Liege stole a glance at him. She couldn’t detect any underlying tone to his words. She knew Warden had been in the shit before, that he’d killed more than a few enemies, so maybe to him, this was just another day at the job.
“Hey, it’s all wet here,” Moose passed. “And muddy.”
The two were only 10 or 15 meters directly below them, so Liege could hear their voice through the air and over the comms at the same time. Moose and Fidor were pushing through the heavy brush at the bottom, struggling to get through some mud.
“On solid rock, who would have thought?” Warden said. “Dirt must have gathered, then windborne seeds got established, but water? I wonder if it’s runoff or if there’s some sort of spring. It’s got to be—”
A shot rang out, and Fidor spun around, hand going to the side of his head. Without thinking, Liege fired off two three-round bursts at a mud-covered figure who had jumped up, a UKI-52 in his grip. The man fell to one knee, tried to rise, then collapsed. Moose was struggling with another figure when Warden fired, and suddenly, Moose was grappling with a corpse.
“Holy Saint Gregory,” Moose said. “I never saw them.”
“Check the area. Stomp your big number 48’s on every centimeter of those plants,” Warden ordered. “Fidor, you OK?”
“Son of a bitch got my ear,” Fidor said, looking up to give the two a bloody thumb’s-up.
“Are you OK while Moose checks the rest of the slough there?”
“Yeah, I’ve got him covered,” he said.
At least that was what Liege thought he’d said. After getting shot in the ear, his accent took a turn for the worse. But he raised his weapon and watched Moose stomp through the plants.
“I think it was only those two. It looks like they were catching some Z’s. I guess they rolled over into the mud to hide after we opened up, then when we came down, they tried to take us out,” Moose reported.
“Big mistake,” Fidor said, his voice steely hard.
“OK, cover us. We’re coming down.”
Liege and Warden, weapons at the ready, half-ran, half-slid down the slope. Liege landed in five centimeters of water over another ten of mud. It sucked at her feet as she struggled through the two-meter-wide ribbon of vegetation. Breaking through, she immediately went to check on Fidor.
He was right. The PIP soldier had shot him right through the antitragus, taking most of it and the lobule off. The entire lower section of his ear was gone.
Fidor was more angry than anything else. He didn’t seem to realize that a centimeter or two to the right, and his head would have been pulverized. There really wasn’t much Liege could do except to stop the bleeding and inhibit infections. She gave him a quick Series 4 injection, foamed the wound with disinfectant, and sprayed it with Quick Stop. He’d need to get it treated later, but for now, he was good to go.
The four went up to the PIP position. All four of the soldiers there were dead. The one who’d gone over the cliff was probably dead as well. Liege purposely ignored the substantial body of her kill, taking in just about everything else except the corpse.
She stepped behind the crew-served machinegun, looking over the barrel. Down below, the weapon had perfect fields of fire over the bridge. If Dannyboy had taken his team out to it, they’d have been dead meat.
“What now?” Moose asked Warden.
“Now we cover Dannyboy, of course,” Warden said before opening up comms to get the bridge charges laid.
Liege sat with her back to the soldier she’d killed and completely put the other one, the one back at the bushes, out of her mind. Out past the bridge, past the hilltop that blocked their view of the PIP checkpoint, a dark line had appeared some ten or twelve klicks out. The four of them may have just taken out seven soldiers, but there were two divisions of their friends approaching, and they wouldn’t be as cooperative in getting zeroed.
Chapter 36
Liege watched Dannyboy’s team emplace their charges. The bridge itself shouldn’t be too difficult. It was about 15 meters long, 20 meters wide, and hung two or three meters over the creek. The gap over the creek wasn’t that wide, and if the oncoming enemy had bridging equipment, they could probably span the creek within ten minutes. The hard part was the area around the bridge, which is why Dannboy’s team, with Gidge, their school-trained EOD Maine, had this mission rather than the more straightforward cliff. To make it more difficult to get the bridging equipment to the edge of the downed bridge, the team was going to crater the road, but back from the bridge. It wouldn’t make sense to do it too close where the rubble would flow down and accidently fill the gap.
A fifteen-meter gap would be nothing to a Marine Davis or Pangolin. Both vehicles had limited hover capabilities, and they could essentially jump it. But jumping such a huge beast took lots of energy and extra equipment and added significantly to the cost. The Tonyas and Patties were designed with economy in mind, and neither vehicle had hover capabilities. They could traverse some pretty serious terrain, but the gap over the creek would be too much for them. They could sacrifice two Patties, however, simply driving over the edge and into the creek, one after the other, to form a makeshift bridge over which other vehicles could drive.
“How long for the captain?” Moose asked.
“He thinks another 70 or so minutes,” Warden answered.
Another eight Marines wouldn’t turn the tide of an upcoming fight, but still, Liege would be happy to see them coming down the far side of Grape. She’d thought that they would have already married up, but terrain had worked against them. Seventy minutes was still a long time, however, and, at a minimum, the lead PIP elements should have reached Licorice by then.
Liege looked over to the approach to the hills, trying to figure out how close that lead element was, when something caught her ear. It took her a second to categorize it.
“We’ve got company coming,” she said.
A Tonya was a hydrogen-powered tank, and her engines were almost silent. However, there were so many moving parts in the big vehicle, parts that were not always of the highest cost and quality, so after time, they creaked and squeaked against each other as the tank rumbled along.
They’d just been in a firefight five minutes ago, and that had to have been noted by the PIP forces, but they’d figured they had at least 15 minutes before a reaction force from Licorice could arrive on the scene, and maybe not even reaching them by then. Personnel had been stripped from the checkpoint to head south, and they might simply stay in place until the first element of the divisions arrived. What the team hadn’t considered was that there had been anyone close enough to the south to react.
Stupid mistake.
Liege ran to the other side of the beak, but for the same reason the dead soldiers couldn’t see them when they were emplacing the charges, she couldn’t see the actual road bed.
“What do you got, Doc?” Warden asked.
“One, maybe two Tonyas. A couple of Pattties. I can’t see them.”
“Dannyboy, get out of there. You’ve got company coming. We’ll blow what you’ve got.”
Dannyboy looked up to them and waved an arm. Within a few heartbeats, three Marines were sprinting for safety, but Dannyboy stayed.
“I said get out of there, Dannyboy!”
“Twenty seconds,” Dannyboy passed back. “I’ll have the last charge emplaced.”
“Doc, where are they? Are they in the blast zone?” Warden shouted to Liege.
“I. . .it’s hard to tell. The sounds are echoing,” she said as the first fingers of panic threatened to take hold of her. She leaned out over the edge, trying to see anything.
“I think they might—” she started, only to be interrupted by a blast below.
She immediately looked to the bridge just in time to see Dannyboy disappear in an explosion of fire.
“Get back now, Doc!” Warden shouted.
Her feet were moving before she realized what she’d heard, and within a second or two, the entire outcropping shook
underneath her, knocking her to the ground. Still prone, she looked back. The edge of the beak still looked whole, but a huge cloud of dust was rising from the gorge.
“Gidge, blow the bridge,” Warden passed over the comms.
Liege stood up, hoping that the round that had killed Dannyboy hadn’t dislodged the charges. A second later, the bridge erupted into smoke as pieces of it flew high into the air. She edged forward, testing the footing, until she could see straight down below her.
Before Warden had detonated their charges, their view of the road immediately below them had been blocked by a bulge in the outcropping. That bulge had now been sliced off, and tons of rocks had fallen. Beneath her, in the rubble, the dust was heavy, but she could just make out what had to be the back end of a Tonya sticking out through the rubble. A Patty was on its battered side. As she watched, a hatch opened, and a lone figure crawled and flopped out to lie still on the rocks.
Further to the south, where the rubble ended, another Patty was on the road, slightly dented, but upright. Soldiers were pouring out of the back, eyes and weapons pointed up. Liege quickly stepped back out of the line of sight.
“The gorge is blocked,” she shouted to the others. “It looks like a Tonya and a Patty are down, but another Patty survived, and the soldiers inside are debarking.”
“Going active on comms,” Warden announced.
Liege heard him contacting the MEB with a SITREP, then adding a request for air support on the approaching column. Liege felt a welcome wave of relief at that. It was time they were not out there all on their own.
“That’s a negative on the air, Granite-Four,” came back after only 20 seconds, erasing that feeling of relief. “Assets are needed elsewhere.”
“Are you kidding me?” Warden asked, proper comms procedure out the window in his incredulity. “We’ve got two full divisions coming down on our asses. What are we supposed to do now?”
“Granite-Four, delay the column to the best of your ability.”
“What kind of order is that? ‘Delay to the best of your ability?’” Warden asked aloud before keying the comms and passing, “You do realize that Granite-Four is a recon team, without heavy offensive capabilities, right?”
There was a ten-second delay, then in a quieter voice as if the Marine at the other end of the comms didn’t want to be heard by those around him, “Granite-Four, I hear you. But we’ve got four divisions heading our way from the east, and the MEB Six is retaining all air assets to protect the capital. You blocked the highway, so whatever else you might do is your and Granite-Three’s call. Maybe you delayed them enough; I don’t know, so anything you can do to delay them longer will help. I’ll see what I can do to free up an air strike, but I can’t promise you anything. God be with you. Lightening-Three-Six, out.”
Chapter 37
Warden’s four-man section ran down the upper trail full tilt, heading to the valley floor. The upper trail ran alongside the high ground, down along Popeye, the smaller hill between Seagull and Licorice, then down the access road from the abandoned home on Popeye to the valley floor. Fifteen minutes later, they burst through the final 20 meters to join Gidge, Teri, and Hank, who’d simply moved along Grape. Warden called a hasty halt as he passed the plan.
“We’ve got no time,” he said, breathing heavily as he caught his breath. “The captain can’t get here for another 40, so he’s stopping up on the high ground where First Team can give us covering fire. It’s not optimum, but it’s all we’ve got.
“Hank, you can fire that thing? For sure?” he asked.
“Ain’t nothing, Stein,” Hank said. “We had ’em in the militia.”
Hank had spent three years in the Panut militia before enlisting in the Marines, and he’d probably thought he’d never have to revert to the older equipment again.
“Me and Teri, we’ve got it licky-dicky. You just keep dem pipsters offa our asses.”
“Team Two, we’ve got overwatch,” the captain’s voice came over the comms. “We count nine combatants, an up-armored Lucy, and what looks to be an Adai technical. We’re sending you the positions in a moment.”
“How about the column?” Warden asked.
“It looks like it’s getting underway again. The lead element is at 6.4 klicks.”
“Roger. We’re commencing in one mike,” Warden said.
“OK, you heard him. I was hoping the column would delay longer, but it is what it is.”
After the hill and the bridge went up, the entire column, both divisions, had accordioned to a stop. That was poor tactics, a sign that whoever was in charge out there was overly cautious. The lead element, at the very least, should have sped into the assault, linking with the small remaining force at Licorice. Licorice was still out of range for the Marine’s arty, and if air hit them, the hills on either side of the checkpoint would offer a small degree of protection. Stopping and bunching up on a highway rendered them sitting ducks—which would matter if the MEB released an air strike. It was poor warfighting, but the Marines had hoped they would delay longer before moving out again.
“We need to move, and move quickly. We’ve got to be taking them out before they realize we’re coming. I’m hoping they’re looking to the north to watch their relief, and not back to the south. So let’s go stick it in their asses, OK?”
He looked around, but no one said anything. It was a pretty shitty operations order. But there just wasn’t any time for anything else. Sometimes, a leader just had to point his Marines in the right direction and then rely on personal training to kick in.
“OK, then, semper fi, do or die!” he said, turning to jog down the side of Grape.
Licorice was only 400 meters ahead. As soon as they cleared the stand of oak and popular, they’d be in clear view of the checkpoint, by then only 200 meters in front of them.
Moose caught up with Liege, and he raised an eyebrow, a shit-eating grin taking over his face. Liege blew him a kiss, M91 at the ready.
Liege was afraid, but surprisingly, that was not her chief emotion. She was excited, her nerves on edge. Intellectually, she knew that she could die within the next few minutes, but running alongside the six Marines in her team, she almost felt invincible.
In the Hollybolly flick The Invincibles, during the scene depicting the Battle of Stiklestad, the Norwegian farmer-soldiers poured over the hills, waving their swords and pikes, shouting out the now famous “Fram! Fram! Bonder!” as they fell upon King Olaf’s professional army. The flick had won two Oscars, largely due to stirring scenes like that. This was real life, though, not a Hollybolly flick, but Liege felt the same stirring as her team burst through the trees.
Two soldiers were in a fighting position alongside the road, but, as Warden had hoped, both were watching north to the approaching divisions. As they turned to see who was coming, the little wooden shack seemed to come apart as fire from First Team plunged into it.
At the sound of firing, the soldiers ahead of them spun around, surprise evident on their faces. One soldier darted for the technical as rounds pinged off the vehicle. He hugged the side of the technical for cover until Fidor, at a full sprint, zeroed the guy. And that was about all Liege had time to notice before she was engaging.
She cracked off two three-round bursts at a running figure but missed. She and Moose had decided to take positions at either side of a wall, all that was standing from what used to be a decent-sized home or shop. Liege rushed for her position, surprising a soldier who was scrambling for cover. He was an instant slower in recognizing her than she had he, and that was enough. Three rounds stitched him from groin to throat. The soldier had on some ancient, but effective armor, but her throat shot dropped him.
She pushed up against the wall, caught her breath, and looked around. She had several bodies in sight, but no live targets. On the other end of the wall, Moose slammed back-first into it, making the entire thing shudder.
“Some fun now, huh?” he said.
Liege looked around the edge of th
e wall. Hank and Teri were mounting the Koft 79mm gun. This was the do-or-die moment. The approaching column had to have seen that something was happening at the checkpoint, and they were well within range of the Tonya’s main 90mm gun. If they engaged and hit the Koft, the plan, what little of it existed, would be effectively over.
Hank slapped himself in the gun operator’s seat and powered the beast up. Liege could see the displays come to life.
Whoever had set in the gun had done a very nice job. A dirt berm had been erected to the front of the gun, putting the main body into defilade. A cover had been placed over the gun, both for concealment as well as protection from airbursts. And as the gun powered up, the tell-tale grasshopper-green glow of counter-beam projectors revealed that the gun had some protection from energy weapons.
Liege tore her eyes away from the Koft, checking the area. The firing had stopped. No Marines had been hit, and it looked like ten soldiers, one more than Team 1 had counted, were down. Liege would have to check them later to see who could be saved—if there was a later.
“The first vehicle is a Tonya,” the captain passed from above them. “I’m ranging it at six-one-two-zero from your position.”
“Roger that, Captain,” Hank said. “Engaging. . .now!”
The big gun belched out a burst of smoke, and Liege tried to look downrange. She saw a flash of light, but her view of the lead vehicles was blocked.
“Hit!” the captain said, the excitement in his voice battling to get out. “Target destroyed.”
The big gun belched again, and once more the captain called out a hit, this time on a Patty. Again and again, Hank fired, racking up six hits out of eight fired.
“The idiots only had the one Tonya in the lead element,” Moose called out, “and now, with only Patties, they can’t reach us. It’s a turkey shoot.”
Patties were decent-enough armored vehicles, and their 30mm chainguns were effective, but they only had a max range of 3500 meters. While mobile arty and missile launchers could reach them, only the Tonya from the PIP’s armor assets had the range to reach the Koft. And with that one Tonya in the lead element knocked out, Moose was right; it was a turkey shoot.
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