The Between (Earth Exiles Book 3)

by Mark Harritt

  Verjon waved this last off, “I don’t really care. Let’s just get there so that I can take a look.”

  Dagit sped up so that they could get there quicker. The first thing that Verjon noticed was the smell. Shortly, he could see the pale grey skin of the dead men through the foliage. The trees thinned and they walked into the open space where the patrol been killed. The bodies were bloating as they decomposed. The stench was overpowering. Animals had gotten to the corpses.

  “Sir, Jarni Mig is over here.”

  “Jarni Mig is another corpse. Like I told you, I don’t care. Show me where the explosives were.”

  Dagit nodded, “This way, sir.”

  He pointed out the locations where smaller explosives went off. Verjon looked at the shredded bodies. Some kind of fragmentation grenade, probably. He noticed a pattern that radiated from one location. Fragmentation was imbedded into the trees on one side.

  He pointed in the direction where he though the fragmentation had come from, “Is that where the initial explosive went off?”

  “Yes sir. We pulled some of these out of the trees,” Dagit tossed something to him. He caught it and looked at it. Except for the scarring from hitting the tree, it was perfectly round. He rubbed it, and the metal gleamed.

  “I want to know what kind of metal this is made from.”

  “Yes sir, we’ll send in everything to get it tested.”

  “Is there more?”

  “Yes, we found wiring.”

  “Show me.”

  They walked to the location where the explosive had been sitting. Dagit motioned for Verjon to follow him. He squat down and pulled at a wire covered with some kind of brown plastic covering.”

  “Did you find anything else?”

  “No sir, just the location this leads to. They were lying parallel to the path, outside the kill zone.”

  Verjon grunted. That made sense. Initiate the ambush, then engage them with small arms fire.

  “Where are the primitives?” he asked.

  “Unknown. It looks like they left in a hurry, though.”

  “I can’t blame them. They must have known that a larger force would show up after this.”

  “Well, we sent Jarni Mig in to kill them. After they killed Jarni Mig, they would have no reason to believe we would show them any mercy,” Dagit pointed out.

  Verjon took a moment to ponder this bit of information, “Is there anything else?”

  “Yes, we found what we believe to be a grave.”

  Verjon frowned. Why would anybody spend time on burying dead meat? That didn’t make any sense. Ordinarily, the Turinzoni would gather their dead, separate them from their equipment, and then burn the bodies to keep disease from spreading. Out here, since they wouldn’t be staying and didn’t have to worry about the bloating corpses, they would just leave them in place for nature to take them.

  “A grave? Why would they bury a corpse if they’re leaving?” he asked.

  “Who knows? Maybe they thought they were coming back?” Dagit replied.

  “Then why didn’t they bury our men?”

  “Unknown. The only thing we know is that it appears to be a fresh grave.”

  Something didn’t make sense here, “dig it up. I want to see what’s in that grave.”

  Dagit inclined his head, “Yes sir. Do you want to go and see the grave?”

  Verjon frowned. He didn’t want to sit around for thirty minutes while the soldiers dug up the corpse. Still, he wanted to put a face on the enemy, “Sure, let’s go over there.”

  “This way, Sir.”

  Once again, Verjon found himself following Dagit. They followed the path up to the village. It was interesting, all of the homes carved into the cliff. There was a round, stone house sitting out in front of the cliff face. It was a lonely place, no people, no animals, nothing to indicate that anybody had lived there.

  Verjon pointed at the cliff houses, “Have you checked those?”

  Dagit nodded, “We checked everything. There isn’t anybody in there. There’s only a few personal items left inside. Probably things they couldn’t carry.”

  “Were you able to figure out which direction they took when they left?”

  “No, we weren’t able to find their path.” Dagit turned to look at him, “It makes sense. They’re primitive hunter gatherers.”

  Verjon nodded. He was intrigued that such a large group was able to move so quickly with no trail, even though they had a large group of women and children. He looked at the round house as they walked past, noting the mortar that cemented the stones together. Then he looked up at the squared off homes above in the cliff face. He wondered how primitive these thregari truly were.

  The path curved away from the cliff houses. They followed the path down, back into the forest. They walked for fifteen minutes, until the trees opened out into a small glade. In the middle of the glade, there was a small mound of fresh turned earth. Bright white stones outlined the grave. There was a headstone with writing in a strange language. It appeared to be two words. The first word had four characters, and the second word underneath had three. Verjon assumed it was the name of the man or woman who was buried in the grave.

  Four soldiers had shovels, and were ready to dig. Another sub-Caon was standing there. More soldiers were standing around the perimeter for security.

  Dagit motioned to the sub-Caon, “Go ahead.”

  The four men looked for direction from the sub-Caon. He nodded, and the men started digging.

  At first, all four were effective, but as they dug deeper, two of them had to step back. Soon, there was only one of them shoveling dirt out of the hole.

  “Good Gods! How deep do they bury their corpses?” Dagit exclaimed.

  Verjon’s bladder was full, so he decided to step away and water a tree. He walked into the forest about fifteen feet. He unbuttoned his fly and started making water.

  He started to relax as his bladder emptied. Behind him, he heard the men chatter as they grew bored. A sharp word from the sub-Caon enforced discipline, and the men stopped joking.

  Suddenly, the man in the hole yelled out, “I found something.”

  A dull thunk sounded as his shovel hit a hard barrier.

  The soldier called for help as he started levering the barrier out of the hole. Verjon buttoned up his fly and turned around. He looked into the glade, and heard something that alarmed him.

  “Hey, isn’t that our tracker?”

  Verjon watched as more soldiers crowded in to look at the contents in the grave. The sub-Caon and Dagit were looking down into the grave. Verjon had a very bad feeling.

  He yelled, “Don’t touch it!”

  Dagit turned his head to look at Verjon.

  The world shattered. Verjon was knocked from his feet as something hit him in the head. He was confused as he tried to lever himself from the ground. Dust was everywhere, cutting visibility. He looked around to see what had hit him. It was the charred remains of a skull. He shifted the skull so that he could see the face. It was the sub-Caon’s skull. Verjon’s ears were ringing from the explosion. He groaned as he sat up. His head was spinning from the movement.

  He put down a hand and shifted to stand up. His arm collapsed as he tried to put weight on it, so he sat back down and took a deep breath. His head hurt where the skull hit it. He put his hand up to his head and felt something sticky. He looked at his hand. It was covered in blood.

  He screamed out, “Medic!”

  His momentary disorientation disappeared as he feared he’d been mortally wounded. Frantically, he ran his hand over his head. He didn’t feel any open wounds. He had one hell of a lump on his skull, though. His head settled and the world wasn’t spinning as much as it had been. His vision cleared, and he looked around. The dust was settling. There was blood everywhere.

  He put his hand down to lever himself up, and staggered up to his feet. As he stood up, he looked down at his uniform. It was crimson from the blood spatter. He realized that the bloo
d he’d wiped off wasn’t his. Verjon started wiping the blood off his face. He remembered that his mouth had been open when he yelled and the grave blew up. He recognized the taste of blood. He was suddenly very queasy. He was a hard man, and he’d seen a lot of gore in his life, most of it caused by him. Maybe it was the dizziness, maybe it was the smell. Whatever it was, it made him throw up.

  He was leaning against a tree, dry heaving when the medic finally showed up, followed by a host of soldiers with him. The soldiers went to help the wounded.

  “Caon Verjon, are you okay?”

  He looked at the medic, blood and flesh, none of it his, dripping from his face, “Do I look okay?”

  The medic blanched. He realized that he was treading on thin ice with the Caon. Verjon took pity on him, and waved him away, “Yeah, I’m okay. Go check on the others.”

  The medic ran around, doing a quick triage on the other soldiers. One of them had been transfixed by a length of bone through his throat and air gurgled as he slowly died.

  “Gods, put that man out of his misery!”

  Nobody moved, the ones that had been present for the explosion still in shock and the newly arrived in shock from the carnage. Verjon walked over, pulled his pistol and shot the soldier in the head. The gargling noise stopped as the soldier died.

  In the distance, gunfire sounded. Instinctively, Verjon looked back in the direction that the sound of gunshots was coming from. A growl bubbled up from deep in his chest. He’d been wrong when he came into this valley. Whoever was out there, they weren’t thregari primitives. He didn’t know who they were, but he was going to track them down and kill them, even if he had to do it with his own bare hands.

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  Chapter Two

  Mike had the binoculars out so that he could call the shots for Tom. Not that Tom really needed it. Tom had put so many bullets down range, in so many different climatic and environmental conditions, that it was all instinct and muscle memory.

  They’d been watching the landing zone for three days, knowing that the grey men would be coming. There had been the chance that the grey men would use a different LZ, but Mike was beginning to think that these guys were creatures of habit.

  “You see the guy, next to the aircraft, pointing in different directions?” Mike asked.

  “What, the short grey guy? Yeah, I see him.”

  “You being a smart ass? They’re all short grey guys.”

  “Of course I am,” Tom drawled.

  “You know who I’m talking about, right.”

  “Yeah, I see him.”

  “Make sure you take him first.”

  “Got it.”

  Mike had broken them up into two combat teams, Tom and Mike on one team, and Mickey and Everett on the other. Caul was acting as Mike and Tom’s security and guide, and Geonti was with Everett and Mickey. They were in a secondary location behind Mike and Tom to watch the six. Matki, and Matki’s son, Jendi, were scouting for fall back locations.

  It was a complicated game they were playing. Misdirection was going to play a big part in what Mike wanted to accomplish. It was about drawing the grey men down the paths that they’d chosen, initiating traps, and keeping the grey men from fixing them in a static position. The team had spent the past three days since the ambush laying out traps for the grey men.

  Mike and Tom would bound back after they engaged, then Everett and Mickey would engage and fall back, in a tactic called bounding over watch. They were a little more spread out than the Army field manual recommended for an over watch position, but the concept was for one team to engage, then draw the hostiles into the other teams prepared ambush. Tom had the sniper rifle, and Mickey was carrying Rob’s ‘203. These weapons would be used to reach out and touch the grey men from a distance, maximize wounds on the targets, and hopefully draw them toward the team and away from Matki’s tribe to give the tribe time to get out of the area.

  Matki brought Jendi, his son, with him. Mike had been dead set against Matki bringing the boy, but Matki had insisted. Matki’s tribe had a complicated system of blazes to pass along information, but there may be a need for a runner to relay information as well. When Mike had pressed him about Jendi, Matki had allayed his concerns.

  “Mike, don’t worry. I’ve trained Jendi. He knows this area like the back of his own hand. When I tell him to go to a location, he will go to that location, deliver his message, and then run back to me.” He looked at Jendi, “Jendi is the fastest runner we have. He is disciplined in the forest. He can blend into the forest, and nobody can find him.”

  Jendi’s chest puffed out with his father’s praise. After that, there was no way that Mike was going to be able to keep Jendi from going with them. Plus, Mike valued Matki’s opinion, especially about his own son.

  The explosion triggered the next phase of Mike’s plan. The landing zone was a large field, about five hundred meters across. That wasn’t a problem for Tom. He could reach out and touch anybody close to the aircraft. He didn’t wait for Mike’s confirmation. The first bullet tore through the leader’s skull. Bullets two and three killed two secondary targets that they’d identified as officers. The team had talked about tactics and targeting, and they’d decided to kill the leaders and wound the grunts, to create maximum confusion.

  The exposed men in the clearing hit the ground, making it a little more difficult for Tom to target them, but not by much. He hammered them, shooting to wound if possible. A leader pushed himself up, yelling at his men, and Tom calmly shot him through the face. As he continued to fire, the soldiers on the ground started shooting back. Bullets buzzed past them. Nobody else in the field tried to take charge, though.

  Mike tapped Tom on the shoulder, “I think it’s time to go.”

  Tom squeezed off one more shot. He held up a hand, motioning for them to wait. Mike hunkered down behind the tree he was hiding behind. Soon, since Tom wasn’t shooting, the amount of fire from the grey men decreased. Fifteen minutes passed with sporadic gunfire. Finally, all gunfire stopped. One of the grey men stood up and started shouting, pointing in Mike and Tom’s general direction.

  Tom shot him. The grey man’s head exploded as the round hit him. The grey men dropped back to the ground. Sporadic gunfire started again.

  Tom turned to Mike with a grin on his face, “Now we can leave.”

  They started low crawling backwards, their stomachs and heads hugging the ground. Thirty feet back the ground sloped down, and they were able to high crawl, moving quicker. The sporadic gunfire stopped. Soon, there were enough trees between them and the landing zone that they moved into a crouched run. Two hundred feet back, and they slid in beside Caul.

  They couldn’t speak the same language, and Mike didn’t want to haul out the small translator that the engineers and Lenny Reitch had made out of an old smartphone, so Mike pantomimed for Caul to lead them out of the area.

  Caul had been munching on pemmican. He gulped that down quickly with a sip of water. He stood up, gingerly holding his new rifle. Tom had gone over the basics, and helped them sight in the new weapons. Caul had shot enough rounds to get used to the new weapon, but Mike could tell he wasn’t completely comfortable with it.

  Caul stood up, and silently as a ghost, led them into the forest.

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  Everett and Mickey watched as Mike’s team slipped by them. They were moving quickly, trotting down a path that Everett and Mickey had been monitoring, careful to stay under the cover of the trees to avoid the quiet aircraft that might be in the air. Everett watched as Caul cautioned them and pointed out a spot on the trail. Mike and Tom slipped around the spot that Caul had pointed at and continued past. The route had been chosen so that Mickey would be able to watch and engage as the grey men tried to follow.

  It didn’t take too long. The grey men were trying to catch Mike’s team. They’d stirred up a bee hive behind them. Even from this distance, Everett coul
d see that the grey men were caught up in the moment, their emotions driving them. In their haste, the hostiles didn’t see the trap laid before them. Two ran by, but the third one stepped into it.

  It was a punji pit. The grey man screamed as stakes speared him through the foot and leg. The front two stopped, and turned around to come back to the wounded man. The ones behind kept moving forward, bunching up in the kill zone. That was all that Mickey had been waiting for. Mickey waited for more to move into the kill zone, then he pulled the trigger. The 40mm grenade flew through the air. It exploded when it hit, shrapnel scything through the air. Grey men dropped in place, the ones that were still alive screaming in pain on the ground.

  Mickey targeted the next grenade at a group behind the first. There were a few of them standing on the path behind the ones that had just taken the brunt of the explosion. They were in shock, confused, staring at the dead and wounded, not understanding what had just happened. The second grenade killed and wounded more in the secondary target group. Everett thought they’d probably killed and wounded fifteen to twenty men.

  Now, they had to worry about a counter attack. Grey men were running toward the ambush sight. Everett and Mickey were way too close for comfort, and in these woods, they had to worry about being flanked. They’d accomplished what they wanted, and they pulled back.

  The goal was to tie up the grey men for as long as possible. One way to do that was to make them more cautious. They had to dangle themselves as bait to keep them coming, but they didn’t want the grey men to close with them too quickly. Matki had calculated that it would take six days of travel before their families could make it to safety, so with three days already gone, they only had to play this game tag for another three days.

  So, they had to do a balancing act. Mike and the team had to keep the hostiles close enough that they scented blood in the air, and kept coming. But, they had to make sure the grey men didn’t get too close. They didn’t want the grey men to find out that they were chasing a small group of seven men and one boy. They were trying to give the impression that they were a much larger force.