Russian Amerika (43 page)

"Then come and get me!"

When they engaged, Bear brought Claw down in a killing strike but the Indian parried it with his axe handle. Neither lost his balance as they danced away from the other. Bear realized they were a perfect match and a fierce elation gripped him.

The Dená swung his axe and Bear jerked back, heard the whisper as blade sliced air. He laughed. "I am Bear Crepov, a bold
promyshlennik
and killer of beasts and Dená ! Who are you?"

The man's eyes blazed in hatred. "I am Malagni, warrior and Colonel in the Dená Republik Army. Killer of Russian scum, especially Cossacks and
promyshlenniks
!"

Bear darted in and swiped at Malagni's arm. He might be fighting with only one hand, but he was using everything else he had. As Malagni fell back Bear leapt forward and kicked him in the chest.

Malagni rolled over backward and landed on his feet, pulled his arm back and sent his axe directly at Bear. Bear threw himself to the side, falling in the process. At least the man was empty-handed now.

The axe whistled a foot past where Bear's head had been. A thong hooked to the axe handle on one end and tied to Malagni's wrist on the other jerked the weapon back to Malagni's hand. The Indian never slackened his charge-he rushed toward Bear and savagely swung down at him.

Fear lent wings to Bear's feet as he rolled away and jumped up. He stifled the desire to throw Claw at Malagni, knowing a miss meant he was a dead man. Instead he threw himself at the Indian, slicing a shallow wound across the moose hide-covered chest.

As blood welled from the cut and soaked into the shirt, Bear suddenly became aware of the Dená surrounding them and the Russian weapons pointed at them-all in a frozen tableau. Neither of them could win this thing.

The certainty of death released him from his few inhibitions and he snapped-went berserk. Screaming in rage, he rushed Malagni and jammed Claw deep into the man's chest.

Malagni jerked away, knowledge of death in his eyes, and swung the axe in a vicious arc that ended at Bear Crepov's head.

Bear's last cognition was the stink of hot blood on sphagnum moss._

82

3rd PIR over Russian Amerika

A tap on his arm pulled Grisha away from the window. The burly, black sergeant major put his mouth to Grisha's ear to be heard over the stultifying roar of the engines. "They want you on the comm system, Colonel."

Grisha nodded. "Thank you, sergeant major." He went back to his seat and plugged his headset into the comm box. "Grigorievich here."

"Colonel, this is the pilot, Major Verley. We are within ten minutes of a major battle between your people and the Russians. We were going to have our people jump on Fort Yukon to act as ready reserve. But if you want, we can let you out behind your battle line."

"How large is the attacking force? What's the situation right now?"

"Our intelligence captain with your forces says the Russians have broken through your first line of defense and are advancing on Chena Redoubt itself. Your casualties are high and your people are heavily outnumbered."

Wing was at Chena-commanding his troops! "Can you drop us between the fight and the redoubt?"

"Jesus! That would be dicey, Colonel. The whole drop would be in range of the Russian advance."

"Then let me out there and you drop the rest behind our lines."

"Whatever you say, Colonel. Good luck."

"Thanks, Major Verley. And thanks for the ride." Grisha took off the headset and moved next to the sergeant major, who stood by the ramp controls.

The sergeant major listened intently to something on his headset. He replied and pulled the set off his head. He plucked a microphone off its wall mount and flipped a switch.

"Lissen up, people! We're on top of a firefight. The Dená are losin'

their butts. The skipper said we was gonna jump at Fort Yukon, way behind the lines, and get fed in where needed."

Grisha turned to gauge the interest of the paratroopers. Every man stared at the sergeant major, hanging on his words.

"Now that's all changed. Colonel Grigorievich here, is gonna jump into the battle and the rest of us are 'sposed to jump behind the lines." His eyes moved across them, challenging them.

"The skipper says anyone wants to volunteer to jump with the Colonel has his okay. Who's goin' besides me and him?" He snapped his rip cord onto the cable running the length of the cabin.

All one hundred twenty men stood, hooked up, and began checking the gear of the men in front of them.

Grisha felt a lump swell in his throat. He turned back to the sergeant major. "You honor me and my people, Sergeant Major. Thank you."

"Ain't every day a troop runs acrost a straightleg colonel with balls, sir. We're the ones proud to be jumping with you."

The red light over the ramp winked on. The sergeant major worked the controls and the ramp in the back of the plane yawned open. Grisha stepped forward and snapped his cord onto the cable at the front of the growing line.

He grinned around at the serious young faces. "I got the most rank, so I get to go first."

They laughed and roared their approval.

The green light snapped on with a buzz.

"Go!" shouted the sergeant major.

Grisha ran the few meters to the end of the ramp and threw himself into space. The parachute snapped open with a loud crack and the harness jerked him upward, the straps cinched tighter on his thighs. Relief rushed through him.

The damn thing really opened.

He had never liked the idea of parachutes.

He looked around. Chutes blossomed above him in increasing numbers. Off to his right and left flew two of their companion aircraft. Men poured out the ends of both filling the air like giant dandelion seeds in a stiff breeze.

Something snitted past his face and he looked down on a scene of chaos. A firefight raged at close quarters at the front of the tree line. Russian tanks fired at pockets of soldiers who weakly returned fire.

Destroyed armor littered the meadow. From the woods around the battlefield small-arms fire winked up at the paratroopers.

Grisha unlimbered his AR-15 and returned fire. The ground rushed up at him.

83

Rainbow Valley

Sergeant Rudi Cermanivich rubbed blood out of his eyes and peered at the tank again. His body throbbed with pain and every time he swallowed he tasted blood.

Where was the damned flier?

If he hadn't had to blink the blood from his eyes he would have nailed the bastard with the second shot. He wondered how long he had to live, if the horrific fall down the valley would claim his life later or sooner.

Things had happened so quickly. As the road gave way under their tank it flipped, throwing him and Colonel Lazarev out of the hatch. Cermanivich had been tossed wide of the tank's path of death and fell into the scant tree line.

The first tree he hit slowed him but took off half his scalp in the process. The next time he hit the branches caught him and he fell grabbing, cursing, shrieking down through them, unable to defy gravity. The tree bordered a scree pile and he landed in it with crushing force that gave no mercy or pause.

Down he tumbled in the loose, jagged rock, tearing and cutting his hands, feet, legs, ass, face, knees. He bounced into one of the large boulders scattered throughout this barbarous valley and slammed shoulderfirst into the loose rock. When he could move again he wiped away the blood streaming down his face.

He saw one of the Velikoff rifles they carried in the tanks, not three meters from him. It looked completely unharmed.

Moving created more anguish than he thought possible or reasonable. But he must see to his comrades, it was the tanker way. Using the rifle for a crutch, he slowly made his way over to the once proud command tank hull and peered inside.

Corporal Ivanivich's uniform held what was left, but most of him coated the steel walls. No sign of the colonel or Kalkoski, the gun server. Sergeant Cermanivich hobbled over to the turret and found no trace of his commander or subordinates.

He surveyed the devastation around him, realized that most of the column lay before him and he was the sole survivor. Without hesitating or caring for his injuries, he started up the grim path left by the tank avalanche. After a hundred meters the pain became unbearable and he sat on a rock, promising himself he would just take a short respite. While he sat there trying to ignore the pain, he saw movement down by the river.

Slowly he eased off the rock and positioned himself behind a slightly larger boulder. He wiped his sleeve across his eyes to clear the incessantly seeping blood from his vision. Focusing on the man, thank the saints it wasn't a bear, he realized it was an enemy aviator.

Who was the enemy? he wondered. The Dená didn't have an air force that he was aware of. And the air attack was nothing if not professional. U.S.A.?

C.S.A.? Kalifornia?

"They were good enough to wipe us out," he muttered.

An intense hatred for the downed flyer suffused his being and he laid the rifle on the rock in front of him. As quietly as possible he chambered a round and took aim.

He decided to wait for the man to stop and rest, or else get much nearer. Between the seeping blood and the other injuries he had endured, he didn't trust his ability to take the target on the wing, as it were. He chuckled silently.

"As it were," he whispered. An old friend used to say that so often that when he said anything, at least half the people listening would intone together: "As it were." Harris had been an English deserter who wound up in the Czar's tank corps. Harris died in Afghanistan a year ago, instantly, when he stepped on an antipersonnel mine.

Sergeant Cermanivich shook his head angrily and immediately regretted the action. His head all but burst with the pain of a dozen hangovers smashed into one. He held himself very still as the wave of anguish washed over him and slowly receded.

I cannot afford the luxury of reminiscence
, he told himself fiercely.
I
would relinquish vigilance.

The flyer, an officer, he suddenly realized with a smile, peered into the command tank hull before looking away and vomiting. Cermanivich grinned, happy to discover his enemy was weaker than himself.

The pilot-officer walked to the turret and stared inside again without hesitation. Well, he didn't lack guts, the sergeant decided. Then the flier leaned back against the turret and sank to his butt.

Sergeant Cermanivich quickly steadied the rifle across the rock, took careful aim between the man's eyes. He took a deep breath and held it, the muzzle didn't waver a millimeter, and squeezed the trigger-just as the flier dropped his head over and down between his knees.

Cermanivich, cursing the fates, the bolt action of the rifle, and goddamn pilots in general, chambered another round, took quick aim as fresh blood obscured his vision and fired. Hands remembering what brain had forgotten, he instantly chambered another round and fired. And missed again.

His quarry went to ground. But the man must be unarmed else he would have returned fire, no? So the obvious solution was to wait for him to break cover and then nail him once and for all.

Cermanivich eased his aching butt back up onto the larger rock, wiped blood from his eyes, and waited with his rifle across his lap._

84

Second Battle of Chena

Like everyone in sight of the contest, Wing watched Malagni battle the huge Russian. Even before the quicksilver blade of the
promyshlennik
darted into Malagni's chest, she knew she witnessed his last moments.

Soldiers from both sides watched the titanic struggle, ignoring their enemies and shouted orders from those not in line of sight, totally mesmerized by two men fighting it out hand to hand on the battlefield with naught but steel between them.

Then the first fatal blow, and Malagni jerked back and with all his remaining strength and might, swung his axe in a blurring arc and decapitated the Russian. Malagni toppled forward, dead.

Wing exhaled, not remembering when she had first held her breath. The Dená and Russians surrounding the meadow edge where the giants had fought stared at the twitching, bleeding bodies for a long moment and as if on command, raised their heads and regarded the enemy.

A Russian sergeant cut down three Dená soldiers and the spell shattered.

Sergeant Major Tobias shrieked, "Charge!" and the Dená line hurtled into the Russians. Hand-to-hand combat raged. Wing considered picking off Russians, but none were far enough from her own people to shoot safely.

The Russians began to fall back under the intense attack. But the combat had exacted an insurmountable toll on the Dená army and they faltered. Russian fire from the woods increased and more and more Dená fell.

As Wing laced the woods with machine-gun fire she saw three Russians shooting into the air. She dropped behind the rim and gazed up at their targets-hundreds of parachutes filling the sky.

Men still spilled out of three aircraft overhead. In the distance she could see three more planes winging away. The Russians were shooting them in the air.

She jumped up and tried to make every shot count. She took out fifteen men before her clip ran dry. Frantically she searched for a full clip. There weren't any.

Smolst had passed out. Wing pulled his hand off the handle on the heavy machine gun, checked the belt feed, and started scything down Russians. A man shouted and they brought their firepower to bear on Wing. Bullets whined past her, made angry buzzes past her ears, smashed against the inadequate earthwork around the firing pit, dirt and small stones sprayed over her.

She dropped to the bottom of the pit. Knew they would be on top of her in moments. This was it.

"God, am I thirsty!" she screamed.

Even with her damaged ears, she detected the increase in weaponry. The bullets ceased seeking her out. Curious, she stuck her head up for a look.

The Russians retreated toward the river. Paratroopers hit and rolled, cut shroud lines, and fired at the Russians. The woods boiled with friendly soldiers.