‘Goddamn,’ muttered one of the sergeants, loud enough for Melton to hear. The enlisted men around him strained to pick up a few clues without being too obvious about it. They were spread out along a side street running between two shops, both of which had been cleared not fifteen minutes earlier. Euler had men inside both, and crawling around on the rooftops, denying the high ground to any hostiles. Anxiety crept stealthily down the line of soldiers, as men who’d been sitting in the dirt, catching a few minutes’ respite, picked up on the changed vibe in the leadership group and slowly began to attend to them. Eyes that had been closed now cracked open, heads turned almost imperceptibly, bodies shifted just a little bit, leaning in towards the lieutenant, hoping to catch some scrap of information that might provide a clue as to what mess they’d stepped in now.
At last the NCOs dispersed down the line, carrying the news with them. Corporal Shetty – a short, dense, African-American version of The Thing from
‘Choppers had to bug out,’ he informed them. Suddenly Melton realised for the first time that the constant droning thud of the Apaches and Blackhawks that had shepherded them through the dusty maze of An Nasiriyah was missing. He saw men craning their heads upwards all along the shadowed alleyway as they heard the news.
Alcibiades asked the obvious question. ‘Why?’
Shetty glared at him, like the absence was his fault. ‘Fucking Iranians,’ he said, as if those two words were enough. When they were found to be patently not enough, however, he continued. ‘Iran declared war on America an hour ago. Their air force is up and trying to punch through, to get to us. It is a full-on fur ball out in the Gulf. Hundreds of speed boats and jet skis. All of ‘em suicide runners. They been swarmin’ the navy. Air force and some British units are mixing it up with the Iranian planes right now, trying to keep ‘em off us here.’
‘Holy shit,’ cursed Alcibiades, his swarthy features paling noticeably.
‘Yeah, anyway. Choppers are outta here for the moment. If we want air cover, we gotta call in A-10s, and they’re only coming when they can get their own cover. It’s fucked up.’
‘Shit, what about arty then?’ Some private, he was a replacement pulled out of the division’s 123rd Signal Battalion and it showed every time he nearly shot himself in the foot with his M16. Melton stayed far away from him, because it was going to end in tears for that commo puke. He knew it in his bones.
‘They’re busy hammering a column of Republican Guard who are trying to get to us,’ Shetty said. ‘So no artillery, no air, nothing but Buffalo Soldiers and the grunts.’
Melton yawned so hard he nearly swallowed his stale wad of chew. He was exhausted but it was a nervous gesture too, one of his personal ‘tells’ that he was under pressure. He fingered the crap out of his mouth, took a sip from his camel-back and tapped Corporal Shetty on the shoulder.
‘Corporal, is it just Iran?’ he asked. ‘Do we know if anyone else is moving? Syria, Israel maybe?’
The non-com’s head swivelled like a gun turret. Back and forth, once. ‘Dunno, Mr Melton. You’d be better placed to find out than any of us, if your satellite phone is working.’
‘Battery’s dead. Went down yesterday and I haven’t been able to recharge,’ Melton said. ‘Sat coverage has gotten awfully spotty of late anyway.’
Shetty took that piece of news like a dustbowl farmer absorbing yet another month without rain. Such was life. ‘Lieutenant’s talking with Lohberger, getting instructions,’ he went on. ‘If we can’t hammer down the bad guys with air support, it makes this whole deal a lot fucking harder.’
‘But the brass still wants this bridge,’ Melton said without any real enthusiasm.
‘Yep. They still want it. Why they want it, I’ve no fucking clue, but they still want it.’
‘Man, this is totally fucked,’ said Bakic. ‘What the fuck are we even doing here? It sure as shit ain’t paying the rent anymore.’
‘What we’re
The chastened soldier mumbled something like ‘Sorry Corporal, no Corporal’ and devoted himself to the intense study of the dirt at his feet. Up and down the line, similar scenes played themselves out as the men dealt with the shock of losing their air cover and gaining a new enemy.
Melton checked his watch. It was late afternoon, shading towards sunset in maybe an hour or so. He wondered if 3rd ID would wait until dark, when the Americans’ night-vision equipment would return to them a significant advantage. On the other hand, the power of a unit like 5-7 Cav lay in its mobility. It was a ‘terrible swift sword’ in movement, cutting through anything that got in its way. Sitting here like this merely invited the Iraqis to gather their forces around them, especially when they couldn’t be targeted for destruction from the air.
Euler was back on the radio within a few minutes, his head bent and shoulders hunched tightly forward as though he was attempting to contain some new piece of shit news from getting free. Figuring on being stationary for a while, Melton opened a chilli mac MRE and stuck the shit-brown spoon down into its contents. He chewed on the meaty mac combo joylessly and washed it down with a drink of warm water. The other men all used the break as best suited them. Some ate, some dozed, one pissed his name up against an ancient wall. Everyone sipped some water or mixed some flavoured drink from their MREs in a water bottle. Most of their store-bought pougie bait had run out days ago.
At least the shade of the alleyway was a blessed relief from the oppressive heat of day. Even with the sun dropping towards the edge of the world, fighting in this temperature was a crippling business. Keeping the troops’ fluids up was proving as difficult as clearing a block of Fedayeen. Melton craned back his neck, stretching it far enough to work out a few kinks with a distinct cracking sound. The sky was lightly clouded and the glare had faded somewhat from its painful intensity in the middle of the day. He searched in vain for any sign of the so-called Disappearance Effect, the nuclear winter that had fallen on Western Europe with the arrival of billions of tons of particulate matter, released into the atmosphere by the burning cities of North America. Maybe it was all bullshit. He couldn’t tell. He was as cut off from the wider world as everyone else in the unit.
It was in that position, leaning back against the wall of the gutted building, squinting slightly into the hot grey sky, that he saw the dark blur of the mortar round as it dropped towards them. The cry of ‘Incoming!’ arose in his head but never reached his mouth, as another round smacked into the rooftop corner at the far end of the alleyway, detonating with a bone-cracking roar and a deadly spray of shrapnel. Men screamed out warnings and dived for
