No. Fuck that. She’d seen that the Hind had more lift than even the Czech engineers were willing to admit. They’d pack them in like sardines if necessary.
Just pray the wounded survived the trip.
Especially given that, that loaded, she was going to have to fly right through the fire of the bunkers in the pass.
She pulled up on the collective and lifted off into the howling storm.
For once, weather was the least of her worries.
“Drop everything but ammo and water,” Mike said over the throat mike.
Sawn was driving the Toyota pickup and Mike wished they’d changed places. But he couldn’t run the op and drive at the same time, the reason that the military assigned drivers to officers.
Fuck, he really was brass.
“When we hit the stopping point, we are going to run not walk, to the LZ.”
He was in commo with the team leaders and depended on them to pass the word to their teams. That was what the chain of command was all about.
“Strip to bare necessities,” Mike continued. “Anybody who can’t run goes on a stretcher. Detail teams to replace as we move. All the casualties go out as soon as we hit the LZ. Oleg, you’re in charge of keeping Dr. Arensky and Katya with us. If either one can’t make the time, dump somebody’s ruck and piggy-back them. Our one mission is to get to the other side of the mountains as fast as humanly possible. Get moving.”
He switched frequencies without thought.
“Vanner.”
“Kildar?”
“Tell your girls to drop all their gear,” Mike said. “They only carry LCE and their weapons. They have to keep up.”
“Got it.”
“Padrek.”
“Kildar?” The reply was muffled.
“Drop all your gear except weapon and LCE. Crossload your spare ammo. You’re going out on the bird if there’s room. You’re going to sweat your ass off in that suit and drinking through the mask is a bitch. If you start to get too overheated, hell, I don’t know what we’re gonna do. Put you on one of the stretchers or something. Keep hydrated as best you can.”
“Yes, Kildar.”
“We’ll extract you as fast as we can.”
Three of the Toyota pickups, loaded to the brim with Keldara from Team Yosif, were in the lead. Mike hoped the Chechens hadn’t gotten an ambush team in ahead of them — he couldn’t afford more casualties — but if they had the three pickups would hopefully spring it.
The entire group, using every functional vehicle, was barrel assing down the road towards the Georgian lines. There was no way to fight their way through, the girls had confirmed that a group of over two hundred had crossed a mountain and were now in blocking positions — but that was also the way to the Guerrmo Pass.
The mountains thinned at that point. Whereas they had had to cross nearly a hundred klicks of nasty assed alpine terrain on the way in, at the Guerrmo the distance from their current valley to “safety” was barely thirty kilometers. He could run that in a few hours on the flat. But this was going to be going up increasingly steep ridgelines stretching up well above the woodline and into the snowline. The Keldara could make it, assuming more Chechens didn’t cut them off. But the females both hadn’t been in as much training as the fighters and… Well, there was a reason that men and women competed in different leagues in the Olympics. The Keldara were, at this point, damned near Olympic quality athletes. They could carry their rucks at a dog trot all God damned day even straight up a slope. He’d worked hard to get them to that level of condition for precisely this reason.
The girls could maybe maintain a jog for three hours. Uphill, less. Even if they’d been in the same condition, they couldn’t have hung with the boys carrying the same gear. As long as they were with the group the Keldara simply couldn’t run as fast. And right now, the only thing that they could do, should do, was run like hell.
Getting them out was a priority right up there with evaccing the casualties and Arensky.
Freq switch again. This time it was to a connection that automatically routed the call through a satellite.
“Tiger Two.”
“Go, Kildar.”
“I take it the helo is moving?”
“On the way,” Nielson replied. “They have to fly through Guerrmo, though. They can get higher but not carrying any sort of useable load. And Guerrmo… ”
“I saw,” Mike replied. “So, is that a permissible Ranger AO?”
“Negative.”
“Fuck.”
“Sir, with all due respect, this is crap,” Guerrin said.
He’d set up a satellite call to SOCOM. Their operational control for this mission ran direct to SOCOM, bypassing the Ranger command group entirely. It wasn’t unusual to get tasked to other units that had operational control.
But he didn’t usually talk directly to the SOCOM commander.
“I’m in agreement, Captain,” General Howard said, mildly. “However, I just got off the phone with the CJCS on this very subject. Relations in the area are very touchy at this time. The Georgians don’t want you fighting at all. They certainly don’t want it apparent to the world that they can’t control their own territory. So the Keldara have to fight their way out on their own. If the Chechens pass the entrance to Guerrmo Pass, if in other words they come past those defenses, you are clear to engage. Among other things, at that point it becomes self protection and I was firm on that point. But until then you are to remain in place and not engage anyone that is in or beyond the pass. Is that clear?”
“Clear, sir,” J.P. said. “I will comply. If the situation changes, though… ”
“I’ll inform you immediately,” the general said. “And I hope it does. For your information, I’m told the mission came off without a hitch. The only hitch is that the entire Chechen force in the area seems to be determined to wipe these guys off the map. And, trust me, I know exactly how it feels to just be sitting there in the rain not able to do a fucking thing. But that is exactly what you are going to do.”
“Sergeant Sivula?” Jessia said, sticking her head in the door to the barracks.
“Yes,” the sergeant said, rolling off his bunk and glad none of the guys were naked when she burst in.
“We are moving the mortars,” Jessia said, panting. “The Keldara are trapped on the other side of the mountains.”
“We got the word,” Sivula said, walking over. The panting was doing really interesting things to her chest but he tried to ignore that. “But we can’t do anything.”
“Neither can we,” Jessia admitted. “But we are going to move our mortars forward to support when they are in the pass. We can fire into it.”
“Damn, that’s right,” Sivula said, grinning. “Let me get with the LT. I guess you’d like some help?”
“We are strong,” Jessia said, shrugging. “But they are very heavy. As is the ammunition. Yes, we would like some help. As many strong backs as you can muster.”
“Fuck, yeah,” Sivula said. “I’ll be with you in a few minutes.”
The president stared at the take from the Predator and sighed. It was, more or less, gray clouds and not much else. The pilots had admitted that they were steering well away from mountains and otherwise entirely on instruments. Nothing could pierce the storm in the area.