Through it they glimpse fog, and gray light. Slanting gray sky. Spray spatters. Marines bend, heaving into the corners. A tide of vomit slides to and fro on the deck.
The thudding becomes a drumbeat, then a howl as if the world itself is being destroyed. Black smoke stains the sky. Aircraft scream over. Jets, and the crosslike shapes of Ospreys.
Terror squeezes his heart. Hector pants.
The marines crouch as hell gapes a mile ahead. Hector can only catch shattered glimpses. Volcanoes of flame throw boulders free to leap and crash down into the surf. Earth erupts, a russet belch of gritty soil scrambled by high explosive and laced with hot steel. Shells roar overhead, detonating with deafening blasts that walk circles of concussion across the water. Farther inland, even heavier explosions shake the sky. They can’t see for the fog, but something up there is unloading destruction on the enemy.
For which they curse and pray, torn between terror and gratitude. Hector, helmet lowered, embracing the Pig, can’t pray. Can’t even think, in the pandemoniac din. Only two words tower in his mind. Last words he will die without saying, if he dies today.
Mandible.
Lifeline.
The iron stink of torn earth and explosive reaches them on the wind.
Somehow a gap. Like the flicker of a strobe, and
He’s ashore. Panting, smeared with red dirt, so somewhere in there he must have fallen or been knocked down. His Glasses have gone blank. His radio hisses empty in his earbud. He looks back down the slope, to where the LCAC…
Where the LCAC…
To where the LCAC lies beached and on fire, canted to one side like Godzilla used it to wipe his ass, then stomped on it. Huge pieces lie smoking, scattered on the rocks. Two amtracs also lie torn open and burning soundlessly. Silent explosions lift tons of white water a few hundred feet out to sea. Huddled bundles in graytan digital camo lie among them, or surge in the surf. A damaged cargo-robo whirs and bobs in circles until it finally topples, slides down into the surf, thrashes briefly, and subsides beneath the waves.
Only Hector doesn’t remember.…
His helmet rocks to a blow and his brainpan echoes. It’s Sergeant Hern, yelling into his face. Soundlessly. Hector blinks. Only after several seconds do the sounds abruptly assemble into words. Accompanied, now, by the zip and crack of incoming. Lots of incoming. Instinctively, he crouches.
“… and get set up. Hear me? Haul ass! Two hundred meters to the left and set up.”
A second face. Whipkey, tugging at his other arm. “Ramos. The fuck, man? — He got concussed, Sergeant. When the cack got hit. Had to drag him out.”
“Get him on his feet. Move him out. We got to get off this fucking beach.”
Nearer the crest the NCOs and officers, huddled in a cleft of rock, are talking on radios and assigning sectors of fire. Hector, toiling heavily past them, sees through a blankness that beyond that lies a bare hilltop, with very little cover and dirt spurting up continually as it’s raked. He feels naked. “Supposed to do this in the fucking amtrac,” he mutters. “What the fuck?”
“Forget the track, dude,” Whipkey pants, shoving him. “They had us boresighted the second we hit the sand. We were lucky to get out alive. Lots didn’t.”
Hern leads them out at a scramble, bent double, riflemen in support, and they rush in short sprints from dip to dip, panting under their loads, until they reach a rise on the left flank. Mortars start howling in as they run. The ground shakes. Earth patters over them. Jagged steel sings and whines. Air bursts. There’s nowhere to hide. They fall, digging their fingers into the ground, then leap up and sprint again. By some miracle, only one rifleman gets hit. They shout for a corpsman, and resume buddy-rushing once they see him on his way.
The sergeant sets them in overlooking a jungled valley with gray fog eddying up from tangled vegetation. There’s a little cover here, at least, stunted scrub trees studded with bare boulders. Their primary field of fire is to the left oblique with a secondary dead ahead. Hern yells, “Make sure you don’t fire on any First Battalion guys. They’ll be coming up on the far side of the valley.” Hector realizes this is the “ravine” mentioned in the briefing, the line between battalions. But where are the Ospreys, the guys coming in vertical assault? He starts to ask Whipkey, then decides he wouldn’t know either.
A huge explosion goes off in the air a hundred yards away, thumping deep in his lungs and kicking up the dirt in a huge circle below it. Besides, they have more pressing issues. Like getting dug in before one of those shells, or rockets, turns them into pulled pork.
Hector and Troy dig madly with entrenching tools. The soil’s reddish, gritty, not sand, but lighter. Their blades grate on fist-sized pumice rocks. He’s never seen anything like this stuff. As they dig it turns to powder and they start coughing. They throw up a hasty position, then spade in the Pig’s bipod legs. Roll in, and glass their front.
But he can’t see. The fucking fog covers everything. It eddies up from the trees below and hangs opaque and motionless. Still, he pings laser ranges, and Troy sketches a card. Fifteen minutes later a Javelin team arrives on their left, then a rifle squad digs in between them, accompanied by an antidrone gunner. With each arrival Hector feels reassured. They have a perimeter now. But where’s the armor? He hasn’t seen a single piece come off the beach. He hasn’t seen any enemy yet, either, but keeps searching the fog, swinging the 240’s muzzle, finger on the trigger. Now and again rain slashes down, hard, chilly, obliterating the last remnants of sight. His helmet radio tells him, “Hold fire, claymores are going out.” He clicks and rogers, but never sees movement. Either they’re really good, or visibility is shit.
The roar of engines behind them… the second wave of cacks is coming in. They’ll have to thread in, avoiding the wrecks. With a queer-sounding pop his radio goes off, then comes back on. “What happened back there?” he mutters to Whipkey. “To the cack?”
“Fuck if I know. Just, we were there, waiting for the ramp to go down, and there’s this terrific bang and the whole side opens up. We’re spinning around, starting to go down… somebody hit the ramp button, though, and they drove the amtracs out. You don’t remember?”
“I don’t remember dick until Hern grabbed me at the top of the cliff.”
“No shit… Well, we hit the beach, then there’s this terrific whang and the track shudders and stops. The driver’s just… gone. He’s like, paste. We get out but then it’s like total clusterfuck. Major incoming. We’re trying to rush, but guys are going down. Then I look back and you’re laying there. A lot of rocks and shit were flying around.” Whipkey bends in. “Shit yeah, you got a hell of a dent here. Can see the ripped Kevlar. Probably woulda tooken your fucken head off, without that brain bucket. Sure you’re okay?”
“I think so. Kind of got a headache, though—”
“Ops, this is Whiskey actual, report Alfa Charlie Echo,” says Hector’s radio. The lieutenant, asking for an ammo, casualties, equipment report.
He peers out again over the sights. “This is Six, six hundred rounds, no casualties, operational. Visibility limited by fog, two hundred meters, no enemy observed. Over.”
“Whiskey actual, out. — Ah, wait one… Stand by… stand by to move out. Follow AAVs, one-zero-five magnetic. Threat direction, left flank. Acknowledge.”
“Fuck,” Whipkey mutters. “We just got this fucken position dug.” But he’s already packing and slinging, getting ready to move.
Hector checks his compass and frowns. “Hey, something’s fucked… am I wrong? That’s gonna take us down into that jungle.”