by Peter Nealen
But as he was thinking that, even though he knew that he had to clear the nearest house first, Aziz pushed past him and stacked on the door just ahead.
Jenkins scowled behind his NVGs. He didn’t like Aziz. He probably wouldn’t have admitted it to anyone else if called on it, but his ultimate reason had more to do with the fact that Aziz hadn’t been a SEAL than anything else. Granted, none of the rest of the team had been, either, but Jenkins figured he needed to make do. This Brannigan guy seemed to be hard-core enough, for a Marine, and this was the team with the mission, after all. Beggars couldn’t be choosers.
Still, once they got this job under their belts, he thought he could offer Brannigan some suggestions that would start to really mold this group into a proper, hard-core, special operations unit. He was, after all, the best-qualified. He’d been a SEAL.
Determined to set the right example, he moved up and joined Aziz at the door, putting a shoulder to the other man’s back to let him know that he was set, and they could make entry. He didn’t know if Aziz would catch the signal, or understand it, but the other man started moving anyway.
That was when the windows of the next house down, only about five yards away, slammed open and started spitting gunfire.
Bullets smacked against the wall inches from Jenkins’ head. There was nowhere to go but through the door, and apparently Aziz thought the same thing. With gunfire snapping far too close for comfort, they pushed through the open door and into the darkness of the house.
They almost didn’t make it in. There was a sandbag revetment three feet inside the door, and Aziz almost tripped and fell over it, plunging into the small figure with a rifle just on the other side.
The figure let out a yelp and tried to bring the rifle up. Aziz was so close that he batted it aside with his own rifle barrel, then put two rapid shots into the figure’s midsection. The Kokang soldier crumpled with a high-pitched, agonized scream.
Jenkins, meanwhile, had sidestepped around Aziz to get a better shot at the middle of the house’s single room. There wasn’t any interior light, though in the faint illumination coming through the door and the windows, he could make out that there might have been a lantern set against the far wall. The other three men were getting up off of mats on the floor, grabbing for rifles and chest rigs as they did so, and Jenkins started on the left and tracked right, putting a hammering pair of 7.62 rounds into each dim silhouette. The strobing flash of his muzzle blast faintly illuminated the room, though only enough to see that they did, indeed, have weapons.
The three men sprawled out, twitching, in death, and Jenkins ceased fire, clambering over the sandbags to get deeper inside and away from the gunfire that was hammering at the doorway behind him. The one that Aziz had shot was still screaming, a high, keening noise.
“Holy shit,” Aziz said quietly. “It’s just a kid.”
Jenkins glanced over. “He had a gun, he’s fair game,” he said, even as he felt his guts twist a little. What kind of monsters were these people? He would have expected child soldiers in Africa. He hadn’t been expecting them in Southeast Asia.
“No shit,” Aziz snarled, as he clambered over the sandbags. He looked around. “Damn. I think we found the mother-lode.”
Jenkins followed his gaze. It was still really dark in the house, but he started to see what Aziz was talking about. The windows were all sandbagged, built up as firing positions. There was what looked like several hundred AK magazines stacked in a corner. The house had been fortified as a fighting position.
With a sudden rubbery feeling in his knees, Jenkins realized just how lucky they had been. If the four soldiers in that house had been awake and on the ball, they could well have been shot to pieces before they’d even gotten to the door.
Then, just barely audible over the hammering gunfire and the whip-crack of flying bullets, the sound of whistles could be heard from the wider dirt road that ran along the south of the village. The same whistles that had signaled the attacks when they’d been in the Norks’ camp.
***
Bianco had actually moved up ahead of the main assault element before Gomez had even opened fire. It hadn’t been in the plan; his spot had been out on the flank of the loose wedge pointed toward the village, but that road that he was supposed to cover made him nervous. He wanted eyes on it as soon as possible, along with the firepower of his MG 3.
He’d never used the German machinegun before this little expedition, but he liked it. Bianco liked anything that spat lots of lead really fast. He’d been the guy to always volunteer to carry the SAW or the M240, even when it hadn’t, strictly-speaking, been his job. He just liked firepower. For Curtis, it might have been professional pride, since Curtis had started out as an 0331, Marine Machinegunner. For Bianco, it was because lots of fully automatic fire was just cool.
So, as soon as the first shots rang out, Bianco was already down in the prone alongside the packed-dirt road, his machinegun pointed toward the two little villes that Brannigan had suspected were really just parts of the same village. And that meant he was ready when the first dark figures, armed with rifles and a couple of machineguns, started jogging up that road, urged on by eerily familiar whistles.
Hancock was behind him, but Bianco didn’t need prompting. He opened fire as soon as he had a shot, sending a long, ravening burst tearing through the night right about at knee height. He took the first man in the shins, chopping his feet out from under him and dropping him screaming onto the road. The screams were abruptly cut short as the man fell right into the stream of bullets, which smashed through his torso and head as he dropped.
He shifted fire as the figures scattered toward the darkness of the vegetation on either side of the road, cutting down another silhouette before they were out of sight. More whistles sounded, and the second man was rolling in the dirt and screaming. It hadn’t been as clean a kill as the first one. But Bianco was reluctant to just silence the man with another burst.
He didn’t especially care about North Koreans or Kokangs, or whoever those figures out in the dark were; he only knew that they were trying to kill him and his new teammates, and that made them fair game. But he didn’t know what Hancock would say if he finished the wounded man off. He knew his old platoon sergeant well enough to know that, even if he covered for him later, he’d have some harsh words about it nevertheless. Hancock had been a ruthless combat Marine in his way, but he had his rules, and you broke them at your own peril. At least, that had always been the Hancock that Bianco had known.
More whistles sounded in the dark, but Bianco didn’t have a target, so he held his fire. But he just knew that they were creeping through the dark and the weeds, trying to get on his flank. He could see them in his mind’s eye, just like the little Vietcong guys in black pajamas in the movies he’d grown up on.
There was a rustle off to his left, and he tried to shift to bring his MG 3 to bear. Even as he did, he barely heard the soft thump of something hitting the ground not far in front of him.
“Down!” Hancock hissed, a moment before the grenade blotted out the world.
***
The grenade blast focused everyone’s attention on the southern flank, and Brannigan felt his blood go cold. Hancock and Bianco had been on that side.
A moment later, a storm of gunfire erupted from the south, punctuated by more whistles. There were heavier booms of the 7.62 NATO G3s in there, but most of it was the slightly lighter rattles of Eastern Bloc weapons. North Korean weapons. Their targets were counterattacking.
He made a quick decision. Pulling back was a non-starter; Jenkins and Aziz already had a foothold inside one of the houses on the edge of the village, and Santelli and Hart were making entry on the next one, off to the right, as he and Tanaka returned the fire coming from the central house. More gunfire was echoing from the open door where Hart and Santelli had disappeared. If they fell back, they’d only be pursued, if not cut off altogether. So, the only thing to do was attack. Establish a foothold in the vil
lage, and they could deal with the counterattack from hardened positions.
Getting up off the ground, he sprinted toward the corner of Santelli’s and Hart’s building, where it sounded like a hell of a fight was going on. The windows of the central house didn’t have as good a line of fire on that corner, and he wanted that place knocked out. It could stall them just inside the village, and their foothold was already tenuous enough.
He paused just long enough to fire five quick, but aimed, shots at the nearest muzzle flash coming from the closest window, hitting close enough that the shooter flinched back from the window and the fire died down for a moment. Then he sprinted forward, hitting the wall with his shoulder and digging in his vest for a grenade. Tanaka hit the wall immediately behind him, his rifle pointed toward the north, even though Curtis should have that side covered, and the attackers seemed to be coming from the south.
He got the grenade out, pulled the pin, cooked it for a two-count, and hooked it through the firing port only a few feet from his head as hard as he could. There might have been a faint, meaty thud, and there was definitely a yell of pain, followed by even more frantic screams of panic. Then the grenade exploded, the detonation sounding like a dull thump through the wall, as dust, smoke, and debris billowed out of every opening.
He didn’t wait for it to settle. He was immediately moving around the corner, heading for the door, Tanaka on his heels.
***
Someone was shaking him awake. Moe Tint Man Goe squinted and cursed, taking a wild swing at whoever was tormenting him. He hadn’t been able to secure a Kokang girl prisoner to warm his bed, and he’d tried to make up for it with a considerable amount of htan ye, so he was still more than a little drunk. And the liquor still hadn’t entirely made up for it, so he was angry as well as drunk.
“What do you want, you miserable dog-fucker?” he snarled.
“Sir,” Khin Oo San Thiha said hesitantly, “there is gunfire off to the east, in the hills. It sounds like a firefight. We think that some of our paramilitaries might have found the rebels who fled from Parsenkyaw after our attack.”
“What damned time is it?” Moe Tint Man Goe demanded groggily. He really couldn’t care less about rebels or paramilitaries at that point. His head was starting to pound, and he really just wanted to sleep it off.
“Sir,” Khin Oo San Thiha insisted, “if our paramilitaries can keep them occupied, we can overcome the rebels this morning! We think that they are less than five kilometers away.”
Moe Tint Man Goe squinted up at his junior officer in the dim light of the lantern that had been brought into the captured house. There was something about the way the younger man had said that…he realized that, for all the abuse he had showered on his subordinate, Khin Oo San Thiha wasn’t quite as cowed as he would like. The younger man had ambitions of his own, and probably had plans to take advantage of this situation if his superior, drunk in the field, didn’t act appropriately. He realized that he might have underestimated his second in command.
That just made him angrier.
“Then what are you waiting here for, idiot?!” he snapped, taking another swing at Khin Oo San Thiha’s head. “Get the Second Company mobilized and ready to move!”
With what might have been a sly look, or maybe that was only Moe Tint Man Goe’s imagination, Khin Oo San Thiha saluted, turned on his heel, and left the room.
Moe Tint Man Goe started looking for his pants. Maybe they could squash these Kokangs for good in another few hours. Maybe then he could go back south again.
CHAPTER 17
Hancock hugged the ground as dirt and smoke fountained in the early predawn darkness, and fragmentation whickered through the air and shredded the vegetation overhead. Bianco’s machinegun had gone silent, and in the midst of his adrenaline-fueled calm, Hancock was seized with worry for the younger man. He’d trained and mentored Bianco in the Marine Corps, and held himself at least partially responsible for getting him into this mess, fighting for their lives all the way out in the Burmese highlands.
But Bianco’s current health had to wait. Picking his head up, Hancock found his red dot in the green circle of his NVGs, just in time to spot the dark shape of an enemy soldier coming out of the trees toward where Bianco was slumped next to the road.
He took a hasty snap-shot at the running man, and was rewarded by seeing him spin halfway around and stumble to one knee. A slightly slower follow-up shot dropped him on his ass, then flat on his back. But Hancock’s eyes and muzzle were already moving beyond the crumpling shape of the man he’d killed.
Tightly gripping the forearm of his rifle, he came up off the ground just far enough that he could easily swing the weapon, and dragged it across the dark line of vegetation on the side of the road where the enemy had disappeared, dumping the rest of the twenty-round magazine as fast as he could pull the trigger. The muzzle climbed as he blasted away, but he only needed them to stay down while he got to Bianco.
A moment later, more gunfire opened up to his right. He recognized the heavier, thumping reports of G3s, as opposed to the AKs or AK variants that the opposition seemed to universally be using. That would be Wade and Flanagan.
He hastily reloaded before hauling himself to his feet and sprinting the couple of meters to Bianco, hoping the big nerd wasn’t dead.
Bianco was moving, peeling himself up slightly off the ground, though even in the low light and through NVGs, Hancock could see the man was hurting. He’d definitely taken some frag, but he was alive.
Hancock hit the dirt next to him, pumping five more rounds into the weeds for good measure. “Vinnie!” he barked. “Talk to me, brother!”
“What the hell just happened?” Bianco asked. His voice sounded thick. He’d probably been stunned by the concussion.
“You just ate a frag and lived to tell about it,” Hancock told him between shots. “Can you move?”
“I think so.” Bianco grunted with pain. “Ow.”
Footsteps pounded the dirt behind him, and Hancock almost spun around to shoot at them, but heard Flanagan’s growled, “Friendly!” Their black-bearded teammate hit a knee on Bianco’s other side, hammering more shots into the trees. “This is a bad spot to hang out, boys,” he barked between the thunderous reports.
“Come on, Vinnie,” Hancock grunted, grabbing the heavier machinegunner by the back of his vest. “Time to go.”
Bianco helped, though he was obviously bleeding and in a good deal of pain, but grabbed for his MG 3 as he got up. He must not have been too badly wounded, because he promptly sprayed a long, fiery burst down the side of the road, before Hancock got a shoulder under his arm and started helping him move back, toward the village and the trees where Wade was crouched, his own rifle spitting flame at anything moving that wasn’t one of the Blackhearts.
They reached Wade’s position, and Hancock dumped Bianco unceremoniously off his shoulder. At first, he thought that the big man had passed out or was more badly hurt than he’d thought, because Bianco fell flat on the dirt. But a moment later, Bianco was behind his MG 3 and sending another long burst down the road, careful to keep his fire away from Flanagan, who immediately got the message and turned to head back.
At the same moment, another series of whistle blasts echoed down the road. There was no return fire, but even as Bianco let off the trigger, Hancock knew they weren’t out of the woods yet.
***
Brannigan went through the door fast, knowing just how little time they had. Unless they could quickly clear these houses, they were going to be caught between the hammer and the anvil.
The door was barricaded with a waist-high wall of sandbags. As he came through the doorway, Brannigan saw a figure rising up over that wall, dropping the muzzle of an AK level. The other man was a fraction of a second too slow, since Brannigan’s rifle was already up and ready. He moved the muzzle up an inch and blew the back of the man’s skull off with a single round through the face from three feet away.
Then he was vaulti
ng the wall, trying to get out of that fatal funnel as quickly as possible. He landed on the corpse of the man he’d just shot, and almost lost his footing, which saved his life as the man on the far corner of the one-room house took a shot at him. He plunged forward, twisting around to return fire, stitching a stuttering series of shots that tracked across the dim shape of the man with the AK only a dozen feet away.
Tanaka had gone the opposite direction, hooking around the doorway as he entered. He hadn’t jumped the wall, but was crouched behind it, tracking his muzzle across the room and taking a shot at the man who appeared to be disappearing into the floor.
“Clear,” Brannigan called. There were two corpses near the window where his grenade had detonated, the two men he’d shot, and that was it. The rest of the inside of the house appeared to be taken up with crates, sleeping mats, cooking pots, and baskets, presumably of rice. Maybe opium, he mused briefly.
“Watch it,” Tanaka said. “Some dude just went through the floor.”
“I saw,” Brannigan said grimly. “I think we’ve got tunnels.”
“Great. I saw Tunnel Rats.”
Brannigan didn’t comment. He wasn’t familiar with the movie that Tanaka was presumably referring to, but he didn’t have to be. He’d read all the horror stories about trying to root the VC out of their tunnel systems. They’d made the Taliban’s cave complexes look simple.
The tunnel entrance wasn’t hard to spot as he moved into the room. It was a circular hole in the floor, about three feet across, leading down into darkness. It had evidently been covered by a rattan mat most of the time. That mat had been tossed aside.
A quick check confirmed that there was no one hiding behind the crates that were stacked in various places around the room.
The rate of fire outside was intensifying. Long bursts from both MG 3s were tearing through the dawn, and the G3s were definitely doing work, as well. Brannigan peered out of one of the sandbagged windows, only to have to jerk his head back as a burst of AK fire spattered sand and grit in his face.
