His command rig was rocking as first one tire, then another, then a third was punctured. Down the line, other trucks went down faster as their tires went flat in pairs or trios.
Soldiers, ordered only a moment ago to put their bodies in front of steaming engine blocks, moved to kneel in front of tires. But whoever was calling the shots wanted the tires dead faster.
Colonel Cortez whipped around. More fire, rapid fire, must mean more shooters closer in. “Look for shooters. Look for targets,” he ordered. But even as the words roared out of his mouth, he knew they would be failures. Order, counterorder, disorder.
Cortez had learned that long ago at East Point. As a junior officer he’d watched as flag-and-field grad officers had foolishly reproven the adage. Now it was his turn.
Troopers sliding to a stop or hunkering down in front of tires . . . most of them going flat . . . needed a second to turn their concentration elsewhere.
That second was enough.
The fusillade ended.
The silence was incredibly pure, just the wind through the trees and bush and the drip, drip of water from the nearest radiator. No moan of wounded, no scream for medic. Just mesmerizing silence.
“Shoot, damn it!” Cortez screamed into the hardening quiet.
“At what, sir?” someone dared to call back.
“Out there,” Cortez shouted, waving his pistol over the dark, muddy waters. “Out there, they’re escaping. Shoot. Shoot anything that moves, or looks to be moving or might move.”
The first shots were sporadic. Then, as soldiers came to prone or kneeling or standing positions, the fire grew into a deafening roar. Clips were emptied and replaced. The mad minute lengthened into two. Trees and shrubs trembled, then came all to pieces. Water here and there was whipped to a white froth.
Cortez studied the effects downrange. Maybe they hit something. Maybe rounds caught someone as they withdrew. Maybe some dart addressed “To whom it may concern” had ripped into someone, spreading blood into the water.
Maybe . . . but Cortez saw no blood, no flesh, no effect at all. He raised his hand, and shouted, “Cease fire.”
It took a moment for other officers to see his raised hand, to make out his order . . . and to carry it out. A full minute expended itself before the last shooter was shouted to silence.
Now the silence truly was deafening. He ignored his ears and stared to the right of the causeway, then the left. Here or there, a tree, too shot up to resist gravity, tottered and fell.
Cortez looked for any sign of movement. To his left, a bird squawked and paddled madly in circles, its right wing red with gore. “Kill it,” he ordered.
A single shot dispatched the creature.
Now the silence was total. The wavelets from its circling dissipated. The water of the swamp grew glassy except where the wind rolled newly downed trees.
If there had been shooters out there a moment ago, there was no sign of them now. No sign of their dead. No sign of their wounded. No sign of nothing.
“Ah, could someone help us out of this mess?” It was the voice of Second Company’s captain. He, like most of his company, had spent the last few minutes cringing in the grip of the tangle net, trying to make themselves small and somehow avoid getting hit by either incoming or outgoing.
Cortez turned back to his initial problem of so long ago . . . maybe five minutes before. The colonel’s latest survey of them showed nothing that his first glance hadn’t told him. “In six hours the stuff will fall off of you. Until then, I suggest you avoid moving.”
“Can we breathe?” came from one private.
“Only if you must, and then I would suggest as little as possible,” Cortez said, and turned away to survey the wreckage.
So Cortez was a mad-minute kind of guy. And Kris owed Jack five bucks. Kris had assumed someone at the end of a long supply line and stripped of all his transports would do the logical thing and conserve ammo.
Jack had bet that anyone dumb enough to take this job would have a temper. Also, a name like Cortez just didn’t seem likely to think rationally once his ox had been gored good and tight.
It had been a friendly bet. As friendly as any a Longknife could have about a live-fire exercise.
So Jack made sure his sharpshooters were ready to go to ground once their job was done. Last shot fired, not one had begun a withdrawal. Each had a hidey-hole handy, the bole of a broom tree, an islet an inch or two above the water. They’d dug to improve their positions, just enough, but not enough to give themselves away.
Then they’d waited.
The wait had been worthwhile.
And despite Colonel Cortez’s deafening response, Jack saw no evidence that the score between them was other than zero to zero.
Except Jack had reduced Cortez to walking, and the Marines still had local transport. Oh, and half of one of Cortez’s companies was all tangled up, blocking the road, and would be blocking that road the rest of the day. Jack had allowed two hours for his troops to withdraw from contact and expected to be well to the north before he made camp.
With any luck, he and Kris would be in a position tonight to have a little talk of their own. And Drago would be in position, every ninety minutes or so, to tell them how Cortez was doing.
Would the guy use this opportunity to cut and run? Head south, pile into his landers, and get out of Dodge? Neither Kris nor Jack would put a dime down on that bet.
Both, in their heart of hearts, would love to see the backside of this bunch. But hoping for something is not a strategy. If the guy turned south, it was more likely to go on the defensive and invite Kris to try the tactical offensive.
Jack shook his head. He’d been loving the job Kris gave him. Exercise an offensive strategy by being on the tactical defensive. Let Cortez chase them until they had him exactly where they wanted him. It had worked this time. Would he be kind enough to let Kris and Jack do it a second time?
Time to get started. He mashed his commlink but limited it to the landline net. “Sergeant Thu.”
“Yes, sir,” came back a fraction of a second slower than it would have on milnet.
“You can untie your locals from the trees they’re hitched to.”
“They be glad to hear that.”
“Tell them they can go home now or they can help us. We need holes dug. If they’re willing to dig, we’d love to keep them, and they may be in on the final shoot-out.”
There was a bit of silence. “They say if they’ll get a chance to shoot up these robbers, they’ll do some digging first.”
“Good. You have them start digging. You see the other group of locals coming in from the west?”
“I got them marked, sir.”
“Leave your corporal to look after this crew, and you ride over to them and invite them to the fun. Same rules. Dig holes alongside the main road. Then shoot if it comes to that. But dig first.”
“Sir, I don’t think these farmers understand how much a light infantry man loves his shovel.”
“Can’t think of a better man to teach a man to lust after his shovel than a Marine sergeant.”
On the causeway, an occasional shot rattled the silence and sent winged things back into flight. Jack doubted they were hitting anything, but he couldn’t be sure. He should have everyone’s vitals showing up on his battle board. Not today.
Today, he’d have to wait and see who showed up at the rally point. What a way to make war. That this had been the norm for most of the history of warfare did not make Jack feel one bit better.
He took a last look at the scene across the water from his borrowed “fort,” then unplugged himself from the temporary net and headed for the back of the cave. A newly dug exit put him on the surface among a lot of broom trees and brush. He had a two-mile walk for a truck.
He enjoyed it.
26
Cortez wanted to get the first word in when Thorpe came over the horizon, but “What are you doing parked on that causeway?” came before the colonel could ge
t to his slumping command van. He took the call in the open with his staff around him.
Cortez went through several choice retorts, enjoying the view being his first unconsidered answer. But the colonel swallowed them all down and said, “Waiting for the tangle net to dry on the half of Second Company that you might notice is down and blocking my advance.”
“Don’t you have any untangle spray?”
“Not in the budget.” That drew a snarl of responses from Major Zhukov and Captain Afonin of the Guard Fusiliers. “You might want to take that up with that Whitebred fellow. I know I would if he was within my reach.”
Thorpe took that under consideration for a moment, or maybe he was distracted by other matters. His next comment was, “I’m getting strange readouts from your transportation.”
“Yeah, I know. We’ve been attacked.”
“Casualties?”
Cortez failed to suppress a snort this time. “You don’t see any hostage bodies lying around do you? Not a single casualty.”
“I also don’t see any dead attackers’ bodies.”
“I suspect you’re right, though I don’t have the fine sensors you have. As I recall, I don’t have any sensors.”
“But you must have seen something. You were attacked.”
“Yep, sniper rounds whizzing by for all of two minutes.”
“So, they didn’t kill any of you, and you didn’t get any of them?” Thorpe sounded incredulous.
“Well, it wasn’t as if nothing got hit. Those strange readings you’re getting are from my transport.”
“Yeah.”
“Every truck, every combat rig is dead.”
“Dead?”
“Not a radiator in one of them isn’t shot out. Most tires are flat. There are two reasons we’re sitting here. Half a company is listening to their tangle net dry. The rest of us have nothing but our boots to take us anywhere.”
“And you’re throwing in the towel because of that!”
Colonel Cortez so wished he’d gotten out of general view before Thorpe started talking. Surrounded as he was by Zhukov and Afonin and a few others from Torun Guard Fusiliers, his options for throwing a fit were limited. It had been a rough forty minutes since the firefight. Now the great Navy father in the sky was accusing him and his command of cowardice. Oh, how Cortez wanted to scream at someone.
Cortez held on to his temper with his fingernails, and asked through gritted teeth, “What makes you think I’d do that?”
Captain Thorpe must have sensed he was only millimeters away from crossing a line that should never be crossed among warriors. He had the good sense to say nothing more explicit than “Ah . . .” Then added, “You haven’t suggested anything.”
“Then let me suggest that we hold a council of war between my officers, you, and the representative of our financiers. Is Mr. Whitebred within hearing?”
“I’ll get him. Wait one.”
There was a long silence. Maybe the mess they were in was sinking in on Thorpe. Maybe it wasn’t.
Then Whitebred squeaked, “Yes, you wanted to talk to me?”
Cortez quickly outlined what had happened to his command since they checked in last orbit. The space side of the conversation did not interrupt, even for clarification.
“That sounds bad,” Mr. Whitebred said at the end.
Was the man so dumb that he lacked any idea just what an understatement that was? “Our situation is not hopeless, but it could be a lot better,” Cortez answered.
“What would you suggest?” Whitebred asked.
Not for the first time Cortez wished this conversation was taking place on visual. It would be interesting to see how Thorpe looked as he swallowed his silence.
“My options are rather clear, Mr. Whitebred. I can continue to advance. To seek out and engage the forces under this Longknife girl. So far, they have gone out of their way to avoid serious contact and any casualties.”
“They didn’t take out a single one of your troopers while they were shooting up your trucks?” Thorpe still couldn’t seem to address that fact without his words drowning in incredulity.
“No one was even nicked. I have fifty hostages and was prepared to shoot ten for every one killed. With not even one trooper wounded, I seemed as much bound to do nothing as our published order bound me to do something if she did hit someone.”
“Should we change that order, Captain Thorpe?” Whitebred asked.
“It doesn’t seem like we’d gain anything by doing that just now. All our mobile assets are down. By the way, Colonel Cortez, I checked back with the troops you left guarding your landers. They do not appear to be under any threat. In fact, no civilians are in view of either of the landing beaches. The locals seem to be making a big thing of ignoring them.”
“Could any of them get their hands on a few trucks. Maybe bring us up a load of radiators?”
“Radiators? Ha!” someone spat. Cortez turned to see a sunburned old fellow sitting in a ring of ten hostages. “We don’t keep no supply of radiators like that waiting around.” He spat again. “You done put all of us on foot, man.”
“Did you hear that?” Cortez asked his orbital listeners.
“Yeah. You’ve been down there awhile. You see anything that looks like a big supply of spare parts?”
“Not in any town we passed through. Farms seem to keep their old stuff around. For spare parts I’d guess, but if we sent a couple of rigs around to collect stuff, I suspect we’d end up with more holed radiators than spares.”
The hostage just grinned at Cortez and nodded.
“I’m wide open to suggestions,” Cortez finally bit out.
“If you try to fall back, you’ll have to do it on foot.” Captain Thorpe stated the obvious.
“If I try to advance,” Cortez pointed out, “I’ll also be doing that on foot.”
“But you have to be close to contact,” Whitebred put in from his deep well of military ignorance.
“That is true,” Thorpe agreed. “You’ve come so far, Colonel, to walk away from your attackers.”
“And could he?” Whitebred put in. “Walk away, I mean. What are the chances this Longknife girl has gotten her hands on some transport? Couldn’t they use any borrowed trucks to whip around your—what do you call them?—flanks, and be in front of you no matter which direction you go in?”
“It does seem like Colonel Cortez will be attacking, whatever direction he chooses to head,” Thorpe pointed out.
“But in one I’ll be getting closer to my base. In the other direction, I’ll be going farther.” Cortez wanted to say, You idiots, pull me back to our bases. There’s a chance we just might hold in the major cities if I have enough troops to garrison. Wandering around out here, I’m just the latest in a long line of generals looking to have my command wiped out.
And if he said that, he’d be immediately labeled a defeatist, coward, and loser. That was what Thorpe wanted to do. Label him. Relieve him and turn his command over to Major Zhukov. Cortez threw the man from Torun a hard glance.
Major Zhukov shook his head and took a step back. He waved both his hands and mouthed, Not me. I don’t want this mess.
Cortez would have preferred a stronger vote of confidence, but a look around the causeway showed no reason for confidence.
“I think he should keep going,” Whitebred said. “There’s not much more inhabited space north of where he is. He does outnumber the Wardhaven interlopers three or four to one. Maybe five to one. It seems to me that you’ve got all of them right there. Why shouldn’t he just keep on attacking them?”
“That sounds like a good call to me,” Captain Thorpe said.
It would, you damn swabby. You’re up there, not down here, Cortez thought. But Whitebred had a point. It might work.
And on the way up here, Cortez had driven his troops through plenty of places for a good ambush. If Longknife and her Marines had trucks, they’d be there waiting for them.
Sooner or later, Longknife would strip him o
f his hostages, and the gloves would come off. Cortez projected a map on the ground in front of him. The distance to the northernmost settlement was barely a quarter of that back to City Two.
If he could just find this Longknife and fix her in place, his four companies should be able to kick the living stuffings out of her. “We will continue to advance, sir, in pursuance of your orders,” Cortez said.
“Very good, Colonel,” Thorpe replied. “We will talk to you again on the next orbit.
Cortez made sure his commlink was thoroughly off before he said a word. “So we toss the dice. Who knows, we might win.”
“Yes, sir,” Zhukov said, “but what do we do about all our spare ammo and food, sir? Our men can’t carry it. My Fusiliers are maxed out with just our weapons load and armor.”
That question hung unanswered by Cortez’s staff.
“Ain’t you guys ever used hand trucks or wagons?” the hostage that had put in his own thoughts asked.
“And you are?” Cortez asked.
“Abe, sir,” the old-timer said, getting to his feet. “Abe Lincoln Corminski if you want all my folks saddled me with. Abe does fine for most.”
Another of the hostages, a woman about his age, kicked him. “Abe dearest, you always did talk too much. You quit doing the thinking for these no-good layabouts.”
“But, honey, I figure if I get these folks up north quicker, they’ll run into whoever is hunting them and this thing will get settled one way or the other, and I can get you back home.”
The woman kicked him again, and grumbled something under her breath that sounded like “thickheaded old fool.”
Cortez motioned the man to him . . . and out of kicking range of the woman he would bet money was his wife.
“And just what kind of hand wagons or trucks are you talking about?” he asked, as the man came to him. He had yellow teeth and bad breath. On further consideration, Cortez took a step back.
“Well, if you take one of the axles off of these trucks—the ones that go straight through, not two-piece ones—and you put a flat bed on it and a shank out with handles or something and you pull it, a man can haul a lot if it’s rolling along on a couple of wheels,” the guy said, folding his arms and preening himself on his expertise on hauling things.
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