• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1464 0

the deep valley, Konstant told his Marines about the planned rearrangement, and he and Crisp helped to establish new positions for the grunts. With utmost stealth, and moving quickly, the Marines got the repositioning under way. Konnie located the command post—which he, Grissom, Pigeon, and Middendorf would occupy—about three hundred meters to the southwest of the old post, where Shah, Konnie figured, would have what was left of his men aim their weapons should they attack. With a CDS drop planned for early the next morning, after which Fox Company would begin their descent out of the Chowkay, Grissom, Konnie, and Middendorf all felt that half the Marines should sleep while the other half stood watch, once they’d completed the position shift.

“Sir, ICOM traffic!” Jimmy the interpreter interrupted the officers’ discussion.

“Oh, great, Jimmy. More ICOM traffic. Let me guess, there’s nine thousand of them, and they all got flamethrowers,” Konnie sarcastically responded.

“Listen, Konstant, we need to take every transmission seriously,” Grissom snapped. “What are you hearing, Jimmy?”

“There are two groups, and they are talking to each other. The man from the first group said, ‘We are all in position, are you there yet?’ And then a voice from the other group said, ‘Yes, we are all here,’ and then the first guy asked, ‘How many men do you have?’ And that man responded that he had forty,” Jimmy summarized.

“Well, if we’ve heard that they’re massing between forty and sixty guys to come get us, we’ve heard it a million times,” Grissom responded. “But let’s stand to anyway,” the captain finished, ordering that all Marines stand security.

“And then, Commander Grissom . . .” Jimmy chimed in.

“What is it, Jimmy?”

“And then they said one more thing. The commander man said, ‘Good, we’re all set, do everything we talked about—but no more talking on the radio or on the phones.’ And that was it, Commander Grissom. The ICOM talk went dead.”

“Now that’s somethin’ we don’t hear them do very often. Mouthy motherfuckers always tryin’ to scare us with their ICOM chatter. They never give the order to shut up like that,” Konnie interjected as Konstant, Middendorf, Grissom, and Pigeon stared at one another pensively, each revealing genuine concern over Jimmy’s last bit of intel.

“Okay. Everybody stay sharp—as usual,” Grissom ordered. “Sounds like somethin’s imminent—real imminent, like within minutes.” The officers spread the word for all the Marines to keep extra focused, on heightened readiness.

But minutes drifted into hours, and the attack never came. The grunts, scanning the surrounding peaks with their NVGs, found nothing even slightly out of place. No unusual lights, no sounds, nothing. With a big movement on the near horizon, and with the Marines slammed with fatigue from the past days, Grissom okayed the return to 50 percent security, allowing half of the grunts to get some much-needed sleep. Jimmy’s translated message had caused just another false alarm; in the silence of the dark, cloud-raked night, Konnie, Middendorf, and Pigeon slipped into an almost comalike sleep—along with half of the other Marines of the element—for the first truly rejuvenating rest they’d had in days.

“Lieutenant! Lieutenant! LIEUTENANT!” Staff Sergeant Crisp roared, shaking Konnie, who was sleeping on the dirt wearing just a T-shirt, underwear, and his laced-up boots. “Lieutenant Konstant! How you sleepin’ through this! How the fuck you sleepin’ through this?!” Konnie woke up to Crisp slamming his shoulders against the dirt, the staff sergeant’s face and Kevlar helmet flashing white, yellow, and red.

“Wha—” The disoriented Konstant opened his eyes, clutching at the dirt below him as the most coordinated, most intense of Shah’s attacks yet pummeled the encampment.

“Man, get yo’ crazy ass the fuck up—sir!”

Konstant awoke to the hisses of incoming RPGs, the earsplitting booms of exploding 82 mm mortars, and the greenish white streaks of PK machine-gun tracer rounds cracking and whizzing above Crisp’s head. He grabbed his M16 and dashed for cover. Boom!