by Peter Nealen
“Roger,” I replied. “We’ll link up on the far side. Watch your step; remember, they’ve got that road IEDed to hell and gone.”
“We’re on it,” he replied. “Out.”
I let him go. The team needed to concentrate on the threat in front of them, and so did I.
Sỳkora appeared next to me. “We should have thought of that beforehand,” he said.
“Yeah, well, you might have blown my guys up in the process,” I growled. “Next time, tell me before you do that.”
He looked at me for a second, as the shower of dirt and debris died away. “I did not know you had a unit back there,” he said.
Well, that’s running battlefield coordination for you. I realized that that was in no small part my fault; I’d assumed that Rybàr had given him the rundown over the radio, and I’d mentioned them in passing, but hadn’t confirmed for myself that he was aware of them.
That was a gut-twisting realization, even as we turned northeast and headed for the road. The shooting had died down on the northwest corner of Vrbovè, and the way out was clear enough.
But I’d damned near gotten my team killed because I hadn’t thought to double check that the friendly unit I was attached to were aware that my guys were downrange. I’d thought it was obvious, given the crossfire that was happening up there, but I’d been wrong.
Assumption is the mother of all fuckups, and I’d dodged that bullet by a hair. Fatigue or no, it wasn’t a comfortable feeling. I’d missed something. And none of us were going to get any less tired as this went on.
I had to stay on top of it. Even as we moved toward the road, surrounded by the cloud of smoke and dust from the blast, which flickered with the muzzle flashes to the north as the other Americans drove toward the rendezvous point, I chewed the inside of my cheek until it bled, just to remind myself not to drop the ball again.
I could only hope that if I did, I would be the one to pay the price, and not my team.
Chapter 21
The linkup went fast; we piled bodies, wounded and able-bodied alike, into vehicles wherever they would fit, while the MRAP turret gunners kept pouring fire into the houses where the enemy were still hunkered down and fighting. Those had to be militia. There was no way that EDC troops were going to be that hard core, not from what I’d seen so far. After seeing those two Pumas get knocked out, EDC regulars would have been either hunkering down under cover or running for it.
It was because we were so spread out that I didn’t find out that Killian had been hit until we stopped at a Nationalist vehicle cache in Hornà Streda.
***
Scott and I had dismounted to start picking vehicles. There were half a dozen big farm trucks and a couple of Alligators. I wanted to take the Alligators, but we were going to need the farm trucks, too. We had too many bodies, between Bradshaw’s section, Draven’s mortarmen, and the Army survivors.
We weren’t dawdling. While the enemy had gotten a good shock during that breakout from Vrbovè, none of us were confident that we’d bought ourselves anything more than some breathing room.
Still, I had to get it off my chest.
As I was checking the fuel level in the first Alligator, and Scott was pulling the tarp the rest of the way off it, I said, “Look, Scott.” I took a deep breath. It’s never fun to confess your own shortcomings, particularly to the man you’d almost gotten killed. “That IED det. That was my fault.” He looked up at me, frowning a bit quizzically. “I thought that Rybàr had told Sỳkora that you guys were out there. I got wrapped up in the fight and didn’t make sure he knew.” I didn’t look at him. I didn’t want to. I kept peering at the gas tank, even though I could see that it was fully fueled. I had to finally force myself to meet his eyes. “I fucked up.”
Scott didn’t say anything for a long moment, just shoving the tarp out of the way so that it wouldn’t foul the 4x4 when we drove it out of the barn. “If I were gonna be an asshole,” he finally said, “I might make a big deal about it. And I probably should, or I should if you were a wet-behind-the ears boot. But I know you better than that. And I’m in no position to throw stones.”
He looked about as uncomfortable as I felt. “I just about dropped a JDAM on our own position once. Did I ever tell you about that?”
I shook my head. He hadn’t. “Yeah,” he said grimly. “I was the JTAC, calling fire on some militia who had us under heavy fire outside of Tripoli.” I knew that Scott had been involved in one of the MEU interventions in the continuous hellstorm that was modern Libya. “Had two F-18s running racetracks overhead. I got excited and transposed a couple of numbers. Ended up dropping behind us, and only about five hundred meters away.”
I winced a little, despite myself. A Joint Direct Attack Munition could be up to a 2000-lb bomb, and five hundred meters was definitely “danger close.” “Anybody catch any frag?” I asked quietly.
“A couple of guys did,” he admitted. “I think one of them is still carrying some of that around today. He won’t talk to me.” He went quiet, though both of us were still prepping the vehicles while we talked. We were grown men; we could do two things at once and both of us were well aware of the need for haste. “Point is, we’ve all fucked up at one point. Even Jordan, though he’ll probably never admit it.” I nodded. Jordan had an almost pathological need not to show weakness. It went along with the two-ton chip on his shoulder. “I’ve heard a couple stories about him, but I won’t repeat ‘em, not now.”
“I wouldn’t want you to,” I said.
“And I won’t repeat this,” he said. “You’ve gotten it off your chest, I know it, and that’s where it needs to stop. We’re in too hairy a situation for it to get around the team, let alone anyone else. And for all you know, Rybàr did tell this Sỳkora guy, and he didn’t hear it, spaced it under fire, or just didn’t care until you called him on it. But the last thing we need right now is that seed of doubt in the team. It happened, we survived it, we learned from it, and we drive on. If it has to come out in the after-action once we’ve gotten out of Slovakia, we can hash it out then. Not before.”
“Fair enough.” It was why I was glad to have Scott as my assistant team lead. He was a level-headed guy who didn’t think with his emotions. It was purely a flip of the coin, in my opinion, that had put me in the leadership spot while Scott got the number two slot. He’d do well with a team of his own.
Just then, even as I fired up the Alligator, the engine turning over twice before catching with a satisfying roar, Reuben came in, his ghillie hood thrown back, his face as dark with soot and dust as it was with camouflage paint. “Matt,” he said, his voice tight and urgent, “Bradshaw needs to see you. Now.”
Something about the way he said it made me sit up and take notice. “What’s up?” I asked, as I swung out of the Alligator and stepped toward the door.
“I think you’d better come see,” Reuben said, glancing at the Nationalists who were also rummaging around the barn, checking the other vehicles that would replace those that had been damaged or destroyed during the fighting for Vrbovè. I just nodded and followed him. Whatever it was, it was serious enough that we didn’t want to air it in front of our allies just yet.
He led the way out into the sunlight. Clouds were moving in, and that light was getting wan. We were probably in for a storm soon. I hoped so; it would severely hamper the EDC’s air assets, and give us some more breathing room.
Provided the Nationalists, with their demonstrably ragged training, didn’t decide that they didn’t want to go out in the rain. I didn’t think Rybàr would stand for that, but I could see Skalickỳ causing problems, just out of spite.
The yard outside the warehouse was crammed with vehicles, most showing some signs of battle damage. We weren’t going to be able to go low-profile, and given how many of those vehicles were thin-skins, that could make things dicier than they already were. Between a couple hundred Nationalist fighters and our sixty or so Americans, that made for a big convoy. I didn’t know where the
next Nationalist strongpoint was, but it couldn’t be too close. I glanced up at the sky again, hoping for rain. Dumping, pouring, miserable buckets of it.
Reuben led the way toward one of the trucks, where a cluster of soldiers were gathered, in varying levels of kit, standing out among the Nationalists in their OCP cammies. Reuben started shouldering through the crowd, even as one of the Army NCOs, a younger Hispanic kid, started yelling at them to get out on security. It was broad daylight, and the town across the canal to our southwest wasn’t entirely friendly. It wasn’t exactly hostile, either, but the EDC and the Bratislava government would have eyes and ears there.
Jordan and Bradshaw were bent over Killian, who was lying on his side on the ground, his gear stripped off and his blouse mostly cut away. The side that Jordan was working on was drenched in blood, and another soldier was holding an IV bag above his head. There was a tourniquet cranked down on his arm, and a blood-soaked bandage was wrapped right beneath it.
Killian was pale as death, and his eyes were closed. It took a second before I could see that he was still breathing. He already looked like a corpse.
“What happened?” I asked.
Jordan glanced up, just for a moment, then returned his attention to his patient. “He took a bullet through the upper arm and into his side, just before we got to the column,” he said. “It missed his heart and lungs, but it nicked his brachial artery. He lost a lot of blood before somebody got a tourniquet on him, and then it loosened up on the ride here.” He pointed to the IV bag. “That’s the third bag of saline I’ve put in him already. But it’s not going to be enough.”
He finished securing the bandage around Killian’s chest, and then sat back on his haunches, his blood-soaked hands limp in his lap as he looked up at me. “I’m pretty sure he’s going to lose the arm,” he said. “I had to crank that sucker down to shut that artery off, and I’m not loosening it up again this side of a hospital. But the bad part is the blood loss. I’m pushing saline into him as fast as I can, but while it’ll bring his blood pressure back up, we’ve got to get him to a hospital or he’s gonna die.”
I nodded. “I’ll talk to Rybàr and Skalickỳ,” I said. I was already dreading that conversation. I knew that Skalickỳ wasn’t going to make it easy. I was already developing a pretty deep-seated dislike for the man. “Where’s Warren?”
Bradshaw pointed. “He needed a minute. Not used to all the blood. Even now.”
I nodded again, my expression tight behind my beard. I’d more than half expected Warren to be a royal pain in our collective ass, an overweight IT nerd of a warrant officer, out of his depth but still the ranking officer. Instead, he’d been remarkably low-key, essentially trying to pull his weight as a junior enlisted, acknowledging by deed if not word that he was out of his element.
But the bitter truth of it was that he was the ranking officer for these kids. And Killian’s senior fireteam leader was standing there, staring at his platoon sergeant, looking sick.
I couldn’t say that I blamed either of them. Sergeant Eckart had lost pretty much all his senior leadership in the space of a week. He was seriously out of his depth. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to be; he’d never trained for this scenario. In a way, he was worse off than Warren, because he was supposed to be able to step up.
“Eckart, come with me,” I told him, grabbing the black-haired young man by the arm and half-dragging him away from Killian. I steered him toward where Warren was sitting against the warehouse wall, staring into space with a sick, shocked look on his slack face. He’d picked up a weapon somewhere. I suddenly realized that it was probably Killian’s.
“Warren,” I said quietly. He didn’t register immediately. “Chief Warren.”
He blinked and looked up at me, then scrambled to his feet. “Is Sergeant Killian…?”
I shook my head. “We need to get him to a hospital,” I said. “Which means that we need to go have a chat with the Nationalist leaders. Since you’re the ranking officer, and Killian’s incapacitated, you need to come with me.”
“I…don’t know that I can do that,” Warren said nervously. “I mean…we haven’t gotten any orders from higher, and the last orders we had were to aid the peacekeeping mission, which meant suppressing the Nationalists. And it sure didn’t include working hand-in-hand with Triarii. Don’t take it the wrong way,” he protested, as my expression darkened. “I’m not spitting in your eye. But you know what happened to Lieutenant Randolph after the Slovenský Grob incident. We could all be crucified if I make the wrong call here.” He suddenly looked lost and alone. “And I don’t even know where to start figuring out what the right call is.”
“Warren, believe it or not, I know where you’re coming from,” I told him. “But right now is not the time to even worry about the political stuff. I don’t know your politics, and at the moment, I couldn’t possibly care less. I don’t know Lieutenant Randolph, but if he has an ounce of honor in his body, he doesn’t regret stepping up at Slovenský Grob a whit. Right now, your concern needs to be with these men’s and women’s lives, not with the impact on your or their careers. If we don’t get Killian to a hospital, he’s probably going to die. PFC Bond is probably going to die. Right now, their only hope is the Nationalists. And given what happened at Keystone, surrendering to the EDC is not an option. They’d just murder us all, or have their militia proxies do it. The Nationalists probably won’t murder us.” I jerked my head toward the Alligator where Rybàr was looking at a map on the hood, arguing with Skalickỳ and several of his other subordinate commanders. “Come on. Worry about the rest of the Army later. We’ve got to worry about American lives now.”
He didn’t know it, but I’d just essentially sketched out the Triarii’s entire operating philosophy. Forget about politics and do what needs to be done.
He nodded slowly. He’d lost weight over the last few days of humping through the Little Carpathians, though he was still a bit doughy, and his endurance was still shit. But he came along, though he still looked nervous as hell. I considered telling him to straighten up and look like he was in charge, rather than show weakness in front of the Nationalists, but I was afraid that he might not know how.
Rybàr didn’t look at us as we approached, but I know he saw us. Several of his bodyguards certainly did, stepping between us, their Bren 805s slung but held ready. I just stood and waited, my gloved hands crossed on the buttstock of my OBR as it hung on its sling in front of me.
Rybàr finished whatever it was he was saying, then issued a curt dismissal. Skalickỳ looked like he was going to stick around, but Rybàr waved at him and said something that sounded sharp, then waved at us. His PSD parted to let us through.
“Rybàr,” I said by way of greeting. “We’ve got a problem. One of our guys got hit, bad. He’s still alive, but he’s lost a lot of blood. We need to get him to a hospital as soon as possible.”
Rybàr nodded. “We have many casualties as well. But the only friendly hospital anywhere near us is in Nitra. It is a seventy-five-kilometer drive, and there are enemy forces between here and there.”
“If we’ve got seventy-five kilometers to cover, then we’re going to need to get moving soon,” I said. The wind was picking up, and it had that damp chill that foretold rain. “If we’re lucky, the storm will last most of the night and give us some cover.” I felt a renewed bit of hope as thunder rumbled in the distance. A good thunderstorm would almost guarantee that the enemy couldn’t get air over us.
“There will be enemy checkpoints on every major road,” Rybàr protested. “Especially after what has happened. There are enemy forces blockading Nitra as we speak. It is the primary stronghold for the resistance in western Slovakia.” He shook his head. “I agree, we need to get there, if only to treat our wounded. But I doubt we will reach it in one night.”
But I was already thinking ahead. Thinking like a Grex Luporum Triarius. “They won’t be expecting us to make a try for it, either,” I pointed out. “We just got dr
iven out of Vrbovè. But we took a hell of a bite out of them in the process.” I stepped around to look at the map on the hood, even as the first few windblown drops of rain hit me in the face and spattered on the laminated map. “Look, if the weather holds, we shouldn’t have to worry about enemy air too much. Even hardcore pilots won’t be eager to take their birds up in this.” Another grumble of thunder punctuated my sentence. “And if the enemy is as risk-averse as I think they are, they won’t let their pilots fly strike or recon missions in a thunderstorm.” So far, except for the armor support, which had gone a bit sideways for them, everything we’d seen suggested that the EDC regulars were hanging back and letting the militias do most of the fighting. And there was no way that they were trusting the militias with expensive strike fighters. Especially not when they didn’t know where the mostly-Islamic fighters might drop the bombs.
“If we’re worried about checkpoints, then that’s what we have scouts for,” I continued. “Send a vehicle or two on ahead, to radio back locations and alternate routes to get around them.”
He looked at me levelly. “And what of the size of the convoy? There is no way to hide such numbers in the open countryside, and we will have to cross a great deal of it.”
“Break the convoy up,” I said. “Stagger vehicles in ones and twos, five to ten minutes apart. It’ll require some coordination, but it’s doable.”
“And who do you suggest I send as scouts?” he asked. He sounded amused.
“Yes, my team is just about tailor-made for that mission,” I told him. “Look at it this way, if we do this, it should convince the naysayers among your commanders that we’re on the same side.”
He looked down at the map for a moment, chewing his mustache. Then he nodded. “Get with Jankovic to make sure that we can use the same radio frequencies,” he said. “Can you be ready to move in thirty minutes?”