FIVE MINUTES CAN BE AN ETERNITY, BUT NOT THIS time. Instead of sniping for a minute or less and then running, we were to hit the van of the enemy column with everything we had and keep at it until the situation became untenable. We wanted to hold up the tonatin battalion as long as possible to give the rest of our units time to get into position to lock them in place. Once we got that battalion stopped, CIC would have our artillery drop a few heavier surprises on them. But we would not get a lot of help from the heavy stuff. Most of what we had available had to be saved for the main enemy force and for counter-battery fire against whatever artillery the tonatin defenders still had.
Kiervauna would fire the first shot—one of our rockets—this time. Both men with rocket launchers would get in a couple of strikes. Then it would be rocket-propelled grenades. Then rifles. One, two, three. We would let the current point squad get close, as near as I dared. The rockets would go after the van of the main force. The RPGs would go against both the point and the main force. If the point squad was close enough, we might toss a few hand grenades their way. When it came time for the rifles, our first priority would be to finish the point squad, the nearest threat. Then we would turn our full attention to the lead company of the main force.
Before we got too deep into the fight—before the enemy commander had a chance to detach any of his people to flank us—I hoped that a couple more of our squads would start attacking. If we didn’t get help within two or three minutes we would be in deep trouble. We would have to try to withdraw, and there wasn’t time to place land mines between us and the tonatin to slow them down. They were too close.
Three minutes. I wiped sweat from my hands and settled so I was looking over the sights of my rifle. Kiervauna was a few feet to my left, watching me as much as out where we expected the enemy to appear. I would give him the signal to launch his first rocket. He would show the rocket the target—one of the enemy soldiers—then launch it. The rocket was smart enough to detonate when it got close to a target, even a moving, living target. If it went off a few feet over the heads of the enemy, as intended, it could do considerable damage.
Two minutes. I looked around to make sure I knew exactly where my people were. Then I had to wipe sweat from the palms of my hands again. I knew it was nerves, fear, but fear is normal, natural, something to use, not something to cringe away from. I looked at the side of my rifle’s receiver to make sure that the safety was off and the selector switch was on full automatic.
One minute. Unless the enemy stopped moving or the estimate from CIC was wrong, the point squad would come into view any second. This time I only wiped the sweat from my right hand. I didn’t want my trigger finger to slip. I worked at getting my breathing even and shallow, worked at calming my mind. Waiting.
The combat uniforms of the tonatin were as effective as ours in minimizing thermal signature, but our night-vision systems do not rely exclusively on detecting infrared. Our targets were sure to be moving, which also helps. I saw movement—a helmet between low-hung branches. I scanned around that spot and in a few seconds counted six men along the side of the path, so close to the trees that they had to duck under the lowest branches. They were 120 yards away.
I raised my left hand a few inches above my head and made a signal for my men, a pointing finger indicating where the enemy was. But I didn’t look to see if the others had noticed my gesture. I kept my gaze toward the enemy. It would only be necessary for Kiervauna to see my next hand signal, the order to fire. That would be the signal for the rest of the squad.
That gesture wouldn’t come until the main force of the enemy battalion was within range, and the point squad was too close for comfort. That would take another minute or two. Until then, we needed to remain as nearly motionless as possible. The point squad might be within forty yards when we opened up. Too damned close.
The enemy’s point squad was smaller than before—and probably wasn’t the same squad as the last time we had hit. That duty gets shifted around to move fresh eyes to the front, and to make sure that the same men aren’t always feeling the most pressure. There were eight tonatin I could see in the point squad. They were within sixty yards. There was fifty yards between the last man in that squad and the van of the column behind it.
I gave Kiervauna the signal.
We opened up with two men firing rockets. They were joined by two men firing rocket-propelled grenades. Then the rest of us opened up with rifles, joined quickly by those who had started with rockets and RPGs. The enemy point squad had been slightly out of range of hand grenades. Maybe the porracci could toss a three-pound grenade fifty yards, but none of the rest of us could, certainly not with the kind of accuracy we needed.
The standard rifle that all of us but the biraunta used had a cyclic firing rate of nine hundred rounds per minute. That meant we could empty a 100-round magazine in under seven seconds if we held the trigger down. The biraunta rifle had a slightly lower cyclic rate, and the magazines their rifles used didn’t hold as many rounds. But none of us emptied magazines as quickly as we could have. We didn’t want to run out of ammunition this close to the enemy.
Still, we put out a fairly heavy amount of fire over about a minute and a half—easily over a thousand rounds. We laid a lot of hell on top of the IFers who were within range. Then I told my men to start being more conservative. We went back to short bursts, three or four rounds at a time. I reported to Captain Fusik and asked how long it would be before we had help.
“Listen for it,” he said, and almost before the last word was out, I heard new gunfire enter the fray from our left, closer to the van of the enemy column. The IFer point squad had ceased to exist by that time. Souvana moved his fire team closer to them and reported that there were no survivors.
A third spec ops squad joined the firefight after another forty-five seconds, and after that the fighting became more general, with the rest of our squads pitching in as soon as they arrived. The enemy battalion was trying to establish defensive positions, not an easy job with the column of two’s spread out over a mile of curving forest trail. All they could do was kiss dirt on either side of the trail and get what cover they could.
Captain Fusik ordered me to start moving my squad left, to join the next squad. Alpha Company was three-quarters of an hour away, pushing toward the fight as quickly as they could. We were also given a “heads up” warning because our artillery was beginning to target the enemy column. Fifteen seconds later, the first rounds exploded. From the sound of the blasts, I guessed that they were the heavy rockets. They carry a larger explosive charge than the shells the big guns fire.
“Captain, we’re going to run out of ammunition before much longer,” I reported when there was a moment of silence following the detonation of the first rockets. “I doubt that any of my men have much more than a single magazine.” Personally, I had one full magazine plus a nearly empty partial in my weapon. My guess was that all of the squads had to be in the same shape, but it wasn’t up to me to tell the captain that. The other squad leaders would be quick to point out their own shortages.
“We’re working on it,” Fusik said. “I’ll get back to you when we can get more ammo in. You’ll just have to stretch your supplies the best you can.”
I couldn’t stop my mouth. “You mean like fire half a bullet at a time? Or maybe we should toss IOUs for bullets at them?”
“Do what you can,” Fusik said, and the words seemed to drip ice. Well, it wasn’t the first time I’d put my foot in my mouth with an officer, but if we didn’t get more ammunition in fairly soon, it sure might prove to be the last.
I CARRIED A PISTOL IN ADDITION TO MY RIFLE, AND I still had a full complement of ammunition for that, four magazines of needle rounds. It might keep me going for a minute or two after the rifle ran dry. Apart from that, we might be reduced to bayonets—if the enemy didn’t just sit off where they were and drop RPGs on top of us. If I kept us close enough to let that happen.
“Cease firing,” I told my men. “Pull back by fire teams. Souvana, take your men back first.” We had been told to move to the next squad. They were a couple hundred yards away, a little closer to the enemy than we had been. Still, I didn’t see any need to take a straight line. We could make a wide curve that would take us out of range of enemy RPGs for a few minutes, and put enough tree trunks between us and the enemy that a bullet would have a hard time finding one of us.
We moved slowly, as if we were still easy targets, not using fire-and-maneuver after the first couple of moves. Until we were ready to hit again, I’d just as soon let the enemy forget us. When we were near the apex of our arc, three hundred yards from the enemy, I stopped the squad and had everyone check on remaining ammunition, and told them to be as conservative as possible once we got back into the fight. “I don’t have any idea how long it’s going to be before we get fresh supplies, but figure it won’t be until after A Company gets into the act,” I told them.
“We will need to limit ourselves to single, aimed shots to have any hope of holding out that long,” Souvana observed.
“There’s not a man in the squad who can’t be effective firing single shots,” I said, and Souvana nodded.
I was just about to give the signal to start moving again when there was a sudden, dramatic increase in the amount of gunfire. Everyone in the squad turned toward the noise. It wasn’t simple curiosity. We had to know if it posed any threat to us. We were too far away to see what was happening. The trees that kept us fairly safe from enemy gunfire also kept us from seeing much. I got us moving along the route I had picked, and got into my place in the line, listening for something on the radio to tell me just what the hell was going on.
It wasn’t long. There were suddenly a lot of reports flying on the company channels. The tonatin battalion commander wasn’t doing what we expected. Again. He was withdrawing his troops under heavy fire—as many as he could. The first estimate I heard was that he was leaving perhaps a short company to hold us off while he pulled the rest out, due west, away from the bulk of us … and directly toward our A Company.
I stopped my squad again, anticipating orders to change course and head west as well, maybe to try to get in front of the enemy force to slow it down. We would have had to damned near run to do that. But two minutes passed without any orders for us. Captain Fusik was busy dealing with other squads, trying to figure out what we needed to do—I guess. He probably also had conversations going on with Colonel Hansen and CIC. I’ve seen officers trying to balance four or five conversations at once.
The firefight—our squads against that lone tonatin company left to guard the retreat of the rest—seemed to get extremely intense suddenly. The IFers were burning
ammunition as if they had endless supplies. I knew that couldn’t be the case. After all of the small firefights, those tonatin had to be getting short of ammo as well, even if their standard load was considerably more than ours was.
“Dragon.” At first there was just the one word. I acknowledged the captain’s call and then he continued. “We hold here, do what we can to finish off the troops the IFers left. Continue moving to join with your platoon’s second squad.”
“Yes, sir,” I said, careful not to say anything more. I liked Captain Fusik. He was okay, for an officer, and I had been trying not to mouth off to him … the way I already had that night. I figured he’d understand, once we were out from under the pressure. “We’re on the way.” I signaled for the squad to start moving.
THIS WASN’T A “MOPPING-UP” OPERATION SINCE the IFers had left almost as many men as we had to fight them. They managed to get into a halfway-decent perimeter, and the tonatin were good soldiers. They must have known that they were being sacrificed to give the rest of their battalion a chance, but they held fast, and gave us every ounce of grief they could. When they got low on ammunition, those who were still able to fixed bayonets, got up, and charged. It was insane, like something from some ancient poem extolling war. It was also more than a little terrifying to be on the end of that charge, even though the IFers had virtually no chance.
We had been engaged in this firefight for nearly half an hour, our positions a hundred yards from the enemy. My men were still being stingy with bullets, firing single rounds. Even so, I think every man in my squad was well into the last magazine for his rifle. It was almost a relief to see the remaining tonatin get up and run toward us. There weren’t near as many of them left—not much more than the equivalent of two platoons. Call it ninety men. Their numbers dwindled quickly once they were on their feet.
Fully half fell before they closed the gap to fifty yards, and only a handful made it all the way to our line.
Even they didn’t get the chance to use their bayonets. I killed one with my pistol at a range of five yards. Down the line a short distance, I saw one tonatin get all the way in before a porracci from second squad grabbed his rifle while the ghuroh next to him slit the tonatin’s throat.
This fight was over. There wasn’t any gunfire. There wasn’t a single tonatin left on his feet or able to fight. Still, it was nearly three minutes after the end of the abortive charge before Captain Fusik came on the radio—using the squad leaders’ channel—to give us new instructions.
“We take care of our wounded, then check the enemy and tag their wounded for pickup later. Then we head northwest, to rendezvous with the people bringing in ammunition. We’ll carry our wounded who can’t walk. There are medics with the supply detachment.” He sounded tired, but I didn’t expect that we would be given a rest. The fact that we were going to meet our ammunition resupply was a pretty good indication of that, so I wasn’t surprised by what the captain said next. “Once we have fresh ammo and turn our wounded over to the medics, CIC will give us a vector to get back into the fight. We have to support Alpha Company as quickly as possible. The IFers still aren’t moving in the right direction.”