Greenies

us, sarge?'

'I think that may very well be his intention,' Lon said, his eyes tracking over the column. He thought for a few moments as he watched them, his mind whirring in overdrive. His troops respectfully remained silent, allowing him to think. 'Maybe,' he said at last, 'we have become a little too predictable. Maybe we should change things just a bit on this attack.'

'Change things?' Jefferson asked. 'What are you thinking?'

'I'm thinking that Chin left his APCs unprotected on the flanks and maybe we can take a little advantage of that. Jefferson, get on the secure link to our Hummingbird and tell them to lift off and get ready for extraction.'

'Right, sarge,' he said.

'Everyone else, listen up. This is the new plan.' He began to talk. Everyone liked what he said.

Brian listened to the update from the special forces team observing the column. Fargo, the squad leader, wanted to go with a change in normal operations, something that was not particularly discouraged in the MPG. It sounded like a fairly good plan so he raised no objections to it, something that would have been his right had there been some question of the safety of the aircraft.

'That sounds doable, shadow six,' he answered back once the details were heard. 'We're on the way now. ETA to strike is five minutes. We'll let you know when we're thirty seconds out.'

'We'll be waiting,' Lon's voice assured him after the normal delay. 'Shadow six standing by.'

Brian switched his frequency switch back to the channel that allowed him to communicate with the plane on his wing. 'Did you copy all of that, John?' he asked.

'I copied,' John Valenzuela, the pilot of the plane, told him. 'Sounds like fun, going in without much opposition for once.'

'Well, don't get too happy about it,' Brian warned. 'They still have a shitload of handheld anti-air lasers down there. They're harder to track on but it only takes one.'

'Happy?' John asked with a laugh. 'Who the hell could be happy around here? Let's do it. I'm right on your ass.'

'Where you belong,' Brian said, applying throttle and banking sharply to the right.

Moving almost as one object, the two Mosquitoes dove down towards the ground and leveled off at less than twenty meters about it. They accelerated to optimum low-level penetration speed and headed for the hills that guarded the valley. Using a map window on his heads up display to navigate with, Brian shot between hills and dove through gullies, cutting back and forth, up and down, but always moving towards the target area.

'Charge up the laser,' Brian told Colton. 'Targets will be the APCs, as always.'

'Charging,' Colton said, looking at his panel. 'And I confirm we're in training mode. Low yield shots only.'

'Three minutes to target area,' Brian said, cutting hard to the right to avoid a particularly large hill. 'I'm gonna come up from the west, right over the top of the team on the ground and then head back in over the hills beyond them.'

'Sounds like a plan,' John answered.

They flew on, heading into the larger hills now, forcing them to maneuver more violently. They bounced about, cut back and forth and the red hills flashed around them on both sides, nothing but blurs. The wings bent and flexed, dipping up and down with the turns. The engine thrummed, gulping fuel and oxygen as it was accelerated and decelerated. Brian kept them in the valleys as much as he could, denying the OPFOR infrared sensors even the barest glimpse of them. It was what Mosquito pilots were best at.

'Thirty seconds,' Brian announced over the laser net when they got close. 'Do your stuff, shadow six.'

'Gavin, Horishito,' Lon said when he heard this. 'Strike is thirty seconds out. Do it!'

'Copy,' both said in unison. From their own perches atop their hill, in the safety of the boulders, they aimed their charged AT-50 tubes down on the column below. Both had already been assigned their targets — two of the anti-air vehicles — and, with the assistance of the magnification setting on their goggles, they sighted in and put their crosshairs directly on the sides, where the engines were.

Less than a second apart they pushed the discharge buttons sending the laser energy out at the speed of light. They scored two direct hits and just like that the advancing column had lost half of its anti-air capabilities.

'Sir,' came the excited voice of sergeant Bracken, the second-in-command of the anti-air division. 'Two laser flashes from the hills. We've lost two of the SALs! The lieutenant was in one of them.'

'What the fuck?' Chin said, panning madly to see what was happening. Other reports began to come in on the frequency now, all of them reporting laser flashes on the hillside. What the hell was this? Had the special forces teams changed the way they operated?

To give him credit, Chin reacted quickly to the situation. 'All tank units,' he said into the tactical channel. 'Open up on the hillside where the flashes came from. Put some fire on those fuckers! Van Pelt!'

'Here, boss,' Van Pelt said instantly.

'Move your people in! I want every soldier you have converging on that hill group!'

'Copy,' he said.

'Displace,' Jefferson yelled the moment the lasers were fired. 'Get the fuck out of here before the return fire comes in.'

Gavin and Horishito did not have to be told twice. They rolled backwards, down the hill, and then crawled to the right, dragging their laser tubes with them. Jefferson, holding his M-24, brought up the rear. Before they could even get ten feet away training rounds, both large and small caliber, began slamming into the rocks around them, hitting with thuds loud enough to be heard even through the thin air and the insulating biosuit helmet. Tiny bits of soft plastic shrapnel sprayed over them. Other rounds whizzed overhead, an experience that was more sensed than felt or seen.

As soon as they reached their new positions both men ejected the spent charging batteries from their lasers, letting them fall to the ground. The charges were plastic, fifteen centimeters square by four centimeters thick, and colored yellow, indicating they were for training only. They grabbed fresh ones from their packs and slammed them into the slots, pushing the charge button as soon as they were in place.

Fire belched from the main guns of the tanks as well as the smaller, commanders' weapons. Hundreds of rounds per second were launched towards the spot where the two laser flashes had come in the hope that the offenders would be hit by one of them. Meanwhile the APCs, on order from Van Pelt, had all turned and were rushing at top speed at the hills, the soldiers inside of them anxious to get in the fight and put a hurt on the special forces teams that had tormented them for so long. They knew that if they could get to those hills in time they could catch the teams before they retreated to the safety of their Hummingbird.

'Keep up the covering fire on that hill,' Chin ordered. 'Spread it out a little. Plaster that whole fucking area!'

Before the tanks could begin to spread their volume around a little bit however, the Mosquitoes joined the battle.

'Coming into firing range,' Brian announced to both his gunner and his wingman. 'Let's pop some APCs!'

He pulled up over the last hill, flying almost directly over the top of Lon and his men. With a quick bank to the right he was now paralleling the valley, streaking along the side of it at more than seven hundred kilometers per hour. In the back seat Colton was looking out the canopy, his goggles placing an X on wherever the laser cannon would hit if fired at the moment. As he turned his head, so did the X, as he looked up or down, so did it. On the belly of the aircraft, the twin cannon complex moved back and forth with his motions as well, swiveling on its turret. The targets came suddenly into view, an entire line of tiny APCs rolling across the ground below. He moved his head and put the X on one of them, simultaneously pushing the firing button in his hand. The laser flashed and instantly was hitting the target, telling its computer to shut it down and to declare the twelve men inside of it dead. Another turn of the head and the X was on another APC. Another push of the button and another vehicle and everyone in it were out of the battle. Behind them John and his gunner did the same.

And then it was time to get out. Brian cut sharply back to the right while the lasers went into automatic recharge mode for another run. Before the remaining anti-air vehicles of the column even realized that an attack was underway, the Mosquitoes were back in the safety of the hills and out of range. It was a picture perfect