Hellfire- The Series, Volumes 1-3

by Leigh Barker

  “Shit! Shit! Shit!” he hissed and turned right, even though there was no right turn, just a mud-brick wall. The Humvee went through it like it wasn’t there, just as the 50 cal opened up and punched fist-sized holes in the remaining bricks. The Humvee came out through another wall, and Caponetto pulled the wheel left, bounced the truck off a building, and floored it again, heading west and the hell out of there. Bricks, washing lines, and crap of every kind bounced off the hood, and the mirrors gouged out the walls as the Humvee tore down the narrow alley.

  It was a good thing all the villagers are dead, Harry thought, or this crazy marine would have done the job himself. The thought ended abruptly as the Humvee slewed into a wider street, skidded, and did the ploughing through buildings trick again as another 50 cal on another pickup opened up. Bugger, these machine guns are like gold dust, but these guys seem to have an arsenal of them, he thought, between being bounced off the sides of the truck. Seatbelts, now why didn’t he clunk-click? Ah, that’ll be because of all the bullets he was dodging at the time. One thing was as clear as crystal to him right then, they were bottled up in the village, and all the crazy driving in the world wasn’t going to get them out. Only dead.

  “The mosque!” he shouted above the thunder of mud-bricks bouncing off every side. “Get us into the mosque.”

  Caponetto glanced at Ethan and got the go-ahead. A right turn through the downstairs rooms of somebody’s pride and joy and they were back into the market square, bouncing over the bodies and ploughing in through the front door of the mosque where the sniper had made the fatal mistake of sitting up after being clipped.

  Caponetto stood on the brakes, killed the engine, grabbed his weapon, and dived out of the vehicle in two seconds flat, followed in close order by the rest of the occupants. The horde of insurgents would have been real scared to see the determination on the faces of the six men alone in the great big building.

  Ethan, Caponetto and Eddie took up firing positions in the small windows facing the square, and Ethan glanced back quickly to see BJ and Tom bound up the stone stairs to the roof, with Harry following one stair at a time, though he lost sight of him in seconds in the swirling dust from their crashing entry. Okay, good, he thought, at least these Brits weren’t completely inept. He looked around as the dust thinned and nodded. Good choice, thick walls, no other windows or doors beside the big wooden ones where Caponetto had parked the Humvee. If they were going to hole up someplace, this was as good as it was going to get. A stream of 50-cal rounds screaming in through the window changed his focus. He swung back against the wall and hoped to God the Brit sniper could shoot and the last outing hadn’t been just luck, because if he couldn’t, they were dead as dog meat, with the little M16s as much use as slingshots against the 50 cal. If they’d even get a shot off among all the AK rounds that were pouring in with the big stuff. Shit, there must be hundreds of them out there!

  Harry could shoot, no doubt about that, but right then a 35 mm machinegun in a building across the square was making the parapet bricks he was hiding behind look like they were in a hailstorm. He signalled to BJ and Tom, and they nodded their understanding.

  Tom counted down on his fingers to BJ, swung the sub-machine gun over the parapet meant to stop devout worshippers meeting their god too early, and sprayed the building with nine-millimetre rounds without any real expectation of hitting anyone, but it did the trick. For a moment, the stream of incoming bullets stopped, as the machine-gunner reacted as any sane man would and ducked. A moment later, the reflex was countermanded, but BJ’s grenade launcher had already pitched two 40 mm grenades at the machine gun’s position. The first one hit the wall below the gunner’s rooftop cover and exploded harmlessly, but the second dropped right between his knees — a grenade launcher’s hole-in-one.

  As most of the machine-gunner sprayed out across the square, Harry was already placing the L115’s bipod on the parapet and snapping back the bolt. He swung right, knelt, steadied himself for an instant, and then fired. As usual, the 50 cal hadn’t got a shield since the gunner had never needed one before, and he didn’t need one now… well, not any more.

  The instant the heavy machine gun stopped firing, the three Americans swung into action, their M16s knocking men off the building opposite like shooting clay pigeons. Too bad these pigeons shot back, and Ethan ducked back just as a whole bunch of angry shooters sent a blizzard of bullets at his favourite head.

  The driver of the pickup with the 50 cal had clearly been at the last engagement, slammed the truck into reverse, and disappeared behind the houses before Harry could do his knocking over the gunners one by one thing, which was a pity.

  Harry scanned the building through his scope and whistled. It looked like there was a gun sticking out of every window, but that might have been fear upping the count, except in the heat of the action, fear was hiding in a safe place, and all he felt was his heart thumping in his chest. He traversed right, looking for a target among all the targets. On the roof of a low building, an insurgent was hitting and shoving a bunch of guys into setting up a mortar tube. Two targets of opportunity, then. First, the officer, or the nearest these guys had to an officer, then the men. No wind, not too steep an angle from this roof to where they were making a dog’s breakfast out of setting up the mortar. Should’ve been an easy shot over a couple of hundred feet, but all that annoying incoming fire was making dust. Harry sighed, put the sound of the bullets ripping into the mud-brick out of his mind, and took the shot without even thinking about it. The hitting and kicking officer slammed back like he’d been hit by a truck. The three men setting up the mortar stood up. They stood up! At that range, even Tom’s sub-machine gun could do the biz. Unlike Harry’s single-shot L115, the MP5 didn’t need a bolt pulled back, and even on semi-automatic it made short work of the idiots standing in plain sight.

  Harry looked around the square at the men behind the parapets or firing out of the upper windows of almost every house, and at the two pickups creeping back into view, and did the maths. A hundred bad guys versus six good guys — if you count the man on crutches. He swung the rifle a few degrees left on its bipod, sighted and fired, pulled back the bolt, and fired again in a single move. Okay, still a hundred to six, but the pickups weren’t going anywhere soon, unless they could find some very brave drivers, and taking the 50 cals out of the game at least meant the mud-brick wasn’t just tissue paper. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glint of sunlight. “Down!” he barked, and the other two dropped behind the parapet and watched him hugging his rifle in his lap, his back against the low wall. “Sniper,” he said and signalled them to keep down.

  Okay, this was going to be hairy. He’d made the sniper’s position, but only approximately, and he would need time to get the L115 into action, time he wouldn’t get. Asking the guys to run a diversion would work fine, right up to the point where they were dead, and that didn’t appeal much. He shook his head at BJ, who was patting the grenade launcher beneath his rifle. The sniper would have seen where they ducked and would most likely be lined up on their position, if he was any good, and he had to assume he was.

  He made a crawling gesture with his fingers for Tom to go to the right corner and keep the hell down. Tom started his manoeuvre, and Harry patted his rifle and signalled BJ to make his visible above the wall so the sniper would see they were still where they were supposed to be. Tom reached the corner and sat back against the wall and waited. Harry fed a round into the chamber, took a breath, and signalled the direction of the sniper to Tom with the flat of his hand.

  Tom snapped the sub-machine gun on auto, stuck his head above the parapet and squeezed off a stream of bullets towards the sniper. To his friend’s horror, Harry stood up. BJ swung round and up and emptied his clip at the roof across the square and then pumped a grenade.

  Through the scope, Harry saw the sniper up close and big, as though he was checking his brow for zits. He saw the look of surprise on his face and the desperate swing as he tried to sight o
n the madman standing in plain sight. Harry squeezed off the shot, saw the sniper’s head come apart up close and in full colour. Cool. He had a moment of clarity and dropped back down behind the parapet before he got his ass shot off by the AK-47s all pointing his way.

  “You crazy shit!” Tom shouted across the roof and received a nod and a grin in response.

  On the ground floor, the Americans were having their own war story, and hoping it wouldn’t be cancelled after the pilot.

  Ethan snapped the third 30-round clip into his M16 and checked his pack and found he had only two left. “How much ammo you got?” he called, and Al and Eddie held up two fingers. Shit. He looked over at the Humvee wedged in the doorway. Plenty of ammo in there, but with the big wooden doors smashed to matchwood, getting to it would put him in plain sight of everybody with a gun, so not cool. They would have to do what they say in the movies and make every shot count. He recalled the highly experienced and battle-hardened officer who’d spent his entire career in training, telling the class that two percent of expended rounds actually hit an enemy. Now that was total BS, and every marine in the classroom knew it, but they just let the idiot ramble on about suppressive fire to target hit statistics because it kept him busy feeling important and they got to rest. Truth was, unless they got the ammo out of the Humvee, they were toast, and even if they did, same thing probably.

  He looked the Humvee over. It was half in and half out of the wide doorway, with splintered wood scattered all around and a gap of maybe three feet from the sides to the walls. Every few seconds a plume of dust would erupt by the Humvee, and nobody was even near the thing, so he knew what would happen if he—

  He got up and walked to the vehicle as calmly as if it was waiting outside the bar ready to take him home. The sheer insanity of it must have stunned the insurgents because not a single round came his way. Going back would be a different story; he was going to get creamed.

  He closed the driver’s door behind him, reached over, started the engine and drove the thing right into the middle of the holy mosque. Well, that solved that problem. It also infuriated the insurgents, who expressed their anger by throwing everything they had at the open doorway. Bullets screamed and whined off the polished stone floor, slammed into the back of the Humvee, or drilled the interior walls. Al and Eddie dived under the Humvee to get out of the way of the rounds shucking through the room like hornets with sunstroke.

  “Man, that was close,” Al said, whistling his breath out. Eddie didn’t answer with his usual wisecrack, and Al shuffled round on his back to where he could see his friend. “Shit, boss, Eddie’s hit!”

  Ethan opened the Humvee’s door, threw the ammunition packs to the side of the doorway, pulled out the MOLLE medical bag from behind the seat, then stepped out and walked round to the front of the vehicle away from the door, completely ignoring the incoming rounds. He bent down, saw Eddie’s foot, and pulled him out. He’d taken a round in the stomach, which, as anybody who’s seen a John Wayne movie knows, is really bad. Eddie was clutching his stomach, his face contorted, and his eyes clamped shut. Ethan took out a syringe from the medical bag and injected 5 mg of morphine into Eddie’s neck. He waited five seconds, which he reckoned was long enough to watch your friend suffer, and repeated the morphine hit.

  Eddie’s breathing eased, and he opened his eyes. “Cool, boss. Can I take some home?”

  “Yeah, sure you can, son,” Ethan said, opening Eddie’s combats to apply a field dressing to the wound. A field dressing was woefully inadequate; he could see that. What Eddie needed was a medivac to a full surgical hospital, and even then…

  Al slid from beneath the Humvee, took one look at Eddie, and walked back to the window without speaking. A few seconds later, Ethan heard his M16 shouting his fury at the men who had killed his friend. He put the medical bag under Eddie’s head and wiped the dust from his face with a tenderness that no one would ever know about. “Hey,” he said softly, and Eddie opened his eyes. “I’m gonna shoot a few bad men. You hang on in there for a while, right?”

  Eddie smiled a microsecond smile. “Go,” he said in a hoarse whisper. “I’m gonna be just fine.”

  “Yeah, son,” Ethan said, getting to his feet. “You’re gonna be just fine.” He stepped out to the right side of the Humvee, but instantly stepped back and ran to the wall on the left as bullets churned up the ground he had vacated on both sides of the vehicle. He looked out through the narrow window and saw them coming out of the houses across the square, like ants pouring out of a nest. Jesus! He killed them, Al killed them, and on the roof, the Brits poured a torrent of fire and grenades onto them, but they just kept coming. It was totally insane.

  “Out!” Ethan shouted and bolted for the stairs with Al a pace behind him. He stopped for a moment on the stone steps and looked back at Eddie, who was holding his M16 between his knees and pointing it at the door. Okay, that’s how he’d want to go if it came to it – yeah right, more like when. He took the steps three at time.

  Tom almost shot the Americans when they burst onto the rooftop, smiled, and returned to firing over the parapet.

  “We gotta move,” Ethan said. “Now!”

  Harry slung his L115, picked up the M16, and staggered in an agonising crouch towards the far side of the roof without a word. Some things are self-evident, and the insurgents pouring into the ground floor was one of those things. He caught the packs Ethan tossed him and handed one off to Tom as he ran past doubled over to keep the parapet between him and the rooftops below. BJ lifted the other pack as he passed him on the right, grunting something that could have been anything from “clips in my vest will fit yours” to “chips are best with red sauce”, but Harry chose not to have a discourse on his friend’s enunciation on the top of the mosque, under fire, outnumbered, and really, really in the shit, and limped and stumbled for the far side of the roof with the others.

  Ethan waved them over the parapet, and it said a lot for their faith in him that they jumped off the roof without looking, to land in a heap on the adjacent roof five feet below. Tom put his hand on the wall to vault, heard the commotion behind, and turned. The insurgents were spilling out of the stairwell onto the roof and would have his friends under their guns before they got to cover. He knelt on one knee and calmly switched the sub-machine gun to fully automatic, waited for the bandits to work out that the infidels had fled, and squeezed the trigger as they turned in his direction. Nobody could live in front of the MP5 under those conditions, and no one did. As the insurgents poured onto the roof under their own impetus, Tom mowed them down. They fell over each other, bits of them spraying across the brick roof, while others tried to run, but there was no cover in that killing zone.

  Harry heard the distinctive rattle of the MP5 and turned to give his friend covering fire, but the mosque roof was too high for him to see anything at all. He started to run back, but Ethan grabbed his arm. He snatched it away angrily and took a step before he realised the American was right. He wouldn’t be able to do anything except get himself killed. He stood for a second and then turned and ran after the others as they jumped the three-foot gap to the next building. He stopped at the edge. It might only be three feet, but his leg was already buggered from jumping off the mosque, and all it was going to do now was drop him into the alley, which some folks would think was a bad thing. He unslung the M16 from his shoulder, turned, and knelt on his good knee.

  The slaughter on the mosque lasted a long, long ten seconds before Tom’s magazine was spent. He reached into his pack and pulled out the last one, but it snagged on something, only for a moment, but in a firefight, that’s all it takes. A 7.62 mm round hit him in the right forearm, not a fatal wound by any measure, but it killed his arm, and he dropped the MP5. And that was the fatal.

  Harry heard the sub-machine stop and the short but intense burst of AK-47 fire and waited for the bandits to come pouring over the wall. But this wasn’t his big moment to be a hero — deceased. He stared up in surprise as BJ landed next t
o him, hooked him under his arms, and tossed him over the gap like a sack of coal. Not dignified, but effective. He would have executed an excellent forward roll, but the sniper rifle slung across his back was his best friend and he wasn’t going to damage that, so he landed hard and skidded on his ass. A moment later, BJ followed him, scooped him up in the same way, and bundled him across the roof and over another parapet, this one chest-high and requiring another undignified assisted Fosbury flop.

  “Jesus, man,” Harry grunted as he hit the stone floor and BJ landed on him. “What the hell have I done to piss you off?”

  BJ shrugged and handed him his M16, which he’d included in the stylish rescue. “Tom’s down,” he said, turning and firing his assault rifle at the insurgents clambering over the mosque parapet.

  “Yeah,” Harry said, closing his eyes for a moment and seeing his friend’s face.

  “You going to sit there and sulk?” BJ said, squeezing off another round. “Or are you going to help kill ragheads?”

  “Dunno,” Harry said, “I like it down here, it’s quiet, and it’s—”

  BJ kicked him in the butt, which pretty much did the trick. He stood up stiffly and looked along the wall to see Ethan and Al firing steadily at the mob streaming over the mosque. They were calm and looked for all the world like they were shooting tin ducks at a fairground stall. Fire, change aim, fire, change aim. Steady and deadly. He looked back across the rooftop at the insurgents, high on bloodlust and climbing over their comrades to get to them. Man, they could use Tom’s sub-machine gun right then.

  “Move!” Ethan shouted, and he and Al headed for the rooftop doorway.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me!” Harry growled, reached over, and rapped BJ’s shoulder. “Hey, we’re leaving.”