“Copy that,” Todd managed, as he heaved his shoulder into the rough bark of the ancient and unyielding tree.
The ambush team didn’t need to confer on what this meant, even if they had the time or breathing room to do so. The capture of their gun truck would be a catastrophe. It wasn’t so much that they’d lose their mobility and be facing a crushingly long march home – on the off chance they survived. It wasn’t that the team would lose half its priceless and irreplaceable fleet of special-ops gun trucks.
No, it was that al-Shabaab would capture their .50-cal minigun.
And then they would turn it on its former owners.
At which point their life expectancy would be measured in tenths of seconds.
* * *
“Guys!” Kwon shouted across both the air and the net, so he might have a prayer of being heard. “It might be time for you to take off!” This was the shoutiest Kate had ever heard the soft-spoken soldier.
Jake was out front maneuvering again, hopping from cover to cover, and putting out grenade after grenade, and mag after mag. “It might be time for you to shut the fuck up,” he said over the net, around heaving breaths.
Combat was now turning into both a high-intensity sport and an endurance one – simultaneously marathon and sprint. Kate wondered how long even the mighty Jake could keep this up. Though, surely he’d get shot or blown up before his wind gave out. So many rounds were coming in that Kate couldn’t believe she wasn’t a human sieve. So many RPGs were hitting the ground so close all around them she was amazed there was any kind of terrain feature left to shelter behind. The air was permanently hot from the explosions, and a haze of debris drifted permanently around them, disturbed only by the passage of hundreds of 7.62 rounds moving two thousand feet per second.
“Guys!” Kwon said. “Seriously!”
And Kate looked down just in time to see something remarkable: Todd grabbed Kwon’s pistol from his chest rig and took it away.
In response to this, Kwon merely looked annoyed and bored. “Come on,” he said. “You don’t think I’m going to go out like that, do you?”
Todd hesitated a fraction of a second – then shook his head, reversed the weapon, and handed it back.
“Besides, I need that. Down!” he shouted. Instantly, Todd hit the deck and Kwon blasted over his head, emptying all fifteen rounds. Two a-S guys had been sneaking up the ridge on their flank. They’d been smart: they hadn’t fired, so hadn’t revealed their positions either to the defenders or to the drone. And they’d gotten very close. Kate boggled again, at how she and Todd had missed them totally with NVGs – but somehow Kwon hadn’t, without them. Then she realized – they were wearing some kind of thermal cloaking.
Jesus. This shit was getting real, and dire.
“Reload!” Kwon said, handing the pistol over.
He had a look on his face that said he’d happily go down fighting from that spot – but he’d fucking go down fighting. He could take care of himself. And, whether he made it or not, he wasn’t going out like a punk. He certainly wasn’t going out like Pete Price did, trapped under that truck during the fall of Lemonnier.
And it pissed him off that anybody thought he would.
Like Elijah, Kwon believed Pete had committed a mortal sin – just a different one. Not against God, who didn’t exist. But against his brothers.
He had given up.
“Reload me!” Kwon said. “Then go get the goddamned truck!” They’d either come back for him, or they wouldn’t.
“Fuck off!” Todd said. “We’re not leaving you!”
“I’ll go,” said Kate. And she said it again across the radio, so Jake would hear her. “You get Kwon free.”
“Negative!” That was Jake. “Stay in this position.”
Doing a quick tactical reload, Kate said, “They take that minigun and we’re done! You need one here to shoot, and one to free Kwon. And I can’t lift that tree.” She didn’t need to add that she also couldn’t fight like Jake. Or that there was no one else.
She was it.
Todd tried to grab her arm but she was fast and slippery, and disappeared into the dark. Todd keyed his mic. “Kate, come back, goddammit! If we couldn’t lift the tree together, how the fuck do you think I’m going to lift it on my own?”
Without hesitation, but around steady shooting, her reply came back.
“You’re an engineer, motherfucker. Build something.”
* * *
Todd had to frantically think and try to design some solution while also desperately engaging and defending. It was multitasking of a high order. They were all shooting now – there were way too many enemy, and they had spread Triple Nickel’s flanks too much. And Jake couldn’t be everywhere.
Build something, build something. Todd racked his brain. What were the simple machines? Lever, inclined plane, a pulley maybe… a wedge… He came back to lever. He looked at the tree. He didn’t need to build a lever – he already had one. What he needed was a fucking fulcrum.
He crawled down lower into the dirt and underbrush. Rounds were thwacking into everything. He couldn’t believe what terrible shots these guys were. They should have killed him ten times over through blind luck alone. Godane must have sent them to the Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy, he thought, crawling and scrabbling like mad – until finally he had it: big-ass rock. Perfect.
Except it was too heavy for him to lift. He suddenly lamented all that time he spent sunbathing when he could have been in the gym with Jake. Digging underneath the rock with eight fingers, he heaved and got it rolling to where he needed it, finally positioning it under the right angled section of tree.
Then he tore his assault pack off, dug through it until he found a pre-packed shape charge, ripped it open, and tore out a hunk of C4. He looked at the C4, looked at the tree. He dug into the pack again, came out with a tape measure, and wrapped it around the trunk right in front of Kwon.
Kwon shook his head and said, “How many breaching charges is this for you, Lieutenant!?”
Todd spared a look at Kwon and busted out laughing, rounds crashing and snapping everywhere, while he checked the circumference. “Thirty-eight… simulated!”
“How many combat drops?”
Still laughing, Todd didn’t answer, but dropped the tape measure, pinched off an inch of the C4 and flicked it into the darkness, then stuck the remainder to the opposite side of the tree – just around from Kwon’s head.
“Isn’t that a little close to my face?”
“It’s a big tree! You should be fine!” Todd set the primer and det cord, then started to pull off his body armor. Kwon knew why – to drape it over him. “No time!” he shouted. “Plus you’re gonna need that!”
Todd nodded, kept his vest, grabbed his command detonator and hunkered down – right beside Kwon, inches from his buddy. Whatever fate he was to suffer, Todd would suffer it, too. They were never alone. And never would be.
He pressed the switch.
Taken
Ambush Site - Kwon’s Fighting Hole
The explosive charge crump’d, even closer than all the other explosions, louder and meaner. But not scarier – because this explosion was Todd’s to control. The thick base of the tree cracked and split in that exact spot and its own weight on the other side of the fulcrum took it straight up and off Kwon. When Todd looked down to check him out, his right hand was free.
But he had it pressed over his right eye.
And blood was seeping out – and Todd couldn’t tell whether it was the hand or the eye. Well, some of it had to be the hand. The first two fingers and the thumb were visibly mangled, half-pulped. But something, tree shrapnel probably, had hit his eye.
“A little less C4 next time,” Kwon said.
Todd pulled out an Israeli bandage and with his own hand clamped it over Kwon’s hand and eye together. He wanted to hold it there, put Kwon’s arm around his shoulder, and walk the two of them out of there. But it wasn’t going to happen – n
othing like it, not yet. Instead he clamped Kwon’s other hand over it, and said, “You’re gonna have to do self-care – while we fight our way out of here.”
Kwon switched the bandage to his gimpy hand, picked up the M9 with his good one, and dropped the mag out. Todd found a mag on his vest and slapped it in. Kwon dropped the slide forward and nodded: Good to go.
Todd radioed Jake: “Ma-RINES. We are LEAV-ing!” He then took a flurry of shots over Jake’s head as the team sergeant came leaping back over Kwon’s hide. They didn’t have time to switch weapons back – everyone was shooting flat out. A couple of the enemy, sensing the withdrawal of the one-man army who had been holding them off, leapt over the hide, firing as they came. The SF guys returned fire more accurately, dropping them into Kwon’s old hole.
The three of them then scampered halfway down the ridge, which finally gave them cover from the counter-ambushing force in their rear. They were in something like a hollow – for now.
“How many times are we gonna fall for this shit!?” Todd shouted as he ran, fighting for breath. He meant it had also been a reserve force that had hit them at Lemonnier, and which they had also failed to spot in time. It was starting to look like a signature tactic. “I smell al-Sîf!”
“I SAW al-Sîf!” Jake answered, traversing the ridge near its crest and putting fire over the top.
“Did you kill his pirate ass?”
Jake didn’t answer, which Todd took for negative. Instead he got on the squad net: “Kate, moving to you! What’s your status?”
When she answered, she was also panting and shooting, flat out on both counts. “Copy! I’m underneath the truck! Okay for now!”
“Hang on! Just watch your six!”
Jake didn’t expend the time or breath to explain that the enemy was moving, where and in what numbers unknown, while Kate was totally on her own, which wasn’t smart at the best of times. Also, with her limited visibility under the vehicle, she could easily be enveloped by al-Sîf’s breakaway force – and she wouldn’t know it until it was too late. Jake had to presume she’d work all that out.
They were going to be at her position in less than a minute anyway. Soon they could hear her shooting, and return fire plinking in on the truck.
And then, all of a sudden, it stopped.
But they were nearly there now, so it couldn’t matter too much. The three climbed back up through the underbrush that covered the perpendicular ridge. The ass-end of the truck was facing down the rise, and its right side faced back toward the other ridge, where the bulk of the contact was. When they hit the truck Jake went around to the left and popped up over the hood. Kwon followed, threw himself in the back-left passenger door, and then prairie-dogged up out of the turret. And Todd took a knee by the front bumper.
As the two unhurt riflemen fired, they could hear Kwon cursing as he tried to traverse the minigun around – with one hand and one eye. Now that they’d secured the position and put out enough suppressing fire to keep from being overrun, Jake dropped onto his stomach to pull Kate out from underneath the truck.
She wasn’t there.
There was nothing underneath but eighteen inches of ground clearance.
And her olive-green ARMY baseball cap, lying upside down.
* * *
Plink, plink – CRACK!
Rounds were still smacking into the vehicle and occasionally finding the panes of shatter-proof glass. These were from the original counter-ambush force, farther behind them. Wherever the truck-assaulting split force was, it was out of sight now.
More rounds crunched into the side windows.
Jake worked the radio while he and the others fired and reloaded: “Kate, Jake, sitrep! Kate, acknowledge! Kate!” He switched channels. “Bren, Jake, interrogative: have you got eyes on Kate? Her last position was at the vehicle! Over!”
“Jake, Bren, negative. We can make you out there now, but that’s about it.”
“Copy! Update on OPFOR, over!”
“Disposition of main force is similar: still scattered around the ridge you just withdrew from – but moving up to take your old positions.”
“Interrogative: what is the position of their breakaway force, over?”
“Unknown! They’ve gone cold! We’ve lost them!”
They had melted back into the forest.
Now a PKM light machine gun got spun up – right in Kwon’s old position on the other ridge. Full-auto rounds started coming in much thicker and heavier on the truck. One of the side windows got shot out, and then the window on the opposite side behind it.
Kwon gave up on the minigun, dropped out of the turret hatch, crawled into the passenger seat, and got the M240 on the swivel arm into the fight. Now it was a machine gun duel. The difference was their guy was emplaced and under cover – and Kwon was sitting in a largely exposed vehicle and firing one-handed, with the other mangled hand still holding that bandage to his eye – which hurt like a son of a bitch. For all anyone including him knew it wasn’t even its socket anymore.
Jake was hunched over his weapon, which lay across the hood. Now he straightened up, heedless of the incoming fire, and bellowed directly out into the night: “KATE! STAFF SERGEANT DUNAJSKI!”
Kwon was only a few feet from him and spared a glance back. Jake’s face was twisted in a way he hadn’t seen before. And he sounded a hell of a lot more emotional than Kwon had ever heard him – certainly in combat, when liquid nitrogen usually coursed through his veins. Then he thought he heard Todd grunt from around back – two seconds after which he came on the channel.
“I’m hit. Just gonna drop down and check it out.”
Still holding his eye bandage with his crushed hand, Kwon crawled out the covered side, where he found Todd hunched over his own groin, checking out his inner thigh. “Sons of bitches,” he said. “They got me on the other side.”
“Lucky bastard,” Kwon said. “They’ve bracketed you. Next one takes your dick off.”
Todd smiled and straightened up. A round came through the missing windows and blew straight through his upper arm. This one wasn’t a crease like in his thigh. It blew out a big chunk of his tricep.
And it was a bleeder.
* * *
“How bad?” Jake kept it short. He was the only one shooting now and couldn’t leave his position.
“Brachial artery,” Kwon answered. “Getting a tourniquet on it now.”
The PKM was continuing to chew up the gun truck and it was only a matter of time until they took more casualties, maybe more serious ones. Also, the bad guys had more RPGs left – and a better position to fire them from now, up on the other ridge. As usual, vehicles were bullet and RPG magnets. This one was living on borrowed time – and so were they.
Jake sucked wind and tried to maintain situational awareness. And that’s when movement caught his eye from the forest to the left. He turned and dropped down behind the hood of the truck, preparing to fend off what was probably going to be a very successful flanking maneuver. They were all the way around behind Jake’s cover, and he knew he was about to be shot. He took a bead anyway.
But it turned out to be a stumbling dead guy, flailing through the underbrush. Two more lurched out of the darkness behind it. The living had been making too much of a racket.
And now the walking dead were here.
After dropping the three shambling Zulus, instead of popping up again to re-engage the living enemy, Jake stayed where he was. He pushed his back up against the truck tire, and then he stopped moving and just looked over at the other two. He could see Kwon doing buddy aid for Todd, despite the severity of his own wounds. And he could see how much blood Todd had already lost. That artery needed to be clamped – and it was going to need vascular surgery to fix properly.
That meant Camp Price, their med shack – and Elijah.
So now Jake had two serious WIAs, both of whom needed real medical care – and he was the only one left unwounded.
The dead were converging on their position
, in numbers Jake couldn’t even speculate about.
And they were all about to die from enemy fire anyway as more rounds and RPGs crashed in.
Jake drew a breath. And he said: “Mount up. We’re going.”
Todd and Kwon tripped over each other fighting to say, “Fuck off!” first. Todd won, so Kwon shouted across the few feet of open air: “Negative! We’ll hold here! You push out and go look for her!”
They didn’t leave people behind - ever.
But Kate could be anywhere, or nowhere. The three of them probably only had a few seconds left to live. And the entire forest was collapsing on them, dead and living, assault rifles and RPGs totally zeroed in.
The superheroes were all out of heroics.
Jake said, “She probably had to displace and lost comms. Got hit in the radio.”
The other two didn’t answer. They were in a pretty bad way.
“She’s been to SERE. She’ll escape and evade.” Jake didn’t know who he was trying to convince. “She’s a tough girl.”
Another Zulu fell out of the forest, right on its face. Jake shot it in the top of the head without moving. An RPG exploded against the other side of the truck.
This was it. They were just about done.
Jake hauled himself to his feet, bodily shoved the other two into the truck, shut the door behind them, snatched Kate’s hat with one hand, piled into the driver’s seat, started it up, and savaged both the engine and transmission powering the truck out of its dug-in position. As he rumbled them off the crest of the ridge and they started bouncing and jerking down the slope, the incoming fire tracked them and continued to ping off the back of the truck and crack the rear window glass.
Stealing a look in the mirror, Jake could see Todd and Kwon both trying to get their personal weapons up over the back seat to engage to the rear and cover their withdrawal. But the far ridge was already disappearing out of view as the rumbling truck rolled over the bodies of the dead and drove straight out the forest path they had all first walked in on.
Arisen : Nemesis Page 25
