Combat

by Stephen Coonts

  “We all believed we could make it work, Jenny, and worked our tails off to prove it to the rest of the world. But you and Chris Brown saved the mission. Chris is a civilian, and he’ll get a commendation for his civil service file. I’m recommending you for the Navy Cross. Nobody fired a shot in your direction, but you were in the fight as much as anyone. Your quick thinking saved lives, and won a battle.”

  Jenny felt herself flush, and she automatically came to attention. “Thank you, sir!” Then she wavered. “But what about Defender …”

  Schultz waved a hand, cutting off her protests. “Oh, yes, there’ll be medals and parades and all the glory a grateful nation can provide. They’ve earned all of it.”

  “Do you think Ray will be able to get a little free time?” she asked quietly.

  LARRY BOND is forty-nine and lives with his wife, Jeanne, and daughters, Katie and Julia, in Virginia outside Washington, D.C. After coauthoring Red Storm Rising with Tom Clancy, he has written five novels under his own name: Red Phoenix, Vortex, Cauldron, and The Enemy Within. The latest is Day of Wrath, which was published by Warner Books in June 1998. His writing career started by collaborating with Tom Clancy on Red Storm Rising, a runaway New York Times best-seller that was one of the best-selling books of the 1980s. It has been used as a text at the Naval War College and similar institutions. Since then, his books have depicted military and political crises, emphasizing accuracy and fast-paced action. Red Phoenix, Vortex, and Cauldron were all New York Times best-sellers.

  He has also codesigned the Admiralty Trilogy series of games, which includes Harpoon, Command at Sea, and Fear God & Dreadnought. The first two have both won industry awards, while the third will be published in late 2000.

  Now in its fourth edition, Harpoon won the H. G. Wells Award, a trade association honor, in 1981, 1987, and 1997 as the best miniatures game of the year. It is the only game to win the award more than once. The computer version of the game first appeared in 1990, and won the 1990 Wargame of the Year award from Computer Gaming World, an industry journal.

  CAV

  BY JAMES COBB

  Excerpts from The New Ways of War: Politico-Military Evolution in the Opening Decades of the Twenty-first Century.

  Professor Christine Arkady,

  University of Southern California Press, 2035

  Much to the consternation of the international community, the African race wars raged on into the new millennium, but not in the format of the old black and white South African conflict. African and Afrikaner came to accommodations with comparative rapidity following the end of apartheid in the 1990s. Replacing it was a new, ominous, and growing confrontation between black and brown.

  In a great arc across the African Sahel from the Atlantic to the Sudan, an almost continuous series of border clashes and minor insurgencies sputtered and flared between the Arabic-Moorish nations of North Africa and the Black African states of the Sub-Sahara. Fueled by racism, newborn nationalistic pride and old tribal enmities, and fanned by self-seeking political leaders and Islamic radicals, the potential for an open conflagration loomed large within the region.

  The flash point came in the fall of 2021. The Islamic Republic of Algeria, the new primary troublemaker among the northern tier Arabic states, began beating the drum of Jihad against Mali, its immediate neighbor to the south. Taking up the cause of a small Mali-based group of Tuareg separatists with a sudden and suspicious vociferousness, the Algerians launched a major military buildup along the Mali border, all the while calling for a “liberation of our Muslim brothers from the black animists.”

  This in the face of the fact that the vast majority of Mali’s population was also Islamic, albeit of a decidedly more moderate cast than the Revolutionary Council in Algiers.

  Mali, in and of itself, was no great prize for any would-be conqueror. Wracked by drought and desertification, it was a strong contender for the title of the poorest nation on Earth. In a strategic military sense, though, it represented a pearl beyond price for any potential empire builder coveting Northwestern Africa. The largest of the West African states, Mali is set in the literal heart of the region. Every other nation around the West African periphery is vulnerable to an invasion staging out of Malian territory.

  Reacting to that threat, and to the pleas for assistance from the Malian government, the West African Economic Federation deployed counterforces into Mali in the first major regional security operation ever launched by that fledgling organization. However, although willing, the WAEF combat units were woefully outnumbered and underequipped to face the armored juggernaut being assembled by the Algerians. Chairman Belewa of the Federation Board of Unity, an intensely realistic statesman, dispatched an urgent request for military assistance to both the United States and France.

  France replied with a Force d’Intervencion task group built around the First Regiment Etranger d’Cavalerie. The United States deployed the Second Army Expeditionary Force with two attached elements: the Thirteenth Aviation Brigade (Support) and the Seventh Cavalry Regiment (Armored Strike).

  It was hoped that the presence of the Legionnaires and the Garryowens on the ground in Mali would serve as a trip-wire deterrent to Algerian military adventurism.

  The hope proved to be false.

  The Western Sahara 300 Km North-Northwest of Timbuktu 1454 Hours, Zone Time; October 28, 2021

  Lieutenant Jeremy Bolde rode in ABLE’s open commander’s hatch with the balanced ease born of long practice. His wiry, well-muscled form flowed with each jolt and lurch of the big Shinseki armored fighting vehicle in much the same way as a skilled rider moved with the trail pacing of his horse. In that portion of his mind not involved with his focused and deliberate scanning of the surrounding terrain, the words of a song from the old army circled past, his sun-cracked lips pursed in an unheard whistle.

  “In her hair she wore a yellow ribbon.

  And she wore it proudly so that every man could see.

  And when we asked her why a yellow ribbon.

  She said it’s for my lover in the U.S. Cavalry …”

  Abruptly, the shrill alarm tone of the threat board squalled in the earphones of his helmet. At the same instant, Bolde felt ABLE swerve sharply beneath him as his driver, Specialist Third (Vehicle Operations) Rick Santiago locked the wheel over in an instinctive turn-and-accelerate evasion.

  Bolde hit the seat control selector with the palm of his hand, dropping himself down through the commander’s cupola and into the cab beside Santiago, the hatch lid thudding closed over his head.

  “What do we have?” he demanded.

  “Our point drone was just painted by a ground scan radar,” Warrant Officer First (Velectronics Operations) Bridget Shelleen reported crisply from behind Bolde’s shoulder.

  “Any indication of a targeting acquisition?”

  “I don’t think so.” The intense little redhead leaned into the drone operations station on the starboard cab bulkhead, her fingers dancing across the keypads as she pumped a series of commands into the datalinks. “CHARLIE was just cresting a dune line when he was blipped. I’ve reversed him back into the radar shadow. Contact broken. With the luck of the Lord and Lady, they’ll think he was a dust transitory.”

  “How about us, Brid? Are we still clean?”

  “No painting indicated. CHARLIE is running about ten klicks out ahead of us. We’re still below the scan horizon of whatever is out there.”

  “Right. Recall CHARLIE. Low speed. Minimize dust plume. Rick, find us a hide. We’re going to ground.”

  “Doi’ it, LT,” ABLE’s wheelman yelled back over the whir and rumble of the wheels. “We got a qued off to the left. I just gotta find us a go-down.”

  At eighty kilometers an hour, the armored cavalry vehicle roared along parallel to a dry wash. Such queds were one of the few, rare terrain variances to be found amid the broad expanses of sand-and-gravel fesh fesh plain that predominate in northern Mali.

  Driving right-handed, Santiago used his left t
o manipulate the settings of the ride control panel, backing off the air pressure in ABLE’s eight massive Kevlar-belted tires from HARD SURFACE to ALL TERRAIN and dialing a few extra inches of ground clearance into the suspension.

  Ahead he saw a point where the qued bank had collapsed, giving him a steep but usable access ramp to the ravine floor. “Okay going down. Hey, back in the scout bay! Hang on! Rough ride!”

  He braked hard, swung the wheel over, and avalanched his vehicle down the crumbling slope. The suspension sprawled and angled, autoconforming to the terrain and keeping ABLE’s twenty-two tons centered over her wheelbase. Tire cleats dug in, then slipped, and the big war machine slither-crashed to the floor of the twenty-meter-wide dry streambed in an explosion of dust and sprayed earth, the pneumatic seats of her crew bouncing hard against their stops. Santiago leaned on his accelerator and ABLE lunged forward again, the eight-by-eight drives scrabbling for traction in the sand.

  Another avalanche could be seen in the sideview mirrors. BAKER, Saber section’s second gun drone, waddled down the slope after the command vehicle, its onboard artificial intelligences obediently station-keeping in their tactical default mode.

  “How far you want me to work up the wash, LT?”

  “Get us clear of our entry point.” Bolde computed artillery spread patterns in his mind, judging clearances. When they’d put two bends in the streambed between themselves and the spot where they had disappeared from surface view, he nodded to his driver. “Okay, Rick, shut down and power down!”

  ABLE shuddered to a halt, her turbines fading out with a whispering moan. A metallic hiss followed as the cavalry vehicle hunkered closer to the ground, her suspension lowering into a vehicular crouch.

  In the forward compartment, an instinctive stream of orders flowed from Bolde.

  “Brid, raise the sensor mast and go to full passive scan. I want a threat review! Rick, prep the Cypher for launch. Mary May! Deploy your ground pickets!”

  “Yes sir,” Spec 5 (Ground Combat) Mary May Jorgenson yelled from the scout team bay back aft. “Ramp going down. Scouts, set overwatch! Go!”

  The tail ramp thudded open, and boots rang on aluminum decking.

  Even as he issued his commands, Bolde personally involved himself in the security of the laager point. Accessing onboard fire control through the commander’s station, he assumed direction of ABLE’s primary weapons pack.

  In road mode, the boom mount of the weapons pack normally rode angled back over the stern of the cavalry vehicle like the cocked stinger tail of a scorpion. Now it straightened and extended, lifting the twin box launchers of the Common Modular Missile system above the lip of the wash. The telescopic lenses of a target-acquisition sensor cluster peered from between the launchers, as did the stumpy barrel of a 25mm OCSW (Objective Crew Served Weapon). Much like the attack periscope of a submarine, the weapons mount began a slow and deliberate rotation, scanning the horizon.

  Scowling, Bolde watched the camera image pan past on his master display. Nothing moved out across the desert except for the perpetual heat shimmer. To the north, toward the rippling dune line, a single thin streak of dust played along the ground. A blue computer graphics arrowhead hovered over it, however, designating a friendly. CHARLIE drone returning from his point probe.

  As the camera turned to the south, more friendly activity was revealed. A figure clad in desert camouflage snaked over the edge of the qued. Carrying his SABR (Selectable Assault Battle Rifle) over his forearms, Specialist Third Nathan Grey Bird snaked across a narrow stretch of gravel in a fluid infantry crawl, vanishing into a low clump of rocks with a deft alacrity that would have brought pride to the heart of his Shoshone-Bannock warrior ancestors.

  Specialist Second Johnny Roman had his outpost established on the opposite bank of the qued and Specialist Second Lee Trebain could be seen through ABLE’s Armorglas windshield, establishing a sentry point farther ahead along the wash floor. Sensor systems were all well and good, but the “mark one eyeball” was still the hardest sensor in the world to fool. Saber section would not trust its security to electronics alone, not while one Lieutenant Jeremy Bolde commanded.

  Bolde disarmed the weapons pack and allowed the boom to retract back into travel mode. Arming off his bulky HMD helmet, he replaced it with the dust-and sweat-stained cavalry terai that had been riding atop the dashboard, settling the hat over his short-trimmed, sandy hair at the precisely proper “Jack Duce” angle. The black slouch-brimmed Stetsons had been revived by the new cavalry as their answer to the berets of the Ranger and Special Forces regiments, a distinctive badge of branch individuality. The difference was that the Airborne units looked upon their signature headgear as being, for the most part, ceremonial. The Cav looked upon theirs as essential field equipment.

  “Pickets are out, Lieutenant. Ground security set.” Mary May Jorgenson came forward from the scout compartment through the narrow passage between the two mid-vehicle powerbays.

  Man-tall and broad-shouldered for a woman, Mary May was one of the elite few female personnel to match the rigorous physical parameters required by the Army for a Ground Combat Specialist’s rating. Yet for all of her inherent and repeatedly proven toughness, there was still a large degree of the mellow Nebraska farm girl in her blue-eyed and lightly freckled countenance.

  Wearing BDU trousers and a flak vest over a khaki tee shirt, she carried an M9 service pistol on her right hip. However the 9mm Beretta automatic was carried in a left-handed holster, butt forward in the old dragoon’s draw. She, too, wore a battered terai cocked low over her brows.

  “What’s up, Lieutenant?” she inquired, leaning back against the rear bulkhead. “Are we in contact?”

  “With something,” Bolde replied, rotated his seat so it faced the systems operator’s station. “How about it, Brid. What do we have out there?”

  “A single battlefield-surveillance radar,” the systems operator replied, her attention still focused on the telepanels of her console. “With our mast up, I’m receiving an identifiable side lobe from it. Emission ID file indicates a Ukrainian made Teal/Specter system … . Multimode … About five years old … And it matches a unit type known to be in Algerian service.”

  She sat back in her seat and looked across at Bolde. “We are indeed in contact with the enemy, sir. And given the emission strength and beam angle, the unit must be operating from an elevation.”

  “Hell!” Bolde permitted himself the single short curse. “They beat us to the pass.”

  Terrain defines the battlefield. Unfortunately, for all intents and purposes, northern Mali doesn’t have any. No rivers, no mountains, no forests, no swamps. Just extensive, arid plains of baked earth and fesh fesh intermittently blanketed by the migrating sand dunes of the Sahara.

  The one exception was the El Khnachich range. A line of low, rugged hills arcing from east to west, midway between Algerian border and Timbuktu, it was the sole high ground in an ocean of flatness.

  The Taoudenni caravan track, the closest thing to a road that existed in this part of the world, ran southward through a pass in the range. For centuries, the Taoudenni track had been a link joining Algeria with the Niger River valley. Thirty-six hours before, when the Algerian army had stormed across the undefended and indefensible Mali border, one entire mechanized division had been vectored down this beaten sand pathway, its mission to seize that route southward into Mali’s fertile heartland.

  In a countermove, Troop B, First of the Seventh had been ordered north from its patrol base in Timbuktu to meet the thrust, a fanged and venomous mouse charging an elephant. For the first time in modern human history, the hills of El Khnachich were important.

  The systems operator called up a tactical map on her main display. The hill range and the pass lay perhaps twenty-five kilometers ahead on the section’s line of advance. Blue IDed unit hacks glowed near the bottom of the map, indicating the position of Saber section’s dispersed elements. A single hostile target box pulsed in the southern mouth of t
he pass.

  “Darn!” Mary May yanked off her hat and slid down the bulkhead to sit on the pebbled rubber antiskid of the vehicle deck. “I thought the noon sitrep said that the Algies were still watering up at Taoudenni oasis.”

  “The bulk of the division was,” Bolde grunted, his angularly handsome features impassive. “But they were already starting to push their lead elements south. I suspect they rammed some fast movers forward to play King of the Hill. Any sign they’ve got anything over on our side yet, Brid?”

  The SO shook her head, her firefall of hair brushing the back of her neck. “Nothing’s indicated. CHARLIE didn’t spot anything, and I’m not picking up any tactical communications on the standard Algerian bands. If they have any units fanning out on this side of the slope, they’re running an extremely tight EMCON, and that’s not like them. We’ll have to go eyes up to be certain, though.”

  “Then let’s do it. Get off a contact report to Bravo six then put up the Cipher. I want to see what we have crawling around out there.”

  The Cipher reconnaissance drone was literally a flying saucer. Or perhaps to be even more precise, a flying doughnut, a flattened discoid aeroform four feet in diameter with two contrarotating lift fans in its center. A puff of compressed air launched it out of its docking bay on ABLE’s broad back. Bobbling in a hover for a moment over the dry wash, it autostabilized then darted away to the north, skimming an effortless ten feet above the desert’s surface.

  The drone rotated slowly as it flew. The television camera built into the rim of its sturdy stealth composite fuselage intently scanned the surrounding environment, the imaging being fed back via a jitter frequency datalink to its mother station in ABLE’s cab. There, in turn, a slender hand on a computer joystick clicked a series of waypoints onto a computer-graphics map, guiding the little Remotely Piloted Vehicle on its way.

  On the main screen, the rusty red wall of the Khnachich range rose above the dune lines.

  “I’m not seeing anything moving out there,” Mary May commented from her position, seated cross-legged on the deck.