“What am I supposed to do with this?” he asked.
“Don’t drown,” Alex replied. He pulled out a plastic tarp of out a pocket and added, “Give me your weapons.”
“Why?” Andriq asked.
“I’m a little tired of you questioning my orders,” Alex growled. Andriq looked sheepish for a moment before passing over his rifle and his pistol, which Alex wrapped in the waterproof material. Alex took a moment to remember that he was dealing with someone who had never served in the military and did not even have the reserve officer training that Alex had. In truth, he did not know how well Andriq even knew how to use a gun. “Have you ever tried to fire a rifle that’s been completely soaked? If the powder gets too wet, it won’t fire. And you won’t know until you’re in a kill or be killed situation, understood?”
“Yes, sir,” he replied.
“We’re going to float down the river,” he explained. “Try to stay as submerged as much as you can, breathing through the reed. We’re going to follow the river and get behind the enemy position.”
Andriq looked at Alex like he was crazy, but he merely nodded and waded into the water. Alex added his weapons to the bundle and finished wrapping it up. The tarp was a camouflage pattern and he hoped that if anyone saw it floating down the river, they would think it was merely a log or some forest detritus. He set the package into the water, placed his lips on the bamboo pole and submerged himself in the water next to Andriq.
Alex kept an arm on the weapons wrapped in the tarp as they drifted down the river. Underwater, with the light of the sun pouring down upon them, glittering through the flowing stream, the day seemed far too calm and serene for the battle and bloodshed that was occurring. The sun was also a blessing on them in that even underwater, Alex was able to tell from its position when the river was starting to turn them to the west, encircling them behind the Dominion positions.
As the sun shifted again, indicating that the river was turning back to the south, Alex popped his head up from the surface and dropped his bamboo reed into the river. He reached out with his one free hand and grabbed Andriq by the shoulder and yanked him up out of the water. Andriq sputtered slightly as he managed to drink some river water, but he was silenced with a threatening glance from Alex.
Together they moved toward the water’s edge on the north bank and pulled themselves through the reeds, trying to keep low and hidden. There was a sudden flurry of movement from Alex’s right and then a glint of metal, followed by a wet splash against him. He looked down to see there was a spray of blood on his jacket and Andriq was holding a knife that was dripping with blood.
Andriq reached forward into the murky water and pulled out the head of a serpent whose short neck ended in a ragged bloody stump. “Bloody water dragon,” he spat in a hushed tone. “A bite will kill you in three steps.”
Alex eyes widened for a moment. “Thanks,” he said.
Andriq nodded as they pulled themselves out of the river and slithered onto the shore, making their way on their bellies toward the tree line, Alex pushing the bundle of weapons in front of them. Once they had put several trees in between them and the water, Alex signaled for them to creep behind a large oak and he redistributed the weapons once they were safely hidden.
There were at least two dozen men hidden in the first row of trees facing north and the damaged jeep, turning and occasionally firing at the wrecked vehicle. There was at least ten more Dommies further back away from the road, providing support to the fighters- exchanging weapons when they ran out of ammunition, and occasionally rotating through to give the front line fighters a moment’s repose. Bullets tore through the woods frequently enough for Alex to know that the militia were still holding the jeep and continuing to fight. He knew that he had to do something quickly in order to relieve his pinned down forces, but Alex was not being presented with many options. He had not nearly expected this many soldiers in the woods. If he were in command of those Dommies with their superior numbers, he would have easily captured and killed the men on the jeep.
“There’s too many of them, sir,” Andriq whispered. “We’ll never make it against that many.”
“We don’t have to,” he replied as the beginnings of an insane plan that would have made his brother proud formed in his mind. “We just need to make them think that there are more of us than there are.”
“I don’t know how we can do that, and I don’t know why that would help,” Andriq countered.
“They’re afraid of us, Andriq,” Alex explained in a whisper. “Why else do you think that thirty men plus more in the western woods have not yet moved on the jeep? They think it’s a trap.”
“Just like at the gorge,” Andriq said knowingly.
“Exactly,” Alex said. “They think that the jeep is a diversion to lure them out. It’s the only thing that explains their caution, and we can use that against them. How many grenades do you have?”
The militiaman checked his belt and replied, “Just the one.”
“Take these,” Alex said passing over a couple of grenades and Alex’s RCP-17 submachine gun along with the only spare magazine he had for it. “I want you to relocate. Don’t let them see you. That tree over there.” He nodded at a large, six foot thick sycamore about one hundred yards from their position.
Andriq attached the grenades to his belt and accepted Alex’s weapon with a confused expression on his face. “Why are you giving me your weapon, sir?” he asked.
Alex took the hunting rifle that Dag had given him off his shoulder and locked a round into place. “I’m going to pick them off for as long as possible with this,” he said. “At the moment they realize they’re taking fire from behind, I want you to chuck all three of those grenades into their lines and then start opening up with your weapon and mine. If possible, put some sidearm fire into the chaos there. I want them to think that there are dozens of weapons and troops surging against them from that side, understood?”
“Yes, sir,” he said.
“Unless I’m wrong, they won’t come after you, but if they do, get back to the river,” Alex ordered. “No matter what happens do not leave the woods for the road. That’s a good way to end up dead.”
Andriq nodded grimly and began to make his way around to the right, keeping low and crawling on his belly when the trees and the undergrowth did not provide enough cover. Alex watched him for what felt like an hour until Andriq was at last in position, and then he turned to the enemy.
Alex was not a sniper by training, but he had passed all his marksmanship exams in reserve officer training and the Dommies were close enough that he did not need to be a sharpshooter like Dag. He did however have to select his target carefully as he wanted to be able to thin out the soldiers as much as possible before Andriq went to work. He selected a Dominion soldier who was standing behind a cypress tree, passing ammunition to two of the front line soldiers. He waited until both soldiers had been reloaded and were firing before he pulled the trigger.
The single gunshot was lost in the symphonic cacophony of constant weapons fire, and the Dommie slumped against the tree, a hole in the center of his back weeping blood. Alex worked the action on the rifle and selected his next target, putting that one down as well. By the time the third Dommie had been shot, Alex’s luck had run out. The soldier had stood up just as he got shot and he stumbled forward into one of the men he had been feeding ammunition to.
The Dommie wheeled around and his eyes locked in on where Alex lay on his belly, mostly concealed by a tree. Alex grooved a shot right between his eyes, but at that point the game was up. A half dozen other soldiers were now looking behind them wildly, and Alex was forced to roll behind the cover of the nearest tree. Immediately, a series of round green objects streaked through the trees, each bouncing two or three times before detonating. The first two blasts took out five Dommies as either killed or wounded and the third grenade blew up at the base of a large oak tree, shattering the trunk and causing the massive tree to topple on two mor
e Dommies.
Machine gun fire raked through the smoke of the explosives as Andriq alternated between bursts of fire from each of the two machine guns he carried. The Dommies looked completely taken aback, but their leader, a lieutenant with the appropriate number of stripes on his uniform’s sleeves and bars on his shoulder boards started barking orders at his men.
“Hold the line, gods damn it!” he barked. “We knew the mountain rats would try to do something tricky. They’re farmers and swine herds. Jericho, Falstaff, lay down some suppressing fire so we can pull back across the road. Alliston, Inverness. Maintain your attack on that enemy jeep. Cover us until we’re back across the road. We’ll get you across once we’ve made it safely. We’ll see how well these maggots do when they are charging at a wooded position across an open road.”
The Dommie machine guns poured through the smoke and the haze still lingering from the explosives toward where Andriq had been positioned. Another few soldiers continued their attack down the road while the rest of the Dominion force assembled to make a mad dash across the road to where another contingent of black uniformed and armored Dommies lay in wait.
With the force in the eastern woods beginning to retreat, Alex rolled out once more from behind his tree and started picking off Dommies. He brought down another two, those who were trailing the farthest behind of the fleeing group. It was hard to see what was happening on the road with the sharp contrast in the bright sunlight that was streaming down on the road and the relative darkness of the woods, but Alex was fairly certain that at least one more Dommie was brought to the ground by the militiamen in the jeep.
The four remaining men providing covering fire for the retreating Dommies then made their way across the road, and Alex fired twice, but missed the moving targets each time. One thing that he noticed that was now absent was the machine gun fire that had been coming from Andriq’s position. With the Dommies now gone, Alex jumped to his feet and raced over to where Andriq had been firing, and then fell to his knees when he found the militiaman.
There were at least four holes in Andriq’s chest, and he was lying on his back on some moss, still carrying the two machine guns that Alex had given to him, a rather unconcerned look on his face. “Am I dead?” he whispered to Alex, some blood gurgling up from his throat as he spoke.
“Not yet, but soon,” Alex answered quietly, trying to keep a tear from forming in his eyes.
“Did we get those bastards?” he asked.
“Yeah, you got them,” Alex said, emphasizing Andriq’s part in the plan.
“Good,” he whispered and then he shut his eyes.
No more breathe came from Andriq, and Alex felt somewhat ashamed as he grabbed the weapons and gear from his corpse and made his way back through the woods toward where the crashed jeep waited. He emerged behind the crashed jeep and was almost shot by Donovan, who looked like he was sporting a new wound to his shoulder.
Alex raced across to the jeep and took cover next to Donovan. “Is that bad?” he asked him, nodding to the shoulder.
“I’ll live for the moment,” the young man replied, his face caked in dirt, blood and sweat. A look of worry crossed his face for a moment and he asked, “Where’s Andriq?”
Another pang of guilt hit Alex and he simply shook his head.
“Gods damned Dommies,” Donovan swore.
“They made a break for the western woods a few minutes ago,” Elisha reported from the swiveling machine gun on top of the jeep. “We took out several of them.” She ducked as a new barrage of fire came from the western woods. “Any idea how many we’re dealing with, sir?”
“If they split in half, then at least fifty,” Alex responded.
“Damn!” Jaxton swore from the front seat of the jeep. He took a moment to smack the hood mounted machine gun. “Out of ammo!”
The words were barely out of his mouth before his body was ripped apart by a barrage of machine gun fire. Alex reached forward and pulled his body out of the front seat, but it was no good. Jaxton had been killed instantly, but to look on his face, you would never know. There was a look of serenity on the young man’s pale features that was anathema to the chaos and the strife surrounding them. If that was really how calm death was, Alex thought to himself, it could not be that bad.
“Movement!” Elisha shouted as she depressed the trigger and sent another salvo of fire toward the woods.
Alex rolled away from Jaxton’s corpse and lay on his belly next to the vehicle’s tire, staring underneath the jeep’s belly. The Dommies were attempting to advance, but it was an old tactic. Soldiers were laying down cover fire from the trees as others darted out from cover and down the road before they jumped back into the woods. The number of soldiers involved was too few though. It was a distraction to keep the surviving Miravallians busy while the rest of the Dommies made their way through the woods, trying to encircle the minor fortification the destroyed jeep provided.
Despite the grim nature of the situation, Alex could still not help but smile. Although they had the clear numerical superiority, the Dommies were terrified of falling into another trap. Their ruse had convinced them that there was another force in the woods somewhere, waiting for the Dominion to show their forces in the open before they struck.
Alex fired a few shots at the Dommies who presented themselves and clipped one in the shoulder before he rolled back to where Donovan and Elisha would be able to hear him. “The Dommies think we have another force hiding in the woods and that we’re bait to lure them out,” he said.
“How could you know that?” Elisha demanded.
“Andriq and I did our best to convince them of that fact,” he said. “That’s why they ran out of the woods.”
“That’s all well and good, sir,” Elisha began as she picked off another soldier with her accurate fire. “But it doesn’t change the fact that there are only two of us against several platoons.”
“There are three of us,” Donovan growled, despite the fact that he was clutching at his wounded shoulder.
“Reinforcements should be arriving any minute,” Alex said. “We need to hold out until then.”
“We need to fall back into the woods,” Elisha said. “We’re too exposed out here.”
“The heavy weapons on the jeep are the only thing keeping them from charging us,” Donovan argued.
“The lieutenant just said they’re afraid of following us into the woods,” Elisha countered.
“If necessary, we can fall back into the woods,” Alex said sharply. “But we can’t afford to let the Dommies dig in at all. If we need to fight them for control of the ravine’s exit, our efforts are doomed before we even start. We need to hold.”
A Dommie trooper came sprinting out of the woods behind their position suddenly, firing wildly. Elisha took a grazing shot against her hip as Donovan raised an old revolver and fired once, dropping the soldier in his tracks. Brushing away Alex’s attempts to aid her, Elisha swung the machine gun around and opened fire to the northwest into the woods. More soldiers started advancing from the southwest as well, moving forward cautiously in a pincer movement.
Alex rolled back into position and poured fire into the advancing group of men, but he had to take cover more than once behind the wheel well to avoid the pinpoint fire coming in from the advancing soldiers. There was a cry of pain from Alex’s left and he looked back just in time to see Donovan crumple down to the ground in a supine position, his revolver slipping from his fingertips, blood trickling out of a hole in his chest.
“I think they’ve figured out it’s just us out here!” Elisha shouted as the Dommies were now streaming out of the woods.
“Get into the trees,” Alex ordered. “I’ll cover you- wait, do you hear that?”
A low rumble was distinctly audible over the sound of gunfire, and the hills made the sound seem like it was coming from everywhere. With a sinking feeling, Alex realized that the Dominion tanks must have reached the top of the ravine, and just like that, they had lost the Cr
est.
“Lieutenant!” Elisha shouted excitedly as she pointed north down the road in the direction of Harren Falls. “Look!”
Rounding a curve just at the limit of Alex’s visibility was a Dominion tank, but it was flying the green and gold flag of Miraval. There was a colossal roar and a puff of smoke from the tank’s main turret. An explosion ripped a hole in the approaching Dommies and left a six-foot deep crater in the road. The tank roared forward down the straight downhill stretch, machine gun fire from its turret mounted guns chasing the advancing soldiers back into the woods and leaving at least six dead. The main cannon roared again, this time close enough to Elisha and Alex to be deafening. The shell landed at the edge of the woods to the southwest, leveling dozens of trees and incinerating the Dominion forces in a fireball.
The tank placed itself it between the Dominion attackers and the crashed jeep, and Alex noticed for the first time that a tow line was extended from the tank to one of the cars that Torrace had requisitioned for the militia. The car came to a stop, and six men piled out of the driver’s side doors, two of them training hunting rifles at the woods while the driver, one of the abbots in the pantheon ran around to the trunk and opened it, letting two more soldiers deploy out.
Abbot Bailey sprinted from the car to where Alex was helping Elisha down from the swivel gun and he assisted in pulling the still protesting Elisha into a position of better cover. “Sorry for the delay, my son, I mean, sir,” Bailey said to Alex. “Car died after about twenty minutes. Tangrit caught up to us though and gave us a lift.”
“Glad to have you with us, abbot,” Alex said. “She’s wounded. If you could…”
Guerrilla (The Invasion of Miraval Book 2) Page 6
