Stephen Coonts - Combat

In the face of the day’s heat, the Algerian crews swarmed around their vehicles, concealing them not only with visual-sight camouflage netting, but also with RAM antiradar tarpaulins and anti-infrared insulation. Stone defensive revetments were being stacked up as well, indicating that this was more than a brief stretch-and-cigarette stop.

“Okay, Brid. Walk us over the pass. Let’s see what else they have down there.”

“What else” proved to be half a dozen more armored fighting vehicles dispersed along the winding floor of the pass. Tracked and lowriding, with the Slavic design school’s distinctive flattened “frying pan” turret shape mounted aft of center, their crews were hard at work digging them in as well.

“Six Bulgarian BRM-30 scout tracks and a pair of Centauros, ” Mary May commented. “That’s a full Algerian Recon company. The radar rig and the Tunguska would be mission attachments.”

“The question being just what that mission is.” Bolde slid out of his seat and hunkered down on the deck beside the system operator’s chair to get a clearer view of the station displays. “Brid, take us north a little more. I want to get a view of what’s happening on the other side of this ridge.”

“Not a problem,” she replied, setting the new waypoint.

It wasn’t. In another minute or two the drone went into hover again, offering its masters a panoramic vista of the plains to the north of the El Khnachich. The caravan road was a pale trace across the desert floor. Clustered about it, perhaps fifteen kilometers beyond the hill range, a number of massive dust plumes rose into the air.

“There’s the rest of your division,” Shelleen commented, “or a goodly chunk thereof.”

“Agreed,” Bolde replied slowly, “but not in road column. It looks like they’re dispersing.”

“They are, LT,” Santiago added. The driver had swiveled his seat around, joining the ad hoc command conference. “From the look of that dust kick-up, you got a series of company-sized detachments peeling off the main road and fanning out.”

“Yeah.” Mary May nodded up from the floor. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say those guys were dispersing to go into a night laager.”

Bolde glanced down at his head scout. “Why do we know better, Mary May?”

The young woman shrugged. “Because they’ve no reason to stop and lots to keep going, Lieutenant. You never halt on the near side of a low river ford or a clear mountain pass. It might not be low or clear the next day when you want to move again.”

“Yeah. That’s how we’d do it. But then the gentleman who’s running that outfit may not necessarily play by the same rules that we do.” Bolde let his voice trail off as he contemplated possibilities.

“Probably,” he said after a half minute’s pause, “that Algi division is strung out along a good seventy — eighty kilometers of the Taoudenni road about now. They’re stuck with staying on it because their logistics groups are still using trucks instead of high-mobility all-terrain vehicles. They can’t move too fast for that same reason. That caravan route is literally just a camel trail.

“Now, a lot of Third World commanders still aren’t too comfortable with large-unit operations after nightfall. Let’s also say that the Algi general running this outfit is a conservative and cautious kind of guy, again like a lot of Third World commanders.

“He’s got night coming on, a replenishment coming up, and he knows that there’s likely U.S. and Legion Armored Cav out here hunting for him. The idea of being draped across this range of hills with some of his maneuver elements on one side and some on the other come oh dark hundred might not appeal to him too much.”

“It wouldn’t to me either,” Shelleen noted thoughtfully. “There are things a raider could do with a situation like that.”

“Indeed there are, Miss Shelleen,” Bolde agreed, lifting an eyebrow. “And I was hoping to try some of them out tonight. Unfortunately, our Algerian friend appears to be playing it safe. He’s run a fast recon element out ahead to secure this pass. That will do a couple of things for him. For one, it’ll plug up the obvious route another mechanized unit would have to take to get at his main. For another it will give him an observation post on the high ground.

“That battlefield radar will give him early warning of any major force moving in from the south. If one shows up, he can engage at long range with artillery, spotting from the pass mouth. He knows he’s got way more tubes and rails on this side of Mali than we do, so he’ll have the edge in any potential gun duel.

“So covered, he figures he can safely fort up overnight north of the pass to regroup and resupply. Come first light, when he doesn’t have to worry so much about being bushwhacked, he can push his entire division rapidly through the choke point of the pass. Once he’s got his maneuver battalions out into open country again, he can trust in his massed firepower to bust him through any light-force screen we can throw in front of him.”

Bolde’s planning staff exchanged glances, wordlessly discussing their leader’s analysis. Bridget Shelleen voiced their findings. “That very well could be what we’re seeing here, sir. The question is, what are we going to do about it?”

“What indeed. What indeed.” Bolde accessed a secondary screen on the workstation, filling it with a graphics-map tactical display of the immediate region. He added an overlay showing Saber section’s position as well as that of the known hostile units. Using the console touch pad, he drew in the potential laager sites of the remainder of the Algerian division. Then he considered once more.

Minutes passed and Mary May Jorgenson stirred restlessly from her seat on the deck plates. “It wouldn’t be too much trouble to mess up that recon outfit in the pass. My guys and I could get up on the ridges overlooking their positions and laser designate for our CMMs. We could take ’em out, no problem.”

“Yeah, we could do that,” Bolde replied slowly. “But how much would that gain us or cost the bad guys? We could kill that recon company, all right. But is that our best potential shot? If we are serious about slowing the Algis down, we’ll have to maximize our strike effect. We’ll have to nurse as much bang out of our buck as is conceivable, even if it means stretching the sensibility envelope to a degree.”

“ L ’ audace, l’audace, toujours, l’audace, ” Shelleen murmured.

“Precisely. The problem is that we are down here—” Bolde’s fingertip touched the blue position hack at the bottom of the map display—“and all the really good stuff is up there.” His finger climbed up the map to the Algerian laager zone. “Tonight, the Algis are going to be in static positions, refueling and rearming. Their logistics groups are going to be up forward and intermixed with their maneuver battalions. That’s when they will be at their most vulnerable and when we could do the most damage.

“Thing is, the Algis are playing it smart. They’ve read their copy of Jane’s All the World’s Weapons Systems and they’re going to ground far enough back from this hill range so that we can’t toss anything over the rocks at them. If we want to hurt them, really hurt them, we’ll have to get over on that north side with them, and they can’t know we’re there until it’s too late.”

Bolde looked back over his shoulder at his driver. “How about it, Rick? Can you get us over these hills without using the pass?”

The lean and moustached Latino gave a slight shrug. “It’s gonna depend on the surfaces and gradients, LT. Miss Shelleen, could you show me the slope profile on that stretch of range ahead of us?”