Chapter Four - The Things They Wore

Chapter 4 – Get Some

The night had fallen. Laser beams, tracers and muzzle flashes filled Kaeo's green tinted vision.
Bullets zipped over his head like angry hornets. There were little splashes in the dirt from the impact of incoming fire all around him. He looked to his right and Garza was cackling gleefully in between firing bursts from his M240G.

“I'm shooting motherfuckers like it’s cool!” Garza yelled, grinning ear to ear while changing targets, and then unleashing another throaty burp from his weapon.


The Tailors were spilling out of the cave's mouth and other various hidden exits around the mountain face. They moved in disciplined groups providing mutual fire support to each other while leap frogging from cover to cover.
Dygalo and Alpha were pinned down near their overwatch position, no hope of a clean exfill or op now. Shit had hit the fan hard. The rest of the platoon was still twenty mikes out and they were inside danger close for arty and were quickly running out of options for egressing.

He heard a twig snap to his left. His 600 dollar ComTac 3's were actually doing their job for once. He rolled over onto his side and snapped up his M4. They were close; close enough for him to see the expression of pants-shitting terror on the faces of two AK armed Tailors caught out of position. He shot off a quick burst into one of them tagging him in the chest and head. The first tailor slumped down while the other raised his AK in surprise and panic fired. He was on the trigger early as the bullets splashed in the dirt sequentially closer to Kaeo as the tailor finished raising his weapon. Kaeo felt something tug at his shirt sleeve, then a microsecond later he felt a bullet smack into flak. He didn't pause and switched targets, gunning the other tailor down as quickly as the first. Kaeo paused to look at his sleeve and there was a long rip along the forearm. He also had a nice graze along the bullet's path.

“Kaeo, I need that spare barrel!” Garza shouted.

He rolled back over, and snatched the barrel in question off the ground next to him and quickly replaced the smoking one on the 240. The accuracy of incoming fire was increasing rapidly.

“Garza, we're moving to Rico!” Kaeo shouted before firing off the rest of his magazine at the tailors moving in from the left.

“Bounding!” Garza responded while snatching the 240 off the ground and sprinting towards the sound of Rico's M203 to their right. The world was awash with flashes: there were a lot of better armed tailors than they thought. Kaeo changed mags and let off another few bursts to keep the tailors to their left down.

“Set!” Garza shouted again, and then took up the slack letting off a few bursts to keep the enemy suppressed.

“Bounding!” Kaeo responded as he took off running towards his right. Angry hornets zipped past his head and nipped at the ground around his feet. Kaeo threw himself behind a tree next to Garza, Max and Rico.

“We've got to get over to Alpha's position then break out of here. Garza, keep laying down fire. Max, Kaeo, go.” Rico instructed, calm as ever, after sending a few rounds into the chest of a bold tailor.

“2-1 Bravo, 2-1 Actual, Alpha team has another man down. Over”

“Solid, Actual”, Rico unkeyed his mic, “let's go gents, double time!”

“Bounding!” Kaeo responded. Garza laid down a steady hail of cover fire to cover their movement. They switched again, moving down the hill away from the Tailor's flanking action towards Alpha. Kaeo flopped behind a rock and let off a few supressing bursts while Rico and Garza moved. They switched a third time. Kaeo sprinted down the hill a short ways and ducked behind a tree, only to find it was already occupied.

He toppled over a prone tailor onto his back inadvertently kicking the tailor's weapon away in the process. Kaeo's M4 slid over his head, still attached to him by the sling but just out of reach. The Tailor rolled over and jumped on top of Kaeo while whipping a long thin knife out of its sheath, then subsequently a tried to plunge it into Kaeo's throat.
Kaeo parried the knife away with his left hand a split second before impact, driving it into soft earth next to his head. In retaliation, he lashed out grabbing at the tailor's face and shoving his thumb into the tailor's right eye socket. He felt his gloved thumb bite into and tear the soft flesh of the eye. The Tailor screamed and reeled back while clawing at his bleeding eye socket, abandoning any attempts at recovering the knife sticking out of the ground.

The scream was cut short by the sharp crack of a Mk 17 whereupon the tailor slumped forward onto him. He lied there for a second contemplating how close to death he had just come before rolling the tailor off and recovered his weapon. He looked up to his skull faced savior. Dygalo was standing above him offering a hand up. He took it and stood up.

“I don't think they teach you that in MCMAP.” Dygalo commented while pulling Kaeo up.

Max was busy putting down suppressive fire to cover Rico and Garza's bound. Who were just running the last stretch down the hill to Alpha's position. The enemy fire was becoming more inaccurate and sporadic. Either the Tailors had lost track of them in the confusion or were staging another big push. He was worried about both, they needed more time.

Alpha Team had taken two casualties already. The first was the reason they were detected in the first place: Lance Corporal Miller had stepped on a shoe mine probably left over from the Mozambican Civil War, a freak accident that no one could've anticipated. However, it had royally fucked their mission and given away their position. He was still combat effective minus most of his left foot but couldn't move unassisted. The second, Lance Corporal Shulte was shot up pretty bad in the opening minutes of the engagement. He was tagged in both arms and the right leg multiple times. His armor had protected him from any shots to the body. That being said, Shulte lost a lot of blood out of those holes before they could put the tourniquets on him. He couldn't stand let alone hold or operate a weapon.

Dygalo flipped up his NODs. A stray needle sparked off a rock near his feet. Gunfire was still audible in the distance. There was nice hard cover all around in the form of large boulders at the base of the cliff. He'd picked a good place for a last stand.

“Tailors have got us backed into a corner pretty good, warriors.” Dygalo gestured to the cliff face of hill Echo that they were positioned against. “This mission ain't scrubbed just yet though. I for one still got plenty of fight in me. We hold here until the rest of the platoon arrives then punch out and get our wounded marines CASEVACed. After that, we get the fuck back in the fight. Understood?” Dygalo finished while reloading his Mk17 and flipped down his NVGs.

They all nodded in agreement. Kaeo looked down to his arm he was still bleeding pretty badly from the graze. It didn't really rate a tourniquet or quick clot but needed to be dealt with. He opened up his IFAK and took out one of his small bandages; quickly tearing open the package and wrapping it around his arm. Dygalo was on the radio again.

“Raptor 2, this is Raptor 2-1 Actual. Interrogative, what's your ETA?”

“Raptor 2-1 we are 5 clicks out and ten mikes from objective. Hold on we're almost there.” came back over the net.

“Solid, Raptor 2-1 Actual, out.”

Ten minutes, he thought to himself. A lot could happen in ten minutes.

“Contact left!” Someone screamed.

Kaeo dropped down behind a boulder as gunfire erupted around him again. Bullets zipped all around him. He leaned out from the boulder and fired off a couple bursts at the vague shapes of moving tailors. Immediately, rounds came back at him splintering small craters in the boulder and producing small puffs of dirt where they impacted.

Garza was laughing again, it seemed like the only time that psycho felt alive was when he was getting shot at. Johnson had abandoned shooting his SAW altogether and was crouched down next to Garza playing assistant gunner, keeping him fed with ammo and fresh barrels. Max and Rico were working together with the precision of a well-oiled machine. Max was calling targets for Rico's 203 in between engaging on his own. Dygalo was a pool of calm in a sea of chaos. He was crouching behind another small boulder with his Mk17 propped up taking slow careful shots while the world exploded around him. Alpha's team leader Corporal McGraw was desperately trying to unfuck the squad's SMAW which had conveniently decided to lock up in the explosion that cost Miller his foot. The locking mechanism for the rocket wouldn't disengage so there was no way of getting a fresh one in there.

Kaeo leaned out from behind his boulder again to take a peek. “Holy fuck were there a lot of muzzle flashes out there.” he thought to himself. Garza had a big group, at least a full squad, pinned down and taking casualties about 200 meters away. They were positioned in that stand of trees that Bravo had just run from.  Max and Rico were chipping away at another group that was bounding towards their position from the right. Dygalo was putting a large hole in the head of anyone stupid enough to stick their head out for more than three seconds.

Kaeo spotted another group of tailors trying to bound closer. He raised his weapon and put a long burst into the lead man's chest. The lead tailor took a sharp dive into the dirt and the others jumped for cover.
The Tailors certainly had the weight of fire in their favor, but they couldn't really see anything either. It just occurred to him they had no night optics again and the night was dark as shit out here. They were firing blindly at muzzle flashes. Although, Kaeo really wasn't concerned with “The bullet with his name on it”, mostly for the ten thousand others zipping all around him which read “To whom it may concern”.

Things were actually looking up for them. Well, until now.

A RPG streaked from further up on the hill over Kaeo's and smashed into the cliff face. A stream of gravel and rocks came tumbling down. The rain of rubble did nothing to stop the firefight but it certainly demonstrated an evening of the odds. Kaeo swallowed hard, peaked out again and fired off a burst at another rushing tailor tagging him in the calf. The Tailor toppled down but continued to try to engage by firing wildly on full auto. Kaeo responded by putting three rounds into his prostrate body. Suddenly his weapon went click instead of bang.

Kaeo ducked back behind cover to unjam his weapon. A second later another RPG flew towards him, this time impacting three yards short of his position. Shrapnel skittered off of the rocks all around. His vision was swimming and teeth rattling from the blast. As both settled a thought occurred: If he hadn't taken cover a second beforehand, he'd probably be dead right now. He looked to his weapon and gave it a quick run through SPORTS. Slap, pull, observe, release, tap, and of course shoot. As he racked it a round came flying out of his weapon. He paused, picked it up and gave it a quick look over before tossing it away. It was a dud. That one dud had been the difference between life and death and, it scared the shit out of him. A group of rounds skittered off the rocks to his left, bringing him back to reality. He turned out to engage again.

The Tailors were getting closer. There were more of them too. At least one came in for every one they put out of the fight and they were putting a lot out of the fight. Things weren't looking so good now.

He fired off another burst at the silhouette of a running tailor before ducking back behind his rock to take quick stock of his ammo. He had two mags out of the original seven on his flak. He had more mags in his pack which the team had dropped at the rally point, more than a click away from their position. He hoped for damn sure the rest of the platoon was getting here soon. He wasn't sure they could hold much longer.

Garza, on the other hand, had made sure that he and Johnson had brought plenty of ammo. There was a nice big pile of spent brass under his 240 and was rotating through barrels every two minutes, keeping a steady, withering rate of fire. Rico was out of forty mike mike grenades and was continuing to engage with his M4. Max was doing much the same. Dygalo was making good use of his ammo, taking those precise single shots.

McGraw had finally got the SMAW's lock to work. He stood up from behind his rock and let off a rocket. The rocket shot out towards a group of tailors and the night was briefly illuminated by the explosion. Rather wimpy from a Hollywood standpoint, but the fireball wasn't the important part anyway. The pressure and shrapnel is what really caused casualties.

In the distance, Kaeo heard something very familiar. It was the sweetest sound in the world to him. The low thud of a friendly M2. The rest of Raptor 2 had arrived.  He could faintly make out friendly strobes rolling down MSR Saffire. Mk19 rounds were bursting all over tailor positions. The fire increased in intensity yet again as the tailors desperately turned to engage the incoming convoy.

“Yeah! Get some, you dress wearing French fucks!” Johnson shouted.

“Now's our chance! Max, Johnson, get Miller and Shulte. Rico, Tokura, McGraw punch out twenty!” Dygalo shouted.

Kaeo sprinted out towards a nearby tree while letting off a few bursts at the recently distracted tailors to keep them occupied. He could see their Humvees now. The tailors were breaking up under the pressure scattering and running for the cave. Kaeo fired off the rest of his mag at the retreating tailors before stopping to help Max carry Shulte.

“Corpsman!” Max shouted repeatedly.  Someone jumped from the second to lead Humvee and sprinted over to carry Shulte's feet.

“Jesus, you guys got lit up.” the Corpsman stated. “Put him on the hood of my Humvee I got it from here.” They set him gingerly on the hood and just as Kaeo turned to go help Miller who was slowly hobbling his way over with Johnson's assistance, the Corpsman put his hand on his shoulder and gestured to his arm. The bandage was already stained thoroughly with blood. “What do you think you're doing Marine?”

He shook the hand off his shoulder. “Getting my friend out of here and then getting back in the fight”. Kaeo trotted over to Miller and gave him another person to lean on. They walked Miller over to the Humvee and set him down in the back seat.

“How you feeling Miller?” Max asked.

“Like I just busted a nut balls-deep in Ke$ha. In short, livin' the dream” He joked while grinning ear to ear.

“Oorah to that devildog.” Max said while slapping him on the shoulder.

They'd snatched victory from the jaws of defeat. However, there was still work to be done. The tailors were inside that cave, and they were gonna have to dig them out the old fashioned way. Kaeo refilled his flak with fresh mags and went to meet the remains of Team One.