Qabaash and Ali both looked at the mullah's ankle and the bone pressing out and said, together, "Shit."
"We'll have to splint it before we try to move him any farther. Sergeant Ali, can you find a couple of stout sticks?"
The sergeant nodded and walked farther into the building, muttering something about, "Darker than three feet up a well digger's ass at midnight… a moonless midnight."
Sada and his two men had no real difficulty moving Mullah Thaqib to his home. The streets were dark, the insurgents mostly less than alert, and their appearance nothing remarkable. Once there, they set Thaqib down on a pallet while his wife fussed over him. Sada used the break to call the legion's command post with a single code word, repeated three times: "Badr… Badr… Badr."
Legionary Command Post, 7/8/462 AC
"They're in and safe," Jimenez announced, when the message was received. A subdued cheer rang throughout the command post.
Fahad, standing by for just this word, breathed a sigh of relief.
"You really care about Sada, don't you?" Carrera asked. "Moslem or not you still care about him?"
The Chaldean thought about that for a minute before answering. "He was… still is, my commander, sir. We've been through the… through the shit together. Bonds like that go past things like religion. Besides…"
"Yes?"
"If this country is ever going to amount to anything ever again, it will be because of Sada and the few men like him, men who stand above tribe and religion and sect. Honorable men."
"Isn't that an interesting thought," Carrera said slowly. "Sada and a few like him. I confess; I see Sumer as doing better in his hands than in those of the pack of jackals down in Babel. He is, as you said, an honorable man… and a brave one. Yes, that's a very interesting thought, Fahad."
"Sir?" Fahad asked, clearly not understanding.
"Never mind, friend. We will see what we will see."
Pumbadeta, Sumer, 7/8/462 AC
A man has to play the hand he's dealt. Sada didn't even try to form a working chain of command based on military experience. Instead, he selected out the couple of dozen experienced senior officers and NCOs from the old Sumeri Army (for while virtually every man in town had some military experience, trained leaders were few and far between) and assigned one or two to each group of tribal and clan leaders. The traditional chiefs would command; the former soldiers only advise.
In analyzing his assets all Sada could think was, There are damned few of them. I've got numbers but I lack everything else. No radios, no heavy weapons, limited ammunition, no special purpose ammunition.
More than anything, it was those last two that decided him to begin the rebellion on the side of the town by the river. If he could clear that, then his troops could throw a temporary bridge over the stream and not only add their own weight to the fight but also bring in whatever the rebellion would need.
He had another consideration though. Even after we seize the near bank, Fadeel's men will just fall back and make us root them out of every little building and shack. Bad for the town, and bad for the townsmen's lives.
Sada knew, from prior planning, that the legion would be making a great show of preparing to assault from every side. The intent was to draw the insurgents out from the center of town, leaving it for the townsfolk to occupy. This would make life very difficult for the insurgents, once they began to fall back.
That's not enough, though. They will still fall back. How do I use that?
He closed his eyes and began to think. Okay… let's imagine I first grab the near bank. The insurgents will run to that to try to retake it and stop us. Let them in or keep them out? Hmmm. Let them in, I think, as many as want to go. Then we rise up to seize the center of town. Both of my battalions here cross the river at about the same time and begin the resupply operation for the locals. Then we push the insurgents into the center of town, which we hold… and ambush the hell out of them as they flee to new positions to the west. Now… where to draw the line?
"Qabaash, do you have the centers of gravity for the clans and tribes, yet?"
In response, Qabaash left the group of elders with whom he'd been talking and from whom he'd taken the information to annotate his acetate-covered map, came over, and laid the map in front of Sada.
Sada rubbed his hand across his sprouting beard wearily. No really good lines to seal off the area. But… there is this government complex in the center of town. It's tall and fairly visible from everywhere.
The trick, he knew, would be assigning the tribes missions that directly related to the security of their own homes, that blocked the fighting from those homes. Sada read off a tribal name that Qabaash had scrawled inside a circle drawn on the acetate along with a number indicating likely fighters. "Dulaim tribe?"
"Here, sayidi," answered a bearded old man in a dusty robe.
Sada's finger pointed to the map near the northern edge of town. "I'll want your people to assemble here and keep anyone from fleeing westward. Let as many as want to come east, but nobody goes west. Got it?"
"Yes, sayidi," the old man answered after looking carefully enough at the map to make sure he could find the right spot. "When do we start? I don't own a watch."
"Noon," Sada answered. "We will begin seizing the river bank at first light. Give these stinking, murdering foreigners plenty of time to move to contain us, and have this position blocked by high noon."
"Yes, sayidi. We can do this."
Sada slapped the old man on the shoulder, then turned his attention back to the group. "Muntafic tribe…?"
Fadeel no longer used his minaret lookout. It was no fine sense of obligation or newfound respect for convention that kept him out. Rather, the filthy, ass-fucking crusaders made a habit of sniping at anyone found near the city's edge who looked remotely like an observer.
They were damnably good shots, too. Worse, some of the rifles they used were subsonic and silenced. One never knew where the shot might have come from that blew out a man's chest or disintegrated his head amidst a spray of brains, blood and bone.
So, instead of his usual minaret perch Fadeel found himself looking through an irregular loophole knocked in the wall of a used car dealership.
Something's definitely up, he thought, looking out over the crusaders' surrounding berm. The air past the berm was heavy with the dust thrown up by what had to be heavy vehicles, lots of heavy vehicles, moving into position.
A large explosion rocked Fadeel. And they're blowing lanes in their own obstacles. We're in for it, right enough.
Fadeel left the shelter of the used car lot headquarters and began moving toward the center of town. While he did, he stopped at a couple of spots to count the aircraft circling like vultures overhead. He stopped counting when he reached forty and then saw over thirty more helicopters winging in from the south. Shit.
Carrera and Jimenez choked on the dust in the air. A nearby light truck deliberately raised those clouds, dragging behind it several rolls of concertina wire stretching out in the dirt. It was one of dozens being used for the purpose. They dragged the concertina up, raising the clouds, then collapsed the wire and drove back away from the city and repeated. From the inside of the town it had to look like a massive assembly of troops and armor.
Soult handed over a radio microphone with the announcement, "Sada, Boss."
"Yeah, Adnan?"
"We're ready to start, Patricio. What's the word from overhead?"
"Not much reaction, yet," Carrera answered. The air folks reported some massing toward the bridges but as near as we can figure that's your people."