engagement zone. All Wittworth wanted was a few minutes warning so that he could coordinate the direct fires of the company with the indirect fires of the artillery.
Lieutenant Kozak, however, felt that it would be better if an antiarmor ambush was established in addition to the outpost. Rivera pointed out that the purpose of the outpost was to provide security and early warning to the company, nothing more. The lieutenant, however, believed that they could do that just as easily by establishing an ambush. An ambush, she pointed out, would begin the process of attrition and perhaps confuse the enemy as to where the company's main positions actually were. Rivera made an effort to point out that they stood just as good a chance of becoming confused as the enemy. It didn't take long, however, before he realized that he was fighting a losing battle. Watching her eyes and listening to her tone of voice as she explained her reasoning in great detail, Rivera decided that perhaps it was best to let the lieutenant have her way. Sometimes, he knew, it was better to leave lieutenants to discover the grim facts of life themselves. Perhaps she just might pull it off, though he doubted it. She was, after all, here to learn, and Rivera knew that sometimes the best lessons in life came from the biggest screwups.
If Rivera's goal was to let her learn the hard way, Kozak did everything she could to help him. The plan she had come up with the previous night placed one squad, armed with a single Dragon antitank guided missile, half a dozen antitank mines, and four light antitank rocket launchers, on the forward slope of a hill. The squad's M-2 Bradley was concealed in a hide position on the reverse side of the hill. Not only did it not have any field of fire, it was over a kilometer away from where the dismounted members of the squad would be waiting in ambush. As tactfully as possible, Rivera pointed out that the dismounts would never be able to make it back up the hill to their Bradley. The enemy force, he pointed out, would overrun the dismounts, pound them with artillery, or simply deploy and gun them down when the dismounts tried to move.
Again, Kozak explained that dismounted infantry, taking advantage of the confusion caused by the ambush, would never be seen by the enemy.
With a bland expression, achieved through years of practice, Rivera gave a dry 'Yes, ma'am' and went about organizing the platoon's battle position while the lieutenant prepared her operations order. As he did so, he wondered where he could find a two-by-four at that hour of the night.
What never occurred to Rivera as he ambled away was that, for the first time, he hadn't thought of Kozak as a woman first. Instead, he had subconsciously lumped her into the same category as every other infantry second lieutenant he had ever known, and had treated her accordingly.
Though not a red-banner day for women's rights, it was, nevertheless, a necessary step if the platoon was to become an effective unit, and not just a showpiece.
From the front seat of Scott Dixon's Humvee, Captain Cerro watched Second Lieutenant Kozak prepare her antiarmor ambush. While the squad setting up the antiarmor ambush might have been able to get away with occupying its positions after dawn, the movement of their platoon leader from one place to another in an effort to check weapons and fields of fire compromised the entire ambush site. Even without binoculars, at two hundred meters Cerro could see people moving and bushes shaking. He had no doubt that the enemy scout track two hundred meters further up the road, hidden in a shallow arroyo and covered with camouflage nets, saw everything.
As Cerro waited for the inevitable, Specialist Eddie Jefferson, nicknamed Fast Eddie, sat next to Cerro, intently studying Cerro's map and the notes written on the margin of the map case that detailed Kozak's plan. Bored, Cerro turned to Fast Eddie. 'What's so interesting?'
Eddie furrowed his brow in confusion, answering Cerro without looking away from the map. 'This here plan, sir. It don't make any sense at all.' Draping the map across the Humvee's steering wheel, Eddie pointed to the blue symbol on the map that indicated where Kozak had placed the antiarmor ambush. 'Look. That dumb bitch puts her squad here, on the wrong side of the hill,' running his finger from the squad symbol to a blue symbol for a Bradley, 'and the Bradley all the way over here, on the oth,er side of the hill. No way they'll make it back.'
Wincing, Cerro reminded Fast Eddie that he was talking about a lieutenant and 'bitch' was not quite appropriate terminology. Eddie looked over to Cerro. 'Oh, sorry, Cap'n.' Then, turning his attention back to the map, he continued. 'And on top of that, that dumb lieutenant puts the Bradley in a hole where it can't use its sights or shoot.'
Shaking his head, Cerro gave up. Eddie Jefferson appeared to be a good troop, intelligent and motivated. There was no need to hassle him.
After all, Kozak was being a bit dumb and it showed. Christ, Cerro thought, maybe he should have sent Eddie out there to set up the outpost.
He couldn't have done any worse than Kozak was doing.
As they continued to watch, it occurred to Cerro that if Eddie, sitting here with a map, could figure out the lousy spot the squad was in, the men in the squad had to know it. If no one else, at least the platoon sergeant and squad leader must have realized that the plan wouldn't work the way Kozak had briefed it. If that were true, Cerro wondered if the NCOs in the platoon had pointed it out to their lieutenant and been overridden by an eager beaver LT with a better idea, or if they had kept their own counsel and were letting Kozak make a fool out of herself. Either way, he was not happy with what he saw, although he could understand it if Kozak had overridden the NCOs. As a young, hard-charging airborne infantry lieutenant, Cerro had once thought that he could conquer the world single handed. It took a few years and a war to convince him that he was outnumbered and needed, on occasion, a little help. His battalion commander had referred to that process as becoming a mature leader. His first sergeant had called it pounding some sense into Cerro's thick head.
With nothing better to do, Cerro asked Eddie how he would have set up the outpost. They were in the middle of this discussion when another Humvee, flying the orange flag of a fire marker team, rolled up to where Kozak's dismounted squad was located. The driver, leaving the road, slowly began to drive along the tree line where the antiarmor ambush was set up. The passenger in the fire marker Humvee, holding a box of artillery simulators in his lap, took one simulator at a time, held it at arm's length, pulled the white cap and string that activated the simulator with a quick jerk, and threw it into the tree line as they went by. After dropping half a dozen simulators that were meant to represent three volleys fired by a 155mm artillery battery, the Humvee drove away, leaving Kozak's squad in the process of putting on their gas masks.
The squad had just finished that task and were settling back down when a line of four enemy Bradley fighting vehicles, with 25mm cannon and 7.62mm machine guns firing blanks, burst out of the tree line across the narrow valley from Kozak's squad and began to advance against the squad's position. Though the fire was inaccurate, the speed and violence, not to mention the surprise, unnerved Kozak, who stood up and ordered her squad to withdraw.
There was, however, little chance of the squad making it. A healthy infantryman, with equipment, can run one kilometer in five minutes, or at best four and a half. A Bradley, moving at twenty miles an hour, can cover the same distance in less than two. It was, as Eddie had predicted, no contest. Nor was the confrontation between the four attacking Brad leys and the squad's lone vehicle. Because the squad's Bradley was on the other side of the hill, the first indication that the crew had that they were under attack was the flashing of their kill light. Listening to both A Company's radio net and that of Kozak's platoon as he watched from the G3's Humvee, Cerro heard no one report the engagement. As far as Captain Wittworth, Kozak's company commander, was concerned, at that moment, everything was in order. Because of Kozak's failure and the swift, well-coordinated attack by the enemy on her squad, Wittworth wouldn't get the two-minute warning he had been counting on.
'How long that take, Cap'n?'
Cerro looked at his watch, then at Kozak's squad as they moved out of their positions, into the open, and fumbled about. 'Three minutes, four if you count the artillery.'
Eddie let out a sigh. 'Geez, ain't that some shit. Four minutes to fill ten body bags. Hope she learned somethin'.'
'Oh, I'm sure she did. But, just to make sure, Eddie, let's mosey on over there and have a talk with the young lieutenant while her company gets overrun.'
Grinning, Eddie fired up the kumvee and drove over where Kozak's squad was rallying. As he did so, Eddie took great care to watch for the rest of the attacking enemy company as it rolled south down the road in an effort to catch up with its four lead Bradleys that had overrun Kozak's squad. The squad was still getting out of their masks, looking for a green key to turn off the buzzer on the MILES belts that had been activated when lasers simulating enemy gunfire had hit them, and accounting for weapons and gear, when Cerro arrived.
