Griffith waited on the other side, leaning against the fender of his old Volvo. “Welcome back, boys. I can see that things didn’t go too well.” He nodded toward the dog tags Andrews still held in one hand.
Andrews held them up. “They have Leona.”
Griffith looked from him to Mulligan. He opened his mouth as if to say something, then changed his mind. He put both hands on his cane and slowly stood up as straight as an eighty-something man could.
“I presume they have Amanda and the others too, then.”
“Very likely, though the conversation centered around his possession of Leona. One way or the other, he has them too.”
“We will adapt,” Griffith said quietly.
“Master Guns, we need to take field positions,” Mulligan said to him. “We can’t stay inside the walls.”
“Underway,” Griffith said. “Has been for a while. We’ve been moving people out ever since the first attack. Been moving lots of guns out to the west, and have two teams breaking down to the south as well. It’ll be a race to get to the bluffs, but we should get there first. They won’t be able to take their rig, or any vehicles for that matter, up there. There are fire trails, but they’re in shit shape.”
“Good to know, but don’t count on them not getting an SCEV up there if they want to,” Mulligan said. “How are they outfitted? Your troops?”
“Like Marines, Green Beret,” Griffith said. “So who is our opponent?”
“One of my old commanders,” Mulligan said.
Griffith blinked, taken aback. “What?”
Mulligan nodded. “I worked for him when we were in First Special Forces Group up at Joint Base Lewis-McChord. He commanded one of the alpha detachments I was assigned to, and we saw some shit go down together in the southern Pacific. As things happen, he transferred over to the Fifth and I stayed with the First. We lost track of each other. Usual stuff. Now he pops up here, and on the wrong side of right. Believe that shit?”
“So he knows what you do?” Griffith asked.
Mulligan shrugged. “As far as Harmony goes, he was involved with the program before it went live. That’s how he knew the passwords for the site. As far as his field capability, he’s an officer. He knows the life of a Green Beret, but more from the leadership perspective as opposed to hands-on operations. But he knew enough to be useful and competent, and I’d imagine if he’s made it this far, then his skill set has probably grown quite a bit. Along with a rather surprising penchant for brutality. He was always kind of standoffish back in the day, but not cruel.”
“Is he tough?” Griffith asked.
Mulligan looked at the old Marine as if he was asking a stupid question. “Doesn’t matter if he was. It’s pretty obvious circumstances have conspired to make him one of the toughest bastards in the area, if not on the face of what remains of the planet.”
“Okay. Okay.” Griffith took a breath and released it slowly. “So what did he tell you?”
“He told us we can reclaim Eklund if we leave Sherwood and head to the south end of Bend. He also told us he wants Sherwood, apparently for its resources,” Andrews said.
“So you’ll be leaving then?”
Andrews didn’t say anything. Mulligan glanced back at him, his expression neutral beneath his helmet and visor. Andrews didn’t need to have a degree in psychology to know leaving would never be in the cards.
“We’re not leaving,” he said after a long moment. “But we do need to discuss our next steps. And you probably need to brief Stan on what’s going down.”
Griffith nodded. “Roger that. Let me give you boys a ride to where you need to go.”
CHAPTER FORTY
It took time for them to wend their way back to the warehouse where the SCEV was stored, and over the course of that time an uneasy wall of silence descended between Andrews and Mulligan. As agitated as he was about Leona’s capture, Andrews knew it must have been a thousand times worse for Mulligan. But the big NCO kept his cool, his eyes flat and expressionless, his face a blank mask. Andrews found he could barely sit still for any amount of time. In counterpoint, Mulligan barely moved aside from turning his head to scan the immediate vicinity, first as they drove in Griffith’s old Volvo, then again as they walked toward the warehouse. Before they got to it, they split up. Andrews would go in first, and Mulligan would join him later after making a quick circuit around the area to inspect the security situation. It made some sense. While they had no evidence a drone was surveilling them, they still had to be deceptive about where the rig was being held.
KC met Andrews as he emerged from the airlock, her eyes big and wide with dread. Andrews smiled at her grimly as he put his rifle in the weapons locker. He then pulled out his uniform and set it on the dinette table—there was no need for him to try and disguise himself any longer, the enemy knew him by name now. KC followed his every move.
“Is it true the lieutenant’s dead?” she asked finally.
Andrews’s guts tightened. He tried to swallow, but his mouth was dry. With hands that were suddenly trembling, he poured himself a mug of water and slugged it down. It roiled inside his belly, and the dryness in his mouth didn’t go away.
“We don’t know that,” Andrews said.
“The sarmajor thinks she is. I heard him say it over the radio.”
Andrews put the mug on the stainless-steel counter and sighed. “I know what he said, Kace. He may be right, but there’s no way for him to know.” He remembered the dog tags in his pocket, and he pulled them out and turned them over in his hand.
EKLUND
LEONA R
619-44-0909
A POS
METHODIST
I never knew she was a Methodist, he said to himself. Never even knew if she was religious. So many things I probably never knew—
When he realized he was thinking of her in the past tense, he closed his hand around the tags. He went to her locker and pulled it open. He hung the tags on one of the hooks there, and they dangled next to her uniforms. On an SCEV, crew lockers were private. No one but their designated owner went through them, and if someone else pilfered through their contents then that crewperson was in for a hell of a lot of trouble. Aside from the uniforms and mission-related gear, he surveyed the small scope of her personal effects. Hairbrush, comb, a bathing kit, body lotion, vitamins, and, he noticed with a small smile, a packet of birth control pills.
He sighed again. It was a shame that all of Leona’s earthly possessions were contained inside a metal locker that was twelve inches wide by twelve inches deep by sixty inches tall. Aside from whatever she might have in her quarters back at Harmony, this is all that summed up the woman who was Andrews’s executive officer. He closed the locker and looked back at KC. She stood near the cockpit, watching him with big eyes full of worry and remorse.
“This is how it happens sometimes, KC,” he told her. “A lot of people don’t get that out here in the field, things can be really dangerous. Doesn’t matter how smart or competent you are, if it’s your time ... it’s your time.” He thought about Spencer and Choi, more than a year dead now but still with him in some way regardless. “Wishing for it to be different won’t change anything.”
“So you think she’s dead too,” KC said softly.
Andrews turned away from her and returned to the dinette where his uniform lay on the table. “I’m going to change,” he said. “Be right back.”
He stepped into the sleeping compartment and closed the shield door behind him. The LED lights snapped on automatically, and he pulled off the hand-me-down clothes Buchek had found for him and slipped into his uniform. He sat on a bunk and pulled on his boots, trying hard to think about nothing in particular. When he was done, he gathered up the clothing and folded it up as neatly as he could. They belonged to someone, and if nothing else he was going to deliver them in better condition than he’d received them. At least they’d been washed with real detergent and didn’t reek of body odor any longer.
H
e stepped back into the second compartment and pulled a plastic bag out of a drawer. He shoved the clothes inside. KC watched him from the cockpit doorway, her arms crossed as she leaned against the shield doorframe.
“I’m going to do a systems check while we wait for Mulligan,” Andrews told her. “I’m sure you’ve been on top of things, but we’re going to have to start making some plans now, and one of those plans might be to take the rig out into the field.”
“We’re going to leave?”
Andrews opened the inner airlock door and tossed the bag inside. “Possibly, but I’d much rather stay and fight,” he said as the door hissed closed. He pointed at the sidearm she wore on a web belt. “Getting used to that?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. Keep it with you at all times, and any time you might have to leave the rig, you make sure you do so in full battle rattle. Things are getting serious out there.”
“I will.”
“Cool.” He nodded toward the cockpit. “Pardon me, young lady?”
She moved out of the way and Andrews slipped into the pilot’s seat. He checked the rig’s engineering status, ensuring all its systems were still functional. The batteries were discharging at a very low rate, but the APU would have to be switched on at some point to recharge them—it would literally take only three minutes of run time to replace the energy they had shed. KC had obviously been very frugal with power consumption during her long periods alone in the rig.
“Hey, what’ve you been eating?” he asked from the cockpit.
“Just the prepack stuff,” KC replied. She returned to the doorway and looked in. “Why?”
“Battery charge is still above ninety-seven percent. You haven’t even been running the microwave, right?”
“I don’t really need it,” she said.
Andrews half turned in the seat and looked up at her. “Kace, this isn’t austerity duty. You can have a hot meal at least three times a day, if you want.”
“I know,” she said. “The prepack and reconstituted stuff is fine for me.”
Andrews shrugged. “As you will, Sergeant. Your taste buds are yours to torture.”
He resumed his check of the vehicle. There was nothing wrong with it. Fluid levels were all good, more than enough go-juice to take the field and run around for a month or more and still have enough energy to get home. Unsurprisingly, the minigun magazines were full, and all Hellfires were still in their racks. Radar was on standby. Electromagnetic pulses flickered across the rig’s antennae as the enemy fighters communicated sparingly, but he felt the rates of transmission were increasing. They were coordinating movements. At the same time, the bands the crew had associated with Sherwood were also alive with activity. Both sides were ramping up for action.
A chime sounded and a corresponding annunciator illuminated on the forward instrument panel. The outer airlock had opened, and Andrews checked the external cameras. Mulligan hauled himself into the airlock and sealed it before proceeding onward to the rig’s interior. Andrews hauled himself out of the pilot’s seat and got to his feet as the towering sergeant major entered the vehicle.
“Sarmajor,” Andrews said by way of greeting.
“Sir. We’re all good for the time being outside. Master Guns and his folks have been busy at work. Not much they can do about protecting structures and the like from attack, but all the noncombatants have been relocated to the mine.”
“Good,” Andrews said.
Mulligan shrugged out of his gear. KC stood nearby, watching him openly. Mulligan tried to ignore it at first, but the weight of the crew chief’s gaze became too heavy even for him. As he put his rifle in the weapons locker, he finally looked over at her.
“What is it, Winters?”
KC sighed heavily, and her eyes gleamed in the LED lights that illuminated the second compartment. “Oh, Sarmajor,” she said, and there was real emotion in her voice.
Mulligan closed the locker and turned toward her. He was more than a foot taller than she was and almost twice as massive, so he truly loomed over her like some sort of martial tower. He put his hands on his hips, and the effect seemed to double. Andrews couldn’t see his face, but he could see KC. She didn’t look away as tears began to build up in her eyes. She wasn’t about to cry because she was intimidated, or exhausted, or even frightened. She was getting emotional because she feared what the command sergeant major must be enduring behind the façade of cool competence he exuded.
“KC.” Mulligan’s voice was soft but direct when he spoke. “There’s nothing we can do for the lieutenant. She knew the risks, just like the rest of us. We gambled that a small group would be able to get past Fox and his people, and we rolled snake eyes. Like the old saw goes, no plan survives contact with the enemy, and they won this round. No matter how much it hurts, we have to recalibrate and try to develop a real operational tempo, because we can’t walk away from this one.”
“You think she’s dead?” KC asked. “Really?” She wiped at her face when a single tear spilled over and traced a wet line down her cheek.
Mulligan was silent for a long moment. He half turned away from her and glanced back at Andrews. The big man’s face was a little taut, but he revealed no untoward emotion. If he was bothered by the set of circumstances the team faced, he didn’t allow it to show.
“They had her for less than two days, and they know pretty much everything. That they have insider knowledge of our operations—even knowledge of my personal relationship with her—tells me that something substantial occurred. All of us know Leona very well, and she wouldn’t willingly collaborate with an enemy force. Whether she’s alive or dead right this moment, I don’t know.” He locked eyes with Andrews. “But I do know this: when we see her again, we’ll be looking at a cold corpse. Not the woman we all knew.”
Andrews felt like he’d been punched in the gut. He understood intellectually what Mulligan was saying. Even if Leona was still alive, there was very little chance that condition would continue. And by the time the team managed to make it to her, she would be well past her best-by date. He clenched his teeth together and manned up as much as he could. Emotion wasn’t going to help him now. And he had to show his crew chief and the base command sergeant major that when more big hits came, he was ready for them.
You wanted to be a player, he told himself. Every play has a cost.
KC wasn’t under any such pretense. Tears spilled over her eyelids when Mulligan had his say. Mulligan turned back toward her, and for a moment, Andrews thought the big man would lash out at her, berate her for showing weakness when they needed to be strong. Instead he reached out and took her face in his big hands, his thumbs wiping away the young woman’s tears.
“Listen, you’re just a kid,” he said softly. “You’re way too young to be dealing with stuff like this. That’s not a knock against you, just a statement of fact. But this is the world we live in, and in this world, good people are eaten by bad people all the time. Sometimes literally. We can change that, we can just exist inside of it and try to show people a better way. It’s up to them to see.”
“And what if they don’t see?” KC asked, sniffing.
“We kill them,” Andrews said.
Mulligan nodded. “What the captain said. We kill them, and pretty much everybody who ever knew them.”
“Jesus,” KC said. “I mean ... Jesus fucking Christ.”
Mulligan smoothed back her spiky dark hair then released her. “Like I said, it’s the world we live in. So we’re going to have to start planning how we’re going to continue that while making the bad guys fall over dead this time.”
“What’ve you got, Mulligan?” Andrews asked. “I think KC needs to stay with the rig full time at this point, if you don’t mind me stepping out ahead of you.”
Mulligan straightened up and nodded. “Yeah. You and I need to take to the field, sir. But Winters here needs to hang back with the vehicle.”
“What?” KC wiped away her tears angrily. “I can fight
!”
“And you will,” Mulligan said. “Preferably from about five miles away with a few Hellfire missiles moving at nine hundred ninety-five miles per hour. The captain and I will have to go out and find Fox’s rig, and we’re going to need you to rain steel on it until it’s destroyed.”
“Hell, yeah,” KC said. She stood up straight when she said it, squaring off her narrow shoulders.
“But after you uncage the ordnance, you need to bug out,” Andrews said. “Seriously, if the enemy rig isn’t taken out, you need to get the fuck out of Dodge because they’ll be able to return fire on your position.”
“Rog, I’ll hook up with you guys directly,” KC said.
Mulligan shook his head. “No, Sergeant. You’ll make for the replenishment site or, my personal preference, direct to Harmony Base. Let George take you the entire way. Once you open up with the Hellfires, the enemy will have a better than decent fix on your position. We lose this rig, we lose every link we have with Harmony. You need to get back and report out what happened up here, so they know where to send the cavalry.”
“What?” KC shook her head, utterly scandalized by the suggestion. “You want me to leave you guys behind? Sarmajor, when did you become such a pussy?”
“Attagirl, I like that attitude,” Mulligan said. “Always knew there was a little scrapper in there. But getting to Harmony is the only way to save our asses, Winters. These rigs aren’t designed for single-pilot ops, but with the tech and the fact you’ll just be retracing a route that’s already been navigated, you’ll be fine. It won’t be comfortable, but it’s doable. And trust me, you will have to do it.”
KC considered that. “Maybe we need to develop more in the way of planning before we get to that point, Sarmajor.”
“Mulligan’s right, KC,” Andrews said. “Once you fire, you un-ass and move out. The Hellfires are our last ace to play, and once they’re gone, you’re just going to become a ballistics magnet. We can consider it likely the enemy has more toys to bring to the party, and at the end of the day, the only way anyone’s going to make it back to Harmony is in an SCEV.” He pointed at her. “This is your only mission here: get back to Harmony Base and report to General Benchley. Otherwise, all of this is shit on a stick. The only way we can save Sherwood is if Harmony surges more troops into the area.”
Earthfall (Book 2): Earthfall 2 [The Mission Continues] Page 41
