by Ian Slater
Suddenly the Russian behemoth foundered, its slanting chin breaking through the plate-thick ice. It was only a momentary pause, however, and the amphibian, its exhaust and bilge jet spouting up high at the rear, continued crashing forward in the marsh, deep enough now that the BTR was afloat, looking to Kegg like a mechanical hippopotamus moving inexorably toward the marines.
Young Kegg, having snapped the Javelin’s launch unit to the disposable launch tube and steadying the fire-and-forget fifty-pound weapon assembly against an aged Mongolian oak tree, looked through the four-power scope, centered the hulking BTR in the green and black of his infrared world, and fired. The kick motor flared, with minimal backblast for Kegg, then the one-two punch of the missile hit the BTR, the Javelin’s initial charge blasting down through the topmost layers of the BTR’s roof, the second, shaped charge piercing the armor proper. The BTR was now a crematorium. The vehicle stopped, its wake of dark, chocolate-colored diesel and exhaust-blown reeds pushing forward over it like a flood. Freeman saw the rear door open and heard the feral screams of rage and terror as two, perhaps three, Russian soldiers — it was difficult to tell how many in the fiery swirl of bodies and debris — came splashing out. One man was afire, trying futilely to swim toward the splintered and icy edge of the marsh, when the BTR’s munitions blew, making it look as if a cyclonic fire had hit.
Melissa Thomas felt her heart pounding in her chest, half in fear, half in — God help her! — empathy for the enemy as marine rifle fire ended the swimmer’s misery.
“Hold fire!” It was Freeman bellowing above the other nearby sounds of battle. “Follow me!” The general, breaking cover, Eddie Mervyn at his side, was running hard toward the lake but skirting its icy perimeter as Sal, Choir, Aussie, Johnny Lee, and the forty-man platoon followed.
“Good shooting, marine!” Chester told Kegg, and, seeing how shaken the boy was by what he’d done, knowing that there were eight, possibly nine, men cooked alive inside the BTR, added, “DARPA ALPHA, Kegg! Good shooting, marine!”
Kegg had difficulty hearing the lieutenant because of the noise off on their left flank where, he guessed, Colonel Tibbet’s HQ section must be engaging the Russians. And what the hell, wondered Kegg, was the general up to, running pell-mell, leading the first two squads of Chester’s four-squad platoon?
Kegg started in fright as Freeman’s team, closer to the lake with Chester’s first two squads, opened up on a five-ton Russian truck that came roaring through the steamy vapor, packed with helmeted troops and heading straight for the drowning BTR. An officer on the running board was shouting and waving his AK-47 at Freeman’s team and the lead marines. But neither the officer nor his troops in the back of the truck had seen Chester’s other two squads now emerging from the tall grass by the wood, the truck coming under such an enfilade of fire from these marines’ M-16s, SAWs, and H K submachine guns and Chester’s burst of six rounds in half a second, that it had no hope. Out of control, the vehicle started sliding at speed toward Freeman and his team, striking a hard clump of stunted and wind-knotted reeds by the lake’s edge with such force that it flipped and rolled. Bloodied bodies were strewn across the ice, weapons, mostly AK-47s, slithering, some of them sliding so far that they disappeared into the rain-freckled water of the marsh where the BTR was sinking, the tip of its whip aerial just visible, which told the ever-observant Freeman that the lake here was about ten feet deep.
Several of the Russians, still able to function, scrambled frantically on the ice, trying to retrieve their weapons, but Freeman’s team and Chester’s first squad of ten marines gave ABC’s troops little chance of recovery. Only one man from the truck survived the marines’ storm of depleted uranium. The ice seemed to come alive as frozen chips, some red with blood, flew into the air.
Then, suddenly, a head popped to the surface, followed by a pair of thrashing arms; a BTR crewman had survived. Though gasping frantically for air and dog-paddling furiously, the Russian plunged his right hand back into the water and came up firing his 9 mm pistol at Aussie, who dealt with the interruption with a burst from his H K. “Silly prick!”
“Look after these two,” ordered Freeman, indicating a forlorn and soaking-wet duo. One of them, rescued by Freeman, who had extended his unloaded AK-74 to the floundering man, was the only survivor of the BTR, the other, though slightly wounded, was the only trooper from the truck who had not been killed in the short but furious exchange. While Aussie, whose right calf had been nicked by one of the truck-borne soldiers, was having it attended to by the corpsman, it took Johnny Lee, the team’s interpreter, only five minutes, with the help of a grim-looking Eddie Mervyn, to conclude that neither of the two prisoners knew anything about the H-complex other than that they had been summoned for perimeter defense as part of some reciprocal arrangement between ABC’s H-block commanders.
What worried Freeman was that most of the dead soldiers were wearing blue-striped T-shirts beneath their sandy green battle jackets. Naval infantry. Together with Spetsnaz, SpecOps, and airborne infantry, these naval troops were the best the Russians had, and Freeman knew that despite the massive drawdown of military assets following Putin’s ascendancy to Boris Yeltsin’s throne amid the ruble’s nosedive, the naval infantry remained an elite fighting force.
“He keeps saying,” said Johnny Lee, pointing to one of the two prisoners, a thin, wiry type who had a bad burn on his left arm and was cradling it with his right, “that he and his comrade are POWs, says they’re—” Lee had to shout against the rattle of small-arms fire and the ear-ringing explosions of nearby battle. “—entitled to protection under the Geneva Convention.”
“Geneva what?” opined Aussie, smarting under the corpsman’s alcohol swab. “Tell ’im I haven’t seen that film.”
“No joking, Aussie,” Lee replied. “He’s claiming they’re regular troops called to secure the ABC perimeter, and as such—”
“And as such,” cut in Aussie, “they’re aiding and abetting fucking terrorists. If they’re regular troops, they shouldn’t fucking be here. Even Moscow’s declared ABC persona non grata. Right, General?”
“Correct,” said Freeman, adding quietly to Aussie, “at least for twenty-four hours.” The general then turned to Lee. “If I thought they knew anything more than the route out from ABC, Johnny, I’d shoot ’em if they didn’t cooperate.”
Chester, having managed to make radio contact with Tibbet’s HQ group so that close-in hand signals in the near-zero visibility were no longer needed, ordered nine of his ten four-man teams to spread out.
“Captain,” Freeman called to Chester, “I’d like my team to concentrate on finding entry. Those truck tracks should be visible for a while. I’ll call you the moment we get in.”
“You betcha,” acknowledged the marine lieutenant. “Stay well.”
“I’ll try,” said Freeman, turning over the two prisoners to Chester. Then he addressed his six team members. “Okay, guys. Everyone marine ID’d?”
They were, with small, infrared diamond shapes on the fronts and backs of their helmets and camouflage battle jackets.
It began snowing. “Aw, shit!” announced Sal. “That’s all we need.”
The four marines of the tenth fire team, ordered by Chester to stay behind to provide a perimeter defense for the arrival of the second wave of Stallions, if they’d come in zero visibility, plastic-stripped the two Russians. A corpsman, having given the burn victim a shot of morphine, assisted the team’s sniper in unlacing the Russians’ boots. And with a hastily invented sign language, they told the two POWs they’d be shot if they tried to run. The two navy infantry comrades nodded their heads vigorously. They understood.
“D’you think,” began one of the marines in a voice barely audible amid the increasingly confused sounds of the battle farther in, “the general was kidding about shooting these guys if he thought they knew more — you know, just shoot them?”
“Geneva Convention!” interjected the burn victim anxiously.
�
�Hey, you know English.”
“Little bit.”
“Yeah, well you know what shut the fuck up means?”
“Da!”
“The Geneva Convention,” said the sniper authoritatively, “does not apply to masked terrorists and those who aid and abet terrorists in any way.” The other three marines were impressed, more by their buddy’s matter-of-fact delivery than by the answer. After all, they knew how marines had viewed terrorists and fellow travelers in Iraq.
As Freeman led his team along the edge of the lake’s frozen western marsh, he could feel the pressure of the twenty-four-hour deadline mounting. Could the first wave hold long enough for the second wave, which would have to fly in on instruments alone, to land in the increasing foul weather? And could he find traces of the truck’s tires on the frozen ground before the snow hid them, showing him and his team the way back to ABC through the minefield that surrounded the H-block? And he of U-turn fame had brought in the first wave sans white coveralls. He had rolled dice with the meteorological officer’s report and lost. But his team was moving in the harmony that comes only with practice, with knowing how each man operates, with being able to recognize one another, even in the dark, by footfall alone. Everything was starting to look white, the rattle of machine guns sounding farther west now, away from the edge of the lake itself but still in the marshy area. The team could hear shouts, in English and in another language that Johnny Lee told Freeman was neither Russian nor Chinese. So far as Freeman knew, his team had been landed in the right grid, but he’d sensed from his short radio communications with Tibbet that while the colonel had been careful not to give coordinates, he had indicated, via slang, that his HQ platoon was on Freeman’s left, as it should be, but more than half a mile farther west, while Chester’s fire teams were spread out a hundred yards to Freeman’s right. Murphy, he of Murphy’s Law, was always waiting in the wings, as Freeman and his team had found out at Priest Lake, but despite everyone not landing precisely where he should, it sounded as if the first wave was at least moving in the direction of the terrorists’ H-block.
Passing through waist-high reeds, checking his wrist GPS, the general estimated that the outer limit of the half-mile-deep minefield that surrounded the ABC complex and from which Terry Chester had surmised swamp gas was rising was no more than fifty feet away to the right of Bravo Company’s line of advance. Douglas Freeman sniffed the snowy air, whiffs of cordite coming downwind in what was now a heavy, swirling snowfall. The general held up his hand and everyone stopped as he knelt in the cold, still marsh grass that was now shoulder high and completely hid him and the team from view, and saw tire tracks impressed in the frozen earth not yet completely covered by the snow because of a tree bough. He glanced back and saw Eddie Mervyn and Gomez only a few paces behind him, Sal, Choir, Johnny Lee, and Aussie farther back with the marines. Something which he couldn’t articulate at that moment cautioned him not to raise his voice, for while the snow-muffled thumps of the Russian mortars sounded about a mile off, the general’s experience of winter battles told him that the Russians were only half that distance away.
Then he realized why his sense of smell was giving his brain a flashing red signal: marsh gas stank. The marines who’d done their training in the intertidal swamps around Parris Island would know that too. Rotting vegetation gave off the rotten-egg smell of hydrogen sulfide. There was no off-putting odor to this vapor. Maybe he’d been right all along and it was a hot spring. He gestured for Eddie and Gomez to come closer, and spoke softly. “See that vapor rising? About fifteen yards off by that clump of woods?” Both had seen it, assuming, as Lieutenant Chester had, that it was swamp gas. “It’s got no smell,” Freeman told them. “Watch the ground directly in front of you as well as our flanks.” Both men acknowledged his advice, knowing how easy it was not to do this when one was walking. Freeman, in the same low tone in which he’d instructed Gomez and Eddie to come with him, pointed to yet another wood on their left flank and instructed Aussie and the marines, “I want you to head over to that wood on our left flank.” The area he indicated was on high ground. It was about two acres in size, with brush and trees that would afford them good cover.
Aussie gave him a thumbs-up farther back at the head of the column, while Freeman, drawing his AK-74 bayonet, with Eddie Mervyn covering him with his shotgun and Gomez as Tail End Charlie for the three of them, approached the area where the vapor was coming from and which his GPS told him must be just a foot or two beyond the outer limit of the mined perimeter, while Aussie, Choir, Johnny Lee, and Sal, the two POWs, and Chester’s marines moved to the wood Freeman had indicated. The reeds were shoulder high, but as they walked farther and passed a small copse of wizened Mongolian oak, the ground underfoot was becoming higher, and quickly the reeds became shorter, so that in another fifteen feet they passed from shoulder-to knee-high reeds.
Suddenly something enormous burst out of the reeds. Eddie Mervyn was so startled he stepped back and fell, detonating a mine. The explosion ripped into his buttocks and groin, the mine’s detonation further terrifying any wildlife in the reeds, like the huge bird that had broken cover.
“Don’t move!” Freeman shouted at Gomez. Even as he was getting up, snow and earth were still raining down on him. Eddie was hemorrhaging severely, and the second wave’s relief choppers were at least one and a half hours away, if they made it. Freeman could have called in a high-priority Mayday, but that would have imperiled the entire team. He knew, as did Eddie, that in this situation the best that could be done was first aid and pumping him full of morphine so that, though he was already in violent spasm, the pain would be diminished.
Gomez, shaken despite all his SpecWar training, fumbled at first, almost dropping his helmet, before he managed to pull out his Ringer packet of four-inch, foam-gel-impregnated gauze pads. Freeman grabbed the packet, ripped open the waterproof seal, and used the six pads as one compress on the gaping wound between Eddie’s legs, the gauze becoming one with the wound and, under the pressure of Freeman’s hand, stanching the hemorrhaging, as Gomez, recovering his wits, injected Eddie with 10 cc of morphine for the pain.
“It’s all right, Eddie,” Gomez told him. “We’re getting you medevaced. You’ll be out of here in—”
“Lying son of a — oh, God, God, help me!”
Aussie was getting Johnny Lee, Choir, Sal, and the marines ready for a rescue squad, but knew that Freeman wouldn’t request it, as it would put more lives at risk in a possible minefield. All Aussie could do for the present was to form a C-section defense on the perimeter of the wood, should the Russians send out anyone to investigate. “Bastards aren’t gonna find a fucking fox next time they come nosin’ around here!”
No one but Choir, who’d been sitting next to Aussie in the helo and heard Freeman and the helo’s crew chief talking about the fox, knew what he meant. Choir flicked his H K’s safety to off as the general and Gomez carried Eddie back to the shelter of the copse of Mongolian oak.
As if the enemy had heard Aussie’s comment, the team and marines heard the guttural roar of a big diesel. This time it wasn’t a BTR or truck that showed up but a BMD, a fighting infantry vehicle. Another amphibian, but this one a post-Putin top-of-the-line, air-transportable BMD-3. For a tracked monster, it was moving fast, at forty miles per hour, its metal treads throwing up a high wake of powder snow as it skirted the ice along the edge of the lake before slowing and then entering the marsh reeds. Then it stopped a hundred yards from where the mine had exploded and began to hose the reeds across a fifty-yard front with its 30 mm anti-aircraft cannon and its coaxia l7.62 mm machine gun. In the copse of oak, where Freeman and Gomez lay protecting either side of Eddie, Gomez checked Eddie’s vital signs. They were all bad. Amid the wood-chopping racket of the BMD strafing the reeds and firing in the general direction of the wood where Aussie and the marines were hunkered down, Eddie’s voice faded to a weak rasp and he uttered a desperate plea for his mother.
Freeman turned sharply to Eddie
. “Leave your mother out of this and stop whining. You’ll be fine. A new flexidick and you’ll be pushing pussy in no time. That son of yours, the four-year-old, what’s his name? Foster?”
“Yeah,” Eddie managed to groan.
“Well, hang on to that. You’re gonna go bowling with him.” He took off his Fritz and handed it to Gomez. “Another gel pack. Quickly.”
“What’s your girl’s name, Eddie?” Freeman asked, even though he knew it.
“I — what — Melanie. I need medevac.”
“Don’t we all!” joshed Freeman. “You’ll be fine. Just keep thinking about bowling with young Foster. We’ll get you out on the second wave.”
Eddie was rolling from side to side in pain.
“Stay still, Eddie.”
“They’re gone!” he moaned. “My balls’ve been—”
“They’re fine,” Freeman lied. “Just a bit mussed up.”
“Oh God,” Eddie moaned. “Give me a shot of morphine for crying out—”
“We just did.”
Freeman glimpsed a straight white vapor trail that streaked from the wood through the falling snow, saw the BMD buck and its right track unravel off its steel wheels. The explosion of the BMD’s magazine was so violent that it sent a searing wind through the trees, whipping up dead branches and flinging them against the denuded trunks and the log behind which Freeman, Gomez, and Eddie Mervyn had sought shelter.
“Payback One to Payback Two,” Freeman whispered hoarsely. “You receive?”
“Loud but sliced,” came Aussie’s reply, which meant that Freeman’s transmission was segmented.
“Are you receiving?” asked the general, his speech more deliberate.
“Loud and clear now.”
“Eddie’s gonna make it,” Freeman said, more for Eddie’s morale than from conviction. Gomez and the general had stopped the bleeding, but Eddie’s chances were fifty-fifty unless they could get some lactate into him and stabilize. For that they needed saline. The general quickly considered the options. He and Gomez could carry Eddie to Choir, who had the saline, or Choir could bring it to them. Freeman decided while it might seem more logical for Choir to come to Mervyn, that Choir, Aussie, Lee, and the others in the wood were in a more sheltered and thus safer area in which to treat Eddie than by the log. Besides, if Choir were to be shot down trying to reach them, then Freeman’s SpecFor team would be without saline. Still, as he helped heave Eddie onto Gomez’s back, he knew it was a gamble. ABC, with its apparently unlimited resources, was no doubt listening in to field communications, and despite the best efforts of McCain’s SES to jam the Russians, it would take less than a minute for any state-of-the-art Russian computer radio-frequency scanner to zero in on the American sources of transmission.
