Meridien K - Chapter 27: The Death In The Sky

Six-Four powered on his headset even though there was nothing to say. Nothing to report. We ran the mission. They knew we'd get it done and we did.

             

We had been on marathons ops before but none that seemed like they had any effect on any sort of war or warfighting ability. That is, before dawn broke and a whole platoon of long-range recon Chinese woke up and stretched and thought about morning chow and then hit the ground when every muscle in their body gave, long before any conscious thought could seep into their brainstem that 716 had followed them for four days and in the space of two minutes killed every last one of them. They fell where they stood, thirty-six dead from forty-seven shots, so close together it came off as one loud bang surrounded by its own echo.

             

My cheeks hurt from smiling all night, waiting for sunrise.

             

Without a word we booked the hell out of there. All stealth from the days-long approach was gone; nine kids in black, running through twig-snapping, weed-infested, root-snaring woods for three miles and then a seven-mile jog to our AVs parked in another belt of forest. We layered the camo netting so well it took another hour just to find the damned things.

             

And then out in the AVs and the open air, our breath caught. Six-Four got on the horn and we waited for whatever they wanted us to do next. We weren't tired anymore. It was early, and we were hungry for more contact.

             

Comms chatter as we drove:

             

"The line's dead."

             

"What?"

             

"It rang, though."

             

"What? Someone, like, hung up?"

             

"Doubt I dialed the wrong freq."

             

"Who the hell else is going to get a call from the number designated for this prestigious Unit?"

             

"Maybe it's those mountains blocking the signal."

             

"Wait, is that a satcomm or line-of-sight?"

             

"It has an antenna."

             

"Doesn't help."

             

"Hey, I got one for you: How many Six-Fours does it take to make a call to base?"

             

"Shut up."

             

"Watch it."

             

"Ha!"

             

"We're not going to solve anything by sniping each other," with a very particular emphasis.

             

Joking around. One of the rare times. Sure, we liked each other enough in a coworker sense, but the mission came first. It always came first. And sometimes that meant no talking for one, two, three days, maybe a full week. We had been silent over fifteen hours and it was a human reflex to shoot the shit and work some life into our vocal chords.

             

I remember it was sometime in our second year in the field, three total if you count the year Stateside and then the big bird over to an AO they never fully told us about, only the assumption that we were along the line between China and Pakistan. At the time we were operating out of a meager piece of real estate snug up to the border. Another FOB Whatever.

             

We parked side-by-side in the two AVs. Six-Four got through to one of our handlers and once he flipped up his mic he relayed the next step. Half of us - my AV - were ordered for movement to contact; driving until engaged by the enemy for twenty miles ahead, given the enemy had scrambled our satellite pictures yet again and they needed a ground force to check it out. They sent us because they didn't know what to expect. Could've been a parking lot for tanks, a nuke silo, or cracked pavement choked with dandelions.

             

I never got Command's real opinion of 716. We seemed disposable but valuable. I guess if you might be going up against a hard fight, you send your best.

             

We were starting to get a rep around Tent City. Not that there was any braggadocio related to all that. It's just how it was. How we were trained. That's probably why they moved us again, so we couldn't turn into military folk heroes.

             

Six-Four second-guessed himself and tried to get hold of Command again. He wanted to confirm that his AV was staying at the designated point twenty miles out from the closest lonely OP, and that the other vehicle - mine, with Caf Gremlin Horse Mars Pointman - was heading out another twenty to try and rustle up some trouble. I stood up on the turret, sat on the top of the AV and looked out at the spread of wilderness, grassland and woods that looked no different than rural Illinois. I had been cramped in the pointless rear of the AV driving in, and since we worked on rotation, my name was up top for gunner duties. No one had been killed on the turret, so I wasn't worried that I was manning an unshielded .50 cal that left my whole upper body exposed; the obvious target for anyone or anything with a bead on one lone AV. We weren't complete idiots, though; whoever was up top wore a helmet.

             

Pointman was behind the wheel, his notebook spread on it, writing down, probably, that Six-Four was trying to contact Command, Six-Four's voice on a loop one AV over. Caf chewed gum in the passenger seat, looking through his weapon's scope and then a pair of binocs, calibrating each to the same preset for a reason that I'm sure made perfect sense to him. Gremlin furiously scratched at a rash on his scalp. Horse, to his right, looked very uncomfortable at all the dandruffy byproduct floating in his airspace from Gremlin's grooming. In the rearmost seats of the AV sat Pointman and Mars, whose only real possible use back there was to hand up more ammo or, if we were in a kill zone, to pull up the armor plates and shoot out from the rear hatch; that, or there was always the opportunity for a suicide exit, same as how Slug took a hit. From the sound of it, they were checking and rechecking their guns and the gear. Not a bad habit for idle moments.

             

Pointman tapped my leg.

             

"Heading out."

             

I stood from my sit, put my dangling feet in the stirrups and gripped the turret. The AV raced forward, tires spinning, electrical engine whining as we gave a good-knowing-you-if-we-die wave to the second AV, calming to a steady eighty or so miles per hour, fast enough to evade contact; also fast enough to run into contact with your ass hanging out. I kept shifting my weight over every nearly-invisible bump in the grass. I leaned forward and looked through the tiny off-kilter scope I taped on the turret above the front sights, and the woods bordering that long grass straightaway barely changed; a blur of foliage as we raced past.

             

The twenty miles passed soon enough. Where we were looked like where we had started. Pointman slowed to a stop and turned off the AV. Not that kind of reckless, nearly-throw-you-off-the-turret handbrake stop-turn Caf often fancied.

             

"Everybody out!"

             

I lifted my legs and slid down the back before Pointman and Mars opened the back and exited. We all stood there dumbly, kind of hoping for incoming fire so at least we'd have something to do. Instead, it was like a road-trip gas-station stop without the gas station and without the road. Caf went to the edge of the woods to relieve himself. The rest of us gravitated to the front of the AV, where Pointman spread out the patchwork map of the AO. None of us were in charge. But it's not like we didn't have a fucking clue what to do without someone pulling rank. We all looked at the map, said our piece.

             

"I say we keep going."

             

"Orders are to stop here."

             

"Orders were movement to contact. No contact."

             

"Movement to contact for twenty miles."

             

"Which is it? Movement to contact? Or twenty miles?"

             

"We'll just go the rest tomorrow, anyway."

             

"Someone call Six-Four."

             

"What's he going to tell us?"

             

"X the call to Six."

             

"You see, right here? Around the bend of those trees about… two miles up? That's uncharted territory."

             

"I don't know. That's pretty far in. Some of the farthest we've gone past the border."

             

"So?"

             

"Okay. Put it to a vote. We move to contact?"

             

Four hands.

             

"Back to the OP?"

             

One hand.

             

"Undecided?"

             

Caf.

             

"Gear up."

             

If that wasn't enough of a prompt, a shell burst thirty yards behind us. Close enough for a full-body flinch, a quick spasm, all the moisture immediately sucked from my mouth. The physical reaction you can never fully escape, but we were all calmly, quickly loading back into the AV, and by the time a second arty piece hit ten yards back and scattered shrapnel around our rear tires, we were speeding forward.

             

"Dammit."

             

"Six-Four, this is the forward element. Taking accurate artillery fire. Searching for forward observers."

             

We thought we were out of range once we got up to eighty miles per hour. But then one made a near-direct hit just above us. Thank bog I was helmeted, as most of the hot metal rained down on my cover, though some of it took a chunk out of my neck and made me bleed out all over the back of the AV, left an ugly horseshoe-shaped burn-scar. I was fine, though, as was my uniform; enough of a scrub and bloodstains fade on black. They said that you're so amped when you go into a hot zone that you can get shot several times and not notice until the action is over.

             

We rounded the corner and there was nothing. In true 716 fashion, none of us said anything when a big, black, old-fashioned helicopter appeared over the hilltops and revved up its miniguns. And there I was, a nice, ripe, soon-to-be-char-broiled piece of meat sticking out of the AV, perfect bait, perfect target. The gunship closed in fast. Under its wings were needlepoint missiles, and even with its miniguns, I saw a door gunner prone behind a very big gun.

             

"Evade."

             

"Gremlin, see if you can speed-gun the helo."

             

"Yep."

             

All calm voices, like we could reason away the helicopter, beat it with logic, make it disappear with words.

             

"Keep it steady. It's going to lock our pace."

             

It took a second before I realized it was my voice. I wasn't surprised, then, since I was the only one who could do anything about it. We were running without CAS or armor, thundering down a straightaway, and it'd be about twenty seconds before they could get a lock on us, fire off a missile, watch the smoke, then send in their boys to sort out the mess and recycle our scrap metal and liquefied bodies into soda cans. Or maybe just fuck us up with the minigun and leave it intact, so they could gather the total lack of intel we carried on our persons.

             

Just me up there on my .50. Racing through rote memories of training, remembering absolutely nothing about how to take down a helicopter with an AV-mounted turret. I could take a dropship, sure, aim for the energy cells, but a chopper about to blow me up? I needed tactics for older wars; I needed the spirit of a reincarnated warrior to guide me through something that could've happened damn near a century prior.

             

The helicopter matched the same velocity as our AV, trying to sync up for a missile lock. It was like we were both stationary. I death-gripped the .50 and aimed with the front sights at the top rotor, at the "Jesus nut" that held it together. I fired and didn't stop. The ka-chunk ka-chunk ka-chunk of a heavy machine firing heavy bullets shook my whole being. Tracers streaked toward and away from me. 12.7mm bullets glanced off the armored top of the AV. Sparks against their rotor. Waiting for the drop of the missile from the wing, its controlled fire propelling it forward, sending us to that Void as defeated men. Recoil from our speed, the terrain, my hands shaking like Terra's hand tremor in fast-motion, cartoon speed, so fast they were blurry.

             

And then a puff of smoke, the bird tilted sideways, fell into the trees from about two hundred feet up, went silent. No explosion. No fireball.

             

A hard handbrake stop. I jerked forward and was hit in the gut by the turret.

             

Out in tactical formation. Abandoning the AV down there for whoever was around to steal it. Into the trees. Fanning out. Ten-foot spread. Eyes ahead and on the ground, avoiding excess noise even though any crash survivor would expect a welcoming party. Silent as the trees. The brown of the bark and soil and hints of green from the high canopy, then the washed-out clearing of the crashed helicopter. Bodies curled around guns. Gremlin fell to a knee and shot everyone he saw in the head. One of them flinched and flopped, either a miraculous survivor barely conscious, or a last firing of the nervous system, or a wily Chink waiting to get the drop on some cocky motherfuckers thinking they can shoot a bird from the air and take everything with it.

             

On top of the crash. No open flames. Only the burnt smell of electrical wiring and the lingering odor of someone who had shit themselves in the fatal collision. It was all dark inside, some avionics under cracked glass. We pulled the dead free and checked them for documents. Just the standard Surrender Card in English, German, French, Russian, some rations, some good-luck talismans. None of that waste like family photos, letters home, letters from home. They were professionals and we were professional scavengers, roaming the AO like vultures.

             

Pointman called it into Six-Four, who then called Command, who finally managed to answer. Pointman sent the coords. Command said they'd check it out. They wanted us back at the OP. They usually did that after a skirmish, either thinking we needed the downtime or they didn't want to push luck, especially after two gunfights in the same morning. They didn't understand us the way we did. Truth be told, I don't think our Unit had to answer to them but we did anyway. As far as we knew, it was one lone nameless guy at Command who made sure we didn't stray into the free-fire zones of adjacent units.

             

We got back in the AV and sped back to the waiting Six-Four and company. A few minutes later a jet shrieked overhead on our opposite bearing. Still on the open-air turret, I turned and looked. The tiny silver cross, speeding away, released something that, at that distance, was the size of a dot. It disappeared into the trees, and then a plume of fire incinerated everything in a hundred-yard radius. The sky bloomed, white light clogging the visible spectrum for a second or two. The woods burned, then the jet made another pass and let loose a spray of chemicals that put out the blaze.

             

Caf tugged on my pant leg.

             

"What the fuck?" he said.

             

"Why bother?" I said, and we drove on.

(Chapter 28 coming Wednesday, January 18, 2012.)