“They’ve got practically all their strength out on the flanks both ways along the gorge,” Swyley announced. “There are some units moving down the opposite slope, but they won’t be in position for about another thirty minutes.” The glow from the screen highlighted the mystified look that flashed across his face. He shrugged. “Right now they’re wide open, right down below us.”
“They don’t have anything here?” Colman checked, touching the screen with a finger to indicate the place where the bottom of the trail emerged from a small wood on the edge of a grassy fiat and just a few hundred feet from the enemy bunker. The display showed a faint pattern of smudges on either side of the trail in just the positions where defensive formations would be expected.
Swyley shook his head. “Those are decoys. Like I said, they’ve moved practically all the guys out to the flanks”-he jabbed at the screen with a finger–“here, here, and here.”
“Getting round behind B Company, and up over spur Four-nine-three,” Colman suggested as he studied the image.
“Could be,” Swyley agreed noncommittally.
“Looks dead as hell down there to me,” Maddock threw in without taking his eyes from the viewpiece of the intensifier.
“What do’ the ‘ seismics and Sniffers say about Swyley’s decoys?” Colman asked, turning his head toward Driscoll.
Driscoll translated the question into a computer command and peered at the data summary on one of the compack screens. “Insignificant seismic above threshold at eight hundred yards. Downwind ratio less than five points up at four hundred. Negative corroboration from acoustics-background swamping.” The computers were unable to identify vibration patterns correlating with human activity in the data coming in from the sensing devices quietly scattered around the gorge by low-flying, remote piloted “bees” on and off throughout the night; the chemical sensors located to the leeward of the suspected decoys were detecting little of the odor molecules characteristic of human bodies; the microphones had yielded nothing in the way of coherent sound patterns, but this was doubtless because of the white-noise background being generated in the vicinity of the stream. Although the evidence was only partial and negative at that, it supported Swyley’s assertion that the main road down to the objective was, incredibly, virtually undefended for the time being.
Colman frowned to himself as his mind raced over the data’s significance. No sane attacking force would contemplate taking an objective like that by a direct frontal assault in the center–the lowermost stretch of the trail was too well covered by overlooking slopes, and there would be no way back if the attack bogged down. That was what the enemy commander would have thought anyone would have thought. So what would be the point of tying up lots of men to defend a point that would never be attacked? According to the book, the correct way to attack the bunker would be along the stream from above or by crossing the stream below and coming down from the spur on the far side. So the other side was concentrating at points above both of the obvious assault routes and setting themselves up to ambush whichever attack should materialize. But in the meantime they were wide open in the middle.
“Alert all section leaders on the grid,” Colman said to Driscoll. “And open a channel to Blue One.”
Sirocco came through on the compack a few moments later, and Colman summarized the situation. The audacity of the idea appealed to Sirocco immediately. “We’d have to handle it ourselves. There isn’t enough time to involve Brigade, but we could pin down those guys on the other side while you went in, and roll a barrage in front of you to clear obstacles.” He was referring to the Company controlled robot batteries set up to the rear, below the crest line of the ridge. “It would mean going in without any counter battery suppression when you break though. What do you think?”
“If we went fast, we could make it without.” Colman answered.
“Without CB suppression there wouldn’t be time to move any of the other platoons round to back you up. You’d be on your own,” Sirocco said.
“We can use the robot batteries to lay down a close cover screen from the flanks. If you give us an optical and IR blanket at twelve hundred feet, we can make it.”