Stephen Coonts - Combat

“Like I said, we’ll get to them as soon as we can.” Mary May started back up to the ridge crest. “We still have four Algi scout tracks down in that canyon we have to take care of.”

“Hey, Mary May. Nate and Johnny are in trouble!”

“Darn it, Lee. I know it!” she snapped over her shoulder. “But the lieutenant and Miss Shelleen and everybody will be in trouble if we let those tracks bust out! Now load antiarmor and come on!”

Trebain swore under his breath and followed.

The growl of engines and the squeak and chatter of tracks echoed up from the pass floor. The Algerian BRMs were on the move. Rolling north at a fast walking pace, they had their scout teams deployed as flank guards. Warily, the Algerian mobile troopers advanced, scanning the walls of the pass on either side. There would be no surprising this bunch.

Lying side by side, Mary May and Trebain watched them advance. “How we working this?” Trebain growled.

“You kill that lead track. I’ll peel the infantry.” Mary May flipped her visor up and settled her eye to the sighting module of her SABR. “One magazine, then pull back fast. On my mark. Three … two … one … shoot!”

The two grenade launchers barked out their vest-pocket artillery barrage. The lead BRM flared and exploded under Trebain’s fire stream while Mary May walked a string of laser-ranged airbursts down the left-hand column of dismounted flankers.

The surviving Algerian infantry scattered and went to ground. Their earlier-gen night-vision goggles picked up the muzzle flashes on the ridge crest and assault rifles began to crackle an angry response. The surviving BRMs reversed gear and backed up the roadway like a trio of startled crayfish. In the turret hatches, the track commanders swiveled their deck machine guns in line with the threat and opened fire, hosing streams of greenish tracers into the night.

“Lee, fall back!” Mary May rose to a half crouch, intent on dropping the last shell in her clip in on the second track in line.

“Mary, get down.” Trebain lunged to his feet, grabbing for her harness. Then the bullet hail was chopping up the stone around them. Mary May flipped backward off the crest in a credible parachute landing roll. Trebain tried to follow but a 7.65 NATO round took his right leg out from under him. The ballistic plate covering his shin deflected the slug but the limb went numb from ankle to hip.

Lee fell forward in a sprawl. He felt himself start to slide. Good God Almighty, he was falling down the front face of the ridge! He clawed at the crumbling slope, trying for a hold, but he only succeeded in making himself tumble. Caught in the midst of a miniature landslide, Lee lost his grip on his weapon. Stars burst behind his eyes as he found himself battered away from consciousness.

“Brid, cut across the laager and then engage the command company! We’ll use the fires for thermal masking.”

“I’m with you.” The contralto reply remained cool and focused.

“Rick. Drop Jabberwockys and commence disengagement! Head for the extraction route.”

“Doin’ it, LT!”

ABLE swerved and accelerated, jinking across the pans like a broken-field runner, her belly racks thumping as the first Jabberwocky beacon kicked clear. Inside the cybernetic world of his battle helmet Bolde’s eyes flicked over to the time display, counting seconds. The three S’s had done as much as could be hoped for and soon the Algerians would be reacting, violently, to this assault.

The danger now lay in the fact that Saber section had revealed itself by radiating. The continuous-wave datalinks that now connected the command vehicle with its fighting drones could be detected and locked in on by radio direction finders. Because of the jitter frequency technology used, it wouldn’t be easy, but given enough time, a minute or two, the Algerian Electronic Warfare battalion would have a fix on them. Once that happened, the word would be flashed to the division’s artillery regiment and hellfire and damnation would rain from the sky.

The Jabberwocky decoys, small, high-discharge radio transponders that produced a false signal similar to ABLE ’s emissions signature, could buy them a little more combat time. So would staying on the move and not presenting a fixed target for the direction finders.

The question was, just how much.

BAKER and CHARLIE raced through the perimeter of the shattered Algerian mechanized company. Not a single vehicle remained intact, and flames leaped from the torn hulks. There were still men alive, though, a few stunned survivors, and mostly they fled or cowered in the presence of the angular, multiwheeled demons that had come howling in from the desert. A few, though, still strove to resist.

Bolde caught the backflash of a rocket launch out of the corner of his eye. Some thirty meters to the left, an Algerian infantryman crouched in the shelter of a wrecked BMP, the tube of a light antitank weapon at his shoulder and leveled at BAKER . Caught by surprise there was nothing that Bolde could do. However, with light-swift electronic reflexes, the gun drone defended itself.

Thermal sensors recognized the exhaust flare of the rocket and the onboard AIs triggered the Claymore reactive panel in line with the threat. A more sophisticated cousin of conventional reactive armor, the Claymore panel exploded, its front face fragmenting into thousands of small tungsten cubes. Sprayed into the path of the incoming rocket, they chewed the projectile apart in midair. And not the rocket alone, the expanding wave of shrapnel reached out and engulfed the missile man as well.

Moments later the drone tore out through the far side of the laager perimeter and Bolde executed the turn in toward the Algerian Headquarters Company. There was a logic to Bolde’s charge directly through the enemy encampment. Any infrared sight aimed at the gun drones from the central enemy position would be blinded by the heat aura thrown off by the blazing hulks of their first kills. Any enemy gunner seeking to engage them would also be presented with the quandary of having his own troops in his line of fire.

The drone’s 35s raved on. The last of the communications and command vans died. The mortar carriers and ammo hogs of the Algerian heavy-weapons section exploded, the glare momentarily overloading the videolinks. Wild missiles tore loose from the disintegrating antiair vehicle, jittering madly across the sky. Bolde became aware of a squealing warning tone and a pulsing red flag in his vision field. Barrel overheat! The drones had expended almost half of their two-hundred-round base load, and their titanium-lined gun tubes were going incandescent.

Damnation! Just when they were getting some real work done!

“Brid, deploy smoke! Execute breakaway! Come right to one two zero!”

Multispectral smoke canisters thumped out of secondary projectors, burying the drones in a synthetic fogbank, and the two vehicles turned away from the havoc they had produced, racing back into the undamaged darkness of the night.

Bolde called up a command on BAKER ’s ordnance menu, releasing a blast of chill carbon dioxide gas down the barrel of the drone’s main gun. “Brid, execute a thermal purge. We’re going in again.”

There was a warning edge to Shelleen’s reply. “Lieutenant, may I remind you that we’ve been radiating continuously for almost five minutes.”

“You may, Miss Shelleen, but I want one more Algi company torn up. We’ll hit the one to the southeast. Come left to zero eight zero and engage as you bear!”

The drones described a dusty curve across the desert toward their next objective, bucketing over the sand ripples in the plain.

This time it was different. This time the Algerians had been given the opportunity to recover from the initial CMM strike. Tank guns spewed fire and tracer streams snaked along the ground. Bolde weaved and swerved his robotic command, snapping off countershots as his sights aligned. One Algerian vehicle burst into flames. A second, a third …