The Best Defense

by Todd A. Stone

  He looked at his watch. We have about twenty minutes left, he thought, and according to the doctors I have twenty minutes and five years.

  ~*~

  For a timeless minute, Denight was half a world away from the Infernesk gunfire. He walked, bent double from the weight of the ruck, back in ‘Nam. The miles of jungle leaves were coated with a weird, thick red-orange dust that stung his eyes, burned his lungs, and made him dizzy. Then years later, in a civilian doctor’s office—he had no desire for the Army to know what he suspected—he sat and listened as a long-haired kid just out of medical school tried gently to tell him what too many years of too many Pall Mall straights combined with two tours worth of sucking down Agent Orange had done to his body.

  “…and so with proper therapy and a conservative lifestyle, Mr. Denight, you can have a good five to ten years, maybe more,” the punk doctor told him.

  “Conservative lifestyle? Does that mean like no booze, no tobacco, only nuts and berries and milk toast? I suppose the therapy means drugs and radiation that’ll take me down to a 98 pound weakling?”

  “You overstate things, Mr. Denight, but these limits and treatments are necessary if we are to control the disease’s progress and prolong your life.”

  “Prolong my life as a what? Not as a man, doc, maybe as a blob, a thing. Like my yuppie investment-banker kid in Chicago says, a veggie? No thanks, the devil with it.”

  He’d stormed out of the flustered doctor’s office, told the Army nothing, and dodged their physicals. Then he’d crawled inside a bottle and stayed there for three days—maybe a couple of years. Somebody had noticed, anyway, and sent him out of the way to Infernesk.

  ~*~

  Bullets ripped through the wooden walls behind him and brought him back. Yes, Denight decided, the devil with it. He conjured up a vision of a malicious, red-skinned, long-tailed Satan. Then he smiled.

  What the hell, Denight thought, what’s five years between friends, you sulfur-smelling sonofabitch. With his good arm he reached around into a rucksack pocket and pulled out the Pall Malls he’d both been saving and sworn off for years. He lit one and, sucking the smoke deep into his lungs, moved up to the Hornet support force leader.

  Corporal Mary Hawkins thought it odd Sergeant Major was smoking; she’d never seen him do so and he’d banned it from most of work areas in the depot. His instructions puzzled her more.

  “Stay here and keep them occupied for,” again he looked at his watch. Now it was eighteen minutes. To hell—yeah, for him certainly straight to hell—with the five years. “Fifteen minutes. When you hear the automatic weapons fire and the explosion then break contact and bound back to the central area.” He gave the young woman his radio, rifle, and ammunition.

  “Sergeant Major?”

  “You’ll need these. Don’t worry, I’ll get stuff off the dead Russians. Let me use that radio for a minute.”

  Baffled, she handed him the handset.

  “Leprechaun, this is Thunderbolt, over.”

  “This is Leprechaun.”

  “Look,” he felt awkward, not knowing what to say and what not to. He took another drag from the cigarette and pressed the transmit button. “The Hornet element is pinned by at least one platoon, but I’m going to fix that situation. I expect they’ll be able to begin movement to your location in about two-zero minutes. Keep an eye on your rear and don’t let whatever the bastards do get to you.” He paused to draw the last of the butt, then threw it aside. “It’s been good working with you.”

  Two buildings away with the assault element, Claire Horowitz grabbed her radio. “Thunderbolt, what are you doing?” She knew only too well.

  “I’m going to have a cigarette. Then I’ll do what I have to do.”

  “Negative, negative! You don’t have to do this!”

  “It’s payback time. This is Thunderbolt, out.”

  Claire Horowitz fought back the tears.

  ~*~

  Denight slid around the corner. Out of sight of the reaction force he indulgently lit another smoke. Then he took the machine gun and a hundred rounds of ammo from a Russian corpse near him. He squatted, threw away the sling which held his wounded arm, then stretched his shoulder to get the range of motion back. He could feel the wound open and start to bleed, but Denight ignored the annoying trickle running down his chest. It took him only thirty seconds to connect the detonator to the rucksack full of C4 explosive. By his reckoning the Russian reinforcements would be three buildings away. He hoisted his load, tightened the pack straps to ease the pain, and moved out.

  ~*~

  “This is Watchdog Ten. Movement vicinity Building 3, about ten personnel, but I can’t tell exactly.”

  The OP was directly opposite the main battle. Val feared a two-prong attack, and with the reaction force pinned she had nothing left to throw at the new threat.

  “This is Leprechaun. Can you hold them off?”

  “Negative, we don’t have a shot, they’re not coming in the open. They seem to be carrying two large objects, but they’re in the shadows, I can’t make out what. They’re moving to vicinity of Lightfoot’s previous location.”

  ~*~

  Denight snaked between the buildings, halting to let his breathing subside. Then he heard the rattle of web gear and guttural whispers. On his belly he peered around the corner. The nearest Russian was three meters away, he and his forty or so comrades lined up in two neat rows against the two buildings’ walls, all fixed forward on the battle ahead of them. He slithered back, his shirt now stained through from the open wound, and stood upright. Lighting his final cigarette, he swung around the corner.

  ~*~

  The two women of Watchdog Ten heard three dull pops, then the grenades’ hisses, then the smoke cloud came again. The smoke only lasted a few minutes, but this time they wouldn’t need to search for the evidence. The naked bodies lay in plain view.

  ~*~

  The firing to their front so fixed the Russian platoon that none of them noticed him. At last someone Denight thought looked like a leader stood up and gave the signal to move out, turning around to see that his unit was ready. That’s when he saw the American, standing in the middle of the space between the buildings, big and tall as a sheriff in an old western, cigarette dangling from a one-up-on-you grin, ready for the final shootout. The officer tried to bring his rifle to bear, but Denight had the faster draw, machine-gun bullets riddling the officer’s chest and knocking his body into the open. Denight worked the gun back and forth like a fire hose, the Russians falling like ripe wheat.

  Silence, then footsteps to his rear. He pivoted to see ten Russians bearing down on him, with more behind, and killed two with his last bullets before a dozen of theirs found their marks. Dying fast but not quite dead, Denight pitched forward, clutching the firing device to his chest.

  ~*~

  She didn’t care that the muzzle flash would reveal her position, didn’t care that the buildings masked the enemy, didn’t care that she couldn’t see through the salt water in her eyes. She fired again and again, pulling the trigger as her partner tried to shake sense into her, until the last piece of brass ejected and the magazine clicked empty.

  Her radio crackled.

  “Watchdog Ten, what’s the situation?”

  She couldn’t take her eyes from the bodies, even as she reported to Val. “Two bodies vicinity Building 3, where we saw smoke earlier. They’re naked,” she choked out. “They killed them.”

  “Roger, we’ll...we’ll send a patrol to recover them as soon as we can. Continue to observe your sector.”

  ~*~

  “Such a big American—I bet he had quite a time with all these women.” The Russian platoon clustered around Denight’s body.

  “Like third platoon did with those two?”

  “That was different, orders, a company mission.”

  “It only took a platoon to accomplish it.”

  “And Dimonokov himself led the way. Such an example to the troops.”

/>   “The third platoon always gets the good jobs. Here we are in reserve—we have to wait to get our share of the women.”

  One of them looked over his shoulder. “Here comes the lieutenant. Roll the American over, we have to search him.”

  “Da, maybe he has food—or cigarettes.”

  Stanev saw the crowd around the body and ran from his observation post, chasing the lieutenant. “No!” shouted Stanev. “Leave the body there! He will have information on him!”

  Their platoon leader arrived in time to see them roll Denight’s body over, in time to see the tension come off the firing device, and in time to feel his blood turn to ice the way it does when a man knows he’s a split-second away from dying.

  Stanev threw himself on the ground and waited for the debris and body parts to stop falling.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Central Area

  Infernesk Munitions Depot

  A vacation would be nice, Val daydreamed. Yes, a nice long vacation by the sea. When all this is over I’m going to shanghai Marshall and we’re going off for two weeks where there’s no army and no uniforms and nobody looking to us to make decisions. We’re going to walk for hours and make love instead of just screw and we’ll tell each other “I love you” until it makes us sick. And we’ll sit on a breezy porch and watch the sun set over the ocean instead of watching the day go dark from inside some sandbagged room. There’ll be no radios and no phones and...

  “This is Watchdog Four. Movement vicinity Buildings 11 and 12. Estimate two platoons leading, undetermined number of enemy behind them. I can’t make them out any better in this twilight, over.”

  Vacation’s over, she thought. That’s one column, where’s the other?

  “Watchdog Nine. Enemy in at least company strength advancing between Buildings 16A and 16B, over.”

  There’s my answer. A close look at her depot map confirmed what she knew intuitively. By either skill or luck the Russians were attacking her weakest points.

  Then from entirely too close the sickening sound of explosives ripping apart a building drowned out the radio traffic. Shit, thought Val, the bastards have mortars. Here it comes. Those were only about three buildings away. And we have an OP there.

  “Watchdog Five, this is Watchdog Three, over.” Another OP must have seen the rounds impact and was trying to contact their friends. Val listened, hoping.

  No answer.

  “Watchdog Five, Watchdog Three.”

  Still nothing.

  “Watchdog Five, Watchdog Three!”

  Silence. Dead silence.

  “Leprechaun, this is Watchdog Three. Observed mortar rounds impacting near Five’s position. The building is burning. I think Five is out of it.”

  “This is Leprechaun, roger. All Watchdogs, this is Leprechaun. Continue to observe. If you get a target, take it.” She lay huddled on the floor, shouting into the microphone over the blasts as the mortars waltzed towards her command post then went to work on it. “Hold for as long as you can, then make for the basement.”

  She strapped the radio to her back, motioned to her runners, and grabbed her rifle. Dodging shrapnel and debris, Val headed off to grab the reaction force. They’d hit one Russian force, then the other, then cover the movement of the garrison underground.

  That’s the plan anyway, she thought, if we get the time and space to execute it. For a second she let her guard slip, and the thought of another two soldiers lost started to eat away at her. She shook it off as the Hornets piled out the door and started toward the enemy. At least with the explosion and the fire, Val said to herself, the Russians won’t get at their bodies.

  ~*~

  From her second-story command post, Christine looked down. Two stories below, three Russians were setting charges to blast their way into the building. Christine unclipped a grenade from her belt, pulled the pin, and dropped it out the firing port. It blew about four feet off the ground, or roughly shoulder height. Christine peered out: below her lay the bodies, one headless.

  I did that, she thought. She felt no sense of triumph.

  ~*~

  A deadly swarm of bullets from the supporting Russian heavy weapons punched through the thin walls of Building 16A. MSg Annette Rich saw the acting MP NCOIC and two of her soldiers fall. A half-minute later the Russians were in the building to Rich’s left. It was too much for her.

  “Everybody out, let’s go,” she screeched over the firefight’s roar. “We’re dropping back!”

  “Sergeant Rich, Staff Sergeant Thickstum said we’re supposed to hold until the Major and Hornets get here!”

  “Thickstum’s dead, and we’ll be the same way if we hang around! You think that fat bitch and her friend will come bail us out? No way. I’m outta here. Who’s with me?”

  The MPs stopped to look at one another. A burst of Russian fire ripped through the plasterboard wall. Rich crouched forward, tossed a smoke grenade through an open doorway, then grabbed her rifle and headed out the door. Her MPs followed.

  They were three buildings back when an enraged Claire Horowitz found them.

  “Your last report had you holding your area—just what the hell are you doing here? You let those bastards cut off my people!”

  From 16A, now totally in enemy hands, a machine gun kicked up dirt around them. Horowitz waved at her Hornets to deploy.

  “To hell with your people,” Rich shouted. “We were getting the shit knocked out of us! We had to fall back!” She looked around. “Where’s the rest of your sluts?”

  Claire ignored her. “The Major’s got two squads beefing up the el-tee’s sector, which was supposed to be the most threatened. That is, until you folded.” In 16A a Russian knocked out a window to get a shot. In one motion Claire locked her M16 into her shoulder and aimed. She was the twitch of a trigger finger away from drilling the enemy when shots rang from behind her. The Russian fell. Claire held her aim for ten seconds longer, then safed the weapon, lowered her rifle, and pointed towards a nearby barracks building.

  “Rich, you set your crew up around over there. Provide a base of fire. I’m going to take my squads, circle around the back, and hit 16A from the side. That will give the Admin section the gap they need to break contact and pull back here. Then I’ll bound back with my two squads, and we’ll work our way back together.”

  “You sound like your ex-boyfriend Denight. I didn’t take shit from him, I won’t from you. You help yourself.”

  Claire slid her M16 straight up until the flash suppresser was just under Rich’s chin. She jerked it up three inches and Rich’s head slid back, but Claire kept the pressure on, forcing the business end of the barrel against the underside of Rich’s chin. Rich backed up, but Claire took two small steps to follow her.

  “Don’t move another fucking inch,” Claire snarled, “or I’ll blow your brains out through your ears.”

  Rich froze.

  “Now you listen to me good. I could do the Army and everybody in this mess a favor and pull this trigger, and who do you think would turn me in? Not one of your policewomen, that’s for damn sure. I might even get a medal. Now you get your people set up and you do it now, or I blow your shit away and do it for you.”

  “You’re bluffing.”

  Claire slid the safety to “fire”.

  “Try me.”

  Long seconds passed. Annette Rich’s face softened. Claire pulled the weapon away.

  “You MPs,” Rich yelled, “you spread out by that building over there. Orient on 16A.” She turned back to Horowitz. “We’ll be set in five minutes.”

  Never turning her back, Claire Horowitz moved away. “Rich, when this shit is over you and I are going to come to terms.” She turned to her people. “Let’s go! Action left!” And they were off out of sight.

  ~*~

  Mary Parker placed the LAW rocket, extended for firing, onto her shoulder. Susan Phillips did the same.

  “Back blast clear?”

  Phillips swiveled her head to make a last check of the
room. “Yeah.”

  An M60 machine gun began yammering, its bullets cutting into the Russian-held rooms in 16A.

  “That’s the signal,” Mary yelled. “Fire!”

  Susan sighted in on their aiming point—a firing port about a foot from a window—and squeezed. With a deafening roar amplified by the walls around the pair of soldiers, two rockets blew a hole in the 16A’s wall, sending hot gas, shrapnel, and splinters rebounding around the inside. Parker and Phillips dropped the empty tubes and picked up their M16s, providing covering fire for the assault element that followed the rockets’ blasts.

  “They’re in, let’s go!”

  “Keep low and move fast.”

  “Why? The M60 and LAWs creamed the bad guys over there.”

  “Yeah, but the MPs are covering us.”

  ~*~

  Once inside the warehouse building, the Hornets went to work to retake the critical portion of 16A. Claire Horowitz led a five-woman team to clear the top floor. They shot their way upstairs, then began—room by room—to work over the building.

  Outside a second-story office, Claire pulled the pin on a grenade, then nodded to the women lined up behind her. Two soldiers faced down the hall for security. At the tail end of the team one woman covered the area they’d just cleared. From beyond the door they could hear guttural voices and the sounds of rifles. Claire and two others stood ready to enter. Another nod. The number one soldier kicked in the thin door and dodged to one side. From her number two position, Claire tossed the grenade, the bomb passing just inches from the first soldier’s shoulder. There was the familiar blast, and the number three woman went in before the roar died, firing full automatic and sliding to the left of the doorway. The number one woman followed a foot behind, taking the right side and sweeping her automatic fire from right to left. Claire came last. Before her lay the bodies of three dead Russians. Claire ran her eyes over the rest of the shredded room.