Intrepid

28

Colonel Cortez mopped his brow; his handkerchief came away sopping wet. He glanced at the sky. It was still two or more hours until noon. Good Lord, but this place was hot.

''Man down. Medic!'' came the shout from his right flank. For the fifth time this morning, Cortez signaled the column to a halt. Major Zhukov pointed at one of the pull carts and aimed them off the road and to where a clump of psalm singers gathered around one of their own who was baying like a stuck pig.

''Watch your step,'' Zhukov ordered. ''Bust your leg, and we'll just leave you.'' The hostage pullers went at a slow walk, eyes fixed on the ground. One did a hop and skip that caused the cart to slow. Maybe it was a snare, maybe not. No way to tell.

Major Zhukov turned to Colonel Cortez. ''This is not working. We're just reacting to them, sir,'' he added.

''Tell me something I don't know,'' Cortez snapped. He glanced at his deployment; it was standard. First Company was scattered widely in a van a klick ahead. Second was to his left, across half a klick of recently cut cropland. Third covered his right, spread out halfway to where the stinking swamp lay … but never more than a half klick out. The Guard was strung out behind him, with the hostages and handcarts mingled in. Half of the carts now carried a trooper moaning his splinted leg.

Casualties kept adding up for a battle not yet started. Cortez didn't know much about the Longknife girl, but from what he saw, she was very good at driving good officers crazy.

Cortez squatted in the shadow of a handcart and projected a map of the road ahead of them. Major Zhukov, still standing, edged the toe of his boot in to highlight a section.

''Yeah,'' Cortez grunted in agreement. ''Yeah, I would probably set up an ambush there, too.''

The photo showed the road twisting around a ridge close to a heavily dug-up area between the road and the swamp. If that batch of ground was as hard as most of this planet's worked-over ground was, those dugouts were ready-made fighting holes.

The place must have been dug up a while back. New trees, shrubs, and ferns covered the ground pretty well. It would be easy to hide people in those ditches. ''I'll have Thorpe give us thermal images of this area every pass.''

''His thermal images haven't done us a lot of good so far,'' Zhukov pointed out. ''No hint as to where that Longknife girl is up north. No nothing about that swamp we got ambushed in. I swear, I could have done better with a blind man's cane.''

''Maybe he'll get lucky. Maybe we'll get lucky,'' Cortez said, staring off at the distant trees. And thinking.

Fact, we got ambushed but good. Fact, highly accurate fire. Rapid fire. But come to think about it, not a lot of automatic fire. No, what had let the air out of his trucks' tires had been single shots. Rock and roll would have shredded the rubber and put holes all around the trucks' fenders. It also would have put holes in troops standing nearby.

No excess holes in the trucks. None in the troops.

Very good shooting.

And no thermal heat sources for Thorpe to spot from orbit.

Who could shoot that fast, that straight, and had battle suits that didn't give off a heat signature?

''God …'' Cortez started, then noticed the look the wounded psalm singer gave him. For peace in his command he swallowed what he'd intended to say and finished with, ''bless.''

''Amen,'' the member of the Lord's Ever Victorious Host appended.

Major Zhukov pursed his lips. ''U.S. Marines,'' he whispered.

''With thermal battle suits,'' Cortez finished.

''Damn,'' said the wounded psalm singer.