Warband

Chapter 1. The Ruins.

Silas Ward held the claymore clacker in his sweaty hand as he watched their back trail. He knew the Viet Cong were coming and he wanted their last mine to count. Strung out in an L-shaped ambush around him were five of the remaining seven members of his team as well as the six Montagnard tribesmen from the unit they had been training.

Silas was still new to the team but was already impressed with the Montagnard strikers, or “Yards” as they were called by the soldiers that were training them. They were tough fighters and quick to learn from his team. Tough as the Yards were, and tough as his fellow Green Berets were, Silas could see that everyone was on their last legs.

All of them were low on ammo after playing hide and seek with the VC for the last three days. Humping all their gear through the jungle heat, the lack of sleep, and constant combat had left them exhausted. Many of them were also injured, and they were further away from their extraction point than ever before. Each time they tried to increase their pace and shift direction toward the extraction point, a new VC unit would show up, invariably right in their line of travel.

They must have killed fifty or more of the enemy, but their numbers kept growing as every few hours, fresh enemy forces arrived. Their radio wasn’t reaching the firebase so they couldn’t arrange for any support. So far, they could keep just barely ahead of the foe, but it wouldn’t be long before they were finally cut off and surrounded. After that, it was time for a last stand as they tried to take down as many enemies as they could before they were overrun.

“Ward, grab Manong and one of his Yards and head west, Lambert needs help checking out some kind of ruins. See if it will give us a better position than this,” Captain Gillman, the commanding officer of their team, ordered.

Manong was the commander of the Yards, and Silas had developed a friendship with the man over the last few months he had been on the team. Manong was a small guy but had a wiry strength that made it easy to underestimate him. Silas knew that Manong was deadly, both with the old SKS he preferred as his primary weapon, and with the primitive crossbow some of his people still liked to use.

Handing the Claymore clacker off to Captain Gillman, Silas waved Manong over to join him. Manong grabbed another of his men and the trio began to push through the jungle to their west. After around a hundred yards, a shadowy figure stepped in front of them. Silas began to raise his carbine before recognizing Lambert, their team scout. The man was deadly accurate with the M14 rifle he carried and could hide in the jungle better than any VC.

“Ward, head fifty yards west and you’ll see the ruins. It’s got good cover and there’s a clearing around the place that will give us unobstructed fields of fire. I’ll let Gillman know where it is and guide the unit there. Set up a base of fire at the ruins in case the enemy is on our heels,” Lambert said, pointing the direction out to Silas before running back toward the unit.

A few moments later, Silas burst from the jungle into a large clearing. There, in the center, were the ruins of a stone temple. Old, abandoned places like this weren’t entirely unknown in the jungle, but this place was on the arse end of nowhere and Silas couldn’t imagine who would have gone through the effort of building it out here.

It had an ancient feel to it, the crumbling stone was covered in mold, but surprisingly, nothing else grew around it and the jungle hadn’t encroached on the place like it did everywhere else. Mostly collapsed, Silas had no idea how tall this place had once been, but now, the ruins were just a pile of rocks that would provide good cover for their last stand.

“This place is wrong,” Manong said. The man wasn’t the most verbose that Silas had ever met, which made Silas curious why he’d say that.

“What do you mean?” Silas asked.

“It’s wrong, this place is not natural, and feels off. We should choose somewhere else to fight,” Manong said, his normally stoic face looking frightened.

“Nah, it’s just an old ruin. It’ll give us better cover than hiding behind plants in the jungle,” Silas argued. Before Manong could say anything else the boom of the claymore going off and then bursts of rifle fire told Silas that the enemy had arrived.

“Spread out, form a firing line and watch your targets, our boys will be coming in hot and are going to need some cover fire,” Silas ordered, taking charge of their small group. Finding what must have been a collapsed outer wall of the ruin, Silas rested his carbine on the rocks, and only needed to expose part of his head to fire.

The firefight in the jungle reached a crescendo, then tapered off into small bursts as their team fell back toward the temple. A minute later, their medic, Doc Haynes, came running from the undergrowth, a wounded man was thrown over his shoulder.

Silas waved Doc over. There was a small, clear space behind Silas’ position where the wounded could be treated in relative cover. Doc was a huge man, and looked more like a bodybuilder than a medic, but he was good at his job and more than a few of them were alive today because of his efforts. Just before he reached Silas’ position, Doc gave a yell as the ground opened beneath him and he fell from sight.

The rest of the team came running from the jungle firing at the enemy behind them. Silas wanted to check on Doc, but he had a job to do and sighted down his rifle at the VC who were in hot pursuit. The team barely made it to the ruins as the first of the enemy appeared.

With a smooth and steady press of the trigger, Silas sighted in on the lead attacker. The carbine barked, sending a single round of 5.56 into the chest of the VC soldier. His target dropped to the ground, seriously wounded or dead, but Silas was already searching for his next target. To his surprise, the wave of enemy troops stopped, several pointed toward the ruins and shouted before they turned and faded back into the jungle.

Silas and the others who had reached the ruins worked over the retreating VC. They dropped a dozen of the enemy troops before they ran out of targets. They all waited for the inevitable attack, but the minutes passed, and it never came.

“I need cover on the flanks and rear, they might have pulled back to surround us and can hit from every direction. Grayson, Harper, get out there and police up the VC weapons. We may need them when the ammo for our rifles runs out,” the captain ordered.

With a keen eye, the captain shifted everyone around to cover all avenues of approach while the two designated soldiers walked among the fallen VC, grabbing rifles, magazine pouches, rations, and grenades to supplement their meager supplies.

“Captain, Doc fell into a sinkhole out there, I’m going to go get him. Someone bring some rope and a flashlight,” Silas shouted as he crawled over the rocks and toward where Doc had disappeared.

“You okay Doc?” Silas shouted into the sinkhole.

“I’m good, we didn’t fall that far, but we’ll need to rig something up to pull out Lambert,” Doc said. There was enough light coming into the hole that Silas could see Doc limp away from a prone Lambert. Lambert had a bandage over his thigh that blood was seeping through, but if Doc wasn’t too worked up about it, Silas wouldn’t say anything.

It took them only a few minutes to rig up a rope harness to pull first Lambert, then Doc out. When he emerged from the hole, Doc held a small worn statue the size of his fist in one hand.

“Bringing back souvenirs now Doc?” Silas joked.

“This is no mere souvenir that I hold, it is our doom,” Doc said, his face morphing into a monstrous form. Silas reached for his carbine, trying to aim it at his weapon and the monster in front of him. Just as he began to take up slack on the trigger, Silas was jolted awake, screaming.

“Damn, not that again,” Silas said waking from the nightmare covered in sweat. It was the third time that week he’d had the same nightmare. Some of the details changed, but it was always that same day back in 1969 when they had taken cover in that old, ruined temple.

Nightmares of his time in Vietnam were nothing new, but having the same one three nights in a row was something he hadn’t had to deal with in decades. The details seemed to change each night, sometimes the VC overran them, and he woke when an enemy soldier stood over him and fired his rifle, other times, he met his end in some other random way. War had more than enough ways to kill you, and Silas had seen more of them than he ever wished to remember.

What really happened that day was that they fished Doc and Lambert out without any trouble. As soon as they were out, the team made radio contact with the firebase. An hour later, choppers picked them up without any problems. For whatever reason, the VC had given up the chase and faded back into the jungle after yelling and turning away as soon as they spotted the ruins.

“Do you think that the nightmares are coming back is because of Doc Haynes, Buster?” Silas said to his dog who merely whined at being woken up by Silas’ shout.

Sergeant William Haynes, known to Silas and his team as Doc, passed away last week. He had been the last living member of their team, other than Silas. Too old and worn out to travel to California where the funeral was held, Silas felt guilty at not being able to say goodbye to his last brother and friend from his days in the Army.

While never one for long phone conversations, Silas and Doc had kept in touch occasionally, each sharing what was going on in their lives. In a last gesture, Doc had left all his old military gear to Silas in his will. The huge footlocker had shown up the morning before, and Silas had to pay the mail carrier extra to haul it into his garage for him. The footlocker was filled with uniforms, gear, and several weapons, many of which were from the war and probably illegal as hell for Silas to have.

The last thing in the footlocker had been that stupid statue Doc had found inside the sinkhole in the ruins. From what Doc had told him, the thing had been knocked off a small altar when Doc and Lambert had fallen through, and for some reason, Doc wanted to keep it.

Still tired, Silas tried to get some more sleep, wondering if the old memories and nightmares of the war would leave him alone.

Beside him on the bed, Buster began to growl and before Silas could tell him to hush, he heard the metallic sound of tools falling on concrete. Someone was in his garage, and from all the noise they were making, the place was being torn apart.