“The mortar team is ready to engage,” my radio buzzed. “Do we have clearance to fire?”
“Granted,” I said, quickly. The enemy were spreading out – one of them had lost an arm to a shot from Patty, or perhaps Stacy – and soon it would be harder to suppress their fire. “Take the bastards out!”
The two mortar units duelled for a long moment, both sides trying to knock the other out before they were knocked out themselves, but my attention was distracted by a sight in the distance. The dead bodies – and the remaining wounded, moaning piteously to themselves as they lay on the ground, bleeding their lives away – had left the ground covered with blood and torn up by explosions until it was damn near unrecognisable. It wasn't that that distracted me, even though I imagined that some battles in the Civil War had looked like that afterwards, but the sight of the Warriors regrouping, further away. They were evidently organising themselves for another charge.
“Dutch,” I said, keying my radio, “give me a roll call. How many have we lost?”
Another explosion from the mortar duel interrupted his words. “Fourteen down, sir,” Dutch said. “Seven have been badly wounded and need urgent treatment; nineteen have been lightly wounded and are refusing to leave their posts.”
My lips quirked. We hadn’t bred cowards, after all, although depending on their wounds, some of them might not have been the smartest cookies in the pack. Dutch would see to that, in any case. If they were too badly wounded to fight effectively, they would have to be sent to the hospital tent after all, no matter how determined they were to fight. I didn’t want to be served by fanatics. They always tend to think more about winning the battle rather than winning the war.
But there was another problem. I had been brought up never to lead a man behind – or a comrade’s body. If we held the FOB, we could have the dead buried properly, but if we were driven out, we would be abandoning their bodies. It may sound silly to worry about that at the time, when we were in danger of being overrun when the Warriors returned to the battle, but I cared about their bodies. I didn’t want them to be desecrated by the Warriors if they captured them. Some of our enemies had taken an unholy delight in such atrocities and had used them as weapons.
It’s not as if we can cut and run from this engagement, I thought, with a sudden flash of rage that surprised even me. I had always hated how our political leaders had seemed to waver to and fro on every issue, leaving the outside world to decide that Uncle Sam was a coward at heart, but now…now, we couldn’t escape the war. The Warriors would be defeated, or they would defeat us. Compromise would be impossible. The very nature of their regime would see to that.
“Ed,” Mac said, suddenly, “it’s starting.”
I heard the roar of engines in the distance and peered towards them through my binoculars…and swore.
“Shit,” I said, horrified. “Mac, look!”
The Warriors had pulled a new trick out of their sleeves…and this one might just stop us from shooting back at them. I don’t know why it surprised me so much. Perhaps I had expected better from Americans, even half-mad religious fanatics. This was right out of the terrorist handbook…
The bastards were using human shields.
Chapter Thirty-Two
C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas la guerre. C'est de la folie.
(It is magnificent, but it is not war. It is madness.)
- French Marshal Pierre Bosquet
“My God,” Ed breathed. “Those disgusting bastards…”
The first wave of human shields were black men, their faces an unhealthy grey pallor as they were pushed forwards towards our defences. They were naked, without even the dignity of a loincloth or underpants, their bodies marked and scarred with signs of regular beatings. Their hands were tied behind their backs and their legs were shackled, forcing them to stumble forwards, unable to run or even to fight. They had no choice, but to walk towards our lines…
It wasn't the slaves who held my attention. That was reserved for the girls. They were naked, too, and secured firmly to the sides of various vehicles, or forced to stumble along behind the first wave of human shields. None of them could have been older than eighteen, but they were all terrified, shaking as they stumbled forward. One of them fell to the ground and a Warrior brought a club down on her head, killing her instantly. Her naked body was left there to bleed into the ground, adding her blood to that of the hundreds of Warriors who had been killed in the fighting. The Warrior who’d killed her fell to the ground as a shot rang out; Patty or Stacy – or both – had killed him. I hoped it had hurt when the bullet passed through his brain.
“Shit, Ed,” Mac said. He knew the most likely outcome of any battle as well as I did. The human shields, male and female alike, would be torn apart in the crossfire. We’d managed to save hundreds of human shields in Iraq during the war, but that had been with highly-trained and experienced troops…and we’d still lost hundreds of others. They weren't religious at all, I decided; the antichrist they so feared lay in their hearts, forcing them to commit evil acts in the name of God. “We can’t fire without killing the poor bastards.”
“I know,” I said, knowing that we would have no choice. The human shields might have been advancing with all the enthusiasm of a boy who knows his father intends to blister his behind when he arrives home, but they couldn’t stay back forever. A single sweep with our machine guns could have killed them all, but they would have soaked up fire that should have been expended on the Warriors. Those miserable bastards had pulled our claws. How many of my soldiers, unused to such an environment, would obey an order to fire on the Warriors, knowing that someone innocent would be caught in the crossfire and die?
“Christina,” someone shouted, from the ramparts. “Christina, Christina!”
I swore, again. That hadn’t occurred to me, but we did have people from Summersville in the force. If some of them had sweethearts or lovers in the town, and logically some of them would have such connections, then…they might see their friends advancing towards them, expecting to be killed at any moment by their own side. One of them, clearly, had seen his girlfriend among the naked girls, stripped of her dignity and left to die by her captors.
I keyed my radio. “Dutch, take that poor man out of the line and get him back to the vehicles,” I ordered. Suddenly, the entire position had become effectively untenable. Once the slaves reached the minefield – the inner minefield – and detonated it, which they would, we would be fighting at knife-range. They’d have the numbers advantage and the fanatical determination to keep fighting. “Get the wounded to the vehicles as well and prepare to use the GOTH plan.”
“Understood, sir,” Dutch said. He didn’t sound eager and I didn’t blame him, but there was no choice. We would be lucky if we managed to extract half of the force from the FOB before it was completely overrun. “I’ll see to it at once.”
“Yes,” I muttered, as I returned the radio to my belt. “They’re on their way.”
The first line of vehicles was advancing slowly up towards the barricades. I couldn’t understand their tactics, despite the presence of a dozen naked girls fastened firmly to the front and sides of the trucks. The driver might be transporting a dozen Warriors with the intention of trying to push through the defences, or…memory crystallised and I became utterly certain that I knew what they were doing. They weren’t trying to keep their people safe; they were deploying truck bombs against us…and those trucks could carry enough explosive to blow right through the barricades.
I lifted the radio to my lips and prayed, under my breath, that they would listen. “Section Six,” I ordered, “take them out. Now!”
Section Six – the team with our three priceless antitank weapons – hesitated. “Sir,” the leader protested, “they have hostages…”
“And those vehicles are packed with explosives,” I snapped, wondering if the bomber driving the vehicles knew what he was doing. He might have been a willing volunteer to die for the glory of the
Warriors of the Lord, or he might have been a patsy unaware of what he was carrying. I’d seen both kinds of bomber in my long experience. “Take them out…oh, Jesus…”
The first wave of slaves, shambling forward like zombies from that successful film, had reached the inner minefield. The lead mines detonated, sending chunks of blood and gore flying everywhere as they blew the poor bastards into wounded animals, shrieking their agony, but the Warriors forced the remainder onwards, trying to use them to sweep away the remaining mines. I’d heard of the principle of driving sheep across minefields, as done back in the days of the First World War, but I hadn’t seen anything like this before. No one in their right mind would have seriously considered it as a way to clear minefields, if only because it was so wasteful. The Prophet of the Warriors had to be completely and utterly barking mad!
“Fire,” Dutch shouted, and the ramparts obeyed. With the first wave of human shields out of the way, no matter how it had been done, the Warriors who had forced them forward could be swept away without hesitation. They died in their dozens as they tried to seek cover, but they couldn’t move fast enough to escape our revenge. The remaining human shields, the girls who weren’t on the advancing trucks, cringed back, but they were held firmly in place.
I keyed my radio again. “Take those damn trucks out now,” I ordered. I was breaking one of the cardinal rules of leading an army – never give an order you don’t think will be obeyed – but I had no choice. The lead truck, and it’s deadly cargo, was almost at the first barricade. It would be running over one of the remaining mines – if one remained intact – at any moment. “Hit it now or…”
The missile was fired, lancing right towards the truck. It hit…and the world went white. I cringed, my senses screaming nuke, even though I knew that that was impossible, as the blast wave hit, knocking me to the ground. I hit hard enough to hurt, despite the padding of the body armour…and I could have blanked out for a second. Mac hit the ground beside me and shook me hard, shouting at me. All I could hear was a ringing in my ears. It was a few seconds before I could even stand up and look towards where the truck bomb had detonated.
If it had detonated any closer, we would have been screwed. Where it had been, along with its unwilling cargo of hostages, was nothing, but a massive crater. There was absolutely no trace of the girls…and, I saw, the second and third trucks had lost their human shields, killed or blown off by the first blast. Even at such a distance, it had wrecked havoc on the defences…and the second and third truck bombs were on their way. If they detonated, we were definitely fucked…
I grabbed for my radio and discovered, with a curse, that it was broken. The tactical radio was supposed to be very hard to break, even in a combat zone, but evidently the warranty had expired. Mac checked his and passed it to me, but it was almost too late. God bless the machine gunners, those who had survived the blast. They hosed the remaining trucks down with machine gun fire until one of them staggered to a stop and the other one detonated. I blinked away spots on my eyes at the combined explosions – judging from the smell, they’d improvised the explosives from fertiliser – and took stock of the defences. It wasn't good news. We had a breech large enough for them to ram an entire armed force through and tear us a new asshole.
I keyed Mac’s radio. “Dutch, have everyone fall back to the inner defence area and get to the vehicles,” I ordered. This was going to be bad. Very bad. “Order the machine gunners to hold them as long as possible, along with the mortar sections. We’re going to have to make a run for it.”
The Warriors howled and charged up towards us, passing through the wrecked craters without much difficulty. The machine gunners opened fire and killed at least a dozen of them in the first shot, but the remainder had managed to reach cover and advance in a slightly more disciplined order. They advanced, jerking forward and covering each other, while supported by the men in the rear. Their mortar teams weren’t that good, not compared to ours, but they were learning fast and they seemed to have ammunition to burn. It wouldn’t be long, I realised, before they forced us right out of the defences and took the FOB.
Mac grabbed my arm. “Ed, time to move,” he said, firmly, unslinging his rifle and checking it briskly. I checked my own out of habit. The fall we’d taken might have damaged the weapon. The M16 was a good weapon, but it didn’t have the AK-47s survivability. In a few years, we’d probably be duplicating AK-47s for ourselves, despite the irony. If tribesmen in a cave under Afghanistan could do it, so could we. “We can’t stay here, boss.”
He was right, but I didn’t want to run, or hide. I wanted to stay and fight. “Mac…”
“There’s no time,” he said, quickly. “Come along before I have to slug you and pretend it never happened.”
I scowled at him as we scrambled down towards the vehicles, which had been parked as close to the north side of the defences as we dared. A single mortar round in the wrong place and we would have had to flee on foot. The vehicles were already being checked, I was relieved to discover, with the wounded and the nurses loaded onto the most heavily-protected vehicles. Dutch was organising a rearguard as I came up to him, leading a group of volunteers to hold the line while the remainder of us made our escape. I didn’t want to leave him or anyone else, but what other choice did I have?
Besides, it wasn't as if Mac was going to allow me to remain behind.
“They’re coming,” Dutch said, as the noise of shooting grew louder. The Warriors had scented our weakness and were pouring their forces into the breach, howling as they lunged towards us. It wouldn’t take them long to punch their way through into the rearguard position; they were already sneaking forces around the FOB to prevent an escape. They would have to be forced out of the way, but that wasn't going to be easy. A single shot in the wrong place and one of our vehicles would be permanently useless…
And yet there was no panic. They were all good kids. The only person who had become hysterical had been the poor boy who’d seen his girlfriend in the group of human shields. The poor bitch was dead now – she had to be dead now – and I could only hope that she was in a better place. The Warriors might have claimed to be acting in God’s name, but I knew better. They served the devil. It was funny how much easier it was to accept that as the literal truth, but after all, as the saying goes, there are no atheists in foxholes.
“I know,” I said. The shooting was growing closer as well, backed up by the dull thudding of the mortars and even a pair of missiles, targeted on our machine gun nests. A warhead designed to melt through a tank wouldn’t have much problem with the machine gun emplacements, even though we’d fortified them as well as we could. Anyone inside was probably dead or wishing they were. I just hoped that we hadn’t left anyone behind for the Warriors to capture. I thought that we had accounted for everyone, but the entire situation was breaking down. “Are you sure…?”
“Yes,” Dutch said firmly. He winked at me. “You get out of here and give your lady a fuck from me. Get them all out of here and set up the next defence line. We’ll break them as surely as we broke Saddam after a few more victories like this one.”
“I hope you’re right,” I said, and held out my hand. He shook it firmly. “Good luck.”
Mac shook his hand as well, and then turned to the vehicles. “It’s time,” he said. There was a grim final note in his voice, almost as if he didn’t expect to see nightfall. “All aboard. I’m triggering the bombs in two minutes.”
We’d used almost all of the mines, apart from a handful that had been held in reserve to the north, based on a trick some bastard had invented in Iraq. We’d filled two massive crates with explosives and buried them somewhere the enemy had to go if they wanted to block our escape. There was no guarantee of anything, but if we were lucky, the explosions would distract any of the survivors long enough for us to make our escape stick. Mac winked at me as I took a seat on one of the technicals, just behind a machine gun that had been positioned to engage targets at any angle, and pushed
down on a remote control. For a second, nothing happened…and then the ground shook as the first mine detonated. There was enough explosive power there, the experts had sworn, to flip an Abrams tank end for end. The result was, quite literally, apocalyptic for anyone unfortunate enough to be anywhere near the blasts.
“Drive, drive, drive,” Mac yelled, as the gates swung open. We hadn’t been able to open them fully beforehand – it would have given the game away rather obviously – but we’d removed enough of the barricade to let us out safely, and quickly. That was the important part, as far as I was concerned. In this case, an absence of haste meant waste. “Here come the drums!”
I want to make it clear that this was not my idea. Mac came up with the idea of hooking a CD player to a set of loudspeakers we’d discovered in the estate and playing music loudly enough to stun anyone who wasn’t expecting it, including the Warriors – we hoped. He had wanted the March of Cambreadth, but I was thoroughly sick of that song…and if I caught the bastard who convinced the militia that it was a great marching song, I was going to put him on the front lines stark naked. It was a great song the first time I heard it. By the millionth time, or so it felt, I was sick of it. Instead, we fled to the noise of Voodoo Child…
The Living Will Envy The Dead Page 30