I'm trying to figure out where Chrissie and Pattie went. From my reading of Chapter 4 it sounded like the two got roped on Jonnie's plane along with Robert the Fox, but they haven't made an appearance since then and I can't find any mention of the girls in the next hundred pages. I guess there was a second plane that Robert switched from to be with Jonnie? So they're in Scotland, maybe?
Eh, it's not like Chrissie and Pattie are worth worrying about. Now that they aren't captives any more, they serve no purpose to the plot.
So, back to Africa. Jonnie and his soldiers secure a landing field and start poking around the abandoned compound that supplies the mine near what "old man-maps said had been called Lake Victoria," which is now called the Body of Water Formerly Known as Lake Victoria.
He spots a "fuel and ammunition manufacturing unit" that's been ransacked, showing frantic activity. The flattened foliage along the roadside suggests a big ol' convoy went through days or weeks ago. Jonnie's uneasy - besides the fact that there's a thousand Brigantes lurking nearby, it looks like the Psychlos have access to heavy vehicles, perhaps tanks, and his men can't fight armor in this "water-satured, hemmed-in forest."
This confuses me. Wasn't this the terrain that the tanks were ill-suited for? Didn't Jonnie bring any of those bazookas that took down (some) Psychlo warplanes? And isn't close, dense, low-visibility terrain with lots of hiding places for ambushing infantry a tank driver's worst nightmare? Oh, but Jonnie can't have air support, so it's an untenable tactical situation.
Dunneldeen lands, Robert the Fox runs up, and the bigwigs have a meeting. Jonnie theorizes that a Psychlo convoy hit this place for fuel before going back to the nearby minesite. Dunneldeen recalls that particular base put up heavier resistance than others, i.e. they managed to almost launch some planes and set up some anti-air weapons that mildly inconvenienced the single Scottish aircraft, even wounding its copilot. 'deen's reconnaisance reveals that the Psychlos at that base have reopened their hangar doors (the Scot pilot blasted them closed) and have planes hidden beneath the treeline - Mark 32 ground attack craft, heavily-armored.
And no, in the weeks since the great uprising nobody's launched a follow-up attack on these guys. You can't expect military operations to continue when the Jonnie Goodboy Tyler's in the hospital, can you?
Jonnie guesses these holdouts are desperate for breathe-gas, and have spent days building up their fuel and ammo reserves for an attack on the biggest supply of the hilariously explosive gas - the Colorado minesite! Dramatic musical sting!
So our heroes resolve to ambush these attackers before America is threatened. Jonnie dispatches some men under Ivan to hold a mountain pass with heavy weapons, including bazookas and mortars, with Dunneldeen as air support. Jonnie and the others will stay behind to deal with those Brigantes. And that's it for this chapter.
Oh, and the battle last chapter, with the "we surrender" at the end? Yeah, I don't know either. No mention is made of it in this chapter, and there's no prisoners around. Maybe it was a fake surrender?
Back to Chapter Five
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