by Tom Kratman
Neither Perez, nor del Rio, nor Mendoza could remember when they'd slept last. Mendoza thought he might have eaten something the day prior but couldn't be sure. The stewed camel over rice was not something the cohort mess section was really used to preparing, but they'd been reduced to that for the last three days. He might have skipped it yesterday; hard to remember. Too sleepy, too . . .
"Jorge, back up! Back up! Back up! Gunner, HE, RGL, two o'clock. Jorge, goddammit, back UP!"
Still half asleep Mendoza automatically shifted gears and backed the tank fifty meters. Before he had gone that distance, though, a rocket launched grenade lanced out from the half-shattered wreck of an adobe building. It missed the tank, barely, and exploded against a wall behind Jorge and to his left. The tank's automatic defense system hadn't fired because all the blocks on the front had been used up and there hadn't been any spares to replace them. Maybe tomorrow . . .
Del Rio was apparently not half asleep since the main gun roared even before Jorge applied the brakes. That woke him up fully and in time to watch the adobe building to his right front disintegrate to dust.
Ninewa, Command Post, Legio del Cid, 6/3/461 AC
A Cricket's engine sputtered outside where it had come to a hasty landing just a few seconds ahead of a heavy machine gun's tracers. A short, dark, and stout man, chest still swathed in bandages, climbed painfully down from its high door.
Parilla had to be helped into the building. The first thing he heard upon entering was Patricio Carrera, cursing a storm into a radio. "Listen carefully, you miserable son of a bitch. I said I want . . . "
Parilla sat heavily and wearily in a folding chair inside. Outside the Cricket that had brought him had its tail picked up by four legionaries and turned to face away from the wind. Once loaded, it would taxi again and face into the wind for takeoff. Another pair of men, wearing white armbands with red crosses, loaded a stretcher in through the rear of the aircraft, then helped another legionary with his chest and shoulder heavily bandaged to climb into the front passenger seat. Loaded, the Cricket took off again in a cloud of propeller-raised dust. Behind the Cricket a NA-23 Dodo with Lolita painted on the nose waited patiently while more wounded either boarded or, if stretcher cases, were loaded.
Carrera took one look and asked, "Raul, what the fuck are you doing here? You're still hurt."
Parilla sighed and answered, "I couldn't stand it anymore, lying there while they brought in more and more wounded kids, most of them worse off than I was. So, one of the advantages of being Dux," and he emphasized the title as if to say, which means people do what I tell them to, generally, "is that when I say, "I want to be flown to the front," someone is going to bust ass to get me flown to the front."
Carrera smiled. "I missed you, you old bastard. Things are not going all that well and we sure needed you here."
"That's why I came, Patricio."
"Are you up to running things from here?" Carrera asked.
"Yes . . . with help," Parilla admitted.
"Okay then. Let me show you how things stand." Carrera walked to the map and began to trace with his finger. "We've got about two thirds of the town, plus this airport," Carrera's head inclined in the direction of the Nabakov-23. "The Sumeris are still hanging on to the local university, backed up here against the river, and this corner." The finger showed the northeast area of the town, marked as being still in Sumeri hands. "This group didn't go into the school, by the way, to try to gain shelter by hiding in an off-limits target. They knew we wouldn't feel terribly restricted by that and sent a parliamentaire to assure us we could engage them there. They're only in it because it's all they have left."
"Fighting strength is down" Carrera continued, "dangerously down. We've got nothing but MPs and walking wounded guarding prisoners and we've cannibalized the rear echelon for riflemen. Even so, average century rifle strength is only about three-quarters, more in some, less in others. That's even with the four hundred replacements fresh out of training that Christian rushed us from Balboa."
Parilla raised a finger. "I can shed a little light and hope on the replacement situation. Another one hundred and fifty . . . ummm . . . fifty-four are due in day after tomorrow. And another one hundred and eighty or so in ten days."
"That might help; the next contingent, I mean. If we haven't finished taking this place before ten days are up, I'll resign."
Parilla inhaled deeply and, with obvious reluctance and distaste, said, "And that's another problem. The papers back home are howling for your head over these reprisals. Some of the politicos are, too. You haven't been up on international news here, have you?"
"No, why?"
"The Taurans are talking about putting out a warrant for your arrest from the Cosmopolitan Criminal Court."
"Fuck 'em," Carrera answered, with no noticeable degree of concern.
"Okay, just thought you might like to know. Anyway, I can handle things here." Parilla looked over the manning charts hanging on one wall. "Legate, you need to get forward to lead this legion."
Carrera looked at the same charts, even as Parilla did. "Can you get by without a couple of the staff?" he asked.
"Who did you have in mind taking?"
"Rocaberti, Daugher, Bowman. Plus Mitchell and Soult. I had to shit Johnson to 3rd Cohort to replace its commander."
"Where's Carl Kennison?" Parilla asked.
"Here, Duce," Kennison answered unexpectedly from the door.
Carrera raised a single eyebrow which Kennison answered by saying, "I'll be fine for now, Pat. We can talk later, after the battle's over."
Carrera nodded. "Fine. I'll be on my way then." He glanced around to make sure all five men he'd said he wanted to take were present. "You people I mentioned; on me in ten minutes, ready to rock."
* * *
Manuel Rocaberti had done his level best to be as useful at headquarters as possible, hoping thereby to escape being sent anywhere but. He wasn't lazy, after all; he just wasn't too terribly brave. He'd learned that over a decade ago when, in the face of an FSC attack on Balboa he had run, deserting his men and his command. He'd have been shot, he knew, if his side had actually won. Fortunately, for him, they had not and in the chaos after the fall of Piña, the ex-dictator, no one had thought to prosecute him. Rather, no one in a position to had ever thought to. He was reasonably sure that Jimenez, among others, would have been glad to see him dead.
Thus it was with a mix of relief and trepidation that Rocaberti found himself suddenly placed in command over an understrength infantry century with a single tank attached. The relief came from the fact that no one in the century or the cohort over it had any obvious reason personally to want Rocaberti dead. The trepidation came from the fact that the century was facing a large number of Sumeris who did want him dead, albeit only in an impersonal way. That was small comfort.
Even so, Rocaberti was an experienced officer, an experienced commander, and well above the rank normally associated with the command of a single century. There was some good he could do. He began well enough, reorganizing the century and letting one badly overtasked sergeant become his assistant, rather than having the entire weight bearing down on the poor sergeant's own young shoulders. Then he'd seen to the supply situation, ensuring especially that more ammunition was ordered. Lastly, after talking amiably with some of the men, he'd set upon the cooks. There would be something better than boiled camel over rice this evening.
* * *
So many of Sada's officers were down that he was reduced to, if not quite leading charges himself, at least guiding the assault parties forward and giving them their final instructions. With another Sumeri commander, this sort of thing would have been expected and, as expected, such assaults would have petered out quickly once out of that stay-behind commander's gaze.
Sada, by contrast, spent so much time at the front, and so much time exposed to enemy fire, that his men understood that if he stayed behind it wasn't in regard for his own safety, but in regard to the miss
ion. They knew they weren't being sacrificed by a coward. That his reputation for this kind of conduct went back almost twenty years didn't hurt matters.
The hardest thing for Sada to learn, this campaign, had been the effectiveness of modern night vision. In the Farsi War there had been little and what little there had been had been almost all on his side. In the Oil War of a dozen years before, while the enemy coalition had had a massive advantage, it hadn't affected him or his men much as they were in another part of the theater, killing Yezidis. They'd been bombed silly more than once, true, but night vision hadn't had a lot to do with it.
Here though, the disparity was both gross and everywhere. The enemy had sights that would see through dust, through smoke, through walls. He'd lost a lot of men figuring that out. Now his men didn't try to restrict their movements to the night that the enemy owned. Instead, day or night they moved underground wherever possible, in tunnels – often no more than crawlspaces – that stretched from building to building and under roads and parks. Even where tunnels had not been possible, trenches were, and these helped shield Sada's men at least from the ground mounted thermal and light amplifying sights, if not from those loitering above, in the air.
It was a hard-learned lesson: If the enemy owns the night, fight, where possible, in the day.
So, rat-like, Sada and his soldiers moved in small groups, through trenches and tunnels, between buildings and under and across roads and parks before emerging, several hundred of them, in a series of apartment buildings still held by his side. The worst part was crawling through a trench that led across a children's park. Sada had fretted over that badly, finally ordering enough troops into five buildings that dominated the park so that any aerial recon could be driven off or shot down. At the end of the park, the trench went underground again, before turning left to enter several apartment building basements.
In the apartment buildings' basements – named by Sada "Assault Position Ramadan" – too tired to be nervous over the possibility of aerial bombs or heavy mortar shells, Sada and his men slept the night, awaiting morning and their attack.
And I must attack, at least often enough to keep the enemy from feeling secure enough to methodically peel us away like the shell from an egg, Sada thought, as he drifted off to fitful sleep.
4th Cohort Command Post (Forward), 7/3/461 AC
The Forward CP was wherever Jimenez happened to be, with a couple of radiomen, a forward observer team with another radio, and a few more soldiers detailed as security.
It was just after midnight. Jimenez and his small party hunkered down behind some furniture hastily thrown up and then reinforced by sandbags, the whole mess being on the ground floor of a government building facing a broad and dusty open area. This had some children's amusements to suggest it had once been dedicated as a park.
One would have to look twice, though, to see that now. The children's' amusements were smashed, littered here and there with bodies, and the otherwise smooth and level fields of dust were pockmarked with shell craters. Further detracting from the image of playground were the long trench dug into the field and the barbed wire that was strung from end to end.
Jimenez had reason to know the place was mined, too. Even if he might have forgotten, the grim light cast by the flickering flames of one of his Ocelots – immobilized by a mine and colanderized by rocket launched grenades – would have reminded him.
At least we got the chingada crew out.
Five apartment buildings, the center one of seven stories, flanked by two of six, with those flanked by two of five stories, dominated the open field. They were exactly the kind of unattractive and tasteless government housing projects one might have expected from any government involved in public housing; blank, featureless, concrete "machines for mass living" with all the humanity carefully excised.
Their ugliness was even worse now – even more real – for it was from these that fire had poured down on Jimenez's men as they'd tried to cross without adequate armored support. It was from these that the RGLs had smashed one of the few armored vehicles Jimenez had available to him.
Carrera had called, just after the last attack, asking if Jimenez couldn't somehow force the field and get a toehold on the buildings opposite.
"Patricio, there is no way I can get across on foot. We tried. We paid, too. If you've got a bright idea, let me know because I am fresh out."
"Wait, out." The radio had gone silent then for half a minute. When Carrera had come back he'd said, "Yes, I've got an idea. It'll be dangerous, though, and it will take some time to set up, to coordinate between the artillery, the flyboys and the Cazadors. Say . . . between four and eight hours. Hang tight. I'll get back with you."
* * *
The artillery wasn't a problem. Neither was getting half a dozen helicopters configured for a mixed infantry-gunship load. The problem was the Cazador Cohort.
"They're spent, Jamie," Carrera said, looking around at a collection of not so much dispirited as simply bone-weary men. "For at least a day, more likely two days, they're just out of it. Sending them back in, in this state, would be murder."
Soult had nothing to say to add to that. Instead, he simply asked, "What are you going to do about it?"
"Something I'd really rather not," Carrera admitted. "Call the CP and have Colonel Ridenhour meet us here."
Tactical Operations Center, 731st Airborne Brigade, northwest of Ninewa
Colonel Jeff Lamprey was frantic, frustrated and infuriated, his face beginning to match his flaming red hair. He paced the close confines of his tented command post, set up just out of range of 120mm mortars, lashing out at all who crossed his path. His headquarters troops tried to avoid him, as best they could.
There was a low thrum from overhead. This, Lamprey hadn't heard before, at least on his side of the river. He left the tactical operations center, or TOC – a fancy name for a command post, stepping outside in time to see a crude and primitive looking aircraft on high, grasshopper leg-like landing struts set down lightly less than one hundred meters away. The door to the plane had painted on it an armored knight with curved wings attached to his back armor and rising overhead.
Lamprey, who had had a week to study the organization across the river recognized it as one of the Legio del Cid's light recon and command birds. He snarled.
The door to the plane swung open to allow a man in FSA-style desert camouflage to climb down. It was too far to see the man's rank clearly, but Lamprey, who had an instinct for general officers – indeed his entire life's ambition was to join that exclusive club – was reasonably certain that the just-arrived officer was not one. Perhaps he was a colonel like Lamprey himself, perhaps some lesser being.
Suppressing his rage and putting on an utterly false smile, Lamprey walked halfway to the Cricket to meet his visitor. He saw that the man was, like himself, a colonel and, upon closer inspection of the embroidered tape over his right breast pocket, that his name was Ridenhour.
Ridenhour didn't waste time on trivialities. "You want into the fight?" he asked.
"Damn straight. And if that son-of-a-bitch on the other side—"
"Which other side?" Ridenhour asked with a wintery smile. "I have direct access to Dux Parilla and Legate Carrera. But if you want to talk to the enemy commander, Amid Sada, you're on your own . . . .though you could probably funnel a message through the legion." Ridenhour smiled, "The relationship is quite close and rather cordial, considering."
"You know damned well who I mean, Ridenhour." Lamprey's frustration and anger threatened to leak out.
"Ah. Well, Carrera is willing to negotiate."
"Negotiate, hell, that motherf—"
"Ah, ah, ah," Ridenhour wagged a finger. "Temper, temper. Carrera had sound reasons for keeping you out, initially, just as he has sound reasons for letting you in now . . . in a limited fashion."
"In a limited . . . arrrghgh!"
"That's right. He is willing to let your brigade take some buildings. It's an important se
t of targets. They'll be plenty of medals and commendations to go around. If you're a) interested and b) willing to fall under his – rather, Dux Parilla's – command."
"Details?" Lamprey asked, forcing his temper down.
Ridenhour nodded; this was easier than he'd thought it would be. He pulled a map out of his left leg cargo pocket and began to speak, while pointing. "In about four hours there will be six helicopters, Volgan-built IM-71s, landing four kilometers south of your positions. At the moment they land there will be an aerial attack on the objective I mentioned. That will be followed by a mortar bombardment on and around the objective. When the helicopters land here, and this is assuming you agree, of course, you will board the first echelon of one battalion—call it one reinforced company of one hundred and forty-four men, maximum—or one reinforced platoon of each of three companies of one battalion; your call. The helicopters will make a total of three sorties each, so the most you are getting over there is a single battalion, plus maybe a little reinforcement."
