The Fifth Battalion

by Michael Priv

  “Are you crazy, coming back here?” I yelled to her over the sounds of intense gunfire.

  “Yes, I am,” she yelled back, grinning. “Crazy about you!” Deafening explosions and the collapse of the building sent large chunks of concrete flying through the air over us, some landing in the fountain, splashing me with dirty water. The Tribal Center’s roof collapsed, dislodging a dense cloud of dust. The surroundings turned dark. I could hardly breathe.

  Coughing, I looked around in search of Linda. My heart stopped. A few feet away, Linda was on her back in shallow water, covered with cement dust and soot, unconscious. A jagged chunk of concrete half the size of a VW bug smashed her left leg below the knee. She

  faint ed from shock,I thought. A large bloody gash on her head further explained the unconsciousness. I jumped up and grabbed a good hold of the concrete. Heave! It did not budge. Heave! Nothing.

  Huge mother,I panicked, butting into the concrete with my shoulder. Linda’s blood was spreading into the water. The firefight, stunted by the explosions, resumed as the surviving Rangers tried to escape from the collapsed building. In the darkness, through a thick cloud of dust, the attackers and the defenders were shooting up a storm—blindly. Linda and I were pinned down amid the cross-fire.

  First things first. Gently, I put some debris, thrown into the fountain by explosion, under Linda’s head. I also turned her head to the side as much as I could and rearranged her tongue in her mouth, so she wouldn’t choke. My quick assessment of the situation brought me no joy whatsoever. I could not free Linda from under the concrete, so we were both here to stay. But even if I succeeded in getting the concrete off her, the leg was shattered, so I would have to carry her, which, under the circumstances, would still mean death for both of us.

  A Ranger stumbled over the fountain wall in the dusty darkness, spitting and cussing next to Linda. I shot him in the head. Another cleared the fountain wall a bit to my left and fell in dead, killed by a blind bullet from across the street. Then two more on my right and my left. The fountain was filling up with bodies, most of them dead. Linda was still unconscious. I shook her a bit, kissed her lips lightly— that supposedly worked for Prince Charming—no response.

  Taking a chance, I peeked over the fountain wall just in time to see a Ranger almost upon me, ready to jump over the short wall. I took him out with a shot in the leg and then a head shot with my Nighthawk. Then I shot another one, coming at me fast from the dense dust cloud. Our eyes met right before my bullet hit him. Normally I hated that, but now I didn’t care.

  The sudden silence in our immediate vicinity was a huge relief. It could signify a number of things, most of them favorable. I peeked over the wall again. Clear. In the issuing silence, the sounds of battle to our right came to the foreground. The Rangers’ main thrust shifted to the right, as they must have been consolidating their forces after their defeat at the Tribal Center. We could possibly be rescued.

  “Hey, help!” I yelled. “Over here! Help! Help!” No response. I yelled again. Nothing. The defenders must have fallen back toward the base, consolidating their own forces and regrouping.

  Sooner or later the Rangers would be back for their wounded or for a number of other reasons. So, here we died. The last stand. Why did I always die in ugly places, such as this disgusting fountain full of dead bodies? Crawling around in filthy, bloody water, I appropriated four spare AR-15 clips and half a dozen grenades. Linda’s half-full Scorpion with two extra clips completed our arsenal. I had more weaponry than I could possibly use in the time I had left in this lifetime. With nobody covering my back or flanks, we were not going to last long here, maybe about half a minute, at most. Thirty seconds. An eternity.

  I dragged one of the dead bodies onto the wall in front of me to use as a shield, increasing the height of the rampart to raise my head higher and widen my field of vision.

  Linda was still unconscious. Just as well, although it would have been awesome to tell her I loved her right about now, but of course she already knew that. I kissed Linda goodbye. Would be nice to say goodbye to Mom, but that too was optional. I ran my fingers through Linda’s wet hair. Had I not dragged her into this… ah, what was the point of thinking that now?

  The sound of heavy boots over rubble-covered asphalt gave away the approaching Rangers. About a dozen. I opened up on them, getting one in the head. They scattered for cover and quickly returned fire. Here we go. It’d be fast. Hate long goodbyes anyway.

  Keeping the Rangers at bay, I watched my flanks. I had to keep my peripheral vision sharp even as I was fighting multiple threats right in front of me. The ones who’d go around, whom I wouldn’t see coming, were the ones to watch for. One of the attackers was thrown off his feet by my bullet into his Kevlar. I scored a hit in his lower abdomen before he got up. Dead or alive, he was no longer a threat. About time they started encircling me, probably one on the right, one on the left. I dropped the one who made it all the way to my right with a Kevlar shot. But I lost the battle to the one on the left by a fraction of a second. My AR-15 burst went wide, while his bullet hit me somewhere below my left armpit, a good spot to shoot somebody through the heart. The Guard’s armor held again, but the impact nearly stopped my heart. I jumped up, fighting for a breath, and was immediately struck in the chest and abdomen by a hailstorm of bullets. My mind exploded with pain. Everything went dark.

  53 I couldn’t have been out long because when some vestige s of consciousness returned, I surprisingly found myself still alive. Or was I simply delirious? Possibly still unconscious,I thought weakly, observing the out-of-focus towering shapes of several giants walking calmly toward me through the murky fountain water and then past me, their weapons spewing streams of raw energy at my enemies. One of the giants returned after a long minute and bent down. His face came into focus. I’ll be damned,thatmotherfuckerof the month

  again! Imust reallybe imagining this.

  “Medic!” Alesh yelled to one of his guys with a longish, slick plastic case on his back. The beefy medic ran up to us, sloshing in the shallow water, with something that looked like a smart phone in his hand, which he ran over my body quickly, peering into a tiny monitor on the wrist of his other hand.

  “Linda,” I croaked. “Help Linda.” “F ive broken ribs, bruised liver, spleen and stomach, some internal swelling, a bit of blood in the lungs, some other minor hemorrhaging here and there and a few other dings,” he reported to Alesh.

  “What does that mean?” asked Alesh.

  The medic grinned. “Healthy as a horse.”

  I stared at the clown, fighting for breath through excruciating pain.

  “You’re okay. We’ll fix you up,” Alesh explained to me, unsmiling as usual.

  The medic nodded his agreement, taking off his oblong, slick, and shiny yellow backpack.

  “Linda,” I croaked again, straining to turn. Alesh helped me turn my head. The Guards had already taken the chunk of concrete off her leg and were now carefully removing her body from the fountain.

  “Help her first,” I told Alesh. He shook his head and started to object, probably referring to his orders, but changed his mind midsentence, waving the medic off to Linda.

  The medic quickly gave me an injection. “Slowly, support the torso,” he instructed in parting. With the help from two other meatheads, Alesh carried me out of the fountain slowly, all of them supporting my body. A wall of pain threatened to overwhelm me, but I fought back the unconsciousness. I had to make sure Linda was all right first. They put me down in such a way that I could see her. The medic was scanning her body. Linda was still unconscious.

  From his strange-looking backpack, the medic removed a black cubic device the size of a small printer. His hand-held scanner monitor fitted into a niche on the device with an audible click. The medic then inserted what looked like a yellow brick into another niche and turned the thing on. The device hummed quietly for a few seconds, and then a thin, molded cast of Linda’s leg, split alongside, started emerging, whil
e the medic kept working—cleaning, spraying her wounds and giving her injections. The medic then pulled out what looked like a rolled wide rubber band from his bag and attached it to the inside of the open yellow cast. With my confidence in Linda’s future restored, I blissfully passed out.

  54

  I came around flying high with very little pain left —complements of the painkillers. Being moved by a Guard, I saw Linda being carried like a child right next to me, cradled in some Guard’s arms. She was conscious but severely drugged, looking at me with glassy eyes, not really seeing. I reached for her hand and took it into mine. Surprisingly, she squeezed my hand slightly.

  The street was now cleared of the attackers. Not much was left of the houses and barns that belonged to people, to families, who had lived here just a few hours ago without even the slightest suspicion clouding their day. Now most of these people were dead and their property destroyed—by whom? The Priests and their cronies had a whole lot to do with it. However, the Rangers and the Air Force were the ones who actually carried out all the killing and destroying. Having a chance to disobey their orders and save thousands of innocent lives, they chose the easy path of obedience to their orders, no matter how stupid and vicious. Blind compliance

  sucks,I thought on my way through the ruins. How unmilitary of me. I liked that.

  “Hey, Alesh, put me down, I can walk,” I protested. He stood me up. I felt woozy but relatively stable. Startled, I realized that the entire upper half of my body was enclosed in a yellow cast, similar to the one on Linda’s leg. It was not too tight, and it seemed to expand and contract with my breathing, offering constant support all around, but it felt prickly and uncomfortable, itching like hell.

  “Hey, something must’ve gotten inside the cast here,” I complained to the medic, who was adjusting wires on a small yellow box, plugged into Linda’s cast. He then slapped the box onto her cast and it held, as if it were a magnet.

  Linda was more awake now. She smiled at me and squeezed my hand harder. I smiled back. “Don’t worry about the p rickly sensation, that’s all right,” the medic assured me. “Those are hundreds of tiny needles that inject you with tiny quantities of pain killers, nourishment, antibiotics and fluids. See this box?” he removed a yellow box, like Linda’s, from my cast so I could see it. I nodded. “That’s the computer and the twentyfourhour supply of the medications.”

  “What happens after twenty-four hours?” I asked.

  “We’ll replace the pack,” the Guard replied with a shrug. “Well, thank you very much for all you’ve done.”

  He waved back.

  “What happened there at the fountain?” Linda asked me weakly, pointing at the Guards and our encased bodies.

  “Nothing much. A little this, a little that. Alesh and the boys dropped by, we had some laughs.” I explained, nodding reassuringly. “Is that why you’re all bandaged up?” Linda gave me one of her adoring looks. We looked into each other’s eyes.

  “Is yours itchy?” I asked.

  Linda nodded. “I’ll scratch yours, if you scratch mine,” she offered.

  “I’ll scratch yours any day and at least twice on Sundays,” I assured her. “Just say the word.” “ I probably look like hell,” Linda said.

  “I like hell already!”

  Linda grinned, staring at me with adoring, misty eyes. “What’s that?” Linda asked, pointing at a commotion on the edge of the forest next to a burnt-out house.

  “Locals are finishing off the wounded,” Alesh explained calmly. “With shovels,” he added. About a dozen women of all ages were hacking at a Ranger’s body on the ground with shovels. Linda gasped and almost fell. I held her up. The motion and exertion hurt like hell.

  “Stop them !” I ordered Alesh. He shook his head. “It’s not okay! He is a soldier too!” I yelled to the other Guards. They ignored me. I know, karma is a bitch, but maybe this time, just once… We came closer. “Fu-u-u-u-uck!” was the only expression that came to mind. The dead, mutilated body on the ground, hacked with shovels, presented quite an eyeful. Linda gasped in horror and squeezed my hand hard. Did she have to come around so soon? Wouldn’t be bad at all if she hadn’t seen this. The local ladies were panting heavily, wiping sweat off their brows, leaving the scene of carnage, probably in search of other wounded to kill.

  “We saw some locals hacking up a wounded on the way over to get you, too,” Alesh said impassively.

  “And you didn’t stop them? How is that okay? Do I do that? Do you do that? Soldiers don’t deserve to die that way.” “ Oh, they don’t?” Alesh stated with significantly more passion than he normally exhibited. “What about these people who lived here? You think the locals deserved what they got here today? These women can do whatever the fuck they want.”

  I shut up. Complicated. Linda and I exchanged glances. “By the way, why did you come for me?” I asked Alesh in a couple of minutes, when I’d calmed down. I was wobbling alongside the Guards painfully.

  “We don’t leave our own behind,” Alesh explained simply, unperturbed again.

  “How am I one of your own suddenly?” Being considered one of them felt pleasing to me but didn’t make much sense. “ Stan said you are one of us, so you are one of us. Stan sent you on a mission with us, right? He dispatched me and Bruno to cover your ass in Cambodia, right? You warned us about the Priests’ attack, right? You’re one of us.”

  “And Linda?” I asked.

  “Yeah, she too.”

  Whew. Linda was safe now.

  “But how did you know where I was?” I pressed further, tremendously relieved and a little flattered. Alesh ignored my question. “Same way you tracked me in Siem Reap?” The sudden realization was unsettling. “Did you implant me with a tracker?”

  “Stan had a beacon solution injected in you when I first brought you in,” Alesh finally replied impassively. “ So, did he plant something under my skin or something? What’s a beacon solution? No, wait. How could that be? I was scanned for electronics by Liran, first in Manila and then in Siem Reap.”

  “ No electronics.” Alesh shook his head. “We injected some shit into your blood, so it shows on our monitors now. Resonating molecules that send out a specific frequency signal or something like that.”

  “Linda too?” I asked.

  “No, just you.”

  “Can you take it out? Does it biodegrade? Do I piss it out?” “No, man, that’s it for life.” Alesh shook his head.

  “Is it harmful to his health? What about a blood transfusion?” Linda suddenly asked, alarmed. It felt encouraging knowing that Linda, for one, believed I had a long enough life ahead of me to worry about the blood thing, despite our current predicament.

  “ Sure, a blood transfusion will do it. Hey, don’t worry,” Alesh told Linda with uncharacteristic warmth in his voice. “We all had that solution injected, so it can’t be that bad. Just modifies the hemoglobin a bit. It even makes the blood a little more oxygenefficient. So, it’s actually good for you. Okay?” I really appreciated the super-long explanation that Alesh offered on Linda’s behalf.

  “Alesh, what’s good for you may not be good for Norm. We are different species, remember?” Linda replied still worried. Alesh shrugged, “Not that different.”

  My blood was now a beacon. Supposedly I ought to have been grateful to Stan. He saved both of our lives yet again.

  55 The battle was raging on the approaches to the hill, housing the space transport and most of the base. The Rangers were too good. Despite being outnumbered two to one at the onset, they’d pushed us back for a couple of miles and reached the base.

  The base entrance was made to look like a farmhouse with wood siding painted yellow, a white picket fence and white trim and window shutters. White curtains and potted plants in the windows added to the fake charm. Behind the cheerful exterior, the insides of the gateway were all gray concrete. The attackers seemed to have broken our defenses as evidenced by shooting inside the gateway structure.

  “Come
on,” Alesh urged the other Guards, eager to join the battle, which we were observing from behind an overturned eighteen-wheeler a couple hundred yards away. “You two stay here. Your armor is not battle-worthy. Too dangerous.”

  Right. As if having the armor fully intact improved things a whole lot. When bullets hit your body full force, it hurts like hell—and I had a busted spleen and all kinds of internal hemorrhaging to show for it.

  “Wait!” I urged. “Let’s enter the hill from the other side and surprise the bastards.”

  “Only one entrance into this hill,” Alesh replied. “Other entrances to the base are too far from here.”

  “No, I know another entrance, let me show you. Come on, this way.” I pointed.

  Alesh gave me a dubious look.

  “Yes, we found a large drainage pipe over that way.” Linda also pointed to where the pipe was.

  “How and when did you find it?” one of the Guards asked Linda. “ We had a photo. She’s super smart. If something’s there, she’ll find it,” I assured him. The Guard shrugged and walked in the direction indicated.

  “Okay.” Alesh nodded. “We’ll find it. You two stay here.” The Guard who carried Linda stood her on the ground carefully next to me. She stayed up, holding on to me. “ Coming with you. We’re okay,” I assured Alesh.

  “You’ll slow us down,” Alesh insisted.

  “Deal with it,” I said.

  Alesh’s face hardened.

  “We can lead you to the drainage pipe. You don’t have time to look for it in the dark,” Linda interjected hurriedly, squeezing my hand.

  Alesh shrugged and started walking. Avoiding the lit areas, we skirted the battle at the Base entrance. The intensity of energy weapons’ flashes indicated that many Guards were now engaged in the fight—except they seemed to be fighting among themselves. With a sinking heart, I realized that some of those blasters were being wielded by the Special Forces, tired of the Guards being impervious to their bullets. They picked the weapons off the dead and figured out how to use them. Damn Rangers,I thought—my respect tinged with apprehension. Ireally wouldn’t wantto mess with