Out of the Dark (54 page)

His jaw muscles tightened, and he reached out and grabbed Maria Averescu, one of his runners.

“I need you to find Gunny Meyers,” he said in the Romanian he’d finally begun to master.

“He’s dead, Top,” the teenaged girl replied harshly, and his belly clenched.

“Sergeant Ramirez?”

“Him, too, I think. I know he took a hit here.” Averescu thumped the center of her own chest, just below the bosom which was never going to have time to fully develop after all.

“Then find Sergeant Jonescu. Tell him—”

Buchevsky drew a deep breath. Jonescu commanded his entire reserve, the only people he’d have available to plug any Shongair breakthroughs on the final perimeter. If he sent Jonescu off. . . .

“Tell him I want him and his people to get as many kids out as they can,” he said harshly. “Tell him the rest of us will buy him as much time as we can. Got that?”

“Yes, Top!” Averescu’s grimy face was pale, but she nodded hard.

“Good. Now go!”

He released the young woman’s shoulder. She shot off through the smoke, and he turned in the opposite direction and headed for the perimeter command post.

•  •  •  •  •

The Shongair scouts realized the humans’ retreat had slowed still further. Painful experience made them wary of changes, and they felt their way cautiously forward.

They were right to be cautious.

•  •  •  •  •

Bastogne had been built around a deep cavern that offered protected, easily camouflaged storage for winter foodstuffs and fodder for the villages’ animals. Concealment was not its only defense, however.

•  •  •  •  •

Buchevsky bared his teeth savagely as he heard the explosions.

In a lot of ways, he still wished he’d been able to get his hands on US mines, since that was what he’d been trained with. On the other hand, Basarab had managed to lay his hands on an amazing quantity of Soviet-style ordnance. Some of it had been sadly obsolete, packed in crates that looked like they’d probably been tucked away in the bottom of a warehouse somewhere since World War II and old enough he’d had serious doubts abouts its reliability or even safety. But most of it had consisted of much more modern equipment, and no one had ever accused the Ruskies of being slouches when it came to mine warfare.

The bulk of the antipersonnel mines had been the Russian MON-50, a directional mine which was basically a copy of the US-designed M18 Claymore with a few uniquely Russian refinements, including a peep sight to replace the original’s simpler open sight when it was being “aimed” on initial emplacement. Tactically, there was nothing to choose between the two, though: a rectangular, slightly concave plastic body containing a shaped charge of plastic explosives designed to throw a hurricane of lethal fragments in a fan-shaped pattern fifty yards or so deep. The variant Basarab had been able to provide threw five hundred and forty steel balls as opposed to the seven hundred slightly smaller balls of the Claymore.

In addition, there’d been several crates of the more powerful MON-100, a circular sheet metal mine shaped like a large bowl and designed to throw four hundred and fifty steel rod fragments to a lethal range of over a hundred yards. There’d even been a couple of dozen MON-200s—much bigger and heavier (over fifty pounds) siblings of the MON-100, powerful enough
to be effective against light-skinned vehicles and helicopters, as well as personnel. He’d used most of those up booby-trapping the fire roads, though. It looked like they’d been at least reasonably effective against the Shongair APCs, but he found himself wishing he had more of them left now.

Not that he supposed the Shongairi were going to complain.

The outer mine belt wasn’t as deep as he would have liked, but the Shongairi obviously hadn’t realized what they were walking into. Their infantry advance had come to a sudden stop as his forward troops set off the command-detonated mines, and he listened with bloodthirsty satisfaction to alien shrieks as solid walls of shrapnel scythed off limbs and shredded torsos.

He didn’t expect the delay to last very long, but he’d take what he could get. Besides, the
inner
mine belt was considerably deeper, with tripwire mines placed to thicken the command-detonated ones.

I may not
stop
them, but I can damned well make them pay cash. And maybe—just maybe—Jonescu will get some of the kids out after all
.

He didn’t let himself think about the struggle to survive those kids would face over the coming winter with no roof, no food. He couldn’t.

“Runner!”

“Yes, Top!”

“Find Corporal Gutierrez,” Buchevsky told the young man. “Tell him it’s time to dance.”

•  •  •  •  •

The Shongairi stalled along the edge of the minefield cowered even closer to the ground as the pair of 120-millimeter mortars Basarab had scrounged up along with the mines started dropping lethal fire in on them. Even now, few of Harah’s troops had actually encountered human artillery, and the thirty-five-pound HE bombs were a devastating experience for troopers whose ranks had already been riven by the blast zones of Stephen Buchevsky’s land mines.

•  •  •  •  •

Regiment Commander Harah winced as the communications net was flooded by sudden reports of heavy fire. Even after the unpleasant surprise of the infantry-portable SAMs, he hadn’t anticipated
this
.

His lead infantry companies’ already heavy loss rates soared, and he snarled over the net at his own support weapons commander.

“Find those damned mortars and get fire on them—
now
!”

•  •  •  •  •

Harah’s infantry recoiled as rifle fire from concealed pits and camouflaged, log-reinforced bunkers added to the carnage of mortar bombs and minefields. But they were survivors who’d learned their lessons in a hard school, and their junior officer started probing forward, looking for openings.

Three heavy mortars, mounted on unarmored transports, had managed to struggle up the narrow trail behind them. Now they tried to locate the human mortars, but the dense tree cover and rugged terrain made it impossible. The Shongairi had never provided their artillerists with the specialized radar human artillery used to track incoming fire back to its source. After all, there’d never been any
reason
for them to develop the capability before they ran into the infernally inventive humans. Instead, they’d always relied upon their RC drones to overfly the local primitives’ positions and direct their fire while they themselves stayed safely out of range and shelled the enemy with impunity. When they tried that in this case, however, they discovered that the humans weren’t
entirely
out of Gremlins after all. And even if that hadn’t been the case, Gutierrez’s weapons had been dug-in and camouflaged with extraordinary care.

Finally, unable to actually find the corporal’s mortar pits, the Shongairi resorted to blind suppressive fire. Their mortars were more powerful than their human counterparts, and white-hot flashes began to walk across the area behind Buchevsky’s forward positions.

One of his forward bunkers took a direct hit and exploded, and another Shongair mortar round stripped the camouflage from a second bunker. Three captured human antitank weapons slammed into it, and he heard screams ripping out of some wounded human’s throat from the ruins.

He heard screams rising from behind him, as well, but the Shongairi had problems of their own. Their vehicle-mounted weapons were confined to the trail, while the humans were deeply dug-in, and Buchevsky and Ignacio Gutierrez had preplotted just about every possible firing position along the trail. As soon as the Shongairi opened fire, Gutierrez knew where they had to be, and both of
his
mortars retargeted immediately. They fired more rapidly than the heavier Shongair weapons, and their bombs fell around the Shongair vehicles in a savage exchange that could not—and didn’t—last long.

Ignacio Gutierrez died, along with one entire crew. The second mortar, though, remained in action . . . which was more than could be said for the vehicles they’d engaged.

•  •  •  •  •

Harah snarled.

He had over a twelve more mortar-carriers . . . all of them still far behind the point of contact, at the far end of the choked, tortuous trails along which his infantry had pursued the humans. He could bring them up—in time—just as he could call in a kinetic strike and put an end to this entire business in minutes. But the longer he delayed, the more casualties that single remaining human mortar would inflict. And if he called in the kinetic strike, he’d kill the specimens he’d come to capture along with their defenders . . . which would make the entire operation—and all the casualties he’d already suffered—meaningless.

That wasn’t going to happen. No. If this bunch of primitives was so incredibly stupid, so lost to all rationality and basic decency that they wanted to die fighting rather than submit honorably even now, then he would damned well oblige them. And when he was done, he’d drag the specimens they were trying to protect from him back to Ground Base Commander Shairez as payment for every one of his own losses.

He looked up through a break in the tree cover. The light was fading quickly, and despite their night-vision equipment, the Shongairi had discovered that fighting humans in the dark was a losing proposition. But there was still time. His infantry had managed to blow at least one gap through the humans’ well-concealed, well-dug-in infantry. There was an opening, and they could still break through before darkness fell if—

He started snapping orders.

•  •  •  •  •

Stephen Buchevsky sensed it coming. He couldn’t have explained how, but he knew. He could actually
feel
the Shongairi gathering themselves, steeling themselves, and he knew.

“They’re coming!” he shouted, and heard his warning relayed along the horseshoe-shaped defensive line in either direction from his CP.

He set aside his own rifle, settled into position behind the KPV heavy machine gun, and swung it to cover the gap where his bunker line had been at least partially breached.

There were a dozen tripod-mounted PKMS 7.62-millimeter medium machine guns dug in in the bunkers and individual strongpoints around Bastogne’s final perimeter, but even Mircea Basarab’s scrounging talents had limits. He’d managed to come up with only one heavy machine gun, but it was one hell of a heavy, Buchevsky thought. Bulky and undeniably awkward—the
thing was six and a half feet long (which made it twenty percent longer than even the US M2A .50 heavy MG Buchevsky was used to), and mounted on a two-wheeled cart—it looked more like some kind of fieldpiece than any machine gun Buchevsky had ever used. As far as he knew, the infantry version had been withdrawn from Soviet service in the 1960s, and the obsolescent weapon looked like a refugee from World War II, but at this time, in this place, he wasn’t about to complain, and the spade grips felt solid and welcome in his hands.

The Shongairi started forward behind a hurricane of rifle fire and grenades. The second mine belt staggered them, disordered them. For a moment, it stopped them completely while their wounded shrieked and writhed in mangled agony. But there simply weren’t enough mines, and they came on again. In fact, their rate of advance increased as they realized they’d gotten too close to the defenders for the single remaining mortar to engage.

Then the medium machine guns opened up.

More Shongairi shrieked, tumbled aside, disappeared in sprays of blood and tissue, but a pair of wheeled APCs edged up the trail behind them. How they’d gotten here was more than Buchevsky could guess, but their turret-mounted light energy weapons quested back and forth, seeking targets. Then a quasi-solid bolt of lightning slammed across the chaos, blood, and terror. Another human bunker exploded, and two of the machine guns suddenly stopped firing.

But Stephen Buchevsky knew where that lightning bolt had come from, and the Soviet army had developed the KPV around the 14.5-millimeter round of its final World War II antitank rifle. The PKMS’ 185-grain bullet developed three thousand foot-pounds of muzzle energy; the KPV’s tungsten-cored bullet weighed almost a
thousand
grains . . . and developed twenty-four thousand foot-pounds of muzzle energy.

He laid his sights on the vehicle which had just fired and sent six hundred rounds per minute shrieking into it.

The APC staggered as the tungsten-cored, armor-piercing, incendiary bullets slammed into it at better than thirty-two hundred feet per second, capable of penetrating almost an inch and a half of rolled homogenous armor at five hundred and fifty yards. The APC’s light armor had been reinforced by the external appliqués Shongair maintenance techs had fitted to every one of Harah’s vehicles, and it had shrugged off human small arms fire all day long.

It never had a chance against
that
torrent of destruction, and the vehicle vomited smoke and flame.

Its companion turned towards the source of its destruction, and Alice Macomb stood up in her rifle pit. She exposed herself recklessly with an RBR-M60, and its three-and-a-half-pound rocket smashed into the APC . . . just before a six-round burst of rifle fire killed her where she stood.

Buchevsky swung the KPV’s flaming muzzle, sweeping his fire along the Shongair front as the aliens’ point drove forward, pouring his hate, his fury, his desperate need to protect the children behind him, into his enemies.

He was still firing when the Shongair grenade silenced his machine gun forever.