To Maxwell’s astonishment, Captain Brickell’s voice came back with perfect clarity.
“This is Alpha. No losses. Continuing mission.”
“Bravo, report.”
“Bravo here. No combat losses. One Bradley tango-uniform. Broke a track. Continuing mission.”
“Charlie, report.”
“Two big boys down in an irrigation ditch. Wasn’t mapped. No combat losses. Continuing mission.”
“Gentlemen, draw your sabers.” Maxwell wished it wasn’t just a figure of speech. “And prepare to close with the enemy.”
To the front, splashes of flame and clouds of smoke. Artillery fire dropping on the Jihadi antitank positions. Lots of beautiful artillery. It looked as if every tube in the corps was pumping out rounds.
“A thing of beauty is a fucking joy forever,” Maxwell said, back on the intercom. “Anybody know who said that?”
“You, sir?”
“John Keats.”
“Sir,” the gunner said, “Keats never said—”
“Prepare to repel drones.”
Maxwell had seen the dark forms darting out of the veil of artillery smoke. Well, at least they’d gotten through the first wave of ATGMs.
He unlocked his hatch and pushed the heavy cover open, taking a beating about the rib cage as he stood to man the.50 cal. Against drones, it was useless to try to control it while buttoned up. He just hoped the stabilizer wasn’t broke-dick again.
A shadow flitted over the tank, then another. Coming from behind. Maxwell looked up. Friendly drones. He watched as they soared toward the approaching enemy UAVs.
Any attempt to employ the machine gun would be as likely to bring down a U.S. Army drone as an enemy airframe. Maxwell pushed the lock release and grabbed the handle to button up again. Gingerly. As a captain, he’d smashed his saber hand on maneuvers by shutting a hatch while rolling through broken terrain.
“Gunner. Targets?”
“Negative, sir,” Sergeant Nash told him. “It’s not just our smoke. The J’s have obscurants up. And they’re turning their spectrum jammers on and off.”
Where was the Jihadi artillery? Were they limiting it to counter-fire? Arty wasn’t the best weapon against tanks, especially with the new jammers to divert homing rounds. But it seemed weird that they weren’t dumping steel on the attack formation anyway.
A barrage of indirect fire struck three clicks ahead and off to the flank. Surely, the J’s couldn’t be
“Panama Canal coming up. One hundred meters.”
This was the second test. While the overhead imagery confirmed that the derelict Israeli irrigation channels were dry, some were wide and deep enough to trap a tank. Maxwell figured that, in the old days, the Israelis had intended the main channels to do double duty as antitank ditches.
The attack had already blown across a series of minor ditches, but the engineers hadn’t been entirely sure about this one.
Even if the antitank missiles weren’t back in the game, his tanks would still be sitting ducks for the drones.
All that Maxwell could see in the sky were occasional black forms. Swooping across his viewer like bats.
The driver slowed the Abrams.
“Sir, what can you see from up there? I can’t see the bottom.”
“Hold one. I’m going up to look.”
Maxwell popped the hatch again, standing on his weapons-station platform. Saber clanking off metal. He could smell the blown-powder stink of the artillery barrage from kilometers away.
“Driver. Slow… Move out. Take it straight on. Gunner. Traverse up, max elevation. Everybody hold on.”
Maxwell braced himself. The tank tipped into the ditch.
It was shallow. A thing of beauty.
Glancing to the right, then left, Maxwell saw another thing of beauty. Third Brigade, faced with no ditch, was surging forward on the flank. His own vehicle and the rest of the 1st Brigade tracks were climbing out of the ditch. Monsters rising from graves. Dozens and dozens of war machines clawed their way forward.
The front of his tank rose skyward as its rear dropped into the ditch.
Perfect time to hit us. Belly shot, he told himself.
But the friendly artillery continued to dump on Afula, and if the J’s were shooting at all, their gun-bunnies were up for the world’s-worst prize.
Glancing skyward, Maxwell saw that the drone count had dwindled, too. Why weren’t the J’s sending in every drone they had?
“Let’s go. Get us out of this ditch, Specialist Vasquez.”
“Yes, sir. Trying not to throw a track.”
As the tank slammed down on the far bank, Maxwell watched a Bradley tip onto its side. The vehicle commander was crushed against the concrete wall of the ditch.
Maxwell flashed on an old commander, a veteran of Iraq, who’d spoken of war’s caprices.
To the right, a missile struck a surging tank and exploded. There was no secondary blast, but the M-1 jerked to a stop. As if someone had yanked an invisible leash.
Maxwell buttoned up again. “All stations, all stations. We’re entering their secondary kill zone. Let’s punch it. Three clicks, and we’re on ’em. Bravo, move into the lead. Alpha, echelon left. Dread-naughts, acknowledge. Over.”
“Alpha, roger.”
“Bravo, roger.”
“Charlie, roger.”
The radio remained beautifully clear. What on earth was going on? No Muslim artillery. A handful of drones. No jamming. Was it some kind of trick? Was it all going to come down on them at once?
They entered the veil of smoke and tuned obscurants. Even the late-model thermal sights revealed only ghosts. It was a fistfight through a curtain now.
The LD-KE had been the wrong round to load. They were moving into HE country. Antitank defenses, but no Jihadi tanks reported in Afula.
Were they holding them back? For a counterattack? Was the blow coming? Maxwell decided he’d just plain called it wrong.
“Loader. Reload HE.”
“Safe,” Specialist Prizzi shouted into the intercom.
Maxwell heard the breech clank open.
A target registered hot in Maxwell’s thermal sight. He punched a button, and the gun slewed around.
“HE loaded. Up!”
“ATGM. Two-two-hundred.”
“Identified.”
“On the way!”
The gun’s recoil, too, was a thing of beauty.
The target bloomed.
Maxwell decided to load sabot. For another click, Jihadi vehicles would register as the principal targets. And sabot would get the attention of any ATGM gunners using buildings, too.
“Up.”
The gunner, who had a hunter’s high-tuned senses, called, “Identified. PC.”
“Fire.”
“On the way.”
