Unsung Warrior Box Set, page 67
part #1 of Unsung Warrior Series
When Maric got back to camp, Gjoni had a message for him from Lami. Shehu had managed to bring together some of the old KLA troops at short notice, and they were ready for inspection. An old pickup truck was waiting to take him to Shehu’s house in the tiny village of Remanic.
Maric stayed in his villager clothing. It might be the best thing to do. He hadn’t had time to retrieve his camo outfit, but that could wait. Shehu’s troops would be skirmishers, he thought. Free fighters who infiltrated enemy lines and concentrated at a useful point to create havoc. Uniforms, even military camouflage, might only confuse them.
The drive back to Shehu’s house was exactly as he remembered it. It consisted of rough gravel roads until a better-maintained section from Revatske across the Iber to the main road. After that twenty minutes of tar seal, and then abysmal roads from the turn off to Remanic.
He was stiff when he got out of the pickup truck. He put it down to the action at the hunters’ camp two days ago. He didn’t want to think it might be the first signs of aging. Shehu saluted briskly, and Maric was surprised at how quickly the old commander’s army persona had returned. It had, apparently, only been sleeping. First stop for the two of them was an old garage, to look at the ordnance Shehu had been able to get down south. Maric nodded. It was better stuff than he’d expected.
There was a clatter of boots behind the house, near the barn, and the distinctive yell of a sergeant organizing his men. Shehu’s men were ‘falling in’. When he got to see them, he was disappointed. There was barely one company in all, maybe twenty men. They did have a good range of serviceable weapons, and plenty of ammunition pouches.
Maric had tried to avoid expectations of numbers, but Ilic had a lot of men. They weren’t well trained, by Maric’s standards, but numbers counted when they wee stacked against you.
“I have been training them for you!” said Shehu proudly, and put the men through a series of commands. Stepping apart so they didn’t group up, then crouching on one knee and aiming at imaginary targets.
Maric watched with interest. His first instincts had been correct. These were skirmishers, not regular army. They had done well in the short time Shehu had drilled them, probably due to old memories of basic training, but they would be no better than Ilic’s police force, or his newer mercenaries, in the field.
It was a good thing Maric didn’t want them for that.
“At ease!” he barked, and Shehu wound down. He looked at Maric questioningly.
“This hill behind us, with a water tank on the top, your land?” he queried. Shehu nodded.
“Spread out, you rejects from a holiday camp!” he bellowed. “Form a line. On second thoughts form whatever you bloody well like. Climb that hill, and take that water tower. If I can see you anytime until you’re right under it, I’m going to take a chunk out of your backside with a dum dum bullet!”
Then he was gone, scrambling up the hillside to get to the water tower before them. There was a shocked silence, and then an explosion of guffaws. Shehu’s men gave him a minute’s start, and then they melted into the undergrowth. This was more like it.
“It’s all coming back to them,” said Maric, when the water tower had been successfully taken. “The ones that didn’t understand what ‘invisible’ meant died in the first few months of the war.”
He saw the look of pain on Shehu’s face, and regretted his words. The old commander must have lost many of his men in the early days of the war for that very reason.
“I thought you were going to storm Boluka,” said Shehu. “Lay down suppressing fire and march right into it.”
“Too many defenders for that,” said Maric. “I am going to storm it, but in the SAS way. Now you see us, now you don’t, now we’re behind you. You and your boys will fit right in.”
A smile crept over Shehu’s face. “Well, glad we got that settled then.”
“We’re still outnumbered five to one, though,” said Maric, looking worried. Shehu looked at him like he was mad.
“These are the boys who could get away from work or family to get here straight away,” he said. “The rest have to put their affairs in order.”
“How many do you think might come, given more time?” said Maric, hope rising in his chest.
“Ten times as many,” said Shehu. “A lot more if you’d give me a month, but I guess you want us ready in another week, or less.
“My son will be among them,” said the old commander proudly, though he didn’t offer any more detail than that. Maric figured the son would bring a cadre of younger men and women with some military experience. They would be welcome.
Then he crunched the numbers. He had a good idea of the numbers in Ilic’s reinforcements from the second ambush, plus those already at Boluka, less those he’d sent south as prisoners, and those now dead.
A gleam came into his eyes. He would have almost as many soldiers as Ilic, and they would be better trained, or at least better led. But Ilic had more money, and he could pay for bigger and better weapons of war. It was going to be hard for the small arms of his people to beat that sort of firepower, and he wasn’t prepared to take them into a bloodbath.
The battle for Boluka wasn’t going to be a walkover, especially when Maric was determined to lose as few of his men as possible.
CHAPTER 26
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The days passed in exhaustive preparations. Then, the night before the attack on Boluka, Maric led Juric and two other special forces soldiers down to the barn. There were no cows for cover, but the moon hadn’t risen yet. The men were well camouflaged for night movement, and managed to slip into the side door without incident.
They made a few adjustments to the hay at the back of the barn, and settled in for the night. It was surprisingly warm with the animals present, and they had the occasional ‘moo!’ for company. One of the calves became curious, and had to be tapped on the nose. It got the message.
Once the sun had risen the next day, breakfast was over quickly. Juric set one of his men to watch the main door of the barn, and the rest went through drills with the demolition charges Shehu had provided. Maric didn’t know where they would be using them yet, but it paid to be prepared.
“One female, coming in at a fast walk,” said the man on watch, as mid-morning approached.
“Dammit, that’s not Dea!” said Maric, looking through a gap in the boards. He conferred quickly with Juric, who called another man forward from the back of the barn.
“Best Serbian speaker out of the four of us,” said Juric. That was diplomatic, thought Maric, knowing his own Serbian was non-existent.
The rest of the team vanished into hiding places around the barn, and the Serbian speaker met the woman at the door. He was grumbling loudly about the state of the barn, and looked surprised when he saw the woman.
“Where’s Dea?” he barked, and she looked terrified. His uniform was different to the one worn by Ilic’s men, but the mercs wore every uniform under the sun.
She garbled some sort of explanation, and pointed back toward the houses.
“Well, what are you waiting for!” snapped the soldier. “Go and get her!”
She mumbled something about orders, but the soldier glared at her, and she hurried off.
Maric clapped the man on the back once she was out of sight. “Worth an Oscar if anything is!” he said jovially.
Then he sent Juric to the left of the main door while he went right, and the other two set up firing lines from the back wall. One of the men at the back kicked a board loose behind him, using a muffled boot. A last minute exit might be needed. If calling Dea to the barn went wrong they would have to move fast.
It took less then five minutes for Dea to come hurrying over. Maric grimaced as he saw her. She looked a mess, and she had been crying. He shut the door behind her, and looked down at her face as he gripped her arms. She started at the contact, but once she saw who it was she seemed to collapse. He half-carried her to a place where she could sit down.
“What is it?’ he said quietly, and she just shook her head. Finally she spoke.
“Vinski is dead,” she said, her voice shaking. Maric waited until she could tell him more.
“Ilic came, while I was looking after him, and the soldiers carried him back to the interrogation room. He was already in a bad way. When they brought him back, he was dead.
“They just dumped him on the bed in the first aid room, and hurried off. No one would tell me anything.”
There was a price to be paid for freedom. Maric knew that all too well. He also knew that involving this couple may have led to Vinski’s death. Dea’s husband might have seemed like a man who was hiding a secret to Ilic, and he was, though Maric doubted it showed. Then again, maybe the fact that Maric had talked to the couple had nothing to do with Ilic’s brutality at all.
Sometimes there were things that just happened, and the tall man had to live with it.
“He didn’t tell them anything,” said Dea, suddenly strong, and Maric knew that in her eyes her husband could do no wrong. In this case, she was probably right. Ilic would have had men waiting for them at the barn if he knew anything. Vinski had died to protect others. He was a hero in the true sense of the word.
“Can you do one thing for me?” said Maric quietly. “Could you ask Lazar to drop by the barn?”
She nodded. Then she let the cows out to graze, except the three who needed to be milked. She wasn’t gone for long with her message, and when she returned she settled the cows down for milking. If the first woman that morning came back, it gave Dea an excuse to get rid of her.
Lazar strolled by the barn a few minutes later. At the last minute, as if it was an afterthought, he changed direction and slid through the main door. He looked grim.
“You have heard?’ he said. “These sons of filth have killed Vinski. If Costas or myself doubted before, now we will do whatever it takes to free Boluka of these animals. The other villagers will feel the same way – when the time comes!”
It was quite a speech. Maric took him aside and showed him how to use a combat microphone. He was to keep it on channel two, and it would be his private channel with Maric. Channel one would be the open channel for the attacking forces.
“What if Ilic can find the same channels?” said Lazar. “I have seen his men talking on equipment like this, when they are on patrol.”
Maric explained that this was a different type of equipment, for many reasons. But mostly because the channels would be encrypted. All talk would go through a central station somewhere along the treeline starting soon. The CPU at the central station would make sure that only these mikes could understand what was being said. Others would hear machine code only, or static.
“Hide the mike away,” said Maric, “until midday. Your first set of instructions will come through then.”
Lazar looked visibly disturbed. That was less than two hours away. Then his resolve hardened.
“It will be done!” he said firmly, and managed a credible salute before he left the barn.
“I’m sorry about Vinski,” said Maric, as Dea finished the milking.
“Free us, that’s all I ask,” she said sadly, turning to him, and then her eyes flashed. “And kill Ilic for me!”
She left the barn with a pail half full of milk in each hand.
Maric went through the battle plan one more time with the special forces men in the barn, and then slipped out the side door. He worked his way back through the cows until he could dip below the fold in the land, and make it to the treeline unseen.
The rest of his army would already be underway, the plan for today drilled into them and every possible contingency covered. It wouldn’t be long before they’d be taking up their allotted positions.
He had found it hard going. This was work for a two star general, placing pieces on a chessboard and directing them from afar. Maric would much rather be in charge of a smaller group he could keep an eye on. He preferred to be with his team every step of the way.
In the end he had compromised. Shehu knew the battle plan backwards, but his troops around the treeline would look to Maric for details when the situation changed, as it would during the fighting. Lami would be head of the remaining hunters, and others that had been recruited from the surrounding area. Domi had stepped up to be an excellent second in command to Lami, despite his earlier reluctance to join the fight.
That left Maric in charge of the special forces team, less the three in the barn. He could also add Gjoni and his hunters, including Baldwin, who were used to working with Maric’s team by now. Then there was Behar with the workers from the lab. Gjoni had been training the workers to stay out of trouble but keep up a steady rate of supporting fire. It gave Maric 12 men who were, in his mind, his rapid response force.
The tall man had to jog almost the whole length of the treeline, inside the forest, to reach the road in from the Revatske side. The battle would start from there.
The view from the treeline let him see Ilic’s preparations as he traveled. Barricades had been erected between the buildings at the edge of the village, leaving two heavily-defended entrances with machine-gun nests on either side. The barricades weren’t much. A few cars pushed into position and hastily erected fences. The idea was simply to give shooters some cover while those attacking had to come in across open fields.
There was a large square in the middle of the village. It held a range of pickup trucks and larger troop carriers, ready to meet attacks as they came in across the fields. Many of the wire fences had been cut to give the vehicles freedom of movement.
None of that bothered Maric, but the possibility of hidden weapons did. He was sure Ilic had them. The smuggling overlord had the money and time to bring in some heavy military equipment, and that could do Maric’s homegrown army some real damage.
“Everything in position,” said Radic, as Maric slid in beside him among the trees beside the road.
“Count off,” said Maric, as he adjusted his helmet microphone. Shehu was in charge of assets one and two, Lami was asset three, and Juric asset four. Lazar would be asset five when Maric brought him into the action. He was on a different channel, and wouldn’t go live for another hour. It was going to mean a mixture of English and Albanian on the open channel, depending on who was talking to who, and they all understood to keep open channel use to a minimum.
The three new commanders confirmed position and status, and then it was time to roll the dice.
“Do the rounds for me,” said Maric, and Radic disappeared into the undergrowth to check on the road team’s position and readiness. They were over-prepared, if anything, but Maric knew how battles went. You did certain things in a certain order. It was reassuring to everybody.
“You’re up, boys,” he said to one of Gjoni’s hunters, and the man signaled to another hunter on the other side of the road. The burr of superbly sharp chainsaws filled the air, and a tall, thin tree dropped out of the forest on either side of the road, so they crossed in the middle.
Perfect, thought Maric. The trees were just in from the point where the road opened out into the fields. It wouldn’t look threatening. It was not an alleyway into a dead end with a potential ambush. The two chainsaw men had been told to pick insubstantial looking trees. It was all about drawing the enemy in, and making them careless.
There was a sudden burst of activity as the chainsaw men dropped other trees, back in the forest, and roughly shaped sections of trunk to specific lengths. These were fitted into a log cabin type of construction just over half a meter high. It was about four meters long and had chink holes to fire from. Behar and his freed workers scrambled out and took up positions behind it.
Then Gjoni’s hunters started to fire on the barricades from the safety of the trees. They could do the most damage with the long-distance accuracy of their hunting rifles. Maric saw troops behind the barricades scramble for cover.
The response wasn’t long in coming. Two heavily-laden troop carriers surged out of one of the entrances to the village, and were soon flanked by half a dozen pickup trucks with shooters crouching behind the cabs. The old cars Maric had seen coming in with the reinforcements were now part of the barricades, where extra strength was needed.
The troop carriers were open top, waist high along the sides, with heavier metal hastily welded over that to try and make them bullet-proof. In places sheets of plywood had been added, in some sort of attempt to give even more protection. Good. Maric’s forces were prepared for that.
Then the trucks were close enough for the assault rifles along their reinforced sides to put some serious firepower into the undergrowth. That forced Gjoni’s hunters to go to ground, but Behar’s workers started firing from behind the log wall barricade.
The tall man willed the vehicles on. He needed the trucks, in particular, to be a lot closer.
CHAPTER 27
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The front wall of the miniature ‘fort’ kept spitting flame, as Behar and his men chewed up the ground around the trucks. They peppered the top of the cabs as well, and managed to wing one or two of Ilic’s troops leaning over the sides.
The AK 74s were ideal for this. A lot of noise and fury, but aimed away from the drivers and the engines of the vehicles they did little damage. Maric was pleased with their efforts. None of Ilic’s men would wonder why the shooters weren’t concentrating on the drivers – an obvious choice – or why they were staying in such a precarious position as the trucks advanced toward them.
With only the slim tree trunks ahead of them, the drivers might even be getting the idea that the troop carriers could ride up on the trunks and smash through the log wall. Maric certainly hoped so.
Behar and his men kept harassing the trucks from the log hideout, despite the increasing return fire from the vehicles. The men who had been prisoners were delighted at the chance to fight back, but now they needed a very real trust in Maric, and the battle plan.
It looked like the men behind the log wall were about to be overrun by the trucks storming toward them, and then cut to pieces by the troops they were carrying. Maric waited until the heavy vehicles were 30 meters from the flimsy blockade. That put them about 20 meters from the trees on either side of the track. He drew his sidearm and fired it twice in rapid succession. That was the signal.
