Charge To Battle: A World War 3 Techno-Thriller Action Event Page 9

  “Vince, you can’t,” Edge made his tone reasonable. “You need to help the Captain to safety.”

  “Then I will help you,” Kalina volunteered. Sweat had cut wet runnels through the dirt and mud that caked her cheeks.

  “No. You’re not trained, and Vince will need your help with the Captain and any other wounded men who want to attempt an escape.”

  Edge went from man to man, crawling through the mud to keep cover. The soldier who had taken a shrapnel wound to the groin was dead, his body already beginning to cool. The two other uninjured men volunteered to join the escape. The many injured meekly accepted that surrender was their only chance of survival. Edge told none of them about the plan in case Russian intelligence officers tortured them for details. When everything was prepared, Edge led the small group of escapees a hundred yards further along the bank.

  “Wait for me downriver,” he told Waddingham. “Find somewhere safe where you can hide, and leave a cairn of stones on the riverbank as a marker. If I haven’t joined you by sunrise tomorrow, keep heading down river until you can cross to the far bank safely.”

  “I’ll wait for you,” Waddingham said stubbornly. He was unhappy and resentful. He gave Edge all the spare ammunition he could carry and then the soldiers stripped off their bulky body armor vests and kicked off their heavy boots. They buried the cache above the river’s tideline. With Captain Walker supported between them, Waddingham and Kalina waded out into the river, followed by the two uninjured soldiers. They sank down into the blood-warm water until only their heads showed above the surface. Waddingham pushed off hard, propelling them out into the grip of the current. Smoke lay like mist across the river’s surface. Edge watched until the figures were just vague grey specks wreathed in haze, and then crept back to where the injured lay. He felt suddenly alone and vulnerable.

  One of the wounded soldiers nursed a broken arm and leg, crushed under the tires of a Striker in the chaos of the battle. He lay propped against the bank of the river. He was groggy with pain, his face ashen. His eyes were deeply sunk into their sockets and shadowed by dark smudges the color of old bruises. Edge knelt beside the trooper.

  “I need an hour,” Edge said simply.

  The soldier nodded. He was breathing in short shallow pants, his expression pain-wracked.

  “When the time is up, start shouting that you surrender. The Russians won’t be far away. The first thing they’ll do is come down from the ridge to scout the crossing.”

  Again, the soldier nodded. He licked his lips. Edge gave the man his canteen of water and held it to his mouth while he drank greedily. He still carried his M4 slung across his lap. It was covered in mud.

  “And keep your hands away from your weapon, soldier. The enemy’s likely to be looking for any excuse…”

  Edge moved fifty yards along the riverbank to where a knot of dense bushes grew. He squatted at the water’s edge and slathered his face and hands in thick smears of mud, then plucked handfuls of long grass to stuff into the seams and openings of his uniform. He worked methodically, but the results were disappointing. He looked more like a straw scarecrow than a patch of meadow. But without a ghillie suit, it was the best he could do. He checked his weapon a final time then crept to the lip of the riverbank. Through the veil of bushy cover, he scanned the stretch of grass field ahead of him. He could see no sign of Russian troops, but he noticed the smoke was thinning, shredded by a stiffening afternoon breeze. He took a final deep breath and tensed himself – but the instant before he committed to going forward a shimmer of movement caught the corner of his eye. He turned his head and then swore bitterly and profusely beneath his breath.

  Coming towards him along the riverbank, doubled over and covered in muddy slime, was Vince Waddingham.

  “You stupid damn fool!”

  Waddingham acted crestfallen. “Scout Team Leader Waddingham reporting for duty, Sergeant,” he said formally.

  “What the hell are you doing here?”

  “Obeying orders, Sergeant.”

  “Orders? I told you to take care of the Captain. Whose damned orders?”

  “Captain Walker’s,” Waddingham grinned.

  “Captain Walker…?”

  “Yes, Sergeant,” Waddingham’s mischievous smile widened. “He told me to come back and help you in your mission.”

  “Did he?” Edge asked with slow ominous menace.

  “He did,” Waddingham confirmed. “Even though I protested, Sergeant. Even though I insisted I should stay with him to ensure his safety because it was my duty as a good soldier.”

  “So you didn’t prompt his decision?”

  “No, Sergeant,” Waddingham feigned shock at the suggestion, and fashioned his mud-streaked face into an expression of angelic innocence. “I’m just a humble Cavalry trooper. I go wherever a senior officer orders me.”

  Edge looked away to stop himself from smiling at Waddingham’s delicate insolence. In truth he was relieved – although he could never admit it. He glared at Waddingham’s broad grinning face a moment longer and then made his voice brusque. “I’m moving out in ten minutes. If you’re not ready by then I’m going forward without you.”

  Waddingham was ready in nine, and together the two men crept to the lip of the riverbank. Slowly – very slowly – Edge and Waddingham snaked their way into the meadow of long grass, moving towards enemy lines.

  It was time to take the war to the Russians.

  Chapter 6:

  They moved with agonizing restraint, hindered by their rudimentary camouflage and the fear that, from the crest of the ridge, a man with binoculars might easily see them. They crept across the field six inches at a time, careful not to disturb the grass, pulling themselves forward with their elbows, pushing off with their toes. Overhead the breeze stiffened and the smoke that had covered the battlefield since sunrise melted away.

  The ground beneath them was hard. Edge suspected the area had once been a small field of crops; it was corrugated as though, years before, it had been under the plough. He kept his head down as he moved, losing track of time so that his entire world narrowed to the few feet directly ahead of him.

  The two men lost contact. Edge was aware that Waddingham lay somewhere to his right but they never spoke, and he never sensed the other man’s proximity. It was a solitary world of strain and sweat and tension. The only sound was his own hoarse breathing and the undulating rustle of the grass as it became fanned by the wind.

  Twice in the first hour he slowly lifted his head to get his bearings, doing so each time with infinite caution, lifting his eyes just high enough to see the wall of trees on the far side of the field.

  The sun on his back became hot and sweat ran in rivulets down his face. Then a sudden shot rang out, echoing against the sky. Edge froze and his heart slammed against the cage of his chest. He lay, unmoving for long seconds until he heard a sudden thin chorus of voices coming from somewhere behind him.

  “We surrender! We surrender!”

  Edge slowly let out the breath he was holding. It was the injured survivors on the riverbank. They had shot a round into the sky to attract the attention of the Russians. His time was up. An hour had passed.

  He knew that within minutes a Russian patrol would come to investigate and until they had gathered up the prisoners all eyes would be on the stretch of river and on the field where he lay. He put his head down and remained still, using the time to regulate his breathing.

  After a few minutes he felt a faint vibration through the ground and then heard the sudden high-revving noise of an engine. It sounded like a jeep. He knew the Russian Army had a number of off-road light utility vehicles. Most of them carried four men.

  The vehicle braked to a halt and then followed the sound of running feet along the road that stopped suddenly. Edge imagined the soldiers with their weapons drawn, tense and wary of trouble as they clambered down the riverbank and stumbled upon the ragged handful of American soldiers.

  For long minutes the silenc
e overwhelmed him. He strained his ears for clues. An alarmed shout in Russian split the silence.

  Edge couldn’t understand the words but the tone was unmistakable. The voice was barking demands, but the replies were muffled. He heard one of the wounded men cry out, “But we surrender! We are injured and need medical aid!”

  A second later the air filled with the violent slam of machine gun fire.

  “Christ!” Edge listened, aghast. “They’ve executed them. The bastards. The filthy fucking bastards!”

  He felt fury and rage rush over him. He felt his blood boil in his veins. A sudden violent madness overwhelmed his senses so that his instinct cried out for him to rise to his feet and fire on the murderers. It took every ounce of his restraint to lay still and resist the suicidal defiance. He clenched his fists until his fingernails dug deep bloody half-moons into his palm. He tightened his jaw until it ached.

  After several minutes he heard the vehicle engine again. It sped away.

  Edge waited another fifteen long minutes and then began to move. His eyes were still misted with red rage. He clawed himself forward, and the taste of his hatred was thick and bitter in the back of his throat, the flames fanned by the brutality of the callous murders.

  He sensed the day passing and the gradual change of light. When he lifted his eyes slowly above the grass line for the final time he saw that it was late afternoon. Clouds hung low in the sky, casting the approaching sunset in dull eerie light. He crept on – and then suddenly a man’s face emerged through the long grass.

  He was dead.

  He was one of the survivors who had joined the ill-fated charge across the open field. He lay on his back, his head twisted to the side. His mouth hung open, his lifeless eyes filled with an expression of bewilderment. There was dried dark blood on the man’s cheek. Flies crawled into the cavity of his open mouth and across his eyeballs. He had been struck by a flurry of bullets. His chest had been pulped to a mush of blood and bone by multiple wounds.

  Edge stared helplessly into the dead man’s eyes, and made a silent, solemn vow. “You didn’t die in vain,” he promised.

  He crawled past the body and began to move faster. He reached a patch of dull shadow and when he turned his eyes to the side he saw tall trees overhead. Edge kept crawling until the ground beneath him changed from corrugations of dry dirt to brown leaves and bark chips, and the afternoon light turned filtered and gloomy. He came up onto his haunches cautiously, his M4 on his hip. He had reached the fringe of the woods. He moved his eyes in a slow scan and saw Vince Waddingham concealed behind the cover of a tree, twenty yards to his right. Edge stayed motionless for sixty seconds and only when he was convinced the forest around him was empty did he finally move at a crouch to join Waddingham.

  The Scout Team Leader’s face was tight and snarling. “Did you hear it?” he hissed, his voice an accusing, infuriated whisper.

  “Yeah,” Edge answered.

  “The fucking Russians murdered them, man. They put their guns to the heads of those poor injured bastards and blew their brains out.”

  “I know,” Edge said darkly.

  “We’ve gotta make them pay. We’ve gotta fight these bastards the way they’re fighting us; no holds barred. That wasn’t war. That was murder.”

  Edge nodded, and his eyes were black. “They will pay,” he promised savagely.

  *

  They moved deeper into the woods. Edge lifted each boot with care, stepping lightly over the ground, watching each footfall to minimize the chance of noise. They moved in the shadows, avoiding areas where the trees were sparse, and they went forward at a crouch, weapons raised, pausing every few moments to stop, look and listen for danger.

  Darkness came quickly to the woods. The night closed in around them. The scent of smoke still hung in the air, trapped beneath the canopy of trees.

  “Vy chto-nibud’ vidite?” a voice whispered out of the gloomy half-light. Edge and Waddingham froze.

  “Net, nichego,” the reply came from somewhere amongst the trees and Edge turned his waist slowly to hunt the voice, M4 at his shoulder, his eye along the weapon’s sight. His finger curled and tensed over the trigger.

  “Dvigaytes’ dal’she na zapad.”

  Then Edge heard the soft sounds of leaves being scuffed by heavy boots and twigs breaking underfoot. A shape moved nearby in the dark, a shadow that seemed to float. He caught the movement out of the corner of his eye, and he tracked it without turning his head or daring to breath. He heard someone stifle a cough and then there was a loud clumsy stumble of jarring noise. The man cursed bitterly.

  “Blyad’!”

  “Vstavay, durak!” snapped the second voice, and they moved on, disappearing into the deep shadows until darkness hid them completely.

  For a full five minutes Edge and Waddingham remained motionless, peering into the gloom while the sweat ran chill down their backs and alarm slid in their chests. Neither man had expected the Russians to be patrolling the woods. It was an additional danger they must account for.

  “There could be more,” Waddingham whispered when it was safe to talk.

  Edge nodded.

  They moved off again, trekking deeper into the woods. All of Edge’s senses were heightened to compensate for the darkness. He could smell his own sweat and the cloying earthiness of decaying vegetation underfoot. He could feel the gentle breeze that came like a cool breath against his cheek. He could feel the clinging dampness of his sweat drenched clothes, and he could taste the rasping dryness in the back of his throat. He was breathing too quickly, the adrenaline rich in his veins.

  The dense cover of trees around them began to thin and then stopped abruptly. Edge froze and lowered himself until he was laying prone. It was a stretch of cleared ground about fifteen feet wide that ran roughly east to west.

  Waddingham dropped quietly down beside him.

  “It’s some kind of a disused fire trail through the woods,” Edge whispered. “It must link up with the road across the bridge.”

  “Do you think it’s patrolled?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Do you think there’s a sentry post nearby?”

  “Probably.”

  Waddingham remained silent for just a moment. “I’ll cross first.”

  He counted to ten, drew a deep breath and stepped out into the open space. The ground had been scored with the deeply-dug ruts of old tire tracks, long since overgrown with grass and covered by leaves. Waddingham moved silently and swiftly. He crossed the open space and dropped down into cover behind a shrub. Edge waited a few seconds and then followed.

  No voices were raised in alarm. No gunfire ripped through the night. Edge and Waddingham pushed on.

  The gradient began to change beneath Edge’s feet, gradually at first and then more dramatically until he had to lean forward against it. They came across a section of woodland that had been scarred black by flames and shredded of foliage. Broken branches and clumps of leaves lay on the ground, still smoldering smoke. They circled the site and paused.

  “I think we’re nearing the eastern end of the ridgeline,” Edge whispered. “It looks like the woods around here took a couple of stray shells from our batteries.”

  They continued to climb and the tension in them grew. Overhead the cloudbanks that had built along the horizon during the afternoon were now scudding across the moon so that the two scouts drifted in and out of silhouette. Finally they were forced to the ground to wait for more cloud cover. They were just below the crest of the ridge, beneath a sparse umbrella of leafy tree branches.

  “We’ll rest for five minutes,” Edge muttered. He wiped his face on the sleeve of his uniform jacket.

  “What do we do once we reach the ridgeline?” Waddingham asked. “Do we follow the spine west until we approach the road?”

  “No,” Edge shook his head. “That would bring us right down onto the saddle where the road crosses the rise. The Russians will be thick on the ground and they’ll be entrenched. I want to
get behind their lines.” He thought for a moment and made up his mind. “We’ll head down the opposite side of the hill and scout their position. Maybe we can pinpoint where their tanks are dug in, or maybe we can cause some mayhem and confusion.”

  “We’re on a kill mission?”

  Edge smiled thinly. It was a cruel twist of his lips, cold as a drawn steel blade and filled with savagery. “Yes.”

  *

  When they were close to the crest, Edge crawled up to the skyline to peer down the far slope of the ridge.

  And, through the palisade of tall dark tree trunks, saw a bright light.

  He guessed the light was two hundred yards away, set in the middle of a tree-studded clearing. Waddingham crept forward until he was laying prone at Edge’s elbow.

  “What the fuck are they doing?” he asked when he saw the glare of white light. “Are they searching for us?”

  “They don’t know we exist.”

  “Then what are they doing?”

  Edge shrugged. “Let’s go and find out. We crawl from here.”

  They slithered down the slope like snakes, creeping through the dense blanket of leafy ground cover that lay strewn across the forest floor. They moved with painstaking caution until they reached the foot of the hill. Still within the fringe of trees, they stared out across a clearing of grassy ground that was sprinkled with dark clumped bushes.

  Four Russian vehicles were parked in a crude circle beside a dirt trail, starkly silhouetted by the bright light. Two of the vehicles looked like light-utility Russian jeep variants. One of them was a canvas-covered cargo truck. But it was the fourth vehicle that drew all of Edge’s attention. It looked like an armored personnel carrier without a turret; an eight-wheeled elongated steel hull on tires. The rear engine hatch of the vehicle was open and Edge saw that the light was a small arc lamp attached to an upright post, powered by a generator which was surrounded by sandbags to muffle the noise.

  “It’s the Russian command post,” Edge’s voice was wolfish. He studied the four vehicles and then turned his attention to the perimeter of the clearing. The dirt trail ran west, he presumed to link up with the road. He guessed the clearing was another old farm field that had once hosted crops. Now the ground was overgrown by weeds and wild bushes. There was a sparse sprinkle of trees on the far side of the clearing that would have offered some cover, but Edge knew he would have no chance of circling the field before daylight. He turned his attention back to the squat eight-wheeled armored vehicle just in time to see a flicker of movement and a soft clink of noise. He tensed, then saw the silhouette of a soldier on his knees.