“So don’t get captured,” Mulligan said. “But if you do, keep trying to be funny. It might put them to sleep.”
“Har har,” Leona said.
Mulligan smiled at her and turned to Andrews. “Sir, please wash that shit you’re wearing. Then find Buchek and get an escort for the lieutenant. She can do this alone, but assigning people who know the lay of the land would increase our chances of success here.”
“Roger that, Sarmajor. Roger that.” Andrews started for the sleeping compartment, where the rig’s small washing machine was located. And then he’d step into the latrine and take a quick shower. Smelling of someone else’s funk was one of the worst things he’d had to do lately, but he imagined it would become a sweet memory as time moved on.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
By the time Andrews had returned to the bar that served as Sherwood’s town hall, Buchek and Griffith had already started to take action. Two of Sherwood’s own drones had been launched to reconnoiter the immediate area. They were small and capable of video-only transmission back to two old tablets that had managed to survive the war, but it was better than nothing. Even though they had nighttime visual capacity, Buchek had been willing to send them out during daylight hours in order to try and get a snap count of the number of hostiles closing in on the community. In order to do this and to make a play for greater survivability, they had to fly at several thousand feet in order to gain some coverage as their range was short, less than two miles in one direction. It was risky, and Andrews found out that one of the little drones had in fact been destroyed by enemy ground fire. But the other returned undamaged, and both feeds had been dutifully recorded. There were about seventy enemy fighters in the area off to the east of Sherwood, and a few more to the south. As far as they could tell, there was no enemy presence to the west or the north.
And of course, there was no sign of the enemy SCEV.
Andrews reviewed the footage on one of Buchek’s tablets. The enemy looked like a ragtag bunch. There were uniforms out in their mix, of course, and they tried to hide themselves as well as they were able, but the pine forests just weren’t that thick. People were seen out amidst the trees, and one large encampment of about fifty folks was hard to miss. They’d even dug latrines in a small field. Andrews thought that was pretty brazen, but then and again, the enemy thought they were safe from attack.
Because they have an armored vehicle they think Sherwood can’t defeat, Andrews told himself.
“Are you going to send out more drones tonight?” he asked.
Griffith nodded, his hat perched on top of his shaven head. “We will. Might be helpful if yours was to go up, too. Your unit probably has much more flight time.”
Andrews nodded. “We’ll run a circuit tonight. We’ll keep it up high, over ten thousand feet so we can cover more territory.”
“You not worried about your drone getting shot down?”
“I am, but at that altitude it would have to be hit by a guided weapon. The drone has radar and laser warning receivers on it, so it can make some defensive maneuvers to break lock. If worse comes to worse, it can just shut down and recover at fifty feet above ground level, then fly home.”
“Maybe you could have done this sooner,” Buchek said, “before a couple of little girls and their mother were killed.”
Andrews sighed. “We have to be conservative in how we employ our resources. They’re not replaceable. That being said, we’re now in a hard place, so we’re going to come out swinging if we have to. On that note, there’s something else I wanted to talk to you about. Privately,” Andrews added, looking around at the people who were in the bar.
“There’s nothing you can tell us that we’re going to keep from the rest of the community,” Buchek said. His demeanor was combative, and Andrews had no trouble determining the man was pissed off and perhaps more than a little frightened. Sherwood was about to be put to its greatest test since the war.
“It’s a special operation we want to conduct,” Andrews said. He looked at Griffith. “The fewer people who know about it, the better it will be.”
“What kind of op?” Griffith asked.
“One that involves a long-range patrol going over the wall,” Andrews said.
“We’ve already done that,” Buchek said. “We have teams of people headed out to Ironside.”
“This is different, Stan.”
Buchek favored Andrews with a stern look. “So different it will save more people from getting killed?”
Griffith clasped his hands across the head of his cane. “Stan. Give the man a break. This is our fight, not his.” He glanced down at his watch. “Besides which, we need to relocate to the mine soon. If the captain needs something, let’s hear what he has to say before things start moving in too many directions at once.”
Buchek rose to his feet with a heavy sigh that bordered on a snarl. “All right, Andrews. I’ll give you two minutes.”
Griffith pushed back in his chair and rose as well. “Hell, it’ll take me two minutes just to get around the bar.”
Buchek headed for the back room behind the bar. There was a small office there adjacent to a storage room. A crew of people were there, boxing up supplies and loading them onto hand trucks for removal elsewhere.
“Guys, give us just a moment, please,” Buchek said as he pushed in. Andrews hovered by the door, waiting for Griffith as he shuffled forward. The people in the storage room filed out, looking at Andrews with tense faces.
“Nice duds,” said a small, elfin woman with short gray hair. “Your pack is in there.” She jerked a bony thumb over her shoulder.
“Thank you,” Andrews replied.
When the room was clear, he stepped inside. Griffith followed him and pushed the metal fire door closed. The three men stood in the storage room, their features illuminated by a row of LED lights.
“All right, Andrews. What is it?” Buchek snapped.
Andrews filled the two men in on Leona’s mission. Buchek listened impassively, but Andrews got the general vibe that he wasn’t particularly pleased with his request to assign people from Sherwood to lead her to the area of the rendezvous point. Griffith was more interested in what Andrews had to say, and he stroked his chin thoughtfully as he listened.
“So you think your people will be here in a couple of weeks,” he said.
“Yes. I’m presuming they’re expediting their departure. It’s possible they could be on the road by the end of next week,” Andrews said.
“We’ll be dead by then,” Buchek said.
“Not necessarily,” Griffith said. “We might lose a lot of real estate and a lot of lives, but they can’t kill us all that easily. But if Captain Andrews’s friends roll up and can’t tell friend from foe, that could make things a lot worse. They could engage the wrong side, or they might just hold back and wait.”
“Or get killed themselves,” Andrews added.
“I’m not sure that’s a consideration we need to take on,” Buchek said. “Your people should be able to take care of themselves, Andrews.”
“And they can. But if they get hit, they’ll never be able to return to Harmony and get more help sent up. And chances are good if they don’t make it, then we won’t either.” Andrews crossed his arms over his chest. “All I’m asking is for a few people to accompany Leona and get her to where she needs to go. If she can contact Laird, they can set up and start looking for the enemy rig. We’ve been told the enemy is only a few hundred in number—we can hold them off for as long as it takes, but we need to kill the enemy rig to make it a decisive victory.”
“At least you’re saying ‘we,’” Buchek groused.
“Stan, we’re with you here,” Andrews said. “We’re going to fight them with you. Once the opportunity presents itself, we’re going to kill that enemy rig and then we’ll rock and roll right over these assholes. Don’t make any assumptions—most of my team is young, but we’ve been trained on how to do things Army style and you’ve met the man who’s
responsible for a lot of that training. Warfighting’s not our primary mission, but we weren’t sent out here to make nice with people who want to kill us.”
Buchek grunted again. “I’m ready to watch that.”
“So. Escort for Eklund? Whether you assign anyone or not, she’s still going,” Andrews pressed.
A glower spread across Buchek’s face, and he looked at Griffith. “Eldon?”
“Oh, you mean you want my opinion here?” Griffith asked.
Buchek’s glower deepened. “Do not fuck with me here, Eldon.”
“The lieutenant does need to get to the other team from Harmony, preferably before they roll into whatever party we have going on. It occurs to me that I don’t know what the destination is, and I hope that’s intentional? You haven’t told anyone here in Sherwood the exact location of your rendezvous point?” Griffith looked at Andrews directly.
“I—” Andrews had to think about it for a moment. “I don’t recall telling anyone specifically, Master Guns. It wasn’t intentional, it just never came up ...”
“That’s fine—we don’t need to know, nor should we.” He looked back at Buchek. “Let’s send three souls with the lieutenant. I like Taggart and T-Bone right off the top, because they’re both pretty solid, have prior military experience, and they’ve been in some shit before.” Griffith paused. “And I like Amanda, because she’s dead smart and probably the most capable person we have. If anyone can get the lieutenant to where she needs to go, she can.”
Buchek raised his head. “Oh, you want me to send out my daughter? How about your son, Eldon?”
“Sean is good and unflappable, but he’s just not tough enough for something like this,” Griffith said. “If you decline to send Amanda, which is your right, I’ll nominate Sean for the mission. But Sean has a knack for keeping people calm, and with what we might be facing inside these walls over the next few days, that might be something we should keep on tap.”
“Because he’s a calming influence?” Buchek asked. His voice was a coarse snarl. “Is that why you won’t send your kid out into the world, Eldon?”
Griffith looked at Buchek with stony eyes. “I am as willing to sacrifice mine for Sherwood as any other. You think differently, you need to be holding court with someone else ... motherfucker.” As he spoke, Griffith sat up straighter and jutted out his chin, as if daring Buchek to take a swing. The implied threat was clear in the old man’s voice, and Andrews almost took a step back from the weight of the primal ferocity in Griffith’s voice. He had a vision then of Mulligan in his eighties: old, torn up, wasted, but still ready to lean forward in the foxhole and show the world that he remained operational.
“Stan, there’s a good possibility she might actually be safer out there,” he said, filling in the gap of silence that ensued between the two men. “Pretty soon, the enemy is going to be oriented onto Sherwood. They’re not going to be paying close attention to their flanks, because there’s not a lot of people outside the walls to cause them any grief. Sure, they’ll pull security, we can expect them to do that. But I can’t see them patrolling the overall area like it’s their own backyard. They know where we are, and unless you order folks out to attack, they think they’ll know exactly where to find us.” Andrews used inclusive terminology, not just to create a bridge between his team and Buchek. Despite the burgeoning distrust the older man was harboring, the people of Sherwood and team from Harmony really were in it together. “When push comes to shove, I’ll light up the engines and roll my rig out into combat. We’ll score a lot of kills, you can count on that—but once we’re taken out, it’s going to be up to you. The enemy can take their time, it’s on their side. But if Eklund isn’t out there to fill in Jim Laird’s team, then the follow-on is going to be imprecise. Don’t misunderstand me, I know Jim and his XO. They’ll push the pedal to the metal. But if they don’t know what they’re riding into, they’re going to be less effective. And less effective means a lot more of Sherwood dies.”
Buchek snorted, a derisive action. “Oh, really ...”
Andrews stepped closer and loomed over Buchek. “Listen, you stupid bastard,” he hissed. “We could have left at the first sign of trouble, but we’re still here. You want to bitch and moan about how we’re not out there dying for you lazy pricks, that’s fine—you can do that all night long, it’s not going to change a thing. The fact of the matter is, you’re about to get really fucked, and squirming like this is going to make it hurt even worse.”
“Whoa, calm down there, Captain,” Griffith said.
“Yeah. Calm down there.” Buchek slowly pushed Andrews away from him, his face a hard mask. “You do that again, things aren’t going to go well for you.”
“Give me some bodies, Stan,” Andrews said. “Invest in your own future here. Help me get Leona to where she needs to go.”
Buchek paced around the storage room, looking at the shelves. Griffith and Andrews watched him until he walked around the entire space and returned to where he had started. He sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. He looked suddenly tired.
“All right, Andrews. They’ll go with you. I can’t force Amanda to leave if she doesn’t want to go—I mean, these are her people, she may choose to stay and fight. But I’ll run it past her and see what she says. If she can’t or won’t go, I’ll detail someone else.”
“There’s always Sean,” Griffith said.
Buchek shook his head. “No. Sean should stay. Like you said, he’s good at keeping people motivated, and we’ll probably need that. I’ll find someone else.” He turned back to Andrews. “All right, Captain. I’ll give you your escort, one way or the other. Anything else?”
“Just keep this between the three of us for the moment, until Lee and the others go over the wall.”
Buchek nodded. “Yeah. I’ll do that.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
“Okay, you’re fully mission equipped here,” Mulligan said after he and Leona organized her equipment. He slapped the full rucksack she would be carrying. It was heavy, full of freeze-dried food that would reconstitute with water, ammunition, sanitary supplies, a medical kit that included vitamins and antibiotics, a water filtering and purification system, and even lightweight solar panels so she could recharge her radio’s batteries. While there wouldn’t be any direct communication between her and the rest of the team, she would at least monitor the frequencies for any updates that might be broadcast; if Sherwood was going down for the count, the SCEV team would do their best to advise her.
“Thanks for your help, Sergeant Major,” Leona said. She was already manned up and ready for the night’s mission, clad in full tactical gear including ballistic armor and night vision gear. They were alone in the SCEV. Andrews and KC were fussing over the drone, which had been removed from the launch bay atop the rig in preparation for its own mission, a reconnaissance flight in advance of Leona’s jump out. It would be launched away from the rig by Andrews and fly its preprogrammed course, collecting data the entire time. It would take an hour or so for it complete the circuit before it returned to Sherwood, where Andrews would download the intel and review it. If nothing was amiss, then Leona and her escorts would finally depart and head northeast for the rendezvous site.
Mulligan pushed himself to his feet and pulled the bag over to the airlock. When that was done, he turned and examined Leona critically, checking the fit of the gear she wore on her person. He put a hand on her shoulder and turned her around, tightening a strap here and tugging on her vest, ensuring it was fully cinched and ready for the field.
“Okay, you look a hundred percent badass,” he said finally. “CamelBak is full, and you are squared away, Lieutenant.”
“Does this uniform make my ass look big?”
Mulligan barked out a laugh and slapped her on the bottom. “That’ll never happen. That body’s tight as hell.” He turned her around to face him, and Leona expected him to start fooling around with the full magazines in her vest. Instead, he embraced her. Leona laugh
ed as she reached up and put her arms around his neck, a motion that wasn’t exactly assisted by the heavy armor she wore. Even though she was well above average height for a woman, Mulligan still towered over her. Every time he hugged her, his sheer physical size made her feel small. Not that she minded that. She kissed his chin and felt sharp stubble against her lips.
“Relaxing the grooming standards, Sarmajor?” she asked.
“It’s been about twelve hours since I last shaved, young lady. Give a guy a break, a little five o’clock shadow’s not going to kill you.”
“True.” She pulled his face down to hers and kissed him. He squeezed her, and the mags in her vest creaked. “Easy there, tiger,” she said after the kiss had ended.
“Yeah well, easy for you to say, GI Jane—you’re going out into the field.”
“Aw, are you worried about me?”
“No. I’m just jealous.”
Leona laughed. “Scott, you really have a way with women.”
Mulligan squeezed her again. “I’m a straight-up smooth operator.”
“Is that so? I hadn’t noticed.”
“Well, you didn’t seem to be complaining last night ...”
“You wouldn’t have noticed—you were too busy bitching about how short the racks are in an SCEV,” Leona said.
Mulligan laughed. “Yeah well, I’m six-six and the racks are six feet long. It’s a tribulation, but I think I made it all work out. Or am I wrong?”
“You’re not wrong.” Leona kissed his neck, then cupped his face between her hands. She pulled on his cheeks.
“What are you doing?” Mulligan asked.
“Is it just me, or are you starting to get jowls?” Leona asked.
“Leona, I am in my fifties,” Mulligan said. His voice was flat and dry.
“Hmm. Wouldn’t have known that last night. By the way, did you strip off the sheets—”
“Washed and replaced. Not to worry, I’m an expert at evidence dispersal. Not that the captain and Winters don’t already know what went down. Speaking of which, I should thank the man. I don’t remember us doing the same for him with Rachel.”
Earthfall (Book 2): Earthfall 2 [The Mission Continues] Page 34
