Escalation

by Peter Nealen

  Scott was already bringing the rest of the team down out of the house. Killian’s eyes took us in; the OBRs, the Mk 48s…and the missing Specialist England, carrying a captured FAMAS. His eyes widened a little at that, but he just turned and started barking orders to his dismounts before starting to laboriously clamber back up onto his M5.

  A few minutes later, the vehicle lurched into motion again, this time with my team flanking it on either side of the road and fifty yards ahead. Together, Triarii and US Army peacekeepers started to move out of Borinka, while the Vipers circled overhead, their engines growling like birds of prey.

  We were almost out of the woods. Or, I thought we were.

  I was sorely mistaken.

  Chapter 6

  We were on the wrong side of the ridge when we finally halted.

  There was no real road leading out of Borinka to the east. We’d had to follow the cleared powerlines; the woods were too thick for the vehicles to traverse.

  As soon as we’d gotten clear, Bradshaw and I had linked up, and then we Triarii faded into the woods, though we stayed close enough to support the Army survivors. We’d turned England over to Killian; hopefully with him in Army hands, we could fade sooner with fewer questions asked.

  At first, the regulars had stayed close to their vehicles, out in the open. Bradshaw and I had traded incredulous glances at that; had nobody taught these kids anything? Killian had picked up on it quick enough, though, and snapped at his fireteam leaders to get their men into the trees. Their woodscraft still sucked, mostly, but it was an improvement.

  Now we were halted, the three vehicles forming an outward-facing triangle, in a clearing overlooking Bratislava itself. The Vipers had peeled off, their rocket racks empty and their fuel getting low, skimming the treetops toward the northeast to skirt around the capitol city before turning southeast toward Hungary. Bradshaw and I had already sent the S-70s off to stand by just over the border. Some of the guys didn’t look all that convinced, but Bradshaw and I both agreed that we couldn’t just leave American soldiers hanging while we flew off.

  Some of that was because something Killian had said over the radio had slowly come to mind as we’d moved away from Borinka. Something that really, really bothered me.

  I walked over to his track, where he was giving his final instructions for the halt to his squad leaders and fireteam leaders. I stood aside, my OBR cradled easily in my hands, and watched for a moment.

  It was to his credit that Killian was briefing all of his subordinate leaders at once. He was pushing out as much information as possible, and keeping it simple instead of relying on a game of telephone. Under different circumstances, it might be considered micromanaging, but here and now, it was just common sense. He didn’t want time wasted with passing word. He wanted to make sure all of his guys were fully informed.

  I say “guys” but there were a couple of females in the unit. With one exception, they were keeping their heads down. That one exception was the halfway good-looking redhead who was hovering near the briefing and eyeballing me suspiciously the entire time.

  It was interesting to watch, actually. There had been a couple of females who had come to my weapons platoon while I’d been on Active Duty; mixed-sex combat units had been shown to be a bad idea for some time, and the forced integration hadn’t gone well anywhere, but the powers that be couldn’t—nay, wouldn’t—admit that they’d screwed the pooch, so they kept pushing them in, where most of them would last until they got hurt or pregnant.

  Or both.

  Looking around that bunch of scared kids with rifles, I saw something that I had noticed many years before. One of the big concerns with mixed-sex combat units was the very real biological response that young men have around females, particularly pretty ones. They lose their heads and fall all over themselves to impress the young women. Not only is it a distraction, but it breeds jealousy and division in what needs to be a tight-knit group.

  But in this kind of physically demanding job, something else crops up, and I was seeing it in spades here. It was entirely possible that one or more of the men were sleeping with the females. It was almost certain, actually. But there was an underlying current of sullen resentment that overwhelmed everything else.

  I figured I knew why. The women simply couldn’t carry as much as the men. And being in a mech unit, it meant that they couldn’t pull as much of the weight when it came to maintenance, either. Which meant that, more often than not, the male soldiers had to step in and take over from the women. I’d known a couple in the Marine Corps who had requested transfers out of the Weapons Company because they were simply ashamed at having to defer to much bigger, much stronger young men. Some of the others had stuck with it out of pride until they got hurt, or, far more often, used their sex as their excuse, and delighted in getting the young male Marines to carry their weight for them.

  I’d been fortunate enough not to have to go to combat with any of the latter. Under these circumstances, I hoped that these kids could keep things together.

  I hoped Killian could keep things together.

  He sent his small unit leaders packing, and turned to me.

  “You asked if we had comms with Gatekeeper,” I said.

  He nodded, pulling his helmet off and running a hand over his buzzed scalp. “Yeah,” he said tiredly. “We halted just short of the town, and Lieutenant Fink called back for further instructions.” He grimaced. “You know how it is; we can’t intervene without permission from higher, especially after Slovenský Grob a couple months ago.” He glanced at me keenly as he said it; he was fishing for any kind of information about us, but I didn’t give anything away. “That was when the SINCGARS went dead. We’ve had no contact on any covered channel since then. I’ve even tried satcom. Nothing.”

  I shook my head even as I frowned. Losing comms was nothing new; I’d experienced it regularly. Radios just weren’t perfectly reliable, especially in the woods and hills. But to lose everything? That was weird.

  “Weird” in a place like Slovakia wasn’t something to make any combat soldier comfortable. It was already making the hackles rise on the back of my neck.

  “We’ve got no comms with them, either,” I said, leaving aside that we hadn’t established any with FOB Keystone in the first place. I turned toward Greg and waved him down. He left his ruck against a tree and jogged down into the clearing. “What’s the comm situation look like?” I asked.

  Greg actually looked worried, which was something new for him. You’d never know it, looking at him and listening to him, but Greg had been blown up by an IED while he’d been a Ranger in Afghanistan. His face had been turned to hamburger, and he’d spent months in the hospital having his face and throat rebuilt.

  Somewhere in that process, he’d decided that he was going to be positive. I suppose it was a natural reaction to surviving something like that. It was probably part perspective, part gratitude. But it had made him an irrepressible optimist, as well as being cheerful to a fault.

  So, when Greg lost sight of his usual “everything will work out all right” outlook, it was time to get a bit worried.

  “We’ve got weak, long-distance comms with Kidd,” he said quietly, glancing at Killian. The Sergeant First Class frowned a little; he didn’t know who Kidd was. Which was only natural; Kidd was our supporting commander back in Hungary. He’d led the advance party from the States, and was coordinating all of this. “Satcom’s not working at all, and apparently it’s the same for him. He can’t get in touch with anyone back home, either.”

  Okay, this was officially bad. Really, really bad. Something had gone haywire, and with a creeping chill I started to wonder if it wasn’t something truly catastrophic.

  It had only been a matter of time, after all. With shooting wars going in the Pacific, the Middle East, and Central Asia, and Europe and the US both coming apart at the seams, it was only natural that things were going to escalate at some point. The only question for us had been when, and how.
r />   Those were still questions. We were in the dark, with no answers. I turned to Killian. “You mentioned a Lieutenant Fink,” I said.

  Killian shook his head. “He was in the lead track,” he answered. I nodded, tight-lipped. I’d seen the smoke. Killian’s platoon commander was dead.

  “Do you have any SA on the other peacekeeping units in the area?” I asked. I was remembering Scott’s report that things were oddly quiet in the nearby Belgian sector.

  But Killian was still shaking his head. “There’s isn’t much communication between sectors,” he said. “Especially lately. The handful of times we’ve interacted with any of the EDC units…well, it’s been tense.”

  I suspected that that was putting it mildly.

  “Don’t spread this around to your boys and girls,” I said quietly, “but I think that something has gone really wrong. We need to get you back to Keystone. Posthaste.”

  I knew that I was on somewhat shaky ground right then. We’d gone in to rescue one dude. We’d done that. And Killian had armor, heavy machineguns, and a 50mm cannon to back him up and get him home. We didn’t. Furthermore, we didn’t exactly belong there, or at least, I didn’t think that his command would think so.

  But as still as I kept my features behind my sweat-streaked camouflage paint, I think Killian might have picked up on something, because he looked at me oddly, with a sort of blend of hope and relief. “I won’t object,” he said. “I don’t know who you guys are, but you’re obviously better at this stuff than most of my kids are. Hell,” he said tiredly, running a hand over his face, “you’re better at it than I am.” He squared his shoulders and looked me in the eye. “Look, I don’t know who you are. And I don’t care. You could be Delta, CIA, DEVGRU, contractors, hell, you could be the fucking Triarii and I wouldn’t care.” That was comforting. Apparently, we were persona non grata with the Army at the moment. Which was strange, given that this was really our first operation overseas. Who knew what was getting said at the current events briefings, though. “We’d still be back there, stuck on that street in Borinka if not for you and your air support, so you have my thanks.”

  It suddenly struck me just how tired Killian looked. He was out of his element, and he knew it. And here we were, a bunch of hard bastards who had come out of the woodwork and smacked the hell out of the bad guys who’d ambushed his unit, and appeared to know what the hell we were doing. We must have seemed like a Godsend to him.

  He glanced downhill. “It’s a fairly straight shot down to the 502,” he said. “Though we haven’t been allowed to take tracks on it. Too much damage to the civilian highway.”

  But I was already shaking my head as I pulled my map out of the pocket set behind the magazine pouches in my chest rig. He glanced at my gear enviously; I was rolling a lot lighter than he was, at least without my ruck on. I spread the map against the Powell’s armor plate.

  “It’s just a hunch, but I don’t want to take the highways right now,” I said. “I’ve got a feeling that it’d be a bad idea. Comms go down all the time, but they don’t go down this hard unless something’s gone seriously pear-shaped. Let’s stick to backroads, shall we?” I traced a line of unimproved roads threading their way through the woods and over the ridge to the north. We might not have had comms arranged with FOB Keystone, but we damned sure knew where it was. Set in the fields between Lozorno and Jablonovè, it was well away from Bratislava itself, purportedly on the insistence of the EDC. “It’ll be safer.”

  “There could be more militias back there,” Killian objected.

  “Maybe,” I replied, not mentioning that I thought the militias were really going to turn out to be the least of our worries. Militias don’t, as a rule, have the capability to jam military comms. “Though I doubt it. The militias have been targeting the Slovaks more than the peacekeepers.” Again, with some notable exceptions, most particularly just an hour before, in Borinka. “They’ve got no real reason to hang out in the woods, far from major population centers. They’ve been secure enough squatting in the cities under the EDC’s protection.”

  Killian gave me a sharp glance at that. I probably shouldn’t have shown my hand that early, but I hadn’t quite realized just how little information the Army was getting with its current events briefings.

  He probably hadn’t seen the reports on the killings in Trnava, while the Belgians had just stood by and watched. It had been Slovenský Grob all over again, only without an American unit stepping in.

  “It’s going to take a few hours, over some of this terrain,” I said, “but if the local trucks can negotiate these roads, your vehicles should be able to, as well.”

  “Are you guys planning on riding with us?” he asked, looking around at my team and the infantry section, at least where they could be seen. Bradshaw had pushed more of his men out, deeper into the woods, expanding the perimeter as much as he could. We both wanted as much warning as possible if we were going to get hit.

  “Not if we can help it,” I replied. “It’s close woods, and close terrain. Just because I’m hoping that the militias aren’t out in the hills, doesn’t mean I’m not going to be prepared for them to be. Cramming everyone on vehicles might take less time, but the woods are just like an urban area. We don’t want to recreate the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest in miniature, here.” He gave me a blank look, and I couldn’t help but shake my head. Granted, I probably wouldn’t have known about the Varian Disaster either if it hadn’t been for Bart Cooper, but it still astounded me sometimes how little other people knew about such things. Particularly warfighters.

  Hell, that battle hadn’t been all that far from where we were. Varus had taken two legions into close terrain and thick woods, and hadn’t come out again.

  He looked down at the map, though, and nodded. “How long do you expect the movement to take?” he asked.

  “We might get there by midnight,” I replied. We were looking at a seventeen or eighteen klick movement, over terrain that wasn’t exactly flat. It wasn’t the Alps, but it wasn’t going to be fun, either. And that was leaving aside the ever-present possibility that one of the vehicles was going to break down.

  Or that we were going to get into another firefight.

  He sighed heavily. “If we’re out of contact that long, there’s going to be hell to pay,” he said.

  “So, keep trying to get comms with Gatekeeper,” I retorted. “It’s going to be a lot worse if we drive into another ambush and get another one of your vehicles blown up, along with however many dismounts are in or on it.”

  His lips thinned a little; he was grateful for our intervention, and clinging to our help like a life-preserver, but on some level, he couldn’t be happy about getting lectured by a scruffy-looking ginger with cammie paint in his beard and completely non-standard equipment. I probably wouldn’t be in his place, either.

  Not that I cared overmuch. I was a Grex Luporum Team Leader. I had bigger concerns than Killian’s ego.

  I glanced around. There were a handful of soldiers on security, though most of it seemed to be covered by the vehicle turrets. A couple of the dismounts had been wounded, either by fragmentation or bullets, and their platoon medic was treating them. “How soon can you be ready to move?” I asked.

  He followed my gaze. “Fifteen minutes?”

  I almost asked him if he was asking me or telling me, but bit my tongue. That would definitely not go over well, and while I’m no diplomat, we kind of needed each other. Especially since I’d sent the S-70s away.

  Great thinking, Matt. You just had to dive in and be helpful, didn’t you? Could have finished the mission and gone back to Hungary, but no. You had to take a mech infantry platoon under your wing.

  I shook off the doubts. There had been a time when I would have essentially said, “I’ve got mine,” and gotten on the birds and left Killian and his platoon to sort out their own fate. It would have been the pragmatic move.

  But I’d been one of the Triarii for a few years. I’d seen too many ca
ses where some police or National Guard unit’s higher command made the “pragmatic” choice, and let men and women die because of it. I was sick of it, and if I ever had the chance to make one of those cowardly bastards pay, I was pretty sure I was going to take it.

  So, there I was, with a short platoon of mech infantry hitched to my wagon, in presumably hostile territory.

  “Fifteen minutes,” I echoed. I turned and headed back up toward the trees, where the rest of my team was set in, most of them sitting against their rucks, rifles held across knees and pointed outboard, mostly back toward Borinka. Greg didn’t hesitate to follow me; apparently, even the most gregarious Ranger I’ve ever known wasn’t all that keen on hanging out with our lost patrol.

  Scott was crouched next to his own ruck, and looked up as we approached. “I don’t know about this, boss,” he said quietly. His voice wouldn’t travel much past where Tony was down in the prone next to his ruck, his Mk 48 sitting on its bipods, pointed back down toward the power lines. It certainly wouldn’t make it to Killian’s ears. He glanced down toward the vehicles, his eyes pensive.

  “They lost two vics and at least half a dozen people,” I said, though I knew why he was reticent. “Killian’s not going to look a gift horse in the mouth. We saved their asses, and he knows it.”

  “Maybe,” Scott replied quietly. He wasn’t as taciturn as Tony, but my assistant team leader was always quiet and soft-spoken. It was usually attributed to his Japanese art hobby. “And five years ago, I would have accepted that. But these days…”

  I just nodded as I followed his gaze toward the troops in the clearing below us. Scott hadn’t been on my team from the beginning. He’d been on another team that had worked directly with some local law enforcement for a while before being set up for a fall with the Feds in Philadelphia. Coming after he’d been screwed by his platoon commander, ending his career at 2nd Recon Bn, he didn’t have much trust in officers in the regular armed forces, or for anyone outside the Triarii, for that matter.