Martinez and he cleared shacks as they passed on their respective sides of the track that divided the town. Their fire teams up on the ridges stayed on-line and provided the soldiers in the town with overwatch.
As they reached the center of town, Paul found what he was looking for. He thought so, at least.
There was a shallow crater and a scorch mark, with multiple blood splotches and splashes around it. Judging from the blood splashed on the well casing and the fresh pockmarks left by flying debris, Paul thought he could safely surmise that they had found the location of the attack.
He’d talk with Beecher about it in a bit, but not until they swept out the rest of the town. He and Martinez did just that and came up empty.
Standing back in the middle of Bir Hakim, Paul called up Beecher. “Echo Six, this is Echo One-Six.”
Beecher’s heavy-jowled image came up on his visual, in the lower left-hand corner. “Go ahead, One-Six.”
“Six, did you see the slave feed?”
“Yeah, One-Six. Looks like there was an attack, but no one is talking.”
“Roger, Six. What are your instructions?”
“Hold tight for the provincial police; they should be there in about an hour. After they show up, turn over custody of the scene to them, and return to base.”
“Roger, Six. One-Six out.”
It was more like an hour and a half before the cops showed up. Paul spoke briefly to them, called his troops in, and moved out.
That night at Third Squad’s outpost, Paul wondered what the hell the day’s activities had been all about: Was it a squabble over the well? Had someone stolen a woman? With a sigh, Paul decided he would never know.
That was Roodeschool 5 for you; the desert swallowed all of her secrets.
While scanning a ridgeline in the Baradna Valley, Paul thought that this desert mountain chain would never surrender its secrets. After the adventure in Pashto Khel, the valley elders had come to the conclusion that Third Battalion meant business.
A peace shura, or council, was called for the entire Baradna Valley. For a couple of days, the team had been busy nursing the process along at a compound in the Chickenfoot. Mighty Mike and his boys had been busy running the security for the show, while Paul and Z-man had accompanied the colonel to the proceedings.
One group of Pathans would yell at another group, and one village would go up against the others. It seemed none of the elders could agree with the others. So naturally, they started to unload all of their problems upon the shoulders of those they saw as the new bosses in town, the Juneau Army. Colonel Fasi agreed to listen, so the villagers came up with a series of complaints.
One of the major complaints of the group from the northernmost finger of the Chickenfoot involved a series of kidnappings that had apparently taken place in the villages there. From what Paul understood of the complaint, men in a white tent had stolen a local sheik’s daughter, a so-called princess.
Colonel Fasi agreed to investigate, and the fun ensued. After the shura broke up, without much being accomplished, Third Company got the mission to go to the northern branch of the Chickenfoot and see if they could find the princess.
The colonel wanted to go along, so Paul and Z accompanied him in a ground-car, suited up. They left at 0700 local to take advantage of the daylight for the sake of their Juneaus, who didn’t have much in the way of night-vision equipment. The other ground-car had Crusty and Al-Asad in it, as they were the official advisors for Third Company.
Paul knew as soon as they started up the long road along the northern valley that it was going to be a long day. The road was worse than bad, with a chuckhole seemingly every meter. Also, the mountains were high and craggy; there were any number of spots someone could take a shot at them from.
At least the air-control guys were along for the ride. Fox would check every ten minutes or so with the F-71 who was flying “racetracks” overhead.
Basically, a “racetrack” was an oval-shaped holding pattern the combat shuttles would fly over a given area. When the shuttles’ services were needed, they would drop out of the racetrack and service whatever unfortunate customer was down below, with usually fatal results for the poor bastards.
It was nice having those guys overhead because the colonel could save micros. Also, while the surveillance systems on the micros were impressive, the systems on the shuttles put the humble micro drones to shame.
Let them fly racetracks, thought Paul, if it means I have a better shot at leaving this garden hole. And the F-71s were scheduled for this entire mission. They would tell the colonel what was around the next bend or show him what was there via slaved halo feeds.
As Third Company plus reached the objective, the F-71s gave the guys on the ground an all clear and helpfully sent them the locations of several white tents in the area.
The first white tent was located at the far tip of a V-shaped valley on the toenail of the Chickenfoot’s middle toe. The colonel held a brief halo conference with the leadership of Third Company, and they decided to start in the north and work back down the valley, hitting the last white tent site in the early afternoon.
So Third Company rolled onward to the north and reached their jump-off point by 1030 local. The vehicles rolled into the small village there and wagon wheeled up.
Paul, who was running the gun, saw his logical sector and started his scan.
The colonel cracked his suit open and prepared to climb out. “Hey, Paul, I’m going on this mission unsuited. Crusty is going to stay back here with you on his vehicle’s gun, and I’m taking Al-Asad and Fox with me. Roger?”
“I’ve got this, sir.” Paul slid up his faceplate and dug out a Fortunate with a little wiggling.
“Well, try not to kill anyone without me.” That being said and the contingency plans posted to his halo, the colonel grabbed his battle harness and weapon and jumped out of the ground-car door. Paul looked on the shuttle’s slave feed and watched the colonel link up with Al-Asad outside of Crusty’s vehicle.
With his suit visor open, Paul could tell how thin the air was up here in this valley. Looking around through his targeting screen, Paul saw that they were located in another stone-upon-stone village with the usual mix of aspen and dinosaur trees. The trees did look a little stunted, though.
Paul figured the colonel was going to have a rough day of humping the boonies. Without the suit’s molecular separator giving the operator an optimum mixture of oxygen, it would purely suck to walk around here unless you were used to it. Well, Paul thought, the colonel is pretty tough. And if he wants to go door-to-door in this village looking for princesses, then more power to him.
Paul split his attention between looking at the slave feed to see where the colonel was and scanning his sector with his gun. Today he had the 40 mm automatic grenade launcher, just the thing for frisky dissidents.
Paul watched Third Company shake itself out into an assault formation; then they moved into the town. Paul lost sight of the colonel underneath some dinosaur trees.
He didn’t see him again for another couple of hours. In the meantime, Paul would glance at the shuttle feed to make sure there was no trouble, and then he would scan his sector. Every now and then, he’d find the desire for another Fortunate and light a near-cig up. This pattern seemed to go on forever, with an occasional crack to Z-man, sitting in the front seat in the driver’s position.
One might think that Paul was bored. Not so. Even though he was looking at nothing much, really, the knife edge of tension pressed constantly upon his neck. He dared not let his alertness slip for a second; even though nothing was happening, he knew that at any second all hell could break loose.
That was the nature of ground combat—an ancient cliché, but true as hell for Paul and the team. They weren’t safe for one second in the Baradna Valley, and each of them knew it.
Finally, Paul spotted the colonel on the shuttle feed. He was about a klick downhill—it would be a long walk uphill after who knows how much wa
lking around the colonel had just done. It looked like they were walking back to the ground-cars.
Finally, the colonel hopped into the vehicle. Fox climbed in the other side. They were both rank with sweat.
“Find anything, sir?” Paul asked.
“Nope, just some goats in a tent, after knocking on half the doors in this little town.” The colonel popped off his helmet and wiped his head and face down with his colorful kaffiyeh.
Z spoke up. “Maybe that’s what they call princesses up here, sir.” His deadpan voice hid a smile.
The colonel just looked at him, mouth slightly open and one eyebrow raised. Paul didn’t think the colonel was having a lot of luck in seeing the humor in the situation.
Paul said, “So what’s the plan, sir?” He pulled out another Fortunate and lit up. You weren’t supposed to smoke in force vehicles, but what were they going to do to Paul—send him to Juneau?
The colonel put his helmet back on, and a map sprang up in Paul’s halo view. It showed a village to the south and a ridgeline with a stylized tent on it.
“That’s where we’re going next, Paul, so we ain’t done lookin’ for princesses yet.”
“Roger, sir.”
When Third Company was finished mounting up, the convoy moved out, back on the hunt for the mysterious princess. Tactically, it was usually desirable to take a different way out of an objective than the route that had been taken to get there. But because of the frequently linear, mountainous topography of this part of Juneau 3, there was usually only one way in or out of a place.
That was definitely the case on this day. Third Company backtracked through a village they had already been through. Paul figured that if anyone was hiding a princess, she would be long gone by now. Of course, he figured that the colonel already knew this. And taking into account the look on the colonel’s face, Paul decided he wasn’t going to add insult to injury. He’d keep quiet. After all, he had the job of sitting pretty on the guns while the colonel was gone; he didn’t have to slog up on that ridge like the colonel was about to.
Paul looked over. He saw Fox looking up the ridge, too. The feature stood over a thousand meters above the valley. Paul wished the two men luck.
Once again, Third Company stopped and set up a perimeter. Paul had a direct line of sight on the company’s objective, so this time he would be able to see the colonel’s progress and overwatch him with fires. That made Paul a lot happier than standing by while his boss was rooting around in some village.
The colonel looked disgusted. He sighed. “All right, Fox, you ready to go again?”
Fox nodded. “Yes, sir.”
The two alighted from the vehicle and started walking toward the ridgeline in the distance, weapons in hand.
Z-man spoke up from the front. “Goddamn, am I glad it ain’t us goin’ up there, sir.”
Paul couldn’t agree more. “Bite your tongue, Z. We’ll be climbin’ mountains soon enough.”
Z just looked disgusted.
One hour passed and then two. Paul followed the tiny dots in the distance, always moving his aiming reticle to place fires in front of the colonel and Third Company if they needed some help.
Of course, the loitering shuttles overhead could tear up bad guys a lot worse than Paul, but every bit helped, he figured. Every now and then, he would look at the shuttle slave feed to get a lot closer of a view of the colonel; he swore he could see the agony on their faces as they climbed the hill.
Finally, Third Company got to the top of the ridge and checked out the tent. There was nothing in there. Well, thought Paul, so much for finding the supposed missing princess.
“Two-Three, this is Five.” Paul could hear the weariness in the colonel’s voice.
“Go ahead, Five.” Paul pulled out yet another Fortunate.
“Roger, Two-Three, dry hole.” Maybe what Paul had heard in the colonel’s voice wasn’t tiredness; it was disgust. “Dry hole” was mil-speak for “didn’t find shit.” “Returning to vehicles now.”
“Roger, Five.” Paul looked at his readout on his visual; it would be about an hour and a half before they were back. At that pace, that meant Third Company would get back to Firebase Atarab right before dark. On Juneau 3, that was a good thing. But hey, thought Paul as he scanned, if the dissidents want to play, well, let ‘em. He lit his Fortunate and dragged on it hard.
At just about an hour and a half later on the mark, the colonel and Fox dragged themselves back into the ground-car. The colonel looked like he was going to die, and Fox, twenty years his junior, didn’t look much better.
“Remind me, Paul, never to look for princesses in white tents again.” With that, he crawled into his split-open suit and buttoned back up. Paul could swear he could hear the environmental exchanger working extra hard to bleed off the Colonel’s excess body heat.
A couple of minutes later, Third Company started to move south again. After a bouncy couple of late-afternoon hours, the convoy moved back into Firebase Atarab. Paul, the colonel, and company spilled out of their ground-car and proceeded to suck down field rations before it got to be full dark.
Mighty Mike, who had been with First Company and Colonel Fasi all day, came sauntering up. “Hey, sir,” he said to the colonel, “it looks like Commander Maktar out toward Hesar wants to fight.”
Combat, thought Paul upon hearing the words. Combat, indeed.
“In combat,” Sergeant First Mike was saying, “the colonel and I are expecting that every member of this team does his part.” Paul had met the man he was later to call “Mighty Mike” a week earlier, as the transports brought together the guys who would form FMAT Team 1.69. They were still short an admin guy and an intel dude, but the core of the team was there.
“Today, we are going to see if you guys can do land navigation. I borrowed seven compasses from the supporting barracks here.”
Ah shit, thought Paul. Compass and paper-map orienteering through the woods—just like at OCS. He seriously thought that his officer’s schooling would be his last time doing this stuff. But the colonel and his team sergeant had other ideas apparently.
As Paul walked through the woods on Canton 2, a pleasantly moderate world compared to Roodeschool, he reflected on his first impressions of his new leadership and how he had gotten here to Canton, training to be on an advisory team.
His last commander had selected Paul for the FMAT mission when his time was winding down on Roodeschool. He had been doing some administrative work in his office on base by Charm, when his halo pinged: he was wanted at battalion headquarters.
Paul wrapped up what he was doing and went straight over after pinging his boss that he was leaving. Paul had no clue what they wanted at HQ; lieutenants in line outfits didn’t usually swing by the brass unless they’d done something wrong. He ran a mental index of all the things he or his guys had done in the past month and couldn’t come up with anything serious enough to warrant a tongue-lashing. Still, that didn’t keep him from being a little nervous when he reported in to the battalion commander’s secretary.
“Lieutenant Thompson here to see Lieutenant Colonel Liozenac.”
No sooner were the words out of his mouth than he heard from the commander himself.
“Enter, Thompson.” Paul walked briskly into the room where Liozenac was seated behind a desk. He stopped, his body centered on the desk. He rendered a brisk salute and reported.
Liozenac smiled and gave back a crisp salute of his own. “Have a seat, Paul.”
Relieved, Lieutenant Thompson sat down and waited for the commander of the Second Battalion, 245th Regiment, to begin.
“I just got an interesting tasking from Force HQ, Thompson, and I wanted to run it by you.” He folded his arms behind his head and leaned back in his battalion-commander-grade chair. “It seems this battalion has been asked to provide one armored-suit qualified officer for a Force Military Advisor Team, and I think you’d make a good fit.”
Paul had heard a little about those teams, and what he
had heard wasn’t good: they involved a lot of unsuited work with temperamental local armies in generally bad circumstances. After all, only worlds with out-of-control dissident problems needed FMATs. The reason being that FMATs were only necessary when problems got to be too big for Special Forces teams to handle on their own. Foreign internal defense and counterinsurgency was the SF’s stock in trade. FMATs, consisting of mostly line troopers, were called upon to play the counterinsurgency game. As a plus, they cost less to train and assemble than an SF team.
Joining an FMAT team sounded different and challenging to Paul. Mentally, he flipped a coin. It came up heads. OK, he thought, I’ll do it. It was another example of a major decision in the life of Paul Thompson being made via a trivial process.
“I may be interested, sir, but why do you think I’m the one for this?” Paul wanted to reassure himself that this wasn’t Liozenac’s way of dumping an unwanted officer.
“As you may know, Thompson, these are tough missions. I don’t want to embarrass the 245th by sending a lieutenant that might not measure up. Also, you have provided leadership in your outfit, even when you thought no one was looking.” Liozenac looked thoughtful. “That’s less common than you may think. I think you can hack this mission.”
For Paul, the die was cast. “I’ll do it, sir, and I won’t embarrass the regiment.”
Paul had been winding his affairs down in Echo Company, anyway, as his tour was coming to an end. He knew he was due a new assignment, but Liozenac had thrown him a curveball.
Over the next month, Paul handed over his responsibilities to a new LT and prepared for transport. Eight months later he was on Canton 2, a world far more hospitable than Roodeschool. Force HQ had chosen Canton for the assembly area for FMAT 1.69.
The colonel, when Paul arrived, was already there. He pinged Paul immediately for a meeting. They met at Force Installation Canton (a not terribly original name, Paul thought) in a Plascrete room that had been painted light green.
Paul sized up the man who was to be his new boss. The colonel had a Mediterranean look about him, with hair slightly longer than the force’s average. He was of medium to slender build and spoke with mild tones.
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