The power of an air force is terrific when there is nothing to oppose it.
—Winston Churchill
The sandstorm had lifted two days prior. With that lifting winter ended and a terrible, oppressive heat descended onto the playing field. With the lifting, also, planes and helicopters were able to fly in parts and men from the main depot at the airport and the smaller one at Mangesh. Convoys wandering lost in the desert or hunkered down were scouted for from the air, found and directed. Tanks were recovered and sent forward. It had even proven possible for Christian, the legion's "II," or personnel officer, to ferry in two just-graduated classes of replacements, about four hundred privates, to make up for losses suffered to date, plus a bit.
Jorge Mendoza, Stefano del Rio and the tank commander, Sergeant Perez, pulled up in their Jaguar II to a dun-colored building fronting a small square. They were pleased to have made it this far. To this point in time, there had been little action for the tankers of the legion. In fact, only two tanks of sixteen could claim kills on enemy armor, and less than half could even claim to have fired a shot in anger at other targets.
The crew was also a little surprised. Good workmanship the Jaguar might have, and good design as well. But it had been designed for the continent of Taurus, not the desert. Half a dozen times since the sandstorm had begun the air filter had clogged with a mass of grit, choking the engine to a whining, sputtering death. The Ocelots had fared little better. Eventually Brown, the commander of the mechanized cohort, had simply said, "To hell with it," and radioed in to legion headquarters that he and his command were simply frozen. "Better we stop now," Brown had explained to Carrera, "before we ruin every engine in the command, than keep going another few miles and never move again until you fly us in a few dozen new power packs."
Since they had stopped before the dust had done their engines to death, once the sandstorm had cleared the mechanized cohort had made good progress, reaching Ninewa in less than a day and taking up positions overlooking the bridge that spanned the broad, slow- moving, and brown-silty river behind it. The bridge stood in plain view about three thousand meters away.
Perez climbed out of the tank and stood atop the turret. From there he could see the bridge easily enough, plus the tall white building his map labeled as a hospital that looked over the entire town, dominating it.
"It's got to come down," he said to himself.
Perez heard a series of foomps, so close together as to seem to be one, single, long explosion. He waited for a few seconds, half in analysis and a quarter in surprise. Then he shouted, "Incoming!"
Del Rio and Mendoza said, together, "What the fu . . . ?" before dropping down into the tank and buttoning the hatches behind them. Perez dived through his own hatch face first, twisting around inside the tank to get one arm onto the turret handle. This he pulled shut with a clang as the first mortar rounds began impacting nearby.
The tank shuddered under the barrage. Inside all three of its crew prayed fervently that no Sumeri shell would find the lightly armored top of the vehicle. Even a smaller shell would be dangerous if it exploded there. A 120mm, as they assumed the enemy shells were, would burst the top like an overripe grape.
The barrage ended as suddenly as it began. Giving the order, "Wait inside until I tell you it's safe," Perez popped the hatch and risked a careful look around.
"Damn," he said aloud, though without keying the tank's intercom.
His tank had survived, but not unscathed. Where once the thing had carried two whiplike radio antennae, all that remained of these were roughly sheared off nubs. It was worse farther away.
The infantry that had dismounted from their Ocelots once these had halted and had been caught in the open and flat footed. Their bodies—the bloody, torn remnants of their bodies, rather—lay stretched out, torn or eviscerated, across the square. Perez didn't try to count them but there had to be at least ten or a dozen men killed.
The wounded, and there were more of these, were worse. They screamed for pain, for "Mama," for lost legs, arms and eyes. Already medicos were busied trying to staunch the flow of blood, to keep intestines from falling out, to field-set broken bones.
A single Ocelot apparently had taken a direct hit on top. It burned on the opposite side of the square from Perez and his tank. Someone inside of it screamed. No one tried to perform first aid on its unfortunate occupants, though Perez did see a lone soldier cross himself before firing a single round into the track. The screaming stopped.
One of the nice things about modern technology—for some definitions of "nice"—was that it didn't take an ultramodern bomber or jet fighter to drop even a very large bomb accurately. Any old thing that would get off the ground with a sufficient payload would do, provided it could fly above the ceiling for light air defense or that there was no real air defense deployed.
The Dodo, as rebuilt, met these minimal requirements. It could carry, handily, six bombs of two thousand pounds each. Moreover, after a blistering tongue lashing by Carrera, the commander of the ala had seen to it that four of his Dodos had wooden frameworks installed internally to allow them each to carry five such bombs, with a sixth on a dispenser rack. The cursing ground crews had worked through the night, cutting, lashing and bolting together the wood scrounged up by Harrington for the purpose. Then they'd worked half the morning using the three-thousand-pound crane integral to each aircraft to load the bombs.
The bombs, themselves, came courtesy of the FS Air Force, an easy and profitable trade in which Harrington had passed over a dozen cases of eighteen-year-old scotch and received in return two dozen bombs. (It was actually more complex than this, since Harrington also had to bring in an ordnance officer from the FSAF, that officer's commander, and a couple of others to see the deal go through and the planes effectively fitted to carry and use the weapons. For simplicity's sake, though, it is accurate enough to say that one case equaled two bombs with guidance packages.)
In prior times, no plane like the Dodo could hope to place a bomb on target with anything approaching accuracy unless the planes were substantially modified. In this case, though, the bombs had been modified. Each of the two-thousand-pounders had had its normal fusing taken out and replaced with a sophisticated guidance package. The guidance package operated off of the Global Locating System the United Earth Peace Fleet had, reluctantly, permitted the FSC to loft into space. Once released, the bombs became self-actuating, if not self-aware. They would guide themselves onto target with a CEP, or Circular Error Probable, of mere meters.
(Of course, the bombs needed to be programmed and the ala's ordnance folks had not the first clue as to how to do that. Moreover, they had to be kept charged until released and this required some rewiring of the Dodos. Thus, as part of the deal two ordnance men from the FSAF had had to accompany the load to teach the Balboans how to do it. As mentioned, the deal was complicated. It became more complicated when Harrington went back, some days later, for several score five-hundred-pound bombs with similar fusing and guidance packages.)
"Evacuate the hospital," the amid ordered abruptly.
"Sir?" asked Qabaash, the operations officer, in confusion.
"Just a feeling," Sada admitted. "But get the men out. Leave the guns. Now go!"
There is very little one can do with a computer that one cannot also do, albeit more slowly and with more difficulty, with a pen and paper, map and compass. The rate of fall of the bombs had been calculated and from that the release point was decided. This had been compared with the bomb's ability to guide itself and an oval shaped area was drawn on the pilot's map, now strapped to his thigh.
Back in the cargo bay, the crew, supplemented by a couple of cooks and a medic, strained to get the bomb moving down the rollered ramp that ran along the plane's center line. It was tricky and required timing.
"Five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . . release." The pilot, Miguel Lanza, pulled back on his yoke to point the nose of the plane upward slightly. This made the roll easier.
The five men of the crew, all clustered behind, heaved and pushed. The bomb began to roll to the door, picking up speed as it went down the heavy wooden ramp. The bomb disappeared from view as the plane, lightened by a ton, lurched upward. Lanza, stomach sinking as the plane arose, immediately applied throttle to get this Dodo out of the way of the next one—number two of four on the mission—coming in to the release point.
"Okay, boys," shouted the sweating, panting crew chief, leaning with one arm on the wooden frame. "Let's go back and slide the next one into position.
Amid Sada sat on a folding chair on the flat roof over his bunker, sipping a tepid fruit juice. His eyes were fixed on the hospital, standing tall and white except for black bull's-eyes painted on each side. He heard, distantly, the drone of aircraft.
Suddenly the interior of the darkened hospital lit up, showing a montage of broken glass and torn-out cinder blocks cascading from every window.
"I will never again doubt one of your hunches, sir," Qabaash admitted.
"Wait for it, my friend," Sada chided, wagging a finger. "The building still stands. It won't for long."
Seconds passed. Once again the former hospital building flashed with internal fire. This time, one corner began to sag. In half a minute another bomb, this one not so accurate as the first two, struck it on the side, almost exactly on one of the painted bull's-eyes. An entire section of masonry peeled away to fall crashing to the street below.
Qabaash looked awed. "It was likely a fluke, my friend," Sada announced.
It was nearly two full minutes before yet another bomb hit the building, again internally. That one managed to start a fire, though the next put it out while crumbling one wing completely.
"How many, do you think, Amid?"
"Why, as many as it takes, Qabaash," Sada answered calmly. "And if what they have tonight isn't enough, they'll be back tomorrow. The enemy has plenty of time, and apparently no shortage of munitions."
"Truth is, Carl," Carrera admitted to Kennison, "that I'd have spared the building if I could. I couldn't. The other side probably had no choice but to use it, and made the right choice of at least not hiding behind it. But because they used it, it had to go."
"Seems like a bloody awful waste to me, Pat." For some reason Kennison seemed more troubled by the destruction of the former hospital than by anything that had gone before. Or perhaps it was a cumulative thing, with the hospital being the final straw. In either case, he had tendered his resignation to Carrera that morning, just before sunrise.
Carrera's face was a stiff mask as he folded the written resignation carefully and placed it in one pocket of his battledress, rebuttoning the pocket when he was done. "In any case, Carl, no, I won't let you go. You signed on for two years and for two years you will stay, in irons if necessary. You were under no illusions about what I intended and you've known me long enough and well enough to know how I think and how I operate. None of this should be a surprise to you."
Kennison looked utterly miserable, haggard and drawn. "That's not the surprise, Pat. Everything you say is true. The surprise is how I feel about it. That, I never had a clue to. I don't even disagree, in principle, about the things you've done. It just bothers me in ways I can't deal with. Pat . . . I haven't slept in a week and it isn't just because of the cluster fuck the sandstorm caused."
Carrera turned away for a moment, thinking hard. I don't have a decent replacement here for him. Kuralski could do it, but he's out of country. Jimenez could, too, but I can't afford to pull him out of Fourth Cohort. I need Harrington where he is. Triste? No. Great intel guy but not an operator. Parilla could run a staff well enough provided someone else gave him the overall plan. But he's still bedridden.
Fuck. I'll have to try to do it myself. That, and try to get Kennison back on track.
"Sergeant Major!" Carrera called.
"Sir."
"Tribune Kennison has not slept in a week. He is currently unfit for his duties. Place him under arrest. Go to my vehicle and ask Soult for a bottle—no better make it two bottles—of scotch. Take the tribune back to the last town we passed and get him drunk as a skunk. Then put him to bed. Place a guard on him with instructions to fill him with more booze when he awakens. Have the legion's chief surgeon check on him from time to time."
Kennison looked at Carrera skeptically. Fine, we'll play it this way for now. But I don't think that's the problem.
The bombing had become more or less continuous, with one Dodo overhead at all times ready to drop a self-guiding bomb— mostly lighter, five-hundred-pounders—any and every time a group of Sada's men showed themselves. The bombs seemed to come down every five or ten minutes even without a visible target.
This is becoming a problem, Sada thought to himself. Another bomb fell somewhere in the town, not so far away that it didn't shake the commander even down in his bunker. At night we have these things, during the day it's the smaller, single engine dive bombers; those, or helicopters configured to carry rockets and machine guns. Both times, day or night, we have their RPVs patrolling for targets for the aircraft, the artillery, and the heavy mortars.
If it's becoming hard on my morale it must be worse for the men.
Right, then. Best get out of this frigging hole and go see them.
Command Post, Legio del Cid, 32/2/461 AC
"That's him!" Fahad shouted in the CP. "That's Sada." An RPV pilot began calling off the grid coordinates of the spot where the enemy commander had been seen.
Carrera, who was spending a lot more time at headquarters than he liked since he had sent Kennison away to sleep and rest, hurried to look at the monitor that carried an image from a circling RPV.
"Are you sure, Fahad?"
"I'm sure. No one walks quite like he does. That's him."
Already the fire direction center was on the radio, giving precise coordinates to one of the Dodos circling overhead.
"Belay that!" Carrera shouted. All chatter in the CP stopped as every face turned to their chief with looks that said plainly, "Are you out of your fucking mind?"
Carrera swept a glare back at his headquarters troops. "Yes, I am probably out of my fucking mind. But I want him alive. He's worth more to us, over there, enforcing the rules than he would be dead and some other asshole breaking them."
He did not give his real reason. I have a use for this man, in the future, if he lives.
Assembly Area Principe Eugenio, just east of Ninewa
Cruz ducked into the trench as the black flower blossomed just a hundred meters away, sending steel shards zinging through the air like homicidal bees.
"They're getting better," Sanchez said. "You've got to admit it; they are getting better."
Cruz knew that shells were in short supply for the legion. Allegedly, they'd been given number one priority for both trucks and aircraft coming down the highway from Mangesh Base. The problem was, so the tribune had explained, that "number one priority doesn't mean the only priority." Food had to be brought, and that was bulky. Nor had the water purification point been moved right up to the river that fed the city yet. The legion needed a lot of water, too, about forty thousand gallons a day. Other items of ammunition, notably high explosives, grenades and small arms, were also needed and took up shipping space. The rockets for the big multiple rocket launchers wouldn't fit the legion's trucks except for the trucks that accompanied the launchers, and they were already carrying what they could.
Making things worse, the gringo commander of the 731st Airborne was pissed at Carrera—no, Cruz didn't know the full story— and had pulled out his own heavy transport.
So shells were being hoarded, for now at least, and the Sumeri mortars—they didn't seem to have any artillery available, but they had a shitpot full of mortars—were having a field day.
One of the century's snipers fired a single round from his Draco. He must have missed; he cursed the thing roundly as soon as he looked through his scope. He fired again.
The flyboys claimed to have gotten some. So far as Cruz could see it hadn't made a lot of difference. The Sumeri mortars barked whenever someone from the legion had the temerity to show himself.
Still, shells were coming down the pike. Stockpiles were being built.
"Won't be long now," Cruz muttered.
"Incoming!" Sanchez shouted.
About four kilometers behind the trench in which Cruz sheltered, Mendoza, del Rio and Sergeant Perez sat in the shade of a tarp stretched out from one side of the tank to block out the setting sun. Even with the tarp it was hotter than the hinges on the gates of Hell. The air shimmered. Mendoza knew it would be even worse inside the tank. Many virtues the Jaguar had. Air conditioning was, sadly, not among them.
About seven hundred meters away a century of heavy, 160mm, mortars barked together. The blast was enough to make the tank pitch slightly. The mortars, like the tank, were out of Sumeri range.
"Bastards could warn us when they're about to do that," del Rio complained, sticking a finger in his ear and rotating it slightly to emphasize the point.
Perez shrugged, indifferent. Mendoza seemed hardly to notice.
"Something bothering you, Jorge?" Perez asked.
Jorge shook his head no, but then added, "I was thinking about a girl back home, Sergeant."
"Girlfriend?"
"No . . . no. Just a girl I used to see at church. Beautiful girl, perfection in miniature. I don't even know her name, never had the courage to ask. But I remember her, wearing a yellow print dress and a white sun hat."
Both Perez and del Rio turned to look.
"Never had the courage to ask her name?" del Rio asked. "What? Am I sharing my tank with a pussy? What are you going to do when we roll into town?"
"I'm not afraid of that, Stefano, but girls can be scary."
Perez laughed. "Yes, Jorge, girls can be scary. But I'll tell you what; we get out of this, I am going to march you to that church and when the girl shows up again march you over to her and introduce you."
"Jeez, Sarge, would you?"
"I said they were fucking getting better. I didn't want them to get this fucking good," Sanchez cursed as he fired his rifle at a Sumeri raiding party that had sprung seemingly out of nowhere.
Rivera's light machine gun chattered, sending streams of mixed ball and tracer out toward the enemy. Cruz simply moved his rifle sights from one shadow to another, firing as the sights lined up. He didn't think he was hitting anybody but one had to try.
From Cruz's right another, heavier, machine gun began to trace lines across the ground. As if the machine gun were a spur to action, one of the Sumeris shouted, "Allahu akbar," God is great. Firing from the hip the whole crew began charging at Cruz's position. The machine gun killed a number of them but, without wire to slow the Sumeris down, they were quickly out of its arc of fire and descending on the century's forward trench.
"Shit, there must be a hundred of them," Sanchez said between shots and bursts.
Cruz set his rifle down and reached for the clackers—detonating devices—that led to a couple of directional antipersonnel mines out to the front. An earlier generation, on a different planet, might have called the mines "claymores." Cruz squeezed both clackers and was rewarded with a double blast. Perhaps as many as twenty of the attackers went down, some silently, some moaning, still others screaming. The rest plunged on.
"Fix bayonets! Fix bayonets! Fix bay—" screamed Sergeant del Valle. He never finished as an unlucky bullet hit him from the side and, breaking through the softer armor there, passed through his chest. He fell without another sound.
Cruz fumbled nervously for his own bayonet, fixed to his side by his web belt and its carrier. Then he unsnapped the leather strap that held the blade in place, withdrew it, and fixed it onto the end of his rifle. He didn't have time to see to Sanchez and Rivera before the Sumeris were upon them.
A bearded face approached, shouting something unintelligible. Above the face a rifle, also with fixed bayonet, was held in both hands. It was intimidating looking, but bad technique. Cruz went under the upraised rifle and plunged his own bayonet deep into the Sumeri's gut. The Sumeri's eyes went wide as his mouth formed an "O" of surprise. His knees crumpled and, as he went to them, his body pulled Cruz's lodged rifle down with it. Cruz struggled to free the blade.
Shit! What is it about me that keeps causing sharp pointy things to get stuck in people?
"Allahu akbar," sounded from another of the enemy, too close in space and time for Cruz to risk trying to free his rifle. He dropped it and faced the Sumeri, left arm and leg bent and forward, showing as little of his own body to the enemy as possible.
The Sumeri lunged. Cruz batted the rifle slightly to one side, just enough to get inside its reach. His right fist lanced upward, catching the Sumeri on the jaw. The blow wasn't enough to knock his opponent out, but it did manage to stun him. Cruz took advantage of that to land another two blows onto the enemy's solar plexus. The Sumeri dropped the rifle and went down, gasping. Cruz took the rifle away from the Sumeri, grasped it in both his own hands and smashed the butt down onto the Sumeri's head, twice.
"Cruz!" screamed Rivera from where he lay, flat on the ground.
The team leader looked up and saw two of the enemy standing over his light machine gunner. Before he could fire both had driven their bayonets down. One, it was later determined, glanced off the glassy metal plate of Rivera's armor. The other sank into his throat.
Shrieking something incomprehensible even to himself, Cruz charged, firing his captured weapon from his hip. At this range, even that way he couldn't miss. Nor did the Sumeris have body armor. They went down. Then the magazine of the captured rifle went dry. Cruz reloaded from his own magazine pouches—for both sides carried, after all, the same model rifle—and fired again, one burst each, into the two enemy soldiers.
When he turned Cruz saw two things. One was that, on the left, the rest of the century was charging to his aid. The other was Sanchez, snarling and cursing and holding off three of them on his own, his bayonet flicking back and forth to threaten each in turn.
Without help, and soon, it would be a losing game.
Cruz charged. One of the Sumeris broke and ran back from whence he had come. Still others, from different parts of the battlefield, were fleeing as well. One of the two still facing Sanchez turned instead to face Cruz.
The two Sumeris saw the rapidly approaching rest of the century. First one, then the other, dropped their weapons and raised their hands. Sanchez was about to kill his man, even so, when Cruz ordered, "No."
"Three dead, sir," Cruz told Carrera the next morning on the same spot as the previous night's action. Bodies still littered the ground. "No wounded, ours or theirs. It was . . . you know . . . too close for that. Too close to take chances."
"I understand. Who was killed here?" Carrera asked.
"Sergeant del Valle, he was my section leader," Cruz answered, "plus my own light machine gunner, Rivera, and Private Aguinaldo from Second Fire Team."
The signifer added, "One of the other sections lost a man as well, Legate."
"Prisoners?" Carrera asked.
"Cruz and Sanchez took two, Legate," answered the century signifer. "I've already had them escorted to the command post. There weren't any others. Not that we've found so far, anyway."
As if to give the lie to the signifer, one of the medics forward of the trench and examining the bodies felled by the directional mines and the machine gun fire shouted, "Hey, we need a field ambulance. I've got two live ones here."
The signifer shrugged. It had been a long night and the morning was young. No surprise they found some men wounded who hadn't been in the close fight.
Carrera looked around again, counting the Sumeri bodies in and around the trench. He noted the clackers lying inside it and the swath of bodies stretched out in two triangles in front of it. He nodded at the signifer who, by prearrangement ordered, "Corporal Cruz, PFC Sanchez, Attention." The signifer, the centurion, and the few legionaries standing nearby also went to attention.
"Orders will come along later," Carrera explained, as he reached into the chest pocket of his battle dress. "We'll make it formal then, too. For now, though, I see no reason to wait. Gentlemen, I am awarding you the Cruz de Coraje en Acero. This is the first step in the six steps of honor the legion has instituted to recognize and reward bravery. You two are only the fourth and fifth such awards we have made since coming here though I rather doubt you will be the last." Carrera hung a medal, a simple cross on a ribbon, around the neck of Cruz. He then did the same to Sanchez.
"This medal is, as I said, only the first step. You will wear it today, as this is the day I awarded it to you. You will also wear it on the day we make it formal, read official orders over you—bless you, so to speak—and present them in front of the legion. On other days you will not wear it, until you earn the next step, the Cross of Valor in Bronze." Carrera smiled slightly. "If you like how they feel on this day and that future day, you will just have to be mindlessly brave one more time."
Clapping both men on the shoulders and shaking their hands, Carrera turned and walked away.
Cruz didn't think too much of the award. Still, he thought, I'm a corporal? Really? Damn.
"What was the butcher's bill, Qabaash?"
"Amid, we sent out ninety-seven men, nearly a full company. Only forty-three returned."
"A bitter price," Sada said. "Bitter but necessary." Sada looked at Qabaash. "You don't understand why it was necessary, do you?"
Qabaash raised his chin and shook his head. Being mostly out of the action was hard on him and very depressing. "No, Amid, I don't. I wish I did."
Patiently, Sada explained, "What's it worth paying to make sure the enemy doesn't sleep well at night, Qabaash? What price should we pay to make sure that he spends more of his effort watching out for a surprise attack than preparing to attack us here? You're a fine fighter, Major. You have to learn to be a thinker as well."
Command Post, Legio del Cid, 35/2/461 AC
"Well, it's not like I didn't try to accommodate them," Carrera said, watching the mass of aircraft overhead and on the other side of the river. The aircraft, a mix of C-31 and C-41 medium and heavy lift, were disgorging the better part of the 731st Airborne Brigade, Federated States Army. The air was thick with parachutes.
"You robbed t'em, t'ey t'ink," answered McNamara. "T'ree times t'ey planned a drop, t'ree times we overran and passed by t'e drop zone before t'ey could execute. An', Boss, you know as well as I do t'at planning a drop takes time and effort. So, yeah, t'ey're pissed at you. T'at's why t'ey stopped letting their forward support battalion help us, to slow us down so t'ey could make a jump . . . a 'combat' jump."
"Interesting application of decision cycle theory, anyway, Sergeant Major. First time I've heard or read of an occasion where a military organization is outmaneuvered by its friends because its friends just decide faster and move faster than the organization is capable of."
McNamara shrugged. Fancy theories were fine, to him, provided they didn't interfere with the actual fighting.
"Anyway, we've got a problem or, rather, several. I've got a tacit agreement with the Sumeris on the rules for this fight. The 731st is not a part of that agreement. I know their commander, and he's a dickhead. Jeff Lamprey, ever heard of him?"
McNamara scratched a cheek, idly. "Name only," he answered.
"Stuffed-shirt, stick up his ass, prig," Carrera said, disdainfully. "Tall, handsome, manly . . . who happens to be a stuffed-shirt, stick up his ass prig. Not too manly, though, some say. I've been told, by people in a position to know, that when he was a captain commanding a company his wife—beautiful girl, too, they say—used to fuck his lieutenants. I don't think he ever quite recovered from that. That's one of the reasons I'm inclined to believe the story. He's the kind of guy who insists on saluting in the field and that troops should shave daily even when drinking water is short.
"Now, technically," Carrera continued, "by the contract Campos signed with us, I outrank him. I know him though and he won't listen to that. Frankly, Sergeant Major, we loathe each other at a really deep, sincere and personal level. So we are faced with the prospect of two forces trying to take the same town at the same time, with essentially no chance that the two forces will or even can cooperate. Hmmm . . . what to do, what to do?"
Carrera paused, obviously thinking hard. McNamara stayed quiet for the moment, worrying about what his boss was thinking. Then Carrera nodded to himself, turned around, and entered the CP.
"Fire support, have we got an armed Dodo overhead?"
"Yes, sir. Two of them, actually."
"Good. Drop the bridge on the other side of town. Immediately."
McNamara, listening, thought, Got to hand it to him. He cuts right to the heart of the problem and finds a solution. It might not be an elegant solution. It might even piss off everyone in the entire world. But he does come up with a solution, every time. Jesus, I see no fucking end of trouble out of this one.
Lamprey and a picked group of paratroopers hit, rolled and recovered. In an instant they had doffed their chutes, prepared their weapons, and were racing on foot to seize the one bridge over the river that led into the town.
The commander of the 731st Airborne saw a dark streak above the bridge. Even without knowing he was still pretty sure what it meant.
"Everybody, DOWN!" he shouted, while still seven or eight hundred meters away from his objective.
KABOOM!
Lamprey looked up to see several concrete sections of the bridge flying up in what looked like an attempt to achieve low orbit.
"Come on, follow me," Lamprey shouted, getting to his feet and resuming his race. He had gained perhaps another hundred meters when the bridge erupted again. Again Lamprey threw himself to the ground.
KABOOM!
"That son of a bitch, undisciplined, insubordinate bastard," he muttered when he reached the bridge only to discover it really didn't exist anymore.
"But, why? I don't understand, I really don't understand, why they dropped the bridge, Amid."
So far his enemy's actions had made a certain sense to Sada. He had to confess, though that this . . .
"Makes no sense to me either, Qabaash. So it must be a trick. Move Fourth Battalion from reserve to facing the river."
"That's going to leave us stretched facing the other enemy," Qabaash objected.
"I know. But I am guessing that they dropped the bridge precisely to lull us into thinking that no attack would be coming across the river. Thus, there almost certainly will be an attack from across the river."
The load this time was five-hundred-pounders, twenty-four of them. Each of the other five birds in the mission carried a similar load, except for Number Four, which carried five two-thousand- pounders. Four was flying somewhere off to the left. Its bombs were programmed for several hardened targets, which did not include Sada's command bunker, within the town.
The navigator—who was doing double duty as the bombardier, to the extent the guided bombs even required a bombardier— announced, "Release in . . . five . . . four . . . three . . ."
Command Post, Legio del Cid
"—two . . . one," intoned Triste from where he stood between the bank of radios and the operational maps. There was a delay of about half a minute between his announcement of "one" and the first rumblings of huge aerial bombs exploding in the city.
"It takes a while for the bombs to hit ground," he explained, a little sheepishly, when Carrera turned an uplifted eyebrow towards him.
Carrera shrugged—a few seconds one way or the other didn't really matter under the circumstances—and returned his attention to the operational maps.
One of these, the largest scale one, Ridenhour was updating with the latest information from Thomas's headquarters, still ensconced in al Jahara. The Federated States had made rapid progress, despite the false start at the beginning of the campaign. Even now its armored columns closed on the capital of the Republic of Sumer, Babel. Whether they would lunge right into the town or wait to allow slower moving infantry to catch up and do the detailed clearing was a matter of some debate within the legion's own headquarters.
Ridenhour, himself, didn't know. He was reasonably sure that Thomas was still undecided. True, the Sumeri Army had mostly folded up whenever FSA troops had gotten close. But there had been exceptions, a few times and places where they'd fought like demons. This was usually the doing of some local commander. Let one or two of that sort be inside the capital with a good sized body of troops under his command and a bold lunge with armor into the town could turn into a disaster.
There's not a lot of difference it makes to us, Carrera thought, with a mental shrug. And it's not like I can affect it one way or the other.
He turned his attention away from the map that showed events he could do nothing about and towards the local map that detailed the actions of his own force.There, things appeared to be going pretty smoothly. Third and Fourth Cohorts were holding position. First, Second, Fifth and Sixth were either in or moving to their jump off positions south of the town.
And, he thought, since there isn't a whole hell of a lot I can do here, I may as well go forward and at least see the action and be seen.
"Mitch, Soult; grab your radios. We're going up to see First Cohort move in."
Assembly Area Principe Eugenio
Corporal Cruz, PFC Sanchez, and the two new men just arrived a few days prior, Robles—younger brother to the Cazador sergeant strangled on Hill 1647—and Correa, got as low and as forward into shelter as the shallow trench permitted.
"Any time now," Cruz said, after consulting his watch. "Any time n—."
To the east, the sky lit up as one aerially delivered bomb after another slammed in, disintegrating buildings and the men those buildings contained. Cruz and the other three, even at this distance, were buffeted and shaken by the bombardment. Bits of hot metal, some of them substantial, flew overhead or careened into the friendly side of the scraped-out trench.
The bombardment went on and on, averaging one major explosion every twelve to fifteen seconds. Cruz lost track of the time. Even before it was finished, every mortar and gun of the legion opened up, lighting up both the open desert skyline and the interior of Ninewa.
Anticipating that the regular bombardment would stay fairly regular, Cruz waited until one of the really big blasts had gone off, waited a few prudent seconds for the metal shards to either pass over or come to rest, and stuck his head up for a risky look.
"It's all smoke and fire," he shouted to his men. "I can't see everything on the edge of town for the smoke, but what I can see has been better than half obliterated." As he watched he saw a substantial building fall to the ground, pouring off bricks as it came down.
He ducked again and just in time as another aerial bomb went off.
Between the distinct sounds of the bombing, Cruz made out the sound of engines, a lot of them, swinging in from the left until they were directly behind him. Then the engines began to grow louder as they moved toward the town, coming closer.
The mechanized cohort had feinted first to the west of the town, then—leaving behind one century to maintain the deception—the rest had turned around and swung wide to three-quarters circle Ninewa again and take up a position to the east. There, behind the First Cohort, they lined up, the remaining three mechanized centuries on line, tanks leading, followed by the Ocelots carrying the infantry.
Perez stood in the hatch of his tank, scanning ahead with his eyes while del Rio, below in the turret, scanned through the tank's thermal imager. Jorge Mendoza just drove, his eyes and crown only just sticking up out of the cramped driver's compartment.
Mendoza felt his heart begin to pound when he heard the century signifer call over the radio, "Roll."
Perez acknowledged the order and echoed it, adding in the directions, "Jorge, aim for those chemlights ahead and stop when we reach them." Mendoza put the tank into gear and began rolling forward, picking up speed quickly as he went. The tank lurched into a shallow trench and then, as Mendoza applied the gas, pulled out of it. It stopped on the other side, rocking back and forth for a moment.
Perez looked around until his eyes rested on a small group of infantry, just rising out of the scraping. "Come on, come on; climb aboard. We haven't got all day." Doubting the infantry could hear him, Perez used his arms to signal that it was time.
Cruz saw the tanker frantically waving for him and his men to climb aboard. He'd never trained on this, but it seemed straightforward enough: climb on, hang on for dear life and hope that the damned thing doesn't fire the main gun until you can climb the hell off.
"Mount up, boys," he ordered over the diesel's roar. "Sanchez, take the tail."
Cruz climbed aboard first, arms grasping for purchase and legs scrambling and slipping on road wheels and treads. He eyed the reactive armor, uncertainly. Rather, he was absolutely certain he didn't want to be anywhere near the damned rolling target if it took a hit and one of the explosive bricks went off.
Then again, if it takes a hit does it really matter? Probably not; probably not even a little. Just be adding insult to—mortal—injury.
Once safely mounted, Cruz reached down an arm to help the next man, Robles, climb up. With Sanchez pushing and Robles pulling they soon had Correa up. Correa and Robles helped Sanchez while Cruz tried to speak to the tank commander.
"I'm Perez," the sergeant shouted over the engine's roar. "We're going to close to within two hundred meters of the edge of town, firing the machine guns like maniacs. Then you grunts get off, along with the rest of your people and clear the edge. After that, we'll lead and you support."
"Why just the machine guns?" Cruz asked.
"Son, you don't want to be on this tank if we fire the main gun," Perez answered. "It . . . hurts."
"I understand, Sergeant Perez," Cruz shouted back. "Just give me the high sign when it's time to get off."
Perez replaced his combat vehicle crewman's helmet and said something, presumably to the driver. Cruz barely had his men positioned when the tank took off again with a shudder and a lurch.
Mendoza was probably the loneliest man in or on the tank. Perez had del Rio for close company. Even the grunts on back could see each other. All he had was his lonely, isolated compartment . . . that, and the intruding memory of a beautiful light brown girl in a white hat and yellow print dress singing "Ave Maria," in a church choir.
Brutally, he pushed aside the thought of the unknown, nameless girl to concentrate on his driving. He had a set of Volgan-manufactured night vision goggles on. These were plugged into the tank for juice. They were infrared, the oldest technology, but had the advantage of being able to pick out any mines that the tank's infrared light might illuminate. Jorge saw none but maneuvered around a few suspicious spots anyway, his abrupt movements throwing Perez and del Rio around the turret and certainly pissing off the grunts hanging on over the engine compartment.
Mendoza actually smiled slightly, a sort of schadenfreude, when he thought about the grunts trying desperately to hold on despite his maneuvers. He felt a little ashamed. It isn't that funny, he told himself. Well . . . maybe it is.
He heard in his headphones, "Tank, halt. Gunner, coax, eleven o'clock, antitank gunner in building."
The coaxial machine gun began to chatter as Cruz felt the sergeant in the hatch tap his shoulder. "Off now, and get low," the sergeant shouted, then turned to use his own pintle-mounted heavy machine gun to fire forward.
Obediently, Cruz pushed Correa off the tank, then turned to give the boot to Sanchez and Robles. Cruz then dove off himself and rolled to a stop next to Correa.
No sooner had he done so than the tank's main gun spoke, the muzzle blast assaulting Cruz's ears painfully and causing his internal organs to ripple. Downrange a building flashed, then exploded, as a high explosive round with delay set on the fuse burst through its wall and detonated inside. Men and parts of men flew out with the walls. The tank rolled forward, its machine guns still spitting at the buildings opposite.
Even though stunned by the muzzle blast, Cruz stood up to a crouch, Correa doing likewise beside him. He looked to the left and saw Sanchez and Robles doing the same. Cruz pointed at the tank's rear panel and pulled Correa along to get them both behind it. Sanchez and Robles joined them there a split second later.
Advancing with the tank, Cruz leaned out and fired a burst at nothing in particular. He hoped the tracers would remind the commander of the tank that he had infantry following. The only thing more frightening to a foot soldier than a friendly tank lurching about without control is an enemy tank lurching about with malicious intent. And the difference in fear factor is not large.
Other tanks, to the left and the right, fired machine guns and high explosive shells into the town. To these suppressive fires were added those of the Ocelots and the supporting infantry. There was some return fire, but the wall of lead put out by the attackers made it, at best, unaimed.
At the very edge of the town, taking cover behind still smoking buildings, the tanks stopped. Like the other infantry, Cruz and his boys surged into the town, to root out the defenders with rifle, bayonet and grenade.
Her breathing was labored now. No matter, it wouldn't be long and Margot Tebaf already had had a life with much to be proud of in it.
It has worked out, she thought. It has worked out as we hoped it would.
The pattern of outworld emigration, demographic flux, and expansion of political control by the United Nations, other supranationals, nongovernmental organizations and their supporters had been intimately linked.
The toughest part had been maintaining a working population sufficient to meet needs while getting rid of only enough useless mouths that the progressives of the European Union could maintain power. Once that power had solidified, though, it had become possible to so undercut the semblance of democracy that the votes of the elderly and indigent, the culturally unassimilated and inassimilable had become superfluous.
Old people don't riot when their pensions are cut or eliminated and their children, if any, refuse to take them in, Margot thought. They just die.
Without off world emigration to dump the Moslems, their departures spurred by almost total elimination of welfare and the unavailability of work, it wouldn't have worked either.
Yet their colony on the New World was also a great draw. May they have luck with it.
Better and more satisfying, the cut-off of European immigration forced the United States to accept larger and larger numbers of immigrants as inassimilable as the Moslems were here. Now? Better than half their population owes and feels no loyalty to America, and votes for what it does feel loyalty to. And as we have expanded our power around the world, we have been able to force the United States to accept more and more of our way of doing things. They're still an economic powerhouse, but they can't impose their will anymore.
Even better than that, though, has been the effect of off-world emigration on the Americans. For each one that left has made the place less comfortable for those that remained. And each drop in the comfort level has made more leave. They still think of themselves as a real country. But they're dying. They predicted demographic death for us, but we will be at their funeral.
It was a cheery, if not perfectly accurate, thought for Margot. Thus, when the evening nurse came to check on her, her corpse was smiling broadly.