"Don't be bloody crazy!"Des Grieux shouted over the indig babble."You saw what's happening south of the wall."
He pointed the barrel of his grenade launcher toward the Escarpment. The bandolier swung heavily in the same hand."Inside an hour,there'll beten thousand people trying t' get through the Notch, and we're here t' shut the door in their face?"
Sincanmo elders shook their guns in the air and cried approval.
Kuykendall's sharp features pinched tighter. She muttered an order to Firewalker's AI, then—regardless of the Hashemites in the Notch—blared through the combat car's external speakers, "Listen to me, gentlemen!"
Her voice echoed like angry thunder from the face of the butte. Shouting men blinked and looked at her.
"The colonel wants them to run away instead of fighting like cornered rats," Kuykendall went on, speaking normally but continuing to use amplification. "He wants a surrender, not a bloodbath."
"But—" Chief Diabate protested.
"What the colonel orders," Kuykendall said firmly, "I carry out. And I'm in charge of this task force, by order of your own council."
"We know the Hashemites!"Diabate said.This time, Kuykendall let him speak. "If they throw away their guns and flee now, they will find more guns later. Only if we kill them all can we be sure of peace. This is the time to kill them!"
"I've got my orders,"Kuykendall said curtly, "and you've got yours.Slammers elements, saddle up. We move out in twenty . . . seven minutes."
Khaki-uniformed mercenaries turned away,shrugging at the slings and holsters of their personal weapons. Des Grieux did not move for a moment.
"I wanted you to see," Kuykendall continued to the shocked Sincanmo elders. "This isn't a tribal council, this is war and I'm in charge. If you refuse to obey my orders, you're in breach of the contract, not me and Colonel Hammer."
Sincanmos shouted in anger and surprise. Des Grieux strode away from the crowd, muttering commands through his commo helmet to the artificial intelligence in H271. The AI obediently projected a view of the terrain still closer to the base of the mesa onto the left side of Des Grieux's visor.
Flowers waited with his torso out of the driver's hatch."What's the word,Sarge?" he called as Des Grieux stepped around the back of a Sincanmo truck mounted with a cage launcher and a quartet of forty-kilo bombardment rockets.
"We're moving," Des Grieux said. He lifted himself to the deck of his tank. "There's a low spot twenty meters from the base of the butte. I'll give directions on your screen. Park us there."
He clambered up the turret side and thrust his legs through the hatch.
"Ah, Sarge?" Flowers called worriedly. His curved armor hid him from Des Grieux. "Should I take down the cammie film?"
Des Grieux switched to intercom. Screen #1 now showed the terrain in the immediate vicinity of H271. The site Des Grieux had picked was within two hundred meters of the tank's present location.
"It'll bloody come down when you bloody drive through it, won't it?" Des Grieux snarled. He slashed his finger across the topo map, marking the intended route with a glowing line that echoed on the driver's display. "Do it!"
The microns-thick camouflage film was strung,then jolted with high-frequency electricity which caused it to take an optical set in the pattern and colors of the ground underneath it. The film was polarized to pass light impinging on the upper surfaces but to block it from below. The covering was permeable to air as well, though it did impede ventilation somewhat.
H271's fans snorted at increased power, sucking the thin membrane against its stretchers. Sincanmo troops moved closer to their own vehicles, eyeing the 170-tonne tank with concern.
Flowers rotated H271 carefully in its own length, then drove slowly up the back slope of the gully. The nearest twenty-meter length of camouflage film bowed, then flew apart when the stresses exceeded its limits. Gritty soil puffed from beneath the tank's skirts.
"Clam Four, this is Clam Six," said Lieutenant Carbury over the 3d Platoon push. "What's going on there? Over."
Des Grieux closed the cupola hatch above him.This was going to be very tricky. Not placing the shot—he could do that at ten kays—but determining where the shot had to be placed.
H271 lurched as Flowers drove it down into a washout directly at the base of the mesa.Des Grieux let the tank settle as he searched the sandstone face through his gunnery screen.
"This where you want us, Sarge?" Flowers asked.
"Clam Four, this is Shellfish Six. Report! Over."
"Right," said Des Grieux over the intercom. "Shut her down. Is your hatch closed?"
The intake howl dimmed into the sighing note of fans winding down. Iridium clanged forward as Flowers slammed his hatch.
"Yes sir," he said.
Des Grieux fired his main gun. Cyan light filled the world.
The rockface cracked with a sound like the planetary mantle splitting. The shattered cliff slumped forward in chunks ranging in size from several tons to microscopic beads of glass. H271 rang and shuddered as the wave of rubble swept across it, sliding up against the turret.
"Clam Four to Clam Six," Des Grieux said. He didn't try to keep his voice free of the satisfaction he felt at the perfect execution of his plan. "I've had an accidental discharge of my main gun. No injuries, but I'm afraid my tank can't be moved without mebbe a day's work by heavy equipment. Over."
"Slick," said Lieutenant Kuykendall, "you stupid son of a bitch."
She must have expected something like this, because she didn't bother raising her voice.
Kuykendall's right wing gunner worked over the Notch with his tribarrel as Firewalker idled at the base of the butte.
When H271 lighted the night with its main gun, the Hashemites guarding the Notch came to panicked alertness. During the ten minutes since, combat cars fired short bursts to keep enemy heads down while the Slammers pulled out.
This thirty-second slashing was different. The gunner's needless expenditure of ammunition was a way to let out his frustration—at what Des Grieux had done, or at the fact that the rest of the Slammers were running while Des Grieux and the indigs stayed to fight.
The troopers of Task Force Kuykendall were professional soldiers. If they'd been afraid of a fight, they would have found some other line of work.
Kuykendall squeezed the gunner's biceps, just beneath the shoulder flare of his body armor. The trooper's thumbs came off the butterfly trigger. The weapon's barrel-set continued to rotate for several seconds to aid in cooling.The white-hot iridium muzzles glowed a circle around their common axis.
Trooper Flowers lifted himself into Firewalker's fighting compartment. His personal gear—in a dufflebag; Flowers was too junior to have snagged large-capacity ammo cans to hold his belongings—was slung to the vehicle's side. Combat cars made room for extra personnel more easily than Carbury's remaining tanks could.