Wolf Pack_Invasion and Conquest

by Rob Buckman

Pain was the first thing he was conscious of, feeling as if his whole body had taken a savage beating from someone, wishing he could remember who, so he could beat the living shit out of him when he sobered up. Not that this was the first time he'd felt this way, having been beaten daily for a month after being captured by a bunch of local rag-head, Hajji, camel jockeys a few years back. He'd paid them back in kind when they made a mistake one day, slitting the throats of all eight of his jailers before escaping into the desert. He savored the memory of them choking to death on their own blood, and the look in their eyes as they died, seeing his grinning, battered face looking down at them. Current memories returned, the jump, the dying aircraft and for a moment he was surprised he was still alive enough to feel pain. In that case, pain was a good thing. With a bit of a struggle he managed to get his eyes open and look around. He let out something akin to a laugh that sounded more like a frog with a sore throat when he discovered it was daylight, and he was hanging five feet above the ground in his chute harness. After hanging that way for so long, his hands were swollen to the point he could hardly close them. Flexing them open and closed he got them working again, and at last managed to reach up and grab the harness release. Lifting his legs in preparation for a proper landing, he pulled the release and thudded to the ground in a painful heap.

  "Oh Fuck!" He muttered after he'd regained his breath.

  It wasn’t exactly the prescribed parachute roll he was supposed to do, not even close. It was more like a 250-pound sack of drunken shit hitting the ground. Thankfully, he’d managed to get his dick back into his pants before he did a back flip off the ramp, but a slight coolness down there told him that his fly was still open. So? What else was new, at least he hadn’t pissed himself.

  “Now what the fuck am I supposed to do?” He muttered.

  With an effort, Decker got to his feet, and took stock of his surroundings, not that there was much to see. Scrub pine trees stretched in all directions, and the overhead canopy prevented him seeing much of the sky, let alone in which direction the aircraft crashed. His first goal was to find the crash site and see if anyone else survived. He doubted it, seeing how low they were when he jumped, but he knew they'd try. Like him, Lady Luck might have favored one or two of the others. Despite his aches and pains, he dumped his gear at the foot of the tallest pine tree he could see, and after taking a long leak, started to climb, hoping he could get high enough to see in what direction the aircraft crashed. Even after several hours since it went down, there should be a telltale smoke plume. There was, and shooting a compass bearing, it was South-West of his current location. After reaching the ground, his first order of business was a meal, lots of water and getting his gear and weapons ready. Unlike others, Decker preferred to pack all his weapons as a precaution against being injured on a hard, or tree landing. He’d seen more than one guy get his neck broken by his weapon sling that got caught by a branch, or the barrel of a rifle jammed into someone's leg. He strapped a large 'Bowie' style knife to his right thigh, plus two fighting knives to each shoulder strap of his Spec Ops T.H.E. or 'hold all your shit' harness. Even if this was a last-minute mission, old habits die hard, and even half-drunk he remembered to fill his 'camel' bladder, so he didn't have to worry about water for a while. Unpacking his M4A1 assault rifle he dropped a full mag into the well and tapped it home. He also loaded the RIS/RAS, grenade launcher, and check that the tactical holographic sight was working correctly. As usual, everything worked as it should, and hadn't suffered any damaged in his plunge through the canopy. Lastly, he strapped on both Glock 22's, one on his left hip in a cross-draw configuration, the other in a special pocket in the bottom of his Bergen. Without the rucksack, he usually carried it in an underarm holster, but with the ruck on, it just got in the way. He ate his MRE squatting beside the pine tree he'd climbed, his cold gray eyes searching the brush around him for any sign of movement.

  …"Then there are the wolves," the old war veteran said, "and the wolves feed on the sheep without mercy."… LTC (RET) D. Grossman

  CHAPTER TWO: SHEEP AND SHEEPDOGS

  Without Intel on the enemy location or deployment strength, he was groping in the dark. As a rule, he’d expect the enemy to head for the crash site to investigate, but with these little green motherfuckers, or whatever color they were, no one knew what the hell they'd do. His best bet was to stay as invisible as possible. The hairy looking overcoat he unstrapped from the top of his ruck was a ghillie Suit, and helped in that respect. The latest version of the Spec Ops suit incorporated active cammo that change the color of the stringy mesh to match whatever background he was moving through, much like a chameleon. That meant he didn't have to keep stopping to change the foliage woven into the netting when he changed from one environment to another, as did the material covering his weapon. All things being equal, and as long as the little green men didn't have a super-duper, whiz-bang alien detection method he could just about vanish no matter where he was. Even his IR signature would match whatever background he was moving through or standing in. Maybe not as good as a real stealth suit they were developing, but it was a quantum leap ahead of what they had ten years ago. Wrapping his cammo scarf to cover the lower part of this face, he settled his helmet on his head, and checked the contact inside the rim interfaced with the microchips above his eyebrows. They did, and with the HUD display in the helmet half visor giving him a compass bearing, he moved off. Keeping up a steady pace, he gradually shook off the remains of his hangover and the general aches, and pains from his unceremonious landing. This was combat, and he didn't have time to worry about a few bumps and bruises. He found the body of his first teammate an hour later, and one by one, he found the rest of his team, all with half-deployed chutes, and laid them to rest as best he could, and deep enough to stop the scavengers from getting at them. The hardest part was stripping the bodies of their gear and equipment, thinking ahead where he might find a use for it. He took one dog tag and placed the other in their mouth and the other in his breast pocket. One day, if he survived, he'd come back and take them home as they deserved. If not, maybe a future generation, if the human race survived to have one, might find them and give them the decent burial they deserved. Of the four-man crew of the C136A and the Lieutenant, he found nothing, all dying in the blazing wreckage of the aircraft.

  "Go with god my friends." Were the only words he could manage, having lost any illusion he had in regards religion and god a long time ago. The old adage about there being no atheist in a foxhole was a load of crap. The last thing he'd prayed for in a firefight wasn't God, but enough ammo to kill every motherfucker shooting at him before his ran out.

  Sergeant Rayburn’s equipment contained an old-fashioned map case and a working map-pad, and luckily, Rayburn had marked the location of the airstrip and civvies. Now the question was what to do? On face value, it seemed crazy to go after the civilians. He had no way of getting them out, no way to report to HQ that the mission was a bust, and no expectation of rescue. Not that this was the first time he’d been in a similar situation, but at least then he had an idea of what to do and where to go. As far as he knew right now there was no safe place South or West all the way to the coast of California. His only practical choice was to head north to Norden, about four to five hundred miles north of here, or three hundred as the crow flies. Not being a crow meant four hundred miles or more trek across the Sierra Nevada Mountains. The chances of getting there before winter set in was doubtful, which meant he’d have to find a place to hunker down and wait out the winter, and the weather to improve to the point where he could travel. On top of that, there were the aliens to consider. The weather might not affect them as much, and eventually they’d restart the bombing campaign to eradicate the rest of the human race in the next step in their conquest. If that was the case, the base might not even be there when he arrived. If it wasn’t he’d was screwed and on his own. After that, he’d have to attempt to survive the best he knew how.

  At the back of his mind, the civil
ians kept bugging him, wondering why military high command thought it worth the risk of sending a team to get them in the first place. There were a lot of other things they should be doing to make life miserable for the invaders, once they put boots on the ground. So what was so bloody important they’d send this ad hoc rescue mission to get? Swearing softly at his own stupidity, he checked the map-pad and took a compass bearing from his HUD in the direction of the last known location of the trapped civvies. First, he took a break for another meal as he waited for sundown, preferring to travel at night, using the darkness to hide from any potential enemies. It wasn't even known if the aliens fought at night, much less anything else about them. He'd seen no photos of what they looked like, or what weapons they possessed. For all he knew they might have already nailed his butt three ways from Sunday with their advanced technology. No matter which way this mission turned out, he might be able to gather critical Intel about the alien's abilities, or weaknesses. All he had to do was survive to take it back. So far, other than the first EMP plasma bomblets that took out their long-range communications, and power systems all over the world, all anyone had seen of the aliens were the large gunships that tore up the countryside, bombing and shooting any human stupid enough to be out in the open.

  Darkness fell, but it was still hot, and with a last sip of water, Decker took off on the compass bearing in his HUD. With the built-in night vision, he now walked through a greenish white landscape drained of all color. Occasionally, the HUD lit up with a white diamond shaped outline of an unknown target, but on zooming in with his scope found it to be a deer or sheep. Occasionally he came across a few cows, one or two horses and a few coyotes, but nothing remotely approaching what he thought an alien might look like. He doubted the little green men would be running around the backwoods on all fours without clothing and weaponry. One of the alien flying craft flew over at regular intervals and when it did, he simply froze in place until it passed. At no time did it turn to investigate or give any sign he’d been spotted, even when he was out in the open. Six hours later after crossing highway 58, now devoid of traffic, and littered with abandoned cars and burnt out big rigs, obvious targets for the alien strafing campaign, he carefully approached the last know location of the civvies. Before topping a slight rise, he settled down and crawled the last few feet to the top, just in case. Below in a shallow valley lay his target, now shrouded in inky blackness. Even his night vision didn’t help much, just a cluster of buildings. There was no light to be seen anywhere, nor any sign of human life. Maybe he was too late, and the aliens had already wiped out any remaining people. Wouldn’t that be a laugh? They’d send out a Spec ops group to extract people who were already dead. With nothing to do until first light, Decker settled down in a patch of dried out shrubs to wait for dawn. He hoped there were a few ex-military types down there with a degree of survival instinct, and that was why he failed to see any human activity. Settling down under the shrubs, Decker became instantly invisible, no different from the rocks, scrub grass, and low bushes around him. Carefully removing a few rocks under his body to get comfortable, he pulled the Ghillie netting down over his face and rested his head on his folded hands over the rifle butt. At least he might try to get a little sleep before dawn. Between the build in alarm systems in his ghillie suit and his natural ones, anything that came close would instantly wake him. As he drifted into semi sleep, he thought about this invasion. As an avid Sci-Fi fan, he’d read dozens of invasion stories over the years, but nothing quite like this.

  Invading a life-bearing planet made sense, especially if you were looking to expand due to over population on your home world, or to expand to another colony. When you come down to it, there were only a few ways you might invade if you wanted to use the planet yourself after the invasion, biological/chemical, bombardment, integration, conquest and enslavement or genetic. Of course, if you were a super advanced race you might cut off all sunlight and just wait for everything to die, then start over with your own plant and animal life, but then again, if you were a super advanced race, why go to all that bother. Just go and find an uninhabited life-bearing planet to colonize. The cosmos is a big place. No, this felt like a cross between conquest, enslavement, or genocide. He wasn’t sure about the enslavement part yet. The bombardment phase seemed more in line with wiping out as much of humanity and its infrastructure as they could before putting boots on the ground. That possibility brought up a host of questions, such as why the strafing campaign when it would be just as easy to put ‘boots on the ground’, unless of course you didn’t have that many boots to put on the ground in the first place. Somewhere in all the musing, Decker fell into a light sleep.

  Dawn came up behind him, slowly filling the valley with light, first with shades of grays that gradually turned to Reds and blue, as the sun came over the horizon, but what Decker saw didn't fill him with confidence. What was once a small army base with a double row of long, two and three story concrete buildings on either side of a wide asphalt road was now just a shattered jumble of rubble. Only one or two buildings still stood and even those were partly blown apart. There was even a faint trace of smoke over one building, so the attack hadn't happened that long ago. The sweet sickly stench of death lingered in the air, something Decker knew well. Soon the smell would be nauseating as unburied bodies rotted. Only his eyes moved as he searched the ruins for any sign of life, but to all outward appearances, it was devoid of human life. He didn't let frustration, or impatience drive him, content for the moment just to lay and wait. An ant walked over his hand and he absently blew it off with a quick puff of breath. Every place had a rhythm about it. The way the birds flew, or pecked around on the ground. Pigeons and sparrows have especially good eyesight, and he noticed they stayed away from one particular half demolished building. Zooming in he carefully searched each shadow, and dark window, rewarded at last by a flicker of movement in a doorway. It answered the question of if there was someone here. Without going down there and making contact with whoever it was, he had no way of knowing if these were the people he’d been sent to rescue. That brought up the question of what the hell he was going to do about it if they were. Decker let out a soft sound, halfway between a snort of disgust and a laugh. His chance of survival on his own was slim to none. What he was going to do with a bunch of overweight, soft as putty, no-nothing civilians was anyone’s guess. Whoever was watching was smart enough to sit back in the shadows away from the doorway, but it limited the watchers field of view. Decker checked the rest of the building, but from what he could see, this might be the only useable way in or out, considering the damage to the building.

  Anyone who wanted in had to go through that doorway, presenting a perfect target for those inside. It also meant it was easily defended to a degree, but a well-placed blooper round, or a grenade would take out the defenders if they weren't prepared for it. Slithering backward, more out of habit than necessity with the ghillie suit, Decker moved back into the cover of the sparse trees, cactus, and low growing bushes. No sense in giving away his position, even if there were Friendly's in the building. More than one soldier regretted not taking that precaution and ended up as a friendly fire casualty. He'd calculated the greatest angle of vision out of the doorway and moved around the perimeter another 45 degrees to give himself a margin of error. With his rifle slung down his back, he lay down and inched his way to the top of the slight slope until he could just see over the top. From where he lay, he could see the side and end wall with the doorway to the building in question. Once in position, he spent twenty minutes scanning the building for any signs of watchers in the shattered ruins on this side. Most of the third floor of the building had collapsed down onto the one below, and at one end, both the third and second floor had collapsed all the way to the ground. From where he lay, only a few of the first-floor windows were partly visible, buried as they were behind a mound of fallen rubble. Sweat trickled down Decker's face, but he didn't move to wipe it off. The human eye is attracted to movement,
and having spent long hours, even days in a sniper roost, he learned that lesson well. Even with the Ghillie suit, old habits were hard to break. He wasn’t one of those young bucks who put all their faith in the technology. What if the solar cells failed, or something when wrong with the wiring? If you haven’t taken due precaution and act as if you didn’t have it, you’d be dead. Easing forward, Decker began his slow stalk. The hard part of stalking wasn't the forward movement being detected, but the crushed down grass, and brush behind him. That disturbance was detectable to the human eye and lead right to him. In Decker's case, he liked to move in a crouched position, as it permitted him to move through the dried-out grass and dead weeds without leaving much of a telltale trail. The downside was, he had a high profile, but the cammo suit should take care of that. In this position, he could move, and crouch down again while he picked out his next step. As he drew closer to the building, he picked up slight sounds of movement and soft voices. Nothing definite, but a clear sign there were living beings inside, hopefully human. Even so he didn't rush, taking another half hour to reach the rubble pile near the front wall of the building. Working his way down to the end where he could see around the corner to the door, he carefully positioned himself just out of the watcher’s line of sight. Now came the interesting part. Who was in there, human or alien? Without knowing how they fought, it was impossible for him to tell without going into the building. Crouched in a semi kneeling position with one leg tucked under his butt on the ground, he slowly drew his sidearm. He then took a doubled handed stance with the back of his cupped hand resting on his knee. Then, inch by inch over the next half hour, he butt walked his way into a position ten feet from the door. Here he could see into the building, and be just inside any watcher’s field of vision. Each move was timed to blend in with the slight movement of the dried-out grass, and weeds that moved slightly in the light, warm breeze as the morning air heated up and started to rise.