Paladin of Shadows 4 - Unto the Breach

by John Ringo

  * * *

  As she swept around to the east, Kacey triggered the speakers. A sound like satanic chanting filled the valley, resounding from mountainside to mountainside. Then she dipped down to come in right at ground level.

  There wasn't any need for special flying and there wasn't much chance of missing the target. The Chechens were all over the ridge. Kacey targeted one group towards the rear and just let fly with everything.

  57mm rockets dropped into the Chechen command group as thousands of 7.62 rounds scowered the ground. The whole group fell, blown to bits by rockets, churned to red mush by the fire of the gatlings.

  She swept around to point up the hill, flying through the dust and smoke of her barrage, and fired everything again, ripping a ten meter wide hole through the middle of the Chechen formation as she swept up the ridge, engine at overload, drums, guitars and voices screaming into the void.

  * * *

  Mike had lost it. At some level he knew that and didn't care.

  He leapt the trench, running ahead of the Keldara, M4 tracking right and left and automatically engaging targets of opportunity, round after round cracking straight through a screaming mouth, behind fierce-slitted eyes, rounds cracking past him, ducking and weaving as some part of his mind anticipated shots.

  Combat psychologists had determined that there were four broad states to humans in relation to combat, mostly definable by heartbeat and blood pressure. The lowest, white, was a steady state. This was a person unstressed by combat and the hormones and endorphins released by it. Heartbeat was steady and low, blood-pressure the same. Above that was yellow, generally found in persons who were aware that combat might occur at any time but were still more or less steady state. Heartbeat was slightly elevated as was blood-pressure. Above that were the ascending orange and red, red being Shakespeare's famous quote regarding summoning up "the actions of a tiger." Heartbeat was generally in the high hundreds, blood-pressure well over two hundred and while fine motor control was reduced the fighter was acting at what most warriors considered maximum capability. Time was distorted, hearing was distorted, the world was an unreal state. The tiger was on the back of the deer and rending.

  But above red was black. Most combatants, entering the black range, lost effect. At the black range the heart was pumping so fast oxygen to the brain was reduced due to poor pumping action, blood pressure was so high that the fighter was seeing either a red cloud or the true tunnel vision of the brain slowly blacking out.

  But some warriors, the most highly trained, could enter into black and function. By definition, they were some of the most deadly persons on earth. In black, the fighter's reactions were superhuman, their automatic training processes working at a level beyond gestalt, their shots so fast that even on single shot they sounded like a machine gun and every one was going to hit a target. A fighter who could ride the wave of the black could, would, never miss.

  Mike was in the black. Time was slowed for him to such an extent he could see the bullets flying from the Chechens AKs, seeming to glide through the air towards him. He could see his own and know before they hit that they were on target. He felt as if he was moving in molasses and yet the Chechens, screaming towards him, were moving slower. The ejected cartridges from the M4 were as big as beer barrels, flying past him as slowly as snails would could they but fly.

  The empty magazine, dropped, unnoticed and another was seated before the first living Chechen in view could target him and still Mike ran on, brow lowered like the gall'ed rock...

  * * *

  "Mike!" Adams bellowed, turning the M-60, still on continuous fire, to the side so that his stupid boss wouldn't run right into his cone of fire. "God damnit! Where the fuck do you think you're going?"

  * * *

  "ARISE KELDARA!" Oleg bellowed. "YOUR KILDAR LEADS!" He targeted a group of Chechens to the side of the Kildar who was pushing into a wedge of dead bodies, firing rounds so fast it sounded as if he was on full auto, but one Chechen after another was flying back with single holes, right through the fucking X ring. Oleg cursed the mortar that had taken his leg. He should be at his Kildar's side! "FORWARD THE AXE AND FLAME! ARISE TIGERS!"

  * * *

  Mike had reached the Chechen line but the fighters in front of him were having a hard time even lifting their weapons with dead bodies falling around and on them.

  Some detached portion of him watched as the butt of the M4 shattered on a Chechen face, the head of the Chechen slumping sideways as the hard driven steel crumpled not only his face bones but his skull.

  The barrel bent across the side of another's head, wrapping into a half U at the impact and brains splashed, slow as dropping feathers, out of the shattered skull.

  The axe came up. The axe of the Kildar and Mike struck down and across, shattering a skull, up to slash through a neck, down to take off an arm.

  The air was filled with a mist of blood, the sacrifices falling slowly, so slowly.

  * * *

  Vil was up and on the Chechens, screaming as he dropped to a knee and fired. Two Chechens, older ones, were maneuvering in to fire on the Kildar and he dropped both with two aimed bursts. But the Kildar wasn't slowing down and moving forward by fire and maneuver obviously wasn't going to let him catch up.

  "Damn him!" Vil shouted. "What's the point of training us if he's going to forget it?"

  * * *

  Lasko was so in his element he thought he might just have to kill himself. Never could he have another day like this.

  He was a very good shot. Good enough that with his scope dialed to more or less the windage and distance, he had no problem instinctually adjusting.

  He was covering the Master Chief's back, sweeping the field and spotting Chechen fighters that were targeting the machine-gunner and terminating them. He wasn't stressed, was in fact in "white", his heartbeat slow and regular. He was coldly finding and terminating his definition of priority targets.

  But the pile of brass gathering around him told the whole story. Lasko truly was "one shot, one kill." Count the brass, take maybe three percent off, and that was his count. There was a huge pile of brass building up. He was going to beat Hathcock's record, probably sometime in the next fifteen minutes. And that was the killer app in the sniper world.

  The last round of the mag blew a head open, he dropped that one, took a full one from Pyotar, loaded and went back to sniping.

  There was, in Lasko's world, nothing better than a field full of Chechens and a full magazine.

  * * *

  Adams still had his finger clamped on the trigger, holding the M-60 at his hip and sweeping it slowly back and forth like a fireman hosing down a fire.

  Eamon was yanking belts out of the boxes and linking them together as fast as he could, while simultaneously holding them off the ground and keeping up with the Master Chief.

  But as fast as Adams advanced he couldn't catch the Kildar.

  "God's Damnit," Adams shouted. "Ghost! Slow the fuck down!"

  * * *

  Somewhere there was an ending to the Chechens. If Mike had a thought in his head it was that he was going to carve his way to that ending and then turn around and carve his way back.

  * * *

  "Oh, fuck," Pavel said, lifting his head away from the scope. He'd been covering the Kildar's back, since he'd apparently forgotten the idea, and only glanced up for a moment to get a general look. What he saw was not the best vision he'd ever seen.

  "Vanner! Vanner!"

  * * *

  Patrick Vanner was having one hell of a time. He was a Marine brat, both his mother and father were former Marines, the latter a retired infantry gunnery sergeant.

  But despite all his years in the Marines, and his service with the Kildar, he'd never gotten a chance to fire a shot in anger. He'd never known if he had that special quality that let men excel when the bullets were flying around them.

  No question now. He had moved forward, following the Keldara and targeting "leakers", guys who for one
reason or another got through the Keldara line. Most of them were slipping around the side, which could be bad if they got in behind the Keldara. But they weren't because Patrick Adam Vanner was by God terminating their mujaheddin asses!

  A Chechen dropped, three rounds in the sweet spot in the upper chest, when his headphone buzzed.

  "Vanner! Vanner! This is Pavel. The Kildar is about to be shot by his own helicopter!"

  * * *

  Kacey wasn't quite in black but she was seeing red. Lots of red. A good bit of it was on her windshield.

  She'd dropped down to where the belly of the Hind was very nearly scraping the ground and flown, hay-diddle-diddle, straight up the middle of the Chechen formation, guns blazing.

  The result was flying Chechen body parts and some of them had flown high enough to impact the windscreen. So Kacey was definitely seeing red.

  She could see the formation breaking up ahead, though, and there were good guys up there. So she let up on her trigger and started to bank up and away.

  The last few rounds from the helo cracked into the back of Chechens and she could, for some reason, watch as the last tracer lazed its way into a gap in the formation.

  A gap filled by a blood soaked Keldara, holding a hatchet in his hand and charging forward in a berserker rage.

  She flew up and away on automatic, watching as the tracer tracked in to strike the axe-head, through it and into the center of the screaming fighter's chest.

  "Dragon! Dragon! Pull up! You're about to..."

  "Blue on blue," Kacey muttered, banking towards a cluster of Chechens that seemed to be trying to reform. "Fuck me."

  "...kill the Kildar!"

  "Oh, double dog fuck me!"

  * * *

  "It was only one goat! I was thirteen! I was drunk! It was a bet!" Father Ferani triggered a burst from the minigun. The helo was banking to the side over a shattered group on a hilltop. There were a few alive, though, and that couldn't be born.

  "You're still a goat fucker," Father Devlich screamed over the guitars. The helo flattened out, nearly at ground level, and began continuous fire to the front. But to the sides there were Chechens, many of them looking towards him, open mouthed in surprise at the sudden attack from the rear. He just aimed the gun and held down the trigger, watching rows of the fedayeen tumble away from the laser-like fire. "What is that damned music?"

  "Yeah, well I really did fuck your mother!" Father Ferani shouted. The group in front of him was looking at him stunned but he didn't care. Fucking Islamic goat... Send them all to the All Father. "And she screamed louder than that fucking singer!"

  "At least I've never fucked a goat!" Devlich shouted back, finding another cluster to scythe down. "You know, I've always wanted to ask..." He fired again, cutting down a fedayeen who was screaming down the hill, dropping his weapon and stripping off his ammo vest. "And it's not like she can understand us. So, just between a couple of Elders... What was it like?"

  "You know," Ferani shouted, sweeping the gun across a cluster of fedayeen trying to escape over the side of the gulley, "I don't honestly remember."

  "You think you'd remember something like fucking a goat," Father Devlich said as the bird banked up and over. This time he was the one still looking at the battlefield and he found another group, this one trying to take cover and keep fighting. They weren't going to fight any more. Not churned to red butter.

  "It was a long time ago," Father Ferani said. He was looking at sky, gripping the spades of the gun and hanging nearly straight down. The sun was already behind the mountains and the slight clouds that had come in in the afternoon caught the light in waterfalls of pink. "And I hadn't had sex before."

  "You popped your cherry on a goat?" They were banking away from the battlefield, now. He hoped this stupid bitch wasn't going home already. He had plenty of bullets left.

  "I remember its ass was hairy," Father Ferani said, musingly. "I remember thinking its ass was very hairy."

  "It's ASS WAS HAIRY?" Father Devlich screamed, laughing so hard he had to stop firing. "It's ass was hairy." He triggered the gun and waggled it back and forth, not really firing at anything; there wasn't anything worth firing at in sight. It was just that he wanted to giggle til he got that bad pain in his chest. Oh, no, there was a group to fire at. Hey, more red fucking Chechens on the ground. "It's ass was hairy."

  "What can I say," Father Ferani replied. "Then I really popped my cherry on your mother."

  "You keep saying that," Father Devlich said, shaking his head. Good, they were headed back towards the fight. Not that there was much fight left in the Chechens.

  "It was spring festival, the same year," Father Ferani said, lost in memory. Not so lost that he didn't fire at a group of the fedayeen that had clustered on the back side of a hill, away from the former battlefield. They scattered, leaving three bodies on the ground. "I think she felt sorry for me that everyone was teasing me about fucking a goat."

  "You are so lying," Father Devlich said. He didn't even have anything to fire at. Fuck.

  "Nope," Father Ferani said. "Sorry, Gregor. I really did bed Martya. It was in a bed of tigerberry bushes on a night with a crescent moon. And, Gregor, do the sums." A large group was forming up in the ravine to the side of the ridge and he fired at them, working the gatling gun across the group. Tracers came drifting up through the air towards the Hind, the first fire they'd taken. "You're..." He grunted and stopped firing.

  "You have to be lying," Father Devlich said, furiously. Now there were some running Chechens in view. He fired, missed, fired again. "I am not..." Something made him look behind him.

  Father Ferani was hanging from the harness the black mechanic had had them wear. Blood was pouring out of his mouth and back. There were three large, red, holes in his back and Father Devlich could see right into the mess inside his body.

  Father Devlich turned back to look out the window of the helicopter. A group of screaming fedayeen was running towards the north and he clamped down on the trigger of the gun, tumbling them to the ground. He continued to fire into the bodies, churning them to red mush, until they were out of sight.

  * * *

  "Oh double dog fuck me," Adams said, running forward. Mike was on his back with about a million screaming Chechens still around him. Adams just fired up the whole area as a round from Shota dropped off to his right, blowing pieces of fedayeen all over the battlefield.

  But the fedayeen didn't seem to care about the fallen Keldara. Mike's berserker charge had shaken them, the continuously firing M-60s had them wavering, the rounds from Shota were terrifying them and the tunnel of dead, not to mention the windrows to either side from the door guns, broke them.

  They were turning and running back down the hill. And the Keldara, their Kildar apparently dead on the field, weren't about to let one of them survive. They gave a cry like a hundred hungry tigers and charged forward, guns firing into unprotected backs, axes sweeping down on necks and over it all the hammer of the drums...

  * * *

  Mike shook his head and rolled to his feet, groaning. There was no moment of "where am I?" He knew exactly where he was, still on that damned hill. The last few moments were pretty much a blur, but he knew right where he was, even if he couldn't remember how he got there. And there was still firing going on around him; the battle wasn't over.

  No, he thought to himself, it's pretty much done.

  He could see where Shota's rounds had landed, the sprawled circles of dead Chechens. He could see the windrows were the machine gun teams had pushed forward, laying down that incredible barrage the new 60s were capable of. But the part that really got him was the fucking hole churned right up the middle, stopping... well, more or less where he was standing. He could remember that, the sight of those rounds marching towards him. He hadn't realized that Nielson had scrounged that much firepower for the Hind. And where in the fuck had those speakers come from? The valley was still ringing with the song even as the Keldara pressed forward, harrying the Ch
echens from defeat into rout.

  The Hind was helping in that, sweeping back and forth, breaking up any pockets of resistance and now segueing into another song, something about dragons. The combination of the firepower at the trenches, the Hind and Shota had not just broken the Chechens, it has slaughtered them. If there weren't three thousand dead on this battlefield, he'd be very surprised.

  The other Hind was coming in for dust-off as the sky turned pink washed with violet. They held this battlefield, but Mike was well aware that there was one more battle to be done on this day.

  He tried to push himself up and realized his right hand really hurt. Really really hurt. Holding it up he saw that the skin of the palm had been stripped off and it looked as if a couple of the fingers and the thumb were dislocated. So much for using that hand for a while. Hell, he hurt all over, pains starting to pop up across his whole body. Then the chest decided to report. Pain. Big pain. Chest. That was bad.

  He looked down at the hole in his body armor. It was smoking. Using his left hand, he undid his battle harness and armor then reached under it and pulled out the still smoldering tracer, wincing a little at the heat. Hmph. 7.62x51. Same kind the Hind had in its gatling guns. It was horribly distorted from something.