Foreign Enemies and Traitors

by Matthew Bracken

  Carson said, “I always thought Americans would be better at guerrilla warfare than this, if we were ever invaded.”

  “So did I, Phil. I just never thought own government would be on the other side. But we’re on a roll tonight, so enjoy the moment! Hey, I’m going to give this thing a quick test fire before we take off: I have to be sure the big guns are ready to rock and roll. I’ve got about two hundred .50 caliber, and maybe twenty of the 40 mike-mike, but I have to know they’ll shoot. Make sure your CVC is on snug: this fifty is gonna make a racket. Oh, wait, give me a minute—I want to look around this machine before we go loud. Once we go loud, we’re hauling ass.”

  Boone slipped down out of the turret, twisting in the confined space like a contortionist. In the small clear space behind the turret were the dead crewmembers’ packs, gear bags, ration boxes, ammo cans and ordnance crates. One was marked “40mm Rifle Grenade HE.” It was a different round from the linked 40mm used by the automatic M-19 turret gun, and not interchangeable with it. An old M-79 grenade launcher with a fat, stubby barrel and wooden stock was tied with bungee cords above the side door. Where the hell did the Cossacks find that relic? A fabric bandolier of 40mm rounds was draped over the weapon’s ungainly stock. That ‘blooper’ might come in handy, Boone noted as he squirmed back up into the turret. There was a reason most tankers and other armored crewmembers were on the small size: these things were just not built to accommodate full-sized Vikings.

  When he was back in position in the turret, Boone said, “Okay, Doug, did you get that thing cleaned up? Have you got your ears on yet?” Boone waited, but there was no reply. “Doug, get your helmet on. Phil, is his helmet on?”

  Phil yelled across, “Doug, are you on the intercom? Can you hear us? Push the button on the wire to talk.” Doug had just finished wiping the blood from the crew helmet with a greasy rag he’d found on the floor of the ASV, and gingerly slid it down over his head.

  Doug shook his head no, and yelled back, “No, nothing, I’m just hearing radio chatter. It’s not in English.”

  Phil Carson grabbed Doug’s shoulder to get his attention and put his finger to his lips, indicating that he should shut up. Then he reached over to the commander’s seat and grabbed the coiled rubber wire hanging from Doug’s left earphone, and turned the switch on its connector. “Can you hear me now?”

  “Yeah. What happened?” asked Doug.

  “You weren’t on the intercom—I think maybe you were on the radio,” replied Carson.

  From the turret Boone called, “Doug was on the radio?”

  Carson said, “I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe it was switched off.”

  “There’s three positions: radio, off, and intercom,” said Boone.

  “Damn! Do you think anybody heard me? Do you think that went out on the air?”

  “I don’t know,” replied Boone. “It was short. It’s probably set to their tactical channel. You slide it back toward you for the intercom, the other way for the radio.”

  “Man, I’m sorry, Boone…”

  “If they heard it, they’re going to be wondering why there was an American on their tac channel. Then they’ll be doing radio checks, and I don’t think we’re going to pass for Kazaks. Okay…turn off everything up there that looks like a radio, both of you. They can probably find this thing just by its passive emissions if the radios are on. Shut it all down. That big GPS too—it’s all connected, they’re all networked. We can’t take the time to figure it out and make sure, just shut it all off. I can use the handheld GPS up here.”

  “Shit…” said Doug over the intercom. “I’m so sorry, Boone…”

  Carson said, “It’s done, get past it. We don’t even know if it went out. Hey, Boone, what about the infrared Morse Kilo? It’s still flashing.” Carson was also wearing night vision now, they all were, and he could see the reflected dash-dot-dash every ten seconds.

  “We’ll leave it on for now,” replied Boone. “If they see us, they’ll think we’re friendly. Helicopters and UAVs too. They have night vision and thermal IR up there, so they’ll see us anyway. We might as well put on their IR light, and pass for Kazaks. The friendly-fire thing is really drilled into people now; it’ll take a lot to get them to fire at a Morse Kilo.”

  “Why doesn’t the other ASV have the Morse Kilo on?” asked Carson.

  “I don’t know. Maybe their SOP says only one vehicle per tactical element puts it on. These two were operating by themselves, but you can bet the rest of them aren’t far away.”

  “What about the radio? What if the other Cossacks are trying to get a radio check from these guys?”

  “Radios foul up all the time. The ‘n’ in ‘snafu’ is for normal. People use the wrong frequencies; it happens.”

  “But what if they heard me?” asked Doug, a hint of fear in his voice. “Or what if somebody got out a radio call before we killed them? What if somebody is alive inside the other ASV, on the radio? We never checked inside it.”

  Boone reprimanded him. “Doug! Stop worrying so much. Worry about it tomorrow. Right now we’ve got to haul ass.”

  “Maybe we should stick with the original plan, and use the boat to get across the river?”

  “Doug…please shut the fuck up! I’m going to give the fifty a quick test fire—make sure your CVCs are on good, and close your hatches.” Boone found the turret hand control and rotated the guns around to forward. Using the tilting hand controls, not unlike those for a computer game, it took four seconds for the turret to spin him 180 degrees around to the front. He flipped the night vision tube up on his helmet, and put his right eye to the gun sight; its night vision was already on. The .50 caliber’s optical sight marks were simple and instinctive to figure out. He found a solitary pine tree in his gun sight, and used the topmost hash mark as his aiming point. The turret rotated to make the slight deflection adjustment. When he was on target he flipped the red plastic safety cover off the trigger on his left hand control, and depressed the button for just a half second. Two booms erupted from the barrel in rapid succession, jolting the entire ASV like a hammer. A red tracer streaked out and hit the tree.

  Next, he switched the gun selector to the Mark 19, elevated the barrel to its maximum of nearly 45 degrees, and punched the trigger button again. He wanted the grenade’s explosion to occur as far from them as possible, as a diversion. The gun responded with a single loud, chunking thud. He listened, but didn’t hear the high explosive round’s impact, which was probably more than a mile away. Maybe it was a dud, or maybe it landed in water or soft ground. “Okay, guys,” he said on the intercom. “Now I’m happy: I know they’ll fire when I push the bang button. We’re good to go. All right, Phil, let’s get the hell out of here. Turn right and head up the field close to the tree line.”

  Phil Carson pushed the gear shifter into forward and mashed the accelerator pedal. The diesel’s turbine whined, the ASV lurched into a turn, and they rolled off to the north.

  ****

  Colonel Burgut’s armored command vehicle rolled inside Eagle Company’s temporary perimeter. The vehicle was a stretched version of an ASV, but without a turret or the turret’s heavy weaponry, and furnished within as a mobile headquarters. The two fully armed ASVs accompanying him remained outside the circle of soldiers, humvee jeeps and trucks securing several hectares of woods on the slope of a low hill. The command vehicle’s side door was opened by his first sergeant. After giving a quick look through its small armored glass viewing port, he swung the top section back, and then lowered the bottom. Burgut and his first sergeant put on their fur hats and stepped down from the heated interior into the cold mist. Darkness was smothering the Tennessee winter day.

  “So, what happened here, Senior Lieutenant Kasim?”

  The young Kazak officer did not salute, given the tactical situation. Saluting in the field only helped snipers to distinguish high-ranking targets. All of the soldiers around and within the perimeter were carrying their Kalashnikov rifles and RPD light machine guns
at the ready. They were deployed in a broad circle, weapons facing outward, crouching or lying behind what cover they could find. In the field, his soldiers wore either brown berets or fur hats, depending upon their preference. Standard Kevlar infantry helmets were forbidden by the International Peacekeeping Forces Agreement as being “too warlike in appearance,” and had not been issued. Well, the fools and sycophants who wrote and signed that insane document should be here now, to see this “peacekeeping” operation! All of his men were wearing brown body armor over their uniforms; at least this was not forbidden.

  The junior officer gave his report while standing close to the rear of the command vehicle, trying to absorb some of the heat given off by its diesel engine without breathing its smoke. “Our reconnaissance platoon found fresh automobile tracks nearby in the snow and mud. They followed the tracks to this farm road, and these woods. Here they discovered a vehicle, very cleverly hidden beneath what is left of those two trees. They are called ‘holly’ trees, and they keep their leaves all winter. They have very dense waxy leaves, with small thorns on them. It was an excellent hiding place for a small vehicle. Unfortunately, the automobile exploded. Three men were killed, and two were wounded. One will die.”

  “Those fools,” muttered Burgut. “Why didn’t they follow standard procedure for approaching an abandoned vehicle?”

  “I can’t say, Colonel; perhaps they did, but…”

  “Then why the devil did they detonate the bomb and get themselves killed? Why didn’t they wait for your sappers to arrive?” From Burgut’s command vehicle, it was no more than thirty meters to the scene of the blast. In the last light of day, he could make out that two thick tree trunks had been shattered. The car that had exploded had been concealed in a hiding place beneath the branches of the two trees. Now it was just a blackened metal hulk. The branches were now almost bare of leaves and hanging in broken shreds. The corpses and most of the body parts of the dead had been collected and placed into three black body bags.

  Colonel Burgut could easily imagine why the dead men didn’t wait for the explosives disposal sappers: greed. They probably saw something of value in the automobile, and wanted to keep it for themselves, without sharing. So typical of the cocky and egotistical reconnaissance soldiers, who thought they knew everything, including the job of detecting and disarming bombs. In his more cynical moments, he thought that soldiers volunteered for recon because it gave them more opportunities for unobserved looting.

  “Colonel, we are still examining the site, but a more complete answer as to exactly what happened must await tomorrow’s daylight.”

  “Yes, yes.” It would be fully dark in just a few more minutes, and it was obviously too dangerous an area to set up visible working lights.

  “From this location we found signs of several insurgents on foot, and tracked them to a cave two kilometers from here. Our sapper squad is now moving very slowly with the recon platoon, as you might understand after what happened here.”

  “Thank you, Lieutenant. Send only one man inside the cave, and keep me informed.” Burgut climbed back into the warm and dry interior of his command vehicle, and settled into his padded swivel seat with a sigh. The first sergeant climbed in behind him and closed the two-part armored door. The command car was longer between the wheels than the other ASVs, and lacked a turret well taking up the center of its space. Instead, this open central area contained four comfortable seats for staff officers and radiomen, radio equipment, swing-out flat computer screens, and two folding desktops.

  The American armored security vehicles were luxurious compared to the Russian equivalents he was familiar with from serving almost thirty years in the Soviet, the Russian and then the Kazak armies. The American M-1117 “Guardian” vehicles even had automatic transmissions, and could drive 110 kilometers per hour on paved roads. But the American vehicle had several major flaws, the worst of which being that it could not ford a river, unlike the similar but lighter Russian four-wheeled BRDM amphibious scout vehicles. A stream only one and a half meters deep was enough to stop the American ASVs, and in Tennessee such streams bisected the countryside every few kilometers.

  With only four tires, both the American and Russian armored scout vehicles were frequently trapped by deep mud. The ASVs, intended for Military Police units and convoy escort duty, were really meant for roads. But because they were the most potent weapon platforms the foreign peacekeeping battalions had been provided by their American hosts, they were often put to the test pursuing rebels across rough ground. Frequently they failed these off-road tests, and so the drivers were under orders not to stray far from solid paving. To enforce this policy, severe disciplinary measures were enforced against the crews of the armored vehicles when they managed to get them stuck in bog mires.

  It was the mission of the mounted horse troops of Saber Company to pursue rebels through thick woods and across streams and muddy or broken terrain, when wheeled vehicles could advance no further. Best of all, the horses could be obtained locally, and they required no supply lines for diesel fuel or spare parts. Tennessee had no shortage of excellent horses for the taking. Within their obvious limitations, they were still useful in a military role. It warmed Colonel Burgut’s Kazak heart to see cavalry employed in the twenty-first century. “Around the corner, we shall meet the past,” the old proverb went.

  Colonel Burgut’s late predecessor as commander of the Kazak Battalion, Colonel Jibek, had repeatedly requested tracked fighting vehicles, such as the excellent Bradley APCs, but to no avail. The Kazaks and the other international units were allegedly “peacekeepers” in Tennessee, and by the terms of the I.P.F. Agreement, they were limited to the vehicles and weapons provided to American Military Police units, including the ASVs. The 12.7mm machine guns and the 40mm automatic grenade launchers of their armored security vehicles were the most powerful weapons they were permitted to have. How could they be expected to pacify the rebel counties while fighting with one hand tied behind their backs? Just so American politicians could maintain the propaganda fiction that the low-intensity war in Tennessee was a “peacekeeping” mission…

  Now Colonel Burgut even suspected that the duplicitous Americans were holding back deliveries of 40mm ammunition for the ASVs’ M-19 automatic grenade launchers. A “clerical mistake” had resulted in a shipment of similar but not interchangeable 40mm grenades for rifle-mounted launchers. How stupid were the Americans, to produce two very similar but non-interchangeable projectile grenades in the same caliber!

  Bradley fighting vehicles, with their all-terrain tracks, large troop compartments, amphibious capability and 25mm chain gun were what they needed! Or the superb eight-wheeled Strykers, which carried a dozen troops inside. Instead we were only given four-wheeled armored scout cars, humvee jeeps and unarmored troop trucks! Colonel Burgut had been to Fort Campbell. He had seen the hectare after hectare of tightly parked tanks and fighting vehicles. They were countless in their hundreds, left abandoned and rusting, often stripped and cannibalized for parts. The vast helicopter parks were even worse. It made him sick to see the discarded weaponry of the declining empire.

  The once great American military machine had been neglected and underfunded for too many years. It was still enormous in sheer numbers of weapons, but it was a decayed and rotting shell, hollow inside. Without money for continuous upkeep, and without enough trained professional soldiers to do the work, America’s ultra-high-tech weapon systems were not sustainable. They were sliding from the status of temporarily not mission capable to permanently unrecoverable. As a result, the international peacekeeping forces were reduced to fighting a counterinsurgency war with troop trucks, humvee jeeps, and a few armored security vehicles.

  It never changed: politicians dictated to soldiers, and the soldiers always died as a result. Colonel Burgut had learned this lesson again and again over his three decades as a professional soldier. Why should America be any different from Afghanistan, Kosovo or Chechnya? It was time to retire, and soon he wou
ld retire on his own horse ranch in Montana or Wyoming. “Big Sky Country,” the Americans called Montana. “The Cowboy State,” they called Wyoming. Colonel Arman Burgut looked forward to taking off his uniform for the last time.

  Burgut’s young enlisted radioman turned in his own chair. “Colonel, I have been trying to contact Gray Wolf 4 and 5 for a scheduled situation report, with no success. Now I have just heard the oddest thing. I heard English spoken on our tactical channel—an American voice.”

  “Are you certain?”

  “I’m quite certain. Positive.”

  “What did this American voice say?”

  “I don’t know the meaning of the words; I only know that I heard English. But I did recognize the word ‘radio’ spoken very clearly.”

  “Probably an American unit is using our assigned frequency by accident. As you know, strange atmospheric conditions sometimes occur at twilight, and they could be quite far away.”

  “Colonel, that has never happened on our tactical net before. And why would they have our encryption key?”

  “I can’t explain it, Sergeant, but such mistakes happen. Continue trying to contact Wolf 4 and 5.”

  The radioman appeared doubtful, but he answered, “Yes sir.”

  Burgut further instructed him, “Send an alert message to all of the companies. ‘We are unable to contact Gray Wolf 4 and 5. They have missed scheduled radio contacts. Report their position if they are seen. Attempt to establish communications with them, physically and in person if necessary. Exercise caution.’ All right?”

  “Yes sir, I’ll send it now.” The radioman jotted down notes on a pad, then swiveled his seat around to his bank of communications equipment to begin his task.

  This strange report was the latest in a string of incidents today that bothered the colonel. First: three soldiers from his Headquarters Company had been missing since before dawn. Perhaps they were merely drunk somewhere, having found a barn full of ‘white lightning’ corn whisky, or some American girls to amuse them. It had happened before…but never during a major field operation. Second: the Eagle Company recon platoon had stupidly—and fatally—triggered a booby-trapped car, instead of waiting for the sappers to check it. Third: the two armored scout vehicles on detached patrol missed their scheduled radio contact, and now there was a peculiar report of hearing English spoken on their assigned frequency.