Last Stand Read online

  Ordinarily, I’d order distribution of ammo. But the armory here was devoid of 6.5mm – one conspicuous downside to being first to switch to a superior round there weren’t already billions of floating around. Hell, ordinarily I’d be pouring mortars, rockets, and MG fire into the attackers – but the hellacious noise would mean death, or rather undeath, for everyone concerned.

  At a certain point, I figured I could have the weapons and ammo unloaded from the Valor. But, glancing at Uron in the dim and dusty air, I knew he would not be best pleased by that. And he still held four of my men. But this counter-attack had to be repulsed. Which meant someone had to act.

  And that foot… was me.

  * * *

  I didn’t know how reassured to be by the narrowness of their little escape tunnel. On the one hand, it suggested it wasn’t a huge vulnerability for us – a couple of guys alone could hold it, and only one at a time could squeeze through from the other side. On the other hand, it also meant these slippery bastards had evacuated their entire force out a tiny, single-file channel in minutes. As it was, my hastily assembled four-man fire team could barely get through at all, overloaded as we were not just with ammo, but also with three of the sub-guns – and one of the smart sniper rifles.

  Ammo for our M5s was already getting tight. Plus, you know, as hard as all this was sucking, who could resist the chance of a little fun playing around with the new toys? Not me.

  We waited at the tunnel entrance for everyone in the towers to pop and go cyclic, putting out hellacious if suppressed covering fire for us. This was more to distract the enemy than provide a base of fire for us to maneuver under, and the four of us slithered out fast, kept low, and took off to the right along the outside of the wire. Soon we were out of sight, screened by a low rise.

  And then we started climbing.

  We were also helped by an unexpected turn in the weather. In the Hindu Kush, the weather was always said to be “valley to valley” – the peaks so high and valleys so isolated they had their own independent weather systems. Now, an angry black thunderstorm had started rolling up our valley and straight into us – catching us by surprise, what with not a single weather widget left working on anybody’s phone. Anywhere. Then again, it was hard to miss, live and in person. The day had already gotten darker than when dawn first broke.

  But this suited me just fine.

  For one thing, visibility dropped massively. For another, it meant we weren’t mountain-climbing in direct sunlight, with eighty pounds of armor, ammo, and weapons on our sweaty and trembling bodies. Out of sight and about 200 meters to the east of the enemy, the four of us leapt up a series of steep switchbacks like mountain goats on meth. I’d had to eyeball the terrain from maps, but I was fairly confident this maneuver would allow us to put lethal flanking fire on our attackers.

  But first we had to get up there.

  And that was where the fanatical Ranger fitness regimen came in. We smoked ourselves in PT so hard every morning because we knew the day would come when being able to hump two weapons and 400 rounds of ammo up a nearly vertical and seemingly endless rocky slope would determine whether our brothers lived or died. We never let anyone out-train us.

  And we had no intention of letting our brothers die.

  But, on this one, we also had to stay alert and tactical. We hadn’t encountered too many dead on the mountain hump in, and thank fuck none of the running ones. But I still couldn’t afford to lose Rangers to stupid-ass avoidable infection. Maybe it was the ridiculous terrain, but we still didn’t see any – not until we got to the top.

  Every muscle burning with lactic acid, uniforms soaked through with sweat – despite the cool breeze, black cloud cover, and first fat drops of rain – we finally topped the last rise. After silently slotting a couple of dead goat farmers doddering around up there, we dropped to our bellies and low-crawled to the edge of the overlook.

  And, laid out below us, it was like Christmas morning.

  Dozens of the enemy were partially or in some cases fully exposed – members of the assault teams working their way forward down the hill, but also the base-of-fire guys back above and behind them on the ridge lines. All had naturally taken cover from the guard towers of the camp, which meant they were showing us their flanks. It hadn’t occurred to them we’d stage a counter-attack – or if it had, they sure as hell didn’t imagine we could climb to the top of the terrain we just had. Or not that quickly, anyway.

  Most of them were just within the effective range of the B&T submachine guns. But for me, with the XM2010, this was going to be like firing a 12-gauge at a cockroach – from two inches away. The bulbous scope on top of the rifle looked like something out of Robocop – big, sleek, and super high-tech, with three separate lenses protruding from the front. I powered it up and put my head down to the eyepiece.

  “Whoah-ho,” I whispered.

  Inside, on the big, vivid, full-color heads-up display, I could see a magnified digital video view of my target – in this case, the first enemy shooter I picked out and settled on. But this poor bastard – who was sitting there not knowing he was already deader than a guy with a stage-5 cancer diagnosis – was also surrounded in the display by targeting data: the exact range in yards, speed and direction of wind at my position, compass direction of aim, cant and inclination wheels… and a few other things I didn’t even know what the hell they were.

  As revolutionary as all that was, I knew enough about the operation of this thing to know the real game-changer was the guided trigger-release system. Physically, this was represented by a rubberized wire coming out of the scope, down into an assembly above the trigger housing – and mainly by a big red push-button on the outside of the trigger guard.

  This was the “tag” button. Heh heh.

  In the display, I lined up my target reticle on the left temple of the shooter in my sights. Then I pressed the tag button to designate that as the impact point. The display told me the Tracking Point system had instantly calculated a precise firing solution for that spot. A red dot also appeared on the side of the dude’s head… and it now moved when he did.

  Finally, I squeezed the regular trigger – which did not in fact discharge the weapon. It merely turned the target reticle red on the screen. The trigger itself was waiting for the electronic release signal from the software – which would only come when the rifle was lined up perfectly with the target, based on the computed firing solution. On screen, I moved the reticle back toward the dot on the dude’s temple – as the smart scope, and the rifle underneath it, visibly swayed a little from my still-labored breathing, after the ass-smashing climb.

  It didn’t matter. The target’s movements didn’t matter.

  I felt like a fighter pilot with missile lock. It was basically the same thing. For as soon as the reticle was aligned with the dot, even for a fraction of a second… the system released the trigger. Boom. First shot, perfect head shot. The guy pitched over, new dual assholes excavated on either side of his face. I had to imagine the one on the other side, the exit wound, but was extremely confident it was rather larger than your standard-issue asshole.

  Holy shit, dude.

  I picked out a new target. To my bottomless and barely restrained delight, two seconds after I tagged him, he got up and started running forward. Really just for grins, I stood up as well, rifle pulled in to my shoulder, panning to the left as I tracked his run down the slope. I pulled the trigger. Then I just waited… for his bouncing head to intersect with my swaying and unsteady target reticle.

  Boom. Perfect head shot. On the run.

  Holy shit, dude.

  One of his buddies ran over to check on him. I dropped him, too. Really, I could have done this all day, happily, but of course we had shit to do, and anyway the agreed plan was I would snipe three to start with, and then the others would open up.

  The others opened up – heavy and nonstop.

  With the suppressors, surprise, and viciousness of our enfilade, it took the Tal
iban a while to even figure out what the fuck was happening to them. By the time they had, and organized some kind of reaction to contact… there were twenty fewer of them than there had been before. All four of us were smiling like kids on Christmas morning.

  And we had a lot less ammo to hump down the hill.

  * * *

  Wzzzz…. KA- BOOMMMM!!!

  “Shit!” Everyone in the TOC hit the deck – everyone except me. I’d been under a lot of IDF before, and knew the roof of this structure was reinforced with enough sandbags to survive even a direct mortar hit. But the enemy had just massively upped the ante. The only thing I could think was they decided if they couldn’t have their sandcastle back, they’d just go ahead and kick the whole thing down. With us in it. And with the mortars they had up at the OP, they could do it.

  I’d had barely a minute to enjoy foiling their first attack.

  Another round exploded right outside the window, blowing it in, showering the TOC with debris, and knocking me to the deck. The others, already down on the floor, looked at me like I was an asshole, which was probably about right.

  I coughed up dust and shook my head, then focused my eyes and saw the controller for the sentry guns lying under a desk. Mostly melted, it looked like the 19-year-old boys had gotten bored and taken a lighter and a can of hairspray to it. Shrapnel is hot. I felt myself up to see if I’d been hit. I hadn’t, so I got up and scanned the room. The armor glass and mesh in the window were still about half intact.

  And the overall damage inside was minimal.

  The other good news was the guard towers at the walls were not just reinforced with sandbags but actually made out of Hesco barriers – four-foot-thick wire-mesh and heavy-fabric containers filled with dirt and turned into blast walls, and which will pretty much stop anything. As long as we all stayed tucked up, we should be able to weather the storm. Two storms now, actually – in between mortar hits, I could hear fat raindrops lashing the dirt outside, as well as the rumble of thunder getting closer in real time. So that was the good news.

  But the bad news was, once again, everything else.

  With us immobilized and covering up from the mortars, the Taliban could restart their attack on more favorable terms. And that wasn’t even our biggest problem at the moment. No, that would be—

  “Top!” Yep, there was Corporal Avarone, ducking inside again, rain dripping off his face now, and with much of the blood drained from underneath it. “Undead approaching, in company strength.”

  I shook my head. A third storm. “Are they running?”

  “Are they what?” I took Avarone’s blank expression as a no. I hadn’t briefed anyone on the new fast-attack variant of dead guy. This was arguably a serious intel, tactical, and organizational lapse on my part. But what we were doing here was enough of a suicide mission as it was.

  And I honestly just didn’t want to scare anyone.

  That’s what I told myself at first, anyway. Now I think maybe I just didn’t want to believe it myself. That I had dreamed the whole thing. Maybe I had. “From what direction?” I asked.

  “The village at first. But now kind of everywhere.”

  Goddammit. I’d already worried about the noise of the shooting – even suppressed weapons make noise – as well as the shouting from the initial fight, plus the noise of the jets overhead. Now we were not only stuck in this death-trap. But, thanks to the mortars, the whole camp had basically been turned into one big ringing dinner bell, with us as the buffet.

  A truly lethal clock was now ticking. The perimeter wall would keep the dead out, a lot of them, for a while. But when there were enough, eventually they’d pile up over it, or else just push it down.

  And then they’d roll right over us.

  * * *

  A mortar barrage, much like a losing firefight, was also not a cool thing to be involved in – most especially getting caught running around in one, out in the open. But I needed to tour the defenses in person, and see the tactical situation for myself. Anyway, fucking Uron had left me little choice.

  “Ditch the toys!” I’d shouted in his face, over the booming of explosions, and the thwack of shrapnel on the outside walls of the TOC. “Load everyone up in the Valor, drop us on the Kennedy, and then fucking go home. We all go home!”

  “Not happening, tovarisch.”

  I knew what I was demanding wasn’t the deal we had made – which was we get him the weapons, and he let us go. But this wasn’t even about the deal anymore. It was about survival. For me, that meant my men. But I wasn’t the only player at this table, and definitely not the one dealing. And it was also about survival for Uron – which for him meant his comrades on the frigate. And not only did he not believe the Americans would let him go if we flew there, never mind release the invaluable helo and pilot. He also didn’t even believe they’d let the Admiral Gorshkov keep floating, once they knew it was out there.

  I flicked at his sat-radio. “As least call CIC and find out if our air is clear!” He shook his head again. We were back in complete commo blackout, because Uron knew that even if the JFK couldn’t decrypt the Russians’ comms, they’d sure as hell be able to triangulate its source – learning both our position and the Gorshkov’s. I put my hand on the radio, and kept it there. There was nothing stopping me from just taking it off him – and radioing the Kennedy to come fucking extract us. I squinted into his eyes, wondering why he didn’t look worried.

  “The American encryption key,” I finally said.

  He opened his mouth and stuck out his tongue, which was ink-stained. The paranoid son of a bitch had eaten it. He tapped his temple. “Don’t worry, tovarisch. I memorized it first.”

  Motherfucker.

  Now I had no choice but to defend the fucking Alamo.

  * * *

  “Motherfuckers!” I shouted to Corporal Avarone, both of us hurling ourselves into the mud as another giant-ass 120mm mortar round whistled in and exploded, close enough to feel the heat on our fucking skin. Before the wet dirt even stopped raining down on our backs, we both bounced up and started hauling ass again, both so covered in mud we looked like Joe Shit the Rag Man.

  After a few more seconds of this fucked-up mortar-barrage Tough-Mudder no-fun run, I finally saw the north guard tower looming out of the mists of the rain and the drifting smoke of the mortars – but I grabbed Avarone and shouted in his ear. “Get back to the Valor! Break out that Raven!”

  “But Uron said no air—” He cut himself off. “Right, fuck Uron.”

  “Exactly!” Not only did we now want to get spotted by the goddamned JFK. But, more importantly, the problem of staying alive through the next ten minutes pretty much took priority – over everything. Avarone veered off to the left as I dug in my mud-slick boots and carried on straight toward the tower, the rain lashing me and at least washing some of the damned mud off.

  Finally inside and up top, I found Chandler commanding from the floor, crouching behind the thick Hesco barriers that protected the room on all sides – up to about nipple height. I also saw one of those sentry guns for the first time – it was a no-shit M134 minigun mounted on a motorized sliding metal frame, along with a small electronics rack and two cameras. It looked to me like the whole apparatus just rolled out through a sliding steel panel in front, built in between two Hescos.

  I looked back to Chandler, who hadn’t deviated from his current mission of keeping the floor from going anywhere. “Hey,” I said. “You planning on doing any shooting today?”

  He gritted his teeth, not thrilled at being called out. “Yeah, we’ve kind of been suppressed for the moment. If you hadn’t noticed.”

  In between explosions, and over the drumbeat of the lashing rain, I could hear rounds thunking in all over the outside of the tower – the Hescos, that steel panel in front of the turret gun, even the wooden supports, like the enemy was trying to shoot the whole structure out from under us. Between the mortars and the pummeling small-arms fire, admittedly, it would pretty much be death
even to stand up at this point. Truly, we had been suppressed.

  Forced into fetal balls, curled up under cover.

  So, there are two huge problems with being suppressed like this. One, you can’t shoot, so the enemy is free to maneuver at will. The end-game of that scenario is them walking up to your position, leaning in over your cover, and shooting you in the face. The other problem is you can’t fucking see, so you also don’t have any idea what the hell’s going on. Hence me telling Avarone to break out that Raven mini-UAV. But I couldn’t wait. I had to risk getting shot in my face by sticking it outside. And the first thing I saw wasn’t the enemy.

  It was the dead.

  There must have been two dozen zombified Pashtun bastards, in various states of decomposition, reaching up at me with grasping fingers. Empty eye sockets yawned, half-missing jaws gnashed, sore-covered gray skin flapped, along with scalps and limbs, solid-cataract eyes burning with malice – and every one of them moaning in a frenzy that would draw every other dead bastard in the area. Even if I didn’t already know this, I could see it. Dozens more of them were even then stumbling down the hillsides through the rain and incoming fire, oblivious to both. Finally, I pulled my face, miraculously extra-asshole-free, back inside and under cover.

  Turning around, I could see the whole FOB exploding behind me.

  * * *

  Captain Darby.

  That’s who I found myself thinking about.

  In that exact moment, I knew I should have been formulating a plan, something that might get us the hell out of there, maybe even in one piece. But I wasn’t. Instead, I was thinking about how the Captain had given his life to get the rest of us out of hell – back on the very first day of the end of the world. Smart young officers always listened to their NCOs, and Darby had listened to me, and had allowed me to mold him into a good leader. But he’d also been smart enough to know not to always listen to me. Because my job had been to look after the men. And his was to complete the missions.