Private Reynolds watched the jungle growth blur below him. Luscious hues of green melted together in a smear. The helicopter he was riding in flew a dozen meters above the tree tops, too low to get shot down with flak, too high to get shot down by trees.
"Alright Privates, get in drop position. X minus two kilometers.", Sergeant Mitchell's voice came through in the back of his helmet.
Mitchell was in the helicopter ahead.
Reynolds didn't have to do anything, since he was already in drop position. Drop position just meant standing up and ready to grab the rope.
He waited in silence, like the other four Privates in the cargo bay. He wondered what the mission would be like. He wondered if there would be any enemy fire. He wanted to do something to relax. He wanted someone to talk to. The last thing he was going to do, though, was talk.
His dumb suit recorded every single thing he said. It recorded every heartbeat, every movement. It knew when he was panicked, it knew when he was calm.
He would never forget the day in training when his commander called him in and asked him why he would endanger the lives of his fellow men by needlessly distracting them with stupid conversation.
One day when he was having a cold, his suit set off an alarm the instant he turned it on. His fever had been picked up by the body temperature sensor and he had been declared unfit to serve by a stupid computer.
He mentally counted to ten, counted backwards to one, and counted up again.
It did make sense to eliminate distractions. It let people focus on the task at hand.
The helicopter slowed, then hovered still.
"Drop cargo," came the Sergeant's voice.
The large box of supplies hung suspended from the ceiling by hydraulic hooks.
The bay doors underneath it slammed open, and with a click, the box was gracefully released from the ceiling hooks.Out the window, Reynolds saw the box from the lead helicopter fall out of its belly.
It hit tree branches going down, smashing and snapping off limbs.
A rope from the helicopter zipped out with it, like a thin umbilical cord.
He looked back inside, looking at the square hole in the floor, and the rope coming up through the middle, spiraling into the winch.
He breathed.
The first Private jumped onto the rope and slid down.
Two seconds, and the suit ahead of him jumped down as well.
One, two.
Reynolds jumped into the air and grabbed the rope. He was in free fall until a few meters from the ground, when he squeezed the rope through his gloves to slow down. His feet hit the top of the box, and he jumped off.
Two seconds wasn't very long to get out of the way before the next body fell on top of you.
Leaves and grass flipped water onto his visor when he got onto the ground.
He noticed the plants around him were almost as tall as he was.
Other Privates were already pulling nail satchel charges out of the supply box.
He grabbed his.
A map of the trees around him displayed on the inside of his visor. The trees to go were displayed as red.
He hightailed it over to the tree he was to blow.
He pushed wet vegetation out of the way and his feet sank into the damp clay as he ran.
When he got to his tree, he was surprised at how huge it was. It must have been three or four meters in diameter.
He took a satchel charge and slammed it into the north base of the tree. The needle-thin nails on the back sank into the thick bark.
"Reynolds ready," he said.
Other calls of "ready" were spoken around him, the voices coming through on his helmet speakers.
He looked up. The enormous tree loomed over him, scratching the sky.
Above that, the two helicopters waited. Mitchell came through on the system,"All ready. Detonating all primary charges now"
His satchel charge ripped into the trunk of the tree, spraying hardwood everywhere.
At the moment of the explosion, Reynolds was greeted by a moment of silence. The ambient noise being played in his suit shut off as the noise exceeded system threshold.
The trees above took their time crashing majestically to the earth.
They all fell together in the same direction. They smashed the earth in straight lines, all pointing the same way.
The Army was obsessed with straight lines, Reynolds decided. It couldn't even blow something up without it lining up in the end.
He started scrambling onto his tree even before it had completely fallen.
The trees were too big for the helicopters to take away, so the squad needed to cut them into smaller pieces.
He ran across the trunk, pacing the tree into three sections. He placed his last two charges, and called in ready.
When the last charges went, dozens of cables snaked down from the helicopters.
Reynolds jumped off his tree, ran over, and grabbed three cables.
Strapping the cables to the sections of tree wasn't easy, as it usually involved crawling through the mud, trying to push one end of the cable far enough under a section of tree that he could get from the other side. He was slowest, obviously, with the thickest third, but after that he was soon done.
The helicopters had an amazing winch system that could haul tons and tons of material.
The wind from the rotor blades above, noticeably grew in intensity as the cables tightened.
Enormous logs rose into the air.
Leaves were blown forcefully from the cargo.
The air snapped off branches of the trees going up.
Reynolds was impressed. He had to hold onto a vine in the ground to keep from being blown away. The helicopters and cargo slowly cleared tree top level, and they heeded back to base.
Reynolds checked his time. Six minutes from drop time. Not bad.
Mitchell came on. "Okay, Privates, the fun's over. Let's dig a hole"
Together, the two supply boxes held the parts necessary to assemble the dirt sprayer. There wasn't much to assemble. The frame half basically just needed to get wheeled over to the engine half. The engine needed to get hefted into the frame, and connected.
Seven minutes later, dirt, grass and roots were spraying into the air.
Fourteen minutes after that, Mitchell walked up to the cavity opening, and looked down.
"Wrap it up, diggers. The CORK is on its way"
CORK was an inside joke. It stood for Command Operations Remote Konnection. Nobody could think of a better word for K, and it really did just look like a massive cork.
Reynolds saw one Private stop in his tracks, stoop down, and pick up a poisonous snake. It tried to bite his arm through his suit. The man laughed, and tossed it away. Helecopter noise started registering in their suits, and everybody scrambled to get the digging machine out of the pit.
Intense wind started ravaging the trees around them again, and four helecopters showed up. Cables streamed down to an enormous cylinder floating through the air.
Four Privates set up laser beacons around the edge of the pit, guiding the CORK down. Computers synched up the helecopters, and controlled them to a precision dropoff.
The CORK slid perfectly into the ground. Bare inches of air separated the massive slug from the earth around it, as it made its way to its final resting place. Tons of hardened steel slipped into the circle pit as soldiers all around sprawled on the ground, trying to prevent themselves from being blown away.
The very top of the CORK finally became level with the top of the pit.
The air from the helecopters eased up to almost nothing, and the cables remote disconnected to zip up and away.
The ground underneath Reynolds trembled as the CORK's grapling spikes slammed into the sides of the pit, securing it in place.
One helecopter descended onto the CORK's landing pad.
Reynolds couldn't help but sneer as the wimps piled out in their unarmored enviro suits.
An elevator opened at their presence, marring the CORK's smooth armor with an ugly blister.
They stepped inside, and the CORK ate them up.
Fully air-conditioned containment lab at your command.
Reynolds helped the rest of the soldiers wheel the digger onto one of the empty pallets and ran over with another couple to grab the other one.
They loaded everything up into the waiting copter, and squeezed inside.
The machine left the landing pad, and Reynolds looked at his time. Under an hour.
He sighed.
Just another day in the life of the Army Corps of Engineers.