Blood Memory (Mongol Moon), page 8
Amidst the carnage, the colonel could see the soldier in the Airborne telnyashka shoulder and then fire an RPG at the now departing American vehicles, a mere second before a bullet hit him, his head disappearing in a cloud of red mist which floated in the breeze.
As the American vehicle drove on and passed out of view, the colonel climbed out of his vehicle, nearly falling to the ground in disbelief. He needed to see how badly the Americans had damaged them.
“You, you—” he pointed to two stunned soldiers standing next to his vehicle who at least had weapons. “Get down the road that way, sound the alarm if the Americans come back.” The colonel knew these two soldiers could not mount any sort of respectable defense against an American column, but if they managed to get some rounds off before their deaths, he would know the Americans were returning.
Walking up to the Ural behind him, which poured billowing smoke and featured a corpse for a driver, he hesitated before looking into the truck’s rear.
Bodies were stacked everywhere. Some men had not even gotten out of their seats before they were torn apart by the American gun.
More good Russian boys killed by those fucking Americans, the colonel thought to himself, kicking aside the now empty RPG launcher that lay at his feet, the headless corpse of its previous owner still gripping the handle as if waiting for a ghostly comrade to reload for him.
Suddenly a moan broke the stillness. A gasp for help from a wounded man under the pile of dead. The colonel watched as his men unceremoniously unpiled the corpses, separating the dead from the dying.
It wasn’t easy to count, but no one in the vehicle’s rear had escaped from injury. One, maybe two, could ride on. A handful more had lost arms, or legs, while the dead were a mixed bag of body parts and giant holes.
“Do your duty,” the colonel said, looking at the lieutenant with shaky hands.
As he walked away from the slaughter, the quiet pops of a pistol reinforced his determination. “I’m coming for you,” he said, staring at the road the Americans had disappeared down.
Day 2
National Highway M3, Chingali, Zambia
Planned Route: Murundi to Mbala, Zambia
838 Miles to Rwanda
“One, this is Two, fucking floor it!” Frey yelled into the radio. Behind him he could see smoke rising from whomever it was that their last vehicle was firing at.
“Shit!” Barsamian screamed above him, turning his head to the rear of the convoy. “Vic Eight is lighting someone up with fucking fifty cal. Goddamn it!” he swore. Another day, another missed opportunity for Private First Class Barsamian.
The gunfight was over as soon as it began. Frey waited long enough to be sure his last vehicle had cleared the danger before he called out over the radio. He had been the guy fighting for his life before, and he knew the anger it caused when someone was also in your ear asking for an update.
“All vix, this is Two, SITREP, over.” Frey tried to remain calm despite every fiber of his being screaming at him to pull his vehicle out of line and go check on his family.
“One’s up, green, green, amber,” the voice came over the radio. The ACE report that would tell Frey the status of his vehicles had been given every stop and start since the beginning of the convoy two days before and had become almost second nature to the individual vehicle commanders. It went in order: Ammo, Casualties, and Equipment. Green meant perfect, Amber meant an issue, and Red or Black, depending on the category, meant a major issue.
“Three, green, green, green,” the Marine corporal commanding the first LMTV directly behind Frey answered.
“Four, green, green, green,” Gunnery Sergeant Harmon reported. Crisp. To the point.
“This is Five, we are, alpha—green; charlie—green; echo—amber,” the sergeant major who commanded the middle gun truck replied. Spelling it all out, by the book. His fuel was amber, and Frey knew the HMMWVs would run lowest fastest. It was nothing to worry about, yet.
“Six, um… green, green, green, I guess,” the National Guard sergeant commanding the third cargo truck said.
Frey exploded. “You guess or you know? What is your status?” It took every semblance of professionalism he had not to scream over the radio. His family was in truck number six.
“We can’t see into the cargo bed, but we got the knock,” Sergeant Emmet replied in his Western drawl. The sergeant was correct. The drivers and commanders of the bigger LMTVs couldn’t actually see into the beds of the trucks to the passengers, but they had worked out a system of hammer blows to the metal cab. One meant good, Three meant bad.
Amanda’s got it, Frey reminded himself. Get your fucking head in the game.
“Roger,” he replied curtly. “Seven, go.”
“Two, this is Seven, we are green across the board.” The last LMTV was also being commanded by one of the National Guard sergeants, but one who clearly didn’t want to incur the major’s fury.
“Two, Eight,” Lieutenant Betz came last. “We are, um… amber, green, amber,” he said, acknowledging that they had used ammunition—and not just one round.
“Eight, this is Two. Roger, were those Russian Army trucks?” Frey asked. He had seen them, and while the Ural trucks were common throughout Africa, TIGRs meant only one thing. At forty-five miles an hour, with just a glance through the ballistic windows of his HMMWV, he hadn’t been sure.
There was long silence on the radio. So long that Frey checked his microphone switch to ensure it had been on transmit before the silence was broken suddenly by a new voice.
“Two, this is Eight Golf.” Golf. That was the gunner of the eighth vehicle, but the voice didn’t belong to the Marine corporal who was usually Lieutenant Betz’s gunner. It belonged to the young “Cultural Attaché” that had been assigned to Tanzania as his first posting. What the young man who had graduated with a Masters in Global Affairs from Yale the year before knew about culture, Frey could only guess, but what he did know was that the kid didn’t work for the State Department. He worked for the CIA.
“We spotted a Russian column, likely PMC, off the left side on the intersecting road. Group was armed, and had at least one TIGR MRAP, maybe eight URAL trucks, and an assortment of other vehicles,” the young CIA officer continued, incorrectly labeling the TIGR as an MRAP, but Frey let it go. “We engaged, damaged one TIGR, destroyed one URAL, and estimate at least ten enemy KIA.”
The thoughts swam through Frey’s brain. How dare this idiot just engage them? They could have worked something out, or maybe just slipped by unnoticed. Frey pressed the button to enable the microphone and then hesitated. That many trucks, this far from the Congo, what was that? It had to be Russian; the kid was probably right. With all those trucks, what were they doing out here? That couldn’t be a coincidence. Besides, he had told Lieutenant Betz engagement was at his discretion, and they were definitely at war.
“Roger,” Frey finally replied. “Keep your gun at the six o’clock and make sure no one follows us.”
Frey didn’t wait for the shaken men in the last truck to respond. They heard their orders and there was work to do. “One, this is Two.”
“Already on it,” the lead vehicle responded, and Frey could see the man in the gun turret ahead of him squat down and come back up with the drone in his hand. He held it up above his head as the rotors began to spin, and the machine raced by Frey’s truck back towards the Russians they had just passed.
Major Frey tried to focus his eyes on the paper map stuffed into the laminate in his hands. They were approaching the city of Kasama and there was nowhere for them to turn off to and take an alternate route before they arrived.
“Seven, this is Eight,” Lieutenant Betz’s voice came back on the radio, talking to the last LMTV in line. “Your left rear tire is shedding pieces at us.”
This was the worst possible news. A casualty they could deal with, but to have to stop now, with a larger and angrier enemy behind them, was tantamount to suicide.
“Eight, this is Seven, yeah, my Delta is telling me the vehicle is starting to shake a little, and… it’s, um, getting worse.” A Delta was a driver. The Golfs and the Deltas always annoyed Frey. It served no purpose and sounded silly, but it was tradition. Why they didn’t just say “driver” was beyond Frey’s understanding.
Frey’s mind raced through the variables and the moves he had available. They would have to stop, but with the Russians behind him.
“Two, One,” John’s voice interrupted the moving pieces in Frey’s brain. “We got drone footage. Yeah, those dudes are stopped, and aren’t going anywhere for a few. Ivy League really fucked those dudes up bad. I’m going to fly it up ahead, see if we can find a concealed spot. Seven, how long can you hold it out?” John inquired.
“We, um… You better hurry, One,” the nervous voice from the wounded LMTV answered. “Also… we just got three knocks from the rear, don’t know what about,” he informed everyone.
“Halt the convoy,” Frey interrupted. He had heard enough. One problem was bad; two needed to be addressed immediately. He could not let them compound, not with the margin for error so small. “Here on the right, this little compound. Security out. One, keep that drone between us and the Russians,” Frey said as the convoy pulled off the highway into a small group of tiny blue houses. Likely the employee housing for the nature resort down the road.
As the vehicles came to a stop, LMTVs in the middle, gun trucks on the outside, Frey pulled off the headset and grabbed his rifle as he pushed his heavy armored door open.
Frey was the second man to have his boots on the ground. From his LMTV, Gunny Harmon beat him by a full heartbeat, and before Frey had even gotten both feet down, Harmon was getting his raggedy, and now terrified, security element into position.
Running past the vehicle his family was in, Frey stole a quick glance, counting, one, two, three Freys, and all limbs attached. He’d worry about their mental state later. Right now he had to get to the last LMTV.
Walking up to the great green monster, he could see right away what had happened. An RPG, the lone round the Russians had managed to get off, had impacted on the left rear wheel. It had shredded large chunks of thick rubber tire off. The tire, despite being run flat, was clearly done for. They could run it just a little bit further, but its useful life was counted in minutes.
Sergeant Emmet, one of the National Guardsmen who had been assigned as the maintenance lead, was already checking out the tire. His look confirmed the major’s diagnosis.
“Alright, give me two bodies, we need to get this thing changed, let’s go, move ya asses!” he yelled, his accent strangely Southern, despite the fact he was in the Montana National Guard. He spit out a piece of Skoal. “Spare tire, hydraulic jack, and some flat pieces of wood. This ground’s soft as baby poo.”
Frey moved on, the matter clearly in hand, and headed for the rear of the vehicle where he could see Lieutenant Betz’s gun truck. The young agency man was leaning over the side of the gun turret and vomiting. Good, I’m not the only one, Frey thought as he unhooked the rear gate to the LMTV. He felt something odd as he lowered the gate, and looked down at his hands. They were covered in blood.
The world slowed, Gunny’s yelling and Sergeant Emmet’s cursing faded into a low hum, as Frey continued to drop the liftgate. Inside the bed of the last LMTV had been much of their food supply, MREs still secured in their cardboard packaging, and various members of the embassy staff and the USAID group.
From the darkness of the covered truck, a pair of bright blue eyes peered at him. They belonged to one of the female members of the embassy staff, the same innocent one who had asked him what to do with the colonel’s body back at the embassy. Frey couldn’t remember her name, but in her lap, she was cradling a bleeding and semi-conscious young man. One of her colleagues. Her eyes appeared different now, somehow more worldly, and yet, still with that flicker of youthful hope that everything would be okay.
As more light shone in, Frey could see there were holes in the canvas siding, and two of the USAID kids trying desperately to put pressure on the wound of a third. The RPG must have hit the tire, or the side, and sent shrapnel through the canvas siding. Frey stared, transfixed by the blood and those piercing blue eyes. For the briefest of moments, he was unable to prioritize the myriad variables and challenges the group was now facing.
“Corpsman!” A scream went up beside him, dragging him back to the real world.
Frey turned towards the voice to see a camouflage blur flying past him into the bed of the LMTV, without even having paused to put down the ladder. He recognized the face, it was one of the Navy corpsman attached to the Marines, yelling for his backup as he started triage.
The convoy’s second corpsman was up front in the second LMTV, and was moving towards the rear, dragging one of the USAID members by the arm. The young civilian had been made an assistant medic in case of emergency. All of the civilians had been assigned other duties.
The second corpsman, technically the senior of the two at the ripe old age of 23, picked up the pace, moving his young but surprisingly athletic assistant with a hearty “pick it up, mother fucker.”
Frey stepped back as they reached the back of the LMTV, watching the two young men spring into action. The corpsman—Jimenez, Frey placed his name as he was halfway into the LMTV—turned back to the USAID worker, who was frozen in his tracks.
Jimenez climbed back down, grabbing the man by the shirt. “Trevor, let’s fucking go, your friend fucking needs you, man,” Jimenez spoke low but urgently to the shell-shocked young man.
“Get in there, Doc, I got this,” Frey told the sailor, snapping out of his own daze.
“Aye, sir.” In less than a second, Jimenez was up into the LMTV and at work.
Frey stepped behind the young man, putting his hand on his back, and said, “It’s just blood. They are bleeding, and they need you to stop it. Just like any cut you’ve ever had. Same thing. One step at a time, they need you… can you help them?”
Trevor turned his head towards Frey, and the fear receded in the young man’s eyes as courage took its place.
“Yes, sir,” Trevor responded, nodding rapidly.
“Get in there, man,” Frey told him, giving him a quick push on the back before walking back up the convoy towards the lead vehicle, where Sergeant Major Sweeney already had the command group assembled. He didn’t see Amanda and the kids in their vehicle, but was grateful for that at the moment.
The command group was huddled around John’s little laptop screen watching the drone feed, and didn’t even see Frey walk up.
“Lord, have mercy,” Lieutenant Betz whispered as he watched. “Are… are they, killing…” his voice trailed off in disbelief.
“Yes,” John responded, looking up at Alex as he joined the group.
Frey took a quick mental attendance, exhaled, and got back into the game. “What is the situation with the Russians?”
“Looks like about a hundred to a hundred fifty, from what we can count. Bunch of light vehicles, couple trucks, some machine guns and RPGs, but nothing heavy that we can see,” John reported. “They are cutting their dead weight now, and will be heading this way.”
Frey stared at the screen and did the math. Even at a low estimate, a hundred Russian mercenaries was way more than his unit could handle. Without air support or artillery, they stood no chance against this group, whoever they were. Sooner rather than later these Russians would be moving their way again, and the Americans needed not to be here when they arrived.
“Okay, listen up, we need to get moving quickly. As soon as we can replace that tire, we are going to transfer the casualties and get on the move,” Frey started, only to be interrupted by the ambassador.
“What are the casualties, Major?” Ambassador Brown asked respectfully.
“Right now, two wounded. One USAID, one of your staff, sir, not sure who. Doc will tell us soon,” Frey said, cursing himself for not thinking of informing the group of the status of the casualties, knowing the ambassador would put people first. The casualties were tragic, but not mission-essential. In Frey’s military mind, they were about halfway down the list of priorities.
“Alex,” John interjected, “we can’t outrun those people.”
“And we can’t outfight them,” Frey retorted.
“Could we maybe lie low and let them pass?” the ambassador suggested to the group.
“That won’t work for long, and then they’ll be ahead of us, between us and the border,” Frey responded and for the first time considered the very real prospect of defeat.
A pair of footsteps and an out of breath Trevor approached the group, and panted, “I… I have an update.”
Every eye locked on to the blond kid covered in other people’s blood as he tried to catch his breath.
“Hands above your head, son,” Sergeant Major Sweeney offered, repeating some advice he had likely picked up decades before playing high school football. Trevor obeyed, putting his hands on his head and standing upright.
“Hospital Corpsman Third Class Jimenez says that Davis has a collapsed lung, and shrapnel in his torso, and he is Urgent,” Trevor said raggedly, talking about the member of the ambassador’s staff.
“And that… that Juaqim has shrapnel in his leg, a severed fibular artery, and is urgent surgical.” Trevor looked grimly at the group. “Doc says the damage is too extensive for him to fix, and… he needs to amputate.” Trevor was on the verge of tears for his friend. “He asked if, maybe, your wife could help.”
Frey stood across from the young, blood-soaked man, and for a moment forgot he was a soldier and answered as husband and father. “No.”
