"Will do," Vanner said, a note of humor in his voice. For sure he knew the reason, but what he was probably finding funny was the "after we got back."

Well, f.u.c.k that.Adams had been in some nasty cl.u.s.terf.u.c.ks in his time and walked out of every one. This one wasn't going to be any different. He didnot intend to die on a ridge in f.u.c.king Chechnya.

The Islamics wanted to be martyrs and go meet Allah. He was here to give them their wish.

This wasn't Kiril's first battle by any stretch. He had had a small piece of the last Chechen attack to cross the mountains and threaten the Keldara. But, more, he had been on the teams that had a.s.saulted the Albanian town of Lunaria and fought four times their number of Albanian defenders to a b.l.o.o.d.y standstill. He bore scars from that, as well, and the memory of an interesting encounter shortly after the extraction birds landed with not only the Keldara but a several dozen former s.e.x-slaves many of whom werevery happy to be out of Albania.

He wasn't planning on getting laid right afterthis battle, not given the ambiguous situation with Gretchen, not to mention not being married to her, yet. But he fully intended to survive it. While the Keldara felt that there was no higher honor than dieing in battle -being a hero was, after all, the only way to get to the Halls of Feasting-they believed just as deeply that your statusin the halls depended on how many had preceded you. One of the DVDs that was played over and over was an American movie about one of the greatest of their generals, a man named Patton. It was one of the ways they practiced their English.

There was one part where he was making a speech, presumably to some of his troops, and said in it: "No b.a.s.t.a.r.d ever won a war by dieing for his country. He won by making theother poor b.a.s.t.a.r.d die forhis !"

Whenever that part of the movie came around the roars in the barracks were deafening.

Now he poked his head up, briefly, taking the chance that any sniper would get his MICH-2000 helmet, then dropped back down. The Chechens were coming in a straggling herd. Hundreds of them.

Good. The Keldara believed in making the other b.a.s.t.a.r.d die. They didn't even have the bare mercy for them the American had professed. The only good target was a serviced target. And it was going to be a target rich environment.

Adams wasn't about to poke his head up; he had a small video camera set up on his position and was watching the take on his BFT pad.

The lead Chechens, who were slowing down from their run and puffing pretty hard, were about eight hundred meters out. He briefly considered engaging them with the SAWs, which had the range. Then he shrugged.

Let them come.

Salah tried to shout in triumph. They were barely five hundred meters from the line of rocks that marked the Keldara positions and still the cowards didn't fire. He held his weapon forward in one hand and triggered a long burst of fire from the AK, joined by dozens, hundreds, of others. They were going to completely overrun these cowards, these pagan pigs, and then they would go on to the valley that whelped them and wipe them out for all time.

Three hundred meters. As AK rounds cracked overheadAdams looked over at Oleg and winked.

"Wait til you can see the whites of their eyes, eh?" the former SEAL said, grinning.

"That one I'm not familiar with," Oleg admitted. "Patton?"

"You guys need to watch some other movies for G.o.d's sake,"Adams said with a sigh as a spent bullet tumbled into the position. Two hundred. "Bunker Hill. Big battle during the American Revolution."

"I wasn't even aware you'd had a revolution," Oleg said. "I will study it."

"Do," Adams replied. One hundred. He keyed his throat mike and lifted himself up to just below the rock lip of the fighting position. "Teams. Prepare to engage."

They were on them now! There was no way to stop them!

"Alahu Akbar!" Salah shouted with what air he could spare. "G.o.d is Great!"

"Open fire," Adams said, straightening up and searching for a target.

That wasn't exactly tough. As he'd expected between the rough ground to their front and the steep slope the Chechens had both tightened up and slowed down. He targeted one of the screaming horde, a young guy holding his AK at his hip and just starting a "spray and pray" burst and fired three rounds into his upper chest. Then he tracked right to the next target.

Kiril lifted himself and poked the barrel of the SAW out of the trench, opening fire before he really aimed. From his perspective he might as well; keeping the barrel down there was virtually no way to miss.

He was searching for priority targets: RPGs, other machine gunners, leadership. But while he did that with one part of his mind he was engaging lower priority targets, firing short, controlled bursts from the SAW.

He'd ganged three of the ammunition boxes together in antic.i.p.ation of a hot fight. Normally the ammo box of the SAW hung on a holder on the left hand side. In this case he'd dug out a small shelf just before the opening of his fighting position and placed the boxes there. Now they emptied their linked 5.56 into the weapon without him having to worry about reloading. He had six hundred rounds andway more targets. The sky was clear, the thin air blew cold down the trench and the ravens, harbingers of battle, were in the sky; the eyes of the Father of All were upon them.

It was a good day to do battle.

The f.u.c.king Keldara b.a.s.t.a.r.ds.

Sorrano was watching his command broken and he could not believe it possible.

The f.u.c.kers had waited until the last possible moment to fire and now they were slaughtering his men on the very edge of victory. It could not be possible. They were soclose he could see their eyes, yet his men could not reach them.

To the right, though, they were getting closer. There didn't see to be as much fire there.

"RIGHT!" he screamed, pointing and slapping some of the fedayeen in that direction. "GO TO THE RIGHT!".

"Left. Big guy with a PKM. Looks like a leader."

Lasko tracked to the left and saw who Gena meant. The man had bandoliers of PKM ammunition crossed on his chest. Lasko automatically targeted the x point where they crossed and triggered one round.

Sorrano grunted and looked down at the red welling in his lower chest. One hand raised to it in surprise.

He couldn't figure out where the blood had come from.

Suddenly the hole began spitting crimson and he fell to his knees as his legs lost all strength. He tried to prop himself up with his weapon but that, too, fell from his hands and he slumped forward on his face.

He was looking at a boot. It was very worn. They needed to get the men some more boots... soon...

f.u.c.kers never learned.

When a gun is fired, the barrel tends to track upwards from recoil. Depending on how cases were ejected it could be pushed to one side as well.

When an automatic weapon was fired, the barrel tracked up and up and up. So when firing on automatic, the only way to keep the weapon from tracking off the target, unless you had a very firm position, was to fire in three to five round bursts.

Professional militaries knew that and trained their people to either fire in bursts or, more often, individual rounds. But groups like the Chechens, and the Taliban who he'd fought inAfghanistan and Al Qaeda who he'd fought inIraq and various tribal militias he'd fought in Africa, the FARCs inColombia ... Christ it was a long list... they never seemed to learn. They'd just hold weapon at their side, press the trigger and spray. Even if the first round was anywhere near the target all the rest tracked up and, in the case of the AK, generally to the right.

It gave you a great feeling to just yank the trigger and spray. He'd done it a couple of times for the f.u.c.k of it. But you didn't hit s.h.i.t.

He hadn't even heard a medic cry from their side and the Chechens were gettingslaughtered . The rushing attack was broken no more than thirty meters from their position with hundreds of bodies scattered on the ground. Most of them were wounded rather than dead, the f.u.c.king 5.56 tended to do that, but not many of them were still trying to fire.

The rest of the Chechens, though, were still charging. He dropped the spent mag out of the well, slapped another in and fired three rounds at one of the screaming horde. The guy kept coming so he put another two in his head. That dropped him.

On the right the Chechens were heavier; the slope tended to push them that way. Some of them were making their way through the fire and were nearly to the trench. That was Sawn's sector. The Makanee kid was good; he could handle that.

Kiril fired upwards as the Chechen came over the lip of his position then dropped the empty SAW and drew his hatchet.

The Keldara practiced at throwing axes but that wasn't the only skill they knew. As the next Chechen tumbled into the position Kiril's axe darted forward, fast as a snake, struck the man in the side of the neck and returned to guard position. The Chechen grabbed at his throat as the carotid began spurting high-pressure arterial blood across the position. With his hands clamped on the wound it still squirted out, but now in a spray that turned to a sanguine mist in the thin air.

Suddenly there were more of the screaming Islamics in the position and it became a b.l.o.o.d.y melee. Kiril blocked an empty AK upwards and kicked the Islamic in the crotch then brought the back of the axe across his face, smashing his cheek in and spraying teeth across the trench. Swinging it back so fast the head seemed to disappear he sank it into the upper arm of another of the Chechens, nearly severing it as the sharpened blade broke through the humerus bone and severed the brachial artery.

Back again to strike the man with the smashed face on the side of the head, crushing his occipital bone in a spray of blood and brains, across to catch another on the throat, tearing out his windpipe, down in one continuous motion to bury it in the neck of the one he'd cut off his arm.

The last Chechen dropped as Sawn suddenly appeared in the opening to the position. The team leader wrenched his own hatchet out of the back of the man's neck and looked around.

"What are you doing just standing there?" Sawn asked the panting and blood drenched SAW gunner.

"Get the bodies out of here and get your gun back in action. This ain't no ice-cream social!"

"Iso regret introducing you to Red Vs Blue," Kiril panted. But the next moment he was heaving the bodies of the Chechens out of the position. Carefully, though. Master Chief Adams had pointed out more than once that there was very little coverbetter than a nice fresh body.

Salah wondered why he could not move. He kept willing his body to rise and nothing would happen.

He had tripped, that was all. And rolled onto his back. His head turned to the side and he could not even move his neck. All he could do was look up and to the side. There was another man next to him, he thought it might be Ibrahim Shatti by the clothing. For some reason, his head seemed to be pushed to the side, weirdly, his face broader and flatter and the back of his head was missing. Salah thought that it made him look better than usual, Ibrahim was not a very handsome boy. He still had the spots very bad and they had scarred his already misshapen face. It was more misshapen, now, and had two large spots to either side of his nose.

The firing had mostly stopped. They must have won. Allah, the Victorious, was victorious once again.

Chapter Forty-Three.

Commander Bukara couldn't believe his eyes. The straggled remnants of the attack force were running down the hill, dropping their weapons, dropping their ammunition, dropping everything in a desperate race to escape. And it was a race they were losing as first one then another dropped to sniper fire.

Barely a hundred had fled, initially, and that number had been dropped by half before they were half way down the slope.

"Pagan f.u.c.ks," Bukara snarled. Already ravens were dropping from the sky onto the bodies and distant shots, single, indicated that some of the wounded were being finished off by the defenders.

"They say that the raven is one of their totems," Bukara noted. "The eyes of one of their G.o.ds. He's certainly getting an eyeful today."

"There is no G.o.d but Allah," Sayeed replied.

"Well I wish he'd send me a sign, then," Bukara snapped.

"Commander Bukara..."

The young Chechen was panting, clearly having finished running hard. He was still carrying his weapon, though, and had come from the rear. So he wasn't one of the cowards up on the hill.

"What?" Bukara snarled.

"Another group comes," the young man gasped. "A large group under Commander Sadim. And they havereporters . From Al-Jazeera! The whole world will watch us destroy these Keldara!"

"You said you wanted a sign," Sayeed said, impertinently.

"Sergeant Sivula, what, pray tell, are you doing here?" Captain Guerrin asked.

Of course the answer was obvious since the sergeant, sweating like a horse, was carrying one end of a 120mm mortar tube.

120mm mortars are, technically, man transportable. And over short distances, if you have enough bodies, they are. Of course, the tube alone weighs 110 pounds. The ma.s.sive baseplate is even heavier at 136 pounds. And the bipod is no joke, despite weighing in at a comparatively light 70 pounds. Then there was ammunition, without which the weapon was useless. Each crate of three rounds weighed forty pounds. And the more rounds the better.

There was no way that even all the young women of the Keldara could have carried the mortars the ten kilometers from the nearest road to the Ranger position. The women were strong but it would have taken four of them, alone, to carry the tube. Sivula and one other Ranger were currently carrying it having traded off with the previous team a kilometer before reaching the Ranger position.

Sivula lowered the mortar to the ground and looked sheepish.

"Well, sir, our mandate was to work with the mortars," Sivula said. "And the ladies wanted to bring them up here."

Every female of the Keldara between the age of fifteen and about twenty, d.a.m.ned near a hundred of them, were in a long line behind him, carrying crates of ammunition, water and food. All of them had weapons, as well, mostly AKs scrounged from Chechens on various battlefields. The weapons and crates clashed with their bright tops and black skirts. It looked like the gypsy caravan from h.e.l.l.

The one woman who wasnot young was right behind Sivula. She looked to be about two hundred but, despite her age and the weight of weapon and ammunition she was carrying, she was following along just fine, not even looking particularly bothered by the slope. The term that came to mind was...sprightly.

"You are the commander," the woman said in broken English as she reached Guerrin's commander. "I am Mother Lenka, brewmistress of the Keldara, Captain. I have brought your men some of mypersonal beer and in exchange I would ask for a favor."

"Well, ma'am," the captain said, uncomfortably, "my men can't drink on duty..."

"Even though you Americans have no legs forreal beer," Mother Lenka snapped, "eventhey will not be made drunk by one bottle, captain. And it's not as if they're having to fight."

Guerrin's eyes flared at that and he opened his mouth to reply but he didn't get a chance.

"We are here on a mission of mercy, captain," Mother Lenka continued, more pleasantly. "There are, possibly, injured Chechens in those bunkers. We are here to provide aid to them. But we are but poor, weak women. So we would like toask for a little help. Just, you know, toting things. I know you are under orders to not move forward butsurely you can help us on a mission of mercy." The old woman batted her eyes coquettishly.

Guerrin was surprised. Despite looking as if she was two hundred, when the woman turned on her charm full force she actuallywas pretty good looking. He'd never thought that was possible.