Back From the Dead (38 page)

Kat leans forward at her desk, exhausted, stress lines showing and dark bags under her eyes. Confronting her from the screen is a very angry Councilor Darch. “They killed two missile teams for sure, and I’ve not heard from the others! You said that ship wasn’t armed!”

“It isn’t, goddammit!” Kat says. “Her sensors are good, they must have been seen. If your idiots managed to get themselves killed, it ISN’T MY FAULT!”

“I don’t hire idiots!” Darch yells at her. “I hire the best, except for YOU! Four ManPADS teams positioned for a clear shot, then NOTHING! Not a DAMNED WORD!”

Kat is taken aback. “ManPADS? Those aren’t allowed in the declared zone! How do you know they are dead?”

“They weren’t in the declared zone. A flyby showed extensive ground damage in their area. They must have been fired on!”

“If you can’t get anyone at the RC then you’ll have to move the main SAM battery.”

“They might be seen if they move!”

Kat shakes her head. “There’s a wooded valley fifteen kilometers from the pickup point. Right on the edge of the declared zone. They can shift a couple of launchers, be there and set up for the trip after next, if they’re any good. Move in fast and tight, keep all electronics off during transit, stay on the valley road. That should be close enough. I can pass intel it’s a safe direction if they stay low. A heavy SAM will never have an easier shot.”

Ambush

The point Harbin has chosen is on a brushy hillside overlooking a wide, shallow valley with slender pines and a curving narrow road down the middle. Everything is dim in the predawn light, gray and silent. Harbin and Sabot sit in a hastily dug but well-camouflaged mortar pit about four hundred meters from the road. A light mortar is set up with a dozen rounds ready to fire lined up on the side, fuse safety pins still in, small note cards under each. Two heavy rifles with scopes and lunchbox-sized magazines sit at the ready, with extra magazines to the side. Suppressed rifles with magazines and bandoleers lie ready to use, or to grab and move.

Harbin checks the mortar settings before looking up and glassing the road. “Okay, range and angle that black rock next to the white one near the curve.” Sabot raises his optical rangefinder, a binocular-like device with a short tube sticking out on each side, adjusting it as he finds the target.

“Middle of the road, next to the black rock next to the white rock. Five eight five meters, forty-one degrees.” Sabot looks at a printed card for a moment, then makes a few notes on it. He sets the card down and picks up another mortar round from its canister. He puts one propellant increment on its base and lays it down. “All laid in. Now what?”

Harbin’s reply is quiet, almost absurdly casual. “We wait.”

“What if they don’t come?”

“We wait longer. Pray if it makes you feel better.”

“What if there are too many?” Sabot asks after a long pause.

“Contract says we get the SAMs. Then we worry about how many are there. Keep your mind on the mission. We are SAM-hunting. Some what-if’s are fine. Worrying about shit you can’t do anything about just wastes calories. Intel says a couple of launchers, a few support trucks, maybe a platoon of guys. Now, tell me the drill again.”

“Start at the left, fire, read the next card and adjust, drop, and go down the line to the right, read, adjust, pull safety, drop, repeat. Then shoot any SAMs that aren’t burning with the fifty. Then trucks. Then soldiers. Keep my hands off the clackers.”

“Good. Remember: only as fast as you can be accurate. Fast misses don’t count in this game. Read the card, adjust carefully. Don’t worry about anything else until you’re done with that.”

“Why not the soldiers first?”

“SAMs can shoot down Taj, guys with rifles can’t, and the heavy trucks will stay on the road,” Harbin says. “I don’t think you will, but you’d be amazed how many people freeze up in combat. With your head down, not worrying about what someone else’s exploding head looks like in your scope, you’ll do fine dropping rounds on the road. Once the SAMs are down,
then
we can worry about pulling back. Let me think about the people and selecting good targets. You just lay waste to the roadway and vehicles. Now then, I suggest you work on breathing: in slow, hold, all the air out slow, hold.”

Harbin stands, takes a final look around. He stretches, flexes, adjusts his gear a little, takes a sip of water from a canteen, then squats down in a corner of the gun pit. “Been a long night. Wake me in two hours, or if anything interesting happens.” He adjusts his helmet, hunkers down, closes his eyes, and appears to fall fast asleep. Sabot looks at him in amazement and shakes his head.

It’s full daylight, and Harbin is looking carefully over the edge of the mortar pit. Sabot is hunkered down in a corner, head down, helmet off, asleep. Harbin slowly lowers his head, then kicks Sabot’s boot gently. Sabot startles, looking around wildly for a moment, settles down, then perks up as he hears the dull rumble of many quiet engines and big wheels. He looks at Harbin questioningly.

“Might want to get your earplugs and helmet,” Harbin says. “We’re crashing a bigger party than expected.”

Sabot gropes for his helmet, carefully keeping his head below the edge of the pit. He starts putting his earplugs in. “How long? How many?”

“A few minutes ago. Bad convoy discipline, all bunched-up. Simple. Kaminski should fire first when the lead vehicle of the column is in position. Get your first shell laid in and ready.”

Sabot grabs the first round and its card. He looks at them dumbly.

Harbin speaks patiently, calmly. “Read the card, make the settings, get ready to pull the safety pin and drop, after the boom, on my say.” Sabot nods and breathes deliberately. He reads the card and checks the settings on the mortar. He pulls the safety pin and holds it over the tube, ready to drop.

Harbin is already lying in approximately the correct position on the heavy rifle. He shifts, scans the convoy, and settles in behind the scope, starting to track a target in the valley: a convoy of more than twenty trucks, stretching beyond the curve in the road both ways. Six large missile-launcher trucks with dual missile-launching tubes on each. Radar trucks. Supply trucks. Troop trucks. Command vehicles.

There comes a rolling
BOOOM
.

Harbin looks up from his scope, gauges the lead vehicle’s position, pauses, then says quietly, “Fire.”

Sabot drops the round, THUMP! A small dust cloud springs up around them from the concussion and he reaches for the next one. Harbin starts firing rapidly, starting at the other end of the convoy, aiming at the last dual missile launcher’s pair of long-range death, then working his way forward. The first truck in the convoy, a radar truck, receives a direct hit and explodes magnificently. The last SAM erupts, one of its missiles hit in the warhead by Harbin’s HE round, blowing the light command vehicle behind it off the road. The bunched-up and slightly disorganized column of trucks descends into total disarray.

A line of mortar rounds marches down the column from the front, hitting some trucks directly, damaging others with near misses, sending people running everywhere. A few trucks try to run off the road, only to wreck into trees or the ditch. Soldiers pile out of troop carriers and scatter, fleeing from the trucks-as-targets, hugging the ground to escape flying shrapnel and exploding SAMs. Harbin and Sabot lay down an accurate and devastating rain of fire. Soon all the dual-missile SAM launchers have exploded or are burning furiously. Sabot runs out of mortar rounds and takes his position at the far end of the gun pit from Harbin, firing his own heavy rifle carefully. Trucks and vehicles try to get out of the killing zone, but the trees and terrain are too rough. They tip or get stuck, and finally are shot.

Dirt kicks up next to Sabot and he jumps in surprise. “DAMN!” Harbin yells over the din. “Only way to stop them shooting is to shoot back! Keep it up! We’ll pull back if there’s a lull!” All the vehicles are rapidly set to flames, the heavy rifles run out of ammo, and only infantry remain moving near the road. There is a frenzy of movement down in the valley as enemy troops find cover and concealment from their tormentors on the hillside. As they can, they start firing more frequently.

Harbin and Sabot pull their heads down and look at each other. Both are dirty and ragged, and Harbin has blood running down his cheek. Sabot motions to it. Harbin touches his cheek with his finger, looks at the blood on his hand. “Wife’s going to give me an earful about that,” he says casually, as if commenting about getting home late after one too many drinks with the guys. Sabot shakes his head in amazement and grins as his own fears settle down.

Spurts of dirt dance on the top of the gun pit. Harbin holds up a small periscope and scans the valley as angry bullets buzz overhead. The hillside below is crawling with scores of soldiers working their way up the slope, a few firing while others sprint from cover to cover. Harbin provides a running commentary as he scans the wreckage.

“Okay, SAMs down. Very well done, Sabot, almost every round square on the road. No vehicles moving, most are burning. Consider yourself an honest-to-God soldier. Now comes the tricky part. Get ready on clacker number one. The leftmost one.” He pans the periscope back and forth. The slope near the road is covered with troops headed their way. “Get ready. Safety OFF.”

“Safety off.”

“Annnnd… FIRE!”

Sabot hits the clacker. A whole line of claymore-type mines go off, and the periscope view is filled with a roiling cloud of dust and debris. All the soldiers in view hit the ground, some diving for cover, some pirouetting into a ragged heap, dead or dying from the blast and steel balls. Harbin shifts left, right, back again. No soldiers standing. Very little firing, but lots of rolling echoes and dust. They hear inarticulate yelling, then something that sounds like commands. Harbin looks to the middle, spotting an enemy fire team advancing again.

“Get ready on number three, Sabot.”

“Three. Got it. Safety OFF. Ready.”

“Steady, steady. Safe that. Ready number four.”

“Safe three. Safe. Got four. Safety OFF. Four ready.”

More soldiers stand and join the run uphill, turning it into a human wave, shouting, yelling, firing blindly on full-auto. The hissing sound of supersonic bullets passing nearby fills the air over the mortar pit.

“FIRE!”

Another eruption of dust and debris, and more soldiers go down. The number of bullets buzzing overhead falls precipitously. Aside from screams of pain, small explosions of ammo burning in fires, and the crackle of flames, relative quiet falls as dark, acrid smoke fills the valley.

Sabot hunkers down while Harbin continues scanning with his little periscope. “Do we blow the rest and fall back?”

“Not quite yet. This is the delicate part. If we blow them when we don’t have to, any decent leader will know that we are trying to cover a retreat and he’ll rally for a fast pursuit to try to catch us in the open. Besides, they’re all behind cover, so we wouldn’t hit anyone. If they think we can do this all day they demoralize and dig in or fall back. So we wait for them to get closer, then blow another one, then again. We fall back the instant we blow one to break up a charge or too much incoming fire and there’s no more of them. Too quiet, now. Let’s see if we can piss them off.”

Harbin cautiously raises his head over the edge of the pit, rifle ready, eye to the scope. He aims carefully and squeezes off a shot. He’s rewarded by a scream. “Foot sticking out.”

He shifts his aim and fires again. Another scream and a string of incoherent cursing. Another shot, nothing. There is an odd SPANG-WZZZZZ, and Harbin jerks his head down. There is a rough crease through one side of his helmet, a furrow plowed by a bullet. He stretches his neck this way and that to test function and winces a bit. “Yup. Pissed off again.”

“You
want
to piss them off!?”

Harbin nods slowly. “So they
react
. Don’t think straight. Give them time to think and plan, we’re screwed. How about tossing a grenade as far down the hill as you can, see what they do?” Sabot pulls a small round grenade from his gear, and looks at it. Harbin reaches over, turns it around so the spoon is against Sabot’s palm, and places Sabot’s other hand on the ring. “Sorry. We usually try to train before we use them for real. Your hand will hold the spoon until you throw. Pull the pin, lob it hard, stay down, cover your ears. Easy.” Harbin winks, then picks up a grenade for himself. “Watch.”

He places its spoon against his palm, pulls the pin, and just holds it. Nothing happens, but Sabot looks nervous. Harbin coils his body and bends his arm, unwinds and flings it hard downhill, then ducks lower. “One, two, three, fou–“

The boom echoes across the valley, then the sound of distant gunfire and more explosions roll in on the breeze. Yelling and a little screaming and crying. “Sounds like this isn’t the only party on the block,” Sabot says.

Harbin nods and points a different direction than he threw. “Like I said, plenty of targets to go around.”

Sabot coils his body, pulls the pin, unwinds and heaves it. Just as his hand is releasing, a lucky bullet rips through his arm, and his follow through brings it down to his chest, where he looks at it dumbly for a moment. Harbin grabs a pressure bandage from a ready supply, tears it open with a well-practiced pull. Another explosion rocks the valley when the grenade goes off.

Sabot stares up into the sky, jaw clenched, as Harbin works. He binds the wound with practiced precision and speed while speaking calmly but rapidly.

“Breathe. I’ve got it. No problem. Combat pay
and
a genuine field injury medal, your lucky day. War stories and scars to prove it. No bone, so you’ll be doing push-ups again next week. In through the nose, hold, out through the mouth, hold. Doing good. Painkillers in the bandage will take a minute to take effect. Just a flesh wound, no problem. Trigger finger still work? Might need it soon.”

Finished wrapping the wound, Harbin picks up his periscope again and starts scanning the valley. It’s quieter, but the occasional explosion or burst of gunfire drifts in from the distance. “Take a sip of water, just sit a minute. Looks quiet, and we still have three more lines of mines and plenty of ammo. We’ll be fine.” The expression on his face is not quite as convincing.