First Strike (48 page)

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From
 
the publisher of
 
First Strike
 
comes the story of an expendable counterinsurgency force, holding down the dirtiest parts of America’s interstellar empire: the United States Foreign Legion…

Pantaleo had been right. The next village, and the ones after that, had had warning; there were less people and far less loot. Mullins had been given five and a half ounces of silver and an eighth-ounce of gold in the first village; over the next six days and five villages, plus about twenty freestanding farms, he got about a third of that again. According to a glimpse he’d had of the lieutenant’s map, they seemed to be moving in a rough loop.

Now, as they prepared to leave a larger village – this one had
 
two
 
bars, and every drop of drinkable alcohol had been looted from both – he guessed that the two platoons, and the CG company with them, were no further than about twenty miles from Firebase 292.

“I thought we were supposed to be out here for two weeks,” he said to Garza as they smoked.

“Supposed to be. Man can only carry so much,” the sergeant replied. “Look at `em.”

In this village, the local Colonial Guard troops had taken almost everything that wasn’t nailed down and a fair amount of stuff that was, regardless of its value. Over the course of the trip they’d acquired a few animals – two horses and several mules, one of which pulled a two-wheeled cart. Those, the Mutt four-wheelers and more than a dozen wheelbarrows were piled high with loot. The CGs’ packs and the animals’ saddlebags were stuffed to capacity.

“So we go back to 292, let them dump the stuff, and come back out?” Mullins asked.

“That’s about right,” said Garza. He glanced at his watch. “We’ve been ready to go for ten minutes. What the hell’s keeping `em?”

Colonial Guard Captain Moore jabbed again at the map.

“Look, moron,” he snarled at Junior Lieutenant Schmidt of the Legion. “This road takes us to within a fucking
 
mile
 
of the base, and there’s a trail from there.”

“No, captain. We are
 
not
 
taking the road.”

“Look, Mr. Schmidt,” said Moore’s XO. He was either playing good-cop or legitimately trying to be reasonable; Lieutenant Croft had seen that these two could get a pretty decent good-cop-bad-cop routine going with suspected secessionists. “The road follows pretty closely along the route we’d take
 
anyway
. If we use it, we’ll reach 292 well before nightfall.”

“Or we won’t get there at all,” said Schmidt flatly.

Croft glanced over his shoulder. They were about a hundred yards outside the village, at the head of the column. But it
 
really
 
wouldn’t do for any of the locals to hear this conversation.

Probably be better if the enlisteds didn’t hear it either, but that wasn’t really avoidable.

“Look, you idiots,” Schmidt said. “The Buddies
 
know
 
where we’re going. Even if none of them were plotting our course on a map, they’re not
 
stupid
. They know perfectly well that your men only steal kitchen sinks when they don’t plan to be carrying `em for very long.”

That’s
 
probably
 
an exaggeration
, thought Croft. In that he hadn’t
 
seen
 
CG men hauling away any sinks, but he hadn’t been everywhere at once. They’d stripped everything else bare; he’d seen easily a dozen men festooned with pans, pots and mugs that they’d tied onto their belts and pack-straps.

The last village had been bad, when word had gotten around that they were almost back at 292. This place had been categorically plundered to the extent of curtains and lightbulbs; the deacon had loudly complained that his Bible had been stolen, as had all his hymn books, pew cushions, stationery and the weathercock on his steeple.

“We’re not going to make very good time off-road,” said Moore’s XO. “In fact, we’re probably not going to get those Mutts or the wagon
 
anywhere
. The men are pretty encumbered too.”

“So have them ditch some of it,” Schmidt said. “They must be carrying sixty or eighty pounds,
 
each
. And most of the stuff on the vehicles isn’t worth the fuel cost of flying it back to Roanoke.”

The captain shook his head.

“No, lieutenant. No. I’ve tolerated enough of this crap from you; we’re going to use the road and we’re moving out now. You can come with us or not.”

He turned to his first sergeant.

“Spread the word. We move out.”

Schmidt gestured for Croft and Robles to follow him.

“That man is an
 
idiot
,” he spat. “More concerned about his cut of the taxes than his own fucking survival. Warn your men that there’s a good chance we’ll be walking into something. Robles, put one of your fire-teams on point. Everyone else is to walk with weapons loaded and ready. Croft, detail one of your teams to outrider – a pair of men on each side at about twenty-five yards.”

“Can’t we just call in helicopters and
 
fly
 
out?” asked Croft.

“No; Moore would never go along. It’d look bad on his efficiency report. We could fly
 
ourselves
 
out, but orders are to stick with these fuckups. I don’t like it either.”

They encountered the first roadblock about a mile in; three large trees had been felled and moved to block the road. At the first sight of it, Lieutenant Croft had shouted for everyone to get ready for action –
 
as though
, Mullins thought,
 
we’re not already
. Second Squad had looped around the roadblock, Mullins’ finger tense on his trigger and ready to blow away anything that moved.

Except that whoever had cut the trees down was long-gone. They got busy clearing the block, which was hard axe-work and took a few minutes. Because of how narrow the road was, and the dense second-growth trees on either side, it was impossible to simply roll the long tree-trunks aside; the part blocking the road had to be cut away and
 
it
 
rolled aside.

The second one occurred half a mile later and was the same. By the fifth, everyone was thoroughly pissed off.

“They’re fucking with us,” Murray growled. “Cowards.”

“If they’re fucking with us,” Garza said, “it means they’re around. Keep a lookout for booby traps and IEDs.”

They were moving at snail-speed because of the overloaded CGs, who tripped and stumbled and cursed constantly. This road had, before the Insurrection, been two paved lanes; now it was barely wide enough to get a Mutt through. The forest for about ten feet on each side was second-growth, although after thirty years it was hard to tell the difference. Flakes of old tarmac were occasionally visible here and there, and a well-built, somewhat-maintained steel bridge crossed one stream.

On the other side was another fallen tree.

Tom Lee had been in the tree since an hour after dawn, twenty-five feet up and completely invisible. His ghillie suit was made from the same thin, flat needles as this particular subtype of tree, gathered last night. It would take another few hours for them to even begin to change color.

He was motionless, even his breathing slow and subdued. He’d grown up in these woods, spent all of his thirty-two years here. Hunting and trapping required knowledge and discipline, and Lee had both. The three uncles who’d raised him – after the Fed motherfuckers had murdered his father outside Godfrey’s Landing – had taught him well.

“One,” Lee mouthed, so silently that he himself couldn’t hear it. On his lower lip was a Chinese-made subvocal transmitter, part of a shipment of goodies that had arrived about a month ago. The Chinks weren’t so bad;
 
they’d
 
never butchered anyone on New Virginia. So far as Lee knew, now was the first time anyone had used any of this stuff for real. They were supposed to wait, but everyone had agreed: these looting fuckers needed to pay.

“Looks like all of `em,” he said. “Moving slow. Not being so careful with the trees any more.”

“Roger, One,” came the reply through another Chink gift, a receiver that had required surgical attachment to his eardrum. “We’re ready.”

Roadblock number thirteen occurred around the twelve-mile mark, as the road through the forest curved along a fairly gentle slope. By now the tree-trunks across their path were no longer scary, or particularly irritating; they were just
 
boring
. The four point guys had been given axes, and were already hacking away at it when the rest of the column arrived.

“Tell Fourth we’ve got another damn block,” Lieutenant Schmidt told his radio man. That man already had his handset out.

Lieutenant Croft turned to Sergeant Williams and said something that Mullins couldn’t hear. Williams nodded and began to walk down towards the end of the platoon. A few of the more gung-ho Colonial Guard, local troops, had mixed in with them; those guys were now leaning against trees or squatting; a couple of them lit cigarettes.

Not such a bad idea
, Mullins thought, and reached for his own pack.

That was when the tree-trunk exploded.

Explosions
 
everywhere
 
- ahead and behind. The blast wave of the exploding trunk, twenty feet in front of Mullins, knocked him reeling backwards. The air was suddenly full of woodchips and sawdust. He stumbled, flailing his arms and rolling, landed awkwardly on his side as a fusiliade of gunshots rang out from left and right.

Almost instantaneously later, a ripping-cloth sound that Mullins recognized from training:
 
machine-guns.

Something wet and sticky – and slightly salty-tasting – was all over Mullins’ face. Somehow his eyes had been spared, although they
 
stung
. They stung like absolute hell but he forced them open anyway, rolling over onto his front and bringing up his gun.

We’ve been ambushed. We’re in an ambush. They stuffed the trunk with explosives.

More explosions. More gunfire from down the length of the line. Somebody began to scream.

Bullets tore the air above Mullins’ head.

Lieutenant Croft lay face-down, about ten feet away. His radio man, Lujan, had been thrown onto his back. There was nothing left of Lujan’s face above the mouth – nothing but a bloody crater the size of a grapefruit.

“Run!” screamed one of the CGs, dropping his pack. “For the love of God,
 
run
!”

That man turned, and a second later jerked spastically half a dozen times as the machine-gun riddled him. Another CG went down screaming.

A
 
deafening
 
explosion not too far towards the rear. Clay and dust fountained up from the center of the road, CG bodies and backpacks amidst it.

Oh, God. I am going to die
, Mullins thought with surprising clarity. He hugged the ground.

Lieutenant Croft was moving, alive but apparently injured. Garza was nowhere to be seen. Pantaleo had been somewhere behind. Most of Third Platoon lay sprawled on the road. A few guys were crawling towards the downhill side.

The machine-gun traversed over them again. It was on the left, the higher side of the slope the road ran along. The muzzle-flash gave away its location. More muzzle-flashes from individual rifles. The fuckers were lying flat – or, given that they’d obviously had the time to set up an explosives-stuffed tree trunk and a machine-gun position, probably dug in.

Somebody opened fire anyway. It might have been Guzman, the other private in Mullins’ fire team. Others followed his lead.

They’re dug in and camouflaged.We’re firing from exposed ground.

The screaming didn’t stop. Somehow he was able to think clearly despite it:

We’re in deep shit. They’ve got us from both sides and we have no cover. And my platoon looks to be cut off.

We’re not all that far from base. Maybe we can get support from them.

Who was calling in that support? Somebody had to. But Lujan was dead, and Lieutenant Croft was either stunned or wounded or probably both.

Schmidt and his radio man.

Mullins raised his head, glanced in the direction of where he’d seen them last. A bullet whicked past his head, so close he felt the displaced air. A huge blond body that had to be the company XO lay not far from the roadblock, his belly ripped open and his head shattered. Next to that body, equally motionless and sprawled on his back, was Schmidt’s radio man.

Oh,
 
shit.
 
The commander’s dead, the platoon leader’s wounded, and both radio guys are
 
dead.