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Both of them looked upwards and cursed simultaneously.
«Oh, fuck!» said Mike Senior.
«Batshit!» echoed Cally.
Michael O'Neal, Sr., looked at the wet, orange-scented armor in his hands and shook his damp head. «What the hell else is going to go wrong today?» he asked with a slightly hysterical laugh.
* * *
The team leader pressed the fingers of his hand into his forehead, as if to press in an idea. There were no safe houses nearby where the team could to go to ground. Even if the lander did not land on them, the team would surely be stopped, the vehicles might be commandeered by the local response teams. And then the shit would well and truly hit the fan. Their hastily prepared covers would not survive investigation.
There was only one possible path to obscurity.
«Turn around,» he snarled to the driver. The monk obeyed without a word, swerving right and spi
* * *
Papa O'Neal had the local weather radio turned up loud as he and Cally battened down the hatches. There was a protocol for a landing, one that they had not been able to perform for their unexpected visitors. Shutters were closed across the windows, even the ones that had cracked at the sonic boom. The horses were brought into the barn. The cows could fend for themselves. Circuits were rechecked, ammunition was laid out, spare weapons were set up to hand.
The phone ringing was almost drowned out by the radio, the automated voice now chanting a mantra of landing warnings. But Cally heard it and ran to pick it up.
«Hello?» she said.
«Miss Cally O'Neal?» asked a faintly accented voice.
«Yes.»
«May I speak to Mr. Michael O'Neal, Senior?»
«May I ask who's calling?»
«Recent visitors,» said the voice with a note of faint humor.
«Oh. Hang on.» She ran outside and clamped the cordless phone against her side. «Granpa!» she shouted.
He looked up, startled, from where he was fixing one of the defective firing circuits.
She waved the phone overhead vigorously. «He'll be here in a second,» she said to the «recent visitor.»
There was a pause as they waited for the senior O'Neal to trot up the hill. Cally could hear a background of a growling engine. Their visitors appeared to be in a hurry.
«Might I ask a question?» asked the accented voice in the interim.
«Sure.»
«How to say it? The other visitor. He appeared to be . . .»
«Me.»
«Ah. That would explain it.» The voice sounded somehow satisfied with the answer.
«Here's Grandpa. Bye.»
She covered the mouthpiece again and smiled. «Our visitors seem to be coming back to tea.»
«Oh, shit,» said O'Neal, Sr., shaking his head. «Be careful what you ask for.»
«Hello?»
«Mr. O'Neal?»
«Speaking.»
«This is one of your recent visitors. We find ourselves somewhat at a disadvantage . . .»
«Come ahead. Put the vehicles in the garage. I'll move the truck out so there's room. And hurry. If our friends get here before you I'm activating the minefield and you're on your own.»
«Of course. We're nearly there.»
In the distance there was a thump of artillery and a rattle of machine-gun fire. The Posleen lander had managed to land squarely between the Fifty-Third Infantry, defending Rabun Gap, and the main positions of the supporting Te
On the other hand, the way the day had been going . . .
* * *
Papa O'Neal rotated a shoulder to get the armor seated better. Either it had picked up ten pounds of water in the cleaning, or he was getting too old for this shit. He smiled at the black-masked commando coming up the walkway and held out his hand. «Mike O'Neal. And you are? I didn't quite catch the name before.»
«Call me Raphael,» said the team leader. He took the proffered hand as his team hurried up behind him. The «white-suits» were following them. Although the black-suited commandos were armed, the white-suits were unarmed and without armor.
«You want to outfit them?» asked Papa O'Neal, gesturing with his chin at the white-suits.
«It would be fairly pointless,» said «Raphael.» «I doubt they could hit the side of a mountain. But if you have some little hidey-hole it would be perfect.»
«Well, can't say as I'm sorry you came back,» admitted Papa O'Neal. «We can do with the extra firepower if the Posleen come up here.» He gestured towards the house and started walking.
«I take comfort in the fact that we are not the only ones assailed by these visitors,» said the visitor dryly. «Surely we are not forsaken by God if they also land upon the Muslim.»
* * *
Lieutenant Mashood Farmazan sighed as he gazed down at the enemy host through the ancient Zeiss binoculars. The Posleen group was a remnant of the mass that had descended upon Turkmenistan. The force had slashed through the impoverished country, spreading out from their landing around devastated Chardzhou and destroying every unit thrown against them. The force that was marching towards the Iranian border was still tens of thousands strong and had cut a bloody swath through Bagram-Ali and Mary following the Old Silk Road. Fellow forces had leveled ancient Buchara and now pressed storied Tashkent. This force was presumably headed for Teheran and the riches it hoarded.
He would like to say that this was as far as they were going. The terrain at this pass through the Koppeh Dagh was very favorable for stopping their advance. However, he was the commander and sole officer of the single understrength battalion that now stood between the Posleen and the Fars plateau.
The unit was part of the First Armored Division, the Immortals. The division traced its roots to the fabled days of the Medes and Cyrus. It had, however, fallen upon hard times since the days of the Shah. The current regime seemed to question the integrity of a unit that traced its genesis to Zoroaster.
But the predecessors of the division had blooded their teeth repeatedly on barbarian invaders in these very mountains. Smart barbarians took the long way around through Pulichatum and up the flank of the Dasht-e-Kavir to capture Mashad. Or to the north to the passes along the Caspian. Only very stupid barbarians came through the little village of Bajgiran. Up through the serpentine Bajgiran Pass. Through the easily defended pass.
Since this was a well-known fact, the majority of the division, along with two other regular infantry divisions, was assembled outside Mashad. Reserve divisions and the Islamic Guard were assembling around Gorgan. Mazandaran might be lost but the enemy would be stopped well short of Quramshar.
The only unit available to defend the inconsequential Bajgiran pass was a «battalion» of clap-trap M-60s from the days of the Shah. The total number of working tanks was less than a company and those were held together with baling wire. And a single unprepossessing, politically unco
The village nestled in the high mountain valley behind him. A typical village of the uplands, the green winter rye was just starting to sprout on the fields and a stream chuckled between the fields and a large stand of poplars. The village itself was a huddle of ancient mud and brick houses nestled at the base of the soaring gray mountains, with a few more modern structures scattered among them. Even these dated back to the heydays of the '70s. Nothing much ever changed in the upland villages.
Roads were paved or cobbled, then faded back into dirt tracks. Empires waxed and waned, power structures rose and fell in distant Teheran or Isfahan or Tashkent, whichever owned them at the time. But the muezzin called the faithful to prayer five times a day, regardless. And the goats ate the sparse grasses of the mountains, regardless. And the snows of winter came, regardless. And the occasional invader came through, regardless. Then the fields would be uprooted by battle until a new tax collector was appointed. And life, for most, would go on.