by Jessy Cruise
"They're all spread out," Paula said, seeing that the tiny figures were stretching all the way across her field of view from left to right instead of marching in a loose line. "It looks like they've learned a few things."
"Paula," Leanette, who was on the far left side of the group, suddenly spoke up. "They're stretched all the way over to the far ring of hills."
She looked that way, seeing that Leanette was correct. Instead of merely marching in the relatively flat and featureless corridor along the edge of the mudfall, there were now well over a hundred troops moving over the hilly, rough ground to the west as well. These men also were spread considerably out as they marched, with no two men closer than twenty feet of each other. "Oh shit," she said, feeling a worm of dread working into her. "If they keep coming at us this way, half of them are gonna be on our left flank when they get into range."
"Which is probably why they're doing it," Hector said, a trace of fear in his voice. "They're trying to surround the hills we've been attacking from."
"They're heading right towards Skip as well," Doris said. "Paula, what do we do?"
"We need to get Skip and Jack the hell out of there," Paula said. She put down her binoculars and picked up her radio.
"But what about us?" Leanette asked.
"We hunker down," she said. "This is just one hill out of hundreds. They'll have no reason to climb it to check it out unless we give them one. We stay put until they pass us."
Everyone looked at each other nervously at these words. While the militia was passing below, they would be completely cut off from support or extraction. If they were discovered up there on the hill, they would be easy fodder.
"Hatchling two to mother bird," Paula said into the radio. "Do you copy?"
"Mother bird here," came Jack's rather tired sounding voice. "Go ahead, hatchling two."
"Wolves are in view," she said. "They're spread out widely and they're going to pass on both sides of us. We're not going to feed them. We're going to hibernate instead."
There was an extended pause and then Skip's voice came on the radio. "I copy that, hatchling," he said. "Do you need emergency extraction?"
"Negative," Paula said, unfolding her map. "You wouldn't get to us in time. We'll be all right. Their path will take them right to your nest though. You need to unfold your wings and go find another nest." She put her finger on a ring of hills to the far west. "I would suggest going west of the area in grid B-5, that's Bravo-five. That will put you well west of their position. You can circle around from the north to pick us up after they pass."
"Copy that," Skip, who was undoubtedly looking at a copy of the same map, told her. "Hatchling one is located at grid Delta-5. Are they in the path of the advance as well?"
Paula consulted her map, tracing her dirty fingernail over the reference grids and quickly locating the small collection of hills where Christine and her team had been dropped. "Yes," she said into the radio. "If they stick to the same manner of marching, they'll pass on both sides of that grid as well. You'd better get them out of there."
"Unfolding the wings now," Skip said. "Can you give me an alternate drop point for them?"
Paula took a deep breath, not really wanting to make such an important and potentially life-threatening decision on her own. That was Skip's job Goddammit! But she was the one looking at the troops right now, not him, and she was the one in the best position to estimate their advance. She continued to run her finger over the map for a moment, taking several glances down at the slowly approaching soldiers and comparing the terrain with the map. She keyed up her radio. "They seem to be staying east of the edge of the Charlie grid on the map. If you put them on a hill somewhere near B-5 and can find a LZ west of there, they should be able to feed some of them in another hour or so. But have them keep a sharp lookout."
"Copy that," Skip said, his voice clearer now and the distinctive hum of the engine noise now in the background. "We're taking off now. Keep hunkered down until they pass and I'll pick you up just to the north of your location. Keep yourselves hidden and let me know if there's trouble."
"Will do, mother bird," Paula said evenly, knowing of course, that if there was trouble, there would be nothing Skip or Jack would be able to do about it.
It took the Auburnites more than fifteen minutes to pass their location once they got close enough for detection to be a serious worry. They moved slowly, carefully, their weapons out in front of them at the ready, their eyes searching the hills around them for signs of attack. Each step they took was a cautious one, the steps of soldiers in enemy territory - a sharp contrast from the carefree gait of the previous day.
Atop of the hill Paula and her team were flat on their bellies in the mud, pine needles pulled over the top of them for camouflage, their faces thoroughly covered in mud. They kept their weapons flat against the ground as well, although in easy reach in case a last stand became necessary. At Paula's direction they lay facing outward in four different directions, their feet forming the hub of a wheel. They watched anxiously as man after man on both sides went by the bottom of their hill on their march. Many of them looked upward towards the hidden squad, their eyes searching for danger, many of them probably seeing the brown lumps that looked like just another collection of mud in the trees without recognizing it was four people in hiding.
As they went by, Paula had a very nasty thought. The mines that they had laid at the base of the hill! What if one of the Auburnites decided to cross from one side of the march to the other at that particular point and blundered across the trap? True, it would disable the soldier in question, but it would also alert the other soldiers that there was something about this particular hill that maybe needed a closer look. Paula kept this thought to herself - although Hector and Leanette both had it independently themselves - and simply kept watch on her sector. No soldiers decided to cross over. No one went anywhere near where the mines had been set.
Finally, at long last, the last groups of widely spread Auburnites marched by. They checked their rear continuously, obviously fearful of an attack from behind, but they continued on, eventually, thankfully, moving off to the south and the tip of the mudfall three miles beyond.
"Christ Almighty," Paula breathed when the last of them were more than two hundred yards away. "I don't ever want to go through that again."
"You ain't shittin'," Hector said, rolling up a bit and twisting around so he could continue to keep an eye out on the retreating figures.
"Let's keep ourselves down," Paula told everyone. "They're still way too close for comfort. Leanette, you keep an eye out to the north, just in case they have a rear-guard back there we don't know about."
"Right," she said, helping herself to Paula's binoculars and taking up position. She began to scan the area to the north of them.
Paula pulled out her radio, which she had switched off when the Auburnites had come close to prevent an unexpected transmission from giving them away, and switched it back on. She keyed up. "Mother bird, this is hatchling two. Are you out there?"
Jack's voice was full of obvious relief to hear her voice. "We're here, hatchling two. What's your situation?"
"Wolves have passed by us without getting a sniff of us. We're ready to head on out."
"We're in the air right now, five minutes past dropping off hatchling one at their new nest. We're currently hanging around grid Bravo 4, maybe three minutes from your location. Give us a nest and we'll be there."
She unfolded her map and looked at it for a moment, quickly deciding upon the base of a hill that was about a quarter of a mile to the north of them. She gave Jack the coordinates and had them confirmed back to her. Just as everything was set, she had a sudden thought. Why should this entire mission be for nothing? "Stand by for a second, mother bird," she said slowly. She turned to her squad. "How we looking?"
"They're still moving away," reported Hector, who was watching the backs of the Auburnites.
"How about to the north?" she then asked Leanet
te.
"Empty," she reported. "If they have a rear-guard, they're keeping it way to the rear."
Paula looked out at the wave of troops to her south for a moment. "How far away do you think the closest of them are now?" she asked Hector, who was perhaps the best of them at estimating distance.
He shrugged. "Maybe a little more than three hundred yards. Far enough that they shouldn't be a bother to us."
"But close enough so that we could still be a bother to them?" she asked.
Three faces turned to her, their eyes wide.
"You're the riflemen," she challenged. "You think you can hit moving targets at more than three hundred?"
Two of them could, aided mostly by lots of shooting practice prior to deployment and the almost complete lack of wind to throw the bullet off course. They made some adjustments to their scopes and sighted in on the backs of three of the soldiers. While they drew beads on their targets, Paula updated Skip and Jack as to what they were doing. Finally, after assuring each other that they were ready, they counted to three and squeezed their triggers. Leanette's shot passed within six inches of her target, which happened to be none other than Lieutenant Roberts, who was in charge of the reserve platoon. At nearly the same instant that Roberts heard something go whizzing by him, Hector's bullet smashed into the back of Sergeant Lyon's head, carrying a good portion of his brain out through his face. He dropped like a rock, never having known what hit him. Even as he was in mid-fall, Doris' bullet performed perhaps the most dramatic feat. Still traveling considerably faster than the speed of sound, it entered the backpack of Private Henson just below his sleeping bag. It burrowed through a box of 5.56 millimeter ammunition, exploding the gunpowder in several of the shells before burying itself into his right kidney. To those watching it appeared as if a small bomb had suddenly detonated in Henson's backpack. He staggered forward three more steps before falling screaming to the ground.
Those in the rear of the militia reacted quickly, throwing themselves down and training their weapons to the rear. Since no one had happened to be looking back at the moment the shots had been fired, no one knew where the attack had come from (which did not prevent five of them from blindly returning fire anyway). Paula deliberately gave away their location by firing an extended burst with her M-16 at the prone soldiers. She wanted them to know what hill the fire had come from and though none of her bullets hit anyone, the muzzleflashes from her shots served this purpose.
"Let's go," she said, scrambling for the far side of the hill just as the return fire started to roll in.
They quickly put the hill between themselves and the Auburnites and began to run north, towards their pickup point. A quick circle around the next hill and there was the helicopter, idling on the ground, the doors open. They climbed in, shut the doors, and a minute later they were airborne and out of the area.
Five minutes later the entire reserve platoon of the Placer County Militia approached the hill, weapons out and ready. Lieutenant Roberts knew that the attackers were long gone but he had been ordered by Bracken to check the hill anyway, to see if there was any wounded or dead. One by one his troops fanned out over the base and finally, one squad began to ascend it. Roberts, who would be responsible for giving report on what was found, stuck to the rear and then, once they were half-way up, started following them while the rest of the platoon fanned out towards the front.
He walked over the same ground that his men had just trod upon but somehow he managed to step in one place where no one else's foot had happened to come down. Without warning, something exploded beneath him with a sharp crack and a bright flash of light. It felt like someone wearing steel-toed boots had kicked him harshly in the balls. He felt an intense burning in his crotch and in the inner portions of both legs. He looked down and saw that his entire lower body was dripping blood onto the muddy ground. His pants had been shredded in the crotch and he could see muscle and fat tissue hanging by pieces of tendon and shredded veins. While the men around him dove to the ground at the sudden explosion, he gasped in shock as the pain intensified. He fell forward, his hands grasping at the bloody remains of his reproductive organs and wished to lose consciousness. Unfortunately, until he was "put out of his misery" five minutes later by his first sergeant, that did not happen.
"It's some sort of homemade mine, sir," Sergeant Costigan, the new leader by default of the reserve platoon, told Bracken when he met with him twenty minutes later. "It was buried just under the mud in a small hole in the ground. When Lieutenant Roberts stepped on it... well..."
Bracken looked at the remains of the mine that had killed his second most senior officer. The shotgun shell that had been fired by the mousetrap was still wedged into the hole, empty of the powder, wadding, and birdshot pellets. The force of the detonation had cracked the piece of lumber quite badly but, as evidenced by the success the weapon had had, that hadn't really detracted from the effectiveness much. He threw the device down, reluctant respect for the ingenuity of those Garden Hill people worming into his brain. "Clever," he said. "We're dealing with some very devious minds here, Costigan, wouldn't you agree?"
"It would seem so, sir," he said, still shuddering at the image of Roberts' shredded private parts. It had actually been a relief to end his suffering, to silence his screaming with a bullet to the head.
"What affect did witnessing this have on your men?"
"They're rather shaken," Costigan said, giving a rather broad understatement. "It would've been better if that thing would've just killed him outright. Seeing what it did to him... well... it was not very pretty, sir."
"No, I don't imagine it was," Bracken sighed. "And you say there was no way of detecting the presence of this thing before he stepped on it?"
"It left a hole in the ground after it went off," Costigan said doubtfully, "but no one saw it before that. I don't know, sir. Maybe if we knew to look for things like that, we'd be able to find them. I just don't know."
"We're going to have to keep our eyes out for more of these little Garden Hill surprises," Bracken said. "If they planted one, they'll plant others."
The militia continued its march around the first of the mudfalls, keeping themselves spread out and straddling the row of hills from which the previous day's attacks had come. The safety that this tactic gave them lasted only as long as it took for Skip and his strike groups to recognize and adapt to it. Here came the advantages of mobility that the helicopter offered. No Micker where or how the militia marched, there was always a place to attack them from and it was only a simple Micker of predicting their advance and moving a team to a spot where they could get away safely. The mountains were full of such places.
Christine's squad hit the middle of the advancing militia shortly after 11:00 AM, firing from a well-protected hill to the west of them - the same hill that Paula had suggested they occupy. Two soldiers were killed outright by the initial shots and one was badly wounded. Christine's automatic fire with the M-16 was not as effective as it had been the previous day - the Auburnites had learned quickly to throw themselves down when people started to drop - but she still managed to inflict one more death and one more serious injury before her clip ran out and her squad fled their ambush site.
The militia platoon tasked with examining the site of the ambush was wary of the mines that they now knew their enemy to possess. They stepped gingerly around, their eyes searching for depressions in the mud or other signs of the devices. They saw no such thing. Even so, Corporal Janders' left foot managed to find one of the devices the hard way. Though his crotch was spared much of the brunt of the shotgun shell blast it was only because the inside of his left calf and thigh absorbed most of the pellets. Though his favorite appendage was saved from too much harm, his life was nonetheless sacrificed because his left leg was now a bloody mess of torn flesh and shredded muscle. Despite his begs and pleas that he could walk, just give him a chance, he was shot in the head by Lieutenant Powers and, after his weapons, ammo, and food were stripped from him
, left to rot there.
The next ambush took place a little more than two hours later. Paula's squad was able to kill three and wound one with the initial attack. Though the militia rushed at them at top speed, as per Bracken's orders, they could not catch anything but another glimpse of the helicopter departing to the south of them. This time Bracken did not allow a platoon to approach the hill from which the attack had come. He wanted to waste no further men to mine warfare and he suspected that they would not have obeyed the order to walk there anyway.
Before the sun set that night, bringing darkness to the land, two more ambushes occurred, costing them five more lives. With each attack Bracken tried to shift formations and course of travel but they still happened with frightening unexpectedness from a direction that no one had happened to be looking in. Each time his troops gave pursuit and each time they were able to do no more than catch a glimpse of the retreating helicopter.
"It's like we're being attacked by fucking ghosts!" one sergeant, angry and frustrated and scared, proclaimed as he stood over the dead bodies of two of his men. "How the hell can we fight back against this?"
"We'll get them," Bracken soothed as best he could. "They'll slip up and we'll get them. This can't go on forever."
His words sounded like a lie, even to himself.
The militia bedded down at 8:00 PM that night, knowing that the nightmare attacks out of the darkness would surely commence at some point. They spread themselves out widely, over an area of more than a hundred acres, with no man putting himself any closer than thirty feet from another man. Twice the usual number of guards were posted around the perimeter and in the middle of the formation, all of them equipped with automatic weapons and powerful flashlights. They braced themselves for attack and they were not disappointed.