by Dan Cragg
“They’re coming!” she shrieked at the officer.
Captain Nigh could see she was a corporal. “What’s your unit, soldier?”
The young woman pulled herself to a loose position of attention and saluted drunkenly, “S-Seventh MPs, shur, sir! Corp’ral Puella Queege, Fourth Comp’ny!”
“Have you been drinking, Corporal?” Then he did a double take and said, “Whaaat? Seventh MPs? What the hell are you doing here, and at this hour, and drunk?” Queege only stared back at him uncomprehendingly. “What in the hell is that smell?” He gasped.
“I was eatin’ slimies, sir!”
“What?”
“Bet with my first sergeant, sir! He bet me I couldn’t eat five of ’em.” She burped loudly and gave a lopsided grin.
“Holy…okay, okay.” Captain Nigh tried to get a grip on himself. “Who, precisely, is coming and why are you here, Corporal?”
“Well, I was takin’ a shit down by my first sergeant’s tent—”
“Why are you here?”
“The goddamn Marines landed! Thousands of ’em! So I pulls up my drawers and I hops into the company car ’n’ I drives like hell down here to warn you”—she burped loudly—“but I ran off the road about a klick back ’n’ hadda walk the rest of the way. Shu-Sir.”
Captain Nigh blinked. “Confederation Marines have landed and taken the 7th MPs’ positions on the coast? Is that what you are telling me, Corporal er…”
“Queege, sir, Puella Queege, company clerk, 4th Company, 7th Independent—”
Captain Nigh silenced her with a wave of his hand. By then several soldiers including two military policemen had gathered at the scene. “Take her,” he ordered the MPs, “clean her up, sober her up, and when that’s done, bring her to General Sneed’s office.” He turned on his heel and ran back into the headquarters building.
“I won the bet!” Queege yelled after him. The MPs held their noses as they dragged her down the street.
“Holy shitbirds!” Major General Sneed barked. “How reliable is her story?”
“I don’t know, sir,” Captain Nigh replied, “But, well, she came from there and something’s going on out on the coast this morning. I think we’d better take her seriously.”
Sneed wrenched open the door to his outer office and shouted, “Sergeant Major! Get the staff assembled! Right now! Move!”
In the division briefing room Sneed laid into his staff. “G2, what’s going on out on the coast? What do you know? We had some drunken sot from the 7th MPs shouting in the street that the Marines have landed out there.”
The intelligence chief shrugged. “All quiet on the Ashburtonville front, sir. Both armies still in place. No enemy activity reported in any other sector.”
“Signals?”
The Signal Corps captain in charge of the division’s communication network stood. “Sir, I’ve tried to reach the 7th MPs since last night. They never submitted their daily coast-watch report and they don’t respond to messages. This is not unusual with them, sir, and I didn’t think—”
“Sit down! Christ on crutches! That goddamned Cogswell.” He was referring to Colonel Delbert Cogswell, commander of the 7th Independent Military Police Battalion.
“Sir?” It was the division operations officer. “I heard that Colonel Cogswell had declared, uh, well, a ‘training holiday’ for his battalion. They, uh, sent some men into town yesterday and picked up a lot of booze and some of the, er, ladies of the town. I didn’t see them but someone told me they were over at Mayor O’Quinn’s office and—”
“Oh, God save us all,” General Sneed muttered, running a hand through his hair. “Why the fuck didn’t anyone inform me of this mess?” His officers stared silently at the floor. “All right, all right. Plan Red is now in effect.” Plan Red was an emergency defensive plan General Sneed had created just in case his division had to react to an invasion force coming in over the coast. “In case you don’t remember Plan Red, gentlemen, here it is…” He paused in thought, then said to his intelligence officer, “But before anything else, G2, get whatshername, find out everything she knows.”
“Probably won’t know much, sir. She’s drunk as a kwangduk at a sewer party.” Captain Nigh chuckled.
“Try. Get on it. Maps!” He turned to the sergeant in charge of the trid displays, and a huge map of Phelps and the surrounding territory leaped onto the screen. “Aviation! Send hoppers to the coast, have ’em scope out the situation there but tell ’em not to engage! Operations! Send a recon platoon up the coastal road, get them as close to the 7th MP position as they can and report what they see up there. The remainder of the division recon elements, I want them spread out on both flanks along that coastal road, snooping and pooping. We can’t afford to be flanked. 222nd Brigade”—he turned to the colonel commanding the 222nd—“I want you to send one of your battalions, mount ’em up, have ’em run down the coastal road to here”—he identified a spot on the vid display a few kilometers outside the Phelps city limits—“and set up a blocking position. If the enemy comes at them, they are to delay the enemy as long as possible, but no last-stand bullshit; withdraw them when you feel you can’t hold any longer.
“Plan Red calls for a defense in depth. First Brigade will hold the town, armor will support you.” The troop dispositions called for in Plan Red appeared on the screen. “Heavy weapons and aviation, with logistics and medical, will deploy behind the ridge bisected by the Ashburtonville road. The rest of the division will occupy prepared positions straddling the road with the ridge to their rear.
“Signals. Send a Flash message to General Lyons. Tell him we believe the enemy has crossed the coast, strength unknown at this time, and is probably moving inland. Send him updates every fifteen minutes. G2, G3, keep Signals informed as soon as you have more information.
“Civil Affairs. Get O’Quinn up here right now. I told that bastard to get an evacuation plan drawn up and he’d better have it. We can’t have civilians encumbering our forces if this is really an invasion and not another reconnaissance in force like they pulled on Gilbert’s Corners. I think it is a full-scale invasion, but we’ve got to know how big. Get moving, men!”
The briefing room was cleared in thirty seconds. Sneed sat there shaking his head, wearily. “I told General Lyons that the 7th MPs were the chink in his armor—oh, no offense Quang! But that coast is our Achilles’ heel.”
“Sir?” said Major Lucretia Spinoza, the division Civil Affairs officer, “Mayor O’Quinn’s secretary says he is ‘indisposed’ and he will drop by after lunch? I told her of the urgency of the situation but she cut me off.”
“The fat pig is drunk on his ass, Major. Okay. You get a detachment of military police. Go to his mansion—or wherever the useless bastard is—and bring him here. If anyone gives you any trouble, use whatever force you deem necessary to bring him to me. But be prepared to run the evacuation yourself. We have to assume that Hizzoner hasn’t done jack squat about drawing up an evacuation plan. What’s the population today?”
“Four thousand, give or take, sir.”
“Damn. All right, go to Brigadier General Josephus of the 1st Brigade. Tell him I said to give you all the cooperation you need to get these people out of town. He doesn’t need them around if he has to defend this place. I’ll contact him in a minute and give him verbal orders. But do not make a career of moving them, Major. Those that don’t want to move, want to hide in their cellars, let ’em. But warn everybody that once the fighting gets started they’re on their own.”
“Sir, why don’t we just take over the evacuation now? Screw the mayor—excuse my language.”
Sneed grinned. “Good thinking, Major. But protocol requires I advise the civil authority of the military situation and that they handle protecting the noncombatant population. You just get O’Quinn up here ASAP and we’ll see what has to be done.”
“Unhand me, you goons!” Cardoza O’Quinn struggled against the grip the two MPs had on his arms as they dragged him into G
eneral Sneed’s office.
Cardoza O’Quinn was ugly even when sober and he was far from sober, still in his nightclothes, disheveled, breath reeking of alcohol. His normally ruddy complexion was inflamed that morning by what he’d consumed the night before and the outrage at being pulled out of his bed so early and so unceremoniously in the morning. The warts that covered his bulbous nose, face, and neck, quivered with anger.
“We pulled him outta bed, sir,” the senior MP, a sergeant, reported. “The uh, lady, he was with never even woke up.” He grinned.
“I apologize to your wife, O’Quinn,” Sneed said.
“She weren’t my wife, Gen’ral, ’n’ don’t think you kin get away with this! President Summers is a personal friend of mine and I knowed Gen’ral Lyons fer years! Yer gonna be in hot water over this!”
“Well, neither of those estimable gentlemen is present now, O’Quinn, so you have to deal with me. We have word the enemy’s landed a force on the coast and it is probably headed this way. I want you to initiate the evacuation plan immediately.”
“What ’vacuation plan?”
General Sneed regarded the mayor silently for a moment. “The plan to evacuate your bowels, O’Quinn, so you won’t be so full of it! The evacuation plan I asked you to draw up in case Phelps ever came under attack! What the hell do you think I meant?”
“You gotta show me more respect, Gen’ral.” O’Quinn drew himself up and tried to look haughty.
“You get what respect you deserve, O’Quinn.”
“I ain’t got no time for any such folderol!”
“You mean there is no evacuation plan, Mr. Mayor?” Sneed asked, his voice deceptively gentle.
“Aw, fuck you, you tin—”
Sneed turned to the MP sergeant. “Take this piece of dreck out of here.”
“What do you want me to do with him?” The sergeant grinned.
“Throw him down a well.”
“You cain’t!” O’Quinn screamed, real terror edging his voice.
“On second thought, I don’t want to poison our water supply, Sergeant. Take him home. You are on your own, Mr. Mayor. But you get in my way and I’ll have you shot.” General Sneed turned to Major Spinoza. “General Josephus is standing by, Major; he has troops to put at your disposal. Do what you can to get these people moving. Do not let anyone down the Ashburtonville road, though. We’ll need that for our own movements.”
“I’ll commandeer all civilian vehicles in town, sir,” Major Spinoza said, “and put them on the road south, away from the coast. There’s a national park with camping facilities about twenty klicks in the direction of Gilbert’s Corners. I’ll get as many people there as I can.”
“Very good, Major.” They exchanged salutes and Spinoza left General Sneed alone with Captain Nigh.
General Sneed sighed and sat on the edge of his desk. “Quang, we’re headed for some real action. Chow down and take it easy while you can because for the rest of the time we’re here we’ll be hopping.”
“Sir?” It was the division intelligence officer.
“Yes, Burton? What’s recon got for us?”
“Sir, it appears that the enemy landed at least a FIST-size element somewhere along the coast and managed to surprise the 7th MPs, rolled ’em up like a rug. They are presently consolidating their position and so far have not moved toward us.”
General Sneed stood up and stretched. “Just a FIST? Good news!” He turned to his aide. “Quang, that female MP, whatshername?”
“Queege, something like that, sir.”
“Yes. Well, put her in for an award. Screwed up as she is, she appears to have been the only soldier in the 7th MPs who kept her head. Write her up a decoration for valor and I’ll present it to her as soon as she’s cleaned up and sober.” He laughed and patted his thigh. “Burton, keep tabs on those Marines!”
“Should we call off Plan Red, sir?” the G2 asked.
“Hell no, Burton! This is good training for them and for the civilians. Plan Red stays in effect until the threat is eliminated. Now, Quang, I’m going to the mess and have me some breakfast. Bring that award recommendation to me there. Gentlemen”—he stretched again—“just a FIST? Shit, I can handle a FIST with one fist tied behind my back!”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Senior Sergeant N’dolo M’kwazi stood at rigid attention before Major General Barksdale Sneed. Beside him was the commander of the 4th Composite Division’s reconnaissance company, Captain Cangama. The company, known as the Trinkatat Scouts, had been assigned to the 4th Independent Infantry Division when it was formed and General Sneed considered them one of his best assets.
“At ease, gentlemen.” General Sneed grinned and extended his hand. “Captain, you and your men have done good work for this division. Sergeant, they tell me you could track a fly across slate in a hurricane.”
“Without a doubt, sir, he’s the best tracker in this army!” Captain Cangama said, nodding at Sergeant M’kwazi.
“That a fact, Sergeant?”
M’Kwazi grinned and nodded. He did not need to confirm what the general had just said. He possessed the easy confidence of a man who knew he was so good at what he did that convincing others would be a waste of valuable time.
“Well, your fine reputation has preceded you. Now, here’s the reason I called for you two. As you know, I’ve initiated Plan Red based on information we have received from a survivor of the 7th Independent MPs who apparently were overrun by Confederation Marines. I have sent the 319th Battalion of the 222nd Brigade up the coast road to block it here.” He indicated the blocking position on the vid screen. “The problem is this: Is this a raid, a reconnaissance in force, or a full-scale invasion? I have got to know. So far we’ve detected no other forces in this area”—he swept the entire coastline—“but that means nothing. I’ve got to have eyes out there to make sure we know what’s facing us here. I cannot rely solely on electronics to tell me what’s going on.”
“Very wise, sir. Electronic surveillance, if you will permit me, sir, is unreliable,” Captain Cangama said. “It can be fooled. I guarantee you”—he nodded at M’kwazi who pointed to his own eyes—“those peepers can be relied on.”
“Deploy your entire company, Captain. I want every sector between here and the coast, in all directions, thoroughly searched. Senior Sergeant M’kwazi, the fate of this division and possibly the outcome of this war may very well depend on your skills as a reconnaissance man.”
M’kwazi came to attention and saluted. “You can count on me, sir!”
Senior Sergeant M’kwazi had learned the rudiments of his trade by leading the way for gnuttle raids on neighboring kraals when he was a boy. After the first, disastrous raid he’d scouted for, he never again led a raiding party into a trap or had a raiding party lose a man because of him. Twenty years in the Trinkatat Scouts had honed the skills he’d developed in those raids. Nearly all of his peers and subordinates, as well as most of his superiors, considered him the best recon man in the Trinkatat army, and therefore in the entire Coalition army. As for M’kwazi’s own opinion of his skills, he wished he’d been sent after the Confederation Marine Force Recon patrols that had ravaged the deep rear of the Coalition army. He knew he would have put fear into them. Any patrols he encountered would have been driven off—any he didn’t manage to kill outright.
So it was inevitable that Senior Sergeant M’kwazi was assigned to lead a four-man patrol to locate the Confederation Marine infantry battalion that had apparently succeeded in overrunning the 7th Independent Military Police Battalion’s position along the coast. Thinking of the MPs, Senior Sergeant M’kwazi sneered. Doughfoot amateurs, that’s what they were! Had he and his squad been stationed along the coast instead, nobody would ever have surprised them. Oh, he’d find out what was out there!
He also thought it was well past time he was given something to do. He thought the 10th Trinkatat Scouts were being wasted performing routine tactical patrolling. Strategic reconnaissance, that was the na
me of the game, and “Strategy” was N’dolo M’kwazi’s middle name! General Sneed had finally recognized that fact and M’kwazi respected him for making that judgment. M’kwazi would handle the rest.
The Marines had overrun the MPs, that much was known. M’kwazi’s first stop before mounting out was to interview this Corporal Queege, the only known survivor of the raid on the MP positions.
“I hope you are sober now, Corporal.” M’kwazi grinned as he took a seat opposite a somewhat composed Puella Queege.
“Unfortunately, I am,” Queege answered. She sized M’kwazi up; tall, whipcord-thin, but he held his body like a coiled spring radiating not only enormous physical energy but strength. His teeth gleamed pearly white against his dark skin and his eyes regarded her with frankly intelligent appraisal. She knew instinctively that this man could see right through her.
“I am going out to your old camp, Corporal. Would you care to come along with me?” He grinned.
“Not only no, but fuck no!” Queege shouted, shifting her weight nervously and casting an apprehensive glance at the recon NCO. Is this guy kidding? she asked herself, licking her lips. She badly needed a beer.
M’kwazi laughed. The laughter came from deep inside his chest. “I want you to tell me everything you can remember about the 7th MPs’ camp out there, where the units were, what kind of tents or buildings they occupied, everything you can remember about the layout and what you can recall from the attack. I don’t have much time, so please be quick, but be thorough.” He flashed her a grin and bid her begin with a gesture of his hand. The fingers on that hand were long and delicate, the fingers of a pianist, Queege thought.
“Well, okay. Y’see, I was out behind the first sergeant’s tent, takin’ a shit…”
M’kwazi left the interview smiling to himself. What a character the corporal was! He shook his head. Well, she was no fool; a drunk, yes, but not a stupid drunk, and she’d given him all she could and that would be a big help. M’kwazi wondered how in the world she’d ever convinced anyone she was an MP.