Grunt Life (19 page)

“Don’t you have somewhere to be?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “Here... removing the weapons from my suit so they can work on it.”

“I’ll do it,” I said. “I’ll do them all.”

“You sure?” he asked.

“Yes, I’m sure.”

“Are you sure you should be even touching the missiles?” he asked, a grin beginning to form.

“Yes, I’m fucking sure! Now leave me alone!”

He stepped backwards out of the room, then paused. I saw him waiting out of the corner of my eye.

I felt bad for yelling at him. I was angry at too many things right now. I needed time to process it. But I was also aware that he was a friend and a team mate. I had to make time.

“What is it?”

“She was trying to explain that God has you as part of His plan even if you don’t believe in Him.”

“What if I don’t believe in the plan?”

He shrugged. “It doesn’t change her point.”

I put my hands on my hips. “You too, Thompson?”

He cocked his head. “Don’t get pissed at me. I’m just explaining her position. I don’t necessarily agree with it, but it’s what she believes.”

I raised my hands. “Enough.”

“If you’re going to want to get to know her better, you’re going to have to deal with her religion.”

I spun towards him. “What do you mean by that—
her religion
?” He’d said it like it was a funerary cloth she carried.

“I’ve said enough.” Thompson backpedaled, then spun around the corner.

What was it with people getting the last word and leaving me hanging? I stood there waiting to see if anyone else was going to chime in, but no one came. Finally it appeared as if I was alone. I began to take down Thompson’s suit, all the while wondering about his final comment—
You’re going to have to deal with her religion.

In the final choice a soldier’s pack is not so heavy as a prisoner’s chains.

Dwight D. Eisenhower

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

T
HAT EVENING SAW
Romeo Six bringing back the few parts of Romeo One-Zero that still remained. When they returned, we stood solemnly, ingloriously glad it hadn’t been us who’d gone out first and mourning the loss of our fellow grunts, especially Frakess. Of the men and women of Romeo One-Zero, what was returned wouldn’t fill a wheelbarrow. But it was important that each part, no matter how small, was given a proper burial.

Afterwards, we got some shut eye. Instead of a foam pad on the steel floor of the container, like in Alaska, we were given cots, of a type I’d used on several occasions and which had probably been ordered and produced in bulk sometime between the Korean and Vietnam Wars. With metal bars, the nylon could be stretched to create some semblance of give. Not as good as what we’d had in our cells during Phase I, but the view here in Africa was so much better.

I tried to get Aquinas’s attention, but she was studiously ignoring me.

MacKenzie was trying to get a game of Poof together, but none of us were up for it. We didn’t even know how to play it. It was some sort of card-guessing-truth-or-dare thing which would invariably result in embarrassment on one side and hilarity on the other. He tried to explain it, but he had no takers. He grumbled a bit about us being spoiled Americans, then packed it in.

After breakfast the next morning, we were treated to an amazing sight. During the night, techs from the BSB and OMBRA had come together and tested one of the spare EXOs. They covered it completely in oil, set it on fire, then maneuvered it through the underground complex. It operated for seventeen minutes before one of the hip servos overheated. The oil attracted all of the dust stirred up by the feet, creating a tarry glue that wedged in the joint.

When the brainiacs were finished cleaning the suit, they were back to square one. If the problem was with the EXO, then it was a design flaw and no field expedience was going to help it survive the onslaught any better. But then they had an idea. Instead of making the suit stronger, why not reduce the number of drones attacking the wearer? With the Cray having almost total air superiority, anything on the ground was fair game. The trick would be to lure the drones into descending, while sending another recon squad along an alternate route.

Thus was born Project Vulcan Logic, named by a pair of
Trek
-loving BCT techs when they realized they’d had the answer in front of them all along. They’d been so locked into the idea of using the Vulcans to protect the artillery pieces that they’d failed to see the guns’ usefulness to the quickly moving EXOs. Why not a mobile air defense system? Twin Vulcan cannons could be mounted on a wheeled sled, to be pulled and operated by members of the infantry companies. They’d move towards cover in the village, waiting until the drones were in line like fighters coming in for a bombing run. Once online, the Vulcans would open up with two 20mm cannons capable of slinging 6600 rounds per minute towards the drones. BCT OMBRA only had SAPHEI rounds—incendiary rounds with a delayed high explosive package and a follow-on zirconium pellet—but that was fine for the purposes. It was a wonder they hadn’t thought of this in the first place.

They began preparing Project Vulcan Logic immediately, with the goal of having it ready to move by nightfall. Word had already gone out and rumors were abounding. Everyone had taken to calling it the
Big Show
, and it was reckoned that it would be the make it or break it moment.

BCT OMBRA had thirty Vulcans and several conexes filled with ammunition from which to draw for their new experiment. Until now they hadn’t been used, but they had been prepared for air defense operations by the infantry companies. Each weapon system had been modified with mini-Faradays to protect them against EMPs.

Or at least we hoped they were protected. The lights, the repair equipment and the ventilation system were powered by an immense group of hydro fuel generators that leeched water from an underground river seventy-five feet below the surface. Not only were they necessities, but they were one of the last links we had to the civilization we once had.

MacKenzie had seen the generators and had commented on them. “These Task Force OMBRA lads seem to have a lot of science behind them. One of these days I need to ask why they been keeping it to themselves.”

None of us had needed to ask what he meant. We’d all been thinking the same thing. The planning, the technology, the knowledge of the Cray, all pointed to a group with a major investment in the alien attack. Of course there wasn’t any larger payoff than being responsible for the survival of your own species. I, for one, was thrilled to be a part of it. Why wouldn’t I be? The alternative wasn’t acceptable.

The next day was spent war-gaming and planning a variety of attacks. I kept checking the clocks, eager for night to fall. I couldn’t wait to see what an entire airplane could do to the alien mound.

The RSM gave the official word just after sundown.

Most of the battalions were satisfied to stand and watch the events unfold on the battery of screens, but the Recon squads and several of the infantry platoons wanted to see it firsthand.

In fact, Olivares called everyone into the squad bay and had everyone don their EXOs. “You want to see it on a television, then use your HUD,” he said. “This kamikaze mission might just work, you know? And if it does, the Cray are going to be pissed. Looks like we’re the only humans within several hundred miles to take it out on, so you take a guess where they’ll come when we piss them off.”

“Hey, Thompson.” Olivares turned to the former drummer boy. “What happens when you shake a hornet’s nest?”

“You piss the hornets off, Sarge.”

“What happens to a bee keeper who ain’t ready?” Olivares asked no one in particular as he affixed the servos to his legs.

“He runs or he gets stung,” Ohirra said, already in her suit and going through system checks.

“And what happens if he’s ready?”

“They can’t sting him through his suit,” MacKenzie said.

“That’s right. For a time in hell we’re beekeepers. We’re going to disturb their hive and see what happens.”

“Damn big bees, or hornets, or aliens, or whatever you want to call them,” I said as I slid my helmet into place.

After we suited up, we checked each other. Each of us had three status lights on the exterior of the left side. Green was good and red was dead. We could also check the status from our individual HUDs. Gaze tech, similar to what jet pilots had used, allowed us to select suit information on our own suits as well as every member of the team’s, making each system accessible by the other.

“Incoming ten miles,” came the voice through our comms.

“Romeo Three, positions.”

We moved in file from the bay, up the gangway and to Trench One. The steel covers had been pulled partially aside, leaving just enough room for us to climb out. Olivares pulled himself up first, and soon we were all standing tall, side by side, and staring at the western sky. My minigun was swung forward and ready, my blade was charged, and my missiles were primed.

Activity around the mound was dying down. Less than a handful of Cray were circling lazily overhead. Far less than the usual hundred or so that blanketed the sky during the day.

“Five miles.”

“They said that the pilot is Japanese,” Ohirra said. “I used to hate Memorial Day, because they’d play all those old World War Two movies on television, making the Japanese look so stupid. So mean. So hopeless.”

The pilots were Egyptian, but I kept my mouth shut.

“But now I feel different,” she said.

“Three miles.”

“I get it now. I understand why they flew their planes into ships. It was a last act of defiance.”

“There it is.” Thompson pointed towards the west at a pinpoint of black.

Our HUDs tracked the incoming Boeing 727 jet. We watched it grow larger until we saw it nose down as it headed for the mound. If it missed, we’d been warned that debris from the plane could pose a danger to anyone on the ground. We didn’t care. We’d rather have front row seats.

The plane was from some African airline I didn’t recognize. I could envision the inside with all empty seats, the brochures and puke bags in the back of the seat pockets, never to be used again.

“One mile.”

The Cray finally noticed the inbound aircraft, dropping at a forty-five degree angle. We could hear the scream of the engines through the amplification systems inside our helmets. The drones in the air turned to meet the incoming plane. EMP flashes lit the sky as they flew towards it. More Cray shot from the launch ramps on either side until the air was swarming with activity.

The plane tore through a phalanx of drones like they were nothing.

A cheer went up from inside the caverns.

Ohirra raised a fist into the air, and the rest of us joined her.

More and more Cray attacked the plane. I couldn’t figure out why they were even trying, until my telemetric showed that it was now off-course. The fuselage would miss the mound.

Five, four, three, two, one.

The plane struck the mound high on its upper third. A last minute correction by the pilot made the fuselage strike a glancing blow. The left wing shattered as it hit, then the plane broke apart. Pieces of it rained down on the plain between the mound and the village. The amplified sound was a terrible cacophony of carnage. The tail section landed just this side of the mound, burrowing into the African soil.

We stared at the Cray hive, waiting for the dramatic collapse.

But nothing happened.

Nothing.

“More incoming,” comms declared.

“We weren’t sure if they were going to follow through,” Olivares said. “A consortium, of sorts: bush pilots, mercenaries, and contract pilots.”

Our telemetry began tracking thirty-two additional aircraft. These were all small single- and twin-engine jobs, the kind used to puddle-jump and carry tourists and hunters back and forth across Kenya and Tanzania. We watched as they angled towards the mound. Our HUDs mapped their ballistic paths, showing the various locations they would strike the mound.

But where the drones had no effect on the larger plane, they obliterated the smaller ones. Pulses of EMP killed electronics, making the planes nothing more than bombs with wings. The drones attacked in midair, ripping away wings, tearing free engine housings and jerking pilots from shattered windscreens. Not a single one of the planes made it to its target, each one crashing and littering the African floor with pieces of what could have been something special.

All except one.

A single plane still soared, out-maneuvering each of the drones. My HUD told me it was a P51 Mustang. World War Two vintage, it was used for long range bombing and reconnaissance against the Japanese. It had to be versatile to outmaneuver the Japanese Zeros, and now I watched as it dipped and twisted and somersaulted its way over and through the Cray. Here and there it opened fire, sending rounds scything through the drones.

The Mustang was unaffected by the EMP because it had no electronics. It was pure combustion engine, through and through. I wanted to cheer as I watched it, but I held my breath instead. It was getting closer and closer until finally, it hammered midway into the side of the mound.

The front of the plane crumpled as the propeller shattered. One of the wings snapped free. Then the plane tumbled unceremoniously to the ground.

The mound remained intact.

We stood there for several moments, staring at the terrible monolith, waiting for it to collapse, or break apart, or
something
. Anything to show that the lives of the men and women flying the planes hadn’t gone to waste. But nothing happened. Nothing.

Then, instead of attacking, the Cray returned to their hive. Soon the air was free of them and the empty, unprotected night sky laughed at us. It was galling. The aliens didn’t even have the courtesy to attack us back for what we’d just done, as if it had meant nothing. In fact, one could argue, that was exactly it.

Olivares was the first to leave the trench. We followed him in silence. No one said a word as we returned to our squad bay. We sat for a long time and said nothing.