Unsung Warrior Box Set, page 33
part #1 of Unsung Warrior Series
He looked across to the line of rocks hiding most of the shooters. Nothing was moving up there at the moment, and that suited him fine. He was hunkered down on top of a small knoll some distance from the top of the rise. It was almost too much to call the unimpressive lump a hill, but it was the highest point around.
It wasn't surprising that the hired muscle had headed straight for it. Normally it would have been a simple matter to round them up, but there was cover everywhere in this limestone country. It was taking time to winkle the defenders out.
Maric’s attack force was somewhere north of the Ucka National Park, in northern Croatia. It was wasteland and forest for the most part, but here on the tops of the ranges there were limestone outcrops everywhere, and that made life difficult. It reminded Maric of clearing an enemy force out of a house room by room.
A single shot smashed into the rock he was sheltering behind, and he moved a little more to his right. It would be a very good idea to keep the rock between him and that particular rifle. Whoever was on his extreme left flank had moved, trying to get a better angle of fire.
The map of his surroundings, the one he kept in his mind on situations like this, changed subtly to accommodate the shooter's new position. The shooter didn’t know it, but he was already running out of time. Mosha was working his way across the outcrops to deal with him, and Davies was ready to deal with the idiot with the shotgun on Maric's extreme right.
As if to reinforce Maric’s dislike, another thunderous blast echoed across the rocks from his right. The shooter was completely ineffective at that range, and the shot was a sign he was panicking. The way Maric and his team had dealt so efficiently with the shooters down in the mine might have something to do with that.
Mosha and Davies would roll up the flanks until Maric and Anderson could panic the dozen or so shooters in the middle into fleeing in the opposite direction. The squad of US Marines Colonel Brightwater had assigned to the mission back at Sigonella air force base were further down the valley, waiting for the shooters to run straight to them.
Maric checked his internal map once again. Then he nodded. His plan was flawless, and he had the position of the shooters and the fields of fire worked out perfectly. It was time to put it into action.
His trainer Cal had been impressed when Maric started keeping a mental record of his surroundings during operational exercises. Cal taught proximity awareness, but what Maric did took it to a whole new level. He would look at a detailed map of a given area, commit it to memory, and then factor in each combatant and their advantage over every other combatant, using elevation and natural cover.
It was like a 3D map with moving dots that he kept in his head. It was even color coded. Green for friendlies, red for enemies, and blue for non-combatants. And every movement, every shot, updated it.
Cal was back in New Zealand, and Maric would keep him abreast of the day’s events when he got back to the air force base in Sicily. So far, though, the most important piece of information they were looking for was missing, and that was frustrating.
These weren't the people NATO intel had thought they might be. Drug runners maybe, smugglers perhaps. The traffic of goods into and out of the EU was unstoppable these days.
When Maric got a better look at the contents of the mine below him, he would know for sure what these people were up to. Whatever that turned out to be, he would bet his last bottle of water crossing a baking-hot desert they had nothing to do with the Count, and the cold-blooded murder of three retired NZ SAS soldiers a little over two years ago.
CHAPTER 2
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A few moments later, Maric got a terse “flank secure” from Davies, echoed a minute later by Mosha on the other side.
“Let the games begin”, muttered Maric, and slid sideways around the rock he had been using as a shield.
A series of counts whispered into his headset. “Two at three”, and then “five at twelve”. His two flank men were telling him what they were seeing, from their positions. Two combatants at three o'clock and five combatants at twelve o'clock. Maric changed the map in his head to accommodate the new information. It allowed him to see exactly how the opposition had arrayed themselves.
“Left flank ten left”, “right flank six forward”, he said quietly, and his two flank men re-positioned themselves. Maric looked back, and saw that Anderson had his M4 carbine settled nicely in a hard-to-access position between two rocks. Anderson would have preferred his Arctic sniper rifle, but his carbine would do at such close range.
Maric eased his own carbine around the rock in front of him, and sighted on his target. He carefully lowered his head until it was out of the line of any returning fire, and triggered short bursts in the direction of the defenders. He left longer and longer gaps between the bursts, until eventually one of the opposition shooters couldn’t stop himself from popping up to return fire.
Anderson nailed him immediately. Then the flanks took one each and slipped away to new positions. The top of the hill erupted in gunfire as the hired muscle defending it opened up with everything they had, firing wildly at what they thought were the attackers’ positions.
Maric let them waste ammunition for as long as they wanted. When they quietened down a bit he started the same process again. Short bursts from his carbine with gaps that became increasingly longer. It was a ploy he had used many times before.
Once you got inside the opposition’s heads you could work them like a sheepdog working sheep. In this case he didn't have to wait long. The almost instantaneous demise of three of their number, as if by magic, and the return of that distinctive pattern of fire, had the desired effect. As the time between his bursts increased, the tension built, and suddenly the defenders on the top of the hill were running away.
Maric worked his way carefully toward the top of the hill. When he’d cleared the area he gave a low whistle. Half a minute later the others appeared at his side. They barely had time to admire the view from the top of the range when a crackle of small arms fire sounded further down the slope in front of them. After that there was a lot of shouting, and no more shooting.
“Looks like they’re surrendering”, said Mosha.
Maric nodded. He didn’t really care if the hired muscle surrendered or not. These sorts of people were addicted to a mercenary lifestyle. Given the chance to settle down and lead a productive life, nine times out of ten they would reject the offer. It was a fact of war, that those who were mentally damaged by years of conflict would be a problem to the rest of the world for at least another generation.
It didn't take the four men long to discover the top end of the access way into the mine. It was concealed by rocks, but once you knew where to look, entrance was easy. You slid between two of the taller rocks, holding your gear above your head, and then descended down the long gallery into the mine proper.
“Time to call the civilian authorities?” said Mosha, and Maric nodded. He took out a cell phone and touched a contact number he had been given. It dialed itself through. There was a burst of Croatian at the other end, which stopped abruptly when he began to speak English. Once his identity was confirmed, and the right code words had been given, he was assured two black vans with tinted windows and a good supply of body bags were on their way.
The four SAS men dragged the three bodies off the tops and down into the mine. They laid them out in an orderly fashion, on their backs, and added the four that had been killed in the initial engagement. Mosha knelt beside one of the four, and checked for signs of life.
“This one’s still breathing,” he said, rather surprised.
“Could be a couple of hours before he makes it to hospital,” said Maric. “Any chance he’ll survive that long?”
“The big problem is a head wound,” said Mosha, “but if I can stop the bleeding from elsewhere there’s a fair chance he’ll pull through.”
Maric didn’t look convinced. There was more blood on the man than on any of the others. On the other hand, Mosha was a paramedic. He knew what he was doing.
“Patch him up then,” said Maric dismissively.
Davies was eyeing the bodies with something more than idle curiosity. He looked at his boss, then back at the faces sprawled on the floor of the mine.
“Tall buggers,” he said laconically, “and they look a bit like you.”
Maric didn’t comment, but his breath quickened. Mosha was the only person to know his reasons for coming in pursuit of the Count were not entirely professional. Maric was of Dalmatian descent, and his ancestors had migrated to New Zealand at the end of the 1800s.
That made him Croatian, at least in part after the mixing of blood that had occurred since. Like most members of the human species it seemed, he had some type of mythical attachment to a vaguely described ‘homeland’.
His people were few and far between in New Zealand, though they made the effort to keep in touch with each other. Maybe he felt he was missing out on something. Whatever it was, this mission, so close to his ancestral homeland, had a special significance for him.
Mosha was right about the people here being tall, though his number two wouldn’t have known why. Maric did. The people of the limestone mountains that stretched down the eastern side of the Adriatic sea from Italy to Albania, the Dinaric Alps, were unnaturally tall. Maybe it was something in the limestone that affected the ph of the water, but the men had an average height just under 190cm, around six foot two. They were officially acknowledged as the tallest race in the world.
That fact had helped Maric come to terms with his own unnatural leanness and height. It might also explain his baby-faced looks and, so far, eternal youthfulness. He would have to find out. He looked forward to meeting his relatives – if he could find them. So far he had a location near the Dalmatian coast to go on, but that was about it.
Maric opened some of the boxes along the wall. Cigarettes and top shelf alcohol. Maybe class C drugs in some of them, probably knock-off electronics as well. Contraband, nothing more. These were not the people Maric needed to talk to about the Count, that was certain.
He and Anderson headed for the mine entrance, intent on bringing in the two guards from the prepared positions above it. One of the guards was still there, but the other was gone. Maric smiled to himself. Davies, it had to be. The SAS man had laid the guard out cold, disarmed him, and left the job at that.
Davies often had discussions with Maric about the ethics of war. Maric welcomed the exchange of views. The guard had not yet shown intent to kill, and may in fact have surrendered, so Davies had cut him some slack. If the man had opened fire, he would have signed his own death warrant.
The guard had come to, found he had no weapons, and seen the body of the other guard. He had then made a very sensible decision to scarper. Maric had no problems with that.
Anderson dragged the body of the remaining guard down the steep slope and into the mine. When all the bodies were laid out in a row, Maric felt an old memory stir. He was back on Ninety Mile Beach, in Northland, not far from Kaitaia, and the fishing had been good.
His grandfather and his uncle, who he’d been visiting, had provided the young Maric with a rod and shown him the basics. A friend of his grandfather’s, an old Maori man, had accompanied them.
Back at his grandfather’s shack, the day’s catch had been carefully laid out, just like this, for the obligatory photograph. Photographs were big back then, and cell phones hadn’t yet reached New Zealand.
His grandmother had been there – one of his few memories of her – and she had been deciding what would be given away, what would be put into an old European recipe for their dinner, and what could be kept for a few days.
Was that what these missions were becoming for him now, a chance to see how many ‘fish’ he could bag? He shook his head. He didn’t think so.
It didn’t feel like that. Not yet, anyway. It would be time to leave the military life if it became nothing more than a tally of bodies for him. He would have a long talk with Cal when this mission was over, just to be sure.
It took a while to organize the extraction of the bodies, and the prisoners the Marines had taken. There was a gravel road on the other side of the mine, and it was closer than the one the attack force had landed on that morning. Despite the easier access, it still took several trips to bring the right number of body bags up to the area, fill them, and take them down to the waiting vans.
There were eight prisoners, and two village policemen to each van. It wasn’t ideal, but Maric would see the prisoners had their hands properly restrained, and the vans were lockable from the outside and partitioned from the drivers on the inside.
Maric waved Dusty over to the other end of a body bag he was ready to take down the slope. The two men picked it up and slung the unfortunate inhabitant between them in a kind of hammock.
With a standard pack, and a rifle slung over the other shoulder, it was hot work in the bright sun of the early afternoon. The two men got to talking as they covered the long kilometer and a half.
“How long you been at Sigonella?” said Maric.
“Too long,” said Dusty, smiling a little sadly. Maric understood. Most of the soldiers he met at different places around the world didn’t have a choice. If you accepted army pay and conditions, you went where the army sent you, and you stayed there for as long as they said.
He was surprised at Dusty’s reticence all the same. There was plenty to like about the Mediterranean climate, and the Sicilian people.
“African Americans are treated okay here,” said the squad leader, “but we’re lumped in with the Algerians and Tunisians who keep trying to cross over into Europe, creating all sorts of trouble these days.”
Maric almost smiled. Dusty had swapped being a Black in the States for being an unwanted African in Europe – not quite the freeing experience he might have hoped for. He felt for the man.
“You got a first name?” he said, and Dusty nodded.
“Abraham Dusty,” he said proudly, and his unstated Southern Baptist roots were all at once on display. There wasn’t much of an accent though.
“Ljudevic Maric,” said Maric, and the two men managed to reach across the body bag between them and shake hands.
“You got a good team?” said Maric, and the corporal nodded. He was a little surprised at the New Zealander’s friendliness, but accepted the warmth in the right spirit.
Maric was genuinely interested in Dusty’s background, but there were other things going on as well. Once the fighting was over Maric always wanted his team nearby. His calm and relaxed manner, his quiet comments, reinforced the idea the team was just doing its job. Nothing unusual to see here. He wanted them to let events that might have upset them leach away, before they became a problem.
It wasn’t a skill he had been taught, it came out of the man that he was. Now he was extending the same mental management skills to Dusty, and maybe even through him to his squad.
“They're a new bunch though,” said Dusty, “and I'm still sorting them out. But they've got promise.”
“Mine have been with me for two years now,” said Maric, “with a few changes. It's a good feeling when we're all extensions of the one body. It's saved lives more than once.” Dusty nodded his understanding.
Two of Dusty’s squad had already delivered their first body bag to the waiting vans, and they hurried back up the slope to help Maric and Dusty. Maric was impressed. Grunts didn't normally help officers unless they were ordered to do so.
“I see what you mean,” he said to Dusty, and the Southern man smiled with justifiable pride.
CHAPTER 3
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Maric was still thinking about the policemen driving the vans when the Sea Eagle cleared the coast and started tracking down past Croatia. Interpol was supposed to take over the scene after special forces had neutralized the threats, but four local policemen didn’t seem like an adequate response.
On the other hand Ucka National Park was in a remote area, and the intel had come in at short notice. Maybe that was all they had in the area. He settled his mind with the hope a strong Interpol contingent would soon be taking over from the drivers in the vans.
Maric had made sure his own team were comfortably settled early on, and Dusty’s squad were all immersed in some form of electronica. He discouraged it himself. He believed in talking to people if you wanted to live a satisfying life. A soldier’s proximity awareness kept him alive, and leaving this world for a fictional one – and he included social media – wasn’t going to help that.
Zadar came up on Maric’s left. He recognized the promontory more than the city. He had added the maps he’d been given into his growing understanding of the terrain, and could plot most points on the ground from their surroundings.
Maric settled back and thought about his team. They were the best weapons in the field he had, and he needed to keep them performing well. He looked after them even better than the small arms he carried himself.
His team had been reunited for this mission. Mosha had been pulled off his own team at Maric’s request, Davies the same, and Anderson removed from active deployment in a peace-keeping force.
Mosha had trained with him in the SAS under Cal. His parents had been refugees. Some of the first to arrive when the New Zealand government committed itself to a set number of refugees each year.
Their first son had been born in New Zealand, and was fiercely proud of his new country. His parents had been similarly proud of their middle-eastern homeland. Mosha had taken the traditional route into the SAS. His diligence in the army got him a try out for the elite New Zealand SAS force.
By contrast, Maric had been Cal’s best student in a mixed martial arts club in the small town where he lived, and Cal had lifted him straight into the SAS. It was highly irregular, but so was Maric. The earnest young man had been floored when he learned what his instructor really did for a living.
