hint of recognition.
From there the squad had waited almost an hour and had then moved out again, dashing from one piece of cover to the next until reaching their current position. They were now looking out at the landing ship and the perimeter of the landing zone once more. To the east of them they could see another platoon of marines, or maybe the same one as earlier, still searching from hill to hill, trying to locate them, with no idea that the men they sought were actually between them and the safety of their trenches now. In the other direction, in the trenches themselves, other marines were lounging about, walking to and fro along the trench line, keeping half an eye out towards the wastelands beyond but mostly just chatting with each other based on the amount of radio waves that Jefferson was picking up. Beyond them was the landing zone itself, with the ship sitting on its supports. Well over two hundred marines were moving about in that area, some engineers setting up further landing areas for the rest of the ships to come down, others combat marines that were guarding them.
An encrypted radio message had just been broadcast from Eden special forces headquarters. The message had asked any team on the perimeter — and just how many teams there were neither Lon nor anyone else in the squad knew — to send in an activity report for the LZ itself. The message had not explained why HQ wanted this information but nobody really needed to know why. All of them knew that part of special forces doctrine was to send mortar teams out to the perimeter of any hostile landing zone. And mortars were much more effective when they had accurate targeting information.
'Can we transmit from here safely?' Lon asked Jefferson.
'I'm pretty sure we can,' he said. 'I can still get a lock on the com sat from here and unless one of those earthling fucks actually gets a visual on me they won't pick up the com laser.'
'How about if we send a photo?' Lon asked.
Jefferson thought for a moment. 'The transmission time will increase about tenfold for a picture,' he said. 'But again, it should be fairly safe.'
'Okay, do it,' Lon ordered. 'Snap a frame shot with your combat goggles and be sure to get the ship in the shot. Be sure you label it as coming from the north side. I'm sure they would know that already, but its best to be sure.'
'You got it, sarge,' Jefferson said.
A moment later the shot was taken. He ordered his computer to download it to the communications computer and to then encrypt it for transmission. The communicator sent up its laser transmitter, locked onto the satellite, and sent out the laser pulse, which in this case took a full five seconds from start to finish. Two minutes later the photo was on the screen of Colonel Bright in the command center. Bright quickly made a few marks on the photo and then transmitted it through the satellite link to the six person mortar team that had been deployed on the east side of the Eden landing zone, about two kilometers from the perimeter, about four from the ship itself, a range that was well within the capabilities of the 80-millimeter weapons they fielded.
Armed with the picture and the GPS data that Bright had noted on it, the team set up their three weapons in a line and programmed the firing computers to stagger the rounds throughout the area of the LZ where the heaviest human activity was taking place. These computers, which knew exactly where the weapon they were mated to was located, exactly where the target area was located, what the barometric pressure was and what the current wind conditions were, quickly leveled the mortars and adjusted them to the proper angle. Green lights flashed telling the operators that the weapons were locked and ready to fire. The gunners then arranged a total of nine high explosive rounds around them — three for each weapon, which was as much as they dared fire from one location — and set them for ten-meter airburst. At a command from the sergeant in charge, the first three rounds were picked up and dropped into the tubes. They fired less than a tenth of a second apart. Before the rounds even reached the top of their ballistic climb, the next rounds were being put in. These too fired off, and then the last rounds were dropped in as well.
Like the artillery shells fired from the 150-millimeter guns, the rounds made no audible sound as they flew through the thin air. A search radar mounted on the landing ship picked them up in flight and automatically calculated their path both backward and forward, telling the operator both where the shells had been fired from and where they were heading, but there simply wasn't enough time to alert anyone. Some of the marines on guard duty saw them coming in as well, white spots in the infrared spectrum against the relatively cool sky. Cries of 'incoming!' went out across the emergency frequency. Unfortunately most of the soldiers on duty inside the LZ itself were not combat veterans, and, as such, they did the predictable when they heard the warning. They looked up to see just
In all, the mortar attack lasted only four seconds and the team that had performed it was already packing up their weapons and hustling off into the wastelands by the time the last round exploded. The 150-millimeter guns atop the ship turned towards the west and unleashed a barrage of counter-battery fire, a total of fifteen rounds per gun, none of which landed within 400 meters of the spot that the Martian mortar team had fired from. Even before the counter-battery fire was complete a platoon of marines from the western perimeter were heading out beyond their trenches to try to track down those responsible. By that point they had heard about the ambushes that had taken place and they went out with a sense of wariness that even the combat vets among them had never experienced before. It was starting to seem that these greenies were a little more dangerous than Argentine or Cuban rebels. They stepped carefully and slowly, their fear increasing exponentially with each step that they took away from the safety of their sandbagged positions.
As it turned out, their fear was justified. They made it to the spot where the mortar fire had issued without incident. They found nothing there, not a body, or a limb, or a footprint, or an expended shell casing, or even an impact crater from the counter-battery fire. They turned to the south because their commanding lieutenant figured that that was the most likely direction the sneaking greenies would have fled in. They made it less than a half a kilometer before flashes began winking at them from the hillsides in front of them and bullets began to cut through their ranks. The attack lasted only six seconds, and in it, six of the marines were killed and nine wounded. Of the wounded, three would die before they could be carried back to safety.
The illusion that Callahan and the remains of his platoon held that they were safe inside of their perimeter was shattered about fifteen minutes after the word of the mortar attack on the LZ reached them. They were inside their trenches, looking out to the north. They could see nothing out there, though they knew that two platoons of marines were currently sweeping the area, searching fruitlessly for the greenie infiltrators that were causing them so much trouble. Callahan was feeling quite morose over the loss of so many of his men, including his first sergeant. He had lost people in combat before, of course. Every platoon commander that had served in Argentina had suffered losses. Never before had he had an entire squad decimated at one time though. He still couldn't quite believe it had happened, that they had been cut down almost effortlessly by a bunch of civilian greenies operating three hundred kilometers from their nearest defensive position.
It was now quite clear that his platoon's contact with the greenies was not just an isolated incident either. From the command channel he heard reports of quick, violent engagements from all sides of the perimeter. Hit and run attacks on patrols and the platoons going out to search the area by groups of greenies that struck like lightening and then disappeared into the landscape like smoke. Nor was the Eden LZ the only one under attack. Captain Ayers had told him that all four of the landing sites were reporting similar engagements.
'How in the hell are they doing it?' asked Sergeant Barley, who was sitting atop one of the sandbags, supervising the redeployment of a SAW. 'How can they get those teams out there without us seeing them?'
'Those aircraft they have,' Callahan said bitterly. 'I'll bet you a thousand bucks to a bucket of shit that they're dropping them off outside of our perimeter with those things.'
'Why ain't our sensors picking them up then?'
'They probably have a very low IR signature,' he speculated. 'They're winged aircraft, remember? Designed by greenie engineers to operate in this atmosphere. Since they have wings they don't need to use the same amount of thrust to keep aloft. Less thrust means less heat. They probably glide in low and set down on the flat ground somewhere close by, drop off a squad, and then take off again and go home. They can support them indefinitely
