Episode 10

Out of Range

“Friendlies incoming!” came a voice. Cellucci, approaching with Jones.

“You see any more?” I asked them and Rocky shook his head.

“This was it,” Park said, rooting through one of the dead men’s clothes and coming out with a knife. He pulled it from its sheath and tried the edge, grinned, then stuck it in his pack.

“RPG neutralized, Sergeant,” I reported in over the com. “We are returning to the bridge.”

When we got back the rest of the squads were already over. We entered the woods on the other side and left the road, dividing in two and following it through the woods. It was slower, but running down an open road is a great way to end up shot to pieces. Then—headlights ahead!

We hit the ground, trusting our camo and the night to hide us. The vehicle zipped past, another truck with four men in the back. One guy held an RPG, the others rifles. The side of the truck had a basket of roots painted on it, along with some of their spitball text. Farm truck. Damn kids had spirit.

“Hit ’em, Raymond!” Jock hissed, but another squad member was already in the road with his RPG, launching a grenade after the retreating vehicle. The explosion was incredible—he must have hit the fuel tank. No way anyone survived THAT. Jones and Cellucci ran over to confirm the kills, then gave us the thumbs up.

We kept advancing, moving toward where we’d seen the anti-tank teams targeting the Ulimbese armor. At that point, our squads split up.

Jock went ahead with the rest of the team, while Park went up a tree with his rifle as I watched the ground. If the enemies had infrared, Park was a sitting duck. If they didn’t, they were sitting ducks. Our RPG teams moved to clear locations to watch for fire.

I couldn’t see a thing except Park above and some sort of an owl up a tree about 10 paces to the left. It was picking at its feathers calmly, just as if the locals weren’t blasting and burning the living crap out of its neighborhood. Retard.

Somewhere ahead I again heard the thump of heavy cannon. We’d be able to take the teams in the woods, I was sure, but the cannon might not be easily accessible.

I looked up at Park, who had his rifle to his eye. He sighted in, and squeezed off a round. The muzzle flash was suppressed but I could see it on my thermal.

Then I took a bullet in the back—what the HELL! It had gone right through my pack and buried itself in my armor. I spun and opened up with my rifle and went low, not seeing anything but sure as hell not going to just stand there and look around while he sighted in on my throat. Or my elbow.

Two men—crouching, a boulder in front of them. I hooked a grenade out of my belt, popped the pin and winged it, seeing them scramble as it swished into the brush between them. Not fast enough! POW! My vision lit up white as the grenade exploded, then cleared. One of the two was down, the other, hopping through the brush. I tagged him twice with my rifle and he went down.

“You okay?” Park whispered over the radio.

“Yeah, just having a cuppa tea down here. You keep enjoying your tree.”

He said nothing as he sighted in again. I dropped my damaged pack on the ground, only to feel it come away thick and sticky. Blood? I hunched low and checked quickly, then breathed a sigh of relief. The slug had gone right through a lasagna MRE. Probably ruined the pound cake, too. I dropped the mess and got back up, keeping my back to the tree and eyeing the woods.

A couple of minutes later, Park came down from above. “Let’s move on—resistance is mostly gone here.” I snatched up my mess of a pack and put it back on my back. So much for dinner.

THUMP—the sound of cannon came echoing again. They had been firing about a shell a minute for the last ten minutes. “Moving out,” Park radioed to Jock, “approaching your position.” He pulled out his GPS tablet. I hadn’t been issued one, but was glad to see his. We had a scattering of our guys across the mountainside and Park quickly ID’d the location of our squad.

As we pressed forward through the woods we came to a rocky opening on the hillside and I could see the battlefield, now from the other side. It was obvious that the Ulimbese had been cocky, attempting to bring their armored division straight through over the creek in the hollow. I saw that a few tanks had made it across and were directing fire upwards towards a far-off ridge. Then there was a flash from the ridge and I realized that was where the enemy cannon must be stationed.

“No way we’ll make it up there,” Park said. “And those tanks can’t hit there from here—too far.”

I wished we could call in an orbital bombardment at that point, vaporizing the enemy guns. It could never be easy.

We came up on Jock and the boys a few minutes later. They were watching the armored column from above. More of them had made it across the creek and the wrecks caused by the enemy anti-tank teams had been cleared. We’d opened it up, but THUMP-CRACK!—even as we watched, a tank was brewed up on our side of the river when a high-explosive shell struck its turret. There was no way they were going to make it all the way into the next town, even without the threat of RPGs. The Corwistalian artillery was sighted in, they had a clear shot down into the valley, and could drop HE on us all night long if they had the ammo for it.

Marks’s voice came over the radio. “Sitrep?”

“The anti-tank teams are neutralized, sir,” Jock said, “but that artillery on the hillside is doing a number on the friendly armor.”

“Can you reach them?”

“Negative, sir. Way out of range.”

There was a silence for a moment, as if the captain were in conference with someone else.

“Sit tight,” he said at long last. “We’re going to drone ’em.”