John Ringo: Unto the Breach

The briefing had never covered being cold… though. And he couldn’t understand where the flood of bright red pouring out of the bottom of his body armor had come from…

Adams slammed the butt of his SPR into the back of one of the fedayeen’s head and watched it buckle. The head and the butt. Fucking M-16 series weapons were lousy for close combat!

“Adams! 60s!”

Fuck! They were down to hand to hand in the fucking trenches . How in the fuck did Mike expect him to get the fucking machine-gun into action.

Oleg, though, had heard the call. He left his axe in the face of the Chechen he had just killed and picked up the 60 off the ground where it had been hidden. Another Chechen tumbled into the pit but he ignored the fedayeen as he cocked the weapon.

Adams wasn’t about to let Oleg outdo him. Stopping only to kick the Chechen so hard his mother was gonna bleed, he picked up his own and dropped the bipod into the firing position.

The target view was pure Chechens. So, taking Mike’s advice against his better judgement, he pulled back the trigger and started firing continuous.

The M-60 series of weapons was first developed in the 1950s as a replacement for the WWI era .30 caliber machine gun. Air cooled, the series had suffered throughout its existence with many problems. It tended to jam, it overheated quickly and when overheated would tend to “cook off”, fire continuously despite releasing the trigger as rounds were heated hot enough to “explode” when they touched the smoking breach. The barrels also tended to heat quickly to the point that they would “droop” and cause an explosion that destroyed the gun. Mixing “cookoff” with “droop” was a sure recipe for disaster.

The Army had eventually replaced the venerable M-60 with the M240 series manufactured by the Belgian firm of Fabrique Nationale. Machine-gunners throughout the Army and various other users had breathed a sigh of relief because while the M240 had its problems, it was head and shoulders above the 60.

The M-60E4 was the manufacturers attempt to regain that vast market it had lost. Besides various improvements to make the gun more reliable, overall, they had paid tremendous attention to barrel and breach design, using a series of new materials to improve barrel life, barrel strength and cooling.

Adams knew, from too much experience, the sound, the smell, the feel of an M-60 that had been overworked. And he knew right when that feel should start. He knew he should be firing in short, controlled, bursts. But… damn there were just too many of the fuckers. The 7.62 rounds were dropping them in windrows, but there were still more ! He knew he had to let up on the trigger, that the fucking 60 was going to overheat, cook-off, jam, fucking blow the fuck up at any moment. But if he stopped firing the fucking Chechens were going to overrun them. AS it was, his 60, Oleg’s and the two with Vil and Sawn had stopped them, butt cold. To even fire in bursts would mean they could move forward, maneuver, something. He had to keep firing, just holding the fucking trigger down. It was the only way to stop the assault!

And the funny thing was… the fucker was still rocking! He could feel it. Like driving a car, you can feel when the car is at its maximum, when you’d pushed it too far. He had that same sense with a weapon, especially the 60 which he’d had to fuck with for far too long in the teams. And this fucker, this bad boy, it wasn’t having any trouble with continuous fucking fire! The screaming Islamics were being ripped to fucking dogmeat by this beautiful fucking weapon and it wasn’t even giving a God-damned hiccup!

“YEAH!” he screamed. This motherfucker was ROCKING AND ROLLING! “EAT HOT LEAD THINLY COATED WITH COPPER YOU ISLAMIC MOTHERFUCKERS!”

The Kildar called it “the money shot.”

Sniping is, essentially, just a normal form of infantry combat. The sniper fired at the enemy with a rifle. That was the essence of infantry combat. Oh, he might fire further than normal, he might use more camouflage. But he was, really, just an infantryman with a few more tricks in his bag.

The big difference with the sniper over the regular infantryman was in how he chose his targets. The infantryman tended to concentrate on the men in front of him, similar in interests and actions, the riflemen and machine gunners that were trying to kill him by direct fire.

Snipers, though, had another duty. Their purpose was to find and eliminate priority targets. Snipers were the reason that infantry platoon leaders had one of the shortest life expectancies of any position in combat. The enemy sniper sought out the leaders to disrupt the management of the battlefield.

With the Chechens this was especially important. Their leadership was very personality based and extremely hierarchical. Take out the leaders and the followers tended to not only lose morale but have no fucking clue what they should be doing. The Chechens, also, derived their memetic combat background from societies that specialized in hit and run. If the first rush didn’t work, they tended to retreat. Especially if they didn’t have anyone behind them driving them on.

Finding the leaders, therefore, was the primary job of the Keldara snipers. And getting the big leaders, the senior commanders, ah, that was the money shot.

Pavel had been scanning the battlefield, keeping an eye on how things were going, for the entire battle. And he knew that the Chechens were at the trenchline, that they’d committed their reserve. He’d called both in. But he also knew that somewhere down there was the man driving them on. The main leader. The man the large brigade had gathered around for a thousand personal reasons but all related to his personality, his ability, his command skills. His charisma.

He finally found it. A cluster of people behind the lines. Radio antennas.

One man was in the center of that. Oh, not the precise center but a sort of psychological center of gravity that was felt more than analyzed. The man that people were looking at. A big man, graying hair, very serene expression.

Pavel hadn’t even realized he’d fired until he saw that expression change as the round hit the center of the man’s white mustache which suddenly became crimson as brains splashed onto the ground behind him.

Again, Mike felt it, like a shock rippling through the enemy. It was time.

He keyed his throat mike and strode out of the bunker, ignoring the rounds that cracked around him.

“ARISE KELDARA!” he shouted, firing one handed at a Chechen that had, somehow, made it through the fire and was about to jump into Adams’ position. The Chechen flew back in a spray of blood. “UP YOSIF! UP OLEG! FORWARD VIL! UNTO THE BREACH, TIGERS OF THE MOUNTAINS! FORWARD THE AXE AND THE FLAME! KILL ALL OF THESE MOTHERFUCKERS! LET NOT ONE ESCAPE!”

Shota was very unhappy. He had this beautiful rocket launcher and he hadn’t been allowed to use it. One Chechen had even gotten to his position, which was just forward of the command bunker and to the right. Shota had picked him up by the leg and beaten him on the side of the position until he stopped squealing. They were all over the place and still he hadn’t been allowed to shoot.

But when the Kildar called, he scrambled to his feet, grabbing the launcher and jumping out of the hole in the ground.

There were Chechens everywhere . He couldn’t figure out where to fire.

“Target! Guy in the red shirt!” Yakov shouted, grabbing him by the shoulders and turning him. “Fire!”