Escalation

by Peter Nealen

  It took a long time to get back to sleep. The vivid images of my teammates and brothers getting shot to pieces wouldn’t go away. I think by the time I finally drifted off again, it was probably less than thirty minutes before Scott was supposed to wake me up.

  ***

  I awoke to the sound of distant gunfire.

  “Flat, Deacon,” I called, as I rolled to my knees and levered myself up off the floor. Everything hurt, and I wasn’t exactly bursting with energy, either.

  “Send it, Deacon.” Bradshaw sounded worse than I felt. I wondered if he’d gotten any rest, or if he’d been engaged all night. It was starting to get light, the darkness no longer quite so impenetrable. I suddenly felt guilty. If Bradshaw had been fighting, while my team and I had been sitting here resting…

  “Do you have eyes on the fighting to the south?” I asked. I could see smoke rising that way, but little else.

  “Negative,” he replied. “We’ve been firm just off Kollàrova Street since we fell back. But it sounds big. Like they shifted their axis of attack to the south.”

  Before I could respond, there was a sudden crash of heavy-caliber fire off to the east. It sounded like tank guns. Several of them.

  “Deacon,” Bradshaw said, with a growing urgency. “That came from behind us.”

  There was some commotion toward the east side of the building. I got up and hustled over there, looking for somebody in charge.

  “You are the Americans?” an accented voice asked. I turned, my hand still on my rifle, just in case. But this guy, who looked about in his forties, with a thick mustache, had his vz. 58 slung and was wearing a full Slovak Army uniform, though with the Nationalist armband around his sleeve.

  “We’re some of them, yes,” I answered.

  “We need to be ready to fall back to the north,” he said. “The enemy broke through with tanks up Cintorinska Street. They have targeted any possible strongpoint with drones, and have been blowing up our car bombs with tank fire.”

  “I’ve got men on the south side of Štùrova Street,” I protested. “We can’t leave without them.”

  “If we do not leave, we will be the next to be blown to pieces,” the shorter man replied. “Are you coming?”

  I looked toward where I’d heard the tank fire.

  “Not without my boys,” I told him.

  “Suit yourself, American,” the man said, turning away. “But there is not much time left.”

  I turned back toward our little redoubt. “Scott!” I bellowed. “Get everybody up and ready to move! We need to break Bradshaw out of that pocket before the EDC and the Loyalists close the noose!”

  Chapter 28

  Of course, trying to break an armored pincer movement with a ten-man team is far more easily said than done. I was wracking my brain to figure out a plan, even as we gathered what little gear we’d put down, along with an RPG-75 or Matador for each man. The weight would slow us down, but we needed every bit of punch we could get.

  And it still wouldn’t be enough. I knew that.

  But I didn’t see another way out. I was dead tired, and the nightmare of watching my team get cut to ribbons in front of me haunted my thoughts as we prepped, and Scott and I pored over the map, trying to figure out how to attack this. We were too few. We were all going to die.

  And yet.

  I couldn’t leave Bradshaw and his guys to die. I wouldn’t. Even if it meant going in alone. Even if it meant I failed, and died before I could get them out. Better that, than to turn tail and save myself.

  And the truth was that even as I felt like I was demanding that the rest of the team commit suicide with me, I knew that if I spoke up and made it a volunteer-only mission, they’d take it as an insult. We were Triarii. We were a Grex Luporum team. We didn’t leave our brothers behind while we ran for safety. Every one of these men, even Jordan at his testiest, or Phil at his most mouthy and assholish, would throw themselves at Hell itself if it meant going after a comrade in trouble.

  Even if it meant dying.

  I didn’t want to go out there. Out there, with the killer drones, and tanks, and airstrikes. I didn’t want to die. The thought of it was twisting my guts as we worked, as I stared at the map and drew a complete blank as to just how we were going to do much of anything besides go out in a blaze of glory, maybe to be remembered by a few of the Slovak Nationalists, and hardly anyone else.

  Scott wasn’t looking at me; he was staring at the same map with a fixity that told me he was thinking much the same thing.

  “Americans?” a heavily-accented voice asked from the doorway. I looked up to see a positively ancient-looking man, his beard snow-white beneath salt-and-pepper hair poking out from under a Slovak Army helmet. Like the burly, mustached man who had refused to help a few minutes before, he was carrying a vz. 58.

  “Yeah,” I said heavily. I didn’t want to get in another argument with a Nationalist who didn’t want to stick around.

  “You are going out there?” he asked, pointing to the south, where the crackle of small arms fire was getting more intense, punctuated by the dull, heavy thuds of explosions.

  I straightened up. “That’s right,” I said, as the team’s eyes turned on him, hands not far from weapons. Every eye was on the crusty-looking old bastard, but he didn’t take his eyes away from me, even though I got the distinct impression that he was well aware that he was the center of a lot of not-too-friendly attention.

  He nodded. “Then we are coming with you,” he said, motioning toward the doorway behind him. My eyes flicked over his shoulder, and saw the group of men, young and old, in a variegated collection of civilian clothes and camouflage, armed with just about everything from Bren 805s to old bolt-action Mausers. “This is our city. Those are our friends and family down there, not just yours,” the old man continued. “Besides, no Slovak patriot should pass up the chance to kill more of the traitors who would sell their own country.” He looked like he wanted to spit on the floor.

  I looked over the group. They were rag-tag, but then, so were we. And they had more spine than our own Army did.

  Maybe that was uncharitable. But we were down here fighting, while Warren and the others were sitting up there, refusing to engage the same people who had wiped out their own comrades, worried about political repercussions. There was bound to be a little bitterness.

  “You’re more than welcome,” I told him. “We can use every gun we can get.”

  Something clicked. Guns. I might have an idea.

  I ushered the old man over to the map. “Do you have radio contact with your artillery?” I asked. I hadn’t heard much Nationalist artillery firing during the last day, though there had definitely been some. I didn’t know how much had survived the air strikes or counterbattery fire.

  “We can reach the Fire Direction Center, yes,” the old man said. Clearly, he was more than just a militiaman who’d been called up by the Nationalists. Either he was former military, or he was a really fast learner. “I do not know how many batteries they have left.”

  “We might only need one,” I said. “Can they preregister on these points, here?” I pointed out the three intersections I wanted targeted.

  He peered at the map for a moment before calling one of the younger men over. The blond kid was lugging a radio, and handed the old man the handset. He spoke over it in Slovak, listened, then started to rattle off numbers. He was giving the coordinates. He looked up at me.

  “Do they shoot now, or on command?” he asked.

  “On command,” I replied. I had a hunch that we were going to get one shot at this, and if the artillery fired too early, we were going to be out of position.

  He spoke quickly into the handset, then handed it back to the kid, with a curt order that was unmistakable in tone, if not in language. Stay close to me.

  Gunfire erupted from the east side of the building. A moment later, the building shuddered with a horrific crash. Dust billowed through the hall, and I thought I saw cracks in the wall as
dust and debris sifted down from the ceiling.

  “That’s our cue, boys,” I said, snatching the map up and shoving it in my chest rig. “Either we get out there and kill them, or they’re going to bring this building down on our heads and kill us.”

  “Out the back,” the old man snapped. “There is more cover there.”

  “You heard the man,” I said. “Let’s go.”

  Phil was already moving, hitching the RPG-75 higher up on his shoulder. Phil wasn’t all that big, which meant he had less shoulder than, say, Dwight or Tony, to carry stuff.

  We had to weave through the office spaces, making our way past more piles of desks, chairs, and electronics, as another hit on the building made the entire structure shudder ominously, aside from the shock of the initial impact. The dust and smoke in the air were getting thicker, and more and more of the Nationalists were joining us, bailing out of the VBC building before it collapsed under the hammering of 125mm shells.

  There were already Nationalist fighters outside, in the parking lot on the north side of the roughly U-shaped building, along with a couple of ancient-looking, hastily up-armored trucks. One of them had a familiar antenna mounted on the roof of the cab, and I breathed a little easier. It looked a lot like the one I’d suspected was a drone jammer on the move out of Vrbovè. Hopefully, that meant we didn’t have to worry so much about kamikaze drones blowing us up.

  Provided they were remote-controlled, and not bot-controlled. That could get a little more dangerous.

  Almost a dozen Nationalist fighters were crouched behind one of the trucks as bullets smacked into the armor, some with loud bangs, some ricocheting off with vicious whines. More rounds snapped overhead, smacking into the VBC building, breaking glass and smashing plaster and concrete, and we ran for cover, most tactical movement or formation forgotten for the moment.

  A burly Slovak with a PKM leaned out in front of the truck’s grill and ripped off what sounded like half a belt, the chattering roar momentarily drowning anything else out, spent brass cascading out onto the pavement to join the pile already there. Given that he was hip-shooting it, I doubted that he’d hit anything, but he’d kept some heads down, and given me a chance, as Phil, Greg, Tony, Chris, and I ran to the truck, to see a bit of what we were up against.

  There was an armored vehicle squatting on the roadway behind the high-rise, just barely visible as a dark green shape through the trees and a handful of civilian vehicles. Men on foot were scattered between the trees, trading fire with the Nationalists while taking more fire from windows in the upper floors of the high-rise.

  I was pretty sure the only reason that that vehicle hadn’t already blasted the two up-armored trucks was that it simply didn’t have that good a shot. It was barely visible around the corner, and seemed to be trying to maneuver, but having a hard time with the tight spaces.

  I leaned out past the guy with the PKM and took a snap-shot at a silhouette beneath the nearest tree. I might have missed, but he ducked, and I got a better look at the lay of the land.

  “We’ve got to take that vehicle out,” I yelled, even as PKM Guy leaned out and blew off the rest of his belt. I slung my rifle, cinching the sling tight, and pulled the Matador off my back.

  I just needed to not get shot while I lined up the armored vehicle.

  Of course, Tony and Dwight were way ahead of me. Tony went flat under the truck, and Dwight pushed to the back, similarly dropping to the prone and setting his Mk 48 on the bipods. Tony having been in position first, he went to work first.

  There is something vaguely awe-inspiring about watching a pair of well-trained machinegunners synchronizing their fire. I’d gotten pretty good at it in the Marine Corps; being an 0331 kind of meant you either had to be able to run a machinegun like a virtuoso or you weren’t suited to your MOS. But Tony and Dwight were better than I ever had been.

  Tony’s burst had barely ended when Dwight’s ripped into the treeline. When Dwight let off, there was almost no pause before the roar of Tony’s 48 picked back up again.

  Frankly, they made the Slovaks look like amateurs.

  Of course, I didn’t have the time or the inclination to just admire their work. They didn’t have the ammo for me to dawdle, either.

  I sprinted to the tailgate of the truck, where I knelt and prepped the Matador. It was fairly simple, and the directions for arming and firing were laid out in a helpful graphic affixed to the side of the tube.

  Down on one knee, I eased an eye out, over Dwight’s shoulder, to locate my target. I got a better view from there, even though it was still half-hidden by a tree. It was wheeled; probably a BOV infantry fighting vehicle, not far off from a Stryker.

  A bullet ricocheted off the truck next to my head with a loud bang and a nasty buzz, even as I pulled my head back. Dwight reacted immediately, despite the rhythm he had going with Tony, shifting his hips slightly to move his point of aim and ripping off a ten-round burst at the tree where the shooter was crouched. Bullets tore into the trunk, spewing splinters and bits of bark from the impacts, but I couldn’t see if he’d hit the Loyalist soldier.

  Short term, it didn’t matter. He’d forced the man to put his head down, and that was my opening. Shouldering the Matador, I stepped out, dropped to a knee, and bellowed, “Backblast area clear!” as I leveled the sights on the boxy, dark green hull ahead of me.

  I took a split second to steady my aim, then I squeezed the trigger. The rocket crossed the gap in an eyeblink, the whoosh of its motor lost in the jarring wham of its impact.

  The vehicle rocked as the flash of the detonation momentarily engulfed it. When the smoke cleared, the BOV was burning fiercely, and the infantry were falling back, though in good order, firing bursts of covering fire as they dashed from tree to tree, avoiding the blazing hulk of the stricken BOV as the onboard ammunition started cooking off.

  One of the things drummed into us as Triarii is that once you have the initiative, you’ve got to hold onto it. Attack, attack, attack. Dropping the spent Matador tube, I swept up my rifle and dashed forward, the weapon in my shoulder as I dropped prone behind a tree and got on sights, my finger already tightening on the trigger as a Slovak soldier, turning and spraying a burst back toward me, filled the aperture.

  It was a hasty shot, so I only hit him in the shoulder. He staggered, thrown halfway around by the impact, and I dropped him with a follow-up shot that was so quick that I really didn’t have time to think about it.

  I hadn’t issued orders, or yelled some inspiring war-movie, “Follow me!” I’d just acted. But training makes up for a lot of talking, and the rest of the team was moving with me, the Nationalists catching up as they figured out what we were doing. Chris pounded past me to another spot, taking cover right at the corner of the high-rise, while Tony and Reuben joined him. Cover was at a premium out there; the trees provided most of it, and few of them were that large.

  I heaved myself to my feet and moved up quickly. There was a row of underground storage units or garages ahead, on the other side of the trees, beneath yet another high-rise apartment building. Even as I took cover, taking a shot at another Loyalist soldier who had turned to fire back at us, a tank round or missile hit one of the upper floors of the high-rise with a deep bang, sending debris cascading down into the street. The man who’d shot at me flinched away from the rain of deadly fragments, and I shot him, sending him spinning to his face on the pavement.

  Unfortunately, while I had good cover, I was on the wrong side of the burning BOV. Cursing under my breath, I ran around it, feeling the heat beating against my face as I went, joining the rest of the team and a handful of Nationalist fighters at the steps leading up to the parking lot on the outside of the bigger high-rise attached to the VBC building.

  The stairs provided some good cover, at least from fire coming from Štùrova Street. I looked around, spotted the oldster from inside, and waved at him to join me. He grabbed his radioman and ran, doubled-over, to join us.

  “Can you call a f
ire mission on that intersection?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he replied, “provided the artillery has not moved too far to avoid the drones or counterbattery fire.”

  He didn’t wait for my acknowledgement, but grabbed the handset and rapped out fast, clipped orders in Slovak. A moment later, he looked up. “Shot,” he said.

  I hadn’t known that the Slovaks used the same verbiage for fire missions that we did. Or maybe he’d done some work with the Americans a long time ago, maybe in Afghanistan or someplace, and had learned there, and was just translating so that we’d understand.

  The round came down out of the sky with a tearing hiss, and struck the red tile roof of the old, elegant row houses across the street. The old man was immediately shouting adjustments into the handset, and while I couldn’t understand the rapid-fire Slovak, I knew roughly what he was calling. Left fifty, drop ten, fire for effect.

  There was too much weapons fire rattling and thundering south of Štùrova Street for me to hear the reports of the howitzers or multiple launch rocket launchers up on the hill, but the scream of the incoming shells was distinct enough, even though the rattling and squealing of treads had told me that the Loyalist commander on the ground had identified the threat posed by that single artillery shell and had ordered his vehicles to scatter. They hardly had time, though.

  The battery commander had been thinking. While the spotting round had been a regular high explosive, the full barrage detonated high in the air with a curiously muted series of pops.

  A split second later the intersection, and a good chunk of the buildings around it, disappeared in a rippling cloud of explosions, the overlapping detonations sounding like the crackle of the popcorn popper from Hell.

  The subsequent detonations of tank magazines cooking off only added to the conflagration.

  “Flat, Deacon!” I yelled into the radio, trying to be heard over the catastrophic noise that was echoing up and down the street. “The intersection is cleared, you need to head straight north to link up with us!”