CHAPTER


TWENTY-TWO

Five Kilometers outside Cranston, Ravenette

First squad didn’t have to wait long for orders to come back from Fourth Force Recon Company headquarters on the CNSS Kiowa. No more than fifteen minutes. The orders were brief and clear:

“In absence of pursuit or discovery, Charlie Mike.”

Charlie Mike. Continue mission.

The squad moved back, closer to Cranston, and Sergeant Wil Bingh climbed a tree from which he could look over the town. It wasn’t yet midnight, but it looked as if there were fewer lit windows now than there had been. Except for trying to find out how many amphibious vehicles were hidden in Potemkin houses, Bingh didn’t see much value in doing a house-to-house survey of the town. Not that they had enough time to make such a search anyway. He thought it would be more productive to find the headquarters of the hidden unit.

He scanned the townscape with all of his optics, looking for anything that might be a headquarters building. All he could see were the public buildings normal for a town the size of Cranston. But which of them was the military most likely to use?

The public safety building was a possibility. It would have people coming and going at all hours; extra traffic might not be noticed by the hypothetical observer the amphibs were being hidden from. But that same hypothetical observer would probably be able to distinguish between the uniforms of the normal officials using the building and the soldiers—or the unusual number of civilians coming and going, if the soldiers weren’t in uniform. Moreover, the military headquarters would interfere with the normal function of the public safety services.

A better bet, Bingh thought, would be a building that wasn’t otherwise much in use. So what public building would have little use? Bingh smiled to himself; of course. This was where all the study Force Recon did on the local culture of their area of operations paid off. This was local summertime. Ravenette held to the pattern of the academic year that had been established back on Earth during the centuries when universal education was mandated, but civilization was still primarily agricultural. The children were needed to work in the fields during the summer, so school wasn’t in session during that season.

Bingh called up the map of Cranston and displayed it on his HUD. He located the schoolhouse on the map and compared that with what he saw of the town. He fixed the school’s location in his mind, then climbed back down the tree and told his men where they were going.

Moving through Cranston, Ravenette

Lance Corporal Stanis Wehrli took point going through Cranston to the schoolhouse. Bingh, as was his habit, followed him, followed in turn by Corporal Gin Musica. Corporal Dana Pricer brought up the rear of the short column. The squad didn’t follow the same route it had entering or leaving Cranston the first time; aside from the tactical routine of never following the same route twice, Bingh wanted to gather as much intelligence as possible. While Wehrli primarily paid attention to where the squad was going, and Pricer to where they’d been, Bingh and Musica visually examined the houses they passed, looking for gaps between the foundation walls and the ground.

A surprisingly large percentage of the houses had gaps. Bingh estimated that if the houses with gaps were all occupied the same way as the few the squad had investigated were, there were easily enough amphibians in the town to ferry at least an infantry division.

Cranston wasn’t densely built up; most houses had yards in the front, back, and sides. The schoolhouse was near the town center, almost two kilometers inside, adjacent to the main shopping district. Two taverns and a coffeehouse with sidewalk tables were open, but the rest of the shopping district was closed when first squad passed nearby.

The schoolhouse itself was dark except for what looked to be safety lights that showed dimly through a few windows. There were lights over the main entrance in the front, and one door on the left side. The Marines checked; neither the main rear entrance nor either of the doors on the right side were illuminated.

The Schoolhouse

Schoolhouse was perhaps not the best word to describe the building. When school was in session, more than a thousand children would fill its elementary classrooms. The building also housed a gymnasium; a theater that could hold not only the thousand children, but a large number of parents and other relatives; and there were faculty lounges and administrative offices. With ground space not being at a premium, the entire structure was on one level.

Unsurprisingly, the rear entrance and four side entrances were locked. There was a guard station in the lobby inside the main entrance, with two people at it. Neither was in uniform, but both appeared to be armed. Two closed doors led from the lobby deeper into the building.

Armed guards inside the main entrance to a schoolhouse in the middle of the night made it clear to the Marines that the building was more than merely an empty schoolhouse between academic sessions. The squad settled into the shadows of a nearby building where they could see into the lobby to observe. It wasn’t long before they saw what they needed to know.

Three men approached the main entrance and stopped in front of it, facing inside. One of the lobby guards moved an arm and the Marines heard a low buzz. The door swung open, and the three men filed inside. The door closed right behind the last man. Once they were inside, the other guard moved an arm, and a door off the lobby opened. The guard remotely closed the door as soon as the men went through it.

The main entrance was locked and controlled by the guards in the lobby. So were the two doors leading deeper into the building. The outer door didn’t close slowly enough for a chameleoned Marine to slip in unnoticed behind someone given entry by the guards.

They needed to find another way in. Bingh wondered if they should risk breaking a lock on a side door. Not if the doors were alarmed, which, considering the lengths to which someone had gone to conceal the amphibs and soldiers in Cranston, was probable.

At that moment, the other door in the lobby opened and two armed men came through it. A lobby guard let them out. They walked along the front of the school and turned at the corner. Bingh sent Musica to see where they went. Musica was back in little more than a minute and touched helmets with Bingh.

“They’re checking the side doors,” he reported.

So much for gaining entry that way.

Bingh looked at the building, not at the main entrance but at the façade. The lower meter and a half was masonry. Above that were alternating panels of glass and what looked like sheet metal, separated and held in place by metal risers. Above that a masonry cornice jutted out a few centimeters. If he remembered right, the building’s sides were constructed the same way.

Bingh touched helmets with his men and gave instructions. The four Marines waited for the guards checking the doors to complete their circuit of the schoolhouse and reenter the building, then rose and headed for the side that didn’t have any illuminated doors.

Five minutes later, they were on the schoolhouse’s roof.

There were two access hatches, but both were locked from the inside. But those weren’t the only ways into the building; there were also several vents into the air-circulation system.

Bingh prepared three minnies and sent them into the ducting. He would have preferred to take the squad inside the building, but none of the vents was large enough to admit a man. Even if any had been large enough, a man would have made too much noise in the ductwork.

Two of the minnies quickly found ways out of the ducting and into classrooms. Bingh checked their relative positions and was elated to find that one of them was near one of the roof hatches. He sent it to find the hatch and gave control of the other two minnies to Musica and Pricer.

While the first minnie searched for the hatch, Bingh followed the progress of the other two minnies. He almost salivated when the minnies found obvious military offices, and he hoped the minnie looking for the underside of the hatch would find its way to the hatch’s locking mechanism; he wanted to take a very close look at those offices.

Then the minnie that was still in the ducting looked into an office, and what Bingh saw made him determined to get inside.

A map of Pohick Bay was hanging on the wall. The map had markings that looked like the plans for an amphibious operation against the north flank of the Bataan perimeter.

The hatch was above a folding ladder in an unlocked supply closet. The minnie was able to scramble up shelves all the way to the ceiling half a meter from the hatch. Bingh had it look all around for a way to get closer, but there wasn’t any; the minnie was as close as it could get. Unless—

The folding ladder was hinged at the top at one end of the hatch opening, and springs held it close to the ceiling. Bingh examined the way the ladder folded and saw places the minnie could grasp to move along it—if it could get to the ladder. Minnies could jump, but they jumped like quadrupeds—they needed headspace for the arc of their jump or they’d simply arc downward. The arc needed to be higher for a standing jump than a running jump. There wasn’t space for the minnie to get a running start, and there didn’t look to be enough headroom for the minnie to make the distance before it dropped below the level of the bottom of the ladder.

He had to get inside the schoolhouse to get a better look at that map, but he couldn’t risk having the minnie miss its jump and lay broken on the floor of the storage closet to be found by the Coalition. After a bit of thought, Bingh had the minnie drop down to the next shelf. Yes, the ladder was within the minnie’s jumping range from the second shelf. Just barely, but it could do it. Bingh sent the command. The minnie gathered itself and jumped. Its forepaws caught on the ladder and it scrabbled onto it. Then it scooted to the hinged end. The hatch was secured with a simple throw bolt. There were no wires or touchplates indicating that the hatch was alarmed. Good! The bolt was properly aligned in its brackets and easily within the minnie’s ability to throw.

“Got it!” Bingh exulted. He gathered his Marines and trotted to the now unlocked hatch—only to find when he began to lift it that it wouldn’t swing open.

He had the minnie look more closely at the other end of the hatch. There was another throw bolt, positioned where the minnie hadn’t been able to see it from the shelves. There was no way the minnie could reach that throw bolt from where it was.

Bingh jiggled the hatch and watched the far throw bolt. The bolt moved easily in its brackets. He jiggled it again, and the bolt seemed to move slightly. Again, and it definitely moved. But after that, no matter how he jiggled the hatch, the bolt wouldn’t budge farther.

Bingh explained what was happening to his men and asked for suggestions. Wehrli asked exactly where the throw bolt was. When Bingh showed him, Wehrli smacked the corner of the hatch with the side of his fist. Bingh flinched at the sound of the thump, but realized it wasn’t loud enough to attract the attention of anybody on the ground—and there wasn’t anybody in the supply closet with the minnie.

The bolt jumped a centimeter. Wehrli hit the hatch again and the bolt jerked farther. And again—and the bolt was free.

They were in!

Operations Center, Schoolhouse

Sergeant Bingh took Lance Corporal Wehrli with him as security and left Corporals Musica and Pricer on the roof, monitoring the minnies.

“We need to find the One Shop,” Bingh told them before he and Wehrli lowered the ladder and disappeared into the schoolhouse.

The One Shop, the S1, the personnel department of the regiment. It would have the records of the division’s personnel; how many there were and where they were. So far, first squad hadn’t found any of the soldiers of the Twenty-third Ruspina Rangers, only the crews of the hidden amphibious vehicles. So while Bingh and Wehrli got all the intelligence they could from the operations office, Musica and Pricer would direct the minnies in a search for the personnel office.

Bingh sent the minnie out of the supply closet the same way it had entered—by squeezing under the door. The minnie looked both ways, and when it found the hallway empty, Bingh opened the door and he and Wehrli stepped out.

The only lighting in the hallways was from small signs showing the way to exits, but Bingh and Wehrli were able to see well enough with their light-gatherer screens. The only sounds were those of an empty building at night. Even with his ears turned all the way up, Bingh could barely hear the low suss-suss-suss of distant voices.

The school building was laid out in a quarter of squares; each square surrounded a courtyard. The main entry lobby was to the left of the supply closet. The operations center was in the cross-corridor that separated the two front squares from the two rear ones. Bingh sent the minnie scurrying to the right, to the intersecting corridor, to take a look. The way was clear there, as well. He and Wehrli followed the minnie, padding softly.

The minnie found the door to the operations center and stopped, snuffling all around the door. When its olfactory sensors didn’t pick up anything indicating current occupation of the room beyond the door, only the scents of people who had passed by in the recent past, it sat up to signal the way was clear.

Bingh and Wehrli dashed to the door. Bingh tried it and found it was unlocked. He opened the door and turned his ears all the way up, listening for an alarm, or the sound of footsteps coming to investigate a door opening when it shouldn’t. He didn’t hear anything. He sent the minnie back to the central intersection to watch for anyone coming along, then he and Wehrli entered the room.

Most of the child-size desks the room would normally hold were gone, and those that remained were stacked in a corner. The teaching console had been moved to the middle of the room, and a dozen field desks were arrayed in two concentric circles around it. Bingh’s eyes lit up at the two file cabinets standing out from the wall opposite the big wall map that had first caught his attention. There was a map case between the file cabinets.

He gave the big map a quick look, then had Wehrli record it while he turned his own attention to the file cabinets. Both were locked, but the map case wasn’t. Three of the maps were of great interest to him; they showed greater detail of the large map on the wall—details for three different regimental assaults on the Pohick Bay flank of the Bataan Peninsula. This was far more than just the Twenty-third Ruspina Rangers. Now he really wanted to find the One Shop. He recorded the maps and put them back as he’d found them while Wehrli checked on the minnie.

He’d just closed the map case when Wehrli touched helmets with him.

“Somebody’s coming from the rear of the building. Looks like security, checking the rooms.”

Bingh turned his HUD on to see what the minnie saw. Two men wearing civilian clothes and goggles were walking the hall, opening doors and stepping inside classrooms. They only stayed in each room for a moment before coming out and proceeding to the next. One of them carried something in his hands. Bingh didn’t recognize the apparatus, but knew it must be some sort of detector, just as he knew the goggles had to be night-vision goggles. He had no way of knowing what direction the security patrol would go when it reached the intersection, but he and Wehrli had to be well out of the way before the pair got there.

He recalled the minnie—couldn’t leave it to be discovered, even if it did look like a rodent—and had it follow him and Wehrli to the nearer outside corridor.

This hallway passed between classrooms situated against the outside wall of the building and others facing the courtyards. Bingh left the minnie at the intersection, just poking its head around the corner, while he and Wehrli withdrew a few meters toward the front of the schoolhouse. His thinking was, if the patrol turned this way, they’d more likely retrace their steps to the middle intersection, or head toward the rear of the building, than zigzag toward the front.

While they waited to see what the patrol did next, Bingh scanned through the views from the other minnies. One of them was stationary, peering through a grill in the ductwork. Bingh knew that Musica and Pricer would have their two minnies constantly on the move unless one of them found something he needed to know, so he looked closely at what the stationary minnie was viewing.

He saw a chart on the wall. The print was too small for the minnie to resolve from its station in the ducting, but it looked like a Table of Organization and Equipment for a large unit.

This had to be the S1!

Bingh checked the schematic. The classroom commandeered for the personnel department was in the corridor behind the main lobby in the front of the building. He swore; that was probably the most dangerous part of the building for the two Marines to penetrate. Still, even though access to the schoolhouse was controlled, and a security patrol periodically checked all the rooms, it appeared that there weren’t any passive security devices in the hallways or classrooms.

Bingh touched helmets with Wehrli and told him about the minnie’s discovery and what they were going to do.

They dashed silently toward the front of the building. Bingh kept the HUD of minnie one in a corner of his view. When he saw the patrol turn to the far side of the schoolhouse, he summoned the minnie to join him and Wehrli.

At the end of the corridor, Bingh cautiously looked around the corner and saw someone enter a room near the far end. He overrode the control of minnie three and sent it through the ducting to see what was happening in that room. He and Wehrli headed for the S1 while minnie three made its move. They were inside by the time the minnie reached its destination. Minnie one soon reached Bingh. He deactivated it and put it in a pocket.

G1, First Ravenette Naval Infantry Division, the Schoolhouse

The chart on the wall was indeed the TO/E of a large unit, the First Ravenette Naval Infantry Division, Reinforced. The primary reinforcing unit was the Twenty-third Ruspina Rangers.

A quick study of the TO/E chart revealed the division’s strength was 18,548 soldiers, 23,619 including the reinforcing Twenty-third Ruspina Ranger Regiment.

This information meshed perfectly with the maps he’d copied in the operations center. Now, where were all those soldiers?

Bingh didn’t dare turn on a computer. Even if they weren’t password protected, the glow from a screen would be visible in the corridor outside and attract someone’s attention. Even if someone came to investigate and didn’t find him and Wehrli, this was an intelligence-gathering mission, they couldn’t do anything to let the enemy know someone had been here. There weren’t any papers lying about, or any unlocked file cabinets or desk drawers to open.

But there was another chart hanging behind the TO/E. And that one proved to be just as valuable; it gave the dispositions of each of the component units of the First Naval Infantry Division and its attached units.

Bingh recorded that chart along with the TO/E, then he and Wehrli got out of there. Five minutes later, all the minnies had been retrieved and first squad was descending the side of the schoolhouse. It was another hour, standard, before they were far enough away for Sergeant Bingh to safely transmit his report, complete with attached visuals of the maps and charts, to Commander Obannion on the Kiowa.