Holy shit, thought Paul. Standing outside the compound probably wouldn’t have helped if that stuff had gone up. Paul walked over to the pile and started examining stuff. There were scads of bullets, for starters. Paul spotted a dozen or so cases of old force “Bouncing Bettys,” bounding mines. There were Sinobloc antiarmor mines. There were cute little toe poppers. Hell, these guys had had everything but the kitchen sink at their disposal. Paul wondered where it had come from. And he didn’t doubt that Commander Maktar had been supplying shitheads all through the Baradna River valley. There was a mountain of crap here.
The colonel walked up, covered in perspiration from the climb. Strange, Paul didn’t remember having been tired coming up the hill. Adrenaline could do wonderful and mysterious things to the body.
“Good work, Paul. Now we have to figure out what to do with this shit; we can’t just leave it here.” He cast his eyes on the pile. There had to be over a ton of explosives and ammo there.
Some Juneaus cheered inside the house. Both men looked toward the upper windows of the place. The colonel shrugged. “Sounds like they’re having fun in there.”
Paul nodded. “Probably trashing Maktar’s house. Fuck him.” He continued, “Well, sir, we can’t just blow this shit in place—who knows how many civilians are down there in the village. It would be easy if the shuttles would just stick a Hadesfeuer in here, though, like we did at Pashto Khel.”
The colonel spat. “Fucking shuttles. We asked them to hit this place when we were pinned down, and they wouldn’t do it.”
Ah-ha, Paul thought. He had wondered about that. “Why’s that, sir?”
The colonel looked disgusted. “These assholes were using kids as ammo bearers, and the shuttles wouldn’t shoot, not even when these guys were shooting at them. The ROE would have covered them; I told them so.”
Paul just shook his head. Sometimes things worked out like that. “Well, at least the groundcars came up to support.”
“Yeah, they did. You should see three-four, though; Crusty tore it up in a creek or something.”
Paul groaned. Vehicle 3-4 was the groundcar the colonel and he had ridden in during a lot of missions. Keeping it tip-top was one of Paul’s priorities. Paul hadn’t seen it yet, but he would. He feared it wouldn’t be pretty.
The provincial police arrived. Bashir started talking with them, and they took over the scene. Second Company gathered themselves up and started marching down, each man carrying ordnance. Paul came down off the hill with Z and the colonel; he was exhausted. His halo clock said 1510 local—he had no idea where the day had gone. When they got to the bottom, Mike was waiting on them.
The colonel called the shuttles and had them set the AD bot’s self-destruct sequence. It had done its job well. Two minutes later, it blew. The explosion echoed off the canyon walls.
Now that the AD bot wasn’t keeping station anymore, First Company was ordered to sweep the southern side of the hill; Colonel Fasi wanted to see if Commander Maktar was among the dead. Mike and Stork went with them and looked. Half an hour later, they had a positive ID from the halo network. Maktar the Shithead was dead.
It’s a shame, thought Paul, that I couldn’t have driven Najibullah the Bomb Maker into that field with the AD bot. He smiled and reached into his pouch with the cigs.
Paul and the colonel hung out and discussed the day while Mike and First Company completed the sweep.
“My halo says thirty-one shitheads have been accounted for so far.” The colonel drew in on his smoke and leaned his head back, exhaling.
“Yeah, sir, I have to say that AD bot was a good call. Those things scare the shit out of me.” Paul shuddered inwardly.
“It was a good day’s work. Now, if we can just get out of here alive, I’ll stamp the day with my seal of approval.” The colonel flicked ashes and took another drag. Paul checked his feed: First Company was headed back in; the sweep was complete.
Shadows were beginning to stretch across the narrow valley they were in. The canyon walls were turning that peculiar purple color they get before sunset. It was time to go, before it got dark and people got crazy ideas in their heads.
The mission was complete and it was essential to start moving before nightfall. While it was improbable that local dissident forces would regroup after the spanking they had just received, it could be the case that some holdouts were waiting for darkness to fall to start bleeding the battalion along the route back to Firebase Atarab. It was time to leave what had been Maktar’s hill.
Mike returned with First Company. He said not a word—there was a lot of death on the southern side of the hill. With halo-controlled precision, the battalion turned toward their vehicles.
When Paul walked up to the circle of groundcars, parked in an improvised lot that had been a sheep field, he saw Crusty. Or rather, Crusty saw him.
Crusty held up his hands, high-fiving the air. “Way to fuckin’ go, sir! Good fuckin’ job!”
Paul smiled. He didn’t see what the big deal was—his guys had done their job, and so had he. Paul had some words for Crusty.
“Good job to you, too, for bringing those vehicles up. Walking out of this place would have sucked big dicks.” Paul meant it with all his heart. He thought about sitting down in his nice gunner’s seat and watching a sector, suited and climate controlled—the thought was intoxicating after the day he had had.
Paul watched the Juneau Army guys file past with their captured explosives, heading toward their unarmored groundcars. He didn’t envy them.
After smoking yet another Fortunate, he climbed into his groundcar, suited up, and got ready to go. After a few minutes, the colonel hopped in and suited up. Paul heard him groan with pleasure and fully sympathized. Sitting in a groundcar seemed a safe luxury; it had been a long day. The colonel put out a call.
“All team vehicles, give me a thumbs-up when you’re ready.” As usual, the colonel’s tones were clipped and coolly professional. From what Paul had understood, though, the colonel had definitely gotten heated up with some people earlier on in the day: fully understandable, in Paul’s opinion.
All vehicles were ready. Mike’s vehicle led on the way out. They had to climb over a rock wall to get out. Paul held his breath; he thought they would flip the groundcar, but Stork, who was driving, managed to right the vehicle just in time. If they were almost flipping vehicles on the way out, Paul couldn’t imagine what it had been like for Crest to come to Kanaghat when the shooting was still happening, even though he had watched his feed.
Paul sat in his gunner’s seat and scanned. It was quite possible that some shithead would try to light them up on the way out.
Groundcar 3-4 had indeed taken damage on the way in. However, it seemed to be doing fine—despite its crunched fender and ripped-off exterior controls. There was nothing like a trip through a stream to tear up a vehicle.
Looking down the “road” that had been plowed through walls and houses, Paul whistled. It was a vehicular gauntlet. Just then, the truck lurched and slewed to the side. Paul’s halo visual lit up with a flashing icon: TURRET AUTOMATIC CONTROL INOPERATIVE. Shit—they needed their guns!
The colonel said, “Paul, get up there and run that gun manually.”
Paul was already moving. He undogged the hatch above him and stood up in his suit. The turret was spinning out of control. The barrel of the grenade launcher struck him full force.
Paul blacked out from the pain. If he had been unsuited, the turret would have ripped him in half. As it was, it really hurt. His halo diagnostics were scrolling a list of injuries on his lower right visual. He clicked them off and forced the barrel of the grenade launcher to the side.
While holding onto the barrel of the grenade launcher, he reached for the autocontrol-disconnect handle and yanked it. He felt the barrel move under his hand—the turret was free. He then popped open a recess in the turret and popped the manual control handle out and spun it; the turret moved under manual control.
Whew, thought Pa
ul, that sucked. But he had the gun back, albeit manually operated, with the sighting system slaved to his halo feed. Standing up through the hatch on the groundcar, he rotated the handle and brought the gun to bear on his sector.
“Guns up, sir.”
“Roger, Paul. Good work.”
And then Paul saw the tree. There was nothing he could do.
Next thing he knew, he was jammed up against the turret again, with wood chips all around him. His diagnostic icon was blinking again, and his whole body hurt. Reflexively, he stood up and tried to move the turret crank handle. It was frozen solid, with the gun and turret stuck at the one-o’clock position.
“Paul, what happened up there?”
“Sir, the gun is down. We hit a tree.”
“Shit. OK, stay up there in the hatch, and give us fires with your M-74 if we need it. Can you do that?”
Paul hurt. He hurt really bad. But there was a job to do. “Roger, sir.”
It was a long trip back from Kanaghat. The experience was arguably one of the worst experiences in Paul’s military career. At one point, Z freaked out over the driving; he had almost rolled the truck into the river. The colonel had to take over. At another point, a Juneau vehicle got stuck, and a force vehicle got stuck pulling out the stuck vehicle.
Mike had to sort out the mess. He demonstrated again why he was called Mighty Mike: he rigged up a triangular tow setup and finally got the vehicles out of the predicament they were in. The process was exhausting to watch. Paul couldn’t imagine how Mike did what he did in getting the convoy back on the road.
Darkness had descended long ago, and the convoy finally limped back into Firebase Atarab at 0100 hours, the day after they had set out. Paul unsuited, got out of his wrecked vehicle, and collapsed on the ground, fully asleep.
The Battle of Kanaghat, as the team would later call it, was over.
Paul woke up with a dry, funky taste in his mouth. His head felt like an alligator was being born in his skull; his body hurt in more places than he could imagine. He lay there for a while, wondering why the colonel hadn’t called him out on another mission. He had done a mission a day since coming to the Baradna Valley; he couldn’t see why this day would be different.
But for some reason, he hadn’t gone out on a mission. Things were different today. The colonel hadn’t woken him up. He lay there, trying to stretch. The sun beat down on his poncho; he was starting to sweat. With a disgusted sweep of his hand, he beat the poncho aside. The camp was already in motion; vehicles were moving, and men were talking in low tones.
Paul’s bet was that they were all discussing the events of the previous day. It wasn’t every day, after all, that an entire battalion went on the attack and annihilated a large and violent nest of dissidents.
Images and moments from the day before went through Paul’s head. Combat was an ugly word. Its stamp was in Paul’s memories and all over his body. He rubbed his face and breathed deeply.
He didn’t remember going to his cot, but here he was. How it had happened, he didn’t know. He felt like he had been at a wild party he only half remembered and had had too much to drink. He even felt nauseated, though he hadn’t had a drop. Hooray.
He swung his feet over the side of the cot and sat up, slowly. The sky seemed to be spinning, ever so slightly. Was he sure he hadn’t been drinking? He was sure—no alcohol for him. He figured he had taken a rap on the head or two, and the effects were catching up with him. Oh well, he’d live for now anyway.
His pistol was still in the chest holster on his battle harness; he reached down, unclipped it, and slid it into his hip holster. His rifle was propped neatly upon the end of his cot. He was sure of it now. He had had help going to bed.
Fuck, he thought, what a day. The sun was too bright. He looked under his cot for his civvy halo, found it, and put it on. There were no messages waiting for him, so he clicked off his icons, especially the one called MEDICAL.
Paul hoped he still had some Fortunates. He groped at his sleeve and felt the lump the near-cigs made in his pocket. Reassuring lumps, he thought, as he plucked a wrinkled smoke out of the pack and lit it. Speaking of reassuring lumps, he was lucky he hadn’t had his dick shot off yesterday.
The scene by the wall of the house replayed itself—the whine of the bullets, the woman falling down the stairs. The look of shock on her face as Paul pushed her. Better not to think of those things, Paul thought. He willed the thought away.
He dragged hard on his near-cig and brought Z-man’s icon up—he was still sleeping. Paul figured he’d let him sleep as long as he wanted to; he had done good work yesterday.
He stood up and walked over to the mechanics’ tent; maybe they would have some coffee. As he walked in, he smelled the brew.
“Hey, Red,” he said to the kid with red hair, “can I score some brew?”
“Sure, sir, take what you want.”
Paul reached into his lower pants-leg pocket, took out his foldable cup, and poured himself some of the heavenly joe. He thanked Red, turned around, and headed back outside. He walked over to the lip of the crater and sat down, careful not to spill his drink. He took a sip and then set down his cup. He pulled out another near-cig and lit up. He alternated drags off the cig with sips from his coffee. He looked into the distance, down the hill from the firebase.
It was a perfect morning, he decided. He had survived a major dustup, and he had hot coffee and smokes. As far as he was concerned, the only thing that would make the morning better would be to see Amy Brown again. But that was pie in the sky—she was over a hundred light-years away, back on Old Earth. Paul figured after he was done with the coffee, he would take the time to check over his battered suit and clean his weapons. That was, of course, unless a mission came up.
He had come to see missions like a farmer views thunderstorms—unavoidable and potentially catastrophic. The bullets were like the rain. Sometimes you were going to get hit; there was nothing you could do about it.
In his mind’s eye, he saw the tracer streak past, a white gleam of light, thin as a pencil. With an act of will, he brought himself back to the present. He heard Mike, jocular and hale as usual, messing around with someone behind him.
Paul finished his coffee and decided he needed to use the field latrine. The latrine was, as usual, a filthy affair. Here at the firebase, they had stuck a piece of wood in the ground as a privacy screen. Behind the screen was the foldable chair with a hole cut in the center of the seat, placed over a deep hole. Paul dropped his pants, did his thing, and smoked a near-cig while he watched a curious scene unfold.
Mike had captured a donkey. Donkeys frequently walked onto the firebase; they would come up from the village below for unknown reasons. Maybe they wanted someone to give them a treat. It was hard to tell what went on in the minds of donkeys.
Mike hopped on the donkey and started to ride it around the camp. He was grinning and looking generally silly, astride the beast and with his muffin hat on. Involuntarily, Paul caught Mike’s infectious smile. This was the first genuinely funny event Paul had seen in a long time. Mike controlled the animal like the Juneaus did, with a slap to the rump in the direction he wanted to go. Mike rode the donkey back and forth. Then he got a mischievous look on his face.
Paul knew he was about to go off of the reservation, so he finished up his business on the latrine and walked over to him.
“What the fuck are you doing, wild man?”
“I’m getting my morning ride in. Why?” Mike had that cat-eyed look. He had half of a beard growing, and he looked like he could roll out with a posse hunting for desperadoes or something—except for his ridiculous steed, that is. Mike turned the sad-looking donkey with a series of slaps and rode off to the mechanics’ tent. Paul was pretty sure no good would come of this.
After a bit of hesitation, Mike got the donkey to ride into the tent. Paul heard a chorus from within.
“Man, what the fuck!”
“Fuckin’ donkey!”
“Go
ddamn, Mike, get that thing the fuck outta here!”
Over it all was Mike’s cackle; he was having a grand time.
Paul was dying with laughter. But the show wasn’t over, yet. Mike rode the donkey back out of the tent and looked for new prey, his eyes casting from side to side. He looked over by Paul’s crater and saw the sleeping forms of Fox and Butter, the air-control dudes, racked out on cots. Mike got that look again, the one that his victims had learned to fear. He spurred the donkey to action, riding over to the two dead-to-the-world men. He neared them and then paused, as if considering his next move. Paul watched the proverbial light bulb go on over his head.
Coaxing the donkey over to the nearest guy, Butter, Mighty Mike positioned the donkey so that his muzzle was against Butter’s face. Butter woke up, whether from the velvety touch of the muzzle or its donkey breath, Paul didn’t know.
Butter jumped back on his cot and yelled, “Get that fuckin’ thing away from me!” His expression was one of horror, mixed with surprise and disgust.
Mike roared with laughter. In a falsetto voice, he exclaimed, “You told me you loved me, Butter!”
About a dozen guys were watching; everyone laughed and laughed. Mike bowed from his seat on the donkey. Paul laughed so hard he cried. He had heard that the only relief from misery is humor, professionally applied. Mike was a pro, and this was one of his finest moments.
Right afterward, Paul went back into the mechanics’ tent and got some more coffee. Miraculously, the donkey had managed not to upset the pot. Paul was outside, enjoying another steamy cup of deliciousness, when some ground-cars rolled up.
The colonel hopped out of the back of one. Paul shook his head. That was a strong man—rolling out before dawn on another mission after the day they had had yesterday. The colonel walked up.
Paul said, “Hey, sir, where ya been?”
He stripped off his harness and helmet before replying. “There was a mission with Third Company this morning to the eastern toe of the Chickenfoot. I wanted to be in on it, so I went.”
In the Valley Page 23