by John Ringo
“The video from Fredericksburg, horrific as it is, clearly shows what Americans, surprised and facing overwhelming odds, can do to these creatures on their own turf. As your President, I cannot simply throw away northern Virginia, not and face myself in the mirror in the morning.
“I have made this decision, knowing that it means the death of many of the soldiers sworn to the service of their country.
“To the soldiers in the field, I have only this to say.
“Obey your orders, care for your comrades and take the field knowing that few things can face a human who is in the right and just keeps coming.
“Good luck. Pile ’em up like cordwood.”
* * *
Mueller watched the female technician hooking wires up to the demolition circuit board. “Where are we with the stringing?” she asked. Her hands moved with a graceful haste, barely pausing as each circuit was connected; her fingers seemed to blur in the morning light.
“We’ve strung all but the outer edge, and the engineers have placed all the detonators. We’re still putting up the claymores, but they’ll be done by the time you’re ready.”
“I wish we had enough Pyronics for this job,” she said, testily. “I hate working with this lowest-bidder military stuff.”
“Hey, MILSPEC is the class of the world!”
“Hah! Tell it to the amateurs, kid. I’ve worked with every type of detonator in the world and five gets you ten one of these blasting caps fails when I do the systems check. These dang military caps are too dang sensitive.”
“Okay, I’ve got ten bucks says you’re wrong.”
“It was an expression. I don’t drink, swear or bet. I have enough excitement in my life as it is.”
“What do you usually do?”
“Well, I used to drop buildings for a living, but lately I’ve been a home demolition contractor.” She set the last circuit in place and hooked up the meter. “How certain are you that they haven’t hooked up any of the blasting caps?”
“Not certain enough.”
“Good answer. I wanted to see if you had any sense.” She stood up and arched her back, rubbing at her lumbar. “I prefer doing this with a table, too.”
“We must all make our little sacrifices for the war effort.”
“Sure. Personally, I gave up chocolate. I’m gonna go do the circuit. Stay here and make absolutely certain no one touches the board. I don’t like all these amateurs running around.”
“I thought I was one of them.”
“Yeah, but that way I only have to worry about one.”
“Let me make you a deal. Since I am in charge of most of the ‘amateurs,’ especially the civilian ones, and I really shouldn’t be tied to this spot, let me get a guard who knows darn well not to touch anything and only understands simple commands so he gets it right.”
“Whatever.”
Mueller came back a few moments later with one of the cavalry troopers providing security for the construction site. With a screen of Bradleys and Humvees five miles down the road, Mueller was personally convinced that the Posleen would be spotted well before they reached the ambush. But the military’s standard operating procedures were developed from numerous situations where people were personally convinced of one thing or another and totally wrong. So — despite anyone’s personal conviction — Colonel Abrahamson was providing security to all of the ambush preparation sites.
This was the ambush site most distant from Richmond and presumably the point of first contact for the Twelfth Corps. At this point, near Road 656, there was a perfect site for a long-range armor and mechanical ambush. An overpass ran along a very slight ridgeline perpendicular to the interstate. North of the overpass there was a straight stretch nearly two miles long. Half a mile from the overpass a group of trees crowded the road at either side and ran down the median. In the midst of the trees a shallow and apparently unnamed creek crossed the interstate in a box culvert.
Now, both sides of the interstate just behind the overpass had been cratered and dug out for fifty meters towards Richmond, creating a shelf in which a platoon of cavalry vehicles crouched with their twenty-five-millimeter cannons pointed northward. They would be able to fire hull-down, protected from most of the Posleen fire, until the Posleen were close enough to be a threat. When the cavalry started taking casualties they could drive away protected by the slight ridge.
And the wooded patch was lined with two thousand claymore mines.
Each mine was a narrow curved box, with thin “legs” on the bottom, projections for detonators on the top and the convexly curved front labeled, humorously in the opinion of most military personnel, front towards enemy. The directional antipersonnel mine consisted of a plastic cover encasing a thin metal backstop, a pound of Composition B explosive and seven hundred fifty small metal ball bearings, just a little larger than a standard BB. On detonation the ball bearings would spew out in a cone, tearing apart anything in their path. At fifty meters, the recommended stand-off for maximum effect, the mines were designed to create a zone of total destruction thirty meters wide. Fifty meters was just about the width of the right of way and there was one claymore spaced every two meters, or six feet, for two hundred and fifty meters on either side of the road, on both sides of the interstate. When the daisy-chained mechanical ambush was detonated, nearly a million and a half ball bearings would fill the air, each traveling faster than a rifle bullet.
“Specialist Rossi,” said Mueller, introducing the cav trooper, “this is Amanda Hunt, the lead demolition person for the claymore ambush.”
“Ma’am,” said the specialist with a nod of the head and a wave of the hand at his helmet. He knew better than to salute, but wanted to acknowledge her civilian rank.
“Ms. Hunt is going to go check the demolition circuits.” Mueller pointed at the circuit board. “This is the controller for the ambush. One of the things she is going to do is check to make sure none of the detonators have been connected. This is like the claymore clacker, so she would like to take it with her. But she’d have to hook it back up and that takes time. So, you are hereby ordered to remain at this post until personally relieved by Ms. Hunt, understood?”
“Yes, Sergeant.”
“I’ve coordinated this with your squad leader and your platoon leader. Now, I don’t think that this will happen, but in the event that we are attacked while she is out there, you are to remain at this post until relieved by Ms. Hunt, understood? You are not, I repeat, not to return to your fighting vehicle, but remain here. Understood?”
“Yes, Sergeant.” The trooper was clearly unhappy with the order.
“In the event that your platoon pulls out before Ms. Hunt returns, you are to destroy the circuit board. Do not attempt to use it, do not let anyone else, not your platoon nor any of the engineers, use it. Understood?”
“Yes, Sergeant, understood. Why?”
Mueller smiled. “Because I might be out there, and I don’t want any idiot cooking off two thousand claymores because somebody saw a horse run across the road. And if Amanda isn’t back, it means that some or most of the detonators are not hooked up. If she makes it back after you destroy the box, she can probably get most of them to detonate anyway.
“I would order you to stand your post until the Posleen are on you. That would do the same thing, would mean that she and the engineers weren’t still trying to hook up claymores. But I’m not going to expect you to remain when your platoon pulls out. You’re behind the overpass embankment and the drainage ditch runs right into the fighting position, so even if she doesn’t get back when we’re taking fire, you can still hold out until the tracks start to move, so stay here until relieved. Understood?”
“Understood.”
“Repeat it back.”
“I am to remain at this post, letting no one but Ms. Hunt have access to this circuit board, until relieved by Ms. Hunt personally and no other. I will remain under those orders, unless my platoon retreats from its position, at which time I am
to destroy the circuit board and retreat with my platoon.”
“Ms. Hunt?”
“Okay.” She looked deeply skeptical. “If I ain’t back though, your boss better make damn sure he waits as long as he can.”
As she drove away in her pickup Mueller looked the specialist in the eye.
“How long you gonna stay?”
“Till she gets back or the Posleen are swarmin’. I’ll get a radio from the track, I’ll still be able to call fire right up till then.”
“Right.” Mueller looked down at the departing civilian contractors. Their grading work done, they were headed to the next ambush. It would probably be less elaborate than this one, but the Posleen were going to be greeted as many times as possible as they advanced.
“Any word from the scouts?”
The cav scout pulled a device out of his thigh cargo pocket and tapped the keypad. The box was the size of an old “brick” cellular phone and had a hand strap on the back for ease of carrying. This was useful, for example, when under fire. The LCD display flashed as he scrolled through options and finally settled on a screen.
“Nah, the Posleen they’re watching are still in some sort of security distribution around their lander. There’s some sort of armor indicator, maybe one of their God Kings. But they still don’t seem to be moving this way.”
“Nice,” said Mueller. “What is it?”
“You’ve never seen one?” said the surprised scout.
Mueller held up his wrist where the GalTech AID was wrapped as a thin bracelet. “I use an AID.”
“Oh, well it’s a combination of the IVIS and the ANCD,” said the scout, using the military acronyms for the InterVehicle Intelligence System and the Army-Navy Cryptographic Device.
“So it’s both a tactical dispositions locator and a code book?” Mueller asked.
“Yeah. Your position is broadcast by it to command vehicles that gather the data and pass it on. And you can pull down signals information from the intervehicle network. So, like, if I want to call up that battleship, I just search for… what was its name?”
“The North Carolina.”
“Right.” The scout tapped keys for a moment and grimaced. “It doesn’t want to give me Navy information. Why the hell do we practice Operational Security when the Posleen don’t use the information?” he asked rhetorically.
“Where’s it getting its location data from?”
“Triangulation from the vehicles. They’re getting it from reads off of other vehicles that get hard position data from those position markers that are scattered around. We hit one on the way up here and the guidance system has us just about where we are — sitting under the overpass — so it seems to be working.” He tapped the device again. “I can put in a call for fire to the artillery battery that’s attached to us, but I can’t get up to the Navy.”
“You can do a call for fire?” asked the Special Forces NCO.
“Yeah, in case it, you know, like drops in the pot.” The trooper shook his head. “I hope I don’t have to, though. That means the chain of command is down to me, you know? How’s that thing work?” he asked, gesturing at the AID.
“Pretty much the same.” Mueller held out his wrist. “AID, battlefield schematic out five miles.” A holographic projection of the battlefield in three dimensions appeared in front of the two soldiers. As they watched, units, friend and foe, were sketched in. “A little easier, though.”
The trooper shook his head again. “Why’d you ask me?”
“I was actually thinking you might say something like, ‘Oh, yeah, I heard on the radio…’ ” Mueller lowered the device and it decided the demonstration was over and switched off the schematic. “Little did I know you were going to pull out your own handy-dandy battlefield computer.”
The trooper smiled. “I really love this thing.”
“What’s the brief for the front-line scouts?” asked Mueller, wondering if everyone had gotten the same word. “Are they staying out of sight?”
“Oh, yeah. They’re not gonna stick their dicks in there, man. The quickest damn way to get the Posleen to follow you is attack them.”
“Yeah, it’s kind of like leading a pig.” Mueller felt the glimmerings of an idea.
“Huh?” asked the urban-raised cavalry specialist.
“The best way to lead a pig is to poke it in the nose,” said the NCO with a distracted smile.
“Oh. Well, until the colonel says different, we’re staying out of sight.”
“Yeah, best thing for it.”
“I thought you’d know that.”
“Why?” asked Mueller, warily.
“Well, wasn’t it a Special Forces team that got shot up on Barwhon?” asked the specialist.
“Actually, it was a mixed special operations team: some Special Forces, Marines, a SEAL.”
“And they stuck their dicks into a Posleen camp, killed some God Kings and got their butts kicked, right?” the specialist asked archly.
“More or less.”
“So we don’t want to do that, do we, Sergeant?”
“We didn’t want to either,” Mueller admitted, grimly.
“So why did they do it?” asked the scout.
“We got orders from higher to snatch some Posleen for medical experiments. We didn’t exactly like it and we liked the result even less than we thought we were going to. We lost two absolute legends in the special ops community — Sandra Ellsworthy and Arthur Tung — and when we made it back to the Himmit scout we were at Death’s door from fatigue and vitamin deficiency.”
“Hold on, by ‘we’ you mean you were on that team?” asked the cav trooper, his eyes round.
“Me, Ersin and Mosovich. We were the only survivors.”
“Jesus, sorry, man. I, well, you know…”
“Yeah, you didn’t know. It’s all right. But the only reason we went into the camp was on orders. The real bitch of it was the whole mission was out of date by the time we did it. They wanted a Posleen to study, but by the time we got back with it there were captured Posleen and frozen Posleen bits out the ass coming in from Diess. Total and complete fuckup.”
Mueller paused, his face hard as he remembered the results of following incompetent orders. The general whose bright idea it had been had never even commented, not even obliquely apologized. Just handed out the medals, tapped them on the shoulders and went on to his next star. “Anyway, the point is, I agree with the scouts staying out of sight.” He looked down the road. “AID, how’s the installation coming?”
“Engineers report all claymores installed, all wire run and all blasting caps are in place and ready to be connected. The engineer teams are ready to start connecting the circuits when Ms. Hunt gives the command.”
“Okay, tell the engineer lieutenant to move all the civilians back to the buses and on to the next ambush. What’s the status on claymores for that?”
“Tractor-trailers are unloading them as we speak, however, we have received only seven hundred, since the rest have been diverted to the defenses on U.S. 1 and U.S. 301. If time permits, more will be sent forward when a shipment arrives from the plant. The factory is emptying its storage as fast as it can move the material out.”
“Where’s Ersin?”
“Master Sergeant Ersin is with the forward scouts.”
“Hell. Well, tell him to be careful.”
* * *
Mark Ersin adjusted the focus on the purely optical binoculars and let out a soft sigh. He and the cavalry scouts with him were wearing ghillie suits, coveralls sewn with dangling fabric strips that made them almost impossible to see against the scrub pine they were nestled in. But Ellsworthy had been wearing a similar suit when she bought it. Up against Posleen sensors, a ghillie suit was cold comfort.
The Posleen, a God King and about thirty normals, had obviously been left behind as security for the lander. The numbers were far under the normal number of troops associated with a God King, though, and Ersin was nervous about where the rest mi
ght be.
The lander loomed on what had previously been a tobacco farm. A tractor jutted out from under one edge. The God King and normals had begun surveying duties soon after the scouts came on site and, with the exception of the arrival of a small anti-grav tank that was parked on the interstate, no changes had occurred.
“Three Five Echo Two One, this is Nine Eight Bravo One Seven, authenticate Whiskey Tango, over,” came a whisper over the scout’s radio.
“What?”
“I say again, Three Five Echo Two One, this is Nine Eight Bravo One Seven, authenticate Whiskey Tango, over,” the transmission repeated.
“AID, who is that?” whispered Ersin.
“Master Sergeant Ersin, that is the Twenty-Ninth Infantry Division’s division artillery fire direction center.”
“What? Direct?” asked the NCO, his faintly Eurasian face wrinkling in puzzlement. His nose twitched like a rat sniffing cheese.
“Yes, Master Sergeant.”
“What’s the authentication?”
“I’ve got an ANCD here,” whispered one of the cav troopers, pulling a box out of his thigh pocket.
“Don’t worry about it,” said Ersin.
“Authentication is Mike.”
Ersin picked up the handset and keyed it. “Niner Eight Bravo One Seven, this is Three Five Echo Two One. Authenticate Mike, over.”
“Echo Two One, require fire mission, over.”
What? “Say again, Bravo One Seven?”
“Echo Two One, do you have the enemy in sight?”
“Roger, over.”
“Require fire mission, over.”
Ersin wrinkled his brow and took a deep breath. “Bravo One Seven, this is Echo Two One. Negative, say again, negative. Stay off this net in the future. Out.”
“Echo Two One, this is Bravo Five Nine Actual, over.”