Paper or Plastic Read online

  Paper or Plastic?

  Mackey Chandler

  Prologue

  Lieutenant Roger McGregor chugged the last half canteen of warm plastic flavored water. He wiped his face on his sleeve and felt the grit grate on his cheek, even though it was the first day for a fresh shirt and the wind wasn't up yet. He could feel the thin thermal vest under his armor working already, sucking heat from his torso, but everything not under the vest felt like it was against a heating pad.

  The morning sun was still low behind them and the view west out the bunker slit was like looking in a furnace door. The shadows were all cast away from them and the yellow glow on the rolling desert made it hard to see anything move. He'd have much rather been on the north or south corner of the diamond shaped base. There the cross lighting made anything sticking up much more visible. Each corner was like an independent fort in miniature and their back was fortified to the base almost as well as their front.

  Across the horizon was Iraq, as if the border with Iran was anything but an abstraction. The Pan-Arabic Protectorate made those old map lines a matter for history books. The locals, on either side of the line, hadn't paid any more attention to the old border than the new arrangement. They rode along the same trails, to the same villages, unchanged for generations.

  Divided by language and religion and ultimately by tribe and family, the locals could still all agree on one thing. They agreed the only thing worse than each other was Lt. McGregor and all his ilk.

  "Westside, we have too many thermal sources showing on the drone," Captain Tate informed them from one of the open laptops. "They've deployed a lot of decoys, so you can expect some action before they start to burn out - call it three hours - they have been setting them up from before dawn. The other quadrants don't have near this level of activity, so it looks like you will bear the brunt of whatever they have planned."

  "How's the weather holding, sir?" Sergeant Cruz at his elbow asked the Captain.

  Lt. McGregor looked at the sky and knew the answer before the Captain replied. The horizon was a gold glow with no sharp line.

  "Wind picking up from the west-north-west within the next hour."

  Within the next fifteen minutes he'd tell Cruz, but not while the Captain could hear. The Captain didn't like having the official forecast questioned.

  "Full gun crews will be standing at their tubes in a half hour. We have two armed drones on call and the fuel for the lasers was topped up two days ago. The other points don't have your level of Tangos, but I still need to talk to them now," and he was gone without so much as a click to mark him hanging up. That was his usual abrupt way of ending a briefing. He was commander so he could do that.

  "Juan, make sure everybody is armored up and have their faceplates ready to drop. Walk through and make sure they have water and extra ammo at their positions."

  "Yes Sir, that's just what I came in from doing." It wasn't an argument and he nodded an acknowledgement. Cruz knew what he was doing and he was glad of it.

  Some of the other officers insisted on calling him John Cross since the English laws were passed. Roger felt the man's mother knew what she wanted to call him. He wasn't such a hard ass that he'd humiliate him over his name, as if any Hispanic was suspect after the attempted Aztlan succession. That was stupid stereotyping, the last of the riots had ended three years ago. Roger knew Juan had been in the service before they even started and he was loyal.

  The blue ribbon tied on one of the close in stakes at three hundred meters picked up and fluttered toward them feebly. There were wind markers like that in all directions, color coded for range out to a kilometer and a half. They let the snipers read the wind much better than depending on dust and mirage. There wasn't a leaf or a blade of grass to tremble in the wind anywhere in sight.

  "Mortar up," Juan called out. The left computer screen had switched to counter battery radar and showed the source of the shot and that counter battery fire had already responded. The report of the responding fire barely made it to the screen, before the thud of the responding weapon told them anyway. The mortar tube and crew would already be in a small pickup running away. The vehicle mounted battlefield laser behind their bunker fired up with a deep rumble. That muted the crack of the mortar round being intercepted far overhead.

  Roger lifted his binoculars and looked to where the shot came from. The computer icon marked a point about two kilometers to the west. There was a small cloud of yellow dust, lifting from down among the folds of badlands, moving to the south. He looked at the overlaid topo map and the folds ran away almost due south there. As he watched, a cloud of brown and black smoke and dust puffed up to the north, followed by the sound of three distinct explosions as the counter battery struck.

  Roger keyed his mic. "Fire Control, this is Westside point. Dust movement indicates enemy fire party got away almost due south. Suggest you walk fire south, starting a hundred meters from your detected launch point."

  "Roger Westside, thanks."

  Three deep thuds marked the departure of their rounds and he lifted the binoculars again to watch.

  Three small flashes of yellow light winked from north to south just over the hills, as a line of cluster munitions burst open and filled the arroyo with bomblets for almost a kilometer of its length. The individual explosions were lost in a general rumble felt through the ground. A cloud of dirty taupe slowly rose along the line of fire. The way the dust was coming toward them as it lifted, showed the wind was picking up. A mortar tube and a pickup were worth expending three cluster munitions. Later today when they had a flight in, they'd check and make sure the weapon was not recoverable.

  "Getting some small arms at extreme range," Juan told him calmly. Roger heard him ordering the men in the open to drop their ballistic face shields. From over a kilometer away they would deflect even 7.62mm rounds. With the shield down at that range, the only part of their body at risk of common rifle fire was their hands. Armor had yet to be developed that could be made into a glove and over flaps got in the way so much they got cut off and 'lost'.

  On the computer the other three corners of the base were shown receiving harassing fire. There were small villages both to the north and south of the base and the Intel people had decided it was prudent to put some cameras in both of them when they'd moved in. On the net they referred to them as Alpha to the north and Beta to the south. "In Alpha and Beta both, everybody has gone for cover and they are taking our cameras out." Command informed them. The screen showed four panes, of which three were black. Alpha was off line and Beta showed a market square with a few stragglers running for cover. A few had abandoned their wares, vegetables laid out on tarps unattended and a few stubborn shop-keeps were cranking down the metal doors, that covered the entire front of their small shops. Apparently nobody had found this one camera and didn't know it was still working. Roger and Juan watched with mounting rage as three Toyota pickups converged on the market and crews piled out setting mortar tubes up.

  "Permission to take out the weapons setting up in Beta," the voice of the Fire Control officer pleaded on the command circuit on which Roger was lurking.

  "I'm not willing to be suckered into that kind of collateral damage until they have rounds in the air," Captain Tate told him. The ribbon at two hundred meters was picking up, hanging a bit to the left, almost towards them. That indicated somewhere between a five and ten mile an hour wind.

  Along a line to the west of them a series of explosions blew debris high in the air. It looked different - grey with shiny highlights. It wasn't their fire mission raising it, because he hadn't heard any guns firing.

  "FC is that friendly fire to the west?" Rog inquired. He'd no sooner asked than a new round of explosions repeated to the west, throwing more
crap in the air. Closer up, columns of dark brown smoke like a smudge pot would release, started rolling up from the hollows. The whole thing was blending into a dirty wall that looked almost like a sandstorm front approaching. Already anything beyond three hundred meters was hidden now and the wind was pushing it over them quickly.

  "Captain Tate," the voice of the Fire Control officer sounded concerned, "the whole area to the west is a solid return on radar. It would appear to be some form of chaff, or metal powder. This is some new shit - It's going to compromise our ability to direct counter battery fire."

  "What about the lasers?" Tate asked. "Can the millimeter stuff see through that crap?"

  As if to answer the laser behind them activated with a growl. They heard it crawling up the ramp on its tracks from its revetment to the riskier high ground, so it could fire down on RPGs and other direct fire weapons, as well as the ballistic targets.

  The fire of their own artillery thumping away with mechanical regularity, was joined by a sound they didn't want to hear - ground shaking explosions as incoming rounds were not intercepted and struck around their position. The deep sound of the laser cut off, as it couldn't acquire targets anymore and they could hear it retreating back into the groove. The artillery continued unabated, but Roger was sure they were firing blind at guessed coordinates.

  "Captain Tate," Roger called. He was going to suggest running the fire mission on Beta.

  No Connection - Node Down, the computer informed him of the Captain. He still had a line to Fire Control.

  "FC, Captain Tate is offline. We're taking the fire he demanded as a prior for weapons release, run a mission on Beta's market. Shit they're probably mounted back up moving to a new fire site by now. Walk a grid across them four hundred meters wide. It's the one place out there we know we have a target. What? Yes, that is my order. The suckers stood there and let them set up their tubes to kill us. That makes them all Tangos if they collaborate."

  The air outside was turning brown and another mortar round landed close enough to bring sand down from the bunker roof. "Juan," he said, looking left to see what he was doing on the board, "chemical drill," he suddenly decided. "We don't know what's in that radar opaque smoke, it could be toxic."

  Juan turned his face toward Roger to reply and there was a white glare of light behind him and a deafening concussion which lifted and smashed the Sergeant's body into his, in an impossibly short time. There was pain too overwhelming to localize and he felt himself falling through the air briefly, before he passed out.

  When he woke his nose hurt horribly and there was bright sunlight shining. Where had the smoke gone? Where had the roof of the bunker gone? He seemed to be laying on something ragged, painfully digging into his back. Time had passed, so he desperately needed to see the Tac screens. He fumbled at his side to brace himself up and a face appeared over his.

  "How much juice does it take to keep you down Lieutenant?" the medic asked. "Shit, this should be enough to drop a horse to its knees," he complained, and tweaked a valve on an IV bag above, he'd not seen somehow. Rog dropped back shocked. The last thing he saw was the huge black triangle of a lighter than air heavy lifter above, damn near as big as their whole base. The lines of its drop elevators came down from the sky, like a tether for a floating island. Then the warm feeling crawling up his arm from the IV spread up his neck and the scene faded out like a smooth video transition. He never felt them pick his litter up.

  When he awoke again he was in a hospital room. There were pine trees outside on distant hills and lazy flakes of snow drifting down slowly. There was a man lying in the next bed, who looked interested in the fact he was awake. Civilian, he thought immediately and then wondered why he'd thought that. He was really groggy. He looked back at the pine covered hills. Oh, yeah - Germany, he thought finally. Then he examined the man again. Ah, the hair. Not many soldiers with a pony tail. But then he blinked and couldn't force his eyes open again.

  "Shit..." he protested about the world in general.

  "Amen, brother." he heard the stranger agree, before he fell asleep again.

  Chapter 1

  Roger had good days and bad days. So far today was pretty good, but he hadn’t got out of bed yet, stretching unhurried and knuckling the rheumy corners of his eyes. The sun was shining and he had slept well, thankfully without any dreams he could remember. He had not set a fire in the stove when he went to bed and autumn was just far enough along that it was cool in the cabin this early in the morning. Soon he would have to bank a fire for the nights.

  Once he threw off the warm blanket he hurried into the bathroom and turned the shower on. With the door closed it heated the small room quickly. When he was done with a leisurely shower, he put on thick socks and baggy pants, leaving the draw string in the waist untied. He put no shirt on yet. It was time to do his physical therapy and he didn’t want to restrict his movement. The exercise would keep him warm too, but not to the point of sweating.

  "House, music – soft jazz channel," he commanded the system. The wool rug beside his bed was thick for a reason: it served as his exercise mat and he sat on it with legs spread straight before him and started stretching. There was a familiar succession of pops that progressed up his spine – three distinct ones – as he turned right at the hips and reached to touch the opposite toes. The turn the other way produced no pops but was harder and he could feel the scar tissue in his back protest as it did every morning.

  Months of intense physical therapy and several years now of faithfully following these daily exercises, had convinced him it would never feel completely right again, but it was acceptable. He could walk normally and didn’t even think about his injuries most of the day. Sometimes when he was tired and had pushed himself too far, a twinge would remind him how fortunate he was.

  The lines, traced out in scars, that shrapnel cut across his hips and lower back, could have easily paralyzed him. The methods of nerve regeneration so common now, had not been available just a few years ago. He continued through his routine, so used to it he did so without conscious thought. When he was through he might not really remember what he had done, but counting off twenty-five repetitions of each motion in a set sequence was automatic now, while his mind followed the music.

  There was plenty of food in the cabin and even more buried in a cache out back, but Rog had a taste for some fresh fruit, some bananas and maybe some grapes, if the market in town had some of the green ones. He felt like he could deal with being around people today. The woods around the cabin were pine, but the trees down in town would be changing by now and he could get a lunch after shopping and sit among the aspen and maples, enjoying the colors.

  The computer on his desk chirped quietly, to indicate his security program wanted his attention. The monitor hung on the wall behind opened, showing a topo map of the area around his cabin. The three icons showing on the edge were familiar enough he didn't bother to get up, but stayed and completed his reps.

  When he was finished he was limbered up enough to rise easily and sit at the desk. He clicked his mouse and zoomed in on the area containing the icons. It was probably just deer, as a small notation on the map marked a line as a known game trail. However, deer weren’t the only things that could use a game trail.

  The woods were too dense for a camera to be much good. Instead what had triggered his alert was one of the wireless heat and motion sensors, that he had scattered a half-mile in every direction. Most of them attached high enough on trees, that few people would think to look for them. Even then, they were small and he often disguised their shape with a little putty, to make them look like fungus or a dead branch stub.

  The icons were approaching a small stream, and there the woods opened enough he had positioned three small cameras, along the approaches to his cabin. He clicked on the closest camera, to open a smaller window showing its view, panned it downstream and waited patiently.

  The first doe stepped out of thick undergrowth and looked around, instinctively unc
omfortable with the open area when she normally stayed hidden in the thick woods. Only after her two sisters were in the open with her, did she feel safe to drop her head again and feed. Rog zoomed the camera in to enjoy the scene. After watching a few moments the three were posed so nicely he tapped the hot key to capture the scene. The folder probably had a hundred as nice or better, but what did one more hurt?

  Roger finally felt a twinge of hunger and decided to treat himself to breakfast in town, if he was going shopping anyway. He grabbed a hoodie T and a sweater and scooped his wallet and pocket things off the counter. Over his waistband he carefully positioned the spring clip of his holster and magazine carrier, so they hung inside with the shirt over. The slots beside the pistol held two magazines of the long 10mm Hornady rounds.

  Sitra Falls was about as safe as anyplace left on the planet, but he had thought himself safe the moment before the fragments from a mortar round had ripped through his back. The sergeant standing beside him had shielded him from the full hail of fragments, except for that tiny window of exposure that left his lower back unprotected. The ballistic shadow of the man’s body was the only reason he was alive.

  Of all the things he had seen and experienced in the Pan Arabic Protectorate, that one was the lesson he would never forget. It made such a mark on his personality that family and not a few friends were uncomfortable with him now. His psychologist characterized it as hyper-vigilant syndrome. Roger considered it accepting reality. He didn't want his safety issues resolved, if that meant going back to trusting in luck. Insha'Allah was ok for tangos, but he found Allah favored keeping your head, when you thought before sticking it up.

  The shrink assigned him, as he progressed in rehab, had never been satisfied with his acclimatization to civilian life and had released him with a provisional status to cover her butt, only after her superiors had pressured her. He had jokingly assured her he would not shame her by committing mass murder, but her eyes had not joined her mouth in smiling.