Alone and Unafraid (American Praetorians Book 3) (27 page)

There were three more apartment buildings to get past, all of them irregularly shaped, in the weird way modern architecture tries to make buildings look interesting.  It meant more corners to cover, and I suspected the entire complex was swarming with ISIS fighters by now. This was getting more interesting by the minute.

I dropped back behind Nick, who pushed up to the point position, and took a hand off of my rifle to speed-dial Ventner.

“Change of plans,” I told him as soon as he answered.  “Blue is a deathtrap; there’s too much fire going both directions there.  We’re heading for Red.”

“Roger,” he replied, without hesitation.  “Be advised, you’ve got armor there, as well.  You’ve got an M1117 and two up-armored Humvees.”

“Got it,” I answered.  “On our way.  Tell the towers not to shoot us.”  I hung up.  This was not the time or place for a long conversation.

Halfway across the courtyard of the second building, another group of fighters burst out of the alley behind us.  Bryan yelled a warning as he opened fire.  I turned just in time to see his first target drop.

In a heartbeat, we were spread out, flat on the ground, and returning fire.  Larry had positioned himself so that he could easily turn and engage in both directions with the ’60, and he immediately started laying into the bad guys, his long bursts at about
shin-height, chopping through legs and then into torsos and faces as they fell.  The rest of us serviced targets as fast as we could get sights on.  The jihadis had been caught flat-footed by Bryan’s quick reaction, and were scrambling for any cover they could find, spraying fire randomly at us.  Rounds cracked by overhead and smacked into the dirt, the building, and the T-walls.

“More to the west!” Nick yelled over the noise of the firefight.  He’d done the right thing and dropped facing the way we had been moving, unwilling to turn his back on a danger area, even with a clear and present threat in the other direction.  He was shooting, and a glance over my shoulder showed a body on the ground by the far corner of the courtyard.  He was still shooting whenever somebody started trying to get around the corner; when one of them simply stuck an M4 around the corner to spray, his shot hit the rifle itself, smashing it away and apparently hitting something on the shooter, because I just barely heard a yelp of pain.  That was a hell of a shot, even at only about fifteen meters.

“Start bounding!” I yelled.  We had to get the fuck out of here.  This position was getting more and more untenable with every second.  The fact that none of us had been hit yet was a minor miracle.

As a rule, we tended to avoid suppressive fire with rifles.  Machine guns were for suppression; rifles were for killing.  But that night, we abandoned that little bit of wisdom.  We had just shy of five hundred meters to cross, with hostiles at bad-breath distance most of the way.  So we upped the fire and started moving, pushing a curtain of fire and lead before and behind us.

It wasn’t indiscriminate spraying.  We only fired when we could see somebody to suppress.  But we were still burning through ammo without necessarily hitting anybody.  We just needed to keep their heads down while we covered the distance to Red Gate.

Our movement turned into a jog, our own little miniature Mogadishu Mile.  We shot at anything that moved, not caring that much if we hit it or not, just as long as it didn’t shoot at us while we ran past.
  We were still taking sporadic fire, mainly from behind, but Marcus and Larry were taking turns stopping, turning, and laying down covering fire to keep the enemy shooters in that direction off balance.

We had a couple more large open areas to cross.  We didn’t even slow down; we just spread out a little more to make ourselves less of a close, clumped-up target.  The
opposition seemed to be tapering off; it seemed like most of the fighters were focused on Blue Gate.

By the time we got to the opening in the wall across from Red Gate, we were still taking sporadic fire from the direction we’d come, but we were pretty much in the clear.

I peered around the end of the wall, trying to get eyes on the armored vehicles Ventner had reported.  I couldn’t see them.  I moved out a little more.  Still no sign.  I switched to the Stahl/CP security channel on the radio.

“Castle
Fifteen, this is Hillbilly,” I called.  It took a few moments to get a response; I suspected some of the tower guards were wondering who this Hillbilly character was.  I hadn’t done a lot of chattering on the general net since we’d gotten to the Embassy.

“Hillbilly, this is Castle Fifteen,”
came the reply.

“Fifteen, I am one hundred meters from Red Gate ECP, at the old gate out of the apartment complex to your northeast,” I told him.  “Do you have eyes on the armored vehicles that Castle Guard reported?”

“Affirm,” he replied.  “They pushed to the east when the attack started over by Blue.  Are you inbound?”

“Affirmative,” I said.  “Eight foot-mobiles inbound.  Don’t shoot us.”

“Come in,” he said.  “Make it quick; I’ll try to cover you from here.”

“Red Gate copies direct,” came another voice.  So, we didn’t need to worry about getting lit up by the guys inside the gate, either.

There was no point in loitering, and our ammo was getting seriously low after that movement.  I pointed, and we started across the street.

It was supposed to be a dash, but at that point it was more of a painful jog.  None of us had yet had time to really recover from the wounds we’d taken in Basra; the hole in my leg was burning, and I didn’t even want to think about how Little Bob felt.
  Marcus’ leg seemed to actually be getting gimpier, though he was still forging ahead gamely.  Fortunately, at the moment, most of the attention in the area was directed down the street.  We got across without taking more than a few sporadic potshots.  Apparently the fighters we’d clashed with in the apartment complex had decided we were a bit more than they wanted to fuck with.

About four of the black-shirted Stahl guys were out in the ECP waiting for us, kitted up and armed.  Creeper was one of them.  He ushered us inside the compound, as the rest fell back, not even shooting
back in response to the odd burst that came our way.  They were probably worried about attracting more attention at that point.

A Land Cruiser pulled up as we got in the gate, and Ventner hopped out.  Just like everyone e
lse in sight, he was wearing a plate carrier and carrying an M4.  He also looked like he hadn’t slept in a week.  He strode forward and clapped me on the shoulder.  He started to steer me toward the SUV.  “Well, they do say no battle plan survives contact with the enemy,” he said.  “I’d say Blue Gate is out for our exfil.”

“Agreed,” I said.  “What’s the status at Black?”

“Quiet, for now,” he answered, as we got in the Land Cruiser.  Another couple of trucks had pulled up behind it, and the rest of the team was piling into them.  “I’ve already started getting the convoy staged to go out that way, and across the Fourteenth of July Bridge.  Great minds, and all that.”

“We need to re-jam on ammo,” I told him.  “We burned through a shit
-ton getting in here.”  I checked.  I had about one and a half magazines left.  About thirty rounds.

“We’ve loaded most of the ammo up already,” he said, as we started rolling across the compound.  “Don’t worry, it’s easily accessible; I figured we’d need it.  You guys should be loaded back up quick.  What about Mike’s team?”

I realized I needed to check on that.  The burner phone came out again.  Mike answered on the second ring.  “We’re secure,” he said, without even waiting for me to ask.  “We had to break contact and get away from the compound.  Sorry I couldn’t let you know before, but Hussein Ali and his team just got us clear.  We’re trying to move around to link up by your position.”

“Don’t bother,” I told him.  “We had to abandon the position and get inside the compound.  Same shit; ISIS tried to assault through after that mortar bombardment.  Where are you?”

“We’re up by Zawra Park, trying to dodge every pack of psychos with guns running around,” he said, “and there are a lot of ‘em.”

“Fuck.  You’re on the far side of where we need you to be,” I said.  I pulled the rumpled photomap of the city out of my cargo pocket and spread it on my knee.  “We’re going out Black, heading across the Fourteenth
of July Bridge,” I told him.  “Try to rendezvous with us on the far side of the bridge if you can; if you can’t get through, head north and we’ll link up near Baqubah.”  I paused for a moment, but before he could answer I said, “I’m serious, Mike.  If you even think it
might
be too much of a risk, disengage and get the fuck out.  We’ve got the Stahl guys in here with us, and we should be able to push out with or without you.  Just let me know which it is in the next…”  I glanced at Ventner.  He grimaced and held up his watch, then tracked his finger partway around to signify a half an hour.  I winced.  “I need to know in the next twenty minutes,” I told him.  “If you can’t get to us by then, head for Baqubah.”

There was another pause.  I knew Mike didn’t want to take off without us, but I didn’t see any other way.  I sure as hell didn’t want him and his boys getting smoked trying to get in here while we were trying to get out.
  I didn’t know what had happened, but Baghdad had just exploded, and I found I doubted if the onset of darkness was going to calm things down.  “Roger that,” he said finally.  “I’ll let you know in twenty minutes.”

I hung up and looked over at Ventner.  “Seriously?” I asked.  “Half a fucking hour?  What the fuck has been going on in here for the last hour?  Did the rockets and mortars somehow
not
get the fucking point across that it’s time for a little sense of urgency?”

He shook his head.  “It’s a clown show in here, man,” he said.  “Most of these people have never been under indirect fire in their lives, and they’re freaking the fuck out.  Full-bore linear panic mode.  I’ve had guys prying people out of bunkers to shove them in vehicles.  Others seem to be in shock or denial or some shit, and keep trying to pack.  I’ve got a team upstairs helping the Ambassador shred documents when he should be just making a bonfire and throwing all the documents and hard drives on it.”

“Motherfuck,” I said.  “You need us to go put boots to asses?”

He shook his head.  “My guys are on it.” 
The Ventner Dynamics contractors were some hard-nosed fuckers, I’d grant them that.  “You guys jam your mags and get ready to move.  Let us handle the State types.”  As he spoke, we pulled up to the several rows of vehicles staged in the support yard by Black Gate.  It was a variety of Suburbans, BMWs, HiLuxes, Land Cruisers, and even a couple of armored Mercedes G Wagons.  A couple of the HiLuxes had machine gun mounts, I was sure thanks to Ventner.  We’d have to make sure we got those or one of the Dillon Aero Subs with the miniguns, though I suspected Ventner’s guys had already called dibs on the Dillons.

Ventner showed us to the trucks with the ammo piled in back, and we set to, though we still had to de-link the 7.62.  Most of our colleagues were still sticking with 5.56.  Ventner left us to it, while he went to put out fires, or start them, as the case may be.

It didn’t take twenty minutes for Mike to get back to me.  It was more like fifteen when the phone buzzed.

“We can’t make it, brother,” he said apologetically.  “It’s getting way too thick between here and there.  It almost looks like they picked the Embassy to fight hardest over.”

“That figures,” I said, “though I’ve got a theory or two as to why that is.”  The seed of an idea had started to sprout in my mind, especially as I looked around at the people gathering at the vehicles and didn’t see Collins or anyone I could readily identify as one of his cronies.  “Get out, Mike.  We’ll see you in Baqubah.  I’ll keep you posted right up to the rendezvous.”

“Roger,” he said.  He really didn’t sound happy.  Mike was a loyal guy.  The idea of leaving us in the middle of that shitstorm had to be bothering the shit out of him.  “See you on the other side.  Be safe, brother.”

“You too,” I told him.  “I’m not thinking you’re going to have an easy time, either.  We’ve got more armor and more guns.  We’ll be all right.”

“I hope so.”  Then he hung up.

Ventner’s thirty minute estimate had been unduly optimistic.  It was closer to an hour, and the last guys on the north wall had to withdraw to the vehicles under fire as ISIS fighters moved in on the ECPs once the fire from the towers slackened.  We were heading out the gate not a moment too soon.  I didn’t look back.  There’d be time to consider the enormity of what had just happened later, if we lived through the night.

Chapter 17

I’d seen plenty of combat.  I’d even been in more than one city that was tearing itself apart; both Djibouti City and Basra had been giving it the old college try.

Baghdad that night made them both look like peanuts.

Even as we rolled out of Black Gate, a massive explosion rocked the compound.  A fiery cloud of smoke and dust billowed up from the direction of Blue Gate; I could only imagine that ISIS had brought in
one hell of a VBIED.  It wasn’t the only explosion lighting up the night sky, either.

Smoke rose in hellishly lit columns as the thunder of explosions and the rattle of small arms fire echoed across the city.  Lines of tracers stitched across the sky.
  It looked like the old videos of the “shock and awe” bombardment in ’03.  Needless to say, apparently that hadn’t been quite shocking or awe-inspiring enough.

We weren’t running point this time; Ventner had us back in the middle of the pack, in two up-armored HiLuxes with MAG-58s in the back. 
Most of the team was lying in the beds, rifles out, with as much armor as they could scrape up piled against the sides.  Jim and I were inside the cabs just to be near the radios.

It was a very short trip from Black Gate to the bridge, but we had enough vehicles rolling that the lead trucks were already across the bridge by the time my truck got to the north end. 
So far, it looked like nobody had tried to seize the bridge, but I knew that was only a matter of time.

Almost as if Murphy had been reading my mind, a trio of BTRs came tearing down Arbataash Tamuz Street, flying the black flag, dimly visible in the flickering light of the fires that were lighting up the clouds of smoke drifting through the sky over the city.  The entire skyline was lit up with a hellish glow.

The lead BTR had a figure sticking out of the hatch, and what looked unmistakably like a heavy machine gun at hand.  The muzzle was pointed up at first, but as soon as they saw us, the barrel started tracking down.

Little Bob, back on the gun in my truck, immediately opened fire, rounds sparking off the armor plate around the gunner until his silhouetted dropped out of sight, the machine gun barrel swinging back toward vertical.
  Then he ducked down, as Black stood up in the bed with one of the RPG-27s on his shoulder.

Nick was driving, and hadn’t stopped.  We rounded the turn, and Black waited until we had straightened out before triggering the RPG.

That was one hell of a shot; I’ve got to give him that.  It slammed downrange with the customary
bang
, and hit dead center on one of the armored windows on the front glacis.  The armored glass held up admirably against bullets or fragmentation, but against the RPG’s shaped charge, it may as well have been Plexiglas.  Fire blossomed inside the armored hull, visible as an orange flash through the windows, then the BTR was swerving to one side, and we were pushing across the bridge.  Jim’s truck swung out behind us, with Bryan laying down fire to keep the other BTR gunners’ heads down while the drivers tried to figure out how to get around the hulk that their comrades’ vehicle had become.

The Tigris looked like a river of
flame, reflecting the fires, smoke, and tracer fire.  Some of that tracer fire was reaching for us, both red and green, and was answered both by our own red tracers as Little Bob and Bryan returned fire, supported by the occasional rifle shot from Larry or Black, and the laser-beam fire from the Dillon SUVs’ miniguns.  Nobody was fucking around tonight.  I wished, again, that I could fight from this damned armored box instead of gripping the radio and hanging on.

Bullets rattled across the side of the truck as we rolled off the bridge, and Black answered with a blistering fusillade of rifle fire.  He was being a lot more profligate with rifle ammo than we trained for, but he wasn’t trained the way we trained.  He also had a couple of ammo cans worth of spare ammo that none of us were going to use, since we weren’t packing AKs, and he was still using the AK I’d handed him outside Basra. 
Little Bob fired burst after burst on the other side, as more bullets cratered their way across Nick’s window.

As soon as we were off the bridge, we were turning left past the roundabout onto Karada Dahil Street. 
It was another major thoroughfare that wound through the crowded, dingy Karada neighborhood.  The store-fronts were colorful under a layer of dust and grime, power lines spiderwebbed randomly across the street.  I was pretty sure Little Bob had to duck a couple of times to avoid catching a cable in the face or throat.

The fire slacked off a little bit as we got away from the bridge, but
it never entirely went away.  As near as I could tell, through a window scarred by bullet impacts, there was a lot more going on in Baghdad that night than just ISIS and Saleh’s soldiers going at it.  I was pretty sure we were seeing a lot of old tribal grudges getting sorted out, along with the usual opportunistic looting and anarchy that tends to go along with big urban battles.  In fact, I know some of that was going on, because I saw several younger men run out of a shattered storefront with their arms full of electronics. 
Good luck using those when there’s no power because of this bullshit, assholes
, I thought.

Other than the long look to make sure they weren’t a threat, we ignored the looters and the occasional other person running furtively through the side streets.  They weren’t our concern.  Whoever came out on top, between ISIS and Saleh, could worry about law and order in Baghdad.  We were just concerned with getting out in one piece.

While ISIS and Saleh’s troops seemed to be mostly focusing on each other, the American Embassy personnel were a prize that neither one was really willing to forego.  That became obvious in pretty short order.

Even with the shitstorm erupting around Blue Gate at the Embassy,
somebody
had noticed us running out the back way and across the bridge, and apparently called ahead.  They were waiting for us at the curve where Karada Dahil became Omar Bin Yasir Street.

It was a classic urban ambush.  They’d turned a truck to try to block the road, and we could already see the shooters in the buildings, lit by the lurid glow of nearby
fires and, in our enhanced NVGs, by their own heat signatures.

I started to call a warning to the lead vehicle, but even as the gunners started opening fire, it was hit by an RPG.  Fire flashed inside the windows, and it slewed to one side and stopped.

The road ahead was well blocked; there wasn’t a way around, and trying to ram the truck aside probably wouldn’t work well.  Even as the gunners and the shooters in the backs of pickups opened fire, hosing down the fronts of the buildings with an intense amount of high-velocity metal, Ventner was yelling over the radio, “The closest vehicle to the last turn, take lead and get us the hell off this street!”

“This is Creeper,” came the reply, “taking lead, and heading southeast.”

Creeper’s Sub was right behind Jim’s truck.  I was pounding the door with frustration at not being able to engage.  Twisting in my seat as more bullets tracked across the windshield, I saw Black and Little Bob fighting like mad, dumping rounds at anything that moved.  Neither one looked hit, yet, but it was only a matter of time.  We still had a long way to go to get out of Baghdad.

As soon as
Creeper’s vehicle was clear, Marcus started backing up Jim’s truck, only to just about get rear-ended by the Land Cruiser behind it.  The vehicles in the rear were scrambling to get out off the street, and threatening to get tangled with the front vics that were still stuck in the kill zone.

I got on the radio.  “Rear vehicles, hold what you’ve got,” I said.  “Let the lead vics get off the X.”

Nobody paid attention.  No sooner was the Land Cruiser around the corner than another one was pushing in behind it, almost touching the bumper.  Most of the rest of the vehicles were crowding in as drivers started to let fear override their tactical sense.  Meanwhile, up there in the kill zone, things weren’t cooling down.

A glance back showed me that the barrel of Little Bob’s MAG-58 was starting to glow a little.  He was crouched behind it, shooting up at the building looming over us, when something exploded right next to the truck.

The vehicle rocked, frag pinging into the entire right side.  The armored glass in the windows spiderwebbed a little more, but it still held.  I turned back to check on Little Bob and Black, in time to see both of them rise up off the bed, apparently none the worse for wear.  Little Bob immediately grabbed the MAG and went back to riddling the side of the building, while Black was taking rapid shots at the other side of the street.

The miniguns up front were going to town, their streams of fire keeping most of the worst of the ambush off us by pulverizing everything they touched.  They were like incandescent lines of destruction, weaving back and forth across the buildings and the truck that was blocking the street, which was now thoroughly shredded and starting to burn.  It was still too much of an obstacle to
push past.

Finally, the last of the rear vehicles had gotten around the turn, and we could finally back out of the kill zone.  We continued to lash the surrounding buildings with fire; they were so pocked with large-caliber bullet holes by then that they looked like they had been chewed.
  The fire from the ambushers had fallen off, as sheer fire superiority sent them shrinking back from the street—the ones who weren’t dead, anyway.

I was starting to worry about ammunition supplies.  The miniguns were burning through the stuff at an intense rate,
and while Ventner’s boys had loaded up regular mountains of ammo, the supply was still finite.  I was expecting resistance all through Baghdad, and Baqubah, for that matter; ISIS had taken that city before.  Sooner or later, burning through ammo the way we just had, we were going to run out.

When that happened, we were fucked.

I keyed my radio.  “Watch your ammunition expenditure, gentlemen,” I said.  “We’ve got a long way to go.”

“Won’t matter if we get lit up much more,” a voice said over the net.  I didn’t recognize it, but given how many contractors had been on the compound, that should come as no surprise.  “That didn’t help the guys in the lead vehicle.”

“Quiet on the net,” Ventner snapped.  “You heard Hillbilly.  Engage targets only; no more spraying down the buildings.  He’s right; we’ve got a long way to go, and the ammo’s only going to last so long.”

We were now in a warren of tight side streets, weaving around parked and abandoned vehicles, along with potholes big enough to break axles.  We were angling back toward a major thoroughfare; I suspected Creeper was thinking in terms of speed
being security, as well as finding better fields of fire.  I couldn’t say I disagreed with him.  These narrow streets felt like deathtraps.

We took a few potshots from windows as we sped through the darkened streets, but nothing else for a while.  It couldn’t last, and it didn’t.

I didn’t see the IED go off.  The convoy was too large, the route too winding, and we were too far back. 
I didn’t even see the smoke rising until we broke out into Fetah Square.

I have no ide
a if the IED was meant for us, for the IA, or for any of the other factions who were ripping the guts out of Baghdad that night.  It didn’t matter.  Whoever it was meant for, it blew Creeper’s vehicle to burning scrap, and the men and women inside it to charred meat and bone.

The wreck was on its side, burning fiercely, when we moved into the square.  The convoy was attempting to push through, but was encountering fierce resistance.  The
buildings ringing the square were flickering with muzzle flashes, and getting a similar response to the first ambush, though the gunners seemed to be trying to be a little more focused with their return fire.  It didn’t look like the ambushers, whoever the hell they were, had all the side-streets blocked off this time; they must not have known what direction their targets were going to come from. 

The convoy hadn’t stopped, or even slowed down much.  Apparently, the vehicle commander of the truck behind Creeper’s had assessed that nobody could have survived the blast, and pushed through.  Unfortunately, as we moved past the wreckage, I saw that he was wrong.

There was movement on the ground next to the smashed Suburban.  I punched Nick on the shoulder, yelling, “Stop, stop, stop!”  He stomped on the brake, and I bailed out as fast as I could get the door open.  I didn’t know who it was, and I didn’t give a fuck; I was
not
leaving anyone behind for these savages if I could help it.

Even when I ran up to the struggling form, I still couldn’t tell who it was; he or she was so covered in blood and charred flesh that they were unr
ecognizable.  It didn’t matter.  I slung my rifle and got my hands under the person’s armpits, eliciting a gurgling scream of agony.  Ignoring the weak struggles and moans of mind-numbed pain, I started dragging the casualty toward the truck.  “Black,” I yelled, “help me out here!”

He swung over the edge of the truck’s bed and dropped to the ground, keeping his rifle up with one hand.  Little Bob was laying into the opposite building with the MAG.  Having stopped, we were starting to become the focus of attention, indicated by the rounds that were snapping by overhead, hitting the burning wreck of the Suburban with loud, metallic
bang
s, and smacking dust and grit off the street where they hit around us.  Several of the vehicles behind us had already gone around, following the rest of the convoy, which pissed me off.  “You motherfuckers!” I snarled at a Land Cruiser that blew by, faces dimly visible behind the armored glass, staring at us.  “Fucking cowards!”