“LZ ahead,” the crew chief said, walking down the aisle of the Osprey.
“Already?” said Mofitt. “We barely took off.”
“Time flies when you’re having fun,” said Lieutenant Young.
It took roughly a half hour for Turk and Force South to reach their positions along the road below the rebel camp. The Marines moved with quiet precision, stretched out in a staggered single file. Their UAV scouting overhead showed that the rebels remained in place. While a handful of men moved in the jungle on either side to ensure there were no surprises, the main force stuck to the road, which allowed them to move quickly.
The Malaysian squad was interspersed with the lead company; though they’d had a long and harrowing day, they had no trouble keeping up. They were spoiling for battle, eager for revenge. Monday Isnin’s head bobbed back and forth as he walked, almost like a radar dish scanning for trouble.
The road twisted around the side of a low rise in the terrain. As they reached the area where they had planned to mount their ambush, the Marines discovered it was separated from the road by a thick marsh, which would make it difficult for them to pursue the rebels. Captain Deris had worked them a little closer to the rebels; it was on lower ground, but the surrounding area was better, and they had good fields of fire to the road and beyond. The Marines settled in, sending a pair of scouts ahead to monitor the approach.
The rebels were still far enough away that Force South could relax a bit. The Malaysians took out their cigarettes and began smoking; it was their normal habit.
Marlboros were the preferred brand. They could have done a commercial.
“You know Mai Thai Warrior?” Monday asked Turk as he settled against a tree trunk on the jungle floor.
“I don’t know him,” said Turk, confused. He thought the soldier was talking about another squad member and couldn’t place him.
Monday gave him a funny look. “Movie,” he said. “Mai Thai Warrior.”
Turk still didn’t understand.
“Hero,” prompted Monday. “Movie.”
“I know it,” said one of the Marines. “Martial-arts movie, right?”
“Great warrior,” said Monday. He began mimicking one of the fight scenes. Then he and the Marine traded notes about some of the techniques.
“Great hero,” said Monday. His voice was solemn.
“I’ll have to check it out,” said Turk.
“We watch it together when we get back to city,” said Monday.
“It’s a deal.”
Danny went down to one knee next to Lieutenant Young as the squad leader stopped to take stock of their position. They were about a quarter mile from the rebel camp, just north of a bend in the road where they would be visible.
“I’m ready to call the planes in,” said Young, who was looking at a feed from the Shadow UAV overhead on a hardened tablet computer. About the size of an iPad but several times as thick and encased in rubber, the tablet gave the commander a real-time view of the battlefield. “Looks like they have a lookout on the hill there,” added Young. “Just one guy.”
“Across the road?”
“Scouts don’t see anyone.”
“If you can take him, you can get closer to the camp before they see you,” suggested Danny.
“That’s what I was thinking,” said Young. “It’s a gamble, though. If he radios back, we won’t have surprise.”
“True.”
Young weighed the chances. There was no right answer.
“I’m going to send my sniper,” he said finally. “Take him out. Then we move farther down.”
“It’s what I would do,” said Danny.
Flying Basher Two north of the engagement area, Cowboy listened to Greenstreet as he talked to the air combat controller assigned to Group North. The ground unit had just reached its mark north of the rebel site.
“We’re going to take out their lookout,” said the controller, relaying what Lieutenant Young was telling him. “Once he’s out, we can get within a hundred yards before they’ll be able to see us.”
“How long is that going to take?” asked Greenstreet.
“Ten minutes. We sent a sniper team.”
“All right.” Greenstreet exhaled heavily. “Let’s move it along.”
“Problem, Colonel?” Cowboy asked over the squadron frequency after the exchange.
“I feel like shit,” admitted Greenstreet. “Rogers gave me his disease.”
“I can take it myself, Colonel.”
“I’m good.”
Cowboy checked his fuel, then ran his eyes over the gauges, making sure the plane’s brain agreed with his gut feel that it was operating exactly to spec.
With the exception of a few high clouds to the west, the sky was perfectly clear. The stars twinkled above; the tiny sliver of moon sat between them, a silver comma.
The sensors were clean as well — they were the only aircraft in the skies for a hundred miles or more.
Which meant no UAV. Cowboy wanted another shot at the little bastard. He’d replayed the encounter in his head a few hundred times, seeing how he could have nailed the little sucker.
Next time, he would.
The mysterious little aircraft intrigued the hell out of him. It was fast, and from what Turk had said, very much like a Flighthawk in its approach to air combat. Cowboy had flown against a pair of Flighthawks in a series of training exercises. Of the five encounters, he’d managed to beat the little robot planes exactly once — and been shot down all the rest.
He wasn’t particularly proud of that, even if it came against some of the best Flighthawk pilots in the Air Force. And even if he had the only shoot-down in the squadron.
He wanted a measure of revenge, and waxing the little sucker tonight would give it to him. A robot better than a human? No way — even if that robot was being flown by a team of people in a bunker.
Especially then.
“Basher Two, tighten up,” said Greenstreet.
Cowboy acknowledged. The ground commander came on the radio. They would be ready for the first strike in sixty seconds.
It was an intricate dance, but it moved exactly as it had been drawn up by Young and Thomas.
Danny heard a shot on the hill ahead — the sniper took out the rebels’ lookout. The Marines began to move in force. The planes swooped down and dropped four bombs on the center of the rebel camp. As they cleared, the Marines attacked the perimeter.
They were within fifty yards of the rebels’ makeshift lean-tos before there was any gunfire. And then it was on big-time, tracers and flashes lighting the night.
A few of the Marines, untested in war, were nervous, and it showed: firing on the run, shooting too soon. But it was an almost necessary mistake, and within moments they realized they had to stay within themselves, had to fight the way they’d been trained, the way they’d drilled. The dozens of exercises they’d worked through over the past several months had embedded memory in their muscles. They slowed down, still moving forward but now doing it with more precision. They fired with better purpose, picking targets one by one.
Before the mission they’d been boys, most not old enough to drink legally in the States. In a few minutes this night they became men, and more than that, Marines. They worked together, in pairs, in threes, in fours, as a whole group, never alone.
Used to fighting small, ill-equipped units of the Malaysian army, the rebels buckled. Exhausted from the earlier fight, they had trouble seeing the enemy even in the clearing. As the gunfire intensified, their conviction wavered. The drugs most had used to gather courage earlier in the day had worn off. In chaos, they began to run.