Blood Memory (Mongol Moon), page 40
He picked up the phone. The voice on the other end was there, waiting for the colonel to speak. It didn’t belong to the captain who had been in charge of the group. The man had taken a position at the front of the defense, and had been killed by the Americans early on in the battle. Leading from the front in the best fashion of the Russian Army. The defense had fallen apart after his death, and the colonel couldn’t blame the failure on the survivors.
“Get your men in the vehicles… all of your vehicles… and meet us on Highway 5. We are going to catch the Americans. You are in charge now.”
The colonel hung up without waiting for a response.
Every minute mattered, and the clock was ticking.
Day 10
10 miles north of the Niemba Bridge over the Lukuga River, Kioko, Congo
Planned Route: TBD
457 Miles to Rwanda
Alex Frey stood in the center of the circle of vehicles, staring at the scene around him. The moment they had stopped, he had leapt from his vehicle and ran towards the LMTV carrying his family.
He found them inside. Amanda pressing her hands on the chest of an embassy staff member. The blood oozing out around her fingers was bright red and frothy. A lung. The poor kid wouldn’t be long. Scanning the rest of the vehicle, he saw his son James’s leg protruding from underneath Sergeant Black who was lying prone and motionless on top of the boy.
“James!” Frey screamed, climbing into the bed of the vehicle. He grabbed Sergeant Black by the shoulders and rolled the man over. He was alive, and underneath him lay both James and Ella, covered in blood. Alex started to panic. Kneeling beside his children, he started to check for bullet wounds.
“They’re fine, sir,” Sergeant Black said, straightening himself out. “It isn’t their blood.”
The major’s eyes met the sergeant’s, who shook his head and added, “Mine neither.”
Frey grabbed both children and pulled them close, covering their eyes from the rest of the charnel house that was the interior of the back of the LMTV. In addition to the man that Amanda was treating, two other bodies lay in the back of the truck. Another of the embassy staff and one of the National Guard Sergeants, McCoy, Frey recalled his name, were both curled in heaps on the floor of the truck. Both dead. Frey pushed their bodies aside, and pulled his children out of the blood-drenched vehicle. He hoped they had been under Sergeant Black when the shooting started and hadn’t seen this, but at least his family was okay.
“Give me a hand up here!” a voice from the LMTV’s cab cried out.
Frey walked around to the truck’s front and opened the driver’s door, and a body slumped out on top of him. A Ranger scroll on the man’s arm. It was Staff Sergeant de Rossi, the man who had stayed until the last second on the ridge at the ferry crossing at the Luvua River, and the man who had fought through the dark jungle with Frey just a few hours before. Frey rolled the man over to find where he was wounded, and noticed half of the man’s head was missing. His head rolled to the side, no longer supported by his limp neck, and a portion of his shattered brain slid on out of the opened skull and onto Frey’s boots with a sickening splatter.
With a big blue mark in his forehead, and the back blown out of his head, Frey thought to himself.
“I’ve been driving this thing for ten minutes from over here,” the CIA analyst, covered in Sergeant de Rossi’s blood and brain matter, cried out from the passenger seat.
De Rossi had been killed instantly as the vehicle had made the right turn to escape. This intelligence agency analyst, a group Frey nearly universally despised, had leaned over, under fire, and driven the truck. He had pushed the dead sergeant’s body aside just far enough to reach the pedal, fighting the dead man’s hands on the wheel the entire time.
In doing so, he had saved Frey’s family. A stopped vehicle would have been a dead vehicle on that field. Frey knew it was mostly self-preservation that had motivated him, but it was a feat of absolute bravery nevertheless. Frey stared mutely at the man, then extended his hand.
The stunned analyst extended his own blood-soaked hand and took the major’s.
“Good work. We have work to do. Let’s go, you’re in command of this vehicle now.”
Frey turned and left. The reports had come in over the radio; all the trucks were rolling, but there were casualties. The men in the gun trucks had been safe behind a couple inches of armor, but the people in the back of the canvas LMTVs had far less protection.
And for the first time Frey heard the screaming. Bestial shrieks of terror, sorrow, and pain rang from inside the canvas-covered coffins. He ran up past Gunny Harmon’s LMTV and reached the front of the line where the ambassador and his group were.
He pulled back the canvas cover of the vehicle’s back gate, and saw nothing but a mangle of bodies, blood, and a screaming Nala, cradling the body of her lifeless husband.
The ambassador had been hit in the back with machine gun fire, and the fist-sized holes in his chest left no doubt as to his status. Frey climbed into the vehicle and found two more bodies, one of the National Guardsmen whom he recognized from his bandaged arm as Sergeant Franklin and the ambassador’s assistant, Ms. Jones. The patient old woman who had been in Africa at the embassy so long, she was being forced to return to the United States for a new assignment that started the first week of January.
Staring at her doll-like body, Frey wondered if, like her, none of them would leave Africa. Pushing the defeatism out of his mind, he prayed that Ms. Jones would meet her son in a peaceful afterlife. He felt movement at his feet. Ainsley, one of the USAID workers, was cradling one of the female embassy staff members. The girl had been hit multiple times, and was dying in her friend’s arms. The Marine Private First Class in the truck’s rear was straightening himself up from around the ambassador’s ten-year-old son. Like Sergeant Black, the Marine had shielded the boy with his own body.
Frey knelt next to Ainsley and the dying embassy worker. He could feel the blood from the floor of the truck soaking into his pants where he knelt on the metal. The woman was shaking, the shock setting in. Frey knew that soon she would feel nothing. Both women cried as Frey reached out and took the woman’s hand and nodded. He knew words meant nothing now. The woman shook, trying to speak one more time, but the blood in her mouth made her last words an inaudible gurgle. But Frey had heard the words before.
“We’ll tell them, don’t worry,” he told the girl, as she went limp, dying in her new friend’s arms.
“Hey, we need you, let’s go,” a voice came from outside of the LMTV. Frey stood, and turned back. He knew who it was before even turning around. Only one man would ever talk like that in the middle of this.
He turned to the Marine private who had survived. “The ambassador’s son is in my Vic. Go get him and bring him to his mother.”
“Aye…” The Marine stared at Frey as his voice trailed off. His eyes wide open, he rocked slightly back and forth. He nodded again, even though the major had not spoken a second time, as if his body and mind had disconnected from their normal harmony.
Frey remembered that it was the Marine’s first time in any sort of real combat.
Give him a moment.
“Aye, sir.” The focus in the Marine’s eyes returned, and he snapped back into duty.
Frey walked back and jumped down. “So, you have a Javelin? When were you going to tell me that?”
“You know now. It was a gift from our friends in Kasama,” John said. “We need to talk.”
“Gather what we have. We need to be out of here in ten minutes.”
Slowly the leadership team assembled. Lieutenant Betz, who had regained consciousness and was recovering, stayed behind, being treated by the group’s last remaining corpsman Jimenez. Corpsman Bagley, the man who had run past Frey to treat the group’s first casualties, had died in the back of Betz’s gun truck. The young lanky lieutenant from Montana was all that was left of his first command.
Frey studied the men he had left. Specialist Pass, who had done a quick fuel count, bent over and threw up. Sergeant Major Sweeney put a hand on his young soldier’s back, almost like a father rubbing a sick child.
Pass stood, wiped his mouth, and delivered his report. “The water buffalo is hit and leaking. We are filling some five-gallon cans with what is pouring out, but the LMTV Two also has a ruptured tank. It won’t make it long. We have, I think if we consolidate, enough fuel to go to three LMTVs and make it to the border.”
Frey did the math in his head and realized that meant stuffing more people into tighter groups… meaning if they got hit again, there would be even more casualties. But without the giant trailer of fuel they had been towing, their fuel situation was desperate.
“Do it. Next?”
Trevor, the young USAID medical worker, spoke up. “We have eleven dead, and another handful wounded. Some seriously, but they all should survive, I think. I dunno, we lost Bagley too, so we are down to one corpsman, plus Drs. Tanaka and Frey.”
“We have fourteen dead, son,” Sergeant Major Sweeney interrupted. “We lost three in vehicle eight,” he said, reminding them all they had left three dead Americans behind.
“Okay, here is the situation,” Frey started. “That group we ran into was new. I didn’t see any TIGR MRAPS or trucks. That means it was not the same group that we ran into earlier,” he said, trying to track all of the moving pieces in his head. “Plan has to stay the same. We need to make it to the coast road and head north.”
”That isn’t going to work,” John told them, interrupting.
“What?” Frey responded, controlling his anger. Now was not the time, and he of all people should know that.
“Look,” John replied, handing over the laptop that controlled the drone. “Visitors.”
The images on the screen made Frey want to scream. The drone was at its max height, so it could see its farthest which made the details in the feed few, but what it showed was unmistakable.
There they were, the Russian group they thought they had lost. A long chain of eight or so vehicles staging to prepare to drive up the road from Kalemie, maybe twenty miles behind them.
“They are going to catch us,” John added. “Unless…”
“Unless what?” Frey asked, his eyes glued to the blond man’s.
“Unless we go after something they absolutely need to defend.”
The entire group turned and stared at John as he spoke. Alex remembered the dual envelopes that had arrived at the embassy. One had carried his orders, the second must have been whatever was coming next.
“West of here are the Lubungo lithium mine and the gold mine at Kampulu where they are refining gallium,” John went on, pulling some pieces of paper from his pocket. Frey recognized the envelope that had held the letters from the Africa Command Commander.
“The Chinese are still refining and exporting gallium for their chip industry from there. They are going to need every chip they can make if they want to extend this war past a year,” John said, laying the imagery and the intelligence on the hood of the bullet-scarred HMMWV.
“They are using the lithium from Africa to ship to the US. They probably aren’t able to get their resupply all the way from the Mainland to whatever is happening in Europe and the US, so it is coming from here. That means everything—radio batteries, night vision, missile guidance chips, resupply and repair for armored vehicles—all of it starting here at these two mines,” John said, pointing to the pictures. “These Russians had to have come from there. They must be guarding it. So, if we threaten the mines, they will pull off of us. They have to.”
“How do we threaten the mines, sir?” Gunny Harmon asked, studying the imagery.
“I will take two trucks and hit them both. That will pull most, if not all of them, away from the civilians. Certainly enough for you to get to Lulimba and through the pass. We can link back up with everyone later.”
What John was suggesting was to take two trucks alone, off through the hostile Congolese countryside, and attack two Chinese mines. With the horrors of the Congo on all sides, and a large and extremely hostile Russian force to their rear, it was tantamount to suicide.
Gunnery Sergeant Harmon stood up slowly, taking his tired eyes off the pictures of the mine complexes. “I’m in, sir.”
“No,” Frey said, trying to regain control. “No one is in. We are not doing that.”
Sergeant Major Sweeney stepped forward. “Sir, if I may, I think we have to let him.”
Frey stared at the sergeant major in disbelief. How could this career administrative soldier, who a few days before had been afraid to lose a two-dollar piece of plastic because the rule book said so, just have sided with this?
“If he leaves, we lose almost our entire defensive firepower. We lose two machine guns, and apparently some Javelins,” Frey came back, trying to get the group to see the insanity of John’s plan. “We can set up a rear defense. Bottle up that column on the road with IEDs, a few Javelin shots, and some machine gun fire. We can keep forcing them to deploy, and let the LMTVs get further away.”
Frey looked each man in the eye. Every one of them covered in blood, sweat, vomit, or some combination thereof. Sergeant Major Sweeney’s neck had a burn in the perfect shape of one of his machine gun’s brass casings. The hot brass had hailed from the gun during the battle, and he had driven on.
And Frey realized that after over a week of travel and a half dozen firefights, these men had earned the right to share their thoughts.
John broke the silence. “Kom praat alleen met my,” he said, taking Alex by the elbow, and walked behind the HMMWV.
When they were alone, John dropped Alex’s elbow. “Alex, you know this is the only way.”
“I am not going to let you make some random guys drive off into the bush with you because you want to play some Prussian guerilla hero.”
John stared at him in disbelief. “Get your fucking mind in the game. You are an officer in the United States Army. Your country is at war. I am telling you I can take two trucks and cause actual damage to the enemy, and all it might cost you is two old-ass trucks and a squad of men. The fuck is wrong with you?”
“You have you and your guys. The rest would have to volunteer,” Frey told him, unsure how many of the shaken men would volunteer for such a task.
“What, like if Amanda and the kids weren’t here, you wouldn’t volunteer in a heartbeat? Get it together,” John barked, his bright blue eyes bearing straight ahead, refusing to look away. “Let me go and hurt the people who started this shit.”
Alex stared off at the tree line and the shadows beyond. The man was right. For whatever reason, the private military guards of those mines had left their posts and come looking for them. First in Zambia, and then had followed them all the way here. He didn’t know why, but with Russians you rarely did. This was an opportunity. An opportunity to strike a real blow, in a place the Chinese and their Russian allies thought was impervious to America’s reach.
“You know, if we had gone south to the farm, we wouldn’t have had any of these problems,” Alex said, remembering the plan his brother had advocated for back at the embassy.
“Nah, neither of us are built to spend World War Three milking drakensberger, bru,” the man said smiling, looking back over his shoulder.
“You be honest with them. You tell them this is probably a one-way trip.”
John smiled back. “That’s the only way to get any of them to volunteer,” he said, and walked off towards the group.
***
John’s speech to the assembled group was quick and to the point. Come with him and maybe die, but he was hitting those mines if he had to fake a Russian accent, join the PMC, and do it like Jason Bourne. This was their chance to get into the war and strike back at the people who had attacked their homes.
No one needed coaxing. Nearly every Marine and soldier in the convoy had stepped forward. To no one’s surprise, Gunnery Sergeant Harmon volunteered first. Whether he wanted to or not, Frey couldn’t tell, but the gunny knew some of his Marines would go and he’d be damned if they went alone.
Every Marine did volunteer. Except Sergeant Black and Corporal Harris. Frey had told Black he could, and relieved him of his previous duty guarding his family, but that wasn’t enough for the big sergeant. Frey smiled, and put his hand on the man’s arm, proud his family could elicit such loyalty. Alex kept three more with the convoy, plus the last corpsman, Jimenez. There were wounded to treat here.
Frey had put his foot down. The Marines were all they had left of a homogenous fighting force, and he needed at least a couple if they had to fight a delaying action along the coast road.
Lopez and Barsamian both volunteered, and Frey let them go. Barsamian had been rather sheepish about leaving his major, but had eventually confessed that he just had to see some action. Pride swelling his chest, the major felt a twinge of hope too, that what they had just gone through hadn’t taken any of the starch out of the young Marine.
Sergeant Patrick, the national guardsman who had luckily turned out to have been a Javelin instructor, and Lance Corporal Jackson both stayed with John too.
The two surprises were Trevor, the nervous USAID medical volunteer, and the embassy chef. John and Alex had exchanged a puzzled glance, but lacked the energy to laugh. Trevor spoke first.
“I came here to help people. If we make it to Rwanda, maybe I can, but where these guys are going, there will definitely be people who need me.”
John had smirked, and pointed at the back of the gun truck the gunny would command.
“What the hell are you doing, Chef?” Frey turned his attention to the portly man.
