Replacements
Justin Watson
Firebase Lang, North of Delph’
2nd Platoon, Bravo Company 1-87 Infantry
The grenade hissed softly and released a green smoke cloud. From his position kneeling behind a thick evergreen tree, Sergeant First Class Rhys Harlingen watched dreamily as the celery-colored smoke billowed across the cool, grassy clearing for several seconds. Shaking his head to clear it, Rhys looked around at his people and saw that his were not the only drooping eyelids in the patrol. He reached to the man next to him, Sergeant Quinn, 1st Squad Leader, and shook him. Quinn’s head snapped up, his brown eyes wide in surprise under his patrol cap.
Rhys made a forestalling motion with his hand to calm Quinn, then indicated with a wave that he should rouse the rest of the patrol. Quinn nodded, chagrin apparent on his dark brown face.
Five days in the bush will do that to anyone. I don’t know if it’s worse or better that we made no contact with the enemy.
Rhys turned his eyes back to the sandbagged walls and dug-in concrete fortifications of Firebase Lang, waiting for clearance to come over the radio. If they entered the clearing without clearance, a jumpy sentry just might fire on them.
“Blacksheep Two-Seven, this is Lang Golf.” The earpiece in Rhys’s helmet crackled to life. “I see green smoke, over.”
“Lang Golf, Two-Seven,” Rhys said. “Confirm green smoke, over.”
“Roger, Two-Seven,” the guard on radio watch at Lang answered. “Come on in, and welcome home.”
“Roger, out,” Rhys said. He rose to his feet, knees crackling like pinecones in a vice, and waved for his people to follow him. They left the concealment of the treeline and walked out into the kilometer-wide clearing surrounding Firebase Lang. With a little prodding from Quinn, the soldiers maintained their spacing and vigilance right up to the moment they collapsed into a file at Firebase Lang’s entry control point.
Per standard operating procedure, Quinn and Rhys stopped at the gate and counted in their six soldiers as well as inspecting them for any critters that might be clinging to their gear, artificial or natural.
“Get a shower and some chow, Quinn,” Rhys said. “And put these guys on twenty-four-hour standdown. Meet me at the command post in an hour to go over the patrol report, then you take a standdown, too.”
“Sergeant, I don’t need a standdown,” Quinn said. “I just need a shower and some sleep.”
“Your dedication to duty is noted, Sergeant,” Rhys said, his voice devoid of inflection. “Ericsdottir can handle her fire team without you for one more day. Shut up and do what I tell you.”
“Yes, Sergeant,” Quinn said, turning toward the barracks tents.
Disregarding his own grumbling stomach and the filth coating him, Rhys headed for the Company Command Post, a plywood building reinforced by sandbags near the center of the outpost. Captain Shultz would want a quick word, and while the CO wasn’t chickenshit enough to jump one of his platoon sergeants for taking a shower before checking in, Rhys knew he’d appreciate being informed ASAP.
Even though all I can tell him is, “We ain’t found shit.”
Sure enough, Captain Schultz was in the command post when Rhys pulled open the CP’s flimsy plastic door. The tall rangy officer sat at a green folding table, scrolling through reports on a ruggedized gray tablet. He looked up as the door open and stood to greet Rhys with a firm handshake.
“Welcome back, Sergeant,” he said. “Take a seat. I take it your patrol was quiet?”
“Yes, sir,” Rhys said as he settled into a chair, taking his rifle off its single-point sling so the muzzle wouldn’t drag on the extruded plastic floor. “We hit all OP locations and saw nothing out of the ordinary.”
Schultz nodded.
“Do you think we’ve stopped the rebels’ logistical traffic through our area of operations, or are we just missing them?” Schultz said.
“I don’t know, sir,” Rhys said. “Since higher pulled the rest of the brigade back to Delph’, we have a fuck-ton of ground to cover. They’re too good at spoofing our automated sensors and we just can’t put enough mark-one eyeballs out there to cover every logging road, much less all the deer trails and other paths that could fit a bike with a small trailer or a mule cart. I got no proof, but my guess is that we’re a moderate inconvenience to them at most.”
Schultz stared at the situation map on the table between them for a moment, his brow furrowed. He finally exhaled.
“I think you’re right,” he said. “I’ll talk to the Old Man about trying something different. In somewhat better news, your platoon is a getting a few new sets of mark-one eyeballs. Colonel Antoine brought some replacement personnel with the new Eel.”
“Cherries or transfers, sir?” Rhys asked.
“Mostly transfers,” Schultz said. “Fortunately, only one of them is an NCO, a Sergeant Cogman. There was no one we could get promoted in time to keep him from taking a team leader spot. The rest I divided up, no more than two per fire team.”
Rhys nodded, taking it in stride. Their parent unit, 1st Battalion of the 87th Infantry Regiment, was an aberration among UN forces on Grainne, or indeed, UN forces anywhere. For more than a decade their battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Antoine, used his family’s political capital to plant himself in 1-87 and avoid relief despite his eccentricities. He also exerted heavy influence on personnel coming into the battalion.
As a rule, 1-87 accepted only enlisted men in the lower three paygrades and brand-new officers. Nearly every NCO, company commander, and staff officer in the battalion at this point had been promoted up through the ranks in the battalion under Antoine’s command, ensuring they were up to Antoine’s standards. Accepting an NCO from another unit was a wild card.
Nothing for it, we are short on people. Hope he doesn’t suck.
“Oh, and the colonel was kind enough to drop off a platoon leader for you,” Schultz said, a mischievous smile curving his lips. “Lieutenant Nguyen. He is brand new.”
Rhys exhaled and ran a hand over his face. Breaking in new lieutenants was senior NCO business, and if you did it right the result was decent company commanders, majors, colonels, etc. But it was always a pain in the ass. Even the ones with potential, almost none of them were objectively good from day one, and took months to develop into an asset. He’d had Lieutenant Lang right about where she needed to be before the rebels had killed her.
Rhys pushed that thought away.
“Where is he now, sir?”
“In the motor pool,” Schultz said, grinning. “He was eager to get started. Go get cleaned up and grab some chow and I’ll introduce you.”
* * *
There just weren’t enough construction assets to make every facility on Firebase Lang hardstand, so the maintenance bay was a massive green fabric tent with dull twenty-by-twenty polymer planks laid down for flooring. The tent, fabricated from locally sourced fibers, was big enough to accommodate two Eel assault vehicles out of the company’s complement of sixteen at a time.
With space thus limited, Eels only stayed parked in the maintenance tent when they required the use of the heavy crane to pull their power plant, or if the maintenance team had to crack open sensitive electronics or other systems that needed protection from the elements. The tent was almost always filled with the whine of hydraulics and the buzz of power tools.
The mechanics and vehicle operators performed all the other maintenance functions out on the parking line of the motor pool. As Rhys approached second platoon’s line with Schultz, he saw a short man in fatigues with buzz-cut black hair standing on a ladder in front of one of the Eels. It looked for all the world as if the guy was trying to fellate the four-foot long barrel of the Eel’s twenty-five millimeter auto-cannon; his hands gripping its barrel on either side and his mouth pressed to the muzzle.
“BOOM!” The man shouted into the weapon.
Shultz looked sideways at Rhys and grinned.
“He was captain of the Tactics Club at the Academy, you know,” he said, tilting his head toward the man on the ladder. “Co-captain of the Combat Weapons Team, too.”
“I’ll sleep better knowing that, sir,” Rhys said, picking up his pace to reach conversational distance with his new platoon leader before Nguyen “Boom-Tested” the gun again.
“Lieutenant Nguyen,” Rhys said.
The diminutive officer looked away from the muzzle of the twenty-five millimeter down at Rhys. Nguyen’s dark-brown eyes were bright and eager, his posture erect and positively humming with youthful energy. Rhys found himself exhausted just looking at the boy.
“Good Afternoon, Sergeant,” Nguyen said, politely, then saw Schultz and started to salute, then checked the motion, apparently remembering that they were in a forward area. The effect looked like an epileptic spasm. “Sir.”
“Nguyen,” Schultz said. “What are you doing up there?”
Before Nguyen could answer, a young woman with Nordic blonde hair and fair skin appeared out of the commander’s hatch on the Eel’s turret. Ericsdottir pulled herself to waist-level defilade, her newly sewn-on corporal’s chevrons were a slightly brighter shade of gray-green against the lapels of her faded and stained battledress.
“Hey, Ell-Tee,” she said. “Could you give us another shout? I don’t think the scanner got a good reading on that last . . . ”
Ericsdottir trailed off as she saw her platoon sergeant and company commander.
“Oh, hi, sir. Welcome back, Sergeant,” she recovered, her voice bright. “The lieutenant was just giving us a hand. The, uh, emitter on the sonic scanner is out, but the receiver still works, so he was helping us test bore and barrel integrity.”
Ericsdottir held up a green device that Rhys recognized as a chemical alarm, not a sonic scanner. Her smile took on a sheepish cast as she waited to see if her superiors would play along.
Schultz just shook his head and turned something that sound suspiciously like a chuckle into a cough.
“Nguyen, this is Sergeant Harlingen, your platoon sergeant,” Schultz said. “I leave you in his capable hands.”
The captain turned and walked away without waiting for a response, shoulders shaking with barely concealed mirth. Rhys turned back to Nguyen and Ericsdottir.
“Good thinking, Ericsdottir,” he said. “But I’m afraid I need Lieutenant Nguyen for a minute. Give the scanner to Metz and do the rest of the boom testing yourself.”
Ericsdottir’s expression fell.
“Oh, I think we’re okay,” she said, pretending to examine the readout on the chemical alarm in her hands. “No cracks or fissures detected.”
“No, no,” Rhys insisted. “Using a nonstandard input requires a larger sample size, you know that. Take at least twelve more readings, Corporal. Good loud ones. Sound off like you’ve got a pair.”
“Yes, Sergeant,” Ericsdottir said, handing the chemical alarm back down inside the turret, her expression resigned.
They walked away to the sound of Ericsdottir’s much higher-pitched, “BOOMs!” Nguyen smiled amiably.
“I take it I was the victim of a prank just now?” he asked. His accent was American West Coast, his voice in the middle of the tenor range, young and clear.
“Well-spotted, sir,” Rhys said.
“Ah, well, I figured I’d take some crap as a new LT,” Nguyen said, he stuck out his hand. “Pleased to meet you, Sergeant. I’m Tom Nguyen, though I guess you call me ‘sir.’”
Rhys shook hands, the lieutenant’s grip indicated he wasn’t physically weak. Nguyen’s reaction to the prank could be good, could be bad. If he really was secure enough that a joke didn’t bother him, good, but if he was absorbing the prank without comment because he was too timid, or too concerned about his popularity, not-as-good.
“Right,” Rhys said. “I won’t lie, sir, you’re joining us at a rough time. We lost your predecessor and a lot of good people just a couple weeks ago. Currently, the battalion is patrolling an area bigger than Georgia. There are no friendly local forces to speak of and we suspect the rebels are massing logistics for something big, but there’s not a whole hell of a lot we can do about it.”
“Understood, Sergeant,” Nguyen said, and Rhys was relieved to see his expression dim. “What are we doing in that case?”
Rhys smiled, but it was tinged with fatigue and pain.
“Our best, Lieutenant. We’re doing our best.”
* * *
Crouched under the front window of a department store, Lieutenant Tom Nguyen, or rather his digital avatar, risked a look over the windowsill. When no hail of virtual small arms fire greeted him, he took a longer look. Fifteen camouflage-clad figures, his third and weapons squads, sprinted across the gravel parking lot and into a gray and brown brick building that he’d designated as their support-by-fire position.
The computer-generated village was lit in a convincing facsimile of Grainne’s predawn sunlight and Nguyen’s VR rig even supplied the drone of native insects, boots crunching on gravel and the whhheeeesshhhh of a soft, consistent breeze. The immersive effect was only partially successful, though, as the insects did not sting, his boots did not slip and slide on the gravel, nor did the breeze cool the sweat off his skin. On a subconscious level, his brain noted the dissonance between the simulation’s audio-visual and tactile inputs.
“Blacksheep Two-Six, this is Blacksheep Two-Four.” Sergeant O’Donnell, the weapons squad leader checked in on the platoon radio net. “Support by fire set, over.”
“Two-Four, Two-Six, Roger, stand by, over,” Tom acknowledged, his pulse quickening. Computer simulation or not, this was his first training exercise as an officer.
If I can just not fuck this up in front of the CO, I’ll be off to a good start.
Turning around in the simulated storefront, he counted the nine surprisingly lifelike representations of second squad around him. The squad leader Sergeant Harris and his two team leaders, Corporals March and Cohen were represented by avatars like Tom’s own. For this exercise, the remaining members of second squad were represented by AI bots. Ironically, the movements and facial expressions of the bots were smoother, more realistic than the avatars of the real soldiers participating in the exercise.
“Blacksheep Two-Seven, this is Two-Six, is your element set?” Tom asked, his commo rig auto-selecting the correct radio frequency based on call-sign.
“Roger, Two-Six,” Sergeant Harlingen replied. “Overwatch set.”
Alright, here’s where the simulated metal meets the notional meat, Tom smiled as he made his way to the front door of the department store.
“All Blacksheep Two elements, this is Two-Six,” he said. “Commence assault on Objective Gold.”
Letting go of the transmit button, Tom turned to the three men and six digital constructs with him.
“Alright let’s—”
Tom’s vision went pure, plain black and deathly quiet filled his ears.
The young lieutenant unlatched the fully enveloping VR helmet and ripped it off his head, shooting upright from his simulation chair—too quickly as it turned out; a wave of dizziness put his ass back in the chair as his senses adjusted to reality. He took a deep, shuddering breath and looked around, seeing Harris likewise coming out of his VR rig, shaking his ginger-topped head. He was followed shortly thereafter by Cohen and March. Sergeant Harlingen and the rest of the platoon were still sitting tight, secure in their VR rigs.
Rising more slowly, Tom saw Captain Schultz regarding him with a pitying half-smile from the control terminal of the sim center.
“Was there a technical issue, sir?” Tom asked.
“No, Nguyen,” Schultz said. “You were killed by enemy fire. Go ahead and have a seat.”
Shitfuckingcuntfullofcockbags.
Tom sat on the plastic bench at the back of the company’s simulation room, allowing his head to thunk back against the prefabricated polymer wall. Stewing in frustration, Tom relished the brief, sharp pain in his skull.
He didn’t have long to wait. The rest of his NCOs began shaking out of their VR rigs in ones and twos. Nguyen was unsurprised that Sergeant Harlingen was nearly the last one out, followed only by the smartass blonde corporal, Ericsdottir.
“Alright, Second Platoon,” Captain Schultz said from the controls of the repeater holo-display. “Gather around me for the AAR.”
Tom wanted to run and hide, but he fought to keep his expression impassive as he approached the glowing terrain model of the repeater display. Once Sergeant Harlingen and second platoon’s four squad leaders and six team leaders were all standing where they could see, Schultz hit a few keys and glowing blue icons representing the platoon began to advance across the holographic terrain model from the LZs toward the objective.
“Your landing went as planned,” Schultz narrated. “As did your approach and initial entry into the town. You remained unnoticed to this point—”
Schultz paused the display at the point where third squad and weapons occupied their position across the street from the main objective building. Then he zoomed it in on the buildings north of the objective where 1st Squad had assumed far-side security. In a nearby alleyway, a red icon blinked into existence.
“It was at this point in the exercise,” Schultz continued, his voice clinical. “That an enemy security element noticed the movement of your platoon. Because Lieutenant Nguyen thought to request jamming support, the enemy was unable to alert the high value target on the objective of our presence via radio or phone comms.”
Nguyen opened his mouth to give Harlingen credit for requesting the jammers, but his platoon sergeant stopped him with a miniscule shake of his head. The red icon on the display began to move further down the alleyway and into a two-story building.
“The enemy lookouts moved into this building,” Schultz said. “And occupied the second floor, from this elevated position they observed second squad entering the department store south of the objective and engaged them with a recoilless rifle, killing the platoon leader, second squad leader and most of the assault element.
“The enemy’s movement to this building was masked from most of the platoon by various buildings except for,” Schultz paused, fiddling with the controls for a few seconds, “Alpha team, first squad. Sergeant Cogman, I believe that is your team.”
Cogman was a medium height man with a hatchet of a nose and flat gray eyes under a straw-colored crew-cut. He didn’t look embarrassed, more annoyed to be called out.
“Yes, sir,” he said.
“In that case, this alley was in your field of view, you should’ve observed the lookouts’ entire movement,” Schultz said flatly. “Yet you failed to either engage the enemy or report them. Why?”
“I guess I must have missed them, sir,” Cogman said, his tone bored.
Tom felt his face warming and his fists clenched at his sides. He had only known Cogman for a few hours longer than the rest of the unit, but he already felt embarrassed at the replacement NCO’s lack of professionalism. Tom’s gaze flicked to his platoon sergeant and he saw Harlingen’s jaw muscles clench violently, but the company commander was talking so they both remained silent.
“You missed them,” Schultz said flatly, his tone making it abundantly clear how stupid that answer was.
“Yes, sir,” Cogman said, shifting from one foot to the other under the hostile gaze of not just his commander, but every other NCO in his own platoon. “Look, I’m sorry, sir, but we just never took this video game shit all that seriously in my old platoon.”
“Maybe if you had they wouldn’t be fucking dead,” Ericsdottir snapped, her voice filled with sudden, intense vitriol.
“What did you just say to me?” Cogman said, stepping towards Ericsdottir. Tom started to move to intercept, but Harlingen was already between them.
“At-the-fuck-ease, right goddamn now.” Harlingen’s normally laconic voice was a growl. “Both of you.”
“Sergeant Cogman,” Schultz said, his voice still flat. “You will treat every training event as if your life, more importantly, your men’s lives, depend upon them, because they do. If this is an issue for you, you will not remain an NCO in my company. Understood?”
“Yes, sir,” Cogman said, voice subdued with deference, feigned or genuine, Tom couldn’t tell.
Schultz continued breaking down the short-lived mission from there, which was mostly a depressing recitation of his platoon’s simulated massacre. Tom allowed his gaze to drift from NCO to NCO in his platoon.
Ericsdottir was still glaring at Cogman. He’d pegged Ericsdottir for an incorrigible smartass from day one, naturally, but she seemed a more or less jovial smartass. The anger and contempt she’d shown Cogman seemed to spring from nowhere, and taking a shot at his dead comrades? No one was happy with Cogman, but that was cold-blooded by anyone’s standards.
What the hell was that all about?
As soon as the After-Action Review broke up, Harlingen called out both Cogman and Ericsdottir.
“Sergeant Cogman, report to my desk in the CP and wait there,” Harlingen said. “It appears you need remedial counseling on your duties as a team leader. Ericsdottir, Quinn, stay here.”
Nguyen waited with Harlingen for the rest of the platoon and Captain Schultz to filter out. As soon as they were alone with Ericsdottir and her squad leader, Quinn, Harlingen started questioning her.
“Alright, what the hell was that about?” Harlingen said, echoing Tom’s thoughts.
Ericsdottir was absent her normal smirk, instead her features were clouded and furtive.
“Nothing, Sergeant,” she said. “I just thought Sergeant Cogman’s attitude was all wrong.”
“Oh bullshit, Ericsdottir,” Quinn chimed in. “Something about Cogman has been eating you up for days. Talk.”
Ericsdottir chewed on her lip for a long moment. Tom remained silent, not knowing what he would say in any case, but tried to look stern and serious while he let his NCOs do all the talking.
“Last week Cogman was talking with the other transfer, the Pashtun kid—”
“Private Rashid?” Harlingen asked.
“Yes, Sergeant,” she said. “Anyway, they were talking about how much they wanted to get some pussy.”
Harlingen raised his eyebrows and cocked his head as if to say, yes, and?
“Hensley told him the platoon was off limits and the local girls weren’t safe,” Ericsdottir continued. “Given that a local bitch would likely fuck you just to infect you with something. Told him to get used to jacking off and be grateful the platoon has a great porn stash—not to be confused with a porn ’stache, of course.”
“Ericsdottir,” Harlingen said, warning tone audible.
“Right, sorry, Sergeant,” she said, and her voice lost the momentary levity. “Anyway, Rashid was like, ‘that’s why you pick the local girls who aren’t expecting it.’ When Hensley asked him what he meant by that, Cogman said, ‘What? You never held down one of those colonial bitches and gave it to her? We used to grab a different one each week and pass them around the platoon.’”
Tom felt his stomach lurch. He couldn’t stop his next words.
“What the fuck?”
Ericsdottir nodded. Sergeant Quinn’s mouth was slightly open in surprise and Harlingen’s own expression settled into something harder and sharper than his pro forma deadpan.
“Right, sir,” Ericsdottir said. “When we pushed him, he tried to play it off like he was just joking.”
“That’s not funny, that’s disgusting,” Tom said.
“No, It’s not funny, sir, and he wasn’t joking,” Ericsdottir said.
“Are you sure about that?” Harlingen said, his normally laconic voice deadly earnest.
“If you’re asking me if I can prove anything, of course not,” she said. “But, Sergeant, I know he wasn’t kidding. That sick fuck is a rapist; I can smell it on him.”
“We have to report this,” Tom said. “We have to start an investigation.”
“Wait just a minute, sir,” Harlingen said, then turned to Quinn and Ericsdottir. “You two don’t talk about this to anyone—not a single goddamn soul. But in the meantime, make sure none of the females are ever alone with Cogman or Rashid. Try to make it look natural if you can. Get out of here.”
Tom waited for the two NCOs to leave.
“Sergeant, we have to get an investigation started,” Tom said again. “We can’t have a fucking rapist in our platoon.”
Sergeant Harlingen seemed to age before his eyes, his shoulders slumped, and his fingers went to the bridge of his nose.
“All we know for sure about Cogman is that he’s an asshole. We don’t know he’s a rapist,” Harlingen said. “Corporal Ericsdottir’s misgivings aside, it’s possible he just has a fucked-up sense of humor, which would hardly make him unique in the force. He and Rashid are the only survivors from his old unit so if they say they were just joking, there’s no one else to question.”
“So we just let this pass?” Tom said, his voice rising. “That son of a bitch confesses to serial gang-rape and we do nothing.”
“Sir, calm down,” Harlingen said. “We’ll tell Captain Schultz what we know; maybe I’m wrong and he or Colonel Antoine can find some traction from their previous assignment. For now, we watch the sonofabitch like a hawk. I’m going to write him a negative counseling statement for incompetence and insubordination during this exercise. If he doesn’t square himself away, all I will need is two more negative counseling statements to establish a pattern of misconduct, then I can relieve him and he’ll be someone else’s problem.”
I don’t want him to be someone else’s problem, I want him to swing from a gallows.
Tom was not, pro-forma jokes about new lieutenants aside, entirely stupid. Ergo, he took a deep breath and tried to adjust his expectations.
“What about the rape ‘joke’?” Tom asked. “Surely that’s conduct unbecoming, at least. There’s counseling statement number two.”
Harlingen shook his head.
“Can’t use it,” he said. “If he challenges his relief, having that on the record against him puts every single dirty joke we let slide up for examination. This isn’t a platoon full of Mormons, sir. I’d have to relieve every NCO we have.”
“Sergeant, there’s a difference between dirty jokes and bragging about gang rape,” Tom insisted.
“Of course, there is,” Harlingen said. “But unless the judge advocate advisor he gets is retarded, it’s enough for them to muddy the waters at the review board. They can claim we singled him out because he was a transfer we didn’t want from another unit. Since Rashid is involved, they’re almost certain to bring up charges of institutional racism, too.”
“The hell?” Tom said, gesturing at the epicanthic folds over his own eyes. “Racism? I’m Vietnamese! Colonel Antoine is black. I’ve seen every shade possible. I met two other Muslim soldiers today; we’re not oppressing them.”
“Islam is a religion, not a race, sir,” Harlingen said. “More to the point, you and the battalion commander have obviously internalized white supremacy despite your own ethnic heritages. Very sad. It’s so common among Americans with minority heritages who don’t suck at life.”
“Oh, come on,” Tom said. “No review board is going to buy that.”
Harlingen took a deep breath and exhaled through his nostrils.
“From our battalion or the 87th Regiment at large? No,” he said. “But he won’t get a board from our regiment since Cogman and Rashid can claim conflict of interest. A lot of other units in the UNPF hate 1-87 with a passion. Some would let him off just to spite us.”
Tom stared at his platoon sergeant for several seconds, his lip curled in disgust.
“They’d let a rapist off,” Tom said. “Just to piss us off?”
Harlingen looked extremely uncomfortable for a long moment.
“What?” Tom said. “They would?”
Harlingen shook his head, not in negation, but in disgust.
“Sir, there are units where raping the locals might as well be in the standard operating procedures,” he said finally.
Tom felt the air leave his lungs.
“No.”
“Yes, sir,” Harlingen said. “We’re losing this war, badly. Morale is absolute shit and discipline is worse. The brass can’t do anything about it, so they’d rather not know.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Tom said.
“I’m not,” Harlingen said. “Colonel Antoine won’t tolerate it and his officers and NCOs are loyal enough to enforce his will. But other units’ senior leaders just want to get through this deployment alive and with their careers intact. They’re not going to draw attention to war crimes in their ranks, nor risk having their men turn on them for fucking up their fun.”
“This is so fucked up,” Tom said, leaning against the wall and putting his hand to his face.
“Welcome to the war, sir,” Harlingen said. “Where the enemy is only half the problem.”
* * *
The roar of VTOL engines overhead shook Rhys’s gray plastic desk, forcing a typo on the evaluation form he was filling out. He glared up at the dull, gray metal ceiling of the CP before returning his attention to the glowing screen in front of him. Backspacing several spaces he continued typing again—
Sergeant Cogman, aside from the incident recorded in attached counseling, has performed his duties in a satisfactory manner this quarter.
The words pained Rhys as he typed them. It was hardly high praise, and in an organization as prone to bureaucratic inflation of evaluations as the UNPF, it was even a de facto negative report. Still, it wasn’t the relief-for-cause evaluation he wanted to write. The hard truth was, even by the broadest possible terms, Rhys had no grounds to relieve or even further discipline Cogman.
Sergeant Cogman and Private Rashid kept their acts meticulously clean in the six weeks following the virtual reality exercise. Neither offered anything remotely resembling disrespect to their chain of command and neither made comment, in jest or not, about misconduct toward the locals. They performed their duties well, if not superbly, and neither bitched about anything. It pained Rhys because, whatever he might have told his new lieutenant, he trusted Ericsdottir’s instincts. Rhys believed he had two genuine war criminals on his hands.
War criminals or not, though, the replacements were no fools and after the first time Rhys laid down the law, they’d given their leadership no further case for adverse action.
Adding to Rhys’s foul mood was the fact that the VTOL that just interrupted his train of thought was returning from dropping off a long-range patrol made up of his soldiers. He’d wanted to go with them, but Captain Schultz had pointed out, correctly, that Rhys has been on patrol twenty-eight of the last thirty days. The CO insisted he let Sergeant Quinn take the mission alone since it was, essentially, a muscled-up fire team, not even a squad.
“Harlingen,” Schultz said. “If shit kicks off out there, I want you leading the rest of Second Platoon to the rescue, not sitting with your ass hanging out on the side of a mountain with one-sixth the combat power you’re responsible for. Nguyen seems to be doing alright, but I don’t want to send him into his first firefight without his platoon sergeant.”
The CO had a good point, but Rhys hated being at the firebase while his people were extended way beyond their normal patrol radius; thirty minutes away by air, to be exact. Schultz was right about the platoon leader, too. Nguyen had led several mounted and dismounted patrols and done fine, but still no enemy contact. The lieutenant tried to act mature about it, surrounded as he was by veteran NCOs. Rhys knew the kid was dying on the inside to get into the shit, though.
The door of the CP swung open, drawing Rhys’s eyes up again. Sergeant Crabbe, the second platoon artillery forward observer and Sergeant Quinn walked in. Rhys nodded at them both curtly, then turned his attention back to the lukewarm evaluation he was writing for Cogman.
Wait, weren’t they supposed to be on the patrol?
“What are you two doing here?” Rhys said, standing up from his folding table as they approached. “Why the hell aren’t you out with the patrol?”
Quinn and Crabbe looked at each other, eyes wide in alarm.
“Sergeant, the lieutenant said the CO pulled us at the last minute,” Crabbe said.
“Wait, what?” Rhys said. “Where’s Lieutenant Nguyen?”
But even as the question escaped Rhys’s lips he knew the answer.
“He got on the VTOL, Sergeant,” Quinn said, confusion apparent on his face. “He had an updated flight manifest.”
Rhys shot an incredulous look at the company clerk, a reedy corporal named Barton sitting at another folding table, who was responsible for typing up the lion’s share of the paperwork.
“I’m sorry, Sergeant, I thought you knew,” Barton said. “The lieutenant said that Sergeant Crabbe and Sergeant Quinn were both down with fever and he needed to get on the bird since they would be at sick call.”
“Oh, Jesus Christ,” Rhys said shaking his head in disgust as he walked toward the back of the CP, toward Captain Schultz’s office to tell him they had a lieutenant rogue and in the wild.
I swear I’m going to choke the shit out of that little bastard for this.
* * *
Forty-eight hours on the side of a mountain cooled, but did not extinguish, Tom’s enthusiasm for the mission. They had been rotating, two men on observation, two on security, two asleep since they’d arrived. The time asleep in the cave next to the battery-powered heater staved off hypothermia and frostbite, but also revived cold-deadened nerves so he could feel the pain accumulated on watch more keenly. The long Grainne year meant a long, chilly autumn, and they were told to expect winter at this latitude to be brutal. At the observation post they put down pads and mats under the brush and netting they used for concealment, but there existed no way to make lying prone on freezing rocks getting blasted by icy winds comfortable. Their only saving grace was that the snows hadn’t started yet, so they stayed dry, if perpetually windchilled.
Tom was just settling into his turn for sleep when Welch, their commo geek, came stumbling back through the cave tunnel.
“Sir,” he hissed. “Sir, we got movement on NAI Frank.”
NAI Frank was Named Area of Interest Frank; a logging compound that regiment’s intel section suspected the insurgency’s brass used for meetings.
Aches forgotten, numb flesh forgotten, Tom sat bolt upright instantly. He tied his bootlaces with fumbling fingers, redonned his cold weather gear, grabbed his rifle and helmet and sprinted down the tunnel toward the mouth of the cave, remembering to crouch as he emerged so as not to silhouette himself against the mountainside over the rock ledge on the cliff.
It was the dead of night with a sliver of moon to illuminate the ground, but Tom easily made out six local trucks winding their way north toward NAI Frank with his naked eye. Buckling his helmet’s chin strap and flipping his optics down, he started magnifying the green and gray imagery, his HUD displaying range to the trucks in decreasing kilometers. He took a kneeling position next to Rosales on the ledge, who tracked the lead vehicle with his massive 10mm sniper rifle.
“I count six vehicles, approximately twenty-five personnel, sir,” Rosales said, his voice flat.
“Confirm,” Tom said. “Welch, call it up.”
For a few seconds, Tom heard Welch talking into the radio and only static answering. Finally, the commo specialist put down the hand mic and looked at Tom, fear apparent in his eyes.
“Sir, I can’t get through,” Welch said.
“What?” Tom looked back at the commo geek. “Why not?”
“It’s some kind of EMI, sir,” Welch said. “Electromagnetic Interference.”
“I know what EMI is,” Tom said, more harshly than he intended. “Is it natural or jamming?”
“I don’t know, sir,” Welch said.
“Go get the ears and find out,” Ericsdottir snapped.
While his commo specialist went to get the Mobile Operational Utility Sensor-E, Tom continued to observe the vehicles. The convoy split into three sections. Two trucks drove to the northern edge of NAI Frank and stopped, while the trail vehicles stopped on the south side of the road, taking up blocking positions. The two middle trucks parked in front of one of the houses in the settlement. The men who got out of the trucks were all fit, bundled up, and carrying Grainne-made weapons openly.
Fucking jackpot, if we can just get the goddamn radio to work.
“Sir, the source of the EMI is one of the trucks on the southern edge of town,” Welch said from under a specialized helmet sporting small, circular sensor dishes on either side of his head.
“That’s gotta be a powerful jammer,” Ericsdottir said.
“Why do you say that?” Tom asked.
“Well, sir, I’m not awesome at geometry,” she said. “But we’re more than a six hundred meters away laterally, and another hundred meters vertically. If you do that a-squared, b-squared shit, I imagine that’s quite a distance.”
“Pythagorean Theorem,” Tom said, his tone absent as he pondered the problem. “And you’re right, whoever they are, they’re important enough to have some decent jamming equipment . . . ”
“Yeah,” Ericsdottir said, a note of suspicion in her voice. “Too bad there are twenty-five of them and we can’t call up the rest of the company.”
“Those are civilian trucks?” Tom said, ignoring Ericsdottir’s comment, turning to Rosales.
“Looks like, sir,” the sniper said. “Might be up-armored but I can’t see any signs of it.”
“We’ll have to risk it,” Tom said, pulling out a rope and webbing-set, he began to secure himself in a rappelling harness just as he’d learned at the Mountain Leader course. They’d already anchored long ropes, just in case they needed to get off the side of the mountain quickly.
“Lieutenant,” Ericsdottir’s normal sarcasm was replaced by the hesitancy of concern, “what are you doing?”
“Get into harness, Ericsdottir,” he said. “I’ll go first and belay you once I’m down. Rosales, as soon you see me pop a thermite on their jamming gear, start disabling their vehicles, I don’t want them to get away.”
“You don’t want them to what now?” Ericsdottir said.
“Welch, as soon as the jamming is off, call in the cavalry,” Tom continued, unabated, ignoring his own hammering heart. “Schindt, Rosales, after the vehicles are disabled, cover us. We’ll exfil south and switch on our IR beacons so you know who not to shoot.”
Tom took a deep breath, and instead of rocking into classic L shape, secured himself to the rope to rappel down face first. He looked over his shoulder.
“Sir, what the fuck are you doing?” Ericsdottir repeated, looking at his position on the ledge.
Tom gave what he hoped was a daring grin.
“Get in your harness and follow me.”
And with that, Tom stepped over the side and began to run down the side of the mountain, his break hand providing just enough friction to keep his descent controlled and more or less straight. As gravity pulled him inexorably toward the ground and the icy wind rushed through his hair and needled his skin and lungs, taking his breath away, Tom knew he’d never felt more alive.
Now this is some soldier shit.
* * *
The sentries patrolling the southern edge of town walked winding paths, eyes scanning the treeline. Their expressions were alert and professional, but not paranoid—they were keeping watch but not expecting contact. Each held a rifle and had night optics strapped to their face. They were backed up by a man with a medium machine gun set up over the roof a truck’s passenger compartment.
Easing back around the trunk, he motioned for Ericsdottir to lean in closer.
“Shoot the gunner at the truck,” he breathed in her ear. “I’ll kill the roving sentries. Give me a ten count, then initiate when you’re ready. Once they’re down, I’ll sprint for the trucks and thermite their jamming gear. You cover me.”
Ericsdottir’s incredulous expression was visible even through night optics, but she nodded, and settled into a prone firing position, rifle shouldered, cheek to stock. Tom did likewise. Because the enemy had their own optics, he didn’t engage his IR targeting beam, instead relying on the optic’s passive sensors to create his sight-picture. The HUD projected not only crosshairs, but the predicted ballistic path of his rounds in glowing red. They were close enough that his targets were still on the ascending branch of his rounds. He aligned the crosshairs just ahead of the man, placed the pad of his finger on the rifle’s trigger and waited.
CRACK-thweet. Crack-thweet, Crack-thweet, three shots rang out over the night air.
Before the report of Ericsdottir’s second round, Tom fired. The rifle recoiled into his shoulder and through his optics he saw the man jerk as if stung. Tom followed up with two more rounds before the man fell, then tracked over as quickly as possible to the other sentry, who was already moving for cover. Tom fired once, missed and fired three more rounds, sending bark from a tree flying off into the night. Glancing at the truck he saw that the machine gunner was slumped over his weapon. Tom’s second target was crouched behind a tree thick enough to stop his bullets.
We’re running out of time, if the rest of their people make it down here, we’re fucked.
“Ericsdottir, covering fire!” Tom transmitted. “I’m going for the trucks!”
Springing to his feet, Tom sprinted through the woods, pumping as hard as a he could to reach the truck. A prominent root caught his boot, tripping him as a burst of fire chewed into a tree mere feet behind him. Tom fell flat on his face but didn’t stop. He crawled forward as he’d been taught during his first cadet summer, to break the enemy’s tracking. The rocks and spiky evergreen seeds strewn across the forest floor dug into his knees and elbows as he scrambled forward.
Have to take out the jammer, or else we’re not going to make it out . . .
He was less than ten meters from the truck now, pushing himself back up he bounded forward, trusting in Ericsdottir to keep him alive, ignoring the rounds flying back and forth in the woods behind him. Tom’s lungs burned from the icy air he inhaled in ragged gasps and his heart hammered inside his chest.
The driver side door on the truck was unlocked when he got there, keeping his trigger hand on his rifle, he yanked open the door and scanned inside. There were discarded coffee cups, empty plastic bottles, cellophane junk food wrappers and—
There.
He recognized a portable jamming unit in the right-rear passenger seat. Climbing awkwardly into the truck’s cab, fumbling with cold and a copious dose of adrenaline that shook his hands, Tom retrieved a cylindrical gray thermite grenade from his web gear and a roll of tape. The tape came off its roll with a crrrreccch and Tom secured the grenade to the boxy black jamming unit, flicked off the safety clip and pulled the pin on the grenade. Before it ignited Tom hauled himself out of the truck, turned and ran like hell back for the woodline.
As he ran, Tom could hear the hiss of the thermite slagging the jammer.
“Summit Eight-Niner.” Tom tried to reach the sniper on his helmet comms. “This Blacksheep Two-Six, clear to engage tar—”
A jackhammer blow to his lower back sent Tom sprawling to the cold dirt and grass, well short of the woodline. For several terrifying seconds Tom couldn’t get a breath and all he saw were gold and silver starbursts. When his vision returned and frostbitten air filled his lungs again, Tom rolled onto his back, reaching for his rifle, every movement agony.
“Don’t you fucking do it, cocksucker!” A rough, deep voice warned him.
Focusing with some effort, Tom saw one of the insurgents, a tall, burly man in a knit cap, leveling a Grainne-issue rifle at his face, his expression furious. Behind his assailant, Tom saw other armed men running to catch up. Despite the mortal terror coursing through him, a detached piece of Tom’s mind forced a chuckle from his throat.
Well, shit, it was a fun ride, if short . . .
The insurgent’s thoracic cavity exploded without warning, spraying Tom with hot, black and red viscera. A split second later a thunder-crack report echoed off the mountainside and through the trees, then another, and another followed by the higher pitched rattle of machine gun fire from far off. Another of the insurgents fell, a large chunk of his torso turned into pink mist, and the rest went to ground as the machine gun kicked up fountains of dirt all about them.
“Move it, sir.” Tom’s radio crackled to life with Ericsdottir’s voice. “You’re covered!”
Wiping the blood, entrails, and bits of black fiber from his face with a gloved hand, Tom grabbed his rifle with the other and ran, once again, for the relative safety of the trees, his men covering his hasty retreat with a hail of fire.
* * *
Less than an hour later, Rhys shook his head as he walked the logging camp at NAI Frank; six trucks hulled; one burning, the rest with gaping holes through their motor cores, a couple dozen dead insurgents, five, thank God, live soldiers and one bloodied and battered lieutenant. Fists clenched at his sides, Rhys stormed toward the cabin where they’d established the aid station. Ericsdottir intercepted him.
“Sergeant, you know if you kill him, they might just stop giving us officers,” she said.
“Don’t threaten me with a good time,” Rhys said. “Why do you care, anyway?”
Ericsdottir looked abashed.
“Well, I mean,” she stumbled over her words, looking around at the logging encampment. “Look around. Yeah, he’s maybe batshit crazy, but his plan worked. We just killed twenty-five insurgents and he was the only one who got hurt. The LT’s got balls.”
Ah, there it is, the time-honored seal of approval of the enlisted for a particular officer, he’s got balls.
“I’ll keep that in mind, Ericsdottir, now fuck off,” Rhys said, continuing his march toward the aid station. When Rhys walked into the small log cabin, the platoon medic was examining an enormous purpling bruise on the LT’s lower back.
“Will he live, Doc?” Rhys asked in a voice that indicated he was ambivalent about the answer.
The nineteen-year-old medic, Private First Class Taylor, looked back at Rhys.
“Well, Sergeant,” he said. “From what I understand that’s up to you and the CO. But if you’re asking if the bruise will kill him, probably not. I gave him a local so he won’t get fuzzy and he can keep pushing. He should get some bloodwork when we get back, though, make sure it didn’t fuck up his kidneys or nothin’. You start pissing blood, you tell me, sir.”
Rhys smiled in a decidedly unfriendly manner.
“Thanks, Doc,” Rhys said. “Give us the room.”
Taylor beat a hasty exit, leaving platoon sergeant and platoon leader alone in the otherwise empty logging cabin.
“Lieutenant,” Rhys said. “If you ever pull some stupid shit like that again, officer or not, I will beat the life out of you and impale your corpse on crooked rebar as a warning to all lieutenants not to buck for medals.”
Nguyen’s eyes went wide, then narrowed. Anger and chagrin warred openly across his features.
“I wasn’t bucking for a medal. But understood, Sergeant,” Nguyen said, a sullen note in his voice.
“He’s going to have to get in line,” a corn-belt rasp interrupted from the door. “Rank hath its privileges.”
Captain Schultz stood in the doorway, looming large in full armor and kit, regarding Nguyen with a razor-edge glare. Rhys straightened to attention, Nguyen followed suit with a wince.
“Yes, sir,” Nguyen said, his defiance slipping away. “I’m sorry, sir, I know I didn’t ask your permission, but I felt my place—”
“Shut the fuck up, Lieutenant,” Schultz said. “You knew what you were doing, you overzealous little shit, and you’re going to get away with it this time because it worked. They had maps labeled with multiple logistics caches.”
Nguyen, wisely, chose not to respond or react to the news.
“Have your squad leaders start their precombat checks,” Schultz said. “We have three hours to formulate a plan and conduct rehearsals, then we’re hitting their largest cache. We expect resistance. You’ve proven you can pull some adrenaline junky bullshit, Lieutenant. Now let’s see if you can actually lead your platoon, which I remind you is your fucking job.”
* * *
The village, “Redbriar,” on the map, was comprised of approximately two dozen buildings. A significant minority of them were on fire now, and damned few were untouched by the fight raging between Blacksheep Company and the rebels defending their supply cache. Night optics were unnecessary now as the gray early light, glow from the fires and occasional explosion of heavy ordnance provided ample light for the combatants, even though smoke threatened to obscure whole sections of the village.
Tom Nguyen sprinted down a side street, cold morning air stinging his nostrils and throat, his boots crunching and tossing gravel hither and thither. Per direct orders from Captain Schultz, he maneuvered just behind his third squad, and a missile team from weapons squad surrounded him. Though not under direct fire, he heard the cacophonous reports of machine-gun bursts and rifle fire filling the air without cease, punctuated by the deeper thuds of grenades exploding, and the occasional whoosh-BRUM of shoulder-fired rockets.
“Two-Six, Two-Seven,” Sergeant Harlingen’s voice sounded in Tom’s ears. “I’ve got second squad and the guns with me at Building Red Three. Confirmed the enemy center of mass is Building Red Two. We’re taking heavy fire from that position, over.”
As Harlingen spoke, the men of third squad stacked up on the back door of a wood frame, one story house. Metgers, the alpha team’s grenadier, extracted a ten-round mag marked with red tape from his 20mm grenade launcher and replaced it with a blue-taped mag containing solid slugs.
“Roger, Two-Seven,” Tom acknowledged. “We’re breaching Building Green-Two now. Can you reduce the target, over?”
“Negative, Two-Six,” Harlingen responded, “Basement on Red Two is a reinforced bunker. We’ve got them under heavy fire but they’re not suppressed.”
Metgers blasted both hinges of the door and kicked it into the building, then stepped out of the way. Four men from third squad flowed through the door, trying to rapidly clear the fatal funnel. Too rapidly, as it turned out, the third man tripped on the lip of the floor tile inside, sprawling on his face with a crash and a stream of profanity.
“Stay the fuck down,” Corporal Luzan, a short swarthy NCO ordered, stepping over the prone rifleman and into the building. “Don’t mask fire.”
“First room clear,” Luzan reported after a moment. “Moving on. Get up, Williams, take number four slot.”
Tom entered the cleared room, a utility room occupied primarily by laundry machines and a big utility sink. Gritting his teeth, Tom held fast while Third Squad cleared the rest of the house. A gut-shaking THROOM outside interrupted the laconic “room clear” check-ins from third squad. Tom couldn’t see what had detonated, but fire slackened on both sides for several seconds after the explosion.
“All Blacksheep-Two Elements, this is Two-Six,” Tom said. “SITREP.”
“Stand by, Two-Six, explosion near Two-One’s position, break,” Harlingen answered.
There was a brief pause as Harlingen unkeyed his mic before continuing.
“Two-One, Two-Seven,” Harlingen called for Sergeant Quinn. “Status. Say again, what’s your status?”
“Two-Seven, this is Two-One-Bravo,” Ericsdottir’s voice answered, hard-edged and tight. “Two-One Actual is gone, booby trap on Building Blue-Three. I’ve lost contact with our alpha team, too, don’t know where they are.”
FUCK. Quinn’s dead, and we don’t know where Cogman’s team is.
“Roger, Two-One-Bravo,” Harlingen answered. “Get your team in position and put fire on Building Red-Two.”
“Looks like we’re alone in here, sir,” Luzan said, returning to the back room with Tom. “Family must have bugged out when the shooting started.”
“Good,” Tom said. “Let’s get eyes on Building Red-Two and kill those fuckers.”
Tom stayed low as he entered the front room, not particularly wanting to draw fire, treading softly on a thick, fur rug betwixt green leather couches. The view out the living room window was dismal. In contrast to what the map depicted, it wasn’t a street but an open field more than fifty meters across that separated building Green-Two from Red-Two. Red-Two was a brown, one-story brick structure about the size of two or three houses put together. It was surrounded by a swing set, monkey bars and soccer goals. As Harlingen had described, narrow windows at ground level twinkled with muzzle flashes.
Really, fuckers? Hiding weapons in a school?
Tom thought furiously. Harlingen had second squad and the machine guns in a building to the east, no closer than Tom’s element. First squad was halved, somewhere south of them. His element, third squad, augmented by a missile team, was supposed to be the assault element, but he didn’t have enough men to successfully rush across that much open field and take a fortified objective.
To punctuate Tom’s tactical problem, a burst of machine-gun fire shattered the living room window, sending glass shards tinkling lethally into the room and ripping great chunks out of the leather furniture. Tom dropped prone, trying to become one with the unidentified animal hide that adorned the floor. Another burst peppered the front room, sounding like an overturned nest of malicious hornets.
Shit, shit, shit.
“What do we do now, sir?” Luzan shouted.
Tom thought furiously, trying not to look indecisive but truly at a loss for what to do . . . until he saw the man-portable missile launcher on Williams’s back.
“Williams,” Tom shouted. “Tell me you packed thermobarics today.”
Williams’s face betrayed confusion.
“Yes, sir,” Williams said. “But we can’t fire in here, the countermass will choke us—”
“I know, load a thermobaric and hang on a sec,” Tom said, then he keyed his helmet mic. “Two-Seven, this is Two-Six. I’m going to try and engage the basement with a thermobaric missile. On my command, mass all fire on the south-facing windows of Red-Two so we can get in position. Acknowledge.”
“Roger, Two-Six,” Harlingen answered. “Say when.”
“Okay, Williams.” Tom turned to the young missile operator. “Take your first shot just outside the kitchen door there. Aim carefully, you got to get it in the basement, but don’t wait to see if it hits. As soon as you fire, sprint for the truck there.” Tom nodded out the window to a gray four-by-four parked on a side drive. “Remember to get behind a wheel-base. Got it?”
Williams’s eyes were wide, but he nodded firmly.
“Okay, LT,” he said. “I’m with you.”
Tom stood behind Williams at the kitchen door on the house’s east facing. Metgers had his hand on the doorknob, looking to Tom for affirmation. Tom nodded.
“All, Blacksheep Two Elements,” Tom said. “POUR IT ON THE FUCKERS.”
The rattle, crack and buzz of small arms fire rose to a crescendo that even the hearing protection on Tom’s helmet couldn’t fully mitigate. Bullets and grenades blew pockmarks into the bricks and concrete of the Red Two’s southern face with abandon and the enemy’s return fire slackened.
Metgers flung the door open, Tom slapped Williams on his armored shoulder and they flung themselves out the door into the smokey morning air. Williams hit the dirt only a few feet from the house, missile tube already on his shoulder. Tom joined him, snuggling into the dirt as ragged return fire puckered the dirt entirely too close to them. Just as he had been taught in Cadet Basic, Tom looked back and around, then slapped Williams on the helmet.
“Clear,” Tom shouted. But a loud THUMP cut him off as the captive piston launched the missile. Behind him, shredded polymer countermass created a cloud in the air. A split second later the southern face of Red-Two was consumed in fire.
Yes! Tom grinned at the sight.
The short-lived explosion faded, as did Tom’s grin when a small geyser of blood gushed from Williams’s arm just above the elbow. Both men stared at the wound in shock for an instant before the ground furrowed all about them with the impact of dozens of rounds.
GOD FUCKING DAMN IT.
“Move, Williams!” Tom shouted, grabbing hold of the shoulder on the man’s body armor and half dragging him behind the truck. Despite the prodigious amount of firepower second platoon was placing on the building, the enemy rounds followed Tom and Williams, chewing into the vehicle and creating great puckering holes in its body.
Tom crouched awkwardly over Williams, shoving gauze into the bullet hole in his arm as they both cringed behind the rear wheelbase of the truck.
That could’ve gone better, Tom shook his head as a near miss creased the very top of his helmet, nearly sending him to the ground. He crouched lower, practically on Williams’s lap. What the hell do I do now?
The missile launcher was still hanging by its sling on Williams shoulder, a green tube with an optical sight and firing mechanism on the top, smeared with blood. One more missile was on a bandolier across Williams’s chest.
“Give me the launcher,” Tom said. Taking the tube in his hands, he tried to wipe the sight clean, only to realize his hands were coated in Williams’s blood. Chivying a bit of undershirt out from underneath his armor, he wiped the blood off the weapon as best he could, ejected the expended load and rammed home the last missile with a thunk-snap.
Tom looked left and then right.
Which way would they expect me to go? Roll back or roll past the front fender. Maybe . . . kinda fucked up . . . whatever, we’re both dead if I don’t.
“Williams,” Tom shouted in his ear. “I need you to run to the front wheelbase to draw their fire. I’m going to take another shot. Just to the wheelbase. Don’t go into the open.”
Williams’s expression was twisted with incredulity and hazy with pain, but he nodded once more, propping himself up to a crouch. Tom took a deep breath, then said, “Go!”
Tom dropped to the ground and rolled out a scant centimeter beyond the rear fender of the truck and sighted in on Red Two’s window slit. The optical sight was still smeared, but it displayed range and elevation alongside the targeting reticle, indicating it was still working properly. Taking one more deep breath, Tom stabilized himself and depressed the firing mechanism, sending the missile on its way.
The missile rocketed right through the basement window and, reaching the back wall, detonated. The warhead consumed all the oxygen in the basement in a millisecond to fuel an incinerating blast that scorched the ground around Red-Two for thirty meters in every direction, setting the playground equipment ablaze. After the final reverberation of the blast, the village of Redbriar was eerily quiet for several seconds.
Rising unsteadily to his feet, Tom gestured for the men still in the house to get up.
“Two-Seven, lift fires,” he said. “Two-Three, follow me.”
* * *
The basement was dim enough that Tom and his men had to use flashlights to see. Cold white shafts of light played across shattered and melted firearms and ammo boxes, radio sets, and of course, charred corpses. The air hung heavy with the stench of burnt meat. Tom’s heart thudded in his chest as his own beam played across a trio of very small, blackened corpses huddled together near one of the support beams.
Oh, Jesus. Oh, no-no-no-no-no.
Acidic bile roiled up Tom’s throat, he choked back on the urge to vomit, putting up a gloved hand to hide the tears forming in his eyes.
I killed kids. Oh, fuck, I killed kids.
A heavy hand landed on his shoulder, causing him to start.
“Sir.” Harlingen’s voice betrayed, for once, naked compassion. “Why don’t you take a minute? I’ve got this.”
Tom coughed and blinked rapidly several times.
“It’s alright, Sergeant,” Tom said. “I mean what was I supposed to do? Don’t put your kids in your fucking fighting position, right?”
Despite his best efforts, the last word escaped Tom’s lips with a cracked, pleading tone.
Where were they supposed to put them, you fucking murderer? his conscience raged at him.
“Sir,” Harlingen said, staring intently into Tom’s eyes. “You did what you had to do. No one knew there were kids down here, but even if we did, we had to take out this position. Without the missile, we could’ve lost the whole platoon on this one building.”
“Right,” Tom said, coughing and shaking his head. He forced himself to think of his duty. That’s all he was doing—his duty. “Do we know what happened to Cogman’s team?”
“We think they might have all been caught in the blast that killed Quinn,” Harlingen said. “Ericsdottir and her team were trying to reestablish—”
As if summoned by magic, Ericsdottir voice came over the radio.
“Two-Six, Two-Seven, I need you at Building Blue-Five ASAP.” She sounded furious and scared at the same time. “I found Cogman and Rashid.”
“Are they wounded?” Harlingen asked. “Status.”
“Rashid’s dead. Cogman’s alive and unwounded, but probably bring Doc Atwell,” she said. “Just come as quick as you can, Sergeant. It’s all fucked.”
Second Platoon maintained two attached medics, one man and one woman. Doc Atwell was the female. Harlingen and Tom exchanged looks as the same horrible thought occurred to both of them.
Oh, Christ, no one was watching Cogman.
* * *
It was a short run to Building Blue-Five, a wood frame residence nestled alongside four or five much like it from outside appearance. Rhys had just enough presence of mind to shout, “Friendlies coming through!” as he, Atwell and Nguyen ran through the front door.
They entered another rustic rural Grainne living room with brown upholstered furniture and magnificent, if unfamiliar, racks of horns and tusks adorning several walls. A thin brunette woman sat on the couch wrapped in a blanket, a blank expression on her face, blood on her hands and pants. Atwell went immediately to her. Ericsdottir stood near, clearly observing the colonial woman but not threatening her. Two bodies covered by tan sheets lay on the black fur living room rug, pools of dark blood spreading from both.
Cogman was on his knees, fingers laced behind his head, pants around his ankles, cock and balls hanging in the breeze. Schindt stood behind Cogman, the muzzle of his light machine gun angled so that he could blow Cogman’s head off without hitting anyone else in the room. The rifleman and grenadier in Ericsdottir’s fire team pulled security, watching out the windows.
Harlingen knew, but he asked anyway.
“What happened?”
“This cunt’s husband shot Rashid,” Cogman shouted from the floor before Ericsdottir could speak. “So I shot him, then the crazy bitch came at me with a knife. What was I supposed to do?”
“Then you should’ve shot her, dumbass, not raped her, you useless sack of shit,” Ericsdottir screamed.
“You guys are such a bunch of faggots over a little local gash,” Cogman said. “I swear to fuck—”
“SHUT YOUR FUCKING MOUTH, COGMAN,” Nguyen shouted. “You are going to prison for the rest of your life. And I hope your new friends there bore your ass out like an artillery piece, you worthless fuckstick.”
Rhys looked at his lieutenant in surprise. He hadn’t known the young officer was capable of such raw, palpable rage. Cogman, hopped up on adrenaline and apparently still thinking with his dick, refused to shut up.
“In your dreams, sir,” he said. “There won’t be a court martial. UNPF will lose the paperwork to cover it up. I’ll readjust for six months in the psych ward and then be out. Bet my next unit won’t care if I’m getting a little on the side, either. So, go fuck yourself, sir.”
The local woman appeared to revive at his words, glaring daggers over Doc Atwell’s shoulder at Cogman, her nails leaving divots on her brown couch. Rhys hoped they wouldn’t have to restrain her. She’d already been through too much.
Nguyen looked him, and Rhys saw the question in his young officer’s eyes.
Is he right?
Rhys looked away, shoulders slumping just slightly. Nguyen turned back toward Cogman.
“Get up and pull your pants up, Cogman,” Nguyen said, advancing a few feet toward the belligerent NCO.
“Sure thing,” Cogman said, standing up, a sneer on his face as he buttoned his pants back up. “Wanna zip-tie my hands? Am I ‘under arrest’?”
Lieutenant Nguyen flipped the selector on his rifle to safe, unclipped it from its single point harness on his armor and tossed it gently to Cogman, who reflexively caught it, bewilderment replacing his sneer.
Nguyen drew his sidearm from its holster on his chest in a motion so quick Rhys barely tracked it. The black polymer 7mm pistol came out in a firm two-handed grip and the report of two shots, so rapid they almost sounded as one, deafened Rhys. Cogman’s head snapped back, the back of his skull opened to the world. A spray of bright red, gray, and pink flung itself across the rustic home to splatter against the refrigerator. Cogman’s corpse collapsed to the black fur rug like a puppet with its strings cut.
For a moment no one spoke. The Grainne widow said nothing, her face resuming its blank expression. The three younger soldiers regarded their platoon leader with a mixture of awe and terror on their faces. Ericsdottir’s face shone with open and fierce admiration. Rhys let out a breath he hadn’t realize he’d been holding, exhaling loudly, breaking the spell.
Nguyen looked around, his blank expression a match for the widow’s now.
“Co-captain of the combat weapons team,” Nguyen said in a strange, strained voice, nodding jerkily at Cogman’s dead body. Nguyen looked over at the thin rebel woman on the couch, opened his mouth, closed it, then strode rapidly out of the house.
As the door closed behind him, Rhys looked at Ericsdottir and her team.
“Cogman went for the LT’s rifle,” Rhys said firmly. “The lieutenant had to shoot him. Everything else happened like it did. Got it?”
“Yes, Sergeant,” all four soldiers chorused.
“Okay, good,” Rhys said. “Let’s get ready to reconsolidate.”
As the troops stood and moved toward the door, Rhys addressed the widow directly for the first time.
“Ma’am, I’m very sorry,” he said. “But we’re consolidating all the civilians at the clinic. If you need to clean up first, these ladies will escort you to your bathroom.” Rhys indicated Ericsdottir and Atwell.
The woman nodded slightly, rising to her feet. Flanked by the two female soldiers in full body armor, she looked impossibly fragile, but when she met Rhys’s eyes, he saw nothing but resolve in those dark hazel orbs.
“You know we won’t stop until you’re all dead,” she said quietly. “We will never, ever stop killing you.”
Rhys sighed.
“Yes, ma’am, I know.”
And maybe we have it coming.
Epilogue
Colonel Madison Kornberg, auburn-haired and straight-backed, sat rigidly in the leather chair proffered her by General Huff. She did not fidget or sigh as the UN’s Supreme Commander on Grainne made a show of reading the tablet copy of the report on his desk. As an inspector general, Madison was unused to being on the wrong end of a power dynamic, even when dealing with a senior officer. Regardless, she was determined to maintain her dignity.
“Seven days of ammunition with light and crew-served weapons for two full battalions, various and sundry explosives and other materials,” Huff said, looking up finally. “That’s quite a seizure. But this business about an officer executing one of his men, I’m afraid it puts a damper on the victory.”
“I beg your pardon, General,” Madison said. “If you read the report, it’s very clear that Sergeant Cogman, after being caught in the act of raping a noncombatant, assaulted Lieutenant Nguyen with deadly intent. The officer in question was clearly defending himself.”
Ach, Wes, why am I still covering your ass?
“And all the troops recording gear was blanked so serendipitously because of an EMP weapon, yes?” Huff said, one eyebrow raised.
“That’s correct, sir,” Kornberg said.
“And your eagerness to accept 1-87’s report without further investigation has nothing to do with your previous support of Colonel Antoine?” Huff said. “You wouldn’t be eager to avoid taking responsibility for your recommendation to retain him in command despite his unit’s numerous eccentricities?”
“Sir, there’s nothing in that report that strikes me as unfeasible,” Madison said, choosing her words carefully. “And, to echo an earlier point you made, without some firmer evidence, I see no need to further tarnish such a significant victory. I hope it’s not presumptuous of me to point out that our forces can use any morale boost imaginable at this point.”
Madison stopped, hoping she hadn’t gone too far.
Come on, Huff, you bastard. You don’t want to cause a stink over one lousy rapist . . .
Huff leaned back in his chair, steepling his fingers.
“Valid points, Colonel Kornberg,” he said. “I’ll consider them. Dismissed.”
Madison stood, saluted smartly, which Huff returned casually, and turned to leave.
“Oh, Kornberg,” Huff added. “Tell Antoine that even a man with his connections runs out of top-cover eventually. I better not get another incident report out of 1-87.”
Madison nodded.
“Yes, sir,” she said. “I’ll deliver the message.”
For all the good it will do.