RECCE II (The Union Series Book 5) (41 page)

‘Whoa, whoa, whoa, guys!’ Aleksi stepped forward,
holding both hands up for silence. ‘Do you two mind telling me what the hell
you’re both talking about?’

‘The missiles that came up here were just a
distraction!’ I said. ‘The rest are waiting at the pumping station on the west
coast of Edo, waiting for the Russian ships to fly straight over them. We’re all
being
played
! Not just Yulia . . . you, us, the Boskers, even Helstrom
and Bhasin.
All of us
!’

17

Strike Op

To contents
page

It all made perfect sense now. As I stared out
toward the fallen freighter all of the pieces fell into place inside my mind,
and I shook my head as I realised how foolish we had all been. Everyone was
being played like pieces on a chessboard, fed exactly the right information so
that we all unwittingly worked toward a plan that was now taking shape before
my eyes.

Helstrom was a crook. A monstrous crook in command
of a whole army of Militia, but still nothing more than a crook whose part in
the plot was little more than an elaborate deception. Taking the missiles
Bhasin had given him at the pipeline, he had stolen our attention from the real
direction the missiles were headed, straight to the pumping station and then on
to the chemical plant on the west coast of Edo.

Aided by the floats Yulia and her men had used to
enter the warren beneath Hill Kilo, as well as the current created by the
pumping station itself, Bhasin had made the perfect getaway, arriving at exactly
the right place to set his trap for the Russian ships. It wasn’t a case of
convenience, however. That had
always
been the plan. Bhasin hadn’t
tortured Yulia’s men to find out how to get out of the warren, he merely wanted
to know where their floats were hidden so he could use them for himself. As for
the pumping station, it must have been taken over by Bhasin’s rogue Guardsmen a
short while after Yulia began her journey through the pipeline. Presumably the
chemical plant was taken over at the same time. Suddenly I remembered the
patrol we had detected in the marsh during our insertion several days ago. They
were patrolling at speed, as though hurrying to get somewhere . . . to the
chemical plant; they were hurrying to get there so that they could set up their
position in anticipation of Bhasin’s success.

Then there was Yulia. I could tell by the confused
expression on her face that she had no idea how she had been used as a tool to
aid her own nemesis all along. She had a crucial part to play in the scheme,
creating and securing Bhasin’s escape route with a large, expendable band of
deserters whom nobody in the Guard or the FEA would believe. Then, just as we
attempted to gain control of the mining infrastructure, she and the other
Boskers had been persuaded to attack the Russian ships, driving them into the
air.

The involvement of Aleksi and Einsatsgruppe-19 was
probably the most alarming aspect of the entire plot, though. Although the
cleared corridor they had created for the Russians was correctly sited from a
strategic point of view, it ran the Russian ships straight past Bhasin’s
launchers. It was far too convenient to be fluke. Either the location of the
corridor had been leaked maliciously, or even worse it had been chosen with the
specific intent of placing the Russian ships in range. I suspected it was the
latter.

If a Russian ship was destroyed by missiles fired
from within Edo, then the political and military consequences would be severe.
This wasn’t just an attempt to ruin the fledging pact between EJOC and the
Alliance, but an attack on Russian trade with Europa as well. Europa, already
battered by Union bombs, would lose all of its financial support with the
resulting withdrawal of Russian commerce. The Union and Alliance would lose
their vision of a return to peace and order, and the people of the Bosque, both
in Edo and Europa, would be left to endure another decade of war. The only
beneficiaries to the doomsday scenario were the President of Edo - if the
Russians didn’t decide to bomb him into oblivion - and the wealthy corporations
of Paraiso, who could continue to enjoy the spoils of war and the comfort of
absolute power.

There was no way that Helstrom, Bhasin, Yulia and
Aleksi were working together. Even Helstrom and Bhasin - whose co-operation was
key to extracting the missiles whilst throwing us off the scent - probably
communicated with each other very little, if at all. The thing that connected
them all was that they were easily controlled, Helstrom and Bhasin through
greed and want of power, and Yulia through her emotional attachment to her
people. Aleksi wasn’t so fickle, but he could still be influenced by orders, orders
sent by EJOC. Between Paraiso’s corporations and the president himself, there
was the means to influence all of those people. There was no doubt in my mind
that they were the masterminds behind everything that had happened, though I
imagined the corporations were the main players.

My platoon was the only thorn in the side of the
plan, which was why so much effort had been made to ensure that we either
withdrew or were wiped out entirely. When we somehow survived the battle for
Cellini and escaped from the warrens, we were then sent into a benign ops box,
restricted to a comparatively small area where we couldn’t be any further
nuisance. Butch’s miraculous survival, his discovery at Copehill, and Aleksi’s
curiosity were the only reason that we had come together with Einsatsgruppe-19,
and the only reason we were stood together now, uncovering the depth of deceit
across the Bosque.

‘So, you think there are missiles waiting for the
Russian ships on the west coast?’ Aleksi asked, alarm spreading across his
features as all of the information began to sink in.

I shook my head. ‘I don’t think so. I
know
so!
I’d put money on it!’

Aleksi glanced between Yulia and I. ‘I need to go, and
you’re both coming with me!’

Yulia didn’t argue with Aleksi when he waved us both
out from the sangar, leaving her bewildered comrades behind. She didn’t know as
much as we did, but she clearly knew the situation was serious.

‘Follow me!’ the Scandinavian ordered as he took up
the lead, running across the barracks with the rest of us trailing behind him.

‘Where are we going?’ I asked, panting as I raced to
keep up with him. Aleksi was surprisingly fit - though he wasn’t carrying as
much equipment as I was.

‘The south-eastern sangar!’ he answered. ‘To where
your casualties are being extracted!’

I wasn’t the only one who wanted to know what was
going on. The sergeant major then spoke up on the net, having noticed our
withdrawal from his vantage point in the southern barrack building.
‘Poltergeist-One, this is Blackjack-One-Zero, where are you going? I can see
you extracting with my men?’

‘Apologies, Blackjack-One-Zero!’ Aleksi answered
quickly. ‘A situation has arisen that requires my immediate attention, and that
of Corporal Moralee! We are going to leave this location by aircraft. I suggest
you extract your platoon now. I will return Corporal Moralee and his men once I
am done with them.’

I took a sharp intake of breath, knowing that the
sergeant major wouldn’t take such a response lightly. Though we were ultimately
under Aleksi’s command, we were still
his
platoon. We had taken multiple
casualties during our assault onto Trondheim, and I doubted the sergeant major
would be happy knowing that there might be more.

There was an elongated pause, before he spoke again
with barely concealed frustration. ‘One-Zero, message received. I am on route
to the south-eastern sangar, where I will expect a face to face . . .’

The sergeant major arrived at the south-eastern
sangar compound shortly after we did, exploding through one of the mouse holes
on the northern wall and almost knocking one of Kam’s men to the ground in his
rage. 

He stalked across the darkened compound, his
predatory black eyes locked onto Aleksi. ‘What the
hell
is going on? Who
do you think you are, running off with my men without even speaking with me
first? Special Forces or not, you can damn well show this platoon some respect
and explain yourself before you take my troopers off on a jolly, do you
understand me?’

Up until our arrival Kam’s men had been busy
preparing all of our casualties in the centre of the compound, but now they all
stopped to witness the epic clash between their sergeant major and the man who
had dragged us all into battle.

‘I’m sorry, Sergeant Major,’ Aleksi replied, visibly
shaken by the outburst. I doubted he was used to working alongside Union
troopers anymore - if he ever had done - and so the dressing down probably came
as a shock. ‘It seems those missiles you were chasing were far more important
than I originally thought. Corporal Moralee believes they might be being sited
to ambush the Russian ships as they make their escape from Europa.’

‘They were in Edo all along!’ I blurted, coming to
Aleksi’s aid. I jutted an arm southward. ‘They were taken along the pipeline to
a chemical plant on the west coast!’

‘Sergeant Major.’ Aleksi held up a hand for calm. ‘I
promise you that I will bring your men back. This time it will be my men doing
the work, but I need Corporal Moralee to recognise Bhasin and any of his
followers.’

‘And the boss . . .’ I added.

The sergeant major glanced at me, but this time
there was no irritation in his glare. Was it intrigue that I saw in his cold,
heartless eyes? Or was it hope? Perhaps he too had found himself considering
the possibility that our trail had warmed up once more.

‘Bring them out, lads!’ Abs called out, bringing an
abrupt end to the deadlock.

There was a commotion within the compound as our
casualties were lifted in their stretchers and filed out through the single
mouse hole on the eastern wall. Leaman, Puppy and Myers were all amongst the
cluster of yellow and green crosshairs, their names flashing on my display.
Weatherall was there as well, helping to carry his worse-off comrades.

Aleksi ushered for us to follow on after the
casualties. ‘Our lift is here . . .’

Even the sergeant major forgot his anger as
curiosity drove us to follow Aleksi like a herd of sheep, ducking through the
mouse hole to see where our injured comrades were being taken.

There was nothing to see outside the barrack
perimeter, other than the small fires that still burned within the nearby slave
camp and the freed Boskers scattering into the forest. As the flames slowly
died, the shadows crept back toward the shredded tents, reaching out to swallow
the camp once more. Our casualties were all held aloft beside the mouse hole,
their stretcher-bearers waiting patiently whilst Van-Zyl paced up and down through
the grass about twenty metres away. He eventually stopped his pacing and simply
stared out toward the slave camp, as if he was expecting something to happen.

I was about to ask Aleksi where his supposed
aircraft were when I saw something unbelievable. I gaped in astonishment,
scarcely believing what I was seeing.

The view of the slave camp appeared to be wobbling,
as if the light was rippling in a heatwave, but it wasn’t the heat from the
small fires that effected my view. There was something
there
. A large
craft of some kind, almost as wide as the sangar compound, except it was
virtually invisible. No, not one large craft, but several of them, lined up in
front of the casualties, each one the size of a dropship.

‘What on earth are those things?’ I whispered
reverently, as if speaking too loud would cause them to disappear.

‘Stealth saucers,’ Aleksi said. ‘Our workhorses.’

‘They’re . . . invisible!’

He chuckled. ‘Not quite. They bend the light around
themselves to create that effect. No heat signature, no radio signature, nothing.
Pretty advanced stuff . . . and entirely secret.’

As I watched, our casualties were carried toward the
waiting craft, suddenly blurring out of existence. Shortly afterward the
stretcher bearers emerged once more, trotting back toward the sangar compound.

‘That was beyond weird,’ Abs commented as he passed
us.

‘No shit,’ Griffiths agreed.

‘Sergeant Major,’ Aleksi prompted. ‘I really do need
to get moving.’

Somehow subdued by the sight of such advanced
aircraft, the sergeant major nodded slowly. ‘OK, Aleksi, you can take my men.
My orders are to assist you, so I have no choice anyway.’ He then returned to
his senses as he turned and poked the Scandinavian in the chest. ‘But if you
don’t bring my men back, I’ll be looking for you!’

‘Of course,’ Aleksi agreed, looking slightly
awkward. ‘Good luck, Sergeant Major.’