Fire Force(79)

‘You OK?’ he shouted.

Chris nodded. ‘The bullet hit the Kevlar,’ he grunted. ‘Just winded me, that’s all.’

Together with Maksim, the three men started to haul Tshaka back up the hillside. Ollie was directing fire into the tent but the soldiers had already abandoned it, retreating to the defensive mud and sandbag wall they’d built just behind it. Even from this distance, you could see they had a couple of armoured vehicles. One of the soldiers had manned a machine gun and was starting to spray bullets. It was wild, poorly directed fire. But the valley was a narrow one. Sooner or later he was going to hit someone.

And it’s going to be one of us, decided Steve. ‘We need some cover,’ he said, ‘or we’re going to get bloody slaughtered out here.’

Ollie, Chris and Nick were frantically pushing together all the mud and rocks and wood they could find, to create a rough wall. Ganju was digging frantically in the churned-up ground. There was no natural cover on the hillside: no decent trees, no walls, no ridges of land they could sneak behind. All they could do was make their own foxhole. Steve threw himself into the work, scrabbling at the mud with his bare hands. The bullets were still spitting up from the tent, but in the dark and through the rain, it would take a lot of luck for any of them to hit their target. Within minutes, a rough foxhole was constructed: a trench, three feet deep and five long, with a mud and rock wall in front of it. Steve paused for a moment, leaning back to recover his breath. The rain was still coming down hard and without any drainage, their foxhole was already starting to fill with water. It was cold and damp, the water seeping into his skin.

‘Bloody hell,’ he muttered out loud. ‘What now?’

‘We hold them, subdue their fire, then break out,’ Ollie said tightly.

‘And how exactly are we going to do that?’ David enquired.

Both Steve and Ollie were straining to look over the roughly constructed wall but the bullets were winging right past them. The troops were dug in inside a pair of armoured vehicles, which controlled the narrow path through the valley, putting down round after round into their enemy.

I’m buggered if I know, thought Steve.

‘Sniper fire?’ Nick suggested.

Steve shook his head. ‘There’s no way you can get a shot in there.’

‘RPG?’ That was Maksim.

‘We’ve only one left,’ said Ollie. ‘Our chances of a direct hit from this distance and in this weather are minimal. Then we’ve used up our ammo.’

‘OK - we sneak along the back and come at them from behind,’ said Maksim.

‘You give it a go if you want to, Maksie,’ said Steve, ‘but it looks bloody dodgy to me. And we need all the blokes we’ve got to hold this position.’

‘Then what?’

‘Scarper,’ said Steve. ‘Put down some fire, then head back into the interior and find another way through.’

‘Run away?’ snapped Maksim. ‘Never.’

‘Call it a tactical retreat,’ said Ollie with a rough smile. ‘I know the Spetsnaz don’t do tactics, but—’

‘There’s nowhere to go,’ said Newton. ‘Now they’re onto us, they’ll use dogs to track us down. There’s no interior to disappear into.’

‘Radio,’ said Ganju quietly. ‘Wallace is only three miles away. Get him on the radio, tell him our position, and he can bring reinforcements in.’

‘Do it,’ said Ollie.

Ganju had already unhooked the shortwave radio from his kitbag and was twiddling the dials, trying to get onto the right frequency. The weather didn’t help. In the storm raging around him, the signals would all get scrambled. ‘But it’s only three miles,’ he muttered to himself. ‘We must be able to get through.’

‘Anything?’ said Ollie, his voice tense.

‘Not yet,’ Ganju said irritably.

‘Keep trying.’

The gunfire was coming closer. Of the two armoured vehicles, one had started to move forward, its big tyres churning through the mud. The machine gunner was raking the hillside with fire, bullets peppering their position. A grenade was lobbed into the air. It landed twenty feet in front of their position, exploding as it crashed into the muddy ground. A huge ball of fire and smoke kicked up into the air, and in the next instant, mud was raining down on their position.

‘Wallace, Wallace,’ hissed Ganju into the radio.

Sodding well reply, thought Steve. Or else we’re all done for. But all he could hear was crackle and static.

A flash of lightning suddenly illuminated the valley. Fifty yards below them, Steve could see the single armoured vehicle, the machine gunner raking the hills. The man who’d lobbed the hand grenade was clearly protected behind the machine gun, preparing the next assault. He’s finding his range, realised Steve. Pretty soon, one of those grenades is going to land right on top of us.