“Hokay. Take five guys. Crab, Baldy, stay on overwatch while Biker and I stretch our legs.” She picked up the M4 carbine from its clips and heaved herself out of her commander’s hatch. It took a moment’s effort to scramble down the outside of her tank and then the sand felt good and solid under her feet.
“This sounds crazy Ell-tee, but you know, I’m kinda getting to like the desert. It seems grow on us dunnit?”
“It does Jim, it truly does. There’s a grandeur here, something elemental somehow.” They’d both noticed the crews of the other Abrams tanks and Bradley infantry combat vehicles also dismounting to stretch their legs and dropped the nicknames. “You ever seen a desert before?”
“Nope. I’m from Vermont. Just a rubber who spent the week in the city and the weekend in the hills. Then my Guard unit got called up and here I am.”
“Rubber?” Stevenson looked curiously at her driver. He didn’t look like a contraceptive.
“Rich Urban Biker. Where you come from El-tee?”
“New Jersey. Bayonne to be precise. Joined the Guard to work my way through college and found myself here in the sandpit instead. Then the Message came, your old Ell-tee laid down and died and I was the only spare officer available.”
“Can’t say I’m surprised, he always was a sanctimonious old bastard. When we at camp and he visited a local knocking shop, he’d get on his knees and pray for forgiveness first. Cracked the girls up it did.”
Stevenson whooped with laughter and hook her head. “Don’t it always go to show? Them that talks the talk don’t walk the walk. Right Jim, we better give the others a chance to stretch.
She’d timed it just right. By the time her crew had got their break, the big Oshkosh ships of the desert had arrived and were driving into the laager. Critically, all the fuel trucks were there, their load of fuel was desperately needed. She watched carefully as the hoses were unreeled and the fuel trucks started gassing up the Abrams and Bradleys. Other trucks were unloading boxes of ammunition.
“Hey Ell-tee. You need reloads?”
“Sure do.” She looked at the barrel of her tank. They’d stopped using a single ring for each baldrick kill, now they had a one-inch band for 10 and a quarter inch band for singles. Plus their single white band as well.
“Right, can give you ten Sabot, twenty HEAT, the rest canister.”
“I’d like more canister if you’ve got it. Not much use for sabot.”
“Sorry Ell-tee, we’re running low. We’re sharing out the HEAT and canister and making the numbers up with sabot. The brass tell us they’re flying 120 in direct from home and more’s coming from Europe but we’re still running low here where it counts.”
“Hokay.” Slightly resigned but there it was. Nobody said war had to be easy. Stevenson and her crew started breaking open the crates and bombing up their tank.
They were interrupted by the sound of a Blackhawk landing.
“Captain Stevenson?”
She turned around, slightly irritated. She assumed the mistaken rank was a comment on her dress, she was wearing a tank top and had left the top of her BDUs in the tank. The desert may be grand but it was still hot.
“Its Lieutenant, Err Sorry Sir, I’ll get my blouse right now.” She did a double take. Colonel Sean MacFarland was standing in front of her.
“Well, when you do, you can get to pin these on it.” He handed her a small box, containing double silver bars. “Congratulations. You’ve done a fine job out here.”
“Sir, thank you Sir.” Stevenson looked at the bars in her hand.
“You’ll take over this combat group. You done good Stevenson, especially for somebody thrown in the deep end the way you were. The whole group will be staying here tonight, the way the pocket is shrinking around what’s left of the baldricks, there’s too much danger of friendly fire if we don’t take things carefully.”
“Big jump up Sir.” Stevenson was nervous, what amounted to a company command was a challenge to put it mildly.
“Same for everybody Stevenson. Army’s growing fast, we’re taking cadre out of units to help train new outfits as fast as we can. You stay alive, you’ll have a battalion in a few months. Well done Captain.”
MacFarland wandered off, apparently at random but to those under him, it always seemed that he would turn up an exactly the time needed to spot a problem developing. Around the laagered combat team, the dusk started to settle and the flashes of artillery fire grew more distinct.
Somewhere In The Desert, Western Iraq, night
Abigor huddled in the rocks, looking out across the desert. If his instincts were right, the hellmouth was very close. The last few days had been a horror, the human sky-chariots had hounded his force as it had disintegrated. They’d never let up, their curious rotating wings beating the air, the thumping of their weapons always so deadly. His Army had started retreating, what was left of it, then the retreat had become a rout. Still the humans hadn’t let up, they’d pursued him until the rout had become a panic stricken flight for the rear and the defeated army had become a helpless mob that had been slashed into ever-smaller pieces. Then, when he thought he had finally escaped, he’d seen more of the human iron chariots in front of them, blocking the retreat.
That was when he had understood at last. The humans didn’t fight their battles to make a point, they fought them to destroy their enemies. He’d noted something else. In Hell, armies fought their battles bottom-up. The foot infantry would get killed but rarely any of higher rank. Commanders had better things to do that kill each other. Anyway, how could one negotiate a deal with somebody one had just killed? But the humans fought their battles top-down. They started by killing the enemy commanders and then slaughtered the decapitated mass that was left. There was a corollary to that, they fought that way because they didn’t intend to negotiate with the losers.
How could they have understood humans so little?
Abigor shook himself, and cautiously looked around. The humans could see in the dark, shots could come out of nowhere. Still, it looked safe enough and there wasn’t far to go. The hellmouth was so close now, just a few more hours away.
Chapter Twenty Six
Central Belfast, Northern Ireland.
Inspector Richard Doherty was a veteran police officer, having been in the Police Service of Northern Ireland, or Police Service of Northern Ireland (incorporating the Royal Ulster Constabulary, George Cross) to give it its full name, since 2001 and had served in the Royal Ulster Constabulary for twelve years before the change of name. He was one of the 20 percent of the service’s officers who were Catholic (well, ex-Catholic and it was about 15 percent since The Message), though as a veteran RUC man he thought of him as an eight percenter, 8.3 percent of the old force having been Catholic. The Message had hit Northern Ireland harder than the Mainland; around a quarter of the population had just lain down and died, or committed suicide, including many of the Province’s religious leaders and some of the political ones. Sadly for the police about ten percent of the service had been amongst those who had died.
Like many of his co-religionists he represented the fact that Catholics had been promoted in numbers well out of proportion to the percentage of total officers. He still remembered the days when becoming a police officer, or soldier, was a very dangerous choice for a Catholic. Not only were you likely to be shot in the back, or blown up while carrying out your duties, but your family was also at great risk. Only now, times had changed.
The appearance of the armies of Hell in the desert of Iraq and a baldrick attack in America had really stepped up the level anxiety for the public. To reassure the population, the PSNI had put a strong armed presence on the streets of the Province. Backing them up were a couple of regular army infantry battalions, who would soon be joined by the recently re-formed Home Service battalions of The Royal Irish Regiment. Men and women (known as ‘Greenfinches’) who had served in these battalions had flocked back to the colors when the decision to re-form them had been announced. Fortunately the army still had enough equipment and uniforms in storage in Northern Ireland to equip them.
The Inspector was in charge of a Police Support Unit of twelve officers, mounted in a pair of armored Land Rovers, known as the Tangi. Once upon a time the Tangis of the RUC had been painted grey, now they were painted in the same orange and yellow checkered ‘Battenberg’ high visibility scheme worn by similar vehicles on the
