Von Neumann’s War Read online

  His primary job, in his opinion, was to enable his commander’s orders. That meant, to First Sergeant Cady, anticipating the captain’s orders, then ensuring that all the little details got filled in. Whether the order was “get chow to the men in the field” or “wipe out those rag-head motherfuckers in the building.” He’d been with Captain Gries for less than three months but Greyhound was one of those officers with whom First Sergeant Cady “clicked.” He knew the primary mission was securing the scientists. But he also knew that Captain Gries wasn’t going to sit on his hands. Some officers froze when they got shot at. Some hunkered down and returned fire, hoping that the rag-heads would run. Gries believed in the infantry motto: “In the Absence of Orders, Assault!” Which meant some rag-heads were about to get the shit kicked out of them if they didn’t run now.

  He also anticipated that Captain Gries would use third for the assault. The first sergeant’s vehicle was forward with first platoon so if he wanted to get it stuck in the rag-heads, he’d have to make it to the back of the ambush. And along the way, he could do some little things to clean up the captain’s orders. If he shagged his ass.

  Behind Sergeant Cady’s back, the men called him “The Gazelle.” Like his commander, the spade-black NCO was tall, 6’ 4’’ and a runner. But unlike the wiry captain, Cady looked like an NFL linebacker with a huge torso and massive shoulders. Despite weighing in at nearly two hundred and fifty pounds, he was, if anything, faster than the captain in a sprint.

  He used that speed to good effect less than a second into the ambush, rolling out of the Humvee and darting to the rear, his M-4 in his left hand pointed towards the ambush like a giant pistol. As he ran he spotted targets, firing at them in three-round bursts as he pounded towards the LAVs in the middle of the column. He knew he wasn’t hitting anything, but the combined firepower of the unit was suppressing the fire from the rag-head ambushers and that was the point.

  As he pounded past the first LAV, one of the scientists stumbled out into the fire and stopped, looking around with an expression of acute stupidity. He was a very smart guy, a Swede who had something like six Ph.D.s. But he was in a situation for which he’d never prepared himself, mentally or physically.

  “Get out of the line of fire,” Cady bellowed. He slung the M-4 and in one continuous motion snatched the scientist off his feet by his suit collar, barely slowing in the run as he lifted the overweight physicist into the air to drag along behind with only his toes touching the ground.

  The far side of the road had a low wall surrounding a vacant lot. Cady wasn’t sure why anyone would put a wall around a vacant lot, but you saw that sort of thing a lot in Iraq. Some of the guys from Humvees that were drawing heavy fire had already bailed out and unassed to the wall. Cady just adjusted his run to the right a bit, switched hands on the physicist and tossed him over the wall towards one of the defending squads.

  “Keep an eye on him, Reese,” he yelled as he continued down the wall. He ducked a bit since people were firing right past him, but he figured none of his men would dare blue-on-blue him. “And if you see any more of these shit-heads, get them under cover!”

  “Top’s coming down!” Sergeant Reese yelled to the rest of the fighters crouched behind the wall. “Check fire for Gazelle!”

  Two more scientists were out in the road, one down with a bullet in his leg and the other bending over him, waving his hands around as if reciting a magic spell. What was actually going on, Cady knew, was that the second scientist had no idea what to do for a guy with a three finger thick chunk blown out of his thigh. It wasn’t gushing arterial blood, though, so the guy’d probably live. If he didn’t go into shock and die from that.

  Cady just sighed and grabbed them both by their suits, the casualty by the front and the other guy, who Cady recognized as the detail head, by the back, then darted to the wall and tossed them both over. The detail head, a supercilious and scrawny French asshole who’d been a particular pain in the ass, actually spent some time in midair. There was a nasty crack when he hit the ground.

  “Medic!” Cady bellowed, heading down-range to third’s position. “And bring a splint!”

  * * *

  Captain Gries saw First Sergeant Cady toss two guys over the wall on the left-hand side of the road and nodded.

  “Top’s up to form,” he murmured, as the massive NCO continued his sprint towards the rear of the column.

  “Sir, we’re taking a lot of fire here,” Specialist Reynolds said nervously. “Maybe we should unass?”

  “Negative,” Gries replied, glancing over his shoulder. He could see the point of third platoon, which had been almost entirely outside the ambush, heading around the side of the building. And the fire from the ambushers had already started to slack off. They were either running or being effectively suppressed by the counterfire from the infantry company. “We’ll be clear soon.”

  He paused as the first sergeant switched from the left side of the street to the right, actually running into the ambush fire, and cracked open his door.

  “How’s it going, Top?” Shane yelled as the NCO, who was carrying about seventy pounds in armor, weapons, water and ammo, thundered past like an Olympic sprinter.

  “Cool as shit, sir!” First Sergeant Cady yelled back, his face splitting in a grin of white teeth that were startling against his skin. “I think I broke Dr. Caseaux’s arm!”

  “Hoowah!” Shane yelled back. “Don’t let ’em get away, First Sergeant!”

  He closed his door just as a round bounced off it, then felt the vehicle shake from a series of impacts; someone was trying to track in on the running NCO.

  “Gotta lead him more,” he muttered to no one in particular as the armor on his window spalled from a direct hit, leaving the deformed 7.62 round stuck in the thick plexiglass about five inches from his head. “Missed me, missed me, now you gotta kiss me…”

  * * *

  First Sergeant Cady rounded the corner of the building and got to the side door while third platoon’s point, Specialist Charles Walters, was still kicking at the door with his boot.

  “Scat,” Cady said, slapping the specialist on the shoulder while his foot was in midair preparing for another kick. The slap sent the specialist stumbling to the side four feet and onto his back, but if he noticed, it wasn’t apparent; he was up on his feet again before Top had gotten in his first kick.

  It only took a single kick from one of Top’s size sixteens, though, for the light wooden door to open, splintering away from its hinges and onto the floor.

  “Stack up!” Sergeant Gregory shouted. The squad leader of second squad, third herd, Gregory was a relative newbie in Iraq and still worked “by the book.” The book said that the point took the door down, then the remainder of the squad “stacked,” closed up with each other to enter the room with each member of the squad having a particular area to cover on entry.

  He’d never actually been in an entry with the Gazelle and wasn’t prepared for the actions of the massive first sergeant, who blocked the squad, then tossed a frag through the door.

  “Back,” Cady said, waving the stack back along the left wall. He’d tossed the grenade well back and to the right, so the fragments were unlikely to penetrate the left wall. But frags were tricky; you never knew how they’d bounce. He crouched by the door with his left shoulder leaned towards it, weapon at tactical, and depended on taking any bouncers on his armor.

  The grenade went off with a “crack” and there was a small secondary that blasted dust out of the door and a hole in the right wall.

  “They put IEDs in the door,” Cady said, glancing over his shoulder at Gregory as he darted into the dust. “You either do a close check or you try to detonate it.”

  “Got it, Top,” Gregory panted as the stack moved into the room. He knew the first sergeant had been at the front of the column when the ambush went off. How in the hell he’d suddenly appeared, the sergeant couldn’t understand. He kept doing that, just appearing out of nowhere. It was u
ncanny.

  The room beyond was empty of anything but junk and cobwebs with an open door on the far side. That led to a narrow corridor but just beyond the door there was a staircase that led up.

  “Specialist Thomas,” Gregory said, tapping the soldier directly in front of him. “Secure this location with primary direction of security…”

  “Follow me, Sergeant,” Cady interjected. “Bring your squad.”

  The first sergeant bounded to the first landing in two massive strides, turning to cover the top as fire started to die away upstairs.

  “Oh, no you don’t,” Cady said. “You’re not getting away from the Gazelle.”

  * * *

  “Romeo Three-One… this is Echo Two… Five.”

  Captain Gries sighed and picked up the mike.

  “Johnny, this is the CO. We’re encrypted. Go plain.” The third platoon leader was a butterbar and this was only his second firefight. He tended to get flustered.

  “Sir, we’ve performed entry on the side of the building,” Second Lieutenant John Crevasse said nervously. “The first sergeant entered with my second squad. First squad is in support.”

  “Roger,” Gries said, looking down the road. All the scientists were either still in the vehicles or over the wall and at least out of sight if not out of danger. He could see one trooper down on the road with a couple of troops pulling him out of the line of fire, but so far casualties appeared to be light. “Move yourself and first squad to the rear of the building. Do not enter. Try to find a point that you can interdict movement out of the building. Second platoon, detach one squad to cover the left side of the building. Let Top clear the second floor, then we’ll see what’s what.”

  * * *

  “Specialist Nelms!” Crevasse yelled.

  “Hoowah, sir!” Specialist Nelms raised his head up in response and rushed to the lieutenant.

  “I’m moving first squad to cover the rear of this building but with all these goddamned buildings in the way I’m not sure we can cover it from ground level. I want you to get the high ground and give us some cover.” Lieutenant Crevasse pointed to the south and across the street at the five-story office complex.

  “Yes, sir! Got the high ground, sir!” Specialist Nelms hefted his Barrett .50 caliber sniper rifle and trotted across the street, looking for a good snipe point.

  He weaved in and out of the shadows like an expert hunter, which he was. He had grown up in central Texas hunting whitetail and mule deer. It was only recently, however, that he had been stalk-hunting terrorist insurgents. Deer didn’t shoot back with cheap imitation Russian or Chinese RPG-7s — and cheap or not they still would kill you dead as doornails. Specialist Nelms had just happened to be one of the lucky few who scored 50 out of 50 on the annual corps marksmanship test. Before that he had a pretty cushy job in the motor pool. But a perfect score was a perfect score. The military being short on snipers, he was handed a Barrett and shifted to a line unit.

  Nelms moved quickly to an alleyway that led to a blown-out wall in the five-story building. He slipped through the hole in the wall and cautiously made it to the stairwell. It was his job to make it to high ground and cover for first squad, the second platoon detachment, and Top. Specialist Nelms didn’t want to let them down — especially not Top. He liked Top and believed in the first sergeant’s credo: Do unto others before they do unto you.

  * * *

  First Sergeant Cady stopped again at the second landing. The stairs continued upwards to the third floor, but he hadn’t seen any fire from up there. There was a door at the top of the landing and he tried the knob. Unlocked. He opened the door slowly, checking for telltales of an IED and finding none, then peeked around the corner. There was a corridor with several doors. From some of the open doors he could hear Arabic voices and the occasional crack of gunfire.

  “We’re going to clear room-by-room,” the first sergeant said over his shoulder. The guy directly behind him was Specialist Herr, the squad automatic weapon gunner. The first sergeant held out his M-4 and snatched the SAW out of the gunner’s hand. “Feed me.”

  With that he stepped quietly down the hall, moving remarkably silently for his bulk, until he got to the first door. He waved his hand to stop the stack behind him and armed another grenade, tossing it into the room carefully at the level of the floor, then stepping well clear of the door.

  The grenade went off with a bang and the first sergeant darted through the door while the fragments were still pinging around the room. There were three tangos in the room, one on the ground screaming from fragments in his legs, most of a body next to him and the third just turning away from the sandbagged position by the window.

  Cady targeted the shooter by the window with a burst of fire that spun him to lean out the window, then backed into the hallway.

  “Two tango KIA,” he said into his squad radio, “one tango WIA. Room clear.” Herr darted past him and kicked the wounded tango’s weapon aside, dropping to one knee to slip plastic cuffs on the terrorist’s wrists.

  The stack had passed the first sergeant and he watched as they cleared the next room. As the first two members of the stack entered the room, a tango darted out of one of the rooms down the corridor. He headed for the far end, though, where there were presumably more stairs, rather than trying to fight the American troops in the hallway.

  Cady had too many bodies between him and the tango to target the ambusher, but Privates Jones and Mahoney from the stack engaged him, tossing the terrorist to the floor. He was only wounded, though, and still tried to crawl to the doorway at the end.

  Cady moved forward as the stack entered the room, dropping to one knee on the far side of the door to cover the hallway. He’d barely taken a knee when the bulbous round of an RPG peeked around the corner of the third door down.

  Now, body armor will stop a lot, but it’s not going to stop an RPG. And the grenadier wasn’t in sight. That didn’t stop Cady, though — he just laid the sights of the SAW on the round itself and fired, throwing himself to the floor immediately afterwards.

  The 5.56 rounds from the SAW impacted on the casing of the grenade, throwing it upwards just as the grenadier pulled the trigger. The round fired, frying the grenadier with backblast from the floor and filling the room beyond him with more blast and flame. The round itself impacted with the ceiling and, being within its minimum safe-arming distance, bounced off the ceiling and skittered down the hallway with a whistling sound.

  Cady rolled into the doorway, tripping a member of the squad who was on his way out. He grabbed the troop, who turned out to be Sergeant Gregory, and threw him into the room, toppling two more members of the squad in the process.

  The RPG slithered down the walls of the corridor until it impacted on the far end. Herr had just stepped out of the first cleared room when it passed and he caught fragments in his legs and right arm while the explosion blew him off his feet.

  “I’m hit!” Herr called, rolling back into the room. “Medic!”

  “Stay there!” Cady called, rolling back into the corridor. He ignored the intervening doors, pounded down the hallway to the door where the RPG gunner had been and tossed another grenade into the room. As soon as it was out of his hand, he jumped back, throwing himself to the floor with his back to the left-hand wall opposite the previous room.

  The grenade went off with a crack followed by a massive secondary explosion; he’d managed to roll it right into the ready ammo for the RPG gunners. The purple-orange explosion blew out the interior walls of the room, filling the corridor with smoke and dust and momentarily deafening the first sergeant. He rolled over backwards, coming to his feet and spinning to the previous room. He peeked around the door but there wasn’t anything to worry about there; the explosion had blown in the walls to that room as well and the terrorists were lying on the ground, writhing in pain.

  Stepping into the room, he could see into the one that had held the RPG gunner and through holes into the last room in the hallway. He dropped to
one knee and scanned the opening, looking for targets. A tango was just getting to his feet and the first sergeant brought him to the floor with a short burst before springing to his feet and darting through the hole in the wall into the RPG room. There was a massive hole in the floor near the corridor wall that he had to negotiate around carefully. There were also two or more bodies, bits really, scattered around the room.

  He passed through, staying away from the windows where occasional “friendly” rounds continued to crack, to the far hole. There wasn’t any definitive movement, just the one tango he’d targeted on the floor. He tossed a grenade through, anyway, backing away to avoid the fragments, then exploding through the hole as soon as the grenade went off.

  There had been one tango by the windows on the near wall, but he was riddled with fragments and coughing blood, his AK on the floor by his hand. Cady kicked it away, then made his way across the creaking floor to the door, peeking into the corridor and ducking back as rounds cracked from the far end.

  “You shoot me, Gibson, and I’ll put you on vehicle painting duty for the rest of your natural life!” the first sergeant bellowed.

  “Sorry, Top!” the private called back.

  “Coming out!” the first sergeant yelled. “Somebody come through and tag these tangos! And somebody else get Herr’s ammo!”

  * * *

  Specialist Nelms sighted the building that first squad was taking rear cover positions on. He could see and hear a lot of action taking place on the second floor. And a lot of shouting; the first sergeant’s accent was clear even through the bellows.

  The second room that he came to on the fifth floor had a jagged hole, a remnant from previous street fighting, down near the floor. He set the Barrett down and peeked through, careful to keep his silhouette away from the window. The hole was wide enough that he could cover the entire roof of the building across the way and get an angle into the side street.