Clear and present danger - Tom Clancy [134]
"Six, this is Point. Our friends are doing some plinkin' again. Their axis of fire is away from us, sir. They're punchin' holes in some tin cans. They can't shoot for shit, Cap'n."
"I'm coming over."
"Roger." Ding set down the radio. "The Cap'n's coming. I think the noise made him nervous."
"He sure does worry a lot," Vega noted.
"That's what they pay officers for, ain't it?"
Ramirez appeared three minutes later. Chavez made to hand over his binoculars, but the captain had brought his own pair this time. He fell to a prone position and got his glasses up just in time to watch another can go down.
"Oh."
"Two cans, two full magazines," Chavez explained. "They like to go rock-and-roll. I guess ammo's cheap down here."
Both of the guards were still smoking. The captain and the sergeant watched them laugh and joke as they shot. Probably, Ramirez thought, they're as bored as we are. After the first aircraft, there had been no activity at all here at RENO, and soldiers like boredom even less than ordinary citizens. One of them - it was hard to tell them apart since they were roughly the same size and wore the same sort of clothing - inserted another magazine into his AK-47 and blazed off a ten-round burst. The little fountains of dirt walked up to the remaining can, but didn't quite hit it.
"I didn't know it would be this easy, sir," Vega observed from behind the sights of his machine gun. "What a bunch of fuck-ups!"
"You think that way, Oso, you turn into one yourself," Ramirez said seriously.
"Roger that, Cap'n, but I can't help seein' what I'm seein'."
Ramirez softened his rebuke with a smile. "I suppose you're right."
The third can finally went down. They were averaging thirty rounds per target. Next the guards used their weapons to push the cans around the runway.
"You know," Vega said after a moment, "I ain't seen 'em clean their weapons yet." For the squad members, cleaning their weapons was as regular a routine as morning and evening prayers were for clergymen.
"The AK'll take a lot of abuse. It's good for that," Ramirez pointed out.
"Yes, sir."
Finally the guards, too, grew bored. One of them retrieved the cans. As he was doing so, a truck appeared. With little in the way of warning, Chavez was surprised to note. The wind was wrong, but even so it hadn't occurred to him that he wouldn't have at least a minute or two worth of warning. Something to remember. There were three people in the truck, one of whom was riding in the back. The driver dismounted and walked out to the two guards. In a moment he was pointing at the ground and yelling - they could hear it from five hundred yards away even though they hadn't heard the truck, which really seemed strange.
"What's that all about?" Vega asked.
Captain Ramirez laughed quietly. "FOD. He's pissed off at the FOD."
"Huh?" Vega asked.
"Foreign Object Damage. You suck one of those cartridge cases into an aircraft engine, like a turbine engine, and it'll beat the hell out of it. Yeah - look, they're picking up their brass."
Chavez turned his binoculars back to the truck. "I see some boxes there, sir. Maybe we got a pickup tonight. How come no fuel cans - yeah! Captain, last time we were here, they didn't fuel the airplane, did they?"
"The flight originates from a regular airstrip twenty miles off," Ramirez explained. "Maybe they don't have to top off… Does seem odd, though."
"Maybe they got fuel drums in the shack… ?" Vega wondered.
Captain Ramirez grunted. He wanted to send a couple of men in close to check the area out, but his orders didn't permit that. Their only patrolling was to check the airfield perimeter for additional security troops. They never got closer than four hundred meters to the cleared area, and it was always done with an eye on the two guards. His operational orders were not to take the slightest risk of making contact with the opposition. So they weren't supposed to patrol the area even though it would have told them more about the opposition than they knew - would tell them things that