Skip to content

Tag: Short Fiction

The Unity Wars – Caractacan Honor
Announcing A Maelstrom Rising Anthology
Taliesin’s Riddle

The Colonel Has A Plan Part 3

Published by Peter Nealen on October 17, 2017

They hadn’t gone far when Lewis was tugging on Brannigan’s sleeve.  “Sir, we just got a message from Team Two,” he yelled in the Colonel’s ear.  “They are mission complete, but are pinned down under fire, and cut off from the beach.”

Brannigan glanced forward, where the wounded Lance Corporal Clark was lying on the deck.  Time was short, but he had a responsibility to those boys down on the ground, too.  He started working his way forward, stepping over and past knees, boots, M27s, and two LSATs, carefully moving around Clark’s supine form, until he got to the cockpit.

“We need to divert to Shilka Position Two,” he shouted to the pilot.  “Some of my boys are in trouble, and need some support.”

“This ain’t a gunship, sir, and we’ve got a casualty aboard,” the copilot protested.

“Don’t try to bullshit me, son,” Brannigan replied.  “We’ve got a minigun and a 240 mounted for a reason, and it’s more than that team on the ground has.  Take us in.”  He stayed where he was, but motioned for Lewis to hand him the handset, cursing the multiple tac frequencies that went along with combined arms warfare.  The recon teams were on one channel, the Battalion Combat Team was on another, and the birds were on a third.  And that was after he’d ranted and raved to simplify matters as much as possible.

Lewis handed him the handset and he flipped his right-hand Peltor headpiece out of the way, pressing the black plastic to his ear.  “Tiburon Two, this is Kodiak Six,” he called.

The answering radio call came after a moment’s delay.  He could hear the rattle of gunfire in the background.  “Kodiak Six, Tiburon Two,” Staff Sergeant Holmes replied.

“We are inbound to your position with air support, Tiburon Two,” Brannigan said.  “ETA two mikes.  Give me a sitrep and a position.  We’re going to lay waste, and I don’t want you boys getting burned down by accident.”

Continue readingThe Colonel Has A Plan Part 3

The Colonel Has A Plan Part 1

Published by Peter Nealen on October 3, 2017

Staff Sergeant Elias Martinez had just checked the quick release affixed to the bow of the partially-deflated Zodiac for the third time when something made him look up.

There was a towering figure standing at the base of the CH-53’s ramp.  Martinez instinctively straightened, then yelled for the rest of his team.  There might be plenty of big Marines aboard the USS Boxer, but there was no mistaking the silhouette of the MEU Commander.  Colonel John Brannigan cut an altogether different figure.  There was something about the way he carried himself that set him apart and made him immediately recognizable.

What was surprising was the fact that the Colonel, with the squat form of Sergeant Major Santelli beside him, was in full kit.  Helmet, NVGs, plate carrier, mags, radio, blowout kit, rifle, the works.  He looked like he was ready to climb right on the bird and insert alongside Martinez’ Force Recon Team.  Which was unheard of, and something that Martinez suddenly found he more than vaguely dreaded.  No team leader wants an officer looking over his shoulder on an op, let alone the Colonel.

“Bring it in a minute, gents!” Brannigan boomed, managing to make himself heard over the racket of the Boxer’s flight deck.  The team clambered over the soft-ducked Zodiac and the rest of their gear until they were gathered in a tight semi-circle around Brannigan and Santelli.  They were a group of dark specters in the dimness of the flight deck, yards away from the superstructure’s lights, already kitted up and cammie-painted for the upcoming op.

“I wanted to meet up with all of the teams before you stepped off,” Brannigan shouted.  “You boys are going to be the envy of the entire Marine Corps, you know that?  You’ll be the only infantry Marines in the Fleet with an armored vehicle kill to your names, probably for years to come!”  He reached out and shook each man’s hand.  “I just wanted to stress one more time that we’re all counting on you.  Yeah, me included.  My ass is going to be on the lead bird going into the target village, so if you gunfighters don’t take those Shilkas out, I’ll be one of the first ones getting burned down.  So go get your kill on!  Good hunting, gents!”  He shook Martinez’ hand last, looking the Staff NCO in the eye as he did so, nodded once, and then turned and motioned to Santelli, jogging toward the next ’53 aft, where Team Two should be loaded up and ready to go.

“Let’s go!” Martinez yelled.  “Wheels up in,” he checked his watch, “three minutes!”

As the team clambered back on the helo, Sergeant Frank Able, Martinez’ Assistant Team Leader, leaned in to shout in his ear.  “Did you see the Colonel’s rifle?”

“Yeah,” Martinez replied.  Brannigan had been carrying an ancient, battered M4, with a lot of the bluing worn off.  It stood out in a unit that had already mostly transitioned to the newer M27s.  “That’s the way the Old Man rolls.  The word going around the Lance Corporal Underground says that he threatened to throw any officer overboard if he caught them with an M27 before all of the shooters had ‘em.”

“Damn,” was all that Able said, before he scrambled up and over to get into the CH-53.  He did a quick head count, then gave Martinez the thumbs up.  Martinez passed the same signal to the crew chief, and a moment later the big helo was surging up off the deck and into the East African night.

Continue readingThe Colonel Has A Plan Part 1

Six Miles West of Nogales

Published by Peter Nealen on July 24, 2017

If it hadn’t been for the earpiece, I never would have heard the radio over the snarl of the four-wheeler’s engine.

“Hillbilly, this is Plug,” Hank called.

I eased off the throttle and took one hand off the handlebars to key the radio.  “Send it, Plug.”

“Can you push up to the top of that ridgeline just to the east of you and take a look to the south?” he asked.  “Tell me what you see.”

“Sure thing,” I answered.  It wasn’t like we had a set patrol route, or even any particular need to be anywhere.  So far, this job had consisted of little more than long hours just hot-wheeling around the hills of southern Arizona on four-wheelers and the occasional pickup truck.

I gunned the engine and sent the sturdy little ATV surging up between the mesquites and the creosote bushes toward the ridge that Hank had indicated.  It wasn’t a long climb, but it was steep and rocky, with plenty more sagebrush and creosote bushes that I had to weave around.  But it still only took a couple of minutes to reach the top.

Halting my ATV, I stood on the running boards and pulled my binos out of the saddlebags.  As I lifted them to my eyes and scanned the open ground to the south, I quickly saw what Hank had been talking about.

There were four figures trotting through the grass and brush in the next draw over.  They were moving pretty quickly, and heading generally north.  Given that Hank and I were the only ones out on patrol at the time, and all of Manuel Lopez’s ranch hands were either working around the house and barns, or watching the herds to the east of us, that kind of narrowed things down.

“Plug, Hillbilly,” I sent, keeping the binos trained on the four.  “I do believe we have some uninvited visitors.”

“That’s what I saw, too,” he replied.  “Just wanted to corroborate it.  Meet you down below, and we’ll go say howdy?”

“Sure,” I answered.  I wasn’t going to complain about actually having some work to do.

The truth be told, even though we were all experienced warfighters, with years of work in the military and some in the contracting world, we had perhaps been a touch naïve when we’d started up our little company.  After all, we owned Praetorian Security, and we knew the score better than any of the soft-clothed financiers who owned most of the rest of the PMSCs out there.  We could determine our own equipment, pick our own jobs, and find the jobs that would keep us in the thick of it, in the shit.

We were finding out the hard way that those kinds of jobs were few and far between, and often involved a lot more shady business to get than we’d necessarily expected.  Most of the time, they were either outright illegal, or in some kind of gray area that tended to get all kinds of scrutiny, so the clients who had those sorts of jobs didn’t tend to be very forthcoming about them.  We’d set up our little private Special Operations company, only to find that we didn’t immediately have clients running to our doorstep.

Continue readingSix Miles West of Nogales