USA vs. Militia 02 Battle Front by Ian Slater

Author:Ian Slater [Slater, Ian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FICTION/Thrillers
Publisher: Diversion Books
Published: 2013-10-28T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Six

The Everglades

Colonel Armani, still recovering from the effects of the wasp attack, looked grotesque, his face swollen, his eyes all but closed, his cheeks a vivid pink, his lips fat and protruding like a gopher fish. He hadn’t seen himself as yet in a mirror, and no one was about to suggest he should, but his four company commanders needed to hear from him, to learn precisely what had happened to his RTO and to his airboat’s driver. Where had the militia fire come from? Armani’s tongue was twice its normal size, threatening to choke him, and his speech was unintelligible. They gave him pencil and paper. His fingers too were swollen, but holding a Day-Glo marker in his fist like a young child and using big letters, he managed to convey the essential military aspect of his experience in the ’glades east of Ten Thousand Islands; namely, that he’d come under fire from the middle of the three islands, no more than a quarter mile from the hammock on which he’d sought refuge.

If nothing else, the information relieved any anxiety the company commanders had about this mission’s rules of engagement. The militia had clearly initiated hostilities, so now it was a simple case of returning or initiating fire the moment any militia was spotted. There was the rub, however, for Armani. Despite his bone-deep agony from the hundreds of wasp stings, his body still coursing with poison, he had not seen a single militiaman. Could it have been a single sniper who had killed his RTO and forced them to take shelter from the mortar squads hitting them? The four commanders’ assumption that there was a large militia force at hand was just that: an assumption.

There was only one way to find out, only this time Armani’s second-in-command, Colonel Gill, had a definite target, the middle island of the three. This time Gill ordered men of the 53rd Battalion, the four hundred of Alpha and Bravo companies on the left flank, the four hundred of Charlie and Delta companies on the right, to proceed in two channels of water lilies approximately a hundred yards apart to the off side of the football-field-sized island to which Armani, Ainsley, and Jory Thomas had fled and designated “Echo.” It meant that instead of approaching the middle “White” island of the three islands beyond Echo designated “Red,” “White,” and “Blue,” as Armani’s three-man scout boat had done in the relatively open saw-grass water, Alpha and Bravo on the left with Charlie and Delta on the right would advance toward White Island using Echo Island as a blind. Once in close to the western side of Echo, the two companies could sweep out quickly from the northern and southern extremities of the island, Alpha and Bravo taking Red, Charlie and Delta taking Blue, before the enemy could launch an effective mortar attack. But even if the enemy launched another small arms and mortar attack, they would have to split their resources in order to bring fire on the two National Guard forces.

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