Greenies

directions. 'Oh shit,' he said and pulled himself as close to the boulder as he could.

Explosions began to boom from everywhere as the eighty-millimeter proximity fused shells detonated twenty meters over the top of the exposed troops. The ground shook as if an earthquake were jolting them. Dust and smoke flew. Shrapnel rained down at lethal velocity. The screams of pain and terror on the radio channels reached a fever pitch. Callahan felt his boulder move several inches by one of the closer explosions, heard the shrapnel peppering it. Dust obscured everything in his view, dust so thick that even his infrared enhancement couldn't see through it.

'Callahan!' Ayers' voice yelled in his ear. 'We're tracking incoming mortar fire from multiple directions! You're under attack!'

'No fucking shit!' Callahan yelled back as another round exploded just behind him. This time he felt shrapnel pinging off his helmet, felt a spike of pain lancing into his back. A warning screen lit up before his eyes, informing him that his suit had been breached and pressurization was being lost.

Ayers said something else — something about counter-battery fire — but it was lost in the overlapping cries of the other men on the channel and Callahan's sudden concern for his own life.

'Your suit has sealed,' a pleasant computer voice informed him. 'Repressurizing lost air. You must return to a zone of safety as quickly as possible for suit repair and medical evaluation.'

How bad am I hit? he wondered. The pain in his back was getting worse. He could feel the liquid sensation of blood on his skin. If it were simply an external injury, the pressure on the suit would keep it sealed and control the bleeding. If it were an internal injury, however... well... the suit couldn't do much for that.

The mortar barrage ended, not gradually, but suddenly. The screams on the radio channels, however, did not. The dust began to clear, blown away by the wind on the surface. It revealed a scene of horror and chaos unlike anything Callahan had ever seen before. Bodies were everywhere, men torn apart, men lying in heaps, shredded by the shrapnel of the mortar rounds, blood vapor boiling up into the air and following the dust on the wind currents. In the sky above, he saw the streaks of friendly artillery shells flying overhead, seeking out the positions the greenie mortars had been fired from. He couldn't even begin to deceive himself that they would actually hit any of them. By now the greenies had cleared those areas and would be moving to other firing positions.

'A trap,' Callahan mumbled. 'They trapped us as neatly as a spider traps a fly in its web.'

The troops that were capable of it began to get to their feet and move around. Medics began to head for the wounded. Callahan saw Lieutenant Powell, commander of fourth platoon, stand up and start moving towards the rest of his men. He made it less than three steps before his head opened up and a spray of blood vapor came boiling out. He dropped soundlessly to the ground. His first sergeant, who was less than twenty meters from him went down two seconds later, felled by another head shot.

'Snipers!' came the yells over the net, overriding the calls for medics and the screams of the wounded. 'They're still out there!'

And indeed they were. Within two minutes three squad sergeants and another platoon leader were shot down like dogs, felled by perfect headshots. And no one even saw the flashes of the weapons that had done it.

Callahan stayed in place behind his boulder. He didn't know how the snipers were able to tell the officers and the squad leaders from the grunts but by now it was quite clear that they were able to make the differentiation. It seemed that venturing out there might be a bit dangerous for him. If this wound didn't kill him first.

He tried to remember the name of his new medic and couldn't. Finally he just called him by the standard designator that had been in place since World War II. 'Doc,' he said. 'You there?'

'I'm here, LT,' the medic replied. 'I took some shrapnel in the shoulder but I'm okay. The suit sealed it up.'

'How we looking?' Callahan asked him.

'I'm still making the rounds. We got hit pretty hard though. Most of us were in the open when the mortars came down. At least six dead and nine wounded. Two of the KIAs were the squad leaders. Snipers got them.'

'Great,' Callahan said with a sigh. 'Come over here and look at me when you get a chance. I took some shrapnel in the back.'

'On the way, LT,' the medic told him. 'Do we have dust-offs on the way? We're gonna need a bunch of them.'

'I'll check with our fearless leader,' Callahan promised. He switched frequencies back to the command net. 'Cap, this is Callahan. You there?'

'Your situation, Callahan?' Ayers asked. 'I'm not getting anything coherent from the other platoon leaders.'

'The mortars hit right in the middle of us,' Callahan said. 'They inflicted considerable casualties. The greenie gunners have got someone out there directing the fire; probably one of those special forces teams up on a hill somewhere. We're under constant sniper fire. They're going after the platoon leaders and the NCOs. I don't know how they're identifying them but they are. We're not picking up the flashes from their weapons. We need some air cover out here and some dust-offs.'

There was a hesitation. Finally, 'Air cover is a bit sparse at the moment. The greenies hit on the north and south side of the perimeter at the same time. They used the same technique. Mosquitoes came in and wiped out the hovers in a matter of minutes. Snipers opened up on the troops once the hovers were gone and then mortar fire came down. You can expect more mortar fire as soon as the greenie gunners relocate their positions.'

'You're not sending any hovers out here?' Callahan asked, appalled, horrified.

'Command won't release them,' Ayers said. 'We've already taken too heavy of losses in air support. The hovers are needed to bomb the greenie's main line of defense.'

'What about the dust-offs?' Callahan asked.

'They can't go either,' Ayers said. 'The greenies will just hit them with mortars while they're on the ground picking up the wounded. That's already happened at New Pittsburgh.'

'New Pittsburgh?' Callahan asked. 'Did this happen there too?'

'Yeah,' Ayers said. 'They hit us even worse there from what I hear. You'll have to leave the dead where they are and load up the wounded into the APCs. Take command of the company and get back here as quickly as possible.'

'Jesus,' Callahan said.

'Keep under cover as much as you can. Intelligence isn't sure how the snipers are able to pick out the officers yet but they're thinking it might be from your radio transmissions.'

'What?' Callahan asked. 'How the fuck could they tell that?'

Ayers didn't get a chance to answer him. Another voice came on the command channel. 'Sir! This is Corporal Swans! I'm in charge of fourth platoon now... I guess.'

While Ayers and Corporal Swans discussed the fact that his lieutenant and every one of the squad sergeants had been killed by falling aircraft, sniper fire, or mortar shrapnel, Callahan saw a shape coming rapidly toward him. So jumpy was he that he raised his weapon and came within three grams of pressure on the firing button of shooting the man before he realized it was his medic.

'Don't fuckin' shoot me, LT!' the medic screamed in terror.

'Sorry,' Callahan said, slowly lowering the rifle. 'I thought you were... well... you know.'

'Yeah,' the medic said. 'I know.' He shook his head. 'I ain't never seen no shit like this before, LT. This is fuckin' horrible!'

'You don't say,' Callahan said dryly. 'Now take a look at me. How bad am I?'

'Where you hit, sir?'

'On the back,' Callahan said, rolling onto his stomach.

The medic took out a body scanner and ran it over the hole in Callahan's back. It sent out a series of X-rays and ultrasonic sound waves to survey the damage done. 'You'll be okay, sir,' he said when he got the reading. 'You got two pieces of shrapnel lodged in the muscle tissue of your back. Bleeding is stopped, no organs hit, and your suit is sealed. Do you need some morphine?'

'No,' Callahan replied. 'Go tend to the others. No dust-offs will be coming to offload them.'

'What?'

'You heard me,' Callahan said. 'We're gonna have to load all the wounded into...'

'Incoming!' was screamed over the net again, first by one and then by eight to ten other voices. Callahan