The Madman's Clock. Aaron Ph.D. Dov
numbers and get it done."
I turned to my right, and David inched back enough so my hand signals could be seen by Kyle and Raj, though remain hidden behind the barricade. I let the spring action in my rifle sling pull the weapon against my chest, and started signaling with both hands. Simple, yet effective. I suppose the instructors were expecting a lack of comms to be a problem. That was more insulting than anything.
'Forward sweep,' I signaled silently. 'Fire and move in turns.'
Kyle and Raj nodded, as did David, who watched out of the corner of his eye as he scanned our forward field of fire, shooting every so often to keep the enemy focused on him and not me. I turned back toward the front, and David inched up against the barricade. This would be over quickly, once we started moving.
The other squad seemed to pull themselves together, and had decided to make a stand instead of pushing forward. Rookie mistake, but predictable and understandable. Most soldiers, confronted by what seemed, and in this case certainly was a superior force, tended to dig in and try to hold their ground. It was a natural instinct, really. Let the bad guy come to you, and theoretically, you can control the field. Without the variable of movement, you can focus on shooting, and watching the attackers' movements. Again, very natural. Also very foolish.
Recon Marines, like most Special Forces for the last several centuries, were trained to stay on the offensive. Holding ground is not what we did. We took ground, no matter how much the bad guys wanted to keep it. Push hard enough and fast enough and your enemy eventually panicked and lost composure. Or, you know, died trying to hold their position. Whatever worked.
David and I moved first. We swept right, around the barricade. Our steps were quick, but not overreaching. Not a run, but a fast walk. Each step was sure and methodical. No rushing. As soon as we started moving, Kyle and Raj opened up, laying down heavy fire. Short bursts only. Two shots, reassess, two more shots. One looked while the other fired, creating an endless stream of fire from their position, yet allowing one set of eyes to watch. It also allowed reloading to be accomplished without too much interruption of fire.
We fired as we moved, but only a few rounds each. These were not plasma rifles, but paint-round guns; they used physical ammo, and we didn't have a lot of it. My target ducked down behind her barricade, even though rounds were not coming anywhere near her. The other squad hadn't realized how low their weapons were set, yet. I waited for one of them to squeeze off a shot and figure it out, but they seemed too scared to do much of anything.
David and I took up our new position, and immediately started firing, angling our rifles upward in order to squeeze a little more range out of them. Kyle and Raj stated moving, just as we had. They fired a few rounds as they moved. They also angled their shots upward, but still, nobody was throwing a round more than fifty meters or so. Even from our new position, that was still slightly short of our targets. I shook my head and sighed. Maybe one of them would slip on the paint spattered on the deck in front of them.
Just as Raj and Kyle reached their new barricade, two of the other marines dashed across our view, left to right. They were moving at a full run, and dove behind a nearby barricade. We were so close now; there was no more cover between us and them. Two were still near their entry door, with David and me across from them. The other two dashing marines were now directly downrange from Kyle and Raj.
I signaled for everyone to wait. The other squad was hiding, though I could hear their hissed orders, that sort of yelled whisper you get when you need to speak to someone far away but don't want to be heard. I couldn't make out the words, but obviously, they were planning something. If they ever got their heads together, they could drag this out. We would have to charge them, one way or the other, since they obviously weren't coming out after us.
I looked to my right, and gave the signal for a 'hydra' maneuver. Both pairs would move in at the same time. We would lay down heavy fire as we moved, spacing ourselves out into a jagged line, two groups becoming four equally spaced shooters, though still focused on our respective pair of targets. It would make it harder to hit us, as they expected us to still be moving in pairs. That moment, that split second while they readjusted to four moving targets instead of two tight groups, would give us all the time we needed to end this.
We stood up as one, David and I circling our barricade to the right, Kyle and Raj to their barricade's left. Our fire was constant, but not wild. The blue paint splattered the top and side edges of the enemy barricades, or flew just over top of them. We closed in on their positions. I moved toward the left side of our target barricade, and David the right. Kyle and Raj did the same for theirs.
We were so close that if one of the enemies picked their head up, they would take a round. It would probably hurt. A lot. With half of my rifle's clip gone, twenty rounds left, I sped up. We moved into a careful run as we swept in for the kill. I rounded the barricade, firing four rounds downward, as did David from the other side, our shots crossing paths but far enough away to avoid either of us shooting the other. We fired directly into... nothing!
"What the fuck?" David muttered.
The barricade was empty. I saw that the barricade Kyle and Raj had charged was likewise devoid of targets. Before I could say anything, I heard rounds whip past my head. Two struck the barricade, and I dove behind it, bumping into David as he did the same. The fire was coming from the right, past Raj and Kyle.
Raj and Kyle were running towards us, firing as they did. I looked behind them. The other four marines were set up at a barricade close by, which was oriented ninety degree off from the others. They had cover as they fired across the width of the arena. We did not. I scurried for cover, exposed along the side of my barricade. The edge of it was barely forty centimeters across, but it would do for the moment. David rushed for cover as well, but there was none. I fired from the downrange side of the barricade's edge, and David from the right. Rounds peppered the deck in front of us, and the wall behind us.
Kyle and Raj weaved left and right as they ran, the fire coming fast and furious from behind. Only bad aim kept them from taking several rounds in the back. They managed to find cover much as we had, which was not much at all.
"There," David said, pointing to my left.
I nodded. "Yeah. Cute, huh?"
"Not so much," he replied grimly.
There was a hatch in the deck, which the other squad had used to move to their new position. We hadn't seen it on our approach. Nice ambush. Obviously, these marines weren't as green as I'd thought. They had played us. The confusion, the shouting, the panicky orders, it was all a ruse. They knew we looked at them like they were fresh meat, and they played it up.
Mostly, we had been cocky. I rebuked myself, swearing at my stupidity. Three weeks off the line, and already we were losing some of the edge we relied on. All the paper work and interviews and the rest of that crap shouldn't have mattered. We were letting it all get in the way of our job.
"Not cool," I muttered to myself. "Really not cool."
"Is it me," David commented, "or are their rifles firing straighter than ours?"
I listened to the thwack of paint rounds strike the wall behind us.
"Yeah," I replied. "We're being screwed with."
"What, and no dinner first?" Raj huffed from his nearby position.
"I know," I replied, firing a burst which forced the other squad down behind their cover. "No romance, anymore. What happened to good manners?"
"Let's teach them some," Kyle called out anxiously.
I could see in Kyle's eyes that he could see the endgame in his head. He got this focused look when that happened, like when a person looks into a crowd and sees someone they know. There was this look, as something inside clicked. Kyle got that when he saw an opening.
"You see it?" I asked, already knowing the answer.
"Hell,