Countdown: H Hour (33 page)

The second of the two gunships also had a place it didn’t belong. Rather, it had an area. This area was anywhere above the now mostly burning encampment where the light from the flames would illuminate the bottom of the helicopter. Unfortunately, Slepnyov had given that pilot his orders—“Echelon left, about three hundred meters”—and the pilot had followed those orders to the letter. This placed the gunship squarely over the brightest of the brightly burning huts, where the Harrikats could
see
it.

Three streams of bright green tracers arose from positions around the camp, followed, a second or so later, by a fourth. All four streams converged on the second gunship. The guns were a mix of ex-PLA and American, thus the streams came in two colors, two red, two green. The pilot’s first warning was when some of the tracers passed by his helicopter’s nose. The second warning came in the form of a 14.5mm bullet that went right through the thick almost-but-not-quite-bulletproof-enough canopy, splattering a goodly percentage of his gunner across the inside of the cockpit. The third warning—admittedly far too late—was a flashing red light on his instrument panel that informed him that he’d lost control of his tail rotor. The light didn’t say why, but in fact a .50 caliber bullet had severed the rod. Without its counterbalancing tail rotor, the MI-28, under the torque from the main rotor, began to spin uncontrollably. Within three spins it was spinning vertically, and then vertically, but down.

Once he’d realized what happened, the pilot had just enough time to say, “God—” before slamming into the ground.
That
, given both the fuel on board and the mix of ordnance, led to a massive blast, big enough to catch two of the ground-based machine gun crews in its radius, and send the other two—minus the platoon leader who was so much strawberry jam at the time—running for the north, hoping to join with the women and children sheltering there. It also very nearly flattened the encampment, and put out most of the fires, partly by blast, and then by the thermobaric warheads using up all the free oxygen.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

It is a shameful thing for the soul to faint

while the body still perseveres.

—Marcus Aurelius

Caban Island, Pilas Group, Basilan Province,

Republic of the Philippines

While the one hundred foot wire is there intended to be used, or at least a minimum of half of it is, it’s actually fairly safe to detonate a claymore much closer to oneself than that, safety regulations, doctrine, and the manual notwithstanding. A couple of sandbags—perhaps three for the very safety conscious or paranoid—are enough to absorb all the plastic fragments the thing will kick back, allowing the soldier to set it off, safe from those fragments, at a distance of a meter or two. Sometimes, in certain kinds of units, a soldier attempting to break contact, and knowing in advance that he just might have to, will place an armed claymore right in the back pocket of his rucksack, then use the frame of the ruck as an ad hoc, hand-held, aiming device.
Uhuh, right about there . . . Boom
! Still . . . fairly safe, though the rucksack’s contents are likely to become scrambled.

Fragments, however, are only one of the dangers to using a claymore, with its pound and a half of C-4, in close proximity. Trees or sandbags may partially deflect the blast, but it will still flow around them. This can . . . kind of hurt . . . at about a meter and a half’s distance . . . with two of them—three pounds of C-4 . . . and no good way to cover one’s ears.

Lord, for what I am about to receive,
thought Semmerlin, as he flicked off the wire bails, the safeties, that otherwise prevented the clackers from being squeezed. He had his head down, of course, and one ear tucked as much into his shoulder as he could get it and the other at least generally towards the ground.

Semmerlin squeezed the clackers. For all practical purposes, the resulting explosions—almost but not quite simultaneous—picked him up and bounced him. He couldn’t hear it, shoulder over ear or not, but the blasts, partially, and the fourteen hundred pellets, mostly, scythed down a good nineteen of the thirty-odd men around him. Almost none of them were killed outright. The rest, such as retained consciousness, shrieked.

Some, of course, were not hit; claymores rarely if ever scattered their pellets quite evenly. Moreover, some were off to the sides, simply out of the pattern of thrown fragments. Of those not hit, though, some stood their ground while others threw themselves to the ground—on the not-indefensible theory that they were under air or mortar attack. Some ran off. A couple of those running off did so screaming in fear or pain or both.

Thinking, to the very limited extent conscious thought was involved,
To Hell with the rifle; to Hell with the machine gun,
Semmerlin launched himself past the up slope tree and through the smoke from the claymore. Three more staggering steps and he tripped over the legless body of a Moro, already dead or dying; he couldn’t tell and didn’t much care. There were plenty of screamers around; what was another one, more or less?

Staggering or not, he was moving fast enough to fall, which fall he turned into a complete roll that left him back on his feet, though with his left hand still touching the ground for balance. He came up without his goggles—broken off and lost somewhere behind—leaving him about as blind as some of the Moros caught in the fragmentation pattern of the claymores; the ones who’d taken pellets in the eyes.

Gotta get out of here.

He really wasn’t sure where he was going; he’d aimed at the tree because he’d known it was upslope. After the fall and the roll?
Jesus, get out of here, yeah. But for where
?

Automatically, his right hand reached for the suppressed pistol under his left armpit. He shook his head to try to clear his fuzzy mind.
Mistake
!
Big damn mistake
! Semmerlin felt a sudden, almost irresistible urge to throw up. Forcing it down, literally, he assumed a low crouch and began slowly creeping back upslope.

Stocker barely noticed the little explosions off to the left. He was still mesmerized by the really big one in the cantonment area, and the way the surviving helicopter was doing its level best to imitate a giant, crushing ants, its stomping feet the unguided eight centimeter rockets, the chin gun the giant’s thumb.

Watching the gunship dance over the remains of the camp, relighting the huts and finishing off any wounded that so much as twitched, Stocker thought,
Note to self: whoever is piloting that
? Don’t
piss him off.

At some point, once the pilot was satisfied that he’d killed everything below, the helicopter started to move north, following the refugees it hadn’t been able to extinguish.

“No, no,” Stocker muttered, “that’s a bit much and you have a mission.” Taking the radio’s mike from the RTO he called for gunship. The Russian didn’t—apparently wouldn’t—answer, until Stocker reminded him with the question, “Are you a soldier or a petulant spoiled brat?”

“They killed my people,” Slepnyov’s voice came back, hate-filled and hurt-filled, both. “They must
pay
.”

“Yes,” Stocker agreed, genially. He more or less understood where the Russian was coming from. “And we can kill them all . . . once we take the island. IN THE FUCKING INTERIM, THOUGH, I NEED SOME MORE FUCKING FIRE ON THOSE FUCKING BUNKERS! Is that clear enough?”

Chastened, the Russian’s voice came back, “Yes, Captain. Sorry, Captain.”

“I understand how you feel, Slep,” Stocker consoled. “But let’s do the job first and have fun later.”

“Roger.”

MV
Richard Bland,
just east of Caban Island

The
Bland
was about a hundred percent faster than the LCM, if it wanted to be. With the irregular waters and sea beds in and around the Pilas Group, its captain did
not
want to be. Still, he managed to pull within two and a half miles of the landing point by the time the LCM had unloaded, turned around, and come back for its second load. Even that was a little iffy; Pearson would never have risked it if there had been any chance that Harrikat mortars could have reached, or Harrikat observers could have spotted, his command.

The RPV had been looking for just those items, in fact, and among other things, and Pearson had been fully prepared to run like hell when it found them. Fortunately, it had found them early, and the two CH-750’s had put all their effort, and two loads of ordnance, onto the Harrikat mortars before Pearson would venture in.

Now one of the CH-750’s was rearming on deck, a very brief process, actually, given how little it could carry, while the rump of Stocker’s company surged over the side and down the cargo nets to the LCM. The nearest crane, not being otherwise occupied, lowered a pallet of mortars, mortar ammunition, and sundry other expendables, mostly more ammunition.

All in all
, mused Pearson,
things haven’t gone too badly. What did the wise man say? “If you can get seventy percent out of a plan you’re doing pretty good.” We’re probably doing a little better than that, with only one exception. We’ve got a multiplier to our plan, Mr. Ayala. If he doesn’t live, then our seventy or eighty percent success gets multiplied by zero. And Cagle, ashore, has his doubts.

Wish I hadn’t had to have Ayala’s wife escorted from the bridge, so Cagle could speak freely. But listening to her alternating wails and demands for immediate evacuation was just getting on my nerves. And once Cagle mentioned doubts? Jesus, what a bitch.

Caban Island, Pilas Group, Basilan Province,

Republic of the Philippines

Both Feeney and Hallinan jumped in their skins when a firefight, a pretty
heavy
firefight, erupted behind them in the direction from which they’d come. Hallinan was fairly new, but Feeney had enough experience to make an informed judgment. “Four platoons, maybe five, of theirs,” he whispered.

“How can you tell?” Hallinan asked, equally softly. There weren’t any Harrikat around, so far as could be told, but since the twin explosions to the east maybe ten or twelve minutes prior, followed by a cacophony of shrieks and wails, some of which had come rather close, they still weren’t taking any chances.

Feeney shrugged—useless gesture in the dark—and answered, “Just the volume of fire.”

“I can only tell there’s a bunch of them.”

“Less than you might think. The Moros have always been tough and brave.”

“You? A good word for our enemies.”

“Playmates,” Feeney corrected, “and I’ve got a lot higher opinion of them than I do of the humanitarians in the hold. Moro men are
men
.”

“You’re a very strange dude, Feeney.”

“You don’t know the half of it. Now where the fuck is Semmerlin?”

It was eerily quiet in Semmerlin’s one-man-world at the moment. His hearing was damaged, he knew, and maybe irreparably.
But I’m not totally deaf. I can hear shooting, explosions. It just all sounds a mile away and like I’m down a well. Damn, I hope it recovers. I don’t know anything but this shit. What would I do if I couldn’t do it anymore? Don’t even want to think about that.

Shit, I’ve
got
to think about it. I can see where I’m supposed to go. Hard to miss with about ten thousand tracers crossing back and forth every minute. But I wouldn’t hear a Moro if he were walking on my helmet . . . provided he was walking softly, anyway. Ah, crap, I need help.

He reached down to the belt around his waist and turned the volume or his radio all the way up.
I might not even hear that.
Then he called, “Feeney, Hallinan, I can’t make it to you. You’re gonna have to find me. My hearing’s almost gone and I’ve lost my goggles. I can’t see you either.”

There was a moment’s delay. When the answer came, it still sounded like it was coming into or from a deep, deep well. “Got an IR chemlight, brother?” Feeney asked. “Just pop one or two. We’ll come to you.”

Everything was harder in the dark. And chemlights helped only so much. The tracers flying back and forth overhead didn’t help at all.

Cagle had Ayala’s blood pressure up to something a little better than a corpse’s. His hands took turns squeezing the bulb of a BVM, a Bag Valve Mask, a kind of hand operated artificial ventilator. And the old man seemed to be starting to breathe better, on his own, a little at least, That was probably the result of the quinolone cocktail Cagle had shot him up with, once he had the veins above collapse level.

He wouldn’t have made it this far if he weren’t a pretty tough old bird. And there’s no proof that he’s only got one strain of pneumonia going, if it is pneumonia. Quinolone might beat one, and leave the other.

Quinolones, while very powerful, had their downsides. Some variants, and the drug had many, as well as many generations, were extremely toxic. Some were carcinogenic.

But cancer is the
least
of your concerns, old man.

“Is he okay?” Graft asked. The sergeant had started slowly going into a frenzy, which state got worse as every minute passed with his man, Semmerlin, out alone.

“For now. You’re worried about your soldier.” It wasn’t a question. Cagle jerked a thumb upward, with his free hand, and said, “Relax. If you haven’t noticed it,
this
place isn’t precisely safe anymore.”

It had taken a while, a lot longer than Stocker was happy with. It had also taken a lot of fire, fire from the gunships—now gunship, singular—fire from the Elands, then, as those two had beaten down the enemy, fire from the company’s own Vampires. Then the machine guns had started kicking in their rattle to some good effect.

Now the men of C Company, Third Battalion, were up and moving, by individuals, by fire teams, and over on the right, where the gunships had had their greatest effect, by squad, as one broke into the Harrikat defenses and began clearing them, right to left, with hand grenades.

Stocker was on his feet, though still covered by an Eland’s bulky form, watching his men work their way through the defenses and, most importantly, making sure the fires shifted to the left as they did.

“Sir?”

Stocker turned around. It was the exec, Simon Blackmore.

“Sir, I’ve got the mortars and the last platoon. The mortars are setting up where we planned and rehearsed it. The LCM is waiting at the beach for a load of wounded. Where do you want the grunts thrown in?”

Stocker jabbed, repeatedly, with a knife hand. “Simon, that’s Second platoon clearing from the right, and First providing fire support from the left. I want the Third to pass behind Second, along the beach, then cut inland. A Company’s decisively engaged, but they’re not losing. If they don’t lose, the enemy must. When the enemy breaks, I want a platoon in place to keep them from getting somewhere where we’ll have to dig them out.

“You understand?”

“Yessir.”

“Good, go with them.”

“Yessir.”

“And Simon?”

“Yes, sir?”

Stocker sighed. “These are a lot tougher and better trained than the last ones. Be careful.”

“Won’t argue with those orders, sir.”