Chapter 4

I had the new troops, I had stopped calling them recruits, practice diligently with their shotguns over the next week. By then, they were about as accurate with them as they were going to get. We were delighted to find three who looked like instructor-grade material. That would take a tremendous load off our shoulders if we had a local cadre that we could depend upon to do the basic teaching while Hasup and I went on to other things.

I wanted my people to have a speaking acquaintance with hand to hand combat in case they ever got into the situation where they needed it. Hasup and I spent three weeks teaching the basics so that they would have some chance to survive a close encounter, though they would never have the time for the training necessary to become real experts at it. After the second day of instruction, we went directly into what some would call the school of dirty tricks. We spent time on things like throwing dirt into the opponent's eyes and stuff like that. From our point of view, there was no such thing as a "fair fight."

Six weeks after Hasup and I landed here, we were way ahead of schedule. The Bustols had done us a real favor with that raid the first day we showed up at Karak-a-bolva, or Karak for short. Now that the defense force had a speaking acquaintance with combat techniques, the time had come to show them what to do with the knowledge they had.

All of the men were familiar enough with hunting that they had an easy time with the basics, though the women didn't get off so easy. We started them off with the techniques for sneaking through the woods without being noticed. After a week of solo practice, I had them try to sneak up on each other. This was where the tables turned—the women were much better than the men in spotting someone trying to sneak up on them. I have no idea why, it just worked out that way. Obviously, those women were going to make better guards than the men; that was something that Hasup and I marveled over.

Once we were satisfied with the sneaking, we moved on to small unit tactics. This was something the Inglets had an uncanny talent for. It was pretty much a case of tell them once, and they had the tactic learned. All they needed was some practice so that they could know when was the best time to apply each part of what they knew.

Fifteen weeks after Hasup and I arrived, I figured that they didn't need us anymore for defense. All they needed was to be blooded in battle to settle everything they had learned to where it should be. Therefore, Hasup and I went looking for trouble.

We assembled the ultra light and prepared it for a scouting expedition. Both Hasup and I were experienced ultra light pilots, so we were all set with the dual controls that came on the bird. With one person to pilot and another person to be an observer/gunner, we were as ready as we would ever be. Of course, the plane would fly straight and level if you gave it a chance, so it was even possible to have two shooters under special circumstances.

We loaded up with 20 of the 20-round drum magazines, all loaded with FRAG-12 HEAP (High Explosive Anti-Personnel) shells. I wanted the enemy to come to us if possible, so we went looking for trouble in the form of that spotter plane that would fly over us once a week. It had a very regular schedule, so we decided to ambush it the next time it showed up. It was due on Thursday at about 10:30 AM, so we planned to be aloft and waiting for it.

It always came in on a northwest to southeast path at about 250 meters altitude. I was the pilot and Hasup was the gunner on this occasion, and I positioned us in a tight orbit at about 400 meters, hopefully hidden in the sun. As far as we could tell, our trap worked, at least in the first part.

The plane showed up and acted as if the pilot and observer had not seen us. They tooled along at about 110 KPH as if they didn't have a care in the world. Fortunately, they were coming toward us, because we had no chance of traveling that fast. I put us into a dive with our little engine putting out all of the RPM that it had. I'm sure that the designer of our craft never intended for anybody to put this much strain on his little baby.

We were after a kill, but we would really settle for the spotter calling for the cavalry to rescue them. Our main goal was to attract a column that we could ambush, with shooting down the spotter plane as a secondary goal. I had hoped to dive in front of him and put some FRAG-12 shots into the cockpit, but he was moving a little faster than I had anticipated. As a result, we were going to miss him at the tail end, so he might not even see us. Dammit, that was not acceptable!

At the moment, we were flying over unoccupied territory, some of it meadow and some of it forest, so we had no qualms about firing at the plane with only a small chance of hitting it. The bullets were going to explode when they hit the ground, but the only harm that would do would be to scare some wild animals. That we could live with.

Hasup began shooting when we got within 150 yards of the plane. We were exactly following its path, so there was a very good chance of hitting the plane just by pointing the AA-12 in the right direction and shooting on full automatic. I kept us pointed at the spotter plane and Hasup kept shooting. She had emptied her first 20-round drum and was inserting the second one when there was an explosion on the fuselage just behind the cockpit, followed only moments later by another explosion a little nearer the tail of the airplane. There was a third explosion near the vertical stabilizer at the tail, but it made little difference, because the plane was already breaking up.

The destruction was so complete that the plane almost jerked to a halt in the air, and we were suddenly flying faster than they were. By this time, Hasup had reloaded with the next drum, so she blasted away at the cockpit, still on full automatic. The two men in the plane were in the process of trying to jump out when the first of her new rounds struck the cockpit. There was an explosion within the cabin, and then another. Neither of the two men were able to escape, and we could see blood trailing out the now open back of the cockpit. The plane was falling in pieces, so we figured that our job was done, and we headed for Karak.

I wish I knew what it meant, because I was sure the information was significant, but the Bustols were very slow to react to our attack. It was four days later when we saw a column approaching us. Hasup and I were in the ultra light again, trying to keep the enemy from sneaking up on us. There was only one road through the area, so we knew the route they would follow. Of course, we had already picked out the ambush point, so it was just a matter of waiting for the enemy to stick their heads into the noose.

We scooted back to Karak and got our people on the move toward the ambush site. There were no hills around, so we could not use them for fighting from high ground. We were forced to work with what we had, which was a swamp. I have no idea why the road was originally built that way, but it ran close to the south edge of the swamp for several hundred yards. The drop off was quite steep and the water near the road was about 130 cm deep. The south side of the road was the proverbial dry as a bone, but there were a number of very large trees growing close to the road.

Knowing soldiers the way I did, I was certain that they were not going into that water, no mater what the provocation. I put eight of our best shots high in the large trees, with everybody else strung out along the road at ground level. We didn't fool around: everybody was armed with five 20-round drums of FRAG-12 HEAP. The HEAP rounds were not as forceful with their explosions as the straight explosive rounds, but I hoped to salvage at least one of the trucks in drivable condition so that we can learn something about it. Therefore, everybody was warned not to put an explosion in the engine compartment unless there was no choice.