Pointblank: Starfist Force Recon Book II Read online

  CONTENTS

  TITLE PAGE

  DEDICATION

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  EPILOGUE

  ALSO BY DAVID SHERMAN AND DAN CRAGG

  PREVIEW OF STARFIST FLASHFIRE

  DON’T MISS ANY OF THESE ACTION-PACKED

  COPYRIGHT PAGE

  Dedicated to Master Sergeant Ray Ytzaina, USA (Ret.)

  Korea, Vietnam

  1933–2005

  PROLOGUE

  * * *

  Office of the Supreme Commander,

  Coalition Forces, Ravenette

  A heavy explosion shook the walls, causing a fine cloud of dust to fall gently onto General Jason Billie’s desk. That was immediately followed by several wump-wump-wumps as friendly coastal batteries answered the enemy cruiser firing several kilometers out on Pohick Bay.

  “Missed again!” Lieutenant General Alistair Cazombi grinned. The artillery dueling was getting to be a daily occurrence for the army cooped up on Bataan. General Billie never batted an eyelash as he brushed the dust off his desk. He’s getting used to the bombardments, Cazombi reflected.

  “Would you have a cigar, General?” Billie shoved the humidor across the desk.

  Now that’s unusual, Cazombi thought, the supreme commander offering anyone except his chief of staff a cigar. What’s he want this time?

  “No, thank you, sir.” Billie raised his eyebrows at the refusal. “You issued an order against anyone smoking in here, don’t you recall? The air-filtering system can’t handle all these men smoking, much less exhaling, down here,” Cazombi elaborated.

  “Ah, yes. Well, General, I never intended that order to apply to senior officers.” Billie sighed, helping himself to a Clinton. Soon a foul blue cloud of tobacco smoke rose up between the two generals. “These are exquisite smokes, Alistair. Sure you won’t have one?”

  “Positive, sir. I prefer Davidoffs, when they’re available. Besides, if my men can’t smoke, I don’t think I should.” It had become a standing joke among Cazombi’s small staff that when he came back into his office smelling of cigar smoke, it was a sure sign he’d been in to see the supreme commander, as General Billie preferred to be called.

  Billie inclined his head and regarded Cazombi through the smoke. “RHIP, General,” he intoned.

  “I’d rather not, thank you just the same.”

  Goddamned prig, Billie thought, shifting his cigar from left to right in his mouth. Then: “We’ve got to find out what the hell he’s up to.” Billie nodded toward the sound of the naval bombardment. “What kind of an intelligence network did you have before I got here?”

  “I didn’t. I was a depot commander, remember? I had neither the personnel nor the mission to set up an intelligence network. General Sorca’s division G2 had someone planted in Ashburtonville as I recall. A female sergeant. She was able to develop some pretty reliable intelligence before she disappeared.”

  “Umpf. An enlisted person, and a female at that? I’ve never put much stock in human intelligence, Alistair. Too damned impressionable. What we need is electronic surveillance.”

  “Lyons’s damned antisatellite lasers have been playing hell with Admiral Hoi’s string-of-pearls, sir, and our aerial reconnaissance flights have been very costly in men and machines. We need someone to go in there and knock those guns out. I’d call for immediate deployment of Force Recon elements—”

  “General, don’t tell me you’ve fallen for that Marine poop-and-snoop propaganda!” Billie snorted. “What we need is eyes-in-the-skies. You’d think Task Force 79 would have fixes on those guns’ emissions and could take them out when they fire! Damn, what good is that fleet up there to us?” Billie puffed exasperatedly on his Clinton.

  “The enemy are using laser cannon with passive sensors, they’re undetectable until they fire. Somehow, they seem to have an inexhaustible supply of the guns. Take one out, and another crops up somewhere else. You have to admit, they’ve been effective. You’ve seen the reports from Admiral Hoi and your own G2’s evaluations, sir.”

  “Yes, yes, yes—” Billie snorted impatiently. “I know all that, I’ve read the reports. But damn! Where’s the innovation up there, Alistair? Where’s the original thinking, eh?”

  “If the Combined Chiefs hadn’t disbanded the army’s long-range reconnaissance units, we could send our own men out to—”

  “Humpf.” Billie gestured with his cigar. “That was a very wise move, General, as you should know. We had to reduce our budget, and with all the money we’d been spending on technology, it was only logical to eliminate the costs of maintaining human intelligence programs. Pure and simple.”

  General Cazombi suppressed a sigh. “As I recall, sir, that was done because the Chiefs envisioned combined operations that would rely on Marine Force Reconnaissance so the army’s Rangers and so on were considered a redundancy.”

  “Um. Yes. Well. Hmmm.” Billie puffed on his cigar in silence for a while, sidestepping the direction the conversation had taken. Like all conservative army officers, General Billie harbored a deep distrust and resentment of any elite unit, regardless of service affiliation.

  Cautiously, as if scratching it, Cazombi put a hand to his nose to suppress a violent sneeze he felt coming on.

  “General, I want you to get on this problem,” Billie said at last. “Get in touch with Admiral Hoi in his ‘ivory starship’ up there. Goose him to find a way to take out those guns, before they kill his satellites.” As if the enemy were listening, a series of powerful explosions shook the command post.

  “Jesus!” someone exclaimed.

  “First thing I want Hoi to do is eliminate that goddamned naval presence out in the bay,” Billie said, banging a fist on his desk.

  “General, consider it done.” Cazombi got to his feet and saluted. Yes, and he knew exactly how to do it.

  Office of the Deputy Commander, Coalition Forces, Ravenette

  “Sir, you’ve been in with the supreme commander again,” Brigadier Ted Sturgeon, Confederation Marine Corps, observed wryly.

  “Yes, Ted, I have. As soon as this campaign’s over, I’m burning every piece of uniform and clothing I’ve been wearing down here,” Cazombi chuckled. “But our supreme commander has given me a task, and I want you to help me with it.”

  “You name it, Alistair.”

  “It’s an easy one, Ted, and I hope I’m not insulting your Marines by asking them to do this for me. Just go out there, behind the enemy lines, find those damned antisatellite laser batteries, and knock
them out. While you’re at it, look around a bit. See what Lyons is up to, count noses. Maybe even pull off a few raids and ambushes, get the enemy off-balance. Then come back here and tell us everything we need to know about his capabilities and intentions and the deployment of his forces. Think you can handle that?”

  Brigadier Theodosius Sturgeon, commander of the Thirty-fourth Fleet Initial Strike Team, stared at his friend silently for a long moment. “Aye, aye, sir,” he responded, and made as if to leave.

  “Ted? Have a cigar?” Cazombi reached into a cargo pocket and withdrew a portable humidor. He opened it and shook out one Davidoff Anniversario. “It’s the last of Cazombi’s Zombies, Ted, and I’d like you to share it with me on this momentous occasion.”

  “Thanks, Alistair, but General Billie issued an order—”

  “Oh, we won’t smoke it, Ted! Heaven forbid!” Cazombi produced a small cutter and sliced the cigar in half. “Seems a sin to treat such an exquisite cigar this way, but we can sure chew on it. While you’re doing that, chew on what I just said. How do you think we can do all that?”

  “Force Recon.”

  “Precisely! Ted, I’m surprised at how goddamned smart you’ve become since you first met me.”

  “But we don’t have them. And before they can be deployed, we’ve got to get the supreme commander’s approval to conduct the missions. I think under the present circumstances, that is not going to be forthcoming.”

  “Wrong. I just got that authority directly from General Billie. He told me to get with Admiral Hoi and figure out how to take out the laser guns that’ve been shooting down his satellites. He didn’t say how. I have sent a message to the fleet commander, using my authority as General Billie’s deputy, requesting help from Fourth Recon Company. Once they have completed their first mission, I’ll let General Billie know what I’ve done. Nothing succeeds like success, Ted, but if he doesn’t like it, let him fire me. What do you think of them apples, Brigadier?”

  “I think I am truly astonished at how devious you have become since you first met me,” Sturgeon answered. They laughed long and hard and chewed happily on their cigars.

  CHAPTER

  * * *

  ONE

  Planetfall in an Undisclosed Location

  None of the watchers on top of the shore cliffs paid any particular attention to the meteorite that briefly flashed down through the sky before it plunged below the horizon.

  The AstroGhost stealth shuttle dropped far enough out to sea that the diffused flares of its braking engines, fired at five thousand meters altitude, weren’t visible from land. A ship at sea, seeing the diffused flares, might be excused for thinking a meteorite was breaking up in the atmosphere. As soon as the juddering of the firing brakes began to smooth out, the AstroGhost popped a drogue chute. The chute tore off after only a few moments, but it was enough to cut the descent velocity; then the AstroGhost turned its descent from straight down to a velocity-eating spiral, which further slowed its fall. At five hundred meters, it gained a stable orbit and lowered its loading ramp. A Mark 8 Skimmer, a specialized version of the standard hopper troop tactical air carrier used by the Confederation Marine Corps, slid out of the AstroGhost’s bay and fell a hundred meters before firing its engines. In another moment it demonstrated how it got its name by staying barely high enough above the waves to avoid raising a rooster tail. The Skimmer was fully loaded with the Marines of first and third squads, second platoon, Fourth Force Recon Company, and their gear. Staff Sergeant Fryman, second platoon’s first section leader, commanded. The nine Marines were wearing chameleon uniforms but the screens of their helmets were up, allowing their faces to be seen.

  Fifty kilometers offshore, well out of sight of any watchers on the shore cliffs, the Skimmer stopped, hovered, and lowered itself closer to the top of the ocean swells. Staff Sergeant Fryman didn’t bother checking his men to make sure they had all their gear; it wouldn’t have been possible in the cramped quarters of the Skimmer; besides, he and the squad leaders had done that before they’d boarded the Skimmer. Instead, he stood out of the way and closely observed through his infrared screen as first squad, then third squad, acting by feel, each lowered a chameleoned Sea Squirt out of the Skimmer’s hatch, then followed the Sea Squirts into the water. Each squad leader mounted his Sea Squirt and operated its controls to extend transparent, bullet-shaped tubes, one on the top, and four more along its sides. The squad leaders slithered into the open ends of the top tubes, their men into three of the side tubes. The gear the Marines weren’t carrying on their persons was secured in the fourth tube on third squad’s Sea Squirt.

  When the last of his Marines was wet, Fryman gave an un-gloved thumbs-up to the Skimmer’s crew chief, closed his own chameleoning, and followed his men into the water. The Skimmer gently backed off as Fryman paddled to the farther Sea Squirt, first squad’s. He slipped into his tube, plugged into the rebreather, took firm hold of the grips, and said into the all-hands circuit, “Squad leaders, report.”

  “First squad’s ready,” Sergeant Bingh replied.

  “Third squad is go,” Sergeant Kindy said.

  “Let’s do this thing.”

  Sergeants Kindy and Bingh, the two squad leaders, had already assured themselves that their men were secured inside their tubes, their rebreathers hooked up. The squad leaders took the controls and sent the Sea Squirts on a shallow dive path to five meters’ depth, where they leveled off, and, using inertial guidance, directed the Sea Squirts toward the distant cliffs. In minutes, they were moving at twenty-five knots; third squad’s Sea Squirt was at wing position, a hundred meters to the left and fifty meters behind first squad. Everybody settled in for the long ride.

  A standard hour later, Fryman signaled Bingh and Kindy, and the squad leaders began slowly edging their Sea Squirts toward the surface. When Kindy looked over the side of his Sea Squirt through the light-gatherer screen of his helmet, he could see the sea bottom slowly rising toward them. At another signal from Fryman, the squad leaders brought the Sea Squirts to a stop on the bottom with the tops of their upper tubes a meter below the surface of the ebbing tide.

  The Marines slid backward out of their tubes and gathered their gear, then paddled to where they could kneel on the bottom with only their heads above water and observed the shore—half with their infra screens, half with light gatherers. The squad leaders took a moment before exiting to key the “wait” instructions into the Sea Squirts, which headed for a designated hiding area in deeper water as soon as the Marines were all clear.

  While the nine Marines were assembling, Fryman gave the beach and cliffs close behind it a scan with his motion detector. No one there. “Hit the beach,” he ordered.

  Keeping only their heads above water, the Marines advanced on a line, propelling themselves with their fingertips and toes against the sandy bottom. When the water was shallow enough that they were almost on their bellies, they rose to their feet and surged forward, past the waterline and across the shallow, boulder-studded beach, to the foot of the cliff. Water streamed off their water-repellent chameleons.

  Fryman took a minnie from his waist pack, turned it on, and placed it against the cliff face. The minnie felt about for tiny irregularities in the rock that would give it purchase, then began scampering upward. The miniature reconnaissance device was disguised as a type of rodent common to the cliffs in this area and would easily fool any casual observer. As dark as the night was, a casual observer wouldn’t even notice the unnatural assemblage hanging off the rodent’s hindquarters. Two more, similarly disguised, minnies followed the first.

  The cliff at that point was a little more than thirty meters high. It took the minnies only a few minutes to reach its top, where they skittered about in a most rodentlike manner, looking at their surroundings and into the middle distance in visible light, infrared, and amplified visible. They raised their noses and sniffed at the air, seeking airborne chemicals that would telltale hidden watchers. Then waited for instructions.

/>   At the foot of the cliff, Fryman studied the data his controller comp received from the minnies. Satisfied there wasn’t anybody directly above the Marines, he transmitted new orders to the minnies. Still rodentlike, the minnies skittered about until the assemblages on their hindquarters hung at the edge of the cliff. A faint whirring was the only indication they were doing something unrodentlike; the thin lines the minnies lowered down the cliff were almost invisible in daylight, completely so in the dark. Except for the weights on the ends of the lines, which had markers visible in ultraviolet.

  Fryman and the squad leaders watched through UV lenses for the lines and caught them when they reached the bottom of the cliffs. Working rapidly but carefully, they attached lightweight grasping cables to the ends of the lines. On a signal from Fryman, the minnies skittered away from the edge of the cliff to small boulders they could anchor themselves to and towed up the lines. Fryman and the squad leaders let the cables trail through their fingers. When the tops of the cables went over the cliff top, they tightened their grips and the minnies stopped reeling them in. The three Marine leaders twisted the cables just so, and the top ends frayed and splayed out, to grip the rocky ground as firmly as a clinging vine.

  The Marines attached a climbing grip to the cables and headed up, half climbing, half towed by the grips. When the first three reached the top, they rolled away from the cables into defensive positions and let the climbing grips drop back down for the next three Marines.

  In moments, all nine were atop the cliff. Their objective was right where they expected it to be, spreading out two hundred meters to their left and fifty meters from the cliff edge. They’d studied the latest images of the objective right before boarding the AstroGhost to make planetfall; nothing they could detect from the cliff top indicated anything in it had changed. They’d rehearsed the mission several times before leaving for it and had studied it constantly during transit. Each of them knew exactly what he had to do and how to do it. Staff Sergeant Fryman said, “Let’s do it,” into his helmet comm, and the nine Marines rose up and headed toward their objective.