"My
lord, I think... I think your book is right. 'The desert is an ocean
in which no oar is dipped' and on this ocean the Bedu go where they
please and strike where they please. This is the way the Bedu have
always fought. You're famed throughout the world for fighting in this
way and this is the way you should fight now!"
-T.E.
Lawrence, from Lawrence of Arabia
"
All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education,
wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and
public health, what
have the Romans ever done for us?"
-
John Cleese, The Life of Brian
A burgundy orb of hydrogen gas burned furiously in just about the Eastern horizon. Seeing the explosions in the distance became progressively more difficult. Mikhail the Rifle sucked one last gulp of lime fruit punch from his camelback canteen before dismounting his truck. He waved at a passing Fahd-30 AIFV and scrambled toward the town corner he planned to cover.
He rotated his arms from the shoulders, and did deep knee bends, checking for signs of fatigue. No, he could go on, even in the heavy boron carbide (B5C) plated armor he'd donned from the truck. Once again, he had an AN-94 in his hands. Strelock had made sure Mikhail had these items and a fresh Under Armour t-shirt. He'd asked the driver for his Lexan tactical goggles. Good Kevlar KM2 material made up his helmet.
Radio chatter spoke of sun dogs in the distant east; it would seem airpower was breaking the main attack. Mikhail Ruzhyo couldn't help if Vlad's strategic vision collapsed, he had a more narrow set of goals, namely killing anyone with a gun in the nearby village.
He'd broken the British Army with his small fire team, and now needed to roll up this hamlet. Their informants reported a private military company's fire team supporting a handful of Marsh Arab militia fighters inside. They had one armored vehicle comparable to the Achzarit infantry armoured vehicle.
There were Sword operatives in that town, and they needed taken out.
"The operatives inside may have killed Kuhl," he said to himself, giving a fleeting thought about the one contract soldier he'd deemed on his level. Mikhail had respected Kuhl, a former German Spetznez member, and by extension, he respected his killers. They'd tracked Kuhl around the world, found him, and didn't take him back alive.
Ruzhyo had vowed not to be pursued so easily. But since Anna's passing, such matters are reduced to the same urgency as commanding a chess board.
Peter Strelock ran in the same direction as Ruzhyo, no doubt for a similar reason. Despite the Shooter's head start, the Rifle immersed his feet in the shallow briny fenland first. He kept pedaling. It smelt dead, and of salt. The malleable black bottom sucked him in, clutching violently to his protesting kicks. He crouched, willingly enmeshing in the muck.
He psychically rebounded from the deathly stench, fighting his way down. To be concealed is to be alive. To be exposed is to die. The swamp is the only camouflage in this whole bald nation, save the steeps of the Kurdish region. Rule one of understanding Iraq is that God hates the country. Rule two is that if God hates a country, the Americans will show up eventually. Bad things seek out bad places, and bad places are magnets for Americans. Rule three is to extend American traits to the British. Rule four is to recognize that all rules concerning Iraq are applicable to Murphy's Law, and if there are any more such laws, Mikhail Ruzhyo will find them before his life expires.
Americans will doubtlessly make a bellicose entrance in Chechnya one day; misery exists there, too. Besides, Vladimir lives there.
Meanwhile
The lead Al Fahd armored personnel carrier, sporting a venerable BMP-2 turret up top, accelerates with the throttle constricting no fuel from the animated pistons as it jars an obstruction of donkey carts and oil drums. The foil, a passive sentinel of formidable weight, obstructed. The terrible collision shakes lucidity from the driver's mind, but liberates sandbags from the interiors of the carts and drums, where they fall underfoot, granting traction for a climb.
The thick treads of the lead wheels grip tightly, the clinging leads to climbing, then a forward lurch. Lead wheels crest the top, still turning, capitalizing on the high center of gravity of the carts, which are now beginning to tumble. The barrier shakes, as if being pulled down.
Behind a cinder block structure, the Gurkha, Fraser Singe, watches on, radio detonator trembling in one hand, waiting for the pounce. Singe tries training his eyes on the undercarriage of the formidable vehicle, imagining a target. It lines up. He depresses the button. He hears a charge crack, then a secondary steel-on-steel puncture sound, and an opening rip.
The blast sparked no fire, a scant light display, and as much noise as a 120mm cannon, but the Fahd APC was dead on impact. Molina had molded some C4 bricks into a nest for a steel plate to form a deadly platter charge. Robin said the plate would impact the APC's bottom at 6000 feet per second, puncturing the hull before spiraling through the interior compartments.
Singe is convinced that's what occurred, for life is no longer evident in that vehicle. The turret lacked life, and weight released from the accelerator, for the wheels desisted that one monotonous activity of turning. Tracers cut the air above the agora to Singe's flank. A fusillade of 30mm and 12.7mm shells walking into the T-72 chassis the Nepalese soldier considers home. The splattering is rattling, and infuriating, but the quad-fifties return bursts, almost casually. Inside were Marsh Arabs, young men that didn't grow up with Gameboys or pocket calculators, operating electronics built by Israelis, of all people, more advanced than those found in American vehicles.
It dawns on Fraser how unreal this is. An intense gunfight such as this must seem antiseptic in that tank hull, where a kid under twenty years of age operated a control yoke to gun down men and vehicles on an LCD screen. It must seem like playing a PS 2 without even knowing what an Atari 2600 is like. The farm boys have become Jedi.
The rumbling from the quad guns sounds more persistent and less staccato than the automatic weapons of custom. They are as water cannons, cleaning mud from where they caked on a Cadillac your older cousins took into the mountain roads after a rainy day.
Those vehicles Fraser can't see, but he imagines they can't be much tougher than the aircraft the M3P guns can destroy in an instant. Possibly, they're stinky Swiss now, holed but perhaps still vital. They must be swerving to avoid the narrow field of fire the street provides, perhaps going for another barrier, and another entrance.
Yes, they're pummeling an adjacent barrier. He hears the strain to climb. Singe can pray Molina has it covered, that the Ma'dan built it just as well, or better, to keep the beast out entirely. No, the deadly dish, Molina's platter, blasts off, a flight aborted transiently. Now the tracks on that T-72 chassis respond to the engine revving up. Fraser chases after it. He wants to put the built-in 60mm mortar to work against pockets of men and machines. They need attrition before the Nepalese fighter becomes comfortable that his recruits can handle them.
Camp William Eaton
Roger Gordian had imagined the Marines he'd supported in 1968, when they'd been stuck in a hole, pulling themselves through a dilemma the venerable French Paras had failed. But this wasn't Dien Bien Phu or Khe Sahn. There are no neighboring hills, and this, as TE Lawrence called it, was a land ocean. The sheer speed of the motorized trenching had surprised and alarmed the veteran/businessman, as did the overall brilliance of the enemy's concealment and logistical abilities.
None of these things he could adequately articulate to his wife, Ashley, over the phone.
"I have the best people with me, and I'm safe under these thick walls," he'd told her. He'd be ok, because big strapping men stayed between him and the bad guys. Things look more spectacular on TV. Remember those training films I showed you, Honey? They missed targets six feet in front of them, and when I took you out shooting that Saturday, remember? We both shot the centers of our targets. My guys, whom I have great faith in, are far better than we are.
A record flipped over in Nimec's jukebox. Tales of Brave Ulysses by Cream emanated from the speakers. He didn't recognize it, so he peeked over to see the title. It seemed oddly appropriate. Memories of songs had been one of the things he'd held on to when he'd been a guest of Uncle Ho's children so long ago. Sunshine of Your Love had actually been the song he'd been humming when the Christmas bombings of Linebacker II told him Americans like him were still thrashing his hosts. Hope was there, and hope is here. Strange that something as innocuous as blues or rock could transfigure into a meaningful motif such as this. He tried telling Ashley this. She understood.
He felt ready to crash from exhaustion, so he swore away from his coffee, which had waxed to tepidness atop a saucer. Instead, he nestled an almond wafer in the crook of two fingers and schlepped to his office cot. Phone in one hand, he guillotined a rationed slice, and commenced grinding it to fragments. The ex-combat pilot let an audible groan enter his phone receiver as he reclined on the mattress. He promptly clarified that his body bore no injuries, preempting a query from the wife.
"But I am in need of rest. I'll call you back at," he browsed his watch, "0800. Check the wall clock I have labeled Baghdad. I'll be off duty, so if we have a tac alert and forget, I'll take your call. Don't worry."
He became fully relaxed at last, and asked the consequential questions about home. His daughter's greyhounds were always a welcome topic of discussion, as were the tales of gang violence in San Jose, oddly enough. They seemed quaint and innocent to him, for he always delighted in drawing parallels between the so-called immigration threat of Mexicans in SoCal to those of Irish and Italians of the old mafia days. Like those two ethnic tides, they'll move from the street mafia to the Catholic mafia, becoming the backbone of law enforcement and the military- then other portions of respectable American life, he said. She'd heard him say it all before, and allowed him to wax philosophical on the subject, as he often did.
"The Air Force, or Marines, or wherever they go, will shape them into fine gentlemen someday, much like this Molina kid I have here." She may have felt differently, Roger did not know, but it had become a routine they played through sometimes. It always passed slowly. She asked him when he'd be back, as she always did, and it ached the same way, so he did as he must, he left a shallow print of hope she could entertain, but still tell the strict truth.
"I have the scheduled vacation coming up," said he, imparting information Ashley knew about. Her sigh was merciful, not the killer she'd give to punish him. It was relaxing. She let him go.
"I love you, too."
San Jose, California
"I bet I'm the only person in this room that had the sensible direction not to learn Visual Basic first," muttered the young Jay Gridley, as he sat studiously with his laptop on an office floor. He'd distributed several compact disks of bootable operating systems, so his bewildered collogues could once again make use of their locked machines. His machine was the only one available for chasing the intruder's declared internet protocol number to a proxy server he'd worked through.
Jay considered himself fortunate to have reached it before the perp had erased the server's records. Quickly, he reversed the Boolean logic of the admin password protection, the same way the perpetrator does, making true false, so that any incorrect password gave him entry to the administration records.
He found the intruder, and followed. It led to a router. Scanning for entrances, he found it impossible to enter through the firewalls, so he pinged it to find it's physical location, then remotely accessed machines from different parts of the globe, so they could ping it as well.
"I have a physical location for this router. It's located in Charlottesville, Virginia. I have the address pinned down, now I need you to call Charlottesville Police Department to take a look at it. Move!"
The network administrator flipped open his phone, paused, and searched Yellow Book for the number. Jay fed him some instructions on what to say, then immersed in his problem.
"I just hope they'll know how to open a port once they get there," he sighed, finding no open ports. Could it really be possible he won't use this router again? Jay became positive, after seeing the router fade from the web.
"Boss," hailed Jay, "when a patrol car gets there, he'll need a bootable OS to get us around the login password. I need the address to the officer's laptop in order to send it over."
The boss held one finger up as if to say "wait a minute," then relayed the request via a private message. Jay pasted it into the entry field, and entered, send a .rar folder containing DSL (Damn small Linux), and installed it.
"I just pray the officer can burn a CD and drop it in a tray," he muttered, just before relaying an instruction through his boss to do just that.
"The officer arrived on scene," said the boss. Jay noticed, as the officer typed a message saying so. "Fedora Core 2," muttered the hacker, "he encrypted the desktop." Smart, but not good enough. Jay knew of one buffer overflow exploit in Fedora 2. Jay dropped his own clone C compiler into the memory stack, and pointed the return address toward that, rather than the real one. Once again, his wonderful compiler reversed the Boolean logic on the security, making what was once secure the polar opposite; insecure. What came next was the perfect line for all hacker movies.
"I'm in."
Outside Camp William Eaton
Soil soft. Soil loamy. Soil comforting. Movement bad, sky pretty. Drowsy thoughts are for civilians, while Terrance Arthur Peel is a soldier, a profession that also serves as a special verb. Soldiering is going about something in a hardcore manner. Someone who is soldiering is showing grit, animation despite pain and danger. Soldiering captures and protects stuff, therefore making soldiering a requisite for building civilization, and for altering the outside world. Dynamically altering the world, that is the essence of the service Terrance Arthur Peel provides for his employers. That service of soldiering is what feeds Terrance Arthur Peel, what allows him to accumulate his own stuff. Soldiering requires animation, and the drive to continue motion until a geopolitical result is achieved for the employer.
T.A.P. found traction, resolve, to drag his body from the ditch, under a gap in the sentry gun screen. A collapsed guard tower, still smoking on the wrecked shack up top, granted cover from optics, and he discovered a dead zone between a berm and the camp's major concrete dome, a huge sports arena-sized structure.
His weariness had given him a tunnel vision of sorts, for he startled when fighter tapped him on his clinched shoulder. He looked Somali, but lacking the wad of khat typical of that breed of fighter. He wore tinted goggles and the six-pattern fatigues of one of the sappers.
"Sir," said he, "I found their deep freezer room over here. This is where we're making the breech," he clarified. He led the British leader over. "Here's the vent where they release heat from it. Freon comes out here." He pointed. "My breeching charge can widen the gap enough to crawl through. I hope."
He pasted the big plastique circle where he pointed, adjacent to the vent, and jabbed a pencil in the middle. Ready.
"Fire in th' hole!"
The detonation of the plastique charge collapsed a thin copper layer, morphing it into a furious molten serpent, which jetted an angry flaming heat tip through the concrete and steel a decimal under the speed of light, displacing the barrier. Spalling of molten metal splattered against frozen meat, leaving burns, and ice cream, leaving delicious puddles. The hole left by the molten jet merged with the exhaust vent just enough to fit one gangly Somali through.
"Nice," said Tap, before sliding in. He raked one hand through an open ice cream carton, and savored the chill. It didn't have to strike him that the Somali and he were nearly instinctively following perhaps the most important maxim listed in every American/western land forces field manual, that agile action trumps inaction, even if the most simplistic plan is implemented.
The Somali sapper worked his knife through the rubber seal, then slide a fiber optic camera through the opening.
"What's your name?"
"Sir, I am named for the holy prophet Jesus."
"I know that prophet, Jesus. In fact, I've spoken to him a few times, with the army chaplain."
"Blessings be upon you," said the Somali named after Jesus, while he finished his visual sweep of the hall, "the kitchen is right ahead. I see as many as four cooks going in and out in intervals." He looked over his shoulder and grinned. "They are armed with kitchen utensils."
The International (Green) Zone, Baghdad
By Mario Pazzi, International Press
Lt. Commander Thad Blaine of the Air National Guard's 103rd Fighter Wing out of Connecticut surveyed the green zone and Baghdad International Airport after the stunning assault. He made a number of modified figure-eight passes over the area the air strike had made the devastating swath, making a more precise evaluation than the initial reports had inferred.
He found that the damage appeared superficial from a couple thousand feet up, in correlation with war blogger Yoshi Von's internet dispatch, which observed that few of the early radio transmissions gave first-hand accounts of spotting dead among the rubble.
As reports continue to pile in, the Central Intelligence Agency confirms their wounded intelligence handler, who's name isn't being release, is no longer in critical condition. This man lost an arm while contacting an informant in one of the open streets. The wound was indeed caused by shrapnel. The green zone hospital is concurring with dispatches that the invading fighters had strafed civilians in Baghdad, and Presidential Envoy Paul Bremer confirms that a 30mm shell obliterated his laptop in the Al Rashid Hotel.
As for damage to critical infrastructure, the14th of July Bridge is once again closed due to damage, the air traffic control tower took a hit of indeterminate damage, and was evacuated, and only the durable A-10 is cleared to takeoff, due to fears of structural damage to airframes. CENTCOM is hustling to clear a flight of F-16C fighter-bombers to cover the skies.
Meanwhile, insurgent mortars continue to fall on police precincts.
Track backs:
"Heh"- Instatalkinghead
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Charlottesville, Virginia
The officer thought back to criminal justice. Yep, He is within his right to search the room for weapons. The supreme court acknowledged the danger in not allowing an officer to conduct a search for safety's sake. He rifled around, but the room seemed immaculate. One thing stood out, a cardboard parcel box, with a return address to Santa Barbara, California.
Beowulf Swords. Whoever he had put this computer and router here had ordered a sword once. I can think of a recent unsolved case involving a sword attack. He pressed the redial button on his cell.
"Hey, I found some forensic evidence here, guys. Could you look up some online purchase records for me? Thanks. Let me dial a friend in a nearby department." He dispatched it through the operator.
"Walther, Morrison, what kind of sword was it used in that hospital slaying? A Shirasaya? Thanks. Yeah, I found the cardboard box it was mailed in. Sure, you can come over! By the way, how's that spiteful little imp? Is he still a samurai fighting for love and gold?"
San Jose, California
"I now have the router's logs. He didn't manage to erase them before I got a screen capture of the records. I see everyone who has come through this network, and I can determine that our guy travels through Europe. Could he be a backpacker?" Jay Gridley let others gaze
"But look," pointed Tom, "the earliest in the records correlate with the latest location in that they approach the Caucuses Mountain Range. It is as if he backpacks from their to Dover, England, and back."
"Exactly," concurred Jay, "our intruder seems to be a Russian or Chechen." Jay swore. "That makes it difficult to arrest him, doesn't it?"
A coworker shared a news article.
"Could this same guy have taken control of those satellites?" Jay wondered. "He's definitely not just some script kiddy scribbling graffiti."
Another man at his computer passed on sales records about the sword, while someone else found a Chechen patient on file at the hospital where the attack had occurred.
"A pancreatic cancer patient from Chechnya died the day of that attack. Get this, her husband had served as a member of Spetznez before moving into a black operations program."
Jay took in the information, as the boss passed it on to the police.
"I don't get it. Is he a Chechen separatist? Then why did he commandeer those satellites and drop them on caves around Peshawar, Pakistan? Would his Jihadist allies not be from there?"
It was then that the boss of all bosses in the company, Megan Breen, Roger Gordian's chosen successor, walked in.
"Perhaps our guy is a Sufi and loathes the Wahabbi movement." Jay nodded appreciatively. "In any case, we've found who is responsible for the attack."
Jay contradicted her.
"Not quite. The router logs come with dates, too. Our Spaznet or whatever guy-" "Spetznez," Breen corrected. "Whatever. I have him in the hospital parking lot while our cracker is in Dover. Now, unless he was hacking through a proxy while killing a street gang, or he's an agent of our cracker."
The Ma'dan Village
Mikhail Ruzhyo ended his commando crawl in the nadir of the bog, along a shelf. The muzzle break of his Abakan peaked just above the muck. A large brick-sized hole in one wall exposed an opening for one Marsh Arab machine gunner. He wore armor, and stayed back in his hole, making a difficult shot. The Chechen assumed Peter had signaled Grigory, for a sapper ran hard on one flank of the machine gunner's sight, inducing a forward lean. Mike took his double-tap shot, the type the Abakan rifle is known for, then hauling his form from the water in a mad scramble for a grove of grapes ahead. He dove, hitting a shallow spot under a palm.
A Ma'dan marksman, intent on revenge, leaned from a balcony, probing for a shot, but Peter, the Shooter, flashed his muzzle, caught the center of the Marsh Arab's mass, distracted him.
Time to run again. He did. Briefly, the interlocked field of fire abated. He crossed the open space, jumped the reed fence, and spread flat against the thick cinderblock wall giving the Marsh Arab militia so much protection.
Camp William Eaton
Less bloodshot after a few hours of aggravated sleep, Vince Scull's trademark basset hound eyes followed crosshairs overlay the nape of a fleeing fighter's neck. Crunch.
They'd finally managed to toss a satchel charge close enough to the anti-mortar Phalanx gun to render it inoperable, but the forced retreat continued that morning, as armored vehicles drove in more platforms.
"We lost the bulldozer's right track this time," choked the analyst. "Now we almost have a stationary gun out there now. Alright, guys, we can't move the dozer ahead anymore, and I don't want to move the other vehicles ahead to take a pounding. Rollie?"
The Cajun Grunted.
"I concur, but we still need to extend the perimeter. This would be the best time to get the hedgehogs out of the garage." The hedgehogs were six-wheeled trashcan-shaped androids with shotguns, and have been used by Sword for perimeter security in the past, but never before to lead an assault.
The last time Rollie had put them to use was at Moto Grosso Do Sol, Brazil, the International Space Station plant, where Siegfried Kuhl had completely changed his life, and the direction of the Sword team. It wasn't the fault of the robots. They'd shown ample muscle in that confrontation. No, the assaulting team had simply been too much, and the machines had been using non-lethal weapons while pitted against a life-fire commando team. They could manage a sweep-up operation.
Their previously non-lethal Remington 870 shotguns (with the Knoxx Industry's drum barrel magazine conversion kit) came to Iraq with flechette and buckshot rounds, and the highly disturbing dragon's breath™ pyro-spewing round as the last in the magazine. The shotguns came in tandem with a .223 carbine of similar size to the shotgun. These were either cut-down AR-15s or M4 carbines, and came installed in the bank where the water cannons of old were removed.
"Sounds like a plan. We've put the bodies of our personnel in too much danger already."
The Village
Mikhail Ruzhyo pulled the safety ring and hurled the heavy, old, devastating concussion grenade known as the Russian RKG-3 with the might his throwing arm could muster. He ducked for cover a moment before the detonator ignited the charge. The tank destroying charge, not fired like an anticipated RPG-7 round, not deposited like a plastique charge, but agilely tossed into position like only a hand grenade could, fell against the interior of the mule-cart barrier, clearing a breech for Mike the Rifle.
His throw, performed parallel to the barrier, couldn't be countered by the defenders' coverage. He had them surprised. Strelock made it to cover behind the thickest palm, which gave him fairly safe coverage of the breech. Mike radioed him.
"Strelock, is it clear?"
"Da, but the armor is on the move."
"Roger. I want an assault team to take down the front door immediately."
"Roger. A strike team will take the front door." A Fahd backed to the breech. A rooftop Keffyia-wearing Arab, lying prone and propped on his elbows, landed an ineffective rifle grenade on the vehicle roof. Peter and Mikhail both snapped rounds at him.
All clear, the hulk's armored door pounced open, and out ran a stack of combatants in black shining SWAT battle dress, the lead man clutching a riot shield and a 10mm Glock model 29 in his right hand. The others followed with P90 submachine guns.
Vladimir had put considerable expense into outfitting the primary strike team.
A shotgun breeched the door, and in charged the shielded leader. Ruzhyo didn't see the entrance, but knew exactly how the stack would move. The concussion grenade, the shouted orders, the boots climbing stairs, he recognized all those sounds, but the enemy's counter-fire, it remained muted.
…
"Fallback!"
One black suit sprinted out, heeding Ruzhyo's shouted plea, but no other, for a crushing semtex charge imploded the heavy cinderblock structure. Dust wafted out.
"We lost our strike team," reported the Chechen, as he sprinted into the house.
Inside
He moved among the black shells cluttering the floor. These were no longer people, thanks to the wave compression from the wired charges. The slick garnet splattering also didn't draw his interest. What interested him was victory.
"Guard the door," said he, dropping a rope through the window. He keyed his radio again.
"Strelock, climb up here, and bring The Hero with you."
He tied the rope down and searched for a tunnel way. He trotted into a dark bedroom. The light bulb had exploded under the pressure, like many other objects. His eyes looked for crookedness, and found a wooden chest not aligned. It had been moved.
Brusquely, the Chechen kicked it aside, fell to both knees, and pounded the floor. It bucked. Eagerly, he dug ten fingertips around a loose tile, and discovered the tunnel he sought.
"I found what I was looking for," shouted he, one beat after hearing Peter's footfall.
"Found what?"
"A tunnel. They evacuated down here." Job Geroj joined them in the room.
"I need someone to venture in," stated the Chechen, "but I don't want it to be a complete suicide mission. Do we have any Bangalore torpedoes?"
"Right here," said the Armenian, displaying a long thin tube for the Spetznez officers. "I can snake this over, and really surprise them."
"Make it so."
Meanwhile
Above in the giant desert cerulean plane, Toby's UH-60 plummeted under the 14.5mm guns of an enemy technical. He cradled Rose as the rotary-winged airframe struck the gravelly desert floor, snapping away the tail, and sending the body into a terrifying tumble.
When motion receded, he recalled no details of the fall, save his cradling effort, which, after peering into his arms, he deemed successful.
"Are you hurt?" Rosencrans pushed her weight against his arm, groaned.
"I'm dizzy. If we're still in Indian Country, we'll need to call in help fast."
Toby felt around as the blinding dust settled from the rotor wash.
"Yeah. I don't know where we are, exactly. Hey pilot-!"
The Navy man witnessed the slumped head, and felt for a pulse.
"Stop touching me- nasty!" The chopper pilot, Toby called him a helo pilot, chuckled, unbuckled, and struggled to free his chest from the pressing steering column.
"We lost our machine gunner." Toby swiveled his head for the voice, it was the lawyer's, and it sounded frightened. "He fell out- I don't know where he is!"
The bird lay on one side, so Gairden had to pull his body over the side to reach the ground.
"Move your legs, Chet." After making it over the lip, he looked around, saw the dusty wake of a vehicle. "Tangos incoming," said he curtly, "find someone on the tac frequencies, and bring in help!"
Camp William Eaton
"Hello, America, this is Geraldo Gutierrez reporting to you from above the battle space in a just lovely nimble Little Bird helicopter, piloted a former member of our venerable Marine Corp. Hoorah!"
Paul Evens took to the air as a gunship, carrying only the reporter and cameraman with him. With rockets and miniguns, he pledged to quickly suppress any flare-ups, saving the hedgehog robots from doom, but until that time, he circled idly, letting these reporters get great exclusive footage, and an interview.
Geraldo: "So Marine, you served in Cobra gunship missions in three conflicts?"
Paul: "Four."
Geraldo: "Four? Where?"
Paul: "Operation Just Cause, 1989, Panama, Operation Desert Shield/Desert Storm, 1991, Operation Restore Hope, Somalia, 1993, and Operation Enduring Freedom, Afghanistan, 2001, and those were just the ones with active combat. Cobra missions dotted the globe in the nineties in all sort of peacekeeping missions."
This felt right, flying the little bird helicopter, supporting soldiers in Southern Iraq. It was almost like 1991 again. He saw retreating enemy, as providence would have it. This was how it was supposed to be.
"Down a bit south from here, I demolished the whole Republican Guard over ten years ago. They were bad guys, and we'd completely punished them for looting the good people of Kuwait. I honestly believe what we were doing was dispensing justice on that highway. They weren't innocent, not by a long shot. I just wish we had a shot at Saddam and his palaces, but it didn't happen then, and I had to wait over a whole decade for a chance to make things right. So, here I am today."
Paul gently pitched the nose down with the cyclic control, then snap-turned to give the cameraman a chance to shoot still frame from the port side.
"Those should work well in a magazine," the pilot smugly commented. "No other photographer will have footage of R2D2 fighting the tangos, I can tell you that."
Indeed. The camera captured strobe lighting and pulsating lasers emanating from the bots, almost as if they took on the burden of making a rave party, not war.
"Those lighting effects may cause convulsive reactions similar to epileptic seizures from the right range," explained Paul, "and those effects are coupled with sound waves inducing similar nausea in the stomach. We think our robots can then pretty much run over them, as long as they don't have countermeasures."
"Now watch this."
He switched his radio frequency, and shouted what sounded to Geraldo as grid coordinates. He wondered if he actually witnessed the calling in of destructive artillery.
"See those cars?" The marine pointed, briefly removing one hand from the collective. "They go boom!"
Seconds passed. Geraldo saw no shells.
"Wait…"
Gray and orange bloomed over the Nissan trucks. The television journalist just hoped it looked spectacular on tape.
"Those pickups were technically technicals, roving platforms for crew-served heavy guns that would have outranged hedgehog robots. I guess those in charge didn't cover that contingency, and that's why I'm here, to do just that."
A moment later, the radio squelched.
"Come in, stranger," urged Paul nonchalantly.
"(Hiss) Mayday! (hiss)"
Huh?
Rollie interjected on the radio.
"Evens, that's the chopper that came in to arrest you last night. Can you do an emergency extraction?"
Visibly to Geraldo's eyes, he shrugged.
"Sure thing, Boss," he quickly glanced to his rear, "you two," shouted he, "I have some rifles tied down there. We're dropping into a hot zone, so the need may arise where you're needed. Just don't shoot those Navy guys!"
Camp William Eaton
Peel followed Jesus. Both handled Ak74M 5.45x39mm automatic rifles, the standard arm of the Russian military, with the bayonets fixed. They'd get close.
An explosive bolt freed the freezer door. The Somali Jesus stormed for the kitchen, moving his muzzle over the chest of the nearest chef. Claret plumes jutted out to the soundtrack of staccato hammering. As one garnet-dyed chef folded over, the one he eclipsed let slip a surgical steel knife against the sapper's chest, not phasing his trigger-finger. Another crumpled, while a third chef flared a grease fire…not phasing the sapper's trigger-finger.
He leaped beyond the prostrate chefs, entering the grand mess, where tables lined up with a dining crowd. Peel and the sapper Jesus fanned apart, raking opposing ends of the open space, while unarmed victims dropped with overturned tables, ducking low under the barrage.
Both their magazines ran dry, and they slipped in fresh spares, before resuming their reaping. Peel walked his fire down the column of prone bodies, stepping in alignment with them, where the tables no longer shielded them. The Somali did the same.
The Englishman overheard his comrade praising God. Peel wondered if his Jihadist friend would claim a bonus in his afterlife. Few of his ilk stand up well to organized militaries in straight combat. He chunked a smoke grenade to the entrance, where security guards just made their way over.
"Jesus, take cover!" The Somali's grenade, a fragmentation type, landed behind the smoke. Figuring overwhelming force trumped the need to conserve, Peel contributed an excess grenade.
They moved beneath the smoke, uncertain of the aegis the shroud provided, but stretching their asset for every datum of value. Peel considered taking a human shield, but shook away the temptation. It would only slow the assault, as ad hoc and desperate as it was. He'd closed the distance to mere meters from the double door mess exit, and realized the security had temporarily fallen back. The British commando could fix that.
"Alright, Mogadishu Man, rake over these bodies to make certain they're dead!"
Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang.
Peel kept low as they rushed in. His bayonet in his left hand, and his field knife in his right, he plunged forward into soft guts. The wounds made sucking sounds, then leaking ones, and two faces, staring at his Anglo callousness, turned ashen.
"We don't have much time," pronounced the Englishman, as his Somali associate joined his side. He pointed at the sapper's fiber optic scope. "Check the corners."
"Yes, Sir."
Caucasus Mountains
Zemya's text message carried merit in brevity, reading simply "Wall breeched." Minutes later, "Ruzhyo seized house." Finally came "helicopter down." The threads were tying together tightly. The setback was the camp. The Sword personnel had managed a counter-offensive in the dawn's early light, shunting away a flush of high-end military expenses and Iranian armor. They had sailed over the sand ocean, depositing hired militiamen all night, an endless wealth of them, no doubt leaving the desired impression on the Western public.
But still, he'd expected more from that Englishman Peel. He expected close-quarters fighting inside, and a breeching of the reactor core.
A message from the instant messenger:
Sheik Baby: "The batter (Peel) is in."
Vladimir typed back.
Wheelman: "Wot do u mean?"
Sheik Baby: "Hez n da batter's box (the compound)."
Wheelman: "R U serious!"
Sheik Baby: "I'm (positive sign)."
Wheelman: "Ur plus?"
Sheik Baby: "I'm positive"
Sheik Baby: "Oops! Hit enter there! I'm positive he's personally inside."
Wheelman: "Gr8!"
Sheik Baby: "He's in with a sapper, but he's a n00b : ("
Wheelman: "I C. BRB."
Sheik Baby: "OK."
Looking deep into the abyss of twenty-four hours news coverage of smoldering sorrow concentrated on a riverbed, the Russian-turned-Chechen mentally retraced his operations. Iran was a practical dark spot for western human intelligence, so he doubted very much any trace-back of today's operations back to him, and his hit on Gordian's San Jose operation ranked no higher than a cyber crime. No, the rods of God he'd pummeled into the mountainsides of Peshawar signaled to the Americans and British that the most powerful movement in Chechnya had rejected the standard of exporting barbarism into the entire world. Those slugs from space could have just as easily have erased Los Angeles from the planet, but the Chechen had declined that slaughter.
No, as far as the intelligence community are concerned, the American leadership are indebted to the Chechen for wiping out the headship of their enemy instead.
Ah, don't escape into reflection now. Only a few hours more. Next on the agenda is-
"Sonja, let's have Darjeeling tea on the veranda. That sounds pleasant, wouldn't you agree?" His secretary-bodyguard-maid raised one eyebrow under the pane of her horn rims. Vlad noticed the gesture.
"Here we are beside the Elbrus. Let's get out of this lodge and enjoy it!" She relented. Cabin fever had been robbing her vitality, she knew. She gave a vigorous shrug and stretched her upper limbs before holstering the pistol she kept on the desk.
Plenkanhov watched her pad over to the gas stove, where she readied a kettle for brewing. He'd hoped they'd be able to share lodging on the pristine Southwest Russian glade for a longer stay, but, alas, someone out there managed to connect too many dots. Though the great gambler he was, Vladimir held a firm respect for a few able minds within states hostile to his greater aims. But.. this domain comes in a secluded form.
He could be extradited, anyway, especially if the Americans link him to Chechen separatist movements. Such links have already been found, thought he, seeing the story of the hospital attack leaked in the Baltimore Sun Online.
Chechnya would be beyond their clenching span, but still possibly under the hard boot of the Russian war machine.
Clatter. The tea, it has steeped. Sonja, as if following the customary art of tea brewing, daintily poured two cups atop two saucers on one tray. Dainty, she couldn't have that describe her, not if she were to be his closest bodyguard through this ordeal.
Wheelman: "Heads up, you have A-10s on a short ETA, and some Royal Navy Harriers further away."
Sheik Baby: "Roger. We picked up the Hog."
Wheelman: "Good luck, and happy hunting."
Sheik Baby: "May the force be with you, Allah willing : )"
"May the force be with you, friends," echoed the hacker, signing off. Next on the agenda,
Darjeeling tea and Sonja on a sky lift. Bliss.
Camp William Eaton
Peel listened attentively, hearing the patter of boots retreating from his bouncing grenade.
"I'm with you, Jesus," shouted he, pursuing the Somali down the bright corridor.
"I got it," proclaimed the lanky black man, clutching the grenade- which still housed the pin and spoon. The Englishman congratulated him, and then fixed a stick to a barricaded dorm door. Barricades all over dropped as klaxons nagged the system to lock up.
"Fire in the hole!" Smoke and clattering signaled the emergence of the blasted open door. Fearing the enigmatic shroud, TAP sprayed the room, as he did in a previous fashion, one room down. Nothing stirred, but still he kept attentive crosshairs weaving at torso-height.
"Clear!" He declared.
Meanwhile, at the village
A dark and narrow environment enclosed on all sides by dust and humus surrounded Job Geroj, the hero. His name, by any rational standard, wasn't a misnomer, for those limited only to the minimum standard of placing the collective above the individual wouldn't voluntarily crawl through this narrow tunnel, knowing the risks. The Bangalore torpedo, which he had angling toward the lip of the tunnel, provided a mitigating factor.
He rammed one connecting sieve up another end, lengthening his clearing device, then, straining, gave it a push. It slide, lifting from the hole. The nose sleeve crested, leaned, almost shaking free of the other attachments.
Then, he gently affixed an empty pipe attachment, and pushed again. Then came the excitement. Backpedaling in a dark tunnel. In this situation, the nightmare was much worse going backward than forward. He'd managed to feel for booby traps with his hands, which came as a natural process, but in reverse, he experienced the reality of having to feel for potential traps- those he may have missed- through the soles of his feet.
Having to, nuts! Instead, he took on irreverence toward danger, backpedaling quickly, then dropping prone, with the detonator in his hand. Only a few feet of thin air and a Kevlar KM2 helmet shielded him from the blast he inflicted.
The chamber punctuated the sonic rupture, shaking his inner ear. Vertigo ensued. Direction grew distorted, and whole clumps of dirt suffocated him through his facial orifices, despite his foresight in wrapping his features in a wet bandanna. Pressure weighted on his back. A partial collapse occurred, despite his clever engineering of a modest rocket stage in his torpedo, which popped many of his extensions out of the tunnel. Even so, the hero, the Armenian hero of the mercenary world, willed his body to reverse his insertion into the darkness. The Rifle called.
"Hero!" He groaned back an unintelligible mutter, then gritted his teeth to resume a forward locomotion. One hand dangled around his waistband, managing to firmly clutch the Yarygin pistol he desired. It came to the fore, over the shattered remnants of his helmet, which he let fall before his shoulders.
The Yarygin Pya he'd had roughly a year to become used to, although on hits he'd usually carried western guns, for that was the region of the world he operated. Here was different. The region was flush in ordinance of a few various calibers, and everything was either of a NATO standard, or a separate Warsaw bloc size. Ergo, Makarov or Luger Parabellum pistol ammunition were the norms. That suited him just fine.
So dank, so dusty, and so dim was his ambiance, but his identity remained the hero, so he trudged until lighting hit his retina, and let his CR gas grenade clenching hand dangle over the earthen lip.
POV overhead
The description of tear gas as a gas is actually a misnomer, for it is actually a solid dispersed in small particles- like ricin or anthrax, but the dispersal as a particulate mist renders the physical differences practically meaningless. The particular agent wafting in from the market floor was actually crystalline in nature, and disastrous when in contact with humans.
Walid, a boy of a young age, coughed through his red-and-white checkered Keffiya, which he attempted blockage of the "gas" with, while his lean reed-bender hands felt for the noxious source. They brushed a cylinder.
"How perfect and glorified Allah is," exclaimed the boy, as those basket-weaving hands clutched the cylinder. "Now be heroic before Molina and God," he urged, but, it refused to budge!
"Allahu ackbar!" He prayed, as a figure, lurched from the hole, pistol-whipping him aside the temple, shocking the frontal lobe dead.
"No, he isn't great," gasped the blistering Armenian, "I don't believe it!" Nauseous from inhalation, he swiftly stubbed his toe at the boy's target, sailing to a far corner, among a crate of ammunition boxes, and a single torn apart body. He whipped furiously at his running nose, shut his blurry eyes, and felt his way back down.
Ruzhyo's tunnel entrance
"We're losing momentum," the Chechen declared, impatiently leering at the seconds hand of his Rolex. "I'm bringing him back." So he kneeled, flashing a handheld beam down the tube.
"Stop that," protested a hoarse throat. The hero returned, with a completely swollen face. Red puffiness circumscribed his eyes. Secretions dribbled from his nose to the bandana, which then lay wrapped across his neck. It was the physical testimony of the existence of a savage blistering agent. CR, more irritating than even the CN no longer used for riot control, still sold as a less-than-lethal law enforcement tool. Considering, someone making a self-inflicting use of it must be acknowledged for going well above and beyond.
"Men, behold. This is why we call him The Hero!" Mikhail waved his hand to gesture at the Armenian, before lowering that hand to lift him up. Job graciously latched on.
"Oh, I'm sorry!" Mike nervously released him, ashamed at shifting the punji stake jutting from the erstwhile tunnel rat's hand.
A medical technician climbed through the upstairs window to treat the dibenzoxazepine (CR) sufferer, while Mikhail commanded additional militants to storm the tunnel.
"Argh!" The medic screamed. "Scorpions!" Amid the chaos of men clamoring, a shriek about a phobia-inducing creature could break down the mishmash of units cobbled into the house.
"Apply the leech therapy, and cigarette the suckers!" A non-smoker, the Chechen still carried a "loosie" for anyone he may share a trench with. He fanned a chrome Zippo under it, getting that flame to nibble at the tip.
"Here," he passed it over, then death-glared at his nascent tunnel rats, "reach your objective now!"
Overhead
This is the hot moment, when the Hughes 500 type helicopter, the OH-6 Little Bird, dives to make an emergency pickup. The former Chief Warrant Officer, Paul Evens, busted to Sergeant Major Paul Evens, forced the stick violently forward, while applying hard rudder left, to get an equivalent of a fighter bank. He peered hard at the crash site, taking in the light trucks and the rocky cover for possible dangers, as he settled into a low hover close to the ground.
"Get out, I'm attacking!" He shouted loudly, but the reporter and cameraman didn't seem to understand.
"I'm making an attack run! Danger! Stay safe, and get out!" The reporter, finally understanding, cupper both hands over his mouth.
"Roger! Semper fi, brave marine!" As they hopped off, Paul pitched up the collective, generating lift, a process that whipped dust at the camera.
"Hoorah! Is there anything more exciting than that? That man is going in to save- hold on, did he say attack run? What if? No, he wouldn't!" He groaned.
"This story bleeds humanity. Out of the air, you can feel the grit of this battle. It is only exacerbated by the actual, non-metaphysical dust swept up from that rotor wash. Those rocket pods- holy fatwa! Hey, pan the camera at this! The olive green form of the tank buster dropping to the deck. No doubt about it, our marine pilot isn't in this alone. Guns are opening up from those light pickups out there. I distinctly remember covering the fighting of technicals-civilian vehicles tricked out with heavy weapons- in Lebanon in my early days as a field reporter, and again in the tragedy of Somalia. This man, this Paul Evens, saw the later. Look at the A-10's gun rip! Wow!"
The racket of roaring General Electric TF-34-100/A turbo-fan engines pulled attention from the prowling helicopter to a giant titanium shape diving in, with one fierce rotary cannon spewing depleted uranium chunks at civilian-model pickup trucks. Then the pilot, Lt. Commander Thad Blaine of the Air National Guard's 103rd Fighter Wing, pulled back the stick, applied rudder hard left, topped out, and sloped back for a second pass. In the process of pulling up, an MK82 conventional five hundred pound bomb fell from a hard point, shattering the will of those below.
The following pass, from a varied angle of attack, razed the desert with the seven barrels of death. His wingman "crossed the t" from a ninety degree angle, pocking the floor with AN/GAU-8 30mm Avenger power and his own bomb load.
From the periphery, smoky corkscrews leapt skyward, but lacked the sentience to pursue the armored birds. Thad Blaine graciously applauded as that mercenary helicopter jumped into the fray, loosing duel 2.75 inch rockets at the origin of the smoke trails. M134 "miniguns," gatlings small in stature compared to the A-10's allotment, oozed from both flanks of the rotary bird, adding superfluous brutality to the concealing rock outgrowth from which the airborne RGPs came.
"Oh Lord, he's flying over. We saw guys with shoulder-fired rockets, and he's flying over. The tail boom- he'll expose the tail rotor!" Geraldo jabbered nervously. "I feel bad-"
Sure enough, through the magnification of the camera lens, shapes of men with the familiar RPG-7 unfolded from a crouch, taking aim. Becoming immolated.
"Where'd that cauterizing deluge come from? Thick, gelatinous napalm suffused those pitiful souls! I can't fathom where- the tail boom! I didn't notice, but a canister must have tumbled from the little bird's tail. The cleverness that fiend dealt them!"
As the fuel died to embers, Paul snap-turned in 45 degree compartments, sweeping with 7.62mm shells differing rock outcroppings for brief moments, while descending above the crash site. The woman, Rosencrans, snaked an arm around the out-hanging board, a full moment before receiving a desperate boost from a perspiring man below.
Tangos, assault rifles slung loose, ran desperately, fanatical desperation encompassing their bodies as auras. Others, at the back of the leapfrog, set their muzzles alight, worrying not about self-preservation. The woman lay prostrate on the deck, inside, grappling for traction. Paul said nothing, he only held the hover, while the UH-60 pilot, or co-pilot, scraped his hands around whatever would latch to him. His chest flourished burgundy with liquid, while his skin devolved to a pallor.
The male Navy officers, a slightly rotund one, and a poster model, triggered their rifles repeatedly, as the remaining pilot body-slammed the out-hanging board. Paul hastily hit the collective hard, surging fifty feet, leaving a swirling wake for a bundling of deadly corkscrews.
"Toby! Chet!" The woman shouted as Paul pressed the rudder completely starboard. He had the canopy fixed over the tangos when he depressed the rockets. The sand erupted thrice and again, hoist limbs and meat into the air.
Then he reversed the collecting, plummeting hurriedly. Two hearty thumps indicated the packages hit the board, and a cursory glance confirmed two humanoid shapes clinging on.
"Six are good to go," he called, punching the cyclic for forward thrust, even as he purged his rocket pods. "There, now I think I have the capacity to retrieve those reporters. Pilot, take the seat beside me," said the marine, while he accelerated due north for where he'd dispensed of Geraldo and the cameraman. He hailed the A-10 flight's call sign.
"I've retrieved all the living. Now I need to retrieve my two journalists on my heading Due North. Do you copy?"
Thad Blaine, the Air National Guardsman, expressed disbelief.
"You butthead! You should have said so earlier! I copy. You have two unmarked journos abandoned in the open Due North."
"Roger that, they have ArmaLites- AR-15s, and a handcam," said Paul. He sounded weary, expressing fully the amount of hours he'd been out in the field. If he'd felt up to it, he may have used an expletive. "They have some tangos baring on them, at least a pair fixed in a fire-fight, and they're too close for me to spray and pray. Here goes."
You must believe, Neo, there is no spoon. He stared down the windshield-mounted optical sight, finger ready to rip open one last satisfying burst. You can save Morpheus. Tracers crossed over his sighting, raking up the thigh of one, lying prone with an RPK-74, then twitch! Stitched the Dragunov-bearer. He noticed in passing it was the SVU bullpup version, very new.
Once more, the collective cut power, descending the five-blade craft inches from sifting pebbles. Tobias Gairden, Lt. Commander big strapping CIS detective, triggered a warning blast one-handed with his M16A2, using his free set of fingers to hoist Geraldo Gutierrez over the board and (empty) rocket pod, then released a more accurate trio within two MOA (minutes of angle) at a menacing figure, a silhouette in the shape of an airman's death.
"I might have missed!" Gairden repeated his fusillade, reconnaissance by fire, but retrieved no retaliation. Aiming again, at a semicircle of perhaps a head, his body bucked under the negative gee force of Paul's flying. The force had him wrestling for seating. On the ledge of the floor, death was neighborly; just a quick drop away.
Fire-seeding commenced, as magnesium hot starry decoys pitched from the three birds. Flares, almost the thickness of a gnat swarm, smothered heat signatures for the three metallic flying bodies, depressing the Strela missile shooters like Toby's terrifying target.
"Hang on, I'm jinking for your safety."
