees were feeling every pounding impact with the ground. I hit a knee next to Sỳkora just as he finished talking with an older man, who was either Hornick or one of his lieutenants.

  Given the wreckage of the house behind him, which was still smoking and choked with dust from the artillery shell that had blown about half of it off, I thought the odds that this guy was a lieutenant were better than even.

  Sỳkora turned to me and pointed. “We need to cross the road and work our way up to the reservoir,” he said, his voice raised to be heard above the roar of the firefight ahead. Then we can strike their flank, and get close enough that they cannot drop artillery on us without hitting their own people.”

  I nodded. It was an old tactic. In Vietnam, it had been called “hugging.” And it worked, provided the foot-mobiles weren’t just Bosnian and Kosovar militia, and that the EDC actually cared about not dropping artillery on their heads.

  What a hell of a mess we’d jumped into.

  The artillery had ceased, though the smoke and dust were still drifting down out of the sky. Muzzle flashes flickered back and forth ahead, while brilliant, massive tracers from whatever was shooting farther up the road flashed overhead with earsplitting cracks. Hunched double, partially hidden by trees and the last few houses before the open fields that my team had crossed on the way in, we hurried toward the road.

  Sỳkora crouched near the road, though back in cover behind the corner of a bullet-pocked but otherwise intact house, and waved at one of his men. That one, humping a vz. 59, belts of 7.62x54 flapping around his chest and shoulders, ran forward. Sỳkora issued terse instructions, and the machinegunner flopped on his belly at the corner, aiming his machinegun up the road, toward the flickers of the firefight between American and EDC forces. Another fighter, carrying one of the older vz. 58 rifles, stepped up over him, leaning out around the corner to add his own weapon to the covering position.

  With the road covered, Sỳkora pointed, and the first couple of Nationalist fighters dashed across the road.

  If we were hoping that the fight would distract the enemy enough that they wouldn’t notice us, we were doomed to disappointment. A rattling burst of automatic fire crackled down the road as the third man got halfway across, tracers flashing overhead. The fire went wild, but he threw himself the rest of the way across the road, landing badly in the ditch in a tangle of limbs and weapons. I thought he’d run smack into one of the first two.

  The machinegunner opened fire in response, the staccato roar of the vz. 59 accompanied by a brilliant fireball spitting and flickering from the muzzle. The oncoming fire ceased for a moment, and Sỳkora and I dashed across the road together.

  We both dropped behind trees at the far side, as some sporadic answering fire started to spit from the shadows up the road. A tracer skipped off the pavement a few feet to my left, whining off into the night with a streak of red light. Several more bullets smacked into the tree bole above my head. I got my rifle around the side and returned fire, careful to aim just beneath the muzzle flashes that I could see.

  More of the Nationalists were entering the fight, more rifle fire thundering up the road. The machinegunner was going to town, and as soon as another one got across the road, he flopped down in the ditch, propped his weapon up on the road itself, and added his own fire. They weren’t well-coordinated; there were long stretches of silence, then both of them were firing at the same time, but they were still throwing enough metal to keep the enemy’s heads down.

  Then a burst of 25mm or 30mm fire ripped through the trees overhead, reminding everyone that we didn’t just have to worry about the rifles and machineguns on the ground.

  “Push!” I yelled, though it was likely that not all of them could understand me. I suited actions to words, hoping and praying that I wasn’t going to find myself with my ass hanging out in the breeze in no-man’s-land while the rest hunkered down and traded fire with the bad guys.

  But as I dashed to the next tree ahead, even as a heavy-caliber cannon round blew a limb off with a shower of splinters that I had to duck my head to try to avoid, Sỳkora was right beside me, moving to another tree just ahead and to my right, opening fire even before he’d settled down behind it.

  Another Nationalist fighter ran up beside me as I squeezed off another shot at a muzzle flash in the shadows ahead. He had what looked a lot like an M203 attached to the underside rail of his Bren 805, and he steadied himself for a moment, then fired it. The grenade launcher went off with a loud thunk, just before a bullet smashed him off his feet. He dropped limply into the ditch beside the road, even as the grenade hit at the treeline ahead with a flash and a thud.

  Then the machinegunners opened up again, raking the trees and the ruined neighborhood that we’d negotiated on the way in with long streams of green tracers. It was time to move again.

  I dashed ahead, while Sỳkora stayed in place for a few seconds, yelling into his radio. A moment later, I threw myself down behind another tree, only a few dozen meters from the reservoir, and all hell really broke loose.

  It seemed that the enemy had avoided most of the pressure plates inside the neighborhood, and the armored vehicles hadn’t advanced far enough to reach any more of the IEDs placed along the road.

  It also appeared that we had either been very, very sneaky indeed getting through that deathtrap, or else very, very lucky that the Nationalists hadn’t decided that we were hostile.

  Because the Nationalists apparently had that entire web of IEDs daisy-chained and rigged for command detonation.

  I hope I’m never that close to that big an explosion ever, ever again. I was actually knocked flat on my ass as the entire world seemed to split open. The trees ahead were suddenly backlit by a flickering
orange flash, which was actually dozens of artillery shells and improvised bombs going off at once. The shockwave blasted the leaves off the trees around me, showering me with debris where I lay on my side in the dirt.

  My ears were ringing as I shoved myself up, looking for targets under the rising black mushroom cloud of dust and smoke. I sent up a wordless prayer that my team hadn’t been too close to that. I was pretty sure that they were in the next hedgerow to the southwest, but there was always that chance, with the shift of the fight in our direction, that they’d moved up. And danger close for that daisy chain was probably damned near five hundred yards.

  That fact was reinforced as more debris started raining down out of the sky on top of us. Brick, tile, fragments of less wholesome things, and smoking bits of metal started hitting the road and the ground, and I huddled close to the tree, hoping that its blasted trunk would absorb most of the shrapnel.

  After that blast, the twin booms of a pair of Matador shots were almost little more than muted pops.

  I coughed; the air was thick with the smoke and dust from the chained explosions. “Weeb, Deacon,” I croaked into the radio. At least somebody was still in the fight, judging by those distant detonations.

  “Deacon, Weeb,” Scott replied hoarsely. There was a lot of scratching in the transmission; whether it was damage or the fact that he was moving and panting I couldn’t tell. “We’re alive, but that was a little close. Some warning would be good next time.”

  “I didn’t get any more than you did,” I told him. “Are you clear?”

  “Almost,” he replied. “We’re still taking some small arms fire from the houses at the north corner of the reservoir, but I think we can handle it and get past.” Before he let go of his PTT, I heard a burst of machinegun fire; it sounded like Dwight or Tony was already getting after it.