Howl: A World at War Novel (11 page)

“
Can you get a chopper on your position?” Selene asked.

“
Shouldn't be a problem,” Danny said.

“
No,” Zach's voice cut in.

“
Why?” Nora asked.

“
They have the Wraith with them, and he's figured out how to snipe the engines of our choppers. Bring one in and it's guaranteed to get shot down.”

“
Then what's our game?” Selene asked.

“
Fade into the woods and head for the river. Split up by squad and scatter. Hopefully that should drive them away. Liz, you there?”

“
I'm here,” Liz replied.

“
Move to the designated point and provide rear guard. Danny, whoever has the schematic is to head straight for the river crossing with their squad. We'll worry about the rest of us later. Robbie, keep making attack runs on them. Bryce, are your guys set?”

“
Set and ready.” Bryce told them.

“
OK, let's move.”

Danny looked at his squad leaders. “You get all that? Good, let's go.”

He could hear intense gunfire coming from the east as soon as he stepped out of the control tower. A pair of choppers zoomed in overhead and made an attack run. The amount of firepower Hydra was bringing to bear in this operation was staggering, and they were using every bit of it against the Valkyries. Danny had never fought them before, though their reputation preceded them. Zach seemed especially jumpy about their capabilities, but he wasn't the type prone to exaggeration.

Danny felt a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. They might be in serious trouble.

Zach hadn't been joking when he had told them the Valkyries were tough. Gavin's squad, probably the best in her platoon, had been completely shredded trying to provide cover fire as the rest of them retreated over the airfield. Even with artillery and air support the enemy just kept coming, and they were laying down accurate and devastating fire.

Gavin, Lyla and Chris were the only survivors of the initial onslaught, and had formed up with Selene in an ad hoc fireteam.

“
Who's covering next?” Gavin asked.

Selene shook her head. “We're getting clobbered. Just run for it and let the artillery take care of that.

A pair of Ravens zoomed in again, spitting death, but that only slowed the enemy down a little. Out in the center of the runway the helicopter blew up.

Selene might have waited for Ragnarok troops to cluster around the cover before she triggered the explosives, but she could see the logic to this as well. They were already well aware that the choppers were rigged to explode, and they might have engineers that could diffuse the bombs.

That was academic at this point. The enemy started to storm across the airfield in a huge mass, covered by machine gun fire. This wasn't a human wave attack done by amateurs. This was a calculated tactical move, and it was being performed correctly. There were too many targets for Selene's troops to engage, and many of them were forced to duck to avoid the cover fire.

“
Fall back, fall back,” Selene ordered her troops. She lifted her assault rifle to fire a burst, but then a bullet smacked into a tree mere inches from her face. Splinters from the impact hit her in the face.

“
OK, they're zeroed on us. Run.”

They had barely gone twenty yards at a full sprint when an RPG blew up in their original position.

“
Right! Right!” Ethan was shouting. He propped his machine gun up between two trees and started firing into the woods.

Zach brought his carbine up to his shoulder and started firing as well. They had been outplayed badly. Ragnarok had beaten them to the punch and had the upper hand. Zach had believed the troops he had spotted from the chopper made up the entire Ragnarok force, but he was wrong. Dead wrong.

Running toward the river on the right flank, Ethan's squad had come under fire from a large force making their way through the forest. The Valkyries had flanked them, and all his force had was a pair of squads. Logan had moved his troops up to support them, but they still had taken a beating. Three of them were killed in the opening moments of the firefight, and the Valkyries kept coming.

They were fighting well and fighting smart. Their marksmanship was excellent, and their maneuver skills were top-notch as well, but they were backed up by a smart commander. They had closed the distance until they were within a stone's throw of Black Wolf's lines. It was a smart decision; now his command couldn't use their air support or artillery without hitting their own troops.

There was no getting away from them, either. Most of them would probably be shot in the back if they tried to run.

Zach loaded up a grenade and launched it into the enemy positions. There was nothing else to do. They would have to stand and fight.

“
Keep moving! Keep moving and head for the landing!” Danny shouted in his radio link. “Karen, don't even think about turning around.”

“
Got it,” came the response, though she sounded agitated. She wanted to turn around and fight, but her cargo was far too important to risk.

Danny switched channels. “Buck Lead, Buck Lead, fire at the designated points.” They would have one chance to shake the enemy on their tail. The Valkyries had sent in a force around the left flank and were coming at them hard and fast.

“Roger,” Bryce replied.

“
Don't bother firing back. Just keep running!” Danny ordered his troops.

They took off through the forest, dodging trees and stumbling through brush. Danny could feel the bullets cracking around him, but there wasn't much else to do. Stopping to fire meant that the enemy would catch up to them and force them to fight.

BAM! BAM! BAM!

Danny heard the sound of explosions going off behind them. Bravehart's mortar fire was landing on positions they had pre-sighted. The fire coming at them started to die down.

“Keep moving,” Danny ordered. Ragnarok wasn't defeated. Not by a long shot. This had only bought them a little bit of time.

“Can you disengage?” Nora asked.

“
No, we're stuck,” Zach said. The gunfire in the background sounded like it was extremely intense.

“
I'll send Liz up to support you guys,” Nora said, looking over the map in her menu. “I'll also have Selene rally to you as well. You're getting close to the river front as well?”

“
Yeah.”

“
Try to fall back so you're close to the river.”

“
We can't do that without artillery support, and they're too close,” Zach said.

Nora looked over at Bryce. “Can you hit them without hitting our own troops?”

“We can try,” Bryce said. “I'll er toward being too long.”

Zach spoke up. “Right, but what's-”

The line went silent for a moment. “You OK?” Bryce asked.

“
Sorry, had to duck,” Zach told them. “What's our plan?”

“
You're going to form a defensive position around the river front. With any luck, they'll think that you're trying to hold it long enough for us to get the schematic away.”

“
While we extract it from another location,” Zach deduced. “Sounds suicidal, but that should work.”

She certainly hoped so. Everything depended on it.

“
He's dead! Leave him!” Selene ordered. Chris had fallen to either a very good or very lucky shot coming from behind them. The Valkyries were closing in.

There was no way around it; they were getting completely massacred. Despite stubborn resistance, despite using every trick and exploit they could think of, their enemy was just too numerous, too skilled and too smart. It was hard to believe that these people came from the same company as the scrubs they had fought in earlier battles.

Nora had ordered them to form up with Liz's platoon and Ethan's squad, though she wasn't sure how much good three people would do. But there was nothing else they could do. Nothing else, but to keep running and fighting.

They were going to be slaughtered. Even the most optimistic among them knew how this was going to end. Between the survivors of Bravo 1 and Bravo 2 he had a little more than a squad left. They had found a strong position in a dried up creek bed and had hunkered down, preparing for the onslaught. They didn't have long to wait.

Danny fired burst after burst of of his machine gun, trying to stop the advancing horde in front of him. It didn't do much good; the Ragnarok troops knew how to use cover well.

Two Ravens buzzed in overhead, but their runs did little more than pin the enemy in place for a brief few seconds. Then they were up, making their push on the main line.

“
Buck Lead, Buck Lead, we need you to lay down the fire curtain,” Danny said into the link. As intense as the fighting here was, it was only a sideshow. The enemy commander probably knew that as well. If Danny had to guess, he believed that they had pinned them in place with a holding force while the rest of the troops went after Karen's squad.

That was where the fire curtain would come in. Bravehart would lay down mortar fire around an area, making it impossible for the enemy to advance. It burned through ammunition like crazy, but right now that hardly mattered if they couldn't get the schematic away.

“Danny!” he heard Xavier shout over the din. He was pointing toward the Ragnarok lines.

He barely had enough time to look before a dozen RPGs came streaking toward them.

You are KIA.

“Zach, I can't reach Danny. I think he's down,” Nora said over the radio link.

“
OK, not good,” Zach said. “We're being hit pretty hard.”

“
Karen's approaching the landing area.”

“
That's good. Concentrate on getting her away. Don't worry about us.”

Liz had moved up to support them and the remnants of Selene's troops had linked up as well, but they were still completely outmatched. Two of the three Ragnarok forces had joined up and were wreaking havoc on them. Zach had to retreat to the rear line to find enough breathing room to communicate with Nora, and even here it was still dangerous.

“I'll try to get you guys an extract once Karen gets away,” Nora said.

Zach heard something, and he looked up toward the front line. “Uh, we might not live that long,” he said. “They've just rushed us.”

The Valkyries weren't fooling around. Once they got close enough they had thrown a barrage of grenades at the Hydra lines and charged. Selene had been taken aback at the ferocity of the attack. Even at close range Hydra had always stood at a distance, firing at each other. Close combat kills were only for stealth. But it looked like the Valkyries had no use for that line of thought.

She smashed the butt of her rifle into an enemy soldier's face and shot him twice as he fell. All around her troops were shooting, punching, kicking, hacking, slashing, grappling, dying. Selene had ceased to have any influence on the battlefield as a commander. She was simply a soldier like the rest of them.

Someone came at her, a female assault wielding a tomahawk. Selene sidestepped her blow and tried to come in with a stab of her knife, but her opponent blocked. She grappled, using her strength to push her enemy backward. She slammed the assault into a tree and took the opportunity to stab. Her opponent let go. Selene shot her twice to make sure she was dead.

She turned around just in time to see the pistol.

You are KIA.

“
Zach, we have reports from Bravo 3. Karen is away and is crossing the river right now.”

Zach breathed a sigh of relief despite all of the chaos and carnage going on around him. His troops were falling like leaves.

“Do you need extract?” Nora asked.

A bullet cracked by his head.

“Talk to Liz about that,” he told her. “I'm not going to make it.”

The words had scarcely left his mouth when a group of Ragnarok soldiers surrounded him. A few of them parted to let their leader though.

“Oh. This isn't going to become a recurring habit, is it?” Zach asked as the Wraith walked up.

“
Where's the schematic?”

Zach shrugged. “I don't have it. By now it's half way to Lerna Bastion.”

“Guess you owe Yvonne five dollars,” one of the Valkyries said.