And here's another. The firefight has some unintended consequences that are just beginning to snowball...in other words, this whole thing will soon explode into an orgy of destruction. Or not
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Maneuvers, p.1
The sun was coming down over the valley. Survey teams were moving back towards the camp as fast as possible – not fifteen minutes ago, they received an emergency recall signal - besides, everybody heard the brief firefight. Most scientists were afraid now, since they didn’t know what happened – the enemy could be hiding in the trees, just waiting to ambush a group full of unarmed civilians. OSF soldiers were forced to forego pursuit and escort scientists back to the fortified base-camp.
Anatoyli would’ve been relieved to know that, but he didn’t have that kind of luxury. His team was moving east as fast as humanly possible, aided by chemical cocktails from their boost-pills. The combination of drugs made everything clear, took away the pain and tiredness which plagued everyone after an entire day of marching through the jungle. Of course, their bodies would demand all of that energy repaid later on.
Thanks to their pace, Anatoyli’s team was able to lose American drones during the brief period refuelling period when the sky was actually clear. This was a relief – by dawn, the Spetnaz commandos be far away from the enemy base and would be able to launch their own recon and combat UAVs.
The question that remained unanswered and tormented Anatoyli constantly was – how the hell were they going to the conduct observation now that the enemy knew they were here?
American C&C
“There were four or five opponents. Disciplined and well trained, but that goes without saying.” – Barret had just finished debriefing the sergeant who commanded the team involved in the firefight – “One of our boys fired first. The enemy was obviously falling back from the beginning. I think we caught them entirely by accident.”
“If they came from that beach, they must've been marching pretty damned fast” – Fields noted, looking at a map of the valley – “They probably were going towards their chosen camp site, I can’t imagine their men could be worth anything after covering forty miles of that jungle.”
Henderson nodded – “I agree. They’re gonna want to put as much distance between themselves and us. Which serves our purpose, really.”
“Yeah, if we can track them, we can just have
Big Maggie blast them if they try anything.” – Fields finished Henderson’s thought – “The problem is tracking them in the first place.”
“I don’t think it’s going to be as much trouble as you think. They’ll establish a camp at the edge of the valley, maybe a bit beyond the crest. I’m assuming they will want to launch their own drones, and they need a location that is shielded from our radar to do that.” – Henderson pointed to the eastern crest – “They will establish a camp someplace here. We can launch a full wave of drones in the morning and sweep the entire area.”
“We can’t be sure they’ll do that.” – Fields was skeptical. After all, she was a combat jumper, and the way combat jumpers did things was always supposed to be unconventional and unexpected.
“Oh, I’m plenty sure. So far, they’ve been doing everything
exactly as we expected. Besides, we got them on the run, they’re tired and probably can’t think all that well. We have the initiative now.”
Jungle
L-21-834 wasn’t a nice place even when the weather was good. At night, it turned into the closest place to hell any soldier could imagine.
As the sun dropped below the horizon, temperature decreased rapidly. Giant insects, resembling a half-meter caterpillar with dragonfly wings, crawled out of the woodwork to hunt their prey, and they constantly bumped into the faces of Anatoyli’s men.
As it became colder, the everpresent chemical stench eased up some. On another hand, some heavy substance, resembling a thick syrup, began dripping down off the trees. After an hour, on ground level it felt like it was raining. The sludge tasted like tar and, of course, got everywhere – in the webbing, in the weapons, under the helmets and uniforms. The undebrush was treacherous, the march extremely tiring. Barely a single day has passed since their landing, and already the Spetznaz team has had enough.
Anatoyli was thinking furiously ever since they broke off from the firefight. What would Americans do now? Were they going to search for his men to try and kill them, or retreat to the camp and fortify it from any possible attack? Or maybe try to locate them and capture them alive? No, that was impossible. All special operations troopers used in the Secret War would rather kill themselves than be captured. Every soldier in Anatoyli's team carried a hypodermic syringe, safely tucked away in a pocket,sawn into the webbing just to house the poison securely.
The way he saw it, the American commander had two options – try to kill them or not. Both ways, he’d need to know where they were, and that meant a search. He could hide civilians inside a fortified camp, and send out his soldiers to aid drones in searching the jungle. Therefore, the first priority of his team would be to lay low and hide.
He looked around. His men were making their way through an impossibly thick underbrush, and it was obvious they were tense and stressed out. The jungle was teeming with sounds of night animals coming out to hunt…and there were no drones in the air.
“Has anybody heard drones since we broke contact?” – he asked his men. No. Nobdoy heard any.
He wiped some ‘syrup’ from his face. The UAVs were only able to track them from low above the tree canopy, but this was bound to change as temperature droped further. The American commander had probably decided to use all his drones at once, rather than keep a few on station throughout the night. So they would locate his team tonight, then just keep a drone or two on them, locate their camp and either destroy it with a direct attack or monitor their movements. Anatoyli had to admit they’d probably destroy the camp – a few hours ago, Americans just proved they’d shoot on sight. With this thought, he came to a final decision and activated his battle-link.
“Wolf One to Wolf Cub, come on the link please.”
His implanted receiver flashed and he immediately knew where his scout snipers were. They have moved somewhat forward during the firefight and immediate aftermath, and were separated from the rest of the group by about half an hour or so.
“This is Wolf Cub, what is it Wolf One?” –accents were funny things when they were filtered through a computer data transfer algorithm. The Frenchman was very hard to understand over the link.
“Change of plans. We’ll move five klicks to the north and dig in there. Try to find some animal den or grotto for us. We will camouflage ourselves and sleep through the night, and tomorrow we’ll establish a camp inside the valley, rather than on the crest.”
“Acknowledged Wolf One, change of plans. Wolf Cub out.” - with that, the link went silent. Anatoyli looked at the rest of his men. The boost-pills would stop working shortly, but they still had about an hour or two. He pointed towards the north and gave a hand signal to move out.
This damn mission was becoming more and more complicated by the minute. For the first time since the insertion, Anatoyli was tempted to call for extraction, forge the records and get a soft bed in return.
