In the Valley (27 page)

At just about an hour and a half later on the mark, the colonel and Fox dragged themselves back into the ground-car. The colonel looked like he was going to die, and Fox, twenty years his junior, didn’t look much better.

“Remind me, Paul, never to look for princesses in white tents again.” With that, he crawled into his split-open suit and buttoned back up. Paul could swear
he could hear the environmental exchanger working extra hard to bleed off the Colonel’s excess body heat.

A couple of minutes later, Third Company started to move south again. After a bouncy couple of late-afternoon hours, the convoy moved back into Firebase Atarab. Paul, the colonel, and company spilled out of their ground-car and proceeded to suck down field rations before it got to be full dark.

Mighty Mike, who had been with First Company and Colonel Fasi all day, came sauntering up. “Hey, sir,” he said to the colonel, “it looks like Commander Maktar out toward Hesar wants to fight.”

Combat, thought Paul upon hearing the words. Combat, indeed.

“I
n combat,” Sergeant First Mike was saying, “the colonel and I are expecting that every member of this team does his part.” Paul had met the man he was later to call “Mighty Mike” a week earlier, as the transports brought together the guys who would form FMAT Team 1.69. They were still short an admin guy and an intel dude, but the core of the team was there.

“Today, we are going to see if you guys can do land navigation. I borrowed seven compasses from the supporting barracks here.”

Ah shit, thought Paul. Compass and paper-map orienteering through the woods—just like at OCS. He seriously thought that his officer’s schooling would be his last time doing this stuff. But the colonel and his team sergeant had other ideas apparently.

As Paul walked through the woods on Canton 2, a pleasantly moderate world compared to Roodeschool, he reflected on his first impressions of his new leadership and how he had gotten here to Canton, training to be on an advisory team.

His last commander had selected Paul for the FMAT mission when his time was winding down on Roodeschool. He had been doing some administrative
work in his office on base by Charm, when his halo pinged: he was wanted at battalion headquarters.

Paul wrapped up what he was doing and went straight over after pinging his boss that he was leaving. Paul had no clue what they wanted at HQ; lieutenants in line outfits didn’t usually swing by the brass unless they’d done something wrong. He ran a mental index of all the things he or his guys had done in the past month and couldn’t come up with anything serious enough to warrant a tongue-lashing. Still, that didn’t keep him from being a little nervous when he reported in to the battalion commander’s secretary.

“Lieutenant Thompson here to see Lieutenant Colonel Liozenac.”

No sooner were the words out of his mouth than he heard from the commander himself.

“Enter, Thompson.” Paul walked briskly into the room where Liozenac was seated behind a desk. He stopped, his body centered on the desk. He rendered a brisk salute and reported.

Liozenac smiled and gave back a crisp salute of his own. “Have a seat, Paul.”

Relieved, Lieutenant Thompson sat down and waited for the commander of the Second Battalion, 245th Regiment, to begin.

“I just got an interesting tasking from Force HQ, Thompson, and I wanted to run it by you.” He folded his arms behind his head and leaned back in his battalion-commander-grade chair. “It seems this battalion has been asked to provide one armored-suit qualified officer for a Force Military Advisor Team, and I think you’d make a good fit.”

Paul had heard a little about those teams, and what he had heard wasn’t good: they involved a lot of unsuited work with temperamental local armies in generally bad circumstances. After all, only worlds with out-of-control dissident problems
needed FMATs. The reason being that FMATs were only necessary when problems got to be too big for Special Forces teams to handle on their own. Foreign internal defense and counterinsurgency was the SF’s stock in trade. FMATs, consisting of mostly line troopers, were called upon to play the counterinsurgency game. As a plus, they cost less to train and assemble than an SF team.

Joining an FMAT team sounded different and challenging to Paul. Mentally, he flipped a coin. It came up heads. OK, he thought, I’ll do it. It was another example of a major decision in the life of Paul Thompson being made via a trivial process.

“I may be interested, sir, but why do you think I’m the one for this?” Paul wanted to reassure himself that this wasn’t Liozenac’s way of dumping an unwanted officer.

“As you may know, Thompson, these are tough missions. I don’t want to embarrass the 245th by sending a lieutenant that might not measure up. Also, you have provided leadership in your outfit, even when you thought no one was looking.” Liozenac looked thoughtful. “That’s less common than you may think. I think you can hack this mission.”

For Paul, the die was cast. “I’ll do it, sir, and I won’t embarrass the regiment.”

Paul had been winding his affairs down in Echo Company, anyway, as his tour was coming to an end. He knew he was due a new assignment, but Liozenac had thrown him a curveball.

Over the next month, Paul handed over his responsibilities to a new LT and prepared for transport. Eight months later he was on Canton 2, a world far more hospitable than Roodeschool. Force HQ had chosen Canton for the assembly area for FMAT 1.69.

The colonel, when Paul arrived, was already there. He pinged Paul immediately for a meeting. They met at Force Installation Canton (a not terribly original name, Paul thought) in a Plascrete room that had been painted light green.

Paul sized up the man who was to be his new boss. The colonel had a Mediterranean look about him, with hair slightly longer than the force’s average. He was of medium to slender build and spoke with mild tones.

“Lieutenant Thompson, why did you sign up for my team?” The colonel had his hands clasped on the cheap table between them and was looking at Paul with a fair bit of curiosity.

“Well, sir, I’ve heard about these teams, and I know they are tough assignments. I like a challenge.”

The colonel seemed satisfied with his answer and proceeded to outline his vision for how the team was going to be put together and function. He didn’t know who was going to show up; Force HQ hadn’t told him, but he did know who his team sergeant was going to be.

He told Paul a little about the background of Mighty Mike and asked if Paul could work with him. He looked at him again, with that curious look Paul would learn well: one eyebrow raised, mouth slightly puckered, head thrust forward.

Paul answered, “Sir, I’ve always followed the commander’s intent and placed the mission first. I think I can work with Sergeant First Mike.”

Two weeks later, Paul wasn’t so sure.

Mighty Mike was a Force Ranger, with a cocky attitude and an easy familiarity with the colonel, whom he regarded as a colleague in the Force Special Operations community. Mike never said so, but Paul was sure that Mike regarded him as a “line puke,” and a shavetail douche bag lieutenant at that.

Paul, though, was an experienced soldier who was used to commanding troopers. Mike’s attitude put the hairs up on the back of his neck. Also, Paul felt a bit outclassed. The team had an SF lieutenant colonel in command with a First Batt no-shit Force Ranger as his designated sidekick. He recognized an inferiority-complex monkey that he had to get off his back.

So Paul looked at the situation, decided he was being a crybaby, and determined that he was going to perform to the colonel’s specifications, no matter what.

Paul also knew, having been an NCO himself, that ranking sergeants were always suspicious of lieutenants who hadn’t proven that they could cut the mustard. He thought he could see the situation through Mike’s eyes, and he knew he would have to work hard to gain the leadership duo’s trust. Paul decided to train without complaint and without quit. Otherwise, he was going to have a rough couple of years with the team.

So he took map and compass in hand and headed out through the real deciduous forest of Canton 2. If the leaves hadn’t been bloodred, he would have felt like he was back in the Ohio Valley, looking for a fishing hole.

He was carrying a standard unsuited combat load, with an M-74 clipped to his battle harness. The mil-grade halo in his helmet was switched off, entirely in keeping with basic land-navigation exercises. Altogether, Paul was carrying about twenty kilos in weight. He was in good shape, though, so it wasn’t a problem at all.

Mike had designed the course so that there was about a kilometer in between most of the legs, and the legs went through plenty of swamps and creeks. Paul was about four legs into the field problem when he spotted Sergeant Dirty. He looked to be having a heck of a time. Dirty was panting from the exercise, and his cams were wet and splattered in mud.

Dirty called out to Paul, “Hey, sir, do you know where point AH is? I can’t find it anywhere.”

Actually, Paul had just come from the little AH placard in the woods; he knew exactly where it was. However, the rules, as laid out by Mike, were clear. There was to be no talking between soldiers looking for points; this was an individual exercise and test.

Paul looked at him, shook his head, and moved out. He left a cursing Dirty behind him.

On the way to his seventh point, a ground-car whispered up beside him. Paul had been using a road on the range to navigate to his next-to-last point.

In the ground-car were the colonel and Mike. Mike was in the driver’s position.

Mike called out, “Let me see your map, sir.” Paul handed it over. Mike took it, and gave it a skeptical look. The scene reminded Paul very much of OCS, where the instructors would look at your map like they had just wiped their butts with it. They looked hard for any flaws. So did Mighty Mike. Mike handed the map back with a satisfied-sounding grunt.

The colonel, who had been watching, looked at Paul and said, “You wanna quit?”

Paul just shook his head. “No, sir, I’m enjoying myself.”

“I’ll bet your feet hurt. You want a ride?” The colonel was trying a new angle, the bastard.

“No, sir, I’m good. Haven’t finished the exercise yet.”

The colonel just nodded, and the pair rode off, looking for the next sucker. En route to the finish point, Paul saw the colonel ride by with Dirty in the back. Huh, Paul figured, no surprises there. Paul had worked with a lot of NCOs over the years, and he figured nothing good was in store for Dirty.

Al-Asad and Stork, who had just shown up the day before, beat Paul to the finish. However, Paul was well under time, so he didn’t sweat it. He handed his map and the paper showing the points he had reached over to Mighty Mike.

Mike looked at it and said, “You passed, sir: ‘gratu-fuckin-lations. Have a seat and relax; tonight we go to the halo simulator and do some weapons practice.”

Paul sat down, turned on his halo, and looked at the training schedule that had been posted by Mike. It was jammed full—they were going to train hard. Once everyone had arrived, the colonel would start the halo-extension combat-advisor course, or CAC. According to the schedule, eight hours a day would be taken up by the halo course. Another eight hours Mike had filled up with stuff, with a big emphasis on physical training, of course.

Seeing as how Canton had twenty-three Earth-standard hour days, the team would be busy. Good, thought Paul. Train hard now, and go on-planet somewhat ready.

One week later, a very tired Paul picked up Birthday and Green from the arrivals lounge on the force installation. The team was complete.

The colonel activated the combat-advisor extension course immediately. The team conducted drills, worked out standard operating procedures, and did field problems. The soldiers did this around their eight hours a day in halo instruction, on such subjects as “Farsi Language and Culture,” “Counterinsurgency Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures,” and so on.

The force was stuffing ten pounds of shit into five-pound bags. There were times when Paul thought his mind or his body was going to explode. However, all good things must come to an end. On schedule, two months later, the halo course was complete, and transport to Juneau 3 had been laid on. The colonel granted his men a three-day pass in Valparaiso, the town close by Force Installation Canton.

While his guys were blowing off steam, the colonel studied maps. He had every intention of extending training into the team’s 113-day (+/– 10 days) transport time.

The colonel knew what awaited his team; he laid the foundations for their success.