The sergeant major came running back to the headquarters element and rustled up a security detail to sweep the nearby buildings. A few minutes later, he checked on his suddenly busy commander.
“Well, so much for a quiet rest stop. Medic says Specialist McBride will live, but it’s a tossup if they can save the arm. We’re trying to get him on a MEDEVAC flight, but… well, you know how it is, sir. No birds available. Could take a while.”
The colonel never thought he’d call his time in Afghanistan “the good ‘ole days.” He marveled at the extravagant luxuries they used to take for granted. Back then, the Army would send a MEDEVAC helicopter for practically any injury and rush the wounded to a fully staffed hospital. No matter what happened, a wounded soldier was rarely more than 30 minutes away from some of the finest trauma surgeons in the world.
Not in this war though. Not with all the bloody business they kept sending back to the rear. ‘Triage’ took on its original meaning in this conflict. It could take hours to evacuate soldiers with sucking chest wounds, and that was just to a field aide station. Hauling their broken bodies to a real hospital usually took a day or two. Sometimes longer. The cruel irony was that the longer a wounded soldier survived, the lower priority his or her injury was given. The merciless logic from the medics made a certain amount of sense: If someone survived so long, surely they couldn’t be in that much danger.
“Should we bother setting up a holding point for any locals that might know who the shooter was?”
“The locals… yeah. Don’t bother. We need to get moving. The Texans stumbled headfirst into a beehive of Feds at Vicksburg. Command’s pouring everything we got in there.”
“We’re going to pull their ass out of the fire?”
The colonel slipped an extra Kevlar groin protector sheet inside his pants.
“You wish. We’re going to break the Mississippi line or wreck ourselves trying.”
Chapter 3
URA Colonel Armistead lowered his night vision eyepiece one more time. Not to scan across the river and inspect the sleepy US troops, but to check that his rebel warriors were busy.
Even this early, he didn’t really need the NODS. Not with all the strobe lighting from the epic battle of Vicksburg, just 15 kilometers to the north. The chaos in that meat grinder hadn’t let up for 36 hours. He unclenched his jaw. If his team couldn’t breach the Mississippi here and flank the federal lines, the slaughter wouldn’t stop until the rebel army was ground down to a nub. The Feds, with their three to one manpower advantage, must be loving this game of attrition.
“Too much is riding on these engineers.”
The major at his elbow missed his commander’s muttering. He pulled the old-fashioned field telephone set away from his ear. His first break in hours.
“We’re all set, sir. Ready to kickoff. Last chance for some artillery prep fire. Should I beg headquarters again?”
Armistead strapped his Kevlar helmet on. “Negative. Division has a point. A ton of artillery fire will just make it clear to the Feds this isn’t another probe. Stick to the plan: no fire support until we’ve carved out a beachhead.”
Massive flashes, even larger than normal, brightened the northern skyline. They wouldn’t hear the booms for almost a full minute. “Besides, looks like the guns are busy elsewhere. Well, let’s not delay any longer.”
He raised his radio and clicked the mike, breaking their strict radio silence. “All elements, this is Stonewall 6: bloody angle. I say again, bloody angle.”
Six sniper rifles barked along a kilometer wide front, drowning him out. Seconds later, rebel mortars dropped a mix of smoke and HE rounds among the dead federal sentries on the far shore. Their living compatriots woke to a storm of brown fog and black shrapnel blanketing their foxholes.
It took another thirty seconds for his troops to haul out their rubber boats from concealed hidey-holes in the woods and down to the water’s edge. All fifty outboard engines rumbled to life as one and stormed east. The enemy blazed away blindly at the sound. The ballsy crews refused to return fire and highlight themselves with muzzle flashes. Disciplined as they were, 700 meters of open water would make for a rough ride without cover. According to his staff’s gruesome algebra, only a quarter of his 600 troops needed to make it to the far shore to accomplish the mission.
Colonel Armistead turned away from their sacrifice and fretted at the sky. “What’s taking so long? They’re throwing the whole timetable off.”
“Last second issue with the cable hookups, sir… ok, here they come!”
Three CH-47 Chinooks levitated out of the woods and thumped into view from the west. As soon as they passed the edge of the tree line, a nails-on-the-chalkboard screech filled the air for miles.
Colonel Armistead held his breath as all three giant choppers seemed to catch on something and hang in the air. The engineering captain next to him cupped his hands and yelled.
“They’ll make it! We tested the concept twice in dry runs.”
Before the colonel could doubt him, the helicopters lurched forward, each two hundred meters apart. He couldn’t see the cables stretching fifty feet to the ground, but he didn’t need to. No way to miss the half-mile long, preassembled pontoon bridge each chopper dragged out of the woods and into the water.
This was the dicey part of the plan. The Mississippi was too deep for any vehicles to ford and too damn wide for any of their Wolverine bridge layers to span. He sure as hell didn’t have the time to secure the opposite bank and build a proper temporary bridge. It was all or nothing tonight.
Twenty more helicopters, a mix of ancient Huey’s and modern Blackhawks, joined the three transporters. They briefly helped to draw fire from the all-important flying tugboats, but soared off to their main objective when the Chinooks neared the east bank.
“God speed.” Armistead prayed some of those infantry would survive long enough to be rescued. The choppers fanned out in the dark, stalking towards a dozen different road junctions. Few of the soldiers on board carried rifles. Instead, they were loaded up for bigger game: nothing but mines, anti-tank rockets and machine guns. If all went well, the air assault should give him a ten-mile buffer zone to keep federal reinforcements at bay during the next crucial phase. If everything went to shit, then he’d just pissed away 200 of his best fighters for nothing.
Speaking of going to shit, a 20mm Gatling gun hidden in the lumberyard on the east shore spun to life. A dozen tracers, meaning scores of invisible rounds, lanced out of the night. The fire shredded the first of the assault boats running ashore. The hell storm kicked the twelve troops on board into the next world before they even knew they were in trouble.
“Kill that bastard! I thought our Intel was positive the Feds had no air defense units here?”
The six-barreled, radar-guided autocannon turned Armistead’s worst fears into reality. Sensing a much better target, the tracer stream reached up and touched one of the bridge-hauling Chinooks. The bird split in two, with the front half exploding instantly. The rear rotor assembly, complete with screaming ramp gunner, kept flying for a few seconds, before catching on its tether and slamming back into the pontoons below. The bridge to nowhere came to rest a good hundred yards short of the riverbank.
One of the rebel tanks on over watch duty roared its 120mm snout, silencing the Gatling gun forever.
The major beside Armistead clapped him on the back as the last two choppers rammed their bridges onto shore. They released the cables and dashed back to rebel lines. Their job was far from over. They’d spend the rest of the night ferrying troops across the river until their rotors fell off.