Patriot Dawn: The Resistance Rises (14 page)

The
hunter-killer force did not know exactly where the Resistance fighters were, but they knew they were in these woods somewhere. As the enemy closed to twenty five meters the Bravo leader, Chavez, opened fire by shooting a silhouette in the chest, which was immediately followed by the rest of his squad opening fire.

The gunfire was harsh in the silence of the dawn and several of the enemy skirmish line were immediately hit.

The Regime troops were well drilled and immediately went to ground and started to return fire, the harsh orders of their squad leader competing with the screams of one of his men who had been badly wounded.

The firing increased to a crescendo and fire control orders were ringing out on both sides. The
enemy managed to bring a SAW into action on the left flank and high velocity rounds went cracking through the trees in both directions.

Luckily for the patrol, they were in hard cover in their scrapes and most of the rounds were passing overhead; they were also able to take advantage of the shock effect their initial weight of fire had on the
Regime skirmish line. Some of the enemy had been hit, most were well drilled veterans, but a few had frozen in cover and were not yet responding to callsfor rapid fire from th
e
Regime squad leader.

Caleb
was assessing the situation. Alpha Squad was still covering the rear, to the south, in case of an enemy flanking attack. Having been ‘bumped’ by the enemy it was now paramount for the patrol to bug out and extract to the Emergency RV. Caleb was reading the battle and listening to the sounds of the firefight.

The ground was
generally flat but to the left, north west, of Bravo Squad was a small depression where the ground sloped away in the beginnings of a draw that ran down to the right flank of the Regime force. It was not a significant feature really, the very beginnings of a creek, but he could anticipate how the enemy platoon leader would see it.

Caleb
could hear the shouted orders from the remainder of the enemy platoon behind the point squad that was currently engaged. He gave orders for Alpha Squad to move up to the left of Bravo Squad.

Bravo gave rapid fire and threw smoke while Alpha peeled out from their scrapes and back on to line covering the small draw.

Normally the patrol would have bugged out with their rucks but the situation was too serious, so they just grabbed their daypacks. From now on, if they got out of this fix, it would be ‘travel light, freeze at night’.

Alpha peeled in to the left of Bravo, getting on line
, both squads facing north.

Caleb
had Doc Oliver observe to the south, just in case. However, he was soon confirmed as correct in his assessment; the Regime commander had identified the depression and rapidly moved a second squad up to the patrols left, to try and flank and roll up the patrol.

As the enemy flanking squad moved through the trees, jogging in
a squad wedge formation, they ran into a hail of fire from Alpha on the left side and rapidly took cover, returning sporadic fire from positions behind trees as they tried to regain their balance. .

The situation was now the two squads of the patrol facing two
Regime squads. The patrol had taken the initiative and inflicted casualties on the enemy. The Regime platoon leader was organizing his reserve squad and relaying the situation back to his company commander to the rear.

The enemy was gaining momentum, the pressure was going to build, but they would be unable to bring down indirect fire while the two forces were so close.

Caleb gave shouted orders for his two squads to prepare to break contact. The drill was for each squad to fire and move as fire teams, keeping both squads roughly on line as they moved south back away from the enemy. If they stayed in place, the enemy would roll them up from the flank.

They threw smoke to the front, and on orders the whole patrol started a rapid weight of fire to knock the enemy back before beginning to bound back, fire and maneuvering
south, away from the enemy.

The patrol
only had the ammunition they carried, so they slowed the rate of fire to deliberate whenever rapid fire was not called for; they aimed at positively identified enemy or fired steadily into cover where they knew the enemy to be.

The
Regime platoon leader had by now deployed one of his 240 gun teams up to his left flank and the gunner brought the 7.62mm machine-gun into action just after the patrol had completed its first couple of bounds back. The deep staccato beat of the gun rang out and the rounds cracked through the trees, tearing off chunks of wood and felling leaves and branches.

Bravo was
conducting fire and movement back and as one of the guys bounded, zigzagging in a short rush, he was hit in the rear ballistic plate and thrown off balance into a face plant, winded. He rolled over and got up, adrenaline pushing him to finish the bound.

Another fighter was hit in the thigh as he
ran; his leg kicked out from under him as the round smashed his femur and tore open his femoral artery. He went to the ground with bright red arterial blood pumping out of the wound. As his buddy was running back, he grabbed the downed fighters harness and dragged the wounded man with him on his rush back, the leg bouncing agonizingly on the ground, until he could get him into cover behind a tree.

The fighter
grabbed the wounded man’s CAT tourniquet and whipped it onto the leg over the BDU pants, right up in the groin ‘high and tight’. He cinched the windlass down mercilessly until the bleeding stopped. The rest of his team had paused to cover this and the fighter pulled the wounded man up onto his back in a Hawes carry, running back and continuing the move north, covered by the rest of the squad as they bounded back.

Doc
joined the wounded group and they moved south looking for a suitable rally point as the squads continued to skirmish back in teams. Caleb maintained a position between the two squads as they moved.

They continued in this way for about
three hundred meters. As they were about halfway they had heard the ‘whop whop whop’ of helicopters passing overhead, but they could not get a good view through the tree canopy. The Regime platoon was just starting to regain its balance and cautiously move forward by bounding over-watch.

The patrol had temporarily broken contact and on reaching the medic and the wounded man
Caleb called “Rally, Rally, Rally!”

The squads got into an all-round defensive position and leaders checked on their fighters. The lightweight stretcher was broken out.
Chavez organized Bravo Squad, who took charge of moving their casualty, four men at a time carrying the stretcher, the remainder providing security and ready to changeover as necessary.

Caleb
did a quick map check and they continued to move off south, with Alpha split into front and rear security teams to cover the casualty evacuation in the center.

As they moved
south they came to a fire break that had once been used as a vehicle track. Rather than cross it or walk on it, they veered off to the south east and hand railed the feature, keeping it about seventy five meters to their right. The patrol was moving at a fast walk, the two teams of Alpha to the front and rear, with Bravo in the center carrying the stretcher with the wounded man.

Olson’s team was on point, strung out in single file. Phillips, Gibbs and McCarthy formed the rest of the team, with Phillips walking point. Caleb mov
ed a little behind Olson’s front team and they all moved in a single file through the trees.

There was something nagging at
Caleb. It suddenly hit him with a realization.

The helicopters!

They had passed over headed south, following the contact with the Regime platoon to the north. They sounded like the big Chinook CH-47s with the front and rear props. He had a pretty good idea that they were facing a Regime hunter-killer company, probably based off one of the old Ranger Companies from before this all started.

Hand railing the feature, which was an obvious egress route from the patrol base, meant that the patrol walked into one of the flank protection/c
ut-off groups belonging to the airborne reaction force platoon’s hasty ambush.

The
Regime platoon had been landed by the helicopters in a clearing just off the trail to the south east in response to the sweep platoon making contact with the rebel patrol base. They were to act as a blocking force (or cut-off group) across the patrols expected line of exfiltration.

They had expected the patrol to move along the track, and as such the main kill group was oriented in a line facing
south west to cover the track.  Their right hand cut-off group was a fire team sized component and they had also been concentrating on the track, where they expected the enemy to come from the north west.

Caleb
heard the shout of ‘Contact Front!” from the lead team just as a fusillade of firing went off at the head of the patrol. The lead team had the drop on the cut-off group and had walked pretty much on top of them, Phillips opening fire at a range of fifteen meters as he saw them. As Phillips fired on rapid the other three in his team stepped left and right to create an angle of fire, Olson as the second man now able to fire at the enemy past Phillips.

As
Phillips and Olson bounded back, they were covered by Gibbs and McCarthy, who had pushed out left and right. The team ended up roughly on line, forming two buddy pairs to fight back together.

Olson took control of them and they
began to buddy move back, firing as they went, having hit at least three of the enemy cut-off group. Celeb moved back and Bravo, the stretcher squad, also moved rapidly back ahead of him while the rear team from Alpha moved ahead of them as security and to establish a rally point.

The main kill group of the new
Regime platoon was trying to move out of their ambush position in order to maneuver on the patrol, but before they could do so the lead team managed to break contact in the trees.

The patrol moved back several hundred meters
in a north easterly direction to a rally point and the patrol leader got them into a wedge formation, each squad forming a side of the wedge in a hasty ambush position so that each of the squads faced the last known direction of one of the two enemy platoons: Alpha to the south west, Bravo to the north west. Some of the guys provided rear protection.

It was effectively a hasty triangular ambush with the third side missing, just covered t
o the rear by a couple of guys.

Doc
was working on the casualty in the center. The team leaders got around and checked on the men, redistributing ammunition and ‘bombing up’ their empty magazines during the lull.

Caleb was running out of options. He was sti
ll pretty close to the enemy and with the confusion in the woods it would be hard for the enemy to bring in indirect fire. He was doing a map estimate, assessing the situation, and reckoned that their best bet would be to head off the high ground in an easterly direction, getting into one of the draws or ravines that ran down off the ridge, then exfiltrating from the current trap.

As
Caleb was about to give the order to move out they were contacted again by the Regime platoon following up from the south. From their static ambush position the patrol were able to hit the enemy lead squad with accurate effective fire, forcing them to go to ground.

However, shortly after they were contacted by the original
Regime platoon moving down from the north west. Then a worrying thing happened: having fixed their position, the enemy pulled back.

The helicopters
must have dropped off an 81mm mortar squad and shortly after the mortar rounds came screaming in on their position with concussive detonations: ‘crump, crump, crump’.

Some of the rounds hit the trees, effectively air bursting and sending both shrapnel and wood splinters down onto the patrol. The fighters were hugging whatever cover they could find as the rounds impacted around them. Luckily, indirect fire is an area weapon and none of the patrol was hit in the first barrage. They were however, effectively suppressed.

It was either dig in and die in place, or get the hell out of there.

Caleb
gave the preparatory order: on his order, rally three hundred meters east of their location. He waited for a lull in the fire and gave the order; the patrol ‘bomb burst’ out of their positions and ran like mad men out of the killing area, Bravo team sprinting with the stretcher.

As they ran, one of the fighters was hit with shrapnel in the upper back, puncturing his lung. He
stumbled, caught himself and kept running, aided by a buddy. They made it the three hundred meters and were out of the impact area of the incoming mortars. Caleb called the rally point and the patrol got into yet another defensive position.

They got into a
n all-round defensive formation. Doc was working on the new casualty and he slapped an occlusive dressing on the sucking chest wound. The casualty was starting to suffer progressive respiratory distress, indicating a tension pneumothorax, so Doc put in a needle chest decompression in his upper chest slightly below the collar bone, which alleviated the symptoms. Given the exigent circumstances it allowed the fighter to keep moving.