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Some nights make everyone miserable. Many are even worse. In Major Curtis Delgado’s opinion, this one belonged to the second category, but only because a third option didn’t exist. For a moment, he considered inventing a new term that might adequately describe a night so dark, so damp, with the air so thick thanks to monsoon-like rain but found his imagination didn’t quite stretch that far.
In short, it was the perfect night for a raid, the sort with weather his instructors in basic training, on the Pathfinder course, and the command sergeant course considered optimum in helping catch an enemy by surprise. Of course, if the opposition was blind, deaf, and miserable, the raiders couldn’t be in a much different state. Both moved through the dense rain forest, low-lying swamps, and over rocky outcrops under a thick carpet of black clouds at oh-dark-thirty, their sensors rendered myopic by the raging downpours, gales of wind, and the chameleon armor worn by both friend and foe. Helmet visors struggled to give searching eyes a coherent picture in such conditions, and no one saw more than a few meters in any direction, less among the ancient trees.
Delgado, officer commanding Ghost Squadron’s Erinye Company, and his winger, Sergeant Carl Kuzek, found the designated observation post on the heights surrounding a shallow, broad valley bisected by a narrow, albeit lazy, mud-bottomed river. As he crawled between boulders covered by moss that likely predated the arrival of the first humans, Delgado wondered why he was bothering. Even from this perch, he couldn’t begin to spot the hundreds of troopers below. He might as well have stayed at the rendezvous position with his reserve troop and company first sergeant. The three troop leaders conducting the raid on a string of enemy hides would either succeed or not, and there was nothing he could do to change the outcome. Once they’d vanished into the forest an hour earlier, they were essentially on their own.
At best, if the plan to infiltrate the enemy positions, set explosive charges, and extract without being spotted succeeded, he’d see and hear those charges going off at the right time, which was in just under two hours. If they failed, he’d spot defensive gunfire much earlier. It depended on how good their opponents were by now and how well they’d learned the lessons inflicted by Ghost Squadron over the previous weeks.
Like many Special Forces officers, Delgado came up through the ranks and went from command sergeant leading a troop to captain in charge of a four-troop company. It meant he was older than most captains in a line regiment but vastly more experienced. Yet, the one thing he would never get used to was waiting while his troop leaders carried out their missions. He wished he could hand back his commission at times like these, put up the six stripes and crossed swords of a command sergeant again, and jump back into the middle of things. But Delgado’s commanding officer, Colonel Zack Decker, another old mustang who started his career as a private, had plans for him, despite the fact he’d often confessed to feeling the same way. And Admiral Talyn, whose division within Naval Intelligence made liberal use of the 1st Special Forces Regiment to carry out black ops, nurtured plans for both.
At least, he reminded himself, the light combat armor they wore kept out the damp chill and the rain. And the smell of rotting vegetation, animal droppings, and mold. He could only imagine how his professional ancestors managed before technology made challenging environments more bearable.
Delgado composed himself, eyes on the valley, knowing that Kuzek was watching his back, and waited to see if his plan would succeed. If those were ordinary foes, he’d not even wonder, except about the unknown unknowns that derailed even the best schemes, but they represented something new.
As he settled into a quasi-meditative state, Delgado experienced the eerie sensation of sinking into an isolation tank, his senses dulled by the white noise of rain drumming on tree leaves and his helmet and the impenetrable darkness. The first click over the company frequency startled him, and he checked the time on his visor’s heads-up display. It meant the first of the three troops had set its charges and exfiltrated from the enemy hide.
Five minutes or so later, Delgado picked up another click, signifying two out of three were on the way home, and he allowed himself to hope for a clean sweep. Alas, it was not to be. No sooner did the thought occur to him that the treetops to his right, almost at the valley’s eastern end, were briefly outlined by gunfire.
Within moments, he heard three clicks in a row, the signal that Charlie Troop, whose objective it was, ran into enemy resistance and was withdrawing rather than engage in a firefight with three times their number. Delgado knew the enemy troops in that hide were even now rousing their comrades in the other locations via radio, which meant a change of plans. They would no longer blow their charges simultaneously since the element of surprise was gone.
Delgado flicked on his helmet radio. “Fire in the hole. I repeat, fire in the hole.”
Seconds later, the first set of explosions lit up the valley to his left, then another in the center as Bravo and Delta Troops activated remote detonators. A third came several heartbeats later at some distance from the target, proving Charlie Troop was scattering its charges and using them to cover the withdrawal. But the enemy would not pursue the most highly trained Marines in the known universe through dense forest in total darkness anyhow. They’d learned Ghost Squadron laid hasty ambushes like no one else to cut down pursuers.
The valley fell silent just as quickly as it woke, all illumination gone as if the short, intense violence of a night raid moments earlier never happened.
Just before daybreak, Erinye Company’s Marines, tired but satisfied, climbed aboard the dropships waiting for them at the rendezvous. After a short flight, they landed on Fort Arnhem’s main parade square, climbed out, and formed in three ranks under First Sergeant Hak.
To Delgado’s surprise, Colonel Decker and Lieutenant Colonel Josh Bayliss came through the regimental HQ’s main doors and headed for him. Both were smiling contentedly.
“What say you, Curtis?” Decker asked in a booming voice when he came within earshot.
“That two out of three isn’t bad?” Delgado grinned as he saluted his regimental commander. “They’re getting better with every training cycle.”
“Who’s that?” Bayliss cocked an eyebrow at the younger man. “Your Erinyes or our new comrades from the 1st Battalion, Marine Light Infantry?”
“The latter, sir. I don’t know that we can do much more to improve their capabilities as a Tier Two Special Forces unit. I am looking forward to Isaac Dyas’ after-action report on how the MLI caught him before he laid his charges.”
“Luck, most likely. But I agree. The 1st MLI is pretty much up to the standards set by General Martinson, and more importantly, by us. I’d be glad to have them at my back, covering us while we work black ops with them.” Bayliss glanced at Decker. “Agreed, sir?”
The big man nodded. “Agreed. Well done, Curtis.”
“Yes, well done.” Bayliss studied the Marines standing patiently by the dropships, waiting for orders. “Sort yourself out, eat breakfast in the cafeteria, and once you’ve done your hot wash, you can send them off for the weekend a few hours early. I’ll see you in my office for the after-action report at thirteen hundred.”
“Yes, sir.”