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They'd pulled the bodies into the woods and given them a quick inspection for any kind of clues to help them figure out who they were or who sent them. Not that they were expecting them to be conveniently carrying identification, but at this point it wouldn't have surprised Dorothy
.
She had to remind herself to not underestimate them. Untrained meant unpredictable. Unpredictable meant dangerous. How often had Paul drilled that into their heads?
Everything they were carrying implied Soviet, as they'd noticed earlier. Their hiking gear, however, was a mix of European and American made. Seriously? Lightweight Levis? For hiking? In mid-October? And these are the wrong boots for this terrain. Ha! Maybe they weren't planning on their costumes being evaluated by a girl, especially one who knows her uniforms. It's like they're dressed up as Soviets trying to disguise themselves as hikers, but doing both very badly. But well-armed, just not for what they seem to be doing.
Even in inappropriately dressed, untrained hands, those A-Ks could do some damage. She got lucky and she knew it. She wasn't sure how Scarecrow had noticed them and she hadn't, or if they just gave their position away before they saw him. It didn't make sense since he should have been well ahead of her.
Better to approach it head-on...while she was holding a rifle and he was not. Just in case.
"Hey, how did you happen to see that first pair?" Act casual, just making conversation.
"I had to reholster after you took off. Something spooked a bunch of birds on the other side of the stream a few seconds after you passed. I looked down and saw them come out of the woods. At first I thought some of the guys came to spy on us. Probably The Lion. You know he has a thing for you. Good thing you took off rather than waiting for a fair start."
Of course. He'd removed his holster before we started sparring. I'm going to remind him of this next time he suggests I'm cheating at something when I'm just giving myself better odds.
She would have preferred the bullets to betrayal -and maybe also to The Lion spying on her- but she'd had to ask. She trusted him and believed his answer, but there were some serious red flags about the whole setup. At least Scarecrow wasn't waving one of them.
"I wonder if they knew they were looking for two of us. Also makes me wonder how they knew anyone was missing. And for that matter, how did they know where to find any of us in the first place? "
"I'm asking myself the same questions. Maybe they thought you were running because you were in contact with Base."
"Which wouldn't matter if they'd secured it. I'd be running into a trap. They wouldn't need to waste ammo and risk the shots being heard. The village is only about 2 kilometers away, and conditions are ideal. for sound to travel."
She wondered if their teammates currently holed up in the village had heard the shots, or if they'd been compromised as well.
Scarecrow had long since gotten used to her natural awareness of things like shooting conditions. Among other qualifications, she was one of the best snipers on the team, and easily the best spotter. She probably could have given him a functionally accurate reading of temperature, humidity, and wind speed and direction on the spot without instruments.
"Trap or not, we still have to get back. But not running, and ...hopefully it's not a trap."
He started rummaging through one of the packs and couldn't resist pelting her with two of the objects he found inside. "You're probably safe to put these back on."
"But these boots are far out, man!"
"Yeah, far out in front of your feet."
Comedy was her coping mechanism, but Scarecrow had his moments. He was right, though. She quickly ditched the boots for her own shoes. Hope this guy didn't have athletes foot or toenail fungus or anything.
There were few clues in the bags, but plenty of ammunition. The only anomaly was a knife one of the men carried: a German-made Solingen rather than the NR-40 one would expect a Soviet unit to be equipped with.
It wasn't anomalous enough to raise questions on its own, but it fit with Dorothy's growing suspicions that these guys were not who they were trying to look like they were. Plus, if they were out sniping, they should have at the very least had some kind of scope or range finder, maybe a tripod. And appropriate rifles. The AR could of course fire single shots -as she'd done with it earlier- but lacked the range of a true sniping rifle.
Curiouser and Curiouser. Paul really should have chosen an Alice in Wonderland theme instead of The Wizard of Oz.
Scarecrow offered her the knife, not realizing she had her own. Unlike him, she hadn't disarmed herself earlier. Holstered guns were bulky and painful if you happened to fall on them, unlike sheathed blades. He looked like he wanted to scold her for not disarming but realized that they'd both quite possibly be dead if things had played out any differently.
They each put on a pack, planning to cache the others and the extra A-Ks somewhere closer to base before approaching. They were rapidly losing daylight but didn't dare risk walking in the open, or together. It was nearly a kilometer back to base, and trying to move quietly while carrying so much extra gear made it a challenging and slow trek. Murphy's Law of Woodland Stealth: Anything that CAN snag on branches WILL snag on branches.
They managed to reach the final bend before base without incident. Scarecrow deposited his extra gear before crossing back to her side of the stream. She saw him miscalculate his footing on the exposed rocks and almost fall into the water in the crepuscular twilight. Coulda washed that blood off, cleaned up a little, made a good impression when we stormed the castle. But I suppose it's a good thing he didn't fall: the splash might've given us away.
Base was maybe 70 meters upstream, at the center of a long, shallow arc in the waterway, about 10 meters inland from the stream itself. The team had selected the location for its sight lines and limited land access not realizing they'd be the ones trying to make a stealthy approach.
She thought it might have been lost on Scarecrow, but Dorothy appreciated the irony that the site selection itself was the only by-the-book obstacle they'd encountered since the shit hit the fan. Fortunately being untrained wasn't the only thing that could make a combatant unpredictable. Paul had chosen his team in part for their abilities to think outside of the box and to improvise.
Scarecrow was excellent at anticipating and evaluating complications in the planning and analysis phases but was still a little rigid when it came to rolling with surprises during operations. He preferred to play by The Book as much as possible, not embracing that some chapters were necessarily the "choose your own adventure" types.
He'd once injured a teammate in a football game because the guy hadn't stuck strictly to the playbook. When he told her about it, she wondered whether his conscience or the guy's arm had healed faster. He was fiercely protective of his team, and part of his rigidity was worrying that improvising would get the people he was responsible for hurt...or worse.
She on the other hand excelled at figuring out how to salvage operations when things went sideways mid-flight. Like today. On the trek back, she'd put together a general plan with several contingencies depending on what they found back at base. She knew Scarecrow had done the same, and just hoped they were on the same page. They didn't have a lot of time to reconcile contradictory proposals. He knew this was her element, though, so hopefully she wouldn't have to resort to pulling rank.
Some of the guys got angry when she had to do it, but Scarecrow always looked like a kicked puppy. She still wasn't sure whether it was an act or not, but she'd seen him use that same look to charm information -and probably other forms of "cooperation"- out more than a few women. Doesn't work on me, though. I'm a cat person.
This week was just supposed to be a training exercise for an upcoming operation. They would be trying to locate and compromise a suspected Soviet information and weapons drop point under the guise of a geological survey of a cave system similar to one between the camp and the nearby village. While The Lion had considerable experience working in caves, he'd lobbied Paul hard for a week to train the rest of the team before leading them in and suggested this location. Dorothy mentally flagged that information, her blood curdling at the continued suspicion of an inside source.
Since this was just supposed to be a training week, the team was armed, but didn't have kind of artillery they'd need to fend off a well-organized attack, especially if they were taken by surprise and outnumbered. Expending five men to try bringing them in suggested either a large unit or that she or Scarecrow -or one of their teammates in the village- was an explicit target. Hitting around meal time meant most if not all of the unit should have been present, most likely with their guard down. Score 1 point for the opposition.
For half a second, Dorothy considered the possibility that Paul had staged the ambush as a test, but he would have never had anyone actually shoot at them, and definitely wouldn't have sent a second team looking for them.
No, I think they're looking specifically for someone who wasn't at camp when they got there. Paul would make the most sense. Whoever sent these guys...how did they know we were out here and where exactly we were? Stationing Paul, Auntie Em, and Toto in the village was a last-minute opportunity yesterday. Nobody outside of those of us involved in the operation should know about that...including the rest of Oz. And if we're compromised here, our actual objective has probably been dismantled. Which probably means we're on the right track..but further from plugging the information leak.
She wondered briefly if it they'd be able to contact the others for backup, but figured it was likely that their primary communications had been captured or disabled. That was an obvious early priority for any offensive. Hopefully the invaders wouldn't find all of of the 2-way handheld radios. The primary transmitter had been a little patchy yesterday when they were in the caves, so Paul had given them the walkies when they made their first trial run this morning. They'd have to find one of the devices. She regretted not bringing hers with them when she and Scarecrow decided to burn off a little energy before dinner. It was stashed in her tent, which would be difficult to get to if the camp had been taken. She hoped the rest of the devices weren't all sitting out in the open on the folding table with the rest of the com equipment.
Hindsight is 20/20, but let's not get ahead of ourselves worrying about outside communications. We need to figure out if the base has been compromised. First step is look and listen.
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They approached the camp carefully...or at least as carefully as they could at nightfall without a light source. There were a few lights on within the camp, so the generator hadn't been knocked out. There was no campfire, though. Red flag number...how many are we up to? The days were pleasant but the nights got chilly pretty fast, so they'd built a fire every night. It was a good source of heat as well as camaraderie. Was the absence an intentional signal? Was any of the team left to signal anything?
Too soon to cross that bridge. They'd navigated to within 20 meters of base, so far without incident. If there were sentries posted, they'd likely be within the 5-10 meter perimeter. They'd mapped the area for defensive positions when selecting the site but hadn't spent much time analyzing potential offensive access. They couldn't know whether or not the invading force had studied the local topography before coming in, but it would be wise to assume they -or whoever sent them- had.
And how did they arrive? Land or water? By vehicle part of the way or on foot from a neighboring village? We can probably rule out parachuting in with so many trees to get hung up in and very few clearings. Obviously they didn't come from downstream, so upstream or from the west. It's a good 5 kilometer trek from the nearest village that way, but by no means would it be a difficult hike.
"You circle from this side, stay about 12 meters out from the perimeter. Don't engage if you encounter anyone. I'm going to cross and see if they came in from the other side of the stream or from the stream itself, although the later seems unlikely. We'll rendezvous at the upstream bend. If we don't find their point of ingress, we'll go further upstream. With any luck they'll have left us a boat somewhere."
Boats meant the possibility of gasoline. Gasoline would give them options. Good thing I brought my lighter and half a pack of cigarettes with me. I always tell the guys they're gonna come in handy one of these days, and this might be it.
"A Jeep would be nice."
"Not likely. Too many trees, too much noise."
"A guy can hope, can't he?"
"Sure, why not? Got any ruby slippers to click together while you're at it?"
"Aw shucks; I knew I forgot to pack something."
"I left mine home too. Okay, 30 minutes we'll meet at the bend. Big tree with the broken branch. 40 minutes and we backtrack each other's route."
The rendezvous point was less than 100 meters away, but could easily take half an hour to navigate quietly in the moonlight. At least it was a clear night with the moon just a few days short of full. It wouldn't help Scarecrow as much circling the camp inland, but it would be enough for Dorothy to
read her side of the stream.
Her gut feeling was that they'd come in on foot from the opposite side and cached any extra gear they might have brought upstream around the bend. They may have come by boat -or more likely several boats- but this time of year the stream was too shallow in places for that to be an ideal option unless they were traveling with a lot of equipment. They'd brought their own equipment in by raft a few days earlier and it had been a rough go in places. However, judging by the men they'd taken out, they seemed to be traveling very light except on ammo.
She wished Tin Man or Uncle Henry was involved in the operation. They were the best at planning how to access and infiltrate targets, but this was primarily a procedural training and information gathering deployment. They could figure out the defensive vulnerabilities and most likely avenues of approach just by looking at the topographical maps. She trusted her gut, but their expertise would have been reassuring. Except of course they would probably have been with everyone else at base when whatever happened, happened.
But if they know our objective, why hit us here a week early? Why not clear out anything compromising and hit us when we get there? Plenty of time to arrange it. And why hit us at base? We're more vulnerable in the caves, and they'd just have to get there first and wait inside for us. That's how I'd do it anyway.
More and more she felt like there was a specific target here, with their isolation rather than this particular mission being the relevant factor. She was also fairly certain that neither she nor Scarecrow would warrant this kind of offensive.
She stayed just at the edge of the treeline as she made her way upstream. Fortunately it stayed within a couple meters of the water along this stretch. She found evidence of multi-person crossings at three places but in the dark couldn't try to calculate the number of individuals involved or if there was evidence of heavy loads being brought across. She was, however, able to determine that in all cases, the tracks extended more than a few meters into the woods and a few trampled ferns indicated the direction of movement was toward rather than away from base. Toto would have been useful. His search-and-recovery background made him the most experienced at both tracking and reconstructing events from footprints and other disturbances to the environment.
As expected, she reached the rendezvous before Scarecrow. She had time to spare, so she ventured upstream around the bend. Alas, no boat ...so no gasoline ...so no blowing things up. Bummer.
That's Wicked's bag anyway and he's not involved this time. She was still a little jealous that Harrison was awarded the nickname she'd coveted, but he had the long, scraggly black hair and could make things disappear in a poof of smoke ...or at least in a cloud of dust and rubble.
She supposed they could have stashed a boat or at least an equipment raft further upstream, but judging by the how far the tracks had gone into the woods, it seemed likely that they hadn't come by water. She found a shallow, narrow area and crossed back to the base side of the stream. Like Scarecrow earlier, she almost took a tumble but made it to the other side with just a little water seeping into her right shoe.
Scarecrow still hadn't arrived by the time she got back to the big tree. She'd been listening for any indication that he'd run into trouble, but aside from occasional indistinct chatter near the camp, the woods were quiet. She was mentally reviewing the area around the site to go looking for him when he finally arrived, with not quite a minute to spare.
Even by moonlight, she could tell he'd found something interesting. She also correctly suspected that he hadn't kept a safe distance from camp. For a guy who expected others to stick to the play book to keep themselves safe, he wasn't as cautious when it came to working by himself. He handed her a metal canister.
She held her breath and moved it close to her face. Even though its contents were depleted, there was enough residue on the nozzle to irritate her eyes. "Tear gas. Explains why we didn't hear shots."
"Yeah, but it doesn't explain why they weren't shooting. They shot at you."
"Another mystery. Any sign of our team? How close did you get?"
"Behind the latrine. I saw 4 men talking so thought I'd see what I could hear. Unfortunately they were all speaking French."
"And your French consists of fluent wine lists."
"Hey, I speak the full menu. The good stuff, anyway."
"Which doesn't help us unless they were planning dinner."
"No, but at least 2 of them weren't native speakers."
"Soviets?"
"Only one. Another sounded American, and the 3rd I couldn't place. The 4th sounded like a native speaker. It's weird that I can't really speak it, but I can identify other accents speaking it."
"Not so weird. You grew up all over the place. A lot of us military brats got exposed to conversations in one language spoken with a variety of other accents. So where did you pick this baby up?"
"It was on the ground not far from the latrine. Once the men went back toward the mess tent, I had a chance to grab it."
"Anything else? Were there just the four men?"
"I didn't see any sentries, but there were several more men around the mess tent. I didn't have a clear view, but I'd say maybe a dozen total if they were all there."
"What about our people?"
"I didn't see or hear any of them."
"Okay, no bodies on the ground. No shots fired or we'd have heard. Tear gas. Were they armed? Vigilant?"
She was pretty sure none of the sets of tracks she'd seen crossing the stream represented their people being taken out of the area since they were single file with no obvious evidence of struggle or having to guide someone who'd been hit with tear gas. It had rained heavily last night so the tracks were fairly noticeable even by moonlight. Signs pointed to them still being at base, probably bound and gagged and inside the tents. That's what I'd do, anyway.
"2 of them had A-Ks slung, but they were pretty casual, like they took the base but couldn't be bothered to secure it."
"Odd behavior since 5 of their guys didn't make it back. Makes me wonder if they're actually military or hired mercenaries."
"I'd guess hired, but not pro. The pros have that certain swagger, that air of autonomy. These guys don't have that. I'd guess none of them are calling the shots, and whoever they're taking orders from isn't with them."
He noticed her reaction to that last part. "Yeah, I'd thought of that, too."
"Damn. I'd hoped I was just being paranoid."
"Hey, we're just considering the possibility right now. We don't have anything definite to go on. We'll just have to keep our eyes and ears open."
So he thinks it might be an inside job too. Groovy.
"I just want to know why I'm the one they were shooting at and why they're going to so much trouble. And why out here when we're all armed and trained? And why send so many of them? And ...ugh! ...why send amateurs?"
"Untrained is unpredictable. Unpredictable is dangerous. We were lucky earlier."
"I've told myself that more than once tonight. You didn't happen to get a look to see if the walkie-talkies were on the comm desk, did you?"
"No, after I picked up the canister I dropped back to 12 meters to finish circling. I don't think I could have gotten to it anyway, with all of them milling around. I'm not exactly dressed to blend in."
Dorothy had a sudden idea. "No, but you're dressed to provide a distraction if we need one. Feeling dramatic?"
Some of the guys occasionally busted on Scarecrow for once bragging that he'd auditioned on a whim -or more likely to impress a girl- in college and wound up landing the lead in the big Drama Club production. Dorothy secretly thought it was a pretty cool accomplishment, especially since he was also playing football that semester. She had the feeling that the appeal for him in this line of work was the opportunity to dress up and play various roles just as much as it was tackling bad guys. She knew he'd be game.
"What do you have in mind?"
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