by Peter Nealen
And all of them ignored us.
It couldn’t last, but the whole point of the drones had been to sow misdirection and confusion so we could penetrate the perimeter undetected. It had worked, and any other bit of obfuscation that got us closer to our target was welcome.
We just had to be ready to fight our way out when the time came.
I lowered my rifle, as nobody seemed to have quite registered that hostiles were already inside their wire. A storm of machinegun and rifle fire roared from the south side of the perimeter as the recently roused EDC troops returned fire. I could only hope, as I made my way quickly toward the CP, that whoever had opened fire and kicked the plan into the crapper had some good cover.
David and I hustled toward the CP, trying to make it look like we were just a couple more EDC infantrymen trying to react to the attack. It wouldn’t stand up to close scrutiny, but we only needed a few minutes.
The gunfight to the south intensified, and a few rounds cracked overhead. The Triarii infantry out there had started to return fire, now that they had no choice. It wasn’t a great situation. They were badly outnumbered, and unless we got done fast and they broke contact, this was going to be a slaughter.
We plunged into the cluster of tents and trailers around the CP and paused as a trio of men in armor and carrying rifles hustled past. They didn’t pay us any mind, focused on the threat outside the perimeter.
A moment later, I glanced around the corner, then continued on.
As I came around the hastily-erected HESCO barriers around the CP itself, I had to crouch behind cover and hold. Two armed men were stationed at the entrance to the dish-topped trailer, and they looked alert, and rather less likely to ignore our gear and weapons, and the fact that on any close inspection, we didn’t belong there.
There was nothing for it then. I looked back at David, who was checking our six. The rest of the team had spread out to cause as much havoc as possible, and a moment later the ground shook with a boom that was a lot closer and a lot louder than one of the drone impacts. The clock was ticking.
As soon as David turned back to me, I held up two fingers, then pointed toward the CP. He nodded and stacked up with me. As soon as I got a squeeze, we stepped out as one, both suppressed OBRs coming level as we moved.
Our rifles coughed at the same time, and both guards staggered. David’s shot had been perfect, right through the T-box, the bullet smashing the guard’s eyepro as it blasted through the bridge of his nose and blew out his brainstem. He was dead before he even knew it, and he collapsed bonelessly to the ground.
My shot hadn’t been quite as neat. It went through the man’s throat, obliterating his larynx and tearing his spine to shreds as it shattered vertebrae. He sagged back against the wall behind him, blood gouting from his ruined neck, his arms going limp as the signals from his brain were cut off, gurgling in agony. He left a dark smear against the wall behind him as he slid down to the ground.
He was going to die hard, but he wasn’t a threat anymore. We pushed past them, crouching just outside the entryway, and started priming our packages.
There wasn’t much left to do. The satchel charges had already been prepped, and while we had packed the initiation systems separately, they had been set up to be plug and play. The blasting caps were inserted into the pre-made holes in the explosives, tamped in, and they were ready to go.
David stood and put a hand to the door. It wasn’t locked. So much the better. Apparently, no one inside had heard the gunshots that had eliminated their security.
I yanked the igniter on the first charge as he swung the door open. With a heave, I flung the charge inside, then immediately grabbed the second, pulled the ring, and sent it after the first.
Yells and screams had already started to erupt from inside as the EDC’s command staff realized what had just happened. David fired four fast shots through the door to discourage anyone who might make a dive for the charges, and then we were running for the HESCOs. We had mere seconds.
We’d just gotten on the other side of the ring of HESCO barriers when another fireteam trotted out of the smoke, heading right for us.
Chapter 19
Time moves strangely in high-adrenaline situations.
In that split second, the man in the lead took in the situation and knew that something was very, very wrong. We were moving fast, away from the CP, and there were two bodies on the ground behind us. It took a little bit longer to register that our gear, clothing, and weapons weren’t EDC issue, but he’d apparently decided on his course of action before then.
His rifle was already coming up as David and I ducked around the HESCOs, both of our weapons too far out of action.
Then the CP blew up.
The trailers weren’t quite as sturdy as they might have looked. The blast tore them open with a world-ending thunderclap.
Explosions can be weird sometimes, but they do tend to follow the path of least resistance. And the door we’d thrown the charges through had been left partially open.
Part of the blast was funneled out that door and through the gap in the HESCOs, right into the lead rifleman’s face.
He and his companions were thrown back onto the ground as the blast hammered into them. I lost sight of them as fire, smoke, and debris billowed out around us. The concussion rocked us, even on the other side of the earth-filled barriers.
When I could see again, three of the four weren’t moving. The fourth, the one in the back, was struggling to get his rifle up.
I shot him a split second before David did. It hardly felt fair, but when you’re deep in the enemy’s base and completely surrounded, you can’t worry too much about “fair.” Especially not in a gunfight.
David was already moving, covering the bodies with his weapon as he moved toward the way out. I fell in behind him, trying to cover every other angle possible. Spreading out in pairs lowered our footprint on infiltration, but it presented more than a few challenges once things went loud.
Including identifying each other in the chaos.
David pivoted at movement to his right, snapping his rifle to his shoulder, then dropped it just as abruptly. “Friendly!” he hissed.
A moment later, Jordan and Greg came out of the smoke. None of us spoke. There was no need. They weren’t carrying their satchels anymore, either. Charges were either set, or had already gone off. It was time to get out.
We moved back the way we’d come, hustling through the narrow spaces between the temporary structures. But we didn’t quite have the same advantage that we’d had on the way in. This time, people were running toward the burning remains of the CP, instead of just other side of the embattled perimeter.
Three paramedics, escorted by one rifleman, suddenly came around a corner just ahead of us. The paramedics didn’t seem to notice us at first. Neither did the rifleman, until he was almost on top of us, and noticed that we were going the wrong way. Then he noticed that we weren’t carrying the right guns, either.
He started for a second, but he didn’t lift his weapon or try to fight. He just yelled and ran.
He didn’t get far. Jordan smoked him after about ten paces.
The paramedics were a bit too single-minded. One of them stared after their fleeing escort, who was yelling for backup. The other two kept going a few steps before the suppressed gunshot made them realize something was wrong.
I really didn’t want to kill medics. Especially since two of them were carrying litters, and the other had a med bag on his shoulder. None of them were carrying weapons.
David solved the problem without needing any prompting. Stepping forward quickly, he muzzle-thumped the closest medic in the chest.
The man fell on his ass with a squawk as we drove forward. The other two got out of our way.
I could see Jordan thinking about it. But he held his fire, and I didn’t have to remind him.
I’d threatened to shoot him myself if he went off the reservation once before. That had been a long time ago. There had been some f
riction over it. Granted, “friction” and Jordan went together pretty easily. But once he’d calmed down, he’d accepted my reasoning, even though there were certain people he was bound and determined deserved to die, helpless and defenseless or not.
I couldn’t necessarily disagree with him, in a way. But killing someone who can’t defend themselves is still murder, and I won’t be a party to it.
We kept moving, though the medics might have gotten a little roughed up along the way, if only to further confuse and terrify them so that they were less likely to call for help or otherwise get in our way. They might be medics, and they might be unarmed—which was weird, none of ours were—but they might still decide to try to play hero.
We were past them before they could really react, disappearing into the flames and smoke. Another explosion rocked the compound.
It took only a few more seconds, moving as fast as we were, to get to the perimeter. That was where things got complicated again.
With the realization that they were under attack, and not just from the air, the EDC were getting their act together. When I leaned out from behind a cargo container, I could see that the fighting holes were empty, but the surviving Pumas appeared to be manned and shooters were up on their back decks, using the turrets for cover while they scanned the fields in front of them.
If we tried to run out there, we were going to get cut to pieces.
I had to risk the radio. “Mike Five Zero, Golf Lima Ten. We could use some more cover on the north side.”
“Copy.” Victor Draven sounded as laconic as ever. “Get your heads down. Thirty seconds.”
We hunkered down. Thirty seconds could be an eternity under these circumstances, but that wasn’t the only reason.
The drones weren’t the only supporting firepower we’d brought south.
Jordan glanced at his watch as we hugged the side of the container. “We need to be gone in ninety.”
Naturally, just then, everything fell apart.
Gunfire erupted off to our left. A moment later, two more EDC shooters came running past us, heading toward the gunfire. One of them happened to look over at us.
Jordan shot him through the skull from about six feet away. A moment later, as his partner realized what was happening and started to turn, the rest of us smashed him off his feet with six rounds at point-blank range.
We didn’t have time, but there was no choice. Even as the distant pops of mortar fire started, we surged toward the gunfire.
It didn’t take long—the base wasn’t that big. And we were mostly heading in the same direction, since the Grex Luporum Triarii had all been converging on the same area.
Two more of our guys—I couldn’t tell who just then—were hunkered down behind an armored logistics vehicle at the edge of the motor pool, trading fire with EDC soldiers both on the perimeter and coming through the trailers from the south. They were holding their own, but they were pinned down, as bullets smacked bright scars into the armor plate above their heads.
I hooked around the corner of a tent and opened fire, hardly bothering to aim. We were out of time.
And so were a lot of the guys shooting at us.
The mortar rounds came whistling down out of the sky, hammering into the northern perimeter with a series of devastating concussions that battered my already deadened hearing as they kicked up fountains of dirt, smoke, and frag. Bodies were torn by shrapnel and tossed off the backs of the Pumas. One of the IFVs took a direct hit, though the 60mm mortar wasn’t enough to penetrate even the thinner roof armor.
Hopefully it had damaged some optics, though, because we had to move.
The mortar barrage ended after the first salvo. I dumped the rest of my magazine at the shooters by the cargo containers, then yanked a smoke grenade out of my vest and threw it. The two Triarii by the transporter were already moving. One was noticeably limping, but they were both alive.
As we sprinted toward the perimeter, more smokes spiraled through the air. We had a very short window to get clear before the mortars started up again to cover our retreat across the fields. And that was leaving aside the little surprise that Jordan and Greg had left behind.
My lungs burned as we ran through the billowing white smoke, and I waited for the 30mm cannon fire to tear us to shreds.
But we were later than I’d thought.
I think I blacked out for a second. When I came to, my ears were ringing—worse than they usually do—my head was splitting, and I was face-down in the dirt.
Behind us, a massive fireball was still rising into the night sky. Debris was only just then starting to rain down onto the fields, and some of it was big enough to cause some serious harm. A smoking chunk of frag the size of my arm slammed down to embed itself in the furrow right in front of me.
Everything hurt, but as I picked myself up, my fogged, battered brain registered that we couldn’t stay there. If we did, we were dead.
I staggered to my feet, dragging David up after me. “Move!” I shoved him toward the ditch ahead of us, and stumbled toward Jordan, who was starting to pick himself up. “We’re still in the kill zone! Get up and run!”
The ammo dump’s detonation seemed to have diverted most of the enemy’s attention for the moment, but it couldn’t last. And our smokes seemed to have been wasted, since the blast had torn away the clouds of obscurant.
And the mortars were about to start falling again.
“Mike Five Zero, Golf Lima Ten! We are still danger close! Hold thirty seconds!” My voice was an agonized croak, deadened in my own ears, as we picked ourselves up and staggered toward some semblance of cover.
We ran, as secondary explosions continued to rock what had been the EDC’s field headquarters for the assault on Wroclaw. The place had been gutted by the blast, flattening a lot that we’d already blown up. But there were still plenty of shooters in there who could lash out and kill us all if they got their shit together.
But no gunfire came after us, at least not at first. I think the concussion of that catastrophic blast had stunned anyone inside the perimeter who’d survived. But as my rattled brains started to recover, I knew that we couldn’t necessarily trust that it was going to stay that way.
“By twos!” My bellow was more of a rasp. I grabbed David and dropped prone, covering the conflagration behind us with my rifle, searching for targets. “Set!”
We started to bound across the field. It took a moment, even as the mortars started to fall again, slamming into the perimeter with heavy krumps that seemed downright small and quiet after the hammer blow that had shaken the ground only moments before. But soon the team was moving, making short dashes before turning and dropping prone, calling, “Set!” and shifting positions at a crawl before halting while the next pair got up and ran.
Three seconds. That’s roughly how long it takes for a rifleman to spot movement, shift aim, get a sight picture, and fire. So that’s roughly how long we kept the bounds. When you’re aching, battered, concussed, and exhausted, you can’t necessarily get that far in three seconds, but we did what we could. And no one was shooting at us at the moment anyway, as the mortars hammered the remains of the EDC’s perimeter.
Draven’s boys were good at their job.
Finally, we hit the ditch and got down as low as we could. “Head count.” That was the first thing on my mind. I dreaded finding out that we’d left someone behind.
But Scott was right there at my elbow, and in a matter of seconds, as the rest of the team got down in the ditch and covered the burning perimeter with their rifles through the bushes, he was back with the report. “All up.”
I breathed a little easier. We weren’t out of the woods by a long shot, but at least we hadn’t left any of our own dead and burned in that blasted crater that had once been an enemy headquarters, underneath a mushroom cloud that was still billowing into the night sky.
“Golf Lima Nine, Golf Lima Eleven, this is Golf Lima Ten. Status?” If they’d gotten clear, they should have broken conta
ct by then. If not…
“This is Nine. We are clear, exfilling to the northwest.” Tucker hadn’t said anything about losses, so hopefully they’d all gotten out before things had blown up.
“This is Eleven. We are clear, but our trail section is still being engaged.” Burkhart sounded beat down and exhausted. “We are circling around to relieve them and break contact.”
“Eleven, Ten. Do you need support?” I didn’t look around at the rest of the team, but I knew that I was quietly hoping that the answer was “No.” I felt guilty about it, but in our current state, after being so close to that blast, getting around the EDC’s perimeter to fight some more was going to be a major task.
“Negative.” I could hear gunfire now, though it still sounded vaguely muted. It was going to take a while for my ears to recover. There was a pause, then Burkhart came back again. “They broke and ran as soon as we hit ‘em. Falling back to extract.”
“Roger. We’re moving.” I checked. I still had one more smoke grenade. It might not be necessary, but there still wasn’t a lot of cover behind us, and all it would take would be one shooter who decided to shake off the shock and take a shot. So I yanked the pin and tossed the smoke in front of us, fortunately retaining the presence of mind to check the wind before I did. It started to hiss and billow thick white smoke as it landed in the field. “Let’s go.”
We didn’t bound, but spread out into traveling overwatch, with two four-man elements separated by about twenty yards. Then we stepped it out.
I would have liked to have been picked up right there. There were a lot of open fields around us. But we couldn’t risk bringing birds in within ten klicks of the corridor that the EDC had forced into Poland, at least not without running a SEAD mission, that the Triarii still weren’t quite equipped for. Our Longswords were capable, but we didn’t have Anti-Radiation missiles.
So, we hiked fast, heading north in the dark while the remains of the EDC’s field headquarters burned.
***
Unfortunately, extract is the most dangerous part of any operation, and this one was no exception.