Kate had never watched men die right in front of her.
Her mouth was filled with dirt, and she was still trying to spit it out, when she saw both Elijah and Jake standing over her, backlit in flames like superheroes. If either were hurt, neither showed it. Each grabbed one of her arms and hauled her to her feet. By the time her vision stabilized, she could see more guys running out the door of the med shack behind them, yanking off their scrubs – and chamber-checking weapons. It was every man to the walls now.
The wire had just been breached.
Heavy Weapons
Camp Lemonnier - Near the North Fence
Debris was still falling to earth, bodies were still down on the deck, one guy was rolling another guy around on the ground – who was still on fire. Carnage and chaos. “What the fuck just happened?” she shouted.
“VBIED!” Elijah shouted back. “Drove right up to the wire! The fence is knocked down, for like fifty meters. We’ve gotta reinforce the breach!”
She could see not only guys with weapons rushing to the yawning hole in the fence, but combat engineers rolling out to begin reconstructing it. Kate saw a small Bobcat earth-mover already rolling and was amazed at how quickly it got into play. Rounds were flecking off it but nobody seemed to care. These guys were like Bob the Builder crossed with Achilles – skilled, badassed, and completely fearless.
“Come on!” Elijah shouted, his rifle held at high ready. Kate could see Jake was already advancing on the still-burning area of ex-gate. Out past it were constellations of muzzle flashes, AKs going crazy. She tried to think. She knew not to panic about the AK fire, which was never accurate when it was that exuberant. But she also knew there could be more suicide bombers. She got her own rifle up, but didn’t try to put out any rounds yet. She needed to have a better idea of what was going on, and where people were.
First, do no harm – i.e. don’t shoot your own guys in the back.
Soldiers, some of them in shorts and shower-sandals, were setting up something like a perimeter. And now, reflected in the flames, Kate could finally make out some of the enemy: black-hooded guys moving like wraiths, hopping from cover to cover, and advancing on the hole in the wire. Coming for them. And she shivered with fear. It was like seeing the actual bogeyman, after hearing all the scary stories.
There they were, right fucking outside.
She once again heard the booming of a very large-caliber single-shot weapon, and wondered if the SEALs had somehow survived having their guard tower immolated. If anyone could, it would be them.
But then she squinted into the darkness and realized it was actually Jake. Unlike the others on the team, he didn’t carry a SCAR, but rather what had looked to Kate like a heavily customized M4. But now she realized it only looked like an M4 – when he started putting out rounds and she heard the crushing boom of its report. Out just beyond the burning hole, she thought she saw a black-hooded head disappear entirely.
Holy shit, she thought. What the hell is that?
She could see now that his barrel was much bigger than it should be, and as she followed behind, she toed one of his empty casings on the ground with her boot. It was fifty-caliber. Then she remembered hearing about the .50-cal Beowulf – a custom receiver and barrel for the M4, and mags that held ten of the giant half-inch slugs. And those rounds could shoot straight through engine blocks. She also remembered someone telling her that when you put all ten rounds out of that thing, you had half a pound of lead heading downrange.
At the time, she’d thought this was just more stupid-ass macho gun porn, and of no practical value on the modern battlefield. Now she reversed her verdict – very pleased to have this level of absurd firepower between her and the nightmare figures out there.
Looking around, Kate could see sections of pre-filled HESCO barrier being ferried out to the breach by the Bobcats, two of them working in tandem. Most of the combat engineers were definitely in their damned pajamas or Ranger panties, some but not all wearing helmets, or else Kevlar vests over bare torsos. It was like a bizarre sleepover in combat engineering hell. These guys were the real deal – they could pour level concrete and pull electrical airing while under a mortar barrage. Everyone respected the hell out of them, and now Kate saw why.
She moved up to try to support Jake and Elijah.
Her teammates.
* * *
None of the insurgents had any kind of suppressor and it was full-on night now, so whenever any one of them fired, he helpfully identified his position for the rallying and regrouping Americans.
Kate remembered to take a full breath, release half of it, put the target reticle of her ACOG sight just above the muzzle flashes… and squeeze not jerk the trigger.
The flashing stopped. She’d add that to her tally: one.
But as she looked up over the top of her sight to regain situational awareness (SA), she realized she could see other figures moving out on the street, in the background, and none of them visibly armed – at least not at that moment. Unit commanders? Suicide bombers? They didn’t seem to be moving stealthily. They were actually moving kind of strangely, kind of lurching around.
Kate realized this meant she had to assume they were civilians, non-combatants. And she had to check her fire and watch her backgrounds. They couldn’t save East Africa by shooting everyone in it to death.
Then again, they were currently facing an existential threat to the base.
Kate saw a squad-sized group of their own guys start to maneuver, pushing out toward the left edge of the gap in the fence. She rose and moved up to keep them tied in, but as soon as she got up— she was buffeted by another explosion. She managed to keep her feet this time. Maybe she was becoming an old hand already. But this one had been smaller, albeit closer, and now she felt herself up for shrapnel wounds as she crouched down, catching her breath. She felt something hot on her lower leg, and surmised that shrapnel had creased the inside of her calf. It didn’t appear to be bleeding, like it had been cauterized.
Kate’s first hours in her new unit were turning into, far and away, the most intense and dramatic scenes of combat of her entire military career. You just never knew when it was all going to kick off.
She was rising to move out again when a strong hand grabbed her and yanked her back. After changing mags without looking, Jake pointed two fingers at her eyes, then two at Elijah, who was firing from cover ten yards away. You, back pocket, he mouthed. Kate nodded – and moved up to the next position of cover, which was an overturned barrel. She hoped like hell it didn’t contain aviation fuel, or any other kind for that matter.
And she got busy shooting.
She’d just burned through her first mag and was ducking down to change it out when a dude sprinting flat out actually hurdled her barrel. At the same time, some jihadi out there suddenly managed to find the range, and a broad burst of full-auto fire went clattering across Kate’s position. A few rounds clanked into the barrel, the rest falling short, tearing up the turf in front – and close enough to the feet of the hurtling dude that he pulled up short and dove for the nearest bit of solid cover, which turned out to be Jake’s.
Still watching, magazine half-changed, Kate could see Jake drop down, look across at the newcomer, grimace, and say, “Sure. Come on in.” The joke was that his cover was a single crate hardly big enough for one. As the newcomer pressed his back up against it, Kate saw the branch insignia on his sleeve – two crossed flintlock pistols, which meant he was an MP; and the single silver bar on his collar said he was a very junior officer, a second lieutenant. He looked to Kate like he was about fourteen – like he’d been in Junior ROTC class that morning.
Then again, he’d just been running balls-out and exposed through heavy fire – which meant he was putting his mission, whatever it was, ahead of his own personal survival.
Kate finished her mag change and brought her weapon back online. Now she felt rounds snapping overhead again – but the overall volume was falling and she found she could hea
r Jake and the MP shouting back and forth. Jake said, “You going for the heavy weapons locker?”
She saw now the guy was clutching some kind of lanyard, with a security key card on it, as well as at least two big-ass metal keys.
“Yeah, man!” the MP answered, shouting perhaps louder than necessary. Fear, adrenaline. First time under fire probably. “It’s time!”
“Go,” Jake said. “We’ll cover you.”
Kate considered that her cue to make herself useful. She popped up and started triggering off steadily, the percussive coppery sounds of the 5.56 shots clinking in front of her face. She couldn’t see where her rounds were hitting in the bad light, but they were at least in the vicinity of the bad guys.
She heard Jake’s shoulder cannon start up again, firing wider spaced single shots, and in peripheral she saw the MP rise up into the starting blocks and launch himself from behind cover like Usain Bolt… well, like Usain Bolt being shot at.
But something pulled her attention forward again. Something moving and slithering, the darkness taking shape and rushing forward – to the left of a section of HESCO barriers that had already been put into place. Because of Kate’s position on the left edge of the line, she wasn’t sure anyone else could see this.
As she traversed her weapon over, something deep inside her told her exactly what this was. Still firing, she turned her head to shout a warning to the running and exposed MP. As she was still drawing breath, though, she could see a round take him in the shoulder blade. His plate may have stopped it, she didn’t know for sure, but the force of it sent him headlong, eating dirt just as Kate had earlier.
She got her shout out as she simultaneously pulled herself under cover. The last thing she saw was the fourteen-year-old MP turning to look at her as he bounced back up to his feet.
Then it went off, the suicide bomber, a hand-delivered human munition, and it pushed Kate’s barrel right into her body and knocked her back several feet across the rough ground. When she scurried back in the lee of the thing, and looked around for the MP, she couldn’t see him through the smoke and dust the explosion had kicked up. When it started to clear, she still couldn’t see him.
And she never saw him again, in this battle or in this life.
She decided to believe he made his getaway in the smoke screen, on whatever urgent errand he was on with those keys.
She heard Jake’s voice cut through the noise of the battle. “Okay…” he said. “I’ve had about enough of this shit.”
You can say that again, Kate thought.
But her throat was too constricted with fear and dust to swallow or speak. So instead she just nodded, wiped the dust from her ACOG sight – and got ready to pop again. Rule Number One – of everything – was to dominate the enemy through fire superiority.
And Kate’s trigger finger was still working just fine.
Salient
Camp Lemonnier - Fifty Meters From the Breach
HESCO barriers are huge cubes made of wire mesh and heavy fabric, which are filled with dirt and debris to make modular blast-proof fortifications. An entire wall of them was going up in real time, right across the section of fence that had been destroyed by the VBIED.
But this was only going to happen if the combat engineers weren’t all killed first. AK rounds were still flecking in bright sparks off the two little bulldozers as they moved in and out, but their drivers and assistants didn’t seem to be worried, or in fact even notice. And there was maybe only thirty meters between the engineers and the attackers.
Something had to change.
Stealing another glance at Jake – either because she was taking her cues from him, or because his presence made her think she wasn’t going to die – Kate saw him strap on the throat mic for his team radio and start talking into it. She couldn’t hear what he said, but thought she could see the result fifteen seconds later, when a lanky figure in full battle rattle dashed across open ground under fire, headed straight toward the north-west corner of the camp, and started scrambling up the ladder – right into the guard tower that had been blown to kingdom come, along with the two SEALs in it.
Kate’s eyes went wide. Now that took some sack.
As the figure climbed, she could see he had a SCAR slung on his back, but carried an M240 medium machine gun with one hand, climbing with the other. He also had what looked like about 600 rounds of linked 7.62 wrapped around his torso. After getting up top and emplacing his weapon, he turned around to exchange hand signals with men on the ground. Kate recognized him now – it was Kwon, the Bravo she’d been introduced to for five seconds. This dude was clearly a badass of the first order. Within seconds, he was also a one-man base of fire, raining a steady stream down into the assault surging against their front.
The instant that covering fire spun up, Jake was on his feet, physically pulling three or four other defenders along with him. Some others saw this group pushing out and also piled in.
Outstanding, Kate thought. Initiative. She rose to follow.
And then instantly felt a heavy weight on her shoulder – it was Elijah’s hand, shoving her back down under cover. He leaned in to shout in her ear: “This is an excellent position for you right here!” He smiled and ducked down with her, speaking conversationally now. “Hard cover. Good field of fire. Line of sight all the way down our left flank.”
“Okay, fuck it,” Kate said, grimacing but not trying to escape.
Elijah clapped her on the shoulder. “Let’s just stay here and watch Jake work. He puts on a great show.”
With that, they both popped and started putting out rounds around the small ad-hoc counter-assault. And they looked on as this squad-sized element, led in every sense by Jake, piled into the incursion in the wire. His .50 Beowulf boomed steadily, as he walked smoothly forward with it held to his shoulder – basically taking cover behind a wall of lead. The others spread out on the flanks and also put out marching fire as they ran or quick-walked, all of them supported by the base of machine-gun fire from the tower.
Then, for just one second, Jake stopped and took a knee. Kate guessed he spotted some higher-priority target, and wanted a stable platform to put effective fire on it. As he kneeled down, his pants leg pulled up around his back leg. And something there reflected light from a flare that had been popped and was floating down overhead.
Kate squinted at that leg, trying to resolve what she was seeing. It was a prosthetic limb, a high-tech one. Basically, Jake did not have a right leg, or some significant portion of it.
Holy crap… Advanced prosthetics were common on Iraq and Afghanistan veterans; but on serving personnel, never mind operational guys in combat units, not so much.
But then he was back up on his feet and advancing again. If he had any kind of limp, Kate couldn’t spot it. Within seconds he and the team he led had reached and then pushed past the engineers, their bulldozers, and finally the HESCO barriers themselves. They were pushing out a salient to cover the vulnerable but unperturbed engineering work.
Most of Jake’s guys now disappeared from Kate’s view, leaving the base and stepping off into Djibouti Town, driving the jihadis right out of their positions. Explosions now started to blossom in the enemy rear; cocking her head, Kate could hear the whistling sounds arcing overhead. Someone had gotten a 60mm mortar into the fight. Whoever it was wasn’t all that squeamish about bombing the town, or about collateral damage, but Kate didn’t really blame him.
All the while, overhead, Kwon put belt after belt through the 240, pausing only to slap in new 100-round segments in a well-practiced flash.
And the HESCOs rolled forward and into place.
It was like the base was a self-healing organism.
* * *
With the salient pushed out and the barriers going up, Kate suddenly found she no longer had targets. Her instincts and training told her to push out, to advance to new cover, and support the offensive. But she was also aware that Elijah was still holding up this barrel with her, the dark skin
of his forearms visible beneath rolled-up sleeves, and glistening with sweat in the flickering flare light. And this told her she’d better not. So she contented herself with scanning the darker shadows ahead over her sight.
Everything suddenly went strangely dreamy, in this bizarrely peaceful interval, as the rhythmic single shots and occasional peels of AK fire faded further to the front, and Kate’s thoughts were given free rein.
She thought about where she’d been put, and what was happening right now. Joining a new unit, never mind in the middle of their deployment, was always awkward. These guys she’d been introduced to in the last couple of hours had been bonded in the crucible of combat, probably many times. And she knew that a twelve-man Special Forces ODA was one of the most close-knit and intimate human organizations anywhere, even in peacetime. How was she supposed to interpose herself into the middle of that?
To a certain extent she had to just trust that these guys were professionals, and that they’d work with her.
But she also knew her new teammates would believe they could trust her exactly when they saw for themselves that they could trust her. That made this unexpected battle right here and now incredibly important for her – everything she did right now was critical.
She hoped she wasn’t fucking it up.
And she knew her assimilation problems wouldn’t be made any easier by her having a vagina, either. The Pentagon had opened all combat roles to women, including those in special operations forces (SOF), at least theoretically. But she was still the odd man out in a combat unit – as she had been when embedded with the Marines in Afghanistan, and would be even more so now with Special Forces. But she was a pioneer, and knew pioneers often ended up with arrows in their backs. And she accepted that, completely.
Being a woman in any part of the military, never mind in the combat arms, was always a cultural challenge. She had never complained about this, and wasn’t going to start now.
The way she saw it, it was a privilege to be there – every day.
Arisen : Nemesis Page 4
