Shadows, стр. 5
“They paint their faces? Like war paint?”
“Like that, yes, except their whole face. The ancient Celts did that, too, sometimes.”
“So how do I read this paint stuff?”
“That’s unknown. It’s one of the things we’re hoping you can discover.”
“That’s not much to go on, sir.”
The colonel paused and thought for a moment. “What was the largest city you visited, back on Earth?”
“New York City.”
“Good. When you strolled down the sidewalk and looked at all the other people, could you tell by looking at them who had money and who didn’t?”
“Now that you mention it, sir, yeah, I guess so.”
Murphy nodded. “And the women’s makeup, could you tell just by looking at them who might be a working girl?”
“Sure, yeah.”
“It’s the same thing here, Lieutenant.”
Leaning back, Cutter studied Murphy for clues as to the actual difficulty of what he was being asked to do. It sounded impossible, yet that was exactly what convinced him to do it. Murphy’s logic finally made him realize that if he, a combat veteran, couldn’t lead men safely through such a FUBAR mission, what chance did an untrained man have?
“Just so I’m straight on the mission, Colonel Murphy, I’m being asked to chase shadows while trying to remain a shadow myself. In a free fire zone.”
“That’s about the size of it, Lieutenant Cutter.”
“I must have a screw loose…all right, Colonel, I’ll do it.”
“Of course, you will.” Murphy smiled. “I never figured you for cleaning out shitholes. I can’t give you a timeline on the mission yet. Some of it depends on how fast we can train up the rest of the indig force we’ll need in order to have a chance of success with the main attack. You won’t have that many men, but that means each one will need to be trained to a higher standard: an elite standard, if you can manage it. You’ll want to concentrate on small unit tactics; that’s where your experiences in France should help.
“One more thing, Lieutenant…I’ve already said we can’t do this alone, but that includes officers, too. There simply aren’t enough of us, and not every Lost Soldier is officer material, nor should they be. We’ve got some of the best non-coms you could ask for. If you run into Rodriguez, you’ll see what I mean, but there aren’t enough of them, either. That means we need to identify, recruit, and train indigs up to our standards in those roles, as well. The sooner you can identify such men, the sooner you’ll be combat ready.”
“What’s the process, sir? Do I appoint them as lieutenant or sergeant?”
“Provisionally, yes. You’re now an O-2, you can appoint an O-1, a warrant officer if you need one or two, and non-coms. Unless I see a potential problem with your choices, I’ll back up the decisions of the man on the spot: you.”
“That doesn’t sound like the rank structure I’m used to, Colonel.”
“Then it’s lucky you’ve got a few hours to learn it.”
* * * * *
Chapter 3
R’Bak
If waking up in the SpinDogs’ orbiting habitat, or the weeks that followed, hadn’t been disorienting enough, the trip to the surface of the planet left Lieutenant Tyree Denning Cutter doubting his sanity. Sure, he’d read pulp stories about spacemen and rocket ships while on the transport over to England in 1943—the same ragged magazines that circulated through every man’s hands in the 30th Infantry Division—but reading about them out of boredom didn’t prepare Cutter for the real thing.
Once on R’Bak, however, things became more familiar. According to Colonel Murphy’s brief, his first step was simply a matter of passing through Major Moorefield’s command on the way to a village with a name he couldn’t pronounce. There, all he had to do was turn men with whom he had nothing in common and who had no familiarity with Earth weapons, discipline, or command structures, into combat-ready soldiers so they could participate in joint operations with Moorefield’s command.
He’d trained men from the ground up before and knew how to do it well. What he didn’t know was how to keep them alive once they entered combat. And that would be his biggest fight: the mental one with himself. Everyone he spoke to insisted that losing his entire platoon in France wasn’t his fault, but he couldn’t manage to believe it. He couldn’t force himself to believe that some of his men survived and other units had suffered worse casualties than his. But it was too late to worry about the past. Now, he could only immerse himself in training the indigs to the exclusion of all else.
Wagons pulled by R’Bak’s ubiquitous whinaalanis delivered the weapons, ammunition, and other supplies necessary to train and outfit his platoon, escorted by a single armored personnel carrier occupied by Cutter and five guards. Rounding a low hill, Cutter glimpsed a wide river valley on his left as their destination came into sight straight ahead. Built on the crest of a bluff parallel to the river, the stone and wood homes lay in the shape of a long, narrow rectangle. Compared to other parts of the region they’d traversed, the vegetation was thick and reminded Cutter of pictures he’d seen of the Great Plains.
People working in a nearby field spotted them rounding the hill and alerted the village, so that by the time the convoy stopped in the center of the main road, children were running alongside the wagons, laughing and shouting. Adults lined the path, and a well-muscled man in his late twenties or early thirties waved them to a stop in front of