“Give me cover fire in thirty seconds,” Edwards said, as he ran back to his company. They were still taking pot shots into the woods to keep the bad guys’ heads down.
The SAW gunner counted off the thirty seconds. The Team was counting. The SAW gunner got a good position on the ground.
“Twenty-nine… thirty,” Pow counted to himself. All of the sudden, the SAW and the Team opened up on the left, right, and front.
“Loading!” Ryan yelled, meaning he was changing a magazine.
“Check!” Scotty yelled and threw out cover fire so Ryan could load.
“Loaded!” Ryan yelled when he was done.
“Loading!” Scotty yelled.
“Check!” Ryan yelled. And so they did this for a minute or two as they coated the woods with bullets.
They had done this so many times that they could keep track of who had reloaded and who would need to reload soon.
They didn’t hear Wes call for a reload.
Bravo Company moved into the woods on both sides. Pretty soon, they could hear scattered shots in the woods. Hopefully it was Bravo shooting escaping Limas, rather than the Limas ambushing Bravo.
“Wait!” Pow yelled out to the Team. They hadn’t received any fire from the woods so they stopped shooting. There was no need to, unless someone took a shot at them. Besides, their guns were getting hot from a couple magazines of firing.
“Pop! Pop!” The shooting in the woods continued, but was dying down. Pretty soon, it was over. The Team sat there scanning the left, right, and front. Nothing. Each of them kept imagining a Lima running toward them out of nowhere and them shooting him. They kept imagining it to keep sharp, and to make it easy to do when it happened.
The bushes around the Team started to move. They swung their rifles around to the movement. It was Bravo, or some military unit with the same kind of uniforms. It could be a FUSA Lima unit, but given how calmly they were walking up to them, it probably wasn’t.
The Team quickly started recognizing individual members of Bravo coming back from the woods. Edwards was one of them.
“We ain’t running into their trap,” Edwards said to Pow. “The map says there are two points in and out, where this road goes into and out of the park. Do you know of any other points?”
“No, sir,” Pow said. “The steep hills go down into the watershed. It would be hard to cross that water and get out of here.”
“Good,” Edwards said. “We’ll seal up the two exit points and wait for the sun to come up. We can go in there in the light, but not in the dark. I only have a handful of NVGs,” he said, referring to night vision goggles. If all his guys had them, and especially if he knew the enemy did not have them, then he would have gladly walked into the woods in the dark.
“We’ll split the company up and put them on each exit point,” Edwards said. “We’ll take this first exit point and have you drive up to the next one, using your headlights the way you were.”
To get shot at, Pow thought. Oh well. There were pluses and minuses that came with riding in the truck.
“We’ll be ready to go in a minute,” Pow said. “Let me know when the half of the company following us is ready, sir.”
Edwards nodded and ran off to get his company split into two.
The Team left their cover and gathered around the truck.
“Where’s Wes?” Ryan asked.
Chapter 303
A Missing Friendly
Everyone looked around. Wes wasn’t there.
“Hey! Wes!” Ryan yelled. “Let’s go.”
Silence.
Pow figured Wes was back with Bravo, so he said, “These Lima dickheads really suck. Did you see all that spray and pray machine gun fire? What a bunch of jackasses. These guys can’t fight worth a shit. We so outclass them.”
Ryan got out his flashlight and started looking around the truck. Wes wasn’t there.
Oh, God. Ryan remembered that Wes had been standing in the back of the truck and not bracing himself when Bobby hit the gas. He ran back to the point where the truck had accelerated. Everyone followed him, as they were now realizing the same thing.
Ryan looked around with this flashlight.
“Shit!” Ryan yelled out. “Come here, guys!”
The Team approached and saw Wes’ rifle on the ground. It had been dropped, but Wes was nowhere to be found.
They stood there stunned and silent. Finally, Scotty got on the radio and grimly announced, “We have a missing friendly.”
“We have to go find him!” Pow yelled as Edwards came up.
“What?” Edwards asked. The Team filled him in.
“We can’t go look for him,” Edwards exclaimed. “We can’t be walking around those woods at night! Not without NVGs.”
“How many do you have?” Ryan asked.
“I dunno,” Edwards said. “Seven, I guess.”
“We need them. Where are they?”
“Whoa, soldier,” Edwards said, using his captain’s voice. “We’re not going into those woods until sun up.”
“But we are,” Pow said pointing to the Team. “Captain, we’re volunteering. Give us the NVGs and we’ll go get Wes. We won’t ask for any support.”
“No way,” Edwards said. “Negative. Understand me?”
The Team was silent. They were going into those woods to go get Wes one way or another. He was a member of the Team. They had agreed long ago that they wouldn’t leave a teammate behind. It just wasn’t going to happen. They didn’t need some captain’s permission to do so.
“No, sir,” Ryan said. “We are going into those woods, NVGs or not. Your choice, Captain. We go in with NVGs or we go in without them. Your choice, sir.”
“You don’t talk to me that way,” Edwards yelled to Ryan. No one ever challenged his authority this way. No one, especially not these irregulars. What a pain in the ass it had been even letting them come out with a real unit.
“We’re irregulars, sir,” Scotty spoke up and said. “We consider ourselves under the command of Lt. Matson and he would let us do this.”
“That’s the stupidest fucking thing I’ve ever heard,” Edwards yelled. “First Sergeant, get over here. We have a discipline problem.”
The First Sergeant and two others came over. “What’s up, sir?”
“These irregulars want to go off into the woods and find their friend,” Edwards said. “I told them no. They say they’ll disobey my direct order.”
“Do as the good Captain says,” said the tough-as-nails First Sergeant.
“We’re done,” Pow said. “We’re resigning our commissions or whatever.”
“You don’t have commissions and you couldn’t resign them on a battlefield anyway,” Edwards said. These irregulars had no idea what they were talking about. Who were these fucking goofballs? Edwards wondered, his frustration level rising.
“Let’s go, guys,” Pow said as he walked toward the woods. He walked right past the First Sergeant and the Team followed.
They got a few yards away and Edwards yelled, “Halt!” The Team thought they might get shot by Edwards and his men. What a way to die, shot by your own side for not obeying an order.
Wes. Wes was in those woods and time was wasting. That was all they could think about.
Edwards had been briefed in advance of this mission that regular military units could not expect irregular units to obey orders like professional soldiers did. If the choice came down to trying to arrest irregulars for insubordination, Edwards’ commanders told him to let the irregulars go ahead and do whatever it was they were going to do — as long as it didn’t get other Patriot forces hurt. The Team guys going out into the woods with no support wouldn’t get any other Patriot forces hurt, Edwards realized, and they were irregulars who were just volunteering. They could go get killed if they wanted.