Last Stand by Michael Stephen Fuchs

Author:Michael Stephen Fuchs [Fuchs, Michael Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Complete & Total Asskicking Books
Published: 2019-10-03T06:00:00+00:00

PART THREE

“The willingness to die for another person is a form of love that even religions fail to inspire, and the experience of it changes a person profoundly.”

- Sebastian Junger, War

* * *

We got back to the HLZ just in time to help hump the last crates of weapons and high-tech gear onto the Valor. There was no time to waste. We needed to get Uron, the cargo, and the aircraft the hell out of there – before the Americans turned up, and especially before the Taliban realized how few we were, and launched a counter-attack.

There was also still the small matter of the dead. As much as we seemed to have had a tacit agreement to run a silent-disco gun battle, there was always the risk of things going loud. Whichever side was losing would be strongly incentivized to start chucking grenades, rockets, mortars, fucking tac-nukes, whatever the hell was handy. Attracting the dead would be a huge problem for the survivors – but surviving long enough to deal with that beat dying beforehand.

As the very last pallet rolled on, I turned to Uron and put my hand out, palm up. He nodded and unslung the satchel hanging beneath his pack. This contained a Barrier-T satcom station – man-portable, but not exactly light, and to his credit Uron had humped it all the way here through the mountains. Even more to his credit, it looked like he was going to keep his end of the bargain after all. As soon as they lifted off, the radio would allow us to make commo with the Kennedy. Hilariously, Uron’s tech guys had even provided an encryption key for the American nets.

But before he handed it over, he had to make his own call – the one that would release his hostages. My last four guys on the frigate.

But even as he pulled the handset out, it buzzed – with an incoming call. Squinting, looking at me in a bizarrely apologetic way, he put the handset to his ear. “Da… Ponimat’.” He turned back to me. I had a strong premonition I wasn’t going to like whatever came out of his mouth next.

I wasn’t wrong.

* * *

From back inside the TOC, we could hear the jets from the Kennedy screaming overhead. This was galling. The mighty air power of the U.S. Navy was practically close enough to touch. And we could do nothing.

Nothing except hide out. The call to Uron had been from CIC on the Gorshkov, telling him about the incoming air patrol – in advance of the supercarrier itself, which was steaming into the Gulf of Oman. This meant Uron couldn’t fly out on the Valor – not until the airspace cleared. The Russians, paranoid to the last, were absolutely convinced the JFK would hunt them down and destroy them if they knew of their existence. So that couldn’t be allowed to happen.

Meanwhile we were grounded – and trapped.

Which was when the first probing attacks on the wire started. Corporal Avarone came dashing in the door, out of breath again, perhaps permanently.

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