Of Rice And Men (No longer being updated)

Chapter 9

Crunching through the half-baked mud, we followed the long un-trodden paths of the goat herders. Most of them had left the area as soon as fighting started, either that or joined the BLF and taken up arms. You could see how quick they’d up and left, rotting carcasses of cows left alone in fields and scythes littered the ground. Mud huts had been battered by storms and with no one to rebuild them; they crumbled as soon as they dried up again. It was a shame; these people had worked so hard on these farms just to have a bunch of lowlife guerrillas to fuck it all up for them.

We didn’t encounter many guerrillas up in the hills, sporadic attacks with small arms. Thin air and high humidity didn’t make for happy troops. It was sapping our morale enough and we had only been on the mountain for an hour or so. At least we were over the summit of the hill and slowly descending. It couldn’t have been too far until we got down to the very bottom.As we rolled into a small settlement, a static hum filled the cabin.

“Sam, we finally getting a signal?” I shouted up to the driver’s seat.

“Yeah, it’s faint but it’s there. I’m a little preoccupied here; these roads have blind turns in the most screwed up places. You take the radio.” He replied, tossing the brick sized device back through the cabin and straight into my sweaty, greasy palms. Turned knobs and changing frequencies, I slowly tuned it in as close as I could. It was still intersected with static but you could just about make out some words in between the annoying buzz.

“Commun….BLF ……. formally declared…… government…… shit……fan. Massive civilian casualties in……”

Everyone turned and listened intently to the fast paced radio SOS as it slowly became clearer.

“Mayday, Mayday, medevac helo carrying UN peacekeeping forces, UN have been decimated in the capital and we’ve been hit with an RPG round. Our helo is going down in grid 028729. Any forces in the area please assist. There are just four of us peacekeepers left and the co-pilot. Need support ASAP”

“How close are we to that grid reference, Carter? We give these guys support, maybe repair the helo, even without it we get a little support ourselves. We’re running on fumes and we left the extra gas in the trailer we dropped, maybe they got some fuel?

Carter pored over the map, his finger darting around, pointing at highlighted areas.

“Yep, we’re about two kliks out. I agree, we really need the help and they ain’t too far from our position. Everyone in favour of helping these guys out say aye.”

Nearly everyone said aye except for the Americans.

“Settled then, if no one important objects we’ll head off then.”

Carter turned his eyes back to the road and muttered under his breath, “What the hell happened to those UN guys, never heard of a unit so badly hit before.”