Chapter 12C

"It appears at this time," General Wrath told the assembled reporters in the briefing room, "that the terrorist elements who are holding Mars somehow got lucky and were able to have a team of their operatives pre-positioned near the north side of the Eden landing site. My guess is that they placed several of these teams in likely locations where they thought our landing ships might come down and that the law of averages simply allowed this particular guess to be a correct one. This group of terrorists engaged some of our marines as they were on patrol around the northern perimeter of the landing zone. My information is that several marines were wounded during the exchange. I have just ordered a shuttle down to the surface to evacuate them. Our troops right now are sweeping the area where the engagement occurred and will capture or destroy these cowardly terrorists before they can make any more such attacks."

"How many were wounded?" asked the crusty old reporter from ICS. "And were any killed?"

"I don't have complete numbers on that yet," Wrath lied, "but my information is that there were a few moderate wounds from the exchange of gunfire and from explosive devices that the terrorists planted."

"Do you believe that any more of these teams might be in the vicinity of any other landing zone?" asked the pretty reporter from InfoServe. "And if so, what steps are you taking to ensure that they will not jeopardize the landing of the rest of the forces?"

Wrath, a veteran of live briefings, pretended to ponder her question, as if the reporter had not been briefed to ask that very thing in those exact words and as if he had not already formulated a response. "Well, Cindy," he said, addressing her by name, "I cannot actually guarantee that there are no other teams of terrorists lying in wait near any of the other landing zones, but I would guess that it is very unlikely. As I said, the terrorists probably placed several teams outside at several of the landing areas in the hope that we would just happen to set down near them. We just happened to show up next to this team. I hardly think that Laura Whiting and her thugs have an unlimited supply of such men to waste on futile attacks such as these. This attack will not affect the landing of the rest of the forces in any way."

There were a few more questions, most of them reworded versions of those that had already been asked, and then Wrath, citing the need to get back to work coordinating his assault teams, brought the briefing to an end.

Two minutes later he was back in the CIC, where Major Wilde delivered more bad news to him.

"Perimeter forces on the west side of the New Pittsburgh LZ are in contact with an unknown size force of greenies," he said. "Reports are that another patrol was taken down in almost the same manner as the patrol at the Eden LZ and that the responding platoon was once again ambushed from cover. Twelve dead, four wounded are the damages so far."

"I see," Wrath said slowly, with barely restrained rage. "And greenie casualties?"

"None as far as can be determined," Wilde told him. "We pounded the area where the fire came from with arty, but, just like at the Eden site, it took far too long for the rounds to get on target. It's the same situation. The lack of GPS data and our unfamiliarity with gunnery in that variable air pressure is making it extremely hard to put down accurate fire. By the time we plastered the hill and got some troops up there, the greenies were long gone. A sweep of the area is underway right now. So far it has turned up nothing."

"Nothing," Wrath said, shaking his head in frustration. Nothing was exactly what a sweep of the Eden ambush zone had turned up as well. "How in the hell are they getting away from us? How can they just disappear into the wastelands like that? There not a goddamned thing for them to hide behind out there."

"We don't know," he answered. "Intel says that the greenie biosuits have a lower infrared signature than the ones we wear, but even so, they have to putting off heat don't they? And then there's the fact that its broad daylight. They should be visible for up to two kilometers with nothing more than an eyeball looking for them. Goddamned if I know where they went, sir."

"Tell the commanders down there to keep sweeping until they find them. I want those landing sites secure in the next three hours so we can start bringing down our heavy equipment before it's dark at the LZ's."

"Yes, sir," Wilde told him. "We'll get them. After all, how many could there possibly be?"

"Those greenies have been supernaturally lucky so far," he said with a grunt. "Their luck will run out as soon as we get our armor down there though." He paused for a moment. "What about the evac shuttle? Is it on its way?"

"Completed it's de-orbit burn about forty minutes ago. It should be entering the atmosphere soon and down on the ground about twenty minutes after that. I sent two doctors, three nurses, and four medics down with it."

"Excellent," he said. "I guess we'd better send another shuttle down for the wounded at the New Pittsburgh LZ."

"I've already taken the liberty of arranging that, General," Wilde told him. "They should be leaving Mercy in about ten minutes. Estimated landing time will be..."

"Major Wilde," a young communications tech suddenly called from his terminal across the room. He sounded excited.

"What is it?" Wilde yelled over to him.

"I just received a message from Colonel Brandywine at the Proctor LZ. A patrol was just ambushed by a force of greenies on the south side."

"Fuck me," Wrath said, his words coming out almost as a groan. It was starting to look like things weren't going to go as smoothly as they had in the simulations.

Lon and his squad had tightened up into two teams of five apiece and were now deployed atop of a high ridgeline just over a kilometer from where they had made their attack on the squad of soldiers. They were all tired and increasingly cognizant that they were in hostile territory and being hunted but their spirits were high, particularly after their successful evasion of the manhunt that had been sent out after them.

After cutting down the squad of soldiers from the hilltops they had fled to the east, taking up observation positions on another set of hills and watching with amusement as the marine gunners tried to hit their previous positions with artillery. Their amusement had turned to fear however when they saw an entire platoon fanning out over the landscape thirty minutes later to track them down. They had moved off of their hillside and put into action their evasion plans, which took advantage not of their speed and agility in the wastelands but of the nearly zero heat emission qualities of their biosuits. They had spread themselves out in a large field of boulders in one of the many gullies, lying down at the base of rocks and remaining immobile. Since it was high noon on the Martian equator, the outside temperature of the air was about as warm as it ever got on the planet, a balmy sixteen degrees Celsius. This made it quite easy for the heat dissipation mechanisms of their suits to keep them exactly the same temperature as the ground around them, which kept them from registering in the infrared spectrum of the marine's combat goggles. And when lying in the boulders the camouflage patterns on their suits made them blend in almost perfectly with the background in the visual spectrum. From anything more than a hundred meters away they would look like nothing but rocks among rocks, dirt among dirt. A squad of marines had walked right by the edge of their hiding spot during the search, had looked directly at them, and had passed on without the slightest hint of recognition.

From there the squad had waited almost an hour and had then moved out again, dashing from one piece of cover to the next until reaching their current position. They were now looking out at the landing ship and the perimeter of the landing zone once more. To the east of them they could see another platoon of marines, or maybe the same one as earlier, still searching from hill to hill, trying to locate them, with no idea that the men they sought were actually between them and the safety of their trenches now. In the other direction, in the trenches themselves, other marines were lounging about, walking to and fro along the trench line, keeping half an eye out towards the wastelands beyond but mostly just chatting with each other based on the amount of radio waves that Jefferson was picking up. Beyond them was the landing zone itself, with the ship sitting on its supports. Well over two hundred marines were moving about in that area, some engineers setting up further landing areas for the rest of the ships to come down, others combat marines that were guarding them.

An encrypted radio message had just been broadcast from Eden special forces headquarters. The message had asked any team on the perimeter — and just how many teams there were neither Lon nor anyone else in the squad knew — to send in an activity report for the LZ itself. The message had not explained why HQ wanted this information but nobody really needed to know why. All of them knew that part of special forces doctrine was to send mortar teams out to the perimeter of any hostile landing zone. And mortars were much more effective when they had accurate targeting information.

"Can we transmit from here safely?" Lon asked Jefferson.

"I'm pretty sure we can," he said. "I can still get a lock on the com sat from here and unless one of those earthling fucks actually gets a visual on me they won't pick up the com laser."

"How about if we send a photo?" Lon asked.

Jefferson thought for a moment. "The transmission time will increase about tenfold for a picture," he said. "But again, it should be fairly safe."

"Okay, do it," Lon ordered. "Snap a frame shot with your combat goggles and be sure to get the ship in the shot. Be sure you label it as coming from the north side. I'm sure they would know that already, but its best to be sure."

"You got it, sarge," Jefferson said.

A moment later the shot was taken. He ordered his computer to download it to the communications computer and to then encrypt it for transmission. The communicator sent up its laser transmitter, locked onto the satellite, and sent out the laser pulse, which in this case took a full five seconds from start to finish. Two minutes later the photo was on the screen of Colonel Bright in the command center. Bright quickly made a few marks on the photo and then transmitted it through the satellite link to the six person mortar team that had been deployed on the east side of the Eden landing zone, about two kilometers from the perimeter, about four from the ship itself, a range that was well within the capabilities of the 80-millimeter weapons they fielded.

Armed with the picture and the GPS data that Bright had noted on it, the team set up their three weapons in a line and programmed the firing computers to stagger the rounds throughout the area of the LZ where the heaviest human activity was taking place. These computers, which knew exactly where the weapon they were mated to was located, exactly where the target area was located, what the barometric pressure was and what the current wind conditions were, quickly leveled the mortars and adjusted them to the proper angle. Green lights flashed telling the operators that the weapons were locked and ready to fire. The gunners then arranged a total of nine high explosive rounds around them — three for each weapon, which was as much as they dared fire from one location — and set them for ten-meter airburst. At a command from the sergeant in charge, the first three rounds were picked up and dropped into the tubes. They fired less than a tenth of a second apart. Before the rounds even reached the top of their ballistic climb, the next rounds were being put in. These too fired off, and then the last rounds were dropped in as well.

Like the artillery shells fired from the 150-millimeter guns, the rounds made no audible sound as they flew through the thin air. A search radar mounted on the landing ship picked them up in flight and automatically calculated their path both backward and forward, telling the operator both where the shells had been fired from and where they were heading, but there simply wasn't enough time to alert anyone. Some of the marines on guard duty saw them coming in as well, white spots in the infrared spectrum against the relatively cool sky. Cries of "incoming!" went out across the emergency frequency. Unfortunately most of the soldiers on duty inside the LZ itself were not combat veterans, and, as such, they did the predictable when they heard the warning. They looked up to see just what was incoming. As a result, most were still standing when the first three mortar rounds exploded ten meters above their heads. Razor sharp shrapnel ripped into a group of engineers that were performing a land survey, blowing off arms, heads, legs, exploding air tanks, shredding internal organs. The next salvo landed twenty meters further west, blasting a squad of MPs who were providing overwatch for the engineers. The third salvo did not cause any casualties but instead destroyed a generator and several equipment carriers. Eleven men were killed outright and eighteen were wounded, five of them serious enough to require immediate evacuation.

In all, the mortar attack lasted only four seconds and the team that had performed it was already packing up their weapons and hustling off into the wastelands by the time the last round exploded. The 150-millimeter guns atop the ship turned towards the west and unleashed a barrage of counter-battery fire, a total of fifteen rounds per gun, none of which landed within 400 meters of the spot that the Martian mortar team had fired from. Even before the counter-battery fire was complete a platoon of marines from the western perimeter were heading out beyond their trenches to try to track down those responsible. By that point they had heard about the ambushes that had taken place and they went out with a sense of wariness that even the combat vets among them had never experienced before. It was starting to seem that these greenies were a little more dangerous than Argentine or Cuban rebels. They stepped carefully and slowly, their fear increasing exponentially with each step that they took away from the safety of their sandbagged positions.

As it turned out, their fear was justified. They made it to the spot where the mortar fire had issued without incident. They found nothing there, not a body, or a limb, or a footprint, or an expended shell casing, or even an impact crater from the counter-battery fire. They turned to the south because their commanding lieutenant figured that that was the most likely direction the sneaking greenies would have fled in. They made it less than a half a kilometer before flashes began winking at them from the hillsides in front of them and bullets began to cut through their ranks. The attack lasted only six seconds, and in it, six of the marines were killed and nine wounded. Of the wounded, three would die before they could be carried back to safety.

The illusion that Callahan and the remains of his platoon held that they were safe inside of their perimeter was shattered about fifteen minutes after the word of the mortar attack on the LZ reached them. They were inside their trenches, looking out to the north. They could see nothing out there, though they knew that two platoons of marines were currently sweeping the area, searching fruitlessly for the greenie infiltrators that were causing them so much trouble. Callahan was feeling quite morose over the loss of so many of his men, including his first sergeant. He had lost people in combat before, of course. Every platoon commander that had served in Argentina had suffered losses. Never before had he had an entire squad decimated at one time though. He still couldn't quite believe it had happened, that they had been cut down almost effortlessly by a bunch of civilian greenies operating three hundred kilometers from their nearest defensive position.

It was now quite clear that his platoon's contact with the greenies was not just an isolated incident either. From the command channel he heard reports of quick, violent engagements from all sides of the perimeter. Hit and run attacks on patrols and the platoons going out to search the area by groups of greenies that struck like lightening and then disappeared into the landscape like smoke. Nor was the Eden LZ the only one under attack. Captain Ayers had told him that all four of the landing sites were reporting similar engagements.

"How in the hell are they doing it?" asked Sergeant Barley, who was sitting atop one of the sandbags, supervising the redeployment of a SAW. "How can they get those teams out there without us seeing them?"

"Those aircraft they have," Callahan said bitterly. "I'll bet you a thousand bucks to a bucket of shit that they're dropping them off outside of our perimeter with those things."

"Why ain't our sensors picking them up then?"

"They probably have a very low IR signature," he speculated. "They're winged aircraft, remember? Designed by greenie engineers to operate in this atmosphere. Since they have wings they don't need to use the same amount of thrust to keep aloft. Less thrust means less heat. They probably glide in low and set down on the flat ground somewhere close by, drop off a squad, and then take off again and go home. They can support them indefinitely that way and then pull them back out again when things get too hot."

"Yeah," Barley said, "but what about..." He got no further in his statement. His head suddenly snapped to the right as a single bullet penetrated through his helmet and blew out the other side. The red vapor that Callahan was starting to become horrifyingly familiar with boiled out of the hole and Barley fell lifelessly into the trench.

"Fuck!" Callahan barked, adrenaline flooding his veins. "Get down!" he called over the tactical channel. "We're under fire!"

Everyone quickly assumed attack positions, sticking their weapons out through the firing holes and manning all of the SAWs, all of them ready to pour fire onto the greenies that were attacking them. But there was no one out there. There were no flashes of weapons firing from the hillsides.

"Where the fuck did that shot come from?" someone yelled.

"A sniper," someone else said. "They got a goddamned sniper out there!"

Yes, Callahan thought sourly, it seemed that a sniper was just what they were dealing with here. He or she had crept up atop some hill, probably nearly a kilometer away, and had potted yet another of his sergeants right through the head. Such things had happened in Argentina from time to time but here there was no sound of a gunshot to help identify the location. "Did anyone see the flash from the shot?" he asked.

There was some muttering on the net, some profanity, even a few death threats, but no one was able to say that he had seen the shot. Even if they did have accurate artillery fire available to them, there was no place to call it down to.

"Everyone keep down from now on," Callahan said. "Don't put your head above the sandbags unless you have to. And if you do, make sure you keep moving. I'm going to get on the air with command and report this."

Captain Ayers was a twenty-year veteran of the Marine Corps. He had risen from a buck private manning a trench in Alaska to commander of Charlie Company of the 314^th. During most of that time he had been stationed in hostile areas — parts of WestHem where the natives just didn't agree with federal rule and usually tried to show that by force of arms. He was about as effective a company commander as the WestHem armed forces — which relied on blind obedience and unwavering political correctness — could produce. And he most certainly didn't like the way his men were being whittled away by the invisible greenies out there in the wastelands.