Prime (Chess Team Adventure, #0.5)

Armitraj once more unleashed a stream of lead from the machine gun. Every tenth round was a tracer, zipping through the night like a red laser beam to mark the path of destruction as he homed in on one of the flanking APC’s. A second line of tracer fire appeared from the opposite direction however, as the gunner in turret of the armored vehicle targeted his DShK 12.7-millimeter machine gun on the Gurkha sergeant’s location. Armitraj knew what was coming but his only reaction as the incoming tracers walked across the sand toward him, was to close his eyes.

A bullet struck the Minimi gun, shattering its mechanism and exploding the unfired rounds in the feed tray. An instant later, Sergeant Taranjeet Armitraj erupted in a spray of red, his body shredded by an unrelenting torrent of enemy fire and fragments of his own weapon.

Higgins knew without looking that Armitraj had fallen; he had marked the cessation of heavy automatic fire from his fellow soldier’s location. He did not mourn for his brother, not even to the extent he had felt grief at the earlier loss of Corporal Singh. The immediacy of the current battle, and the certainty that at any moment, he too would feel the icy hand of death on his shoulder, made such grief irrelevant. He emptied his magazine at a Land Cruiser, shattering its windshield, and then rapidly loaded another HE grenade into the launcher.

Not far away, Kismet was reloading his weapon, burning through magazines rapidly, but making every shot count. The enemy convoy had ceased advancing, their vehicles now a liability. The troops inside hastened from the impossible-to-miss targets, spreading out and seeking cover. More than a dozen had fallen, picked off by Kismet as they filed through the narrow doorways of the APCs; God alone knew how many more would never leave those vehicles, yet their numbers seemed undiminished.

Higgins dropped a grenade close enough to blast the nearest Land Cruiser over on its side. The fuel tank ignited in a secondary explosion that jetted sideways away from the exposed undercarriage. The shock wave momentarily stunned the Gurkha. His vision doubled, leading him to wonder if he had taken some shrapnel to the skull, but he ignored the side-effect of the concussion and slammed another magazine into his rifle. It was his last.

Kismet was attempting to fix enemy positions by the angle of incoming fire and rising from cover only long enough to snap off one round at a time before ducking down again. Higgins switched the selector on his own weapon to single shot as well, but knew it would merely delay the inevitable—that moment when he squeezed the trigger and nothing happened. He raised the M16 above a dune crest, firing at what he thought might be a sniper position, then ducked down again.

It would be over soon, he realized, and for some reason decided that he didn’t want to die alone. He had always known death in combat was a possibility—for a Gurkha it was almost inevitable—but he had never imagined that he would be the last man standing. Kismet was only twenty meters away, but reaching his position would mean running a gauntlet of enemy fire.

Kismet wasn’t a Gurkha. He was by his own admission barely a soldier; he was a reserve officer, engaging in military drills in order to pay for a college education, with no combat experience. Higgins would have willingly died for any man in his regiment, even the much-loathed officers, but for this American?

You’re going to die anyway, mate.

He almost laughed aloud at the admonishment of his inner voice. “So I am.”

He triggered a three-round burst over the dune crest, then launched into motion. He had gone three steps when a 7.62-millimeter slug from an enemy AK-47 ripped across the back of his right thigh. He winced at the unexpected burning sensation, but his leg did not fail and he did not stop running. After a dozen more strides, with blood streaming down his leg and into his boot, he made a desperate dive for Kismet’s position.

“I’m out,” shouted Kismet.

Higgins indicated his own weapon. “My last.”

Kismet nodded gravely and laid his carbine aside. Then he did something that left Higgins stunned. He drew his blade, the kukri Higgins had given him earlier.

The large knife was the signature weapon of all Gurkha fighters, and this one had belonged to the fallen Corporal Singh. Higgins had offered it as a token of his respect for Kismet, in that now barely-remembered moment when he had glimpsed a bit of steel in the young officer, but had never expected to see it used by the American.

You’re one of us now, he had said. And at the time he had meant it, even though so much about what had happened that night remained beyond his comprehension.

How did I forget that? He wondered.

The lull in firing from their position gave a clear signal to the enemy. Higgins could hear the orders, barked in Arabic, for the soldiers to advance cautiously on their position. Not much longer now.

He had no idea how many rounds remained in the magazine of his M16—he figured he could probably count them on one hand. He set his gun beside Kismet’s and drew his own kukri.

The first man to crest the dune led with his rifle, flagging his approach with the barrel of his AK-47. Kismet heaved the boomerang shaped blade against the gun, smashing it aside in a spray of sparks then reversed the edge, hacking across the soldier’s torso. Higgins sprang at the next man, pivoting on his good leg and putting his full weight behind the cut.