And anyway, it was all just part of the terrain on which the battle was waged. She could either deal with that, or go home. Well, technically, she couldn’t go home – she’d been called up, despite being a reservist, a year ago – and now would get to go home exactly when the Army said she could.
But home seemed very far away.
And while she was here, today and every day, she would keep doing her job.
* * *
Kate emerged from her reverie – the mind does strange things while under fire – only when her vision was grabbed by the streak of another young officer trotting by in peripheral. She did a double-take as she recognized this one: it was Captain Brendan Davis, her new commander, whom she hadn’t seen since back in the JOC, a thousand lifetimes ago.
She shook her head, and tried to take a deep drink from the situational awareness bucket. She quickly saw that the firing had died down, that everything burning had now been extinguished, that there were alert-looking guys walking the walls, and there was also a brand-new set of HESCO barriers sealing the gap in the wire. Nothing was exploding anymore, no more incoming rockets – and either the enemy were out of suicide bombers, or else they had been shot before they could auto-detonate.
The immediate peril seemed to have passed.
She could even hear helos doing circuits overhead, and out over the town. They sounded like Apaches, which were the nearest things to killer angels for troops on the ground in trouble. And it occurred to Kate for the first time that they weren’t actually all going to die tonight.
The running Captain came to a stop and nodded to her before kneeling down and grabbing Elijah by the arm. The two of them waited for him to say something, orders maybe, but he only squatted there with them in frozen silence. This was Kate’s first good look at the man she now worked for. He didn’t look fourteen, like the earlier guy. But he might conceivably have been no older than twenty-four.
After a few seconds passed, she realized he was waiting for something, too – namely his team sergeant, Jake, who now came trotting back in, weapon held low and easy, steely gaze casting around smoothly, like the Terminator spotting for targets. Kate guessed the Captain had recalled him by radio on his way here. And Jake’s return seemed to underscore that the tactical situation had been, for the moment, reclaimed.
But when he huddled up with the other three, the Captain immediately said, his voice serious and level, “We’ve lost contact with the split team.”
Jake nodded once. “Drone coverage?”
“No, nothing. We’re blind.”
“Okay. So then we’re going out.”
“Yeah,” the Captain said. “We’re going out.”
For some reason, Kate had the impression that these two, detachment commander and team sergeant, did not agree on everything. But on this – that they were going out into the chaos of the African interior to get their people back – neither had the slightest doubt, disagreement, or hesitation.
Kate’s pulse spiked again as she tried to imagine what this was going to entail.
Team Room
Camp Lemonnier - Fifty Meters From the Wire
“You get Pete and Todd, I’ll grab Kwon,” Jake said.
“Check,” the Captain said. “Team Room in ten. We’ll sketch a play and run it.”
“What about her?” Elijah said, rising from cover and pointing his elbow at Kate, as if this were a drinking game and she had fouled.
The Captain seemed to notice her for the first time, turning and looking into her eyes searchingly. She expected him to speak to her, but instead he looked back to Elijah. “How is she?”
Elijah nodded. “She’s fine.”
“How long has she been awake?”
“I’m right here,” Kate said. “And I’m good to go.”
“At least forty hours by my count.”
“Captain.”
He swiveled to face her now. “It’s Brendan,” he said. “Or Bren. And you’re going to get some rack – now.”
She opened her mouth to protest.
“I don’t give a shit,” he said before she could get it out. “I don’t know if it’s going to be Zulu Dawn here a few hours from now. And I need you functional in the morning.” There seemed to be something forced about his severe tone. Like he was still trying to establish authority. Then Kate remembered he’d only been in the unit a few months.
She started to curse under her breath.
But then she thought about it for two seconds, read between the lines – and realized this didn’t have anything to do with her sleep history, or ability to function, or his exercise of authority. It was because she was the FNG – the new guy, on her first attachment to this ODA. And she didn’t have even five seconds of orientation to this team, their TTPs, how they operated, or what their rhythms were. And this young commander had zero desire to be responsible for her right now – while she was still an unknown quality, never mind while the shit was coming down all around them.
Her arrival and attachment wasn’t supposed to shake out this way, but things rarely shook out just like they were supposed to. She’d have to deal.
Jake, the veteran master sergeant, looked over at Brendan, the young captain. Something else had evidently just occurred to him. “What about command?”
Brendan blinked once, expressionless. “Both the General and the CSM have made it clear that we are forbidden to mount any form of rescue – or to leave the wire for any reason. They say they can’t spare the bodies.”
“But we’re going anyway,” Jake said.
“Yeah. We’re going anyway. That’s presuming the camp doesn’t fall first.”
Jake snorted. “I just secured their camp for them.”
Elijah leaned forward now, his expression betraying concern. “Wait. We can’t just disobey a direct order from the commander of the task force – can we?”
“Sure we can,” Jake said without hesitation. “It’s easy. Saddle up and come with us and I’ll show you.”
“Team room in ten,” Brendan repeated, before trading a last look with Kate, and then heading off toward the JOC.
In addition to her FNG status, Kate now sensed this group of men was about to go rogue. Maybe Brendan was merely saving her from a court martial.
Or worse.
* * *
Kate followed behind Elijah and Jake now, puppy-like. Their route took them by the half-destroyed guard tower, where Kwon was still on overwatch for this side of the camp. He hopped down lightly and fell in with the others, alert and silent. Kate found something about the man unnerving. Like he was, or at least had the manner of, a cold-eyed killer.
She was just glad he was on their side.
As they moved through the floodlit darkness of the besieged and wounded camp, the whole north side now seemed to be swarming with armed soldiers, Marines, even a few airmen. None of these guys looked like they had fired their weapons in anger tonight – and some of them looked like they’d barely walked around with them before, and were worried about dropping them. Kate guessed everyone on post had been called out when shit got real with the VBIED.
But the majority of them had only turned up after Jake and Kwon and the combat engineers and a handful of others had already saved the day.
Kate moved through this kaleidoscopic and starkly lit dreamscape, counting her blessings – mainly that no one was shooting at her or trying to blow them up right now. Evidently the Triple Nickel Team Room was on the far side of the base, as their route took them across most of it, including by the main gate.
There they found a somewhat chaotic, frightening, and tense scene on both sides of the security shack, as MPs tried to open the gate to let returning units back inside – without also admitting any of the ghouls outside who they all sensed still wanted to get in. There was still wild and vaguely menacing movement, and shouting, and occasional shooting, in the darkness outside the wire. There were people running in and out of shadows, and the shouting was in what Kate presumed was Somali.
And more of those vaguely seen stumbling figures.
As their group approached it, the gate swung open, and the heavy steel bar with its massive concrete counterweight swung up for another incoming vehicle. Two MPs approached it with circular mirrors on sticks, which they used to examine the undercarriage. And this was unmistakably a military vehicle – a stock Humvee with four soldiers in full battle rattle sitting in it and looking like they were still fighting to get their breath back. Kate got the impression they’d never in their lives been so glad to be anywhere as on the inside of that gate.
A third MP, the non-commissioned officer in charge (NCOIC) by his stripes, approached the driver with a clipboard in one hand and a flashlight in the other, the beam of which he panned around inside. As Kate and her new team darted in front of this scene, her gaze was drawn to the two men in the back, who were illuminated in the beam for a few seconds.
One was clearly wounded, with a bloody field dressing wrapped around one arm, and the other tending to him – giving him water out of his own CamelBak bite tube. Kate kept moving, but her gaze stayed riveted to the first guy, who did not look good. At first she thought maybe he had burns to his face, in addition to the arm wound. But then through squinting eyes she could make out what looked like faint red sores. And he appeared to be sweating like a pig about to become a Christmas ham, and also trembling.
Shock from the arm wound? Or something else?
She suddenly regretted not paying more attention to the phone over that guy’s shoulder in line at Starbucks – and the article about the epidemic.
Whatever the cause of this soldier’s suffering, it didn’t look good to her, and she was glad they kept moving out of the area.
* * *
In another four minutes they reached a small standalone prefab structure, which was set slightly apart on the far edge of the camp. Kate, Jake, and Kwon arrived at almost the same instant as Brendan, who had two others in tow. One was the big slope-shouldered Echo Kate had seen at the radio set.
The other she hadn’t seen before. He was dressed and armed more or less like an irregular soldier, including the distinctive Crye Combat Shirt that many SF guys wore – with its synthetic tan torso, rip-stop camo sleeves, and zip collar. But he honestly looked to Kate like nothing so much as a surfer dude. He was tall and willowy rather than muscular, with lightly tanned skin, and wispy blond hair poking out from under a scuffed-up dark-blue baseball cap with Cal written in golden cursive letters. He casually carried a tan SCAR with underslung grenade launcher, and seemed somehow to wear the world lightly.
Brendan unlocked the door, reached in to hit the lights inside, and entered behind the others. The light was from two bare bulbs overhead, and as Kate looked around upon entering, she immediately saw her exact mental image of an ODA Team Room. In the center was a U-shaped arrangement of tables surrounded by chairs, one for each team member. In the middle of that were two sand tables, used for planning operations, complete with toy trucks, toy soldiers, and bits of vegetation, probably scrounged from the woods nearby. Around the edge were whiteboards and butcher-block paper pads on easels, for planning and briefing. And on every inch of the outside walls were racks for weapons, stacks of gear and ordnance, and lockers and shelving for ammo and operational equipment.
This was where the daily planning, preparation, and instructional life of an ODA happened. Kate got a small adrenaline jolt, feeling like she had just been admitted to the inner sanctum.
But then she was almost instantly ushered right back out of it, Elijah pushing her on through and toward the single plywood door at the back. As they threaded through the cluttered space, she heard a phone ringtone going off – “Addicted to Love” by Robert Palmer. By the time Kwon found and removed the device from his combat gear, it had stopped ringing. He checked the screen.
“That was Maximum Bob,” he said.
“Really,” said Jake. “Wish the big unflappable bastard was here. We could have used his gun in the fight.”
“I’ll check in with him later,” Kwon said, putting the phone away.
By this time, Kate and Elijah had passed through the flimsy door into a second room at the back, the same width but only half as deep. It was a riot of kit bags, personal gear – and, mainly, narrow bunks stacked three deep. This was where the team slept – when they did.
Obviously not one of their big priorities, Kate thought, judging by the amount of space they allotted to it. There also seemed to be no head or shower room. Presumably they used shared facilities – nearby, she hoped. What light there was leaked in through the single square window, and from the cracked plywood door to the team room outside.
Kate guessed she was going to have to make herself comfortable.
Claustrophobia
Camp Lemonnier - 555 Bunk Room
“This is my rack,” Elijah said, all but setting her down in a bottom bunk on the left. “And yours for tonight.” Kate nodded her thanks, and started stripping off and squaring away her body armor, gear, and weapons.
She was anything but tired – still completely wired from the firefight, actually. But her new CO had made his intentions for her 110% clear, and she was in no position yet to push back any further against them.
Elijah turned his back to reach for something on a plywood shelf and turned around with a liter bottle of water. “Hydrate,” he said – and, when Kate hesitated, he added, “ – or die.”
“I get that,” she said. “The CamelBak slogan.” He was right, of course. It was easy to forget to drink water, particularly in a combat situation. And dehydration fatigue could sneak up on you, often before you even felt thirsty. Hydrating turned out to be a major component of combat effectiveness. She started getting the lukewarm water down.
The sound of a low, fast helo flight zoomed by outside.
Kate stopped chugging long enough to ask: “Reinforcements?”
“No.” Elijah shook his head sadly. “Medevac flights. Been going all day. Ferrying in wounded from units who’ve been cut off outside the wire.”
“Jesus.”
“I’m afraid they’ll be coming and going all night – at least as long as they can safely set down anywhere outside to pick people up.”
Kate resumed chugging from the bottle.
Elijah nodded his approval. “Okay. I’ll be right outside.”
“Until you’re not,” Kate corrected, having killed the bottle. “How are you guys planning on getting out there? To wherever it is you’re going.”
“We’ve got three of our gun trucks here – in a garage we control, not the camp motor pool.” Kate knew from her advance studies that SF gun trucks bore only a passing resemblance to the standard Humvees they were based on. They were usually unarmored – due to speed and tactical requirements – but armed to the gills with heavy weapons. Their mindset was: mobility good, firepower very good. Move fast and hit hard. The extensive modifications to the vehicles were the evolution of decades of trial and error – what worked and what didn’t – and this knowledge was handed down from team to team.
The SF guys also liked to maintain them to an exacting standard themselves – engine maintenance, beefed-up suspension, and even welding extra shit onto the chassis as mission parameters dictated.
Kate guessed that three of these monsters, stored in their own private garage, were another reason the commanding general was such a big fan of this team.
“It’s close by,” Elijah added, pivoting to look out the window as the bright light of vehicle headlights flashed by, accompanied by shouting voices. The walls were thin and there appeared to be nothing like blinds or drapes for the window.
Elijah went back to his shelf and now produced a pair of big headphones – shooting cans. “Put your Peltor ear-pro back in, wear these over them, and you can sleep through the apocalypse.” He also pulled out a large black-and-flat-dark-earth shemagh with a ragged fringe, and draped it around her neck. “And this’ll keep out the blinding flash of the end days.”
He smiled, and so did Kate – she actually did appreciate his sense of humor.
Something banged loudly from out in the team room – the outside door, Kate presumed. And one second later an extremely gruff and severe voice said: “Well, well – don’t you boys just look as cosy as a bunch of faggots in a dick tree.”
Elijah grimaced, turned, and went out to face whatever the hell that was.
* * *
Kate was left alone in the dark – but it was only near dark, because the door to the team room didn’t quite close. At first she resisted the temptation to peek through the crack. But she could hear everything that went on out there, and every word that passed.
“Sarn’t Major.” That sounded like Kwon, greeting the newcomer, his voice quiet and emotionless.
“You want to tell me what the fuck you guys are planning?”
A couple of beats of silence suggested that no one did.
“Half our guys have disappeared into the bush.” This was Jake.
“Loss of commo doesn’t mean your guys are lost, or even in trouble. They’re fucking snake-eaters – their whole goddamned job is surviving alone in the boonies.”
At this point Kate lost her sense of discretion and put her eye to the crack, looking out into the brighter room outside. She could see a seriously squared-away and intimidating man standing two feet inside the door. It was the Command Sergeant Major she’d seen in the JOC. She could see now his nametape read Zorn. She could also see that he, too, wore the Ranger tab on his shoulder. For some reason, she remembered someone writing once that “Sergeants Major are the walking, breathing embodiment of Everything That’s Right in the U.S. Army.” This guy looked like the rule that proved the rule.
Jake spoke again. “Our split team was under heavy fire at last contact. We had to give up our drone coverage.” He paused. “And there was something else.”
“What?” A beat passed, but Zorn didn’t wait for an answer. “So what are you implying? That we’d better not be such dumbasses as to try and stop you guys from going out for your brothers? Is that it?”
This was neither confirmed nor denied by the ODA.
Arisen : Nemesis Page 5