Hell To Pay

by Andrik Rovson

  It was chaotic, distracted by the villagers they had to manage at the same time they were shooting at his two lines of men, far enough apart they couldn't face both of them at the same time. Perfect! The added edge the poison gas provided had made the difference. How had the Russians not used it like this? Idiots! As a pure terror weapon it was overkill, so widely destructive its ghastly slaughter made the soldiers who used it unsure of their side's mission, sowing dissension that showed up as drug use and desertion.

  But like this, as a prelude to a regular assault on the terrified survivors, it was purely tactical, an idea his men relished, their secret weapon that drove all before it. A few villagers dead from the gas was a small price, as many as they'd kill in a full on attack anyway. Who cared?

  “Williams, what?” Jabo pushed the receiver in his ear deeper, crouching and turning his head away from the crackling fire of his men, shooting at long range, not yet committed, his reserve he'd need soon, when his initial defensive line buckled. “Pull back, toward the Village, no, not the LZ, fuck that, they won't shoot any more gas, I just know, that's why, move and stop thinking, that's my job!” He hated to badger the most able second he'd ever known, but he tended to call his own shots and that was Jabo's job, the only way they'd not only survive, but win this damned fight.

  The villagers took the hint and ran, returning to the village, exactly what he'd wanted, pressed on two sides, like Williams' squad confronting them. His most forward team was flanked and falling back slowly. They were down to five, no four, shit he'd lost another one, dead, wounded? He didn't have time to find out, didn't care. Men died in battle, would die here. He had to fight the entire force opposing him. Tactically it was each man for himself, following orders, working as a unit. That was why they were special forces, their unit integrity was locked in, a team first last and always, to the last man standing.

  “See that? They're reacting to our movement towards the village, theyre sliding east, toward the LZ instead of pushing us toward that wall in the south.” Jabo looked at the low mud wall that acted as a pen for the few cattle and horses the villagers possessed, the other sides wooden, a few posts and cross pieces. They'd built the long mud wall as a village, intending to finish the other sides as their farming duties allowed. Now it was redoubt, in the other side's possession, confirmed at last by a few flickers of fire along the top, stopping a throng of villagers who'd decided to run for the hills, skirting the wall or climbing over it. Bad idea. Two or three people fell down, dead or wounded, the rest turned the other way, crashing into his men in their fear, running into the fire coming from Asif's two converging battle lines pressing everyone back toward the village gate.

  His men grabbed at people, tugging them down or trying to get them to return to the village, but the memory of the deadly gas kept most of them outside, getting shot or in the way of his men. It was genius, if you didn't mind killing everyone which was Asif's plan. Jabo knew there was a way to turn this to his advantage, but not yet...

  A soldier ran up with a short report. Jabo's command post was behind a short well wall, just him and the radio man. When they needed helos to evac, wounded and his men, they'd call, but until then they were on their own. Fast movers and drones would be useless, it was too chaotic, the lines too mixed and fluid. Only Asif's men behind the south wall could be identified, and they were too few to matter, more an escape route he couldn't use, unimportant for now, since they could retreat to the village, but that might start the poison gas attack all over again. Nothing he'd come up with was very satisfactory.

  “Tell Williams to concentrate on the left end of their line,” he waved his hand to indicate the direction, so there'd be no confusion, “and tell him to get set to flank them, but not until he sees my red flare, understand?” The soldier nodded and jogged off at a crouch, pushing and pointing to the villagers, urging them to exit the battle area and find cover inside the village walls.

  “Wonderful, they're going back inside, get ready for two more shells, hurry. We'll drive them out one more time into the fields and cut them all down.” Asif focused on his precious mortar crew, calling for them to speed up, get the weapon laid in on the East end of the Village, where most of the villagers were concentrated, huddled just inside the gate.

  A three man crew had emptied the bundle they'd dragged outside, an ammo supply they desperately needed now. Besides more small arms ammo in piles of magazines, they'd loaded up on the light weight M72 rocket launcher tubes, taking two straps over each shoulder, hefting four each up on a house close to the North end of the Village, where Asif's first battle line was anchored. These were special versions, what their teams were often given first shot to try out in battle conditions. Simplicity works best in a fire fight and that was how these models worked. Rather than a contact on the nose which would fire off the round when it hit something, these had a dial on the side which could be spun to set the distance from the launching point the weapon would explode.

  By itself this wasn't hard to engineer, the math to determine the distance was trivial, and a straightforward conversion of desired distance into time, between ten seconds, the maximum range, and one half second, the minimum, about one hundred meters, was hard wired into the unit. What made this version of the almost ancient M72 extremely lethal was the combination of shrapnel types layering the entire explosive nose, laid out to project outward in a rippling torrent toward the ground as the spin stabilized rocket fired off. It produced a swath of agonizing death by shotgun sized pellets, metal shards of the nose cone body and worse of all, a spray of fine needles that stung, blinded and disoriented instead of killing. What it didn't eliminate outright, it stunned and tore into, creating massive casualties to distract those who were least effected. Men in battle find it very hard to ignore the screams of pain and cries for help from their comrades, at least momentarily.

  “Boxcar Go Go Go!” Jabo called into his tacnet radio.

  “Roger that, execute.” Sargent Nelson Pettigrew replied, business like and unsettled. He knew what these new rockets would do to their enemy and he pitied them, but they'd chosen this fight.

  He tapped the shoulder of each of his team mates, their sector of attack worked out as they'd taken the rockets off their shoulders, laying out on the roof to watch the battle unfold.

  Asif was winning, his superior numbers deployed in two wings, a dangerous ploy, cutting his force in half, it also meant Jabo's men, in the center of their two attacks, could only fight one wing or the other effectively, taking fire and generating casualties that were winnowing down their numbers as well as cutting down over twenty villagers permanently, the ones too panicked to return to the village or too young to know how to react to a fire fight. Dealing with the wounded, doing a quick triage reduced Jabo's active fighters as men acted like medics, tending to the large number of villagers scattered around the fighting men, adding to Asif's advantage.

  Running low on ammo, the Special forces soldiers were reduced to well aimed, single shots that often hit, killing or wounding was not keeping the sides equal. Asif had more men to lose and pressed both his wings to rush the dwindling circle of American soldiers fighting back. Their original estimate of twenty five men was way off, he had nearly twice that many, over twenty in each of his two attack lines when they'd started. After all his losses Asif still had more men than had stepped off the Black hawks only an hour ago. One more all out attack would end it.

  The first LAW rocket streaked out, an explosive round, aimed at Asif's mortar crew, seconds before they were going to drop in the first of three more poison gas rounds inside the village, where most of the people were huddled, tending their wounded and wishing this fight would end, not caring which side won. It hit the wooden crate they'd hauled over the mountains with such care, terrified it would explode and kill everyone within a hundred feet if it was dropped. The explosion set off the rest of his precious poison gas shells. The noxious haze started drifting toward Asif who had equipped himself with a Russian gas mask,
made to protect against these ghastly chemicals. He ran away from the cloud, abandoning his men who were on the other side of the expanding haze, grey and gold from the morning sun. Their screams scared his other men. They drew in one breath then felt their lungs burning. Soon a pounding fire in their heads made them run around wildly before they fell, shaking and choking as they howled in misery, begging for death. His command and mortar cadre was wiped out with one well placed round and now more as the cloud drifted toward the most northerly of his two attack lines.

  The line on the north broke, running the opposite direction as Asif who stopped, seeing the wind pushing the devilish cloud toward the long line of men who were panicking, dropping their weapons to flee toward their other line of fighters, forcing them to slow their fire, afraid they'd hit their compatriots. The poison gas moved slowly but dispersed quickly, as it was designed to do, and the Taliban fighters' initial reactions slowed as well, joining their the other group to face the Americans once more.

  Jabo shot the red flare, the signal for Sargent Williams to move out, to occupy the place just abandoned by the fighters and flank the other force, where Asif's first line was mingling with the second, making a confused mass that was quickly organizing into a long battle line a few hundred meters from the east gate of the village.

  Wearing their gas masks, confident they could endure the secondary effects of the now diffusing gas cloud, Williams had his men stay close, concentrating their fire power, herding the confused, leaderless men they were facing.

  As soon as they saw the red flare the other group he'd dispatched to work around behind the long mud wall on the South side of the village executed their instructions. The long four foot tall mud wall was manned by a small group of Asif's fighters. Jabo's men sprang up and took out the Taliban from the rear, one man for each of the others crouching behind the wall as they took pot shots at the Americans, forcing them to fight a two front battle they lost in seconds.

  Taking the place of the dead Taliban, Jabo's men set up their only machine gun, carried away from the ammunition bundle his man had dragged out initially. Its staccato bark, in short bursts, ran over clumps of the Taliban who were beginning to organize themselves into a new battle line, making them drop or fire back wildly toward the wall where it exploded in dusty chunks, without effect.

  “Walk it into them, Left to Right, Now, Go, Go, Go,” Jabo called out to his LAWs crew who repeated his command, 'Left to Right, Go.” One by one the rockets flew out, set to explode in the air over the mass of men opposing them, each one had ample targets below it's red firestorm of sickeningly effective anti-personnel projectiles. Each group of men screamed out in agony. Their positions, flat on the ground offered no protection against the explosion of pellets, shrapnel and thousands of hissing needles covering hundreds of square feet in a micro-second. The fire didn't let up, a new maelstrom of death and slicing metal exploded fifty feet away, walking down the line of men who soon saw what was coming and started running away from the next round they knew would scream through the air, seeking them.

  Jabo sent up a green flare, signal for a tactical hold in place, to see what they needed to do next to finish off the battle. Moving up to make a complete line to insure no one got through their position, they were forcing the bewildered Taliban fighters into the long, flat fields where the rising would make it easy to hunt them down, one by one with the help of the villagers who were already filtering out of the gates, drawn by the silence after all the noise of battle had stopped. Young men and old alike started salvaging weapons, striping the dead near the mortar where the rocket attack and deadly chemicals had killed the most in their tracks. Cleaning off the yellow dust and keeping their scarves wrapped tight around their faces, they walked delicately to not disturb the poison dust which was already breaking down in the air, as it had been designed to do rapidly, faster because the mortar rounds were so old. Filling in the gaps of the Special forces front, they nodded, some smiling, some grim and angry for revenge, waiting for the signal to make the final attack and kill the survivors of the terrible LAWs barrage.

  The two Madras men stood behind the village, where the Taliban had first come out of the hills. Young Kassim and his disabled father, Hassan worked along the outer walls, on their own mission. His father limped with a never seen noble bearing, motivated by the knowledge he'd brought this destruction on the hated Asif and his band of evil men. Both had AK-47's, unearthed from their house when Kassim had run home, telling his father who he'd seen walking across the high meadow, heading for their village. Asif was the man who'd casually shot up his father's leg, laughing as he'd screamed in pain, begging for mercy in the name of Allah.

  “To hell with Allah, beg me for mercy,” Asif had demanded as his godless companions, all Taliban who made their own rules, urged him to finish the job. But Hassan had done what he needed, humiliating himself by groveling to Asif, sparing his family who'd be decimated without him. Asif had stopped shooting, his point proven, he was a man to be reckoned with. That had been eight long years ago and Hassan had burned to have his revenge on this evil man who'd killed and maimed so many of his fellow countrymen.

  When the fight had started Hassan and Kassim had stared at the small group of men near Asif, working the mortar, as runners came for orders and hurried off. They didn't care how the battle ended, who won, only Asif mattered. The gas rounds had made them push further away, jumping from the top of one house to the next until the dust had dispersed and settled, as if by the hand of God, dissolving in pure, clean air only a few feet away as they huddled on the last house, next to the tall outer wall, a jump his father would not survive with his withered leg, unable to hide from the nearby Taliban fighters. Staying there, they'd kept watching Asif until the explosion that took out his mortar crew had turned the battle, watching him flee, running away, revealing the coward he was, saving himself first, like the Persian King of long ago, when Alexander had broken his lines and defeated his Imperial guard bunched in front of his chariot.

  Asif had no chariot, only his feet he used to jog away, pausing to look at the swirling cloud which was moving the opposite direction. He sensed his chance was gone, the battle soon lost. Heading back for the mountain path he'd used to attack the village in the early morning, it offered the only sure escape.

  “Asif!” Kassim stood panting, his AK-47 leveled at the man he'd grown up hating, hungry for this moment he could confront the man who'd crippled and humiliated his father, ruining his life.

  Asif didn't hesitate, drawing his pistol he emptied it at the boy who stood defiant or stupid, slowly raising his machine gun to aim it at his enemy. Why don't these people know when they're beaten? Kassim felt a bullet graze his side, his shirt instantly wet and dripping blood, but he didn't care. “Kassim, get down!” his father shouted, just emerging from the gate, nearly a hundred yards away from the two figures.

  Asif's pistol clicked back, empty. He hurriedly patted his vest, covered with long curved magazines for his own AK-47 he'd abandoned, too scared to grab it before he ran away from the billowing cloud of death surging up from the explosion near his mortar.

  His hand found the thinner form of another load for his pistol and his fingers closed on the top, pulling it out, then the AK-47 in Kassim's hands rattled, spitting up dust at his feet then the bullets tugged at Asif's clothes, then began spattering out flesh and blood, marching up his body that danced and twisted from the force and spikes of intense pain where the bullets tunneled and tore through his flesh. One last bullet hit his throat, making him drop his pistol and the mag he'd finally pulled out of its canvas sleeve, clutching his neck, his legs buckling, his mind shocked by the tumultuous agony wracking his entire consciousness.

  Kassim calmly dropped the AK on the path, not hearing his father telling him to stop, lurching forward to help his son, unable to control him. Arriving at Asif who had fallen, laying on his side, gasping out the hole torn in his neck, able to stare at his nemesis. Seeing a large rock beside the path, Kass
im picked it up, smashing it down on the Asif's temple, happy to see the look of terror that spread on his enemy's face at the last moment before his skull was crushed.

  “Two groups, five each, five here, base of fire, keep the villagers in front so they shoot each other, not us, if they get too excited. This is their fight now. Let them finish it off, pick off anyone who causes trouble, prisoners optional, go.” Williams and Benito nodded, rushing off to organize the hunt for survivors. Women from the village and some older men were carefully stripping the wounded Taliban, after slitting their throats with a cackle of satisfaction, having seen men like this tear into their friends or relatives for years. Mercy wasn't offered to anyone. The ten men who'd run off were quickly found, some hiding, a few fighting to the last, killing a few who closed in. These last survivors were peppered with hundreds of bullets so their heads were blown apart, their bodies bloody hamburger, wrapped in ripped cloth.