Blood Memory (Mongol Moon), page 26
The family stood, and Alex wrapped his arms around his wife. Her head rested under his, and the smell of her long brown hair filled his nostrils. After all of these days of travel and hardship, it still smelled like flowers.
“Don’t be late,” Amanda whispered, her hand on his chest over his heart.
“I won’t. You know I hate rivers.” Leaning over, he kissed her forehead again, and looked back towards the ferry, getting both kids to follow his gaze. He used the ruse to reach behind his wife and pat her butt, before winking at her and slipping back towards Artigas and Lieutenant Betz.
He reached the pair quickly. Artigas was overseeing the packing of his unit’s two vehicles. An old Mercedes Unimog and a Land Rover.
“Orders, sir?” Betz asked.
“I need you to stay here, Mike. These people are going to need to be organized and you are the only one I can trust. You have to get all of our civilians on the first ferry with the Humvee. Have one of the agency dudes drive it. Be careful. You need to go with them, and take charge on the other side.”
“Do you want to radio them now?”
“No. I don’t want them to come back on the ferry. If we tell them now, they are going to try and reinforce us here and it will make it worse. When you get there, put Sergeant Major Sweeney in charge of the camp, and get Gunny to set up two Humvees on the far hill, in case they need to cover us as we withdraw.”
Betz nodded slowly, his eyes looking past the major towards the hill on the other side of the river. “I won’t let you down.”
“I know you won’t, Mike.” Frey put his hand on his shoulder. “When you see John, tell him to stay away from the river.”
The lieutenant gave his major a puzzled look, but could sense no further answer was forthcoming.
Artigas turned towards the pair, a wooden crate in his arms. “If you two are done whispering softly, it is time to work.” He handed Frey the crate and picked up another. They were heavy, ammunition-heavy. Frey lifted it to his shoulder, and saw Thomas, the ambassador’s teenage son, hiding behind the Uruguayan vehicle.
Frey smiled, but called out to the boy. “I see you back there. If you aren’t on that ferry, I’m going to throw you in the river.”
“Sir, please, come on, let me stay!” the kid pleaded, his voice lacked any sort of fear, which to Frey, made him a potential liability.
“No. We already have too many people staying behind. Get on the ferry.”
The young man began to protest, but was cut off by Artigas. “Get your damn ass back to the ferry like he told you before I come over there! The last thing we need is another black man without a uniform running around.”
The major tried to conceal a chortle as the boy turned and sulked back to the ferry. He couldn’t help but feel a twinge of pride that the young man wanted to stay, but watching out for the ambassador’s son in the middle of a firefight was a luxury better suited to a fight with more even odds. Luckily, the boy’s father wasn’t Lieutenant Colonel Artigas’s ambassador.
The two officers exchanged a smile and carried their crates up the hill, where Staff Sergeant De Rossi had already put the men to work piling what cover they could find into small mounds. A few were digging in the loose red dirt while others dragged logs and branches. Their line straddled both sides of the dirt road. Americans on the left, Uruguayans on the right. The crest of the hill they occupied was covered by a small copse of trees, thick enough to take partial cover behind. The road stretched out for a few hundred feet, then curved left into the forest behind a row of trees. To their front was several hundred yards of grassland. An occasional clump of trees interrupted what was mostly an open field covered in waist-high cogongrass. Wispy white seeds covered the tall stalks and sifted in the evening breeze, like the gentle waves of a white ocean.
“You’re here, sir,” De Rossi said, pointing to a thick tree that had recently fallen beside the road. Frey grunted. From this position he could see the entire defensive line, and both banks of the river. De Rossi had chosen this position perfectly.
“Okay, what do we got?”
“We have the fifty caliber and about six hundred rounds. Everyone has a rifle, hopefully still zeroed, and three magazines. We don’t have a tripod for the fifty, so we kind of have it propped up on a stump with some stakes on either side. It’s really fucking janky, sir, but it’ll do,” De Rossi reported. “We’ve got eight men. Including yourself, sir. Me, Sergeant Bennet, and Franklin from my team, Sergeant Black, Lieutenant Betz’s crew, so Corporal Adams and Corpsman Bagley, plus another Marine private from the ambassador’s truck.”
Frey turned to his friend. “Juan-Pablo?”
“We all have rifles. AK-101s and some Tavors. Also, three of our rifles have attached grenade launchers.”
Artigas was holding a black AK101, a newer version of Russia’s famous Kalashnikov rifle. What was more useful to Frey at the moment was that both it and the Israeli-made Tavors were designed to fire the same round as his American rifles.
“Ammo?”
“We have about ten crates of ammo for the rifles and two for the grenades. We have mostly training rounds, but also some high explosive and smoke rounds.”
In his brain a litany of past battles scrambled for attention like eager kindergarteners. What had these smaller, more professional armies done when fighting against vastly superior numbers? He found the battle he was thinking of, which had taken place not far from this spot, and remembered one of the key lessons from it.
“Spread the ammo crates out and break them open now. I don’t want dudes to be trying it under fire. We are limited in how many M4 magazines we have, but they can at least reload some. We have a good line here. My guess is they either drive right up the road to the ferry, or try and get as close as they can before dismounting. If they try to drive up, we are going to wait as long as we can to open fire, and kill as many as we can while they’re bunched up in their vehicles. We need to keep them channelized in front of us. De Rossi, I want you and Sergeant Black on the far left. I want accurate fire to push them back towards the middle if they try to spread out that way. Juan-Pablo, get some of your grenade guys on the far right and do the same.”
“Sir, one thing,” De Rossi interjected. “We can use the fifty to do that, but I will need that Marine corporal from Lieutenant Betz’s truck to man it.”
“Do it. Juan-Pablo, can you grab all the smoke and tear gas grenades you have? I have an idea. Hopefully we will break their charge and they’ll just go away.” Frey turned to see the ferry departing the near bank. His family and the last HMMWV on it.
“We have about an hour and a half to go for two more trips if they go quickly. About the same until dark. When that ferry comes back, I’m sending half of our guys and half of your guys with it, Juan-Pablo. De Rossi, you pick who, make sure they know.”
“No, you are not,” Artigas protested, his pride visibly hurt. “This is our ferry to defend, and we will not leave it until you are all across. Then we will drive out of here upriver.”
“Alright, then everyone else but our half on the last ferry. De Rossi, tell Sergeant Black he is going to lead the first group out. You want to take those stupid helmets off?” Frey pointed at the powder blue UN helmet sitting on Artigas’s head.
“They are the only helmets we have. You don’t have any. Besides, if we keep them, at least someone can say that they finally saw someone fight while wearing one.”
Reached out, Frey shook his friend’s hand, and the man hurried across the road. A flurry of Spanish erupted from the other side as Artigas told his men the plan. A cheer erupted from the Uruguayans. Frey heard De Rossi going to each man and pointed out where the man’s sector was to fire. He did it quickly and professionally, no words wasted, with minimal cursing.
A still silence fell on the ridge. Frey sat on his log and watched. He set a timer on his watch for thirty minutes. In the rush of adrenaline it would be easy to lose track of time, and they needed to be ready to load the next ferry the moment it landed. He exhaled and watched the tall grasses for movement. From his perch a few hundred feet up, they looked beautiful swaying in the warm breeze.
“Dust on the road!” A shout came up from the left. Frey swung over and spotted it. At this distance it was all they could see, but it was too much dust to be just one vehicle, or even a dozen. As the cloud got closer, it turned a corner and came into view through a small gap in the trees. He tried counting the vehicles, a mix of bikes, pickup trucks, and old diesel flatbeds, but gave up at twenty-five. Each laden with armed men occupying every possible space, many with their feet dangling over the sides.
He could feel a pall set in on his men, and knew the Uruguayans likely felt the same. He stood up, looking his men in the eye. The immense weight of command and responsibility settling on his heart. “Listen to me,” he started, the volume and intensity of his voice rising with every word. “We didn’t spend millions of dollars and the valuable time of dozens of officers training you to lose to a bunch of fucking illiterates with rusted-ass iron sights. You are the best soldiers and Marines in the world, and this is World War III. It is fucking game day, boys. None of you are getting killed in a side quest on some hill in fucking Africa. We have plenty of Chicoms and Russians to kill when we get home and, boy, do they ever need killing. Remember your training, breathe and squeeze, and you stack those fucking Zulus high.”
He knew the men approaching their tiny line weren’t Zulus, and whether his men knew or not was less relevant than the laughs and cheers from the National Guard sergeants and the loud “kill-kill-kill”s coming from the Marines.
Frey slipped back behind his log just in time to hear a loud roar rise from the tree line to their front. It was musical, the voices of hundreds of African men treading across the field to battle and blood. The chanting built to a rhythm, and crescendoed louder as the first line of men appeared in the far tree line next to the road.
Raggedy and undisciplined, the line of Congolese showed all the signs of centuries of African tribal warriors. The first man was followed quickly by a second, and then a third. They advanced at a quick jog across the open field, brushing the grass aside as they moved. Squinting, Frey estimated there were at least a hundred men moving towards them.
“Well, that’s one way to fucking die,” said Sergeant Bennet, the convoy’s resident mechanic, as he lay in a shallow pit behind a thick tree root next to Frey.
As he watched the men advance, Frey realized he missed his crew. Despite their short time together, he had bonded with Harris, Barsamian, and Lopez in a way that would puzzle those not familiar with the intimacy of battle. To his left and right were strangers. Men he hoped he could count on, but at the end of the day, men he did not know. He imagined having to control Barsamian’s lethal excitement, and the calm demeanor of Harris here on the hill, and for a moment, wished for them.
The lines of Africans continued to advance through the field. They had covered about fifty yards of the field when Frey popped in a pair of ear plugs and gave the order.
“Sergeant De Rossi only—Artigas, your far right only—open fire.”
Staff Sergeant De Rossi was the first to obey. The staccato chunk of the fifty caliber opening fire reverberated through the forest. The waves of advancing Congolese froze as the first burst impacted the ground in between the first two lines. Without a tripod to steady the massive gun, they were relying on instinct and Kentucky windage to aim. But it was not De Rossi’s first time, and he adjusted the gun quickly. The second burst tore into the men at the extreme end of the first wave. One round caught an advancing Congolese in the head, which disintegrated into a red mist as the body disappeared into the tall grass. His comrades shied away from whatever unseen magic had killed their friend. A third burst from De Rossi sealed the deal, tearing an arm off of a man in the second line and nearly cutting a third man in half. The newly armless man, however, refused to fall. He ran screaming down the line of men, his arm pumping arterial blood over everyone he passed. He made it about a hundred feet before falling face-first mid-stride, and never rose again.
On the right, two thumps joined the fight, as the Uruguayan grenadiers lobbed their grenades into the Congolese. They were well aimed and a credit to the training of Artigas’s men. The first exploded at the feet of the first wave, dropping two men screaming to the ground. The second caught another with a direct hit, and the man’s entire body vanished into heaps of meat and flesh.
The Congolese had seen enough. From behind them, instructions were screamed, and they began to fire as they advanced. The fire was inaccurate, but the volume was intense. Even if only one round in thirty came close, it was enough. De Rossi fired another burst, and was followed by the grenadiers on the right, and the Congolese began to bunch in the middle, trying their best to avoid the death that seemed to only be appearing on their flanks.
“Now—open fire!” Frey yelled, sensing the moment was near. Advancing with bullets coming at you was the hardest task a soldier could be asked to do, but could be done as long as the soldier believed there was a way out. This was their moment to break them of that belief. The rifles tore into the men seeking the safety of the middle, and they began to fall by the bunches as the score of men on the hill delivered their lethal persuasion into them. Frey took aim at one in the middle. He couldn’t make out the man’s face at this range, but he wore a bright yellow basketball jersey that could only belong to the Lakers. He carried an old, Vietnam-era vintage American M16. As the red dot on Frey’s rifle found the man’s midsection, he exhaled and squeezed the trigger, and the man dropped from sight.
The lines advanced another few feet, then faltered, before finally breaking. Some of the Congolese sought refuge in the grass. A few ran to the nearest clump of trees, but most ran back towards the safety of the forest to their rear. Frey knew that Mutombo would be back there, and he knew that whatever horrors the man would use to motivate his men to advance again would need to be countered.
In the field the bodies had flattened out the grass, leaving giant holes in the once beautiful landscape. But here and there, the holes were moving, as wounded men attempted to crawl to safety. This was his chance to dissuade another charge.
“Juan-Pablo, there, that group there!” he yelled across the road. He could see his friend load a smoke grenade into the long black cylinder underneath his rifle, before sitting back up and firing. The colonel dropped back down, making the sign of the cross across his chest as the smoke grenade impacted into the dry cogongrass. The normally nonlethal round used an incendiary charge to ignite its chemicals. It quickly lit the cogongrass, which was known for its eagerness to burn, surrounding the wounded men. Screams filled the field once again, as the fast moving flames lapped over the slithering masses of wounded Congolese. A few tried to stand and run, taking their chances that the aim of their enemy on the hill was less certain than the flames, but were quickly and lethally cut down as they ran.
The smell of roasting human meat wafted on the thick air, filling the noses of the men on top of the ridge. It was a sweet, shamefully appetizing smell to the men who had existed on nothing but field rations for days. A burning African smelled differently from a burning European or Middle Easterner. It was the hair, or in the case of these Africans, the lack thereof. Without it, the bodies burning below them lacked that acrid stench but smelled more akin to roasting pork than roasting man.
A few prayers could be heard from the Uruguayans to the right, and at least one of the Americans vomited as the blood-curdling screams of the wounded men being burned alive tore at their western Christian psyches. Frey had smelled men burn before. He stared wordlessly out at the field, watching the slithering in the grass speed up as men tried desperately but ultimately in vain to escape the flames.
“Status?” Frey called out to his left and right. None of his men had been wounded; ammunition was still in the green. Their line had held.
“Get ready, they are probably coming again. They have more men. Reload your magazines, and get some loosies in your cargo pockets.” Frey told the group, letting Artigas translate for the Uruguayans.
He took a step back from his position, and slid to his left, careful not to expose too much of himself above the ridgeline and gave each man he passed a reassuring pat on the leg. A firefight was a lonely thing, even when lying next to an ally. Sometimes all it took was a touch from a leader to remind men that they were in this together. He stopped behind the log sheltering Corporal Bagley and Private First Class Colton Lynch. Both the sailor and the Marine were young, Frey guessed no older than 20, and both were staring out across the deadly field with wide eyes. This was the spot the major was looking for. If his line were to break anywhere, it was here with these two young men. Bagley, who as a medic was only supposed to have a pistol for defensive purposes, tried to hide the rifle he had been fighting with, but Frey, who had long been lashed to the strictest possible interpretations of the rules of war, was done being the only side who abided by them.
“Holding it together?” he asked, making sure each turned to look him in the eye.
“Yes, sir,” Lynch answered, his voice shaky, but not broken.
Killing, as Frey knew, was a test of one’s soul, and not one that most people passed instantly. The brain took time to adjust to the new reality that the body had taken a human life.
Lynch set down his rifle, and reached into his pockets to pull out a cigarette and a lighter.
“If they are going to get my meat, I might as well make it spoiled.” His hands shook as he tried to light the cigarette, missing on his first two attempts.
The corpsman reached over, and put his hand on his friend’s, steadying it just enough to get the cigarette lit. He had not said a word.
Frey knew where his words were needed, where they would steady the line most, and experience had taught him just what to say to a young Marine like Lynch.
“You aren’t going to let this fucking Navy pog outshoot you, are you, Marine?” The question was seasoned with just the right amount of an accusation, but not enough to make the young man retreat into whatever safe area his mind was searching for.
