Blue Curse (Blue Wolf Book 1) Page 4

  “How are we doing with air?” I asked Baine.

  He was half-shouting, half-stammering into his radio. The same adrenaline that was enhancing my senses, helping me to focus, was unnerving the Centurion rep. Probably his first real action.

  “I need an ETA!” I shouted.

  “Tw-twenty minutes to arrival,” he called back.

  I relayed the information to Segundo as I sighted another combatant and took him down. My team sergeant swore in response. Not knowing how many hostiles we were facing, and with most of the team pinned, twenty minutes was an eternity. “The heavy guns are down there,” I reminded him, referring to the pair of 240 machine guns. “Can you reach them?”

  “Doubt it,” Segundo answered. “We’d have to be able to drag them to cover to set up, and the fire’s still too heavy.”

  At that moment another RPG glowed into view. I threw myself to the right as the rocket ripped past, searing the side of my face. It detonated against the valley wall, the bunker shielding us from the shrapnel this time.

  I followed the lingering vapor trail back across the valley. It terminated at a dark hole high on the opposite wall. A cave. It must have curved back because I couldn’t see anyone through my sight picture now. I released a burst of fire to keep the shooter back.

  The shooting from both points on the ridge continued. With air support, the combatants would have been eviscerated by now, dammit. We needed more firepower on them.

  “Start sending the team up here two at a time,” I told Segundo as I changed magazines. “Have them come around the backside of the hill. We’ll lay down suppressive fire.” I signaled to my engineers that they were responsible for the combatants on the left side of the ridge. I waved Baine forward. He crawled up reluctantly, still talking to his drone pilots, urging them to hurry.

  I pointed toward the hostiles on the right. “We need to put pressure on that position.”

  Baine nodded and found them through the ACOG on his weapon. When two of my team below began to move, I gave the word and opened fire. Baine did in kind, streaks of light zipping across the valley. The dumb bastard was using tracer rounds—and he was wildly off the mark.

  Answering fire began pinging the rocks around us.

  I pounded his shoulder with a fist. “Switch your mag! No tracers! They’re pinpointing us.”

  Swearing, Baine ejected his mag and began fumbling over his vest for another.

  As the two members of my team made the backside of the hill, I dropped my sights to the cave again. A solitary figure glowed into view. I squeezed off two shots but missed. He ducked back out of sight.

  The weapons sergeants—Dean and Dan—arrived on either side of us, and I ordered Segundo to send up two more of the team. With five capable shooters now, we were forcing both groups of fighters on the opposite ridge to take cover. I sent periodic bursts into the cave to discourage further RPG fire. When two more members of Team 5 arrived, I ordered the weapons sergeants onto the ridge behind us to see if we had any fighters approaching from behind.

  “Can you get the heavy guns up now?” I asked Segundo.

  “It’s going to be iffy. They’re still hitting us in bursts.”

  I cycled through our options before settling on Olaf’s BFG. The grenade launcher would be able to reach the cave. But when I looked back at the collapsed section of bunker, Olaf’s mangled body was no longer there. Had one of our team members dragged him out?

  Someone shouldered in between me and Baine. I glanced over, expecting to find a new member of Team 5, but it was Olaf. The left half of his head was caked in blood, and his elbow seemed to be holding on by the sinew, but he gripped his BFG gamely in both hands.

  “Where do you need heavy fire?” he asked in an Eastern European accent, which wasn’t surprising. Centurion recruited broadly, and foreign soldiers were often cheaper. But none of that mattered right now.

  “Get back to cover,” I said. “Our medic will be up to treat you.”

  “Where?” he repeated.

  I sighed and pointed out the cave across the valley.

  Olaf lowered his head to his sights. With a small grunt, he squeezed the trigger of his launcher. Seconds later, the dark hole lit up with a detonation. A scream echoed from inside the cave an instant before secondary explosions erupted: the RPG rounds. The hole filled with smoke and the dust of collapse.

  “Where else?” he asked.

  My weapons sergeants had reached the ridge behind us and were lighting up the opposite ridge. Sporadic gunfire answered. I didn’t want the enemy to retreat and regroup. I wanted them eliminated. I gauged the distance to the fighters to be about two hundred yards.

  “What’s your launcher’s range?” I shouted above the noise.

  Olaf held up five fingers of his gloved right hand. Five hundred yards? Must be a special make. He lowered his face to his sights, but his injured arm was trembling now, affecting his aim.

  “Do you mind?” I asked, reaching for the gun.

  His hands clenched around it for a moment, but then he relented and shoved it toward me. I handed him my M4 and then took a moment to position the BFG and line up the sights. Calculating for the trajectory, I took aim above the leftmost group and fired four shots. Seconds later the grenades detonated with a series of bright flashes that sent bodies flying.

  Damn, never seen power like that in a grenade round.

  I aimed and fired above the other group. A second series of explosions lit up the night, and the enemy fire ceased. I scoped the ridge. “How’s it look from your vantage?” I asked my weapons sergeants.

  “No movement,” Dean, my senior, responded. “I think we got ’em all.”

  “There’s a drone on station,” Baine shouted triumphantly.

  “Better late than never,” I muttered. “What are they seeing?”

  “About a dozen dead and dying fighters.”

  “Tell him not to go anywhere.” I stood and removed my earplugs as the rest of Team 5 arrived on the hill. “How is everyone?”

  “No casualties if you don’t count the rucks,” Segundo responded, bringing up the rear. “Up here?”

  “Just one,” I said, cocking my head toward Olaf, who remained on his stomach. “Mauli? Could you take a look at him?”

  “I am fine.” Olaf stood, clamping his injured elbow. “It will be good by morning.”

  I’d seen this before. In the adrenaline-pounding heat of battle, a soldier often had no immediate sense of how badly he was wounded. “Mauli’s going to check you out anyway.”

  “Yeah, let’s find you a room inside,” my medic said. He took Olaf by his other arm and led him toward the bunker. That Olaf could walk under his own power impressed me. He’d been in the immediate blast radius of an RPG and half buried under a stone wall. Regardless, he was in good hands with Mauli. Our medic would stabilize him until we could get him out.

  I turned to the rest of the team. “All right. I want the engineers to get working on restoring the bunker wall. Baine, you’re going to put Hotwire in contact with your pilots. He’s taking over air.” The Centurion rep didn’t grin or talk back this time. Instead he stared around with shocked eyes. “I want everyone else bringing up the rucks and gear. Get the heavy guns set up there and there. Even with recon overhead, we’re going with fifty percent security tonight.”

  As the team got to work, my number two came over to talk to me. “So do you think the fighters were connected to that village we’re visiting tomorrow?” Segundo asked.

  “No telling. But based on how long the Kabadi have been here, any alliance is probably reluctant, maybe even being forced on them. We’ll know more when we meet with their leaders tomorrow.”

  “What are we going to do about Blondie?” Segundo asked.

  Baine was seated on the ground with Hotwire now, their laptops and radios spread in front of them. Baine was going over the ciphers. “He’s unfit in just about every way,” I said in a lowered voice. “I’d leave him behind if I could, but we’re
going to need Centurion’s drones tomorrow, and he seems like the type who would sabotage our support out of spite.”

  Segundo nodded in agreement. “At least we don’t have to worry about his buddy.”

  “Olaf is actually the competent one, but yeah. The fewer mercenaries tomorrow, the better. Baine’s only getting the bare mission essentials. I want you to keep him in the back, out of the way. I also want you holding his ammo. He doesn’t handle pressure well, and he could fuck this up royally.”

  “One babysitter coming up,” Segundo said.

  I picked up my rucksack and clapped his shoulder. “If it’s any consolation, I don’t see this going beyond tomorrow. Once we’re back at base, Stanick has promised the team a solid week of R and R.”

  “While you slip out the back door, you bastard.”

  “The team will be in good hands.” I paused the appropriate beat. “I think.”

  Segundo waved his middle finger at me as I grinned and walked toward the bunker.

  Across the ridge where the dead and dying combatants lay, a wolf’s howl went up.

  Sounds like someone’s getting a late dinner, I thought grimly.

  6

  I emerged from the bunker the following morning to find the valley shrouded in cold mist. Most of the team was outside, cleaning their weapons and doing final prep. I called for the others still in the bunker and then walked over to Baine. “Can I talk to you for a minute?” I said, making quick eye contact with Segundo.

  Baine looked up from an MRE with bleary, red-rimmed eyes. Even though I’d kept him off the security rotation, I doubted he’d slept. I had heard him tossing and turning in his sleeping bag most of the night. He set his breakfast down and followed me to the other side of the bunker, where Segundo joined us.

  “You can keep your gun,” I told Baine, “but Segundo is going to carry your ammo.”

  “Afraid I’m going to shoot myself in the foot?”

  I ignored the bitter remark. “He’ll give you whatever you need should you need it.”

  Baine looked from me to the ammo pouch Segundo held open. “I’m not under your command.”

  “No, but I have operational authority. Besides endangering us by calling off air support last night, you were a liability in battle. It would be entirely within my authority—and good sense—to scrap the mission and request a different rep.” I paused to let that sink in. Something told me he would do anything to avoid the shame of being swapped out. “I’m still willing to let you come along as an observer, but on the condition you lose the ammo.”

  He clenched his jaw but began pulling mags from his vest and dropping them into the pouch. Removing the mag from his SCAR last, he held it up. “I’m going to be reporting this,” he promised. “It’s a violation of the Public-Private Defense Agreement.”

  “Whatever,” Segundo muttered, prying the mag from his grasp.

  I ejected the round from Baine’s chamber, which he had conveniently forgotten, and returned to the head of the ten-member team. Mauli would be staying behind to tend to Olaf. An armed drone would remain overhead to provide security. I was preparing to give the order for final check when Olaf appeared from the bunker, fully outfitted and carrying his BFG.

  “I go too,” he said.

  I shook my head. “You’re in no condition.”

  Mauli appeared close on his heels and sidled his big body past him to approach me. “Sir? I wouldn’t believe it if I hadn’t seen it myself,” he said in a lowered voice. “But he’s practically healed.”

  “That’s not possible. His left arm was barely attached last night.”

  “No kidding,” Mauli said. “I had to tourniquet him and give him three units of O negative. I was even wondering if I was going to have to amputate, but by this morning, the tissue had grown back. And his shrapnel wounds are just scabs, some of them already flaking off.”

  Handing off my M4 to Mauli, I walked over to Olaf and pushed up his left sleeve. A clean bandage wrapped his elbow. Gripping his wrist, I told him to flex his arm while I resisted. I expected Olaf to grimace and tremble with the painful effort, but it was all I could do to arrest his motion. I checked his other arm to make sure I had tested the correct one.

  “I go,” he repeated.

  I couldn’t begin to understand what had happened, but I wondered if it had something to do with Centurion’s bioengineering division. Sigma Base had declined to medevac Olaf last night, instead requesting periodic updates on his condition.

  Regardless, it wasn’t for me to question. I nodded, then signaled to Segundo that he would also be responsible for Olaf. I didn’t feel the same need to confiscate his ammo. Whatever Olaf’s background, he was steady.

  Ten minutes later we descended from the outpost and turned up the valley. Hotwire had arranged for the one drone to remain above the bunker while two more escorted us and one reconned ahead. The word from the sky was that the way was clear. After a mile, we crested a section where the valley had fallen in on both sides and we found ourselves looking down on a lush Eden.

  The village was set in the center of a green bowl, peaks rising protectively on three sides. Meadows with herds of shaggy gray sheep extended all the way to the Wari river, while level upon level of terraced farmland and orchards scaled the valley’s sides. Small mud huts dotted the landscape, seeming to converge on a large compound that I recognized from the satellite map but that, like the rest of the valley, appeared more impressive in person.

  I signaled for the men to keep moving. “How’s it looking from above?” I asked Hotwire as we waded into the knee-high pasture grass, the nearest sheep hustling out of our path.

  “Like a ghost town,” he answered. “No one’s out.”

  As I scanned the ground, something caught my eye. I stopped and knelt. Half buried in the soil was a chunk of metal. I dug it out and brushed it off, then held it up. A mushroomed 50mm bullet, which meant heavy weapons. I scanned the huts and compound again.

  “There’s another one back here,” Segundo called.

  “Permission to speak, sirs?” Baine asked sarcastically.

  “Go ahead,” I said.

  He pulled a laminated gridded map from a pocket in his cargo pants and spread it out. I noticed his digital camos had changed from the gray desert colors to the green of the grass he knelt in. “I would have pointed this out last night,” he said, “but no one seemed interested in anything I had to say. Centurion’s satellite technology gives us the highest resolution imagery of the area.”

  “So?” Segundo said.

  “So, I might have an explanation for the bullets.”

  I walked over to him and looked over his shoulder at the map. The bird’s eye view of the village was closer up and much more detailed than ours.

  “See that?” Baine said, pointing to a pair of large lumps on top of one of the buildings that made up the compound. “Those are canvas covers. Our friends are hiding something up there. Judging by the rounds, I’d say a pair of anti-aircraft guns. Probably Soviet era.”

  I looked toward the compound but couldn’t see the rooftop from our angle. I raised my gaze further to the clearing skies. What had they been shooting at? I scanned the ground again. Several feet away, I pried up a translucent plate. Pale, and glittery when tilted, it looked like mica, but the crusty plate was rounded on three sides, like a fish scale, and I couldn’t break it in half.

  Pete’s words from yesterday returned. A number of years back we had a guy flying an Apache on a solo mission. Swears he was chased by something.

  Though the account seemed only slightly less ridiculous now, it was still ridiculous. I tossed the plate aside and turned to Hotwire. “Ask a pilot to keep an eye on those weapons. If the covers come off them, I want to know.”

  As Hotwire sent up the request, Baine refolded his map and smiled smugly.

  “Is there anything else you’re holding back?” I asked.

  “No,” Baine replied coyly. “That was all.”

  I looked at hi
m another moment, then gave the order to continue moving. We left the pasture and followed a network of trails past the huts. Chickens pecked beneath lines draped with traditional clothing, but the villagers themselves had cleared out, probably spooked by last night’s battle up the valley.

  “Shouldn’t we be kicking down doors?” Baine asked.

  Yeah, what better way to get a populace on your side, I thought.

  As we approached the compound’s main gate, I eyed the formidable stone walls. I waved to Parker, my interpreter, and he clattered up under the weight of his body armor and rifle. Behind us the rest of the team assembled into concentric layers of security, covering our sides and back. I moved my M4 to one hand and knocked on the tall wooden door.

  Baine snorted. “Yeah, like they’re just going to open…”

  His words trailed off as something clunked on the other side of the door: a crossbeam being lifted from a latch. A moment later the door opened a crack and a young woman’s green eyes peered from the shadows.

  Parker stepped forward and spoke our introduction in Wakhi: “Forgive our intrusion. We represent the United States of America on a friendly mission. This is Captain Wolfe, the leader of the team, and I am Sergeant Parker, team interpreter. We request a meeting with your tribal leaders to inform them of a project in the area. We would also like to learn of any help your village may need.”

  The woman watched him, eyes keen and unblinking. She was young, but the sun and wind had already begun to weather her skin and draw faint crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes. When Parker finished, the woman looked from him to me. I started to smile through my beard, then stopped. A halo of green light seemed to surround her, almost as if I was viewing her through night-vision goggles.

  “Daroed,” she said.

  “She’s inviting us inside,” Parker told me.