Chapter 13
Murphy’s Laws of Combat #13:
“No mission plan ever survives first contact.”
The fuzzy green images of fields and trees in Rig’s GN goggles passed by as his horse trudged through the frigid landscape, hooves crunching ice and the whispering wind the only sounds in the black night. Exhaustion made his thoughts muddy, the night vision goggles strapped around his head an unpleasant weight on his brow. Sleet and snow soaked any exposed clothes, creating glacial aches in his arms and legs.
He glanced back at Mel for the third time in the last ten minutes. Her glowing green form rocked back and forth with the roan’s gait, a cone-like silhouette in one of the three capes found in the saddle rolls with rain poncho over that. Her hooded head nodded with each step of her horse. He’d offered to tie her in the saddle so she wouldn’t fall off, but each time she’d declined with a quick shake of her head. Stubborn woman, she’d said nothing since they’d left the barn four hours ago.
His shoulder burned and his thigh felt like it was being stabbed each time Chief stumbled on unseen rocks. He couldn’t have held the pack horse’s reins for one mile, let alone fifty. Luckily, Mel knew how to tie the reins to the saddle, so he had the horses strung together, Chief leading them in the pitch dark. He’d learned in ‘Stan’ that horses, thankfully, had excellent night vision.
Their trail meandered through the hills, wide and easy to follow. Twice they’d crossed roads, stone markers giving the distances in leguas, however long those were, to Morales, to La Ba?era, and to other towns near the main route to Astorga. They were making good time paralleling the main highway. Traveling all day and night had brought them close to the town. Dawn was two hours away and Astorga probably three.
Even after an entire night in the saddle, sores, and all, it still felt good to be in motion toward a specific destination. With a concrete mission, he could funnel his rage over being kidnapped into something he was practiced at, developing a plan, and making it happen. He felt energized, more in control.
Their steady progress, even in the bitter cold, also fed his confidence. However, the relentless beat of hooves on frozen ground proved a mental irritant. The rhythm kept an old Ranger cadence running through his mind:
“C-One-Thirty rollin’ down the strip,
Airborne Ranger on a one-way trip.
Mission unspoken, destination unknown,
Airborne Ranger ain’t ever comin’ home!”
Ain’t ever comin’ home. He gritted his teeth.
Trained to recognize and use fear, he’d lived with it long enough to know that fear of the unknown could cripple a soldier if he wasn’t careful. But this was different. He’d nearly let his fear derail everything.
A sick, overwhelming emptiness grew in his gut. Alien imaginings ate at him, far stranger than any normal anxiety over mission snafus or being wounded. In this time, if his leg became infected, decent medical treatment would never be available. Nightmares of a witchdoctor in a cravat bleeding him because his blood was bad kept stealing into his thoughts. Worse, if he failed this mission, he’d be marooned in this backward era for the rest of his life—assuming that’s the way Mel’s amulet hoodoo worked. Even she wasn’t sure.
His whole plan was based on a hunch.
He rubbed his face in a futile attempt to warm his cheeks and then he shook himself, settling again into the saddle. He couldn’t give in to the ‘maybes,’ his fear. I will get home must be his mantra.
There’d been no signs of pursuit, but Rig kept looking over his shoulder all the same, telling himself he was just being careful, rather than checking on Mel. Abruptly, the horses shuffled down a slope and onto a wide dirt road running north and south. He could see a faint haze of morning to the east, topping the hills behind them. Turning the horses north, he walked them up the road. He turned off the goggles as he reached the crest of the rise to study the faint light above the hills to the north which split the surrounding black. It was a manmade light. Astorga?
With the goggles back on, he could see the road stretch before him for more than three kilometers downhill meeting a road lying east and west. An overturned wagon and broken boxes littered the sides of that road along with a dead mule. Looking at their road, he saw similar refuse on the thoroughfare as it led southwest, into the plains. In a retreat, an army might have to abandon and destroy equipment so the enemy couldn’t use it. In this day and age, it meant killing animals. Shaking his head at the waste, he moved up hill with his team in tow.
As he passed the wreckage left by the British army, he began to doubt his memory. With the refuse left behind, it looked like the army had marched toward Vigo instead of La Corunna. He worried over this for a moment. No, there was a battle at La Corunna. He remembered. Ahead, less than ten miles away to the west, Astorgaglowed on the horizon, probably from dozens of British army campfires.
Chief stumbled, and once he recovered, stopped. The beasts were beat—hell, they all were. They’d covered better than sixty kilometers tonight. He gave Chief a gentle kick, turning his head up the hill west off the road. They followed the crest, keeping the fire-lit city on their right.
As he moved up a ridge, the town came into view far in the distance. The goggles revealed bright dots of light in the city center and lime green blobs of small groups, either civilians or soldiers milling around the fires or moving across the nearby fields. He heard the faint popping of musket fire closer. The French were near Astorga. They had beaten him to the city. As far as he could tell, the British were burning supplies and had left only a rearguard to slow any pursuit beyond the town.
Damn.
With the French in the town, he and Mel couldn’t risk wandering into a skirmish or crossing the bridge there. The British would have no reason to welcome him. For the first time, he considered what a serious problem his uniform, his equipment, his entire identity would be once they reached British lines. He filed the dilemma away. He’d have to deal with it later.
The walled town sat up against the mountains, a fortress guarding the sloping plain before it. They would have to go around the town to the south.
The sky was brightening to the east when Rig found what he was looking for. About two klicks from the road, a stand of pine, oak, and chestnut trees stood in a basin, an area invisible from the top of the bare plateau. There they would be hidden from view. Neither army would send anyone south up here when the armies were traveling east to west.
He led them down into the bowl and under the trees. The oaks still retained some of their leaves, so they and the pines would disperse any smoke a fire might make. A cut in the slope to the west allowed drainage, which is why the bowl hadn’t filled up like a bathtub with the rain.
Rig left Mel dozing on her horse while he dismounted to make camp. His arms and legs seemed to belong to someone else. It took all his concentration to move them. Fifteen hours in a saddle left him struggling to stand upright. He popped a Vicodin and some Ranger candy. He didn’t have his company to rely on. God, how he missed those guys. Ernie would be laughing his ass off at Rig’s predicament and Sid would already have camp made.
The dawn light burnished the clouds to the east as he finished a lean-to with his tarp up against a boulder and trudged stiff-legged through the thin layer of frozen white to Mel. She still slept as light snow fell. He set his goggles on top of his head. For a moment, he studied her face above him. Little twitches of her wide mouth created fascinating expressions. Her bruises were already turning brown and green, and the swelling had gone down. She was tough, no doubt. No complaints from her—he reluctantly smiled—and easy on the eyes.
His smile twisted into a scowl. Now this contrary woman constituted his only ally in this godforsaken land—and time. And his ticket home. He sucked air though his teeth. Nothing easy about this.
Traveling with her uncle into a combat zone made no sense. Why would she want to be in the middle of this gory mess? He frowned. What did a woman of 1808 want? Rig laid a hand on hers.
She came awake with a little gasp. She glanced around bleary-eyed for a moment and then her gaze met his. She almost smiled, but instead her tired eyes traveled up and settled on the night vision goggles resting on top of his head. She seemed to shrink into herself and pulled her hand away. She’d refused to look through them last night, afraid of his modern technology. It was reassuring in a way. There were at least a few chinks in her impressive armor.
He led her horse over to a fallen oak and used it as a step to help her down. She didn’t take his offered hand. Frowning, Rig watched her stumble away.
When she returned, he untied her sling, and they removed the horses’ saddles and bridles, laying them across the trunk of the fallen tree. After telling Rig the horses shouldn’t remain wet in this cold, Mel wiped them down with the third cavalry cape.
Brushing her roan, she spoke over its back, “The horses are surprisingly fit. Most French mounts we’ve captured have girth and back galls.” She looked at him, like she expected him to make some reply.
Rig could only guess what a ‘girth or back gall’ was. He had to depend on her knowledge of horses—hell, of this entire world. Though frustrating, he wasn’t about to allow that irritation to lead to more stupid grousing from him. He desperately needed her cooperation to complete his mission, to get home.
They hobbled the beasts with ties found with the cavalry equipment, so they could feed on the tall grass which grew in profusion across the damp hollow. Tuffs poked through the snow, green and tender. He walked the perimeter, seeing open ground all around. Nothing to worry about. Returning, he handed her a bag from his pack with the word ‘Jerky’ on it in red and what he called an ‘energy bar.’
When she asked what was in the red bag, he walked away saying “breakfast” over his shoulder. “I always carry snacks during an operation. The only words she saw on the bag were ‘teriyaki steak.’
When he returned, Mel stood looking down at her sleeping bag. It lay next to his blankets under the plastic covered lean-to he’d built against a boulder. A layer of grass padded the ground cloth.
“I cannae sleep there.” She eyed him furtively.
“Then go sleep where you want.” She pursed her lips but glanced around the area as though looking for just such a spot. He sat down on his blankets and began laboriously untying his boots, grunting, and wincing, trying not to bend his bad leg. He got under the blankets while she still stood undecided.
He suddenly lost patience with her and the implied accusations in her hesitation. The morning shadows emphasized her knotted brow. “Look, Miss Graham, I’m way too tired to rape you and no one is going to see you here. We’ll both be a lot warmer—and drier—next to each other under the tarp, but you go do what you have to.” He set his Beretta next to him and covered his eyes with what he called his boonie hat. Moments later, he felt her wiggle into the sleeping bag. She was asleep before the sun was up. Rig remained awake, unable to stop thinking about what he didn’t know of this world.