Grudge: Operation Highjump by Brian Parker

Author:Brian Parker [Parker, Brian]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Phalanx Press
Published: 2017-04-18T07:00:00+00:00

FOURTEEN

08 July 2025

Bravo Flight, Near Lewistown, Montana

The pockmarked concrete façade of Bravo Flight Launch Facility showed signs of recent battle. The electrified chain link fence appeared to be intact, meaning the other fallschirmjäger platoon hadn’t breached it. They’d failed before they even started.

Gregory rotated his binoculars slowly, trying to ascertain how the platoon had been unsuccessful. Three days ago, and a hellish journey over vast fields of grass and dangerous rock-strewn hills, he’d received the last radio transmission from his fellow paratroopers. The highest ranking German remaining, an unteroffizier whose name he could not remember, stated that only five men remained uninjured and they were forced to break contact. They would travel west toward Yankee Flight where Gregory’s platoon was traveling east. They never heard from them again.

“Who, or what, were they fighting?” he mumbled, searching the area surround the facility.

“Sir?” Feldwebel Anders asked from his position beside him.

The lieutenant glanced over at his platoon sergeant. He held his own pair of small, foldable hunting binoculars. They weren’t as powerful as the military-issued binoculars that Gregory had, but were much clearer at closer distances.

“Do you see any indications of what the other fallschirmjägers fought?”

He pointed at a rocky outcrop a few hundred meters from their current position. “There are bloodstains on those rocks. I assume that is where they attacked from—it’s a good location.”

Gregory turned his binoculars toward the outcropping. He’d been focused on the Bravo Flight facility and not where the others had been. There did seem to be some rust-colored stains on the rocks and the soil was disturbed from soldiers’ boots. If that’s where they’d been, their bodies and gear had been removed.

“So if that’s where they were…” he trailed off as he saw a slight bit of movement beyond the outcrop. A small drone lifted skyward. “Hide!”

His men hunkered down in the rocks, throwing their tan and grey ponchos over themselves for cover. The high-pitched whine of a quadcopter’s engines echoed across the wide expanse of the valley as no other sounds disturbed the late afternoon stillness.

He tried to ascertain where the drone was, but he couldn’t see anything except the dirt under his nose. Sweat poured in great streams from his hair, down his cheeks and fell to the ground around his nose. His canteen was within reach, would the movement be identified by the drone flying high above the valley?

The dryness in his throat morphed into a tickle near the back of his tongue. He wanted to cough to clear it away, knowing that to do so would be tantamount to suicide. To distract his mind, he thought about the sensors the Americans could have on their drone. If they employed thermal imaging, his men were already discovered. The ponchos wouldn’t hide their body heat. However, if it was simply an audio and visual sensor, they may be fine—as long as no one made any noise.

The sound of the drone’s engines drifted further away, changing tones as it went. He risked a quick glance and saw that the drone was sinking back to the earth where it had originated from.

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