Earthfall (Book 2): Earthfall 2 [The Mission Continues]

by Knight, Stephen

  Kelly had moved to the command intelligence station and her fingers flew over a combination of keyboard and touch screen displays. “Where do you want it?”

  “Secondary window, main display.”

  The window opened, making the big flat-screen display a busy place. Laird dragged through the image, pulling it down. He finally came upon a community, taken at a fairly extreme angle. He looked back at Amanda.

  “This is not Sherwood,” he said.

  “No. That’s Beulah,” Amanda told him. “Haven’t seen it in a while, but ...”

  “But it’s been ransacked,” Laird said. “What kind of defenses did they have? Your people have fought with them. You should know that.”

  “Combination of wood and steel walls,” Amanda said. “Lots of defenses set way out. Medieval stuff, maybe—barriers with stakes on them.”

  Laird dragged through the image in the window. “Yeah, I see that. Good against casual infantry, and certainly wildlife. I’d imagine it’d be sufficient to keep most outsiders out. But here”—he pinched his fingers and the result was a zoom into an area of the photo where there was a ragged gap in the wall—“it looks like things didn’t go so well.”

  Amanda viewed the debris that was scattered about. The wall looked as if it had been blown to shit. “Yeah. I guess not.”

  “Hellfires will do that,” Laird said. “These people didn’t stand a chance. You want to stop a Hellfire? You back everything up with a lot of dirt to hope to contain the detonation. Because those things carry two hundred pounds of explosives.”

  “Yeah, okay.”

  Laird started to reply, when a voice came over the monitor speaker.

  “Andrews. You and Mulligan didn’t listen—we didn’t see a rig leaving Sherwood. That’s a shame.”

  “Who the fuck is that?” Laird asked, shocked.

  “It’s coming across TAC one,” Kelly said. “Ah, north and west of us. Eight miles is the estimate ...”

  “Work the data,” Laird told her. He then shouted toward the cockpit while pushing himself to his feet after wriggling out from behind the dinette table. “Cobar! Set a Hellfire for HARM and pop the pod!”

  “Underway,” came the reply.

  “Jim, I don’t know, this transmission seems processed,” Kelly said. “I think it’s rebroadcast from a UAV—”

  The voice spoke again over the speaker. “Your girl is waiting for you at the top of Black Butte. You’ll have safe passage to retrieve her. She was very useful. Thanks for sending her out. Coordinates as follows: 44.3995599, minus 121.6432504. Hope you like what you find. Fox out here.”

  Laird looked at Kelly. “You have a lock on that?”

  “It’s coming from those coordinates,” Kelly said. “Jim, they wouldn’t put a rig there—”

  “Upload the coordinates to fire control!”

  Kelly began typing on her keyboard, and studied the map that came up in response. “Transmission is definitely from that pos, but they couldn’t expect to position their rig there and not be attacked.”

  “Agreed, but it’s an opportunity,” Laird said. “Cobar?”

  “Target information received. Clear to fire on HARM?”

  “Set it to switch to active radar after the weapon reaches apogee,” Laird said as he pushed toward the cockpit. “Good to shoot. Slattery, get out of there!”

  Amanda heard mechanical noises from somewhere above as one of the men squeezed out of the cockpit and Laird pushed in. The man with the pale hair and fuzzy chin slid behind the workstation right behind the cockpit bulkhead and brought the displays there to life. Kelly strapped herself into her seat and looked at Amanda.

  “You need to belt in,” she said. “There are harnesses on the couch. You need help with it?”

  Amanda found the lap belt and fastened it. “Good here,” she said.

  “Shoulder straps are in the back of the couch. They’re on gravity reels. There’s a headrest integrated into the couch, see if you can pull it up. You’ll need it, this is going to be a fast run.”

  There was a hiss from overhead. As soon as she heard it, the rig lurched forward. Its engine noise picked up as the big vehicle suddenly pulled into a hard left turn.

  “Missile’s away—Jordello, watch the missile radar feed, it’s being rebroadcast to us,” Laird said. Amanda could barely hear him, but Kelly apparently got the message over her headset.

  “On it,” she said. “Might want to switch the radar to air search and put the rear minis on point defense.”

  “That’s been done,” Laird said.

  The SCEV rocked violently as it accelerated through the woods. It suddenly tipped to the right, and Amanda reached for the shoulder straps, trying to pull them out of the couch. The rig straightened with a sudden jarring jolt that almost sent her head crashing into the table before her.

  “Holy fuck,” she said aloud. She felt dizzy and a little terrified. Being trapped inside a rolling rig was a far different experience than she had thought it might be.

  The ride smoothed out considerably then, but the rig continued to accelerate. They were on the highway, she knew. Laird was running the rig hard after firing their missile, probably in an attempt to avoid being on the receiving end of any return fire. She took the opportunity to pull the shoulder straps out of their recesses and, after a few seconds of confusion, managed to clip them into the big buckle at her waist.

  Kelly and the man sitting at the station beside her seemed to not notice the transit, they just worked their displays and kept doing what they were supposed to be doing. The rig swerved a bit, probably to avoid contacting one of the rusting hulks that sat on the highway as the crew up front made tracks to avoid being struck by any hostile fire.

  “It’s a drone!” Kelly said from her station. “They were rebroadcasting from a drone!”

  “Reset for proximity det,” Laird replied, and to Amanda his voice was even more distant.

  “Done. Thirty seconds to target splash.” A half minute later: “Target destroyed. They shut it down a few seconds before detonation, but the drone couldn’t fall faster than the missile was flying. So they’ve lost one UAV.”

  “At least we’ve got that going for us,” Laird said. “Buckle up, people ... we’re going off road in about sixty seconds.”

  Amanda watched as Kelly and the man at the station beside her tightened their straps. Kelly turned to her and made a grabbing motion behind her head.

  “You need to pull that headrest up,” she said. “It’s right behind you.”

  Amanda felt around the back of the couch and found a handle. She pulled on it and a padded headrest rose up and clicked into place. Amanda was sitting with her back toward the front of the vehicle. The headrest was big enough that it blocked her view of Kelly and the rest of the rig, leaving her with only the rear bulkhead to look at. Then the vehicle jinked to the right and began bucking like an untamed bronco, hurling her against the straps of her harness. Her stomach roiled, and Amanda was certain she was going to decorate the bulkhead’s padded surface with the contents of her stomach any second now.

  The transit continued for what seemed to be an eternity, and all Amanda could do was cling to the table before her and try not to vomit all over it.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  All three members of SCEV Four were in the rig planning the upcoming activities when they heard Fox’s broadcast. It was transmitted in the clear over their usual rig-to-rig channel of TAC one, and Andrews immediately started working the command intel station to get an RDF slice. He found it, and it did indeed come from the direction of Black Butte.

  Would they really be broadcasting from the pos they just gave us? he wondered.

  “Forget it, Captain,” Mulligan said, as if reading his mind. “They’re not there. They’re using the drone to rebroadcast. So long as the enemy rig stays in line of sight, they can transfer the voice data by laser.”

  “Preaching to the choir here, Sarmajor,” Andrews said. Fox kept his transmission sh
ort regardless, not that there was much need for him to worry. SCEV Four couldn’t open fire on the transmission source without giving away its position, and it wouldn’t be a lot of trouble for Fox to calculate the missile’s trajectory and return fire on the triangulated point of origin. The chances of striking Fox’s vehicle were fairly astronomical, especially since they would have to maneuver clear of the warehouse. That would give the enemy rig enough time to displace and seek cover from a missile attack.

  But more compelling than the source of the transmission was the content of the message. Andrews knew it was likely a trap. The only reason Fox would use Leona in such a way was to try and capture or kill the team from Harmony if they were foolish enough to actually head out to the position the former Green Beret had doled out.

  “We can’t go out there,” he said.

  “Yeah, it’s a set up,” Mulligan agreed.

  “What about sending someone else?” KC asked quietly. “I mean, we could ask some people from Sherwood to head out there. Or at least send out a drone. One of theirs, if not ours.”

  Andrews thought about that for a moment. He looked over at Mulligan. The big NCO was seated at the engineering station. He leaned back in his seat tiredly and rubbed his eyes, then shook his head at Andrews.

  “We can’t ask that of them,” Mulligan said. “We have to start taking some risks ourselves. If anyone’s going up there, it’s got to be one of us.”

  “So are you saying we should go?” Andrews asked. “You just said it’s a set up.”

  “It is. But eventually, we’ll have to go up there to retrieve Leona. Or at least”—he sighed heavily and let his head fall against the seat’s headrest as he looked at the overhead—“at least to collect her body.”

  “Jesus.” KC’s voice was small and tiny. She sat at the dinette, collating maps that had been printed out in hard copy. Andrews couldn’t think of anything else to say. What was there, really? Should he tell Mulligan to look on the sunny side?

  He cleared his throat. “Yeah. We’ll rotate our drone. Passive only, of course. We can incorporate it in the pass we were already going to make.” Part of their planning was to use the SCEV’s sole UAV for a nighttime reconnaissance run around the entire area to help map out the hostile density. While Sherwood had jumped out drones of its own, they didn’t have the sophisticated optics that could read warm bodies in the night.

  “I think we might want to—”

  “Four, this is Five. We copied that last message. We splashed the enemy drone, which means the OPFOR is down to two.”

  Everyone in the rig perked up the second they heard the transmission. There was no mistaking Jim Laird’s voice.

  “Son of a bitch,” Mulligan said, looking up.

  “Do we respond?” KC asked. Her eyes were as big as silver dollars.

  “We do not,” Mulligan replied. “How the hell did Laird get the new ciphers if Eklund was captured?”

  The answer came immediately. “We understand Eklund is in enemy hands. We’re with Amanda Buchek. She boosted Eklund’s ruck, which is how we have the ciphers and knew to contact you on this freq. We’re rotating drones now. Will surveil target area, then report back. By the way, my serial is two-seven-seven-four-four-five-five-five-three, and I’m quartered on level three in unit four-six with Tango Miller. Don’t think Eklund ever knew that. Five, out.”

  Andrews worked the console. “Yeah, that signal was coming from our southwest, and the bearing was changing—he’s broadcasting from a drone, just like the enemy did,” he reported. “And he’s right, Jim is quartered with Tango.” Tango was another SCEV commander, the boss of SCEV Eight. Leona would have known that, but his serial number was a different matter.

  “Do we know Laird’s serial?” Mulligan asked.

  “No. I don’t think so. Personally identifiable information isn’t something we load into the computers.”

  “So that could have been disinformation,” Mulligan said.

  Andrews snorted. “Mulligan ... you don’t think that was Jim Laird?”

  “We can’t independently verify it, so we need to keep our cards close to the vest,” Mulligan said. “We don’t have any procedures to authenticate ourselves to each other, and even if we had, those procedures could be undermined by whatever intel they got from Eklund. So while I’m encouraged to hear what I sincerely hope is Captain Laird, let’s not sit back and start humming Kumbaya.”

  A chime sounded, and Andrews turned to the intel station. “We just received a file,” he said. “And ... it’s video.”

  “No shit?” Mulligan leaned over and looked at the display.

  “File header has SCEV Five’s ident,” Andrews said with a smile.

  “Scan it,” Mulligan said.

  “Yes, yes, that’s underway.” Andrews watched the integrity scan run, and it took only seconds to complete. “Okay, let’s run it.”

  KC got up and hurried over, and Mulligan leaned forward even more. A window opened on one the displays. It showed an SCEV cockpit from the perspective of the forward instrument panel. There were two video cameras in the panel, one in front of each pilot seat. They were used for training purposes, and Andrews had pretty much forgotten all about them. Framed in the confines of the display was Jim Laird as he piloted the rig along the landscape, swaying slightly in his seat as the vehicle negotiated some rough terrain. He looked down at the camera and gave a dazzling smile.

  “Hey, guys! Just wanted to send some verification. It’s me, it’s us, it’s SCEV Five two point oh, and we’re hanging about eighteen miles south of your pos. I know the sarmajor would want some more evidence, so here it is. We have five drones with us. I’ll fly two up to you tonight. Grab the data drives, I’ll encrypt them with your rig transponder code with a number eight at the end. By the way, Mulligan? This is the number of friends you have, including yourself.” With that, Laird held up his right hand and extended his middle finger. The display went black after that.

  “Yeah, okay. It’s really Laird,” Mulligan said sourly.

  Andrews and KC both laughed. After a moment, Mulligan allowed himself a small smile, but that was all. When Andrews saw this, he sobered immediately. There was still the matter of Leona to be handled.

  “Scott. We have to get Leona.”

  “I know, Mike. I know.”

  “We’ll wait for Jim to overfly the area with a drone and relay whatever intel he collects to us. If he sees her, he’s going to tell us. At that point, we’ll need to determine if we’re going to jump out ourselves and take care of things, or if we’re going to leave it to him.” Andrews studied the screens on the intel station for a moment, even though there was nothing new to see. “She was my responsibility. I should be the one who brings her back.”

  “You sound like you think she’s dead too,” KC said.

  Andrews turned from the displays and looked up at KC, who still hovered over his left shoulder. She looked so very young to him then.

  “Kace ... if Fox left her there for us to find, then she probably is dead. Or dying. Or maybe even worse,” he added, though he didn’t want to pull on that thread any further. He discovered he was suddenly good at keeping the emotional aspects of the situation pushed to the edges, but when he did the deep dive and considered it further, it was extremely difficult not to get worked up over it. He had been the one to send Leona out, and now he had to carry the weight of responsibility around his neck like a heavy plumbing stone. It was only fitting and correct that he be the one to venture out into the field and bring her home.

  Which led to a potentially sticky situation, embodied by none other than the six-foot-six-inch frame of Command Sergeant Major Scott Mulligan. Andrews turned away from KC and regarded the bigger man beside him.

  “I’ll go get her, man,” he said.

  Mulligan shook his head slowly, his hard-chiseled features fully revealed in the compartment’s LED lights. In that moment, Mulligan looked much older than his fifty-two years. He looked older than Benchley, who
to Andrews was only a few days younger than dirt.

  “We’ll both go, sir,” Mulligan said. “I know you need to be out there doing this. But obviously, I need to be out there as well.”

  “I rather think you should stay with the SCEV, Sergeant Major.”

  “I rather think you should want to keep your front teeth, sir.”

  Andrews narrowed his eyes. “Sarmajor?”

  “Just a little innocent coaching from my side, sir,” Mulligan replied.

  “I can hold down the rig while you guys jump out,” KC said. “Neither of you should go out solo. Too much can go wrong.”

  “Like both of us getting killed together?” Andrews asked.

  Mulligan harrumphed. “Oh ye of little faith.”

  “Mulligan, it’s bad news for us to go on the same op together,” Andrews said. “We were undermanned before, and we’re even worse off now.”

  Mulligan jerked his chin toward KC. “You saying Winters can’t watch the shop while we’re out on our little walkabout?”

  “Has nothing to do with that,” Andrews said. “But one person can’t reasonably operate an SCEV aside from driving it.”

  Mulligan leaned back in his seat and looked at KC. “Winters, if Andrews and I bite it, what are you going to do?”

  “Head for Harmony,” she said immediately.

  Mulligan smirked at Andrews. “There you go.”

  “But I wouldn’t want to,” KC added quickly.

  Mulligan looked at her. His expression was sharp as a knife at first but it softened when he’d had a moment to process what she’d said. “Winters, sticking around is only going to get you killed. You blaze trails and bring back help. That’s what we, and these people all around us, will need. A whole lot of help.”

  “I know. I’ll do it, Sarmajor.”

  Mulligan nodded slowly. “I know it’ll be hard, but you can do it. Let the machine do most of the driving. Hooah?”

  “Hooah.”

  Andrews stirred in his seat. The sudden appearance of SCEV Five was a happy occasion, especially if his crew was able to conduct some additional recons. And if they had more drones, that only served to increase their battlefield awareness. They could be less conservative with their own platform, presuming replacements arrived as Laird had promised. But they still had to conduct their local recon.