“The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.”
-Bertrand Russell
“Stop!” yelled a voice. It was not the amplified one this time, but it was still stern and forceful. Though at the moment it was hard to tell. Everything sounded very distant, coming to him only through a strong haze that had descended on his mind…
The voices closest to him broke off and began speaking in a different direction and different tones, hushed and subdued. But this new voice shouted them down quickly. He could scarcely hear what was being said over the fractured noises and images still running through his head.
He opened his eyes. At least he thought they were open. All he could see was the thick haze of grey and black.
“Secure that man!” it said, somewhat closer now. “Lower your weapons, and secure that man now!”
He felt the presence of hands on his arms again. They pulled and brought him to his feet. The light of day trickled back in and swept everything else from him, letting the cold, harsh waking world in. He could see a face too, an unconcealed one that was now just inches from his own.“Who are you?” it yelled. The noise was loud enough that he could hear it without trouble now.
“Sergeant Aaron Dezba,” he said with some effort. “First Platoon, Bravo Company. Five-Nine-Four, Three-Nine, Seven-Two-Six-Three.”
The face nodded at him with steely eyes. “Hello Sergeant Dezba. I’m Lieutenant Mencken. And you are your boys are occupying my hospital.”
His Hospital? Dezba smiled at that. So they were opening with some posturing. He was not quite cognizant enough to discuss details just yet, and tried to stall.
“I don’t suppose we could talk somewhere more private?”
Mencken looked about them at all the men who were assembled under his command. He gave Dezba a questing look that suggested he was less than impressed.
“This is as private as your going to get, Sergeant. So speak your piece so I can decide what to do with you.”
Okay, man’s in charge, Dezba thought. No sense in appealing to his soft side if he didn’t have one. But even a hard ass could be expected to make allowances for a packed hospital.
“Lieutenant, we’ve got wounded in that hospital, some men who’ve been in there for months or longer. You attack, you’re gonna kill a lot of servicemen who’ve done nothing to harm you.”
Mencken didn’t hesitate to reply. “My concern isn’t the men who are out of action, Sergeant. It’s the hand full of soldiers who’ve been harassing my men and now take shelter amongst the wounded.”
Dezba perked. So he wasn’t concerned with what was inside? Was it too much to hope that he didn’t know what that was?
“If you persist in doing that,” he continued “I can’t stop you. But I can damn well kill you where you stand, and if plenty of other people die in the process, then that’s on your head, not mine. I can’t be held responsible for combatants who embed themselves amongst the wounded and the indigent.”
He looked down to Dezba’s arm and frowned. When he looked back to meet Dezba’s face, his eyes were burning with an intensity that hadn’t been there before.
“Speaking of my men, we found two with their necks sliced. The other one had his neck crushed. What the hell kind of man pulls something like that off, huh? What’s it take to that kind of damage?”
A damaged man, he thought. A cornered man. A man with nothing to lose and a whole lot of fury. Naturally, he didn’t verbalize these. He doubted the Lieutenant would understand. As hard as he acted, he doubted the man knew a fraction of the horror people like him faced on a daily basis.
“With respect, sir, you attacked us. Only question is, are you going to keep attacking?”
Mencken stepped forward, his helmet on the verge of touching Dezba’s brow. The burning look remained fixed on him, and he felt all the more at this range.
“That depends on you, Sergeant. Are you prepared to come out there and surrender yourselves? Or are you going to force me to come in after you?”
Dezba took a deep breath. “Are we negotiated terms?”
Mencken raised the weapon he had kept at his side until now. He slipped it from his right hand and placed the stock in his left, his finger groping around the trigger.
“You want terms? Here they are: you and your men come out here, you get down on your goddamned knees, and you stand aside as we take all those wounded into custody. And if I choose to take the lives of three of yours in exchange for the ones I know you killed, then you’ll just have to stand aside as that happens too.”
Dezba felt cold again, but not because of nerves. This was something different. In his mind, he could blood bursting forth again; of a man holding his neck and turning purple as his artery was severed and his throat was crushed in a vice-like grip. He even heard the sound of servo-motors buzzing as his hand curled into a ball at his side. Mencken noticed too.
“You don’t seriously expect me to accept that, do you?”
Mencken patted the stock of his weapon. “No…” he said with a smile. “I don’t.”
* * *
He found the Corporal waiting for him on the other side of the aperture. He barely noticed him at first, the result of going from light to dark so quickly. But the extreme worry was apparent as soon as he spoke.
“What happened? Why did you go out there?”
“I tried to appeal to his human side. Didn’t work.”
“So… what happens now?”
Dezba looked around and blinked a few times to adjust his eyes. In the upper corners of the corridor, he could see the charges and demolitions set and waiting. He leaned to his right to see the side doors and noted the motion sensors on the Claymores as well. Everything seemed to be ready.
“The ROE’s going to have to change, Corporal. Even if we could kill all the foot mobiles with our controlled demolition, those heavy weapons and LAV out front would demo the rest of the place in no time.”
“You think they would?”
Dezba looked at the Corporal. How to explain that the conversation he just had left no doubt in his mind that the Lieutenant would level the place and everyone in it, and that it was essentially his fault too?
“Ah, I know the man. He’ll do it in a heartbeat if we push him.”
“Then what do we do?”
Dezba sighed and looked around some more. He spotted their ammo cache in the adjoining room. All the weapons they had between them, stocked and pooled in one place.
“Get the others, we need to go over our inventory and figure out if we can take them out in one shot.”
The Corporal swallowed hard and nodded. He ran down the length of the hallway to get the others, no doubt still busy at work laying the last of the charges and setting up the detonators in the rear. Dezba made for the table where their equipment lay, hoping that the answer to their problem might lay in their somewhere.
Between what remained of their platoon, they had a small store of M203 grenades, frags, flashbangs, plenty of mags, and two M72s. And of course there was their limited supply of C4 and Claymores, which they had already put to use. Enough to do some harm, for sure. But not enough to take out 24 men, three heavy gun emplacements, and an LAV, not when the combined force of all these were firing back at them.
The quickened boot steps coming up behind him turned his attention to his squad. He came about and noted the looks on their faces. They looked ready, but not entirely confident either. Word must have gotten around that the opposition they faced was something more than just a few foot soldiers and small arms fire. There was no way to sugar coat things, and no time for it either.
“Alright squad, listen up. We got some angry, pissed off dudes on our doorstep. They’ve made it pretty clear we’re to surrender or die, and they’re prepared to kill anyone they have to make either one of those happen. What’s more, their CO conveyed in no uncertain terms that some of us might die anyway even if we surrendered. Seems that the Geneva Convention is pretty much bunk right now, law of the jungle applies.”
Some angry murmurs and words of disbelief went up from the group.
“What’s worse, I’m not sure we have the firepower to thwart these guys before we wipe us all out. We’ve got enough firepower to make a dent, but I’m just not sure its enough…”
More angry murmurs. He knew how they felt.
“But if we’re determined to try, we better damn well make it count. Seeing as how the assholes out there are determine to give us no choice, we might as well kick them in the teeth for it. They want to corner us… well, there are few things more dangerous than a cornered rattlesnake, right?”
The angry noises turned into murmurs of assent. Slowly, their spirits began to rally, something which he needed right now.
“So… we better deploy just right.” He grabbed one of the M72′s and held it in his hands. “Any thoughts?”
Corporal Watkins looked around at his men, and was first to speak. “How about we deploy those guided missiles to the roof? Get a better shot off that way. We take out that LAV first, maybe we can knock out those gun emplacements next.”
“Not bad. If they lose their heavy weapons, they might just try to storm the building and try to kill us face to face.”
One of the privates smiled. “Then we blow the front end and crush the fuckers.”
Watkins shrugged. “Bit of a long shot, but its better than letting them drag us out and shoot us execution-style.”
Dezba nodded. They weren’t quite Gung Ho, but at least they weren’t drowning in their own despairs. He needed them thinking like him right now, like a man who could be expected to be unstable and desperate. Only then did they have the slightest hope of coming out of this alive, even if it did leave them scarred and horrified for their rest of their natural days.
