The Forlorn Hope (18 page)

The tank was faceted with blocks of sandwich armor. The hull and turret had no curves, but neither did they have any shot traps or plates vertical to a probable angle of attack. The sandwich was faced with sloped, density-enhanced steel, up to ten centimeters thick on the turret and bow slope. The central layer was a mat of monomolecular sapphire, its interstices filled with a high-temperature gum which acted to equalize mechanical stress. The sapphire filling was far inferior to steel in terms of stopping high-velocity projectiles, but under battlefield conditions it was impenetrable by lasers or shaped-charge warheads.

Behind the sapphire was a second layer of steel as thick as the first; and the first layer alone would shrug off rounds from the Company's shoulder weapons like so many drops of rain. Two tanks. Krishna.

One of the armored personnel carriers swung out on the column. It doubled back around the tank at the end, returning to squat at a point on the ridge overlooking the valley. The other seven vehicles continued to rumble down toward the truck. They kept a ten-meter separation and probed the brush with nervous twitches of their weapons.

The APCs were designed to carry a half-platoon of troops apiece. They were as large as the tanks and mounted an automatic cannon in a small turret forward. They were not significant threats as vehicles—their light armor would stop shell fragments and rounds from indig assault rifles, but the mercenaries' guns could penetrate them the long way. The danger of the APCs lay in the fact that they carried twice the number of troops as lay awaiting them. Nobody had to tell the Company's veterans how lethal a short-range burst from an assault rifle could be.

“Well, I'll tell you one good thing,” Cooper said to his partner. “It isn't us up there with that APC, waiting for somebody to step out and take a leak down our necks.… And it isn't us down
there,
either.”

The motion of Cooper's eyebrows sufficed for a gesture toward the stationary supply truck. The three figures in camouflage fatigues looked very small atop it. And against the bow and the pointing weapons of the lead tank, they looked hopelessly vulnerable.

*   *   *

“Fine, there's two of them,” the radio said in the attentuated voice of Albrecht Waldstejn. “Ignore the APCs. Your only target is the farther tank. Ah, farther from the truck, the second tank.”

There was a whisper of heterodyne in Sookie Foyle's ears as her command set rebroadcast the message. The radios woven into the helmets of the Company were short range. Under ideal circumstances, they were good for a kilometer. The fact that everyone's head was stuck below ground level made the present circumstances far short of ideal, and there was no damned room for error. One channel of the command set was dedicated to Waldstejn's helmet. Anything he said over the radio was banged out to the whole Company on a separate frequency.

Sookie was alone in a slit trench on a knoll to the northwest of the ambush. It was the direction from which it had seemed least likely that the Rubes would approach. That was not because Foyle was a woman or the Communicator
per se.
There were seven other women in the Company; and like those others, Sookie Foyle carried a gun and was expected to use it goddam well. At the moment, however, her duty was more important than that simply of a gunman. She had to set off the ambush itself.

The armored vehicles were dark blotches against the yellow-green of Spring foliage. From a slight elevation, the armor was as obvious in its approach as ticks crawling across a sheet. The few troopers huddled low in the notch of the valley had a view of only a few meters through the scrub. It was one of them who would have to detonate the make-shift mines on which the Company's prayers had to rest.

One of the figures below on the truck brushed his head in what could have been a wave toward the oncoming tank. “Don't think I'll dare key this again,” whispered Albrecht Waldstejn. “It's all in your hands, Sookie. For God's sake, don't give the word until a tank is in range. Whatever happens.”

She could not see the Cecach officer's fixed smile as he greeted the hostile armor. His back was to her, and the distance was long for that sort of detail, even through the gunsight. Waldstejn's transmission had clicked off at the last half vocable, suggesting more than reason permitted Foyle to believe.

Sookie tried to wet her lips with a tongue that was almost equally dry. Let him live, she prayed silently. Dear God, let the others both die but let him live.

Her hips moved in the narrow trench, pressing her groin tighter against the soil in an instinctive search for relief.

*   *   *

Sergeant-Gunner Roland Jensen could see nothing but the dirt just in front of his eyes. Enough light seeped through the cover sheet for that. Even without the cover, there was nothing to see above his shelter except brush, and he had seen enough of that during the march from the compound. Like much Cecach vegetation, the scrub that had retaken this valley dangled roots at intervals from the tips of branches. That had made the Company's flight an obstacle course, but at least it meant now that their pursuers were unlikely to notice the hiding places before they were intended to.…

Jensen was singing to himself, mouthing the words soundlessly as he always did to pass time. It was a habit to disconnect his brain until it was needed again. The blond man had a reputation for patience, for perfect stolidity.

“If in the field your grave you find,” he sang, starting the fourth stanza.

He was not at all patient, not with the ox-like torpidity of a Del Hoybrin, at least. But Jensen had learned to wait. The supply truck had contained caps, detonating cord, and the explosives themselves; but there had been no provision for initiating the explosion except electrically. It was a load of fungibles, after all. The Smiricky Complex had no need of the ignition hardware itself.

“That is not cause for crying.…” The ground was trembling. Part of Jensen's mind could hear the snap of branches springing up against armor plating. His helmet's commo worked. He had heard without difficulty Waldstejn's final relayed instructions. That meant Jensen would be able to hear the Communicator's own instructions as well, and there was no reason in the world to try to see anything for himself.

“In the green, green grass, just rest your ass.…” It had been easy to fuze the truck, easy enough, but the daisy-chain had to be initiated separately for the plan to have a prayer of success. The device chosen to set off the daisy-chain was Sergeant-Gunner Roland Jensen.

“And watch the clouds go flying!”

*   *   *

It was his own fault, but Allah save him from the fruits of his stupidity!

Lieutenant Hussein ben Mehdi pressed his knuckles against his brows as if he could somehow force out the awareness of what he had to do. He had hung the bundle from his pack only seconds before leaving the Operations Center for the last time. It only weighed two or three kilos, after all, and it might be useful.
Use
-ful! Allah save him from the Hell he had earned, it was that indeed. And who but Lieutenant ben Mehdi, the foresightful officer who had brought the bundle—who but he should be trusted
with
its use?

There might have been no reconnaissance drones accompanying the patrol … but not even ben Mehdi had been able to think that it was probable that the ground forces would not have that support. He alone of the Company—save for the Cecach trio, might Allah requite them!—was placed within the daisy chain. If there were drones at all, they were most likely to orbit the center of affairs, and even a few meters could make a crucial difference.

Ben Mehdi had no overhead shelter except his cover sheet and the acrid smoke. They had lighted a brush fire a few meters away from where he lay. It should confuse vision and the possible heat sensors on the Republican vehicles. Whether or not it hid the mercenary, the smoke certainly punished him with its smouldering lethality. His gas filters made each breath agony, but they did nothing to prevent smoke tendrils from making his eyes burn.

As Allah willed, but might he not will so terrible a thing! prayed Hussein ben Mehdi. Beside him in the trench lay the bundle of five, broomstick-slim anti-aircraft missiles. To fire them accurately, he would have to stand with the bundle extended on its launching staff. He would be as obvious as if he were waving a Federation flag. Ben Mehdi had both the experience and the imagination to picture how the Republican gunners would react.

Allah preserve him!

*   *   *

The lead tank came to a quivering halt twenty meters from the waiting truck. Behind the tank, the six vehicles which had followed it down from the ridge formed a hedgehog. Each armored personnel carrier pulled close to the vehicle ahead of it, then rotated 30° to one side or the other. That way the heavier bow armor and the turret weapon faced attacks from the flank, but the troops within the rear compartment could still use their weapons through the firing ports provided for them. The tank at the rear did a slow 180° turn on its axis so that its heavy laser covered the track the vehicles had just ripped through the scrub.

“Too far,” muttered Quade, kneading his thighs with hands that left sweaty patches on the fabric. “Goddam, won't get neither of them.”

“We'll work something out,” said Albrecht Waldstejn. Moving sideways so that he continued to face the armored vehicles, the Cecach officer stepped down to the roof of the cab. He used the edge of the microwave dish as a handhold. It was warm with use. The truck had a live feel though it was motionless in any gross sense. Hodicky had run the fans up to speed and then locked them flat while the trio mounted the truck. That way they could be seen. The fans were still spinning without load, ready to boost the vehicle on its air cushion as soon as someone dialed up their angle of attack.

There was presumably a radio discussion going on among the officers of the Republican patrol. No sign of it reached Waldstejn as he clambered down. He stepped on the driver's seat, then to the ground.

The armored vehicles had no external loudspeakers, and it was quite obvious that their crews were not anxious to unbutton until they better understood the situation. The tank's main gun followed Waldstejn on silent gimbals with the same precision that it would have tracked a target worthy of its ravening power. The automatic weapon on the bow slope occasionally moved. It was clearly ready to sluice the truck body with a stream of explosive bullets.

The patrol was halted, but all the vehicles still hovered a finger's width above the ground. A fire that had smouldered near to death now quickened with a gush of sparks. The draft beneath the skirts of the lead tank bathed the Federal troops with smoke and dust blown across the stubble of cut brush. The fans roared as they sucked air through protective gratings to replace leakage around the skirts. Because it was omnipresent, Waldstejn did not realize how loud the noise was until Hodicky tried to speak over it. The little private had followed Waldstejn to the ground, but he still had to shout to ask, “How close, sir? You see it now. How close?”

Staring at the dark bow of the tank did not put Waldstejn any nearer to being able to judge how thick its armor was. Too damned thick, almost surely.

The mass of the tank was an aura about it, and its three-meter height was no longer a statistic but a lowering presence. It was not the armor that mattered now, just the angle, and that number was not changed by Waldstejn's fear of the reality whose laser glared at him like the path to Hell. “Half this,” he said to his subordinate, “or a little less if you can, but—don't startle them whatever.” The tall officer began to walk toward the tank. His hands were in plain sight and his body was so tense that he was near to fainting.

Hodicky yelped at the change in plans, but it had taken Waldstejn's action to break the silent deadlock. There was a swish and a clang as a side-panel of the lead personnel carrier hinged down. The section of troops which the vehicle held moved nervously onto the ground. They blinked in the sunlight with their rifles pointed in various directions.

The real value of armored personnel carriers lies in the troops they carry. From their inception, however, there has been a tendency to use them as fighting vehicles rather than as infantry transporters. Even brave men hesitate to leave their dark cocoon for natural terrain searched by an enemy's fire. Rationally they may know that the metal box encasing them is more a magnet for fire than a protection in a hot engagement; but reason dies when the first bullets rake the field.

Republican designers had developed a simple solution for the problem. The troop commanders could throw switches and drop either or both side panels of their APCs. The thin armor-plating became a ramp which neither hindered the troops' deployment nor encouraged them to stay with their vehicle. Most of the present unit knelt, coughing at the smoke in the air. Six of the soldiers trotted toward Waldstejn. One of them was an officer marked by a pistol and a belt-slung radio. “Hold it right there!” he ordered Waldstejn.

Someone came to a decision. There was a change in the medley of the drive fans. Republican infantrymen turned in alarm. Waldstejn's own heart leaped in fear of the unexpected modification. Then the background noise died away as all the vehicles settled to the ground. Their fans slowed to idle on descending notes. The difference was as abrupt as that of walking out of a stadium where amplified music was being performed.

“Thank God you've found us, sir!” Lieutenant Waldstejn cried to forestall the Republican officer. The troops in dark uniforms clustered about their captive. Others from the group still near their vehicle moved uncertainly toward the two Federal privates. “My men and I were kidnapped from Smiricky #4 by a band of bloodthirsty cut-throats—off-planet dregs, every man of them and their whores too! Now that you're hot on their trail, we have a chance to get revenge. Why, you can
see
how the beasts used us.”