Oleg, pale and sweating, pulled the axe out of his mouth and buried it in the dirt. Dmitri leaned forward and held up his own bloody axe, looking Oleg in the eye.
The team leader wrapped his hand around Dmitri’s, the blood running down over both then leaned forward and licked the axe head. Licked off his own blood and bone.
“Aer Keldar,” Dmitri shouted.
“Aer Keldar,” Oleg replied, pulling him forward to slam helmets together.
“Aer Keldar!”
“Aer Keldar!”
“AER KELDAR!” they screamed in unison, pounding their helmets in time with the chant.
“Fuck,” Adams said, sliding down the side of the hole. “And I thought Hell Week was fucked up. What do they feed these guys? Oh, yeah. Beer.”
“Pavel.”
“Go, Kildar.”
Pavel had a bird’s eye view of the entire battle. Unfortunately, it meant he was out of the battle. Mostly.
The Chechens were trying to get sniper teams up on the ridgeline to the north. They weren’t having much luck, though, because Pavel was letting them get mostly set up and then taking them down. So far it was like hunting mountain goats; they never looked up. They seemed to think that the counter-sniper fire was coming from the defenses below. They would get towards the top of the ridge at a walk then drop to their bellies and crawl forward. The snipers on the mountain would let them get into position overlooking the main Keldara position then fire them up. They never knew what hit them.
It wasn’t exactly sporting, but good tactics never were.
And there were compensations. The view from their position was outstanding.
“We’re getting our ass mortared off down here and hunkered down. So we’re kind of blind. What are the Chechens doing?”
“Trying to get snipers on the ridge and failing,” Pavel said. “And it looks as if they are moving into pre-attack positions.”
“Tell me when they start heading up the hill,” Mike said. “And thanks for keeping the snipers off our backs. I don’t suppose you can see the mortars.”
“No, Kildar,” Pavel said. “I can climb higher.”
“Nah. You’re good. Kildar, out.”
Damn. The mountain above him had one face that had to be at least three hundred meters and looked to be somewhere between a four and a five with some nice overhangs. He really wanted to climb it.
War sucked.
“This sucks,” Sivula said, “but this is as far as we can go.”
There was no question of recovering any injured Chechens from the bunkers. What was left was mostly pieces and they had scattered a flock of ravens when they approached.
“It’s all right,” Jessia said, smiling and walking to one side. She set her box of ammunition on the ground and gestured to the other women to start piling in the same spot. “This is as far as I go as well.”
“Huh?” Sivula said, calculating distances. He’d seen the map. They were still at the back side of the pass. There was no way they could range all the way to the entrapped Keldara.
“This is as far as I go,” Jessia said. “But others will go further.”
“Well,” the sergeant said, sighing. “I hope I’m still around when you get back. I’d… well this has been. Interesting.”
“What you’re trying to say is that you hope you see me again,” Jessia said, smiling. “I hope I see you again as well, Andrew. But now you must go and I must lay in the guns.”
“This situation so sucks,” Sivula replied. “Look… ”
“I left an email address you can reach me through on your bunk,” Jessia said. “Which, by the way, was very messy. I hope you guys clean the barracks up before you leave; we worked hard on them before you got here. Now… go. We can talk later. Talk much.”
“We will sweep the infidels from our lands, yes, Mahmud?”
The older fighter just grunted. From his perspective there wasn’t much to talk about.
Mahmud Al Hawwari had been a young factory worker in Grozny when the Berlin Wall fell. He had never cared much about the Berlin Wall, or international politics. All he cared about was getting paid enough to afford some vodka and a little partying on the weekends.
But as the Soviet Union collapsed the economy collapsed with it. The factory closed. All the businesses in Grozny closed. Where before there had been long lines for anything of any worth, now there was no money for even less goods.
He had found solace in one of the new mosques that opened in the wake of communism. At first he just went because the mosque served food, if not vodka, and gave him a place to sleep out of the cold. So there was a little preaching to be put up with, it was worth it.
But the longer he stayed in the mosque the more he came to realize how empty his life had been and how little he understood the world. He had always known that his family was Islamic, even if they had “Russified” their name. Some of the grandparents talked of the Prophet and the word of Allah. But until he came to the mosque for the free hand-out the Prophet had decreed, he had never understood the importance of Allah in his life.
And the mosque taught him more than just the importance of charity. Chechnya was a part of the Dar Al-Islam, Islamic lands that had been occupied for too long by the Russians. Whether godless communists or Orthodox Christian, both were sins in the eyes of Allah. Those lands that had once been under proper Muslim rule must be returned to submission to Allah. And there was a way. The path of Jihad.
The battle for Grozny, though, had erased that long ago furor. It was a miniature version of Stalingrad fought with not much more high-tech weapons. The Russians poured masses of half-trained conscripts into the machine and got out sausage. The Chechens fought a hit-and-run campaign that the Russians never quite got a handle on. It was a cauldron of blood and fire that seemed to go on and on.
But over time, mass has a quality all its own. The Russians suffered ten times the casualties of the resistance but in the end the resistance was forced out.
Somewhere in that cauldron Mikhail Mihailovich Talisheva, AKA Mahmud Al Hawwari, a one time factory worker and current “freedom-fighter”, lost his faith in Allah, in the Dar Al-Islam, in shariah and jihad and all the rest. He knew that there was no road back to the man he might have been. There was no road to vodka and chess on the weekends. Some of the factories were reopened but he couldn’t go back to shoving parts on a line. Not after the things he’d seen, and done. Not with the price he had on his head. And the resistance did not take kindly to deserters. The umah did not take kindly to those who recanted their faith.
The only road forward was the one he was on. And that road, currently, led up a hillside covered with the dead of a previous attack. The road led into a storm of mortar fire and an enemy that was whispered of by the men who were from these hills.
It led to another cauldron. One that, if Sho’ad walked out of it, might teach the young fedayeen a thing or two.
So Mahmud just grunted as the lines of fighters sprayed out on the hillside and shook into lines.
He pulled out a bottle of water and drained it, wishing as he always did that it was vodka, even the cheapest vodka. Then he opened his fly and took a piss. There weren’t any trees around and he didn’t really care. He’d lost that, too, the caring. He’d left it behind in Grozny.
“Piss,” he said to Sho’ad.