Everything not needed for an immediate fight was going in our rucks. If I had thought I knew how to get my gear quiet and ready, my last two hours on the island found me inadequate in this area. Sergeant Thor fixed my major malfunctions and had me doing burpees in full rattle once he’d rigged it, just to show me how quiet you could get and still do active stuff like creep around and knife people in the back. The cheat is you used a lot of hundred mile an hour tape and made sure the carrier fit snug, but not too tight. You also shed a lot of useless gear that looked cool and did nothing.
We’d move quick and silent, using the Rules of Ranging as they applied to movement with respect to recon. We were focusing on speed of movement. We needed to get to the objective as fast as possible, but at the same time it was important, due to the condition of our fighting force and current state of ammunition, that we move no closer to the enemy than we had to. Normally we’d have scouts in front, behind, and on the flanks. “The clock,” as it was called. But there weren’t enough scouts tonight. One scout team far forward was all we had.
The most crucial component for the entire force was stealth. That meant camo, noise, and light discipline was total, or as total as could be attained. The NCOs advised us not to use any more Vicks VapoRub to relieve the dead body smell and to instead rub grass and leaves in our noses to get that smell of death out of our olfactory senses once we crossed over the river. Hopefully we’d still be able to smell the enemy, as they tended to stink real bad.
Conversely, we needed to cover our own smell—which meant rolling in leaves and getting as woodsy as possible. Our issue Crye assault uniforms, covered in blood and gore, were discarded. The enemy seemed to have a pretty good sense of smell, so no chances were taken. It occurred to me that I needed to get with Jabba on this and see what he was capable of, sense-wise.
I’d spent most of the day getting better at speaking with Last of Autumn and developing a sand table map for the route to our three en route rally points and final destination, a place she called “Hidden Cave.” In the afternoon, the captain, the sergeant major, and the platoon leaders and platoon sergeants came down to the riverside for the op order. Last of Autumn and I walked them through the route she had given me and gave the markings we would land-nav by. Then we stepped back and the captain broke down how we were going to do this.
Movement would be conducted by patrol in single file. Teams would assemble into ten-man squads moving within sight of each other. Spacing would be twenty meters between teams and fifty between platoons. Line of sight could be broken as long as comm was maintained. Communication between all elements during the move would be key.
Everyone except the scouts, who would be three hundred meters forward, and the rear security team, the same to the rear, would be carrying overstuffed rucks and extra gear. Everything we could possibly take. Antibiotics and clamshells stuffed with all essential medical gear. More ammo. Explosives. Everything. The teams were pack mules, and engagement was to be avoided at all costs in favor of movement as fast, and as stealthily, as possible. Things were not to pop off. Avoid contact with the enemy at all times. If things went sideways, we’d find ourselves in a fight we might not be able to disengage from.
There would be three en route rally points to reach our final objective, and the captain and the sergeant major would be leapfrogging each other to reach those points with security teams ahead of the main body to ensure the rallies were safe and in locations that were off the beaten track and secure. Night vision was mostly dead. Battery power was reaching critical shortage levels. The radios were still operational, but communication via visual marking signals left by the lead elements was incorporated into the PACE plan. Primary, Alternate, Contingency, and Emergency. We would use the radios until they stopped working, then would switch to visual hand and arm signals, and after that it would be visual markings on the ground or in the trees. Finally, if nothing else, the sound of weapons fire would let everyone know that our mission for the movement had failed, and that contact with the enemy had been made. That was when the worst-case scenario went into effect. The element in contact was to stay in contact and hopefully allow all other teams to bypass the enemy and escape en route to the final objective. If they survived, they could E&E on their own, but they were to make sure that the entire element did not get decisively engaged. Someone had to make it.
The captain would be supervising the disengagement and withdrawal from the island as the command sergeant major led the main force to the first rally point at the top of a high pass through the hills to our north. If the enemy located and pursued us away from the island, the captain, who had what remained of the high ex, and a fire team acting as rear security, would attempt to buy the rest of us time to get upslope to the pass and disappear to the other side.
But, and Captain Knife Hand was clear about this, “This is a withdrawal. We are going to fade and avoid engagement. We’re going ghost.”
Next the sergeant major took over and established the signal and communication for the route and organized the order of march. I was surprised to find out I would be with the scouts for the sole purpose of assisting in communication with the elf, who would be showing us the route and acting as our indigenous guide.
We were already up the first hill leading toward the ridgeline we’d cross that night when I looked back in the last light of the end of the day and saw the rising black smoke of the funeral pyre the Rangers had made for their dead before finally withdrawing from the island they’d fought so hard for. That had been the last item in the op order. The Viking Farewell. The fallen had served the 75th Ranger Regiment and fought well. Now they were going out on their shields. They would not be forgotten, and their names are written down in my journal under a phrase from the Ranger Creed I learned during my short time in RASP: “I will never leave a fallen comrade to fall into the hands of the enemy.” That had to be adhered to, or else the sergeant major risked these Rangers starting to fall apart. The creed was all we had now, especially with the dwindling supplies of ammunition, demo, chewing tobacco, and, oh yeah, coffee. Something had to hold this force together, and that’s exactly what the Ranger C is for. Exactly why it’s recited as a mantra during any and all events and situations where it’s appropriate—and it’s always appropriate, for one reason or another. So much so that a lot of the Rangers had portions of it tattooed on their bodies, scribbled into the margins of their Bibles, or etched into pieces of their equipment. The command sergeant major, as he started the fire and intoned those words in his West Texas gravel, was using it right for exactly the purpose it was intended for.
They would not be forgotten.
I watched the thin column of smoke and saw the rear security team cross the river in the last light of the warm day. Spring was here. And summer would soon come.
I wondered if we would be here to see it.
Chapter Thirty-Three
The Ranger company scout section left before anyone else. That was the job of the scouts. Go out and scout. Find first what we’d be running into so we could kill it or evade it. Their job was to make the unknown known before it became a problem. And of course, everything surrounding us currently was unknown.
The route Last of Autumn had laid out for us was fairly simple, and if it worked it would get us clear of the enemy and on our way to her people pretty quickly. The first section of the march was the hardest part. That was for two reasons. Reason one being the enemy would have its best chance to locate and destroy us during those early hours of the march in the night as we’d be closer to our last known position. Reason two was because the overland route was all uphill. We were carrying wounded and every piece of equipment not nailed down was on our backs. Who knew what we’d need once we got where we were going? So we were taking as much as we could carry and fight with. And then some.
We crossed over the river along the western bank and then made a short trek through a body-littered forest the enemy had
been operating in. Most of these corpses had been killed on night two by indirect fire. We started up a series of hills that lined this edge of the river valley and used the ridgeline to cross toward a steep canyon farther to the north. There would be, according to Last of Autumn, a thin trail up that narrow canyon that the Shadow Elves, Last of Autumn’s people, used on occasion but hadn’t in some time. The bottom of that trail was Phase Line Fox, and the en route rally point was designated Domino. We’d reach it by midnight if we didn’t hit any snags.
Phase Line Eagle was on top of the pass the canyon led up along. Beyond the top of the pass was “Old Witch Pool,” as it was called in Last of Autumn’s language. A small stream that started there would eventually turn into a river downslope leading toward some ruins out on the plain below. The ruins, or what she called “The Philosopher King’s Palace,” were Objective Rally Point Match to the east along the river. After that we would depart the river and enter the Upper Charwood Forest, where we’d find the Shadow Elves’ Hidden Cave somewhere within.
Basically, it was north to the hills, east to the canyon, north again along a small river, then east into a forest they called the Upper Charwood.
She made it clear everything was dangerous until we reached the Charwood. I relayed that to the sergeant major. He made a face that indicated this was obvious but didn’t bother to comment other than being mature enough to say, “Good to know.”
Yeah, I said to myself as I got my ruck ready, obviously everything was dangerous. What was I thinking?
She showed us stars we could navigate by, and soon the teams were starting out in the deepening gloom, staggered to follow one another.
I’d been placed with the scout team and our elven guide. The Ranger scout team consisted of five Rangers and Sergeant Thor, who’d been added as sniper support for his training and experience as a pro Swamp Fox. There was one hangup. While working on the sand table for the route march with Autumn, I remembered Jabba and went off to retrieve him. When I came back trailing a goblin at the end of a length of 550 cord and a chain around his neck, the elf had a ninja sword out in a flash, and she was more than ready to use it to slice and dice the little thing in about two cuts. Funny, none of us had noticed her weapons before. And now here it was out and menacing all of us as I approached with the chained-up little Jabba, who was freaking out in the face of what he perceived as a mortal enemy. Last of Autumn. Jabba scrambled behind me for cover and protection as she shouted something in Tolkien Elven I can only guess meant something close to “Die, Goblin Scum.”
She seemed quite angry. And yes, she was sexy like that, too. Her face was pure dark storm cloud rage, and I was pretty sure being on the receiving end of that would not be a pleasant experience. A few minutes later the sergeant major was involved and asking me what the hell I was doing.
“This is our prisoner,” I told him. “The one I interrogated, Sergeant Major. I’m bringing him with us.”
The sergeant major gave me a look that suggested he was baffled, or perturbed, or both, at why the enemy thing was still alive after the pertinent information had been extracted and the creature’s usefulness expended. But since we were in polite and open company it was clear we couldn’t be as straightforward as we had been on the subject of now-deceased Deep State Volman.
Side note. No one had missed Volman so far.
It all eventually got straightened out once I explained the goblin was disposed to work with us and might provide valuable intel later on throughout the mission. But Last of Autumn would have nothing to do with Jabba, and her whole bearing changed permanently after the incident, even though I kept explaining that the Jabba was a joein, or prisoner in Korean. German too. Häftling.
Her seething hatred for him had changed her delicately placid and beautiful features into those of fiery avenging angel in the space of a moment. An avenging angel I would be none too happy about meeting if I were on the wrong side of the equation and at the tip of her shiny ninja sword of razor-sharp death.
The sword. Interesting. She was quick with it. Not McCluskey fast, but it was still pretty ninja. The weapon wasn’t like any of those the Rangers had picked up to use when ammo got down to nonexistent. What she was pointing at Jabba was something more like a fabled blade. Something straight out of an epic tale about serpents and Vikings. But at the same time, something a deadly Ronin might use to murder a thousand samurai on an endless quest for revenge. It was beautiful and definitely well-made. A fine thing. Not like, but in the same category of fineness as, McCluskey’s black blade had been. Coldfire, the SEAL had called it.
At that moment I wanted to ask her if she knew of this King Triton, but… now didn’t seem like a good time, what with her waving around a very dangerous weapon she was intent on drawing gobbie blood with.
She kept hissing at the goblin and calling it a “Diener der Finsternis!” in Grau Sprache.
Servant of Darkness.
Jabba earnestly shook his head like he was trying to tell some cops back on the block that he was just hanging out with those other guys the po-po were looking for. He was innocence defined and guilty as hell.
Jabba was even jabbering the equivalent of “It’s cool” in Turkic.
It was all kind of funny. Until she took someone’s eye out with the blade, and then it was liable to get out of hand. And then it would be even funnier years later. To the survivors that is.
Like I said, it all got straightened out, and Tanner was called in to take charge of the prisoner. I ordered Jabba to obey everything Tanner said, and I gave Tanner a few phrases in Turkic to order the little goblin around.
By nightfall the goblin was overloaded with two huge duffels and carrying the weapons section’s extra gear as we departed the river island. No mean feat. They were feeding him scraps from their MREs like he was a dog, and truth be told the little goblin didn’t seem to mind much. Brumm had even taught him to jump up and down and roll over. They left the goblin on the 550 cord leash with a chain around his neck, but he was gonna earn his keep along the way. Those swollen duffels were heavy. Oh, and plus, he was carrying a 7.62 drum in each gangly claw. He was impossibly, and comically, overloaded, and yet like I said, he didn’t seem to mind. In fact he was grinning ridiculously. I think someone had let him try some Rip It they’d smuggled along for the ride. Once he was fueled up on a near-lethal dose of caffeine and vitamin B12 the little goblin seemed almost happy to be with us, proving once again that Rip It was mission-critical.
Private Soprano had been reassigned from Jasper’s fire team, which had been cannibalized to fill other squads who’d taken casualties. Soprano was now the AG for Specialist Rico.
“Get a load of this guy,” laughed the new assistant gunner. Gone was his comical Italian parody, replaced by a deep Bronx patois that gave away his hometown sure as command sergeant major’s drawl.
The exaggerated accent, likely a knee slapper among his friends back in the shadows of Yankee Stadium, made a comeback. “Looka da little monkey man!”Jabba was only slightly smaller than Soprano. “He’s-a too funny to kill. Hey… monkey, you bite and I’ll splitta your skull, sì, capisce?”
Now, heading into the night and up through a dark forest climbing toward the foothills, the scouts moved, sweeping ahead of Last of Autumn and myself at the center of their patrol wedge. We followed the scouts pointing out their initial course track. She was interfacing with “Hard,” or as he was officially known, Sergeant Hardt. Hard and Kurtz were cut from the same cloth. Completely competent. Zero personality. Strong opinions on everyone weaker than themselves. Spoiler: everyone was weaker. Both tabbed, and I’d bet my whole instant coffee stash they had their tabs tattooed to boot.
All I got from the Ranger scout leader when I reported with Autumn was “Try not to make much noise and make sure she understands me and I understand her, or there are going to be problems for you, PFC.”
During the patrol brief, Thor st
epped in and told Hardt I was “good to go,” and that dialed Hard back a bit. Slightly. A little. But you could tell he was wired tight and didn’t want any mistakes out of me that might jam up his section’s chi.
In Mandarin, chi literally means “air” or “breath.” Figuratively it refers to the vital energy in all living things. Spelled qi in the Pinyin romanization. Chi or ch’i in the Wade-Giles transcription.
This is me contributing.
In any case, I didn’t want to jam up anyone’s chi. Armed dudes operating out in the unknown dark, surrounded by the enemy, needed as much energy flow as possible. Especially with me out here with them. Jammed chi probably meant all of us getting hacked and stabbed to death by something mythical and angry. I was intent on avoiding this fate until I had at least one last decent cup of coffee somewhere. I had reached the “Not Particular” phase of this little adventure. As in, if we had run into the worst gas station in the world with coffee that had been brewed sometime last week… I would have hit it and been exceedingly grateful.
We started out at evening nautical twilight, like I think I said, and just before we did, Last of Autumn whispered a few Tolkien words in her dappled-gray horse’s ears, and after that the horse followed the patrol wedge, but so far back it was almost out of sight. Every so often I’d look back with the barely working NVGs and see the horse standing near a thicket, almost invisible, still following us like a good boy. I wasn’t even sure if the horse was a boy. But he, or she, was a pro at stealth.
Once we were underway, the comm was up and the following teams started out on our back trail. The scouts under Sergeant Hardt knew what they were doing. They were constantly back and forth, up and down terrain high points and checking visibility along the route. Our rucks were impossibly overloaded, but as scouts we weren’t loaded down as heavily as the rest of the company. That allowed us to move faster and quieter. And the scouts were definitely quiet. But they were also carrying weapons and gear, and when the air was still enough and there was no background noise like rushing water or wind through the trees, you could just barely hear their muffled hustling movements as they went softly from tree to tree in two-man teams. Covering and watching. Whispering into their throat mics.
Forgotten Ruin: An Epic Military Fantasy Thriller Page 26