by Tom Clancy
“Now what?” Eddington asked, a cigar in his teeth. The victors suffered through many mood swings on the battlefield. Arriving in confusion and haste, facing the unknown with concealed fear, entering battle with determination—and, in their case, with such wrath as they had never felt—winning with exhilaration, and then feeling horror at the carnage and pity for the vanquished. The cycle changed anew. Most of the mechanized units had reorganized over the last few hours, and were ready to move again, while their own MPs and arriving Saudi units took possession of the prisoners gathered by the line units.
“Just sit tight,” Diggs replied, to Eddington’s disappointment and relief. “The remains are running hard. You’d never catch them, and we don’t have orders to invade.”
“They just came at us in the same old way,” the Guard colonel said, remembering Wellington. “And we stopped them in the same old way. What a terrible business.”
“Bobby Lee, remember, Chancellorsville?”
“Oh, yeah. He was right, too. Those couple of hours, Diggs, getting things set up, maneuvering my battalions, getting the information, acting on it.” He shook his head. “I never knew anything could feel like that... but now...”
“ ‘It is good that war is so terrible, else we should grow too fond of it.’ Funny thing is, you forget sometimes. Those poor bastards,” the general said, watching fifty men being herded off to trucks for the ride back to the rear. “Clean up, Colonel. Get your units put back together. There may be orders to move, but I don’t think so.”
“Three Corps?”
“Ain’t goin’ far, Nick. We’re ‘keepin’ up the skeer’ and we’re running them right into the 10th.”
“So you know Bedford Forrest after all.” It was one of the Confederate officer’s most important aphorisms. Keep up the skeer: never give a fleeing enemy the chance to rest; harry him, punish him, force him into additional errors, run him into the ground. Even if it really didn’t matter anymore.
“My doctoral dissertation was on Hitler as a political manipulator. I didn’t much like him, either.” Diggs smiled and saluted. “You and your people did just fine, Nick. Glad to have you on this trip.”
“Wouldn’t have missed it, sir.”
THE VEHICLE HAD diplomatic tags, but the driver and passenger knew that such things had not always been respected in Tehran. Things changed in a country at war, and you could often spot previously clandestine facilities by the fact that they got more guards in time of trouble instead of remaining the same. The latter would have been far smarter, but everyone did it. The car halted. The driver lifted binoculars. The passenger lifted a camera. Sure enough, the experimental farm had armed men around the research building, and that wasn’t the normal sort of thing, was it? It was just that easy. The car turned in the road and headed back to the embassy.
THEY WERE GETTING only stragglers. The Blackhorse was in full pursuit now, and this tail chase was proving to be a long one. American vehicles were better and generally faster than those they were pursuing, but it was easier to run than to chase. Pursuers had to be a little careful about possible ambushes, and the lust to kill more of the enemy was muted by the concern at dying in a war already won. Enemy disorder had allowed the 11th to pull in tight, and the right-flank units were now in radio contact with the advancing Saudis, who were just now finishing off the last few battalions of II Corps and thinking about engaging III in a final decisive battle.
“Target tank,” one TC said. “Ten o’clock, forty-one hundred.”
“Identified,” the gunner said as the Abrams halted to make the shot easier.
“Hold fire,” the TC said suddenly. “They’re bailing out. Give ’em a few seconds.”
“Right.” The gunner could see it, too. The T-80’s main gun was pointed away, in any case. They waited for the crew to make a hundred meters or so.
“Okay, take it.”
“On the way.” The breech recoiled, the tank jolted, and the round flew. Three seconds later, one more tank turret blew straight up. “Jack-in-the-box.”
“Target. Cease fire. Driver, move out,” the TC ordered. That made the twelfth kill for their tank. The crew wondered what the unit record would be, while the TC made a position notation for the three-man enemy crew on his IVIS box, which automatically told the regimental security detail where to pick them up. The advancing cavalry-men gave them a wide berth. Unlikely though it was, one of them might shoot or do something stupid, and they had neither the time nor the inclination to waste ammunition. One more battle to fight, unless the other side got some brains and just called it a day.
“COMMENTS?” POTUS ASKED.
“Sir, it sets a precedent,” Cliff Rutledge replied.
“That’s the idea,” Ryan said. They were getting the battlefield video first, unedited. It included the usual horrors, body parts of those ripped to shreds by high explosives, whole bodies of those whose deaths had come from some mysterious cause, a hand reaching out of a personnel carrier whose interior still smoked, some poor bastard who’d almost gotten out, but not quite. There had to be something about carrying a mini-cam that just drew people to that sort of thing. The dead were dead, and the dead were all victims in one way or another—more than one way, Ryan thought. These soldiers of two previously separate countries and one overlapping culture had died at the hands of armed Americans, but they’d been sent to death by a man whose orders they’d had to follow, who had miscalculated, and who had been willing to use their lives as tokens, gambling chips, quarters in a big slot machine whose arm he’d yanked to see what would result. It wasn’t supposed to be that way. Power carried responsibility. Jack knew that he would hand-write a letter to the family of every dead American, just as George Bush had done in 1991. The letters would serve two purposes. They would, perhaps, be some measure of comfort to the families of the lost. They would, certainly, remind the man who had ordered them to the field that the dead had once been living. He wondered what their faces had been like. Probably no different from the Guardsmen who’d formed that honor guard at Indianapolis, the day of his first public appearance. They looked the same, but each human life was individual, the most valuable possession of its owner, and Ryan had played a part in stripping it away, and though he knew it had been necessary, it was also necessary for him, now and for as long as he sat in this building, to remember that they were more than just faces. And that, he told himself, is the difference. I know about my responsibility. He doesn’t know about his. He still lived with the illusion that people were responsible to him, and not the reverse.
“It’s political dynamite, Mr. President,” van Damm said.
“So?”
“There is a legal problem,” Pat Martin told them. “It violates the executive order that President Ford put in place.”
“I know about that one,” Ryan responded. “But who decides the executive orders?”
“The Chief Executive, sir,” Martin answered.
“Draft me a new one.”
“WHAT IS THAT smell?” Back at the Indiana motel, the truck drivers were out for the morning dance of moving the trucks around to protect the tires. They were sick of this place by now, and heartily wished the travel ban would be lifted soon. One driver had just exercised his Mack, and parked it back next to the cement truck. Spring was turning warm, and the metal bodies of the trucks turned the interiors into ovens. In the case of the cement truck, it was having an effect its owners hadn’t thought about. “You got a fuel leak?” he asked Holbrook, then bent down to look. “No, your tank’s okay.”
“Maybe somebody had a little spill over at the pumps,” the Mountain Man suggested.
“Don’t think so. They just hosed it down a while ago. We better find this. I seen a KW burn once ’cuz some mechanic fucked up. Killed the driver, that was on I-40 back in ’85. Hell of a mess.” He continued to walk around. “You got a leak somewhere, ol’ buddy. Let’s check your fuel pump,” he said next, turning the locks on the hood panels.
“Hey, u
h, wait a minute—I mean—”
“Don’t sweat it, pard, I know how to fix the things. I save a good five grand a year doing my own work.” The hood went up, and the trucker looked inside, reached to shake a few hoses, then felt the fuel-line connectors. “Okay, they’re all right.” Next he looked at the line to the injectors. One nut was a little loose, but that was just the lock, and he twisted that back in place. There wasn’t anything unusual. He bent down again to look underneath. “Nothin’ drippin’. Damn,” he concluded, standing back up. Next he checked the wind. Maybe the smell was coming from... no. He could smell breakfast cooking in the restaurant, his next stop of the day. The smell was coming from right here... something else, too, not just diesel, now that he thought about it.
“What’s the problem, Coots?” another driver asked, walking over.
“Smell that?” And both men stood there, sniffing the air like woodchucks.
“Somebody got a bad tank?”
“Not that I can see.” The first one looked at Holbrook. “Look, I don’t want to be unneighborly, but I’m an owner-operator, and I get nervous about my rig, y’know? Would you mind moving your truck over there? And I’d have somebody give the engine a look, okay?”
“Hey, sure, no problem, don’t mind a bit.” Holbrook remounted his truck, started it, and drove it slowly off, turning to park in a fairly vacant part of the lot. The other two watched him do it.
“The goddamned smell went away, didn’t it, Coots?”
“That is a sick truck.”
“Fuck ’im. About time for the news. Come on.” The other driver waved.
“Whoa!” they heard on entering the restaurant. The TV was tuned to CNN. The scene looked like something from the special-effects department of a major studio. Nothing like that ever was real. But this was.
“Colonel, what happened last night?”
“Well, Barry, the enemy came in on us twice. The first time,” Eddington explained, holding a cigar in his extended hand, “we sat on that ridge back there. The second time, we were advancing, and so were they, and we met right about here...” The camera turned to show two tanks heading up the road, past where the colonel was giving his lecture.
“I bet those fuckers are fun to drive,” Coots said.
“I bet they’re fun to shoot.” The scene changed again. The reporter’s familiar, handsome face was covered with dust, with the bags of exhaustion under his eyes.
“This is Tom Donner, with the press team assigned to the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment. How can I describe the night we had? I’ve been riding with this Bradley crew, and our vehicle and the rest of B-Troop have gone through—I don’t know how many of the enemy in the past twelve hours. It was War of the Worlds in Saudi Arabia last night, and we were the Martians.
“The UIR forces—the ones we faced were a mix of Iraqis and Iranians—fought back, or tried to, but nothing they did...”
“Shit, wish they’d’ve sent my unit,” a highway patrolman said, taking his usual seat for his beginning-of-watch coffee. He’d gotten to know some of the drivers.
“Smoky, you have those in the Ohio Guard?” Coots asked.
“Yeah, my unit’s armored cavalry. Those boys from Carolina had a big night. Jesus.” The cop shook his head, and in the mirror noticed a man walking in from the parking lot.
“Enemy forces are in full flight now. You’ve just had a report from the National Guard force that defeated two complete armored divisions—”
“That many! Wow,” the cop observed, sipping his coffee.
“—the Blackhorse has annihilated another. It was like watching a movie. It was like watching a football game between the NFL and the Pop Warner League.”
“Welcome to the bigs, you bastards,” Coots told the TV screen.
“Hey, is that your cement truck?” the cop asked, turning.
“Yes, sir,” Holbrook answered, stopping on the way to join his friend for breakfast.
“Make sure it don’t blow the hell up on you,” Coots said, not turning his head.
“What the hell is a cement truck from Montana doing here?” the cop asked lightly. “Huh?” he added to Coots.
“He’s got some kinda fuel problem. We asked him to move the rig. Thanks, by the way,” he added. “Don’t mean to be unneighborly, buddy.”
“It’s all right. I’ll have it checked for sure.”
“Why all the way from Montana?” the cop inquired again.
“Well, uh, we bought it there, and bringing it east for our business, y’know?”
“Hmmm.” Attention returned to the TV.
“Yes, they were coming south, and we drove right into them!” a Kuwaiti officer was telling another reporter now. He patted the gun tube of his tank with the affection he might have shown a prize stallion, a little man who’d grown about a foot in the last day or so, along with his country.
“Any word on when we can get back to work, Smoky?” Coots asked the cop.
The highway patrolman shook his head. “You know as much as I do. When I leave here, I go up to the line to play roadblock some more.”
“Yeah, all that good ticket money you’re losin’, Smoky Bear!” a driver commented with a chuckle.
“I didn’t notice the tags. Why the hell drive a cement truck in from Montana?” Coots wondered. Those guys just didn’t fit in.
“Maybe he got it cheap,” the cop thought, finishing his coffee. “I don’t have anything on the sheet about a hot one. Damn, I wonder if anyone ever stole one of those?”
“Not that I heard of—zap!” Coots said. The current shot was of smart bombs. “At least it can’t hurt much.”
“Y’all have a good one,” the cop said on the way out. He entered his Chevy patrol car and headed back to the highway, then decided to give the cement truck a look. Might as well run the tag, he thought. Maybe it was hot. Then he smelled it, too, and to the cop it wasn’t the diesel ... ammonia...? It was a smell he’d always associated with ice cream, having once worked a summer in a plant which made it... and also with the smell of propellant in his National Guard cavalry unit. His curiosity aroused, he drove back to the cafe. “Excuse me, gentlemen, is that your truck parked over on the edge?”
“Yeah, why?” Brown asked. “We do something wrong?”
It was his hands that betrayed him. The cop saw them twitch. Something was definitely not right. “Would you gentlemen come with me, please?”
“Wait a minute, what’s the beef here?”
“No beef. I just want to know what that smell is. Fair enough?”
“We’re going to have it looked at.”
“You’re going to have it looked at right now, gentlemen.” He gestured. “If you would, please?”
The cop followed them out, got back into his car, and drove behind them as they walked to the truck. They were talking back and forth. Something just wasn’t right. His fellow highway cops were not terribly busy at the moment, and on instinct he called another car for backup, and told his headquarters to run the truck tag. That done, he got out and looked up at the truck again.
“You want to turn it over?”
“Okay, sure.” Brown got in and cranked the engine, which was noisy enough.
“What is going on here?” the cop asked Holbrook. “Could I see some identification, please?”
“Hey, I don’t understand what the beef is.”
“No beef, sir, but I do want to see your ID.”
Pete Holbrook pulled out his wallet as another police car arrived. Brown saw it, too, looked down to see Holbrook’s wallet in his hand, and the cop’s hand on the butt of his pistol. It was just the way cops stood, but Brown didn’t think of that. Neither Mountain Man had a gun handy. They had them in their room, but hadn’t thought to carry them to breakfast. The policeman took Pete’s driver’s license, then walked back to his car, lifting the microphone—
“The tag is clean, not in the computer as hot,” the lady at the station informed him.
“Thank you.” He tosse
d the mike back inside and walked back to Peter Holbrook, twirling the license in his hand—
Brown saw a cop with his friend, another cop, they’d just talked on the radio—
The highway patrolman looked up in surprise as the truck jerked forward. He yelled and pointed for the man to stop. The second car moved to block him, and then the cement truck did stop. That did it. Something was just not right.
“Out!” he shouted, his pistol in his hands now. The second officer took control of Holbrook, not having a clue what this was all about. Brown stepped down, and felt his collar grabbed and himself thrust against the body of the truck. “What is the matter with you?” the cop demanded. It would take hours to find out, and then a very interesting time at the truck stop.
THERE WAS NOTHING for him to do but scream, and that, uncharacteristically, he did. The video was undeniable. There was an instant respectability to global TV, and he couldn’t stop it from going out. The affluent in his country had their own satellite dishes, and so did many others, including little neighborhood groups. What would he do now? Order them turned off?
“Why aren’t they attacking?” Daryaei demanded.
“The Army commander and all corps commanders are off the air. We have some contact with two of our divisions only. One brigade reported it is heading north with enemy forces in pursuit.”
“And?”
“And our forces have been defeated,” Intelligence said.
“But how?”
“Does that matter?”
THEY CAME ON north. Buffalo came on south. UIR III Corps didn’t know what lay ahead. The discovery took place in midafternoon. Masterman’s 1st Squadron had so far eliminated a hundred or so fuel and other trucks, more than the other two battalions. The only question now was how much resistance the enemy would display. From air coverage, he knew exactly where the advancing force was, in what strength and concentration, and in what direction. It was much easier than the last time he’d seen action.