‘Corporal Moralee!’ a voice shouted from behind me.
I looked over my shoulder, ducking as a dart cracked over my head.
Mr Barkley had moved as far forward as he dared, taking cover on the edge of the forest ten metres to our rear - his command group spread out around him.
‘Can you see them?’ he asked, craning his neck to see into the valley.
There was nothing cowardly about Mr Barkley’s positioning - if anything, he was too far forward. If the platoon commander was killed then the fight would go on, since everyone was trained to understand the job of the man above him, but such a sudden upheaval of our command structure was a nightmare scenario in the combat environment.
‘Yeah,’ I replied, ‘but I only count six!’
He swore loudly. I could think of only a few times that I had heard the platoon commander swear, in fact, I think I could count the number of times on one hand alone. I shared his frustration, and his fear. Two troopers appeared to be missing, and we were in no position to go out and find them. We had multiple casualties, and were facing an enemy far larger than ourselves without any sign of our requested air support. Even when the saucers did arrive, they wouldn’t be much use against an enemy well concealed under the forest canopy.
We had no choice but to forget about the two missing troopers and focus all of our efforts onto saving the remaining six. It was a harsh choice to make, but we needed to get Three Section out of the contact before they took any more casualties.
I watched their progress across the valley anxiously, considering the option of sending a few troopers down to help them across. I knew that the sergeant major would be coming forward with Four Section, as well as his own small team, using them to assist Corporal Stanton in extracting his casualties. Unfortunately, they had a greater distance to cover in order to reach the valley, and so Three Section had to struggle across on their own.
Suddenly a red crosshair flickered in the left-hand corner of my visor display, emanating from somewhere a few hundred metres to my west. I looked toward where it had appeared, wondering if perhaps my visor had made a mistake. There were no more red crosshairs, and nobody else in my section had noticed anything. I stared into the darkness, ignoring the fire fight raging around me.
I studied the area where the crosshair had appeared. There was a thick cluster of bushes there, making it possible for somebody to slip across unnoticed before moving around to hit us on the opposite side of the valley. On the other hand, it was also possible that the two missing troopers were trying to cross there, having been separated from their section, and that they had kept off the live net in order to evade detection. My visor might have assumed that they were hostile by mistake.
I turned back to the platoon commander. ‘I think somebody’s trying to cross the valley!’ I yelled over the noise, and pointed down the valley. ‘Two hundred metres up there!’
He followed my outstretched arm. ‘Friendly, or enemy?’ he asked, flinching as a dart struck a rock near to him.
‘I don’t know!’
Moments later Mr Barkley began issuing orders to the reserve section, seeing the need for a swift response. If enemy were attempting to flank us, then we needed to stop them in their tracks, but if our missing comrades were attempting to re-join the platoon, then they needed collecting fast.
Corporal Kamara acknowledged, informing us that he was now only a hundred metres behind us and was altering his course accordingly.
‘I’m sending the reserve around to block!’ Mr Barkley shouted to me, making sure that I’d heard, and I gave him a thumbs-up.
The noise was becoming deafening, as every trooper in my section continued to spray the far bank with darts. There were still no red crosshairs, though the enemy were clearly firing back from deeper within the forest to the north, their own darts chipping away at the rocks, causing the valley to flicker with the light from their sparks.
It was a good thing that we couldn’t see the enemy, I told myself. Rather than moving up to the edge of the trees to engage us accurately, they were keeping away from the open - which meant that their attack was stalling, at least for a moment, giving Three Section the vital time they needed to negotiate the rocky valley to my section’s east.
Three Section were still struggling to cross the valley, though, and their movements were becoming slow and laboured as they stumbled over the uneven terrain.
They’re taking too long, I thought as I watched, they’re failing to take advantage of the situation. It wasn’t their fault - they had dragged and carried their casualties under withering fire for well over a kilometre, and now physical exhaustion was beginning to get the better of them. They needed help, and with Corporal Kamara now tasked to block a potential flanking attack, there was nobody except the sergeant major’s group left to help them.
‘Boss!’ I hollered back to the platoon commander, ‘I’m gonna give them a hand getting up!’
From his position twenty or so metres behind me, Mr Barkley took a second to work out what I meant. He gave me a nod. ‘Do it, but don’t sacrifice too much of your firepower!’
I nodded. ‘Puppy! I’m going to take my fire team - less Skelton - to get Three Section’s casualties!’
‘Roger!’ Puppy shouted over the din.
I turned to my fire team, who were still firing across the valley.
‘Skelton, you stay here!’
The trooper didn’t look up from his mammoth, continuing to engage the far wood line with bursts. ‘Yep!’
‘Myers, Griffiths, follow me!’
I picked myself up and ran to the east, swiftly followed by the two troopers. We had to move well clear of the section line of fire before making our descent, otherwise we’d be running right into our own darts.
I leapt over jagged rocks and weaved through thick bushes as I moved away from Puppy’s fire team, before turning down the slope toward the battered section. Several times during my descent, I narrowly avoided rolling my ankle on the uneven surface, so desperate I was to reach my comrades. I reminded myself that if I broke a bone running down the slope then I might as well have been shot, for I would become a casualty myself.
The air above our heads was thick with darts, the sharp cracks caused by each round merging together into one deafening roar. Despite being beneath the field of fire for both sides, the urge to duck was overpowering, and I found myself bending lower and lower as I approached the nearest Three Section trooper.
It was a young man named Harris, or ‘H’ as he was known to the platoon. He was near enough staggering under the weight of the fully-kitted drop trooper he held on his shoulder, having used virtually all of his energy to carry him as far as he had. He clutched his rifle in his other hand, whilst the injured trooper on his back pointed his own weapon rearward. At least he was still alive and conscious.
‘Thank God,’ H breathed, as I reached him. I could see that his chest was heaving from the exertion.
There was no time for small talk. ‘Griffiths! Get that casualty off him and get him up the slope!’
‘Roger!’
Griffiths quickly exchanged the casualty with H, the injured trooper groaning painfully as he was swapped over. It looked like he had been shot in the legs, though how many times I wasn’t sure. He was lucky - a good strike by a supersonic dart could take a limb clean off.
‘What kept you, you bunch of pipe smokers?’ the casualty joked, though there was genuine relief in his voice; troopers never lost their sense of humour.
I was about to task Myers with another casualty, when Sergeant Major Davies suddenly appeared beside us, almost causing me to jump out of my skin. His small protection team followed close behind, looking almost as exhausted as the troopers in Three Section after running all the way from the village.
Seizing control of the situation, the sergeant major turned and jutted his arm out, pointing back up the slope toward a fresh crosshair that he had created.
‘Take the casualties there. Seen?’ he
said.
Griffiths gave a thumbs-up, and then stormed up the hill with H following close behind.
‘Three Section!’ the sergeant major called, raising his arm into the air. ‘Close in on me!’
The section quickly changed direction, moving in toward the sergeant major. He gestured toward two troopers from his group, and then pointed toward another casualty being carried toward him.
‘Get those two up the hill!’ he ordered. ‘Don’t just gawk at him, you pair of cretins! Fucking move!’
Spurred by the acid in the sergeant major’s words, the two troopers hurried to help, one of them snatching the casualty whilst the other helped to keep the man that had carried him upright. He looked unstable on his feet, as though he might pass out.
‘They’re in a bad way,’ I said in dismay.
‘Come on, let’s go!’ The sergeant major hurried the remaining two troopers of Three Section toward him, pumping his fist to express the urgency.
As they closed in on us, I realised that Corporal Stanton was injured in the leg. He was limping as fast as he could, with an uninjured trooper trotting beside him for support.
‘They’re everywhere.’ The section commander sounded overwrought. ‘I don’t know where Butcher and Sanneh are!’
‘Don’t worry about that right now,’ Sergeant Major Davies said firmly, jerking a thumb toward the ragged line of troopers withdrawing up the slope toward the relative safety of the platoon. ‘Follow after them. Stretchers out, prepare to extract.’ He turned toward the remaining trooper from his group. ‘Help them up!’
‘Sir!’ The trooper leapt into action, reaching his arm under Corporal Stanton’s armpit and propelling him up the slope.
I looked along the far edge of the valley, searching for any sign of the two missing troopers, but there was nothing there apart from the blue line I had placed to direct my section’s fire, and the crosshairs Corporal Stanton had placed to mark his withdrawal. To be fair, I mused, if I was separated from my section and surrounded by bloodthirsty Militia, then I probably wouldn’t want to start sending messages on the net, not until I was far away enough to minimise the risk of detection.
‘What now?’ I asked.
The sergeant major turned to me. I didn’t know if he was annoyed that I had taken it upon myself to extract the casualties from the valley, since casualty evacuation was one of his primary roles, but there was no time for angry rants about me going over his head.
‘We extract,’ he replied harshly. ‘Get back to your section.’
We ran after the casualties, quickly negotiating the rocky slope toward the marker the sergeant major had placed earlier.
We arrived at the top of the slope as a fresh gunfight erupted off to the west. Four Section, sent by Mr Barkley to block the possible enemy flanking manoeuvre, had opened fire … that meant only one thing.
‘I guess it wasn’t Butcher and Sanneh crossing the valley, then,’ I decided, grimly.
‘Let’s hope not,’ Myers replied. ‘If it was, then we just shot the shit out of them.’
Ahead of us the sergeant major’s group were crowding around the marker he had placed. In a flurry of activity, they gave the casualties immediate first aid, tearing bandages out of their packaging whilst others ripped lightweight stretchers from their daysacks. In their haste to escape, none of Three Section had tended to their wounds properly, and it seemed not one of them had escaped injury.
‘Let’s get these two on a stretcher!’ The Sergeant Major pointed at the two most severely injured troopers. ‘Come on, hurry up! Get a grip! We’re not out of it yet!’
I saw that Griffiths had become absorbed by the task of treating the casualties, and was busy helping one of the sergeant major’s troopers assemble his stretcher.
‘Griffiths!’ I shouted. ‘Leave that, mate, we need to get back to the section!’
Griffiths looked up from his work and hesitated. It was easy for troopers to get sucked into dealing with casualties, it was in our nature. Everybody wanted to help their mates, but the best way for us to do that was to re-join the section so that we could provide adequate cover for their extraction.
‘Griffiths, leave it!’ I repeated angrily. ‘They can deal with it!’
‘You heard him, Griffiths,’ the sergeant major snapped. ‘Fuck off!’
Griffiths returned to his senses and stopped what he was doing.
We ran back toward our section, weaving through the rocks as the battle continued to rage around us. Darts whizzed over our heads, forcing us to crouch as low as the muscles in our legs allowed.
Taking up our original positions within the section, we resumed firing into the trees across the valley.
‘Puppy, that’s me back in,’ I said over the section net as I scanned the trees to my front for targets. There was still nothing to be seen, though the Militia were clearly still firing from that direction.
‘No worries!’
Everyone in the section was firing, completely focused on holding the enemy at bay. Though Three Section was across the valley, the sergeant major still needed the time to organise the casualties and move back into the forest. I knew that as soon as that moment came then the platoon commander would call for our withdrawal.
‘All call signs, situation report,’ Mr Barkley announced on the net, explaining the layout of the battlefield so that we all knew what was going on around us. ‘One-Zero-Bravo will be ready to withdraw with the casualties in one minute. One-Four is holding a block to the west in order to prevent an enemy flanking manoeuvre. One-One is holding the southern bank of the valley. I assess the greatest potential threat to be an enemy enforcement of the flanking manoeuvre to the west. Therefore I intend to withdraw One-One first, maintaining One-Four’s block initially. One-Four, acknowledge.’
‘One-Four.’ Corporal Kamara’s reply was calm and crisp. Though I could hear firing from his direction, his section was clearly in control. I imagined that the enemy Militia who had crossed the valley to the west, convinced that they were closing for the kill, had received quite a shock when they ran straight into a fresh section of drop troopers.
The platoon commander looked down at the ground, engrossed in his datapad as he mapped our withdrawal over the net. Seconds later a blue line appeared, this time a few hundred metres away to my rear left. I looked backward intently, eager to see his plan as soon as possible.
Just then another series of red crosshairs flickered on my visor display, snatching my attention away from Mr Barkley’s extraction plan. This time the crosshairs were on my right side, suggesting that the Militia were crossing the valley on our right in a mirror image of the flanking manoeuvre already occurring on our left.
I blinked in surprise at the sudden appearance; my surprise quickly turned into confusion. My head then spun in bewilderment … the enemy were flanking us on the right? But they were already flanking us on the left!
Nobody ever attacked from both sides at the same time! Otherwise the two sets of attackers would end up shooting each other. Nevertheless, that was exactly what was happening, and we were about to become trapped in one hell of a crossfire.
‘Boss!’ I shouted over my shoulder. ‘We need to withdraw now!’
‘Wait!’ Mr Barkley snapped angrily. ‘We need to allow …’
‘We’re about to get flanked on the right! We need to withdraw NOW!’
The platoon commander looked at me as though I was mad. ‘They’re flanking on the right?’
‘Yes!’
The sergeant major overheard what I had said, and he hurried his men and the surviving members of Three Section. They snatched up their stretchers just as the sergeant major raged at a trooper who leaned over to retrieve something he had dropped.
‘Stop fucking around, you freak!’ He scathed. ‘Get moving!’
The casualties were carried back into the forest moments before a burst of darts ripped through the trees, forcing me to duck for cover. Ferns danced around me as the fresh barrage whizzed ov
erhead.
‘Contact right!’ somebody shouted, and my stomach tightened into a knot.
We were in serious trouble.
14
B Company
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The response by my fire team was instantaneous. Seeing the immediate threat to the right, Griffiths leapt up and fired his grenade launcher, lobbing several of the tiny, guided bombs in the direction of the enemy. Spotting their targets as they hurtled through the trees, the grenades flashed as they detonated in showers of shrapnel. Skelton then bolted around the back of Griffiths and sprayed the forest with his mammoth in one long continuous burst, the powerful weapon spitting link into the undergrowth beside him.
Ignoring the enemy darts cracking through the air around me, I bounded through the ferns, tearing through the undergrowth as I moved into a position next to Skelton and Griffiths. Myers then sprinted after me and within seconds the fire team had re-orientated itself to form a line facing the new threat to the east. It was an instinctive manoeuvre, practiced again and again so that it required no commands.
Several crosshairs flickered on my visor display, marking Militiamen as they ran through the trees less than a hundred metres away. There was no need to call for rapid fire onto them - every trooper in my fire team was already firing as fast as he could, allowing only for recoil before firing again. We all knew the severity of our situation.
‘Boss!’ I hollered urgently, spittle spraying onto my visor. ‘WITHDRAW!’
‘Roger!’ he replied. ‘I’m moving!’
I glanced over my shoulder to see the platoon commander’s group rapidly withdrawing southward, out of harm’s way.
There wasn’t a moment to lose. My section was split into an L-shape, with Puppy’s fire team still engaging the Militia across the valley, and mine engaging them to the east. With Four Section under fire to the west, it was only a matter of time before we became enveloped by an enemy who clearly didn’t care for conventional tactics, or even common sense.
RECCE (The Union Series Book 4) Page 22