Despite his infras, Schultz was still distracted enough looking for large red spots in his field of vision that he wasn't the first to see the man-size spots.
"Look alert." Leach's voice came over the platoon command circuit. "We've got company up ahead on the right."
Schultz got his attention under control. Sure enough, a stippled line of red began seventy-five meters ahead. He knew that the stippled red line was men lying in ambush in a defilade position. He didn't do it now, but he knew that later he would severely castigate himself for not spotting the ambush first—his shift was in the lead of the platoon; Leach was behind him and still saw something ahead of them before he did.
"Platoon, stop," Leach said.
"Hold them up," Schultz softly told Acting Assistant Shift Sergeant Kharim, who was walking a few meters away. The FP leaders didn't have any of the command frequencies on their radios; the Marines reserved those for communications among themselves.
"Shift, halt," Kharim ordered in a low voice.
The troopers stopped where they were and lowered themselves into firing positions.
"Hammer, stay with them," Leach ordered. "Doyle, come with me."
Schultz's jaw locked. Doyle, come with me! Leach was going to scout the guerrilla positions. That was a job Schultz could have done by himself, and done very well—he was the best man in the company at that sort of work. And Leach knew it! Leach should have sent him to scout the ambush. Instead he did it himself. And took Doyle, the damn company clerk, with him! Schultz was mortified.
Mortified, but professional enough not to let it distract him from what he needed to do now, which was check the platoon to make sure everyone knew what was going on and what he had to do. Probably none of the guerrillas had infras, so Schultz figured he could walk upright without being seen. But maybe one or more of them did. Even if none of them did, if they decided to open fire on the platoon, even though it had halted outside the ambush's killing zone, a stray round could hit an invisible man as easily as a visible one. So Schultz crawled to Kharim to tell him what was happening, then began crawling to the second shift leader to tell him. Leach should have told the FP officer, but might not have, Schultz thought, so he told him as well.
Leach got back just as Schultz finished briefing the platoon's leaders and called for them to join him and Doyle.
"There's a guerrilla company up ahead waiting for us," Leach told them. "They've got us outnumbered two to one. I got close enough to hear some of them wondering why we stopped. We don't have much time. Here's what we're going to do..."
Lieutenant Sokum Pincote's company lay in concealed positions in a shallow depression that marked an ancient waterway. She knew they were well-hidden because she'd gone out herself to see how close she had to get to them before she could see the ambush. It was a matter of meters. The first time, she was almost within knife range before she saw the closest fighter. Then she did it again from a different direction, and deliberately stepped on the fighter she approached to show him how close she had to be to see him. Three more times she walked toward her company's position from different directions. No matter that she knew where the company was, each time she had to get very close before she could spot any of her fighters. Satisfied, she took her own position in the line.
Their intelligence was good: they didn't have to wait long before a Feldpolizei platoon came toward them. Pincote wanted to laugh out loud at the ludicrous sight. The Feldpolizei were wearing camouflage uniforms in a forest pattern; mottled bands of green, ochre, and black. They tried to make themselves look like miniature sections of forest! But it didn't work, it couldn't make them look like the woods. Certainly not the stiff way they moved. True, they were keeping good intervals and were less awkward than on their first patrols. It was also true that they kept watching the woods around them instead of keeping their eyes to the front as they had formerly done. But they did it all so gracelessly. It was obvious they were unaccustomed to that manner of movement, and uncomfortable with it. Wiping them out was going to be easy.
Suddenly, with the lead shift only seventy-five meters away, the lackeys stopped, with no apparent reason for doing so. No one she saw had given any danger signal to indicate they'd spotted her ambush. The lackeys lowered themselves into defensive positions very casually, as though they were taking a rest. Why did they have to pick that particular place and time to rest? Or were they resting? None that she could see laid down his head to nap, none broke out field rations. As casual as they were about it, all of them seemed to be alert.
What was that? She thought she saw a flicker of movement out of the corner of her eye, but when she looked, she saw nothing but what she expected to see—trees, scattered underbrush, and alert, resting men.
She shook her head to clear it. Maybe she was too tense, too excited about the rich prize that had stopped just short of her ambush's killing zone. She took a deep breath, held it for a few seconds, and let it out slowly. Did it again. After the third breath she felt calm, almost the way she felt when she was lapping the blood her pointed teeth drew from the shoulder of one of her infrequent lovers. She showed those pointed teeth in a tight grin as she thought of how so few men were unafraid to be her lover.
She shook her head to clear it. It wasn't the time to think about men's cowardice when faced with a strong woman; there were Feldpolizei to kill, blasters to take.
There was another flicker of movement at the periphery of her vision, but she saw nothing when she looked that way. What was happening to her? She'd never experienced this before, not even on any of the occasions when she'd been more excited or tense than she thought she was now. She shook her head. What could be wrong? Then she stopped thinking about the wrongness she felt within her and paid attention to something concrete she saw that seemed wrong.
Three of the lackeys rose to their feet and moved back, almost out of her view. They hadn't moved to any signal she saw or heard. They assembled and knelt in a semicircle, looked the way her own officers did when they knelt in front of her to receive new instructions on a patrol or operation and watched her draw a map in the dirt. But no one was at the center of the semicircle. Something very strange was going on, but she couldn't image what it was.
Then the three Feldpolizei returned to their positions and spoke to the waiting lackeys. Then they all rose into crouches and began returning the way they had come. Why were they going away? They were supposed to continue the way they had been going, they were supposed to walk into her ambush!
"Chan, Godenov, up," Corporal Ratliff said into his radio. Even though none of the FPs had the command frequency on his radio, Ratliff wanted to talk to his Marines face-to-face and not take the chance that anyone unknown might be listening in somewhere.
Chan and Godenov used their infras to find the fire-team leader and joined him.
"Chief's platoon almost walked into a company-size ambush about two klicks south of here," Ratliff said in a low voice as soon as they reached him. "Wang wants to catch the guerrillas. He thinks we don't have time to get our pretty boys in place to do the job. We're going to force-march them to half a klick from the guerrillas and put them in position as a blocking force, then we'll meet Wang and the rest of the squad." He paused to think of how to pass the word to the FPs. He knew they wouldn't like it if they knew what the Marines were thinking. "Tell your shift sergeants first platoon's chasing some bad guys and we're a blocking force to catch them. When we put them in place, tell them we're going ahead to scout the situation. They don't need to know what we're going to do. Understand?"
"Understood," Chan said.
Godenov didn't reply immediately; he didn't quite get it. Why would they put the platoon in a blocking position and tell them they were a blocking force if they weren't a blocking force?
"If the guerrillas run their way," Ratliff explained, "the platoon can do some damage to them. But if we do this right, the guerrillas won't get away. If we take the platoon with us, well, they just aren't good enough to get in c
lose and catch the guerrillas by surprise. We don't want to hurt their feelings by telling them that. Now do you understand?"
Godenov flinched when Ratliff said the FPs weren't "good enough." He'd heard the play on his name directed at himself too many times. But he understood. He wondered if the FPs weren't "good enough" because Godenov wasn't "good enough" to train them right.
"Let's go. We've got to move fast or the guerrillas will leave before we get there." All three sped back to their counterparts in the platoon to tell them as much as they needed to know about what they were going to do. Some four kilometers to the south of them. Corporal Dornhofer was giving similar orders to Van Impe and MacIlargie.
Haste was essential to catch the guerrillas, and the Marines wanted to run. But if one group of guerrillas was in ambush in the area, there might well be another group. They went as fast as they could while using infras to help spot danger. The fire team leaders also used their heads-up displays, which showed where they were and where Leach and his fire team waited. It took more than fifteen minutes for the entire squad to assemble.
"Here's the situation," Sergeant Wang Hyakowa said as soon as they were all present. He transmitted the situation map display he had constructed from Leach's report, and the little bit the string-of-pearls surveillance satellites were able to tell him, to his fire team leaders. "Chief put three FPs in place to keep an eye on the guerrillas. They haven't reported movement, so I think we can assume the ambush is still there."
Schultz snorted softly at the mention of the FPs being trusted to keep an eye on the ambush. MacIlargie rolled his eyes and grinned. No one else showed any reaction.
"My best guess," Hyakowa continued, ignoring Schultz and MacIlargie, "is they don't have infras, so they don't have any idea we're here. Where did you place your platoons?"
Ratliff and Dornhofer gave him the coordinates, which he plugged into his situation map. The four NCOs studied the updated map for a moment, then Hyakowa began talking again.
"First platoon's in the best position for a blocking force," he said, "and we'd be most effective if we rolled up their flank, which would chase the survivors their way. But we'd have to go all the way around the ambush to do that. We may not have the time to go all the way around." He knew that if he was in command of that ambush, he'd probably have moved it already. "I think our best bet is to get on line and hit them from their rear. Comments?"
None of the fire team leaders had a better suggestion.
"Let's do it."
The ten Marines silently sped to get on a line fifty meters behind the guerrilla ambush site.
The more Lieutenant Pincote thought about the way the oligarch's lackeys stopped just outside her ambush and then pulled back, the more it bothered her. She wondered if their scouts had spotted the ambush. But that didn't seem possible; the clumsy Feldpolizei just couldn't move well enough that none of her fighters could see them. She didn't believe that even the Confederation Marines could move that well in the forest; there simply wasn't enough foliage to conceal a walking man that well—and no one could crawl well enough or long enough to be a scout for a patrol. A vagrant thought tickled the back of her mind; somewhere she'd heard that the Confederation Marines could turn themselves invisible. No, she hadn't believed it when she first heard it, she wasn't going to believe it now.
She looked all around and saw no people but her own fighters, the very few she could spot from her position. No one was standing or walking. Maybe she should send out scouts of her own to see where the lackeys went to? The lackeys couldn't possibly be alert enough to spot her scouts before they were seen themselves. No, no scouts. Something felt very wrong; she wouldn't risk scouts following the Feldpolizei.
What was that? She was facing to her rear, searching for movement, when again something seemed to move at the periphery of her vision. Again, nothing was there. She shook her head sharply. That was the third time she'd thought she'd seen something that wasn't there. Something was very, very wrong. Perturbed, she carefully studied the area again.
Chan froze when one of the guerrillas looked directly at him. If he moved, the shift of patterns created by his uniform would probably give him away. Even someone who didn't know what to look for could spot a fully chameleoned man by accident, if they were looking in the right place when the concealed man moved. And this guerrilla was looking very intently in his direction. Had he seen him? Chan didn't think so, but the guerrilla had seen something that made him look closer.
Nervous sweat beaded on Chan's brow and trickled down his ribs as he stood motionless, watching as the guerrilla peered toward him, eyes probing all around his position. He didn't want to take his eyes off the man, he wanted to know immediately when the guerrilla looked away, or instantly if he aimed his blaster toward him. But he had to have an awareness of the whole situation so he wouldn't be caught by surprise by one of the others. He forced himself to flick his eyes toward the other guerrillas he could see. A few meters to the side of the one watching him, a bearded guerrilla was staring intently in the direction the FP's first platoon had gone. Beyond him another guerrilla, not bearded but unshaven, was also looking in that direction. Chan was shifting his vision to the other side when an anomaly struck him and he looked back at the one who seemed to be seeking him. That guerrilla was totally beardless.
It was odd for a guerrilla to shave in the field. He looked to the next one to the right and saw a heavy mustache—and a five o'clock shadow. Every guerrilla he could see was bearded or unshaven—except for the one who was looking toward him. He lowered his gaze to the chest of that guerrilla. It had a distinct bulge, but it wasn't in the right place for powerful chest muscles. His gaze went lower. The curve of the hips was wrong, and the crotch of the pants was too tight for an active man.
Buddha's blue balls! It was a woman!
In four operations, Chan had never faced a woman in combat. He'd heard of women fighting to protect their children or homes, and he'd even heard of women fighting as members of guerrilla bands. But he'd never encountered it. Women were to be protected and cared for, this he knew and felt deeply. Now he was in a situation where he would have to fight a woman, and to kill her—or risk being killed by her?
His knees weakened. This was wrong. He swallowed to loosen his suddenly constricted throat.
Lieutenant Pincote shook her head, about to give up her search. She'd almost decided she needed to see a doctor about her eyes when she distinctly saw something. Startled, she almost gaped at it, but caught herself quickly enough to keep her gaze roaming.
Centuries ago some philosopher, she couldn't remember who, said that if you eliminate everything impossible, whatever was left, no matter how improbable, had to be the truth. As improbable as it seemed, if she had spotted an invisible man, then an invisible man was there, and she didn't want to stare at him and let him know he'd been spotted. While her head moved and her eyes shifted, she kept examining what she saw out of the corner of her eye. Yes, what she saw remained there. There was a tree forty meters away. Part of its trunk was missing—an irregular line along one side of it was mottled with the browns and greens of the ground and undergrowth as though it was occluded by a man partly blocking it—a man concealed with the pattern of the surrounding ground and underbrush. It was impossible to her that the Feldpolizei could turn themselves invisible. Improbable as it was, the only thing possible—given that an invisible man stood before her—was that Confederation Marines did have a way to make themselves invisible. And the Marines were approaching her ambush from the rear!
Chan watched the woman with growing horror. He was certain she knew he was there. He didn't want to kill a woman; if he had to fight a woman, he'd rather take her prisoner. Boys don't hit girls was something he'd been taught since earliest childhood. If he shot the woman, he'd be hitting her the hardest possible way. But she was directly in his path, she was armed with a blaster herself, and he thought she knew exactly where he was. If he didn't shoot her, she'd shoot him. He'd been more frighte
ned at times in the couple of dozen firefights he'd been in on his four previous campaigns, but never more horrified at the prospect of a fight than he was now—he was almost paralyzed by it.
So nearly paralyzed that he almost didn't react when the woman twisted to the side and into a prone position with her blaster pointed straight at him. He almost didn't hear her cry out a warning to the other guerrillas. Almost, but almost wasn't enough to kill him. He flung himself to the side in time to avoid anything more than a singeing. His blaster was at his shoulder when he landed on his belly, and he rapidly depressed the firing lever twice. His combat reflexes took over—she was no longer a woman, she was the enemy. Chan's first bolt hit the ground two meters in front of her. He couldn't tell whether the second was a grazing hit or part of the fireball created when the bolt that struck the ground next to her was deflected onto her. The woman was out of the fight, but Chan didn't have time to breathe a sigh of relief. He turned his attention to another guerrilla and incinerated the man.
While Chan was frozen, trying to avoid giving himself away to Lieutenant Pincote, the rest of the squad continued to creep forward.
When they were twenty-five meters from the ambush line, Hyakowa said one soft word into the command circuit of his comm unit: "Positions." His infra shield was down so he could see his men. He quickly glanced to his sides to assure himself his Marines were lowering themselves to the ground. All but one, who was nearly ten meters behind the line. From the position of the red pillar, he guessed it was Chan. He could think of only one reason a man as experienced as Chan would have frozen instead of moving forward with the rest of the squad. He looked toward the ambush and, yes! One of the guerrillas was looking to the rear. If Chan had been spotted, there was no time to waste.
School of Fire Page 19
