Unto the Breach

Chapter Fourty-Five

“Oh, fuck,” Kacey muttered as she approached the pass.

Helicopters and firing mortars do not mix. They have to occupy the same airspace and have a horrible tendency to occupy the same three dimensional point at the same time.

There was room to the side for her to pass, but she assumed they were firing in support of the Keldara trapped on the ridgeline. If so she was going to be following the gun-target line the whole way. That was really gonna suck big donkey dicks.

However, as she crabbed by she could tell they were pointed away from the Keldara position. What in the fuck were they firing at?

The answer became clear as she crossed the pass. The mortars were pounding the shit out of the Chechens blocking the pass. And, what’s more, a line of Keldara women were just shaking out in what was clearly an assault line.

“Uh, hey, Father… uh… Ferrari?” Kacey said, keying the intercom.

“Da?”

“Those women, they’re attacking the Chechens. Should we help them?”

“Nyet,” the oldster replied. There was the loud chain-saw sound of a minigun from the left side of the bird as they passed the Chechen position. “Mother Lenka… Bad fucking news, yes? To the other battle.”

Kacey didn’t know who “Mother Lenka” was, but if the old fucker in the back considered her “bad news” she really wanted to meet her.

And she had to admit that the conditions up ahead looked worse. The fucking Chechens covered the damned ridge.

Well… good.

The Dragon was hungry.

“Gregor,” Father Ferani said over the intercom.

“What do you want?” Father Devlich snarled. He hadn’t gotten to fire at the Chechens and it rankled.

“Sion was right,” Father Ferani said. “I just saw the tiger he was talking about. Up on the ridge watching over the women. They will succeed.”

“And on this side are fucking ravens looking to eat your eyes,” Father Devlich replied.

“The Father of All watches.”

“Yeah, he’s gonna watch you piss your pants when the Chechens start firing at us.”

“Fuck you.”

“You fuck goats, I fuck women. Who wins?”

“That’s just because goats are too fast for you. You only fuck the old women that you need a crowbar to open.”

“And you still fuck goats. I win.”

“Yeah, well I fucked your mother.”

“I fucked your mother which is how you got born. But the good part dribbled down her leg.”

“I’m older than you, you jackass. How does that work? You fuck her before you were born? I, on the other hand, really did fuck your mother. And she was loose from other men.”

“Oh, fuck you. How do you cock this thing?”

“You have to have a cock, first.”

“I’m serious.”

“Father of All, you never listen, do you? Fifty-seven years I’ve been watching you pay attention only to your own bellowings and I’m about sick of it… ”

“Oh… go to Hel! ///sic/// And tell me how to cock this fucking thing, smart ass! We’re nearly there!”

Sayeed crouched behind a pile of bodies. They had nearly made it. But only nearly. The mortars had stopped too soon. The men had been too slow. Again, as they got close enough to throw rocks at them, the Keldara had opened up with a whithering fire. How so many could be alive after the pounding of the mortars he couldn’t imagine.

He lay prone, using the bodies for cover, and looked through the gap between the chest and mostly exploded head of one of the dead fedayeen. He would fire if he saw a good target. Otherwise, he was going to wait for Sadim’s Brigade to finish off these Keldara fuckers before he was moving again.

Kiril threw his last two boxes of SAW ammo onto the ammo step and slid in a belt. He had a total of four but he wasn’t going to bother belting them up. The next Chechen wave was already less than seven hundred meters away. This one wasn’t just charging, either. Oh, they were running, but they were using fire and maneuver, running forward to cover then dropping and firing up the hill to cover the next group.

He ducked as rounds impacted his position then took a long swig from his camelbak. Ammo, Liquids… Damn. It was in English and he still was struggling with that. And he didn’t fucking care anymore. The only thing that mattered was ammo. He just wanted to see which ran out first, his ammunition or the fucking Chechens. When the ammo ran out, he was going to climb out of this fucking trench and take them the axe until the oceans ran with blood…

“Tiger Three.”

“Go,” Adams said, taking a swig from his camelbak and breaking down his SPR by feel. It had started to get “hinky” on him in the last fight. Not jamming just… hinky. Probably the gas tube was getting fouled; he’d put a bunch of rounds through the damned thing.

“The next group, engage with the 60s,” Mike said. “But not until I say. And tell Shota to stand by.”

“Roger.”

“How’s Oleg?”

Adams looked over at the Team Leader. He was discussing ammo crossloading with Dmitri. There was a big red rag over his stump. Every now and then he’d wince then go on talking as if nothing had happened.

“Great.”

“Make sure that there’s plenty of rounds for the 60s. Belt them together and when the time comes make sure the gunners know to just go to full scale rock and roll.”

“Mike, that’s going to burn the fucking barrels and we don’t have any spares.”

“It won’t. Trust me. If we’re still fighting after that long, we’re not going to care.”

“Jessia, Mother Lenka is at the gap. Go to white phosphorus now.”

“Two gun! White phosphorus, traversing fire! Continuous!”

“Now they fire smoke?” Kamas asked as the white smoke drifted over the trench. Then he screamed as burning white metal fell on his skin and the white smoke started pouring from his shoulder and head.

White phosphorus is a chemical, mostly the metal phosphorus, that, once ignited, is practically impossible to extinguish. It carries its own oxidizer so it needs no oxygen to burn. Water will not quench it nor fire-fighting foam. Flesh, especially, will not put it out.

When it hits flesh, white phosphorus is drawn downward by gravity inexorably. It stops only when it hits bone and even then for mostly mechanical reasons. And it continues to burn. It is a poor killer for it cauterizes the flesh even as it burns it. Deaths from white phosphorus come from mainly mechanical issues, such as when it hits the throat and damages the trachea, or from shock. For white phosphorus is most intensely painful.

Much more common are blinding when it hits eyes, damage to the lungs from inhaling the freshly released smoke, which is extremely hot, and of course horrific scars. And it is frightening. It breaks the will more than it kills.

But for all its military utility, white phosphorus is considered a poor weapon. Steadfast units will take the horrific casualties and continue fighting. It does not, after all, kill. Not well.

The military value of white phosphorus lies mostly in its smoke. The burning metal releases clouds of the stuff. It’s not inherently harmful; once it is cooled it can be breathed without serious short or long-term damage. And created faster smoke than conventional smoke rounds with the added benefit of being, well, horrific.

It was for these dual purposes that most mortar “obscurement” rounds were made of white phosphorus. The ladies of the Keldara had not intended to kill Kamas, they just wanted to blind the unit in a cloud of white.

Of course, burning a fucking Chechen was always a good thing. Blinding one, in truth, was even better. Burning off balls would be happy making.

The Keldara mortar women loved white phosphorus.

Haza looked down the zig-zag trench as more of the Chechens began screaming in pain. Many were already dead or severely wounded from the terribly accurate mortar fire; most of the fire had been dropping right in the trenchline. He could hear the fuckers; they were close. But the way that sound echoed in this damned pass, he couldn’t place where the fire was coming from. It could be anywhere.

But he knew what the white phosphorus meant.

“Get up!” he screamed, lifting himself to the lip of the trench. “Get up! They are coming!”

He didn’t know who was coming, he wasn’t sure what direction they were coming from. But smoke only meant one thing. The infantry would be right behind.

Mahmud fired at the shape of a helmet behind a pile of bodies then darted forward as the group ahead of him went to ground to provide covering fire.

There wasn’t much in the way of cover on this slope. He could see where rocks had been pried out of the ground and even the remnant of sticks that had been range markers. The defenses were well prepared which just made this assault that much more idiotic.

Sho’ad was running beside him, as he’d been instructed, yelling as much as the thin air would permit and firing his AK in long, unaimed bursts. Mahmud considered telling the young idiot to conserve his ammunition then decided he didn’t have the air or the care. He’d started the same way, screaming and running at the enemy, firing bullets everywhere but at the enemy. If he lived, the young idiot would learn.

Mahmud sensed rather than saw the rounds and dropped to his face, lying behind a convenient body, as bullets, sharp sounding, probably 5.56 from the enemy’s squad automatic weapons, ripped overhead. He heard the thud of the bullets hitting something and then the thud of a body hitting beside him.

Looking to his right he shrugged. Sho’ad wasn’t going to be learning anything.

He reached over and took one of the dead idiot’s magazines. He was going to need the ammo and Sho’ad sure as hell didn’t.

Kiril fired a burst at one of the Chechens but the guy dropped before he could have hit him. However, his partner was still on his feet, screaming at the Keldara lines and spraying and praying. Kiril fired a burst into his chest and sent him to Allah as he wished.

He tracked right and continued to fire at the charging fedayeen. They were getting close. On the other hand, they were starting to bunch up and the careful fire and maneuver that they’d used on the lower slopes was breaking up as the assault dissolved inot a human wave charge.

That was fine by Kiril. More Islamic fuckers to send to Allah. More souls for his Death Guard. Souls to share with his love…

Mahmud could hear the SAW even over the rest of the firing. It was firing in precise bursts. These Keldara might be ghosts to the local kids, but they were also good.

However, he could also tell, by the sound, when the machine-gun tracked away from him. The note of the firing changed, became more muted, when it wasn’t pointed directly at him.

He rolled up to one elbow and pointed towards the sound. He saw the SAW gunner immediately, just the shape of a helmet and an arm behind the weapon. But he was less than fifty yards away. Easy shot…

Kiril couldn’t understand how he’d gotten into the bottom of the position. He could see his SAW above him, still hanging onto the edge of the position by its bipod feet. It was hanging down, though, not being fired. It had to be fired. It should be served.

Above him he could see birds. Ravens. Circling above the battlefield. The eyes of the Father in a red sky.

“Gretchen… ?”

Mike was firing, now, hunkered down against the right-hand side of the opening to the bunker. They were individual, aimed shots at the Chechens that were at the fucking trenchline. Some of them were jumping it, heading for the bunker.

He saw one of the fedayeen jump the trenchline, a young guy, screaming at the top of his lungs and pulling frantically on the trigger of an empty weapon. The image was there but it was filed away in some corner that wasn’t in the present reality. The only present was the two rounds he put right into the screaming mouth and the automatic part that told him the tango was serviced, sir, you can move on.

Another part of his brain was waiting for something. He couldn’t describe it but it was like art: he would know it when it happened. Battles don’t just go to the best or the most numerous. Most battles in history had gone to the side that just held out the longest. The side that just refused to quit. The side that you could wipe out but would refuse to fucking quit. The side that committed its reserve the last. Who dares, wins.

Mike felt it, even as his earphone crackled.

“Kildar. They have committed their reserve.”

“Adams! 60s!”

Sawn looked up and around. Kiril’s SAW had stopped firing. They needed that firepower if they were going to hold on.

He stepped back and turned to run down the trench, M4 pointed down in a tactical carry. He could damned well run a SAW if he had to.

Mahmud darted forward and jumped into the empty SAW position. They would have to clear the trenchline and from where he was it made most sense to move to his right.

He ignored the weapon; it would be picked up after the battle, and turned right, holding his AK forward and ready to strike. He had fought in trenches plenty of times and knew that an enemy could appear at any time. The thing to do was to move forward, fast. Strike with the barrel or the butt. Fire when sight-lines made it possible but most of all move forward fast. Take the positions still trying to defend from behind.

The direct line on this trench was about four meters to a turn. He hurried that way and, at the turn, almost ran smack into one of the Keldara who was running down the trench. He had probably noticed the SAW was out of action and was going to see why.

Mahmud clutched at his trigger and fired three rounds, point blank, into the man’s chest.

Sawn grunted in surprise as the rounds hit him then struck out, a trained and reflexive reaction, the barrel of his M4 striking the AK upwards and to the right. He followed in with the butt of the weapon, smashing the fedayeen in the chest and knocking him backwards. The M4 was bent by the combined blows so he dropped it as his hand dropped to his belt, ripping out his axe as he darted forward.

The Islamic raised the AK, either in defense or to fire, but Sawn’s axe cut down in a lightning strike, sliding along the barrel and taking the man’s fingers off his left hand. A second blow laid open his head.

Sawn fell to his knees, suddenly feeling weak. Just combat reaction, he was sure. The sympathetic nervous system, the part that controlled direct action in the human body, went into full overdrive during intense moments of combat. When they passed, the parasympathetic nervous system, the part that was in charge during sleep and ran all the automatic systems, came back with a vengeance. You felt weak and nauseous. Your hands shook. You wanted to sleep.

The briefing had never covered being cold… though. And he couldn’t understand where the flood of bright red pouring out of the bottom of his body armor had come from…

Adams slammed the butt of his SPR into the back of one of the fedayeen’s head and watched it buckle. The head and the butt. Fucking M-16 series weapons were lousy for close combat!

“Adams! 60s!”

Fuck! They were down to hand to hand in the fucking trenches. How in the fuck did Mike expect him to get the fucking machine-gun into action.

Oleg, though, had heard the call. He left his axe in the face of the Chechen he had just killed and picked up the 60 off the ground where it had been hidden. Another Chechen tumbled into the pit but he ignored the fedayeen as he cocked the weapon.

Adams wasn’t about to let Oleg outdo him. Stopping only to kick the Chechen so hard his mother was gonna bleed, he picked up his own and dropped the bipod into the firing position.

The target view was pure Chechens. So, taking Mike’s advice against his better judgement, he pulled back the trigger and started firing continuous.

The M-60 series of weapons was first developed in the 1950s as a replacement for the WWI era .30 caliber machine gun. Air cooled, the series had suffered throughout its existence with many problems. It tended to jam, it overheated quickly and when overheated would tend to “cook off”, fire continuously despite releasing the trigger as rounds were heated hot enough to “explode” when they touched the smoking breach. The barrels also tended to heat quickly to the point that they would “droop” and cause an explosion that destroyed the gun. Mixing “cookoff” with “droop” was a sure recipe for disaster.

The Army had eventually replaced the venerable M-60 with the M240 series manufactured by the Belgian firm of Fabrique Nationale. Machine-gunners throughout the Army and various other users had breathed a sigh of relief because while the M240 had its problems, it was head and shoulders above the 60.

The M-60E4 was the manufacturers attempt to regain that vast market it had lost. Besides various improvements to make the gun more reliable, overall, they had paid tremendous attention to barrel and breach design, using a series of new materials to improve barrel life, barrel strength and cooling.

Adams knew, from too much experience, the sound, the smell, the feel of an M-60 that had been overworked. And he knew right when that feel should start. He knew he should be firing in short, controlled, bursts. But… damn there were just too many of the fuckers. The 7.62 rounds were dropping them in windrows, but there were still more! He knew he had to let up on the trigger, that the fucking 60 was going to overheat, cook-off, jam, fucking blow the fuck up at any moment. But if he stopped firing the fucking Chechens were going to overrun them. AS it was, his 60, Oleg’s and the two with Vil and Sawn had stopped them, butt cold. To even fire in bursts would mean they could move forward, maneuver, something. He had to keep firing, just holding the fucking trigger down. It was the only way to stop the assault!

And the funny thing was… the fucker was still rocking! He could feel it. Like driving a car, you can feel when the car is at its maximum, when you’d pushed it too far. He had that same sense with a weapon, especially the 60 which he’d had to fuck with for far too long in the teams. And this fucker, this bad boy, it wasn’t having any trouble with continuous fucking fire! The screaming Islamics were being ripped to fucking dogmeat by this beautiful fucking weapon and it wasn’t even giving a God-damned hiccup!

“YEAH!” he screamed. This motherfucker was ROCKING AND ROLLING! “EAT HOT LEAD THINLY COATED WITH COPPER YOU ISLAMIC MOTHERFUCKERS!”

The Kildar called it “the money shot.”

Sniping is, essentially, just a normal form of infantry combat. The sniper fired at the enemy with a rifle. That was the essence of infantry combat. Oh, he might fire further than normal, he might use more camouflage. But he was, really, just an infantryman with a few more tricks in his bag.

The big difference with the sniper over the regular infantryman was in how he chose his targets. The infantryman tended to concentrate on the men in front of him, similar in interests and actions, the riflemen and machine gunners that were trying to kill him by direct fire.

Snipers, though, had another duty. Their purpose was to find and eliminate priority targets. Snipers were the reason that infantry platoon leaders had one of the shortest life expectancies of any position in combat. The enemy sniper sought out the leaders to disrupt the management of the battlefield.

With the Chechens this was especially important. Their leadership was very personality based and extremely hierarchical. Take out the leaders and the followers tended to not only lose morale but have no fucking clue what they should be doing. The Chechens, also, derived their memetic combat background from societies that specialized in hit and run. If the first rush didn’t work, they tended to retreat. Especially if they didn’t have anyone behind them driving them on.

Finding the leaders, therefore, was the primary job of the Keldara snipers. And getting the big leaders, the senior commanders, ah, that was the money shot.

Pavel had been scanning the battlefield, keeping an eye on how things were going, for the entire battle. And he knew that the Chechens were at the trenchline, that they’d committed their reserve. He’d called both in. But he also knew that somewhere down there was the man driving them on. The main leader. The man the large brigade had gathered around for a thousand personal reasons but all related to his personality, his ability, his command skills. His charisma.

He finally found it. A cluster of people behind the lines. Radio antennas.

One man was in the center of that. Oh, not the precise center but a sort of psychological center of gravity that was felt more than analyzed. The man that people were looking at. A big man, graying hair, very serene expression.

Pavel hadn’t even realized he’d fired until he saw that expression change as the round hit the center of the man’s white mustache which suddenly became crimson as brains splashed onto the ground behind him.

Again, Mike felt it, like a shock rippling through the enemy. It was time.

He keyed his throat mike and strode out of the bunker, ignoring the rounds that cracked around him.

“ARISE KELDARA!” he shouted, firing one handed at a Chechen that had, somehow, made it through the fire and was about to jump into Adams’ position. The Chechen flew back in a spray of blood. “UP YOSIF! UP OLEG! FORWARD VIL! UNTO THE BREACH, TIGERS OF THE MOUNTAINS! FORWARD THE AXE AND THE FLAME! KILL ALL OF THESE MOTHERFUCKERS! LET NOT ONE ESCAPE!”

Shota was very unhappy. He had this beautiful rocket launcher and he hadn’t been allowed to use it. One Chechen had even gotten to his position, which was just forward of the command bunker and to the right. Shota had picked him up by the leg and beaten him on the side of the position until he stopped squealing. They were all over the place and still he hadn’t been allowed to shoot.

But when the Kildar called, he scrambled to his feet, grabbing the launcher and jumping out of the hole in the ground.

There were Chechens everywhere. He couldn’t figure out where to fire.

“Target! Guy in the red shirt!” Yakov shouted, grabbing him by the shoulders and turning him. “Fire!”

Oh, that was easy. The guy was barely fifty meters in front of the trenches.

Shota didn’t even bother to use the sights.

Adams ducked as a massive explosion went off to the front of his position then picked up the M-60, cradling the remaining links in his arm.

“Oleg, see you in a bit,” he said, frowning.

“I’ll give you cover, yes?” Oleg said, hopping up one-legged onto a firing stoop so that he could see over the palisades of the position. He began firing, sweeping the M-60 back and forth, still going continuously. The position was filling up with brass and links. They both must have fired over a thousand rounds each and the weapons still weren’t giving a hiccup. “Take some of my ammo.”

“Okay,” Adams said, clambering out of the position he had occupied for so many hours. The Chechens were still trying to move forward but they were looking… weak. They were hardly firing; apparently most of them had expended their ammo and weren’t in any mental condition to reload or scrounge if necessary. The explosion had shaken them and another to the left that almost knocked Adams into the trench again was worse.

Eamon Ferani, loaded down with ammo boxes, clambered up beside him and grinned.

“The Kildar wishes us to advance, Master Chief,” the boy said. He drew an axe and waved it. “I will cover your sides, yes?”

“Oh, fuck yeah,” Adams said, lifting the belt up a bit more and raising the machine-gun to his shoulders. He clamped down on the trigger and started striding forward, sweeping the weapon from side to side. It was like shooting a God-damned fire hose. “OH, FUCK YEAH! I GOT ME ONE OF THESE YOU ISLAMIC BASTARDS!”

Over his screaming, and the continuous clatter of the gun, he thought he heard wings beating. It sounded like a giant bird, bigger than any bird, ever…

“THE DRAGON IS ON YOU, YOU BASTARDS!”

As she swept around to the east, Kacey triggered the speakers. A sound like satanic chanting filled the valley, resounding from mountainside to mountainside. Then she dipped down to come in right at ground level.

There wasn’t any need for special flying and there wasn’t much chance of missing the target. The Chechens were all over the ridge. Kacey targeted one group towards the rear and just let fly with everything.

57mm rockets dropped into the Chechen command group as thousands of 7.62 rounds scowered the ground. The whole group fell, blown to bits by rockets, churned to red mush by the fire of the gatlings.

She swept around to point up the hill, flying through the dust and smoke of her barrage, and fired everything again, ripping a ten meter wide hole through the middle of the Chechen formation as she swept up the ridge, engine at overload, drums, guitars and voices screaming into the void.

Mike had lost it. At some level he knew that and didn’t care.

He leapt the trench, running ahead of the Keldara, SPR tracking right and left and automatically engaging targets of opportunity, round after round cracking straight through a screaming mouth, behind fierce-slitted eyes, rounds cracking past him, ducking and weaving as some part of his mind anticipated shots.

Combat psychologists had determined that there were four broad states to humans in relation to combat, mostly definable by heartbeat and bloodpressure. The lowest, white, was a steady state. This was a person unstressed by combat and the hormones and endorphins released by it. Heartbeat was steady and low, blood-pressure the same. Above that was yellow, generally found in persons who were aware that combat might occure at any time but were still more or less steady state. Heartbeat was slightly elevated as was blood-pressure. Above that were the ascending orange and red, red being Shakespeare’s famous quote regarding summoning up “the actions of a tiger.” Heartbeat was generally in the high hundreds, blood-pressure well over two hundred and while fine motor control was reduced the fighter was acting at what most warriors considered maximum capability. Time was distorted, hearing was distorted, the world was an unreal state. The tiger was on the back of the deer and rending.

But above red was black. Most combatants, entering the black range, lost effect. At the black range the heart was pumping so fast oxygen to the brain was reduced due to poor pumping action, blood pressure was so high that the fighter was seeeing either a red cloud or the true tunnel vision of the brain slowly blacking out.

But some warriors, the most highly trained, could enter into black and function. By definition, they were some of the most deadly persons on earth. In black, the fighter’s reactions were superhuman, their automatic training processes working at a level beyond gestalt, their shots so fast that even on single shot they sounded like a machine gun and every one was going to hit a target. A fighter who could ride the wave of the black could, would, never miss.

Mike was in the black. Time was slowed for him to such an extent he could see the bullets flying from the Chechens AKs, seeming to glide through the air towards him. He could see his own and know before they hit that they were on target. He felt as if he was moving in molasses and yet the Chechens, screaming towards him, were moving slower. The ejected cartridges from the SPR were as big as beer barrels, flying past him as slowly as snails would could they but fly.

The empty magazine, dropped, unnoticed and another was seated before the first living Chechen in view could target him and still Mike ran on, brow lowered like the gall’ed rock…

“Mike!” Adams bellowed, turning the M-60, still on continuous fire, to the side so that his stupid boss wouldn’t run right into his cone of fire. “God damnit! Where the fuck do you think you’re going?”

“ARISE KELDARA!” Oleg bellowed. “YOUR KILDAR LEADS!” He targeted a group of Chechens to the side of the Kildar who was pushing into a wedge of dead bodies, firing rounds so fast it sounded as if he was on full auto, but one Chechen after another was flying back with single holes, right through the fucking X ring. Oleg cursed the mortar that had taken his leg. He should be at his Kildar’s side! “FORWARD THE AXE AND FLAME! ARISE TIGERS!”

Mike had reached the Chechen line but the fighters in front of him were having a hard time even lifting their weapons with dead bodies falling around and on them.

Some detached portion of him watched as the butt of the SPR shattered on a Chechen face, the head of the Chechen slumping sideways as the hard driven steel crumpled not only his face bones but his skull.

The barrel bent across the side of another’s head, wrapping into a half U at the impact and brains splashed, slow as dropping feathers, out of the shattered skull.

The axe came up. The axe of the Kildar and Mike struck down and across, shattering a skull, up to slash through a neck, down to take off an arm.

The air was filled with a mist of blood, the sacrifices falling slowly, so slowly.

Vil was up and on the Chechens, screaming as he dropped to a knee and fired. Two Chechens, older ones, were maneuvering in to fire on the Kildar and he dropped both with two aimed bursts. But the Kildar wasn’t slowing down and moving forward by fire and maneuver obviously wasn’t going to let him catch up.

“Damn him!” Vil shouted. “What’s the point of training us if he’s going to forget it?”

Lasko was so in his element he thought he might just have to kill himself. Never could he have another day like this.

He was a very good shot. Good enough that with his scope dialed to more or less the windage and distance, he had no problem instinctually adjusting.

He was covering the Master Chief’s back, sweeping the field and spotting Chechen fighters that were targeting the machine-gunner and terminating them. He wasn’t stressed, was in fact in “white”, his heartbeat slow and regular. He was coldly finding and terminating his definition of priority targets.

But the pile of brass gathering around him told the whole story. Lasko truly was “one shot, one kill.” Count the brass, take maybe three percent off, and that was his count. There was a huge pile of brass building up. He was going to beat Hathcock’s record, probably sometime in the next fifteen minutes. And that was the killer app in the sniper world.

The last round of the mag blew a head open, he dropped that one, took a full one from Pyotar, loaded and went back to sniping.

There was, in Lasko’s world, nothing better than a field full of Chechens and a full magazine.

Adams still had his finger clamped on the trigger, holding the M-60 at his hip and sweeping it slowly back and forth like a fireman hosing down a fire.

Eamon was yanking belts out of the boxes and linking them together as fast as he could, while simultaneously holding the off the ground and keeping up with the Master Chief.

But as fast as Adams advanced he couldn’t catch the Kildar.

“God’s Damnit,” Adams shouted. “Ghost! Slow the fuck down!”

Somewhere there was an ending to the Chechens. If Mike had a thought in his head it was that he was going to carve his way to that ending and then turn around and carve his way back.

“Oh, fuck,” Pavel said, lifting his head away from the scope. He’d been covering the Kildar’s back, since he’d apparently forgotten the idea, and only glanced up for a moment to get a general look. What he saw was not the best vision he’d ever seen.

“Vanner! Vanner!”

Patrick Vanner was having one hell of a time. He was a Marine brat, both his mother and father were former Marines, the latter a retired infantry gunnery sergeant.

But despite all his years in the Marines, and his service with the Kildar, he’d never gotten a chance to fire a shot in anger. He’d never known if he had that special quality that let men excell when the bullets were flying around them.

No question now. He had moved forward, following the Keldara and targeting “leakers”, guys who for one reason or another got through the Keldara line. Most of them were slipping around the side, which could be bad if they got in behind the Keldara. But they weren’t because Patrick Adam Vanner was by God terminating their mujaheddin asses!

A Chechen dropped, three rounds in the sweet spot in the upper chest, when his headphone buzzed.

“Vanner! Vanner! This is Pavel. The Kildar is about to be shot by his own helicopter!”

Kacey wasn’t quite in black but she was seeing red. Lots of red. A good bit of it was on her windshield.

She’d dropped down to where the belly of the Hind was very nearly scraping the ground and flown, hay-diddle-diddle, straight up the middle of the Chechen formation, guns blazing.

The result was flying Chechen body parts and some of them had flown high enough to impact the windscreen. So Kacey was definitely seeing red.

She could see the formation breaking up ahead, though, and there were good guys up there. So she let up on her trigger and started to bank up and away.

The last few rounds from the helo cracked into the back of Chechens and she could, for some reason, watch as the last tracer lazed its way into a gap in the formation.

A gap filled by a blood soaked Keldara, holding a hatchet in his hand and charging forward in a berserker rage.

She flew up and away on automatic, watching as the tracer tracked in to strike the axe-head, through it and into the center of the screaming fighter’s chest.

“Dragon! Dragon! Pull up! You’re about to… ”

“Blue on blue,” Kacey muttered, banking towards a cluster of Chechens that seemed to be trying to reform. “Fuck me.”

“… kill the Kildar!”

“Oh, double dog fuck me!”

“It was only one goat! I was thirteen! I was drunk! It was a bet!” Father Ferani triggered a burst from the minigun. The helo was banking to the side over a shattered group on a hilltop. There were a few alive, though, and that couldn’t be born.

“You’re still a goat fucker,” Father Devlich screamed over the guitars. The helo flattened out, nearly at ground level, and began continous fire to the front. But to the sides there were Chechens, many of them looking towards him, open mouthed in surprise at the sudden attack from the rear. He just aimed the gun and held down the trigger, watching rows of the fedayeen tumble away from the laser-like fire. “What is that damned music?”

“Yeah, well I really did fuck your mother!” Father Ferani shouted. The group in front of him was looking at him stunned but he didn’t care. Fucking Islamic goat… Send them all to the All Father. “And she screamed louder than that fucking singer!”

“At least I’ve never fucked a goat!” Devlich shouted back, finding another cluster to scythe down. “You know, I’ve always wanted to ask… ” He fired again, cutting down a fedayeen who was screaming down the hill, dropping his weapon and stripping off his ammo vest. “And it’s not like she can understand us. So, just between a couple of Elders… What was it like?”

“You know,” Ferani shouted, sweeping the gun across a cluster of fedayeen trying to escape over the side of the gulley, “I don’t honestly remember.”

“You think you’d remember something like fucking a goat,” Father Devlich said as the bird banked up and over. This time he was the one still looking at the battlefield and he found another group, this one trying to take cover and keep fighting. They weren’t going to fight any more. Not churned to red butter.

“It was a long time ago,” Father Ferani said. He was looking at sky, gripping the spades of the gun and hanging nearly staight down. The sun was already behind the mountains and the slight clouds that had come in in the afternoon caught the light in waterfalls of pink. “And I hadn’t had sex before.”

“You popped your cherry on a goat?” They were banking away from the battlefield, now. He hoped this stupid bitch wasn’t going home already. He had plenty of bullets left.

“I remember its ass was hairy,” Father Ferani said, musingly. “I remember thinking its ass was very hairy.”

“It’s ASS WAS HAIRY?” Father Devlich screamed, laughing so hard he had to stop firing. “It’s ass was hairy.” He triggered the gun and waggled it back and forth, not really firing at anything; there wasn’t anything worth firing at in sight. It was just that he wanted to giggle til he got that bad pain in his chest. Oh, no, there was a group to fire at. Hey, more red fucking Chechens on the ground. “It’s ass was hairy.”

“What can I say,” Father Ferani replied. “Then I really popped my cherry on your mother.”

“You keep saying that,” Father Devlich said, shaking his head. Good, they were headed back towards the fight. Not that there was much fight left in the Chechens.

“It was spring festival, the same year,” Father Ferani said, lost in memory. Not so lost that he didn’t fire at a group of the fedayeen that had clustered on the back side of a hill, away from the former battlefield. They scattered, leaving three bodies on the ground. “I think she felt sorry for me that everyone was teasing me about fucking a goat.”

“You are so lieing,” Father Devlich said. He didn’t even have anything to fire at. Fuck.

“Nope,” Father Ferani said. “Sorry, Gregor. I really did bed Martya. It was in a bed of tigerberry bushes on a night with a crescent moon. And, Gregor, do the sums.” A large group was forming up in the ravine to the side of the ridge and he fired at them, working the gatling gun across the group. Tracers came drifting up through the air towards the Hind, the first fire they’d taken. “You’re… ” He grunted and stopped firing.

“You have to be lieing,” Father Devlich said, furiously. Now there were some running Chechens in view. He fired, missed, fired again. “I am not… ” Something made him look behind him.

Father Ferani was hanging from the harness the black mechanic had had them wear. Blood was pouring out of his mouth and back. There were three large, red, holes in his back and Father Devlich could see right into the mess inside his body.

Father Devlich turned back to look out the window of the helicopter. A group of screaming fedayeen was running towards the north and he clamped down on the trigger of the gun, tumbling them to the ground. He continued to fire into the bodies, churning them to red mush, until they were out of sight.

“Oh double dog fuck me,” Adams said, running forward. Mike was on his back with about a million screaming Chechens still around him. Adams just fired up the whole area as a round from Shota dropped off to his right, blowing pieces of fedayeen all over the battlefield.

But the fedayeen didn’t seem to care about the fallen Keldara. Mike’s berserker charge had shaken them, the continuously firing M-60s had them wavering, the rounds from Shota were terrifying them and the tunnel of dead, not to mention the windrows to either side from the door guns, broke them.

They were turning and running back down the hill. And the Keldara, their Kildar apparently dead on the field, weren’t about to let one of them survive. They gave a cry like a hundred hungry tigers and charged forward, guns firing into unprotected backs, axes sweeping down on necks and over it all the hammer of the drums…

Mike shook his head and rolled to his feet, groaning. There was no moment of “where am I?” He knew exactly where he was, still on that damned hill. The last few moments were pretty much a blur, but he knew right where he was, even if he couldn’t remember how he got there. And there was still firing going on around him; the battle wasn’t over.

No, he thought to himself, it’s pretty much done.

He could see where Shota’s rounds had landed, the sprawled near circles of dead Chechens. He could see the windrows were the machine gun teams had pushed forward, laying down that incredible barrage the new 60s were capable of. But the part that really got him was the fucking hole churned right up the middle, stopping… well, more or less where he was standing. He could remember that, the sight of those rounds marching towards him. He hadn’t realized that Nielson had scrounged that much firepower for the Hind. And where in the fuck had those speakers come from? The valley was still ringing with the song even as the Keldara pressed forward, harrying the Chechens from defeat into rout.

The Hind was helping in that, sweeping back and forth, breaking up any pockets of resistance and now segueing into another song, something about dragons. The combination of the firepower at the trenches, the Hind and Shota had not just broken the Chechens, it has slaughtered them. If there weren’t three thousand dead on this battlefield, he’d be very surprised.

The other Hind was coming in for dust-off as the sky turned pink washed with violet. They held this battlefield, but Mike was well aware that there was one more battle to be done on this day.

He tried to push himself up and realized his right hand really hurt. Really really hurt. Holding it up he saw that the skin of the palm had been stripped off and it looked as if a couple of the fingers and the thumb were dislocated. So much for using that hand for a while. Hell, he hurt all over, pains starting to pop up across his whole body. The the chest decided to report. Pain. Big pain. Chest. That was bad.

He looked down at the hole in his body armor. It was smoking. Using his left hand, he undid his battle harness and armor then reached under it and pulled out the still smouldering tracer, wincing a little at the heat. Hmmph. 7.62x51. Same kind the Hind had in its gatling guns. It was horribly distorted from something.

Looking around he spotted his axe. The head, anyway, which was bent in half and had a hole in it.

“Adams, call in the dogs,” Mike said, keying his throat mike while still lying on his back. He stopped to get some wind. His chest really hurt. He was pretty sure the sternum was cracked. And he could tell he was bleeding from a couple of spots. But he’d bled before and nothing seemed super-critical except his hand. He’d live. “Vanner, get ahold of that armed Hind and tell them to conserve some ammunition. We’ve still got to get through the pass… ” He reached over with his left hand and grabbed his thumb, pulling it out and popping it back into position. Then he did the same with his forefinger, middle finger and pinkie. Right hand… call it fifty percent functional. Needed to get a bandage on it. Plug a couple of holes. Good enough.

He rolled to his left and got up on one knee, picked up a blood-covered AK, then straightened up, swaying on his feet.

Now to go kill the fuckers in the pass…

Above him, the ravens soared…

“AER KELDAR!”

Haza had fought just about everyone on earth at one point or another. He had mostly fought Americans but there were other Pashtun tribes, the Uzbeks and Turks of the Northern Alliance. He had fought beside and against Somalis and animalist Christians in Sudan. He had fought the Israelis and the Ghurkas. The British SAS commandoes and American Delta force. He had fought Spetznaz, Rangers and SEALs.

But if he survived this he was going to quit fighting anyone. For the trench had suddenly filled with women, big women, big blonde and brunette and red-headed women, screaming a terrible battlecry and swinging AXES for Allah’s sake!

They had come in on top of the damned mortars. He had glimpsed one blown backwards in a spray of blood and guts, hit by one of her own rounds. More were spouting wounds from shrapnel. They didn’t seem to care. They didn’t seem to feel. They were wide-eyed and screaming in skirts and bright blouses, shooting AKs from their left hand and swinging those axes in their right.

They had dropped on the fedayeen before most of them had realized the mortars stopped, dropped into the trench hacking and screaming in a berzerker rage that made the most Allah enraptured fedayeen look like a child having a tantrum.

They had dropped in like eagles from the sky and began hacking and shooting. Some of them had shot each other but even that did not seem to stop them.

The fedayeen had not had a chance. They were still trying to recover from being effectively and relentlessly mortared when these screaming harpies dropped on them and began slashing and hacking until the trench was a river of blood.

The axes made terrible wounds, cutting off limbs, slashing necks, crushing heads.

Haza had shot one, point blank, blocked one of the axes then felt another sink into his shoulder. The AK dropped from his nerveless hands and suddenly he was on his back with an old woman, red dripping axe in hand, looking down at him.

“You are the commander, yes?” the woman said in badly accented Arabic. “Feel glad. You are being honored.”

The woman dropped to sink both knees in his abdomen and Haza tried to wrench upwards. But three wide-eyed women were pinning his arms and legs. The fourth, a little slip of a red headed girl he should have been able to toss off, had his arm in a bar-lock and was watching quite calmly out of the deepest blue eyes…

“It is said we eat our dead. Not true.” The woman raised the axe and chopped downwards, splitting his sternum. Chopped again, working her way from throat downward to get through all of the big bone.

The fedayeen screamed in pain and tried to writhe away but he was effectively pinned and couldn’t escape. The women holding him down knew what they were doing, acted as if they had done it… before.

“The men, they are so besotted of the Father of All,” the horrible old woman said, reaching down and ripping his chest apart. “But the women, oh we women know who holds the power. Power of life, power of death, the breath of the crops and the wind in the trees.” A knife came out and descended.

The last thing Haza saw was the horrible woman raising his still beating heart and dribbling his blood into her mouth.

“Ay Sibelus!” the woman shrieked, holding the heart to the sky. “Bring back the spring!”

Captain Guerrin stood up on the ridgeline as the line limped towards him. Bodies on stretchers carried by men in battle armor and women in blood-splattered smocks. Men with women, too wounded to walk, over their backs. Men carrying the bodies of dead comrades. Smoke-stained and blood-drenched. But they were all there, every dead Keldara, man and woman. Some of the men carrying multiple weapons and still helping to lug the heavy mortars.

“First Sergeant, get the stretchers,” Guerrin snapped. “Hell, get the whole company. These people are going home if we have to carry them on our backs.”