Running and Gunning

Disclaimer: Same as before. Warning, crude humor in text.

~ ~ ~ ~

For the next hour we fought a running battle with the enemy soldiers as they pursued us across the Sinai.

"Go! Go!" I shout as I urge Budnick and Jack to pull back, with Stoney and Link providing support. Dave and Shorty are already further to the rear and firing. Me and Arnot are last to pull back as a 23mm flak gun is opening up on us. Two trucks and two APCs are also on our tails.

I pull the SADAR off my belt kit, pull the tube so it's longer and thus armed and flick up the tiny aperture sight. I aim it at one of the trucks and fire. The 66mm rocket blows the thing up in a flash and a secondary explosion. I must've hit the fuel tank or some extra ammunition.

I see Link aiming his own SADAR and firing the rocket. He manages to explode the 66 between the two APCs, killing or wounding three enemy soldiers but doing little else.

"Fucking outrageous." Link groans.

Suddenly I see Arnot hit the deck. "Man down! Man down!" I shout.

"Man down!"

"Man down!" the shouts relay the message as I go back for Arnot.

"Are you alright?" I ask.

"Oui." Arnot replies as he gets rid of his field pack. He runs and follows me then turns around to retrieve something in his pack, "I forgot my flask! Present of the wife!"

"Where's the medi-kit!?" I shout at him. He doesn't answer as we leg it across the plains.

~ ~ ~ ~

The field packs were binned, we couldn't move quickly enough with them. The belt kits contained what we couldn't do without, water and ammo. That night we covered eighty kilometers, the length of two marathons, with a hundred more to go to reach friendly territory.

"On me! On me! To your right! To your right!" I hear Jack Falstaff yelling.

"One!" Arnot shouts.

"Two!" I shout.

"Three!" Link shouts.

"Four!" Stoney shouts.

"Five!" Budnick shouts.

"Six!" Shorty shouts.

"Did anyone see Dave go down?" I ask.

At a chorus of no I say, "Alright, three minutes and we look for him."

Just about then Dave staggers in, his face beet red and gleaming sweat, "Christ, I'm dehydrated. I forgot about removing my thermals."

I pull a packet of rehydrate powder and mix it with the water in my canteen. Dave drinks it greedily.

"Is it my imagination or is it getting cold?" Stoney asks, pulling his beanie cap lower on his head.

"Signal's kit?" I ask Budnick.

"Radio's fucked." Budnick said, "It took a 20mm through it back on the MSR."

"Get rid of that codebook then." I reply. Budnick removes it from his belt kit and lights it on fire.

"Medi kit?" I ask.

"I left it back at our last contact." Arnot said, "But I saved my flask."

"Oh great!" Falstaff groans, "If one of us goes down we'll be glad to take a quick nip."

"Are you alright?" I ask Jack.

"My leg's buggered, but other than that I'll be fine." Jack replies, he's always had a bad left leg since a Squadron rugby game got out of hand back when we were on the Counter Terrorist Team back in early 2144.

"Injuries?" I ask.

I don't hear any replies so I say, "We'd best get moving. Arnot, take lead scout, Jack stay behind Arnot, Dave, stay behind Jack."

We fell into our line with the three men specified in front, followed by me, then Link, then Budnick, Shorty, and Stoney bringing up the rear. "Spring day in the Southern US at the coldest," was Mike's response to my query on weather at night.

Spring day at home my ass, it was the coldest night the Sinai had experienced in a decade. It was damn near 14 degrees Fahrenheit. I envied Dave as I trudged forward, wearing only my paratrooper's smock over my desert fatigue blouse and t-shirt and my trousers. All the other guys, like me, had removed our thermals before daylight at the LUP. Only Dave had forgotten to remove them. The wind blew fiercely, blowing clouds of sand everywhere.

I hear an aircraft flying overhead, it's a P-58 fighter, "We're gonna try the TACBE again."

"We're gonna try the TACBE." Link passes behind him.

I extract the TACBE, and start the call, "Hello any call sign, this is Kilo Two Zero. We are a ground call sign and need assistance. Over."

I hear the voice of the pilot, tinny, over the speaker, "Say again Kilo Two Zero. You're weak."

"Turn back west! Turn back west! Over!" I shout into the speaker.

I hear nothing more over the TACBE and turn around saying, "Where's Jack, and Arnot and Dave?"

I should've checked to see if Dave passed the message on. He was knackered good style, barely attentive to anything. I should've checked.

We spend about two hours looking for them, and when we don't find any sign we reluctantly continue our westward course through the Sinai.

~ ~ ~ ~

Kate felt that feeling of acid dread welling up in her veins again. Hiram was in trouble, she could tell. So far her investigations had turned nothing major up. Now that she had Bogel and Weerd on her side, she had additional help. She had at least one of them shadow Cogsworth every day.

Weerd appeared in the room saying, "Kate, this guy's serious bad news."

"What do you mean?" Kate asked.

"Well we don't know if he's had a hand in Van Ghoul's abduction, but we know he's not clean as a whistle." Weerd began, "He keeps talking to this cult dedicated to one of the 13 Demons of the Chest, Mordor the Malevolent."

"Didn't you guys work for him?" Kate asked.

"We did. But if he gets out of the chest he'll be standing in a line to get us for being the 'inept lackeys'. Well at least with the gang and later Hiram we're more than that. Fellow ghosts be damned." Bogel replied.

"Anyway he keeps talking to his cult members about Special Forces units that keep disrupting their operations. At least two mobile patrols in land rovers are going through the Sinai making life a mess for them. Then there's an eight man reconnaissance unit that's giving them some grief. They've so far left upwards of a hundred dead cult members dead on the desert floor." Weerd replied.

"Hiram, he's in action I knew it." Kate replied, "We're gonna need more concrete evidence if we hope to get Cogsworth. We need some definite proof he's up to no good."

"Definite proof of what honey?" Scott said as he walked into the room.

"Just thinking out loud, Scott." Kate said, putting her arms around his neck and kissing him lightly and repeatedly.

Scott ran his right hand down the curve of Kate's body, which he could feel through her silk night shirt. Bogel and Weerd had made themselves scarce because they figured Scott would freak out when he saw his fiancée talking to two ghosts.

~ ~ ~ ~

Springtime at Fort Bragg my ass, the weather's the worst it's ever been in half a century in the Sinai. What's worst is that Stoney's down with hypothermia. The only bit of cover we can find sticks out like a neon sign.

"Shorty, is it my imagination or is there snow on the ground?" Stoney asks through chattering teeth.

"You're not dreaming." Budnick said, "It's snow alright."

"You know Stoney," Shorty says, "You're body's not as cold as you think you are."

"Really?" Stoney asks.

"You're colder, much colder." Shorty replies.

"To hell with this. I'm making a brew." I reply, as I pull a heating tab from my belt kit and pour some water from my canteen into a cup.

"So not only are you breaking SOPs by brewing a hot drink. Through the smoke you're putting up a huge sign that says here we are. What is it, coffee, tea or hot chocolate?" Link asks, knowing I only carry those three types of hot brews on me.

"Hot chocolate." I reply as I start heating it up.

Only a few hours remain until last light and then we can head on our merry way. But time and the weather are against us. If Stoney gets any worse he could die. Also any one of us could keel over from the cold desert nights, or from starvation, almost all the food we had with us was binned with the field packs.

"You're worried about Jack, Arnot, and Dave?" Link says.

"Yeah." I reply.

"Well don't, they're big and ugly enough to take care of themselves." Link replies.

~ ~ ~ ~

"Twenty year old Christopher Osborne is still missing after a seventeen day search." The newscaster announced as Kate put another pin into a map of Central Florida. For the past few months there had been several unexplained and unsolved disappearances around Central Florida.

At first Kate thought they were unconnected but Weerd had dug up a similar case during the 1990s where a cult in Mexico had been responsible for the disappearance and death of a Spring Breaker. She immediately began researching the most recent disappearances and plotting the locations where they were last seen on a map.

"Whoa, honey, this research project of yours is taking over the room." Scott remarked as he walked in, to find his fiancée awake and typing something into the computer.

"Sorry, Scott," Kate replied, "I guess I kinda lost track of time."

"I'll say, you've been at this for hours." Scott replied, "Well breakfast is ready if you want some."

"I'll be down in a minute." Kate replied, kissing him.

"Pheww, that was close." Bogle said, reappearing as soon as Scott left the room.

"Yeah, too close for comfort." Weerd replied, "You sure you're all right? I didn't hear anything about Hiram at all. Good news is Cogsworth's stupid little cult lost over a hundred men dead and about two hundred severely wounded in the Sinai trying to find them."

"I know, he's a Special Forces guy..." Kate began, "But I can't help but worry sometimes. South America was the same way."

"Keep looking, maybe something will turn up." Weerd replied.

~ ~ ~ ~

Still seventy kilometers from the border and we had to do something drastic and fast, because if the cult doesn't kill us the weather will. I take a penlight from my belt kit and wave it about, seeming to be a man with a wounded comrade. Doubled over at my side is Stoney, pretending to be wounded. Budnick, Link, and Shorty are hiding in the culvert. A vehicle stops in front of us and suddenly the driver and his two passengers find themselves face to face with three Wiraways and two 206s aimed at them. They leave the vehicle and I see two of the cult guys and some civilian.

The taxi driver, the civilian, starts yammering away in the mother tongue which none of us understand. One of the cult guys says in a cloying voice, "Kill him, not us, for Mordor will give you amnesty when he takes over."

"Shut up!" Budnick says, kicking him back off his knees. Both cult prisoners are begging us not to kill them as they realize we're part of the team that kicked the living daylights out of their unit two days earlier.

"They've been looking at the damned things all day." Stoney remarks as we keep our three prisoners under control.

"What's his fucking problem?" I ask one of the cult guys, as the civilian's yammering like a crazy bastard. I see Link going through their packs for cigarettes, extracting about three packs of Camels.

"You are stealing his taxi, it's his living." One of the cult guys says.

"Get down in the ditch!" Link says as he and Budnick help Shorty control the other prisoners.

We pile into the taxi and I say, "What did you do with them?"

"They'll live. Pissed off, but they'll live." Link begins.

As they were dragged off the two cult guys begged us to kill them because they would suffer the indignity of being sacrificed. Honestly it's not my problem.

"Any of you guys know how to put this thing in forward?" I ask, having never driven a column shift.

"Up." Says Link.

"No down." Stoney replies, realizing Link had just told me the way to put the taxi in reverse.

Thus, in the comfort of a yellow taxicab we drive across the Sinai desert roads. "Budnick, keep an eye out for junctions, point me west." I ask.

A Land Rover Defender full of cult members presumably passes us by, "See, why didn't you lift something like that?" Stoney asks.

"Stoney, shut up will you. You were dying of hypothermia an hour ago." I reply.

"Bullshit man, bullshit." Stoney replies.

Budnick turns on the radio and we catch a local Arab radio station. Instantly Link starts singing along with lyrics of his own, "My husband has breath like a goat..."

The cab fills with our laughter as we drive down the Sinai Highway with Link adding more lyrics, "His penis is small and covered with blackheads..."

Shorty looks like he's about to explode as Link continues, "Now a days I sleep with the goats...They have much bigger penises and their twice as intelligent..."

We're making good time in relative comfort on our way out of the Sinai. Let's just hope Lady Luck's smile doesn't change to a frown.

~ ~ ~ ~

TBC