Commander Bukara couldn't believe his eyes. The straggled remnants of the attack force were running down the hill, dropping their weapons, dropping their ammunition, dropping everything in a desperate race to escape. And it was a race they were losing as first one then another dropped to sniper fire. Barely a hundred had fled, initially, and that number had been dropped by half before they were half way down the slope.
"Pagan fucks," Bukara snarled. Already ravens were dropping from the sky onto the bodies and distant shots, single, indicated that some of the wounded were being finished off by the defenders.
"They say that the raven is one of their totems," Bukara noted. "The eyes of one of their gods. He's certainly getting an eyeful today."
"There is no God but Allah," Sayeed replied.
"Well I wish he'd send me a sign, then," Bukara snapped.
"Commander Bukara..."
The young Chechen was panting, clearly having finished running hard. He was still carrying his weapon, though, and had come from the rear. So he wasn't one of the cowards up on the hill.
"What?" Bukara snarled.
"Another group comes," the young man gasped. "A large group under Commander Sadim. And they have reporters. From Al-Jazeera! The whole world will watch us destroy these Keldara!"
"You said you wanted a sign," Sayeed said, impertinently.
"Sergeant Sivula, what, pray tell, are you doing here?" Captain Guerrin asked.
Of course the answer was obvious since the sergeant, sweating like a horse, was carrying one end of a 120mm mortar tube.
120mm mortars are, technically, man transportable. And over short distances, if you have enough bodies, they are. Of course, the tube alone weighs 110 pounds. The massive baseplate is even heavier at 136 pounds. And the bipod is no joke, despite weighing in at a comparatively light 70 pounds. Then there was ammunition, without which the weapon was useless. Each crate of three rounds weighed forty pounds. And the more rounds the better.
There was no way that even all the young women of the Keldara could have carried the mortars the ten kilometers from the nearest road to the Ranger position. The women were strong but it would have taken four of them, alone, to carry the tube. Sivula and one other Ranger were currently carrying it having traded off with the previous team a kilometer before reaching the Ranger position.
Sivula lowered the mortar to the ground and looked sheepish.
"Well, sir, our mandate was to work with the mortars," Sivula said. "And the ladies wanted to bring them up here."
Every female of the Keldara between the age of fifteen and about twenty, damned near a hundred of them, were in a long line behind him, carrying crates of ammunition, water and food. All of them had weapons, as well, mostly AKs scrounged from Chechens on various battlefields. The weapons and crates clashed with their bright tops and black skirts. It looked like the gypsy caravan from hell.
The one woman who was not young was right behind Sivula. She looked to be about two hundred but, despite her age and the weight of weapon and ammunition she was carrying, she was following along just fine, not even looking particularly bothered by the slope. The term that came to mind was...sprightly.
"You are the commander," the woman said in broken English as she reached Guerrin's commander. "I am Mother Lenka, brewmistress of the Keldara, Captain. I have brought your men some of my personal beer and in exchange I would ask for a favor."
"Well, ma'am," the captain said, uncomfortably, "my men can't drink on duty..."
"Even though you Americans have no legs for real beer," Mother Lenka snapped, "even they will not be made drunk by one bottle, captain. And it's not as if they're having to fight."
Guerrin's eyes flared at that and he opened his mouth to reply but he didn't get a chance.
"We are here on a mission of mercy, captain," Mother Lenka continued, more pleasantly. "There are, possibly, injured Chechens in those bunkers. We are here to provide aid to them. But we are but poor, weak women. So we would like to ask for a little help. Just, you know, toting things. I know you are under orders to not move forward but surely you can help us on a mission of mercy." The old woman batted her eyes coquettishly.
Guerrin was surprised. Despite looking as if she was two hundred, when the woman turned on her charm full force she actually was pretty good looking. He'd never thought that was possible.
"Uh..." Guerrin said. "The toting you'd like help with, that would be, oh, mortars, baseplates... That sort of thing?"
"Well, we have to have weapons for self protection," Mother Lenka said, still blue eyes wide and innocent in the face of the blatant lie. "And there may be poor, injured Chechens to bring back."
Guerrin had seen what Captain Bathlick had left of the Chechen position. If there was anyone alive over there he was a leg. But she had a point. I mean, a mission of mercy? Even State couldn't find fault with that.
"I can see that logic," Guerrin said, trying not to grin. The woman could charm the scales off a snake. "I'll round up some guys. Third Platoon looks a little worn out."
"Why thank you, Captain," Mother Lenka said, smiling. She dipped into one of her ammo pouched and pulled out a bottle. "Have a beer. But eat something with it. You Americans are weak drinkers."
"Presents from the Mothers," Sawn said, dropping a package in Kiril's position.
Kiril had gotten the bodies arranged to his satisfaction, cleaned his SAW and reloaded it. He'd left one of the bodies, one of the less bloody ones, in the position. It gave him something to sit on.
"Blessings be upon the Mothers," Kiril said, opening the wooden box.
There were three meat rolls, beef and cabbage wrapped in bread, a small loaf of oatmeal cake, rich with honey and washed in egg and, blessed be, a bottle of beer stamped with Mother Lenka's personal rune. He'd only had Mother Lenka's beer on two other occasions; it was saved for holidays. The meat rolls were hot and the beer still cold, courtesy of the straw both were packed in.
"Blessings indeed," Sawn said. He had a load of other boxes in his arms. "I have to drop these off before I can eat. So I'm out of here."
"Go," Kiril said, his mouth already stuffed with meat-roll. He cracked the top on Mother Lenka's brew and took a sip. Given that he'd been out of beer for days and hadn't eaten in nearly twenty-four hours, it was one of the best meals he'd ever had. "Go with blessings."
Mike opened up the box then looked over at the commo and intel section.
It was like friends told him about kids. They weren't getting into trouble until they were quiet. Before the food got dropped off they'd been happy-talking. Happy to be alive after the Keldara had beaten off the attack. Now they were quiet, and they weren't eating.
"What?" Mike said. "Whatever it is, I'm going to find out sooner or later."
Vanner looked up from the BFT pad and shrugged.
"Check the updated casualty report," he said. "Female."
Mike pulled out his own pad and keyed the casualty reports. He didn't need to sort it, the name leapt off the screen.
Mahona, Gretchen, Private, Crew-Chief. KIA.
Crew-chief. "Game as hell. Took some with her, I think, but she got hit by one of the 12.7s."
Mike put the pad away then put his hand to his forehead, eyes closed. His jaw worked as he tried to get control but his mind was filled with the sound of laughter, flashing legs and the war in his head was one of chocolate mousse.
He could not do this right now. He could not. He had to bottle it away. And there was one other thing he had to do. Nobody else could do it. Nobody.
He wiped his eyes and took a deep breath as he stood.
"Keep the food warm. I've got to go over to Sawn's positions."
"Oh, shit," Pierson said as CNN broke in with a "special report from Chechnya."
Ever since the advent of the 24-hour news cycle, every higher headquarters kept at least one TV tuned to one or more of the satellite news channels. Not only was it a necessity to see what lie was being perpetrated by the Main-Stream Media today, quite often you could pick up intelligence that was otherwise unnoticed or unavailable.
And sometimes, you found out when an op had been blown sky high.
"This is Jack Sperman with CNN," the newscaster said. "We are receiving reports of a major battle going on in Chechnya at this moment. The region where the battle is taking place is called the Pansiki Gorge, an area long used by Chechen militants as a refuge in their resistance to Russian occupiers. Much of the area belongs to the country of Georgia but Georgia has been unable to stop the Chechens from using it. They have apparently sent a small force in for reasons at this time unknown and the force has been cut off and surrounded by the Chechen freedom-fighters who are vowing to destroy them. We now take you to live video feed from the Al-Jazeera satellite news service..."
The video was of an Al-Jazeera reporter interviewing a big guy wearing the der rigueur bandana of "freedom-fighters" everywhere. They were both speaking Arabic but there was a continuous translation overlaid on the voice track.
"Commander Bukara," the reporter said, "your first attack was beaten off. What are you going to do, now?"
"That was only a probe," Bukara said. "We were just finding where their positions are. Now that we know, we will attack in force and destroy the infidels, removing their stain. These are the lands of Islam and we refuse to let foreign crusaders, pagans and pigs, from setting foot here!"
"You say they are pagans, yes?"
"Pagan eaters of pig flesh. They are worshippers of false gods and will recant or die as the Prophet decreed!"
"You are confident, then?"
"Very. They are few and number and my men, after a long battle that left many of them dead, now have them trapped. They are faithless, as well, leaving their wounded and dead behind. We have treated the wounded with care and the dead shall be buried with full Islamic ceremony, although they are pagans and thus doomed to hell. It shall not be said, though, that we are barbarians."
"You are acting in the best traditions of Islam, Commander. When do you plan to attack..."
"Somebody better tell the president," Pierson said with a sigh.
"Kildar, this is Tiger Two."
"Go."
Mike was just looking off into the distance. Telling Kiril had been harder than just about anything he'd ever done. But it wasn't that that had a black place where his soul used to be.
"We're sending you a video on feed two," Pierson said. "Al-Jazeera had some reporters covering the Chechen forces in the area. They've apparently caught up to your battle. Bukara is spouting bullshit but I thought you'd find it humorous."
"Fuck," Mike said, picking up his personal pad and hitting the control for feed two. Sure enough... Motherfucker. He could recognize their emplacements in the background. Just what he fucking needed.
He stood up and walked to the front of the bunker and looking down the hill then picked up his binoculars. Steadying his arm on the wall of the bunker he dialed in the digital zoom and spotted the group. Bukara had to be the guy waving his arms.
"Is the president seeing this?" Mike said.
"Mike, it's satellite TV," Pierson replied. "It's being carried live on CNN, Fox, Al-Jazeera and Skynet. Yeah, he knows. Hell, the whole world knows."
"Mr. President," the Secret Service agent said, hand to his earmike, "Sir, sorry to interrupt dinner, but Colonel Pierson says you might want to turn on Fox News."
"Sorry about this, honey," the president said to the First Lady, smiling slightly. He gestured with his chin and another Secret Service agent clicked the TV in the dining room on.
"...Kill the Keldara pagans. Then we shall go to their homes and scour them. Their valley is a rightful part of Islamic lands, stolen from us long ago. Today is the day of reckoning against these infidel invaders..."
"Get me Colonel Pierson," the president said, his face hard. "Now."
"That's Michael isn't it?" the First Lady said, worriedly. "Honey..."
"Not now, Amanda," the President said. "Not now."
"Fuck."
Mike considered the group through his binoculars then hit the range finder. Two thousand seven hundred and ninety eight meters. Winds... pretty touchy. Mostly from the side but shifting... On the other hand it was downhill all the way...
"Hey, Nielson," Mike said, touching his throat mike and checking the time. "You'd better call higher and tell them if anybody's eating dinner they might want to turn off the video feed."
"Mike..."
Mike switched frequencies.
"Lasko, you'd better still have the Robar."
Lasko peered through the NightForce NSX scope of the Robar .50 caliber sniper rifle and considered the shot.
The target was barely a dot even at twenty-two times magnification. The winds were fifteen knots at his position but seemed higher in the air in between. Probably closer to seventeen. He leaned over and looked through the spotting scope then hit the built in inclinometer. Two hundred and sixty three meters below his position. And nearly three thousand meters. The height difference was the only thing that made the shot even vaguely possible.
The ballistics of a round is a simple function of gravity. Anything dropped in a gravity well has the force of gravity pulling it down. Once the bullet leaves the barrel of the weapon, it is continuously falling towards the ground and just as continuously accelerating, gravity being like that.
Thus the "parabolic" function of anything thrown in a gravity well, from a football to a CD chucked at your sister's head to...a bullet fired at a target nearly a mile and a half away.
In addition, rounds slow due to air resistance. Winds push them around. A bullet fired from a gun pointed perfectly at a target even a hundred meters away tends to miss. Much less a mile and a half. Mile and a half just simply wasn't doable. Impossible. Unthinkable.
Lasko knew all this. He'd been a superb "instinctive" shot before the Kildar came along. Since then he'd studied and practiced constantly. The computations of advanced ballistics sometimes took him a while, he had, after all, barely been able to do multiplication before the Kildar, but he had technology to help out there. This shot, though...
Tricky, tricky. Winds...
Normally, Sion would be doing this but Pyotar had no clue how to really spot. So Lasko dialed back the zoom on the spotting scope, checking the winds. Winds seen through a scope at that distance made a "haze" effect similar to the mirage you got on hot days. You could see them rippling by and with practice could figure out direction and probable speed. The wind nearest the target was going to have the most effect because the bullet was going to be going slowest there. Hell, it might be going slowly enough to not have any effect on the target at all.
He checked six points going back, making notes on a pad at each point, then zoomed the scope back to the target. The fucker was still talking and standing nice and still for the cameras.
He pulled out his own BFT device, which had a program for long-range shooting calculations built into it. Plugging the distance, elevation change and wind variables he hit the enter key. The device in less than a second gave him numbers for elevation of the barrel and deflection off target. It also gave him the speed the round was going to be traveling which, fortunately, was more than high enough.
Looking through the scope he snorted. He'd adjusted his scope to the maximum hold-over, was at the bottom of the stadia on the vertical and still needed two mils. He shifted the rifle up and snorted again. About two mils was going to have to do. And the bullet was going to be breaking the sound barrier on the way. That, right there, was going to make this shot more luck than either science or art.
He also was firing with the scope at nearly maximum horizontal. The rifle pointed upwards and sideways at, apparently, thin air. Insane to even try... Oh, well. If he missed nobody was going to notice. Except the Keldara and, in a way, they were the only ones that mattered.
Shifting the rifle he found the target again and wrapped his arm into the strap, getting a good solid seat. If he thought about the impossibility of the shot for even a second he might not take it at all. So he just took a slight breath and squeeeezed...
"Colonel, we need to ensure that there is no discussion of our interaction with this," the president said.
"Yes, Mr. President," Pierson said. He was sweating. He'd never had an op go this far south in his life. The whole fucking world was watching one of the blackest of black ops on satellite TV. Motherfucker! He shook his head as one of the commo lieutenants looked over at him, waving. "President!" he mouthed.
"I KNOW," the guy suddenly screamed. "Tell him to turn off the feed! NOW! Or at least get the First Lady out of the FUCKING ROOM!"
The bullet was a Hornady A-MAX, the round of choice for long-distance shooters. The sharp polymer cap over a more or less hollow center gave it excellent ballistic ability because it could knife through the atmosphere and maintain a solid spin over long distances. And the hollow point, well, that meant the round nearly exploded on contact with a target.
It started off at 854 meters per second and in a perfect spin, courtesy of high quality manufacture in both the bullet and the rifle. But by the time the 750 grain round reached target it was going barely above the speed of sound and pointed nearly straight downwards. The edges of the sound barrier had caused it to begin "wobbling" and now it was tumbling as well.
It was that angle and wobble that did it as much as anything. The round entered Commander Bukara's chest going at slightly below the speed of sound, falling at a 75 degree angle and very nearly sideways, transmitting in one brief moment 1804 foot pounds of energy or nearly six times as much as the most powerful .45 pistol round.
At that point, hydrostatic shock took over.
The President watched, wide-eyed, as the man on the screen seemed to explode. His torso separated from his abdomen in a spray of blood and intestines. One arm was ripped off, spinning through the air and hitting the Al-Jazeera reporter hard enough to knock him off his feet.
He just sat there for a moment, his mouth open, as the view from the camera became one of the ground, sideways, then started shaking and moving as the cameraman, smart man, crawled away. It suddenly terminated, showing an empty chair. From the sounds, the newscaster was throwing up into a wastebasket under the desk.
"Can we let the First Lady back in, now, Mr. President?" the Secret Service agent by the door asked.
"Sure," the president replied.
His wife still had her fork in her hand. When the Service got the word that the First Lady needed to "exit the room" they didn't mess around. This wasn't Hollywood. When the Service got the word to move a principle, they stopped being polite; the principle moved at the highest speed the Detail could run with him or her in their arms. Her feet had not hit the floor.
"What happened?" she asked, angrily.
The president looked at the fork and shook his head.
"Nothing," he said, grabbing at his mouth. "Excuse me!" he muttered, rushing out of the room.
The First Lady looked at one of the younger agents, who was throwing up in a wastebasket, the screen where the anchorman, green-faced, was just straightening up and then at her personal Agent.
"I'm glad you picked me up, aren't I?" she asked.
"Yes, ma'am," the agent responded, stone-faced. He'd still been in the door, looking over his shoulder for the threat, when the guy made the shot and all he could think was "we have got to get that guy on the Detail."
"Vanner, what's the pool on Bukara's replacement?" Mike asked.
"Sadim," Vanner said. "He's the senior Chechen in the sector and most of the survivors are his men. He's not going to be as easy as Bukara, either."
"We'll deal with it," Mike said as his earphone beeped indicating that Nielson was on the other freq. "Go, Tiger Two."
"Kildar, do you think that was wise?" Nielson asked. "Pierson is fucking fuming. The President, along with several million other people around the world, is reported to be puking in the bathroom."
"No," Mike said, coldly. "But it sure was what I call quality television."