No one was in the jeep when it blew up, but soldiers throughout the area scattered, bawling warnings.
A few men simply cowered and screamed. One of them continued screaming minutes after the explosion.
Suilin resumed walking toward the entrance.
The combined motor pool held well over three hundred trucks, from jeeps to articulated flatbeds for hauling heavy equipment. The only gate in and out of Camp Progress was visible a block away. A pair of bunkers, massive structures with three-meter walls of layered sandbags and steel planking, guarded the highway where it passed through the wire, minefields, and berm.
The sliding barrier was still in place across the road. When the Consies came over the berm, they took the bunkers from behind. Satchel charges through the open doors set off the munitions within, and the blasts lifted the roofs.
The bunkers had collapsed. The craters were still smoldering.
One of the long sheds within the motor pool had been hit by an artillery rocket. The blast folded back its metal roof in both directions. Grenades and automatic weapons had raked and ignited some of the trucks parked in neat rows, but there were still many undamaged vehicles.
A three-tonne truck blew up. The driver jumped out of the cab and collapsed. Diesel from the ruptured fuel tank gushed around him in an iridescent pool. Nobody moved to help, though other soldiers stared in dazed expectation.
Two officers were arguing at the entrance while a number of enlisted men looked on. A lieutenant wearing the green collar tabs of Maintenance & Supply said in a voice that wavered between reasonableness and frustration, "But Major Schaydin, it isn't safe to take any of the vehicles yet. The Consies have booby—"
"God curse you for a fool!" screamed the major. His summer dress uniform was in striking contrast to the lieutenant's fatigues, but a nearby explosion had ripped away most of the right trouser legand blackened the rest."You can't deny me! I'm the head of the Intelligence Staff! My orders supersede any you may have received. Any orders at all!"
Schaydin carried a pair of white gloves, thrust jauntily through his left epaulet. His hat hadn't survived the events of the evening.
"Sir,"the lieutenant pleaded,"this isn't orders,it isn't safe. The Consies booby-trapped a bunch of the vehicles during the attack, time delays and pressure switches, and they—"
"You bastards!" Schaydin screamed. "D' you want to find yourselves playing pick-up-sticks with your butt cheeks?"
He stalked past the lieutenant, brushing elbows as though he really didn't see the other man.
A sergeant moved as though to block Schaydin. The lieutenant shook his head in angry frustration.He, his men,and Suilin watched the major jump into a jeep, start it, and drive past them in a spray of dust.
"I need a jeep and driver," Suilin said, enunciating carefully. "To carry me to the Slammers' TOC." He deliberately didn't identify himself.
The lieutenant didn't answer. He was staring after Major Schaydin.
Instead of following the road, the intelligence officer pulled hard left and drove toward the berm. The jeep's engine lugged for a moment before its torque converter caught up with the demand. The vehicle began to climb, spurning gravel behind it.
"He'd do better," said the lieutenant, "if he at least tried it at a slant."
"Does he figure just to drive through the minefields?" asked one of the enlisted men.
"The Consies blew paths all the cop through the mines," said a sergeant. "If he's lucky, he'll be okay."
The jeep lurched over the top of the berm to disappear in a rush and a snarl. There was no immediate explosion.
"Takes more 'n luck to get through the Consies themselfs,"said the first soldier. "Wherever he thinks he's going. Bloody officers."
"I don't need an argument," said Dick Suilin quietly.
"Then take the bloody jeep!" snapped the lieutenant. He pointed to a row of vehicles."Them we've checked, more or less,for pressure mines in the suspension housings and limpets on the gas tanks. They must've had half a dozen sappers working the place over while their buddies shot up the HQ."
"No guarantees what went into the tanks," offered the sergeant. "Nothin' for that but waiting—and I'd as soon not wait on it. You want to see the mercs so bad, why don't you walk?"
Suilin looked at him. "If it's time," the reporter said, "it's time."
The nearest vehicle was a light truck rather than a jeep. He sat in the driver's seat, feeling the springs sway beneath him. No explosion, no flame. Suilin felt as though he were manipulating a marionette the size and shape of the man he had been.
He pressed the starter tit on the dash panel. A flywheel whirred for a moment before the engine fired normally.
Suilin set the selector to Forward and pressed the throttle. No explosion, no flame.
As he drove out of the motor pool, Suilin heard the sergeant saying, " . . . no insignia and them eyes—he's from an Insertion Patrol Group. Just wish them and the Consies'd fight their war and leave us normal people alone . . . ."
"Here he is, Captain Ranson,"said the hologram of the commo tech at Firebase Purple. The image shifted.
Major Danny Pritchard looked exhausted even in hologram, and he was still wearing body armor over his khaki fatigues. He rubbed his eyes. "What do you estimate the strength of the attack on Camp Progress, Junebug?" he asked.
"Maybe a battalion," Ranson replied, wondering if her voice was drifting in and out of timbre the way her vision was. "They hit all sides, but it was mostly on the south end."
"Colonel Banyussuf claims it was a division," Pritchard said with a ghost of a smile. "He claims his men've killed over five thousand Consies already."
An inexperienced observer could have mistaken for transmission noise the ripping sounds that shook the hologram every ten or twenty seconds. Even over a satellite bounce, Ranson recognized the discharge of rocket howitzers.
Hammer's headquarters was getting some action too.
Cooter laughed. "If the Yokels killed anybody,it was when one of 'emfellout a window and landed on 'im. We got maybe three hundred."
"Stepped on?" demanded the image of Hammer's executive officer—and some said, heir.
"Stepped on and gun camera,maybe two hundred,"Ranson said."But there's a lot of stuff won't show up till they start sifting the ashes. Cooter's right, maybe three. It was a line battalion, and it won't be bothering anybody else for a while."
The command car was crowded. Besides Ranson, it held a commo tech named Bestwick at the console, ready if the artificial intelligence monitoring the other bands needed a human decision; Cooter,second in command of the detachment; and Master Sergeant Wylde, who'd been a section leader before, and would be again as soon as his burns healed.
Wylde was lucky to be alive after the first buzzbomb hit his car. He shouldn't have been present now; but he'd insisted, and Ranson didn't have the energy to argue with him. Anyway, between pain and medications, Wylde was too logy to be a problem except for the room his bandaged form took up.