Driscoll’s response is short but all he can say over this. “Understood.”
“That’s not all, unfortunately. Be advised that any raghead force you may encounter will probably be supported by smiters — using heavy automatic weapons.”
“Come again, Alamo?”
“You heard me right. smiters using heavy machine guns have teamed up with our enemies. Over.”
Now it is Driscoll who needs a few seconds to collect himself. “Sir… what do you want us to do?”
“Your orders are standing. Keep your grip on the scavenger base until I sort this situation out. Stay alert. Alamo over and out.”
“Roger, Alamo. Out.”
Silence falls over Task Force Anaconda’s communications tent where Driscoll, Collins, Schmidt and Gunnery Sergeant Anderson have gathered. The radioman who usually handles less important transmissions than the last one doesn’t dare look at them and buries himself in transcripts of radio messages intercepted from Bagram.
“Sergeant, give us a moment,” the first lieutenant tells him. “Don’t you dare speak of this outside the tent. I’ll deliver the bad news to the warriors myself. Oorah?”
“Oorah, sir,” the radioman replies. He salutes and leaves the tent.
“So, gentlemen,” Driscoll tells the two officers and the gunny. “You heard the man.”
Anderson still struggles to believe. “Smiters with machine guns… Jesus!”
“What’s important now is that we keep up morale. Ragheads are one thing but mutants with guns another.”
“We never lost a full squad before,” Lieutenant Schmidt quietly says. “Where on earth are those beasts coming from?”
“All I need are coordinates and I’ll blast that hole away!” the black gunny says.
“That will come after we do our job here, Anderson. As for now: Scotty, double the guards at our southern perimeter and relocate the fifties. I don’t expect the scavengers attempting a break-out and we’d better keep a close eye toward raghead lands. Gunny, I want the mortar section to fire a few eighty-one shells into the scavengers’ perimeter every now and then. Just to let them know who’s in charge here. That’s all.”
“Can I make a suggestion sir?” Collins asks. “If you agree, I’d return to base with a fifty-sixty strong squad. It would be a waste of resources to have our main force sitting around here while the Alamo itself might be in danger.”
“What makes you think the Alamo is in danger, Collins?”
“With the southern outpost lost, the road from the south is open. If I were a raghead, I’d use the momentum.”
“I would also return if I were you,” Driscoll says. “But contrary to you I know what a command means. We stay where we are.”
“But…”
“There’s no ‘but’ in ‘chain of command’, Lieutenant Collins. Dismissed.”
44
“This is the closest thing I have to a home, Nooria… even though I have found my place in the New Zone, my heart will always long to see this land.”
“It is beautiful here.”
“I haven’t heard anyone talk like this about the Swamps for a long time… but today I must agree.”
Approaching the railway embankment in the northern part of the Swamps, Tarasov checks his PDA map. Now that the Doctor has placed a marker, the path to his cottage appears almost straightforward. It is marked as an empty stash, out of caution, but it will be easy to find the way back. The clear sky too makes yesterday’s tedious march appear like a faint memory.
Strange, Tarasov thinks. All appears peaceful… Something’s not right.
“The embankment isn’t far now,” he says to Nooria. “What exactly do you have to do there?”
“Put Slime into Vortex, wait and tell Doctor what happens. I am very curious to see.”
“You already speak like a Stalker.” Tarasov smiles. He halts his steps and listens to the cackle of two wild ducks flying over the Swamps. “How capricious the Zone is! Yesterday it was dreadful, today it shows us its beautiful face.”
Without the gloom they had been through yesterday, Tarasov’s eye reaches over the reed fields to the western hills where the tunnel lies and the fields and stretches of forest beyond the river. Cirrus clouds drift high in the sky and below, on the far horizon, white cumuli like cotton balls.
No shot or howl disturbs the Swamp’s ordinary noises, only frogs croak, bugs chirp and the endless reed fields whisper as the wind moves them. It would appear like any landscape if it weren’t for the rusted, derelict train engines and wagons that stand on the embankment. Their wheels are overgrown with weeds and grass.
“If my memory serves, the anomalies are behind the wagons,” Tarasov says. They walk up a few concrete stairs leading up the steep embankment. Tarasov uses this vantage point to scan the Swamps with his binoculars.
“Wait! Get down and stay behind that wagon!”
There is something sinister in a groove overshadowed by a cluster of oaks and poplars, halfway between the railroad embankment and a wide stretch of water. He takes a closer look.
“Mutant?” Nooria whispers.
“Worse. Men.”
Cautiously, Tarasov sneaks around the wagon and lies down on his stomach between the tracks.
Zooming further in he observes a small group of Stalkers. The party is a surprisingly mixed bag: a Loner is sharing his food ration with a rookie-looking Bandit sitting next to a Freedomer cleaning his MP5 submachine gun, while two more Loners are engaged in a conversation with a companion wearing ragged Monolith armor. Two tough-looking Bandits are keeping watch a little further away. They are armed with LR-300 assault rifles, a much better weapon than most of the others have. Another Bandit, apparently the leader or guide of the group, is even wearing an FN F2000 slung over his shoulder, a rare and state of the art assault rifle in the Zone.
“These are not supposed to have a picnic together,” he whispers. “Stay put!”
With his old reflexes setting in, Tarasov starts thinking about a way to engage them. Whatever this bunch of Stalkers might be up to, it can’t be good if they are led by Bandits. However, he knows that he would be hopelessly outgunned. All he can do is to take a steady aim at the Bandit guard standing closer, who now steps into the bushes to relieve himself. Through the ironsights, Tarasov aims directly at his hooded head. He jerks his index finger and mentally pulls the trigger.
“Bang,” he whispers to himself.
Then he hears the quick tick-tick-tick of a burst fired from a noise-suppressed sniper rifle. With the wind blowing through the poplar trees and playing with the thousands of yellowing leaves, the rifle’s sound could have just been his imagination.
A whimper escapes him seeing the Bandit’s head jolt, splattering blood with skull fragments that look real enough. Tarasov closes and opens his eyes to check if what he saw had been for real, but when he looks again at the spot where a second ago the urinating Bandit had stood he only sees his dead body.
The rest of the party hadn’t noticed the danger yet, neither did the other guard who is now looking up at the sky as if a bird had caught his attention. Another tick-tick and he falls too. Tarasov realizes that he is witnessing a perfectly executed sneak attack, aided by the Bandit guard’s mistake of having stood with a tree between him and his fellows who wouldn’t see him collapse.
With the two guards removed from the flanks, Tarasov knows that the butchering phase is about to begin. He hears a thump and a moment later a rifle grenade lands right in the campfire. The explosion immediately puts several Stalkers out of action. The leader jumps up, barking frenzied commands as he tries to scramble his men who are already under the concentrated fire of automatic rifles. Tarasov easily recognizes them as Kalashnikovs by their barking sound. The Stalkers frantically return fire but have no chance to repel the attack of their still invisible enemy.