A Desert Called Peace (56 page)

Sabah made the not unreasonable connection between remaining on M3 and his own untimely demise. Since remaining on the hill— period—was also likely to be life threatening and trying to get off the hill by going north would only get him shot, or worse, by his own side, he opted to head
toward
the enemy rather than away. There was a little depression a few hundred meters forward that he knew of.

"Follow me," he said to men, taking his machine gun, one corporal, and three privates. "We'll hide forward."

Maybe we can surrender,
Sabah thought.
After all,
we
haven't done the enemy any harm, personally.

Led by Sabah, the five Sumeris slipped over the trench and began working their way down the steep slope of the hill.

Stollen
Number One,
0735 hours, 13/2/461 AC

A piper standing outside the
Stollen
played "
Boinas Azules Cruzan la Frontera"
(Blue Bonnets over the Border) as an Ocelot bearing a long, narrow footbridge passed by. Cruz and his fire team emerged from the shelter. Some of the men who knew the new words began to sing along with the pipes:

 
Many an eagle's wings
Fly where the shellfire sings.
Follow your crest that is famous in story.
Stand and make ready then,
Sons of the jungle glen.
Fight for your legion, your God and their glory.
 
March, March,
Principe Eugenio
 . . . 

Perhaps they found it calming. Cruz didn't sing; he didn't feel the need to. Instead he watched. The bridge, he saw, was actually up in the air at about a forty-five degree angle, held in that position by ropes that ran to the rear of the vehicle. The bridge seemed to Cruz to be about one hundred feet long.

"Come on, shake it out!" shouted Cruz to his fire team. With his hands, he directed them to form a shallow wedge based on himself as the point man.

Right,
he thought.
Maybe it doesn't make sense to take up a
wide
formation before we hit the footbridge, but it will make it easier to get the boys back into formation once we cross.

Ahead the Ocelot stopped a scant two meters from the river bank. The track commander emerged from his hatch and crawled onto the rear deck. He looked across the river to make sure he had judged his spot well, then took out and swung a machete to cut the rope. The bridge hesitated briefly before plunging down to span the river. It bounced twice before finally settling. Then the sergeant dismounted to cut the footbridge loose from his vehicle's bow.

Off to the right another Ocelot approached the river bank, this one also bearing a footbridge on its prow.

The signifer for the century blew into his whistle, signaling the attack. Then he double-timed to the bridge and, without hesitation, began to cross. A shell came in, exploding on the near bank. The signifer was apparently unhurt as he increased his speed to get across the bridge.

"Come on, you assholes," Cruz shouted above the din. "The future's on the top of that hill. Follow me!"

As Cruz and his men began to cross, he chanced to look up at the hill ahead. It was—section by section—disappearing as the mortars switched from pounding it with explosives to dropping white phosphorus shells along a line on the slope to blind any of the Sumeris in the forward trace who might be still able and willing to fight.

Carrera followed the progress of the men through his binoculars. He looked for Parilla, but in vain. The light was still too dim to make out individuals.

Still, up the slopes the flash of rifle and machine gun fire, punctuated by major blasts as the infantry and engineers chewed their way through the wire and mines, told the tale well enough.

The artillery and mortars suddenly switched targets, the 120mm mortars laying smoke just below the crest of both fortresses, while the artillery took to pounding targets farther back. The lighter, 60mm, mortars ceased fire as their crews packed up to begin the backbreaking trek to the slope to join their centuries once the hilltops were secured.

Now,
Carrera thought,
if everyone is still following the plan . . . 

Ah, there they were, eight Turbo-Finch Avenger close air support aircraft and three Cricket recon birds winging in out of the rising sun. The Avengers formed circle a couple of kilometers to the east, taking turns to dive in and lace the fortresses with rocket and machine gun fire. Once, but only once, a light antiaircraft missile lurched up to attack the planes. All eight Avengers circling at the time had sensed the incoming missile and automatically spat out flares and chaff. The missile overcorrected and ended up ultimately crashing to the ground harmlessly.

And where are my Cazadors?

He needn't have worried. The four remaining centuries of Cazadors, borne on ten of the twelve medium lift helicopters, passed through above the highway by Multichucha Ridge and continued along it. As the choppers passed low between the fortresses atop Hill 1647 and its companion, door gunners blasted away more or less indiscriminately with machine guns. Once past, the choppers continued on. The Cazadors had a blocking position to take up farther to the north.

"Hah!" Parilla exulted as he forced his body up the hill, "Not bad for a man of almost sixty."
Even so, I wish to hell the slope ahead weren't too steep for tanks and tracks.

Parilla was followed by a small guard from the Headquarters cohort, plus two radio-telephone operators. They were the poor slugs who had to hump the heavy radios up the hill so that Parilla could stay in communication with Carrera and the command post to the rear, as well as the infantry cohorts to the front.

The call, "Fire in the hole!" came frequently now as infantry and engineers dropped small charges to explode surface laid mines, or used bangalores to clear paths through buried belts of them. Some of the sappers dragged heavy sleds holding rocket-propelled mine clearing line charges. These, intended in most armies to replace bangalore torpedoes, had one major problem. Bangalores could be adjusted and assembled to suit the depth of the obstacle. The MCLC was one size fits all. Thus, while it took six bangalore sections of about one hundred and twenty pounds to clear two five-meter deep obstacle belts set sixty meters apart, a single MCLC, at about the same weight, could clear the first obstacle but would fall short of the second.

Fortunately for MCLC fanciers everywhere—most certainly to include engineer century commander Sam Cheatham—there was at least one broad belt of mines very near the base of the ridge. As the sappers and grunts blasted their way forward as fast as they could set a charge and duck, the more specialized engineers dragged their sleds forward, Cheatham cheering them on, ducking the flying rocks and metal as required. Their feet slipped on packed snow, and they cursed the entire way.

Parilla had to admire the engineers for their damned determination and grit. He stopped and took one arthritic knee—
Oh, that frigging
hurts—to watch as they reached the edge of the broad minefield with a MCLC.

Operation of the MCLC was simple It involved little more than removing a watertight plastic cover from the plastic sled, rotating a rocket assembly to point generally frontally, hooking up an electric connection and then running to cover. Once behind cover, the engineers merely hooked up a small generator, and
wheee
. At that point, electricity applied, the rocket took off downrange with a great deal of smoke and flame, dragging the line charge behind it. The line charge, roughly inch-thick demolition cord, set itself off after it had reached apogee and fallen to the ground. About a dozen antipersonnel mines went boom, in sympathy, when the shock wave reached them

And then the grunts were on their feet, screaming like a thousand banshees, charging through the gap with blood in their eyes and bayonets fixed.

Nineteen miles north of the twin hills, fifty odd vehicles of a Sumeri artillery battalion struggled in the dark along a winding road that led to the south. The trucks pulled behind them eighteen 122mm guns, generally similar to those used by the legion. It was no surprise that the guns were similar, both types had been built by the Volgans and sold for hard, desperately needed, cash. The guns represented the only artillery reserve available to Ali al Tikriti's uncle, the Sumeri brigade and regional commander.

If the guns could reach a position in range of the hill before it was lost, there was a chance of breaking up any assault before it could reach the summit and dig in. In time, even the shell-shocked Sumeri defenders would recover. They'd recover, in fact, a lot faster than their enemy could replace the shells expended so far on the bombardment.

A few thousand feet above the battalion, unheard over the roar of the trucks' diesel engines, a lone Cricket observation aircraft circled in the clouds, dropping down from time to time to observe the winding mountain road below.

The observer in the Cricket said to the pilot, "Oh, God, I think I'm going to come just looking at this."

The pilot banked the aircraft over, took one look, and whistled. "Oh, baby, oh, baby, oh, baby, oh."

The observer was still laughing when he used the radio to call, "Zulu Lima X-ray Four Six this is Tango Mike Uniform One Two. Fire for effect . . . baby  . . . over."

The radio crackled back. "Fire for effect . . . what's this "baby" shit? Over."

"Four Six; One Two. I've got fifty, maybe sixty trucks with a battalion of guns plodding up the highway vicinity Target Alpha Oscar Four Five."

"Oh, baby."

Far to the south, halfway from the hills to Hewlêr International Airport, the six heavy rocket launchers of the legion received the call for fire from the Cricket, Uniform One Two. Each of the launchers was capable of firing twelve 300mm rockets, bearing warheads of two hundred and thirty-five kilograms, to a range of seventy kilometers. At that range, the predictable error was under two hundred meters. Since the beaten zone of a full ripple launch was on the order of three quarters of a kilometer, square, per launcher, the dispersion was tactically insignificant.

Within four minutes from the Cricket's call, when the trucks dragging the artillery had moved perhaps five hundred meters, the area was deluged with something over fifty-one hundred two-kilogram bombs.

Two minutes after the last of the rockets had scattered its bomblets, the Cricket flew low and made a pass over the column to asses the damage. Not one of the broken, bleeding, burned or simply stunned men below even bothered to shoot at the plane.

"Oh, baby . . ."

All my life I just wanted to be a simple soldier
, Parilla thought to himself as he struggled to force his armored torso up the slope while listening to the radio he held closely to his ear.
Hard to do in Balboa. Hard to do any place in the undeveloped world. All my life I was forced into politics, starting with the coup after the riots in '21 and continuing right up through when that bastard, Piña, tricked me into resigning from the force in '41. Nothing but goddamned politics. And now— finally—and thanks to you, Patricio, you gringo maniac, I get to be what I always wanted to be. Late
is
better than never.

Yes, I don't have much to do. We planned and rehearsed the shit out of this. We trained back in Balboa for just this sort of thing. So I listen on the radio and provide a little moral support when I can. So what? At least I am here, a man among men, doing a man's job for once in my life.

Parilla looked up and to the right, where a legionary was carrying the gold eagle of the legion, the eagle shining bright atop its spiral carved staff. He felt a sudden warm glow.
My eagle, too. My
legion
, too.

Mohammad Sabah saw the group of enemy soldiers struggling up the hill. He watched carefully, from behind a snow covered bush.
Do their faces look like they're in the mood for mayhem? Or might they be willing to . . . 

Sabah felt as much as saw the machine gunner push the muzzle through the bush that concealed them. He started to shout, "
Kif
," stop, but before he could even get the syllable out the gunner had fired.

Parilla felt the shock before he even heard the muzzle report. One bullet bounced off of one of the glassy metal plates on his chest. Two more, however, plowed into his torso, pushing aside the silk fibers of the armor and smashing meat and bone below. He went down, limp but still marginally conscious.

"It's all right," he whispered. "Better this than never knowing and always wondering what it was like . . ."

"Allah curse you for a fool!" Sabah shouted at the machine gunner as his group came almost immediately under heavy sustained fire. He had no choice but to fight now. Maybe if he could hold the enemy off for a bit they might calm down and be inclined to mercy. Maybe.

The leader of Parilla's small guard force stared in momentary disbelief when he saw his
Dux
go down. Recovering, he gave the command: "Enemy in draw. Assault fire! Assault!" Leading the way, screaming, firing short bursts as they ran, the Balboans closed on the Sumeris.

The Sumeri sergeant was the first to fall. Under the legionaries' leaden hail the other members of the group were forced down into the depression in the slope. As the Balboans approached, the Sumeris threw down their arms and raised their hands in surrender. But, after seeing their commander shot, the men were not interested in taking prisoners. Muzzles spoke and bayonets flashed red under the snow- reflected light.

Several hundred meters to the west, and about one hundred and fifty forward, the recon section of Cruz's cohort, the First Infantry, reached the "lift fires" line. The cohort commander called that in via radio. Mortars ceased fire on that section of the hill altogether. The recon section took their bayonets from their rifles and the scabbards from their belts, attached the two together to form wire cutters, and began gnawing their way through the last wire before the enemy trenches and bunkers began. Other groups, straight infantry and the cohort sapper section, did so as well as they reached the last obstacle on the hill.