Crest and Shield Book 2: an O R D E R mini

by Dorsey Jackson, Jr

  Chapter Three

  “Damn it. Daniel was right,” Lamp said under his breath as he fought for his balance trudging through a section of soft sand.

  “Hey, Commander, the Wing Commander’s looking for you,” Nehemiah called out to him from a ways away.

  “Thanks,” he said, almost falling on his face. “Where’s he at?”

  “He was headed to Central Command.”

  “Alright,” Lamp responded. “I’ll make my way there one day,” he said again to himself, as he continued to try to balance through the sand.

  He eventually made it to Central Command. When he stepped in, Canton, Daniel, and Herschel were all bent over the Holo table analyzing the green holo of the Compound.

  “What you guys working on?” Lamp asked as he approached.

  “Trying to figure out a way around the compound anti-air defenses. At the rate we’re going, we’re losing pilots way too fast,” Daniel informed him.

  “And as far as ammunition goes, we’re technically down to eight more goes at this place,” Herschel added.

  “Oh, that’s all? I thought you gentlemen might be working on something important,” Lamp joked. The men laughed. “Oh, by the way, I ran into some of your soft sand on my way over here. Forget what I said about P.T..”

  “I told you. We’ll get more than enough P.T. just walking around this place,” Daniel said.

  “So what have you gentlemen come up with?” Lamp asked as he leaned on the table and joined the other men’s view.

  “We were searching for angles of approach that would restrict their anti-air fire and maybe concentrate our Pouncers Siege missiles on destroying those particular guns,” Canton demonstrated.

  “That way we could maybe open a window, concentrate a set of aircraft's Siege missiles on completely bringing down their front gates,” Herschel added.

  “Have we found any potential angles that would work?” Lamp asked.

  “Not really. There isn’t an angle where we can force them to consolidate their gun fire. Not without also consolidating our aircrafts into a confined area,” Daniel admitted.

  “Thus making them an easier target,” Canton finished.

  “They’d be a bigger target to hit. The Compound would just have to point their guns in our general direction,” Herschel pointed out.

  “Have we thought about attempting the exact same path of attack of the previous mission, with different targets? I know they wouldn’t expect us to be that stupid,” Lamp suggested.

  “Great suggestion, but the results of the last strategy weren’t rewarding enough to try it again. The number of possible targets from that strategy don’t outweigh the cost of taking them out.”

  “I see your point,” Lamp admitted.

  “If only there was a way we could get under them and attack them from below…” Daniel thought out loud.

  “Even if there were, the walls are too reinforced. It would take a tremendous amount of Siege missiles to bring down another section of that wall,” Canton pointed out.

  “True. We expended the entire 6 count missile load of 32 aircrafts before doing any real damage,” Lamp reminded them.

  “And we don’t have that kind of ordinance to give away,” Canton added.

  “Damn it, that is a lot of ammo not to turn up any definite results,” Daniel said. He rubbed the bottom of his chin as his mind ran. “Wait. Our missiles were being fired from a pretty good distance. If we got in closer and concentrated the fire power, we might produce some definitive return.

  “The front gate is damaged. I agree that we should focus on what we can capitalize from that. Structure’s already weak and if we can concentrate that same amount of fire power at a closer distance on that spot, we can pretty much open the door for ourselves and just walk on in.”

  “But we still have to find a way to get below the anti-air to even get to them. The mountain blocked their radar last time, but we’re coming from the other direction this time and I’m sure they’ve replaced the foreword guns. There’s no way to fly the whole team down that mountain and a mile around to the front undetected,” Herschel said.

  “Wait,” Lamp exclaimed, snapping his fingers. “Daniel, remember that time Roman fooled the radars during a war game after we took the compound in our reality?”

  “Yeah, I think so. Didn’t he fly so low that he only showed up on weather radar as a normal wind disturbance because of all the sand he was kicking up around him? The radar couldn’t distinguish between the ground and the Pouncer.”

  “Exactly.”

  “But how low was he flying and for how long?” Canton asked.

  “The war game perimeter wasn’t that big, so he didn’t have to fly that far. Maybe a mile,” Lamp said.

  “And when I say he was low, he was low,” Daniel added.

  “We’re talking about the same elevation as we took on the mountain, like 10 to 20 feet off the ground,” Lamp pointed out.

  “The normal range of radar on the compound back home was 50 to 60 miles easily. I’m guessing they would be using the same type of Pulse Doppler radar system,” Canton said. “I wouldn't chance 20 feet. You would have to ask your pilots to fly at an elevation of 10 feet in a tight formation for roughly 60 miles.”

  Daniel looked at Lamp. Lamp looked back at him.

  “It could work,” Daniel suggested.

  “It could,” Lamp agreed.

  “You two have to be joking?” Canton said.

  “No, but the strike force would have to be a lot smaller. Fifty planes tight in any formation? That’s too much and would draw too much attention. But if we slim it down to maybe ten aircrafts, we may be able to get in undetected.”

  “If they use the same pulse Doppler weather radar system, the strategy works.” Hershel pointed out.

  “Ok. Let’s assume you do get the aircrafts to the gates undetected and attempt to finish tearing down the front wall. Are you going to fly around with twelve Pouncers and destroy all of the anti-air guns and the gates? The numbers don’t match up - you’d be out of Pouncer 1 missiles and it would take longer to destroy them with 30 mil gunfire.” Canton said.

  “Hmm,” Daniel murmured.

  “What do you have in mind?” Lamp asked.

  “Increase the strike team to twelve. Have the first six beat up on the forward guns, peel out for reload somewhere back behind the battlefield, and then send in the other six to wreak havoc on the gates while they reload. And repeat the process.”

  “Canton, how long would it take to rearm the Pouncers out in the field?” Lamp asked

  “Let me think. With at least three men per missile on a manual loader, assuming any extra ordinance would have to be transported by hand to the loader, it would take approximately thirty minutes per fighter.”

  “Thirty Minutes! That's a hell of a long time to leave the other aircrafts out in the wings,” Lamp exclaimed.

  “That’s not going to work. We’d have to find a way to cut down that time by at least half, but -” Daniel said.

  “Half? We'd have to cut it down way more than that brother! The second set of Pouncers would have fired all their missiles in ten minutes and would just be flying around waiting to reload for the next 20 minutes,” Lamp admitted.

  “Strike force would have to have at least three more Pouncers to carry the Missiles,” Herchel informed.

  “Fifteen? That’s really pushing it,” Daniel said.

  “We could cut out the three extra planes and have each Pouncer carry its own reload ordinance. Doing that, we could bring even more missiles," Lamp suggested.

  "Yeah, but if we lose a plane, we'd lose the plane, pilot, and extra ordinance. That ratio doesn't sit well with me. I don't mean to minimize the lives of our pilots, but if we do lose the plane, that's ordinance we can't use on future assaults."

  "Plus, if a Pouncer gets hit with all those Siege missiles onboard, the explosion would take out any other Pouncers in a big vicinity. Their explosions then could cause a domino e
ffect. We could lose the whole squadron from one hit plane," Herschel explained.

  "Well, that wouldn't be good," Lamp admitted.

  “I don’t know. Let’s take a few more hours to mull it over. We’ve got to make the numbers count this time. Oh, there’s one more thing to Roman’s strategy that makes this all work.”

  "There's more?" Herschel asked. "And what would that be?"

  Daniel and Lamp looked at the two Sub commanders and smiled devilishly. If only they knew how much more interesting this was about to get for the pilots that would be chosen for this mission.