Escalation

by Peter Nealen

  Which only intensified my intent to stay still and silent, avoiding looking directly at any of them—for some reason I’ve never been able to understand, you really can feel it when somebody is staring at you, particularly when they’re only five yards away. They were jumpy and scared, and more than likely to open fire at anyone or anything that surprised them.

  Finally, the pointman said something that sounded final, though it was a mystery to me whether it was good final or bad final. He then switched channels on his radio and made another call.

  Come on, move on first. It was really starting to hurt, staying stock-still like that. My knee was in an odd position, and it was going to lock up.

  But he spoke briefly with whoever was on the other end, then stuffed the radio back in his vest and stood up. He spoke rapidly to the rest of the patrol, two of whom sounded like they were objecting to something, but he shouted them down and pointed back downhill toward the bridge and the town.

  Unfortunately, downhill meant walking within three feet of my position.

  I tried not to breathe. I tried to stop my own heart, because the beating sounded loud as hell, even as old boy’s boots crunched in the leaves and fallen branches. Only at the last second did he turn aside, just a little, to find a better way through the thick vegetation. The others followed, filing past about four feet away.

  None of them looked down at their feet or saw me where I was huddled under the low-hanging branches of a sycamore. They went right by me, not one spotting me despite the fact that I could easily have tapped any of them in the shin with my rifle.

  It wasn’t the first time I’d seen it happen. It didn’t make it any less unnerving.

  I still didn’t move while the crunch and rustle of the patrol got farther and farther away. Finally, I couldn’t hear them at all, but I still stayed where I was, barely daring to breathe. Only when I hadn’t heard anything for at least a minute did I start to move, shifting my leg to relieve the growing pain in my knee.

  Phil let out a long, shuddering breath. “Holy shit,” he whispered.

  “Yeah.” I slowly, carefully, and most importantly, quietly got to my feet, moving out from under the tree and scanning the woods downhill and to the north, where the patrol had disappeared. I couldn’t see anything, but I pointed uphill and farther to the southeast, signaling Phil to get us as far as possible from that patrol before we moved in to rejoin the team.

  Without another word, and as soundlessly as possible, we headed back up through the woods. We didn’t have any way of knowing just how that conversation had gone, and at that point, I wasn’t willing to risk the noise to call Scott and ask.

  We’d find out when we got there.

  ***

  Làska wasn’t exactly a fountain of information. All he could tell us, as we crouched there in the forest, was that the team leader had said that he needed to contact his superiors. Which was about all that could be hoped for; there was no way that a simple patrol leader in a Slovak Army mechanized infantry platoon was going to be authorized to make official contact with anyone without his superior officers’ input. No matter whether the 11th had gone over to the Nationalists or not.

  And, I reflected as we headed back to rejoin the convoy, even if they had, how would they know that our Slovaks were Nationalists, and not Loyalists looking to punish them for turning their coats?

  There are few wars more complicated than civil ones. And that’s saying something.

  ***

  We were back in the weeds, this time with a couple of old Carl Gustavs that Medved had brought along. I was, frankly, surprised that we even had the ammo for them. The Carl Gs had been getting phased out of the Marine Corps when I’d been in, after far too short a tenure.

  We were there as backup, as was the T-72, which was sitting on the road about a klick to the east, with a clear shot at the far end of the bridge. Neither Medved, Bradshaw, Draven, or I were eager to take chances. Somewhat to my surprise, Warren had been on the same page. He didn’t have his troops down in the brush with us, but they were armed and on the alert, ready to do what they could.

  Unfortunately, against BVPs on the bridge, that wasn’t much.

  The lone BOV with Medved aboard rolled toward the south end of the bridge and halted just before moving out onto the span. Medved popped the commander’s hatch and climbed out, dropping to the pavement and stepping out onto the bridge.

  The two BVPs at the other end didn’t move, but a man in uniform stepped out to face Medved.

  “Imrich?” the man at the other end yelled.

  “Alojz?” Medved replied.

  The man at the far end started walking toward the center of the bridge. I kept him in my scope, while Chris, next to me, kept his Carl G pointed at the one BVP we had a shot at. This could still go south awfully quickly.

  Medved advanced to meet the man. When they met at the center of the bridge, they stood apart for a moment, then shook hands and bear-hugged each other.

  “I think that means we’re good,” Greg said.

  “I hope so,” I muttered.

  A moment later, Medved turned and waved the BOV forward. The armored vehicle rumbled onto the bridge, and we started breaking down and moving toward the road. The rest of the column was already starting down the road toward the bridge, the crew of the lead BOV having apparently called over the radio that we were among friends.

  I still glanced at the sky. The wind was still gusty, and the clouds lowering, but the storm hadn’t materialized quite as I’d hoped. There was still the very real chance that we’d be observed by a drone, or even a manned aircraft.

  The second BOV rolled to a stop at the bottom of the hill, and we piled in. The rest of the column was already trundling across the bridge, Medved’s T-72 at the rear. Medved himself had walked to the far end with the other man, who appeared to be a friend.

  They were waiting when we reached the north bank. I got out, joined by Warren, Draven, and Bradshaw coming from the Tatrapans.

  Medved was grinning with some evident relief as we walked up, all of us still geared up and armed. Even Warren, somewhat to my surprise. I glanced at the man. Physically, he’d hardened up considerably since we’d pulled him out of the wreckage of FOB Keystone. That was inevitable; days on end of hardship and exertion on little food and less sleep will make the laziest butterball turn lean. There was a new determination in the set of his face, though, even though when I looked in his eyes, I could still see the look of a man who was out of his depth and knew it.

  “This is Kapitàn Alojz Suchỳ,” Medved said, his arm around the other man’s shoulders. Suchỳ was a slight man, with a hawkish face and pale eyes. “We went to officer training together.”

  It was an inevitability of civil war. Of course there were men among the Nationalists and the Loyalists who knew each other. There were probably men on either side who were members of the same family.

  “The rumors we heard were right,” he went on. “The 11th has refused any further orders from the EDC puppet government in Bratislava or the EDC itself. They are holding the bridges here in Bytča for the Nationalist cause.”

  He sobered, then, and looked north. “There’s more, isn’t there?” I asked.

  Medved nodded. “It looks as though a battalion-sized formation of EDC tanks and mechanized infantry have moved to occupy a line from Makov to Čadca. Apparently, some forces from Poland have already pushed across the border, and now the EDC is trying to seal us off from Poland.

  “It will be a fight to get out of here, my friends.”

  Chapter 33

  It was dark, but the clouds that we’d hoped would cover more of our approach were rapidly receding into the east, leaving the sky clear and studded with stars overhead. They were crystal clear; the lights were all out in Vrchrieka, and the column, now consisting of our mixed unit of Americans and Nationalists from Nitra, as well as an entire company of the 11th Mechanized Infantry, was blacked out. Not that it would keep us from being observed if the e
nemy drones had thermal imaging—which I was sure they did—but it was a standard precaution.

  My team was gathered at the back hatch of one of the Tatrapans. Bradshaw, Draven, and Warren had joined us, along with Medved and Suchỳ. We had our fusion goggles down and switched on, our mags full, and were getting ready to leave.

  Under different circumstances, we might have left our rucks behind. They were heavy and cumbersome, and we wouldn’t need what little sustainment supplies we had left in the firefight ahead. But most of that stuff had been cleared out and stacked in the BOV we’d been riding anyway. The rucks were full of a much more lethal cargo.

  “You realize that this is only going to work if they’re really spaced out like we hope they are?” Warren asked. “And if they’ve got all their drones concentrating on the north.”

  Scott and I glanced at each other and nodded. “That’s why we move carefully and slowly,” I said, “and recon every gap before we move into it.” I nodded toward the north. “We’ve got some good concealed approach routes along the hedgerows between the fields. We should be able to see any problems before we get to them.”

  “That’s a lot of ‘shoulds,’” Warren said.

  “This is the nature of the beast, Warren,” Bradshaw put in. “There are risks in combat. There comes a point that you’ve got to accept them, accept that you’ve done about as much as you can to alleviate them, and push through, even knowing that you might not come out the other side.” His voice sounded hollow; I could tell that he was thinking about those of his men who already had taken those risks and come out the losers. The men who hadn’t made it out of the Little Carpathians, or out of Nitra.

  I still wasn’t sure how my team had, so far, gone unscratched. We were weary, beaten down, and shell-shocked, but so far, none of us had died.

  It couldn’t last, and I was afraid that our streak was going to end here.

  There was an entire battalion between us and Poland. Five companies; two of tanks, three of infantry. And they had air support; we’d heard helos growling in the distance already. Against that, we had one Grex Luporum team, about two-thirds of a Triarii infantry section, reinforced by a mortar section without mortars, a rag-tag, platoon-sized element of US Army soldiers, some of them wounded, and about two companies of mixed Slovak Nationalist troops. We had sixteen BVPs, two BOVs, two Tatrapan APCs, and a single T-72 tank.

  That wasn’t what I would call an even match.

  Which was why my team and I, with Làska and another three Slovak scouts, were going out ahead of the column, in the dead of night. We were going to try to even the odds a little bit.

  I looked around the team. “Everybody ready?” I asked. I got a series of nods and monosyllabic grunts. Nobody, not even Phil, seemed to be feeling all that chatty.

  Bradshaw stepped over to me. “Watch yourself, brother,” he said softly. He stuck out his hand and I gripped it. He turned the handshake into a brief, one-armed bear hug, and then stepped back.

  Warren was waiting as Bradshaw stepped away. He didn’t seem to quite know where to look, though his expression wasn’t the clearest through the white phosphor tubes of my fusion goggles. They were focused on a point about a hundred yards away, so he was a little blurry.

  “I…” he started. “Part of me thinks I really should be going with you.”

  “No,” I said, with a chuckle that honestly didn’t have much humor behind it. “Don’t even think it, Warren. You’re not ready for this kind of op. Might never be.”

  He nodded, looking down at the ground. “Maybe, once we get to Poland…”

  “Worry about the next step after Poland once we’re in Poland,” I told him. “Your boys and girls are going to need you to keep your head in the game, and to focus on the fight we’ve got right here.” I blew out a sigh. I was too damned tired for this, too tired and beaten up to be mentoring a man who was at least five years my senior. “You might not have been trained for this, Warren, but you’ve got a couple of good NCOs. Listen to them, and follow Bradshaw’s lead. He’ll keep you in line.”

  He nodded again, finally looking up at me. He wouldn’t have seen much besides the boxy housing of my NVGs. “Good luck,” he said.

  “You too.” I looked around. My team was all waiting, standing with rifles in hand, looking at me.

  I’d never expected to be in this position when I’d joined up with the Triarii. Being only the middle of the pack, experience-wise, but having an entire team, not to mention the reinforced company presently relying on my team, looking to me to give the word. It was sobering. Always had been sobering, ever since Hartrick had called me in and told me that I was taking over the team as he moved to a different billet within the organization.

  But sobering or not, it wasn’t time for woolgathering. “Let’s move out,” I said. I waved at the hill to the north, and Phil turned and led out, moving past the BVP that was parked and rumbling at the edge of Vrchrieka, moving toward the dark mass of the forest.

  ***

  It was just over a klick to the treeline at the edge of the fields. It hadn’t been a straight shot; there were clearings to avoid, and our chosen hedgerow was well off to the west from Vrchrieka.

  We crouched in the shadows of the treeline, watching the fields and the scattered lights of Vysokà nad Kysucou on the far side.

  My fusion goggles were showing bright white spots well separated from the lights. Closer inspection made out the blocky shapes of German Pumas, with the smaller heat spots of human figures on foot nearby. None of them were moving at the moment, but they were there, and from the heat signatures coming off the armored vehicles, their engines were running.

  They were also stationed in a perimeter around the town, rather than in the middle of it or on-line to the north, facing Poland. Which was not unsurprising, but was going to make the approach more difficult. While armored vehicles in general aren’t great for visibility, I was pretty sure that the Pumas had thermal sights, like the US Army’s M5 Powells, and they were holding security, their 30mm cannons aimed out at the fields.

  We could hope that the gunners weren’t paying that much attention, given the hour. A glance at my watch, carefully shielding the green glow with my hand, told me that it was just after 0200. And if this had been a regular Bundeswehr unit, that would have been a pretty good bet. Discipline in the regular EDC forces had been pretty lax for a long time.

  But if these were ED Corps troops, and if Rybàr’s intelligence was accurate, we couldn’t take that chance. They might be just as disciplined as we were, if the EDC’s trainers had really been as professional and focused as Rybàr had suggested.

  Next to me in the bushes, Phil pointed up at the sky. I followed his finger, and spotted the moving speck in the sky. It was hard to see; it was small, it didn’t have much of a thermal signature, and it wasn’t showing lights. But there was just enough ambient light coming from the town that our fusion goggles had managed to pick the drone out.

  From there, it was easy enough to spot the other three. They appeared to be flying racetracks, circling above the hills north of the town. I was surprised that there weren’t more, especially focusing on the south, given that the Bytča garrison had gone over to the Nationalists.

  There was no avoiding the drones, but fortunately, they were far enough away that we might be able to use the hedgerow after all. Especially since it was on low ground between fields. Which also meant that it was going to be wet as hell, but physical discomfort was getting to be the least of our worries.

  I would have preferred to use the drone jammer still mounted to one of the BOVs, but that would have meant moving the vehicles up more closely than we wanted to at this stage, and alerting the enemy that something was wrong with their drone coverage.

  That was the same reason we couldn’t set up a diversion to cover our movement. Setting off a bomb at one end of the town would certainly get them looking in that direction, but it would also alert them that somebody decidedly unfriendly was in the neighb
orhood.

  There was nothing for it. I tapped Phil on the shoulder and pointed down into the hedgerow. He quietly rose and started in.

  We were committed.

  The hedgerow was less of a hedgerow than it was a beech and pine thicket, with soggy ground at the lowest point. We were soon thrashing through vegetation so thick that I doubted the enemy could have seen us if they’d driven right up to it. I know I couldn’t see much, between the thickness of the trees and bushes, and the lay of the fold in the land. We still moved carefully, staying low and scanning ahead constantly. I didn’t object to Phil’s constant halts to look and listen while crouched down in the little draw, even as our time slipped away.

  Compromise is failure, and we’d probably get everyone else killed along with ourselves if we screwed this up.

  We had just about a klick to go to reach the road. The line of trees took us uncomfortably close to one of the Pumas and the squad of EDC soldiers either bedded down or on watch near it, but the drones in the sky overhead meant that we didn’t dare come out from under the trees until we had no other choice.

  That point was going to come, but by then I hoped to be close enough to the town that we’d get lost in the noise, dismissed as just another group of EDC troops on the ground. If the drone operators were even looking that close to the town itself.

  It was a long slog, the worst part being when we came to a much thinner stretch of trees, that had looked a lot thicker on the imagery. To make matters worse, there was a small farmhouse right on the edge of the trees. If someone was awake in there, or the enemy had posted sentries, or they just had a dog that started barking…

  But we slipped past without being detected, plunging back into the thicker strip of woods leading most of the rest of the way to the outskirts of town. By then we could hear the growl of the nearest Puma’s idling engine, almost drowned out by the more distant, but louder, snarl of helicopter rotors.