Reclamation (Best Laid Plans Book 4) (28 page)

The sergeant waited to see if there were any more questions, then turned to Matt. “You can spend the time until lunch settling in, as well as acquainting yourself to anyone in camp currently on downtime. The mess tent is open to your men, although we'll want you to contribute to both finding food and the cooking in the future. I want you and any other leaders in your group to come to the command tent after you're done eating . . . by then I should've figured out a way to make best use of you working with my people.”

Trev spoke up again as the man started to walk away. “Any objections to us using the morning hunting and foraging?”

The sergeant looked amused again. “You mean to you doing work during your free time on your own initiative? Be my guest. Just remember you'll be sharing your bounty with the rest of the camp, and you'll still be expected to work hard on duty even if you squander your opportunities to get some R&R. You're part of a unit now.”

Once he was gone Matt glanced around the group. “All right then. I guess first things first we should probably split the squads in to teams, just to be prepared. Trev, you've been training your squad and know them best, so I'll leave them to you.”

* * * * *

It was a relief to know they weren't going to be sent out to fight the Gold Bloc, but at the same time Davis had meant what he said about making the best use of their time.

Over the next couple weeks Matt and his volunteers, working together with Davis's Marines and the other local volunteers, ended up hiking several miles every day, learning the terrain of the mountains, foothills, and the valley below between Huntington and Aspen Hill to within binocular range of their home. It wasn't just jaunts, either; they spent grueling hours scouring the foothills and slopes for even the most difficult paths the enemy could take to get past them into the mountains.

They didn't just do it for their own familiarization, either. Davis wanted anyone who had a decent eye for distances and could draw a straight line to sketch detailed maps of the areas they passed through, which he then personally traced onto a larger map in his tent to create a fairly accurate topographical map of the entire region. He jotted everything the scouts learned about paths and other useful information on that map.

Including ambush points, which were one of the sergeant's main priorities. Even before they'd become fully familiar with the region they'd been assigned to guard Davis had everyone in his unit hard at work digging foxholes and emplacements in likely spots, as well as rigging up pitfalls from any handy rocky slopes or ledges. He'd also requested demolitions teams to come plant charges above the roads in suitable spots to completely block passage beyond those points, especially along Highway 31. They were still waiting on those teams.

When they weren't scouting or digging the sergeant pushed them through extensive training, constantly bemoaning the lack of ammunition that kept them from doing much live fire training. “We don't excuse waste in the Marines, but to do proper training you'd be expected to fire hundreds of rounds before you were done,” he said at the end of one exercise. “And that would just be for basic competency.”

In compensation for that he split his soldiers among the groups sent out hunting, getting double value out of having the volunteers train on the spot while shooting at game. It wasn't the best setup, but it worked well enough for what they had.

As for gear, Davis didn't have much more to work with than the volunteers had brought with them. But there were some useful things he could provide, to streamline everyone's efforts at coordinating with each other. Among the most useful of those were the sophisticated radios he gave out to Matt and Trev as squad leaders.

They were designed to carry on the belt, with a high quality long distance antenna that could be attached to the top of the backpack with a breakaway cable for quick removal. In combat the radio would usually rely on a smaller antenna on the device itself, which reduced the range a bit but not as much as expected. The radio came with noise canceling earbuds and a mic designed to filter out loud and high pitched noises for clearer speaking.

It would solve a lot of the communication problems the Aspen Hill defenders had run into against the raiders. It was encrypted, to start with, and with the earbuds communicating over it wouldn't give away a person's position. There was also a toggle on the radio itself to talk, which meant talking would be more hands-free in situations where you had to do multiple things at once. The noise-canceling feature also meant you wouldn't go deaf being around gunshots and explosions, and even at the loudest times would have a better chance of hearing people talking and picking up telltale noises around you.

They were fairly standard issue, and in an ideal situation every soldier would have one. But with equipment scarce and precious Matt considered himself lucky that he and Trev had theirs to work with. The rest of the squad had to rely on the radios they'd got from the raiders, which were encrypted and could be used to communicate with the better radios but didn't have all the perks.

Still, they were worlds ahead of the gear Davis's other local volunteers had, where they had any at all. At best most of those folks had the same sorts of walkie talkies Aspen Hill's defenders had been stuck with when the raiders attacked. The higher quality radios could communicate with those, but without encryption.

Matt made sure to warn his fellow irregulars of the vulnerabilities of those radios, describing his experiences with Turner's raiders and the problems unsecured communication which could be easily exploited had caused the town. At least the leaders among the other volunteer groups also had Davis's radios, which was a plus.

The sergeant mostly kept the volunteers in their own distinct squads, training together, but he also encouraged them to get to know each other and often had people from different groups do camp chores together. The locals were a bit leery of Aspen Hill at first, since last fall it had developed the reputation of being stingy with refugees, and more recently there'd been plenty of rumors about the town's turf war with the raiders, not all of them true.

The other volunteers got more friendly once they'd had a chance to hear Aspen Hill's side of things. As for the towns they came from, mostly Huntington and Castle Dale, they had their own horror stories to tell about events since the Gulf burned. It was something everyone had in common and served to further bond them.

All in all Matt was feeling pretty good about their situation. They had the lay of the land, and Davis had painted a fairly clear picture of just what they'd need to do if the unexpected happened and they were required to turn back a Gold Bloc attack in the area.

Thanks to the natural choke points and their superior positioning and preparations they should have the advantage even if they were massively outnumbered, to the point where just the several dozen fighters they had should be able to hold back an army until reinforcements arrived. In fact, the sergeant predicted that once the blockheads saw that there was no easy path into the mountains along this stretch they'd give it up entirely, and either try to go around or hunker down in the valley for a more extended conflict.

If they went around they'd run smack dab into the bulk of Lassiter's forces waiting along I-70, Highway 6, Highway 40, and I-80. Most of those larger roads also had decent choke points along them, but there was a large area to cover outside of those points, more open spaces where the enemy could get through too easily, especially if they were coming from both sides.

The lack of choke points in those places meant the General had to rely on numbers rather than positioning. And because those were the larger roads the military predicted that they'd see the fiercest fighting against the blockheads there. Davis
did
warn, though, that with I-70 not all that far away they'd probably see plenty of probes from Gold Bloc scouts searching for alternative routes or just keeping tabs on the area.

Thanks to the volunteers' specific role in the upcoming conflict they were less worried about the future. So much so that when word reached them over the radio in mid June, sixteen days after they arrived in camp, that the Gold Bloc forces had finally arrived, they weren't as anxious as they might otherwise have been.

They'd all gathered in the mess tent to hear the news, listening to the stream of reports being passed on to them about Russian forces to the east closing on the area where Erikson and his men had set up in the Colorado Rockies. The first skirmishes between blockhead advance scouts and the military had already begun, and the General expected the fighting to become fierce within the next few hours as the vanguard of an army hundreds of thousands strong reached Denver and Cheyenne, then began searching for an undefended path farther west.

The military had known of that army's approach for over a week now, but they'd expected them to spend more time taking and holding positions in the Great Plains rather than pushing westward as hard and fast as they had. It left the enemy strung out and exposed with supply lines stretching back for hundreds of miles, something the US Armed Forces could've punished them for if they'd had any units in the area. Unfortunately they didn't, and the Russians had either known the bold play was a safe one or they'd taken a huge gamble to shave weeks off their timetable.

From the sounds of it the Chinese were just now beginning to gather over a hundred miles northwest of Utah, still days away from being any sort of threat even if they copied their Russian counterparts' aggressive move. Their progress would be further slowed by the fallout zone around Hill Air Force Base, which they'd have to swing far around to avoid, traveling along predictable routes Lassiter was prepared to defend.

Which meant that, for the moment at least, the fighting was all in Colorado. And from the sounds of it Erikson's men had caught the approaching blockheads by surprise and were decimating the scouting units with relatively few losses.

Things seemed hopeful, although the enemy forces hadn't even begun to arrive and truly engage the military to the east. But even with that consideration the threat felt remote to Matt, far away and not likely to get closer any time soon with the Gold Bloc butting their heads against the natural protective barrier of the Rockies. The other volunteers didn't seem all that bothered as they listened to the continuing stream of reports, either.

Not so with Davis and his Marines. They were all tense, expressions grim as they huddled closer around the radio. Matt could understand their feelings, since their brothers in arms were in danger and some of them probably had close friends among the soldiers fighting the enemy. And it was probably a good idea to remember that, as far away as that threat was, it was a massive one and it was headed their way.

The war with the Gold Bloc was about to begin in earnest.

Over the next three days the fighting got fiercer and fiercer in Colorado, but judging by what Matt heard from Davis or over the radio it was going well.

General Erikson had put up a lot of vicious booby traps while waiting for the blockheads to arrive, anything from bridges and overpasses rigged with explosives to destroyed roads channeling the enemy towards minefields. He'd also been sending out Special Operations Forces teams to strike at targets of opportunity, including behind enemy lines.

The massive army closing on them had slowed down to a crawl in the face of the unexpected and violent show of resistance, especially after going relatively unopposed for so long, and their losses were growing more and more severe by the day. In comparison Erikson's soldiers reported far fewer losses, and were solidly entrenched along all the routes westward.

The only options the Gold Bloc's eastern forces had at this point were to either try to go far north or south around the Colorado Rockies, which would slow them down considerably and leave them exposed to attack along a much larger front, try to settle in for a long siege and hope they had more supplies than the US Armed Forces holding out against them, or try to brute force their way through with sheer numbers.

So far that latter option didn't seem to be working. It might once the Chinese threw themselves into the fray, since at that point there'd be no guessing how things would shake out. But for the moment things were fairly hopeful and spirits were high in camp.

They could also be somewhat optimistic about a siege, depending on how well the Gold Bloc could keep up their supply lines. One benefit of being the defending force was that they were mostly stationary, which ended up using far less fuel. Not only did the enemy have to use more just getting to them, but if their attack failed and they were forced to retreat they'd use even more withdrawing, then getting to them again for the next attack they tried.

It all added up, especially with Erikson's Spec Ops teams ordered to specifically target fuel depots and tankers if the opportunity arose. They had the perilous but necessary task of finding ways to strike at such valuable and well defended Gold Bloc resources, after which they'd hopefully get away clean and disappear into the countryside to hide from any attempts at retaliation. With any luck they could then reposition for another strike.

Matt didn't envy those guys that job, but if they were successful they would ultimately be the ones that won this war for the remnants of the US, by taking away the enemy's ability to wage war long term and eventually forcing them to retreat.

Another thing that could, and absolutely had to, be used against the enemy was that they outnumbered the US forces more than ten to one. While that was a horrific advantage it also meant they had ten times as many mouths to feed, which would make any siege cripplingly costly unless they changed up their tactics.

With the good news rolling in people in camp had even begun talking about the possibility of winning this war, which had seemed unlikely given how outnumbered and outmatched they were.