zone. They were now spread out in three groups, all of them peering between boulders on the tops of a series of small hills. They were lying on their bellies, their weapons cradled next to them, their goggles set on medium magnification. All had plainly seen the four men climbing off the hill and starting down.
'And here comes a patrol,' Lon said quietly, his words broadcast at ultra low power to the rest of the team.
'Did you see that dumbshit fall off the hill?' Horishito asked from the next hill over. 'Christ. They can't even walk out here. How the hell do they expect to fight?'
'They're marines, remember?' Matza said, his finger playing over the firing button of his SAW. 'They don't have to be able to walk. They can kick ass buried up to their necks in sand. At least that's what they always say.'
'All right, guys,' Lon said. 'Let's keep the chatter to a minimum, shall we? No sense giving ourselves away with leaking radio waves.'
Everyone kept quiet, watching as the four men, now safely on the bottom of their hill, formed up in a diamond formation and began to move clumsily forward. They disappeared momentarily behind one of the other hills and then emerged a few minutes later on the other side of it.
'How far out will they go, sarge?' Lisa asked.
'At least two klicks,' he responded. 'If they follow doctrine that is. We should wait until they're out about as far as they're going to go before we hit them.'
'Shadow them?' asked Horishito.
'Yes,' he responded. 'Three at a time. The rest of the squad will leapfrog around out of sight and set up. Hoary, you and your team will be the first trackers.'
'You got it,' he said.
'You should be virtually invisible to them at more than three hundred meters as long as you don't silhouette yourselves. Stay low and keep your distance. Just like we've trained.'
'Right, sarge,' he said. 'We're on the motherfucker.'
The marine patrol began to angle slightly off to the right. They walked awkwardly and every few minutes one of them would trip and fall down. They would walk up to each hill, make a turn around the base, and then move on to the next one. They kept their weapons slung around their shoulders as they did this. As they came to within half a kilometer of where the special forces team lie on the hill, Horishito, Gavin, and Salinas began to inch backwards, back down to the bottom of their own hill. Once on the ground they began to trot to the east, keeping low, moving from one piece of cover to the next. They stopped behind boulders, at the base of hills, leapfrogging each other one by one until they had moved around to the other side of the advancing marine patrol, which, by this point, had moved out of the view of Lon and the rest of them.
'We got them, sarge,' said Horishito's voice. 'They're moving northeast around the base of hill 171 right now. They've slowed their pace down a bit. I think they're checking their maps.'
'Yes,' said Lon thoughtfully, 'I guess that makes sense. They'll be running on inertial navigation.'
'Wouldn't that be a shame if they got lost out here?' asked Matza.
'A damn shame,' Lon agreed. 'Come on. Let's displace. We'll hook north around hill 222 there. That should give us defilade from our friends. We'll re-deploy on hills 123 and 201. Everyone clear?'
No one answered, which meant that everyone was clear.
'Okay, let's do it.'
Sergeant Mallory was not having a good time. His right ankle was throbbing from the twist he'd given it a few minutes ago and he was nursing a thirst that the water from his supply reservoir simply could not satisfy. His heart was pounding uncomfortably in his chest with the exertion of walking in the Martian soil. Christ, why hadn't they exercised more on the trip here? He had not been so out of shape in years, since before being accepted into the Marine Corps more than twelve years ago.
'Motherfuck,' grunted Zimmerman as he stepped on a loose rock, which rolled out from beneath him. He tried to keep his balance and would have easily been able to do so had he been in standard gravity but here, with the unfamiliar pull and the awkward suit he was in, he went down. It did not look like a fall on Earth however. It was a slow tumble, looking almost like it was being viewed in slow motion. He landed on his chest, bounced once, and then came to a rest.
'You all right, Zim?' Mallory asked, adjusting his rifle on his shoulder.
'Yeah,' he grunted sourly, starting the rolling motion that would get him back to his feet. After a moment he was able to get his knee beneath him and stand up. 'Christ, sarge, haven't we gone far enough out yet?'
'Yeah,' agreed Spanky. 'Their ain't no fuckin greenies out here. Even they're not that dumb.'
'Another half a klick or so,' Mallory said. 'We need to check that group of hills in front of us.'
'Christ,' Zimmerman swore, brushing dust from his faceplate. 'We oughtta just give this fuckin place to the greenies. Who the hell else would want it?'
'Well, Agricorp seems to think it's a nice planet,' Mallory said.
'And that's who's giving us our goddamned orders, right?' Spanky asked bitterly.
'Ours is not to question why,' Mallory said. 'Now lets move out and get this shit over with. Lead off, Spanky.'
'Leading off,' Spanky said, walking forward.
After a moment, the rest followed. Their eyes were kept on their feet instead of on the terrain around them. You fell down less that way.
'Here they come, right on schedule,' Lon said, watching as the group of four emerged from around another of the hills. They were now well out of sight of the ship and the perimeter positions surrounding it. The patrol was almost two kilometers out from their sandbagged positions. Lon and his group were deployed atop three hills 700 meters directly in front of their avenue of advance.
'Still walkin dumb I see,' Horishito said. 'I bet we can take them right here.'
'Undoubtedly,' Lon agreed. 'But let's let them close a bit more first. We go with ambush plan Alpha-Bravo seven. Everyone got that?'
No answer, which meant that everyone got it. Plan AB-7 was one of many ambush plans they'd practiced over the last few weeks. It was one that fit this particular situation perfectly in that it would not only eliminate the patrol, but also draw a larger group into the same trap.
'I'll assign targets when they come into optimum range,' Lon said. 'For now, just keep trained on them and keep down.'
They waited, watching as the four men walked from hill to hill, circling around and then moving onto the next. They did not look up on the hills as they passed them. They stared downward.
It took the better part of ten minutes but finally the patrol passed to within 500 meters. They were in a lengthy gully now, open ground all around them, heading directly towards the hill where Lon, Lisa, Matza, and Jefferson were waiting.
'Okay,' Lon said, 'they're coming up to us. We'll take them down. The rest of you hold in place and mop up anyone if they get away from us. As soon as the shooting's over, we displace to hills 233, 422, and 397 respectively. We need to be off of these hills before they can bring some arty down on us. Everyone got it?'
Everyone got it.
Lon looked at Lisa. 'Wong, you take the point man out. You'll shoot first on my command.'
'Right, sarge,' she said, hiding the nervousness that she felt. 'I take the point man.'
'I'll take the man right of point,' he said next. 'Matza, you give a burst to the man on the left of point and then shift fire to the area around the rear man. Wong, you hose down the area around him too, but remember, don't hit him. He has to be able to put out a broadcast or Alpha-Bravo seven is blown.' He turned to Jefferson, the communications tech. 'Jeffy, you tell me the instant that rear man broadcasts back to the rest of them.'
'Right, sarge,' he said, his radio set down on a rock, his weapon tucked against his side.
'Let's do it then,' Lon said, aiming his rifle out over the open space. 'Wong, are you on target?'
She adjusted the barrel of her weapon just a bit, laying the targeting recticle over the faceplate of the man on point. The range indicator told her that his head was 486 meters away. She increased her magnification until his head was practically the only thing in her view. She could see his face beneath the lightly tinted plate. He was a
