An hour’s walk later, they arrived a few hundred yards short of that night’s planned campsite. Scat had selected it from a satellite photo, so he went ahead to check the surrounding ground before confirming it could be adequately secured. As was usual when walking through the Neutral Zone with civilians in tow, they were settling in early for the night: civilians were notorious for crashing around in the dark and, besides, Rose wasn’t that fit and could only walk so far each day.
Scat positioned two 2-man teams in makeshift hides outside of camp to cover the most likely approaches. When they were in place, he let Rose unpack his survey gear for the umpteenth time that day: this time to give it a thorough clean. Tang did the same with his sniper rifle.
Ping!
Crump!
Familiar sounds reverberated along the wadi walls. Scat stooped slightly, looking around him. Rose froze. Tang dragged Rose down to the ground and then deeper into cover behind a tumble of loose rocks.
Scat cocked an ear. He could just make out the distant “blat” of solid shot being fired and the tube-like “plop” of rifle grenades being launched, probably from under the barrel of an S-122 assault rifle. They would be anti-personnel.
The broken ground and heat shimmer made it hard to identify where the firing posts were, but as the solid shot passed high overhead, they were no longer flying supersonically. There was no familiar crack, just a “fizz”, like a small-calibre flechette round at the far end of its range. The grenades were exploding a long way short of camp. It suggested the people doing the firing were a long way away.
Scat looked back at Rose and spoke unhurriedly to Tang.
‘Make sure he stays down. I’ll go and find out what’s going on.’
Scat unclipped his helmet from his pack and put it on his head. Tan did the same. This wouldn’t be the first time a Marine had blundered into someone else’s shooting war. The locals were always taking a pop at each other.
The team net came to life with a female voice.
‘Boss? It’s Bruce. Whack Jobs. A convoy of them on the main road. About a mile east. They’re just shooting up our side of the wadi.’
Scat already had the lay of the land imprinted in his head. They had travelled 10 miles over two days. Today they had snaked their way southwards, down a wide, shallow and waterless wadi, towards the Newabaa-Taba highway which ran north to south across their path. Their camp was on the inside bend of the wadi, just before it turned to meet the road about a mile and a half away.
He looked at his watch and then up at the sky. It was still only five pm. It would not be truly dark for another three to four hours.
‘How many, do you think?’ he asked.
There was no immediate reply.
More cracks as rounds hit rock; more dull cruds as the occasional rifle grenade exploded in the wadi, still a long way short of camp. Scat could see none of it.
‘Bruce?’
Some static and then:
‘—of them,’ she replied. ‘Maybe a few more. They’re out of their vehicles and strung out, firing this way. Just laying down fire.’
‘How many?’
‘About 60.’
‘That’s my count as well, Scat.’ It was Henderson. He was acting as Bruce’s spotter. ‘It’s kind of weird, though. They just pulled up and started firing. They aren’t aiming at anything worth shit—all they're doing is spitting lead in this general direction.’
Scat mulled that over. Bruce and Henderson’s hide was up the side of the wadi, a little way east of camp, so they had the better view. Dahl and Philips were most probably unsighted: they were a little further back and higher still, covering a wadi that joined theirs from across the way.
Tang made his way over at a crouch and flopped down beside him. The occasional round passed high overhead.
‘You catch that, Tang?’ Scat asked.
‘Yes, sir. Whack Jobs.’
Scat stared out across the wadi. That changed things. Whack Jobs were the local paramilitaries the Asian Bloc funded to make a Western Bloc soldier’s life difficult—at least, more difficult than it already was. They received their training from the Abs or Abos—Asian Bloc insurgency operatives—working out of Cairo. They were whacko by nature, and the Marines whacked them for a living. Their mostly dirt-poor and overburdened families offered them up to the Abs as errand boys, fighters or suicide bombers, in return for cartons of cigarettes and fistfuls of hard currency—usually the mighty Redback, the Chinese Yuan. The region had a long and sordid history of earning its hard currency in that way. More often than not, the local chiefs acted as intermediaries, taking their cut.
But 60 of them? In the middle of nowhere? Shooting up the desert?
Scat floated a thought:
‘Training?’
Henderson described what he was seeing.
‘Doubt it. They’re being chivvied on by some guy in uniform. … He’s looking this way using binos. And, yeah, from what I can see he’s wearing light tans.’
OK, Scat thought, so at least one of the buggers was wearing Abo desert fatigues, but there was no point in sending Battalion a contact report until he knew for sure that the Whack Jobs were gunning for his team: the resulting flap would kill the mission.
He thought about deploying the dragonflies again, to get a closer look, but remembered the swarm was recharging, and he may have a greater need of them during the night.
Scat turned back to Tang and Rose. Rose had dragged his survey equipment a little further back behind a rocky outcrop, and he was now staring out.
‘Looks like they know we’re here, or hereabouts,’ Scat noted. ‘They’re trying to flush us out.’
Rose looked down at the ground. Tang curled his lower lip and nodded.
Scat pointed at Rose.
‘You!’ he said. Rose looked up. ‘Start packing.’ Then, more quietly: ‘Tang, look after him. I’m going to spend some time with Jenny—to get a look-see. You keep an eye on our rear.’
Tang took a few steps up the side of the wadi and looked back, trying not to raise his head any higher than he needed.
‘Anything?’ Scat asked.
‘No. We aren’t surrounded. Not as far as I can see ...’
‘Bruce? How long do we have on your side.’
It was Henderson who replied.
‘They aren’t in a hurry, sir. I’d give us 15 minutes. Maybe more.’
‘OK. I’ll be there in a few minutes.’ Scat turned back to face Tang. He pointed at Rose again. ‘Keep this one out of trouble.’
Scat made his way up to where he had sited Bruce’s hide, sticking carefully to the emergency route in and out. Bruce was nestled a little way up the wadi’s side, in a crease of ground large enough for one person. She had to wriggle her way back and out, before Scat could move in.
‘You thinking of taking your total to more’n 30, sir?’ she asked. ‘Cos if you are, it ain’t fair. I can far-arc any one of ‘em with this pickle just as easy as you can with that solid-shot.’
Scat smiled as he unbuckled his helmet.
‘I know that Jenny,’ he replied, waiting for her to ease all the way out. ‘But we gotta think of your reputation. We can’t have you farking every man you come across.’
As he squeezed past her and settled into place, Bruce caught the pun. She nudged his leg playfully with her boot.
A few yards off to their left, Henderson kept up a continuous commentary of what was going on along the enemy line. Out front, the Whack Job line resembled a chaotic jumble of half-kneeling, half-standing, migrant workers. The light tans looked like field bosses urging them on. None of the Whackos appeared overly keen. Some were plainly reluctant. Either way, they stood out clearly against the light wadi floor. When Scat was ready, Henderson guided him to the light tan who appeared to be running the show.
There the Abo was—some three-quarters of a mile out. He was walking through the sparse scrub that had taken hold closer to the road, taking care not to catch his trousers on the thorns.
The scope magnified the Abo officer a dozen times. He looked southern Indian, a Tamil perhaps, maybe a Sri Lankan: it was hard to tell with him slowly floating around inside the scope. In any case, he was not directly looking this way. He was waving his hands at the tee shirts and ragheads to his left and right, occasionally grabbing one by an arm to pull him away from his friends, to stop them from bunching. He was young, a junior officer. In the grand scheme of things, then, he was no more than a gofer. It would be an easy and trouble-free kill. Scat thought that might as well take the shot himself.
Scat ignored the range finder: the Abs had gotten remarkably adept at ducking for cover when their target-marking sensors went off. He would do it the old-fashioned way: the way he had trained his team to make a kill when their active aids were either dead or fried.
It was a downward shot. Scat watched the dust move at a distance half way to the target, and around the target itself. He estimated the light breeze to be around three to five miles an hour, cutting diagonally from over his right shoulder towards the target. The air was arid. The satellite map gave him the distance to a cluster of boulders in the centre of the wadi—his range marker. Finally, he added in the angle of depression to the target. Once done, he asked Bruce and Henderson for their numbers. They were remarkably close.
He adjusted the scope and selected an armour-piercing round, just in case the beggar was wearing something under that beautifully pressed field uniform of his. He pressed down into his elbow pads, locked them into place and aimed at a point just below the Abo’s throat. If the elevation were off, the round would hit something between the middle of his chest or the top of his head. If he had gotten the wind wrong, he would hit something a couple of inches either side. Whichever way it went, the guy would go down.
As Scat waited for the Abo officer to draw level with the boulders, the Garand sensed he was preparing for a shot: a round was in the breach and the breach-barrel assembly was locked and set to “float”; Scat had turned on the passive in-scope target tracking software, and it was his eye behind the sight. Now the Garand’s computer was sensing the Abs motions in the scope, tracking the spot Scat had marked just below his throat. As it did so, it applied minute, almost indiscernible adjustments to the rubber muscles inside the barrel’s outer sleeve, to keep the barrel aligned with the target as it moved fractionally inside the sight.
Three breaths later, Scat applied two-point-five pounds of pressure to the trigger. At a speed of three thousand feet per second, the 0.5” calibre, 2”-long round burst from the barrel, the recoil kicking hard into his shoulder.
From further up, Henderson tracked the atmospheric disturbance as the round punched its way through the air, eager to make its way down the gentle slope towards the road. Out front, Whack Jobs hit the ground and scrambled away from a cloudburst of blood as the light tan’s head split like a melon under a hammer.
Henderson was full of praise. It had been a long shot. When the scope settled again, the light tan was already down. Scat lowered his aim a few mils in search of the kill. When he found him, Scat could see the Abo had dropped directly to his knees before slumping over onto his left side. The dead man now lay on his back with a knee pointing upwards. Scat could not see much of the Abo’s head: the skull was shattered and flattened. The face was now a torn rubber mask, lying on the floor.
Either side of the body the Abo line wavered.
Scat put his trigger finger to his lips and reversed out of the hide. Jenny handed him his helmet.
‘Thanks, Jen,’ he said, dusting himself off. ‘Get back in there. Keep an eye on them. If they move forward again, let me know.’ He pulled his mike a little closer to his mouth. ‘Tang, you can send that contact report.’
Scat picked his way carefully between the jagged rocks and headed back down the slope. As he slide down the final stretch of scree, Battalion terminated the mission and told the team to prepare for a daylight extraction. That meant deploying a couple of fully armed gunships in support, but, with a peace conference coming up, that request had to go up the line: to Brigade, to Central, to the Pentagon, and then to the lawyers. The last thing anyone wanted to do was escalate a long-distance exchange of rifle fire up to a serious air-to-ground action—not in the Neutral Zone, and not without the political cover.
Shaking his head, Scat briefed the team by radio.
‘OK, everyone! Things don’t feel right, so we’re leaving. But we aren’t bugging out until I’ve checked the route back to the rallying point.’
Everyone but Philips acknowledged the message.
Dahl spoke up:
‘I can see him, sir. He’s OK. Comms problems, most likely.’
‘OK,’ Scat replied. ‘If you need to bug out, make sure you bring him with you.’
The rallying point was a place where everyone could regroup in the event the main camp was overrun. Theirs was a mile back up the wadi. They had all seen it on the way into camp.
Scat had an uncanny talent for reading a tactical situation, and he felt uneasy about this one. It seemed odd that the Whack Jobs were laying down fire without knowing exactly where to aim. OK, so they would make their way up the wadi and stumble across his team eventually, but nothing the Whack Jobs were doing made any sense. He was sure the whole thing was a ruse, to get their small team to run back up the wadi and into an ambush prepared by a more professional force: and in this part of the world, the only professional soldiers worthy of taking on the Marines, with any hope of success, were the Asians.
Except Tang was right. There was no evidence of anyone on the route back up the wadi. He had jog-walked right up to the rallying point, and even scoped out the ground a few hundred yards beyond it: there was nothing to see.
Eyes stinging and mind racing, Scat got back on the radio to check on his team. Henderson brought him up to date: the firing line had stopped a half mile out and settled down to fire the occasional shot. No one was really trying hard to press home the attack.
‘OK,’ Scat said. ‘I got that. Stay where you are for now. Save your ammo. Tang, how’s Rose? He ready yet?’
‘Yes, sir,’ Tang replied. ‘We’re waiting on you.’
‘Alright then. Get yourselves up here.’
Scat then sat down to think some more.
The rallying point was located next to a large rectangular boulder, a huge, flat-topped slab that had collapsed into the wadi sometime during a flash flood. Boulders littered the wadi, of course, but this one was on the shoulder of a junction with a smaller wadi that ran off to the east. It stuck out of the scree at a 45-degree angle, pointing one of its sharp ends northwards. It was big enough and odd-looking enough for everyone to notice it, even at night and in a mild panic. That was why he had chosen it. He remembered baiting Rose as he had taken a leak behind it on the way down.
Then Scat thought he remembered Rose carrying a bag ... and pulling at a zip. That caused him to get up and walk behind the rock to peer into the shadows. Something blinked red. It blinked again.
‘Well I’ll be a whore’s uncle!’
It was a beacon.
3
Scat strode back along the wadi until he came across Tang and Rose walking towards him, sharing the load of the rubber survey bag, both soaked in sweat. As Scat walked up to them, he slung his rifle and unclipped the flap to his pistol holster. Without stopping, he grabbed Rose by the scruff and dragged him out into the wadi.
Rose yelped and struggled, only to get his legs in a tangle. A little way out, Scat kicked his legs from under him and threw him onto his back. When Rose got to his hands and knees, Scat kicked him in the stomach.
‘Are you sure you haven’t found anything, Rose?’ he asked, stepping back, ready to kick him again.
Tang had seen Scat lose his temper before, but usually with good reason, and most times it was over quickly, so he sat down on a rock and waited for the rage to pass. In front of him, Rose sat back on his heels and held his arms around his stomach. He then doubled up and wretched into the s
cree.
Scat kicked him a second time, this time in the head. Rose slumped down onto his back, trying to wave a hand in a plea for Scat to stop.
Scat reached into his map pocket and pulled out the smashed beacon. He yanked Rose’s head up by the hair and pushed it into his face.
‘Say something damned quickly, Rose, or I’ll put a bullet in you and then leave you here for the roaches.’
Rose mumbled something, realised he was not making much sense, and then spat out a tooth.
‘So you found it, then?’ the old man said, rubbing his jaw and trying real hard to focus his eyes.
‘Yes I did,’ Scat answered. ‘Fancy that.’ He tossed the beacon back over his shoulder.
‘Don’t take it to heart, Scat,’ Rose replied as he sat up. ‘Nothing personal.’
‘I take being shot at very personally, Rose. Or weren’t you aware of that?’
Rose laughed but immediately clutched his sides in pain. When the wave subsided, he got to his feet and leaned forward with his hands on his knees. He looked up.
‘Of course I’m aware of it Scat. Who wouldn’t be? The Hero of Suez. Too friggin’ proud to play the game the way it’s meant to be played. Banished to babysit people like me.’
Scat looked across at Tang, reliving a painful memory. The older marine had been with him in Ismailia during the evacuation of the Marine Airmobile Base and had seen Scat kill the Whack Job’s Abo paymaster. The trouble was the beggar was also the Cairo-based Chinese military attaché and he had enjoyed diplomatic immunity. By convention Scat should have let him go, unharmed, but at the time, Scat was thinking that maybe the Whack Jobs should not have their acts of self-destruction witnessed by the same person who signed off on the money. Instead, he had tracked him in his scope and whacked him. Within hours, and as the news spread that the moneyman was dead, the nerve-wracking suicide bombings halved.
At the time, Tang confirmed the kill and slapped Scat on the back. Later that night, Scat’s team bought him drinks. In its daily sitrep to Central, his unit wrote it up as an unavoidable consequence of the fog of war. During a flash visit, the General commanding Middle East Central tore him off a strip before shaking his hand. Then the blogosphere got wind of it, and it morphed into a political circus.