Caleb did a quick map check and they continued to move off south, with Alpha split into front and rear security teams to cover the casualty evacuation in the center.
As they moved south they came to a fire break that had once been used as a vehicle track. Rather than cross it or walk on it, they veered off to the south east and hand railed the feature, keeping it about seventy five meters to their right. The patrol was moving at a fast walk, the two teams of Alpha to the front and rear, with Bravo in the center carrying the stretcher with the wounded man.
Olson’s team was on point, strung out in single file. Phillips, Gibbs and McCarthy formed the rest of the team, with Phillips walking point. Caleb moved a little behind Olson’s front team and they all moved in a single file through the trees.
There was something nagging at Caleb. It suddenly hit him with a realization.
The helicopters!
They had passed over headed south, following the contact with the Regime platoon to the north. They sounded like the big Chinook CH-47s with the front and rear props. He had a pretty good idea that they were facing a Regime hunter-killer company, probably based off one of the old Ranger Companies from before this all started.
Hand railing the feature, which was an obvious egress route from the patrol base, meant that the patrol walked into one of the flank protection/cut-off groups belonging to the airborne reaction force platoon’s hasty ambush.
The Regime platoon had been landed by the helicopters in a clearing just off the trail to the south east in response to the sweep platoon making contact with the rebel patrol base. They were to act as a blocking force (or cut-off group) across the patrols expected line of exfiltration.
They had expected the patrol to move along the track, and as such the main kill group was oriented in a line facing south west to cover the track. Their right hand cut-off group was a fire team sized component and they had also been concentrating on the track, where they expected the enemy to come from the north west.
Caleb heard the shout of ‘Contact Front!” from the lead team just as a fusillade of firing went off at the head of the patrol. The lead team had the drop on the cut-off group and had walked pretty much on top of them, Phillips opening fire at a range of fifteen meters as he saw them. As Phillips fired on rapid the other three in his team stepped left and right to create an angle of fire, Olson as the second man now able to fire at the enemy past Phillips.
As Phillips and Olson bounded back, they were covered by Gibbs and McCarthy, who had pushed out left and right. The team ended up roughly on line, forming two buddy pairs to fight back together.
Olson took control of them and they began to buddy move back, firing as they went, having hit at least three of the enemy cut-off group. Celeb moved back and Bravo, the stretcher squad, also moved rapidly back ahead of him while the rear team from Alpha moved ahead of them as security and to establish a rally point.
The main kill group of the new Regime platoon was trying to move out of their ambush position in order to maneuver on the patrol, but before they could do so the lead team managed to break contact in the trees.
The patrol moved back several hundred meters in a north easterly direction to a rally point and the patrol leader got them into a wedge formation, each squad forming a side of the wedge in a hasty ambush position so that each of the squads faced the last known direction of one of the two enemy platoons: Alpha to the south west, Bravo to the north west. Some of the guys provided rear protection.
It was effectively a hasty triangular ambush with the third side missing, just covered to the rear by a couple of guys.
Doc was working on the casualty in the center. The team leaders got around and checked on the men, redistributing ammunition and ‘bombing up’ their empty magazines during the lull.
Caleb was running out of options. He was still pretty close to the enemy and with the confusion in the woods it would be hard for the enemy to bring in indirect fire. He was doing a map estimate, assessing the situation, and reckoned that their best bet would be to head off the high ground in an easterly direction, getting into one of the draws or ravines that ran down off the ridge, then exfiltrating from the current trap.
As Caleb was about to give the order to move out they were contacted again by the Regime platoon following up from the south. From their static ambush position the patrol were able to hit the enemy lead squad with accurate effective fire, forcing them to go to ground.
However, shortly after they were contacted by the original Regime platoon moving down from the north west. Then a worrying thing happened: having fixed their position, the enemy pulled back.
The helicopters must have dropped off an 81mm mortar squad and shortly after the mortar rounds came screaming in on their position with concussive detonations: ‘crump, crump, crump’.
Some of the rounds hit the trees, effectively air bursting and sending both shrapnel and wood splinters down onto the patrol. The fighters were hugging whatever cover they could find as the rounds impacted around them. Luckily, indirect fire is an area weapon and none of the patrol was hit in the first barrage. They were however, effectively suppressed.
It was either dig in and die in place, or get the hell out of there.
Caleb gave the preparatory order: on his order, rally three hundred meters east of their location. He waited for a lull in the fire and gave the order; the patrol ‘bomb burst’ out of their positions and ran like mad men out of the killing area, Bravo team sprinting with the stretcher.
As they ran, one of the fighters was hit with shrapnel in the upper back, puncturing his lung. He stumbled, caught himself and kept running, aided by a buddy. They made it the three hundred meters and were out of the impact area of the incoming mortars. Caleb called the rally point and the patrol got into yet another defensive position.
They got into an all-round defensive formation. Doc was working on the new casualty and he slapped an occlusive dressing on the sucking chest wound. The casualty was starting to suffer progressive respiratory distress, indicating a tension pneumothorax, so Doc put in a needle chest decompression in his upper chest slightly below the collar bone, which alleviated the symptoms. Given the exigent circumstances it allowed the fighter to keep moving.
The patrol got themselves back into formation and started to move rapidly away east towards where the ground fell away down the steep sided ridge into the valley.
As they moved, one of the fighters noticed the sound of a distant helicopter engine and passed it on up the line. They reached a place where at some point the trees had been felled and it was an area of thinner brush and tree growth extending about a hundred meters before the forest started again on the edge of the slope down. It was a linear danger area but they did not really have much choice but to keep going.
As they headed across out of the forest canopy in their patrol formation, the gunner in the Apache attack helicopter picked them up on his thermal imager. He had been tracking what he thought was the hunted patrol for a few minutes, but given the close combat in the woods he had been unable to clearly identify the patrol from his own forces. The pilot maneuvered on station in order to give the gunner the best shot.
The Hydra 70 rocket burst in the air before it hit the patrol, sending ninety six flechette darts into the center of the patrol where the stretcher party was jogging along. The casualty on the stretcher as well as four others surrounding him, including Doc and Chavez, disintegrated into a red mist under the impact of the darts.