Countdown: The Liberators-ARC (56 page)

"Gunner! Machine Gun! Infantry!"

"I see them, Lana," Viljoen said, as his coaxial machine gun began to chatter. He spun his hand crank, sweeping fire across the line of dismounts sprinting for their position. In Mendes's field of view some of the infantry were bowled over while others dove for the dirt.

Something flew by overhead. Lana felt the wind of its passage and then the shockwave from behind as it exploded somewhere to her right rear. She looked and saw a tank making a minute adjustment. The muzzle of its smoking cannon looked to be a mile wide.

"Turret fucking down, Dumi!" she screamed. She felt the Eland shudder, then shift backwards in a hurry. She also felt herself being thrown face forward. And then she felt . . .

Like any good combat vehicle driver, and Dumi was by no means bad, the Zulu already had the gearshift in reverse and his foot on the brake. As soon as Lana called out, he slid his foot off the brake and mashed the gas. Gear and wheels shrieking, the Eland flew back at better than twenty miles an hour. On the wadi's sloping floor, it sank out of view of the surface.

Then Lana screamed, "Owww! Oh, shid! Muh fuggin' NODE. You addho', Dumi; you broke muh fuggin' NODE!"

Over Lana's pained shrieking, the crew heard Abdan say to the platoon leader, "Sir, time to charge."

"Lana?" Viljoen asked.

She shook her head. God, that hurts. "Fug id! Charge!"

The main gun was loaded and so didn't need her for now. Nose throbbing, Lana stood in the Eland's hatch, her shoulder pressed against the stock of the pintle-mounted machine gun. The gun's stock sank up and down with the movement of the Eland. At the same time and to the same cause, her blood rose and fell, raising and dropping the level of pain from her shattered nose. As bad, every thump of a wheel over a rock or over the lip of the wadi was transmitted instantly to the sundered cartilage, ruptured blood vessels, and pulverized bone.

With a double thump, and a barely suppressed groan from Lana, the Eland emerged from the wadi into a scene of fire and smoke, fallen bodies and people running in confusion and terror. Along the road heavy vehicles sat, abandoned, or burned their souls away in the night breeze. Those were the obvious ones. Others, still alive and trying desperately to fight back, were less obvious.

In the few hidden moments in the wadi, the scene had changed in important ways. Targets and threats once seen had moved. New ones had appeared. Pain or not, Lana's eyes scanned for the tank that had driven her Eland down into the wadi for safety. She spotted it not far from where it had fired at her car. Screamed, "Gunner, HEAT, Tank!" into her microphone, she tugged the machine gun to line up on her enemy.

"Where, Lana?" Viljoen demanded.

"Ten o'clock . . . follow my tracers," she answered. Her finger stroked the trigger, sending a stream of lead, one in five with a glowing tail, in the general direction of the T-55. She hit nothing, not even the tank and certainly not the commander in its hatch with the terrified grimace across his face.

Viljoen couldn't see the tracers in his sight until he had spun the turret well to the left. The target was moving, even as its turret traversed to reacquire the old threat. Viljoen fired, missed, and cursed, "goddamittofuckinghell."

Lana let go the machine gun, dropping down once again to cram a round of 90mm into the gun. It was as well that she did. Moments later the target fired, missing high right through the space her body had occupied a split second before. She felt the muzzle blast and she felt the wind of the round's passage over her head.

Popping her head back up, Lana ordered, "Hard left, Dumi! Clode into it. Viljoen, can you spin dat t'ing faster dan he can traverde?"

"Betcher ass," the Boer replied, pride in self and determination in mission plain in his voice.

"I am bedding my add!"

The T-55's commander may not have seen or understood what Lana and her crew intended. The effect, however, was the same as if it did. While the Eland closed as quickly as Dumi could force it to, its turret swinging as fast as Viljoen could spin his gunner's wheel, the tank's turret likewise turned. If the tank's commander had been experienced and well-trained enough to order his driver into a hard pivot steer, or if the driver had understood on his own, the Eland and her crew might have lost the race. As it was, the car and the tank danced around each other, their turrets straining to line up for a killing shot.

The advantage the Eland had was Viljoen's strength and experience. The advantage the tank had was that its hydraulic traverse wouldn't tire as, eventually, the Boer must. There was only going to be one shot at it.

"Target!" Viljoen exhulted, pressing the trigger. The Eland rocked sideways from the recoil of the 90mm. Mere meters ahead, the hollow charge shell impacted on the thinner side armor of the turret, just behind the commander's hatch. There was a flash as the shell exploded, a portion of its power forced into the metal cone at its nose. The cone collapsed, then transformed into a gas-more of a plasma, really-that shot forward, melting its way through the armor. The T-55 stopped dead in its tracks, smoke beginning to pour from every open orifice. Flames followed the smoke.

Lana popped up again, taking control of the machine gun. In her NVGs she saw the T-55's driver, scrambling out of his cramped hatch. She cut him down, then resumed her scanning. "Gunner, HEAT, Tank . . . "

Reilly didn't have a turret. He didn't even have a machine gun since James was on that, laughing his ass off while he bowled over Ophiri dismounts by the twos and threes.

Instead, he had eyes and a radio. With his eyes he counted nine burning tanks. An explosion and a burst of flame caused him to amend that to, No, ten of the motherfuckers. Four to go. And who knows how many dismounts?

Another dual flash, muzzle and target, almost made him add, Eleven and three. A closer look told him that last wasn't a tank; it was one of his own infantry carriers coming apart at the seams.

How many did that cost me? Two anyway, machine gunner and driver. And maybe three or four. Shit. Hopefully Lana . . . Reilly just cut that thought off at the root.

"Is my fucking dustoff on the way yet?" he asked of the Merciful.

An RPG landed short, blowing up on the ground a couple of meters in front of Maalin's tank. The explosion rattled both the tank and the major. From whence it came, Maalin had no clue; the things seemed to come from everywhere and to land pretty much anywhere. He didn't have any night vision, though his panicky gunner did. The gunner simply gibbered when the major asked him to report.

At least the enemy seemed to have fired off all their directional mines. Maalin wasn't sure how much difference that made; tracers from what seemed to him to be about a dozen or more machine guns lanced across the road from all directions. To add to the confusion, mortars shells-or maybe they were artillery; Maalin didn't have the experience to say-walked up and down the road, exploding in bright flashes followed by dark, evil smoke and sending their shards through flesh to rattle off armor.

Even without night vision, the major could see tanks burning both ahead of and behind him. By those flickering lights he saw bodies and parts of bodies. One, in particular, caught his attention, where a probably panicking tank had run over a certainly panicking infantryman, crushing the latter like a grape.

Moans and screams arose from every side. Maalin heard pleas for mercy and pity in his own tongue.

"Allah, have mercy," Major Maalin prayed. "Deliver me from this nightmare." He doubted that mercy would be forthcoming. This was the kind of nightmare he was also reasonably sure he wasn't going to awaken from.

He was getting no reports that made sense. As near as Maalin could determine from the radio, he had one platoon leader with no tanks but his own, two more tanks with no platoon leaders, a bunch of scattered, frightened-out-of-their-wits infantry more interested in getting out of what was now obviously a preplanned kill zone than in striking back, and a couple more tanks under his exec chasing some light vehicles somewhere to the west.

And now the enemy vehicles were in among his own, taking advantage of their maneuverability, size, and speed to move faster than his tanks' turrets could traverse.

There was one chance. It was hard to take it, but Maalin really couldn't see much choice. "Surrender," he sent out over the radio. "Get out of your vehicles and walk with your hands up." He said much the same to his own crew, then ripped off his tanker's helmet, a Russian job of pads and mesh with electronics running through it.

"Surrender!" he shouted to his own infantry. "Drop your arms and put up your hands. Surrender!"

In his NVGs Reilly saw the gesture. "Cease fire," he commanded. "Cease fire, I said, goddammit," he repeated when he also saw a machine gun from his own side chop down several Ophiris. The word passed from his radio to the others, and then by word of mouth. In a few minutes, the firing stopped. Only then did he see a much larger number of the enemy rise from the ground, putting up their hands. "Prisoner teams out."

"James, grab the radio. Follow me. Bring the translator."

Finding the senior officer remaining among the enemy's tanks wasn't particularly hard. It was just a matter of counting radio antennae, all pretty well lit by the fires of burning tanks. At least that's how Maalin assumed his foe found him.

"You are the commander?" the white enemy asked through an interpreter.

"I was," Major Maalin said.

"You have two tanks to the west, chasing a few of my vehicles. Order them here, and to surrender."

"And if I refuse?"

Reilly jerked a thumb over his shoulder to where his own infantry were collecting up the beaten enemy and herding them out onto the main wadi floor. "Then all your men here go into a ditch and get shot, along with yourself. Then we'll hunt those tanks down and kill them anyway. But I don't have time to fuck around, so you get a chance to save their lives, and the others'."

It was a hard world, and a cruel one, Maalin knew. He didn't doubt this . . . Well, American, I suppose he is, and if half the stories told of that vicious people are true, he'll carry out his threat. Murderers, it is said, the lot of them, whatever pious platitudes their government may put forth for public consumption.

"One moment, please?" he asked, as he scrambled up the side of his tank, reached in, and took out a radio mike. What he said, Reilly didn't know, though it didn't seem to alarm the translator.

Then Reilly got a call from Snyder. "Alpha Six, Scout One. The enemy has reversed turrets and is rolling to your position. How did you do that?"

"Just good planning," Reilly answered, even while thinking, Luck. Pure fucking luck. I was ready to trade you guys for a little time. Thank God, I didn't have to.

A stretcher team trotted by, a moaning man bouncing on the stretcher. Reilly sighed. It's never really been about killing the enemy, he reminded himself. It's always been about winning when that requires you to risk your life.

He stood quietly for several minutes then, both his RTO and the enemy commander looking at him, intently in the one case, warily in the other.

"What's your name?" Reilly asked of the Ophiri.

"Maalin, Muktar. Major."

Reilly inclined his head toward the east, where Coffee had set up an ad hoc aid station that was rapidly filling.

"Major Maalin, have your men bring their wounded to my chief medic. We'll treat them as best we're able before we have to go."

"Yes, sir," Maalin answered. "Thank you, sir."

Reilly took the mike from James and broadcast, "By the way, all platoon leaders, this is Alpha Six. Do we have anybody who knows how to drive a T-55? I need . . . six of 'em."

"I kin dribe wun o' de pides o' shid," said a voice that sounded a lot like Lana's, but as if she were speaking with a clothespin over her nose.

Reilly ignored that for the moment, saying, "That's one. I need five more. And, Lana, if that was you, report to me, center of the kill zone. Other people who can drive a T-55 do the same. Infantry platoons and mortar section, I need two people from each of you to stand in a turret and look threatening."

He handed the mike back to James, who stuck it to his ear, listening intently. Suddenly, James smiled. "Dustoff, two minutes out," he announced. Turning to where Sergeant Coffee and the other two medics, under the lights of the medical Eland, fussed over seven wounded men, next to a line of five of their own dead, James pointed and repeated, "Dustoff, two minutes out!"

CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

The bullet is a mad thing;

only the bayonet knows what it is about.

-Alexander Vasileyevich Suvarov, Count Rymnik

D-Day, Yemen

As hot as the day had been, and it had been nearly life threatening, despite the shade of the nets, the night was bitter. Konstantin shivered despite himself and despite the robes he wore over his battle dress. And the breeze didn't help. Unconsciously he pulled his headdress tighter to him, at the same time pressing on the earpiece cum microphone he wore, as did his men.

"Browned skin and contacts, fake beards or not, we're going to stand out like sore thumbs, you know," Galkin said, holding up his rifle for emphasis. This close, it was easy enough to see both, despite the dust laden breeze, blowing out of the northeast from Saudi Arabia's Rub al Khali, or Empty Quarter.

The Romans had called the place, "Arabia Felix," Happy Arabia, this based on the income from harvesting and trading incense, as well as trade generally. Sadly, the bottom had nearly dropped out from the frankincense and myrrh markets many centuries past, while, conversely, the market in oil, which Yemen didn't have much of, had grown enormously in decades recent. Thus, while Saudis may have tooled around the desert in four-wheel drive Mercedes, it was more common to see Yemenis on dirt bikes doing the same. Or hearing them.

Seeing but not hearing them would have been considered odd. That was one of the little weaknesses to the plan. Konstantin had accepted the weakness as necessary if he were going to be able to get to Yusuf's palace close enough, which meant quietly enough, to do the job in time to get picked up and brought home. His dirtbikes were as silent as the weapons his men carried.