Countdown: The Liberators-ARC

by Tom Kratman

  Almost, almost, he'd told Green to switch the order of march from First Section leading to Second Section. He hadn't because it would have been such obvious favoritism that he couldn't have stomached it. Nor, he suspected, could Lana have.

  But I can hardly stomach that a girl I care for is preceding me into combat, either, even if only by fifty meters. Fuck, fuck, FUCK! The old rule is good: "Nobody else's wife, nobody's girlfriend, and none of the hired help." Fuck.

  Lana was young and very healthy. The bouncing of the Eland caused her kidneys no serious discomfort. If it had, she might not have noticed anyway. The woman's heart sang at riding into battle on an iron steed, emulating the heroes of her childhood: Dayan, Sharon, and Israel Tal.

  Turning her face back to the front, she placed her hands on either side of the vehicle commander's cupola. Night vision goggles on, she scanned to the front and to the left. Although it was premature, she ordered, "Viljoen, gun to ten o'clock."

  "You see something, Lana?" the Boer asked, although his hand was already spinning the traversing wheel.

  "No, just being careful. You should have done it without being told."

  Viljoen bit back a snarly reply. Even so, he thought, No, you should have told me. A vehicle in order of march takes its cue from the one ahead of it, sweetie, or from SOP. Since we don't have an SOP, and the one ahead of us is aiming straight front, there was no cue. Ah, well. It's a little thing after all.

  Reilly was about to pitch a bitch at the First Platoon leader when he saw the gun of the second vehicle, Lana's, swing left. Number Three automatically began to traverse to the other side.

  He turned full about and saw the gun and turret of the next Eland in line, Sergeant Abdan's, moving to the left. Satisfied, he set his own head and eyes to the front, out to where the scouts led the way.

  While it's possible to do bounding overwatch with three vehicles, Snyder, the scout section leader, thought, it just isn't practical.

  Bounding overwatch, a military term meaning, in essence, one section moving while another watches over it, ready to fire in support, would have been clearly preferable when heading into the unknown. This, quite despite the fact that there was an unmanned aerial vehicle overhead and forward, scouting in advance of the scouts. The problem with doing it with three vehicles, and after the accident on the boat that was all Snyder had, was that one could either have uneven teams, with lessened security and lessened confidence for the shorter of the two, or one could have one vehicle continuously switching from one overwatch to the other. This last could be done, but it was somewhat slow and somewhat prone to screw ups.

  Instead, Snyder kept his three Ferrets in a broad wedge, one-his own-in the center and following an approximately straight path to the objective, the others about three hundred meters to either side-RPG range-to spring any ambush the locals might throw together at the last minute.

  Best we can do, I suppose. Well, that, and navigate the company to the objective. "And for that," Snyder said, aloud, "we've got GPS." Damn, but we've all been spoiled absolutely rotten by GPS.

  D-Day, MV Merciful

  Stauer didn't say anything for a few moments, taking in the screens visible past the UAV pilot's shoulder. One showed a map, and the location of the UAV. Another showed the ground in an image-intensified camera carried on the nose of the aircraft.

  "Anything on the ground?" Stauer asked of the pilot.

  The pilot shrugged. "Couple of runaway goats. Other small animals."

  "How about at the tank lager?"

  "Looked at it twenty minutes ago. Nothing unusual."

  Boxer and Waggoner walked in and stood behind Stauer.

  "We've got no unusual cell phone calls coming from anywhere, yet," Boxer said. "But we do have unusual activity at Bandar Qassim. People loading boats, that sort of thing. And at least one boat that was at its moorings isn't anymore.

  "By the way, it looks like Buckwheat and company did a killer job on the airport to the west of the port, too. Wrecks and flames everywhere."

  "Source?" Stauer asked.

  "I tapped into NSA."

  Stauer shook his head. There was something just so fundamentally wrong about a private citizen, even if a retired two star, accessing the most secret means of intelligence gathering available to the United States of America.

  Seeing the headshake, Boxer defended himself, "Hey, it's not like I'm giving the information to enemies of the United States, is it?"

  "I think," Ken Waggoner interrupted, "that we need to launch on Bandar Qassim now, boss. We've got to assume the sub went down somewhere, and probably before completing its mission. If we launch now, the planes will hit just after daybreak."

  Stauer felt a twinge at the phrase, "the sub went down." Mourn later. He thought a moment before agreeing, "Yeah, do it. But since there's at least one boat missing from the port, have the planes skirt the coast and take out anything sailing our way between here and there."

  Waggoner considered that, found it wise, and answered, "Roger. Send the medevac flight, too?"

  "Yeah. Have it loiter out of small arms range, though."

  D-Day, six hundred meters south of

  Bandar Qassim Airport, Ophir

  Maybe this wasn't so fucking smart after all, thought Buckwheat. He was panting too hard to say it aloud even if he'd been of a mind to. His lungs bellowed, sucking air. Lord Jesus, it purely sucks to get old.

  Bullets cracked and ricochets sang around the team as they withdrew at a dead run. The group shooting at Buckwheat and his people seemed to lack night vision; nothing else really explained that their fire was dispersed along the entire ridge. But they could see well enough that it hadn't come from the sea to the north and the pattern of wrecked and burning aircraft suggested strongly that it hadn't come from east or west, either.

  And, thought Fulton, looking behind him at the advancing figures silhouetted by the burning planes and helicopters, God, there are a lot of them.

  He stopped, knelt, and in rapid succession emptied a magazine at the pursuers. President's Hundred, motherfuckers, he thought, seeing that he'd hit four for five and the pursuit then slowed radically. I wouldn't have missed the once except for being out of breath.

  While Fulton fired, Vic passed him by and the scoundrel was hardly breathing hard. As Fulton turned his attention back to the south, and began running again, he heard Babcock-Moore cry out and stumble, then fall to the ground.

  Buckwheat changed his direction toward his spotter. In five or six steps he'd reached him and knelt down.

  "Hit?" Fulton asked.

  "Left leg . . . pretty bad," Vic gasped.

  "Right."

  Without another word Fulton slung his rifle across his back, bent forward at the waist, and pulled the wounded man to a sitting position. Babcock-Moore gasped as Fulton stood, pulling him to his feet.

  Letting inertia hold the black Brit in place, Fulton bent, pulled, and the next thing Vic knew-which is to say, what he knew when the pain subsided enough for him to see again-he was slung across the American's shoulder, the other man's rifle barrel digging into his chest, and bouncing up and down-and my, didn't that hurt, too-as the pair of them ran on Buckwheat's legs for the topographical crest and cover.

  I am so too old for this shit, Fulton thought, then said, "Fat . . . fucking . . . limey."

  "I'm . . . not . . . fat," Babcock-Moore gasped. "I'm . . . just . . . big."

  D-Day, Rako-Dhuudo-Bandar Cisman highway, Ophir

  The road in front of Snyder's Ferret was broad and had been, at some time in the past, more or less paved. He reported having reached it to Reilly, who answered, "Roger, follow the plan."

  "Wilco," the scout section leader answered. "Break, break . . . Three, this is one. Cross the road directly in front of you, cut out to three hundred mikes past it, then scout generally west for four klicks, keeping parallel to the road. At four find a good hide."

  "Roger," came the answer.

  Snyder continued, "Four, one. Don't cro
ss the road. Back off three hundred and scout west five klicks, paralleling the road. Hide when you get there."

  "Roger."

  Snyder then used his intercom to tell his driver, "Back off fifty, then cut right. We'll follow the road for three kilometers, then find our own hide away from it."

  The wheels of Lana's Eland thumped and bumped over the broken asphalt of the road, approximately where it had been crossed by Scout One a few minutes earlier. Looking to the turret's right rear-it was still trained left-toward the presumed location of the scout, she found she couldn't see the other vehicle but could make out a plume of dust driven upwards by its passage.

  She turned to face forward again. "Whoa, Dumi," she said into her intercom, at seeing a deep and sudden drop into a wadi that she wasn't sure the driver had seen.

  "I've got it, Lana, no sweat," the Zulu said. Even so, he let off of the gas and put his foot on the brake.

  Lana leaned back sharply as the armored car rolled into the wadi. Its tail swung a few degrees to the left, not entirely out of control but not entirely in it, either. The rolling slide down gave her a distinctly unpleasant feeling, not dissimilar to being in a freefall elevator.

  Except the ground here is so much more real, she thought. She had a sudden, horrifying vision of the gun digging into the wadi floor and the Eland doing a pole vault over it.

  She began to order, "Viljoen, nine . . . " before she saw that the gunner was already swinging the muzzle farther to the left.

  The rear wheels spun for a moment, kicking up rocks. Feeling the back of the thing going out of control, Dumisani took his foot off the brake and reapplied the gas. The spinning wheels threw more gravel and sand to the rear, as the Eland plunged down.

  Lana felt herself being thrown side to side in the commander's hatch. For a moment she thought the thing would flip. Heart in her mouth she almost screamed for the driver to simply stop. Self-discipline stopped her from that. Barely.

  At the bottom of the long slide, the angle of the ground under the front wheels changed, causing that end to bounce upwards. Again, barely, Lana managed to stay in her position. This was repeated when the rear wheels struck.

  Then, to the Israeli woman's vast relief, Dumi was able to apply the brakes for a moment before cutting right and moving out again on the wadi floor. He had to move quickly, too, because the next Eland in line was already cresting the lip of the wadi.

  Adonai, Lana thought, if that was so terrifying, what am I going to do when the bullets start flying?

  By sections and platoons the company spread out in its ambush configuration, reporting in to Reilly as each position was reached.

  First to report were Peters and the mortar section, about four kilometers back. That one was simple: "Guns up."

  Next was the scout section, its three Ferrets strung out to the west at roughly one thousand meter intervals, two north of the road and one, the farthest out, south of it. These hunkered down in hide positions, plentiful among the deeply cut wadis, while the commanders got out, slung radios on their backs, and crawled to where they could see the road but still not be seen.

  The two sections of turreted Elands didn't go as far as the scouts had. Instead, they followed the deep main wadis several hundred meters then began looking for side cuts. These were plentiful and steep, if not nearly as steep as the major wadis' sides were. Into these side cuts the vehicles pulled until the gunners reported that they could see the road. At that point the drivers went into reverse and backed up until there was a fair certainty that the bulk of the vehicles would be hidden. To make sure that was so, each commander and driver then dismounted and put a camouflage screen in front of their Eland. Lastly, they bent and tied the whip antennae down.

  The infantry platoons took advantage of the lay of the ground, as well. It was a predictable peculiarity of a wadi system that feeders into the main wadi would be at an angle to it, corresponding to the lay of the ground. Into these feeders the turretless infantry carriers pulled. The dismounted men then trooped along the sides of the feeder, confirming they had a good line of sight to the road. They began setting up directional antipersonnel mines, even as the squad RPG gunners laid out rounds on the ground for easy access and reload.

  The AT section, under Harvey, took up a position farther east, well behind the infantry lines.

  Once everyone had reported, "In position," or some variant on that, Reilly and James dismounted and walked up the road through the entire kill zone. Yeah, it's a risk, Reilly thought, but still better than having an enemy tank not in somebody's field of fire. The troops adjusted their firing positions from there, reported what they had, field of fire-wise, to their leaders, and then hunkered down again behind cover. Once Reilly had confirmation that the entire KZ was covered by fire, he called the Merciful and said, "Let loose the jarheads of war."

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  Cruelty has a Human Heart

  And Jealousy a Human Face

  Terror, the Human Form Divine

  And Secrecy, the Human Dress

  The Human Dress, is forged Iron

  The Human Form, a fiery Forge.

  The Human Face, a Furnace seal'd

  The Human Heart, its hungry Gorge.

  -William Blake, "A Divine Image"

  D-Day, five and a half miles north-northeast of Nugaal, Ophir

  Plaster from the bullet-shattered ceiling was still raining down as men, some armed, others not, began stumbling into the hallway. Some rubbed sleep from their eyes. Most were, at best, half dressed. The two Americans with Terry on the second floor fired at all armed men as they appeared. Sure, maybe the accountant who was the prime target had come out with a rifle but if Stauer didn't like it, he could do the thing himself.

  Once those flurries of fire were done with, Terry thundered through his interpreter: "THE ACCOUNTANT WILL SURRENDER HIMSELF NOW OR EVERYONE IN THIS COMPLEX DOWN TO THE LAST BABY SUCKING THE LAST TIT WILL BE PUT TO DEATH!"

  "Say it again," Terry ordered the translator. "Only this time put a little insane hysteria into it."

  "THE ACCOUNTANT WILL SURRENDER HIMSELF NOW . . . "

  Even as those words thundered an altogether different kind of thunder, this one accompanied by a sort of lightning, began in the grounds outside and on the lower floor.

  Graft, the machine gunner on the gate, snugged his Pecheneg's stock a little closer to his shoulder as soon as he heard firing commence inside the palace. His scope was trained on the sole door from the barracks into the grassy compound.

  The Pecheneg was yet another among the remarkable series of innovations and improvements attributable to the Russian, formerly Soviet, arms industry. The thing was, at core, a PKM machine gun, modified with a heavier, radially ribbed barrel, with a sleeve around the barrel through which cooling air was drawn. The barrel, itself, was nonchangeable in the field. This didn't matter so very much as the cooling arrangements allowed the gun to fire up to six hundred rounds in one continuous burst without overheating. No other single barreled, air-cooled machine-gun, meant to be fired from the ground, could boast this, though the First World War's Lewis Gun might have come close.

  Graft proceeded to put that nearly to the test. As the ready squad from the barracks piled out of the door in a confusion of arms and legs and rifles, he trained on the foremost, depressed the trigger, and walked his six hundred and fifty rounds a minute across the squad, then back again. Some of his targets fell immediately. Others did a version of the ballistic ballet, there on the grass. A few screamed and someone began to cry.

  Some of those felled tried to crawl away, but Graft was having none of that. Lifting his shoulder slightly to depress the muzzle, he fired three more bursts at the crawling men, stopping each in his own blood trail. In his scope Graft saw sprays of blood and chunks of flesh fly up from the shattered bodies.

  ‘God, I missed this," Graft said, just as grenades began going off in the first floor rooms of the small palace, driving glass shards out onto the courtyard. "Good huntin
g and no limit."

  Semmerlin snickered as he heard Graft's machine gun chattering behind him. Be my turn soon.

  He didn't have long to wait. Whoever was inside the barracks had probably seen the gunner's handiwork and decided that the courtyard was no place for Mrs. Dheere's little boy, Achmed.

  Achmed, or whatever his name really was, slipped out the back with a few friends. Semmerlin let them run perhaps one hundred, one hundred and twenty meters, and opened fire, engaging the rearmost man first and working his way forward. Achmed, if that's who was in the lead, heard and felt nothing until the three-ounce bronze bullet passed through his chest, wrecking heart and lungs and pitching him, already dead, to the ground.

  "Graft," Issaq Abay asked, "you want me use RPG now?"

  "No, Issaq," the gunner answered, without taking his eyes from the scope. "They're pinned in there. No sense in giving them a reason to want to come out yet."

  "Okay, I do what you say. Still . . . want to use RPG now."

  "Just wait. You'll get your chance."

  "Give me a chance," came the shout in English from one of the rooms farther down the hall. A set of underwear on the end of a curtain rod was shoved out the door. "I am the accountant. Please don't shoot anymore."

  "Cease fire except in defense," Terry told the subteam with him on the second floor. Immediately, all but the translator, Abdidi, dropped to one knee, keeping their weapons aimed toward the back of the building. Explosions and bursts of fire continued on the floor below.

  "Come out," Terry ordered.

  The rod with its makeshift white flag dropped incrementally, then sagged to the floor as a man in a clean robe, wearing glasses, emerged. He took one look at the assault team and dropped the rod, frightened even more than he had been during the shooting.