by Leigh Kimmel
The Three Shop's floor was deserted, but he ran into one of the other section members on the way down. "Beatty. You're with me. Dump that stuff in the commons and run to catch up. I'm on my way to the headquarters' barracks. Do. Not. Dally." The private nodded, out of breath from carrying the duffle up the stairs, and lurched into a jog, taking the steps two and three at a time. Tom continued down to the first floor and out onto the battalion road.
He turned left and sprinted up towards the company areas, heading directly towards the HQ barracks. Parked in front of the building was a hum-vee, and as he got closer he recognized the bumper numbers. It was Major McKinney's vehicle, and as he came up to it, he walked out into the street and looked inside the driver's compartment. The steering wheel was unsecured, and on a hunch, he dug the spare padlock keys that he still had in his pocket, pulled the chain up and secured the wheel.
The front door of the barracks bounced open and four people came out in a rush, carrying two weapons' cases, stacked, each person on a corner. The four appeared to be wearing their ALiCE packs, also, and the packs' top flaps were open and rifle barrels could be seen poking upwards.
One of the four was Specialist Birch. Tom didn't recognize the others.
Tom realized that while the weapons' cases didn't normally carry ammunition, if Birch was doing what it looked like she was doing, then she probably brought her own to the party. From where he was standing, still concealed behind the vehicle, he couldn't tell if the locks on the gun boxes had been defeated. It became apparent as they neared, however, that it was irrelevant. Just over the top of the upper gun box, Tom could see that Birch was wearing a shoulder holster, and the flap was undone. Tom reached into his coat and undid his own holster. He pulled the weapon, jacked it then stepped back from the vehicle further into the street. This gave him the clearance needed to bring the weapon up far enough to not quite clear the hood of the vehicle. He kept it hidden from the approaching group as he side-stepped away from the cab of the vehicle, the weapon kept just inches below the group's impeded sight lines. With the engine block between himself and the approaching bandits, he said "Hold it, Birch!"
As he was noticed, the three strangers shifted their carry holds on the load, just as the specialist at the far read corner let go and stepped around them in a quasi-coordinated movement. The three broke into a jog and ran towards the vehicle's back gate. As Specialist Birch cleared the obstruction that the boxes and their carriers made, her hands came up with a Beretta M9, which she must have been carrying in her off hand. She didn't bother saying anything, just began to zero in on an aim point in Tom's center of mass. She didn't make it.
Tom's first, mostly unaimed round hit her in the shoulder and pulled her aim point off just as her own weapon fired, the round hitting the glass windscreen of the hum-vee and ricocheting away. Her eyes registered shock as Tom's second, aimed round hit her just below the chin and knocked her backwards onto her back.
As the booming echoes tailed away, Tom heard the gun boxes crash to the ground. He turned in that direction, and his third, snap round hit the man coming around the back of the vehicle, just as that one returned fired at Tom. Tom jerked as the bullet passed cleanly through his upper arm.
Using the pain from the wound to harden his voice, he barked "Freeze!", and then, because he didn't trust them, he dove to the ground around in front of the vehicle. This proved to be prophetic, as additional small arms fire passed through the space he had occupied up to that point.
From his current vantage point, he could see the feet of one of the two remaining deserters. From the sounds, the fourth was opening the clamps of the gun box. Rather than draw this out, Tom shot the one he could see in the ankle and then as the man fell, forward, shot him again in the top of the shoulder, the massive forty-five caliber round punching through the man's shoulder blade and passing down into the body cavity.
Before doing anything else, Tom hopped back up and clambered up onto the bumper of the vehicle. He'd just given the remaining deserter ideas, and he wasn't about to stick around waiting for the man to act on them. From where he was standing, he couldn't see the man, so he quickly reloaded the colt.
"Throw down your weapons," he ordered, trying to buy time.
The only answer he got was the sound of a magazine being slammed into the belly of an 7.62mm AIW, and the bolt being shot home.
"Ah, man ... " thought Tom, crouching down behind the engine block of the hum-vee, still balanced precariously on the bumper, as the man fired bursts from the assault weapon blindly into the vehicle a couple of times before stopping suddenly. Tom wanted to stick his head up to find out which way to jump, but was afraid that was what the thief was waiting for. Tom decided to go for the high ground and prepared to hop up onto the hood and from there the roof of the hum-vee.
"Sergeant Weaver! How many are there!" The voice came from behind the vehicle, beyond the fourth deserter.
Tom froze, listening intently. Aside from the moans from someone at the back of the vehicle, he couldn't hear any other noises. Finally he yelled "Four! I hit three!"
"I got the fourth one, we're clear!"
"Beatty?"
"Yes, Sergeant."
"You were carrying?"
"Yeah."
"Good thing, that," Tom said. The adrenaline was beginning to wear off and his arm started to pulse pain in time with his heart beat.
"Yeah, well ... I had this Sergeant tell me once, 'always have a backup'. Words to live by, if you ask me ... "
* * *
Outside the ambulance was a storm of activity as the Criminal Investigation Division of the local Army command tagged and marked the scene, while around them moved the battalion as it alternately stood in formation waiting for the busses that would take them to their prepositioned equipment, or broke up to search out missing equipment.
Inside the ambulance was a sea of calm however, as Tom sat on a gurney having his arm looked at by a medic. Also in the vehicle was another investigator from the CID, who was alternately asking questions and dictating comments into his AID. "And where did you get the handgun?" asked the CID investigator calmly.
Tom shrugged with only one shoulder. "I keep it locked under a false bottom in a drawer of my desk."
"You do realize that maintaining a privately owned weapon outside the arms' room is chargeable under the Uniform Code of Military Justice?"
Tom looked out the window at the storm that was gathering. He looked back at the CID investigator. He nodded. "I know that. I believe that Colonel Kuzio will be doing an Article 15 on me shortly." The pain killers had dulled his sense of humor as well as his sense of pain, otherwise he would probably have tried to laugh it off.
The investigator nodded. "That sounds like reasonable punishment. My own recommendations upwards will be to allow a simple non-judicial on that. Same thing for Private Beatty."
Tom nodded again. "That's a relief. It would be bad for him to save my life, then turn around and go to jail for it."
"Ok, one more question about the .45 and that'll be it for now. You say you keep it in a locked drawer. Did you take it out of the drawer before your AID warned you about Birch, or after?"
Tom looked up at the ceiling, thinking back. "Had to have been before, wait ... " Tom pulled his field jacket over and pulled the AID out of the pocket. "AID? Replay everything from when you first notified me about the situation that was developing in the arms' room."
The AID dutifully replayed everything, collaborating Tom's rethink. "Yeah," Tom said, eventually. "I was already wearing it when the message came in."
"And that replay also collaborates with your statement. I believe it would be admissible as proof that you did give them every opportunity to give themselves up without anybody getting hurt ... Well, that's about all. Have you got any questions for me?"
"Yeah, the MPs got here almost immediately after Private Beatty. How did they know?
"They had been summoned by the silent alarms from the arm's room. Installed
just below the lower half of the two part door is a kick plate that activates the alarm. Your warning through your AID to not allow them access arrived too late to save the armorer, but when he started kicking the plate frantically just before they shot him, it added to the priority level of the notification to the MP station. The MP dispatcher summoned the cavalry even before checking the camera feeds from the room."
"So they wouldn't have got away with it, then."
"Maybe. They must have had a plan for the get-out."
"And all that for only, what, twenty rifles."
"You didn't know?" asked the investigator.
"Know what?"
"Those boxes could have been carried by two of them, if it had only the equipment that your section needed. They'd crammed as many AIWs in there as they could fit, and four or five SAWs, then had filled out their rucks with more AIWs and M9s. They had easily a hundred-thou in black market value there."
"Ah."
The investigator's AID gave a ping noise, and the man listened intently. After a moment he said "Roger." After another moment, he nodded absently and frowned, then said "Ok, thanks for the update." He turned to Tom. "We've found your Three."
"Really? Didn't know you were looking for him ... " said Tom, absently, around the haze of pain, as the medic finished bandaging the bullet wound.
"We weren't. But we found him anyway. He's in his BOQ, stark naked, strapped to a chair and with a bullet through his brain pan. Specialist Birch and the others had initially tried to draw all the weapons using Major McKinney's authorization, and we were wondering how she had acquired the it in the first place. I guess now we know."
Tom nodded, the pain killers deadening any reaction he would have had to the death of the S3. "His AID," he said absently.
"What about it?"
"That's how they knew. His AID would have warned him at the same time mine warned me that the landing were imminent. I think they were rushed."
The investigate nodded thoughtfully. "Good point," he said, then dictated some more notes to his AID. "Any thing else you'd like to know, Sergeant?"
"I won't keep you, Sir."
"Good luck, Sergeant."
Tom focused on the man. "Thank you, Sir. I think I just used mine up, though," he said, gesturing at his arm.
* * *
"Sergeant Weaver?" Beatty threw a chin over Tom's shoulder. "Here comes the Six."
"Thanks, Beatty." Tom turned to the road, came to attention, and then came to parade rest, waiting for the vehicle to pass. As it approached, he returned to attention, looked over his shoulder and said "Section ... Attention". As the vehicle neared, Tom saluted.
To the section's complete lack of surprise, the vehicle pulled up and the colonel hopped out. He returned the S3 NCOICs salute precisely, frowning slightly. "At ease, Sergeant. Brigade can't find me another O4 to take over as my S3. That leaves Captain Rundle as Three Acting. Can you live with that?"
If anyone was surprised at the commander's question, they disguised it well. It wasn't often that an O5 asked an E7 for his opinion. Tom nodded, once, sharply. "Yes, Sir. Captain Rundle knows the plans as well as I do."
Sotto voce, so that only Tom could hear him, the LTC nodded, whispering "Which is a lot more than we can say about our late, unlamented ex-S3. If anything, Birch has done us a favor I think ... Sorry to hear about your arm, though. That always was the problem with the Weaver Stance, you know. Leaves the arms exposed ... " His voice came back up to a normal speaking voice for the last part. "Have your assistant get the section out to their vehicles and bring up the net. I'm holding a staff meeting in ten minutes, and there are a few things I want to go over with you. It looks like the initial landings in force are headed for the eastern seaboard, but we might get a rogue or too. Ride with me, Sergeant Weaver."
"Yes, Sir," Tom said, ignoring the pun. He came to attention and saluted. The CO returned the salute and returned to his vehicle, while Tom turned back to the formation in front of which he was standing. He looked down at his watch, then back up. "Right. Initial landing in just under an hour, but it won't be here. Tkachenko, Apple, you know where your teams are supposed to be. Beatty, grab my stuff and follow us. Dismissed." Tom spun back around and jogged the couple of steps over to the battalion commander's vehicle and climbed in.
As he settled himself, the CO tossed him a small piece of cardboard with a three pins attached. "Here, put these on, Master Sergeant. Do you know where your family is, Master Sergeant?"
Tom looked down at the pins and grinned lopsidedly, until the CO's non-sequitur got through to him. The grin faded. "Yes, Sir. They are in England. I left a message for them via the AID, but I don't know if it will get to them anytime soon."
"Wrong. They boarded a British Airways flight this morning and were someplace over Canada inbound to San Francisco when the initial globes appeared out of hyperspace. Their plane was diverted and they are now on the ground in Manitoba, Canada."
Tom's jaw dropped open. "How ... "
"Yes?" asked the Colonel Kuzio when Tom's voice faded.
"They have tickets for next week."
"I guess they moved it up. I need you focused, Tom."
The use of his first name by the commander didn't register. "Yes, Sir. Have I ever not been?"
"I'm assuming I've never seen you in the kind of situation that would cause you to unfocus. I just don't want this to turn out to be one. Your family is currently safe, and on this continent. They are, I'm assuming, enroute to California by other means. Do you know where they will be staying?"
"Yessir. If I can get a message to them, I'll tell them to get to the cabin in the Sierras. That looks like the safest place to be right now."
"You have a cabin up there? Where?"
"Small place straight up highway 4, called Lake Alpine. My family's had it since the late forties. Over the past couple of years we've turned it into a right fortress, dug straight back into the hill and built our own Sub-urb. She knows about it, and has been there before, so that is where I'd tell her to go to."
"Use your AID. I'll have Rundle give the briefing. Get her the message. Are we clear?"
"Sir, we are clear, Sir!" Tom felt stress draining away, stress that he didn't know he had been suffering under. "And, Thanks, Sir."
"No problem, Master Sergeant." There was a significant pause while Tom futzed around with the new rank insignia. "Tom?" the battalion commander said, quietly.
"Sir?" Tom asked, looking up.
"I got a call from a General Dekalli the other day. That ring any bells?"
Tom frowned, as the name did ring a bell. Then he remembered and the frown deepened. He shot a hard look at the battalion commander, his eyes narrow, but didn't say anything.
"Thought as much. Pull over, Cassel." The three soldiers were quiet as the commander's driver pulled over to the side of the road. As soon as the hand break was set, the commander said "And now go take a leak or something."
"Sir," the specialist said, quietly, before dismounting and wandering off.
LTC Kuzio turned in his seat and looked at Tom. "I won't go into what he said. But he asked me to give you these, also." Kuzio dug into a breast pocket and pulled out another insignia set. The rank flashed gold as he handed the set to Tom. "After getting off the horn with General Dekalli, I called in Timpton and he told me a story. Was it true?"
"Probably, Sir," said Tom, staring at the oak leaves in his hand. Tom handed the rank back. "I gave that up, Sir."
"I can give it back, Tom."
Tom's eyes closed. "I don't know, Sir. Even when I was a lieutenant ..." Tom stared at his cap and began fiddling with the newly pinned-on Master Sergeant's rank. "... Sir, I don't know. What if they were right. You tell me ... Am I a warrior?"
"You took down Birch in a pretty warlike manner, Tom."
"Yeah, but that was just ..." Tom waived a hand around.
"Just what?"
"That was just luck, Sir."
"Dekalli thinks you know how to man
ufacture luck, Tom. Or was that Winter REFORGER end-around you pulled just a fluke ..."
"No, Sir. But they were humans. I know how humans think."
"That puts you a leg up on just about everyone else around here, Tom. Well, here comes Cassell. Think about it. If you put on those leaves, Tom, you'd be my S3 in a heartbeat. Think about that."
But what if they were right?
* * *
Later that evening, Tom sat in his hum-vee, reviewing the images from the initial landings in Virginia that afternoon. They weren't good. What was good was that the Posleen fought just as they had been seen to fight on Barwhon and Diess. That meant that the doctrine that was in use there, should work here too.
Quality of the soldiery withstanding, of course.
Tom sighed, then looked up at the ceiling of the vehicle. Finally, he nodded. "The problem with the poke them in the nose strategy is that you can't poke them in the nose with artillery," Tom dictated to his AID. "Sure, you could swat them around a bit, but you can't actually get their attention focused in the right direction.
"To do that, you need to walk right up to them and, well, poke them in the nose. And even that presents its own level of issues.
"First off, you have to poke them in the nose from the correct direction. If a lander came down in the middle of a field, and there are four sentries (or platoons, or companies, or battalions, or pocking great armies), one on each side of the field, then one, and only the one, should grab the horses by the short and curlies and do a habeas testiculos on them.
"But just let one individual or device break fire discipline from any of the other three corners, and its uh-oh time. There will be no way to predict what the horses would do under those circumstances."