by Peter Nealen
“I was the firefight,” Flanagan replied. “Ambushed a patrol that was coming up this way. They won’t be following us, but we need to move before somebody else who heard the ruckus comes looking.”
“Fine with me,” Wade said. “We almost had my chute down before you started blowing stuff up; give me two more minutes and I think we can be on our way.”
“Quick and quiet,” was all Flanagan said in response. He kept his eyes and his muzzle covering the road. If any more trouble came their way, that was the most likely way it would come.
Wade didn’t argue. Seeing that Flanagan and Gomez had the road covered in both directions, he stood and went back to his tangled parachute. A couple of hard tugs later, and the partially-shredded canopy was on the ground and he was stuffing it into its kitbag. There was the muffled sound of a zipper, then Wade disappeared back into the trees. A moment later, he was back on a knee between them, his ruck on his back and his G3 in his hands. “Set,” he said. “Let’s go.”
Flanagan rose and led out, staying within the treeline, heading uphill toward the drop zone. They still had a few hours of darkness left; he hoped they could make linkup and get at least a mile away from the DZ before sunup.
CHAPTER 9
Brannigan was seriously considering breaking out the radios to try to make contact with Flanagan, Wade, or Gomez. The plan, in case they had gotten separated on the descent, had been to hold just off the DZ for two hours, then move to a secondary rally point if any stragglers hadn’t shown up by then. Everyone on the team knew where the rally point was, as well as the timeline. And he wasn’t worried that any of the three men had forgotten. But they’d heard the faint, rolling echoes of what could only have been a grenade blast, followed by several shots. And they’d been coming from the direction of where he’d last seen Flanagan and the two missing new guys.
He restrained the anxiety about the men that was gnawing at him. Noise was their greatest enemy at that point; until they could reconnoiter the North Korean camp and set up their attack and withdrawal, they couldn’t risk detection. Speech, even muted, would carry quite a distance in the dark, especially since a lot of the jungle noises had stopped after the boom of the grenade had thundered down the valley. So, he left the radios off, and waited.
The jungle stank and steamed around them as they huddled in the forest, weapons trained outward, peering into the nearly impenetrable darkness through their NVGs. The insects hadn’t stopped buzzing, or biting, with the noise of the firefight below, much to every one of the Blackhearts’ chagrin. He heard a faint slap and a muttered curse, followed by a hiss from Santelli that, while wordless, promised horrible, painful death to whoever gave their position away because of a damned mosquito.
Slowly, the night noises of the jungle returned. Night birds chirped and hooted. Somewhere in the distance, a deep, throaty, bellowing roar announced that a tiger was somewhere in the area, and Brannigan felt the gooseflesh rise on his arms. Running into one of those was not in the plan, and would present a major problem.
But they had no choice. They stayed still, sweated, and waited. Brannigan carefully checked his watch, shielding the green glow with his hand. Forty more minutes.
***
There were about ten minutes left. He was mentally preparing to get up and move, silently praying that the explosion and the shooting that they’d heard hadn’t meant the deaths of three of his men. He knew Flanagan considerably better than Wade or Gomez, but it didn’t matter at that point. All three were Brannigan’s Blackhearts. They were his boys, and they’d followed him into that jungle night. He was ultimately responsible for their fate.
There was rustling in the foliage ahead of him, and he tensed, ever so slightly, slowly starting to raise his rifle. He peered through the trees, trying to see movement, a silhouette, anything. It was dark as the tomb under the canopy, and he saw nothing.
The sounds of movement, faint as they had been, stopped. After a long moment, he started to think that perhaps he’d either imagined it, or that maybe all he’d heard had been an animal passing by in the night. There were certainly enough critters in the jungle, and they’d been silent and motionless for long enough that the local fauna was probably getting used to their presence.
But somehow, he didn’t think it had been an animal. The hackles were up on the back of his neck. That was a person out there. He just didn’t know if it was friend or foe.
Then a double IR flash flickered out in the jungle, partially obscured by the wide fronds of the undergrowth, and he started to breathe again. Taking his hand off the G3’s forearm, he responded with a single flash and got another in return. Then shapes were moving through the jungle toward him, dimly visible as men with packs on their backs, rifles in their hands, and the dark tubes of night vision goggles protruding from beneath the brims of boonie hats.
“Was that you set off that commotion down there?” Brannigan asked Flanagan as the bearded man took a knee beside him.
Flanagan was dripping with sweat and breathing hard. None of them were used to the heat and humidity, and jungle movement was always taxing, anyway.
“Yeah, that was me,” he said quietly. “There was a patrol coming north. It was going burn these two while they were getting Wade’s chute out of a tree, so I ambushed ‘em. They won’t be a problem, at least until somebody comes up to investigate the noise and finds the bodies.”
“Which could be any time, if it hasn’t already happened,” Brannigan mused. “We need to get moving. How are you guys holding up?”
Flanagan glanced over his shoulder. “We’ll be fine,” he said.
“Seriously, Joe,” Brannigan said. “I don’t want any macho bullshit if it means one of you is going to go belly-up from heat exhaustion in another hour.”
“We’re fine,” Flanagan repeated. “It’s hot, but we weren’t moving fast. Some water and salt tabs, and we’ll be ready to move. Two minutes, tops.”
Brannigan studied the other man through his NVGs for a moment. Flanagan wasn’t an experienced jungle fighter, strictly speaking, but he was a woodsman and a careful, canny fighting man. He wouldn’t have gone barreling through the jungle, wearing himself out and, worse, making noise. If Flanagan said he was all right, then he was all right.
“Okay,” he said. “Five minutes, then we’ll step off.” He turned to Hart, who was crouched next to him, somewhat awkwardly since he couldn’t kneel quite right on his prosthetic leg, and passed the word along. Hart repeated it back, then turned to Curtis, to pass the word along.
It took nearly a minute before the word that they were getting ready to move had gone all the way around the tight circle. Villareal, Towne, and Sanda were crouched in the middle, with the rest of the mercenaries in a ring, bristling with rifles and the two machineguns. Last-minute sips of water were taken, and a couple of the mercenaries took the opportunity to unbutton and piss on the ground beneath them. If Sanda noticed, she pointedly said nothing.
Then it was time. Childress got to his feet, having already gotten his bearings, and led off. Brannigan followed close behind; they would have to keep close together in the jungle or risk getting separated. He checked behind him to make sure both that Hart was still there, and that he hadn’t dropped anything on the way out, then he plunged ahead, into the foliage.
***
Their route actually led back downhill, into the valley and meadow where they had landed, and across the road. Childress worked his way carefully along the edge of the clearing, keeping back in the trees and looking for the narrowest part of the open ground before crossing the road. The rest followed in a winding file, picking their way carefully through the tangled undergrowth.
As they moved, it became evident that, while the jungle was quite thick enough, it wasn’t nearly as dense as they’d expected. The steepness of the terrain presented more difficulty than the vegetation did. Brannigan mused that they were probably too high in the mountains; the really dense, triple-canopy jungle would be down south, closer t
o Thailand.
He kept glancing down the valley to the south, looking for any sign of more hostiles, who might be looking for the men that Flanagan had killed. The fact that there was no sign of any response to the ambush at all, in what was supposed to be the heart of Kokang territory, bothered him. It didn’t make sense, and when things in a combat zone didn’t make sense, he started to look for an ambush.
Childress lowered himself to a knee at the edge of the treeline, peering up the road to his left. Brannigan moved up and joined him, following the younger man’s gaze uphill. It took him a moment, but then he saw the shape of the house alongside the road, almost completely obscured by the trees. There were no lights, and he could make out no movement. Though it did seem as if the sky was getting a little lighter, and the image in his NVGs seemed to be brightening. Were they that close to dawn already? He glanced at his watch, even more careful about the green glow of the watch face. Yes, indeed. Dawn was only about thirty minutes away.
Childress said nothing, but only studied the silhouette of the house, the lay of the land, and the trees. Brannigan waited. He’d seen some of Childress’ field skill on Khadarkh, and so far, he’d seen nothing to complain about with the younger man’s ability in the woods. He took the time to form his own assessment of the crossing point, pausing once more to peer down toward the south, though the road curved around a tree-covered hill only half a klick away, still wreathed in darkness. As hard as he stared, he saw no movement, but could not see enough to be certain that there was no one there.
He felt Childress look at him, and met the gaze of the other man’s inhuman-looking goggles. Childress pointed across the road, and Brannigan nodded before turning back, making sure he had Hart’s attention, and signaling that they were going to cross the road. Hart indicated he understood, then passed the signal along before moving up and getting into position beside Brannigan, where he could cover down the road, ready to engage anyone who might threaten the first two men as they crossed the open area.
With Bianco set in and covering the other direction, Childress and Brannigan got up and moved quickly across the road, half-crouched, their rifles held ready to engage. The clay and gravel of the road crunched under their boots, and then they were in the grass on the other side, climbing up into the trees and toward the crest of the ridge.
Both of them halted just inside the treeline, getting down behind some of the trees, just exposed enough to be able to see up and down the road, and held. They would cover the rest while they crossed.
The pre-dawn light was getting stronger. The image in his NVGs was getting brighter, and more details were beginning to become clear. And with them came the realization that there was far less vegetation and forest on the ridgeline above them, and across the valley, than they’d thought. There were certainly thicker stands of trees, but there were a lot of wide stretches of open, grassy ground between them.
Moving much during the day was not going to be a good idea.
At the same time, they couldn’t afford to go to ground where they were; the settlement nestled in the saddle to their northwest was far too close. They’d have to step it out over the next thirty minutes, to get to a hiding place before the sun came all the way up. Glancing out of the corner of his eye, he could tell that it was still too dark to see much with the naked eye, but that wasn’t going to last.
The rest of the team was crossing in pairs, rushing as quickly and quietly as they could across the road to plunge into the patch of woods where he and Childress were kneeling. Brannigan found he was getting more and more anxious. Come on, we’ve got to move! He had to fight the anxiety. Going too fast meant getting sloppy, and getting sloppy would be a death sentence.
Hart and Bianco hustled across, Bianco delivering a fist-thump to his shoulder to signal that everyone was across. Brannigan had to hand it to both of them; as big as he was, Bianco wasn’t struggling in the heat with the weight of the MG 3, and Hart didn’t seem like his prosthetic was slowing him down at all.
He turned and rose off the ground, moving toward the front of the roughly cigar-shaped perimeter the rest of the team had set up in the trees, with Childress slightly ahead of him.
Childress had just passed Flanagan when they all froze where they were.
A faint, crackling roar of automatic weapons fire was echoing across the hills from the south. A moment later, it was joined by the unmistakable crump of mortar rounds landing.
“What the hell is going on down there?” Curtis whispered. “I thought the Norks were off to the north of here.”
“Quiet!” several voices hissed.
Brannigan listened for a few more moments. Whatever was happening, it was some distance away, though still too close for comfort. There was no way to tell who might be involved in the fight, either. Though it might explain the lack of pursuit after Flanagan’s ambush. If most of the fighters in the area had been moving toward the target that was currently getting pasted, then they might not have had the manpower or the firepower to spare to go looking for a missing patrol.
Though the question of just who “they” were still remained.
He contemplated their course of action as they stayed still and quiet, listening for any other activity. As far as their information went, the North Korean camp was still almost four miles ahead and above them. He’d seen the imagery, and knew that it was current. Unless Van Zandt had them chasing a stalking horse of some kind, that was still their target. Getting sidetracked by factional combat wouldn’t help them accomplish their mission. Until they knew for sure that they were barking up the wrong tree, they had to concentrate on getting eyes on that camp and confirming that there were, in fact, North Koreans there.
But first, they had to get to a lay-up site before the sun came up.
“Let’s go,” he whispered to Childress. “That’s a long way away from here. Let’s just try to keep away from roads for now, just in case there are reinforcements heading down south.”
Childress nodded, then got up and started moving.
***
Both to avoid the roads and stay within the trees, they had to circle off to the east and back down into the draw, skirting the steep hillside, trying not to slip on some of the more pronounced side-slopes. At times, when they were deeper into the woods, they had to brace their boots against the boles of trees as they passed. The grass and brush underfoot did not provide very good footing, either, and everything was just damp enough that it always felt like the dirt underfoot was about to slip away beneath a boot.
Finally, Brannigan simply had to call a halt. They were in the middle of a stand of trees on an apparently abandoned hillside, with the ribbon of red-dirt road nearly a hundred feet above them. There was little in the way of flat ground, but they were under the trees, there was undergrowth to use for concealment, and it was getting far too light to continue. Bracing themselves against trees and rocks as best they could, they settled in to wait out the already boilingly hot day.
***
Lontan was on fire.
General Cao had been adamant that the government-loyal paramilitaries had moved into the town, displacing the local police and oppressing the populace, using the town as a base of operations to move against the Kokang Army in Marish. Lontan had therefore become their first target.
The mortars had led the way, though the machinegunners who had crept in closer to the outskirts of the town had not been able to resist the urge to open fire. Just before the sun rose, streams of bullets ripped into buildings with rattling, hammering roars, while mortar rounds whickered down out of the sky to detonate in the streets with thunderous crumps and fountains of black smoke and red mud.
Park and his men had been under Cao’s direct command, part of the main thrust into the town behind the bombardment. It was clear that Cao wanted to see what the North Koreans had to offer on the ground, and Park was determined to show him that they were better than his rag-tag Kokangs. They had moved systematically down the main street of the tiny vill
age, going from house to house.
The civilians had been fleeing for the hills, the ones who hadn’t already been caught in the crossfire. There had been enough violence over the years in northern Burma that they knew to run when the shooting started. These weren’t the Karen, but they’d been harassed and bullied by the government anyway, and had long since learned to head for the hills as soon as armed men showed up. Armed men were bad news, because they were either government troops, paramilitaries—who were worse—or Kokang Army, who often lorded their position as “defenders of the people” over the villagers, to “the people’s” great detriment.
Not everyone in the village had been fleeing, though. A young woman had either fallen or been pushed out of a house, and a moment later, muzzle flashes had spat from the house’s windows, with the familiar rattling roar of an AK. Bullets had ripped through Seo Ha-Jun’s chest and he had crashed to the street, twitching and spouting blood, as the rest of the North Korean platoon scattered to find cover, spraying fire in return, riddling the target house and those to either side of it with bullets.
The fire slowed, and Park had run forward, pulling a grenade out of his vest. It was a Korean grenade, and therefore not very reliable, so he made sure that he was close before lobbing it in the window and dropping flat to the dirt.
As he had feared, it had been a dud. The fire from the house had stopped with yells of alarm, but no explosion had blown out the windows and doors. However, Jeon had gotten into position by then, and had engaged the house with his Type 73 light machinegun. The Bren-style machinegun had rattled and thundered as it tore the front of the house apart.
Jeon had dumped the entire magazine into the house. By the time he had run out and reached up to change the magazine, there had been no more fire coming from the house. Park had gotten up and charged forward, with half his men behind him, and kicked in the remains of the door.