Handshakes were difficult to accomplish in a biosuit. The two of them greeted in the manner that had evolved to replace this ancient ritual when out in the field — they banged their right fists together three times.
'I'm tired as a motherfucker,' Mike said. 'Hungry too. I hear you brought us some breakfast.'
'Yep,' Lon agreed. 'Ten fresh food gel packs, five of them beef paste, five chicken paste. You all can fight over who gets what.'
'We've long since gotten over that,' Mike said. 'They all taste like shit anyway.'
'I hear our paste tastes like filet mignon compared to the WestHem paste,' one of Mike's men interjected. 'They don't even try to flavor theirs. It's just raw nutrients.'
'That has to be pretty damn disgusting,' Lisa said. 'I'm surprised they eat at all.'
Mike's men all took a minute to look at Lisa with varying degrees of curiosity. All had heard about the female special forces member, of course, and a few had even met her before, but this was the first time they'd ever seen her out in the field, packing a weapon and lugging a huge equipment bag.
Lisa noticed their perusal. 'Yeah, I got tits and a pussy all right,' she said sweetly. 'Don't I guys?'
'Yep,' Jefferson said. 'I've seen 'em.'
'She is definitely not a boy,' Horishito agreed.
Lon simply smiled, amused at the discomfort Lisa was causing the mortar team. 'Anyway,' he said. 'We brought the marines some breakfast too. Sixty eighty millimeter mortar shells, fresh off the Alexander Industries assembly line. Will that hold you until you're relieved?'
'Hope so,' Horishito said. 'It's all we could fuckin' carry.'
'Six apiece?' one of Mike's men said. 'Is that all? Hell, we carry ten apiece when we deploy.'
'Do you now?' Lisa asked. 'And do you carry a twelve kilo anti-tank laser and thirty kilos worth of charging batteries and twelve kilos worth of extra ammunition as well? We sure as shit did.'
The man grinned through his helmet. 'You seem to fit in with Fargo and his team pretty good, Wong,' he said. 'No, we don't carry all that, although we do have to carry the actual mortars around. Those weigh a kilo or two.'
'Point taken,' Lisa said.
'Yes,' said Lon, 'and if we're done measuring dicks here, how about you guys relieve us of this shit before I get a fuckin' hernia? Where do you want it?'
'Right this way,' Mike said. 'Let me show you to our supply closet.'
He led them along the side of the hill and between a couple of large boulders. There, in the dark recesses behind the larger of the boulders, he lifted a piece of firm plastic imbedded with fake Martian rocks and covered with dust that had blown in. Beneath it was a hole about a meter deep, two meters long, and a meter and a half wide. Twenty or so eighty millimeter shells and a few boxes of ammunition were neatly stacked inside.
'Nice,' said Lon as he hefted his pack from his shoulders and set it down on the ground. 'You guys dug this yesterday?'
'Took about an hour,' Mike confirmed. 'Our own hidey holes are about six meters that way.' He pointed further along the hill, towards another scattering of boulders. 'Those took longer to dig but we were ready for action by the time the sun went down.'
'The cover insulation worked as advertised?' Lisa asked, referring to the insulating material that had been developed to keep the heat released from a biosuit from seeping out into the nighttime atmosphere and therefore giving away an underground position.
'Like a charm,' he replied. 'Ambient temp went up about two degrees every ten minutes when we were sealed inside, that's how well it was keeping the heat from escaping. Around 0330 the Earthlings sent a platoon strength unit in here after us. Some of them were less than ninety meters away and didn't see us.'
'That had to have been a bit tense,' Lon said.
'When they first showed up it was,' Mike said. 'I mean, there's six of us and forty of them and we don't even have a SAW out here, just our M-24s. But after a minute or so of looking at them through the periscopes we could see they weren't gonna find us even if they walked right over the top of us. The real tension started when they didn't leave right away, they just kinda stood out there, looking around. If they would've stayed more than an hour enough heat would've built up in our holes to start leaching through the insulation.'
'How'd you get rid of them?' Lon asked.
'You know Meyers?' Mike asked.
'Ziff Meyers?'
'That's him,' Mike confirmed. 'He's our overwatch sniper and our recon guy. He and his observer got their own hidey hole about two clicks south, on top of one of the hills out there. They were the ones feeding us our targeting information last night. They were also the ones who warned us the Earthling dismounts were making a run into the hills. Anyway, they were scanning the transmissions, found the guy who was talking the most, and Ziff put a round right through his fuckin' skull.'
'From two klicks?' Horishito said, visibly impressed.
'From two fuckin' klicks,' Mike confirmed. 'And there was a forty kph wind blowin' too. That is some serious-ass marksmanship there. It was beautiful. I saw the flash from his weapon but only because I knew where to look for it. None of the Earthlings saw shit.'
'That's awesome,' Lon said. 'Do we have any confirmation the guy blabbing his mouth the most is a squad leader?' One coup the marines had managed to score in the conflict was figuring out how the snipers and the other special forces teams were managing to pinpoint their leaders. The job had become somewhat more difficult since they'd started confining their conversations to only one channel while dismounted or while in their APCs. MPG Intelligence had suggested that the more a person talked the more likely it was that he was a leader of some sort.
'We ran the scanner over him,' Mike said, referring to the micro-chip reader all MPG units at the squad level and above carried. It was capable of reading the information from the identity chip imbedded in the arm and chest of every WestHem and Martian soldier and transmitting that information via satellite link back to MPG headquarters. The reason for this was to facilitate identification of both enemy and friendly KIAs for purposes of notification under Geneva accords in the case of the former and notification of next of kin in the case of the latter.
'And?' Lon asked.
'Corporal John Grigsby was his name,' Mike said with a shrug. 'Could be he was just the biggest loudmouth in the platoon or it could be he'd been promoted to squad or even platoon leader because we already got the other leaders in that platoon. We'll probably never know.'
'Probably not,' Lon agreed, 'but Colonel Bright briefed us personally this morning. He says to keep going after the noisy ones.'
Mike shrugged again. 'I guess it pays to keep your mouth shut in the WestHem marines these days.' He turned to his men. 'Come on, guys. Let's get these shells stowed so we can get some breakfast and then crash out for a bit.'
'You're on stand-down?' Lisa asked.
Mike nodded. 'Team echo should be on the ground by the time you get into position. We're gonna catch five hours and then be on station for the afternoon festivities.'
'Well don't let us keep you from sleep,' Lon said, he turned to his team. 'Let's unload, people. And then we can go say a hearty good morning to our WestHem friends.'
'Callahan! Callahan, you there?' a voice barked in his helmet. He heard it but didn't respond at first, he couldn't. His fatigued mind was simply too far gone to comprehend that he was
He grunted once and rolled over, his biosuit pushing into a jagged piece of frame protruding from the smashed APC he was lying against. He began to drift off again.
'Callahan!' the voice barked again. 'Jesus Christ, don't tell me they got
The drifting came to an end. His mind snapped back into something approximating functionality and he opened his eyes. He was looking at Martian soil stained with hydraulic fluid and metal fragments. The display in his combat goggles told him it was 1433 hours, less than twenty minutes since blissful unconsciousness had taken him.
'I'm here, cap,' he told Ayers. 'Sorry, I was trying to catch a nap. What's up?'
