D-Day, MV
Boxer burst into the TOC and said, 'Shit! We missed two tanks.'
'What are you talking about?' Stauer asked.
'The UAV passed over the tank column a few miles from the lager. It couldn't count the tanks in the column but counted ten in the camp. So we figured fourteen tanks Reilly would have to face and continued on to the town. On the flight back the pilot swung over the lager again and counted eight. So he followed the road for a while and found the other two, few enough he could count them, racing to join the rest.'
'Will they catch up before Reilly's kill zone?'
'No. They'll still be out of it by the time Reilly has to engage.'
'Ah . . . fuck. Get me Reilly on the horn.'
D-Day, Rako-Dhuudo-Bandar Cisman highway, Ophir
'Yes, we identified the problem and I've got a handle on it, boss,' Reilly answered. 'Yes, it's a shitty, greasy, sloppy handle, but I've got a handle.'
Man, I hate being nagged.
Sergeant Abdan reported in, 'First tank entering the KZ.'
Reilly finished up, 'And I got to go now. Busy, doncha know. Send the dustoff our way, would you? We're probably going to need it.'
The radio spouted, 'Alpha Six, One-Six. First tank at Checkpoint Three . . . '
Lana, wearing NVGs, watched the long steel snake slither through the kill zone with a mix of eagerness and fear. Some of the fear was for her life and health, true. More of it, though, was in the form of, Lord, God, don't let me fail.
In this she wasn't so very different from any of the others peering in at the sight of the massacre they hoped to make.
Though she didn't have to whisper-the tanks made more noise than she could hope to-still she did. 'Gunner . . . eleven o'clock . . . gunner . . . ten o'clock . . . gunner . . . eleven o'clock.'
With each command, Viljoen deftly spun the traversing wheel that also held his firing button. A certain tone crept into her voice, that same combination of fear for self and fear for self-image.
'Relax, Lana,' Viljoen said. 'It's . . . well, I won't say it's a piece of cake, but I will say you're as ready and as able as anyone I ever served with.'
'Well, thanks a lot, lover,' Dumisani piped in.
'I never served with you in combat, you black bastard. You were on the other side.' Viljoen hesitated for a moment; he wasn't normally the maudlin sort. Then he added, 'Dumi, if you were ever down range of my gun . . . I'm awfully glad I missed.'
'What are you talking about?' the Zulu said. 'You hit my tonsils every time.'
'Asshole!'
'And sometimes that, too.'
Lana couldn't help herself; she started to laugh.
Which was the point of the exchange, Viljoen thought. As Dumi understood. As he understands damn near everything.
***
Reilly felt his heart pounding with the sheer wicked joy of impending combat. It had been a long time, and every minute since the last had seemed like a pointless eternity. From behind the screen his driver and James had thrown up, as if through a veil, he watched the foremost approaching behemoth grow closer . . . and closer . . . four hundred meters . . . three hundred . . . two hundred.
'Guns up!' he sent over the general frequency. He couldn't see it but somehow he felt eight major antiarmor systems rising from the ground. A quick glance left and right showed Nagy's engineers manning machine guns and RPGs.
'One-six up . . . ATGMs up . . . Mortars, hanging.'
One-fifty. One hundred.
'Company . . . FIRE!'
Major Maalin, riding in the fifth tank back, the one right after the gap, scanned left and right. He couldn't see a lot; the moonlight cast shadows on the low scrub and rocks that tended to conceal more than the moon illuminated.
Of course, if I could just have convinced uncle Gutaale that being able to see at night was at least as important as having a twenty-fourth tank . . . but, noooo, he wanted the image more than the reality.
Nominally, Maalin's command consisted of one large, very large, tank company, and two infantry companies that were in theory going to get wheeled armored personnel carriers someday. For now, the company he had with him made do with riding on top of the tanks. Yes, it would sting if the tanks' guns fired.
The major had lost cellular communication with his uncle's office nearly an hour ago. There were broad patches of the country that the phone service simply couldn't reach. Indeed, if his cantonment hadn't been atop a hill, Maalin rather doubted he'd have any service at all. Certainly the town to the west and lower down, Rako, had no service at all.
And, of course, the tanks' radios didn't reach. And didn't I complain about that, too? 'One less tank, uncle,' I said. 'One less tank and we can get night vision devices, longer range radios, and even some more training ammunition.' But, nooo, he didn't understand the importance of those things.
And can he or his flunkies give me a spot of reconnaissance? A little intelligence on what lies ahead? No. That's why I have one tank platoon forward; maybe they can find out something at not too great a cost.
I swear . . .
Maalin's silent complaints stopped when he saw two bright flashes, perhaps two kilometers away, or maybe three-it was hard to tell at night and no one had ever taught him the flash-to-bang formula anyway.
For several seconds, he couldn't see anything related to those flashes. Then he saw something, two smaller ones that seemed to be nearing him. Those lights danced in bright circles. He was about to call for evasive action-a 'Sagger Dance,' western armies would have called it-when there was a much larger flash ahead, followed in just over a second by a substantial boom. Half a second after that something flew by his head, spitting small flames out the side.
What happened to that-missile, it must have been-Maalin didn't know. He was too busy trying to make sense of the fire that seemed to come all at once, from everywhere. He heard sharp cracks all around his tank, and the sound of bronze ricocheting from steel, as the infantry he had boarded started to fall and crumple around the turret.
Shit, he thought.
Then another explosion, close by, went off by the side of the road. He saw the infantry on the tank ahead simply swept off, as if by a large broom. The tank commander, who had been riding unbuttoned, came apart in shreds of cloth and flesh. When Maalin heard the same kind of explosion behind him, he didn't even look. Since he was alive and some of his infantry still on his tank, he knew the one behind him had been similarly brushed off.
Directional antipersonnel mines. Those, too. Fuck.
While Dumi was still bringing the Eland up to hull down from turret down, Lana saw one of the missiles fired by Harvey's antitank section fly by a few hundred meters to her front before it buried itself in the rocks with a thunderous crash.
'Shitty Russian workmanship,' she muttered, before breaking into the routine, 'Gunner, HEAT, Tank, Eleven
