Hero by Joel Rosenberg Read Free Book Online

effectives."
    "Will do."
    He wasn't about to waste a complete team on guarding their rear, but he wasn't going to run through the woods with both his flank and his ass hanging out, either.
    Keep pieces protecting other pieces, that was the idea. It was just another chess game, but it was always a chess game in the fog, played by a crazy drunkard: you never really knew the value of the pieces, and never knew for sure which ones you were risking.
    He should have had his exec and top sergeant at his side, but both were down, probably dead. Had to move the pieces around the board by himself.
    So be it.
    He puffed back to the company freak.
    "—can't see any of them," somebody said, "there's got to be a hundred of them, a hundred—"
    "Shut the fuck up, Isenstein."
    "Shit, shit, they're all around us."
    "Oh, God, Mother, I'm hit."
    He puffed for override mode. "Kelev Twenty," he said. "Tighten up, chaverim." His voice felt tight and squeaky in his throat, but it sounded almost too calm in his ears. "Company freak and platoon freak is for orders down to all and for information everybody needs going up. Keep the bullshit and the chatter on your squad freaks, or better yet, shut the fuck up."
    Damn, but that sounded good. It sounded like he knew what he was doing.
    He hoped the feeling was contagious—he might catch it.
    He was out of shape, he decided, as he paused in the lee of a huge tree. He squatted, trying to catch his breath while he got himself oriented.
    They were about a hundred meters down the road from the ambush, and maybe fifty beyond the road. Time to organize things.
    He puffed for his private line to the general. "Kelev Twenty here; I need a sitrep."
    "Stable, but shitty. Hang on." Shimon Bar-El was back in a moment. "Colonel Chiabrera's on the line to Division Ops; they had two flights of helos on the pad; getting them up. Estimate five minutes over target. You want any help?" he asked drily.
    "Fuck, no. Keep them clear." The last thing he needed was a bunch of locals overhead firing down at God-knew-what. "Get them opconned to us quick, eh?"
    "I'll try."
    As the old saying goes: Friendly fire isn't.
    He had to get this company organized fast or there were going to be a lot of his people dying—because Yitzhak Galil hadn't done his job. Unacceptable.
    He stood and puffed his mike off. "Okay, everybody," he shouted, "over here. Take a bearing on me. Move it, move it," he said, raising his rifle over his head.
    Kelev One carried twenty-four men on the books; he counted eighteen, including himself, and at least a half dozen of them were men from Support/Transport/ Medical who had picked up fallen men's weapons.
    Not too pretty for an elite security and assault platoon of the best military force in the Thousand Worlds, but everything was always a mess. You practice and you train and you plan, and you learn to do it by the numbers, and then you find yourself improvising your way across a wooded ridgeline, never quite knowing what the hell to do next, your scrotum so tight your balls hurt.
    But never mind that; just move the pieces.
    The piece with the three bars on its shoulder was to be in front, with its fireteam, but most of his HQ fireteam—his platoon sergeant, the mechanic and one of his driver/gunners—were out of it. That left him and Moshe Bar-El, the driver/gunner/medic. It could be worse.
    Two of the squads were mostly intact; he'd move them out and fill in with the remnants of the others.
    He pointed at Skolnick. "We move out in a wedge. You take the left flank," he said. "Improvise another squad."
    He turned to solid, rooklike Benyamin Hanavi. Lipschitz's fireteam was intact, but Hanavi was saltier. Shit, though, it looked like he was down to himself and two others.
    "You got two down?"
    Hanavi hesitated, then nodded. "Lavinksy's dead; Ari took a knock on the head."
    "Then why—save it." It didn't matter that he didn't like Benyamin Hanavi a whole lot, and Hanavi liked him even less. The chessmaster