"That was helpful," Oleg said, looking at the line of boxes. "We were seriously down on ammo. And I'm glad to have the machine-guns finally."
"It's not going to last long," Adams said then, as a bullet whistled overhead, turned and spit in the direction of the Chechens. "Fuckers can't shoot for shit. Let's get this stuff and didee on out of here."
"Master Chief," Mikhail Kulcyanov said, in a puzzled tone. "These are not the right machine guns."
The former SEAL walked over and shook his head.
"Fuck me!" he shouted. "These are the damned guns we got for evaluation! Where the fuck are the M240s!"
"We can use them," Oleg said, picking up one of the guns. "We'll figure it out. But we'll need help with all this ammo. And it's all 7.62."
"Another fuck up," Adams snarled. "Kildar, this is Tiger Three. We got a situation here..."
"They sent the '60s?" Mike said.
"Yeah, they're M-60s. The new kind. Those four we bought to evaluate."
"Fucking Oorah!" Mike said. "Don't use them."
"What?" Adams snarled. "What the fuck do you mean 'don't use them.' We've been needing them!"
"I'd rather keep them for a surprise," Mike said. "I was going to surprise you with them. You haven't seen the video. But you're gonna fucking love 'em. Trust me."
"Kildar," Adams ground out, "Mike. We are up to our ass in alligators. If one of these things jams, you know how to clear it, I know how to clear it. The Keldara don't know how to clear it. We don't need to be switching out weapons in the middle of a battle!"
"Yeah, speaking of which, I want one. No, better to leave them with the teams since we've only got four. But I'm gonna get one as a personal weapon..."
"Mike..." Adams stopped and took a deep breath. "I am getting fucking sick of this shit. What the fuck are you babbling about?"
"You'll see," Mike said. "We are not going to use those things until we absolutely have to. You'll see why."
"Whatever," Adams said. "Tiger Three, out."
He looked over at Oleg and shook his head.
"I think the Kildar is losing it," he said.
"I think not," Oleg replied. "You don't go on the internet much, do you?"
"I've got better things to do," Adams said.
"I was surprised, and upset I will admit, when I saw that these were not the machine guns we usually use," Oleg replied, placidly. "But I am going to carry one, myself, thank you. You would be well to grab one as well before the rest of the Keldara find out we have them. They have all seen the video."
"What video?!" Adams snarled. "He said that too!"
"You will see," Oleg replied, grinning. "For once, the pupil knows more than the master."
"I'm going to fucking kill Mike," Adams said. But he grabbed one of the machine guns. It was an M-60. They went all the way back to the Vietnam War. The US had ditched them for the M240 because it was, hands down, a better fucking weapon. Higher cycle rate, much harder barrel so you could get a couple of hundred rounds through it before you had to change the barrel, a bit less prone to jamming, tad lighter. The M-60 was old tech in comparison.
What was the big fucking deal?
Katya walked in the entrance of the caravanserai and directly to the harem quarters, ignoring the gasp from Mother Savina who had been passing through the front room.
"Katya?" Anastasia asked, her eyes wide. "Are you okay?" She started to hold her arms out then thought better of it and just stood there, not sure what to do.
Katya was covered from head to toe in drying blood. There were still pieces of Viktor stuck to her, especially in her hair.
She knew she didn't look all that great. A few of the Keldara had even shied away from her. For that reason and because she just could not ask those people for a ride, she had walked the long way back to the caravanserai, her eyes blank and staring.
She was cold. She knew that. "A deadly little bitch" was what the Kildar had called her once.
But having a person blasted into pieces in front of your eyes, and all over you and in your face, mouth and nose, that was something even the coldest person had a hard time with. No one else in the compartment had really seen Viktor vaporized. The wounded Keldara and Dr. Arensky both had had their heads down. The other wounded were mostly so doped up they were half or totally unconscious.
But she had seen every splash. She'd barely closed her eyes and gotten her arms up in time to keep from being hit in the face by a length of intestine.
"I'm fine," Katya said, still staring into the distance. "I just need a shower. A very long shower."
For perhaps the first time in her life she felt pity for someone. Because the helicopters were going to have to go back through the pass.
"Gretchen!" Kacey said over the intercom. "I've got a little more altitude, but you need to fire up the bunkers again!"
"Got it!" Gretchen called. She'd gotten blood into the three casualties that really seemed to need it and made sure Gregor was okay. Now it was time to do battle.
She pulled out Father Kulcyanov's axe and kissed it.
"Father of All, let me triumph this day," she said, arming the gatling gun.
As she did she looked up at the ridgeline. There, clear as day, there was a tiger walking along the shoulder of the mountain. A young male from the looks of it. Not yet to his full growth but... magnificent nonetheless. The tigers had returned.
She knew Sion had said he'd seen a tiger, but nobody had believed him. She thought for a moment how happy he would be when she confirmed that she'd seen it, too. Then she remembered that Sion wasn't going to hear of it, short of joining him in the Halls.
Circling over the tiger, though, was a raven. It was headed to the north, towards the battlefield. How did they always know? And would this one, the eyes of the Father of All, stay to watch her upon the field?
No, it continued on, riding the strong winds to the battle. The tiger disappeared over the ridge. In a moment, she was alone again.
She shook herself back to the present and leaned outwards. The bunkers were just coming into view.
"Welcome to the land of the tigers," she screamed. "Father of All hear my prayer! Let me slay this day!"
"I am going to fucking kill that thing this time," Baakr said, pointing at the helicopter.
"It's going faster this time," Hanan noted, holding the belt. "Lead it."
"I am leading it you pig eater," Baakr replied, as he opened fire. He was crouched down, but he just couldn't seem to get the fire high enough. "Help me! Lift this thing up!"
Gretchen held down the trigger of the minigun, walking the rounds into the nearest bunker. They were both firing but she ignored that. She just wanted to bring some servants to the Hall.
This time she managed to walk the rounds into the firing slit of the north bunker and let out a hoot as the machine-gun stopped firing.
"Yes! I have slain this..."
Gretchen hadn't realized she'd left her intercom on but Kacey wasn't about to interfere with the girl's moment. But when the scream of joy cut off she hit her mike switch.
"Gretchen?" Kacey shouted. The damned Hinds weren't open to the troop compartment so she couldn't even look back to see if the girl was okay. "GRETCHEN!?"
Oh, fuck.
"Oh, fuck."
Two groups operated Predators in the United States government, the United States Air Force and the CIA. And USAF Predators were not armed. The Air Force held the position that anything was going to fly and be armed, it damned well better have a pilot in the cockpit and not just a bunch of wires.
The Army was making a bid to get some armed Predators but the AF was using every bit of political muscle to prevent it. Going all the way back to the Key West Agreement in 1947, the Air Force had done everything it possibly could to prevent the Army from having anything with a weapon on it in the air. They'd failed with helicopters but they were standing firm on anything with a "fixed wing." Predators were fixed wing aircraft and, therefore, the Army might be permitted some that weren't armed, but armed Preds were right the fuck out.
The CIA stood outside that particularly asinine turf battle. The Air Force had occasionally complained about various armed CIA aircraft to which the CIA had invariably answered "what aircraft?"
So the CIA had Predators. And they were, by God, armed. What's the point, otherwise? And they used them in various ways, mostly removing high value terrorists that, for other reasons, were hard to reach.
They really didn't give a damn where they sent their Predators, or the Hellfire missiles they mounted, because if anyone said anything about missiles, or the occasional crashed Predator, they just said: "What missiles? What Predators? We have no knowledge of any such aircraft or missiles."
The pilot of the CIA Predator was a former Air Force captain who had made something of a career in the Air Force flying Predators. The problem was, if you made it known you liked Predators and thought they were the future of air combat, your days in the Air Force were numbered.
After an Officer Evaluation Report that, in subtle ways, indicated that he might as well hang up his flight suit, the captain had reluctantly left the Air Force.
But before he could ever hit the exit door a nice man in a suit had offered him a job.
Flying Predators.
Armed Predators.
Gosh, the captain had thought, wonder who he works for? Because everybody knows that nobody has armed Predators.
So these days he flew armed Predators for about twice the pay he made as a captain. And the great part about it was, he never had to leave the Northern Virginia area. The Predator could be controlled, via satellite, from anywhere in the world. Oh, the launch teams had to get closer. This one was, in fact, based in eastern Georgia. But he was a pilot. He could do the job from his bedroom.
No more sleeping in nasty barracks in some Third World shithole. No more bad chow—the commissary in this building was, in fact, first rate. And his commute to work was about twenty minutes.
This was the shit.
But some days were better than others.
This mission had some very high priorities. Predator video was routinely pumped to the White House. Sometimes the President watched, sometimes he didn't. But unless it was a US ground force in action, he rarely got involved. Even then, the most they might get was an occasional minor retask to look at something in particular. This president, thank God, wasn't Johnson. Despite having a better ability to control things from the safety of the White House, he stayed hands off.
Mostly.
This seemed to be an exception to the rule. He'd been told that this mission was a direct tasking. The fucking Director had called three times, asking when they could get some good video.
Video, though, had been the least of the problems. Flying a Predator was always an exercise in mind over instinct. You sure as hell couldn't "feel" the plane. All you could do was watch the instruments and the video and hope like hell you didn't crash.
And the last few hours of flying had dropped his hope level pretty low. Technically, the Predator was an "all weather" aircraft, at least according to his new employers. It had GPS and night vision (night was considered a "weather" condition.) It had instruments to figure out if it was upside down or not. Ergo, it was "all weather."
But last night, Georgia time, had been anything but realistic flying weather. The Preds had been socked in all night. And flying them back, over the mountains, was a nightmare. Generally you just told them where to go and they went. But the conditions had been so bad he'd had to manual them the whole way back, the most pulse-raising ride he'd had since his last F-16 check ride.
Even now, with the weather clearing and the sun coming up, he was sweating bullets. The winds were hell. The Predator was neither overpowered nor particularly aerodynamic so at times it seemed when he turned into the wind he was going backwards. Flying with the wind was worse since he lost almost all control. Crosswinds had him flying at a slant. Updrafts and downdrafts were all over the place. Conditions just sucked.
But for six sweating hours he'd kept the damned thing on station. Just in time to spot this through a break in the clouds.
"Control, you might want to look at the Pred feed," he said. "We have a situation on the ground."
"Get them off!" D'Allaird shouted. "Move!"
The Keldara women were already unloading the stretchers, the ripped Keldara men stifling screams at the rough handling. There was no way they were going to scream in pain in the presence of their own people.
As Gregor was loaded on a stretcher, Kacey scrambled out of her seat.
"Chief?" she yelled, running to the rear of the bird.
"Stop," D'Allaird said, holding up his hand. "Just get back in your seat, Kacey."
"Fuck that," Kacey said, pushing by as Tammie came up behind her.
Gretchen was lying against the far door. She had been hit on the upper chest. The round had cut through her armor as if it weren't there and blasted her chest into ruin. Most of the girl was still held in place by the surviving armor but her head slumped to the side, connected only by a few strands of tissue.
Kacey turned around and threw up, puking up everything in her stomach and then some.
"Oh...fuck," Tammie said. "When we couldn't get her on the intercom we...hoped..."
"Ain't much hope there," the chief said, climbing on the bird and picking up the ravaged and remarkably light body. He had long experience of bodies ripped by everything from crashes to gunfire. And it always amazed him how much the weight of the body was in blood. Gretchen was pretty much fully bled out.
"Not Gretchen!" Mother Silva screamed. She tried to compose herself but she just couldn't. She ran to her daughter and cradled the broken body to her breast. "Not Gretchen. Please!"
"Kari," Mother Makanee said. "You will not do this. We have to clear the helicopter. We go on. We continue the... the mission."
"Oh, gods, Julia," Mother Silva said. "First Viktor and now Gretchen!"
"And Sion and Gena was not alive," Mother Makanee said, pulling the woman away. "We are the Keldara. Our place is in battle. They rest in the Halls. We will join them at the end of all things. They shall fight the final battle in our names and bring us honor as they honor us this day. But you must come away."
Kacey didn't know what the women were talking about, but she kind of figured the one crying was Gretchen's mom. As they carried the little body off she turned to D'Allaird.
"Chief, I'm done taking fire and not being able to do anything about it," Kacey snarled.
D'Allaird, watching the two women carry Gretchen over to the line of bodies by the hangar, nodded.
"Got just what you need, boss," he said, gesturing to the hangar. "She's tanked and armed. And it's got the 'special' package on it."
"I'm taking it straight to those fuckers in Guerrmo," Kacey snapped, heading for the hangar.
"Fuck yeah," Tammie said, starting to follow her to the bird.
"Alone," Kacey said, holding out a hand. "Chief, load up this bird. The Keldara are getting hammered out there. Tammie, head back as soon as the bird is loaded. Do the drop, do the dust-off. But I'm going this one alone."
"Kacey, the front position is designed for a gunner," Tammie protested. "Why do you get all the fun?"
"We've got wounded to pull out and ammo to deliver," Kacey said. "Both birds, captain. Chief, get Valkyrie One in the air. Fast. In the meantime, I'm going to go deliver a message to the Chechens."
The wounded had been cross-loaded to the Blackhawk which was already in the air. Most of the Keldara in the area, therefore, stopped what they were doing as Tammie and D'Allaird started tugging back the doors to the hangar. Everyone, of course, knew that the other Hind had been armed, and painted. But this was the first time that most of them had seen it.
As the two Americans pushed the Hind into view the Keldara started clapping and hollering. About half the women present ran forward to help push.
D'Allaird had been a busy man. Not only were the pylons of the Hind now loaded with two gatling guns and two 57mm rocket launchers, but the front of the bird had been painted in a snarling dragon head. To either side, tusks on the flaming dragon, were two more fixed gatling guns for a total of four of the brutal weapons. Kacey already had the engines warming and as soon as the tail was clear of the hangar bay she started up the rotors.
"Tiger Base, this is Helo Two, designation Dragon One," Kacey said, plugging in the route she planned to follow on the terrain avoidance system. "Mission change. Combat op to clear defenses along the Guerrmo Pass route."
There was a pause then Nielson's voice came back over the radio.
"Keldara Two: Confirm. Good hunting, Dragon One."
"I'm going to bring them the word of God, Tiger Base," Kacey replied. "These fuckers are going to face the flame."