We Have a Compromise

Disclaimer: Same as before. Mordor was the first demon in the Chest of Demons.

~ ~ ~ ~

(Sinai Desert)

The LUP was in a wadi, or gully created by a long extinct desert river. We were hidden less than a couple miles from a very big problem we didn't see in the dark. Right bang in the middle of the MSR (Main Supply Route) was an emplacement of anti-aircraft guns and several vehicles.

On stag is Dave and through a piece of string connected to the lapel of my desert smock he can tell me about what he can see by a tug to get my attention. He tugs on the string to let me know he's seen something. As I pull back to acknowledge he let's Jack know to take over on stag temporarily.

"There's a truck full of troops broken down in the middle of the MSR." Dave alerts me, "They're about a mile and a half away from here. They're those red robed desert raiders that people in the Sinai have been reporting about."

Dave's talking about some strange men, who wear crimson desert robes that have been raiding towns throughout the Sinai area and occasionally foraying into Egypt by crossing the Suez in rubber boats. They're being unnaturally bold this time. They're the guys supposedly responsible for firing missiles into surrounding states from hidden and mobile platforms in the Sinai.

"Budnick, call in the Air Corps and tell 'em we've got a target." I say.

"Hello AWACS (Air Warning and Control System) this is Kilo Two Zero, we are a ground call sign in need of assistance.. I say again, AWACS this is Kilo Two Zero, we are a ground call sign in need of assistance, over." Budnick begins, "I can't raise anybody."

"Keep trying." I say.

"You say you've seen the communication's landline they use to program the missiles?" Link says, "Then why don't we just sneak over there, cut it and then piss off."

"I'd rather take it out by air strike." I reply, "But I'll keep that in mind. We've got a big problem with at least a battalion strength element with those anti-aircraft guns."

As we waited in the LUP I heard the sound of bells, the sort one would find around the neck of a goat. We each grabbed our weapons and Stoney comes down from the other side of the wadi, splaying his hands out to indicate that the goatherd, a kid not more than twelve was less than five hundred feet away.

One of the goats apparently got separated from the herd and was headed straight for the wadi. The goatherd was at the threshold of the wadi, all he had to do was look in and find eight members of a Special Forces reconnaissance team. And look down he did.

"Here we go govener, lovely bit of chocolate 'ere." Jack says, in his best kindly old uncle voice, "C'mon...Shit!"

Apparently the kid got away. "He's heading for the soldiers in the middle of the MSR." Dave shouts.

Why didn't we shoot him? Well number one, that's a definite compromise. Number two, if their boys get a hold of us we're not gonna last five minutes. It had to be Jack, if it had been Arnot or Dave they'd have taken the kid down. His own kids might love him, but he'd never get a job playing Santa Claus.

"Budnick." I say, "Get on the guard net and tell them in plain speech we have a compromise."

"Hello any call sign, this is Kilo Two Zero. Radio check over." Budnick begins.

"Right, we make for the RV with the skimmer. If we have a contact on the plains then we won't be sitting targets."

Suddenly we hear the rumbling of an engine as we're packing our gear away into our bergens and are getting ready. "Shit." Dave says.

"What's that?" I reply.

"Armor." Budnick replies.

"Stand too! Stand too!" I shout. Instinctively the guys form a circular perimeter, grabbing what cover they can. Budnick scrambles to the top of the wadi, removing the SADAR 66mm disposable rocket launcher from his bergen. The SADAR's a great anti-armor weapon; it's simply a lightweight aluminum tube weighing one pound that packs a hell of a punch against vehicles.

"Now, now, remember the back blast." Arnot warns Budnick, his peaked field cap perched atop his head. Damndest thing is they look just like the M1943 caps of World War II, giving Arnot the nickname Rommel among our guys.

"Jawohl Herr Rommel." Budnick remarks. He already knows that back blast, the fire coming out of the rear end of rocket propelled weapons, is just as deadly as enemy fire.

"It's a bulldozer." Stoney announces, "I think he's lost, dude."

"Lost, a fucking bulldozer, lost?" Budnick replies, "He's going past us."

"The soldiers in the truck told our goatherd to piss off." Dave says.

"Right, let's get to the RV (rendezvous) with the skimmer. Medi kit?" I ask.

"Top of my pack." Arnot replies.

"Signal's kit?" I ask.

"Top of my pack." Budnick replies, "Codes are in my map case."

We continue further along the plain and again we hear the sound of motors in the distance. "Stand too! Stand too!" I shout. This time I don't think it's a lost bulldozer.

Of course you're afraid, anyone who says they're not they're either lying or need to see a shrink. You just wanna make the biggest hole possible to hide in. You'll take your spoon out and start digging if it'd help any. But then the training takes over, you psyche yourself up, you check that your magazines are on tight and your pouches are all closed up.

Shorty's up on the binoculars, scanning the horizon as I see the guys readying their weapons, extracting the SADAR rockets we're all carrying, and cocking the 206s and Wiraways.

"What's going on behind me Shorty? What's happening?" I say, "I need to know, talk to me!"

"I can't see jack shit but I can here them they're to your half right." Shorty replies.

"We're gonna go! We're gonna go!" Arnot shouts, the field cap atop his head making him look like Rommel.

"Ready!" Link shouts.

"Ready!" Stoney shouts.

"Ready!" Dave shouts.

"Ready!" Budnick says, "Jack, you ready?"

As we're shouting I see two APCs (Armored Personnel Carriers) coming our way with a truck full of infantry. The first is a tracked APC, meaning it has tank treads and a smooth bore 25mm cannon. The other is a wheeled APC with a couple heavy machineguns. The one with the bigger gun is the bigger threat, obviously.

Suddenly the tracked vehicle stops as a 66mm rocket tears the left tread loose. Jack just scored a mobility kill with the SADAR. Mobility kill means the vehicle in question is disabled, not destroyed, Jack just stopped the SOB in his tracks.

"Shit!" I say as Budnick hits the first APC with another SADAR rocket. We disabled it, but didn't kill it.

"Stand your ground!" I shout.

"Stand your ground!" Shorty replies, passing my order along.

We open fire as soon as we see the first of the red robed raiders emerge from the first APC. With about three rounds Link takes him down. Everyone's firing, but we're not shooting off whole magazines, the way our adversaries are shooting their Vz-57 assault rifles (a crude, older model assault rifle that's cheap to produce and therefore a terrorist favorite). The machine gunners are shooting four and five round bursts, at most firing ten round bursts. Those of us with 206s are shooting single shots to conserve ammo. Aimed and accurate semi-auto fire wins firefights, not shooting from the hip like you see in Rambo films.

The machine gunner in the second APC goes down as Link takes him out with a burst of gun fire. Dave's opening up on the guys running out of the back of the truck and I see Budnick score another kill from an APC crewman who tries his hand at being a foot soldier.

I've taken down another enemy soldier running from the truck that escaped Dave's fusillade into their ranks. The first APC is still firing its 25mm cannon occasionally, the shells exploding near us.

"Stoppage!" I shout, indicating that my weapon is either out of ammo or jammed. In this case the magazine's empty. I simply grab another magazine, take out the old magazine, jam the new one in and tap the side of the weapon, chambering a round.

I see Shorty get up on one knee, lift the SADAR to his shoulder and aim it at the truck. He fires it and the truck goes up in a fireball.

"Arnot stand by!" I shout.

"Oui!" Arnot replies.

"You've got to move forward and take the fight to them. It's the last thing they're expecting. You're dead anyway, so anything you do is a bonus." As we run forward, the words of one SAS Sergeant from the 20th Century are running through my mind. Both me and Arnot hit the deck and start firing at the enemy soldiers who are starting to fall back in disarray, with the second APC backing up, shooting its machineguns at us. The infantry are using it as cover, firing their Vz-57s from their hips, shooting the fifty round 20mm magazines off with one squeeze of the trigger.

"Coming through!" Shorty shouts, Dave running right behind him. Both men hit the ground a few meters in front and to the right of me. The 25mm shell explodes behind them, barely missing.

"Coming through! Coming through!" Falstaff shouts as he and Budnick advance past us. We're firing all the while, dropping several enemy foot soldiers with accurate gunfire. We've got them running away.

"Stoppage!" Dave shouts, as he tries to clear a jammed round from his weapon.

We're all firing accurate but high volumes of fire. We're constantly advising each other of the status of our weapons and what we're about to do so we avoid shooting each other by mistake, as happened once in South Am back '42 when two trigger happy legionnaires accidentally killed a member of Boat Troop who was wearing a Gollum made belt kit.

"Coming through! Coming through!" Link and Stoney shout.

A shell explodes behind Stoney, "Coming through! Coming through!" Stoney shouts, leaping upward.

"Stoppage!" Link shouts, clearing a jammed round. He gets the gun firing again as the enemy troops continue their retreat around the wrecked truck.

Budnick fires a 206 bomb over the truck, followed by one from me. Somebody certainly wasn't happy because I hear a less gunfire and frantic shouts in foreign tongues.

"Coming through!" I shout.

"Coming through!" Arnot adds alongside me as we advance, I'm reloading as we go, I just went through another magazine. I barely avoid another shell burst behind me.

"Gunner!" Jack shouts, calling for a Wiraway man.

"Coming through!" Dave shouts as they advance towards a slight pile of rocks where Dave sets up his Wiraway.

"Shit!" Jack yells as a shell explodes fairly close.

"Coming through!" Budnick shouts as he follows them a few meters back. He jumps up as another 25mm shell explodes behind him.

Dave and Falstaff are putting fire on the retreating enemy element, but we've still got that disabled APC with the 25mm gun to handle.

"Coming through!!" Shorty yells and puts more fire on the retreating troops.

"Coming through!" Stoney shouts, "Coming through!"

Shorty ceases fire for a while when Stoney crosses his line of fire and resumes again when Stoney clears. There are crewmen still alive inside the APC as Stoney puts his Wiraway down, takes a grenade from his belt kit, pulls the pin, counts to four and throws it inside the open back of the APC. The explosion stops the cannon fire at last.

We advance towards the wrecked vehicles, with me, Arnot and Budnick reaching them first. I see one of the 'dead' enemy soldiers sit up and raise his Vz-57. Budnick takes him out in two shots. To my left I see Shorty sweeping the perimeter and see another supposedly dead soldier try to take him out. Shorty obliterates his forehead with five rounds from a Wiraway at twenty five paces

All around us are about fifty dead bodies. The charred arm of an unlucky passenger in the truck that Shorty destroyed brushes the back of my head and I spin around, taking aim. I see Arnot kick over another body to determine if it's another faker.

"Fucking outrageous." Link groans, as he kicks over another corpse.

"Now what?" Arnot asks me.

"We'll pick up our field packs and head west; we've got an hour till last light. We'll wait till it gets dark, double back and then sort ourselves out." I reply.

~ ~ ~ ~

"Fifty men dead, another thirty seriously wounded. From eight men?" Cogsworth demanded over the phone. His lunch meeting with Petersen and his fiancée had ended hours ago. He got a call from the Sinai desert, the members of the Cult of Mordor the Malevolent, shortly after the contact with Hiram's patrol.

"Redouble your efforts. They can't have gone far on foot." Cogsworth replied, despite this minor setback, the Cult of Mordor was holding its own. A million strong, the sect had remained secret for millennia since Mordor's imprisonment in the Chest of Demons. It was they who built his fortress. And it was they who later abandoned it and went into hiding until their descendants had sensed their time had come.

~ ~ ~ ~

Orlando, Florida

Scott was sleeping like a baby as Kate scanned the screen of the laptop for all the information she could find on Cogsworth. She'd called a friend working for the Orlando Sentinel as an investigative reporter. Other than the fact that he had an unsubstantiated scandal involving a Florida senator and a mob gambler several years ago, Cogsworth was clean. She asked Molly to pursue that lead as she kept scanning.

She couldn't help but worry about Hiram. She was feeling that eerie feeling that something was wrong, that one she would always get back when Hiram was in South America. Whenever she had those feelings Hiram would usually have run into some major drama while on patrol.

Scott rolled over in the bed of his sister's spare bedroom, reaching an arm out for Kate. When he didn't find her he woke up to find her sitting at the kitchen table, looking over something on the computer.

"Still think Cogsworth's a crook hon?" Scott asked, gently putting an arm around Kate.

"I'll be back in bed before you wake up." Kate said, standing up and kissing Scott tenderly. He moaned affectionately with each kiss.

"Had another one of those feelings?" Scott asked.

"Scott." Kate warned.

"I'm just saying, you've been awfully worried about Hiram lately." Scott said.

"Scott, he's my best friend, anyone who gets involved with me is going to have to accept that." Kate replied.

"It's weird though, like you guys have some kind of telepathic bond." Scott replied, "That day two years ago when there was that skimmer that went down over the Atacama Desert, you were so sure Hiram was in that big firefight and his next letter home confirmed it."

"Cogsworth isn't a criminal. I don't know why you think he is." Scott said.

"I don't know how I know either, but something about that guy just creeps me out." Kate replied, "I guess you can label it right under those incidents involving Hiram."

"I'll see you when you go back to bed honey." Scott said, kissing her again. Kate kissed him back, tenderly and with affection.

~ ~ ~ ~

Forward Operating Base

Colonel Archie Gates had gathered everyone from B Squadron he could find. A and D Squadrons were out in the Sinai, searching for the mobile sites and prepared to shoot them apart and run away in their armored land rovers and motorcycles.

Like everyone else in the encampment Archie Gates wore no rank or markings on his fatigues. He carried his belt kit and an L-99. The rescue package was set to go in after Kilo Two Zero, and he was going in with it.

Though he outranked the rescue team's leader he had no intention of taking over the operation. Ug was designated patrol leader for this op, but Gates was damned if he was gonna let eight of his guys rot in the desert while he stayed at the FOB.

Archie Gates was a major, a fellow with salt and pepper hair, cropped short. A veteran officer who had served with the 22nd Special Forces before the South America campaign as a member of the Mobility Troop. He'd taken command of B Squadron, 21st Special Forces, Territorial Army just before the Squadron shipped out to South America.

He was the very picture of American military machismo, with his crew cut, aviator sunglasses and the 9mm pistol in the shoulder rig in a leather holster. Archie Gates was a calm, analytical fellow with little tolerance for bureaucratic bullshit that tended to plague the regular army.

"Harris, take the MILAN missile post." Gates said, referring to the big anti-tank missile launcher in the back of the land rover, "I'll drive."

"You sure sir?" Ug asked. He and Sponge were supposed to be in the lead land rover in the two vehicle rescue package.

"It's your mission, Captain. I'm just along for the ride. I'll be damned if I let Becker and those guys rot out there while waiting at the FOB." Gates replied.

"Yes sir." Ug replied. Gates was not the typical West Pointer that he had worked with before. If he were the average arrogant ring knocker he'd have barked orders and commandeered the mission, but Gates seemed to trust him and thus Ug trusted Gates.

"Pinsky, Stein, you two take the motorcycles. Scout ahead of the unit." Ug ordered, "Donkeylips, you take the third humvee with Mike and Cyril."

"Well, what are you waiting for? Your patrol leader's given you boys orders." Gates said.

Donkeylips got into the driver's seat of the second land rover with Cyril manning the two MG-70 machineguns in the front of the vehicle and Mike in the back, manning the 40mm belt fed grenade launcher. In addition to their land rover's weapons all three men carried either L-99 or M206 weapons.

Gate's land rover in the front of the column had Ug behind the twin machineguns facing forward and Sponge at the MILAN post, minding the medical kit to treat the survivors of Becker's patrol. The middle vehicle was the cargo vehicle, driven by Al Wilkes and Todd Keck, both of them Staff Sergeants and veterans of South America.

Ronny Pinsky had a 9mm Stingray Mk. II folding stock carbine, a handy little weapon with a thirty round magazine and about a dozen spare clips. Michael Stein had an electric gun. Both men could fire the weapons one handed from the motorcycles if necessary, but their main defense was the three land rovers. Useful for passing messages between vehicles to maintain radio silence as well as reconnaissance, the motorcycles of Mobility Troop and the men who rode them into battle were some of the best motorized reconnaissance units in the military.

"Let's move out." Ug ordered as the column began to drive out into the Sinai, searching for the lost members of patrol Kilo Two Zero. Stein and Pinsky led the way, their weapons accessible on the handlebars of their model Indian motorcycles.

~ ~ ~ ~

The next day Kate ran into Daphne as she was shopping at the grocery store. She asked if Daphne knew anything about Cogsworth.

"No, I don't really." Daphne said, pushing the grocery cart.

"Up?" said Jana, Daphne and Fred's year old daughter.

Kate picked up the baby who gurgled happily, "I really don't have a good feeling about that guy. I mean there's something really wrong with him."

"I'll see what I can turn up, but I can't promise you I'll really find anything Kate." Daphne replied, adding, "Look, I know there's nothing I can say to really ease your worries..."

"About what?" Kate asked.

"Hiram. I know that you're worried about him, just like you were worried when he got deployed into South America." Daphne replied.

Kate transferred the baby into Daphne's arms as they walked out of the checkout line. She got into the rental, parked near Daphne's SUV as Daphne's cell phone rang.

"Oh my God!" Daphne exclaimed.

"What's going on?" Kate asked, "Daphne?"

"Vincent Van Ghoul." Daphne said.

Kate knew a little bit about the story of the mysterious wizard that infrequently visited Shaggy's house, but not very much. She also was a little more tolerant of Hiram's two buddies, Bogel and Weerd than most people were.

"What about him?" Kate asked.

"He's gone. And you know too much already." Daphne said, her voice having an uncharacteristically hard edge. She slammed the door of her SUV and drove north, towards Sapphire Bay.

Kate took out her cell phone, she called Shaggy's house and Bogel picked up the phone.

"Bogel, Weerd, this is really important." Kate said, "Can you come down here?"

"You rang us, fair lady." Weerd said, appearing behind her.

Kate jumped back about six feet, her eyes wide open, "How did you guys...?"

"It's a power of we ghosts." Weerd replied, as if addressing an ignorant child, "When a mortal summons us by name we appear. IF you believe in ghosts that is. And since you've seen us around Hiram you qualify."

"Hoo hoo hoo, Bogel and Weerd, at your service." Bogel said.

"I need you to help me find out what happened to Vincent Van Ghoul, and whether Cogsworth has anything to do with it." Kate replied.

Both ghosts were clad in old style Army uniforms. Weerd puffed out his chest and Bogel his gut as they both saluted, "Yes ma'am, we'll find him ma'am!"

The two ghosts disappeared in a puff of smoke, leaving Kate with the very distinct feeling something was very wrong. If the only person who possibly knew where the Chest of Demons was hidden was gone, or worst, in the hands of the enemy, then things were definitely looking grim.

~ ~ ~ ~

TBC (What's become of Vincent Van Ghoul? Wait and see...)

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