Hero (6 page)

But never mind that; just move the pieces.

The piece with the three bars on its shoulder was to be in front, with its fireteam, but most of his HQ fireteam—his platoon sergeant, the mechanic and one of his driver/gunners—were out of it. That left him and Moshe Bar-El, the driver/gunner/medic. It could be worse.

Two of the squads were mostly intact; he'd move them out and fill in with the remnants of the others.

He pointed at Skolnick. "We move out in a wedge. You take the left flank," he said. "Improvise another squad."

He turned to solid, rooklike Benyamin Hanavi. Lipschitz's fireteam was intact, but Hanavi was saltier. Shit, though, it looked like he was down to himself and two others.

"You got two down?"

Hanavi hesitated, then nodded. "Lavinksy's dead; Ari took a knock on the head."

"Then why—save it." It didn't matter that he didn't like Benyamin Hanavi a whole lot, and Hanavi liked him even less. The chessmaster needed a rook, not a hug. "Your squad's on the left—your fireteam and these five," Galil said, gesturing at five more men. "You're designated Red section. Rest of you with me, you're Green section, arrowhead to my left flank—Moshe and I are the spur. Let's go, quick and quiet. Moving overwatch—twenty-meter interval. We don't have time for run-and-cover."

They moved quickly, boots crashing through the slimeleaf plants littering the floor of the forest.

"Autogun one is up," Shimon reported over their private line, his voice drowned out by a crash. "But the second bus just blew, and I don't think these people are running out of ammo." His voice was distant, dreamy. "Any chance you can hurry things up?"

"On my way." Galil didn't alter his pace. Yes, you hurry. But you don't hurry things so much that you blunder blindly into a rain of bullets.

Rifle fire beyond the next knoll caused him to stop for a moment. He puffed for the platoon freak.

"Kelev Twenty to all Kelev One units. Green section hold in place; cover my advance."

Near the base of a tree, his foot slipped on something and he almost fell headfirst into one of the corpse-white fungi.

"Shit." Which is what it was. Human shit. It had to be. While terrestrial fauna had long been turned loose successfully on Nueva, it was small stuff. Galil didn't think that was the end product of a rabbit. This didn't make any sense, not at all. The ambusher
had
to have been hit by an elite assault group, but basic field sanitation was something that elite field soldiers would long have gotten down pat.

He was trying to figure out the implications of all that when two rifles to his left opened up.

"Got 'em. Two men in Casa utilities. The fucking Casas—"

"Shit, David, don't be an asshole—he was shouting in German. They're fucking Freiheimers in Casa uniforms."

Galil grinned tightly. The rules of the game were very specific about what you could do to pieces caught in a war zone while showing false colors: anything. They'd be captives of war, not civil detainees, prisoners, prisoners of war or criminal detainees—not even capital criminals awaiting execution.

Captives of war had no rights. None.

He puffed for Shimon. "Kelev Twenty. We're about two points south of west of you, three hundred meters out. Moving in for—"

A helo roared overhead. What the fuck?

Gunfire rained down through the leaves. Pain lanced through his right leg, knocking him to the ground.

"Go, go, go," he shouted. Sometimes if you shout, you can manage not to scream. "Two prisoners.
Do it
." He waved the rest on.

Half blind in pain, he pulled an injector of valda oil out of his belt pouch. His fingers trembled and shook as he scrabbled uselessly at the release tab, then swore and bit the package open, slid the injector out and jammed it into his leg, just above the knee.

A warm wave of dull distant pain washed away the agony, and then dissolved itself. He puffed for his private line to the general. "Shimon, we're taking fire from above."

"How many hit?"

Galil had just caught the edge of the rain of bullets; Moshe Bar-El had been stitched diagonally across the chest. He sprawled on the ground, almost cut in half, fat, broken, yellow worms of intestine peeking out through the crimson mess of his midsection.

Two men beyond him lay broken and bloody, and for the life of him Yitzhak Galil couldn't put names to the broken pieces.

"Three dead; I'm dinged." Keep the pain distant.

"Do I need to replace you?"

Galil took a quick inventory. His leg was still bleeding, the blood running down his khakis and into his boot, but it didn't look like much; probably only cut through the muscle. No spurting—venous, rather than arterial blood.

The piece with the triple bars of a captain on its shoulder was only injured, not out of it.

Besides, he could monitor and control things from here. No. You had to leave decisions for those who were going to have to live with them. "No, Shimon. I'm passing it along." He puffed for Skolnick. "Kelev Twenty—you've got the assault commando; I'm auto-patching you through to the General."

"No need; it's okay, Captain. Got three of them knocked down. Others are retreating toward the road. Estimate a total of fifteen. What do you want me to do?"

You can't pass control of an operation over to somebody who's asking you what to do; the piece named Galil would just have to function as chessmaster a few minutes more.

"That was a Casa helo overhead, possibly circling for another pass," Shimon said. "Chiabrera says another one from the same flight'll be overhead any second; two more in two minutes. They say they can patch me through for direct control in one minute. Peled's got both Hunters ready, busy acquiring. Call it."

The pain was a distant thing—
no,
it was nothing. A chessmaster didn't feel any pain when one of the pieces was endangered. All he had to do was call the right move.

He puffed for the regimental freak, override mode. "Kelev Twenty to Tel Aviv Ten. Target Casa helo. Perp to the road, eleven o'clock. Green light."

A minute? A minute was an eternity. The autoguns on a Casa attack helo fire upwards of five thousand rounds a minute. Maybe they were supposed to be a friendly force, but there were three men dead on the ground because the assholes hadn't held their fire as told.

And that had nothing to do with it. Not a damn thing. It was just data. A chessmaster didn't have any affection for his pieces; he just had to evaluate the danger and react.

"Tel Aviv Ten.
Say again.
Request confirmation."

"I said green light, Colonel Peled.
You get that fucking piece off my board.
" He leaned hard against the tree. "Burn the bastard down," he added. But his microphone wasn't on.

"Tel Aviv Ten, roger. Acquired." Peled's voice was crisp and flat. "Rocket
away
."
High overhead, the world exploded into flame and noise that didn't quite drown out Peled's quiet mutter of "
Got
him," before the colonel shut off his mike.

Good: the enemy was on the run; the friendly forces weren't overhead shooting up his pieces.

Galil puffed for Skolnick. "Kelev Twenty—who'd you leave on flank?"

"Litvak. And it's clear there. We got one whole prisoner, one injured. Leg and wrist wound. Both secured."

"Keep the injured one alive; Shimon needs two."

"Understood. They're pinned down in the ditch across from the burning bus. You want to try for more captures?"

"No. Finish it."

"Will do."

The firing intensified, then started to taper off, punctuated with a triple bang of grenades.

"I think we got all of them," Skolnick said.

The chessmaster named Galil leaned back hard against the smooth bole of the tree. His bad leg couldn't support him and his good leg was getting all distant and vague, like the clumsy fingers that couldn't hold the assault rifle any longer.

He slipped down onto the slimyleaves, the world starting to swim in front of his eyes. He closed them. Just play it blindfold, that was it.

You didn't have to look to see the pieces.

He listened to the babble of voices in his headphones for a few seconds.

"Kelev Twelve Thirty-One. I see three down, none moving."

"Kelev Eleven Eleven." That was Lipschitz. "Burning helo on the ground north of the bend, maybe four hundred meters. No sign of life."

"Kelev One Two Three Three. What are we going to do about Slepak? He—"

"Save it, Twelve Thirty-three."

"—motherfucker froze—"

"This is Kelev One Two Three One. I said,
save it
."

It looked like it was settling down; it was time to move to cleanup. Galil puffed for All Hands, and found that he still had override mode. "Kelev Twenty to all units. We're. . . ." The world started to go black around him, but he forced it back to gray. "We are staying operational, but it looks like it's almost over. Don't waste ammo. Everybody except fireteam leaders switch to single shot. Designated sharpshooters only are to fire insurance rounds; everybody else to fire only on active targets. Fireteam leaders, use your judgment, but keep it clustered. Medics and medicians to medical duty."

"I've got operational control of the helo overhead," Shimon said. "What do you want from him?"

"We're on cleanup; you take it. I suggest you land him just ahead of the first bus and use him for medevac. You'd better get me a medic, and find somebody else to take over the mopping up."

"Fair enough. I'll take over, now?"

"It's yours, General."

"I've got it. Good job, Yitzhak."

Galil started to say something, but the distant world at the end of the dark tunnel, the dim world surrounding the piece with the triple bars of a captain, the gray world was going black. Maybe he had lost too much blood after all.

Damn.

CHAPTER 5

Mordecai Peled: Cleaning Up

Mordecai Peled kicked through the smoking remains of the roughly square piece of composite. Part of the outer wall of the cabin, maybe, although it was hard to tell. The whole damn thing stank of burning petrochemicals and scorched meat. A scorched fragment of bone stuck up through the wreckage. He nudged it with his toe, but couldn't decide whether it was part of an arm or leg.

He eyed it coldly. That was just something that had happened to get in his way, and he'd knocked it down. That didn't matter at all.

Hey, Casa mamas, teach your boys not to point guns at my boys.

There's some things you have to give up on. Teaching morality, for one.

You can't teach them that it's wrong to run through the streets of Berlin smashing your people's windows and burning their shops. You can't teach them it's evil to herd your people into the Umshlagplatz and load them into cattle cars to be hauled away and boiled down for soap. You can't teach them that it's unjust to wrap your revered teachers in the Torah scroll and burn them alive. You can't teach them it's immoral to wait on an overpass and then, shouting, "Arafat will fuck your sister," throw firebombs at an auto on a Jerusalem road and boil a baby in his mother's womb.

You can, however, teach them that it's
unsafe
to raise their hand to you and yours.

That was good enough for Mordecai Peled.

The bodies, some still in Casa uniforms—had to save something for the Thousand Worlds observers—scattered across the lightly wooded slope were something else, though: they had him irritated. The bastards had
tried
to get in his way, and he didn't like that much. But the dozen or so bodies didn't seem a fair trade for what was shaping up to be at least thirty dead Metzadans and five times that many wounded.

There weren't enough Freiheimer bodies in the universe to trade for the least of his people.

But that was personal, not professional. His professional judgment was that the Thirtieth had been fucking lucky.

Seven hundred and fifty men, all except one stripped company organized into a support/transport/medical command and two specialized training detachments, the lot of them ambushed by fifteen well-armed infantrymen, would be expected to take upwards of fifty percent casualties. Well upwards.

Looking at it the other way: if Peled had staged an ambush like this, he would have expected to knock out more than half the buses and kill well over half the men.

Buses. He shook his head. Buses. Not even APC's, although he didn't think much of APCs, not in a combat zone.

He was an old infantryman, and he took the old infantryman's view: the worse place to be in a firefight was a pillbox—but being inside a vee-hicle was almost as bad. If you need a foxhole, you dig one; you don't build it above ground. Putting tracks, wheels or fans underneath it doesn't make it better. Still an above-ground foxhole.

Well, they weren't organized into two fucking training detachments and a transport/support/medical command now: they were now the First Battalion, call sign Haifa, operational in a combat zone.

Peled didn't necessarily like that, but he understood it.

His earphone hissed. "Haifa A One Twenty, err, Haifa A Twenty," Avigdor Cohen said, correcting himself. "That is, Haifa A Twenty for Haifa Twenty. Clear at the streambed."

"Haifa Twenty," Peled said, acknowledging as battalion commander. "Post guards to cover your sector, then move up to the CP, double time." The command post was the spot near the first bus where Shimon was interrogating the prisoners. Not much of a CP, but when in doubt, the command post was where the commander was.

"Haifa A Twenty, you got it," Cohen said, identifying himself yet again as the commander of A Company, First Battalion.

Senior Captain Avigdor Cohen had been on the books as an armor and ordnance repair specialist, not a trainer—Cohen was a lousy teacher, but he was good at getting local arty back online faster and running better than anybody thought possible. Cohen was commanding the hastily improvised A Company now, what there was of it: it was more of a platoon than anything else. Resnick, who would have been Peled's first choice for a combat company commander, was dead in the first bus, along with too many of the support people.