“Nothing as big as an armored column at any rate.” Bolde glanced at the ECM threat boards. “And nobody is emitting except for that one radar on the high ground. Brid, take the drone out to the west a ways and then take it up to the ridgeline. We’ll move it back east along the crest and have a look down into that pass.”
Shelleen nodded her reply, her expression fixed and intent on the drone-control readouts.
Even at the Cipher’s best speed, it took over a quarter of an hour to maneuver the drone into its designated observation position. At one point, as the RPV climbed the jagged stone face of the hill range, the video image on the display flickered and the datalink inputs faded as line of sight was broken between the drone and its controller. Instantly, Shelleen’s hands flashed across the keypads, rerouting the links through one of the flight of Long-Duration Army Communications drones orbiting over the Mali theater at a hundred thousand feet.
The imaging smoothed out and Bolde rewarded his SO with a slight, appreciative nod of his head.
In due course, the drone’s position hack on the tactical display and the image on the television monitor indicated that the drone was approaching the gut of the pass. Shelleen eased the RPV to a hover just below the crest of the last saddleback. “No closer,” she advised, “or they’ll hear the fans.”
“Okay. Blip her up. ‘Then we shall see’ as the blind man said.”
The systems operator tapped a key. Twenty miles away, the drone’s motor raced for an instant, popping the little machine an additional hundred feet into the air. For a few seconds before dropping back out of sight below the lateral ridge, the RPV’s sensors could look down into the mouth of the pass.
“Oh yeah,” Mary May commented. “They beat us here all right.”
Bolde reached forward for the monitor playback controls and froze the image.
It was the usual multinational hodgepodge of military equipment that had become commonplace in the post—Cold War Armies of the Third World.
The previously detected Teal/Specter radar track and its generator trailer sat parked in the center of the road. Mounted on the hull of a BMP 3 Armored Personnel Carrier, the radar unit’s slablike phasedarray antenna swung deliberately in a slice-of-pie scan of the desert below.
Backed deeper into the cut behind it, deftly positioned to blast any radar-hunting fighter-bomber or gunship making a pass on the Teal/ Specter unit, was a massive, tracked antiair vehicle, its rectangular turret bristling with multiple autocannon barrels and missile tubes. A Russian 2S6M Tunguska or, more than likely, an Indian-produced copy of the same.
Then there were Scylla and Charybdis, a pair of eight-wheeled Otobreda Centauros parked out on either flank of the pass entry. The longtubed 105mm cannon mounted in the turrets of the big Italian-built tank destroyers angled downward, covering the narrow road that switchbacked up from the flats.
In the face of the day’s heat, the Algerian crews swarmed around their vehicles, concealing them not only with visual-sight camouflage netting, but also with RAM antiradar tarpaulins and anti-infrared insulation. Stone defensive revetments were being stacked up as well, indicating that this was more than a brief stretch-and-cigarette stop.
“Okay, Brid. Walk us over the pass. Let’s see what else they have down there.”
“What else” proved to be half a dozen more armored fighting vehicles dispersed along the winding floor of the pass. Tracked and lowriding, with the Slavic design school’s distinctive flattened “frying pan” turret shape mounted aft of center, their crews were hard at work digging them in as well.
“Six Bulgarian BRM-30 scout tracks and a pair of Centauros,” Mary May commented. “That’s a full Algerian Recon company. The radar rig and the Tunguska would be mission attachments.”
“The question being just what that mission is.” Bolde slid out of his seat and hunkered down on the deck beside the system operator’s chair to get a clearer view of the station displays. “Brid, take us north a little more. I want to get a view of what’s happening on the other side of this ridge.”
“Not a problem,” she replied, setting the new waypoint.
It wasn’t. In another minute or two the drone went into hover again, offering its masters a panoramic vista of the plains to the north of the El Khnachich. The caravan road was a pale trace across the desert floor. Clustered about it, perhaps fifteen kilometers beyond the hill range, a number of massive dust plumes rose into the air.
“There’s the rest of your division,” Shelleen commented, “or a goodly chunk thereof.”
“Agreed,” Bolde replied slowly, “but not in road column. It looks like they’re dispersing.”
“They are, LT,” Santiago added. The driver had swiveled his seat around, joining the ad hoc command conference. “From the look of that dust kick-up, you got a series of company-sized detachments peeling off the main road and fanning out.”
“Yeah.” Mary May nodded up from the floor. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say those guys were dispersing to go into a night laager.”
Bolde glanced down at his head scout. “Why do we know better, Mary May?”
The young woman shrugged. “Because they’ve no reason to stop and lots to keep going, Lieutenant. You never halt on the near side of a low river ford or a clear mountain pass. It might not be low or clear the next day when you want to move again.”
“Yeah. That’s how we’d do it. But then the gentleman who’s running that outfit may not necessarily play by the same rules that we do.” Bolde let his voice trail off as he contemplated possibilities.
“Probably,” he said after a half minute’s pause, “that Algi division is strung out along a good seventy—eighty kilometers of the Taoudenni road about now. They’re stuck with staying on it because their logistics groups are still using trucks instead of high-mobility all-terrain vehicles. They can’t move too fast for that same reason. That caravan route is literally just a camel trail.
“Now, a lot of Third World commanders still aren’t too comfortable with large-unit operations after nightfall. Let’s also say that the Algi general running this outfit is a conservative and cautious kind of guy, again like a lot of Third World commanders.
“He’s got night coming on, a replenishment coming up, and he knows that there’s likely U.S. and Legion Armored Cav out here hunting for him. The idea of being draped across this range of hills with some of his maneuver elements on one side and some on the other come oh dark hundred might not appeal to him too much.”
“It wouldn’t to me either,” Shelleen noted thoughtfully. “There are things a raider could do with a situation like that.”
“Indeed there are, Miss Shelleen,” Bolde agreed, lifting an eyebrow. “And I was hoping to try some of them out tonight. Unfortunately, our Algerian friend appears to be playing it safe. He’s run a fast recon element out ahead to secure this pass. That will do a couple of things for him. For one, it’ll plug up the obvious route another mechanized unit would have to take to get at his main. For another it will give him an observation post on the high ground.
“That battlefield radar will give him early warning of any major force moving in from the south. If one shows up, he can engage at long range with artillery, spotting from the pass mouth. He knows he’s got way more tubes and rails on this side of Mali than we do, so he’ll have the edge in any potential gun duel.
“So covered, he figures he can safely fort up overnight north of the pass to regroup and resupply. Come first light, when he doesn’t have to worry so much about being bushwhacked, he can push his entire division rapidly through the choke point of the pass. Once he’s got his maneuver battalions out into open country again, he can trust in his massed firepower to bust him through any light-force screen we can throw in front of him.”
Bolde’s planning staff exchanged glances, wordlessly discussing their leader’s analysis. Bridget Shelleen voiced their findings. “That very well could be what we’re seeing here, sir. The question is, what are we going to do
about it?”
“What indeed. What indeed.” Bolde accessed a secondary screen on the workstation, filling it with a graphics-map tactical display of the immediate region. He added an overlay showing Saber section’s position as well as that of the known hostile units. Using the console touch pad, he drew in the potential laager sites of the remainder of the Algerian division. Then he considered once more.
Minutes passed and Mary May Jorgenson stirred restlessly from her seat on the deck plates. “It wouldn’t be too much trouble to mess up that recon outfit in the pass. My guys and I could get up on the ridges overlooking their positions and laser designate for our CMMs. We could take ’em out, no problem.”
“Yeah, we could do that,” Bolde replied slowly. “But how much would that gain us or cost the bad guys? We could kill that recon company, all right. But is that our best potential shot? If we are serious about slowing the Algis down, we’ll have to maximize our strike effect. We’ll have to nurse as much bang out of our buck as is conceivable, even if it means stretching the sensibility envelope to a degree.”
“L’audace, l’audace, toujours, l’audace,” Shelleen murmured.
“Precisely. The problem is that we are down here—” Bolde’s fingertip touched the blue position hack at the bottom of the map display—“and all the really good stuff is up there.” His finger climbed up the map to the Algerian laager zone. “Tonight, the Algis are going to be in static positions, refueling and rearming. Their logistics groups are going to be up forward and intermixed with their maneuver battalions. That’s when they will be at their most vulnerable and when we could do the most damage.
“Thing is, the Algis are playing it smart. They’ve read their copy of Jane’s All the World’s Weapons Systems and they’re going to ground far enough back from this hill range so that we can’t toss anything over the rocks at them. If we want to hurt them, really hurt them, we’ll have to get over on that north side with them, and they can’t know we’re there until it’s too late.”
Bolde looked back over his shoulder at his driver. “How about it, Rick? Can you get us over these hills without using the pass?”
The lean and moustached Latino gave a slight shrug. “It’s gonna depend on the surfaces and gradients, LT. Miss Shelleen, could you show me the slope profile on that stretch of range ahead of us?”
“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 … .
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.
Combat Page 33
