“What?” the younger man said, surprised. A few of the other old fighters were pissing as well. It didn’t seem very… right.
“Piss,” Mahmud said, again. “Did you take a crap recently?”
“No,” Sho’ad said, reluctantly drawing out his pecker. Showing it in public like this felt, no was, sinful.
“Then don’t cry to me when you crap your pants,” Mahmud said. “Crap before battle. Drink and piss just before battle. It’s the only thing I can teach you. If we’re both alive tomorrow, you might be ready to start to learn shit like reloading and aiming.”
The company leader whistled and the group started moving forward in teams. Up ahead there were two units that Mahmud had never fought with. One of them was Bukara’s old unit. He’d met Bukara one time and thought he was a blowhard. He was like one of the old comissars who’d come down on the factory floor and tell you how to do your job when he’d never been on the line.
There was a three hundred meter gap between them and the Sadim Brigade. Let those fuckers soak up the the ammunition and hope of the defenders. Then the Sadim Brigade would descend on them like the efreets.
He began whistling a tune, a sad one that was best rendered by the balalaika. The Chechen fedayeen didn’t like the balalaika since it was a Russian instrument. But Mikhail’s mother had lulled him to sleep to the tune and he had listened to it often over the years in bars when he was young and happy in his vodka and chess. It was a common tune with many lyrics attached to it. But the refrain was usually the same.
“Tum bala, tum bala, tum balalaika,” he half sang, half chanted in Russian. “Tum balalaika, play balalaika, laugh and be gay.”
The words were drowned, though, by the thunder of the mortar barrage and the sound of the first wave of the assault opening fire.
“Tom and Hank are up and on station,” the supervisor called. “You have the first position, designated Tango One.”
“When?” the pilot asked. He’d been circling the damned thing for nearly half an hour. Ten minutes my ass.
“Coordinated fire,” the supervisor said. “Tom and Hank are up.”
“I’m up.”
“Then five, four, three… ”
“Adams, how’s it going?” Mike asked.
“Pretty fucked up, good buddy.”
Adams was screaming. He must have lost his hearing. Again. Since Mike’s ears were ringing from all the concussions, he was pretty loud, too. Before long both of them were going to be deaf as posts.
“Had to cut off Oleg’s leg,” Adams continued. “Actually, Dmitri cut it off. We’re cool otherwise. You?”
“What?” Mike screamed. “Is he okay?”
“Fine. Just fucking peachy. I gave him the last of my beer, so he’s happy as a clam, cleaning his M-60 and for some reason belting together one fuck load of 7.62. Was this a social call? Because I’m getting my fucking ass mortared off at the moment!”
“Well, be of good cheer. The Chechens are coming up the hill. As soon as they get here, the mortars will stop.”
“Keep going!” Shayeed shouted. He had been chosen to lead the remnants of Bukara’s force by default. Now he wished he’d kept as far away from the idiot as possible. He’d come to realize early on in his tenure as driver and bodyguard that Bukara wasn’t nearly as smart or tactically sound as he’d thought. Now he was in the middle of an Allah damned nightmare. And the men with him weren’t interested at all in running into a hail of mortar fire. OR at the Keldara. Being a martyr was all very well to shout about in the mosque but when the bullets were flying and the artillery was hammering down, when the force before you was meat for the ravens, doubts had a way of creeping in. “We must close with them just before the mortars stop! Keep going!”
They were still two hundred yards away and the group was faltering. Fine.
He stepped to the rear and fired over their heads. A long burst that emptied his magazine.
“Go towards the Keldara or be cut down from behind you pig-eating cowards!” Shayeed shouted, reloading. “If I don’t kill you, Sadim’s Brigade will. Now move. And fire as Allah wills! To victory in the name of Allah! God is Great! Alahu Akbar! Yell it you pig-eating cowards! Alahu Akbar!”
They were moving again. And yelling. Whether from fear of him or Sadim’s brigade of killers or for belief in Allah he didn’t care. Whatever it took. Whatever it took.
“Kildar,” Pavel said. “There is a large explosion to the north. Several.”
Mike frowned at the call and shook his head to clear it. The bunker had sustained several direct hits. Dust filled the air and his head was a fog from concussions. He tried to make sense of what Pavel was saying but couldn’t.
“The Chechen first wave is closing,” Pavel continued. “They are at two hundred meters.”
“Okay!” Mike shouted, holding his head. God he wished the fucking mortars would just stop for one fucking second. “Pavel, go to full team freq. How far?”
“One hundred meters!” Pavel called on the other frequency.
“Teams, open fire at fifty meters,” Mike yelled then stopped yelling. The mortars had stopped. That was early. They should have kept firing until the Chechens were right on them. When you were in an assault like this it was best to actually catch a few casualties from your artillery support rather than have it stop early. That way the enemy had to keep their head down until you were right on them. Either the enemy had fucked up, always possible, or… He wasn’t sure and didn’t have time to think about it.
“Seventy-five!”
“Prepare to open fire!”
“Fifty!”
“Mother Lenka, the mortars are laid in!” Jessia said, straightening from the mortar sight.
“Very well,” Mother Lenka said. “Now, you must keep firing right up until we reach the lines! That is very important. I would rather we have some of the girls hit than the fire stop too soon. You understand?”
“I do,” Jessia said, swallowing hard.
“Kalisa has given you the coordinates so start firing as soon as we move out,” Mother Lenka said. “And keep firing until we are there. You have enough rounds.”
“Yes, Mother Lenka.”
“Good girl,” Lenka said, smiling and hefting her AK. “It is many many years since I have held a gun. But I think I still know how to use one. And then there is this,” she added, tapping the hatchet at her side. “Good for close quarters you know. I personally always liked a sharpened shovel, good for burying your friends, too. But these axes are nice.”
“We should go to help,” Kamas Al-Rakabi said to Haza.
The hill Haza had occupied was a relatively small morraine, a bare sixty feet or so over the surrounding rocky terrain. But it was right in the mouth of the pass, less than five hundred meters from the saddle. From it Haza had full control of entry and exit. It was where he wanted to be and he wasn’t planning on budging.
“We are helping,” Haza said, losing patience with the young man. He had been an excellent scout but he had no head for tactics. “We forced them to ground and now, by staying here, we prevent them from escaping. I won’t say it again.”
“You don’t understand,” Kamas replied. “I want to kill Keldara.”