The Crossing by Kevin Ikenberry

Author:Kevin Ikenberry [Ikenberry, Kevin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Science Fiction, Military, Time Travel, Alternative History
ISBN: 9781982192013
Google: oSaxzgEACAAJ
Amazon: B0B4KLHK54
Publisher: Baen
Published: 2022-08-02T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

An hour after sunset, the cadets left their cabin carrying everything they owned and moved into the forest. They’d agreed to keep the pace almost glacial, moving as silently as possible. Mason put them into a tight Ranger file with Murphy leading the procession. Under fair skies, the nearly full moon cast a weird glow over the land as it rose to the east. The clouds would provide some protection from the moonlight, but they’d need to move quickly before the moon reached full illumination overhead. As long as they moved quietly, it would be okay. The open forest near the farmlands closed in around them as they moved to the east. Even with the moon rising, the forest grew darker than anything Mason had ever seen. When he’d first joined ROTC, he’d wondered about the small rectangular patches sewn to the back of every cadet’s patrol cap and helmet bands. The “cat eyes” were universally laughed at because they broke every rule about light discipline being luminous, but making their way through a forest at night, Mason could see Koch immediately to his front and Stratton another five meters away. Their white sheet ponchos helped, too, but if they had to lay down for any reason, Mason hoped they’d be near the sporadic patches of snow so that any interested parties would be challenged to see them at all.

For nearly an hour, they crept through the darkness. A couple of times, Murphy froze them in place. In the ever-lighter forest, there were no voices in the night and once they caught sight of a lighted wagon in the distance. Staying off the roads and near any lower terrain like creek beds worked well as time ticked. By 2200, they were close to their objective and Murphy wisely slowed down even further. As they walked, Mason fingered the pace-count beads his mother had given him for Christmas. The small black plastic beads were designed to slide on a piece of parachute cord to count the tens and hundreds of a traditional pace count. The slow pace and Ranger file were throwing off his traditional pace count. He’d measured it as sixty-six steps with his left foot equaling a hundred meters. Mason had reset his beads at three thousand meters when movement caught his eye.

Koch stopped and raised a fist—the signal to freeze. Mason strained to hear something but couldn’t hear anything over his heart thumping in his chest. Koch knelt in the snow, passing back the signal for the squad to do the same. Mason moved forward quietly, his boots crunching the snow underfoot. While he couldn’t see Koch’s exact footprints, Mason tried to put his boots into the same spaces when they crossed a patch of snow. He snorted and tried not to smile. In his final briefing, they talked about using a tight Ranger file. Traveling single file would hide their numbers, Stratton had said. Mason smiled at the memory because Murphy had immediately started quoting Star Wars as a result.

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