anything. The hovers cruised low over the hills and were able to detect the fused soil from the Hummingbird's thrusters but no greenies. That was unsurprising. Experiments with the captured greenie biosuits had confirmed that the Hummingbirds would have to be directly over a greenie at an altitude of less than four hundred meters to even get a sniff.
'Dismounts,' came Ayers' voice. 'Let's get out there. Start checking those hills in front of you, one by one. Advance to contact. It's time to flush them out.'
'Yes sir,' Callahan repeated. The APCs came to a halt and the ramps went down. Two hundred men climbed out onto the Martian surface and began to fan out towards the hills. They stayed bunched together as closely as possible on the theory that a simple squad of greenies would not engage that many marines. Despite all the media hype about the suicide attacks that had caused so many casualties, the marines knew that the greenies were far from suicidal.
The marines were right. The special forces teams were not suicidal and had no intention whatsoever of actually going head to head with an entire company supported by tanks and hovers at once. In fact, Lon and his squad were the only actual combat squad currently deployed on the western side of the Eden LZ and they were almost five kilometers away. They had their normal weapons and their normal assortment of anti-tank and anti- aircraft lasers, but their orders were not to engage unless they were located and under attack themselves. Their job on this particular phase of the operation was to observe and report the position of the marines. All of the other teams that had been dropped on the western perimeter were mortar squads and sniper teams. Utilizing the position fixes fed to them by Lon and his team, who were perched atop a series of high hills and watching the marines through combat goggle magnification, the mortar squads pulled back to their optimum range and began to set up while the sniper teams — each of which consisted of a gunner and a spotter — began to move in. But before these elements could begin to do their work, someone had to do something about the hovers. Fortunately, someone was on the way to do just that.
Sixty kilometers to the west, screaming in at six hundred kilometers per hour, a flight of four Mosquitoes turned and banked through the hills, keeping less than thirty meters above the ground. In the lead Mosquito, piloted by Brian Haverty, Matt Mendez started intently at the screen in front of him, watching as the red dots that signified the marine hovers circled slowly around and around.
'Twelve targets,' he told Brian through the intercom system. 'Three flights of four but all close enough for mutual support. They're in overlapping patterns, altitude four, zero, zero AGL. I'm plotting a position to best engagement zone right now.'
'Right,' said Brian, who was focused on keeping the aircraft from smashing into the ground or one of the hillsides. The information Mendez was reciting was coming from a special forces team somewhere out in the wastelands, a team that had the deployment under direct observation and was beaming their observations up to a com sat where it was then being encrypted and broadcast to the flight via a transmitter in Eden. 'What do we got on ground forces?'
'Company strength tank forces, company strength armored cav, including four SAL five-sevens spread throughout the armor.'
'Great,' said Brian. 'And those SALs won't be shooting training charges either. We need to keep exposure time at an absolute minimum.'
'Fuckin' aye,' said Matt. 'It's also reported that the armored cav is dismounted now. Two hundred troops on the ground.'
'And if they're following doctrine,' Brian said, 'there will be one hand-held SAL per squad. In case you're a little slow on the math, newbie, that means there are at least twenty portable surface-to-air lasers that will be gunning for us.'
'They can't hit us with them things, can they?' Matt asked. 'They don't lock on target like the mobile SALs do.'
'They may not lock but with twenty of them out there gunning for us the chance of a lucky shot slamming into us increases considerably. Don't underestimate the hand-helds. I've been taken down in training missions more than once by them.'
'Thanks, boss,' Matt said. 'I thought I knew about every fucking thing there was that could kill me out here. It's sure nice of you to add to the fuckin' list.'
'Just keep our exposure time to a minimum,' Brian repeated. 'This is an improv mission at its finest. You're in control of where this whole flight pops out and where it goes back into the hills. Don't fuck it up or you'll get some people killed.'
'Right,' Matt said. 'A trial by fire. I got it.'
'You'll do fine,' Brian told him. 'We've practiced this dozens of times. It's a textbook improv air-to-air strike. Classic phase two warfare. '
Matt nodded and looked down at his screen. The holographic map display showed the hills and valleys in three dimensions, with altitude numbers atop each peak. It really was like a training mission except for the fact that the hovers out there were not MPG owned and the SALs were not firing training charges. He put this out of his mind and his nervousness faded away. His finger began to trace a course across the map, taking them in from the east, skirting around the base of three hills, and then popping up over the last set of hills where the hovers were flying. A blue line trailed behind his finger, marking the projected course. When it entered the firing zone, it turned red. He skirted it along the ridge and then curved it back to the west. Once behind the next hill, the tracing turned blue again.
'I got it,' he told Brian. 'We'll swing in from the east and pop up to five, zero, zero AGL, egress to the west. Total exposure time, four point three seconds.'
'Sounds good,' Brian said, violently cutting them to the right around a hill and then leveling them again. 'Put it on screen.'
'Don't you wanna check it first?'
'Can't take my eyes off the terrain,' Brian told him. 'I'll have to trust you on this one.'
Matt took a deep breath. 'Okay,' he said. 'On screen. Shipping it to the other planes.' He pushed a button on his screen and locked in the plot. He pushed another button and the plot was beamed to the other three aircraft via a short-range radio burst. The navigation carrot on their heads-up display swung to the right and they began to follow it, homing in on their targets. Matt called out the course corrections as they came up, counting each one down. Soon his ESM display began to make some noise.
'I'm picking up three distinct active IR and radar sweeps from the target area,' he announced. 'Frequencies indicate SAL-five-seven phased sets on standard search setting. Probability of detection, zero.'
'Got it,' said Brian.
'Come right to two, seven, three in five, four, three, two, one.'
The aircraft banked right, spinning around another set of hills, and leveled out again. They climbed a few feet to clear a smaller hill and then dove back down again. Behind them, one by one, the other three Mosquitoes matched their moves exactly.
'Coming up on the IP,' Matt said after the next bank. 'Charging the laser, activating air-to-air search mode.'
'Copy,' said Brian.
'Active IR and radar getting stronger, still no chance of detection.'
'That's what I like to hear. No active airborne?'
'Nothing,' Matt confirmed. 'I guess the hovers don't wanna overload their ESM sets.'
'Their mistake,' Brian said.
They flew on, skirting through a narrow gully. The laser set beeped, indicating it was charged and ready. They reached the Initial Point, or IP, made their last turn, and then screamed on towards the last hill between them and the marines.
'Let's do this thing,' Brian said, putting on some power and pulling up on the stick. The Mosquito began to rise into the air.
Lon, Lisa, and Jefferson were deployed atop Hill 655, five kilometers northwest of the circling hovers and the company of dismounted infantry beneath them. The hovers were clearly visible to them, circling in simple, overlapping, mutually supporting patterns. Some of the infantry and armor were visible as well, but most were obscured by the hills between Hill 655 and the target area. That didn't really matter though. The dust cloud
