"One minute!"
Sweating in the troop cabin of an armoured vehicle, Marine and squad grenadier Private First Class Terry Dunn rested his head on the side bulkhead of the AAV-7P1 he and his squad were travelling in as they approached the beachhead. Dunn was nervous. He had done this scenario almost a dozen times in practice. The mission they were going into was for real, and the stakes were even realer. The tension in the compartment could almost be smelt in the air.
"Thirty seconds!" Dunn's squad leader called out from the seat next to the ramp. Dunn bit his lip.
"Hey Dunn," Dunn's team autorifleman, Lance Corporal Scott Moore, tapped him on the shoulder. "No fear, yeah?"
Dunn scoffed. "One MEU versus the entire fucking Yuktobanian military. Yeah, no fear."
"Love to hear it." Moore laughed.
"Ten seconds!"
Dunn heard popping towards the front of the AAV. Smoke grenades dispensing a thick layer of obscuring smoke. He took a deep breath, made sure his M16 had a bullet in the chamber, and readied himself for the fight ahead. The AAV made landfall and then came to a stop. The ramp opened and light flooded into the compartment.
"Out, out, out!"
"I would not want to be down there…" Samurai mused from the back, looking down through the canopy and at the rapidly approaching coastline. The entire AO was being bracketed by a storm and it was pissing down rain.
Blaze smirked. "Targeting data punched in?"
"Always."
"Good. Thunderhead, Wardog 1, in on first row of targets.
WARDOG 1 / BLAZE, SAMURAI / F-15E
WARDOG 2 / CHOPPER, ZOOMER / F-15E
WARDOG 3 / EDGE, CORVUS / F-15E
WARDOG 4 / ARCHER / F-16C
"Copy, Wardog. You are cleared hot." Thunderhead reported back. Flying in a column with Nagase trailing on her six, Blaze dipped the Mudhen's nose down towards the ground as they crossed the barrier from feet wet to feet dry - going from above the ocean to above solid land. Blaze's index finger was on the trigger.
"Targets confirmed." Samurai confirmed.
"Blaze, pickle four!" Blaze declared, hitting the trigger, pulling out of the shallow dive and egressing a hundred and eighty degrees back towards the ocean. From the belly of the Mudhen dropped four GBU-39s, Small Diametre Bombs or SDBs. A tiny weapon in the two hundred fifty pound weight class, the SDB was ill suited for large structures and underground complexes, but it was perfectly suited for striking dug-in positions and small bunkers with fairly minimal concrete work. And of course they were easy to carry. A single F-15E could carry almost thirty SDBs.
"Edge, pickle four." Nagase dropped four of her own baggage of SDBs, following Blaze out to the ocean once her weapons had separated. Samurai was looking over their shoulder back at the ground, scanning for the flashes and smoke stacks indicating impacts.
"Good hits." Samurai said to Blaze.
"Rogie." Blaze replied, shooting back out to sea and returning to their holding point. "Chopper, Archer, how are you looking?"
"On target in ten seconds!" Chopper called back. Blaze looked to her left. A couple of kilometres down the beachhead, Chopper and Archer were conducting an attack within their lane. Blaze watched as they went feet dry.
"Chopper, pickle four!"
"Archer, pickle four!"
The two got their SDBs away on their targets, an extensive network of bunkers and fighting positions that lined the hills leading deeper into the peninsula. There was a long line of explosions maybe three or four kilometres in length as Chopper and Grimm's SDBs found and detonated over their targets. However, for the junior members of the squadron their lead in attack wasn't finished. The two adjusted their heading to travel south-west, deeper into the peninsula.
"Laser hot." Zoomer reported. Blaze listened to their comms.
"Wardog 4, tally. In." Archer spotted the laser. Chopper started circling around their target, painting a target via laser for Grimm. The latter came screaming in for a high aspect bomb toss.
"Archer, pickle!" Archer declared. He pulled out of a dive as his second type of air to ground weapon, a GBU-24, came screaming towards the ground searching for its target. Judging by how quickly Grimm levelled out, Blaze didn't want to know how many gees he had just absorbed pulling out of a near vertical dive.
"Good effect on target!" Zoomer called out. "Command complex is belching smoke! She's cooked!"
"Try coordinating a defensive now…" Blaze muttered. "Good shit, egress east."
"Wilco. Two and Four are outbound heading 180." Chopper replied as he and Grimm turned out towards the ocean and raced back to their holding positions.
"Wardog, relay from ground forces. Good effect on target, I say again, good effect on target. Keep up the good work." Thunderhead relayed a communication from the Marines currently pushing the beachhead.
"Wardog copies, wilco." Blaze answered. As long as they were on station, they'd keep hitting targets to the best of their ability.
"Blaze, on your six." Archer checked in with Blaze. Blaze looked over her shoulder. Grimm was a kilometre behind her in his Viper.
"Tally, Archer." Blaze confirmed that she saw him.
"Wardog, Thunderhead, ground forces are requesting close air support. Connecting you with a TACP asset, callsign Havoc." Thunderhead relayed a CAS request through to Wardog Squadron. Blaze heard a radio click in her headset as her frequency was changed.
"Wardog 1, Havoc, radio check, over." The JTAC, Joint Terminal Attack Controller, made a radio check.
"Dagger, Wardog 1, lima charlie, over." Blaze confirmed that she heard the JTAC's check in.
"Wardog 1, Havoc, report when ready for gameplan and nine line."
Blaze and Samurai both got their pens and kneeboards ready. "Wardog 1, ready for gameplan and nine line."
"Havoc, gameplan. Enemy infantry in static positions in the pass north-west of Anvil Beach. Friendlies attempting to push through the pass. Enemy MANPADS in area. Type 3, bombs on coordinates." Havoc initiated the air support request.
Blaze muttered to herself as she scribbled down the relevant information. "Static positions in the pass north west of Anvil, MANPADS in area, type 3, bomb on coordinates."
"Wardog 1, correct. Report when ready for nine line." Havoc confirmed she had remembered the correct information. Blaze flipped over a new page.
"Havoc, Wardog 1, ready for nine line." Blaze held her pen to her kneeboard.
"Wardog 1, Havoc. Ingress 310 from Anvil. Elevation 551 feet, target is static fighting positions, Echo Papa 2081-0681, no mark. Friendlies nine hundred metres south-east. Egress 000, remain above ten thousand feet to avoid MANPADS. Readback."
Blaze read her scribbles. "Havoc, Wardog 1. Ingress 310 from Anvil, target elevation is 551 feet, targets are enemy static positions at Echo Papa 2081-0681 with no mark. Friendlies nine hundred metres south east. Egress 000, hard deck Angels 10."
"Wardog 1, Havoc, correct. You are cleared hot on target."
"Wardog 1." Blaze glanced back at Samurai. "You got all that?"
"2081-0681…" Samurai mumbled, entering targeting data for a bomb pass involving SDBs. "Set. We're hot."
"Alright…" Blaze braced herself as she pitched up to get above the TACP's designated hard deck. She then turned around and headed for the target. "Wardog 1, in."
"Bombs on your trigger, ready to go." Samurai said. Blaze cycled through her weapons until the SDBs were cued to his trigger. She looked around for the drop point. Helpfully, Samurai was looking at it via the Mudhen's LITENING pod, painting the general area on a display for her pilot. With the target acquired, Blaze pitched down at a shallow angle and released four bombs.
"Wardog 1, pickle four." Blaze declared, banking to the right to get away from the drop point along the designated attack egress as the four SDBs deployed their wing kits and shot down towards the target.
Beep, beep. New RWR contact. Blaze glanced at the radar warning display. SA11. A Yuktobanian Buk surface to air platform. It was out to their north-north-west.
"Buk." Samurai called the threat.
"Tally." Blaze replied.
Beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-
"Wardog 1, spiked." Blaze warned. She banked harder to the east and started pitching down to get away and below the Buk's line of sight and effective employment altitude.
BEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEP!
"Oh shi- Wardog 1, defending!" Blaze yelled as she put the hammer down, diving right down to the deck and deploying chaff to defend against the now incoming missile. Samurai yelped from the back as Blaze threw the Mudhen down.
"MANPAD risk!" Samurai called forward, reminding Blaze of the fact that the Yukes were actively deploying Iglas around the area.
"I know!" Blaze replied. She'd rather take the risk of dodging an Igla over a much more capable Buk. In a matter of seconds Blaze had gone from ten thousand feet to barely a thousand, the rain and wind wooshing over the canopy.
"Shark 2, Magnum, Magnum!" An electronic warfare aircraft reported he was firing anti-radiation missiles on the wider air net. Blaze was still being tracked by that Buk battery according to her RWR. She was looking over her shoulder.
"See that missile?!" She asked Samurai.
"No joy!" Samurai replied, not spotting any smoke trails or power pole sized missiles. After a few seconds of continued manuevers, the RWR went silent. The Buk's host radar had gone cold.
"Did we lose it?" Blaze asked, looking around still for any signs of an incoming missile.
"Radar's off." Samurai stated the obvious. "I think we're clear. I think…"
"Alright." Blaze drew off on the throttle, levelled out and flew back towards the body of Wardog Squadron. "Havoc, Wardog 1, requesting BDA."
Dunn could feel his teeth rattle from the near simultaneous impact of four bombs, even below the relative safety of several thousand cubic feet of soil. The cracking and zipping of bullets passing over their head stopped the moment the bombs hit the enemy fighting positions.
"2-2, go, go!" Their squad leader roared once the gunfire stopped. To Dunn's left was a substantial uptick in fire, both from the small arms of the squad a hundred metres to the left of their lane, as well as from the fifty cals and the grenade machine guns of their supporting AAVs. M16A4 in hand, Dunn's booted feet were practically a blur as he and his squad made a mad dash to the next row of cover two hundred, maybe two fifty metres in front of them. Two hundred metres ordinarily wasn't a long distance to sprint, but with almost thirty kilos worth of equipment on top of his body weight, on top of running through sand, Dunn felt winded by the time they made it to the rocks that made up their cover.
"Fuck me." Dunn wheezed as he took a knee next to a boulder. There was little respite for the devil dog. Dunn raised his rifle to his shoulder, peeked over the boulder and started taking potshots at the now obliterated Yuke fighting positions.
"Moore!" Dunn yelled. "Infantry, eleven o'clock, six hundred!"
Moore moved over from his position to set his M249 SAW up on a chest height boulder next to Dunn. The autorifleman scoped in the enemy position and fired precise three to five round bursts at that point.
"Shift left ten!" Their squad lead, Sergeant George Cox, yelled to Moore. The latter adjusted his aim ten metres to the left and continued firing. Dunn spotted a Yuke soldier trying to get a firing position on them. He swung around on him and fired two delayed shots. The first shot missed, the second round hit him somewhere in the upper body. The Yuke dropped.
"Get some, motherfucker." Dunn mumbled to himself.
"2-2, get ready to bound to the next berm!" Sergeant Cox shouted. Dunn adjusted his sling and stood up, mentally preparing himself for the next sprint. In his peripheral vision he noticed their sister squad reaching their position across the assault lane.
"Here we go." Moore put away the bipod for his SAW.
"2-2, push up!" Cox screamed. Dunn hopped over and in between the rocks and hit the ground running. Gunfire erupted from the other squad as they took over 2-2's role providing suppression and overwatch. Dunn felt the strain in his legs and arms by the time they made it to their next position. The next bound would take them all the way to the positions that had just been bombed. A bullet cracked far overhead. Somebody was shooting at them.
"Alright, motherfucker." Dunn said between grit teeth. Getting on his belly, Dunn crawled a couple of metres up the berm and looked for the shooter through the ACOG on his M16. Dirt was kicked up by rounds hitting the berm a few metres to his left from where Moore was shooting. Dunn spotted a muzzle flash from in between a handful of trees. He snapped to the source of light and fired two rounds. The muzzle flashes stopped after that. Dunn crawled back into cover.
"One down in the trees." Dunn made his kill known. Even though they were being hammered by rain and wind, Dunn was sweating like a motherfucker under his helmet and body armour. Behind them, the AAVs were moving up to keep in line with the infantry, their M2s and Mark 19s ripping up stragglers in the hills.
"2-0, 2-2, affirm, set at final bound mark." Cox was speaking to the platoon commander over the radio. Dunn took the time to reload, pocketing his half-empty magazine and slamming in a fresh thirty round mag.
"2-2! Fix bayonets!" Cox called out across the squad. There was an almost robotic movement amongst the fourteen man squad as everyone minus the three autoriflemen unsheathed their bayonets and fixed them to the lugs of their various M4s and M16s. Dunn took a deep breath and got ready for the final push into the trenches.
In the skies above, Nagase and Pops were flying trail behind Blaze as she merged back with Wardog. While Nagase had many, many qualms about the morality and practicality of Osea landing on Yuktobanian soil, at the end of the day she had a job to do so she was going to execute it to the best of her ability.
"Edge, you're up for the next CAS call." Blaze informed the youngest Mudhen pilot in the ground.
"Copy." Nagase replied. Fortunately, she had one of the oldest and most experienced pilots out of Sand Island flying as her wizzo. Pops, or Corvus depending on who you asked, was scanning around the area with their underslung LITENING pod.
"Hmm… not seeing a lot of big ticket items." Pops commented on the state of Yuktobanian resistance below.
"They must be staging at the end of the peninsula." Nagase theorised.
"Maybe. Maybe…" Pops mused, continuing to scan around for any threats. So far all he saw were Osean vehicles and foot mobiles.
"Wardog, Thunderhead." Thunderhead piped up. "Ground forces further inland are requesting close air support. Connecting you with a TACP party, callsign Dagger."
"Alright Edge, you're up." Blaze said shortly before Nagase heard a clicking in her headset indicating a channel change.
"Wardog 2, this is Dagger, check in." The JTAC of this second observation and fires team, a younger sounding woman, checked in with Nagase.
"Dagger, Wardog 2, loud and clear, over." Nagase could hear the JTAC clearly. She got her kneeboard and pen ready.
"Wardog 2, Dagger, gameplan as follows. Massed enemy armour currently static in the highway passes on the south-west side of the active AO. Enemy anti-air blanket in area. Type 2, bombs on coordinates."
Nagase was fairly certain she got all that down. "Dagger, Wardog 2. Large formation of enemy armour static in the south-west of the AO. Enemy anti-air, type 2, bombs on coordinates."
"Wardog 2, correct. Report when ready for nine line."
Nagase cleared her throat. "Havoc, Wardog 2, ready for nineline." Nagase was ready to receive her target's location and relevant information.
"Wardog 2, Dagger, nine line as fellows. Ingress 225 from Anvil for 30 klicks. Elevation 209 feet, target is enemy armour. Echo Papa 0158-0032, no mark. Attack with eight GBU-39 Bravo. Friendlies three hundred metres north. Egress 090. Remain above twenty thousand feet to avoid AA, advise lob bombs at twenty klicks." Dagger passed on the relevant targeting information. Nagase could hear Pops punching the information in faster than Nagase could write it all down.
"Dagger, Wardog 2. Ingress 225 from Anvil Beach. Target elevation 209 feet, enemy armour at Echo Papa 0158-0032 with no mark. Friendlies three hundred metres north. Egress 090 at Angels 20. Attack with eight times GBU-39s at twenty kilometres standoff." Nagase read back the information to the JTAC.
"Wardog 2, all correct. Cleared hot, advise when pickle pickle." The JTAC replied.
"Wilco." Nagase pulled out of formation away from Wardog Squadron, flying over the landing zone at Anvil Beach before turning to the designated bearing of 225 from that location and flying towards the target area. "Pops, we hot?"
"When are we not?" Pops retorted with a chuckle. "Grid 0158-0032 is locked with eight SDBs."
"Copy." Nagase proceeded to the target, ascending from ten thousand to twenty thousand feet. The target was far enough away with the current weather that Nagase couldn't actually see what she was supposed to be dropping bombs on. With the RWR alerting her of at least a couple of Tunguska and Shilka self propelled anti aircraft vehicles, Nagase didn't want to get within spotting distance anyway. They reached the designated height and advised drop mark.
"Wardog 2, pickle eight!" Nagase reported to Dagger, a repeated clunk making itself heard eight times as eight SDBs left the Mudhen. Their wings popped open and they started gliding towards the target. "Dagger, Wardog 2, splash in two minutes."
"Dagger." Dagger acknowledged Nagase's time on target report. She turned away from the drop point and flew back out towards Anvil Beach on an exact east heading. By the time they made it back to the beachhead, the bombs had hit their mark.
"Wardog 2, Dagger, good hits, good hits. Multiple enemy vehicles destroyed. Survivors are scattering." Dagger advised. "Cheers for the assist, clear to depart."
"Copy, Dagger. Wardog 2 is signing off this channel." Nagase said a half second before returning to the wider air net. "Lead, 2, merging on your back right quarter."
"Roger, Edge." Blaze confirmed that she heard her wingman.
As Edge conducted a bombardment on a field of Yuktobanian tanks and infantry fighting vehicles, Alphas 2-1 and 2-2 were advancing onto the fighting positions that Blaze had bombed not ten minutes earlier. Dunn was charging towards a crater with his M16 up, bayonet and all. There was grey smoke billowing out from a fire within the position. As he and his team crested the trench, Dunn sweeped his sector. Nothing there but bunched up soil, scattered equipment and corpses. Dunn dropped down into the trench with his rifle up and took point, sweeping through the trench. He heard somebody speaking loudly in Yuktobanian.
"Frag." Dunn called back to the Marine behind him, moving up to a corner in the trench. A pin was pulled shortly before an M67 frag grenade flew over Dunn's head and past the corner. There was a brief commotion and the sounds of boots on wet soil before the grenade went off with a deafening bang. Shrapnel from the grenade flew up the trench, impacting the wall opposite Dunn. As soon as metal fragments stopped flying, Dunn punched in with the M16 nested neatly in his shoulder.
A wounded Yuktobanian came flying from the corner, coughing and bleeding. His suffering was cut short by two bursts to the chest and head. Stomping in over the body, Dunn and the Marine behind him came barging into what appeared to be a small communal space. There were at least three bodies scattered around the floor and two alive, albeit badly wounded, Yukes crawling away with rifles in their shattered arms. Dunn tapped one of them with two rounds to the back, putting him down for good. The Marine immediately behind him did the same, shooting the second survivor in the head. The body spasmed as the life left his lungs.
"Clear!" Dunn called out.
"Clear!" His buddy repeated the call.
Dunn moved onto an arm of the trench that ran away from the communal space. Moore backed him up with the SAW. They came across a body, their head removed clean from their shoulders. Probably somebody that got hit by a fifty. Dunn and Moore moved on ten metres further to the end of this arm of the trench. A couple of bodies. Correction, one body and one man bleeding out wheezing on the trench floor. The Yuke had a penetrating chest wound.
"Got a live one!" Dunn called back down the trench as he advanced on the wounded soldier. There was blood running in a small stream from his mouth. Every time he coughed, more blood came out. Evidently he had been hit in the lungs. Dunn took a knee, ripped the first aid kit from the dead soldier laying face down on the trench, opened it up and looked for a chest seal. Luckily, he found one.
"Moore, cover me, will ya?" Dunn requested as he slung his M16 around his back, pulled out a knife and started ripping open the soldier's chest rig and clothing. Once all of his layers were peeled back, Dunn wiped the wound clean of blood and applied the chest seal over the wound.
"What's his condition?" Moore asked.
"Definitely a pneumothorax. Lost a fair bit of blood." Dunn looked up. "Not much I can do for him, this is corpsman work."
"If we can hold this position." Moore retorted. He turned his head back down the trench. "Sergeant Cox! Got a live Yuke over here!"
A moment and a half later, Sergeant Cox appeared from the other end of the trench. He took a look at the situation. "Oh, fuck me." He got on the radio. "2-0, 2-2, one times wounded POW on my position."
Dunn raised an eyebrow, putting his M16A4 back in his hands. Cox eyeballed both him and Moore.
"Hold this position and wait out for orders." Cox ordered before moving back in under cover. Dunn took a look over the northern end of the trench. They still had at least five hundred metres to push forward before they would be on top of the mountain range. Unfortunately that looked like the least of their concern.
"Hey, I see movement!" Dunn shouted. "Infantry, twelve o'clock, four hundred!"
