Andrews tapped the ridges to the west of the town. “Why did you put teams here? Just to get the high ground?”
“Mostly. That second ridgeline is high enough to provide points of visibility over the walls, meaning they could fire directly into parts of Sherwood if the enemy were to take it. And the depression there is low enough that the attacking force could push through there while using the first ridge as physical cover to mask their approach.”
“The machine guns are going to be key,” Mulligan said. “We can provide suppressive fires, as well as use them to harass any vehicles the enemy plans on bringing forward. They won’t present the rig, of course—they’ll use that for standoff attacks.”
“How many drones do you have available?” Andrews asked.
“Five out of six,” Griffith said. “We lost one to enemy fire. Short legs, only a few miles of range per unit.”
“Okay, we’ll need to jump some of those out into the field as well. Are they relatively easy to operate?”
“They are.”
“We’d like to take a couple of them with us when we leave,” Mulligan said. “You guys manage to hack their operating systems? They’re not going to be much good to us if they’re hanging at four hundred feet. We’ll need them to go higher.”
“Oh yeah, that was done,” Buchek said. He still looked at the map Andrews had spread out at his feet, his expression detached and distant. A father wrapped up in worry over his daughter.
“How many fighters can you field at one time?” Andrews asked.
Griffith shrugged. “Upwards of two hundred or so, and still have enough people left behind to defend Sherwood.”
Andrews looked at Mulligan. “Puts us on par with what we think the enemy numbers are.”
“They trained up to a certain standard?” Mulligan asked.
“Not everyone’s cut out to be a Marine rifleman, but they can follow orders and execute fairly complicated operations,” Griffith said. “We have radios, and we can communicate and synchronize. I’d say they’re about as competent as your average Army grunt, only a lot smarter.”
Mulligan snorted. “We’ll see about that. Anyway. Add to the fact we’re better fed and have a fixed base of operations, I like the way things are shaping up so far.”
“They have some boogeymen out there,” Griffith warned. “Not talking about the SCEV. They must’ve collected some other hardware during their march from wherever they came from. And Beulah had a pretty decent inventory of weapons, I can tell you that.”
“So what is it you guys want to do?” Buchek asked.
Andrews pointed at the map. “We know the enemy forces are mostly concentrated to our east and south. They’re probably still operating out of Beulah right here, which makes sense since that’s territory they own now and it’s a lot more convenient to stay in place where there’s shelter and food as opposed to pulling everything out into the field. We’d like to recon that first, and we’d like to use one of your drones for that. Those DJI things, how high can they go?”
“Book says a max operating altitude of over nineteen thousand feet, but we’ve never pushed them that high before,” Buchek told him. “But the fact of the matter is, you won’t have a ton of station time before the thing has to return. It’ll burn off a lot of charge on the climb.”
“We just need some pictures,” Andrews said. “We don’t need to make multiple passes, just pass by overhead long enough to see what’s down there. Once we have that, we can recover the drone and plan next steps.”
“What if they’re not in Beulah?” Buchek asked.
“Then they’re not in Beulah. We’ll at least know that much,” Andrews said. “Really, we still don’t know how big the enemy force is, aside from what Marquette and his people said, and it’s not like they were taking time to count. So we’re only presuming it’s on par with what we can field. We have to be sure, so we really need to amp up our recon game.”
“We’re still a few days out from hearing from our teams,” Griffith said. “They have to move by stealth. But in order for you to get close enough to Beulah to send out that drone and be able to recover it, you’ll need several hours to get to the launch point.”
“It’s fine, Master Guns. I’ll go over the wall tonight and send out the drone myself,” Mulligan said. “We need the area recon pretty badly, so I’ll do it personally.”
“Why not send your own unit?” Buchek asked. “It has a longer range, and can fly faster.”
“But not higher,” Andrews said. “Those little drones of yours might show up fine on radar, but our friends probably aren’t using it. They do that, we’ll be able to detect the spillage, and then launch against them in anti-radiation mode. Ah ... you need me to explain that?”
“The missile homes in on the target emitting the radiation and destroys it,” Buchek said. “I get it. And if the bad guys see it coming and turn off their radar system, the missile has its own to use for terminal guidance.”
Andrews nodded with a smile. “Okay. Yeah, you got it.”
“So the overall plan has to accommodate us consolidating forces and hitting them where they live,” Griffith said. “I presume that if they’re in Beulah, that’s where we’ll roll. But what if they’re staging right outside the walls?”
“Makes it a hundred percent easier,” Mulligan said. “We take them head on and see what they’re made of. But if not, the recon missions should tell us where the fight’s going to take place.”
“Easy for you to say, Sergeant Major,” Griffith said. “The dead and dying won’t be your families.”
“On the contrary, Master Gunnery Sergeant,” Mulligan said, “these people are as important to me as anyone I’ve ever had in my life. I’m willing to die for them if it will keep them alive.”
Griffith considered that for a long moment. “Well. You’re hardly a young man, anyway.”
Mulligan snorted at that.
“I am,” Andrews said, “and I’d do the same.”
Griffith looked at him, and for the first time, Buchek looked up from the map. Both men studied Andrews before glancing at each other.
“You’d better,” Buchek said. “Because if you hold back, a lot of people might wind up very, very dead.”
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
They made great time heading north. Laird kept the radar minimized to five miles of coverage, which was more than what they would need to safely navigate the landscape. Usually, they ran it full out in either the forty-five- or seventy-mile bands, but SCEV Five needed to practice economy of emissions, as they had no real idea where their potential opponents might lie. The chances of them encountering them were fairly astronomical, actually. But Laird wasn’t going to take any unnecessary risks, such as announcing their presence via extended radar energy.
As if to chide him for his sense of risk aversion, the interferometers didn’t relay anything untoward. For all intents and purposes, SCEV Five was alone in the world, able to navigate freely without fear of interference.
Laird kept the radar minimized to its lowest setting, and kept the control column pushed forward. The big rig sprinted down cracked concrete highways at sixty miles per hour.
The crew had elected to push through to the rendezvous point as rapidly as possible. The SCEV wasn’t idled at nights. It continued hammering through the darkness, moving as fast as the terrain would allow. They stuck to improved roads wherever possible, and those high-speed approaches were a godsend. California had a remarkable highway system before the war, and even after a decade after the Sixty-Minute War, seasonal changes and seismic activity hadn’t rendered them completely useless. To be sure, there were times where the rig had to go overland—obviously, taking it across bridges which hadn’t seen a lick of maintenance years before the war wasn’t something they would even consider—but those circumstances were fairly rare in the big picture. They had to cross rivers every now and then, which caused Laird enough concern that he asked the rest of the crew to wake him if they fo
und they had to ford a substantial body of water. The rig took it all, as it had been designed for such activities in the very beginning. Just the same, Laird wanted to be on hand to fight with the sticks if necessary.
Nothing they encountered was a problem. The SCEV operated as if it had been in the field for months.
It still took four days to get up to Oregon. As they progressed, they would occasionally come across signs that SCEV Four had preceded them along the route. This wasn’t a great surprise, as the axis of advance had been preplanned, but it was still a sign that satisfactory progress was being made. It reduced stress levels and convinced the crew that they were following a true cardinal path, where one SCEV was successful in navigating the course of another. Laird was impressed with their progress.
As they pushed farther north, the weather became more changeable. It would pour rain one day, then be bright and sunny the next. Other days would be occupied by sullen clouds that never seemed to abate, or a thick fog that appeared almost impenetrable. Despite these obscurants, the radar and infrared systems never let the rig’s operators down. They were able to proceed without delay, even if at a reduced speed. The real obstacles were man-made. Stalled cars and trucks mostly, some of which had already been pushed out of the way. The gouge marks in the concrete were still visible when this had occurred, which informed Laird and his crew that SCEV Four had done some of the heavy lifting before them.
It was on the evening of fifth day, after they had penetrated the Oregon border and were rolling up toward Bend, that the radio interferometers began to pick up activity. At first, it was just indications that the electromagnetic spectrum was alive with some source of energy. No data could be extracted from the findings, aside from the fact that a radio was being keyed somewhere. As the rig progressed steadily northward, the information riding along the carrier wave became more pronounced. It was voice traffic. It took some time for it to come into the clear, as distance and terrain prevented the signal from being fully received initially. But finally, it was in the clear as the dawn of the seventh day arrived.
“Five. Ninety-Seven. One-four-six.”
The transmission was repeated every two hours, and only in the daylight hours. Laird called for a halt once they received the full transmission, and he stood behind Kelly at the command intelligence station as they reviewed it.
“Okay, what does this mean?” he asked.
Kelly threw up her hands. “How should I know? I can only guess.”
“I’ll take whatever you can give me,” Laird said.
“Okay. Five is our des. Ninety-seven? Maybe the highway we’re traveling on. The rest? No clue,” she said.
Laird grunted and considered that. The rig had been barreling up the Dalles-California Highway until he called for the vehicle to stop. That part at least made sense.
“You recognize the voice?” he asked.
“It’s not Leona. And I doubt it’s KC,” Kelly said.
“And for sure it’s not Mulligan or Andrews,” Laird said. “So they’re calling us by our des, but not giving us specific information in the clear. We can infer the speaker is giving us the highway, but after that?”
“We could always respond,” Kelly said. “We have the freq, and it’s in the clear.”
Laird considered that. Under normal circumstances, that’s exactly what he would have done. But considering there was a potentially hostile rig out there, he wasn’t exactly interested in broadcasting across a secure frequency, much less an open one where anyone could listen in.
“Not happening,” he said finally, after giving it much thought. He examined the map of the area that was on one of Kelly’s displays. “So what would have numbers up here related to a highway? Exits, addresses, what?”
“Mile markers?” This came from the cockpit, where Cobar was sitting in the right seat. His voice was soft and barely audible over the distant whine of the engines. He was exhausted, just like everyone on the rig. Four people had to pull a lot of hours to keep a rig operational twenty-four seven. That hadn’t been the plan, of course. The plan had been ten hours transit per day, then shut down for rest. But no one had wanted to do that, not even Slattery, who was currently sacked out in the third compartment.
It’s a good thing we stocked up on coffee, Laird told himself. Especially the bold varieties.
“Mile markers,” Laird repeated. He looked at the moving map display on one of the monitors before him. The radio direction finder slice indicated the transmission originated from ahead of them, so directly it was almost on the same compass radial heading as the rig. Signal analysis indicated the frequency was an old band that was mostly reserved for handheld radio transmitters.
Kelly scrolled through the map quickly. “Here.” She pointed at the display where the marker was showing up as a blue numerical designation. “Six miles or so ahead. As in dead ahead, actually.”
Laird regarded the display for a moment, stroking his bristly chin. That a handset had a fairly limited range and it was coming from somewhere near the mile marker kind of worked. And they knew they were coming, which meant they were either hoping to intercept them before they drove into some shit, or some shit was waiting for them at mile marker one forty-six.
The SCEV had been bolting up the highway. There hadn’t been any real indications of life—human life, anyway—so there was no reason for them not to use the roadway. Unless they picked up some detection of a human settlement, be it warlike or otherwise, Laird had intended to stick to the roads wherever possible. But that was about to change.
“Let’s move overland a mile or so, then jump out a drone,” he said.
Kelly regarded the map before her. “East would be easier,” she said. “Terrain rises a bit to the west. Nothing terrible, but the flatter the better.”
Laird examined the display. “Yeah, we’d make better time.”
“Why not just deploy the drone from here?” Cobar asked from the front.
“Because if someone gets a track on it they’ll be able to get to us quickly,” Laird said. “Off-road, maybe not so much.”
“Even in another rig?”
“Trust me, we’d do better maneuvering off-road than on a linear high-speed approach,” Laird said. “Didn’t you guys learn anything during training?”
“I keep forgetting we might make enemy contact,” Cobar said. “Sorry, but I’m just a senior crew chief. I leave the warfighting to people like the sarmajor.”
“Well, this time you’ll have to leave it to me and the lieutenant,” Laird said. “Just do what we tell you when we tell you to do it.”
“No problem. Disregarding orders is Slattery’s gig, not mine.”
Laird grunted and turned back to the map. There were a couple of fields about three quarters of a mile out, just lateral from the mile marker. Laird pointed them out.
“We’ll set up there,” he said. “Go ahead and forward the navigation.”
“Roger that.” Kelly began charting the course.
***
“It’s only one person,” Kelly said as she watched the drone feed. The unmanned aircraft was flying at twelve thousand feet, near its maximum altitude and making a circuit over the target area. It surveyed the territory below through infrared, which was passive and emitted no wavelengths that could be traced. Just the same, the drone was intercepting a fair amount of electromag energy from the northwest. Kelly slewed the sensors in that direction, but the cloud cover was substantial enough that they couldn’t make much out using infrared alone. Whatever was out there was probably beyond the curvature of the Earth anyway, so direct visual observation was fairly unlikely.
Laird and Kelly studied the display, joined by Slattery who had emerged from the sleeping compartment when the rig rolled off the highway and headed into rougher terrain. It had taken only fifteen minutes to get to the launch point, as the forest wasn’t particularly thick and the terrain was hospitable enough for a multiton vehicle to navigate. Laird had piloted the rig without using the rad
ar, maneuvering around obstacles wherever possible, and climbing over those necessary. Just the same, there was a path of shattered pine trees behind them.
“Okay, so one person. And no sign of anyone else for miles around,” Laird said. “Interesting.”
“Yeah, so what’re we going to do, sir?” Slattery asked. “We gonna raise her on the radio?”
Laird shook his head slowly. “No. This one will be face to face.” He put a hand on Kelly’s shoulder. “Let’s recover the drone.”
“On it.”
***
Amanda heard a vehicle approaching, but not from the road. That left her terrified, but she didn’t dare stand up and make herself a target. If it was the bad guys, then they’d heard her transmissions and had figured out her location and she wouldn’t be getting away anytime soon. She considered hopping on the bike and pedaling down the highway as fast as she could. The cracked concrete thoroughfare was only a few hundred feet away, so getting on it wouldn’t be a problem at all. But though the bike was great and all and she was in great shape, neither she nor the bicycle were speedy enough to get away from a turbine-powered vehicle that could hit around sixty-five miles per hour on flat surfaces. Overland wouldn’t be much better. While she was sure she could outrange the vehicle initially, she would have to stop and rest. And as she did that, drones would be surveilling her progress and would capture her position.
Then there was the chance it could be the good guys in SCEV Five. Though why they were coming through the forest as opposed to up the highway was a mystery. Unless their commander was unduly cautious, he was taking the major long way around.
Wait it out, she told herself.
So she sat where she’d huddled down for the past two days behind a rocky defile, listening to the slowly swelling ruckus of roaring turbine engines accompanied by the occasional crack of falling trees and shattering rock. She kept her head up just enough to ensure she would be able to see the vehicle approaching in the event it was headed for her direct position. Whether friend or foe, if a rig rolled over her, she’d be just as dead.
Earthfall (Book 2): Earthfall 2 [The Mission Continues] Page 43