“What are the Hkh’Rkh like in combat?”
Gavin shook his head. “Bloody tough, is what they are. If you’ve got a dustmix weapon set for high velocity, you can usually take ’em down with a single shot. But if you’re using caseless or most of the old brass-cartridge rifles, forget it; you’re going to have to bash ’em a few times before they stop getting up.”
“Their armor?”
Tygg frowned. “Pretty much like ours, but thicker. And they routinely hump a ninety kilo ‘light’ pack.”
“And they’re still quick?”
“In the open, they are like greased lightning. But in the jungle, not so good. They’re heavy, tall and broad and get tangled in brush that we slip through. And you can hear them coming a mile away. The only time they ever surprise us is if they’ve been lying quiet, observing from a distance. Then they pin us down with long-range systems like the needler, and send assault infantry after us on the double-quick. But if we have native flankers and scouts with us, we see them first—every time. Our real problem is long-range communication.”
“Why? The EMP bursts?”
“No, not so much. They didn’t light too many of those off over rural Java. But their jamming is absolute. We can’t find a channel that isn’t being used or fuzzed by them. So we have to go with jury-rigged LOS systems: usually old target designators converted into crude lascoms. And to keep things short, we sent prerecorded compressed messages, usually in Morse code.”
“That’s no good for tactical ops, though.”
“During ops, we use pagers, linked by ground repeaters.”
“Don’t they find the repeaters, destroy them?”
“Sure, but then the locals plant a few more. They’re seeding them into projected ops areas all the time. Particularly farmers.” He leaned back with a smile. “Welcome to the shit, Captain. Now, what was your objective when you almost got yourself killed by blundering into us?”
Trevor smiled back. “‘Killed by blundering into you,’ eh?” He lifted his hand in a surfer sign.
Tygg raised an eyebrow. “You were planning on feeding yourself to the sharks?”
Gavin stared and then grinned. “Lieutenant, you’ve got something on your shoulder.”
“Eh? What—?” Tygg looked, and saw a bright red dot painted directly on his clavicle. He swallowed.
Trevor lowered his index finger. The dot disappeared. Robin breathed again.
Stosh smiled. “Oh, it’s still there, Lieutenant. You just can’t see it. Lieutenant Winfield just snapped the laser designator—and scope—over to UV wavelength with preset frequency modulation. Even with a UV scope, you wouldn’t see it unless you’re wearing goggles that are set for the same pattern of frequency-hopping that the beam is using.”
“And Lieutenant Winfield is—?”
Trevor decided to pick up the story. “Another of my men, about three kilometers behind us, with a ten-millimeter liquimix Remington M167 long-barrel assault gun. I’m sure you know the specs, so I won’t bore you.”
Tygg nodded, smiled. “I guess I underestimated you. But then again, you may have underestimated us.” He raised his left hand, all fingers spread wide.
The bush wavered. At least half a dozen previously invisible Indonesian villagers stood, the closest no more than six meters away. Half of them carried Pindad caseless bullpup carbines, the other half AK-47s. Tygg’s smile became wolfish. “I don’t want to bring the Arat Kur down on us, so I won’t send a pager signal to the group I have waiting four klicks behind you with Corporal Holloway. But they might have made Lieutenant Winfield’s afternoon a little more interesting.”
Trevor smiled. “I daresay they might have.” It was going to be good working with Aussies again. “Bonzer good show, mate.” Tygg rolled his eyes at Trevor’s broadly accented Hollywood Aussie slang. “Now, if you’ve got a few dozen strong backs and local boats you can whistle up, I’ve got some interesting equipment cached back on Pulau Panaitan—”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Opal heard the hoarse growl of a Hkh’Rkh tri-barrel eight millimeter and ducked lower; it was closer than she’d expected. She had heard the first reports of a firefight five minutes ago, had moved in their direction, estimated that she was now within a kilometer of the point of contact. But that sudden blast of angry rotary fire had been less than three hundred meters away. Whatever shit was hitting the fan, it was flying in her direction—and fast.
She low-ran forward, stopped just beneath the crest of a small ridge, and crawled up closer behind a particularly dense thicket. Taking care not to stir any of the vegetation, she lay on her back, flipped on the monocular data screen, double-checked that it was jacked into the line-out feed from the scope, and lifted the weapon up so that it could peer downslope over the tips of the fronds and spatulate leaves.
The picture’s a little too wobbly. Zoom out—ah, that’s better. A handful of locals were retreating in good order, moving in two groups. The front rank fired a few rounds, ducked and ran while the second rank covered and then headed even farther rearward. At first she couldn’t see the Hkh’Rkh pursuers, but it had to be them. That eight-millimeter rotary was their signature squad support weapon, from what she had seen. After a few moments, she detected the thrashing bush tops and vines that signaled their approach in dense vegetation. Their long, powerful dog-jointed legs and immense lung capacities marked them as open country predators possessing both superlative speed and endurance. But we bald-assed monkeys evolved here in the jungles. Welcome to our humble home.
As if to underscore that welcome, a man in a Kopassus uniform popped up from a wide thatch of ferns, just as the Hkh’Rkh drew abreast of his position along the human route of withdrawal. He blasted half a magazine of caseless at them and went prone. The Hkh’Rkh closest to him caught at least eight rounds in the right trunk and was knocked sideways, a reddish-maroon mist persisting a half second along the trajectory of his fall. Hurt, probably dead.
The Hkh’Rkh pursuit stopped, and their weapons hammered the jungle around the ferns. If the Indonesian commando was still there, his remains wouldn’t fill a rice bowl.
With the Hkh’Rkh attention suddenly rotated ninety degrees to their right flank, one of the irregular insurgents reversed course, sneaking back toward the Hkh’Rkh line, evidently intending to catch them by surprise from what had been their direction of advance. She rose up to fire, her AK-47 snugged under her cheek—
Fifty meters behind the Hkh’Rkh contact line, there was a quick sputter. One projectile tore the woman’s right arm off just beneath the shoulder; two more hit her in the chest, exiting her back with explosive sprays of bright red. Just because the Hkh’Rkh were bold didn’t mean they weren’t competent tacticians: their overwatch marksmen knew to watch for tricks such as the one the woman had attempted. However, the destination of her fellow insurgents’ retreat remained unclear—to Opal no less than the Hkh’Rkh. Their route of withdrawal led into a narrow gorge, about two hundred meters farther on. The sides were wooded and steep, and the back was a sheer wall of black volcanic rock. A dead end. Literally, if they kept heading that way.
Opal lowered her rifle, thought. I’m close enough to Jakarta to make contact with locals. But there might not be any of this bunch left in three minutes. So saving their trapped asses might buy a decent welcome and quick trust. She rose up into a crouch, began following the backside of the slope she was on, which ultimately evolved into the near wall of the gorge.