“Lots,” the colonel said. “But you’ll be learning, too. I take it you’re going to be operational with this group?”
“Probably,” Mike said. “But I want the leadership types to be trained up to full tactical ability to lead their teams. When we do multiteam exercises is when I’ll come in. I’ve mentally broken the teams down by the Families. The good part to that is there’s automatic cohesion, the bad part is if a team takes heavy casualties, it will hit the Family hard. It might make more sense to split them up.”
“Split them,” the colonel said, automatically. “The other problem is that if a team is operational when there’s something to be done around the farm, that Family will be hardest hit for workers. Okay, let’s look at this.” He picked up the paper and then extracted a pair of glasses from his shirt pocket. “You’re sure about the hundred and twenty?”
“Close enough,” Mike said. “They haven’t been physicalled.”
“We’ve two SF medics,” Adams said. “We’ll get ’em all checked.”
“Assume the hundred and twenty,” Nielson said, looking at the paper. “Six teams, one team leader from each team. Twenty people including the team leader. Team leader and an RTO. The RTO is going to need something that carries in this mountains, maybe satellite if you can afford it…”
“Can,” Mike said.
“Two medium machine-gun teams,” the colonel continued. “Gunner, AG and ammo bearer. Two snipers, two five-man teams. It works out.”
“Okay,” Mike said, looking at the TOE list. “If we put twelve medium machine guns in the teams, we’re short at the houses. I’ll either need to order more or get heavies. What about the mortars?”
“They’ll stay at the houses,” Nielson said. “The women will run them.”
“That’s going to go over great,” Mike said, grimacing. “How about women and older men?”
“Works,” Nielson said, shrugging. “You got one-twenties. The women are going to have to be strong to service them.”
“They’re farm girls,” Mike said, shrugging. “They’re lookers, but I’ve seen them toss around some pretty heavy loads. I think they can hang.”
“This will be fun,” Nielson said, looking at the sketchy map of the area. “No better maps?”
“Not currently, sorry,” Mike said.
“I’ll get Meller and Prael to do a survey map of the area,” the colonel said, humming. “That will keep them out of mischief. Don’t know what to do with the rest for the time being, but we’ll find something, we will. Idle hands are the devil’s doing and I do so love training…”
“That’s the river I think would make the best one for hydro,” Mike said, bringing the Expedition to a stop short of the foaming white-water. The river, still rich with snowmelt, was running at the top of its banks. It dropped through a steep gorge to the flats, running over large rocks as it reached the bottom and then through a deeply cut channel through the fields. Behind them, they could hear a low, deep song as the Keldara worked at picking the numerous stones from the fields. The stones had been brought down by this and other rivers ages ago, and dropped by sheets of ice along with the rich dirt of the valley. With the freeze in winter, the rocks were pushed up through the soil and had to be picked out to prevent damage to the plows. The soil was black and deep, but it had the price of the rocks. “I’m told it won’t start to go down until April.”
“Oh, there are things we can do now,” Meller said, getting out of the SUV and looking at the slope. There were ridges to either side and they were very steep, but the one to the south was slightly lower and covered in trees. He pulled himself up the incline, using the trees and sideways shoved feet, and started up the hill.
Interested in what he was looking for or at, Mike followed. The engineer kept climbing, though, following the course of the stream. He climbed for about an hour and then stopped where two streams ran together.
“Okay,” the engineer said, looking from side to side and then climbing to the top of the ridge, “how much demo do we have?”
“Lots,” Mike said. “And I can get more. How much do you need?”
“A lot,” Meller admitted. He slid down to the stream and then shook his head. “Should have brought a rope.” Despite the speed of the current and the water being freezing ice-melt he waded in, working his way across carefully, holding onto large rocks that jutted out, until he reached the north side of the gorge. That side was lower and he climbed to the top of that ridge, looking to the far side.
“Meet you down at the bottom,” he called to Mike.
When they got to the bottom, Meller wandered off to the north. Mike watched him for a moment and then got back in the Expedition, driving down to where there was a barely fordable point and crossing the stream. When he got back by the edge of the valley he found the engineer considering another gorge. This one was, if anything, steeper than the first, a very narrow, tree-choked V, with a small stream flowing out of it.
“Do you know if that stream is really important to the Keldara?” Meller asked, distantly, as Mike walked over.
“No,” Mike admitted.
“How about this field?” Meller continued, looking around and then squatting down and looking around closer to ground level. “What do we have in the way of earth-moving equipment?” he asked, getting down in a leopard crawl position and spinning in place, looking outward.
“Not much, yet,” Mike said as the engineer leopard crawled backwards to the treeline and looked from side to side. “We can get it. Backhoe?”
“Steam shovel,” the engineer said, pushing up and looking at the ground. “Definitely steam shovel.” He stood up and brushed off his hands. “I’m going to need a bulldozer, a big Cat or equivalent, or one hell of a lot of strong backs. Something to mix concrete. Cement and sand. Sand we can get here. You know if there’s any good clay around?”
“No,” Mike admitted. “And I don’t know if this field is important.’
“It’s okay,” Meller said, wandering over to the ravine. “I can route it along the base of the hill with some rocks.”
“What in the hell are you talking about?” Mike asked, puzzled.
“That gorge isn’t as good for a hydro dam as this one,” Meller replied, looking at him as if he was a moron. “We’ll build one over here.”
“There’s only a trickle of water,” Mike pointed out. “And that’s intermittent.”
“There won’t be when we route the main stream over here,” Meller said. “That’s why I was asking about demo.”
Meller showed Mike and Genadi what he was contemplating on the rough map of the area supplied by the Georgian military. It had apparently first been done by the Soviets, and it was both poorly surveyed and horribly out of date. But it showed both gorges, even if the elevations were wrong.
“We’ll build the dam in the north gorge,” Meller said. “I need to survey it really carefully, but I’m virtually certain it’s going to make a better dam. Much more rise to it with less expanse.”
They were considering the map while parked by the north gorge. The day had brightened up and while it was still cool, the thaw was definitely in place. That was evident by the mud that coated the Expedition as much as anything else.
“You can get higher water for a shorter dam?” Mike guessed.
“Got it in one, Kildar,” the former SFer said with a grin. “Shorter it is, less likely to fail all things considered. Also, it’s not overrun with snow-melt so we can get started as soon as the ground thaws a little more. We’ll build the dam, then blast a channel from the previous river over to the new gorge. We’ll have to do that in stages so it doesn’t get a hard flood, but we can work that out later. Drop some of the rubble into the current gorge, build a smaller dam up there, with a relief overflow, and you have the river running into the new gorge and the old one is just a trickle except in winter when it will overflow into the old gorge. The river will come out of the new gorge, go down a channel we’ll cut, and join the old river. The flow of the land works that way, anyway. Might not even need to cut the channel.”