The Caliphate Invasion Page 17

  Each of the four-legged warbots swiveled a mini-railgun and swiped the speeding missiles out of the air. The other three turrets on each rained hell upon the American vehicles.

  Dore squeezed his radio so hard that something cracked inside. “Chalk Two, cover Chalk One. All elements: don’t waste time with missiles...”

  It was too late. Despite the thick armor on the Infantry Fighting Vehicle’s, the warbots pumped out thousands of rounds and ground the Brads down in a second. Two tracks blossomed into steel confetti instantly. The other two deployed their defensive smoke screens and rushed backwards. They didn’t get far, since the incoming fire shredded their treads. Not one of the soldiers dived out of their burning vehicles though. They held their ground and blazed away with their chain guns.

  For a split second, the enemy’s fire wavered… but not from defeat. One of the five-meter tall machines leapt through the green smoke cloud and charged the closest Bradley. The motionless vehicle blew off two of the bot’s gun turrets at point-blank range… just as the drone deployed a pair of mechanical arms and hugged the American vehicle.

  With no visible effort, the warbot flipped the 32-ton Bradley through the air. It landed with a screech on top of the other surviving Brad. Kat caught a momentary glimpse of both turrets being sheared off and crushed. Any hope she had for at least the drivers to escape perished as both vehicles exploded.

  The whole show lasted 10 seconds. In less time than it took to pee, twelve men had been pissed away. Half of Kat’s teammates gone just like that. A whistle blew from below. She peered over the ledge to see the local Shiite commander running south and screaming in Arabic. Kat turned to the terrified militiaman behind her.

  “What’s he saying?”

  “He wants everyone to fall back to the palace. We’ll make a last stand there.”

  Kat gazed at the ancient fortress on a hilltop over his shoulder. She shrugged at Dore. “Well, there are worse places to hole up, Captain.”

  Dore rushed to the ladder. “Fuck that! You don’t kill my men and get away with it. Follow me.”

  He clicked on his throat mike and shouted orders while he slid down the ladder. “Chalk Two: rally on the bunker. We have to defend the civilians at all costs. Ditch your Bradley’s and grab every portable anti-tank weapon in sight. Plenty of Rocket Propelled Grenades lying around. We’ll hole up in the museum. Don’t fire until the bots get right on us. Then we’ll concentrate all our fire against them one at a time. Acknowledge, over.”

  Kat slung her rifle over her back and raced to the ledge. Her Iraqi companion beat her to the ladder. Maybe the stress was getting to her, but she felt a tinge of sympathy. The second they landed on the ground, she clapped his shoulder. “I’m sorry about earlier. I’m glad to have you with us. I’m Kat, by the way.”

  The guy gave her a slight smile. “I’m Ibrahim. Go with God.” He raced off south, toward the palace, without a backwards glance.

  “Coward!” She cried after him, but didn’t have time to get really pissed off. The survivors of her team came racing around the corner. Everyone clasped a rocket tube except for her.

  The creepily cheerful Mr. Smith rectified that. “Calm down. It’ll be fun to play the insurgents for a change!” He shoved a spare Rocket Propelled Grenade launcher into her hands. Reaching into his bulging backpack, he tossed her extra rockets.

  “Take as many as you need.”

  “All right, enough!” Her arms bulged with boom boom gear. She even dropped one, but Smith stashed another on top of the pile she cradled.

  “Are you sure? I’ve still got some thermobaric warheads left.”

  Kat shook her head as she wobbled into the museum with the rest of the unit. The main room was nothing but a giant hall with oversized stained glass windows on each side and some ornate stone columns lining the middle of the room. Not exactly a bunker.

  Dore was too busy sighting in fire teams to do a headcount, but Kat noticed someone missing. “Johnson! Where’s Michaels? Wasn’t he with you?”

  “He said he was going to meet up with you…”

  Kat screwed a Rocket Propelled Grenade warhead and booster together and pulled out the safety pin in the nose. She wedged the deadly stick down the tube and called out to Dore. “Sir, Michaels is missing. I’ve got a bad feeling—”

  The captain smashed a north-facing stained glass window. “Not now, Kat. Those bastards are almost here.” He spun around and pointed in different directions. “You two, fire from the alleyway. Everyone else, launch from deep inside the building out the north-side windows. Make sure your back blast sticks out the south-facing windows or you’ll burn us all up! Fire on my count at the second bot from the left, the one that’s a little closer than the rest. Five, four…”

  One of the drones shifted its aim from slaughtering Shiite militiamen and swiveled towards their building. Dore rushed the count. “One!”

  The museum hall sprouted ten rockets in a staggered volley. All four turrets on the nearest robot poured out insanely rapid fire and swatted the rockets out of the air in milliseconds. Even at their in-your-face range, only one warhead made it through the enemy’s lead storm. Kat held her breath as the shaped charge ripped a hole in the drone’s side. A split second later, molten steel splashed out the other end. With a screeching lurch, the drone collapsed against another warbot.

  “Hooah!”

  The troops screamed as one. Dore dropped his empty 84mm unguided, portable, single-shot recoilless anti-tank weapon and snatched another from their dwindling supply of anti-tank rockets. “Move it people. Next volley in three seconds.”

  He never managed to start the countdown. The loss of one of their fellows riled up the enemy machines. With perfect coordination, the others rotated all their fire on the museum, just as a confused Dr. Jenkins came rushing in with a pair of Shiite militants on his heels. All three lugged Rocket Propelled Grenades.

  “Everyone down!”

  Kat squeezed herself behind one of the thick columns in the middle of the room. She reached out and snagged Jenkins as a million shells annihilated the northern façade. Plaster and dust filled the world, forcing her eyes closed. At least Jenkins was easy to move…

  Kat opened her eyelids and fought the urge to shut them again. “God damn you bastards!”

  She tossed Jenkins’s arm on the hamburger pile at her feet. His remains were so thoroughly mixed in with chunks from the militiamen that she couldn’t tell which mound was his. She leaned back and loaded another rocket. The pillar that kept her in one piece shuddered. Kat glanced around at the other troops stacked against their own columns. If her shield was disintegrating under the bullet storm as fast as Captain Dore’s was, then she only had seconds to live.

  Dore shouted something to her through the dust and brain-numbing whipsaw fire. Kat just nodded back and raised her launcher. She paused long enough to zip-tie her wrist and index finger to the weapon’s handgrip, creating a crude dead man’s switch. That maelstrom would surely chop her apart the instant she exposed herself, but at least her death spasm would still avenge her.

  “Rachel, Dixon… Mama’s coming home! Ahhhh!”

  She flipped her head and shoulder around the collapsing stone pillar. As soon as the tube cleared the column, she squeezed off a rocket at the machine just twenty yards out the nearest window. With the adrenaline flooding her system, it took a moment before Kat realized something was off. Besides the crazy fact that she was still alive, why the hell weren’t any of the bots firing at her?

  At the same instant her rocket blew off one of the legs of its target, a shower of sparks consumed the upper body. No way she had caused that. With whatever control mechanism it had lobotomized, the drone collapsed into a pile of scrap metal.

  Taking advantage of the distraction, Dore ran over and collared her. “Let’s move! We have to get out of here and take the other two in the flank. Go, go, go!”

  She complied and ran out the south door, but screamed into her radio as she spotted the
ir savior almost a kilometer away.

  “Michaels! Thanks for the cover, but you need to get your crazy ass out of there. You’re a sitting duck!”

  His only response was to let loose another chain of 25mm rounds from his Bradley’s cannon. Since the steering wheel and gun controls were in separate compartments, there was no way for one person to drive and fight at the same time.

  Which didn’t seem to bother him. Michaels had taken the time to park a second mini-tank in front of and perpendicular to his own. He spewed high explosive shells over the backside of his hasty shield at the two surviving warbots. Their return fire shredded the empty vehicle he sheltered behind while Michaels churned away as if paid per shell. A rebel yell over the radio was the only answer to Kat’s pleading.

  “Move it, Kat!” Captain Dore and the remnants of his team didn’t waste a moment. Ignored by the enemy, they dashed across the sandy fields to a flanking position. Kat raced to catch up as the team slid into some drainage ditch a hundred yards away. She dived into the trench next to Captain Dore as he whistled at his command.

  “All right. Michaels has their complete attention. Let’s shoot these assholes in the back and end this!”

  Two seconds later, Kat discovered just what the enemy’s full attention entailed. One of the machines abruptly stopped firing. An arm, or tail, more accurately, whined out from its rear end and popped something off in Michael’s direction. She seized her radio to scream “incoming,” but Dore snatched her wrist.

  “Radio silence. They must be tracking our signals—”

  Even a quarter mile away, the shockwave knocked them both head over ass into the ditch. Kat was the first to crawl back up to the ledge. Every inch of the climb was harder than the last. The complete absence of gunfire from either side was the most nerve-wracking sound she’d ever heard.

  Kat just blinked when she got to the top. She pried her eyes off the crater where Michaels used to be and focused on the enemy, now galloping towards the Ishtar Gates. “You ready yet, Captain?”

  Dore opened and shut his mouth without a peep. He ground his teeth into nubs and shouldered his own rocket. That was all the signal anyone needed. Three seconds later, the Special Operations Command team rippled off another ten-round volley. This time, though, the drones were at the edge of their range.

  “Ah!” Kat chucked her launcher away in impotence as the enemy’s robo-guns casually slapped every warhead from the sky. One of the machines hosed down their trench line in response, but the other did something much more terrifying.

  As it passed through the gates, the bot swiveled and smashed in the bunker door with an extruding arm. The drone reared back and aimed its tail down the hallway. Kat could hear the civilians shrieking horror even from her position.

  “Over here, fucker!” Kat and Dore braved the other bot’s fire and popped away with their rifles, but nothing could distract the robotic killer.

  Before the tail chucked a holocaust ball down the stairwell, some lone figure flitted across the wall above. Kat stopped firing.

  One of the fleeing Shiite militiamen was coming back.

  “Is that Ibrahim?” Kat’s mouth hung open as she caught sight of his bulky black vest. He sprinted across the ancient wall rising several meters above the drone. Without breaking stride, Ibrahim launched himself over the ledge.

  “ALLAHU AKBAR!”

  Kat couldn’t make out the plunger in his hand, but she got the message. One of those auto guns snapped around 180 degrees and blew Ibrahim’s skull off in mid-flight. The headless bomber crashed into the mechanical beast, his body sliding down the monstrosity’s slick side.

  Just before Ibrahim’s corpse fell to the sand, the explosive vest hooked on a joint where the back-left leg met the body. The machine shook its limb like an agitated dog trying to dislodge the burden. Which only made the rear leg fly even farther away when the suicide vest detonated.

  The death bot hopped backwards on three legs, clearly still in the fight, but at least distracted from massacring the civilians. Instead, the warbot found a new target. Kat peeled her helmet off and spun around as the drone pointed its tail at her position.

  She grasped Captain Dore’s hand and slid close. “So long, Bruce. It was a pleasure knowing you.”

  He draped an arm around her, but no words came out. None were necessary. They both sat helplessly as the enemy machine reared back and—

  Exploded.

  So did most of the field. Something about the conventional explosions all around them triggered Kat’s reflexives. She pulled Dore deeper into the trench as a familiar whining filled the air. Over the krumping shells, Kat grinned.

  “King of battle, baby! I’m not the only artillery observer still around.”

  Her team hunkered down as four volleys of artillery leveled everything within several hundred yards. When the bone-rattling blasts faded and the shrapnel quit zinging, the roar of jet engines filled the sky. The Americans jumped up to greet their reinforcements.

  “I knew we weren’t alone. Here comes the cavalry!”

  Kat beamed at the destroyed drones, but she couldn’t share the captain’s enthusiasm.

  “Sir, those aren’t ours. Nor even Iraqi aircraft…”

  A pair of American-built F4 Phantoms circled the Sunni lines to the north, dipping down every few seconds to drop a bomb or strafe something. The only problem was that the US decommissioned their Phantoms over twenty years ago. Only a few foreign air forces still operated Phantoms. Not all of them were US allies.

  Strange, but steady thumping from the west made Kat whip her head around. Two Hind helicopter gunships flicked past them and spit rocket fire at the retreating ISIS fighters. Four more Hip transports landed next to the wrecked drones several hundred yards away. They each disgorged two dozen uniformed and heavily armed troops. The last soldier off the choppers, sporting a black beret instead of a helmet, waved at the Americans.

  Kat prodded Dore and pointed at the green, white and red flag on the choppers’ tails. “Those are Goddamn Iranians! In the middle of Iraq… Well, fight or flight boss. What’s your call?”

  Dore narrowed his eyes, but soon stood up and slung his rifle. “If we were alone, I’d say it was time to get the hell out of Dodge. But we aren’t. There’s no way we could fight our way out of here with the civilians in tow. I guess it’s time to swallow our pride. Let me do the talking for once, Sergeant.”

  The rest of the American unit climbed out of the trench and followed the captain. Taking his lead, they all shouldered their weapons. As hard as they pretended to relax, their loose formation and darting eyes gave them away. The Iranian soldiers stopped smiling and wavered as the tense Americans stalked closer. Several raised their weapons before Mr. Beret barked something in Farsi.

  He strolled ahead of his men and stuck out his hand. Dore kept his poker face on, but shook anyway. Unlike most Arabs or Persians, the Iranian didn’t lightly touch his hand, but pumped it like a Westerner would. Dore instinctively tried to force his own hand on top, but the Iranian officer twisted his wrist just enough to keep their palms parallel to the ground. In respect for his show of equality, Dore let the other man speak first. Also unlike Easterners, he got right down to business.

  “I am General Hamadani of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. You must be those rogue Americans that came out of nowhere. Thank you for saving our brothers here in their darkest hour. If Daesh had broken into town, it would have taken days and hundreds of lives to clear them out. I suppose, as you people say, ‘I owe you one.’ So what can the Jerusalem Force do for you?”

  Kat saw red, but stepped back while Dore and Hamadani chatted. Johnson nudged her elbow and offered her a pinch of chewing tobacco. For once, she was tempted to take up the old infantry habit, but she managed to smother the urge.

  “Hey Kat, what the hell is the ‘Jerusalem Force’? If they’re Jews, then I’m a damn leprechaun.”

  “Just another cover name for the QUDS force. The foreign operations branch of t
he Iranian Revolutionary Guards. That’s the Persian version of our CIA and Special Forces rolled into one. The US government designates them a terrorist group, for good reason. They’re the best of the worst.”

  Johnson spit out some juice. “Jesus Christ. I knew the Iranians and Iraqis were tight, but this is crazy. Are the Iranians doing all the fighting for Baghdad now?”

  Kat struggled to rein in her hate, but her voice shrieked. "Of course they'd be here. The sons of bitches have been training, arming and fighting alongside the Iraqi Shia militias for years. The whole country is basically a vassal state of Tehran. Same with Syria and Yemen. Iran’s a cancer gobbling up the Middle East.”

  Her venomous hissing distracted Dore and the general. Hamadani squinted over at her. “Miss, do bear in mind that if we weren’t here, you would have been wiped out. Rather ironic, eh? If we weren’t operating in this country to counter American influence, your American commanders would have been forced to leave you to die. Allah works in mysterious ways.”

  Hamadani’s sneer was too much for Kat. “Is this a game to you? Tell me, how many Americans did you kill with those explosively formed penetrator IED’s of yours during the Iraq war? How many of those bounties on the heads of every US soldier did Tehran payout?"

  The Iranian general sized her up and leered.

  "Oh, who can keep track? All I know is that you people left and we're still here. Does that piss you off? Why don’t you tell me something? How many years of your life did you waste in Iraq? Did you lose many friends in Bush’s little game of Risk?"

  Kat pounced like a rabid tigress at his smirking face. Captain Dore looped his hands under her armpits, laced them behind the back of her head and pinned her down. Kat’s fist swiped the air inches from the QUD commander’s face. He didn’t flinch, but his grin burned wider.

  Dore murmured in her ear. “Wrong war at the wrong time. Keep your shit together until the civilians are safe.” He let her go, but kept a firm hand on her shoulder. Right on the sling of her rifle, to be exact. Dore gave Hamadani a tiny bow.