units involved in Operation Desperate Fumble and east of Prague to commence nuclear survey and monitoring.'
Dixon had said nothing. He had suspected that something would go wrong. He constantly reminded his commanders and staff that things never go exactly the way they were planned, which, according to his admonishments, was why commanders were always needed to be forward and staff officers thinking. In the back of his mind, Dixon had been waiting for the hidden flaw of this operation to pop up and rear its ugly head. That it came in the form it did was a shock that neither he nor Cerro had imagined.
Cerro, taken aback by the captain's announcement as much as Dixon, responded first. Folding his arms across his chest and looking down at the ground, Cerro grimaced. 'Well, so much for stealth and cunning.' Looking up at the captain, he asked if there was anything else.
'No, sir. We asked for additional information, but the people at corps gave us a wait-out. I don't think they had a good handle on everything yet.' Then as an afterthought he added, 'The sergeant major is having Sergeant Godwin prepare an effective downwind message and frag order for all units to initiate immediate survey and monitoring. By the time you get back, it should be ready.'
Dixon reached out and put his hand on the captain's shoulder. 'Well, don't wait for us. Get back there and get it out over the air. Use flash-override if necessary. Now go.'
After a hasty salute, the captain turned and trotted off back to the command post carriers.
For several seconds, Cerro watched Dixon in silence. Dixon was thinking, mentally absorbing the latest development and considering what actions, if any, he needed to take. Finally Cerro spoke. 'Colonel, should we consider delaying the deployment of the brigade trains forward in case someone decides we need to unass the Ukraine in a hurry?'
Dixon thought about Cerro's question as he turned and looked at the unending line of trucks moving east. 'Too many goddamned vehicles,' he mumbled. 'We've got too much shit for our own good.' Then he looked at Cerro. 'Let's wait and see what's happening before we get all excited and start altering the equation. Come on, let's go. Break's over, Hal. Back on your head.'
The last of the three tanks of the advanced guard detachment had been destroyed by the time Kozak reached Ellerbee's position. Pulling up next to his tank, Kozak had dismounted and climbed up on Ellerbee's tank, where she listened to his report. When Ellerbee was finished, Kozak went over with him what she expected from her subordinates in the way of reports. Though she was composed by the time she got back into her Bradley, Sergeant Wolf knew that the red in her cheeks wasn't all due to the cold and wind. Watching her as she put her combat crewman's helmet on and stared blankly to her front, Wolf decided she needed a little humor. 'Well, ma'am, I guess it's true.'
Caught up in her own thoughts, Kozak gave Wolf a quizzical look. 'What are you talking about, Sergeant Wolf?'
Wolf smiled. 'You know, ma'am. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.'
Kozak suppressed the urge to laugh. 'Where in the devil. Wolf, did you hear that one?'
'The first sergeant. That's what Top always says when you go off and chew someone out after they've pissed all over your leg.'
Though military etiquette frowned on sergeants talking to their commanders in such a manner, Kozak seldom corrected or restrained Wolf or any of the members of the crew of Charlie 60, her Bradley. She in fact encouraged open and free discussion as a means of both relieving the tensions that sometimes became unbearable in C60 during operations and as a way of finding out what the latest rumors and gossip in the company were. Still they had their limits. And vulgarity was, for her, pushing the limits of acceptability.
'Sergeant Wolf, you are not the first sergeant. And I didn't chew Lieutenant Ellerbee out. I merely ensured that he understood what I consider to be proper reporting procedures.'
Wolf gave Kozak a knowing smile. 'Okay, ma'am, I understand. Where to now? Back up the hill?'
'No. Let's head for the bridge and find Lieutenant Matto. We need to see how her engineers are doing. Those three T-80 tanks no doubt weren't alone. I expect we'll have some more company soon.'
Serious now, Wolf keyed the intercom switch on his crew man's helmet. 'Yo, Terri. Crank it up and move on down to the bridge to where we were before.'
Terri Tish, known by most of the company as Terri Toosh, responded by cranking up the Bradley. Despite the fact that she was small in stature, Wolf had known few drivers, including himself, who could make a Bradley perform like Terri. Though he still kidded her about women drivers, his comments, like those he made with Kozak, were lighthearted.
At the northern approach of the bridge, Second Lieutenant Elizabeth Matto stood next to the ancient M-113 armored personnel carrier that served as her command post track and ammo carrier. While the ton-and-a-half trailer attached to the personnel carrier restricted its maneuverability, the extra demolitions and barrier material she could carry in the trailer made it too important to be left behind.
In the distance she could see the sappers of her platoon going about their tasks. On the south end of the bridge, an M-9 armored combat engineer vehicle, called an ACE, was cutting a hasty anti-vehicle ditch on either side of the roadway leading up to the bridge, while a squad of her people finished emplacing a cratering charge on the roadway itself. On the bridge, another squad worked on placing demolition charges. She intended to drop two sets of the bridge's supports as well as three sections of roadway in order to create a gap too large for the Ukrainians to bridge with an armored assault bridge.
Though the work was taking longer than she had anticipated, it was progressing well and nearly completed when Matto heard the whine of Kozak's Bradley approaching. Turning to her platoon sergeant, Matto told him to make a quick check along the line and hurry the demo teams up while she stayed where she was and 'entertained' the CO.
Kozak, however, wasn't interested in being entertained. After pulling up next to Matto's personnel carrier and dismounting, Kozak came up to Matto for a report on their progress.
Matto rendered her report while they both watched the engineers on the bridge. In the light of a pale moon that just barely cleared the high ground behind them, they could even see the M-9 ACE as it continued to laboriously hack away at the frozen ground. 'Well, ma'am, it'll be another ten, maybe fifteen minutes until the highway bridge will be ready to be dropped. The cratering charge on the southern approach to the bridge is in place and ready, but the anti-tank ditch extended to the riverbank won't be finished for at least another half hour. I believe the railroad bridge upstream is ready to drop now.'
Kozak listened to Matto's report in silence. When Matto was finished, she began issuing orders. It was, to Matto, almost as if she had already decided what she intended to do before hearing the status of the work. 'Go ahead and stop the antitank ditch. We don't have a half hour. Use a very hasty minefield to close the gap if you can do it in ten minutes, which is all the time you have to finish the job on the bridge. I'm going to order the infantry platoon back now. The brigade's shifting a company of attack helicopters covering the advance on Mukacevo to a battle position just northwest of here to give us some support. Between them and the mines, we can do without the anti-tank ditch.'
Not waiting for a response, Kozak began to turn to hurry back to her track when Matto stopped her. 'Captain, we can't surface-lay the mines and then set off the cratering charge. The detonation and debris from that charge will set off most of the surface-laid mines. We'll have to set off the cratering charge, then go back and lay the mines.'
Kozak looked at Matto, then at the bridge, and then back at Matto. 'Okay. Forget the mines. We don't have that kind of time. Do whatever you need to do in order to blow everything in ten minutes.'
Saluting, Matto turned and trotted off toward the bridge, calling out for her platoon sergeant as she went. Kozak watched and listened for a moment. Her voice, like Kozak's, came out as a screech whenever she tried to yell, which was why Kozak seldom yelled. It was, she had been told by one of her sergeants years ago, both irritating and at the same time a source of amusement to the men under her command. So Kozak had learned to give orders and direct her subordinates in a way that all but eliminated the need to yell and shout. When shouting was necessary, she had one of her male NCOs do it for her when possible. Although few people in her company knew why their young female captain with a slightly crooked nose seldom yelled at anyone, most of the men and women in her command preferred it that way. It showed, one senior sergeant once said, that she had respect for her people as well as for their eardrums.
When she reached her Bradley, Kozak stopped next to it and called for her gunner. Because of her accent,
