Chapter 109 – Maritime Mayhem.

Lot of glossary terms in this one.

SOCOM - Special Operations Command

JSOC - Joint Special Operations Command (subservice within SOCOM)

AWG - Asymmetric Warfare Group - An Army organization tasked with identifying new adversary tactics, techniques, and procedures and identifying shortfalls in readiness

MARSOC - Marine Special Operations Command

Group - Shorthand for members of Army special operations teams, such as the 10th Special Forces Group. Saying someone is 'group' is saying that they belong to one of the special forces teams.

Chapter 109 – Maritime Mayhem.

Cole hadn’t had much time for boats, historically. He could swim and he could work an outboard motor, sure. But fishing in Georgia was best left for the bank or the beach with a cooler of frosty beverages. Not bobbing in the middle of a lake in an aluminum bucket.

That was before he learned the Navy’s tactical river boats that went seventy-plus kilometers per hour were a thing.

Cross-training with boat crews for rapid shallow-water combat saw the whole squad in the tributaries of Virginia, and rather than Cole leaving early, this time he was there for the whole soaked-to-the-bone experience. Not only that, but it would be unattuned crews actually operating boats on Hexighast to insert them inside the cities. Brave sons of bitches.

The chief petty officer at the helm hit the speed retarding jets, and the boat roared as it kicked up a ten-foot wall of water. As soon as the prow hit the shore, Cole swung over the side, struggling up the slippery bank to the tree line. The deafening covering fire of the pintle-mounted sim-round LMG shredded the foliage overhead.

Howie was first up the bank. The Marine might not have been a mid-distance runner like Cole, but he was a hell of a sprinter. He lifted the grenade launcher in his hand and fired two grenades that arced toward the plywood village. The pop hiss of phosphor smoke grenades cut off a clatter of return fire from the village.

Roxy and Besson pushed up next, with Nona bringing up the rear. Her conditioning was improving, but she still couldn’t keep up with the active military members of the team in a non-enhanced environment. Two grueling weeks of this amphibious assault training was starting to show in her face.

“Besson, Howie, move up to the ridgeline three hundred meters on our right. Make sure they can’t flank us from that angle and pin down the village.”

“Movin’,” said Howie, tagging Besson on the shoulder.

“Roxy, Nona, on me.”

With the cover of the smoke grenades billowing white clouds, Cole advanced up, rifle at the ready. He spotted movement at a shack and fired several rounds from behind Roxy’s ballistic shield. Gunfire from the ridge where he’d sent Besson and Howie began to echo down into the plywood village. Cole closed the distance to the nearest structure, eyes peeled for any sign of movement. A trio of masked figures stood from behind a barricade but lowered their rifles almost immediately as their interlinks went dead from the support fire.

“Fuck!” shouted one of them. They stood, watching as Cole, Roxy, and Nona vaulted into the dugout with them and moved through the trench to a two-story structure. Roxy pulled the pin on a grenade and shoved it through a gap in the window covering.

“Grenade!” someone called from within, along with the sounds of scrabbling against wooden floors. A moment later, the pop and flash rattled the structure and Cole kicked the door in so that Roxy could push inside. Her pistol barked as she pivoted left, so Cole swung right and fired at a pair of soldiers tucked into the corner and then focused on a blind corner that led deeper in the structure while Nona pulled in behind him and tapped him on the shoulder. He moved up to the corner and angled his rifle around.

“Two doors left, one right,” he whispered. They moved up, arranging themselves on either side of the first door. Cole held the hallway while Nona and Roxy breached, then repeated the process with the other two rooms, eliminating threats as they went.

The CQB drill continued up to the second floor, where a sim frag from Cole took out three more of the red team soldiers. Each of the soldiers sat in place. But pushing into the room, fire from underneath a table hit Cole’s vest, activating his sim interlink and killing his weapon.

“Shit,” said Roxy, taking a knee to finish off the lurking soldier. “Nona, on that right corner!”

Nona got her gun up just in time for a duo to lean around the corner. She was faster, but their gunfire killed her interlink first. At the same time, two soldiers came up the stairs and tagged Roxy from behind with a grenade from the first floor that also killed their two friendlies in the room.

Cole pulled a radio from a pouch on his plate carrier. “Cease exercise, cease exercise,” called Cole. He looked at Nona. “Nona, your leg okay?”

“Landed bad off the boat,” she said. It had been subtle, but she’d favored her left foot during the drill and been a bit slow on the advance. “It’s fine. We can go again.”

Cole shook his head. “Not worth pushing it into an actual injury.”

“Even if we do, we can just…” Nona looked at the soldiers, the very much uncleared soldiers, who watched them with interest. She stopped short of saying we can just heal it. “Fine,” she said, instead, glowering.

Cole keyed the radio again. “Endex, endex.”

The hostile soldiers in the room sighed with relief and started unclasping helmets and slinging rifles.

“Thank fucking god,” one of them muttered.

“Sorry about your ankle,” another one offered to Nona. The woman just looked away.

“Fuckin’ fine, then,”

Roxy patted the guy on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, she’s like that with us, too.”

“Cut the chatter, Emmerson,” one of the soldiers warned. He had master sergeant’s stripes—someone who would have outranked Cole in the Army. The senior NCO turned to him. “Anything else you need here, sir?”

Cole shook his head. “Negative. Thanks for all your help today.”

“How about a ride, at least?”

Cole kicked one of his legs absently. There was still water in his boot, and he didn’t much care for the idea of climbing back into the jet boats. He keyed his radio, instead. “Chief, we’re hitching a ride back to the upper base. Ya’ll are good to RTB.

“Aye, aye,” came the reply. “After action?”

“If you want to attend, it’ll be at—” Cole checked his watch. “—1800 hours. I’ve got no notes for you on the landings. I think we’ve got that locked down.”

Cole slung his rifle.

Roxy checked her own watch and looked back at him. “We should make it back in time for chow, this time,” she said.

Besson and Howie met them in the center of the village. The defending training unit had several tactical vehicles, but also several pickups, and they piled into the back of one for the forty-minute drive back to civilization. Gear return, showers, and uniform changes let Cole feel actually human again, and he had the dark grey DOR fatigues on by the time he met Roxy and the others.

“Food here sucks,” said Howie as they sat down at one of the tables. The only one missing was Besson, who typically got something from one of the fast-food joints on post so that he could eat alone.

“Yeah. Got the nutritional value of cardboard,” said Roxy, lifting a spoonful of rice pilaf.

Nona said nothing. But she usually didn’t, when it came to food. The way she always ate her own without comment or complaint made Cole think she probably grew up with worse. Earthlings were apparently pretty spoiled in the food department if even Army chow was a step up from what she was used to. She seemed extra moody, since he’d called endex.

“Nona,” said Cole. She looked away, but he could see her eyes flick to him. “We were hitting diminishing returns,” he said. “That was going to be the last iteration regardless. Don’t think we stopped for you.”

She softened somewhat. Cole relaxed, too. It was tougher reading her on Earth where the Soul Schism locked parts of her personality away. But he was starting to pick up some of the nuances.

A laughing, jostling group with trays came by. Cole heard a quiet “Oh, shit,” and then a throat clear. He looked up, recognizing several of the soldiers from the red team now changed into PT gear. “Mind if we sit with ya’ll?” he asked.

“Go ahead,” said Cole.

The group pulled out chairs and dropped plates onto the table. “How do you like the food? Peter, by the way.”

“Cole,” said Cole. “And, uh, better than Bragg. But it’s close.”

Peter grinned. “Right?” he leaned in. “So, hey. We’ve got some bets going on. Trying to figure out who you guys are. I know you were Army. But this training exercise is so weird. We’ve trained with Delta and we’ve trained with SEALs, and we’re pretty sure you’re neither of those. If one of us guessed right, will you confirm?”

“Sure,” said Cole.

Peter scooted his chair in, grinning and rubbing his hands together. “Alright, first off, do ya’ll fall under SOCOM?” he asked.

“Negative,” said Howie.

Several of the soldiers tsked or grumbled at that. Peter just chuckled. “They were thinking JSOC, MARSOC, and Group. But there’s no way. There’d be at least twenty of you on those boats. So are you private?”

Cole shook his head. “Working for good ol’ Uncle Sam.”

Another couple members of their group groaned. Peter’s smile got wider. “Knew that, too. Gotta be a three-letter agency.”

Cole considered.

“If you’re thinking that long about it, it’s gotta be money. CIA? FBI? NSA?”

“Nope, nope, and nope,” said Cole.

“AWG? PMG? Secret service? Homeland security?”

Howie leaned in. “What’s PMG?

“Post Master General,” said one of the other soldiers.

Roxie snorted.

“They don’t fuck around!” the guy protested. One of the others threw a military-grade bread roll at him.

Cole chuckled. “Sorry,” he said.

Peter huffed, taking a bite of his food. “It’s just weird. There’s only a couple of you. You’re infiltrating compounds to disable equipment or penetrate through a defensive line and reach the other end. You’re super outnumbered, you can’t call for fire or air support. And on top of that, you gotta hit us each four times to take us out of action and it still takes a dozen of us to slow you down.”

“You’re right,” said Howie “It is weird.” He leaned in and lowered his voice. “We’re SHIELD agents,” he confided.

One of the other soldiers snorted.

“Oh yeah? Tell Scarjo and Nick Fury I said hi,” said Peter, laughing.

Nona looked at Cole. “What team are they on?”

“What? No, it’s a… never mind. I’ll backfill you later.”

Howie laughed and tapped Roxy on the shoulder. “Marvel marathon at Cole’s place.”

Cole snickered and leaned back. It was… weird, how much he missed this. How much he missed sitting in an Army chow hall shooting the shit with regular soldiers. He couldn’t even tell them what they were really red teaming for. That their OPFOR toughness represented automaton monster robots, and that Cole’s team’s lack of fire support was a result of an operation completely off-world.

Maybe a movie marathon was just the thing to regain some sense of normalcy. Even just these last weeks of being on-post training with guys in uniform with standard-issue carbines, grueling as it had been, was a release. Too much of the bat-shit insane otherworld drama would crack anyone.

Occasionally they needed a reminder that they were still supposed to be human, too.