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soul–something the Marxist doctrine of his youth had told him did not exist. It turned out to be better that it did. “Our religion, our Faith, it is a thing of God, not of murder. The Prophet teaches Holy War, yes, but it does not teach us to become our enemies. Unless Mahmoud Haji proves these things are false, I will not stand with him, for all his promises of money. I would like to meet this Ryan, when the time comes.”
BY 13:00 LIMA TIME, the picture was firming up nicely. The numbers were still pretty unattractive, Diggs thought, with five concentrated divisions on the move facing four brigade-sized forces, which were still dispersed. But there were things that could be done about that.
The small Saudi blocking force north of KKMC had held for three spectacular hours, but was now being enveloped and had to move, despite the wishes of the Saudi general staff. Diggs didn’t even know the kid’s name, but hoped to meet him later. With a couple years of proper training, he might really turn into something.
At his “suggestion,” King Khalid Military City was being evacuated. The one part about that which hurt was turning off the intelligence assets there. Especially the Predator teams which now had to recall their birds for their withdrawal to WOLFPACK’S line north of Al Artawiyah. Now that they’d all had time to think about it, the battle was like a huge training exercise at the NTC– three corps instead of battalions to face, but the principle was the same, wasn’t it?
The lingering concern was an Iranian heavy division now known to be crossing the swamps west of Basra. The enemy’s operational concept did leave one blank spot. In bypassing Kuwait, they had not had a covering force in place, perhaps because they thought it unnecessary, more likely because they didn’t want to tip their hand, figuring to patch the hole as they were doing now. Well, every plan had a flaw.
So did the plan he’d put together for Operation Bu-FORD, probably. But he didn’t see it, despite two hours of looking.
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“Are we agreed, gentlemen?” he had to ask. Every Saudi officer in the room was still senior to him, but they’d come to see the logic of his proposal. They were going to fuck ’em all, not just a few. The assembled generals nodded. They didn’t even complain any more about leaving KKMC to the enemy. They could always rebuild it. “Then Operation BUFORD commences at sundown.”
THEY FELL BACK by echelon. A few Saudi mobile guns had appeared and they now fired smoke to obscure the battlefield. As soon as they landed, half of Major Abdullah’s vehicles backed off their positions and hurried south. The flanking units were already moving, fending off encirclement attempts which the enemy had adopted, probing expensively for the extreme ends of the Saudi line.
Berman’s helicopter had never arrived, and the afternoon of noisy and confusing action–you couldn’t see crap down here! he had come to learn–had been instructive. Calling in four more air strikes and seeing the effects on the ground was something he would keep in mind, if the Saudis clawed their way out of the trap the other side was casting about them.
“Come with me, Colonel,” Abdullah said, turning to run for his command track, ending the First Battle of KKMC.
61
GRIERSON’S RIDE
THE VIEW ON THE MAP was just awful. It was easy for anyone to see, a lot of long red arrows and short blue ones. The maps on the morning TV shows were not all that different from those in the Situation Room, and commentary–especially “expert” commentary–talked about how American and Saudi forces were badly outnumbered and poorly deployed, with their backs to the sea. But then there was the direct satellite feed.
“We’ve heard stories of fierce air battles to the northwest,” Donner told the camera from “somewhere in Saudi Arabia.” “But the troopers of the Blackhorse Regiment have yet to see action. I can’t say where I am right now– the fact of the matter is that I just don’t know. B-Troop is stopped for refueling now, pouring hundred of gallons into those big Ml Abrams tanks. It’s a real fuel-hog, the troopers tell me. But their mood remains the same. These are angry men–and women–back in the headquarters troop,” he added. “I don’t know what we will find at the western horizon. I can say that these soldiers are straining at the leash despite all the bad news that has come down from the Saudi high command. The enemy is somewhere out there, driving south in great strength, and soon after sundown, we expect to make contact. This is Tom Donner in the field with the B-Troop, 1st of the Black-horse,” the report concluded.
“His poise isn’t bad,” Ryan noted. “When does that go on the air?”
Fortunately for all concerned, the television uplinks were over military channels, which were encrypted and controlled. It wasn’t time for the UIR to learn exactly who was where. The negative commentary of the “defeat” of the Saudi army was, however, going out. That news, leaked in Washington, and studiously not commented on by the Pentagon, was being accepted as gospel. Jack was still worried, however amusing it might have been in the
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abstract that the media was doing disinformation without even being asked.
“This evening. Maybe sooner,” General Mickey Moore replied. “Sunset over there is in three hours.”
“Can we do it?” POTUS asked.
“Yes, sir.”
WOLFPACIC, FIRST BRIGADE, North Carolina National Guard, was fully formed now. Eddington took to a UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter for a flyover of his forward units. LOBO, his 1st Battalion Task Force, had its left edge on the road from Al Artawiyah to KKMC. WHITEFANG, the 2nd, was arrayed to the west side of the highway. COYOTE, the 3rd, was in reserve, his maneuver force, leaning to the west, because that’s where he thought the possibilities were. His artillery battalion he split into two segments, able to cover the left or right extremes, and both able to cover the center. He lacked air assets and had been unable to get anything more than three Black Hawks for medevac. He also had an intelligence group, a combat-support battalion, medical personnel, MPs, and all the other things organic to a unit of brigade size. Forward of his two frontline battalions was a reconnaissance element whose mission was, first, to report, and second, to take out the enemy’s eyes when they appeared. He’d thought of asking the 11 th ACR for some of their helicopter assets, but he knew what Hamm had planned for those, and it was a waste of breath to ask. He would get the take from their reconnaissance efforts, and that would have to do. Looking down, he saw that the forward line of Ml A2s and Bradleys had all found comfortable spots, mainly behind berms and mini-dunes, where possible just behind high ground, so that at most the top of a turret was visible and mainly not even that. Just the track commander’s head and a pair of binoculars would suffice in most cases. The tanks were spaced no less than three hundred meters apart, and mostly more than that. It made them an unattractively diluted target for artillery or air attack. He’d been told not to worry about the latter, but he worried anyway, as much as circumstance allowed. His subordi-
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nate commanders knew their jobs as well as reservists could, and the truth of the matter was that the mission was right out of the textbooks written by Guderian and practiced by Rommel and every mounted commander ever since.
THE WITHDRAWAL STARTED with a ten-mile dash at thirty-five miles per hour, enough to outrun artillery fire, and to look like the rout that Berman initially thought it to be–until he remembered that he made a practice of leaving enemy fire behind at least fifteen times as fast as these mechanized vehicles were doing. They were riding with top hatches open, and Berman stood to look behind, past the brown-black fountains of exploding artillery shells. He’d never known what a defensive stand was like. Mainly lonely, he thought. He’d expected bunched vehicles and men, forgetting what he himself did to such things when he spotted them from the air. He saw what had to be fifty columns of smoke, all vehicles blown apart by the Saudi National Guard. Maybe they didn’t take training seriously enough–he had heard such things–but this team had stood their ground against a force at least five times as large, and held them for three hours.
Not without cost. He turned forward and counted only fifteen tanks, plus eight infantry tracks. Perhaps there were more he couldn’t see in the clouds of dust, he hoped. He looked up, into what he hoped was a friendly sky.
IT WAS. THE score since dawn was forty UIR fighters down, all of them air-to-air, against six American and Saudi losses, all of them ground-to-air. The opposing air force had been unable to overcome the advantage of the allied airborne radar coverage, and the best thing that could be said for their effort was that they had distracted efforts to attack the ground forces, which would otherwise have been totally unimpeded. The ragtag collection of American-, French-, and Russian-made fighter aircraft looked impressive on paper and on the ramp, but less so in the air. But the allied air forces were far less capable at