“What is so fucking important about the fucking Keldara?” Haza snapped, finally losing it. “Everyone has been whispering about these fucking Keldara! Tigers of the Mountains! Evil pagans! So what? They are just men.”
“They are the Keldara,” Kamas replied. “Did your mother not frighten you with anyone when you were a child? Did she not whisper that if you were not good that something would come for you in the night? They have not been back in generations and we are glad. Is there nothing that you, deep in your gut, fear, Haza Khan?”
“Ah,” Haza said, nodding. “Now I understand. They are the djinn that come for bad children. Yes, we had the same stories, but about a people called the Ghurkas. But I have fought the Ghurkas. They are good. Very good. Better than your fucking Keldara, I am sure. But they are men. They die.”
“The Keldara eat the dead of their enemies,” one of the fedayeen in the trench whispered in reply. “They are pagans who perform sacrifices to their black gods. They cut out the hearts of their enemies and eat them. Raw. They say that that way they eat their souls.”
“Stupid stories,” Haza said with a sigh. “There are many such stories. The people that the stories are about support them and hope the rumors spread. They make you fear. They break the will. But they are, always, stupid stories. I have heard the same stories about the Ghurkas but I know from experience that they don’t eat the hearts of their dead. In one war a whole battalion ran rather than face the Ghurkas, because they’d heard the stupid stories. We will not run from these fucking Keldara and we will not run to them. We will wait and keep them in place for the others to destroy. Then we can eat their hearts, or say we did, and thus start stories about us. Yes?”
“I just want to kill Keldara,” Kamas replied, sullenly.
“The radio said that we will attack their valley after we finish off their defenders,” Haza assured him. “Then you can kill Keldara. And have their women as prizes as the Prophet decreed.”
“That will be… ” Kamas stopped and looked up and back towards the pass at a whistling in the air. He didn’t see what was causing it but he did see something he thought never to see in his whole life. On west side of the pass, on the ridge above the saddle, was a tiger. A real tiger. It looked like it was not full grown but it had to be big for him to see it at this distance. He stopped talking, wide mouthed.
“INCOMING!” Haza screamed, grabbing the young idiot and dragging him down. Mortars. Fucking mortars. The only people around here with mortars was supposed to be the fedayeen! Where were they coming from?
“I don’t have time to teach you bitches fire and maneuver,” Mother Lenka said over the booming of the mortars. They hadn’t reached the saddle of the pass, yet, but they were close. “So when we get out in the open just spread out and head for the hill!” The first rounds were landing and the slamming of the explosions were racketing down the snow-covered pass. Hopefully they wouldn’t cause an avalanche. That would be seriously unfunny.
“But if you see something to shoot, take one knee and aim!” she screamed as they approached the saddle. “Do you understand me?”
“YES, MOTHER LENKA!”
“On target,” Kalisa whispered over the radio. She had run ahead and was now hunkered down by a boulder, calling fire. “One hundred Islamic Jerry’s Kids in open trenchline. Fire for effect.”
“All guns!” Jessia screamed. “Fire for effect! High explosive, mixed contact and proximity, continuous!”
Gana Kulcyanov hefted one of the high explosive rounds and slid the end into the tube. She released the round and slid her hands down either side of the tube then turned and took another round as the firing round slammed outwards. The explosion of the round compressed her chest like a giant fist but she ignored it, counting time as she took the next round from Jelena Makanee and twisted through three dimensions to raise it to the tube.
The modern 120mm could fire sixteen rounds in one minute. But they were, potentially, going to be dropping far more than that and she didn’t want to wear out the Kildar’s barrel. So she was firing “continuous” speed, one round every seven seconds, the speed she had been told by her American Special Forces trainer that “saved tubes and broke armies.”
“Six Mississippi, Seven Mississippi,” she muttered then let the round drop, sliding her hands down the tube and doing it all over again.
She wasn’t sure where or what Mississippi was, but it must be a horrible thing if it was used as a mantra for the guns.
Chapter Fourty-Five
“Oh, fuck,” Kacey muttered as she approached the pass.
Helicopters and firing mortars do not mix. They have to occupy the same airspace and have a horrible tendency to occupy the same three dimensional point at the same time.
There was room to the side for her to pass, but she assumed they were firing in support of the Keldara trapped on the ridgeline. If so she was going to be following the gun-target line the whole way. That was really gonna suck big donkey dicks.
However, as she crabbed by she could tell they were pointed away from the Keldara position. What in the fuck were they firing at?
The answer became clear as she crossed the pass. The mortars were pounding the shit out of the Chechens blocking the pass. And, what’s more, a line of Keldara women were just shaking out in what was clearly an assault line.
“Uh, hey, Father… uh… Ferrari?” Kacey said, keying the intercom.
“Da?”
“Those women, they’re attacking the Chechens. Should we help them?”
“Nyet,” the oldster replied. There was the loud chain-saw sound of a minigun from the left side of the bird as they passed the Chechen position. “Mother Lenka… Bad fucking news, yes? To the other battle.”
Kacey didn’t know who “Mother Lenka” was, but if the old fucker in the back considered her “bad news” she really wanted to meet her.
And she had to admit that the conditions up ahead looked worse. The fucking Chechens covered the damned ridge.
Well… good.
The Dragon was hungry.
“Gregor,” Father Ferani said over the intercom.
“What do you want?” Father Devlich snarled. He hadn’t gotten to fire at the Chechens and it rankled.
“Sion was right,” Father Ferani said. “I just saw the tiger he was talking about. Up on the ridge watching over the women. They will succeed.”
“And on this side are fucking ravens looking to eat your eyes,” Father Devlich replied.
“The Father of All watches.”
“Yeah, he’s gonna watch you piss your pants when the Chechens start firing at us.”
“Fuck you.”
“You fuck goats, I fuck women. Who wins?”
“That’s just because goats are too fast for you. You only fuck the old women that you need a crowbar to open.”
“And you still fuck goats. I win.”
“Yeah, well I fucked your mother.”
“I fucked your mother which is how you got born. But the good part dribbled down her leg.”
“I’m older than you, you jackass. How does that work? You fuck her before you were born? I, on the other hand, really did fuck your mother. And she was loose from other men.”
“Oh, fuck you. How do you cock this thing?”