Escalation

by Peter Nealen

  The oldster came to join us, along with Kysely, who looked considerably older, dirtier, and more battered than he had just a day ago. “They are coming up Pàrovskà,” the oldster said. “They are moving more slowly; the mines and improvised bombs have made them cautious. There is another column moving up Štefànikova trieda. So far, they are pacing each other, and there is another delaying force set up there. If they fall, we will have to set the charges here to delay and fall back before we are cut off.”

  I was scanning our surroundings. The street was tight, most of the buildings touching each other, with few alleys to provide escape routes or ambush sites. As thorough as the Nationalists’ preparations had been, they hadn’t had time to knock holes in all the walls to turn the buildings into tunnels.

  They might have been hoping to get through the battle without the city being a total loss, too.

  There was a bit of tree-covered low ground to the west, but getting back onto this side of the barricade would be difficult, if not impossible, and Janka Kràl’a Street, at the end of the block behind it, had been turned into a nightmare of victim-actuated IEDs and concertina wire. Getting through that would be just as dangerous for us as for the enemy. No, we were going to have to stick with the Nationalists’ plan and hold at the barricade until we got the signal to fall back.

  I didn’t like it. Grex Luporum Teams aren’t trained to be die-in-place elements, short of a true in extremis situation. We were light, fast, mobile hunters. Our job was to get in, kill everybody who needed killing on the target site, or else call in enough fire to do it remotely, and get out. But the situation was what it was. We could either adapt and overcome, or we could die.

  I wasn’t big on lying down and dying.

  I hunkered down behind the overturned truck as we heard the low rumble of diesels and the rattle and screech of tracks approaching. That sounded big. The drones had been cleared out of the sky; the closer we got to the castle, the more jammer trucks the Nationalists had deployed. So, at least we didn’t have that to worry about anymore. But if the Loyalists were leading with tanks…

  They were. The low, ugly, dome-turreted shape of a T-72M1 was trundling up the street, its 125mm smoothbore turning toward us as it tracked along the curve of the road.

  If you’ve never been downrange from an enemy tank, you can’t really understand the sheer terror of facing one of those things. It’s one thing ambushing one from the flank or behind with a rocket or an IED. But the frontal armor is always the thickest, and if its main gun is pointing at you, you’re looking right at the very maw of death itself. The size and power of the growling, steel beast becomes secondary at that point.

  Two rockets banged out from the barricade, a Matador and an ancient 135mm, wire-guided Konkurs. The Matador glanced off the front glacis and detonated against the high rise off to the west. The Konkurs, on the other hand, hit right at the turret ring.

  The tank momentarily disappeared in a puff of black smoke and flying sparks, before something bigger blew, and the entire turret was blasted skyward, looking for all the world like a gigantic frying pan flying through the air. It came back down halfway on top of the burning chassis with a catastrophic, deafening clang.

  Against that, the machineguns tearing up the infantry to the flanks seemed like popguns.

  Then the Nationalist triggerman next to me mashed the lever of his detonator, and half the street behind the destroyed tank disappeared with a flash, an ugly blast of smoke and frag, and a tooth-rattling wham.

  Kysely nodded, standing up behind the tipped-over truck as the dust and smoke whirled around us. He spoke quickly.

  “We will set the charges here to delay and fall back to the next position,” the oldster translated. The triggerman was already doing something with the actuation circuit for the next row of IEDs, embedded in the truck, set in piles of rubble alongside the columns holding up the overhanging second story of the blocky Evis Hotel, and inside the doors of the red-tiled store across the street. When they went off, this entire block was going to be a very unhealthy place to be.

  We hoped that it was going to take the Loyalists, the EDC, and the militias a long time to move up to clear the barricade out. They’d taken punishing losses so far. And to get to the barricade, they were going to have to go past the dead hulk of that tank and the waste that had been laid of the column behind it. None of those sights were going to make them eager to press forward.

  We picked up and started moving up the street, leaving the triggerman to finish setting the charges.

  ***

  The square in front of the Nitra Gallery wasn’t the Nationalists’ last stand. Not quite. Nitra castle still loomed above, wreathed in smoke but defiant. It had clearly taken a couple of hits as the airstrikes had resumed, but the EDC’s planes were staying at higher altitudes, with a corresponding loss of accuracy in their bombings. That was a two-edged sword; smoke and dust rose from residential neighborhoods where bombs had gone astray.

  Not that the EDC cared about Slovak civilians. If they had, they wouldn’t have unleashed jihadi militias on the countryside.

  The square had been turned into a fortified staging area. Two T-72s were sandbagged up, their main guns pointing down the primary approaches, their 12.7mm commander’s machineguns pointed up at the sky. There were even two ShKH Zuzana 2 howitzers similarly fortified, their 155mm tubes on direct lay. Anything they hit, especially at the ranges involved there, wasn’t going to live.

  The rest of us had set up in the Gallery itself, the windows sandbagged, watching and waiting for the next push.

  Smoke was rising in a hundred places above the city. Even from the second floor, where we had gathered with some of Kysely’s Nationalists, we could see high-rises that were only half-standing, entire sides collapsed into rubble. Some of that was from EDC bombs and Loyalist tank fire. Some of it was from Nationalist artillery and IEDs.

  I could see helicopters circling to the south, lean, predatory shapes that would be a threat as soon as they closed in on us. There were still plenty of shoulder-fired SAMs and a few heavy machineguns up in the castle, that would make the airspace plenty dangerous for the helos, but they had more standoff than most of the AA weapons we had remaining had effective range.

  “Damn,” Scott muttered. He and I were crouched under a sandbagged window, and he was peering out through the firing slit. He looked drawn and haggard, beneath a thick layer of dust and soot on his face. I guessed that I looked much the same. My beard felt like it was about half grit. “What are they waiting for? Why don’t they just come and get it over with?”

  Personally, I was plenty glad for the break, but I understood his point. There comes a time where the waiting only stretches already strained nerves, and the anticipation becomes worse than the hell of combat itself.

  “There you are, my friends.” I turned to see Sỳkora coming toward us from the stairs. “I have good news.” He squatted down between us, staying below the slit. “Generàlporučik Kràl sent Generàlporučik Rybàr a message, just a few minutes ago.” He grinned, his teeth white in the blackened grime on his face. “The Loyalists have had enough. They are standing down. They are not surrendering, yet, but they are falling back to the edge of the city. It seems as if they are not happy with the Germans letting them do most of the bleeding against their own countrymen.”

  “Are the EDC forces going to sit down for that?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “Probably not. But it sounds as if they do not have the strength they would need to take the city by themselves. It sounds as if the German commander is furious, and the black-ass militias even more so, but what can they do?”

  “Those jihadis can still do a lot of damage,” I warned him. “There’ll be stay-behind elements, the really young, stupid, hard core shahid types. It’s going to take weeks to root them all out.” And the Nationalists might not have weeks. I didn’t say that part.

  Before he could respond, one of the heavy machineguns outside started pounding, spewin
g tracers up into the gray, smoke-choked sky. The growing rumble of jet engines rose to a shriek. We all got low, praying that the Gallery wasn’t the target. Though we’d probably never know what hit us.

  Bombs struck below, the thunderclaps of the detonations sounding almost like the world was splitting apart. It was a noise you felt, more than heard. It vibrated through every bone.

  I glanced out. One of the Zuzana 2s was burning. Craters pocked the square, and one of the T-72s was smoking, its back deck partially mangled. Several of the sandbag redoubts that had been set at the mouths of the approaching streets had been obliterated, smashed bits of what had once been men scattered amidst the blackened debris at the edges of the bomb craters.

  The helos came next, but the bombs hadn’t quite done the trick. As rattled as he had to have been, the other T-72’s commander was on point, and was already swiveling his turret to the south as the Tigers swooped toward the square.

  The 125mm smoothbore thundered, a blossom of flame spitting from the muzzle, and the lead Tiger just disintegrated in a fireball, whickering bits of fuselage and rotors fluttering toward the ground a mere five hundred feet below. The others quickly dove for the rooftops, banking away and fleeing as the wreckage burned, adding to the pall of smoke that lay low over Nitra.

  Chapter 30

  We stayed in place until nightfall, waiting to see if the unspoken truce really was going to hold. I had no illusions that the EDC was going to let it stand; hell, Bratislava wasn’t going to let it stand. It was only a matter of time before Kràl was relieved for cause, the Loyalists reinforced, and another push was made.

  But as it got dark, it finally started to look as if we had a breather, if only for a few days.

  Only once we were fairly confident that the offensive wasn’t going to kick off again in the next hour or so did we start back up to the castle.

  Once our guys were set in a small cottage, getting their mags reloaded and finding some much-needed chow, Bradshaw and I headed for the field hospital first, looking for Killian.

  The hospital had been set up in a lower building, set into the hill just beneath the museum that had been turned into Pokornỳ’s command post. The walled courtyard in front of it was crammed with vehicles, and even as we hiked up toward the gate, another Nationalist ambulance came roaring up the lane and turned in the gate. The back doors were hanging open, offering a glimpse of mangled, bloodied bodies wrapped in bloodstained bandages. The Nationalists had hammered the Loyalists badly, but they’d taken a mauling, themselves.

  It was inevitable, given the amount of firepower and explosives being thrown around in such close quarters. It was a sobering sight, nevertheless.

  We followed the ambulance in, and as the Nationalist soldiers started offloading the wounded, without saying anything, the two of us stepped forward and started helping out. That wasn’t why we were there, but the need was there, and Bradshaw and I were of the same general temperament.

  I stepped up to help a man who was missing a foot, mangled meat and splintered bone hanging down from a shredded pantleg, a cinched-down ratchet strap around his upper thigh acting as a tourniquet. There was also a reddened bandage wrapped around his forehead and one eye; he probably wasn’t going to ever see out of that eye again.

  We limped inside with the rest of the casualties. At that point, it didn’t matter that the man missing a foot and I probably didn’t speak the same language. We’d probably fought in entirely different parts of the city. None of it mattered. I found a medic, who pointed to a bare spot on the floor, and I helped the wounded man down, checking the tourniquet as I did so. A moment later, a young woman with dark hair held back with a bandana pushed me aside and started assessing the man’s wounds. I straightened up and looked around.

  The place looked like a scene out of a World War II movie. Wounded and dying men covered just about every flat surface, and there were more coming in as I watched. Harried medics and young volunteers were rushing from casualty to casualty, assessing and triaging. Even as I watched, an ancient-looking, white-haired man straightened up, leaning away from the man he’d been working on, settling back on his haunches. His shoulders slumped and he hung his head, before stripping off his blood-smeared gloves and crossing himself. I followed suit, even as I kept scanning the long room.

  I was looking for Killian, but I spotted Warren first. He was sitting down on a cot, his elbows resting on his knees and his head down. I started weaving through the rows of wounded toward him, Bradshaw joining me as he stepped away from the stretcher he’d helped carry into the hospital.

  Warren looked up as we approached. We must have been quite the pair of apparitions, blackened by dust and soot, still kitted up for combat. Warren was still filthy from our fighting retreat through the mountains and away from Vrbovè, but he hadn’t been out there in Nitra. He’d lost weight, his cammies and the plate carrier he’d acquired on the way now fitting far better than they had at first. His face was drawn, his eyes bloodshot. He had an M37 leaning against the cot next to him.

  My eyes shifted from him to the cot. The shape lying on it had been covered by a poncho.

  Warren nodded, his face slack, his eyes glimmering. It took him a moment to get the words out.

  “Sergeant Killian died two hours ago,” he said. He looked down at the still shape under the poncho. “They tried, but he’d lost too much blood. They said he must have kept bleeding, that maybe there had been an internal bleed, too.”

  I looked down at the cot. There wasn’t much of anything Jordan could have done. There wasn’t anything any of us could have done, not with an internal bleed in a combat situation. The only hope we’d had had been to get him to surgery. But we hadn’t been quite fast enough.

  Even when you’ve seen death, it’s still hard to accept that, no matter how hard you try to stave it off, every man has his time. Killian’s had come, whether we liked it or not.

  Warren looked back up at us. “I don’t know what to do now,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. “I’m not a combat leader. I’m the ranking officer, but I have no idea what I should do.” He looked back down at Killian’s shrouded body. “I guess that I figured as long as Killian was there, we could figure it out. But now…”

  I didn’t think he was talking to us at that point.

  “Warren,” I said. He didn’t respond, but kept staring at Killian’s corpse. “Chief Warrant Officer Warren!”

  That snapped him out of it. He blinked and stared up at me, his eyes wide, the tracks of tears in the dirt on his face.

  “I’m sorry that Killian’s dead,” I said, and I meant it. “He was a good dude, and he was solid when things went to shit.” I scanned the other American wounded. There were fewer still among the living than I’d hoped. And I didn’t see the girl who’d lost her leg in the airstrike among them, either. I felt a pang at that. I’d never liked seeing women get hurt, and it was one reason I’d always been uncomfortable with the women in my platoon in the Marine Corps. One of many. “I’m sorry that all of them are dead.

  “But you can’t fall apart because Killian’s not here to lean on anymore,” I said, turning my stare back on Warren. I was sure I looked like hell; I hadn’t had a chance to look in the mirror, but I could imagine, just judging by what Bradshaw looked like. My face blackened by smoke, dirt, and debris, my eyes bloodshot orbs set between lines of black. “You’re the ranking officer, like it or not, and these kids are going to need you to act like it. We’re not out of the woods yet.”

  He stared down at his hands, then nodded silently. “You’re right,” he said, though his voice shook a little, and he looked back at Killian’s body one more time, as if begging for advice. Finally, though, he heaved himself to his feet, picking up the M37 as he did so. I suspected it had been Killian’s rifle. He only had about three magazines left for it. “Did we win?”

  “We won a breather,” I replied. “But that’s it.” I nodded toward where Bradshaw was checking on his own wounded. “We nee
d to go talk to Rybàr. Once Tyler’s done.”

  Warren nodded jerkily, then looked down at the floor again. After a long moment, he said, “Bowen…” He hesitated. He still wasn’t looking at me. “I…I should have made a different call.” He swallowed, hard. “We…we should have…we should have done something.”

  “Yeah, you should have,” I replied harshly, still watching Tyler. He’d lost a third of his section since Borinka. It was only through the grace of God that my team was still intact. It was hard to accept Warren’s apology, when we’d been out there fighting and dying while he had stayed up here, mostly secure, with his troops, waiting.

  “Sorry” didn’t quite cover that.

  He still didn’t look at me, but kept studying the blood-stained flagstones on the floor. Tyler finished talking to Wolfe, who’d had his forearm shattered by a bullet, and stood up, meeting my eyes and nodding. It was time.

  “Let’s go,” I said, taking a deep breath and trying to push away the sudden flash of anger at Warren.

  I almost didn’t say it. But I forced the words out. “Can’t change what’s already happened. Just got to do better.”

  He looked at me for a moment, searching my face as if he wasn’t sure what to make of that statement, but I was already heading for the doors, ignoring the dull throb of the cut in my leg. It hadn’t killed me yet, and it wasn’t likely to. I didn’t think we had all that much time. We needed to talk to Rybàr and find out what our next move would be.

  And whether it would be with the Nationalists’ help, or in spite of them.

  ***

  It took a while for the three of us to find Rybàr. He wasn’t in the command post, and Pokornỳ looked considerably less than enthused to see us. He stared at us with those piggy eyes, breathing through his mouth, until we left, looking for his far more amiable counterpart.