Hero (15 page)

He didn't hear a cry of protest from the helo's pilot, so he pulled out his maps and took off the heavy combination headset/helmet/nightgoggles, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. Not good to start an observation post mission tired, not good at all. What passes for rest in an OP isn't.

Without the headphones clamped on his ears, the din of the helo was deafening. The roar pressed down on him, making his ears ring.

It was probably worse back in the cabin, although that didn't have anything to do with why Galil was up here. Yitzhak Galil didn't normally insist on the perquisites of rank.

In garrison, insisting on special treatment was bad practice, an abuse of power. For Metzada, the purpose of rank and the chain of command is to get the job done, not to enforce class distinctions between officer and enlisted.

In the field, demanding perks was usually a bad idea, often a dangerous one. A company-grade Metzadan commander usually went in first. It was in many ways a safety mechanism—an officer whose troops thought they could live better without him might not come back out.

Still, this time Yitzhak Galil rode up in the right-hand seat of the helo instead of in back, with the platoon. For one thing, he could prop his bad leg up a bit better, without everybody bumping into it back in the passenger compartment.

More importantly, he still had to figure out where on the ground to put everybody. He wasn't pleased with himself. Looking at it objectively, as though he were his own rating officer, he decided that he should have done that already. Hell, he
had
done it already, but he wasn't satisfied with the locations of some of the OPs.

Reaching into his khakis, he unzipped his exposure suit all the way to his crotch and scratched at the itch over his belly.

Enough dawdling, he decided. Back to work. He zipped himself back up and spread the maps across his lap.

Damn it—being an officer, being in charge, was supposed to get easier. He was supposed to, eventually, be able to look at a map and figure out where to put his people.

His stomach wobbled with every lurch of the helo.

Nap of the earth flying or no, there was a fair chance that a Freiheim skywatch was somewhere along their twisting route, and that any second thousands of silcohalcoid wires would be cutting through the hull while the skywatch's computer took an extra couple of milliseconds to lock its 20mm main gun onto the bird.

His stomach threatened to rebel. Dammit, you were supposed to get used to this after awhile.

Just didn't work that way. He bent back to his maps.

It had sounded so simple at the staff meeting.

"Mopping up," shit.

Not that he objected to house-to-house fighting, particularly when you had an enemy that had been cut off. It was the only assault situation where technique reigned supreme, and where Galil knew that if everybody did their part by the numbers, one step after another, he could keep casualties low. You cleared a town street by street, entering houses from the top, working your way down, driving those who didn't surrender out into the street to be cut apart by your waiting autoguns.

He was good at house-to-house. He knew that his platoon was good at house-to-house.

So, of course, he wasn't fucking getting it. Shimon had given him recon.

And babysitting.

Shit.

"I've got an easy one for you. Foreplay, while the rest of us get fucked." The old bastard hadn't had the grace to blush. "Sit down," he had said. "I know your leg's hurting."

It was; he sat.

Shimon had been given a small, windowless office, probably intended for two staff officers to share. The brick walls were covered by an awful yellow paint that looked almost wet in the light of the overhead glowplates, and there was barely enough room for three chairs in front of the desk.

Mordecai Peled had set up a worktable next to the door and was hunched over a haphazard pile of maps and tech reports.

Peled looked even more tired than Galil felt: his lined face seemed to sag, particularly around the eyes, and his shoulders tended to hunch.

Poor bastard. It would have been kinder to stick a pistol in his ear.

Shimon Bar-El cocked his head to one side, as though he was trying to figure out what Galil was thinking, then shrugged, as though it wasn't worth the effort. "Prezzolini," he said, "the general running Second Division, knows his shit. Good soldier; he's doing the mech assault through Sector Three right. I think."

Peled nodded. "Classic armored cav tactics—smash through, then let somebody else clean up the mess behind you." He straightened. "You don't need to know the details, except where." He tapped a map, fingernails on the paper like ticks on a drumhead.

"Don't worry about it, Mordecai. Yitzhak won't be talking to anybody." Shimon Bar-El turned back to Galil. "The Freiheimers have been patrolling heavily all through here," Shimon said. "The Casas can't keep an OP manned, and I don't want them going in blind, or without good, accurate arty prep. Since we're going to be clearing the town—call it Trainville—after they crash through, I need some idea of the local order of battle so we'll know what kind of clearing job we're facing."

Peled tapped the map again. "Three observation posts scattered across here, each with a Casa forward observer."

Shimon took another puff of his tabstick and shook his head. "Not enough, Mordecai. I've called for six posts. Six FOs."

"Yes, General." Peled's lips whitened. "Each OP has about a ten percent chance of being discovered, even assuming that the Casas are up to sneaking around the woods at night. With six posts, General, it's about a fifty percent chance that at least one is discovered."

"So minimize the chances of discovery, but give me the six." Shimon turned to Galil. "Double some of them up, Yitzhak. We're attaching them to us, so they're under your orders. Put the worst FOs in three of the distant posts, and put your best teams up close. We'll pass fire orders from those through Greenberg, and Deir Yasin—I'll have them liaise with divisional arty."

Galil nodded. It meant that, once the assault started, the wrong people—the Casas—would have priority of mission, but that was to be expected.

Shimon pursed his hps. "Another thing. You're going to figure a lot of this out yourself, so I may as well tell you straight out: they're doing it right. Diversionary assault in the center sector—and there'll be heavier arty prep over there, to keep the Germans sure of their clever guess that the Casas are going to try to punch through in the wrong place.

"At zero minus one hour, your Casa FO takes over and he spots for the arty while they start rolling the tanks. The tanks punch through the right flank; rest of division bypasses the town, while we secure it. They're buying the real estate; we have to take it."

Yitzhak Galil looked at Shimon Bar-El, long and hard. "How sure are you of all this?"

Shimon Bar-El waved away the possibility that he was trying something tricky. "Sure enough to tell you I don't want you captured. And that you'd better locate your own exit-pill. Understood? Soft touch, Yitzhak. That's what I need from you—a nice soft touch. You get your people in there, and you keep them watching and waiting until you get further word. Then you report, spot, and get your heads down. Things have to roll through. Got it?"

"Got it."

"Anything special you want?"

Yeah,
he wanted to say.
I want that Ari Hanavi the hell out of my platoon.

But Shimon Bar-El already knew everything that Galil did; if Shimon wanted the asshole out, the asshole would already
be
out. Should have drummed him out of the family along with Slepak. Would have, if Ari didn't have connections that poor cowardly bastard Slepak didn't.

On the other hand, this was Galil's command.

"Damn it, yes, Shimon. Give me two good sharpshooters from Ebi's battalion, and give
him
the Hanavi brothers. You're talking about me going in with about thirty people, and six of them are Casas. I've got to be able to count on my people, and Ari Hanavi just doesn't measure up."

"I understand he had a head injury. Is that his fault?"

Galil didn't answer.

Shimon Bar-El toyed with a stylo. "Mordecai? You got an opinion?"

"Shit, I don't know." Peled shrugged. "I'm just the chief of staff—"

"Don't,"
Shimon Bar-El said. "Don't do that again, Mordecai, or I swear I'll relieve you on the spot. You're a full colonel, you were my deputy, and you flinched on a green light. I had to fire you, and you know it. Our friendship, if there's anything of it left, doesn't mean anything. Your hurt feelings don't mean anything. The question in front of us is whether or not the regiment is better off if I do what Yitzhak wants,
and nothing else
."

Yitzhak Galil felt like he used to when his parents had argued in front of him.

"Very well, sir." Mordecai Peled drew himself up straight. "Then I'd say that we're marginally better off with two sharpshooters in the main force, and not in an OP. The Hanavi kid's scores are good; odds are he'll do fine."

"So be it," Bar-El said. "Request denied."

Shit. Well, if it had to be done, Galil would do it himself. "When do we go in?"

"One squad in three days, to lay the groundwork and site the OPs."

Galil stood. "Then I'd better get some rest."

"No. Not you, not this time—Doc Zucker says you need the full five days to heal. You'll do that here. Skolnick can handle this."

"
I
choose who goes in first, not you." Galil shook his head. "You've already overruled me on personnel; don't try to micromanage my platoon, General. Recon squad goes in three days—the rest of us follow two days later?"

"Right. You've got five days to train your people. You think maybe a quick review of OP selection and setup is in order?"

"Yeah. It'll be a change from urban assault." Galil was already on his feet.

"How are they handling it, by the way?"

"In truth, not bad. I caught some of them with a cheap trick today, but they're pretty good." Galil shrugged. "If they do as well in OP, I'll be happy. I'm going to keep it simple and light. They're in good shape, and OP is a matter of endurance more than anything else. Two, three days of reasonable work, then let them rest." He tottered off toward the door.

"Good. Yitzhak?" Bar-El's voice stopped him.

"Yes?"

"Who are you sending in?"

"Skolnick." Yitzhak Galil smiled. "But it's
my
call, not yours."

Of the six Casa forward artillery observers assigned to him, two were absolutely useless—stumbling oafs who hadn't been able to go through the forested areas of Camp Ramorino without tripping over their own putzes.

The only thing Galil could think to do with them was stick them in an out-of-the-way OP, with their radios under the control of the two Metzadans, and with the firm hope that they wouldn't get caught.

Not that they'd stay caught: Sapirstein had specific orders on that score, and the only phut gun. If necessary, their bodies would be captured. Let the Freiheimers make corpses talk.

Orders might be orders, but Galil was taking only a minimum of shit.

That left four Casas that might be able to tell their left foot from their right, and could be reliably expected to call in the arty into roughly the right hex, if everything went right. If they didn't panic, if the radios were still working, if, if, if. . . .

He shut off the reading light and pulled up the screen.

The rain hammered down at the windshield, coursing off in manic rivulets.

It was dark in the cockpit, the faint glow from the instruments and the almost invisible flicker of the windshield display barely relieving the inky blackness.

He pulled the copilot's helmet down on his head and turned the screen back on. The cabin sprang into relief, the dim light of the helo's instruments flaring like a red beacon, the windshield display becoming a twisting net of paths and flashing crimson sources.

The pilot sitting next to him looked like some enormous insect, wires coming out of the top of his helmet like antennae, the oversized lenses of his night goggles riding high on his forehead, the screen in front of his face flat and blank from this side.

Beyond the rain-streaked window, the enhanced night was harsh whites on black, skeletal trees poking bonily from rolling, corpse-white hills.

"Thirty seconds to Site One," the pilot announced, his voice clear in Galil's ears. "No lights. Do you still wish me to dip and bypass? Or can I just bypass?"

"Dip and bypass," Galil said. "Maybe they're at Site Two."

The idea was simple: the helos would simulate dropping them off at one or more sites before and after actually dropping them off. If there were Freiheimer observers out there, they'd have only a twenty percent chance of guessing where Galil's people had been left.

Of course, it did make the chances of the helo getting blown out of the sky a lot worse, which was why the Casa pilot hated it.

The pitch of the blades deepened as the helo slowed. Galil shut the screen off and patted the panel the helmet was plugged into, wishing he could take it with him. The Freiheimer watchers in Menadito would have night goggles. Granted, not the super-light models that you could use on other worlds, but that was an advantage for the defenders: they could afford the thirty kilos of circuitry it took to process a starlit image into something usable. Galil couldn't afford to haul it—there was already too much mass in his Bergen.

The helo settled toward the ground, dropping rapidly until Galil could feel the surge as it went from true flight into transitional lift, riding almost like a skimmer on the cushion of air between the rotor and the ground.

Too soon, the helo started to move.

"No. Give it thirty seconds." It would take at least thirty seconds to disembark, if this was for real.

"Capitano—"

There was another helo two minutes behind this one, also half-empty.

"Count it out. Twenty more seconds."

With a muttered curse, the Casa pilot pushed the cyclic forward, jerking up on the collective. The nose dropped and the helo moved forward, quickly picking up speed as it climbed.