The Next Warrior

Disembarkation - Part 17

Though he was only thirty-five, his face was weathered from years of Marine Corps life to that of a man much greater in years. The Marine Corps has a way of aging a man before his time. The glower he perpetually wore reassured the squad. In the way that Marines think, it was a fatherly sort of thing to have him around. Months ago, his presence was bitterly despised for the unit's Marines in the last year where he brought with him daily rituals of training, remediation, deprecation, and endless runs through the North Carolina swamplands. This was all while subjecting them to self-imposed deprivations few would have imagined enduring before his arrival. It made him the most hated man in the company. He was a wretched, nasty old cuss when you failed him, but once the Marines hit the beach, though they would never admit it, every Marine in the platoon felt a measurable sense of security with his presence assured... not to say the least of the skills his brutal training had given them. It was during those times his wealth of knowledge in the science of killing became terrifyingly evident, and now that they were on the beach, they felt a sense of ease knowing that whatever he had put them through, was nothing compared to what he had in store for the enemy hiding in the jungle. A part of them all, also just wanted to see the man in action.

He was with Romero's squad poised right beside the hatch. He would be one of the first to hit the beach and lead the unseasoned.

Around a minute after they had hit the beach, the vehicle came to a stop. The ATC must have reached the treeline, which was as far as the lumbering hulk could go before a path would need to be cleared to the nearest road. The Marines anxiously waited as the massive engines idled, the reverberations of the vehicle camouflaging the tremors running through them. The Marines, still attempting to hide what, to all but one of them, was their first real opportunity to experience the occupational hazard that defined their existence as war fighters. The Gunny though, was quiet, too. Though no discernible sign of human emotion was clearly visible on the man from the outside, he was anxious, as well. The difference between he and the others, was why.

Outwardly, his stoic resolve shone through in a sort of intense calm accentuated by the thousand-yard stare he gave through the still closed back hatch of the vehicle. He stared at it so intently, one would think he could see through it, or perhaps, that if he willed it, he could explode the door from its hinges in a fit of telekinetic rage. He crouched, poised in front of that hatch waiting for the moment when he would lead the others into the fight beyond their shelled enclosure.

He sat listening to the Staff frequency on the radio onboard his Tee-CUD. There was a lot of discussion, but very little action. The final stage of the invasion was delayed. By Yafante's discernment, some officer got nervous about conflicting intelligence reports they'd received between the time the troops left the ship and when they hit the beach. That same officer, Yafante presumed, upon his authority and against the better wisdom of the last eighty years of American warfare doctrine, decided to hold some element of the invasion force back... unwittingly delaying the movements of thousands of others.

The vehicles just sat there on the beach while the officers reevaluated their situation and decided on their course of action. Whatever the case was, in the Gunny's mind, he knew what had happened. Something didn't go as planned. There was some hang up, some surprise, some nonsense that prevented their action at the time when action was most needed. Something was always going to happen. Something always happened. "This is why we made the Raiders," he thought. "With this outfit, you find a rock in the road, they have to call in an engineering platoon to blow it out of the way. The Raiders just go around the damn thing." He thought, through gritted teeth, "Just get us out of this damned tin can, you blithering morons, before they turn into two million dollar coffins."

Without fail, there is always some sufficiently ranking officer whose fear of an investigation and a negative Fitness Report would override his sense of initiative or willingness to accept necessary risk. If they sat there on the beach all night, the ATCs would be sitting ducks to rocket propelled grenade fire or worse and inbound enemy missile. The ATCs could last for a time, but weren't engineered like a tank to sit there and just take the abuse. They were armed with Trophy active defense shields, able to explode such rounds prior to impact, but they were one shot defenses. They would only last through a few rockets at best and two fired at the same spot would level the vehicle and everyone inside. No amount of armor can survive sustained fire from a determined enemy if the vehicle does not move. If the troops did not disembark soon to finish securing the beach for reinforcements surely already on the way, then the whole invasion, could be over very soon. Yafante switched to passive listening mode so that he could still hear if something important came up, but turned on the squad's channel.