“Did you really tell that SheVa colonel to run me over?” he asked.
“Who?” Horner said with a frown. “Me? Whatever gave you that idea?”
“ ’Twas a terrible cruel thing to do,” Mike grumped. “I got half a dozen ports clogged.”
“Face it, Mighty Mite,” Horner said, slapping the suit lightly on the shoulder. “You needed a good shellacking. It was a tough job, but somebody had to do it.”
Mueller crouched on the slope above Bridge Creek Road and regarded the bridge sourly.
The rest of the team was gathered around, belly down on an outcrop of schist that gave a fairly covered view of the dam and the bridge at the same time. In spring or summer the slope of mixed white pine and hardwoods would have obscured the view of the dam and vice versa. But this late in the fall the only thing protecting the team from view was camouflage and stillness. Which meant that crossing the bridge was going to be tricky.
Coming out of the dam the river curved around the slope they were on, slightly to the east, then straightened back out in an “s.” The bridge was a strikethrough in the middle of the “s,” slightly out of sight from the dam. On the north side of the road, the side they overlooked, was a low field of white pine that came within twenty meters of the road and ran right up to the water’s edge. The road’s right-of-way hadn’t been bushed since before the invasion from the looks of things and was thick with weeds and brambles. The cover down on the flat was going to be much better than anywhere on the slope.
On “their” side of the river was a power substation that appeared to be still functioning. At least, the road up to it had been recently regraded and the fence metal looked to be in good repair. If it wasn’t in use, the Posleen probably would have salvaged it long since.
From long years of experience, Mueller was fairly sure which way Mosovich would hop, but he had to be sure.
“Well?” he whispered.
Mosovich’s camouflage-painted face was set and still for a moment, then he grimaced. There were two problems in the crossing. The first was the slope, which was not only open — it was steep as hell. Most civilians would have referred to it as a cliff, but it was really just a very steep, standard Appalachian, forested slope. The trees alone would reduce the difficulty in going down and it was cut by both the back-and-forth trails of deer and a couple of what looked like old logging roads. The team, with the exception of Nichols, had been spending enough time climbing up and down similar slopes that they were as good as any mountain troops, with the possible exception of the Gurkhas, in the world. So they would be able to negotiate it. But it was still steep as hell and that meant the possibility of somebody getting injured on the way down.
If they went straight down they would also be in view of the dam. For all his words about the Posleen not posting sentries he wasn’t about to take an unnecessary risk. Just to their left, moreover, was a very shallow gully. If they moved around to that they would be out of sight of the dam, any Posleen coming from the east would have to look back over their shoulder to spot them and the ground was a tad less steep.
Once they were on the flat they could get into the trees by the stream and have fairly good concealment right up to the bridge. Crossing that would be tricky thing number two.
“Left. Take the slope fast. Go for the drainage ditch by the road then into the trees.”
“Gotcha,” Mueller said, swinging off the gray rock outcropping to get ready to go down the hill.
“Fast is a relative term,” Nichols pointed out. “I ain’t gonna win any hundred yard dashes with this heavy mother.”
The sniper’s rifle weighed thirty pounds and the ammunition for it was not exactly light. Although the snipers carried relatively few rounds, their “loadout” — the amount of material and equipment they carried — rounded out at over a hundred pounds. Nichols wasn’t a slouch, but Godzilla couldn’t dash with a hundred pounds on his back. Not very far.
“Mueller, take one end,” Mosovich hissed. “I’ll take the lead. When we hit the flat, trot, don’t dash. But for God’s sake, keep an eye out, don’t trip and don’t slow down.” He crouched as well, looked both ways and nodded. “Let’s go.”
The safest and quietest way to go down the leaf-covered slope would have been to follow the deer paths step by cautious step. In places they might have been able to drop a level or two, moving onto the occasional outcrop or fallen tree so as to get down on the flats a bit quicker, but by and large it would have been a slow, serpentine, back-and-forth trail to the valley floor.
However, that serpentine trail would have meant being exposed for ten or fifteen minutes on the lightly wooded hill. Mosovich had considered and discarded that method, preferring to get to the flat, and some reasonable cover, as fast as possible. Which meant tobogganing.
The most deadly part of the descent was that each step was in danger of sliding on the leaves. But that slide could be used to the advantage of the team and Mosovich was more than willing to go for it. He sat down, planted both feet lightly and kicked off.
The sensation was similar to tobogganing on snow and just about as fast. It was also reasonably quiet, not that that would matter; if there was a Posleen close enough to hear their passage they would be spotted as well. The technique was different from sledding on snow in that it was easier to slow yourself and Mosovich was careful not to let it get out of control. Fortunately, there were not only trees to occasionally catch himself on but several natural breakpoints.
He reached the first of these, a broken section of what was probably once a logging road blasted into the slope and went flat to listen for a moment. The Posleen companies weren’t quiet and there was a chance that if one was coming from the east they would hear it before it came in view. The same couldn’t be said for the west, which was the more dangerous direction, but life was a gamble much of the time, especially for the LRRPs.
After a brief pause he started down again. This portion of the slope was, if anything, steeper and he had to catch at trees several times, banging himself painfully on the inner thigh on a small, concealed stump and catching a small beech sapling just before going over the steep bluff at the bottom. He paused again to listen, but there was nothing to hear except the soughing of wind in the trees and the faint hum from the power substation no more than twenty meters away. And ten meters down on the flat.
The ten-meter bluff was not quite ninety degrees. Once upon a time he would have turned around and carefully found his way down using hand- and footholds. But, once upon a time and far away in a land called Vietnam, a visiting Gurkha had first laughed himself sick then shown him the proper way to traverse such a slope. So, standing up, he leaned forward and started to run. The movement could best be described as a controlled fall, there was no stopping it until you reached the flat and could coast to a stop. Or keep running as the case might be.
He was never able to determine where he had put his feet in these situations and it didn’t really matter because a second after he started he’d dropped the ten meters, feet flying from one friable bit of quartz embedded clay to another, and was on the flat pounding towards the drainage ditch by the road. He flopped on his belly in the stagnant water in the ditch, extended a camera to cover both directions and popped up a directional antenna.
“You guys coming or what?”
It was exactly two minutes and thirty-five seconds from when he had kicked off of the ledge.
The rest of the team descended more circumspectly, but with Mosovich in place he had a view that would give advanced warning if a Posleen patrol was approaching. As long as the team could freeze in place their camouflage and the darkness would probably prevent their being spotted. As it turned out, there were no patrols in the time it took them to descend the hill and join him on the flat. A small patrol, no more than twenty, came by while they were making their way through the grove of white pine along the river. But they just crouched in the close packed trees — the area looked almost like a Christmas tree farm — until the Posleen passed, then the human patrol closed on the bridge.