The enemy knew that the one man they had accounted for, Rory Alladay, would not be alone and the view of the canyon floor now differed markedly from less than a minute ago.
From the Chinese point of view the threat was too close in for them to call in mortar, artillery or air support, so the Chinese commander elected a reconnaissance by fire instead.
A wiser commander would have ordered just one of his men to fire at suspicious shapes though, not the whole section.
Muzzle flashes emitted from each of the ‘rocks’ ahead of them.
Richard was in the process of dropping prone, his ears ringing painfully from the loud cracks of high velocity rounds passing close by, when he was struck a fierce blow on the right side of the chest. He landed hard, the breath driven from him and his right arm numb from shoulder to fingertips.
The weight of his bergan pressed him face first into the snow, smothering him in his suddenly disabled state its sheer weight preventing his lungs from fully inflating. Spots danced before his eyes and he realised the vulnerability of his position. Adrenaline assisted him to roll onto his right side where his left hand could reach the quick release buckle of his bergan. Free of its burden he rolled prone once more with incoming small arms kicking up the snow about him and striking the bulky pack.
Richard’s job was to control the fight, not squirm about attracting the incoming but he had to first get himself into a position where he could do that job. The bergan was being used as an aiming point so groping for the pistol grip of his M4 he rolled clear of the bergan and awkwardly brought the weapon up one handed with the intention of putting some rounds down, inaccurate or not, in the general direction of their attackers but he sensed, rather than saw, that something was amiss with the weapon. The weight and balance were all wrong.
Behind him the M&AWC had reacted automatically, beginning the business of winning the fire fight.
The single aimed shots from the professionals, the marines, proving far more effective than what appeared to be ‘point and blat’ by the opposition.
Richard Dewar used the light from the flare to quickly examine himself, his weapon, and to also see what he could of his enemy.
There was no blood but there were several tears in his arctic whites. The M4 had been wrecked by a round that had struck the body of the weapon but had been deflected off the working parts and exited via the butt. Just a length of decapitated buffer spring was left protruding from where the telescopic butt assembly should have been.
He removed the full magazine and laid the weapon aside, it was useless now, so Richard studied the opposition instead.
Five muzzle flashes were apparent from ahead of them, which he assumed made the Chinese troops of section strength.
An entrenching tool stood upright, visible in the muzzle flash of their squad’s automatic weapon which explained what the lone soldier had been doing, supposedly on sentry whilst the rest of his section dug in.
When Richard Dewar had gone down, Sergeant McCormack had immediately taken over, directing the marine’s fire. They ganged up on the enemy’s squad automatic weapon first before pairing up on the riflemen.
The parachute flare flickered, approaching burnout and a second took its place, but the fading light was good enough to reveal the smoky launch position for Sergeant McCormack to loft a 40mm grenade from his M4s underslung launcher, mortally wounding the Chinese section commander.
Someone threw smoke and someone else unwisely broke for the rear before the smoke had established itself as a temporary cover from view. A flurry of rounds from the marines cut the man down.
Light filled the valley again, a hundred times brighter than the tail flame of the ICBM, and when it faded in intensity it was to take on the reds and gold’s normally associated with the beauty of sunsets, reflecting off the side of the valley from its source on the other side of the mountain.
The ground bucked violently, triggering rock falls and avalanches.
Richard knew without looking what the cause was.
With night vision totally shot he shouted a warning, telling his men to brace themselves, and then he gasped in shock and not a little fear.
As if the door of a giant blast furnace had been suddenly opened behind him the snow began to melt and the ice beneath it started to thaw. Richard could hear the sounds of the opposing force bugging out, slipping on the incredibly slick melting surface, crawling backwards, one or two firing random shots into the smoke cover until they judged they were far enough away to try to get up and try to run. Those who made it upright were struck by flying rocky debris, and knocked flat by a blast wave that triggered further rock falls.
Sound accompanied the shock wave, the most terrible blast of noise Richard had ever heard. It fractured the soul in its awful intensity, reducing brave men to trembling shades.
After the blast wave had swept over them and beyond Richard lay for a long, long moments, his thermal clothing soaked in melt water, listening to the clap of doom echoing off the mountain peaks.
“The peaks!” he though in alarm, rolling on his side in a puddle of melt water to look.
“Get up!” he shouted to his men, all prone upon the melting ice, some on their sides, curled into balls hugging their knees with eyes wide with fear.
“Leave the bergens, leave everything but personal weapons, ropes and climbing gear…move!”
Men stirred at his words but two did not, remaining in foetal positions.
Sergeant McCormack rose up onto his knees and looked to his left, up the rising valley towards the centre of the mountain range, at mountains that no longer wore a cap of white.
“Get up and follow the boss if you want to live…get up and RUN!” he shouted, reinforcing Major Dewar’s words.
Richard crawled forward to where Rory lay.
The reddish glow was diminishing as the fireball dissipated but its light still reflected off Corporal Alladay’s left eye, the bullet which killed him having entered the right. Richard removed the ID disks from around the fallen man’s neck.
“Sorry Rory.”
Atop Rory’s Bergen was a coiled 60m rope, held in place with webbing straps and secured with a quick release buckle. Richard took it and also snatched up the M4 that lay beside the body. He stood carefully, and then slipped and slithered as fast as possible towards the rock wall.
The only enemy he could see were laying still or moving feebly.
The closer to the wall he got the more traction he found beneath his feet, the rock dust and debris from above acting like grit on an icy road.
Turning about he saw all of his men up and moving but strung out, although Sergeant McCormack had taken up the tail-end-Charlie position, assisting a limping marine and chivvying along the remainder in that gruff and aggressive Glasgow accent of his.
At the wall of the narrow valley Richard slung the weapon across his shoulders and began to climb rapidly, using the remaining glow by which to see hand and footholds until he came to a rock shelf after thirty metres or so. He just hoped it was high enough.
Lifting his smock to reach his hammer and pitons he furiously drove two into the rock face, grunting with the effort of each blow and quickly attaching himself to them by his harness, clipping a carabiner through the eye of each before hammering a further piton into the rock. He attached one end of Rory’s rope through the eye, tied it off and threaded the other end of the rope through a chemical light sticks eye and knotted it. Snapping the light stick, Richard activated it and dropping the rope into the returning darkness. He had no schermoulies to hand; it was Sod’s Law of course, just when he could have used the light to provide illumination for his men to climb by, there were two in the left side pocket of his bullet perforated bergen, somewhere out there on the canyon floor and lost to him now.