“You are his enemy. He is now under orders to attack you. He cannot talk to you, and he will not talk to you until your conversation consists only of you negotiating your surrender.”
“You’re crazy!”
“No, Grace. We are at war. We fight now. When one of us is prepared to surrender, we talk about surrender—and maybe contracts. But first, we must do something about those Black and Reds. It will be much easier to arrange things with Hanson if the Black and Reds are not turned loose in Amarillo.”
“But that would mean a sortie outside the valley. Won’t Hanson have us bottled up pretty well in the next day or so?”
“Yes, but what if you hold here stubbornly? Put up more of a fight, and, say, Syn and Wilson fold quickly and fall back. Hanson knows how to fight. He will reinforce success.”
“And if his right is successful, where will he pull reinforcements from to send there?” Grace asked.
“That, my commander, is what we help him decide.”
Grace eyed the map. She pulled up a chair and studied it from her vantage point, then moved the chair around to study it from Hanson’s side. While she sat, Ben moved a few pieces of paper and wood around the map.
Santorini was running with his plan. Should she change hers? “Ben, I see what you’re up to. Now, what if Wilson and Syn…”
“How bad is it?” Major Hanson asked Captain Graf, CO of C Company and Hanson’s point on the drive for Amarillo.
“Not good, sir. Your best view is from the upstairs porch of this old house.” The house was deserted but undisturbed. L. J. followed the captain out a window and stood on the porch roof. The land had looked flat from his command van. Now he saw what he’d missed. The land was rolling, and ahead was a slight but significant rise. The two lead platoons of C Company were deployed to either side of the road. A Joust tank had rolled out of its treads on the road. The infantry had gone to ground.
“What happened, Captain?”
“A mine damaged the tank, sir. There’re so many potholes it’s impossible to tell which are just potholes and which have mines under them. I ordered my sappers forward to clean the road, but they came under very accurate sniper fire, which I couldn’t locate. I deployed my infantry. Snipers dropped four including a lieutenant and a sergeant, and I still can’t identify where the fire’s coming from. When they dropped a second sapper, I quit, sir.”
“How far is it to that deep gully on the map?” That was where L. J. had expected resistance.
“Almost two kilometers, sir.”
“So somewhere in those two klicks are a couple of guys with rifles. Can’t your sensors find them?”
“No, sir. We’ve got the magscan gear up, but it’s gone crazy. The dirt around here is red—rich in iron—and somebody spread a lot of tacks out there.” The captain pulled a small carpet tack from his pocket. “Between the iron in the dirt and these damn things, my sensors say there’re a thousand rifles out there. Do we have enough artillery to flatten a half-klick around the road for the next two klicks, sir?”
L. J. scanned the ground. Rocks, brush, a few trees—mostly dead—more rocks, and more brush. “No; we’re light on artillery this contract,” he said as Captain Fisk of B Company joined them on the roof. “C, form to the right of that road. B, form a line to the left. Let’s see just how far out those snipers go.”
L. J. remembered his own recent experience with Grace’s resistance. “Watch for woven mats—the grass around here matches the dirt. Get the infantry moving. Put them in the lead to check for holes. Have ’Mechs and tanks cover them.”
“Yes, sir,” came back at him. Grace O’Malley was a terrorist and too damn smart for either of their good—her and the six MechWarriors she’d hired. “Get your teams out. Find their flank. Let’s get behind them, come up their asses and put them down. We’ve got to secure this road.”
An hour later a hundred men, plus tanks, gun trucks and eight ’Mechs had beat the bushes. A small rise that seemed the source of their trouble had gone quiet as a church when they reached it. Now the next ridge over put fire on them.
Casualties came in dribs and drabs, but they kept coming. Men whose ceramic armor had shattered under a hit were sent to the rear to draw new armor. L. J. checked with Supply; there wasn’t a lot more armor to issue.
A sniper was finally flushed and brought in. “We dug him out of a hole under some brush,” the sergeant told his commander.
“Yes I was, under that brush and unarmed. They told me to bust my firing pin when you guys got close, so I busted it and I was unarmed and you guys treated me right nice,” the fellow in jeans and a plaid shirt said without taking a breath.
“How many of you are there?” L. J. asked.
“They told me you’d ask that, and they told me I didn’t need to know so I honestly don’t know. But there’s a lot of us, and we’re out there with our water jugs and our rifles, and if I was the first one you got, there’s a lot more of us still there.”
L. J. got in the guy’s face. “How many are out there?”
The guy bent his head back. “I told you, they didn’t tell me and I don’t know.”
“What were you, a platoon? A company?” L. J. roared. The man looked back as if L. J. was speaking some strange language. The guard took the prisoner away and Mallary stepped forward.
“Sir, if what he said is right, they’re behind us as well as in front of us. We’ve got a mess on our hands. I just got a report from A Company outside Bliven. They met resistance where they expected it and brushed it aside. They are advancing unopposed into the Gleann Mor Valley.”
L. J. followed her to the map table on the porch below. In the shade with a cold glass of water, it was pleasant. Strange, the refrigerator was still running. “Where’s D Company?”
“Sir. They haven’t gone far since they broke away from our route three hours back. Seems the locals have been out digging the potholes deeper. With water in them, trucks and ’Mechs don’t know if it’s just your garden-variety hole or a bottomless pit. Makes for slow going.”
“Company A report anything like that?”
“No, sir. I get the feeling the defense kind of fell apart on our right.”
“And the gang to our left is the bunch that swallowed a pretty good slug of Black and Reds,” L. J. muttered. Two good roads came out of Bliven that a flanking company could use to hit Amarillo. He faced an opposed crossing here, as would D on his left. Why fight for more crossings when he already had one?
“Order B and C Companies to fall back. Have B Company get on the road to Bliven. Tell D to have a platoon task force set up a roadblock on good ground and the rest fall back on us.”
“Yes, sir,” Mallary said, and went to execute her orders.
L. J. studied the map. Grace, you’re good, but I’m better. You’ve put together an army in damn fast time, but I brought an army trained and equipped to this fight. “Training will tell,” he thought, quoting his uncle. He frowned. On his left somewhere was a mess of Black and Reds. They’d be road-marching across the front of whatever was holding the west entrance to this valley. So far the enemy had dug in and fought where they stood or run as they had at Bliven. True, the west group had gone out to find the fugitives. The satellite had caught the end of that battle. The Black and Reds had been taken by surprise on their flank. One amateur fighting another, and the Special Police had shown they weren’t all that special.
Should he have that platoon from D Company search forward to make contact with the Black and Reds? L. J. weighed the problem and found that he had a solid basis for assuming the B and Rs could hold their own, and that if he extended his platoon he risked his flank. No, the Special Police should be able to handle any problem that came their way.
L. J. turned back to the situation on his right. That would make or break his attack.