Lieutenant, page 19
part #2 of Dirigent Mercenary Corps Series
For the first few paces, Lon managed no more than a walk. He scanned the front, looking for signs of enemy activity and watching for any of his men who might have trouble. Girana’s squad was closest, the men in a shallow wedge in front of him. As the squads in front of them pulled away, Girana’s men also picked up their pace, and Lon stayed virtually in step.
Only a few flickering embers remained in the building that had housed the explosion, though the building glowed in infrared. The heat of the fire would remain for some time. That might help us, once we get across, Lon thought. With that glow behind them, his men would have greater protection from thermal imaging. They would be harder to detect with normal night-vision gear.
Lon nearly tripped over the curb on the north side of the street. He had not been watching where his feet went. He stumbled, but caught his balance and kept going forward. The first squads were entering the building on the left. Other squads were moving to set up positions north of the buildings and cover the eastern approaches.
Just past the nearest corner of the building on the left, Lon stopped. Girana halted his squad, directing them to various points of cover. Lon looked around for a few seconds, noting where his other squads had gone, then called Captain McGregor.
“We’re across,” Lon announced. “No trouble. No casualties. I’ve got my people in position. Whenever you’re ready.”
“We’re on our way … now,” McGregor replied.
McGregor’s company started running across the street. The first platoon was halfway across when a grenade exploded in the street, a little to the west. It was close enough to send some shrapnel into the nearest Dirigenters, but only one man fell, and the next two men picked him up by the shoulders and dragged him on with them to cover. Several other grenades exploded in the street, but only that first one was close enough to cause casualties. Grenades could be launched from cover, over buildings. Riflemen would have to expose themselves to get shots off at the men crossing the street.
So far, so good, Lon thought as the first of McGregor’s men pulled up in the area between the two buildings. A medical orderly went to the man who had been dragged across after being hit. Lon went to him.
“He’ll live,” the medic said, looking up at Lon for just an instant before he resumed tending the wounded man. “But he’ll recover a lot faster if we can get him into a trauma tube.”
Lon simply nodded, then moved back out of the way. The next wave of men from Delta Company was coming across.
“It went better than I expected,” Captain McGregor said once the last of his men were across. There had been a total of six casualties, but the other five wounds had been minor, almost insignificant. Only the one man needed a trauma tube.
“You were right about catching them off guard,” Lon said. “They still haven’t started to hit back. We’ve pushed right to the end of that building.” He pointed to the structure that had burned. “And across to the next street.”
McGregor had not specified deployments. That had been left, temporarily, to Lon’s judgment. “Might as well grab as much as we can hold,” the captain said.
“As long as nothing holds up that company from 1st Battalion,” Lon replied.
“They’re on schedule, as of five minutes ago. I’m going to see how much we can hurry them.” McGregor switched radio channels, and Lon could not hear his call. “Twenty minutes,” McGregor said when he returned to the channel he had been sharing with Lon. “They’ll be in position to come across behind us in twenty minutes. Now, I need to get in somewhere where I can check our deployment and see what we can do next.”
The two officers separated, but remained in contact by radio. Lon had focused his men on the left half of the salient, the building that had been abandoned by the Belletieners, leaving McGregor’s company to the right and across the center. While the captain checked the deployments, Lon moved into the building where half of his men had taken up defensive positions. The rest were outside, along the west and north of the structure, digging in as quickly as they could.
“I don’t believe we got over here so easily,” Tebba said. He remained with Lon, along with one fire team from his squad.
“Things might get rough in a hurry though, Tebba,” Lon said. “Maybe we caught them napping, but they know we’re here, and they’ve got to try to kick us back out. As long as we hold this gap, we’re a knife at their throats.”
“Well, let’s cut them and have done with it,” Tebba said. Lon did not respond.
They climbed to the second floor and went to the west end. That gave Lon a view of the enemy positions in the next block. He could see the enemy moving troops. He relayed that to Captain McGregor. “Could start any second now,” Lon said.
“On the other side too,” McGregor said. “You handle your end. I’ll deal with this side. Good luck, Nolan.”
“Yeah, you too, Captain.”
Then the shooting started.
Belletiene attacked Lon’s half of the salient, pushing three companies of infantry forward while more stayed behind and provided heavy covering fire. In the middle, the advancing soldiers leapfrogged each other, trying to suppress return fire from the Dirigenters. But Lon’s defenses were stacked, men flat on the ground and on each of the three levels of the buildings. There was no cover for the men coming at them. They kept coming.
Lon moved to a window and stood at the side, using his rifle to join in the fight. He could not concentrate exclusively on that, though. His primary responsibility was to command. After a moment, he moved back away from the window and gestured for Tebba to follow. They went up to the top floor and Lon looked out to the north, toward that part of the attack.
“If we can get up on the roof, I can watch it all at once,” Lon said, moving close enough to speak to Tebba without using the radio. “You seen anything that looks like roof access?”
Tebba shook his head. “Not inside. There’s a ladder on the outside to the roof, but that’s on the north wall, and I don’t think this is the time to try that.”
An explosion rocked the building. It was powerful enough to almost throw Lon and Tebba to the ground.
“What the hell was that?” Lon asked, shouting over a ringing in his ears.
“Cheez,” Tebba said. “They must be using rockets against us. That was something meant for a tank or an airplane.”
Lon switched to a channel that connected him to all of his noncoms. “What was that explosion?” he asked, already moving toward the stairs. There was nothing visible on the third floor. It must have hit lower.
“We’ve got a hole in the west wall, Lieutenant,” Ivar Dendrow reported. “We’ve got casualties there, a good part of fourth squad is down. I don’t know how serious yet.”
“What about you?” Lon demanded. “You don’t sound too good yourself.”
“I’ll live,” Dendrow said.
Lon and his escort kept going past the second floor landing down to the first. Most of the first floor had been one large room, with only a few small partitioned offices along the north side. That main room was now filled with smoke, but Lon could see the gaping hole at the far end of it. Men were being carried back away from the opening, out into the foyer near the stairs.
“Tebba, you’d better get down there.” Lon gestured to include the members of Girana’s squad with them. “Help plug that gap until we get things sorted out. I’ll be along in a minute.”
Girana nodded and started down the length of the room with his men. Lon stayed in the foyer, looking at the casualties who were being lined up in two rows. Two men were clearly dead. They had been laid off to the side, by themselves. Lon could not tell who they were. He started to move closer, but saw someone staggering toward him, out of the densest smoke, trailing one leg behind the other, supporting himself with his rifle. Lon went to help. The wounded man was Ivar Dendrow.
“We got hit bad, Lieutenant,” Dendrow said while Lon half carried him to where the other wounded were. “I think we’ve lost half of fourth squad, dead or too badly wounded to keep on.”
“Don’t worry about that now, Ivar,” Lon said. “I’ll get a medical orderly for you.”
Dendrow did not respond. Lon looked to make sure that the platoon sergeant was still alive, still conscious. He called for help by radio while he worked to put bandages over the most obvious of Dendrow’s wounds. His left arm and leg, his entire left side, was bloody. The side of his helmet was cracked.
You’re going to need a trauma tube, Lon thought. He looked around at the other wounded. Dendrow was not the only one who was going to need time in a tube to recover from this.
A medical orderly came over, knelt next to the platoon sergeant, and started examining him. Lon waited for a few seconds, then got up and stepped across, looking toward the hole that had been blown in the far wall. The building had holes in both ends now, the first remaining from the earlier explosion in the building next door.
The smoke was beginning to clear, finally. Lon started working his way toward the east end. He had to be careful. There were bullets flying, coming in the hole. He stayed low and moved to his right, along the series of cubicles on the north side. The doors were all open—those that had not been blown off—and Lon glanced in each one, looking out the window at what was going on along the north side of the building. The fighting was continuing, but Lon saw no evidence that the Belletiener force was getting too close.
Tebba Girana and the men he had brought with him had moved to the hole in the end wall. Lon moved to the side, finding a spot where he could look out to the right, past the corner of the building—the weak spot in the defenses. The building had no windows right on the corner, so there was a narrow angle that was not as well covered by fire zones as the rest of the perimeter. Only a squad of men outside, on the ground, had that angle directly in view.
“I think it’s covered okay, Lieutenant,” Tebba said when he saw where Lon was looking. “The men are mostly at one side of a window or the other. That gives them a chance to see anything happening along there.”
Lon nodded. “Ivar is out of action, wounded,” he said. “You’re senior squad leader in the platoon, so that means you sub for him until he’s fit for duty again.”
“Yes, sir.”
Lon told the other squad leaders of the temporary arrangement, to make certain that there would be no questions at a delicate time.
“Here they come!” an anonymous voice said. Lon thought that it had to be one of the men from the squads that had been attached to his command. It was someone whose voice he did not recognize. “On the west.”
Lon moved closer to the hole in the wall, bringing his rifle up as he did. It appeared that Belletiene was going to make a solid run at them, a frontal assault by two or three companies of infantry, with more supporting them from behind. Lon passed the news to Captain McGregor.
“They’re coming in from the north too,” McGregor said, “on the eastern half of our line. You’ll have to hold with what you’ve got. Still another fifteen minutes or more before our reinforcements arrive.”
“We’ll do our best,” Lon said before changing channels to talk to his squad leaders. He gave orders to move some of the men upstairs over to the west side of the building, and had another squad come into the building to reinforce the men on the ground floor. That squad could scarcely find positions to fire at the enemy. Lon wanted them close in case the Belletiener assault made it to the wall.
He looked around. If a grenade came through that hole and exploded inside the room, the results would be devastating, but there was no help for that. There was no time to move the men outside, and no time for them to dig slit trenches if they could.
The Belletiener attack faltered fifty yards from the Dirigenters who were outside. The enemy skirmish line dropped to the ground, grabbing what minimal cover they could find on the manicured lawn. But within fifteen seconds a second line of Belletieners came forward past the men on the ground. And a third line came along twenty yards behind them.
“I don’t think they’re gonna back off, Lieutenant,” Tebba said. “Someone’s putting the spurs to them. They’re gonna keep coming as long as any of them can move.”
“I think you’re right, Tebba. Let’s make sure not too many of them can move this far.”
The second skirmish line went to ground fifteen yards in front of the first. The prone soldiers continued to fire, and continued to suffer losses. The third line moved past. More men came up from behind, and the first line that had gone to ground got up—those who still could—and resumed its advance.
Lon’s men were firing at point-blank range. It was impossible to miss the men running on at them. But they kept coming, and men were falling on the Dirigent side of the line as well. “Fix bayonets,” Lon ordered on his all-hands channel.
Some of the men had already taken that precaution on their own. The rest hurried to comply.
Belletieners started trying to climb into the building. The first were cut down by bullets, some fired from no more than three feet away. But more kept coming, a suicidal surge. The Dirigenters on the outside were in hand-to-hand fighting, and were being pushed aside.
The last squad that Lon had ordered into the ground floor of the building came forward to meet the enemy. Ten Dirigenters moved forward toward the gap, their rifles firing single shots now, or short bursts, as they attempted to throw back—or destroy—the enemy assault. Lon moved into the gap with them, thinking only of ending the threat as quickly as possible. As long as the enemy could be kept out, Lon thought that his men would be able to hold. He heard reports from outside, and knew that the men out there were being hit even harder.
But the line was holding.
Less than three minutes after the first Belletiener had touched the outer wall, the immediate fight was over. The enemy had suffered dozens of men killed, and had more wounded. Few of the enemy had surrendered. The comparative silence left a hollow ringing in Lon’s ears. He stood dumbly, looking around at the bodies, his men and the enemy, too stunned to do much else.
A sudden cramp in his stomach brought him out of the daze. He blinked several times, then switched to his noncoms’ channel. “I want reports on our casualties as quickly as you can give them to me,” he said. “Keep your eyes open. This may not be over.”
19
The company from 1st Battalion came and went. The men stopped in the pocket that Lon’s platoons and Captain McGregor’s company had defended only long enough to let their commanding officer ascertain the situation. Then they moved on, pushing north. “We’re to try to split the enemy completely in half,” the company’s captain explained, taking only a few seconds to talk to Lon and George McGregor. Then he was off with his men.
“It looks like this might all be over with by morning,” McGregor told Lon when the two talked over a private channel. “Things are popping all around the perimeter now, from what I’ve been hearing.”
“So what are we supposed to do?” Lon asked.
“Treat our wounded, identify the dead, and pull ourselves together.” McGregor’s voice sounded as leaden as Lon felt. “If our people keep tightening the noose around the enemy, they can do without us for a bit.”
“Yeah, well, I’ve got men to see to, Captain. I know you do too,” Lon said. There was a taste of bile in his mouth, and a knot in his stomach. It was the taste he noticed most.
The wounded were being treated. Medical orderlies triaged the wounded, making certain that those in most desperate need of a trauma tube were transported to where the tubes were set up, then helped care for the wounded who could wait for tubes. Relays of men toted the wounded to 3rd Battalion’s medical aid station. The rest of the casualties, those with minor wounds, were mostly being cared for by their squad mates.
Lon checked in with each squad leader or assistant. Heyes Wurd, who had third platoon’s first squad, was among the dead. Third squad’s Corporal Ben Frehr had been wounded, and already carried across to get his turn in a trauma tube. By the time Lon had talked to the men in all of his squads, the knot in his stomach had become a steel claw. Third platoon had seven men dead and a dozen wounded. Fourth platoon’s numbers were five dead and fifteen wounded. The story was much the same in the squads that had been attached to Lon’s command—bad.
The Belletiener wounded were being treated by the prisoners, under guard. The number of dead Belletieners was revised upward several times, as wounded died of their injuries. Prisoners would be given turns in trauma tubes, but not at risk to Dirigenters. “We take care of our people first,” one DMC corporal told a prisoner who wanted a wounded friend taken immediately to a trauma tube. Lon overheard the exchange but did not contradict the corporal. “If we can get a man to a trauma tube alive, he’s got nineteen chances in twenty to stay alive,‘ the claim was, “and if he survives the first two minutes in the tube, his chances are virtually one hundred percent.”
Major Kai, 3rd Battalion’s second in command, came over to look at the site of the battle and talk to the officers who had led the fight. He asked questions and listened to Lon’s sometimes disjointed answers. He made commendatory remarks that Lon scarcely heard.
“As soon as we get our lines tied together north of you,” Kai said finally, “we’ll pull your people back to battalion headquarters and give you a chance to rest and regroup. You boys have taken a licking, but you did good. You did what we needed you to do.”
“I hope it was worth it,” Lon said, privately certain that it could not be, not even if the rest of the Belletieners suddenly decided to surrender. Or drop dead. “I lost more than ten percent of my men killed.”
“I know it’s hard, Lieutenant,” Major Kai said. “I’ve been through it too. But your lads may have saved a great many other lives tonight.”
It was another fifteen minutes before Lon received the order to pull his men back to 3rd Battalion headquarters, which had moved closer to the medical aid station. Captain McGregor’s company moved there as well. It too had taken serious casualties. McGregor was wounded, had lost part of his left hand, but he had stayed with his men until all of them could pull back. Once they reached the aid station, his lead sergeant half hauled the captain to help.
