A Desert Called Peace

IX.

So many of Sada's officers were down that he was reduced to, if not quite leading charges himself, at least guiding the assault parties forward and giving them their final instructions. With another Sumeri commander, this sort of thing would have been expected and, as expected, such assaults would have petered out quickly once out of that stay-behind commander's gaze.

Sada, by contrast, spent so much time at the front, and so much time exposed to enemy fire, that his men understood that if he stayed behind it wasn't in regard for his own safety, but in regard to the mission. They knew they weren't being sacrificed by a coward. That his reputation for this kind of conduct went back almost twenty years didn't hurt matters.

The hardest thing for Sada to learn, this campaign, had been the effectiveness of modern night vision. In the Farsi War there had been little and what little there had been had been almost all on his side. In the Oil War of a dozen years before, while the enemy coalition had had a massive advantage, it hadn't affected him or his men much as they were in another part of the theater, killing Yezidis. They'd been bombed silly more than once, true, but night vision hadn't had a lot to do with it.

Here though, the disparity was both gross and everywhere. The enemy had sights that would see through dust, through smoke, through walls. He'd lost a lot of men figuring that out. Now his men didn't try to restrict their movements to the night that the enemy owned. Instead, day or night they moved underground wherever possible, in tunnels-often no more than crawlspaces-that stretched from building to building and under roads and parks. Even where tunnels had not been possible, trenches were, and these helped shield Sada's men at least from the ground mounted thermal and light amplifying sights, if not from those loitering above, in the air.

It was a hard-learned lesson: If the enemy owns the night, fight, where possible, in the day.

So, ratlike, Sada and his soldiers moved in small groups, through trenches and tunnels, between buildings and under and across roads and parks before emerging, several hundred of them, in a series of apartment buildings still held by his side. The worst part was crawling through a trench that led across a children's park. Sada had fretted over that badly, finally ordering enough troops into five buildings that dominated the park so that any aerial recon could be driven off or shot down. At the end of the park, the trench went underground again, before turning left to enter several apartment building basements.

In the apartment buildings' basements-named by Sada "Assault Position Ramadan"-too tired to be nervous over the possibility of aerial bombs or heavy mortar shells, Sada and his men slept the night, awaiting morning and their attack.

And I must attack, at least often enough to keep the enemy from feeling secure enough to methodically peel us away like the shell from an egg, Sada thought, as he drifted off to fitful sleep.

4th Cohort Command Post (Forward), 7/3/461 AC

The Forward CP was wherever Jimenez happened to be, with a couple of radiomen, a forward observer team with another radio, and a few more soldiers detailed as security.

It was just after midnight. Jimenez and his small party hunkered down behind some furniture hastily thrown up and then reinforced by sandbags, the whole mess being on the ground floor of a government building facing a broad and dusty open area. This had some children's amusements to suggest it had once been dedicated as a park.

One would have to look twice, though, to see that now. The children's amusements were smashed, littered here and there with bodies, and the otherwise smooth and level fields of dust were pockmarked with shell craters. Further detracting from the image of playground were the long trench dug into the field and the barbed wire that was strung from end to end.

Jimenez had reason to know the place was mined, too. Even if he might have forgotten, the grim light cast by the flickering flames of one of his Ocelots-immobilized by a mine and colanderized by rocket launched grenades-would have reminded him.

At least we got the chingada crew out.

Five apartment buildings, the center one of seven stories, flanked by two of six, with those flanked by two of five stories, dominated the open field. They were exactly the kind of unattractive and tasteless government housing projects one might have expected from any government involved in public housing; blank, featureless, concrete "machines for mass living" with all the humanity carefully excised.

Their ugliness was even worse now-even more real-for it was from these that fire had poured down on Jimenez's men as they'd tried to cross without adequate armored support. It was from these that the RGLs had smashed one of the few armored vehicles Jimenez had available to him.

Carrera had called, just after the last attack, asking if Jimenez couldn't somehow force the field and get a toehold on the buildings opposite.

"Patricio, there is no way I can get across on foot. We tried. We paid, too. If you've got a bright idea, let me know because I am fresh out."

"Wait, out." The radio had gone silent then for half a minute. When Carrera had come back he'd said, "Yes, I've got an idea. It'll be dangerous, though, and it will take some time to set up, to coordinate between the artillery, the flyboys and the Cazadors. Say… between four and eight hours. Hang tight. I'll get back with you."

The artillery wasn't a problem. Neither was getting half a dozen helicopters configured for a mixed infantry-gunship load. The problem was the Cazador Cohort.

"They're spent, Jamie," Carrera said, looking around at a collection of not so much dispirited as simply bone-weary men. "For at least a day, more likely two days, they're just out of it. Sending them back in, in this state, would be murder."

Soult had nothing to say to add to that. Instead, he simply asked, "What are you going to do about it?"

"Something I'd really rather not," Carrera admitted. "Call the CP and have Colonel Ridenhour meet us here."

Tactical Operations Center,

731st Airborne Brigade, northwest of Ninewa

Colonel Jeff Lamprey was frantic, frustrated and infuriated, his face beginning to match his flaming red hair. He paced the close confines of his tented command post, set up just out of range of 120mm mortars, lashing out at all who crossed his path. His headquarters troops tried to avoid him, as best they could.

There was a low thrum from overhead. This, Lamprey hadn't heard before, at least on his side of the river. He left the tactical operations center, or TOC-a fancy name for a command post, stepping outside in time to see a crude and primitive looking aircraft on high, grasshopper leglike landing struts set down lightly less than one hundred meters away. The door to the plane had painted on it an armored knight with curved wings attached to his back armor and rising overhead.

Lamprey, who had had a week to study the organization across the river recognized it as one of the Legio del Cid's light recon and command birds. He snarled.

The door to the plane swung open to allow a man in FSA-style desert camouflage to climb down. It was too far to see the man's rank clearly, but Lamprey, who had an instinct for general officers- indeed his entire life's ambition was to join that exclusive club-was reasonably certain that the just-arrived officer was not one. Perhaps he was a colonel like Lamprey himself, perhaps some lesser being.

Suppressing his rage and putting on an utterly false smile, Lamprey walked halfway to the Cricket to meet his visitor. He saw that the man was, like himself, a colonel and, upon closer inspection of the embroidered tape over his right breast pocket, that his name was Ridenhour.

Ridenhour didn't waste time on trivialities. "You want into the fight?" he asked.

"Damn straight. And if that son of a bitch on the other side-"

"Which other side?" Ridenhour asked with a wintery smile. "I have direct access to Dux Parilla and Legate Carrera. But if you want to talk to the enemy commander, Amid Sada, you're on your own… though you could probably funnel a message through the legion." Ridenhour smiled, "The relationship is quite close and rather cordial, considering."

"You know damned well who I mean, Ridenhour." Lamprey's frustration and anger threatened to leak out.

"Ah. Well, Carrera is willing to negotiate."

"Negotiate, hell, that motherf-"

"Ah, ah, ah," Ridenhour wagged a finger. "Temper, temper. Carrera had sound reasons for keeping you out, initially, just as he has sound reasons for letting you in now… in a limited fashion."

"In a limited… arrrghgh!"

"That's right. He is willing to let your brigade take some buildings. It's an important set of targets. They'll be plenty of medals and commendations to go around. If you're a) interested and b) willing to fall under his-rather, Dux Parilla's-command."

"Details?" Lamprey asked, forcing his temper down.

Ridenhour nodded; this was easier than he'd thought it would be. He pulled a map out of his left leg cargo pocket and began to speak, while pointing. "In about four hours there will be six helicopters, Volgan-built IM-71s, landing four kilometers south of your positions. At the moment they land there will be an aerial attack on the objective I mentioned. That will be followed by a mortar bombardment on and around the objective. When the helicopters land here, and this is assuming you agree, of course, you will board the first echelon of one battalion-call it one reinforced company of one hundred and forty-four men, maximum-or one reinforced platoon of each of three companies of one battalion; your call. The helicopters will make a total of three sorties each, so the most you are getting over there is a single battalion, plus maybe a little reinforcement."

Ridenhour looked up to see if Lamprey was still with him. Seeing that he was, he continued. "The helicopters will follow this route. They will halt, briefly, at a range of five hundred meters and blast the living shit out of the targets, which are five apartment buildings of five to seven stories, each. Then they'll move in by pairs. As pairs, they will fly in your men and drop them on top of the buildings. Your job is to clear them to ground level, then pass through a… well… call it a 'battalion' from the legion. The cohort concerned-their commander is Xavier Jimenez, good man-will fall under your command until they pass through, just as you will fall under legion command as soon as you board."

Lamprey's eyes lit up slightly. Ridenhour was morally certain that what he was thinking about was a comment on his next Officer Evaluation Report Support Form to the effect of, Commanded a foreign battalion during combat operations in Sumer in 461, just above the comment that said, Cooperated fully with allied forces during combat operations in severe city fighting in Sumer in 461.

"If-and it's a big if, I know-you do this and it works out," Ridenhour continued, "Carrera will use his assets to ferry over your entire brigade and subdivide the city into two sectors for operational purposes. You will still be under legion command, however. Do you accept?"

Before Lamprey could answer, Ridenhour laughed. "If you don't, he will take the city on his own, damn the cost, and you will look like the Grand Old Duke of York, except that the air transport that got you here so that you could sit around jerking off is much more expensive than the shoe leather the duke wore out marching his men up a hill and down again."

"I could simply ignore the bastard and cross on my own," Lamprey insisted. "I've got my people back in the rear working on getting me rubber boats even now."

Ridenhour sighed deeply. How to explain to one arrogant worldclass asshole that there was a much bigger, and infinitely more ruthless, asshole nearby.

"Have you ever stopped to consider that dropped bridge, Jeff?" Ridenhour asked. "Do you really think it was just a mistake? I've gotten to know the man and he doesn't make or permit that kind of mistake. Now what do you suppose he might be willing to do if you try to force a river crossing against his wishes? What do you think it will do to your career if there's a massive friendly fire incident here between you and the legion and you end up losing over half the total of men killed in this campaign? You did want to see stars someday, didn't you?"

Forward Command Post, 4th Cohort

Xavier Jimenez heard the IM-71s whop-whopping behind him as they moved from the captured airfield to cross the river to where the gringo Airborne troops waited. Truth be told, Jimenez had doubted the FS Army commander on the other side of the river would roll for it. It had been an awfully dirty trick, he thought, Patricio dropping the sole useable bridge right under the paratroopers' noses.

The helicopters' sound rose, then began to drop again. Almost immediately, four Turbo-Finches appeared overhead. Singly they began to dive on the apartment buildings, firing machine guns and rockets down to clear the rooftops of any enemy who might be waiting there. Jimenez didn't know how effective the attack would be, though he did see one enemy soldier running along a roof be driven over the side by a blast to fall, screaming and arms flailing, to the ground.

That attack went on for several minutes while the helicopters got farther away. Just as Jimenez lost track of them completely, the aerial attack stopped, the birds winging it out of the area on full throttle.

Even as the last Turbo-Finch emptied its rocket pods, there came a massive roar from the legion's heavy mortars, in firing position somewhere to Jimenez's rear. He'd seen and heard so much mortar fire of late that he didn't even bother to try to count the seconds until impact. Instead, at about the right time, he ordered his command party to, "Duck!"

The mortar rounds that came in were almost all airbursts, set off by variable time fuses as they neared the vertical walls of the apartment building or the ground below. Their shards sometimes landed near Jimenez and his men. More often, the shards crashed against the apartment buildings' walls or entered the rooms through open or smashed doors and windows. The firing stayed steady, at about thirty heavy rounds a minute, for several minutes.

Sometime after the heavy mortars had begun firing, Jimenez heard the sound of the helicopters coming from behind and growing. They held up and hovered at a holding position several hundred meters behind Jimenez. That was his signal.

"Patricio, this is Xavier. Cut the heavies."

"Roger, out."

The muzzle blasts from behind stopped, though the shells continued detonating for half a minute. The last four shells were smoke. These exploded and sent burning bits of phosphorus down to the ground trailing tails of white smoke. Jimenez counted them off, carefully, before ordering, "Fourth Cohort! Support the assault by fire!"

Rifle and machine gun fire erupted from Jimenez's side of the children's park.

Assault Position Ramadan

Sada was most pleased to wake up and discover he was not dead, as he had half-expected to become when he'd closed his eyes to sleep the night before. Around him, his men were also awakening, shaken rather than shouted at by their sergeants and lieutenants. The sun was just beginning to seep through the basement assembly area's few slits and crevices.

"Qabaash, check the troops to the right," Sada ordered. "I'll go left."

The two then split up, walking where possible and crawling where not, to inspect the soldiers Sada was about to send into an attack that was, on its face, hopeless. They returned after several minutes, meeting with the commander of the battalion about to assault.

"Let me go with them, Amid," Qabaash begged. The major just quivered with excitement at the pending assault.

"No," Sada answered, firmly. "You have other things to do." He turned to face the new battalion commander. "You know your orders?"

"Yes, Amid, " the captain commanding the assault battalion answered. "They're simple: attack, do damage, break through and go hunting through the rear for the support areas. Then become such a pain in the ass in the enemy's rear that he has to stop his attack to the northeast." The battalion commander-he was the sixth officer to hold the post in as many days-looked like a man who has resigned himself to death, as indeed he had.

"Allah's blessing upon you then," Sada said, placing one encouraging hand on the naquib 's shoulder. He looked at a firing slit, and then at his watch. Judging the time about right, Sada said, " Allahu akbar, my friend. Attack."

Ordering "Fixed bayonets" and taking up the cry, " Allahu akbar! " the battalion commander led his men out of their sheltering cellar and into the light.

" Allahu akbar! " came from three hundred throats as the storming party, pleasantly surprised not to be shot to bits as they emerged from the basements, charged across the street in full battle fury.

As they stormed, six blocks away a barrage was unleashed on another Sumeri position.

Command Post, Rocaberti's Century

Timely provisioning was something Rocaberti had always prided himself on, even back in the old days of the Balboan Defense Corps. He also saw much benefit in an orderly dispensing of rations. His acting centurion, still the sergeant who had previously led the century, had had other ideas. The sergeant had demanded to maintain fifty percent security rather than lining up three sections out of four to make chow go more smoothly and efficiently. The sergeant had demanded and Rocaberti had overruled him. All the sergeant could do now was get the men through the line and back to the front as quickly as possible. This he tried to do. He was still trying, when the heavy mortars to the rear had opened up on some apartment buildings well off to the right front. The men had shuddered, as nervous and tired men will, when the first shell bursts had gone off.

"Ignore it," the sergeant insisted. "Get your goddamned food and get back to the line."

The last time Manuel Rocaberti had heard massed artillery so close it had been at the commencement of the invasion of his country by the FSC. It had set him to trembling then. It did no less now.

Then, though, it had not been the artillery that frightened him so much as the prospect of a ground attack. That had convinced him to desert his command and run for it. So, when over the shock waves of the big guns he heard, louder and much closer, the massed cry of " Allahu akbar, " and looked up to see a mass of armed Sumeris boiling up seemingly from the earth, Rocaberti did three things: he dropped his jaw, he dropped his breakfast and he dropped the pretense of courage.

While his sergeant shouted, "Action front," and tried to push, pull and prod the legionaries into some semblance of a position they might hope to defend, Manuel Rocaberti, son of the Federated States Military Academy at River Watch, Class of 438, former major in the Republic of Balboa's Defense Corps, tribune in the Legio del Cid, bolted.

Daugher straight-armed the bolting, panic-stricken legionary, dropping him flat on his back. Carrera and his party had headed toward the sound of firing as soon as they'd heard it. When it had grown into a cacophony they'd broken into a run to get there. They'd slowed when they saw the soldier fleeing without his rifle.

Carrera bent down and, grabbing the soldier with one arm, backhanded him across the face with the hand of the other. "What the fuck is going on, trooper?"

The kid just shook his head back and forth saying, "I don't know, I don't know, I don't know-"

"Mitchell, this soldier is under arrest. Follow. The rest of you, either side of the street. Let's go see."

Carefully, the headquarters party advanced, Carrera just behind Bowman on one side, Daugher taking point on the other. Mitchell, taking up the rear, prodded the arrested soldier forward at muzzle point. They saw no more fleeing troops. On the other hand, they did see small groups of Sumeris advancing across an intersection without any obvious opposition.

Carrera took the radio microphone from Soult. He called Parilla first, to tell him what he thought had happened and to warn the Dux to be prepared to defend the CP and the airfield. Parilla was already shouting instructions before he released the microphone on his end.

Confident that at least the Command Post wouldn't be taken unawares, Carrera next called the Cazador Cohort.

"Tribune," he'd said, "I don't care if your men are tired. I don't care if they're dragging their guts behind them. Meet me at…" he stopped to look at his map… "Meet me at Checkpoint Alpha Seventeen. Now… yes, your whole fucking cohort."

"What now, Boss?" Bowman asked, eagerness and excitement in his voice.

"Now? Now we go seal off that intersection and try to buy some time."

Daugher and Bowman said, together, "Yeehaw!"

Carrera's only responses were a smile, the word, "Lunatics," and the order, "Let's go."

Jimenez had to admire the elegance of the thing. While his men fired up the lower stories of the apartment buildings across the park, the choppers pulled pitch and lifted up above Jimenez's own positions. They advanced above the park blazing away, lacing the fronts of the enemy-held buildings with fire. As they crossed from overhead to his high front, Xavier saw that even the crew chiefs were leaning out the side doors and windows to add their machine guns to the din.

With no significant return fire coming, the center two IM-71s arose, then swooped down, one falling in behind the other, to the center-and tallest-of the apartment buildings. The first disgorged its troops there, then moved forward to give room to the helicopter following.

When it did, the far side of the building-the side where there was no suppressive fire and which had not been touched by the mortar barrage-erupted with machine guns and RGLs. The helicopter tried to get away, but its own downdraft corrected at least one grenade in flight, straightening it out by the wind on the fins and causing it to surge upwards. This struck it on the tail, wrecking the tail rotor and causing the helicopter to tilt half over to one side and go into an uncontrolled spin. Spinning still, it spiraled to the ground behind the apartments and crashed in smoke and flames. Pinned tight by centrifugal force, none of the crew escaped.

Jimenez didn't see the crash. He caught a single glimpse of the spinning tail boom and then heard the fiery explosion. "Shit," he said quietly, nausea gripping at his stomach.

Lamprey and his RTOs landed even as the previous bird was beginning its death spiral. The pilot of the IM-71 that disgorged this second group saw what had happened to his predecessor and had no intention of following. Fortunately, he didn't have to. The first bird had taken the dangerous route out to clear the rooftop as quickly as possible for the second. Since only two were scheduled to carry troops to the tallest of the buildings, the second chopper didn't have to get out of anyone's way and could take the time to lift and do a fairly leisurely turn.

Once it had cleared the rooftop, the third and fourth helicopters eased in to the lower buildings flanking the center one. Before they touched down, forty of the forty-eight paratroopers of the 731st that had already landed had burst through the rooftop and were clearing out the Sumeris hiding below in vicious, no quarter, room-to-room and hall-to-hall fighting.

Lamprey, staying on the roof, led from the rear.

Rocaberti stopped running only after having sprinted half a mile and zigzagged several times to make sure he was out of the line of fire. It was a not unimpressive performance from a man in his early forties. Gagging with exhaustion, he leaned against a wall to catch his breath. Behind him, he heard enough firing to suggest that his entire command had not been exterminated.

This was a problem.

When Rocaberti heard the roar of a big gun-a tank, he thought- he knew he had a really big problem. If the century somehow held out there would be witnesses, dozens of them, against him at his future court-martial. He considered the way Carrera had treated enemies who had broken the rules. What would he do to nominal friends who had? Thinking of ropes and short drops, the tribune automatically felt around his neck.

Not that Rocaberti considered Carrera a friend; the legate had always been a bit distant. In fact, the sinking feeling in the deserter's stomach might not have been quite so deep if Carrera had been a friend.

"What difference does it make though?" he wondered aloud. "Jimenez is his best friend and Carrera would even have him shot if he'd run as I did. Fuck; fuck; fuck! Why did I ever let my uncle force me back into uniform?"

Though it did not answer the question, another blast from a tank's muzzle half a mile behind him did punctuate it.

Mendoza had to admit, the food was a bit better this morning than it had been. He sat in his driver's compartment, surrounded by the dials and controls of his tank, eating breakfast, fried sausage and some yellow-greenish stuff that probably had egg in its ancestry somewhere. Del Rio had gone and fetched it for all three men; the infantry century they supported still hadn't quite figured out what to do with them.

Between bites Mendoza watched the legion's attack aircraft swoop in on some targets blocked by the buildings to either side. Between those attacks, his mind wandered to a pretty girl in a yellow dress…

The cry of " Allahu akbar " echoed down the street. Mendoza heard Sergeant Perez shout, "Oh, shit!" He looked up from his food and saw a part of the Sumeri wave washing down the street. Without orders, Mendoza pushed the starter button to bring the tank's engine to life. With only the slightest hesitation he tossed the food up and out of the driver's compartment, then pulled on his combat vehicle crewman's helmet in time to hear Perez ordering, "… HE, Infantry."

The tank rocked as del Rio fired a round point blank into the oncoming Sumeris. The shell exploded a bit farther than would have been ideal but the Sumeris went down anyway, killed or wounded or merely stunned by the explosion behind them.

Perez shouted into the microphone, "Jorge, back up! Back up, dammit!" Mendoza threw the tank into reverse and stepped on the gas. These actions were automatic; he didn't need to see. Instead, he looked up and saw parties of the enemy racing along the roofs on both side of the street. Several of them carried rocket grenade launchers.

Distracted by the threat above, Mendoza lost track of the direction his tank was going. Instead of moving directly back, it lurched at a slight angle to the lay of the street. Thus, just after passing an intersection, the left rear struck the wall of a building, smashing it and lurching up on the mound of adobe fragments it created. The tank bellied up and stuck on the mound.

Perez was firing the heavy, pintle-mounted machine gun in front of the commander's hatch, the steady hammering feeling like blows to the driver. Maybe Perez saw the attackers above; maybe he didn't. The firing stopped, in any case, when the tank crashed into the wall and came to a sudden halt. Mendoza, stunned but not out, keyed the microphone on his CVC and tried to warn Perez. "Sergeant Per-"

Whatever warning he was about to give was cut off when an RGL round, fired from above, struck the top of the tank, over the engine compartment. Jorge didn't see the hit, but he felt the sudden overpressure all around him as if it were a set of massive clubs, applied equally and simultaneously to every square inch of his body.

He didn't feel the second round impact on the roof of the turret. Nor did he feel it when a round of the ammunition, caught halfway between the armored carousel below the turret and the breechblock of the gun, went off.

Having seen off the spoiling attack, Sada, Qabaash and a few of their men retraced their steps back toward the command post. It was daylight now and, even though he knew in principle that he was at least as likely to be seen crossing the trench across the park at night as in the day, it still took all the courage Sada could muster to take that first crouched-over step out into the sunlit trench.

The shelling had stopped, which seemed to Sada a good thing as the shards from the airbursts might well have found them out even below ground level in the uncovered ditch. On the other hand, the helicopters above seemed as threatening.

"But they're not looking down here at all," Sada said to himself. "Hmmm. If I had an RGL would it be worth the shot? No matter, since I don't."

Halfway across the park Sada and his party turned left and followed a narrower, zigzagging section of the trench that led to the apartment building's basements. Nobody saw them, all the enemies' eyes still fixed on the buildings looming above.