The Coward's Way of War (52 page)

“Return fire,” Doug said, ducking down.  After years of experience in Iraq, the Humvees were armoured to the point where it took RPGs or heavier weapons to destroy them.  The machine guns mounted on the vehicles opened fire, striking back at their invisible tormentors.  He saw a man wearing a black suit appear and start to run towards the Americans, just before the machine guns struck him.  He didn't die so much as disintegrate under the sudden impact.  Doug keyed his radio as more suicidal attackers appeared.  “We could do with some help here.”

“Roger that, Sergeant,” a voice said.  “We have support coming in fast; brace for impact.”

Doug grinned as jets screamed over the city, dropping bombs down towards the positions held by the insurgents.  The ground shook as the bombs detonated, striking the buildings the insurgents had used for cover and shattering them.  Chunks of wreckage flew through the air, some tiny fragments slamming into the Humvees and denting them.  He rubbed his ears as the jets receded into the distance, just before he saw the first helicopters racing over the city.  Their guns were already blazing as they targeted the remaining insurgents, driving them out into a killing zone.  They never stood a chance.

“Dismount,” Doug ordered.  He jumped out of the Humvee and lifted his rifle, searching for targets.  The area the jets had bombed was a smoking pile of rubble, the damage stretching for several dozen meters around the destroyed buildings.  “Follow me.”

He led the way towards the remains of the buildings, trusting in the helicopter pilots to hold their fire.  Most of the insurgents seemed to have been vaporised, but a handful of bodies could be seen at the edges of the blast zone, all clearly dead.  One body looked surprisingly intact and he shot it anyway, just in case.  He heard a moan and saw a man – no, a boy really, barely out of childhood – lying on the ground next to a rifle.  His legs were mangled; it only took one look to know that the child was injured beyond hope of recovery.

Doug stared down at the youth, wrestling with his feelings.  It was easy to dehumanise the Saudis, to hate them because of their culture, their religion and what their leaders had done to the United States.  They treated everyone else like shit, including their mothers, wives and daughters.  Part of him just wanted to watch and laugh as the youth breathed his last; the more compassionate part of him was horrified at the mere thought.  No one deserved to die like that.

Calmly, he lifted his rifle, pointed it at the boy’s head, and pulled the trigger.

When it comes to promoting themselves, the Marines are the best of the best; no other service, not even
the USAF, can compare
.

- Sergeant Al Hattlestad

Saudi Arabia

Day 48

“Nice day for a flight, don’t you think?”

Mija laughed as the helicopter swooped over Saudi Arabia, heading west.  From time to time, they passed signs that Saudi Arabia was in the grip of a massive invasion; American forces heading west or burning debris where the Saudi Arabians had tried to make a stand.  From the briefings she’d received – which she had turned into stories that had been forwarded back home, where they’d been printed and published – the Saudi Army was badly weakened, but the foreigners and insurgents were still trying to fight.  Some of the scenes of carnage, she’d been told, were horrifying.

She looked over at the pilot.  “Are you sure they know we’re coming?”

“Of course, of course,” the pilot laughed.  He paused and frowned.  “Hang on a second; did I remember to turn on the IFF transponder?”

His co-pilot frowned.  “Coming to think of it, I’m sure you didn't,” he said.  “We’d better turn it on before the jarheads blow us out of the sky.”

Mija stared at him in horror, then realised that they were pulling her leg.  “I hate you both,” she said, making them both laugh.  “You can forget about being interviewed for the paper.”

The pilot laughed.  “I'm sure the Marines can be relied upon to give good copy,” he said, checking his instruments.  “Incidentally, we just got swept by one of their mobile radars so we’d better hope that they’re not feeling paranoid.”

Mija nodded.  The Royal Saudi Air Force had been effectively destroyed, although there were reports that some aircraft remained unaccounted for, and nothing was flying apart from American and allied aircraft.  American bombers were concentrating their attention on Saudi strongpoints and command and control centres, hoping to smash the Saudis flat before the ground troops arrived and occupied the remaining cities.  Iraqi aircraft had been redeployed westwards, towards Mecca, in preparation for the liberation of the Holy City.  There shouldn't have been anything else in the sky.

Even so, the soldiers were feeling jumpy.  The Saudi insurgents had played all kinds of tricks, from wearing American uniforms to using human shields.  They rarely survived such attacks, but each encounter took a toll on men and women who were tired and worried about their families.  Mija had heard disquieting rumours about prisoners being gunned down in cold blood and worse, while the Arab news services were delighted to turn even the vaguest rumour into fact.  The United States, if all of the reports were taken literally, had utterly slaughtered the Saudi population.

The town ahead of her stood on a crossroads, where highways from the north – up towards Kuwait – and the south and east met up.  The Marines had arrived at the town two days ago and occupied it, despite savage resistance from a battalion of Saudi troops and hundreds of insurgents.  Parts of the town looked as if they’d been smashed flat, other parts looked surprisingly intact, patrolled by heavily-armed Marines.  A number of locals were digging graves under the supervision of several Marines, who were transporting bodies out of the city.

“What a mess,” the pilot said, as he took the helicopter down towards a tiny airport.  Mija guessed that it had been built for one of the princes, for it was far too small to serve as an international or even national airport.  A pair of tanks was parked nearby with their weapons pointed away from the airport, although she knew they could swing around in seconds and cover them.  “They really went through this place.”

“It looks like it,” Mija agreed.  The helicopter touched down and the rotor blades came to a halt.  “Thank you for the ride, guys.”

The heat struck her as soon as the hatch opened; a wave of hot dry air that left her gasping for breath.  She swallowed hard and found that she had breathed in some sand.  She choked and gasped in relief when one of the Marines offered her a bottle of water, which she sipped gratefully.  The two Marines grinned at her, but insisted on checking her ID before she was allowed off the airport...and only then under escort.  The town wasn't quite as safe, she guessed, as the PR officers back in Kuwait had made it sound.

“Welcome to our little home away from home,” one of the Marines said, as they escorted her out of the airport and towards the FOB.  A dozen tanks were parked surrounding the base, their weapons primed and ready to deal with any threat.  Mija took one look at the ominous vehicles and knew that
she
wouldn't want to challenge the invaders, not if they had invaded her town.  The Marines looked relaxed, but she could tell that they were on edge.  Despite the heat, none of them had stripped down or even removed their body armour.  “We have quite a few Marines who want to talk to you.”

Mija glanced around, saw an older man standing beside one of the tanks, and nodded towards him.  “Can I interview him first?”

***

Gunnery Sergeant Dean Burtis kept his thoughts off his face as the reporter came over to him, with the clear intention of asking
questions.  He disliked reporters as a breed, if only because they could never be trusted to report the news accurately, even the best of them.  The worst thought of the military as populated by monsters, men who wouldn't hesitate to kill anyone who got in their way and even considered their enemies as heroes.  The kind of moral bankruptcy it took to consider men who looted, raped and murdered as heroes was beyond his imagination.

The reporter was pretty enough, he decided, and she’d certainly attracted some attention from the younger Marines, but that meant nothing.  Still, he had to be polite.  “So,” he said, as she stopped next to his LAV.  “What can I do for you?”

“I have a million and one questions,” the reporter said.  She sounded slightly stunned, as if she were nothing more than an airheaded bimbo, although that meant nothing.  Burtis had met quite a few smart people who had posed as absolute nincompoops.  “What have you been doing so far?”

The question made Burtis laugh.  “Let’s see,” he said.  “I have landed on a hostile beach under fire, I have driven into the heart of an industrial city and helped clear it of enemy troops and since then I have driven upwards into a country that Satan refused to take to Hell when he got kicked out of Heaven.  Apart from that, I’ve just been working on my tan.”

The reporter laughed.  “And you look wonderful too,” she said.  Burtis scowled at her.  If he wasn’t old enough to be her father, he would be astonished.  Rumour had it that young women were attracted to older military men, but he'd never met any who were. “What do you think of the enemy?”

Burtis grinned.  “Well...first there are the regular troops,” he said.  “Some of them put up a fight; some put up their hands and surrender, or throw down their weapons and try to make their way home.  The...less enthusiastic ones have to be forced to fight us at gunpoint.  And then there’s the National Guard.  They have better weapons and equipment and some better training.  They’ve caused us some headaches on the march into this ghastly country.  Some of them even managed to retreat in good order while under fire.”

He glanced into the distance as another flight of helicopters appeared, heading north.  “And then there are the foreigners, the religious police and the insurgents,” he concluded.  “The foreigners want to die and we want to kill them, so we just swat them like bugs.  The religious police are cowards who don’t hesitate to use human shields and shit like that to get close to us and hurt us.  We kill them and then we drive over their bodies.  We’d piss on them, but that’s too much respect.  The insurgents are morons, plain and simple; most of them don't even know what they’re doing.  They just get themselves killed for nothing.”

The reporter frowned.  “I’ve heard rumours that soldiers haven’t been accepting surrenders from enemy forces,” she said.  “Is that true?”

Burtis glanced over towards the black flag flying from the lead vehicle.  “We do not take surrenders from the foreigners and the religious police,” he said.  “We’ve lost too many men to their tricks.  These fuckers think that beating women and killing dissidents is permitted.  We’ve pulled bodies out of their strongpoints that were not killed by us.  They do not deserve to live.

“We accept surrenders from other forces, as long as they behave themselves,” he added.  “We make them strip down at gunpoint and keep a sharp eye on them.  They get sent back to the POW camps where they will be held until we have finished the invasion and sorted through the records to see just who we hold.  We don’t want to capture and then release another terrorist fucker just because we didn't know who he was.”

He shrugged.  “Is that enough information for you, missy?”

“Yes, thank you,” the reporter said.  He gave her points for not flinching at his tone.  “Are you looking forward to going back home?”

Burtis shrugged.  “I've been in the Corps for fifteen years,” he said.  “I don’t have any other home.”

He watched as the reporter headed away to interview other Marines, and then shook his head, climbing back into the LAV.  He had some maintenance to perform before they joined the march on Riyadh.  Despite the best efforts of the USAF, foreigners and other enemy forces were flowing into the Saudi city at an alarming rate.  Taking it was going to be a struggle that would rival Fallujah in its intensity. 

“Silly girl,” he said to himself, patting the LAV’s armour.  The memory of the remains of a girl, shot in the back by the religious police, drifted up in his mind.  “Why would we show such people mercy?”

***

The table in front of them was groaning with food, prepared by the King
’s own personal chefs.  The King of Saudi Arabia had long had a liking for European food and had hired a number of the best European chefs, all of whom had been ordered to continue working for the new government or join the remainder of the human shields in Riyadh.  Prince Ibrahim picked at his food, remembering diplomatic banquets he’d attended in Europe, back when the world had been a happier place.  The sight of so much food was disgusting when, on the streets of the city, people were starving and dying.  If it hadn't been for the strong presence of the religious police, the soldiers and the foreign fighters, there would have been an uprising by now.