Brushfire, p.9
Brushfire, page 9
part #11 of Expeditionary Force Series
“Skippy is correct, Gunnery Sergeant,” Smythe added. “Time is not the critical factor.”
“Got it.”
With all eight bricks removed and glued to other bricks in a mess that reminded her of a school project many years ago, she had the conduit exposed. “OK,” Skippy told her. “Wrap the freeze blanket around it. That’s right,” he said encouragingly. “Ready?”
“Do it.”
The blanket, which was really more of a slick plastic sheet the size of a hand towel, crinkled and its surface instantly became covered with frost from moisture in the air, as the inner surface of the blanket chilled to a hundred twenty below zero Celcius. “That did it,” Skippy announced happily. “The det cord in that section is inert.”
“Great,” she unwrapped the line holding her to the ceiling. Removing those eight bricks had consumed four minutes and eighteen seconds, far too long. The next set of bricks should go faster, now that she knew how to do it. Letting herself drop lightly to the floor, she fixed her eyes on the section of bricks on the other side of the basement. “I will-”
“Uh oh. Shit. You’ve got trouble. We have trouble.”
“What is it?” Smythe asked before she could.
“The guy at the workstation near the door has been calling Tony Montana, with increasing concern. I have been pretending to be Tony, and making noises upstairs like he is giving a prisoner a beat-down, but the guy in the lobby is panicking. That is because a supervisor is making one of his unscheduled nightly inspections, and he is coming to your building first.”
Smythe didn’t hesitate. “Adams, get out of there.”
“But, Sir-”
“No arguments. Out. Now.”
“On the way-”
“Wait!” Skippy pleaded. “There is no time! The guy in the lobby just got up and is looking down the corridor, shouting for Tony to get his ass downstairs. If you come out the basement door, he will see you.”
“I can take him out,” she unslung her rifle and switched off the safeties.
“Hold,” Smythe ordered. “Skippy, is the guard at the workstation?”
“Yes.”
“It won’t work, Adams,” the STAR leader declared. “Their work areas are behind thick sheets of clear composite. Rifle rounds would be deflected unless you used armor-piercing mode, and that is too loud. It would blow the entire operation.”
“Well, you need to do something,” Skippy shouted, close to panicking. “The supervisor will be there in less than one minute. Ooh! The guard in the lobby is stepping out of the workstation area.”
“This is my chance, Sir,” Adams put a boot on the second stair.
“No, wait,” Skippy groaned. “He’s gone back inside.”
“Sir,” Adams repeated. “I can’t stay down here.”
“No, you can’t,” Skippy agreed. “As soon as Tony’s body is discovered, the supervisor will sound the alarm over the base network. When that transmission fails, he will pull the cord near the door to activate strobe lights and sonic alarms all over the base.”
“That will blow the operation,” Smythe said through clenched teeth. “The last two teams estimate they need four minutes to complete their tasks. Skippy, can you lock the door, so the supervisor can’t get in?”
“Uh, Jeez, I could try. That door lock is electronic, but there is a manual backup, so-”
Adams backed down the stairs. “No. Let the supervisor come in.”
“Gunnery Sergeant?” Smythe was concerned. “What are you planning?”
“Nothing stupid, Sir. I’ve got this. I will get us those four minutes.”
“Colonel Smythe,” Greene said in an urgent whisper. He was on top of a warehouse, at the edge of the fenced compound that held the human prisoners. Concealed under stealth netting, he had a view covering three-quarters of the dormitory buildings. Greene was the team’s lone reserve, the only person not disconnecting explosives inside the basement of a dormitory. He had been sweeping the rifle scope from one side of the compound to the other, with nothing to do, until Skippy announced that a Kristang supervisor was making an unannounced visit to the building Adams was assigned to clear. “That lizard is approaching Objective Kilo. Adams is alone in there.”
“Adams has the situation well in hand, Greene,” Smythe replied, his voice containing a trace of irritation.
“Sir, I can take that lizard out from here.” He verified the range to target with his rifle scope, checking that he had selected an inert round with low muzzle velocity.
“Negative. He is in the open; if you drop him, the body will be noticed. We need you providing cover from your position.”
Greene took a moment to breathe in through his nose while he considered the situation. Questioning an order, on an open channel, was not done. Period. The only exception was if the commander was not aware of a vital piece of information. Lamar thought he could get to the building before the lizard reached the door, but surely Smythe had access to the same data and had already made a judgment call.
Adams was alone, she was in danger. He had lost her once before, due to his inaction. If he failed to act right then, she might lose her life. The purpose of his being on top of the warehouse was to deal with threats to the entire team, not just one person.
He could pretend he had not heard the complete order, and asked for confirmation. Smythe would know that was bullshit, and Greene would lose the trust he was trying to build with the STAR team leader. He had not served with the STARs, Adams had. She trusted Smythe. If only for that reason, he should trust the STAR leader.
“Understood, Sir,” he told Smythe. “Holding position.” He held the rifle scope’s crosshairs on the supervisor, while that lizard strode quickly across the open area between buildings of the compound. One gentle squeeze of the trigger is all it would take to end the threat to Margaret. Maybe the prone body of the supervisor would be noticed in the next four minutes, and blow the whole operation.
Maybe not.
He lifted his finger off the trigger, cursing himself for indecision.
The supervisor walked up the steps of the building designated Objective Kilo, and punched numbers on the keypad. In seconds, he would be inside, and Greene would have no ability to affect the outcome. No way to help Margaret.
The door swung open and the supervisor walked inside.
“Shit!” Greene cursed, his helmet microphone off. There were not any other lizards in sight. He was useless on top of the warehouse, while Margaret was in danger of-
“Greene,” Skippy whispered in his ear. “Trouble at two o’clock. A lizard will be coming out of the guard barracks, to Objective Lima. He heard the supervisor is performing an unscheduled inspection, he wants to assure his team there is alert.”
Greene swung the muzzle of his rifle back to the barracks, torn by indecision. “Why doesn’t he just call his team?”
“Because the supervisor is monitoring all their communications. Listen, the lizard will be going around the back side of the building so the supervisor can’t see him. That alley is dark and narrow. If you drop him there, no one will notice until it is too late.”
“I-” The side door of the barracks opened, and a figure dashed out, keeping low. “I see him. Shit!”
“What?”
“Nothing.” He had hesitated before, waited too long. He could not help Margaret, but he could prevent the second roaming lizard from interfering with Frey and Chaudry at Objective Lima. “Colonel Smythe?”
“You are cleared to fire, Greene,” the STAR leader ordered.
In the center of the basement, Margaret Adams lay on her back, her rifle aimed at the ceiling. “I hear something,” she whispered. “Footsteps? And raised voices.”
“Yes,” Skippy confirmed. “That is the supervisor. He is standing outside the workstation area, demanding to know where Tony is. The guy in the lobby just threw Tony under a bus. OK, OK, now the guard is opening the door, going out in the corridor. They are both standing there. Wow, that supervisor is really giving the guard an ass-chewing. Hmm, I need to write down some of those curse words, they are quite unique. Ah! Yes! They are walking down the corridor now, the supervisor is in front. Do you see them?”
“Yes, I ‘see’ them.” The synthetic view in her visor showed the two Kristang approaching as if the floor beneath them was transparent. Skippy was feeding her suit computer a composite view from the cameras on the first floor. “Ready.”
“Do you-”
“Quiet, please.”
The figures walked quickly toward the spot she had selected. In the lead, the figure strode quickly but with authority. Not rushing, one foot in front of the other. Behind and to the right, the other figure fairly danced, she could imagine the hapless guard pleading with his supervisor. Whatever form of non-judicial punishment the Kristang administered, that jackass had it coming.
But first, the two lizards had something else coming, at three hundred sixteen meters per second. Adams had programmed her rifle to fire first an inert, armor-piercing round at medium velocity, to penetrate the floor and clear a hole for the following round. The first round punched through the floor, the guard’s right foot, skimmed his kneecap and entered his right pectoral muscle before striking his jaw and exiting near his right ear. The round in flight a split-second behind was explosive-tipped, set to anti-personnel fragmentation mode with the yield dialed down near minimum. It skimmed one side of the hole in the floor and corrected its course to impact the guard in the chest, exploding with a sickeningly wet splat.
Half a second later, she shifted to the lead target. The purpose of taking out the guard in the rear first was that if she missed, the supervisor would have farther to travel back to the door, and would have to jump over the sagging body of the dead guard. A single, gentle squeeze of the trigger initiated another double-tap, this time leading the target a little in anticipation of him being startled by the sound behind him. Her judgment had been right, the supervisor suffered the loss of most of his head, and his body toppled forward to thump on the floor.
“Result?” She asked, slowly releasing a breath.
“Two down,” Skippy reported. “That first armor-piercing round went clear through the second floor and lodged in the underside of the roof. Prisoners heard the noise and they are all screaming, but nobody can hear them outside the building.”
Heaving herself off the floor and to her feet in one smooth motion, she engaged both the rifle’s safeties. “Did anyone outside the building hear the shot?”
“Negative. I barely heard it through the acoustic sensors of the base headquarters building, and those sensors are not alerting anyone, that’s for sure. Good shooting, Gunny.”
“Colonel Smythe,” she called. “Objective Kilo is secure.”
“Outstanding,” Smythe said. “Adams, that was a jolly good show. Stand by.”
She slung her rifle. “I still have work to do. Skippy, talk me through removing that other set of bricks.”
“I could do that. Or, you could go to the guard’s workstation, and disable the det cord ignition mechanism from there. It’s your call.”
“Let’s do it the easy way.”
Greene waited until, just as Skippy said, the second Kristang ran down a dark alley between dormitories. To prevent any loose humans from having a place to take cover, the alley was clear other than a trash dumpster, and the lizard veered to go around that obstruction. Just as he passed the overflowing dumpster, Greene gently pressed the trigger of his rifle.
A round was spat out at only six hundred kilometers per hour, the rifle’s active silencer mechanism reducing the sound to a barely-audible puff. The round’s warhead was inert, the seeker tip adjusting its flight to track the moving target. When the round flew within one meter of the target, the tip mushroomed into a blunt shape in the air, and it smacked into the target’s neck at the base of his skull. There was a wet thump sound, and a startled gasp from the target as he toppled forward, his spine broken.
Greene had another round ready. “Skippy, I can only see his legs from here.” That was the disadvantage of waiting until the target went past the dumpster. The advantage was, the body was barely visible from the main area of the compound.
“No pulse, according to his phone. Scratch one lizard. That was good shooting,” the AI gave rare praise.
Greene let out a slow breath. “Status of Adams?”
“She is fine. She took out two lizards by shooting through the basement ceiling. Shame on you, Gunnery Sergeant. You should have more faith in her.”
“That’s easy to say now,” he retorted. “Do the lizards have any more surprises for us?”
“No. Smythe is contacting Bishop now.”
Seven minutes later, Smythe called me. “Colonel Bishop, all target buildings have been secured. We are not presently able to get access to the base hospital, where two of the Keepers are receiving medical treatment.”
“Roger that,” I said. “Fireball,” I called Samantha Reed. “You’re up. It’s showtime.”
The two Panthers, wrapped in stealth fields and with their engines leaving an infrared signature barely bigger than a hummingbird, approached from the southeast. The heat sinks of both aerospace craft were near capacity from absorbing the thermal output of the engines. Skippy had argued that his control of the planet’s defense network made it very unlikely for anyone on the ground to detect the faint heat trails behind the Panthers, but Sami declared that since his sorry ass wasn’t flying the dropships, she would use her own judgment. Besides, it was good to practice maximum stealth maneuvers against a soft target like the Kristang, so they would be better prepared if they had to infiltrate a world controlled by an advanced technology species.
That thought made her smile. Not that long ago, the thought of an operation against a well-defended Kristang planet would have made the Merry Band of Pirates terrified, even if none of them would admit it. Now, the presence of explosives in the buildings housing the Keepers was the major obstacle to the operation, the lizards were merely a minor annoyance. They were not actually even a threat to the Pirates, the only concern was that the warrior caste soldiers on the base might kill some of the Keepers, or pose a risk to the dropships while they were coming in to set down.
With the threat of explosives no longer a factor, it was time to take action against the threat that remained. The aircraft hangars of the military base were just visible, as the two dropships flew just above the treetops. In the east, the sky was developing a faint rosy tinge, the local sun would be rising within an hour, and that meant the base would be awakening to start the day. At the moment, the barracks were full of sleeping soldiers. “Chen,” she called the pilot flying the other Panther. “Launch on my mark. Three, two, one, mark.”
Doors retracted in the base of the thick wings, and missiles were spat out the rear to gently fall until they cleared the stealth fields. The missiles sprouted wings, and turbine engines spun up to one-third power, pushing the weapons through the air at a moderate speed, the missiles on front slowing for the trailing units to catch up. Seeing sixteen missiles in the air and tracking true toward their targets, Sami advanced the throttles and followed the missiles in.
The missiles diverged as they approached their individual targets, adjusting speed so they all would arrive on target at the same second. A lucky soldier, unable to sleep because of his loudly snoring squad mates, was up and walking across the parade field when he heard a low-pitched humming sound from above. Looking up in the darkness with his genetically-enhanced eyes, but without the advantage of the synthetic vision provided by goggles, he thought there was a shape passing in front of a star, but he only wondered what type of local bird was flying so early. By looking up, he was not looking where he placed his feet, stumbled in a rut, and fell full-length on the dew-covered grass.
That fall saved his life.
All around him, barracks buildings, aircraft hangars, autogun emplacements, missile launchers and sensor towers erupted in flames, the sound making the ground under him shake and he covered his ears as he hugged the grass, cursing the Thuranin who surely had perpetrated the crime.
“BDA, Skippy,” I asked. The display in front of me showed the battle damage all over the base and that was great. It could not tell me what was not obvious, for that assessment I relied on Mister Magnificent.
“A total triumph as usual, Joe,” he said over a fake yawn. “Really, this is getting too easy for me. Maybe next time, I should allow you monkeys to handle the targeting.”
“We did handle the targeting, you ass.”
“Sure, but not the fine, last-minute adjustments.”
“Stick to the subject, please. What opposition does Smythe need to worry about?”
“I estimate about a hundred and seventy personnel survived on the base. Not all of them are soldiers, of course, and many of them will not have access to weapons. The only real threat are the forty-five guards in their barracks, plus the guards in the prisoner dormitories.”
The lizards assigned to the undesirable duty as guards for the captive humans, were housed in a separate barracks right in the middle of the cluster of windowless dormitories which held the Keepers. We could not risk a missile strike on that barracks, so the plan called for Reed and Chen’s Panthers to follow right behind the missiles and take out the barracks with precision maser fire. A quick check of the tactical display showed the location of every person we had on the ground, none of them were in danger from friendly fire. “Fireball, you are cleared to engage.”
When the missile strike devastated the base in the blink of an eye, Captain Katie Frey had been impatiently waiting at the top of the basement stairs in the dormitory she was assigned to clear. Unlike Adams, she had not encountered any surprises, other than the tangled pile of junk that was revealed when she opened the roof hatch. She had judged there was no way to clear a path through that junk, without it toppling over, falling down and causing a tremendous noise that would alert everyone in the building, if not farther. The backup plan was to cut a hole through the roof, down through the ceiling of the third floor, and gain access there. Skippy thought he knew of an unoccupied third-floor room, but there were no cameras in that area, so he couldn’t be certain. Drilling a hole and threading a fine sensor wire through had revealed the room was indeed empty, and by ‘empty’ it actually was, no jackass had stuffed it full of unwanted crap. Since she and Chaudry dropped through the hole they had cut in the roof, the operation had gone smoothly. No cowboy lizard leaving his post to amuse himself by abusing prisoners. Cutting through the det cord on the basement ceiling had been quick and simple, a different team must have installed the explosives, or they had gotten lazy by that point. Having to cut through the roof had put Frey and Chaudry behind schedule, though no more than allowed for.
