None.
"Fire support," Heifetz continued. "The regiment's dual-purpose artillery battalion will be employed in its air defense mode. The mobile operations envisioned by the plan will be too swiftly paced for heavy-artillery accompaniment. Thus, we have decided to move the regimental artillery directly to the follow-on assembly areas, by routes to the rear of the areas of contact. One battery will deploy to each site — Platinum, Silver, and Gold. You will be prepared to intercept any hostiles on the tail of our squadrons as they close."
Heifetz did a quick mental review. Had he forgotten anything?
No. He went into his closing. "Nonspecified coordination measures per SOP. Quartering parties are authorized to depart for the follow-on assembly areas at end-evening-nautical-twilight. Keep to the approved routes so you don't have some trigger-happy Soviets shooting at you. Artillery follows at EENT plus one. Scouts up at LD minus ninety minutes. Sir," he addressed Taylor, "are there any questions?"
"No. Good job, Dave."
"Then I will be followed by the electronic-warfare liaison officer from the Tenth Cav."
Heifetz rested the remote device on the field podium and moved for his seat, passing a tall, very lean young man on his way. The younger man took up a position just to the side of the briefing screen and began to discuss the intricacies of maneuvering jammers and conducting electronic deception assaults, of electronic tides, digital leeching and ruse dialogues with enemy radars, of ambient energy and frequency deconfliction.
Back in his cold metal chair at Taylor's side, Heifetz had no difficulty imagining the new briefer in a different battle dress, describing the employment techniques for a new type of arrow or sling.
Manny Martinez missed laughter. In peacetime exercises, even during the Mexican deployment, he had always been able to deliver his support briefings with a touch of humor. It was a tradition in any unit commanded by Taylor that the S-4 briefed last. And Martinez had always managed to brighten even the bad days with smiles and small jokes, with banter that made fun of himself or the world. But the humor was gone now, and he shifted uncomfortably in his seat, awaiting his turn to speak as he might await his turn in the dentist's chair. Nothing he had experienced had ever been this serious, and he felt only the weight of his problems — growing problems — within the support and maintenance system, doubt about his personal adequacy, and the deepening worry that he would let down Taylor and all of the other men who depended on him.
He war-gamed possible realignments and shortcuts that might better accomplish the ever greater number of required repairs, that might more efficiently move the regiment's extensive support infrastructure to the new assembly areas, that might begin to ready the maintenance crews for the still-not-quite-imaginable challenges they would face in the aftermath of combat. Martinez had always had a light, clever way with solutions to support problems, the ability to see the obvious answers hidden by the camouflage of regulations and routine, and he had been vain about his talents. Now he saw only the possibility of failure on a dozen fronts.
He half-listened through the series of other briefers, as the chemical officer reported on the latest strikes and the types of agents employed, and as the regimental surgeon warned of typhus among the refugees and lectured the warriors yet again on the uses and abuses of the stimulant pills they had been issued and on the limitations of the fear suppressants given to the dragoons and other junior enlisted soldiers — tablets the troops nicknamed suicide pills because they were convinced, despite all assurances to the contrary, that they impaired a man's judgment. If the pills were so hot, the soldiers asked, how come the officers didn't have to take them?
Martinez listened, wishing the briefings could go on forever, suspending them all on the edge of war, on the verge of action, forgiving them their impending duty. Despite the kidney-penetrating chill in the warehouse, he felt himself sweating.
It never occurred to him to be afraid for his life. He was only afraid of failure.
Then it was time. A startling voice said:
"I will be followed by the S-4."
It was time.
"Manny?" Taylor said, turning his discolored face down the row of chairs.
Martinez sprang to his feet, surprised to find his body as ready and buoyant as ever.
"Good afternoon, sir, gentlemen…" he began, "… as of 1600 local all combat systems have been fully fueled and their weapons suites calibrated and loaded. From the logistics and maintenance standpoint, there is nothing to interfere with the immediate mission, although there is still some question as to how many M-l00s we'll actually get across the LD. Assuming the parts swap-out allows First Squadron to get Zero-eight up, that leaves us with a present strength of forty-five operational systems of fifty assigned. There is a possibility that we'll be able to get one more of Third Squadron's birds up by lift-off time, but I can't guarantee it."
"Now, damn it, Martinez," Lieutenant Colonel Reno cut in, "you and the motor officer told me you'd have all three of my down birds back up."
It was a lie. Martinez knew it, and he knew that Reno knew it. Reno, the general's son.
"Sir," Martinez said, "I told you we'd do our best. But—"
"That's the damned trouble with this army," Reno said, "you can't count on—"
Reno, who, as Martinez knew, had joked that, "That little spic's going to find out that logistics means more than stealing car parts in some back alley."
"Colonel Reno," Taylor entered the exchange in his stark, commanding voice, "I agree it's worth a fight to get every damned machine in the air that we possibly can. But I'm personally convinced that regimental maintenance is doing a good job for all of us. No, a great job. As the Seventh Cavalry commander I'm about to go into battle with a ninety-five percent ready rate. I'll tell you frankly, that's better than I expected. I'm going to cross that LD confidently tonight — and I think everybody else who's going along on the mission can feel the same way. There was a quality about Taylor's presence that seemed ready to leap into an audience, like one of the big cats. At times like these, Martinez realized, it was not Taylor's relatively subdued words that invoked discipline, but the ferocity of his silences, the intensity of the pauses between the mannered sentences, expressing exactly what his language masked. "Anyway," Taylor went on, "I'd cross that line of departure tonight if I had to walk south throwing stones at the enemy. So I'm not sure we should complain about having forty-five of the most powerful combat systems ever built ready for action." Taylor took his eyes off of Reno. "Manny, I'm one hell of a lot more concerned about the problem with the calibrators. What's going on there?"
After being so firmly defended by the old man, Martinez felt doubly bad about the problem he now had to address.
"Sir," Martinez said, "as you know, the regiment's authorized four calibrators for the electromagnetic gun system on the M-l00s. Due to deficiencies, the first issue was recalled in July, but so far we've only received two of the A2-variant replacements. We deployed with both of those. Now one of them has gone down. The motor officer's been working on it personally, and we've got an emergency requisition in to the States. But it looks like we may only have a single calibrator to rotate between the squadrons at the follow-on assembly areas."
"And there's no way the recalibration can be done manually?" Taylor asked.
"No, sir. The system's far too complex. It's not just a matter of sights and a gun tube like in the old days — we've got to reset the control electronics, and it takes the recalibration computer to do that."