Stephen Coonts - Combat

Abruptly, the shrill alarm tone of the threat board squalled in the earphones of his helmet. At the same instant, Bolde felt ABLE swerve sharply beneath him as his driver, Specialist Third (Vehicle Operations) Rick Santiago locked the wheel over in an instinctive turn-and-accelerate evasion.

Bolde hit the seat control selector with the palm of his hand, dropping himself down through the commander’s cupola and into the cab beside Santiago, the hatch lid thudding closed over his head.

“What do we have?” he demanded.

“Our point drone was just painted by a ground scan radar,” Warrant Officer First (Velectronics Operations) Bridget Shelleen reported crisply from behind Bolde’s shoulder.

“Any indication of a targeting acquisition?”

“I don’t think so.” The intense little redhead leaned into the drone operations station on the starboard cab bulkhead, her fingers dancing across the keypads as she pumped a series of commands into the datalinks. “ CHARLIE was just cresting a dune line when he was blipped. I’ve reversed him back into the radar shadow. Contact broken. With the luck of the Lord and Lady, they’ll think he was a dust transitory.”

“How about us, Brid? Are we still clean?”

“No painting indicated. CHARLIE is running about ten klicks out ahead of us. We’re still below the scan horizon of whatever is out there.”

“Right. Recall CHARLIE . Low speed. Minimize dust plume. Rick, find us a hide. We’re going to ground.”

“Doi’ it, LT,” ABLE ’s wheelman yelled back over the whir and rumble of the wheels. “We got a qued off to the left. I just gotta find us a go-down.”

At eighty kilometers an hour, the armored cavalry vehicle roared along parallel to a dry wash. Such queds were one of the few, rare terrain variances to be found amid the broad expanses of sand-and-gravel fesh fesh plain that predominate in northern Mali.

Driving right-handed, Santiago used his left to manipulate the settings of the ride control panel, backing off the air pressure in ABLE ’s eight massive Kevlar-belted tires from HARD SURFACE to ALL TERRAIN and dialing a few extra inches of ground clearance into the suspension.

Ahead he saw a point where the qued bank had collapsed, giving him a steep but usable access ramp to the ravine floor. “Okay going down. Hey, back in the scout bay! Hang on! Rough ride!”

He braked hard, swung the wheel over, and avalanched his vehicle down the crumbling slope. The suspension sprawled and angled, autoconforming to the terrain and keeping ABLE ’s twenty-two tons centered over her wheelbase. Tire cleats dug in, then slipped, and the big war machine slither-crashed to the floor of the twenty-meter-wide dry streambed in an explosion of dust and sprayed earth, the pneumatic seats of her crew bouncing hard against their stops. Santiago leaned on his accelerator and ABLE lunged forward again, the eight-by-eight drives scrabbling for traction in the sand.

Another avalanche could be seen in the sideview mirrors. BAKER , Saber section’s second gun drone, waddled down the slope after the command vehicle, its onboard artificial intelligences obediently station-keeping in their tactical default mode.

“How far you want me to work up the wash, LT?”

“Get us clear of our entry point.” Bolde computed artillery spread patterns in his mind, judging clearances. When they’d put two bends in the streambed between themselves and the spot where they had disappeared from surface view, he nodded to his driver. “Okay, Rick, shut down and power down!”

ABLE shuddered to a halt, her turbines fading out with a whispering moan. A metallic hiss followed as the cavalry vehicle hunkered closer to the ground, her suspension lowering into a vehicular crouch.

In the forward compartment, an instinctive stream of orders flowed from Bolde.

“Brid, raise the sensor mast and go to full passive scan. I want a threat review! Rick, prep the Cypher for launch. Mary May! Deploy your ground pickets!”

“Yes sir,” Spec 5 (Ground Combat) Mary May Jorgenson yelled from the scout team bay back aft. “Ramp going down. Scouts, set overwatch! Go!”

The tail ramp thudded open, and boots rang on aluminum decking.

Even as he issued his commands, Bolde personally involved himself in the security of the laager point. Accessing onboard fire control through the commander’s station, he assumed direction of ABLE ’s primary weapons pack.

In road mode, the boom mount of the weapons pack normally rode angled back over the stern of the cavalry vehicle like the cocked stinger tail of a scorpion. Now it straightened and extended, lifting the twin box launchers of the Common Modular Missile system above the lip of the wash. The telescopic lenses of a target-acquisition sensor cluster peered from between the launchers, as did the stumpy barrel of a 25mm OCSW (Objective Crew Served Weapon). Much like the attack periscope of a submarine, the weapons mount began a slow and deliberate rotation, scanning the horizon.

Scowling, Bolde watched the camera image pan past on his master display. Nothing moved out across the desert except for the perpetual heat shimmer. To the north, toward the rippling dune line, a single thin streak of dust played along the ground. A blue computer graphics arrowhead hovered over it, however, designating a friendly. CHARLIE drone returning from his point probe.

As the camera turned to the south, more friendly activity was revealed. A figure clad in desert camouflage snaked over the edge of the qued. Carrying his SABR (Selectable Assault Battle Rifle) over his forearms, Specialist Third Nathan Grey Bird snaked across a narrow stretch of gravel in a fluid infantry crawl, vanishing into a low clump of rocks with a deft alacrity that would have brought pride to the heart of his Shoshone-Bannock warrior ancestors.

Specialist Second Johnny Roman had his outpost established on the opposite bank of the qued and Specialist Second Lee Trebain could be seen through ABLE ’s Armorglas windshield, establishing a sentry point farther ahead along the wash floor. Sensor systems were all well and good, but the “mark one eyeball” was still the hardest sensor in the world to fool. Saber section would not trust its security to electronics alone, not while one Lieutenant Jeremy Bolde commanded.

Bolde disarmed the weapons pack and allowed the boom to retract back into travel mode. Arming off his bulky HMD helmet, he replaced it with the dust- and sweat-stained cavalry terai that had been riding atop the dashboard, settling the hat over his short-trimmed, sandy hair at the precisely proper “Jack Duce” angle. The black slouch-brimmed Stetsons had been revived by the new cavalry as their answer to the berets of the Ranger and Special Forces regiments, a distinctive badge of branch individuality. The difference was that the Airborne units looked upon their signature headgear as being, for the most part, ceremonial. The Cav looked upon theirs as essential field equipment.

“Pickets are out, Lieutenant. Ground security set.” Mary May Jorgenson came forward from the scout compartment through the narrow passage between the two mid-vehicle powerbays.

Man-tall and broad-shouldered for a woman, Mary May was one of the elite few female personnel to match the rigorous physical parameters required by the Army for a Ground Combat Specialist’s rating. Yet for all of her inherent and repeatedly proven toughness, there was still a large degree of the mellow Nebraska farm girl in her blue-eyed and lightly freckled countenance.