Alarm of War (8 page)

• • • • •

At the bridge, the Green Company commander nervously looked at his watch. Where was the damn convoy? He knew the ambush had not gotten them, and all the surviving ambushers were now back at the bridge. He wheeled to the Red Company commander. “I don’t like this,” he said worriedly. They should have been here by now. They’re up to something. We need to send out some more patrols.”

The Red commander yawned. “Take it easy. We’ve got the hill and we’ve got the bridge. They have to come over this bridge to reach the Four Corners. Relax and let them come to us.” She looked at her watch. “Only three hours left.”

The Green commander picked up his radio. “This is Messina on the bridge, calling the observation detail. Do you have anything to report?”

On top of the hill they labeled Sunflower, Kimball picked up some pebbles and shook them in his hand, making a scratchy, rough noise. While still shaking the pebbles, he thumbed the radio they had taken from the Red Company lookouts.

“Nothing to report,” he said, praying the background noise would adequately disguise his voice

“See?” said the Red leader. “They’re not within two miles of here or the lookouts would have seen them.”

• • • • •

Emily shook sweaty hands with Rafael Eitan. “Boy am I glad to see you!” she said fervently. Eitan was medium height, stocky and sported a thick black mustache. He smiled in return and bobbed his head. “And I you. It has been a very long day, yes?”

His accent told her he came from Refuge. His uniform was torn and filthy. Emily wondered if he had spent the day driving a truck or rolling around in the dirt. From the corner of her eye she could see Sergeant Kaelin join Drill Instructor Johnson, who had climbed out of one of the trucks. They stood to the side, conferring quietly. DI Johnson looked at his watch and shrugged.

A radio buzzed. Kara Zavareei trotted over. “Our patrol on the flank reports all is clear.”

“How far is the bridge?” Eitan wanted to know.

“Forget the bridge,” Emily told him. “We are taking the trucks across the river just up past that stand of trees. We found a sand bar that is only three feet deep.” She didn’t mention that it stopped thirty feet short of the far bank and the water there was deeper and faster.
One thing at a time.

Eitan looked doubtful, but had the good grace not to say anything. Emily’s curiosity finally got the better of her. “Just what is this precious cargo you’ve been carrying?”

Eitan shrugged. “Boxes. One per truck, but I don’t know what’s in them.” Emily followed him to the back of the truck. Eitan swept back the tarp. The floor was cluttered with tools, pry bars, a coil of rope and a square wooden box measuring roughly two feet per side. She hoisted herself into the truck and gave the box an experimental push. Heavy, but two men could carry it. She eyed the tools scattered around the floor.

“What is all this?” she asked.

“I think these are the trucks used by the grounds crews to clear brush and trees back at Camp Gettysburg,” Eitan said. He frowned. “Don’t we have to hurry?”

Emily nodded, preoccupied. “Do you have axes in the other trucks?”

Eitan thought a moment. “Yes, in the third truck. Maybe half a dozen. Some saws, too.”

Emily clapped her hands in delight, startling him. She scrambled down off the tuck, shouting a flurry of orders. “Not much time! Move your asses!”

• • • • •

On the bridge, a soldier suddenly pointed to a bend where the river road turned toward the bridge. “See, right there, just sticking out a little past that big rock. That is the front of a truck!”

The Green commander lifted his binoculars and adjusted the focus. By God, it was the front of a truck! The Gold team had finally made it. He glanced at his watch. Too late, too damn late. Blue and Gold had less than two hours to make it to Four Corners. He looked at the bunkers squatting on the bridge like three shabby trolls. No way in hell they were going to get past that, he thought with satisfaction. He lifted the binoculars again. But why weren’t they attacking?

In answer to his question, eight men on the bridge suddenly screamed and fell to the ground. Arms and legs flashed orange. Two men just stood there, not quite understanding they were already FOF.

“Where the hell are they?” someone shouted. “I can’t see them.”

“On the hill! Snipers on the hill!”

The Green commander threw himself behind one of the bunkers, out of the line of fire from the hilltop. More shots, and he was shocked to see the two men with him blink orange. Another shot nicked his shoulder and pain lanced through him. Dammit! “They’re behind us!” he shouted. “Take cover! They’ve sent troops across the river.” Well, he had a surprise for them. He spoke urgently into his radio. He had a team of fifty men hiding in the forest just to deal with this possibility, and they would come in from behind and crush the enemy against the river.

But as the troops hiding in the forest came forward to crush the attackers, they came within reach of the attackers on the hill. More Red and Green soldiers fell. The Red commander ordered fire from the bridge, but to get a decent firing angle the soldiers had to leave the protection of the bunkers. FOFs began to pile up.

“Fall back!” the Green commander ordered disgustedly. “Get back into the forest and the bunkers. Make them come to us.” He shook his head in frustration: fifteen dead after only ten minutes of fighting. He looked at his watch. Not much longer.

• • • • •

“Pull, dammit! Pull!” Emily shouted. Fifty men pulled on the rope and the first truck lurched off the sand bar. Its nose started to sink into the water, then the two tree trunks jammed behind its front tires gave it some buoyancy. Five of the miners from Christchurch thrust more logs under the back of the truck just as the rear wheels reached the end of the shallows. Then the truck was floating – precariously, perhaps, but floating. The men on the far side of the river pulled, the rope tightened and the truck jerked forward, bobbing toward the far shore.

Emily laughed out loud. It was working! One of the men from Christchurch called to her: “Give us more time, Little Sister, we build you a proper bridge, eh?” The others laughed with him. And Emily looked at the scene; dozens of men splashing through the river, men pulling on the tow rope, trucks being readied for the crossing.
We’re going to do this,
she thought.
And I am their commander!

• • • • •

Once the first truck was across, Emily sent two platoons led by Cookie and Sandra Lee ahead to take the Four Corners. She was taking a risk that Green and Red had it heavily defended, but she was betting they had thrown everything into securing the bridge.

They used the first truck to tow the second truck, and the pace picked up. The miners waded waist deep in the river, stuffing logs under each truck as it was dragged off the sand bar. Crews on the far shore received the trucks, pulled the logs out and swam them back across to use with the next truck. Emily had already taken the precaution of sending all of the precious, mysterious boxes across and they were loaded into the lead truck.

Sergeant Kaelin stood behind her, hands on his hips. “Got an hour and a half left, Tuttle. You just might pull it off.”

“Just might, Sergeant.” She couldn’t suppress a grin. “Just might at that.”

“Catch a ride, Little Sister,” one of the miners called as the last truck splashed past her. She leapt onto the passenger side door runner. The driver smiled broadly. “All honor to you! By my life, this is a great day!” The truck reached the end of the sand bar and another miner tied the rope to its tow ring. On the far shore the truck started to pull. The tow rope lifted out of the water, spraying droplets everywhere. Emily wanted to sing.

She was never sure exactly what happened next. Maybe the truck had not been lined up properly, or maybe the previous trucks had weakened the sand bar. As the truck lurched forward, the entire side of the sand bar suddenly collapsed. The truck shuddered, creaked loudly, then fell over on its driver’s side as if in slow motion. When it crashed to the river bottom, Emily’s face cracked into the door frame. Her nose broke in an agonizing spray of blood and pain lanced all the way to the back of her skull. Black dots suddenly crowded her vision, growing larger and larger and-. Suddenly she was in the water, sputtering, coughing, then under water, choking, then she felt herself grabbed hard by the shoulders and hauled to the surface.

Pain ravaged her head and overwhelmed her senses, but she became dimly aware that people were still shouting and someone was screaming and more people came running, and only then did she realize that there were people trapped under the fallen truck.

When it was over, two soldiers – two of her beloved miners – were dead.

Sergeant Kaelin cursed. He exchanged a long look with DI Johnson. Something passed between them, then Johnson shrugged. “Fuck it, Andy. I’ll back you either way,” he told Kaelin.

Emily felt thick-headed, fuzzy. What was Johnson talking about? She looked at the two bodies laid on the shore. Tears pricked the corners of her eyes and she scrubbed them with the back of her hand.

“Tuttle,” Sergeant Kaelin said quietly.

She thought about the two men and wondered if they had girlfriends waiting for them. Did they-

“Emily!” Kaelin said more sharply. She looked up at him. He looked tired, she thought. He was soaked to the skin and his thinning hair was plastered to his head.

“Emily, listen, I have to call for a chopper to evacuate the casualties. If I call now, it will come within minutes, but the Major will insist that the maneuver be stopped. Do you understand?” He looked at her hard. But why was he telling her this? The men were dead, of course they had to-

And then she did understand. There was still time for her to take the convoy to the Four Corners. Still time to complete the mission. But if they called in the fatalities now, the operation would end. She shook her head. Stupid, stupid,
stupid
. All a game and now two men were dead forever. She looked up at Kaelin and the tears came freely now, almost invisible against her wet cheeks, but there.

“I hate this,” she said. “Gods of Our Mothers, I hate this.” Then she turned to the river and waived her arms until she caught Rafael Eitan’s attention on the far shore. Her radio was on the bottom of the river somewhere. She checked her watch and saw they still had forty minutes. She cupped her hands to her mouth.

“Go!” she shouted. “Take it to the Four Corners!”

“Come across, Emily,” he shouted back. “We’ll wait for you!”

Emily waived him away. “Go! Complete the mission. You’re running out of time.” Eitan stood for a moment, then climbed into the truck without another word and the convoy drove across the field.

Emily turned and walked to edge of the water. Men who were standing there silently moved aside. She knelt down between the two bodies. She knew them both. They were two of the men who had teased her, offered her fruit they had taken from the mess hall, kept an eye on her on some of the brutally long marches. Nodded at her in approval when she did something well. Followed her orders.

She placed a hand on each of the two dead men. “Thank you,” she murmured. “I’m so sorry.” The sun felt warm on her face. She closed her eyes and waited for word that Four Corners had been taken.

I
lost two men today.

I think I will remember their faces for the rest of my life.

T
he admirals from the Tilleke Empire, Dominion of Unified Citizenry and Cape Breton met in the same hotel in Darwin to plan the war. They all dressed in civilian clothes, but there was no mistaking what they were: men and women who had spent their lives in the military, accustomed to command. This was their third meeting, and it would be their last. After today there would be no more meetings, just a signal. A simple, coded signal to launch the greatest war in the history of the League of Human Worlds. They had given the operation a code name now, ‘Family Reunion.’

As always, Michael Hudis chaired the meeting, but said as little as possible. He was not a military man and did not pretend to know the admirals’ task better than they did. The meeting was cluttered with the warp and the woof of the fabric of war: signal codes, routes, target designations, designation of attack forces, endless logistics, and chains of command. The task of coordinating three different forces that would be fighting in at least two separate sectors was a formidable task, but that did not make it any more interesting to the civilian observer.

Finally there was a pause. “You still haven’t told us about your new weapon,” Hudis remarked to the Tilleke admiral.

The Tilleke admiral was a tall, handsome man and a member of the royal family, Hudis couldn’t remember what – a count or a duke or something.

“Nor will I now, Citizen Secretary,” the admiral replied. “It works, that is all you need know.”

“You’ve tested it then?” Hudis pressed.

The admiral nodded. “Oh, more than tested it, Citizen Secretary. We have actually
used
it. Just last month. The operation was quite successful. When the time comes the Vickies will be in for a nasty surprise.”

Hudis filed this away, and made a mental note to review the news for reports of missing ships within the last sixty days. “Your Emperor realizes that during the next few months the public statements of the Dominion will be increasingly hostile and belligerent towards the Tilleke Empire?”

“Yes, yes, we’ve been through this before,” the Tilleke admiral said impatiently. “We have no doubt the Vickies will believe every word of it. Arrogant fools.”

“You should be thankful the Vickies are so arrogant,’ Hudis said. “That is how we are going to beat them.”

The admiral leaned forward. “Emperor Chalabi remains concerned that other nations might intervene at an inopportune moment. Our intelligence operatives have not discovered anything, but we acknowledge that our spy network is not as extensive as the Dominion’s.”