A/N: Wooo! FMP? Fumoffu! Is slated for a May 10th release date according to Suncoast! Finally, we get the proper dub treatment.
Katsucon was a BLAST. I need to post the report in my LJ, but the long and short of it was that my entry as Taishi, performing in our Communist Party of Anime sketch, got some real acclaim for originality, as well as props from the few people who recognized me. ComiPa gets no cosplay love, but I shouldn't whine about that in a Full Metal Panic! fanfic.
Anyway, apologies for the lateness, but we're ramping up now. Props as always to Lakewood and Anysia for beta work and moral support.
I also wanted to point out something that Wild Goose 01 brought up in his recent review. I am trying to place this story 100 within Shoji Gato's canon, as described in the novels that Boku-tachi dot net (lousy link-killing in fanfiction dot net... grumble) has translated into English. If anyone who has access to novels that Boku-tachi has not yet translated and can inform me of any canon that I do not know of, please let me know. I am striving to make a realistic FMP! precursor, and I try to be as diligent as possible. All canon corrections will be made. Also, yes, that is the same McAllen as in the series.
In any case, I base this off of Owaru Day by Day and Dancing Very Merry Christmas, as well as the English-translated FMP! artbook (It's around 10 on Ebay and other places; it's invaluable for any fan and well worth the price), both of which have some hints at the characters' pasts. It also touches upon other bits and pieces of history that FMP! uses, and it's something of my primary resource.
Anyway, I am aware of Sousuke's parents being killed in a plane crash, so I want to immediately deny that NAPA VALLEY and Natalya are Sousuke's parents. After all, we only know NAPA VALLEY as Richard Sonoma, not Richard Sagara, and as far as she exists, Natalya has no true name... so no, they are not Sousuke's parents. You'll have to keep reading to find out more.
A/N addendum, March 2nd: I got injured pretty badly at aikido, and my right shoulder (and arm) are out of commission for at least a week. I, like an idiot, don't E-mail my chapters to myself so I can work on them at home, and chapter 9 just needed about another paragraph before it could go out for beta-ing. :-( I'm not happy about this, and I apologize to everyone who read this far and wants more. In lieu of hopes getting better, please leave a good, critical review so I can help make my writing better. :-)
Enough babble. On with the show!
"The Hollow Men" by T.S. Eliot, third canto
"This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.
Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone."
8: This is the Dead Land, This is Cactus Land
MITHPAC Headquarters Command Center
Sydney, Australia
September 6th, 1981
10:47 PM
The connection from Rome had been open for the better part of an hour on a dedicated satellite line. Small crowds of Intel analysts had pulled the records from the Cheltenham MARSUPIAL file and were poring over the regional photos. They had taken over the command center with sheer mass alone during the early end of the night shift.
Despite the concerted analyses with everything from spectrographic sensors to magnifying glasses, it was all for naught. There wasn't a single grain of sand out of place in the past week's archives.
"Shee-it," Mark said with a lowwhistle. "They snuck 'em right under the Americans' satellites."
Kenji compared a low-angle shot that the KH-11 had taken on a second pass, just intercepted three minutes ago. An hour after the first photos were taken, the side-looking cameras were able to get good shadow shots of the battlefield. The forty square kilometers that the satellite had snapped only showed the same thing as before: wrecked Egyptian and Israeli armored vehicles, and no Leapfrog leg.
"It looks as if two company-strength units went into a set-piece engagement." He traced some circles with a dry-erase marker on a copy of a photo. "The tanks were lined up roughly parallel to each other before they started firing... but why would they do that?"
"It certainly runs counter to not only Egyptian and Israeli tactical doctrine, but American and Soviet as well." Gef scratched her head. "Normally, it's the artillery that'll deploy parallel to the battle line, but that's a fairly long distance back. Why do it with tanks?"
"I can't even imagine. The Egyptians are already well over the border if the coordinates are correct, and if they're bringing tanks, I'm pretty sure that the IDF wouldn't send more tanks just to say hello." Mark tapped the original photo sent from MITHLANT. "Look. Most of these wrecks are right on those lines, but almost all the others are behind both sides' operational areas. It looks like some of them were trying to retreat from the battle."
Kenji shook his head. "Armored warfare isn't built on tactical retreats. It's too easy to move forward and hold the territory if a breach in the line is exploited. I doubt that either side would fall back from each other. Quite the opposite; if they're fighting, they'd keep pushing forward at every opportunity."
"So what happened here, then?" Gef sighed as a courier from Intel brought up a fresh set of photos, sent by a MARSUPIAL system outside of Moscow, where a group of mechanized gazelles surreptitiously gathered taiga grass and intelligence from the Soviet Kosmos-1011 photorecon satellite.
"A whole clusterfuck, that's what," Kenji harrumphed.
Gef and Mark turned to look at him. "Well, I'll be damned," Mark commented, grinning. "The boy can curse!"
"Just only when I'm very enraged," Kenji assured him.
Gef raised an eyebrow. "Enraged? Kenji, you look like you're kicking back with a martini! Captain Calmness over here..." Gef ribbed, grinning.
Kenji raised a thin eyebrow. "Trust me, Gef, I am very stressed-out over this entire issue. I don't like being caged up like this. We may be Intel personnel, but we're field intel, not desk jocks."
"Might as well pitch in when we can." Mark shrugged. "Ain't got no deployment orders yet."
"Well, at least we know the Russians see the same things we do." Gef leafed through the intercepted photos from the Soviet satellite. "Hell, the orbit is almost the same as the American KH-11."
The three MITHRIL operatives sipped their coffee almost simultaneously.
"Do we have anyone from the Soviet or American armies who trained these guys?" Kenji asked nobody in particular. "Maybe if we had someone with armor experience, they could take a look at it from a ground-pounder's view."
Mark shook his head. "Boris Vladimirov was rotated back to MITHSOUTH to help with their counterinsurgent training. We also had Jack Alexander from the Buffalo Cav, but he's gone in undercover back at Fort Irwin. He's getting some good human intelligence on the Army's OPFOR is hesitant to fake a deployment order to get him out."
"Great. All this is compounded by the leg being gone all of a sudden." Gef matched a print from a photo marked twelve hours ago to the most recent downlinks. "It was there in the evening, and now it's gone. What could have brought it out?"
"There's no visible tracks of heavy cargo vehicles or transporter trucks near the wreck where the leg was that we can tell," Mark pointed out. "Not even the KH-11 can get an accurate readout of how that's all shifted."
"Airlift?" Kenji suggested.
"Could be. We have no idea how heavy that leg is, but it wouldn't take that long to attach it and haul it out."
"There's not much wind in the Sinai, though. We'd have plenty of disturbed sand near the leg from rotor blast." Gef shook her head. "Besides, the closest air force with heavy-cargo helicopters is the Egyptian 17th Tactical Support Wing, and they're on the outskirts of Cairo. The IAF wouldn't allow any helicopter to get this far inside the border without blowing them out of the sky."
"So what do we tell the General?" Mark threw up his arms in exasperation.
Kenji slumped back into the office chair he had appropriated from an empty comm station. "We tell him that we don't have any information to conclude an analysis," he pitched. "Quite honestly, it could have been destroyed."
"That's unlikely, though," Mark pointed out. "Nobody knows what the hell that thing is—the Egyptians, the Israelis, the Warsaw Pact and NATO—hell, not even us, which means a lot. You think that they'd blow it to pieces so quickly? Hell, it looked like it already got destroyed once."
"Maybe someone wanted to finish the job." Kenji crossed his stout, muscular arms, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. "We haven't the faintest idea as to how it got there, just that it was... well... there. Could have been one of the wars, maybe?"
General Sachar was down in the command center in a few moments' time, having emerged from a briefing on the recent development. "I just had a junior colonel sugarcoat the fact that the only existing physical evidence of the Leapfrog has been nicked," Sachar said with a sigh. "Any chance I could see the hard data?"
"Of course, sir," Kenji affirmed, handing over the small stack of photos.
"From my untrained eye, it looks like explosions amongst sand dunes," the general joked sotto voce. "Anyone have any ideas at all?"
Silence.
Sachar sighed. "Wonderful. One leg usually doesn't just up and walk away, folks, it takes two to do that. No treads, no backblast, no drag marks, nothing?"
"We checked back twelve hours ago, when the last satellite pass occurred, sir. There's no evidence of any intact vehicles transiting the area."
Sachar frowned. "Mark, what was the weather forecast for the western Sinai for the past couple of days?"
Mark blinked, then slapped his forehead. "Hot, dry, and windy," he grumbled, sifting through some papers. "According to the Israeli National Meteorological Service sideband, it's been gusting up to forty kilometers per hour since Tuesday."
"So that blows away any tracks," Gef pointed out. "High-profile vehicles would have to take it slow, and that means any big engineering tracks would be visible before and after."
"Nothing with wheels, either," Mark tossed in. "A deuce-and-a-half truck would get blown right over if it's careenin' over dunes with that sort of wind."
"Same with choppers. The Egyptians' heaviest-capacity helo is a Hip, and I doubt they handle well in heavy gusts." Gef knew from experience. Black September had once run an operation to steal a Hip captured by the Israelis. She was in the infiltration team and had gotten a very impromptu hands-on lesson in chopper-jacking.
"So we're back to square one, then," Mark sulked.
The three petty officers and the General let out a collective sigh.
"Nothing in the wider-area shots?" Kenji asked nobody in particular.
"Photo!" Mark called out. "You get anything from the next couple of passes?"
"The first download didn't have any items of interest," a voice from a few desks down responded, obviously harried. "Next pass is the Soviets' Kosmos-1011 in seventy-five minutes, but we don't expect much."
"Then it had to be something else." Kenji scratched his chin thoughtfully. "It had to be another one."
"Another Leapfrog?" Sachar raised an eyebrow in disbelief.
"What else is there? We've ruled out airlift and wheeled ground transport. If another one just waltzed or leapt on in, it'd be able to move around and just leave miniature dunes in the sand. The wind would take care of anything else."
"That's a pretty big leap of analysis." Sachar raised an eyebrow, only partly conscious of his pun. "As far as we know, they only had one of those, and it looks like its wreckage was there originally."
"We have no concrete data since 1965, General. They might have been able to throw something together and get it into the area."
"They could have sealifted it out..." Mark picked up his partner's line of thinking, tapping the photos with two fingers. "It hops, skips, and jumps all the way to the Suez Canal or even the Red Sea or the Mediterranean."
"Gotta be the Med. Rumani is too far north." Sachar pulled a map of the Sinai next to the photos. "From there, they could take it to a cargo ship..."
The general looked up. "Gef, get on the line to MITHCENT right away. Tell them to start pulling in the net on cargo ships heading out of the Med. It'll take them at least five days running at high speed to reach the Bosporus Straits, a week to reach Gibraltar. But if they take it through the Suez Canal, we're already too late to close the canal locks."
Gef nodded, reaching for a phone and dialing the communication center for MITHCENT in Tel Aviv.
"Mark, Kenji, you're going to fill in for Fehu and Berkana. Get to the airport by the fastest available transport. We'll have the Herky-bird hop you to Diego and we'll proceed on the ground from there."
"By 'fastest available transport,' sir, do you mean we can—"
The set of keys bearing the symbol of a black, rearing horse on a yellow rectangle were already in the air. Mark reached out to catch them, but Kenji extended himself in a rare leap right in their path.
"You can ride shotgun," Kenji quipped, tucking the keys securely in his pocket.
"Only because you're a tricky little bastard," Mark grumbled.
"I'll be a few minutes behind you guys," Gef tossed over her shoulder as she covered the phone's mouthpiece with her hand. "You'll probably need backup if we're going to get through this. MITHCENT is trying to scramble a response team together, but they're not optimistic."
Mark gave a sloppy, informal salute. "You got it, sar-major," he snapped off affirmatively. "See you at the airport."
Ground levelA few minutes later
The alleyway between the old Sydney synagogue and the tobacconist was usually a quiet one, just one of many secret entrances to MITHPAC headquarters. Despite the Sydney City Council's plans to develop the Hyde Park area into a shopping and tourist district, there was always some highly entrenched opposition to deal with. Nobody had to know why the council members were so opposed to the development of the area, but it was always a narrow defeat on a rezoning proposal.
MITHPAC's secret entrance itself was a fairly obvious one: a battered green metal door leading into what appeared to be the brick wall of the synagogue. However, the door wouldn't open unless the hands grasping it had fingerprints that were recognized by the highly sensitive doorknob itself. Gloves or unrecognized prints would throw it into an instant lock.
Fortunately, exiting was just a matter of opening the door hard enough to dislodge the garbage bag of rotting orange rinds that was kept as a passive defense.
"Worst part of my day," Mark grumbled. "Few things in life are worse than havin' to sleep on a C-130 with a belly fulla coffee, let alone worry how you're gonna get that coffee out of your belly..."
"You're just jealous because I get to drive," Kenji observed, grinning, as he held the door open for Mark.
"Damn right I am!"
"You can drive on the way back. How about that?"
"Yeah, yeah. Gimme a hand with this thing."
It took both men's full strength to move the small Dumpster aside on its casters. After they'd cleared enough space, they swung out the chain-link fence, revealing a large blue tarpaulin covering a low, sleek shape.
"No car thieves yet, huh?" Mark grabbed one end of the tarp.
"I doubt they'd make it past the smell."
Without a word between them, they pulled the tarp back with the gentleness of a father dressing his newborn child. It gave way to the polished, perfectly-waxed black paint of a 1976 Ferrari 512BB, sitting low to the ground; its chromed grille, wheels, and body panels seemed to resonate with the reflected yellow glare of the low-sodium streetlights in the quiet Sydney night.
Kenji turned the key after adjusting the seats for his stature. The V-12 engine started up and roared to life with a growl, sounding as smooth as the tan leather seats and interior appointments felt.
"Buckle up," he reminded Mark superficially.
"No need to," Mark grinned. "You drive this thing like an old lady."
"No complaints from the peanut gallery, please," Kenji grinned back. "Diplomatic or police?"
"I feel rather adventurous, my friend," Mark quipped in a faked British accent. "Shall we be representatives to Her Majesty?"
"Sounds like a plan." Kenji flipped an unmarked switch hidden under the steering column.
Outside the car, the triangular-sectioned license plates flipped to mark the car with diplomatic tags, ensuring that no zealous police officers would stop the car. The Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations made it clear that unwanted touching of the car by a police officer or government agent would lead to serious trouble.
The transmission shifted into gear with a well-engineered throw of the shifter knob, and Kenji eased the car out, signaling his way into the light traffic. As he took the right turn onto Elizabeth Street, he gunned the engine, easily working the clutch and shift through second and up through third. Mark let out a loud rebel yell as they dashed towards Sydney International at almost eighty miles per hour.
Approximately 50 miles south of Feyzabad, Afghanistan75 miles east of the Badakhshan provincial border
9:37 AM local time
The flight had been a harrowing one so far.
Kalinin had traded off the guard position over the pilot with Sergeant Kadashvili, and not even the roar of the Hind's turboshaft engines could fully drown out the radio chatter from Konduz Base.
"We are now officially MIA," Kalinin informed Kuyvishev and Danilenko. "From what I could hear past the pilot's headphones, General Petrov believes that the raiders were repulsed and we either got lost or downed in the fighting."
"Do you think that Colonel Rozhkov will send troops out after us, comrade lieutenant?" Danilenko ventured, setting aside his Dragunov in a weapon rack behind his head.
"I doubt it." Kalinin shook his head. "Misha Il'ych may be KGB, but he knows the strategic and tactical realities here. He should. We were in the same classes at the Frunze Academy. He was assistant colonel to the 101st Guards Airborne Division's Operational Maneuver Group before he requested to go to the KGB. If there's anyone who knows when and how to fight, it's him."
Danilenko nodded. "I'm surprised that he wouldn't already try what we're doing right now, though."
"I'd bet even money that he did," Sergeant Kadashvili quipped. "Hell, maybe the Helmaj are just an elaborate ruse to root out traitors and rogues like us."
The sergeant's hearty laugh didn't quite reach the two low-ranking noncoms. Danilenko and Kuyvishev traded a very nervous look. Treason was a capital crime for a Soviet citizen, but that citizen's family would be the one to bear the real punishment of the state.
The spang of a ricocheting bullet echoed through the cabin of the Hind, followed by several more in rapid succession.
"We're taking small-arms fire from those cliffs at three o'clock," the gunner called out.
"I don't care where you're going or how fast you need to get there," the pilot yelled to his captors, "but I'm going to start evasive maneuvers. You can die when you get there, but I'm going back alive!"
The chopper reefed in a sharp right turn, its nose dipping low to rapidly pick up speed. Kadashvili had managed to grab hold of a metal bar behind the pilot's cockpit, but Lieutenant Kalinin was strapped into the bench beside the cargo door. He kept venturing looks outside, even occasionally catching the cone-shaped muzzle flashes of AK-47s from the ridgeline of the valley they were passing through.
"Nothing too horrible, unless they score a hit on a rotor or through the engine intake," Kalinin said calmly as he turned back to his men. "Probably just a local tribe of mudje."
"I hope you're right, comrade lieutenant," Kuyvishev swallowed nervously.
"It's nothing to worry about, Corporal." Kalinin patted him on the shoulder as a dent suddenly appeared in the armored sidewall, just above one of the windows. "See? The Hind's armor is basically impenetrable even to 7.62mm rounds. This must have come from a AK, otherwise there'd be more of these." He knocked on the dent with his knuckles. "Considering how deep we are in enemy territory, I'm surprised we haven't run into more enemies."
Coupled by Sergeant Malenko's expert evasive tactics and quick adjustments on the controls, the Hind dipped between two craggy hills and left the small valley of mudjehedeen positions rapidly behind them.
"We've dropped fairly low, Lieutenant," Kadashvili warned from the cockpit. "Should I have him take us up higher?"
Kalinin shook his head. "We'll have no element of surprise if they see us coming. Keep us low. Where are we, Sergeant?"
Kadashvili checked the current heading of the Hind and checked the terrain surrounding them against his own map. "On the eastern edge of grid coordinates 15/70," he replied.
"Another hour's flight. Keep your eye on him, Sergeant," Kalinin reminded.
"Da, tovarisch leytenant!"
On the ground, two pairs of eyes saw the glimmer of sunlight reflecting off the canopy joints of the Hind. It was easy to spot the chopper from almost ten miles off, what with the Zeiss binoculars that neither the Soviets carried nor the Americans shipped to the mudjehedeen tribes nearby.
The taller man appeared to be of different stock than the normal mudje fighter. His swarthy, mustached face was tanned from the desert-like environment, but it was not the darker Arabic or olive Persian skin tone that made up the majority of Afghanistan's many diverse ethnic groups. Instead, it was a milder, drab-like fleshy dark yellow, almost as if he were of mixed Asian descent. It was he who followed the helicopter through binoculars as a shorter man, lacking the mustache but sharing the same tan and tone of his skin, crouched low in preparation.
"Stakalav yatalari," he said calmly, lowering the binoculars on their strap and crouching down on one knee and lifting the microphone to a sophisticated-looking backpack radio. "Kakhtar'val Roosianit helikopatar, rakal kolomet."
"Shtara!" The smaller man nodded twice, then pulled the camouflage netting off of the large olive-drab box, unveiling U.S. ARMY FIM-92A MANPADS in spraypainted white stencils.
"Now passing through grid coordinates 16/71. Ten miles from designated drop zone." Kadashvili beckoned Private Danilenko to the front. "Cover this man, Private. I'm going back to plan out a little."
"Right away, comrade sergeant!" Danilenko snapped to his feet and made his way to the front office of the helicopter.
"What's the plan, Sergeant?" Kalinin asked, dropping the 'comrade' honorific.
"We've only got that blade to work with," Kuyvishev grumbled, holding up the Helmaj dagger to the map to match coordinates once again. "We can't assume much given our complete lack of strategic intel on the Helmaj's operations, so we might just have to do a systematic search of the entire area."
"That's something like forty square kilometers, comrade lieutenant. Do we have enough food and water to cover that area?"
"We'll stick to the helicopter as much as possible. I'm sure we have plenty of fuel in this beast, don't we, Danilenko?"
"The main fuselage tanks look like they have an hour and a half, comrade lieutenant." Danilenko checked over the pilot's shoulder. "We won't have much time to loiter."
Kalinin nodded. "This is your last chance to back out, everyone. If you want to go back, I'm going to have our friend drop off the sergeant and myself. We'll look for the Helmaj base and radio it in ourselves. You can catch the ride back to Konduz and say it was just my maniacal plan."
"I'm with you, Lieutenant Kalinin!" Danilenko instantly replied. "If we don't stop the Helmaj from here, they're just going to tie up the Soviet Army in Afghanistan even worse than the mudjehedeen already are!"
"You won't be able to speak to them if I can't help you, comrade lieutenant," Kuyvishev grinned.
"A wonderful little band of thieves you all are," Malenko grumbled to himself.
The Stinger missile was designed to be assembled without any sophisticated instructions: match the launcher tube to the targeting unit at the red rings, then twist in the direction of the arrows. It was just as easy to aim thanks to simple silhouettes spraypainted onto the launcher at the Raytheon manufacturing plant.
The shorter man flipped down the targeting scope, tracking the Hind as it traversed an almost perpendicular line across his field of view from left to right. It wasn't that hard to gauge the distance, thanks to the rangefinder lines in the scope.
When the Hind was within the 1.5-mile range of the antiaircraft missile, the man elevated the launcher a few degrees and waited for the missile to lock on. A warbling tweeeeee indicated that the supercooled nitrogen heat sensor had firmly found itself a target and was waiting for release.
He let out a cry of "Helmajin tarook!" as he flipped the safety off of the right-handed grip and squeezed the red trigger.
The Stinger missile, only five of which had yet been sent from the United States to the mudjehedeen, leapt out of the launcher as the trigger tripped a compressed-gas catapult to fling the missile safely away from its launch point. It was blown almost forty feet in the air until the rocket motor kicked in and the missile raced off, curving towards the Hind.
"Incoming missile!"
Malenkov turned hsi head towards the white smoke trail rapidly closing in from the ground. Without warning his passenger/captors, he stomped hard on the right rudder pedal and threw his cyclic control to the right, spinning the helicopter and banking it sharply to the right. A shove forward on the vertical control stick dropped the helicopter towards the ground.
Danilenko was rapidly thrown to the left wall of the chopper, hitting his head hard on the bulkhead of the cockpit. The other men, all sitting on the left cargo seats, were pinned there by the G-forces of the hard turn. Their stomachs drifted as the helicopter descended and picked up speed again.
The pop-pop-pop of the Hind's flare dispensers stunned the men as the bright red magnesium charges drifted out of the rear, trying desperately to fool the missile as Malenkov tried to face it head-on.
"Firing rockets!" the gunner called out, desperately triggering his UV-57 unguided rockets in an attempt to spook anyone on the ground into moving. The singular, rapidsvarooosh of ripple-firing rockets was followed by a series of explosions as the swift projectiles impacted on the ground.
The Stinger continued its merciless pursuit of the Hind, merely yards from the hot exhaust trails of the turboshafts when Malenkov was able to turn the helicopter in a rapid 180-degree turn. Popping the flares was a stroke of genius; the system was new to the Hind-D, but Malenkov knew the chopper well enough to make use of it.
Just moments before it hit the flares, Malenkov's quick sinking maneuver got the massive rotor clear of the missile's flight path. Seeing the heat sources that it thought it was aiming for, the merciless robotic brain of the missile commanded itself to detonate the warhead.
The Hind shook from the explosion of the ten-pound warhead, nothing significant in terms of actual strength, but enough to cause a hail of fragments to flood the space where the engines would have been.
"Nicks in the rotor!" Malenkov called out. "UHF and IFF antennas are gone, tail rotor backup hydraulics are down. Primaries are still good. Did you get anyone?"
"I've got a two-man team at our two o'clock!" the gunner called out. "They haven't—wait, they've seen us! They're readying another missile!"
"Weapons are free!" Malenkov shouted in reply.
On the ground, the shorter man was rapidly trying to assemble the second Stinger in the "coffin" box when the explosion of 57mm rockets around their position threw a shower of stone shards and fragments into the air.
The two men ran, retrieving two previously-camouflaged assault rifles and firing at the helicopter.
"These guys are good shots!" the gunner observed as the rounds they fired squarely impacted against his thick bulletproof canopy. It was like a shower of sparks against the window, which was fortunately made of thick, nearly-impenetrable Lexan plastic.
"It doesn't matter! Kill them already!"
The two men saw that there wasn't much left they could do as the four-barreled Gatling gun started to track them. The helicopter had slowed and was little more than a half-mile away.
"It looks like there's about to be two less Helmaj in the world." The gunner grinned as he lined up the heads-up display sight on the two men.
"Don't kill them!" Kalinin yelled, helping Danilenko back to his feet and back to consciousness. "We need them alive!"
"They shoot at us, they die!" the gunner shouted back, squeezing the trigger.
The Gatling gun started spinning, then it began to fire, the electrically-controlled turret moving ever so slightly to correct its aim from the recoil of the four .50-caliber barrels. The two Helmaj dove to one side each, rolling as the cigar-sized bullets kicked up dirt along a path between the two of them. The tall man was the first to dash perpendicular to the cannon as it tracked them, spewing out shells and casings all along.
"Stand still, you Helmaj bastard!" the gunner cursed, firing another stream of rockets. "Sergeant, translate us above their position! Get me as close as you can to them!"
"Takhtal kolrak!" the tall man screamed as he dove to the ground, just as a rocket exploded twenty feet behind him. "KATAL!"
"Halam!" the short man replied, hefting his rifle. The tall man ran straight for the chopper as it lowered its nose to close in. The shorter man, though, ran off to the left of the Hind.
"They split up. Dammit!" Malenkov felt the pistol at his helmet again as Kalnin made his way to the cockpit. "Comrade lieutenant, if you kill me now, we all die in the crash, so leave me the fuck alone while I try to take out two goddamn annoyances on the ground!"
"Kill them and you'll be next, comrade sergeant!" Kalinin growled.
The tall man pulled a grenade from the bandolier across his chest, dropping it into the breech of the old American M-79 slung on his back. He stopped running, dropping to a knee, but aimed the M-79 only with his left hand. He reached behind his back with his right, drawing a golden, ornate dagger and using his teeth to wrest its sheath free.
He saw the Gatling gun turn to face him; he stared the four-barreled weapon down as if facing the Devil himself.
"HELMAJIN TAROOK!" he yelled out, almost proudly, as he thrust his dagger upward into the air and fired the 40mm grenade from the M-79.
The braaaaaa of the Gatling gun's high-speed firing drowned out Kalinin's threats.
"Target's dead!" the gunner called out, straining against an evasive slide to the right. The grenade went wild, missing the chopper, as Malenko stabilized the aircraft.
"Confirmed!" Malenkov replied, his sharp eyes picking out the prostate form of the dead Helmaj. Nobody can survive a half-second burst from a Yakushev-Borzov, he thought triumphantly."Where's the other one?"
"Lost the target. Take us up and put us in a search patt—"
The Hind leapt upwards and tilted to the side wildly as an explosion erupted right under it, throwing the flight crew and soldiers against their restraints and bulkheads.
The shorter Helmaj lowered his grenade launcher in satisfaction, having run right under the helicopter as it went after his partner. Seeing the glint of the taller man's gold dagger had locked him in, knowing that he had already decided to give his life. It was not in vain, though, as he had managed to plant his 40mm high-explosive grenade right in the vulnerable underbelly of the Hind.
"Primary flight hydraulics damaged! Engine one is on fire, extinguishers are not responding!"
"We've lost the rocket pods and Swatters! Jettisoning now!"
The left-side engine of the Hind was emitting flames and smoke as the helicopter began to spiral in mid-air, throwing its occupants to the right as it spun. Malenkov stomped hard on the left rudder pedal and held it, trying to get them moving before they bottomed out. Showers of sparks and thick, black smoke erupted from the gunner's cockpit, and a series of honking alarms went off.
"We're autorotating down! Strap in and hold on!" Malenkov screamed, barely able to straighten out the spiraling flight path of the helicopter.
Kalinin and his men had taken a hard hit from the fragments of the explosion, which had blown the entire underbelly of the chopper clean away. They had a clear frame of reference, able to look directly at the spinning, rapidly approaching ground.
"The Helmaj really are everything we feared, eh, comrade lieutenant!" Kadashvili yelled over the sound of alarms and the single remaining turboshaft engine, compounded by the windblast into the cargo area.
Kalinin narrowed his eyes and reached for the handholds of the bench seat. "Brace yourselves!" he ordered. "We're not out of this yet!"
The lone remaining Helmaj observed the chopper dive, spiraling into the ground, until it impacted hard on its right side. The heavily armored fuel tanks did their job and didn't explode, but the helicopter cartwheeled on its right wing, its tail boom rending with a screech of metal as it struck the ground. The spinning rotor blades snapped off in segments, flying willy-nilly across the landscape before the helicopter settled on its left side and then its nose. It eventually fell over onto its topside after the heavily-armored cockpits gave under the multi-ton weight of the Hind.
He walked back to his assault rifle—an American M-16A2, still not yet in the hands of front-line soldiers—and slung the old grenade launcher over his shoulder. Silently, the Helmaj soldier beckoned a complex hand signal, and a short, ululating battlecry wafted out from a few hundred yards behind him.
Kalinin didn't bother checking Malenko and the gunner as he dangled, upside-down, in the cargo section of the Hind. He only needed to look at the pilot and see the disjointed angle of his head to know that the man had died on impact. The gunner's cockpit had been crushed inwards from the fall on the nose.
"Everyone all right?" Kalinin asked, coming back to his bearings.
"My back hurts from earlier, but I am alive, sir," Danilenko tentatively replied.
"I know I sprained my wrist, and the Dragunov's infrared scope attachment is shattered. The optical sight is fine. Don't know about my legs yet, comrade lieutenant," Kuyvishvev grumbled, rubbing his wrist. "What about you, Sergeant?"
"You got off lucky, you young buck. My left arm is definitely broken, comrade lieutenant, and my right leg might be in just as bad a shape."
"Nobody even pissed their pants?" Kalinin grinned a rare grin. "That must mean you're all seasoned veterans."
He held onto the metal bench with one hand and unbuckled his seat harness with another, flipping over and landing easily on his feet. He helped his men down, taking extra care with the wounded Kadashvili and Kuyvishev, just as he saw movement out of the corner of his eye.
Kalinin turned to look down the barrels of no less than ten rifles—Soviet AKMs, American M-16s, and even an Austrian Steyr AUG.
"Men," he said quietly. "We may indeed have stumbled upon the Helmaj a little bit earlier than we thought."
To be continued...
A/N and Glossary:
IDF: Israeli Defense Force; the ground-based army and combat forces.
IAF: Israeli Air Force. No explanation necessary.
Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations: The Vienna Convention, ratified by the United Nations and all member states in 1961, governs the establishment of what is more commonly known as diplomatic immunity on accredited diplomats. Basically, certain accredited and recognized members of a national embassy or consulate in another country are not subject to the laws of the host nation while they are on that nation's soil. However, given due cause, a nation can declare an accredited person "persona non grata" and basically force them out of the country. In other words, diplomatic immunity is guaranteed so long as the accredited diplomat isn't a spy.
Almost inevitably, most accredited diplomats below the assistant ambassador of most countries are usually spies. The trick is proving that, though.
FIM-92A 'Stinger' Missile: The Stinger was developed in the early 1970s to replace the aging Redeye soldier-portable surface-to-air missile system. The FIM-92A began production in 1978 and saw field deployment to US and NATO units in that year, but its historic use was in Afghanistan.
The CIA deployed almost 500 Stinger missiles to the mudjehedeen guerillas fighting the Soviet occupation forces. No confirmation of dates has ever surfaced, but it can be assumed that CIA deployment did not begin en masse until the mid-1980s, according to some Soviet accounts and unconfirmed mudjehedeen reports.
How they came to the Helmaj as early as 1981 is a mystery to which the United States government will not acknowledge. It's safe to assume that the CIA would never give such weapons to a group such as the Helmaj, who fought the Soviets and mudjehedeen with equal fervor...