In the Valley (29 page)

Once again, Paul reflected that Juneau was no place for soft men. It bred fighters and fanatics like a dog fed fleas. His hand started to shake. With an effort of will, he steadied it down.

The battalion took a final halt in a clearing after the village. The clearing held a sight that was not encouraging to Paul. The Juneau Army parked its vehicles for a final briefing of men and officers before contact became likely, on the road to Qalat. Of course, first they had to maneuver around the blasted wrecks of older-model federation groundcars.

Paul felt chilled, looking at the relics of long-ago fighting. The wrecks and the dead men they summoned in the imagination were the reason the federation had gone with the approach of letting Juneaus deal with Juneau problems.

A heavy hand just didn’t work with these settlers, and men like Bashir had made that clear thirty years ago. Funny, Paul thought. Bashir was his comrade,
his brother in arms. And yet thirty years earlier, Bashir could have fought his uncle Jack on these same mountains and passes.

A goose stepped over Paul’s grave as he stepped down from his groundcar to attend the conference. The mechanic took over Paul’s gun.

Paul walked over to the meeting in progress. Colonel Fasi and the colonel were discussing the latest that had come over the Juneaus’ halos, and Mike was speaking with Stork and Monkey-Boy for some reason. Mike had the cat look in his eyes: someone would die today, and it wouldn’t be him.

Paul just stood by and waited for people to sort themselves out. He could tell everyone was in a high state of excitement. Some showed it; others were good at hiding it, but it was all the same. One thing Paul noticed was that Colonel Fasi was actually wearing the Juneau equivalent of body armor, something he had never seen before.

Of course, Bashir had nothing on but a set of Juneau fatigues. Paul guessed it was either his form of bravado or just cool confidence. The hell that they were going into was Bashir’s home, after all.

The meeting finally broke up with nothing new really having been put out. A couple of changes had been made in the order of march to Qalat, but that was about it. The simple plan was unaltered.

Paul relieved the mechanic on his gun and climbed back in. In a couple of minutes, the colonel mounted up as well. It was time for the final, supposedly easy, leg of their journey, into Qalat.

As they moved out of the force’s groundcar graveyard, Paul got a look at the road ahead via his gun projection. It made the road into Hesar look like a superhighway in comparison. The “road” was a skinny track perched right next to the Hesar Creek, which roared along thoughtlessly as Third Battalion made its way south. They were riding in a canyon with near-vertical walls. Paul tried to make his gun track upward high enough to cover the ridgeline, but he couldn’t.
It was an unsettling feeling, not being able to cover with his guns all the ground available to the bad guys was not a good thing.

After a short march, they reached the clearing in Qalat that had been designated as the ORP (objective rally point) for the assault. As the vehicles laagered up, the colonel called out to Crest.

“Hey, Crest, this is Five.” The colonel had shot off a micro, but he had found out in short order that the service ceiling of the little drones was beneath the lip of the canyon’s walls! This was a serious problem, and one that no one had foreseen. Everyone took micros for granted, and now that dependency was biting them in the butt.

Crest answered, “Go ahead, Five.”

Paul was scanning his sector, which was 180 degrees away from where everyone was looking. He wondered what was going on, and the micro-feed window in his visual was of no help.

“Crest, you see those bastards on the ridgeline directly in front of you?”

“Roger, Five.”

“Are they armed?” The colonel was getting excited, Paul could tell. But then again, his own fun meter was pegging, as well.

“Yes.” Crest’s reply was curt. If someone was armed on the opposing ridge, they sure weren’t Third Battalion soldiers.

“Shoot them.”

“Roger, Five.”

Bum bum bum
. Crest’s automatic grenade launcher spoke.
Thump, thumpthump
sounded, about twenty seconds later.

At the sound of Crest’s gun, an electric shock went through Paul’s whole body. It was the bugle call to battle, a sign that showed itself in the heavens:
THIS IS WHERE MEN COME TO DIE
. If it was possible, Paul scanned that much harder with his gun sight.

“Crest, you’re low about fifty meters.”

“Roger, Five, I can’t elevate my gun any farther; the bad guys are scattering.”

The colonel swore. The day was off to a wonderful start, and so was the the fight through the valley.

It’s really amazing, thought Paul, how people can screw a plan up. The colonel had covered everything the night before. Mike had gone over and above that when he had spoken. Everyone’s assignment had been put out on their halos, complete with maps and animated checkpoints. At the stop back in Hesar, the plan had been reiterated.

And still things were screwed up. Paul had finally dismounted from his groundcar after a discussion with Birthday about when he was going to be relieved, and Crest was arguing that he should accompany the assault force, when it had been put out to him to stay back with the vehicles.

Also, and more ominously, the planned-for shuttles weren’t overhead for the battalion’s movement. The air-control bubbas couldn’t raise them. The colonel was steamed about that; apparently there was too much interference from the canyon walls—ditto with micro coverage. If the micros couldn’t cover the elevated areas, they weren’t much good. The Juneaus were moving out, there was nothing for the advisors to do but follow them.

Feeling blind with no micro-drone coverage, Paul fell into trail behind Bashir with Z-man in tow. They moved through a grove of dinosaur trees with Second Company in one file and First Company in another. Behind both files of men came the command element, with the colonel. Bringing up the rear was the short battalion of provincial police.

At the end of the grove, Second Company split off and moved up onto the promised goat trail on the eastern, or left, side of the valley. Paul’s Juneaus were pushing a furious pace, and he and Z busted ass to follow them.

They had five kilometers to go to the objective. Gunfire sounded from somewhere up ahead, a loud
dah dah dah, pop pop
that echoed along the canyon’s walls.

Paul cursed again that the shuttles weren’t overhead, cursed the useless micro feed. He was, he reflected, really doing this the old-fashioned way. A twentieth-century warrior would have gone about this fight in the same way. Limited halo communications, an assault rifle, and his own two legs and eyes—it was exactly what that ancestral warrior would have been equipped with.

In other words, Paul and the Team had been dunked in the shit.

Who knew? Maybe his halo would go down too, and he would have to get out his compass. Then he thought: bite your tongue, son, this day is already fucked up enough without inviting trouble.

Paul and his guys continued to climb. He looked to his right and clearly saw First Company in the valley below. His halo picked up Mike and Stork. They were roughly parallel to him; they were exactly 486 meters away.

Paul looked to his left and saw rocks. He had to crane his neck to see sunlight, and he knew he couldn’t see the top of the ridge. It made him dizzy to look up there, so he quit doing it. Then again, the further he and Z went, the crappier the view to the right was getting, too.

From ahead, there were more pops and the sound of something heavier firing, too. The colonel pinged his halo.

“Two-Three, can you see where that firing is coming from?”

Paul wished he could. “Five, negative.”

He and Second Company continued to climb; the goat trail was going down and then going back up. It was like being on a slow-motion roller-coaster ride with no safety belt. In some places, there was barely enough room for one guy. In other places, two men could walk comfortably abreast, but that was all.

Paul sped up, so he could try to catch Bashir; he was a couple of soldiers ahead. Bashir was walking along like it was a stroll through the park. Paul, weighted down with about forty-five kilos of gear, finally made it up to him.

Bashir noticed him—probably from the sound of Paul panting. “Ah, Thompson, my good friend, this is a joyous day, yes?” Bashir was beaming.

“Absolutely. God has given us an enemy to fight, yes?”

At Paul’s words, Bashir’s smile broadened. “The only thing that would make it better is if we had time to stop for tea, but alas, we do not have it.” Bashir didn’t look all that put out, but you never knew with him.

“Bashir, my friend, have we seen the enemy yet? There are many places for him to hide.”

As Paul looked around, he saw nothing but possible fighting positions. His halo had tried for a time to identify possible spots, but Paul had shut the feature down after it had highlighted almost all of the terrain red for “possible danger areas.”

Technology had its limits; Paul was getting some first-class examples today.

Bashir answered him. “No, we have seen only glimpses of them. They are delaying us, trying to break our will to fight. I have done this many times.”

I’ll bet you have, thought Paul.

“They are shooting at us, but they are not serious yet. When we receive fire from their antiarmor rockets or artillery, then, and only then, will they be ready to fight.”

Bashir continued. “Do not fear, friend Thompson, for is our fate not in the hands of God?”

Paul thought for a second and answered, “It is, friend Bashir. For all that is under the stars, may God be praised.”

Paul called up the colonel and shared his feed of Bashir. The colonel concurred with what Bashir had said and added some more.

“Hey, Two-Three, look at it this way: as long as we move toward the sounds of the guns, we can’t be screwing up too badly.”

Those are true words, thought Paul, true words. And Paul and Z were definitely moving toward the guns.

An hour later and two klicks farther, things were definitely starting to get hairy. Z had already treated two shot Juneaus; they had been sent to the valley floor below. Second Company never stopped, and Z had to hustle to make it back up to Paul. The wounded were carried back to the ORP.

They had rushed past the crumpled bag of rags that had been a dead bad guy as they sped along the goat trail. Paul’s halo said they were four hundred meters above the valley floor, but he had ceased to notice the scary drop off to their right—all any of them cared about was reaching the cluster of buildings ahead of them that was the village of Kanaghat.

The intensity of the enemy fire had increased dramatically. Now Paul was having trouble distinguishing individual rounds; the sound was a steady drumbeat around him.

Paul was starting to hate the upward dips of the goat trail to Kanaghat. When it went upward, he and his men came into view of the village, and the fire would ping around the running men.

These were the moments that Paul began to have a renewed belief in God. As bullets tore past him with their hateful
phweet
, he began to believe it was miracle he and Z-man were still alive.

Juneaus ran into the hail of bullets like men trying to avoid rain—hunched forward, shoulders sloped as if under a heavy burden—which, in a sense, they were. The assault took courage, and it took a psychic toll that would only be seen later, if at all.

Second Company travelled along another dip downward, this time all the way to the valley floor. First Company and Second Company came together briefly, before the final push into the village. First Company was going through the village; Second Company rose back up along the goat trail to take the village heights. Unfortunately, that was in direct line of sight to Maktar’s fortress on the hill.

Mighty Mike was standing at this choke point like a warlord in his prime. He pinged Paul’s halo and called out, “Hey, assholes, how do you like my party?” He cackled evilly; the Juneaus just grinned and called out his name.

Paul couldn’t help but smile. Mike was always good for a laugh, especially at moments like this. He got another ping from Mike as he headed up the hill. Mike’s face was entirely serious as he came onto Paul’s visual.

“Two-Three, this is One-Three.”

“Go ahead, One-Three.”

“Two-Three, how is your medic holding up?”

“He’s fine, a little shaken, but he’s doing the thing. I’ve been keeping my eye on him.”

Mike didn’t look convinced, but Z-man was Paul’s problem, not really his. Mike continued, “Hey, Two-Three, now that we’ve reached a bit of a holding area, the colonel is setting up a CP and trying to get some air cover back. I guess Fox finally managed to get ahold of those assholes; they were flying racetracks around Firebase Atarab.”

“No shit, One-Three? What the hell happened? We need those pricks up here.”

“No clue, Two-Three. From what I understand, they are inbound.”

Paul continued to climb the trail. He was coming up on some houses toward the top.

“Rog, One-Three. Things are getting busy; got to go.”

Paul was alongside some houses; the goat trail ran behind them. He was hearing the
zip-zips
of passing bullets with some regularity now. His mouth was bone dry, and his knees felt weak, as if someone had touched them with a cattle prod.

Up to now, he had thought he had known fear. He had been in tight spots before. But with the mouth of the path that was obviously dialed in by someone’s guns looming in front of him, he knew real fear. He pressed on. A woman came up the steps alongside the house next to him, screaming. He almost shot her. Instead, he stiff-armed her back down the steps.

He kept moving. Paul checked his halo; Z was still behind him. He was at the top of the little hill, and bullets passed to all sides of him. He heard a peculiar rushing noise—it was an antiarmor round that passed right between him and Z. His balls headed north in a hurry, probably somewhere in his stomach, he thought.