Reflexive Fire - 01

by Jack Murphy

  The terrorist was practically turned into a sieve by the time it was all over.

  The Kazakhs were still checking faces and testicles with their hands to make sure everything was still there in the aftermath of the blast, when Deckard started yelling and forcing troops back to their feet, grabbing them by the collar.

  As near as he could tell, the bunkers were more than half clear, but a glance back at the remaining mercenaries told them they were taking casualties in the process. If they lost the initiative for even a moment and the enemy was able to launch an effective counter attack, it was all over for the Samruk men. They had nowhere to retreat but to a tunnel that was impossible to defend from.

  “Doorway left! Doorway right! Go!”

  The assaulters surged forward.

  More grenades were hurled into the uncleared rooms, simultaneous explosions jarring Deckard's fillings. The American jumped in the nearest stack, moving into the next room. Inside, two insurgents were sprawled out on the ground, lifeless eyes staring at the ceiling. It seemed that the FMK2 grenades were worth the ridiculous invoice Deckard had been given for them.

  A third terrorist attempted to stand, but was quickly put back down by shots from three AK-103s and Deckard's VSS rifle. Outside, the staccato bursts chattered back and forth. The rumble of explosions shook the walls, showering them with debris. Deckard whistled. The chamber was packed to the gills with poppies ready to be processed into opium.

  Another assault team bounded past as they exited through the door to move deeper down the corridor. Deckard was stepping out into the hall, when Frank literally ran into him with a sheen of sweat coating his face.

  “We got him,” Frank panted. “ Khalis. MIK, and his boyfriend, too.”

  “Oh, well,” Deckard lamented. “At least he died doing what he loved.”

  Frank snorted.

  “Make sure you get a picture of him and DNA.”

  “That's fucking disgusting, I'm not doing that shit.”

  “I mean a blood sample, you fucking idiot-”

  Screams were suddenly drowned out by gunfire.

  Kurt Jager slowly opened one eye, then the other, before lifting his head up off the ground.

  When the grenade rolled between his feet, the former sergeant had leaped to the ground, covering his head with his arms and hoping to avoid the inevitable blast. It never came. Looking at the Soviet pineapple grenade, Kurt reached out and picked it up. Pulling the pin, he hurled it back at the enemy.

  The explosion rewarded him with the satisfying smell of sulfur. It permeated through the air, alongside the screams of dying insurgents.

  By now Chuck had reset the support by fire line. The machine gun teams opened up, holding the triggers down, significantly reducing the amount of incoming enemy fire as the insurgents were again forced to the ground to avoid the wall of lead cutting through the air above them.

  Knowing it was time to move, Kurt pulled the pin on the initiator, beginning the burn sequence on the time fuse.

  Alibek and Kanat could barely be heard above the gunfire, but the men got the message and once again began to advance. Jumping over the sand berm, Kurt and his adopted squad moved with one of the PKM gunners bringing up the rear. The terrain quickly narrowed into a single winding path that clung to the side of a cliff. He suspected it was much the same for the other squads as they cleared laterally, sweeping around the mountainside from one enemy position to the next.

  During a break in machine gun fire, he heard something sliding down the cliff face and halted the squad. Pressing up against the side of the crumbling earth wall, the mercenaries watched as the bodies of two insurgents slid off the cliff, flailing like rag dolls, recent victims of Chuck's machine gunners in a kill zone somewhere above them.

  Inching along the path, Kurt rounded a bend and found himself face to face with another sandal-wearing insurgent with a Mosin-Nagant bolt action rifle in his hands. Both gunfighters brought their weapons into play, Kurt beating him by a wide margin and drilling the man with three shots into his chest. Dropping his rifle, the insurgent slid off the cliff to be reunited with his comrades somewhere below.

  A little more cautious now, the squad moved forward, all too aware that they were channelized along the mountain trail with nowhere to go, a suicidal leap of faith down the mountain excluded.

  Back at the stronghold they had left behind, the charge set on the DShK exploded. Combat created a strange kind of time distortion. It seemed like they had been on the trail for an hour already, but in reality there was only a minute of time fuse to burn before the charge went off.

  Rounding the next bend in the trail, Kurt afforded a quick glance around the turn before exposing himself. Sure enough, there was a sandbagged fighting position, three insurgents present and manning a ZSU-23 anti-aircraft machine gun. Nestled into the mountain face, it was out of the line of fire of Chuck's PKM crew.

  Leaning back, he whispered in the lead Kazakh's ear, explaining the situation and plan of action in Russian before telling him to pass the information back to the rest of the squad. Hopefully it didn't result in a game of telephone where the tail gunner in the rear got a story about Genghis Khan's army sitting in a foxhole.

  “Piet?” Kurt whispered into his handheld radio.

  “The boys are a little busy. We got buggers crawling all over the mountain.”

  “Can you handle a few more?”

  “Where are you?”

  Kurt flipped on the infrared strobe light strapped to his assault rig.

  “I just switched on my strobe.”

  “I've got you. Whole squad lined up on there, huh?”

  “Look to your left from my strobe.”

  “A couple gun barrels in there, I think.”

  “Two barrels, one gun. A ZSU.”

  “Ah.”

  “Three bad guys, too. Give me a moment to get ready.”

  “Make it fast. Nikita is the only thing stopping the squad below you from being overrun.”

  Kurt palmed one of his grenades. Holding down the spoon, he yanked the pin.

  “When you're ready,” he said, keying the radio with his free hand.

  Almost immediately a single shot thundered out from Piet's bolt gun. His concealed position in the rocks gave the remaining the enemy little hint as to where he was located. The survivors began shouting in excited Pashto as Kurt lobbed the Argentinean grenade into their fighting position. Half a second later, Piet fired a second shot, cutting off the Afghan's conversation; a second after the grenade detonated ending any notion of it.

  “Tausend dank,” the German called back.

  Piet responded with something in Afrikaans that Kurt couldn't understand.

  Moving in, the squad rapidly captured the insurgent position, finding it occupied by two corpses shot through the head and another riddled with shrapnel. Kurt put the PKM gunner facing forward to take on any new threats while he decided their next move.

  Without any more explosives he did the next best thing to disable the massive anti-aircraft gun. Detaching the linked 23mm rounds, he lugged them to the side of the cliff and hurled them over.

  Muzzle flashes were lighting up the night, tracer fire flying in every direction. So much gun powder was in the air that it wafted in with a nauseatingly sweet smell that seemed to stick to their sinuses.

  A barrage of RPG rockets streaked over their heads.

  Kurt wondered how much farther it was to the bunkers.

  Chuck winced as one RPG whooshed just a few feet over his head before the second rocket hit the ground in front of the firing line, raining shards of rock down on them. While trying to blink his eyes and see through the toxic cloud left in the anti-tank round's wake, a third rocket exploded and threw him on his back, everything blinking out, going dark.

  Coughing and wiping dust out of his eyes, the former Navy SEAL felt like he was moving in slow motion, his mind struggling to keep up with his surroundings. His hands ran over his body, out of instinct more than anything,
checking for holes. Forcing himself to focus he looked at his hands but didn't see any red.

  Looking back he remembered where he was.

  A single PKM gunner was holding down the trigger, sending a constant volley of fire down range while the two other machine guns lay silent. Despite the nearly blinding flame shooting from the muzzle of the lone PKM, Chuck found it strange that he couldn't hear anything.

  Arm over arm, he high crawled forward until he laid his forearm down on something hot. Retracting his arm in pain, he saw that he had crawled on top of one of the PKMs or what was left of it, the receiver hopelessly bent by a rocket propelled grenade.

  Closer now, he saw the bodies of two gunners and one assistant gunner. The remaining AG was rolling back and forth holding his face. There was nothing Chuck could do for him at the moment. If someone didn't start putting more fire down range, they'd have more dead and dying friendlies on their hands.

  Manning the remaining PKM, Chuck conducted a functions check on the weapon, his mind struggling to remember the procedure. Racking the bolt back and forth a few times was the best he could manage under the circumstances. Digging through the dead AG's kitbag, he found what was left of the 7.62x54 linked bullets.

  To his right the remaining gunner ceased fire, smoke coming off the barrel as the Kazakh was also sent digging around for more ammunition.

  Chuck slapped the fresh belt in the feed tray, slammed the feed tray cover closed, and racked the bolt to the rear.

  Looking down the iron sights, he targeted an insurgent in the distance, only visible as a silhouette under the moonlight, but the outline of the RPG-7 was clear enough. The tube primed with a fresh rocket.

  Pulling the broken wooden stock tight into his shoulder, Chuck went cyclic.

  Adam ducked back behind the boulder as AK-47 rounds kicked dirt into his face.

  Lower on the side of the mountain from Kurt’s squad, they had found themselves in relatively open terrain, even if it sloped at a vicious angle, making it difficult for the troops to maintain their footing. Only a few lonely boulders and shallow depressions offered them any cover as the insurgents hammered them, apparently determined not to lose any more ground.

  “Right side! Bound!”

  On taking fire, the squad broke down into two assault teams. Adam and his team leaned out from behind the rocky outcropping and fired on the enemy positions. It looked to him as if the muzzle flashes of several enemy rifles had blinked out permanently but he wasn't sure.

  The second assault team leaped out from the depression they had lain prone in, sprinting forward to a pile of rocks that had gathered at the base of the cliff to their right flank. Meanwhile, their only PKM gunner moved up behind them, searching for his own position.

  Once Adam heard the automatic fire of the PKM, he signaled to his men that it was time to move. With their counterparts laying down suppressive fire, the team ran forward, bullets still kicking up geysers of dust around their feet.

  When they collectively huddled behind the only boulder in otherwise open ground, Adam was relieved to see they had all made it, even if one young kid's face was covered in blood from god only knew what. At least he was still on his feet.

  On each side of the boulder, a Kazakh got in the prone while another took a knee beside him. Leaning out from behind cover, they fired high and low. When one of the kneeling mercenaries went dry on his AK and had to reload, Adam pushed him back, taking his place. They continued to sweep gunfire at known, likely, and suspected, targets until the PKM gunner came up behind them, moving Adam and his buddy out of the way.

  The gunner went cyclic again while the other fire team found relief in a nearby ditch created by weather erosion. Finding their new positions, the assault team joined the AK fire stitching several insurgents across the middle, weapons falling from lifeless hands.

  “Let's go,” Adam ordered taking the lead.

  His team rushed forward, finding another small gully created by rainwater; it was knee deep at best. By now incoming fire was reduced to the occasional crack that sent dust showering down over the edge of the ditch.

  “Grenades!”

  The Kazakhs looked back and forth, not understanding until he pulled an FMK2 grenade from his chest rig and pulled the pin out. Tearing through chest harnesses, the Kazakhs primed their own grenades and waited for Adam's command.

  Five frag grenades arced through the night, coming down on top of the bastion. Explosions knocked down haphazardly built stone walls and tore the insurgents limb from limb.

  Amid the pained screams coming from their front, the other assault team made one last bound before the entire squad formed a skirmish line and stalked across the enemy position, double-tapping bodies to make sure, while in a few cases delivering a final coup de grace.

  Halting the squad, Adam ran down the assault line, physically lifting them up and placing them where he felt they could best pull security in case of an enemy counter attack. Finding the kid with blood gushing down his face, he pulled out some gauze and began wiping his head down, looking for the source of the bleeding.

  They turned in unison, as it sounded like strikes of thunder were slamming into the side of the mountain.

  Deckard sunk the blade into the terrorist's throat until it stopped at the hilt.

  Cutting through the thick muscles around the neck was somewhat more difficult than most people expected. Slicing the rest of the way through the enemy's carotid artery, Deckard grabbed him by his dishdasha and cast the insurgent aside.

  The Kazakh who had been pinned underneath the insurgent got to his feet.

  He looked pretty good for having a near-death experience or two.

  With Frank distracting him, some of the assaulters had gotten spread a little thin. By the time he caught up with them, one of the mercenaries had already been sideswiped and taken to the ground.

  Down the hall, assault teams looked back at him, giving the thumbs up. The bunker complex was clear. Finally.

  “Alexander! Medic!”

  The platoon sergeant came rushing forward, his right hand covered in blood. Pulling out a pair of medical shears, Deckard grabbed the Kazakh commando by the arm and sliced off his shirt sleeve. Alexander grunted, just now noticing the shrapnel wound on his forearm that was pumping a steady flow of blood.

  Deckard began applying a field bandage while glancing up at Alexander's bloodshot eyes.

  “We need security,” he said, nodding. “Security. Casualties? Bullets?”

  “Medic, yes.”

  Securing the bandage with its metal fasteners, Deckard patted the sergeant on the shoulder.

  “Go.”

  The platoon sergeant took off, making sure his men pulled security rather than just standing around. Barking orders, squad leaders began to report in with any injuries their men had sustained and how much ammunition had been expended. Deckard already knew they had several fatalities.

  “Frank?”

  “Yeah,” the Army veteran said, sticking his head out a door.

  “Start collecting whatever you think is relevant.”

  “Already on it.” Then as an afterthought, “We got a couple prisoners here, too.”

  Evidence exploitation was specifically not included in the Operations Order. They were supposed to kill and destroy everything they found. Scorched earth. His handlers didn't want him collecting up hard drives and documents, much less interrogating anyone.

  They wanted him in an intelligence black hole and it wasn't his place to ask questions. He had other ideas.

  “Shit, how the hell did that happen?”

  “Guess they missed a couple guys during the initial sweep who had tried to hide.”

  “Remember that for the AAR.”

  Alexander came stomping back. What followed was an impossible to follow dialog, for any casual observer, that took place in English, Russian, and sign language, but the point was made. The troops expended about two magazines each. There were seven injuries, two dead. The platoon medic
was working on the most serious injury.

  Motioning for the platoon sergeant to lead the way, Deckard followed him to a critically wounded Kazakh, lying on the ground in the insurgent's kitchen area. The American stood back, silently observing.

  The casualty had been shot through the abdomen, the bullet punching straight through his chest, leaving a ragged exit wound. The commando gasped, struggling to breath. Using the plastic packaging from a field dressing, the Kazakh medic taped it over the exit wound before pulling out a fourteen-gauge needle and carefully sticking it between the second and third mid-clavicle line below the collarbone.

  A whoosh of air escaped from his chest cavity, a successful tension pneumothorax treatment that decompressed the chest cavity. As if someone had waved a magic wand, the casualty began to breath normally again. If the medic was able to keep his patient alive all the way to the field hospital in Bagram, Deckard would make sure both the medic and the former Green Beret who trained him received a bonus.

  Deckard turned around, examining the other casualties that had been consolidated in the kitchen for triage and treatment. Some cuts and non-life threatening gunshot wounds; the five Kazakhs would survive. It was the final casualty that concerned the Samruk commander.

  “Richie, what the fuck?”

  “Bullocks, you bloody bastard,” he gasped.

  “That's a real gusher you got there.”

  The demo expert looked down at the mostly cauterized burn across his shoulder.

  “One of those fucking barbarians of yours got too close when we were clearing a room,” he spat through clenched teeth. “Got caught with his muzzle flash.”

  “Hold on a sec,” Deckard said, sympathetically. “Let me help you with that.”

  Reaching down, he grabbed Richie by the ear and painfully dragged him to his feet.

  “Does it feel better now?”

  “I'll slot the whole lot of you wankers!”

  “We don't have time for you to start sandbagging on us. Gather up whatever demo you distributed to the platoon. I want a line main down the corridor. You can probably find enough mines and rockets in the stockpile they have here to sympathetically detonate and bring the roof down. Got it?”