Tiger by the Tail (46 page)

As they rounded the corner onto Sule Pagoda Road, Vanel caught sight of a flurry of activity ahead. Several BTR-3U eight-wheeled armored personnel carriers escorting a half-dozen troop transports had assumed defensive positions on the road in front of the City Hall. The doors opened on the sides of the APCs, and soldiers began exiting, joining the men streaming out from the back of the troop trucks.

“Sniper teams, disperse! Find the highest ground you can and take your positions!” Himal translated for Mike. “All other teams, move forward!”

Cars were beginning to jam up behind the blocked road. Unable to see what was stopping traffic, the confused drivers in the waves behind the first vehicles furiously honked their horns. While the noise was useful for sowing confusion and concealing their approach, it also made it hard for the various teams to communicate. Although Mike and Himal did their best to keep the teams together, they began to spread out as they approached the growing mass of soldiers that were about to move on City Hall.

Of greatest concern to Vanel were the 7.62 machine guns on the BTR-3Us, which could quickly scythe through the smaller force in a few seconds. He resolved to keep an eye on them, and go at them the moment they started turning toward the Kildar and his motley crew. What exactly he was going to do once he reached them would be decided once he got there.

* * *

Jace had also noticed the weapons on the APCs, and was about to ask Mike what, if anything, they should do about them when about ten Gurkhas abruptly turned left and began moving toward the far side of the vehicles through the crowd of people that had started to gather near them.

Guess he’s got that handled,
Jace thought. By now the main force of insurgents was almost on the group of soldiers. The enemy force, perhaps two hundred strong, had organized itself in the road outside City Hall and was about to move up to the main entrance. Expecting no resistance, the soldiers hadn’t even unslung their rifles yet. The commanding officer, a colonel, walked to the front of the line, and had just raised his arm to give the command to move forward when another voice shouted from the side of the street.

“All soldiers of the Myanmar Army, lay down your weapons and place your hands above your heads!”

The order was accompanied by the sight of sixty men popping out of the crowd and pointing automatic weapons at the assembled soldiers. The crowd behind them, seeing rifles appear, began to scatter, their shouts and screams rising above the noise of the idling engines and the confused bellow of the general. The turret of the nearest BTR-3U swung over to point at the interlopers as the general yelled for the others to surrender to the soldiers immediately.

Himal repeated the order, making the soldiers, with their rifles still on their shoulders, look at the determined, well-armed force on their left, and the colonel and their armored vehicles flanking them.

* * *

Toward the back of the assembled soldiers, Myanmar Army Lance Corporal Sanda stared at the men who had come out of nowhere and were now aiming rifles at him and his fellow soldiers.

This was not how it was supposed to happen!

His commanding general had told him and the rest of his men that only they could help stop the insidious spread of antinationalist forces that were conspiring to take over the government under their so-called “democratic” demands. Sanda had believed this, much as he had believed everything any military man had told him, beginning with his own father, a second lieutenant in the army.

Sanda had been perfectly schooled in the might and right of the military since he was a toddler. It had been only natural that he follow in his father’s footsteps and join the army as soon as he came of age. In many ways, he was the perfect military candidate; strong, relatively unthinking, and blindly obedient to the idea of the military state.

With all that in mind, there was no doubt that he would resist any enemies that tried to stop their progress toward bringing the nation back under its rightful rulers. He did not even need an order to do what he knew was so obviously right.

Using the cover of his fellow soldiers, Sanda unslung his weapon, chambered a round, and stepped out to aim at the attackers. He was just about to squeeze the trigger when—

Upon spotting one of the soldiers pointing his rifle at them, a Gurkha killed him with a single shot.

That was when the 7.62mm machine gun on the nearest APC opened up, and all hell broke loose.

* * *

Of all the groups, the Myanmar soldiers were caught in the worst position possible. Out in the open, with the nearest cover several meters away. More than a third of them went down in the initial volley from the combined force of Keldara and Gurkha soldiers. The rest scrambled for whatever cover they could find, some running back to the nearest BTR-3U, others diving behind the dead bodies of their former compatriots. The range was so short that almost all of the victims of the first volley had been killed outright.

Even with the chattering machine gun, the Keldara and Gurkhas had a much easier time falling back to cover. The cars littering the road made good, if not perfect, barriers, depending on the type of round the Burmese were using; even the engine block wouldn’t provide sufficient cover if they had gotten their hands on 7.62mm NATO rounds. Fortunately, with the APCs lined up in a row, there wasn’t any way for more than the turrets on the first two vehicles to draw a bead on the attackers.

Most of the nearest drivers stuck between the two groups of fighting men either got out of their cars and ran like hell or hunkered down in their vehicles, hoping their cars would protect them.

Against the 7.62mm machine gun, the runners were doomed, with the rounds punching through them like a hot knife through butter. Those who stayed put were better protected, as the gunner was primarily focusing on moving targets, not stationary vehicles.

The Keldara and Gurkhas had already been going for cover when the turret started to move. The majority of them had ended up behind the cars as rounds whizzed by, shattering windows, flattening tires, and punching holes in hoods and fenders.

A few, including Vanel, had even swept forward. They had ended up under the nearest APC’s slanted front end, which provided plenty of cover from the turret weapons as well as protection from the men in the road. Even the couple of army men who came around the corner of the tall vehicle were quickly shot and killed.

Now all Vanel had to do was come up with a plan to take out that machine gun . . .

* * *

Phen sat in the driver’s seat of his idling bus and cursed his luck. Even with the large payment the foreigners had given him, he could be making even more money on a run back to the airport. Times were still tight, and if he wasn’t moving, he wasn’t earning. It had taken him four years of bribery and working his fingers to the bone to secure a bus driver job, and he wasn’t about to lose it because some damn fools were going to keep him from working.

Glancing in his wide rear-view mirror at the huge, one-legged man with bright white hair sitting behind him, Phen repressed a shudder. He had a pretty good idea of why the big man had been left behind—beside his missing leg, of course.

The
pop-pop-pop
of gunfire sounded in the distance, making the bus driver sit up in his seat and crane his neck to try to get a look at what was going on. Sensing a shadow fall over him, he looked up to see the white-haired man towering over him. Staring at Phen, he pointed in the direction of the firefight just as several bursts from what sounded like a machine gun echoed all around them.

“
Lee sok pay!
” the driver exclaimed. “Suck my dick—I’ll be damned if I’m driving toward that—”

The huge man didn’t give any sign that he understood what Phen was saying. He just reached out and grabbed the collar of his shirt with one massive hand. Hauling the shouting, smaller man out of his seat, he opened the door, and tossed him out onto the road.

Phen landed on his ass, scraping skin from his palms as he tried to break his fall. He looked up at the giant, who was wedging himself behind the wheel with one of his crutches poised to work the clutch. As Phen scrambled to his feet, the white-haired man reached over to close the door.

With a grinding of gears, the bus lurched left. Smacking into a small truck, it shoved it out of the way as the man drove Phen’s prized bus onto the sidewalk.

* * *

Vanel was now crouched with Marko and a pair of Gurkhas in the shadow of the BTR-3U’s angled snout. While the APC didn’t seem to be going anywhere, its chattering machine gun kept spitting rounds and pinning down the Kildar’s forces. Along with the screams of the wounded, the loud bursts, along with the return fire, made it almost impossible to talk.

Suddenly they were faced with a trio of Myanmar soldiers who were trying to take cover in the same space Vanel and his teammates occupied. Three short bursts from the Gurkhas and Keldara made quick work of the retreating soldiers. As the bodies fell, the smoke grenades on their web gear gave Vanel an idea.

Exchanging his standard magazine for AP rounds, he grabbed three grenades and shouted to Marko, “Boost me!” while pointing up. With a puzzled look on his face, Marko did just that.

Bracing his HK 416C in the crook of his arm, Vanel fired a short burst into the APC’s front viewport, punching a hole in the bullet-resistant glass. Before the crew could return fire, he pulled the pins on two of the grenades and tossed them inside. He followed both with a few more shots to make sure no one tried to throw one back out. Dark gray smoke immediately began pluming from the open hole, and coughing and panicked shouts could be heard inside.

“Down!” he said to Marko, who set him back on the ground. Vanel ran around to the right side of the vehicle in time to see the first crewmember climb out of the side hatch, coughing and wiping at his eyes. Vanel clubbed him with the butt of his rifle the moment his feet hit the pavement. By the time the second crewman had come out, Marko and one of the other Gurkhas had joined him, and they captured the rest of the crew as they stumbled out.

Grabbing another trio of smoke grenades, Vanel pointed at the next APC, which was one of the ones firing its machine gun. He was heading toward it, assault carbine at the ready, when a Myanmar soldier came appeared around the back corner of the one they had just disabled.

Vanel and the private both fired at the same moment. The Keldara’s target fell back, blood bursting from his chest as his rifle fired into the sky.

Vanel felt something punch him in the stomach, beneath his body armor, and suddenly he found himself sitting on the ground, feeling lightheaded and numb around his waist. He fell backward as his hand went to his stomach and came away bloody.

“Vanel! What happen—” Marko said as he cleared the corner and crouched by his teammate’s side. Then he looked back toward their forces and yelled, “MEDIC!”

* * *

Beads of sweat dotted Oleg’s forehead as he wrestled with the balky bus. The vehicle had been indifferently maintained, and it showed in the stiff clutch and loose transmission. Oleg had to jam the crutch down on the clutch pedal while letting up on the gas as he forced the bus into second gear. At the same time, he leaned hard on the horn to clear the sidewalk of anyone either deaf or stupid enough to still be in the area.

With a resigned groan, the bus began picking up speed. Oleg smashed the clutch down again and forced the stick shift into third gear, making the thirty-year-old vehicle lurch up to maybe forty miles an hour.

Judging by the louder gunfire, he was getting closer. Now he just needed a bit of the All Father’s luck to get him near enough to his target to make a difference.

* * *

“No go, Mike! We are fucking pinned!” Adams shouted after almost getting his ass shot off during a brief recon to see if they could somehow flank the machine gun that was keeping them under cover. “What we could really use right now is some air support!”

“What about the snipers?” Mike yelled back.

“Watch!” Jace shouted. The three men peeked around the corner of their battered cover to see a series of sparks flash off the top armor of the second APC. “They don’t have anything powerful enough to penetrate it!”

The main force of soldiers had been killed, driven to cover, or scattered by the initial attack, but the APC machine guns were causing a huge problem. Every time anyone showed even a flash of movement, the guns zeroed in and tried to shoot through their cover to get the man behind it. Three cars were on fire from rounds piercing the engines and gas tanks, and it was only luck that none of them had exploded yet.

Mike, Adams, and Jace were hunkered down about twenty meters from the second APC, which was firing at anything that moved. “We have to disable that weapon!”

“Short of getting in the first one and unloading on the one behind it, we don’t have a chance in hell of taking it out!” Adams shouted, just before his eyes widened as he looked beyond Mike’s shoulder. “What the hell—?”

Mike and Jace both turned to see the bus they’d been riding in barreling toward the stopped military convoy, picking up speed. “No way that’s the driver, which means—” Jace began.

“—Oleg’s doing a fucking suicide run!” Mike finished.

But the moment the bus lined up on the second vehicle, the door flew open and a large body tumbled out. He rolled over and over on the road as both of the turrets traversed to take out this new threat. The 7.62s shattered the windshield and began walking rounds across its front grille. But before the 30mm main gun could begin firing, the bus slammed into the side of the APC, right where the turret was—just as it shot its first shell.

Detonating right outside the muzzle, the blast rushed back down the bore as the second shell came out, making it detonate early as well. The barrel was next to go, rocking the turret as it exploded. Smoke started pouring out of the vehicle, and the side hatch flew open as the crew evacuated.

“We just got our distraction. Move in now!” Mike ran around the front of the destroyed car he’d been hiding behind and headed for the first APC. Adams and Jace followed right behind him. Seeing their leaders sweeping forward, the rest of the warriors followed, covering the three men as they reached the first BTR-3U.