Chapter 12B

Back at MPG headquarters General Jackson now had a pretty clear idea of the forces that had so far landed on the planet. Reports had come in from all of the special forces teams that had been deployed which allowed him to update the maps with solid intelligence figures. As far as he knew, none of the special forces teams had been detected by the enemy. None had been engaged anyway.

Jackson directed his computer to initiate a conference with Laura Whiting, who was in her own office four kilometers away. The link up took less than thirty seconds to accomplish. If anything, Laura looked even more fatigued than Jackson himself.

"What do we have, Kevin?" she asked him, stifling a yawn.

"Reports are in from the recon elements at all sites," he told her. "We have approximately twenty thousand enemy troops landed, approximately one thousand of them deployed. Battalion strength at each of the landing zones, making a perimeter and digging in according to standard doctrine. No heavy weapons, armor, or hovers have been spotted as of yet. My guess is that those will come down in the second wave."

"So they're vulnerable right now?" she asked.

"I plan to make them vulnerable every second they're on our planet," he answered. "But yes, they are about as defenseless as they'll ever get right now. If we had a couple of battalions of tanks out there we could destroy their beachheads in less than an hour."

"But we don't," she said.

"No," he said with a sigh. "We don't. That's why they land all the way out there after all. Anyway, we do have platoon strength special forces teams at each LZ and more on the way. Mortar teams have just deployed from each of the cities. They should be on the ground within the hour and able to make attacks thirty minutes after that. They will be utilizing shoot and scoot methods. They'll lob some shells into the Earthling perimeter and then pack up and deploy somewhere else and do it again. Before that happens though I expect some of our fire teams out there will start getting on the scoreboard. The Earthlings will be sending out patrols soon."

"It sounds like you have things well in hand," she said. "Why don't you try to get a little sleep? You look like shit and you'll need to be refreshed when the rest of the troops come down."

"I'll catch a few after the first attacks are carried out," he told her. "I don't think I'll be able to turn my mind off until I know that things are working out there." He smiled a little. "I would suggest that you catch a few hours though. You look like someone who's had a few too many cups of coffee."

"I'll make you a deal," she told him. "I'll sleep when you sleep."

He laughed. "Deal," he told her. "I'll keep you updated as things start to happen here."

It was now three and a half hours since the landing ship had come down. Lieutenant Callahan was standing atop of his hill and surveying the work that his platoon had accomplished. All along the top of the hills around them, trenches had been dug to a depth of 1.5 meters. The rocky soil that had been extracted from these holes had been placed into sandbags that now lined the front of each position. The material of each sandbag was reinforced with Kevlar material, which, thought not impervious to high velocity rounds, would, when coupled with the dirt inside and the other layer of Kevlar on the back, prevent them from penetrating through into the hole. They would also stand up quite well to mortar fire in the unlikely event that the greenies managed to throw some at them. Mounted between two sets of the sandbags in each position was one of the squad automatic weapons. Other firing ports for the smaller M-24s had also been constructed. The positions were by the book and very formidable. By staying within them Callahan's single platoon could find off an entire company of greenies provided that they didn't have tank or hover support.

"Not bad, guys," he told his men on the command channel. "This almost looks like a fighting position."

"Yeah," said Stinson, who was manning one of the SAWs, "and I used up a quarter of my fuckin air supply digging it. Talk about a waste of oxygen."

"Well, it's true that we probably won't get much use out of them," Callahan said with feigned sympathy. "But they sure do look pretty. Has anyone taken a picture of them yet? You can impress your grandkids later on. Show them the holes you got to dig on Mars."

There were some dutiful chuckles at his words, but not many.

"What now?" asked Sergeant Mallory, who was sitting on an ammunition box and cradling his rifle.

"I'm real glad you asked that," Callahan said. "Real glad indeed."

A chorus of groans met his words. The men hated it when he talked like that. Experience had taught them that something unpleasant would soon follow.

"Now, let's not get our panties in a bunch, gentlemen," he said, leaning against one of the sandbag walls and looking at his men. "Its not all that bad, we just have to follow doctrine to the letter. Mallory, I need you to take three men and make a patrol of the area."

"Ahhh man," Mallory said. "We gotta go walkin around out on this abortion of a planet?"

"Yeah, LT," Stinson put in. "Can't we just not do it and say we did? There ain't nothing out there but a bunch of fuckin rocks and this goddamned dust."

"That ain't no shit, LT," another of the men put in. "I think we've seen all there is to see right here."

"And you are undoubtedly correct, my good men," Callahan told them, "but doctrine is doctrine. Think of it as training for if we ever have to fight a real war."

The sound of thirty-eight sighs came over the radio set.

"All right," Mallory said, standing up and hefting his weapon. "You heard the lieutenant. Zimmerman, Spanky, Trower, you just volunteered. Grab your weapons and lets get to it."

The three men who had been chosen slowly rose to their feet and grabbed their own weapons.

"Take them out at least two klicks to the north," Callahan said. "You don't have to pretend we're securing a position in Salta or anything, but do at least check around all the hills out there. Its theoretically possible that the greenies made a lucky guess and landed a few recon elements out here before we came down."

"How the hell could they have done that?"

"Lucky guess, like I said. After all, our fearless leader up on the command ship told them what cities we were going to be landing at. They might've put people out at the likely places."

"You don't really believe that do you, LT?" Mallory asked.

"No, of course not, but it is within the realm of possibility, isn't it? So go out there and put our minds at ease. It shouldn't take more than hour, right?"

"I guess not," he sighed, climbing out of the trench. "All right, boys. Lock and load and lets go look at some more rocks and hills. Spanky, you take the point."

"Right," Spanky said. "I'm on the point."

"Let's switch down to sub tach channel Charlie."

They all switched their radio frequencies so that their chatter during the patrol would not bleed onto the main tactical channel.

"Be back in an hour," Mallory told Callahan on the main channel. "How about having some hot food for us?"

"You got it," Callahan said with a grin. "I'll throw a couple of beers on ice too."

"You do that," he said and then turned towards his patrol mates. "Okay, lets get this shit over with. Spanky, lead us off. Check the hills as we go."

They all climbed out of the trench and began to make their way down to the bottom of the hill on the north side. Before they even made it ten steps Zimmerman overbalanced and went tumbling all the way down.

"Shit," Callahan said, shaking his head slowly. "I hope those fuckin greenies give it up soon before we all break our goddamn legs."

Lon and his squad had moved 700 meters closer to the WestHem positions on the north side of the landing zone. They were now spread out in three groups, all of them peering between boulders on the tops of a series of small hills. They were lying on their bellies, their weapons cradled next to them, their goggles set on medium magnification. All had plainly seen the four men climbing off the hill and starting down.

"And here comes a patrol," Lon said quietly, his words broadcast at ultra low power to the rest of the team.

"Did you see that dumbshit fall off the hill?" Horishito asked from the next hill over. "Christ. They can't even walk out here. How the hell do they expect to fight?"

"They're marines, remember?" Matza said, his finger playing over the firing button of his SAW. "They don't have to be able to walk. They can kick ass buried up to their necks in sand. At least that's what they always say."

"All right, guys," Lon said. "Let's keep the chatter to a minimum, shall we? No sense giving ourselves away with leaking radio waves."

Everyone kept quiet, watching as the four men, now safely on the bottom of their hill, formed up in a diamond formation and began to move clumsily forward. They disappeared momentarily behind one of the other hills and then emerged a few minutes later on the other side of it.

"How far out will they go, sarge?" Lisa asked.

"At least two klicks," he responded. "If they follow doctrine that is. We should wait until they're out about as far as they're going to go before we hit them."

"Shadow them?" asked Horishito.

"Yes," he responded. "Three at a time. The rest of the squad will leapfrog around out of sight and set up. Hoary, you and your team will be the first trackers."

"You got it," he said.

"You should be virtually invisible to them at more than three hundred meters as long as you don't silhouette yourselves. Stay low and keep your distance. Just like we've trained."

"Right, sarge," he said. "We're on the motherfucker."

The marine patrol began to angle slightly off to the right. They walked awkwardly and every few minutes one of them would trip and fall down. They would walk up to each hill, make a turn around the base, and then move on to the next one. They kept their weapons slung around their shoulders as they did this. As they came to within half a kilometer of where the special forces team lie on the hill, Horishito, Gavin, and Salinas began to inch backwards, back down to the bottom of their own hill. Once on the ground they began to trot to the east, keeping low, moving from one piece of cover to the next. They stopped behind boulders, at the base of hills, leapfrogging each other one by one until they had moved around to the other side of the advancing marine patrol, which, by this point, had moved out of the view of Lon and the rest of them.

"We got them, sarge," said Horishito's voice. "They're moving northeast around the base of hill 171 right now. They've slowed their pace down a bit. I think they're checking their maps."

"Yes," said Lon thoughtfully, "I guess that makes sense. They'll be running on inertial navigation."

"Wouldn't that be a shame if they got lost out here?" asked Matza.

"A damn shame," Lon agreed. "Come on. Let's displace. We'll hook north around hill 222 there. That should give us defilade from our friends. We'll re-deploy on hills 123 and 201. Everyone clear?"

No one answered, which meant that everyone was clear.

"Okay, let's do it."

Sergeant Mallory was not having a good time. His right ankle was throbbing from the twist he'd given it a few minutes ago and he was nursing a thirst that the water from his supply reservoir simply could not satisfy. His heart was pounding uncomfortably in his chest with the exertion of walking in the Martian soil. Christ, why hadn't they exercised more on the trip here? He had not been so out of shape in years, since before being accepted into the Marine Corps more than twelve years ago.

"Motherfuck," grunted Zimmerman as he stepped on a loose rock, which rolled out from beneath him. He tried to keep his balance and would have easily been able to do so had he been in standard gravity but here, with the unfamiliar pull and the awkward suit he was in, he went down. It did not look like a fall on Earth however. It was a slow tumble, looking almost like it was being viewed in slow motion. He landed on his chest, bounced once, and then came to a rest.

"You all right, Zim?" Mallory asked, adjusting his rifle on his shoulder.

"Yeah," he grunted sourly, starting the rolling motion that would get him back to his feet. After a moment he was able to get his knee beneath him and stand up. "Christ, sarge, haven't we gone far enough out yet?"

"Yeah," agreed Spanky. "Their ain't no fuckin greenies out here. Even they're not that dumb."

"Another half a klick or so," Mallory said. "We need to check that group of hills in front of us."

"Christ," Zimmerman swore, brushing dust from his faceplate. "We oughtta just give this fuckin place to the greenies. Who the hell else would want it?"

"Well, Agricorp seems to think it's a nice planet," Mallory said.

"And that's who's giving us our goddamned orders, right?" Spanky asked bitterly.

"Ours is not to question why," Mallory said. "Now lets move out and get this shit over with. Lead off, Spanky."

"Leading off," Spanky said, walking forward.

After a moment, the rest followed. Their eyes were kept on their feet instead of on the terrain around them. You fell down less that way.

"Here they come, right on schedule," Lon said, watching as the group of four emerged from around another of the hills. They were now well out of sight of the ship and the perimeter positions surrounding it. The patrol was almost two kilometers out from their sandbagged positions. Lon and his group were deployed atop three hills 700 meters directly in front of their avenue of advance.

"Still walkin dumb I see," Horishito said. "I bet we can take them right here."

"Undoubtedly," Lon agreed. "But let's let them close a bit more first. We go with ambush plan Alpha-Bravo seven. Everyone got that?"

No answer, which meant that everyone got it. Plan AB-7 was one of many ambush plans they'd practiced over the last few weeks. It was one that fit this particular situation perfectly in that it would not only eliminate the patrol, but also draw a larger group into the same trap.

"I'll assign targets when they come into optimum range," Lon said. "For now, just keep trained on them and keep down."

They waited, watching as the four men walked from hill to hill, circling around and then moving onto the next. They did not look up on the hills as they passed them. They stared downward.

Jesus, Lisa thought to herself as she kept the point man on the patrol covered with her targeting recticle. This is almost too easy.

It took the better part of ten minutes but finally the patrol passed to within 500 meters. They were in a lengthy gully now, open ground all around them, heading directly towards the hill where Lon, Lisa, Matza, and Jefferson were waiting.

"Okay," Lon said, "they're coming up to us. We'll take them down. The rest of you hold in place and mop up anyone if they get away from us. As soon as the shooting's over, we displace to hills 233, 422, and 397 respectively. We need to be off of these hills before they can bring some arty down on us. Everyone got it?"

Everyone got it.

Lon looked at Lisa. "Wong, you take the point man out. You'll shoot first on my command."

"Right, sarge," she said, hiding the nervousness that she felt. "I take the point man."

"I'll take the man right of point," he said next. "Matza, you give a burst to the man on the left of point and then shift fire to the area around the rear man. Wong, you hose down the area around him too, but remember, don't hit him. He has to be able to put out a broadcast or Alpha-Bravo seven is blown." He turned to Jefferson, the communications tech. "Jeffy, you tell me the instant that rear man broadcasts back to the rest of them."

"Right, sarge," he said, his radio set down on a rock, his weapon tucked against his side.

"Let's do it then," Lon said, aiming his rifle out over the open space. "Wong, are you on target?"

She adjusted the barrel of her weapon just a bit, laying the targeting recticle over the faceplate of the man on point. The range indicator told her that his head was 486 meters away. She increased her magnification until his head was practically the only thing in her view. She could see his face beneath the lightly tinted plate. He was a Caucasian and he had a short, neatly trimmed mustache. His mouth was hanging open as if he were breathing hard. He had no idea that he was taking the last breaths of his life. "I'm on target," she said.

"Fire," he told her.

Slowly, smoothly, without stopping to think about what she was doing, she pressed the firing button on her rifle. It kicked against her shoulder with a flash of red fire from the barrel and a sharp crack that sounded loud to her ears but that would be completely inaudible to anyone more than twenty meters away. Sound traveled very slowly and very inefficiently in the thin Martian atmosphere. The bullet that shot out of the barrel moved much more efficiently though. It was four millimeters in diameter and moved nearly ten times faster than the sound waves. There was little in the way of air friction to slow it down or push it off course. It traveled over that 486 meters in two tenths of a second and drilled into the point man's face shield less than two millimeters from where Lisa's targeting recticle was placed. It smashed through the Kevlar reinforced plastic of the shield like it was tissue paper, drilled into the man's face, through his brain, and out the back of his skull with enough velocity left over to punch a hole the size of a man's fist in the back of his helmet. Blood, skull fragments, pieces of brain matter, and chunks of helmet flew in a messy spray behind him. The blood boiled away into a misty red vapor the moment it hit the air. The point man never knew what hit him.

Even before he could fall down Lon and Matza fired too, sending their bullets out towards a lethal intersection with their targets.

It happened so fast that Mallory had a difficult time processing things. One second he was walking in the rear of the formation, putting one foot in front of the other, and the next, all three of his comrades were down. Spanky got it first, his head snapping back in a spray of gore and boiled blood. Zimmerman went a half second later, another headshot, another spray of red vapor, skull chunks, and mushy brain flying out through a large hole in his helmet. And then Trower was hit with a burst of machine gun fire right in the midsection, at least four rounds. They blew out the back of his biosuit, exploding two of the compartmentalized air chambers in the tank with a loud bang. Trower managed a grunt of surprise and then he fell forward in the curious slow motion style that was all the rage on the Martian surface.

"What the..." was all Mallory had time for before bullets were slamming into the ground all around him. They plinked off rocks and kicked up dust around his feet. They whizzed through the air as streaks in the infrared spectrum of his combat goggles. He was under fire! He was under fire and three of his men had already been hit!

Mallory was a veteran of ambush attacks by Argentine rebels. His brain reacted instantly once the message that he was under attack was processed. He threw himself to the ground. Only he didn't drop immediately as he did when he was on Earth in normal gravity. Instead, he seemed to float downward at an almost serene pace. When he hit the dirt, he bounced back up and then slowly landed back down again. Two bullets came plinking in less than a half meter from his head.

"Fuck me!" he barked, feeling the adrenaline start to flow now. There were greenies out there and they were shooting at him! He could see the muzzle flashes from their weapons now, coming from the hills about half a kilometer in front of him. Half a kilometer! They were putting down frighteningly accurate fire from half a klick away. God help him.

He began scrambling to get under cover, trying to crawl behind a large boulder a meter to his right. His movements were ungainly and did little more than kick up more dust for a moment. Finally he started to inch along, bullets still flying all around him. A rock near his right hand was hit and flipped nearly a meter into the air, chips of it exploding everywhere. Finally his hands were on the rock. He pulled himself around it, putting its bulk between him and the enemy, praying that it was large enough to provide cover.

Bullets began to slam into the rock now, throwing chips of it into the air to rain down upon him. Acting quickly, not stopping to wonder how he had been miraculously spared when the other three men had been potted as easily as pop-up targets on a shooting range, not knowing that he was doing exactly what his tormentors wished him to do, he switched his radio frequency to the main tactical channel, calling up his mapping display in the same instant.

"Callahan, this is Mallory. Emergency traffic!" he screamed.

Callahan came on the air immediately. "What is it, Mallory?" he asked, his voice calm.

"I'm taking fire!" he said. "I have a squad sized unit shooting at me from grid three-one-bravo. The hill marked two-three-four. I repeat. Hill two-three-four in grid three-one-bravo. The rest of the patrol is down. Requesting immediate arty support!"

"Confirm the rest of the squad is down?" Callahan asked, his voice kicking up a notch in excitement.

"That's affirm," Mallory said, wincing as another burst of fire came stitching into his rock. "I've got small arms fire coming from that location. I'm pinned down at grid three-one-charlie, half a klick south of the hill! Get some arty down on those fuckers!"

"He's broadcasting, sarge," Jefferson said. "No doubt about it. Encrypted 900 megahertz frequency from his bearing."

Lon nodded, squeezing off another two shots into the dirt around the rock where he was hiding. Beside him Matza blasted an extended burst with the SAW, the expended casings flying out behind him. "Wong, do you got a shot on him?" Lon asked. "He's under cover from my direction."

"Mine too," she said. "I can see part of his foot if you want me to put one there."

"No, no sense torturing the bastard. Hoary," he hailed to the Horishito on the adjoining hill. "You have a clean shot of him from over there?"