by Leo Champion
“He – was just a random one? Why, then?”
“Faden, we both know our service is considered expendable. It was formed to be expendable. The Department knows that, too. They would have wondered why a task force was actually being sent, so we’re giving them another reason. The Euros are big on personal patronage networks, Faden. It’s how they think, even more than how we are, so they’ll buy it.”
“Sir, you want the Europeans to believe that there’s a rescue force on the way? Won’t that spoil any uncertainty they might have?” The captain seemed to realize something. “The Governor is going to authorize the rescue force, if you convince her? What do you think the odds of that are, sir?”
“The odds of there being a rescue column,” asked Doom, “or the odds of the Department expecting a rescue column?”
“Both, sir.”
Doom just smiled.
* * *
“There’s going to be a relief force, is there?” Lavasseur mused. Not a possibility she’d considered likely, but she hadn’t necessarily considered the Army and Air Force people in the fort as well. Those people would be regarded as less-expendable, being full US citizens, and it did make sense that an effort might be made to get them out. Especially if one of them had influential friends.
“Apparently, ma’am,” said Major Bujold.
Not a good thing, although she wouldn’t act until she had more to go on than a promise made to a desperate man. Something to watch for.
“This new Gambler Six, whoever he is – voice is being analyzed now?” she asked the Danish technician, who gave a thumbs-up. “Whoever he is, he’s got a clear motivation to do everything he can to get the company out: not just the lives of his new men, but the sake of his career.
“Especially since it sounds like someone somebody cares about, is there. This Army kid, Eric McMahon. His patron – who’s his relative? And who’s the person on Dinqing calling in a favor to help get the kid out.”
“We’re looking,” said Bujold. “No matches yet, and we may not know – from context, the relative himself is probably offworld. I’ve alerted our people around Government House, though.”
“Assets we have in the area to deal with the relief force?” Lavasseur asked one of her other staffers, a Greek captain.
“Just the horde,” said the captain. “About thirteen thousand of them around the fort, about that many again in total, although we know from other Team Nine reports that at least three of those groups have gone independently into Chongdin.”
Action teams, thought Lavasseur, wouldn’t have been relevant to the situation anyway. There were a couple in the field on this operation, attached as nominal advisors to hordes going to Vazhao in the case of opportunities. Their skills wouldn’t have been useful to either the siege or dealing with the relief force.
“What about air and naval assets?” she asked, knowing the answer to the last one.
“Ma’am, the nearest sub-orbital capability is Landsfarne Base, Southeast Region. At full speed, the aircraft there would be over Kandin-dak in… two and a half hours from takeoff. Naval, three warships in orbit but you know how the Navy is.”
As unhelpful to the Department as they could be, due to the rivalry between Department and Naval Intelligence. There was zero chance of them cooperating to the point of beyond-completely-illegal direct strikes into American territory.
In-atmospheric airstrikes on actual US targets were as illegal as orbital strikes, but the Army Air Forces might be convinced to arrange a major ‘accident’. It would burn a lot of favors and political capital to ask, because it would trigger diplomatic fallout.
In this case it probably wouldn’t be necessary – anyway, she didn’t want to kill Andre’s murderers so impersonally, dead before they knew what hit them – but it was something to keep in mind as a possible option.
“Very well. Matters of the relief force,” she said. “Get me von Kallweit.”
Bujold hit a key on his laptop and motioned with his head at Lavasseur’s phone, having anticipated that.
She picked it up.
“Captain.”
“Madam Colonel.”
“You heard the conversation. What do you think we should do about this relief force?”
“Confirm its existence, ma’am, to start with,” von Kallweit said.
Well, yes – that was obvious.
“Assuming it’s confirmed,” she said.
“Attack. The fort, immediately. It sounds like they’re stronger than I thought, but I wasn’t certain of that estimate anyway. Certainly they’re underestimating us.”
“Seven or eight thousand in the horde,” said Lavasseur with a smile. “When there’s more than half that many again. They’ll be assembling the task force to deal with eight thousand.”
“Ma’am, I urge you to authorize an attack. Axhar is entirely open to the concept. Attack an hour from now, burn the place to the ground and avoid the relief force altogether.”
Lavasseur saw that reasoning; it was what she’d expected an intelligent, methodical German to say while missing the big picture.
“And miss a chance to destroy it, too?” she asked. “The Americans definitely have maps of the wastelands at least as good as ours. We know this because they did manage to capture at least two of ours. So we know the routes they’re likely to take.
“They think they’ll be facing eight thousand nomads besieging a fort. They’ll be ambushed by twelve thousand in one of the passes they’ll have to go through if, given how rough the ground directly between Kandin-dak and Vasimir is, they want to get there in time.
“That means more American assets wiped out, and assets that from then on won’t be available to defend Chongdin,” she finished. “So luring a relief force out, to destroy it – supports the wider-scale operation.”
“Yes ma’am,” said von Kallweit. “I can make plans to destroy the relief column if you keep me updated on its status.”
“I’m assigning a couple of analysts to that, too,” said Lavasseur, “but you’ve been on this ground – they haven’t. The routes they’re most likely to take…”
“Yes ma’am. Siege doctrine says to leave an investment force in case they attempt to break out, Madam Colonel…”
“Of course,” said Lavasseur. “We don’t want that, and we don’t want them to think we’ve forgotten about them. Leave – a thousand?”
“A thousand would be sufficient,” said von Kallweit. “We might interest other bands in the ambush, too. Some of the ones who’ve been staying away from Axhar after word got around about the casualties he took attacking the fort.
“Some of those bands have gone through to Chongdin without waiting for him, others have been hanging around waiting for him to avenge his father. But they’ll join with an ambush.
“So you have your orders. Plan to ambush and destroy the relief force, come back and take the place. Your khan I hope understands the reasoning of not being caught between two enemy forces?”
“He should, Madam Colonel.”
“Very good.” Lavasseur put the phone down and looked at the Danish technician responsible for voice analysis.
“Does Gambler Six match anyone on file?” she asked.
The tech shook his head.
“No ma’am. No particular voiceprint match to any degree of certainty.”
The tech looked like he was going to say more.
“And?” Lavasseur urged him on.
“Ma’am, this is just a feeling I can’t prove, but it might have been run through a personal modulator. A high-end one, if so.”
A gut instinct. Those were something Arlene Lavasseur respected.
“Thank you, Lead Technician,” she said. “Offhand, what would you guess the chance of that being?”
The tech looked away for a moment, thinking:
“Thirty to forty percent, ma’am. Not a hundred percent, but not zero either.”
So the colonel, or the RTO, on the other end was possibly using a modulator
to disguise their voice. Not necessarily, but possibly. A minor data point to consider.
“Very well,” Lavasseur told her subordinates. “You know what to do. Oh, and Bujold?”
“Yes, ma’am?”
“Get me the commander of Landsfarne Base and ask him to put a strike flight on standby,” she said. “I don’t want to use them, a direct strike would be an act of war the diplomats would have problems with, but – just in case.”
“Yes, Madam Colonel.”
* * *
“A rescue force,” Hill repeated to the group. They’d gathered in a circle to listen to the communication a few minutes ago over the radio’s speaker, although Mullins had disabled the microphone function of that.
“The fort’s likely to fall Thursday,” said Lennon. “This new commander had better get that force moving fast if it’s to get there in time.”
“If someone is thinking task forces,” said Mandvi, “they might also be thinking of high-altitude precision bombs. Or resupply.”
Yeah, thought Mullins. Or even reinforcements.
He’d personally appreciated how the battalion commander had lied about where the maps came from. As well as being an obvious signal for him, Mullins, to keep his mouth shut because someone hostile might be listening, it explained the maps to any hostile listeners.
Those listeners would think that the loose group that had gotten them, was safe and accounted for. That was reassuring. And better to know about hostile listeners than let something slip without knowing.
A task force, punching through the wastelands to rescue them. Except—
The new commander had said, without giving it away to any unwanted listeners, that the battalion network might have been compromised. He’d then indicated fewer nomads than they could possibly have thought, falsely allowing anyone listening to believe command thought there were so few.
The task force was going to be under-sized, if they were going to be basing their estimated strength on that. And the enemy, if anyone was listening as battalion command seemed to think was the case, would know they were coming.
Was battalion command crazy, or were they stupid? Or did they, not that Mullins had too much regard for the sanity or IQs of officers ranked major or higher, have something else going on?
* * *
“Good to see you, Darryl,” said Captain Olli-Pekka Numminen to his newly-arrived executive officer. He knew Hadfield well; as a junior lieutenant he’d led the sapper platoon of what had been the battalion Weapons Company.
“Good to see you guys are alive. Rough couple of weeks, I hear,” Hadfield replied.
He and the other Delta Company returnees had just gotten off the plane – actually just space in the back of an existing resupply flight – from Vazhao, the first leg being an uncomfortable several hours to Templeton Base.
At Templeton, in the center of another secure area, they’d moved pallets of food from the plane to make way for heavy pallets of ammunition for the second leg to what had been designated the East Vasimir Enclave.
“It was tough. We were in contact for the entire first week,” said Numminen. “But in mountains – they couldn’t flank us and their zaks weren’t much good. We moved faster after they gave up.”
“Good to see you, sir,” said Master Sergeant Kowalski to Hadfield.
“You too, top.”
“Men are sorted out and assigned, sir,” Kowalski said to Numminen.
“Thank you. Now – let’s go somewhere quieter. We have a couple of questions to ask about the new battalion commander.”
“Figured you might, sir,” said Hadfield.
Numminen led them off the airport’s flight line, busy even at four in the morning. East Vasimir was directly to the south of where the Vasimir Way opened up into the Chongdin Empire, and it had initially been spared from the hordes because none of the early ones had wanted to take a hard ninety-degree turn upon arriving in Chongdin over the nice highway the Americans had built through the mountain passes.
The troops falling back, the troops Delta Company had been near-sacrificed to protect the retreat of, had mostly gone to what they’d known was an ancient fortified city. East Vasimir was protected on two sides by mountains, and on the west – from doubling-back nomads, which some hordes were starting to do as they found the easy targets already taken – by a river.
In the south, the only easy approaches were held by some of the thousands of sepoys, Colonial Guard and regular US troops who’d retreated to the area. Patrols ran twenty or twenty-five miles in three directions from the place. Delta Company had been given a day to recover from their trek and told to make the best of it, there’d be orders tomorrow.
The notification that Hadfield and the others were back had woken Numminen out of a heavy sleep, not that he’d minded too much.
The three men reached a quiet area by some fuel tanks, warning signs about flammables stencilled on the side of them. Numminen drew the group to a halt.
“So new Gambler Six,” said Numminen. “You could start by telling me his name. It wasn’t in the email we got, just that a new commander has been appointed effective immediately. I had the impression they hadn’t decided who, yet – and then he issued an order.”
“He’s a sneaky one, I’ve heard,” said Hadfield. “Know the name Richard Doom?”
Numminen shook his head. Although he’d heard the name somewhere before.
“The new CO?”
“Yeah. From Intelligence,” said Hadfield.
“I don’t care if he’s from Beijing,” said Numminen. “Does he have a plan to get Bravo Company out of there?”
Hadfield fingered the personal phone he had in a – non-regulation – clip on his belt.
“Yes,” said the XO.
“Are we going to be involved? We’re the closest,” said Numminen.
“Yes,” said Hadfield. “One way or another, Delta Company is definitely going to be a part of his plan.”
* * *
Lieutenant-Colonel Richard Doom had had a long night of staff work, most of it without his staff. The company commander had been competent enough and motivated to help; Broder and Rhee had been less-qualified but still helpful on stuff like finding information and drafting orders.
He’d dismissed the other three to rest when the first actual operations staff, whose job this kind of planning was, had reported in. Details of the plan had been researched, alternatives set up, intelligence collated to the extent it existed. The battalion’s S-2 and S-3, intelligence and operations, shops had gotten busy doing what they were trained to do.
Now, after a one-hour nap himself that had refreshed him sufficiently, he gave the folder of printed plans a final review. Not perfect by any means, and now the battalion staff were all at their jobs a couple more hours could have given him more certainty on the intelligence side and more options on the planning side.
But that would be venturing into the territory of diminishing returns, and he was acutely aware of Bravo Company’s ticking clock. This was very much a case where the best was the enemy of the good.
What he had would suffice. He picked up the phone and entered a number.
“Office of the Governor.”
“Hey Simon,” said Doom to the receptionist. “Doom here. Get me the chief of staff.”
“Ms. Tribolo’s busy, Colonel.”
“Tell her I have an item for the ten o’clock situation briefing. She’s about to have it in her email.”
“That’s in barely an hour,” said the receptionist. “And Ms. Tribolo is busy at the moment.”
“Tell her not to be busy in twenty minutes, then. I’m coming over.”
* * *
Leah Tribolo met him at the helipad. The Governor’s chief of staff was a very good-looking woman in her mid-forties, originally from one of the formerly-Canadian states, a long-time political aide of Evanston. It was a second career; her first had been the Intelligence branch of the Army, where she’d risen to major. She’d taken what she�
�d learned there over to the political world, where she’d been an aide to Evanston for over a decade.
She’d never liked Doom and the expression on her face didn’t hide it.
“We were wondering when you’d show up demanding something,” she said after Doom’s helicopter had taken off again, rapidly ascending as it headed back toward the Administrative Zone. You didn’t want to drive through the Qing districts of Vazhao right now.
“I hope you won some money. Is your office secure?”
“You have two minutes to pitch me on this, Doom,” Tribolo sighed.
* * *
Tribolo’s office was smaller than chief of staff’s rank could justify, but thickly laden with memorabilia that, to Doom’s astute eyes, told more than just her life story. Given more time than he had, he could have used that information to stitch a profile of the woman; her frames of reference, her biases and her weaknesses. There was a reason Doom’s own office was bare of those clues.
He didn’t have more time, so he got straight to the point as Tribolo closed the door. She hadn’t offered him a seat.
“I’m not asking you to even so much as consider actually executing Operation Desert Savior,” he said. Political types liked dramatic codenames. So did the French.
“I skimmed the overview,” said Tribolo. “You want to move troops, reassign not just the companies of your own battalion but Army forces as well, to assemble a reinforced-battalion task force at the Vasimir Pass for the purpose of relieving Kandin-dak and just incidentally saving some of the men you’ve assumed responsibility for.”
“It should take about thirty-six hours to ready the force,” Doom said. “That’s all I’m asking – for the force to be readied. I know Governor Evanston won’t OK sending it.”
“You’re asking for six companies, three of them light armor, to be taken away from where they’re presently needed. Prepare them to travel more than eight hundred miles – and then they go nowhere.”
“Exactly,” said Doom. “They can go right back to their duties, and they can do so without much disruption. Option C shows the most convenient ones to move and how to replace them.”