Trial by Fire - eARC (41 page)

But in their search for the lone sniper, the Hkh’Rkh hit the rebel hardpoint: a colonial era bank. There they encountered almost twenty well-armed humans, half equipped with relatively modern Pindad caseless assault rifles. Following their new counterinsurgency doctrine, the Hkh’Rkh held position while a third APC positioned itself in the fields well behind the bank. Any rebels fleeing the
kempang
in that direction would run directly into its massive firepower. And so the Hkh’Rkh waited for the game-ending air strike.

And they waited.

As Caine knew they would. He had coordinated this operation with two other resistance cells. Triggered by a daisy chain of pager signals, those two cells had mounted sharp, short attacks in other, distant
kempangs
as soon as the Hkh’Rkh had been spotted wheeling their way out to the one in which Caine was currently situated. And that meant that the forward-deployed enemy air assets in this region were already committed to attacking other rebel forces. Which had disappeared by the time the invader attack craft reached their target zones.

Consequently, the Hkh’Rkh in Caine’s
kempang
had to wait that much longer for the already overtaxed air assets based at smaller, harried airfields around Jakarta. Or, even more likely, due to the low threat of concerted insurgency in the
kempan
g’s region, the Hkh’Rkh would simply be ordered to do what they most wanted to do: close with the enemy and kill them. Personally.

When the two Hkh’Rkh squads waiting at the edge of the
kempang
started moving to join the first, Caine knew what orders they had received, just as if he had intercepted and decoded them.

The Hkh’Rkh had settled in half of their forward squad to pin down the insurgents in the bank, which proved extremely resistant to their fire. The reason: steel construction sheeting and engine-blocks of old cars lining its interior walls. The remainder of the squad split and probed the flanks to find a route that skirted the structure and enabled the follow-up squads to hit it from the sides and rear. Their probe of the bank’s right flank found an indeterminate number of resistance fighters with relatively modern weapons. But the primary threat they posed resided in the variety of small, wire-detonated IEDs at their disposal. After suffering two casualties there and making no progress, the Hkh’Rkh withdrew to a safe distance, pinning that flank without any further probing.

The left flank of Caine’s resistance cell presented the invaders with a more promising tactical opportunity. They encountered only two command-detonated mines, and the few humans there were only armed with AKs. The venerable rifles were not reliably lethal to the Hkh’Rkh except when discharged at very close range and in very great numbers. After driving these humans back from their first position, the Hkh’Rkh became bold and tried charging across a street to seize what seemed like that flank’s final fallback position.

That was when they learned that the sniper who had greeted them upon entering the town had relocated himself to cover this flank. With one Warrior killed outright by the rifle, and another wounded and then hammered senseless by the rebels’ AKs, the rest of the Hkh’Rkh withdrew back across the street. Their two casualties laying in plain sight of Caine’s mission tower CP, they traded shots with the humans occasionally, without any result in either direction.

However, in tactical terms, the Hkh’Rkh probes had been successful: they had found the insurgents’ position and had identified the left as the weak flank. The subsequent deployment of their reserves—reported by a seventy-five-year-old grandmother speaking into a hard-wire phone in her second-story sitting room—made the invaders’ attack orders quite clear. They were bringing up the next two squads with an acoustic trackback system and heavy weapons. They’d try to overrun the human position on the left flank, then turn sharply northward and roll up along the now-uncovered left side of the bank, assaulting it from the side and rear with superior numbers and supporting fire from heavy weapons and portable rockets. For all Caine knew, they might have stocks of CoDevCo-supplied tear gas with them as well.

A few minutes later, the rebel overwatch in the minaret of a dusty, dilapidated mosque a kilometer outside of town confirmed that the Hkh’Rkh assault forces were moving into engagement positions. The observers’ signal—closing the shutters on the top window of the tapering tower—had been visible to, and understood by, every human unit: approximately three minutes to contact.

Caine looked at his ancient, wind-up wrist watch. The timing was crucial: the first rush of the Hkh’Rkh attack upon the left flank had to be blunted enough to ensure that they would not all charge across the street. Not immediately, at any rate. He turned to Hadi as Teguh entered the mission tower CP from the rear. “Any reports?”

Hadi shook his head. “The Sloths are quiet up by the bank and the right flank. Some of the townspeople are coming out, though.”

“What? We told them—”

“They’re coming out to run away, Caine. Now that the firing’s died down, they probably think it’s a good time to get out. Before it starts again.”

There was nothing to be done about it now, and hopefully, the Hkh’Rkh would perceive the fleeing women and children as civilians trying to distance themselves from the insurgents in their
kempang
. Hopefully.

Caine picked up his Pindad caseless carbine. “Hadi, signal the launch crews to stand ready. The Hkh’Rkh will be finding their assault positions now. Knowing them, they won’t waste a lot of time debating optimal attack procedure.”

“No,” agreed Teguh, “the Sloths got no problem with being decisive.”

Hadi leaned over. “Launch crews signal they are ready and waiting for the launch order.”

Up the street, in the buildings across from those rebels who’d drawn the risky job of manning the weak left flank, there was movement. “Get ready,” whispered Caine.

Human shouting arose from the buildings in which the Hkh’Rkh were probably readying themselves. It subsided quickly.

“What was that?” Teguh asked, peering up the street, clutching his Pindad six-millimeter caseless more tightly.

“Don’t know,” Caine murmured. “Could the Hkh’Rkh be trying to interrogate civilians?” To date, the Hkh’Rkh did not torture opponents, even though they killed them readily enough. But perhaps they had decided to try something new—?

Hadi’s head snapped up. “Left flank observation post reports movement in buildings along the expected enemy assault route. Do we launch?”

Caine scanned those buildings through binoculars. “Not yet.” He glanced overhead at the ceiling. “Are they ready up in the attic?”

“They are,” Teguh answered with a nod. “They’ve only got the two RPG rounds, though.”

Caine nodded.
More for show than anything else. Something upon which to focus the attackers’ attention, to break their momentum in mid-assault for a few crucial seconds.
Up the street, Caine heard more shouting; this time a dog barked.
What the hell—?

Muzzle flashes erupted out of the windows of the buildings across from the rebels’ left flank. A high-pitched growl rose up a moment later: a coil gun. An incredibly lethal weapon, and a pearl of great price. As if fleeing its ear-rending reports, a dog ran out of one of the houses, tail between its legs.

The return fire from the left flank was fierce but dropped off quickly. Out of the phone receiver held by Hadi, lilliputian shouts of desperation rose and then were suddenly silent.

“Caine,” started Teguh.

“Wait,” said Caine, watching the street through his binoculars.

Another dog ran out of the same building—from which the two expected squads of Hkh’Rkh emerged in a rush, their distinctive loping strides carrying them rapidly toward the center of the street, firing as they came.

As Caine took the phone from Hadi, he shouted, “Flanking fire!” Teguh threw open the mission’s shutters. Without stopping, he shouldered his Pindad and dumped half a clip into the right flank of the charging Hkh’Rkh. Hadi was doing the same a moment later—just as Caine heard the defunct attic fan overhead get kicked outward, followed immediately by a hoarse, roaring rush: an RPG sped down the street toward the enemy.

This hail of deadly fire—but particularly the rocket—made the Hkh’Rkh dive for cover or go prone in the street. With sickening speed, however, they shifted their fire to the mission tower. Caine heard rounds ringing against the steel sheeting they had mounted inside the double-coursed brick-and-mortar walls.

He counted to two as the Hkh’Rkh’s personal weapons continued to roar and rounds started coming in through the open window, pulverizing the walls behind them. “Launch,” Riordan shouted into the phone’s receiver, just before grabbing Teguh and the less-willing Hadi, one with each hand. Pulling them downward, he yelled, “We’ve got to go!”

With a whining growl, the coil gun unloaded at them. The street-facing wall started coming apart; the steel plating screeched as hornet-screaming rounds spattered it, some going straight through.

One caught Hadi square in the sternum. In the same instant that a dime-sized entry wound appeared on his chest, his back blew out in a cascade of red mist, meat, and spine fragments. The air overhead was alive with a shrieking torrent of four millimeter projectiles that ground everything they hit to gravel and dust.

Caine and Teguh stayed low, scrambled back to a waiting rope in the stairwell, slid down to the ground floor. While Teguh hooked up the phone they’d readied at this fallback point, Caine peered out the doorway, to the south. The rebels’ six precious fire-and-forget missiles—the kind that could be left sitting in a trashcan until launched—were arcing up from their launch points along the tree line. The trajectories of the missiles suggested their apparent targets: the APCs waiting outside of town to the north.

Meanwhile, the Hkh’Rkh up the street were already reorganizing and checking their wounded. Those who had been providing covering fire from within the buildings now shouldered out to join the others, ignoring the fitful sputters of a sole AK-47 as they prepared to complete their overrun attack of the left flank—

—just as a third dog, this one not much more than a puppy, ran into the street, heading south after the first two. More human cries arose from the buildings being vacated by the Hkh’Rkh. From between their ogrelike shapes, a little girl carrying a doll darted out, screaming after the young dog.

The Hkh’Rkh paused, stared.

Caine’s breath stopped in mid-inhale.
No—

The PDF units on the APCs began chatter-hissing at the incoming rockets,

Caine reached to grab the phone out of Teguh’s hand—who held on. “No. You can’t—”

A young woman ran out after the girl, screaming for her to come back. Right behind her, a rush of other civilians—several young women, two older, and a number of children—seemed to vomit out of the building just south of the Hkh’Rkh, apparently believing that some decision had been made to flee the area en masse.

Caine snatched the phone away from Teguh, who grabbed his shoulder, fingers like nails. “If you call off the missiles—”

Caine knew exactly what would happen if he called off the missiles: the Hkh’Rkh squads would go through the left flank, hit the bank, slaughter everyone there when they discovered the rear was only lightly defended. They would wipe out all the rebels who had come to trust and follow Caine over the past weeks. But if he let the rockets come down—

“No—” Teguh repeated, and stared hard at Riordan, his eyes red-rimmed.

That stare froze Caine in place as—an instant after two of the fire-and-forget missiles were shot down—the remaining four triggered their secondary thrust packages.

The thrust packages were designed to fool PDF systems by jinking the trajectory of the missile sideways with a sudden burst of angled thrust. But Caine had discovered that the packages could be rigged to push the missiles downard, and so the secondary thrust rockets now bumped the missiles over into sudden, steep dives which carried them under the intercept arc of the Hkh’Rkh’s PDF systems—and into the street.

Caine looked past Teguh’s glistening eyes as the four surviving missiles came down on their preset coordinates, just meters away from where the Hkh’Rkh were regrouping—and from where the Indonesian women and children were fleeing.

The high-pressure fragmentation warheads went off with overlapping roars. The explosions flung some Hkh’Rkh up in the air. Most were blasted sideways, some of the blurred forms closest to the impact points split apart. However, the stick-figure shadows of the women and children simply dissolved in the force of the blast. But Caine knew that, when he walked into the street to help collect whatever spoils could be gleaned from almost three squads of dead or now easily dispatched Hkh’Rkh, he would see the tattered, bloody remains of those thin, helpless bodies.

As if to underscore that inevitability, the charred pink head of a child’s doll rolled lazily out of the smoke, came to a stop against the doorstep of the mission.

Caine pitched over as he vomited. Then he straightened and walked stiffly into the swirling, settling dust. “Teguh,” he called over his shoulder, “pass the word: salvage teams advance. Let’s get this over with.”

In the lightless nighttime jungle, Caine heard Teguh approaching. Again. He sat down next to Caine, who wondered how the Indonesian could see at all.

“I just learned from some of the new guys that they’ve got a nickname for you in Jakarta.”

Like what? Slayer of the Innocent?
But what Caine said was, “How do I get a nickname in a city where no one knows me?”

“Well, they don’ know you, but they sure know what you done. You are The Dentist.”

That caught Caine off guard. “The Dentist?”

“Hey, bro’, you removed a pretty famous tooth about three weeks ago. You know all the new posters of Ruap, smiling? Favorite thing for kids to do is blacken out one of his front teeth.”

“They’d better be careful. They could get shot for that.”

“Well,” said Teguh, and then he stopped.