Hero

by Joel Rosenberg

  Feared, rather than knew, or even suspected. If the Freiheimers suspected that the hills around them held observation posts, they'd probably send out patrols to examine closely.

  Or, possibly, send out an artillery barrage. Impact fuses triggered as shells dropped into the forest would send down cones of killing splinters and fragments. Tomorrow, they might be able to live through that—they were going to attempt to fill the sandbags and dig themselves in tonight, to get at least forty centimeters of overhead protection for the sleeping area of the OP.

  The Freiheimer patrol vanished behind a building and didn't reappear.

  More likely it was just good discipline, and the Freiheimers had good discipline.

  Ari made a note of where they had disappeared. Odds were fairly good that they were based on the street that Galil had named Avenue C, somewhere here between Fourth and Fifth Street.

  Six Freiheimer tanks, their main guns pointing rearward, rattled out from a warehouse at the edge of town and moved slowly away, turning left behind a block of apartment buildings and disappearing. All hatches were open, helmets and shoulders peeking out. One of the tank commanders was standing up, his body armor gleaming.

  Ari didn't understand why he was wearing it while in the tank. Anything that could crash through the ceramic armor plating of the tank wouldn't be stopped by another couple of millimeters of baslyn, and the ninety percent or more time that tankers spend outside their tanks only account for about a quarter of their casualties.

  six[-]—poss. tank company, Ari wrote, then traced their path on the map. fl4; guns rearward; unbuttoned; plt ldr(?) standing in hatch.

  Identifying them as the Funcken-Leopard IV had been easy. The Mark IV had the stubby Rheinmetall 100mm smooth bore main gun, instead of the longer 120mm rifled gun of the Mark III. Military utility tends to run in cycles; in another ten years the locals would be producing the double-or triple-charge HESH loads that would make spin-stablized ammunition again preferable for tanks, counting on multiple shaped charges to do the job of crashing through armor, instead of the kinetic energy of the Hivel rounds the smoothbore gun had been designed for.

  Still talking into the squash radio's facemask, Galil shook his head.

  reinf platoon, he wrote.

  Ari didn't know much about it, but he didn't remember hearing that Freiheim was using the overstuffed five-tank platoon. They didn't try to cram in all that sort of data in school; there were too many armies on too many worlds for you to remember the TO&E of all of them, or even most. Ari's teachers had concentrated on the principles of organization, not on memorization of details. He hadn't cross-trained in armor, but from what he could remember about tank organization, pretty much everybody had long been convinced that the basic fighting unit was three tanks: one to attack, one to cover it, and the third as a spare—a necessary spare, given that you tended to lose about ten percent of even well-maintained tanks for every hour of travel. Finicky beasts; they needed a lot of service.

  loose deuce platoon? Ari wrote.

  Galil pulled the mask from his mouth. His lips pursed in exasperation, he picked up the pad, pulled the tab to blank it, then put it and the stylo down. He opened his mouth and then with a visible effort closed it, before beckoning Ari closer to him. Galil pulled the speaking mask from the radio and fit the rubber collar tight over Ari's ear.

  "Screw it," he whispered, "I'm getting writers' cramp.

  "First, asshole, you'll note that the Freiheimers are protecting the town with an infantry battalion. If you were listening to any of the briefings, you'd know that Frei doctrine calls for a maximum of a tank company integral to a defensively positioned infantry battalion. If you'd been paying attention to the previous reports, you'd know what we already spotted another six tanks on the other side of town, operating together. If the Frei are moving them around for our benefit, we're in deep shit.

  "Simple conclusion: what you're looking at are reinforced platoons. Platoons. Figure six tanks times three platoons plus a company command tank and one for the exec and you've got maybe twenty tanks defending the town. It's likely the other platoons are out preparing defensive positions, accompanied by bulldozers we know ought to be in Trainville, but which we haven't seen, either.

  "Second. Tanks break down. Nobody good switches to loose deuce before combat—it's better to make do with fewer three-tank platoons. Frei armor commanders are good; they know all that.

  "Conclusion: you don't see two-tank platoons here.

  "Lastly. The job of observer, particularly when the observer is a green private, is to observe. Not argue." Galil pulled the speaking mask gently from Ari's ear and fitted it back to the squash radio before picking up the stylo and writing:

  conclusion: your conclusions not worth shit.

  order: stop arguing, asshole. keep eyes open, note what you see.

  Ari finished his shift with his eyes open, noting only what he saw. No conclusions. He mentioned that the tanks used the tarmac roads, and that the roads were not apparently damaged, but not his conclusion that that meant the tanks wore the heavily rubberized treads that wouldn't chew roads.

  But he didn't pull the tab to erase the notepad. He wasn't sure whether it was an act of bravado or cowardice not to hide Galil's stinging message so Benyamin wouldn't see it, but he couldn't do it.

  A day of boredom and embarrassment was followed by a night of work and agony, and then another.

  The book said that it was supposed to take anywhere from a half hour to two hours for two men, working overtly, to move the bit more than a cubic meter of soil that clearing a fighting position required. The amount of time depended on the soil.

  Ari had spent some of his off-time performing the mental calculation as to how much soil they'd have to move, and had come up with about two cubic meters. The resting bay of their OP would be a shallow, boxlike hole, a bit less than two meters wide, half a meter deep, the side-by-side observation posts an inclined plane leading down to it.

  The ground was practically ideal—the melfoglia that covered the floor of the forest rooted only shallowly, and choked off everything else; there were no root systems to hack through in the soft soil. It should have been easy, neat, like the book, and like one of half a dozen positions Ari had helped dig during training exercises.

  A lot of work, granted, but with five to help, it should have gone quickly. Figure four to six hours, max.

  He hadn't thought it through. For one thing, there weren't five to help. An OP is maintained around the clock. Even combining the observer and recorder into one job only left four men.

  Then subtract two others, out in the night with phut guns, watching for Freiheimer patrols.

  And, unlike when Ari had practiced digging a regular fighting position, there still wasn't enough room. Whoever was digging had to work under the tarp, and without making noise.

  And then there was the damn dirt to get rid of. They had to keep some, of course, and had hauled hundreds of thin urlar bags along in their Bergens. While bagged soil wasn't as good overhead protection as could be manufactured, it was already there.

  But most of it had to go, and go somewhere inconspicuous. Ari was going to suggest that they sneak out to the edge of the woods and dump it on the plowed ground, but Galil had other ideas. Fresh soil from the floor of the forest would be of a different shade than the dirt in the fields. It would look different, to an alert Freiheimer.

  So two of the Bergens were filled with dirt—easily 60 kilos each—then strapped to the backs of two men and hauled off into the night half a klick away, spread or dumped somewhere away from the edge of the forest.

  Ari had figured on it taking four to six hours, but it took all of that night, and all of the next.

  * * *

  He came awake painfully, Benyamin's hand on his mouth yet again. Your stag again, Benyamin mouthed. Five minutes.

  Benyamin looked like shit in the light streaming through the vines covering the observation port at the front of the OP. His eyes
were red slits in dark hollows, and his face was greasy with sweat and dirt. The hand that helped Ari up to a sitting position trembled. He probably smelled bad, too, but Ari couldn't smell anything, which was just as well.

  Ari looked down at his thumb. 0755 was the time, but what day was it? It had to be the fifth, or maybe the sixth. No, maybe the fourth. Two days ago there'd been the flight of Casa attack airplanes overhead, only two of them peeling off to lightly strafe the town.

  Or was that just yesterday?

  He couldn't be sure; time had become an unending chain of sleep and wake, work and watch, always surrounded by a haze of pain, and of weariness. Sleep didn't refresh. Neither did food. Nothing could, nothing ever would.

  Ari tried to stretch, then thought better of it. A permanent pain had taken up residence in his upper back, just under his left shoulder blade. Probably tore something, he decided. It felt different than the bruised spot over his left kidney. Worse. More of a deep ache than a stabbing. He was becoming quite a connoisseur of pain.

  His lips were dry and cracked, his mouth tasted of salt and dust, and the daylight hurt his eyes as he sprawled out in the observer's spot. His eyes immediately started sagging shut.

  No. Keep awake. Don't give the bastard the satisfaction of waking you up on stag.

  He looked down at the notepad, amazed at the date. It was only the fourth day, after three nights of digging.

  no digging tonite, the notepad read, under the words standing orders.

  everybody too tired to keep silent.

  including your fearless leader.

  If anything, Galil looked worse than Ari felt, although not much.

  His eyes seemed to have trouble focusing. His hair and now ragged beard were matted with dirt and oil, and his hands were seized with occasional tremors. He had cut his right hand digging two nights ago, and even though it had been washed and bandaged, it had still somehow become infected. Farabuttocillin had the infection under control, but the hand was still swollen, leaving Galil barely able to write, his stylo clamped awkwardly in a fist.

  Like the rest of them, Galil had long before stripped off his exsuit for the heat of the day. His khaki oversuit was damp at armpits and waist, where it had already long been stained white with salt and spattered with dirt.

  But he still held the squash radio's mask against his mouth, and referred to the notepad as he dictated his report. Even though he was only a few centimeters away, Ari couldn't hear his voice, but he would have bet that Galil's tone was flat and steady.

  Ari eyed the sun and decided that he had at least a half hour of binoculars until the angle became dangerous. He brought the set up to his eyes, and felt them start to sag shut again.

  He could probably close his eyes for just another minute or two, but he wouldn't.

  It was no big deal; nothing much would be happening below. The tanks would make their daily run out of the OP's line of sight, presumably into prepared forward defenses, and then practice a classic mobile ambush retreat.

  Ari was sure he had pinpointed the command tank—and yes, it appeared to be a reinforced platoon, not a stripped company; Galil was right. Twice he had seen the platoon commander turning toward the 297 tank before issuing a hand order, as though he were verifying instructions received.

  tank #297 prob. command tank, he had written, and put his initials after it. Not that that would matter much. Galil wasn't listening to him, anyway.

  He woke with a start. Galil was shaking him, frowning.

  don't fall asleep, he wrote.

  A distant whistle grew louder, becoming a scream that ended in a flash in the town below, and followed, seconds later, by a distant crump! It was followed by another explosion, and yet another, then by the crackling thunder of several detonations coming all at once.

  "I think," Galil said, his voice cracking around the edges, "that we've got a war on our hands." Galil tapped at the binoculars; Ari put them back to his eyes. The skywatches had tucked themselves down into their holes, which could easily go down as deep as ten meters, maybe more. Unlikely targets for artillery, it would take armor and infantry to dig them out—or aircraft, but the trick of using drones to lure the skywatches out of their holes had long been countered by pop-and-fire.

  The transmit plate on the squash radio went green—a flat green, not a glow—and stayed that way for more than five seconds before the bottom of the display went back to being a clock, the top half now announcing retrieval 08:22:01. Remotely triggered data pickup—and from the length of time it had taken, RHQ had polled them for everything.

  Galil put on the earphone and listened, then passed it over to Ari. "Begins," it whispered in Peled's crisp syllables. "Triumphant is go. OP mission concludes as of 0830; FO mission begins as of 0900. OP Four is off the air; all others have reported in. Continue mission. Good luck, all. Ends."

  "Shit." The tank platoon was rolling down the road, buttoned down except for three of the tank commanders, who stood upright in their hatches. The tanks were rolling forward to defensive positions. The best tank killer has long been another tank, and hull down behind prepared defensive positions, a retreating ambush was about the most effective way to use that tank killer.

  Galil rolled over for the sniper rifle's case and opened it. The snap of the catches sounded like shots in Ari's ears. He cradled the weapon in his arms, then handed it to Ari.

  Three shells blew on the edge of town. Blam. Blam. Blam.

  And then there was silence.

  "You'll have two shots, at most," Galil whispered. "I want the armor company CO. Do it."

  This was crazy, Ari thought, as his hands went through the motions with the rifle, snapping a magazine of match-grade 7mm ammunition into the receiver.

  This didn't make sense.

  Ari started to bring the rifle up.

  "No," Galil whispered. "Move back a bit."

  The captain was right; Ari would have poked the barrel through the grasses covering the observation port. Do it by the numbers.

  He rolled over on his left side, working the charging bolt, ignoring the way the muscles in his back protested, using his right hand to force the butt of the rifle into his right shoulder, gripping the stock with his right hand as he rolled back on his elbows, his shoulders now level.

  "Get on with it, get on with it."

  "Shut up, Captain." Ari was a fair long shot with a rifle, but a head shot wasn't trivial, not even at this distance. He flicked the sights to 200 meters.

  There were voices and grumbles around him, but Ari concentrated on what he was doing. The world, the universe, was his rifle. It rested on the v of his left hand—on the palm, not the fingers—the butt jammed almost painfully into the pocket where his hunched shoulder met his neck. His right hand held the stock firmly, almost welding it to his cheek, the only part of his body free and loose his trigger finger.

  With the tank moving and bouncing, there was no decent chance at a head shot—but if the Freiheimers did what they'd done two days in a row, the tanks would stop at the crossroads, changing from column to a ragged wedge as they left the road for the fields.

  He'd have one opportunity.

  "Wind at 12:30," Galil announced. "Light—maybe four klicks per hour."

  No windage adjustment, but this still didn't make any sense.

  They were a lot more valuable as forward observers than they'd be as snipers. Besides, you didn't snipe from a fixed OP—it was take a shot or two, then move, then shoot again. A sniper was supposed to be invisible and mobile.

  Maybe ten seconds to the crossroads. He was looking directly into the scope; there was no shadow effect along the edge. Crosshairs were level; no canting of the rifle.

  He took in a breath; the crosshairs moved down, through a narrow arc.

  Five seconds. He released the breath, took another, let half of it out, and held it. Finger on the trigger, held at the first joint.

  The tanks slowed, and Tank 297 rattled into motionlessness in his sights.

 
; "Fire mission, target moving tanks." Galil said. He rapped out a series of coordinates and then listened. "Confirmed. ASAP, fire."

  At two hundred meters, even with sight as acute as Ari's, the face of the tank commander should have been only a blur, a fleshy blob in the sights.

  But all of a sudden it was the face of a person, a man of perhaps twenty or twenty-five standard years, his remarkably ordinary face streaked with sweat and dirt, and while it wasn't at all possible that the Freiheimer could see him, he was just at that moment looking directly at Ari.

  Ari couldn't shoot him in the face. He couldn't. His fingers trembled, and the Freiheimer's face jerked out of his sights.

  But he pulled the trigger anyway.

  CHAPTER 12

  Yitzhak Galil: Green light

  Three shells blew on the edge of town. Blam. Blam. Blam.

  And then there was silence.

  "You'll have two shots, at most," Yitzhak Galil whispered. "I want the armor company CO. Do it." There was no time; Galil had to use the asshole as the sniper. Galil couldn't shoot, not with his hand swollen and useless, like a pregnant woman's belly; and he couldn't get either Benyamin Hanavi or Lavon up and ready for a shot, not in a minute or two.

  Ari Hanavi looked at Galil as if Galil were crazy, but it didn't matter what Ari Hanavi thought. Things were about to get too hot in Trainville for the defenders to be worrying about a stray sniper. It would make the division's job of crashing through easier if the tank company were leaderless. Advancing toward an attacking enemy—even in a tank, even if you were only moving into prepared defensive positions—was difficult to get soldiers to do, and they might fall apart if the leader were gone.

  And for sure it would inhibit at least one tank if its commander were dead in the hatch, bleeding out and emptying his sphincters on everything and everybody underneath him.

  And, besides, in a half an hour, this would stop being Galil's command and become Marko Giacobazzi's forward observer post. Galil, Lavon and the two Hanavis would just be along for the ride, just to keep Giacobazzi from being bothered or killed while the Casa spotted for the artillery. Yitzhak Galil hated the idea of turning over his command without having drawn blood.