Chapter 7

As soon as it was dark enough, they started to walk toward the possible site of the Russian invaders. They had walked about two miles when they saw a few lights here and there. A light was never visible for very long, but the wind had picked up to a pretty stiff breeze. Jim guessed that the canvas covers over the lights and such were blowing in the wind and letting the lights be seen occasionally.

Fortunately, the moon was shinning very brightly, so brightly, in fact, that they did not need their night-vision goggles. Nevertheless, they almost stumbled onto a guard outpost before a warning from Ajax stopped them in time. At this point, it certainly would not do to be caught by the Russians. If they were caught, they would have no chance to inform headquarters about what they found. However, they saw no reason why Ajax could not utilize some of his magic and take out the guard post.

Jim clicked his tongue a couple of times and Ajax suddenly disappeared. A few minutes later, there was a fatal gurgle coming from the guard post. Only moments later, there was a second similar sound. All was quiet after that, and Ajax showed up with what had to be a grin of triumph. When found at the change of the guard, it would be obvious that the two men had not been killed by a human, but they could guess all they wanted to about who or what had done the deed. This would serve to make the guards very nervous, and that would work only to the good of Jim's operation.

Now they knew how far they could advance on the Russian installation, so they backed off about 100 yards and dug in to wait for daylight. Nothing less would serve to give them the information that they wanted. Their night-vision goggles were just not sensitive enough to stretch the full distance to the interesting places that they really needed to see. With their skill, it would take only a little bit of luck to be safe from discovery.

One of the first things they saw when the sun came up was a group of three Russian officers talking near the two dead soldiers. All three wore spetsnaz maroon berets, so they had to be some sort of Special Ops. Uh-oh, that probably meant that this was an important installation and needed to be wiped out as soon as possible.

Obviously, the three men were discussing what might have happened last night. Two ripped out throats could not be dismissed as a non-event, so there might be heightened security around here very soon. If that were the case, Jim's crew was going to have to move. It looked like Jim's order to Ajax had been a very bad idea last night.

It was going to take a while to get a full search organized, so now was the time for them to make their escape. They gathered up their stuff and slithered out of their hiding place while nobody was looking in their direction. They moved back another 500 yards before turning to their left to find another close place to use for an observation station.

They had to circle around the camp for over a mile before they found the kind of place that they were looking for. By now, it was noon, and the Russians had a full scale search going in the area that they had vacated. Jim realized how lucky they had been and mentally kicked himself over his stupid blunder of last night.

However, they were now in a place where they could see the airplanes landing and taking off. The sand had been blown off the hardpan, and that was what the Russians were using for a landing field. Jim was amazed at the confidence exhibited by the Russians and wondered why they could be so blatant about their activities. He was going to ask headquarters the reason for that the next time he reported in.

Meanwhile, they counted the number of the three different types of aircraft at the airport, for they could now see that was what it was. They saw eight helicopters, twenty fighters, and seven transports on the ground. They also saw equipment and vehicles being removed from the transports. One of the recently emptied transport planes took off while they watched, and two more landed. Shit, this was a busy place! The area involved was much larger than that of the first place they had discovered, and Jim doubted that a single neutron bomb would be large enough to eliminate this place.

He had a laser rangefinder pulled from his pack and was checking the relative location of each of the aircraft and the motor pool. He also located the mass of canvas tents used to house the troops, and saw that this was a major undertaking almost five miles in radius. It would have been much larger in the past, but the fixed-wing aircraft were all of the type that could use short runways.

Jim figured that they had the important points located and should start moving out if they were going to be missed by whatever bombs were dropped to clean out this infestation. To insure that headquarters had the information that they had managed to gather, Jane sent it out as soon as Jim reported a new point of interest. That way, if they were discovered, headquarters would have enough information to act.

They left their observation point as soon as the sun went down and it was dark enough for them to move in reasonable safety. They were told that they had to be 30 miles away this time to be safe from the ordnance that would be sent in after the Russians. Still, no conventional nuclear weapons would be used, but certainly neutron bombs would be sent to kill as many people as possible.

Two days later, Jim, Jane, and Ajax were nearly 45 miles away from the Russian airport, and Jim gave the go-ahead for the bombing to start.

Six neutron bomb equipped cruise missiles were sent against the Russians, and these were followed up by ground-attack aircraft, Warthog IIIs, to make damned sure that all of the Russians had been eliminated. Jim was told to return to the airport, and another truck similar to the one they had been using would be flown in for them to use. That was welcome news, and he and Jane didn't mind the walk to pick up the truck.

The story was that the Russians had been able to move in without detection because the satellite normally used to scan that part of the USNA had been lost, but it was such a desolate area that nobody figured that it was worth worrying about. Now they knew how much of an error had been made, and reconnaissance drones would be flying over that and similar areas from now on. The Russians might still sneak in, but they would not have such an easy time of it this time around!

The trio picked up their new truck and headed back toward California. From now on, they were going to be keeping an eye on the sky as well as watching the ground. There were a lot of things wrong with the USNA, but they would be damned if they would let the Russians take over without a fight!

They returned to I-10 and headed west. They kept to their rule of 35 MPH as their maximum speed, and they swapped off the driving. They were still being bothered by high winds, but they just made the best of a difficult situation and kept going. They had about 500 miles to go to get to Yuma and the Colad River, so they took close to four days to get that far. By then, they were exhausted and decided to take a couple of days vacation. Ajax was glad for the opportunity to get some exercise and to find his own food.

The Colad River was hardly more than a stream at this time of the year. It did run stronger back about 70 years earlier when the big Hoover Dam had collapsed, but the drought had sapped most of that water long ago. Now, the river was just a trickle compared to what it once was. They talked to some local people and were assured that the river valley could easily be crossed by their truck if they were careful to watch out for the marked quicksand pits. The big problem was in finding a gentle enough slope to let them drive onto the river bed and back out. Again, the locals were helpful, and they found what they were looking for with a minimum of effort.

The river crossing was almost anticlimactic, but Jim and Jane were glad that was behind them. They had gone into what had been California desert about 50 miles when they were surprised by a roadblock. There were at least six guards at the roadblock and possibly others nearby. This definitely was not a bunch of Wasters, but it was not clear who it really was. Jim made an emergency call to headquarters for two M-219 40mm grenade launchers with FRAG (fragmentation) rounds. He had hardly gotten the words out of his mouth when there was a chime signaling the arrival of the weapons that he had ordered.

The M-219 was a shotgun-like weapon with a drum magazine holding nine rounds. It was semiautomatic or fully automatic with a simple selector switch. By now, Jane was sufficiently familiar with shotguns to be able to handle an M-219 under combat conditions.

Jim was driving, and he slowed down to let Ajax jump out the rear door when Jane opened it. She had her M-219 with her and an extra magazine and Jane jumped out when Jim brought the truck to a complete halt. He had kept the angle at which he approached the roadblock such that Jane could not be seen when she exited the truck. This was somewhat open country, so she and Ajax had to stay with the truck to keep from being seen.