Intrepid

Abe went without a backward glance. That was good, ‘cause Cortez might otherwise have shot him. Here and there, a hostage stood. Most stayed seated and gave the standing ones a lot of lip. One woman sat back down.

''Captain Afonin,'' Cortez said.

The company commander whipped out his automatic and fired a round in the air. Talk stopped. Captain Afonin got the standing ones headed for a truck, then followed Abe as he headed for other clumps of hostages for his little talk.

It went quicker after that.

Most of the trucks had lumber on their beds, either as the bed itself or to protect the metal below. Between the locals and the engineers, they got several long chunks of board into a tripod-and-pulley arrangement good enough to lift some trucks off their axles. Getting the axles out was not an easy task; most tires were determinedly not round.

The process was not without its mishaps. One engineer had his leg crushed when a tripod collapsed and a truck came down early. Several arms were broken. Grim thoughts that Cortez was starting to have about sabotage hung like a deadly cloud over the process as the casualty count grew higher. But that count stayed about even between those in green and the locals. In the end it was dead even at five each, and he resnapped the cover to his sidearm.

Tires proved to be the limiting factor. None of the axles they recovered could take a tire from a Guard rig. Most of the local rigs had been shot up pretty well, even the spare tires. The final tally came in at eight single-axle carts.

The sun was edging below the horizon about the time both the tangle net started to crack and fall off its victims and the wagons were loaded with as much food, ammunition, and water as they would carry. A squad was delegated to protecting the rest.

Cortez got his command to the north end of the causeway and then set his troops to digging fighting holes to sleep in. Ten freed hostages started their way south. The remaining forty were cuffed sitting up to the wagons they would pull in the morning.

The night guards got a serious talking-to. ''If anything moves in your line of fire, kill it.'' Grim faced, they took in their orders.

The night was broken regularly by gunfire. Winged and four-legged critters that caught a guard's attention died without firing a shot in retaliation. Sleep was not all that plentiful, but as dawn came up the next morning, the camp was secure.

27

Kris finally got a chance to talk to Jack around sunset. He risked rigging a tight-beam to the Wasp, which immediately passed it along to Kris.

''How'd Short Stop One go?'' was Kris's first question.

''Surprisingly close to plan,'' Jack answered happily. ''In one wild minute my fifty Marines pretty much took down every truck they had. They're all afoot now.''

''They get anyone?''

''Winged a private who didn't get his butt down low enough when Cortez rewarded us with one of the noisiest mad minutes I ever hope to encounter. I thought these broom trees were tough, but they shot several of them up so badly they kind of came sliding down into the mud low and slow. 'Twas sad to see such giants laid low.''

''Just so long as none of us got laid low.''

''As I said, one bun shot. How's your recruiting job gone?'' Jack asked back.

''I've got quite a procession spread out around me, say eight hundred locals along. My Marines are busy training them.''

''They any good?''

''We won't know that until the shooting starts. Speaking of good, what's your call of the invaders? They up to Marine standards?''

''Don't let Gunny hear you even thinking that question. From what I saw of them, there's about a company of heavily armed and armored. I figure them to be nearly as good as ours. Then there are three companies of guys running around in uniforms but no armor. And just a rifle and bayonet. They haven't impressed me. One walked into the tangle web and let it make them into a bunch of fools. Those that missed the fun with tangle net didn't duck all that fast when we shot up the trucks. Give Gunny two or three months with your local recruits, and I bet he'd have them in better shape than these white coats.''

''We don't have two or three months. Gunny and his NCOs are doing everything they can with the locals, but a day or two isn't two or three months.''

''You getting cold feet?''

''I'm worrying about Short Stop Two.''

The pause wasn't all that long before Jack came back. ''It's bothering me, too. Looks kind of obvious on the map, and I don't trust this Colonel Cortez with obvious. Not after what we did to him in the last obvious ambush ground.''

Short Stop Two was a neck on the road north where the ridgeline to the west reached almost down to the swamp on the east. Because of the high water table, the gophers and their droppings had been forced to the surface. Someone had dug up the area, leaving behind what looked like shallow trenches. Now overgrown with bushes and young trees, it had looked, from orbit, like a perfect place to set up a second ambush.

Now maybe it didn't.