Tin Soldiers Page 8

  The corporal from Tennessee had been watching the driver since they’d stopped the truck. He now called to his platoon sergeant as he tightened the grip on his rifle, the butt pulled to his shoulder and his cheek in position along the stock in order to retain a good sight picture. “Sarge! You better get over here! Somethin’s goin’ on and I don’t like the looks of it one little bit! I think this boy just pissed hisself! And the other one’s sweatin’ up a storm and screamin’ at him!”

  The lieutenant felt like staining his own trousers as he saw the driver’s hand close firmly on the weapon and begin to withdraw it. “Stop, fool. Do not—”

  The driver pulled the machine gun out and began to swing it toward the American overwatching him. He made it halfway.

  The two soldiers standing on either side of the truck didn’t hesitate. The sounds of brass bouncing off the hard desert floor was drowned out by the screams of the Arabs as both of the infantrymen emptied their rifles through the truck’s windows.

  Stuart had heard the small arms fire less than a minute ago, but it seemed ages. He knew that the Mech Platoon had their hands full if anything had happened and that they’d report as soon as possible, so despite wanting to radio for a situation report, he restrained himself. In frustration he scanned with his binos toward the reported location, knowing he wouldn’t be able to see a damned thing.

  Finally, the call came in. “Knight Six, Blue One, over.”

  Stuart keyed his transmit switch. “Knight Six.”

  “Knight Six, this is Blue One. Truck attempted to open fire on our dismounts. Both Arabs are K-I-A. I say again, both are K-I-A. We sustained no casualties. Found something interesting in their vehicle. Suggest you come to our location ASAP, over.”

  “Roger. En route, out.” Stuart prayed that whatever they’d found in the truck was good. If not, and they’d killed a couple of civilians, no . . . better not to think about it.

  A mile to the west, another truck was spotted by the 2-35 Armor’s Counter Recon Force. Five minutes later, having assured themselves the Bedouins were not a threat, the truck was released so that the Arabs could continue their search for their missing livestock. The soldiers that had spotted them returned to their concealed positions, on sharp lookout for enemy reconnaissance.

  Iron Tigers TOC, Northern Kuwait

  21 October, 1430 Hours Local

  “So what does it mean, Phil?” Estes asked his intelligence officer as they looked at the situation map.

  The S2 pulled out the weapon of choice of every staff officer of every army in the world—a telescopic pointer. He employed the pointer as a master fencer a foil, moving it with swift thrusts around the map. “Sir, this red pin indicates the location where Knight took out the truck. The subsequent search of the truck resulted in the discovery of a cooler with a false bottom—a very professional job that we might not have noticed if a round hadn’t rattled the cooler enough to dislodge the bottom slightly. Inside the hidden compartment were a portable radio and a map. The map contains symbology indicative of Iraqi reconnaissance operations.” He turned to Estes. “Interestingly enough, sir, though you might not realize it, the Iraqis utilize a combination of Soviet and British military doctrine.” He returned to the map. “You can see here that—”

  Estes’s face barely moved. “Phil.”

  The S2’s pointer ceased its sparring. “Yes, sir?”

  “Could you bottom-line this for me? Like . . . right now?”

  The captain cleared his throat. “Certainly, sir. The Iraqis seemed to have a very good idea of where our forces are located, to include elements way in the rear. Damned strange. These guys, and I’m sure there are other teams like theirs, were trying to confirm their boss’s guesses. Note that they’ve made slight changes to the graphics, reflecting our actual locations when they differed from their estimate.”

  Estes turned to the S3 Air. “Have you called this up to Third Brigade yet?”

  “Roger, sir,” answered the junior captain. “They were pretty pissed initially. Said we violated the Rules of Engagement. Once I told them about the radio and the map they were a little more understanding.”

  Estes couldn’t help smiling. “I’ll bet. Has anyone taken a look at the radio to see what frequency they were using?”

  The captain shook his head. “Sir, the radio caught a couple of rounds, so it was hard to tell much of anything from it. They said the truck looked like something out of Pulp Fiction when the firing finally died down. You know, that scene where Travolta is holding the pistol on the guy in the back of the car and—”

  Estes held up a hand. “Yes, yes, I’m familiar with the film.” He turned to the other men in the TOC. “Anything else, gentlemen?”

  “Sir, I’ve spoken with the brigade S2,” said the intel captain. “It turns out we’re not the only task force who encountered ‘bedouins’ this afternoon. The 2-35 Armor ran into some down in the wadis.” Silence followed for a moment. Then the Two continued. “They let them go.”

  “Shit,” said Estes as the impact of the words hit him. “What you’re telling me is there’s a damned good chance the enemy knows the disposition of the forces on our left flank?”

  Major Barnett spoke for the first time. “Sir, I caught the conversation between the 2-35 commander and Colonel Jones on the brigade command push. It wasn’t pleasant. The colonel directed him to reposition as many of his forces as possible, particularly the ones in the area the bedouins had gone through, while continuing to maintain security within his task force’s sector.”

  Estes didn’t look happy, but nodded. “Okay, we’ll have to hope that does it. Who do we have adjacent to 2-35 Armor?”

  Barnett didn’t bother referring to the map. “Anvil, sir.”

  Great, thought Estes. “Okay, call Captain Malloy. Tell him I don’t have a warm and fuzzy about that flank and to orient a few positions that way. I want at least one platoon of tanks to be able to shift to that sector quickly.”

  Barnett nodded. He’d made the call ten minutes earlier.

  3rd Brigade, 4th ID TOC, Northern Kuwait

  21 October, 1500 Hours Local

  Colonel Bill Jones, commander of 3rd Brigade, exhaled a couple of lungs’ worth of smoke and stared at his operations map. The numerous colored symbols wouldn’t mean much to the average person. To Jones, each icon represented a group of his soldiers. Some he knew, others he didn’t. But he loved them all, because they were his men—and women. He couldn’t forget the women. No longer was it enough to worry about your men dying or being captured. Now add to that the concerns that only a father with daughters, such as Jones himself, could have.

  Jones shook his head in defeat and pulled out another cigarette. He thumbed his Zippo, lit up, and looked at the souvenir from another war. One of his NCOs had given him the lighter during Desert Storm after watching Jones bum lights off others for a month. Two days later the man was dead. He’d driven a Hummer over an antitank mine in a “cleared” area.

  Jones closed his eyes and exhaled. Now the Zippo was like Jones himself—a little worn, but still with some usefulness left in it.

  He looked around the operations center and spotted Sergeant Major Jack Kelly. Kelly, the brigade operations sergeant major, had worked with Jones off and on over the years. Jones had considered it a personal coup that he’d snagged the sergeant major when the old soldier arrived at Fort Carson a year earlier. If the REMFs, a polite acronym for “rear-echelon motherfuckers,” at Division Headquarters had known Kelly was transferring in, he’d be pouring coffee from a silver pot to the brass right now. The veteran NCO was one of those soldiers every general officer in the army seemed to know from one posting or another. He would have been a very nice addition to the division staff. Jones laughed to himself. He hadn’t given the fuckers a chance.

  “Hey, Sergeant Major, that pot of coffee ready?” inquired Jones in a gravelly voice.

  Kelly stared at Jones in awe. He hadn’t seen the man eat a bite in three days. His diet seeme
d to consist of nothing but coffee and cigarettes. “No, sir, but it’ll only be a couple more minutes. I’ll bring you a cup when it’s ready.”

  “No, you won’t, Sergeant Major. Christ on a crutch. People wait on me hand and foot around here. I draw the line at being allowed to pour my own coffee.”

  “Yes, sir,” Kelly laughed. He knew Jones had no idea how highly regarded he was by his troops. They’d follow him to hell if he asked. All he’d have to say was that Satan had fucked up and was in dire need of an ass kicking, and forty-four-hundred-odd men and women would cram themselves onto the first elevator they could find that went all the way down. In twenty years of service, the sergeant major had met no other man like Colonel William Jebediah Jones. He was as hard and gritty as one of the weathered boulders along the North Wall of the National Training Center. Like the boulders, Jones had put in his time observing men fight in that godforsaken piece of the Mojave. Unlike the boulders, Jones had learned at the NTC, as well as at dozens of other training sites, and applied the skills he’d learned to leading men in combat. Still, for all his hardness, on more than one occasion Kelly had also seen the tears well up in Jones’s eyes at the loss of one of his soldiers. Never in public, usually over an old bottle of scotch.

  The 3rd Brigade commander turned back to his maps. His experienced eye noted the disposition of the brigade’s three task forces. They were thin. He would have preferred to put one task force in reserve behind the two others, but he just had too much ground to cover. The best he could do was to pluck a team from 2-8 as a reserve. Looking at 2-8’s battle position, he knew that the loss shouldn’t hurt them. They had the high ground and a lot of TOW tubes to strike from long range.

  Jones looked to the left and right of his brigade’s positions. He hoped the Kuwaitis would make a fight of it. The 3rd Brigade was directly in the tornado’s path, but they’d need the locals to contribute. More troops were on the way from stateside, but he couldn’t count on them being in the fight for a while yet. No, the Kuwaitis would have to be able to hold if a push came in one of their areas. They had fielded some of the more than two hundred M1A2s they would eventually receive, but for now only a portion of their two armored brigades had the tank of choice for the twenty-first century. The majority would be M-84s, a European variant of the Soviet T-72.

  The primary question in Jones’s mind wasn’t the Kuwaitis’ equipment, but their will to fight. After the Iraqis overran them so quickly in 1990, serious steps had been taken to beef up their defenses. Initial reconstruction planning after the Gulf War, formulated with the help of the U.S. and the British, called for two additional armored brigades, both fielding the M1A2 tank and modern Infantry Fighting Vehicles. After a few years with no aggression from the other side of their border with Iraq, the Kuwaiti government’s bean counters began pressuring their politicians to divert the funds to other projects. Add to this the fact that all Kuwaiti units were short in the manpower department—most were royalty, after all, so getting their hands dirty wasn’t really what most had in mind—and one saw a force that was improved over what it had been, but which still couldn’t hold its own borders for any significant length of time. Especially against the largest army in the Middle East. Jones shook his head in frustration, knowing that there was a decent chance that the Kuwaitis they were backing up would just say screw it and take off south for the Saudi border at the first sign of hostilities, waiting there for more forces to arrive in country to help force their belligerent northern neighbors back into their own yard. Still, Jones had done some training with the “new” Kuwaiti Army over the past few years. He knew there were some good men in its ranks, men who looked forward to a time when they could avenge the rape of their nation that had taken place more than a decade prior. Arab memories were long.

  How the Kuwaitis would react to an Iraqi attack worried Jones, but at the moment it took a backseat to his concern regarding the Iraqi recon forces that had penetrated his sector and possibly the Kuwaitis’ sector as well. The best Jones could do was some repositioning, but you had to fight with the terrain you had—and that didn’t leave a great deal of room for major changes in his unit’s disposition.

  The Iraqis would probably have at least an eighty percent read on Task Force 2-35 Armor. On the flip side, the other task forces were digging in and continuing to improve their positions. If 2-35 could get most of their repositioning completed before nightfall, Third Brigade would be ready. He hoped.

  Continuing to look at the map, his gaze shifted east from 2-35’s position to 2-77 Armor’s sector. The Iron Tigers. Jones hoped they lived up to the name. He had placed them dead center across the most likely approach for the Republican Guard division. He knew Rob Estes was a capable commander. He also placed a lot of faith in Dave Barnett, although he hated the mustache. Once more he found his mind wandering to that piece of facial hair. It really did look waxed, but even Barnett wouldn’t try to bait him like that. Would he?

  Before he could come to closure on the mustache issue, which he never did anyway, Jones smelled the intoxicating aroma of a Colombian roast. He turned to see Sergeant Major Kelly approaching with two steaming white foam cups. Standing, Jones took one.

  “Damn it, Sergeant Major, I told you I’d get my own coffee.” He tempered the rebuke with a smile. “But thanks. I appreciate it.”

  Jones sipped from the cup. “Where did you manage to dig up the good stuff? The only coffee I’ve seen around here besides the brown water the chow hall dishes out was some foo-foo stuff the air force liaison officer had—amaretto or some such shit.”

  “Sir, you know that kind of information is a trade secret,” quipped Kelly. “If we told you, you wouldn’t need NCOs anymore.”

  “Grab a chair and sit down with me a minute, Jack,” said Jones, sitting on a field chair. “God knows my old bones can use the break.”

  Kelly grabbed a stool, turned it backward, and threw a leg over it. A complicated field move, the casual stool break took years to perfect. Doing it with a full cup of hot coffee was not to be attempted by the novice. “Oh, shit, sir, you’re not that old yet. What? Forty-five or so?”

  Jones looked at Kelly over his cup, blowing nonchalantly. “Damned near, Sergeant Major, damned near. But they’ve been long years. Jumping on and off armored vehicles takes its toll on a body after a couple of decades. Now are you going to tell me what the hell you’ve been smiling about all day? It’s just not like you to have such a pleasant demeanor in front of the troops.”

  Kelly’s grin, if possible, grew larger. It threatened to crack open his bulldog face if it expanded beyond its current boundaries. “Oh, hell, sir. I’m not that transparent, am I? But in answer to your question, yeah, I do have a bit of news.”

  Jones stretched his legs out and sat back. “Well, spill it, man! I can see you’re dying to tell somebody.”

  Kelly’s eyes began to twinkle. “Sir, do you remember my oldest son, Little Jack?”

  Jones sputtered as he inhaled sharply and coffee went down the wrong pipe. “Little Jack?! You mean that six-foot, six-inch freak of nature you call a son? Last I heard he was commanding a company in the Eighty-second back at Bragg.”

  Kelly nodded. “Yes, sir, that would be him.” He shook his head sadly. “Never figured out where I went wrong with that boy. Raise him right and then he goes off and joins the infantry—airborne to top it all off. Anyway, Little Jack and his wife, Rhonda, just sent me a message. Jack the Third was born at eleven-thirty last night. Twelve pounds!”

  Jones whooped and held out a massive paw to his friend. “Well, congratulations, Kelly. Unfortunately, he’ll probably get his looks, as well as his size, from your side of the family—no offense to the wife of course. I blame it all on your genes.”

  Kelly grinned and shook the outstretched hand. “None taken. Thank God your girls took after their mother.”

  Jones turned serious for a moment. “So Little Jack was in Fayetteville for the birth?”

  Kelly’s smile faded. “
Yes, sir. His company didn’t leave until a few hours later. He should be on the ground in Kuwait sometime tonight or early tomorrow morning.”

  Jones nodded understanding. It didn’t matter how old you were, no one liked to see his children in harm’s way. Especially those who knew exactly what harm’s way meant.

  “Okay, Jack, I hate to spoil the mood before we start hugging and kissing, but it’s time to talk business,” said Jones, nodding his head toward the map. “You’ve been playing this game as long as I have. What do you think?”

  Kelly took a sip of coffee before responding. “I think we looked good until this afternoon, sir. There’s no way of telling how much intel those fucking rag heads bagged before we caught on to their game. I have to say, though, it was a slick ruse. Yes, sir, slicker than owl shit on a barbed-wired fence.”

  Jones nodded in agreement, though he couldn’t help wondering exactly how owl shit and barbed wired equated to slickness. He stubbed out his cigarette on the dirt floor of the operations center. “Yeah, that’s the bitch of it. No way of knowing.”

  Kelly continued to gaze at the map. “My opinion, take it for what it’s worth, is that the infiltrations were by and large in our sector—not in the Kuwaitis’.”

  Jones grunted. “Rationale?”

  The sergeant major shrugged. “Well, sir, I figure the Kuwaitis know the difference between bedouins and Iraqi reconnaissance if anyone does. And I figure the Iraqis know that, so they’d naturally send most of the effort our way . . . which is likely their preferred route at any rate.”

  Jones nodded. “You’re probably right. Terrain’s definitely better for mechanized movement.”

  “If it makes you feel any better, I’ve watched the Iron Tigers in the field. I guarantee you, sir, Colonel Estes is priming a few extra gun tubes in the direction of those wadis to his west.”