In the Valley (23 page)

From the stories that Paul had heard about the place, this mission was really going to suck. The dissidents in the upper Pashtun Province had really taken a beating lately from Third Battalion; the dissidents in the Baradna were fresh. Also, from all reports, they were heavily armed and had no problem with using those arms either.

Apparently, a provincial police outfit that was stationed down there had really gotten chewed up a couple of weeks earlier, and bad guys operating out of the Baradna had just tried to kill the provincial vice governor. Apparently a peace commission that had gone to the valley had gotten a big “fuck you” from the warlords down there as well.

Added up, that meant that the entire Third Battalion, 215th Juneau Army Brigade, was going to pay those fellows a call—and where Third Battalion went, so went Team 1.69.

A short battalion of provincial police was headed down there as well, but not, thank God, a certain Major Najibullah. The bomb-making major had begged off the operation, citing pressing responsibilities in the Belt. His magical bomb-and-bullet-avoiding powers did not extend to the Baradna Valley apparently. Even Najibullah the Shithead knew it was going to be fucked up.

Paul remembered Mighty Mike’s prophecy: “If we go to the Baradna, there will be blood.”

Paul was hoping it’d be a cakewalk, instead. His hand was shaking, just slightly. His hopes were bound to be dashed.

As usual, he had thoroughly checked Z’s equipment the day before and gone over his own with a fine-toothed comb. He would be gunning for the colonel in his ground-car, and Z would be driving.

Also riding in the ground-car would be an air-asset control guy. It was a sign of the importance of this mission that higher had assigned an air-control team to the effort. The air-control team might really come in handy, thought Paul.

New Sol was breaking above the mountains in the east; it was about time to get this thing started. Paul was waiting by the ground-car with Z; the colonel was making some last-minute preps with Colonel Fasi.

What the hell, thought Paul, may as well have a near-cig while I wait. He dug a Fortunate out of his pocket and puffed away. Five minutes later, and the colonel came walking up. It was time to suit up and head south. Paul would be the colonel’s gunner for the duration of the mission.

An hour later Paul was scanning his sector via his halo, whose feed was slaved to sensors on the gun above him. He swept his sector incessantly, running his targeting chevron up and down buildings, people, and terrain features.

When he was out on a mission, the scanning never stopped. It had gotten to the point that his scanning for targets didn’t stop at all; he did it constantly these days. The alertness was the gift of a tour on Juneau; it was a switch that had an on, but no off.

Looking via the micro feed, Paul saw that he was toward the front of an enormous convoy. Bashir had told him that he had never been in such a large operation, and Paul believed it.

On Samarra, Paul had seen some damn big convoys. Well, this one was those convoy’s equal—if not in power, then certainly in sheer numbers.

The Juneau soldiers generally would ride in the back of unarmored ground-cars; they relied on God to protect them. Paul had asked them before what they thought of riding to war in such a cavalier fashion. The soldier he had asked had simply said, “If God wills it, I will die. If not, then praise be to God.” And that was the end of that line of thought for those guys. Paul thought again that they were magnificent, brave sons of bitches.

The present convoy was also unlike the usual force convoy in its definite lack of uniformity: among the vehicles and the soldiers in them. Where a force convoy would always either uniformly color shift from Safety Orange to terrain-matching camouflage, the Juneau Army vehicles relied on plain tan or green paint. Also, each vehicle was a little different, personalized by each operator.

There were snippets of Koranic verses, streamers, and colorful stickers slapped on the Juneau Army vehicles, seemingly at random. A force major sergeant would have had a fit to see such a ragtag assemblage of vehicles in his vehicle park. That same notional major sergeant would have crapped his pants to see the uniforms, or lack of them, that the Juneau soldiers were wearing.

To take Second Company as an example, there were at least four different camouflage patterns to be seen on the troops. Each soldier wore different headgear at his whim, and it was usually a colorful variant on the shawl-looking
kaffiiyeh
or the
pakol
(the Pashtun muffin hat). Sometimes they would wear helmets, and the civilian halos that they wore were of all manufactures and shapes as well. And their footwear: if they even had footwear, they tended to be civilian, faux rubber slippers of some sort. The Juneau soldiers rarely wore the boots they had been issued.

Those guys were a sight. But as Paul knew, and as he was to witness again and again on the following campaign, the Juneau Army soldiers were fighters and killers. He gave their appearance a pass.

After another hour and a half of bone-jarring travel on the main provincial route, Third Battalion prepared to enter the Baradna Valley. As Paul’s ground-car navigated the pull off from the provincial highway onto the main road leading into Baradna, the air-control bubba in the vehicle started to get busy.

“Sir,” the guy named Fox said to the colonel, “we have two F-71s inbound to shadow our convoy moving in.”

“Roger, Fox, that’s good shit—exactly what I requested.”

The colonel went back to monitoring his micro feed. He had been studying it intently for the last hour, and he had been controlling units with Colonel Fasi via halo link.

Scanning with his gun, the convoy looked smooth so far to Paul. And it was nice having two death dealers like the F-71s overhead. The colonel had told Paul about that part of the plan last week; Paul had doubted at the time that they would get the air assets.

Well, Paul thought, that’ll teach me to doubt the colonel. He thought he would have known better by now. The convoy rolled on into the hostile valley.

For a couple of hours, and about forty kilometers, the convoy’s penetration was pretty quiet and definitely slow. Part of the reason for the slow going was that the convoy was screened by a platoon the team had “borrowed” from the Eighteenth Force Engineers.

It was all right by Paul to take it slow if it meant the engineers were screening the convoy for bombs. That happened to be exactly the job that they had that day.

Heck, he thought while scanning his sector, with the navy overhead and the engineers out front, this should be all right—definitely better than riding up Bomb Alley in the Belt, in the back of a Juneau Army ground-car, unsuited and unarmored. That kind of shit was for the birds, in his opinion.

Of course, no one asked or would care about his opinion. Hell, Mighty Mike rolled out all crazy like that and laughed his balls off. Paul figured Mikey was a better man than him.

His halo buzzed. “Five…Five, this is Sapper Six.” The engineer’s LT, Sapper Six, was calling the colonel.

“Sapper Six, this is Five. Send it.”

“Five, be advised: we have a find up here.” Paul’s juices got going. The day was becoming a bit more interesting. A “find” was usually a bomb.

“Six, state the nature of the find.” Paul risked a quick look at the colonel’s face. He was a study in calm neutrality.

“Five, our micro feed is giving us imagery of what appears to be a rocket-assisted 155 mm round, oriented at ground-car–cab height.”

Oh, Paul thought, that would have been ugly. It seemed that someone in the Baradna Valley wanted to play silly games with Third Battalion. Paul concentrated even more fiercely on his aiming chevron, silently begging the unseen enemy to appear.

“Roger, Sapper Six,” said the colonel. He paused and thought for a second. “Six, what is your recommended course of action? Be advised: this operation is time critical.” In other words, the battalion, if at all possible, needed to be off the road and have its firebase set up before dark.

It was already 1335 local. Paul thought it was fine to delay for a bomb—heck, the delay would have been catastrophically worse if the engineers wouldn’t have found the device. A rocket-assisted 155 would have been very bad medicine.

Essayons
, thought Paul. It was the ancient motto of the combat engineers, “Let us try.” As long as the engineers expedited things a little, finding that bomb had been a good thing.

The engineer officer called back. “Five, this is going to take a little bit. Rocket-assisted munitions can be a little temperamental, and the round is too big to blow in place. It’s too close to those houses.”

Paul looked in on the micro feed quickly and then was back to scanning. The engineer was right—the bomb was only about seventy-five meters from a nearby civilian compound.

“Six, roger. What can you tell me about probable initiation of the device?” The colonel was deep in thought, Paul could tell.

“Five, our sensors tell us it’s a simple radio-initiated bomb. Our jammers have shut it down. We’re coming up with a plan to take this thing out. Stand by.”

Colonel Fasi chose that moment to chime in. “Colonel, my friend, I think my soldiers can deal with this bomb. We must make it to our camp soon, or we will be attacked with more than a bomb.”

“Fasi, this is Five; what is your plan?” The colonel was rubbing his face.

“I have sent some of my soldiers up to this bomb; they will take care of it.”

Oh boy, thought Paul, the Juneaus were about to pull off some shit. With his eyes wide open, the colonel watched the micro-drone feed. A Juneau ground-car was driving right up to the bomb!

“Fasi, this is the colonel. What are your people doing?” On the mil-grade halo net, the engineers were freaking out. Paul, peeking at the feed while scanning his sector, couldn’t believe what the Juneaus were doing either.

Colonel Fasi answered, “This bomb—the engineer soldiers say it is radio controlled and that they jam it. This bomb—it is harmless, yes?” He sounded jolly.

Paul, the colonel, and everyone else tied into the micro feed saw the Juneau’s actions.

Viewed from above, a Juneau ground-car had driven up to the bomb. Two soldiers got out. One walked up to the bomb and kicked it over. The other soldier started ripping at wires and stuffing bits into his pockets. He threw something on the ground and stepped on it. Probably the detonator, thought Paul.

The soldier who had kicked the bomb leaned down—it looked like Monkey-Boy from First Company on the feed. He picked up the 155 round and threw it, none too gently, into the back of the ground-car between the other soldiers sitting in there!

“Holy shit!” said the colonel.

“Five, this is Sapper Six. Holy shit! Did you see that?” The engineer sounded like his head was going to explode.

The colonel came back. “Uh, roger, Sapper Six, I saw it. Be advised: stay away from that ground-car.” The colonel rubbed his face.

Mike popped up on the net: “Yup, them’s my boys!” He looked positively gleeful. First Company’s wild men had struck again.

Fasi came back over the halo net. “Do you see, Colonel, my friend? My soldiers have taken away this bomb. Now we can move to our camp.”

Colonel Fasi was as good as his word. The massive stalled convoy started to move.

Paul felt as though he had to clean his shorts after watching that little escapade. An hour later Third Battalion rolled into the Chickenfoot and established Firebase Atarab in the heart of the Baradna Valley. That night, the first patrols went out.

“S
o tell me about your first patrol, Uncle Jack,” a slightly nonplussed Paul said.

“Nah, Paul, you know what it’s all about anyway,” the bearded man said.

Paul had a layover after graduating OCS on Mumbai 3. His next shot at a transport to his new assignment was in about a week and a half, and he had been pinged, much to his surprise, by his long-lost uncle Jack.

Paul had never met the guy, but it still felt damn good to run into flesh and blood tens of light-years from Old Earth.

Paul had been kicking back doing nothing much in the barracks one day after graduation when an icon labeled “
JACK THOMPSON, MS, RET
” came up on Paul’s visual. A very surprised Paul had spoken briefly with his uncle, and they had arranged to meet in Jewel, the capital city of Mumbai 3.

The two were currently hanging out in a bar called Star-Crossed, lounging on Mughal-style cushions with a bong set in the middle. Paul took a hit off the cherry-flavored near-tobacco pipe and listened to the device bubble away happily. Jack drank from a glass filled with two fingers of Johnny Walker Red, served straight up.

Paul wasn’t sure what to say to this figure of legend in his life. This was the guy who had “disappeared into the stars,” much as Paul had done, as a matter of fact.

“Tell me about your father; tell me about Hopefield. That’s what I really want to know.” Jack’s eyes had an inscrutable look; his gaze flicked from Paul back to the bubbly bong.

“It’s been fourteen years since I’ve been home,” Paul said. “I’m sure a lot has changed. Father pings me from time to time, but you know how it goes with Glimmer comms: everything is a little random when it does reach you.” Year by year Paul was starting to forget what “home” actually was. The only remembrance he had of it was the quilt, his switchblade, and the scarf from long-lost Amy.