War Dog

  By Jim Roberts

  Copyright 2020 Jim Roberts

  Kindle Edition, License Notes

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  Author’s Note

  This novella takes place directly after events in Spirit Warrior

  Chapter One

  Jufawa, South Sudan

  April 21st

  A GRENADE LANDED directly in front of Krieger.

  Even with the darkness of night and the sound of gunfire echoing through the streets of the village of Jufawa, there was no mistaking the object that clattered against the metal siding of the hut in front of him.

  Typically, soldiers in this situation are trained to either drop prone to avoid the explosive fragments or make a grab for the device and throw it aside. Common wisdom showed that any of these actions could prevent a normal soldier from having his testicles minced.

  But Krieger wasn’t a normal soldier.

  Instead, he took the moment to judo toss the luckless Centurion he’d been grappling with a second earlier, on top of the incendiary. The Olympus trooper had the length of a single breathe to realize he was completely screwed. The frag exploded—shredding the poor fool into a shower of raining bits of armor and body parts. Krieger flung an arm up to protect his face as he felt a few small chunks of the private military trooper fleck across his body. As he’d hoped, the reactive armor the Centurion wore absorbed the outward blast, protecting the big Russian from any real danger.

  “Dasvidanya, my friend!” Krieger grunted in his husky voice. While there may not have been anyone to hear him in the alleyway of the tiny South Sudanese village of Jufawa, the big Russian couldn’t resist embellishing his flair for the dramatic. Wasting Olympus fools—especially war-crime committing Centurions such as these—never got old for Krieger.

  Knowing whoever tossed that grenade would be on their way to check the results any second, Krieger bent down and fished through the scattered heaps of garbage covering the alley. He’d been forced to drop his AK-74 when the Centurion had pounced on him seemingly out of nowhere. Sweat poured off his forehead, soaking his week’s growth of beard. His tactical vest was equally damp underneath the rain poncho he wore.

  He’d just managed to find his weapon when the sound of footsteps behind him forced the big Russian to whirl around. A second Centurion burst into view from behind one of the domiciles, gripping an FN F2000 assault rifle in his hands. The futuristic-looking Belgian-made gun had become Olympus’s most widely adopted weapon over the past year. It had been a while since Krieger had seen one up close and had definitely not wanted to be on the receiving end of one.

  Blam!

  In a flash of gunfire, the trooper’s helmet exploded, showering the wall across from the big Russian with bloody chunks of blood and brain matter. The dead Centurion dropped to the ground.

  A voice came from off to the side of the alley, hidden in the shadows. “Where would you be if you didn’t have me watching your back, Alexei?”

  Krieger lowered his AK. “Probably waxing my asshole on a beach somewhere, Walker. And don’t call me Alexei.”

  Curtis Walker exited the shadows, pulling down the bandana he wore across his boyish, dimpled face. In his hands he clutched a smoking FN FAL battle rifle—a fairly common NATO weapon found all over these parts. The gun, like others in the Peacemakers, was retrofitted to fire special armor-piercing rounds developed stateside to deal with the protection used by Centurions.

  Despite prior words, Krieger was glad to see his old comrade. “Do you know what happened to Danny?” he asked, checking the feeding ramp on his AK.

  Walker shrugged as he moved over to stand beside the big Russian. “Not sure. We got separated a ways back.” Walker reloaded his rifle, taking care not to jam the weapon in the dark. The one-time arms smuggler and all-around outlaw had now embraced his role within the Peacemakers—that of a solid jack-of-all-trades man of action.

  “We need to find little Canadian and fast,” Krieger said, checking the street for any contacts. “This place is crawling with these bastards.”

  Walker scowled. “Maybe next time you won’t stop for directions in a tavern that’s full of off-duty Olympus grunts!”

  The Russian grimaced. “How was I supposed to know that? Besides, they were Stream-deprived. They were sloppy. Otherwise, I’d be dead.”

  “You’re always full of excuses, Alexei,” Walker grumbled.

  Krieger sighed.

  It had just been a shitty week from the start.

  As Walker moved up beside him, Krieger reflected on the entire stupid plan that had led him and his strike team to this place in time.

  The small squad of Peacemakers consisting of himself, Curtis Walker, and the team’s main point man, Danny ‘Whisper’ Callbeck, had arrived in the world’s newest country of South Sudan only a few days prior. Their mission had been simple: locate and capture Joe Braddock, the former Staff Sergeant of the Peacemakers.

  Krieger recalled the shock he and the team had received when they viewed the images of Braddock photographed amidst the sea of dead bodies that day back at the Cottage. It didn’t seem possible that Joe could have gone off the deep end to such a degree.

  It had been nearly six months since Braddock had deserted the team he’d helped build and during that time, Krieger had felt almost on autopilot. He missed his good friend more than he would admit out loud and seeing Joe implicated in a massacre of innocent people had hit him especially hard.

  The team’s head honcho, Alistair ‘Brick’ Reynolds had ordered Danny Callbeck to hunt down and apprehend Braddock before the Peacemaker Unit could be drawn further into a diplomatic relations nightmare. Without hesitation, Krieger had volunteered to go with him. A day later, Danny and his hand-picked team were rocketing across the Atlantic on board the Spirit Walker, fully prepared to quickly find and detain Joe.

  That simple-sounding task had already proven to be a monumental headache.

  Having recently come out of a devastating civil war, the new country of South Sudan had, for a brief time, been under a coalition government formed between members of its largest political party, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, or ‘SPLM’. The coalition itself was shaky at best, as its leadership was shared between two men of equal power. Disagreements within the government and massive economic turmoil had all led to an imbalance of ethnic tensions between the government and unaligned tribes and citizens across the country. The government—with its poorly trained military strained to a breaking point—was fresh out of options to bring in line the multitude of rebel and ethnic forces resisting their oppressive regime.

  And that, as the saying goes, was where Olympus came in.

  Two weeks ago, the UN reported that a deal had been struck between the government forces of the SPLM and Olympus for two regiments of Centurions to aid in pacifying the population. These forces were to be led by one of Olympus’s higher-ranking members, Tribune Saladin. In the weeks that followed, Olympus ran roughshod through Eastern Equatoria, the most rebellious district in the country. Reports of ethnic cleansing
and other atrocities were rampant following Olympus’s entry to the chaos.

  It was amidst this chaos so common to Africa that Joe Braddock had reappeared after the battle in the Caribbean six months earlier.

  Upon locating the tiny village of Kumbasa, the Peacemakers—under the guise of UN security personnel—had learned that news that the massacre Braddock had been photographed in was being suppressed by the SPLM forces. None of the civilians would speak to them and gathering any real information quickly proved impossible. The only intel they could find was that nearly forty innocent people were killed along with several Olympus personnel—troops who were ostensibly in the town to ‘guard’ the civilians.

  The massacre was being blamed by the SPLM on the rebel Joe Braddock.

  Krieger knew the truth had to fall somewhere in between.

  After that, they’d found picking up Joe’s trail hadn’t been easy. Under cover, Krieger and Walker had managed to learn that a man of Braddock’s appearance had last been seen near a local cattle village called Jufawa. After a half day’s journey by truck, they’d arrived at the village to find it nearly deserted, save for a few shady native militiamen and some local merchants. Krieger had suggested the direct approach of simply asking for help in finding their AWOL comrade.

  It hadn’t worked out well.

  Unbeknownst to the Peacemakers, two entire squads of Olympus Centurions had taken this very night to hunker down in the tiny hamlet’s only local tavern for a rousing time of drinking and hassling the locals. When Krieger had walked in, swathed in a rain poncho but little else to hide his distinctive characteristics, it hadn’t taken long for the Centurions to identify him as one of the Peacemaker’s most visible members.

  After that, all hell had broken loose.

  Krieger, backed by Curtis Walker, had been forced into a running gunfight through the dark streets and alleyways of Jufawa. The few frightened locals remaining were awakened to bullets cracking through the night. Many fled into the surrounding African wilderness. It was now all the two Peacemakers could do to get out of this village alive, let alone find their AWOL comrade.

  Crouched amidst the alleyway, Krieger gestured to Walker to move back into the safety of darkness, away from the main drag.

  Walker covered the alley with his FN FAL, wondering aloud, “I can’t believe you convinced me to join this crazy unit, Alexei. I was always a pretty good cook, you know? I could have been in Havana—frying up some steaks right about now.”

  “I hate cooking,” Krieger said in reply, “I’d burn Kool-Aid. Where is Danny?”

  “I can’t raise him on the comlink. Either he’s not answering by choice, or reception out here is for shit.”

  A sustained crackling of gunfire came from the east end of the village. Krieger winked to his companion. “Sounds like somebody found him…not that they’ll be alive much longer, dah?”

  They ducked and weaved through the collection of domiciles, grateful for the cover they provided. The village barely had any lighting to speak of, just a scattershot array of low-wattage hanging lamps decked here and there.

  Walker and Krieger were following the gunfire coming from the east when the heavy sound of a diesel engine reverberated through the main street.

  “The hell is that?” Walker asked in a hushed tone.

  Krieger crouched low and padded through the alleyway to take a quick peek around a hut at the new arrival.

  A massive heavy terrain vehicle, twice the size of a typical pickup truck, barreled down the main drag of the village.

  “Looks like an Olympus Scythia armored truck,” Krieger whispered back to his comrade, his danger senses going into overdrive. The truck, designed after the US army’s Mine Resistant Ambush Protected trucks was heavily reinforced and colored a panther-black obsidian that almost caused it to disappear into the dark streets. On the roof was mounted a ‘CROWS’ nest, or Common Remotely Operated Weapon Station, that supported a mounted M2 .50 caliber machine gun that swiveled back and forth—sweeping the streets for anyone it deemed hostile.

  Walker cursed into the darkness, “Fucking great! A goddamn tank! Now what do we do?”

  Krieger pulled his companion back into the darkness of the alley, careful of the possibility the CROW system utilized infrared targeting. “First off, we find Danny. Second off, we stop being pansy asses and prepare to fight!”

  “Are you insane? What the hell can we do against that?”

  “Just stay on my ass…it’s where you deserve to be, crybaby.” Krieger didn’t wait for Walker’s response before hightailing it from their position. He heard his comrade let out a scowl before following after him. Krieger made sure to run perpendicular to the Scythia, dodging behind the ramshackle huts to keep out of the CROWS’ line of sight. If that .50 cal marked them, it would be Peacemaker meat sauce all over the place.

  For the next minute, the two men dodged and weaved through the darkness, taking care to keep the Scythia in his line of sight. Both men were only armed with their assault rifles and a few grenades—nothing capable of dealing with the massive truck.

  Where the hell was that damned Canadian?

  “Freeze!”

  An electronically altered voice from thirty feet away yanked Krieger’s attention from the Scythia. Across the main road of the village, a group of three Centurions had marked them. The glowing green eyes of their helmets shown eerily in the low light of the village.

  “Chyort!” Krieger swore in his native tongue. The Scythia was a good twenty yards ahead of them and had so far not marked their position.

  That would change quickly enough.

  Walker wasted no time. His response was to swing his FN FAL across and pump a single armor-piercing round into the visor of the lead Centurion. The bullet cored out an inch-wide hole in the trooper’s brainpan before exploding out the back. The dead Olympus soldier hit the ground without a twitch.

  Krieger looked to the Scythia ahead of them. The CROWS emplacement abruptly swiveled around to aim at their position. At the same time, the remaining Centurions—slower on the draw than was typical for their pay-grade—opened up with their F2000 rifles. Bullets clanked and ricocheted off the metal huts and debris around them. Krieger barely had a second to move before the place he’d been crouching was perforated with flying lead. Walker, still firing his FAL, pulled back into the alley, hoping the darkness would shield them for a moment.

  Then, there was the chilling sound of the massive .50 caliber opening up from the CROWS nest. The gun pulverized the entire metal hut the Peacemakers had used as cover from the Scythia. Massive rounds of hot lead blasted through the alley, ripping apart anything and everything in its line of sight.

  Krieger judged they’d be dead in four more seconds.

  “What do we do?” Walker shouted above the din of the machinegun as the two men dropped behind one of the still-standing huts for protection.

  “Cover me!” Krieger barked.

  “What?” cried Walker above the noise. He had a second to parse the command before Krieger bolted like a crazy man into the alley, running as fast as he could towards the Scythia. Walker, angry that his comrade had left him alone, yelled out, “Krieger, you crazy sonuvabitch!”

  The Russian exploded out from the alleyway directly behind the Scythia. In the corner of his eye, he spotted another half-dozen Centurions entering the fray near their comrades. They would be weapons-free any second. Krieger prayed his wild plan didn’t get Walker killed.

  After all…who would help him cheat at darts on pool night?

  The .50 cal was deafening this close-up, but Krieger paid it no mind. The sides of the armored truck had footholds for easier access to the top of the vehicle. Slinging his AK, the Russian jumped onto the side of the Scythia, climbing up as quickly as he could. Reaching the top, he moved to stand over the CROWS emplacement which was still firing at Walker’s last location.

  Examining the CROWS, Krieger saw that the .50 cal was attached to a swiveling gyro-stabilizer by several
metal bolts and operated by a system of mechanical parts that in turn fired the gun.

  The whole thing was quite advanced—which meant Krieger knew exactly what he needed to do.

  Raising the AK, he fired a quick burst of armor-piercing rounds into the casing that held the .50 cal, breaking it to pieces. Dropping the AK, he grasped the weapon hard with both hands. The gimble the gun was attached to was only a thin piece of metal. With a grunt, he yanked back on the gun. His thick, corded muscles bulged as he grit his teeth, pulling as hard as he could.

  With a sudden sound of metal breaking, his sheer strength won out and he tore the gun loose of the CROWS nest. The weapon was still attached to an ammo bandoleer connected to the emplacement. Clutching the gun awkwardly in his brawny arms, the big Russian leveled it at the Centurions who were now beginning to cross the road towards Walker’s position.

  “Adios, eblan assholes!”

  The Centurions had just then realized something was amiss with the Scythia. Several turned, weapons training on the big Russian standing on top of the half-tank.

  Too late.

  Krieger opened up with the .50 cal, grunting as the sheer power of the weapon sent round after round towards the group of Centurions. He saw the initial salvo tear into the troopers' reactive armor like it was tin foil. At this range, the gun reduced the men, not to meat sauce, but to paint.

  A mad laugh escaped the lips of the big Russian as he rained hot death upon the Olympus troops. The recoil of the massive gun was as enjoyable a sensation to him as sex on a summer night.

  He was in his element. Everything made sense in moments like this.

  Death was what he knew and he dealt it out in spades.

  The Centurions had lost six of their number in Krieger’s initial salvo. They attempted to shoot down the Russian, who made an excellent target standing on top of the truck. But whether it be panic or just divine providence, their bullets failed to hit him. The Russian answered their attack with a renewed salvo of the massive gun that ripped through the leftover Centurions; separating limbs and torsos from their armored forms.