Dexter Cooper took a deep breath. “Look, boss, Baumflecken and its conventions are too far behind to go back.”
Stern stared at the lines and arrows on the map, seeing nothing and yet seeing everything. In his mind Baumflecken Kaserne, his empty relationship with Veronica, and nearly two decades of practiced orthodox military doctrine all blended into one dark mass, For a second it loomed large, and then the mass shrank into the distance.
“We have come pretty far.” He glanced at Cooper. “All of us. I guess there’s too much at stake to play conservatively.”
Cooper nodded. Stern reached for his pipe.
“But we still have to play well. Really well. S2, I mean Deputy Commander, Colonel Griffin has a personal mission — the man has a cause, maybe for the first time in his life. But we also have a mission and a cause. Frequency 31.65?”
“Roger that, Sir.”
“Get on it and contact him — give him the updated information on the enemy and your best guess where they’ll go next. Have him pass back any information on their dispositions he finds along the way. Then we’ll see what he can do.” He tamped more tobacco into his pipe and struck a match. “Get busy. I have a brigade to command.” Stern checked his watch, puffed to get the tobacco going, then crushed the match out. “If we’re fortunate, we might even get ‘The Griffin’ under control,” he said as he made for the TOC entrance.
“Good luck, Sir.”
“Jager Flight, this is Flight Leader. Target area in approximately one-five minutes.” Outside his cockpit the four other Tornado jet fighters held their places in the formation. Scrambled on direct orders from the high command, their mission was relatively simple: Pinpoint the American brigade and attack its columns. Beneath his oxygen mask, the flight leader smiled. He had been handpicked as both a loyal officer and a good flyer. Here was his opportunity to move up, to prove himself to the new order — especially since most of his peers, who had stupidly opposed the new regime, were now under arrest. He brought his mind back to the mission. The Americans do not have their big missiles and radars, he mused; the only fire from the ground will be their small arms. We will bloody them from the air. He glanced down, unable to see through the clouds, but his instruments told him his chance for recognition lay below, only a few minutes away. In his mind General Blacksturm himself pinned a medal on his tunic.
“Tango, this is Tango Zero-One. Move out, form column, pick up a five hundred-meter interval behind the lead platoon.”
Corporal Shelley hit the “internal” button on the intercom. “You heard the man, Keats. Give the tanks ahead of us about three hundred meters’ head start, then go.”
“Roger that,” replied Keats. “At least we’re not leading this time.”
“Yeah, we’re all of second in line behind that other tank platoon,” Winchell chimed in.
Shelley steadied himself as the tank rolled forward. “Hey, cook, load HEAT, then get up here and pull air guard.”
“My name is Knudsen, and I don’t know how to pull air guard.”
“What did you do before you learned to be a loader?”
“I was a cook.”
“Okay, like I said then. Cook, get up here and learn to pull air guard.”
Tanks and Bradleys rolled along the fields on both sides of the highway, spewing out rooster tails of dirt behind them as their tracks first chewed up then spat out dark earth.
Eads settled the Bradley in behind the lead battalion’s command vehicles. At least we’re moving, thought Stern, taking in the spectacle around him; the brigade’s going forward.
“Jager Flight, this is Flight Leader. Target area in zero-five minutes. Arm weapons, prepare to descend to attack altitude. We will make one pass to identify targets.”
Griffin sat cross-legged on top of the Bradley’s back deck and again studied the circles on his map. Cooper said these were places where Joel would be likely to put his CP, thought Griffin. But I think he’ll be farther forward, maybe here — he drew three more circles, then suddenly froze. Keeping his head down, he raised his eyes to study the forest around him.
“Driver,” he said quietly, still not lifting his head, “you see anything out there?”
“No, Sir. I thought they were supposed to be reconning us.”
“They are. They’re out there, I can feel it.” He sat motionless, ears straining past the bird and insect noises, his eyes tight against the top of their sockets, scanning left and right, scrutinizing the shadows cast by the tall trees for some telltale sign. Everything seemed in place. Slowly, carefully, a half inch at a time, he raised his head and ran his eyes over the foliage. Nothing moved.
Griffin eased his hand off the map and down to his right.
He precisely calculated every move — the exact angle of his arm as he slid his hand off the map, the soft release of the marker so it would make no noise as he put it down, the speed at which his hand would slide to the small pile of rocks by his side. Each action held in precise form by cold discipline, each action instinctive, intuitive, made so by that same discipline that had grown as much a part of him as his soul — perhaps grown to be his soul itself. His fingers curled three rocks into his palm. The Griffin tensed his arm and waited.
Think think think, dammit, think! Your job is to think, your job is to anticipate. Stern and Middletown and Griffin do the fighting, you do the thinking. Dexter Cooper paced about the 195th’s TOC. So think, anticipate! They’re moving on us, trying to find out exactly where we are, what we’re doing. Then they’ll want to attrit us — but how? With what? Their arty can’t reach us yet, their scouts and ours are in a standoff; for some reason they’re not using their helicopters — why not? They haven’t hit us from the air — at least not yet.
Not yet.
Not yet. Cooper dashed outside, shoving a soldier out of his way. Like any other German morning, the sun was no more than a lighter patch in the slowly rolling gray haze.
A low ceiling, Cooper thought, but high enough.
Back inside the TOC he pushed aside the private who sat monitoring the brigade command net. The microphone felt slippery to Cooper, wet from the nervous sweat coating the deputy commander’s hands.
“Air attack imminent. Air defense weapons status free. I say again, air attack imminent.”
Like the way he had leapt to take out the sentries in Panama, Griffin tossed the rocks with smooth, deadly accurate motion. First one to his left, about twenty meters, then another to his right front, between two evergreens. Still seated he spun around to toss the third, but stopped in midpitch, his hand held high.
Directly below him The Sep materialized out of nowhere. The big man leaned carelessly against the Bradley’s armored skirts, arms folded, looking up at his boss.
“You picked up two out of three. That’s not bad, Colonel.”
Griffin lowered his arm and tossed the rock carelessly aside. Sep was good, better than he’d expected.
“The others did pretty well.” Griffin motioned over his shoulder to where two recon teams now stood near the places his rocks had hit. “Got within thirty meters. They still have some work to do, though.”