THE COMMANDER OF the Immortals no longer had a proper command post to use, and so he absorbed what was left of the command post from the vanished 1st Brigade, having also learned that he had to keep moving at all times. The first order of business for him had been to reestablish contact with I Corps command, which had proved somewhat difficult, as that CP had been on the move when he’d walked into the American–it had to be American–ambush along the road to Al Artawiyah. Now I Corps was setting up again, and probably talking a lot to Army command. He broke in, got the three-star,
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a fellow Iranian, and told what he could as rapidly as possible.
“There cannot be more than a single brigade,” his immediate superior assured him. “What will you do?”
“I shall mass my remaining forces and strike from both flanks before dawn,” the divisional commander replied. It wasn’t as though he had much choice in the matter, and both senior officers knew it. I Corps couldn’t retreat, because the government which had ordered it to march would not countenance that. Staying still meant waiting for the Saudi forces storming down from the Kuwaiti border. The task, then, was to regain the initiative by overpowering the American blocking force by maneuver and shock effect. That was what tanks were designed to do, and he had more than four hundred still under his command.
“Approved. I will dispatch you my corps artillery. Guards Armored on your right will do the same. Accomplish your breakthrough,” his fellow Iranian told him. “Then we will drive to Riyadh by dusk.”
Very well, the Immortals commander thought. He ordered his 2nd Brigade to slow its advance, allowing 3rd to catch up, concentrate, and maneuver east. To his west, the Iraqis would be doing much the same in mirror image. Second would advance to contact, fix the enemy flank, and 3rd would sweep around, taking them in the rear. The center he would leave empty.
“THEY’VE STOPPED. THE lead brigade has stopped. They’re eight klicks north,” the brigade S-2 said. “Hoor should have visual on them in a few minutes to confirm.” That explained what one of the enemy forces to his front was doing. The western group was somewhat farther back, not stopped, but moving slowly forward, evidently waiting for orders or some change in their dispositions. His opponent and his people were taking time to think.
Eddington couldn’t allow that.
The only real problem with MLRS was that it had a minimum range far less convenient than the maximum. For the second mission that night, the rocket vehicles,
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which hadn’t really moved at all, locked their suspensions in place and elevated their launcher boxes, again aimed by electronic information only. Again the night was disturbed by the streaks of rocket trails, though this time on much lower trajectories. Tube artillery did the same, with both forces dividing their attention between the advance brigades left and right of the highway.
The purpose was more psychological than real. The mini-bomblets of the MLRS rockets would not kill a tank. A lucky fall atop a rear deck might disable a diesel engine, and the sides of the BMP infantry carriers could sometimes be penetrated by a nearby detonation, but these were chance events. The real effect was to make the enemy button up, to limit their ability to see, and with the falling steel rain, limit their ability to think. Officers who’d leaped from their command tanks to confer had to run back, some of them killed or wounded by the sudden barrage. Sitting safely in stationary vehicles, they heard the ping sound of fragments bounding off their armor, and peered out their vision systems to see if the artillery barrage presaged a proper attack. The less numerous 155mm artillery rounds were a greater danger, all the more so since the American gun rounds were not bursting in the air, but were “common” shells that hit the ground first. The laws of probability guaranteed that some of the vehicles would be hit–and some were, erupting into fireballs as the rest of 2nd Brigade was forced to hold in place, ordered to do so while 3rd moved up to their left. Unable to move and, with the loss of their own divisional artillery, unable to respond in kind, they could do nothing but cringe and stay alert, look out of their vehicles, and watch the shells and bomblets fall.
B-TROOP, 1ST of the 11th, moved out on schedule, spreading out and traveling due north, with the Bradley scouts in the lead and the “Battlestar” tanks half a klick behind, ready to respond to a report of contact. It provided a strange revelation to Donner. An intelligent man, and even an outdoorsman of sorts who enjoyed backpacking with his family on the Appalachian Trail, he spent as much
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time as he could looking out of the Bradley, and didn’t have a clue as to what was really going on. He finally overcame his embarrassment and got on the interphones to ask the track commander how he knew, and was called forward, where he crammed himself as a third man in a space designed for two–more like one and a half, the reporter thought.
“We’re here,” the staff sergeant told him, touching his finger to the IVIS screen. “We’re going that way. ‘Cording to this, there’s nobody around to bother us, but we’re looking out for that. The enemy”–he changed the display somewhat–“is here, and we’re along this line.”
“How far?”
“About twelve klicks and we should start to see ’em.”
“How good is this information?” Donner asked.
“It got us this far, Tom,” the track commander pointed out.
The pattern of movement was annoying, and reminded the reporter of stop-and-go traffic on a Friday afternoon. The armored vehicles would dart–never faster than twenty miles per hour–from one terrain feature to another, scan ahead, then move some more. The sergeant explained that they’d move in a steadier manner on better ground, but that this part of the Saudi desert was marked by hillocks and ridges and dips that people might hide behind. The Brads were in a platoon, but actually seemed to move in pairs. Every M3 had a “wingman,” a term borrowed from the Air Force.
“What if there’s somebody out there?”
“Then he’ll probably try to shoot at us,” the staff sergeant explained. All this time, the gunner was traversing his turret left and right, searching for the glow of a warm body on the chilled ground. They could actually see better at night, Donner learned, which was why Americans had adopted the darkness as their preferred hunting time. “Stanley, come left and stop behind that bump,” he ordered the driver. “If I was a grunt, I’d like that place over to the right. We’ll cover Chuck as he comes around it.” The turret rotated and sighted in on a larger bump, while the Bradley’s wingman drove past. “Okay, Stanley, move
ut.”
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THE ARMY OF God command section had proved devilishly hard to pin down, but now Hamm had two helo-scout troops detailed to that single mission, and his electronic-intelligence section had just set up again, co-located with 2nd Squadron’s headquarters troop. They’d taken to calling their target the enchilada. Locate it, and disorganize the entire enemy force. Saudi intelligence officers attached to the ELINT tracks were listening to signals. The UIR forces had encrypted radios for the senior commanders, but those were good only for talking to other people with the same equipment, and with the gradual degradation of the enemy radio network, sooner or later the enchilada would have to start talking in the clear. One Corps and two divisional command posts had been hit, two of those almost totally destroyed and the other badly disrupted. Moreover, they knew roughly where III Corps was, and Army would have to start talking to that formation, since it was the only one so far not engaged except by a few air strikes. They didn’t have to read the messages, nice though that would have been. They knew the frequency ranges for the high-command circuit, and a few minutes of traffic would enable them to localize it enough for M- and N-helicopter-scout troops to dart in and start ruining their whole morning.
It sounded like static, but digitally encrypted radios usually did. The ELINT officer, a first lieutenant, loved eavesdropping, but missed his jamming gear, which had been overlooked in the POMCUS equipment sets, probably, he thought, because that was supposed to be an Air Force mission. There was an art to this. His troopers, all military-intelligence specialists, had to tell the difference between real atmospheric static and manmade static as they swept the frequencies.
“Bingo!” One said. “Bearing three-zero-five, hissin’ like a snake.” It was too loud to be atmospheric noise, random though it might have sounded.
“How good?” the officer asked.
“Ninety percent, elltee.” A second vehicle, slaved electronically to the first, was a klick away, providing a base-