The Last Centurion

by John Ringo

  Iranians and Arabs are okay fighters until you throw them a loop. So far, everything had gone according to plan. The plan had just changed.

  Bunch of them had gone into the secondary ammo dump, the one where we'd dropped most of the ammo from the FOBs we'd had scattered around Iran. I figured I'd light them up first.

  Wow, that was exciting.

  I'd tried to make sure shit actually blew up. You'd think ammo would just blow up and stay blowed up.

  Now I knew why those ammo guys had so carefully fired every single Carl Gustav.

  The explosives went off then the ammo started going off. Or not going off. Some of it was just flying through the air. In every direction.

  Big, big, big explosion. Lots of secondaries. Lit up the sky despite it being broad daylight, sort of an orange-purple. And it kept going. Shit going off overhead. Shit hitting the ground and exploding.

  It was hitting us and exploding.

  Oh, not a lot. And we were mostly in bunkers. But it was popping all over the place. We didn't take any casualties but it was mighty damned exciting.

  "Right, Fillup, get rid of their vehicles for me."

  Javelin is one hell of a weapon. Absolutely sucks to be up against, mind you. But that's the point if you're holding one.

  They make, like, no signature. The missile pops up under very low power and then ignites about twenty feet up. And the signature even then is really small. Something about very efficient combustion.

  The really nice part, though . . . Well, there are so many nice parts about Javelin.

  Nice part one. They're fire and forget. You lock them on the target, fire them and they just track right the fuck on. Forget the old days of having to keep the sight on the target like TOW and Dragon. Fire and fugedaboudit. Fucker is going to hit the target five times out of six.

  Second nice part. The target is going to be smoked. Take a tank. Armored like a motherfucker, right? Sort of. They can't armor them like a motherfucker everywhere. So the majority of the armor is up front, where you'd expect a round to hit anyone but the French.

  Javelin? Comes down from way the fuck up. They went damned near vertical at that range. Came right the fuck down. On the softest part of the tanks.

  Third nice part about Javelin? Really easy to fire another one. Drop the launcher, slap on the sight, get another target.

  Fourth nice thing about Javelin? Range. Dragons were about a klick. The vehicles that were the target would have been out of range. (And Dragon had a minimum range of six hundred meters. So you had a four hundred meter engagement basket. Sucked. Oh, and they used to blow the fuck up when you fired them. Better than nothing if you were up against tanks but not by much.)

  Now, the manual said that the maximum range on Javelin employment was 2000 meters. At the range, it had been found to be at least 2500. And one SF team in Iraq had gotten a kill at over 3000.

  These guys were at about 1500 meters from the Javelin teams. Clap shot.

  They could have fired back if they were looking the right way. And if they'd seen the teams pop up and fire. They didn't get much of a chance.

  The company had four Jav teams. They'd talked it out and engaged the two tanks, a 20mm gun and the APC first. The thing about the Javelin was . . . Okay, another nice thing. They went way the fuck up. Time of flight for a short range shot or a long range shot was about twenty seconds. If you were in a hurry to take somebody out, not so good.

  If you were in a hurry to take out a bunch of things, pretty good. Because our guys could reload, target and fire in less than ten seconds.

  Second flight was off before the first had hit. Targeted at . . . the two tanks, a 20mm gun and the APC.

  Never do unto others unless you do unto them hard.

  Then they slid down the berm and displaced. Just in case.

  Meantime, the guys in the gear park were freaking out. Some of them were running forward. Some were running back. The ones near the ammo dump were just rolling around on the ground.

  I do so love my job.

  So I figured, what the fuck? Everybody survived the first ammo dump . . .

  I had no need for any of the ammo. I had all I could carry in Fort Lonesome and then some. And, what the hell, ammo is cheap.

  This one, fortunately, was further away than the first. It was also bigger. Less rained down on us. More rained down on them. Most of it didn't explode, mind you. Clearing the area was going to be an interesting job. And, okay, there was going to be some ammo for the locals to pick up and use. It was going to be on each other. They'd been doing that since Sargon; some scattered and very fucked up ammo wasn't going to change things. But the "Husayn Ali Martyr Brigade" was not going to be using it if I had my way.

  So three "technicals" had survived, all mounting 14.7mm machine guns. They were now looking for whatever had killed them. I doubt any of them had ever faced Javelins. They were pointing the guns into the sky.

  The Jav teams displaced. They popped back up. They only fired once this time.

  Smoke three more technicals. Round two to Bandit.

  Now, the gear park was about a mile long. And it could be confusing as hell if you didn't have a map, which I trusted they didn't.

  Well, I more than trusted. I couldn't figure out, anymore, who was trying to attack us and who was running away. Except the running away ones were probably the ones running up the berm and sliding down the other side.

  Into concertina. Hadn't intended it for that use, but it worked.

  "Barriers that are not covered by direct fire are of no use except annoying an enemy." Don't know where I heard that, AOC maybe, but it's true. If you put out barriers, wire, mines, tank-traps, and don't have fire on them all they do is slow the enemy down, slightly, and annoy him. You might kill a few but most get through unscathed.

  Unless they're panicked and stuck in concertina. In which case, as soon as they get unstuck, they start running again. Into mines.

  And then they had to get past the fence. Which most couldn't. And thus tried to run to the openings. And if they hadn't seen their buddies getting blown up, they ran into mines. Those that had mostly hunkered by the fence and wept.

  Let's go for round three. I hit my last charger and started to watch umpteen billion dollars of Uncle Sam's gear go up in flames.

  Most of it was pretty unspectacular. A tank getting hit, when it's fully loaded, is an awesome sight. A pillar of flame from its exploding ammunition, turret flying off, etc.

  The ones hit by the Javelins had just burst into flame and cooked the crews. Not too spectacular. I was disappointed.

  The mortar carriers were okay. They tore apart. Trucks went up like bombs, as should be.

  Strykers, even, were quite spectacular. One round on the engine, two in the crew compartment. They really tore into ribbons.

  Fucking Bradleys?

  Same load out. Turret came off of a couple. Burning like shit, don't get me wrong. All sorts of plastic and stuff. But not the earthshaking kaboom I'd hoped for.

  The damned Abrams with five God-damned artillery rounds and C-4 and tank rounds in them?

  Puffs of smoke. I couldn't even tell for sure if they were damaged. Pissed me off.

  Oh, the guys caught in this?

  Man, we'd put all sorts of explosives in there. And when shit blows up, it throws stuff around. Think various sized pieces of metal, wood and plastic going through the air at a very fast rate. Not pleasant to be around. Then there were the fuel trucks.

  Now, they were empty, mind you. But I'd sort of forgotten there were going to be fumes. And fumes, generally, blow up better than liquids.

  Okay, they were spectacular.

  I was running out of eyes at this point, there had been various effects on my video surveillance system, so I got on the radios.

  "Samad?"

  "Are things going to stop blowing up, sahib?"

  "Yeah, pretty much done. Hey, you guys did most of the work. Good job, by the way."

  "Then may Buddha forgi
ve us, sahib."

  "Still some guys crawling around in the ruins last time I'd looked. Keep an eye out."

  "Your whiskey is safe, sahib."

  (Oh, where'd the booze come from? This was a big ass LOG base before we packed it with all the shit from Iran. Yes, Rule One, no drinking, pornography or such was in effect. But when big civilian brass visit they don't want to hear about no fucking Rule One. One of the things I'd found in the inventory was the storage for booze for the Distinguished Persons. And, trust me, brother, it was the good shit.

  (Okay, logistics sidenote. I didn't know that there was booze out there in a CONEX. But after Samad turned up those Brit uniforms, I decided to see what weird crap was stored here. Figuring that "weird" meant small amounts, I sorted the full computer inventory of the original LOG base for smallest number of items. Also where I found the swagger stick, which I still have. As well as a bunch of really odd things. I don't know what dip-shit left behind several pounds of gold in thin sheets but it was packed on the evac vehicles along with a stash of random currency also left behind. Really, you wouldn't believe some of the shit I turned up. The "less than twenty items" went to fucking pages and pages. Most of it "case, one each." I kept expecting to find the Arc of the Convenant.

  (I said I didn't like being a logistics puke, never said I wasn't good at it. End sidenote.)

  (Wife's Edit: Is that where that silver tea service came from?)

  (Shhhh! And the answer is sort of complicated . . . )

  Where was I? Radios. Oh, yeah.

  Wasn't really radio. I just swiveled around in my chair.

  "Fillup, I think the rest of the party is yours. I'm going to go hang out with Samad."

  "Roger," Captain Butterfill replied, heroically or some shit. "Thanks for leaving something for us to do."

  So the Strykers rolled out the gates and turned north, up the outside of the base. There were now some of the bad guys up on the berm. Some of them shot at the Strykers. They didn't get more than one shot.

  Two platoons unassed by the breaks in the berm. Where the footprints crossed the gaps it was clear the mines were gone. They got up on the berm and started working the remains of the gear park.

  The third platoon, which was short because it had supplied the guards on the gates and in bunkers, continued a sweep around the base. Any enemy they spotted they engaged with "direct fire."

  A few of the guys had made it through the gear park, what was left of it, and into the open area in front of Fort Lonesome. I got to the main control bunker as firing started up from the lines.

  "Samad. What are you doing letting people get this close to my whiskey?"

  "They will not get your whiskey, sahib."

  "Or my women."

  "Or your women."

  And they didn't. There was some long-range fire that might have been an issue if a. the Nepos hadn't been in bunkers and b. the RIFs could shoot worth a shit. Since a. equalled value "yes" and b. equalled value "no" it was a nuisance not a threat. And the Nepos had gotten to be some really good shots. I wouldn't trust them on a patrol, not yet, but firing from their bunkers they were racking up some kills.

  But there were still guys in the gear park and they were going to have to be combed out. With a bunch of unexploded ordnance in their midst.

  It wasn't, by the way, getting dark. I looked at my watch when I got to Samad's bunker and it was 1430, two thirty PM.

  The whole "battle" had taken thirty minutes. Round Four was done.

  So what to do next?

  Wait for dark.

  Fillup arrayed snipers up on the berms, including what was left of the ammo berms. Sometimes they took fire from rats hiding in the remaining gear. We couldn't actually level the place and there was plenty of cover.

  Then we waited. And had a drink of water and some cold MREs. I ordered Fillup and Samad to rotate guys for downtime; it was going to be a long night.

  When it got dark we went to Round Five.

  It was tedious and it was dangerous but that describes a lot of shit that soldiers do.

  As soon as it got dark, it started without any help. The RIFs, thinking they could escape under cover of darkness, started trying to slip up the berm and away.

  Sniper rifles come with thermal imagery scopes.

  Our enemy did not have thermal imagery equipment. It was a moonless night and just about as black as pitch with all our lights shut down.

  To them, we were invisible.

  They glowed in the fucking dark under thermal imagery.

  I moved over to the berm to watch. The whole group was arrayed on the west and north sides of the berm. Samad had the south exit from the base covered.

  The guys had been firing at the RIFs hiding in the garbage during the afternoon. The RIFs knew they were on the west and north side. They'd figured out, from the firing in that direction, that the south was blocked. They went east.

  To get out on the east side, they had to climb the berm.

  That was not a fast exercise. It was fifteen feet high and steeply sloped. And there was, mostly, an open area before it.

  And they glowed.

  Under thermal imagery, good thermal imagery and the scopes were sixth generation, a person glows white-hot. Their footprints glow white for as much as twenty minutes depending on conditions. When they move through concealed areas, the heat of their body rises, as it did this night, and you can see a faint trace like a ghost moving overhead.

  And if you're a sniper with an assigned area you wait for that trace to come into view and you shoot the guy in the chest. If he's still moving, then, you shoot him again in the head.

  The base wasn't a box. It was a long oval, more or less, curved a bit like a kidney. It was seven hundred meters across most of the base, berm to berm. Long shot for a sniper. But they'd gotten settled in, stacked sandbags, used laser rangefinders. There wasn't any wind. It was still as death. Except for the occasional crack of a shot, echoing off of the berms. Sometimes there'd be another. Not usually.

  I didn't interfere. I just walked behind them, listening.

  "Sector two-five."

  "Fucker is smoking a cigarette. How fucking dumb can you be?"

  Pause.

  Crack.

  "Hope he liked his last smoke."

  A sniper works with a spotter. The spotter, well, spots the targets and gives the sniper information on distance, weather, what he should have eaten for dinner.

  All the sniper has to do is dial in the information on his scope, take a good steady stance, breathe deep the gathering gloom and terminate.

  Bravo company had some very good snipers. Lord Love my boys. Okay, Fillup's boys.

  I also had some good guys at "Close Quarters Battle." Not that, I hoped, there would be any of that tonight.

  But when the movers settled down, the guys still in the area apparently being of the correct opinion that trying to leave was suicide, the rest of the company had to get into action.

  Teams spread out and moved through the park. They'd done it before and knew their way around. But it was somewhat different after a. murthering great explosions and b. said explosions having scattered unexploded ordnance around.

  The teams, though, weren't there to fight. They were there to flush. They, too, were using thermal imagery and were in contact with the snipers. Very direct contact. As that part of the battle started, the snipers shifted around. Each was assigned a sector and a team. And the two talked. A lot.

  "Okay, you've got me, right?"

  "You're right by that fucking blown-up Humvee."

  "That describes a lot of this sector. There's, like, two hundred Humvees here, all blowed the fuck up. I'm waving a chemlight over my head. You've got me, right?"

  (To add clarity to this exchange: A chemlight is a plastic tube that has some chemicals that mix when you bend it and make light. Think those necklace thingies. Well, the military has chemlights that give off invisible light. I shit you not. There are both infrared and ultraviolet. If you break
one, you can't see the light unless you've got thermal imagery in the first case or UV imagery in the second. This is the type of chemlight the guy was waving. The world is a very strange place when it has chemical lights that don't give off light.)

  "So is . . . Second Platoon's One Alpha, I think. Yeah, man, I got you. The dumbass by the blown-up Humvee waving the UV chemlight. The other guy is by an Abrams."

  "Okay, we're moving south at this time."

  "Trust me, I've got you. I could smoke you and fuck your girlfriend. And there's a heat source in that next Humvee to your . . . left. So watch your ass."

  Unexploded ordnance could get one of the guys. If he wasn't very damned careful. It was all over the fucking place. One thing I hadn't counted on. Also fires which fucked with the thermal imagery.

  But what I was really worried about was one of the snipers taking out one of the flushers.

  Seemed to be working out all right.

  It took all fucking night. Snipers got rotated. You could only look through a scope so long before your eyes started getting fuzzy and we did not want fuzzy snipers. The guys doing the flushing went in then out and got some downtime, if nothing else a few minutes to not be in wracking terror between stepping over unexploded cluster munitions and not knowing if some RIF was right around the corner. The Nepos got some Zs. I forced Samad to rotate them; he thought they were just being lazy. I forced him to rack out.

  Me? I kept moving around the base. There were problems, there always were. That was what I was there for. Me and Fillup who also didn't get any sleep.

  By dawn's early light the broad stripes and bright stars were still gallantly waving. And, yes, there was a flagpole. Before the rest of the fucking Army pulled out, along with all the Non-Governmental Organizations and the Press, there had been, like, nine flags up. Ours, Iran's new/old one, various countries (Britain) that had something to do with the LOG base, a fucking UN one.

  When everybody left we took them all down. (We burned the UN one. And the French.) Except the Stars and Stripes. And we had fucking reveille every morning with a raising and retreat in the afternoon complete with badly rendered bugle over loudspeakers.