Alone and Unafraid (American Praetorians Book 3) (34 page)

“Is that so?”  I was about ready to be done with these fuckers.  They could do it, too.  If we were focused on the next attack, they could make their move.  We couldn’t spare the guns to watch them
and
fight off ISIS.

Jim voiced it.  “We should just smoke these dogfuckers,” he said.  “If things had gone according to plan, we might not have this problem, but with ISIS out there, and them in here…put ‘em in the dirt.”

We might have, right then and there, except the mortars started falling at that point.

We all headed for the wall and got as small as possible as the whirring sound announced the incoming shells.  I don’t know if they were just waiting for them to get brought up, or if they were starting to run low on ammo for the heavy machine guns.  The shells started detonating in the center of the compound, which actually put Carnivore and his cronies at more risk than the rest of us.  All the Praetorians were on the perimeter.

I grabbed one of the RPGs from Jim.  I just knew that those rolling armored bombs were on their way, under cover of the mortars.  It was also too late to plant even one of the satchels; I saw the gate take a direct hit, dirt, frag, and black smoke belching into the air with a shuddering
crump
.  Even if we had planted a charge there, the mortar probably would have detonated it before the VBIED could get there.

I skirted the wall, stepping over a couple of shooters along the way.  I keyed my radio, trying to be heard over the unholy thunder of the mortar barrage.  “Get everyone away from the gate, and get some RPGs on it!  We’ve got to stop those VBIEDs!”
  I paused just short of the northeast corner of the compound, dropping flat on the ground as another mortar round came in.  The shockwave smacked the air out of my lungs and frag whickered overhead to patter into the walls.  Compared to the raving thunder of the shell’s detonation, the shrapnel hitting the wall sounded harmless, but it would have flensed most of the flesh from my upper torso if I’d been upright.  “Clear the north side of the gate,” I called over the radio as soon as I got my breath back.  My voice sounded like sandpaper in my own ears, and I couldn’t even be sure I was heard, though a couple of figures lying against the wall ahead of me started low crawling as fast as they could toward me, which told me they at least had heard.

 
There was no time to be as thorough about it as any of us would have liked.  The mortars made one hundred percent accountability almost impossible at the time, as well.  We had to roll with what we had, and hope not too many of us died in the process.

The mortar fire slackened, while the heavy machine gun fire either intensified, or became more noticeable with the cessation of all the high explosive
rain falling out of the sky.  I felt bruised and sandblasted.  I was also out of position to engage anything coming through the gate.

I dashed for the nearest building.  It should have a shot at the gate, albeit a narrow one.  If a couple of the HESCOs hadn’t been removed or disintegrated, I wouldn’t even have had that.  But it was all that was presently available.

The building was a standard, flat-roofed, plastered cinder block building like any number of hundreds of thousands in Iraq.  It had also taken a couple of direct hits from the mortars.

One corner was completely caved in, which actually had the welcome effect of giving me a straight shot inside without having to run around to the door.  I did have to clamber over
the rubble of the corner walls, trying to keep my rifle from swinging into anything, while simultaneously keeping the RPG’s tube hanging on my shoulder.  As rattled by the nearness of the mortar impacts as I was, it was awkward, to say the least.  I got over the pile of debris with a couple new bruises and a nasty scrape from some protruding rebar.

As I went through, I thought I saw movement out of the corner of my eye, but I disregarded it.  I had to concentrate on getting at that VBIED.

The second round had gone through the roof, leaving a good-sized hole with more rebar hanging down and another pile of rubble on the floor.  The place was otherwise empty.  I hurried to a window, cocking the launcher by raising the rear sight.  The RPG-27 is in many ways very similar to the AT-4 that is still used in the US military.  It’s a cheap, mass-produced anti-armor rocket in a disposable fiberglass tube.  It’s just a little bigger.

The window to take the shot was even narrower than I’d thought.  Getting the rocket through it without clipping a
HESCO was going to be a bitch.  I laid the tube on the windowsill and got down underneath it, leveling the sights at the gate.  I was using the window not only to steady the weapon, but to ensure that I didn’t do what I’d seen a lot of guys do with the AT-4; they braced for a recoil that wasn’t there, so when the weapon fired, they dipped the tube and sent the rocket into the dirt.  That would be a fatal mistake this time.

I didn’t have long to wait.  The
steel front of the first armored VBIED nosed through the gate after a couple of minutes, looking like something straight out of
Mad Max
.  I lined up the sights on the center of the cab and pressed the trigger.

There was some scuffling and what almost sounded like a yell behind me just before I fired.  The blast of the RPG’s rocket motor firing drowned it all out, followed by the slam of impact against the cab.

Somebody else had fired on the VBIED at the same time from the south; we hadn’t had the time or the presence of mind to coordinate who was shooting, and, frankly, the more shots on target the better a chance of stopping the damned thing before it could get all the way inside.

The sides of the armored cab bulged, and fire belched from the vision slits.  It continued to trundle forward a few feet before grinding to a halt; that fucker had to be way too heavy to roll forward on its own, and I doubted there was enough left of the driver to hold down the pedal.  A moment later, the charge in the back exploded.

It was probably the biggest explosion I’d ever been that close to.  It was as if some primordial pagan god had slapped the compound.  I was knocked flat as the shockwave slammed through the window, carrying a tidal wave of frag and debris.  I caught a little bit of it, though the sting was momentarily eclipsed by the sheer overwhelming impact of the detonation.

I think I actually blacked out for a second.  When I was aware of my surroundings again, I noticed that the wall had partially collapsed, and my legs were under some of the rubble.  As bruised as they felt, they didn’t appear to be broken.  I pulled myself free and got my hands on my rifle, which was still on its sling.  It didn’t appear to be damaged, but I did a quick function check to be sure, and quickly looked through the scope.  Intact.  I just hoped the barrel wasn’t bent.

It was then that I noticed the corpse behind me.

He wasn’t immediately identifiable in the dark, but from the look of things, even t
o my rattled brain, he’d caught the backblast from the RPG.  Black was by the hole in the corner where I’d come in, picking himself up off the ground.

“Carter…” he started to say, pointing at the body on the floor.

“Whatever,” I said, running over and grabbing him.  “We’ll deal with him later.  Right now, we’ve got a gate to defend.”  I hauled him over to the rubble of the wall, which now presented more firing positions aimed at the gate.

Just as the second explosive behemoth rumbled into view, I realized that Black didn’t have an RPG, and I’d only brought the one.  Oh.  Fuck.

“Get down!”  I didn’t bother to wait, and grabbed him by his kit, dragging him down flat on the floor with me.  Even as I did, I heard the
bang
of another RPG, followed by another earth-shaking, bone-rattling detonation.

The gate was now a crater, the front buildings and their surrounding HESCOs all but obliterated. 
I hauled myself back up, my head already splitting, and got behind my rifle.  “Get up, Black!” I yelled.  “This ain’t over yet!”  I could just make out movement beyond the overlapping blast craters.  The foot-mobiles were coming in.

The good thing about working with Praetorians is that most of us have gotten to the point professionally where we don’t need to be told a lot.  We’ve worked together enough that we’re all generally on the same page tactically, and if you can’t recognize a situation and act accordingly without being told, you probably won’t get hired in the first place.  In a sort of lopsided L-shape around the gate, all of us were picking ourselves up, shaking off the aches, pains, and sheer disorientation from the blasts, and getting ready for what came next.

The first wave came forward under the cover of more heavy machine gun fire, crouched down and moving fast.  They were spread out in a wide wedge, little more than slightly darker silhouettes against the blackness of the desert, vaguely back-lit by the muzzle flashes of their cover fire.

They expected to come in right behind the VBIEDs and take an enemy that was at least disoriented and demoralized by the blasts, if not all but obliterated.  Instead they met a storm of rifle and machine gun fire.

The lead fighters were cut down in seconds.  One of our guys with an M60 was in one of the buildings to my right, hosing down the entire formation from left to right and back again.  Rounds that would have cut off running men at the knees hit the crouched fighters in hips, guts, and chests, ripping through flesh and bone and dropping them screaming in the dirt, only to be silenced by follow-up shots.  The rest of us riflemen picked our targets as best we could in the dark, dropping them with controlled pairs.

They didn’t press the attack.  As soon as the first squad walked right into our fire, they realized the VBIEDs hadn’t had the effect they’d been after, and they fell back, still under cover of the technicals’ up-guns.  We were so far down and back behind the rubble by then that even the 23mm fire from the ZU-23s didn’t faze us much anymore.  Or maybe we were just getting numbed to the sheer
, mind-shredding violence of the night.

After a few more minutes of lying there in the debris, rifles trained on the gate, waiting to make sure they weren’t coming back immediately, Black and I turned to each other.

He got up and shuffled over to the body behind us.  Bending down, he picked up what looked like a bowie knife.  “Carter thought he was going to deal with you while your back was turned,” he rasped.  “Fucking idiot walked right into the backblast before I could shoot him.”

I hauled myself to my feet.  It seemed to take a monumental effort.  I hurt everywhere.  “Let’s go.  We’re dealing with this bullshit right now.”
  I stepped up to Black.  For a moment, he tensed, then he flipped the knife around and offered me the hilt.  I took it and walked past him, headed out into the compound.

The fire from outside had slackened again, as ISIS considered their next move. 
It hadn’t ended, though.  Sporadic bursts of machine gun fire and an occasional salvo of mortars continued to steadily pound away at our redoubt.  The interior of the compound was a surreal hellscape, rubbled and lit sporadically by flashes of weapons fire and flickering fires started by a few of the mortar impacts.

The Project types were in their usual little clique, watching me come out of the wrecked building.  A couple of them seemed a little startled to see me come out, with Black behind me.

My rifle was slung in front of me, and I had that big knife in my strong hand.  I picked out Carnivore, and without a word, I strode right up to him and slammed that wide, blackened blade to the hilt in his guts.

The blow drove the air out of him with a grunt.  He staggered against me as I pulled back and thrust the knife further up into his vitals.  I’d gone in low, below his front plate, and driven up toward his heart and lungs.  “The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach,” indeed.

I wrenched the blade out and shoved him off me.  He fell on his ass, then collapsed on his back, his hands clutching the ruin of his bowels.  I had blood, bile, and shit on my hand and all over the knife.  I dropped the knife in the dirt, and bent down to scour the filth off my hand with sand.

The remaining Project guys were staring at Carnivore in shock, as he shuddered out the last of his life in the dirt.  The choking noises he was making told me I’d at least stabbed through a lung.  Black had angled off to one side, and had his rifle
semi-trained on the rest of them.

I’d had my doubts about Black for a long time, but they were pretty well gone by then. 
He could easily have finished what Carter had attempted, after I fired that RPG.  He sure didn’t need to be running top cover for me after I’d just butchered Carnivore.

I looked up at the rest of them.  “Let me make myself perfectly clear,” I said.  “You
will
get out on the line and you
will
fight.  If any of my guys even get a hint of an idea that you’re planning something froggy, you wind up just like this shitbag.  One of you fuckers just tried to stab me in the back, while I was attempting to defend this compound, and every one of your worthless fucking lives along with our own.  By all rights, I should just cut all your throats and be done with it.  The
only
fucking reason you’re still alive is because we need every gun right now.  Now get your asses on that gate before I change my mind and kill you where you fucking stand.”

They kind of shuffled off, looking stunned.  A couple lingered to look at Carnivore’s corpse.  There wasn’t much to see but a huddled form on the ground.  The occasional tracer overhead illuminated a dark puddle beneath him, quickly soaking into the sand.