Episode 36
Forward Observations
“A gun battery—8 guns. 100+ millimeter, I would say…”
“Eight armored troop transports…”
“And looks like about a company of regulars.”
I repeated each line after him. “What’s the ETA on enemy position data, Fox?”
“Give me a few,” Park said and I dutifully repeated.
Retrieving the paper map, a minute later we’d worked out where the enemy position was on the grid.
“Dammit,” Jock said, “I’d trade my pinky toe for GPS right about now.”
“Yeah,” said Park as he eyed up his thumb against the enemy position. “Damn low tech.”
“Seriously,” Jock said. “That restriction is stupid. We can have advanced optics but not GPS?”
“It’s the Ascendancy,” I said, remembering what I’d learned on the way in. “No military satellites. They’re pretty arbitrary about the tech levels.”
“Sure,” Park said, “We can’t put our satellites up, but civvies can use GPS?”
“We should have figured out how to tap into the civilian system.”
Jock snorted dismissively. “I suspect the Ascendancy would frown on that.”
I watched Park look at the map, then the enemy position, then back at the map, making notes with a pencil. He was eying out locations, probably taking something like a tank and using it as a measuring point off the road to see how far into the grid the enemy location might be. See, when you can’t use a laser, you just pick something you know the size of, then get a good guesstimate by using lengths. In this case, it wasn’t all that easy because of the slope.
He pencilled down a number and gave it to me, then I called it in to artillery.
“Roger,” came the voice of the gunnery sergeant. We waited… and then heard “Shot—over!”
“Shot—out!” I said and started counting. 1… 2… 3… 4… 5… 6… 7… 8… 9… “Splash, over!” he called. Then POW! “Splash out!” I radioed back as a big burst of dirt and smoke from the hillside maybe 40 meters past the enemy position announced the arrival of the first barrage.
“Close,” Park said. “Drop 50, left 25. Fire for effect. Over.” The enemy were moving around now and more lights had come on at the base. I radioed in Park’s adjustments and they were acknowledged by the gunnery sergeant. A few moments later,
“Shot, over!”
“Shot, out!”
1… 2… 3… 4… 5… 6… 7… 8… 9…
“Splash over!”
RATTLE THUMP-THUMP-THUMP RATTLE the rounds crashed in!
“Splash out!” I yelled back.
This time the barrage was in front of the enemy position by about 10 meters. Park gave me another number and I sent it in—and we really nailed ’em! We took a chunk out of the road to the east that time, and it was good timing as a tank column was just starting to move.
Park was boxing them in. We did this for over an hour, moving in and out and towards the center until the base was ruined and most of the men had fled. A few vehicles got away, but the battery was destroyed and a lot of guys weren’t going home again.
“Enemy position destroyed,” I reported to the gunny. Now we’d watch as our boys came in.
Along the road from the south Wardogs and Ulimbese marched and rolled in, approaching the hill, then heading up along the sides. We could see muzzle flashes and grenade bursts, but it didn’t take long. Within a half hour of the operation’s launch from the highway, it was over. Hill 621 was ours without a single casualty.
We taken out the transports, four tanks, the gun battery, plus I found out later that our guys took 200 prisoners, were all ID’d before being paroled with a warning that if they were taken prisoner again, they’d be immediately shot.
Don’t ever let people tell you mercenaries ain’t smart. We’ve usually got the best intel because we’re professional enough to pay for it.
