The War for Profit Series Omnibus (96 page)

Late that afternoon Lance Corporal Stone rode in the back of a Capellan Marine assault boat. It carried him and his platoon to the north, set down in a park in the city and lowered its assault ramp. Last thing he heard before he disconnected was the boat’s pilot saying, “If you need more juice or more ammo let me know.”

Then the platoon debarked and Stone jogged away with his squad. They made their way to the north, away from the park, moving close to the walls of the tall buildings. They ran past factories and ware houses and they kept jogging until they reach flat-roofed apartment buildings. Eight to ten stories high, they enclosed courtyards. Up ahead were barricades where Mandarin soldiers stood watching the street. The squad leader signaled and the fire teams broke off. Stone led his lance mates—Hastings and Hitchcock—to the right and into the ground floor of an apartment building.

At the base of the stairs Stone said, “Hitchcock, wait around back and I’ll drop rope down to you. Hastings, take the FFE and satchel and go about three hundred meters ahead. I’ll signal from up top.”

“Hoorah.” They slipped away. Stone climbed the stairs and was grateful for the boost the powered armor gave his strength. The charge was still at ninety four per cent when he reached the roof. He looked over the low back wall down to the street and saw Hitchcock waiting, signaled to him. Hitchcock signaled back. Stone took the coil of rope off his shoulder and secured one end to an HVAC evaporator and tossed the other end down. Hitchcock took it, pulled it taught and yanked on it a couple of times and lifted himself to hang his whole body weight from the rope. It held.

Hitchcock then took the end of the rope and walked away far enough to hold the rope at an eight hundred mil angle to the ground and then secured its end to the grill of a storm drain in the curb of the alley. He then tested the rope again by hanging his full weight on it, jumped up to grab with both hands and dangled a meter off the ground and bounced a couple of times to be sure. He gave a thumb up to Stone and then went to climb the stairs and join him on the roof.

Hastings looked three hundred meters back at the roof top and saw Stone and Hitchcock there. Stone waved him to the left and then forward until Hastings stood up against the brick wall of a corner shop. Hastings set down the satchel of explosives and the Flame Field Expedient jug. The twenty liter plastic jug was half filled with alcohol and vegetable oil, with sugar and flour added as well. Hastings made sure the lid was tight and gave it a good, hard shaking to mix the contents and set it down. He then duck-taped a thin metal plate to its side and set it right up against the brick wall. He then looked up at the rooftop and Stone gave him a thumb-up gesture.

Hastings picked up the satchel and carried it fifty meters closer to Stone and then Stone gestured him to come about ten meters closer and to the right.
Hastings used his crowbar to pry up a square of sidewalk and then dug down with his hands, set the satchel in the hole, glanced back at Stone. Then he chipped a corner off the sidewalk square and set it back on top of the satchel, looked up. Stone was sighting through his 20mm sniper rifle scope, gave a thumb-up.

Hastings
then flipped the square away, opened the satchel and removed the safety bale. Then he carefully lowered the sidewalk square back on top of the satchel, then removed the excess dirt and debris and tossed it down a storm drain grate. Then he pulled a branch off a nearby evergreen tree and used that as a makeshift broom to get rid of the rest of the dirt, and then dropped the branch down the drain too. Stone signaled for Hastings to join him on the roof. The sun had set and it was starting to get dark.

Hastings
climbed the stairs and then sat on the roof with Hitchcock and Stone. A wall a meter and a half high went all around the edge of the roof. Bits of rebar poked out of its concrete surface in places, showing that it would offer protection from enemy small arms fires. Stone said, “You hear that?”

Hastings
cocked his head as far as his helmet would allow. “Maybe.”

Hitchcock said, “Gunfire, about two klicks away.” He reached for his handheld sensor.

Stone said, “Don’t turn that on! No gadgets until we make contact. You know that.”

Hitchcock shrugged. “I figure they could detect out armor anyway.”

Hastings said, “It’s triple-shielded and the armor blocks most of the signal anyway.”

Stone said, “Orders. We obey orders. You are Marines, right?”

“Hoorah.” Hitchcock put the sensor back in its nook on the left thigh of his powered body armor.

More gunfire, closer, and then some explosions to the far left and far right front. Stone placed his hands palm down on the edge of the wall and slowly rose to look down at the street. Nothing yet. Some Mandarin soldiers ran from right to left, right through the kill zone, disappeared behind the next building. Tracer fire and laser bolts blinked in the distance, much of it from Mosh weapons. Then a block ahead, Mandarin and Mosh units exchanged fire. A tall building a kilometer to the front collapsed and flames rose from another. Some more explosions. The building shook under the three Marines.

Stone said, “Get ready.”

They peeked over the wall. Hitchcock readied his rocket launcher and knelt back down.
Hastings laid out three fragmentation grenades and then checked the load on his assault rifle. Stone opened the bolt of his 20mm sniper rifle and pushed four armor piercing rounds into the magazine, then put an incendiary round on top of that and closed the bolt, released the safety.

He peeked at the street again and saw a Mosh team move forward to cover the intersection, saw them setting up a crew-served machine gun. More Mosh came and emplaced knee mortars.

Stone laid his rifle on the wall and turned on the night scope. He sighted in on the plastic jug Hastings had emplaced earlier, fired. The incendiary round hit the metal plate and ignited the contents of the jug. It burst and burned to provide back-lighting for the kill zone. The Mosh stood out as dark silhouettes.

Stone then sighted in on the satchel and shot it. It erupted in an explosion that flattened all the Mosh in the intersection. Four still moved. Stoned carefully sighted in and shot each of them in turn. Then he dropped down and reloaded his rifle with Armor Piercing. Hitchcock had his sensor out and turned on. It showed the approach of more Mosh, a platoon, supported by a light vehicle.

Hastings took a quick look over the wall. “A light self-propelled gun.”

Hitchcock smiled, watched his sensor. Then he stood and fired his rocket and hit the vehicle center of mass, dropped back down. The vehicle’s explosion rocked the area. The sensor showed a squad still active, the remnants of a Mosh platoon. Tracers zipped over the roof. Some rounds hit the wall. Then a pause.

Stone nodded at Hastings. Hastings stood and fired his assault rifle on full auto. A Mosh bullet bounced off his body armor. Stone laid his rifle on the wall and shot four more Mosh. They were quick to take cover. Stone and Hasting dropped back down. Hastings picked up his grenades and clipped them back on his armor.

Stone said, “Bug out!”

They high-crawled to the back of the roof. Stone hooked his rifle over the rope and crossed his ankles over the rope and slid down to the street and then lay in the prone to provide security. Hitchcock followed, collapsed his rocket launcher and shouldered his assault rifle. Hastings came down last and cut the rope. The three moved back a block and rallied with the rest of their squad to set a larger ambush that covered a parking lot.

After an hour of waiting with no action, the squad leader received orders to extract. They moved back to the park and got back on their assault boat and left the area. The platoon leader said, “Congratulations, the Mosh advance has stopped for the night and the Mandarins are reorganizing their defense.”

Stone plugged his armor into the boat’s power and saw that his charge was all the way down to fifteen percent. All things considered, it was a good day’s work.

Two hours before sunrise, the helos skimmed along the left side of a road that led north from Chong-gok, five klicks to its east. The road was a hardball two lane, an old road not used much; a super highway was built heading north out of the heart of the city two decades before. The lead helo moved fifty meters to the left and hovered and a squad of light infantry speed-roped to the ground and took cover. The helo turned and headed back to its base. The helos moved along and emplaced a squad every hundred meters, set down a whole company, picked up another company and returned, made three trips to emplace the entire light infantry battalion.

The battalion moved forward to the west and stopped when the squads spotted Mosh units in the distance, called up reports. The Hercules and Stallion and Hellcat tank battalions moved up the road and faced west and pulled in behind the light infantry squads, stayed far enough back so that the Mosh wouldn’t spot them. The Interceptors came and hit targets designated by the infantry, destroyed or neutralized most of them. The squads moved forward, spotted more Mosh. The tanks came forward as well.

The Light tank battalion and Cavalry squadron sped north on the road, past the other units, and then turned west to stab into the rear areas of the Mosh units. The Interceptors came and made another run, hit more targets. The heavy and medium tanks moved ahead of the light infantry and paused. Mosh units reacted and came east to attack and were cut down by the tanks. The tanks moved forward with the infantry watching their backs. The left flank of the heavy and medium tanks moved forward so that the line was diagonal from southwest to northeast.

The Cav and Light Tanks pushed along a westerly axis and smashed into scattered resistance, took down several brigade headquarters and sent a detachment to overrun each of the Mosh division command centers. They stopped when their lead element reached the bank of the Gang-nam River and then they faced south. The heavy and medium tanks pushed on and picked their way to the river bank as well, taking out any Mosh they ran across. They faced across the river and fired on targets of opportunity on the other side at extreme range.

Cav and Light Tank then moved south right up to the edge of the city and fired into Mosh positions and waited there until the Mandarin regular army moved north to clear out the rest of the Mosh still in the city’s outskirts. The helos came and picked up the light infantry and then the heavy and medium tanks did a final police call across the area of operations on their way back to the road, headed south in column, back to their designated hide areas in the city of Chong-gok op.

Cav and Light Tank made their ways back to their hides as well. Twelve hours spent, two Mosh light divisions taken out. Galen informed his troops they had two days to lick their wounds and reconstitute for more maneuvers. That was plenty of time. Six Hellcat and two Stallion tanks lost, eighteen troops killed, five more injured too badly to return to duty.

***

Galen stood in the ops center and stared at the battle map.

Spike walked up to stand beside him and said, “Battle’s over. Get some chow and go to sleep.”

Galen said, “That was too easy.”

Spike said, “Not really. The Mosh lost twenty percent of their warriors and more than half of their combat support weapons when they burned in for a hard landing. They also lost nearly half their line warriors when they first entered the city. Most of what we ran over today was rear-echelon pukes. Then their fighters were caught between us and the Mandarins at the edge of the city. What we really took out today was more like half a division, and they were low on ammo.”

Galen rolled his shoulders, pointed at a spot to the left on the battle map. “Is this data current?”

Spike said, “About an hour old at the most.”

“That,” Galen tapped the unit markers for a Mosh armored corps, “is what I’m worried about.”

Spike said, “They aren’t moving very fast. Their route is hampered by Mandarin units. The Mandarins stand and fight and die in place. They are slowing down the Mosh armor.”

Galen looked at the town at the bottom of the map. “It looks like the bridge farthest to the south is now in Mosh hands. The Mosh armor could cross there tomorrow.”

Spike said, “That bridge was destroyed by the defenders. When the Mosh main force moves in, they’ll need a couple of days to put up a new bridge.”

Galen stared, looked around the map.

Spike said, “Maybe we should send some Marines to the west side of our bridge, bolster the Mandarin defenders.”

Galen said, “No. Don’t split our forces.”

“Our mission is to hold that bridge, I thought.”

Galen smiled. “Yes. That’s why we’re here. But I’m thinking…”

Spike said, “You need rest. Let Tad fry his brain staring at this map.”

Tad entered the ops center. “You talking trash about me again?”

Spike said, “You know it. Brilliant operation you ran today, by the way. You’re an operational genius.’

Tad said, “Whatever. Phase two will blow your mind.”

Galen said, “Phase two?”

“Sure. We let those three Mosh light infantry divisions coming in from the west make it to the bridge, then we punch across that bridge and clear them out of the industrial city. Combined arms, Marines with the tanks. Then we circle back around and get back on this side of the river and then wait for the lead elements of their armor to get on the bridge and then destroy the bridge with them on it. Then phase three, we attack south and meet some Mosh armor head-on.”

Spike said, “You are sick and twisted.”

Galen said, “I like phase two. We’ll do that. Phase three, that’s a whole different story. Phase three, we move back to our old Jasmine Panzer Brigade compound and stand down for a while.”

Tad said, “I’ll get to work on phase two tomorrow. Time for some sleep.”

Galen left the ops center and went upstairs to his office and ate a field ration and stretched out on the couch.