Ahead of them, the ground erupted where it was hit. A small tree fell over. They were well within two hundred yards of the wreck when their fire was answered with a scream.
Just a scream, cut off quickly. No man got up to run through the woods drawing their fire. No shout for “medic.” Maybe it was just an animal with a near-human cry of pain.
Maybe.
The sound of shooting grew more intense after that. Here and there, a gunslinger paused to reload.
Nothing answered their fire, leaving Willy to puzzle over it all. Were there no Marines? Could anyone be so disciplined as to take all this shooting at them without so much as a single return shot?
This didn’t add up. Or if it did, Willy didn’t like what it added up to.
He paused, careful to make it look like he was reloading his .45 automatic as he actually let the noisy line of shooters get farther ahead of him.
Something about the way the hairs were standing up on the back of his neck made him glance up, so he not only heard but saw when it happened.
The rifle and pistol fire was going on in its usual desultory way when a roar came at him.
One, solid roar. It lasted only a fraction of a second, but it was there, of that he was sure.
The noise was there . . . and then he saw the result.
Around him, men collapsed. One second they were standing there, the next they were falling down. Fifty or sixty men, all at one time. Their knees gave way, and they went down in a heap.
It wasn’t as if they’d been shot. Willy knew what a man looked like as his body absorbed a bullet in his gut, got his head blown off. It was nothing like that.
They weren’t blown back; they just fell down.
In the blink of an eye, they were down. And then the roar came again, and another fifty or sixty went down.
Willy didn’t wait for the next roar. He spun on his heels and started running.
When the next roar came, he found out what it was all about. He felt something slice into his back. A heartbeat later, his legs quit working. He fell, sliding facedown in a tangle of fallen leaves and small bushes.
Then he fell asleep.
36
Colonel Cortez stood atop a rock, surveying through binoculars the body-strewn woods in front of him. His Marines lay where they’d fired from, awaiting his order to break cover.
There were a few exceptions. One medic was tending to the lone Marine who had been hit by the thugs. From the sound of it, his arse had been creased . . . for the second time. He got little sympathy from his fellow Marine.
The other situation was far more serious. Gunny Brown led a squad from second platoon digging through the remains of the beer truck hunting for the three missing Marines. Work was steady, moving cans, packages, and bits of wreckage. The attitude was grim, spiced with an occasional crack.
“I’m never ever going to look at a beer the same way.”
“I just knew it wasn’t Miller’s time.”
“All this beer and not a single pretzel.”
Gunny barked directions that were quickly followed, so he seemed content to let the chatter ride.
“I got an arm here,” a trooper shouted.
“Is it still attached to someone?”
“Hey, it’s even got a pulse.” And eager hands tossed beer cans and wreckage aside to pull a woman Marine from the hole she’d hidden in.
She looked much the worse for the wear, but she was shoving aside those who would help her. “Find the others. Find the lieutenant,” she shouted.
Gunny waved a medic to the woman and the other Marines to the other side of the truck to work on that ditch.
Minutes later, another Marine was pulled from the wreckage, followed only a bit later by the lieutenant.
Gunny came up on net. “We got lucky, folks. I thought maybe we had from the stink of fertilizer and diesel fuel I smelled when I got here. The bomb failed to achieve full-order detonation. It blew out the sides of the truck, but it could have been a whole lot worse.”
The colonel breathed a short prayer and concentrated on the other problem at hand. He’d stood, an easy target for anyone to shoot at for a good five minutes.
No one had taken a potshot at him.
He wasn’t too worried about being hit. From the looks of their shooting, the safest place to be was in front of any gun these jokers were waving. What was it that made a civilian with a gun think they could stand on the same battlefield with a professional like these Marines and live?
That these dudes were alive, they owed to Wardhaven policy of avoiding unnecessary civilian casualties and one Princess Longknife making sure her Marines had a good supply of Colt-Pfizer’s best darts of nonlethal intent.
Which was no guarantee that all the sleeping beauties spread out in the woods in front of the colonel would survive the experience.
A sleepy dart could rip through a man’s neck. A fallen man could suffocate in the mud. The drugs could bring on a heart attack, or any number of bad-luck things could turn a survivable incident into a trip to the morgue. Sorry about that. Please accept our apologies.
That no one had taken a shot at him told Colonel Cortez that they’d likely gotten everyone . . . or anyone out there was well and fully cowed by the experience.
Now it was time to clean up the mess and see if there was actually a butcher bill to pay.
“Platoons, police up the area in front of your positions. Bring all those enjoying their beauty rest down to the road. Cuff them and let them sleep. If anyone is awake, cuff them and let them walk to the road. If anyone takes a shot at you, kill ’em.”
The ground around him came alive with Marines coming out of their fighting positions. A ragged Ooo-Rah greeted his last order. The cleanup began as he made his report to Captain Montoya.
Jack listened, Sal’s sound up loud for Kris, as Colonel Cortez made his report. “We got lucky. Whoever the bomb maker was, he got his primary explosion, but the fuel oil and fertilizer didn’t get fully involved. Our folks at the roadblock managed to get into the ditch beside the road and survive the explosion.”
“Thank God for little favors,” Jack said.
“As I see it,” the colonel went on, “there are several loose ends here. I got my hands on about two hundred dudes that tried to shoot up your company, Captain. It wasn’t for lack of trying that they only managed to crease one buttock. Am I correct that the local cowboys might not consider this a major legal issue since no blood was spilled?”
“I don’t know about that,” Kris said, “but if that bomb maker put together the one that hit me, I want a large chunk out of him. I suspect Bobby DuVale would like the same. His father, too.”
“I’ll look into the proper disposition of the prisoners,” Penny said. “I’ve met at least one cop who I consider worth talking to.”
“You do that,” came from both Kris and the colonel.
“And there’s the problem of feeding us,” Colonel Cortez said as he went on. “I’ve got troopers looking into those trucks, and they’re empty. No food, no drinks. I strongly suspect you’d be taking your life in your hands to open one of the beers littering the area. Not to say that I haven’t seen one or two popped open. We need chow and amenities unless our shore leave is canceled.”
“I’m sorry that I can’t tell you to relax and have fun,” Kris said. “Jack was right, this planet is not as nice as it wants to pretend it is. But I’m not ready to put my tail between my legs and slink home. We’ve got the lodge. Let’s use it. Nelly, could you call Julie Travis and see if she knows some suppliers she trusts . . . Nelly?”