But one of the first things they teach you in SF is that hope is not a strategy.
Now, through his NVGs, Todd could make one of Kwon’s IR-reflective patches, which most of them wore to be highly visible in NVGs, shimmying up into a guard tower. As fate would have it, the best overwatch point (OP), and the one Kwon had decided on, was the same half-destroyed guard tower he had manned in the defense of the camp eighteen months ago.
As soon as he was set up and in position, he reported it quietly over the net.
Todd put his hand on the ignition – but then froze.
After a couple of seconds had passed, Jake came over the radio from the back. “What’s the hold-up?”
Whispering, and slumping lower in his seat, Todd answered. “I’ve got movement to our twelve.”
“How many?”
“At least a dozen.” He paused before finishing.
“And they’ve got heat signatures.”
Mexican Zulu Stand-Off
Camp Lemonnier
Both Todd and Brendan swung out of the cab and out onto the ground in the next second. It was doctrine. They were cut off by a superior force of foot-mobiles. They knew that if you stay in the vehicle, you die. Todd for one had no plans to be riddled with bullets while sitting stupidly behind the wheel.
On the other hand, there was no good cover to hand, so both of them leaned out around the sides of the open truck doors, weapons horizontal and steady, pulled in tight to their shoulders by pressure on the vertical foregrips, looking over the tops of their weapons sights. When wearing NVGs, which made using the sights awkward at best, they aimed using the IR lasers mounted on their weapons.
No one fired. There were a variety of reasons for this.
The first and most obvious was that all those heat signatures out there cutting them off could be friendlies. They hadn’t met any friendlies, or living people of any disposition, since the fall. But that didn’t mean some weren’t out there. They were on a U.S. military base, after all.
An even better reason was that they were surrounded by the dead. There were hardly any in sight. But they were sure as hell out there. And while Triple Nickel’s weapons were expensively and effectively silenced, that probably wouldn’t be true of the enemy – whoever they were, and if they were enemies.
As the heat blobs grew closer and resolved, the need for silence became the controlling reason. Because it became clear, to Todd at least, that they were a bunch of jihadi-looking motherfuckers: sandals, robes, turbans – and everyone who didn’t have an AK had an RPG. Some had both. They also outnumbered Triple Nickel about three-to-one. Not that those were necessarily bad odds, given the quality of the opposition.
“Kate, Jake, send status.” This was Brendan. He needed to know where his other two people were – now.
“Still in the truck bed,” Kate answered. “I’ve got them zeroed, over the top of the cab.” Kate had improvised on doctrine, Todd realized: with the enemy to the front, rather than in the more common L-shaped ambush, she’d decided that where she was actually provided her best cover – the best she could quickly get to, at any rate. It was a good call.
“Jake, sitrep,” Brendan repeated. He was barely whispering.
After a few seconds, it was Kate who answered. “He dismounted and took off, moving fast and quiet. Don’t know where to.”
“Copy that.”
The next voice was from their twelve, up ahead. It was one of the jihadi mothers. And he was yelling at them – while keeping his voice to a whisper. A kind of urgent, voice-thrown hiss.
“Amrikieen! You go nowhere! Put down your guns. We kill you! We have you! We have you!”
Todd guessed they meant, “We have you surrounded and outnumbered” – but didn’t have sufficient English for it. He sighed out loud. Why were these guys always so overwrought? It was like jihad turned you into a fourteen-year-old girl – everything was this huge drama.
Brendan got back on the net. “Nobody engages unless I do.” His intent was clear: their suppressed weapons wouldn’t keep things from going noisy. AKs are fucking loud, never mind RPGs. If shooting started, whoever started it, the jihadis would bring the whole dead world down on their heads.
“Kwon – have you got eyes on Jake?” But the only answer that came back was two squelches: no. Todd could sense Brendan silently cursing. He could also see the enemy maneuvering – spreading out on both their flanks. The SF team couldn’t maneuver without leaving cover. And soon they’d be flanked on both sides, which essentially meant no longer being under cover.
“Amrikieen! Put your guns. You come now!”
After that, the silence came back, becoming as much a player here as the darkness of the night. You could hear a pin drop. You could actually hear people struggling not to breathe too loudly – from the adrenaline, tension, and barely restrained panic. Trying not to hyperventilate from fear.
Todd had the green dot of his IR laser pointer on the chest of a guy in the middle of the jihadis, but one position to the left. He could see Brendan’s on the guy to the right. He’d already taken half the slack out of his trigger, and his safety had gotten disengaged a lifetime ago. He worked to steady his breathing, and the bouncing of the green dot. He could hear the blood pounding in his ears. He could feel his own powerful, rapid heartbeats in his chest.
He took a look to their nine o’clock, his left, just to take a look.
And there was more movement – but no heat signature. Trying to get the dull dark blob to resolve, he worked out it was a dead guy. And it was moving. It hadn’t locked on yet, much less gone into frenzy and moaning. But this stand-off of the living had piqued its interest. Now it was shambling over for a look.
And there was another one, just to its side and a few meters behind.
Todd looked through the open doors of the truck cab to check their three – same deal. Faint movement.
Fuck. “Uh, Cap…” he said.
“Amrikieen! This your last chance! You die now!”
Todd stole another look to his left. The first dead guy was still moving slowly – but inside of twenty meters from him.
“Uh, Cap,” he repeated, very quietly. “I don’t like the look of this girl for slow-dancing.” And it was now obviously a female solder who was approaching him – one who was still somehow overweight, which was impressive this far into the ZA. “And I’m definitely not into any face-sucking.”
Todd looked over at Brendan – and he could see he was frozen.
At this point, everyone in the situation knew something had to give. The tension had to crack in some way – to break in one direction or the other. And Todd could feel Brendan not doing it, could sense his reluctance to pull the trigger. For some reason, maybe fear of how it would play out when things kicked off, Brendan was trying to keep it from coming to a head.
But someone had to make a move. Brendan had to act. C’mon, B, Todd silently urged him on.
But Brendan didn’t act. Instead someone else did.
Audibly muttering, “Oh, fuck it,” an unarmed figure left the jihadis’ ranks and walked smoothly but quickly into the open of the no-man’s-land between the two forces, his hands held out from his sides.
“I’m unarmed,” he said. “Don’t shoot.”
His English was only lightly accented.
* * *
Brendan lowered his rifle slightly. Todd did not.
The guy who had broken ranks was in indeterminate dress, and didn’t quite have an Afro, but it wasn’t exactly crusader straight hair either. Todd half-expected this to be the white-boy jihadi they’d seen on drone video. But it wasn’t. Todd didn’t think he was al-Shabaab, or even Somali. His race was indeterminate.
But he was pretty clearly a Westerner.
And then Todd was out of time for target identification, because his undead girlfriend was only two seconds from reaching him. But in the same instant he decided to turn and fire, her head went thwack – and she stopped in her tracks, falling into a pile of he
rself, fat rolls and limbs.
Todd didn’t move. He just pondered.
It’s Kwon, he realized. In overwatch. His suppressed rifle would be completely inaudible at that range. He looked out of the corner of his eye as the girlfriend’s friend, a few steps behind, also collapsed. Then two on the other side, to their right.
There was muttering from the jihadi ranks. Dead guys magically hitting the dirt obviously spooked them – but not as much as the guys actually in their sights firing would have. So Todd, Brendan, and Kate continued to hold their fire. Then again, Todd was all too familiar with al-Shabaab fire discipline, and could sense their fire selectors on full-auto and sweaty fingers curled around triggers. He knew these guys could go from nodded-out to lethal in two seconds, with no warning.
The non-jihadi dude, his hands out before him in a gesture of calming, whispered, “Look. Nobody wants anybody to start shooting in here. Let’s work this out.”
Brendan came back to life. To Todd, he appeared to cock his head and regard the new guy for a few seconds, his mouth slightly parted, a strange look on his face. Finally he said, “Fine. Have your people back off. And then we’re driving out of here.”
The man paused before answering. “I’ll do my best. But I don’t think they’re going to let you go with the stuff you’ve got loaded up.”
“It’s not their fucking stuff, is it?”
The jihadi previously in charge got back in the game now, but switched languages. He said, “Zakwani! Kaalay dib! Markii ugu hadal uu ka weyn yahay.”
Everyone in Triple Nickel but Kate spoke pretty decent Somali.
And they knew what that meant was: shit was probably going to kick off now.
Todd cocked his own head now – he could just make out another heat signature, fainter, moving in the jihadis’ rear. Reinforcements? A runner, with a message for them?
Silently, the head of the head jihadi stopped existing.
Head Canoes
Camp Price
Then the head of the guy next to him. Both disappeared in red mist and silence.
It was reinforcements, but not for them – for the Special Forces.
It was a one-man quick reaction force (QRF) – it was Jake, moving around with total impunity in the enemy’s rear. And now he was carefully, methodically, and precisely putting three-round bursts from his MP7 into the backs of the heads of the enemy. This was his normal trick with dead guys, but it worked perfectly well at converting living ones. He was instantly and seamlessly supported by Kwon, shooting down silently from above. Todd guessed the two of them had coordinated either on a spare channel, or maybe with hand signals. Or just badass-motherfucker telepathy.
Neither of their weapons made any audible noise.
And none of the enemy got a shot off.
In three seconds, all twelve were dead. And the Westerner – Zakwani, otherwise known as Zack – was left standing in front of a semicircle of dead guys, truly dead, all of whom had now had their heads turned into canoes. Through his NVGs, Todd saw the green dot of an IR aiming laser settle on the man’s chest… then just sit there. It was Brendan, who was covering him from beside the truck. But he didn’t fire.
Todd laughed and got on the radio. “Jesus Christ, dud—”
He was cut off by a long clattering burst of AK fire crashing off the grille of the truck and the door he was behind, and at least one round passing close enough to his arm to pull at the fabric of the sleeve.
And then what seemed like a thousand AKs were lighting up the night – followed immediately by two streaking RPGs. Luckily, the latter were launched from too far out to be effective – but by no means too far out to be fucking terrifying. As Todd hit the dirt, he tried to process the night-vision image that had impressed itself on his retina in the prior second.
And he actually worked out what was probably going on.
Jake and Kwon had killed the al-Shabaab force that had got the drop on them. But they must have had a reserve force – which was now blasting in from their front and right, roughly from the direction of the front gate. These guys would have had to have vehicles, too. And also wouldn’t have wanted to bring them in too close. Todd figured the reserve force must have been with the transport.
And that was just about all the time for analysis he had here.
Rounds were still clattering off the surfaces of the truck, flattening the tires, shattering the windshield. Todd returned fire, just to put some goddamned rounds downrange, aiming in the rough direction of the galaxy of muzzle flashes. Not pausing his shooting, he stole a glance to his right, where he saw Brendan had crawled under the truck. Also smart. It seemed like he could vaguely sense Kwon shooting down from overwatch, and maybe even Kate from up in the truck bed. It was also some kind of SF telepathy.
He’d already emptied his first magazine, not really aiming, when he belatedly made out an IR-reflective patch sprinting directly toward him. It was Jake, hauling ass back to the truck, through the lines of the guys he had killed, and with the jihadi army reserve right on his tail.
Jesus Christ… Todd could have shot him in all the chaos and confusion. That was the trouble with not aiming. But there was no time for freaking out about that either, because Jake was shouting at full volume as he ran flat out: “Saddle up! Time to go!”
Todd braced his body to move.
Someone fell on him.
It was a dead guy. And it was trying to chomp him.
* * *
There were legions of dead collapsing on them now, from every direction except the one the reserve jihadi assault was coming from. But Todd had more immediate problems.
He pushed and kicked and shoved to get the body weight of this one off him, creating enough space to bring his assault rifle to bear, which he did.
Click.
It was empty. He’d forgotten about that.
He let the rifle drop and yanked his secondary weapon from its chest rig, instantly triggering off and taking off half the wheezing dead soldier’s head. He didn’t stop firing and took down two more coming in behind it, fifteen rounds right in a row and the slide locked back. The dead guys were moving a hell of a lot less tentatively now that the world was exploding with light and noise all around them. They were getting in the spirit of things, like it was all an amusing dead-guy/live-guy mixer. Todd rose to a crouch and decided to reload the pistol immediately. He couldn’t leave both his weapons empty, which was not a good marker for life expectancy.
He felt a sharp pain on the inside of his right thigh. An incoming AK round had creased him. The incoming fire was still pretty heavy – and increasingly effective, which meant accurate. Everywhere he could see were dead guys, jihadis shooting, dead guys, more jihadis. Wherever the dead garrison of the camp had been hiding, they’d all come out to play now.
“Load up!” Jake shouted, blasting by. “There’s too many, we gotta go!” That he hadn’t gone for the truck cab told Todd one thing – Jake wanted him driving. He bounced up off the dirt and slithered into the driver’s seat, keeping low and shoving his rifle ahead of him. Broken glass bit into his ass, but there was zero time to do anything about it. He turned over the engine – and the headlights came on, completely washing out his view and causing an instant crushing headache in everyone there wearing NVGs. He flailed around blind for the switch, finally killing the lights.
He tried to slump down even lower as rounds crashed into the cab and another brilliant RPG streaked in right toward their faces, then dropped off and exploded in front of the truck, causing another brief whiteout, as well as a shower of dirt cascading over them. But then the fire to their front and right started slackening as a couple of smaller explosions went off up ahead, and Todd could sense Jake and Kate in the back of the truck chucking grenades over his head and putting out rounds. The heat blobs of the swarming reserve jihadis started to scatter – they were either taking hits, or else had worked out they were under effective fire and going for cover.
Special Forces doctrine was
always about crushing fire suppression in their immediate action drills. And they were doing it, reacting perfectly as a team, with no coordination required.
Brendan came sliding into the cab from the other side, also keeping low.
Todd hit his radio mic: “Sound off—”
“We’re all in!” Jake cut him off. “Go, go, go!”
Todd ground it into gear and then tried to put the accelerator pedal through the floor with his boot. The truck rocketed forward like a fighter plane in a carrier-deck catapult launch, albeit one with a full load of heavy weapons in the back, knocking down and then bouncing over three or four shambling corpses that’d been stupid enough to wander in front of it. At the last possible second, Todd saw a figure huddling on the open ground dead ahead.
It was the Western guy – Zakwani. Brendan hadn’t shot him in the end. Maybe there was a reason.
With about four inches to spare, Todd cranked the wheel to the left and swerved to miss him, the entire apparatus of truck and load of weapons and men lurching wildly. Then he pointed the truck’s nose at the north-west corner of the camp, and its ruin of a guard tower.
He was hauling ass to go get their last team member.
And nobody remotely had to tell him to.
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot
Camp Lemonnier - Approaching NW Guard Tower
“Kwon, Todd, comin’ to you!”
“Copy that.” Jesus. Kwon sounded like he was at the rifle range, laid out flat on a nice soft ground pad, breathing the fragrant air. Whereas Todd was currently driving like he was in 2012 and LA was dropping into the sea eight feet behind them. He took a right turn that pulled all the weight off the left-side wheels, if not quite pulling them off the ground. This was way too much like their original madcap escape from this place during the fall – except with more dead guys now, and also the only other living people shooting at them.
He keyed his radio again. “And I am not stopping, so get your Indiana Jones on and get ready to jump for it, motherfucker.”
“Copy that.”
“I might slow down a little if you’re lucky.”
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