| From: | "Paul J. Adam" <shadowtk@********.DEMON.CO.UK> |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Withdrawal In Contact |
| Date: | Wed, 19 Nov 1997 00:15:21 +0000 |
>>>>>[I quit. Gone. Goodbye. Outta here. AMF.
+++++begin trideo
The firebase, near midday. The row of wounded outside the hospital tent
is almost gone, the last few cases - all walking wounded - awaiting
treatment for theirs, the least life-threatening injuries.
The transport helicopters still shuttle to and fro, moving supplies in
and men out, but the eight gunship conversions sit in a menacing row,
stub wings bristling with weapons. Further away, the 155mm guns are
still firing: the towed guns in a slow, steady rhythm, the self-
propelled guns in fast bursts with long pauses between.
There are more vehicles around now, including pair of Mack prime
movers: one is attached to a trailer that's already opening out to form
a field workshop, the other sits by the hospital, and several more LAVs
are scattered around: two with mast-mounted radars elevated, two with
missile packs and twin cannon.
Four sleek shapes pull contrails across the skies overhead: MiG-57s,
returning from a sortie.
Kelly and her cameraman sit near the communications tent, finishing off
a meal from a British-pattern 24-hour ration pack. There is a bustle of
activity inside the comms tent, Rebels ferrying equipment out to a
parked truck: two emerge and begin furling the satellite antenna: a
helicopter with a slung cargo pallet descends, placing the pallet near
the helipad and releasing the lines.
"Guess we're moving out again." Kelly says, folding the empty foil pouch
that had held her lunch. "You still filming?" A half-dozen Rebels are
breaking open the pallet and organising its contents, as a second and
third are delivered.
"Might come in useful. Some of this we could use for a documentary, at
least, since Turner don't want it for broadcast news. Lots of gee-whiz
guns and bombs." Bill keeps tracking around, pauses as vehicles appear
around the curve of the highway: two LAV-30s, then four mine trucks,
then a LAV engineer vehicle towing another LAV-30 (this one with its
turret torn open like a jagged steel flower), then a fifth mine truck,
then a large low-loader vehicle with a Merkava tank on its bed (the
Merkava smoke-stained, missing half the roadwheels on one side), another
two LAVs, a trio of Scarabs (one scout, two missile vehicles)...
Over fifty vehicles of various types, most LAV variants with a half-
dozen mine trucks and a dozen Scarabs, eventually emerge: many showing
damage and being towed by others.
The convoy stops near the hospital tent, which is also being rapidly
broken down and packed away: only when the sides are rolled up is it
plain that the field hospital is built around, and packs away into, a
forty-foot cargo container. The medics bustle to finish collapsing their
hospital, as the other Mack tractor backs down onto it and hitches up.
Mine staff spill from the back of the trucks, soldiers from the LAVs:
all look dusty and exhausted, but not defeated. The precision and
organisation is alarming: the drivers of the functional LAVs go to the
helipad first, collecting hot food and moving clear before the queues
form. As the soldiers and miners form a chow line, some of the eight-
wheeled vehicles move off to hitch up and tow away the 155mm guns,
others move or are towed to the workshop for running repairs. Like the
hospital, an efficient triage system is in effect: some vehicles
rejected outright, others set aside for trivial repair, some jacked for
major work right away.
"These guys are good." Kelly comments.
"Practice. Training. More training." replies Bill, walking closer to pan
along the food queue: tired frightened miners, and soldiers who show a
fatigued confidence. Some of the Rebels even adlib - "Hey, roll the
cameras, this is a movie now!" "I'll be John Wayne, Hoss can be my
horse!" "Who'll be the Bad Guys?" "The Gomers can be the fucken bad
guys!"
Bill is stopped by a Dwarf with lieutenant's bars. "You working?"
"No, sir."
"You eaten yet?" The Dwarf regards him with amusement.
"Yes, sir!"
"Then get your ass over there and get on the work detail. Your
girlfriend too. Move!"
+++++sequence deleted for brevity
Bill and Kelly are carefully settling a tripod into the rock by the
highway, while a soldier lowers a bulky cylinder - half a metre in
diameter, almost as long, topped by what looks like a rifle scope - onto
the mount. The soldier is talking animatedly.
"...charge. See, the ground's too rocky for ordinary mines, so we just
throw the scatterables behind us to slow the Gomers down, but these sit
to the side. Detect and classify any vehicle passing, only fires at
armoured targets. Stop a tank dead, blow a BMP to fuck-all - can I say
that?"
"We'll bleep it." Kelly finishes adjusting the arming wires.
"Scatterables. Those are fired by the artillery, right?"
"Yes, sir. Six per shell, Just sit in the road, they'll break a track or
blow off a wheel. Slow the Gomers down some. Anyway, these off-route
mines are hot shit when you know the enemy's only coming one way. Like
now."
"You seem to have taken heavy losses. Three tanks, all your cavalry
vehicles..." Bill suggests, unfolding the next tripod.
"What? Oh, hell, no, sir. The armour platoon's the rearguard. They're an
hour behind us, staying in contact, buying us time to get out." The
young engineer corporal draws a K-Bar knife and levers the lid off a
fibreboard case, lifting the next off-route mine out and expertly
shaking loose the protective packing.
"It doesn't bother you that you're retreating?"
"No way, sir. We righteously kicked ass, did what we came to do, now
we're getting out. We'd _love_ a rematch, but not right now and not for
free." Kelly clears gravel and adjusts the tripod's legs as Corporal
Milne lowers the heavy mine onto it.
+++++sequence deleted for brevity
The helicopter - carrying Kelly Robson, Bill the Cameraman, and half-a-
dozen Rebels - banks and flares, and Bill can finally see where they're
landing. A ship's deck.
Everyone piles out, Bill staring around almost in wonder. The ship is a
modern RO-RO cargo vessel, her ramp dropped onto a concrete jetty and
grey-camouflaged LAVs and trucks filing aboard. A dockside crane is
placing those vehicles too damaged to get aboard themselves, on the
forecastle: the ship's bow is an elephant's graveyard of burnt and torn
metal, vehicles worthy of repair or cannibalisation being brought back
for recycling.
The helo crew are folding the rotors, and rigging cargo strops: the
ship's own deck crane picks up the Stallion and places it carefully next
to three of its brothers, all folded up and covered against salt spray.
Near them, a row of a dozen 81mm mortars are set up, ammunition piled
behind the tubes and the crew crouched and ready.
The quayside is emptying rapidly, as the last vehicles make it aboard;
the deck throbs and smoke belches from the funnel as the ship's big
medium-speed diesels start up. Bill notices with a perceptible jolt that
men and women are running onto deck with AT-27 missile launchers, FN
MAG-5s and assault cannon, setting the heavy weapons up shipside and
aiming at the land. Two MiG-57s scream low overhead, and they drop their
ordnance close enough to be clearly heard and seen.
The helicopters landing now are the gunships, weapon racks empty and the
scars of combat visible. Three land: a fourth settles for an awkward,
bouncing landing on land near the abandoned mine trucks. Five Panther
cavalry vehicles (eight-wheeled LAVs armed with turreted 105mm guns)
race into view, skidding slightly on the curve of the poor road to pile
onto the ship as fast as possible.
Behind them, three Merkava tanks can be seen, making fifty miles an hour
on the metalled road, turrets trained to the rear: one fires, then the
other two. The mortar crews begin dropping small finned bombs into their
tubes, firing a shot per tube every three seconds; three hundred bombs a
minute are heading for the enemy, most of them smoke to form a screen
but some airburst HE.
Smoke rises behind the retreating Merkavas, and another two MiG-57s roar
past, skimming the sea: smoke and flame rises in their wake where they
dropped their cluster bombs. The tanks are less than half a mile from
the jetty now, the last soldiers on land (these clad in black hardshell
armour) making an orderly withdrawal along the Mexeflote bridge to the
ship, two of them setting the mine trucks and abandoned helicopter
ablaze.
The tanks are on the jetty, still almost at full speed, when one of the
missile gunners on deck fires, then another. There is an explosion
nearby in return, as another pair of MiGs break left and right around
the ship to deliver their own ordnance. Bullets ricochet off the
superstructure, and the gunners along the railing return the fire.
The last tank can hardly have been aboard before the ship moves
leisurely sideways - the abandoned Mexeflote bridge falling away - and
back, accelerating steadily away from the quay in an incredibly dense
cloud of black smoke. Two helicopter gunships can barely be seen in the
distance, engaging at long range with missile fire and exploding a dozen
vehicles in as many seconds: then the thickening smoke screen hides the
coast completely.
Bill sucks down a shuddering breath, rises to his feet. "Fuck! We made
it!"
Kelly, lying beside him, doesn't move.
"Kelly?"
Bill the Cameraman crouches. "Kelly? You okay?" Her blonde hair is
streaked with blood, and she's lying in a spreading pool of it.
Turning her head, staring at her beautiful, perfect features, he sees
the small round hole - too small to poke a finger into, even - just
above her eight-balled right eye.
Kelly Robson, formerly of Turner News Network, stares at the sky with
her expensive dead eyes as her cameraman sobs helplessly beside her.
+++++end trideo]<<<<<
-- Bill the Cameraman <00:13:26/11-19-58>
