C.R.O.W. (The Union Series) (31 page)

‘Room clear,’ Westy hissed over the
intercom, he didn’t want the enemy to know where he was, ‘One enemy dead. One
doorway to the north, two blocked windows to the east!’ Westy described to the
boss what he needed to know over the platoon intercom.

The boss was in a squat, leaning
around the smashed doorframe we had entered by. If what had happened at the
door fazed him, he didn’t show it. Behind him I could see one of the lads in
one section lifting the smoking door away from Browner. I spotted movement; he
was alive, thank God. The relief was overwhelming.

The boss nodded, ‘Westy, go again. No
engagements to the west. Jonesy, get your boys in cover in-case Westy throws a
grenade in there. Ev, have Three section ready to clear onto the top floor.
There must be a stairwell here somewhere.’

‘Roger that, Boss, they’re at the
entry point with me now.’

We were to assault again into the room
to the north, but we had to be careful where we fired, because One section
would be in the adjacent room as we entered, and if we weren’t careful we could
potentially shoot them through the walls.

‘Andy, stay here with Brooks,’ Westy
ordered. He crept toward the open doorway with Daniels, ushering Stevo to
follow him.

Westy looked over his shoulder at
Brooks and pumped his fist up and down. Brooks recognised the message for rapid
fire and instantly responded with another sustained burst, spraying the wall to
the left of the doorway where the Chinaman had died by my rifle.

Using the distraction Westy bounded
toward the doorway and lobbed a grenade into the room, throwing it as hard as
he could so that it would bounce against the walls and would be impossible to
pick up quick enough to throw it back.

‘Grenade!’ We collapsed to the ground.

Boom!

The grenade exploded, sending a
shockwave through the building so powerful that plaster fell from the ceiling
and clattered off our helmets. Westy and Brooks were through the door seconds
later, followed by Stevo.

‘Room clear,’ Westy called over the
platoon intercom, ‘One room to the west, plus one stairwell and a window to the
east!’

‘Roger, the room to your west is
occupied by Jonesy’s section so do not engage. Cover the stairwell and the
windows.’

‘Okay,’ Westy said quietly. The boss’s
voice seemed to calm him, as it did me. He was a smooth operator, he rarely
seemed to flap.

‘Three section move up. Westy keep
your blokes spread out and low, remember those walls won’t give you much protection.’

As Three section filed past with the
boss in tow, I took the opportunity to go back to check on Browner. It was one
of my many jobs as 2ic to manage my section’s casualties, after all.

‘Is Browner okay?’ I asked from the
doorway, dreading the answer.

‘Yeah,’ one of the one section lads
answered from where he continued to cover the hole in the roof, he daren’t not
look away even for a split second, ‘Platoon sergeant is having a look at him at
the entry point, mate, but he looks fine. The door saved his life.’

‘Cheers, mate.’

I ran back to the entry point looking
for Browner, to see him being shaken about like a rag doll on the ground by the
platoon sergeant. Initially I feared the worst, but only for few seconds.

‘I’m okay, Sergeant,’ he insisted as Sergeant
Evans ran his hands over Browner’s limbs and then felt with his fingers under
the edges of his armour and around his respirator.

‘Not taking any chances,’ he said, and
slapped Browner’s helmet a couple of times, ‘Yep, heads still there. Alright, go
on, then.’

I helped Browner to his feet, ‘You
lucky bastard!’

Browner shook himself off in a cloud
of dust, ‘That was one tough door!’ He laughed.

Gunfire rattled overhead, Three
section were upstairs.

‘Come on, you two,’ Sergeant Evans
pointed the way we came, ‘Get back to your section, we’re not finished!’

We ran back to the section to find the
lads attacking the sandbagging that covered the windows with rifle butts and
fists.

‘Use your bayonets, lads, cut the bags
open!’ Westy hacked and slashed at one of the windows with his bayonet, and
coarse sand spilt to the ground. Something exploded somewhere outside the
building, far away enough for us to be safe, but close enough for us to be
alarmed.

‘Let’s get some fire going out of this
building!’ Sergeant Evans bellowed, stalking the rooms of the lower floor like
a caged animal with the taste of blood in its mouth.

A hole large enough to get a weapon
through was created in one of the windows, and glowing orange light flooded
into the room. Something outside was burning fiercely.

‘Westy! Get a mammoth in that hole!’

‘Brooks! Get in there!’

Brooks set up his MAM-G in the freshly
made hole in the sandbags and no sooner had he taken up a fire position when he
then opened fire.

‘Enemy moving left to right!’ He warned.

The whole building erupted into noise
as more and more of us managed to get through the sandbags to fire into the
city. The Chinese were attempting to set up a fire support base amongst the
rubble, and brief glimpses of soldiers running across our frontage suggested
that they were going to try to attack from the southern flank, which would mean
our platoon would be hit from the side while we were still in the process of
securing the building.

‘They’re coming round to the south!’ I
hollered.

Sergeant Evans peered through the hole
I had made and instantly saw the danger, ‘Jonesy! Jonesy!’

Jonesy answered on the intercom, ‘Yeah?’

‘Secure the southern flank!’

‘There’s no windows there, mate!’

‘I don’t care how you do it,’ Sergeant
Evans rebuked angrily, ‘Just get it done!’

‘Roger,’ Jonesy knew not to argue,
‘I’ll see what I can do.’

Jonesy had acknowledged, but didn’t
sound sure of himself. Sensing this, Sergeant Evans swore and made his way
round to him.

Daniels pointed frantically, ‘Missile!’

There was no missile that I could see,
the only thing that lit up the dark were the sparks from ricocheting darts and
the fires that burnt from within the city.

It seemed such a stupid question,
since any smart missile would have hit us before I could even open my mouth, ‘Where?’

‘Launcher,’ Daniels corrected himself,
‘There!’ He pointed uselessly. How was I to see it?

He must have seen a Chinese smart
launcher, I figured. Chances were that the brick buildings would withstand or
at least reduce the effect of a smart missile, but they were so called for a
reason - they were smart. If one managed to get through one of the holes we had
made and detonated then we were done for. I resisted the urge to run into a
room to the back of the house.

‘For God’s sake, mark it, then, you
stroker!’ Westy shouted, and seconds later a red crosshair flashed on my visor,
a marker placed by Daniels. Just behind the marker and in the dark something
moved.

‘Grenade!’ Westy fired his grenade launcher,
and the round landed right on top of the crosshair. Nobody could have survived
the explosion, and we whooped with delight.

Browner shook a fist jubilantly, ‘Have
it, you pink bastard!’

Enraged by the death of one or more of
their smart launchers, the enemy seemed to open fire with everything they had,
hacking at the house with supersonic darts and causing many of us to take
cover. I ducked as a round struck a sandbag next to my head and ricocheted.

‘Building clear,’ the boss was on the
platoon net, three section had finished the job upstairs, ‘Keep a watch on the
southern flank, Ev!’

‘Already got Jonesy on it, Boss,’
Sergeant Evans answered, sounding slightly out of breath after placing out One
section somewhere just outside the house. Whatever had happened before in the
ditches was forgotten, Mr Barkley and Sergeant Evans had become so slick
working with each other that they were almost a joy to watch and listen to. I
had no doubt that there was no one better for either job.

Sergeant Evans strode back into our
room, where we continued to exchange fire with the Chinese, ‘Do you want the
launchers up there, Boss? They’re useless down here,’ the two smart launcher
crew, who had tucked themselves safely into the corner of the room, glanced up
at him nervously in the dim light.

‘Yeah, get them up.’

Sergeant Evans turned to them, ‘Get up
there, boys.’

As soon as the smart gunners left the
room a trooper crashed through the western doorway, bouncing clumsily off an
overturned piece of furniture. His helmet had tilted to one side and his kit
looked like it was about to fall off him.

‘Where’s your lieutenant?’ He demanded
in the most well-spoken officer’s accent, which might have commanded respect if
he hadn’t turned up looking like a trooper on day one, week one, on Uralis! I
was shocked when my visor identified him as the OC of B Company.

Sergeant Evans flicked his head
upwards, ‘Up there, Sir.’

‘Thank you, Sergeant,’ the officer
said, and disappeared into the next room, uttering, ‘What a mess. A bloody
mess.’

‘What’s he talking about,’ Browner
asked with a hint of humour, ‘The battle or his kit?’

Sergeant Evans did a rare thing and
laughed - only briefly - before turning serious again, ‘Observe your arcs,
Brown. And you, Moralee.’

‘Firing!’ Somebody shouted from
upstairs, and the first smart missile screamed into the city where it detonated
in a flash and a shower of sparks. I marvelled that a smart missile by night
was not entirely unlike a firework.

‘Just like new year’s day!’ I shouted.

Several targets were indicated on my
visor a few hundred metres away, it looked like the pinkies were withdrawing
deeper into the city through the rubble and burning homes, and I took a couple
of shots at them. My rifle corrected my aim if it was slightly off, and I was
always a good shot even without the visor display. At least one of the Chinamen
went down, and was dragged off by another. We let them go, even though any of
us could easily have hit the slow moving target, we couldn’t shoot a man
helping a casualty, there was something just not right about it. Most of us knew
what it felt like to drag a mate who had been injured, because we had done it
ourselves.

‘Contact!’ My heart skipped a beat, it
was Jonesy on the intercom, ‘Contact to the south!’

‘Hold your position!’ Sergeant Evans
ordered, then looked up toward the ceiling as if he could see through it, ‘Boss!’

‘Wait,’ the boss snapped, and our
platoon sergeant growled in annoyance.

He shook his head, ‘What the hell is
that stupid major up to?’ I understood his frustration. Any time wasted was a
loss of initiative, allowing the Chinese to re-group and counter attack. B
Company should have launched through us without hesitation, because we were
only the very tip of the blade, and if we lost our hold on the city fringe that
blade would be blunted.

‘There’s loads of them!’ Jonesy
sounded desperate.

‘Boss!’ There was no reply, ‘Fuck it,’
Sergeant Evans scanned across us impatiently, ‘Moralee, Brown, come with me!’

‘Yes, Sergeant,’ we obeyed instantly,
moving away from the windows.

‘Westy, hold here, mate.’

Westy was through one of the holes,
firing a grenade at something, ‘Roger, mate!’

We ran back through the building to
the hole that had been blown out with the charge, and as soon as we emerged
into the cold night air Sergeant Evans swore. The whole of B Company were
waiting in the darkness, in the middle of the open doing nothing. I gaped. Our
attack was stalling.

‘Let’s go,’ Sergeant Evans ran around
the southern side of the building and I saw that Jonesy and his four men were
in cover behind a low wall, locked into a fierce fire fight with enemy in and
around a building one hundred metres away to the south. Darts peppered the wall
to our house, and we all dove for cover.

‘Jonesy, what’s going on, mate?’
Sergeant Evans crawled up alongside the embattled section commander, while me
and Browner crawled up to the wall and joined in with the fire fight. Multiple
targets were identified by my visor, some within the windows of the two-level
house and others amongst the rubble in front of it.

‘There must be a whole platoon of
them,’ Jonesy said nervously, ‘They just went for it - full frontal! We shot
loads, but…, that was mental!’

‘What’s your grenade state?’

Jonesy shook his head, ‘Nothing for
the grenade launchers, I used the last one just then.’

‘Jonesy, your 2ic needs to tell me
stuff like that,’ Sergeant Evans scorned, and switched himself onto a channel
reserved for his launchers, ‘Mitch, I need missiles to the south, I will mark
the target.’

I couldn’t hear the reply, I wasn’t on
that channel and I didn’t have time to be curious. It didn’t matter anyway
because seconds after Sergeant Evans sent the message I suddenly had much more
pressing matters on my mind, because the Chinese fired three smart missiles at
once.

‘Incoming!’ We flattened ourselves behind
the wall, clutching at the earth with our fingers, but it made little
difference. The first two missiles struck the wall a few metres to my left,
their detonations blasting a chunk from it and hurling troopers to the ground.
The third struck the ground just in front of where Browner lay dazed, and his
body was thrown like a toy to land in a heap against the house.

I lifted my head to look at the
smoking remains of the wall. My body was still intact, the wall had somehow
saved me from the third missile.

‘Moralee!’ It was Sergeant Evans who
called me. Somehow he too remained unscathed amongst the rubble, with Jonesy’s
de-capitated body at his side, ‘They’re coming!’

My lips curled. Those fucking
bastards. I looked over the wall at the charging line of Chinese soldiers,
screaming their war cries, an unrelenting enemy that never knew when to give
up. Whether the Union won or not, we were never going to survive New Earth, I
realised, but instead of filling me with fear, that one thought filled me with a
powerful resolve to do what had to be done.