by Rob Buckman
“Never happened as far as I know. Even people like the Prime minister and the royals have volunteered to act as the hostages.”
“Damn! I’d hate to be the guys that made a mistake.” Joann looked wide-eyed at Grace. “So, what makes them so different from ordinary soldiers?”
“That’s a question. Unlike many units, they don’t much go in for regimentation and all that marching up and down. They prefer to spend their time cross training in as many different areas as possible and honing their skills. I’ve met a few bods from GSG9 and Shayetet 13 from Israel, and they are spooky, but SAS guys are in a different class. They say that a soldier’s life in combat is measured in days, and that’s generally true. With the SAS, all they will say is, they complete the mission.”
“Even if they all get killed.” Joann added, understanding the meaning. “A hard standard to live up to, Grace.”
“Now you understand what Decker is up against. He has set himself the task of getting that package to ‘Norden’ no matter what.”
“He’d sacrifice all of us to get there?”
“No, no! Like he told you, he is a sheepdog and his responsibility is to protect the flock, us. What made him decide to take us with him instead of leaving us there and taking off on his own I don’t know, but I for one am glad he did.”
“Me too. I don’t think I would have survived if I’d stayed there.”
“Believe it or not, you are not the same person you were back then. If anything happened to the rest of us I know you’d be like him and get that package to ‘Norden’ no matter what.” Joann looked sheepish, blushing slightly despite the cold.
“Yeah, I would, for him.” She muttered softly. Grace nodded hearing that, hearing the steel in her words and patted her gently on the shoulder.
A cold wintery dawn slowly crept up over the horizon from the east, and from the look of the thickening overcast, there was a promise of more snow. From the teams point of view that was a good thing as it covered the tracks they made searching for the armory and the ammo dump. The first they found after a search of the building but it took a while and an old base layout map to find the second. Much to everyone’s surprise the armory and ammo dump were untouched and they unearthed a wide assortment of weapons. A sharp hiss and a scowl from Grace and Joan had everyone tiptoeing around the barracks in their sock feet and whispering in low tones so as not to wake Decker. When he did stir and open his eyes he found Kim Drummond kneeling by his rack with a hot mug of coffee.
“Thanks.” He muttered, wiping the sleep out of his eyes.
“Don’t thank me, thank Joann. She made it especially for you.” She grinned. Decker smiled in return and looked around the room. At the far end, the team had set up several tables and laid out an assortment of weapons they collected from the armory.
“Breakfast is up. Powdered eggs and SOS with jam and hard tack on the side for desert.”
“Sounds as good as you’d get at a five-star hotel.”
“That’s us, hotel shambles.” Decker took his time, relaxing for a few minutes while he sipped his hot coffee. Someone had even managed to find canned milk from somewhere, so all they needed now was cornflakes to go with it. Decker dressed and pulled his wet boots on, grimacing a little until they warmed up.
“So, what did you find?” He asked needlessly as he looked over the weapons. The first thing that caught his eye were five L115A1 with the new folding stock, Schmidt & Bender 5-25x56mm Scope and a modified muzzle brake with attached suppressor. Decker’s wind burned face broke out into a broad smile.
“Now we have the firepower.” Joann muscled her way to the front, looking a little worse for wear still. She’d taken to wearing a woolen cap pulled down to hide her burned off hair and the burn on the side of her face.
“Please tell me I get to have one of these?” She asked looking up at Decker with pleading eyes. Decker scratched his chin and thought about it. This was a lot of gun for someone as small and light as Joann but she’d already proved she could handle one. With her own L115A1, he wouldn’t have to keep checking the setting on his before firing.
“Why not girl. You earned it.” Joann let out a little squeal and hugged him, bringing a lot of smiles and chuckles from the Pack. Since her near death experience and getting scorched pretty good, she’d been a little subdued and not her usual obnoxious self and that worried him. Even CC and the other young girls couldn’t seem to get her out of her funk, but Decker knew from experience it would take a while for her to recover.
“Okay, that takes care of one. Who wants to try out for the others?” Half a dozen people put their hands up. Decker smiled, like all soldiers they wanted to get the best firepower they could. “Guess I’ll have to have a little shoot-off to decide.”
That evening Decker spent time stripping and cleaning each weapon to make sure they were all in good working order. Ammo was no problem as the ammo dump had a good supply for them to practice with. The next morning he took off with Max, Alpha Team and the wolf pack in tow, partly to hunt and partly to set up a target half a mile way. That should be enough for the teams to practice with. They bagged two deer, and after taking what they needed, mostly the hindquarters, they left the rest for the wolf pack to eat. Max sniffed the dead carcass and trotted after Decker, as he liked his meat cooked, not that he turn his nose up at catching and eating a rabbit if he was hungry. Goldie in the meantime was safe in a little blanket nest giving birth to her puppies and getting a lot of sympathetic attention from the girls.
Setting up a shooting stand in the old parking lot, the valley was filled with the muted sound of rifle fire as each girl took turns shooting Decker’s target. Decker had all the girls try out, as by now even the original marginal ones were turning into fine shots. War was a harsh mistress and they’d learned the lesson well. Shoot to kill and don’t hesitate. Once he’d found the winners he handed each a rifle and spent an hour going through the cleaning and stripping process until they could do it blind folded and in less than a minute flat.
The scavenger teams came back with a lot of useful stuff the Pack could use and resupplies for Doc Mason’s medical kit. What Decker hadn’t expected was to hear the roar of an engine and to see Joann come racing towards him on a snowmobile. She skidded to a halt near him and jumped off, her red, wind burned face, grinning from ear to ear. For a moment, Decker thought of yelling at her but thought better of it. The aliens didn’t seem to react to noise or light, at least not at the moment.
“Where on earth did you find that?” Joann jumped up and down all excited and happy.
“Now we don’t have to walk all the way to Soda Springs, and get there a lot faster.” She laughed. "I found a bunch of them in a garage on the other side of the base.
“I thought I told you not to go off by yourself?” He scolded.
“It was okay, I had half the wolf pack with me, and they would have given me warning if there were any bad guys around.” She had a point. The pack had been giving them warnings about things like game or danger.
“How many snowmobiles did you count?”
“Thirty of them all together, but a number of them are damaged, but look repairable.” Decker did a quick count in his head.
If they could get all the machines working, with two people on each snowmobile, and one riding a towed sled they could transport everyone, plus a lot of supplies. It would mean going from town to town and scavenging for gas or parts but it was workable. Much of it depended on the weather remaining overcast and snowy, thereby limiting the UFMs ability to ‘see’, however they ‘saw’ in the first place. That still puzzled him, and he wasn’t about to take too many chances they couldn’t tell the difference between people and animals. It just might be they were waiting for the winter to kill off a lot more humans before starting the next step in their invasion. It wasn’t as if they didn’t have time on their side and a reason to rush. They’d already started building cities, or living complexes, suggesting they felt confident the local wild life, us,
wouldn’t be much of a problem to exterminate. That thought angered him to the point of taking the chance to use the snowmobiles to get to ‘Norden’.
“Let’s go have a look at your new toys.” He said at last.
While they were working on the snowmobiles, he took the precaution of setting up sniper roosts at high points around the base, with quick drop fallback positions just in case the UFMs showed up. From Joann’s experience, he knew how fast the bio-mechs reacted, betting the snipers would only get one or two shots off at the most. Anything else, such as human marauders they could take their time and the normal precaution of shifting shooting position after one or two shots. In all it took a week to get all the snowmobiles in working order as there was plenty of spare parts and even engines and drive belts. Not surprising, seeing this was the Marine Corp Mountain Warfare training command. In any modern war, troop mobility was key, and being able to get to their assigned fighting area as quickly as possible with the necessary equipment, supplies, and ammo to make a difference. In mountainous terrain and winter snow it’s particularly hard to move troops around to where they’re needed, so the snowmobiles made a lot of sense.
“Code Red – Code Red! We have movement on the perimeter.” Decker swore.
“UFMs or something else?” He asked, keying his unit.
“Don’t know, Wolfman, could be both!” Decker looked out the window at the misty morning. Low cloud or fog, he didn’t know which shrouded most of the valley. Either way it would help and hinder his people as much as the UFMs. Shooting under these conditions was difficult at best, and impossible if it got any thicker.
“Shit!” He switched to the all-hands frequency. “Team leaders grab your people and take up your defensive positions, we have tourist's incoming. When you get there hunker down, and don’t engage.” How the hell could it be both the UFMs and bad guys? Grabbing the pouch with his L115A1, he dashed out of the garage and headed for the main building, and his CP. Once there, he headed for the roof up a makeshift ladder, eyeing the pile of old mattresses at the bottom. If he had to bug out, he simply had to fall or dive through the hole on the roof. Staying flat, he belly-crawled to the vantage point he’d prepared only to find Joann had beaten him to it. She grinned and blew him a kiss.
“You’ll have to take the secondary, boss man.”
“Cheeky.” He grumbled and belly crawled to his secondary shooting point.
Lying on his back, he unzipped the pouch, pulled the L115A1 out, and flipped the bi-pod open. The electronic sight hummed to life as he settled himself behind the weapon and started his search of the surrounding terrain.
“Wolfman actual. Give me a sit-rep.”
“Not sure boss man. I can hear shooting down along 108 and it sounds as if it is heading towards us.”
“Heads up Wolfman… we have incoming from the east, two UFM heavy lifters.”
“Shit! How much worse can this get.” Decker muttered. Sounds behind him made Decker look over his shoulder and saw Doc Mason’s head and shoulders sticking out of the roof hole waving the captured radio at him.
“This thing started squawking a little while ago.” With portable generators to supply power, Decker had kept the radio charged and on standby just in case, and it looked like his precaution had paid off. Decker slid back, took the radio, and turned up the sound. Sure enough, there were a bunch of people shouting back and forth and it took a moment to figure out what was going on. He nodded thanks to the doctor and she vanished back down the ladder.
“What we got, Wolfman?”
“What we got is trouble, girl. Looks like those assholes from Mammoth followed us here.”
“What! All this way… why?”
“Do I look like a fucking fortune teller or a mind reader?” He snapped. Joann just grinned.
“So, who are they shooting at?”
“Beats the shit out of me, more assholes probably or… Oh, shit! The UFMs hit Mammoth and drove the people out. They must have figured out where we were going and followed.”
“And with the UFMs on their tail.” Joann shifted her rifle and looked to the east. “Yup, the UFMs are unloading a bunch of those big bio-mechs near the airfield.”
“Just what we need right now. SHIT!” Added to that, the mist or fog was slowly lifting to become a low hanging cloud.
Once the transport unloaded their cargo of bio-mechs, they lifted and flew along route 108, flying right across their front. They’d be perfect targets if they had something to hit them with. The two ships halted in midair and began firing at something unseen on the ground. That was until they started taking return fire in the form of ‘stinger’ missiles. From the speed they tracked across the sky towards the transports, Decker knew these were the new generation of FIM-92 Stingers and travelled at Mach 4.2. The transport dodged and spun around to take the wave of missiles on their forward shields, all the while firing at the stingers and the ground launchers. They managed to get most of them, but what they didn’t expect was a second wave of stingers that shot up their tail pipe. Both exploded in a brilliant yellow and white flash, as whatever they used for fuel detonated.
“Guess that takes care of them.” Joann chuckled.
“Yeah but it won’t be long before more of them show up.” Without warning, two of the bio-mechs started firing at one of the buildings, and turned to head towards them.
“Christ on a crutch!” That was one thing Decker didn’t want. If they started demolishing the buildings, they were in a world of hurt.
“All units take the mother fuckers out!” He yelled, squeezing the trigger.
Joann beat him by a fraction of a second and they both hit the same target. The exploding round blew the bio-mech in two and they quickly switched to the second mech, but there was no need to fire as the rest of the snipers took that one out as well. What Decker didn’t expect was one of those spiky silver drones to come floating out of the mist heading towards them. That accounted on how they’d been spotted hiding out in the building. The drones had better sensing equipment. Five rifles fired at once, exploding the drone in midair and switched to a second drone that came floating out of the mist. That too disintegrated and fell to the ground, and just as he felt pleased with himself, a bullet pinged off the concrete near his head.
“What the fuck!”
“Those assholes are firing at us!” Joann yelled, returning fire.
“Hold it, Joann. We need to move positions. They know where we are.”
“Oh right. With you boss man.” Joann slithered back as round started peppering her location. They fell through the hole one after the other, Joann scrambling out of the way before he landed on top of her.
Here they moved to each end of the long, open room and Decker set up his L115A1 on a table by the back wall, well away from the busted out windows. Joann did the same, and they both sat on old chairs and scanned the ground back along route 108. The other ten bio-mechs didn’t stay active for long as they were taken out with stingers, clearing the way for whomever it was coming up 108 to the base. Much of the shouting and commands on the radio had stopped except one.
“Suppressive fire on those buildings, people. Shoot anything that moves.”
“You sure you want to do that, dickhead?” Decker asked, keying the radio. For a moment, there was a shocked silence and Decker was betting the leader was swearing his head off. Now he couldn’t use the radio to relay commands without them knowing what he was doing.
“You that SAS yahoo my guys told me about?”
“Could be. Who the fuck are you?”
“I’m Colonel Remington and I’m ordering you to stand down soldier.”
“You have to be shitting me, asshole.”
“If you are who you say you are, identify yourself, name and rank.”
“Who me? I’m the local Girl Scout troop leader and me and the girls are out for a nature stroll.”
“Don’t fuck with me, son. I gave you an order, soldier.”
“Of one thing I’m sure of, I’m
not your son; secondly this is the 22 SAS special duty squadron.”
“What… what are you doing here?” He’d meant to say something else then changed his mind.
“We were on detached service on a training mission.” That in itself was true, to a point.
“You in charge?”
“You could say that.”
“I’m still ordering you to stand down. We are on the same side here.” Decker laughed.
“Really? It didn’t look that way when we came by your unit at Mammoth.”
“That was just a misunderstanding…”
“Shooting at us and trying to take us captive a misunderstanding?”
“My orders are to collect as many civilians as possible and hold them in a secure location until things get organized.”
“That’s not what your pissant excuse for soldiers told me.”
“They misunderstood…”
“Right and I am the queen of the May, and by the way, unless you tell that pathetic excuse for a sniper to get his ass back under cover I’m going to shoot his ass off.”
“I’ve got him, Wolfman.” Joann murmured.
“Put a round in front of his face so he knows he’s been spotted, then move.”
“Nag, nag, nag. You’re worse than my dad.” She muttered as she squeezed off the round and moved. Several shots came back but none close to the window she’d fired from. It was a sure bet they hadn’t seen which window she’d shot out of but there was no sense in taking chances. They probably had a real sniper out there, one with an infrared scope if Decker remembered.
“Joann, switch on your active cammo.”
“Huh?”
“Remember that sniper in Mammoth? He has a scope like yours.”
“Oh shit. Infrared.” Joann vanished into the background behind her, as did Decker when he activated his. While he was talking, Decker watched Joann’s round kick snow and dirt into the would-be snipers face and he quickly scrambled back into cover, but Decker used his infrared setting to keep an eye on him and the other hot spots he could see.
“That was a freebie, Colonel, if that’s what you are. There won’t be any more.”