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.
IX.
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 mission. 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, ratlike, 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 leglike 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-'
