-1
"To
make war upon rebellion is messy and slow, like eating soup with a
knife"
-TE Lawrence
Summer arrived early in West Texas. The grass, parched and tan, snapped audibly under the heels of various boot designs. Some boots were lizard skin narrow-toed high-heeled footwear of the cowboy design, while others wore lace-up wide steel-toed construction boots, with patterned soles.
All the men wore the similar flair of orange vests, a fashion utilized for safety. At the lead of the congregation, the waffle-griddle pattern of a 10EEE boot kicked over a fire ant mound, causing quite a common for one little hive. The man with the mahogany boot passed on, willingly ignorant of the destruction he caused. He'd disturbed many ants in his life of over sixty years, as well as the dictators that ruled them. Even so, his focus was on the mallard, an avian creature washing feathers in a terribly thick green pond scum of algae.
After a time, he allowed his mind to refocus on the conversation around him. A sometimes rival spoke to him directly, appealing for a favor, a heavy one. The man in the wide boots wasn't a Mafioso, and it sure as certain wasn't the day of his daughter's wedding, but he patiently listened anyway. It was his job to consider requests such as this, although not officially. The de jure obligations of his job were few, cast a tie-breaking vote once in a blue moon, and survive, that was all the job really required. Not that those things were unimportant, but he felt- no, he knew- his substantial acumen entitled him the right to expand his responsibilities, and he did. This irked many, which only served as a bonus for the master of arts holder from a small state university.
The man requesting help had a similar background in life, except for his extended stay as a "guest" of the Vietnamese government. From there, the paths of the two men forked considerably, but even so, that man asked Richard Bruce Cheney to relate to his predicament.
"Gordo, you're asking that the President of the United States pardon a murderer of a United States citizen. Not only that, but you're asking that I recommend that he do that during an election year. I can't make that decision on the spot, and you haven't yet persuaded me." The man rested his tool, swiped his brow. "We generally frown on pardoning murderers, and yours didn't murder some thug-"
"He killed a child rapist!" The secret service detail recoiled, the small press corp. perked up, and Cheney's face turned livid.
"I know, but we don't just summarily execute our own people. Look, I like your guy. He seems great, but you're asking a lot from the Oval Office." Roger Gordian didn't seethe, though that may have been his first inclination. Instead, he found solace in his lungs. He took in more than breath, he pulled inspiration, thoughts, and order. Threads of streaming data weaved into the structure of a narrative, a construct to better advocate his cause.
"Sir, Mister Vice President, I'm want to tell you the story of what exactly happened at our camp. Do you recall the brief from the Naval Criminal Investigative Service officers, Rosen-whatever and that Toby guy?" The man gave a curt affirmative, then surveyed the wetland's reed stalks.
"That was some heroic stuff," he groused, "we truly don't appreciate what our helicopter pilots do, not, enough, you know. I grant you he deserves a service medal, his status as a private military contractor albeit disqualifying him."
"Thank you, Sir. I hope-" Everyone paused at the cross-talk between the VP and Gordian.
"Sorry," said the veep, "I just wanted to tell you I'll call the House Speaker to nominate a Congressional Gold Medal of Honor. We'll also lend recommendation for a Presidential Medal of Freedom, and an Exceptional Civilian Service Award." Roger thanked him.
"You're very kind, Sir, but there's more. Gutierrez is finishing his documentary now, and I understand it fully discloses what happens next. This story isn't coming off like water," he laughed, "it just gives me some fits. He leapt from the little bird at the end, but he kept going."
The erstwhile hunting troop congregated for story time.
Camp William Eaton, April, 2004
Paul Evans' rotor whirled over the wreckage of our base, as you know, when his radio sounded. The ground told him to be advised the base had been infiltrated. Paul, being the inquisitive man he is, asked where they entered. Rollie Thibodeau entered the chat to say it was a wall breech on the Northeast side.
Evans surveyed the wall, found the hole, and asked the military black hawk pilot to take the controls, which he did. Paul then ordered the man to take it low, and allow him to disembark. Much of this was in the public record, but that's where it ends, while reality kept rolling. What happened next will become public knowledge only when the documentary is released.
While the others raced to the helipad, Paul stepped through that hole, a loaded M16A2 cradled loosely, favored mostly on his right forearm. He felt the freon coolant of the walk-in refrigerator as he felt for the enemy in his environment. The climate shift felt stunning, he said, and I can understand that. The ice cream, he noticed, had not yet fully melted, it was so frigid, but his metabolism rebelled against freezing up, and he stalked out the steps the enemy had taken.
He hailed Rollie on the radio network from his Motorola, which he kept fastened in a pouch of his webbing, informing the party of his entrance. Rollie acknowledged, warning him that a fire team including Nimec, Ricci, Pokey, and Braun were coming up from his left flank. He understood, and replied that he was proceeding. Rollie asked him to hold on, but Paul briskly rebuked him.
"We don't have time!" He kept the butt plate firmly against his right shoulder as he marched into the cluttered and gored kitchen. His trained eye peered down the Trijicon Advanced Combat Optical Gunsight, taking in the macabre scene of the dining- or mess- area. He moved ahead as wounded pressed on the open wounds of other wounded, as a few with sucking chest wounds liquidly gasped.
"Rollie, tell me you have a medical team following the fire team, over," said he, as he habitually checked the selector switch, confirming he had the 3-round burst selected.
"A corpsman and a nurse are wheeling ahead a robotic rifle on a cart right now, closing behind them," he confirmed. "Hey, Evans? The reactor room reported that the enemy is retreating. Keep your head up, buddy." The marine patted his Motorola's receiver, muttered an affirmative, and moved to a kneeling position, just outside the cafeteria doors. It exposed much of his left torso, but that was Paul, living dangerously. He kept the tritium reticles on an imaginary torso, waiting for a flesh-and-blood target to creep in. He regulated his breathing, calming his pulse, clearing his eyes, and flexing his index finger to deliver three foot-pounds gently.
It has been said that Evans can dry-fire a pistol with a wine flute safely balanced on top, his squeeze is so gentle, and that might just be true. He certainly squeezed the trigger well when a sapper turned that corner. His reaction time must have astonished the African, if he had time to register his own death at all. It may have been painless. No, I don't believe that. The nerves destroyed within the temporary or permanent cavities formed by those three 5.56mm rounds must have inscribed that shock as his last memory.
Paul heard a shouted cry of "Jesus" following his shot, disturbing him. Invoking the name of Jesus seemed so out of place in a battle space made up mainly of Moslems, rather than Christians, and it stunned him. A blue-on-blue? Has he made a grievous friendly-fire incident?
"Unknown, Evans. Keep fighting, that's an order." Rollie reiterated that no known friends were prowling the right flank halls. Decision time.
"Put down your weapon!" A tall shadow cast around the corner. The gun silhouette, AK-74! Enemy, he is my enemy. The repo man from Arkansas told me he smiled while watching the shadow poke around the corner. The panel ceiling lighting made the close-quarters fighting easy. He savored the advantage. "Surrender now! Put down your weapon!"
The other man froze in a standoff, but kept his primary weapon ready. But then, his arm swung underhanded, Paul saw, and it lobbed something, he knew not what for certain. No pin and spoon, he noticed, holding ground. He's coming. The shadow merged with flesh coiled around a rifle. It fired off balance, as the enemy shifting sideways to plant his sinister foot.
Paul, knelt firmly, planted the tritium over the torso, and loosed another trio, dropping another body. His knees straightened, popping as he stood, but it proved only a minor bother. Load-bearing harnesses on an aging body causes such things.
Standing, he kept his rifle trained on the fallen foe. He trained his rifle uncomfortably with one hand as he thumbed the radio.
"Rollie, I have two down here. I'm moving ahead."
"Wait,"
protested the Louisiana native, "are they
dead?"
Paul regarded them.
"Unsure," he declared, noticing the second one didn't seem wounded in any vitals. "I have to go. The reactor is heating."
"What? Paul, what are you going to do about the reactor? We have a robot for this!"
"No time," breathed the repo man, sprinting, "I'm going to staunch those leaks."
West Texas
"This sounds a little too much like that Star Trek movie," another hunter interrupted abruptly, "The Wrath of Khan. You know, where Spock repairs the reactor by himself?" The VP chortled.
"Or that boomer
accident Ivan had, eh, Ryan?" Jack, the
only former president in the group, nodded.
"Those
accidents happen, Dick," said the only
man excused from addressing Cheney Mister Vice President, "we
never had a reactor leak on that boomer I-uh-served on, but the
Vilnius Schoolmaster did impart some information about what the
northern fleet went through. I also watched K19 like everyone else."
He grinned as the subordinate to his professional descendant chased a
heart pill with Diet Sprite.
"We all get some of our ideas from the movies, that's just a sad product of modernity, Jake. Gordo, the bad guys reached your little reactor and damaged it?" The story resumed.
"That's right, they managed to, uh, scuttle some of the coolant piping. We use gas coolant, carbon dioxide, which can be hazardous in large amounts. We have a gas-cooled fission reactor designed by South Africans, and it is a fairly compact and safe make. But there's more to the story."
Camp William Eaton, April, 2004
The Galco holster loosed the SIG P2020 pistol fast, letting Peel squeeze two rounds out fast, grouped tightly at the white guy's lower back. Coming from the hip, the placement earned his acceptance. That will do.
The man didn't gasp a sigh, Peel observed, but collapsed to his knees, then fell prostrate. Around, there, coiled beside him, Jesus, the Somali. Dead, reckoned the Britain, he appeared to have bled out. No, that heaping khat pile, wadded in one cheek, rose and fell. His mind a swirl, Peel recklessly dragged him past the mess doors as a fire team appeared in pursuit.
He felt the dragged weight rise behind him, an almost out-of-body uplifting in his arms. Jesus had risen.
"I'm glad you've come back to the living, Jesus," he quipped, "I wasn't carrying that weight all the way." Jesus forgave him, then dispensed his remaining magazine at the figures diving to parallel sides of the room. Terrance took more precise aim one-handed. The two lead figures fanned apart alarmingly fast, so abrupt, so swift, Peel felt his last moments were imminent. If those were to be his last moments, he'd stay close to Jesus.
"We've made the kitchen," he wheezed, draining his magazine at a popped-up head, "try to run," he instructed, inserting his replenishing load.
"No," the Somali objected, "martyrdom I hadn't planned, nor is it what I seek, but…" he chopped Peel's wrist, wrestled the pistol, and elbow-prodded his ribs… "I…" bang… "guard your running."
The sapper, first in, last out, all bravery, didn't register the Englishman's shrug as he sprinted away.
West Texas
"Two in the back like that- man- that must've left a deep purple welt all over." The former SecDef pivoted one foot over that broken ant mound, nervously wobbling apart the whole infrastructure. "That should keep anyone but a rugged teen down for a spell."
"Yeah," seconded Jack Ryan, "that type of licking kept me down in my day, but your guy leaped back up?" Jack simulated a golf swing out of boredom, and to loosen the tension in his back. Don't get stigmata now, Jack. He stepped to and fro on the parched grass, snapping stems underfoot. Roger let the conversation settle, then resumed.
"No, he got up, and when Nimec and Ricci reached him, he was tenderized and naked."
"Naked?"
"Unclothed, with all his fibers fastened around piping. He had the reactor cooled, almost miraculously. Geraldo was there, danger close, stripping before the camera to help the cause." Ha. Jack worked in a quip.
"I knew we could count on him to go to that level for the accolades!"
The Marsh Arab Village
Zemya, the man named for a snake, phoned the man named for a rifle.
"Rifle, a strafing run is coming on you. A-10s, bearing South." Indeed. An MK 82 bomb case, affixed with a GPS receiver for modification into a JDAM precision guided munitions, spiraled headfirst groundward. Digits in a matrix determined the corrections in the bomb's trajectory, digits mapped and transmitted from three points in a complex constellation coasting in motion 17,000 miles per hour in an ellipse parked around 20,000 km up, between the extreme low orbit of sixty miles above the planet surface, and the lagrange point.
The amount of logical paths taken for the bomb to decide where to go were plenty. It had to decide where it was, where the target was, where the satellites were, what direction the bomb itself was moving, and what direction to correct toward. It further broke down to what direction to move the stabilizers. If one grid short of target, increase lift. Boolean logic is crude and simple, but manages to create seemingly complex behavior. If fleet dead, exit hyperspace. Many popular space navy video games operate under a series of such simple scripts, creating behaviors that seem credible to the player. It thus becomes possible for a single programmer to program exciting space missions in as little as an hour.
Consequently, programmers worldwide, eager to create as fine a product in as little time as possible, exploit the model in all sorts of projects, including defense projects.
This is why weasels poach on military networks so easily.
Most troublemakers labeled hackers by the public, and as crackers by those that know a hash bucket from a handsaw, are known as script kiddies, malicious dorks that take scripts written somewhere, and apply them against systems with vulnerabilities posted on message board ad infinitum, and the sophomoric time-budgeted security methods taken to fend them off won't stop a stealth hack.
Out in the ether space, a solitary Russian named Vladimir understood well the vulnerabilities of these systems, seeing that he'd exploited this massive world-wide weakness repeatedly. Though physically located on the Georgia-Russian border on a ski lift, his mind climbed in astral projection through a GPS uplink, which tapped on the ports of a satellite far away. Because it had to accept the questions of a user on the ground, it had to accept certain information packets through the firewall. Otherwise, it couldn't service the public. Vladimir's port scanner knew as much.
Plekanov, a contributor to his native country's own GLONASS (Global'naya Navigatsionnaya Sputnikovaya Sistema) constellation, knew in advance the packets to sneak through. His method closely resembled the approach of the Mr. Jay Gridley in San Jose, California, which, comically enough, had the enemy's C compiler build up his hack for him. Only, it didn't build up a new program, only a mutation.
GPS finds locations through Multilateration, a process that unfolds through the knowledge of time difference of arrival. Simply by switching one digit, the signals didn't match up, and got the location wrong.
"Rifle, the bomb hit a garden plot, so I'm guessing the wheelman came through, that wizard!" The snake didn't witness the anguish inside the cockpits, only that the winged couple, and their big rotary guns, kept coming. The rifle heard their rattling jets through the window of his cinderblock house.
"Spread flat on the walls!" He shouted, flattening his back hard in example. He tensed, but kept his eyes wide when the strafing began. Depleted uranium, with three times the atomic weight of steel, formed milk carton-sized projectiles, sharp at that, slicing through the roof at mach three, at a rate of 3,000 a minute, sustained for a full second, in a pair of waves. Concrete dust pelted them over every exposed surface, obstructing vision.
Ruzhyo, fully realizing the strafing run had passed,
pointed and shouted, "flatten against the
adjacent set of walls!" He trained his
ears for the jet noise. Yep, they were banking to 'cross
the T' with their next strafing attack.
Steel rain stitched through again, just as horrifying as before.
Horrifying, but utterly ineffective.
Nearby
The NMEA data protocol report sent by the GPS satellite had been doctored. He sure didn't mess up, Molina insisted, and the Air National Guardsman up there protested he didn't screw it, and the tech weenies pleaded that the bugs in their program had plenty of time to be worked out. He knew where he was, and the laser range-finder knew where the house was, and things hadn't moved quick enough for a careless mistake. What are these people we're fighting?
They found and flooded across the connecting tunnel, and he'd blasted through with some sort of super shotgun, and a corrosive gas. A leftover from Saddam's reign? These villagers knew teargas, and insisted it wasn't any they knew.
The enemy had two buildings already. The Sheik directed his militia to push concrete barriers into the streets. It cut down slightly on the mobility of the APC, but Robin Molina understood his friends' desire to slow the advance with barriers. It pushed back their mobile firepower, though.
He checked his leg. Still fastened on tightly. Then he moved closer to the firefight. Russian-model chain guns dueled with Russian-model chain guns and RPK types. It matched the ferocity of a Vietnam-era meeting engagement, but, worse; neither side would disengage. And both have full frontal enfilades.
The A-10s called bingo fuel, they were at the point of no return and a smidge beyond, and those…Iranian air strikes had the tankers grounded. Tomcats, those went home. British Harriers were ETA under five minutes. Good news came in that the enemy APCs had pulled back somewhere, but Molina knew not where. FUBAR.
Ruzhyo's House
Everyone looked shipshape. Ruzhyo ordered a quartet to follow him out back, after delegating authority over the house to Strelok. "Guard the periphery," had been his standing orders. He had a designated marksman take the attic, watching beyond the back courtyard. Over the courtyard brick wall was a ghetto of traditional Ma'dan reed huts, presumably used as barns or something.
The guys fanned past the groves. Ruzhyo looked back at his marksman. Clear? The marksman squelched his radio once, an affirmative. Mikhail shouldered his An-94 to offer a foothold for his point man. Point inserted his boot into his cupped hands, accepting the boost. Mike felt the weight dissolve, then accepted another boot, until all cleared the obstruction.
He heard sporadic gunfire, with at least one upstart being a .303 Lee Enfield rifle. A ma'dan picket? Possibly, not all would have a Kalashnikov rifle. The attic marksman returned fire as the Chechen lifted his body over the wall. The dusty street offered no cover, but the four-man team effectively broke into a wide skirmish line, crouched, performing reconnaissance by fire, retaliating against the return fire, and leapfrogging ahead.
A narrow alley existed to port, so Ruzhyo trotted to reconnoiter it. He kept the iron sights near his focus of vision while shirking around the edge. An armed figure, aiming, stood in a firing position from the opposing alleyway. His muzzle emitted white flame, as did Ruzhyo's.
Cold hammers thudded his flat torso plate in a close trio, transferring joules of force into a painful byproduct, cracked ribs. He focused his center to stay put; doubling over into the alley would be death. He held to the concrete wall, and feebly managed to elevate the rifle. Pain slashed through the muscles connecting the chest to the shoulder, but he lifted enough to level a half-respectable shot. Watered, blurry eyes zeroed on two figures, one dragging the other into a doorway. Mikhail clenched his teeth tighter when summoning the crucial three foot-pounds for depressing the steel. Recoil from two 5.45mm bullets fired in a burst rate of 1700 RPM, blessedly, rated as less than torture.
Finally, he sagged and unclenched the two rows of teeth he'd mashed to avoid biting off his tongue or lip. Only breathing, and moving, and standing still hurt.
Across the street
"I thought the tango grunts couldn't shoot," coughed Fraser Singe, Gurkha rifleman and veteran of East Timor. Contracted auxiliaries of the coalition had dealt with plenty of sharp-shooting insurgents, but most had been solitary figures or marksman/spotter teams working as ad hoc "snipers," a phenomenon of modern war and fact of militaristic life since the franc-tireur first began shooting Germans.
"Yeah, they're customarily area-effect aficionados in these parts, hombre. Spraying and praying is first-nature for many accustomed to al shahada. I've had to teach ours that faith and diligence keeps the rifle aim more true." Robin Molina examined the flat surface on the black torso plate of his comrade. "Hijole, that dude didn't space them much. Check it."
"If you'll give me breathing space," muttered Singe, protesting physically to Molina's pinning to the floor. "Jeez, man, I thought I made it clear we only had a platonic relationship." Yikes. Evacuate immediately. Apologetic back peddling is clumsy business for an amputee.
"Lo ciento- uh, sorry!" Robin felt no different than if a fist full of peppers had furiously parted through his mouth. He held conviction his checks burned radish-like. Singe defused a chuckle trapped down deep.
"Yeah
ha, I only felt one, that lucky buzzard!"
Unnecessarily,
Molina pointed.
"Those are small indentations in the trauma plate, Hermano, like five-point-four-five small." Without another word, Molina walked on. "An Abakan plinked you. Be thankful you lived."
Fraser Singe, now alone, peeled off his tri-colored desert camouflage jacket, and let his load-bearing burden plummet. The sensations of touch tumbled down from the shield his limbic system raised when the Abakan gunman double-tapped him. Swelling commenced over the sternum, but somewhere under that place where endorphins leaked from his glands, satisfaction consoled him. My three bigger rounds bagged that sucker.
The Marsh
Wheelman transmitted one last text message, giving The Snake one last location, heading, and speed update of the flight of F/A2 Sea Harriers coming in. Very good. Reeds impeded his vision of the sky, at least much of it, but the Russian commando swiveled his turret toward the heading, keeping his iron sights trained where he anticipated a black speck to fly. His aide de camp belatedly confirmed the text message, giddily announcing a strong blip on his passive bistatic set. The LORAN radio navigation towers blipped again, painting the four jets lightly with an electric brush their receivers didn't warn them about. Grigory grunted, itched to depress the triggers for his devastating 30mm auto cannon, a gun of duel-purpose mounted on his great Egyptian fighting vehicle. He stalked with others stuck in the marsh, concealed under matted reeds and alluvial muck.
He grinned nostalgically of
shooting down more jets while in the concealment of a water platform.
He'd done this kind of work before,
including a couple of Tu-134s in the Black Sea in 1994, a jet
carrying the two presidents of Rwanda and Burundi that same year, and
an airliner on the American east coast in 1996. Yeah, he'd
done this work for a long time, but now he has a wolf pack to make a
big shoot-down. They'd be unable to
disavow his exploit, like they did that TWA flight.
Intent on the
sky, he couldn't afford to visually
inspect the men. He took it on faith and shear Russian machismo that
his men had their weapons, ranging from HN-5 man-portable missiles to
Type 56 and KPV 14.5mm machine guns, aimed skyward and focused when
the Sea Harriers stopped being blips on a boring TV screen, and
became threats to the livelihood of the ground-pounder.
He gleefully imagined their plight. These guys had been ramped off the flight deck as soon as word telephoned in about the Baghdad strike. They'd gone up in the air defense role, then coalition AWACS or JSTARS or whatever does that blasted thing tasked them to close air support of a village in dire need. So very sweet having these all-steel underpowered pidgins cruise over his trap. Wheelman couldn't have manipulated events better.
Grigory watched anxiously. He doubted the British planes had decent look-down capability, being an air-to-air naval bird, but as they closed, he felt the absurd sensation of a predatory light passing through his marrow. He contracted his carpal muscles.
"Fire!"
Sustained flashes jumped from his vehicle to the flight element lead, bashing the nose, folding it up into crumple and smoke as the others bolted away. All guns fired, chasing the unsuited quartet in the openness of the sky. They couldn't hide, they had no afterburners, and they had no titanium armor. They had merely ADEN cannons, 30mm nose guns only good for direct fire.
West Texas, July of 2004
"Those birds sounded as vulnerable as those ducks down there," observed Jack Ryan, triggering his shotgun to punctuate the reality, "I recall all four failed to make the return to the Illustrious flight deck." The duck took pellets across the breasts, and plummeted into the algae in a tidal thud.
"The ambush was as thorough as anything I've ever seen," Roger Gordian opined. "We were certainly not dealing with some nascent indigenous force. At least, the Iraqi military of March 2003 couldn't do something like that."
The Village, April 2004
A radioman by trade, Sergeant/Communications (18E) Robin Molina, held his two pound wonder, the AN/PRC-148 Multiband radio, which he'd grown up with in the ranges between Kabul and Peshawar in 2001 and 2002, before winning a direct non-expense trip to Ramstein AFB. It worked well high in the mountains, so well he recalled no dead spots, and what worked well in Afghanistan two years ago only work better in flat deserts and even marshland.
He hunkered beside a rugged-topped table smothered in grains of nascent cinderblock dust, shaken from the bricks pummeled by fragmentation and shelling. The unsettled debris summoned some coughing, but Molina dutifully dispatched news of the Sea Harriers, the vehicles in the marsh, and the enemy's infiltration.
Fraser the Gurkha assumed the window as his station, his torso area completely taped up, Robin saw, and his M8, still called the XM8 by the overly conservative Army, hanging on to a petite daylight camera/closed circuit TV acquired from the Land Warrior program. Molina watched him hang it from the window, and indirectly aim with the unproven closed circuit television.
"Field testing of yet another Land Warrior component is going smoothly," he flippantly chimed into his field radio. "William Eaton, I need advised about those Anglo air-dales down in the marshy beyond."
"Cut the poetics, British Knight, we reckon that region's too hot for a helo evac," said Rollie, referring to Molina by the nickname penned by Nigel, a play on his knowledge that Robin is a "BK," a Below the Knee amputee. Thank Jesus and the saints Burger King didn't stick, thought the Roswell native.
"Willy Echo, we are Army men, regardless of who our chopper pilot is, I don't want chatter about any helos again, over." Squelch.
"Roger…Burger King!" On radio, no one can hear you scowl.
"Those limeys are bullet sponges out there, Eaton, I want to pull our truck out and haul them in." Am I nuts? "A few habib and I could go on a gun run and try to retrieve them."
"But
they aren't yours to retrieve, Boobie
King, the Royal Navy is already set for an evac."
Robin swore he heard a sigh. "Disregard
that, the limeys are only dispatching fast-movers. I want a no BS
assessment, can the village hold on without the a fortiori
armored
vehicle backing it up?" Molina watched as
Singe triggered another unnatural looking shot, holding the rifle
like a baby with a dripping diaper, while watching TV. Modern urban
combat can be a strange sight to behold.
"We have the infiltrated unit pinned, except for one fire team trying to break out in the southeast. There, the enemy is holing up in some of the reed structures, and we're prepared kick them in the dirt, Sir!" A chortle served as reply.
"That's settled. Go be agile, mobile, and hostile."
"Hooah!" He slipped the brick into his webbing; a left pouch on his LC-2 harness, patted it down for assurance, and cantered toward the Gurkha, who still cornered the big bad plastic army gun with the video camera around the window. One stern pat on the back pulled Singe and his phaser/tricorder doohickey from the firing position. The Nepalese professional soldier fingered at a fresh translucent magazine in his webbing as his face turned toward his superior officer. His orders bellowed over the sporadic reports from diesel engines and field crew firepower.
"Singe, I'm leading an armored extraction of some downed airmen. That means you have command in the village. Take this radio," he removed the AN/PRC-148 "brick," and planted it in the hand Singe just freed from feeding a new magazine, "and try to let Camp William Eaton know what's the ground situation!" A flaming quartet of big anti-aircraft shells blazed through the window, pounding more dust from a back wall.
"Sir, I'm not familiar with the radio, Sir." Robin assured him the SF soldier had it tuned to the right frequency.
"Just turn it on like so," he demonstrated. "William Eaton, I'm transferring command to Singe, over."
"Roger that, Burger King."
Only a minute later
Molina ducked and weaved through enough back alleys and concrete barriers to reach the APC, taking appreciation once again that the most literal translation of the vehicle's name, a fortiori, was "from the stronger." The name, selected by Roger Gordian, was meant in the context the phrase is utilized in logic for, the transition from a weaker answer to a more solid one, and indeed, this armor stopped all.
"Status?" Molina puffed as he halted before the Ma'dan crew. The sheik, weary but smiling, waved lightly at his younger American friend.
"My friend, we have new boxes of the ammunition up, and petrol in the tanks, but the mortar shells gone from the fighting from the last day and the night and to this very morning are lost to us. Behold, we have few but some rationed, besides Willy Pete for smoke. I fear we're almost out, Lad." The sheik frowned in apology, shifted uncomfortably. The younger men, some bent and scarred from years of battling Saddam in the receding marshes, aged and worn by the years of Saddam's environment-destroying terror, still smiled upon finishing the load out. Robin grinned back, and pulled himself through the back hatch.
"Men, we have a serious problem. Some of the aviators fighting off the enemy outside this community have augured into the ground, and with your permission, Mr. Sheik, I'd like to take some of your finest with me, and rescue them from slaughter." The sheik looked touched that this foreign soldier, this man Iraqis would call a son of a dog, asked the cultural and tribal leader, rather than assume rank in pulling from the city defense.
"You can have them. Go be a hero." They mutually bid farewell, and the Hispanic American slapped the roof, signaling the driver to move. Gravel and dust kicked up, obscuring the Sheik greatly as he waved in an extended farewell. Molina returned the send-off, before closing the back hatch.
"Roll call!"
The Ma'Dan, set stiffly on benches in the warm steel hulk, spoke in synchronisation, labelling themselves by the nicknames they'd long answered to in their village, or in the Iranian shanties they'd fled to a few years ago. The names were Arabic, brief, and Molina thought boyish. These young men, boys, held a strong sense of community, having all grown up playing together, and in the worst times, starving together and fighting together against the Republican Guard units. Like the American frontier, as he'd read about it, these "boys" actually varied greatly in age. Some featured full beards, and possibly had children of their own, but these younger boys were their peers. They'd trawled the marshes together, built the city defense, built the city itself. Robin Molina looked at them all, and imagined the sort of life they lived. Agrarian, polygamous households, with well water, and food only came earned from the ground, in the water, or through hunting.
The concept of a diet, a picky selection in nutrition, wasn't known firsthand to them. Vegitarianism would mean willingly starving on the days a slain water buffalo was the only meal. School must have been a mix of schoolroom religious instruction with an air of Greek instruction. Robin had personally seen the old sheik take the boys out into the open, and talk to them about classical ethics, and their relation to Islam. It had surprised him greatly that these Ma'Dan practiced Sufism, and when the time came to deliver secret instruction to his initiated, he bashfully asked the American Catholic to stay away. He'd apologized afterward, but had asked favor.
"This is my testimony of the love of Allah," he'd said reverently, firmly planting a sheaf of papers, loosely bound in leather and reed, into his hands. "The poetic works of my lifetime are in there, as well as my account of the last thirty years fighting that serpent of Satan, Saddam." He had then imparted to the soldier a timeless Sufi proverb:
"There are three ways of knowing a thing. Take for instance a flame. One can be told of the flame, one can see the flame with his own eyes, and finally one can reach out and be burned by it. In this way, we Sufis seek to be burned by God." (1) He inististed he'd lived so long because it had been his mission- a soldier can relate to that, mission- to pass his instruction into the West, into the East, and into any home with loving people that would listen.
A month later, the book was selling on Amazon, and some larger publishers were negotiating to distribute it further. As God willed it, the man proclaimed.
In the present, his militiamen opened the small rifle ports on the hull of the vehicle, and triggered excitedly at vehicles being pulled by electric wenches from the slough.
"Mashallah!
Mashallah! Mashallah!" Molina understood their exclamation meant
"What God wills!"
They'd done that a minute before, when
they'd streaked past the infiltrating
fire team residing on one of the 'mudhifs, reed homes, and this time,
it didn't spook him.
The eldest one
grabbed hold of what Molina considered the Israeli variant of the
Common Remotely Operated Weapons System (CROWS), the joystick and
monitor control for the outboard "quad-fifty,"
the four linked machineguns up top, while Robin dunked one WP smoke
round into the mortar after another.
The smoke screen would enshroud their escape. Inshallah, as the sheik would assure him. With complete conviction, inshallah.
The End
(1) The original Sufi author is unknown.
Stay tuned for the epilogue
