RECCE II (The Union Series Book 5) (25 page)

‘Yes,’ he answered. ‘They don’t give us much in
return, but they leave us in peace. We don’t argue.’

There was no light or announcement that the cycle of
air was complete. Instead, Marcus simply pulled off his respirator as soon as
the grille stopped making a noise. I followed his lead, taking a moment to
enjoy the kiss of cool air against my face.

Yulia removed her visor and pulled her facemask
away, catching my eye as she did so. Our eyes then locked for a moment as we
saw each other’s faces for the first time since we had captured her in the
tunnels beneath Cellini. There hadn’t been many times where I had seen her
without her protective headgear, few enough for me to count them on only one
hand. Despite her hardened expression, she was an attractive woman, more
attractive than ever, in fact. I supposed it was because I now knew that there
was a human being beneath that mask, a person with her own hopes and fears, and
even though I barely knew her, I felt that I could relate to her.

Aleksi was watching us both, I realised, his face
suddenly impassive. I could sense him trying to figure out what was going
through my mind, what my relationship was with Yulia, and how it might affect
him and his operation. Suddenly self-conscious, I looked away from her.

Marcus pushed the inner door open, and we walked
along a short passage to emerge into a storeroom, filled with equipment and
machinery that had been neatly arranged into rows so that it could be moved
easily. A single strip light glowed in the centre of the ceiling, casting long
shadows across the storeroom.

‘The Militia don’t often search the laboratory,’
Marcus said whilst we walked. ‘If they do, they’re normally searching for
things they can eat, drink or use. There is nothing useful to them in this
building, so they never look here.’

We followed him through the rows of equipment, to
the far side of the storeroom where there were a number of doors. He then took
us to the furthest door, tucked right into the corner, and pushed it open.
Light spilled out of the doorway, illuminating all of us in a warm orange glow.

‘Butch!’ Marcus called into the room. ‘Your friends
have found you.’

I stepped into the doorway, still expecting to be
disappointed . . . but there he was.

Butch was sat on the edge of an old, battered cot bed,
half-dressed in his combats with a sheet wrapped about his shoulders. His arm
was bandaged, and his face and body were covered in small scratches and
bruises, but otherwise he looked healthy and well cared for.

He looked at me and smiled. ‘What kept you?’

I walked into the room and offered a hand. ‘It’s
good to see you, Butch.’

Before the injured trooper could react, Griffiths
pushed past me and gave him a bear hug that caused him to wince. ‘Where the
hell have you been, you nob head?’

‘Waiting for you lot!’ Butch replied in jest,
shaking both our hands as we revelled in a rare moment of joy.

I looked him over, inspecting the bandage wrapped
about his arm and searching for other serious injuries. ‘Are you badly hurt?’

‘I’ll live,’ Butch replied. He nodded toward Marcus.
‘These boys have done a good job looking after me. I’d be dead if it wasn’t for
them.’ He paused for a second, then shook his head, grinning broadly. ‘I can’t
believe you boys found me. I thought I was gonna end up living here . . . no
offense, Marcus!’

The councillor smiled. ‘None taken.’

‘Well, it looks like you’re in safe hands anyway.’ I
glanced at Aleksi. ‘What was the plan for extraction?’

‘We’ll talk about it later,’ Aleksi replied.

He wasn’t going to reveal how he intended to get
Butch back to Paraiso, I realised, certainly not with the surrounding audience.
I sensed that Aleksi and his team, wherever they were, wouldn’t give away
anything they didn’t need to.

‘What’s the plan now, then?’ Butch asked me. ‘How’s
the platoon?’

I exchanged looks with Griffiths, then sighed sadly.
‘The platoon’s seen better days, mate . . .’

The injured trooper frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

‘We’ve lost a lot of men. Thapa and Skelton from my
section, a few guys from Two and Four section, the boss . . .’

Aleksi looked as shocked as Butch did when I
revealed the horrendous casualties our platoon had sustained. Only on New Earth
had I been in a unit that had suffered worse.

Butch shook his head, disbelieving. ‘Christ . . . even
the boss is dead?’

‘Captured,’ I corrected. ‘Along with all his team.’

‘Sanneh’s dead, too,’ Griffiths added gloomily.

Butch gave a small nod, then lowered his head
mournfully. ‘I know. Marcus showed me Helstrom’s transmission. Wish I never saw
it.’

‘Don’t worry. We’ll make him pay for what he did,’
Griffiths promised.

Normally I might have rebuffed such a promise, but I
too wanted vengeance against Bhasin and Helstrom. Somehow, I wanted to make
them know the same suffering that they had inflicted onto so many others.

The injured trooper looked up again, his eyes
piercing into mine. ‘Make sure you do. Make those bastards pay!’

11

Agent Handling

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Griffiths and I listened as Butch told the harrowing
tale of his escape from the Militia ambush the night before. He and Sanneh had
both been together at the rear end of Three Section when it came under fire.

‘The contact was to our front and we were all in
single file,’ he remembered, ‘so Sanneh and I were right at the back. I
couldn’t see anything, not even the lads at the front, so I couldn’t fire
straight away.’

The only way to survive an ambush is an instantaneous,
aggressive and well-drilled response. The victims need to either attack the
ambush - a brazen move that can shock the enemy, suddenly putting him on the
defensive - or conduct a rapid withdrawal. Both options require a huge amount
of firepower, so the instant response of any section caught in an ambush is to
orientate itself so that everyone can return fire.

Three Section’s 2ic was midway along the
line of troopers, and with a shrill cry and a sweep of his arm he ordered his
fire team to move up to the left hand side of Stan’s half of the section, in
order to form a baseline.

Furthest from the battle, Butch sprinted
through the undergrowth, leaping over roots and crashing through branches as he
dashed around into a position to fire. Darts were whipping past his head,
sending splinters flying through the air as they struck the trees around him. But
Butcher was scarcely aware of them in the heat of battle, the only thing that
mattered to him was joining the firefight to repel the ambush.

‘I knew it was bad when I got up there,’ Butch
recalled. ‘Everyone was firing, but nobody had a clear view at the enemy. There
were targets popping up everywhere. Darts were ripping through the trees like a
fucking chainsaw. There were bits of wood flying around . . . one piece even
hit me on the visor.’ He tapped his face, as if remembering the impact.
‘Thought I’d been shot for a moment. Stan made the right call to withdraw. Nobody
could have assaulted into that.’

Butch took up his new position alongside
Sanneh on the left hand side of the section as it re-orientated itself into a
ragged defensive line. Neither one of them had fired more than a couple of
rounds before Stan then gave the order to withdraw.

‘We bounded back for ages,’ he continued. ‘Blokes
were getting hit all across the section. We had to stop at least once when
someone had to pick up a casualty in Stan’s fire team. It was chaos. Then I was
running back when something hit me and I went down. I remember laying on the
ground for a second, blinking at the casualty alert on my visor. I thought
this
is it
, you know?’ He looked up at us all. ‘Then Sanneh came crashing over.
He pulls me up, says
“What the fuck are you doing?”
“
I’ve been shot
,”
I said.’

Butch had been on the ground for no more
than thirty seconds, but in that time the rest of the section, burdened by
casualties and harried by gunfire, had continued to withdraw away from them,
oblivious to the fate of their companions.

Now virtually surrounded by charging
Militia, the two troopers crouched back to back and prepared to fight for their
lives. Butch shot one man as he exploded out of the undergrowth, whilst Sanneh
opened fire with a burst from his mammoth, cutting down several more.

It took them little time to realise that
Three Section weren’t coming back for them. They hadn’t even noticed that two
men were left behind. The only hope for Butch and Sanneh was to run, and hope
that the Militia didn’t shoot them in the back. So the two troopers made a dash
through the trees, weaving left and right in an attempt to make themselves more
difficult targets. Butch completely forgot about his wounded arm as he sprinted
southward, hoping to somehow make it back to his section.

Suddenly Butch fell again, but this time
it wasn’t a dart that caused him to lose his footing, but rather an exposed
root snatching his foot out from under him. He tumbled head first, narrowly
missing a stream that cut a deep trench through the forest. His helmet visor
smacked against another exposed root, cracking slightly from the force of the
blow. Dazed from the collision, it took several moments for Butch to lift his
head again.

‘I looked for Sanneh, but he was gone.’ Butch waved
his hand away from him. ‘Just kept on running . . .’

‘He abandoned you?’ I asked, my voice turning up in
surprise.

‘I didn’t say that!’ Butch snapped. ‘I just said he
kept
on running
.’

I gave the Welsh trooper a moment to calm down, as
well as take a moment to check myself. Butcher’s reaction was understandable. It
was pretty harsh of me to accuse a dead trooper of cowardice. My faith in
humanity might have taken another hammer blow over the past few hours, but I
needed to remember that the loyalty between my comrades was unbreakable.

‘Everything happened so fast, you know,’ Butch
continued with a sigh. ‘Sanneh wouldn’t even have noticed me fall. We weren’t
shooting anymore, we were just running. We forgot ourselves . . .’

‘So what did you do?’ Griffiths asked.

Butch paused as his mind returned to the
battlefield. ‘It was a split second decision,’ he said. ‘My arm was in a bad
way. And I knew the Militia were right behind me, I could hear them coming. So
I scrambled forward and slid myself into the stream. It was a bit of a drop,
like a metre or so, but I didn’t make too much noise when I landed in the water,
and I doubt the Militia heard anyway. The stream wasn’t that deep. It was
barely a trickle, but it had cut right through the ground around it. The banks
were almost vertical, so they hid me well. I tucked myself in and hoped for the
best.’

I didn’t know if Butch had made the right call in
hiding himself in the stream. It was easy for us to judge him, but none of us
had been there at the time. He had already lost Sanneh, so he was on his own,
and the Militia would easily have seen him as he tried to pick himself back up
with only one good arm.

The sound of Three Section’s battle receded,
and instead Butch could hear the voices of the Militiamen as they flooded through
the forest, passing close by to his hiding place. One of them would
occasionally stop to take a shot, but Butch doubted they could see anything.
His comrades were gone.

‘So, I’m just lying there thinking
fuck! What the
hell do I do now?
I had no idea how long I’d have to stay in that stream
before it was safe to move again. The water was cold. Even though my combats
had sealed the wound on my arm, it still hurt proper bad, but I knew that if I
tried to do anything I’d be caught, and I wasn’t gonna do that. So I just
stayed where I was.’

Butch passed the time thinking about how
he would make his escape when the time was right. He could hear the distant
battle intensify as the platoon turned up, but he knew nobody would come for
him when they realised he was missing. Nobody would know where to look anyway,
not unless Butch activated his net, and then the Militia wouldn’t take long
finding him either. All he could do was hope that the platoon would withdraw
back to Cellini and hold its ground long enough for him to make his way around.

‘There were still loads of Militia above me,’ he
continued. ‘I could sometimes hear them chatting shit. I couldn’t understand a
lot of what they were saying, they were using slang even my headset couldn’t
make out, but I guessed they were a reserve platoon or something. They were
talking about attacking Cellini “when the time was right” and then they started
talking about the “Edo traitors” who were helping them.’

I raised an eyebrow. ‘Did they say anything else
about the traitors?’

‘Not really. Most of them were talking random
nonsense. It was kind of freaky, though. One minute one would talk about raping
a civilian, then they’d be chatting about their kids at home and stuff. They
truly are messed up. Crazy.’

‘They’re all scum,’ Griffiths uttered, his lips
curling in revulsion.

‘I was really worried, though,’ Butch continued. ‘I
could hear the sound of railguns firing into the forest. Then one of the
Militiamen says that our dropships had come for us. They said that the Union were
running back to Paraiso, and now the Edo forces were on their own.’

I could only imagine the sense of utter hopelessness
that Butch must have felt. The distance between Cellini and the nearest border
with Paraiso was several hundred kilometres. Our dropships could make the
distance in well under an hour, but for a man on foot it could take days,
perhaps weeks to complete the journey. He would have to avoid everyone, even
our supposed Edo allies, whose hatred for the Union was often barely concealed.
A lost trooper whom nobody knew was still alive would make an amusing plaything
for any FEA or Guard patrol that caught him. I remembered Sanneh, and Helstrom’s
wicked knife being drawn against his throat, and shuddered.

After several hours, the Militiamen patrolled
away toward Cellini, and the forest fell silent. It was daylight by then, but
Butch wasn’t prepared to wait any longer in the freezing cold water, so he
slowly climbed out of the stream, sliding his soaking wet body up onto the
bank.

Having given up any hope of rescue, he planned
to make his escape by heading directly south-east toward the Paraiso border.
Unfortunately, however, the only way he could survive such a journey would be
if he had plenty of food, water and supplies.

‘I only had two litres of water in my daysack, maybe
a day’s-worth of food and a single resy canister,’ Butch said. ‘I knew it
wasn’t enough, so I decided my only chance was to move around to the southern
side of Cellini, where I’d loot all those FEA soldiers who died there the day
before. There was no way all those bodies had been collected, there were so
many of them, and I only needed one or two to get what I needed.

‘I couldn’t believe my luck, though. Just as I’m
getting ready to go, I see a load of dead Militiamen. They hadn’t bothered to clear
their dead when they left - they hadn’t even stripped their kit! I dumped
everything I didn’t need from my daysack, then started filling it with whatever
food and water I could find . . . but then I heard something . . .’

It was the Militia. Whether they were
searching for him or not, Butch couldn’t tell, but they were close enough for
him to hear them to the south, snapping twigs and brushing against branches. He
found himself forced to withdraw northwards, evading what seemed to be
countless Militia patrols that were streaming through the forest, all headed
for Cellini. Every time he attempted to change direction, he narrowly avoided
bumping into yet another patrol. He was being driven up toward the border with
Europa - the opposite direction to where he needed to go.

Eventually Butch decided to stop, taking
refuge inside a small cave
.
The plan was to wait
out until the Militia activity had died down, since any attempt to move seemed
to be making things worse. At the same time as our platoon were reeling at the
sight of Sanneh being executed, Butch was curled up within his tiny shelter,
shivering in his wet kit as he tried to come up with a new course of action.

He was in trouble. He still needed more
supplies and equipment to survive his journey, but considering the sheer number
of Militiamen in the area, returning to Cellini almost guaranteed his capture.
Though he never received the recording of Sanneh’s death at the time, he
already knew that allowing himself to be taken prisoner was unthinkable.

Finally, after several hours in hiding,
Butch made a decision, one which almost certainly saved his life. Rather than
attempting to head for Cellini, he would go in search of another population
centre, guessing that the large flow of Militiamen meant that other areas would
be left unguarded. Under the cover of darkness, he would steal what he needed
from the unwitting population, either by stealth or by force.

When Butch exited the cave to begin his
journey, though, he was in for a shock. As soon as he raised his head from the
tiny hole, he came face to face with a rifle barrel.

‘For a second I just thought I was a dead man,’ he
said, ‘and I was about to raise my rifle to shoot when the man spoke.’