Blood Memory (Mongol Moon), page 43
Frey nodded in approval and put his hand on the young man’s arm. “Get Corporal Harris to give you a quick refresher on that rifle,” Frey told him, and walked off to find Amanda. He had eight men; that had to be enough.
“Everyone else, get in the first two LMTVs. Let’s go.”
Frey’s eyes scanned the group that would be leaving, stopping on the blue-eyed embassy worker waiting behind as the rest of the group turned towards the LMTV. She had a bandage wrapped around her left arm, which was partially soaked red with blood. She glared back at him. “Fuck them up, Major, you promised.”
Frey smiled, and nodded. Unable to bring himself to speak, he stared into the woman’s piercing blue eyes and hoped she could see in his the promise she sought.
Walking past her, he heard Sergeant Major Sweeney giving orders behind him. “You heard the major. Rear guard, grab all the ammo and weapons we can hold. LMTV Party, grab a couple mags, enough to get you through one spicy meal, and let’s get moving.”
He found Lieutenant Betz in the damaged LMTV, pulling any of the sensitive documents and radios out.
“Mike, you got a second?”
The wounded lieutenant hobbled down, scrambling out of the cab as quickly as his wounded body allowed.
“Sir?” he asked, trying to conceal the pain on his face.
“What branch are you?”
“I, uh… I’m an infantry officer, sir, why?”
“I thought so.” Major Frey pulled a knife from his pocket. “When I was a young lieutenant, all we wanted was to get our Combat Infantryman’s Badges. Then again, the GWOT was going on, so everyone from my Infantry Officer’s Course was in Iraq or Afghanistan within a year or two of graduation.” He reached up and slid the knife behind one of the patches sewn into his uniform on his chest.
Betz watched him cut off the long patch adorned with a rifle and a wreath. “Sir, I—I don’t think I earned that.”
“Lieutenant, in the last ten days, you have personally participated in three separate firefights, helped in another, commanded this convoy, and got blown up. My first year in Iraq, we managed to get into two, hit an IED, and Apache’d some dude on a roof. That is it.” The major handed the cloth to the lieutenant.
“You are in command now, that means you command. Don’t do what you think I would have done, do what you think is right. You are a hell of a soldier, Mike. When you get back home, give those commies hell for me.”
“Yes, sir,” were the only words Lieutenant Betz could utter.
Major Frey pulled out Ms. Jones’s bloody sketchbook and handed it to the lieutenant. “One more thing, when you get wherever, do something with this.”
“It’ll find its way home, sir.”
“Thanks, Mike.” Frey turned and walked away, towards where he knew his wife and children would be.
Alex found them, sitting by a tree. Amanda had a kid under each arm, talking to them quietly. Alex walked up, his heart a giant ball of metal in his chest, and knelt on the ground in front of his family.
“Hey,” he whispered, running his fingers through his dirty long brown hair.
Ella ran up to him and hugged him. “Mommy says you are going to stay and help,” the little girl nearly cried. “I want you to stay with us, Daddy.”
Alex hugged his daughter tightly. “I know, pumpkin,” he told her, trying to keep his voice from breaking. He had never lied to her, except maybe that time he told her if she ate any more chicken nuggets she would turn into a chicken, and he wasn’t going to start now. “But I have to, baby girl. Sometimes, we have to do things we don’t want to, to help good people.”
He kissed her head, and looked at his wife. “I love you,” she mouthed to him. James stepped closer to his father, holding the knife Alex had given him.
“If you are going to stay and help, Dad, maybe… maybe you need your knife back?” James said, holding the knife out.
The words tore Alex’s heart apart. Pulling his son in close so the boy couldn’t see his tears, he said, “Thanks, buddy. But it’s your knife, you’ll need it. And someday you can give it to your son. Promise?”
James nodded, looking down to hide his tears from his dad.
“It’s alright, buddy, come here,” Alex told him, squeezing the boy tighter. He had a child in each arm. They meant everything to him. Everything he had done in his life had been for them. There was no way he was going to let anything happen to them.
He squeezed both of them tightly, and turned his head towards his wife. “Remember, as long as you are together…”
“We are going to win,” both kids said in unison, sobbing in his arms.
Alex stood and hugged his wife again. Both of them still covered in dirt and other people’s blood, they embraced. “You got this, Doctor,” Alex said, one last time.
“You got this, Major,” Amanda said, resting her forehead against her husband’s for a moment before breaking the embrace. She took both kids by the hand and walked them back to the LMTV that would carry them to the airfield.
Thirty minutes later, Major Frey had his men in position atop a high hill. Below them was a hairpin turn in the road. At the base of it, just beyond the view coming up the hill, they had tipped over an LMTV. The Russians would have to stop there and move the LMTV out of the road, and this gave them their chance to hit the front half of the Russian unit while the other was on the other side of the sharp turn.
They needed to buy an hour at least, and this was the best place to do it. They had about 500 rounds remaining for the fifty caliber, and Frey had set it up under Sergeant Black. His job would be to destroy as many of the truck engines as he could. Without those trucks, the Russians would never reach the airfield in time. No matter what happened after that, the other group would be safe.
Preston had been assigned to Sergeant Black, to feed ammunition into the gun for the Marine. He lay there in the dirt, next to the experienced sergeant. Frey could see his boot shaking. He knelt beside the young man and put his hand on his back.
“The first time I ever got in a gunfight, I screamed and mag-dumped an entire magazine into a tree. What about you Sergeant, Black?”
The big sergeant grinned. “Pissed myself, sir.”
The two veterans laughed, and the young kid from Baltimore forced a smile.
Preston rolled over, and scooped up a handful of the red dirt. Holding his fist up, he let the dirt sift between his fingers, some blowing away in the breeze, some falling right down to the ground in a red mist. “I heard somewhere once that the Shona say the dirt is red because of all the blood that has been spilled from all the killing here. And that it will stay red forever.”
“You think that is true?” Frey asked curiously. He knew relatively little about the young man, and fleetingly wondered if he was wrong to have allowed him to stay behind.
“Honestly, I don’t really care. Fuck this place, and fuck them. Not a single one of them is worth a single one of us, none of it is.”
“Then why are we here?”
The kid frowned. “Sir, the why doesn’t matter. We are, and they are. So it’s us against them for as long as it goes. That’s all that matters.”
“What do you think, Sergeant Black?” Frey asked the Marine positioned behind the machine gun’s tripod.
“Who are the Shona, sir?”
“Just some assholes.” Preston frowned, checking the chamber of his rifle, making sure he could see the brass color of the bullet ready to fire.
“Well, I think after we are done killing these Russians, sir, we find wherever these Shona live and kill them too.”
“Fuck it, might as well,” Preston replied, pulling a pack of cigarettes from his backpack that was lying next to him.
“When did you start smoking those?” Frey asked him.
“Mutanga. So, yesterday.”
Neither Frey nor Sergeant Black followed up. Instead, Sergeant Black reached into his own pocket and handed over a lighter, his eyes never leaving the front sight of the machine gun.
“Welcome to Africa, Preston. You’ll do just fine,” Frey told him, and stepped back from the pair. A few yards behind Sergeant Black and the machine gun sat Corporal Harris and the Javelin nestled behind a fallen tree trunk.
Sergeant Black, Preston, Major Frey, and Corporal Harris were the first line of defense. Off to his right, Sergeant Major Sweeney, Denis, and the two young Marines lay somewhere out there.
The Russians wouldn’t just give up. They would come up the mountain and try to flank the machine gun. Major Frey had put them there to catch the Russian flank attempt in the open. He did the math in his head. If they could stop the first assault, that would buy them enough time to displace to another position before the superior numbers and firepower of the Russians started to take its toll. If they could get to the second position, even if some of the Russian vehicles survived, that would be enough time.
Every moment mattered now, every heartbeat, every bullet. Every man was in place, every one of them knew what was expected of him.
Lowering into a crouch, Frey sat behind the fallen tree where Corporal Harris was lying. The man who had been by his side since the beginning. “You know, Harris, I don’t think I ever asked your first name.”
“John, sir,” the Marine said before reaching forward and clicking on the red dot on his rifle. “My name is John, sir.”
Frey extended his hand to the Marine on the ground, who took it, shaking it earnestly like two men meeting for the first time. “The boys over by the sergeant major could probably use a few words, sir,” he said, not letting the officer’s informality affect him.
Harris was right, as he often was. The men with Sweeney were far from the most experienced of the group, which is why he had put them in the second line, but that didn’t mean they didn’t need his attention too. Frey sat up a little taller on the log and shouted over to the foursome concealed in the bushes off to his right.
“Sergeant Major, what do you think about relaxing the grooming standards tomorrow? Anyone who shows up to first formation on time tomorrow gets the day off from shaving?”
“Y’all wouldn’t be able to tell a difference with Franky’s baby face, sir,” Private Lynch’s Kentucky drawl crept through the Congolese hillside, and almost—almost Frey could believe they were sitting on an Appalachian hillside.
Sweeney gave young Private First Class Francis no time to defend his honor, and answered the major’s question. “No can do, sir, we observe the grooming standards here. But what I can do is, anyone showing up tomorrow unshaven will have to do only twenty push-ups.”
The entire group laughed, and Frey could feel the nerves setting in. Each minute that passed brought the Russians closer. Waiting for contact that might or might not come was one thing; knowing it was heading towards you was a level of stress these men had never felt. The laughter died out. Frey knew it had helped, anything at this point would, but also knew he needed to leave each man alone to his own preparations. Once again, an unnatural quiet fell on the hillside.
The still of the African day was interrupted by the screaming of monkeys somewhere deeper in the hills. Frey smiled, wondering how far they had really come from those howling monkeys, as the low hum of a drone came buzzing down the road, hovered over the rolled-over LMTV, and then moved on down the road.
Moments later, the screech of the monkeys was replaced by the high-pitched whine of the Russian BMP’s 500 horsepower diesel engine. Frey sat back, trying to get lower behind the log. He doubted the Russians could see this high, but there was no room for errors now. He lifted the Javelin’s launch unit to his face, and felt the weight of the single rocket on his shoulder. A single missile remained. They’d have one chance.
He remembered a poem that had been with him for days, maybe weeks now.
Long was the morn of slaughter,
Long was the list of slain,
Five score heads were taken,
Five score heads and twain;
And the men of the First Shikaris
Went back to their grave again…
Major Frey moved the small buttons on the box to zoom in on the lead Russian vehicle. The one they absolutely had to stop or nothing else mattered. Holding the giant launch unit to his face, he used both hands to aim. The missile would fire up into the sky, then come straight down on the target. He had heard the Afghans call it “the finger of god” because of the smoke trail it left on its way out of the heavens towards its target below.
The Russian column came down the windy road like a hungry serpent, unaware danger lurked ahead. They were going fast, trying to catch the American vehicles ahead of them before they got too far away. Frey watched a truck slow around a turn, and every vehicle behind it bunched up in a near pile.
“Look at those idiots slinkying,” Corporal Harris said, shaking his head. “Did we look that jacked up, sir?”
“Not anymore we don’t,” Major Frey replied, making no effort to hide the pride he felt.
The driver of the slowed Russian truck found his courage and sped up, leaving a gap behind him. Every vehicle copied the move, before they all bunched up again behind the tracked vehicle in the front.
Frey watched as the BMP crawled up to the overturned American LMTV and stop. A man emerged from the hatch. He was older, bearded, and wore something that looked like an officer’s rank. The BMP lowered its gun to fire at the rolled over LTMV, intending to blow it out of the way. The man shouted an order into the vehicle beneath him, and the gun settled on the American truck.
Frey put the crosshairs at the bearded man’s feet. He was standing behind the round metal turret, right above where the Infantry Fighting Vehicle’s ammunition was stored. Frey exhaled, whispered his wife’s name, and squeezed the trigger.
An alarm blared from a pole-mounted speaker inside the tiny gold mining compound near the village of Kampulu. As it screamed its ominous warning across the ramshackle offices and buildings that dotted the surface around the mine, Su Ming noticed that none of the African workers seemed to give it the level of seriousness he had intended.
They had been lazy and unproductive on the best of days, but today he needed them moving. The alarm was there to signal a flood or some other serious problem and had never been used before. It came as a small shock to Su Ming that it actually functioned. The alarm’s lack of use had not been because no accidents occurred at the mine, which they did most days, but because pressing the button also automatically triggered an alert at the headquarters back in Kinshasa.
To Su Ming, this was an unacceptable outcome, and if his years in the treacherous political machinery of the Chinese Communist Party had taught him anything, it was that if you don’t admit there is a problem, there isn’t one. It was this thinking that had led Su Ming out of his meager existence as a maintenance supervisor at a mine in Jinfeng to running this vitally important installation in the Congo.
He knew what this mine meant for the war effort, and he would not allow the blame for any delays in production to be placed at his doorstep. This was no accident that killed a handful of African workers or a problem with one of the machines that made the work easier: those issues could be covered up in paperwork. No, Su Ming thought, this was a serious problem he could not hide: the Americans were coming.
The short and stocky Chinese manager looked at his phone again, resisting the urge to call back the Russian captain who was coming to their aid.
The Russians are returning. We must protect ourselves until they get here, he told himself.
Su Ming cursed the drunken Russian colonel who had left his post securing the mine and cursed his superiors for not having sent him more reliable Chinese People’s Liberation Army soldiers.
As he stepped out of the large shipping container that doubled as the mine’s operations center, Su Ming looked around and wondered how on earth he could slow down the Americans.
A gaggle of Chinese and African faces stared back at him as he walked out into the humid Congolese day. Not all of the workers at the mines were African. China had many sons that due to simple mathematics would never find a wife back home. So the Party had sent its young men abroad to work and manage in one of their people’s many foreign holdings.
There were also a few African supervisors they could trust. These were the men that enforced the rules, and sent their countrymen into the mines every day.
Cai Jun, the mine’s administrative manager, spoke first. He spoke in English. Su Ming hated English, but it was the only language the African workers and the Chinese had in common. For now.
”How much time do we have?” the taller, bespectacled accountant asked.
The question was logical, and probably the most important. Cai Jun, like his boss, had no experience in the military beyond a crash course, but the man’s talent of keeping track of all of the numbers that went into the operation could not be questioned. He had been with Su Ming from the mine’s very beginning, and the isolation had made the men close friends as well as colleagues. Su Ming understood the politics, but he would be nowhere without Cai Jun’s dark and mystical accounting magic.
“Two hours, maximum,” Su Ming said, looking sternly at his men. “How many weapons did the Russians leave behind?”
“They left many, perhaps fifty rifles, four machine guns, and many, many grenades,” Cai Jun answered. He had already done an inventory when the Russians left. To lose a worker or a shovel was not a serious issue. To let an AK-47 get into the hands of an African miner was something else altogether.
Su Ming shifted to Mandarin. “Give every one of us a rifle. Find the workers the supervisors trust and give them each a rifle, but do not give them ammunition yet. If the Russians don’t arrive in time, we will give them enough ammunition.” He spoke quickly. Time was of the essence.
“Su Ming, perhaps there is something else we could try,” a voice called out in English.
Su Ming looked at the group for the voice’s owner. The voice belonged to Yuan Yan, an older man who despite his years of service had never risen in the Party’s ranks. He was gruff and unlikeable but a hard worker nonetheless. More importantly, unlike Su Ming, he had spent a short time in the PLA.
