Heart of War

by Lucian K. Truscott

  “You have any idea what’s up, Sarge? What do you hear from the men?”

  “I hear we’re going on some kind of big-time field exercise, up against the 24th.”

  “No kidding? Where’d you hear that?”

  “Around, sir. It’s just a rumor.”

  “You heard anything, Lieutenant?”

  “No, sir. The orderly just called me and told me to get my stuff and report the same as everybody else.”

  “You guys better get back to your platoon. We’re about to move out.”

  “Yes, sir.” Lieutenant Parks fell in next to Mace.

  “What’d you hear, Sarge?”

  Mace glanced at Parks. The chin strap on his helmet was snapped tightly, and his face looked impossibly young and eager. “I heard it’s some kind of downsizing thing, sir.”

  “That means the brass is going to be everywhere.”

  “Yes, sir. I’d imagine.”

  They reached the platoon vehicles, a command Humvee and a couple of trucks. The men were lying around on the ground, resting against their field packs. Mace felt a tug at his jacket sleeve. He turned as Radley whispered: “Sarge, the captain’s on the radio. He’s giving the order to move out. The whole battalion’s on the move.”

  Ahead of them, engines roared to life and taillights came on.

  “Get the men on the vehicles, Sergeant.”

  “Yes, sir.” He turned to the platoon. “Mount up. Let’s go.”

  The platoon picked up their gear and started getting into the trucks. Mace walked up to the Humvee and climbed in the back. Lieutenant Parks climbed in the front seat.

  “Looks like it’s going to be a long night, Sarge.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Lieutenant Parks stared out the windshield. “Well, I hope they’re ready. Whatever this thing is, it’s going to be rough.”

  “They are, sir.”

  The Humvee’s engine started, and Radley put it in gear. Ahead of them, a set of brake lights was fast disappearing. Radley stepped on the gas. Behind them, the trucks lurched forward. The platoon radio spat static, and the captain’s voice came on.

  “Where the hell are you guys, Parks? Get your asses up here with the rest of the company.”

  Parks picked up the mike. “On our way, Six.”

  Mace looked out the top of the Humvee through the open machine gun mount. Overhead, storm clouds had obscured the moon. It was dark and getting darker, and there was another storm on the way. He could feel it in his bones.

  Lannie ran under the whirling blades of the Blackhawk and climbed in. She took the seat next to General Beckwith and buckled up. The big bird shuddered, tilted forward, and rose skyward from the pad. She put on an intercom headset and adjusted the volume.

  Beckwith’s voice crackled in her ears. “What’d you find out, Captain?”

  “The Chief of Staff lifted off at 1900 from Andrews, sir.”

  “Dammit!”

  “It’s just like you thought, sir. We’re going up against General King’s 29th Infantry Regiment.”

  “King’s people up in Washington stage-managed this. I can smell it. Pendleton called me yesterday and said something was up. He saw that goddamn Ranstead going in and out of Carson’s office all day. He couldn’t get anyone to tell him what they were up to. My guess is, we just found out.”

  “Do you remember my friend Carla Gonzales?”

  “You were at the Point with her.”

  “She’s working in the Chief’s office now. General Carson moved her out of DESPER and installed her in his PAO shop. I talked to her a few minutes ago. General King is meeting the Chief out at Lawson Airfield as soon as he gets in.”

  “If he took off at 1900, he’s already here.”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  The chopper banked steeply. Below them, the lights of a convoy snaked through the dark woods along a dirt road. Lannie pointed out the window. “There they are. Our guys are right on time.”

  Beckwith leaned across her to get a better look, resting his. hand on her leg. She twisted the intercom mike away from her mouth and whispered loudly enough for him to hear her over the sound of the chopper’s engines: “Watch it. I’m ticklish there.”

  He leaned into her ear. “Elsewhere too.”

  She laughed. Her headset crackled. It was the pilot. He sounded like he was about eighteen.

  “Aahhh, we’re going to touch down in zero-two, sir.”

  “Roger that.”

  The chopper came in over the trees and hovered above a wide meadow crowded with Bradleys and Humvees. When they touched down, Beckwith pulled open the door and stepped out. Lannie followed close behind. Just as they suspected, General King was standing with General Carson next to a Humvee flying a four-star flag. Carson was stocky, maybe five-seven. He had deep-set eyes and a jaw that wore a permanent five o’clock shadow. Lannie knew that the word on him in the Pentagon was unanimous: General Carson was a soldier’s soldier. He had commanded a company in Vietnam and later did a stint as Army liaison to the Congress, but in between he had taken every command job he could find. He had been superintendent of West Point at the time Beckwith was commandant. The word at West Point had been that they hated each other.

  Lannie didn’t recognize the other general standing with them. From the look on Beckwith’s face, he knew who he was. Beckwith saluted smartly. Carson extended his hand.

  “Good to see you, Bill. You know Jack Ranstead, don’t you?”

  “Yes, sir.” Beckwith had a thin smile on his lips as he turned to the other general. “Long time no see, Jack. How have you been?”

  General Ranstead was tall and slender and wore a look of perpetual relaxation. His face cracked a wide, engaging smile.

  “Never better.”

  “You enjoying the E-Ring, Jack?” asked General Beckwith.

  General Ranstead chuckled. “I’m finding my way around.”

  Carson laughed and the others joined him. General Beckwith turned to General King. “Evening, Bernie. Looks like the Chief’s got something special up his sleeve tonight.”

  “That’s what I hear,” said General King. “Your guys ready?”

  “They’re fueled up and raring to go.”

  “I’ll see if my troopers can’t give you a run for your money, Bill.”

  “We’ll be ready for you.”

  General Carson cleared his throat. “Each of you were alerted four hours ago. Two hours ago you received your ops orders by fax. Are there any questions?”

  General Beckwith stepped forward. “Sir, I’ve got a question. How are you going to score a capture?”

  “Good question, Bill. That’s where Jack Ranstead comes in. He’s going to oversee scoring the exercise. His boys will accompany each of your units down to company level. They’ll make the determinations as to whether or not a unit has been captured in the field.”

  General Carson lit up a large cigar and blew a puff of smoke into the air. “This operation is being conducted in conjunction with a live-fire exercise.” He pointed to an area of the map that had been outlined brightly with a red magic marker. “Inside the red-lined area to the west of the area of operations will be a live-fire zone, simulating continuing conflict in the region. We’ve got it marked pretty clearly out there, but it’s going to be the job of each of you to make sure your units down to the individual soldier are keenly aware of the live-fire zone. Your men are to stay two hundred meters clear of its outer boundaries. We don’t want any accidents out here. They’re going to be bringing in air strikes and hitting that ground with every kind of artillery they can throw on it. Anybody entering that live-fire zone is going to walk right into a shitstorm of ordnance.”

  Both generals nodded gravely.

  General Carson held up a yellow plastic flag about the size of an automobile license plate. “You’ll find these flags every fifty meters along the edge of the live-fire zone. They mark the boundary of a two hundred-meter warning area. Your men will keep well outside the warning
area, and under no circumstances will they cross into the live-fire zone. Understood?”

  Beckwith said, “Yes sir. Understood.”

  “Got you, sir,” said General King. Carson handed each man a manila folder.

  “You’ve got two hours to take your positions. Bernie, your men hit the line of departure at zero-two-hundred.” Carson checked his watch. “The clock is ticking, gentlemen. You are free to move out.”

  Both generals saluted. General King and Command Sergeant Major Conklin headed toward a Humvee parked across the dirt road. General Beckwith and Lannie walked in the opposite direction. A Humvee flying red four-star flags drove up. Beckwith got in.

  “It’s just like Carson to set up a unit competition that discourages actual combat. Ranstead’s behind this thing. I want you to stay right here and keep an eye on him. I don’t trust him. He’s up to something, and I want to know what it is.”

  “Got it, sir.”

  “I’ll have Randy check in with you. Have you got your cell phone?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good. Stay off the regimental net. Use your cell phone. Find someplace to charge your extra battery, ‘cause you’re going to need it. I want to be updated twice a day. If Ranstead gets a cold, I want to know how many times he sneezes.”

  “Roger, sir.”

  Beckwith closed the Humvee’s door. Lannie snapped a salute as the vehicle accelerated. She walked back toward the Chief of Staff, who was still bent over the map.

  Ranstead. Ranstead. Where have I heard that name before?

  The rain had let up, but during the day a cold front had pushed through, driving the temperature down into the thirties by nightfall. Mace wrapped himself tighter in his poncho liner and looked through a peephole he had whacked out of the patch of briars he was using for an observation post. He was lying flat on the ground next to Lieutenant Parks. The thicket was so dense, they had to dig their way under one side and squirm beneath the twisted, thorny branches until they reached an open spot in the middle where they covered themselves with leaves and dirt. Mace knew that from the outside they were invisible. He squinted into the misty darkness. There was something moving out there.

  Over on the right. Yeah.

  He nudged the lieutenant and picked up the mike: “Radley. You see ‘em?”

  “Yeah, Sarge. ‘Bout three squads, comin’ up the hill.”

  “Spread the word. Cover up tight. Total silence.”

  “Right, Sarge. Will do.”

  The platoon was spread out behind them, scattered through the dense woods, dug into one- and two-man holes with thickly woven weeds and branches pulled in over them. Mace had learned the technique of camouflage and concealment from an old platoon sergeant when he first got in the Army. The sergeant had learned it during the war in Vietnam. The VC called them spider holes. You dug in and constructed a sturdy lid for the hole that looked just like the forest floor. If you did it well enough, as the VC certainly had during the war, an entire company could walk quite literally over your positions and never see you. Why maneuver and scoot around avoiding the enemy when you could fix it so he didn’t even know you were there? That morning when they were finished digging in, Mace had crawled out of his thicket and walked back through the stretch of forest where he knew the platoon was. There wasn’t the slightest evidence that the woods had been disturbed by man.

  Lieutenant Parks had been dubious about the plan until Mace pointed out that once an enemy unit had walked past them, it was very unlikely they would turn around and cover the same ground again. This gave the platoon a choice of staying in their holes and maintaining concealment until the exercise was over, or maneuvering against the enemy from his rear. Either way they enjoyed the element of surprise. As a tactical matter, you couldn’t have it much better than that.

  The figures were closer now. You could make out their helmets and packs and weapons. They were moving slowly, probably because they couldn’t see any better than Mace could. You could hear them whispering softly to one another. They knew they were close to the partisan lines. Mace pegged the third guy in line as the lieutenant. He kept nervously stopping and turning around to check and recheck that everyone was following along behind. Finally he stopped directly in front of the thicket where Mace and Lieutenant Parks were concealed. He took out a penlight and checked a map. His platoon sergeant tilted his helmet back and took a swig from his canteen.

  “They’ve got to be around here somewhere, Sarge. The captain said intelligence had the partisans strung out all the way across the front to this creek here, and we just crossed the creek a few minutes ago.”

  “Maybe they done moved off already, sir. They got plenty of room to maneuver to the north.”

  “Yeah. Let’s keep going. Tell the men to look closely for signs of the enemy’s position. Our recon patrols saw smoke earlier this afternoon. They had to have built a fire around here somewhere.”

  He turned off the penlight and folded the map. As they brushed past the briar patch, the lieutenant caught his web gear in the thorns. He cursed under his breath, pulled it loose, and kept moving. When they were well past Mace’s position, he shifted around and looked out the back of the thicket.

  “Radley, they’ve got to be right on top of you,” he whispered into the mike.

  There were two quick bursts of static through his earpiece as Radley confirmed yes by keying his mike. In a moment Radley’s voice came on, in a whisper.

  “They’re gone, Sarge. Back down the other side of the hill. We’re home free.”

  Mace tugged Lieutenant Parks’ sleeve. “They’re past our position, sir.”

  “Worked like a charm, Sarge. I’ve got to hand it to you.”

  Just then the company radio crackled, and Parks grabbed the receiver. It was Captain Long. “Rattlesnake three, this is Rattlesnake six, over.”

  “This is three, go ahead.”

  “Rattlesnake six. The whole damn battalion is getting overrun. Peacekeepers are coming up on our position now. Get your platoon out of there, or you’ll be scored as captured. If you can avoid the peacekeepers, they won’t score the whole battalion as captured. Think you can do that, three?”

  “Roger, six. Understand. We’ll beat ‘em. Three out.” Parks turned to Mace. “Saddle them up, Sarge. We’re out of here.”

  “What happened, sir?”

  “They overran the rest of the battalion. We’ve got to get out of here and keep on the move till the end of the exercise, or Fifth Army’s going to lose this thing.”

  Lannie unzipped her sleeping bag and slipped away from her cot, careful not to wake the others in the tent. She waited until she got outside to put on her field jacket, zipping it tightly against the cold, turning up her collar, trying to sink deeper into its warm reaches. She rounded the corner of the tent, heading for the latrine. The wind hit her full force, making her eyes water. As she turned her head, wiping her eyes on her sleeve, she bumped into something and looked up.

  “Randy! You scared me!”

  “Sorry.”

  “I thought you were staying behind at Headquarters, holding down the fort.”

  “I was. The General called and told me to get over here and see what’s going on. He’s been trying to reach you on your cell phone.”

  Lannie took her phone from her jacket pocket. It had gone dead. “Must be the cold. I charged the battery this afternoon.”

  “Why don’t you show me around? I’ll call him and tell him I checked everything out.”

  “There’s not that much to see.”

  “I’ve got to be able to tell him something, Lannie.”

  “Okay. I’ll take you through the control shack.” She led him down the row of tents, and they entered the shack through the front door. It was warm inside, and the place was buzzing with activity. Lieutenants wearing headsets were furiously entering radio reports from the field into their laptops. A female major was standing at a huge map mounted on the wall. It was covered with red- and blue-flagged pins. One o
f the lieutenants raised his hand, and the major walked over. He pointed at something on his laptop. She leaned forward, reading. Then she walked back over to the map and moved one of the red pins a few inches.

  Lannie walked up behind her. “Major Hammett, this is Captain Randy Taylor. He’s General Beckwith’s aide.”

  Major Hammett turned around. She had prematurely gray hair, and her eyes were rimmed red from lack of sleep. “What can I do for you, Captain?”

  “I thought I’d come over and see what was going on, ma’am. I don’t want to get in your way.”

  Major Hammett picked up a pointer. “The red flags denote peacekeeper companies belonging to the 24th Infantry, Captain. The blue flags are partisan companies in the 29th. As you can see, your peacekeepers are closing on partisan positions, but the partisans have been doing a pretty good job of staying out of their way. We’ve had a couple of reports of partisan units captured, here and here.” She pointed at two orange flags that had been pinned next to red flags. Another lieutenant rushed up and whispered in the major’s ear. “Your peacekeepers just captured most of the partisans’ Second Battalion, Captain. They’re chasing down one last element of the battalion right now.”

  She pinned a large yellow flag next to a small concentration of red flags. “That’s a real blow to the Fifth Army. I’d have to say your guys have been behind up until now, but if you’re able to capture the rest of that battalion, that’s going to put you way ahead in the scoring.”

  The imposing figure of General Ranstead appeared in the door. “Did I hear you say the partisans lost a battalion?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Major Hammett. “Just happened, sir.”

  General Ranstead walked into the shack’s main room. Randy and Lannie snapped to attention. Major Hammett stepped forward.

  “Sir, Captain Love and Captain Taylor work for General Beckwith. Captain Taylor is his aide.”

  General Ranstead nodded at Lannie. “Captain Love.” He paused, looking at Randy. “Captain. Nice to meet you.” The general held Randy’s eyes for an instant, then turned quickly to the map as Major Hammett pointed out the position of the captured battalion. When she was through, the general walked quickly back into the rear office and closed the door behind him.