Currently he was in heaven. The Kildar had carefully pointed out the “difficult” portions of the mountain crossing to him, the places where it would be necessary to climb. And the device in his thigh pocket said that this face would be about fifty meters. Because of the angle of the shot, nearly vertical, it was hard to judge how difficult the climb would be. But the Kildar, although an excellent fighter, was clearly not an imagery analyst.
It was more like a hundred and fifty, much of it about a grade five if he was capable of judging. It was night, the clouds finally cleared off and the wind howling. It was probably forty below zero in celsius. And he was splayed across a rock wall, one finger stuck in a crack, his boots barely scrabbling to two more points and slamming in a piton with the biggest grin in the world on his mask-covered face.
This was the fucking shit as the Master Chief would say.
He clipped a carabiner to the piton, ran his safety line through it and looked for the next set of hold points. Frankly, directly up there weren’t any. But he’d seen an easy ledge off to the side.
He let go of all three points, holding himself only on the piton and swung sideways. For a moment he was suspended in the air, flying free as a bird. Then one hand slammed into the crack in the rock, the “easy” ledge that was a bare jutting of rock, and thumb and finger clamped to it like a limpet.
For a moment he hung, suspended, then the other hand came up, sliding a pair of fingers into the crack and clamping them in a knuckle hold. There wasn’t anywhere to put his feet, but he could see another hold just a half meter or so up. He’d have to leave the fingers in the crack and lift himself on those to get to it.
This was assuredly the shit.
“How long we gonna be doin’ this shit?” Serris asked.
They’d been out on the mountains for only a day and already he was ready to head back to the barracks. First of all, there wasn’t a thing moving except them. You got a feel for an area pretty quick and all the animals they’d run across had that “undisturbed” feel. They’d sat on one trail in ambush positions all day and half the night and seen dick all.
Then there was the terrain. The area reminded him of Afghanistan except for the, often thick, underbrush and the trees. The vegetation was more like around Dahlonega, the Rangers’ primary mountain training area. But the slopes were one fuck of a lot higher; Dahlonega was in the Appalachians not the fucking Alps. And they seemed steeper. They’d been slithering upwards towards the treeline for the last day, except for the ambush position, and they could quit any time as far as Ma Serris’ little boy was concerned.
This was just stupid.
“Til we’re done,” Staff Sergeant Jordan Lawhon said. “Time to do one of our ‘deception operations’.”
The Ranger squad had stopped on the east slope of a ridge, looking out over a small valley that had a trail running down the far side. Just to their north and west the valley funneled to a pass through the mountains, the source of the trail. The deciduous trees and choking underbrush of the lower slopes had given way to firs, mostly wide spaced. A careful visual check hadn’t spotted anyone in view, though, so it seemed like a good place to do a “notional” ambush.
“This is such shit,” Lane replied, flopping down and leaning back on a tree. He opened up the breach on his Squad Automatic Weapon and pouted. “I’m gonna foul the shit out of this, you know that? I’m gonna have to break it right the fuck down, clean it and then maybe I can load live rounds again.”
“Quit the bitching,” Lawhon said, frowning. “We’re all gonna have to clean our pieces. Which is why only Alpha and Bravo team are gonna fire. Charlie’s gonna stay hot.”
Squads were broken down into two “fire teams”. Each of the fire teams was led by a sergeant or corporal and had five men, the team leader, a SAW gunner, a grenadier and two riflemen. At least on paper. Rarely was a TOE, table of organization and equipment, filled.
“Fine,” Lane sighed, pulling out his blank adapter and a case of blank ammo. “Let’s get this over with. We gotta run and shout or what?”
“I think we just shoot the shit,” the squad leader said. “Maybe do some shouting.”
“This is fucking nuts,” Serris said, readying his weapon. “Say when.”
“Everybody ready?” Lawhon asked. “Charlie, do not fire.”
“Got it,” Corporal John Pitzel, the Charlie team leader, replied. “Team, check fire.” Since the team was sprawled out on the ground in the traditional “rucksack flop”, that was unlikely.
“Okay, Alpha and Bravo, open fire,” Lawhon said and pointed his blank-adapter covered muzzle in the general direction of uphill before pulling the trigger.
The blank-adapter was required because without the back-pressure from the round that normally travelled down the barrel, the weapon would only fire one time and the receiver wouldn’t cycle the next round into the breach. With the usually red blank adapter screwed into the barrel the weapon would cycle normally even firing the blank ammunition.
The other problem with blank ammunition was that it was dirty as hell. The propellant was a less refined material than the usual propellant in live rounds and coated the weapon in carbon that was difficult to remove. You could fire thousands of rounds through an M4 before it fouled. You might get a couple of hundred blanks out before the damned thing jammed solid.
Despite those facts the Rangers had as much fun as they could.
“ARRRRHHH!” Lane screamed, triggering expert five round bursts from his SAW despite having the barrel cover laid over his right knee. “TAKE THAT YOU DIRTY RAGHEADS!”
“EAT SHIT AND DIE, ISLAMIC MOTHERFUCKERS!” Serris replied.
“YOUR MOTHER WAS A WHORE AND YOUR FATHER A PIG!” Lane screamed, not to be outdone.
“I WAVE THE BOTTOM OF MY SHOE IN YOUR GENERAL DIRECTION!!!” Serris added then looked up. “SARGE! WE’RE TAKING FIRE!”
“CHECK FIRE!” Lawhon screamed, diving to the ground. He had been firing properly, weapon tucked into his shoulder, leaning into the non-existent recoil and aiming. In this case at a tree over by the trail, but training was training. Now he dove to the ground and looked up. Sure enough, the branches overhead were being cut by fire. “Where the fuck is that coming from?” The rounds were big. Maybe a fifty caliber. And now that the firing had stopped, he could hear the weapon firing, the dull thud-thud-thud of a heavy machine-gun.
“Not in sight,” Pitzel replied. “Sounds like it’s coming from over the ridge.”
“Serris, check it out,” Lawhon said, instantly.
“Can I at least put live rounds in?” Serris asked, sarcastically. He already had the blank adapter unscrewed and was seating a mag of hot.
“Just get your ass up there,” Lawhon replied.
“There you are, you fucker,” Serris hissed. He’d pulled a ghillie cloak over his head and pulled up his balaklava to reduce the shine on his face then slid up the ridge to the crest. The top was a knife-edge and by laying belly down, half behind one of the firs, he had a pretty good view of the far side. The valley they’d been in hooked around to the west and up at the head of it, right at the opening of the pass, there was a bunker. It was hard to spot, whoever built it had camouflaged the hell out of the damned thing, but Serris had spent enough time in the Stans to get pretty good at spotting shit like that. One of the reasons Lawhon sent him up. He also had “sniper eyes”, the ability to pick out something from the background that others missed.