Desperado (Murphy's Lawless: Watch the Skies Book 2), Kevin Ikenberry [reading the story of the txt] 📗

doing so. Some part of him recognized and acknowledged that he missed Aliza, but as the plan became more concrete, refining it centered him in a way that was both welcome and exhilarating.

He’d felt a similar sensation while leading the makeshift cavalry force during the J’Stull Job. Recovering Lieutenant Tapper’s forces while capturing a sizable number of J’Stull vehicles left him energized and eager, despite being physically exhausted. For the first time in years—his hundred and thirty-year sleep notwithstanding—Bo felt like he was actually doing something the Army had trained him to do. Not only that, he was good at it. During his time in Somalia, stymied by both insurgents and incompetent leadership, he’d thought of himself as a failure. The change during and after the J’Stull Job had been palpable, and he’d welcomed it. He might not have a family to return to and he might never see Earth again, but he had a worthwhile mission to perform, good—if occasionally problematic—troops, and someone to love. Once this was over, he’d make good on that last item. For now, his focus was on the task at hand.

Bo called the leadership together to set their tasks. Movement toward the objective would begin later that afternoon in order to take advantage of nightfall to pass through the defensive flora atop the plateau. It would also give the whinnies a chance to travel without holding up the formation of vehicles he would use for the main effort. One of the oldest tricks in the combat leader’s rucksack was the one-third/two-thirds rule; Bo would only take one-third of the remaining time before the operation to outline the plan, while giving Lieutenant Stewart and his subordinate section leaders the remaining two-thirds to square away their own preparations. And when that clock ran out, it would be time to cross the LD, the line of departure.

As they gathered around, Bo took a moment and studied their faces. When he’d first been awakened by Colonel Murphy and told the situation, he’d dreaded the prospect of working with “substandard soldiers.” Yet after meeting Whittaker and some of the others, he’d come away with a few hunches. Most of the Vietnam veterans were surly and immediately distrustful of officers. Bo couldn’t blame them, based on what he knew of the war. For the most part, they’d realized things were very different in this future and found a measure of long dormant professionalism. Their leadership skills returned. As Lieutenant Stewart had put it, things really had changed since they had been taken. Beneath their slowly fading façade of indifference was a change in attitude, a willingness to recognize competent leadership and the emergence of their own sense of duty. The younger soldiers, the ones who might not have had mentors to guide them in their original service, were harder to motivate, no matter when they’d been abducted. But Bo and the other officers found ways to bring them around. Riding whinnies had brought out the best in several of the young soldiers. They might still like to gamble and argue with one another when bored, but gradually they’d come together as a team, and Bo was proud of them.

“Okay, everybody. Let’s get started. Lieutenant Stewart?”

The young lieutenant nodded and stepped into the middle of the group. On the ground, they’d scratched a diagram of the city and the plateau. Stewart used a long, thin stick and pointed at the diagram to emphasize his words.

“Here is Imsurmik and the plateau behind it. You should all know what this is since we’ve been staring at it for quite a while now.”

There were a few chuckles in the group, but their collective attention remained on Stewart. He continued, “Okay, we know they’ve built a couple rows of dwellings under the shelf of the plateau. We won’t worry about them until phase two if Captain Cutter’s team runs into trouble, and we have to go door-to-door. There’s also a tunnel system which we don’t have a complete map of yet. This area here—” he pointed inside the glacis, “—is called the Inner City. It’s protected by the wall—a glacis—that’s about thirty feet tall, give or take. It’s big and appears to be fairly strong. On the west side of the city is the main access road, which enters the city through a security gate. Here, on the east side of the city, there’s a breach in the wall where a man-made canal drains into the thermal pool below. That’s where they’ve been doing most of that harvesting we’ve been hearing about.

“Down the slope from the Inner City is the Outer City and all the farmland. The major difference between the Outer City and the Inner City is that one of them has planned thoroughfares and a logical arrangement to its streets, and the other does not. The Outer City is little more than a shantytown or a rice paddy village.

“From an enemy force perspective, we can estimate they’ve got about two thousand total troops. There’s no firm chain of command we are aware of. There are a handful of warlords and their own little units. We know a couple of their leaders, but there’s nothing really definitive as far as their strength or their ability to work together. In that respect, we think we’ve got them in a position where we will have an advantage in command-and-control.”

Sergeant Fahey, another Vietnam vet, raised his hand, and Stewart paused. Fahey’s transition to this new reality had been particularly difficult and violent. Yet, over the course of the last several weeks, he had taken up riding and become familiar with his mount, Apollo. He’d really come around. So much so he’d been given a fire team of indigs to lead. “Could these guys have radios? Or any other communications we don’t know about?”

“Great question,” Stewart replied. “We don’t know. We know they’re not using anything UHF, at least in the bands we can pick up on