CHAPTER


THREE

Havelock, Near Camp Howard,
Marine Corps Base Camp Basilone, Halfway

Sergeant D’Wayne Williams ambled, relaxed, along Princeton Street in Havelock, a liberty town outside Camp Basilone on Halfway, though most everybody other than a Marine would call his amble a march. And the people who knew him best would easily recognize that he wasn’t really relaxed. One reason he wasn’t truly relaxed ambled/marched at his left side, Corporal Harv Belinski. Another ambled behind him, Lance Corporal Santiago Rudd. A third reason ambled next to Rudd, Lance Corporal Elin Skripska. Any more than the most cursory glance would reveal that both Belinski and Rudd walked gingerly, and Skripska kept casting concerned glances at them.

The reason Williams was uneasy with these three Marines was that he was new in Fourth Force Recon Company, and he was the new squad leader for the three Marines ambling along Princeton Street with him. Before his most recent tour as a squad leader with Seventeenth Fleet Initial Strike Team, Williams had served as senior reconman with Eighth Force Recon Company, so he knew coming in that there would be a certain degree of unease and even tension with a new squad leader. But there was more than the usual amount of tension this time, because he was replacing a well-liked squad leader who’d been killed on the squad’s most recent mission—on which mission Belinski and Rudd had also been wounded, which explained their gait. Williams didn’t know much about that mission beyond that it was a raid conducted by the entire second platoon, and that the platoon had suffered heavy casualties.

It was a Force Recon tradition that a new squad leader coming in from outside the company took his new squad on liberty at his own expense soon after joining the squad. This was a mechanism for him and his men to get to know each other and begin getting comfortable together. The basic Force Recon operational unit was the squad. The four Marines of a Force Recon squad went alone and unsupported into the most dangerous places the Confederation military sent anyone, and they had to go in and return undetected. To be detected meant they couldn’t accomplish their mission—and probably got them killed in the bargain. So the Marines of a Force Recon squad had to be closer than Marines in a squad or fire team in a FIST; they had to know each other better than Marines in other kinds of units did. They had to know exactly what each of their squadmates would do in any situation. Their lives depended on that intimate knowledge.

Williams also needed to find out what had happened on that platoon-size raid, a raid that saw six Force Recon Marines killed and ten wounded; he’d never heard of a platoon-size Force Recon mission that had suffered so many casualties. Williams needed to know what had gone wrong. His life, and the lives of his men, might depend on his having that knowledge.

“How’s this place?” he asked, pausing in front of a bar-restaurant whose sign announced it as The Unfouled Anchor.

“It’s fine by me, boss,” Rudd said, “as long as you’re paying.”

Belinski and Skripska agreed, so Williams led the way in.

  

About the same time that Sergeant Williams was finding out why The Unfouled Anchor was fine with his men “as long as you’re paying,” the eight Marines of second platoon’s first and third squads were settling into a side room at the Snoop ’n Poop, a much less costly establishment that catered to the Force Recon Marines, and a favorite of second platoon. Neither Sergeant Wil Bingh nor Sergeant Him Kindy had to pick up the tabs for their men. Bingh had been third squad leader on the recent deadly mission, and Kindy the assistant squad leader of first squad—the two squads had swapped positions in the platoon. Third squad’s, now first squad’s, Corporals Gin Musica and Dana Pricer had both been wounded on that mission; Lance Corporal Stanis Wehrli was the only member of the squad who had come through unscathed. First, now third, squad’s only casualty was the first Marine killed in the raid, but Kindy nonetheless had two new men, Corporal Ryn Jaschke and Lance Corporal Hans Ellis. Kindy had been promoted to squad leader when his squad leader on that mission, Sergeant Jak Daly, was accepted into Officer Training College.

Pitchers of Onofre Ale, a local brew, were delivered to the room by two reasonably attractive young women dressed in mock female Marine dress reds, scarlet jackets over navy blue skirts. But the Confederation Marine Corps would never authorize uniforms cut the way these were. The jackets started off right, with high stock collars covering their throats, but went seriously awry from there. The sleeves were too short—one woman’s jacket had short sleeves, the other’s had three-quarter length. The bodices, well, the bodices gaped wide open in a broad horizontal oval from just below the collar to halfway down the slopes of the women’s breasts. The jackets were cut away a couple of inches above the solar plexus. And the backs were deeply scooped from just below the collar, so it was only the shoulders that kept the bodices up. The only modification to the skirts was they stopped well short of mid-thigh.

Needless to say, not many female Marines patronized the Snoop ’n Poop; many of the female Marines who pulled liberty in Havelock preferred Chesty’s Place on Fort Nassau Boulevard, where the serving staff consisted totally of young men garbed to display their muscles.

It was rumored that several of the Snoop ’n Poop serving staff were off-duty female Marines. A large percentage of the servers were tough enough that many of the male Marines who patronized the establishment believed the rumors.

That evening, while the eight Marines of the two squads appreciated seeing their waitresses, the appreciation was more in theory than active. They gave their food orders and waited politely, quietly, for a moment while the ersatz female Marines left the side room, closing the door behind themselves, then whooped into laughter.

Jaschke was the first to regain enough control and breath to be able to speak. “We did it!” he said. “We showed them!”

Bingh and Kindy stopped breathing for a moment and exchanged a glance, then looked at Jaschke and burst into even louder laughter.

Jaschke saw they were laughing at him, spread his hands, and asked in an offended tone, “Did I say something funny?”

Pricer, sitting next to Jaschke, slapped him on the back. He shook his head, gasping to try to gain control of his breath, and leaned forward. When he was finally able to speak, he shook his head again and said, “You had to have been there,” then doubled over with more laughter.

Jaschke now looked confused as well as offended—he had been there, so why was he being laughed at?

Kindy managed to pull himself together and leaned across the table to grasp Jaschke’s forearm. “Don’t sweat it, new guy. When you’ve been here awhile, you’ll know that we didn’t do it, we didn’t show anybody—not until the Skipper says we did.”

That set off another peal of laughter around the table, wiping away any trace of mollification from Jaschke’s face. “But didn’t you see the shit-eating grin on Staff Sergeant Fryman’s face when he rejoined us?” he demanded.

Now Bingh had regained control. “New guy, our section leader is a new guy, too. He doesn’t know yet, either,” he declaimed.

Jaschke looked at Ellis, the only other Marine in the room who was new to Fourth Force Recon—and the only other man who hadn’t started laughing again at Fryman’s being another new guy. Ellis just shrugged; he looked as confused as Jaschke.

Finally Bingh, the senior man present, sat erect, sucked in a deep breath and held it for a moment, then bellowed, “Shitcan the grabass, people!”

There was a brief roar of laughter at that, which cut off when Bingh reached out and smacked Wehrli on the back of his head. An instant later, Kindy stopped laughing and did the same to Corporal Mikel Nomonon. Everyone stopped laughing, though it was an obvious struggle for most of them.

Corporal Gin Musica almost lost it again when the door suddenly opened and their waitresses reentered with trays of food, but he choked his laughter back when Bingh glared at him.

As soon as the waitresses were gone again, Bingh growled, “By the numbers, people. Eat!”

Kindy couldn’t help laughing at that, but was the only one who did, so he quickly stopped. They ate in silence for several minutes.

Sometime later, when the edge was off his appetite, Bingh cleared his throat and said softly, “I wish I could have seen the expression on that doggie colonel’s face when Staff Sergeant Fryman told him his HQ was wiped out.”

“He must have been pissed something fierce,” Nomonon said.

Bingh nodded. “I overheard Staff Sergeant Fryman telling Gunny Lytle the doggie tried to overrule him, but the referee who followed him into the colonel’s tent had already radioed in his report on the action.”

Kindy chuckled. “And you heard what the Skipper said when he debriefed us.”

Commander Walt Obannion, the commanding officer of Fourth Force Recon Company, told the squads who’d run the raid in the training exercise that the commander of the Confederation Army’s 525th Heavy Infantry Regiment had lodged an official protest. Exercise Sea Eagle had pitted the army’s Eighty-sixth Infantry Division against three Marine FISTs in a force-on-force training exercise in Camp Basilone’s huge training area. The Marines relished the opportunity to go up against a larger, better-equipped, and more heavily armed force and fight circles around it. The army relished the opportunity to put the Marines in their place by kicking their asses all over the training area.

The army hadn’t expected the Marines to insert Force Recon elements into the exercise and declared that the use of Force Recon was outside the scheme of the exercise, so the results of its actions should be discounted. The raid conducted by the eight Marines having dinner in the Snoop ’n Poop had so thoroughly disrupted the army’s operational plans that the three FISTs were now close to defeating the division, despite still being outnumbered five to one on the battlefield.

“Did they really think we wouldn’t use every available asset?” Musica asked rhetorically.

Wehrli snorted. “Shit, they probably thought the Raptors already gave the FISTs an unfair advantage.”

Pricer shook his head at the army’s obtuseness. “I’m surprised the army hasn’t figured out that having our own aircraft is one of the things that makes Marines more effective fighters than anybody else.”

“Semper Fi, brother,” Bingh said, and held a hand up for Pricer to slap. Bingh turned solemn and asked, “You understand why they picked us for that exercise, don’t you?”

Most of them nodded, but Jaschke and Ellis looked blank. Bingh looked at them and explained.

“The three of us”—he gestured to indicate himself, Musica, and Pricer—“were wounded on our last op. It was a test to see if we’d recovered enough to go on live ops. Sergeant Kindy is in his first command as a squad leader; they wanted to see how he’d handle it. You two”—Bingh pointed at Jaschke and Ellis—“and Staff Sergeant Fryman are new—Fryman’s been in Force Recon before, and he’s been a platoon sergeant in a FIST, but this is his first assignment as a Force Recon section leader. They wanted to see how the three of you would function. The only ones of us who weren’t being tested, who were just being trained, were Nomonon and Wehrli.” Bingh grinned broadly. “I think we passed.”

“OOO-RAH!” they roared, and clanked mugs.

Later, after they finished eating, and after they’d drunk several more pitchers of Onofre Ale, the eight Marines of first and third squads, second platoon, Fourth Force Recon Company, went in search of female companionship. The two sergeants and a couple of the corporals had steady lady friends whom they went to see; the other four split into pairs and went on the prowl.

Headquarters, Fourth Fleet Marines, Camp Basilone, Halfway

As late as it was, Lieutenant General Ramses Indrus, Commanding General, Fourth Fleet Marines, his operations officer Colonel Lars Szilk, and Commander Walt Obannion of Fourth Force Recon Company were still at work. They weren’t planning a new Force Recon mission, they were doing something of far less importance to them: they were dealing with some very upset army officers. Indrus, flanked by Szilk and Obannion, sat on one side of a conference table. Opposite him was Lieutenant General Thom Kratson, commander of the Confederation Army’s XI Corps, who was on Halfway to observe the training exercise. To his left were Brigadier General Lusey and Brigadier General Judite, respectively the corps G3 and assistant division commander of the Eighty-sixth Infantry Division; Major General Nikil, the commander of the Eighty-sixth wasn’t present, he was still engaged in the exercise. On Kratson’s right was his chief of staff, Major General Olgah. Colonel Evava, commander of the 525th Heavy Infantry Regiment, sat next to Major General Olgah. The four army generals and the colonel were furious.

Even though there was only one flag officer among the three Marines, they weren’t any more intimidated by the seven stars opposing them than they were by being outnumbered five to three.

“My Marines were within Standard Operating Procedure, General,” Indrus patiently explained for what felt like the thousanth time, but probably wasn’t more than the twentieth. “Fourth Fleet Marines Headquarters received a request—”

Kratson slammed a hand on the tabletop and thundered, “Force Recon wasn’t in the Marine Order of Battle for this exercise. You cheated by introducing them!”

Indrus looked at him blandly and continued almost as though he hadn’t been interrupted. “—received a request from the FISTs engaged with opposing forces for a Force Recon raid. It is Standard Operating Procedure for such requests from a multiple FIST operation to be honored by this command if such assets are available.”

“But—”

Indrus raised his voice to ride over Kratson’s objection. He knew what the army general was going to say, he’d heard it several times already. “The operational plan for this exercise stated that no reinforcements were available within twenty-five light-years, I know that. But the op/plan also stated that it was within eight lights of a Fleet Marine Headquarters. FMHQ, as I’m sure you know, is where Force Recon companies are based. My staff, on my orders, held off on opening the request for thirty hours, to simulate transit time via drone from the area of operations to this headquarters. After ‘receiving’ the request, they wrote and issued an operation order to Fourth Force Recon Company. The selected squads took the normal time to prepare for such a mission. They then delayed four days before making planetfall, to simulate the transit time from here to the area of operation.”

Indrus folded his arms on the tabletop and leaned forward. “Let me tell you a story, General,” he said conversationally. “Way back, when I was a young lance corporal in Thirty-eighth FIST, my company commander told me something, not in a company formation, but just him and me in his office. He said, ‘Lance Corporal, there’s no such thing as a fair fight. One side or the other always has an advantage. When you get into a fight, it’s up to you to find the advantage.’

“My Marines didn’t cheat, General. They found an advantage and didn’t copy the opposition commander on their plans.”

Kratson’s lip curled at Indrus’s story. He then took a deep breath and made a valiant, and almost successful, attempt to sound reasonable. “General, I’m not saying my soldiers should have been copied on your plans. But you stepped outside the normal limits of Force Recon’s functions. Force Recon is tasked to aid the Confederation Army, allied forces, and Marine forces commanded by a major general or higher. You—”

Indrus held up a hand to stop him. “Not quite. There is no requirement for a Marine major general to put in a request for Force Recon. Force Recon may be tasked in any multiple FIST mission. The commanders of the three FISTs facing the Eighty-sixth Division consulted, then the senior of them put in the request. As per doctrine. My command honored the request, as our tasking allows.” Indrus turned for the first time since he’d sat down to the man sitting alone at the end of the table, a Confederation Navy commodore with a referee’s brassard on his sleeve. “Am I right, sir?”

Commodore Petrch tapped a query into his console, read what came up, and nodded. “That’s right, sir,” he said. “NavReg 94, section 42b, paragraph five. ‘On a multi-FIST operation, in the absence of a higher-ranking officer, if the FIST commanders are in concurrence, the senior among them may request that the appropriate Fleet Marine Force detach a Force Recon element(s) to provide appropriate assistance.’” Petrch looked at Kratson. “The Marines were operating within the rules, sir. I have to find against Colonel Evava.”

Kratson jerked to his feet. “We’ll see about this,” he snapped. He spun about and stormed from the room, knocking his chair over as he went. The other four army officers hustled after him.

The three Marines and the commodore sat looking at the doorway for a moment, then Indrus rose to his feet. “It’s been a long day, gentlemen,” he said dourly. “I believe we are entitled to a drink.” He turned to Petrch and added, “Commodore, I would invite you to join us, but I’m afraid that would give the impression of impropriety, and the appearance of impropriety is something we need to avoid at this juncture.”

“I thank you for the thought, General,” Petrch said, also rising. “You’re right about the appearance of impropriety, though there is none. Now I should get back to my duties. By your leave, sir?”

Indrus nodded and Petrch left. “Gentlemen,” Indrus said when the three Marines were alone, “Flag Club. My treat.” He didn’t say anything to Szilk or Obannion, but internally he was seething at Kratson’s obtuseness; that kind of thinking on the part of a general could lose a campaign. When the enemy introduces an unexpected element, a commander doesn’t complain about it, he deals with it.

The Peepsight, Havelock, Halfway

The snipers of Fourth Force Recon Company seldom frequented the Snoop ’n Poop with the rest of second platoon. The favorite watering-cum-dining salon of all of Fourth Force Recon Company’s snipers was The Peepsight, on Matthews Avenue. The decor of The Peepsight was clearly designed to appeal to expert marksmen: an astonishing array of targets, designed for an equally astonishing variety of individual weapons, adorned the walls; shooting trophies rather than bottles lined the shelves behind the bar and served as lamp bases on the tables; match-conditioned shoulder weapons were mounted on the walls above the targets; recorded sounds of sniper weapons, whether the almost inaudible humm of the M14A5 maser, the blast of the M2Z midrange sabot rifle, or the loud boom of the long-range M111 fin-stabilized rifle, echoed randomly from speakers placed throughout the main room. The M111’s boom was always accompanied by a bright actinic flash from hidden LEDs.

Fourth Force Recon Company’s snipers weren’t the only patrons of The Peepsight—the place would quickly go out of business if they were. After all, a customer base of twenty-eight people, some of whom were always off-planet at any given time, simply wasn’t enough to sustain a bar-restaurant. Base personnel also frequented The Peepsight, most of them from Camp Howard or Camp Hathcock, two of the smaller “camps” that made up the eighty-thousand-square-kilometer establishment called Marine Corps Base Camp Basilone. Those Marines pulled liberty in Havelock for the same reason the Marines of Fourth Force Recon did—it was conveniently located to both. Some went to The Peepsight because its food and drink were high quality and reasonably priced. Some because of its weaponry décor and its military ambience. Others because the presence of the snipers made them feel more like real Marines than like the pogues the combat-arms Marines considered them to be. Yet others were sniper groupies. Whatever their reasons, the snipers didn’t scare them as much as the reconmen of Fourth Force Recon, which was why they were at The Peepsight rather than the Snoop ’n Poop.

The snipers had their own corner of the main room, and a stretch of the long bar was unofficially reserved for them, and just about everyone knew to vacate those places when the snipers came in.

Of course, except for the snipers not many of The Peepsight’s patrons knew what a peep sight was.

So it wasn’t surprising that The Peepsight was the place where Lance Corporal Bella Dwan was most likely to be found when she pulled liberty in Havelock.

As usual when she was there, Bella Dwan sat more or less alone, nursing something pink in a tall glass. The “more” was because nobody much engaged her in conversation. The “less” was because Sergeant Ivo Gossner, her team leader and spotter, sat at the same table with her, though he engaged with snipers at other tables far more than he did with her. Dwan didn’t feel at all put out by being virtually ignored by the other snipers. She seemed interested in nothing but weapons, marksmanship, and kills, while the other snipers indulged in a much wider range of conversational topics.

Bella Dwan was petite and pixie-faced, with tight, blondish curls haloing her head. She looked like your best friend’s favorite kid sister, the one you felt protectively brotherly toward. Until you looked into her eyes. Nobody’s favorite kid sister had eyes like that. They were cold and hard and looked as if she were painting a pretty sight-picture on you, were only waiting for a vagrant breeze to blow its course before squeezing the trigger and ending your miserable life.

Everybody at Camp Howard and Camp Hathcock knew about the Queen of Killers and knew to stay out of her way.

But then there were those who might be called sniper groupies.

“Hi, Bella,” a tall, muscular, blond man said, sitting down at Bella Dwan’s table without asking. He was in civilian clothes, but his way of holding himself and his high-and-tight haircut marked him as surely as would a uniform as a Marine. “Evening, Sergeant,” the tall Marine said to Gossner. He either didn’t see or chose to ignore the warning look Gossner gave him and turned his attention back to Dwan.

“It’s really nice to see you back,” Blondie said to her. He’d tried to make conversation with her before. With the other snipers too, but mostly with Dwan; often enough that they all called him Blondie, and none bothered to find out or remember his name or rank, though if pressed they’d allow he was probably a corporal. “We missed you.” He waved vaguely at the other patrons. “And you too, Sergeant,” to Gossner. Gossner turned away from Blondie, Dwan hadn’t yet looked at him. “That must have been some mission you were on. I mean, just the two of you. You were gone for weeks. Nobody”—again he waved at the room—“has heard anything about it. Where’d you go? What did you do?” He paused to let her answer, or for Gossner to say something. When neither did, he continued.

“You know, usually when a sniper team goes out, we all know all about it by the time you get back. This time, nobody knows squat, and we’re dying to find out what you did. So where’d you go?”

Gossner looked at him briefly, muttered, “You just said something more true than you realize,” and looked away again.

Conversation among the other snipers ebbed, then died, as Blondie talked, and they all started listening. Many of them hoped that Gossner or Dwan would say something about the assignment. All any of them knew was that the mission was so tightly held that the pair weren’t allowed to say anything about it. None of them had ever heard of a Force Recon mission so secret that those who went on it didn’t ever tell anybody else in the company. And all of them were watching and waiting to see how Dwan would deal with Blondie’s pestering.

“Come on, Bella, you can tell me, sweetheart.” Blondie put his hand on Dwan’s wrist. The hush in that corner of the room seemed to suddenly suck in its breath. Blondie didn’t notice. “Come on, we’re just a bunch of pogues, you know that. We have to live vicarously through you. Tell me.”

Dwan looked at the hand gently holding her wrist and murmured, “Move it.”

Blondie jerked his hand back as though it had just been jolted by a thousand volts of electricity. “Uh, oh, sure, Bella. I didn’t mean anything by that. Just being friendly, you know that.”

She finally looked at him and her lips curled into what would have been a sweet smile, had it extended beyond her mouth.

Blondie looked relieved but Gossner tensed; he had a good idea what was coming.

“It’s so good to have you back, Bella,” Blondie said. “I like you, I like you a lot. You know that, don’t you?” So did a lot of other men—at first meeting; one look into her eyes backed most of them off. But Blondie wasn’t looking into her eyes, he was focusing on her lips. “So where did you go? What did you and the sergeant do?” He grinned what he thought was the grin of a harmless, trustworthy man.

“I can’t tell you,” Dwan said softly.

“Ah, you can tell me, Bella. Please?”

Dwan lowered her eyelids as though she were thinking it over. Then she looked into his eyes and said just as softly as before, “Yes, I could tell you. But then I’d have to kill you. And everyone else who overheard.”

“Oh, you don’t mean that, Bella, do y—” He lifted his gaze a few inches from her mouth to her eyes. Death was looking back at him. His throat suddenly thickened and his voice harshened. “Ah, listen, ah, Bella, ah, Lance Corporal Dwan. I-I’m sorry I bothered you. No harm meant.” His chair scraped and fell over as he pushed back and to his feet. He hastened away.

“Damn,” one of the other snipers whispered. “I was hoping she’d say something.”

“Be glad she didn’t do something,” one of the others whispered back.