“Ready Blackjack 2–6, but be advised: all we’ve got available are mortars. The artillery is busy elsewhere.”
Walker rolled her eyes. She shouldn’t have expected anything else in this shitstorm. “Fine. Just give me whatever you got on linear grid 421387 to 424360. HE followed by Willy Pete. Fire for effect, over!”
“Roger 2–6, ‘shake and bake’ coming your way. That’s danger close, right? Over.”
“Everything’s danger close out here. Now get me some damn rounds downrange!”
A moment passed before her dreams came true. The unknown artillery officer at headquarters seduced her with those beautiful words: “Shot, out!”
Ten seconds later, she enjoyed looking up. Their small 120mm mortars weren’t nearly as powerful as the heavy artillery, but, by God, could they shoot fast! A salvo of high explosives shook the ground 300 yards away. Another barrage on its heels fizzled on impact. That would be the white phosphorous rounds spraying out their deadly chemicals. The other half of the “shake and bake” strike. One of Walker’s soldiers in the next foxhole hooted. “Hooah!”
Walker screamed with excitement too, but not over the enemy soldiers dying so painfully under the steel rain. That thick, billowing smoke cloud gave her an idea. With little wind and relatively high humidity, the burning white cloud made an effective smoke screen. She rose completely out of her hole and barked at everyone around her. “Maybe lady lucky hasn’t abandoned us yet. Let’s go everyone! Bound back, fast. Let’s get the fuck out of here while we still can.”
She hopped on the radio and repeated the same retreat order to every receiver in range. Walker had barely fallen back 10 yards before the first calm male voice, sitting in safety miles away at headquarters, took over the radio net.
“All Blackjack elements: disregard that previous command. Hold in place until relieved. Break… Blackjack 2–6, do you acknowledge, over?”
Walker had to wait until it was her section’s turn to stop and provide covering fire. As she took a knee behind some scrub bush and fired backwards, the other half of her platoon that had covered her movement rushed forward. In between shots, she found time to answer the radio. “Negative, Iron Main. I believe I’m the senior leader left on scene here and we cannot hold. I say again: we cannot hold. It’s fall back or be overrun. All elements: keep moving, over.”
The faceless officer on the radio didn’t give up. “Break, break, break. All elements need to stand fast. That’s a damn order.”
Rebel mortars were now getting into the game. Walker’s people weren’t yet bracketed, so the rounds fell short. If they kept moving, they might escape that steel rain. As a much closer round thumped in only a hundred yards away, she screamed at her platoon, “Fuck the radio. Everyone, keep moving—”
Another mortar barrage slammed much closer. Something kicked Walker in the chest and slammed her on her ass. She ripped out the shrapnel shard lodged in her vest’s ballistic plate with more annoyance than fear. Fighting the urge to stay down and catch her breath, she jumped back up and hissed into the radio, “All Blackjack elements: you can stay and die or you can follow me!”
Those magic words, spoken from someone with them in the shit, drowned out anything some far-away command center had to say. When some staffer, safely sitting on his ass miles away mentioned “traitor” over the net, Walker turned her radio off. Real peace washed over her while she focused all her energy on extracting the rest of the unit. In minutes, she had every survivor of the company loaded onto their remaining vehicles and racing back east. With the boys slapping her on the back in thanks, she couldn’t care less about the court martial coming her way.
An hour later and twenty miles farther east, Sergeant Major Brown threw down a crate of small arms ammo as loudly as he could. None of the collapsed soldiers on the Strykers’ ramp stirred. Racked completely out. Brown found the one soldier he needed in the uniform puddle easily enough. They all had field caps tossed over their faces to block the sun, but only one had a ponytail spilling out the back.
The woman finally sprang to life when he kicked her boot, still with a half-eaten MRE pouch in her hand. “Sergeant Walker, we need to talk. The rest of you….” he grinned at the few tired eyes that pried themselves open a tad, “carry on.”
Walker slipped her battle-rattle armor on, but tucked her helmet under an arm. It was hot enough. Brown took his K-Pod off as well, which by his standards was a remarkable display of intimacy. They walked in silence for a minute before the sergeant major whistled.
“So Sergeant, you’ve sure pissed command off. You might not have heard, but the last order your CO was given before he bought the farm was to hold in place. No matter what. You all were supposed to die to the last man just to buy us some more time. That’s what they were trying to tell you over the radio, but didn’t have the guts to say so with the whole company listening in. That retreat you orchestrated caused the entire battalion to fall back in order to keep from being flanked. Which, of course, in turn forced the entire brigade to disengage. So on and so on all the way up the line. The general is hopping mad that some random soldier moved his whole army without his permission.”
“Then why don’t you seem pissed off, Sergeant Major?”
He gave a little chuckle. “Maybe because I’ve spent so long trapped at HQ that I’ve forgotten what it’s like to have a leader with commonsense.”
Brown stopped and held her shoulder. “I don’t care what they say. You made the right call in an impossible situation. You traded a few square miles of worthless land to save hundreds of lives. Whereas most officers would have unhesitatingly sacrificed everyone to hold a pointless objective. You knew when to live and fight another day. We need more of that type of thinking and fewer glory hounds around here.”
“I appreciate that, Sergeant Major, but why aren’t you telling this to our new CO?”
“But I am. You’re in charge, for now. I’m sending you loose squads from other, even more badly mauled units. So you’ll be almost back at full strength in a few hours. I wish I could get you more ammo, but as long as our supply lines in Kansas are cut in half that’s all we can spare.”
Walker held up both hands. “Wooah, Sergeant Major! Wait a second. Surely there’s someone else you can put in charge? What about Lieutenant Dixon? He was only briefly knocked out. The medics say he’s fit to lead now.”
Brown raised an eyebrow. “Be serious here. Do you really want a 2nd Lieutenant, with all his six weeks of experience, taking over in the heat battle? The hell with the chain of command. We need real leaders at the moment. Your CO is dead and both the executive officer and first sergeant are being Medevac’d as we speak. So quit your bitching. The colonel wants all company commanders at the TOC in half an hour for a powwow. Try to hammer out some orderly plan of retreat. He’d really love to meet his newest commander.”
Walker snorted. “I doubt that, Sergeant Major, but thanks anyway.”
“Actually, he supported me when I suggested we leave you in command instead of digging up an inexperienced officer from somewhere else.” He shook her hand and started walking away. Over his shoulder, he hollered, “He’s still pissed, but the colonel believes command is the most fitting punishment for you. So good luck. You’re gonna need it.”