A Desert Called Peace

VII.

Mohammad Sabah saw the group of enemy soldiers struggling up the hill. He watched carefully, from behind a snow covered bush. Do their faces look like they're in the mood for mayhem? Or might they be willing to…

Sabah felt as much as saw the machine gunner push the muzzle through the bush that concealed them. He started to shout, " Kif," stop, but before he could even get the syllable out the gunner had fired.

Parilla felt the shock before he even heard the muzzle report. One bullet bounced off of one of the glassy metal plates on his chest. Two more, however, plowed into his torso, pushing aside the silk fibers of the armor and smashing meat and bone below. He went down, limp but still marginally conscious.

"It's all right," he whispered. "Better this than never knowing and always wondering what it was like…"

"Allah curse you for a fool!" Sabah shouted at the machine gunner as his group came almost immediately under heavy sustained fire. He had no choice but to fight now. Maybe if he could hold the enemy off for a bit they might calm down and be inclined to mercy. Maybe.

The leader of Parilla's small guard force stared in momentary disbelief when he saw his Dux go down. Recovering, he gave the command: "Enemy in draw. Assault fire! Assault!" Leading the way, screaming, firing short bursts as they ran, the Balboans closed on the Sumeris.

The Sumeri sergeant was the first to fall. Under the legionaries' leaden hail the other members of the group were forced down into the depression in the slope. As the Balboans approached, the Sumeris threw down their arms and raised their hands in surrender. But, after seeing their commander shot, the men were not interested in taking prisoners. Muzzles spoke and bayonets flashed red under the snow- reflected light.

Several hundred meters to the west, and about one hundred and fifty forward, the recon section of Cruz's cohort, the First Infantry, reached the "lift fires" line. The cohort commander called that in via radio. Mortars ceased fire on that section of the hill altogether. The recon section took their bayonets from their rifles and the scabbards from their belts, attached the two together to form wire cutters, and began gnawing their way through the last wire before the enemy trenches and bunkers began. Other groups, straight infantry and the cohort sapper section, did so as well as they reached the last obstacle on the hill.

Hill 1647, Ali's bunker, 0811 hours, 13/2/461 AC

Ali al Tikriti, worn out as he was, still noticed the change in fires. The boy had crawled under Ali's bed for shelter again and lay there whimpering.

"Shut up, you little worm," Ali commanded. He reached for the field telephone on his desk and picked it up. Listening for a few moments to the empty sound, he turned a crank to ring the other phones on the system. No one answered.

Without the enemy artillery coming in, and even as exhausted by fear as he was, Ali felt confident enough to leave his bunker. He forced himself to his feet and left via the dog-leg that led to the communication trench. There was rifle fire to the south, and close.

Ali found his battalion's senior sergeant, along with about fifty soldiers, cowering in a bunker. He began trying to herd the troops out and into the trenches. The men stood up, staggering and swaying as their twitching hands fumbled with their rifles and machine guns. They did not, however, take so much as a single step to move forward. When Ali ordered the senior sergeant present to get the men moving, the noncom just stared at him without comprehension, not so much shell-shocked as shell-induced-fear-exhausted. The mukkaddam used both arms to physically turn the older NCO around and push him through the bunker entrance. Then he pushed the rest of the men, one by one, after him. Ali, himself, took up the rear.

The sergeant stumbled down the trench without really seeing it. He almost, but not quite, sensed a series of shadows leaping over it, above him. One or two of the shadows dropped something in the trench at the sergeant's feet. Grenades.

With the explosions ahead the Sumeri troops scampered back to their bunker. Ali ran back to his own.