the experience to say-walked up and down the road, exploding in bright flashes followed by dark, evil smoke and sending their shards through flesh to rattle off armor.
Even without night vision, the major could see tanks burning both ahead of and behind him. By those flickering lights he saw bodies and parts of bodies. One, in particular, caught his attention, where a probably panicking tank had run over a certainly panicking infantryman, crushing the latter like a grape.
Moans and screams arose from every side. Maalin heard pleas for mercy and pity in his own tongue.
'Allah, have mercy,' Major Maalin prayed. 'Deliver me from this nightmare.' He doubted that mercy would be forthcoming. This was the kind of nightmare he was also reasonably sure he wasn't going to awaken from.
He was getting no reports that made sense. As near as Maalin could determine from the radio, he had one platoon leader with no tanks but his own, two more tanks with no platoon leaders, a bunch of scattered, frightened-out-of-their-wits infantry more interested in getting out of what was now obviously a preplanned kill zone than in striking back, and a couple more tanks under his exec chasing some light vehicles somewhere to the west.
And now the enemy vehicles were in among his own, taking advantage of their maneuverability, size, and speed to move faster than his tanks' turrets could traverse.
There was one chance. It was hard to take it, but Maalin really couldn't see much choice. 'Surrender,' he sent out over the radio. 'Get out of your vehicles and walk with your hands up.' He said much the same to his own crew, then ripped off his tanker's helmet, a Russian job of pads and mesh with electronics running through it.
'Surrender!' he shouted to his own infantry. 'Drop your arms and put up your hands. Surrender!'
In his NVGs Reilly saw the gesture. 'Cease fire,' he commanded. 'Cease fire, I said, goddammit,' he repeated when he also saw a machine gun from his own side chop down several Ophiris. The word passed from his radio to the others, and then by word of mouth. In a few minutes, the firing stopped. Only then did he see a much larger number of the enemy rise from the ground, putting up their hands. 'Prisoner teams out.'
'James, grab the radio. Follow me. Bring the translator.'
Finding the senior officer remaining among the enemy's tanks wasn't particularly hard. It was just a matter of counting radio antennae, all pretty well lit by the fires of burning tanks. At least that's how Maalin assumed his foe found him.
'You are the commander?' the white enemy asked through an interpreter.
'I was,' Major Maalin said.
'You have two tanks to the west, chasing a few of my vehicles. Order them here, and to surrender.'
'And if I refuse?'
Reilly jerked a thumb over his shoulder to where his own infantry were collecting up the beaten enemy and herding them out onto the main wadi floor. 'Then all your men here go into a ditch and get shot, along with yourself. Then we'll hunt those tanks down and kill them anyway. But I don't have time to fuck around, so you get a chance to save their lives, and the others'.'
It was a hard world, and a cruel one, Maalin knew. He didn't doubt this . . . Well, American, I suppose he is, and if half the stories told of that vicious people are true, he'll carry out his threat. Murderers, it is said, the lot of them, whatever pious platitudes their government may put forth for public consumption.
'One moment, please?' he asked, as he scrambled up the side of his tank, reached in, and took out a radio mike. What he said, Reilly didn't know, though it didn't seem to alarm the translator.
Then Reilly got a call from Snyder. 'Alpha Six, Scout One. The enemy has reversed turrets and is rolling to your position. How did you do that?'
'Just good planning,' Reilly answered, even while thinking, Luck. Pure fucking luck. I was ready to trade you guys for a little time. Thank God, I didn't have to.
A stretcher team trotted by, a moaning man bouncing on the stretcher. Reilly sighed. It's never really been about killing the enemy, he reminded himself. It's always been about winning when that requires you to risk your life.
He stood quietly for several minutes then, both his RTO and the enemy commander looking at him, intently in the one case, warily in the other.
'What's your name?' Reilly asked of the Ophiri.
'Maalin, Muktar. Major.'
Reilly inclined his head toward the east, where Coffee had set up an ad hoc aid station that was rapidly filling.
'Major Maalin, have your men bring their wounded to my chief medic. We'll treat them as best we're able before we have to go.'
'Yes, sir,' Maalin answered. 'Thank you, sir.'
Reilly took the mike from James and broadcast, 'By the way, all platoon leaders, this is Alpha Six. Do we have anybody who knows how to drive a T-55? I need . . . six of 'em.'
'I kin dribe wun o' de pides o' shid,' said a voice that sounded a lot like Lana's, but as if she were speaking with a clothespin over her nose.
Reilly ignored that for the moment, saying, 'That's one. I need five more. And, Lana, if that was you, report to me, center of the kill zone. Other people who can drive a T-55 do the same. Infantry platoons and mortar section, I need two people from each of you to stand in a turret and look threatening.'
He handed the mike back to James, who stuck it to his ear, listening intently. Suddenly, James smiled. 'Dustoff, two minutes out,' he announced. Turning to where Sergeant Coffee and the other two medics, under the lights of the medical Eland, fussed over seven wounded men, next to a line of five of their own dead, James pointed and repeated, 'Dustoff, two minutes out!'
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
The bullet is a mad thing;
only the bayonet knows what it is about.
-Alexander Vasileyevich Suvarov, Count Rymnik
D-Day, Yemen
