Operation Mayhem

by Steve Heaney MC

  The first flare was about to fizzle out, going dark as it hit the jungle. I figured Dolly’s was the patrol most in need of light right now. The vegetation was closer and thicker around 33 Bravo’s trenches, the terrain being wetter and more swampy, which had made it harder for the villagers to fully clear their arcs of fire. Plus there were folds in the ground – ditches and hidden gullies – for the enemy to use to mask their advance.

  I felt it in my bones: Dolly was the one who most needed the light.

  I took hold of the 51 mm, hefted it up and swung it through 180 degrees, pivoting on my right knee. I got it in position and drove it down again, base plate smacking into the earth with a heavy thud. It was now orientated towards the north, with 33 Bravo being some three hundred yards away from me. I angled it at 45 degrees, to get the range, and reached behind me.

  Cantrill was still lying prone on the deck and I didn’t blame him. With all the fire we were taking, it made sense to keep lower than a snake’s belly. The air was thick with the peppery, firework smell of cordite, and a haze from all the gunfire lay low across the village. But still he had a fresh mortar round ready and waiting, and he slapped it into my hand. The Royal Marine captain was doing me proud.

  I yelled like a madman. ‘DOLLY! YOU’RE GONNA GET ILLUME! PICK YOUR TARGETS!’

  With Dolly being so isolated out on our left flank, I wanted him and his boys to have plenty of prior warning. I let the mortar fly. It flew on its silent trajectory, before bursting to the front of 33 Bravo’s trenches, throwing the ragged jungle into stark relief.

  I straightened up: ‘USE THE LIGHT! PICK YOUR TARGETS! PICK YOUR TARGETS!’

  The moment I’d finished yelling I heard a massive upsurge in fire from Dolly’s battle line. There was the pop-pop-pop of controlled SA80 fire, plus long, punching bursts from 33 Bravo’s Gimpy.

  To my immediate left a second GPMG joined in the fire, hosing down the rebel fighters massing at Dolly’s position. It was H. Due to the fact that all the other friendly positions were behind him, H could cover a 180-degree arc from due south to due north. Or at least, all friendly positions should have been well behind him. Right now he had us two lunatics bang out in the open on his right and with not even a shell-scrape to hunker down in.

  H kept ramping the Gimpy to left and right. He was dropping rebel fighters as they tried to sneak along the drainage ditches to either side of the main highway, then pivoting left to give Dolly supporting fire, hammering rounds into those trying to rush 33 Bravo’s trenches. On H’s right shoulder he had James ‘Bucks’ Roebuck, the second guy manning that lone trench, and I could see Bucks likewise blasting away with his SA80. That was one assault rifle we didn’t want having any stoppages.

  Their position had borne the brunt of the battle since the opening shots had been fired. I’d heard H make the one ammo belt change already on the GPMG. He had to be burning through his second belt. Firing ten-round bursts, it only took twenty pulls on the trigger and that was a belt of 200 rounds of link exhausted. With sixty bursts, that would be all his ammo finished – and then H and his wingman were either going to get overrun, or they’d have to bug out and abandon their position.

  ‘H! Watch your ammo!’ I yelled across to him. ‘WATCH YOUR FUCKING AMMO! WATCH YOUR AMMO!’

  I turned in the direction of Nathe’s trenches. After H, they’d taken the next greatest volume of enemy fire, and they had returned it with good measure.

  ‘Nathe! Watch your ammo! WATCH YOUR FUCKING AMMO! WATCH YOUR AMMO!’

  I’d fired three of the illume rounds now, meaning I had fifteen remaining. With the light up our fire was fearsome and precise, if only we could keep a careful watch on the ammo. But when you could see your targets under the light, the temptation was to let rip on auto. What I wouldn’t give now for some HE rounds for the 51 mm. In the time it took one illume to drift to earth I’d get four to five HE mortars launched in quick succession, smashing the enemy apart.

  I’d be calling out to Cantrill: ‘Illume! HE! HE! HE! HE! HE! Illume!’ And so on and so forth.

  But even without HE, the 51 mm was still proving a game-changer. Getting the light up had tilted the balance of things maybe just in our favour. The battle was balanced on a knife-edge still, but at least we had deliberate aimed shots going down, and we were getting pretty damn close to where we needed to be: one shot = one kill.

  The first illume round went down and out now, fizzling to darkness in the jungle. Round two was only seconds away from plunging into the forest to the far side of the railroad. Round three was halfway to earth above Dolly’s position. It was time to light them up again.

  I swung right 90 degrees, hefting the mortar with me, so I was facing to my front. The extreme exertion of the long crawl, followed by the sheer physical effort of ramping the 51 mm tube around was half-killing me. I felt as if I’d been sitting under one of Lungi Lol’s drenching tropical rainstorms, my combats were that soaked with sweat. I was literally steaming with it – clouds of water vapour evaporating from my body into the cool night air.

  The fourth illume went up without a word having been spoken between Cantrill and me, other than: Round! I sensed it was a nice, long, deep shot, one that would burst a good two hundred yards beyond the fringe of jungle. The moment it ignited my eyes were drawn to flashes of movement out on the main highway.

  In the few short moments of darkness since that first illume to our front had died, the rebel commander had got his men on the move. Scores of heavily armed figures were darting across the dirt track, heading in the direction of Dolly’s position. Being the man furthest forward, there wasn’t anyone better placed to spot the rebels, or to call down the fire.

  I could see fighters armed with AK47s, plus others hefting RPGs and belt-fed RPK light machine guns, the Russian equivalent of the GPMG. H had his focus on targets to the front of Dolly’s trenches, which he was blasting apart with his gun. His wing-man, Bucks, was likewise smashing fire into them with his SA80. I needed them to swing right ninety and mallet the rebels surging across the highway.

  ‘H! Bucks! Target movement on track four hundred metres! Bend in track! Bend in track! RAPID FIRE!’

  H tensed his shoulders and swung his gun east. The muzzle spat out a long burst of flame, as he hammered out the first burst. It tore into the ditch to one side of the track, where the rebels were mustering to make the dash across the open road. We weren’t using tracer. We had none. We’d have used it if Mick had had any – packing each 200-round belt with four normal ball rounds to a fifth of tracer. At night, the first tracer round gives you your line to aim for: fuck, I’m high, drop down three. The second confirms you’re on target.

  In daylight you can see the strike of bullets on the ground. You can gauge from that the need to adjust fire: drop ten and come right five. Fighting in the dark and with no tracer, the only indication we had whether our rounds were on target was seeing people get hit and fall. The way the rebels on the roadside were going down, H had to be hammering in the rounds bang on the bull’s-eye.

  I saw figures get smashed to the ground and struggle to get up again, but before they were halfway to their feet the Death Dealer had cut them down once more.

  Some three hundred yards out from the village the main highway kinked north, beyond which it lay out of our line of sight. The rebels were surging across it at the bend in the track. I figured they had to be planning to move to our far left flank and advance on Dolly’s position from there. At 300 yards’ distance from us, it was well within range for engaging with the GPMG, which is accurate up to 1000 yards or more.

  With the SA80, 300 yards was about the limit of its accurate range, even if every weapon had been fitted with a night optic sight. As it was we were using the basic iron sights – the metal V at the rear of the carry handle, which you line up with the nipple on the muzzle-end – which meant Bucks was having to operate at the very limit of his marksman’s skills.

  I remained in the kneeling position, scanning the terra
in 180 degrees to our front and trying to get a sense of what the rebel commanders were going to try next. The light over Taff’s position spluttered out, throwing the railroad back into shadows and darkness. I checked the one above Dolly’s patrol, where I figured the rebels had shifted the present thrust of their attack. Their fighters had got well malleted to our front and on our right flank, so it made sense to shift well left.

  I figured the railroad had to be littered with bodies – rebel dead and injured – as was the highway. I could see the corpses littering the dirt road ahead of us. Any rebel commander worth his salt would have learned a vital lesson by now: Operation Kill British was going to be no pushover. Wherever he got his men moving out in the open we were getting the light above them and they were getting smashed. Hence the need to stick to the cover of the jungle and the darkness, and to try to hit us from fronts we least expected.

  Hence the need on our part for maximum vigilance.

  As I knelt there eyeing the distant fringe of jungle, I was scanning for any close movement as well. Surely the rebel commander would have sent some of his fighters forward to take out Cantrill and me. With the state of mind his fighters were in, he was sure to have no shortage of volunteers. Oh, take me, me, me! Take me! I’m bulletproof!

  If he managed to take us out – by either killing us or worse still capturing us – in one fell swoop he’d have half of his problems sorted: no more light. With the threat from the rear as well, I felt like I needed eyes in the back of my bloody head.

  But as luck would have it, the rebels were about to hit Cantrill and me right from our very front.

  18

  I caught the flash of fiery movement even as the noise washed over me: pshshuuusshshh!

  RPG launch.

  From somewhere to the southeast of us the fiery trail of an RPG cut through the blinding darkness. The high-explosive projectile came barrelling towards us, with me and the 51 mm tube bang in its line of fire. Time seemed to freeze. I hit the deck in slow motion, even as the express-train whoooooooossh of the thing drilled into my head.

  At the very last instant the increasing velocity of the RPG round must have forced it to climb a fraction higher, and it tore over the top of my head, missing me, the mortar tube and Marine Captain Richard Cantrill by bare inches. I was left enveloped in the backblast of its rocket motor, fumes billowing around my ears and a choking, burning smell hanging in my nostrils.

  It screamed onwards. I figured it would smash into the trees around the HQ ATAP, which lay next in its line of fire, I tensed for the blast, but none came. I didn’t hear any explosion at all – fuck knows why. All I did know was this: that had been no lucky shot. It had been targeted directly at Cantrill and me. The rebel commander knew where the battle was being orchestrated from, and killing us had to be his number one priority now.

  ‘What – the – fuck!’ I exclaimed.

  Cantrill was lying face down in the dirt. He didn’t so much as raise his head to acknowledge me.

  For a good thirty seconds the fire from the enemy side slackened, as if upon orders to do so. From the positions to our front I figured that as few as three belt-fed machine guns were lancing in the tracer now. The rest had ceased firing. Then even those few remaining guns fell silent.

  All quiet on the Lungi Lol front.

  What the fuck were the rebels up to now?

  In the eeriness of the comparative silence I heard cries of ‘MAG CHANGE!’ Blokes to either side of us were shoving fresh magazines onto their SA8os.

  The loud click and slide of a fresh bullet being rammed up the barrel was followed by a tense, expectant stillness, as we waited for whatever the rebels were going to try next. I figured we’d just survived their first two major pushes – one a feint to our front, the other along our right flank on the railroad. I didn’t think for one moment the rebels were done with us. Without doubt they’d be regrouping in the jungle for a third try.

  I flicked my eyes back to Cantrill. We hadn’t spoken a single word since the RPG had torn across us. Apart from the fact that we were still alive, the amazing thing was how we’d somehow been working faultlessly as a team. He hadn’t fumbled even one of the mortar rounds; each had been ready and waiting where and when I needed it. I gave him the faintest of nods. He forced a smile in return.

  We had to win this thing in the time the light would buy us, for sooner or later we were going to start running out of illume. Somehow, I needed to keep the light up, while rationing the mortar rounds. I’d dived onto my front to avoid the RPG, which meant I was pretty much unsighted right now. I risked bobbing up again to get eyes-on the silent battlefield.

  I got on one knee, glanced north and I could see the flare round drifting earthwards over Dolly’s position. Bare seconds now and the light over 33 Bravo would go dark. Directly to my front, the most recently-fired illume round was still riding high above the main highway, oscillating gently from side to side. But over Taff’s position on the right flank all was very dark.

  I grabbed the 51 mm tube, twisted 90 degrees right, planted the base plate, took a baton from Cantrill and fired. Even before the round had burst over Taff’s position I swivelled through 180 degrees, sighted over Dolly’s patrol and got a second round airborne. They burst in quick succession, throwing a burning halo across the sky to either of our flanks, Cantrill and me sandwiched in the centre of the glare.

  We were six illume rounds down now. Twelve remaining. Or four more blasts of three across our front.

  My gut instinct was telling me that the bad guys were heading for Dolly’s position, way out on our left. I’d spotted the rebels surging across the main highway in that direction. At the distance they were out from the village, I figured they had to be heading for a distinctive feature that we’d already scoped out as a major threat. The blokes had discovered it via the probing patrols that we’d pushed out from the village, and they’d given it the nickname Fern Gully.

  Fern Gully was a knife-cut ravine some seven to eight feet deep. It ran from the fringes of the main highway out towards 33 Bravo’s front. Come one of the torrential rainstorms we’d been having, the gully would fill with water, draining off the road and the surrounding terrain. But right now it was comparatively dry. Fringed with thick bush, it provided great cover to mask the movement of a large body of men at arms.

  It was the perfect feature via which to advance on 33 Bravo’s battle trenches unseen, and get in amongst Dolly and his blokes. I risked raising myself still higher, getting into a half-crouch so I could check for any enemy movement through Fern Gully itself. It was only the fact that I was fractionally higher than I’d been before which alerted me to the threat to Cantrill and me: the rebels were danger-close, creeping through the bush to overwhelm us.

  From the corner of the punji field nearest to us I heard a distinctive crack – dry vegetation crunching under the weight of a human footfall. My head darted around, my eyes flicking towards the noise, my ears straining. I figured I could detect rustling in the low undergrowth now – all that had been left standing by the villagers who’d cleared out the arcs of fire. We hadn’t got them to cut to ground level: we’d only asked them to clear anything that might hide a man from our fire.

  Then I heard an unmistakable sound: the hard clink of metal on metal. It rang out through the silent darkness like a gunshot. It was the kind of noise a spare magazine makes when banging against a rifle, or a grenade against a steel webbing buckle.

  Either Nathe’s blokes had moved far forward of their trenches without giving warning to anyone, or we had rebels between Nathe’s position and ours. I spotted a shadow creeping forwards. This wasn’t fucking Nathe’s lot. It couldn’t be. If they were coming in the least they’d have done is yell out a warning: Steve! Steve! Nathe plus one coming in!

  The rebels were there – right fucking on top of us.

  They were so far forward that they were well out of the cones of light cast by the illume rounds. Now I understood the silence: the rebel commander must
have sent a hunter unit forward to nail Cantrill and me. Smash the guys putting up the light, so he could launch his next offensive in total darkness.

  I let the mortar tube fall from my grip, and in one smooth movement I grabbed the SA80 in my right hand, lifted it from the dirt and brought it into my shoulder.

  Bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang!

  I let rip with a savage ten-round burst, aiming at the movement and the flitting shadows. Thank fuck that even after laying my SA80 in the dirt for so long I hadn’t had a stoppage. I paused for a second, watching like a hawk. Cantrill was down on his belly and I’d not breathed a word to him of the threat. I figured he had to be wondering who the hell I was shooting at, though surely he could hear them.

  More movement.

  Hordes of shadowy figures rushing us.

  Bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang!

  Shifting my aim left and right, I hammered rounds into them. I heard the hollow, soggy thuttd-thuttd that 5.56 mm rounds make when they tear into human flesh at very close range. Any nearer and we’d be poking the fuckers with bayonets. They were so close I didn’t need the SA8o’s metal sights: I was scanning the darkness with the weapon in my shoulder, sighting down the length of the barrel.

  I heard screams now, agonised screams.

  I realised how dark it was.

  It was pitch black.

  Dark, dark, dark.

  More movement. How many of the fuckers were there? I saw figures rear up from the bush in front of me, eyes white in the darkness and wide with … what? Adrenaline? Drugs? Voodoo-bulletproof-madness?

  Muzzles sparked from barely a few dozen yards away.

  I answered fire with fire: Bang-bang-bang-bang! Four more rounds.

  Bang-bang-bang-bang! Another four.

  More screaming.

  Deafeningly close.

  I was dripping in sweat, my heart was going like a jackhammer, and I was high as a kite on the adrenaline.

  I heard these spine-chilling cries of agony rend the darkness, this time a little further to my right. It had to be from where the rebel fighters had blundered into the punji fields. My fire must have driven them back that way, the injured and the survivors fleeing into the safety of the open darkness, only to get stuck with bamboo spikes honed to a razor sharpness.