by John Ringo
He looked through the binos and pressed the button for range-finding. An invisible laser, good for about ten miles much less this short distance, lased the ground below and returned a range of nearly five hundred feet.
Fuck.
They had a couple of thousand foot ropes with them but he would have liked a bit more safety margin. However, this was as good as it was going to get.
He waved to Gregoriya and Mikhail then dumped his ruck in the snow. The serious climbing gear was in an outside pouch and he pulled out the pre-rigged harness. Some climbers would have clucked in horror at the piton hammer and pitons he pulled out. However, at the moment environmental consciousness was the last thing on his mind.
He used his ice axe to clear away some of the snow until he found solid granite then looked for a crack in the face. The air-driven piton hammer would drive one of the stainless steel spikes straight into the granite he had to do that. But a crack to start it was preferable. The good news was that it was granite. Feldspar or limestone, both prevalent in the area, had the possibility of being highly friable. Friable rock had a tendency to shatter under pressure and release pitons. That would be bad.
He found a crack, finally, and loaded the piton hammer then laid the tip of the piton on the crack, leaned into the hammer, and fired it.
The sound rebounded across the rocks. If there were any Chechens around he'd just definitively given their position away.
He punched in three pitons then connected caribiners to each of the pitons. The military called caribiners "D rings", a metal "ring", generally some form of oval with a sprung-loaded opening bale. Some people used them as key-rings but they were originally designed for climbing. Finally, he took one of the ropes Mikhail handed him, uncoiled it and then recoiled it in two heaps. Taking the center section, he began tying it off. That was a bit complex. He didn't want to leave the rope behind so he had to put in a recovery knot. However, he also wanted to make sure that nobody fell, thus the three pitons. Putting in a three-way recovery knot was a pain in the ass. Finally, he managed it. The knot had a slip-knot built into it that permitted someone on the ground to untie it by a hard yank on one of the two dangling ropes. The problem was that they could start to untie all by themselves under heavy use. The answer was to slide a pin of some sort into the loop of the slip-knot until the last climber was ready to go down.
Finally he had the entire rig set up and stood up, groaning as his bad knee protested. One of these days that damned thing was going to go out entirely. Hopefully not today.
Mikhail looked at him quizzically for a second and then picked up the two coils and tossed them over the side. Both, fortunately, fell straight and true without tangling and the tips hit the ground, barely.
The reason for the quizzical look, Mike realized, was that he should have tossed the loops. His brain was really working slow.
Nonetheless, he pointed to Sawn and then at the rappel at which Sawn nodded and stepped forward.
Everyone had already donned their climbing harnesses. These were padded nylon that ran around the upper body and under the arms. Earlier harnesses and those used for "light" mountaineering were a seat. But the upper body harnesses were necessary when you were working with rucks. Without them you tended to dangle upside down.
Sawn picked up the doubled ropes and attached them to his figure-eight. There were, Mike swore, as many ways to rappel as there were climbers. However, one of the simpler involved wrapping the rope through a doubled metal circle that looked vaguely like an 8 with one end much smaller than the other. They were only good for relatively short rappels, longer ones required a device called a "ladder." But Mike wasn't planning on doing any ten thousand foot rappels on this mission.
Sawn looped the ropes through the figure-eight, hooked it to his harness with a carabiner and stepped to the edge. He seated the ropes by leaning back on them while holding himself in place by the rappel line. The method of descent was simple. The tied rope ends, called the standing end, ran to the figure-eight then through a complex double loop. The untied end, the running end, then was held in the right hand of the climber. If he pulled the rope around his back it stopped him. Pulling it out to the side permitted the rope to slide through his hand. The left hand was placed on the standing end for stability. The important thing was to remember to bring the arm around rather than "grabbing" the running end. Grabbing didn't get you anything but a burned glove. The gloves Mike had ordered had leather palms specifically for rappelling but if the rope ran through the palm too fast or was gripped too hard it was going to burn through, anyway.
When he was sure the ropes were set Sawn walked backwards to the edge of the cliff, looking down over his shoulder, placing his feet carefully on the ice-covered edge of the cliff and shaking the rope slightly to keep it from binding. At the top of a long rappel the weight of the rope tended to stop the climber from descending due to friction across the figure-eight. Once his full weight hit, though, it would smooth out.
Finally, he was in an "L" shape, feet planted on the wall, body straight out in defiance of gravity. At that point he began bounding slightly outwards from the cliff, falling a short distance on each bound, stopping when his feet hit the wall then bounding out and down again. He took it slow, which was good, but it meant the team was going to be rappelling when the sun came up. Bad.
Mike started putting in another set of ropes. God he was tired. Hopefully something was going right on this mission.
* * *
It was less than twenty minutes before first one, then two and finally seven tractor trailers made the sharp final bend into the valley. By the time the seventh was on the flats a machine-gun toting GAZ, a Russian made military SUV, had pulled into the newly laid helo-port in the lead of the first truck.
"Colonel Nielson," the captain said in crisp faintly Brit accented English. "Good to see you. My father-in-law sends his regards." He snapped a crispy salute and dropped it at the colonel's reply.
"Ah, Captain Kahbolov, we've never met," Nielson said, shaking the captain's hand. "Captain Bathlick, Captain Efim Kahbolov. His father-in-law is the Georgian Chief of Staff. And he's a pilot as well."
"Good to meet you, Captain," Kacey said, shaking his hand.
"And you, Captain," the Georgian said, grinning. "I was originally trained on the Hind. I understand the Js are sweet birds. Hopefully these will help." He pulled an envelope out of the GAZ and handed it to Nielson.
"This is certainly generous," Nielson said, ripping open the envelope and sliding out the contents. He looked at the papers and then blanched. "Holy Fuck, captain."
"Which one?" Kacey asked, looking over his shoulder. However, the documents were in Cyrillic and incomprehensible.
"Thank your father-in-law, captain," Nielson said, awe in his voice. He looked up at the trucks and shook his head. "Thank him very VERY much for us."
"They were going to be sold," the captain replied with a shrug. "My father thought that using them in the defense of the homeland made a better choice. Use them well, captain. That will be worth the very long, very cold, ride."
"What?" Kacey asked, frowning. "What's the big deal about parts?"
"They're not parts, Kacey," Nielson said, handing her the documents while continuing to look at the trucks in wonder. "The lead truck is three complete gun systems for a Hind. The second has rocket launchers. The rest...is ammo."
"Well, that certainly makes things more interesting."
* * *
The whole team was down, the sun was coming up and it was time for Mike to descend.
The view across the glacier was spectacular in the pre-dawn light. The blue pre-morning twilight reflected off the glacier and filled the valley with a glow quite unlike anything Mike had seen before in his life. It was something like being in the middle of a blue-white diamond. The figures of the Keldara below, rapidly setting up a camp and getting camouflage in place, seemed to walk through a mist of blue-white.
However, this wasn't a good time f
or sight-seeing; it was time to get down to business.
The only incident during the descent was that one of the Makanees ended up getting tangled down half way down the cliff. The guy was utterly unable to free himself so the next rappeller down stopped alongside and managed to get him freed, mainly by cutting on his outer wear. That was gonna require patching. Then the two of them went down the rest of the way.
Mike had already tossed the second rope and now, with difficulty, yanked out the pins securing the primary. Storing those he hooked up and stepped to the edge, pulling carefully on both ropes to ensure they were secure. So far, so good.
Someone was on belay below and he looked down and waved. The belay man was in place as a safety measure. If the climber descending lost control of the rappel, the belay man could, by putting pressure on the rope, stop him in place.
Mike stepped over the edge and got in a good L position then bounded out. All good. It wasn't like he hadn't done this a thousand times.
However, about half way down, the entire rig trembled and went momentarily slack, dropping him into freefall for a moment and then jerking him to a stop.
He'd done slack rappels enough times to recognize the signs. The primary slip-knot had released. Whether it was the cold working on the ropes to make them more slippery or what, the slip-knots were coming undone. If all three let go, he was going to fall three hundred feet onto solid ice covered in about an inch of snow.
The term was "splat."
As his feet touched the face he bounded instantly outward and threw his right arm out to the side, removing all pressure on the rope and falling, effectively, in freefall, the rope screaming through both hands with the smell of burning leather.
The fall, however, wasn't quite freefall: the friction of the rope running over the figure-eight prevented that. So in keeping with simple Newtonian physics, Mike was pulled back to the face in a long, slow swing. The arc of pendulum was very long, but inexorable. Thus about two hundred feet over the ice he had to slow, again, for a bound. As he did he felt the shock of the second knot giving way.
This time he pushed off, hard, and let loose of the rope almost instantly. He'd never really stopped at the bound and was falling fast enough it wasn't much different than a freefall jump. He wasn't sure whether he should do a parachute landing fall at the bottom or not. However, doing it with the ruck on his back was pretty much out.
He had one more, probably shaky, knot between him and splatsville. He had about two hundred pounds of gear wearing him down and nasty ice right underneath. And he was falling at about terminal velocity. Oh, and he was inexorably swinging in towards the face.
On the other hand, he had to admit that this was the sort of thing he fucking lived for. Adrenaline was pumping, the time seemed to slow and endorphins were riding high in anticipation of sudden and incredible pain. A degree of skill and one hell of a lot of luck were the only things between life a very messy death. Forget sex, forget gambling, this was life on the blade. The only moments better than this was the kill after a long stalk or being in the center of a fuck-load of enemies, a larger number than a buttload and just shy of a shitload, with several full magazines and a mild amount of cover.
Time had slowed and he expertly judged the distances involved. The arc of pendulum had opened out a lot on the last bound and he anticipated that, even with breaking, he shouldn't slam into the wall. He was going to have to brake, though, and that was where the luck came in. The variable was how long the last knot was going to last. Based on the previous two the answer was "not very fucking long, if at all."
He had two choices, brake slow and hope the knot held under the lighter, longer, pressure or brake hard. Hard was shorter time on the knot but more "pull."
In an instant he made the decision. Hard. Hell, he'd passed the point of "slow" anyway.
Fifty feet over the ground, and smokin', literally, he pulled the rope in and pressed it, hard, against his side and back.
Instantly he started to slow from a full freefall to something survivable. With luck. But he was still going pretty fast, maybe seven feet per second, when he felt the knot pop free with a shock.
The next moment his feet hit the ice and he rolled back onto his ruck. His kidneys did not enjoy that moment but he was alive to feel the pain. Pain was good.
"Nice," Sawn said from the belay as the rope started to fall all over Mike. "That was the most perfect rappel I've ever seen, Kildar. You didn't even have to undo the ropes."
Mike, from his position on his back, realized with a feeling of horror that Sawn truly believed it had all been planned.
"Yeah, well, that's why I went last," Mike said, as nonchalantly as he could under the circumstances. "When you've been doing this as long as I have you pick up a few tricks."
* * *
"You know," Kacey said, watching as the gun system was uncrated by a couple of the older Keldara men, "I think it's cool that the Georgians just gave us all this shit, but I just realized, I have no fucking clue how to use it."
Unloading had gone fast, it turned out the Kildar had, among other equipment, a field mobile forklift. All the crates had been pulled off and the gear stacked inside the hangar. The ammo had been carted off to the ammo bunkers.
"There is that," Tammie admitted. "I've never driven a gun-ship."
"Got a partial answer to that," D'Allaird said. "Problem being, we are on incredibly short time. You know the mission goes down tonight, right? You're going to have to be ready to fly."
"And I'd love to be able to fly hot," Kacey said. "But I don't even know where the damned buttons are for this shit. Much less how to shoot with it."
"Like I said, got a partial answer for that," D'Allaird repeated. "Would you ladies care to accompany me up to my room?"
"Chief," Tammie said, "I didn't know you cared!"
"Oh, I've always cared, honey-bunch, but that's not what I meant," D'Allaird said. He'd scrounged one of the Keldara trucks and he now gestured to it. "I do think a trip to the caravanserai is in order, though."
* * *
"That's a very interesting place," Specialist Andrew Sivula said, gesturing with his chin up to the castle on the hill as an SUV approached the front gates. "We're not quartered up there, which is too bad. I'd love to take a look around."
"The home of the Kildar," Jessia Mahona replied, smiling. "I suppose it is interesting, but it has been there my whole life, you know? It just is. The Kildar, he is interesting. He has brought many changes. I never thought I would be allowed to handle weapons, much less my beauty."
Sivula had to admit that the 120 was pretty. With a tube nearly six feet long and nearly six inches across, the thing could throw a mortar round, set for proximity, instantaneous or delay detonation, 7200 meters. And it was pretty clear that the mortar team, all women, maintained it meticulously. The tube looked as if it had just come from the factory but looking down the bore it was clear it had been fired. A lot.
However, pretty as the mortar was, it paled next to the mortar team leader. The girl was fucking awesome. Tall, about 5' 10" and stacked with pretty brown eyes and curly brown hair. Sivula was pretty sure he was in love. Her English wasn't bad, either. He knew he was in lust, but he was pretty sure it was love, too. He knew there was a hands off policy, but he wondered who you approached about an honest offer of fucking marriage.
They weren't alone in the bunker, though. Four of the seven "man" female crew were performing maintenance on the tube while three more were showing the Bravo mortar team the ammo bunker while his AG tried to chat up one of the girls doing maintenance.
"I haven't played with 120s since I was in mortar school," the Ranger said in reply. It was that or "ubba, ubba, ubba." "We carry 60s. But I know the tune and I can dance a few steps."
"What?" Jessia asked, confused.
"Sorry, not a reference you'd get," Sivula replied. "I sort of know how to gun one. What I don't get is what you use for poles."
