Lon set his M-24 down for a moment and adjusted the magnification of his combat goggles. Instantly, with the help of infrared enhancement, he was able to pick out the individual tanks of the column even though they were still nearly twenty kilometers distant. "Looks like an armored cavalry column of battalion strength," he reported to his men. They had not been privy to what the strength of the OPFOR was going to be. "They have fifty plus APCs, we're talking five hundred troops if they're fully loaded. I also have three... no four SAL-50 anti-air vehicles in the front, middle, and rear of the column."
"I'm reading the same," said Jefferson from his perch. "Moving at about forty KPH."
"That gives us an ETA to contact of about thirty minutes," Lon said. "I'm gonna get hold of the Mosquitoes." He flipped another switch on his computer panel and dialed into the encoded laser frequency. "Striker flight one," he said, keying the radio link. "This is Shadow team six. Are you there?" In order to avoid giving themselves away by leaking radio emissions, his words were converted to digital pulses, which were shot upward 18,000 kilometers by a laser beam to a communications satellite in geosynchronous orbit. The suit computer used GPS data to keep a constant fix on the satellite's location in the sky. If Lon had been in a position where the laser was blocked by an obstacle, an indicator in his goggles would have lit up, telling him this.
The delay from talking to reception was about three seconds. "Shadow six, this is striker one," came the voice of Brian Haggerty, one of the many pilots they worked in tandem with on a regular basis. "Go ahead. I'm tracking your current position."
"Copy that you're tracking us," Lon said. In addition to providing secure communications, the laser system also carried placement data, allowing support units to have an accurate fix on friendlies. "We have a visual on an armored column of battalion strength moving eastward through the cut. We count thirty plus ETT-12s, fifty plus APCs, and four SAL-50s. The SAL-50s are at the ends and middle of the column. They're moving west at approximately forty klicks. Estimated time to our position, thirty minutes. I repeat, three zero minutes."
"Copy thirty minutes," Haggerty said. "Get back with us five minutes to strike time with an update and we'll wake them up for you."
"Will do," Lon said. "Shadow six out."
They watched mostly in silence as the column drew closer and closer. The dust cloud that it raised expanded and continued to blow off to the south, carried by the prevailing seasonal winds. Though the sound of the advance did not reach them — sound did not travel very far or very well through the Martian air — the vibration and the rumbling of the ground did. The movement of nearly ninety armored vehicles was enough to shake loose small rocks. It was as they began to come into view without magnification assist that Lon began to notice something different about their formation. It took him a few minutes to pin down exactly what it was. Usually the APCs traveled in a protective ring of tank platoons, all the better to cover the soldiers within. Now the tanks were mostly forward and to the rear, with only a few token pieces covering the flanks.
"Look at how the APCs are formed up," he said when it finally came home to him. "That's not a standard marching formation."
"No," Jefferson said. "It sure ain't. Why do you think they're doing that?"
"That crafty little fuck Chin is up to something," Lon said. "He's trying to screw us out of our beer tonight."
"What's he planning?" asked Gavin. "Why would he leave the APCs bare like that? It doesn't make sense."
"It does if he wants them free for a charge," Jefferson opined. "You think he's trying to spring a little trap on 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.