In the Valley (33 page)

With the weight of fresh experience, he knew he was in no immediate danger. The firefight was on the hill, not where he was standing. He willed his stiff, resisting legs to move and climbed out of his homey little crater, away from his cot.

When he gained the level of the valley floor, he looked around. He caught sight of a tracer, burning its way to oblivion in the starlight over First Company’s hill. The bullet’s streak confirmed what he had thought. The shooting was coming from the hill in front of him.

He could think of several reasons for the firefight.

There could have been a nervous sentry, popping off a few rounds into the night. That happened with a fair amount of frequency. But he discounted that option. After all, the shooting was still happening. A nervous sentry wouldn’t have caused the entire ruckus up there.

Or, it could have been a probe of the camp’s defense by the dissidents. Paul knew they were still lurking out there. From all the firing, especially the launch of the antiarmor rockets, he thought that could be the reason. But there
didn’t seem to be any fire going down into the valley where the advisors slept, so maybe that wasn’t it either.

Was it a celebration of some sort? Paul immediately dismissed that option. For God’s sake, it was about four in the morning. A quick check of his mil-grade halo display confirmed the time: 0421 local. No way. If the Juneaus were going to celebrate something, they would do it in the middle of the day.

Well, it had to be something else. No one had put up a micro, so he had no overhead feed. Looking at his display, he could see that no shuttles were around, either.

He dug out a Fortunate and lit it. He wasn’t worried about poor light discipline. All sorts of guys were showing lights, what with the pandemonium on the hill. His near-cig’s glow, when compared with the situation a couple of hundred meters from him, was negligible.

Apparently, the colonel had arrived at the same conclusion. He was leaning against the fender of a ground-car, puffing away quietly. Paul sauntered up to him.

“Any idea what those guys are doing, sir?”

The colonel took another drag. “Naw, not a clue. Sounds like they’re having quite a party, though.” He didn’t seem very concerned, but then again, neither was Paul once he had gained full consciousness.

The colonel looked upward, as if he expected a bird to poop on his head. “Hmm…wonder if I should shoot a micro up.”

Paul gestured with his smoke. “I dunno, sir. We’re running out of the man-pack ones. Maybe a flare?”

The firing was dying down. Whatever the cause for the firefight, things seemed to be calming down. Mike walked up with Stork and Crest in tow. As
usual, Mike had a certain intensity about him; his sidekicks seemed to be caught in the undertow of a particularly powerful wave.

Mike stated the obvious. “Sir, the firing is coming from my company’s area. I’d like to go up there and take a look around. No one is answering my halo pings.”

The colonel just nodded and got out another cig.

A vehicle made the characteristic humming of a powerful electric motor coming online. More vehicles started. The men looked over at the group of ground-cars clustered by the foot of First Company’s hill.

They saw scurrying figures and shouted commands. The EOD guys over there were having a first-class freak-out if Paul’s guess was correct.

The day before, a unit of explosive-ordnance disposal techs had come out from the capital city of Jade. Their mission was to dispose of the excess explosives captured by the battalion a couple of days before, at Kanaghat.

When the techs had arrived at Firebase Atarab, Paul could tell they were not exactly used to living in field conditions—their expressions said it all when they glanced around the camp. They were garrison soldiers, used to such luxuries as hot meals and Plastone toilets. They looked decidedly out of place at the firebase.

Their eyes had gotten even bigger when they saw the ordnance that had been captured. It wasn’t every day that a ton of explosives had to be disposed of, after all.

The EOD guys had eventually settled on a place in the middle of the desert to blow the crap up; it had been tough to find an empty spot with at least a kilometer safe distance on all sides. Their caution was well justified.

The ordnance had made a huge explosion when it was set off; a half-kilometer-high mushroom cloud’s shadow had fallen over the entire valley upon
detonation; an enormous clap had resounded. It had been quite a show for the sense-deadened guys on Firebase Atarab.

Now, though, their work done, the EOD techs apparently found Third Battalion’s comfy home an unhealthy place to be. As Paul and the others watched, the EOD vehicles hauled ass out of the camp. Mike jeered in derision.

The colonel raised his eyebrow. “Well, look at that. The fucks could have at least come to say good-bye. Cheese dicks.”

Paul agreed. What a bunch of pussies, he thought. The distraction over, Mike’s group turned and left to go up the hill.

The colonel and Paul stayed at the bottom and shot up flares to illuminate the scene on First Company’s hill. The two men slaved feeds to see what Mike’s group was seeing. Paul chose to look through Stork’s feed.

Fuck, thought Stork as he climbed the hill. Stork was weirded out. He had no idea of what he was getting into up there, but he knew it wouldn’t be good. His medic ruck dug into his back as he went. The hill was steeper than it looked, and Stork started to take deep breaths.

He put one foot in front of the other and made it up the hill bit by bit. A star came to life above him; it was the first flare that the colonel had shot off. Stork didn’t think it was necessary. Everyone in his little group was using the night-vision function on their mil-grade halos. But he figured, what the hell—every little bit helped.

By the time they got to First Company’s area, Stork was blowing a little from the exertion. Crest, behind him, looked like he would die. Even Mike was taking deep breaths—whether it was from the climb or the tension relating to what they would find, Stork didn’t know.

He looked around and saw a group of guys standing by one of the platoon leader’s tents. Other Juneau soldiers were looking around for something, and
other ones were jabbering excitedly with their friends. All were waving guns around with abandon. Stork was acutely aware that this was how accidents happened.

One of the Juneaus spotted the three men. “Mike…Mike, you must come! The enemy—he has shot two of our men!” He gesticulated wildly in the direction of the platoon leader’s tent, where a group of men seemed to be looking at something.

Mike made like a laser toward the scene. Another flare blossomed overhead; everything was illuminated by the actinic light and counterilluminated by the breaking dawn. It made for a strange and ghostly scene.

“Hey, Stork,” Mike said, “get your shit ready; you may be busy soon. I might have to figure out an LZ up here.” There was an odd note of tiredness and excitement in his voice.

As they walked quickly over to the tent, Stork started mentally cataloging what he might have to do and what supplies he had brought up the hill.

All of the men in front of the tent had spotted them by now. They parted out of the way to let the group of three inside. The tent’s entrance gaped at them like the mouth of a drunk, sagging and toothless. A dim light shone from within.

As the group passed through the Juneau soldiers at the entrance, Stork caught whiffs of gunpowder, sour bodies, and blood. He prepared himself mentally for what he was about to see.

And then he saw it. There were two bodies lying in spreading pools of blood on the floor. The bodies were in sleeping bags; their attitudes suggested that death had found them while asleep.

Stork took one look at the corpses and decided his services were not going to be needed. These guys were stone dead. Mike looked at the bodies and then
at Freidag, one of First Company’s officers. Mike’s face was grim. “What happened here?” It was as much an order as a question.

Freidag said, “We are not sure, but we think an unhappy soldier came into this tent and shot these two men.”

Mike blinked, and then his cat-eyes bored into Freidag. “Why do you think that?”

“One of our soldiers was very unhappy when we attacked Kanaghat. He said those people were his relatives.”

One thing Stork had noticed about Juneau was that everyone here seemed to be related to everyone, or were at least friends. Family ties mattered on this world—at least among the mountain-dwelling Pashtuns that had settled the Dusheman Kush Mountains of Juneau. Stork had noticed that fighting counterinsurgency was a stone bitch. On Juneau, the forces you were using to fight the enemy had strong ties to the people you were trying to fight. It was no wonder they could never keep anything secret on operations.

Mike’s voice broke into Stork’s reverie. “I can see why this soldier was unhappy about fighting his relatives. Did he say anything specific that leads you to believe he would have done this?”

Freidag said, “Yes, some soldiers went into the women’s house in Maktar’s compound at Kanaghat. They looked at the women’s underwear and laughed. He was very angry about that; he said he would kill the men who did it.”

“Are these the men?” Mike gestured at the corpses on the ground with his rifle. With a shock, Stork realized one of the men was Sergeant Lyek, whom he had been joking with the day before. He hadn’t recognized him at first because death changes a face.

Freidag answered, “No, they were other men. This is my tent. He meant to kill me. God be praised, I was not here when he came. He came in here, shot his rifle empty into these two, and ran. A guard saw him. He shot at the guard. We are hunting for him now.”

That answers that question, thought Stork. The Juneau soldier, now officially a bad guy, had gotten away.

The tent flap rustled. A Juneau soldier burst in on the unlovely scene and shouted, “A flare landed on our tent; now it is burning!”

Mike looked heavenward, as if seeking strength from the divine. He pinged the colonel’s halo.

“Five, this is One-Three; could you stop shooting flares? One of them landed on a tent up here.” Mike paused. Stork could tell the colonel was talking to him. “OK, Five. Thanks. One-Three out.”

Mike rubbed his face. Seeing as how the colonel must not have had any other questions, Stork figured Mike’s feed was slaved to the colonel’s down below. Stork stood there, feeling helpless and creeped out. There was nothing he could do.

As Stork stood in the tent feeling lost, the colonel spoke to Paul in a conversational tone down below. “Well, Paul, maybe the flares weren’t such a hot idea.”

“Yeah, I saw that myself.” Someone had brought coffee to the two men. They were both sipping away.

“Guess I caught a tent on fire.” The colonel picked up his cup and took another sip.

“Yeah, roger. Anybody get fucked up? I couldn’t tell from Stork’s feed.”

The colonel answered, “You mean shot or burned up?”

Paul dragged off his smoke. He had been chain-smoking since being rudely awakened. Fucking war, he thought. “I saw that Lyek got shot.” He took another drink of coffee.

“Well, two Juneaus are dead, and yeah, one of them was Lyek”

“He was a good guy.” Paul meant it. Lyek was a friendly dude; there was always a joke or a laugh to be had with him.

“Yeah, he was.” The colonel pulled out a smoke and lit it. He had been hitting the near-cigs hard as well.

“Shit. Anybody get burned up?”

“Nope.”

“Guess some Juneau was pissed off about a panty raid.” Both men knew the Juneaus were really touchy about their women. They understood that something so stupid could and would result in fatalities. Paul shrugged. It had been that kind of war so far.

Both men continued to smoke and drink their coffee. It was going to be a beautiful sunrise.

B
irthday thought the sunrise on the day the team moved to Kanaghat was unspeakably beautiful. He hadn’t been able to sleep a wink the night before. He had tossed and turned in his cot all night, thinking about the next day’s impending combat.

Birthday had never been in combat before. He had never really mentally prepared himself for its strains. He was an administrative soldier; an assault against a prepared fortification was not even remotely on his mental horizons when he had joined the force.

But here he was, preparing to go out on a mission that he knew would result in death. There could be death in his close proximity, as well—maybe his own. He was totally freaked out. As he watched the other members of the team prepare, he wondered if some of them would be missing tomorrow.

Hell, he wondered if he would be missing tomorrow. He didn’t know, and the knowledge of that uncertainty made him a little crazy. He had never faced such mortal insecurity in all his life.

The halo call came to prepare to leave the firebase. He mounted up in the ground-cars with the rest of the team and Third Battalion. His hands were numb. It felt like a frog was caught in his throat. The colonel ordered his ground-car to move, and Birthday responded like a machine.

As they rolled on the road to Hesar, Birthday felt desperate. The feeling mounted in his chest the farther south the convoy rolled. He drove past yawning chasms, rolled past hardscrabble farms.