Stephen Coonts - Combat

“Coming up.” Pad keys rattled.

A new overlay appeared on the tactical display, a mottled red, yellow, and blue transparency draped across the contour lines of the map. This was a gauging of the slopes and angles of the El Khnachich range as laser and radar surveyed by a Defense Mapping Agency topographical satellite cross-referenced with the cross-country performance capacity of the Shinseki Multi-Mission Combat Vehicle family.

“Yeah, we got somethin’ here.” Santiago levered himself out of the driver’s seat and crowded in with the others around the workstation. “See,” he indicated in interlocking sequence of yellow and blue areas on the map. “It looks like I can get us over that next saddleback to the west of the pass. The grades look good anyway.”

“How about surfacing?” Bolde inquired.

“I kept an eye on the visuals we were getting from the drone. It looks like we got some shale-and-gravel slopes and some boulder fields, but nothing we can’t beat.”

“And how about the Algis? Do you think they might suspect somebody could crawl through that hole?”

A faintly condescending smile tugged at the driver’s lips. “Treadheads always have a problem believing what a Shinseki can do, LT. The Algerians don’t have a vehicle that could get over that saddleback. I’m willing to bet that they’ll figure we don’t either.”

Santiago straightened and took a step back, collapsing into the driver’s seat again. “The problem is, sir, while I think I can get us over that sucker, I’m not going to be able to do it fast. Especially if I have to be sneaky while I’m doing it.”

“How about if you don’t have to be sneaky? We’ll be tiptoeing going in, but we’ll be pretty much running flat out when we extract. Can you get us back out over this route before the Algis can zero us?”

Santiago held out his hand, palm down, and rocked it in an ominously so-so manner. “The main force isn’t what’s sweating me, LT. My beast and I can outrun pretty much anything that moves on treads if we get half a chance. What I’m worried about is that recon company up in the pass. They can’t cut us off moving laterally along the ridge. Like I said, their vehicles can’t hack the climbing. But if they move fast enough, they could either drop down out of the pass and intercept us short of the hills as we fall back, or they could be waiting for us over on the other side. It wouldn’t take much. They’d only have to hold us in place for a couple of minutes, just long enough for their pursuit forces to close up and engage and … fiiit! ”

Santiago drew his thumbnail across his throat, matching graphic action to graphic sound.

“A valid point, Rick,” Bolde replied, rocking back on his heels. “To secure our line of retreat, we’re going to need to give that recon company in the pass something else to think about. Mary May, you were talking about taking those guys out. Do you think you and your team could do the job without the direct support of the vehicles?”

The young woman tilted her head down so that the brim of her hat concealed her eyes and her expression as she thought. When she lifted her head again, she looked composed and confident. Only a faint reddening of her lower lip indicated how she had bitten it. “No problem, Lieutenant. We’ll have the terrain and the surprise factor. We can keep ’em busy.”

“Okay then. Brid, recall the Cipher.” Bolde glanced around the cab of the command vehicle, meeting his troopers’ eyes as he spoke. “Here’s how we’re going to do it. We’ve got some pretty good cover here, so we’ll lie doggo for the rest of the afternoon. We’ll keep the pass under observation, run some mission prep and get a little rest. If the Algis do go to ground and if we have the same tactical situation come nightfall, we’ll develop an Ops plan. We all good with this? All right, then let us proceed.”

The remaining hours of the afternoon passed in a breathless shimmer of heat, the smears of shade produced by the walls of the qued a priceless commodity beneath the torchblast of the sun. The expanse of desert around the vehicle hide remained empty, barring the passage of a herd of rare Saharan gazelles. As they materialized out of the mirage fields, their delicacy and grace stood in stark contrast to the harshness of the land.

The only hint of war came when two pairs of frost-colored contrails climbed above the horizons, one pair coming from the north, the other from the south.

They met and tangled lazily in the desert zenith, sparks of sunflame glinting from cockpit canopies and banking wingtips. One by one, over a period of a single minute, the snowy streamers of yarn terminated, turning dark and arcing toward the earth below, or ending abruptly in a smoke blotch against the milky azure sky.

The lone survivor turned away to the south. Bolde and his troopers watched for any sign of a descending parachute but all that was seen was the tumbling flicker of falling metal fragments.

Tired of its day’s brutality, the sun drifted below the horizon.

[SABER 6-BRAVO 6***WHAT SUPPORT ELEMENTS WILL BE AVAILABLE WITHIN MY OPSFRAME?]

Jeremy Bolde typed the words onto the flatscreen of the communications workstation, located on the left-side bulkhead behind the driver’s seat. Reaching forward, he tapped the transmit key. Instantly, his sentence was encrypted and compressed down into a microburst transmission too brief to be fixed on by a radio direction finder. Tightbeamed up from the dish antenna atop ABLE ’s cab, the blip transmission was received by a station-keeping relay drone and then fired downward again to the Bravo Troop command vehicle some two hundred miles away to the southeast.

Awaiting the response, Bolde tilted the console seat back, the creak of the chair mount loud against the only other two sounds in the cab, the low purr of the air-conditioning and the quiet snoring of Rick Santiago. ABLE ’s driver had his own seat tilted back to its farthest stop and his terai tipped down over his eyes, raking in a few precious minutes of sack drill. Even when ABLE was in laager, Rick could generally be found lounging behind the cavalry vehicle’s wheel, an aspect of the almost symbiotic relationship he had developed with his massive armor-sheathed mount.

Bolde was pleased his driver could get some rest. He wished he could do as well. Maybe later.

Then the answer to his query flashed back on his screen, erasing any thought of sleep.

[BRAVO 6-SABER 6***EFFECTIVELY NONE.]

The datalink transmission continued hastily.

[BRAVO 6-SABER 6***I’M DAMN SORRY, JER, BUT WE ARE AT SATURATION. ALL AVAILABLE IN-THEATER AND LONG-RANGE AIR ASSETS ARE COMMITTED TO SUPPRESSION OPS AGAINST ALGERIAN AIR FORCE. HONCHO 2ND HAS EFFECTIVELY ASSUMED COMMAND OF ALL IN THEATER GROUND FORCES. 1ST LEGION CAV, 2 & 3 OF 7TH, AND WAEF MOBILE FORCE ARE MASSING IN EASTERN SECTOR FOR COUNTERSTRIKE AGAINST ALGERIAN ARMORED CORPS ADVANCING SOUTH ALONG TESSALIT-GAO HIGHWAY. HEAVY INITIAL CONTACT PROJECTED FOR TONIGHT. ALL AIRCAV, ALL L-R ARTILLERY ELEMENTS ARE ENGAGING ENEMY MAINFORCE AT THIS TIME. YOU CAN CHECK THE STRIKEBOARDS BUT I THINK THE CUPBOARD IS BARE UNTIL AT LEAST FIRST LIGHT TOMORROW.

There wasn’t anything else to do except to type

[SABER 6-BRAVO 6***ACKNOWLEDGED. ANY FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS.] [BRAVO 6-SABER 6***JUST SCREEN AND DELAY, JER. 2ND RANGER, 6TH AIRCAV AND 9TH RIFLE HAVE ALL BEEN COMMITTED AND ARE DEPLOYING BUT WE CAN’T EXPECT TO SEE THEM ON THE GROUND FOR 36–92 HOURS. SCREEN AND DELAY AND BUY US SOME TIME. CARBINE AND PISTOL SECTIONS BRAVO HAVE FOUND ANOTHER TRANSIT POINT OF THE EL KHNACHICH RANGE TO THE EAST OF YOU AND ARE GOING DEEP, HUNTING FOR ALGERIAN LOG UNITS. ALPHA AND CHECKMATE TROOPS 1ST ARE REPOSITIONING TO TIMBUKTU PATROL BASE BUT WILL NOT BE A FACTOR UNTIL 06–07 HUNDRED TIME FRAME TOMORROW ….