by James Rosone
“Wow, I don’t think I’ve ever fired a shot that far,” Fortney commented, making sure the front shades of the truck were shut. They put their hearing protection on when the order to fire came.
“Firing missile,” Ramirez said loudly as he relayed the orders.
Swoosh…
The missile fired, shaking the vehicle as the solid fuel motor kicked into overdrive and sent the missile on a Mach 3 journey. The sound of the battery firing these six enormous missiles into the sky was thunderous and loud. Because they were shooting the larger ATACMS, the truck launchers only had the capacity to hold one missile at a time instead of the usual six smaller rockets.
Once the battery fired their missiles, a call came over the company net for everyone to prepare to relocate to a new firing location. Once they reached it, they’d reload the launchers and prepare for any additional follow-up missions.
“Damn, Fortney,” exclaimed Ramirez. “Things got real, didn’t they? We unloaded holy hell on the Chinese and Cubans.”
“Yeah, no joke,” Fortney replied. “Now it’s time to scoot in case they decide to throw some counterbattery fire at us. I sure as hell don’t want to be around for that if it does come.”
*******
“Loki One, Odin. Rounds out. ETA four mikes.”
“Odin, good copy. Rounds out. ETA four mikes.”
Currie and Dawson smiled. The rocket artillery was on the way. Now it was a matter of waiting for them to fly the hundred and seventy miles to plaster this place. It was nice knowing they had some rocket artillery they could call on and not have to rely solely on cruise missiles and the Air Force.
“Currie, you think there are more TELs in the area or any of those HQ-9 radar sites or missiles?” asked Dawson.
Currie looked over to Dawson and had to remind himself the guy was only a meter away. Tricked out in their ghillie suits and face paint, they were hard to spot. “Maybe,” Currie responded. “I suppose once this place gets lit up, we might spot some vehicles trying to move to a new location if they survive. If that happens, then we should see where they’re going. We might get lucky and catch some of these vehicles in the open with a second barrage.”
Dawson nodded. He pulled an energy bar out and started eating. They’d been in-country now for ten days. A total of twenty Loki teams had infiltrated Cuba before the war had started and were doing their best to identify enemy radar and missile sites. Their secondary objective was assessing the local population and seeing if they could find some friendlies among them. If they could convince some of them to work with the Americans, it’d help them find more targets for the Air Force and Navy to hit. Ideally, they’d like to train up a local militia force to help them seize the island. They could then work with this force to set up a new democratic government once the current regime was removed.
“Loki One, splash.”
“Odin, splash out. Stand by for BDA,” Currie replied.
“Here they come,” Dawson said as they heard the shrieking sound of the incoming missiles.
Boom, boom, boom…
The six seven-hundred-and-fifty-pound warheads on the missiles impacted in a scatter pattern on and around the PLA missile launchers. As if on cue, multiple secondary explosions rocked the area as the CJ-10 cruise missiles began to cook off in the conflagration.
The whole jungle erupted as more secondary explosions rocked the place. It was clear to Currie and Dawson that, deeper in the jungle, the PLA must have been storing additional missiles, or there were more trucks they hadn’t seen. As the blasts continued to destroy the area, they counted over a dozen secondary explosions from the initial strike.
“Odin, good strike. Break,” Dawson relayed. “Count fifteen additional secondary explosions. Break. It appears we hit a missile depot or additional Dragons. Break. Will stick around to monitor the area. Break. Will advise on possible repeat of last fire mission. Out.”
“How long do you want to hang out?” Dawson asked Currie after he had finished providing their battle damage assessment.
“Not sure. I think the area might get a little hot with activity. Maybe we hang out until closer to dusk. Then we can make a move.”
“Loki One, Odin. New mission. Prepare to copy,” the radio called out.
The two operators looked at each other as if to say, What now?
“Loki One, travel to Charlie Uniform Five-Five-Six-Niner-Seven-Four-Four-Five. Link up with a downed Air Force pilot. Major Ian Ryan, call sign Racer. How copy?”
Dawson shook his head. A recovery mission was tough business. As operators, they knew how to move around the jungle and the terrain without being detected—a downed pilot, not so much.
“Odin, good copy. Please advise the pilot of our frequency. Break. Handshake pilot frequency. Will make contact as we get closer. Out.”
Currie turned to look at his partner. “Well, I guess that settles it. If I copied the position right, that pilot is ten kilometers from our current position. A short hike through the jungle, no big deal,” he joked as they started packing up their gear and getting ready to move out.
*******
Unknown Location
Cuba
Major Ian “Racer” Ryan vomited for the fifth time in the last hour.
I knew I shouldn’t have eaten that… He chided himself over eating a fruit he’d been unsure of.
He’d had a rough go of it since he’d been shot down. He’d parachuted into a dense canopy of trees in the middle of nowhere. It had taken him forty minutes to untangle himself from the wires of his parachute without falling fifty feet to the jungle floor below. The last thing he wanted was to break a limb or something worse behind enemy lines.
Once he’d freed himself and managed to get back down to the ground, Racer did a quick inventory. He didn’t have much, but he checked his radio and turned it on to the preset frequency for the CSAR unit. Racer was lucky—he was able to contact command right away.
Sadly, they said a recovery was out of the question. Racer struggled with this news. He knew NAS Key West was less than a few hundred miles away. He figured they should be able to send a helicopter to fetch him from there. Sadly, there wasn’t going to be a rescue mission anytime soon—not until they thinned the enemy SAMs out a bit more. The SAMs would eat the helicopters up.
Shuffling over to a nearby stream, Racer knelt down, cupping his hands together as he brought some cool water to his face. He drank in the water and sloshed it around in his mouth, cleaning out the vomit before spitting to the side.
He then drank his fill of water. He knew he needed to stay hydrated. He didn’t have any protein bars left, so water would be the only way to satisfy that hungry feeling.
“DD Three, this is Dad. How copy?” the radio called out softly to him.
Racer looked at the small radio like a young kid at a Christmas tree full of gifts on Christmas morning. He depressed the talk button.
“Dad, DD Three. I copy loud and clear.”
“Send us your current coordinates. A Loki team is nearby. Will attempt to link you up with them. How copy?”
It’s about damn time, Racer thought.
Looking at the Hook3 radio in his hand, he saw the button that would gather his current location and hit it. This took a few minutes as the GPS satellites above had to acquire the coordinates. When the little light turned green, letting him know it was ready, he hit the transfer button. This sent the coordinates directly to the unit trying to recover him. From there, it was out of his hands. All he had to do now was not get captured until the Special Forces soldiers found him.
*******
“You see that? Looks like a PLA patrol,” Dawson whispered softly over the radio.
They both had an earpiece and a throat mic on, allowing them to talk with each other while not giving away their positions. They’d spent nine hours traversing through the valley to the coordinates Odin had provided.
“Yeah, I see them. How many do you think are there?” asked Currie.
&nbs
p; “I’d say it looks like a platoon,” answered Dawson.
“Do you think they’re looking for us, the pilot, or on a routine patrol?” Currie asked.
“Hard to say,” Dawson replied. “We’re kind of far from our old location. My money says they’re probably out here still looking for our pilot.”
“Let’s keep moving. We need to find this pilot before they do.”
*******
Racer heard some voices off in the distance and turned to look in their direction.
That doesn’t sound like Spanish. I hope those aren’t ChiComs, Racer thought.
As the minutes dragged on, the voices got closer. Racer took cover in a thicket of shrubs and underbrush, hoping whoever they were, they’d continue to move along.
Then he saw them. At first it was a group of three soldiers. One would move slowly and methodically forward, scanning everything in front of him. The second man scanned to their right, while the third man scanned to their left. For the life of him, Racer couldn’t understand why these guys were so silent and stealthy while the soldiers further back were talking and making a ton of noise. It seemed counterintuitive for them to be quiet while the guys behind them were not.
When the first three soldiers pushed past his position, Racer saw the next group of soldiers. They were spread out in a very wide line, like they were trying to bird-dog something. Then it dawned on him. They were trying to bird-dog him. They talked loudly, animatedly, as they pushed through the underbrush and shrubs…looking for him.
Several of the Chinese soldiers were getting closer to his position. This wasn’t good. He wasn’t sure if they would pass by him or if they’d end up walking right up on top of him. The soldiers weren’t walking forward in a straight line but appeared to be making a disorganized crisscrossing pattern.
I need to move or these guys will catch me…
Just as Racer was about to slip away, his radio chirped softly, letting him know someone was trying to reach him.
Grabbing at it, he quickly turned the volume off and prayed none of the soldiers had heard the chirp. They didn’t appear to have registered the noise, since they didn’t change anything they were doing. Depressing the talk button, Racer whispered, “Loki One, this is Racer. How copy?”
A momentary pause ensued before he got a reply.
“Racer, this is Loki One. Good copy. Break. We’re nearing your position. Enemy patrol nearby. Where are you?”
Before Racer could respond, all the Chinese soldiers stopped talking and moving. Someone came forward from behind the line, holding an electronic device. In that moment, Major Ryan knew they’d found him.
The soldier holding the electronic device pointed it exactly where he was hiding and started shouting something angrily in Chinese. In an instant, half a dozen soldiers started running right for him.
Ah crap! I have to get out of here. Racer turned and started running in a crouched position away from the enemy soldiers.
He heard shouting behind him. Tree branches and limbs were snapping as hot lead flew all around him. They sounded like angry bees before his mind registered the gunshots.
Racer ducked behind a tree as a few slugs slammed into it. Popping out from behind the trunk, he aimed at the charging soldiers and fired off several shots. Racer hit one of them several times in the chest, then moved to fire at the second guy as a few rounds flew right next to his head. He fired two more aimed shots, hitting another soldier before ducking behind the tree and then bolting to a new position.
What the hell?! Aren’t they supposed to try to capture me and not kill me? Racer thought.
More gunshots and yelling could be heard behind him as he ran. Racer stood a little taller and ran for all he was worth, shifting to his right then to his left to throw his attackers’ aim off.
When Racer jinked to the right, something punched him in the back of his right shoulder, causing him to spin and fall. He hit the ground hard, unable to break his fall or even try to brace for it.
As he lay there on the ground, hurting all over from the uncontrolled fall, his shoulder felt like a hot poker stick had been pushed right through it. Racer knew he’d been shot. He also knew that unless he did something right now, these enemy soldiers would be on top of him and they’d finish him off. The last thing he wanted was to be taken prisoner or killed and not even try to defend himself.
He grabbed for his Beretta 9mm and fought through the pain to sit up; he spotted a Chinese soldier running right for him, maybe forty feet away. Racer pulled the trigger twice, hitting the man squarely in the chest. He dropped and fell forward from his own momentum.
Turning to his right, Racer saw another soldier running toward him, except this guy had his rifle already aimed at him. He saw the rifle flash several times and figured the bullets would crash into him in moments, but they didn’t.
Then Racer heard a lot of spitting noises coming from somewhere behind him. Then he heard, “Frag out!”
An explosion took place near a group of the enemy soldiers. A few more fell to the ground, hit by something.
Racer’s world faded out a little bit. His vision became tunneled and he grew confused. He watched several more soldiers go down before a green blur appeared right in front of him. The man disarmed him before he could say or do anything. Then Racer felt his body being thrown over the shoulder of the mystery man and they were off, running through the jungle like the world was on fire.
Racer wasn’t sure what had happened, but he thought he was being rescued. Then he blacked out.
*******
Currie was covering Dawson as he threw the injured pilot over his shoulder and ran. Dawson rushed past his position as he unloaded the rest of his magazine into a group of enemy soldiers who thought they could bum rush the unknown attackers.
Reaching for one of his white phosphorus grenades, Currie pulled the pin and gave it a good toss high in the air in the direction of the enemy soldiers.
Without waiting around to see it go off, he was on his feet, running after Dawson.
Crump…
The grenade exploded moments later, dousing the area with a chemical cloud that would ignite nearly anything it touched. This was Currie’s first time using a WP grenade in a fight. They normally carried flash-bangs or fragmentation grenades, but someone had said the WP grenades would make for a good area denial weapon if they were ever being chased by a large force. Each of the two-man Loki teams had made sure to grab a couple of them before they headed out on the mission. They each knew the likelihood of a rescue was slim if they ran into trouble, at least until the invasion kicked off or the Air Force could reasonably control the skies. They were alone…and no one was coming to save them.
Currie could still hear shouting behind them. He also heard a lot of screaming and cries of pain as well. Even as a soldier, that was hard to hear—knowing he had inflicted that pain and agony on another human being was tough.
“We’ll need to stop soon to treat this guy’s wounds,” Dawson said over the comms.
“Give it another sixty seconds, then stop.”
They ran another minute, then Dawson laid the pilot down against the side of a tree so he could examine the man’s injuries. “This guy got lucky,” he mumbled. “The round that hit him must have been an armor-piercing round and not a hollow-point. It punched a small hole right through him.” The hollow-points would have left a small entrance but a large exit wound—those kinds of wounds were a lot tougher to treat.
Dawson pulled the flight suit away from the wound and assessed the blood that was slowly oozing out. Pulling his patrol pack off, he grabbed for his medkit. He tore open a small package of QuikClot and poured it over the front and back of the wound, then placed gauze bandages on both sides and tied a tight pressure dressing over it all to hold it in place.
Currie examined the pilot’s face while Dawson finished up. It was obvious he was fading in and out of consciousness. “Hey, Major Ryan. We’ve come to rescue you. We need you to hold on. You have
to fight to stay alive, OK?”
The pilot smiled briefly and nodded. The painkillers Dawson had injected him with were starting to hit.
They swapped positions, with Currie carrying the wounded pilot while Dawson covered their six. They trudged on for another two hours before they felt they were far enough away from the enemy soldiers that they could stop.
It was starting to get dark, so they didn’t have much time to find a decent place to sack out. Normally the snake eaters wouldn’t care where they slept, but they had a wounded man they needed to take care of now.
Eventually, they found a slight ridge that had some good rock outcroppings on it. They climbed up to it and nestled in for the night. This position would give them good cover and place them on the high ground should they end up having to shoot it out with another patrol. No doubt more PLA soldiers would be sent looking for them. They knew there was a downed pilot nearby and a small commando team—they’d want some payback for sure.
Chapter Thirty-One
Preparations
NAS Key West
Bravo Company, 3rd Ranger Battalion
Staff Sergeant Amos Dekker looked around the airfield with Captain Meacham as they surveyed the damage.
“What do you think, Staff Sergeant? Think we can launch the heliborne assault from here, or do you think we’ll have to airborne it?”
Dekker liked Meacham. Unlike most officers, he was a Mustang. He’d served in the Rangers as an enlisted man before he’d been given an appointment to the Academy. Following his graduation, he’d returned straight to the Rangers.
“If the Seabees or a Red Horse unit can get the airfield repaired and all the debris removed, then yeah. I think it can work for a heliborne assault,” Dekker replied.
“Yeah, but can they do it in the timeline we need?” Meacham pressed.
