Peace Warrior (2 page)

Still sighting on the tanks below, Justice heard the muffled steps and ragged breathing of Corporal Taylor as he returned from the listening post. A glance toward the soldier showed Justice that Taylor had returned with Corporal O’Keefe and Pvt. Broussard, the soldiers manning the listening post.

“Sorry, Sergeant. But these damn radios don’t work for shit,” O’Keefe explained through ragged breaths. Justice knew that their rush back through the drifting snow had been difficult. The need to keep low to the ground, staying out of sight from the vehicles below, had further slowed their progress as they made their way carefully but quickly along the steep, icy ridge of the mountain. Justice doubted that they could be seen by those below, but they were well trained and staying out of sight was a self-preserving habit that you either picked up early in wartime, or died because you didn’t.

“Not your fault, Corporal,” the Sergeant replied. “Taylor, take your place and get ready. The show should begin any second now. O’Keefe, take Broussard and head out to the pick up point. Your job is over.”

“If it’s okay with you, Sarge, we’d like to stick around for the show. You might need our help.” Broussard nodded his agreement. He was a newer addition to the team but, in the four months that he had been with them, had proved to be a good trooper. He didn’t say much but he went about his duties with determination and confidence. Justice thought he was a shoo-in for getting his team tattoo in another two months.

Justice’s face was covered against the cold, so he did not try to hide his approving smile. Manning the outpost for three days was a lonely, tiring assignment and, by team rules, the men did not have to join in the firefight. It was not standard Army procedure, but it was Sergeant Justice’s procedure. There were a lot of things that Justice practiced that were not standard Army procedure.

“Sure, O’Keefe. Head down the line a ways and hurry it up. We don’t have much time.”

O’Keefe and Broussard moved toward the head of the line, keeping low. They were less than ten yards away, when Macon fired on the lead tank. Within a few seconds, the rest of the soldiers in the ambush line opened fire. The severe wind and swirling snow did nothing to dampen the explosions as the laser-guided missiles found their targets.

Justice was lining up his second target when O’Keefe yelled frantically from the left. In the confusion and noise of the ambush, he couldn’t make out the words. He put the corporal out of his mind. Concentrated on the target below. Exhaled. Fired.

The explosion indicated a direct hit. A volcanic spout of flame blew the target’s top hatch twenty feet into the air, confirming it.

Justice smiled. Looked over to the corporal.

O’Keefe was shouting and pointing at something down the steep, snow covered slope. Justice looked in that direction and saw Private Broussard tumbling, sliding down the steep grade toward the column of enemy tanks and personnel carriers below, many of which were now on fire and smoking heavily. The chaos of war had begun.

“Shit,” Justice cursed. He fired off his third and final round at one of the armored personnel carriers accompanying the tanks. His missile hit the target, but not before its cargo of armed men began pouring from the rear.
Damn, they’re well trained
, he thought as the armor piercing shell found its target. In a spectacular show of force, the explosion lifted the carrier from the road and tossed into the frozen lake below. He heard the explosions and felt the heat of multiple blasts as his men found their targets.

Justice scanned his team, saw that they were okay, and searched the base of the slope below for Broussard. He spotted the private near the bottom of the incline where he had stopped tumbling and, as he watched, the soldier reversed his direction and began a frantic crawling climb back up the icy slope.

“Shall I go help him, Sarge?” he heard O’Keefe shout.

“Negative! Hold off.” The last thing he wanted was for another man to get trapped below. The best thing they could hope for was that the young soldier would make it up on his own, and he appeared to be doing surprisingly well. He was unhurt and moving in the right direction. The enemy was scampering for whatever cover they could find. The initial chaos and smoke from the burning vehicles helped shield Broussard from view. Their luck was not going to last, though.

No sooner had the thought settled in his mind, than he was proved correct. Broussard was halfway up the icy slope when he caught a round in the right leg. Justice watched the blood splash the snow-covered embankment and the young man fell hard against the frozen slope. He did not lose much ground, but Justice knew the climb would be too much for the wounded soldier without help.

“Cover fire,” he ordered. The men around him immediately concentrated suppressive fire on the enemy positions below. The enemy fire was minimal, a predominately uncoordinated effort by a few of the enemy soldiers. Soon enough that would change, and Justice did not want to be around when it did.

“Corporal Taylor, watch my back!” Without waiting for a reply, Justice leaped from his fighting position and vaulted over the edge of the ice-covered slope.

The move was doomed to failure almost as soon as it began. His first step hit a rock buried in the snow and immediately turned his descent into an uncontrolled, headlong slide. Instead of fighting the slide or trying to stop himself, Justice rode with it. Within a few yards he gained enough control of the slide to affect his direction. His momentum was another story, and he continued to pick up speed. Justice struggled to stop, or at least slow, his course but to no avail. Within seconds, the slide carried him quickly to where Broussard was fighting his way up the hill on one good leg.

Justice hoped the soldier recognized the situation and held out his arms.

Broussard came through. As Grant reached his position, he fell neatly on top of the sergeant and jammed his booted toes firmly into the snow and frozen turf. They lost ten yards of progress, but he managed to stop a full out tumble to the bottom.

Unfortunately, the rounds fired by the European soldiers began arriving in earnest at the same time. Bullets kicked up frozen dirt, ice and rock all around them as Justice wrestled his body out from under Broussard. He quickly freed himself and turned back to face up the frozen hill. He reached out for Broussard.

“Grab my arm,” he growled to the wounded private, who promptly complied, and the two men began a slow but steady crawl toward their team and the relative safety above. Suppressive fire from the ridge above increased as the entire team recognized what was happening below. The increased support caused the enemy to seek cover once again.

The fire directed on the two soldiers waned significantly. However, the occasional bullet still ripped into the frozen ground around them and Justice noticed something unusual. The bullets were creating small craters in the frozen hillside.

“Shit, explosive rounds.”

Justice knew that the bullets being fired toward them were the new explosive-tipped rounds that the European soldiers had recently begun using. This was his first encounter with the new ammunition but the realization spurred a renewed burst of energy. He stared at the frozen ground in front and above them and redoubled his efforts to reach the top of the hill. Broussard tried to increase his pace, but the injured leg wasn’t cooperating. Justice refused to stop or be stopped and was now mostly dragging the young private up the slope. The fire from the enemy slowed even further and the sergeant suspected that Corporal Taylor and the others above were now honing in on individual targets.

“Broussard, when we get out of this shit remind me to make Taylor a buck sergeant.”

“You got it, Sarge,” the wounded private gasped through clenched teeth. The pain and loss of blood had to be sapping his strength, but he continued to fight as they struggled up the hill. “We’re almost there.”

Justice looked up from the frozen ground in front of them and saw that they were almost to the top. Through the blowing snow, he could even see Taylor, O’Keefe and several others firing their automatic weapons at the enemy soldiers below.

Justice groaned with effort and, with a final surge, found himself at the top of the slope. He wrestled the injured private over the lip of the ridge until the man was secure on the flat surface. Once satisfied that Broussard was not going anywhere, Justice began to pull himself over and –

– slipped.

His right leg was raised when his left foot lost purchase. One moment he was planted firmly on the ground, the next he was pitching forward toward the hillside.

His chin slammed into the hard, frozen slope. Through an explosion of stars and sudden, searing pain, he had a dim awareness of tumbling and sliding. With a sense of calm that he later recognized as shock, he only had time to think,
Okay, here we go
, before he gave himself over to the darkness.

The darkness was obviously short-lived because, when he regained his senses, he was still in a free slide down the hill. His face covering had been stripped away and the immediate splash of frigid wind and freezing snow helped bring him to complete awareness.

Unlike the first trip down the hill, this time he had no control over his direction. He tried to stop the wild descent, but it was no use. The icy slope had him in its embrace and there was no slowing down. The speed he had gained while star gazing carried him quickly to the bottom of the hill…

… and beyond.

Justice found himself sliding uncontrollably across the frozen road. Hurtling toward the 200 foot drop on the far side. As he passed through the enemy column he caught a brief, blurry glimpse of a tank burning to his left.

He crossed over the far side of the narrow lane at top speed.

His last thought before dropping off the cliff was that the heat from the smoking hulk should have melted the fucking ice on the road.

The sergeant made a desperate grab as he dropped over the edge. His right hand struck something solid. Snatched. Held on. His fall halted with a hard jolt that wanted to tear his arm from his shoulder. He cried out from the sharp tearing inside his body and looked up. A jagged outcropping of rock, a good distance below the cliff’s edge was the reward of his effort. His plunge to the lake’s frozen, snow-covered surface was stopped short by roughly a hundred feet.

“Aw, damn, that was close,” he muttered. And in that instant, he first considered the possibility of his death and what might lie beyond.

He thanked the fates at having been spared. For the moment.

Then, reality dawned. He was hanging by a hand and an injured arm over a long drop to a frozen lake with a lot of enemy soldiers between him and his men.
And they probably think I’m hitting bottom about right now
, he thought.

“Fuck me to tears,” was all he could think to say.

Justice tried, unsuccessfully, to pull himself up onto the rock outcropping above. He was able to get his left arm up so that he now had a hold with both hands, but the pain in doing so informed him that there was additional damage to his body. It felt like he had at least one broken rib, and the pain in his right shoulder was getting worse. He knew then that he was finished, one way or another. His only hope was that someone would pull him up and that was a slim hope at best. The team had less than twenty minutes to make it to their pick up point and they had been trained to put the mission, and the safety of the group ahead of the individual, unless there was proof that the individual was alive. Those were his rules and he could expect them to be followed.

His expectations were proved correct; the sound of fighting died off over the next couple of minutes and he could picture the team departing from their positions on the ridge above and heading out to the pick up point. They were his team, his family and he would miss them, but he did not fault them for doing their duty. It was what he had trained them for and he felt a familiar surge of pride in how they had performed today.

Several minutes passed without any sounds from above except for the occasional sound of a secondary explosion as the rounds in the destroyed vehicles cooked off. The only thing Justice could do was to wait for his strength to give out and he was determined to hold on as long as possible. It was not in his nature to give up, even when he knew the outcome, and he hung on to the outcropping of rock, determined to refuse death’s claim as long as he had an ounce of effort left.

His thoughts had traveled once again towards death and what it would be like when he heard voices on the road above him. He spent precious energy to look upward and saw the uncovered faces of three soldiers. They did not appear happy and they were not wearing the same uniform as he was.

“Shit.”

His body continued to throb and he wondered how long the men would stand there and watch him hang. Probably until I fall, he thought.

Justice looked down for the first time at the drop that awaited and noticed that the lake beneath his dangling feet was closer than he had thought, only about a hundred and twenty feet or so. He debated whether he could safely let go and knew that, although he might live through the fall, he certainly wouldn’t be well enough to escape from those above him. Even with the thick covering of snow on the icy surface, he could expect several broken bones at a minimum.

He also noticed that the ice covering the lake was peppered with several large holes and he was struck by the pleasant realization that they were caused by the falling vehicles that he and his team had knocked over the side with their missiles. He briefly considered that the personnel carrier he had fired upon had even caused one of them and could not suppress a grin at how well his team had done.

He was jerked from his contemplation of the lake’s surface by the sound of a metallic “clicking” from above.

A glance upwards identified the origin of the noise. One of the soldiers – there were more of them now, nearly a dozen – had chambered a round and was aiming his weapon towards the trapped man. Justice could see from the man’s uniform that he was an officer, but his position did not allow him to see what rank he held or what branch he served. From the way the man smiled, an upturned snarl that did not reach the eyes, Justice was certain that he was not pleased with the events of the day. Where Justice had felt pride in his team’s performance, he knew that this man felt the opposite. It was not a good sign.