But despite all his years in the Marines, and his service with the Kildar, he’d never gotten a chance to fire a shot in anger. He’d never known if he had that special quality that let men excell when the bullets were flying around them.
No question now. He had moved forward, following the Keldara and targeting “leakers”, guys who for one reason or another got through the Keldara line. Most of them were slipping around the side, which could be bad if they got in behind the Keldara. But they weren’t because Patrick Adam Vanner was by God terminating their mujaheddin asses!
A Chechen dropped, three rounds in the sweet spot in the upper chest, when his headphone buzzed.
“Vanner! Vanner! This is Pavel. The Kildar is about to be shot by his own helicopter!”
Kacey wasn’t quite in black but she was seeing red. Lots of red. A good bit of it was on her windshield.
She’d dropped down to where the belly of the Hind was very nearly scraping the ground and flown, hay-diddle-diddle, straight up the middle of the Chechen formation, guns blazing.
The result was flying Chechen body parts and some of them had flown high enough to impact the windscreen. So Kacey was definitely seeing red.
She could see the formation breaking up ahead, though, and there were good guys up there. So she let up on her trigger and started to bank up and away.
The last few rounds from the helo cracked into the back of Chechens and she could, for some reason, watch as the last tracer lazed its way into a gap in the formation.
A gap filled by a blood soaked Keldara, holding a hatchet in his hand and charging forward in a berserker rage.
She flew up and away on automatic, watching as the tracer tracked in to strike the axe-head, through it and into the center of the screaming fighter’s chest.
“Dragon! Dragon! Pull up! You’re about to… ”
“Blue on blue,” Kacey muttered, banking towards a cluster of Chechens that seemed to be trying to reform. “Fuck me.”
“… kill the Kildar!”
“Oh, double dog fuck me!”
“It was only one goat! I was thirteen! I was drunk! It was a bet!” Father Ferani triggered a burst from the minigun. The helo was banking to the side over a shattered group on a hilltop. There were a few alive, though, and that couldn’t be born.
“You’re still a goat fucker,” Father Devlich screamed over the guitars. The helo flattened out, nearly at ground level, and began continous fire to the front. But to the sides there were Chechens, many of them looking towards him, open mouthed in surprise at the sudden attack from the rear. He just aimed the gun and held down the trigger, watching rows of the fedayeen tumble away from the laser-like fire. “What is that damned music?”
“Yeah, well I really did fuck your mother!” Father Ferani shouted. The group in front of him was looking at him stunned but he didn’t care. Fucking Islamic goat… Send them all to the All Father. “And she screamed louder than that fucking singer!”
“At least I’ve never fucked a goat!” Devlich shouted back, finding another cluster to scythe down. “You know, I’ve always wanted to ask… ” He fired again, cutting down a fedayeen who was screaming down the hill, dropping his weapon and stripping off his ammo vest. “And it’s not like she can understand us. So, just between a couple of Elders… What was it like?”
“You know,” Ferani shouted, sweeping the gun across a cluster of fedayeen trying to escape over the side of the gulley, “I don’t honestly remember.”
“You think you’d remember something like fucking a goat,” Father Devlich said as the bird banked up and over. This time he was the one still looking at the battlefield and he found another group, this one trying to take cover and keep fighting. They weren’t going to fight any more. Not churned to red butter.
“It was a long time ago,” Father Ferani said. He was looking at sky, gripping the spades of the gun and hanging nearly staight down. The sun was already behind the mountains and the slight clouds that had come in in the afternoon caught the light in waterfalls of pink. “And I hadn’t had sex before.”
“You popped your cherry on a goat?” They were banking away from the battlefield, now. He hoped this stupid bitch wasn’t going home already. He had plenty of bullets left.
“I remember its ass was hairy,” Father Ferani said, musingly. “I remember thinking its ass was very hairy.”
“It’s ASS WAS HAIRY?” Father Devlich screamed, laughing so hard he had to stop firing. “It’s ass was hairy.” He triggered the gun and waggled it back and forth, not really firing at anything; there wasn’t anything worth firing at in sight. It was just that he wanted to giggle til he got that bad pain in his chest. Oh, no, there was a group to fire at. Hey, more red fucking Chechens on the ground. “It’s ass was hairy.”
“What can I say,” Father Ferani replied. “Then I really popped my cherry on your mother.”
“You keep saying that,” Father Devlich said, shaking his head. Good, they were headed back towards the fight. Not that there was much fight left in the Chechens.
“It was spring festival, the same year,” Father Ferani said, lost in memory. Not so lost that he didn’t fire at a group of the fedayeen that had clustered on the back side of a hill, away from the former battlefield. They scattered, leaving three bodies on the ground. “I think she felt sorry for me that everyone was teasing me about fucking a goat.”
“You are so lieing,” Father Devlich said. He didn’t even have anything to fire at. Fuck.
“Nope,” Father Ferani said. “Sorry, Gregor. I really did bed Martya. It was in a bed of tigerberry bushes on a night with a crescent moon. And, Gregor, do the sums.” A large group was forming up in the ravine to the side of the ridge and he fired at them, working the gatling gun across the group. Tracers came drifting up through the air towards the Hind, the first fire they’d taken. “You’re… ” He grunted and stopped firing.
“You have to be lieing,” Father Devlich said, furiously. Now there were some running Chechens in view. He fired, missed, fired again. “I am not… ” Something made him look behind him.
Father Ferani was hanging from the harness the black mechanic had had them wear. Blood was pouring out of his mouth and back. There were three large, red, holes in his back and Father Devlich could see right into the mess inside his body.
Father Devlich turned back to look out the window of the helicopter. A group of screaming fedayeen was running towards the north and he clamped down on the trigger of the gun, tumbling them to the ground. He continued to fire into the bodies, churning them to red mush, until they were out of sight.
“Oh double dog fuck me,” Adams said, running forward. Mike was on his back with about a million screaming Chechens still around him. Adams just fired up the whole area as a round from Shota dropped off to his right, blowing pieces of fedayeen all over the battlefield.
But the fedayeen didn’t seem to care about the fallen Keldara. Mike’s berserker charge had shaken them, the continuously firing M-60s had them wavering, the rounds from Shota were terrifying them and the tunnel of dead, not to mention the windrows to either side from the door guns, broke them.