Read Come and Take Them-eARC Online
Authors: Tom Kratman
Tags: #Military, #Science Fiction, #General, #Action & Adventure, #Fiction
Thus, while this battalion had repeatedly demonstrated before that it would come over land, most of the battalion was actually currently loading landing craft. The rest were boarding helicopters. This was, in fact, the only area of general surprise anyone on the Tauran Union Security Force-Balboa had managed to spring on the Balboans. This was also probably not the first time in human history that a military organization had gained a distinct advantage because of its distance from headquarters. Moreover, the one battalion due to fly in from the
Mar Furioso
side had never at all rehearsed its assault, in conjunction with the Fourteenth Anglian, on Muñoz-Infantes Castilian battalion on Fort Williams, so surprise there could be expected to be fairly complete as well.
The Fourteenth Anglian left one company, “Mad Dog” Alpha, on the Fort Melia Pickup Zone, or PZ, to move by helicopter to assault the Fourth Corps headquarters in Cristobal. The better part of the battalion headquarters company was left to guard the fort. The remainder, two rifle companies, the battalion tactical operations center, or TOC, and the scout, mortar, and antitank platoons had moved, well before H Hour, by foot and truck to the western edge of post, to where the water touched, right behind the dental clinic. There, the landing craft were waiting, which took those companies and platoons to the back side of Fort Williams. Rain, not unexpectedly, began to drive down into the open topped boats once they were out in the lake.
The boats dropped off the troops in waist deep water about a mile from the main trapezoidal barracks for the post. Fifty caliber machine gunners on the boats trained their guns on the shore, just visible through the driving rain. This was the tensest moment. If the Castilians were waiting for them there would be a terrible massacre.
Each man who could see breathed a sigh of relief as the point man from each of the four boats reached shore without incident. The Castilians, like the legion, seemed to have bought the previous month’s demonstrations. Quickly the rest of the men were landed ashore, soaking and bug eaten but otherwise fresh and unbloodied. The Scout Platoon raced along the open area between the locks that faced the Shimmering Sea and the jungle. Behind them, the rest of the battalion, minus Mad Dog, assumed a widely spaced tactical column and began the march to the trapezoid to the south.
A thousand meters in, the jungle fell off, opening up to the post golf course, a relic of days when the FSC had owned this ground. Here the column turned south by southwest, even as Company B turned further out, pushing the pace harder, as well, to bring the two rifle companies’ points on line. Both companies used the railroad tracks they’d just passed over as reference points.
The post seemed nearly deserted. It was, in any case, as quiet as a cemetery. Without opposition, the soldiers of the Fourteenth Infantry glided noiselessly through the tree-darkened and night-shaded streets and alleys, between the bungalows of the family housing area on the edge of the golf course, and right up to the long building that marked the northern limit of the quadrangle. If they made a noise it was covered by the heavy rain pelting them and everything around them.
To the south, on the sharp-sided hill overlooking the fort, lights shone from the Castilian battalion’s headquarters. That was the scout platoon’s target, theirs and the antitank platoon’s. Those two passed west of the post’s octagonal theater, heading almost due south.
There was yet one more way in which the Anglians benefitted from lack of close supervision from higher. Because Castile was part of the Tauran Union, even if their battalion in Balboa was in a state of mutiny, the roles of engagement said that Muñoz-Infantes’ men were to be given the chance to surrender before they could be engaged. The Anglian commander had read those orders, smiled, and said, “Fuck that shit.”
Only two minutes after H hour a green star cluster, the signal to begin the attack, streaked overhead. The clouds glowed green above as red tracers lanced out, smashing windows and walls, and bowling over such Castilians as began pouring out of their barracks.
Clay Dairy Farm, Southwest of Fort Melia, Balboa, Terra Nova
The boys in the warehouses around Clay Farm and at other points on the Shimmering Sea side didn’t, really couldn’t, know if the ruse had been successful. They could only know that they were still alive, and draw what limited conclusions could be inferred from that. So they waited, not knowing if the next few minutes or hours would bring a rain of Tauran bombs to send them to eternity.
One entire maniple, of seven organized by the Academy at
Puerto Lindo,
was situated in a largish warehouse south of
Avenida
Scott. Inside that warehouse was a small office set aside for the commander of the Academy, Legate Chapayev. The phone in that warehouse rang, causing every cadet in the warehouse to tense at the sound. No one would call such a place at this hour unless it was to call them to action or send them back to school. However much they may have hoped, none believed they would be returned to their academy soon. The maniple commanders and academy staff, regular Balboan and Volgan officers, stood up as Chapayev’s door opened.
“We have firm word. The Taurans are on the move all over the country. Many more are flying in from the Tauran Union. Based on flight times they are expected to hit within fifteen to twenty minutes. The plan is unchanged. While they are hitting Fourth Corps, we march to Melia and Lone Palm and kick them in the ass. Only then, when they’re reeling from the loss of their base, do we march to relieve Fourth Corps in Cristobal and its subordinate units. Fourth Maniple—”
Chapayev stopped speaking as the phone rang again. Not having bothered to close his office door, his voice reverberated off of the walls of the warehouse—“What? Fuck! By boat? Shit… All right…we’ll handle it. Yes,
Suegro,
I won’t let you down or Maria wouldn’t give me a moment’s peace for the rest of my life. Just hang on, it’s a longer march. But we’ll be there as soon as possible.”
However he’d sounded in semi-private, when he stepped out of the office Chapayev looked the very soul of calm. His eyes hunted for his Fourth Maniple commander. Seeing him, Chapayev said, “Koniev?”
“Yes, sir.”
“The Taurans are hitting the Castilians at Fort Williams. It’s odd, since they didn’t rehearse that. No matter. The tanks and Ocelots are yours and your maniple’s. Load up and fight your way to Williams, relieve the Castilians under attack there. Once they are relieved put yourself under the command of Colonel Muñoz-Infantes. He will have further orders by then. I hope.
“Everybody, ready to march within ten minutes. Mortar and rocket launcher batteries can unmask now. Air defense can unmask now, weapons free, engage anything that flies and is in range. Tanks and Ocelots can start engines now. Recon maniple move out as soon as you’re ready. You had better already
be
ready. Report when your tail is out of the buildings. Now, all of you, go!”
At Chapayev’s command his officers left to carry out their instructions. Within minutes the sound of tank engines overpowered the pelting of the rain of the warehouse’s tin roof.
Some miles away shouting cadets, mostly the younger ones, rushed out of the makeshift barracks to break open conexes containing their 81mm and 120mm mortars, and Grad rocket launchers. Manhandling—rather, boy handling—the tubes into position went fairly quickly. Then the cadets returned to cart the heavy boxes of ammunition to the firing positions. An instructor or older cadet went forward of each firing position to lay the guns and launchers in with an aiming circle. The guns were soon up and had enough ammunition on hand for immediate needs.
By the time the indirect fire weapons were ready at Sabanita, the Recon troops had moved out from Clay Farms. Chapayev had the rifle maniples to follow in two long, snaking columns. Between them, on
Avenida
Scott, Koniev’s tanks and Ocelots, the drivers and commanders using night vision goggles, took the asphalt road in between the two lines of foot troops. The armor quickly outpaced the infantry cadets.
Fifty meters to either side of the last tank, teams of cadets carried and laid communication wire from the battalion to the TOC and fire support coordinator at the warehouse.
As soon as Koniev crested the hill at Magdalena, he saw the sky in front of him lit up with the flashing fires of the Tauran Fourteenth Infantry, the return fire of the Castilians, and the glow of at least one burning building.
“Faster, boy,” Koniev said into the microphone of his vehicle crewman’s helmet. “Faster or there won’t be much left to save.”
Chapter Forty-two
In one of his handwritten memos to himself entitled, “Things Worth Remembering,” the methodical Arthur Currie had included as Item 3: “Thorough preparations must lead to success. Neglect Nothing,” and as Item 19: “Training, Discipline, Preparation and Determination to conquer is everything.”
—Pierre Burton,
Vimy
Santisima Trinidad II,
Bahia de Balboa,
Mar Furioso,
Terra Nova
She was at least the eighth vessel to bear the name. Moreover, in all honesty, the name was not a particularly lucky one. Of the preceding seven, three had been captured, of which one had sunk in a storm, taking its prisoner crew to the bottom. Another, the most recent predecessor, had had to ram itself into another ship, a terrorist suicide ship, to save the ship it was escorting at the time, the aircraft carrier
Dos Lindas.
Glorious and admirable that might have been. Lucky it was not.
Now the ship, a small corvette—about nine hundred tons displacement—formerly of the Volgan Navy, patrolled around the legion’s major training base on the
Isla Real
.
The crew was on alert, there having been reports—confused and fragmentary to be sure—of fighting on the mainland. Still, “alert” didn’t mean much to a ship with twenty rather short-ranged surface-to-air missiles, a 76mm gun, a twin mount with 57mm guns, a number of elderly antisubmarine weapons, including a rather massive array of antisubmarine rocket lauchers forward of the bridge, and radar that was, charitably, not of the best and latest.
In any case, alert or not, the corvette was not particularly stealthy, while the carrier launched aircraft that popped up over the
cordillera central
and acquired it was quite stealthy. A more modern radar would not have helped.
That aircraft, a P-53 off of the carrier HAMS
Furious
, launched a single Dark Cloud antishipping missile. In this case, the half-ton warhead of the Dark Cloud was probably overkill.
The missile, rather stealthy itself, followed the lay of the land until reaching Balboa’s northern shore, then sped out just above the waves at about a thousand kilometers an hour for the last sighted position of its target. It neither knew nor cared the nature of the target.
Twelve minutes after launch, give or take a bit, the missile went high, reacquired the
Santisima Trinidad
, then kicked in rockets to go high supersonic. It struck the corvette about four-tenths of the way back from the bow, right below the superstructure, where the radar return signal was greatest. The half-ton warhead was bad enough, but the hit was also terribly close to the antisubmarine rocket launchers just forward of the bridge. Worse, on a small ship like this one, the ammunition magazine had to be automated and placed near to the weapons they served. And armor was, of course, right out. The ship didn’t so much blow in two as disintegrate by phases.
Most of the crew of the
Santisima Trinidad
never knew or saw what hit them. Those of the sixty who survived the shock of the initial hit did so with multiple broken bones, flash burns on their exposed skin, ruptured organs, and even a few inhalation burns. If any lingered in agony after surviving that, they probably found it a blessing when the propellant and warheads of the ninety-six antisubmarine rockets ahead of the bridge went up. Even exclusive of the propellant, the warheads massed two and a half tons of high explosive.
SSK
Megalodon
,
Mar Furioso,
Bahia de Balboa,
eighty kiloyards north of the
Isla Real,
Terra Nova
Auletti ripped the headphones off his head in agony, as if someone had set off a large firecracker in each ear. “Son of a
BITCH!
” he exclaimed. Then, after shaking his head to clear it, he told Chu, “Skipper, that was an explosion. A big, and very brissant, explosion.”
“War then,” said Chu, softly and sadly. He was sad for the commencement of the war, not for anyone in particular who’d been lost in it already. He’d been there before, seen it before, and learned that, while he could do it, it wasn’t anything to cheer over.
“Start warming the tanks.”
The Meg class had an odd—really a unique—method of flooding and evacuating its ballast tanks. Like the pressure hull, these were cylindrical. Basically, the boat took advantage of the very low boiling temperature of ammonia. The ammonia was kept inside of flexible tubing made of fluorocarbon elastomer with a seven hundred and fifty angstrom thick layer of sputtered aluminum, followed by a five hundred angstrom layer of silicon monoxide with an aerogel insulation layer. Heating elements inside the tubes—called “rubbers” by the sailors and designers, both—heated the ammonia into a gas, which expanded the “rubbers” and forced out the water. To dive, the ammonia was allowed to chill to a liquid rather than be heated to a gas. Chilling was really only a factor when quite near the surface, and then only if the water was unusually warm.
“Bring us up to fifty meters. I want to try to lift a radio buoy to see if we can get some information as to where we can apply ourselves best.”
Fuerte
Guerrero, Balboa, Terra Nova
Sergeant Major Cruz had been under artillery and mortar fire before, in Yezidistan, Sumer, Pashtia and Kashmir. He’d also had a taste of it in training. Those had, in many ways, been worse than what he experienced now. True, the Tauran shells were far more accurate. And their sizzling shards drove Cruz’s head down again and again. But the intensity of fire was not so great as the Sumeris had thrown, nor was there the surprise the enemy in Pashtia frequently had counted on. Moreover, Cruz’s concrete shelter was rather better than a scrape hole in the sand.
Give the Devil his due, though,
thought Cruz, as a nearby barracks wall was shattered by a direct hit,
these fuckers are good.
The real bitch here was that the incoming artillery, for all that it wasn’t killing many legionaries, was still almost completely effective in keeping their heads down, or ruining the aim of those ballsy enough to put their heads up. This allowed lift after lift of helicopter-borne infantry—Cruz thought he saw a couple of field pieces, too—to descend to the parade field, golf course, park, causeway…pretty much anywhere they wanted to, form up at their leisure, and move to assault positions.
Now let’s hope Cara listened and did not pick up a rifle to try to help.
Cruz hadn’t heard from the commander of the cohort, still less from Legate Chin. He was, he believed, the senior man at least in this barracks building.
Decision’s mine, I guess
, he thought.
When the time comes, there won’t be a lot of time to give orders. So…
“Fix bayonets!” He shouted, loudly enough to be heard throughout the building, even over the incoming artillery. Other people picked up the cry and passed it on: “Fix bayonets!”…“Fix bayonets!”
And
, mused the sergeant major,
that’s as much about letting each other know we’re determined to stick it out to the bitter end as it is about actually sticking it to someone else.
Carrera’s Command Post,
Lago Sombrero
ASP, Balboa, Terra Nova
Tracers drew bright lines in the sky to the south. Carrera watched them calmly, no movement or expression betraying his nervousness. Around him the RTOs of his command post called off the morning’s disasters. Carrera closed his eyes and simply listened to the reports of invasion.
“For Christ’s sake, sir, order the cadets into action. They’re murdering us!” exclaimed Siegel. In fact, Carrera had ordered one and permitted another of the six cadet cohorts to attack. It was around the Tauran main effort that he was holding them back.
“Not yet, Sig,” he answered. “Not yet.”
“What are you waiting for?”
“I want them to feel like they’re doing well,” answered Carrera.
At Siegel’s low-voiced curse Carrera explained further. “Sig, I want them to be fully committed before we make our move. I want every body they can commit to action committed and tied down. Up to a point, the longer I can wait, the more committed they will be.”
“Then why permit us to act here and around Cristobal?”
Carrera sighed. Not everyone had quite his grasp of timing, and human possibilities.
No shame in that, though
. “Here,” he answered, “we’re too far away for them to react. For Cristobal, it’s almost as far away and they don’t have the mindset that the Shimmering Sea side much matters.
“Okay, sir,” Siegel conceded. “That’s fine for us, but there’s a moral factor in there. What about those poor bastards taking it up the ass? They need us to move now.”
“Sig…they’re buying me…buying Balboa…time with their lives. There are worse ways to go, I think.”
Carrera continued to listen to the reports without obvious emotion. One could hardly have told, from anything he did or said, that he was bleeding inside. Finally there came a report that the Gallic parachute brigade had reached the defensive perimeter of Herrera Airport. The cadets were fighting a desperate holding action. There, though, Carrera needed to give no orders. Third Corps was already mobilizing as quickly as one could hope for. Let the cadets hold on for as much as ninety minutes and the Gallic Paras would be facing eighty-
thousand
Balboans with vengeance in their hearts.
Carrera looked south to where fighting raged at the
Lago Sombrero
garrison area. He turned to Siegel slowly. “Let the big dog hunt,” he said simply. With a shout of triumph Siegel ordered the cadets’ commander, Sitnikov, to emerge and attack.
* * *
The Anglian Paras’ command post was nothing more than a half dozen radios and their operators clustered around the brigade commander. Two of the radio operators were wounded from some strange four pointed jacks they had rolled on in landing. Allegedly several hundred more men, maybe as many as a thousand, had also been perforated by the caltrops, and wounded worse when they pulled the barbed monstrosities out. Still, they were Paras and Paras didn’t stop for little wounds. The men in the line battalions continued the attack even as agonized radiomen stuck to their commander despite the pain and dripping blood.
The area around the command post was lit by the flames of burning legionary self-propelled antiaircraft guns. By the flickering firelight the brigade commander, Brigadier Porter, read his map and received reports of his battalion’s consolidation and movement to action.
The flames of the burning ADA pieces were some comfort to Porter. Had the Royal Anglian Air Force failed to take them out initially his brigade would have been dog’s meat on the drop zone. Now they had a decent chance to accomplish their mission without heavy loss.
One thing bugged Porter. Though his men had driven the Balboans back to the general vicinity of their barracks, there were reports—as in the report of a cannon’s muzzle—coming from the south-southeast. And he had limited contact with the battalion down that way.
Tracers arced over Porter’s head as he issued orders into the radio. The legion troops were apparently still in the fight. To suppress this, or destroy it, from time to time the aerial gunships lashed down at the legionaries in the barracks and bunkers to the north, west, and east with a stream of fire: 20 millimeter Gatlings, interspersed with 40 millimeter cannon, highlighted with blasts from the gunships’ 105s. Wherever their streams of death touched, resistance ceased—at least temporarily.
Had Porter been one for reflection he might have paused at how unfair the discrepancy in firepower was. Neither Porter’s character nor his mission allowed for much reflection at this point. Tough enough to take out the cadre of a mechanized corps from the air, in the dark. Any advantage he had seemed no more than fair.
One of the RTOs handed Porter a microphone. It was the commander of his second battalion, and that commander had a complaint.
* * *
At almost the first sign of the Tauran assault
Lago Sombrero
’s defenders had fired off their caltrop projectors, over a hundred otherwise innocuous looking plastic drums. Nearly a million of the sharpened four prong jacks now littered the field. The caltrops were slowing down the brigade’s assault on the legionary positions.
Over and over again, Porter’s battalion commanders called to say they were being delayed by the nasty little obstacles more than by the legionary fire that covered them.
* * *
“A quarter of my men have been wounded by those caltrops, Porter,” said the second battalion commander, inferior in rank but in the peculiarities of Anglian military culture a complete social equal.
“Yes…yes…we’re still moving to the north to continue the attack. But a company slows down when its men do, and a man slows down when every rush might land him on four or five spear points, or every step might mean five centimeters of sharp, barbed plastic through the foot.”
That was worrisome, of course, and added to Porter’s natural anxiety. Even so, that anxiety began to lessen as the first battalion commander reported that the Balboans in one of the barracks had been silenced—dead or driven out—and his troops were clearing the building.
Porter’s satisfaction was short-lived. So far his regiment had landed and consolidated with relatively little opposition. Then, from overhead, he heard the freight train sound of incoming artillery, a lot of it, coming from the southeast. Porter called for a gunship to suppress those legionary. That got him a, “Wilco,” followed shortly by the sound of powerful aircraft engines and a very satisfying stream of tracer fire to the southeast.
The commander of the Anglian Paras felt only a momentary satisfaction. In contrast to the sheets of tracers descending to the ground, three streams of green tracers arose and intersected on the gunship, causing it to fireball in the tropic night.
* * *
Carrera still stood atop the ammunition bunker that served as the Cadet Cohort’s command post, as well as his own. From where he stood he could see the red and green tracers arcing up over the barracks to the north.
A good sign,
he thought.
If they’re still fighting now they should hold out strong until the cadets can stick it up the Paras’ asses.