Burmese Crossfire (Brannigan's Blackhearts Book 2) by Peter Nealen

Author:Peter Nealen [Nealen, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-01-15T06:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 12

Park made no move as Mun and Jee returned to the rally point, signaling their approach by tapping their buttstocks. Jeon answered the signal, and then the two scouts were back inside the platoon perimeter.

He knew that the camp had come under attack. Even if Ahn hadn’t called a brief distress signal on the radio, they’d heard the gunfire from nearly two kilometers away. Park was not going to go charging in without reconnaissance.

“We gave the recognition signal, but there was no reply,” Mun reported. “We could hear low voices in the camp, but could not hear what they were saying. I do not think they were speaking Mandarin or Korean.”

“Did you see anything?” Jeon asked. “Patrols, perimeter sentries?”

Mun shook his head, almost invisible in the darkness. “There might have been a shape in the southern defense pit,” he said, “but I could not make it out, and it did not move. That was when I sent the signal. No one responded, but no one shot at us, either.”

Park peered across the valley, chewing his lip. He did not know that he was very nearly in the same spot where Brannigan had observed the route up to the camp, not even an hour before. It was too dark to see the marks of the mercenaries’ passage.

“Jeon,” he said, “I think that we must assume that the camp has been overrun. If the enemy was not speaking Mandarin, it must mean that some of the paramilitaries got around us and attacked the camp.” He did not know how that was possible, but it was the only thing that made sense. He could hear the bombardment in Parsenkyaw, but that was presently Cao’s concern. And knowing what he did about the Burmese Army, he doubted that Moe Tint Man Goe would risk splitting his force. That would mean taking on the risk of having part of it cut off on the far side of Parsenkyaw.

He quickly began to outline his tactical plan. They would have to move quickly, to overwhelm the paramilitaries and retake the camp. Not only would losing the camp make them lose face, and hurt their relationship with Cao and the Kokang Army, but he had little doubt that Cao would soon be demanding more of their support against the Burmese. He would not grovel in front of the Kokang leader after having lost his own base of operations.

Together, he and Jeon disseminated the plan to the rest of the platoon, Commissar Lee hovering nearby like a malignant spirit that none of them believed in, as if worried that Park’s battle plan might somehow be politically unacceptable. He said nothing, though, even as Park assigned him a place in the upcoming attack. With the men they had left in the camp presumably dead, they would need every rifle.

Focused now, the North Korean soldiers began to slip down the hill into the valley, staying low in the tall grass and keeping to the shadows of the trees.

***

Flanagan was sweating, and he was starting to itch.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.