The Effing Press. They were greeted by LT Carter, who ran over to them with a giant sucking sound and started shaking their hands. He stood by their extra camera equipment and yelled for me as the Huey thundered back up river.
“Sergeant, get a detail together and move this equipment down to the boats!”
“NO FUCKING WAY!” I yelled back.
LT Carter stopped his sucking up for a minute to come over to talk to me.
“What is your problem, Sergeant?”
“Sir, what is the point to this mission? We are a recon element, not a goddamned circus.”
“Sergeant, the mission is to show the world that we are returning to the places that mean something to America. This camera crew is going to help us show that.”
I shook my head in disgust. “They are going to get us killed.”
“Sergeant, you will protect these men with your life, if need be. Their mission is more important than any one man. Do you understand?”
“Oh yeah, I understand that those douchebags are going to get themselves and us killed and or eaten. They aren’t going.”
“I’ll load their equipment myself if I have to.”
“Fine. Have fun. Arrivederci. Whatever.”
“When we get back to Fort Orange, Sergeant, I’m bringing you up on charges of insubordination and dereliction of duty.”
“How about we get through this mission first, and then we see what’s a sucky attitude and what is reality!”
I turned my back to him and walked away. A little later I saw him yelling at Redshirt and Mya to load the equipment into the boats, and the Navy boat crew giving him shit about the extra weight.
So here we were. My team was in one boat, and the LT, Mya, Redshirt, the reporter and his cameraman in the other. I knew the “reporter” from my days in Afghanistan. He had done a couple of embeds, then managed to alienate and piss off just about everyone in the military with his crappy reporting and misdirected crusades, and spent the rest of the war “reporting” from Singapore. I wasn’t surprised he had survived. Cockroaches always do.
We cut the engines and shipped oars about two hundred meters from the remains of the dock, but let the current carry us slowly there. As we drifted up, we all watched through our NVGs for signs of Zs. I saw one stumbling through the parking lot, then hear a muted phut from Ahmed’s rifle and the figure went down. We backed water with our oars for a few minutes to see if anything else came out, then tied up to the dock.
The team fanned out, rifles ready, scanning the parking lot to see if there were any other Zs waiting around. We set up a small perimeter while the packs were unloaded, then the second boat pulled up and started unloading the camera crew and their gear. They made too much noise and I ignored them. I noticed Mya and Redshift had immediately moved away from the LT and over to where Brit and Jonesy held part of the perimeter. They weren’t stupid.
The plan was for us to wait for daylight before moving uphill towards the main campus. Unfortunately, no plan survives contact with the enemy, and in this case, the enemy was us. Or, to be more specific, the asswipe reporter and his cameraman.
A high intensity light suddenly lit behind the team, silhouetting us all. It shone full on the LT, who stood next to the reporter, bedazzled look on his face, while the guy shoved a microphone at him. That lasted all of about two seconds before Brit turned and fired a burst that shattered the camera, the light, and the cameraman’s shoulder. Chaos erupted.
“YOU STUPID ASSHOLES!”
“That bitch shot me!”
“Sorry, I was aiming for the camera!”
“Not helping, Brit!”
“Sergeant Agostine, get your men under control!”
The cameraman was rolling on the ground, screaming. The LT was yelling and the reporter had pissed himself, from what I could smell. The rest of the team stood silent, scanning the perimeter. Waiting.
I walked over to the wounded man; Mya was already putting a field bandage on his wound. She whispered “Right through, he’ll be fine.” I squeezed her shoulder, whispered “good job” to her, then stood up and slapped the LT across the face. He stopped yelling.
“Sir, shut the hell up and LISTEN!”
He fell silent, eyes wide, then he heard it too. The moan. They were coming.
I whistled once and made a circle in the air with my hand. We fell back to the dock and started firing at the figures that were beginning to stumble down the road towards us. Some were actually running, smelling the blood from the wounded cameraman.
I banged the end of a green flare on the ground and it shot into the air. Out on the river, I heard the engines of the boats roar to life, and breathed a sigh of relief. The first one pulled in thirty seconds later, and we threw the cameraman and reporter in bodily. I was right; he had pissed and shit himself. Next went Mya and Doc, then Redshirt.
“Get in, Sir.”
“No, Sergeant, I will be the last one to get on the boat, fighting off the demons while you load your team.”
Around us the firing increased, joined by the 240Bs on the boats. They scattered their bursts head high, hoping to catch the Z but most of their bullets tore right through. My team tried to drop them with head shots, but it was tough to do in the dark.
“OK, suit yourself!” I turned and waved the rest of the guys in, and they piled in the second boat. The LT looked at me, then turned and ran for the boat as fast as possible, passing Brit and Jonesy on the way. Ahmed and I backed towards the dock, firing as we went, then jumped as it started to pull out. We landed in the bottom of the boat and Ahmed’s rifle hit me in the back of the head, making me see stars.
While I sat there, trying to clear my head, I heard Brit on the radio, finishing up a call for fire on Priority Target AA3427, which we had marked before leaving the base that night. We had over twenty of them pre-plotted but I hadn’t expected to need them right away.
I watched as the night was split open by the CRACK CRACK CRACK of variable timed rounds bursting over the parking lot, sending thousands of ball bearings through the several hundred Zs gathered there.
Chapter 35
Dawn found us pulling back up to the barges tied off at Firebase Castle. A trauma team was waiting for the cameraman, but Doc had already done a pretty good job of stopping the blood flow. One round had shattered his shoulder blade, and it was painful, but he wasn’t in any danger of bleeding out.
The reporter pretty much ran off the boat, and Brit tracked him with her rifle as he jumped off without looking back. I stopped her from taking a shot at him, but only just. He had almost gotten us all killed, and pretty much blown the mission, for now.
LT Carter slunk off toward the base Command Post, a tent with the American flag flying over it. I knew that we would have to “talk” later, but maybe some time for him to think about what had happened would be good. Meanwhile, I had another mission to plan. Well, same mission, different plan.
“Hey Nick, how long are we going to be here?”
“We’re going to try again tonight, so get some sleep.” Muttered grumblings as they pulled out their pop-up tents, or wandered off to find someplace dark to hide out and catch some shuteye.
I headed over to the Fire Direction Center for the Artillery, and I brought Jonesy with me. As we walked, I told him my latest idea.
“J, I want you to find an M-203 and put it on your rifle. Then find some grenades, pull the explosive head out so you have just the propellant charge, and try two things: Rig up a thumper to the shell, and see if you can get it to survive getting kicked out of the barrel. Try and see if you can rig a flashbang, or if you can actually find some for a 203, that would be great too.”