Free Big Pete (Privateer Tales Book 4) by Jamie McFarlane

IT'S THE SUDDEN STOP
     
    Our two squad transports slipped quietly across the besieged city. The pilots had been given orders to fly as low as possible. Lieutenant Irawan, the pilot of my squad’s ship, had taken the orders quite literally, flying no more than a dozen meters above the buildings, juking and jiving around the tallest structures. In the last month alone, Charlie Company had lost three transports to SAM (Surface to Air Missile) equipped patrols while out in the bush so I for one, wasn’t complaining.
    Each transport was configured with drop rails that held a full squad firmly in place. In combat we could be, and had been, dropped from just about every height. Personally, I didn’t care for stealth insertions, where we were dropped from high altitude and not allowed to fire our arc-jets until the last minute. I was all about flying low.
    Charlie 12 or the One-Two, as we referred to ourselves, was on the way back to base for some downtime. Four empty hangers on the drop rail were the only testament to the team members we’d lost over the last month.  The entire platoon had been dropped into a shitstorm and our squad’s casualties weren’t as heavy as others. I guess we’d been lucky, although it hadn’t been lucky for Padre, Benny, Scratch and Giggles, who weren’t making the return trip.
    “Aren’t you out in a month, Sarge?” Patch asked. I was one of the few members of the team without a nickname.
    “Can it, dickhead,” Mulehog fired off before I could respond. Jason ‘Mulehog’ Mueller was the most intimidating member of our team, if not our whole damned company. At two meters tall and a hundred-thirty kilograms he was imposing without armor. Put him in a hundred fifty kilos of mechanized armor and he looked like a tank with long legs. It also didn’t hurt that his weapon of choice was a SAW (Squad Automatic Weapon) slug thrower which added fifty kilos to his normal load-out.
    Patch had only been with the squad for the last month. He’d earned his nickname only a day after he’d arrived, by getting shot up while on patrol. The damage to his suit had been extensive enough that the field-techs applied several obvious patches. The armor had since been repaired, but the nickname stuck.
    Mulehog was pissed because it was an unwritten rule that we didn’t discuss our end dates. Most of us believed it was bad karma, especially since we’d all known guys who had one day left and hadn’t made it out.
    I wasn’t about to respond. It turned out that Mulehog was pretty easygoing as long as you didn’t get him too fired up. And in reality, the only guy on the team who was stupid, or brave enough to mess with him was his smaller buddy Mark ‘Methane’ Metzner. Where Mulehog was a spray and pray guy with his machine gun, Methane was a triple shot, precision shooter. As squad leader, I’d learned that together they complemented each other very well.
    “I’m just wondering if he’s going to re-up,” Patch complained.
    It was a question I hadn’t answered for myself yet. I didn’t really have anywhere to go to, but I’d been a Marine for five years and seen way more than my fair share of combat. I was a good Marine and a good team leader, but I’d recently started to question if I was really a career type of guy.
    I didn’t have a chance to answer as my helmet’s clear visor snapped shut and the floor of the transport dropped away.
    “Taking fire, prepare for drop,” the pilot’s steady voice said over my helmet’s audio. I’d gotten a look at her when she’d picked us up. Killer curves and a fresh, bite-your-ass attitude for a lieutenant. She’d flown us before and there’d been more than a little talk about her - but that’s about as close as a grunt would ever get. A little idle chatter was okay with me. Many of the men didn’t make it back and a little fantasy wouldn't hurt anyone. That is, as long as they didn’t cross the line.
    She’d broken protocol by skipping a convo