“Good thinking, Captain. How much charge did you run off?”
“Only about nine percent. I cut the engines about two klicks out, so we’re good to go for at least the rest of the night.”
“Yeah, well, night’s only got another four hours or so,” Andrews said. A sudden burst of wind struck them, and rain flew sideways for a moment.
“That’ll have to do.” Laird looked at Mulligan for a few moments, then back at Andrews. “Gentlemen, time’s short. It does appear Leona’s dead. I’m very sorry to step into it like that, but I’m pretty sure that’s why we’re all here. Recover her, and get a little bit of payback in the process. Am I right?”
“Usually almost never,” Mulligan said. “Tonight is a rare exception.”
Laird reached out and clapped Mulligan on the shoulder. It was a rare display of kinship coming from him, as he and Laird didn’t really mix all that well interpersonally. Just the same, Mulligan appreciated the effort. He nodded to him.
“I’m okay, Laird. I don’t have time for it to be any other way right now,” he said.
Laird nodded back. “I hear you, Sarmajor. I know you’re a tough son of a bitch.” He pointed up at the butte that towered over them in the near distance. “Listen, those guys have got to know they’ve been scanned. I’d be surprised if they didn’t break out of their fighting positions and set up elsewhere. Amanda was able to map out a couple of approaches that the rig can take. One’s a fire trail, the other’s a hiking trail. Both are pretty overgrown, but even on battery power we can make it. Can’t launch a drone in this weather—we’d definitely lose it. But we do have some extra capacity, so if you gentlemen are able to accept that we might lose that asset, I’m up for giving it a shot.”
“Let’s wait on that,” Mulligan said. “We think the weather will start to break around dawn.”
“Okay. So where do you want us?” Laird asked.
“You do a recon of the area with IR?” Andrews asked.
“Hell, yes. Only thing we saw was wildlife. Deer, shit like that. Nothing bipedal out there that we were able to detect.”
Andrews turned to Mulligan. “Push Five up the fire trail like halfway and hold pos until we need it?”
Mulligan nodded. “I like that. We’ll head up the hiking trails and see what we can find. We’ll move into the zone and see what we can find, then we’ll give you a burst over the radios on TAC one. Don’t respond, sir,” he said to Laird. “The messages will be simple. Either ‘advance,’ or ‘retreat.’ If we call you up, chances are good you’ll be able to find us. If we tell you to get the hell out, fall back to whatever staging area you’ve predesignated and hold station there until you hear otherwise. If we don’t get to you within twelve hours or so, you can consider us both KIA and you should make plans to return to Harmony.”
“What, leave you guys here? What about Winters?”
“She’s over eighteen and she knows what the score is,” Mulligan said. “If we’re dead, we’re beyond your help. And Winters will have to figure out what she’s going to do with herself going forward.”
“I don’t dig that, Sarmajor.”
Mulligan stood up straight against the pull of his heavy rucksack and faced Laird directly. When he spoke, his tone was far from conversational. It was a hundred percent senior noncommissioned officer of the United States Army. “You’re not running away, Captain. You’re going to egress from the area to summon reinforcements. And once you have them, I expect you to come back, rub these motherfuckers out, and erase them from human memory for the rest of eternity.”
“Okay,” Laird said after a long pause. “Okay. I can do that.”
“Can isn’t what I want to hear,” Mulligan said. “What I want to hear is will.”
“You’ve heard it, old man,” Laird said. He turned to Amanda. “You with us?”
Amanda shook her head and looked past Mulligan and Andrews at the waiting trucks. “I’m with them.”
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
They pressed on through the rainy darkness. Mulligan was up front, and his misery at slogging through the rain and wet brush was aggravated by the butte’s incline. It was relatively steep, and rugged as he elected to stay off the hiking trails and go directly overland. He’d selected an extremely aggressive approach, one that wouldn’t be obvious to anyone lying in wait atop the butte. While this would serve to deceive the forces arrayed in ambush, it was also especially punishing for the team from Sherwood. There was no way about it, and the truth of the matter was, there wasn’t a huge hurry. Leona was, as he’d known all along, dead.
As he pushed through the brush, Mulligan considered that point directly. He and Leona hadn’t discovered a deep, everlasting love, but they did manage to appreciate each other. She’d certainly helped him get through the pain and agony of his past, and he hoped he’d been able to help her get over her awkwardness around other people. For certain, she had developed a sly sense of humor and had begun to reach out to other people on a more personal level. Mulligan was angry that was lost now. Leona Eklund, despite all her faults, was a capable and competent person. She was clumsy with a lot of things, and had yet to experience the mightier aspects of life, such as a deep love or a crowning achievement. Now she never would, and what was left of the world was poorer for it.
Maybe she did find love, you old fool, he told himself, and he was surprised at the thought. Could Leona have been in love with him, of all people? She’d never indicated it to him directly, but the signs were there. Always oblique, as most things were with that girl. Implied, never explicitly stated. The possibility made Mulligan feel even more morose. He’d loved his wife deeply, and whenever he held and kissed his daughters it was as if he were kissing the face of God. He’d felt nothing like that with Leona, only a sense of gratitude and a debt he could never repay.
You pay it off by saving Sherwood, and by killing Fox yourself.
Mulligan wondered if Leona would approve of that last part. Vengeance—or more specifically in this case, revenge—were concepts that might have been too basic for her to embrace. Not that there was anything noble to revenge, but it was an expected human reaction when pain and misery had been inflicted upon one by another. Mulligan had practiced it before, when fellow soldiers had been struck down in combat, sometimes right beside him. It could have gone the other way, where he’d become one of the fallen, but he’d survived and extracted his pound of flesh more often than not. While Leona might have looked upon that cycle with something akin to disgust, Mulligan knew where he was headed. The sequencing of his life pretty much mandated he put paid to not only Fox, but his entire demented strategy of conquering Sherwood and subjugating its people. That just wasn’t going to fly. Ever.
Sean Griffith was with him, and behind Sean was Amanda Buchek. They served as Mulligan’s forward scouts, since both of them knew the territory and were better suited to picking their way through the initial approach. And as Amanda had the same night vision gear he did, Mulligan effectively had double the MMR and infrared coverage that could pierce through the dark night. Andrews was farther back, more toward the center of the file. The force had effectively been split up into two squads, with Mulligan’s tasked to conduct initial combat while Andrews’s maneuvered until it could outflank whatever force opposed them. They would envelop the OPFOR elements one by one, until they were wiped out. It had taken a little bit of discussion, getting Andrew to hang back and command a secondary element. Despite his training, he was still young enough to feel he needed to lead from the front, and he had reasonably informed Mulligan that the command sergeant major’s breadth of experience made him much more valuable than some glorified bus driver who had been given captain’s bars. While Mulligan didn’t necessarily disagree with his assessment, the truth of the matter was Andrews was a great leader. He was able to inspire others to take action, whereas Mulligan was rather limited to slapping people around the head and shoulders until they finally relented and did what he told them to do. Both methods had
their place, but Mulligan’s preference was that Andrews do his joint while Mulligan did his. So in the end, Andrews would command the envelopment operation while Mulligan ran the balls-to-the-wall direct engagement package.
Ahead, Amanda held up a clenched fist. Sean mirrored the motion an instant later. Mulligan came to a halt and crouched down, then passed the signal down the line. As soon as he was assured the file was grinding to a stop, he slowly duck-walked up the incline. His thighs felt like they were on fire. He edged up between Sean and Amanda and raised his head, letting the optics and radar in his helmet do their job.
Eighty meters or so ahead was a group of men and women, armed with rifles and anti-tank weapons. One of the rifles was actually an old Squad Automatic Weapon, he noticed. That was a problem. Despite its age, if properly employed it could chew up the file pretty effectively. Mulligan moved past the weapons inspection and focused his attention on the enemy combatants themselves. They looked tired and run out, and the rain was taking its toll on them. But several of them handled their weapons with a casual professionalism that told him they were former soldiers, or had at least experienced enough of combat to know that some measure of readiness had to be maintained at all times. Many of them wore night vision goggles, but none had the same gear he wore. That was a major plus. The night was so dark, and without any extra illumination, the NVGs they wore were essentially useless. They’d have a maximum field of view of forty degrees, and they likely wouldn’t be able to see anything more than fifty meters out.
When Mulligan spoke, his voice was barely audible above the falling rain. “Sean. Can you see them with your goggles?” Sean wore newer-gen gear that had come from Harmony. Not as effective as Mulligan’s visor, but better than anything else that would be on the current marketplace.
“Barely,” he said.
“Good. That means they can’t see us. Those are sixth-gen night vision devices they’re using. Not enough light for them to augment.”
“Great,” Sean muttered. “So how do you want to play this?”
“It’s not like we’re trying to plot an escape trajectory around a black hole, son. It’s pretty simple. You and Amanda stay eyes on. I’m going to drop back and brief Andrews. Hold this position until I return.”
“Got it.”
Mulligan crawled back down the escarpment until he found Andrews. He briefed the captain on the situation ahead and described the weaponry, including the SAW.
“We open up on these fuckers now, the rest will hear us,” Andrews said. “We can kiss surprise goodbye.”
“Exactly. Which is why we’re going to shift a hundred meters or so right and hump past these fuckers. Make them fight up the slope to come to us, as opposed to the reverse.”
Andrews grinned, the expression revealed to Mulligan in both infrared and millimeter wave radar. “I dig that shit, Sarmajor.”
“Then go ahead and start moving your element now. We’ll catch up. I’ll post security up front to cover the maneuver, then they’ll fade over and we’ll start the advance again. Cool?”
“Cool, a hundred percent,” Andrews said. “See you a hundred meters east.”
Mulligan slunk back to the head of the file, murmuring his instructions to his team as he moved past them. He held two in reserve, to keep eyes on the enemy before them with instructions to radio their movements if they suddenly displaced. In the rain and without any impetus to relocate, he felt that was a virtual impossibility. He also gave them instructions to pin them in place with grazing fire once the fight started. A little confusion wouldn’t hurt anyone, especially when it was bad guys getting shot at.
“Maybe I should stay,” Sean said to Mulligan.
“No. You and Amanda need to come with me. These guys aren’t going to feel the heat, and I need people around me who can make the others fight when the shit starts getting heavy,” Mulligan muttered. “Trust me, guy. I know what’s up here. The mortars are our biggest enemy. We don’t get them, they start raining down on Sherwood.”
“Got it,” Sean said.
“But what about the people we leave here?” Amanda asked.
“They keep their heads down, they’ll be cool,” Mulligan told her. “They’re a diversion. An irritant. We’ll be the real pain.”
“Okay,” Amanda said.
“Stay with me, guys. I’ll show you how this shit gets down.” He gestured to the right, using a true blue knife hand. “Follow me.”
It took a few minutes to get in position. Once the file had reformed, they resumed their advance, bypassing the blocking force. The brush was thicker, and it slowed their pace. Mulligan pushed on, threading his way ever upward. The rain was beginning to slacken off, which meant Laird could launch a drone or two if he so desired. Mulligan hoped that might be the case.
The terrain began to flatten out as they reached the top of the butte. Mulligan slowed the file’s advance and waved the troops around him to spread out. They were about four hundred meters from where Leona’s body lay, so enemy contact was almost guaranteed. He slowly stood up and turned his head, sweeping the area with radar energy. Shapes emerged, hidden from visual and thermal imaging by intervening brush but rendered visible by the radar pulsing from the emitters in his helmet. And there was something more—a hard metallic return. Three mortar tubes in a shallow depression that were just barely visible due to his height. If it had been Andrews doing the scan, he might have missed them.
He stepped back and knelt beside Sean and Amanda. “Mortars, about two hundred meters to the north,” he muttered. “There’s about fifteen enemy providing protection hidden in the brush. Tell Andrews to displace his element another two hundred meters to the east and establish a screen. We’ll attack in about ten minutes. Pass that down the line.”
Amanda turned and relayed the information to a man who crouched down behind them. He nodded and eased down the butte to pass it on. The chain of communication would work, but it would take a while. Mulligan returned to his original observation position and verified the targets. None of the enemy had moved, and they were just as cold and wet as the force from Sherwood. They weren’t reacting to his presence, so clearly they didn’t know they were under direct observation. That suited Mulligan just fine. He shivered slightly as a cold spring wind rushed across the bluff, and he glanced upward. The cloud cover was beginning to break up. Soon, star light would filter through the top cover. The enemy’s night vision gear would be able to utilize the faint illumination to visualize the environment, and the game would become more evenly matched. He checked his rifle and ensured the grenade launcher was loaded and ready to go. He’d use that on the mortar emplacement first thing, as they were still inside its minimum effective firing radius. A few rounds of sixty-six-millimeter high explosive would ruin their run pretty quickly.
A few minutes later, someone tapped his boot. It was Sean.
“Andrews is moving,” he whispered.
Mulligan nodded and checked the time readout on his visor. He would give the captain two minutes before he opened up.
“Party in two mikes,” he told Sean, and held up two fingers. “Start pulling the team forward into a skirmish line. I’ll hit the mortars with grenades, and you guys work over the troops. The explosions will give off enough light to see by, so you’ll be able to designate your targets.”
“Got it.” Sean slithered away, and a moment later Mulligan heard the soft sounds of men and women on the move. The noise they made was masked by the wind. Mulligan touched the visor control unit on his left wrist and a target designator appeared over the mortar emplacement. He had forty-millimeter grenades that used semi-autonomous miniature radar seekers on them for terminal guidance, and they would be able to make small course corrections to their target. Even with the mounting wind, there was little chance the rounds would miss once they were on their way.
Two minutes were up. He turned his head and saw the troops had formed up in a ragged line on either side of him. Sean was to his left, Amanda to his right. They
were on their rifles.
Time for kick off.
Mulligan raised his rifle, and the tactical computer in his helmet presented him with the firing position he should adopt as well as a representation of the round’s projected parabola. He squeezed the launcher’s trigger, and the grenade left the tube with a muted pop. He immediately popped open the breech and the spent cartridge ejected automatically, falling to the rocky ground with a metallic clink. He plucked another round from his vest and slid it home then snapped the launcher closed in a series of precise, almost mechanical movements. He raised the rifle again. By the time the first round exploded in a searing flash of light and glowing sparks, the second grenade was on its way. The men around the mortar emplacement flailed as hot fragments tore through their bodies. Their voices were high and shrill as they screamed in agony, writhing on the wet ground. Then the second round landed, shredding them even further. The infrared imagery showed the whirling fragments as they slashed across the area, moving at hundreds of miles per hour. Several of them grounded before Mulligan, lancing into the earth where they disappeared from view. He ignored the visible spectra and slapped another round into the launcher. The enemy troops around the engagement area were snapping into action, pulling rifles tight, scanning the area for threats. Several of them were turning toward where Mulligan stood, and there was no chance in hell they’d be able to miss the heat bloom exploding outward from the launcher when he fired it again—through night vision goggles, it would look like he’d just set off a firework. He’d mark his position pretty clearly.
He popped off the third round and buried his nose in the dirt as a fusillade of rifle rounds tore through the space he’d previously occupied. He was perhaps saved from certain death when Sean and Amanda started firing, and then the rest of the line opened up, peppering the enemy formation with fire. The enemy hadn’t been properly prepared for an organized engagement, even though Mulligan was certain Fox had told them to be on guard. The bad guys were scrambling now, trying to adjust to the grenade attack and the sudden explosion of small-arms fire that tore the night asunder.
Earthfall (Book 2): Earthfall 2 [The Mission Continues] Page 48