052: CQB

September 26th, 2000

We left at twilight, 8 hours and a short 3 klicks later, we were in a sheltered position overlooking the back of the Palace of Culture.  The trip had been slow and uneventful.  A matter of God setting us up for later excitement, no doubt.  Leo and I took up watch.  The others tried to get some rest.


Alphabit took his exclusion hard.  We've been together, had each others backs, since I'd been mis-shipped to the 5th.  And that's why he had to stay.  Someone has to take care of the box if we didn't make it back.  Stark would grab it and talk some hotheads into making a run at Krakow's chopper.  That would leave all the rest, refugees, stranglers, and our unit, in deep, deep trouble.  He'd do it if he had to.  

I made it up to him.  He got a chunk of our short stores of plastic explosives and told to make us some portables.  He had fun.  We've got near a dozen hubcabs smeared with plastic on the inside and filled with nuts, nails, bolts, and other assorted junk.  They've got a metal spike welded to the bottom at an angle so they can be rammed into the ground.  Ersatz claymores.  My troop is imaginative.


Leo's uncased his precious, the thermal sight. 


Whispers, "Talk to me."

"As expected, patrols are heavier.  Twice the men on the gate checkpoint.  They still have MG nests in the big outbuilding, one at either corner.  Gives them good crossfire on entrance.  Crews the same; gunner and assistant."

"Still doable."

"Da."

The entry plan's simple.  We're going to get as close as we dare.  Leo removes the building detail with the suppressed SVD.  Meanwhile, Gunny'll dial in a call for fire from our boys on the boat.  They'll drop one for range, if the Russian in our tac-net doesn't correct, then they'll go to rapid fire on the 82's.  We run like hell for the back doors.  Simple.  

"So, you going to tell me about your General?"

"What to tell.  We served together in Afghanistan."

"Sure, Valdimirovich.  I'm not the best on Russian customs, but that implies something much closer than basic service."

Sigh. He gestures at the palace.  "Yes, after, maybe."

Once we're in, simple is done.  I can hope for a set of signs saying "Meeting on 6, south wing".  Somehow I doubt that, waste of paper.  We're going to do some en-route interrogations.  And keep moving.  If we slow and get pinned it's all over but the shouting.

"I heard my name dropped more than once.  What'd he say."

Grins, gives me a sidelong look.  "He knew that we had a woman commander.  He was expecting someone a little more... slim."

"Slim?"

"Da, American women wax fat on the exploitation of the proletariat or they're slim and pretty."

What a crock.  "Instead?"

"Instead, he wanted to know how we got an East German Bodybuilder."

They've been arriving since late morning.  The growl of an APC, putter of a failing auto, and the nicker of horses.  I feel bad about the horses.  I've tried not to think about the civilian laborers harvesting the courtyard fields either. 

Positions.  Team One (Leo, Doc, Andrejz's man Halleb, and I) are on the point.  We're going to carve through any opposition and get the target.  Team Two (Gunny, George, Andrejz, and his other man Frandszk) will follow.  Once we're in it's their job to plant Alpha's toys along our trail and discourage any heroics on the part of the Baron's men. 

Leo is as good as he claims.  His first round takes the gunner in the head, his second through the lungs of the assistant.  Before the first mortar round has fallen he's switched to the other nest.  That gunner catches his in the throat.  The assistant receives a gut shot as he stands in response to the whistling sound from the courtyard.  BOOM.

The experienced troops already dropped from the sound of incoming.  For the others, it is a moment of pure indecision.  They freeze as the screams start.  Then panic as another distant thump sounds.  It's later than I'd like.  Must have had to correct.  We're in motion.

We boil out of the rubble onto the road.  Andrejz is screaming at the checkpoint, "Mortar attack!  Get into cover!"  The man has a good loud command voice.  BOOM.  They make for the outbuilding.  We cut around, running for the palace. The distant thumps start a regular beat, punctuated by the louder cough of the 120.

The guard on the heavily warped fire door props it open and desperately waves us in.  Good man.  Andrejz, last in, clocks him in the face with his shotguns butt and gives him a savage kick where it counts while he's down.  George takes the chains hanging from a hook and secures the door.  I imagine fists pounding against it from the outside.

Halleb leads the way.  He'd been a janitor here, prewar.  Leo follows close behind him, working the MP5 over anyone with weapons in our way.  We move quick through former maintenance spaces and administrative offices to the entry hall.  They're focused out, on the fire striking the courtyard, as we fall upon them.  Done.

We break, right and left, to take both sets of stairs up to the second floor.  Storm and fire.  Clear the overlook.  They have a fucking desk with a fucking functionary huddling under its strong wooden surface.  Leo gets with the talking.  Gunny checks the barrage, order phase 2 of the fire plan.  The other Team Two boys plant mines at the top of the stairs.

Leo shouts, "Northeast wing, fourth floor!"  He barks out a laugh, "Sign on the stairwell and end of the hall!"

"Are you fucking with me!"

"No!"

The tubes begin an intermittent harassing fire, just enough time to make you think you could scramble to better cover.  Then you're back in your hole at the thump.  Hard to get organized with that going on.

We're getting spread out down the corridor.  Team Two plants half their stock down our path, moving by bounds.  It takes time.  Guards, or a response team, boil out of the target stairwell.  They get some fire off before being cut down.  Something low powered strikes my vest, but doesn't penetrate.  Halleb yowls as a round takes his ear.  Don't stop.

As we climb to three, one of Alphabit's contraptions detonates.  Teach them some caution.  We weren't going out that way anyhow.   Damn, I should have brought some empty pie tins.

Four doesn't have a door.  Halleb, still on point, charges right through.  He gets chewed and spit out by automatic fire.  I catch myself on the door frame before joining him.  Push back away from the slaughter.  I'm wearing bits of him.

Doc ducks around me.  "Fire in the hole!"  Without exposing herself, she powers a grenade off the far wall and down the corridor.  Shouts, CRASH, a wild, trailing scream.  "Come on!"  She takes point till the hallway splits into a T.  More grenades to prep the way.  More alarmed cries for the east.  CRASH, CRASH.

I take point after the T.  Doc secures the west passage until team two can, while Leo advances with me.  Firing the 60 on the move does shit for accuracy.  I just want to fill the area with as much danger as I can.  Leo takes the more accurate shots that we need.

Big conference room on the north east corner.  Ill fitting doors in the frame.  Leo tries to power them open and bounces.  Good for him as pistol fire punches through.  He staggers back around the corner.  Splinters in his face and a gash, clotting, down his arm.  "I AOK!"

Dimmly, through my ringing ears, I can hear team two engaging.  No time, no time.  The doors have stopped shaking from fire.  Quiet as I can I step up.  Det cord up the left hinge crack, diagonal down the width, looping the doorknobs, and back up the right hinge crack.  Doc and Leo prep our last two concussion grenades.  Might as well take someone home.  We can always kill them later.  Back as far away as I can.  Good-bye door.

Desks and chairs were barricaded behind the door.  Our grenades are thrown high deep into the room.  After the twin claps we're bulling through.  They'd piled half the furnishings here.  The remaining desks had been overturned to provide cover in a semicircle against the back and far corners.  Doc takes the right, Leo the left, me straight up the middle.  Scattered, staggering men fall under our fire.

Doc and Leo reach the makeshift cover.  Fire into the down men, fire, fire, reload, repeat.  I knew our real targets would be at the very back.  There!  A man in all black fatigues trying to cover himself with another's body.  How, melo-fucking dramatic.

I advance past Leo and Doc's clean-up work.  Get over around a desk.  The little fuck looks at me with fear filled eyes planted in a narrow weasel face.  Empty hands shot up.  He screams, "Not me, not me, I surrender!"

"Czarny!  Now!"

"Not me!  He's the one you want!"  Pointing back behind me.  I wish I'd fell for the oldest trick in the book.  I'm too high to feel the pain.  I do feel the rip through my leg, the staggering impacts against my pack, and torso armor.  I fall.  More impacts, arm and armor, before his pistol clicked empty. 

Leo comes up quick as I fell, laying suppressing fire down the length of the room's back, driving my attacker around the corner of the desks.  Reloading, he scuttles right into Doc's sights.  Two bursts, center of mass, advance, two more just to be sure.

I could walk.  The wounds weren't telling.  Bloody, already stopping, but not costing me any motion.  I squash Doc's demand to look them over right now.  There would be time for that after extraction or no need at all.

We spared the weasel and one more MIB, a big fit fella.  Weasel because he was telling us everything he could to save his own life.  The big man, a Lt. Rutkowski according to weasel, because we needed a strapping young man to carry the Czarny corpse.

"Gunny!  Sit-rep!"

"Holding, they're down at the far end.  We beat off two pushes.  They've just about cleared the stairwell."

Frandszk is slumped against the inner wall, holding his gut, his hands covered with red.  George and Andrejz have the T.  George is bleeding from the arm.  Andrejz looks pale and shocked, but I don't see any obvious wounds.

"Weasel says there's a midden pile off the far northwest wing at least six feet deep.  We use it to get off the roof and extract.  Battery is to give us five and then go to phase 3!"

"Roger!"

George tosses a grenade into the stairwell as I suppress the corridor.  Our team crosses.  Weasel, hands tied tight behind him, babbling assurances about the exit.  The new LT gets cuffed to shut him up from threatening our new friend.  George helps up Frandszk while Gunny and Andrejz take up covering fire at the T.

We hit the exit in record time, bursting out into the sunlight on the exposed northwest wing.  It isn't a roof, just what's left of the wing.  George takes up covering position in the doorway as the last two fall back.

I drag Weasel over to confirm the pile.  Right where he said it was.  Hope it's deep enough.

"You first!" I shout as I test the pile with Weasel.  He screams like a girl, but struggles out of the mush.  Me and Leo next.  We make sure Czarny mule doesn't suffocate.  Doc clears the wall in a leap.  Who's she trying to impress.

Gunny's about to make the jump when there's an explosion behind him.  He cries out as he makes an uncontrolled fall onto his back.  Leo drags him out, blood runs down Gunny's legs and the man-pack is a sparking ruin.  Leo slashes Weasel's bonds.  "Carry him."  No need for 'or else'.  He takes Gunny's M-16 and 203.

No other faces.  We can't help and we can't wait.  The mortars are falling heavily again.  Around the wing to the entry point.  Gunfire from the wing.  A shape appears, a body levered up and over the sill, falls into the worked earth behind the palace.  I see George's face at the sill and he turns away, back into the building, gunfire.

I race to the body, Andrejz, breathing wetly with a thready pulse.  I sling the 60, lift the big Pole into a fireman's carry, and race back.  East German indeed.  I'd laugh, but I can feel his ribs shifting over my shoulders.  He won't make it.

Get a good distance, find a hole, take stock.  We'll move, as best we can, after darkness falls.  Doc and Leo lead the way.  Damn you George, you should have jumped.