Suddenly there were more of the screaming Islamics in the position and it became a bloody melee. Kiril blocked an empty AK upwards and kicked the Islamic in the crotch then brought the back of the axe across his face, smashing his cheek in and spraying teeth across the trench. Swinging it back so fast the head seemed to disappear he sank it into the upper arm of another of the Chechens, nearly severing it as the sharpened blade broke through the humerus bone and severed the brachial artery.
Back again to strike the man with the smashed face on the side of the head, crushing his occiput bone in a spray of blood and brains, across to catch another on the throat, tearing out his windpipe, down in one continuous motion to bury it in the neck of the one he’d cut off his arm.
The last Chechen dropped as Sawn suddenly appeared in the opening to the position. The team leader wrenched his own hatchet out of the back of the man’s neck and looked around.
“What are you doing just standing there?” Sawn asked the panting and blood drenched SAW gunner. “Get the bodies out of here and get your gun back in action. This ain’t no ice-cream social!”
“I so regret introducing you to Red Vs Blue,” Kiril panted. But the next moment he was heaving the bodies of the Chechens out of the position. Carefully, though. Master Chief Adams had pointed out more than once that there was very little cover better than a nice fresh body.
Salah wondered why he could not move. He kept willing his body to rise and nothing would happen.
He had tripped, that was all. And rolled onto his back. His head turned to the side and he could not even move his neck. All he could do was look up and to the side. There was another man next to him, he thought it might be Ibrahim Shatti by the clothing. For some reason, his head seemed to be pushed to the side, weirdly, his face broader and flatter and the back of his head was missing. Salah thought that it made him look better than usual, Ibrahim was not a very handsome boy. He still had the spots very bad and they had scarred his already misshapen face. It was more misshapen, now, and had two large spots to either side of his nose.
The firing had mostly stopped. They must have won. Allah, the Victorious, was victorious once again.
Chapter Fourty-Two
Commander Bukara couldn’t believe his eyes. The straggled remnants of the attack force were running down the hill, dropping their weapons, dropping their ammunition, dropping everything in a desperate race to escape. And it was a race they were losing as first one then another dropped to sniper fire. Barely a hundred had fled, initially, and that number had been dropped by half before they were half way down the slope.
“Pagan fucks,” Bukara snarled. Already ravens were dropping from the sky onto the bodies and distant shots, single, indicated that some of the wounded were being finished off by the defenders.
“They say that the raven is one of their totems,” Bukara noted. “The eyes of one of their gods. He’s certainly getting an eyeful today.”
“There is no God but Allah,” Sayeed replied.
“Well I wish he’d send me a sign, then,” Bukara snapped.
“Commander Bukara… ”
The young Chechen was panting, clearly having finished running hard. He was still carrying his weapon, though, and had come from the rear. So he wasn’t one of the cowards up on the hill.
“What?” Bukara snarled.
“Another group comes,” the young man gasped. “A large group under Commander Sadim. And they have reporters. From Al-Jazeera! The whole world will watch us destroy these Keldara!”
“You said you wanted a sign,” Sayeed said, impertinently.
“Sergeant Sivula, what, pray tell, are you doing here?” Captain Guerrin asked.
Of course the answer was obvious since the sergeant, sweating like a horse, was carrying one end of a 120mm mortar tube.
120mm mortars are, technically, man transportable. And over short distances, if you have enough bodies, they are. Of course, the tube alone weighs 110 pounds. The massive baseplate is even heavier at 136 pounds. And the bipod is no joke, despite weighing in at a comparatively light 70 pounds. Then there was ammunition, without which the weapon was useless. Each crate of three rounds weighed forty pounds. And the more rounds the better.
There was no way that even all the young women of the Keldara could have carried the mortars the ten kilometers from the nearest road to the Ranger position. The women were strong but it would have taken four of them, alone, to carry the tube. Sivula and one other Ranger were currently carrying it having traded off with the previous team a kilometer before reaching the Ranger position.
Sivula lowered the mortar to the ground and looked sheepish.
“Well, sir, our mandate was to work with the mortars,” Sivula said. “And the ladies wanted to bring them up here.”
Every female of the Keldara between the age of fifteen and about twenty, damned near a hundred of them, were in a long line behind him, carrying crates of ammunition, water and food. All of them had weapons, as well, mostly AKs scrounged from Chechens on various battlefields. The weapons and crates clashed with their bright tops and black skirts. It looked like the gypsy caravan from hell.
The one woman who was not young was right behind Sivula. She looked to be about two hundred but, despite her age and the weight of weapon and ammunition she was carrying, she was following along just fine, not even looking particularly bothered by the slope. The term that came to mind was… sprightly.
“You are the commander,” the woman said in broken English as she reached Guerrin’s commander. “I am Mother Lenka, brewmistress of the Keldara, Captain. I have brought your men some of my personal beer and in exchange I would ask for a favor.”
“Well, ma’am,” the captain said, uncomfortably, “my men can’t drink on duty… ”
“Even though you Americans have no legs for real beer,” Mother Lenka snapped, “even they will not be made drunk by one bottle, captain. And it’s not as if they’re having to fight.”
Guerrin’s eyes flared at that and he opened his mouth to reply but he didn’t get a chance.
“We are here on a mission of mercy, captain,” Mother Lenka continued, more pleasantly. “There are, possibly, injured Chechens in those bunkers. We are here to provide aid to them. But we are but poor, weak women. So we would like to ask for a litlte help. Just, you know, toting things. I know you are under orders to not move forward but surely you can help us on a mission of mercy.” The old woman batted her eyes coquettishly.
Guerrin was actively surprised. Despite looking as if she was two hundred, when the woman turned on her charm full force she actually was pretty good looking. He’d never thought that was possible.
“Uh… ” Guerrin said. “The toting you’d like help with, that would be, oh, mortars, baseplates… That sort of thing?”
“Well, we have to have weapons for self protection,” Mother Lenka said, still blue eyes wide and innocent in the face of the blatant lie. “And there may be poor, injured Chechens to bring back.”
Guerrin had seen what Captain Bathlick had left of the Chechen position. IF there was anyone alive over there he was a leg. But she had a point. I mean, a mission of mercy? Even State couldn’t find fault with that.