spirits.
Navy and Marine Corps public affairs officers had already characterized
the landings, however, as “meeting little opposition” and “suffering
only very minor casualties,” all in all a “remarkably clean and
uncomplicated, surgically precise strike.”
0835 hours (Zulu +3)
Above Arsincevo Tombstone lay flattened in a pool of near-liquid mud,
face-down, hands clasped over his head, as the ground beneath him bucked
and rocked. Thunder passed, caressing him; he looked up and saw smoke
boiling into the sky.
“Goddamn it, Matt!” Pamela screamed from her patch of mud a few feet
away. “Tell them we’re on their side!”
“Rule number one of combat, miss,” Chief Geiger growled from close by.
“Friendly fire isn’t.”
Slowly, Tombstone rose to his knees, staring after the departing
aircraft in time to see sunlight flash from the wings of the two A-6
Intruders that had just spilled an avalanche of high explosives–a
“force package” in the sterile lexicon of official reports–across the
top of the ridge.
There was nothing, nothing more demoralizing in warfare than being
attacked by your own side.
Rising unsteadily from the mud, he jogged toward the smoke. Boychenko
was there, pointing and giving orders as Russian soldiers trotted toward
the crest of the ridge. Several vehicles had been hit on the road and
were burning furiously, including, he noticed, the ACN van. Oh, God, no.
..
But there were no bodies, no screaming wounded. He spotted PO/2 Kardesh
standing near the general. “Natalie!” he called. “Anybody hit in that
attack?”
She shook her head. “I don’t think so, sir! But the general asked me
whose side those Intruders were on. He says some of the men are a little
shaken by that attack!”
“I can believe that.” Fortunately for the rebel column and its American
auxiliaries, the Intruders had dumped their load on the vehicles, which
had been standing empty along the Kerch Road, on the west side of the
ridge.
“Tell him he’s got to get the panels out!” Tombstone told her.
“I did! He said this ridge is too exposed, that we have to try moving
closer to the refinery. Otherwise, we’re going to get flanked up here.”
“God save us from military geniuses.”
Natalie blinked at him. “Pardon, sir?”
He hadn’t realized he’d muttered the thought aloud. “Never mind. Come
on. Translate for me.”
Tombstone could hear the sound of the ground battle developing up ahead,
on the east side of the ridge, a sharp rattling and cracking of
automatic weapons. As they reached General Boychenko, he was conferring
with several of his officers. He looked up from a map as Tombstone and
Natalie approached. “Ah, Captain Magruder,” he said, raking Tombstone
with his eyes. “You. .. are one of us now, da?” He added something in
Russian, and his officers chuckled.
Tombstone looked down at his full dress uniform ruefully, now so coated
with mud that he was very nearly as well camouflaged as the Spetsnaz
troops in their camo fatigues. Both of his shoulder boards with their
four broad gold stripes were gone, and he’d pocketed his medals during
the drive from Yalta. His uniform was no longer blue, but a smeared mix
of black and clay-brown. It felt as though his face were probably
colored the same way.
“General,” Tombstone said. “if you don’t get those marker panels out,
we’re going to be one big, happy bull’s-eye on top of this hill.” During
his planning session with Coyote, they’d agreed that cloth ground
panels–parachute material or canvas or whatever else could be scavenged
for the purpose–would be laid out in the shape of large Vs, visible
from the air, identifying Boychenko’s column. If there’d been time, he
would have insisted that Vs be painted on the vehicles as well, but
they’d been on the move, on the run, really, all night.
And now it was too late. He was just glad no ACN people had been in that
van when the Intruders had struck.
Natalie translated, then gave Tombstone Boychenko’s reply. “He wants to
know if we aren’t in communication with our ships.”
“Tell him yes, we are, but things are pretty confused out there right
now. With so many planes in the sky, it’s hard to coordinate. All of