The Living Will Envy The Dead (41 page)

I keyed my radio.  “Dutch, take that poor man out of the line and get him back to the vehicles,” I ordered.  Suddenly, the entire position had become effectively untenable.  Once the slaves reached the minefield – the inner minefield – and detonated it, which they would, we would be fighting at knife-range.  They’d have the numbers advantage and the fanatical determination to keep fighting.  “Get the wounded to the vehicles as well and prepare to use the GOTH plan.”

“Understood, sir,” Dutch said.  He didn’t sound eager and I didn’t blame him, but there was no choice.  We would be lucky if we managed to extract half of the force from the FOB before it was completely overrun.  “I’ll see to it at once.”

“Yes,” I muttered, as I returned the radio to my belt.  “They’re on their way.”

The first line of vehicles was advancing slowly up towards the barricades.  I couldn’t understand their tactics, despite the presence of a dozen naked girls fastened firmly to the front and sides of the trucks.  The driver might be transporting a dozen Warriors with the intention of trying to push through the defences, or…memory crystallised and I became utterly certain that I knew what they were doing.  They weren’t trying to keep their people safe; they were deploying truck bombs against us…and those trucks could carry enough explosive to blow right through the barricades.

I lifted the radio to my lips and prayed, under my breath, that they would listen.  “Section Six,” I ordered, “take them out.  Now!”

Section Six – the team with our three priceless antitank weapons – hesitated.  “Sir,” the leader protested, “they have hostages…”

“And those vehicles are packed with explosives,” I snapped, wondering if the bomber driving the vehicles knew what he was doing.  He might have been a willing volunteer to die for the glory of the Warriors of the Lord, or he might have been a patsy unaware of what he was carrying.  I’d seen both kinds of bomber in my long experience.  “Take them out…oh,
Jesus
…”

The first wave of slaves, shambling forward like zombies from that successful film, had reached the inner minefield.  The lead mines detonated, sending chunks of blood and gore flying everywhere as they blew the poor bastards into wounded animals, shrieking their agony, but the Warriors forced the remainder onwards, trying to use them to sweep away the remaining mines.  I’d heard of the principle of driving sheep across minefields, as done back in the days of the First World War, but I hadn’t seen anything like this before.  No one in their right mind would have seriously considered it as a way to clear minefields, if only because it was so wasteful.  The Prophet of the Warriors had to be completely and utterly barking mad!

“Fire,” Dutch shouted, and the ramparts obeyed.  With the first wave of human shields out of the way, no matter how it had been done, the Warriors who had forced them forward could be swept away without hesitation.  They died in their dozens as they tried to seek cover, but they couldn’t move fast enough to escape our revenge.  The remaining human shields, the girls who weren’t on the advancing trucks, cringed back, but they were held firmly in place.

I keyed my radio again.  “Take those damn trucks out now,” I ordered.  I was breaking one of the cardinal rules of leading an army – never give an order you don’t think will be obeyed – but I had no choice.  The lead truck, and it’s deadly cargo, was almost at the first barricade.  It would be running over one of the remaining mines – if one remained intact – at any moment.  “Hit it now or…”

The missile was fired, lancing right towards the truck.  It hit…and the world went white.  I cringed, my senses screaming
nuke
, even though I knew that that was impossible, as the blast wave hit, knocking me to the ground.  I hit hard enough to hurt, despite the padding of the body armour…and I could have blanked out for a second.  Mac hit the ground beside me and shook me hard, shouting at me.  All I could hear was a ringing in my ears.  It was a few seconds before I could even stand up and look towards where the truck bomb had detonated.

If it had detonated any closer, we would have been screwed.  Where it had been, along with its unwilling cargo of hostages, was nothing, but a massive crater.  There was absolutely no trace of the girls…and, I saw, the second and third trucks had lost their human shields, killed or blown off by the first blast.  Even at such a distance, it had wrecked havoc on the defences…and the second and third truck bombs were on their way.  If they detonated, we were definitely fucked…

I grabbed for my radio and discovered, with a curse, that it was broken.  The tactical radio was supposed to be very hard to break, even in a combat zone, but evidently the warranty had expired.  Mac checked his and passed it to me, but it was almost too late.  God bless the machine gunners, those who had survived the blast.  They hosed the remaining trucks down with machine gun fire until one of them staggered to a stop and the other one detonated.  I blinked away spots on my eyes at the combined explosions – judging from the smell, they’d improvised the explosives from fertiliser – and took stock of the defences.  It wasn't good news.  We had a breech large enough for them to ram an entire armed force through and tear us a new asshole.

I keyed Mac’s radio.  “Dutch, have everyone fall back to the inner defence area and get to the vehicles,” I ordered.  This was going to be bad.  Very bad.  “Order the machine gunners to hold them as long as possible, along with the mortar sections.  We’re going to have to make a run for it.”

The Warriors howled and charged up towards us, passing through the wrecked craters without much difficulty.  The machine gunners opened fire and killed at least a dozen of them in the first shot, but the remainder had managed to reach cover and advance in a slightly more disciplined order.  They advanced, jerking forward and covering each other, while supported by the men in the rear.  Their mortar teams weren’t that good, not compared to ours, but they were learning fast and they seemed to have ammunition to burn.  It wouldn’t be long, I realised, before they forced us right out of the defences and took the FOB.

Mac grabbed my arm.  “Ed, time to move,” he said, firmly, unslinging his rifle and checking it briskly.  I checked my own out of habit.  The fall we’d taken might have damaged the weapon.  The M16 was a good weapon, but it didn’t have the AK-47s survivability.  In a few years, we’d probably be duplicating AK-47s for ourselves, despite the irony.  If tribesmen in a cave under Afghanistan could do it, so could we.  “We can’t stay here, boss.”

He was right, but I didn’t want to run, or hide.  I wanted to stay and fight.  “Mac…”

“There’s no time,” he said, quickly.  “Come along before I have to slug you and pretend it never happened.”

I scowled at him as we scrambled down towards the vehicles, which had been parked as close to the north side of the defences as we dared.  A single mortar round in the wrong place and we would have had to flee on foot.  The vehicles were already being checked, I was relieved to discover, with the wounded and the nurses loaded onto the most heavily-protected vehicles.  Dutch was organising a rearguard as I came up to him, leading a group of volunteers to hold the line while the remainder of us made our escape.  I didn’t want to leave him or anyone else, but what other choice did I have?

Besides, it wasn't as if Mac was going to allow me to remain behind.

“They’re coming,” Dutch said, as the noise of shooting grew louder.  The Warriors had scented our weakness and were pouring their forces into the breach, howling as they lunged towards us.  It wouldn’t take them long to punch their way through into the rearguard position; they were already sneaking forces around the FOB to prevent an escape.  They would have to be forced out of the way, but that wasn't going to be easy.  A single shot in the wrong place and one of our vehicles would be permanently useless…

And yet there was no panic.  They were all good kids.  The only person who had become hysterical had been the poor boy who’d seen his girlfriend in the group of human shields.  The poor bitch was dead now – she had to be dead now – and I could only hope that she was in a better place.  The Warriors might have claimed to be acting in God’s name, but I knew better.  They served the devil.  It was funny how much easier it was to accept that as the literal truth, but after all, as the saying goes, there are no atheists in foxholes.

“I know,” I said.  The shooting was growing closer as well, backed up by the dull thudding of the mortars and even a pair of missiles, targeted on our machine gun nests.  A warhead designed to melt through a tank wouldn’t have much problem with the machine gun emplacements, even though we’d fortified them as well as we could.  Anyone inside was probably dead or wishing they were.  I just hoped that we hadn’t left anyone behind for the Warriors to capture.  I thought that we had accounted for everyone, but the entire situation was breaking down.  “Are you sure…?”

“Yes,” Dutch said firmly.  He winked at me.  “You get out of here and give your lady a fuck from me.  Get them all out of here and set up the next defence line.  We’ll break them as surely as we broke Saddam after a few more victories like this one.”

“I hope you’re right,” I said, and held out my hand.  He shook it firmly.  “Good luck.”

Mac shook his hand as well, and then turned to the vehicles.  “It’s time,” he said.  There was a grim final note in his voice, almost as if he didn’t expect to see nightfall.  “All aboard.  I’m triggering the bombs in two minutes.”

We’d used almost all of the mines, apart from a handful that had been held in reserve to the north, based on a trick some bastard had invented in Iraq.  We’d filled two massive crates with explosives and buried them somewhere the enemy had to go if they wanted to block our escape.  There was no guarantee of anything, but if we were lucky, the explosions would distract any of the survivors long enough for us to make our escape stick.  Mac winked at me as I took a seat on one of the technicals, just behind a machine gun that had been positioned to engage targets at any angle, and pushed down on a remote control.  For a second, nothing happened…and then the ground shook as the first mine detonated.  There was enough explosive power there, the experts had sworn, to flip an Abrams tank end for end.  The result was, quite literally, apocalyptic for anyone unfortunate enough to be anywhere near the blasts.

“Drive, drive, drive,” Mac yelled, as the gates swung open.  We hadn’t been able to open them fully beforehand – it would have given the game away rather obviously – but we’d removed enough of the barricade to let us out safely, and quickly.  That was the important part, as far as I was concerned.  In this case, an absence of haste meant waste.  “Here come the drums!”

I want to make it clear that this was
not
my idea.  Mac came up with the idea of hooking a CD player to a set of loudspeakers we’d discovered in the estate and playing music loudly enough to stun anyone who wasn’t expecting it, including the Warriors – we hoped.  He had wanted the
March of Cambreadth
, but I was thoroughly sick of that song…and if I caught the bastard who convinced the militia that it was a great marching song, I was going to put him on the front lines stark naked.  It was a great song the first time I heard it.  By the millionth time, or so it felt, I was sick of it.  Instead, we fled to the noise of Voodoo Child…

“So here it comes, the sound of drums,

“(Here come the drums, here come the drums.)

“Baby, baby, baby,

“You are my voodoo child, my voodoo child,

“Don't say maybe maybe,

“It's supernatural, I'm comin' undone.”

I don’t know what it did to the Warriors – they probably considered it blasphemous - but by God it frightened me.

The vehicle gunned its engines and leapt forward, leading the way down the road towards the interstate and then up towards Ingalls…and the next defensive line.  I hung on for dear life, hoping that Mac had managed to get onto one of the other vehicles before the charge started, watching out carefully for any signs of hostile action.  Fires were burning in the direction of where the mines had detonated – we’d included a little something in the explosive mix to encourage fires – but at first we saw no signs of the Warriors.  We couldn’t hear anything over the sounds of Voodoo Child, but we saw, from time to time, some individual Warriors trying to get to us.  The gunners cut them down with swift precise bursts and we drove past them, not even slowing to take better aim.  There was no need.  The Warriors had no choice, but to show themselves, just to take a shot at us.  We gunned them down mercilessly.  Whatever restraints we had once acknowledged had died in the heat of battle.

Behind us, the remains of the FOB burned.  I turned my head, craning it as far back as I could to look at the burning ruins, but there was no sign of Dutch or any of the rearguard.  I could still hear Voodoo Child until it cut off suddenly, accompanied by a massive explosion.  The Warriors had probably hit something explosive and destroyed the loudspeakers.  There was some shooting, brief isolated bursts of fire drifting in the warm air, but nothing else.  Silence was gradually falling as we drove away from the scene of recent carnage…