The Best Defense

by Todd A. Stone

  The three soldiers on point dispensed with method, bolted around the entrance door’s sides, and began firing. Behind them the torrent poured into the shop area, Val directing traffic. The Russians turned to meet the new threat, shifting behind the rows of equipment. Sgt. Willa Cato saw three duck into an office. She collared an M60 machine gunner.

  “Shoot right there!”

  “At the walls, sergeant?”

  “Right at the damn wall!”

  Three bursts of six punched through the office’s wooden skin. Cato crawled forward and peered inside. The bullets had passed right through—three Russian corpses lay on the floor.

  If the Russians stayed put, Val’s counterattack force rooted them out. If they moved, from above Demiliozak’s squad blazed away. Caught in the crossfire, the Russians broke. Groups of two and three made dashes for the few exits. Some made it; most did not. Those who did ran into Val’s defenders. Tearing down the hallways, the hunters turned hunted fought viciously, believing the Americans would give them the same treatment they had offered. In the countless small firefights that followed, it was an accurate assessment.

  ~*~

  Although shots still rang out from the connecting passageways, the fight on the shop floor ended almost as quickly as it began. Val again pushed out her three-soldier point squads, trying to gain some space and security while her force mopped up. From a neighboring maintenance room another spat of fire erupted, then died out. Val took her runners and hustled toward the action. SSG Patricia Choi met her halfway.

  “Two platoons worth, Ma’am,” Choi blurted out, “maybe more. They backpedaled when they saw us—took off in separate directions.”

  “They’ll go until they bump into our people,” Val said. “I didn’t expect to get them all, just break them.”

  “Yes, Ma’am. We bought a lot of time, though.”

  Time, Val thought, her mind whirling, time. Tampier. The ADM.

  “Elmore, round up the leaders, then get your butt down to area seven on level three. SSG Choi, you’re in charge. Hold what we have here. Hite, come with me.” She took off back the way they’d come, her runner following.

  For once Tampier, Val prayed as she ran, be less than efficient.

  Chapter Twenty

  Below Infernesk Munitions Depot

  “Does it hurt much, Cruiser?”

  “Only when I breathe. Of course it hurts, dammit.”

  He grimaced as he propped himself up on the sandbag wall, looking down the dark corridor in front of him. Having only a few minutes earlier fought his way down it, Cruz knew that the passageway was cut by one side tunnel and ran for about seventy meters before it emptied into a cavernous storage room. He also knew the storage room to be filled with not only stacked nuclear munitions, but an uncomfortably large number of Russians. His burning left arm, right calf, and left shoulder reminded him that those same Russians were also good shots.

  “I’m not going much farther, Sharpie. Not shot up like this. They’ll be forcing their way out of that room soon.”

  “Yeah. We’d better get ready.”

  “What’s to get ready? I got one grenade and maybe twenty rounds. How about you?”

  “The same. Plus that HK.”

  “Sharpie, take my ammo, leave me the grenades and the rifle, and split, okay?”

  “No way, baby. Cruiser, we just come too far together for me drive off alone.” She pulled out her last grenade, straightened the safety pin, then laid it between them. “When we go, we go together.”

  The first wave of Russians was preceded by several bursts of automatic fire. Shapiro and Cruz didn’t fall for the trick. Instead they ducked down, waiting for their attackers to show themselves.

  The three Russians on point walked cautiously, the lead man hugging the wall. Having seen other point teams mowed down, behind him his two partners kept as great a distance as the darkness would allow. Behind them the rest of a squad followed, and behind that squad a platoon of Special Security soldiers, bloodied from the fights above and below ground, followed their last orders.

  Had there been a surviving officer, the Russian platoon might have detailed two men to watch their rear. If there had been a living NCO, when the trail squad heard a “Halt! Who goes there?” from behind them, they might have reacted sensibly and stopped to consider their situation. But their leadership had long since either been hauled to the surface or left to bleed to death in place, and the trailing squad—then the whole platoon—reacted as their hours of fighting in the buildings’ and tunnels’ cramped spaces had conditioned them. They pivoted and attacked.

  In the initial exchange of gunfire, Bravo Company, 1-75 Infantry Airborne/Ranger, lost four dead and three wounded. But Bravo still had its leaders; instead of backing away the squad leaders of First platoon pushed their men forward, determined to recover the bodies of those who had fallen. Bravo’s company commander fed another platoon into the storage room to bolster the base of fire building up among the stacked crates. Then he sent flankers out to find another entrance, and when a runner from Third platoon told him of a side way in, all of Third platoon was committed in an end run.

  Shapiro and Cruz had no more than slipped the safeties on their M16s to “fire” when the battle broke out, and they felt both confused as to what was happening and odd at being on the sidelines. The battle in the storage area quickly grew loud, then louder still as the sound of M16 and M60 fire drowned out the noise of the Russian AKMs. Soon the firing was all M16. Then came shouts, and although the distance and the crates distorted the sounds, Shapiro believed the words were in English. The clump of boots and rattle of equipment that heralded approaching soldiers put them on their guard. Shapiro looked down at the grenade, then at Cruz. He was looking at her.

  “Last chance to split, Sharpie.”

  “We’ll give them all we got, Cruiser. Then we check out together.”

  Ahead of them in the dark, a soldier bumped something and swore. Shapiro’s head snapped up.

  “Yo,” Cruz shouted, “home boy. Como se lama?

  The answer came quickly. “Are you guys down there Americans?”

  “Since when did any Russian mofo understand Spanish? Like, quit worrying about what you bumped your head on and get down here, man.”

  Shapiro bent the safety wires back on the grenade.

  ~*~

  The Bravo Company commander watched as his medics slid Cruz onto a stretcher. He talked briefly to one of them, then turned to Shapiro.

  “The doc wants to get an IV into your buddy here before we move him. That means he’ll have to stay put for a little bit. You can go back topside now. I’ll have one of the trail teams walk you out.”

  “No thanks, Sir,” she replied. “I’ll stay. I came in with him. I’ll leave with him.”

  ~*~

  “Listen, Ma’am,” Sp4 Scott Hite said as they ran, “we got bad guys ahead of us.”

  Val pulled up short. Over her own heavy breathing she could hear them coming. Seconds later two Special Security soldiers, with more behind, entered the wide hallway. Hite heaved a grenade and the two Americans fell back.

  Kneeling and aiming from behind a corner, she pulled her M16’s trigger and gunned down two charging Russians. Directly across from her, also partially protected by the corner of the passageway’s intersection, Hite’s shots felled two more. Both jerked back as bullets sparked off the walls around them. Val leaned forward around the corner, sprayed six quick shots, then ducked behind the protection of the wall. Bullets chased her back, then came a short lull.

  “You go on, Ma’am. Drop back. I’ll cover you and send Elmore on when she gets back.”

  “Negative. I don’t leave soldiers alone.” And besides, thought Val, there’s no place to go and it won’t matter in a while anyway. There’ll be a rumble and a roar and then it’ll all be over. Good-bye, Wolfe. So much for the vacation—hell, so much for the marriage. She thought about looking at her watch, but decided against it. Who cares about time now, V
al thought. Maybe it’s just time to get this over with. She ejected the magazine from her rifle and locked her last full one into place.

  “Hite, how many of them do you think there are out there?’

  “I dunno, Ma’am. Maybe most of a squad, but not a full one, though. We’ve taken out a bunch of them. Probably five or so left, or something like that.”

  “That’s what I figure. Now listen to me. If we stay here and wait for them, eventually they’ll take us out. Then it’s a clear shot all the way to the nukes. If we can get by, then maybe I can get Lieutenant Tampier and Panjwani to turn that bomb off. When I say so, I want you to cover me. You fire high and left, keep it more or less along your wall. I’m going after them. Elmore will be back from the personnel side any minute. If I don’t take out all of them, you and Elmore deal with the rest. Then you two move like scalded apes, you find Lientenant Tampier and Panjwani, and you get them to undo what they’ve done. Got it?”

  “No way, Ma’am. You said yourself that the John Wayne stuff was only good in the movies.”

  “There’s no other choice, Hite. We need to get by.”

  Except for the sound of shuffling as the Russians moved closer, the tunnel was quiet.

  “Wait a second then, Ma’am. I got to get ready.”

  In the half-dark Val couldn’t see the young soldier across from her. She could only hear him place a fresh magazine into his weapon and arrange his equipment. The tunnels were quiet enough for her to hear Hite’s grenade safety pins hit the floor when he discarded them.

  “Ma’am?”

  “Yes, Hite? You ready?”

  “Ma’am, you can’t. Not you.”

  “None of this protecting the women shit, okay?”

  “Well I’ll be God-damned, Major. For all your talk about bullets not being color-coded pink and blue, you still just don’t get it.” Hite’s bayonet clinked as he latched it onto the barrel of his rifle. “This isn’t about men and women, and it isn’t about you. It’s about the damn unit.”

  He spun around the corner. “Cover me, Ma’am, high and right on your side!” As he drove toward the Russians, Scott Hite pulled the trigger and held it, his rifle tucked under one arm and spraying burst after burst down the corridor. Val froze, then aimed around the corner and blazed away.

  “Hite! Get back here!”

  He was still standing and still firing.

  “Hite! Dammit! Get back!”

  The Russians fired back. Val heard Hite’s M16 fire stop for a second, as if he’d taken a bullet, then pick up again. A bullet bounced off the wall not six inches from her face. She could no longer see her runner, the tunnel’s darkness having swallowed him up.

  “Hite, drop! I’ll cover you! Crawl back!”

  Val heard his M16 click empty. From the darkness came sound of a scuffle and the clang of metal on metal. He’s in a bayonet fight, Val realized. There were grunts and the sound of cloth ripping. A body fell. Then a loud “Shit!”—Hite’s voice. Then came the grenades’ blasts. Suddenly Carrie Elmore was beside her. Val looked down, then looked back into the corridor. Then nothing.

  “Ma’am, Ma’am, they’re here.”

  “No. Hite took them out.”

  “No, Ma’am. Our guys. Rangers. All the way from the states. They’re in the tunnels, down here, and they’re hitting the Russians from behind. They’ve even made contact with our people on the personnel side and back in the shop area.”

  Val looked at the eager face beside her.

  “How do you know?”

  “Parker and Phillips almost shot them up, and I saw them! The lieutenant said she was going to go…”

  But Val was halfway down the hallway. “Hold there, Elmore, hold there! You keep ‘em at bay for a while. I’ve got to go! I’ll be back!”

  Or it won’t matter, thought Val as she ran, it won’t really matter to me or Wolfe at all. From somewhere down an unknown passage, spats of rifle fire continued.

  ~*~

  Val raced through the corridors, rifle held at the ready. In her haste, twice she missed a turn and had to double back. It was in this manner that she sped around a corner and ran head-on into two quite lost Russian soldiers, the impact startling them all and knocking all concerned sideways. Val fell backwards and went down firing, a wild bullet spray filling the corridor. Then she was on her feet, running between the two forms on the floor.

  She tore through the dark until she came to a storage area, turned and entered, then stopped. From across the room, well behind and muffled by the rows of stacked nuclear ammunition, came the timer’s ticking. She quickly worked her way between the rows of boxes.

  Christine stood alone, hands tugging at a cable assembly connected to an ADM initiation package. Val could hear the timer counting down.

  “Tampier, what are you…?”

  “Oh, Ma’am! You scared the hell out of me!”

  “Tampier, we got to stop...”

  “I know, I saw Phillips and turned around to come back here.”

  “Where’s Panjwani?”

  “We got hit on the way. She’s down. I kept going.”

  “What do we have to do to stop this thing?”

  “It’s in its final firing phase—the shutdown point’s already passed. Help me yank this wiring off.”

  Val dropped her rifle and grasped the thick cable assembly.

  “Okay, Ma’am. We gotta pull hard and get it all out at once.”

  “Tampier, this cable carries all the wiring, why are you…?”

  “On three, Ma’am. One…”

  “Did your class teach you…?”

  “Two…”

  “Isn’t there an anti-tamper…?”

  “Three! Pull!”

  The two women strained together. The wiring harness and all its cables broke free, sending them both staggering backwards. They tripped over their own feet and each other, and with grunts and curses fell smack on their butts.

  The timer buzzed. Val sucked in air and stared at the ADM.

  Nothing happened.

  Christine opened her eyes.

  Silently, the two women picked themselves up off the floor. Christine picked up an M16, then realized it was Val’s and held it out to her. Silently, they exchanged weapons and walked toward the door.

  Halfway down the hallway, Val turned to Christine.

  “Lieutenant?”

  “Yes, Ma’am?”

  “You told me that you had a class in rigging special munitions for emergency demolition.”

  “Yes, Ma’am. At the Ordnance School.”

  “So that’s how you knew to remove that cable assembly.”

  “No, Ma’am. I missed those two days. I was in the hospital with a knee injury from running.”

  “Then how did you know exactly what action to take to abort the firing sequence?”

  “I didn’t.”

  Val Macintyre stopped.

  Christine Tampier kept walking.

  1st Battalion, 75th Infantry, Airborne/Ranger

  Tactical Operations Center

  Infernesk Munitions Depot

  Attached to Building 14, tent-like canvas extensions ran off the sides of the almost-intact building’s blasted walls. Altogether the stretched canvas and the rooms in the shattered building housed the Rangers and Marshall Wolfe’s spacious—by field standards—Tactical Operations Center. From this mating of infantry and depot garrison, Wolfe and Val jointly directed the hand-off of responsibility of the Infernesk garrison.

  Both of them were pleasantly surprised at how smoothly events progressed. The Rangers relieved Val’s survivors, who then helped evacuate their wounded to the surface. Remnants of the Special Security main body were herded from below ground, disarmed, and placed under guard. Combat patrols pushed through the corridors to hunt down Russian stragglers. The Rangers made prisoners of those who chose to surrender and statistics of those who didn’t. There were no friendly fire casualties in the black maze of interconnecting rooms and tunnels, primarily because V
al sent several of her sergeants back below ground as guides.

  Val sat at a field table in the TOC, monitoring the operation’s progress. Around her radios crackled as Rangers patrolling the outlying buildings and bunkers reported engaging diehard Special Security holdouts. Occasionally, sounds of far off, sporadic small arms fire drifted in. In one corner of the TOC, runners sat waiting for their next assignment. Staff officers scurried about. Five feet away, Wolfe huddled with three Ranger company commanders, sorting out missions and unit responsibilities.

  Val looked over at him, noticing the mixture of self-control and anxiety that defined him. Wolfe seemed fully engaged in his discussion with the three officers, but each time a combat report blared from a radio or the familiar crack of rifle fire was heard in the distance, he’d skip a beat in the conversation and slightly cock his head. Val could see his eyes squint as he processed the information. It only confirmed what she knew—that Wolfe would rather be in the fight than manage it, rather lead a charge than organize one. It was a feeling she saw in herself as much as she saw it in him.

  Infernesk Munitions Depot

  He woke to a gouging weight on his back, a hammering pain in his head, and darkness all around. Slowly, he tugged and pulled, until he finally crawled free of the heap of bricks and boards that had once been a building. He did not remember if he had been trying to rally his soldiers or if he had been fleeing the American helicopters. He only remembered the roar of cannon fire and the walls collapsing around him.

  He stood, leaning on a shattered wall for support, and took stock. He could not hear out of one ear. Dust filled his nostrils. His vision was blurred, but he could see, and from three buildings away a security lamp’s yellow light gave him a clear enough picture. His uniform was shredded. The dried blood matted in his hair spoke of a head injury, his face was lacerated, and there were deep gashes on his torso and legs. His muscles ached as he reached down to touch one of his wounds, and he jerked back his hand as his fingertips touched the slimy ooze of rapidly spreading infection.