Nielson heard the phone hit the desk and Umarov frankly snickering in the background. After a few moments the Chief of Staff apparently got himself under control.

"Thank you," Umarov said. "I needed that. Now would you like to answer the question?"

"Yeah. But I'm not going to. If you want to know the answer, ask the Germans, Russians, French, Indians, j.a.panese, Italians, Brits and Americans. If you can find anyone in any of the governments who can answer the question. Don't bother asking the people who expressed polite interest. They're just going to be obeying confusing orders. You might want to ask the Prime Minister, President or what have you, personally. They're about the only people that will know the answer for sure."

"Oh."

"Yes, sir. Oh. I'll put it this way, and don't take this as a threat. But if this valley looks to fall toany group or government, including yours, you're liable to find every major country on earth invadingGeorgia in force. n.o.body will know why, it will probably be a scrambling cl.u.s.terf.u.c.k, pardon my language, and liable to trigger World War Three. But I thought you should know. Between friends."

"Does this have anything to do with your current mission?" Umarov asked.

"No comment," Nielson said. "Which actually means 'no comment.' Don't draw anything from it."

"Okay," Umarov said, sourly. "Anything we can supply right away?"

"Not unless you have a bomber in your pocket."

"We're quite low on aircraft. And given the conditions I don't see any of mine being of use to you at the moment. You really don't want the former Defense Minister's hand-picked fighter pilots dropping bombs anywherenear your people. Did my gifts help?"

"Very much," Nielson said. "Thank you. And might I suggest that you stop by for dinner some time. We can talk about...old times."

"I'll do that," Umarov said. "You have a battle to run and I have people to scream at. Andmany to fire."

The last was said with satisfaction.

"I guess this was a pretty good outcome," Nielson said, hanging up the phone. "But I'd rather have one d.a.m.ned girl alive. I'd rather haveall of them out of that valley of death."

Chapter Forty-Five.

The mortar missedAdams ' position by barely a meter, dropping in the trench instead of directly on them.

That wasn't much of a mercy. The blast area of the 120mm mortar was nearly twenty five meters. At a meter, the concussion could kill you.

The walls attenuated the concussion, though, the angles funneling it to the rear of the position and away from the two fighters. They also caught most of the shrapnel. Most.

Oleg's left leg caught most of the rest.

The team leader let out a shriek of agony that morphed into a bellow of pure rage.

Adamswas knocked nearly unconscious by the blast. His position was more in the line the concussion had taken and it threw him against the earth and rock wall, the combination of overpressure and impact slamming the air out of his lungs and causing his head to ring.

He shook the fog off like a horse flicking a fly and looked at Oleg. The first thing he saw was that the Keldara was either screaming or shouting. It took him a moment to track down to the leg.

It was a mess. Meat had been stripped away from the bone and Oleg's foot was lying across the trench.

Adamsslid forward and pulled out a fast-tourniquet, slipping it around Oleg's thigh, low down by the knee. If they were lucky they might keep the upper thigh. There was no way that the best reconstructive surgeon in the world was going to keep the leg.

Oleg had his hand clamped around the thigh andAdams had to push it to the side. He slipped on the fast-tourniquet and pulled it tight then used the latch to cinch it down. The red arterial blood stopped squirting out at least.

"I gotta get you back to the bunker, buddy!" Adams shouted, sliding his arm under the big Keldara's armpit.

Oleg was shouting something at him butAdams couldn't catch it. He realized he was deaf as a post. It should pa.s.s; it had happened before. But right now he couldn't figure out what Oleg was shouting. The Keldara pushed him off and reached down to his belt, pulling out that tomahawk all the Keldara carried.

He pointed it at the leg and made a chopping motion.

"Nof.u.c.king way!"Adams shouted, shaking his head. He reached into his own harness and pulled out a morphine ampoule. The guy was clearly crazy with pain.

Oleg slapped it out of the Master Chief's hand and reached forward, grabbing him behind the head and dragging him down to look directly in the eye.

"I NEED TO LEAD!" Oleg screamed. "TO FIGHT! TOO MUCH PAIN!ONE LEG!"

Oleg took the axe and shoved it into Adams' hand, then pointed at the leg.

Adamsunderstood. Oleg only needed one leg to stand in the position and fight the Chechens. He didn't need any to command his troops. But he couldn't do that with the pain of the ripped-up leg. Or on morphine.

There was just one problem.Adams looked at the axe for a second and then held up one finger, getting up in a crouch.

He went down the trench, hunched over, to the position where Dmitri Makanee was located. He gestured at the a.s.sistant Team Leader with one finger and the two went back to the position.

When he got there, Dmitri took in the scene in an instant then looked at the axe in the Master Chief's hand.

"I don't know how to use one of these f.u.c.king things," Adams admitted. He could probably have cut the leg off, but he knew one of the Keldara could do it better.

Dmitri took the axe and knelt by Oleg then stretched his mouth wide. Oleg opened his and Dmitri shoved the hilt of the axe in for him to bite. Then he drew his own axe and in one swift motion cut down.

The blow cut through the shattered bones of the leg just below the knee and through half of the meat. It only elicited a coa.r.s.e bellow from Oleg. A second strike to cut through the remaining tissue didn't even get that.

Oleg, pale and sweating, pulled the axe out of his mouth and buried it in the dirt. Dmitri leaned forward and held up his own b.l.o.o.d.y axe, looking Oleg in the eye.

The team leader wrapped his hand around Dmitri's, the blood running down over both then leaned forward and licked the axe head. Licked off his own blood and bone.

"Aer Keldar," Dmitri shouted.

"Aer Keldar," Oleg replied, pulling him forward to slam helmets together.

"AerKeldar!"

"AerKeldar !"

"AER KELDAR!" they screamed in unison, pounding their helmets in time with the chant.

"f.u.c.k,"Adams said, sliding down the side of the hole. "And I thoughth.e.l.l Week was f.u.c.ked up. What do theyfeed these guys? Oh, yeah. Beer."

"Pavel."

"Go, Kildar."

Pavel had a bird's eye view of the entire battle. Unfortunately, it meant he wasout of the battle. Mostly.

The Chechens were trying to get sniper teams up on the ridgeline to the north. They weren't having much luck, though, because Pavel was letting them get mostly set up and then taking them down. So far it was like hunting mountain goats; they never looked up. They seemed to think that the counter-sniper fire was coming from the defenses below. They would get towards the top of the ridge at a walk then drop to their bellies and crawl forward. The snipers on the mountain would let them get into position overlooking the main Keldara position then fire them up. They never knew what hit them.

It wasn't exactly sporting, but good tactics never were.

And there were compensations. The view from their position was outstanding.

"We're getting our a.s.s mortared off down here and hunkered down. So we're kind of blind. What are the Chechens doing?"

"Trying to get snipers on the ridge and failing," Pavel said. "And it looks as if they are moving into pre-attack positions."

"Tell me when they start heading up the hill," Mike said. "And thanks for keeping the snipers off our backs. I don't suppose you can see the mortars."

"No, Kildar," Pavel said. "I can climbhigher ."

"Nah. You're good. Kildar, out."

d.a.m.n. The mountain above him had one face that had to be at least three hundred meters and looked to be somewhere between a four and a five with some nice overhangs. He really wanted to climb it.

War sucked.

"It sucks," Sivula said, "but this is as far as we can go."

There was no question of recovering any injured Chechens from the bunkers. What was left was mostly pieces and they had scattered a flock of ravens when they approached.

"It's all right," Jessia said, smiling and walking to one side. She set her box of ammunition on the ground and gestured to the other women to start piling in the same spot. "This is as far asI go as well."

"Huh?" Sivula said, calculating distances. He'd seen the map. They were still at the back side of the pa.s.s.

There was no way they could range all the way to the entrapped Keldara.

"This is as far asI go," Jessia said. "But others will go further."

"Well," the sergeant said, sighing. "I hope I'm still around when you get back. I'd... well this has been.

Interesting."

"What you're trying to say is that you hope you see me again," Jessia said, smiling. "I hope I see you again as well, Andrew. But now you must go and I must lay in the guns."

"This situationso sucks," Sivula replied. "Look..."

"I left an email address where you can reach me on your bunk," Jessia said. "Which, by the way, was very messy. I hope you guys clean the barracks up before you leave; we worked hard on them before you got here. Now...go. We can talk later. Talk much."

"We will sweep the infidels from our lands, yes, Mahmud?"

The older fighter just grunted. From his perspective there wasn't much to talk about.

Mahmud Al Hawwari had been a young factory worker inGrozny when the Berlin Wall fell. He had never cared much about the Berlin Wall, or international politics. All he cared about was getting paid enough to afford some vodka and a little partying on the weekends.

But as theSoviet Union collapsed the economy collapsed with it. The factory closed. All the businesses inGrozny closed. Where before there had been long lines for anything of any worth, now there was no money for even less goods.

He had found solace in one of the new mosques that opened in the wake of communism. At first he just went because the mosque served food, if not vodka, and gave him a place to sleep out of the cold. So there was a little preaching to be put up with, it was worth it.

But the longer he stayed in the mosque the more he came to realize how empty his life had been and how little he understood the world. He had always known that his family was Islamic, even if they had "Russified" their name. Some of the grandparents talked of the Prophet and the word of Allah. But until he came to the mosque for the free hand-out the Prophet had decreed, he had never understood the importance of Allah in his life.

And the mosque taught him more than just the importance of charity.Chechnya was a part of the Dar Al-Islam, Islamic lands that had been occupied for too long by the Russians. Whether G.o.dless communists or Orthodox Christian, both were sins in the eyes of Allah. Those lands that had once been under proper Muslim rulemust be returned to submission to Allah. And there was a way. The path of Jihad.

The battle forGrozny , though, had erased that long ago furor. It was a miniature version ofStalingrad fought with not much more high-tech weapons. The Russians poured ma.s.ses of half-trained conscripts into the machine and got out sausage. The Chechens fought a hit-and-run campaign that the Russians never quite got a handle on. It was a cauldron of blood and fire that seemed to go on and on.

But over time, quant.i.ty has a quality all its own. The Russians suffered ten times the casualties of the resistance but in the end the resistance was forced out.

Somewhere in that cauldron Mikhail Mihailovich Talisheva, AKA Mahmud Al Hawwari, a one time factory worker and current "freedom-fighter", lost his faith in Allah, in the Dar Al-Islam, in shariah and jihad and all the rest. He knew that there was no road back to the man he might have been. There was no road to vodka and chess on the weekends. Some of the factories were reopened but he couldn't go back to shoving parts on a line. Not after the things he'd seen, and done. Not with the price he had on his head. And the resistance did not take kindly to deserters. The umah did not take kindly to those who recanted their faith. The punishment for apostasy decreed by the Prophet, the Beneficent guy, was stoning to death.

The only road forward was the one he was on. And that road, currently, led up a hillside covered with the dead of a previous attack. The road led into a storm of mortar fire and an enemy that was whispered of by the men who were from these hills.

It led to another cauldron. One that, if Sho'ad walked out of it, might teach the young fedayeen a thing or two.

So Mahmud just grunted as the lines of fighters sprayed out on the hillside and shook into lines.

He pulled out a bottle of water and drained it, wishing as he always did that it was vodka, even the cheapest vodka. Then he opened his fly and took a p.i.s.s. There weren't any trees around and he didn't really care. He'd lost that, too, the caring. He'd left it behind inGrozny .

"p.i.s.s," he said to Sho'ad.

"What?" the younger man said, surprised. A few of the other old fighters were p.i.s.sing as well. It didn't seem very...right.

"p.i.s.s," Mahmud said, again. "Did you take a c.r.a.p recently?"

"No," Sho'ad said, reluctantly drawing out his p.e.c.k.e.r. Showing it in public like this felt, nowas , sinful.

"Then don't cry to me when you c.r.a.p your pants," Mahmud said. "c.r.a.p before battle. Drink and p.i.s.s just before battle. It's the only thing I can teach you. If we're both alive tomorrow, you might be ready to start to learn s.h.i.t like reloading and aiming."

The company leader whistled and the group started moving forward in teams. Up ahead there were two units that Mahmud had never fought with. One of them was Bukara's old unit. He'd met Bukara one time and thought he was a blowhard. He was like one of the old commissars who'd come down on the factory floor and tell you how to do your job when he'd never been on the line.

There was a three hundred meter gap between them and the Sadim Brigade. Let those f.u.c.kers soak up the ammunition and hope of the defenders. Then the Sadim Brigade would descend on them like the efreets.

He began whistling a tune, a sad one that was best rendered by the balalaika. The Chechen fedayeen didn't like the balalaika since it was a Russian instrument. But Mikhail's mother had lulled him to sleep to the tune and he had listened to it often over the years in bars when he was young and happy in his vodka and chess. It was a common tune with many lyrics attached to it. But the refrain was usually the same.

"Tum bala, tum bala, tum balalaika," he half sang, half chanted in Russian. "Tum balalaika, play balalaika, laugh and be gay."