Alone and Unafraid (American Praetorians Book 3) (7 page)

A white micro-bus tried to rush out and block the street at the end of the block, but was just a fraction of a second too slow.  The lead driver swerved to one side and slammed into the van’s front quarter panel, slewing it around and out of the way.  The gunner and the men on the right side dumped a ferocious amount of fire into the van as they passed.  I caught a glimpse of shattered glass, slumped, ragged corpses, and lots of blood as we scraped by.

They had moved a little quicker as we got to the next block, moving a couple of sedans and an old Toyota HiLux to block the road, with several fighters and a machine gun crouched behind them, shooting at us.  Again, to our great good fortune, they ascribed to the “Insh’allah” school of marksmanship.  The lead truck took a hard right and we started moving north, toward the school.

This wasn’t going to last.  We’d gotten lucky so far, but we were deep in bad guy territory, and very, very badly outnumbered.  Sooner or later, one of the trucks was going to take a bad hit, and if there were survivors we had to stop and pull out, we were all fucked.  It would be Blackwater in Fallujah all over again.

To try to hold that inevitability off, our gunners were lighting up anything that moved.  The back of our HiLux was positively awash in brass and emptied ammo belts, and that gun had to be getting hot, given how hard Little Bob was leaning on the trigger.  All of us at the windows, except for Marcus, who was busy driving, were taking shots when we could, but the majority of the fire was coming from the gunners in the beds.  I was starting to worry about ammo, too, as I stripped out my third mag of the morning and rocked in another.  We had several blocks to go before we were clear, and those guys were burning through belts like there was no tomorrow.  Of course, if they slacked off the fire, there likely wouldn’t be.

We rounded the corner just south of the school with a screech of skidding tires and kept pushing. 
More rounds smacked into the truck with a series of metallic
bang
s, and Daoud suddenly yelled from the back.  It sounded like he’d been shot, though neither Nick nor Hassan checked on him.  Oh well, fucker shouldn’t have tried to screw us.

The road we were on ended in a T-intersection only about two hundred yards ahead.  I think I saw the guy with the RPG pop up on the roof directly over the intersection at about the same time Little Bob did.

I didn’t have the best shot, but somebody had to at least throw his damned aim off, or we were going to be toast.  I leaned partway out the window, leveled my rifle as best I could, braced it against the doorframe, and opened fire.  At the same time, the PKP in the back roared again, tracers winging toward the rooftop.  The RPG gunner crumpled in a puff of red mist.

More vehicles were coming out.  I was glad to see that so far none were technicals, but they were trying to use them to box us in.  The lead gunner was concentrating his fire hard on them; we were leaving a series of shattered windshields, punctured engine blocks, and dead drivers behind us.

More rounds hit the truck, and Marcus suddenly yelled, “FUCK!”  The truck swerved dangerously close to smashing into the next compound wall before he got it back on track.

“Where are you hit?” I asked.  I didn’t try to
immediately pull my rifle back inside and treat him; if he wasn’t seriously wounded, we needed the firepower directed out more than he needed bandaging.

He gritted his teeth
.  “Lower leg.”  He reached down with his left to feel it.  “I think it’s just a through-and-through.”

“You good?” I asked.

“I’d better be,” he retorted as we rounded the next corner and just about ran over a fighter trying to jump out of a compound.  I managed to get a snap-shot at the guy, but we were past him too fast to tell if I hit him or not.  “This would be a hell of a time to change drivers.”

For some unknown reason that struck me as being funny as hell.  “
We’re not stopping until we get there!” Nick yelled from the back seat.  “If you’ve got to piss, hold it!”  Apparently I wasn’t the only one with a weird sense of humor in the middle of a firefight.

One more turn and we were on a straightaway and hauling ass for the open desert.  More and more Mahdi fighters seemed to be pouring out of the compounds and up on the roofs to shoot at us as it looked like we were going to get clear.  They wanted us dead, and they clearly didn’t give a shit how many died to accomplish that.

Another series of loud
bang
s tracked along the side of the truck.  The rearview window on my side shattered, and I felt a fiery stab of pain in my shoulder and a savage impact against my rifle, almost knocking it out of my hands.  A glance showed me a bright scar gouged in the side rail, but it didn’t look otherwise damaged.  I looked at my shoulder, which was turning red.  I dug around in my torn sleeve, but the bullet just seemed to have grazed me, cutting a similar gouge in my shoulder.  It hurt like hell, but it wasn’t enough to impair the arm, so I gritted my teeth and drove on.

Another grenade arced through the air to land in the bed of the al Khazraji truck right in front of us.  The gunner let go of the gun, dropped to a squat, scooped up the frag, and threw it out.  It exploded only a few feet away, and the man slumped down, covered in blood.  I thought he was dead, but he dragged himself back up to grab the MAG-58 and get back on the trigger, even though he was visibly bleeding badly.

Then, with a roar of engines and gunfire, we were clear and heading into the open desert.  Ahead was nothing but the Rumaylah oil fields between Basra and the Caliphate border.  A few desultory shots still snapped by overhead, and there were technicals starting to come out of the city after us, but we were out of the deathtrap of narrow streets, and while most of us were wounded, I didn’t think anybody had actually been killed in that insane few minutes.

It was the closest I could think of to things going our way that had happened in a very long time.

Chapter 6

The few Jaysh al Mahdi trucks that followed us out of the city didn’t follow for long.  We didn’t even have to brake-check them the way we had the pirates out of Hobyo in Somalia.  We kept driving out into the desert for about a half hour before we finally stopped, circled up, and took stock.

At first glance, we looked like the walking dead.  Everybody was bleeding from somewhere.  Marcus had a
decent-sized chunk of his left calf missing from the bullet that had yawed its way through his leg.  I had a bullet burn on my shoulder and a spent round embedded in my thigh that I hadn’t noticed until five minutes after we cleared the city.  Little Bob had actually been shot three times, miraculously all flesh wounds, though a couple of them could get nasty if they weren’t treated soon.  He’d also lost a fair amount of blood.  Nick had shrapnel cuts alongside his face from frag getting shot off the truck frame.  Hassan was missing a finger, and his Tabuk was officially no longer functional, thanks to the bullet that had punched through that finger and into the receiver.

Daoud had indeed been shot.  He was now lying on the ground next to the truck, pale and still.  The bullet had nicked his
brachial artery.  He had died before we even got out of the city.  The back seat was soaked in blood.

All the rest of the trucks were in similar straits.  Somehow, none of us but Daoud had died, though the ballsy gunner who’d thrown the grenade back was in a bad way.  Larry was bent over him, working fast and hard to get the bleeding stopped.

We were well out in the middle of nowhere.  We couldn’t even see any of the Rumaylah oil rigs, which was fine with me.  We’d see anybody coming long before they were in weapon range.

The trucks themselves were riddled with holes.  There was no way in hell that we’d be able to sneak anywhere; anyone who saw us, even leaving aside the fact that four of them were still black-and-white painted PPF trucks, was going to know that something bad had gone down, and that we were probably running from it.  The original plan had been to swap the trucks
out in Ad Dayr.  That probably wasn’t going to work now.

Jim, Hassan, and Hussein Ali joined me at my truck.  Jim had a bandage hastily rigger’s-taped to his shoulder, and had blood on his face.  Hussein Ali looked a little gray; I couldn’t tell where he’d been hit, but that he was wounded was obvious.  There was a hitch in his step as he walked up.

“Are you all right?” I asked him.  Hassan didn’t get a chance to translate.

“It is not serious,” he said haltingly.  “I was shot…” he pointed to his side, “…but not bad.  I will live.”

I frowned.  I knew the guy well enough to know that he was perfectly capable of pulling a hardass act until he bled out, but for all the blood on his leg, it didn’t seem to be running out too badly.  “Any of us take a look at it?” I asked.

He didn’t quite get that, and looked at Hassan, who asked the question in Arabic.  He nodded then.  “Larry did.”

I stared at him for a second, trying to judge if he was telling the truth, or trying to blow me off.  Finally I nodded, accepting that he probably had let Larry look at it, and if Larry had said he’d live, he probably would.

I pulled out my sat phone and tried to start it up.  It took me a second to notice that there was a bullet hole in it.

Fuck.

“Jim, have you got your phone?” I asked, as I tossed the expensive, and now useless, hunk of metal, plastic, and silicon in the back of the truck.

He reached into his cargo pocket, pulled out the brick-shaped phone, and carefully checked it over before handing it to me.  “Hope the battery’s still charged,” he commented.

It was.  I started it up and called Mike.

“Send it,” he said by way of answering.

“Change of plans,” I told him.  “Daoud jumped the gun and we had to leave early.  We got shot the fuck up on the way out of town; no way are we going to make it all the way to Ad Dayr without getting spotted and rolled up.  Half of Basra knows about the four PPF trucks that got filled with holes on the way out.  The bad guys will have spotters out for us.  I need you to bring some trucks out and pick us up.  We’re abandoning these vehicles.”

He didn’t comment, but just asked, “Where?”

I walked over to the back of the truck and pulled the rumpled overhead photo map of the
greater Basra area out of the top pouch of my ruck.  The ruck had acquired a few new holes, and so had the map.  It was still mostly readable, though.  I spread it on the puckered hood of the truck and peered at it.

“We’ll be five hundred meters north of the on
-ramp from Highway Eight onto Highway One, heading north.  We’ll be on the northeast side.  Don’t head out here right away; we’re going to go firm until sundown, then move on foot to the rendezvous.  Be there no earlier than 0200.”

“Roger.  Does anyone need medical attention?” he asked.

I looked around, tempted to laugh for some reason.  “Yeah, just about everybody,” I replied.  “Almost all walking wounded, though.  We’ll be good until linkup.”  Not that we had much choice.

“Solid copy,” he drawled.  “We’ll see you tonight.”

After another check of who was hit, how badly, and how much ammo we had left, I called Alek and apprised him of the situation.  It wasn’t good, but it was far from the worst shit we’d gotten into.

Jim came over after I finished.  “We’re not going to be able to carry a lot of the gear,” he pointed out.

I shook my head, looking over our little collection of scarred, bloodied fighters.  “No, we aren’t.  Weapons, ammo, water, a little food, and a jacket are going to be about it for most of us.  Too many of us are limping as it is.”

Jim glanced at the rucks in the back of my truck.  “Kind of a shame to leave some of it.  That’s some expensive gear back there.”

“It’s replaceable,” I said bluntly.  “None of these guys are.”

“Oh, I agree,” he said.  “Just saying.”

I rubbed my eyes.  “I know.”  I suddenly laughed, though it came out as more of a grunt than a laugh.  “Remember how much we all used to bitch about geardos?  And here we are, lamenting the loss of our gear.  This should be our fucking end-all, man.  Weapon, ammo, and water.  That’s it.”

He chuckled.  “It’s a little different when you paid for most of the gear.  I won’t miss the weight, but the wound to the wallet is what hurts.”  Then he sobered, and looked over the small perimeter of laagered, shot-up trucks.  “Larry doesn’t think Malik’s going to make it.”  Malik was the gunner who’d thrown that last frag back.  “He lost too much blood.  He’s passed out right now, and Larry doesn’t think he’s going to wake up again.”

“Shit.”  Not only was Malik a good dude, but we were going to be slower carrying him.  I would be damned before I’d leave him here to die if he was still breathing when it came time to leave.

Jim’s mouth pressed into a thin line, disappearing into the jungle of his beard.  I remembered when Jim liked to stay clean shaven; now he was Grizzly Adams reborn.  “You know somebody’s going to say it.”  He didn’t look at me.  He didn’t like the possibility any more than I did.

“Then they can save their fucking breath,” I snapped.  “He’s one of us now.  We’re not slitting his throat, we’re not giving him an overdose of morphine, and we’re sure as hell not going to leave him here to die slowly in the desert.  If we’ve got to take turns buddy-dragging his ass all the way to the RV, then that’s what we’re going to fucking do.  If he’s still alive at sundown, we’re taking him with us.  End of fucking discussion.”

Jim nodded, still looking at the dirt.  “Clear,” was all he said.

I pushed away from the side of the truck abruptly.  There was a hot rage building in my chest over the very question.  I knew Jim didn’t deserve it, I knew that it was probably a reaction to the losses we’d taken recently, but that didn’t hold it off.  I had to walk it off, or distract myself, or something.  “I’m going to walk the perimeter,” I grumbled.  Jim didn’t say anything, but the look on his face told me enough.  He knew what was going on, and had the sense not to push about it.

I stopped by the back of the truck first, where Little Bob was back on the gun.  He had refused to even listen to arguments that he needed to rest once his wounds were packed and bandaged.  He was getting as possessive of that PKP as Bryan was of his.

He gave no sign that he’d heard the conversation with Jim, though I was sure he had.  Little Bob had a talent for minding his own business, even though he usually knew about most things going on.  He just tended to listen and keep his mouth shut. 
“How are you holding up?” I asked him.

He shrugged.  “I’ve been shot before,” he said, with that deceptively high, soft voice of his.  “This ain’t the first time, and it won’t be the last.”  He glanced down at me.  “How’s the leg?”

The hole where I’d dug out the mashed bullet that had passed through the door and into my thigh burned every time I moved.  “It hurts,” I replied.  “How’s that for the shocking revelation of the year?”

He grunted a laugh.  He tried to hide the wince of pain that went along with it, but I noticed it.  I didn’t say anything;
the way we lived and worked, you didn’t mention another man’s pain unless he became a liability or started bitching and moaning about it.  But it made me worry about the upcoming night movement more than I already was.  I hoped we’d have enough darkness to make the movement.  We had almost seven kilometers to cover, and nobody was going to be going full speed.

“For what it’s worth,” Little Bob said, after a long silence, “I was glad to hear what you said back there.  To be honest, I probably would have been the first to say
, ‘leave him.’  But you’re right.  They’re our guys now, and we can’t leave our own behind.”  He spat over the side of the truck, out toward the desert.  “I guess I hadn’t really thought of it like that before.”

“It’ll take some getting used to,” I admitted.  “And it could be that they’ll be pushed out by selection whenever we get to that.” 
The ones who survive this
, I didn’t add.  I didn’t need to.  “And we’ve left too many of our own corpses behind us for me to be comfortable leaving any we don’t absolutely have to.”

“I never met Colton,” Little Bob said hesitantly, as if all too aware he was treading on hallowed ground.  “He’s still in Djibouti, isn’t he?”

I was silent for a moment.  “Yeah, he is.  In a wadi a few miles outside Djibouti City.  Hank, Tim, and Rodrigo are in or around Kismayo somewhere.  I still hope to eventually go back for Colton, at least.  The others…we’ve got no way of knowing where their remains ended up.”

Neither of us said anything for a moment.  “I’d better go check on the rest,” I said, more as a way of extricating myself than anything else.  Little Bob just nodded.

I wandered from truck to truck, making small talk, checking on wounds and ammo levels, all of which I’d already checked when we stopped.  It was a transparent attempt to keep busy, but nobody seemed to mind, except Cyrus, who bitched about carrying Malik while I was in earshot, but lapsed into sullen silence when I approached.  We were going to have to settle this somehow, but this wasn’t the time.  I ended up leaning against a diesel Ranger with Hassan, who was smoking a cigarette.

Our small talk about how Team Hussein was holding up, since I still couldn’t talk with half of them without Hassan there to translate, gradually segued to discussing Hussein Ali himself.

“How far are these guys really going to go with us, Hassan?” I asked.  “I know what he told us, but I’m not new to this part of the world.  Hussein Ali knew that we were probably his best chance of survival once Saleh made a deal with al Hakim.  Once we’re in the clear, what then?”

“They will stay, and go through selection to be members of your company,” he said with a shrug.  “It is what Hussein Ali wants, and these are his closest cousins.  They will follow him, most of them.”

I frowned.  “I guess I still don’t understand why.  Maybe I’ve gotten too used to being used by every Iraqi who spins a story about how much they care about justice and peace.”

“
Most Iraqis will tell you what they think you want to hear, to get what they want, yes,” Hassan said, blowing smoke out his nose.  “Hussein Ali is…different.  Yes, he is a survivor.  He has had to be.  But I think at the center, he is an idealist.  He had great hopes for his country when the United States came to overthrow Saddam in 2003.  He does not talk about it, but I think he even hoped something would change back in the 1990s, when the Coalition threw the Iraqi Army out of Kuwait.”

“Are you saying that
his idealism has somehow survived the last couple decades?” I asked.  “That’s hard to believe.”

He shook his head.  “It has not, not really.  He has watched every dream he has ever had of Iraq becoming a peaceful, prosperous country dashed, both by the hatred of the Islamists and by the West’s neglect.”  He took another drag on the cigarette.  “But he still believes that a man’s honor must be tied to his word.  That is a uniquely Western viewpoint, you know?  Here, a man’s honor is tied to how much esteem he is held in, in the perception
of his wealth and his family.”  He blew the smoke skyward.  The sun was dipping toward the perpetual haze that stole its strength about an hour before it actually set.  “I don’t know where he got the idea; he has never traveled to England or America that I know.  He has been to several foreign military academies, back before the embargo after the war in the ‘90s.”  He turned to look at me, his face serious.  “He has given his word that he wants to be a Praetorian.  He means it.  He will honor it.  Which means these men, his tribesmen, will honor it as well.”