by David Poyer
Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud.
“Jesus,” breathed Will Givens, deep in his chest. He recognized the sound, not of one mortar, but of a battery of them.
Far above them, high up in the brilliance, tiny blacknesses, like steel tears wept by the sky hung turning, deciding; and then winked out.
“Disappear,” shouted Silkworth, and Will hit the ground at his feet, scrabbling down into the deepest part of the ditch. More bodies slammed in on top of him. There was time only to hope desperately that the rest of the column had someone like Silkworth to warn them, and then the rounds went off, the sound not outside but within his head, like a train passing a foot away. The ground jolted and concussion cuffed at his chest. Things pattered and pinged above him, and in the middle of four explosions so close they were one explosion, someone began to scream. “Barrage,” someone yelled above him, and he thought Barrages yes they’re firing in salvos now, not like we do but then this way you get to spot your fire as a group, you don’t get confused between tubes the way we would; and he knew, too, they must have someone spotting for them, someone on the far side of the road, on some bare crest, with binoculars and a radio—the radio probably just like theirs.
Shit, he thought. Shit. Shit. Jesus!
It all took about half a second, two seconds at the most, and then the roaring stopped and he was up and running for the ’tracks, stumbling over a fresh hole in the roadway, the stink of explosive cutting his lungs like one of Harner’s Marlboros. The other men were running too, the ramps of the ’tracks were coming down. Two marines carried another between them, his feet dragging uselessly. He looked awake but dazed, and his boots left blood on the asphalt. At the head of the column, through the dust and smoke, he saw the colonel staring still upward, holding the handset absently away from him.
Will Givens hesitated on the ramp, looking back. He was looking at his first field of battle. He looked closely, seeing it all whole and clear; the men, the helpless vehicles, unable to turn on the narrow road, the striating clouds of blue smoke and white dust that tamped down the hot heavy air above the roadway.
The colonel stiffened and swung the handset toward his mouth, looking upward. Givens saw now, looking down at him from the ramp, that he held a map in the other hand. He leaned back, peering through the smoke. The amtracs had stopped firing. Whoever had been screaming stopped. In the sudden silence along the road all they could hear was the faint serial concussions of another volley beyond the hilltop, and a tinny voice quacking from the radio in the jeep.
“No, I can’t spot,” the colonel was shouting back. “Area fire. Area. It’s rock up there, so HE’s just as good as VT. As long as it goes in right now.”
The tinny voice crackled back, and the marines waited, looking first at the man in the jeep, at his erect back, turned to the hillside, and then upward at the sky. Then the explosions came again, louder this time, and the ground shook and pieces of rock came loose from the cliff above them and slid downward.
“Get the fuck in here, Oreo, you idiot,” said Cutford, appearing beside him.
“Let go of me.”
“You want to catch a frag? Get your ass in here.”
“What’s happening, Cutford? Does he want artillery?”
“You listen with those ears, numbnuts? We got no arty ashore.”
He understood then, and a shiver took him. He raised his eyes to the smoke that blew off the other side of the hill, from the hidden mouths of mortars, and felt suddenly how immense it all was, how vast was the machine that had put him here, deep in a ravine in Asia. Vast and unpredictable, vast and unknowable. Some distant decision-maker had placed a black private first-class here, like a checker nudged forward by an old man in the pine-smelling dimness of a lumberyard. But that anonymous counter was Will Givens, sometime guitar player, someday engineer. The machine used him. Would it stand behind him? Or did it even know, recognize, that the man inside this uniform felt and knew just like the ones who sent him, suffered fear and yearning and desire?
The last men came running from the ditch, bent low, aiming themselves for the amtracs. Will recognized Wash-man’s tubby figure, his lowered head. He was heading for the next ’track back. He craned out. “Washout!” he yelled.
The private looked up, pimply face dirt-smudged, and saw him and changed his direction.
Will was craning around the hatch of the ’track, watching him, when the volley hit the column. Five, six shells, dead on in range and spaced along the road. The hull of the LVT behind them vanished and in disbelief he saw bodies in the air, smoke, flame; it must have been a dead hit. Another went off at the same instant directly in front of him. The shock was so close and hard he was unable to move, only watch, frozen, as twenty feet away Wash-man straightened, arched forward, like a clumsy diver from the side of a pool, and then rolled to a bloody stop on the roadway. One side of his head had been blown free, left behind on the asphalt like a discarded rag.
“Washout!” he screamed, starting forward.
“Get in here, shithead!” Cutford shouted in his ear, jerking him back. He stared, unable to look away, as the ramp ground upward, cutting off the light. Something shoved him, something he dimly recognized as a heavy hand, and he stumbled back into the shelter of the amtrac.
The eyes of the others met his in the dimness, and huddling together they waited for the shells to fall.
31
U.S.S. Guam
Lenson stretched in his seat, looking across the crowded, bright compartment with a premonition of triumph. A fierce grin crimped the fatigue lines tight around his eyes. He had forgotten his days without sleep, forgotten the months at sea, forgotten Isaac I. Sundstrom.
Urgent Lightning was rolling like a well-oiled machine.
The marines were solidly ashore, and moving rapidly inland. Not a shot had been fired, and they had taken only one casualty, a man who ran into a rotor during the helo insertion. Lenson could hardly believe, even now, that sitting deep in the steel vitals of the flagship he held a handset that linked him with live men, real ships. He was remembering all the times he, and the others with him, had practiced this. The schools, the months of drills, study, exercises.
Now it was for real—and it was working.
For the first hour after the leading elements crossed their lines of departure, he had kept the whole team on the edges of their chairs. The first wave to hit the beach had rolled out of the amtracs and dug in instantly at the first dune line, covering the troops in boats behind them. But the beach was deserted. He had followed the cautious probes inland, putting the wave commander’s frequency on a loudspeaker so that everyone in the compartment could hear. But there was no resistance. No troops or even civilians were reported on the beach.
The second and third waves hit and moved quickly up to the front line, consolidating the initial toehold and then leapfrogging forward onto the beach road.
At 0700, when the mobile column, sorted out and remounted, launched itself inland toward Qoubaiyat, the atmosphere in SACC relaxed. Men slouched back in their seats. They stayed alert, but the excitement waned. Lenson laid down his phones and stretched, glancing at the map. They were by no means home, though the landing itself, the most vulnerable moment in an amphibious raid, had gone off well. But perhaps this would go more easily than they’d feared.
He rubbed his eyes and focused them on the chart, opening the operation order to check reported positions with those he had assigned for the postassault phase.
Ships first. The amphibs, empty now, were steaming slowly in separate boxes of sea ten miles out. To seaward of them Virginia patrolled; she was now at the northern edge of her area. Good; any Syrian air strike would come from that direction.
Farther inshore, the two escorts were lying to only a few thousand yards off the beach. Ault had reported in at 0700. He had swiftly established comms and briefed her gunnery team by radio. He felt far more confident now: Her arrival had quadrupled his seaborne firepower.
He blinked, and sh
ifted his attention landward. The militias and regular army units that Byrne had sketched in from Sixth Fleet intelligence reports worried him. Several of them lay between the MAU and its goal. He knew that some of the positions and strengths reported were guesswork. And no one could predict their responses when faced by an unexpected body of fast-moving U.S. troops. Some of the Lebanese, the Maronite militias, should be friendly, or at least neutral. Even the Syrian-backed Shi’ites might not interfere—if the diplomats had done their job.
I’ll worry about that when it happens, he thought. We’ve got our plates full here. He stretched again, feeling good, and thought for the first time that day about food.
At 0730 the column of amtracs from the beach reached the ALZ, and the two forces joined. Lenson relaxed a bit more. The heliborne troops probably hadn’t realized it, but out on their own above the road, unable to move except on foot, they’d been prime targets.
Byrne, beside him, was staring into a pub and looking worried. Dan turned down the speakers and punched him lightly. “Jack, what’s wrong? Somebody split an infinitive?”
“Real droll.”
“What’s that you’re reading?”
“Intel summary on Syria.”
“You’re worried about them?”
“Aren’t you?”
“They pay guys back in Washington to do that, I thought.”
“I hope they do,” said Byrne. “The action back at State must be fierce. Think about it. The obvious course would be to get word to Damascus that we’ll be coming ashore this morning, that our target is the terrorists and only them, and that opposition will bring retaliation in overwhelming force. But they had to time it: allow them enough hours to warn their troops and client militias, but not tip our hand so far in advance that a leak would lose us the element of surprise when we hit the camp in the final assault.”
“That’s obvious?”
“Of course. But then, if you warn the Syrians, they might just as well decide to defend their border. In the last analysis, it might depend on which way the USSR, their protector, advisor, and overall Big Brother, tells them to jump. So if some junior Middle East expert makes the wrong decision—or makes the right one and the President overrules him, if anybody screws up, anywhere along the line…” He let his voice trail off.
“I get it now,” said Dan grimly. “Instant powdered MAU.”
“Or worse,” said the intel officer. “If the Soviets back them up and we don’t, or can’t, back down. Why do you think we went to nuclear alert? I guarantee you, every missile boat we have at sea is checking its firing data right now.”
Both of them looking worried now, they looked back at the map. And above it, the clock whirred on.
* * *
He was gnawing at a leg of cold chicken a few hours later, part of a box lunch sent up from the mess decks, when things began to go sour. He had his first intimation of trouble when Flasher stiffened and sat up, phone pressed to his ear. He was on the circuit to Haynes, near the head of the column.
Dan stiffened too, and laid the drumstick down. “Red—what is it? Damn it, pipe down, you guys.”
Flasher waved his hand; wait. The buzz of conversation stopped, and men turned their heads to listen.
“Put circuit eight on the horn,” Lenson said to McQueen.
When the speaker cut in, the tension in SACC snapped instantly back to high pitch. Every man in the room could hear the landing-force commander’s deliberate voice firsthand. No. More than that. Lenson swept the table in front of him clear, pulled a fire form to him. They could hear the rattle of small-arms fire and the crunch of mortars, terrifyingly close. Every man in the room had reached for his handset then, by reflex, and so had Lenson; but at the last instant he snapped his selector switch to a dead portion of the spectrum.
“Goddammit,” he shouted. “Everybody back to your own net. I’ll handle this. Regular procedures!”
“Dan, I got two Intruders orbiting—”
“What’s their fuel state?”
“Ten minutes.”
“Christ. Mac! Where’s Haynes’ grid position? Leading element?” At the map, the petty officer reached far into the hills, laid his hand on a curved segment of road. Lenson half-rose, squinting to make it out. “Forget it, Jack. It’s too far inland now for them. We’ve got to use the guns.”
“Use them, then.”
“No,” said Lenson again, still holding the switch closed. “Not yet. He hasn’t requested it.”
“He will,” said Flasher.
Haynes did, then. Lenson screwed the handset into his ear; the circuit had gone faint for a moment. But the next words came through clearly.
“Overkill, this is Green Bench Leader. Call for fire. Indirect. Grid location, North, four three seven seven. East. Niner four zero zero. Fragmentation, variable time. Will control. Over.”
“Green Bench, this is Overkill. Roger your call for fire.” He scribbled. The pencil snapped and he dropped it and grabbed the next. “Indirect. Grid North, four three seven seven, East, niner four zero zero. Fragmentation, variable time, will control, over.”
“Green Bench, roger, out.”
“Mac! Check those coordinates!”
“Nothing on the map, Lieutenant.”
“Double-check. No houses? No roads?”
“Bare ground, sir. Nothing but the other side of the hill.”
“This has to be a test, Dan,” said the intel officer urgently. “To see if we’ll support them with force. Hold this for me,” he snapped to one of the other men, handing off his handset. “Be right back.” He shoved his way past chairs and ran out of the room.
“Let’s get it on the air,” said Flasher. He reached for the form.
“Hold it, goddammit, Red. We got to get Sundstrom’s permission.”
“Screw that, Dan! Those guys need cover!”
“I know. And they’ll get it just as soon as I have the commodore’s chop on it.” He bit at his lip and flipped the intercom on. “Flag bridge, SACC. Commodore, please, emergency.”
A moment’s pause, seeming like minutes, though it could not have been over four seconds; then Glazer’s voice. “He’s listening, sir. Go ahead.”
“Commodore. Lenson here. We have a call for fire from Colonel Haynes. He’s under attack.”
Silence. Then, “Mr. Lenson, Commodore wants to know what kind of attack.”
“Hostile fire, sir! We need clearance to use Ault’s guns.”
Another pause, then, finally, Sundstrom’s voice. Nice of him to push his own talk button, Lenson thought. “Dan. Let’s all keep a cool head, now. That’s what it’s all about. Is this a serious situation? I’m not going to release heavy weapons just for snipers.”
“It’s not snipers, sir. Sounds like mortar fire.”
“Sounds like? Better find out, Dan. A mistake here could get us in real hot water. I can’t give permission to fire without knowing all the facts. I’m not going to fly off the deep end like that.”
“God damn him,” muttered somebody in the silent room. They were all quiet, listening to the dialogue over the intercom.
“Lieutenant,” said McQueen, “Colonel Haynes wants an acknowledgment.”
“Acknowledge. Tell him we’re getting it cleared,” Lenson said, very fast. To the intercom he said, “Sir, Commander Byrne—I mean, I believe they’re testing us. If we don’t respond, they’ve enough forces in the area to destroy the MAU. It’s urgent that we support the troops ashore.”
There was a moment’s hesitation. Then, “I agree, Dan, to the utmost. You’re preaching to the choir when you tell me that. But we have other requirements laid on us, too. This is a touchy situation, diplomatically. I have to bear that in mind. Call him back—call the colonel—and ask him for an estimate of the numbers and armament of the force he’s encountered.”
“Do it,” snapped Lenson to McQueen; then, letting up on the “press to talk” lever, so that his voice would not reach the bridge: “Red, get on the net to Ault. Thei
r callsign is ‘Gunslinger.’ Give them the target coordinates. Double-check those numbers and make them read them back! Have them load with VT, fuzed for air burst, but make sure they understand not to fire till they get a ‘batteries released’ from us.”
“Roger,” said the N-3.
Byrne came back, panting, and slid into his chair. He thudded a weighted briefcase on the table and began hauling out folders. “Jack,” said Lenson, “double-check defilade fire for five-inch thirty-eight. Make sure trajectory for full-charge load will clear seventeen-hundred-meter hills at a range of twenty-nine thousand yards.”
“Right. Dan—”
“Sir,” McQueen interrupted, “Colonel Haynes says he can’t see them. He doesn’t know who they are. But they have at least four heavy mortars, and they’ve got the column pinned down. He can’t advance till the road ahead is checked for mines. They’re getting plastered there; he’s got casualties. He wants fire now.”
He could hear the mortars, booming out of the still-open circuit to the interior. He could hear the growl of amtrac engines, the rattle of rifles, sporadic, as if the marines were firing at random. Faintly, a thin tremolo over the bass of battle, a scream laced the still air of the room.
“Trajectory checks out okay,” said Byrne.
“Right.”
“Dan,” said Flasher, very softly, and Lenson turned his head. Their eyes met across the room. “Ault reports ready. We ought to fire.”
“No, Red,” said Lenson, just as quietly. “You heard him. This is the commodore’s decision, and he has to make it.”
“Lieutenant Lenson?” said the intercom.
“Here, sir. Haynes estimates four mortars, sir, and that means at least twelve men. Probably more to carry ammo.”
“Can he see them?”
“No sir, he says he can’t see them. They’re over the top of a hill from him.”
“What’s on the other side of that hill, Dan? Has anybody bothered to think about that?”