Whatever the reasons, it did not matter. All that counted was that the reserve was intact and – properly deployed – it could win the day.
Paratroops had a mystique, but they were not supermen. In essence, once you stripped away the maroon berets and parachute wings and jump boots, they were nothing more than underequipped infantry. Look at what had happened at Arnhem despite all the weight of allied airpower. Armor had destroyed them.
Look at what had happened at Dien Bien Phu in Vietnam. The French had been arrogant and had counted on their artillery and airpower to save them. But in the end the underdog had triumphed and the surviving French were marched into captivity.
Carranza was a keen student of military history, but his memory was selective and the memories that supported his thesis came from a different time.
But he was correct on one point.
The Airborne were particularly vulnerable after they landed and before their heavy firepower was fully unpacked and into action. But vulnerable did not mean helpless. And some heavy units were not just fast at getting into action. They were very fast.
He was entirely wrong in his assessment of the air. He knew nothing at all about the Kiowa Warriors.
'Major Carranza,' said Oshima.
'Commander?' said Carranza.
'I would like you to lead the counterattack,' said Oshima.
'Personally?' said Carranza.
'They need your leadership,' said Oshima.
You're sentencing me to die, thought Carranza. We may well triumph, but I will be killed. It was less a feeling than a certainty.
It was odd. He did not feel anything except a certain impatience.
Oshima watched Carranza leave the command bunker. Twenty feet up, his armored reaction force sat waiting. Facing them was a ramp leading to a hydraulically controlled bombproof door similar to those installed on missile silos.
The armored door opened up directly into the hangar. For maximum shock power, the armored force could assemble a dozen tanks or more before attacking.
Individually, tanks could be picked off one by one, but en masse they were an armored fist that few soldiers could withstand.
A rifle was useless against a tank. If you stood your ground, you were crushed. AT4s and LAWS could destroy armor, but these were close-range weapons whose backblasts gave away their firing positions when used. A wedge of tanks advancing with guns blazing away was every infantryman's nightmare.
General Mike Gannon watched radio aerials sprout. The news of Dave Palmer's death had just come in from the air force, and he was momentarily stunned.
Divisional HQ occupied a pair of two-thousand-pound-bomb craters. The area was already covered over with camouflage netting and sweating paratroopers were further reinforcing the position with sandbagged top cover. It was not so much that generals deserved special protection, but more the basic fact that the radios had to be kept safe.
Without radio communications, the 82 ^ nd would be shorn of most of its effective striking power. Air, artillery, antitank, his own armor, and his maneuver battalions all needed to be coordinated. The Kiowa Warriors and the Spectre gunships were his windows into the evolving battle. Certainly all concerned knew their individual roles, but in an airborne operation things changed at speed.
First Brigade were netted in and progressing well. Second Brigade had called for artillery support. They were up against a network of bunkers defended by minefields. The air force had made two runs but then had run out of ordnance. The Spectre gunships were otherwise engaged. The A10s were around, but for some technical reason they could not be contacted.
Under heavy fire, troopers were clearing paths through the minefields by advancing on their stomachs and poking with fiberglass rods. God knows how they had the guts to do it. It was not like they could take their time. During an airborne assault this intricate and highly dangerous job was performed at speed. It had to be done that way. You had to get through. Failure was not an option.
The strike momentum had to be kept up.
The artillery was still not in action. One battery had landed in a minefield, and the gunners rushing to unpack their pieces had taken casualties as they moved in. Another battery had been hit by a mortar strike.
Gannon missed Palmer. Dave was the best executive officer he had ever had, and combined they made a near-perfect team. Gannon was a fighting general at his absolute best when leading men. Palmer was the imperturbable organization man who kept the structure together and the information flowing. The thought that he'd just been blown out of the sky and was now… gone, was sickening.
Gone! What more could you say? You were supposed to be safe at 20,000 feet up, but that was an illusion. Nowhere was safe during an airborne assault.
There was a boom as a 105mm howitzer went off and then another. The camouflage netting fluttered as the shock waves spread.
The noise jolted Gannon back into action. Despite all the shit that had been thrown at them, the gunners were back on the firing line. He looked at his watch. They had been on the ground only twenty-two minutes. The opposition was heavier than he had expected. The air force had worked right through the targeting board, but the terrorists were dug more effectively than he been believed. And the intelligence on mines had been inadequate.
You could prepare as much as you liked, but when it came right down to it every battle had to be fought. There was no easy way.
Gannon suddenly thought of the supergun. If Livermore was wrong, no matter what the 82 ^ nd accomplished, a whole lot of his young men were going to die.
The operations board was coming up with the division's assets. The Kiowa Warriors, electronic countermeasures, artillery, mortars, his TWO missiles mounted on Humvees, the Sheridan tanks, the heavy machine guns. All were now unpacked and operational.
Twenty-seven minutes in. Not good enough. They could always do better.
But not bad.
Gannon studied the big operations map. The wild card mission was the one commanded by Fitzduane. He was heading across to the hangar to link up with a Delta team, and together they were going to try and flush Oshima out of her bunker.
In Gannon's professional opinion, it was a fool's mission, since penetrating a series of armored doors to a location sixty feet underground was tantamount to suicide.
Nevertheless, the game in this case was certainly worth the candle. Gannon had studied Oshima's file and had walked through the bloodstained wreckage in Fayetteville. Oshima was the nearest thing to pure evil that so far in his life he had ever encountered.
Fitzduane, Al Lonsdale, that Washington fellow Cochrane, and then Brock's little army. They were good people and did not deserve to die. But then, neither had Dave Palmer.
'General?' said Carlson, who was standing in as exec. 'We've got a report from the Delta observer team on the hangar roof. Armor, sir, and lots of it. Twenty T53s, and they're still coming out of the ground like dragon's teeth.'
'Colonel Fitzduane?' said Gannon.
'Raising him now, sir,' said Carlson. 'But he'll know soon enough. They're heading right for him.'
Fitzduane's minder, thought Gannon. Lieutenant Brock. The LouisianaTrainingCenter. OPFOR had attacked in force and caught Brock in a situation just like this.
Using pre-positioned AT4s, Brock had fought one of the best infantry rear-guard actions against armor that Gannon had ever seen. Kill a couple of tanks, make smoke, and fall back in the confusion. Next time they advanced, hit them from a different angle. Shoot and scoot ground-pounder style.
