The wind had kicked up tenfold over the past twenty minutes, almost like a storm was sliding down off the high, rocky hills. Except the wind was hot, not cold; a fiery blast of heat whipping up dust in the valley and howling like a demon in their ears. To the west lay tall, craggy hills; a small range parallel to the coast with crests ranging from five hundred to a thousand feet tall. Like most of the landscape in the area, the hills were bare of anything except rocks, dirt and the most drought resistant vegetation. It didn't rain much this time of year.
During the course of their off-road journey from highway 85, the terrain had become more and more inhospitable as they worked their way north in the Humvee, leaving the highway to find cover in the rough landscape. Climbing up into the hills, Baird had guided them to a ravine with a gentler slope on the south side and a steeper slope leading up to a sheer two hundred foot cliff on the north side. They hadn't intended to make their stand at the top of the north slope with the cliff at their backs, but when the Raiders cut off their escape at the west end of the ravine, they'd had no choice.
"What are they waiting for?" Wixler asked.
"They're hoping we'll surrender," Dom explained, shifting in his crouch. "They might think we're out of ammunition."
All five of them had taken cover behind the armored Humvee with the cliff face a mere twenty feet from their backs. They had the high ground, sitting at the highest point a vehicle could climb on the steep side of the ravine. In the wet season, water likely flowed down from the hills and filled this ravine, running out to the ocean fifty miles west. In the peak of the dry season, the ravine and the softly sloping hills to the south were bone dry. The wind coming down from the higher hills whipped up small cyclones in the silt-like dust left behind in the creek bed, but the cliff protected Dom's squad from the worst of the wind. It was the Raiders in the valley below who had to worry about dust blowing into their eyes.
Close to sixteen Stranded men had parked their pick-ups in an arc around the cliff, and they'd piled out of their vehicles. For a while, they'd exchanged fire in short bursts. One too-bold Stranded man had attempted to charge up the hill at them, thinking his friends could cover his ascent. He'd fallen face-first in the dirt after Solice put a tight Lancer grouping in his chest. After that, the Raiders seemed content to sit back and wait them out. After all, who would come for them all the way out here? Even long-distance radio communication was shaky at best.
For the past few minutes, both sides had gone quiet. Dom had ordered a cease-fire to conserve ammo while they waited for Clay's APCs to arrive. They were lucky their former brother-in-arms had been close. Something about these hills made it very difficult to establish a line to Control.
"They know they can't take us easy, so why not give up? Pick an easier target to kidnap? I got a baby girl at home. Don't any of them got kids?" Wixler asked.
Solice snorted. "Why don't you go down and ask them, brah? Maybe invite their kids to have a tea party with your kid."
"Did it ever occur to you geniuses that they aren't here to kidnap us?" Baird asked, enough edge to his voice to cause the two young privates to fall silent. Baird had his lancer slung across his back and he was preparing five blocks of C4, placing a detonator on each block.
"Why else would they go to all this effort?" Wixler finally asked.
Dom noticed Baird's mouth tighten, just fractionally. "Santiago, get your men focused," the engineer grumbled. "I'd hate to have someone blow a hand off today."
With a short eye roll, Dom commenced going down the long list of safety rules related to handling plastic explosive. Wixler and Solice listened, but their main focus remained on the Raiders. They were ready for action, but loose. Once again, Dom was glad he hadn't been given any green men on this trip. Even though Baird was a pain in the ass, Dom was pretty damn glad to have him and Cole along too. It'd been a long time since he'd been deep in the shit with total strangers.
Dom was crouched next to Baird by the Humvee's front wheel-well and his legs felt exhausted from maintaining a crouch for so long, even with the catcher-pads on the backs of his calves. It'd been a long time since he'd had to maintain cover for an extended period of time and Dom had started to wonder if he might be getting a little too old for this sort of thing. At sixteen he could've stayed in cover all day without so much as a cramp, but now his knees and quads certainly didn't appreciate it much. Dom shifted, trying to get the blood flowing to the muscles in his lower limbs.
Finally giving up and taking a knee behind the Humvee's front tire, Dom accepted the block of plastic explosive Baird handed to him, complete with wireless detonator, and handed it down the line. Solice was last in line, taking cover at the Humvee's rear bumper, and he ended up holding onto the first block of explosive. Because they were doing work similar to their efforts at Bender Fields, the vehicle assigned to them had a small lock-box for explosive demolition materials and they'd been given some ordinance to fill it with before heading out.
They had a plan. A fast-and-dirty plan they'd begun to cook up before Clay's call came in, and until they added in two turreted vehicles, it had been a woefully inadequate plan. Dom hoped it was solid now. This was the first time he and Baird had really put their heads together, the same way Marcus and Baird used to put their heads together, and Dom hoped the result would get them all home in one piece.
"You look nervous," Baird commented while inserting the final two detonators in the final two blocks of plastique.
"And you look like an asshole," Dom quipped, realizing that Baird, in his own inflammatory sort of way, was coaching him in being a Sergeant. Poking and prodding until he forced Dom to face the moments when he slipped back into the habits and attitudes of a private.
"That's the spirit." Baird handed Dom one of the final two blocks. There were five bricks total, one per man.
Dom placed a finger to his ear. "You ready, Clay?"
"Roger that. I'm in position east of you guys with APC one. Dan's in position south of you at the head of the valley with APC two. We're ready to roll on your signal."
Dom dropped his hand from his ear, turned to Baird and said, "Hit it."
"All right," Baird said, taking a knee and looking down the line. Every single pair of eyes were on him. "We are going to count backwards together from three to one. On one, toss your block straight out as far as you can into the valley. Got it?"
Dom's squad all nodded their understanding.
Baird shifted around so his back pressed against the Humvee. "Andddd...start counting back."
In unison, all five of them counted back, "Three, two, one."
Five blocks of C-4 flew through the air, landing in a semi-circle on the valley floor.
A distinct silence fell over the ravine, made thick by the heat and the moment of fear experienced by the Stranded men surrounding them. In the distance, a crow cawed, and then the Raiders all burst out laughing. The C-4 bricks had all fallen far short of the semi-circle of trucks, and a brick of that size exploding in an open area wouldn't reach any of the Raiders.
"Yeah, yeah, laugh it up," Baird said. He powered on the transmitter, flipped up the plastic safety switch covering the button, and punched it with his thumb.
All five bricks blew, and the blast didn't come close to touching the Stranded men, or their trucks. However, the wall of dirt blown straight up into the air caught on the howling wind, descending upon the line of Raider trucks like a deadly sandstorm in a desert.
"Throw your smokes!" Dom ordered.
Five smoke grenades sailed into the storm, covering those areas where the dust wall was transparent. All of a sudden they had a curtain to work behind, and the untrained Raiders were thrown into a panic.
Dom depressed the comm in his ear. "You get our signal, Clay?"
Amused, Clay responded with a, "Loud and clear, Sarge."
The dust wall was even more impressive than Clay could've imagined. The dry silt left behind in the intermittent river bed after thousands of rainy seasons had lifted up, transformed into a black, roiling veil. Smoke 'nades flashed in the turmoil and the added smoke and sparks sent the Stranded Raiders scrambling for their truck cabs all the faster.
The old APC started bouncing along up the final hill, the heavy springs and independant suspension allowed the huge rubber tires to run over the rough terrain without bouncing them around too badly. The way they bounced along was almost pleasant compared to some of the rides Clay had been on in his life.
When the APC surged over the hill across the valley from Delta's location, coming over at an angle instead of head on, the tires left the ground momentarily before they crashed down on the other side. Most of the Raiders had already mounted back up on their vehicles, choking and coughing on the dust and smoke, some of them simply running for it. They were blind, panicked, and absolutely unprepared to defend against an attack from their rear.
With a vicious grin on his face, Clay's large hands flexed on the twin handles of the mounted machine gun, holding on against the jarring motion of the vehicle, aiming down the barrel. Squeezing the trigger, he opened fire on the raider trucks, using short, controlled bursts, the powerful kickback vibrating through his entire torso.
Charlie made them a hard target by strafing back and forth across the hill's face, the APC's big tires spitting gravel, violently shredding the turf and bare vegetation on the hillside. She'd get them going one direction by gunning the engine and shifting gears, quickly picking up momentum, and then she'd turn the wheel fast, using the clutch, accelerator and breaks in tandem to quickly snap their momentum in the opposite direction without stopping or exposing the broad side of their vehicle. She pushed the vehicle for all it was worth. The sandy terrain made these maneuvers possible, but Charlie made them artful. After being so careful with the rig all the time, Charlie probably needed a chance to let loose. After all, as long as they survived, who cared if the transmission fell out of the APC a few thousand miles sooner?
The careening APC scattered a group of men trying to escape by running up the hill. Charlie used the vehicle as a weapon against close targets while constantly keeping the turret in play to maintain a long-range assault. She never made a turn that interrupted Clay's line of fire, and she stayed far enough back to keep them above the settling black cloud and able to shoot down into the valley, preventing the chance they might accidentally shoot through the smoke and hit an ally. The small amount of return fire they did experience either missed them completely or skipped harmlessly off the APC's reinforced armor.
The turret tasted blood over and over again, making more racket than the rest of the skirmish combined, including engine noise, the howling wind, and the screams of dying men. Fire blazed out of the end of the barrel. Clay started with the trucks, blowing out the windshields before turning his deadly rain upon the armed men in the back of the trucks. Immobilize, and eliminate. Rinse, repeat. The heavy rounds didn't just kill men, they obliterated, sometimes not leaving behind much more than a pink mist.
The green tracer rounds showed clearly where the machine gun fire was going, and in no time they cut a deadly swath through the center of the Raider's line. When he ran short on his current belt of ammo, Clay queued up a new one and then continued the assault, hardly missing a beat. He could feel the heat coming off the gun and the end of the barrel glowed.
Before the south end of the Raider's line could get moving, Dan broke through, coming around the bend in the creek bed so fast none of the Raiders saw the second APC coming. Men didn't even have time to jump clear before Dan rammed two half-ton pick-ups sitting nose-to-tail with the reinforced front grill of his APC, crushing the front quarter panel on one and destroying the rear-end of the other. Both trucks spun nearly all the way around, throwing men piled in the back to the ground. After breaking through the line, Dan made a b-line for the soldiers stranded at the top of the hill on the other side of the curtain.
"Delta, we have your exit covered," Dan said over the radio. "Anyone want to ride with me?"
"Heh, I'll ride with you, baby," a deep voice said over the radio. "The Cole Train owes these boys a whoopin'."
When the smoke and dust cleared enough for Clay to see Dan's APC again, it was leading Delta's Humvee out of the valley, both vehicles moving slowly so the three soldiers still on foot could take cover behind them, moving in infantry formation and firing on any Stranded left to fight, leaving no survivors. By then it was over. The Raiders were either dead or were gunned down when they tried to flee the ravine on foot. None of the Stranded vehicles made it out of the ravine.
Dan's voice briefly came over the radio. "They're gonna blow the blocks out of those remaining trucks so they can't be recovered, then we're going to hit the road. Cole tells me he wants to take point."
With a wide grin of victory on his face, Clay reached down, grabbing the handset from the center column. "Roger that, Danny. We'll cover the back door. Where these boys headed?"
"Same place we are. An outpost on the coast a couple hours down the road. Figure we can all ride there together."
"That sounds like a plan," Clay said. "I can't wait to see the look on Fitz's face when we pick him up. Shit, I can't wait to see Karver's face when Fitz tells him you put a gun to his head."
Dan chuckled over the line. "Yeah. Me either."
Returning the handset to its holder, Clay chucked Charlie on the shoulder with the back of his hand. "Hey, what's wrong with you?" he asked. Instead of basking in the team's shared success, she seemed almost mahogany, quiet with a grim look on her face. He'd seen that look before. It was the one she wore whenever she knew she had to do something unpleasant, and she was absolutely determined to do it anyway.
"I know some of those guys. I owe them a lot. This past year, they've probably thought I was dead and this is the first chance I've had to let them know I'm okay," she said, staring out of the APC's windshield at the Humvee, and the four men piling into it once the engines on the Raider pick-ups were adequately blown to bits and the frames were well on their way to becoming burned-out husks of metal.
So that was why she'd been so determined to help them. It'd seemed a little strange because she always had an eye out for the COG, avoiding them whenever possible. Most cities had special in-routes for semis, and Karver usually went ahead at the checkpoints because he had the official documents clearing them for city access. Whenever Charlie had to speak to an MP, she become almost completely blank. No emotion, no expression. It was like she held her breath in every way she could until they passed safely through.
Clay had thought perhaps Charlie really had been a soldier once, and couldn't stand the thought of leaving the men here to die. Maybe that was part of it, but he still didn't know her yet. The mystery should've warned him off, but Clay liked puzzles. Charlie had many small threads, and the more he tugged and teased, the more mysterious she became. That was what made her so very attractive to him. He wanted to know everything about her.
Clay shrugged. "You want to go out there and tell them? I'll go with you."
Charlie shook her head. "They know who I really am, and I'm not ready for that to be public knowledge."
"If you're worried about Dan, I don't think he'll tell."
"I'm worried about that guy," Charlie said, motioning with her head to the last man getting into the Humvee. He was an Islander, young but solid. Charlie didn't elaborate on her concerns with regard to the young Islander private, but Clay wished she would. He was curious. "If I could just talk to Dom, get him alone..."
"Cheer up, Chuck, I got this," Clay said, reaching once more for the handset. "Hey, Santiago. You boys heading back to base tonight or what?"
The Humvee was loaded, and Dan cautiously led their small convoy out of the valley, heading back toward the highway across the rough landscape. The Humvee followed after, and Charlie brought up the rear.
Dom's voice came over the radio after a moment. "Why? You got something in mind?"
"Just thought maybe we could all go out tonight, grab some drinks. This outpost we're coming up on has a damn good strip bar."
"Now that sounds like a plan," another voice chimed in from the Humvee. Clay recognized the voice of his former squad leader, Damon Baird. "You hear that, Cole?"
"We going to a strip club tonight?" Cole asked.
"Not unless I say so," Dom reminded. He was in charge, after all. He had the stripes.
If Clay recalled correctly, Baird had his stripes at one point...and then lost them, and then got them back, and lost them again... The man bounced between sergeant and corporal as often as Prescott flip-flopped his political stance. Not that it meant much. A corporal basically was a sergeant with a lower pay grade, and since none of them were getting paid at the time...
"May I remind you that we all could've died today?" Baird said, dryly. "Man, if you make me sit on my ass and twiddle my thumbs tonight, I'm going to punch you. In the face."
"Gotta take your fun where you can get it, Sarge," Cole chimed in. They were a familiar bunch. Most new sergeants wouldn't have taken that sort of shit off their underlings.
Clay noted Santiago's two privates didn't chime in on the conversation—they'd probably correctly concluded they wouldn't get away with such candor—but Clay'd bet they were on the edge of their seats, waiting for a decision to come in.
A long pause ensued before Dom came back on the line. "I'd rather get back to base tonight, see Carlo. But if Marcus needs more time for the survey and Control clears it, we'll stay out and I'll let you guys off duty for the night."
Cheers ensued from the two privates in the background. Clay didn't listen to the conversation any further. He replaced the handset and hopped down from the turret, squeezing Charlie's shoulder. "Now you have to come out with us."
Slightly slouched with one casual hand on the wheel, the other resting on the gear shift, she quirked an eyebrow at him. "I'll bet you're real happy with yourself. You're finally forcing me to go to a strip club."
Clay grinned unabashedly. He'd tried to guilt Charlie into going out to a club before, but she'd claimed coming down with a cold, and wanted a good night of sleep before a long run. Just when Clay was about to pull out the big guns and imply Charlie didn't want to go because 'he' liked guys, Karver intervened, making clear how he felt about anyone harassing his business-oriented driver.
Rubbing Charlie's shoulder, Clay grinned, "Oh yeah, and I'm going to pay a train of girls to give you lap dances. You'll have to be pretty clever to get a moment alone with Santiago, because your face is going to be motor-boated between a pair of double-d's all night, Chuck."
With a small scoff and a look of disgust on her face, Charlie shifted gears as they finally climbed back onto the road and their convoy began to pick up speed. "Well, try not to pop the buttons off your fly while you're going broke humiliating me."
"That would require buying a tighter pair of pants, but I'm confident I could do it," he teased, taking a knee behind the driver's seat and letting his chin rest on her shoulder. "If that's what you're into. I can't always tell; you make it so hard sometimes." The tone of voice he used made it clear the sort of 'hard' he meant would make her gasp and moan in a dark room. It was something of a self-fulfilling prophesy, because thinking of her small body under his much larger one in a dark room definitely made things firm, at the very least.
She gave him a look out of the corner of her eye, and then just shook her head, ignoring the smug look on his face. His expression so clearly said, 'I'm thinking about fucking you senseless and I think it's funny you act like you don't think about it too.'
Clay slid a hand around the seat to her front, gently rubbing her stomach just above where the seat belt ran across her hips, his large hand making slow circles spanning from her breast bone to just below her naval. She didn't protest. Not at first, anyway.
"Do you have any idea how sexy you are when you're kicking ass?" he asked, his voice hitting a low note most girls found irresistible. "If we could get a room right now I'd be begging you for it, babe."
"Clay," she said softly. "I was involved with one of those guys. Before things could take off, I was separated from them by—unforeseen circumstances. I didn't say anything to you before because—well, because I don't tell you much, honestly—and I didn't think I'd ever see him again..."
"Was it serious?" he asked, the sensual circles he'd been making on her midriff grinding to a halt.
Taking a deep breath, her nostrils flared when she let out a deep sigh. "I never got a chance to find out."
His face breaking out in a wide grin, Clay gave her a squeeze with his arm. "You know, I like a little competition. It keeps things interesting. If you can call Baird competition."
"How do you know it was Baird?" she asked, her face not telling much about her thoughts.
"Wasn't the younger two Gears you were eying. Figure it probably wasn't Dom, and when it comes to women, Cole's a lot like me. But I'm cuter." Clay gave her a charming, boyish smile.
"You know, you are cute," she informed him. "But I don't think you're half as adorable as you think you are."
Clay chuckled, his eyes glinting with mischief. He gave her another little squeeze around the waist. "Maybe so, but I'm a lot more fun than Baird. I'd give even odds we get a few drinks in us tonight and you end up in bed with me instead of him."
"I'm not going to bed with anyone tonight," she pointed out. "Just because I found them doesn't mean I can go back to my old life."
"And why would that be?" Clay asked, slipping quickly through the opening she'd given him, his chin still lightly perched on her shoulder. She hadn't shrugged him off yet. That seemed to be a good sign.
Charlie sighed. Up ahead was the semi, still parked along the side of the road. And a very pissed-off looking Fitz.
"It's complicated," she said, her mouth set in hard line. She didn't seem too keen on continuing the conversation. In fact, she looked like she might bite his head off if he pressed any further.
If they didn't have to get out and get back to work, he would've pressed it.