Countdown: H Hour (21 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

My center is giving way, my right is in retreat;

situation excellent. I shall attack.

—Ferdinand Foch

MV
Richard Bland
, Coastof Africa city of Bajuni

TIC Chick was standing by—more precisely,
kneeling
by, lest the rotor take her head off—as the small hatch on the side of the gunship popped open to reveal one of the medics, pressing a thick gauze bandage with one hand while the other held an IV bag high overhead. Behind the doctor, likewise on one knee, were half a dozen other medical personnel and three two-wheeled gurneys. The medic had probably kicked the latch to open the hatch.

A closer inspection, had it been possible, would have shown that the medic wasn’t trying to stop the bleeding so much as to hold the patient’s intestines in place, where a thick fragment of 120mm had ripped open his belly, spilling them to the earth. Odds were the intestines were, themselves, ripped up, a sure path to major internal infections if not cleaned and repaired posthaste. The IV was there only to keep the man’s veins from collapsing, which would have made further injections highly problematic.

“GET THIS ONE!” Screamed the medic, quite unnecessarily; TIC Chick and company were already at the hatch, struggling to get the wounded man out while keeping his guts in. In this they were not entirely successful, a small portion of the large intestine being torn open on an exposed screw head. A vile stench immediately filled the compartment.

“Get the gurney over here!” TIC Chick ordered. The patient was not small and she and two assistants barely sufficed to hold him up while holding him together. She needn’t have shouted; one of the gurneys was wheeled under the man before she’d even finished.

“That’s the worst one, TIC Chick,” the medic shouted over the roar of the engines. “Gary said he ought to be your number-one priority.”

The doctor bridled for a moment.
Harrumph. Telling me my business. Just because he’s my husband . . . Well . . . no, because he knows my business about as well as I do.

She took the IV bag from the medic and pointed in the direction of the superstructure. “Thataway! Now!”

Bajuni, former Federation of Sharia Courts, Africa

Warrington was facing north, in between the remnants of three small buildings. He could still hear Balbahadur’s croaking out some awful Scottish medley, the sound coming from his front and a little bit to his right. Suddenly to his left front, an amazing volume of fire picked up.

Thumbing the radio switch, he asked, “Andrew, are you letting your piper fall behind?”

“No, boss,” the Canuck replied. “He’s right behind me and I’m right behind the juncture of the two platoons.”

“Then what’s all that firing to your west?”

“Best guess, some of the ones we’ve been driving ahead of us we drove into some other group we haven’t reached yet.”

With a rush of static, Sergeant Moore piped in, “I think I can vouch for that. The ones facing us here suddenly turned away. And they’re fighting
somebody
. We’re not taking any deliberate fire at the moment.”

“Right,” Warrington agreed. “Fine. ‘Keep up the skeer.’ ”

“Huh?”

Chuckling, Warrington said, “Sometimes I forget you’re from the great frozen north. Go look up Nathan Bedford Forrest some time.”

“Yeah, sure, in my ‘copious free time.’ Hey, boss, I’ve got some fighting to do. Bug me later, huh?”

“Keep up the skeer, Captain.”

“Roger. You know, if these guys had any unity of command, they’d have pushed us into the sea—or dumped our corpses there—a while ago . . . Hey, Khan, pot that bastard!”

It pretty much went with the territory; for a night attack, in close terrain, fancy formations and maneuvers were just a little too dangerous. Instead, everyone was kept on a very tight leash and, if not exactly on line, the fire teams—little knots of men moving and shooting together, under
tight
control by their team leaders—did form something like a line, or a serrated knife’s edge.

Khan heard his captain’s shout, but couldn’t really see who the old man intended for him to shoot.
Be nice when I make it to team leader and they give me a set of those goggles.

Then he didn’t so much see as sense a shape, about two dozen feet to his right front. That shape was a little too far out to be friendly. Khan automatically closed his left eye, then fired a short burst from the hip. In the muzzle flash he could see a man, lifting a rifle, and wearing local clothing. He fired again, and then again, though those was only in the same general direction, as the muzzle flash had temporarily done for his night vision in his firing eye.

Three bursts? Well, fire discipline was nice, but at close quarters, when you want someone down, you want him down
right away
.

Wonder what kept that guy here; most of the others have run. Probably in terror of Sergeant Balbahadur’s pipes. God knows, they terrify
me.
Funny, I thought I’d be bothered by killing somebody, and these poor bastards never did me any harm. But they’re not my family.
My
family’s on either side of me. So screw ’em.

Khan didn’t know it, and he couldn’t have seen it even had he known, but the rightmost man in the platoon to the right practically brushed his sleeve on a soccer stadium where a late member of the regiment, Master Sergeant “Buckwheat” Fulton, had once done to death an improbably large number of the locals for stoning a young girl whose crime had consisted of being raped.

Stocker heard in his ear, “Rightmos’ man be at de stadium, Skipper.”

“Roger. Break, break. Both platoons, our heading is now two hundred and twenty-five, I say again, two hundred and twenty-five degrees. Keep pushing ’em.”

“Wilco . . . wilco.”

The men who followed Adam’s uncle Korfa were, as advertised, relatively well trained. Why not? He, himself, was a man of some education, to include some fairly advanced military education from not only the United States, but also the United Kingdom and the former Soviet Union, depending on who was buttering his former country’s bread at the time. What he’d learned, his men had learned.

And they’d, generally speaking, learned well. They’d pressed whoever the hell it was had landed on their turf pretty hard before the swarm of two other gangs tried to flee through them. They really hadn’t known what it was that hit them. One minute, there was nothing but the occasional shot to the flanks, more for morale and warning than with any deadly intent. The next there was a mass of firing somewhere off to the east. Then, after perhaps another twenty minutes, a mob—there was really no other word—of terrified refugees had begun pouring through their lines, chased by some kind of shrieking demon.

Some of Korfa’s men had stood and fought, if it could be said that one is fighting while gunning down men who had no thought of anything but escape. Still others had joined the stampede.

“And if I ever find out who,” Korfa muttered, “they’ll wish their mothers had strangled them in the cradle.”

Korfa wasn’t fooled by the sound.
No demon
, he knew.
Now I know exactly what it is. The fucking British have sent in the Highlanders. I can’t face that. Take on an isolated company of Americans when I’ve got three or four thousand followers and the Americans tied their own hands behind their backs? That I can do. But we’re a skirmisher people. This chin up, stand and be still to the Birkenhead drill bullshit is not my people’s cup of tea. And if those are British regulars, in numbers—and the speed they’ve been moving says they’ve got the numbers—then my best bet is just to say to hell with the aid workers, to hell with their ship, and to hell with their medical equipment and supplies.

There must have been British subjects among the hostages my nephew took and, for a change, the Brits decided to act like men.

Can’t advance; the fire’s too fierce. Can’t stay here; I don’t even think half my men are left. Time to leave, get out of their way, then reorganize and come back after they pass.
That,
we know how to do.

“Warrington? Stocker.”

“Go ahead, Andrew.”

“There’s nothing to my front and that’s got me worried. Maybe there’s nothing there, but then again, maybe there are and this group has some discipline and is just waiting. Can we have the gunships do an overflight?”

“Roger. Break, break. Slep, you back from the dustoff?”

“I am back.”

“How did my man do?”

“Was alive when he gots pulled from my helicopter.”

“Okay, good. I want you to do a flyover, all around the perimeter. In particular, I want you to have a close look at the area southwest of the football field.”

“Wilco. On it now.”

“Andrew?”

“Stocker here.”

“Much as I hate for you to lose your momentum, I’d hate it more if you got caught in the open by steady, approximately trained, troops. Hold up until Slepnyov has a look.”

“Wilco.”

The MI-28 was a
very
capable helicopter. The Russians built a good helicopter, in general—oh, sure, short on creature comforts and bitching tiring to fly—but the MI-28 was better than most. And, most importantly, it had something nobody else on the ground did, a truly powerful thermal imager. Even the ones in the Elands were small change in comparison.

With it, Slepnyov could see, “The area Captain Stocker clear out . . . they starting filter back. Ones and twos, mostly.”

“Expected that,” Warrington said. “It’s a skirmisher military culture. Rarely stand and fight to the death. Rarely entirely give up, either.”

And, eventually, unless you’re willing to turn barbarian yourself and go all
Einsatzgruppen
on them, the skirmishers will wear you out. It’s as valid as our methods of war, by the only criterion that matters: Winning.

“Yes,” Slepnyov agreed. “Almost nobody . . . immediate front of Captain Stocker’s men. Few I can see are . . . dead, I think. Or maybe wounded. Or maybe . . . what’s that Americanism? Ah, yes, ‘playing possum.’ But of people who look ready to fight, I see none.

“There’s a knot, maybe a hundred or two, still fighting down by the west shoulder of the peninsula. But it’s clear until there.”

“Can you run them off?” Warrington asked. “That’s where I want Stocker to pass lines back to our side.”

“Prob’ly. Sure can try.”

“Do it. Don’t expend more than half your on-board ammunition at the attempt, though.”

“Roger. Urrah!”

Okay . . . now, once Stocker’s boys are safe behind the lines, how are we going to thin the line to unass this AO
?

MV
Richard Bland
, Coast of Africa city of Bajuni, Africa

“Fuck the tranzis,” Pearson said. “The wounded have priority.”

“Authority to use force to make it clear to them?” Feeney asked, over the radio. His voice held a definite tone of eager anticipation.

“Whatever it takes,” the captain ordered.

“Roger.”

Yep, definitely eager anticipation
, thought the skipper.
Oh, well. Feeney, whatever his faults, should be able to explain their position in life to them
. He promptly put the aid workers out of his mind, rotating his chair and looking shoreward to where two intermittent streams of tracers leapt from the sky to the ground.

So far, so good, there. At least from the few snatches of radio traffic we’ve been able to pick up from the line dogs. Awful damned pricey though. Speaking of which
. . .

Pearson punched the intercom button to sick bay and asked, “TIC Chick?”

“I’m kind of busy right now, Skipper.” She was, indeed, quite busy, her arms more or less draped in intestine, and another eight feet she’d had to cut away sitting on a stainless steel table beside her.

“I know. Heads up; you’re going to be busier still.”

“How many?” she asked, peering intently at a bit of odiferous flesh as she wove her needle to and fro. “And how bad?”

“Nineteen, and mostly not so bad. All but two are conscious, Sergeant Feeney reports. Not happy, but conscious.”

“Okay. Teams are standing by. Wish to fuck Gary were here to help.”

“I can probably get you some help,” Pearson said.
It won’t be happy help, most likely, though.

“From where?”

“The aid workers. There are doctors there.”

“Oh, right. Yeah; forgot. Send ’em down.”

“Roger. Wait.” He went back to the radio. “Sergeant Feeney?”

“Here, Skipper.”

“Next load, doctors and RN’s.”

“Already sorting them that way, Captain. Fact is, a couple of the shitheads went up with the first load because our wounded needed them.”

“Very good, Sergeant.”
And just because you’re a maniac doesn’t mean you’re stupid.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

I have no right to rank with such great captains,

for I have never commanded a retreat.

—Moltke, the Elder

Bajuni, former Federation of Sharia Courts, Africa

Stocker’s wounded and his two dead had been passed through the lines previously, whenever there’d been a convenient, or inconvenient, for that matter, slowdown in the pace of the assault. That made the final passage back into friendly lines that much easier. The commander stood by, Balbahadur’s pipes—“Lilliburlero” was the tune now—still motivating the men but, more importantly for the moment, marking the point of passage. Stocker’s first sergeant counted the boys through, confirming with the squad leaders and platoon sergeants that everyone was accounted for. Tail end charlies for the event were the supply sergeant and his assistant, pulling the pins to arm and then tossing PFM-1S toe poppers for all they were worth. All Hansel-and-Gretel-like, they’d left a broad swath of the nasty little things along their sweeping route around the perimeter, in every building along that route, and up and down the alleys. Safety pins pulled, the mines would generally arm themselves within as little as a minute, and certainly within ten minutes. They had an integral twenty-four hour self-destruct mechanism, though as with much former Soviet and modern Russian material, reliability was a matter of conjecture.

That the PFM-1S’s rarely killed was not generally considered a good reason to blow one’s toes off by stepping on one. There was some reason to believe—the sudden bang followed by the heartrending shriek—that a couple of the local skirmishers, closing back in behind them, had found this out the hard way.

More or less by luck of the draw, or at least by placement, Khan’s fire team, a machine gun crew and a Vampire crew, plus one of the two Elands, had ended up covering the supply sergeant and his small party. Nobody was shooting at them, at the moment, what with the pasting they’d gotten from the gunships. They weren’t taking any chances anyway, especially now that the moon, thin sliver that it was, was casting down just about enough light to allow something like target identification and deliberate aiming. The machine gun and Eland fired at anything remotely suspicious, though the rocket launcher was holding its fire for something more worthwhile.

Then came the word for those last ten, and the Eland, to pull back.

It was almost entirely quiet inside the perimeter. So far, at least, the mines were doing their job keeping the locals at bay. Slepnyov had said they were rallying, but only by ones and twos. And those ones and twos were advancing very cautiously.

“We can account for everyone except one man,” Stocker reported to Warrington.

“That guy who went down between the ship and the LCM?” the latter asked.

“Must be. I’ve got the two platoons I brought in waiting for the LCM down by the beach. Moore’s platoon is still on the line, along with your Third Team. How do you want us to handle disengagement?”

Warrington had been thinking about that quite a bit over the last hour. “One thing I
don’t
want is the Elands sliding into a bunch of packed troopers in the LCM’s well deck.”

“Right; they have to pull out first. I figured that much.”

“I can have Third Team sprint for the Zodiacs still on the shore. Can Moore extend his line to cover their sector?”

“He’s already doing it,” Stocker answered.

“Good . . . wait a sec.” Warrington called his third team and told them, “As soon as the line dogs replace you, get the hell on the Zodiacs and head for the ship.”

“Wilco.”

Turning back to Stocker, Warrington continued, “All right. Once Simon has the Elands and the bulk of your company loaded, tell Moore to run like the wind for the LCM. I’ll stay here, along with Balbahadur—”

“
We’ll
stay here.”

Chuckling, Warrington agreed, “Fair enough. You and I and the Gurkha will stay here, just watching and, if needed, firing until the LCM takes off. Then I’ll call in one of Slepnyov’s gunships to pick us up while the other one patrols the perimeter.”

“Wish to hell,” Stocker said, “that we’d thought to bring some claymores along for Moore’s people to set on trip wires.”

“Can’t think of everything. But you’re right. I wish we had, too.”

Uncle Korfa hadn’t known, hadn’t even suspected, there were mines placed out until, entering a wreck of a building with some of his personal guard, one of the guards had knelt by a window and promptly had his knee blasted into ruin. It was fortunate, in a way, that it was so dark. Korfa wasn’t sure how the rest would have taken the sight of mangled flesh, pulverized bone, and squirting blood. He’d had the man carried away to what passed for a doctor for his gang.

Well, to be fair, none of that would bother them ordinarily. But that, coupled with the knowledge that the ground itself has become untrustworthy? That would . . . do something to them, and not anything too very good.

Taking one knee himself, albeit very carefully, he took from a pocket and flicked into life his cigarette lighter. Sure enough there was a small, odd little butterflylike device a couple of feet away. Bending lower still, he examined it closely.
That small
?
Can’t be too powerful. We can clear them safely, I think.

“Go find some branches,” he ordered, “some brooms, anything we use to sweep the ground ahead of us. And hurry! The medicines and the hostages are likely gone, but if we move quickly we may be able to grab some new hostages and trade for what we need.”

He, more than the other gang leaders—there really wasn’t a better word to describe them—also had a better idea of what had gone on the last few hours. It wasn’t entirely accurate, of course, but it was close.

Some westerners—based on the bagpipes, I’d have to say “Brits”—objected to Adam’s grabbing a ship full of aid workers. They landed a force—there’s probably a cruiser or something as big, right off shore—and rescued them. Or—and this is possible, too—the hostages were the price of getting Adam, his family, and the few men still loyal to him, out of here.

But things went slower than they anticipated, so we had time to engage them closely. They had to land more force maybe than they’d planned on. That force is going to take time to get off the shore. And they’ll be going out in dribs and drabs. That will be our chance, if any time will be.

“Elands to the landing craft; go!” Stocker ordered over the radio. The armored car chiefs acknowledged the order. Even if they hadn’t, Stocker could still have heard the previously idling engines purr into high gear. In mere seconds, both of them appeared, bounding over the dunes, racing for the LCM.

Both stopped about fifty meters shy of the landing craft. For a half a minute or so they maneuvered to line themselves up, one behind the other, in a straight line to the bow. Both rotated their guns to the rear, one over the left rear fender, the other over the right. Then, gunning his engine, the first driver made a high speed dash. He hit the ramp, then bounced up, still going forward. The bounce ended about halfway down the well deck. Again, the thing bounced, though not as high or as far. By the time it touched down again, the wheels were spinning in reverse. This did no noticeable good; the front of the thing smashed into the forward bulkhead of the engine room, almost knocking Kirkpatrick from his feet. The second Eland followed, not quite as fast. No matter; it smashed into the first one.

“We on,” the section leader for the armored cars reported. “We beat up and bruised, but we on. Tying de bitches down, now.”

“Mortars, expend all remaining ammunition on targets three, four, and seven.” Those were major avenues leading into the beach area.

“Shot, over.”

“Simon, start loading second platoon on the LCM.”

“Wilco,” answered the exec.

“Rounds complete,” announced the mortar chief.

“Mortars out of action; report to the exec for boarding.”

“Wilco.”

At the same time, Stocker saw the Third Team, from way over on the right, more or less duck walking across the sand in a ragged line. When they reached the first series of dunes they stood up, albeit still somewhat bent over, and began to sprint to where they’d staked down the Zodiacs.

“Slep? Warrington.”

“Here, Captain.”

In truth, neither of the helicopters was quite “here.” Both were snaking back and forth about a quarter of a mile out to sea.

“This is going to be touchy, Slep. In about eight minutes, or maybe a cunt hair less, the line dogs are going to bug out for the LCM. That’s going to leave me, Stocker, and Balbahadur on the beach. I want one gunship, your choice, to go all medieval on what used to be the perimeter. Expend all ammo. Kill anything that moves. Then. Come. Get. Us. We’ll make ourselves very obvious. We’ll be the guys running for the beach like the devil’s on our tails. Two tall skinny white dudes and a little bit of a Gurkha with some pipes under his arm.

“After the one bird expends its ammo, I want the second one to cover our retreat. Once we’re airborne, get the fuck out of Dodge and head for the ship.”

“You gots it. My wing man will do first run. I cover after.”

“I’ll tell you when to start.”

From the ship’s bridge Pearson piped in. “Tracy, if you want I can have the CH-750’s rearmed and airborne in that time.”

“No, Skipper,” Warrington sent back. “Strike them down or there’ll never be room for the gunships. Or, if there will, we’ll still be taking a risk we don’t need to take.”

“Your call.”

“Warrington? Cagle.”

“Go ahead, Gary.”

“Is there any chance we can have the gunships sink the aid ship?”

“What?” Warrington asked, incredulously. If there was anything he’d have expected from the medico, it wasn’t destroying valuable medical supplies and equipment. “You’ve got to be shitting me.”

Over the radio, damn procedures, Cagle sighed. “No . . . I’m not. Those supplies are going to kill more people fighting over them than they could possibly save. Sink the ship, if we can.”

It took a long pause before Warrington answered. “No. I understand your position. But I’m not going to destroy medical supplies and equipment. If they want to fight over it, that’s their problem.”

“Okay. But I wish you would.”

“They’re all in, except for Moore’s platoon, Captain,” Simon reported. “They’re hanging off the barrels of the Elands and breathing by the numbers but they’re all aboard. With enough space for Moore.”

“Very good, Simon,” Stocker said. “Break, break. Sergeant Moore?”

“Moore, sir.”

“Expend all ammunition and then hit the road, Sergeant. Now is not the time for good order and discipline. Do the move as quietly as possible; use the fire to cover the bulk of it, but fucking
move
!”

Suddenly the entire perimeter lit up as by a thousand strobe lights as Moore’s platoon fired, bursts and full automatic, mostly. Within two or three minutes, every round from half the platoon was gone. Within an equal space of time, which time was used by the previously firing teams to bug out without being noticed, the rest had fired off everything they had, to include the rockets for the Vampires.

“Going now, sir.”

“Simon?”

“Here, sir.”

“As soon as Moore’s boys get there and are all accounted for, you join them and get out of here. Don’t wait for an order.”

“What about you, the piper, and Warrington, sir?”

“Didn’t I tell you? Hmmm . . . maybe not. We’re leaving like gentlemen, on the last bird out.”

“Yes, sir.”

It had been fairly slow going, but eventually Uncle Korfa’s boys had beaten a safe path through the mines. It would have been quicker, perhaps, except that about twenty meters into the presumed obstacle, the enemy—
Must be Brits
—opened fire at a fantastic rate, as if they were going to attack again. It took Korfa and his close underlings several minutes to get the frightened men back to their mine clearing duty, once the fire stopped.

But, after the delay, by the time they had a route through the mines, the LCM had raised ramp and was wallowing out, low in the water, leaving Warrington, Stocker, and Balbahadur alone.

“This is what we call a classic shitty feeling,” Warrington said. Each of the three, he, Stocker, and Balbahadur, were on one knee. That latter was still playing his pipes, rifle slung across his back. The former two had their rifles aimed inland, sweeping left to right for some sign of a closing enemy.

Stocker was thinking almost exactly the same thing. Instead of voicing that sentiment, though, he said, “At least we’ve still got the gunships with us.”

“Yeah . . . speaking of which . . . ” Warrington keyed his radio and said, “Slep, Warrington. Whichever one of you is going to pick us up, have the other go ahead and clear the perimeter.”

“Roger.”

Both gunships had been hovering out to sea, their rotors a distant
whopwhopwhop
. In mere seconds, that distant sound had gotten quite close. The helicopter passed about four hundred meters to the right rear of the small stay-behind party then, guiding on the small infrared chemlights that dotted the erstwhile perimeter, it began to pound.

“Amazing,” Stocker said, in awe, “just how much firepower one of those things can bring to bear when it wants to.”

“Yeah, no shit.”

Korfa and his men, now through the mines, heard the chopper coming as plainly as had the three on the beach. Korfa physically pointed the point man at a building, ordering, “Quick! Take shelter in it.”

The gunship’s weapons man smiled at the distinct silhouettes of a dozen men, shining clearly in his thermal even through the mud brick wall. He muttered something in Russian that could have been approximately translated as, “Dumb fucks.”

From his panel, the gunner initially selected his preferred weapon for something like this, an antitank guided missile, or ATGM. The AT-9
Ataka
, with its more than fifteen pound warhead, was really overkill. “But there’s no kill like an overkill.” He’d have used the AT-9, but, since the target was so close, less than the missile’s arming range, he changed his selection to one of the pods of unguided rockets.