A tale o'war

[ambrafoxtrot]

Whoever reads this will have to forget me for my non native English

Twilight 2000 system with a totally remade background

Prologue
A wooded area, Florida, United States of America; winter 2000

A new definition of thick wooded area was now part of Lario’s experience background. He looked around, sure that he had found the perfect spot to hide. The misty air and the light rain could not worsen visibility, already made very scarce by the density of the vegetation. Something like that, he had only seen in his training sessions in the Borneo at the British jungle warfare school many years before. The days of the cooperation with the British Special Forces were long gone though, and that was not Borneo, but Western Florida somewhere north of Tampa Bay. The sensation was not very different from the Far East jungles anyway; killing humidity but a somehow chillier temperature. After a night of quasi sleep, Lario was contemplating his own misery and evaluating his options. He had been expected to rejoin the remnant members of his patrol three weeks earlier at that very topographical point on the map; nobody had shown up. Couple of weeks before, the other two members of his long range recon team left him at the RV point and departed for a scouting mission around the American defensive lines at Hernando Beach, where European Federation forces were ashore and advancing. Nobody ever came back. Somehow Lario connected the disappearance of his mates with the devastating explosion that he had heard and seen with his own eyes ten days before. The sudden and blinding flash, coupled with the death of his UHF satellite radio, did not leave room for many doubts or speculations; someone had detonated a f$$##*g nuclear warhead over Tampa Bay. Not a huge one…thanks God not a huge one. Given the level of heat and the intensity of the rumbling concussive counter wave that Lario had felt at 50 kilometers of distance from the assumed impact ground, he estimated a 50 to 100 kilotons warhead, a big enough device to have him suffering superficial burns in every exposed part of his body, and breathing an uncertain amount of fallout dust that swept through the woods where he was located. And if that was not enough information, the confirmation of his fears was provided by the appearance of a characteristic detonation mushrooms rising up on the approximate location of Tampa Bay. Needless to say, from that moment on he had been trying to spend as much time as possible under his one man tarp, in order to provide at least some shelter from the presumably radioactive winds and rains that followed the event, even though he knew that expecting real protection from such a measure was wishful thinking at best. Anxiety and panic followed soon after: a new development had just happened in the war, and it would have been a whole new game from then on, beginning with the fact that Lario had been separated from his patrol, and his chances of survival had been consequently greatly reduced. Days after that, in the lack of any further traumatic events, the survival instinct and the years of training started to prevail inside Lario’s mind, and he gradually started to function again, and to conceive a plan for the immediate future.
At the miserable speed allowed by a body and a brain that were not awake yet, especially considering the quality of the hotel he was staying in, Lario began the preparation for the morning foraging routine. He still had packaged and canned food for about four days, but he did not want to touch that strategic reserve, not if it was not absolutely necessary. He more than once considered the possibility that everything had to be more or less contaminated in the area, but the alternative to starve was not very appealing anyway.
“Another night without anybody finding and killing me”, he thought while he started to check his weapons and to collect his tarp and his sleeping bag. Being alone, he could not maintain constant vigilance during sleep time, but at least so far he had been lucky. Soon his daily routine would have to change. If he decided to start moving, sleeping during daylight and travelling by night would have to become the new rule. And indeed he had already decided that he should try and rejoin the Federation lines, provided that they were still somewhere west of his position. Should such an enterprise prove impossible, he would try to head south and make contact with the Cubans and the Russians that landed in Miami. He needed to find news about what was going on; for too long he had already been cut off from any information, and the destruction of his long range recon patrol had rendered him a totally combat ineffective military unit.
After wrapping up his modest camp site, Lario started to head west. With his combat boots sinking into the cold morning mist, he proceeded carefully taking care of the thick branches hitting his face. No paths were visible in the uniform pattern of thick flora which characterized the place. After having marked his location on his map, he used his compass to give himself a decent bearing to his approximate destination. Once he was satisfied with that, he started to look around for plants or any other wild edible element of nature that he could put his hands on. He considered his reserve of water as well: at normal consumption rate, about 24 hours, but that would not represent a problem considering that according to the map, he was bound to hit a small water body in about two kilometers, if e continued along his present course. No, it was not the water supply that worried him, while he mechanically picked plants that at first sight he judged to be possible nutrition material. He would have them examined more carefully during his first rest break. The water was probably a secondary problem at this stage, the main concern being the operational situation on the ground. Were the European Federation troops still where they were supposed to be? Did they manage to overcome the American resistance? Who detonated the nuclear device that with all probability indicated a new step in the escalation of the tragic madness that was going on? He was fairly sure that it was not a strategic warhead that had been detonated on the approximate location of Tampa Bay. Was that supposed to mean that the Americans were so desperate that they hit their own territory to stop the Federation troops on their tracks, or maybe it was the other way around; the Europeans using a big tactical warhead to smash through the American stubbornness?
Then with no warning at all, it happened. Without even realizing it, distracted as he was by all his thinking, Lario found himself in front of a helmet; unmistakably an American helmet low on the ground. Below the helmet was a face, wide eyes and an open mouth. In less than one second, other details cleared up to Lario’s view: the sandbags of the foxhole the American soldier was in, two more G.I.s sitting a handful of yards behind the position located in a small open area where a HUMVEE sat, covered with branches and a camouflaging net.
Twenty meters, no more separated Lario from the American combat element, and for whatever reason, none of the two parties had noticed the other until the very last moment. Again, the thickness of the ambient vegetation probably played a crucial role. Lario’s mind did not even register the act, but before he was done processing all that visual information, he had dropped his M16 down his body, and drawn his side arm from his leg holster. Twenty meters engagement…too close to efficiently maneuver the Assault rifle; at that distance a short weapon would give him precious initiative.
Almost ten years of close quarter combat practice kicked in at once, as time in Lario’s world slowed down to a rate not accessible to the average line infantry. He took aim at the soldier in the foxhole. The Beretta 92SB went off twice. Double tap, a standard practice in the 9th Assault Parachute Regiment of the Italian Army, when it came down to hostage rescue, room by room clearing and other close quarter actions included in the book. Lario did not hear the noise of the handgun, but registered the mechanical noise of the extractor as he expelled the spent cartridges and put the third bullet in the receiving chamber of his Beretta. The first bullet hissed less than one inch from the American soldier helmet, but the second hit him right in the head with a crack noise as it tried to force his way through the Kevlar composite. The head simply fell on the assault rifle sticking out of the hole, without a sound and without any further movement. The enemy infantryman was either dead or out of commission from the blunt trauma if his helmet ever managed to dissipate the entire penetration power of the 9x19 mm bullet.
A blurry movement on Lario’s left, as two more American G.I.s tried to stand up and ready their weapons. Targets, eleven o’clock, moving right to left…slow.
Lario did not even aim; not enough time for that. The Americans were starting to recover and they needed to be put out of action quickly. Two more shots; Instinctive shooting. The first missed, the second jammed the gun. The cracking noise of the stoppage provoked a surge of adrenaline in Lario’s body. Sudden contact and instantaneous reaction was in Lario’s bag of tricks, but unexpected stoppage of a usually reliable weapon, much less so. At least the first shot obtained the effect of having the Americans hit the deck, which would in turn slow down their reaction even more. Just based on that fact, Lario decided to turn around and run. Standard disengagement technique as well, with the important difference that in that particular instance there was no mate covering his retreat by laying suppressive fire down at the hostiles. So exploiting what Lario had left of initiative, he made a quick dash away from the enemy. Once again, the density of the vegetation came to his help, as he was out of visual range in a quick rush. He run and run, for several minutes at the maximum speed allowed by the exigency to avoid hitting any trees. When he appreciated he could have been at a reasonable distance, he stopped and listened. At the beginning he could only hear his sustained heart rate and heavy breathing, but shortly after he could be reasonably sure that nobody was pursuing him, at least not immediately. No other particular sound other than the ambient sound of nature around him. He assumed that the enemy was trying to regroup, tending to the casualty and informing any other troops in the neighborhood of his presence in the area. Gradually Lario calmed down and he started to focus his mind on options again, and he quickly appreciated that the way west was closed. He did not have an idea if he had hit the back of the main American lines or just an isolated outpost. Only further investigation and further probing of the supposed American line could provide an answer. Lario’s decision to head west to try to link up with friendlies stood, but from now on, given the information he had painfully discovered about enemy deployment, he would have to move much more tactically.