Stephen Coonts - Combat

Unnerved at so suddenly finding herself regarded by those large and level green eyes, Mary May asked with a forced lightness, “Casting a spell on the Algis, Miss Shelleen?”

A wisecrack wasn’t at all what she had wanted to say but she’d had to do something to recover her equilibrium.

“Oh no,” Shelleen replied with a calm seriousness. “The Law of Return would make that a very bad idea.”

“The Law of Return?”

“Yes. One of the root laws of all magic,” the systems officer replied, picking up her flak vest and pistol belt from where she had set them aside. “‘So as you conjure, so shall you receive back fourfold.’ Invoking a negative conjuration, a black magic if you will, against the Algerians could come back and hit us far harder than it would the enemy. I was only addressing the Lord and the Lady, asking them for strength, protection, and wisdom for us all this night.”

Mary May tilted her head questioningly. “You mean like you were only praying?”

“Essentially.” Shelleen smiled back.

The two women started back up the ravine to the vehicle hide through the deepening shadows. Overhead, the first star seeped through the darkening blue of the sky.

“War,” Mary May asked eventually. “Can I ask you something?”

“Why not?”

“Well, the word is that you were once a model in New York or something. How did you ever become … a soldier?”

Again, “soldier” wasn’t what she’d meant to say, but that’s how it had come out. The warrant officer shot her a knowing glance and smiled again.

“Yes, I did have the start of a modeling career once,” she replied, slinging her flak vest over her shoulder. “I also had the start of a very unhappy, meaningless, and self-destructive life. So I started to look around for something to hold on to. Eventually, I found the beliefs of my Celtic ancestors, Wicca or Paganism as it is known to some. It was something that worked for me, giving me a degree of peace although not of contentment.

“I continued my studies and, upon my becoming a priestess, I elected to confront my destiny once and for all. I undertook a time of fasting and spiritual seclusion, a spirit quest as it is called by the American Indian. During it, I asked for the Lady to show me the path I should be following during this stage of my life.”

“Did she?” Mary May asked, intrigued in spite of herself.

Shelleen nodded. “She did. She came to me as the Lady of the South Wind, armor-clad, the guardian and the woman warrior. I had my answer. So, I went back to New York, fired my agent, tore up my contracts, and joined the Army.”

She smiled a sudden impish grin. “And yes, there are any number of people who think that I have gone totally and completely insane.”

Mary May chuckled. “A lot of my family think the same thing about me. What do you think now? Was it the right call?”

Bridget Shelleen paused just short of ABLE ’s tail ramp and swept her arm around the vehicle hide. “Here, I find I am centered,” she replied, looking into the scout’s face. “Here, for the first time in my life, I can say that I am exactly where I’m supposed to be. If you can do that, I suppose you aren’t doing so badly.”

Mary May Jorgenson could not disagree.

The only illumination within the cab came from the glow of the instrument displays, that odd gray-green unlight that is compatible with night-vision systems. The only light beyond the sloped windshield issued from the cold and distant stars.

At the walking pace of a healthy man, the three vehicles of Saber section ground upward toward the saddleback, the two gun drones trailing ABLE nose to tail, like obedient circus elephants. Normal operating doctrine called for an unmanned vehicle always to be out on point, cybernetically scouting and taking the initial risk. However, the rugged irregularity of this night’s drive mandated that a human intelligence break the trail.

As ABLE hunched and clawed her way upslope, Rick Santiago relished the feel of handling the big war machine. As a kid back in Arizona, there wasn’t a tractor pull, off-road race, or monster truck bash within a hundred miles of Wickenburg that he hadn’t attended. By the time he’d graduated from high school, he’d built up both a perilously hot Ford F150 pickup and a terror-of-the-desert reputation.

Unfortunately, few job prospectuses listed driving crazy in the dirt as a prime desired attribute.

Then came the day when an enterprising Army recruiter brought a transport variant of the Shinseki Multi-Mission Combat Vehicle to a hill climb outside of Yuma. Rick and a lot of other young people stood by in awe as that magnificent eight-wheeled monster shamed some of the best ATVs and 4X4s in the Southwest, Rick had filled out his enlistment papers that day, sitting in the Shinseki’s cab.

“Okay, people,” Lieutenant Bolde murmured over the helmet intercom. “We’re getting in close. Column stealth up and go to batteries.”

Miss Shelleen replied with a soft verbal acknowledgment as she dialed the command into the drone datalinks. Rick answered by clicking a switch sequence. The breathy whine of ABLE ’s twin turbogenerator sets faded away, leaving only the purr of the multiple drive motors and the crunch of the mountain rubble beneath the mushy all-terrain tires.

The key to the Shinseki’s amazing flexibility and performance was its composite electric-drive system. Two lightweight UMTec 1000 ceramic gas turbines spun a pair of electrical generators. The generators pumped power into the banks of rechargeable iron-carbide batteries under ABLE ’s deck plates, and these batteries, in turn, fed the 150-horsepower radial electric-drive motors built into the hubs of each ground wheel. No gears, no clutch, no driveshaft, just instant power on demand.

There were other advantages as well. Spinning constant speed at their most efficient RPM setting, the turbines drew the maximum power potential from each liter of fuel consumed. And for those times, such as now, when stealth was at a premium, the turbines could be shut down. Operating on battery power alone, the armored cavalry vehicle’s thermal and audile signatures were greatly reduced.

Through his night-vision visor, Santiago noted a change in ground texture ahead. A shale patch on the hillside angled down to the left. He eased the all-wheel steering over, hunting uphill for better traction.

But not quite far enough.

Rick felt the hill shift beneath ABLE , the deck slewing and tilting as loose shale slid away beneath the left-rear tires. The cavalry vehicle lurched, threatening to twist crosswise and slide in the beginning of its own avalanche. Santiago’s foot rocked forward on the accelerator, slamming 1200 horsepower into the ground. ABLE responded like a hardspurred cow pony. Lunging upgrade, she scrabbled to solid ground, tire cleats paddlewheeling in the stone fragments.

Rick Santiago grinned into the night. ¡Hijole! And they’re paying me for this! “You’re gonna want to edge the drones over to the right a few yards, Miss Shelleen,” he called back to the systems station. “We got a little patch of soft stuff here.”

And then they were at the crest of the saddleback with only the downslope and a great darkness before them. Bolde cycled through the vision modes of his helmet visor and surveyed that darkness. By standard light, there was only the starblaze of the sky and the black horizon line of the not-sky. By switching to the night brite option, he could use the starlight to make out another great expanse of gravel pan and sand dune stretching out from the northern face of the range.