“Have either of you been in a combat situation before?”
Neither Bower nor Kowalski answered verbally. They simply shook their heads.
“All right. You’ve got to prepare yourself for what could happen. You will hear gunfire. Don’t freak out. Keep your head down. Stay low. If you need to move around, crawl. We’re going to fire some illumination flares when contact commences, but that’s not to light them up, it’s to destroy their ability to see in the dark, make it harder for them to pick out silhouettes moving at night. It's a bluff, to mislead them, to make them feel like it's a fair fight. When it comes to warfare, there’s no such thing as a fair fight, there’s kill or be killed.”
Bower nodded her head understanding she was being given privy access to the battle plan the Rangers had formulated.
“Rifle fire is loud. It’s intimidating, overwhelming, but I want you to listen for something else. Try to ignore the gunfire and listen for the sound of any impacts near you.”
She wasn’t sure what he meant. Jameson must have picked up on that from the look on her face as he mimicked two distinctly different sounds.
“You’ll hear something like ppft BANG, ppft BANG.”
Bower screwed her face up.
“If you hear that, they’re shooting at you. Remember, these guys are firing supersonic rounds, so you’ll hear the round whiz pass and strike something near you before you hear the gunfire itself, ppft BANG.”
Bower nodded.
“There’s going to be a lot of noise, a lot of confusion. You’ll swear someone’s shooting at you, but don’t freak out, listen for where the rounds are landing, listen for the impact. That’s your best guide. There will be a lot of echoes, a lot of sound bouncing around off the mud huts, off the jungle, and that can be disorienting, confusing. Listen for impacts. If there’s none, you’re fine, they’re not firing at you.”
Kowalski nodded, which reminded Bower to nod as well. She felt like a school kid taking instruction from a Phys-Ed teacher.
“If you see poofs of dust or chips of mud and rock flying, the bullets are coming from the opposite direction, from roughly 180 degrees. Stay low.
“You’re going to want to run, but don’t. Don’t try to get away. As tempting as it is, you don’t want to run from gunfire as you’ll make yourself an obvious target. Move closer. I know it sounds strange, but it’s all about angles. If you move away from the shooter, in the direction the bullets are traveling, you’ll make yourself an easy target. You want to do the opposite. Move under cover toward the shooter as that destroys his angle. By moving closer you’re moving up against an obstacle that hides you from sight. From there, crawl laterally, left or right, but stay out of sight.
“Remember, if you can hear gunfire those bullets have already passed you by. You’ll flinch and duck but if they were on target they'd have hit you already.
“If you hear a whiz or a crack but no impact, they’re shooting high and the bullets are flying past. Just stay low and don’t panic.
"If there’s a lull in the fighting, stay put. You’ll just draw attention to yourself if you move around. We will come for you. We know where you are. We’ve aligned our fields of fire to cover this location, so don’t leave here, if you do you could be hit by friendly fire as much as by rebel fire.”
Bower swallowed the knot in her throat.
“Stay low. Don’t panic,” she repeated back to him, already feeling panicked. In her time in Africa, she’d had a few close calls with some of the tribesmen, but never anything that made her feel like she was in a war zone. With the UN presence, the civil war in Malawi had ground to a halt, but now she sensed some of the fear she’d seen in the villager’s eyes when she had first arrived.
“I need you to communicate this to your staff. OK?”
Jameson was looking into her eyes, his eyes darting between each of her eyes, looking to see if she understood. Bower felt out of her depth.
“OK.”
“The rebels are undisciplined. They’ll fire at shadows. They’ll let off a long rat-a-tat-tat. If you listen, you’ll hear us firing back, but our rounds are smaller and we’re using muzzle suppression to avoid a flash that would give away our position. Our rounds will sound more high-pitched, like the crack of a whip. And you’ll only ever hear the Rangers firing controlled bursts. Just one or two shots at a time, but don’t worry about that. Firefights are about precision, not bluster. We’ll only fire when we’re on target, when we’re sure of a hit. If you hear lots and lots of machine gun fire, don’t be scared. Remind yourself, they’re wasting ammo and they’re giving away their position. If anything, they’re making our job easier.”
The radio crackled.
“I’ve got movement on the road,” said a disembodied voice over the radio. Bower recognized Bosco’s nasal twang. “Lone truck. One occupant, driver. Headlights off. Moving slow.”
“Looks like they’re delivering my spare parts,” another voice replied. Bower thought it was Smithy, but she wasn’t sure.
“It’s about bloody time.” That was Elvis. There was no mistaking his voice over the static.
Jameson spoke into the radio. “Warning shot. Single burst. Tracers over his head. Let them know we’re here. We’ll give them the opportunity to pull back.”
“Roger that.”
Jameson peered out over the low stone wall. He’d flipped his night-vision goggles down from his helmet, making him look more of a machine than a man. Bower couldn’t help herself, she had to look. She turned around, kneeling as she peered over the rough rocks. Kowalski stayed where he was.
Looking out through the night, Bower could see the landing zone to one side on a flat expanse before the dark jungle canopy. The truck Smithy had been working on had been moved into the village, hidden from the road by the crest of a small hill.
Her eyes struggled to make out any detail in the murky grey darkness. She could hear the rebel truck, but it still sounded several hundred yards away.
The night lit up briefly. For a second it was as though lightning had struck. Gunfire streamed out away from the village into the darkness. Tracer rounds snapped through the air, leaving reddish phosphorescent trails cutting through the pitch black of night. Thunder rolled around them. It took Bower a moment to realize the chesty thump was that of the machine gun firing and not the storm breaking. She was surprised to see the faint outline of one of the Rangers illuminated briefly by the outgoing tracer rounds. He was lying prone not more than thirty yards away. She’d expected him to be hidden rather than lying flat on the landing zone. No sooner had he fired than he was on the move.
“Spotting,” came the call over the radio. “Elvis, you are clear. Eleven is stationary. Looks like an observation post. One occupant.”
“I’ve got movement at three,” and Bower was able to pick out Smithy’s voice.
“I’ve got movement at seven,” another voice added over the radio.
“The truck’s conducting a three-point turn, pulling back,” Bosco said, his voice breaking up with static.
“Stand by,” Jameson said into his radio.
Bower was impressed by the clinical detachment Jameson had, reminding her of some of her senior lecturers at medical school, and how calmly they’d describe a complex procedure like a heart by-pass. She liked to think of herself as pretty calm and collected in the operating theatre, but the reality was that if an operation deteriorated on her she struggled under the pressure. She hadn’t lost a patient, but she’d come close enough to walk out of theater with her hands shaking. In Africa, though, not losing a patient was nothing to brag about, the serious cases rarely made it as far as a field hospital.
Out of nowhere, a machine gun opened fire, raking the village.
Bower ducked, even though she knew it was technically too late. If she’d been the target she’d already have become a casualty, and that thought alarmed her. She’d treated plenty of bullet wounds and understood the damage a small piece of lead could do when accelerated fa
ster than the speed of sound. Bower didn’t fancy lying on a stretcher undergoing surgery in the middle of Africa and figured she’d keep her head down. Although she felt an impulsive desire to watch what was unfolding she knew there was nothing to see, just fleeting flashes in the darkness.
Jameson held his finger up.
“No zing. No ppft. This is a bluff, a fake, intended to draw us out and get us to expose our positions.
“They might be amateurs, but they’re not dumb enough to mount a frontal assault across an open grassy field. Don’t worry about this. It’s a diversion while they conduct a flanking maneuver. They’re trying to keep us preoccupied with a frontal attack while the real action comes from three and seven.”
He was pointing as he spoke.
“Three is on the move,” came as a crackle over the radio.
“Eleven is open,” said another voice.
“Take him,” Jameson replied, talking into the radio with no emotion at all. He could have been ordering pizza.
A single crack resounded through the night.
“Eleven down.”
Bower struggled to swallow the knot in her throat. In those few seconds, she’d witnessed the death of a rebel. There were no theatrics, no drama. If anything, life seemed cheap; an entire life had been snuffed out as one would swat a fly.
As a doctor, Bower found herself wondering about ‘eleven,’ wondering if the shot had been instantly fatal. She’d didn’t want to second guess the Rangers, but she doubted the man was dead just yet. There were very few places on the human body that would kill a man in an instant, and she found herself wondering about a rebel bleeding to death in the jungle foliage. Her interest wasn’t some form of pseudo-emotionalism. Bower understood he’d brought this on himself, and yet she was trained to save life, it was hard to ignore that. In her heart, she’d never really made the connection that soldiers were trained to kill. Intellectually, she knew that, but reality struck her hard in those few moments sheltering there in the dark, leaning against the rough stone wall.
Jameson spoke into his radio. “I am en-route to three.”
Bower breathed deeply. Jameson rested his hand on her shoulder as he spoke, reassuring her.
“You’ll be fine. This will be over before you know it. Trust me.”
Bower nodded as Jameson slunk away, melting into the night.
One of the nurses appeared crouched in the doorway to the stone hut.
“I’ve got it,” said Kowalski, staying low as he darted over and into the hut, and with that Bower was alone.
Sweat ran down her forehead, soaking her collar. Her gloves were sticky and uncomfortable. The ground was rough. She shifted her weight, trying to clear away some of the smaller, gritty stones to make sitting there bearable.
Sporadic gunfire erupted around the outskirts of the village. Each shot felt as though it was directed at her. She winced, trying to curl up into a ball as she sat there, wanting to become so small as to disappear. There were no zings, no ppfts, she reminded herself. Wasting ammo, that’s how Jameson described it, just like fireworks on the Fourth of July.
A flash of lightning lit up the brooding clouds. Bower expected the crash of thunder to break a few seconds later, but the resounding boom was almost instantaneous, breaking directly over the village, shaking the ground. Bower jumped as the thunder rattled the village.
Large drops of rain began falling. At first, just one or two, but they struck her hat with unusual force. Within seconds, torrential rain fell. The temperature plummeted. Another bolt of lightning arced through the sky, followed by a thunderous crash that shook her to the bone. It seemed the heavens were at war with Earth, competing with the Rangers and the rebels. Through the deafening downpour, Bower could hear the crack of gunfire increasing in its tempo. An explosion erupted from the far end of the village, from what Jameson had labeled seven o’clock.
Bower wanted to run.
Even the relative safety of the dry hut held no allure. She wanted to run from the village and she struggled to control that compulsion.
Bower pulled off her hat, allowing the rain to wash over her hair and face. Sitting there in a puddle, tears rolled down her cheeks. She wasn’t sure why she was crying, and she doubted anyone would have noticed in the rain, but still she cried. Perhaps it was the release of tension brought on by the storm, but Bower felt silly, and that made her cry even more. She felt small, insignificant, helpless as the storm raged around her.
The rain eased a little, allowing the sound of the battle to reach her ears. She turned instinctively at the roar of an engine and saw the rebel truck bounding up the muddy track. Flashes of light burst from the open flatbed. Ppfts and zings raced past her, but in the confusion she was powerless to do anything other than watch.
The truck lurched toward her, bouncing out of a rut and careening up the embankment towards the village. Dirt and mud flew through the air, being dislodged by the truck’s bumper as it caught the soggy ground. Bower found herself sprayed with mud as the truck slammed into the low stone wall and came to a thundering halt.
The door to the cabin of the truck swung open. A rebel slumped to the ground, dead. His body landed in the puddle on the other side of the low wall.
Bower jumped at the nightmare unfolding before her, her body repulsed by the shadow of death looming over the village.
A bloody arm hung down off the back of the flatbed truck.
Bower watched as the arm twitched.
Slowly, the wounded rebel on the back of the truck got to his feet. He staggered against the cabin, using it for support as he stood on the wooden deck. Through the sound of the rain, Bower could hear him swearing, cursing some African god.
Their eyes met.
Neither the darkness nor the rain hid her from his gaze. He saw her crouching there beside the stone wall, paralyzed with fear. His eyes widened. Smiling, he grabbed an AK-47 from where it lay on the deck of the truck.
A flash of lightning illuminated the village, turning the night into day for the briefest of moments.
Bower watched in horror as the rebel brought his rifle to bear, pulling back on the bolt to load a round into the chamber.
The crack of thunder shook the earth as the rebel’s chest exploded, a bullet tearing through the muscle, sinew and bones, coming from somewhere behind him. The rebel fell into the darkness, disappearing from sight. Demons moved around her, dark specters sinking back into the night.
Her heart raced. The hair on the back of her neck stood on end. She looked around and as suddenly as it had come the violence was replaced with the soft patter of rain.
Bower stood there in the drizzle.
She shouldn’t have stood. She wasn’t even sure when she’d stood up, but somehow she was standing there by the low, stone wall. Something told her to stay down, and yet terror seized her muscles, refusing to let her crouch close to the earth.
Someone was screaming, a woman. The pitch of the woman's voice was unearthly, piercing the night, a banshee howling with the wind. Bower felt a sense of dread washing over her, an expectation of the worst, that she would die here in Africa.
A hand grabbed her shoulder and she jumped.
“Hey, it’s OK,” said Kowalski. “It’s me. Come with me.”
And Kowalski led her away into the hut. It was only then that Bower realized she’d been the one screaming.
Chapter 04: Las Vegas
Bower didn’t know what time it was when she woke, but the sun was rising in the sky, creeping across the mud floor of the hut. She was lying on a blanket, with a rolled-up jacket as a pillow. The ground beneath her felt uncomfortably hard.
The hut was empty. Bower could hear Kowalski outside talking with one of the patients. Her neck was sore. She sat up, feeling stiff.
“The axle’s fucked,” yelled one of the soldiers. “Goddamn it, Bosco, can’t you do anything right. You fuck up the radio, you fuck up our transport. What is it, man? Are you determined to bury us in Africa? Those nice rebels del
iver us a perfectly good truck and you shoot it to shit.”
Several other soldiers laughed, making fun of Bosco.
Bower staggered to the door of the mud hut and saw Smithy examining the truck that had crashed into the wall the night before. The front wheels had ridden up over the crushed stone wall, dropping the chassis down onto the rocks and breaking the front axle. Hydraulic fluid mixed with oil as it seeped out on the ground. Already, the sun had dried the puddles of water lying around the village. Cracks formed in the hardening mud.
“Hey,” Kowalski said, coming over to her and offering to help her walk to where Jameson was sitting on the remains of the wall.
“What the hell happened to me?”
“You were shaking, mumbling. Your eyes were dilated.”
Bower was silent, she knew what he wasn’t saying, ‘You were in shock.’
Kowalski handed her a water canteen.
“I gave you a sedative.”
“You gave me a headache.”
“That too. I thought it was best to let you sleep.”
“Good morning, Sunshine,” Jameson said as Bower wandered past. It must have been somewhere between ten and eleven judging from the angle and heat of the sun.
Bower was in no mood for small talk. She splashed water on her face, running her hands up through her hair, feeling a matted tangle on one side. She tried not to think about what she looked like, knowing she must look a mess.
“Sleep well?” Jameson asked.
“My head feels like someone’s been hitting it with a jack-hammer. I have a hangover without touching a drop of wine. Is there any fate worse?”
Bower squinted, noticing her backpack sitting on the grass beside the soldier’s gear. After rummaging through her pack she found a pair of sunglasses and a hat.
“Oh, that is so much better,” she mumbled.
Stretching her back, she looked around at her patients. One of the nurses had cooked up some maize and was dishing out bowls to the patients. They were merrily chatting with each other. Kowalski went back to examining the premature baby, listening to its heartbeat and respiration with a stethoscope.
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