Stephen Coonts - Combat

A secondary screen on the console lit off, indicating that a data dump was under way from the troop command vehicle carrying intelligence updates, refreshed battlemaps, and weather projections, the sole aid their CO could dispatch.

… DO THE BEST YOU CAN WITH WHAT YOU HAVE, JER.] [SABER 6-BRAVO 6***IF IT WASN’T A CHALLENGE, SIR, IT WOULDN’T BE THE CAVALRY. SABER-6 DOWN]

Bolde secured the transmitter and retracted the roof antenna. For a long moment, he studied the last glowing lines on the communications screen. After a moment, he chuckled with soft self-derisiveness. What was that line George C. Scott had said in Patton? The one just before El Guettar, “All of my life I have dreamed of leading a large number of men in a desperate battle.”

Well, while he had no large number of men, the desperation level was certainly adequate. Brid Shelleen, with her somewhat “different” worldview would say that he had created this moment and this situation for himself. He had asked and the universe had given.

For he, Lieutenant Jeremy Randolph Bolde, had dreamed of being a warfighter, not merely a soldier, or a career army officer, but a combatant. For as long as he could recall, Bolde had hungered for what Patton had called the “sting of battle,” for the chance to test himself in the ultimate crucible.

Such concepts and attitudes were decisively not “PC” these days, not even within the Officers’ Corps, or within his own old Army family. But they had smoldered on deep down in his belly where he lived, and they flared hot and bright now.

Hail, Universe! If this night is your gift to me, I thank you for it.

Bolde called up a large-scale tactical map on the big screen. Tilting the seat back, he studied the display, absorbing each terrain feature and deployment point.

They would be overwhelmingly outnumbered, but that was almost an irrelevancy. Classically, cavalry almost always fights outnumbered. But then again, the cavalry trooper almost always had three good allies ready to ride at his side: speed, shock, and surprise. Utilize them properly, and they could go a long way toward leveling the odds. He must use them in precisely the right way tonight.

Also, while the modern armored cavalry section was, pound for pound and trooper for trooper, the most tactically powerful small military unit in history, he must dole that power out one critically metered spoonful at a time to maximize its effect against the enemy. Definitely a most interesting exercise.

Without Bolde realizing it, his lips pursed and a whispering whistle drifted around the command cab.

Mary May Jorgenson stood beside CHARLIE in the twilight, putting the gun drone through a systems check cycle. As with the section command vehicle, CHARLIE was an MM15 Shinseki Multi-Mission Combat Vehicle configured for armored cavalry operations, a sleekly angular boat-shaped hull the size of a large RV, riding on eight man-tall tires. Unlike ABLE , it carried a decisively different payload of systems and weapons. CHARLIE , and his brother BAKER , were the dedicated stone killers of the team.

Configured for robotic operation, CHARLIE ’s cab windshield and crew gunports had been plated over. Squat sensor turrets were mounted in the driver’s and commander’s hatches, giving the drone a slightly froglike appearance. A low casemate had been fitted atop the aft third of the hull, the mount for a Lockheed/IMI 35mm booster gun. The slender, jacketed tube of the hypervelocity weapon extended the full length of the drone’s spine to a point five feet beyond its nose.

Using the trackball on the remote testing pad, Mary May tested the fifteen-degree traverse and elevation of the booster gun, then cycled the chain drive of the action, carefully keeping the magazines and propellant tanks on safety. Her head tilted in the dimming light, she critically listened to the clatter of the rotary breech mechanism, trusting her own judgment as well as the pad displays.

The blip of another key tested the twelve CMM artillery rounds slumbering in their vertical-launch array in the drone’s forward compartment. The touch of a third verified the readiness of the Claymore reactive panels scabbed onto CHARLIE ’s composite armor skin. Checks done. Boards green. Mary May unjacked the remote pad from the drone’s exterior systems access. They were ready to rock.

Boots crunched on the gravel of the qued as Nathan Grey Bird trudged up from BAKER ’s parking point. Her assistant scout leader had been running an identical testing cycle of the second drone. “How’s Mr. B looking, Nate?” Mary May inquired.

“Pretty much good,” the stocky, bronze-skinned trooper replied. “One of the secondary link aerials was acting sort of shorty, so I replaced it. And that first wheel motor on the right side’s leaking oil again. I topped it up and we’ll be okay for tonight, but for sure we got a busted seal on that unit.” Mary May nodded. “I’ll write it up. The next time we see the shop column, we’ll get it pulled.”

“Whenever that might be.” Grey Bird grinned, white teeth flashing. “We pulling out soon?”

“The LT says as soon as we hit full dark. I’d say that’ll be inside the hour.” Mary May passed Grey Bird her testing pad. “Secure that for me, will you, Nate. Then go on up to ABLE and kill some rations. We’ll eat, then switch off on picket with Johnny and Lee so they can get a not-on-the-move meal, too.”

“You got it, Five. You comin’ along now?”

“In a minute. Save me the pizza MRE if Rick hasn’t already snagged it out of the box.”

Mary May caught up her carbine from where it leaned against one of CHARLIE ’s wheels and started back down the wash. Warrant Officer Shelleen had walked down the draw a few minutes before, and the scout wanted to verify that everything was all right with her. Or at least that was the excuse Mary May gave herself.

In actuality, she was motivated by a continuing and nagging curiosity about Saber’s systems operator. When Mary May had elected to join the Army, one of her reasons had been to see new things and meet new people. Never in her wildest imaginings however had she ever visualized herself serving beside a genuine, spell-casting, card-carrying witch.

A smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. She never mentioned Warrant Officer Shelleen’s religious preferences in any of her letters home. Mary May’s family were all hard-shell Lutheran, and she didn’t need Uncle Joseph and Aunt Gertrude writing their congressmen.

Mary May lightened her footsteps as she approached the shallow bay in the wall of the wash that she had seen Warrant Officer Shelleen enter, not desiring to disturb, yet aware that she might. In the growing shadows she noted a slender figure kneeling on the sand of the qued floor, facing away to the south. A palm-sized splash of diesel oil burned bluely on the ground before her, and the silver-hafted dagger the SO carried lay on the sand at her knees, its blade aimed at the heart of the flame. Bridget Shelleen’s arms were uplifted shoulder high, and her head was lowered, a soft whispered pattern of words escaping from her lips.

Mary May hesitated, a ripple of unease touching her, the discomfort sometimes felt by the average person when in the presence of a truly and genuinely devout individual.

Shelleen’s whisper faded away and the whicker of the wind in the wash was the only lingering sound. For a long minute, the systems operator continued to kneel, statue-still. Then, gracefully, she leaned forward and scooped up a double handful of sand and poured it over the patch of flame. Lifting the dagger from the ground, she made a decisive gesture with it as if she were slashing through some invisible line or thread that surrounded her. The blade disappeared into her boot sheath and the redhead rose and turned to face Mary May, her movements an effortless catlike flow.