Warlord: Dervish

by Tony Monchinski

  The choice of carbines was somewhat reassuring. He was familiar with the Colt M4 from his time in Iraq. Everyone’s rifle had all sorts of accessories hanging off the rails. Jason’s had an M203A1 grenade launcher hugging the barrel. Riding above the receiver was an Aimpoint CompM2 red dot reflex sight. He liked having the Beretta M9 holstered on his hip; from his experience, only officers were issued pistols. Here they each had one one.

  Bronson had pointed out to Jason that they were all carrying M4s, except for Hahn and Drooper who had SAWs, and the three other mercs. The Redtide men handled AK-47s with GP-31 underbarrel 40mm grenade launchers. Snork woke up to his M24 bolt-action sniper rifle like a kid waking up to the best present under the Christmas tree.

  The Humvee lurched under Jason, its suspension jolting as a tire bounced out of a depression. Calling it a trail or road, he thought, clutching the wheel with both hands, was generous. Hess had told them they were heading into Pakistan. Is this what Pakistan looked like? Jason had nothing else to go on until something presented itself that proved otherwise. They hadn’t seen anyone in the hour they’d been driving. No people, no goats, not a thing. Nada, zero, zip.

  The seat next to his was empty. Aguilera had chosen to isolate himself in the rear. It was kind of weird. Jason didn’t think he had anything to worry about from the Marine, but he didn’t know. When he could, he spared a glance back at the guy and there he was, always doing the same thing, drawing the edge of that Ka-Bar over a whetstone. Aguilera didn’t seem interested in the crates of ordinance around him. He caught Jason looking back at him once and smiled, a grin that unnerved Jason more than he liked to admit. Jason hadn’t looked back since.

  Their four vehicle convoy passed between ten-story mountainous walls on either side of the riverbed, a decidedly uncomfortable place to be. Great place for an ambush. Hess’ Stryker sped along as fast as the land allowed. Was the Major concerned about an attack? Seemed like Hess had been throwing caution to the wind. Maybe he knew something about the area that he wasn’t sharing. Jason sure hoped so.

  Any second he expected to see the white smoke trail of an RPG rocketing down at them. Or the flash and rattle as something detonated under him. Jason thought about Rudy, the way the kid had been shorn of limb and melted into his seat, still alive. Though his hands were gloved, Jason knew they were white on the wheel.

  The overhanging cliffs gave way to gently sloping planes which leveled out before giving onto more mountains in the near distance. Hess had ordered complete radio silence. Which was another thing that made little sense, because one of the first things Jason had done was check the radio in the Humvee and it didn’t appear to be operational. Why would everything—their weapons and equipment, the vehicles themselves—be top notch, but the radio didn’t work? Jason wanted to ask Bronson and he could have, because they were both wearing their headsets and comms within the Humvee were up, but he didn’t, because he didn’t know who else might be listening.

  Sunlight glinted off steel and Jason shivered, expecting the crack of a sniper’s rifle or the KRUNK of a mortar. Neither came. He squinted through his wraparound sunglasses and the windshield. The sun was between himself and whatever it was reflecting off of, so he couldn’t make it out distinctly.

  It was warm in the Humvee and hotter than hell outside it.

  “Ho, Jay!” Bronson yelled over the intercom. Jason had already seen the Stryker in front of them pull over. Hess’ eight wheeled truck pressed on in the lead and Jason wasn’t sure what to do. Bronson pounded the flat of a hand on the roof—“Pull her over, Jay!”—so Jason wheeled the Humvee around, pulling it to a stop across from the mercs’ Stryker, facing in the opposite direction.

  The four mercenaries were already out, staring off across the plane. They didn’t look worried about taking any fire. Jason shifted the Humvee into park and climbed out into the heat, taking along his M4. Aguilera had sheathed the Ka-Bar, his own carbine in hand.

  Jason stepped over to the man who called himself Fleegle. All of the mercs had painted black tiger stripes on their faces. Fleegles’ face looked funny, all that grease paint except for the upside down U of hair framing his mouth. “What’s this?”

  “Tank graveyard.” Fleegle fit a cigarette to his mouth.

  Dozens of shattered tanks rested on the plane, buried up to their treads in sand and dirt.

  “T-72s.” Bingo identified them.

  The men and women from the Humvees and the Stryker stood looking over the derelict armored vehicles. The rusted tanks and wrecked armored personnel carriers were long abandoned, entombed to varying depths in grass and sand. A skeleton jutted out of the turret in one tank.

  “I saw some of them in Iraq,” said Bronson.

  “They’re Soviet-era.” Fleegle drew deeply from his cigarette. “Look at the markings.”

  “You think we’re in Afghanistan?” Jason asked.

  “Ain’t you the bright one?” quipped Snork.

  “Hey, Snorky main.”

  “What do you want, Bronson?”

  Bronson said what he said next very quickly. “Homo-say-what?”

  Snork looked at him, perplexed. “What?”

  “What I thought.”

  Bingo laughed as Snork turned red.

  “Ladies and gentlemen!” Major Hess was standing outside his Stryker. “What in the hell—do you think—you are doing?”

  Jason made to turn and follow Bronson back to their Humvee, but Fleegle reached out and stopped him. “Wait.”

  “Why?”

  “Watch.” Fleegle nodded towards the Major.

  “Chop-fucking-chop, ladies and gentlemen,” the Major yelled. Fleegle’s men, Aguilera, Ahmed and Deirdre, Letitia, even Hahn, all were getting back into their vehicles. “Let’s get this show—” the sun reflected off Hess “—on the fucking road—” and as Jason watched, the Major’s body shivered, a ripple that ran nearly instantaneously up and down his figure “—most ricky-tick!”

  Jason blinked.

  “You saw it.”

  “Yeah.” He was confused. “But what’d I see?”

  “That’s what we’re going to find out.”

  “Sometime today people!” Hess yelled.

  As Jason trotted back to his Humvee, Fleegle reached up to his mouth, gripped his cigarette between thumb and forefinger and took one last drag before tossing the butt. He stared at the Major, and the Major was yelling, but the Major didn’t seem to be yelling at him. The Major wasn’t even looking at him. One of the Major’s men was watching him closely though, guy up on the Stryker’s Mk-19. Fleegle released the smoke from his lungs, tilting his head towards the man on the grenade launcher, letting him know he’d noticed the man staring.

  As Jason got back into the Humvee, he saw Aguilera was on the fifty. He expected to find Bronson in the passenger seat but was pleasantly surprised to find Deirdre there. Bronson rode in back.

  “What were you talking to Fleegle about?” She asked as Jason pulled back into line. He liked the sound of her voice, her accent.

  “He think we in Afghanistan?” Bronson leaned forward so he could take part in their conversation.

  “Well,” Jason considered watching what he was going to say but decided what the hell. If Hess had their Hummer miked, he had their Hummer miked. “He thinks that’s what they want us to think…”

  “Those were Russian tanks, right?”

  “Sho’ looked like it.”

  “Got tired of the company?” Jason referred to Deirdre’s vehicle switch.

  “Letitia isn’t the most pleasant person in the world. Hahn doesn’t speak English, and the only person who can translate for her hates her guts.”

  “What’s Ahmed got against Hahn?” Bronson wanted to know.

  “Only about two thousand years of history.”

  Jason looked at the truck in front of them. “I don’t trust those guys.”

  Bronson scoffed. “I don’t trust them either.”

  “That jerk reminds me of my ex-husba
nd.”

  Intrigued, Jason asked, “Which one?”

  “The fat one.”

  “Snorky?” Bronson didn’t sound like he believed it either. “Dee, you was married to a guy like Snorky?”

  “Unfortunately.”

  “Remind me why you’re here again, Deirdre?”

  “Well, Jason, I reported on some high-level shenanigans involving your government and some of its most cherished corporations. At least that’s why I think I’m here.”

  “No. I mean why are you a reporter?”

  “You mean, why aren’t I at home popping out babies and waiting for my man to return from work?”

  “Something like that.”

  “I guess I just never met the right man.” She feigned wistfulness.

  “Is that the answer you wanted?”

  “Me and my girl, we was gonna get married,” Bronson didn’t fake his, “before I deployed. We thought it’d be good for Chandra.”

  “Who’s Chandra?” asked Jason.

  “You don’t remember I told you?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “My baby girl.”

  “You got a daughter, Bronson?”

  “Yeah I got me a daughter, Jay. Told you that before, main.”

  “So,” Deirdre pressed, “did you two tie the knot before you shipped out, Bronson?”

  “Nah, we didn’t. But now I’m thinking we should’ve.”

  “Why’s that?” Jason watched the sides of the road.

  “I don’t know, Jay. It’s the way my grandma raised me, main. I don’t want my little girl growing up with no daddy.”

  “Chandra has a father, Bronson,” Deirdre reminded him. “You’re her father. Whether you’re married to her mother or not doesn’t change that.”

  “Yeah, I know, Dee, but I’m old fashioned I guess is what it is. It woulda been betta I married her moms ‘fore I shipped out.”

  “Lots of people are having kids these days without getting married.”

  “Yeah, but Chandra ain’t lots a people. She my baby girl. We get back from this, I’m a do her right, marry her moms, put things correct on that front.”

  “Well,” said Jason, “if Hess ain’t bullshitting us—and that’s a big if—maybe you’ve got a chance to make things right for Chandra in the next couple of days. You lend a hand in wiping out the top shelf of the terrorism industry, who knows what kind of carnage you’ll be averting down the road.”

  “How ‘bout you, Dee? You got any kids?”

  “No.”

  “You want any?”

  “I’d like to,” she admitted. “But I can’t.”

  “What you mean you can’t?”

  “We tried. We tried everything: diet, fertility treatments, all sorts of things. And each time, my body wouldn’t—it wouldn’t keep.”

  “Each time, huh?”

  “Three times.”

  Bronson scratched his forehead under his Kevlar. “Day-em, Dee.”

  “Three strikes and ones out in your baseball, so I just thought…”

  “That’s sad,” Jason was touched. “I’m sorry.”

  “It turned out to be a good thing. Like I said, he was a jerk. A baby would have only complicated the picture. Kept him in my life.”

  “That’s what I’m sayin, Dee. Too much drama.”

  “So, Deirdre,” Jason ventured drolly, “you traded potential domestic bliss for a career as what? A globe trotting photojournalist?”

  “Something like that.” She smiled. “I got my start as a stringer for INS, one thing led to another, and, well, here we all are, right?”

  “Where ever here may be.”

  “Welcome to the suck,” Bronson piped up in the rear.

  “You know, Jason, when you got back in the car—” Deirdre realized she was referring to the Humvee incorrectly and amended her words “—when you got back in, the look on your face…”

  “I thought I saw something back there. Before.”

  “Yes, just another thing that doesn’t sit right with me about this.”

  “Ya’ll think we’re okay to talk about this…here?” Bronson gestured with his hand, taking in the interior of the vehicle.

  “Probably not,” Deirdre agreed, “but so what? You’re soldiers—” she resumed her original line of thought “—and you have guns. I’m a reporter. I have none of my equipment. No digital recorder, no camera. Nothing.”

  “Guess they ain’t lookin’ for first-person accounts.”

  “I suppose not.”

  Jason remembered something Bronson had said to him, when the other was nothing to him but a disembodied voice in a cold hallway. “Hey Bronson, how’s that rap game going?”

  “Let me tell ya, Jay,” Bronson answered, genuinely enthused. “The rap game is simple.” He sounded like he’d given it a good deal of thought. “What are most rap songs about? How big your dick is—‘scuse me, Dee—how much bling you got, how great you are, your bitch. Shit like that.”

  “Shit like that, huh?”

  “What you know about hip hop, Jay?”

  “I know Kid Rock.”

  Bronson slapped his armored thigh and laughed. “Let me guess: you know LL Cool Jay, right?

  “Wasn’t he on CSI?”

  “Nah, that was Ice-T.”

  “I heard of some lil’ Wayne guy.”

  “You heard a’ lil’ Wayne, huh? What about Rick Ross? You heard of Rick Ross? Nicki Minaj? Drake?”

  Jason professed his ignorance.

  “Shit, Jay. How long you been out of the states?”

  “Three tours.”

  “Three tours. Shit!”

  “That should be illegal,” opined Deirdre.

  “Aight, Jay, so I say, like, French Montana, or Earl Sweatshirt, Brother Lynch Hung, and you say, like, what the fuck, right?”

  “Right. What the fuck? And you’re making shit up now, right?”

  “Nah. You heard of Snoop right?”

  “Snoop Dogg?”

  “Snoop dee-oh-double-g-oh.”

  “Yeah, sure I heard of him.”

  “Thank God. What about you, reporter lady? You a hip hop head?”

  “No. No offense.”

  “’s right.”

  “You know how to use one of them?” Jason changed the subject, referring to the M4 Deirdre had resting barrel up between her legs.

  “Vaguely.”

  “Hey, Jay, you get a load of the shit they got back here?” Bronson had been rifling through the various equipment and weapons stored in the rear of the Humvee during their conversation.

  “Nah, I been too busy driving.”

  “They gots a SMAW.”

  “What’s a SMAW?”

  “This, Dee.” Bronson patted a tubular launcher.

  “It’s a shoulder launched multipurpose weapon.”

  “A bazooka?”

  “Kinda’. They’re good against bunkers.”

  “What about against tanks?”

  “Oh yeah,” Jason assured her, “They’ll work against tanks.”

  Bronson whistled in the back seat. “They got some rockets for this bad boy too. HEDP, HEAA—”

  “High explosive, dual purpose,” Jason spelled it out for Deirdre, “high explosive, anti-armor.”

  “—we got Novel explosive—”

  “What’s a Novel explosive?”

  “Thermobaric warhead,” clarified Jason. “They create an overpressure—”

  “An overpressure?”

  “A bad ass shock wave!” Bronson sounded overjoyed.

  “They can just…” Jason considered the best word “…demolish buildings, caves, tunnels. That kind of shit.”

  “Sounds more like thermo-barbaric.”

  “Thermo-barbaric. I feel that, Dee.”

  “It is what it is,” Jason agreed.

  “Oh main,” Bronson spoke longingly, “let me get an eye on Osama and his boys sitting in a cave when I gots me one of these…”

  “We’re heading into a
city, Bronson,” Jason reminded him, “Maybe you can take his ass out at a café.”

  “That’s it. I’ll get thermo-barbaric on his haji ass while he’s sipping Chai at Starbucks. You think they got Starbucks here, Jay?”

  “I think they got sand and dirt and—” Jason peered through the grime-encrusted windshield “—and garbage. A lot of garbage.”

  “Oh my god,” Deirdre gasped, “look at this place.”

  What had appeared to be small hills from a distance were in fact mounds upon mounds of trash moldering in the merciless sun and sand. Wisps of smoke rose lazily from several of the piles, dissipating into the atmosphere.

  “The city must be just over those hills…” Jason slowed the Humvee. The vehicles in front had already come to a halt. They gathered together again, outside the vehicles. The young mercenary, Drooper, wore belts of 5.56mm ammunition over his shoulders and chest. He looked like he couldn’t wait to use the Squad Automatic Weapon hanging from its sling around his neck. Without drawing attention to himself, Aguilera stepped away from the group.

  “We’re close.” Letitia spoke to herself, eyeing the piles of trash suspiciously.

  “Hey—” exclaimed the young mercenary “What’s that?”

  “No, Drooper.” Fleegle pushed the muzzle of the man’s light machine gun towards the ground, tossing the butt of his cigarette away.

  A little boy sat in the dirt amid the trash piles, his knees drawn up to his chin.

  “Hey you, kid,” Bingo squatted down. “Come here.”

  The child considered them with brooding eyes, distrustful of the armed men and women.

  “Tell him don’t run,” Bingo told Ahmed.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Standing outside his Stryker, Hess was going ballistic. “Get back in your vehicles.”

  Ahmed called out to the boy and the child reluctantly rose, approaching them.

  “You heard him.” One of Hess’ gunners yelled, mounted on the Stryker’s grenade launcher.

  Jason shared a look with Bronson and Deirdre and they began to put some space between themselves.

  The gunner on the truck aimed his words and the muzzle of the Mk-19 at Fleegle. “Get back in the fucking Stryker. Now.”